Shiela Malone
Unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 90 per cent by 2050, we are on course to reach the dangerous 2 degrees ‘tipping point’ in the heating up of the earth’s atmosphere. This will set off positive feedbacks, dramatically accelerating the process of global warming

The polar ice caps will melt at a far quicker rate, causing sea level rises that will drown 10 per cent of Bangladesh, and flood major coastal towns and cities around the world, including London.

Glaciers, which presently feed the vast rivers of the world, such as India’s Bhramaphutra, will disappear, causing millions of refugees to flee or die of drought and starvation.

The permafrosts of Siberia and elsewhere will melt, releasing methane, a greenhouse gas twenty times more potent then carbon dioxide.

And the huge forests of the world, such as in the Amazon basin will die back and rot or burn, releasing massive amounts of extra carbon into the atmosphere.

This latest news from the Tyndale Climate Centre should have provoked an urgent response from our political leaders at their annual conferences. Instead there has been little more than the now familiar posturing on green issues.

The Liberal Democrats proposed taxation as a remedy, voting to scrap their 50 per cent income tax rate on the rich and fill the revenue gap with ‘green taxes’.

However, as George Monbiot pointed out (Guardian 21.09.06), the proposed switch would actually generate a paltry amount – only 2.3 per cent of current tax returns – and so would surely mean reductions in other areas of public spending.

Under the new cuddlier, bicycling David Cameron, the Tories are also expected to try to paint themselves a little greener – with an eye to growing public concern about climate change. Both they and the Lib-Dems, to their credit, have called for statutory targets, albeit inadequate, in carbon emissions cuts.

As to New Labour, however, nothing of seriousness or substance penetrated their shameful, sycophantic circus in Manchester.

The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, Blairite to his dull and unimaginative bones, had nothing at all to say about the environment on the domestic front. Since he holds the purse strings, the few meagre measures talked about later by Environment Secretary David Milliband looked like more hot air, particularly as emissions are rising relentlessly under New Labour.

This was reinforced by current embarrassing revelations that Milliband’s staff at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs clocked up fees last year of a whopping £1.75m on airline travel!

Flying is the fastest growing contributor to increased carbon emissions and therefore dangerous global warming. Can such a band of profligates and hypocrites really be taken seriously in tackling climate change?

Meanwhile, the Green Party held a less publicised conference in Brighton.

The Greens sometimes make a sharp critique of the social inequality and injustice resulting from current neoliberalism. But their leadership policies fall short of a radical alternative.

They rightly call for big investment in renewables, energy efficiency and for a reduction in demand through lifestyle changes.

But as long as their means to achieve this remains principally within the framework of a greener, more regulated capitalism, they come up against the contradictions of this system.

For instance, backing more localised, small-scale production as an alternative to the power of the big-polluting multinationals is a pipedream as long as profit remains the driving force for growth. The big boys on the block simply elbow out their smaller rivals.

Individual companies will, of course reduce pollution to cut their own costs. But if investment decisions are governed by profit they will necessarily resist measures that make them less c competitive.

The Greens traditionally have not seen the labour and trades unions (or much of the left) as allies. Conversely, green issues have not been seen by the labour movement as a public good and campaigned for in the same way as, for instance health and education.

This failure to link social and environmental issues and to fight for governments to be responsible for a clean environment and a stable climate has made it easier for corporate capitalism to push a neoliberal agenda on these issues.

Just as the welfare state as of old is now presented as unaffordable in the areas of health and education, this is also applied now to the environment. Instead the market is to provide a solution, and there is cross-party agreement on this.

The principle market mechanism proposed to cut greenhouse gas emissions is carbon trading, as in the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Under the ETS political and business leaders agree required cuts and allot themselves quotas, which they can then trade on the open market.

However, the ETS has been much discredited. Domestic targets were set either artificially low, thus failing to make sufficient cuts or artificially high, enabling big profits to be made by selling surplus quotas to others – who, of course carried on polluting.

Another proposal is for personal tradable carbon vouchers, managed through swipe cards. Milliband is apparently an advocate of such a scheme – although he clearly excludes himself, given the impermissible amount of carbon his jetting around spews out.

In fact, personal vouchers are rather in line with neoliberal thinking, since they put responsibility onto the individual, as is now being done in health and education.

The area where a solution to unsustainable emissions is most needed is in transport, especially aviation. If flying continues to expand as predicted, its emissions will double in just a decade, cancelling out all other reductions under the Kyoto Protocols. However, this is an area where a proposed market solution is set not only to fail spectacularly, but to make things much worse.

Recently, Richard Branson, capitalist entrepreneur par excellence, once darling of the Thatcherites, now of New Labour, has been promoting himself as a friend of the planet, pledging $3bn to ‘combat global warming’.

Branson is a ruthless egotist, who knows a good business opportunity when he sees one, but has never been noted for any green credentials.

So what is he up to?

The promised money will come from the future profits of his travel companies, including a predicted 10 per cent yearly expansion of his hugely polluting long-haul Virgin Atlantic airline. How can this square with saving the planet?

Because, says Branson, the money will be invested (through his own company Virgin Fuels) in alternative ‘clean’ energy sources, specifically plant-derived biofuels.

The spin on this is that these derivatives are the carbon-neutral fuels of the future, enabling us all to fly around without limit in so-called ‘eco-friendly’ planes – bringing in pots more money for Sir Richard, of course.

This is simply deceit. Biofuels emit carbon dioxide when burned, the same as fossil fuels. This is supposed to be completely ‘offset’ by the plants having soaked up carbon as they grew. But recent scientific studied show such greenhouse gains to be much exaggerated.

Taking into account production of fertilisers and pesticides, then further processing into fuel, the amount of energy used and therefore carbon emitted it considerable.

But the biggest disaster of the current promotion of biofuels is the amount of forest this eats up. According to the campaign group ‘Biofuelwatch’ :

‘Malaysia and Indonesia have earmarked millions of hectares of tropical rainforest for destruction – to grow more palm oil for biodiesel sold in Europe.

Soya is also the main destroyer of the Amazon, and Brazil hopes to become a global exporter of soya-biodiesel.’

As they say in addition, tropical deforestation already accounts for a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. Further destruction would be catastrophic.

Business ‘solutions’ such as Branson’s necessarily involve expansion, otherwise no increase in profits. But the truth is that the remedy for cutting aviation emissions must mean not more but less flying, replacing it with proven, more environmentally sound methods or travel or less travel altogether.

An obvious step in this direction is to halt all further airport and runway expansion. Aviation fuel could also be taxed, ending a £9 bn annual tax holiday currently enjoyed by airline companies. This would probably be passed on to passengers in the form of increased ticket prices

Many on the left are opposed to environmental taxation, since they see it as penalising the poor. In fact, as regards air travel, the majority of people using so-called ‘cheap flights’ are from higher or middle-income brackets, and the really poor don’t fly at all!

It could be argued too that the sheer urgency of tackling climate change means that some eco-taxes, such as on transport, are currently necessary, it they raise money fro real alternatives and change [peoples behaviour.

I would cite the London congestion charge as successful in doing both. For example, money has been made available to improve public transport and there has been a 20 per cent reduction in use of the particularly environmentally harmful private car.

Of course, socialists also argue for social ownership for our transport systems and public planning of our towns and cities to make them more people and planet friendly

On a wider scale, there is an urgent need for an international, legally binding treaty on greenhouse gas cuts, which goes beyond the Kyoto Protocols by including all transport. It should also set much higher targets than the current meagre 5.2 per cent

Social ownership, economic growth, the market, taxation, lifestyle changes and much more will be topics for debate at Socialist Resistance forum ‘Ecosocialism or Barbarism’. Come and join us and share experiences, ideas and hopes for the future!