Climate Crisis: Our Last Chance
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An interesting take on the climate crisis.
“…Climate-change activists have made carbon dioxide public enemy No1. But CO2 emissions are really just a proxy for industrial development. The fact that African countries produce less CO2 is indicative of their lower levels of development than the West – and the dreadful poverty this entails for many of their inhabitants…”
While we make take issue that industrialisation and the proletarisation of rural workers is development, it is true that environmentalists by default aim at the continuation of inequality in developing and undeveloped nations.
“But CO2 emissions are really just a proxy for industrial development.”
That’s not really the case though is it? Maybe when fossil fuels were the only viable option, but not now. For example, China’s move away from fossil fuels and towards renewables doesn’t represent an industrial regression.
This article is just twaddle from a bunch of climate change deniers, why give them the oxygen?
DJP, China isn’t shifting substantially away from fossil fuels despite claims and increased application of renewables. Its coal consumption is predicted to continue to rise. Coal’s slice of the pie might be shrinking, but the pie is still getting bigger. It also plays a major role in growing coal demand abroad. Its financing new coal power plants in its foreign investments.
But I get the point. Africa, for example, should not be aiming to build giant dams and central power stations with energy transmitted by a grid network but should be concentrating on more efficient off-the-grid solar and wind sources.
However I felt the article wasn’t taking a denialist stance but highlighting that there are serious concerns that many environmentalists are calling for the end of growth…demanding even degrowth…totally ignoring that the vast majority of the world have still not got a secure comfortable decent life.
They expect the poor to stay poor for the sake of their relative rich privileges. Why should a Mumbai shanty town dweller remain without proper housing or sanitation so that a Miami beach-side residence remains above water?
In his articles advocating a socialist steady-state economy Pieter Lawrence acknowledges that there will be an initial rise in production and out-puts (hopefully off-set by the elimination of wasteful non-socially useful production) so that we remove slums, end inequality, end the poverty. That will take re-directing more resources into fixing the disparity.
It’s what those who promote de-growth either ignore or even object to.
Perhaps, though, I was reading into the article,those points and it was as you say, another form of denialism.
Talking of China and coal, it has been interesting to learn that China is financing a big coal-fired power station in Morocco. I learnt about this because last year news surfaced of a major infrastructure project to be carried out by the Spanish electrical company REE to create an absolutely huge electrical grid or highway which wull cut through the beautiful Alpujarras and Lecrin valleys south of Granada where I work and live , en route northwards to link up with other pasts of the national grid. Some of the pylons – nearly 100m high in some cases – would have a devastating visual impact on the whole area which is heavily dependent on tourism. Understandably the locals were enraged and the protestors have managed to stall the project for the time being (but for how long is anyone’s guess)
Corresponding with a local researcher , I discovered that this project is tied up with a much larger scheme promoted by the European Union – to create a much more integrated energy grid in the Iberian peninsula. Spain has huge potential for renewables – wind turbines can be found dotting the landscape in many parts of Andalucía and there are significant solar farms inland. The network in France which is sometimes subject to outages is reliant to some extent on Spanish energy. So while Spain sells surpluses to France , Spanish people have to pay some of the highest electricity prices in Europe.
Anyway, the connection with Morocco is that apparently there is going to be an underwater cable from Morocco feeding electricity into the Spanish grid. “Dirty energy” from Morocco will be topped with “clean energy” from renewables along the Mediterranean coastline and then the planned electrical highway will veer inland somewhere in Granada province I gather and head northwards ultimately towards France.
Come the day they start harvesting solar power on a massive scale in the Sahara desert, I imagine this particular electrical highway will become ever more strategically significant not just for Spain but for much of Europe and the environmental sensibilities of the locals will stand no chance against the power of big money
What’s wrong with electricity grids, national and international? They are a sign of how production is inter-related and part of the material basis for a worldwide socialist society. We will still need them in socialism. Small is not particularly beautiful. It is just small.
Its a matter of horses for courses, what is the most appropriate and fitting for the conditions.
Across the continent only 10% of individuals have access to the electrical grid, and of those, 75% come from the richest two quintiles in overall income. Less than 2% of the rural populations of Malawi, Ethiopia, Niger, and Chad have access to electrical power. Electrical provisioning in Africa has generally only reached wealthy, urban middle class, and commercial sectors, bypassing the region’s large rural populations and urban poor. According to recent trends, over 60% of Sub-Saharan Africans will still lack access to electricity by 2020. Even in the areas covered by the electrical grid, power is often unreliable: the manufacturing sector loses power on average 56 days out of the year
So that is the background over-view that has to be tackled.
I don’t think anybody is suggesting that we pull down the existing pylons and not make use of the electric grid that already exists. Nor even not to expand them. For example, South African coal power could be replaced with hydroelectric imported from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (when it is politically stable, that is) could save 40 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.
But we need not duplicate the past to supply the energy needs of those who do not possess or have erratic intermittent access.
There are two alternatives – mini-grids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-grids
and stand-alone house-hold systems
Both are quick solutions
When a centralised grid eventually arrives, they merely tap into what is already there.
What’s wrong with electricity grids, national and international? They are a sign of how production is inter-related and part of the material basis for a worldwide socialist society. We will still need them in socialism. Small is not particularly beautiful. It is just small.
Nothing wrong with electricity grids per se – provided they are buried underground! Of course under capitalism the cost factor militates against this but capitalist cost benefit analysis always understates the cost of externalities.
For example in the part of the world I live in overhead pylons can result in devastating bushfires through sparking. For that reason very wide strips have to be cleared around them and access roads created (in the Alpujarras alone about 80 hectares of woodland would have to be cleared and regularly strimmed but many existing strips are growing back because of the cost of maintenance Wildlife and in particular raptors are electrocuted – tens of thousands of them in Spain.
But the biggest impact is visual. Sorry but I think these giant pylons are grotesque monstrosities that destroy the beauty of places (my William Morris tendency is coming out here) never mind the consequences for the tourist industry. I would sincerely hope a socialist society would embark on a vast programme of decommissioning all pylons – at least those over a certain size – and burying the cables underground where they last much longer when not exposed to the elements, preferably alongside major roads to allow for easy access
I believe in some parts of Europe underground cabling is becoming much more common despite the greater initial costs. Holland I believe is leading the way but even here in Spain sections of the grid are buried underground. Damn good thing too
Electricity has been seen as essential for a future communist society by all sorts of critics of capitalism. From Lenin’s “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country” to Kropotkin’s detailed interest in it in Fields, Factories and Workshops as providing the basis for production in a decentralised society. Both were right. But you can’t will the end without willing the means.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/24/90-pe-cent-uk-africa-energy-deals-fossil-fuels
“More than 90% of the £2bn in energy deals struck at this week’s UK-Africa investment summit were for fossil fuels, despite a government commitment to “support African countries in their transition to cleaner energy” … A report by Greenpeace and Newsnight also found that UKEF spent billions of pounds abroad supporting fossil fuel projects that will emit an estimated 69 million tonnes of carbon a year…”
What do Greenpeace expect? The government negotiators and capitalist enterprises involved in such deals can’t help it. If fossil fuels are cheaper than renewables they’d be mugs not to do deals based on this as, if they didn’t, they would increase production costs and so undermine competitivity — and somebody else would come along and negotiate the cheaper fossil fuels deal. That’s the way it is under capitalism, especially on the international field where, unlike within capitalist states, there is no international body that can enforce measures in the longer term interests of capitalists and their system.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51233444
Mini nuclear reactors could be generating power in the UK by the end of the decade. Manufacturer Rolls-Royce has told the BBC’s Today programme that it plans to install and operate factory-built power stations by 2029.
Mini nuclear stations can be mass manufactured and delivered in chunks on the back of a lorry. “The trick is to have prefabricated parts where we use advanced digital welding methods and robotic assembly and then parts are shipped to site and bolted together,” said Paul Stein, the chief technology officer at Rolls-Royce.
Environmentalists are divided over nuclear power, with some maintaining it is dangerous and expensive, while others say that to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 all technologies are needed. However, the industry is confident that mini reactors can compete on price with low-cost renewables such as offshore wind.
Rolls-Royce is leading a consortium to build small modular reactors (SMRs) and install them in former nuclear sites in Cumbria or in Wales. Ultimately, the company thinks it will build between 10 and 15 of the stations in the UK. They are about 1.5 acres in size – sitting in a 10-acre space. That is a 16th of the size of a major power station such as Hinkley Point. SMRs are so small that theoretically every town could have its own reactor.
But Paul Dorfman from University College London said: “It’s far more economic to build one 1.2 GW unit than a dozen 100 MW units.”
Scientists are attempting to transform nuclear waste into batteries that can last for thousands of years. Next-generation diamond batteries that use energy from radioactive materials have already been developed and tested by researchers at the University of Bristol. Carbon-14 isotopes extracted from graphite blocks produced by the plant are infused with wafer-thin diamonds to create the batteries, which researchers say are capable of providing power on a “near-infinite basis”.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/24/david-attenborough-citizens-climate-assembly
The Citizens Assembly appears to be a promising idea but then I saw that David Attenborough is to offer it his opinion and I began to think of that computer saying “Garbage In Garbage Out.”
The principle that a randomly but representative selected assembly exercises democratic will of the people in theory seemed a good one but the information they receivecan be skewed. They will be given various presentations but who decides which ones and how many will be in conflict with the already prevailing general consensus albeit with what may be considered conflicting but which we wouldn’t judge a true choice.
Does the Assembly have the power to call witnesses? Then what is the process is there for it to be aware of the variety of ideas out there to hear? Do organisations such as ours have the right to address it? What is the procedure to apply?
It is easy to determine the outcome of the Citizens Assembly as it is any Public Inquiry by setting its remit and cherry-picking those whose voices is to be heard. Nor have I heard so far about any admittance of the public/media to watch the proceedings. Do we have the ability to leaflet and canvass the members of the Citizens Assembly ? If so how can lobbying by business interests be avoided?
Just a few questions that popped into my head when I read that some will have privileged access to the assembly and others such as ourselves , as always remain silenced.
Some of my fears proved unfounded. Attenborough restricted his comments to the idea of a popular assembly rather than parliaments and did not address them with any actual solutions to climate change
The corporate Democrats come out with their “Green New Dud”
“…The draft Climate Leadership and Environmental Action for our Nation (CLEAN) Future Act—largely seen as a “competing plan” to the Green New Deal—was announced earlier this month by the committee’s chair, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.). Crafted after 15 committee hearings, the bill (pdf) aims to ensure that the United States achieves net-zero greenhouse gas pollution by 2050…”
First get the GND off the agenda and then with compromises and concessions dilute this “CLEAN” proposal to make it acceptable to businesses.
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