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

Pitiful Copenhagen (2010)

From the January 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Given the competitive nature of capitalism any agreement on trying to deal with climate change was bound to be feeble and inadequate.

If we were living in a rationally-organised world, and a problem such as the threat of a too rapid global warming arose, a co-ordinated global response would be organised as a matter of course. If it was generally agreed amongst scientists specialising in the field that the problem had been caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels, then steps would be taken to cut this back and to phase in alternative sources of energy. The problems encountered in doing this would only be technological, not political or economic, as there would be no vested interests manoeuvring and lobbying to prevent or delay what needed to be done from being done.

But of course we are not living in a rationally-organised world. We are living under capitalism where there are vested interests galore – of the states into which the world is artificially divided, of the capitalist corporations seeking to make a profit by supplying some market or other. Certainly, the United Nations exists but it is only the arena in which these vested interests jockey for position and advantage, as was too plainly evident at the UN conference in Copenhagen last month on climate change.

The media concentrated on the differences there between the developed capitalist countries (misleadingly called “the rich”, as if everybody there was rich) and the developing capitalist countries (cynically, but accurately, called “emerging markets”). The representatives of the newer capitalist countries argued that as the long-established capitalist countries had been responsible for the past emissions of CO2 that scientists say is causing global warming, they should pay the cost of putting this right.

This is what the arguments there were all about – who is to bear the burden of cutting back on CO2 emissions? It wasn’t just a North-South clash. Each capitalist state had its own interests (those of its capitalists) to defend, with those more dependent on or with more reserves of coal or oil dragging their feet. Because, if the use of fossil fuels is to be cut back or is to be made more expensive this would affect them proportionately more. Their production costs would go up more, putting them at a competitive disadvantage on world markets. Which is why President Bush notoriously declared about the Kyoto Treaty.

“I made the decision . . . that the Kyoto treaty didn’t suit our needs. In other words, the Kyoto treaty would have wrecked our economy, if I can be blunt . . . I walked away from Kyoto because it would damage America’s economy, you bet. It would have destroyed our economy. It was a lousy deal for the American economy.” (Interview with Trevor MacDonald, ITV, 4 July 2005).

He was right. The US would have suffered economically if it had signed. Obama is taking a less confrontational approach, but he still has to bat for US capitalist industry, arguing for the continued use of coal and oil but introducing new technology to try to stop so much of the CO2 getting out into the atmosphere.

Chris Harman in his book Zombie Capitalism quoted some relevant statistics which show why the EU has been more keen than the US to cut back on burning fossil fuels:

“The national structures within which accumulation takes place depend to very different degrees upon carbon energy. The US was self-sufficient in oil until the early 1970s, its structures of accumulation and consumption became very highly dependent on oil and that means that today it has 20.2 tons of carbon emission per person; the main West European states lacked domestic oil resources, developed rather different structures of accumulation and consumption (with petrol, for instance, about three times the cost it is in the US), and so have far only 8.8 tons of emissions per person; China's rapid industrialisation and urbanisation are based on massive amounts of coal and its total emissions are close to that of the US figure, even though its emissions per head in 2004 were only a little over a sixth of the US figure and 40 percent of the West European figure. These enormous differences mean that measures that seriously cut back on emissions would hit firms based in different countries very differently. It is this which explains why the European Union seemed more committed to action against climate change in the early 2000s than the US; its national states stood to gain from measures that would proportionately hit US-based industries more than their own” (pp. 316-7)

World Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 2006 (Million Metric Tons CO2)
Source: Energy Emission Administration

The OPEC countries, led by Saudi Arabia (where they still really do believe that the Earth is flat), are, for obvious reasons, opposed to reducing oil consumption. In the manoeuvrings before the opening of the conference, their representative was reported as saying “if you cut your oil use we want compensation” (London Times, 2 December). So do they all.

It is the differing economic interests of the various capitalist countries that work to make any international action to deal with this world problem feeble and inadequate. It’s the same with other world problems, even purely capitalist ones. Baron (then simple Mr Peter) Mandelson, when he was the EU Commissioner in charge of trying to negotiate a reduction in tariffs on world trade, remarked (before the Doha Round ended in failure):

“If, after seven years, you cannot complete a trade round, what does that say for your prospects of reaching a deal on climate change?” (London Times, 21 July 2008)

What indeed?
Some are well aware of what the obstacles are. Thus pioneer global warming scientist James Hansen said just before the conference started:

“The fundamental problem is that fossil fuels are the cheapest form of energy. As long as they are, they are going to be used” (London Times, 3 December).

However, naively, he sees the solution as imposing a carbon tax to raise the price of fossil fuels, so making the price – and so the use – of alternative fuels such as renewables and nuclear proportionately more competitive. But that’s easier said than done as who is going to make the US and China pay this tax that would undermine their competitiveness? In fact, as Copenhagen showed, nobody can impose anything on these two powers, the Nº1 and Nº2 CO2 emitters.
Lord Oxburgh, then chairman of Shell UK, speaking at the Greenpeace Business Lecture in January 2005, pointed out:

“Whether you like it or not, we live in a capitalist society. If we at Shell ceased to find and extract and market fossil fuel products while there was a demand for them, we should fail as a company. Shell would disappear as any kind of economic force” (Independent, 26 January 2005).

These are the hard facts of current economic life which those campaigning against climate change are up against. As long as they are cheaper, coal and oil will be used. And no capitalist corporation in that line of business is going to commit economic suicide by not seeking to make profits from supplying this paying demand for coal and oil.

If those concerned about the threat of a too rapid climate change would think the matter through they should be campaigning not for capitalist governments and corporations to change their spots but for the end of capitalism.

Adam Buick

Climate change: business as usual (2010)

From the January 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

What should we have expected from such a large gathering of the world's elites if it wasn't this?

Authorities against protesters seeking to have their views heard. Police in force wrecking the long-made plans of people to shut down the port of Copenhagen for a day to draw attention to their agenda. Police employed by authorities to silence the voice of a mass of individuals trying to express the views of millions worldwide who recognise that their elected so-called representatives do little, if anything, to represent those views.

The voice of protesters had to be kept within certain bounds. There were no invitations to send in their chosen representatives to address any part of the summit and what did the former Danish minister and president (of the greater part) of the climate summit, Connie Hedegaard, mean when she said that the minority of protesters who were using violence were still too many and that they should have acted using their democratic channels? Surely if the ‘democratic channels’ brought forth democratic results then all those folk on the streets around the world would have stayed at home? Property owners may have been afraid of damage to buildings and vehicles but how does that compare with the fear of the tens of thousands outside the venue and the other multitudes in demonstrations around the world – the fear that those inside would continue their damage to the world and all its inhabitants through lack of appropriate action? A fear compounded by a document leaked on the second day which revealed that Denmark, US and UK proposed to transfer oversight of any future treaty from the UN to the World Bank, the very institution already loathed by the majority of protestors for its dire and damaging policies.

Costs vs Opportunities
For any who hold on to hopes of capitalism discovering a new method of delivery, a kinder, more equitable, better regulated version of itself , let's look at a few examples of what Copenhagen and the climate change debate is all about. If you thought it might be about reducing those nasty emissions think again. It's about markets – carbon markets, and specifically about the buying and selling of the right to pollute. Carbon trading lies at the heart of global climate policy and is projected to become one of the world's largest commodity markets, an approach which attempts to tackle climate change via the route of business as usual (see Oscar Reyes at Carbon Trade Watch and Transnational Institute).

Early on at Copenhagen US State envoy Todd Stern said that Obama had no plans to sign up to Kyoto, except possibly for offsets and a market-based trading system, ‘We're not going to do Kyoto, and we're not going to do something that's Kyoto with another name.’ (See here.)

Later there was some commentary on BBC World Radio to the effect that US would cut emissions by 17 percent, which to some sounded like a move forward. However cutting their emissions from 2005 levels (which was the proposal) by 17 percent would return them only to their 1990 levels, the year that was to be the benchmark from which we were all to reduce according to Kyoto. Further BBC commentary said that the US was “grappling with domestic difficulties and can't offer more.”

A 19-page UK Draft Options Paper on Renewable Targets reveals much about the aims of the UK delegation. “The costs of increasing renewable technology use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is around three times higher than allowing flexibility in reduction options through emissions trading.” (Note – don't reduce your own emissions but pay for other emissions elsewhere where it's cheaper).

“Full flexibility to invest in renewable energy in other parts of the EU and, even more helpfully, (my underlining) in the developing world would deliver us the least cost outcome to meet the 2020 target”(e.g. invest in solar energy projects in North Africa rather than transferring to renewable energy at home.) From this and plenty more in the document, “flexible options, maximum flexibility, 'flexibility-based' options” etc., it is clear that the priority is about costs to business not to the environment and ‘helping developing nations’ is just a way of keeping costs down.

Carbon emissions as a commodity
Friends of the Earth, in a document, A dangerous obsession, offer detailed explanations of all aspects of the climate change debate. According to them offsetting “institutionalises the idea that cuts can be made in the developing world in place of cuts in the developed world when the science demands cuts in both.” And, “ At the current rate taking a per capita basis an 80% reduction in developed country emissions by 2050 with no offsetting would still not ensure the levelling off of per capita emissions by 2050. Offsetting only exacerbates the situation increasing inequalities in the production of carbon emissions further.” (See here.)

As to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) which is an integral part of offsetting, it is supposed to reward new, previously unplanned projects but a number of studies have shown it to be virtually impossible to know when a project really is additional and to prove it. According to Larry Lohmann, carbon trading specialist, of www.cornerhouse.org.uk, “This makes impossible any distinction between fraud and non-fraud rendering any attempt at offset regulation ultimately pointless.” He has also written about carbon being “a magnet for hedge funds, energy traders, private equity funds and large global investment banks – Barclays, Citi-Group, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas and Merrill Lynch.....”

Friends of the Earth report that carbon trading had reached $126 billion by 2008 of which $92 billion was made up of transactions of allowances and derivatives under the EU ETS (emissions trading scheme), UK being one of the leading proponents of such trading. “In 2007 Gordon Brown aimed to give global carbon trading a central role in delivering emissions reductions and foresaw an opportunity for huge growth on the world market.” Larry Lohmann reports that Wall Street has projected carbon markets to be around $2 trillion or more by 2020, and that they could become the dominant 'commodity', displacing oil, which begins to reveal the scale of the carbon derivatives market being created. Compare these figures with those promised on the last day of the Copenhagen meetings with Obama as the mouthpiece – $10 billion by 2012 and $100 billion by 2020 from the developed to the developing nations to help them mitigate their emissions (as long as they meet the requirements of course – no free lunches here). Oscar Reyes, in an article “Taking care of business”, says that the rapid growth has already spawned more complex markets where carbon credits are bundled together, then sliced up and resold, the same structures that caused the recent financial crisis.
First there has to be a commodity, in this case the somewhat intangible carbon emissions. A security, whose value is derived from the value of an underlying commodity, is one step removed from the commodity; a derivative is one step removed from the security which makes derivatives two steps from the commodity. For most of us carbon emissions as a commodity are several steps removed from reality. These aspects of trading carbon reinforce the primacy of the market and governments' willingness to allow the market to dictate the rules. The history of sub-prime and corporate lobbying point to the likelihood of another bubble and collapse – this time involving a pseudo-commodity.

The Unequal Struggle
On a very simplistic level the question could be asked what is it we want to achieve, do we take seriously the need to reduce emissions overall worldwide or do we choose to create another money-making business by gambling, guessing, playing with the idea of carbon as commodity? It may be guessing, gambling and playing with money – but with our habitat? Larry Lohmann again: “Carbon Trading as it exists now is damaging, ineffective and fundamentally flawed and seeking to reform it is a waste of precious time and energy in the face of the urgent threat of climate change.”

What stood in the way of an agreement at Copenhagen was not the world's population or the demonstrators, who are to be applauded for keeping many of the rest of us focussed on the events. It was capitalism with its big business interests, lobbyists, banking and financial corporations all with revolving doors to their lackey governments standing shoulder to shoulder against the people. Perhaps the biggest tragedy of Copenhagen is the fact that, although totally dissatisfied and disillusioned, many people still cling to the hope of the ‘leaders’ coming to their senses and taking control before it's too late. So, in this forum meant to save the world and its inhabitants from the ravages of global warming and climate change but where business as usual has been seen to be the overriding concern, we must recognize the unequal struggle for what it is – them against us; power against the people and, unless collectively we abandon hope's triumph over experience, it will ever be thus.

Janet Surman

Editorial: Capitalism and the New Decade (2010)

Editorial from the January 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two thousand years ago Emperor Nero reputedly stood on the private stage he had had built in his palace and played music while his city burnt around him. A thousand years later Copenhagen's King Canute tried to command the tides to impress his subjects. Plus ca change: last month, despite intensive efforts, the expensively-assembled representatives of global capitalism spent two weeks in Copenhagen fiddling while the planet warmed, and the sea-level rose.

But despite appearances to the contrary, capitalism enters a new decade in rude health. The economic disruption to production and the credit system of the last two years may have been severe, but it is a necessary consequence of the need for the market system to maintain its essential objective, that is profitability at all costs.

Against that imperative, millions of jobs globally are being sacrificed. The spending promises of politicians around the world are being revised and reforms abandoned. Schools, housebuilding and hospitals are shelved as a consequence of the massive diversion of financial resources into propping up the house of credit cards that drove capitalism for much of the last ten years.

The decade started with a mini-slump in most western economies - relating to the high-tech and internet sectors primarily - and has ended with an almighty "correction".

Politically the decade also started with global capitalism in some apparent disarray as protesters closed down the WTO trade talks in Seattle in the last days of the 20th century and in the process gave birth to a movement of sorts under the banner of anti-globalisation and (less commonly) anti-capitalism. These back-slapping/back-stabbing summits have been a regular occurrence over the last ten years as the political whores who serve the interests of the global pimp class battle it out over their respective pitches.

And so the much-heralded Copenhagen climate change conference in December all but collapses. Despite their best effort, our leaders, decision-makers and opinion-formers (various democrats, dictators, corporate flunkies, sycophants, charities, popstars and other hangers-on to the coat-tails of capital) singularly failed to find a way to reconcile the differences between the old (developed) capitalist nations in decline and the developing nations on the up. It's like picking sides in an argument between the neighbour on one side who has always thrown their rubbish out the window onto the street, and the other neighbour who is threatening to start doing the same. Capitalism in 2010 may have fewer emperors and kings, and its subjects are becoming harder to impress, but the end result is much the same

The last ten years then have seen an undoubted decline in confidence in leaders and in "capitalism" (albeit loosely defined). Entering 2010, the task of socialists - and anyone sympathetic to the case for a radical, democratic, participative change in society - is to further undermine the shaky ideology of capitalism, to challenge the ideas which encourage the majority to continue propping up this system, and to clearly put forward the case for a moneyless, wageless, stateless and classless global society.

Editorial: Copenhagen: another predictable failure (2009)

Editorial from the December 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The most recent IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) findings say that rich, industrial countries must cut emissions from 1990 levels by 25-40 percent by 2020 if the world is to have a fair chance of avoiding dangerous climate change.

In July the G-8 leaders agreed to limit the global temperature rise to 2 degrees C above the pre-industrial level at which human civilisation developed. Pre-Copenhagen the EU has pledged 20 percent cuts by 2020, but will increase this to 30 percent if others – like the US – do likewise. Japan has pledged 25 percent reductions by 2020 if others will do the same. Chinese president Hu pledged to cut emissions ‘by a notable margin’ by 2020. The US has given no assurances but a bill Obama has said he supports (the Waxman-Markey bill) would give less than 5 percent reductions by 2020.

Also in July, the findings of a newly completed study by WBGU (a German acronym) – the chairman of which, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, is chief climate adviser to the German government – were given for the first time to an invitation only conference in the Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico. The study has since been published. This WBGU study says the US must stop all CO2 emissions by 2020; Germany,Italy and other industrial nations by 2025-30 and China by 2035, with the whole world needing to be carbonemissions- free by 2050. The study would allow the big polluters to delay their slowdown by buying emissions rights from developing countries, enabling possible extension times of around a decade for some. A fundamental principle of the study is the ‘per capita principle’, meaning that the right to emit greenhouse gases is shared equally by all people on Earth. Applied to a world population of seven billion, each person on earth would have a quota of 2.7 tons of CO2, whereas currently US citizens emit 20 tons per capita.

Schellnhuber claims that meeting these criteria will give humanity a two in three chance of staying within that 2 degrees C limit – although there is no guarantee. To increase the odds in favour carbon emissions would have to end sooner; delaying another decade or so before halting all emissions would reduce the odds to fifty-fifty. Odds are that whatever is promoted at Copenhagen there will be much jockeying and positioning, many fine words and ifs and buts by selfimportant world leaders and another decade down the ever-more polluted and climate change-affected road we’ll look back and see another abject failure – just like Rio, Kyoto, Johannesburg, etc. ad infinitum. What more can we expect from a system which makes a habit of fouling its own and everybody else’s backyard as long as it’s making money by blind pursuit of growth? Come 2020 the King Canutes of capitalism will still be trying to hold back the waves with empty gestures.