The climate challenge

1
The climate challenge
2
Is Human Society the cause?

• This crisis is man-made (not natural)
• Overpopulation?
• This crisis is directly linked to the capitalist
  mode of production

3
The greenhouse effect
Solar radiation
Infrared
100
26
Capture 153 Wm-2
4
H2O
20
CO2 , CH4, N20
50
Conduction, Evaporation
15C
390 Wm-2
4
The greenhouse effect

• A natural phenomenon
• Makes life on Earth possible
• Higher temperature liquid water is available
• Brings inertia to the system
• Main gases responsible
• Carbon dioxide (CO2)
• Methane (CH4)
• Nitrous oxide (N2O)
• Water vapour (H2O)
• Direct link to the carbon cycle

5
The carbon cycle
6
The imbalance of the carbon cycle

• Vegetation / Atmosphere
• Respiration 60 Gt / year
• Photosynthesis 62 Gt / year
• Net result - 2 Gt / year
• Oceans / Atmosphere
• In solution 92 Gt / year
• Release 90 Gt / year
• Net result - 2 Gt / year
• Deforestation 2 Gt / year
• Burning of oil, coal, gas 6 Gt / year
• In total
• 8 Gt / year released by human activities
• THIS IS TWO TIMES TOO MUCH!!

7
The phenomenon of warming, causes and consequences
8
Causes of global warming

• Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution
• CO2 31
• CH4 150
• N2O 15
• 3 crucial  events 
• Industrial Revolution
• Post war boom
• Globalisation of exchanges

9
Causes of global warming

• Emitting sectors in France
• And globally

10
The coming climate change

• The IPCC
• Notes the state of affairs in research and
  technologies
• Publishes a report every 4 years (next report in
  2013)
• Works with scientific consensus
• Prudent in its positions by nature
• Yet they are not reassuring us

11
The future evolution of the climate

• Today the highest concentration of CO2 and CH4
  since 400,000 years
• This is only the beginning if we dont do
  anything

12
Emissions total 2004 2030Emissions per
inhabitant
13
The reality for climate change

• No more doubts on the existence of future climate
  disorders
• Sudden and irreversible changes
• The facts confirm the most pessimistic forecasts
• Yet retroactive changes are not even taken into
  account melting of the permafrost, destruction
  of the ice shelves at the poles

14
Arctic sea ice summer 2012
15
Melting event Greenland 2012

16
Arctic sea ice minimum on the 16th of September
2012
17
OccupySandy.org
18
What concrete consequences?

• Central scenarios
• Between 2C et 4C
• Highly probable scenarios
• Between 1,1C et 6,4C
• The facts confront us with the most pessimistic
  scenarios

19
Concrete consequences

• With 2C
• Decrease of agricultural yields
• Risk of famine 200 million people
• Lack of water 1,8 billion people
• Rising water levels 10 million people
• Expansion of zones with malaria 50 million
  people
• Extinction of 25 to 40 of all species
• With 3C
• - 30 of the yield of wheat in India
• Risk of famine 600 million people
• Lack of water 4 billion people
• Rising water levels 170 million people
• Numerous islands erased from the globe
• With 4C
• Collapse of agricultural yields
• Expansion of the zones with malaria 400
  million of people
• Rising water levels330 million people

20
(No Transcript)
21
Stop temperature rise at 2 C

• 2 C danger limit
• How do we do it?
• Stabilise the temperature
• Stabilise the concentrations of GHGs (450ppm)
• Bring emissions back to natural  recycling 
  capacity
• Divide worldwide emissions by half
• The factor 4 to garanty equal rights for all

22
Berger 2005
23
To stop at 2 C

• Emissions must decline before 2015
• Developed countries (compared to 1990)
• - 25 to - 40 in 2020
• - 80 to - 95 in 2050
• From 2020 on, developed countries must deviate
  substantially from the trajectory (except Africa)
• World emissions -50 à -85 en 2050

24
Climate policies of the dominant Powers
25
The general trend

• Subordinate adaptation to the rhythm and needs of
  capital
• Cost-risk analysis (example Stern report)
• Priority of technological solutions
• Creation of new markets
• New developement cycle of capital  green
  capitalism  
• Point to the responsability of emerging countries
• Use climate menace to impose their neoliberal
  policies

26
The Kyoto protocol

• Some positive aspects
•  common but differentiated responsabilities 
• Concrete targets and sanctions
• BUT numerous problems
• Insufficient targets - 5,2 (reduced to - 1,7)
• Emissions of maritime and air transport not taken
  into account
• Carbon sinks Emission reductions
• Possible delocalisation of the efforts (CDM,MOC)
• Emission rights and carbon market a form of
  privatisation of parts of the atmosphere

27
Recent evolution of policies by the great powers

• Insufficient commitments
• -20 in 2020 for the EU
• Obama wants less than Kyoto
• Ever more flexible mecanisms
• Their role was limited with Kyoto
• New technologies integrated as clean
  technologies carbon sequestration, nuclear,
  biofuels
• A specific market for the forestsREDD
• Make the lower classes take the brunt of the
  effort (ex Carbon Tax )
• The answers to the climate and the economic
  crisis are contradictory, inconsistent public
  policies cars, public transport

28
All negotiations ended in failure

• UNEP market forces, economic growth, green
  technologies

29
In the face of a predicted failure, the menace of
a barbaric management

• New Orleans
• Tuvalu, Vanuatu
• The  Climate report of the Pentagon
• The monstre storm  Sandy 
•  the numbers of deaths caused by wars, by famine
  and by disease will decrease the size of the
  population which will readapt to the carrying
  capacity . 
• Source An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and its
  Implications for the US National Security,
  SCWARTZ RANDALL, 2003

30
A catastrophy can perhaps be avoided (in part)
31
Personal energy savings

• A policy of small gestures  is not sufficient
• Fight against attempts to make you feel guilty
• An important part of what you buy, of
  transportation is unavoidable
• Necessity of collective action to make possible a
  lifestyle that saves energy and is low in carbon
  use

32
Saving energy to lower emissions

• What possibilities?
• Suppress useless/harmful productions
• Armement, the army
• Numerous manufacturing of chemicals, of
  fertilisers
• Advertisements
• Energy efficiency
• Rehabilitation of housing
• Norms for electrical devices
• Norms of car engines
• Reorganisation of society (the most important
  source)
• Ex. of transportation
• Urbanisation working class expulsed far from
  the city centre
• Problemes of freight production  just in
  time , international division of labour
  according to the cost of labour

33
Renewable energies

• Solar an IMMENSE potential
• Its caracter limits its valorisation in a
  capitalist system
• Low density in energy
• Difficult to appropriate
• Necessity of a new orientation of research
• Necessity of making available and of large
  distribution of technologies not only for those
  who can pay

34
Budgets RD Energie (AIE)
Research to be urgently redirected!
Renewables 8,1
35
Our anticapitalist project
36
Necessity of an anticapitalist strategy

• The market is powerless
• A change which is too radical
• Time is too short
• Any change needs the  agreement of the
  citizens 
• Capitalism confronts social forces with a
  dilemma
•  To save nature or to increase the conditions of
  exploitation of the workers 
• Increase the costs of the exploitation of nature
  versus a lowering of the cost of the work force
• Our ecosocialist project
• Planning based at the same time on the
  democratically determined needs and taking into
  account the ecological problems

37
Transitional method linked to an emergency
program

• A pedagocical role
• Demonstrate that it is possible
• Confront capitalism with its contradictions
• Link the social and the ecological dimension
• The crises are fed by the same mecanisms
  competition, search for profits, dictatorship of
  the markets
• Put the fulfillment of social needs and the
  respect of ecological equilibria at the centre of
  our program and our struggles

38
Examples of sectoral demands

• Suppression of unnecessary and harmful industries
• The building sector
• Public service of housing and renovation
• Transportation of commodities
• Ban on long distance transport by road
• Public policy for the development of
  infrastructure for rail transport
• Transportation of people
• Free public transport
• Development of the possibilities for public
  transport infrastructure
• Stop the development of suburbia
•  reintroduction  of the working classes in the
  city centres
• The energy sector
• For a public service of the whole of the energy
  sector
• Nationalisation of the big companies in the
  sector
• Decentralisation of the means of production of
  energy
• in order to allow control by users and by
  employees
• Agriculture food sovereignty and
  organic/ecological farming
• Drastic reduction of nitrogen containing
  fertilizers
• A break with the productivist logic in the
  farming world

39
An emergency plan withprofound transformations

• Reorganisation and transformation of labour
• Peoples control on production
• Get out of the contradiction consumer/worker
• Reduction of working hours must be a central axis
  of our program
• Necessary industrial reconversions
• Garantee employment, contracts, wages and work
  collectives
• To be applied by the workers themselves