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CLIMATE JUSTICE FOR EARTH DAY
People's Voice Editorial
Recent headlines reporting that Inuit communities are describing warming and "weirder" weather to scientists should add urgency to Earth Day events.
In expressing our support to the actions on April 22, People's Voice again calls for emergency climate change legislation. Environmental problems are not simply a question of individual consumption habits. They are deeply rooted in social‑economic realities. The Copenhagen Summit's failure to reach an agreement shows that imperialism aims to transfer the cost of climate change directly onto the backs of the world's peoples. For centuries, imperialist countries have pillaged the global south. Some, like Bolivian President Evo Morales, have recently called for climate reparations allowing third‑world countries to economically develop using sustainable technology.
Yet from international to domestic policy, Canada's Harper Conservatives have consistently allowed the big corporate polluters to set the guidelines, ignoring scientific facts while crafting destructive positions. We need to boot Harper out, and radically re‑write Canada's position to one of climate justice.
Our friends in the Young Communist League are currently debating putting climate change onto their priority areas of struggle (see below) in the lead‑up to their May 23‑25 Central Convention. We wish them well in this discussion. Climate justice is an important demand, not just of the youth but also the working class. Serious progress in this direction appears clearly incompatible with a social and economic system based on private ownership of wealth and resources. Protection of the environment requires a deep‑rooted social transformation, breaking away from capitalism, and instead putting nature before profits as a critical step towards socialism.
CLIMATE CHANGE AND YOUTH STRUGGLE
The 25th Central Convention of the Young Communist League‑Ligue de la jeunesse comuniste (YCL-LJC) will be held May 21-23 in Toronto. We reprint here some excerpts from Part 5 of the Call to the 25th Convention, the section on struggles by young people around the issue of climate change.
The issue of climate change has engaged many young people today - first, because the nature of the impacts which will primarily involve the young generation, secondly because most of us were born at a moment when climate debate became very public.
The Copenhagen conference teaches us many things. First, it illustrates how global warming is mobilizing the masses and especially the youth in all countries. The Asia‑Pacific started the flow of events around the world with some 50,000 people in the streets in Australia, Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne. In Manila, Hong Kong, Jakarta, and as in most major Canadian cities, rallies of several hundred protesters were also held. In Copenhagen itself, hundreds of thousands of people began marching in the cold to protest.
One thing is interesting to note in this mobilization: some have noticed, like the French deputy José Bové, a farmer and altermondialisme personality, that here is an opportunity to link "climate justice and social justice... Today, there is no break between the fight against global warming and the fight for another world."
With the abysmal failure of this United Nations conference which was suppose to conduct an agreement between states to reduce GHG following the Kyoto agreement, it becomes obvious to the people that the imperialist countries have no desire to act. The strings of this conference were pulled by the United States and its allies including Canada. The so‑called agreement that came out was not obtained in a democratic way and is a farce. In summary, the countries simply have the obligation by the end of the year to provide targets for 2020.
At this summit, leaders of imperialist countries have been singled out and accused of being in the pay of industry. For the general public, the belief is that industry and individual consumption are causing climate change. But as Marxists, we know that this is not so much the industry as the way it is implemented; in other words, how capitalism works. For itself, industry is not necessarily something negative. In fact, because of industry for the first time in history, the development of productive forces has the potential to produce enough to meet the needs of all.
About individual consumption, this is a way for capitalists to individualize the problem and put us all in the same boat. Under this idea, people are all equally responsible for the disaster. But the working men and women of the world do not consume as the bourgeois class does. Half the planet lives on less than $2 per day and is not liable as the capitalists who exploit them.
It is not without reason that the media propagate massively the idea of the individual solution. Only the rich can afford an electric car, organic vegetables or any other new product supposedly green. The conditions of the working class already determine its consumption. This idea of individual responsibility is dangerous and leads to even viewing with a negative eye the aspiration of some developing countries to achieve a standard of living equivalent to the occident.
Instead, we need to consider the demands of Evo Morales, President of the Republic of Bolivia and others who call for climate reparations, and funding sustainable technologies in the developing world. The obstacle to this is imperialism, which prefers to make trillions off these countries rather than address the gravity of climate change.
Climate change is not caused by all classes. Furthermore, it will not consistently impact humanity. Those who are most affected by environmental crisis will be the poorest in the world. Climate change will bring the disruption of ecosystems, and therefore lifestyles that are more dependent on the immediate environment. It will affect the health of populations, such as the development of certain infectious and respiratory diseases. Which brings us back to fight for a public health system accessible to all.
In 2007, the Secretary General of the United Nations said that in many developing countries, youth, and in particularly girls and young women, are often responsible for agricultural work, collecting water and firewood, tasks which "will become more difficult and take longer at the expense of education and productive activities as climate change affects access to water, agricultural productivity and the survival of ecosystems."
Imperialism is considering other approaches to solving global warming as well - so-called "Plan B." This is because the effects of global warming have already begun and are expected to get much worse. Therefore immediate problems of mitigation come into play. Plan B or geo‑engineering is the intentional large‑scale manipulation of the global environment, generally to reduce undesired climatic change (i.e., initiating a giant plankton bloom in the ocean, or the injection of large amounts of sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere simulating a volcanic eruption). NASA, the British Institute of Mechanical Engineers, the British Royal Society, and the UK parliament are all doing studies on geo‑engineering. But these nightmarish solutions could cause unknown damage.
Right: cartoon poking fun at people who make shortsighted decisions.
"Let's not throw the word "privatization" around the way Joe Mccarthy threw the word Communist around!"
- Councillor Justin Swandel
Mayor Katz got his way.
At the end of the day (literally) Council voted 10-6 to approve of the new Utility and strategic partnership model.
This is a disappointing but not entirely unexpected development.
There were about 200 people at the rally the previous night along with excellent speeches, music and a big white elephant!
On the day of the vote, almost as many people showed up and packed both galleries.
outside, a camera was set up to allow critics of the Utility P3 to have their say. It was a kind of "speaker's corner."
At the outset, one of the Councilors, Justin Swandel, did attempt to limit the number of speakers to four, but Council ultimately agreed to hear the 20 speakers who signed up to speak.
At the outset, there were three or four people who spoke out in favour of the water utility, one arguing that further delay would cost the taxpayers money.
THEN THE DELEGATIONS SPOKE OUT AGAINST THE UTILITY. One of the people who had signed up to speak did not show up, so the next speaker, Phyllis Watson of the Council of Women of Winnipeg spoke on the flawed consultation process.
Following Phyllis were the following presentations all approximately 5 minutes long:
John Loxley (Danger of P3s with Examples); Jesse Hajer, CCPA-MB ( Poor Cost Saving Predictions in Business Plan ); Mike Davidson, CUPE MB (Distinction between Upgrades and Utility Model) ;Chris Leo (Urban Sprawl); Alana Makinson, CFS-MB (Youth Perspective); David Cavett-Goodwin, Wolseley Residents Association (Lack of Accountability and Public Control)
Around 11:30 there was a break to allow a different subject to be debated, that over the removal of a heritage building.
Then there was lunch. Over the lunch hour, CKUW helpfully covered the Utility proceedings which included interviews and colour commentary by Tony Clarke, Maude Barlow and Jenny Gerbasi. An Archive of that broadcast can be found at http://ckuw.ca/24/20090722.13.00-14.01.mp3 .
After lunch, Robert Chernomas presented his talk based on the most recent Fast Facts by Maude Barlow and Meera Karunananthan which can be found at the website for the Centre for Policy Alternatives (policyalternatives.ca)
The remaining delegations included the following...
Tom Simms (Charleswood Bridge comparator); Christine Bennett-Clarke; Kevin Rebeck, CUPE MB (Labour Perspective); Sandy Gessler, SPC Board President (Health); GReen Party Leader James Beddome; Larry Klippenstein
Following the delegations, Council deliberated for about three hours. Predictably, the Councilors in opposition to the water corporatization plan raised our major concerns and showed that they had done their homework. Councilors Gerbasi and Orlikow were particularly notable in this regard.
Most of the rest of the Councilors betrayed through their comments that they were largely oblivious to the concerns being raised by opponents of this plan.. Councilor Swandel accused the opponents of "cherry-picking" and not being particularly honest in their appraisal of P3s. He of course ignored Jesse Hajer's devastating critique of the cherry-picking in the Utility Business Plan!
Councilor Steeves insisted that something has to change. That the current system wasn't working, and that something had to be done! If this writer hadn't been familiar with the documentary information indicating that the current system was working fine, he would probably have been impressed by the Councilor's presentation. Even the Deloitte and Touche report which has been used by Council and the Mayor to justify this new Utility has been clear that there was "nothing to suggest that current regulatory requirements and services were not being met" by the current Department of Water and Waste. Therefore, nothing to justify the creation of this highly controversial proposal.
And they call us fear-mongers!
Of course, Councilors Swandel and Steeves sounded like thoughtful and enlightened statesmen compared to most of the other proponents in Council. Councilors Browaty and Fielding clearly had not heard a word that had been said from the delegations. They repeated the canards about how increased involvement from the private sector would reduce costs to the public, reduce cost over-runs, etc.
One pleasant surprise, however was Russ Wyatt's change of heart. He sits on the EPC (Executive Policy Committee) and formerly voted with his colleagues to approve this proposal. Yesterday, he spoke eloquently on the need to engage the public in a proper consultation. At one point he noted that the site of the consultations, the Masonic Temple on Osborne, was not easily accessible to people in his community (Transcona). It bares noting that Russ Wyatt's constituents waged a major campaign against the proposed Olywest pork processing facility a few years ago.
A low point was struck by Mr. Harry Lazaranko who threw a tantrum criticizing the opponents of the Utility plan of "grandstanding" in front of the press and capitalizing on the ignorance of concerned citizens who were expressing concerns about privatization. He even suggested at one point that the presence of children and a man in a wheelchair was part of some kind of PR stunt! He maintained that the Utility plan was so clear and plain to read that "even a twelve year old child could understand it!"
Mr. Lazarenko was the author of an amendment which would call for a mandatory referendum before "Privatization of our water" could happen. By this he appears to mean a shift of ownership from the public to the private sector.
This amendment is a red herring. As Council of Canadians reps Maude Barlow and Meera Karunananthan explained in a recent release...
"Councillor Harry Lazarenko’s motion to ensure that privatization is not sought without a referendum does not allay concerns about the loss of public control over water services, hikes in water rates and the global impacts of creating a for-profit utility."
Of course, the Mayor in the end demonstrated his dismissal of the opponents' arguments, continuing the meme of how the opponents were fear-mongering and lying.
The heart of the opponents' arguments was that there was inadequate consultation and no real opportunity for the public to engage decision-makers. Critics were arguing that they have not gotten adequate answers to their questions!
By the end, there were around 40 of us trying to make sense of what happened. We mostly wandered off dejected and tired.
However, as has been pointed out both within Water Watch and within the Council of Canadians, we really didn't expect this Council to vote against the proposal even if the media ended up giving more coverage to the issue than we dared to dream for!
The next stage of the battle in the opinion of this writer, would involve the province's approval process.
If nothing else critics of the Mayor's plan have public opinion onside. According to a recent poll, nearly 2/3s of Winnipeggers oppose approval of this Utility without proper public consultation.
Michael A Welch
