U.N.'s top climate change official, Yvo de Boer

Following the failure of the U.S. to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol, which was initiated in 1997 – and  has so far been ratified by 187 nations to date – the Copenhagen Climate Summit (COP-15) this past year marked yet another low point in the struggle to arrest and reverse environmental crisis.  Many officials and media pundits, in fact, have commented that the U.N. summit in Copenhagen represented, in all likelihood, the last opportunity on the part of the industrialized and developing world to reach and enact a binding, global agreement pertaining to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the hope of adverting a future environmental catastrophe.

Representatives of upwards of two-hundred nations and countries converged on the summit in Copenhagen to reach, ostensibly, after 14 previous meetings, a global agreement that called for drastic reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions produced by the primary global polluters: the U.S., the E.U., China, India, and Brazil.  Weeks before the summit, politicians representing the industrialized world touted the precepts of emission cuts approximating to 40% by the year 2020; however, as the summit approached, and even after a few days into it, it became clear to all the initial exaggeration of those projected ambitious targets for emissions.

After the submittal of eight draft proposals, which, incidentally, all went down to defeat, the representatives of the U.S., China, India, Brazil, and South Africa issued instead a so-called “Copenhagen Accord.”  This Accord, which Obama referred to as an “important breakthrough,” is nothing short of a complete political failure on the part of the economically dominant nations to address the exigent issue of global warming and the subsequent destruction of the environment.  The Copenhagen Accord stated simply the need to combat the rise in global temperatures to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels; however, the statement does not say concerning how and by whom this can be met with accomplishment.

The Accord, furthermore, aims to provide upwards of $30bn a year from 2011 to 2012, and up to $100bn by 2020 to developing countries in order to help them “cope” with the long-term effects of global warming and environmental destruction.  Again, the non-binding brochure does not address who allocates funds to whom.  The document, which is in and of itself, toothless, was merely “recognized”– nothing made binding, no commitments, and no serious approach to address the issue of global warming.  It is also not apparent, moreover, whether the Accord would even come up for ratification at some future date in time.

The inherent logic of global, corporate capitalism compels all nation-states on pain of extinction to compete with each other – fighting in the interest of their own multi-national conglomerates – over the control of markets, natural resources, and, as we bore witness to this past December in Copenhagen, productive capacity, while, at the same time, taking a devastating toll on the great mass of working and poor people in the process.  Global climate change, therefore, cannot be combated so long as the current leaders of individual capitalist states remain at the helm of the decision-making process.  The world’s majority of working and laboring people – those with everything to gain and lose in this struggle – must come to the fore if they want to ensure a planet left to survive on not only for ourselves but for future generations as well.  How and where should we proceed?

The first step to averting climate catastrophe is to exact the most potent of pressure on our respective governments to force through a binding, global agreement, which must contain language calling for strict penalty payments on all productive facilities and their respective governments that do not follow in accord with the above agreement to follow through with commitments to reduce emissions.

In addition, since the rich, developed countries are the main polluters, it is their responsibility to lower emissions drastically as well as to help developing countries sincerely cope with the impacts of global warming, i.e., storms, floods, and droughts by providing billions of dollars in aid with no strings attached.

Following this, we need an immediate turn away from the burning of fossil fuels as a method and source of energy production and consumption towards the propagation of renewable and sustainable alternatives, i.e., wind, wave, and solar power.

We need to end the production of internal combustion engines and massively expand public-transportation systems.  Such a policy can be facilitated by making public transportation completely free for all to use through the implementation of a progressive tax on multi-national corporations, banks, finance houses, and, most of all, the rich (those making above $250,000 a year) in order to cover administrative, maintenance, and other operating costs.

We also need to halt the development and construction of new nuclear power plants along with the gradual phasing out of reactors currently in operation in favor of the above-mentioned alternatives.  The supervision of and maintenance of currently operating nuclear facilities must not be left up to corporate managers or bureaucratic, State administrators – only workers employed at these facilities know if their place of employment is safe or not.  In the event that workers determine a plant to be unsafe and structurally unsound, they must have the authority and ability to close their former workplace as soon as humanly possible for the benefit of all society.  Full financing for job re-training in alternative spheres of energy production for displaced workers must come from their former capitalist employers, the State, and or the union to which they belong.

Left to their own devices and plans, the representatives of the bosses will try everything in their power to ensure the profitability and hegemony of their multi-nationals over their foreign imperialist counterparts.  Any resolution, to that effect, on emissions, no matter how “binding,” that still allows for the existence of the market to exist in the sphere of global social production, inevitably sows the seeds of its own downfall – especially when inter-imperialist rivalry forces competing corporations to adhere to their own self-interests at the expense of global environmental regulations through increased production done blindly for the market without care or concern for how their economic priorities effect our natural surroundings.

The havoc fundamentally “manufactured” by the global capitalist system on our environment through its own inner mechanisms suggests a fundamental, systemic change is necessary to reverse our course of development as a civilization, one leading inextricably toward meltdown and chaos.  We need, to that effect, to alter completely the ways in which we, as a globalized society, produce and consume energy.

To save our environment from destruction and the rendering of the Earth uninhabitable by our species, we need a globally planned economy, one existing within the overall framework of a workers and consumers’ democracy.  By removing the production of energy done anarchically for the market and for the benefit of multi-national shareholders, we can not only ensure the survival of our species in general, but we can also utilize the mechanisms inherent in the planned, global economy to level up the quality of life deteriorating today in the semi-colonial countries on the continents of Africa, South-America, and Asia due to the rapacious nature of the mining and energy corporations, funneling off resources and profits to increase their bottom-lines.

Through aid provided from the economically advanced countries through the global plan, clean, sustainable development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America can become, at last, a reality by providing these nations with highly-advanced technologies, i.e., wind turbines and solar panels, providing the opportunity to consign the burning of fossil fuels across the world for energy consumption to the dustbin of history.

The energy multi-nationals, the oil, mining, and natural gas companies, and their mouthpieces in government, however, would never allow such action to be taken, as it would take direct aim at their ability to expropriate the world’s social wealth and claim it as their private property.  The overthrow of these “institutions” and their State is the only solution, as they would have recourse to all the forces of the public power (the police, the army, etc) at their disposal to prevent the great majority of human from stopping them and reversing their environmentally-destructive tendencies.

A social revolution against the capitalists and their State is, undeniably, crucial and necessary if we are to save the planet; however, we do not have to wait for these conditions to enact the fundamental changes we need right this moment.  We can raise and struggle for demands as we speak that begin to transform the privately-owned system of energy production to one that embraces the great mass of humanity, putting all matters of production, distribution, and consumption under their complete control.  To realize this in practice requires the nationalization of all the energy conglomerates and their holdings under workers’ control, without any compensation paid to the former capitalist owners / polluters or their shareholders.

Energy production done blindly for profit has reduced the world’s mighty rainforests (the lungs of the Earth) to mere stumps, rendering their natural landscape a barren plane.  A global program of reforestation is necessary to counter and ultimately reverse the rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere originating with the onset of the Industrial Revolution.  Starting from these above measures, we can begin the struggle of reclaiming our environment from those responsible for the condition of the planet today: the multi-national corporations, the capitalists, and their system.

Nevertheless, only with the complete overthrow of the entire capitalist class and their State on a worldwide scale via a social revolution and the establishment of a world, federative socialist republic can ensure that the pressing environmental issues of our times are addressed and ultimately resolved.  Only through this revolution will we be able to obliterate capitalist priorities and provide the potential for a new society that is consciously aware of its place within nature, and that consciously provides energy for every nation and, indeed, person on this Earth.

The Copenhagen Climate Summit of 2009 revealed once more how the existence and further intensification of the laws that dictate the course of capitalist development reveal themselves as the prime culprits propagating climate disaster; and, as a result, how it is fundamentally and structurally unable to break with its profit-oriented agenda and take the needs of the world’s population into account.  Simply put, it is an exemplar of the unwillingness and the inability of the capitalist system to solve the environmental crisis.

The capitalist system is undeniably unable to provide and utilize resources to ensure an equal quality of life to all people on this planet along with those of further generations.  We must break with the logic of the market; we must organize ourselves in the unions, in the workplace, in schools, in universities, in communities, at demonstrations and strikes, etc, in order to fight the dictate of profit maximization at the great expense of humanity.  Only with this vehement struggle can we ensure that present and future generations will encounter an environment that enables an enjoyable, sustainable existence.