8/6/2019 Politics of Global Warming

1/3

book Review

june 27, 2009 vol xliv nos 26 & 27 EPW Economic & Political Weekly50

P l t cs f Gl al warm ng

Nagraj Adve

The earths oceans, orests, grass-

lands and other landmass can cur-rently absorb roughly 14-16 billion

tonnes (gigatonnes, Gt) o carbon dioxide(CO2), an amount that is slowly decliningeach year. About 36-37 Gt were emittedinto the atmosphere in 2006, the last year

or which reliable worldwide data is avail-able. O this, according to the o cial Unit-ed States ( US) Energy In ormation Admini-stration, 29 Gt was emitted by the burningo coal, oil and other ossil uels. Another7-8 Gt was added due to de orestationand land use changes. Hence about 20billion excess tonnes o carbon dioxideremains unabsorbed each year, addingto the CO2 concentration in the ear ths at-mosphere, which currently stands at 387parts per million (ppm). These higherconcentration levels o CO2, and also o methane, nitrous oxide and other green-house gases have warmed the earth by an average o 0.8 degrees celsius sincethe Industrial Revolution. And because

there is a lag between CO2 emissions and warming, a ur ther 0.6 degrees o warm-ing is assured.

That would take us, over time, to 1.4 de-gree above pre-industrial levels. Warmingtriggers eedbacks in the earths ecosys-tems, which contribute to urther warm-ing. Already observed eedbacks includereduced Arctic ice, release o methane rommelting perma rost, decline in oceanicalgae, emissions rom warmer soils, andreduced absorption o CO2 in the southernoceans. It is widely accepted that were theearths average temperature to cross roughly two degrees above pre-industrial levels, itis likely to trigger these eedbacks, simulta-neously, to a scale that would underminehuman capacity to control the process.

Whether one can avoid reaching thesedangerous levels o warming is one o thekey questions that Jonathan Neale addre-sses in his book . The best estimates, he says,suggest that the two degrees celsius in-

crease will become unavoidable i CO2 lev-els reach 400-450 ppm. Neale talks not somuch o the dangerous levels o warming

as much as abrupt climate change, whichothers including James Hansen, the

worlds oremost climatologist, have warned about (Hansen et al 2007; Hansen2007). To avoid this climate catastrophe,Neale suggests that sharp cuts are neededin per capita emissions in the industrial-ised world, by roughly 80% to between1.7-1.3 tonnes per person, and urgently, in10-30 years (pp 24, 30, 159).

I think the numbers are even more direthan Neale suggests; or one, he makes amistake many do in omitting carbon emis-sions rom de orestation in his calcula-tions: they have been over 4 Gt a year av-eraged over 1990-2005 ( UNDP 2007), andeven more in recent years. That wouldmake the target cuts he sets even moredi cult to reach. What is more, recent

writings by Hansen and others suggest

that even 400 ppm may be too high, and tobe really sa e we should revert CO2 levels to350 ppm, but likely less than that(Hansen et al 2008), i e, reduce it rom cur-rent levels. There is a small but growingcampaign demanding this.

But this is not a book about the scienceo global warming. For an overview o thescience, there have been ew better thanFred Pearces The Last Generation . Anothersuperb, sometimes technical but generally accessible source is realclimate.org. Nor isthis book about the impacts o global

warming. For that you would pro t by visi-ting the web site o the IntergovernmentalPanel on Climate Change ( IPCC) to readthe massive second volume o its 2007 re-port though it is conservative in some as-pects, or United Nations Development Pro-grammes ( UNDP) Human Development

Report 2007-08 .

Politics of Global Warming

Neales book is essentially about the poli-tics o global warming about the cli-mate justice movement, its links with the

Stop Global Warming: Change the World byJonathan Neale(Bookmarks Publications), 2008; pp 287,11.99 .

anti-war and other mass movements,about climate politics in the 1990s, theKyoto Protocol and subsequent negotia-tions, the resistance o corporations andother power ul elites to change, and thelinkages between all o them. One o hismain arguments is that using existing

technologies the drastic cuts needed ur-gently to avoid abrupt climate change are

easible. Focusing on individual consump-tion, though use ul to generate debate, issimply not worthwhile and would proveinadequate. We need huge public works,and massive government intervention andregulation, globally. However, since thereare power ul vested interests, preventingthe kind o intervention necessary (o the10 largest companies in the world in 2007,six were oil companies and three car com-panies), a vibrant mass movement is need-ed to push these changes through, eitherby orcing current elites to act or replacingthem by those who will.

The book is divided into ve sections.Following a brie presentation o relevantaspects o the science, the sections that

ollow discuss technological solutions andpolicy measures that could work now (andsome that will not); why the rich and pow-er ul will not act; climate politics in the

1990s and a ter 2001; and alternativeutures, a penultimate chapter that discuss-

es the horrors o global warming impactsin New Orleans and in the Sahel, a worldo re ugees, amine, war and su ering[that] awaits us i we do not act, and a nalchapter that brings the various threads o his argument together urging the necessi-ty o a radical climate justice movement toovercome the many hurdles acing it. It isall too possible, he says at the end, thatelites stall long enough and abrupt climatechange will overwhelm us. It is also possi-ble that ordinary people will take controlo their societies and economies in a rev-olutionary overturning o corporatepower. It is not the most likely outcomebut it is possible and it would save theplanet (pp 255-56).

A short review can scarcely do justice tothe numerous themes and ideas this book touches upon. It is striking how varied theissues Neale discusses are, and with a re-

markable lucidity borne o his engagingpublicly with these issues or years and alsoo his being an activist in many movements

8/6/2019 Politics of Global Warming

2/3

book Review

Economic & Political Weekly EPW june 27, 2009 vol xliv nos 26 & 27 51

since the 1960s. I would urge his book beread not just by those involved with the cli-mate justice movement in India, but alsoby activists in other movements, and read-ers at large.

Workable Solutions

A crucial section o the book given theurgency and scale o the problem at hand is the one that deals with Solutions ThatCould Work Now. It discusses cuttingemissions via the trans ormation o elec-tricity generation by massive deploymento wind power, concentrated solar powerand photovoltaic ( PV) cells. Britain, he ar-gues, could have 5 million solar roo s in

ve years. Other, sunnier places includingIndia could deploy concentrated solarpower, and transport the electricity gen-erated through long-range high voltage DC cables, such as the 1,700 km long DC cablein operation in A rica. Separate chaptersthen deal with cutting energy use in build-ings, transportation and industry. Read-ing these portions reminds one o GeorgeMonbiots Heat: How to Stop a Planet Burn-ing, which also presents various techno-logical solutions in a largely First Worldcontext. In discussing emissions romcement, oil re neries and steel industries,

Neales rame is wider than Monbiots, andits politics considerably wider. But neithero them discuss emissions rom the de-

ence industry worldwide, one hugesource o direct and indirect emissions,possibly due to the lack o reliable data.

There are a number o issues abouttechnological solutions that Neale doesnot address adequately. One is the Jevonsparadox, which shows that increased e -ciency in using a resource results not in itsreduced demand over time, but paradoxi-cally in increased demand or an overallincrease in energy consumption (Foster2003:94-95). Two, as John Bellamy Fosterhas repeatedly argued, under capitalism,it is those energy sources that generate themost pro t or capitalthat are promoted,not those that are bene cial to humanity and the Earth (Foster 2003a:100). Wit-ness the alacrity with which Shell and other

ossil uel companies rushed in to mine theecologically disastrous tar sands in Cana-

da, and are currently withdrawing nowthat the price o oil has allen to a third o its peak o $ 147 a barrel a year ago.

Three, one was uncom ortable with hisassertion, repeatedly made, that climatechange does not have to mean sacri ce orordinary people. Even i one assumes thattechnological advancement prevents dan-gerous climate change, what o the otherecological and livelihood crises thrust in-

ordinately upon the poor and non-humanspecies because o direct and embodiedconsumption by elites everywhere theloss o community and livelihood rommining, soil degradation, the increasinglack o access to sa e water, the loss o spe-cies which some call the sixth mass extinc-tion in history, the oceanic crisis and oodsecurity, the generation and export o tox-ic wastes, etc? And which ordinary peopleis he re erring to? I one were to measureconsumption, or indeed carbon emissions,on a world scale, the ordinary people o the First World Neale re ers to would beplaced easily at the higher end o the scale.

Four, what matters i we are to avoiddangerous levels o warming is not merely technological change but the rate o change. Do we have the raw materials orindeed the capacity to carry out that mas-sive task worldwide in the short time athand? Drastically reducing the carbon in-tensity o the worlds energy systems nece-

ssitates a rapid trans ormation o its eco-nomic in rastructure. It is moot whetherdecarbonisation can proceed aster thanthe rate o depreciation o long- lasting

xed assets (Li 2008). In short, what would one do with the coal powered sta-tions that China has been building at astaggering rate, even as it galloped pastthe US as the chie emitter in the world?

In act, the rapid rise o Chinas CO2 emissions as manu acturing expanded

rom 3,050 mil lion tonnes (mt) in 2001 to5,322 mt in 2005 ( EIA 2007), and over 6 Gtin 2006 illustrates how centrally global

warming is connected with the growthand spread o capitalism, precisely becauseo capitalisms deep-seated logic o opting

or cheaper inputs, o energy (coal) andlabour power. A more thorough discussiono the systemic nature o the problem

would have resulted in a more realisticpicture o the hurdles we ace.

Organising Mass ActionWhich brings us to another major themeNeale stresses in his book the importance

o a mass movement, to enable not just thedeployment o more benign techno logiesbut also the growth o societies based onpeoples needs, not on pro t (p 259). The

job cannot be done by environmentalistsalone; a mass climate movement has toinclude and mobilise large numbers o

working class people. I could not agreemore. Such a movement would need topersuade unions and workers that the

ight against global warming is notabout sacri ce but about jobs and abetter world.

There is no doubt that global warming(along with myriad ecological crises gen-erated by capitalism) has brought to the

ront-burner questions o equity, enrichedthe sustainable development debate, ex-posed the limitations o an anthropocen-tric worldview, and has the capacity to link movements against displacement, mining,dams, war, and or equitable access to thecommons. Global warming simply cannotbe resolved under capitalism, and makesthe struggle or socialism an even morepressing one. But i one key question is,can we avoid two degrees o warming,then we really need to ask ourselves

whether the climate justice movement,can, arm in arm with other peoples move-

ments, grow in scale and then ensure the wide introduction o benign technologies,and en orce public policy changes thatNeale talks about, along with the accom-panying trans ormation in economic andsocial relations.

I doubt it. True, the movement againstglobal warming has been growing by leapsand bounds in the last couple o years inthe west. Increasingly, visible impacts o climate change in India, such as on agri-culture (a good discussion o which can be

ound in P K Aggarwals Global ClimateChange and Indian Agriculture), willbuild the momentum o the fedglingmovement here. There are also vibrantstruggles against orced displacement

rom industrial projects, special economiczones and dams, etc, which directly orindirectly relate to global warming. But letus ace the act that global warming as yetcuts no ice with most political parties andindustrial unions in India, and, anecdotal

evidence suggests, in China. Despite its im-pacts on agriculture or years 15 years inhis region, an activist and agriculturalist

8/6/2019 Politics of Global Warming

3/3

book Review

june 27, 2009 vol xliv nos 26 & 27 EPW Economic & Political Weekly52

told me recently it has barely begun toregister on the radar o large social orces.This may be because o the many other se-rious systemic crises acing the Indian un-derclass, and also because there exists a

ragmented view o development, indus-trialisation and employment. A more nu-

anced analysis by Neale o the constraintsmovements ace would have been use ul.The books requent re erences to past suc-cesses such as or the wel are state, publicdrainage in the 19th century, etc, underes-timate the scale o the problem (some-

where between the French Revolution andthe ght or the wel are state), and thecomplexity o equity, which is at the hearto the matter.

In act, an increasing number o climatechange scientists eel the earth may havealready tipped over the edge (Adam 2009).There is also the view that since there arealready threshold changes in ecosystemsand ocean acidi cationdangerouschange is likely to appear be ore 2 degreescelsius (Lovejoy 2009). The Real Climate

group recently wrote that given the extento current impacts a ter only 0.8 degreeso warming, calling 2 degrees C a dangerlimit seems to us pretty cavalier. Butthere is very little discussion in most Le t

writing about what the poor would ace i and when we cross dangerous levels o

warming. Public discussion on possibleimpacts beyond which Mark Lynas dis-cusses in his grim book Six Degrees: Our

Future on a Hotter Planet would under-line the urgency o global warming andperhaps help prepare or the crises. Doingtoo little too late would be a matter o li e and death or millions o the worldspoor, and or innumerable other specieson this planet.

Email: naga@bol.net.in

References

Adam, David (2009): World Will Not Meet 2 C Warm-ing Target, Climate Change Experts Agree,Guardian , 14 April.

Aggarwal, P K (2008): Global Climate Change andIndian Agriculture, The Indian Journal of Agri-cultural Sciences , November, pp 911-19.

Energy In ormation Administration (EIA) (2007):World Carbon Dioxide Emissions rom theConsumption and Flaring o Fossil Fuels,1980-2005, available at United States EIA

web site.Foster, John Bellamy (2003): Ecology against Capitalism

(Kharagpur, India: Cornerstone Publications). (2003a): Capitalisms Environmental Crisis: Is

Technology the Answer? in Foster, Ecologyagainst Capitalism (Kharagpur, India: Corner-

stone Publications).Hansen, James et al (2007): Climate Change andTrace Gases, Philosophical Transactions of the

Royal Society A, Vol 365, (1856): 1925-54.Hansen, James (2007): Climate Catastrophe, New

Scientist, 28 July, p 33.Hansen, James Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha et

al, (2008): Target Atmospheric CO2: WhereShould Humanity Aim? Available at, http://

www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOASCJ/2008/00000002/00000001/217TOASCJ.SGM

Li, Minqi (2008): Climate Change, Limits to Growthand the Imperative or Socialism, Monthly Re-

view, July-August, pp 49-64.Lovejoy, Thomas (2009): Climate Changes Pressure

on Biodiversity in State of the World 2009 , World- watch Institute, pp 67-70.

Lynas, Mark (2007): Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hot-ter Planet , Fourth Estate (Har perCollins).Pearce, Fred (2007): Last Generation How Nature

Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change (Transworld: Eden Books).

RealClimate (2009): Hit the Brakes Hard, 29 April. Available at www.realclimate.org.

UNDP (2007): Human Development Report 2007-08: Fighting Climate Change (New York: PalgraveMacmillan), p 69.

ind an Nat nal M m nt:on r Many?Salil Misra

o mass culture. In the societies o Asia, A rica and Latin America, this trans or-mation was brought about by politicalconquest, domination, and economic ex-ploitation o these societies by the indus-trially developed countries o Europe. In-terestingly, both the processes producedconditions that led to the emergence o nationalism in di erent societies.

By nationalism we mean here an inter-nal homogenisation o diverse populations

within a society, their trans ormation intoa political community, and an insistenceby this community on its own representa-

tive state. In other words a process o trans-ormation o multiple communities intonational community (or a nation), desire

by this national community or its sepa-rate identity, autonomy, internal unity,

and a representative state (or a nation-state), lie at the heart o nationalism as apolitical principle and an ideology. Thismuch may be treated as shared ground.

From this shared ground, it would benecessary to distinguish nationalism as aphenomenon rom the nationalist experi-ences that di erent societies went throughin the 19th and the 20th centuries. Indiannationalism shared certain traits withother nationalisms, but also retained itsown distinctive eatures. The theories o nationalism in general have not been airto anti-colonial nationalisms. As a resultthe nationalisms o Asia and A rica havebeen studied empirically and separately

without being integrated into a commontheore tical ramework. A study o Indiannationalism is there ore necessary becauseit can contribute to the building o a com-mon theoretical ramework, which placesthe experiences o the colonies at the cen-tre in the discourse on nationalism. The

volume under review is an attempt tobring out some o the distinct ive eatureso Indian nationalism, on the basis o

Nationalist Movement in India: A Reader editedby Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), 2008; pp xIiii +389, Rs 345.Nationalism is one major way in which the modern world can bedistinguished rom other pre-

modern societies. Scholars have contrastedthe nationalism-prone character o themodern world with nationalism-resistant

eatures o pre-modern societies. What isit about the modern world that makes it soconducive to the emergence o nationa-lism? Scholars, Ernest Gellner in the mainand many others, have viewed national-ism as rooted in the trans ormation o the

world rom agrarian to industrial. Thistrans ormation was neither smooth noruni orm and was mani ested in di erent

orms in di erent societies.In western Europe (and subsequently

in other parts o Europe and North Ameri-

ca) it was marked by unprecedented eco-nomic growth, literacy, mobility, a pulltowards egalitarianism, and the creation