Climate change

Printed in the first Discusssion Bulletin on ecology, November 2023 Below are some reviews, focussing on books which I think are relevant to debates on theoretical background issues. The books in the class struggle ecological and wider science sections are valuable in general, for ecological stuff: the third section engages more with theoretical questions. My reviews are not polished for articles, they are mostly half-formed critiques, thoughts, and extracts. Some I intended to review, but never pulled together notes. But I share them for reference: General class-struggle ecology, very good —...

Discussion bulletin on ecology #1, November 2023 (DB 371) Click here for pdf of the first Eco DB, in the two column format as printed. Click here for a PDF of the same but in a one-column format, if preferred for reading online. Click here for doc version of the bulletin. Discussion bulletin on ecology #2, February 2024 Click here for pdf of the second Eco DB, in the two column format as printed. Click here for a PDF of the same but in a one-column format, if preferred for reading online. Click here for doc version of the bulletin. Contents #1 Click to read online: Metabolism, Part 1: Marx, by...

The super-rich 1% are responsible for 16% of global carbon emissions, equal to the emissions of the poorest 66% of humanity (five billion people). The richest 10% (incomes over $91,000) are responsible for half the emissions. Limiting long-term global warming to 1.5°C requires a 48% cut in total global emissions by 2030 (compared to 2019 levels). There is no way of achieving this without radical cuts to the oversized emissions of the rich. Progress on poverty alleviation and longer term climate goals also necessitates social control of investment decisions. As the super-rich gather for the...

As if inexorably, the Keeling curve measuring carbon dioxide emissions continues to ratchet up. At the same time, annual global average temperatures continue to increase. This year looks set to become the warmest for millennia. Paltry efforts to curb fossil fuel use, to prevent the problem of climate change at source, have stalled or are swallowed by ever-growing energy demand. Net zero resembles a distant mirage. Activists have to redouble our efforts to impose mitigation measures on profiteering capitalists and their unwilling bourgeois states. While emissions abatement must remain the main...

The UK steel industry is at a crossroads. Steel production is carbon intensive. A transition is needed if the UK is to meet its carbon goals. And the UK’s four blast furnaces, which produce 80 per cent of our steel and provide thousands of jobs, need replacing over the next decade or so. Their owners have proposed a more rapid closure with the loss of up to 5,000 direct jobs and many more beyond that. Steel production has been in a long decline in the UK. At its peak in the early 1970s, the industry employed around 320,000 people. It is now somewhere around 5-10% of that. Just before Margaret...

Pressure is mounting over the sentences of Just Stop Oil (JSO) protestors Marcus Decker and Morgan Trowland. Both scaled the Queen Elizabeth II Suspension Bridge, stopping traffic for almost 40 hours in October 2022. Decker was imprisoned for two years and seven months, for “public nuisance”, and Trowland for three years. These are the longest sentences ever given to non-violent protestors in the UK. Ian Fry, the UN’s rapporteur for climate change, has said the sentences were “significantly more severe than previous sentences imposed for this type of offending in the past… I am gravely...

For many years the representatives of fossil capital have outnumbered politicians and scientists at the COP talks, but this year fossil capital has openly, brazenly taken control. COP28, starting 30 November, will be chaired by Sultan Al Jabr, CEO of ADNOC, the UAE’s state-owned oil company. He recently announced plans to increase output from 2.7 billion barrels to 5 billion barrels a day, and leaked documents reveal ADNOC’s plans to use the summit to broker business deals. For the past 28 years the capitalist class has demonstrated it will not and very likely cannot halt rising emissions...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (2014) highlighted the potentially important role for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies in keeping global temperature rise below 2°C. The report defined CDR as methods that “involve removing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing the carbon in land, ocean, or geological reservoirs”. CDR is also called “negative emissions technologies” (NETs). The IPCC’s fifth report discussed CDR technologies such as land carbon sequestration by reforestation and afforestation; soil carbon management, or biochar; ocean carbon...

Workers' Liberty decided the following on 19th November 2023. On climate change, the overwhelming priority remains the struggle to reduce emissions as swiftly as possible. Geoengineering is not a substitute for sharp emissions reductions. Some of the geoengineering technologies might have major downsides and risks. But they may prove necessary to confront a world we never wished for. The present stage is mostly about research, experiments and testing. On balance, it makes sense to support authorised, publicly-funded research. We raise the questions of governance of geoengineering, pushing for...

Expanded and updated 11 th November “If we could come up with a geoengineering answer to this problem, then Copenhagen wouldn’t be necessary. We could carry on flying our planes and driving our cars.” — Richard Branson, 2009 “[A]ddressing climate change risks SRM [Solar Radiation Modification] cannot be the main policy response to climate change and is, at best, a supplement to achieving sustained net zero or net negative CO 2 emission levels globally. SRM contrasts with climate change mitigation activities, such as emission reductions and carbon dioxide removal (CDR), as it introduces a ‘mask...