Climate Crisis: Our Last Chance
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Positive/ negative, Scottish/alien – we have all mind-sets to contend with/appeal to. It seems to me it’s a matter of presenting facts however we can, in whatever style, language, format . . . . ultimately it’s the same massage –
capitalism or socialism
Having now read parts of the thread -belatedly- I apologise for my crass intrusion and callow comments, and I shall hereby endeavour to be a better read, red, before interjecting again.
However, having said that, I counted at least 3 Private Frazer’s, in the little of the thread I’ve actually read so far, and at least one of them appears to hail from Suffolk, or Sussex, somewhere south of the border anyway, where they had to invent a new word for bastardised Glasweagian –English.
How’s your Welsh btw Adam?
Another fine Celtic tounge originally sent south from Strathclyde. 😉
(Yes Matthew, the correct pronunciation is doo-ur, dour! 😆 And being one of that rare breed of Scots, a (near) teetotaler, enjoying only the rare dram of fire-water, I was never that big on the pished up shenanigans of the local public house anyway.)
Adam perhaps you’d like too, humorously, stereotype my “Chippewa” and, or, “Irish” blood as well as the “Scottish?” Have at it! 😎
As a member of the only “race” I care about, the human race, and an avowed longstanding Internationalist, I couldn’t care less:- in fact, I might even join in!? -Not certain, but who mentioned Private Frazer in the 1st place? 🤔
(Although it might become fodder for the “’45(%)ers” of North Britain who would love to latch onto it, in support of the idiotic reformist [minority- but when has democracy ever stopped a good nationalist] nonsense they are spouting about an “independent commonweal” while co-running capitalism and completely failing to make any meaningful dent in carbon emissions, let alone the “looming environmental catastrophe” that seems about as pointedly obvious as the nose on a good Roman face.)I should perhaps point out that I said “we may have lost but something is all we can do” (actually I blatantly stole the line from an Echo and the Bunnymen song, and used it uncredited, but I doubt that irrelevant titbit would bother the lads from Liverpool who actually wrote it) thereby forestalling the “they don’t really think they’re/we’re all doomed” arguement before it’d even gotten off the ground.
I, in common with many “climate scientists,” and, at least, a couple of other socialists, really think “we’ve” already passed the point of no return, or are, at the very least, approaching an “imminent existential threat” and have about as much chance as the proverbial snowball in hell, but I’m not the praying type (or much use at fiddling while Rome burns) and I won’t be waiting, breath bated, for capitalism/capitalists to fix the problems it/they’ve created, even when it’s so obviously in their own best intrest to do so.
(If “we” all followed the dictates of our own class interests, we’d have no need to be still tossing the socialist ball around our playground:- Socialism would’ve been a reality long ago.)
Alan mentioned something about bearing repeating. But Ill leave the last word, for now (time, tide, and massively inconvenient breaking waters, wait for no man) to the 3rd Frazer, my English brother (if I may make so
bold,or italic even) Suffolk Socialist: “I think you are grossly underestimating the threat. 1.5° warming isn’t scare mongering, it is likely. Over and above 2° is probable given that currently NOTHING is being done to stop it. The steps needed to prevent 2+° warming need action globally right now. Not next year or by 2020, now. Capitalism doesn’t even consider this to be a problem let alone begin to tackle it, so I think your assumption is a little flawed based on past events. In the past these kind of end of civilisation scenarios were not time limited and entirely in our control, this is neither.I understand your position of placing ourselves in a discreditable position by saying we are all going to die and then we don’t. I get that. But I think, even conservatively, we should be saying that if nothing changes life for the majority will become very uncomfortable indeed and for great swathes life will simply end.
I also think you underestimate the threat of runaway warming. We are not as big and clever as we like to think and if 2+° is reached even if socialism appeared, there would be little we could do to prevent massive changes to our planet. And that won’t take 80 years, the models say this is happening now and the effects are now and we have mere decades.”
*Oops:- Fukushima!
Nearly forgot it again.
Nuclear armageddon, doesn’t need to be some madman pressing the big red button, it could also come from any/many combination/s of the poorly maintained and designed, outmoded, outdated, civil nuclear facilities, dotted around the globe in perilous positions, and put under increased pressures and stresses from the “imminent existential threat” of continued global environmental degradation.
I don’t think offering false hope of a rosy red superabundant future, as some in the WSM, seem too, is either wholly honest, accurate, or advisable either.But, hey, that’s just another dour sweaty socks, oh so humble, personal opinion.
Came on here to find peace from trolls trots, TZM/TVPers, and what do I find? More non party members, and the usual argumentative bloody SPGBers. 🤣
The fight is fixed, we’ve already lost, but we might as well soldier, or party on.
Laters Gators.
“I don’t think offering false hope of a rosy red superabundant future, as some in the WSM, seem too, is either wholly honest, accurate, or advisable either.”
Malcolm, I would agree although, offhand, I can’t think of many proponents in the WSM of a “Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism.” in which our needs would be fulfilled with the mere push of a button on a console. Most I think would take a more sober and realistic view of the situation – that the establishment of socialism would be accompanied by a considerable structural transformation of the whole apparatus of production in which the quality and, even sustainability, of life will loom larger as an objective than mere quantitative increases in output – at least for many workers in what is today called the West.
I vaguely remember Hardy in an article in the SS suggesting something along the lines that some of these workers may very well have to put up with a reduction in consumption levels, come socialism, precisely in order to free up resources to alleviate capitalism’s legacy of grim derivation that many more other workers will be left to grapple with.
Its a small price to pay for a better world if you can call it a price at all. In some ways it would a release from the oppressive burden and accumulated clutter of consumerism . Speaking personally, I have little doubt that, in income terms, I would fall within the bottom 20 percent but, moving house recently, even I have been struck by the sheer amount of crap I have accumulated over the years and for which I have no practical or foreseeable use at all. It was bliss to give the stuff away to charity.
As socialists we should be not seen to be pandering to the ethos of consumerism or giving credence to the economists myths about human beings being insatiably greedy in their demands. “Abundance” should be redefined to mean simply what is sufficient to satisfy our reasonable needs with the emphasis on “reasonable” in this era of climate change
Marshall Sahlins’ great work the Stone Age Economics: The Original Affluent Society has much to teach us in this age of growing environmental constraint and in particular this passage from that book:
There are two possible courses to affluence. Wants may be “easily satisfied” either by producing much or desiring little. The familiar conception, the Galbraithean way- based on the concept of market economies- states that man’s wants are great, not to say infinite, whereas his means are limited, although they can be improved. Thus, the gap between means and ends can be narrowed by industrial productivity, at least to the point that “urgent goods” become plentiful. But there is also a Zen road to affluence, which states that human material wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate. Adopting the Zen strategy, a people can enjoy an unparalleled material plenty – with a low standard of living. That, I think, describes the hunters. And it helps explain some of their more curious economic behaviour: their “prodigality” for example- the inclination to consume at once all stocks on hand, as if they had it made. Free from market obsessions of scarcity, hunters’ economic propensities may be more consistently predicated on abundance than our own.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-35068-1
non-technical summary here
https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/science/2018/11/16/2000-ways-kill-the-world/
Researchers from Australia and Italy created 2000 variations of the planet we live on and then subjected them to different stresses such as runaway global warming, nuclear winter following the detonation of multiple atomic bombs, and a large asteroid impact.
“This is what surprised us: warming turns out to be the worst case scenario”.
“In the case of global warming in particular, the combination of intolerance to heat combined with co-extinctions mean that five to six degrees of average warming globally is enough to wipe out most life on the planet.”
In the 60s and 70s the Party did talk of socialism being “A World of Abundance”. This was even the front cover of the August 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard:
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970/
The Socialist Party of Canada reprinted it as a pamphlet with the same title.
I suppose this reflected the optimism of the period (“hope” of a better future). Today, on the contrary, pessimism is the dominant view (“fear/ threat” of a worse future). Inevitably this is affecting us, but I don’t think we should condemn technology. Ok, we can talk of a world capable of producing enough for everybody (and more) instead of “a world of abundance” but this still requires advanced technology. After all, technology, properly used under democratic social control, is going to be the way-out. Not just nuclear fusion but all the renewable energy sources require developing and applying technology, as Murray Bookchin explained in his 1968 article and pamphlet Towards A Liberatory Technology:
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/tolibtechpart2.html
p.s. As the moderator is allowing us some leeway to discuss the pronunciation of dour I assumed all Scotch people pronounced it “doo-ur”. That’s how I do. No doubt because my father was an Ulster Scot. Next we’ll be discussing how to pronounce “scone” (which of course is “scon”) … Better than discussing how many birds can dance on a non-material pinhead.
Blimey, life in this thread yet! And it’s SUSSEX chaps, I can’t afford Suffolk! 😉
I see what ALB is saying and I also agree with a lot of the Frazier’s comments, but the question is as a Party, what next?
Is it possible to update our climate pamphlet in light of the IPCC report and recent on street developments with Extinction Rebellion? New chapter on plastic waste?
Discussions with them and other green groups?
Posters of adverts in national newspapers/magazines directly making the link between the way we live with consumerism and capitalism driving climate change?
On other social media I have been highlighting simply how shops, manufacturers and the rest aren’t interested in climate change or reducing plastic use due to capitalism desire to seek profit first. Lots of people are waking up to the obvious facts that they can’t/won’t change and we can tap into this.
And as members, I think we need to put ourselves in the shoes of potential supporters / members – young people would flock to EXR as they offer something tangible NOW – its quick, its direct, its action, its exciting even if ultimately it is doomed to failure and reformist. For older members there are what seem initially more well thought out ideas that are being promoted heavily on social media;
https://www.triarchypress.net/drc.html#
We may see and understand the flaws in their thinking, but for a newcomer to politics, we both draw the same conclusions to the problems faced now, but they have here’s what we propose answer with concrete (if wrong) ideas and actions – we can be a little guilty of being a bit vague in some of our literature about what replaces the nitty gritty of capitalism. Convincing people to give up the familiar for the unknown is extremely difficult even if the familiar is killing them – think cigarettes!
So what action can we take?
Perhaps i am the optimistic one after all 😆
I’m with those singularity folk whose emphasis is on robotics, cybernetics, and automation …full luxury communism. I want Artificial Intelligence to do the thinking especially since most accidents are human error.
I actually think those deep green primitivists have lost the battle and are a fringe of the fringe of the fringe. After all, it was the mobile phone and social media that is organising Extinction Rebellion last week and it is technology that will monitor the success or failure of the implementation of their demands.
A couple of Guardian letters from those involved.
Our task is to ensure that this new generation of protesters and resisters do not march down the same road as previous generations. i already highlighted the Green New Deal – believing that the Democratic Party, the party of Wall St will be the salvation and their saviours.
Yup…if they view us as grumpy old men…then that is the role we should adopt. But then Noam Chomsky and Bernie Sanders are no youngsters and yet possesses a youthful audience.
The second of those letters links to an article in the Guardian last Friday under the headline:
Policies of China, Russia and Canada threaten 5C climate change, study finds
Be honest, does that not suggest that there is a threat that the average global temperature will rise by 5 degrees (which would indeed be a disaster that could trigger a runaway global heating}?
If, however, you read the smaller print in the article, what the study says is that if all the countries in the wold pursued the same “emission reduction” policies as these three then the average global temperature would rise by 5 degrees by the end of the century compared with the pre-industrial level (they have already risen by 1 degree since then, so it is a question of a rise by a further 4 degrees):
The study, published on Friday in the journal Nature Communications, assesses the relationship between each nation’s ambition to cut emissions and the temperature rise that would result if the world followed their example.
But other states aren’t and won’t be pursuing the same policies as the three in question (some couldn’t anyway). This is why I think the headline in the Guardian is tendentious and misleading and is the sort of thing that will have led to the writer of the first letter to think that there is an imminent threat of a runaway global warming.
There is an imminent threat (I would say likelihood) — of capitalist states not preventing average global temperature rising by 1.5 degrees since pre-industrial times by 2030, i.e by a further 0.5 degrees between now and then. The article explains why:
Under the Paris agreement, there is no top-down consensus on what is a fair share of responsibility. Instead each nation sets its own bottom-up targets according to a number of different factors, including political will, level of industrialisation, ability to pay, population size, historical responsibility for emissions. Almost every government, the authors say, selects an interpretation of equity that serves their own interests and allows them to achieve a relative gain on other nations. (emphasis added)
Precisely. Because of the competition between capitalist states to sell their products on world markets and to obtain the raw materials to generate energy they are unable to adopt a rational policy to slow down global warming.
There is another similar report on our blog that says the worst offenders – Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – would take the world beyond 4C.
(I had reservations that Saudi isn’t really an industrialised country but it could be its oil well gas flaring)
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2018/11/system-change-not-climate-change.html
the source
Just posted a summary of a summary of the IPCC report on the Extinction thread here:
Average global temperature has already risen by 1 degree since pre-industrial times, i.e. since 1750.
As a result of this, sea levels will continue to rise whatever is done now but, obviously, slower if something is done.
If the aim is to prevent a further rise of 0.5 degrees (on top of the already 1 degree rise, i.e by 1.5 degrees in total) by 2100 is to be achieved, CO2 emission will have to have been cut by 45% from 2010 to 2030.
The policies so far adopted after the last intergovernmental meeting on climate change in Paris in 2015 won’t achieve this.
Having now read the IPCC’s own summary of its report, I realise that I have been labouring under a misapprehension. I had assumed (like the rest of us here) that it was talking in terms of limiting the rise in average global temperature between now and 2030 to 1.5 degrees. In fact it was talking in terms of what extra measures needed to be taken up to 2030 to prevent a rise of 0.5 degrees by 2100 (to bring the rise to a total of 1.5 degrees since pre-industrial times, a rise of 1 degree having already happened.)
So, even if nothing more is done than at present or as presently planned the average global temperature will be nothing like 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2030. Such a rapid rise since 2010 would be a disaster ! What is being talked about is a rise of 0.5 degrees over an 80 year period; which on the basis of a crude back of the envelope calculation is 0.00625 per year and a rise of 0.075 degrees by 2030.
This has convinced me more than ever that to talk in terms of an increase in average global temperature by a further 4 or 5 degrees by 2100 is absurd and scare-mongering. For that to happen countries would have to increase the burning of fossil fuels, especially coal, by an enormous amount (I don’t know, perhaps three or four times present levels). Which is not going to happen and is in fact not happening. It may be increasing but at nothing like the extent or rate that would be required to increase the global average temperature by a further 3 or 4 degrees over the next 80 years.
There is a problem. Rising sea levels, more stormy weather, more forest fires, more droughts, desertification, etc will make things worse for millions of people but there is no “existential threat” either to civilisation or to the human species. For us to join those who say so would be opportunism and unscientific. Let’s stick to saying that only within the framework of socialism can the problem be rationally dealt with as, under capitalism, conflicting interests between competing capitalist states will mean that what will be done will be disorganised and too slow.
I think i am facing is statistical overload…too many figures and projections.
We do need to simplify the science
The main greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change have all reached record levels, the UN’s meteorology experts have reported.
Carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are now far above pre-industrial levels, with no sign of a reversal of the upward trend, a World Meteorological Organization report says.
“The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO<sub>2</sub> was 3-5m years ago, when the temperature was 2-3C warmer and sea level was 10-20 metres higher than now,” said the WMO secretary general, Petteri Taalas. “The science is clear. Without rapid cuts in CO<sub>2</sub> and other greenhouse gases, climate change will have increasingly destructive and irreversible impacts on life on Earth. The window of opportunity for action is almost closed.”
Prof Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia, said, “I am very concerned that all three gases most responsible for climate change are rising upwards unabated. It seems the urgency and extent of the actions needed to address climate change have not sunk in.”
Patricia Espinosa, head of the UN framework convention on climate change, said: “On one hand, greenhouse gas emissions have yet to peak …”
Levels of CO<sub>2</sub> rose to a global average of 405.5 parts per million in the atmosphere in 2017 – almost 50% higher than before the industrial revolution.
Levels of methane, a potent greenhouse gas responsible for about 17% of global warming are now 2.5 times higher than pre-industrial times owing to emissions from cattle, rice paddies and leaks from oil and gas wells.
Nitrous oxide, which also warms the planet and destroys the Earth’s protective ozone layer, is now over 20% higher than pre-industrial levels. About 40% of N2O comes from human activities including soil degradation, fertiliser use and industry.
“CO2 remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years and in the oceans for even longer. There is currently no magic wand to remove all the excess CO2 from the atmosphere,” said WMO deputy secretary-general Elena Manaenkova.
<p dir=”ltr”>IPCC chairman Hoesung Lee said: “That deep and rapid reductions of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will be needed in all sectors of society and the economy. The WMO greenhouse gas bulletin, showing a continuing rising trend in concentrations of greenhouse gases, underlines just how urgent these emissions reductions are.”</p><aside class=”element element-rich-link element–thumbnail element-rich-link–upgraded” data-component=”rich-link” data-link-name=”rich-link-1 | 1″>
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