Action Replay: Warming up (2026)

The Action Replay column from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The UN has a programme called Sports for Climate Action, described as ‘a global movement harnessing the unifying power of sport to address climate change and build a more sustainable and resilient future’ (unfccc.int). Sport can be adversely affected by climate change, pollution and loss of biodiversity, but supposedly it can also be an agent for promoting collective action. Sport, it is claimed, needs to adapt to the impacts of global warming and also to engage its global audience to make their own contribution to fighting climate change.

All very well, of course, but a look at some of the environmental impact of professional sport paints a rather different picture. In motor racing, Formula 1 (F1) will be moving from the use of fossil fuels to an allegedly sustainable fuel from next season, fuel which might then be used in ordinary cars. But, as noted in the November 2025 Science Focus, there are major issues involved here. The new fuels may be low in carbon emissions but still emit many other pollutants, hence not really being sustainable. The synthetic fuels may in fact involve CO2 emissions in the process of producing hydrogen from natural gas, so the overall climate impact is not at all clear. In any case, fuel from races is only a tiny part of F1’s total carbon footprint, with massive amounts of global travel playing a far larger part. Carbon emissions in the logistics side of F1 have already been reduced, but there is still a long way to go to achieve real sustainability.

Another example would be this year’s football World Cup, which will be played in the US, Canada and Mexico, in stadiums from Vancouver to Mexico City, so meaning much long-distance travel. It will involve 48 teams and 104 matches (sixteen more teams and forty more games than previous tournaments). Scotland, for instance, will play their group matches in Boston and Miami, which are well over a thousand miles apart. One estimate is that the tournament will generate over nine million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, almost double what previous ones have produced.

In addition, the heat will mean that many of the venues will be effectively unplayable during the afternoon. Many top players have already suffered while playing in hot conditions in the US, as in last year’s Club World Cup, and also there will be hundreds of thousands of supporters, plus backroom staff and media workers who will have to endure extreme heat at many matches, reaching over thirty degrees or perhaps even forty. FIFA are apparently keeping ‘an open mind’ on all this, which presumably means they won’t be making any significant decisions quite yet, if at all.

So global warming can affect not just people’s living conditions, but various kinds of leisure activity too. And sport can exacerbate climate change, as well as (just possibly) help to combat it.

Paul Bennett

Pathfinders: Top of the Pop Charts (2010)

The Pathfinders Column from the January 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

While the Cop15 delegates were largely copping out at Copenhagen recently, one fairly relevant aspect of the world’s dire whether forecast (that is, whether we survive or not) scarcely rated a mention, which was the question of global population. This oversight was duly noted by the Chinese delegation (China Daily, 10 December) which, possibly anxious to offset western criticism of their tactics at Copenhagen, seized the opportunity to justify the country’s unpopular and repressive One Child Policy as a positive contribution to global emissions reduction. The news report quotes research by postgraduate student Thomas Wire of the London School of Economics: “Each $7 spent on basic family planning would reduce CO2 emissions by more than one ton whereas it would cost $13 for reduced deforestation, $24 to use wind technology, $51 for solar power, $93 for introducing hybrid cars and $131 electric vehicles.” Such research will no doubt bolster China’s already unparalleled enthusiasm for reducing its, and other countries’ populations, either by birth control or firing squad.

There’s no question that population growth is going to pass the carrying capacity of the planet at some point. The world is currently pushing 6.8 billion people and if you go to the website of the Optimum Population Trust at http://www.optimumpopulation.org/ you can watch the ticking counter go up at the rate of two per second. David Attenborough, a patron of this trust along with Jane Goodall, James Lovelock and other notables, takes the same doomsday view (Horizon Special, BBC1, repeated 5 January) as that other famous patron and author of the 1968 book The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich.

Socialists have often criticised Ehrlich’s view in the past, in particular his claims, written prior to the flowering of the Green Revolution of the 1970s, that population had already outstripped food capability and that hundred of millions would starve to death. But as food yields have gone up, so have populations, and the argument is not going to go away. Global population by 2050 is estimated at between 9.2 and 10.6 billion (http://www.un.org/popin/), with most of the growth occurring in the least developed countries, while in developed countries there is a steady decline in fertility and death rates. Population is likely to be a factor in the resource wars we can expect to see in the next century.

Ehrlich, the Trust, and David Attenborough in the Horizon programme all argue the same simple view, that the population growth rate can be slowed or reversed by just two factors, contraception and education. This view has the benefit of being uncomplicated by questions of culture, politics or religion and thus palatable to the broadest audience, but is it true? Yes, says John Guillebaud, emeritus professor of family planning and reproductive health at University College, London, who argues that conventional wisdom, which says that couples in poorer societies actively plan to have large families to compensate for high child mortality, to provide labour, and to care for parents in their old age, is wrong. According to Prof Guillebaud, half of all  pregnancies worldwide are accidental conceptions rather than insurance policies, and demand for contraception increases when it is available, regardless of a society’s wealth or child survival rates: “The evidence is clear within a wide variety of settings that – despite no prior increase in per capita wealth or child survival or other presumed essentials – demand for contraception increases when it becomes available, accessible, and accompanied by correct information about its appropriateness and safety.” (http://www.optimumpopulation.org/releases/opt.release26Mar09.htm).

One wonders how the professor knows that fifty percent of all children are accidents, but population growth rates do indeed seem to correlate roughly in inverse ratio to the rate of birth control, if one compares figures (see [Dead Link).

However, to imply from this that the issue is simply a practical ‘numbers game’ with no ethical or political dimension is a bit contra-perceptive. The UN estimates that over 200 million women worldwide lack access to effective contraception, but it is not necessarily because it is unobtainable, but because religion opposes it or men refuse to use contraceptives. Globally it is women who take responsibility.  The number one method of contraception worldwide is female sterilisation, IUDs are second, the pill third, and male condom use is number four, and mostly confined to Europe and Japan. Meanwhile, as is well known, the Pope and his ilk have been going around sub-Saharan Africa helpfully telling locals that condoms spread AIDS (TimesOnline, March 17, 2009). Thus at the least there are gender and religious issues to be addressed.

And let’s get population numbers into perspective. It used to be said you could fit the world’s population comfortably onto the Isle of Wight. Well, times have changed, and one enterprising commentator has recalculated this figure to show that, as of October 2007, you would have to add in the Isle of Man, as well as Jersey and Guernsey (http://www.ampneycrucis.f9.co.uk/PARK/Population.htm). As of 2010 you would need to start on the Scottish islands as well. But the basic point remains the same – humans don’t take up that much space by themselves. It’s what they do with the rest of the space that counts.

And that is a political issue, because rich countries demand far more space and resources than poor ones, and rich people far more than poor people even within rich countries. Carbon emission footprints also increase in lock-step with income, not population. Though population growth is clearly not sustainable long-term, it is made a much worse problem because of the disparities in wealth and consumption that capitalism causes.

Paddy Shannon

Carbon trading or social change? (2006)

From the October 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

July brought two publications coincidentally including articles on the same subject. Couched in terms so, so soothing to the save-the-planet-sympathisers, Roughnews advises us that “we all need to limit our personal impact on global warming” and whilst supporting responsible tourism we should give thought to “how we can redress the environmental damage caused by travel – in particular flights, the fastest growing contributor to global warming”. Great! Excellent idea! This has to be good news. We can continue to fly, as often, as far as we choose and can also redress the environmental damage. And the solution? Offset your use of carbon taken from the ground by enabling a tree to be planted somewhere in the world – and on a short haul flight this “costs no more than the price of a drink”.

Rough Guides is also publishing a book in October, called Climate Change which, miracle of miracles, is actually a ‘climate neutral’ book meaning that “the amount of CO2 emitted in the book’s production and distribution, including everything from paper manufacture to the computers used by the author and editor and the estimated carbon footprint of the book’s physical distribution has been calculated” by the carbon offset company Climate Care. To what end? So that Rough Guides (through increased retail price of the book, presumably) will pay Climate Care to ‘offset’ the carbon emissions by planting some trees somewhere, or by installing energy-saving light bulbs somewhere else, or a similar scheme supposed to mop up the carbon released. Apparently Rough Guides offsets all its authors’ travel by paying Climate Care to take care of it. No mention of how Climate Care benefits from the arrangement. It seems one can ‘offset’ all manner of nasties now, from flying, car rental, to producing CDs, all the while feeling good about ‘putting something back’ and being lulled into believing you have repaired the damage done. (The World Bank estimated the global carbon market to be worth $11 billion at the end of 2005, 10 times the previous year’s value.)

However, the second July publication, New Internationalist, has a different story to tell. It reminds us that by unlocking the carbon in fossil fuels by mining it, burning it and releasing it as active carbon it disrupts the balance of carbon in air, soil and seas. What is needed to address the problem of too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is to reduce the amount of carbon released. Oliver Rackham, a Cambridge University botanist and landscape historian is quoted thus, “Telling people to plant trees (to solve climate change) is like telling them to drink more water to keep down rising sea levels.” Adam Ma’anit, the author of the article, gets to grips with reality and shows offsetting for what it is – companies being formed to take advantage of the gullible consumer, established companies jumping on the bandwagon to increase their share of the market and the misinformed punter alleviating their guilt whilst doing nothing to actually cut carbon emissions. Adam Ma’anit: “Climate change is an issue we shouldn’t be ‘neutral’ on. Carbon offsets are at best a distraction and at worst a grandiose carbon laundering scheme.” And, “The solution to climate change is social change.” Any seconders?

Janet Surman

‘Ethical Shopping’: A Luxury (2022)

From the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Count your food miles, buy organic, live without plastics, buy local products, support small businesses – we’re told this is how individual consumers can choose to help the environment.

Really? Don’t get us wrong. We’re all in favour of people taking personal responsibility – the voluntary society we want will depend on that very thing.

But these incitements to personal sacrifice are a gigantic act of misdirection. The powers-that-be love talking about your personal responsibility for the state of the planet, because it’s better than owning up to their collective responsibility for ruining it.

They are responsible for a wasteful system that creates obscene wealth and luxury for the 1 percent while many of us end up struggling just to get by. And they have the cheek to tell us to cut back on our personal consumption!

So be responsible, by all means. But just remember, capitalism never will be.

Now ask yourself these questions:

1. Why is it that most of what we ever buy – food, clothes, electricals, etc., is mass produced?

It’s because of economies of scale, which reduce production costs, so mass-produced stuff comes to dominate the market because it’s always cheaper.

2. Does this stuff have to come from so far away?

The companies that make the stuff are always trying to undercut each other to grab more market share. This has tended to push production out to wherever in the world wages are cheapest, resulting in long, complex supply chains and wasteful global transportation. These two factors have wiped out most local production over the decades, so we have little choice when we shop.

But there’s another factor that restricts our ability to choose. Our wage levels generally are determined by how much we have to spend to keep us in a condition that allows us to keep working. And it’s the prices of the global, mass-produced stuff (battery eggs, not free-range; prosecco, not champagne) that enter into that calculation.

So while some may be able to shop ‘ethically’, it’s a luxury many of us simply can’t afford.

World View: Nothing new to report (1998)

From the November 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two recently published reports make compelling reading for those who think capitalism is a fair and efficient system of global organisation and provide undeniable evidence, if ever it was needed, that the case for world socialism is as pressing now as it ever has been.

Coming within one month of each other, the UN Human Development Report 1998 and the Living Planet Report from the World Wide Fund for Nature, the New Economics Foundation and the World Monitoring Centre, paint anything but a picture of a world run on rational lines.

Launching the Living Planet Report on October 1st, Nick Mabey of the WWF announced that “time is running out for us to change the way we live if we are to leave further generations a living planet . . . we knew it was bad, but until we did this report we did not realise how bad”. (Guardian, 2 October).

The report he speaks of points out that since 1970, humans have destroyed more than 30 percent of the natural world, the UNHDR claiming that this has happened because of “consumption increasing six-fold in the last 20 years, doubling in the last 10”. (Guardian, 9 September).

Over-consumption lies at the heart of both reports, which are critical of the lip service paid by governments to the notion of sustainable development.

While the Living Planet Report points out that CO2 emissions have doubled since 1960, and to a level now exceeding the natural world’s ability to absorb them, the UNHDR reveals that the burning of fossil fuel has in fact quadrupled since 1950, with the wealthiest one-fifth of the world’s population accounting for 50 percent of this. The poorest one-fifth account for only 3 percent of CO2 emissions, yet countries like Bangladesh and Egypt pay the highest price for the global warming CO2 helps produce—rising sea levels with the loss of homes and livelihoods.

Both reports point out that for the first time one of the most serious problems that faces us is a depletion in the world’s fresh water reserves, with fresh water eco-systems declining at the rate of 6 percent per annum While 50 percent of all fresh water supplies are monopolised by humans, three-fifths of the developing world’s 4.4 billion population have no safe drinking water.

The reports find that wood and paper consumption have increased by two-thirds since 1960—with little or no sustainable management of forests—and that the marine catch has quadrupled in this period, with one-quarter of fish stocks now depleted and a further 44 percent fished at their biological level.

The UNHDR claims that global inequality increases apace with 20 percent of the world’s population consuming 86 percent of the earth’s natural resources. To emphasise this discrepancy, the report reveals that a child born in New York or London will consume, pollute or waste more in a lifetime than 50 children born in the developing world. Meanwhile, the Living Planet report says that the average American or Japanese consumes 10 times more of the earth’s resources than the average Bangladeshi. The UN report also lists the latest figures on world wealth distribution. The world’s wealthiest 225 people now have combined wealth equivalent to that of the poorest 47 percent of the global population, while the world’s three richest people have assets that exceed the combined GDP of the world’s 48 least developed countries.

It further estimates that “the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all and adequate food…water…sanitation for all is roughly $40 bn per year…(a figure which is)…less than 4 percent of the wealth of the 3 richest”. (Guardian, 9 September).

As could have been anticipated, the reports’ suggested remedies to redress the above fall well within the category socialists term reformism, amounting to the same battle cries of the well-meaning, though less well informed, without visible results for decades.

It is perhaps a forgone conclusion that such statistics will not fair any better in the years ahead, and we may well wonder how long their compilers will juggle with them before they conclude capitalism can’t be tinkered with in our interests.

Instead of producing volumes of such statistics each year, which on the face of it are only of any use in the armoury of the socialist, wouldn’t it be wiser if the “experts” decided to work out how much better the world would be if we freed production from the artificial constraints of profit, and organised production in a rational and sustainable manner and to the benefit of all. Or would these same experts fear they would be labelled socialist and their reports taken less seriously?

John Bissett

Pathfinders: Tales from the Crypto (2022)

The Pathfinders Column from the April 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the less apparent effects of the ongoing Ukraine situation has been a rejuvenated interest by western governments in regulating cryptocurrencies, into which Russian oligarchs, among others, have invested billions. The problem with crypto, from the capitalist state’s point of view, is that it is a decentralised, peer-to-peer money system over which the state has no control. Naturally the state will point out that crypto is a gift to organised crime because transactions are not trackable through any central bank system, but they will also pedal hard on the urgent necessity of regulating the market for the sake of protecting you, dear consumer.

The real motivation is that state power over your money means great power over you. For instance, in response to a recent truck driver protest disrupting Ottawa’s main road network, the supposedly liberal and progressive Canadian government used emergency powers to freeze protesters’ personal and business bank accounts (bit.ly/3CWJFV3). Obviously, if you have all your money in crypto, the state can’t grab you by the proverbial short and curlies.

Small wonder then that China has banned crypto entirely. In somewhat less draconian style, the US Justice Department has set up a National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team with the FBI providing backup services in ‘blockchain analysis and virtual asset seizure’. UK regulators are also calling for tighter controls, again flying the consumer protection flag, with the Treasury and Bank of England in urgent consultation on the matter (bit.ly/3CYkAc2). Conversely, after having first banned it last September, Ukraine has just performed a volte-face and legalised Bitcoin, as crypto donations to its war chest have surged north of $100m (bit.ly/3uhBG0C).

One reason why states haven’t cracked down harder and faster may be cultural inertia due to perceived notions of value, as people struggle to come to terms with the idea of currencies that are simply conjured into being, and virtual commodities like non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that have no physical or independent existence. How can you buy a thing that isn’t there using money that’s been made up?

For socialists though, all commodities are essentially imaginary, in the sense that their ‘value’ is a socially agreed perception and not an intrinsic physical property of the object. In socialism, where everything is free, things will be valued only in terms of their usefulness, not in terms of what they’re ‘worth’ in a non-existent market transaction. And currencies – at least government-issued fiat currencies – are all made up anyway. These days, as currency is no longer convertible on demand into gold, that piece of paper in your pocket may say £10 on it, but it’s only worth £10 because governments say it is and because we accept it is. Otherwise it’s just a firelighter. It’s the same with NFTs, which can be thought of as virtual limited shares. You can sell a share in anything, a meme, a song, a photo, if someone is willing to buy it, no matter how ‘worthless’ it might seem to anyone else. It might sound bonkers but that’s capitalist logic for you.

One vital consideration in all this is that it must not be possible, under any circumstances, to sell the same thing twice over, or the whole system is instantly discredited. Until recently, all money was managed through the central state banking apparatus, making double accounting impossible. Now blockchain technology prevents double accounting without central state involvement. Another essential requirement is ensuring that the supply of this virtual currency doesn’t increase exponentially, causing runaway inflation. The genius – if that’s really the word – of Bitcoin and other cryptos is to make the process of issuing or ‘mining’ new currency so extravagantly difficult through artificial problem-solving processes that they require enormous and ever-increasing amounts of computer number crunching. The solution of both these requirements has allowed crypto and NFTs to break free and take on a life of their own.

None of this is without cost however. Currently Bitcoin mining uses more electricity than 185 countries and 7 times Google’s global consumption (bit.ly/34XFWtC), with a growing carbon footprint that’s surpassing that of New Zealand (bit.ly/3tsNRbQ).

Now chip manufacturers are producing custom ‘blockchain accelerator’ chips especially for crypto-mining, which demonstrates, if you hadn’t already realised it, that what capitalists want and what governments want isn’t always the same thing (bit.ly/3L104dF). And crypto has largely contributed to the well-known chip famine of the past couple of years. These days, it’s chips with everything as the world surges ahead with 5G and the Internet of Things, VR, augmented reality, smart cities, lights-out factories, drone swarms, robotics, 3D printing, AI, electric vehicles, self-drive tractors, you name it. The problem is, the manufacturers of all these gadgets generally don’t make the microchips in-house, as the R&D and the ‘fabs’ are too expensive. Instead they outsource the work, mostly to one key place in the world, Taiwan, which has a GDP of around $670bn, close to that of Saudi Arabia, and a per capita workforce productivity 6 times higher than China’s.

Taipei is home to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s largest and most sophisticated semiconductor ‘foundry’. In 2020 TSMC accounted for 54 percent of global semiconductor revenues, and is a supplier to Apple, Qualcomm and Nvidia. No other foundry comes anywhere close, not even Samsung in South Korea or GlobalFoundries in the US, and China is not even in the picture.

Which, incidentally, adds a David and Goliath element to the tense situation between China and Taiwan over questions of political ‘sovereignty’ and strategic questions of control over the South China Sea.

So, while Ukraine spends its crypto windfall on guns before butter, China is currently keeping its cards close to its chest over the Ukraine question, and watching Nato very closely to see how muscular its response to Russia is. Today Ukraine, tomorrow Taiwan, is the big question exercising the geo-strategic wargamers. Just when you think capitalism can’t make things any worse, it displays its true inventive genius.

Paddy Shannon