Climate Change Action: Not Too Hot and Not Too Cold
Much of what passes for expert opinion and academic scholarship is in fact an ongoing attempt to look anywhere but the rather obvious real bases of power. At a time of huge oligarchic corporations, colossal concentrations of wealth in so few hands, the slow and steady destruction of the Western middle class, and the glaringly obvious widespread corruption among the politicians and state bureaucracies the “experts” and “academics” still write silly articles about “free” markets and “democracy” as if such things really existed. Of course, they do not. To understand the reasons for the lack of action on climate change we have to first throw off the dreams which the “experts” and “journalists” are paid to blind us with. It is all about power and wealth.
First of all, we have the interests which are directly at risk of losing wealth that is tied up in fossil fuel assets and fossil fuel-related assets such as refineries. The nations of the United States, Canada, and Russia are well aligned when it comes to climate change because they are all significant producers of fossil fuels, and in the case of the US also have massive international oil and gas corporations that are headquartered in the country. Any policy-driven reduction in fossil fuel use, especially oil and gas, will directly threaten the large agglomerations of fossil fuel wealth in these nations. So, their governments veer between outright climate change denial and a weak eco-modernism focused on technologies such as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) that will both allow continued fossil fuel usage and utilize the very skills that fossil fuel companies possess. The fact that CCS is a highly questionable technology and has never been proven at scale to be economically viable is irrelevant, it serves as a smokescreen to cover up the reality of climate change. We can add to these three nations the fossil fuel rentier nations of the Middle East and Africa where the elites, who have mostly stolen the fossil fuel wealth from the people, are dependent on a chunk of that wealth to bribe/discipline their populations. Without the fossil fuel rents they would need to get on a plane out of the country asap or probably end up hanging from a lamppost. We can call this combined grouping the Not Too Hot grouping, where the fossil fuel interests don’t want the heat of climate change actions turned up to a point where they become seriously threatened. We must remember that given the nature of the global oil and gas markets, relatively small falls in demand can produce very large drops in price – creating a major fossil fuel revenue crisis very fast. Better to stretch out the transition away from fossil fuels and hopefully a lack of new exploration and production will reduce production quicker than demand; producing a very profitable transition. To help this we have the blatant official lie that natural gas produces less greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than coal, when any accurate assessments that take into account fugitive methane emissions find it to be worse than coal; a bridge to climate chaos. Another fallback for this group will be Solar Radiation Management (SRM), blocking out the sun by mimicking the effects of a large volcanic eruption.
The other nations do not have these major fossil fuel interests, but their economies and their wealth are very much dependent upon continued economic growth. Stocks are valued at multiples of future growth, debt is dependent upon the future income growth to pay the interest, and even house prices are very dependent upon future earnings. In addition, economic growth provides some extra crumbs to feed out to the masses, so they don’t get the crazy notion of increasing taxes on the rich – and even worse, taxes on wealth and not just income. To keep this reality at bay we have the mainstream eco-modernist fantasies that economies can continue to grow while GHG emissions fall substantially. For four decades since eco-modernism first made an entrance into academia and politics it has been empirically proven to be false, continued economic growth has produced continued increases in GHG emissions; most definitely not any reductions. But nations simply cannot get off the growth wheel without destroying much of what may very well be fictitious wealth, based upon future growth that will create climate chaos. For these nations, they need climate change policies that seem to be addressing the issue, or perhaps long-term wishes not supported by real policies, to allow them to keep the growth orientation going. For them climate change action can’t run too cold or else the truth will become increasingly obvious to the general population. It also can’t run too hot that it discomforts major corporations such as car manufacturers, that have large investments in such things as fossil fuel engine plants that are nowhere near fully written off.
So, we end up with climate change policies that are not too hot to endanger fossil fuel interests, and the growth upon which so much wealth is dependent while not too cold to make it obvious that pretty much nothing substantial is being done about climate change. As the academic Radoslav Dimitrov states we also have global “empty institutions” such as the regular international climate meetings that are designed to present a façade that something is being done about climate change when in fact hardly anything really is. The most recent Canadian government climate change plans are a fine example of official lies designed to keep the population quiet while business as usual is continued – climate policies that are neither too hot or too cold, but just right not to discomfort the wealthy and powerful.