Climate Change Social Change Conference

CLIMATE CHANGE|SOCIAL CHANGE CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS STATEMENT NOW AVAILABLE ON LINE

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Sun, 11 May 2008 07:20:22 -0500

Dear friends,
This is just a note to let everyone know that the participants' statement from the April 11-13 Climate Change|Social Change conference is now available at here. Please distribute this information to your networks, and get all who are serious about fighting global warming to sign on.
Yours in the struggle for a livable planet,

Dick Nichols

The latest climate science shows that the global warming crisis is already here
The evidence about global warming is more alarming than ever. It is likely that critical “tipping points” once believed to lie in the future have already been passed (see Climate Change and Trace Gases, by James Hansen et al, 2007, available at www.carbonequity.info):
Arctic ice loss reached 20% by extent over the past two years as against 7% a decade over the period between 1979 and 2005; the volume of Arctic summer ice is estimated to have fallen by 80% over the last 40 years; glacier movement in Greenland is speeding up, producing massive “ice quakes”; in Antarctica the 2002 collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf and the recent splitting of the Wilkins ice shelf raises the spectre of the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet (and sea levels rising 5 metres).
The feedback sources of global warming are accelerating, with declining reflection of solar radiation, falling carbon absorption capacity of soils, forests and oceans and increased forest fires and methane release from Siberian tundra permafrost. By 2006 global annual human CO₂ emissions were 9.9 gigatonnes of carbon, with only 4 gigatonnes being absorbed by the Earth’s “carbon sinks”. Some scientists project this figure to fall to 2.7 gigatonnes of carbon a year by 2030.
As a result, according to James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Science, “the Earth is gaining more heat than it is losing: currently 0.5 to 1 watts per square metre. This planetary imbalance is sufficient to melt ice corresponding to a 1 metre of sea level rise per decade, if the extra energy were used entirely for that purpose—and the energy imbalance could double if emissions keep growing.”
A 2º maximum average increase in world temperature probably won’t stop destructive climate change
A 2º increase in average global atmospheric temperature above pre-industrial levels has been widely accepted (for example, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) as the maximum allowable if uncontrollable global warming is to be avoided. The chance of a 2º increase has been rated at between 38% (IPCC) and 78% (Hadley Centre) if greenhouse gas concentrations reach 450 parts per million of CO₂equivalent (CO2e). But these have already reached 459ppm CO2e, producing a 0.8º increase and “locking in” another 0.6º. Clearly, an upper limit of 450ppm is too high, risking further destructive climate feedbacks.
We need a greenhouse gas reduction target that fits the global warming crisis
Existing broadly accepted targets for greenhouse gas reduction (GGR) are therefore far too little far too late. In particular, the commonly accepted GGR target of 60% by 2050 compared to 2000 (advanced by the Stern Review, European Union and the Australian Labor Party) would allow greenhouse gas concentrations to grow to 550ppm CO₂e, making a 3º average temperature increase a 50:50 chance and risking even more extreme increases—with catastrophic consequences for billions of human beings and entire ecosystems. This frightening reality dictates an approach of stopping greenhouse gas concentration increases as soon as possible, with the goal of reducing them to a long term safe and sustainable level (around 300-325ppm CO_2, roughly corresponding to a 0.5º increase from pre-industrial levels).
Despite the urgency of the crisis, solutions are possible
Despite the enormity of the global warming threat the carbon-reducing technologies, industrial processes and forms of economic and social organisation that can reverse it already exist or can be created. Many needed policies (e.g., rapid energy demand reduction and application of sustainable energy technologies) are already being introduced, albeit on an extremely inadequate and under-resourced scale. The central challenge is to speed up the replacement of carbon-intensive infrastructure and forms of economic and social organisation, setting in place the measures supporting climate sustainability at a pace that meets the timetable for the greenhouse gas emission cuts the Earth needs.
Vested interests stand in the way of climate sustainability and have to be confronted
Reaching this goal involves more than a debate about climate science and government climate policy. It is also, even primarily, a struggle against those forces with a vested interest in keeping the transition to sustainability within a framework that doesn’t risk the profitability of carbon-intensive investments. Also, while the global rate of investment in renewable and sustainable technologies is increasing rapidly from a low base, it still falls far short of that needed to produce the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions required by climate science.
Existing climate change policy is falling behind the challenge
Likewise, the presently preferred lead policies against global warming—carbon trading schemes and “feed-in” tariffs—have not speeded up the uptake of sustainable technologies to the pace needed. Even the most advanced Mandated Renewable Energy Targets envisaged by mainstream environmental organisations would see 60-70% of energy still being produced by carbon-intensive technologies (coal and oil) in 2020. In those states and regions where such policies done most to increase energy efficiency and stimulate private investment in sustainable technologies (Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Spain, California) energy use and greenhouse gas emissions are at best falling very slowly. At the international level the Kyoto Protocol failed and the Bali round threatens to repeat that failure on a larger scale.
The real road to climate sustainability has five basic elements
There can be no real shift to climate sustainability without five core elements—properly resourced public agencies to drive the sustainability effort, an international framework where the First World pays the vast bulk of the price of reversing global warming, an end to rampant consumerism, vastly strengthened campaigns for climate sustainability, and building a powerful political alliance for climate sustainability with social justice. These imperatives are explained in the next five sections.
We need properly funded public agencies to oversee the sustainability transition
Climate sustainability will never be achieved if basically entrusted to the profit motive and the market. At the core of any successful transition will be a public agency or agencies entrusted with guaranteeing that adequate targets are met. Without going into detail—which will vary widely by country and region and require ongoing elaboration to meet local conditions—the main tasks of any public agency overseeing the transition to climate sustainability will be to:
Drive the implantation of energy saving and efficiency programs, including mandatory and enforceable minimum standards for domestic and commercial buildings;
Oversee programs to convert existing building stock to zero-carbon status;
Implement a plan to introduce renewable energy technologies at all levels, simultaneously phasing out fossil fuel fired power generation;
Foster research, development and the application of sustainable technologies and processes, with a view to achieving their mass application as rapidly as possible;
Oversee the upgrading and spread of rail networks to provide the capacity to shift long-distance freight movement from road and air to rail;
Oversee the conversion of the car industry to non-polluting forms of propulsion;
Foster the growth of a new model of agriculture and forestry which includes the advances of methods like permaculture and aims to retain and increase the carbon-absorption capacity of the land biosphere;
Oversee the closure of polluting industries and the full retraining on full pay and conditions of the workers affected; and
Promote social instead of private ways of meetings basic human needs in housing, domestic work, child and aged care, transport etc.
We need international solidarity in the fight against global warming
The advanced industrial nations, whose own growth continues to depend on access on favourable terms to Third World resources, have been responsible for 76% of emissions since the beginning of industrialisation. Powers like the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia cannot now demand that those economies that are presently at earlier points on the path of industrialisation (or still locked in underdevelopment) pay the price for decarbonising the structures of production for which they are overwhelmingly responsible.
Accepting the cost burden of overseeing the transition to climate sustainability in developing countries involves the creation of a global sustainability fund overwhelmingly funded by the advanced industrial powers. Resources presently wasted on military spending could, if switched into such a fund, finance a rapid global switch to renewable energy sources.
We need a struggle against consumerism
The struggle for sustainability is also a struggle against the consumerist, individualist life-style of “developed” industrial society and a search for a human-centred and community based social existence. Solidarity with the struggles of Indigenous peoples whose environments have been stolen and most ravaged by “development” and the study of their values will teach a lot about what sustainability and care for ecosystems really mean.
In particular, attention to these values will be an important element in countering the mass lifestyles promoted by the vested interests of the corporations—with their ever higher levels of consumption, built-in obsolescence and throw away culture.
We need the broadest possible alliance for social justice and climate sustainability
The bedrock of the transition to climate sustainability lies in developing the alliance between the environmental and climate change movement and working people, young people, the unemployed and welfare recipients, and their union and community organisations. Such an alliance can only develop on the basis that the costs of the transition to climate sustainability are funded from reduced wasteful spending in government budgets (for example, on military hardware and subsidies to polluting industries) or through taxes borne by those who bear greatest responsibility for the climate crisis and those who can most afford to pay. Whatever the mechanisms used to reduce the use of carbon-intensive products and processes and to harvest the income to help fund the replacement of carbon-intensive infrastructure, the burden must fall primarily on the corporate world and the rich. The history of eco-taxation has already seen too many failed attempts at making ordinary consumers pay, leading to working-class and popular alienation from the environment movement, and providing dangerous openings for right-wing anti-environmental demagogues. If those opposed to radical action for climate sustainability succeed in turning the mass of working people against the global warming struggle there simply will not be a sustainability transition—the majority (especially the poorest and most oppressed) will see the fight against global warming as an attack on their living standards, social gains and rights, reproducing on a massive and debilitating scale the split between forest preservation movements and timber workers in places like Tasmania, the US and Canada.
The struggle for climate sustainability will also be weakened if it separates itself from other struggles for social justice and equality. By supporting all those campaigning for their rights the climate sustainability struggle will strengthen its own cause.
12. We must build all campaigns for climate sustainability
The emergence of movements that give powerful and sustained organisation to the profound community concern about global warming will be the key driver of the climate transition. The Climate Change|Social Change conference commits to helping build the movement for climate sustainability in Australia and elsewhere.
The signatories to this statement come from a wide range of backgrounds—climate activism, scientific climate research, Green, socialist, Indigenous, feminist and many more. We do not agree on all the issues in play in the great, complex debate about how to confront and defeat global warming, but we do agree on the basic approach outlined in this statement. We understand that ongoing involvement in the struggle for climate sustainability will give us the best chance of further developing policy against global warming and resolving present differences.
We are also committed to further developing the discussion that has taken place at this conference, and will form an email network to this end. We urge everyone committed to the vital cause of reversing global warming—even if they do not agree with the analysis and proposals presented here— to join it and use it to develop our collective understanding and effort to confront humanity’s most vital challenge.

Climate Change Conference DVD's now available

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Thu, 08 May 2008 06:05:11 -0500

Climate Change | Social Change conference

DVDs available

Thanks to Actively Radical TV

AU$10 each or $35 for set of 4 (plus postage) available through Resistance Bookshops or online

VIDEO ONE

Friday 11^th April – Public meeting

Climate change and its social roots

John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review; author of Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature

Patrick Bond, University of KwaZulu-Natal; editor of Climate Change, Carbon Trading and Civil Society

David Spratt, Carbon Equity, co-author Climate Code Red

James Goodman, social researcher, University of Technology in Sydney

Saturday 12^thApril – Plenary

Climate change solutions: what role for the market?

Patrick Bond

John Kaye, Greens NSW MLC

Stuart Rosewarne, co-editor Journal of Australian Political Economy and Capitalism, Nature, Socialism

Renfrey Clarke, Green Left Weekly

VIDEO TWO

Saturday 12^thApril – Feature workshop

Cuban experience: the challenge of fossil fuels and climate change

Roberto Perez, Cuban biologist and permaculturalist, Antonio Núñez Jimenez Foundation for Nature and Humanity, Cuban NGO, featured in The Power of Community: how Cuba survived peak oil

Plenary

Ecology, capitalism and socialism

John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review; author of Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature

VIDEO THREE

Saturday 12^thApril – Feature workshop

Power privatisation and the environment

Matt Thistlethwaite, Unions NSW deputy assistant secretary

John Kaye, Greens NSW MLC

Dick Nichols, author Environment, Capitalism, Socialism, Socialist Alliance national coordinator

Sunday 13^th April – Plenary

Transitions to sustainability

Mark Diesendorf, Institute of Environmental Studies, University of NSW

Adrian Whitehead, Zero Emission Network

Stephanie Long, Friends of the Earth Australia's international climate justice spokesperson

Roberto Perez, Cuban biologist and permaculturalist, Antonio Núñez Jimenez Foundation for Nature and Humanity

Renfrey Clarke, Green Left Weekly

VIDEO FOUR

Feature workshop

Radicalising the Australian climate change movement

Simon Cunich, Resistance

Vanessa Bowden, Climate camp

Mel Barnes, Students Against the Pulp Mill

Ben Courtice, World Environment Day, Melbourne

Strategies for winning

John Rice, Adelaide Ecosocialist Network

Cam Walker, Friends of the Earth Melbourne

John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review; author of Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature

Dick Nichols, author Environment, Capitalism, Socialism, Socialist Alliance national coordinator

--
CC|SC conference organising team

Are liveable cities just a dream?

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Mon, 05 May 2008 22:14:33 -0500

By Dave Holmes
[from Links]

When one sees a modern city from the air, especially at night, it is a truly awe-inspiring spectacle. What always strikes me is the immensity of the project, a testimony to the power and creativity of human beings. However, on the ground and actually living and working in this wonder, things are quite different and the social and ecological problems crowd in and fill one’s view. The truth is that our cities have always been dominated by the rich and powerful and built and operated to serve their needs — not those of the mass of working people who live and toil in them.

* * *

This article is based on a talk presented at the Climate Change | Social Change Conference in Sydney, April 2008. The conference was organised by Green Left Weekly. For more articles, audio and video from the conference, click here.

* * *
Problems of urban life

And today the destructive effect on the quality of urban life of the capitalist pursuit of profits before anything else is growing alarmingly. Here is a short and far from complete list:

* Modern capitalist cities are absolutely dominated by cars and the trucks. This leads to massive, life-threatening pollution and a vast network of roads and car parks which scars the urban landscape. People live on islands surrounded by seas of asphalt and concrete — 40% or more of the city surface is asphalt and concrete. The city creates its own, warmer climate.
* Motor vehicles also directly kill and maim large numbers of people each year; still greater numbers die from the pollution. Vehicle emissions are also a major contributor to greenhouse gases and the climate change which threatens the human race with utter catastrophe.
* The corollary of this is that public transport systems are weak and take second place to the motor car. Similarly, the great bulk of freight is carried by trucks not rail.
* Developers aided by governments have created the appalling urban sprawl with all its ecological and social consequences (erosion of farmland, huge distances between home and work, etc., etc.). The word “developers”, of course, is an appalling euphemism — capitalist sharks would be a more accurate description.
* And now, in the name of urban consolidation, these same developers are being encouraged to build their often crappy blocks of units anywhere and everywhere. In Melbourne this has led to a great deal of angst in the suburbs. And one result is no better than the other.
* Then let’s look at what the developers actually construct. Modern houses and buildings are generally not only hard to maintain but ecologically wasteful and often extremely unhealthy (emissions from building materials, plastics and cleaning agents). They could be designed differently — we could easily have ecologically sensible houses instead of the current extremely wasteful “McMansions” favoured by the building industry.
* In the cities, public land — modest though it is — is constantly being alienated by greedy developers in league with councils and city and state governments.
* Not only are house prices soaring beyond the reach of most workers, but homelessness is growing sharply (estimated to be over 100,000 nationally) as governments refuse to build public housing and rely on the market to solve everything (preferring to give subsidies to people to rent from private landlords).
* Shopping centres (malls and supermarkets) dominate much of city life. They kill most of the neighbourhood shops and force people to rely on cars to do their shopping. But these juggernauts are purely the result of the capitalist thirst for profit — they appear before us as facts of life; people never get to discuss what is really needed. Moreover, the ubiquitous shopping mall represents a serious privatisation of social space — we all have to use them and they thus fulfil a social function but access and control is wholly in the hands of the private owners.
* And as the supermarkets and malls kill off many of the neighbourhood shops, their place is taken by chain outlets (7-11, Coles Express, petrol station shops) all offering emergency supplies — at much higher prices.
* Within the city we have the hypertrophy — a monstrous swelling — of the city centre (full of truly ugly buildings all jostling for position) and the bleak wasteland of the sprawling suburbs.
* In the sixties, “decentralisation” was a buzzword. Governments encouraged a modest movement of services and industry to regional centres. But today country towns and villages are dying as governments cut services and jobs and banks close branches. This has a multiplier effect. People move to the city (or at least to the big regional centres) and the rural crisis intensifies.
* There is a movement back to some regional centres but — under the wonderful capitalist system we have — it becomes ghastly caricature of what is really needed. The rich and middle classes build holiday homes in coastal towns forcing up prices and making life impossible for ordinary people (working-class pensioners and renters) who have to move elsewhere.

Peak oil and climate change

On top of the all the above, as the concept of peak oil and the eventual end of this finite resource laid down over millions of years gains currency, the fragility of the modern city is suddenly laid bare. The movie The End of Suburbia demonstrates very well how the American suburbs have been built on the automobile. If the motor vehicle as we know it goes — i.e., can no longer serve as mode of mass transport — then the urban sprawl becomes even more untenable and an alternative way of living becomes desperately urgent.

Similarly, climate change has put a big question mark over the modern city. Effecting a drastic and rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is a life-and-death question.

* * * *

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* * * *

In Australia, perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of climate change for the cities is the question mark over water supplies. Achieving water security and sustainability is a burning issue. To date, the main response of state and federal governments has been to go for big-budget projects (in Victoria, a desalination plant and a diversion pipeline to take scarce water from the equally drought-affected Murray-Goulburn irrigation area in the north).

Arguably, such responses do not address the real problem and will actually make it worse. (For instance, Victoria’s projected desalination plant will be a major emitter of greenhouse gases.)

All in all, climate change calls into question so many aspects of our current urban existence.

* The motor vehicle culture which big business has foisted on us is no longer viable (if it ever was). If declining fuel supplies and ever-more-expensive petrol costs don’t kill it off, surely climate change will. Public transport systems will have to be developed to replace it.
* The urban sprawl especially characteristic of Australian capital cities — which compels people to travel vast distances to get to work — will have to give way to some form of consolidation. The hypertrophy of the city centre and the bleakness of much of the suburbs needs to be overcome. A much better spread of jobs would mean that people didn’t have to travel vast differences to work.
* In my opinion, over time the fetish of the ¼-acre block — the equivalent of every family owning its own car — would start to ease and eventually disappear as people realised that denser living with radically improved public amenities (parks, transport, services) had a lot to offer (c.f. some European cities).
* As currently constructed, our houses and buildings embody huge amounts of water and energy and considerable greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, their actual operation is characterised by a high and unsustainable energy and water consumption.
* Climate change will put our food supply under extreme pressure. What foods we eat, how they are transported and distributed will become burning questions. As well as finding ways to guarantee our food security, reducing the water and energy consumed in the whole process will be vitally important.
* We need a much more uniform distribution of the population over the countryside. At the very least, the cities must get smaller and the country towns grow. But, unlike what is happening today, this needs to be done in such a way that jobs and services move out also, transport access is maintained and actual living communities are created. In time, the traditional isolation of the countryside would disappear along with the swollen capital city with its bloated centre.

In this regard socialists reject the current developer-driven model whereby greenfields housing estates gobble up precious farmland and create McMansions-style ghettos on the fringes of the city, isolated and with few amenities, a trap for housewives and the elderly and a terrific burden for those who have travel vast distances to work. We can surely work out something much better.
Abandon affluence?

As an aside, Ted Trainer, in his 1985 book Abandon Affluence, had a lot to say on the modern city. But his non-Marxist, radical green framework marred a lot of the useful points he made.

He saw “overconsumption” by the West as the source of the global ecological crisis. In his book he bases everything on reducing consumption.

Marxists, of course, see the fundamental problem not as “overconsumption” but the capitalist drive for profits ahead of all else; achieving a relative material abundance is essential if humanity is to leave class conflict behind and achieve full communism. With modern technology, it would be quite possible to achieve relative material abundance and — by improving production processes and eliminating the wastefulness of capitalist production and society — at the same time actually reduce our ecological footprint massively.

One can say generally that the West consumes too many resources but this obscures the reality that these are class-divided societies and a large proportion of the population doesn’t consume very much at all. For example, in the United States there is a huge internal Third World which radically underconsumes the necessities of life. They are not responsible in any way for the profligacy of the US — that should be sheeted home squarely to the ruling capitalist plutocracy.

While we oppose the wasteful use of resources and while we too are opposed to capitalist consumerism, posing the problem in terms of reducing consumption as such is wrong and would be political suicide for the socialist movement. For instance, supermarkets, for all their capitalistic form, are actually a tremendous labour- and time-saving convenience. The liberation of women and the whole working class has many aspects; a key one is reducing drudgery to the minimum. We want to go forwards from capitalism, not backwards.

Ted Trainer’s city of the future has a very definite reactionary, feudal, labor-intensive feel to it, but even allowing for this rather basic weakness, he does paint a thought-provoking picture of the new city, with the old freeways and roads dug up, with vegetable gardens where the factories once stood, etc.
Monstrous beast in the room

Making our cities livable and grappling with peak oil, climate change and sustainability are really one and the same thing.

Ideally, we would have a big discussion, develop a rational plan and then organise ourselves to implement it. If we were, say, a small community living in ancient times before the development of class society, that is exactly what we would have done.

But today, the problem is not that the population has grown but that the economy on which we all depend — the productive apparatus and everything associated with it — is not owned collectively by society but by a tiny handful of capitalists. Working people’s labour operates the means of production — in that sense it is social — but a few per cent of the population privately own it.

This is the monstrous, slavering beast in the room. At every turn of the wheel it has to fed. Its ravenous appetite must be satisfied ahead of any human need. What it wants — profits and ever more profits — is not what the rest of us want — i.e., meaningful action on climate change and other social problems.

For example, look at what is happening in Victoria right now. The big-business-oriented Brumby ALP government is moving at high speed in the opposite direction to what is needed to confront peak oil and climate change:

* Rather than a massive program of fitting all dwellings with water tanks and recycling systems, imposing conservation targets on industry and agribusiness, and establishing the infrastructure for large-scale stormwater capture, it has signed off on the desalination plant and the northern pipeline — bonanzas for big business but a disaster for the rest of us. Water bills for ordinary households are projected to double within five years.
* Rather than a program to phase out our disastrous dependence on brown coal and make the switch to renewable energy, the ALP government is intent on pursuing the mirage of “clean coal” technology. (As someone said, this will turn the Earth into a giant soda fountain.) Power prices are also set to double for ordinary users over the next few years.
* It refuses to put the necessary resources into public transport which exists in absolutely infuriating and permanent crisis; instead its program is roads, more roads and still more roads. Now it is inching towards a truly insane monster road tunnel under Melbourne’s general cemetery. Not even the dead are to be left to rest in peace!
* It is going ahead with a radical dredging of Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay which, among other things, threatens to lead to the flooding of low-lying suburbs at high tide. And all this is so that bigger ships — laden with yet more consumerist crap — can transit the bay.
* It has given the go-ahead to GM canola. Brumby’s utterly ludicrous comment was that this was giving the consumer “choice”! The consumers don’t want this sort of fake “choice” — they want safe foods. GM was given the green light to give a profit bonanza to Monsanto and a few big exporters; the rest of us will pay the price (an increase in allergies and who knows what other long-term health damage).

Public ownership and planning

In order to grapple with the crisis of climate change we need a total mobilisation of society and a drastic and rapid reorientation of our entire economy. But to imagine that anything can compel a horde of profit-crazed corporations to be “responsible” is utterly fanciful. The commanding heights of the economy must be in public hands.

* Socialists call for the nationalisation of the entire energy sector (coal, oil, gas, the power stations and distribution systems, wind farms, etc.). This vital infrastructure must belong to the community — whether it is in federal, state or municipal hands. The charter of this sector must be to phase out the fossil fuel power plants and make the “big switch” to renewable energy as quickly as possible.
* The public transport and freight systems must also be in public hands. The aim must be to achieve a drastic and rapid reduction in the use of motor vehicles. The roads should be kept safe; apart from that, massive investments must be poured into rail, trams and feeder bus systems.
* The automobile industry should likewise be nationalised. The car plants should be retooled to produce public transport stock and renewable power equipment.
* As the crisis of climate change bites deeper, food security will become a big issue for society. We can’t leave the bulk of the distribution system in the hands of profit-gouging supermarket chains like Coles and Woolworths, that exploit small suppliers and consumers alike. They too should be brought under public ownership.
* The banks, which underpin the capitalist economy, should be nationalised and a single state bank created. This would guarantee bank workers jobs, provide services and generate funds for the reconstruction of the economy.

Economic planning based on public ownership of the means of production has tremendous power. Here is just one example.

In 1967 Isaac Deutscher, the renowned biographer of Trotsky, published The Unfinished Revolution, his well-known study of the Soviet Union. He pointed out that if you allowed for all the years the USSR took to simply get back to pre-war levels of production (following the World War I and the Civil War and then World War II), then in the equivalent of a mere 25 peaceful years — from a very low base — it had created the second most powerful industrial economy in the world.

Put aside Stalinist bureaucratism and repression, the deliberate neglect of consumer needs in favour of heavy industry, and the damage to the environment — this example nevertheless shows the enormous power of collective labour, once it is freed from the shackles of capitalism and allocated according to a conscious plan.
Fight for the future

Of course, the capitalist class has immense power and wealth and will not give it up without a tremendous struggle. Only the growth of a vast popular movement, solidly based on the great working-class majority, can succeed here. The development of a movement to fight for meaningful action on climate change will at the same time prepare the political conditions for a workers government which will finally bring the economy under collective ownership and control.

This — and only this — will enable us to begin to construct a society based on the fulfilment of human needs and living sustainably in harmony with nature.

Dave Holmes is a member of the Australian Democratic Socialist Perspective, a Marxist tendency within the Socialist Alliance.

CCSC Presentation

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:06:18 -0500

This is a quick slideshow I put together for a presentation tonight here in Brisbane on the Climate Change Social Change Conference. It was designed to go with some video shot of the conference and serve as an introduction to the sort of discussions that were held during the event.

-Dave Riley

| View | Upload your own

View presentation in large format

After CCSC -- Building a Red Green Alliance

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:43:59 -0500

by Dave Riley

While it may be urgent that we create a red green alliance to strengthen radical social action to stop climate change, our collective problem is how are we going to do that?

The Climate Change Social Change Conference held in Sydney Australia during April tried to tackle that challenge.This was a bold attempt to bring together left and green activists in order to locate a shared perspective around which we could begin more consciously organize. While this was an Australian event organized by the newspaper, Green Left Weekly, the conference also heard from the Cuban permaculturalist Roberto Perez; the editor of Monthly Review John Bellamy Foster (author of Marx's Ecology); and Patrick Bond director of the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; editor of Climate Change, Carbon Trading and Civil Society.

Foster and Perez urged the conference's participants to consider socialism as the only viable solution to the climate emergency. This was a persistent theme discussed throughout the three day event as speakers were drawn from a range of environment movements and organizations (such as the Australian Greens and Friends of the Earth) as well as academic specialists -- who preferred solution packages which were not consciously committed to a socialist transformation of society..

Nonetheless, the plenaries and workshops teased out a lot of agreement over what can concretely be done today.

The final Conference statement tried to articulate that shared perspective. It argued that climate sustainability can be built on five basic elements:

properly resourced public agencies to drive the sustainability effort,
an international framework where the First World pays the vast bulk of the price of reversing global warming,
an end to rampant consumerism,
vastly strengthened campaigns for climate sustainability, and
building a powerful political alliance for climate sustainability with social justice.

This statement is also being distributed as a generic sign on statement world wide that can function as a collective organizer for the sort of alliances that need to be built and the sort of discussions we need to have. As the document concluded:

The signatories to this statement come from a wide range of backgrounds—climate activism, scientific climate research, Green, socialist, Indigenous, feminist and many more. We do not agree on all the issues in play in the great, complex debate about how to confront and defeat global warming, but we do agree on the basic approach outlined in this statement. We understand that ongoing involvement in the struggle for climate sustainability will give us the best chance of further developing policy against global warming and resolving present differences.

You can review the conference deliberations by accessing the digital recordings of most of the conference events and ongoing reports are being published in Green Left Weekly. Audio is also available from Links.

The absence however of wide participation from among the socialist left, outside the sponsoring organizations such as the Socialist Alliance, suggests that a lot more attention has to be invested by reds to turn green. The challenge thrown up not only by the Cuban example of sustainability -- explained by Roberto Perez -- and the ecological relevance of Marxism --as argued by John Bellamy Foster -- gave many greens much food for thought and many lefts a lot of inspiration.

The local --and perhaps unique -- advantage was that Green Left Weekly has been published for 17 years here with a very clear focus on trying to marry left and green politics. Without the respect the paper has earnt it is hard to imagine that this conference could have been pulled off.

As conference featured speaker, Dick Nichols told LeftCast (my podcast program) the challenge now is to find concrete ways to build the red/green alliance that is so urgently needed by going out there and doing it any way we can.

[Dave Riley is a member of the Socialist Alliance and blogs and podcasts at LeftClick ]

John Bellamy Foster on the global financial crisis: ‘Nobody knows where the toxic debt is buried and how much there is’

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:30:44 -0500

John Bellamy Foster is an American journalist, sociologist, essayist and socialist, as well as editor of the Monthly Review, a prominent political journal foundered by the Marxist economist Paul Sweezy in the 1940s.

Foster is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon in Eugene. He has written widely on political economy and has established a reputation as an environmental socialist.

He has argued that Karl Marx was a radical ecologist in his book, Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature .

Foster is interviewed by Peter Boyle for Links and Green Left Weekly.

LeftCast April 29th, 2008

Original audio source

Capitalism and climate change-- John Bellamy Foster -- video of Foster's talk to the Climate Change Social Change Conference

Audio:Individual versus social solutions to global warming

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:29:25 -0500

Workshop at the Climate change Social Change Conference on April 13th.

Speakers:

Terry Townsend -- editor of Links
Lauren Carroll Harris - Resistance

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[This was a talk given by Terry Townsend (Managing Editor of the online journal Links) to the Climate Change Social Change Conference held in Sydney from April 11 to 13. The article on Greenwashing that is referred to is linked here]

Setting up ecosocialist networks in your city

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:10:43 -0500

Workshop at the Climate Change Social Change Conference April 13th, 2008

Speaker: John Rice -- Adelaide ecosocialist network

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Elite co-option of the environment movement

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:38:00 -0500

A workshop delivered to the Climate Change Social Change Conference on April 11th, 2008.

Speaker: Mike Barker doctoral candidate, Australian School of Environmental Studies

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Radicalising the Australian climate change movement

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:37:06 -0500

A workshop delivered to the Climate Change Social Change Conference on April 13th, 2008.

Speakers:

Simon Cunich, Resistance
Vanessa Bowden, Climate camp
Mel Barnes, Students Against the Pulp Mill
Ben Courtice, World Environment Day, Melbourne

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Critical anthropology of global warming

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:36:15 -0500

A workshop delivered to the Climate Change Social Change Conference on April 12th, 2008.

Speaker: Hans Baer -- anthropology lecturer, Melbourne University.

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Strategies for winning

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:35:31 -0500

The final plenary session at the Climate Change Social Change Conference on April 13th, 2008.

Speakers:

Dick Nichols
John Rice
John Bellamy Foster
Pip Hinman
Patrick Bond
Cam Walker

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Why we must ration the future

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:34:40 -0500

A workshop delivered to the Climate Change Social Change Conference on April 13th, 2008.

Speaker: Damien Lawson

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Climate change and the global South -- beyond Third Worldism

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 08:43:54 -0500

A workshop delivered to the Climate Change Social Change Conference on April 12th, 2008.

Speakers:James Goodman, IanMacGregor, University of Technology, Sydney

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Individual versus social solutions to global warming

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:53:48 -0500

I’m sure everybody here is aware of the basic facts of global warming and the likely consequences if rapid and serious action is not taken. There is virtually unanimous agreement among scientists and activists, and increasingly among millions of ordinary people, about the degree of the problem and the time frame we have to make fundamental changes to address it.

The main "solutions" being offered by the capitalist class, its politicians and the corporate-dominated mass media -- and endorsed by some key peak environmental organisations -- are consciously designed to shift the responsibility for, and the major costs of, addressing global warming away from the most polluting corporations and to preserve the basic structure and mechanisms of Western capitalist economies. They are also designed to delay the necessary political, economic and social changes for as long as possible, and to keep them to the minimum that are compatible (in their assessment) with both the survival of capitalist society and ameliorating the worst of climate change.

This is why major-party politicians and the corporate media -- and again unfortunately some peak environment groups – do not place serious demands on big business, but endorse -- even celebrate -- big business’ preferred measures of emissions trading, "green" taxes, carbon offsetting projects in the Third World and capitalism-friendly publicly subsidised techno-fixes such as so-called clean coal and agro-fuels.

These false "solutions" are not only inadequate, they are counterproductive. However, since other speakers and workshops will be focussing on those, I’ll concentrate on another of the establishment’s favoured -- and ultimately also counterproductive -- "solution" -- one that is intertwined with the others. The push for all individuals to voluntarily consume a little less, and "buy green" whenever they can. That the answer to global warming is for all of "us" -- consumers, workers, residents, pensioners -- to voluntarily change our wasteful behaviour.

Despite its benign aura of commonsense advice, this is a massive ideological campaign to drive home to "us" that it is ordinary working people who are ultimately to blame for climate change, and that it is "us who must pay for its solution. It is part of the ruling class’ overall offensive to shift the blame and cost of addressing global warming away from itself and its intrinsically environmentally destructive economic and social system.

As one commentator aptly noted in the usually system-friendly Grist e-zine "every time an activist or politician hectors the public to voluntarily reach for a new [fluro] bulb or spend extra on a Prius, Exxon Mobil heaves a big sigh of relief" because it diverts people’s attention from what is really necessary to address the crisis, and from who is really responsible.

Another radical commentator, George Marshall, has described this ideological offensive as "death [by] a thousand tips". He is referring to the literally tens of thousands of newspaper articles and web pages that, after having outlined the severe crisis we face and the sharply diminishing time society has to respond, direct the reader to a snappy, upbeat sidebar or list entitled "10 easy tips to save the planet" or some variation thereof. The same sort of lists have been the core of government-sponsored campaigns across the globe, including Australia.

Standard items include "change your light globes", "turn off unnecessary lights", "don’t leave your appliances on stand-by", "adjust your thermostats", recycle, compost, drive a fuel-efficient car, or drive less. Yet extremely rarely do these helpful hints mention political action, let alone make concrete demands on governments or business. On the odd occasion they do, it is vague and tokenistic – and tacked onto the end of the list.

Of course, there IS a place for action by individuals, and it should not be discouraged. It does make sense in terms of saving energy and water, reducing waste and saving money. Educating and facilitating such behaviour on a mass scale is a significant part of what is needed to halt global warming. But such suggestions should not be counterposed to, or used to drown out calls for, the urgent need for mass political action to force the necessary cuts to emission demanded by the science. And they should not be cynically presented, as they are by the corporate media and capitalist politicians, as THE way to save the planet.

In Britain, the government spent £22 million on a "Do your bit" campaign and had to admit that it produced no measurable change in personal habits. A poll in 2007 indicated that this campaign had miseducated people, with more than 40% saying that recycling household waste -- which would result in a relatively small reduction of emissions -- was the most important thing they could do. Only 10% nominated the far more effective regular use of public transport.

That £22 million would have been better spent to organise a movement to demand an end to the massive and wasteful packaging and advertising industries, or the mass expansion of public transport.

In Ireland, faced with greenhouse gas emissions that have increased 25% since 1990, the government’s response was to launch a multimillion euro "The Power on One" campaign, which provides -- yes, you guessed it -- "10 top tips" to "make a difference". Among the revolutionary actions suggested were: don’t overfill your kettle, but fill your dishwasher before use, and unplug your mobile phone charger.

As George Marshall quips, all "that sounds much nicer than curtailing road building or industrial growth. They are not called `easy tips’ for nothing."

On October 15, the UN Environment Program organised a "Blog Action Day" in which some 15,000 blog sites offered more "tips" to web surfers, from the inevitable changing light globes to one of Copyblogger.com’s "tiny actions [that] can save the world": quit your job requiring a long commute and start up a home-based business! Copyblogger’s not alone in making "tips" that are simply beyond the means of most debt-strapped working people in these days of widespread ``mortgage stress’‘ and rising interest rates. Common "tips" include buying more expensive hybrid cars and building architect-designed "carbon neutral" houses.

All such campaigns are premised on blaming working people for global warming. But as Dave Holmes, a veteran Australian socialist, points out in the latest Green Left Weekly, what real choice to do the mass of ordinary people have:
"the source of our current crisis is quite specific: it is the operations of modern capitalism. The drive for profits by the giant corporations has been relentless and has been pursued in complete disregard of any impact on the environment.

"The fundamental conditions under which we live — how we generate our power, how we get around, how our food is grown, etc. — are not decided by us but rather by the big corporations that control society’s means of production. Without the rule of corporate capital we could set in place radically different and ecologically sustainable arrangements.

"For example, the cars which most of us use are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions...The favouring of private motor vehicles over public transport hasn’t come about because we are innately a society of petrol-heads but is a consequence of the deliberate policies of a succession of capitalist governments loyally protecting the interests of their big business masters. The auto industry and its associated sectors make up a very large part of each national capitalist economy."

However well intentioned, appeals to people to change their individual habits bring trivial results when measured against the problem, and if not coupled to the much more urgent task of politically mobilising to demand serious government action to immediately reduce and rapidly halt greenhouse gas emissions, it derails mass concern about global warming from taking a political road.

It also sells the damaging lie that "clean", "green", "natural" and "organic" commodities are the answer, when they are fundamentally no better for the planet than any other over-produced commodities under capitalism. It plays into the hands of the mega-financed "Greenwashing" by corporations and governments of an unsustainable economic system.

If anything sums up this sort of operation, it was the massively publicised "Earth Hour" on March 29. The brainchild in 2007 of the World Wildlife Fund, Fairfax newspapers and the Leo Burnett advertising agency, Earth Hour declares on its website: "Created to take a stand against the greatest threat our planet has ever faced, Earth Hour uses the simple action of turning off the lights for one hour to deliver a powerful message about the need for action on global warming." But you will search in vain for any demands for political action, just boilerplate "tips". It states: "Earth Hour is the highlight of a major campaign to encourage businesses, communities and individuals to take the simple steps needed to cut their emissions on an ongoing basis. It is about simple changes that will collectively make a difference -- from businesses turning off their lights when their offices are empty to households turning off appliances rather than leaving them on standby."

There was more of the same in the 40-page, full-colour Earth Hour Magazine that was distributed "free" (free that is if you don’t consider the small forest and who knows how many tonnes of CO2 that were expended in its production and distribution) with the approximate 211,000 copies of the Sydney Morning Herald on March 17. Only one article, by Tim Flannery, made any serious attempt to point out the vested interests that need to be tackled and raised the issues of inadequate public transport, stopping new coal plants and setting adequate emission-reduction targets by 2050.

But his contribution was buried under an avalanche of yet more regurgitated "tips", feel-good stories and gumph such as this: "Many governments and communities have already made big changes to reduce emissions. The use of solar and wind power is on the increase. Other renewable energy sources are being investigated. Millions of dollars are being spent exploring ways to bury carbon dioxide or to produce cleaner coal. But more needs to be done and politicians need to be brave enough to make tough decisions. If those politicians know that a couple of million people in their homeland have joined Earth Hour, they can be confident that the people will support the hard decisions and will applaud leaders who have the will to act."

Don’t expect Fairfax to support "hard decisions" that impact on the big end of town, though. "Hard decisions" is code for making you and me pay higher bills.

The supplement was festooned with full-page ads by electricity suppliers such as EnergyAustralia, Integral Energy and Country Energy -- the ones that hawk all that coal power -- car companies such as Toyota, Fiat and Hyundai (Volvo waited for 8-page post-Earth Hour "Souvenir edition" Sydney Morning Herald), and even Cascade beer (100% Carbon Offset!). Corporate and government "greenwashing" was the central goal of the pre-hour hullabaloo. For all the talk of millions of Australians taking part, almost the sole yardstick of the night’s success was on corporate office blocks and huge neon advertising signs in the CBD switching off. The participation of major publicly owned landmarks is really what made the impact. Which begs the question, why aren’t all these lights and signs switched off every night?

Fossil fuel giant AGL loaned the giant WWF-logoed hot air balloon, which sailed over several capital cities beforehand, producing an estimated 378 kilograms of CO2 an hour. That’s the same AGL that is a shareholder in Victoria’s largest brown coal mine. Richard Branson gave his grin of approval, ever keen to "offset" the impact of his fleet of 38 747s. BP -- the world's third largest global energy company -- also promised to turn off all its "non-essential lighting". Let’s not mention that BP was named one of the "ten worst corporations" in both 2001 and 2005 based on its environmental and human rights records. Or that it is busy trying to mine the ultra-polluting tar sands oil in Canada.

McDonald’s turned off it Golden Arches for an hour nationally! So the literally millions on tonnes of useless packaging produced by this lot, not to mention the clearing of Amazonian rainforest for beef for Maccas, is forgiven. Not surprisingly, Channel Nine’s support did not extend to urging people to switch of the tellie or to refusing to air the ads of CO2 polluters. Behind the scenes, advertising industry magazine Campaign Brief in league with the SMH offered an incentive to copywriters who "demonstrate the most effective and/or inspirational way to leverage Earth Hour 2008" -- two return trips to Cannes in France!

And last but certainly not least, the eco-friendly Department of Defence signed up to participate in Earth Hour. Federal Labor defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon announced: "Defence takes its obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions seriously and will have over 1330 buildings across Australia participating in Earth Hour." The minister of war also reported that the department had launched the Combat Climate Change initiative (clever pun) to provide information and "tips" to defence staff in the "workplace" and home to reduce energy use. Here’s a "tip" Joel: get all troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and end all support for those wars for US imperialist control of energy sources.

In the end, despite the hype and PR, the results were hardly impressive. In the hour, electricity consumption across whole city and the Illawarra dropped just 2-3%, while in the CBD it was just over 8%. Nationwide figures put the drop at 3.6%. Based on a survey of 3000, WWF claimed 59% of Sydneysiders took part -- a figure that doesn’t gel with the marginal power drop, if simply turning off lights is the way forward.

Anyway, it seems that the WWF and Fairfax were not going to let their advertisers down and were going to declare the night a success whatever the result. The Online Fairfax-owned Brisbane Times reported that "Brisbane made history this evening with the city’s first official Earth Hour going off without a hitch. Kellie Caught, of Earth Hour organiser World Wildlife Fund, said she was thrilled with the response." Only problem was, this was published on March 28, 26 hours before Earth Hour had even taken place!

The last word on Earth Hour should go to Jimmy Yan, a member of the Glen Waverley Secondary College Eco-Committee, whose excellent critique was carried on the committee’s blog: "Earth Hour rests on the assumption that the environmental movement can make any real progress without looking at the deeper social and political institutions and systems within our society that cause our environmental problems, one of them being a system that seeks to accumulate as much profit as possible for the sake of more accumulation and more competition irrespective of the human, environmental and social cost. Our environmental problems become another commodity that is bought and sold on the market ... Ultimately, events like Earth Hour ... rest on the idea that we can trust and work with those responsible for environmental destruction without holding them accountable for their crimes and the assumption that ordinary people are too stupid and nave to go beyond just turning off their lights for one hour."

We have to convince millions of people and build a mass movement for emission-reductions that genuinely address the real problem. For Australia, that’s at least 90% by 2030 -- not Labor’s anaemic 60% by 2050. A movement that demands that governments impose far-reaching measures that force giant industrial polluters to rapidly and massively slash their emissions, at the risk of massive fines. And if they refuse, they should be nationalised and run in the interests of the workers and consumers.

All public subsidies and tax concessions for the giant fossil fuel industries and resource corporations -- which amount to billions -- should be redirected to research the development of publicly owned renewable energy sources. We could help ordinary people implement individual actions, by supplying free or at a massive subsidy to all households solar waters heaters and water tanks. There should be a massive reorganisation of society to move away from private-car-based transportation to free and frequent mass public transport, and, redesign our cities to put people’s homes close to work and shops.

We need to think about ways of linking these wider demands with our more immediate campaigns, for example as we fight to stop the Tasmanian pulp mill, oppose power privatisation, end coal and uranium mining, and to stop the building of new freeways and toll roads, we have to also convince people that the workings of capitalism itself is both responsible for the crisis and also the main obstacle to its solution.

Through struggles for immediate and broader demands, masses of people can come to understand that the source of the problem lies with capitalism itself.

The scientific analysis of capitalism first made by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, illustrates how, despite the assertions of many environmental movement theorists over the years, Marxism not only provides essential insights into the fundamental cause of the environmental crisis ,but also offers a political guide to its solution.

Capitalism’s fundamentally anti-ecological trait is captured by Marx’s analysis of the working of capitalism. Capitalists buy or produce commodities only in order to sell them for a profit, and then buy or produce yet more to sell more again. There is no end to the process. Competition between capitalists ensures that each one must continue to increase their production of commodities and continue to expand in order to survive. Production tends to expand exponentially until interrupted by crises (depressions and wars) and it is this dynamic at the very core of capitalism that places enormous, unsustainable pressure on the environment.

Capitalism is a system that pursues growth for its own sake, whatever the consequences. This is why all schemes based on the hope of a no-growth, slow-growth or a sustainable-growth forms of capitalism are pipe dreams. As too are strategies based on a critical mass of individual consumers deciding to go "green" in order to reform the system.

People are not “consumers” by nature. A multi-billion-dollar capitalist industry called advertising constantly plays with our minds to convince us that happiness comes only through buying more and more "stuff", to keep up with endless wasteful fads, fashions, upgrades, new models and built-in obsolescence. The desire for destructive and/or pointless goods is manufactured along with them. In 2008, an estimated $750 billion will be spent on corporate advertising and public relations in the US alone. In Australia, such spending is now well in excess of $12 billion a year.

Many in the environmental movement argue that with the right mix of taxes, incentives and regulations, everybody could be winners. Big business would have cheaper, more efficient production techniques, and therefore be more profitable, and consumers would have more environment-friendly products and energy sources.

In a rational society, such innovations would lower the overall environmental impact of production. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a rational society. Any energy and money savings made through efficiency are used to make and sell more commodities, cheaper than their competitors.

Capitalism approaches technology -- in the production process or in the final product -- in the same way as it does everything else. What will generate the most profits? Whether it is efficient, clean, safe, environmentally benign or rational has little to do with it. The technologies that could tackle global warming have long existed. Even though research into them has been massively underfunded, renewable energy sources are today competitive with coal and nuclear power (if the negative social and environmental costs are factored in). Public transport systems have been around since the late 1800s.

Fundamental to capitalism’s development has been its power to shift the cost of its ecological and social vandalism onto society as whole. More profits can accrue if the big capitalists don’t have to bother themselves with the elimination, neutralisation or recycling of industrial wastes. It’s much cheaper to pour toxic waste into the air or the nearest river. Rather than pay for the real costs of production, society as a whole subsidises corporate profit-making by cleaning up some of the mess or suffering the environmental and/or health costs. Or the whole messy business can simply be exported to the Third World.

It is becoming abundantly clear that the Earth cannot sustain this system’s plundering and poisoning without the humanity sooner or later experiencing a complete ecological catastrophe.

To have any chance of preventing this, within the 10- to 30-year window that we have in relation to global warming, humanity must take conscious, rational control of its interactions with the planet and its ecological processes, in ways that capitalism is inherently incapable of doing.

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Audio:Individual versus social solutions to global warming

Setting up ecosocialist networks in your city

Elite co-option of the environment movement

Radicalising the Australian climate change movement

Critical anthropology of global warming

Strategies for winning

Why we must ration the future

Climate change and the global South --­ beyond Third Worldism

Individual versus social solutions to global warming

Climate change and the global South -- beyond Third Worldism