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Last Friday I attended the first of seven ‘climate change and violence’ 1-day workshops attended by a network of academics, campaigners, government and faith groups (and others) interested in looking at climate change in a holistic manner, rather than from segregated disciplines or policy positions. The network is called Crisis Forum, set up and coordinated by Mark Levene and David Cromwell (of MediaLens), both academics in Southampton.

Bleak, but necessary

The workshop was a fantastic, if bleak, reinvigoration of the necessity to act. The latest presentation from Kevin Anderson from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research made it absolutely clear that, globally, we have spent our emissions budget. Kevin was self-professed as a ‘bean counter’, a mechanical engineer who refocused the forum firmly on the counting of cumulative emissions, not some distant, 2050, reductions target. As Kevin made it clear, the final reduction target is not necessarily important–it’s the emissions pathways (PPT) to get there that is critical for any mitigation of the current temperature rises. Mitigate for 2C, but adapt for 4C.

This message was backed up not only by other academics and campaigners, but also news from the military think tanks such as the Advanced Concepts Group; and other research bodies, such as the Oxford Research Group.

This, of course, was also at the optimistic end of the wedge. Add in the positive feedback loops, eloquently explained by David Wasdell from the Meridian Programme, and the bean counting looks even bleaker still.

The glummest looking person in the room? Probably, I thought, the person from the parliamentary Environment Audit Committee. Today representatives from the Tyndall Centre presented to the EAC on ways to both count and reduce emissions from shipping.

Surviving Climate Change - Home and Abroad?

Perhaps the clearest single message from the workshop–and from reading the book from the same group, Surviving Climate Change, on the train on the way down–was this: that what is described as the worst case scenario of societal breakdown, of a walled-in Police State Britain suffering from food and energy shocks, is simply what is already happening in many parts of the world.

Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, brought our attention to Heritage Park, the new South African homestead for 6,000 people totally surrounded by an electrified perimeter and with its own security force.

As the front page of their website says:

The town, like any other, will have schools, shops, offices, places of worship, parks and houses. The difference is that the whole town will be secured by an electrified perimeter fence monitored by the town’s own security force. The concept of whole town fortification has been with us since medieval times and it seems appropriate to take a leaf out of our past and install it into a safe future.

There appear ’saving graces’ to the ‘township’ — the outreach programme that trains black neighbours as bricklayers, builders etc (and then, of course, keeps them locked out). The outreach programme is part of the security plan. As the Guardian notes, by offering work it is “by extension a reason not to storm the citadel”:

“Unless these people have jobs we will still have crime problems. We are training them to be bricklayers, carpenters and painters so that they can take work here when the next development starts,” says developer George Hazelden.

Market Failure

This is the outcome of food, jobs and opportunity shocks, and, within the black communities themselves, of large numbers of migrants coming into South Africa from the rest of the continent. The situation in South Africa has its roots in social injustice–apartheid–and economic inequality. But if the symptoms are the same for climate change, will the outcomes be the same? Well, what about the little-known Indian barrier project, to fence off Bangladesh?

Not too long ago I spoke to Tom Standage, Business Editor at the Economist, about climate change and political global responses. We were talking about whether or not there were alternative models to capitalism, or at least runaway capitalism, which could perhaps now be reined in a little since the credit crunch. Tom, understandably, was critical of those who simply blamed business for climate change, and were unwilling to see business and capital as a way out of the problem. He said:

And all of this can be painted in a bad way, you know, big business only in it for the money, or it can be painted in a good way, that businesses can harness profit from this, and that regulation is going to bring that in and really sort out the problem. People who object to this, those who see it as a problem of capitalism and consumerism, they’re looking at solutions that will take us back to the middle ages, and that’s not an option. Not an option. We need to look at solving this in the least bad way possible.

“Solutions that will take us back to the middle ages”… “The concept of whole town fortification has been with us since medieval times”… In other parts of the world, that is exactly what developers, councillors on planning committees, publics, and investment banks, are looking to do, and readily admitting it.

Are ‘we’ heading towards a Children of Men scenario–a walled in Britain, where class divides (which are “rubbish” according to the Queen’s fifth cousin, David Cameron) lead to economic and ecological apartheid?

This element of thinking always sticks in my throat, in both ways.

First, because it is a hopeless way to think–literally, empty of hope, and something that Professor Rogers in particular steered the group away from. But second, because it became abundantly clear at the Crisis Forum meeting that ‘our’ thinking–those who believe that an alternative to the current system of capital “is not an option”–remain optimistic that, even if the worst case scenario does play out, that, we here won’t “take the hit.”

This isn’t even relevant, for two reasons. One, those most at risk from climate change are not the countries or populations who caused it, but the poorest. Second, the globalised nature of our world now means that no-one will be spared ‘the hit’.

The market won’t let it happen…? Then why is climate change, in the words of Tom Standage, echoing Nicholas Stern “the biggest market failure the world has ever seen”?

As in the words of Aubrey Meyer of the GCI, the proponent of Contraction and Convergence (C&C), anyone who still believes that either it isn’t happening, or that the market will get us out, is talking “bullshit”.

Road to Copenhagen

At the end of this month, on November 30th, the 15th UN Climate Conference begins in Poznan, Poland, to lay down the final draft for negotiations of the policy, treaty, legislation, call it what you will, that will replace Kyoto in 2013. The Crisis Forum itself, as a position, is organised around the C&C argument as a simple, elegant and necessarily equitable way of organising global greenhouse gas emissions to commit the world to a drastically reduced carbon future. That is not to say every ‘member’ endorses or promotes it–the forum is not a membership group.

But still without viable alternatives–politically acceptable alternatives that are rigorous and drastic enough, unlike most cap-and-trade systems–the outlook for mitigating to a minimum 2 degrees C temperature rise looks bleak. Of course, temperature is not the key: the temperature we are experiencing now is due to the actions of those people–our parents and grandparents–40-60 years ago. The radiative forcing that we contribute to the atmopshere now will only be apparent in another 40-60 years. Well beyond the terms of office of some, and of the lifespan of others. Even looking ahead to Copenhagen is too long to wait.

(x-posted at AlexLockwood.net)