Naive
Or Cynical: Terminator Tactics
In Fighting Climate Change
By Bill Henderson
14 August, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Cap
and trade instruments for greenhouse gas emission reduction will be
a key tool in any climate change solution. But their use by California
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in his presently proposed West
Coast Governors Climate Change Initiative will be at best
ineffectual and at worst an illusion that will keep Californians and
Americans from taking effective action of a scale necessary to protect
against the worst dangers of climate change.
Arnie and co are definitely
showing leadership
in addressing climate change. But look carefully and the
Terminator and those who have picked up on his deft political handling
of the climate change issue are trying their damnedest to fit climate
change mitigation to within business as usual ( BAU). This is how the
politically astute stick handle climate change: mitigation policies
and programs that won't in any way challenge or put at risk the ongoing
growth of the economy as presently configured.
Unfortunately, to use a jock
metaphor, the presently planned emission reduction programs are hopelessly
naive:
In my sport rugby (or in
football [soccer]), to call for the ball and think you are just going
to run through everybody to score a try (dribble through and score a
goal) is 'naive'. Against any good team you are going to have to control
the ball as a team for at least several phases to even get the ball
into a scoring position, and then against a good defense you might have
to move the ball around the pitch as you probe and have everybody on
the same page when a scoring opportunity arises, and even then it's
hard to score as good teams make defensive gems when you attempt to
take your scoring chance.
In the movies Arnie could
run through the whole All-Black team (dribble through the whole ManU
team and put the ball high in the corner over Van der Sar). As a politician
he's good at pretending to be leading in the huddle. But we are foolish
to consider his proposed emission reduction program as even capable
of making 25% reductions by 2025 and 80% by 2050.
Let alone the 90%
by 2030 that is increasingly becoming the shared emission
reduction bottom line of those who recognize the insidious danger of
non-linear climate change.
Cap and trade can and will
be an effective instrument but only when deployed within a much
broader program of socio -economic
reconfiguration. The tactical choice of cap and trade by
any regional entity without a comprehensive and well thought out special
regulatory framework is either naive or cynical.
Arnie's present plan involves
California, thirteen other states, and tentatively some Canadian provinces
(with potentially other national partners). Industry
leaders are already preparing to subvert action within
this cap and trade league threatening leakage of jobs and capital to
jurisdictions not in the plan. United
States leadership and wide multilateral acceptance and
compliance is essential for cap and trade to work effectively; ad hoc,
piecemeal sign-ons will just be marginalized.
The real world problem of
the present
drawdown economy
subsuming whatever emission reduction that will be achieved
is nowhere addressed. Consumption
within the presently evolved economy is the fundamental problem of which
carbon emissions are just one symptom.
There is no acknowledgement
of how the end of cheap oil will compromise this climate change program.
A potentially roiling, desperate economy may find emission reduction
too costly.
And Arnie's plan has us all
still in cars driving to the mall. Better mileage and more efficient
car technology within a continuing sprawl
economy isn't going to do it.
Arnie's whole climate change
program is completely within the presently configured economy; incremental
change is carefully spun as good for business, as a growing future economy.
How naive can a leader, can a politician, can a general public be?
Has anybody commissioned
a poli-sci or economics study of just what level of emissions reduction
is possible - is realistic, isn't naive - in implementing cap and trade
or even carbon taxing instruments within the presently configured socio-economy?
And let's get real and properly
asses the opposition:
There are relentless market
forces leveraged to the max by guys totally transfixed in playing THE
most important economic games. They are making big plays, some instantaneous,
some laminating millions of people in continents around the worlds over
time frames of many decades. The games always on the line with a CNN
Turning Point possible any second. And who knows what the refs are going
to call.
And, like my rugby mates,
these guys are so into the game they'd maybe run over their mother if
she somehow wandered out onto the pitch. They don't care if there's
a good chance that climate change without adequate mitigation means
no more humanity and no more creation as we know it. Not if emission
reduction - shitfart production for all they care - threatens the deal
they're doing right now.
And into this game Arnie's
going to drag a join if you want cap and trade union hoping to move
a small group of states and Canadian provinces to meaningful (well not
quite meaningful) emission reduction? Without breaking a sweat and getting
re-elected cause everybody in the economy is going to continue to prosper?
Finally, If the worst case
scenario of runaway
climate change emerges as the defining climate change threat
then we might only have one
chance to score emission reduction points sufficient to
keep us from winning that ultimate Darwin Award for self-extinction.
To keep us from being relegated to a lower league of Use2bees.
If climate change is a slow,
linear rise in temperature then Arnie's climate change program, the
development of clean, renewable energy, and even such oxymorons
as green consumerism can be solution 'wedges'. But if climate change
is non-linear with carbon cycle time delays and with potential thresholds
to dangerous climate change of immediate concern, then the proposed
California climate change program is most important as an illusion of
solution that mis-informs the public about the degree of mitigating
change necessary.
Naive? (Is there a 'manager'
out there that has a more realistic plan?)
Or just rock bottom politically
cynical?
"One small dive
for man, one giant leap backward for life on Earth." Jeremy
Rifkin
bill (at) pacificfringe.net
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