The climate challenge

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The climate challenge
2
Climate mecanisms
3
The greenhouse effect
Rayonnement solaire
Infrarouge
100
26
Piégeage 153 Wm-2
4
H2O
20
CO2 , CH4, N20
50
Conduction, Evaporation
15C
390 Wm-2
4
The greenhouse effect

• A natural phenomenon
• Makes life on Earth possible
• Higher temperature liquid water is available
• Brings inertia to the system
• Main gases responsible
• Carbon dioxide (CO2)
• Methane (CH4)
• Nitrous oxide (N2O)
• Water vapour (H2O)
• Direct link to the carbon cycle

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The carbon cycle
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The imbalance of the carbon cycle

• Vegetation / Atmosphere
• Respiration 60 Gt / year
• Photosynthesis 62 Gt / year
• Net result - 2 Gt / year
• Oceans / Atmosphere
• In solution 92 Gt / year
• Release 90 Gt / year
• Net result - 2 Gt / year
• Deforestation 2 Gt / year
• Burning of oil, coal, gas 6 Gt / year
• In total
• 8 Gt / year released by human activities
• THIS IS TWO TIMES TOO MUCH!!

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The phenomenon of warming, causes and consequences
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Causes of global warming

• Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution
• CO2 31
• CH4 150
• N2O 15
• 3 crucial  events 
• Industrial Revolution
• Post war boom
• Globalisation of exchanges

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Causes of global warming

• Emitting sectors in France
• And globally

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The prospects for climate change

• The IPCC
• Notes the state of affairs in research and
  technologies
• Publishes a report every 4 years
• Works with scientific consensus
• Prudent in its positions by nature
• Yet they are not reassuring us

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The future evolution of the climate

• Today the highest concentration of CO2 and CH4
  since 400,000 years
• This is only the beginning if do dont do
  anything

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The prospects for climate change

• No more doubts on the existence of future climate
  disorders
• Sudden and irreversible changes
• The facts confirm the most pessimistic forecasts
• Yet retroactive changes are not even taken into
  account melting of the permafrost, destruction
  of the ice shelfs at the poles

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What concrete consequences?

• Central scenarios
• Between 2C et 4C
• Highly probable scenarios
• Between 1,1C et 6,4C
• The facts confront us with the most pessimistic
  scnearios

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Concrete consequences

• With 2C
• Decrease of agricultural yields
• Risk of famine 200 million people
• Lack of water 1,8 billion people
• Rising water levels 10 million people
• Expansion of zones with malaria 50 million
  people
• Extinction of 25 to 40 of all species
• With 3C
• - 30 of the yield of wheat in India
• Risk of famine 600 million people
• Lack of water 4 billion people
• Rising water levels 170 million people
• Numerous islands erased from the globe
• With 4C
• Collapse of agricultural yields
• Expansion of the zones with malaria 400
  million of people
• Rising water levels330 million people

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Stop temperature rise at 2 C

• 2 C danger limit
• How do we do it?
• Stabilise the temperature
• Stabilise the concentrations of GHGs (450ppm)
• Bring emissions back to natural  recycling 
  capacity
• Divide worldwide emissions by half
• The factor 4 to garanty equal rights for all

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Berger 2005
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To stop at 2 C

• Emissions must decline before 2015
• Developed countries (compared to 1990)
• -25 à -40 in 2020
• -80 à -95 in 2050
• From 2020 on, developed countries must deviate
  substantially from the trajectory (except Africa)
• World emissions -50 à -85 en 2050

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Climate policies of the dominant Powers
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The general trend

• Subordinate adaptation to the rhythm and needs of
  capital
• Cost-risk analysis (example Stern report)
• Priority of technological solutions
• Creation of new markets
• New developement cycle of capital  green
  capitalism  
• Point to the responsability of emerging countries
• Use climate menace to impose their neoliberal
  policies

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The Kyoto protocol

• Some positive aspects
•  common but differentiated responsabilities 
• Concrete targets and sanctions
• BUT noumerous problems
• Insufficient targets -5,2 (reduced to -1,7)
• Emissions of maritime and air transport not taken
  into account
• Carbone sinks Emission reductions
• Possible delocalisation of the efforts (CDM,MOC)
• Emission rights and carbon market a form of
  privatisation of parts of the atmosphere

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Recent evolution of policies by the great powers

• Insufficient commitments
• -20 in 2020 for the EU
• Obama wants less than Kyoto
• Ever more flexible mecanisms
• Their role was limited with Kyoto
• New technologies integrated as clean
  technologies carbon sequestration, nuclear,
  biofuels
• A specific market for the forestsREDD
• Make the lower classes take the brunt of the
  effort (ex Carbon Tax )
• The answers to the climate and the economic
  crisis are contradictory, inconsistent public
  policies cars, public transport

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In the face of a predicted failure, the menace of
barbaric management

• New Orleans
• Tuvalu, Vanuatu
• The  Climate report of the Pentagon
•  the numbers of deaths caused by wars, by famine
  and by disease will decrease the size of the
  population which will readapt to the carrying
  capacity . 
• Source An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and its
  Implications for the US National Security,
  SCWARTZ RANDALL, 2003

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A catastrophy can perhaps be avoided (in part)
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Energy savings

• A policy of small gestures  is not sufficient
• Fight against attempts to make you feel guilty
• An important part of what you buy, of
  transportation is unavoidable
• Necessity of collective action to make possible a
  lifestyle that saves energy and is low in carbon
  use

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Saving energy

• What possibilities?
• Suppress useless productions
• Armement, the army
• Numerous manufacturing of chemicals, of
  fertilisers
• Advertisements
• Energy efficiency
• Rehabilitation of housing
• Norms for electrical devices
• Norms of car engines
• Reorganisation of society (the most important
  source)
• Ex. of transportation
• Urbanisation working class expulsed far from
  the city centre
• Problemes of freight production  just in
  time , international division of labour
  according to the cost of labour

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Renewable energies

• Solar an IMMENSE potential
• Its caracter limits its valorisation in a
  capitalist system
• Low density in energy
• Difficult to appropriate
• Necessity of a new orientation of research
• Necessity of making available and of large
  distribution of technologies not only for those
  who can pay

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Budgets RD Energie (AIE)
Researhc to be urgently redirected!
EnR 8,1
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Our anticapitalist project
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Necessity of an anticapitalist strategy

• The market is powerless
• A change which is too radical
• Time is too short
• Any change needs the  agreement of the
  citizens 
• Capitalism confronts social forces with a
  dilemma
•  To save nature or to increase the conditions of
  exploitation of the workers 
• Increase the costs of the exploitation of nature
  versus a lowering of the cost of the work force
• Our ecosocialist project
• Planning based at the same time on the
  democratically determined needs and taking into
  account the ecological problems

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Transitional method linked to an emergency
program

• A pedagocial role
• Demonstrate that it is possible
• Confront capitalism with its contradictions
• Link the social and the ecological dimension
• The crises are fed by the same mecanisms
  competition, search for profits, dictatorship of
  the markets
• Put the fulfillment of social needs and the
  respect of ecological equilibria at the centre of
  our program and our struggles

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An emergency planExamples of sectorial demands

• Suppression of unnecessary and harmful industries
• The building sector
• Public service of housing and renovation
• Transportation of commodities
• Ban on long distance transport by road
• Public policy for the development of
  infrastructure for rail transport
• Transportation of people
• Free public transport
• Development of the possibilities for public
  transport infrastructure
• Stop the development of suburbia
•  reintroduction  of the working classes in the
  city centres
• The energy sector
• For a public service of the whole of the energy
  sector
• Nationalisation of the big companies in the
  sector
• Decentralisation of the means of production of
  energy
• in order to allow control by users and by
  employees
• Agriculture food souvereignty and
  organic/ecological farming
• Drastic reduction of nitrogen containing
  fertilizers
• A break with the productivist logic in the
  farming world

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An emergency planProfound transformations

• Reorganisation and transformation of labour
• Peoples control on production
• Get out of the contradiction consumer/worker
• Reduction of working hours must be a central axis
  of our program
• Indispensible industrial reconversions
• Garanty employment, contracts, wages and work
  collectives
• This must be realised by the workers themselves