Workers Solidarity Movement

Carbon trading and offsets distract attention from the wider, systemic changes and collective political action that needs to be taken in the transition to a low-carbon economy. Promoting more effective and empowering approaches to climate change involves moving away from the blinkered reductionism of free-market dogma, the false-economy of supposed quick fixes, the short-term self interest of big business.

In response to growing discussion of ‘zero growth’ ideas among some environmentalists, Alan MacSimoin asks Is non-extraction the answer?

In recent years, with climate change dominating headlines regularly, it has become popular among some environmentalists to propose non-extraction of fossil fuels as a viable way to reduce the effects climate change. But if this idea was taken up what would be the result? Less oil & gas being processed means what is available will rise in price. That’s the logic of capitalism. And having to pay even more for home heating and cooking is not going to change the habits of the wealthy but would have a big impact on most of our pockets. Making things even more expensive than they are at present will not exactly endear environmentalists to most people.

In the last issue of Workers Solidarity we looked at how the causes of climate changes are deeply embedded in the economic and social structures controlled by the rich few. The increasing levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases being pumped into our atmosphere are primarily caused by the capitalist model of 'economic growth' and its accompanying miseries for millions around the planet.

On a day when we all desperately needed a change in the weather, people gathered beside the bunker on wood quay which is the Council offices. A man in a Santa clause hat spoke at us like he was hosting a children’s television program and told us we would await the bells to chime at two o’clock from Christchurch before we would move off for the march.

There no longer remains any doubt that climate change has been caused by the activities of humans. The resulting problems of flash flood, more severe droughts, hurricanes etc alongside increased resource and water wars will have drastic economic, social and political consequences right across the globe. For many people both in the richer developed north and the global south, the ensuing climate chaos will only further exasperate their already precarious lives and livelihoods.Whilst governments like our own make almost daily pronouncements about ‘tackling’ climate change, and the media have weekly reports of increasing chaotic and unpredictable weather conditions, both have carefully avoided talking about its main cause. The one thing that historically has caused and continues to perpetuate the effects of climate change is putting private profit before public welfare.

The recent spate of unusually destructive hurricanes in the US and the severe floods in Eastern Europe over the last 2 years have seen the climate change issue climbing the headlines once more. A special report in Time magazine acknowledged that the “serious debate” about whether climate is, or is not occuring, has ended. There is now agreement even among skeptics that climate change is real and that human activity is causing it.