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Socialism and Climate Change‘Socialism and Climate Change’, discussion meeting, 3 May 2007.
Questions addressed:
‘Is global warming happening? Are CO2 emissions to blame? Can capitalism cope with the problem? Can developing countries improve their productivity and living standards without making the situation worse. What should we do and what should governments do? What is a socialist response to the issue?’
Notes from the meeting, by CM
In my view, this was a candidate for best ever group discussion. The Chair (DP) indicated that the speaker (PH) who was kicking off the discussion would speak for 5 minutes or so, and then others could come in and contribute for a similar amount of time. And that was what happened, and the mix of contributions was varied and fascinating.
Those attending (partially anonymised; if you’d prefer, first, last or full names, let me know):
DP, PH, GB, JT, DD, SE, BE, CM. This may not seem very many people, but we were delighted, the group having disappeared for several months, perhaps never to return.
What follows are the notes I took at the time, edited only to expand my scribbles, and add my own contribution, which I didn’t note at the time, so probably I’m clearer here than I was orally. If anyone would like to correct or expand on what I heard them say, or have it written up more fully, please email me.
PH: I’m going to talk about carbon rationing, on the assumption that we agree we have to cut carbon. There is very nearly a consensus amongst scientists that we do need such measures. The question is, how to do carbon rationing, and how to motivate people to participate.
What is needed and possible is essentially a capitalist approach: trading, the establishment of a carbon exchange, where carbon is traded in a similar way to trading pork bellies or orange juice.
An EU emissions trading scheme has been set up for large companies, whereby each company has a ‘free’ carbon allowance. If they run out they have to go to market and buy some more. In the current Phase 1, for 2007, the carbon cost is 50 Euro cents per tonne. They can buy forward to Phase 2, 2008, when the cost will be 12-15 50 Euro cents per tonne. There is a more generous allowance to countries in Eastern Europe.
This scheme could be extended to ordinary consumers using a carbon credit card. As for companies, there would be a ‘free’ allowance, calculated on a country-by-country basis, and divided equally over each country’s population.
Interjection from GB: What you describe is equivalent to a ‘right to pollute’ market.
PH: I don’t like to call it that.
People who will be hit hardest by having to pay for carbon will be better off people, for example, those with a second home abroad which they fly to.
Interjection from CM: You see such a scheme as progressive then?
Yes, I do.
This is workable. We already have a credit card network, which can become the communications infrastructure that is needed.
The West has to set an example, regardless of the fact that China is about to overtake the USA on total carbon emissions, after all, per capita consumption in China is much lower than in the USA and the West generally.
BE: PH is living in Valhalla. In capitalist society there is no control to bring polluters into line. They are there to make a profit. These companies control governments.
We in the West are more responsible.
That carbon emissions are causing climate change is not proven.
China is opening one coal-fired power station every day.
Brazil is building two Amazonian highways: north to south, east to west, with branch roads off them. The question is, how are President Lula and Brazilians dealing with this; who is saying don’t do it.
[CM: when writing this up I did a Google search on ‘Lula Brazil Amazonian Highway’ and got this useful looking site: http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html
The first piece I noted there was: ‘Cattle ranching is the leading cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. This has been the case since at least the 1970s: government figures attributed 38 percent of deforestation from 1966-1975 to large-scale cattle ranching. However, today the situation may be even worse….’
Searching the site on ‘highway’ brought up: ‘Between 2000-2005 soybean cultivation resulted in a small overall percentage of direct deforestation. Nevertheless the role of soy is quite significant in the Amazon. As explained by Dr. Philip Fearnside, “Soybean farms cause some forest clearing directly. But they have a much greater impact on deforestation by consuming cleared land, savanna, and transitional forests, thereby pushing ranchers and slash-and-burn farmers ever deeper into the forest frontier. Soybean farming also provides a key economic and political impetus for new highways and infrastructure projects, which accelerate deforestation by other actors.”’
A search on ‘Lula’ brings up: ‘(3/6/2007) A proposed ethanol alliance that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is expected to forge with U.S. President George W. Bush later this week poses both opportunities and risks for the environment, a top U.N. environmental official said Monday.’]
Until recently, Brazilians were the only ones using alcohol, from two sugar cane harvests a year, to produce a fuel which releases a twentieth of the carbon as does burning diesel.
We are facing the biggest obstacle to carbon reduction in the West, which is the capitalist system.
I shall be more worried when oil and water run out.
CM: I agree with what BE has said, particularly on capitalism not submitting to schemes to restrict carbon emissions.
On whether or not the climate change which seems to be happening is manmade, I personally don’t know. The cause could be solar activity. Perhaps the many scientists agreeing with carbon emissions being the cause is due to there now being economic opportunities from addressing this, and one can be cynical and say that ‘he who pays the piper…’ and scientists say what is in their interests to say.
On oil ‘running out’, which BE mentioned, this is the twin problem to climate change and is called ‘peak oil’, which refers to the ‘Hubbert Peak’, the point of maximum oil production, [http://www.hubbertpeak.com/summary.htm ] Oil doesn’t run out a this point, but it means that the best oil, from which petroleum can be most easily and cheaply be obtained, has probably been used up, after which petroleum will get more and more expensive.
What concerns me is that a solution to both climate change and peak oil can be seen to be the production of biofuels: ethanol from sugar, biodiesel from oil seeds: soya, oil palm and rape. However, extensive cultivation of biofuels would bring about a new wave of land degradation, and the deforestation and breakdown and erosion of soils caused could release more carbon than the equivalent in petroleum. [For oil palm, between 2 and 8 times the carbon from mineral diesel, see http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/ ]
What also concerns me is that the damage caused by our use of fossil fuels gets little attention. Because we’ve had these convenient forms of energy, we have depleted natural resources on a massive scale, in particular destroyed forests and productive land, and used up the richest mineral ores.
In my view, the only hope for stopping this destruction is a revolution to bring an end to capitalism, not to bring in any totalitarian, centrally planned ‘communism’, but a global network of culturally diverse, locally self-reliant and self-governing communities.
JT: The EU carbon market has just taken a figure out of the air. It is like when you buy a CD, which is really buying the right to use the music. What will happen is hoarding to drive up the price. The upper middle class people with their second homes will have the resources to do that. All the carbon rights will end up in the hands of the bourgeoisie.
Interjection from DP: In his book Heat, Monbiot says what’s needed is to calculate how much carbon the world can afford to release and allocate it to each country by population size.
JT: Monbiot’s country by country allowance assumes a powerless UN to administer it. In my view the only thing that will work will be a totally free market, which will be like what happened in Russia [when shares in state-owned industries were divided up amongst the people – they just sold what they had and it ended up with the oligarchs.] Or there will be a global economic crisis. Capitalism works on ever expanding production, so it cannot be held back.
It may be possible to ration carbon, but not under capitalism.
[The following notes are difficult to follow; there was a dialogue going on between GB and PH. If either of them can clarify what was said, please let me know.]
Where clean water is. Scarce resources not a problem. [??]
How can capitalism control its own social processes? It can’t.
Capitalism is an unconscious system. It can moderate itself to resist class struggle, but we’re now in a phase there capitalism is allowed to have its head.
It’s right to be responsible, not just wait for the revolution.
The solution takes place at an individual level, using a credit card system, not totalitarian, a communications system already exists that can know all my life processes, measure my uses of energy.
We resist identity cards and other ways of controlling our lives.
There is no capitalist conspiracy, they’re in competition, except when they need to stop socialism.
SE: I have a question. There are supranationals spanning nation states, how as socialists can we challenge their power, given that socialist organisations exists on a national basis?
DD: There is a vast number of scientists studying this area, producing peer reviewed reports, and the evidence is very strong. Sun spot activity causes a small variation in climate, which has been studied and proved as well. Evidence going back to the Middle Ages, and from arctic ice cores, shows that from 1700 onwards emissions vastly increased. We must accept global warming, and unless something is done, the planet is caput in a hundred years.
Capitalist society will collapse, Marx’s arguments are valid, but his timing was wrong, but the collapse will come too late. We have to work within capitalism to reduce carbon. It’s an awkward situation. Individuals can do a little bit but it needs inter-governmental action.
DP: Reading Georeg Monbiot’s Heat, which is recommended as it’s useful to know the facts and figures. Monbiot has a rant about renewables, and false claims for them. he is not a woolly, sandal-wearing green.
On the science, in as issue of the New Scientist on the International Panel of Climate Change, there was an editorial about a conference at Exeter University where it was stated that contentious bits of the IPCC report had been blotted out.
Monbiot writes that if the permafrost in Siberia melts, that would release methane, which is 23 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
In Chapter 2, Monbiot writes about the denial industry. When a challenging issue comes up on the radio, a scientist is also brought on who says there is no proof. There is a history of this with respect to tobacco, where there was supposed to be a dispute, despite 99% of studies not in dispute over the health dangers, which have been recognised for a very long time. Philip Morris from the tobacco industry set up Citizens Power Groups, supposedly independent, bothered about interference with their liberties; a PR industry.
An equivalent for climate change has been set up by Philip Morris and Exxon Mobil.
Monbiot writes that the global temperature could rise by 6 degrees C,a nd the last time that happened it caused the extinction of 95% of species.
Ice core samples show that with the industrial revolution carbon rose exponentially. We can’t argue with the science except on how serious the problem is.
UK Government targets are to reduce carbon by 60% by 2050. Monbiot says this needs to be 90% by 2030. He also says the government figures disregard the biggest growth area which is the air industry.
Interjection from BE: This will require a complete change in lifestyle.
DP: We have just had the hottest April for 300 years. Up to now, we’ve had exceptionally hot weather once in 3 or 4 years; in 10 years time the change will be obvious to everyone.
We will have to have carbon rationing if we are to reduce carbon by 90% by 2030.
I don’t understand hw that can work economically.
Interjection from PH: through a parallel currency.
DP: Monbiot says divide the possible emissions by the population of the planet, but we couldn’t impose it.
In the Left press, global warming is seen as a green issue, and we don’t talk about them.
Carbon rationing would be less punitive towards the working class than other means like road tax or tax on fuel.
Interjection from BE: I can’t see the infrastructure argument.
DP: There are going to be big class struggles. The Scottish Socialists have a policy for free public transport.
The opportunity for socialists to battle for improvements is limited.
Monbiot writes of sequestration of carbon by power stations. He says that only 50% of energy can come from renewables, no further because they cannot cope with big peaks.
Interjection from someone: It is possible to provide for peaks, which means storing energy. It’s done by building big tanks or reservoirs for water, in period of lower demand, using energy to pump water up into the reservoirs, then at peak demand, use the flow back of the water to generate the extra energy needed.
DP: In the UK we’d have to build 30-50 of them.
On SE’s question, socialism has always been seen as an international struggle, we can link up with trades unions internationally to bring concerted pressure.
CM: I have a question. I visit a number of anti-statist, anti-market Marxist socialist discussion groups, and found that climate change is dismissed on the basis of the materialist conception of history, whereby the next stage, socialism/communism is supposed to be building up under capitalism, whose advanced technology is developing such that there will be the ‘potential abundance’ needed for socialism to come about.
DP: We have to face up to the fact that we’re not going to get socialism, not on that basis.
BE: Implosion of capitalism, going to run out of markets.
DD: We need a drastic change in lifestyle.
PH: A sound way to reduce one’s impact is to go vegan.
One thing I deliberately didn’t talk of was carbon offsetting, which is nonsense, rubbish.
We all currently use debit of credit cards or loyalty cards so information on our consumption is known. The banking system works at a practical level, what I envisage is an extension to that,
GB: Can Paul send an email round about how his infrastructure would work?
JT: Socialism or barbarism. Materialist conception of history is like Darwinism, describes process, not when it happens.
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