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I am interested in attending the conference in London on 22 May

 

3 Creating a sustainable future

The abject failure of the Copenhagen climate summit in December 2009 is an historic betrayal of humanity by leaders and states of the world’s major capitalist economies. They well understood that climate change is a clear and present danger – and yet did nothing.

Extreme weather is increasingly frequent and without dramatic and immediate intervention, global warming will have catastrophic consequences for hundreds of millions of people, particularly those living near low-lying coastal areas. An analysis of global, peer-reviewed science published in September 2009 – just 80 days before Copenhagen – by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) left no one in any doubt that we are in a planetary emergency. 
 
Some scientists are warning that rises of up to 4.3 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial surface temperatures could occur. This exceeds the threshold for many "tipping points", including the end of summer Arctic sea ice, and the eventual total melting of glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet. Sea levels could rise by up to two metres by 2100 and five to ten times that over following centuries.

Some regions, populations and eco-systems are already suffering irreversible effects of climate change. Most affected are the Arctic, where the ice cap is melting; sub-Saharan Africa, where drought, and therefore hunger, is increasing; small islands, like the Maldives, which are losing coastline as the sea rises; and the Asian and African mega deltas, where fish stocks are diminished and fertile land becoming salty because the sea is pushing back into the river deltas. The millions of people who live in and around Kolkata are threatened by the erosion of the flood protection from the Sunderbans mangroves following destruction of the surrounding forests through intensive agriculture.
 
The Kyoto Treaty, signed in 1997, acknowledged the danger from global warming. But all that resulted from Kyoto – which the United States refused to adopt – were international markets in carbon trading and the notorious policy of “offsetting”, whereby richer countries could “export” their emissions. But by the time Kyoto came into force in 2005, carbon emissions were still on an upward curve. Why? The answer is straightforward: world capitalism could not stop itself.

A global economy where profit is the motive, driven by the need to expand year on year to reward shareholders, regards nature purely as a “resource” to be exploited. And this includes the people who inhabit the planet and labour on behalf of the corporations. For capitalism, anything that is not directly related to generating profit is an “external”.  

Global emissions were growing by 1.1% each year from 1990-1999 and this accelerated to 3.5% per year from 2000-2007, the period of intense, corporate-driven globalisation fuelled by increasing levels of debt that culminated in the 2008 meltdown. This reckless pursuit of profit led to a rapid increase in the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

If this was not bad enough, global capitalist activity has polluted whole areas, especially in China, depleted resources and accelerated species extinctions, which are now running at about 1,000 times the "natural" rate. Pledges made at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg to halt species decline by 2010 have not been met.

Copenhagen failed because the existing political systems are tied to maintaining the status quo. That is why in Washington and London, the cry is not “We must cut carbon emissions now” but “We must return to growth.” This was rejected by 500 organisations who signed the alternative Klimaforum declaration. This declared climate change to be the result “of an unsustainable global economic system built on unequal access to and control over the planet’s limited resources”.

President Evo Morales of Bolivia went further than this. He told the conference:
“The real cause of climate change is the capitalist system. If we want to save the earth then we must end that economic model. Capitalism wants to address climate change with carbon markets. We denounce those markets and the countries which [promote them]. It's time to stop making money from the disgrace that they have perpetrated."

Bolivia then seized the initiative and called an alternative peoples’ conference “to define strategies for action and mobilisation to defend life from climate change and to defend Mother Earth’s Rights”, recognising the interdependence of nature and humanity.

In Britain, Supporters of Climate Camp and Climate Justice Network are prepared to confront the state and the corporations. The growth of movements like Transition Town confirms that people understand they have to act in concert to create the conditions for change. Communities throughout the world are in a daily struggle against deforestation, agri-corporations and governments.

Sustainable capitalism is a contradiction in terms and is impossible to achieve. Individual actions to reduce emissions, while important, cannot hope to achieve a significant impact when faced with the might of corporate and state power.  

3.1 Revolutionary solutions

Sustainable production

Capitalism has usurped our given relationship with nature and is engaged in creating excessive consumption of short-lived commodities, while for large sections of humanity mere survival and subsistence are the order of the day.

A central part of creating a healthy and sustainable eco-system is the need to break this tyranny of profit-driven production relationships. We need new democratic, not-for-profit forms of ownership and management providing the goods and services for people to live life to the full.

These associated producers would develop models of production based on need, establishing pricing structures that truly reflect environmental impacts and requirements, and the need to provide a social surplus for vital public services. Decisions on production would be taken collectively by communities of producers and consumers identifying and meeting peoples’ needs. [See section on Transforming the Economy for more detail]

Production would switch to developing better quality goods which last for as long as possible. The overall amount of resources used would be minimised while maximising the use of recycled materials. Total energy use would be reduced through on-site efficiencies and the remainder switched to renewable energy sources.

Community-based recycling and waste sectors would focus on developing energy and raw material recapture for community benefit. Materials dumped in the past will be revisited to extract reusable materials. A global recycling and waste industry will focus on developing energy and raw materials recapture. In a networked world, the waste of one product can be offered on-line to become the useful material for another product. All enterprises will be required to take back the products they sell at the end of their life for recycling.

Technology in the service of capitalism adopts a one-sided approach, setting out to create new processes and bring new products to market, with minimal concern for wider social or environmental impacts. In a not-for-profit society, technology will serve a social purpose. No novel technologies or new products will be rushed into production without extensive testing of their environmental and social impacts.

3.1.1 Climate Justice

To avoid disastrous climate change requires, it is estimated that carbon emissions must be limited to no more than around 2.7 billion tonnes by 2030 annually, or a per capita allowance of around 0.33 tonnes per year. The only equitable way of achieving this is through contraction and convergence. Countries like Britain need to reduce emissions to 0.33 tonnes per capita per year, while developing countries increase, until their emissions converge up to the same level.

The concept of climate justice, which underpins the “contraction and convergence” idea, needs to be expanded to include justice within countries and not just between them. To suggest that China, for example, should have unfettered growth because it came late to industrialisation, is to merge the interests of the Chinese elite and the corporations they serve, with the Chinese people. But they are currently facing unemployment and slump, privatisation of land, and a food and water crisis caused by climate change.

A new kind of international co-operation would bring together the peoples of the planet in a democratic forum to plan together to halt the growth in emissions and to mitigate the impacts that are now inevitable. They would draw on all the expertise represented by climate scientists, world food and health experts and support each others’ development towards self-government and economic independence.

3.1.2 Renewable energy  

Research published in the Scientific American (November 2009) shows that renewables like wind power can meet 100% of the world’s energy needs (not just electricity) and that it is technically feasible to do so by 2030. A European Environment Agency report found that potential wind power amounts to more than three times projected demand for electricity in 2020 and seven times projected demand in 2030.  

And that could be achieved with existing technology and without covering the entire landscape with wind farms. Offshore wind power alone could meet between 60% and 70% of projected European demand for electricity in 2020 and about 80% of projected demand in 2030.

Yet the government and the energy corporations are focused on building more coal-fired and nuclear power stations. Both leave the problem of storing, for all time, potentially dangerous CO2 and nuclear waste, with the cost borne by taxpayers, not the corporations.

Central to achieving emissions reductions, is removing ownership of power generation and of oil, coal and uranium sources, from the transnational corporations. In control of their own resources, the countries and regions of the developing world can rapidly become exemplars in the use of renewable energy, particularly solar power, as they move towards the convergence level.  

Not only is the profit-driven capitalist market incapable of delivering a safe and renewable energy supply, that reduces CO2 emissions, it is even incapable of providing more of the same kind of energy supply that we have now. New North Sea oil and gas fields are no longer considered profitable and the government has failed to do any strategic planning to replace old coal and nuclear power stations. Britain is facing an imminent energy crisis. So it is not just that developing alternative energy is the way to halt climate change, it is also the only way to secure future energy supplies.

For developed countries like Britain, action requires putting energy generation under democratic control, creating decentralised local or small regional, energy supply co-operatives. The work done by the Transition Town movement allows us to imagine how this could be structured.

 

3.1.3 Transport

Global capitalism is driving the growth in car use and the privatisation of public transport for profit. In the UK, 27% of carbon emissions come from transport and this continues to grow as car use increases and public transport declines.

A low emissions transport strategy is not just about technological solutions but also about fundamental economic and social change. Existing work patterns have people travelling long distances to get to work (as well as to buy food). A transformation of the world of work – where and how activities take place – and of people’s working hours, is essential. 

Public transport can become the norm, if it is community owned and run flexibly to meet people’s needs. In cities, a new generation of planners will put the needs of pedestrians and cyclists first, discouraging individual car use, in favour of urban rail and tram links. Between transport routes, cars can become the new buses, with car sharing and car pools for occasional use.

Halting useless business flying; banning flights importing goods such as cheap flowers and ending military flying, will leave scope for people to go on flying to explore each others’ countries and have new experiences, using an allocation of air miles.

3.1.4 Food

Climate chaos is intensifying starvation and creating food shortages throughout the world. It has also led to a rapacious land grab. Since 2006, corporations and countries have spent $30 billion buying up 20 million hectares of fertile farmland in Africa and Asia – an area that equates to a fifth of all the agricultural land in the European Union. Just as Ethiopia is facing yet another famine, its government is selling off fertile land to China, to grow food for sale.

All over the world the poorest people are beginning to suffer from hunger, following a 50% rise in the price of staples in 2009. In the United States the percentage of people suffering “food insecurity” ranges from 6% of the population in wealthier states to as high as 15% in poorer parts of the country.

Global food stocks are low; salination, excess cold, drought, hurricanes, floods, late and failed rains, forest fires and heat waves, have ruined crops in many parts of the world. High oil prices have raised the price of fertilizer, leading to lower yields. And of course whole tracts of land and forests are being turned over to production of bio-fuels.

The food we eat is responsible for an eighth of our carbon footprint and the UK exports the same amount of food as it imports, adding to carbon emissions solely for the purpose of profit. Discouraging industrial-scale meat and dairy production and encouraging diets high in grains, vegetables and fruit would reduce greenhouse gas emissions while improving human nutri­tion and lowering health costs.

None of this is possible while a handful of transnational agri-corporations, seed corporations and supermarkets monopolise the food chain. They exploit producers and consumers alike.

An industrialised system of food production has resulted in a diet of highly processed foods. This has triggered unforeseen neurological and physiological impacts, leading to an explosion of heart disease, obesity, diabetes and behavioural and psychological problems. Corporations like Monsanto, Wal Mart, Tesco, Syngenta and Cargill have to come into collective ownership, and be run by partnerships of employee-owners, suppliers, farmers and consumers.

Common ownership of land in every country is absolutely vital, with farmers’ rights protected. Farmers and natural scientists will be encouraged to develop solutions to the problems formerly solved by the application of herbicides and nitrates. Locally-sourced food must become the priority wherever possible. 

Essential to sustainability is that composting becomes a structured part of the recycling process for the whole of society. Returning waste to the soil is a concrete example of the establishment of co-operation and unbreakable links between town and country.

3.1.5 Advancing bio-diversity

Climate change is accelerating the loss of species. In 2009, scientists report that
21% of mammals, 30% of amphibians, 12% of birds and 32% of gymnosperms (conifers and cycads) were threatened with extinction. Shellfish and mollusks are endangered by the increased acidification of the seas, with serious impacts higher up the marine food chain. The interdependence of species means extinctions can reach a tipping point where life as a whole becomes unsustainable.

There need to be binding global treaties to halt species destruction and protect remaining wildernesses, and the concept of rights needs to be extended to nature as a whole. The land rights of indigenous people, who live in wildernesses or other tribal lands, must be protected for all time.

Restoring and then developing the natural relationship between people and the planet along the lines outlined in the Manifesto will lead to greater habitat diversity and create the conditions for a sustainable society.

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