Changing climate (2016)

Book Review from the November 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic’. By Peter Wadhams. Penguin Books, 2016.

Peter Wadhams is a professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge and former director of its Scott Polar Research Institute. Over 47 years as a polar researcher he has been on many expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic.

His book straddles three literary genres. Part of it is a scientific exposition of the properties and structure of ice and how it forms under various conditions (quite differently in the Antarctic from in the Arctic, for instance). Other passages are a prose poem on the beauty of icy landscapes that only a few hundred people have ever seen. Above all, it is a warning of the gathering speed and momentum of climate change, culminating in a ‘call to arms.’

The author explains all the positive feedbacks that are accelerating global heating. The most alarming new development, he argues, is the release of methane – a very powerful greenhouse gas – from shallow Arctic seas whose warming is starting to melt long-frozen seabed sediments. In his opinion, the seriousness of the situation is understated not only by those who deny the reality of human-made climate change but also by many of his fellow specialists in the field, such as climate modellers who stubbornly stick to the predictions generated by their models even when the latter conflict with recent field observations.

Although most of the book focuses on the Arctic, there is a very valuable chapter on the Antarctic. The Antarctic is rather isolated from the rest of the planet in geographical and meteorological terms, although if global heating continues it will eventually suffer the same fate as the Arctic.

Professor Wadhams takes the view that it is now too late to avert disaster without resort to geoengineering – that is, ‘engineering’ the earth in ways that will reduce incoming solar radiation, increase the albedo (reflectivity) of the Earth’s surface or remove greenhouse gases from the air. (For more on geoengineering, see Pathfinders in the September 2010 and January 2011 issues of the Socialist Standard.)

The author’s clear scientific explanations contrast with rather muddled treatment of economic and political matters. But credit where credit is due: there is one paragraph in Chapter 13 where he does penetrate to the core of the problem facing our species:

  ‘The world’s rickety financial structure still requires perpetual growth in order to retain stability … Within the present capitalist system, as practiced by everyone including China, there is no way that a sustainable equilibrium society can be tolerated. Everyone knows that exponential growth … cannot continue and will lead only to disaster, yet every finance minister seeks to encourage economic growth …’

Unfortunately, this is a flash in the pan. Wadhams does not develop this insight or explore its implications. Instead he reverts to blaming the situation on superficial factors like the greed that makes people buy SUVs and the fact that most political leaders have no scientific training (a noted exception being Margaret Thatcher, with whom Wadhams was in direct contact).

It is all very well to call for ‘colossal programs on an international scale’ – but there is no real world community to consider and undertake such programs. Who can imagine the rival capitalist powers pooling their efforts to bring back the Arctic ice? The same powers that right now are ‘scrambling for the Arctic’ – salivating over the profit-making opportunities opened up by the retreat of the ice and manoeuvring to control the region’s newly accessible resources (see ‘Scramble for the Arctic,’ Material World, September 2007)?

The crucial problem is not how to devise programmes to save our planet but how to create the world community.

Stefan

World Common Ownership (2017)

From the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

By common ownership we don’t mean state property. We are not proposing the science-fiction nightmare of all the Earth’s resources being owned and controlled by a single World State. We mean the opposite: that there should be no private property or territorial rights over any part of the globe. The Earth and its natural and industrial resources should not belong to anybody – not to individuals, not to corporations, not to states. They should simply be there to be used by human beings to satisfy their needs.

World Common Ownership is not a new concept. When in the 1970s they were discussing dividing up the seas amongst States and individuals in the same way that the land has been, the idea of ‘global commons’ was put forward. And you had, of all people, President Nixon talking about making the seas ‘the common heritage of all mankind’. The idea was that there should be no private property and territorial rights over them. The same has been proposed for Antarctica and the Moon.

What we are proposing is that this should apply to the Earth as well – that private property rights and territorial rights over any part of the planet should be abolished. This is the only basis on which we as the human species can set about arranging our relationship with the rest of Nature in a rational and ecological way so that the planet becomes a habitable place for all of us.

Due to the development of the world market economy, the relationship between humans and the rest of Nature has now become a relationship between the whole human species and the biosphere as a whole. Which is a point that some Greens overlook when they propose going back to local small-scale self-sufficient communities.

Just look at the sort of problems that have been discussed at the various Earth Summits that used to be held: global warming, tropical deforestation, the thinning of the ozone layer, acid rain. All these are world problems – problems that ignore the artificial frontiers which crisscross the globe, problems which concern the whole human race.

The calling of so-called Earth Summits and other meetings to deal with climate change are a recognition that there are no national or local solutions to these problems. But these meetings have been failures, and were bound to be, because solutions were sought within the framework of the present, profit-driven, capitalist world economic system. The leaders of states, driven by the system to engage in a competitive struggle for profits against each other, were expected to co-operate to solve ecological problems – problems caused by the competitive, profit-seeking system they support and uphold.

While it is clear that a question which concerns the whole world such as the possible consequences of global warming can be effectively dealt with only by unified action at a world level, it is equally clear that this is not going to happen under the profit system. The different states into which the world is divided have different – and clashing – interests. At most, all that can happen under the profit system when a global problem arises is ‘much too little, much too late’.

The profit system, the world market system, must go before we can tackle these problems in a constructive and permanent way. It must be replaced by a global system of common ownership and democratic control. We must organise to take the Earth back from those who currently own and exploit it, and must make it the common heritage of all.

One Thing the Romans Did For Us (2017)

The Material World column from the July 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

What did the Romans ever do for us – other than pass down their concepts of property? For instance, land in Rome could either be ‘private property’, res privata or managed by the city authorities such as a park in which case it would be part of the res publica. Res nullis referred to land belonging to no-one, ownerless, therefore, it was available for occupation, the justification on which the British settlement in Australia was based despite it already being the home of indigenous peoples. However, res communis property was territory not subject to the legal title of anyone. It could not be claimed by a state because it belonged to all, or ‘the common heritage of mankind.’ In the sixth century CE, the Institutes of Justinian codified the relevant Roman law as: ‘By the law of nature these things are common to mankind – the air, running water, the sea, and consequently the shores of the sea.’ Two modern-day examples of res communis would be the continent of Antarctica and outer space.

In 1908, Britain made claims on parts of Antarctica and after that, several other countries did likewise. To avoid conflicts, the Antarctic Treaty was signed in 1959. This was the start of the polar region being protected and preserved for the heritage of all. The treaty does not recognise territorial sovereignty claims ‘to ensure in the interests of all humankind that Antarctica shall continue forever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not become the scene or object of international discord.’

This year in October, the 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (better known as the ‘Outer Space Treaty’) will turn 50. The Treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet. Article Two of the Treaty states that ‘outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means’.

The 1979 Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other  Celestial Bodies (the ‘Moon Treaty’) was apparently intended as a new treaty to supersede or supplement the Outer Space Treaty, most notably by elaborating upon the outer space treaty’s provisions regarding resource appropriation and prohibition of territorial sovereignty.

It banned all exploration and uses of celestial bodies without the approval or benefit of other states under the ‘common heritage of humankind’ principle (article eleven). Dr. Christopher J. Newman, a reader in space law at the University of Sunderland explains ‘You couldn’t have the superpowers landing on the moon and carving up bits of territory on the moon. It’s not possible to own it, it’s not possible to appropriate it by means of sovereignty or any other such device. So it was designed to deal with a binary power bloc, and a superpower budget. The people who drafted the treaty didn’t have commercial space activity on their minds.’

They could not be expected to foresee the Space Act of 2015 (sometimes called the ‘Extraterrestrial Finders Keepers’ law), which grants US citizens or corporations the right to legally claim natural resources – including water and minerals. Commercial operations could reap trillions of dollars from mining precious metals like platinum, common metallic elements such as iron, and water. Handing out the right to exploit chunks of space to your citizens sounds very much like a claim of sovereignty. Congress is saying to these companies, ‘Go get these rights and we’ll defend you,’ and at the same time saying, ‘We’re making no sovereign claim of ownership’. The bottom line is, before you can give somebody the right to harvest a resource you have to have ownership.

Socialism has legal precedent back to Roman times for the aim of common ownership which can be defined as a situation where every individual has the potential ability to benefit from the wealth of society and to engage in the decision-making process of what and how we consume, to allocate resources in short-term and long-term collective goals. Even so, to use the word ‘ownership’ can be misleading in that this does not fully bring out the fact that the transfer to all members of the society of the power to control the production of wealth makes the very concept of property redundant. In that sense, socialism will be a ‘no-ownership’ society.

ALJO

Antarctica - End of the Last Wilderness? (2013)

The Material World column from the December 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Antarctica is our planet’s last remaining wilderness – almost wholly uninhabited, in large part even unexplored by humans – a vast continent of snow-swept plains, icy mountains and cliffs swarming with penguins. 

And yet Antarctica is highly vulnerable to human activity. Offshore, trawlers from several countries scoop up the fish that feed the seals and penguins and the krill that feed the fish. (The latest attempt to reach an agreement to ban commercial fishing off East Antarctica and in the Ross Sea failed.)

The krill are then fed to aquafarmed fish and marketed to health-conscious consumers as a superior source of omega-3 fatty acids, although it is unclear why krill should be preferred to other sources like walnuts, soybeans and quinoa.

Chunks of the melting West Antarctic ice sheet continue to break off and plunge into the sea. In Central Antarctica too global heating has an impact, but of a different kind – increased precipitation that still takes the form of snow.

Territorial claims

Antarctica was first sighted in 1820 by a Russian naval expedition, then again three days later by the crew of a British naval vessel. French explorers landed in 1840 and claimed the territory for France – a claim soon forgotten. Further discoveries were made in the late 19th and early 20th century by British, Norwegian, Belgian, German, Japanese, Australian and American explorers.

During the first half of the 20th century eight countries made claims to sections of Antarctica – some on the grounds that their explorers had got there first (Britain, France, Norway), others on grounds of geographical proximity (New Zealand, Chile, Argentina) or on both grounds (Australia). Several other countries (Russia, the US, South Africa, even Peru) ‘reserved the right to make a claim’. Brazil announced a ‘zone of interest’ that it insisted was not a claim.

These claims were not taken very seriously. Even though some of them overlapped, the discrepancies did not generate conflict. Much of the continent remained unclaimed.

A unique international regime

In the second half of the 20th century a unique international regime took shape in Antarctica, known as the Antarctic Treaty System. The main Antarctic Treaty, which came into force in 1961, prohibited the use of Antarctica for military purposes. No new territorial claims were to be allowed; existing claims were neither annulled nor recognized.

Thus, the chief human activity in Antarctica is scientific research. Thirty different countries now operate 70 research stations, of which 50 function year round. There is also a little tourism – and a Russian church, served by two priests.

From the 1970s onward, the main treaty was supplemented by further agreements. Several deal with conservation of animal and plant life. The most important is the Protocol on Environmental Protection, which came into force in 1998 and prohibits non-scientific activity relating to mineral resources. Unfortunately, it does permit geological prospecting, which falls under the category of ‘scientific activity’.

An arrangement of this kind was never on the cards in the Arctic. What made it possible in Antarctica was the clear separation of the continent from sovereign national territory and especially its remoteness from the great powers of the northern hemisphere. It was also generally assumed that whatever riches might lie under the icy wastes it would not be feasible to extract them and transport them to world markets in the foreseeable future. (This assumption also explains the nonchalant approach taken to earlier claims.)

The treaty system in decline

In recent years there have been signs of diminishing confidence in the Antarctic Treaty System. More is known now about the continent’s mineral resources – for instance, large iron ore deposits in the Prince Charles Mountains and extensive coal deposits in the Transantarctic Mountains. Gold, manganese, chromium, nickel, cobalt, tin, uranium and titanium have also been located. Moreover, as the ice starts to melt and mining technology advances the possibility of extraction no longer seems so remote.

The position taken by each government involved in Antarctica goes like this: ‘We shall not be the first to violate the treaties by staking new claims or moving beyond prospecting. But we must plan how to react as soon as some other country breaks out of the current international regime.’

Professor Guo Peiqing from the Ocean University of China likens the situation to preparing for a global game of chess: ‘We don’t know when play will happen, but it’s necessary to have a foothold’ (Guardian, 8 October).

A plausible date for the start of play is 2048, when the Protocol on Environmental Protection comes up for review. Of course, play could start before then, perhaps triggered by a dispute over whether some action crosses the line separating scientific research from commercial exploitation.

Chess and gō

When it does start, the game will actually be rather more complicated than chess. The number of players will clearly far exceed two.

Although countries may still refer to the nationality of early explorers when staking claims and contesting the claims of rivals, they will base claims mainly on the locations of their research stations. The preparatory manoeuvres already underway are more like the Japanese game of gō, in which a player places counters (in this case, research stations) anywhere on the board with the aim of surrounding coveted spaces and blocking the opponent’s efforts to do the same. 

The Antarctic Treaty System demonstrates that in the absence of strong commercial pressures even capitalist governments are capable of moving beyond the constraints of state sovereignty. In some ways the Antarctic model of human cooperation prefigures the unity of world socialism.

Stefan