Who Cares If The IPCC Disappears?
by Lorna Salzman
How many Americans care whether the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) continues to exist at all? I would venture that it is probably less than the number who think that 350.org and the major Washington-based environmental organizations are doing anything significant about climate change or energy policy.
The findings of the IPCC are constrained by international politics and the need for consensus. Moreover, their reports lag behind new data and findings on climate change by about five years. So far, nothing that they have published has been adopted into legislation nor activist groups' policies.
The two most needed policies to counteract global warming are a stiff carbon tax, starting low and reaching eventually $200 a ton, and mandatoryfederal energy efficiency standards that could reduce CO2 emissions by 50% in a year or two (as opposed to the minimal reduction, speculative in any case, that nuclear reactors could achieve if they substituted for all the coal powered plants in the country, which would take decades to accomplish even if you brought a new reactor on line every month for the indefinite future).
In terms of public awareness and response, we are now in pre-Earth Day times. Besides a few expert prognoses by people like James Hansen,Richard Heinberg, James Kunstler, Gus Speth and Lester Brown, and despite research by eminent bodies such as Climate Code Red and the Hadley Centre, most Americans remain disconnected from the most urgent issue of our time. It is as if Americans were sitting in the audience of a giant auditorium - in this case the planet Earth - and watching a Greek tragedy unfolding.
Unless you have dropped everything and devoted your spare time to this issue, you are complicit in the fate of the earth. I am bewildered at the extent of public disinvolvement. Let me re-state what I have repeatedly said for years: the first thing that you must do is to definitively reject two things: the temptation to consume; and the Democratic Party.
Actually these are simple tasks. Spend money only on vital necessities, and stop voting. The harder and most urgent task is to start a movement or political party that is targeted solely on environmental issues, with climate change as the priority. The US Green Party had its chance and failed because its members, mirroring the apathy of the general public, made the mistake of thinking that a focus on social justice (and on Israel) was the solution.
American liberals and the misguided left have wreaked havoc on our political system by averting their gaze from the destruction of the earth's natural systems, species and habitats. Their recusal plus the apathy of minority communities tempted by consumerism, capitalism and economic growth have brought us to the brink of disaster. We have a double tragedy of political disintegration and ecological collapse. The doubters and deniers of climate change are a problem but are outnumbered by those who sit on their hands or pretend that they are waiting for "proof" and are still making up their minds.
As yet there is no one out there willing to stand up to our elected officials or throw them out, or acknowledge the false promises of renewable energy or a "green" economy. The fundamental systemic changes needed are still rejected by our environmental leaders, epitomized by the recent mailings of 350.org to the business community, actively soliciting its support for greenwashing with no mention of the impossibility of continued economic growth and consumption, and by Ralph Nader's abandonment of his anti-corporate stance in favor of the vilification of Israel.
If you still have such illusions, let me puncture them once and for all. The present recession is not just a passing blip in economic activity.Capitalism is in a terminal recession, taking the rest of us and the natural world down with it. This crisis coincides with and is in turn affected by The Perfect Storm of higher energy prices, higher food prices and the expanding impacts of climate change that include loss of biodiversity, shrinking water supplies, desertification, turbulent weather, depletion of ocean fisheries, floods (due to deforestation and rising sea level) and, not least,overpopulation.
Anyone who thinks that things will get better or "back to normal" is inhaling from the Big Bong. The Golden Age of growth and affluence ended decades ago and we are now on the downcurve by any measure. Just look at the upward population and global temperature curve, and the downward curve of energy and mineral resources, add on global warming, and voila, you have unmitigated, irreversible disaster.
But most people aren't looking. Whistling in the dark, they look for easy salvation: renewable energy, recycling, bicycles, organic gardening, and, most devious of all, new technologies such as the hydrogen fuel cell, promoted by Amory Lovins and Jeremy Rifkin. I am not holding my breath. But collective efforts of the most well-intentioned frugal citizens are a drop in the bucket, in the face of the forces arrayed against us.
All our good behavior has been for naught. We are looking in the wrong places. Yes, individuals bear much responsibility , alongside congress, corporations and other countries. But we must now hold these other entities' feet to the fire: reduce consumption while demanding the fundamental changes that are needed: properly pricing energy, standing up to corporations, and getting rid of our elected officials, wholesale. It means a categorical rejection of the economic growth model of capitalism. It means making sacrifices and simultaneously rejecting what is on offer to us by our government and the business community.