Three quarters of a century ago, it wasn’t just political and racist motives that lay behind the Nazi conquest of Europe. Adolf Hitler wanted to ensure that Germans would always be well fed, and the fertile fields of Ukraine were viewed as an attractive source of supply. Jews would be wiped out and the remaining locals were welcome to starve.
Climate change wasn’t a hot topic back then, but the quest for food security was capable of driving drastic agendas. Writing in the New York Times a couple of months ago, Yale history professor Timothy Snyder also cited more recent catastrophes that could be construed as a consequence of environmental degradation, notably the Rwandan genocide of 1994, which “followed a decline in agricultural production. Hutus killed Tutsis not only out of hatred, but for land”.
Others have pointed out that the civil war in Syria was prompted in part by an extended drought that drove a substantial proportion of the rural population towards urban centres. The Syrian refugee exodus to Europe is seen as a forerunner of worse to come, not least because arable lands in Africa are being purchased by rich countries to meet their own consumption needs.
There is, at the same time, evidence that dispossessed populations are more susceptible to religious extremism. This notion wasn’t completely lost on some of the 150 heads of state and government who gathered in Paris this week to kick off two weeks of negotiations aimed at evolving a consensus on measures aimed at restricting global warming to 2ºC above pre-industrial times.
It has been estimated that government pledges already in place would lead to a temperature increase of nearly 3ºC — and given that we are talking about pledges rather than concrete action, some scientists fear that the actual outcome by the end of the 21st century could in fact be considerably worse. Meanwhile, some of the island states that have most to lose from rising sea levels are pushing for a 1.5ºC limit. They are backed by the UN, but it is hard to imagine international agreement on this level, given that an increase of 1ºC has already been registered.
A key issue is the extent to which emerging economies, heavily reliant on fossil fuels for expansion, should be expected to chip in towards a reduction in global carbon dioxide emissions. China — which has emerged in recent years as by far the world’s largest polluter — and India contend it would be unfair for them to be held back, as the developed economies relied on a no-holds-barred approach for decades to get where they are today.
There is a certain logic to this argument, but given the overwhelming evidence of the damage that emissions are wreaking on the planet we all share, there is also a compelling need to focus far more sharply on alternatives to oil and coal. In fact, had this occurred on a much larger scale three or four decades ago, the nature of today’s debate would likely have been very different and substantially less alarmist.
One of the many things that hasn’t changed very much is the complaint that switching to solar and wind energy would be too expensive. Well, yes, innovations are often expensive to start with, and then become steadily less as economies of scale kick in. Solar panels are today used in most parts of the world, but there is huge scope for setting up gigantic ones across uncultivable terrain in the subcontinent and West Asia, as well as across the parched centre of Australia, for instance.
A temporary rise in energy costs would surely be a small price to pay for enhancing the longevity of our fragile planet. Besides, it could be combined with efforts to curb the wasteful use of energy at both the micro and macro levels . But wouldn’t that be incompatible with the primacy of the profit motive? Yes, it probably would. And it’s probable that the one per cent will conspire to thwart the goal of a 2ºC limit. It will be interesting to see what kind of compromise emerges in Paris. But you can bet your bottom dollar it won’t entail a deviation from the disastrous neoliberal creed.
By arrangement with Dawn
