EDITORIALS
Death Sentence for Mother Earth
The executioner is Donald Trump backed by fossil-fuel capital and virulent anti-environmentalism.
D
onald Trump has been repeatedly calling climate change
a hoax. For instance, on 2 January 2014, in one of his
tweets, he glibly admonished the worlds foremost climate
scientists: This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has
to stop. So when on 1 June 2017, as President of the country that
spews as much as 15% of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions,
he announced that the United States (US) will withdraw from
the 2015 Paris climate change agreement, shocking though this
piece of news certainly was, it was not unexpected. A revealing
memo about the incoming Trump administrations climate policy,
drafted by Thomas Pyle, head of the Koch brothers-financed
American Energy Alliance and the lead player in the Trump transi-
tion team for the Department of Energy, had been leaked in early
December 2016. Put simply, the message of the memo made clear
the core of the Trump administrations climate policy: (i) take the
US out of the Paris climate change agreement, (ii) rubbish Obamas
Clean Power Plan (CPP), and (iii) make sure that the pipeline
projects, including the Keystone XL Pipeline, go ahead.
No doubt Trump and his advisors embody and/or represent the
interests of a certain section of the US ruling class, the owners
and financiers of the fossil-fuel businesses, but the decision to
withdraw from the Paris climate pact has not gone down well with
the US ruling class as a whole. Nor has Trumps rash resolution
been agreed to by the ruling classes of the other constituents of
the triadWestern Europe and Japan. Surely, his America First
nationalism has undermined American leadership of the triad.
Apart from the Koch brothers who control the fossil-fuel busi-
ness behemoth Koch Industries, and some other moneybags
with huge investments in fossil-fuel businessesall big financiers
of Trumps presidential campaignthe captains of US industry
have been expressing concerns about the dangers of climate
change and even speak of the adverse consequences for future
generations. The CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, was
upset with Trumps decision, calling it a setback for the environ-
ment and for the USs leadership position in the world. Indeed,
the Paris agreement has been supported by the multinational
energy giant ExxonMobil. Even its former CEO, Rex Tillerson,
now Secretary of State, has chosen not to go along with the head
of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt, and
Trumps chief strategist and chairperson of the alt-right Breitbart
News, Stephen Bannon, the most outspoken deniers of climate
change in the Trump administration.
By and large, it seems the ruling classes of the triad and their
political representatives have come to realise that ecological
8 JUNE 10, 2017
modernisation of capitalism is long overdue. But commitments
in the Paris accord have been deliberately kept completely vol-
untary and non-binding. There is neither any overall mecha-
nism for implementation nor any provision of sanctions for non-
implementation. The Obama administration had brought in the
CPP under which the EPA was to legally regulate carbon dioxide
emissions by electric power plants under the Clean Air Act, but
US states beholden to the fossil-fuel industry filed a lawsuit to
suspend enforcement, and now the Trump administration will
be rescinding the CPP itself.
The ruling classes of the triad and their political representatives
support the Paris climate pact precisely because it is entirely
voluntary and non-binding. The Kyoto Protocol, it may be recalled,
had set binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions for the US
and the other developed countries, but the US ended up refusing
to ratify it and did precious little to mitigate global warming.
Frankly, voluntary and non-binding targets are unlikely to be ful-
filled. Meanwhile, scientists at the University of Oxford associated
with the climate-tracking website trillionthtonne.org believe
that if the status quo with regard to greenhouse gas emissions
continues to prevail, the 2C increase in global temperatures
relative to preindustrial levelsthe tipping point indicating that
the planet has been warmed to an extent enough to set in motion
an unstoppable processwill be reached in just over 20 years.
And yet, the leaders of the rich, high per capita greenhouse gas
emitting nations, historically responsible for the current levels of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, after having conveniently
agreed among themselves to voluntary and non-binding green-
house gas emission-reduction targets, fiddle as Rome burns.
Basically, the assault of the world capitalist systems process
of accumulation of capital, rooted in the exploitation of labour
and nature, and in competitive rivalry and class inequality, has
reached a cumulative magnitude which nature can no longer
withstand. In particular, nature can no longer hold out against
the heavy reliance of the processes of production and consumption
on fossil fuels. And yet, powerful sections of the principal bene-
ficiaries of the capitalist system, virulently anti-environmentalist,
seem to be bent upon blocking the transition to renewable forms of
energy. Indeed, by pulling the US out of the Paris accord, their
principal representative Trump has, in effect, pronounced the
death sentence on Mother Earth, and if the sections of capital
backing him are able to carry through the sentence, human civi-
lisation as we know it, and all other forms of life, will face a long
and painful death.
vol lII no 23 EPW Economic & Political Weekly