IS YELLOW THE NEW BLACK?
The Copenhagen blame game continues with the media reaching a hysterical pitch in their attempts to demonise China over the disappointing results at the climate change summit.
By Madam Miaow
The Guardian publishes another lurid smear, this time by someone called Mark Lynas and titled: “How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room”
Starring Mark Lynas as Sax Rohmer which, I guess, makes me Fu Manchu. (I recommend you read all the comments on the Guardian thread.)
UPDATE Wednesday 23rd December : Comment is free but only if you agree. The Guardian removed my comment below from their thread, posted 22nd December 9.23pm. Not only mine, but I notice some other very good posts robustly rebutting Lynas’s assertions and errors have been removed.
Dear Mark,
So the cold war is alive and well.
Western spin is really pulling out all the stops, perhaps because we are onto you as the various blogs and forums show.
if anything, China got strong-armed into signing a weak deal when it should have held out as Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba and others have said.
The US and the rich nations use up almost all the carbon allowance in the atmosphere over the past 160 years, the US dithers over ten years of Bush, they refuse to ratify Kyoto, the Danish summit chair has to resign when she’s caught fast-tracking the rich nations’ deal, the West fail in their Kyoto pledges, Canada rips up its Kyoto deal and proceeds with exploiting its huge reserves of dirty oil, the US will only reduce emissions by 4% against the 1990 base year and not the 17% you describe as “serious cuts”, while China makes real strides in green technology, and so on.
But it is all China’s fault.
Hilary Clinton bursts into the conference demanding China [edit: eat merde] when the US didn’t even have anything to offer. They knew that the terms of the “verification” they demanded was an exercise in humiliation and China would not stand for it. The US can’t get anything meaningful past their senate, which includes some “wholly owned subsidiaries of the energy industry” (Monbiot) and resorts to sleight of hand.
But China is the villain.
As for Merkel, she is a massive hypocrite when you look at what her government’s been doing.
Even John Prescott pointed out that we’ve had our industrial revolution yet the poor countries have to halt in their tracks and people live on an average of $2 per day.
But according to you China twirls its moustache and strokes its cat as it eats the planet for breakfast.
What other country has an entire city using solar powered appliances? Who else has planted such huge tracts of forest while loggers tear down the rest? China aims for 15% of its energy from renewables, it has revolutionised wind-turbines, makes a key component of electric car batteries, and so on. We in the UK can’t even meet our Kyoto promise.
The world says it’ll pay $100 billion into the global kitty. Yet how much does the US spend each year on wars? Something like a million dollars a day on petrol alone.
This game of smoke and mirrors is shameful. Dividing the world into angel and devil does not help, neither does throwing a hissy-fit when China baulks at signing the rich nations’ deal which condemns the poor nations to a slumdog future. At an early stage in its industrial development China is moving onto the right track. By all means criticise them when they screw up but give them credit for what they’re getting right. The future of the planet is too important for these political football games.
Seasons greetings, although seasons may soon be a thing of the past if the rich nations get their own way,
Anna
Practically a lone voice in the Guardian, George Monbiot writes:
Obama went behind the backs of the UN and most of its member states and assembled a coalition of the willing to strike a deal that outraged the rest of the world. This was then presented to poorer nations without negotiation: either they signed it or they lost the adaptation funds required to help them survive the first few decades of climate breakdown. … Pushing a strong climate programme through the Senate, many of whose members are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the energy industry, would have been the political battle of his life. Yet again, the absence of effective campaign finance reform in the US makes global progress almost impossible.
Almost forgot, Naomi Klein: Copenhagen’s failure belongs to Obama
UPDATE 2: A recent comment (not mine) at the above Guardian CIF thread:
The Guardian writer was trying to confuse the public by omitting the fact that the EU couldn’t even agree to its binding emission cut targets even by 2020 and they couldn’t fill that blank. He also omitted the fact that the US also refused to have its emission cut target by 2020 included in the draft. An 80% cut by 2050 on a global scale obviously would have painted a big panckage in the sky. When the rich countries have not honored their pledges to the Kyoto Protocol to cut their emissions and they couldn’t set binding short-term emission targets, how do we expect them to honor a long-term emission cut targets by 2050? In fact, Yvo de Boer in his last press conference said that the commitments to cut GHG emission by individual developing nations combined are far larger than those of the developed countries combined.
They want 80% cut by 2050 written into the accord so they could pressure the developing nations, because after all, the developing nations are the ones whose emissions will have to grow and peak as the year 2050 gets closer.
Above all, the writer didn’t even tell how the US and other rich nations were pretty successful in detrailing and deviating the negotiations over the Long-term Cooperative Action and amendments to the Kyoto Protocol, especially the Kyoto Protocol, the two documents that have legal binding over the rich countries. The writer didn’t even have the courage to mention the two most important documents, upon which any political declaration should have been based on.
It is the rich countries, the US, particularly, which has hijacked the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. That much should be clear to us all.
Wonder how long that’ll stay posted.
The real reason Copenhagen failed.
SEE ALSO HARPY MARX
I think a more accurate account of China’s (and that India, Brazil and South Africa) is contained in patrick Bond’s analysis at http://links.org.au/node/1426
* * *
By Patrick Bond, Durban
December 23, 2009 — In Copenhagen, the world’s richest leaders continued their fiery fossil fuel party last Friday night, December 18, ignoring requests of global village neighbours to please chill out. Instead of halting the hedonism, US President Barack Obama and the Euro elites cracked open the mansion door to add a few nouveau riche guests: South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, China’s Jiabao Wen (reportedly the most obnoxious of the lot), Brazil’s Lula Inacio da Silva and India’s Manmohan Singh. By Saturday morning, still drunk with their power over the planet, these wild and crazy party animals had stumbled back onto their jets and headed home.
The rest of us now have a killer hangover, because on behalf mainly of white capitalists (who are having the most fun of all), the world’s rulers stuck the poor and future generations with the vast clean-up charges – and worse: certain death for millions…
So if only two things were accomplished in Copenhagen, they were the unveiling of Pretoria, Delhi, Beijing and Brasilia as willing criminal accomplices to the Washington/Brussels/Tokyo/Canberra/Ottawa axis, and the rise of Climate Justice Action, Climate Justice Now!, 350.org and parallel movements whose hundreds of thousands of protesters swarmed streets of the world’s cities.
The next question is whether in 2010, before the next fiasco in Mexico City, the latter can cancel the former. We all depend upon an affirmative answer.
Comment by Terry Townsend — 23 December, 2009 @ 10:49 pm
Please note that figure in the global kitty is, of course, $100 BILLION, not million as I mistakenly wrote. Put it down to early Christmas cheer. Hic!
Merry festivities and seasons greetings to all. You’re my best pal, you are.
Comment by Madam Miaow — 24 December, 2009 @ 12:08 am
Yellow is the new yellow. China sending a flunky to negotiate with Obama in Copenhagen is unforgivable.
Comment by Hugh — 24 December, 2009 @ 2:29 am
Socialist Action on imperialism’s responsibility for failure at copenhagen.
http://www.socialistaction.net/Copenhagen-talks-lay-bare-the-class-conflict-at-the-heart-of-climate-change.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email
Comment by graham james — 24 December, 2009 @ 10:05 am
America sending a flunky who couldn’t offer anything in Copenhagen is unforgivable.
Comment by Madam Miaow — 24 December, 2009 @ 10:09 am
China sent a flunky?
I must admit I didn’t follow the negotiations in detail, but the photos show Wen Jinbao with Obama, who is the premier of the Peoples Republic.
Comment by Andy Newman — 24 December, 2009 @ 10:15 am
Andy, Hillary insulted Wen by basically calling them dishonest the moment she walked in, making demands despite their own failures instead of negotiating. The Chinese rep was kept out of negotiations for the first three days. Some say either Wen had a hissy-fit over the humiliation or he refused to meet Obama because he had nothing to put on the table.
I think China was out-manouevred by the US. Remember the Danish chair was caught fast-tracking a second agreement — the secret rich nations deal — when there was supposed to be only one for the summit to horse-trade over. The scandal meant that the chair was changed halfway through the conference. This did little to engender trust.
China ended up succumbing to pressure and signing the weak accord which enraged the poorer nations such as Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba. For me this is where any criticism lies, not the US BS.
Comment by Madam Miaow — 24 December, 2009 @ 11:15 am
Thanks MIaow
Certainly the impression I get is that the US picked a fight with China over issues where China could not compromise.
This is particularly obvious given we know that Obama’s greatest personal strength is his ability to negotiate and to recogise those red lines where his interlocutors cannot yield ground, and to find creative solutions around them. (for exmaple his manageing to get the police trade union Chicago to agree to restrictions on the death penalty, something no-one thought could be done)
The US State Department know as well as any of us that national sovereignty is the absolute non-negotiable issue for the PRC, and therefore insisteing that the Chinese make concessions in this area was a deliberate tactic by the US to force the Chinese to pull out.
Of course in the West the Us may have considerable success in spinning this against China; but in the rest of the world I feel China’s position will be well understood. It is also very much hard wired into Chinese diplomacy to avoid confrontation except where absolutely necessary, so i can understand why China signed the deal, rather than make a stand.
Comment by Andy Newman — 24 December, 2009 @ 11:36 am
“The Guardian publishes another lurid smear this time by someone called Mark
Lynas”
It’s very hysterical to portray Mark Lynas as some kind of “anti-Chinese cold warrior” on the basis of his article on Copenhagen.
Maybe Lynas was too generous in his interpretation of Obama’s offer, but he’s also been critical of the policies of the US administration under Bush.
He’s written several books widely-read books on the subject of climate change, which have been favourably reviewed on RealClimate.Org, the most widely-read and authoritative scientific blog on the subject.
Along with the IPCC, they’re agreed that it’s necessary to prevent C02 levels reaching 350 ppm by 2015 to limit global warming to 1.5 C.
If these conclusions are correct, but developing nations like China and India continue to extract their coal reserves without any limits, they won’t achieve sustainable development at all.
All they’ll do is create a parody of We
stern consumerist lifestyles for the middle classs few, before environmental collapse destroys their agriculture and environment, plunging the masses back into poverty.
This is the future that puffed-up nationalist rhetoric and nuclear dick-waving leads to.
Lynas is a liberal with illusions in the new Obama regime in the USA.
But the substantive point he was making was that the Chinese government not only refused to accept any definite reduction targets for their own C02 emissions.
They also insisted that the previously announced Western targets should be removed from any agreement too.
This rejects any quantifiable monitoring of C02 emissions in favour of vague goodwill and a few press releases about alternative technology.
There must have been whoops of joy from the Oil Companies busily exploiting the Candian oil-shale reserves and Alaskan deposits.
Not to mention the US coal corporations lopping off mountaintops in Wyoming and the Appalachians.
Meanwhile the Chinese bureaucrats can continue to send thousands of miners to their deaths every year without loosing any sleep at night.
Conclusion; only international action by the working class and its allies can stop disastrous climate change.
Comment by prianikoff — 24 December, 2009 @ 11:43 am
Prianikoff
All the hysteria, I’m afraid, has been used up by the wave of articles whipping up anti-Chinese — not just anti-China — feeling. There’s a widespread revulsion in the environment blogosphere over the racist tone partly because scapegoating the Chinese rather than giving a balanced critique lets everyone else off the hook, especially the world’s No 1 emitter of greenhouse gases. One US Tweeter gives the Hall of Shame Award for ” most shoddy racist coverage” to the NY Times. Had the Guardian left the comments on the Lynas thread you would have seen that the environmentalists were challenging his account by an impressive ratio. Not only that but the “recommend” button was being hit by far more than those who agreed with him.
There are obviously criticisms to be made of China (the mining disasters being only one) but personally I would have preferred to have seen balanced journalism here. There’s a concerted effort to load the blame on one country and that is ridiculous. The press suddenly screeches that China wrecked the summit? What, one country in two weeks? Come on. Here’s a better article that gets low status at the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/dec/23/g77-copenhagen-bernaditas-de-castro-muller
How can we have a proper debate in this atmosphere?
Talking of atmosphere, while China’s use of coal is alarming, they are at least using “clean coal” technology that removes 85% of carbon from emissions. They are building these at the rate of one per month whereas I don’t think we have even one despite lots of talk about it. Or would we rather see nuclear power back on the menu?
Comment by Madam Miaow — 24 December, 2009 @ 12:18 pm
BTW, Prianikoff: “Conclusion; only international action by the working class and its allies can stop disastrous climate change.”
Agreed. Ultimately, the market economy wherever it is, will take us all down. And, yes, Graham, it is about class conflict not race conflict.
Comment by Madam Miaow — 24 December, 2009 @ 12:26 pm
Miaow
You are correct that China is moving towards cleaner coal with reduced emissions, and this is a very positive step forwards
However the next step towards actual Clean Coal is still elusive. The technology seems plausible on paper, what is needed is a crash research programme to make it a reality.
Comment by Andy Newman — 24 December, 2009 @ 12:26 pm
so quick to ascribe criticism of the chinese dictatorship as racism. unable to see describing Obama as a “flunky” as a pure racist slur. Socialist Unity, friend of Tyrants everywhere
Comment by anabaptist — 24 December, 2009 @ 1:04 pm
anabaptist — the use of “flunky” was a response to comment 3’s use of the term to describe the Chinese diplomat and a rhetorical device. Obviously. Informed criticism of Chinese regime good. Turning it into racism - ba-a-a-ad! I’ll draw pictures if you like.
Comment by Madam Miaow — 24 December, 2009 @ 1:20 pm
Jonathan Neale’s take from the new SWP website here
Comment by chjh — 24 December, 2009 @ 1:53 pm
Good article. I think speaking of the North-South divide is not enough. You also have to factor in who is really north and who is really south. I think you also have to get away from thinking that the ‘interests’ of the US or China are the same as the interests of the populations of those countries.
Comment by johng — 24 December, 2009 @ 2:06 pm
Quotes from Jonathan Neales’ article: ” We had no idea…The rulers of the world have betrayed those suffering now …” blah blah. What’s he talking about? Since when have lifelong revolutionary socialists believed the rulers of the world were representing the interests of the people? Get real. ” The lifestyles of the American people are not negotiable” to quote Dubya. I don’t need to point out that ‘the American people’ means ‘the people that matter’. Their lifestyle is not negotiable, so if it’s a choice between their lifestyle and massive extinction, then the people will have to go. They are not concerned about climate change because it will ’self-correct’ - they don’t have to worry about the damage that will be done if the Chinese and Indians attain our level of consumption because climate change will kill them off, with a discrete nudge here and there. We already have their hacks, like Lovelocek, preparing us for this with their talk of the optimum population level for the planet. If capitalism has reached the end of the road, then the lifestyles of the rich can be maintained with a lower population, and a system based on slavery rather than capitalism. Why would anyone expect anything else of the ‘rulers of the world’? It’s really depressing to hear so-called revolutionary socialist talking like they believe it’s possible to petition the powerful to find it in the goodness of their hearts to consider the future of the human race. That 1% that owns 50% of everything IS the human race as far as they are concerned - their only priority is how do they keep all the stuff they got!
Comment by jock mctrousers — 24 December, 2009 @ 2:54 pm
I think the form that the failure took was a surprise to most commentators including activists. It IS surprising. Surprises happen even to Marxists. People who are never surprised are incapable of recognising anything new at all, and are pretty useless to politics.
Comment by johng — 24 December, 2009 @ 3:10 pm
Thanks for this Madam Miaow
I tried to read Lynas’s High tide but failed. it was a series of travellors tales without insight or political direction.
The large imperialist nations know from their scientists that climate change is real. From serious work work like the Stern report they know it will cost a lot to stop. And basically driven by Capital’s need to make a profit they have decided to let us rot.
After all blaming China for suppling the West with goods it asks for is bizarre.
Garth Frankland
Leeds Alliance for Green Socilaism
Comment by Garth Frankland — 24 December, 2009 @ 7:47 pm
CPI (ML): `Shameful betrayal’ at Copenhagen — India and China sign undemocratic US-scripted accord
December 24, 2009 — Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation — The 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) has finally ended in Copenhagen, and it is now time to officially write the obituary. This week-long conference, where 110 countries got together to try and evolve a blueprint to handle the climate change crisis, has quite predictably and most unfortunately ended in failure. Predictable, because for a long time now there have been indications that the US would continue to hold the rest of the world to ransom by refusing to accept responsibility for its role in creating the climate crisis…
US President Barack Obama (representing his corporate funders) came to Copenhagen armed with the usual bullying tactics and United States’s oft-used trump card: unless India and China agree to binding emissions cuts, neither will we. In a most shameful betrayal of Third World unity, India and China responded to this blackmail by breaking away from the Group of 77 countries (G-77) and signing a US-scripted “deal” on the last day of the conference. It is indeed shocking and shameful that India and China, along with Brazil and South Africa, decided to sign this deal – an agreement which signifies an important departure from the developing countries’ long-standing position at the climate change talks.
Full article at http://links.org.au/node/1429
Comment by Terry Townsend — 24 December, 2009 @ 9:57 pm
Madam Miaow’s immature letter is not going to worry Lynas. Her disrespectful tone (”someone called Mark Lynas) and hyperbole (”lurid smear”, “hysterical pitch” etc) is rather ironic - it is she that sounds hysterical in her efforts to defend the dictatorship.
Lynas is far from being a hothead. He is well respected and moderate, and a deeply committed environmentalist. I trust his account of his own experiences deep in the negotiations over Madam Miaow or Andy Newman, who are keen to defend the dictatorship at every turn.
This is a corrupt regime that only in the last few days has thrown someone in prison for eleven years for the “crime” of proposing constitutional reform. Not a word from Andy and co about that - I am sure he thinks constitutional reform a terribly bourgeois activity, and hence eleven years for it nothing to worry about. Trust the leaders in Beijing to build the workers’ paradise, then!
Comment by Jon — 26 December, 2009 @ 2:04 am
Moreover, Miaow’s implies that criticizing the CCP govt in China is simply racist, as necessarily an extension of ‘yellow peril’ ideas. This is simply pathetic. It’s just as cowardly and useless as Israeli nationalists accusing all those who criticize the Israeli govt as being antisemitic. Give me a break. The fact is China is both a dictatorship and an upcoming superpower: you think these guys are not going to play hardball? They operate under the same logic as any other big power, and can be just as capable as malfeasance. Lynas’s account has a ring of truth about it. The odd thing is, if true, the likes of Newman and Miaow would probably support such behaviour anyway - because its China.
Comment by Jon — 26 December, 2009 @ 2:23 am
What gives the game away that Lynas’ article is designed to let the US and the West off the hook is the statement: “The US had . . . put serious cuts on the table for the first time (17% below 2005 levels by 2020), and was obviously prepared to up its offer.”
That is a lie, as this amounts to a miserable 4% cut below 1990 levels. This is not a serious cut…. (if they ever try to achieve that, and offsets and trading and other scams will make it much worse, of course).
By all means let’s not have illusions in the Chinese pro-capitalist leadership and its dirty deal with the US, but also let’s make sure we don’t lose sight of the fact that it the US who is the primary climate criminal.
Comment by Terry Townsend — 26 December, 2009 @ 4:28 am
look at the climate facts-look at the global politics-stop blaming china-which country in the last quarter century has reduced global poverty by over half a billion? fact: china-in fact it accounts for all of the global net decrease in poverty
understand the real politics of climate change:
eg
‘Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez put it in his speech to the Copenhagen conference:
“The richest 500 million people, that’s to say 7 percent of the entire world population, are responsible for 50 percent of the polluting emissions, while the poorest 50 percent is responsible for only 7 percent of the polluting emissions. The United States has nearly 300 million inhabitants. China has 5 times the population of the United States. The United States consumes over 20 million oil barrels per day; China only consumes 5.6 million oil barrels per day; we can not demand from the United States the same we demand from China.”
It is clear that redistribution from the 1% of humanity that controls 40% of global wealth should pay for the measures needed to minimise catastrophic climate change. That is precisely what capital wishes to avoid.’
that is real class politics
http://www.socialistaction.net/Copenhagen-talks-lay-bare-the-class-conflict-at-the-heart-of-climate-change.html
attaking china is worse than racist=it is letting imperialist nations off the hook-blaming one of the nations already most affected by climate chnage and also taking massive strides forwards-it is attepmting to turn the world against one of the few states offering an alternative economic model to neoliberalism and imperialist wars- thei right will fall for this-anyone calling them self left should not fall for this-because if they do they are essentially pro-imperialist on the key global class struggle in this epoch
Comment by sylvia ebberly — 26 December, 2009 @ 9:31 am
Actually for once I tend to agree with this analysis. There is an unpleasant udnertow to the whole blame China line.
Good points.
Comment by Andrew Coates — 26 December, 2009 @ 10:06 am
Terry Townsend
The issue here is not about identifying the biggest “climate criminal”, to use your ridiculously overladen term. Yes, historically, the US has pumped the most stuff into the air. Lynas’s article was about the Copenhagen deal itself: about the future. The US’s proposed cuts are meagre, but if what Lynas says is true, it was China who stripped the deal, not the West. It seems to me quite logical for China to do that, given its current position. Then factor into that that China is currently the world’s biggest polluter, and will pull away greatly in this position over the coming years.
To suggest that Socialist Unity is naive about China is an understatement; it is not only naive but entirely unconcerned about human rights and reform in China, and is entirely incapable of understanding that China is just as capable of malfeasance in international negotiations as the US or any other large power. Moreover, it seems to have entirely escaped Socialist Unity’s attention that it may actually be possible for China to have clients and puppets in Africa (shock, horror), useful to China in these sort of negotiations.
Added to that, of course, is the fact that independent civil society is very weak in China, as the Party has strong control (this is approved of by Socialist Unity, but disapproved of by democrats).
Comment by Jon — 26 December, 2009 @ 10:29 am
#24 Do you think the families of the large number of miners who have died in China believe it is offering an alternative to neo-liberalism?
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-chinamine_23int.ART.State.Edition2.4b3f672.html
Not to mention the migrant workers facing super-exploitation so that a few Chinese can become billionaires.
http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521870450
Comment by tyresome points — 26 December, 2009 @ 10:57 am
Jon #21, being a naice sort of gal who doesn’t go in for the forelock tugging you demand I show no respect for Lynas because I have no respect for him since reading this article.
Lynas writes:
“The US had confirmed the offer of $100bn to developing countries for adaptation, put serious cuts on the table for the first time (17% below 2005 levels by 2020), and was obviously prepared to up its offer.”
As Terry points out at comment #23, Lynas calls 17% cuts offered by the US “serious cuts” when even this low figure owes thanks to creative accounting and the real figure is 4% on the 1990 base year, a tenth of the 40% needed to make any difference.
Not only that, but Lynas agains skews in America’s favour and presents the £100 billion as the US’s own dosh, repeating what the Guardian published in another item, whereas they’d just supported the notion of an internationally shared fund but with no dates and no firm numbers. Even this is reckoned to be far below what is needed to keep Africa and other regions from devastation.
It’s all very well calling for an 80% cut by 2050, but given that the rich nations couldn’t even keep their Kyoto pledges and that the US STILL hasn’t ratified, would you bet the farm on manyana promises? How many times have we heard huge numbers cited by the West which never materialised?
Even if China signed up to the ambush deal (the Danish text) this still leaves the US emitting twice that of China. BTW, for those who insist that China is the biggest emitter —are you saying, Jon, that if I was living in China I’d only be entitled to half the emissions of someone who is an EU member? Or a quarter of an American? How fair is that?
This isn’t to say that China doesn’t have its own agenda. Of course it has. But it seems to be the only nation that is making practical productive efforts to curb emissions. Is it enough? Probably not. But it’s far more than we are achieving in the West. Unfortunately, the aggressive tone of the post-Cop15 spin (how respectful is Tony Juniper’s “inscrutable” crack in the Guardian?) means that I’m still trying to untangle who did what and why. Jonathan Watts helps as he is critical of China but it’s within a context of what everyone was doing.
http://www.danwei.org/foreign_media_on_china/danwei_interviews_jonathan_wat.php
Playing angel and devil does not help our understanding of how to deal with climate change.
Then there’s this comment at New Statesman which is reprinting the Lynas:
(http://bit.ly/7sHdl1):
“At worst, China turned a terrible deal into no deal at all. If it had gone along with the offer on the table from the US that Lynas calls serious then we wouldn’t be debating why Copenhagen failed, we’d be debating what to do now that a terrible deal is locked in until 2020. Lynas has been on the way out since he said equity was the problem and we should limit immigration, but this article does provide a lesson in how climate desperation can take you down a political cul-de-sac: if you focus exclusively on cutting carbon emissions, then developing countries developing their way out of poverty quickly becomes a bad thing. Even if you adopt Lynas’s racist colonial mindset, you’re never going to get developing countries to agree not to develop as quickly as possible. So the only credible position is to demand that rich countries come up with serious offers to show the way. The fact that Lynas feels free to publicly blame China while advising the Government of the Maldives shows who’s still got the real power and influence. This is the nail in Lynas’s coffin as a credible commentator.”
.
Comment by Madam Miaow — 27 December, 2009 @ 4:16 pm
I think its important to confront the hypocrisy of the US around this question. I also think though, that its wrong not to factor in the role of the emergent powers who blocked togeather who are in my view politically indistinguishable from each other. Its in this context that the piece written by a member of CPI-ML in Liberation posted above is interesting. This organisation is a Maoist group (although it is not aligned with the CPI(Maoist) in India), and whilst I disagree with much of their politics, the sense of disapointment from those who believe that developing countries ought to set a more progressive agenda needs to be registered:
http://links.org.au/node/1429
This is to be contrasted with the CP(M) position (the same CP(M) implementing SEZ’s based on the Chinese model in Bengal) who as well as backing the state’s offensive against CPI(Maoists) and adivasi people in the name of security, also finds it easier to present things as if all that is happening is a retreat from confronting US imperialism.
The Indian and Chinese state’s are no friends of the progressive movement. Its very important to be clear about this.
Comment by johng — 27 December, 2009 @ 5:06 pm
A few more links for your perusal.
Martin Khor in the Guardian on the Copenhagen failure:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/dec/28/copenhagen-denmark-china
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/22/copenhagen-climate-deal-expert-view
John Prescott answers Lynas on China and Copenhagen:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/28/john-prescott-defends-china-copenhagen
Roy Wilkes:
http://socialistresistance.org/?p=781
The BBC’s round-up includes a short but telling piece on Obama’s actual power to negotiate:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8426835.stm
Comment by Madam Miaow — 28 December, 2009 @ 3:16 pm