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Pope Francis denounces both climate deniers and carbon credits
by Pete Brown, Detroit Workers' Voice
On Sept. 24 Pope Francis will visit Washington, D.C. and address the
U.S. Congress. A mass rally on the National Mall is planned for that
same day in support of environmental goals, and organizers of the rally
are hoping the pope will recognize and possibly address them. The pope's
visit became a reason for a "green" rally after mid-June when Pope
Francis issued an encyclical (a major statement) on environmental issues
titled "On Care for Our Common Home." There he plainly stated, "humans
are contributing to unprecedented destruction of ecosystems." After that
a number of environmental organizations joined together to express
support for the pope's encyclical and planned a demonstration on the
occasion of his visit. These groups include Moral Action on Climate
Network, Earth Day Network, the League of Conservation Voters, and
Sierra Club. But many establishment environmentalist organizations like
these also support carbon pricing schemes like the ones Francis
denounces in his encyclical.
In his statement Pope Francis chided world leaders for not coming to
agreement on effective measures to combat global warming, and he
criticized climate change "deniers." He says warming "... has
repercussions on the poorest areas of the world, especially Africa,
where a rise in temperature, together with drought, has proved
absolutely devastating for farming." And further, "...recent World Summits
on the environment have not lived up to expectations because, due to
lack of political will, they were unable to reach truly meaningful and
effective global agreements on the environment." This sums up the
failure of the Kyoto Protocol, which relied on market methods to reduce
carbon emissions and was a big flop. Kyoto set up a system of
cap-and-trade where supposedly the countries that signed would cap their
carbon emissions and trade carbon credits in order to gradually reduce
their output of CO2 into the atmosphere. The pope correctly notes this
was a failure in section 171 of his encyclical:
"The strategy of buying and selling 'carbon credits' can lead to a new
form of speculation which would not help reduce the emission of
polluting gases worldwide. This system seems to provide a quick and easy
solution under the guise of a certain commitment to the environment, but
in no way does it allow for the radical change which present
circumstances require. Rather, it may simply become a ploy which permits
maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors."
Many establishment environmentalist organizations and media ("New York
Times", CNN, MSNBC, etc.) have tried to gloss over this statement of the
pope's and the failure of Kyoto. Liberal politicians of the Democratic
Party take it as gospel that we must have carbon pricing schemes in
order to control CO2 emissions. They try to force environmental reform
ideas into the straitjacket of market fundamentalism, and this includes
their proposals for a carbon tax. But the carbon tax, like other
market-oriented schemes, is based on the idea that the market will solve
any problems that arise; the only thing that needs to be adjusted, they
say, is for the government to impose a tax on carbon to raise its price.
After that the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith will take care of carbon
emissions and global warming. They say this policy would hasten the
transition to renewable energy, but the only thing for sure it would do
is anger many people and turn them against environmentalism. Francis'
encyclical does not talk explicitly about the carbon tax, but his
denunciation of market methods goes against the logic of the carbon tax:
"The principle of the maximization of profits, frequently isolated from
other considerations, reflects a misunderstanding of the very concept of
the economy. As long as production is increased, little concern is given
to whether it is at the cost of future resources or the health of the
environment; ... ." (Section 195 of the encyclical.)
Although the church has never accepted socialism and has backed
capitalism in practice, it has also never accepted the capitalist market
as the end-all solution to life's problems. Francis continues this when
he says, "... by itself the market cannot guarantee integral human
development and social inclusion." But he also speaks out more topically
and forcefully about the failures of market fundamentalism, for example:
"Our care for the environment is intimately connected to our care for
each other. ... We are not faced with two separate crises, one
environmental and the other social, but rather one complex crisis which
is both social and environmental. ... The rich and powerful shut
themselves up within self-enclosed enclaves, compulsively consuming the
latest goods ... while ignoring the plight of the poor. The poor find
themselves on the run from natural disasters and degraded habitats ...
with decreasing access to natural resources." On a recent visit to
Bolivia Francis denounced unequal multinational trade deals and said,
"Unbridled capitalism is the dung of the devil." These are the sorts of
statements that get ignored by the American media even as they report on
Francis' concern for the environment.
Francis' encyclical is part of his attempt to make the church more
relevant to modern life. He's known for being more accessible than
previous popes, for having a human touch and sympathy for the poor.
Since taking office Francis has adopted a more liberal attitude towards
abortion and annulments and called on Europe to be more welcoming to
migrants. He's also asserted that access to safe drinkable water is "a
basic and universal human right," something all those in charge of water
utilities -- including the water bureaucrats in Detroit, who continue to
threaten thousands of people with cutoffs -- should bear in mind.
But while recognizing present political stalemates Francis does not draw
out the implications, that to change the situation we need a movement of
ordinary working people that combines the two questions, social and
environmental. And the method of class struggle, so successful in the
social realm, needs to be brought into the environmental movement.
Francis instead tries to appeal to the rich to have sympathy for the
poor and regard for nature; but this is a vain attempt. He says
structural injustices require political will and sacrifice to overcome,
but he doesn't say whose political will, or whose sacrifice; he doesn't
try to describe what methods should be used or what sections of the
population can be mobilized. Francis calls on people to carpool,
recycle, etc. and practice other "simple daily gestures." These are
nice, but what's needed to avert environmental disaster is a complete
revamping of the economy, to make a rapid transition to non-carbon
technology with extensive economic planning.
Francis tries to maintain a broad humanistic outlook that embraces the
energy billionaires as people and exhorts them to care for the poor. But
we know how far that will go. Look at the hundreds of thousands of
decent, ordinary human beings they have massacred in the past 20 years
in oil wars in the Mideast. Does this look like the record of humanistic
beings with a care for the poor? Look at the thousands of people they
cut off from heat every winter, or the people in Detroit who have their
water cut off. Is this a system of concern for the poor?
Francis is correct that we need a rapid transition to a non-carbon
economy "without delay." What he doesn't note is this will require
massive economic planning. This must include planning to maintain and
expand the welfare of the poor and the working millions. To make sure
decisions are taken correctly, we need mass influence on government
planning and decision-making similar to what people demanded to end
segregation and racist institutions in the 1950s-60s. Ordinary working
people must have oversight over corporate compliance with environmental
regulations just as corporations could not be depended upon, on their
own, to provide equal pay, benefits and promotional opportunities to
black and white employees. Under the present system corporations report
their own use of chemicals, their own oil spills, etc., and frackers
don't even have to report what chemicals they use. This is a system of
the fox guarding the henhouse.
Pope Francis rejects the anti-scientific "deniers" and urges people to
have concern for the world they leave behind them. He's right to connect
this to social issues and to oppose "dung of the devil" market
fundamentalists. He's wrong, however, to overlook the political movement
needed to overcome present stagnation. We need a mass movement for the
urgent measures needed to preserve the environment and our livelihoods. <>
For more on environmental crisis and the fight against global warming,
see http://www.communistvoice.org/00GlobalWarming.html <>
(from the Detroit Workers' Voice email list for Sept. 21, 2015)
-- Joseph Green
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