The ConDem coalition government has shown its true shade of green with new proposals to reward households who produce more recycling waste. The plans, announced last week by Communities Secretary, Conservative Eric Pickles (whose name just seems to capture his essence), are ostensibly designed to reduce waste going into landfill sites around the country. In reality they illustrate how the government’s commitment to market idealism trumps any supposed commitments to the environment made during the election campaign or before.
Microchips are being fitted to wheelie bins and household waste measured on collection, in a pilot scheme being rolled out to 60, 000 households in the Conservative-controlled borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in the southeast of England. The scheme rewards households for producing more recyclable waste, with a loyalty-card like system whereby residents collect points for their recycled rubbish, which are then exchanged for shopping and restaurant vouchers for up to the value of £130. While there are not yet plans to create a national scheme, Pickles’ endorsement could mean other English local authorities follow suit in the near future.
The previous New Labour administration had toyed with the idea of microchips in bins before, tabling both incentive schemes like this one and the contrasting approach of introducing tax-like penalties for households sending too much waste to landfill. The latter idea generated a fearful response from the tabloids, with the Daily Mail warning of “Spy chips hidden in 2.5 million dustbins” and “council snoopers [planning] pay-as-you-throw tax” in March this year.
However both the carrot of the incentive scheme and the stick of the waste tax are misplaced policies that fail to tackle the real causes of the excessive quantities of rubbish our society produces. As philosopher and environmentalist James Garvey argued in the Guardian last week, the point should be to reduce waste overall, not just change the bins people use to dispose of it. The old environmental adage, “reduce, reuse, recycle” was in that order for a good reason. Recycling of recyclable materials should be the last resort, with far greater emphasis on reducing the amount of waste produced in the first place. This is because while recycling is certainly better, and more energy efficient, than sending waste to landfill and creating new products and packaging from scratch using raw inputs (like oil for plastics, trees for paper and card or metal ores for tin cans), it is still an energy-intensive and environmentally destructive process, especially as recycling too has been left to the fate of the market.
John Vidal reported in 2004 that over one third of recycling waste collected in the UK was being sent 8,000 miles around the world for processing in China, without any consideration for the environmental and social consequences – especially as China is quickly becoming one of the most polluted countries in the world, with very little in the way of legal protection for the environment or exploited workers. The Environment Agency admits that the practice of exporting recycling waste has continued to expand, suggesting on their website that, “If you work for a local authority or company that is involved in waste management, an increasing amount of the wastes you collect and process for recycling and re-use will ultimately be exported.” They report that the volume of waste exported doubled from seven million tonnes in 2002 to 14 million tonnes last year.
Sometimes SSY members try to sneak back after their 27th birthday
However even if recycling were rationally planned and performed locally to good environmental standards, it would still be far less efficient than producing less stuff in the first place. The problem with both the bin tax and the incentive scheme is they do little or nothing to reduce the amount of rubbish produced. The Tories’ incentive scheme could even potentially increase the amount of waste generated. As Garvey describes it:
“The point of recycling has to do with understanding the importance of reducing waste in a finite world. It costs energy and resources to make a plastic bottle, fill it with water, package it and ship it to your local shop. We currently get almost all of that energy by burning fossil fuels and doing damage to our climate. The resources which go into the bottle’s production, distribution and disposal might have been used in other, better ways. Once empty, the bottle might take up space in a landfill or end up in the ocean. If you understand the value of reducing waste in a finite world – if you want to avoid a hand in wasting energy, causing climate change, squandering resources, poisoning oceans – you might think twice about buying a bottle of water. If you recycle because you earn reward points for doing so, you might just buy a lot of plastic bottles.”
This also points to the second problem with market-based “solutions” to environmental problems, that of inequality. The pay-as-you-throw tax proposal would have affected all households equally, regardless of income or the availability of opportunities for avoiding excessive packaging and wasteful consumption. Only those with access to gardens or allotments, as well as spare time, are in a position to compost their food wastes, for example. Similarly the incentive scheme encourages wasteful consumerism – especially rewarding those who can afford to consume the most – while celebrating that it might persuade a few more to use the right kinds of bins for the right kind of rubbish.
A complete rethink of priorities is necessary to really challenge the way waste is produced and dealt with, rather than simply attempting to tinker with people’s behaviour to get a few more items in recycling bins and a few less in the ground or floating in the sea. Supermarkets, the food industry and other commercial interests need to be challenged and prevented from covering everything in maddeningly excessive packaging. People should be given the opportunity and be encouraged to consume less stuff and live less wastefully, not just cajoled into using recycling bins, whether by carrot or stick. The logic of free market capitalism has been the cause of excessive waste and environmental destruction. Are we really expected to believe that a market-based response can do anything to reverse that?
The attempt by Aberdeen SSP to conduct a serious interview on the issue of free public transport was left in disarray last night after a (no doubt drunken) passerby interrupted SSP candidate for Aberdeen North Ewan Robertson’s attempt to explain the policy. Rather than discuss issues of climate change, reversing rip-off privatised transport with a free, publicly owned service run for people’s needs while reducing congestion and carbon emissions, the interview was cut short as a local Aberdonian vented his anger at Donald Trump. This is probably in response to Trump’s efforts at building an elite golf course in Aberdeenshire which will destroy the beautiful and environmentally rare sand dunes, as well as threatening the local resisdent’s with compulsory purchase orders i.e. evicting them from their homes, if he can get Aberdeenshire Council on side. Then again, we’ll never know…
In response to the utter failure of the world’s governments to tackle the climate crisis in Copenhagen, the left wing government in Bolivia has organised a people’s summit.
Bolivia, Venezuela and other radical developing countries refused to sign the deal that rich countries like Britain and the US tried to force through the Copenhagen summit, exposing it as a scam that would have shifted responsibility on to poorer nations instead of those responsible for climate change. In response, the British government withdrew £2.3 million of climate aid from Bolivia.
The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth is bringing together 15, 000 people from environmental groups, organisations for indigenous people, writers, scientists and activists. It’s taking place in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba, where 10 years ago the people won a historic victory against water privatisation that helped pave the way for a left wing government taking power and the moves towards socialism that grassroots organisations in Bolivia are trying to carry out now.
The summit is expected to take proposals to the next UN meeting on climate change in Mexico later this year. These are expected to include a global referendum asking people to vote on solutions to climate change, as well as in an international climate justice court in which major polluters could be prosecuted for their harm to the planet. The conference will demand that rich countries open their borders to allow in the millions of climate refugees created by their own pollution. They also want the UN to draw up an international charter of rights relating to climate change and the environment, such as the right to clean, unpolluted fresh water.
Bolivian President Evo Morales
Bolivian President Evo Morales opened the summit with a chant of “For the planet or for death!”, and went on to say:
“Capitalism is the major element responsible for the destruction of the Earth. Capitalism depends on the greatest profit possible. Yet globalization is manifestly creating poverty. For capitalism, we’re only consumers or workers. There is no other aspect to our identities. Capitalism commodifies everything. We must choose either corporations and death or life. We cannot live in harmony with Earth when a few people are controlling the vast majority of the planet. Our new system of collectivist socialism will solve these problems. We are against unlimited development.
We are united here to celebrate the role of indigenous peoples as stewards of the Earth and as an alternative to unsustainable development. Mother Earth belongs to all of us and cannot be sold. Capitalism is synonomous with the destruction of the planet.”
He went on to criticise dependence on plastic materials, which pollute the environment for thousands of years. He contrasted ponchos made of plastic to traditional indigenous ones made of wool, pouring water over the wool poncho to demonstrate how it was more waterproof. This was evidence, he said, of how we needed to return to indigenous ways in order to save the planet.
Political Prisoner of the US, Leonard Peltier
Some of the most inspiring messages to the conference came from people who couldn’t attend it physically. Leonard Peltier is a Native American political prisoner in the US. He has been imprisoned since 1977 for a murder he did not commit. Peltier was one of a group of civil rights activists who were attacked by the FBI on a reservation in 1975, and in the resulting shootout an activist and two FBI agents were killed. It should be remembered that at this time the FBI was effectively at war with the people of the Pine Ridge reservation, which had a higher murder rate than the city of Detroit, as many activist were killed or disappeared with no investigation. At Peltier’s trial witnesses were coerced and false evidence introduced, leading to his sentence of life imprisonment.
In his message to the conference in Cochabamba conference, Peltier said:
“My name is Leonard Peltier. I am a citizen of the Dakota/Lakota and Anishinabe Nations of North America. Like many of you, I am a tribal person. As Aboriginal peoples, we have always struggled to live in harmony with the Earth. We have maintained our vigilance and bear witness to a blatant disregard for our planet and sustainable life ways. We’ve seen that the pursuit of maximized profits through globalization, privatization, and corporate personhood has become a plague that destroys life. We know that it is not only the land that suffers as a result of these practices. The people most closely associated with the Earth suffer first and most.
The enormous pressures of corporate profits have intruded on our tribal lands, but also on our ancient cultures—even to the extent that many Indigenous cultures have virtually disappeared. Just as our relatives in the animal kingdom are threatened, many more cultures are on the brink of extinction.
In America, we are at ground zero of this war for survival and most often have been left with no mechanism to fight this globalization monster. On those occasions when we are forced into a defensive posture, we are disappeared, tortured, killed, and imprisoned. I myself have served over 34 years in prison for resisting an invasion intent on violating our treaties and stealing our land for the precious resource of uranium. The same desire for uranium has decimated and poisoned the Diné Nation of Arizona and New Mexico. The quest for land for dumping and hiding the toxic waste from various nuclear processes has caused a war to be waged on the Shoshone people of Nevada, as well. These are just a few examples of what “progress” has meant for our peoples. As many can attest, the same struggle is occurring throughout Central and South America. While my defense of my tribal lands made me a political prisoner, I know I’m not at all unique. This struggle has created countless other prisoners of conscience—not to mention prisoners of poor health and loss of life way, as well as victims of guilt and rage.
To live as we were meant to live is our first right. To live free of the fear of forced removal, destroyed homelands, poisoned water, and loss of habitat, food sources, and our overall life way is our righteous demand. We, therefore, continue our struggle to survive in the face of those who deny climate change and refuse to curb corporate powers.
It is time for all our voices to be heard.”
You can read the full text of what he had to say here.
Another person who couldn’t be there was the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano. Galeano is a left wing journalist, historian and novelist, who has had to flee Latin America several times for fear of being killed by right wing dictatorships supported by the US. Perhaps his most well known work is ‘The Open Veins of Latin America,’ which tells the story of how Europeans and the US have plundered Latin America and destroyed its environments and peoples since their first arrival over 500 years ago. The book has been hugely influential, being translated into 20 languages. It was banned by the right wing dictatorships that once held power in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Last year, Venezuelan President Huge Chavez gave Barack Obama a copy at a summit to try and help him understand the revolutionary processes underway in Latin America.
Galeano’s message to the summit said:
Eduardo Galeano
“Bolivia is one of the American nations where indigenous cultures have managed to survive, and their voices are now ringing with more force than ever before, despite the scorn and persecution they suffered for a long time.
The entire world, stunned as it is, is wandering about like a blind man in the middle of a crossfire, having to listen to those voices. They teach us that we, tiny beings called humans, are part of nature, relatives to all those who have legs, paws, wings, or roots. The European conquest condemned the indigenous, who lived in that communion with nature, for idolatry, and for believing in that communion they were flogged, their throats were slit, or they were burned alive.
From the times of the European Renaissance, nature has been turned into a commodity or an obstacle to human progress. And, to this day, this divorce between us and her has persisted, so much so that there still are people of good will who are moved by poor nature, so abused, so wounded, but are seeing her only from outside.
Indigenous cultures see her from inside. Seeing her, I see myself. What is done against her is done against me. In her I find myself, my legs are also the road on which they walk.
Let us celebrate, then, this Summit of the Mother Earth. And may the deaf listen: the rights of human beings and the rights of nature are two names of the same dignity.”
You can read the full text of what Galeano had to say here.
Scary volcano face isn't happy about climate change. I wouldn't fuck with him, even if I was Willie Walsh
Now that the flight ban is over, it’s estimated that the grounding of planes over the past few days has prevented around 2.8 million tonnes of carbon emissions by the aviation industry.
To put this in perspective, this is more than the annual emissions of around 50 different developing countries like Rwanda, Malawi or Sierra Leone.
It’s far from enough to prevent catastrophic global warming, but it’s a dent in the continuing self-inflicted poisoning of our home that capitalism is causing for humanity. It also serves to highlight the ridiculous dependence of the UK and other rich countries on planes.
The UK government likes to trumpet its record on the environment, claiming that UK carbon emissions are falling enough for us to more than meet our commitments under the Kyoto protocol.
Unfortunately, the government’s figures are about as fiddled as the ones on unemployment. They don’t take into account the cost of importing all the food we rely on Africa to grow for us, or the goods China manufactures for us. When you take into account the cost of shipping and aviation, UK carbon emissions are still rising, i.e. making the crisis worse. The governments figures also allow them to deduct carbon credits by paying for forests abroad etc., which is in fact a bit of a scam.
So taking this all into account, it’s pretty clear that the Eyjafjallajokull volcano has done more to tackle climate change than the UK government, or the US government, where carbon emissions also continue to rise. Not only are these governments not doing something about the problem, they’re making it worse.
The UK government has fought tooth and nail against local residents in Hillingdon, who are sick of noise and pollution, for a third runway at Heathrow airport. This is despite the fact that in independent report found that the third runway would actually COST the UK economy £5 billion, far from making money. But government policy is absolutely committed to the expansion of the aviation industry, no matter the long term cost.
How most of the stuff we buy gets here
As George Monbiot writes in a great piece for the Guardian, our society is now way over specialised and complex, which leaves it vulnerable to collapse. We depend so much on the developing world meeting our needs for us with cheap (virtually slave) labour, that the smallest disruption can have a ripple effect. Even in the few days flights were banned the UK was facing running out of certain food commodities.
Capitalism takes its decisions purely on what makes money, and doesn’t factor in the long term possibility of problems. Supermarkets rely on “just-in-time” deliveries, and any disruption pulls the whole thing down. What we should take away as a lesson from the volcanic disruption is that we urgently need to start meeting more of our needs closer to home. That means that cities need to start growing their own food, and regions must as much as possible be self sustaining. Of course there’ll always be a need to get some from outside, but right now we couldn’t sustain ourselves without the planes and ships bringing in our food.
Transforming our cities and regions into self sustaining, healthier places to live would be a lot of work. But its exactly the sort of work that would solve so many of our social problems, and give meaning to the lives of people who are unable to find a decent, meaningful job, and are left alienated by an economy that currently considers them useless because they aren’t rich.
Growing food in the heart of the city in socialist Cuba
The other thing we should learn from this crisis is that capitalism has weak links. Some workers have a lot of power that right now they aren’t using. The whole complex system in the developed world relies on the aviation, shipping, and transport industries, and if workers in these areas were organised and prepared to disrupt things, we could put a lot more pressure on capitalist governments than they’ve felt in a while. It’s no accident that British Airways management are so determined to smash the workers in one of the few airlines that has decent union organisation. Something for socialists to think about.
News came today that an independent inquiry into the so-called ‘Climategate’ hacked email scandal has cleared the scientists involved of any wrongdoing.
Last year an as yet unidentified hacker managed to steal thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. These were then sent to climate change deniers, who picked through them with a fine tooth comb, trying to prove that climate change is in fact a giant lie made up by a global conspiracy.
The media coverage that ensued has made a big dent in the public’s acceptance for what it is, a scientifically proven fact that is taking place. The emails went back years, and the most notorious one was from 1999, in which Professor Phil Jones said he had used a “trick” to “hide the decline in tempratures.” Climate change deniers seized on this as proof that climate scientists were fiddling data and lying.
There’s a detailed explanation here of why this particular phrase was used. Basically, the truth of the matter is that climate scientists trying to study global temperatures over hundreds of years have a problem: accurate regular readings with thermometers were only possible from the 1850’s. Before that we have to rely on evidence gathered in the natural world, like ice cores or tree rings. However, scientists have noted that there is a statistical blip where the evidence of the temperature that comes from tree rings isn’t borne out by the real temperature as measured using thermometers. The “trick” Professor Jones used was to add in the ACTUAL REAL temperatures over recent decades to a graph, so that it would be MORE scientifically accurate than just relying on tree rings.
The media seized on the word “trick”, but in fact it’s nothing more than a poorly worded email written in a hurry. Evidence of a conspiracy it was not.
The independent inquiry into the “scandal” was led by Lord Oxburgh, and gave the unit “a clean bill of health.” Their report says there was “absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever.” This comes after another enquiry, by a House of Commons committee, also cleared the scientists.You can read the full text of the Oxburgh report here.
The worst the report could find to say about Professor Jones and his colleagues is that, over decades, there were some problems keeping paper records. A problem completely unknown in any other workplace in the world, where everyone has copies of everything going back to the 70’s in triplicate.
You have to feel for Professor Jones and his colleagues. When the CRU was set up, they were doing what most people would regard as boring and unsexy science. But their and others’ discoveries turned out to have huge political and social implications, as society slowly began to realise that the global capitalist economy is destroying the conditions which allowed human civilisation to develop on Earth. This is the biggest scientific issue in human history, and suddenly the CRU were put at the forefront of the most important political question of our time.
Professor Jones has said publicly that he is “a very apolitical person, I don’t want to get involved in the politics, I’m much happier doing the science and producing the papers. I’m a scientist, I let my science do the talking, along with all my scientific climate colleagues. It’s up to governments to decide and climate science is just one thing they have to take into account with the decisions they have to make.”
He's hiding from scary freaks in bear costumes!
In other words, a guy who just wanted a nice quiet life compiling graphs of tree rings and the like has been thrust into the spotlight, as allegations that could have ruined his career were repeated again and again in the mass media. He’s never been telling what anyone what we should do or set himself up as a political guru, he’s just tried to tell us all how it is, scientifically. Despite huge pressure in the media, he refused to resign, as he’d done nothing wrong. The uni themselves said they’d refuse to accept his resignation even if he did submit it.
After three inquiries into their actions, there has yet to be any serious investigation for the people responsible for harassing them, making their work more difficult, and ultimately stealing private emails. Before the leak, the scientists had faced barrages of demands from climate denier Steve McIntyre. His constant pestering hampered their ability to do their jobs.
The emails were stolen in the weeks leading up to the Copenhagen summit. There is still no sign of the person responsible coming forward or being found out, but it’s clear their intention was to do maximum damage to attempts to do anything about the climate crisis.
As the contents of private emails, going back years, by people who were being regularly harassed at work by climate change deniers, were repeated again and again, the public took in the idea that the people involved were liars. Some scientists even received death threats.
The tabloids that tried to tell us again and again this was evidence of a conspiracy have of course moved on before the publication of today’s report. But the bigger question remains-who stole the emails and started this whole farce off? They are part of the REAL climate conspiracy. The gigantic lie that is being propagated by the fossil fuel industry that climate change isn’t taking place is one of the greatest crimes of all time, because the people responsible are endangering the long term survival of human civilisation in order to maximise short term profits. It’s hard to imagine a more obvious reason why capitalism is a totally bankrupt system that needs to be replaced before it takes us to the brink of catastrophic climate change.
A major investigation by Greenpeace has revealed what we always knew: climate change denial is a well funded conspiracy, centered on oil corporations.
In recent years, there’s been a lot of focus on the role of companies like Exxon in funding organisations that spread lies and propaganda to undermine climate science. But even their contributions are dwarfed by a little known US firm called Koch Industries.
The company is based in the US but has interests all over the globe. Despite being little known, it’s the second largest privately-held (that is, its shares aren’t traded on the stock market) company in the US.
The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch who own the company put $50 million into climate change denial between 1997 and 2008. Their interest is clear-they want to discredit any attempts to end the fossil fuel economy and limit carbon emissions. What they have done is a spectacular crime against the world, allowing huge amounts of lies to be disseminated that have seriously undermined efforts to tackle the biggest problem in human history.
Through a series of front groups, the Kochs have used their money to shift political debate away from action that needs to be taken. A few examples include:
-The American for Prosperity Foundation received $5,176,500 from the Kochs between 2005-8. This money was used to organise “grassroots” events across the US as part of the ‘Hot Air’ tour, which featured a hot air balloon. The aim was to build opposition to US legislators taking any action on climate change.
- The Cato Institute received $5,278,400 between 1997 and 2008, which it used to get climate change deniers on to panels and in the media to spread lies about what’s happening.
Scumbag liars
- The Kochs funded a Spanish study that tried to claim, falsely, that renewable energy had cost Spain jobs, which has been used by right wingers in several countries despite being shown to be nonsense.
- Koch funded groups have played a major role in hyping and repeating vastly exaggerated claims about the East Anglia Climate Research Unit hacked emails.
These guys are scum, capitalism at its worst: endangering the entire future of human civilisation for their own short term profit. Their (extremely well funded) politics has done so much damage to the world, and embodies all that is insane about our current economic and social model.
Make no mistake: organised climate change denial is a criminal conspiracy, perpetrated by the global rich to try and prevent social change. It needs to be challenged every time it rears its head.
Don’t blink. Don’t even blink. Blink and you’re dead.
James Lovelock is a notable scientist and inventor. He’s most famous for developing the Gaia theory, which argues that living organisms and the physical processes of the Earth are part of a huge system that regulates conditions on this planet to keep it comfortable for life.
He’s also a total knobhead.
Lovelock has been prominent in recent years in the debates about climate change and ecological destruction. What he says shows that he’s good at understanding the global climate, and absolutely useless at understanding human beings, politics and social change. His rantings are seriously damaging to those of us who actually want to change the world and make society fairer and more ecologically sustainable.
He recently gave his first interview in months to the Guardian. In the intervening period the world has seen the hacking of emails from climate scientists that was blown into a huge controversy by the media, the total failure of the global elite to tackle climate change at Copenhagen, and the really cold winter.
In the face of declining public trust in climate science, Lovelock says he hasn’t read the hacked emails, just the media coverage, but that he was “absolutely disgusted.” Thanks for taking a balanced view and making up your own mind there James!
But more importantly, the headline given by the paper was his claim that “Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change.”
James Lovelock is a serious misanthrope. He ultimately believes that humans are doomed to face the collapse of civilisation through runaway climate change, and we’ll never do anything about it. In his book ‘The Revenge of Gaia,’ he argues for an effort to preserve as much of human science and knowledge for survival in a mass produced book in preparation for the coming apocalypse.
Not if we have anthing to do with it
The risk of runaway climate change is all too real, and could indeed lead to a situation that undermines the basis of human civilisation. But there is another way we could go. What James Lovelock fails to understand is that it isn’t humans that are stupid. There are millions of humans all over the world that understand that it’s our social and economic system, based on inequality and constant growth at the expense of the environment, that’s responsible for taking us to the brink. What we urgently must start doing is changing our society and economy, allowing us to meet everyone’s needs without further destroying the planet.
In the face of apocalypse, people feel powerless. But as long as there is the chance of survival, humans must try to survive. Accepting it as inevitable would be the most spectacular example of us ignoring our duty from the whole of history. But that’s what Lovelock advocates, saying he favours “adaption” to climate change. It also leads people to going “Fuck it, what’s the point?”, something that he’s encouraged when he says “Enjoy life now, because, if we’re lucky, it’ll be 20 years before it hits the fan.”
It’s understandable that Lovelock is unable to see the eco-socialist alternative to catastrophe when you take a look at his political views. He blames a lack of “elitism” for the email scandal. He talks of “dumbo” scientists “churned out” by “mass produced universities.” “Elitism is important in science. It is vital,” he argues.
What this sounds like to me is a belief that science has been corrupted by the break down of traditional privileges that meant it was hard for working class kids to get a job in science. (It’s still pretty hard tbh.) It completely ignores the fact that the scientists who wrote the controversial emails are under siege from an organised, right wing climate change denial movement, which aims at protecting the profits of energy corporations at the expense of long term human survival.
His love for elitism shines through as well when he talks about what needs to be done:
We need a more authoritative world. We’ve become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It’s all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can’t do that. You’ve got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. And they should be very accountable too, of course.
But it can’t happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What’s the alternative to democracy? There isn’t one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.
At this point he really is skirting the territory of eco-fascism. The desire to see a strong state, or some kind of virtual dictatorship impose ecological limits will not work, and turns people off environmentalism. What we need is real democracy, equality that’s social and economic as well as political.
Quite right old chap, these plebs have got no place in a lab!
I’m not going to go into here some of the more mad things he’s said, such as that most people should have to eat food that’s been chemically synthesised, leaving real food a luxury for those that can afford it. Or that this science fiction process should be fuelled by a massive programme of building nuclear power stations, and that we should dump the nuclear waste in the Amazon jungle.
The point of all this is that Lovelock is a respected voice of the environmental movement. Much as he is a great scientist, Lovelock has absolutely no solution to the problems facing human society. Far too much of the coverage that environmentalists get is human-haters who are unwilling to confront the people in power. The eco-socialist alternative isn’t covered because it’s the real threat to the system.
It’s really important that the people who see the real issue here begin to make their voices heard. And the real issue is that capitalism and climate change are two names for the same process-a corrupt, unfair human society that is incompatible with humans being part of the global ecosystem. A system that can and must be changed.
People like Lovelock believe apocalypse is inevitable because it is easier for them to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
Warning: This post contains some upsetting stuff about dead ducks.
The above video is one of several shot by William Todd Powell, a senior biologist working for the Province of Alberta in Canada. It shows a duck struggling to escape from a tailings pond, where oil company Syncrude dumped the toxic leftovers of its operation to extract oil from the Alberta tar sands.
Over 1,500 migrating ducks landed on the pond, covering themselves with the deadly residue. The vast majority of them died. Now Syncrude is facing a trial for its failure to protect the ducks, and the company could face up to $800, 000 in fines, and executives ultimately could get 6 months in prison.
Syncrude admit that they had failed to properly install noise-making equipment to scare the ducks away from landing on the toxic pond as they were migrating.
The disaster could have been covered up were it not for the courageous efforts of tipsters like Powell. Although legally obliged to do so, Syncrude had failed to inform authorities of what had happened. But when Powell and other wildlife officials got on the scene, their shocking images and video stormed around the internet, and forced action.
Footage of a Greenpeace action against the tar sands.
The whole affair has brought into sharp focus the environmental battle to stop exploitation of the tar sands. As the possibility of peak oil begins to bite, the fossil fuel industry is desperately looking for new areas to exploit to keep their profits flowing. The tar sands in Canada offer the prospect of huge new reserves, but they are very difficult to extract. This means huge amounts of energy are used in the process, causing massive carbon emissions. It also means enormous destruction of the natural environment, including much land that is home to Canada’s embattled indigenous people as well as pristine boreal forest. The fight to stop further exploitation of the oil sands is one of the most important battles against climate change and ecological destruction in North America, if not the world. Exploitation of the tar sands alone is enough to make Canada fail to meet its obligations under the Kyoto agreement on global warming.
Lawyers for Syncrude have entered a plea of not guilty to the trial, claiming there was nothing they could have done to prevent the disaster. Shamefully, they have attacked William Todd Powell, and, supported by the corporate media in Canada, accused him of “showboating”. Syncrude argues that Powell should have “shot the ducks with a gun not a camera” as that would have been more humane. Leaving aside the complete heartless hypocrisy of the statement, this ignores the fact that actually Alberta wildlife authorities did shoot the ducks that were in range to put them out of their misery. However, the pond is so vast and the number of ducks so huge, it was only possible for them to reach a fraction of them.
Ed Stelmach: Twat in a hat
The Conservative Premier of Alberta, Ed Stelmach, is unfortunately in the pocket of Syncrude and the other oil companies. His government has given approval to a massive expansion of tar sands operations, as well as spending millions on trying to improve the image of the dirty oil project. Responding to the disaster, he bizarrely chose to call the horrific duck deaths an “opportunity” to show the world Alberta “means business” when it comes to environmental protection. Quite how footage of dead and dying ducks does this is unclear.
In an even more ridiculous gaffe, Stelmach also told reporters recently he had not seen the notorious duck images, even though they had been headline news on TV and in the papers in Alberta. His comments outraged many, as they felt they showed a total lack of concern for his own responsibility in the disaster. In response, opposition politicians gave him photos in the legislature, and Greenpeace delivered blown-up and gift wrapped photos in person.
“Not even looking at the front page of papers in this province? That’s something that is not responsible for a premier to do. They are taking Syncrude to court, but are they actually examining their own actions?” said Mike Hudema of Greenpeace.
Greenpeace activists deliver gift-wrapped photos of the dying ducks to Ed Stelmach
Stelmach and his spokespeople have offered various different stories to try and get out of looking stupid over his claims. Stelmach now claims he thought reporters were asking if he’d seen the photos before they were introduced in court, which they clearly weren’t. His team have also claimed that they give him news clippings each morning with the pictures cut out. “He doesn’t have the luxury of opening a paper in the morning,” said his communications director, Cam Hantiuk. “He missed the visuals.”
The fact is that the disastrous tar sands development is being driven by the corporate greed of Syncrude and others, and whatever the results of the trial they will continue to have huge control over the political process in Canada as elsewhere. The heroic work of William Todd Powell in exposing them shows the world a model of a responsible public servant. Unfortunately, Canadian governments see work like his as less of a priority than defending dirty developments, as wildlife services across the country face budget cutbacks and lay-offs.
The horrific duck deaths just underline the need for grassroots activism that works on the ground to undermine the power of the oil lobby and their paid-for politicians.
I’m sure many Leftfield readers will have been watching the latest series of Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe, pretty much the best satire on telly.
I loved the second series of this vital show, taking down the lies and fantasies of the media at every turn. But I didn’t love most of the bits featuring “US comic and drunk [big woop] Doug Stanhope.”
This guy has a persona of an absolute misanthrope: he hates the world and everyone in it. His most objectionable bit was the one embedded above, talking about overpopulation.
In this little rant, Stanhope tries to make out like he’s telling the world a hidden truth, something hidden by the media because it doesn’t fit with the mainstream environmentalist agenda. This supposed truth is that there are too many people in the world, using up too many resources, and the only way we can really save the environment is to stop having kids.
But the reality is that this idea is a very powerful one, and it’s been used by the ruling class as an excuse for nearly 200 years now.
In 1798 English cleric and economist Thomas Malthus published his Essay on the Principle of Population. He argued that population growth would always outstrip the expansion of the food supply, and that as more workers became available wages would be driven down, leading to poverty.
2.Many.Malthuses.
In other words, the working class in Britain were to blame for their own poverty. It had nothing to do with the exploitation they suffered at the hands of the capitalists, who owned the places where they worked, and got rich on the back of their labour.
The thing is, he was wrong. Food production has grown faster in the last 200 years than at any other time in history, and has rapidly outstripped population growth. Famines aren’t caused by food shortages, but by unequal distribution of food.
But blaming the poor for poverty and hunger was a convenient solution for the people who were really responsible -- the rich.
In the 1960s Malthus’ arguments were revived by environmentalists, who argued that population growth in the third world was causing an ecological crisis and must be stopped.
These people never however stopped to think about the centuries of looting that the third world has suffered at the hands of European empires. Nor did they consider that many people in poor countries have many children to ensure that at least some of them survive the harsh realities of an impoverished childhood.
In fact, the rate of world population growth is slowing. It peaked in the 1960s, and ever since the rate of increase has been getting slower.
The population theorists thought that if the world’s resources were a pie, reducing the number of people who wanted a slice would mean everyone gets more. But what about the 1 or 2 people that are eating three-quarters of the pie, leaving the rest of us fighting over the crumbs?
Delicious pie: Time to fight for a bigger slice
Most mainstream environmentalists don’t want to confront the realities of inequality, caused by capitalism. It’s much easier to tell everyone that they have to play their part, change their lightbulbs etc., than to say “A tiny minority of the world’s population are fucking everything up to make themselves rich.” The reason it’s easier is that rich people are very powerful, and taking them on is a hard fight. But if we’re really going to prevent the worst of climate change, and save the global environment, then we’ll have to take them on and beat them.
As a system, capitalism is based on economic growth. Every year we must produce more products, consume more, and make more money. But growth is unequal -- the economy is constantly funneling more and more wealth from the hands of the majority into the those of the rich.
Right now, 10% of the world’s population own 54% of the world’s wealth. The richest 50 humans on Earth make more money than the poorest 416 million put together. In their unceasing quest to get richer, these people are trashing the Earth, by pulling out everything of value from the ground, the sea, and the soil, and by pumping back the toxic waste left over. These are the people who are really responsible for climate change, and must be defeated.
The best way to reduce population growth is to start ending the poverty afflicting most of the world’s population. For decades the world’s rich countries and financial institutions have forced poorer countries to cut their public spending, preventing them from having decent health services. If more poor countries were able to follow the example of Cuba, and set up world beating health services, then less babies would die and parents would have less children. Another key issue is women’s access to proper sex education, and reproductive rights to control their own bodies.
If we’re really going to save human civilisation from the potential catastrophes on the horizon, we can’t be human-haters. We need to change our society to be more eco-friendly, and at the same time more people-friendly. It’s more than possible to meet all the basic needs (clean water, housing, enough to eat, a fulfilling life) for all the people in the world.
The people in the way of us achieving this would much rather believe that all humans are equally responsible. I’m sorry to disappoint them, but with unequal wealth and power comes unequal responsibility. So Doug Stanhope isn’t bringing us a radical message that they don’t want you to hear. His hatred of humanity (which conceals a real misogyny -- see his comments about “a tired old whore” and women’s wombs) actually suits the mainstream agenda just fine. Because it lets the people who’s fault it really is off the hook.
This map uses colour and distortion to show two different things. The extent to which a country is squeezed or inflated shows the extent to which countries are consuming their fair share, based on population, of the world’s resources. Starved-looking countries consume less than their fair share (most of Africa), whereas stuffed-looking countries consume far more than their share (most of Europe and North America). The colour of the countries shows the balance between whether a country can, within its borders, generate enough resources and cope with its own waste within its environment (green, like environmentally rich Brazil and Canada) or not (like the Middle East and, yes, the United States). (via www.pthbb.org)
Since June of last year, environmental activists have been occupying the site of a proposed new open-cast coal mine in Mainshill, Lanarkshire.
Despite vehement opposition to the mine from the local community, and the devastating environmental impact of open-cast mining locally, not to mention the impact on climate change globally, South Lanarkshire Council, Scottish Coal and wealthy landowner Lord Home have pressed on with their plans to tear up Mainshill wood and proceed with the mine. Now… a conglomeration of big business, local government bureaucrats and a Conservative peer putting their own interests before that of the local community and environment… who’d have thought it?!
This video shows the hypocrisy and corruption of some of the politicians involved in the decision making process, and exposes the cosy relationship many of them enjoy with Scottish Coal, who operate on numerous sites across Lanarkshire.
Over the past seven months, those occupying the site have been resisting any attempt to begin work at the site. This has involved the sabotage and destruction of machinery, lock-ons and blockades, as well as maintaining a sizeable human presence in the wood. However, this morning (Monday 25 January), bailliffs acting under the instruction of Lord Home moved into to begin the eviction of the Solidarity Camp, assisted by police. This morning saw the arrest of several activists, with many more still dug into tunnels and in treehouses, and the eviction is expected to last several days, if not longer.
The camp have had full community support throughout, who know the devastating effects that open-cast mining can have first hand, with the landscape around the village of Douglas scarred by them.
As the utter failure of the Copenhagen talks to reach any worthwhile deal on carbon emissions demonstrated, capitalism cannot, and will not, sacrifice profit for the sake of environmental or human concerns. It’s now up to us to halt the potential environmental catastrophe that climate change will bring, fighting alongside local communties who’re facing the brunt of the system that pits profit above all else.
There’s regular updates from Mainshill Solidarity Camp on Indymedia Scotland & on their twitter at https://twitter.com/MainshillCamp.
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