Capitalism will fail the climate campaigners

 

Global greenhouse gas emissions must peak in the next four years, coal and gas-fired power plants must close in the next decade and lifestyle and behavioural changes will be needed to avoid climate breakdown, according to the leaked draft of a report from the forthcoming third part of the landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

 It confirms what socialists have always anticipated, that  politicians will not heed scientific advice 

"Group of scientists release draft IPCC report as they fear it will be watered down by governments" reads the sub-headline of the article in the Guardian.

CTXT, the Spanish publication that leaked the draft, said it showed that the global economy must be shifted rapidly away from a reliance on conventional GDP growth, but that the report underplays this. “The essential radical change in an economic system whose perverse operation of accumulation and reproduction of capital in perpetuity has brought us to the current critical point is not clearly mentioned.”

This is the crucial core case from socialists of why we argue that mitigation of climate change under capitalism will fail. 

Part three is not scheduled to be released before next March, but a small group of scientists decided to leak the draft via the Spanish branch of Scientist Rebellion, an offshoot of the Extinction Rebellion movement.

The leak reflected the concern of some of those involved in drawing up the document that their conclusions could be watered down before publication in 2022. Governments have the right to make changes to the “summary for policymakers”.

Rich people in every country are overwhelmingly more responsible for global heating than the poor, with SUVs and meat-eating singled out for blame, and the high-carbon basis for future economic growth is also questioned.

The top 10% of emitters globally, who are the wealthiest 10%, contribute between 36 and 45% of emissions, which is 10 times as much as the poorest 10%, who are responsible for only about three to 5%, the report finds. “The consumption patterns of higher income consumers are associated with large carbon footprints. Top emitters dominate emissions in key sectors, for example, the top 1% account for 50% of emissions from aviation,” the summary says.

The report underlines the lifestyle changes that will be necessary, particularly in rich countries and among the wealthy globally. Refraining from over-heating or over-cooling homes, cutting air travel and using energy-consuming appliances less can all contribute significantly to the reductions in emissions needed, the report finds.

Eating patterns in many parts of the rich world will also need to change. 

“A shift to diets with a higher share of plant-based protein in regions with excess consumption of calories and animal-source food can lead to substantial reductions in emissions, while also providing health benefits … Plant-based diets can reduce emissions by up to 50% compared to the average emission-intensive western diet,” the report says.

 “Weaker near-term action would place limiting warming to these levels out of reach, as it would entail assumptions about subsequent accelerated policy development and technology development and deployment, inconsistent with evidence and projections in the assessed literature,” the report warns.

It draws attention to the danger of "business-as-usual"

“Existing and planned infrastructure and investments, institutional inertia and a social bias towards the status quo are leading to a risk of locking in future emissions that may be costly or difficult to abate,” the scientists say. “The combined economic impacts of stranded fossil fuel resources and capital could amount to trillions of dollars,” the report says. For example, coal-fired and gas power plants with working lives usually measured in decades will have to be decommissioned within nine to 12 years of construction, the report finds, and that no new fossil fuel development can take place if the world is to stay within 1.5C of heating.

Technology to capture and store carbon dioxide has not progressed rapidly enough to play a major role yet, the report also finds, but technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would almost certainly be needed to hold heating to 1.5C.

The report underlines a point frequently raised by this blog that address the needs of the world's poor in the undeveloped and developing world cannot be neglected and, in fact, briging, modern energy to all those who currently lack it would have a “negligible” effect on emissions, the report notes.