Climate Change: Those who trash the planet won't save it

Editorial from the UK Marxist Website LeftHorizons

Screen shot. Source: Lazaro Gamio / Axios

Those who trash the planet won't save it

The representatives of big business have been waking up to climate change for some time now. They haven’t really had any alternative, given the way the issue has relentlessly climbed the political agenda in the last few years. Now, barely a day goes by without some other billionaire declaring how important it is to save the planet.

The latest company to comment on the global environment is the giant US bank, JP Morgan Chase, which in a report this week, has added “climate change” as a significant risk factor for its clients. Rising sea levels, increased incidences of flooding, droughts and wildfires, it has declared, are all risks that may have “…negative consequences for the business models of JP Morgan’s clients”. Never mind the human race, it's money that talks. The Damascene conversion of the bosses of JP Morgan comes close on the heels of similar statements by other moguls of international corporations.

The new boss of giant oil company BP, Bernard Looney, said last month that he wanted his company to sharply cut “net carbon emissions” by 2050 or sooner. BP, according to Looney, needed to "reinvent" itself. His comments came hard on the heels of similar statements by the heads of Royal Dutch Shell and Total, two other oil giants.

For anyone concerned about climate change, these announcements might appear as welcome news. It is not as if there isn’t ample justification for the issue of climate change to climb up the priorities list for any politicians or company bosses.

Last decade the hottest on record

It was confirmed recently that the last ten years up to the end of 2019 were the hottest decade on record, according to three authoritative global agencies: NASA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the UK Met Office. Moreover, 2019 was the second warmest in records going back to 1850. The past five years were also the warmest in the 170-years records, with each year of those five being more that 1^oC warmer than pre-industrial revolution times.

The British Met Office adds that 2020 is likely to continue the same warming trend. The unprecedented wild-fires in Australia and the floods in the UK this week, not to mention other weather ‘anomalies’ around the world, are a taste of what the world will experience as temperatures rise. Commenting on those Australian fires, Professor Richard Betts of the Met Office Hadley Centre said we are "seeing a sign of what would be normal conditions under a future warming world of 3^oC".

Last year, British researchers conducted an analysis of the impact of climate change on the risk of wildfires around the world. One of the lead authors of the review, Dr Matthew Jones, of the University of East Anglia, commented, "Overall, the 57 papers reviewed clearly show human-induced warming has already led to a global increase in the frequency and severity of fire weather, increasing the risks of wildfire".

World’s oceans showing warming trend

Another analysis, published in the journal Advances In Atmospheric Sciences, used ocean data from every available source and concluded that sea temperatures reached a new record level in 2019, showing “irrefutable and accelerating” heating of the planet. The world’s oceans are the clearest measure of the climate emergency because they absorb more than 90% of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuel burning, forest destruction and other human activities.

Their analysis showed that the past five years are the top five warmest years recorded in the ocean and the past 10 years are also the top 10 years on record. The amount of heat being added to the oceans is equivalent to every person on the planet running 100 microwave ovens all day and all night.

We could cite many, many more articles, research papers and documents. There is an overwhelming consensus among scientists that climate is not only an important issue, it is an urgent one that demands resolution. Even climate change sceptics, who doggedly suggest that climate trends might be ‘cyclical’, are unable to refute the mountain of empirical evidence of real change that is there before our eyes.

The two greatest obstacles to finding a resolution, however, are those massive blocks that have stood in the way of human progress now for generations: on the one hand, the private ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange and on the other, the nation-state.

On-going investments in coal, oil and gas

Despite the fine words of company bosses, there is no possibility that big capitalist corporations and their bosses can be ‘won over’ en masse to a zero-carbon economy, as the growing climate emergency demands. What miserable efforts these big companies can make towards sustainable energy production amount to little more than exercises in public relations, like putting green on their company logos, and their gestures are massively dwarfed by their on-going investments and exploration in oil, gas and coal.

JPMorgan, for example, still has on its board a long-time climate denier and former head of the giant Exxon oil corporation. In its January 2020 Corporate Finance report, Ten Striking Facts for a New Decade, climate doesn’t get a mention in a forest of graphs, data and predictions. 

As for the boss of BP, he was ridiculed by fellow-boss and CEO of Glencore, one of the world’s biggest coal producers. BP’s plans for net zero carbon by 2050, were, the Glencore boss said, “wishy-washy”.  “How are you getting there? How are you going to do it? It is a long way out.” For Glencore, it’s a case of maximising profit, always for the short-term, and let the future look after itself. 

In fact the bosses of BP and Glencore are two sides of the same coin; one is offering platitudes and gestures to appease rising public concern, while the other is openly sceptical and blithely continues hammering out the profits from burning coal. Either way, there are no indications that the giant private corporations that have trashed the planet can in any way be trusted to put matters right.

Reluctant, stuttering, partial shift

As we have argued in many articles, the key question for the climate emergency is who owns, controls and manages industry, not least the energy-producing sector. As long as private profit and greed are the main drivers of investment, the best we can expect is a reluctant, stuttering and partial shift towards renewable energy, a shift that is far to slow to make a serious difference.

The labour movement has to demand the implementation of socialist measures, not for sentimental reasons or because it is ‘tradition’, but because it is the only realistic means of organising carbon-free energy production and use. The giant oil, gas and coal companies should become publicly owned, at the earliest-possible date, so that their vast resources and profits can be swiftly applied to sustainable, renewable forms of energy.

But private ownership of industry is only one of the key blockages to human progress. The other is the nation-state. Many of the worst culprits in the ongoing development of oil, gas and coal are actually state-owned. Companies like Aramco of Saudi Arabia, and Russia’s Rosneft, which is investing billions in fresh oil and gas exploration and in building a pipe-line, Nord Stream 2, to Western Europe.

Socialist planning internationally

Each of the ruling elites in different states will jealously guard its power, privilege and prestige, not only against the opposition of its own population but, where necessary, in competition with its rivals abroad. Socialist planning of energy needs and production has to be an international policy, one that pools resources, technology and know-how to develop a cooperative, global, network of energy production.

It is understandable that many young people today are angry and impatient about the lack of serious political movement on climate change. They, after all, have the most to lose if not enough is done to save the future of the planet. But the determination to bring about change has to be directed and purposeful. Change, at least on the scale that is required, cannot be engineered by the same people who caused the problem in the first place. The case for socialist change is not postponed by the climate crisis, it is amplified by it.

February 27, 2020