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 21st 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 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-subsidized) 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 mobilized
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 G7 leadership posturing in June, when at their
meeting in Germany the Establishment made a meaningless commitment to a
decarbonized 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 mobilization.
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 delegitimize 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 a media
circus.”
Asad Rehman coordinates climate advocacy at the world’s
leading North-South CJ organization, 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 i
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.
nfluence on behalf of solidarity
with those CJ activists making a real difference, at the base.
When News Breaks Out, We Break In. (The 2014 Bloggies Finalist)
