A climate for change
The news that Tony Blair has effectively abandoned the British government’s support for the Kyoto treaty on climate change should surprise no one. Blair and his party are nothing if not the enthusiastic champions of corporate-driven globalisation. Blair no longer believes there is any point to treaties aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which are responsible for global warming and climate change. Instead, it was better to start “from the brutal honesty” about the political situation. He told a New York conference: “The truth is, no country is going to cut its growth or consumption substantially in the light of a long-term environmental problem.”
This single sentence sums up what New Labour is all about. It believes that states and governments are not responsible for protecting citizens from the consequences of climate change. The state’s priority is to maintain and expand growth and consumption, whatever the consequences. The business of government has become business itself. As for greenhouse gas emissions, Blair told his audience, “incentives” for business to clean up their act were the only practical way forward.
And there you have it. The polar caps are melting away, weather systems are becoming more violent and unpredictable and many scientists now believe we have reached the point of no return with climate change. For New Labour, however, these are viewed as “long-term” issues which cannot be allowed to interfere with corporate growth and credit-fuelled consumption. This, not surprisingly, is the same point of view held by the Bush government, which has not even added its signature to Kyoto.
Those who didn’t get the message in New York could always listen to the great leader’s speech in Brighton, at the New Labour conference, if they wanted clarification. Held inside an armed camp, with 82-year old hecklers detained under anti-terror laws, the conference was treated to a Blair sermon on the joys of capitalist globalisation.
While the trade union delegations cringed in horror, Blair told them: “In the era of rapid globalisation, there is no mystery about what works: an open, liberal economy, prepared constantly to change to remain competitive.” He added: “The temptation is to use government to try to protect ourselves against the onslaught of globalisation by shutting it out; to think we protect a workforce by regulation; a company by government subsidy; an industry by tariffs. It doesn't work today. Because the dam holding back the global economy burst years ago. The competition can't be shut out, it can only be beaten.”
We get the message – loud and clear. Free market capitalism rules and we have to learn to love it, even if it means the destruction of the planet’s eco-systems with its consequences for the continuation of human life. This is clearly not acceptable to the overwhelming majority of the world’s population whose future is made uncertain by the rapacious activities of transnational corporations.
At present, nature, which includes humankind, is treated as a source of exploitation and corporate revenues. Corporate ownership and control prevents us from having a holistic relationship with nature. This alienation from nature has to end by freeing production from the treadmill of profit accumulation and putting it on an entirely different footing. We could then tackle climate change in a planned and scientific way. Freed from concerns about global economic competitiveness and the like, we could change the way we produce and consume in order to respect rather than ravage nature.
Governments and corporations, having created the climate crisis with their policies and actions, now turn round and abandon any responsibility for tackling it. The fact is the eco-crisis is out of control and the present political system is incapable of doing anything about it. So we should ask, what is the point of hanging on to such a worthless, undemocratic political system?
Under these circumstances, the mass of the people have every right, in fact an obligation, to take matters into their own hands. Time is running out and a movement is needed that will take humanity beyond the status quo of New Labour and corporate power. A World to Win is sponsoring a day of discussion, debate and feedback on 29 October on the ecological crisis. You are invited to come and help put together an action plan to halt and reverse climate change and discuss strategies to “recycle” capitalism, economically and politically.
4 October 2005
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