By John Pickard
The second world climate change conference is taking place in Katowice, Poland, as a sequel to the Paris conference of December 2015. This new summit will involve as many as twenty thousand delegates, including politicians, business representatives and scientists from 190 countries. The conference, also referred to as COP24, is intended as a follow-up to Paris, where only general targets were agreed without any specific mechanisms to implement or monitor progress. The Katowice conference, therefore, is specifically aimed to put concrete rules to previously vague commitments.
No-one should be under any illusions about the seriousness of the issue. The Paris agreement committed signatories to keeping human-made global warming – from the release of carbon into the atmosphere – to “well below 2oC”. However, it is now clear that the failure to adhere to past commitments now means that we are on track for a temperature rise of 3oC or more by the end of this century. The evidence is piling up, year on year. Four of the hottest years on record, for example, have been in the last six years. After something of a pause, global carbon emissions are again accelerating, and this year are increasing at their fastest pace for seven years.
The implications of global warming are, even according to the Financial Times, “staggering”. The British naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough, addressing the conference, warned that the “collapse of civilisation and the natural world is on the horizon.”. Rising average world temperatures in the rest of this century – let alone what would happen after 2100 – will lead to frequent and severe weather anomalies, rising sea levels, global crop failures and increased prevalence of disease, to name only a few effects. These ‘natural’ calamities will inevitably work their way through the political and economic system to create a ferment of volatility, upheaval and social disorder.
Can the human race even survive?
Even without the effects of climate change, capitalism is pushing human society into what may well be the most disturbed period in the whole of its history. Add global warming to that and an historic period of revolution, counter-revolution and war is the likely outcome. This will be epoch in which the fundamental question asked will whether or not the human race can even survive. Or will it be destroyed by nuclear war or drastic climate change?
The key issue that socialists need to pose is this: can capitalism save the planet, or is the socialist transformation of society a necessary pre-requisite for its salvation? We would strenuously argue that it is the latter.
Marx made the point that capitalism had come into being “dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt”. In other words, it came at a phenomenal cost in death, hardship, war, poverty, disease and oppression. But for all that, as an economic advance on feudal society it also brought with it the promise of huge advances in science, technique and production.
Today, capitalism has outlived any usefulness it may have had. It is a system that forms an absolute obstacle to the further development, or even the survival, of humanity. The two great barriers to the progress of science, technique and useful production are, on the one hand, the private capitalist ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange and, on the other, the nation state. These are absolute fetters to any solution of the problem of climate change and global warming.
The political representatives of capitalism are aware of the problem and that is why we have had the Paris and Katowice conferences in the first place, as well as United Nations and other reports on climate change. There is a recognition among the theoreticians and more far-sighted thinkers of capitalism that there is a serious issue here. But the ability of the capitalist system and its representatives to do anything fundamental about the problem is an altogether different matter.
For largely public image reasons, a number of large companies – including energy companies – are switching some investments towards renewal energy. Some of this has come about because of shareholder revolt and pressure.
All the big oil companies now sport ‘green’ logos and carry slick adverts about their ‘green’ credentials. Exxon Mobil has partnerships with a fuel cell company. Shell has its own renewal energies arm called ‘New Energies’. The French company Total also has a ‘New Energies’ arm and has invested in the acquisition of a solar energy company, SunPower. It has announced investments of £500m in renewable energy. Almost all of these companies have investments in solar power companies or wind generation.
The latest ‘big’ announcement has come from Anglo-Dutch Shell, which at Katowice announced to great fanfare that it is going to set emission targets for itself. But, as the Financial Times points out, “it still commits only 8 per cent of its annual capital expenditure budget of $25bn to clean energy projects.”
Despite warnings from academics – Paul Stevens of the Chatham House think-tank has warned that large oil companies must “transform their business or face a short, brutal end” – measures and changes introduced by Big Oil are still largely cosmetic. Their investments in renewables pale into insignificance alongside their relentless pursuit of oil and natural gas.
New surge in carbon emissions in 2018
The big oil companies have invested as much in lobbying on behalf of so-called ‘clean gas’ as they do in the development of renewable energy. Natural gas might be ‘clean’ in the sense that it creates less pollution than coal or oil burning, but it still pumps carbon into the atmosphere.
The big energy companies have enormous political clout and despite their nod in the direction of renewables – and that is all it really is – the politicians in their pockets continue overwhelmingly to sponsor national energy infrastructures based on carbon rather than on renewables. In northern Europe, billions of Euros (and Russian roubles) are going into the production of the Nord2 gas pipeline that will tie Germany and other states to gas for decades. In Canada, the ‘dirtiest’ fuel of all – tar sands – is still being developed on a huge scale and around the whole world new coalmines and coal-fired power stations are being created on an unprecedented scale. The surge in carbon emissions in 2018 has been largely through the economic development of China, India and the United States.
To more fanfare, the World Bank announced that it will be investing $200bn “to help poor countries prepare for climate change over the coming years.” This might sound a lot, but it is a sum that is spread over several years and it depends (for half) on private capital. Moreover, it is a puny sum set alongside the increase in total global wealth of $14tr in a single year to mid-2018.
The political representatives of capitalism are locked into the two constraints of private ownership of the economy and the nation-state and all their decisions are therefore limited by these narrow horizons. Each separate government, representing its ‘own’ capitalist class, is craftily trying to steal a march on the others. They all express the wish to switch to renewables and away from carbon, but it is always the others who must start it off. It’s a case of “after you”.
Since the Paris agreement in 2016, the Trump administration has followed a nationalist policy of “America First” and he has explicitly renounced the meagre Paris commitments of the USA. Trump glories in his ignorance and disregard of scientific opinion. To be a “climate change denier” today is equivalent to believing in a flat Earth. So when some arm of the US administration publishes any reports of climate change – as they do from time to time – under Trump they are diluted, distorted or just simply suppressed.
Similar right-wing politicians across Europe and the world have echoed the same narrow outlook as Trump, pandering to their own xenophobic and nationalist movements. It might be the case that the Katowice conference is taking place on the site of a former coal mine, but the Polish Prime Minister is a climate-change denier and Poland is one of the few countries in Europe (and the only large one) still building coal-fired power stations.
“The rise of populism on the right has turbo-charged climate denial”, one pundit was quoted as saying in the Financial Times, “because it introduced these elements of anti-elitism, anti-globalism and anti-global engagement.”
No-one is ‘greener’ than a ‘red’
Some of the representatives of capitalism, like billionaire Michael Bloomberg, are optimistic about the possibilities of change. Despite Donald Trump, he points out, “We’re closing coal-fired power plants in the US at the same rate under Trump as we did under Obama” (Financial Times).
“In the end”, he claims, “capitalism is working. We do what is in our interest and stopping climate change and improving the environment today are both things that are in the public and corporate interest.”
But what is in the interests of capitalism as a whole is not the same as what is in the interests of a particular company trying to squeeze the most profit for its shareholders. What is in the interests of the Earth as a whole, is not the same as what is in the political interests of this or that right-wing nationalist demagogue. Who could seriously believe in the current world political climate, with increasing trade and military tensions between the big superpowers, that there could be any meaningful cooperation on carbon emissions or harmonious changes in energy policies?
Capitalism might be moving in the direction of a switch from carbon to clean energy. But it is doing so reluctantly, feebly and spasmodically…and almost certainly too slowly. If capitalism was borne “dripping from head to foot with blood and dirt”, it is certainly seeing out its last decades in the exactly same manner. Through natural disasters, famine, wars and social conflicts, it is threatening to impose untold misery and devastation on billions of people – all of which are unnecessary.
The Katowice conference will make no fundamental difference to the outlook of Big Oil or to the various governments of capitalism. There will be paper commitments galore. But afterwards, each government and company will try to outflank the other. It will be, more or less, business as usual. For socialists, it is a time to renew our commitments to change society. No-one is ‘greener’ than a ‘red’. The use of science, technique, human skills and the planet’s resources in a planned and rational way for the benefit of all – that is the only answer to global climate catastrophe.
December 7, 2018
