Below is the introduction, from the latest issue of "Communist Voice", to the the article "The sorry results of the Cancun global warming summit, the failure of climate capitalism, and the prospects of major change"/
Introduction -- November 2011
A few days ago, in early November 2011, it was announced that 2010 had seen a 6% jump in carbon emissions over the previous year, with about 564 million more metric tons of carbon than 2009. This was, in absolute terms, the largest annual increase in carbon emissions ever, and it was worse than the most pessimistic scenario put forward at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit. It was a sign of the utter failure of the climate summits organized by capitalist governments to deal with global warming.
The market methods of dealing with carbon emissions, and the complete subservience of the capitalist governments to the energy corporations and other capitalist interests that make money off destroying the environment, have made a mockery of efforts at averting the looming climactic disaster. Climate capitalism, or neo-liberalism applied to environmental reform, has proved utterly bankrupt.
There is no reason to think that 2011 will turn out to be any better. The article below shows that the measures adopted by the Cancun climate summit of December 2010 followed the same path to disaster as the previous climate summits.
The 2011 UN climate summit will be held Nov. 28 - Dec. 9 in Durban, South Africa. All signs are that it will follow the same neo-liberal path as its predecessors, and the environmental crisis will deepen. There will be debate on what is to replace the Kyoto Protocol, whose first "commitment period" is set to expire at the end of 2012, but no challenge to reliance on market methods. But serious progress on global warming will require abandoning market fundamentalism and implementing serious environmental and economic planning and regulation. Moreover, it will require the influence of the working class on this planning and regulation to ensure that it accomplishes environmental goals, that capitalists aren't able to evade it, and that it is integrated with social programs to protect the well-being of the working masses, rather than serving mainly as another way to funnel subsidies to the capitalists.
All this goes against the logic of capitalism, so that it can only be accomplished in part while capitalism exists. Moreover, world capitalism is still insisting on market fundamentalism as the world sinks deeper and deeper into a world depression. So the struggle for relief from austerity and its deepening misery, and the struggle for measures to deal with the environmental crisis, both face the need to fight the neo-liberalism of the bourgeoisie. The same bourgeoisie that is cruelly sending a whole generation of working people into destitution and desperation in order to save the banks, is also ruining the environment. If there is to be a chance for serious progress in protecting the environment, the class and environmental struggles must be linked.
The following article is based on a presentation at the Detroit Workers' Voice Discussion Group meeting of Jan. 2, 2011. ....
www.communistvoice.org/46cCancun.html
-- Joseph Green