Despite the economic recession that followed the Covid-19 outbreak, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels surged in 2020. In this same year, a series of extreme weather events broke records across the world: hurricanes and cyclones in the US and India, heatwaves in Australia and the Arctic, floods in large parts of Africa and Asia, and wildfires in the US. In 2021, carbon dioxide emissions are set for their second-largest increase in history as governments pour stimulus cash into fossil fuels while, at the same time, trying to mitigate climate change through market-based ‘green’ solutions. The idea that the capitalist economy — the cause of environmental degradation — can also be the solution to climate change is driving us towards a climate catastrophe. BJORK LIND reports.
While the British government has been vocal on raising its climate targets ahead of the COP26 climate summit, its commitment to economic growth has pushed the agenda in the opposite direction. In January, the government greenlighted a project to build the country’s first deep coal mine in 30 years. In March, Boris Johnson announced that he would approve cuts to taxes on domestic flights to revive the aviation industry. In the same month, Rishi Sunak announced that a fuel duty on petrol and diesel would be frozen for the 11th year in a row. In April, as the government continued supporting the construction of a major gas project in Mozambique, it became abundantly clear that its pledge to end support for overseas fossil fuel projects is nothing but hot air. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has released data showing that global emissions from the energy sector were 2% higher in December 2020 compared to the same month the previous year. Based on this development, the IEA predicts that global carbon emissions from energy use will rise by 1.5bn tonnes in 2021, which represents a 5% rise of carbon dioxide for the year. Global coal demand is forecast to grow by 4.5%, approaching its all-time peak in 2014. This leap in emissions will be second only to the massive rebound 10 years ago when governments poured cash into carbon-intensive projects in an effort to pull their economies out of recession.
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries have committed to cut greenhouse gas emissions with a view to ‘limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels’. However, if the planet continues to warm at the current rate, we will reach this limit within a decade and, once breached, as many as three billion people are expected to be pushed beyond the historical range of temperature that humans have survived over the past 6,000 years. If this is to be avoided, governments will have to suppress emissions by 10% per year. But cutting emissions to such an extent will entail industrial shutdowns across the board and require public ownership of natural resources. In short, it will mean an end to capitalism since production for profit will have to be replaced by production which meets human needs without destroying the environment.
However, the ruling class, which will not sacrifice the capitalist system to save the planet, continues to insist that economic growth is perfectly compatible with emissions reduction as long as pollution is treated as a commodity. According to this logic, putting a price on carbon creates market incentives for companies to move capital investment into less-polluting technologies. Economic growth can then go on forever as it is rendered benign for the environment. Even though this approach has failed miserably — and, as a result, ecosystems are collapsing faster than ever — the further development of carbon markets and other ‘green’ market mechanisms are expected to be key topics at the forthcoming climate summit.
Carbon imperialism
Carbon markets, introduced in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, have been embraced by the ruling class in the imperialist nations as a preferred tool for tackling climate change. This arrangement parcels up the atmosphere so that ‘permits to pollute’ can be bought and sold as any other commodity. Carbon permits are first issued free of charge by governments — the most polluting industries will receive the biggest allocation of allowances. In theory, a cap is placed on the amount of carbon that companies are allowed to produce annually, but in practice there is almost no limit. Since a cap on emissions means a cap on economic growth, the ‘cap’ set by governments is well above any level that would have a significant impact on the climate. On top of that, if individual companies wish to exceed their quota, they can buy carbon allowances from other companies that are willing to sell their excess allowances. What makes matters worse is that companies also have the option to ‘offset’ their pollution by investing in pollution reduction projects. This allows them to earn a high number of pollution credits that can then be used to increase emissions further or sold to generate profits. The amount of credits earned by each project is calculated on the basis of the reduction in emissions promised by the project. A corporate polluter can thus conjure up huge estimates of the emissions that would be produced without the company’s investments.
Carbon offsetting projects include monoculture tree plantations since trees allegedly absorb carbon from the atmosphere. However, scientific understanding of the interactions between the biosphere (trees, oceans, and so on) and the atmosphere is limited. Therefore, there is no scientific credibility for the practice of soaking up pollution using tree plantations. Moreover, monoculture plantations are ecologically destructive, causing biodiversity loss, water table disruption and pollution from pesticides. The majority of these projects are being imposed upon underdeveloped nations where they act as an occupying force in impoverished communities dependent on these lands for survival.
In 2020, companies purchased more than 93 million carbon credits, equivalent to the pollution from 20 million cars in one year. That’s a 33% increase over 2019. The market is expected to grow sharply in the coming years as heavy emitters have vowed to negate pollution by acquiring more carbon offsets. Shell has promised to offset 120m tonnes by 2030 while Nestlé has a goal of offsetting 13m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year – each year requiring a further 4.4m hectares of land, according to the NGO Grain. Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England and one of the organisers of this year’s climate summit, has said that the global market for carbon offsets can be expected to grow to $100 billion in the decades ahead. The long-term consequences of carbon markets are increased greenhouse gas emissions and soaring corporate profits. It therefore comes as no surprise that corporations which have an interest in delaying climate change mitigation and in continuing to burn fossil fuels are big advocates of carbon trading.
Since the introduction of the Kyoto Protocol, imperialist countries have been able to record a reduction in their pollution even though carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are growing at four times the rate they grew in the 1990s. This is due to the fact that a large number of companies have moved their production outside the imperialist countries to avoid emissions standards and to take advantage of super-exploitable labour. Imperialist countries can thus claim they are reducing or stabilising their emissions when they are in fact dumping them in underdeveloped nations. In 2019 the British government announced that the country’s emissions were now 42% below 1990 levels and thus were brought on par with the year 1890! Denmark, which is hailed as a model for climate action, likewise leaves out emissions from import, offshore production and shipping (the latter being a sector which accounts for half of Denmark’s greenhouse gas emissions) when measuring its pollution.
Degrowth delusions
The project of sustainable capitalism was doomed from the start because maximising profit and saving the planet are mutually exclusive goals. Many bourgeois environmentalists have come to recognise the relation between economic growth and environmental degradation. However, in their defence of ruling class interests, they maintain that ending fossil capitalism does not mean the transition to socialism. Instead, they argue, it involves placing limits on national GDP growth. The idea is that the capitalist economy can be slowed down, made to run at a ‘steady state’ or even made to ‘degrow’. In other words, they advocate for economic stagnation to save the planet. However, who is going to pay the price is something they do not talk about. Indeed, degrowth advocates remain strangely silent in the face of the current economic recession which has plunged millions of people into extreme poverty.
It is undeniable that economic growth is the main driver of planetary ecological degradation, but capitalism is a system premised on it. The choice we are faced with is therefore not the one between climate catastrophe and ‘degrowth’ recession, but instead between the disastrous anarchy of capitalism and socialist planning. It is possible to mitigate climate change and achieve zero emissions, but time is running out.
