Reply To: The Climate Emergency

Nobody is objecting to saying that a further rise to between 2 and 3 degrees above pre-industrial levels (we are already a little abo e 1 degree more) won’t cause serious problems in sone parts of the world which capitalism won’t be able to cope with properly.

What is “alarmist” (which dictionaries defined as “someone who exaggerates a danger and so causes needless worry or panic”) is the claim that the most likely future scenario is somewhere between 3.5 and 4 degrees and that this will reduce the carrying capacity of Earth to only 1 billion humans, ie that up to 9 billion will die of starvation. I don’t think even Malthus would envisage that.

You yourself, Alan, have been — rightly — insistent on debunking “overpopulation chatter”. There is an article in the February Socialist Standard recalling that in the 1960s the likes of Paul Ehrlich were predicting mass starvation before the end of the last century. They were wrong.

Let that be a lesson to us about being alarmist about population.

Also, the effects of a rise to between 2 and 3 degrees will be worse if it happens under capitalism. If it happened on a world socialist society then the problem could be dealt with in a planned and rational way. So capitalism is as much to blame here as climate change.

The real emergency is to get rid of capitalism.