Hans Ehrbar wrote: > An important result of the 2011 Climate Change Conference > in Durban > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference > > is the "Durban Platform for Enhanced Action." This > framework for international climate negotiations eliminates > the distinction between Annex I and Non-Annex I countries. > Instead, its goal is to draft an international climate > agreement by the year 2015, to go into effect in 2020, which > ensures "the highest possible mitigation efforts by *all > parties*." > > I always thought the Durban framework has two shortcomings: > > (a) 2020 is too late. > > (b) by ignoring the historical debt of the rich countries > it places too much burden on the poor countries. >
The Durban framework is based on continuing the market fundamentalist approach to the environment which is leading to utter catastrophe. There is no recognition of the failure of market measures, but only the desire to continue it. There is no condemnation of either the reasons for the fiasco of the Kyoto Protocol, nor the basic forces responsible for it. > But I'd like to start a discussion here whether activists > world wide, environmentalists, socialists, and > ecosocialists, should support the Durban framework anyway. No, serious activists should look into bringing the class struggle into the environmental movement. This means setting forward a serious program of environmental regulation and control as opposed to market measures. It means working to build a working class environmental movement that will fight market fundamentalism and the bourgeoisie in favor of serious environmental measures, and that will oppose the fluffy empty rhetoric of establishment environmentalism and its dirty deals with the polluters. It means exposing the class interests involved in destroying the environment, and it means linking up the movement in defense of the environment with the movement in defense of the working masses in the current world economic crisis. > > Carrol writes: > >> I see the problem to lie in capitalist relations of production, NOT >> in the >> opinions or desires of individual capitalists or individual >> capitalist >> politicians. > >> If this is so, then the needed actions simply cannot be taken within >> the >> framework of global capitalism. > Carrol's argument is to sit on one's hands as our world goes to pieces. It's the same as if someone would say that the economic struggle is useless because exploitation can't be ended within the framework of global capitalism. His reasoning is that fighting the capitalists on any particular issue somehow means seeing the problem as "the opinions or desires of individual capitalists or individual capitalist politicians." Carrol's plan means capitulating to the capitalists on the environment, which would not only make the looming environmental catastrophe so much more likely and so much deeper, but would help give rise to capitulation on every front. [Hans Ehrbar wrote:] > Going along with the media > here in the US which ignore or belittle the Durban process > would be a big mistake. Going along with the media, which promotes establishment environmentalism as the alternative to climate denialism, would be a big mistake. -- Joseph Green _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
