Climate change is undoubtedly an existential threat. Something which threatens to bring about global suffering, food scarcity, and a torment of natural disasters too great to manage. And yet, we must resist an insular, navel-gazing approach to these threats which is increasingly something that exudes among even the purported collectivist-left in the form of nihilism, misanthropy and ‘sustainable populationism’(a nice term for Malthusian eugenics). We’ve all in our darkest hour felt the need to capitulate to this view worldview. Having seen first-hand the full-force of the Australian bushfires last year, I can certainly relate. But it’s a dangerous mindset to fall into.
One of the biggest mistakes that we make in these discussions is painting a far-off dystopian almost fantastical picture where the human species is taken off the face of the Earth. In fact, we ignore that there are already global precedents for the ways in which human beings respond to rapid climate change. In Australia we ignore that indigenous people lived through several of them. In fact, the fall of Ancient Egypt was predicated upon a global warming caused by volcanic eruptions that created years of famines and starvation coupled by attacks from climate refugees from Europe. Of course, man-made climate change is unlike what we may have seen in the past because it will occur at a greatly more accelerated rate but human beings will ultimately prevail. In fact, what few seem to understand is that the very fact that human beings will prevail regardless of how successful we are at fighting the current economic order may be the saddest part of all. Why? Because capitalism is already looking for ways to thrive among dystopian conditions from the Elon Musk Mad Max car to the to million-dollar bunkers run on solar power and Silicon Valley tech bros buying up land in New Zealand where arable land is predicted to remain while creating gated communities.
In fact, some of the biggest climate change warriors like Greta Thunberg are backed by monopolies like Unilever. Because the end goal for many of these climate NGOs is to create an environment where the richest in society do in fact make it out with a large majority of the scarce resources while the rest languish. The climate nihilist mentality be it represented very subtly in David Attenborough documentaries with an emphasis on “human beings” subjecting the natural planet to climate change and land clearing or from prominent left wing voices who speak of an outright extinction against which absolutely no economic mode of production so far could withstand is a serious problem. It’s a problem in so far as it melts away the important distinctions between which class is committing the extractivism and the imperialism that upholds said extractivism, and which countries are the greater threat.
While China for example is the greatest carbon emitter to date, we uphold the cop out arguments of Scott Morrison and Donald Trump ‘about other world emitters’ not pulling their weight if we do not recognize the context in which China may become such a large emitter to begin with. While China is now viewed as one of if not the current global power in the world, they have risen to such a status only after liberating themselves from the oppressive thumb of British colonialism and view themselves as finally catching up with global standards and in doing so have been able to lift millions out of poverty as more of their population moved away from simple agrarian production to more complex manufacturing and now technological production of even higher standard in the form of smart cities like Shenzen. So what of their role in global climate change?
China’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–20) included binding targets for several key environmental parameters, from energy consumption and carbon emissions to air quality and forest cover. And apart from increasing its investments in ecological conservation and green technologies, China also is the world’s leading renewable energy producer. According to government data, cities that implemented the new air quality standards saw their average concentration of atmospheric particulates with a diameter of less than 2.5µm (PM2.5) reduced by 31 per cent from 2013 to 2016. The 2020 target to reduce carbon intensity by 40–45 per cent was reached three years in advance in 2017. And forest cover has increased by 21 million hectares (almost 81,100sq miles) in 10 years.
Similarly, while the West continue the debate about the harm of Monsanto crops and pesticides (which are undoubtedly both a human physical harm and damaging to soil quality), China is facing these challenges head on. Throughout China, farmers are reverting to traditional farming methods without modern fertilizers. Farmers in Huinan county, Jilin province, raised 5,000 ducks in rice fields, feeding them on grass and prawns. It eliminated the need for manual weeding and chemical pesticides.
China is now the world’s largest player in clean-energy development. The country makes 60% of the world’s solar panels and surpassed Germany in 2015 as the world’s largest producer of photovoltaic energy. It pledged to invest US$367 billion in renewable power generation — solar, wind, hydro and nuclear — by 2020 and met that target. The investment added about 10 million jobs to the already existing 3.5 million jobs in the sector. China already produces nearly half of the world’s wind turbines, at a rate of about two every hour. In 2017, China stopped or delayed work on 151 planned and under-construction coal plants. They are also just now working on turning Beijing into a forest city.
China is also heavily investing in green energy projects around the world including the Cauchari power station in Argentina, Kenya’s electrical substation and a large offshore wind farm in Scotland’s Moray East.
So, while the US and Australia negated our responsibilities at the Paris Climate Agreement and extracted more coal and oil both domestically and internationally than ever, China is setting real measures and goals and meeting them independently despite carrying the real burden of being the world’s manufacturing hub. As Naomi Klein says “you cannot create a climate market to solve climate change. You have to address the structural causes. These causes are not only to be measured in terms of greenhouse gases. They are trade, finances, and economy.” She rightly emphasizes that there is a difference between the survival emissions of the Global South, whom are already experiencing the brunt of climate change, and the luxury emissions of the Global North — a brutal cocktail of hyperconsumption and overproduction. And many socialist advocates rightly emphasize that there is a similarly massive distinction that needs to be created between the emissions of the poorest in the West and the majority of the emissions being created by a select few at the top.
While we can denigrate or applaud (depending what perspective you come from) China’s perceived modern capitulation to the capitalist system, we actually ignore that it has in fact very quietly implemented positive reforms to tackle climate change long-term in a shorter space of time than we have in decades. Government control over industry in China means that closing or rejigging entire industries is simply a matter of setting policy and seeing it brought to fruition swiftly, where in Australia even the suggestion of something much milder like a mining tax sees prime ministers very quickly removed from office. Climate nihilists who paint the problem as an issue for “us” or “humanity” play right into neoliberal hands because they don’t want us to focus on these differences; to recognize these differences is a matter of admitting that tackling climate will require a radical change to our economic system and a matter of recognizing exactly what kind of economic system can and does work.
