ALB
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I see from today’s papers that the incoming President of Mexico, Lopez Obrador, has pledged in his inauguration speech that under him the poor will come first:
“We are going to govern for everyone but he are going to give preference to the most impoverished and vulnerable,” he said. “For the good of all, the poor come first.”
I wonder how long it will take him to find out that under capitalism profits have to come first and be forced to implement this.
The Green Party are hopeless reformists. They are also currency cranks with it, as in the passage from their manifesto he quotes shows:
The existing banking system has failed and is no longer fit for purpose. The Green Party believes that the power to create money must be removed from private banks. The supply of our national currency must be fully restored to democratic and public control so that it can be issued free of debt and directed to environmentally and socially beneficial areas such as renewable energy, social housing, or support for community businesses…
Most Green Party candidates let alone members don’t understand what this means. I remember listening to one during the 2015 general election as she valiantly tried to explain this — basically the government simply printing more money to finance the reforms they propose. Hello, raging inflation. And of course if you try to put spending on social or environmental reforms before profit-making you’ll just provoke an economic downturn.
Where I live at the local elections in May the Greens did a deal with the Liberals and got 4 councillors elected. This seems to be the Green Party’s current strategy — get councillors elected. There’s not much else they can do now that Labour under Corbyn has taken back the programme of social reforms that the Greens stole from them when Blair & Co were in charge.
Trump officials are minimizing warnings from scientists by arguing they are exaggerated and based on the worst-case scenario. They say the National Climate Assessment (NCA) – an expansive federal government report on the dangers of climate change in the US – considers only the highest possible levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
“If you take the extreme case, you’re right, it’s dire,” Trump’s interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, said on Fox News. “If you take the best case, it’s not much.”
The officials are either being disingenuous or stupid or maybe responding to overenthusiastic environmentalists or sensational news headlines which have highlighted the NCA’s worst-case scenario as what will happen (as we know this sort of thing happens here in the UK).
The NCA report clearly sets out two scenarios and explains what they are, the higher one being if nothing is done to reduce CO2 emissions and they continue at their present rate. The lower one is based on significant reductions being achieved:
By late this century, increases of 2.3°–6.7°F (1.3° -3.7°C) are expected under a lower scenario and 5.4°–11.0°F (3.0° -6.7°C) under a higher scenario relative to 1986–2015. (…) With significant reductions in emissions, global temperature increase could be limited to 3.6°F (2°C) or less compared to preindustrial temperatures. Without significant reductions, annual average global temperatures could increase by 9°F (5°C) or more by the end of this century compared to preindustrial temperatures.
And when they set out the dire economic consequences, they explicitly state that this is the worst case scenario as it is introduced by
Without more significant global greenhouse gas mitigation and regional adaptation efforts,….
The point is that the worst case scenario is not likely to be achieved because something more will be done to reduce emissions. On the other hand, it is not likely too that the lower scenario will be what will happen either because not enough will be done. So, what will happen? Probably something in between, but that’s anybody’s guestimate. But whatever it is it will have negative consequences on millions of people.
Ah, the dangers of cutting and pasting ! What you need to do is, after submitting, check what will appear and if the formatting stuff does, press edit and delete it, and submit again.
I think I am beginning to understand what the statement that “In the first two decades after its release, methane is around 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide” means.
It doesn’t mean that methane lasts decades in the atmosphere after it is emitted. It is a measure of how much more heating a given amount of methane creates compared to the same amount of CO2. For various chemical reasons CH4 absorbs more heat than CO2 and so is a more “potent” greenhouse gas. How much more depends on over what period you measure the extra warming effect.
If one considers a long time frame, then the longer-lived gases will appear stronger, and vice-versa if one considers a short time frame. This is why the values for methane appear to be all over the map. Methane sticks around for only about a dozen years, so it does its warming early on. Carbon dioxide, in contrast, can persist for thousands of years, steadily warming that whole time. As a result, methane’s potency is much higher if evaluated over 20 years rather than 100. (https://www.factcheck.org/2018/09/how-potent-is-methane/ )
The figure of 80 times more is based on a 20-year period (hence the “first two decades” in the quote). Over a 100-year period it’s about 30 times more. The measure is called “Global Warming Potential” (GWP). (As the standard, CO2’s GWP is 1 over any time period.)
For all this focus on methane’s potency, though, it’s useful to remember that methane is still a smaller overall contributor to climate change than CO2. As we’ve written before, CO2 is the main driver. Other gases, such as methane, are important, but they’re far less abundant. According to the IPCC, “carbon dioxide is the largest single contributor to radiative forcing over 1750–2011 and its trend since 1970.” By itself, CO2 accounted for 76 percent of all human-made greenhouse gases in 2010. Methane ranks as the second-largest single contributor, responsible for 16 percent of the same total if using the older GWP100 values, or 20 percent if using the newer ones. Go ahead, and take your pick.
To complete the picture:
in the U.S., 31 percent of methane emissions due to human activity come from the oil and gas industry; 26 percent come from livestock, such as cows; and another 16 percent come from landfills. Methane also has many natural sources, including wetlands and termites.
Natural gas, which when burned releases CO2, is methane. Also, as the last post from Alan points out, global warming results in more methane being released from natural sources.
By the time this discussion is over we’ll all be experts in global warming, hopefully inoculated against accepting claims without checking them !
In the first two decades after its release, methane is around 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide!
That claim is all over the internet but I can’t find its origin. It is contradicted by other statements that methane only lasts in the atmosphere for about 12 years (compared with hundreds of years for some CO2). For instance:
The lifetime in the air of CO2, the most significant man-made greenhouse gas, is probably the most difficult to determine, because there are several processes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Between 65% and 80% of CO2 released into the air dissolves into the ocean over a period of 20–200 years. The rest is removed by slower processes that take up to several hundreds of thousands of years, including chemical weathering and rock formation. This means that once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can continue to affect climate for thousands of years.
Methane, by contrast, is mostly removed from the atmosphere by chemical reaction, persisting for about 12 years. Thus although methane is a potent greenhouse gas, its effect is relatively short-lived. (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhouse-gases-remain-air )
Help, Dave BSc !
It also ends up by urging them to abandon being non-violent as this, supposedly, “protects the state”.
Finally, if you’d like a longer analysis of how the state and media represses or co-opts protest movements, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of How Non Violence Protects The State.
The Extinct activists might even consider that this means that the whole message might have come from an agent provocateur urging them to take violent action. (I’ve just been to see Mike Leigh’s film on Peterloo in which Oliver the Spy makes an appearance, in the film that is.) In any event, that there are such people around is a possibility that those who engage in illegal activity have to consider, and it means that they can’t trust everybody, especially as there will already be undercover police in Extinct. This is something the anarchist forgot to mention, though it is also part of anarchist experience.
Armed with critical thinking about long-term predictions from our discussion of climate change, we can also be sceptical about the government and Bank of England predictions about what will happen depending on the type of Brexit that happens:
The Bank of England is at least explicit in stating that its scenario is a worst-case one:
The central bank considered the worst-case scenario to be a Brexit where the UK is unable to agree to a deal with the European Union and there is no transition period after March 2019.
In this situation, the UK economy would suffer for years and be about 8% smaller by the end of 2023, compared to the bank’s most recent projections. There are also expectations for inflation to peak at 6.5% and unemployment to peak at 7.5%. House prices could fall by about 30% and interest rates could spike.
The Bank of England (BoE) also expects an exodus of tens of thousands of people leaving the UK each year in the midst of such a downturn.Since the UK is highly unlikely to (I’m prepared to say won’t) leave the EU on 29 March without any arrangements being made, this really is Project Fear. The government is evidently pulling out the stops to try to get its deal adopted.
As to the government’s 15-year predictions, these aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. Nobody can predict how the capitalist economy will be even in one year let alone fifteen. It is curious, though, that the government itself is predicting that the policy it is pursuing will slow down the accumulation of capital.
I know it’s a bit embarrassing to be agreeing with the Mad Brexiteers but on this point they are correct: we are not all going to die. So, keep calm and carry on watching the capitalists and their political representatives arguing over the best trading arrangements for capitalist business.
It does look that we are heading towards a second referendum and the festival of xenophobia that will be.
That sort of article, whether intentionally or not, diverts the blame for global warming from the capitalist profit-seeking economic system on to individuals. If only they would eat less meat or ride a bicycle instead of driving a car. As the (second) article linked to actually puts it:
When people ask, ‘but what can I do about climate change?’ we have an answer, ‘eat less beef.’ We can also drive less by cutting unnecessary trips — for example, grocery shopping only once a week. Turning down the thermostat in winter and up in summer to reduce energy consumption (and lower gas and electricity bills), walking or bicycling instead of driving short distances for better health and for our environment are suggestions we have heard before. It’s time we complied.
Smug people telling us what to do again. Well, we can guilt-trip them in return by pointing out that they are prolonging the problem by not working to get rid of capitalism.
The reason cows, sheep and goats emit methane is that they consume so much fibre in their diet. Humans, too, emit methane and, because they eat more fibre, vegetarians and vegans more than the rest of us. Put crudely, they fart more. In any event, the logic of the anti-cow argument is not that we should become non-meat-eaters but equally that we could eat different types of meat, birds and fish and pigs and horses instead.
But there’s another problem, methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas but does not work the same as carbon dioxide (CO2). CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere while CH4 is broken down fairly rapidly and recycled at a given level. I don’t understand why the WMO seems to be including methane as a “long-lived greenhouse gas”. We (including me) are getting out of our depth here but maybe Dave Bsc can explain.
In any event, CO2 is the main culprit and it’s emissions of that that have to be reduced. Once they have been, then methane emissions shouldn’t be a problem. Don’t forget that we need some greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to avoid Earth cooling to -18 degrees centigrade.
Good rebuttal based on facts, but why do you say the argument is different from ours? Isn’t our argument too that in conditions like this people don’t act like capitalist homo economicus but abide by generally accepted rules whether written or unwritten, in the common interest? It only becomes a tragedy under capitalism, where you have, for instance, profit-seeking fishing companies competing to make a profit out of fishing.
Farmer Roberts makes a couple of good points against the vegan lobby: hill farming in Wales (renowned for sheep) and health scares about meat as such (not as adulterated under capitalism). They are on a sticky wicket there as there are also health issues about a vegan diet, especially for cats:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7817089/cats-vegan-diet-warning-rspca/
The only justification for veganism is an ethical one but that doesn’t give them the right to impose their ethics on others. As here:
No wonder they are so unpopular. People don’t like holier-than-thou types.
Self-righteousness (also called sanctimoniousness, sententiousness, and holier-than-thou attitudes) is a feeling or display of (usually smug) moral superiority derived from a sense that one’s beliefs, actions, or affiliations are of greater virtue than those of the average person. Self-righteous individuals are often intolerant of the opinions and behaviours of others.
How would they like it if a gang of meat-eaters barged into a vegan restaurant eating hamburgers?
Anyway, haven’t we discussed this enough? It’s got nothing to do with socialism. We are just providing a platform for food faddism.
Dave B wrote
The international capitalist class are fragmented into ruthlessly competing economic blocks. They are , or the capitalist economic system, is endemically incapable of co-operating even to prevent their own obvious destruction.
Tony Cliff’s righthand man in the SWP, Chris Harman, came to the same conclusion in this article from 2007:
What applies to the economy applies to the environment. Governments and individual capitalists may be able to see where the pumping out of greenhouse gases is leading, but not one of them is going to sacrifice their own competitiveness to take the necessary countermeasures – even though what comes afterwards will literally be floods in Bangladesh, the Nile Delta, and eventually, London. (http://socialistreview.org.uk/334/slump-boom-and-climate-change)
And then he goes and spoils it by saying something silly like:
To say green investment makes sense in a recession is right, but it is not capitalist sense. People can see better public transport as an alternative to cars. They can see massive insulation programmes as logical at a time of soaring heating bills. And jobs in insulation schemes and alternative energy programmes offer more to construction workers threatened with redundancy than blaming foreign workers who face the same plight. But it is not capitalism that is going to make those alternatives real – it is the struggle against capitalism.
So it’s the “struggle against capitalism” that’s going to impose this on the capitalist class and system. Oh dear.
What about the actual abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism as a system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources, with production directly to satisfy people’s needs instead of for profit?
This has been published while Alan is asleep:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/11/1026691
They say:
The authors of the report note that nations would need to triple their efforts on climate action without further delay, in order to meet the 2°C-rise limit by mid-century. To meet the 1.5°C limit, they would have to quintuple their efforts. A continuation of current trends will likely result in global warming of around 3°C by the end of the century, with continued temperature rises after that, according to the report findings.
So we don’t get the degree rises confused, the 3°C rise here is what is predicted if current promised emission reduction measures are applied (the 5°C rise mentioned in other reports is what is predicted if nothing is done and emissions continue at their current rate).
Implementing unconditional NDCs [National Determined Contributions], and assuming that climate action continues consistently throughout the 21st Century, would lead to a global mean temperature rise of about 3.2°C (with a range of 2.9–3.4°C) by 2100 relative to pre-industrial levels.
So the “threat” at the moment is of an increase in global average temperature by 2100 of around 3°C above pre-industrial levels, i.e an extra 2°C this century. Though of course not as bad as a 5°C rise, this would have still serious consequences in terms of rising sea levels, more severe weather and population movements.
Due to conflicting economic interests between states and their jockeying for competitive advantage the chances of them agreeing to cut emissions in the next decade or so to limit the rich to 2°C, let alone 1.5°C, look remote. Let’s see what happens (or doesn’t happen) at the Climate Change Conference in Katowice next month).
