This week’s release of the climate action film Disobedience [watchdisobedience.com] and the new 305.org civil action site breakfree2016.org both encourage the world’s citizens to become active in a movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Is this really necessary? Won’t our governments take action now that the COP21 agreement is signed and they have pledged that they will do so?
In my view, the COP21 agreement will not cause most nations to actually do enough to keep warming below 2.5, or even perhaps 3.5 C. Here’s why:
I just finished an eye-opening book by Pepe Escobar called Globalistan. Escobar is a world events journalist who has developed a deep and scholarly understanding of world players and events. In Globalistan, he writes about globalization and how the neoliberal economic model is destroying nations and creating the great slums of the world.
Note: Here in America, the term Neoliberal is loosely used and often misunderstood. To make this point very clear, I quote from the introduction by Rob’t. W. McChesney:
“Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time— it refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit. Associated initially with Reagan and Thatcher, … Neoliberalism has been the dominant global political economic trend adopted by political parties of the center and much of the traditional left as well as the right. These parties and the policies they enact represent the immediate interests of extremely wealthy investors and less than one thousand large corporations. Aside from some academics and members of the business community, the term Neoliberalism is largely unknown and unused by the public-at-large, especially in the United States. There, to the contrary, neoliberal initiatives are characterized as free market policies that encourage private enterprise and consumer choice, reward personal responsibility and entrepreneurial initiative, and undermine the dead hand of the incompetent, bureaucratic and parasitic government, that can never do good even if well intended, which it rarely is. A generation of corporate-financed public relations efforts has given these terms and ideas a near sacred aura. As a result, the claims they make rarely require defense, and are invoked to rationalize anything from lowering taxes on the wealthy and scrapping environmental regulations to dismantling public education and social welfare programs. Indeed, any activity that might interfere with corporate domination of society is automatically suspect because it would interfere with the workings of the free market, which is advanced as the only rational, fair, and democratic allocator of goods and services. At their most eloquent, proponents of Neoliberalism sound as if they are doing poor people, the environment, and everybody else a tremendous service as they enact policies on behalf of the wealthy few. The economic consequences of these policies have been the same just about everywhere, and exactly what one would expect: a massive increase in social and economic inequality, a marked increase in severe deprivation for the poorest nations and peoples of the world, a disastrous global environment, an unstable global economy and an unprecedented bonanza for the wealthy.”
[Chomsky, Noam (2011-09-06). Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order (Kindle Locations 42-44). Seven Stories Press. Kindle Edition.]
Now, back to Escobar’s Globalistan: Most illuminating to the Climate change puzzle is what he shares from his experiences in the Middle East to the Far East. In one of the major sections of this book, Escobar identifies the major players of America/Europe, Russia, and China/India and how they are working to control the flow of petroleum and gas from the entire Middle East and East to the rest of the world. From US destabilization policies to gargantuan pipeline deals crossing multiple nations, the wealth and indeed the very life of nations is at play, war is a constant, and it’s all based on long-term fossil fuel extraction.
From another chapter, Escobar illuminates how the multinational corporations work into this competition. To understand the scale of the international corporate involvement in all this, Escobar cites: “Wal-Mart is bigger than Austria, GM is bigger than Indonesia, Daimler-Chrysler is bigger than Norway, BP is bigger than Thailand, Toyota is bigger than Venezuela, Citigroup is bigger than Israel and Total-Final-Elf is bigger than Iran. Ninety percent of the Corporatistan Top 500 is in the Triad. The Top 1000 corporations account for no less than 80% of the world’s industrial output.”
My point is this knowledge adds great depth to the understanding of what will be required to actually save our planet. To gather the full, rich knowledge Escobar imparts you can go read the book. I highly recommend it. It helped me come to understand Obama’s “all of the above” energy policy; and why he was powerless to do anything else.
Along with making the world safe for Multinational Capitalism, the focus of US military actions in this region is all about control of oil and gas. The same holds for Russia and to a lesser extent many other nations. Syria may have no oil, but is strategic for some of the pipelines; hence it is part of the game. Afghanistan? It is the site of a trans-continental pipeline that can’t be built because we have failed to “secure” it. Escobar details well the details surrounding how engaged the Taliban and invaded Iraq for the purpose of controlling oil and gas.
Oil and gas prop up the economies of so many nations! The wealth of the top 500 multinationals is tied to this process. It is therefore unreasonable to believe that the governments of these nations or the elite directors of the multi-nationals are going to shut this entire system down within the 15-30 years we have left to get it done and avoid catastrophic climate change. Quite the opposite, they are totally committed, blood (yes, yours) and fortune (yes, ours too), to oil and gas economies for the foreseeable future!
Given this, what does a non-binding climate agreement mean? You already know the answer.
So, is the Breakfree2016 movement the right idea? Sure looks that way from here. And, Escobar illuminates this also, showing how Globalization is dividing the entire world into a small population of the wealthy, a very small population of the ultra-wealthy oligarchs , and the remainders, the “surplus” are driven into grinding poverty, starvation, suppression, and outright slaughter in the mega-slums.
There is only one sure end to this: when nearly 3 Billion people stand up, together, and say Enough. It will happen; the question is only when, and will it be soon enough. Perhaps Breakfree2016 is this spark, and if so which side are you on?