Bill Hare, CEO of CAT’s partner organization Climate Analysis, said: “It’s good for leaders to claim that they have a net zero goal, but if they don’t have a plan on how to achieve it, then their The 2030 goals are as low as many of them. Frankly speaking, these net-zero goals are just verbal commitments to actual climate action. There is a serious credibility gap in Glasgow.”
The new promise from Glasgow will reduce this warming by only 0.1 degrees Celsius. As established by the Climate Action Tracker, there is a “very large credibility gap” in the net-zero policy. In this case, the lives of millions or even billions of people are not worthwhile.
damage
The main weakness of the COP process is that even the best results are not designed to be actions, but words. The focus of these meetings is on governments to formulate new commitments, always framed by deadlines in the next few years. When these chickens go home to roost, politicians and their parties may not even be in power.
The most closely watched members of civil society — concerned citizens, protesters, charities and NGOs, and thousands of journalists — feel obliged to celebrate and expand the smallest success of the COP process. People are very worried that the public will become discouraged, climate anxiety will intensify, and activists will shut down.
Therefore, one of the main successes touted at the conference was an agreement signed by 40 countries to phase out coal power for colonial economies in the 2030s and 2040s, and to end all new coal power invest. China has not yet agreed to reduce domestic coal production and combustion.
The unexpected agreement between the United States, which has historically been the largest contributor to the climate collapse, and China, which is currently the largest national contributor, has also attracted widespread attention. But even here, the reaction of many people on COP26 is the same: “This is a no-burger for stage management. There are no new bar words, no content about coal, finances or loss and damage.”
The problem is that climate collapse is a physical reality.
Share price
In 2020, a total of 88 million barrels of oil were produced globally. The global pandemic has caused an unprecedented international shutdown in history and has not come close to reducing our oil use to the level needed to prevent climate collapse. In fact, the output in 2019 reached a record high of 95 million barrels. There is no reason to believe that it will not return to these suicidal levels in the next few years.
In addition, a total of 159,610,000 tons of coal were produced globally in 2020. The slowdown of the pandemic has once again led to a decline in the mining industry. However, even so, today’s global coal production is still higher than in 2016 when the gavel was sounded to commemorate the signing of the Paris Agreement. Remember, there are still 1,074,108,000,000,000 tons of proven coal reserves in the world.
The actual introduction of the capitalist economy will inevitably cause coal, oil and natural gas to become stranded assets. Those companies that hold these assets will not be able to use them to convert assets into profits and into shareholder dividends. The stock price may not collapse, but it will definitely fluctuate. If capitalism works at any level, those who have capital will only invest in companies that can bring investment returns.
The stock prices of major energy companies tell the same story. Exxon Mobil’s current market value is $281 billion. The company’s stock is worth $64 today-no different from the price on the opening day of COP26, much higher than the $35 in the same period last year. ExxonMobil’s shareholders are not afraid of cooperative capitalism.
Similarly, the share price of Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private coal company, remains stable at $11, almost three times its value last year. Closer to home, as the company recovered from the pandemic, BP’s share price rose from £2.36 per share to £3.41 last year.
activist
The rationale for this political project is that the need to avoid climate collapse is so urgent and critical, and the possibility of broader and deeper political changes in our society and economy is so remote that capitalists must be persuaded and at the same time appeased They are in their interest and anyone else’s interest in mitigating climate change.
The problem with the capitalist plan is that the capitalists are not running the capitalist system, but the capitalist system is running the capitalists. The corporate leadership of any country will not choose what or how it produces, but our society is willing to do anything to ride the wave of capitalist wealth at all costs.
Shell CEO Ben van Beurden Moral vacuum. But this is not a person’s personal failure, he happens to rise in the ranks of the company through hard work and diligence.
Capitalist logic promotes those executives who achieve results and profits by making full use of the human and natural resources they control. No amount of evidence or intimidation can change Van Burden’s thinking. If so, he will be unemployed.
The gathered representatives, surrounding NGO activist banks, and exhausted journalists tried to understand the daily shocks and disappointments of the COP process. Suppose that a particular leader—usually the leader of others—understands that failure is the cause of meeting failure. We adhere to the concept of human initiative, a powerful savior and national leader.
Billionaire
COP26 Negotiations for our common future are hidden in the closed zone within the blue zone. More than 500 of these representatives are either directly employed by fossil fuel companies or represent government agencies that cooperate with large coal, oil and natural gas. NGOs and journalists permitted to enter the area are excluded from the real discussion and can only rely on press conferences to obtain any information.
The blue area itself is like a military camp on the banks of the Clyde. The fence stood high above their heads, and the delegates rushed through the revolving door guarded by security guards. The green area along the road is completely independent, but the pavilion here is dominated by National Grid, Unilever, Sainsbury and Microsoft. Information—the company is the solution—is not subtle. The green area is open to the public, and elementary school students can visit the science museum-style displays.
Civil society is represented in Glasgow.but COP26 Alliance The sites scattered in the center of Glasgow’s life are projected onto the hinterland both physically and metaphorically. Here, people understand and accept the science of climate change and discuss the reality of actual changes needed to prevent disasters. The participants are real people from Glasgow.
The discussion at the Adelaide Plaza venue was extensive and significant, involving the Green New Deal, degradation, indigenous traditions, threats of green colonialism, food sovereignty, and international trade. But this incident only seems to coincide with the COP negotiations that took place less than two miles away. It seems unlikely that these debates will influence the procedure.
Greed should be a dystopian nightmare. The COP26 meeting is a political project aimed at safeguarding our current global economic system as much as possible. Billionaires will continue to make huge profits and fuel their interstellar fantasy. At the same time, 15 million people may die from the coronavirus, and billions of people will not have access to cheap vaccines to sustain the profits of the pharmaceutical industry.
monster
But the experience of COP26 in the past few days shows that cooperativism itself is an unattainable utopian dream, just as hollow as Charles Fourier’s vision of the ocean becoming lemonade. Alas, no new words are really needed. Capitalism cannot allow corporatism to exist. This is its greedy demand for the mountains and oceans of coal, oil, and natural gas.
Barack Obama, when the President of the United States played an important role in defusing the Paris Agreement, now calls on young people to protest climate action.In his speech on Monday He made the following confession: “Sometimes, the future seems a little bleak. Sometimes I doubt whether humans can unite their actions before it is too late, and the image of dystopia begins to sneak into my dreams.”
The reality is that COP26 is failing because capitalism cannot be replaced by corporatism. We cannot postpone the work of ending capitalism until we take action to avoid climate collapse. Because capitalism is a climate collapse. Ta’Kaiya Blaney from Tla A’min Nation, the indigenous activist said at the People’s Plenary Session before the strike today: “Cop26 is a performance. This is an illusion that aims to save roots in resource extraction and colonialism. Capitalist economy. I am not here to settle the agenda — I am here to destroy it.”
This argument need not be simplified for the public. We already know.As Cora, a 15-year-old future member from Edinburgh on Friday, said eloquently this week: “Let that The Capitalist Theatre will be held every COP? We will never see the changes we need now. “
But if corporatism is now an impossible utopia, is capitalism really the only game in the city? Is it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of a billionaire? Or it’s time for the climate movement to fully integrate into the environmental movement, the social justice movement, (I dare say) the anti-capitalist movement, so that we can bring together our wounds, our dissatisfaction, and our hopes and start to challenge us The power of the unfortunate core capitalist machine and the masses?
The famous words of the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci now seem appropriate. “The old world is dying, and the new world is trying to be born. Now is the age of monsters.”
This author
Brendan Montague is the editor Ecologist.
