Dave Carr, East London Socialist Party
The planet is on a ‘highway to climate hell’, according to United Nations secretary general António Guterres. But for the heads of state and governments from around the world gathered at COP27 in the Egyptian resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh it appeared to be business as usual, as fossil fuel carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions – the main driver of global heating – reached the highest on record. And, according to the Global Carbon Project, the 2015 Paris Agreement target of limiting global heating to 1.5ºC increase on pre-industrial temperatures by 2050, is likely to be exceeded in the next decade.
Given this impending climate emergency, Guterres should have added the line from AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’: “Season ticket on a one-way ride”!
Summit for nothing
30 years ago, political leaders of 175 countries at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro signed a declaration for “global partnership to achieve equitable development and environmental protection”. CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels in 1992 were 22 billion tonnes a year. Emissions today are 36 billion tonnes a year.
Given this lamentable failure of capitalist governments to seriously tackle environmental catastrophe and the associated problems of food, economic and human security, it’s hardly surprising that, according to one international survey, only 22% believed anything would be achieved at Sharm-el-Sheikh.
‘Big oil’
At last year’s COP26 summit in Glasgow, then PM Boris Johnson let slip that there was “no chance” of getting an internationally binding agreement on achieving the Paris target. Indeed, COP26’s final declaration spoke only of phasing down “unabated” coal burning, while saying nothing about reducing oil or gas.
Environmentalist George Monbiot checked “every final agreement produced by the [26] summits since they began. Fossil fuels are named in only six of them. Just one hints at using less overall.”
One obvious reason for this lack of climate action is the power of the giant oil and gas corporations.
Attending COP27 were 636 lobbyists from the highly profitable fossil fuel companies (up 25% from last year’s summit); and more than the combined delegations from the ten most climate-impacted countries. 200 of these lobbyists were embedded in various countries’ delegations, including BP chief executive Bernard Looney and four other BP senior managers in the delegation from Mauritania!
Capitalism is the problem
Capitalism, with its insatiable drive to maximise profit through the exploitation of labour and raw materials, has created an interconnected global system of finance and trade, but corporate ownership still resides within individual countries. However, the solutions to adverse climate change have to be worldwide – emitted greenhouse gases don’t stop at the borders of nation states.
But no capitalist government is unilaterally going to jeopardise its global share of trade and corporate profits, by implementing the comprehensive measures needed to halt climate change.
The only feasible way to achieve sustainable levels of net-zero carbon production – and a redistribution of wealth to secure decent living standards for all – is through democratic, international planning; impossible in a capitalist system of competing companies and nation states. To stop destructive climate change, we need socialist change. That, in turn, means building a mass movement for a fundamental shift in wealth and power, based on working-class people – whose class interests are diametrically opposed to the capitalists.
