Climate Change or Social Change

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Climate Change or Social Change?
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The fact of climate change

• A wide consensus among climate scientists
• The sceptics
• Populists or scientists from other fields who do
  not write to peer reviewed scientific journals
• Exxon etc. have been financing this
• There is politics also in climate sciences but it
  has not so much influence on the main tenets
• instead on the publication of results and on
  practical recommendations

3
What has already happened?

• Average temperature has risen about 1oC from
  pre-industrial level
• Average sea-level has risen more than 17 cm since
  the year 1900 more floods
• Mountain glaciers are disappearing rapidly

4
Recent observation

• The ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic
  melt and break off much faster than expected
• The Arctic sea ice is diminishing up to 30 years
  ahead of IPCC forecasts
• The melting of Arctic permafrost has started.
• Canadian forests have changed from a carbon sink
  to a CO2 source
• The Amazon is drying rapidly

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The melting of the ice sheet in Greenland has
accelerated
1992
2002
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If no action ...

• The upper limit of global warming is not tens of
  degrees but hundreds of degrees
• Total catastrophe for humanity, animals and plants

Venus surface temperature 460oC
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Needed emission cuts

• The IPCC -85 by the year 2050
• gt at least -95 in the Global North
• Many recent research reports The climate is much
  more sensitive than the IPCC assumed in May 2006
  (the report deadline)
• The information on the atmospheric concentrations
  in the ancient warm periods
• Many recent observations which are not included
  in the IPCC models
• gt the emissions must be reduced even more rapidly

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The present CO2 concentration too high

• In fact the present CO2 concentration of 385 ppm
  is too much, should be 350 ppm
• gt emission rapidly to zero and a lot of CO2 be
  bound in biomass

9
Only little time left

• James Hansen etc. less than 10 years
• Otherwise self-perpetuating climate change starts
• Positive feed-back
• We cannot control it

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Mainstream solutions, part 1incentives

• Publicity
• Creating carbon markets
• State regulation (taxes etc.)

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Mainstream solutions, part 2technical fixes

• capturing CO2 from the coal power plants
• Planting trees
• Nuclear power
• Renewable energy sources
• raising the efficiency of energy use

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My thesismainstream solutions don't work

• The record in the mitigation efforts up to now is
  dismal

• Global carbon dioxide emissions grew more than 3
  per year 2000-2004, more than ever
• Most of the signatories of the Kyoto Protocol
  have increased their emissions.

13
The limits of publicity

• Publicity against climate change minimal compared
  to the PR for behaviour causing it
• Advertisements and other incentives to consume
  essential for growth and capitalism

14
The limits of carbon market

• New markets, old problems
• Market ideal gtlt the reality of capitalism
• In order to get markets running, the idea of
  reality must be simplified
• You have to create firm knowledge even though you
  in reality have only guesses
• Corner House, Larry Lohman
• www.thecornerhouse.org.uk

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The limits in state regulation

• In principle, but...
• Information overload in centralized social
  structures
• State-Capital nexus in formulating the regulations

• In execution of regulations Revolving door
• Jänicke, Martin State Failure/Staatsversagen

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The technical limit of technical fixes

• Many proposed technical fixes probably won't
  succeed at all
• e.g. carbon capture
• No energy source in the official economy is green
  house gas free at present
• At least in their construction phase large
  emissions
• especially nuclear power and most biomass sources

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The inertia of technological system

• Enormous investments in the present system
• To replace it means enormous efforts, giant
  investments and millions of professionals and
  skilled workers
• If we had time to wait until the present one
  wears out, there would be no problem
• But we do not have such time
• Not enough skilled workers and raw materials to
  be mobilized quickly enough

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The net emission reduction comes too late

• The construction of a new energy system would
  absorb so much energy that we would have to wait
  net energy for decades
• e.g. one nuclear power plant/month gt net energy
  not until after 33 years (a conservative
  estimate, probably even later)
• A rapid technical transition program would
  increase the CO2-emissions just at the most
  critical period

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The social and political limits of technical fix
program

• Insofar as technical fixes would be successful,
  the oil and coal corporations would lose money
  and influence gt enormous resistance
• Retardation
• Turning the program to a direction that is safe
  to corporations but endangers the environment

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The general freezing of economy when energy costs
are rising

• The Stern review and the report of the IPCC's
  3. working group maintain otherwise
• They are misleading
• They are not based on the latest climate science
• Their starting points are scenarios which are
  very risky already on the bases of the then
  available science
• Stern chose 550 ppm greenhouse gas concentration
• gt 50 chance that temperature rise is gt 3 oC
• 10 chance that temperature rise is gt 5 oC

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Hopeless situation?

• For many the only hope is geoengineering
• changing the physical characteristics of the
  planet Earth
• Many of these are very dangerous
• for example spreading a large amount of sulphates
  into the atmosphere

22
Solution cutting down production and consumption
rapidly

• ending non-essential production
• reducing institutional consumption
• Decreasing individual consumption of the global
  upper and middle class.
• A historical example the collapse of the USSR
• stumbling block Growth imperative
• This obstacle curtails advances in renewable
  energy sources and energy conservation
• The same applies also to publicity and state
  regulation

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Why is economic growth so important?

• Reflects the growth of the capital of
  corporations the essence of capitalism
• The threat of social chaos
• The risk of structural social change
• Growth consumer society
• The current way of ruling
• The present depression
• Social instability grows
• The depression in the 1930's the same story

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To give up growth aspirations gt to change the
social system

• e.g. to a new openly authoritarian system
• Although the elite would have more direct power,
  most members of the elite don't like this

• More uncomfortable to be in the top position
  hate and insecurity every where
• More difficult to govern, to suppress passive and
  active resistance when there are no legitimacy of
  formal democracy

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Transition to a real democracy

• Post-growth and post-capitalist society could as
  well or even more probably more towards genuine
  and deep democracy
• Democracy has been the main legitimating ideology
  of the present largely non-democratic system
• Partly therefore people have commonly embraced
  democratic values
• Democracy is most natural social system found
  also among social animals

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Why anti-growth and system change perspective is
commonly rejected even among left-green?

• The hopelessness of the other options and the
  desperate state of affairs are not realized
• The same fear as among the elite but reversed
• The sectarian and narrow-minded atmosphere among
  openly revolutionary left
• Certain interpretations of history and the
  present
• The relationship between the present economy and
  satisfaction
• The present-day social structures and how people
  are attached to them
• The relationship between capitalism and wealth
• The historical democratic revolutions and their
  failure

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Another interpretation

• Consumer society is based on organized creation
  of dissatisfaction
• Social structures are not like machines but
  rather provisionally frozen front lines in an
  on-going struggle
• Another non-capitalist parallel society already
  exists based on common wealth and non-monetary
  relationships
• Revolutionary movements created democratic
  structures which broke up more because of outside
  than inside forces

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Dissatisfying consumption

• Hundreds of studies consuming more does not make
  people more satisfied or happier
• In advertisement in popular culture commodities
  are made into symbols of most varied things
• Commodities are bought because of their social,
  cultural and spiritual meanings and connotations
• But usually they do not satisfy social, cultural
  and spiritual needs
• As far as they do satisfy, they do it only for a
  short while
• Soon meanings are moved by advertisements from
  old things to new ones. Yet you cannot buy the
  new ones at once or perhaps ever.

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Real existing alternative

• Underneath and parallel to the official
  structures and roles, there is another world of
  thought, activity and social relations

• E.g. when their children are small, parents
  produce an enormous amount of food, cleaning,
  care and other essential services unpaid at their
  home.
• Usually the only thing preventing them from
  breaking down under the workload is the help
  given by informal circles of friends, relatives,
  neighbours and peers.

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Common wealth

• Material common wealth the air that we breathe,
  the sun that warms us, the winds that cool us,
  the very climate we try to save, the ability of
  most women to give birth, wild animals and
  plants, rivers and most lakes, oceans, deserts
  and a large part of the forested areas, cities
  and villages, public libraries, schools,hospitals
  and cheap public transportation systems

• Non-material examples are most of the genetic
  information and scientific knowledge, open-source
  software like Linux, local knowledge, folk wisdom
  and common sense, folklore and a large part of
  popular and high culture

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Social and subjective 'surplus'

• Humans are only partially attached to capitalism
• There exist enormous social and subjective
  'surplus'
• It explains rapid social changes in history
• Its can orientate social movements and give hope
  for future