ALB
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I agree that there is a realistic prospect of the UN target of limiting the rise in average global temperature to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century not being achieved. But that’s not at all the same as saying a rise to 4 degrees by 2055 is realistic or even possible.
Just heard this mentioned on the radio. It might mean I’ve a better chance to being alive in 2055 than you (not that I really set much store by such superficial research).
You’ve met your match there, Alan, in that Hunziker bloke:
“What happens if 4°C hits by 2055?
The short answer has gotta be: Pandemonium reigns supreme!
According to the scientific forum 4 Degrees Hotter: “Less than a billion people will survive.” Expect, on average, more than a million human global warming deaths every week. As such, mass graveyards stacked with bodies would become a new normal.
Prominent climate scientists were quoted in the 4 Degrees Hotter article:
According to Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, one of Europe’s most eminent climate scientists, director of the Potsdam Institute: “At 4C Earth’s … carrying capacity estimates are below 1 billion people.”
Echoing that opinion, professor Kevin Anderson of the prestigious Tyndall Centre for Climate Change stated:
Only about 10% of the planet’s population would survive at 4C.”
The good news is that this is only a scenario, a thought experiment, and that it’s not going to happen. In fact, I would say, in view of the time lag between the emission of greenhouse gases and the consequent rise in average global temperature, that it would be physically impossible to get average global temperature to rise to 4 degrees above pre-industrial levels (a further 2.5% compared with today as it’s now already 1.5 degrees above) by 2055, even if this was adopted as a deliberate policy by capitalist states, It might happen eventually but not by 2055, not that it’s not going to be adopted as a deliberate policy aim anyway.
I don’t suppose either of us will be around in 2055 but some here might be. I’m prepared to bet whatever you like that in 2055 average global temperature will not be 4 degrees above pre-industrial levels. I’d ask those here still around then to make a note in their diary to look up what was said on this forum on 27 August 2019 and call in your bet from the beneficiaries of your will and donate it to the socialist movement.
Why do people write such scare stories? To sell books, I suppose.
Thanks, but what makes you (or the person you are quoting) describe Hoffer as a “”Marxist”? In fact what is the source and date of the quote?
According to the leftwing US magazine Jacobin he was “The Right’s Working-Class Philosopher”, an admirer of Nixon and Reagan:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/the-rights-working-class-philosopher/
Yes, I thought of Jimmy Hoffa too but it can’t have been him as I don’t think he was a Marxist was he, though I’m sure he’d arrange for a jungle to be burned down if you paid him enough.
I thought that the main aim was political democracy ie that all the members of the Legislative Council should be directly elected instead of just some. Which I suppose would be a legitimate demand in itself, wouldn’t it?
Actually, by coincidence, it is exactly 50 years ago this month that hippies were causing a scandal by squatting an empty building in central London. Here’s what the Socialist Standard said at the time:
Click the link to 144 Piccadilly for more and a picture of hippies. There’s even an ageing hippie on our executive committee,
Actually, that has long been the choice facing the British capitalist class, as this letter in the Times on 14 August pointed out (anticipating Macron) :
“Sir, When I voted to join the Common Market in 1975 it seemed to me that the future of our country lay either with Europe or the US. Your leading article “Strategic Pivot” (Aug 13) makes it clear that nothing has changed. If we leave the EU we shall, inevitably, become a client state of the US, expected to follow the policy of the US government in which we have no voice. We may not always agree with the policy decisions taken by the EU, but we do at least have the opportunity to influence them. In a world controlled by competing power blocks, the idea of pursuing an independent path is a mirage.
Professor Richard Carter, Carnforth, Lancs.”I was at the talk which was the basis for that article by Ian Wright on Labour’s economic policies. He was searching for something in them that encourages worker coops and dug up this definition of socialism (in an obscure policy discussion document on “Alternative Models of Ownership”) :
“What we have presented, as an alternative, amounts to the first steps in challenging that dominant model of ownership and control. We have shown, in simple, practical terms, how a government committed to addressing those profound, structural problems could implement key policies that would rectify them. Its goal would be nothing other than the creation of an economy which is fairer, more democratic, and more sustainable; that would overturn the hierarchies of power in our economy, placing those who create the real wealth in charge; that would end decades of under-investment and wasted potential by tearing down the vested interests that hold this country back. The historic name for that society is socialism, and this is Labour’s goal.”
It didn’t, and probability won’t, find its way into Labour’s election manifesto. So it’s just a curiosity, an obscure attempt by some Labourites to define socialism.
I can confirm from discussions with him that he sees nothing wrong in principle with interest (which will survive into his petty commodity production by workers coops economy). It’s only profit that he objects to as a something-for-nothing income.
From today’s papers President Macron’s assessment of what a no-deal Brexit would mean for capitalist Britain:
“Can [the cost of a hard Brexit] be offset by the United States of America? No. And even if it were a strategic choice, it would be at the cost of a historic vassalisation of Britain. I don’t think this is what Boris Johnson wants. I don’t think it is what the British people want.
“The British are attached to being a great power, a member of the Security Council. The point can’t be to exit Europe and say ‘we’ll be stronger’ before, in the end, becoming the junior partner of the United States, which is acting more and more hegemonically.”But maybe it was the point of those who financed the Leave campaign?
Ian Wright knows the Party and is sort of sympathetic to us. He follows us on Twitter and may even have voted for us. However he doesn’t agree with our non-market conception of socialism.
This doesn’t come out in this article (as it didn’t need to) but he is a market socialist of sorts envisaging an economy of workers cooperatives still producing for the market but not for profit, selling their products at their labour-time value rather than at their “price of production” (cost price + average rate of profit). A sort of simple commodity economy where the producers are workers coops rather self-employed artisans.
It must be a moot point whether or not this really represents the abolition of the wages system.
“One reason that the police is handling the demonstrators with kid-gloves is that they do have the sympathy of much of the public despite the disruption caused. “
Yes, I think that was largely true of the actions in central London a few months ago, but it’s not clear if this is going to last if the disruptions continue on a regular basis as planned.
Anyway, the news item you mentioned was about Australia, a climate sceptic country where commentators argue that the Labor Party lost the recent elections there because many voters regarded it as too “pro-greenie”. Which suggests that your point works both ways. If the protestors do not enjoy public sympathy the police can be more heavy-handed. It will be interesting to see what happens if XR try anything in New York next month. And whether discretion will (sensibly) get the better part of valour as in Katowice last year
I know, Alan, that you set great store by this but face the facts. “Thousands” taking part in a “global” “strike”. That would be pathetic. Just a drop in the ocean. One of those quoted in the link and on a video there is more ambitious:
“We’re talking about trying to get two to three percent of the population, which doesn’t sound like a lot but that’s a lot of people,” a student organizer named Sana, who is attending a climate strike in New Jersey,
She’s right. It is a lot of people. The population of the US is 323 million. Two per cent of that is 6.46 million. The population of the UK is 65 million. Two per cent of that is 1,3 million. If they can get over 6 million in the US and a million in Britain to take part that would be something. But I doubt whether they will mobilise even one million in either country. I hope she’s not going to be too disappointed and become disillusioned.
The stated aim is to get capitalist governments to do a lot more to limit carbon emissions in the context of capitalism and its competitive struggle for profits. Good luck to them.
It is true that XR does have a more lofty aim:
Shortly after the Week of Action ends on September 28, Extinction Rebellion will begin its own “Worldwide Rebellion” involving the peaceful occupation of parts of London and calling on people all over the globe “to rise up and rebel for our deep love of life and the need to protect it.”
Oh dear ! This is just self-indulgent Christian-like bearing witness which eventually is going to piss off the rest of the population. Completely counter-productive.
We are preparing to produce a few thousand copies of the Indian leaflet to hand-out at various street stalls and events in September and there’ll be the editorial and a couple of articles in the September Socialist Standard. I doubt, though, that any member of the Socialist Party will be taking part in this rather naive so-called “global strike” which has no more credibility than the Trots incessant calls for “a general strike now”. The schoolkids’ strike is ok, though I don’t think we have any schoolkid members. We do have parents. They’ll probably be encouraging their kids join in and not go to school on 20 September.
What do they expect? That even 3.5% of the population can take on the state and win? As the song says (sort of), they fight the state and the state wins.
Marquito has drawn attention to this article on Brexit from the Marxist Humanist Initiative in the US
https://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/uk-news/boris-johnson-brexit-and-the-law-of-value.html
I’m not sure it succeeds. Are there really any capitalist firms that favour Brexit because the fall in the value of the pound will make their exports more competitive? After all, a fall in the value of the pound will also make imports more expensive, while exports to Europe will have a tariff imposed on them in the event of a no-deal Brexit. And has immigration from East Europe really undermined wages in Britain? The minority capitalists interest in Brexit would still seem to be financiers who favoured getting out of EU regulation of their deals in favour, as is now being revealed, of switching to the less onerous US regulation. In any event, the present US regime wants Brexit so as to weaken the EU as a competitor on world markets, with pro-American UK politicians now openly pushing the US interest.
More interesting was the link they gave to the discussion within MHI before the referendum on what line thy should take. They say that as an organisation they have no position (fair enough, why should they?) but are publishing two points of view. I had expected there’d be one for Remain and one for Leave. In fact there was one for Remain, with the other for Abstain, Which I suppose was the only real choice facing those with the interests of the working class at heart, reflecting that there was no conceivable working class case for Leave. The one for Abstain by Ravi Bali makes some good points against Lexit.
