ZNet Commentary / Dave Edwards / The Climate Killers / Nov 29 (fwd)

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 16:13:37 -0800
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To: znetcommentary@tao.ca
Subject: ZNet Commentary / Dave Edwards / The Climate Killers / Nov 29 

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THE CLIMATE KILLERS
Big Business Consigns The Sixth Conference On Climate Change To Irrelevancy
By David Edwards

An anonymous US official once advised, "We must counter, both in the UN and
within the framework of the North-South dialogue, any discussion of global
problems which questions the validity of the free market and of free
enterprise in the countries of the Third World."

This was merely a small part of a much wider, highly conscious and
vigorously executed campaign - by now, perhaps 100-years-old - to stifle
discussion of anything that questions the validity of the free market.
Looking beyond the crude totalitarianism of his day to the sleek
totalitarianism of ours, PR guru Harold Lasswell wrote in 1927:

"A new and subtler instrument must weld thousands and even millions of human
beings into one amalgamated mass. A new flame must burn out the canker of
dissent and temper the steel of bellicose enthusiasm. The name of this new
hammer and anvil of social solidarity is propaganda. Talk must take the
place of drill; print must supply the dance."

Evidence for the success of this attack on questioning and dissent are all
around us. Peter Horrocks, editor of the BBC's prestigious Newsnight, told
staff in 1997: "Our job should not be to quarrel with the purpose of policy,
but to question its implementation."

Barry Cox, deputy chairman of Channel 4, recently wrote an article in the
Observer sub-titled: "In defence of political apathy - voter disillusion
with polls and politicians is little more than a sign of peace and
prosperity."

The Guardian's Madeleine Bunting - writing after the Seattle protests, and
before Washington and Prague - asked: "Let's be honest, who cares much about
politics beyond a small elite of professional politicians, commentators,
policy wonks and a rump of party activists? When did you last have a raging
row - or even brief conversation - with anyone about politics?"

With the canker of dissent burned out, the ensuing silence can, indeed must,
be presented as contentment and "social solidarity", rather than the triumph
of corporate control.

Naturally enough, then, given this context of mutually dependent lies and
silence, it is simply not possible for the mainstream to discuss the problem
of global warming. The real problem being that of overcoming the corporate
system standing between us and action in response to global warming, and,
with specific regard to the corporate media, standing between us and any
discussion of global warming "which questions the validity of the free
market and of free enterprise". October 11, 2000, was one of those
interesting days when reality and deception collide. That day, and for the
next three days, massive flooding caused Britain's "greatest ever natural
disaster", at a cost variously estimated between £2 and £4 billion - more
than twice the damage inflicted by the hurricane of 1987. Worst hit areas
were Sussex, Kent and Hampshire. A spokesman for East Sussex fire brigade
gave an idea of the scale: "I would say we are now at full stretch. Every
crew we have is involved in one way or another. These floods are among the
worst we have ever seen. We have hundreds of flooded homes and many roads
are impassable."

Elliot Morley, New Labour's countryside minister, literally waded in: "We
seem to be having more violent weather patterns and we accept that it could
be due to global warming."

On that same sodden October day, the Guardian, as it occasionally does, gave
fleeting and pitifully superficial attention to the efforts of big business
to undermine even trivial action to combat global warming. The latest target
is the upcoming sixth Conference of the Parties of the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change in the Hague, taking place between
13-24 November, and to be attended by leaders and negotiator s from 35
countries. Polly Ghazi reported how James Hansen and colleagues at Nasa's
Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York had, perhaps unwittingly,
handed big business a priceless gift ahead of the conference by suggesting
that the emphasis on reducing carbon emissions was misplaced. Instead,
existing technologies should be used to cut other climate-warming pollutants
such as methane and traffic-generated ozone and carbon (soot). Western
nations, Hansen and colleagues urged, needed to help spread proven clean
technologies such as catalytic converters to the developing world:

"We're suggesting a more optimistic scenario than the conventional wisdom
which says that curtailing global warming is almost hopeless," Hansen told
the Guardian. "I believe the prospects for having a modest rather than a
disastrous climate impact are quite good."

That very day, copies of the Guardian carrying Hansen's predictions of a
"modest" climate impact were to be found floating out of newsagents and down
flooded high streets around the country.

Dr George Woodwell, a climate expert and director of the Woods Hole Research
Centre in Massachusetts, has denounced Hansen's proposals as "dangerous" and
"crazy", adding: "Arguing that we should forget about CO2 for the time being
while we reduce other greenhouse gases assumes that we have time to allow
carbon dioxide levels to just keep on rising. That would be a very dangerous
assumption on which to base the future of six billion people."

And also, of course, a highly profitable assumption for industry. Big
business has discernibly leapt on Hansen's proposals as a way of attacking
the 1997 Kyoto treaty, which binds nations to cut emissions of carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases to below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) Issue Brief of August 2000,
for example, insists: "There is more disagreement than ever on how much and
how fast warming is actually occurring; whether achievable reductions in
fossil-fuel burning will have any significant effect on climate; and even
whether any future warming will be beneficial or harmful."

As ever the NAM went on to declare:

"We oppose the Kyoto Protocol and urge the President and Congress to reject
it."

To appreciate the irresponsibility of this statement, we need to consider
some key facts: carbon emissions are continuing to rise, and current
agreements under discussion are "trivial in terms of stabilising the
climate", according to climate scientists - proposing 5.2% cuts as opposed
to the 60-80% cuts required. While it is estimated that 100,000 people have
lost their lives to global warming since 1997, the London-based Global
Commons Institute predicts a further 2 million deaths over the next ten
years, with material destruction measured in the tens of billions of
dollars.

The dinosaurs of the NAM are of course just doing what business has always
done: pursuing maximum profit as vigorously as possibly, regardless of the
human cost. This has worked for them for many decades, but this time they
have bitten off far more than they can chew. As George Woodwell points out:
"The chances of keeping a heavily technological civilisation intact with an
open-ended warming of the planet taking place are practically zero."

Nevertheless, related arguments that will be employed by big business to
prevent meaningful agreements at the Hague include the buying of emissions
credits from countries with capacity to spare as a result of collapsed
industrial production, or due to reliance on nuclear power. Friends of the
Earth explain the beauty of emissions trading for business: "They have
halted real action to stop climate change as parties have become completely
caught up in the complex and almost incomprehensible detail of these
mechanisms."

'Carbon sinks' will also be promoted, involving, for example, the growth of
carbon-absorbing forests. But the carbon thereby absorbed could be released
again at any time if the trees are burnt or cut down. Again, endless
wrangling over such issues works wonderfully to delay serious action.

As discussed, the role of the media - manned by Lasswell's drill sergeants
and dance masters - has been to maintain an unearthly silence on these
issues. Fully ten years after a connection was made between rising global
temperatures and industrial activity, the mainstream continued to mock all
talk of a link. In June 1996, the Sunday Times declared: "The latest
apocalypse, global warming, is just that. Lots of hot air." Two weeks later,
an editorial in the Daily Telegraph ran under the banner " Hot Air",
arguing: "To many scientists the likelihood of man-made global warming is
about as credible as stories of goblins and fairies."

The "many scientists" totalled six - all of them heavily funded by the
fossil-fuel industry.

Eighteen months later, in December 1997, the BBC2 series, Scare Stories,
said of global warming: "It's been a campaign driven by passionate belief
rather than verifiable fact. they [environmentalists] have cried wolf once
too often."

This, less than two months after 1,500 of the world's most distinguished
scientists had signed an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
declaration urging world leaders to act immediately to prevent the
"potentially devastating consequences of human-induced global warming".

As recently as September 2000, a Sunday Times article reported that the
legendary Northwest Passage had at last been opened by climate change; an
event which "has fuelled hopes that tankers and other vessels could soon be
plying the route on a regular basis". An upbeat Peter Conradi explained:
"The benefits are considerable: up to 2,500 miles will be cut from journeys
from one coast of America to the other, and as much as double that from
Europe to Asia." A marvellous boost to global trade, in other words. "Not
all experts share the euphoria", Conradi noted, not because global warming
threatens a global holocaust, but because there remains a depressing
possibility that local temperatures might actually fall over the next few
years, threatening the newly opened trade route.

The prize for media lunacy, however, must go to the BBC lunchtime news.
Having outlined the latest scientific warning on climate change last month,
the news anchor then proceeded to refer the greatest threat to face humanity
in this or any other age to the resident weather forecaster. "Can anything
be done about global warming?", she was asked. "No, not really," came the
reply. "All we can really do is try to adapt to it." The anchor nodded,
turned back to the camera, and moved on to the next story.