The corporate mass media were briefly all agog about the agreement reached in Paris for the world’s nations to reduce green house gas emissions and save the planet.[1] COP21 was widely declared a success, then quickly ignored. But really, what was accomplished? A very slick propaganda pitch by the world’s political elites, that’s what. Yet, it must be acknowledged that the unanimous agreement among the leaders of all nations at the conference was impressive in itself.
After several decades of consistent scientific consensus confirmed by massive planetary evidence, the politicians were forced to admit the obvious. That was a major step toward serious climate action. Yet it was embarrassingly similar to a bunch of alcoholics admitting their addiction at their first 12-step meeting. Unfortunately, it is far too little and it also may be too late. Global warming is a threat to humanity now and the addiction of corporations, governments, and people to fossil-fueled global economy remains fundamentally unchanged. In covert denial, major media reports buried the facts of failure deep in their glowing descriptions.
Indigenous earth advocates and leaders of island nations – as well as major climate organizations such as 350.org and Friends of Earth – objected that the “agreements” have no teeth. The agreed goals of the negotiating nations fall far short of targets demonstrated by the scientific evidence to be necessary to avoid planetary climate catastrophe. The science-based targets must be reached very soon. In contrast, the carbon-emissions cuts the politicians pledged to make do not add up to a total that is sufficient to keep global warming to even the insufficient goal of an increase of no more than 2º C.
Denial as Affirmation
Working toward the 1.5º C. the climate science consensus deemed necessary to avoid climate catastrophe is presented in the Paris accords as a vague wish. On the positive side, the agreement is a universal political acknowledgement that there is indeed a climate crisis. The nations present agreed that something must be done. That’s all – hardly a plan of action. COP21 produced an agreement of concern; none of its targets for governmental action are enforceable or adequate. Most importantly, virtually nothing is said about how nations can achieve the agreed goals. Yet the praise pours forth.
In the U.S., the mass shooting at a community center in San Bernardino, California, interrupted any scant coverage of the UN conference. Every last detail of the terrorist shooters’ lives was covered over and over by CNN, MSNBC, and other cable outlets. Given the apparent inspiration given them by ISIS and the immigration security failure in the case, the attention given it is certainly understandable. Yet over the two-week span of the conference, the U.S. corporate media gave coverage to COP21 at a level implying its relative unimportance to Americans. One might wish that it had been given the level of coverage of Donald Trump’s latest offensive utterance, and with greater honesty. However, the mass media are deeply implicated in the fossil-fuel addiction of the corporations that control it.
Perhaps the scant news coverage has to do with the fact that the U.S. is unique in its political stance toward global warming. Everyone knows that the climate-crisis denying Republican-controlled Congress will never ratify any climate-action agreement with its present membership. First, nothing President Obama attempts to accomplish will be accepted by this racist radicalized Tea-Party dominated gang of corporatist obstructionists. Obama’s efforts to shape the agreement so that it does not require congressional ratification will not significantly change U.S. political stagnation over the issue. Second, the blatantly racist hostility to Obama in Congress is merely amplified by the climate-denial fossil-fuel industry funding of so many legislators. It is a lose-lose situation for climate action in the U.S., and it is a disaster for the planet.
Major national news outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, reporting at the end of the conference, have at least implicitly proclaimed victory for the environment. Despite the failures of content and commitment evidenced by the document itself, it is widely praised for the hope it brings to the deepening climate crisis. Agreement in principle, however, is entirely different from any commitment to specific climate actions. What can we realistically hope will be accomplished as a result of the COP21 accord?
Affirmation Diverting Attention to Wrong Policies
A compilation of actions taken and not taken by the various nations that have contributed in extremely different degrees to climate destabilization would be book-length. The global fossil-fuel industry and its connections to governments and corporations is highly complex and differentiated. In the U.S., federal efforts to constrain emissions from coal-fired power plants remain ambiguous at best. The Environmental Protection Agency attempts to impose stricter emissions standards on power plants. At the same time, the Bureau of Land Management continues to virtually give away coal mining leases in the Powder River Basin without competitive bidding. The price of coal is thereby held down in a “giant subsidy” to the coal industry.[2] The social costs of burning coal – pollution driven health damage and the climate destabilization – remain unaddressed. The coal problem is only one of many contradictions in government action in relation to emissions reduction. Most are driven by the demands of industry upon the state. The culture of unrestrained fossil-fuel driven economic growth remains unscathed.
The corporate agenda of industrial growth not only continues unabated, but has permeated talk of how to limit carbon emissions. Research and development of exotic new technologies for energy production dominate governments in the industrially developed Western nations. The Bill Gates’ coalition of billionaire “venture philanthropists” has convinced governments to spend on new high-tech energy production. Even if the research and development efforts for such exotic strategies as Bill Gates’ new technology for nuclear power generation could be guaranteed viable, they are misdirected.
Right Action Threatens Corporatism, and Must
Instead, public authorities should be investing in more difficult to organize but absolutely necessary immediate actions to conserve energy and cut carbon emissions directly. Existing means for energy conservation and near zero emissions production – solar and wind – are immediately available. Their immediate deployment should be maximized. But that would seem to require structural changes in the economy of global extractive capital. Actually, their gradual deployment is already forcing change in energy investments, as is the divestment movement. If sufficient investment shifts to renewable energy, the fossil-fuel industry cannot continue to drive governments of the “advanced” industrial nations to continue down the path of destruction.
Those who have contributed most to the problem have contributed least to its solution. The corporatist model of new industrial technology for reducing carbon emissions merely serves to take us further down the path of wrong action. Those who can instigate real change away from the corporatist model of over-production and over-consumption toward an ecological economy, must take action now. Given the intransigence of federal policies subsidizing the fossil-fuel industry, the contradictions between abstract federal climate policy and the continued support for extractive capital will become more obvious.
Local and regional efforts to protect aquifers, farms, local drinking water, and indigenous lands from their destructive effects are making extractive investments more difficult. Communities, municipalities, and regions must reassert their innate rights to self-preservation by direct actions replacing fossil-fuel based energy production, instituting comprehensive energy conservation programs, and restricting the carbon emissions allowed. The false hopes of abstract international agreements must be replaced by the realistic hopes of direct actions by people where they live.
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[1] Prime examples include: Chris Moody, “Paris climate deal: 5 big issues,” The Washington Post, December 12, 2015. Accessed at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/paris-climate-deal-5-big-issues/2015/12/12/2bb2ba8c-a107-11e5-8728-1af6af208198_story.html?wpisrc=nl_pwrainbow and Coral Davenport, “Nations Approve Landmark Climate Accord in Paris,” New York Times, December 12, 2015. Accessed at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html.
[2] James Surowiecki, “The Financial Page: Money to Burn,” The New Yorker, December 7, 2015, p. 28.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 