[Peace-discuss] AGW and the Left

[C. G. Estabrook]

[A similar position in this country from Cockburn's co-editor at CounterPunch. 
--CGE]

	May 14, 2007
	Humans, CO2 and Climate Change:
	The Earth is Warming, We Did It, Gore Won't Solve It
	By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Since the publication of Alexander Cockburn's latest assaults on the link 
between the burning of fossil fuels and global climate change, I've been 
inundated with hundreds of emails from CounterPunchers demanding to know my 
position. I thought my views had been clear for many years. But I'll take this 
opportunity to summarize them.

     1. The planet is warming once again.

     2. This latest period of warming is largely caused by the accumulation of 
CO2 in the atmosphere.

     3. The CO2 clotting the earth's atmosphere is mostly produced by the 
burning of fossil fuels and by deforestation and slash burning.

     4. So, yes, human activities are largely responsible for the current phase 
of climate change. Even the most strident scientific critics of the IPGCC 
reports do not dispute this anymore. Most of the scientific contention is over 
the rate of future warming, not causality. The most conservative of critics tend 
argue that the pace of warming is slowing. I disagree, but I'll be ecstatic if 
I'm proved wrong.

     5. Climate change models are models not facts. We should be suspicious of 
them. Empirical observation, from ice cores and paleobotany, are more valuable. 
That said, sometimes the models have underestimated the problem, as in the 
recent evidence on the accelerated rate of Arctic melting. Yes, billions of 
dollars are being poured into new computer models and hi-tech research tools. 
Where's the harm? That's less money going into the killing machines in Iraq and 
Afghanistan. Close the oil depletion allowances, then we can talk about how much 
money is being wasted on climate change research.

     Mike Davis chides me for my aversion to modeling. He contends that the 
computer models are getting better and better. And he's right. The margins of 
real contention have also narrowed considerably. Still the emphasis of most 
modeling is prognostication. Predicting the future is a fun but risky 
occupation. Instead, I look to the natural history. There the evidence of 
causality is overwhelming and decisive.

     6. As I understand it, the water vapor critique is a recycled canard that 
circulates through global warming denialist camps with the same feverish import 
that 9/11 conspiracists attach to Larry Silverstein's infamous quip that he'd 
"pulled WTC building 7." Water vapor is, indeed, an important greenhouse, but it 
is a feedback response not a forcing mechanism. Water vapors also reside in the 
atmosphere for a relatively short time, 14 days or so, compared to 20 years for 
CO2 emitted from the burning of fossil fuels.

     7. Here's where my skepticism comes in. Humans have contributed to global 
warming, but seem utterly incapable of solving. Al Gore offers rhetoric not 
solutions. He had his shot for eight years and his administration couldn't even 
come up with an alternative energy policy. Kyoto was a hollow half measure, 
weakened even further by the Clinton administration, and Gore didn't even try to 
push that through the US Senate. Three strikes and you're out, Al. Gore places 
most of the blame on individual consumption and not on corporate rapaciousness 
and the capitalist system that is driving nearly every environmental crisis, 
including climate change. You will search his essays, books, speech and films in 
vain for any sustained critique of corporate behavior. Instead, he offers the 
tired neoliberal approach of tax incentives and carbon credits that rewards 
those with the most blood on their hands.

     8. Huge profits are being made from global warming fear mongering, from the 
do-nothing NGO grant whores to the nuclear power industry to strip miners 
decapitating the mountains of Appalachia for low sulfur coal to British 
Petroleum's quest to saturate the Third World with genetically engineered crops 
for a new generation of biofuels.

     9. The environmental movement is dead. (DOA: April 2, 1993.) It is a 
co-opted exoskeleton of its former self, largely controlled by cautious 
politicos and neoliberal hacks like Gore, who suckle from grants doled out from 
oil industry seeded foundations (such as Pew, W. Alton Jones and Rockefeller), 
and who advance free-market incentives over regulation, lobbying and public 
relations over real mass movements and direct action.

     10. So we're fucked. But don't worry. I hear the Rapture approaching. In 
any event, this is a human problem, not a planetary one. Last summer floating 
through Cataract Canyon, I leaned over my little kayak to touch the tortured 
shapes of rocks from the violent Permian Period, 251 million years ago, when 98 
percent of the planet's species went extinct. But the dance of life went on. 
Now, the question, really, is whether humans want (or deserve) to be part of it. 
Although if we are intent on checking out, I don't see why we have to take the 
polar bears with us.

A final caveat. I'm not a scientist. In fact, as a neo-Luddite, I tend be 
extremely cautious in my relationship to science and technology. There are, 
however, many climate scientists, working in hostile bureaucratic conditions, 
whose research I highly value, such as Julio Betancourt. I find the 
RealClimate.com site to be a very useful archive of articles
distilling hard science on climate issues into readable prose. Yes, the NGO 
grant hucksters on climate change (or endangered species) are obnoxious, but 
they haven't killed anyone--except through their indifference and passivity. I 
reserve my true hatred for the pr thugs and scientific guns-for-hire (going 
rate: $2,500 a day) at Big Coal, the rapers of West Virginia and Black Mesa, and 
Shell Oil, the killers of Ken Saro-Wiwa. They can roast perpetually in the 
Hell's Cul-de-Sac, otherwise known as Phoenix, Arizona, circa 2050.

[Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to 
Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book is End 
Times: the Death of the Fourth Estate, co-written with Alexander Cockburn. He 
can be reached at: sitka at comcast.net]

Matt Reichel wrote:
> Within the EU, there is a sizable movement on the left opposed to the liberal
> consensus on the issue of global warming, and the international machinery
> meant to tackle a possible catastrophe (Kyoto, the various EU treaties, etc .
> . . ). This is an important critique that you don't see much in the United 
> States, because there isn't much of an institutional left ( that is to say .
> . people who are critical of capitalism, and the progressive capacity of the
> liberal state). Without changing the overarching superstructure of market
> fetishism and imperialism, can we hope to live in a greener and more just
> world? Probably not . . . Alex would, of course, benefit from sticking to
> these points without wandering into his anti-scientific silliness.
> 
> Here is a more principled critique of EU global warming policy as written by
> my mentor in France, Steve McGiffen:
> 
> http://www.spectrezine.org/Editorial/environment2.htm *Why the EU's policies
> on climate change will fail ...