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Monbiot: G20 forgets the environment
George Monbiot, Guardian
Climate breakdown, peak oil and resource depletion all dwarf the financial crisis in financial and humanitarian terms
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Here is the text of the G20 communique, in compressed form.
“We, the Leaders of the Group of Twenty, will use every cent we don’t possess to rescue corporate capitalism from its contradictions and set the world economy back onto the path of unsustainable growth. We have already spent trillions of dollars of your money on bailing out the banks, so that they can be returned to their proper functions of fleecing the poor and wrecking the Earth’s living systems. Now we’re going to spend another $1.1 trillion. As an exemplary punishment for their long record of promoting crises, we will give the IMF and the World Bank even more of your money. These actions constitute the greatest mobilisation of resources to support global financial flows in modern times.
Oh – and we nearly forgot. We must do something about the environment. We don’t have any definite plans as yet, but we’ll think of something in due course.”
The G20’s strategy for solving the financial and economic crisis, in other words, is detailed, innovative, fully costed and of vast scale and ambition. Its plans for solving the environmental crisis are brief, vague and uncosted
(2 April 2009)
Why We Should Listen to the Protesters
Johann Hari, Independent/UK
The way out of the credit and the climate crunch is the same – a Green New Deal
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When this hinge-point in human history is remembered, there will be far more sympathy for the people who took to the streets and rioted than for the people who stayed silently in their homes. Two global crises have collided, and we have a chance here, now, to solve them both with one mighty heave – but our leaders are letting this opportunity for greatness leach away. The protesters here in London were trying to sound an alarm now, at five minutes to ecological midnight.
Many commentators seemed bemused that the protesters focused on the climate crunch as much as the credit crunch. What’s it got to do with a G20 meeting on reviving the global economy? Why wave banners saying ‘Nature Doesn’t Do Bail-Outs’ today? Because both crises have their roots in the same ideology – and both have the same solution.
We are facing a collapsed economy and a rapidly warming world because an extreme ideology has dominated world affairs for decades. It is the belief that markets aren’t just a useful tool in certain circumstances; they are an infallible mechanism for running human affairs. If the economy ebbs, the market will put itself right by punishing wrong-doers. If the climate begins to unravel, business will rectify its own behaviour voluntarily. Now we know how well this market fundamentalism works.
The climate is currently going the same way as the banks.
(3 April 2009)
Also at Common Dreams.
Climate change the biggest loser of G20 summit, warn environmental groups
Julian Borger and Felicity Carus, Guardian
G20 stimulus package has ‘short-changed the planet’ • Fears that greenhouse emissions will continue to rise
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The $1.1 trillion stimulus package agreed by G20 leaders yesterday risks locking the world into a high-carbon economy in which greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, environmental groups have warned.
[G20 members gather for a group portrait. (Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)]G20 members gather for a group portrait. (Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)
Campaigners agreed that the summit’s biggest loser was the fight against climate change, despite a positive response from global financial markets to the announcement of financial aid. At the summit, prime minister Gordon Brown reiterated support for low-carbon economic growth and tackling climate change.
(3 April 2009)
Change How the World Works? Yes, We Can
Robin Hahnel, Times Online/UK
n The Times last week Hugo Rifkind threw down the gauntlet to demonstrators protesting at the G20 summit to “formulate a coherent argument” and “propose some sort of feasible alternative to the world economy instead of just bitching about it and blowing your bloody whistles”.
Humorous disciples of neo-liberalism too often delight in ridiculing critics through caricature. So I welcome this opportunity to point out that we not only offered cogent reasons why capital and trade liberalisation aggravate global inequality, but predicted that they would prove destabilising as well. We not only argued that stock market and property bubbles were no substitutes for productive investment, but predicted that these bubbles would pop, leaving wreckage in their wake. And we predicted that, whatever one might say about markets in general, free-market finance and free-market environmentalism were accidents waiting to happen.
… Yet Rifkind and others are right to ask what we want instead. Our answer is simple: we want to empower people to protect themselves and the natural environment from the damage caused by neo-liberal capitalism. But we also want to replace the economics of competition and greed with the economics of equitable co-operation so we are not forever fighting defensive battles to mitigate environmental destruction and economic injustice, and so we need not fear that a crisis such as this will happen again.
Moreover, we have “coherent arguments” and “feasible alternatives” about how to do both.
… Instead of a financial sector intent on funnelling society’s investment resources into stock market and property bubbles, we might find ourselves with a new financial system that channels savings where they are most needed – into investments in renewable energy sources and energy conservation which are needed to transform our fossil fuel-guzzling economy into a carbon-neutral economy before we broil ourselves to death.
(1 April 2009)
Also at Common Dreams.
G20 campaigners: More money spent on car industry than climate change
Louise Gray, Telegraph (UK)
The Government spent seven times more on paying off bankers and 20 times more money bailing out the car industry than on environmental initiatives, campaigners have claimed
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In the run up to the G20 meeting of world leaders in London this week, two reports have called for more focus on tackling climate change as part of any international economic stimulus.
Think tank the New Economics Foundation claimed the Government has spent just 0.6 per cent of the UK’s total stimulus package on green measures despite Gordon Brown’s promise to reflect President Obama in creating a low carbon economy in a “new green deal”.
The report compared the £120 million spent on the green economy to the £775 million bonuses paid to staff at the Royal Bank of Scotland and £2.3 billion paid out to the car industry.
It said the Government could be missing a “huge opportunity” to boost the economy, ensure energy security and tackle climate change through investing in renewables and green jobs.
In a separate report, the Government’s sustainable development adviser argued that the pursuit of economic growth is one of the root causes of the current financial crisis, as well contributing to climate change.
(30 March 2009)
Also at Common Dreams.
