To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
December 10, 2019
RE: 500,000 protesters on the outside, but business-as-usual carbon traders dominate the inside
By Joseph Green, Detroit Workers' Voice
Up to half a million people demonstrated in Madrid on December 6 because they were concerned that the ongoing UN climate summit, COP25, wouldn't accomplish anything. A smaller protest took place in the Chilean capital of Santiago, where COP25 had earlier been scheduled to take place. These actions are part of the wave of monster climate demonstrations that have taken place this year under names such as Fridays for the Future, Global Climate Strikes, and Youth Strikes for Climate. At times, the demonstrations were carried out in dozens of countries, with the participation of several million people.
This year's UN conference opened with UN Secretary General António Guterres warning that the world faced disaster. He said that "we need to reduce emissions by 7.6 per cent each year to reach our goals....it is imperative that governments not only honour their national contributions under the Paris Agreement, they need to substantially increase their ambitions." But, according to a report from the BBC, "UN climate chief Patricia Espinoa said that the issue of countries increasing their pledges [to reduce carbon emissions] wasn't even on the agenda for the final outcome" of COP25. (1)
It's no wonder that Greta Thunberg, addressing the protesters, said "The change we need is not going to come from people in power. The change is going to come from the people, the masses, demanding change." (2) In an interview, she said "We are angry, we are frustrated, and it's because of good reasons." And she added, "If they want us to stop being angry, maybe they should stop making us angry." (3)
But despite past UN agreements, total world carbon emissions keep going up. During the last decade, they have gone up about 1.5% a year. The American oil and gas industry, spurred on by the maniac Trump, is racing to increase this figure as fast as possible. Meanwhile the world is getting hotter, and catastrophic floods are getting more common.
Why is this happening? Would turning away from fossil fuel have been impossible?
By way of contrast, the Montreal Protocol, which is an international agreement to save the ozone layer from ozone-destroying chemicals, has worked so far. The ozone layer is on the way to recovery, and there were celebrations during the 25th and 30th anniversaries of this Protocol. True, the celebrations may have been a bit premature: global warming constitutes a new threat to the ozone layer. For example, the melting of the Arctic permafrost is releasing nitrous oxide into the atmosphere, and this threatens the ozone layer. (4) Still, it's important that the Montreal Protocol succeeded in cutting the world production of various harmful chemicals to next to nothing.
Why did the Montreal Protocol succeed while the climate summits under the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) have not? It's because saving the ozone layer could be done with only relatively minor changes to industrial production. Yes, the chemical industry cried bloody murder, but the capitalists always do that, no matter how small the obstacle to their greed. The elimination of greenhouse gas emissions, on the other hand, requires major change in, and strictly-enforced regulation of, many spheres of production. It not only requires a radical change in the production of energy, which goes against some of the richest and most powerful capitalist corporations in the world, but also changes in industrial and agricultural production as a whole. To accomplish this would require the end to market fundamentalism, the reversal of privatization, and a turn to economic regulation and planning. And if this regulation isn't to be oppressive for the majority of the population, it means that the working people would need a major say in this planning, and the individual capitalists wouldn't have unlimited freedom to plunder the earth as they like.
But much of the world bourgeoisie is clinging to oil and gas, and even those who aren't are nevertheless clinging to market fundamentalism at all costs. So the UN climate conferences have promoted market measures such as carbon trading and carbon taxes, as have the World Bank and the IMF; it doesn't matter to them that carbon trading has been a flop. So as the world burns and floods, the UN is continuing down the road of failed measures. COP25 is another carbon trading summit, which is trying to overcome differences among the different groups of capitalists over how to extend carbon trading.
So some of the climate activists have not just been demanding action, but also denouncing carbon markets. The Indigenous Environmental Network and various other indigenous organizations, and some climate justice organizations, have circulated a petition demanding "that carbon markets are kept out of the Paris Rulebook. We say NO to a resolution on carbon markets at COP25." (5) This hits at one of the central problems with COP25.
The overall climate strike movement, however, demands effective action to deal with global warming and to eliminate fossil fuels, but is not united on what this action would be. The abolition of carbon markets isn't yet a general demand, and such measures as the carbon tax are still widely promoted.
Moreover, to effectively oppose market measures, it is necessary to build a working-class section of the environmental movement. Only the working, minority, and poor people around the world can form a consistent, powerful opposition to the bankrupt market measures. There needs to be attention to why the international climate summits keep failing; there needs to be consistent opposition to the entrenched corporate interests that profit off destroying the world; the class struggle needs to be brought into the environment movement; and only this way will it be possible to force more effective environmental action.
The limitations of the current mass demonstrations shouldn't stop the radical left from working to promote and expand these actions. But the radical left should, at the same time, take steps towards building a working-class section of the environmental movement.
It is very important that COP25 has been met with a mass demonstration. This helps puncture the empty talk of the world leaders. We should never forget that it isn't just outright climate denialism that is leading the planet to disaster, but also the ineffective establishment environmentalism of a section of the rich, the bourgeois governments, and the UN. We need effective measures, and a movement that fights for these measures. The anger at the empty talk of the UN bureaucrats and the mass actions in the street are signs that change is needed, and that change will come.
(1) https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50680781. Espinosa is the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and COP25 is a meeting of the parties to the UNFCCC.
(2) "COP25: Thousands gather for climate protests in Madrid", https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50694361
(3) "Greta Thunberg: People underestimate 'angry kids'", https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50644395.
(4) "The warming Arctic permafrost may be releasing more nitrous oxide than previously thought", Caitlin Mcdermott-Murphy, https://phys.org/news/2019-04-arctic-permafrost-nitrous-oxide-previously.html. The article points out: "Up in the stratosphere, sunlight and oxygen team up to convert the gas into nitrogen oxides, which eat at the ozone. According to the EPA, atmospheric levels of the gas are rising, and the molecules can stay in the atmosphere for up to 114 years." And, it says, "a recent paper shows that nitrous oxide emissions from thawing Alaskan permafrost are about twelve times higher than previously assumed."
(5) https://www.ienearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Petition-No-to-carbon-markets.pdf. <>
The UN climate summit of Dec. 2-13 is called COP25. This means the 25th annual meeting of the Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. It is simultaneously the 15th meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol and the second meeting of the parties to the Paris Agreement from COP21.
The UN promised that COP25 will deal with renewable energy, sustainable economy, biodiversity, helping out with the consequences of natural disasters, even climate justice. In reality, the focus of COP25 is market measures, carbon pricing, and carbon trading. Everything else is subordinated to these market measures. This goes along with the market fundamentalism of the main UN members.
Thus, although a thousand different issues and projects will be discussed at COP25, pretty much the central issue is the attempt to flesh out the details of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, particularly paragraphs 6.2 and 6.4. It isn't clear whether the various governments will succeed in coming to agreement over Article 6, but that's the centerpiece of what COP25 is trying to accomplish.
Let's look a little more closely at Article 6.
Paragraph 6.2 authorizes countries, if they wish, to take part in a sort of international cap and trade system. This is to be accomplished through a system of "internationally transferred mitigation outcomes" (ITMOs). Countries pledge to reduce their carbon emissions to a certain level (the NDC or "Nationally Determined Contribution"), which they voluntarily choose, but are welcome to go above that level by purchasing ITMOs from other countries which have reduced carbon emissions beyond their own NDC.
Paragraph 6.4 seeks to continue what the UN calls elsewhere the "Clean Development Machanism" (CDM). Under it, countries can get credit for reducing carbon emissions if they finance projects in developing countries which are supposed to reduce emissions, and if these projects wouldn't have taken place without that financing. An international body is supposed to oversee what counts as an acceptable project. Under the Kyoto Protocol, a country receives Certified Emissions Reduction units for financing such a project. So the CDM is used in coordination with cap and trade, and it provides another way for a country to claim to be reducing its carbon footprint without actually doing so. One can buy carbon credits from another country, and one can also finance various projects.
The CDM has given rise to such fraud and fanciful projects that even the World Bank has taken some note of some of the problems. Paragraph 6.5 tries to plug one hole in the system by specifying that the carbon reduction claimed for a project can't be credited both towards the financing country and the developing country in which it is located. But this is hardly the only or worst problem with the system.
These market systems undermined the Kyoto Protocol, but the UN is determined to continue with them anyway. Article 6 is drowned in phrases about how all these things aim to achieve higher and higher levels of "mitigation and adaptation actions and...sustainable development and environmental integrity". But the real content of Article 6 is: the old market measures are dead, long live the new market measures!
True, Paragraph 6.8 pays lipservice to "the importance of integrated, holistic and balanced non-market approaches", but this is window-dressing or greenwashing. In a long document on the meaning of Article 6, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) writes that "There are not many clear concepts of what could constitute a NMA [Non-Market Approach]". It makes sure to say, however, that NMAs should "not duplicate work under the Convention [the UNFCCC], the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement, or other multilateral forums". (6) So what would be left for them to do? Summing up Article 6 as a whole, the ADB points to the real heart of the matter, that it is intended "create a framework that will enable the creation of an international carbon market. This will lead to a convergence of domestic carbon pricing approaches, including carbon markets." (7)
Organizationally, the meetings of COP25 are divided into blue and green zones. The "blue zone" is the conference area for official negotiations, and thus is the real heart of the conference. The "green zone" is dedicated to presentations by a variety of groups, including businesses, indigenous groups, local governments, scientists, NGOs, etc. It is designed to give an impression of being all-inclusive, but it is a side-show that goes on while the governments haggle behind the scenes. The major action by the people was that at the mass demonstration of Dec. 6.
COP25 won't deal with the failure of market measures and the fanciful nature of the emission reductions claimed under the CDM.
COP25 won't condemn, but instead promote, the privatization of governmental and regulatory functions that fosters the vast corruption in the CDM and cap and trade systems.
COP25 won't deal with the need for comprehensive environmental and economic regulation if serious and rapid steps are to be made towards cutting greenhouse gas emissions, saving the oceans from being polluted beyond repair, protecting and restoring farmland, restructuring production so that it doesn't over-strain world resources, etc.
COP25 won't take serious steps to ensure that mass livelihood must be considered alongside environmental goals if both are to succeed. There is no way that part of the world will become green, while the rest lives in slums and environmental sacrifice areas.
COP25 will restrict climate justice to haggling over payments from wealthy governments to poorer ones.
That's why the mass protest of December 6 has been the best thing about COP25.
(6) "Decoding Article 6 of the Paris Agreement", Asian Development Bank, April 2018, p. 49. It is available as a free PDF download at https://www.adb.org/publications/decoding-article-6-paris-agreement.
(7) Ibid., p. 1. <>
* The Paris Agreement stems from the UN climate summit of 2015,
COP21. World carbon emissions have increased despite the Paris
Agreement, but even if the inadequate targets of the Paris Agreement
had been met, the world's march to climate disaster would have
continued. See About the Paris Climate Accord of December 2015, by Joseph Green, and Paris climate terror could endure for generations by Patrick Bond.
http://www.communistvoice.org/DSWV-170605.html.
* The coming of the environmental crisis,
Jan. 2007, both describes the failure of market environmentalism and
sets forward an alternate program for the fight against global warming.
http://www.communistvoice.org/39cKyoto.html#mozTocId42737
* Lessons from the failure of the Copenhagen climate conference (COP15),
January 2010, deals with this fateful summit. It was faced with dealing
with what would follow after the Kyoto Protocol; its failure to come to
agreement resulted in the UN giving up on the idea of mandatory carbon
emission targets, and moving to voluntary targets decided by each
country for itself. It also marked the bourgeoisie giving up on the
idea of completely stopping global warming, and instead haggling over
illusory plans of how to pay for adapting to it, as if money could make
up for destroying the planet. COP15 was also marked a highpoint of the
protest movement of those times, and the article has an overview of the
different trends in that movement.
http://www.communistvoice.org/44cCopenhagen.html.
* Links to a number of other articles on the need for a working-class environmental movement can be found at
http://www.communistvoice.org/00SavingThePlanet.html.
These valuable works don't just point out the theoretical flaws of carbon trading, but deal with the sad results of carbon trading in country after country.
* Carbon markets at COP25, Madrid: A threat to people, politics, and the planet is a denunciation of carbon markets by a number of indigenous and climate justice groups.
See https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/English-carbon-markets-briefing-OK-LOW.pdf.
* Larry Lohmann's Carbon Trading--A critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power,
Sept. 2006, is a book-length study (359 pages) of carbon trading,
pollution trading, and carbon offsets. Much of it is devoted to
examining the results of pollution trading in the US, and of the CDM in
Latin America, Asia, and Africa. It also contains an account of
how bourgeois environmentalism "united around a neoliberal or 'market'
approach to climate change", and of the pressures on the UN's
scientific body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
It can be downloaded from a link at
https://www.daghammarskjold.se/publication/carbon-trading-critical-conversation-climate-change-privatisation-power/.
* Carbon Trading, How it works and why it fails,
Nov. 2009, by Tamra Gilbertson and Oscar Reyes, 102 pages, examines the
European Union's Emission Trading Scheme and the UN's Clean Development
Mechanism. It includes case studies of CDM projects in Thailand, India,
Indonesia, and Brazil. It can be downloaded from a link at
https://www.daghammarskjold.se/publication/carbon-trading-works-fails/.
* The books Durban's Climate Gamble: Trading Carbon, Betting the Earth (2011), edited by South African activist Patrick Bond, and the Politics of Climate Justice: Paralysis Above, Movement Below
(2012), by Bond, show the horrible results of a number of market
measures, such as cap and trade, and the growing importance of the
militant movement from below in South Africa, a movement opposed by the
ANC government. Bond writes that the UN climate conferences have just
been "deckchair shifting on the climate Titanic".
* Carbon Pricing: A Critical Perspective for Community Resistance is a 60-page pamphlet by the Indigenous Environmental Network and the Climate Justice Alliance. Below is an excerpt from the "Main Takeaways" at the start of the pamphlet:
1. Carbon pricing, including carbon trading, carbon taxes and carbon offsets, are false solutions to climate change that do NOT keep fossil fuels in the ground.
2. Carbon taxes will always be low, will always be evaded, do not cut pollution to the degree needed, and are greenwash.
3. Carbon trading, carbon offsets and REDD+ [the UN's scheme for using carbon trading to supposedly "Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation"--JG] are fraudulent climate mitigation mechanisms that in fact help corporations and governments keep extracting and burning fossil fuels.
4. Token revenues distributed to environmental justice communities from carbon trading or carbon pricing can never compensate for the destruction wrought by the extraction and pollution that is the source of that revenue.
5. The injustices, racism and colonialism of carbon pricing schemes
are international in scope. Our resistance needs to be international as
well. (The full text can be found at
https://www.ienearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Carbon-Pricing-A-Critical-Perspective-for-Community-Resistance-Online-Version.pdf.)
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Posted December 15,
2019
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