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NEWS & LETTERS, February 2008 - March 2008Bali 'road map' risks climate futureFor two weeks in December, governments of the world met in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, negotiating a "road map" toward a new treaty to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which expires in 2012. The Bush administration sabotaged the deal, squelching quantitative limits for greenhouse gas emissions. Embodying the spirit of capitalism, Bush showed himself ready to sacrifice the future of humanity for the short-term interests of the oil and coal industries. The conference came on the heels of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Even this conservative body of scientists concluded that reductions in greenhouse gases have to start immediately to avert a global climate disaster. From Kenya, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai issued a statement: "For the global South, especially Africa, environmental issues are not a luxury....Arresting the world's warming and protecting and restoring our natural systems are issues of life and death for much of the world's population." U.S. obstruction in the face of these warnings earned a chorus of boos, unheard of from a diplomatic gathering. Kevin Conrad of the small country Papua New Guinea was cheered when he called on the U.S. to "get out of the way." The rift is not just political but economic. In competition between the U.S. and developing countries--above all China and India--each points fingers at the other while expanding consumption of fossil fuels and emissions of greenhouse gases. Europe expects to profit from trading of carbon emission credits and from developing more energy-efficient technologies, so its current rift with the U.S. was expressed most sharply at Bali. But the real challenge to capital's reckless rush toward climate disaster came from below. On Dec. 8, over 150,000 people rallied in 84 countries--including thousands in Bali--for the third annual Global Day of Action Against Climate Change. A few days earlier, a "Bali Call" was released by a group of activists from every continent, appealing to governments to create a parallel set of negotiations for a "Global Economic and Energy Transition" toward "socially just and ecologically sound economies." Later, a week-long parallel conference organized by the Indonesian Civil Society Forum drew hundreds of participants--including environmental refugees from Pacific Islands, indigenous peoples endangered by schemes linking forests to carbon credit trading, and farmers. They raised the banner of "climate justice," bringing environmental justice to bear on climate change, for all the world to see. The official conference's direction was the opposite: everything was tied to market solutions, above all the growing market in carbon credits--that is, a business that wants to exceed its allowed amount of greenhouse gas emissions can buy credits from another business that does not expect to use up its allowance. Added to this is the so-called "Clean Development Mechanism" (CDM), under which businesses and other entities can earn credits by funding emissions-reducing projects in developing countries. The campaign to slow down deforestation was brought under this umbrella, likely leading to takeover of forest lands by private interests and dispossession of forest peoples. This is already happening, as the highly touted biofuels market has greatly increased demand for palm oil, stimulating destruction of forests in Indonesia to make way for palm plantations. The forest clearing contributes more to climate change than the resulting biofuels can make up for. The "road map" produced at Bali includes an Adaptation Fund to help poorer countries cope with the harm they are just starting to experience. While Oxfam estimated the needed funds at $50 billion, it is dubious that industrialized nations will contribute even 1% of that amount by 2012--although adaptation work is needed, as residents of New Orleans can attest to. The leading role given to the World Bank in this Fund was met with a demonstration at the conference itself, pointing out the sordid history of its "carbon finance" projects, 80% of whose funds have gone to coal, metal, cement, and gas companies. What the opposition from below keeps pointing to is the need for "a sustainable and equitable pattern of development," leading to a near carbon-neutral global economy where growth means improvement of human living standards, not capital growth. These environmental justice movements reveal the potential for driving toward fundamental social transformation from a capitalist-imperialist world to a new, human society. --Franklin Dmitryev |
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