Cancun Conference on climate change
The representatives of the
world’s ‘great and good’ have just met, again, to discuss carbon emissions at
the Cancun climate control summit where they pontificated, made solemn sounding
statements, debated and tried to outwit each other, not to mention the rest of
us, with various versions of an ecological ‘three card trick’, where each
imperialist power appears to promise to cut their carbon emissions without
doing so while trying to get everyone else, especially the poorer and
developing countries, to do it for real.
For good measure they even allow the
representatives of the poorer nations in to ‘their’ meeting to show how
concerned they are for the people of the whole world. This publicity stunt of
pretending that they regard these ‘poorer’ nations as equals means that they
also have to listen to the representatives of the poor castigate them publicly
for all the horrors that imperialism brings to all corners of the world in its
unending search for maximum profits whatever harm that does to people,
exploited nations or the environment. But with the tame media owned by
imperialism such things are reported, if at all, in such a way that the leaders
of the poor who stand up to imperialism and denounce its activities that are
threatening the very planet we exist upon, are portrayed as ungrateful
wretches, ignorant bullies and/or power-hungry lunatics.
The 16th Conference of the Parties to the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change held at Cancun had, before it even started,
been written off in much of the press as unlikely to come up with any positive
agreement. This ‘pessimism’, we were told by the press, was because of the
appalling failure to agree much at all at the previous year’s summit in Copenhagen where the only thing that emerged was a non-binding ‘accord’. That meeting
also saw Gordon Brown, along with all the other imperialist representatives and
most of their lackey press, accusing Presidents Chavez of Venezuela, Correa of
Ecuador and Morales of Bolivia, of “holding the world to ransom” because
they wanted the imperialists to lower their own emissions instead of ‘buying’
poorer nation’s low carbon output. They also called for realistic funding to
be made available for poor and developing countries to develop alternatives so
that they could build their infrastructure without increasing carbon outputs.
Lastly they pointed out that only socialism could save the world and that
capitalism was the road to extinction.
As Chavez said at that summit “The political
conservatism and selfishness of the largest consumers, of the richest countries
shows high insensitivity and lack of solidarity with the poor, the hungry, and
the most vulnerable to disease, to natural disasters. Mr. President, a new and
single agreement is essential, applicable to absolutely unequal parties,
according to the magnitude of their contributions and economic, financial and
technological capabilities and based on unconditional respect for the
principles contained in the Convention.
“Developed countries
should set binding, clear and concrete commitments for the substantial
reduction of their emissions and assume obligations of financial and
technological assistance to poor countries to cope with the destructive dangers
of climate change. In this respect, the uniqueness of island states and least
developed countries should be fully recognized.”
These sentiments had been supported by a
large section of the summit and so the intransigence of the imperialist
countries protecting their profits above all meant that no agreement was
reached and, of course, the western media laid the blame for that at the door
of the above nations along with Zimbabwe, Brazil, China and others.
This year saw a different venue but the underlying
problem still exists, the rich countries still only want to consider saving the
planet if it doesn’t interfere with their profits; and more, if it also
guarantees that third world countries cannot rise to become competitors for
markets or even just independent of imperialist interference in their affairs.
At this summit the only movement that was made to reach the much-lauded
agreement was made by the poorer countries and this ‘agreement’ that was
cheered in the summit and feted by the imperialist press as a great and
unexpected step forward on the road to ‘saving the planet’ is an agreement that
is no more binding or progressive than the ‘accord’ reached at Copenhagen.
The main problems identified are:
a) The poor and
developing countries did not get a new commitment period for the existing
climate change agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, which imperialism wants to tear
up and throw away.
b) The so-called
‘gigaton gap’ (the gap between existing pledges and the carbon reductions
needed according to leading climate scientists) is big and this ‘agreement’
doesn’t go anywhere near reducing it.
c) The ‘fund’ to
help poorer countries that has been talked about has no basis in fact ie. Who
will provide it? Where will it go? On what basis will it, if it is ever
raised, be given out? Without these things any talk of ‘a fund’ is
meaningless.
The real issues are left yet again to next year in South Africa when they are just as likely to be ignored or brushed over again.
In
short, imperialism cannot alleviate the problems of the third world, or the
first world come to that, if the planet is to be saved it will be saved by
socialism and only revolution will take us there. As the CPGB-ML leaflet given
out on the recent climate control demonstration in London says “You’ve got
to be Red to be Green!”