On 2015/12/15 09:11 AM, Joseph Green wrote:
The "red lines" demonstration in Paris was the best thing that happened at the
Paris climate change summit, COP21...
Agreed... but from centrist-NGO civilized society came a stunningly weak
response, worse than I'd anticipated from the prior episode at the G7,
sigh. A couple of pieces to express the frustration:
*Climate terror from Paris could endure for generations*
/ZNet, /15 December 2015
Paris witnessed both explicit terrorism by religious extremists on
November 13 and a month later, implicit terrorism by carbon addicts
negotiating a world treaty that guarantees catastrophic climate change.
The first incident left more than 130 people dead in just one evening’s
mayhem; the second lasted a fortnight but over the next century can be
expected to kill hundreds of millions, especially in Africa.
But because the latest version of the annual United Nations climate
talks has three kinds of spin-doctors, the extent of damage may not be
well understood. The 21^st Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) generated reactions
ranging from smug denialism to righteous fury. The first reaction is
‘from above’ (the Establishment) and is self-satisfied; the second is
from the middle (‘Climate Action’) and is semi-satisfied; the third,
from below (‘Climate Justice’), is justifiably outraged.
Guzzling French champagne last Saturday, the Establishment quickly
proclaimed, in essence, “The Paris climate glass is nearly full – so why
not get drunk on planet-saving rhetoric?” The /New York Times /reported
with a straight face, “President Obama said the historic agreement is a
tribute to American climate change leadership” (and in a
criminally-negligent way, this is not untrue).
Since 2009, US State Department chief negotiator Todd Stern successfully
drove the negotiations away from four essential principles: ensuring
emissions-cut commitments would be sufficient to halt runaway climate
change; making the cuts legally binding with accountability mechanisms;
distributing the burden of cuts fairly based on responsibility for
causing the crisis; and making financial transfers to repair
weather-related loss and damage following directly from that historic
liability. Washington elites always prefer ‘market mechanisms’ like
carbon trading instead of paying their climate debt even though the US
national carbon market fatally crashed in 2010.
In part because the Durban COP17 in 2011 provided lubrication and – with
South Africa’s blessing – empowered Stern to wreck the idea of Common
But Differentiated Responsibility while giving “a Viagra shot to
flailing carbon markets” (as a male Bank of America official cheerfully
celebrated), Paris witnessed the demise of these essential principles.
And again, “South Africa played a key role negotiating on behalf of the
developing countries of the world,” according to Pretoria’s environment
minister Edna Molewa, who proclaimed from Paris “an ambitious, fair and
effective legally-binding outcome.”
Arrogant fibbery. The collective Intended Nationally Determined
Contributions (INDCs) – i.e. /voluntary /cuts – will put the temperature
rise at above 3 degrees. From coal-based South Africa, the word
ambitious loses meaning given Molewa’s weak INDCs – ranked
<http://climateactiontracker.org/countries/southafrica.html>by
ClimateActionTracker as amongst the world’s most “inadequate” – and
given that South Africa hosts the world’s two largest coal-fired power
stations now under construction, with no objection by Molewa. She
regularly approves increased (highly-subsidised) coal burning and
exports, vast fracking, offshore-oil drilling, exemptions from pollution
regulation, emissions-intensive corporate farming and fast-worsening
suburban sprawl.
A second narrative comes from large NGOs that mobilised over the past
six months to provide mild-mannered pressure points on negotiators.
Their line is, essentially, “The Paris glass is /partly/ full – so sip
up and enjoy!”
This line derives not merely from the predictable back-slapping
associated with petit-bourgeois vanity, gazing upwards to power for
validation, such as one finds at the Worldwide Fund for Nature and
Climate Action Network, what with their corporate sponsorships. All of
us reading this are often tempted in this direction, aren’t we, because
such unnatural twisting of the neck is a permanent occupational hazard
in this line of work.
And such opportunism was to be expected from Paris, especially after
Avaaz and Greenpeace endorsed
<http://triplecrisis.com/avaazs-climate-vanity/>G7 leadership posturing
in June, when at their meeting in Germany the Establishment made a
meaningless commitment to a decarbonised economy – in the year 2100, /at
least fifty years too late/.
Perhaps worse than their upward gaze, though, the lead NGOs suffered a
hyper-reaction to the 2009 Copenhagen Syndrome. Having hyped the COP15
Establishment negotiators as “Seal the Deal!” planet-saviours, NGOs
mourned the devastating Copenhagen Accord signed in secret by leaders
from Washington, Brasilia, Beijing, New Delhi and Pretoria. This was
soon followed by a collapse of climate consciousness and mobilisation.
Such alienation is often attributed to activist heart-break: a
roller-coaster of raised NGO expectations and plummeting Establishment
performance.
Possessing only an incremental theory of social change, NGOs toasting
the Paris deal now feel the need to confirm that they did as best they
could, and that they have grounds to continue along the same lines in
future. To be sure, insider-oriented persuasion tactics pursued by the
42-million member clicktivist group Avaaz are certainly impressive in
their breadth and scope. Yet for Avaaz, “most importantly, [the Paris
deal] sends a clear message to investors everywhere: sinking money into
fossil fuels is a dead bet. Renewables are the profit centre. Technology
to bring us to 100% clean energy is the money-maker of the future.”
Once again, Avaaz validates the COP process, the Establishment’s
negotiators and the overall incentive structure of capitalism that /are
the proximate causes of the crisis./
The third narrative is actually the most realistic: “The Paris glass is
full of toxic fairy dust – don’t dare even sniff!” The traditional
Climate Justice (CJ) stance is to delegitimise the Establishment and
return the focus of activism to grassroots sites of struggle, in future
radically changing the balance of forces locally, nationally and then
globally. But until that change in power is achieved, the UNFCCC COPs
are just Conferences of Polluters.
The landless movement Via Campesina was clearest: “There is nothing
binding for states, national contributions lead us towards a global
warming of over 3°C and multinationals are the main beneficiaries. It
was essentially amedia circus.”
Asad Rehman coordinates climate advocacy at the world’s leading
North-South CJ organisation, Friends of the Earth International: “The
reviews [of whether INDCs are adhered to and then need strengthening]
are too weak and too late. The political number mentioned for finance
has no bearing on the scale of need. It’s empty. The iceberg has struck,
the ship is going down and the band is still playing to warm applause.”
And not forgetting the voice of climate science, putting it most
bluntly, James Hansen called Paris, simply, “bullshit.”
Where does that leave us? If the glass-half-full NGOs get serious – and
I hope to be pleasantly surprised in 2016 – then the only way forward is
for them to apply their substantial influence on behalf of solidarity
with those CJ activists making a real difference, at the base.
Close to my own home, the weeks before COP21 witnessed potential
victories in two major struggles: opposition to corporate coal mining –
led mainly by women peasants, campaigners and lawyers – in rural
Zululand, bordering the historic iMfolozi wilderness reserve (where the
world’s largest white rhino population is threatened by poachers); and
South Durban residents fighting the massive expansion of Africa’s
largest port-petrochemical complex. In both attacks, the climate-defence
weapon was part of the activists’ arsenal.
But it is only when these campaigns have conclusively done the work COP
negotiators and NGO cheerleaders just shirked – leaving fossil fuels in
the ground and pointing the way to a just, post-carbon society – that we
can raise our glasses and toast humanity, with integrity. Until then,
pimps for the Paris Conference of Polluters should be told to sober up
and halt what will soon be understood as their fatal attack on Mother Earth.
***
*Avaaz’s climate vanity: Upward gazing can be politically blinding*
/Triple Crisis <http://www.triplecrisis.com/avaazs-climate-vanity/>, /17
June 2015
Who’s not heard the great African revolutionary Amilcar Cabral’s
injunction
<https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/cabral/1965/tnlcnev.htm>, fifty
years ago, “*/Tell no lies and claim no easy victories/*”? If, like me,
you’re a petit bourgeois who is hopeful for social progress, then let’s
be frank: this advice hits at our greatest weakness, the temptation of
back-slapping vanity.
The leading framers for the 41-million strong clicktivist team from
Avaaz need to remember Cabral. They over-reached ridiculously last week
in praising the G7:
/Many told us it was a pipe dream, but the G7 Summit of leading world
powers just committed to getting the global economy off fossil fuels
forever!!! Even the normally cynical media is raving that this is a huge
deal. And it’s one giant step closer to a huge win at the Paris summit
in December – where the entire world could unite behind the same goal of
a world without fossil fuels – the only way to save us all from
catastrophic climate change… Our work is far from done, but it’s a day
to celebrate – click here to read more and say congratulations to
everyone else in this incredibly wonderful community!!/
Actually, according to /The Economist/
<http://www.economist.com/news/international/21653964-why-g7-talking-about-decarbonisation-sort>/:
/“*no fossil-fuel-burning power station will be closed down* in the
immediate future as a result of this declaration. The goal will *not
make any difference to the countries’ environmental policies*, since
they are mostly consistent with this long-range goal anyway. Where they
are not (some countries are increasing coal use, for example) they will
*not be reined in* because of the new promises… the G7’s climate effort
raises as many questions as it answers. The group seems to have
*rejected proposals for more demanding targets*, such as decarbonisation
by 2050.”
Or /Time/
<http://time.com/3918982/g7-summit-obama-united-states-isis-russia/>:
“*The results were disappointing* to say the least… The G7 announced an
‘ambitious’ plan to phase out all fossil fuels worldwide by 2100.
Unfortunately, *they didn’t make any concrete plans to scale back their
own conventional fuel consumption.* That’s a big deal when 59 percent of
historic global carbon dioxide emissions—meaning the greenhouse gases
already warming the atmosphere—comes from these seven nations. Taken as
a group, G7 coal plants produce twice the amount of CO2 as the entire
African continent, and at least 10 times the carbon emissions produced
by the 48 least developed countries as a whole. *If the G7 is serious
about tackling climate change, they should start at home*.”
So what was going on, really? Here’s a talking head from the /Council on
Foreign Relations/
<http://atimes.com/2015/06/what-matters-and-what-doesnt-in-the-g7-climate-declaration/>
(an imperialist braintrust): “The United States has long pressed for
a*shift away from binding emissions reduction commitments* and toward a
mix of nationally grounded emission-cutting efforts and binding
international commitments to transparency and verification. European
countries have often taken the other side, emphasizing the importance of
binding targets (or at least policies) for cutting emissions. Now it
looks like the*big developed countries are on the same page as the
United States*. The language above is all about binding countries to
transparency – and *there isn’t anything elsewhere in the communiqué
about binding them to actual emissions goals*.”
There is an even tougher critique from the left, e.g. from Oscar Reyes
of the Institute for Policy Studies, who annotated the G7 climate
communique here
<http://genius.com/6767353/G7-leaders-declaration-g7-summit-climate-section/The-upper-end-of-the-latest-ipcc-recommendation-of-40-to-70-reductions-by-2050-compared-to-2010>.
He lands many powerful blows, not least of which is that you simply
cannot trust these politicians. This is well known
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/07/02/us-g8-africa-idUSL0162462220080702>
in Africa. Exactly a decade ago, Tony Blair led the (then-G8) Gleneagles
Summit that made all manner of ambitious redistributive promises for the
continent that weren’t fulfilled.
Another promise to look at more critically is whether ‘net zero’ carbon
emissions by 2100 will be gamed through ‘false solutions’ like Carbon
Capture and Storage, dropping iron filings in the ocean to create algea
blooms, and expansion of timber plantations to suck up CO2. The most
serious watchdogs here, the ETC group
<http://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/2015/06/net-zero-is-not-zero-the-g7s-dystopian-decarbonization/>,
ActionAid
<http://www.actionaid.org/sites/files/actionaid/caught_in_the_net_actionaid.pdf>
and Biofuelwatch
<http://dcgeoconsortium.org/2014/11/10/uncertainties-is-an-understatement-when-it-comes-to-beccs/>,
agree that the G7 needs to reverse its energy ministers’ recent
endorsement of these Dr Strangelove strategies.
Put it all together, and after last week’s Elmau G7 Summit, admits even
Oxfam
<http://www.euractiv.com/sections/sustainable-dev/ngos-unsure-lukewarm-g7-climate-deal-315218>
(often also upward gazing), “This lukewarm summit result will *only make
the fight harder, if not impossible*.”
Avaaz are not only embarrassingly contradicted on their right flank. The
organisation’s premature celebration is /dangerous. /After all, the
conservative (pro-market pro-insiderism anti-activism) wing of ‘climate
action’ politics – as distinct from climate /justice /advocacy – is
gaming us all now, arguing that the Paris COP21 can result in a victory.
Avaaz just amped up that narrative.
Will the mild-mannered Climate Action Network (CAN) join a big all-in
tent to maximise Paris popular mobilisations? In 2011 at the COP17,
that’s the approach that civil society tried in Durban, to my regret
<imap://[email protected]:143/www.ephemerajournal.org/sites/default/files/12-1bond.pdf>.
I think CJ activists drawing in CAN – and Avaaz – may be making a
serious mistake
<http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Climate-Movement-Across-Movements-20150326-0035.html>.
For this surprising Avaaz spin – declaring victory at the G7 – compounds
the essential problem of mis-estimating the rigour of the fight ahead.
The reality: if we don’t dramatically change the balance of forces and
applaud activists who do much more militant modes of engagement, then
global COP malgovernance continues another 21 years. Civil disobedience
has beenbreaking out
<https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/reversing-climate-change-what-will-it-take/>
in all sorts of blockadia spaces, and so surely Avaaz should put 99% of
its climate advocacy effort into amplifying the work of those heroes?
From Paris, one of the main organisers of COP21 protests, Maxime
Combes, was suitably cynical
<http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/maxime-combes/090615/linertie-du-g7-prepare-de-nouveaux-crimes-climatiques-decryptage>
about the G7, which “had already committed in 2009 (in Italy) to not
exceed 2° C and to achieve a reduction of at least 50% of global
emissions by 2050. So nothing new in the 2015 declarations except that
at that time they had also committed to reduce by 80% or more their own
emissions by 2050. No mention of this target is present in the
declaration this year.” Avaaz is young, yes, but still should be able to
recognise /backsliding /over the half-dozen years.
Last September, I was greatly heartened
<http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Climate-Justice-Resurfaces-amidst-New-Yorks-Corporate-Sharks-20140924-0082.html>
by Avaaz mobilising (not messaging), against what were my own prior
predictions
<http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12381>
(on /RealNews /from 4’00”, reflecting pessimism thanks partly to Avaaz’s
awfully unfortunate New York subway adverts
<https://twitter.com/pinelli_adrien/status/505485038381965312>, putting
“hipsters and bankers in the same boat march”). That wonderful mass
march linked the issues and put non-compromising placards high into the
air (way higher than ‘climate action’ or pro-nuke or pro-cap-and-trade),
and the next day, the Flood Wall Street protest hit corporations hard
for a few hours. Avaaz and allies appropriately had us marching */away
/*from the UN, because after all nothing useful has happened there
regarding air pollution – or any global crisis for that matter – since
the 1987 Montreal Protocol addressed the ozone hole by banning CFCs.
And I am also one who appreciates Avaaz’s excellent petition machinery.
(It’s in use now generating awareness and solidarity for truly excellent
anti-mining campaigns two hours south
<https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Investors_of_Mineral_commodities_LTD_MRC_Stop_forced_mining_on_South_Africas_Wild_Coast/?sTLrPib>
and north
<https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Susan_Shabangu_Minister_of_Mineral_Resources_Reject_Ibutho_Coals_application_for_a_mine_on_the_boundary_of_iMfolozi/?pv=14>
of where I live in Durban, for example.) So this is not a standard lefty
critique of clicktivism. It is a recognition of how desperately
important it is for Avaaz to retain maximum credibility in the
mainstream and among hard-core activists alike. Endorsing the world’s 1%
politicians is quite surreal, given how little they did last week in
Bavaria, what with their 85-year time horizon and orientation to false
solutions.
Avaaz wasn’t alone, by the way. From a press release
<http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/media-center/news-releases/Greenpeace-Responds-to-Climate-Progress-at-Todays-G7-Meeting/>
I learned from Greenpeace’s international climate politics officer
Martin Kaiser: “Elmau delivered.” Also, from Greenpeace US Energy
Campaign director Kelly Mitchell, “Leaders at the G7 meeting have put
forward a powerful call to move the global economy away from fossil
fuels and toward a renewable energy future. Heading into the Paris
climate meeting this year, it’s a significant step toward securing a
commitment to 100% renewable energy by 2050.”
Tell no lies, claim no easy victories. What I hope might happen is that
in future Avaaz, Greenpeace and similar well-meaning activists might at
least see it in their interest to tell the truth and intensify the
battle */against/* the leaders of the G7 (and the BRICS too) */and
especially against /*the corporations that yank their chains. Instead of
Avaaz massaging
<https://www.facebook.com/Avaaz?rf=106321336073398&filter=2> the G7
elites for “sending an immediate signal to dirty and clean energy
investors that will help accelerate the clean-energy boom we desperately
need,” as if capitalism can solve the climate crisis, why not re-boot
the power relations?
How about this wording, instead: “Since the G7 rulers finally recognise
that fossil fuels must stay underground, /duh!/, but still*/fail to act
decisively to that end/*, we in Avaaz condemn the politicians. We’ll
redouble our efforts to target their biggest fossil investors. We’ll do
so through not only divestment – achieved by small investor committees
in wealthy Global North institutions – but now we’ll also turn Avaaz’s
mighty 41-million strong listserve towards consumer boycotts of the
corporations and especially the banks that have the most power over
these G7-BRICS politicos. And we’ll get legal and media support for
anyone blockading these firms, since the ‘necessity defence’ for civil
disobedience is becoming much more vital to our world’s near-term
survival. Even the Pope’s new climate Encylical agrees.”
Wouldn’t that be a more satisfying and nutritious strategy than the
climate junkfood email that millions just received from Avaaz? I really
felt a little sick after consuming it. Surely Avaaz can see the merits
of shifting the goalposts to the left each time they have a chance, and
thus /enhancing the climate justice struggle/ – not joining the G7 in
a/fatal climate snuggle/.
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