11.04.2007

More bad climate news

Jim Moody on the irrationality of carbon offsetting and carbon credits

Earlier this year we discussed in these pages the summary report of working group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, entitled 'Climate change 2007: the physical science basis' ('Socialism or catastrophe' Weekly Worker February 8). However, another working group has also been beavering away, and has just released its fourth assessment report.

On April 6 the IPCC's group II brought out 'Climate change 2007: climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability'. Whereas February's report, as its title suggested, was concerned with technical details of climate change, this document deals with "scientific understanding of impacts of climate change on natural, managed and human systems, the capacity of these systems to adapt and their vulnerability" (www.ipcc.ch/SPM6avr07.pdf).

In the six years since the third assessment reported was published, the number of studies of observed trends in the physical and biological environment and their relationship to regional climate variations has increased greatly. Nonetheless, a geographic imbalance in data and literature on observed changes is obvious, largely due to a paucity of information from so-called developing countries. Despite this caveat, there is sufficient observational evidence from all continents and most oceans to show that many natural systems are currently being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases.

Based on 30-year data sets, this report is the culmination of five years' research and utilises 450 lead authors. Then government representatives got their grubby hands on it, in the 'overview process', and excised sections to which three scientists filed objections. At the press launch, group II co-chair Dr Martin Parry responded to this by suggesting that when "governments buy in it becomes their document". As a result, he admitted, "Certain messages were lost ..."

According to the summary of the working group, "Much more evidence has accumulated over the past five years to indicate that changes in many physical and biological systems are linked to anthropogenic warming." It goes on to list the four "sets of evidence" which, taken together, support this conclusion:

l The "increase in the globally averaged temperature since the mid-20th century" is in all likelihood mainly due to the "observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations".

l Of the more than 29,000 observational data series, from 75 studies, that "show significant change in many physical and biological systems", more than 89% are consistent with the kind of change expected as a result of warming.

l The evidence of warming across the globe is "very unlikely to be due solely to natural variability of temperatures or natural variability of the systems".

l Models that input both anthropogenic causes of warming (greenhouse gases and aerosols) and natural causes (solar activity and volcanoes) "simulate observed responses significantly better than models with natural forcing only".

So anthropogenic causes (ie, those derived from human activity, as opposed to those occurring in natural environments without human influence) have been unequivocally identified as mainly responsible for global warming. And, although changes to the report have been forced through, especially to suit the USA and China, even at this most conservative level the inescapable conclusion is that human agency is responsible. Even the Bush regime has had to accept this. No longer can natural change or the sun's cycles be promoted as excuses for global warming. This being so, capital has had to change tack and develop responses in its own interest.

Of course, what the ruling class proposes can hardly be expected to be in the interests of the majority or humanity as a whole. Capitalism has its own, inhuman logic to follow - the logic of profit. Under its rationale, the crisis of climate warning becomes an opportunity to market and to individualise.

Starting from a basic premise that climate warming must not be allowed to challenge the current mode of production, nor the fact that it constrains humanity within painfully narrow boundaries, the defenders and apologists of capital will come up with 'remedies' at the expense of the working class, where it is individuals who are encouraged or forced to shoulder the burden.

Take 'carbon offsetting', for example, whereby those who engage in activity that produces carbon emissions - eg, travelling by air - can pay a given sum in order to, say, 'plant a tree' by way of compensation. Just as the catholic church in the middle ages sold indulgences, forgiving the most heinous of sins in exchange for land,  money or other gifts, so in the 21st century you can hand over your cash to a range of dubious bodies in order to assuage your guilt. If you are rich enough, all your ecological sins can be forgiven - in fact you can carry on sinning.

While such schemes are at present voluntary, it is quite conceivable that a compulsory system of 'carbon credits' will soon be proposed. You would be allocated your own individual 'ration' of carbon-emitting activity during a given period, and if you wish to exceed it you will have to buy up somebody else's.

Moving to such a system of 'carbon accounts' would punish the poor and indeed perpetuate poverty. It would place the burden for global warming on the masses, who would certainly be made to pay in the advanced capitalist countries. For the rich, payment would be a trivial matter. Much as (in microcosm) Ken Livingstone's £8-a-day congestion charge for the right to drive your vehicle through the centre of London is a disincentive for the majority, but is peanuts for the rich, who are grateful that their journeys are speedier as a result. Now New Labour is considering road user pricing; Gordon Brown has already doubled air passenger duty (although the £2 billion annual revenue from this undifferentiated tax on individual travellers is not necessarily earmarked for environment tasks. Similarly Tory leader David Cameron wants 'green' taxes on air travel that will inevitably penalise those least able to pay.

We desperately need to develop an alternative strategy to combat global warming - one that is based on the interests of the working class. Inevitably that means challenging the very basis of the system of capital itself, which is incapable of promoting human need (including protecting our environment) above the creation of surplus value.

However, the Socialist Workers Party has issued only platitudes about "taking on big business" - within the parameters of current mainstream 'solutions', not least Kyoto: "Companies listed on the London Stock Exchange produce 15% of global emissions. The British government should take responsibility for curbing this figure. According to radical geographer Doreen Massey, Britain is one of the few countries that may hit its Kyoto target for reductions. But this is not because companies have cleaned up their act - rather reductions in British manufacturing industry have meant that companies have effectively exported their pollution. We need to force the government to take a lead in reducing global emissions - and that means taking on big business" (Socialist Worker January 13).

Kyoto must be condemned as totally inadequate, not supported as a unity project by the left, just like the 'carbon chit' approach now finding vogue. In continually pursuing broadness, the SWP is soft toward Kyoto. Just as the Stop the War Coalition was left paralysed by this policy of broadness for its own sake, unable even to call for votes against Labour cabinet members in the 2005 general election, so the movement to counteract climate change will be rendered impotent if it is not armed with a consistent working class programme.

Similarly, in its offering to tackle capitalism's looming ecological disaster, the Socialist Party in England and Wales contents itself merely with updating its old nationalisation slogan: "We will continue to argue for the urgent necessity of public ownership of the 500 multinationals that effectively control the world's resources, and of democratically controlled planning of the utilisation of those resources, by the working class. Then, instead of the profit motive ruling, the main criteria would be the needs of the majority of people and a sustainable environment" (The Socialist March 15).

This raises far more questions than it answers. As the SPEW writer has clearly realised, a response to global warming cannot be based on national solutions, such as the nationalisation of British companies. So what does SPEW mean by "public ownership"? Would this be vested in individual states? The United Nations? We need to start from the need to struggle for working class control now, not after the (SPEW-style) 'socialist dawn', to be achieved through "public ownership".

Communists have to tackle head on the questions raised by global warming as an immediate priority. It is certainly true that the question of class rule is posed starkly by this issue, whenever proposed 'solutions' are subjected to careful scrutiny. Production for profit instead of need has produced this situation and will continue to exacerbate it. However, we have to expose such irrationality as suggesting that carbon offsetting or carbon credits can compensate for emissions in the advanced capitalist countries. How can a few token trees planted in India make any difference, when the system as the system is driving forward deforestation at an unprecedented rate?

The natural environment of which we are part demands care and attention. Capitalism is not compatible with a healthy environment, since it sees the resources of the world as free to be used for its purposes. We must therefore oppose schemes designed to place the burden of capitalism's ecological crimes on the shoulders of the working class.