The Myth of Kyoto
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/business/worldbusiness/28kyoto.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
A worker walks home from a copper smelter in Karabash, Russia.
The country is selling its pollution credits to other industrial countries
After years of discussion, the great majority of the “experts” agree that one of the by-products of burning carbon based fuels, as the engine of industrialization, is most likely “global warming.” Based on this understanding, 150 nations met in Kyoto, Japan, to reduce the levels of carbon dioxide production. Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere tends to let light and heat from the sun in and to not let heat escape. (Just like glass on the top of a terrarium.) Hence, we have the specter of global warming.
Eventually global warming would lead to climatic changes, higher sea levels, increases in tropical diseases and other calamities. The current Industrial (Capitalist) mode of production of pollution is changing the balance of the terrarium we call earth. To solve one of the problems, “global warming”, the Kyoto conference agreed “in principle” to the following course of action:
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•The 38 primary industrial countries will reduce their carbon dioxide production to an average of 5% below their 1990 levels by the year 2012.
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•“Third World” or developing countries are asked to set voluntary limits. Once 55 nations representing 55% of the 1990 carbon dioxide emissions ratify the Kyoto accord, it will become legally binding. The “catch 22? is that the accord is only legally binding on an individual nation if that country ratifies the agreement.
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•By buying “pollution rights”(The right to pollute) from another country, a nation can lower its emissions without lowering the pollution produced in that nation.
These “rights” are limited in that they can not exceed the levels of pollution that the rules are trying to impose.
Trading “pollution rights” is already fashionable in this country. This has been advanced by the the Environmental Defense (Offense?) Fund. Under these rules, polluting factories, oil refineries, and other polluting enterprises, may find it more “cost effective “by buying pollution rights or credits from non-polluting industries rather than cleaning up their mess. In reality, it grants corporations and nations (under the Kyoto accords) the right to pollute. The Kyoto accords actually open up the concept of private ownership of the air. (Good air being bought and sold for bad air.)
Even if everything in the accord were enforced or capable of being enforced, the plan can not work. The developing nations are rapidly becoming the main producers of carbon dioxide (See my article on this page about the forest fires in Southeast Asia.). Along with this increase and the 5% of the 1990 levels the carbon dioxide levels are guaranteed to double!
The basic problem is that the present economic system cannot stop from producing pollution. Individual capitalists may be for controls, but the system is based on production for profit. this causes anarchy in production plus intranational and international competition. Capitalist production is not based on human needs let alone on needs of the rest of the environment. Can one expect the developing nations to increase their costs in order to save the world from pollution? If there is a recession will this be possible? Will the present collapse of the “Asian Boom” lead to non-profitable expenditures to prevent pollution?
The only conceivable solution under capitalism would be one super power monopoly that would own and control all of production. That would require wars of such magnitude that humanity would not survive.
In reality, it requires collective ownership of the air by everyone who breaths and collective expropriation of all who pollute in order to stay the present course and maintain the balance necessary for humanity to survive within the terrarium called Earth.
The Burning of Southeast Asia
http://www.rssgmbh.eu/rss_de/projekte/entwicklung/d_projekte_entwicklung_indonesien_sumatra.html
A recent article in Socialist Action, on the forest fires in Asia failed to point out the basic cause of the fires. The essence of the problem was reported in the November 29, 1997 New York Times . In his article “Asian Pollution Is Widening Its Deadly Reach”, Nicholas Kristof captured the degree of pollution from the burning of the forests in Southeast Asia:
“‘We have no health problems and no drop-off in attendance,’ Ratnajuwita, the matronly principal of a private school in the Sumatran city of Jambi, said as she sat on a couch in her office. ‘Everyone is fine. The only problem is that we can’t use the blackboards in the classrooms.’ Why? ‘The smoke is so thick in the classrooms that students can’t see what is written,’ Ratnajuwita explained patiently. Then she smiled reassuringly and added, ‘But there are no health problems.”’
“The smoke is so thick…that the students can’t see what is written.” This horrifying description is a graphic example of the extent of the pollution caused by the burning of the forests throughout Southeast Asia. The statement: “But there are no health problems”, just reflects the position of the Indonesian government and the ruling rich.
It is estimated that Indonesia’s forest fires, these past few months, have released as much greenhouse gas as the whole continent of Europe will emit this entire year. The escalation of “forest burning”is fueled by the drive to produce more goods (such as palm oil and rubber etc.) at a lower cost for the world market. Forest fires are being lit by the profit motive throughout the world’s rainforests. Rainforests are a basic resource that consume carbon dioxide and produce oxygen through photosynthesis. This destruction of the forests takes away the natural means of dealing with “greenhouse effects”.
Along with the fires, the growth of industry throughout Asia, with no controls over the burning of coal, gas, and wood, has led to a huge increase in greenhouse gas emissions. At its present rate, Asia will soon become the world leader in the production of these emissions.
The rapid development of industry in China and the rest of Asia has been done with no controls. Cars and other motor vehicles are being run with leaded gas. Factories are pouring their toxins into the rivers and sending toxins into the air. This is being done despite the present knowledge about pollution. Capitalists, on a world wide basis are well aware of the dangers of pollution, but they act like sharks in a feeding frenzy as they enter new markets in their quest for maximum profits.
What we are witnessing is the impact of capitalism through out the world and the logic of the “New World Order”opening up new markets on a world scale. Capitalism, at the present time, is running unchecked. Forests, never to return, are being turned into deserts. Streams are being turned into cesspools of industrial waste throughout Asia as a by-product of its “economic boom”.
What we are witnessing is the globalization of pollution along with the expansion of capitalism throughout the world. No place on this planet is safe from pollution. Basically, these acts of capitalism are acts against nature’s current equilibrium. To be more precise, this are acts against the natural order that human beings need to survive. The capitalist system is working against the interests of humanity.
The problems of the environment are so immersed in our everyday lives, that it requires that everyone has to take control of the environment. In the long run, humanity needs a socialist society that has social control over production. Production for use and for the benefit of the human environment — not production for profit with its by-product of pollution.
Nature can and will survive humanity.
The question is will humanity survive, or will the cockroach prove to be the superior species?
http://www.blackcommentator.com/316/316_cartoon_ecology.html
From the October 7, 2009 The Guardian:
Deforestation on Sumatra island (24 pictures)
The UN wants to cut carbon emissions by paying poorer countries to preserve their forests in a scheme called Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (Redd).
Around 20% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions are estimated to come from global annual deforestation, which often takes place in the most biodiverse regions of the world, such as Brazil and Indonesia.
The fastest rate of deforestation in Indonesia is occurring in central Sumatra's Riau province, where some 4.2m hectares (65%) of its tropical forests and peat swamps have been cleared for industrial plantations in the past 25 years.
Sumatran rainforest, 1986: The fastest rate of deforestation in Indonesia is occurring in central Sumatra’s Riau province, where some 4.2m hectares (65%) of its tropical forests and peat swamps have been cleared for industrial plantations in the past 25 years. Under the Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (Redd) scheme $30bn a year could be transferred from rich countries to the owners of endangered forests. But experts on all sides of the debate - from international police to politicians to conservationists - warned that the scheme may be impossible to monitor and may already be leading to fraud. Photograph: Charles O'Rear/Corbis
A motorcyclist passes through the haze in Pelalawan, Sumatra, in 2006, when forest fires were raging across Indonesia. Visibility was reduced to as low as 30 metres (100ft) in parts of Borneo island, forcing cars to use headlights during the day and causing chaos for air travel. The demand for palm oil, which is fuelling much of the forest clearance and resultant pollution in Sumatra, has risen in recent years to meet a global demand for biofuels. Photograph: Beawiharta/Reuters
A worker runs through a burning forest in Pelalawan, in Indonesia’s Riau province, in October 2006. Thick smoke from bush and forest fires in Indonesia has forced schools to close and brought misery to residents. Neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore have complained that the smoke from Indonesia has affected air quality in their regions. The average annual CO2 from forest loss, degradation, peat decomposition and fires between 1990-2007 in Riau province was 0.22 gigatonnes – higher than that of the Netherlands and equivalent to 58% of Australia’s total annual emissions, or 39% of the UK’s annual emissions, according to a WWF report
A satellite image showing where fires are occurring in Sumatra and Borneo, Indonesia, in August 2008. The UN estimates that 25% of the world’s forestry emissions, or nearly 5% of total global carbon emissions, could be saved by 2015 if rich countries invest $15bn to set up Redd schemes. So far, rich countries have put up $52m to establish nine official pilot Redd schemes in Asia, Latin America and Africa. In addition, several hundred private schemes are being set up by bankers, conservation groups, and businesses who plan to offer carbon credits on the voluntary market
Photograph: NASA
Smoke rises from a palm oil factory outside Pekanbaru, Riau province, which also produces paper Photograph: AFP/AFP
