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The Fourth National Climate Assessment and the "yellow vest" protests against gas price increases -part one- (from the Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice list for Dec. 5, 2018) The Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) was released Nov. 26 by a department of the federal government. (1) It comes a month after a Special Report from the UN´s climate agency on how time is running out to prevent utter disaster. (2) These reports paint a devastating picture of the dangers facing us. They provide abundant and documented evidence of the reality of human-caused climate change, and utterly refute the climate denialism of Donald Trump and the rightist know-nothings. While Trump´s minions encourage corporations to pollute at will, the NCA4 was put out by scientists who have a backbone. The NCA4 can´t criticize the government directly, but every word shows how Trump and the pro-corporate conservatives are lying sleazebags that, for their present enrichment, are threatening the basic conditions of human life. But what does the report suggest we should do about the problem? It praises various measures currently being taken in the US to lower carbon emissions, talks about the "risks of inaction", and suggests we need to do more. But other than a fully justified skepticism about geoengineering, it has little to say about the failure of many of the current methods, and those proposed by capitalist politicians and corporate environmentalists, to live up to their promise. (3) For decades now, the pro-corporate environmentalists have advocated that market methods and pricing mechanisms should replace direct regulation of green house gas emissions. Has that worked or not? The NCA4 is, after all, a government report, and so it won´t say. At the same time that the NCA4 was released, massive demonstrations were taking place in France against fuel tax increases. They have convulsed the country for over three weeks. These "yellow vest" protests (drivers in France are required to carry highly-visible vests in their cars for use in case of emergency) have the sympathy of millions of people in France, who see Macron´s version of the carbon tax as another round of intolerable austerity being inflicted upon them. The establishment environmentalists tell us that the carbon tax is what is needed to fight global warming, and the NCA4 says that "emissions pricing (that is, GHG emission fees or emissions caps with permit trading)" is one of the tools to be used to oppose global warming. The French government is using fuel price measures to enforce austerity, but it hides under the environmental pretext. So now the question of what should be done to deal with global warming - market measures or serious regulatory measures - is coming sharply to the fore. Do we need major economic planning and mass pressure on the capitalists to have serious measures to save the environment, or should environmentalists woo the big corporations with market measures, at the price of earning the hatred of millions of working people? Carbon taxes, such as fuel price increases, are market measures. That´s why the market-worshiping and environment-destroying IMF and World Bank have been pushing the carbon tax for several years, and why ExxonMobil and various other major polluters have now come out in favor of it. The carbon tax is not a tax on energy company profits, but a sales tax passed on to the consumer; and it´s put forward as an alternative to economic regulation. It´s not especially effective, and it doesn´t provide for the development of mass transit or other ways to cut down on carbon emissions. It´s up to the market to develop the alternatives. This is not to say that some market measures don´t (or can´t) reduce carbon emissions a little, only that they have been (and will be) miserable failures in achieving sufficient reductions. Hence, at most, they can only be subordinate parts of something bigger, such as environmental regulations and economic planning, leading to a compulsory change of the energy infrastructure and of how industry and agriculture are conducted. However, to achieve such measures, one needs the enthusiastic cooperation of the workforce in forcing the corporations to obey the necessary regulations, and checking on whether they really do. (4) The French demonstrations aren´t dominated by any political party, and have an amorphous character. They reflect the distress and anger of millions of people who are being squeezed, and they are not only about fuel price increases but other austerity measures. Environmentalism has to make a choice. Either side with the struggle of the masses for a decent life, or side with the corporations and the measures that they prefer. The fate of the earth may hinge on the answer. Notes: (1) The Climate Report is from the US Global Change Research Program. It´s available at https://www.globalchange.gov/nca4. (2) The UN report is from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (3) See, for instance, "Al Gore´s Nobel Peace Prize and the fiascos of corporate environmentalism", http://www.communistvoice.org/41cAlGore.html. (4) See "The coming of the environmental crisis" at http://www.communistvoice.org/39cKyoto.html. By Joseph Green, Detroit Workers´ Voice <> --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
