Good Cop or Bad Cop?

So what are we to make of the failure of the meeting that was billed as our last chance to save ourselves as a species? The conference was a demonstration of the gap between media spin and political substance in the modern world. Nothing demonstrated this better than the impotence of the man who many of the world's disempowered have viewed as somebody who could wield power to make a difference. From rhetorical bravura to rhetorical bravado, in one short speech Obama demonstrated that, like every other US President, he is utterly controlled by the economic actors who dominate his domestic politics.

The clue to what was going on was given by the separation, in the wake of Obama's arrival, of emissions reductions from the transfer of cash to larger but less diplomatically savvy countries that were once part of the patronisingly titled 'third world'. 'We haven't managed to agree on emissions', went the spin, 'but the other main issue has been resolved'. The creation of US dollars from thin air is not, and never was the purpose of Copenhagen. As followers of this blog will know, creating money in this way is actually driving economic growth and environmental destruction. Worse still, this deal does not offer the bulk of the money until after 2020, by which time it will be much too late to make the cuts necessary to ensure a habitable environment for humankind on planet earth.

The most galling aspect of the conference was to have to accept lectures from the US about leadership in climate change. As the table makes clear, Obama would do well to adopt a position of humility rather than the arrogance he showed at Copenhagen. The numbers make clear who the main culprits are in terms of CO2 per capita, the only just way of measuring emissions. These figures should be the real focus of our attention, and until every number in the second column of that table stands at 1 or less then we are in very deep trouble.
Note: Data are for total greenhouse gas emissions, reported as equivalent to the impact of CO2. Gases included are: CO2, CH4, N2O, PFCs, HFCs, SF6.
Source: World Resources Institute, Washington DC: http://cait.wri.org.

This gives a sense of the scale of reductions in carbon emissions we are talking about. Not giving more money to Brazil or South Africa, not cutting by 9% or 17% or 23%, but completely changing our lifestyle so that we end the 200 years of oil-fuelled over-consumption and return to a balanced relationship with the earth that is the source of all our wealth.

Obama's purpose in travelling to Copenhagen was to sidestep the main issue of actually reducing emissions and shift the debate to an area he could control, i.e. the production of worthless pieces of paper by the US mint, and an issue where he could take the moral high ground, i.e. the regime of inspection. He has also provided himself with a media opportunity that will give him some leverage in taking a bill of sorts through the Senate.

The EU and Japan, who have been acting with a moderate degree of commitment on this issue, have been left sidelined by a degenerate superpower and a group of wannabee nations who ought to know better. Leadership is still possible, although a negotiated settlement may not be. The way ahead is clear: an agreement between the developed nations who are prepared to make cuts and the poorer countries of the world. The contraction and convergence model can be made to work first in a club of nations, with transfers of technology to be exchanged for our excess emissions during our period of transition to a low-carbon economy. Tweet

From Denial to Cognitive Dissonance

Two significant meetings are taking place this week. The conference in Copenhagen to address the science of climate change is receiving world-wide publicity. Our correspondents report that normally sober scientists are looking frightened in public: they have seen the evidence of environmental breakdown and their hair is turning white. That in Horsham, Sussex - a preparatory meeting for next month’s G20 —less so.

The meetings have different participants and different agendas because at present world leaders are seeing the environmental and financial crises as two separate issues. But they are not. We are facing a single economic crisis which can be summed up by the phrase ‘living beyond our means’. In financial terms, living beyond our means has resulted in a grossly inflated debt bubble whose explosion is decimating the world economy. In environmental terms, this same over-expansionist logic has resulted in over-exploitation of planetary resources and the atmosphere.

What we need to achieve at next month’s G20 is an economy that is stable and balanced. This cannot be achieved while we have a privatized financial system which relies on debt as the motor of the global economy. While Gordon Brown is focusing attention on bankers’ pay, re-regulation, and using the IMF to create yet more debt, the real issue is the need for a restructuring of the international financial architecture.

The financial system devised at Bretton Woods in 1944 guaranteed a lengthy period of peace and prosperity — at least for Western nations, but it did not respect planetary limits. The G20 should return us to a system of political management of the global economy but one which ties in an agreement on climate change. The evidence presented by scientists makes it clear that we can no longer wait for an agreement on climate change: radical cuts in CO2 emissions are needed now. Since it is economic growth that drives the increase in CO2 emissions we cannot achieve that outside the framework of a significant readjustment of the world’s economic system. Tweet