Convention on Climate Change

Disaster Capitalism 

I n addition to emphasizing the role of the market in climate strategies, corporate capitalists are seizing on the growing concern about climate change to sell previously controversial projects as “solutions” to global warming. In this way, huge monoculture tree plantations, large-scale production of biofuels, genetically engineered trees and crops, massive hydroelectric projects, and nuclear power can be sold to a Northern audience as a means to maintain a grossly over-consumptive lifestyle while supposedly making a positive contribution to the fight against global warming. 

The unfortunate truth about these projects, however, is that they do little to mitigate climate change while causing tremendous environmental and social impacts. This fact led the Global Forest Coalition to organize a weekend workshop called Life as Commerce: Indigenous Peoples Seminar on Carbon Trading, held in Namanga, Kenya on the Tanzanian border during the weekend lull of UNFCCC. The seminar included indigenous representatives from around the world. Some participants gave presentations on the impacts their communities have experienced due to carbon trading schemes in an effort to alert other indigenous representatives about the hidden dangers of carbon offset proposals, many of which are geared toward the lands of indigenous peoples. 

Following the seminar, a collection of environmental groups held a press conference in  Nairobi to condemn the promotion of such false solutions to global warming. World Rainforest Movement, Global Justice Ecology Project, Gaia Foundation, STOP Genetically Engineered Trees Campaign, Global Forest Coalition, and Large Scale Biofuels Action Network came together to demand real action against climate change and an end to measures that merely relocate the costs of the unsustainable consumption patterns of the North onto poor Southern countries where indigenous communities pay a particularly high price. “Soya plantations in Latin America and palm oil plantations in Indonesia, being developed for biofuels, are driving deforestation and pushing hundreds of thousands of farmers and indigenous peoples off of their lands. Once again the developing countries of the South are being asked to pay the price for the unsustainable lifestyle of the North,” stated Miguel Lovera of Global Forest Coalition. 

Ana Filippini, from the World Rainforest Movement, insisted that by their very nature, the temporary carbon storage of monoculture tree plantations cannot be looked at as a permanent solution. They do, however, cause tremendous impacts, including exhaustion of soils and ground water and displacement of indigenous and rural communities who must be evicted from the land to protect the carbon storage of the trees. “The UNFCCC needs to move away from these complicated and fraudulent carbon trading schemes. It should begin to address seriously the issues of how to phase out fossil fuels and how to stop deforestation,” she stated. 

Genetically engineered trees and crops promoted as a source for biofuels or a component of carbon sink plantations were also opposed. Arguments against genetically engineered plants and trees are many, and include contamination of native forests and conventional agricultural crops with potentially destructive engineered traits. GE trees have the potential to devastate forest ecosystems by contaminating native trees with pollen or seeds engineered to kill insects, resist toxic herbicides, or grow faster. “The escape of pollen or seeds from GE trees into native forests would cause severe and totally unpredictable ecological impacts that could impact the ability of forests to store carbon, worsening global warming. They must be banned,” insisted Orin Langelle of the STOP GE Trees Campaign. 

Regarding the biofuel issue, Dr. Andrew Boswell of the UK-based Large Scale Biofuels Action Network, pointed out that even if biofuels are produced only with conventional non-genetically engineered components, if produced on a large-scale, they will still not be a helpful alternative to fossil fuels. In 2005 competition for grain led to a 60 percent increase in grain prices, favoring the use of grain for biofuels and escalating the numbers of people who cannot access enough food. “The amount of grain needed to produce enough biofuel to fill a single SUV tank could feed a person for a year,” he stated. 

The growing demand for biofuels is also driving the logging and burning of native forests in places like Indonesia where land is being cleared to make room for plantations of oil-rich palm trees. In addition to displacing communities and driving species to extinction, this deforestation is accelerating climate change. “Fires in Indonesian forests in 1995 released more carbon emissions than the entire European Union that year. Large-scale production of biofuels is clearly not a strategy that is going to benefit the fight against global warming,” stated Teresa Anderson of the Gaia Foundation. 

But perhaps the most contentious climate change abatement strategy is carbon trading. Modeled after the pollution-trading allowed by the U.S. Clean Air Act and championed by Al Gore during his vice presidency, carbon trading enables corporations and governments to avoid reducing greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing carbon credits. These carbon credits can come either from carbon offsetting projects like tree plantations, which are established under the guise of “development” in poor countries, or from countries like Russia that have an excess of carbon credits. Because the carbon emission allowances are based on 1990 emission levels, countries like Russia—which saw many of its industries shut down after 1990—have an abundance of excess carbon emission credits, which they can sell off to the highest bidder. The theory is that the limited supply of carbon credits being traded will kick in the laws of supply and demand and the market will take over and solve the problem. (For an excellent critique, read Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power , by Larry Lohmann of The Corner House.) 

Ignoring for a moment the insufficient emission reduction targets of the Kyoto Protocol—which call only for reductions of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels when climate scientists agree that immediate reductions of at least 60 percent are needed to avoid climate catastrophe; and ignoring the numerous and substantial carbon reduction verification problems with this market-based strategy—there is the inescapable dilemma that the United States, which is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases (with 6 percent of the world’s populace producing 25 percent of the global emissions) will not endorse any global warming strategy. 

We cannot continue to put our faith in bodies such as the UN to solve this problem for us. Just as people around the world have risen up against the WTO, massive protests must be organized against leaders that refuse to take real, meaningful action to stave off climate catastrophe. Otherwise we face a very uncertain future.