Saturday, December 08, 2012

Change the system, not the climate

People are losing their homes, their livelihoods, their sources of food. People are dying because of climate change. We are already feeling the impacts of climate change; the past few months we have witnessed record-breaking extremities of weather – drought, typhoons, floods and extreme temperatures. These extremities of weather change have also wreaked havoc on crops, farmlands, livelihoods and homes. Around the world communities are already facing the impacts of climate change. Already, there is a growing relation between climate change and the staggering increases in food prices and the growing food crisis. Capitalism has been a catastrophic failure for the majority of the human race, not to mention the other species and the environment. Technological advances have not been used for the bettterment of humanity but rather to enrich an elite class.

The United Arab Emirates, where Doha is located, has THE highest carbon footprint per capita in the world, the perfect spot for world governments to put on a "save the environment show". 

"I can't explain why industrialised nations here in Doha can't see the urgency of all this,"  Teresa Anderson of the Gaia Foundation, the UK partner of the African Biodiversity Network remarked. SOYMB and Shamus Cooke can answer her

"Our environmental crisis is not caused by some abstract notion of growth that humans in general just can't seem to shake.  Capitalistic style growth, however, is built into the system at the ground floor; nothing is produced under capitalism (in the private sector) unless a profit (growth) results; capitalists who don't get a return on their investments (growth) lose their money. This is the holy shrine of growth that cannot be surgically removed from the capitalistic body; the body itself was born ill. Thus, if renewable energy is not as profitable as oil — and it isn't — then the majority of capitalist investing will continue to go towards destroying the planet. It really is that simple. Even the best-intentioned capitalists do not throw their money away on non-growth investments. Countless environmentalists have tried to solve the climate issue while keeping capitalism in place, since this is the only "practical" solution. But this approach has failed as the climate has dramatically worsened. It's becoming increasingly obvious to a growing number of people that our economic system itself cannot be reformed to save our environment."
writes Shamus Cooke "Ultimately, climate activists must come face to face with political and corporate power. Corporate-owned governments are the ones with the power to adequately address the climate change issue, and they will not be swayed by good science or even a flooded planet."

The international peasants organisation Via Campesina rejected "the false capitalist solutions" contained in the drafts of proposals, and argued they would "only worsen the climate and food crises...The inaction in the climate negotiations is a reflection of the corporate capture of governments by big business who want to continue exploiting nature to gain as much profit as possible," the group said in a statement.

 Negotiations are a "million miles from where we need to be to even have a small chance of preventing runaway climate change," said Lidy Nacpil of Jubilee South Asia Pacific, a network of faith-based and development organisations. "We cannot go back to our countries and tell them that we allowed this to happen, that we condemned our own future," Nacpil said in a statement.

 "African negotiators are throwing their hands up in despair, and asking why they should even bother coming to the negotiations, if the developed countries continue to wring more demands from us in return for no money or commitments," said Seyni Nafo of Mali and a spokesperson for the African Group of Negotiators in the U.N. climate talks.

 Regardless of all those representatives meeting in Doha, Qatar, they will ultimately fail to agree on any effective action. Climate change is a world problem and as such can only be tackled at world level. But, as the experience of the Kyoto Treaty shows, the chances of the world’s major capitalist states agreeing on an adequate enforced programme are practically nil. The history of sincere but failed attempts to correct a system which cannot meet needs leads to the conclusion that a new social system should be tried.  Only in a world in which the Earth’s natural and industrial resources have become the common heritage of all humanity can the necessary measures be taken to stabilise and reduce emissions, curtail and end pollution and deal with the consequences of global warming and climate change.

 The bottom line is that we possess fore-knowledge of the chaos and flight of the homeless and the hungry as a result of the inevitable floods and droughts and this is surely premeditated murder of millions from self-interest.

1 comment:

ajohnstone said...

So a form of draft was agreed,delaying needed action on climate change for another three years and more talks.

“The fossil fuel industry won” said Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ director of strategy and policy, who has attended nearly every one of these climate negotiations over the past 18 years. “The science is clear that four-fifths of known fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground but we continue to burn them like there is no tomorrow. Doha became more of a trade fair…Negotiators protected the interests of corporations and not the needs of people”

“Doha is a betrayal of people living with impacts now. And it is a sellout of our children and grandchildren’s future” said Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International.

http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/12/critics-brand-climate-talks-another-lost-opportunity/