ALB
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Today’s Times reports Trump as adding after his dismissal of that report
that he would not take measures to cut emissions unless other countries did.
That’s what they are all saying but can’t agree on what measures to take as whatever they decide will advantage some states and disadvantage others.
Whatever else you can say about Trump he doesn’t attempt to hide the capitalist interests behind US policies. He renounces the Paris Agreement on the grounds that it is not good for US businesses, i.e that the restrictions on carbon emissions it envisages puts them at a competitive disadvantage compared with businesses operating from other capitalist states. And now he says it again: if US adopts clean technologies but the rest of the world doesn’t that’s not good, i.e. puts the US at a competitive disadvantage. Such jockeying to avoid being disadvantaged is of course why the capitalist states of the world are finding it impossible to agree to do what scientists say is needed to prevent average global temperature rising by more than 2 degrees C (let alone 1.5 degrees) compared with pre-industrial levels by the end of the century (that’s a further 1 degree as they’ve already risen 1 degree since then, which means that sea levels are going to go up even if all current emissions are stopped).
The Reuters news item about this says:
The congressionally mandated report http://www.globalchange.gov said that climate change will cost the country’s economy billions of dollars by the end of the century
The exchanges on this forum will have taught us to assess such news items critically. What the Report demanded by Congress actually says is that climate change would cost the US billions of dollars if emissions continue at their present rate. That was the Report’s worst case scenario, but it also presents other scenarios in which emissions are reduced and which will have a lesser economic effect.
Trump says he doesn’t believe it, but it is not clear what he doesn’t believe. It could be either that he doesn’t believe the prediction of what would happen if emissions continue at their present level or that he doesn’t believe that its economic consequences will come about as some measures will be taken to reduce emissions. Or it could be both,
I’m afraid, ZJW, I couldn’t work what all this was about, never having heard of half (more than half) of those mentioned. It strikes me that the author should have followed the advice we were given in Speakers Class — never use irony as people will take you literally. It’s true.
The stated aim is vague as an endgame, but then you could argue the same about our “classless, moneyless, socialist society” with very few details.
No you couldn’t ! Our “system change” is quite clear. It’s a change from class and minority control to common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production, so permitting production directly to satisfy people’s needs instead of production for profit and capital accumulation. Of course this will achieve their aim of a system “which maximises well-being and minimises harm”. But that aim is so vague that even supporters of capitalism can, and in fact do, claim this for the profit system.
I agree, though, that in raising the question of “system change” they are introducing an idea that we can expand on.
Many waved banners emblazoned with slogans including “System change, not climate change”
That’s a good slogan but what exactly do they mean by it? According to their website at https://rebellion.earth :
We aim to promote a fundamental change of our political and economic system to one which maximises well-being and minimises harm.
I’m sorry, but that’s far too vague. In fact, who would say they didn’t want that?
Also on the site is their objective in this particular campaign of theirs (they organise campaigns on other subjects too):
We are facing an unprecedented global emergency. The government has failed to protect us. To survive, it’s going to take everything we’ve got.
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The Government must tell the truth about the climate and wider ecological emergency, reverse inconsistent policies and work alongside the media to communicate with citizens.
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The Government must enact legally binding policy measures to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025 and to reduce consumption levels.
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A national Citizen’s Assembly to oversee the changes, as part of creating a democracy fit for purpose.
If you listen to the 50-minute talk explaining their campaign it appears that they really believe they can achieve this by the “non-violent sacrificial action” of a few hundred. I got the impression that some religious or spiritual views was what was motivating them.
Demand 1 is for All-Day Climate Change instead of All-Day Brexit. They have achieved some publicity but nothing like that.
As to 2, this is a demand addressed to the UK government. I think we can safely say that it is an impossible demand. If the UK did this unilaterally it would undermine the competitiveness of UK businesses and the consequent loss of markets and an economic turn-out. I am not sure what they mean by “reduce consumption levels”. Are they proposing that people consume less, i.e more austerity?
Their stunts/sacrificial actions are achieving more publicity than marches, petitions, lobbying MPs or voting Green. At least for the time being, but I expect it will peter out with the only result being a few hundred people feeling “virtuous” as their spokesperson puts it.
Extract from the US 2018 National Climate Assessment report quoted in a previous post.
Regardless of future scenario, additional increases in temperatures across the contiguous United States of at least 2.3°F relative to 1986–2015 are expected by the middle of this century. As a result, recent record-setting hot years are expected to become common in the near future. By late this century, increases of 2.3°–6.7°F are expected under a lower scenario and 5.4°–11.0°F under a higher scenario relative to 1986–2015. (https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/)
I know people have complained here about statistics overload but how can you make sense of this unless you know how to convert Fahrenheit to Centigrade and know what the lower and higher scenarios are?
I am sure Dave Bsc will be able to explain it better, but basically to convert a degree increase in F to one in C you multiply the F figure by 5 and divide by 9. So the 2.3 degrees F above is about 1.3 degrees C. Which doesn’t sound so scary. On the other hand, the comparison is with the period 1986-2015 as opposed to pre-industrial times. Between pre-industrial times and 2016 average global temperature increased by 1.8°F (1.0° C), so the comparable figures to those in the recent IPPC report are 4.1° F and 2.3° C.
Fortunately, in other parts of the report they give the figures in both F and C. The Report is one required every four years by law and so is a serious document. Its conclusions are more or less the same as those of the IPCC report.
As to the scenarios, the higher one is where CO2 emissions continue at their present rate, i.e. a sort of worst case scenario which is not likely to happen. An increase by 6.7°C (12°F) would in fact be a real disaster risking the runaway global warming that some talk about.
The lower one is what would be needed to limit the rise to 2°C as set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
As the Report puts it:
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.
The “significant reductions” would have to be quite substantial:
Of the two RCPs predominantly referenced throughout this report, the lower scenario (RCP4.5) envisions about 85% lower greenhouse gas emissions than the higher scenario (RCP8.5) by the end of the 21st century.
The Report also puts forwards some capitalist reasons for doing something about it (and why I would think they will do something, though in the US there is the additional obstacle of having to stand up to sectional lobbies that put their interests before that of the capitalist class as a whole):
Without more significant global greenhouse gas mitigation and regional adaptation efforts, climate change is expected to cause substantial losses to infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century. Regional economies and industries that depend on natural resources and favorable climate conditions, such as agriculture, tourism, and fisheries, are increasingly vulnerable to impacts driven by climate change. Reliable and affordable energy supplies, which underpin virtually every sector of the economy, are increasingly at risk from climate change and weather extremes. The impacts of climate change beyond our borders are expected to increasingly affect our trade and economy, including import and export prices and U.S. businesses with overseas operation and supply chains. Some aspects of our economy may see slight improvements in a modestly warmer world. However, the continued warming that is projected to occur without significant reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions is expected to cause substantial net damage to the U.S. economy, especially in the absence of increased adaptation efforts. The potential for losses in some sectors could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of this century.
The odd plate of lentil soup would do them, the world, a world of good.
A “mess of pottage” you mean?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mess_of_pottage
Most humans are, have been since we came down from the trees (in fact even before we went up there) and will continue to be into socialism, flexitarians, or omnivores. That’s part of our biological nature as an animal species. It is only because human behaviour is flexible (another part of our biological nature as animals) that a minority can choose to be inflexitarian by not eating meat. Good luck to them as long as they leave the rest of us alone.
Alan, I don’t object to you being a vegetarian (how could I as what people choose to eat is a private matter?) nor to you propagating vegetarianism (how could I as that’s a matter of free speech? Though I would question whether here’s the place to do it). What I am objecting to is linking the case for socialism with vegetarianisam (and also the exaggerations that Matt and me have just drawn attention to). I am afraid that every time you do this someone has to call you out lest people think socialism has something to do with vegetarianism.
Actually, William Morris put the socialist attitude to vegetarianism very well when her wrote in Commonweal</em), the journal of the Socialist League, in September 1886:
Our readers will have noticed several letters amongst our correspondence on the subject of Vegetarianism, one or two of which were written in a somewhat aggrieved tone, apropos of attacks by Socialists on that doctrine, if one may call it so, though several comrades and friends are vegetarians. It seems to me that there is no need either to attack a vegetarian or to confer a vote of thanks on him, so long as he is one because he chooses to be so on any grounds that please himself, whether he makes it a matter of health, or economy, or sentiment. But a man can hardly be a sound Socialist who puts forward vegetarianism as a solution of the difficulties between labour and capital, as some people do, and as one may think very severe capitalists would like to do, if the regimen were not applied to themselves; and again, there are people who are vegetarians on ascetic grounds, and who would be as tyrannical as other ascetics if they had the chance of being so. I do not mean to say that Socialist vegetarians are likely to fall into these traps; they only make themselves liable to the sneer of an anti-Socialist acquaintance of mine, who said to me one day ‘All you Socialists have each of you another fad besides Socialism’.
Yes, this pro-vegetarian propaganda is getting out of hand. People might get the wrong impression and not realise that the Party’s position is that what workers eat (or drink or wear) is a private matter that has nothing to do with socialism and that we certainly don’t tell people what they should or should not eat.
I think you should have made it clear that the first quote is not from the Lancet but that it is the Lancet quoting an article in another scientific journal. I say this because the Lancet article ends with a statement (you quote) about “red or processed meat” not about meat in general.
Agriculture is by nature a change in the ecological environment so does the study take into account the destruction of the trees that originally grew on the land cleared for agriculture (nothing wrong with that of course as long as a new stable ecological balance is established)? Also, I believe you pointed in another post to the global-warming gas, methane, being released by growing rice (your staple diet?).
Incidentally, is processing vegetables more environmen-friendly than processing meat?
Although we can say that the capitalists and their political puppets don’t “seem remotely interested in tackling” CO2 emissions, we can’t say that are not doing anything about it, however feeble and hesitating. They are, if only in their long-term interest, e.g. not having to spend money in the future on sea defences, moving populations, coping with forest fires, etc.
And it is not always a case of a government not wanting to do anything. It’s that economic constraints (profit considerations)prevent them for doing much. Capitalist corporations from the different capitalist states are competing against each other to sell their goods on world markets. And states with sources of fossil fuels are interested in continuing to sell them.
So, if one state were to unilaterally take the necessary measures, which will involve extra energy costs for their capitalists, this would make them less competitive on world markets. So they are only going to take action if other states are too. Hence the various climate change conferences. At these conferences each state is trying not to disadvantage itself and to prevent other states getting an advantage over them. So what emerges is the lowest common denominator.
This is why we can be certain that the IPCC recommended 45 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030 compared with 2010 will not be reached so that, unless something else happens, the average global temperatures rise since pre-industrial times will not have been limited to 1.5 degrees by 2100.
As you say, the only framework in which the world can rationally tackle this problem is the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources.
Having now read the IPCC’s own summary of its report, I realise that I have been labouring under a misapprehension. I had assumed (like the rest of us here) that it was talking in terms of limiting the rise in average global temperature between now and 2030 to 1.5 degrees. In fact it was talking in terms of what extra measures needed to be taken up to 2030 to prevent a rise of 0.5 degrees by 2100 (to bring the rise to a total of 1.5 degrees since pre-industrial times, a rise of 1 degree having already happened.)
So, even if nothing more is done than at present or as presently planned the average global temperature will be nothing like 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2030. Such a rapid rise since 2010 would be a disaster ! What is being talked about is a rise of 0.5 degrees over an 80 year period; which on the basis of a crude back of the envelope calculation is 0.00625 per year and a rise of 0.075 degrees by 2030.
This has convinced me more than ever that to talk in terms of an increase in average global temperature by a further 4 or 5 degrees by 2100 is absurd and scare-mongering. For that to happen countries would have to increase the burning of fossil fuels, especially coal, by an enormous amount (I don’t know, perhaps three or four times present levels). Which is not going to happen and is in fact not happening. It may be increasing but at nothing like the extent or rate that would be required to increase the global average temperature by a further 3 or 4 degrees over the next 80 years.
There is a problem. Rising sea levels, more stormy weather, more forest fires, more droughts, desertification, etc will make things worse for millions of people but there is no “existential threat” either to civilisation or to the human species. For us to join those who say so would be opportunism and unscientific. Let’s stick to saying that only within the framework of socialism can the problem be rationally dealt with as, under capitalism, conflicting interests between competing capitalist states will mean that what will be done will be disorganised and too slow.
Just posted a summary of a summary of the IPCC report on the Extinction thread here:
Average global temperature has already risen by 1 degree since pre-industrial times, i.e. since 1750.
As a result of this, sea levels will continue to rise whatever is done now but, obviously, slower if something is done.
If the aim is to prevent a further rise of 0.5 degrees (on top of the already 1 degree rise, i.e by 1.5 degrees in total) by 2100 is to be achieved, CO2 emission will have to have been cut by 45% from 2010 to 2030.
The policies so far adopted after the last intergovernmental meeting on climate change in Paris in 2015 won’t achieve this.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the IPCC report is wrong. Maybe the planet can take even 4deg warming and we can all still carry on as (relatively) normal.
I don’t think anyone is claiming that an increase in global warming of 4 degrees above pre-industrial levels (ie pre 1750)would mean we could all carry on as normal. It doesn’t seem a likely scenario anyway. Certainly the IPCC report is not suggesting that it is.
I don’t think the IPCC is wrong or, rather, than lay persons like ourselves are in a position to say it is. Quite the opposite. Not being experts in the field we can only rely on reports like this which say what most experts in the various fields involved are agreed on. If we don’t do this we will just be quoting the conclusions of individual experts who happen to agree with our uniformed opinion.
This being the case we ought to know what the IPPC report says. Its finding are summarised on pages 5-20 of the report here:
ipcc.ch/pdf/special-reports/sr15/sr15_spm_final.pdf
Here’s some extracts:
“Human activities are estimated to have caused approximately 1.0°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels, with a likely range of 0.8°C to 1.2°C. Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate. (high confidence). (p. 6)”
“Warming from anthropogenic emissions from the pre-industrial period to the present will persist for centuries to millennia and will continue to cause further long-term changes in the climate system, such as sea level rise, with associated impacts (high confidence), but these emissions alone are unlikely to cause global warming of 1.5°C (medium confidence). (p. 7)”
“By 2100, global mean sea level rise is projected to be around 0.1 metre lower with global warming of 1.5°C compared to 2°C (medium confidence). Sea level will continue to rise well beyond 2100 (high confidence), and the magnitude and rate of this rise depend on future emission pathways. (p.9)”
“On land, impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, including species loss and extinction, are projected to be lower at 1.5°C of global warming compared to 2°C. Limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C is projected to lower the impacts on terrestrial, freshwater and coastal ecosystems and to retain more of their services to humans (high confidence). (p. 10)”
“In model pathways with no or limited overshoot of 1.5°C, global net anthropogenic CO2 emissions decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 (40–60% interquartile range), reaching net zero around 2050 (2045–2055 interquartile range). For limiting global warming to below 2°C CO2 emissions are projected to decline by about 25% by 2030 in most pathways (10–30% interquartile range) and reach net zero around 2070 (2065–2080 interquartile range). (p.14)”
“Estimates of the global emissions outcome of current nationally stated mitigation ambitions as submitted under the Paris Agreement would lead to global greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 of 52–58 GtCO2eq yr−1 (medium confidence). Pathways reflecting these ambitions would not limit global warming to 1.5°C, even if supplemented by very challenging increases in the scale and ambition of emissions reductions after 2030 (high confidence). Avoiding overshoot and reliance on future large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) can only be achieved if global CO2 emissions start to decline well before 2030 (high confidence). (p. 21)”
Basically, it is stating the obvious (that things will be worse if by 2100 the rise is 2 degrees rather than 1.5 degrees, i.e given that these have already risen 1 degree since 1750, if there is a further rise of 1 degree rather than of 0.5 degrees) but its main message is that current stated policies (“pathways”) will not lead to the rise being limited to a further 0.5 degrees by then. To achieve this, global CO2 emissions will have to decline by around 40 percent before 2030, i.e within the next 12 years.
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