7-13-08, 10:02 am
Original source: The Guardian
Environmentalists started to warn of the dangers of climate change 30 years or more ago. Ignoring warnings, corporations and their equally irresponsible governments continued to aggravate the crisis by a callous and reckless disregard for the predictable consequences of their activities. The situation has now become urgent. The entire planet has become an ecological time bomb. The most important problems are not technical – they are economic, political and philosophical.
Governments of all persuasions ignored the warnings from many scientific reports. The corporations continued to savagely exploit the natural resources of the planet in their criminal chase after profits irrespective of the consequences. They made huge profits out of the earth’s natural resources while the same earth was treated as a sewer for the often-toxic wastes produced.
The Garnaut Report on Climate Change recognises this reality. It has weakened the climate change skeptics who have road-blocked the necessary steps to meet the challenge and the possibility of devastating climate changes for many years. But they are already attacking the Report and will do nothing as in the past.
In 1994 the CPA joined the scientists and warned that some environmental changes had already reached “the point of no return.” Others have referred to the situation as a “tipping point.”
Social and economic change
Our society will change fundamentally, either through our efforts to save our environment or because environmental destruction finally overwhelms us. Difficult choices will have to be made and we cannot stand aside from these issues. The question is, who will make those choices, and how? Will working people be the victims of change, or will they help control that change for the benefit of ourselves and our children?
But what is to be done?
Ross Garnaut’s report proposing an urgent Carbon Emission Trading Scheme is one alternative but it is a typically capitalist solution to a crisis which has been created by the very same forces that the report is relying on to solve it. The crisis is a consequence of the capitalist philosophical outlook, the use of unrestrained “market forces” and the profit hungry drive of capitalism itself.
How would a trading scheme work?
Firstly the government will decide on a cap on permitted emissions for a number of production sectors.
Permits or certificates will be sold by the government to enterprises in the various sectors. It has already been estimated that the Federal government will reap an income of $4 billion from the sale of these certificates.
The certificates can be bought and sold on a “market” through a bank which it is claimed would be “independent.”
The obligations of high emitters can be traded off by offsets from sectors with low emissions. In effect these certificates enable corporations and other institutions to continue to pollute.
Garnaut’s Report says: “An emissions permit represents a tradable instrument with inherent value that can be exchanged between sellers and buyers in an emissions permit market.”
It goes on: “The singular objective of the scheme is to provide a transactional space that enables the transmission of permits to parties for whom they represent the greatest economic value” and that, “A reduction or removal of emissions from activities in one area of the economy can be used to … offset emissions in another sector … The use of these offset credits should be unlimited.”
In sounding a warning that the issue should be left to the private sector, not the government or to publicly owned institution, the Report warns that “markets can quickly collapse if their credibility is shaken. This is all the more pertinent for markets that owe their existence solely to government decree … market participants will be alert for any signs of shifts in policy.”
Even this limited explanation of the trading scheme is sufficient to reveal that an emissions trading scheme is nothing more than an attempt to use “market economics” to solve a problem that has been produced by the irresponsibility of governments and the private sector – wrong policies, a wrong philosophy and a predatory approach to nature. They cannot even contemplate that there is another and a better way. No less than 14 years ago a CPA statement said that: “The carbon tax is a wildly off course and non-attempt at a solution.” It does not change established economic, social and political practices.
An emissions trading scheme will not control profiteering which is at the root of the capitalist system. It will lead to massive corruption and manipulation and will actually do little to meet the challenge of climate change.
The Garnaut Report is a monumental work but it does not come to grips with the urgent measures that can and must be taken now. Here are some measures that can be taken – today, tomorrow!
1. A crash program to develop renewable energy industries – solar power, hydro, wind, use of wastes, thermal and fusion. The sun gives us an inexhaustible source of energy and the Australian continent is richly placed to use it.
2. Phase out coal fired power stations rather than chase the myth of clean coal or burying carbon gas emissions in the ground (geo-sequestration). In Australia coal-fired electric generators produce about 30 percent of all emissions.
3. The widespread use of natural gas which produces less emissions than coal at least as a transition energy source.
4. The urgent promotion of public transport and the use of rail for the transport of raw materials and products rather than road transport.
5. Re-afforestation: It is estimated that planting 40 million hectares of trees in industrialized countries would lower CO2 emissions by 200 million tonnes or by 3 percent.
6. Recycle and control the massive wastes produced by production processes.
7. Peace and the environment are linked. The production of weapons and their use in wars has not only destroyed lives and property but is one of the world’s most dangerous polluters. War, as a means of settling disputes, must be outlawed forever and the manufacture of armaments drastically cut now and eventually completely eliminated. This step would release huge funds for the development of a liveable environment for all and lift the living standards of hundreds of millions of people now living in poverty.
Jobs and the environment
The capitalist class asks: “What do we want:, a job, or clean air and water? We need to ask, “What kind of system is it when we have to make such choices?” It is time we took the question of “jobs or the environment” out of the bosses’ hands. The very posing of the question indicates that the system is rotten, corrupt, and dying. It has to be replaced!
Will companies willingly introduce the necessary waste free and environmentally safe technologies and production processes? No! not if it interferes with their profits. They are already demanding that their profits be maintained by government handouts of taxpayers’ money or that they be issued with free certificates.
Destruction of the environment is a crime which threatens humanity and the planet. Companies that pollute and refuse to change should not be handed subsidies or allowed to manipulate the market, escape the consequences, or even be rewarded for their irresponsible behavior. They should be jailed.
“Those who have a class interest in exploiting both workers and the environment cannot be allowed to put their interests above those of humanity any longer,” wrote Dr. Hannah Middleton, President of the CPA in a booklet, Good Planets are Hard to Find, published in 1994.
To meet the climate change crisis society must find and adopt new economic and political policies and a philosophy that is based on the needs of humanity as a whole. That philosophy is Marxism. It will be implemented by the working class who, by that very act, will ultimately end class divisions and unify humanity. It will usher in an as yet undreamed of renaissance in human behavior and thinking.
Stop emissions. Don’t trade them!
From The Guardian
