Vol. 80/No. 1      January 4, 2016

 
(front page)

‘Climate’ summit: Imperialist rivalry
and attacks on semicolonial peoples

 
 
After two weeks of squabbling, government officials from nearly 200 countries attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris signed an accord Dec. 12, ostensibly to cut carbon emissions — a by-product of burning fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal that dumps greenhouse gases and other pollutants into the atmosphere.

But like its predecessors, the Paris talks actually centered on imperialist rivalries, as the ruling families in Washington, Berlin, Paris and elsewhere vied for business and trade advantage, efforts to suppress competition from “emerging nations” like China, India and Brazil, and steps to keep the toilers there under control. They ignored the pressing need for electrification and other industrial development in the semicolonial world.

Ever since the 2009 round of talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, collapsed without a deal, President Barack Obama has been pushing for some kind of agreement as part of his “legacy.” He hailed the Paris accord as a “turning point for the world” and “the best chance we have to save the one planet that we’ve got.”

Previous climate gatherings have foundered as conflicting capitalist interests made it impossible to reach any concrete overall plan and enforce it.

So in Paris, this approach was abandoned. The new agreement sets only an abstract “goal” — to allow global temperature increases to go no higher than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit over temperature levels before the onset of the industrial revolution, and then “pursue efforts” to do better. Its only binding requirement is that signers make and publicize a plan to cut emissions at home, and, starting in 2023 to reconvene every five years to hear how everyone’s doing.

Obama had an additional reason to insist on a nonbinding deal. That way he can sign it as an executive order, avoiding having to submit it to the Senate for a vote, where he would lose. Most Republicans and many Democrats oppose the deal as interference with Washington’s imperial power.

After the Kyoto climate conference in 1997, several governments in Europe committed to reduce carbon emissions. The Paris deal nullifies these promises. French President Francois Hollande immediately announced Paris would revise its targets downward before 2020 and invited others to do the same.

This was an easy promise, since it will cost Paris nothing, while putting pressure on its rivals. France derives more than 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear power — which does not produce carbon emissions — far more than any other country in Europe.

The German government decided in 2011 to phase out nuclear power and replace it with solar and wind energy. In the meantime, reliance on coal, which accounts for nearly half of the country’s electricity production, has increased.

The “cap and trade” business in carbon emissions, which took off in the beginning of the 2000s, was left undisturbed and virtually undiscussed. These schemes involve setting overall caps on emissions but allow businesses and governments to buy and sell the “right” to pollute. The abundant supply of these credits has led the price to plunge from $32 to $4 per ton of carbon, making it much cheaper to buy them than to invest in cleaner technology.

Capitalist traders hope that a new Chinese cap-and-trade plan will revive this market and make it more profitable.

Many capitalists expect the conference decisions will open new opportunities for “green” profit. “The global market for low-carbon goods and services is already worth $5.5 trillion a year and this deal will turbochange the amount of capital chasing new low-carbon investment opportunities,” Abyd Karmali, managing director for climate finance at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, told the Financial Times Dec. 13.

A feature of all the climate talks has been attempts by Washington and other imperialist governments to blunt rising competition from China, India and a variety of “emerging economies.” Arguing that China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter and India the fourth, they make pious proclamation about saving the environment, then demand capitalists in these countries make deep cuts in their carbon emissions.

But U.S. emissions are nearly three times higher per capita than China’s and 10 times higher than India’s.

The conference — attended by some 40,000 people — was surrounded by hordes of delegates from nongovernmental organizations, environmental profiteers and groups best known for claiming the world will come to an end unless all working people give up their “privilege.”

The Weekly Standard complained Dec. 14 that Beijing scored too many victories. “The first was the right to continue using carbon-emitting fossil fuels to keep its factories running at a low cost while we force ours to switch to more costly fuels,” the paper said. The second was “in the competition to provide new power plants for developing countries. The Obama administration has ended most public financing of coal-fired power plants. Not China.”

The target here is the Chinese government’s financing of 92 new coal-powered plants in 27 countries, many in Africa, “to the probable tune of over $100 billion” the Standard laments.

Expansion of energy is an absolute necessity for developing the economic and cultural level of working people in Africa, Asia and Latin America. According to the International Energy Agency, 1.2 billion people, 17 percent of the world’s population, still had no access to electricity in 2013 and “many more suffer from supply that is of poor quality.” More than 2.7 billion rely on “solid biomass for cooking, typically using inefficient stoves in poorly ventilated spaces,” with deadly health effects.

Working people have an interest in fighting shoulder to shoulder with toilers of the semicolonial world for energy expansion and industrial growth there. These steps build the working class and open the door to greater solidarity worldwide.

Officials from governments in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean grouped in a Least Developed Countries coalition called for $100 billion a year in aid from the imperialist countries. Washington and other imperialist powers brushed the demand aside.
 
 
Related articles:
Gov’t policies in UK turn flooding into social disaster
China: Construction boom causes deadly mudslide
Defense of nature falls to working class
 
 
 
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