Surviving Climate Change , livre ebook

300

pages

English

Ebooks

2007

Écrit par
Mark Levene

Publié par
Pluto Press

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300

pages

English

Ebooks

2007

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Pluto Press

Date de parution

20 octobre 2007

Nombre de lectures

EAN13

9781849643306

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

Climate change is a pressing reality. Hurricane Katrina, melting polar ice and increased threats to food and water security show that planetary blowback is becoming all too evident.

Governments and business keep reassuring the public they are going to fix the problem. This book brings together some leading activists who disagree. They expose the inertia, denial, deception -- even threats to our civil liberties -- which comprise mainstream responses from civil and military policy makers, and from opinion formers in the media, corporations and academia.

An epochal change is called for in the way we all engage with the climate crisis. Key to that change is Aubrey Meyer's proposed Contraction and Convergence framework for limiting global carbon emissions. This book, which also includes contributions by Mayer Hillman and George Marshall, is a powerful and vital guide to how mass mobilisation can avert the looming catastrophe.
Preface

Introduction: Survival Means Renewal, Mark Levene and David Cromwell - Both University of Southampton

Part I The Big Picture

1. The Case for Contraction and Convergence, Aubrey Meyer

Part II The State and its Apparatus

2. Thinking the Worst: The Pentagon Report, Dave Webb - Leeds Metropolitan University

3. Preparing for Mass Refugee Flows: The Corporate Military Sector, Steve Wright - Leeds Metropolitan University

4. Britain, Political Process and the Consequences for Government Action on Climate Change, James Humphreys

Part III Critical Players

5. First they Blocked, Now do they Bluff? Corporations respond to Climate Change, Melanie Jarman

6. Mostly Missing the Point: Business Responses to Climate Change, David Ballard - University of Bath

7. The Mass Media, Climate Change and how things might be, John Theobald and Marianne McKiggan

8. Having the Information but what do you then do with it? The Scientific and Academic Communities, Jonathan Ward - University of Bristol

9. Asleep on their Watch: Where were the NGOs?, George Marshall

Part IV The Challenge Ahead

10.Clearing the Pathways to Transformation, Susan Ballard and David Ballard

11. Averting Climate Change: By Force, Persuasion or Enlightened Self-Interest ? Jim Scott

Afterword: Where Do We Go From Here? Mayer Hillman - Policy Studies Institute, London

Appendix 1: A Layperson's Glossary of the Global Politics of Climate Change, Tim Helweg-Larsen (Centre for Alternative Technology, Machynelleth, Wales) and Jo Abbess

Appendix 2: Climate Change campaigns and other relevant links

Notes on Contributors

Index

Voir

Publié par

Pluto Press

Date de parution

20 octobre 2007

Nombre de lectures

EAN13

9781849643306

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

Surviving Climate Change The Struggle to Avert Global Catastrophe

Edited by DAVID CROMWELL and MARK LEVENE

P Pluto Press LONDON • ANN ARBOR, MI

in association with Crisis Forum

First published 2007 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106

www.plutobooks.com

The right of the individual contributors to be identiﬁed as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Hardback ISBN-13 ISBN-10

Paperback ISBN-13 ISBN-10

978 0 7453 2568 2 0 7453 2568 8

978 0 7453 2567 5 0 7453 2567 X

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England

In memory of John Theobald, our friend and fellow campaigner

176

Mostly Missing the Point: Business Responses to Climate Change David Ballard

The Mass Media, Climate Change, and How Things Might Be John Theobald and Marianne McKiggan

Climate Change and the Political Process: Consequences for Government Action in Britain James Humphreys

vii

123

Having the Information, but What Do You Then Do With It? The Scientiﬁc and Academic Communities Jonathan Ward

Cont

The Case for Contraction and Convergence Aubrey Meyer

102

Part II: The State and its Apparatus

Preface

First They Blocked, Now Do They Bluff? Corporations Respond to Climate Change Melanie Jarman

158

137

Thinking the Worst:The Pentagon ReportDave Webb

Part III: Critical Players

Preparing for Mass Refugee Flows: The Corporate Military Sector Steve Wright

Introduction: Survival Means Renewal Mark Levene and David Cromwell

Part I: The Big Picture

viii Surviving Climate Change

Asleep On Their Watch: Where Were the NGOs? George Marshall

Part IV: The Challenge Ahead

Clearing the Pathways to Transformation Susan Ballard and David Ballard

Averting Climate Change: The Need for Enlightened SelfInterest Jim Scott

Afterword: Where Do We Go From Here? Mayer Hillman

Appendix 1: A Layperson’s Glossary of the Global Politics of Climate Change Tim HelwegLarsen and Jo Abbess

Appendix 2: Climaterelated Groups and Other Relevant Websites

Notes on ContributorsIndex

196

219

239

253

266

277

280 282

Preface

Things are hotting up; and not just in terms of soaring temperatures. Politicians, opinionformers, economists and business gurus all seem now to be jockeying for pole position in the climate change debate. It is almost as if, simply by demonstrating their supposed credentials and commitment, the ‘answer’, and with it salvation, will be found. As this book goes to press, former US Vice President Al Gore arguably leads the pack; at least in terms of ‘razzmatazz’, with a ‘star studded’ 24hourlong music festival, dubbed ‘Live Earth’, on seven continents in July 2007: all geared to alerting us, as if we weren’t already aware, to the impending climate crisis. Not far behind is the departing UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair; a man, we are told, with a ‘serious track record’ on climate change. As his ﬁnal leaving present he promised an international G8 summit which would involve not only major polluters like India and China, but even his friend, President George W. Bush. Not to be outdone, ﬁgures with a lesser international proﬁle, such as Norway’s Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, are coming up strongly on the outside lane. Stoltenberg’s assurance is that his country will be ‘carbon neutral’ by 2050, offering a powerful goad to other rich countries to follow his lead. Even the Pope is rumoured to be offering an encyclical on the matter. Nor would it appear to be all just hot air. In the spring of 2007, much to the delight of Friends of the Earth, the British government unveiled its Climate Change Bill to commit the UK to the world’s ﬁrst detailed delivery mechanism for signiﬁcant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions: a 60 per cent cut by 2050 from 1990 levels. Given that leading environmental campaigners believe this is one of the most important political landmarks of this generation – the beginnings of a transition towards a lowcarbon economy, no less – surely we can rest assured that our leaders are not intent on destroying the world but are, instead, doing everything in their power to save it. This book dares to question that assumption: and we do so by challenging the social, economic and political parameters within which diverse elite actors assume a basis for action (or inaction) on climate change. The essential inadequacy of the elite position rests

x Surviving Climate Change

on an unwillingness, indeed inability, to accept that anthropogenic climate change is an inevitable consequence of our globalising economic system. Only by rethinking the operating premises ofthatare we likely to have any chance of moving towards a safer and more sustainable future. Mainstream institutions are, inevitably, waking up to the dangers ahead. Witness the entirely unprecedented UN Security Council debate in which climate change was posed, not only as a threat to international peace and security, but as ‘a slow genocide’. By the same token, nongovernmental organisations in the West have recently been much more vociferous in their own dire warnings. Christian Aid, for instance, recently spelt out the link between climate change and world poverty, warning that by 2050 as many as 1 billion people could be refugees because of water shortages and crop failures. The Royal Society in the UK has gone even further, pointing to the danger thatHomo sapienswill die out through nuclear weapons and/or climate change. That was the stark message from its president, Lord Rees, at a January 2007 conference of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, at which its famous ‘Doomsday Clock’ had its minute hand moved forward to ﬁve minutes to midnight. Yet for all the anxiety, government and business efforts to stymie, let alone reverse,acceleratingcarbon emissions are at best unconvincing, and at worst entirely risible. Even the climate science experts in the shape of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), postulating how a range of carbonreducing technologies might help, have not been able to offer a greenhouse gas stabilisation target of anything less than a range of 445–534 parts per million by volume. This ‘target’ is already signiﬁcantly beyond levels deemed in this book to be anywhere near safe. Indeed, at the top end of this range, the impacts would likely be utterly disastrous. The IPCC’s emphasis on smart technology, to be underpinned by serious ﬁnancial backing, is, however, unsurprising. It is premised on the perpetuation of the current international political economy regardless of its dysfunctionality as exposed by climate change. The yawning chasm between what is needed and what is currently on offer is only further underscored by a recent European Union ﬁasco. This was when carbon permits doled out to serial polluters under the current Kyotosponsored carbon emissions market proved so generous that the market price collapsed, practically to the point of making the EU scheme meaningless.

Preface xi

Of course, a few would rather clutch at the straw that climate change is a load of baloney, anyway. They were given succour by the television broadcast ofThe Great Global Warming Swindle on Channel 4 in March 2007, a deceptive documentary that left many viewers befuddled and confused. Back in the real world, the scientiﬁc evidence that humanity is putting the planet under unprecedented stress is rapidly accumulating. What this unequivocally points to, at this dread moment in the human saga, is the need for nothing less than a paradigm shift. In other words, the only logical response has to be one not of incremental but of revolutionary change; revolutionary, that is, without precipitating nations, societies, and communities worldwide into unmitigated and ultimately suicidal violence against each other. The book addresses the question: how is this to be done? Central to the answer is a framework which has been in existence since the early 1990s. Known as ‘Contraction and Convergence’, its case is argued eloquently in Chapter 1 by its original proponent, Aubrey Meyer. With the Kyoto Protocol due to end in 2012 and, in any case, now defunct, an effective universal replacement is not just a matter of urgency but of the utmost gravity. Grassroots campaigners question why Contraction and Convergence is not yet squarely on the negotiating table. The next key round of climate talks beckons at Bali in December 2007. The spotlight thus falls on political elites, administrative mandarins and scientiﬁc advisers. Here istheirgenuine opportunity, not just to act with political maturity but to take a giant leap on behalf of humanity. Can they break with all the vested interests, the inertial forces, the conventional wisdoms which are the historic lot of those in power, even while these have now lost all value? Through some collective Damascene vision might they at this late hour provide not only redemption for themselves, but for the rest of humanity too? One thing, though, is for sure: little time is left.

Mark Levene and David Cromwell June 2007

Introduction: Survival Means Renewal Mark Levene and David Cromwell

1 ‘Civilisations die from suicide, not by murder’ Arnold Toynbee

INDICES OF A DYING PLANET

In the summer of 2005,New Scientistreported some of the latest ndings on climate change. According to researchers who had been studying the permafrost of western Siberia, formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, this, the worlds largest frozen peat bog  as big as France and Germany combined  was not simply melting but could possibly unleash billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse 2 gas 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. If this were to happen, the consequences for humanity and planet alike would be little short of apocalyptic. Had the researchers uncovered one of the tipping points repeatedly warned about by the climate science community? A point of no return: a threshold beyond which, whatever we try to do, it is going to be too late? Are we really, as historian Mike Davis  one of the most insightful commentators on the relationship between geophysical events and impacts on human society  has put it, living on the 3 climate equivalent of a runaway train that is picking up speed? If so, the speculation on what might happen could almost be endless. With both Arctic sea ice and the Greenland icesheet 4 diminishing at accelerating rates, the odds on the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation  the Gulf Stream being its most well known component  weakening or even collapsing, would increase accordingly. And if that were to happen, the temperature of western Europe could plummet by ve degrees Celsius or more, transforming its climate into that of Newfoundland, on the same latitude but minus the moderating effect of the Gulf Stream. Or will temperatures around the globe actually soar upwards by six or even twelve degrees, surpassing the torrid Cretaceous, even to that moment in the Permian period, 251 million years ago, when 9095 per cent of all life on earth 5 was wiped out and evolution virtually had to begin again?

2 Surviving Climate Change

Perhaps it is just as well that such questions cannot be answered by this book. Perhaps, indeed, we should leave the science to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the rst stage of whose Fourth Assessment Report, published as this book neared completion in early 2007, conrmed that the world is not only radically hotting up but that the main cause is almost certainly anthropogenic  that is, humancaused emissions of greenhouse 6 gases. One might add that one hardly needs to be a climate expert to be aware that what is going on around us  both in terms of incremental shifts confusing, even suffocating, our normal seasons, or, more strikingly still, through repeated extreme heat, cold, storm and ood surges  are all signs that something is dreadfully amiss. What ordinary everyday observation cannot do is empirically test and explain causation or, having done so, chart likely, ongoing trajectories or outcomes. Without the science we would be none the wiser. Whether this in itself means that the scientic analysis can be secure in its ndings may be another matter. It may turn out, for instance, that the fourth IPCC report has insufciently anticipated the combined effect of positive feedback processes of which a sudden jump in methane emissions isonlyone. A signicant number of the reports own contributors take this argument a stage further through analysis of climate change impacts on the earth system as a whole, to suggest that we may be close to, if not past, that critical threshold beyond which human intervention cannot and will not be able to 7 halt the runaway scenario. Whatever the timeframes involved, and the degree to which the alarmist warnings turn out to be the most accurate, there is an almost universal scientic consensus that the necessary societal response must be one of very urgent and radical reductions in global carbon emissions. As John Holdren, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has tersely put it: We have already passed the onset of dangerous climate change, the task now is the 8 avoidance of catastrophic climate change. And it is that task which is the point of entry for this book.Surviving Climate Changeisnot about the science of global warming as such, though we certainly encourage our readers to become as well acquainted with it as they 9 can. Rather, its focus is onhuman consequences: international, national and local politics, the economic and social implications and, crucially, the cultural shift which will be necessary if humankind itself is to undertake at one and the same time a breakneck yet orderly

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