Bolivia: Solidarity Activists Need to Support Process

Sunday, November 20, 2011 | Green Left Weekly

By Federico Fuentes

Bolivia’s first indigenous president celebrates winning a recall referendum in August 2008.

The recent march in Bolivia by some indigenous organisations against the government’s proposed highway through the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) has raised much debate among international solidarity activists.

Such debates have occurred since the election of Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005 on the back of mass uprisings.

Overwhelmingly, solidarity activists uncritically supported the anti-highway march. Many argued that only social movements — not governments — can guarantee the success of the process of change.

However, such a viewpoint is not only simplistic; it can leave solidarity activists on the wrong side.

Kevin Young’s October 1 piece on Znet, “Bolivia Dilemmas: Turmoil, Transformation, and Solidarity”, tries to grapple with this issue by saying that “our first priority [as solidarity activists] must be to stop our governments, corporations and banks from seeking to control Bolivia’s destiny”.

Yet, as was the case with most articles written by solidarity activists, Young downplays the role of United States imperialism and argues the government was disingenuous in linking the protesters to it.

Others went further, denying any connection between the protesters and US imperialism.

The Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Bolivian East (CIDOB), the main organisation behind the march, has no such qualms. It boasted on its website that it received training programs from the US government aid agency USAID.

On the site, CIDOB president Adolfo Chavez, thanks the “information and training acquired via different programs financed by external collaborators, in this case USAID”.

Ignoring or denying clear evidence of US funding to such organisations is problematic. Attacking the Bolivian government for exposing this, as some did, disarms solidarity activists in their fight against imperialist intervention.

But biggest failure of the solidarity movement has been its silence on US and corporate responsibility for the conflict.

The TIPNIS dispute was not some romanticised, Avatar-like battle between indigenous defenders of Mother Earth and a money-hungry government intent on destroying the environment.

Underpinning the conflict was the difficult question of how Bolivia can overcome centuries of colonialism and underdevelopment to provide its people with access to basic services while trying to respect the environment. The main culprits are not Bolivian; they are imperialist governments and their corporations.

We must demand they pay their ecological debt and transfer the necessary technology for sustainable development to countries such as Bolivia (demands that almost no solidarity activists raised). Until this occurs, activists in rich nations have no right to tell Bolivians what they can and cannot do to satisfy the basic needs of their people.

Otherwise, telling Bolivian people that they have no right to a highway or to extract gas to fund social programs (as some NGOs demanded), means telling Bolivians they have no right to develop their economy or fight poverty.

Imperialism aims to keep Third World nations subordinate to the interests of rich nations. This is one reason foreign NGOs and USAID are trying to undermine the Morales government’s leading international role in opposing the grossly anti-environmental policies, such as Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).

REDD uses poor nations for carbon offsets so corporations in rich countries can continue polluting. Support for REDD was one of the demands of the protest march.

Young says “our solidarity should be with grassroots revolutionaries, anti-imperialists and defenders of human rights, not with governments or parties”.

But, as the TIPNIS case shows, when governments are trying to grapple with lifting their country out of underdevelopment, the demands of social movements with competing sectoral interests may clash.

In fact, some of the most strident supporters of the highway were also the very same social movements that solidarity activists have supported in their struggles against neoliberal governments during the last decade.

In such scenarios, you can only choose between supporting some social movement demands by dismissing legitimate demands of others, as many did with the TIPNIS case.

Lasting change can only come about when social movements begin to take power into their own hands when social movements become governments.

It is this objective that Bolivia’s social movements set. They forged their own political instrument through struggle ? commonly known as the Movement Towards Socialism ? and won a government they see as their own.

Having gone from a position of “struggle from below” to taking government from the traditional elites as an instrument to achieve their goal of state power, these social movements have begun winning control over natural resources and enacted a new constitution.

Converting the constitution’s ideals into a new state power remains a task for the Bolivian revolution.

But its success depends on the ability of “grassroots revolutionaries, anti-imperialists and defenders of human rights” ? operating within and without the existing state ? to struggle in a united way.

Our solidarity must be based on the existing revolutionary struggle in Bolivia, not a romanticised one we would prefer.

A permanent state of protests may be attractive for solidarity activists, but ultimately can only translate into a permanent state of demoralisation unless social movements can go beyond opposing capitalist governments and create their own state power.

Refusing to support the struggles as they exist illustrates a lack of confidence in the Bolivian masses to determine their own destiny. It also displays an arrogance on the part of those who, having failed to hold back imperialist governments at home, believe they know better than the Bolivians how to develop their process of change.

Mistakes are made in any struggle. But such mistakes should not be used to try and pit one side against another. We should have confidence that these internal conflicts can be resolved by the social movements themselves.

[Federico Fuentes edits Bolivia Rising.]

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/49516

Manufacturing Consent on Carbon Trading

“No one raised their hand to object to a single word in the declaration text. In an email distributing the document, Dodd states that, “The Declaration was accepted unanimously by the 1500 NGOs and other stakeholders present.”

By Chris Lang, 26th October 2011

 

In September 2011, the 64th Annual UN DPI/NGO Conference took place in Bonn, Germany. About 1,500 people from 70 countries turned up. On the third day of the meeting, a remarkable thing happened. Not a single participant at the conference put up their hand to disagree with a declaration which promotes REDD as a carbon trading mechanism.

DPI, by the way, stands for Department of Public Information. Every year since 1946, UN DPI has held an NGO conference. Speakers at this year’s conference included Vandana Shiva of Navdanya International, Daniel Mittler of Greenpeace International, Achim Steiner of UNEP, Victoria Tauli Corpuz of Tebtebba and many others. Some of these speakers may be in favour of carbon trading, others are not.

The presentations are available here. In her speech, Vandana Shiva talked about two important principles that “have been used by every local community across the world: the precautionary principle and the polluter pays principle.” She talked of the derailing of the World Trade Organisation in 1999 and the slogan “Our world is not for sale”. Which sounds a lot like the slogans that opponents of carbon trading use.

She talked about the economic crisis and the US$16 trillion bailout. She asked, “Can you imagine what US$16 trillion would have done for the earth and the poor people of this planet, if spent in an appropriate way?”

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz spoke on the topic of “sustainable consumption”. She explained that,

“Many indigenous peoples can claim they are the practitioners of sustainable consumption and production and I can say that from my own perspective and experience. I am an Igorot, indigenous peoples from the Philippines. In my community, in my culture, we have very strict customary laws that define how we relate with everybody and of course with the environment.”

She mentioned several of these laws, including what she called the golden rule: “Don’t do to others what you don’t like others to do to you.” This presumably prohibits carbon trading. Just as Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines do not want their air to be polluted, communities living near polluting power plants in California or Glasgow do not want the companies running these plants to be allowed to continue polluting by buying carbon credits.

The UN DPI/NGO Conference declaration (pdf file 147.4 KB) is an outline of “sustainable development goals discussed and identified as key objectives” at the conference, according to the NGO blog of the conference. Delegates got a copy of the draft in their conference bags when they arrived at the meeting.

On the third day of the conference, Felix Dodds of the Stakeholder Forum and chair of this year’s conference asked the meeting to approve the declaration. It took him 49 seconds:

“We’re, I think, very pleased with the quality of the document we have prepared for you over the last two days and I’m going to ask the meeting to show by a show of hands those people who would like to make their support for this being a chair’s text that I should hand on to the German government and the UN. For those people show, by show of hands in favour of me handing this over as your chair to the government. Thank you very much. Is there anyone against? Is there anyone asleep? Thank you, the chair is very happy.”

No one raised their hand to object to a single word in the declaration text. In an email distributing the document, Dodd states that, “The Declaration was accepted unanimously by the 1500 NGOs and other stakeholders present.” The only possible explanation is that when Dodd asked the meeting to support the document, many of those present had not read the text. That’s perfectly understandable, considering that they were busy attending a conference, which in addition to the speakers, featured a series of side events, workshops and exhibits. No doubt that didn’t leave much time to read a long draft declaration written in a mind-numbing UN style.

The German government will present the conference declaration in the UN General Assembly in November 2011. “You have a great opportunity with the declaration,” Dodds said in his presentation. “You have an opportunity through that declaration to suggest to the Rio+20 process what you think are the critical issues that summit should address.”

The declaration makes several references to REDD. The first is part of the “institutional framework for sustainable development”, the second two are part of the “sustainable development goals” or SDGs (the numbers refer to the line numbers in the declaration):

310 We call upon governments to ensure that Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) is implemented with regard to development decisions, and other decisions such as REDD+, that impact indigenous peoples, indigenous groups and tribal and local communities.

479 SDG – CLIMATE SUSTAINABILITY: By 2050, governments should have reached clear pathways towards climate sustainability that regulates the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees C. Emissions of greenhouse gases should be reduced to 25% of 1990 levels by 2020, 40% by 2030, 60% by 2040 and 80% by 2050. Carbon taxes and tariffs should be in place to provide incentives for low-carbon development and manufacturing, finance GHG emissions reduction projects, REDD+ and other offset mechanisms, and green infrastructure solutions to help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change.

534 SDG – HEALTHY FORESTS: By 2020, all remaining frontier forests are protected from conversion and degradation, consistent with the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity adopted at COP10, with a well-resourced and equably [sic] governed REDD+ mechanism in place, which respects the rights and knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities and other environmental and governance safeguards, to reward developing countries for protection and sustainable management of their forests, not only for carbon capture and storage but for their wider ecological services. A policy of no net loss of forestland, globally and nationally, is also achieved by 2020.

At that time, all new forest areas cleared will be offset by ecologically sound restoration of forests in nearby areas. Restoration of over 150 million hectares of cleared or degraded forest landscapes is achieved by 2020, with the creation of millions of new jobs and enhanced livelihoods, improved security and adaptation to climate change.

Reduce deforestation emissions by key corporations and their supply chains committing to avoid the purchase of products that cause deforestation, such as soy or cattle from deforested lands in the Brazilian Amazon, palm oil from deforested agricultural land in Indonesia, or illegal wood and wood products throughout the world.

Additionally, for stakeholders everywhere to undertake and/or participate in large-scale, environmentally and socially responsible reforestation efforts.
[ . . . ] At Rio+20, we call on governments to pledge concrete and systematic support and promotion of multi-stakeholder managed forest certification systems, in all parts of the world, with particular emphasis on tropical rainforests.

If you’re still awake after reading that, congratulations. The first statement is a reasonably straightforward demand for free, prior and informed consent. Except that without a reference to the UN Declaration on Indigenous Peoples, this runs the risk of FPIC becoming a rushed process carried out by governments and corporations in order to tick the FPIC box.

The second statement on REDD describes it as an offset mechanism, a carbon trading mechanism. While this accurately reflects the way REDD is developing, it is surprising (to say the least) that none of the NGOs present objected to this acceptance of a trade in forest carbon.

(The sentence at the start of this statement is ridiculous. Requesting that “governments should have reached clear pathways towards climate sustainability”, by 2050 makes no sense whatsoever. If, by 2050, we have not found a way of leaving fossil fuels in the ground, there is a very high probability that the climate will have dramatically changed. This talk by Kevin Anderson of the Tyndale Centre clearly explains why: Climate Change: going beyond dangerous. “Things are getting worse, and they are getting worse at an incredibly fast rate,” Anderson says early on in his presentation. “We are accelerating towards a cliff that we know is there.”)

The third statement is perhaps even more problematic. Protecting frontier forests is mixed with REDD, which the declaration has already stated will be a carbon trading mechanism. The carbon stored in these forests is apparently to be offset against continued pollution elsewhere.

But the declaration does not envisage that deforestation will be stopped by 2020. Only that “no net loss of forestland” will take place. Forest can be cleared as long as other areas are planted with trees. Of course, the declaration insists that this has to be “ecologically sound restoration of forests”. But in its definition of “forests”, the UN does not differentiate between industrial tree plantations and native forests. There is no mention of the UN’s disastrous definition in the conference declaration.

The statement ends with the call for governments to support forest certification. The “gold standard” of forest certification is the Forest Stewardship Council. Yet FSC has certified vast areas of monoculture tree plantations. FSC also certifies industrial logging in primary forests.

But none of the 1,500 people in the meeting objected to any of this – or any of the other statements in the more than 9,000-word declaration. The only possible explanation is that they had not read it. Funnily enough, Stakeholder Forum, the organisation that Felix Dodds works for, claims to be “working to advance sustainable development and promote democracy at a global level”. Dodds, as chair of the meeting, should quietly tear up the document and recycle the paper, as his contribution to sustainable development.

http://www.redd-monitor.org/2011/10/26/manufacturing-consent-on-carbon-trading/

Al Gore’sClimate Reality P roject: 24 hours of climate reality, but market fantasy

By Joseph Green
Wed, 14 Sep 2011

 

Today was the start of Al Gore's 24 hours of internet presentations,
which will last till Sept 15, about the reality of climate warming.
These presentations are putting forward many facts about what's
happening to the climate. They dramatize the effect these changes are
having on countries and people around the world.

    But when it comes to solutions, Al Gore is as stuck in the atmosphere
of denial as the market-fanatic John Boehner and the other
head-in-the-sand politicians referred to in the 24 hours of
presentations. Gore still promotes the market-based measures that have
helped lead to the present threat of global climate catastrophe. He
still says that capitalist corporations will do the right thing for the
environment out of the motivation to make higher profits. Meanwhile
Gore and the other speakers are silent on the movement for environmental
justice and say nothing about the many activists who are fighting
militantly to protect the environment against those business interests
that Al Gore praises. And Gore is silent on the urgent need for
extensive environmental and economic planning and regulation.

     The article below, which will appear in the coming issue of
"Communist Voice", discusses Gore's stands in the weeks leading up to
the 24 hours of reality. It brings out those truths about global
warming, and about what needs to be done, which Gore closes his eyes to.
It is not Adam Smith and the drive for higher profits that will save the
environment, but the development of a working-class environmentalism
that breaks with pro-business environmentalism and instead takes part in
the class struggle.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

        Gore created a flurry of interest when he chided President Obama in
"Rolling Stone" (June 2, 2011). This, it turns out, was a warmup for his
new Climate Reality Project, which was announced on July 12. Gore speaks
with passion about those who deny the ongoing environmental crisis, and
he titled his article "Climate of denial: Can science and truth
withstand the merchants of poison?". He says that climate change is not
a matter of the future: no, it is here today. He even gently reproaches
Obama for inaction.

    But when it comes to what to do, Gore still clings to market methods,
rather than regulation and planning. He makes a point of praising the
supposed environmental concern of the vicious wage-cutting profiteer
Walmart, but says nothing about the important role of militant activists
for environmental justice. He demands action, but the action he demands
is supporting big business, "reward(ing) those companies that are
providing leadership", and providing more support to the very reprobate,
Obama, who is sitting on his hands and letting the environment deteriorate.

    Worse yet, Gore chides Obama only for inaction, not for advocating
harmful policies like "cap and trade", which is a proven failure at
cutting carbon emissions.. Gore hides the many ways the Obama
administration has actively worked with big business in ravaging the
environment, whether it is backing the fraud of "clean coal",
encouraging the land-destroying practice of hydraulic "fracking" for
natural gas, pooh-poohing the significance of the Fukushima nuclear
disaster while letting American reactors evade safety standards, or
helping BP minimize its liability for the Gulf oil spill.

    Al Gore's Climate Reality Project is calling for 24 hours of reality on
September 14-15. Its website declares: "What can change in a day?
Everything. On September 14, the world will focus its attention on the
truth about the climate crisis. For 24 hours, we will all live in
reality." This change is to be accomplished by "a new multimedia
presentation created by Al Gore and delivered once per hour for 24
hours, in every time zone around the globe."
(http://climaterealityproject.org/the-event/) But how much reality can
he put forward when he is still in a state of denial over the failed
market measures which he advocates?

The environmental crisis is here
---------------------------------------

    As usual, Gore is at his best in pointing out the dangers of climate
change. He points to the disasters of the past 12 months: last year is
tied with 2005 as the hottest year since scientific heat measurement was
begun; huge floods displaced 20 million people in Pakistan, and
submerged an area of Australia larger than Germany and France combined;
a level of flood that is only supposed to come once every thousand years
struck Gore's home town of Nashville, Tennessee; heat and drought was so
hot in Russia that fires spread; ice continues to melt at an accelerated
pace, threatening faster sea-level raises than previously predicted; etc.

    Gore also denounces the way that a "climate of denial" has been created
in the mass media to drown out the evidence of climate change and hide
the scientific consensus on global warming being a reality. He admits
that "the concerns of the wealthiest individuals and corporations
routinely trump the concerns of average Americans and small business."

    So his article has some useful material. It may be of use in waking up
some people to the ongoing climate crisis. That's what the 24 hours of
reality in September are supposed to do, and his presentation is likely
to point to the real dangers that face us. But Gore's agitation that
people should wake up and smell the coffee is accompanied by sweet
lullabies to put people back to sleep. For Gore may travel around the
world far from his native Tennessee, but he has never left the state of
denial, and he works hand in hand with the very business elite which
include the "merchants of poison". So, when it comes to solutions,
Gore's article is an example of the type of blindness that is widespread
in the establishment environmentalist organizations. And we can expect
that his presentation on September 14 will be in the same vein,

Hand-in-hand with the merchants of poison
-----------------------------------------------------

    There is more than one type of climate denial. Gore admits the
environmental crisis, but clings to the failed policies that have helped
bring it on. It was Clinton and Gore, as president and vice-president,
who insisted that the Kyoto Protocol be based on market measures.
Instead of using the regulatory methods that had been used to fight a
number of other environmental problems, Clinton and Gore championed
market-fundamentalism, or neo-liberalism. They sought to develop
artificial markets in pollution, and then hoped that Adam Smith's
"invisible hand" would result in pollution being phased out. Today Gore
may denounce the "merchants of poison", but Clinton and Gore insisted on
the "cap and trade" schemes which created the poison markets in which
these merchants operate. The idea was that the more societal regulation
was replaced by the self-serving decisions of the "merchants of poison"
the better: poison markets would supposedly result in environmental
improvement, as a result of individual companies making decisions based
on what was most profitable, and regulations on them would continue to
be loosened or dropped.

    This was the so-called "cap and trade" scheme. It hasn't worked. But
Gore simply closes his eyes to this. Instead, he continues to advocate
policies that would worsen the situation.

    Gore's idea is that we all should walk hand-in-hand with big business,
which he imagines would act responsibly and help reduce carbon
emissions. He goes out of his way to praise business whenever he can.
But what's happened? Most capitalists are pooh-poohing the problem, and
Gore just hasn't noticed it. Oh yes, he says, *some* companies do engage
in "green-washing". But for him, the fault lies just in ideologues and
some of the richest companies (except for Walmart, of course, which he
adores). All it takes, in his view, is for "individuals" to "demand
change in the marketplace", and the business community will respond.

    Gore's most radical step in his books and articles is to advocate that
there should be *both* a "cap and trade" system *and* a carbon tax. (See
his latest book, "Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis", Ch
15, "The True Cost of Carbon".) The carbon tax is another market measure
designed to replace environmental regulation. It is supposed to create
financial incentives for businesses to reduce carbon emissions, just as
cap and trade was supposed to have done. Actually, the weight of the
carbon tax would fall on the people, while most of the business world,
especially big business, would pass the tax on to consumers. Workers,
independent truckers, small fishermen and others couldn't pass the tax
on, but the big energy companies certainly could. So it would have the
harshest effects on those with the least power to determine whether
goods are produced in an environmentally-proper way, and the least
effect on the big businesses with the most power. For example, workers
might find that driving to work had become fabulously expensive, but the
carbon tax would do nothing to provide them with any alternative to
driving. Moreover, this tax would turn the slogan "make the polluters
pay" into a denunciation of the mass of consumers, rather than of the
corporate polluters. For this and other reasons, it's likely to be the
biggest fiasco ever -- making environmentalism hated among substantial
sections of the masses, while failing to accomplish environmental goals.
(See www.communistvoice.org/42cCarbonTax.html for a more thorough
discussion of the carbon tax.)

    True, in this article Gore doesn't say anything directly about the
carbon "tax"; instead he talks about setting a price on carbon. But it's
just different words to describe the same thing.

Gore at his worst
---------------------

    So as usual, Gore is at his worst when it comes to solutions. His basic
idea is to keep doing the things that haven't worked -- cap and trade;
working hand-in-hand with the corporations and giving them subsidies;
keeping government small and privatized; and hiding the extent of
corporate crimes.

    Gore is utterly committed to  introducing market principles into
everything. Indeed, Gore helped "reinvent government" under the Clinton
administration: this meant privatizing government functions, removing
regulations, providing incentives and subsides for business, and letting
the affected industries call the shots in the regulatory agencies. This
plan, carried out by both Democrats and Republicans, has led to
disaster. To be more precise, it has been disaster for the environment
and the working class, but profitable to many businesspeople. It has
meant marking time as far as global warming; ravaging the public schools
through Bush's No Child Left Behind and Obama's Race to the Top; relying
on private insurance in Obama's health plan, and so on. But energy
companies, educational companies, insurance companies, and upper-level
administrative personnel have made out like bandits.

    Gore sums up his approach near the end of his article. It comes down to
this: "above all, don't give up on the political system." By this, he
means, don't give up on the Democrats and the Obama administration. So
the alpha and omega of his proposals are to accept the pro-market
politicians and search for big businesses to work with. If he chides
Obama for inaction, he takes it back by suggesting that if we all get
behind him and push, Obama will do the right thing.

From the Alliance for Climate Protection
 to the Climate Reality Project
---------------------------------------------------

    So in his article Gore recommended that people join an organization,
namely, the Alliance for Climate Protection (www.climateprotect.org),
which he founded in 2006 and  chairs, and whose name is now being
changed to the Climate Reality Project. The ACP praises the European
Union's version of cap and trade, the so-called Emission Trading Scheme,
which is the heart of the Kyoto Protocol, which has failed badly. But
why should Gore care that's he's advocating a policy that has failed?
Indeed, it's notable that the ACP's website even praises some things,
like the Copenhagen Climate Summit, that Gore himself calls a failure in
his article in "Rolling Stone". The extent of these failures can be seen
in that, according to both the International Energy Agency and the top
UN climate official, last year, 2010, saw, not a decrease, but *a record
increase* in greenhouse gas emissions. (See
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/31/emissions-rise-un-climate-
chief, and also http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/29/carbon-emissions-
nuclearpower.)

    Indeed, the Alliance for Climate Protection hasn't even made the mild
criticisms of unnamed corporations and special interests that Gore makes
in his article. Why, right and left, government and industry, everyone
should just go hand-in-hand. The ACP promotes such fantasy as having the
"WE Campaign" unite pro-business liberals and hard-right conservatives,
minorities and racists, together in defense of the environment. The ACP
website says: "Some of the most popular WE Campaign advertisements
include the  Unlikely Alliances' campaign, which paired together such
seemingly polar opposites as Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich and Revs.
Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton." (http://www.climateprotect.org/our-work/)

    Gore has now decided to rechristen the ACP as the Climate Reality
Project. But the website for the CRP has even less information than that
of the Alliance for Climate Protection. Gore does denounce "fossil fuel
interests", and that's about it.

    In his article, Gore writes that "To make our elected leaders take
action to solve the climate crisis, we must forcefully communicate the
following message:  I care a lot about global warming; I am paying very
careful attention to the way you vote and what you say about it; if you
are on the wrong side, I am not only going to vote against you, I will
work hard to defeat you -- regardless of party. If you are on the right
side, I will work hard to elect you." But the ACP and the CRP haven't
uttered a word about Obama's record, nor that of any other politician.
They fawn on the rich and powerful, and search out ways to praise them.
How this is going to create pressure to do anything in favor of the
environment, is Gore's little secret.

Bring the class struggle
into the environmental movement
-----------------------------------------

    Gore to the contrary, the establishment leaders, the corrupt
politicians, and the profiteering corporations, are not "our leaders".
Workers should abandon Gore's pro-business politics as usual, and so
should anyone with a real concern for the environment. Of course,
workers should abandon, not politics, but pro-capitalist politics. They
should seek to rebuild a better politics, based on struggle against the
big corporations, a politics of class struggle. They should get
organized   at the workplace, in the community, and in solidarity with
workers around the world   to fight the capitalist rulers of this world.
They should fight against the current world austerity drive of the
bourgeoisie, and they should fight about the environment too. With
regard to the environmental crisis, they should push for the things Gore
is silent about:

    * comprehensive environmental regulation, which should enforce
compulsory standards on big energy and, for that matter, big business as
a whole;

    * that environmental planning should include concern for the mass
livelihood: it's a conservative trickle-down fraud to believe that
"green jobs" will automatically provide prosperity; instead there must
be programs directly  guaranteeing people's basic needs;

    * the need to bring the class struggle into the environmental movement,
rather than searching for big corporations to praise;

    * comprehensive economic planning and regulation, which is needed both
for the sake of the environment and to be able to surmount the economic
crisis;

    * the need for planning be done in a new way; that the privatization of
government functions should be reversed; that the industries being
regulated should be pushed out of the government bodies regulating them;
that regulations should be made transparent; and that workers should be
brought, as far as possible, into the process of planning, and of
enforcing the planning;

    * the need to look towards the working class, not the business world,
as the bastion of environmental concern.

    Gore is silent about these things, because he's still a
market-fundamentalist politician, albeit one that claims to be against
market-fundamentalism. His recommendations show the narrow limits in
which establishment environmentalism is caught, and the narrow limits of
the left-right, community-big business cooperation on the environmental
front which is so fashionably advocated in mainstream environmentalist
circles today. Gore may preach against climate denial. And yes indeed,
as far as climate change, the Republicans would have us go to our doom
with our eyes shut, but Gore would have us go to our doom with our eyes
half-open. To survive, one should instead open one's eyes all the way,
and see not just the looming disasters, but the policies needed to avoid
them.  

--Joseph Green
   jgr...@communistvoice.org

 

Greenpeace forest team works hard toward REDD – A False Solution Opposed by Indigenous Around the World

Forest Code becomes real at UNFCCC climate discussions

Blogpost by John Bowler – June 16, 2011 at 11:14

Bonn jour :-) and "hi" from the UNFCCC climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany where the Greenpeace forest team is working hard to secure a good REDD deal. The REDD concept is fairly simple: rich, developed countries provide funding to help developing countries protect their forests and invest in clean, green development). But we are not just listening, lobbying and negotiating. We are also campaigning. Last week we held a side event focused on the consultancy company McKinsey. I’m not going to get into that here so if you want to know more about that go to David’s blog. What I want to let you know about is a spoof presidential decree from Brazil’s President Dilma that we distributed yesterday morning.

The decree was about Brazil’s Forest Code and although not under discussion here we believe it to be of such importance that we could not let the negotiations end without bringing the problem to the attention of the world’s governments represented here.

Brazil is seen as a leader in reducing rainforest destruction so it is all the more important and urgent to let the international community know what is going on with the Forest Code. The new proposed version of the Forest Code is a dismal affair. It will weaken what in fact is a good law: it will grant amnesty to those who have deforested; reduce the areas to be protected; and lessen the responsibility of the government.

The new Forest Code, if it ever becomes law, will drastically reduce forest protection and kill the government’s goal to achieve an 80% reduction in Amazonian deforestation.

So yesterday morning a small team gathered inside the venue lobby and distributed the spoof decree to delegates as they entered for their early morning meetings. The response was good. Many of those reading it could be seen smiling once they realised that it was not true but a smart Greenpeace communication on what is required to protect Brazil’s rainforests. Simple, and let’s hope effective in initiating international support for President Dilma to deliver on her pre-election promises.

(John Bowler is Greenpeace Forest campaigner, from the UNFCCC Intersessionals in Bonn)

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/forest-code-becomes-real-at-unfccc-climate-di/blog/35310

Belo Monte | ‘Green’ Capitalism / Climate Genocide will not be Stopped with Petitions / Letters …

The chief Raoni cries when he learns that Brazilian president Dilma released the beginning of construction of the hydroelectric plant of Belo Monte, even after tens of thousands of letters and emails addressed to her and which were ignored as the more than 600 000 signatures. That is, the death sentence of the peoples of Great Bend of the Xingu river is enacted. Belo Monte will inundate at least 400,000 hectares of forest, an area bigger than the Panama Canal, thus expelling 40,000 indigenous and local populations and destroying habitat valuable for many species – all to produce electricity at a high social, economic and environmental cost, which could easily be generated with greater investments in energy efficiency.

REDD | A False Solution | Indigenous Leaders of the Alto Xingu Region

REDD | A False Solution | Documentary Filmmaker Rebecca Sommer with Indigenous leaders of the Alto Xingu Region

Friend and fellow activist / documentary film maker Rebecca Sommer filmed several statements from the Indigenous leaders of the Alto Xingu region. See her videos and photographs below:

Indigenous Peoples Alto Xingu: River poisoned by soy plantations despite complaints

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcOwNvXhI0M

Alto Xingu Indigenous leader Aritana wants to preserve watersheds springs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IMDCPHRW2M

Indigenous Leader Alto Xingu complaints

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa3uRopeLr8

Alto Xingu – and how an NGO is promoting REDD

http://www.youtube.com/user/EARTHPEOPLES#p/u/12/LbRWCZKsfVA

Leader Aritana, Alto Xingu, about BELO MONTE

http://www.youtube.com/user/SommerFilms#p/u/6/b144DnaX4us

The following article on REDD from the ‘Hoodwinked from the Hothouse. False Solutions to Climate Change’. The commentary below has been written by the Indigenous Environmental Network (Tom Goldtooth) (with Rising Tide North America).

Seeing REDD

Within the United Nations’ climate negotiations, a controversial agenda item for climate mitigation called “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation” (REDD) has emerged. REDD is a mechanism for wealthy countries and polluting industries to pay cash-poor countries in the Global South to conserve their forests instead of cutting them down or allowing them to be logged illegally. The forests targeted by REDD include areas heavily populated by Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities whose rights, interests, and livelihoods are at stake.

The World Bank—whose long history of human rights and environmental missteps is the subject of many other publications—runs a similar project known as the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF). As the World Bank puts it, this program “provides value,” by monetizing standing forests. Proponents believe it will create an economic incentive to conserve these forests, discouraging clear cutting for timber or to create plantations, including for agrofuels and genetically modified trees.

REDD is still evolving; its final form is uncertain and being negotiated within the UN climate talks. It is likely that carbon credits from REDD will be sold on the market as carbon offsets so that developed industrialized countries, as well as polluting industries, will be able to purchase REDD credits instead of fulfilling emissions reduction requirements as part of national or international climate agreements.

Trees would thus become part of a property rights system, despite very few countries having legislation that recognizes the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local forest-dependent communities to forested areas. These rights have long been a major source of conflict. Safeguards currently proposed for REDD at the UN and for the World Bank’s FCPF do not guarantee REDD projects would avoid human rights abuses. National governments and carbon trading companies stand to make billions of dollars on the sale of forest carbon, while local communities—at best—would receive small cash payments ($25/month/family would be common). At worst, Indigenous and local communities would be given nothing and could be forced off their land, or end up by forced to pay rent on it. This would leave communities without traditional livelihoods, without jobs, and without real access to their ancestral land.

Companies want rights to the carbon in forests to use as greenwash licenses. For big polluters, it will be cheaper to buy permits to pollute through a REDD carbon offset mechanism than to reduce emissions. This will allow them to continue burning and mining fossil fuels from the Alberta tar sands in Canada to the Ecuadorian Amazon, and from the Niger Delta to the Appalachian mountaintops in the US.

With REDD negating existing efforts to mitigate climate change and exacerbating conflicts over the lands of Indigenous and forest peoples, it is clearly not a solution for climate change.

www.redd-monitor.org • www.ienearth.org • www.wrm.org.uy • www.carbontradewatch.org

The Declaration created at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth clearly condemned REDD, stating that it violates “the sovereignty of our Peoples.”

Will the UN Help Us?

“In December 2009, the UNFCCC in Copenhagen saw people of the world coming together to question the false solutions being negotiated by world governments.

After participating in UN climate negotiations for many years, I have never witnessed the intensity of deception going on behind closed doors by industrialized countries of the North, elites of some Southern countries and of large non-governmental organizations. Even though using forests from developing countries for carbon offsets was rejected in UN climate meetings over ten years back, there has been a well-planned effort by Northern countries in the EU and the US to form an agreement for developing a global forest offset program called REDD and REDD+. The carbon market solutions are not about mitigating climate, but are greenwashing policies that allow fossil fuel development to expand.

As an alternative to the Copenhagen Accords, we are supporting the Cochabamba People’s Accord and the proposed Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth developed by members of social movements and Indigenous

Peoples that came together in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in April 2010.”

– Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environment Network

Greenoxx NGO sells first tons of REDD Project

Greenoxx NGO sells first tons of REDD Project

Contributed by Clair Marrey

Added: 10 May 2010

Expires: 30 November 2010

The Madre de Dios Amazon REDD Project has sold its first 40,000 tons of CO2 in May 2010. Approved according to the CCB Standards & due to it’s high social & environmental sustainability the project obtained Gold Level status. The Madre de Dios Amazon REDD Project has been registered in the Markit Environmental Registry, as another step towards its future registration in the VCS. The project sold its first 40.000 tons of CO2 in May 2010, at a USD 7 price per carbon certificate. The Madre de Dios Amazon REDD Project has been approved according to the CCB Standards (Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standards). Due to its high social and environmental sustainability the project obtained Gold Level, being one of first REDD projects to achieve said status. The project has been developed by Greenoxx NGO www.greenoxx.com/en/ngo.asp, who also financed an important part of the project and is exclusively commercializing. Greenoxx NGO is a non-governmental organization dedicated to combat Climate Change, an integrant of the Ammado Foundation, based in Dublin, Ireland, and integrated by more than 1800 nonprofits worldwide and a participant in the network of non-governmental organizations of the sustainable community, WiserEarth. Greenoxx NGO is a Member of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), being able to act as Offset Aggregator. As Offset Aggregator, Greenoxx NGO is responsible for the elaboration and registration of projects eligible for the CCX, as well as of submitting them for approval before the CCX Forestry Committee. It is also responsible for the presentation of annual reports and submission of the corresponding information to CCX officially approved verifiers. As Official Trader or Offset Aggregator, Greenoxx NGO is officially authorized to execute sales on the CCX Trading Platform on behalf of project owners. At the same time, Greenoxx NGO, integrates the CCX Forestry Committee, whose main responsibilities are the approval of commercial forestry and offset projects, the technical revision of the quantification methodologies and the making of appropriate rule changes. The Forestry Committee, integrated by Greenoxx NGO, does pioneering work in establishing new standards and protocols. The proposed project activity consists on sustainable forest management in the forestry certified timber concessions “Maderera Río Acre S.A.C. and Maderera Río Yaverija S.A.C.” in Madre de Dios, Peru. The project is located in the hydrographic basin of the Acre River, Iñapari district, Tahuamanu province in the Madre de Dios department in the Peruvian Amazon. An environmental study of the Vilcabamba-Amboró Conservation Corridor was recently carried out by the Peruvian NGO AIDER1. Within the objectives of the report was the identification of potential avoided deforestation projects to be implemented in the area. The studied area is located within 50 km to each side of the new inter-oceanic road that will join Brazil with the Peruvian ports, in the region that belongs to the Vilcabamba-Amboró Conservation Corridor, one of the world biodiversity hotspots. The conclusion of this analysis is that obtaining revenue for the environmental services that the rainforest offers is the only way to preserve these areas. This approach has great potential to generate sources of additional income for local population with low income, contributing therefore to improve their way of life. Read the Project Design Document : http://www.hedon.info/docs/Greenoxx_madrededios-1.pdf

WWF hopes to find $60 billion growing on trees

WWF hopes to find $60 billion growing on trees

The carbon credits scheme would make WWF and its partners much richer, but with no lowering of overall CO2 emissions, writes Christopher Booker .

By Christopher Booker
Published: 4:53PM GMT 20 Mar 2010

Tumucumaque in northern Brazil has been designated a ‘carbon sink’

If the world’s largest, richest environmental campaigning group, the WWF – formerly the World Wildlife Fund – announced that it was playing a leading role in a scheme to preserve an area of the Amazon rainforest twice the size of Switzerland, many people might applaud, thinking this was just the kind of cause the WWF was set up to promote. Amazonia has long been near the top of the list of the world’s environmental concerns, not just because it includes easily the largest and most bio-diverse area of rainforest on the planet, but because its billions of trees contain the world’s largest land-based store of CO2 – so any serious threat to the forest can be portrayed as a major contributor to global warming.

If it then emerged, however, that a hidden agenda of the scheme to preserve this chunk of the forest was to allow the WWF and its partners to share the selling of carbon credits worth $60 billion, to enable firms in the industrial world to carry on emitting CO2 just as before, more than a few eyebrows might be raised. The idea is that credits representing the CO2 locked into this particular area of jungle – so remote that it is not under any threat – should be sold on the international market, allowing thousands of companies in the developed world to buy their way out of having to restrict their carbon emissions. The net effect would simply be to make the WWF and its partners much richer while making no contribution to lowering overall CO2 emissions.

Related Articles

· G20 summit: Green movement labels G20 a missed opportunity to tackle global warming

WWF, which already earns £400 million yearly, much of it contributed by governments and taxpayers, has long been at the centre of efforts to talk up the threat to the Amazon rainforest – as shown recently by the furore over a much-publicised passage in the 2007 report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC’s claim that 40 per cent of the forest is threatened by global warming, it turned out, was not based on any scientific evidence, but simply on WWF propaganda, which had wholly distorted the findings of an earlier study on the threat posed to the forest, not by climate change but by logging.

This curious saga goes back to 1997, when the UN’s Kyoto treaty set up what is known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). This allowed businesses in the developing world that could claim to have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions to make billions of pounds by selling their resulting carbon credits to those firms in the developed world which, under the treaty, would be obliged to cut their emissions. In 2001 the parties to Kyoto agreed in principle that trees in the southern hemisphere could be counted as “carbon sinks” for the benefit of CO2 emitting firms in the northern hemisphere. In 2002, after lengthy negotiations with WWF and other NGOs, the Brazilian government set up its Amazon Region Protected Areas (Arpa) project, supported by nearly $80 million of funding. Of this, $18 million was given to the WWF by the US’s Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, $18 million to its Brazilian NGO partner by the Brazilian government, plus $30 million from the World Bank.

The aim was that the NGOs, led by the WWF, should administer chunks of the Brazilian rainforest to ensure either that they were left alone or managed “sustainably”. Added to them, as the largest area of all, was 31,000 square miles on Brazil’s all but inaccessible northern frontier; half designated as the Tumucumaque National Park, the world’s largest nature reserve, the other half to be left largely untouched but allowing for sustainable development. This is remote from any part of the Amazonian forest likely to be damaged by loggers, mining or agriculture.

So far all this might have seemed admirably idealistic. Despite the international agreement that forests could be counted as carbon sinks, there was as yet no system in place whereby the CO2 thus “saved” could be turned into a saleable commodity. In 2007, however, the WWF and its allies in the World Bank launched the Global Forest Alliance, with start-up funding of $250 million from the Bank, to work for what they called “avoided deforestation”. A conference in Bali, under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which administers the CDM, agreed to a scheme called REDD (reducing emissions for deforestation in developing countries). Hailed as “the big new idea to save the planet from runaway climate change”, this set up a global fund to save vast areas of rainforest from the deforestation which accounts for nearly a fifth of all man-made CO2 emissions.

But still there was no mechanism for turning all this “saved” CO2 into a money-making commodity. The WWF now, however, found a key ally in the Woods Hole Research Center, based in Massachusetts. Not to be confused with the nearby Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, a bona fide scientific body, this is in fact a global warming advocacy group, headed by a board which includes fund managers responsible for billions of dollars of private investments.

In 2008, funded by $7 million from the Moore Foundation and working in partnership with the WWF on the Tumucumaque project, Woods Hole came up with the formula required: a way of valuing all that carbon stored in Brazil’s protected rainforests, so that it could be traded under the CDM. The CO2 to be “saved” by the Arpa programme, it calculated, amounted to 5.1 billion tons. Based on the UNFCCC’s valuation of CO2 at $12.50 per ton, this valued the trees in Brazil’s protected areas at over $60 billion. Endorsed by the World Bank, this projection was presented to the UNFCCC.

But two more obstacles had still to be overcome. The first was that the scheme needed to be adopted as part of REDD by the UNFCCC’s 2009 Copenhagen conference, which was supposed to agree a new global treaty to follow Kyoto. This would allow all that “saved” Brazilian CO2 to be turned into hard cash under the CDM scheme.

The other was that the US should adopt a “cap and trade” scheme, imposing severe curbs on the CO2 emitted by US industry. This would boost the international carbon market, sending the price soaring as US firms flocked to buy the credits that would allow them to continue emitting the CO2 they needed to survive.

As we know, the story hasn’t turned out as planned. Amid the shambles at Copenhagen in December, all that could be saved of the REDD proposals was an agreement in principle, with the hope of reaching detailed agreement in Mexico later this year. Also lost in the scramble to save something from the wreckage was the small print that guaranteed the rights of indigenous peoples in rainforests, whose way of life – to the concern of groups such as Survival International and the Forest Peoples Programme – has already been severely damaged by REDD-inspired schemes elsewhere, such as in Kenya and Papua New Guinea.

Just as alarming to the WWF and its allies, who were hoping to make billions from Brazilian forests, has been the failure of the US Senate to approve the cap and trade bill championed by President Obama. Since the EU has excluded the rainforests from its own cap and trade scheme, bringing the US into the net is vital for the WWF’s hopes of finding “money growing on trees”. The price of carbon on the Chicago Climate Exchange has just plummeted to its lowest-ever level, 10 cents a ton.

The WWF’s dream has been thwarted – but the revelation that it could even be party to such a scheme may have considerable influence on the way this richest of all environmental campaigning groups is viewed by the world at large.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7488629/WWF-hopes-to-find-60-billion-growing-on-trees.html

Beyond “Green Capitalism” | Victor Wallis

A disdain for the natural environment has characterized capitalism from the beginning. As Marx noted, capital abuses the soil as much as it exploits the worker.1 The makings of ecological breakdown are thus inherent in capitalism. No serious observer now denies the severity of the environmental crisis, but it is still not widely recognized as a capitalist crisis, that is, as a crisis arising from and perpetuated by the rule of capital, and hence incapable of resolution within the capitalist framework.

It is useful to remind ourselves that, although Marx situated capitalism’s crisis tendencies initially in the business cycle (specifically, in its downward phase), he recognized at the same time that those tendencies could manifest themselves under other forms—the first of these being the drive to global expansion.2 Such manifestations are not inherently cyclical; they are permanent trends. They can be sporadically offset, but for as long as capitalism prevails, they cannot be reversed. They encompass: (1) increased concentration of economic power; (2) increased polarization between rich and poor, both within and across national boundaries; (3) a permanent readiness for military engagement in support of these drives; and (4) of special concern to us here, the uninterrupted debasement or depletion of vital natural resources.

The economic recession of 2008, widely recognized as the most severe since the post-1929 Depression, has been variously interpreted on the left in terms of whether or not capital can overcome it by, in effect, restoring the restraints—some of them socially progressive—that it had accepted (in the United States) in the 1930s. To the extent that such remediation is viewed as possible, the crisis is seen as undermining only the neoliberal agenda and not capitalism, as such.3 In that case, we would witness a perhaps cyclical return to a period of greater governmental regulation (including greater responsiveness to limited working-class demands).

But what is not at all cyclical—and what most sharply distinguishes the present crisis from that of the 1930s—is the backdrop of aggravated environmental devastation. The reign of capital has now been thrown into disarray not only by financial chaos, but also by the shrinkage and disruption of the natural infrastructure which serves not only the survival needs of the human species but also the particular requirements of the capitalist ruling class. The immediate grounds for ruling-class concern arise along several major axes: (a) rising raw material and energy costs; (b) losses from catastrophic climate events; and (c) mass dislocation, popular disaffection, and eventual social upheaval.

It is this set of preoccupations that drives the political agenda of “green capitalism.” While there are obvious points of convergence between different green agendas, it eventually becomes clear that any full merger between an agenda that is insistently capitalist and one that accentuates the green dimension is impossible. Nonetheless, immediate pro-ecology steps are urgently needed, irrespective of their sponsorship. The resulting dilemma is one that the left must face without delay, as an integral step in developing whatever more radical strategy might be possible for the longer term.

The “Green Capitalist” Agenda4

At a conceptual level, it is clear that “green capitalism” seeks to bind together two antagonistic notions. To be green means to prioritize the health of the ecosphere, with all that this entails in terms of curbing greenhouse gases and preserving biodiversity. To promote capitalism, by contrast, is to foster growth and accumulation, treating both the workforce and the natural environment as mere inputs.

Capital is no stranger to contradiction, however. Just as it seeks to balance market-expansion with wage-restraint, so it must seek to balance perpetual growth with preservation of the basic conditions for survival. Despite the ultimate incompatibility of these two goals, therefore, capital must to some extent pursue both at once. Although green capitalism is an oxymoron, it is therefore nonetheless a policy-objective. Its proponents thus find themselves in an ongoing two-front struggle against, on the one hand, capital’s more short-sighted advocates and, on the other, the demand for a far-reaching ecologically grounded conversion of production and consumption.

The green capitalist vision is sometimes associated with small enterprises that can directly implement green criteria by, for example, using renewable energy sources, avoiding toxic chemicals, repairing or recycling used products, and minimizing reliance on long-distance shipment for either supplies or sales. But the scope of such practices is likely to be severely limited by market pressures. The aspect of local self-sufficiency is most widely seen in the food-services sector, especially in farmers’ markets, which have experienced a notable resurgence in recent years in industrialized countries. This corresponds more to what Marx called “simple commodity production,” however, than to capitalist enterprise. Agribusiness allows residual space for it, but at the same time undercuts it through economies of scale facilitated by technologies of food processing and storage; political clout, resulting in subsidies; and reliance on a typically migrant workforce that receives less than a living wage. Because of the resulting cost differences (as well as inconveniences of access), patronage of farmers’ markets is likely to remain primarily a political choice until much more is done to offset the artificial competitive edge enjoyed by the food-industrial complex.

Focusing now on the dominant corporate sector, we find the green capitalist agenda expressed partly by the enterprises themselves, partly by industry associations, and partly by government.5 For the corporations themselves, “green” practice takes essentially three forms: (1) energy-saving and other cost-cutting measures, which are advantageous to them in any case; (2) compliance with whatever regulations may be enforced by a government in which they normally have a large voice; and (3) most importantly, public relations (PR). The industry associations further amplify the PR aspect, playing an especially vital role on the global stage, where they strive to establish the common assumptions underlying international agreements. They have worked extensively to influence the United Nations Development Program, and they also carry out large-scale lobbying campaigns to set negotiating parameters for the periodic Earth Summits (Rio de Janeiro 1992, Kyoto 1997, Johannesburg 2002, Copenhagen 2009). The Business Council for Sustainable Development thus came into being in the run-up to the Rio conference, declaring in its charter that “economic growth provides the conditions in which protection of the environment can best be achieved.”

Under its influence, the monitoring of global environmental measures was entrusted to the World Bank, which in the ensuing decade paradoxically invested more than fifteen times as much in fossil-fuel projects as in renewable energy.6 The Kyoto conference advanced similar criteria five years later by enshrining emissions trading as the primary strategy for battling global warming. This practice, under the rubric of “cap and trade,” has become the centerpiece of governmental proposals in the United States. It posits an incentive-based approach to corporate policy, under which enterprises participate in a market in pollution credits. Because of the political clout of the corporations, however, the initial cost of these credits may be reduced to zero. At the same time, the most severe industrial offenders are allowed to “offset” their damages elsewhere (e.g., by funding reforestation programs) rather than directly curtailing them.

Cutting across all corporate insertions into the environmental debate is the assumption that the basic instruments for responding to ecological crisis are technology and the market. The technological fixation has been a constant of capitalist development. Initially focused on maximizing labor productivity, it is continuously replenished by ever more miraculous applications, especially in the spheres of communication and of genetic engineering. The unending proliferation of innovations—a hallmark of late capitalism7—lends credence, in public perception, to the idea that there is no challenge that technology cannot overcome. The unstated premise behind such claims is that the selection of any technology will continue to reflect corporate interests, which in turn reflect the goals implicit in market competition, i.e., profit-maximization, growth, and accumulation. While green technologies—e.g., renewable energy sources—may attract a degree of corporate attention (thanks mainly to social/political pressure), nothing short of a change in the basic locus of economic decision-making will stop certain corporations from continuing to pursue established (non-green) lines of production. Insofar as they must nonetheless try to present themselves in green clothing, they will not hesitate to misrepresent the questions at stake and to invoke technological “solutions” that have little chance of being successfully implemented.

A revealing and economically important illustration of this dynamic is the advocacy of so-called “clean coal.” To begin with, much of the coal industry’s PR emphasis is placed on the removal of specific impurities (such as sulfur and particulates) from coal-burning emissions, overlooking the biggest problem: the combustion process itself, and the resultant rise in atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. When this unavoidable “bottom line” can no longer be ignored, the industry, not wishing to be restrained even by such modest disincentives as a carbon tax, will assert, as did CEO Steven Leer of Arch Coal Inc., that “the enabling technology for stabilizing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is carbon capture and sequestration. There is not another option.”8 Carbon capture and sequestration, however, is an unproven technology, with problems not unlike those associated with any toxic byproduct that has to be disposed of in very large quantities. While it is possible to isolate carbon dioxide emissions and to pump them into out-of-the-way sites (whether underground or perhaps even under the ocean), the potential blowback from such undertakings, once they exceed a certain threshold, is uncertain, incalculable, and possibly catastrophic.9

The desirability of shifting to certain inexhaustible or renewable energy sources is obvious. What is not so widely recognized, however, is that these sources too have their costs—in terms of installation, collection, maintenance, and transmission—and that therefore none of them, despite whatever abundance may characterize their occurrence in nature, can offer unlimited accessibility for energy supply.10 Some of the alternative sources, such as hydrogen and biomass, themselves require significant if not prohibitive energy inputs.

Biomass (burning biological materials as fuel) also threatens to reduce the land-area available for growing food. Hydrogen, for its part, carries the danger of leakage and of rising to the stratosphere, where it could destroy the ozone layer. Tapping geothermal energy can, in certain regions, risk provoking seismic disturbances; in addition, there may be high costs associated with the depth of requisite drilling, and the emerging heat may be dissipated in various ways. Wind energy, despite its clear positive potential, is limited by materials and space requirements, as well as by the irregularity of its source in many locations. Tidal power is more continuous than wind energy, but in addition to the high installation cost of its requisite barrages or underwater turbines, it poses—as do wind turbines—certain dangers for resident or migrant wildlife. Solar energy, finally, is extraordinarily promising in direct localized applications, but for power generation on a large scale, it would risk impinging on space required for other purposes. As for solar collectors situated in otherwise unused desert regions, their dust-free maintenance in such sites would require the long-distance trans-shipment of vast quantities of water.

All these technologies, with the partial exception of biomass, avoid adding to the net concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The same might perhaps be said of nuclear power, provided that, as the more up-to-date versions promise, it does not entail further large-scale mining and refinement of fissionable material. Nuclear power has other problematic implications, however, beyond its daunting startup costs in both time and money. Even if we were to suppose—as is further claimed—that the problem of waste has been minimized via repeated re-use (until there is hardly any radioactive material left) and that the dangers of a Chernobyl-type disaster or of vulnerability to military attack have been addressed by engineering improvements,11 there still remains the fact that nuclear power is linked to the potential for making bombs, and no disarmament process is underway. The imperialist governments will therefore not allow nuclear power to be distributed on a scale sufficient to match the potential global demand for it. The longer-term ecological and political desideratum would not be to undo such restrictions, but rather to impose them on the imperialist powers themselves, as part of a full-scale conversion process.

The upshot of all these considerations is that the question of how to supply the world’s currently growing energy demand without continuing recourse to carbon dioxide-producing fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—has not yet been solved. In view of the problems associated with all the alternative energy sources, a radical and comprehensive reconsideration of the demand side of this equation would seem to be called for. This is the essence of the socialist response: while encouraging the use of various safe-energy alternatives, it can accept the fact that these alternatives are ultimately limited in their total power-generating capacity, and therefore that the world’s aggregate energy consumption will actually have to be reduced. Once this is understood, one can then focus on the interrelated issues of how to identify and prioritize real needs, and how to correspondingly reorganize society in such a way as to assure everyone’s well-being. This is beyond the purview of capitalist thought, whatever its level of awareness of the environmental danger.

The Politics of Reduced Energy Consumption

The ecological movement, as it has so far developed, has not yet been able to mount a socially persuasive agenda for reducing energy consumption on a large scale. Broadly speaking, critique of the capitalist growth model has advanced along two paths, which, although complementary in their ultimate thrust, have tended to clash politically. On the one hand has been the tradition identifiable with the “small is beautiful” slogan, associated with localism, ruralism, and (in varying degrees) rejection of “industrial society.” This tradition understands the danger of growth but tends to link it with the general condition of modernity, including modern technology, population increase, and urbanization.12 On the other hand is the socialist tradition, which, drawing on Marx, sees growth not in terms of human evolution as such, but rather in terms of the specific drives unleashed by capital. In its political expression, however, this tradition has been associated with revolutionary regimes arising in countries of widespread poverty, where the top priority appeared to be a form of “socialist growth.” As a result of this association—buttressed by real or ascribed failings of the regimes in question—critics of growth tended also to become critics of socialism, which they saw as sharing the major negative traits of capitalism. Conversely, those who felt the urgency of emerging from poverty rejected the anti-growth posture, viewing it as an ideological expression of sectors whose needs were already satisfied, and who would unfairly deny similar satisfaction to others.

A theoretical resolution to this antagonism already exists. It is implicit in Marx’s dual focus on nature and humans as sources/creators of wealth and as objects of capitalist depredation. The link has been discussed in depth by, among others, writers such as Paul Burkett, John Bellamy Foster, Joel Kovel, and Richard Levins. Foster’s book Marx’s Ecology, in particular, refutes the productivist stereotype of Marx’s thinking, and Levins has presented a concise yet wide-ranging refutation of developmentalist assumptions, informed by a blend of dialectical thought, biological expertise, and farming experience.13 Reading this literature, one can see implicit in the Marxist critique of capital a call for undoing high-tech agriculture, restoring biodiversity, drastically reducing the volume of long-distance trade, and generally bringing technology under social or community control. These are the same goals enunciated by zero-growth activists (who stress lifestyle choices and local actions over challenges to state power), but the realization of those goals is, for Marxists, clearly linked with class struggle. The basis for this link is simply that without successful class struggle the major vectors determining trade patterns and technological development will continue to be those of the capitalist market.

There is thus a clear theoretical symbiosis between ecological thinking and the anti-capitalist critique. Two major strands of radical activism are thereby poised to function as one, in the sense that the ecological movement, in seeking to override market dictates, is at its core anti-capitalist, while the critique of capitalism is, in its rejection of the growth/accumulation imperative, inherently ecological.14 The resultant socialist ecology or ecological socialism constitutes a full-blown alternative to the dominant ideology. Its political potential, moreover, should be greatly enhanced by the 2008 financial collapse, which showed the hollowness of capitalist “prosperity.” Yet there remain huge obstacles to popular recognition of the link between ecology and socialism, and hence to popular support for an agenda of collectively planned, society-wide reduction in energy use. What are these obstacles, and how can they be overcome?

Although the growth imperative at the macro level is specific to capitalism, it is not without some grounding in longer-standing human traits. Indeed, this is what makes possible the very idea of seeing growth as an inherent human pursuit. Like all such generalizations, it has a strand of accuracy, which is then amplified to the point of blotting out the truth of the whole. It is legitimate to say that there is a natural human striving for improvement and even for perfection. This is evident in various forms of artistic expression throughout the ages, as it is also in the care of artisans—whether individually or as a team—to make the best possible product. The goal of growth intersects with such striving in a qualified way. A healthy plant, animal, or human must grow to full stature. One can even say something similar of a community, which, unless it reaches a certain threshold of size and productive capacity, cannot expect to provide the range of services and diversions required in order to offer a satisfying life to each of its members.

But in any such unit of growth, one must distinguish optimum from maximum. Optimum growth for any living entity is part of what constitutes fulfillment of its potential. Anything above optimum, however, is pathological: the organism, whether an individual or a community, suffers disequilibrium either among its component parts or between itself and its environment (or both).

Capital’s growth-impulse is inscribed in its credo of accumulation. Its objective limits are determined, in the short run, by saturation of the market and, in the long run, by exhaustion of resources. When its productive potential is stymied, it turns to financial speculation, which only increases the gulf between the capitalist class and the rest of the species. Because of imperialist relations, deprivation is particularly vast, widespread, and seemingly intractable in countries of the global South. This has the ironic effect of creating a constituency which, although desirous of revolutionary redistribution, may at the same time be receptive to calls for growth as a kind of compensatory entitlement, as its members seek to overcome the huge gap between their own consumption-levels and those prevalent within the imperial metropolis.

Insofar as the world’s poor—and/or those who purport to speak for them on the global stage—retain this longing to ape the extravagant U.S.-advertised lifestyle, the U.S. leadership will continue to invoke the poor countries’ demands as a pretext for rejecting its own ecological responsibility. The government of the United States, on the one hand, and the governments of countries such as China and India, on the other, will remain locked together in a dance of death, in which each partner invokes the other’s intransigence to justify its own. The impact of progressive ecological steps taken in other countries will be severely limited, and most of the world’s peoples will be reduced to the status of spectators, if not victims, of the ongoing environmental breakdown. This is the prospect that loomed over the Summit in Copenhagen.

An alternative to this bleak scenario, if there is to be one, will depend primarily on the impact of popular movements around the world. There are promising steps in this direction, from both the South and the North, although the idea of a policy link to socialism—let alone of a politically powerful organization to articulate and embody such a link—remains elusive. The incipient efforts deserve our attention, as does the question of how to surmount the conceptual impasse that frustrates international negotiations.

In Search of a Mass Movement for Ecological Socialism

The most massive expressions of radical environmental awareness have arisen among the peasants and indigenous peoples of the global South. For these populations, the capitalist/productivist plunder of the environment—in the form of deforestation, reckless or deliberate pollution, sea-level rise from global warming, and misuse of fresh water (flooding by dams or depletion of aquifers)—is a direct assault on their homes and livelihoods.15 Their sense of outrage and desperation is beyond measure. It is, moreover, a community sentiment on the part of people who are being stripped of everything, and whose plight leads them to consciously reject the entire agenda of the invasive force. One would have to return to the early days of capitalism to find a comparable unanimity of antagonism to the agencies of exploitation.

Yet, while the anger and its justification are not unprecedented, the basis for the current movement distinguishes itself from that of earlier resistance in at least two ways, one of which makes it weaker, but the other of which could give it greater strength. The weakening factor has to do with dispensability. Through all its phases, capital has sought limitless supplies of its necessary inputs, including human labor power—for which its early recourse to open slavery has given way in more recent times to the large-scale abuse of migrant laborers and, in some countries, also of prisoners. Alongside this element of continuity, however, has come, with labor-saving technological advances, a markedly increased propensity on the part of capital to view certain populations as altogether expendable. Insofar as these populations exist on the margins of capitalist production, they lack economic leverage and their demands—much less their sufferings—therefore carry no political weight. So far as capital is concerned, these populations can thus be consigned with impunity to sickness, dispersion, or death.

Where then lies the potential strength of this constituency? These people do indeed hold one card which was not available to their exploited counterparts of an earlier age. Their direct tie to the long-term sustainability of the land, at a time when such sustainability is everywhere undermined, gives them in fact a strategic placement that contrasts diametrically with the supposed superfluity to which they have been relegated by capital. Their own “parochial” needs embody the collective need of the entire human species—not to mention other endangered life-forms—to stop the relentless destruction of the ecosphere. Ironically, therefore, although such peoples are among the world’s poorest, not just by capitalist standards (personal possessions), but also in terms of access to the means of mass communication, they have been thrust into a vanguard position, on a par with that of Cuba,16 in the global ecosocialist movement.

Visible expressions of this leadership role have so far been sporadic, beginning with direct, on-site confrontations—especially dramatic in recent years in Latin America and India—but progressing to the world stage via international conferences of indigenous peoples,17 interventions at the United Nations,18 and participation in the annual gatherings of the World Social Forum (WSF). From such platforms, they have been able to remind a worldwide audience how arbitrary has been the whole historical development underlying commonly held assumptions about the way our species should live. Their most recent WSF declaration (from Belém in 2009) characteristically includes statements like the following:

Modern capitalism was initiated centuries ago and imposed in America with the invasion of October 12, 1492. This gave way to global plundering and invented theories of “races” to justify American ethnocide, the incursion in Africa for its slave trade, and the plundering of other continents.…

[W]hat is in crisis is capitalism, Euro-centrism, with its model of Uni-National State, cultural homogeneity, western positive rights, developmentalism and the commodification of life.…

We belong to Mother Earth. We are not her owners, plunderers, nor are we her vendors, and today we arrive at a crossroads: imperialist capitalism has shown [itself] to be dangerous not only due to its domination, exploitation and structural violence but also because it kills Mother Earth and leads us to planetary suicide, which is neither “useful” nor “necessary.”19

This perspective is clearly one that speaks for a bigger constituency than that of its immediate exponents. Indigenous peoples, numbering approximately 300 million worldwide, constitute no more than 5 percent of the total human population. From a sociological standpoint, they are simply an ethno-linguistic category, distinguished above all by their immemorial roots in a particular locality. But, in terms of their collective message in an epoch of environmental breakdown, they express, more completely than any other demographic group, the common survival interest of humanity as a whole.

Our theoretical challenge is to define an arena of negotiation, and eventually a political strategy for reconciliation, between the global perspective of the indigenous peoples and the ongoing, though in part disputable, needs of the much larger population—in its majority, the international working class of the twenty-first century—that has been drawn into a mode of life far removed from the one that the indigenous are striving to preserve.20

From our earlier discussion, it is clear that total energy-consumption must be drastically reduced. To this end, indigenous communities can offer inspiration in several respects. They tend to be exemplary in their reverence for the natural world, also in their material self-sufficiency, their rejection of individual property-rights, their egalitarianism, and their sense of mutual accountability.

But how can these virtues, embodied in defiantly autonomous communities, with a way of life in many cases defined by low population density, be acquired on a massive scale by the other 95 percent of the world’s people—the majority of whom inhabit large urban settlements in which they have become alienated from the natural world and acculturated to livelihoods characterized, at one end of the spectrum, by energy-intensive services and comfort and, at the other, by a desperate and competitive scramble to stay alive?

This question is, in essence, the present-day form taken by long-standing enigmas of revolutionary transformation. From the beginning of the capitalist epoch, the challenge has centered on attaining class-consciousness, a key component of which is the process whereby wage-workers come to recognize that their interests are better served by mutual cooperation than by competition (which, in terms of contending wage-claims, has always entailed a race to the bottom—whether with one’s immediate co-workers or with others in distant locations). The progression from a competitive to a cooperative or solidaristic mindset is a cultural shift. As such, it weakens or undercuts ingrained defenses and prejudices. On a limited scale, it prefigures the new constellation of attitudes associated with the socialist project.

Such an initial step in the process of transformation has been an experience common to most countries. It has typically been offset, however, and in many instances reversed, by the enormous economic impact of transnational corporations. Previously powerful labor movements have suffered dramatic declines in membership, and their surviving leaderships have often been forced to accept humiliating concessions, always under the threat of an even worse alternative. Their readiness to acquiesce was forged, in the U.S. case, during the post-Second World War period of labor’s direct partnership with global capital. Now, in their weakened position, U.S. labor leaders are less capable than ever of challenging capitalist priorities. Instead, often in defiance of programmatic demands of their membership, they give unconditional support to one of the country’s two capitalist governing parties.21

In the wake of this evolution, any revival of the latent working-class predisposition to solidarity will have to come, at least in part, on the basis of a whole new set of cultural influences. These can be drawn from a mix of sources. Looking again at the U.S. case (no doubt the most resistant to such change), one possible source of fresh perspectives may be the arrival of immigrant workers with experience of class struggle in their home countries.22 Another may be the impact of various social movements, including those of radical youth, from outside the workplace. But a very important additional source, sooner or later, will be an awareness of the environmental crisis: in particular, the understanding that it cannot be adequately addressed merely by a mass of individual responses.

At this point, the collective nature of the response put forward by indigenous communities could resonate within an otherwise disoriented and dispirited working class. Most especially, if the struggles of those communities were to become widely known, they could further energize the current revival of worker self-management initiatives. Already, the recent chain of bankruptcies in the United States, as well as that of 2002 in Argentina, has given workers new inducements to take over their factories.23 In Venezuela, a similar process has evolved in response to economic sabotage by capitalist opponents of the Bolivarian Revolution.24 The potential for ecologically informed redesign of production processes could generate added motivation for such initiatives: workers not only can see at first hand where materials and energy have been wasted; they also identify, as a matter of course, with the nearby population’s non-negotiable interest (and their own) in eliminating or neutralizing toxins.

Complementing such workplace-grounded developments are those that may occur in the neighborhoods. Again, the indigenous models would have to be made known through every possible channel. But the manifest breakdown in the supply of fresh produce to poor urban communities will create an opening for new (or in some sense much older) solutions. People could begin to ask themselves why common food items need to be shipped great distances, via countless intermediaries. The farmers’ markets are a first step in breaking out of this circle; a second step, already gaining traction in some places, is urban gardens. All such practices restore a level of direct interaction among people, promoting collective autonomy and undercutting the impact of commodification. The infrastructure required for the necessary cooperative arrangements will be conducive also to political education, which is integral to the overall process. Here again, the experience of indigenous peoples could be brought into play—perhaps even by direct contacts—to combine practical advice with wider inspiration.25

The larger picture here is one of a vast learning process. This is something that revolution has always entailed, but with distinct contours in each period. The present conjuncture is marked by a core paradox. Capitalism is superannuated. This is not just a wishful assertion that it “should have” been superseded; it is recognition of the verifiable fact that its accelerated resource depletion has far outpaced the regenerative capacities of the ecosphere. Under these conditions, the most advanced technological achievements of the capitalist era are, taken as a whole, outdated.26 They are not collectively sustainable over the long term. As a result, they are now forcefully challenged by a perspective that rejects them altogether.

Relatively few, on a world scale, would consciously choose “business as usual” (worst-case scenario for the Stern Review)27 over species-survival. But the vast majority of the non-indigenous 95 percent are caught up in structures—many of them internalized—that impede our efforts to build a new paradigm. Mere exhortation will not induce us to jettison these relics of a nefarious mode of production. As a species, we will have to liberate ourselves “strategically” from the associated habits, by focusing on scale and on degrees of urgency, framing equitable criteria for restricting or eliminating one or another practice—be it a given form of transport, a given item of long-distance trade, or a particular energy-intensive amenity of any kind.28

In carrying out this process, those who do not belong to indigenous communities will have much to learn from those who do. Indigenous communities are being threatened, however, and their members may be understandably reluctant to visit “alien” territory. But they may also begin to recognize that their own survival depends on whether a transformation takes place in that outside world. If they can contribute to such a revolution, they would thus be serving their own interest as well.

Breaking the Impasse on the World Stage

The emergence of indigenous peoples as an organized presence on the world stage presents an extraordinary opportunity to the rest of humanity. We have already noted the traits that have earned these peoples a leadership role in terms of ecological practice, and how those traits are linked to their rejection of the property regime that underlies capitalism’s growth impulse. Of equally great importance is the fact that neither the indigenous population as a whole, nor any community within it, constitutes a nation-state. To the contrary, such a formation would violate their very essence. Instead, the world’s indigenous peoples are spread out over many countries and regions. Only in exceptional cases have their interests attained even limited expression in any national government.29 They therefore act at the global level as a kind of transnational pressure group, advocating for their own interests but, in so doing, serving also as a moral force reminding international organizations of a shared responsibility for the preservation of life.

This new element in the global equation matches the ecological issue itself as a phenomenon transcending national boundaries. It gives us the possibility of rethinking the entire framework of representation that currently exists for addressing matters of worldwide concern. The frustration that has attended international negotiations over environmental policy is well known. National governments speak for the dominant interests in their respective countries; their stances on ecological issues are only as good as they have been pressured to be by each society’s working-class and progressive movements.30 Moreover, the aggregate global outcome tends routinely to reflect the position of the ecologically most retrograde of the major powers, which, given the parameters of capitalist competition, are likely—in part precisely because of their ecological negligence—to be the ones with the greatest commercial advantage and therefore the biggest impact. Given this dynamic, the ambitious ecological proposals that may be put forward by other governments will go nowhere.

It is within this arena of inter-government negotiations that the deadly standoff between the most profligate “developed” economy (the United States) and the most populous “developing” countries (China and India) is sustained. The dynamic at work here is reminiscent of the fear of “mutually assured destruction” that for decades sustained the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, in that in both cases the logic of competition tends to block any concessions. That earlier dance of death ended only with the disintegration of one of the two partners. The present race to environmental oblivion is unlikely to be restrained without a series of political collapses of comparable scope. When the Soviet Union disappeared, progressive forces in the United States were unprepared to impose the anticipated “peace dividend” (diversion of military expenditure to social reconstruction), because they failed to recognize that, for the forces driving U.S. global military projection, the alleged threat of an equivalent Soviet thrust had never been more than a pretext—for which some substitute would quickly be devised.

At the global level, discussion over how to respond to environmental dangers requires a new framework. The non-state contours of the worldwide indigenous movement offer a hint as to where to begin. In the environmental debate among states, those opposing the status quo proceed on the assumption that every national unit has equal entitlement (on a per-capita basis) to deplete the earth’s resources. This seems fair enough so long as we accept the nation-state as the basic agent of policy, with the implication that the particular earmarking of environmental costs within each nation-state is beyond the purview of international scrutiny. But this is precisely where the problem lies. Each national aggregate encompasses its own mix of necessary and wasteful expenditures—with the proportion of the latter tending to vary with a country’s economic and military power-position (as well as its acquired patterns of excess consumption).31 Certain types of resource use must be curbed wherever they occur; the fact that they are more prevalent in richer countries will itself reinforce the concern for seeking equity between richer and poorer regions.

But the global community will now have to promote such equity not only between regions, but also within them. Such an externally driven reorientation will of course be fiercely resisted, initially with the argument that it violates sovereignty. National sovereignty, however, is properly understood not to supersede basic human rights, which are what is ultimately at stake in the environmental debate. The irrelevance of national boundaries to the spread of environmental devastation is well known, but the corresponding political conclusions have yet to be widely drawn. This is a clear case where the whole world has a legitimate interest in the measures that may or may not be taken—whether by government or by the private sector—within any given country. Although the formal means to implement this interest are at present very weak, the political potential of such universally formulated criteria has been amply demonstrated in connection with historic struggles against racism (e.g., the United States in the 1960s and South Africa in the 1980s).

In the sphere of environmental policy, the worldwide debate about emissions needs to undergo a radical shift, from a national to a sectoral focus.32 The first sector to be challenged will of course be the military. For each of the sectors addressed, however, the key issue to be resolved, through informed, society-wide debate, is: How much of the activity in that sector—and hence, of the resources it consumes—is directed, not at the satisfaction of human need, but rather at pursuits reflecting the priorities of capital and its ruling class?

It would be illusory to expect such a process to yield a universally accepted set of criteria that could be quickly applied. Like all revolutionary processes, its realization will be beset by obstacles and contingencies. But the challenge of identifying and eliminating social waste could prove to be a powerful unifying force for the vast majority, as human beings seek simultaneously to restore the environment and assure the satisfaction of their own needs. The process also readily lends itself to defining short-term targets—particular categories of energy waste—while nonetheless enabling activists to bring out the full scope of the longer-term task.

Notes

1. ? Speaking respectively of “large-scale industry” and “industrially pursued large-scale agriculture,” Marx wrote, “the former lays waste and ruins labour-power and thus the natural power of man, whereas the latter does the same to the natural power of the soil.” Capital, vol. 3, tr. David Fernbach (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 950.
2. ? Communist Manifesto, section I.
3. ? Rick Wolff, “Economic Crisis from a Socialist Perspective,” Socialism and Democracy, no. 50 (July 2009), 3.
4. ? This section is drawn from my report written for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (www.rosalux.de), entitled “The ‘Green Capitalist’ Agenda in the United States: Theory, Structure, Alternatives,” published in English in Stephan Kaufmann & Tadzio Müller, Grüner Kapitalismus: Krise, Klimawandel und kein Ende des Wachstums (Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag, 2009) and to be posted on the foundation’s Web site.
5. ? For a more extensive treatment, see Victor Wallis, “Capitalist and Socialist Responses to the Ecological Crisis,” Monthly Review 60, no. 6 (November 2008).
6. ? Kenny Bruno and Joshua Karliner, earthsummit.biz: The Corporate Takeover of Sustainable Development (Oakland, CA: Food First Books, 2002), 30.
7. ? Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism (London: New Left Books, 1975), 192.
8. ? Alvin Powell, “Mining Exec: Coal Vital to Energy Mix,” Harvard University Gazette, February 9, 2009.
9. ? For an introductory overview of this technology, see Craig Rubens, “Carbon Capture & Sequestration,” earth2tech, January 2008, http://earth2tech.com/2008/01/07/faq-carbon-capture-sequestration/CCS. Apart from its unpredictable dangers (including suffocation by massive carbon dioxide inhalation in the event of a sudden accidental release), such still undeveloped technology is very costly and energy-intensive. For detailed study and discussion, based on the Dutch experience, see Philip Vergragt, CCS in the Netherlands (Boston: Tellus Institute, 2008).
10. ? The summary that follows is based, in part, on Tom Blees, Prescription for the Planet: The Painless Remedy for Our Energy and Environmental Crises (self-published, www.booksurge.com, 2008), 63-86, and, for solar power, on calculations presented in Gregory Meyerson and Michael Joseph Roberto, “Obama’s New New Deal and the Irreversible Crisis,” Socialism and Democracy, no. 50 (July 2009), 64n. Blees’s critical summary is useful irrespective of whether or not one shares his view that what must therefore be pursued is an updated version of nuclear power.
11. ? Blees’s Prescription for the Planet argues that the new Integral Fast Reactors (IFRs) have solved the technical problems of safety and waste associated with earlier generations of nuclear power plants. Even in the absence of severe mishaps, however, the underlying risk of accumulated radiation effects on workers and, through them, on the wider population, remains. See John W. Gofman and Arthur R. Tamplin, Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants Before and After Three Mile Island (1979), http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/PP/.
12. ? An influential expression of this tradition is Herman E. Daly and Jonathan B. Cobb, Jr., For the Common Good, 2nd ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994); see also Clive Ponting. A New Green History of the World (New York: Penguin Books, 2007).
13. ? John Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000); Yrjö Haila and Richard Levins, Humanity and Nature (London: Pluto Press, 1992), chapter 5 (“Agricultural Ecology”).
14. ? Victor Wallis, “Toward Ecological Socialism,” Capitalism Nature Socialism 12, no. 1 (March 2001), 132-33; see also Michael Löwy, “Eco-Socialism and Democratic Planning,” Socialist Register 2007 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2006).
15. ? Numerous cases from Latin America are analyzed in Nacla Report on the Americas 42, no. 5 (Sept.-Oct. 2009) and in Gerardo Rénique, ed., “Latin America: The New Neoliberalism and Popular Mobilization,” in Socialism and Democracy, no. 51 (November 2009). See also the Joseph Berlinger’s 2009 documentary film on the struggle in Ecuador, Crude: The Real Price of Oil (http://www.crudefilm.com/).
16. ? Cuba’s special significance as an ecological model, including its shift to 80 percent organic agriculture with large-scale urban gardening, is well brought out in the 2006 documentary film, The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil (http://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php).
17. ? See, for example, materials on the 4th Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples (May 2009) in Puno, Peru, which drew 6500 delegates from 22 countries (http://cumbrecontinentalindigena.wordpress.com/).
18. ? UN interventions culminated in 2007 with the General Assembly’s overwhelming ratification of the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/declaration.html), which includes in its Preamble a clause, “Recognizing that respect for indigenous knowledge, cultures and traditional practices contributes to sustainable and equitable development and proper management of the environment.”
19. ? http://www.indigenousportal.com/News/Declaration-of-Indigenous-Peoples-at-the-World-Social-Forum-Bel%C3%A9m-Amazon-Brazil.html.
20. ? In many countries experiencing large-scale urban migration, one cannot draw a sharp distinction between indigenous and non-indigenous populations. People who have left their original territories may preserve much of their culture, as in the city of El Alto, Bolivia (see Adolfo Gilly, “Bolivia: A 21st-Century Revolution,” Socialism and Democracy, no. 39, November 2005). The global figure of 300 million indigenous could, in this respect, be viewed as an underestimate. In addition, the communication boundaries between indigenous and non-indigenous may sometimes be more porous than this apparent dichotomy suggests.
21. ? See Kim Moody, Workers in a Lean World (London: Verso, 1997).
22. ? For a suggestive example of such impact, see Héctor Perla Jr., “Grassroots Mobilization against US Military Intervention in El Salvador,” Socialism and Democracy, no. 48 (November 2008).
23. ? On Argentina, see Laura Meyer and María Chaves, “Winds of Freedom: An Argentine Factory under Workers’ Control,” Socialism and Democracy, no. 51 (November 2009). On the United States, see Immanuel Ness and Stacy Warner Maddern, “Worker Direct Action Grows In Wake of Financial Meltdown,” Dollars & Sense, no. 284 (Sept.-Oct. 2009), and also Michael Moore’s documentary film, Capitalism: A Love Story (2009).
24. ? A useful general analysis is Iain Bruce, The Real Venezuela (London: Pluto Press, 2008), esp. ch. 4.
25. ? Although I here emphasize what indigenous peoples can teach us, the theoretical dialogue will need to go in both directions, inasmuch as certain spokespersons for the indigenous (e.g., Ward Churchill) and for a “subsistence” approach (e.g., Maria Mies) have popularized a severe misreading of Marx, ascribing to him the very notion of value—as excluding nature—that Marx had identified as a major fault of capital (which confuses value with real wealth). For a critique of such misreadings, see John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, “The Paradox of Wealth: Capitalism and Ecological Destruction,” Monthly Review 61, no. 6 (November 2009), 7-10.
26. ? For detailed discussion, see Victor Wallis, “Socialism and Technology: A Sectoral Overview,” Capitalism Nature Socialism 17, no. 2 (June 2006).
27. ? The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review (Cambridge University Press, 2006), a British government report prepared under the direction of Nicholas Stern, is perhaps the most comprehensive formulation of the “green capitalist” perspective. For a critique, see the Introduction by John Bellamy Foster et al. to Monthly Review 60, no. 3 (July-August 2008), 3-6.
28. ? For a fuller exposition of this point, see my essay, “Vision and Strategy: Questioning the Subsistence Perspective,” Capitalism Nature Socialism 17, no. 4 (December 2006).
29. ? Where they do attain such representation, as in Bolivia with Evo Morales, the government is inescapably subjected to conflicting pressures (in particular, over the exploitation of energy resources), as a result of which tensions arise between it and its indigenous base.
30. ? This does not mean that working-class movements necessarily have progressive positions on ecological issues; what it does mean is that only when they do have progressive positions do the latter carry significant weight.
31. ? For an initial attempt at itemizing categories of wasteful expenditure, see Wallis, “Toward Ecological Socialism,” 135-37.
32. ? I noted such a desideratum in an earlier article—“‘Progress’ or Progress? Defining a Socialist Technology,” Socialism and Democracy, no. 27 (2000), 56—but at that time the political forces that might be able to embody its approach were not known to me.

http://monthlyreview.org/100201wallis.php

How NGO Bureaucrats and Greenwashed Corporations are Turning Nature Into Investment Capital

The Dead End of Climate Justice

www.counterpunch.org

Weekend Edition

January 8 – 10, 2010

By TIM SIMONS and ALI TONAK

On the occasion of its ten-year anniversary, the antiglobalization movement has been brought out of its slumber. This is to be expected, as anniversaries and nostalgia often trump the here and now in political action. What is troublesome, though, is not the celebration of a historical moment but the attempted resurrection of this movement, known by some as the Global Justice Movement, under the banner of Climate Justice.

If only regenerating the zeitgeist of a radical moment was as simple as substituting ‘Climate’ for ‘Global’; if only movements appeared with such eas! In fact, this strategy, pursued to its fullest extent in Copenhagen during the UN COP15 Climate Change Summit, is proving more damaging than useful to those of us who are, and have been for the past decade, actively antagonistic to capitalism and its overarching global structures. Here, we will attempt to illustrate some of the problematic aspects of the troubled rebranding of a praxis particular to a decade past. Namely, we will address the following: the financialization of nature and the indirect reliance on markets and monetary solutions as catalysts for structural change, the obfuscation of internal class antagonisms within states of the Global South in favor of simplistic North-South dichotomies, and the pacification of militant action resulting from an alliance forged with transnational NGOs and reformist environmental groups who have been given minimal access to the halls of power in exchange for their successful policing of the movement.

Many of these problematic aspects of the movement’s rebranding became apparent in Copenhagen during the main, high-profile intellectual event that was organized by Climate Justice Action (CJA) on December 14 . CJA is a new alliance formed among (but of course not limited to) some of the Climate Camp activists from the UK, parts of the Interventionist Left from Germany, non-violent civil disobedience activists from the US and the Negrist Disobbedienti from Italy.

The event, which took place in the "freetown" of Christiania, consisted of the usual suspects: Naomi Klein, Michael Hardt, and CJA spokesperson Tadzio Mueller, and it was MCed by non-violent activist guru Lisa Fithian. In their shared political analysis, all of the speakers emphasized the rebirth of the anti-globalization movement. But an uncomfortable contradiction was overarching: while the speakers sought to underscore the continuity with the decade past, they also presented this summit as different, in that those who came to protest were to be one with a summit of world nations and accredited NGOs, instead of presenting a radical critique and alternative force.

Ecology as Economy and Nature as Investment Capital

"What’s important about the discourse that is so powerful, coming from the Global South right now, about climate debt, is that we know that economic debt is a tool of domination and enforcement. It is how our governments impose their neoliberal capitalist policies around the world, so for the Global South to come to the table and say, ‘Wait a minute, we are the creditors and you are the debtors, you owe us a huge debt’ creates an equalizing dynamic in the negotiations."

Let’s look at this contemporary notion of debt, highlighted by Naomi Klein as the principal avenue of struggle for the emerging climate justice movement. A decade ago, the issue of debt incurred through loans taken out from the IMF and World Bank was an integral part of the antiglobalization movement’s analysis and demand to "Drop the Debt." Now, some of that era’s more prominent organizers and thinkers are presenting something deemed analogous and termed ‘climate debt’. The claim is simple: most of the greenhouse gases have historically been produced by wealthier industrial nations and since those in the Global South will feel most of its devastating environmental effects, those countries that created the problem owe the latter some amount of monetary reparations.

The idea of climate debt, however, poses two large problems.

First, while "Drop the Debt!" was one of the slogans of the antiglobalization movement, the analysis behind it was much more developed. Within the movement everyone recognized debt as a tool of capital for implementing neoliberal structural adjustment programs. Under pressure from piling debt, governments were forced to accept privatization programs and severe austerity regimes that further exposed local economies to the ravages of transnational capital. The idea was that by eliminating this debt, one would not only stop privatization (or at least its primary enabling mechanism) but also open up political space for local social movements to take advantage of. Yet something serious is overlooked in this rhetorical transfer of the concept of debt from the era of globalization to that of climate change. Contemporary demands for reparations justified by the notion of climate debt open a dangerous door to increased green capitalist investment in the Global South. This stands in contrast to the antiglobalization movement’s attempts to limit transnational capital’s advances in these same areas of the world through the elimination of neoliberal debt.

The recent emergence of a highly lucrative market formed around climate, and around carbon in particular cannot be overlooked when we attempt to understand the implications of climate reparations demands. While carbon exchanges are the most blatant form of this emerging green capitalist paradigm, value is being reassigned within many existing commodity markets based on their supposed impact on the climate. Everything from energy to agriculture, from cleaning products to electronics, and especially everything within the biosphere, is being incorporated into this regime of climate markets. One can only imagine the immense possibilities for speculation and financialization in these markets as the green bubble continues to grow.

The foreign aid and investment (i.e. development) that will flow into countries of the Global South as a result of climate debt reparations will have the effect of directly subsidizing those who seek to profit off of and monopolize these emerging climate markets. At the Klimaforum, the alternative forum designed to counter the UN summit, numerous panels presented the material effects that would result from a COP15 agreement. In one session on climate change and agricultural policies in Africa, members of the Africa Biodiversity Network outlined how governments on the continent were enclosing communally owned land, labeling it marginal and selling it to companies under Clean Development Mechanisms (CDMs) for biofuel cultivation. CDMs were one of the Kyoto Protocol’s arrangements for attracting foreign investment into the Global South under the guise of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. These sorts of green capitalist projects will continue to proliferate across the globe in conjunction with aid given under the logic of climate debt and will help to initiate a new round of capitalist development and accumulation, displacing more people in the Global South and leading to detrimental impacts on ecosystems worldwide.

Second and perhaps more importantly, “Climate Debt” perpetuates a system that assigns economic and financial value to the biosphere, ecosystems and in this case a molecule of CO2 (which, in reductionist science, readily translates into degrees Celsius). “Climate Debt” is indeed an "equalizing dynamic", as it infects relations between the Global North and South with the same logic of commodification that is central to those markets on which carbon is traded upon. In Copenhagen, that speculation on the value of CO2 preoccupied governments, NGOs, corporations and many of the activists organizing the protests. Advertisements for the windmill company Vestas dominated the metro line in Copenhagen leading to the Bella Center. After asserting that the time for action is now, they read "We must find a price for CO2". Everyone from Vestas to the Sudanese government to large NGOs agree on this fundamental principle: that the destruction of nature and its consequences for humans can be remedied through financial markets and trade deals and that monetary value can be assigned to ecosystems. This continued path towards further commodification of nature and climate debt-driven capitalist development runs entirely antithetical to the antiglobalization movement that placed at its heart the conviction that "the world is not for sale!"

The Inside in the Outside

One of the banners and chants that took place during the CJA-organized Reclaim Power demonstration on December 16 was "Whose summit? Our Summit!". This confused paradigm was omnipresent in the first transnational rendezvous of the Climate Justice Movement. Klein depicted her vision of the street movements’ relationship to those in power during her speech in Christiania as follows:

"It’s nothing like Seattle, there are government delegations that are thinking about joining you. If this turns into a riot, it’s gonna be a riot. We know this story. I’m not saying it’s not an interesting story, but it is what it is. It’s only one story. It will turn into that. So I understand the question about how do we take care of each other but I disagree that that means fighting the cops. Never in my life have I ever said that before. [Laughs]. I have never condemned peoples’ tactics. I understand the rage. I don’t do this, I’m doing it now. Because I believe something very, very important is going on, a lot of courage is being shown inside that center. And people need the support."

The concept that those in the streets outside of the summit are supposed to be part of the same political force as the NGOs and governments who have been given a seat at the table of summit negotiations was the main determining factor for the tenor of the actions in Copenhagen. The bureaucratization of the antiglobalization movement (or its remnants), with the increased involvement from NGOs and governments, has been a process that manifested itself in World Social Forums and Make Poverty History rallies. Yet in Copenhagen, NGOs were much more than a distracting sideshow. They formed a constricting force that blunted militant action and softened radical analysis through paternalism and assumed representation of whole continents.

In Copenhagen, the movement was asked by these newly empowered managers of popular resistance to focus solely on supporting actors within the UN framework, primarily leaders of the Global South and NGOs, against others participating in the summit, mainly countries of the Global North. Nothing summarizes this orientation better than the embarrassingly disempowering Greenpeace slogans "Blah Blah Blah, Act Now!" and "Leaders Act!" Addressing politicians rather than ordinary people, the attitude embodied in these slogans is one of relegating the respectable force of almost 100,000 protesters to the role of merely nudging politicians to act in the desired direction, rather than encouraging people to act themselves. This is the logic of lobbying. No display of autonomous, revolutionary potential. Instead, the emphasis is on a mass display of obedient petitioning. One could have just filled out Greenpeace membership forms at home to the same effect.

A big impetus in forging an alliance with NGOs lay in the activists’ undoubtedly genuine desire to be in solidarity with the Global South. But the unfortunate outcome is that a whole hemisphere has been equated with a handful of NGO bureaucrats and allied government leaders who do not necessarily have the same interests as the members of the underclasses in the countries that they claim to represent. In meeting after meeting in Copenhagen where actions were to be planned around the COP15 summit, the presence of NGOs who work in the Global South was equated with the presence of the whole of the Global South itself. Even more disturbing was the fact that most of this rhetoric was advanced by white activists speaking for NGOs, which they posed as speaking on behalf of the Global South.

Klein is correct in this respect: Copenhagen really was nothing like Seattle. The most promising elements of the praxis presented by the antiglobalization movement emphasized the internal class antagonisms within all nation-states and the necessity of building militant resistance to local capitalist elites worldwide. Institutions such as the WTO and trade agreements such as NAFTA were understood as parts of a transnational scheme aimed at freeing local elites and financial capital from the confines of specific nation-states so as to enable a more thorough pillaging of workers and ecosystems across the globe. Ten years ago, resistance to transnational capital went hand in hand with resistance to corrupt governments North and South that were enabling the process of neoliberal globalization. Its important to note that critical voices such as Evo Morales have been added to the chorus of world leaders since then. However, the movement’s current focus on climate negotiations facilitated by the UN is missing a nuanced global class analysis. It instead falls back on a simplistic North-South dichotomy that mistakes working with state and NGO bureaucrats from the Global South for real solidarity with grassroots social movements struggling in the most exploited and oppressed areas of the world.

Enforced Homogeneity of Tactics

Aligning the movement with those working inside the COP15 summit not only had an effect on the politics in the streets but also a serious effect on the tactics of the actions. The relationship of the movement to the summit was one of the main points of discussion about a year ago while Climate Justice Action was being formed. NGOs who were part of the COP15 process argued against taking an oppositional stance towards the summit in its entirety, therefore disqualifying a strategy such as a full shutdown of the summit. The so-called inside/outside strategy arose from this process, and the main action, where people from the inside and the outside would meet in a parking lot outside of the summit for an alternative People’s Assembly, was planned to highlight the supposed political unity of those participating in the COP15 process and those who manifested a radical presence in the streets.

Having made promises to delegates inside the Bella Center on behalf of the movement, Naomi Klein asserted that "Anybody who escalates is not with us," clearly indicating her allegiances. Rather than reentering the debate about the validity of ‘escalating’ tactics in general, arguing whether or not they are appropriate for this situation in particular, or attempting to figure out a way in which different tactics can operate in concert, the movement in Copenhagen was presented with oppressive paternalism disguised as a tactical preference for non-violence.

The antiglobalization movement attempted to surpass the eternal and dichotomizing debate about violence vs. non-violence by recognizing the validity of a diversity of tactics. But in Copenhagen, a move was made on the part of representatives from Climate Justice Action to shut down any discussion of militant tactics, using the excuse of the presence of people (conflated with NGOs) from the Global South. Demonstrators were told that any escalation would put these people in danger and possibly have them banned from traveling back to Europe in the future. With any discussion of confrontational and militant resistance successfully marginalized, the thousands of protesters who arrived in Copenhagen were left with demonstrations dictated by the needs and desires of those participating in and corroborating the summit.

Alongside the accreditation lines that stretched around the summit, UN banners proclaimed "Raise Your Voice," signifying an invitation to participate for those willing to submit to the logic of NGO representation. As we continue to question the significance of NGO involvement and their belief that they are able to influence global decision-making processes, such as the COP15 summit, we must emphasize that these so-called participatory processes are in fact ones of recuperative pacification. In Copenhagen, like never before, this pacification was not only confined to the summit but was successfully extended outward into the demonstrations via movement leaders aligned with NGOs and governments given a seat at the table of negotiations. Those who came to pose a radical alternative to the COP15 in the streets found their energy hijacked by a logic that prioritized attempts to influence the failing summit, leaving street actions uninspired, muffled and constantly waiting for the promised breakthroughs inside the Bella Center that never materialized.

NGO anger mounted when a secondary pass was implemented to enter the summit during the finalfour days, when presidents and prime ministers were due to arrive. Lost in confusion, those demonstrating on the outside were first told that their role was to assist the NGOs on the inside and then were told that they were there to combat the exclusion of the NGOs from the summit. This demand not to be excluded from the summit became the focal politic of the CJA action on December 16. Although termed Reclaim Power, this action actually reinforced the summit, demanding "voices of the excluded to be heard." This demand contradicted the fact that a great section of the Bella Center actually resembled an NGO Green Fair for the majority of the summit. It is clear that exclusionary participation is a structural part of the UN process and while a handful of NGOs were "kicked out" of the summit after signing on to Reclaim Power, NGO participation was primarily limited due to the simple fact that three times as many delegates were registered than the Bella Center could accommodate.

In the end, the display of inside/outside unity that the main action on the 16th attempted to manifest was a complete failure and never materialized. The insistence on strict non-violence prevented any successful attempt on the perimeter fence from the outside while on the inside the majority of the NGO representatives who had planned on joining the People’s Assembly were quickly dissuaded by the threat of arrest. The oppressive insistence by CJA leaders that all energy must be devoted to supporting those on the inside who could successfully influence the outcome of the summit resulted in little to no gains as the talks sputtered into irreconcilable antagonisms and no legally binding agreement at the summit’s close. An important opportunity to launch a militant movement with the potential to challenge the very foundations of global ecological collapse was successfully undermined leaving many demoralized and confused.

Looking Forward: The Real Enemy

As we grapple with these many disturbing trends that have arisen as primary tendencies defining the climate justice movement, we have no intention of further fetishizing the antiglobalization movement and glossing over its many shortcomings. Many of the tendencies we critique here were also apparent at that time. What is important to take away from comparisons between these two historical moments is that those in leadership positions within the contemporary movement that manifested in Copenhagen have learned all the wrong lessons from the past. They have discarded the most promising elements of the antiglobalization struggles: the total rejection of all market and commodity-based solutions, the focus on building grassroots resistance to the capitalist elites of all nation-states, and an understanding that diversity of tactics is a strength of our movements that needs to be encouraged.

The problematic tendencies outlined above led to a disempowering and ineffective mobilization in Copenhagen.Looking back, it is clear that those of us who traveled to the Copenhagen protests made great analytical and tactical mistakes. If climate change and global ecological collapse are indeed the largest threats facing our world today, then the most important front in this struggle must be against green capitalism. Attempting to influence the impotent and stumbling UN COP15 negotiations is a dead end and waste of energy when capital is quickly reorganizing to take advantage of the ‘green revolution’ and use it as a means of sustaining profits and solidifying its hegemony into the future.

Instead of focusing on the clearly bankrupt and stumbling summit happening at the Bella Center, we should have confronted the hyper-green capitalism of Hopenhagen, the massive effort of companies such as Siemens, Coca-Cola, Toyota and Vattenfall to greenwash their image and the other representations of this market ideology within the city center. In the future, our focus must be on destroying this reorganized and rebranded form of capitalism that is successfully manipulating concerns over climate change to continue its uninterrupted exploitation of people and the planet for the sake of accumulation. At our next rendezvous we also need to seriously consider if the NGO/non-profit industrial complex has become a hindrance rather than a contribution to our efforts and thus a parasite that must be neutralized before it can undermine future resistance.

Tim Simons and Ali Tonak can be reached at: anticlimaticgroup

http://www.counterpunch.org/simons01082010.html