Steve Arnott and Joanne Telfer look at the disappointment of the Copenhagen 15 Climate Change summit, reflect on the international left criticism of the Obama led accord, and ask where should the left go from here on the issue of climate change.

“One could say there is a spectre at Copenhagen, to paraphrase Karl Marx… almost no-one wants to mention it: the spectre of capitalism”

99999999999999999999999999999999-Copenhagen speech of Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan President

“If the climate were a bank, they would have bailed it out already”

99999999999999999999999999999999- Banner carried by Copenhagen protestors

The end of 2009 saw what was billed as the most important international summit on climate change since Kyoto. World leaders, government ministers and their political and scientific entourages gathered in Copenhagen with a view to reaching a legally binding agreement on global carbon emissions and a raft of measures to tackle both the urgent threat of global warming and its effects. Tens of thousands of climate change protestors also gathered to place pressure on the political leaders and ram home the message that tough radical and timely action was needed now.

The Copenhagen summit – formally known as the 2009 United Nations climate change conference – and referred to colloquially by sections of the media and the environmentalist movement as Cop 15, because it was the 15th conference of parties to the UN framework on climate change – took place between the 7th and 18th December in the Bella Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The background was certainly different to previous summits. Less than six months previously the scientific conference – Global risks: Challenges and Decisions – had met in the same venue. That conference reported that there was ‘little, or no good news’ on climate change, that sea levels could rise by as much as one metre as a result of climate change. A thorough review of the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) data of previous years led to only two conclusions. Firstly, despite the best efforts of climate change deniers, led by vested interests and the most rabid elements of the right wing UK Little Englander press, the only reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the science was that climate change was man made, due to carbon emissions and the planet had steadily been getting hotter since the industrial revolution. Secondly, that continued political inaction was now inexcusable.

Another major difference in mood and expectation had been engendered by the election of an American to the White House who wasn’t George Bush. In rhetoric as well as some (though some would say not enough) meaningful action, Barack Obama had shown an understanding of the need to take global warming and climate change seriously.  Here was someone who was appearing to listen to what the rest of the world was saying and who was clearly not in hock to ostrich headed shock jocks or Big Oil.

Prior to the summit UK prime Minster Gordon Brown took the unusual and politically dangerous step of ramping up expectations and pressure with a high profile public speech. Perhaps his eye was at least partly fixed on the upcoming general election, but most climate activists would regard his words as being accurate and apposite

We cannot afford to fail. If we fail now we will pay a heavy price. If we act now, if we act together, if we act with vision and resolve, success at Copenhagen is still within our reach, but, if we falter, the Earth will itself be at risk and, for the planet, there is no Plan B.

It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive, so goes the old Japanese proverb, and when the summit failed to reach a legally binding agreement, and instead settled for a Danish brokered accord committing only to some starting measures and a further conference to attempt to come to an agreement the international response was fairly damning, not just from the environmentalist movement and the left but from large sections of the media. Worse, not only had a meaningful and legally binding agreement not been reached, but there had been a clear split at the conference, with developing and largely southern nations accusing the Americans and the big Western economies, together with China, India and South Africa, of organising a stitch up behind closed doors.

In this contribution to the debate on where now after Copenhagen, we want to look at the reaction of the left, particularly of those left led nations who lined up against the accord, and the counter response from some in the pro-accord camp. We’ll want to constructively examine some of the alternative climate change programs being offered, and finally, draw some conclusions about the way forward in combating climate change.

View of the left led nations

The response of Fidel Castro, writing in the wake of the summit accord, was not untypical of the left, and in particular of the leaders of the Latin American countries who have been prepared to challenge capitalism. First of all he acknowledged the scale of the problem, and then placed the blame firmly at the door of the advanced capitalist economies, particularly the USA. It is worth quoting him at some length.

‘Climate change is already causing enormous damage and hundreds of millions of poor people are enduring the consequences.  The most advanced research centres have claimed that there is little time to avoid an irreversible catastrophe. James Hansen, from the NASA Goddard Institute, has said that a proportion of 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is still tolerable; however, the figure today is 390 ppm and growing at a pace of 2 ppm every year. Each one of the past two decades has been the warmest since the first records were taken, while carbon dioxide increased 80 ppm in the past 150 years.

The melting of ice in the Arctic Sea and of the huge two-kilometre thick ice cap covering Greenland, of the South American glaciers feeding its main fresh water sources and the enormous volume of ice covering Antarctica; of the remaining ice on Mt Kilimanjaro and the Himalayas, and the large frozen area of Siberia are visible. Outstanding scientists fear abrupt quantitative changes in these natural phenomena that bring about the change.

Humanity entertained high hopes in the Copenhagen climate summit after the Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997 entered into force in 2005. The resounding failure of Copenhagen gave rise to shameful episodes that call for due clarification.

The United States, with less than 5% of the world's population releases 25% of [industrial] carbon dioxide emissions. The new US president had promised to cooperate with the international effort to tackle a new problem that afflicts that country as much as the rest of the world. In the meetings leading to the summit, it became clear that Obama and the leaders of the wealthiest countries were maneuvering to place the burden of sacrifice on the emergent and poor countries.’  (our emphasis)

From the floor of the summit itself, in a similar vein, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela had applauded those demonstrators outside the summit calling for a radical package of social, economic and environmental measures and poured scorn on the attitude of the advanced and advancing big capitalist economies

‘There is a group of countries that believe they are superior to those of us from the South, to those of us from the Third Word… this does not surprise us… we are again faced with powerful evidence of global imperial dictatorship… There are many people outside... I've read in the news that there were some arrests, some intense protests there in the streets of Copenhagen, and I salute all those people out there, the majority of them youth… They are young people concerned for the world’s future.

I have been reading some of the slogans painted in the streets… One said, ‘Don’t Change the Climate, Change the System!’ And I bring that on board for us. Let’s not change the climate. Let’s change the system! And as a consequence, we will begin to save the planet. Capitalism is a destructive development model that is putting an end to life; that threatens to put a definitive end to the human species.’

Continuing his speech Chavez went to recommend a book by Herve Kampf, How the Rich are destroying the Planet:    

‘Do the rich think they can go to another planet when they’ve destroyed this one? Climate change is undoubtedly the most devastating environmental problem of this century. Floods, droughts, severe storms, hurricanes, melting ice caps, rise in average sea levels, ocean acidification, and heat waves, all of that sharpens the impact of global crisis besetting us.’

It would be wrong to say that the positions taken here by Castro and Chavez are the universal position taken up by the left and the rank and file environmentalist movement internationally, but they certainly constitute a clear thread that exists in most critiques of Copenhagen from the left and activist movement.  And justifiably so.

Surely it is beyond dispute that capitalism, based fundamentally on the drive for profit, and the developed and developing capitalist countries represent the major part of the problem of man made climate change? And equally, surely it is legitimate for the left to criticise an agreement that seems to go easy on those developed countries and gives no real guarantee of sufficient help to developing countries to develop their economies in a renewable fashion?

However, being right in a multilateral process may simply not be enough in a pragmatic sense. If the left accepts that climate change is a truly global problem, then we surely have to accept that any agreement that is going to mean anything will have to include big players – and big polluters – like China, Europe and America. Consequently we would argue that the left and developing nations should continue to speak out and advocate the deeper radical action that is required, but that they should continue to engage with the process. Ultimately, any legally binding agreement that includes the big industrialised nations and commits to significant levels of carbon emission reduction, even if imperfect, is better than no deal at all. And as the question of climate change sharpens internationally, existing agreements can always be revisited and sharpened under public pressure. Let’s see what Obama and the pro-accord voices had to say.

Is half a loaf better than no bread?
 
While criticism from the left and the developing nations was almost universal, there were voices welcoming the progress that had been made at the summit and warning against being locked in early to solutions that might not work
 
Dr Myles Allen, climate dynamics head at Oxford University said: “Current thinking that nationally negotiated emissions targets and a system of carbon trading will solve this problem is flawed. A legally binding regime based on that principle would lock us into that process, and it could take 20 or 30 years before it became sufficiently obvious it was not working.”
 
Under fire in the Danish Parliament for his role in the Accord, Denmark’s premier Lars Løkke Rasmussen, defended the point of view that a starting point with the promise of further negotiations towards a legally binding agreement was better than nothing
 
“I am not among those who believe that we reached in Copenhagen what we should have. But we created the Copenhagen Accord, which covers 76 percent of the world's CO2 emissions, while the current situation is that it is less than a quarter of the world's CO2 emissions that are regulated by the Kyoto Protocol.”
 
US President Barack Obama, very much the villain of the piece as far as Cuba, Venezuela and others were concerned, argued in his speech to the summit that it did represent a positive beginning. In words clearly at least partly aimed at a home electorate, he also made an appeal to stick with the process
 
‘The question is whether we will move forward together, or split apart. This is not a perfect agreement, and no country would get everything that it wants. There are those developing countries that want aid with no strings attached, and who think that the most advanced nations should pay a higher price. And there are those advanced nations who think that developing countries cannot absorb this assistance, or that the world's fastest-growing emitters should bear a greater share of the burden.
 
We know the fault lines because we've been imprisoned by them for years. But here is the bottom line: we can embrace this accord, take a substantial step forward, and continue to refine it and build upon its foundation. We can do that, and everyone who is in this room will be a part of an historic endeavor – one that makes life better for our children and grandchildren.
 
Or we can again choose delay, falling back into the same divisions that have stood in the way of action for years. And we will be back having the same stale arguments month after month, year after year – all while the danger of climate change grows until it is irreversible.’
 
Quite what the phrase ‘advanced nations who think that developing countries cannot absorb this assistance’ means, we don’t know. But it’s certainly an ill chosen, even patronising, phrase that cannot have helped matters. Perhaps one of Obama’s speech writers thought it necessary to reassure some of ‘the folks back home’ that their tax dollars weren’t winging their way to Fidel or Hugo!
 
Apart from that though, Obama’s speech was perhaps a plea for time and understanding. After all, he cannot commit to an agreement that he cannot deliver through the senate and congress. What would be the point?
 
One way to look at this is from the vantage point of dialectical materialism, rather than through the goggles of idealist quasi-vanguardism. This is the age-old problem for the left in distinguishing between ‘socialism, utopian or scientific’. The material conditions of humanity have a profound effect upon the ideas that pervade international and domestic politics and the strategies that are adopted. The essence of Marxism is not the Hegelian proposition that action is the child of its dialectical parents in pure ideology, but that material conditions dialectically shape perceptions, attitudes and actions
 
Whereas Marxists should be quite familiar with the dialectical process from which class consciousness and a recognition of the economic contradictions arises, climate change and the emergence of its own material consequences into human consciousness, is no less a dialectical process. What we now have is a convergence of two dialectical leviathans and green-left movements as evidence of that convergence. Furthermore the convergence is in itself dialectical because socialists and greens bring their respective historical baggage and perceptions of each other to the common ground.
 
The essential thing to realise is that Obama, being neither a green nor a socialist, but a radical pragmatist, is riding a dialectical tide. He takes his cue from the same scientific evidence as the rest of us, on the one hand but a different populace on the other. Climate change is and will continue to affect the poor disproportionately and the strong anti-socialist tradition, which currently rears against fiscal stimulus in the US, has its antithesis in the mandate given to those new left leaders in Latin America.
 
Though disappointing in its specifics, Obama’s approach marks a massive improvement from the abject denial of the Bush era. 
 
Anger at the summit’s outcome is natural, and criticism of the lack of urgency and power broking of the advanced nations is justified. But surely it is also legitimate to ask the following questions. Would Obama do more if he wasn’t a semi-prisoner of the US political system? Isn’t half a loaf better than no bread? And would even this limited accord, with its promise of a future legally binding agreement, have occurred had McLain and Palin won the American election?
 
Morales
 
Following the failure of the summit to reach a legally binding agreement, Bolivian President Evo Morales issued the following invitation to a people’s conference to be held in Bolivia in two months time
 
January 5, 2010 -- Considering that climate change represents a real threat to the existence of humanity, of living beings and our Mother Earth as we know it today; 
 
Noting the serious danger that exists to islands, coastal areas, glaciers in the Himalayas, the Andes and mountains of the world, the poles of the Earth, warm regions like Africa, water sources, populations affected by increasing natural disasters, plants and animals, and ecosystems in general; 
 
Making clear that those most affected by climate change will be the poorest in the world who will see their homes and their sources of survival destroyed, and who will be forced to migrate and seek refuge;
 
Confirming that 75% of historical emissions of greenhouse gases originated in the countries of the global North that followed a path of irrational industrialisation; 
 
Noting that climate change is a product of the capitalist system;
 
Regretting the failure of the Copenhagen conference (COP15) caused by countries called "developed", that fail to recognise the climate debt they have with developing countries, future generations and Mother Earth; 
 
Affirming that in order to ensure the full fulfilment of human rights in the 21st century, it is necessary to recognise and respect Mother Earth’s rights; 
 
Reaffirming the need to fight for climate justice;
 
Recognising the need to take urgent actions to avoid further damage and suffering to humanity, Mother Earth and to restore harmony with nature;
 
Confident that the peoples of the world, guided by the principles of solidarity, justice and respect for life, will be able to save humanity and Mother Earth; and Celebrating the International Day of Mother Earth;
 
The government of the Plurinational State of Bolivia calls on the peoples of the world, social movements and Mother Earth’s defenders, and invites scientists, academics, lawyers and governments that want to work with their citizens to the Peoples’ World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth’s Rights to be held April 20-22, 2010, in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
 
While such an initiative is to be welcomed and supported there are some elements of the language and assumptions within this invite that should not go unchallenged.
 
To describe climate change as a product of the capitalist system may be sufficiently robust in the form of slogans or banners but should be used more discriminately in the context of a formal political statement. It would be easy to imagine the counter claims from defenders of capitalism who might point to ecological disasters of the soviet era, such as the horrific scale of industrial pollution in the Black and Baltic seas
 
Also from our perspective it is not sufficient to explain away the environmental errors of former planned economies as consequences of deformed revolutions. The necessity for sustainable development, ecological protection and greenhouse gas management, has only become manifest in recent decades
 
Morales spoils a very sound factual approach by talking about ‘mother earth’ and her ‘rights’ which seems like an unnecessary excursion into Gaia theory.  If this is taken figuratively to mean the biosphere and the excessive disturbance of natural cycles then this is fine but there is a danger that the more extreme versions, which mystically depict our planet as an intelligent entity, might detract from what is otherwise a very sound argument. Should the reality of climate change become a debate between theists and animists then the theists are likely to win. Unfortunately a tipping point will be reached before ‘the son of God’ reappears to sort out the mess.
 
Klimaforum ‘People’s declaration’
 
The alternate event in Copenhagen, the Klimaforum, hosted by anti-globalisation and affiliated left wing organisations, issued the following statement
 
There are solutions to the climate crisis. What people and the planet need is a just and sustainable transition of our societies to a form that will ensure the rights of life and dignity of all peoples and deliver a more fertile planet and more fulfilling lives to future generations
 
We, participating peoples, communities and all organisations at the Klimaforum09 in Copenhagen, call upon every person, organisation, government and institutions, including the United Nations (UN), to contribute to this necessary transition. It will be a challenging task. The crisis of today has economic, social, environmental, geopolitical and ideological aspects interacting with and enforcing each other as well as the climate crisis. For this reason, we call for urgent climate action
  • A complete abandoning of fossil fuels within the next 30 years, which must include specific milestones for every five-year period. We demand an immediate cut in GHG of industrialised countries of at least 40% compared to 1990 levels by 2020. Recognition, payment and compensation of climate debt for the overconsumption of atmospheric space and adverse effects of climate change on all affected groups and people.
  • Recognition, payment and compensation of climate debt for the overconsumption of atmospheric space and adverse effects of climate change on all affected groups and people.
  • Rejection of purely market-oriented and technology-centred false and dangerous solutions such as nuclear energy, agro-fuels, carbon capture and storage, Clean Development Mechanisms, biochar, genetically "climate-readied" crops, geo-engineering and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), which deepens social and environmental conflicts.
  • Real solutions to climate crisis based on safe, clean, renewable and sustainable use of natural resources, as well as transitions to food, energy, land and water sovereignty. Therefore, we demand COP15 reach an agreement that will initiate the restoration of the environmental, social and economic balance of planet Earth by means that are environmentally, socially and economically sustainable and equitable, and finally come up with a legally binding treaty.

Again, while there is much to be welcomed here, some of the language and assumptions should not pass without comment from a genuinely socialist i.e., scientific rationalist point of view

In general the statement reads very much like an amended resolution where disparate views from within a broad coalition have been accomodated. In a sense this is inevitable because this is the voice of a broad coalition. However there is a danger of being too prescriptive. The solutions to climate change will need to be flexible and innovative and therefore it may be better to continue in the vein of the first paragraph. The second paragraph might have called for the implementation of the FAIR model (from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency) which recognises need for developed nations to carry the greatest burden.

Many of the specifics might be better viewed as devolved issues, with legally binding agreement on emission cuts, but flexibility in how they are achieved. There will be cases for example where biomass is the optimum solution but the general condition should be that this is not promoted at the expense of necessary food production. The nuclear option can usually be opposed on pure cost grounds because the renewable alternatives are generally more economical. However the apparent rejection of technological or ‘geo-engineering’ solutions in paragraph 3, is simply anti-scientific Luddism at its worst, and needs to be opposed. 

Of course, the historic shift away from fossil fuels is key and there may be those who feel that any appeal to geo-engineering solutions detracts from that message. However, global warming is real not a game of political purity, and furthermore it is happening now and on its own timetable. To rule out geo-engineering solutions which could delay or slow down global warming while the transition to a non-fossil fuel economy is made, and which could potentially save millions of lives seems to us to be perverse.

Problems of convergence

The false notion that capitalism had progressed beyond the inconvenience of periodic crisis seemed to fall apart in the grand financial meltdown of 2008 and 2009 but so far in the developed world, it seems to have been possible to plaster over the cracks without any return to a heightened class struggle such as reminiscent of seventies. This will be tested as huge austerity measures are called for to pay for the bank bailout. Vested interests will of course defend the status quo irrespective of class struggle - so long as they can operate above sea level.  

The left is learning that environmental issues need to be urgently addressed whilst the greens are learning that spooning solutions into the narrow channels of profit motivation will not result in a sufficiently rapid transition to a low carbon economy.

Activists from both traditions are informed and motivated but in the developed world this is not, as yet, currently translating into mass movements or coherent political formations.

History might tell us that dialectical processes often bubble along below the surface before erupting explosively in sharp political changes akin to the sudden release of a volcanic plug. Perhaps the plug in this analogy is represented by the rampant consumerism and ‘American dream’ preoccupation of contemporary capitalism, but it is also perhaps the fear factor of unknown alternatives and a contempt for the failures of old socialist models which have been widely discredited.

There is a blandness of politics in the mass media and mistrust of science in the post-modern psyche, which was succinctly postulated by Adam Curtis in "The Power of Nightmares”. The pervasive influence and limits of human experience however, have shown how consciousness can appear to move forward only to be thrown back again. The recent spell of unusually cold weather seems to have affected attitudes towards global warming by its apparent negation experientially in the short term.

Climate scepticism 'on the rise', BBC poll shows

The number of British people who are sceptical about climate change is rising, a poll for BBC News suggests.

The Populus poll of 1,001 adults found 25% did not think global warming was happening, an increase of 10% since a similar poll was conducted in November.

The percentage of respondents who said climate change was a reality had fallen from 83% in November to 75% this month.

And only 26% of those asked believed climate change was happening and "now established as largely man-made".

The findings are based on interviews carried out on 3-4 February.

In November 2009, a similar poll by Populus - commissioned by the Times newspaper - showed that 41% agreed that climate change was happening and it was largely the result of human activities.

A similar poll was carried out in the USA by the Pew research last October. Among those considering climate change a problem, only 35% think that is a "very serious" issue, down from 44% saying so last April. 32% of the interviewees do not see global warming as a serious problem, up from 24% recorded in April. 17% do not consider the matter a problem at all. Moreover, most US citizens do not believe that global warming is a result of human activity. This assumption is at the core of current efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.

33% reject the idea that global temperatures are actually rising. Another 16%, albeit acknowledging the existence of the phenomenon, do not attribute it to human actions. They think it is the consequence of natural patterns.

Those convinced that global warming is indeed a result of human activity dropped from 47% to 36% in just a few months, according to the Pew research

Abundant solutions

The inescapable irony of the situation is that a low carbon economy is technologically realisable. Wind, wave, tidal, solar voltaics, etc on a massive scale have now been available options for decades during which time they have become cheaper and more efficient.  Conversely because of the lack of public ownership and central strategic planning, and reliance on the private sector, progress has been abysmally slow.

Readers of New Scientist magazine have been excited by new developments in the concept of algae farming to produce either electricity or fuels for transport and the development of 5 kW batteries to assist with power storage. Meanwhile in the anarchy of market economics, angry nimbyist residents block planning applications. It’s impossible to design and optimise the transmission grids because there’s no overall plan.

Despite and because of the inadequacies of Copenhagen, the real movement to stop climate change and address global warming is only just beginning. There is an increasing awareness that relying on capitalism to go green because it makes commercial sense is asking at best for a lukewarm response to the problem, and that democratic public ownership, particularly of our energy, finance, construction and transport resources is now not only a socialist demand, but an environmentalist one, not only to optimise control over the timeline we are now running against in the battle to stop the planet overheating and the ice at the poles melting, but because it is increasingly clear that the battle for environmental justice and social justice, and against the undemocratic social power of capital, go hand in hand.

We call for the continued building of campaigning green left networks across the globe, and for the formation of new and credible green socialist parties to take on the dithering parties of the capitalist market in every corner of the world.  Democratic Green Socialism, in other words.

With thanks to Link, International Magazine for Socialist Renewal, from which some of the material for this article was taken