A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

32 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingSounds like a familiar story.Yes. But if elites’ attitudes are predictable, some of the issues are new.Global warming isn’t a threat like that of ozone depletion or evennuclear weapons. It can’t be fixed without broad social and politicalchange. Its implications for corporations are many-sided, but threateningfor the largest energy companies and the energy-intensive privatesector generally. Hardest of all, as this report will argue, avertingthe worst effects of climate chaos is likely to entail democraticmobilisation.For global elites, particularly in the North, these realisations are inevitablyharder to stomach than the threats posed by global warmingitself. The science fiction-like spectre of rampant superstorms, collapsingagriculture and drowned coastlines is easily trumped, in theelite imagination, by the more mind-wrenching terrors of less energyuse, less centralisation, slower transport, and – most staggering of all– less inequality.But isn’t it also the case that political and business leaders are simply in denialabout the urgency of the climate crisis?Northern environmentalists often like to say so. But as the last chapterhas suggested, most elites, with a little help, can quite well imaginewhat lies in store if greenhouse gas levels continue to rise. Whatthey have difficulty with is accepting political action that is commensuratewith the problem.You mean they know what’s happening, but lack the political will to do anythingabout it.It’s not really a ‘lack of political will’. In fact, as this chapter will document,many leaders – and the private corporations and technocraciesthat channel their choices – have a surplus of ‘political will’ for dealingwith the climate crisis, just as they have plenty of political will fortrying to turn any other crisis to their advantage. The problem is thatalmost all of this ‘will’ is directed towards technical, informational or‘market’ fixes entrusted to a handful of undemocratic institutions.Thus US president George W. Bush openly proclaims the need forthe US to break its addiction to oil – only to propose technologicalfixes such as sequestration of carbon from coal-fired power plants,biofuels and more nuclear energy. 5 Sir David King, the UK government’schief scientific adviser, warns that climate change is a threatgreater than terrorism – only to embrace some of the same technologies,plus emissions trading, as a solution. 6Technological fixes aretempting.