The Apocalypse Is On the Way

It is a beautiful day in Victoria. The sun is out and it is 10C. The flowers are up. Many trees are in bloom. People are out working in their yards. But while eating breakfast I pick up the Times-Colonist. A front page story covers the demonstrations in Vancouver yesterday over the proposed expansion of Trans Mountain Pipeline. Indigenous leaders insist that the new pipeline will be stopped. But look how quickly opposition was shut down at Standing Rock. Today the repressive state has enormous power and popular opposition is weak. This is not the 1960s.

Vancouver rally againstTrans Moutain Pipeline

Friday Kinder Morgan obtained a court injunction banning protests at their Burnaby terminal. There had been around 15 protesters there for over a week trying to slow down new work, part of the expansion which has the approval of the Trudeau government and the appointed National Energy Board.

Is there a chance that the project can be stopped? The municipalities of Burnaby and Vancouver have gone to court to challenge the legality of the NEB and their declaration that the project can not be held up by laws existing in the municipalities. The NEB has the support of the Trudeau government.

There are high hopes that the John Horgan NDP government will stand by its pledge that the pipeline will not go ahead until an expert panel decides that there would be no threat posed to B.C. from an oil spill. But the B. C. government has already backed down on this political issue by agreeing to allow the courts to rule on the legality of the proposed commission. Does anyone really expect a court to rule against a corporate development project? Will anyone really be surprised if the Horgan government folds on this issue? The NDP government reversed its pledge to halt the Site C dam construction.

But what disturbs me most is the fact that in this political fight between the Alberta and BC NDP governments the issue of climate change and the burning of fossil fuels is nowhere to be found. Yet even the U.S. Energy Agency says that if the goal of keeping the increase of the planet’s temperature below 2 degrees C, all of the bitumen included in the projected plans of the existing oil corporations operating in the Alberta tar sands must stay in the ground!

There is a mountain of scientific studies reporting on the extreme dangers to the planet posed by climate change brought on by the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. There are endless news reports which show real changes happening right now. One can understand why most governments make only empty pledges to take action. But it is hard to understand why intelligent people do not take the issue seriously. It does seem to me, as a political economist with an historical orientation, that it is a reflection of the reality of the triumph of liberal individualism and the defeat of the democratic tradition of community solidarity.

The apocalypse:

(1) On the Beach (1957 film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(1959_film)

This film is based on Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel of the same name depicting the aftermath of a nuclear war. Unlike the novel, no blame is placed on whoever started the war; it is hinted in the film that the threat of annihilation may have arisen from an accident or misjudgment.

(2) Planet of the Apes (original film, 1968)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Apes_(1968_film)

American astronauts land on strange planet where they find that evolved apes rule and dominate a smaller mute human population. Film ends when Charleton Heston, the captain, discovers the remains of the Statue of Liberty and realizes that they are on Earth which has been nearly destroyed after humans engaged in nuclear war.

(3) The Road (2009 film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_(2009_film)

A man and his young son struggle to survive after a global cataclysm has caused perhaps by climate change. There is no living environment. They scavenge for supplies and avoid roaming gangs as they travel on a road to the southern coast in the hope that it will be warmer. Based on the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy, one of my very favourite authors. This novel won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006.

(4) The Last Policeman (trilogy by Ben H. Winters, 2013. )

http://www.quirkbooks.com/page/last-policeman-series-ben-h-winters#

The trilogy is a combination of a crime novel and science fiction. The world faces extinction as a large object from outer space approaches. How people react is the theme. As refugees approach the USA men turn to guns. Winters, it seems to me, is describing how Europeans are dealing with desperate refugees from the Middle East. The Pentagon study of the effects of climate change predicts American refugees (in the millions) fleeing to Canada.

“I’ve seen the future, brother: it is murder.”

The Collapse of Western Civilization; a View from the Future. By Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. 90 pp.

I guess a lot of people who read feel like they have had enough of the climate change issue. There are thousands of scientists working on the issue, and reports come out every day. A survey of literature in the scientific journals finds that 97% of those doing the actual research know that global warming and climate change is caused by humans burning fossil fuels.

The international organizations confronting this issue have set an arbitrary limit to the increase in temperature that we can tolerate: 2 degrees Celsius. That level of increase is often cited as “the tipping point” which will trigger disasters that cannot be stopped or reversed. The World Bank in its 2012 report argued that if things continue as they are going by the end of the 21st Century the rise would be around 4 degrees. They warned that it is not certain that we can adapt to such a climate. The International Energy Agency, an arm of the western capitalist states, which promotes the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, warned in 2011 that we are actually heading towards a 6 degrees Celsius increase.

We also know only too well that our governments are unwilling to take any serious steps towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions. All the international conferences on the issue repeat the conflict between the industrialized western states and the less developed countries. Our governments are not impressed with arguments that our industrial revolution created the mess, so why should the poor countries of the Third World be called on to take a heavy economic hit? Why don’t we set up a system based on per-capita consumption of fossil fuels? And so on.

It is easy for those of us who have followed this issue over the years to conclude that it seems highly unlikely that our governments will adopt any policies that seriously try to mitigate the problem. Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway believe this to be the case. Thus their small book looks back at the Period of the Penumbra (1988 - 2093), which produced the Great Collapse and the Mass Migration (2073-2093). Why did this happen?

Oreskes and Conway are highly respected historians of science based at U.S. universities. In 2010 they authored the widely acclaimed Merchants of Doubt. They exposed the influence of a small number of right wing neoliberal scientists whose crusade was to cast doubt on the science which exposed the dangers of tobacco smoking, acid rain, the questions about the ozone layer, and climate change. They were aided by corporations and conservative “think tanks.” The strategy was to deny the mainstream scientific data, delay any government action, and to present misleading evidence. They were aided by the mainstream media, which gave them equal coverage under their demand for “balanced reporting.”

Neoliberal hegemony
The key to the lack of action by governments was the ideological hegemony of neoliberal political economy. The scientists were on the political right: they strongly resisted any government intervention into the free market. These advocates were relatively few in number, but they had the support of political and economic power.

As I read their prediction of what would happen without a significant effort to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, I was reminded of the study done for the Pentagon on what to expect from the advance of climate change. It was the only study to seriously predict major loss of food crops, food riots, mass migrations, wars for the control of resources, the outbreak of diseases, and the inability of governments to deal with the crisis. The result, they predicted, would be highly authoritarian governments and increased militarism.

Oreskes and Conway project the arrival of the Great North American Desert in 2041, which spread up from the High Plains in the USA through the breadbasket states and the Canadian prairies. In response to food riots and widespread looting, the U.S. government imposed martial law. The two countries formed the United States of North America to try to share resources and help the mass migration of American citizens into Canada. Similar moves were made in Europe and Russia. The populations of Australia and Africa were obliterated by the warming climate and the inability to grow food. The country that dealt best with the crisis was China, which had an effective authoritarian government, a very large military/police establishment, and a citizenry used to following orders.

“Where they said REPENT, REPENT, I wonder what they meant.”

Thanks, Leonard.

Capitalism and Climate Change

On Sunday I entered Beit Zatoun community centre on Markham Street in Toronto to sit in on a discussion of Naomi Klein’s new book:  This Changes Everything; Capitalism vs. the Climate. Around 300 people were stuffed into this nice older building, mostly long time left wing political activists.

A three-person panel kicked off the meeting. Umair Muhnammad argued that this was an important book, for Naomi Klein, now an internationally known journalist, had legitimized the role of socialists in this debate on the disaster of global warming and climate change. Klein had made it clear to a wider audience that capitalism must have constant growth and the production of profit to survive. At present, those dominating the system were deeply committed to the continuation of the fossil fuel economy. Climate change could not be brought under control without confronting capitalism.

Beit Zatoun Toronto

Building alliances for change
Ellie Perkins stressed that a popular movement for serious change had to be tied to all the broad issues concerning social justice. She pointed to the leadership provided by the Aboriginal and women’s movements. There had to be a clear link with the anti-war movement. Broad based alliances were necessary.

Many of the criticisms I had when reading Klein’s book were emphasized by Sam Gindin. Klein’s book had left out the reality of the enormous power of the political state, which was closely aligned to the capitalist class. There was no discussion of the modern version of capitalist imperialism, the U.S. government leading NATO’s world wide crusade in opposition to all popular efforts for change.

Gindin stressed that Klein’s book had opened the door for us. It was time to boldly put forth the egalitarian and democratic alternative to capitalism in all our discussions. Capitalism has not served the interests of the people we represent. He noted, as one example, that under the free trade agreements the number of employees at General Motors had declined from 800,000 to 100,000.

Much of the discussion from the audience focused on how to try to build coalitions. I recognized a number of people in the crowd from the days of the Coalitions for Social Justice and the national coalition formed to oppose the free trade agreements. We had some successes back then. Central to that effort was the trade union movement, which had the resources, the organizations and the base to give the coalitions. Could this be revived?

Gindin was refreshingly frank on the issue of organizing for change. We have to recognize that since the onslaught of neoliberalism beginning around 1980 we have faced a long period of steady defeats. At the federal and provincial level the welfare state is being whittled away. The free trade agenda had resulted in the loss of a great many manufacturing jobs. Real incomes have declined for most workers. Income and wealth inequality was steadily rising.  People were discouraged, with a growing percentage not even wanting to vote. As Gindin argued, “it is as if we are having to start all over from the beginning.”

No one mentioned the fact that the political parties that we used to support, and who brought us the welfare state after World War II, now fully embraced the broad neoliberal agenda and U.S - led imperialism.



Can capitalism save the planet?
One member of the audience rose to put forth an alternative view. He declared that the science is clear on global warming, and there are many studies showing what has to be done and how to do it. We do not have to have a socialist alternative: the capitalists can make the changes. After all, we all know that capitalists can make major adjustments, as they did to deal with the Great Depression. Leo Panitch agreed that it was possible for capital to make the necessary changes, but it would just lead to other contradictions. He cited one example: Germany is praised for bringing in a green program for producing electricity, but no one mentions that they have expanded their export of coal.

I didn't agree. It might be possible for the capitalists in the G-7 countries to accept a plan to shift to Green Capitalism. But would it be possible to get the rest of the world’s capitalists to take a similar stance? Gindin asked: "What would happen if the North agreed to shift wealth to the South? The mass of people in the South want the consumer lifestyle that they see in the North. In addition, most of the governments of the states in the South seem to be worse than ours. Would they agree?"

One problem I had with Klein’s book is that the alternative strategy she promotes is the model we associate with the Occupy movement. But these spontaneous actions all seem to fade away rather quickly as they have no structure. Capital yielded on trade unionism and the Keynesian welfare state after World War II because they were confronted with the mobilized power of the popular classes through their organizations and political parties



Will Greece show us the way?
Naomi Klein wrote this book over the past five years during which a mass struggle was going on in Greece. Yet there is no mention of this in her book. But that is exactly where we need to look to see what strategies work. The mass struggle in Greece, characterized by a great many general strikes, served to educate and politicize the general population. It has resulted in the rapid rise in support for Syriza, the Left Green opposition party, which now has a chance of winning the general election on January 25.

On the bus trip down to Toronto, my colleague, Susan Ferren, who went with me to the meeting, remarked at the major change that had occurred in the Greater Toronto Area since she had lived here in her youth. From Oshawa through to Toronto there is now one great alienating example of market-designed suburban sprawl, the home to six million people, many forced to live in sky high condos. The 401 highway is twelve lanes wide with seemingly millions of vehicles going back and forth, 24 hours a day. She asked: “How could this be sustainable?”

As we walked down Bloor St. West to go to the meeting, we saw where the capitalist class does its shopping. She reminded me that “consumerism is the ideological essence of personal capitalism, and it is deeply entrenched in our culture.”

Before we headed back to Peterborough we went to the cinema to see Selma. Don’t miss it. I remember this struggle well. We have won battles in the past. It is possible to mobilize people. Organization is essential. Martin Luther King knew how to do this.  As Sam Gindin pointed out at the meeting, it is through local struggles on important issues that people come to understand how the system works. Not through reading books.

Domesticated Animals

The Agricultural Revolution also created a revolution in the production of meat for human consumption. According to recent estimates, the world can now boast of more than a billion cattle, about a billion pigs and sheep, and around 25 billion chickens. This past summer I was given the opportunity of watching some of these animals domesticated by us Homo sapiens.

In late September I was walking through a pasture about a mile east of our place, land owned by our neighbour Marianne. There were about 40 cattle on this quarter. There had been lots of rain and snow in our area over the past four years, and the grasses are high and the sloughs are overflowing. The animals had not seen a human being since they were dropped off there in April. They stood in a group and all stared at us. Who were these intruders? I was a bit edgy, but there were no bulls around and Marianne had run cattle for many years. This must be much like it was before humans took control of the world.

As I drive into Bulyea to check the mail and go to the co-op, I pass a pasture where there are six cows and one horse, always very close together. I used to wonder of the horse now thought he was a cow.

On the Saturday drive into Regina, I pass a farm where two miniature burros always hang out in a field with six cows. They are the best of friends, never separated. After the wheat was harvested this year, the farmer put the cows in the adjoining field to clean up but left the burros in the pasture. The burros and the cows stayed right next to each other on each side of the barbed wire fence.

Marianne, who has been running the farm since her husband died about fifteen years ago, raises goats and sheep. Out in the middle of one pasture there is a fox den. Early in the summer this year’s small foxes emerged. They soon began to play with the new born sheep and goats, chasing each other around. Being of the older generation, we did not have our I-phones to record this event.

Among the goats and sheep is one black steer. He is distressed when put in a different pasture by himself. One day I drove by the farm and saw the steer in the small pasture next to the barn. The only other animals with him were the chickens and ducks. He was running back and forth along a barbed wire fence, doing his best to try to keep a fox from coming into the farm yard.

A pair of domestic geese had been living on my neighbour’s farm for a few years, hanging out around the dugout and the farm yard. One of them disappeared this summer, most likely a victim of a coyote or a fox. The remaining goose now waddles out every morning with the sheep and the goats and spends the day with them in the pasture.

Norm, who has the farm behind us, runs cattle on the adjoining quarter. He also has four horses there, as he and his daughter ride. The four horses are rarely seen except standing together, no more than two or three feet apart. They ignore the cattle.

A short way down the grid road I had a very productive garden on Dale’s farmstead. It is surrounded with barbed wire fence as the neighbour would run some of his cattle there before and after harvest. One day I drove into the yard and there were around a dozen cows next to the fence as well as three cows on our side of the fence, in the garden. I walked towards the animals as I was going to open the back gate and let them out into the field. They freaked, as they did not know me and feared the worst. An older Holstein milking cow and one of the calves ran and jumped over the fence. The heifer ran and scooted under the barbed wire fence.

I am currently reading Yuval Noah Harari’ Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. He argues  that “domesticated chickens and cattle may well be an evolutionary success story, but they are also among the most miserable creatures that ever lived.”

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The stupidity of Saskatchewan's "clean coal" project

  What happened to all the environmentalists in Saskatchewan? Are they only interested in nuclear power? Why are they all silent about Sask Power's ridiculous "clean coal" project? Are they all silent because this project was first pushed by the Saskatchewan NDP government?

Sask Power's Boundary Dam facility

   The final face of the carbon capture and sequestration project at Sask Power's Boundary Dam Station is being pumped by the mainstream media. Sask Power executives argue that we have hundreds of years of "cheap" coal to burn, why should we turn our backs on it? The NDP and the Sask Party agree. The project as it currently stands has a new coal-fired generator which is rated at 160 megawatts (MW). After the energy used to capture the carbon, it will produce between 100 and 115 MW to pump onto the grid. The total cost is reported to be $1.24 billion. What a bargain!
   The project is again being promoted by Bruce Johnstone, the financial editor of the Leader Post. Putting everything else aside, haven't these people ever heard of opportunity costs? If $1.24 billion was spent on other alternative energy projects, how much carbon dioxide would be saved? How many more jobs would be created? Since no one wants to take on this issue these days, and I am too busy to again visit the subject, here is a piece I wrote in 2007. There are very good alternatives to burning our grossly polluting coal.

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“Clean Coal” is the Wrong Road to Take

by John W. Warnock

Regina Leader-Post
May 3, 2007

    Lorne Calvert’s NDP government and SaskPower seem determined to saddle the people of Saskatchewan with a new “clean coal” generating facility. The research has been done, the Estevan site has been chosen, and the project’s supplying corporations are on side. The 300 Megawatt (MW) plant will cost between $1.5 and $2.0 billion. But this is clearly not the best way to produce energy nor to reduce carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions.
    In the first place, coal fired generators are very inefficient, capturing only around 33% of the energy in the combustion process; the remaining two thirds of the energy produced is dissipated into the environment. This waste energy cannot be captured and used where power plants are far removed from industrial projects and population centres.
    The “clean coal” aspect of this project is the Oxyfuel system used to capture around 90% of the carbon dioxide, compress and chill it to liquid form, and then pump it deep into the ground for sequestration. Unfortunately, this is an expensive and inefficient process. Of the total 450 MW of electricity to be produced by the new plant, 150 MW will be used in the Oxyfuel and geological storage process. As many studies have argued, down the road carbon dioxide sequestration may permit the continued use of coal for power generation. But it is no solution to the current problem of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.    
    Furthermore, the carbon dioxide extracted by the proposed SaskPower plant will be used to enhance oil recovery. The liquid carbon dioxide is pumped into the permeable oil bearing rock strata, is dissolved in the oil which reduces its viscosity, and it then sweeps the more mobile oil to the production wells. This is the system presently used by EnCana at Midale. Some of the pumped carbon dioxide escapes in this process. And of course this strategy completely undermines the goal of carbon sequestration as more petroleum is extracted and consumed, creating even more greenhouse gas emissions.
    Building a very expensive new power plant at Estevan further commits Saskatchewan and Sask Power to a highly centralized system of electrical power production and distribution. We have a great many alternative sources of energy, and their development requires a decentralized system. We must also plan for disasters which are caused by climate change. In January 1998 there was an ice storm in Quebec, and many areas were without power for several weeks. What would a similar event do to Saskatchewan?  How many people would die?


Seattle shows how it should be done
    Last January I was in Seattle doing research and I looked into the energy strategy of Seattle City Light, a municipal public utility. In the 1920s they built three dams on the Skagit River which serve as their base supply. They also contract for some power from the Bonneville Power Administration. In 1976 they opted out of the Washington Public Power Supply plan to build nuclear reactors and chose instead to promote conservation. In 2002 they contracted to purchase power from the Stateline Wind Project on the Oregon-Washington border.
    But the Seattle area has the highest annual population growth of any region in the United States. Therefore, in 2006 Seattle City Light produced an integrated plan for power development for the period 2007-2025. Over this period they will add 460 MW of electrical power. This will include 142 MW from conservation, 100 MW from geothermal development, 55 MW from additional wind sources, 25 MW from landfill gas, and 15 MW from biomass energy. The total projected capital cost of these additions is only $170 million.
    For many years Seattle City Light has been providing direct financial incentives to promote conservation and the purchase of more efficient appliances. They have a very basic demand management system: for the first 10 kilowatt hours (kWh) consumed a household pays 3.76 cents a kWh, above that the cost is 7.93 cents kWh. They are now promoting individual household and business production of solar, wind and biomass electricity. Through a net metering system households are paid market price for the energy they provide to the city grid. Households and businesses who install new generating facilities get city, state and federal rebates and tax incentives.
    Seattle City Light is only one example of how communities can shift to renewable energy. How long do we have to wait before a Saskatchewan government takes this issue seriously?

John W. Warnock is a Regina political economist and environmental activist.