Articles
Environment and Climate ChangeEnd Times in Copenhagen
It’s hard to overstate the importance of the upcoming December meetings at Copenhagen, Denmark, set up by the UN for the purpose of renegotiating the climate protocols set forth in Kyoto, in 1997 and due to expire in 2012. These latter were greeted with a certain modicum of hope and a small offsetting of skepticism. As Copenhagen looms, the skeptics have been proven right in spades, those who thought something good would come out of Kyoto stand revealed as fools or liars and charlatans. In the sober words of Nature from 2007, the Kyoto protocols, which demanded of wealthy countries that they reduce carbon emissions by 2012 to six-to-eight percent below 1990 levels, have “produced no demonstrable reductions in emissions or even in anticipated emissions growth.”
The reason we cannot afford to have the results of Copenhagen go the same way is known by many but taken seriously by few: The best science tells us there is a rapidly closing window for turning climate change around before irreversible positive feedback loops set in, e.g., methane freed from beneath melting tundra, or the loss of albedo reflectivity from seas once covered with ice. Once this sets in (it may already have begun), climate change, awful as it now is, will likely spiral rapidly downhill with consequences catastrophic beyond belief and comprehension.
And yet the numbers of those who do not take this brutal truth seriously include the main forces geared up for Copenhagen. You may, if you turn to the voluminous reports circulating on the internet and elsewhere, learn a great deal about what is planned for Copenhagen and the numberless players in its scenario. You will wear your eyes out and confuse yourself to distraction as you try to pick your way through the bulletins and pontifications of the experts who have been given their proverbial “seat at the table” that is being set in the lovely Danish capital. But you will not discover there any serious attention paid as to why Kyoto has so abysmally failed, nor indeed about the fundamental truth about climate change and the whole ecological crisis of which it is the most spectacular manifestation.
Class and Climate Change
Class forces palpably drive the crisis of climate change with the ruling class of capitalists, along with the capitalist state structures that regulate their world, responsible for the gathering nightmare. After all, the vast bulk of carbon spewed into the atmosphere is there because of decisions made by capitalists and not ordinary people. It follows that the climate crisis also introduces the profound question of the survivability of the dominant capitalist mode of production. We have been told of the “inconvenient truth,” as the largely forgotten Al Gore has put it, that rising atmospheric carbon threatens the survival of civilization. But who speaks of the much more inconvenient truth: that controlling carbon levels to the point where breakaway climate change can be arrested will almost certainly entail a structural contraction of the capitalist economy, which, as any student of capitalism knows, means the end of the capitalist system. Basically a simple choice looms: We can have either capitalism with no hope for the future, or get rid of capitalism and have a fighting chance for a future.
The global bourgeoisie understands this. They might not understand it consciously, but they know viscerally that the ecological crisis is their Armageddon, and this conditions their responses at meetings like Kyoto and Copenhagen. These do not fail because of stupidity but from existential reasons. Capitalism is the life-process of the bourgeoisie and profit is its blood; thus survival for the bourgeois means to pump profit through the arteries of society. The appeal of mechanisms like the cap-and-trade regimen that has ruled Kyoto and will most likely continue after Copenhagen is not that it solves the dilemmas of carbon accumulation. Indeed, it is essential to understand that capitalists do not want to solve the dilemma of carbon accumulation, because this would mean their suicide as a ruling class. Instead, they substitute what they know — the accumulation of capital, which is to say, its expansion — and, secure in their power, they delude themselves into thinking this can also solve the climate crisis. Cap and trade creates new commodities and markets for them, gardens where capital can grow. Trillions of dollars, we are told, await the financiers who will command these new markets: a blinding sun that completes the building of delusion. Thus the ruling class is quite willing to sacrifice nature, and therefore humanity itself, including, it might be added, their own children and grandchildren, so that their profits keep rolling in.
Where is our Turning Point?
And the rest of us? Are we going to accept this madness from the pundits, the officials and the police, panels and bureaucracies who represent capitalist reality? Are we going to petition our governments, as the liberal press urges us to do, bowing down to beg: “Please, my liege, be sensible, and slow down the rate of carbon accumulation … give us another generation before the hammer of nature descends.” Are we going to respect Barack Obama, who will be telling us with his pleasant demeanour and rhetorical skill, that compromising is the best we can do given the way the world is set up?
Or will Copenhagen be the great moment of refusal that the world has been waiting for? Will we take the opportunity afforded by the tenth anniversary of the Seattle uprisings to complete their work?
Plainly, these meetings will be a turning point. The question remains as to the direction taken, whether toward eco-catastrophe or hope for life. I do not think it will be possible to deal a fatal blow to the carbon system in this one place. Reality is not set up to accommodate fantasies of instant transformation. But we should do our best to non-violently impede the meetings so long as they serve capital. More important, it will be possible to use the moment to energize and begin to pull together the vast array of spontaneously emerging movements that have sprung up on every continent over the past decade, chiefly under the rubric of “climate justice.” We can build a “movement of movements” from below, harbingers of a transformed world: a movement to reveal the murderous betrayal of life by the capitalist class, and centered around the principle of keeping the sources of carbon in the ground as we build ecologically socialist way of production.
The system massed at Copenhagen will have its day. But the day after can belong to us all.
This article appeared in the November/December 2009 issue of Canadian Dimension magazine. SUBSCRIBE NOW to get a refreshing and provocative alternative delivered to your door 6 times a year for up to 50% off the newsstand price.
“Turn on, tune in, and drop out” That was the message of the LSD supporters in the sixties. I am against turning on with harmful chemicals, but the tuning in and dropping out makes more sense than ever. As a society we have been hypnotised by propagandized materialism, but as individuals, we can fight this. It is easy to point fingers, but more difficult to make changes in our own lives. Cars have become a way of life, but they have not been around that long. In terms of how long they have been on earth, they have done a lot of damage. How important is it to be able to dash all over the place like the Road Runner of cartoon fame? Looked at in one way, it is a hell of a waste of time. And when we get dependent on corporations to do everything, what is lost thereby? I have an old photograph of my Scandinavian Relatives sitting around a table playing violins and cellos. That’s what people used to do - entertain themselves. People knew how to sew, to knit, to build houses. I think we are getting terribly dumbed down. Reviving the art of conversation would be a start. From there maybe we could move on to thinking. Then if the TV was turned off, and we stayed away from the mall and even the car for a week, we might even come up with some creative ideas for living in a whole new way, that would be better for us, and for the planet, and for the fishes in the deep blue sea.
#1. Posted by Madeline Bruce in Nanaimo, B. C. on November 2nd 2009 at 11:30pm
God Put Enough Food To Feed Us, He Knows About The Climate Lie.
#2. Posted by Gary in Oxford,Ms on November 22nd 2009 at 11:15pm
climate change is a lie governments and eilite and pope are all involved to take over the world the one head that was wounded was the catholic church a new black pope will talk over this pope benadict . the united nations is the popes army .rothchild , rockefeller , bromfman ,bush ,oboma and many more are tring to depopulate mankind. masons ,biulderburg, illumanoty, shriners,lions club and so on.
Jude 4 King James (for certain men have crept in unnoticed,who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. Don’t be fooled into beleiving that when the anticrist apears in the east sky don’t follow him this is a hologram projected from satilites in the skies al over the world in different languagees this is how thay deceive the people of the world then he satan can rule over all the nations . satan is in the theater now. She in the bible is the catholic church There is so much to say and so littel time So keep the love of Jesus in your heart and no matter what happens thay can’t take your SOUL GOD BLESS THE WORLD WITH YOUR LOVE. see you in the skies.
#3. Posted by cifford jones in london (canada the new sodom & gomorrah) on December 17th 2009 at 10:07am
Yes. God help us and have mercy on us all.
#4. Posted by Madeline Bruce in Nanaimo, B. C. on December 17th 2009 at 10:15am
there is no god or gods only class systems and ecosystems
#5. Posted by blues on December 21st 2009 at 9:57pm