GREEN IS RED: the case for eco-Marxism

GREEN IS RED: The case for eco-Marxist politics

A talk given by Daphne Lawless at the Fightback 2013 conference, June 2013. Reprinted from Fightback magazine.

It seems to be common sense that socialism and green politics go together. “Green is red”, wrote English socialist Paul McGarr more than ten years ago. On the other side of the aisle, the Right often refer to the Green Party as “watermelons” (that is, red on the inside – secretly socialist). The Green Parties, for their turn, like to deny this connection, often declaring themselves “neither left nor right but out in front”. And many Marxists don’t want to have anything to do with this supposedly privileged middle-class movement for that very reason.

However, ecosocialism is – in brief – the idea that you can’t have green politics without red politics. That is: that you can’t have an environmentally sustainable society under capitalism and its almight profit motives. And you can’t have a socialist society which ignores ecological sustainability and quality of life in favour of producing mass quantities of consumer goods. I want to argue that, while ecosocialism has been for the last 25 years or so “the wave of the future”, it is now very much the wave of the present.

Marx and Ecology

Ecosocialism is the descendant of a Marxism which comes from “bottom up” – a Marxism which takes as its start and end point the lived experience of human beings on this planet. Marxism, as a philosophy which seeks to liberate humanity from alienation, is most widely known as the theory of how capitalism alienates the working class from the produce of their labour. But Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels also discussed how it alienates human beings from nature.

The American socialist writer John Bellamy Foster has shown that Marx’s early writings are very clear that capitalism creates a “metabolic rift” between social systems and ecological systems. Through the town-country division of labour, natural resources, including the plant and animal kingdoms, waterways and space itself, become seen as inert objects waiting to be transformed into goods for profit. And of course this applied also to the workers themselves – the worker is not valued for her or his humanity, but only as a source of potential profit for the boss. Capitalism is a system of exploitation of all of nature – including people.

The increasing push for resources under industrial capitalism leads to both environmental damage and heightening of capitalist competition. For example, in 19th century England farming was transformed by the increased use of chemical fertiliser – but the increasing yield of crops led to soil degradation. Meanwhile, imperialist wars were fought over tiny islands rich in guano (bird droppings) which could be used to make fertiliser.

However, this also has an effect on human well-being. The growth of industrial cities led to an urban environment fouled and polluted as much as a rural environment – especially for the working masses who flocked to these cities from the country. We can see a very similar process (the wearing out of the countryside under exploitation combined with the growth of tenement cities) in modern China. Foul, cramped, soulless working and living conditions are as much a product of capitalist alienation as the expropriation of surplus value.

degradation of the Aral Sea

Soviet Russia’s eco-disaster

The first argument which is thrown back at ecosocialists is that the 20th century European and Asian states which called themselves socialist were hardly environmental success stories. This is true. But in this lies the fundamental difference between ecosocialism and these bureaucratically mismanaged state-run economies.

Just like capitalist economies, the Soviet Union was determined to push for economic growth at all costs – to keep up with the West and defend itself. Referring to industrialisation, Josef Stalin is reported to have said: “We must do in ten years what England did in a hundred”. And a process running at ten times the speed was ten times as brutal.

We need only mention a few examples – the mass famines following the collectivization of agriculture, which killed millions in the Ukraine. The Aral Sea in Asian Russia has virtually ceased to exist after the rivers feeding it were diverted for irrigation. Consumers stood in line for basic necessities while priority was given to building heavy machinery, space vehicles and nuclear weapons. And countries in the Soviet orbit – such as East Germany – became notorious for their greyness and dirtyness, due to burning cheaper “brown coal” (lignite) or using shoddy concrete.

No wonder that in the late 1980s, the workers didn’t lift a finger to defend these so-called “workers’ states”.Their actual, human needs were never a priority for their bureaucratic rulers.

Against productivism

So ecosocialism is opposed not only to free-market capitalism, but to productivism in all its forms – the push for economic growth, whether measured in profits or in raw production numbers, at all costs. Productivism is the triumph of the abstract (numbers of currency or objects) over the concrete (the real quality of life of the masses). Ecosocialism believes that socialism must run on a triple bottom line – not only must a new society restore political and economic power to the workers, but it must also work to heal social alienation and the alienation of humanity from the rest of nature.

So why is ecosocialism becoming so vital at this point in history? It’s well known that “Marx is back” since the near-collapse of financial capitalism in 2008 and the subsequent “recovery for the rich only”, which have laid bare the continuous reality of class warfare and exploitation. But the massive economic crisis only one of the problems facing the current world system.

PERIL syndrome

New Zealand socialist Peter de Waal came up with the concept of the “PERIL syndrome”. PERIL here stands for five integrated crises that capitalism faces at the current time. The Profitability crisis is only the first: there is also:
• an Ecological crisis involving global warming, polar melting and other such imminent fundamental changes to the environment;
• a Resources crisis as fossil fuels get rare, and battles loom over other scarces resources, such as rare-earth minerals in the Congo;
• a crisis of Imperialism as the United States and its allies such as Israel increasingly find it difficult to exert their hegemony over such up-and-coming economies as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa);
• a Legitimacy crisis as the veil is increasingly stripped away from the naked greed of the ruling classes, as the working classes in the rich countries are progressively stripped of their social gains, while the working classes in developing countries become aware of their potential collective power.
This combination of crises suggests that the global capitalist order is now fragile in a way it has not been since the Second World War. Some theorists – like the New Zealand socialist Grant Morgan or the Russian-American Dmitry Orlov – have gone as far as to argue that global capitalism is doomed to collapse within a few decades.

However, ecosocialism doesn’t necessarily hold to this apocalyptic scenario. Whether globalised capitalism is sustainable – and what social order or orders might replace it – is a question which has an objective as well as a subjective factor. The crises mean that the global order must change and compensate – but the balance of class forces will determine exactly how that comes about.



Socialist organisation for human beings

So how shall ecosocialists organise? The first point to answer is that the last thing that ecosocialists in New Zealand want is another “sect”. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels said that communists do not form another party opposed to working-class parties. Similarly, ecosocialists have not been forming groups opposed to other socialist groups.

Some existing socialist parties – such as the Left Party in France or the Socialist Alliance in Australia, or even the Fourth International itself – have explicitly declared themselves “ecosocialists”. But in the rest of the world, ecosocialists are forming networks for discussion and common action, while still working within the existing left, socialist and green parties. The concrete form this take depends on the circumstances. For instance, the Green Left in England continues to work within the Green Party, whereas ecosocialists in New Zealand have largely abandoned our own Greens, especially since Sue Bradford was defeated within that party.

But the crucial distinction is that ecosocialism – being based on the concept of ending the alienation of the whole human being, not just from the means of production – is careful to not perpetuate that alienation within its own structures. The “sect” model of organisation which has been standard on the small-group radical left in the developed countries has become a dead end. A holistic view of politics, such as that which ecosocialism provides, argues that no organisation can shut itself off from capitalist society and claim to be proof against its abuses.

We must increasingly admit that the actually-existing radical left is not an affirming and nurtuing place for workers, in particular queer, non-white and female workers. We are all familiar with recent scandals – here and overseas – with sexually abusive behaviour in radical organisations. This happens in organisations which have sucked in the productivist logic of capitalism – where comrades are “burned for fuel” to fulfil the schemes of a self-perpetuating leadership.

Therefore, ecosocialism isn’t just about adding ecological demands to our existing Marxist programmes. It’s about a method of organisation which is sustainable on the human level for revolutionary cadre – which neither burns them out or turns them into automatons carrying out leadership commands. This is perhaps the main reason why I think it is good for ecosocialists not to separate themselves from other radical parties – that not only does ecosocialist politics complement rather than challenge socialism-from-below, but ecosocialist organisational principles can save many good activists from being burned out and alienated by small-group leaders gone berserk.

Where to from here?

The Green Party in New Zealand has completely abased itself before the profit motive. It is now the party of “greenwashing”, of middle-class consumer activism, of the relatively well-off under capitalism seeking some kind of moral basis for their consumption habits. The voting numbers for the Greens in South Auckland show how relevant this is to the working class.

Socialists must challenge Green politics from the left, showing how ecological issues are of top relevance to the quality of life of working people. But we must also challenge bureaucratic and schematic politics from a holistic viewpoint – “green is the tree of life”, said Lenin quoting Goethe, and socialism which exploits activists and crushes their spirits is nothing worthy of the name.+

Libraries are Dangerous Places

by LEN PARKER

Recently I had occasion to give a talk on the preservation of library archives; under the heading of “Establishing The Red Kiwi Library.”

During the latter part of my talk I listed but a tiny fraction of a vast record of the destruction of libraries throughout history. All nation states, without exception, sacked and burnt the archives and records of other nation states. I included periods in which books were simply banned for religious reasons, such as the Catholic Index of Prohibited Books (Index Librorum Prohibitorum,1600 - only abolished in 1966 by Pope Paul VI), or in order to destroy the cultural identity, accumulated knowledge and wisdom of the conquered.

More recently, I discovered another kind of assault on libraries; not so much on the books but on the library patrons themselves, while disabling their gate-keepers and guardians, the librarians. It is often said: Knowledge is power, while the lack of it by others serves to reinforce those who have access to it.

The discovery evoked the idea as to how a similar attack might impact on our civil liberties here in New Zealand, with the passing of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) Bill. This Bill aligns us with the United States NSL and PATRIOT Act and the Five Eye surveillance network in which we are enmeshed.

Similarly, the proposed Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill, also before the House, will cohere with those of the United States. It enables, “the surveillance agencies (The New Zealand Police, the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and the GCSB) to request information from network operators.”

While political debate and repartee in the parliamentary nowadays is increasingly abrasive and venomous, it is not exactly razor sharp or cutting edge. Labour and the Greens missed the opportunity to parry the sarcasm of Prime Minister John Key. In the debate on the GCSB Bill, being rushed through the House, Key referred to an opposition Labour member as Noddy. Some savvy wit might have responded with; “Our concern is with Big Ears” - referring of course to Tangimoana and Five Eyes international spy base network soon to spy on New Zealand citizens.

When Key sanctimoniously stated that “New Zealanders are more concerned with recreational fishing than the GCSB.” a quick riposte might have been; “Is fishing spelt with a Ph or an f?” But while there was lots of angry buzzing in the Beehive, the smoke from the government benches must have dulled the opposition's edge. Instead; the then leader of the Labour opposition, David Shearer, overcome by the two dead fish he brought into the house, immediately resigned.

Obviously, there is no Oscar Wilde amongst us!

To ensure the passing of this assault on our democratic freedom, civil liberties and the right to privacy, prime minister Key whipped his government members into line, depriving them of their right to a conscience vote, if one existed - which says a great deal about the opportunism of National MPs in ceding integrity and principle for Key's favour. Key then relied on the one vote of now independent Peter Dunne to carry the day, having already secured the support of “libertarian” ACT Party member John (cup-of-tea) Banks.

No courageous Marilyn Waring of the past - who brought down the Muldoon government by threatening to cross the floor - or even a dissenting Mike Monogue concerned with Muldoon's increasingly autocratic rule. Just a badger, lots of toadies, a rat or two and plenty of “Wind in the Willows”. (Perhaps a little unfair as Labour, the Greens and Mana promised, if they became the government, to repeal the Act.)

There is the mantra here in God's Own and elsewhere: “If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.” I don't think that is what President Frankly D. Roosevelt meant when he said “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” He took on the banks and corporate interests in the depression years of the nineteen thirties and introducing the Glass-Steagall Act to save capitalist America from itself..

MANA MP Hone Harawira was right in stating (at the public protest meeting in the Auckland Town Hall on the GCSB Bill) that the majority of poor beneficiaries, pensioners, low paid working class Maori, Pacific Islanders and Pakeha, if they were aware of the GCSB - and many were not – had neither energy or inclination to attend the meeting and would wonder what all the fuss was about. They were, he said, spied on all the time, by Social Welfare; IRD; police and many other departments of the State; as well as by their bosses; retail supermarkets; the banks and creditors and various others who ruled their lives.

Nevertheless: the assault on our civil rights and liberties is undeniable in this encroaching “Brave New World” of insidious surveillance and increasingly secret government with access to every detail of our personal lives as citizens - under the guise of National Security.

If you think you have nothing to fear from our willingness to prostrate ourselves before the United States, how about this?

In their book; “Standing Up to Madness”, Amy Goodman (Democracy Now host) and brother David Goodman relate how - during the Bush administration and under the United States PATRIOT Act - four librarians in Connecticut came under coercion from FBI agents wanting access to library subscribers' records and library computers, to determine who was reading and researching what - simply by presenting a letter under the Act from the NSL. No warrant required.

The FBI presented a letter from the NSL demanding the library make available: “... any and all subscriber information, billing information and access of any person or entity” that had used their computers across their twenty seven libraries between certain times on a certain date in 2005. While stunned by this “request” the executive director refused access believing it illegal under the Constitution.

“The letter advised that the information was sought 'to protect against international terrorism.'”

The agent pointed to a sentence in the letter that read that the recipients could not disclose “to any person that the FBI has sought or obtained access to information or records.” Effectively a perpetual gagging order. Information gained through an NSL is kept forever. A similar non-disclosure clause applies here in New Zealand under the the existing Security Intelligence (SIS) legislation.

However, the intrepid and defiant “mild-mannered” librarian did consult the three other library executives on this intrusion, who thought differently - believing, what people coming into the library did was their private affair and they should be able to use the library for whatever their want. The American Library Association (ALA) had a system protecting confidentiality: “that automatically erased any record of a patron's book use - provided the book was returned to the library and the fines paid”.

Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, however, allows the FBI agent to enter a library or bookstore and demand records of the books that patrons read and which internet sites they visited.

The nervous, but stoic, librarians took on the PATRIOT Act and engaged an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer to represent them in their law suit and sought an injunction against having to comply with the NSL; requesting a ruling to strike down NSLs as unconstitutional. They also wanted the gag order lifted so that they could inform their full board of directors about what was happening.

Former U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft accused the defiant librarians of creating “baseless hysteria.” Sound familiar?

Although the four librarians were the only ones who could testify in court that the FBI was using the NSL and PATRIOT Act against libraries, they couldn't speak or identify themselves to the public in any way.

In the first of the so-called “Connecticut Library Connection” hearings, John Doe v Gonzales, in federal court the John Doe librarians were excluded and only able to observe the proceedings by closed-circuit television inside a locked storage room in the Hartford courthouse.

Other librarians, having got wind of the case, came from all around the region to fill the court without knowing who the librarians in the case were.

When their cover was eventually blown - after a judge's ruling - due to government bungling when they were forced to release some documents in which they failed to redact references to the Library Connection and the name of one of the principals was exposed. The ACLU lawyer informed the named person that it was so serious that they (ACLU) had decided to hire criminal attorneys - just in case.

Nevertheless the gag order remained. Even when John Doe Connecticut went to an appeals court in October 2005 in Manhattan, New York, the four librarians had to conceal their reason for attending,

as well as their identity, and could not sit together, look at, or acknowledge each other or their attorney. Once again librarians came from regions all over the United States in unity.

In Washington, DC, librarians protested in support of their unnamed Connecticut colleagues by wearing gags emblazoned with NSL.

The authors note that government's insistence on keeping the librarians gagged became Orwellian and worthy of Kafka. The district court in Bridgeport ruled that the gag order violated the librarians' first amendment rights and that there was no compelling reason why revealing the names of the four would hinder the government's investigation. In fact it had become a hindrance.

After statements before the congress and much debate, the many loyal hand-on-heart patriotic “representatives of the people”- sworn to uphold the constitution of the United States, but apparently more concerned about the up-coming election (while wishing to get these hornets out of their hair) - assembled to reauthorize the Act.

The PATRIOT Act was reauthorized in 2006, and incorporated a clause that the FBI had to show ”reasonable grounds” to demand library information - a pathetically low threshold, according to the authors.

Following the reauthorization, part of the John Doe Connecticut's case - the challenge to the NSL provision of the PATRIOT Act - was ruled moot, since the law had changed. But the gag order remained.

Six weeks after the PATRIOT Act was reauthorized, the Justice Department had a sudden change of heart .The librarians were no longer a threat to national security after all. The government informed the ACLU that they would no longer contest librarians' demand to lift the gag order.

“That is how the four of us became the only Americans who can speak about our experience “ Peter Chase, one of the four and director of the Plainville Public Library in central Connecticut, said.

When asked by the Goodmans, “which book in their libraries best captured their experience, the librarians unhesitatingly mentioned Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four”.

So is there a lesson here for us?

Well apparently not. We have little to worry about if we have no secrets and have done nothing wrong, because the spy masters have to get a warrant from prime minister Key who has over-sight, chairs the GSCB, and is so concerned with our liberties that he will not issue them lightly. So we can safely go fishing without worrying about the spooks breaking into our houses, monitoring our emails and computers, checking with our neighbours or visiting our local library.

No wonder beneficiaries – who know about these things - think it is simply a storm in a tea cup – or was that a cup of tea - and only “conniving” journalists who eves-drop on important “other” people and violate their privacy face prosecution? Enigmatically, although the police here found “our own” Dotcom was a victim of an illegal invasion and violation of his person and property by the state, no further action will be taken.

I suggest readers get a copy of the Goodman's' small book “Standing Up to Madness” as there is much more to this episode. It also includes chapters on the “Pentagon Papers” and “Science Under Siege”, on climate change denial and the censorship and gagging of James Hansen the director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; the renowned climate scientist who recently visited New Zealand, to tell us about something that isn't happening apparently. At least, according to our oilwellian masters.

The Cassandra Complex: Paradoxes and Denial in a Finite World

by LEN PARKER

Tom Wessels notes in his book The Myth of Progress: “Prior to the publication of Rachel Carson's groundbreaking Silent Spring in 1962, the words “ecology” and “environment were probably [largely] unknown.”

Carson's scientific insight led her to ask: “The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without losing the right to be called civilized,” and unlike George W Bush who believed; ''Economic growth is key to environmental progress.'', Carson believed; “The control of nature is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy ...” In hindsight, perhaps a little harsh on the Neanderthals.

In our finite, complex world of constant change and development we are constantly told that our future well-being depends on constant progress through ceaselessly increased efficiency, production and consumption as if our planetary resources were infinite.

Others believe human ingenuity, science and technology will always keep us ahead of the game and social collapse from resource depletion; the consequences of planetary pollution; crop failures; food and water shortages; climate change and global warming; ocean acidification; population explosion and the general economic crisis of capitalism. Whether this illusion arises from denial, or deliberate self-deception it is too important a question to ignore, and we do so at our peril.

To be in denial differs from the consequences suffered by the Greek Trojans who had no choice but to discount and ignore the warnings of the oracle Cassandra. We can chose!

Cassandra was one of the Trojan women in Greek Mythology. The daughter of the King and Queen of Troy: Priam and Hecuba.

In Greek, the name Cassandra means 'She who entangles men'. Legend has it that she was of great beauty who men lusted after – not reciprocated. She had, however, a gift of prophecy bestowed on her by the Gods.

Cassandra was able to foretell the future, and warned the people of the impending outcome of the Siege of Troy. The God Apollo was passionately in love with her and invited her to spend the night at his temple where snakes licked her ear giving her the gift of prophesy. However, when Apollo's love was not reciprocated he cursed her, ensuring that her gift would cause her nothing but anguish. Rather than strip her of the power of prediction he chose to ensure that no one would believe her prophesies.

Cassandra, however, foresaw the destruction of Troy, predicted the Trojan Horse and the death of Agamemnon and her own eventual murder, but nothing was done because of Apollo's curse.

Today there are amongst us those who are in denial of evidential, impending, profound, social change, along with the deliberate deceivers and learned idiots who discount warnings of capitalist collapse and environmental disaster and believe we can carry on with “business as usual”.

There is, however, much to learn from ancients and moderns alike, in the void between the self-delusion of clever individuals with a preoccupation for intellectual puzzles and paradoxes, and the common sense and logic of ordinary folk.

For example: even the simplest minded of us know that in a race between a ninety year old human on crutches and a tortoise - even if the tortoise was given a head start in race of limited distance, - the human would win (apart from the contrary fable of the race between the Hare and the Tortoise that some clever-Dick will now recall).

But this was a serious question for the ancient Greeks, particularly Zeno whose logical puzzle of Achilles and the Tortoise was one of the four great paradoxes attributed to him.

“Achilles is in a race against a tortoise that has been given a head start, and it is argued that Achilles, no matter how swiftly he may run, can never overtake the tortoise, no matter how slow it may be. By the time Achilles will have reached the initial position of the tortoise, the latter will have advanced some short distance; and by the time Achilles will have covered this distance, the tortoise will have advanced somewhat farther; and so on indefinitely, with the result that the swift Achilles can never overtake the slow tortoise.”

Most of us will know that in the real world, at least the one we inhabit, that Achilles would have zapped the tortoise no shit. So what is the problem?

Well: these legitimate paradoxical puzzles for the Greeks turn up in modern society as if they are a part of material reality.

Richard Heinberg in his book The End of Growth relates how that “The near-religious belief that economic growth depends not on energy and resources, but solely on increasing innovation, efficiency, trade and devision of labor, that can sometimes lead economists to say silly things.”

He references the late Julian Simon, a longtime business professor at the University of Illinois and fellow at the right-wing Cato Institute. “In his 1981 book The Ultimate Resource, Simon declared that natural resources are effectively infinite and that the process of resource substitution can go on forever. There can never be overpopulation, he declared, because having more people just means having more problem-solvers.”

“How can resources be infinite on a small planet such as ours?” asks Heinberg. “Easy, said Simon. “Just as there are infinitely many points on a one-inch line segment, so too there are infinitely many lines of division separating copper from non-copper, or oil from non-oil, or coal from non-coal in the earth. Therefore, we cannot reliable quantify how much copper, oil, coal etc...there really is in the world. If we can't measure how much we have of these materials, that means the amounts are not finite – thus they are infinite.”

Heinberg continues “It's a logical fallacy so blindingly obvious that you would think not a single vaguely intelligent reader would have let him get away with it. Clearly, an infinite number of dividing lines between copper and non-copper is not the same as an infinite quantity of copper. While a few critics pointed this out (notably Herman Daly), Simon's book was widely praised nevertheless. Why? Because Simon was saying something that many people wanted to believe.”

“Simon himself is gone, says Heinberg, but his way of thinking is alive and well in the works of Bjorn Lomberg, author of the best selling book The Skeptical Environmentalist… Lomberg insists that the free market is making the environment ever healthier, and will solve all our problems if we just stop scaring ourselves needlessly about running out of resources.”

Maybe climate change and capitalist collapse then are simply left-wing conspiracies?

Well, I would hardly think that US Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the US nuclear submarine fleet, was some sort of Commie bastard - but I could be wrong.

“In 1957, Admiral Hyman Rickover gave “a sobering speech to a group of U.S. physicians in St. Paul, Minnesota. Rickover encouraged his audience to consider...their responsibilities to [their] descendants – those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age.” “Responsible living, he said, meant energy conservation, excellent education for all citizens, an new culture of self-denial, and higher taxes to fund a large more complex United States. The alternative was doubt, indecision, chaos and collapse.”

Rickover went on “Our civilization rests upon a technological base which requires enormous quantities of fossil fuels.”...”What assurance do we have that our energy needs will continue to be supplied by fossil fuels? The answer is – in the long run – none,” he said.

He went on to say how much of the land that was once wilderness was “now buried under cities, factories and suburban developments where each picture window looks out on nothing more inspiring than a neighbor's backyard...”

Rickover warned; The United States must undergo a transition. “Fossil fuels resemble capital in the bank. A prudent and responsible parent will use his capital sparingly in order to pass on to his children as much as possible of his inheritance. A selfish and irresponsible parent will squander it in riotous living and care not one wit how this offspring will fare.” (See Andrew Nikiforuk's 'The Energy of Slaves” for the above quotations).

While authorities in Auckland have procrastinated for more than 70 years about the electrification of a rail loop and faced the consequent grid-locked motor-ways, nothing has been done. While millions was spent on Consultants and various reports. We should remember, the automobile was responsible for suburban sprawl that covered over fertile land with concrete and tarseal. How did this come about?

I recall a railways' manager, at a transport conference here in Wellington, New Zealand after WW11, resisting the assault on rail stating that they could load a thousand wagons overnight to transport goods on the main-trunk line. Recently, I saw a train with seventy wagons of logs on the Whakatane Line. That could take that many trucks off the roads. So what happened?

We need to look overseas to the United States. “Until the 1940s both San Francisco and Los Angeles possessed well used electric trolley systems. Big oil, changed that. A shell firm financed by General Motors, Exxon and Firestone bought San Francisco's trolley system and then sold it with draconian conditions attached: the trolley cars had to be replaced with General Motors buses, running on Exxon gasoline and Goodyear Tires.”

“General Motors, Standard Oil of California and Firestone similarly dismantled L.A.'s electric train service. As journalist Carl Solberg would explain in Oil Power in 1976, 'In this fashion the big companies blotted out 100 electric railway systems in 45 cities – including New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis and Salt Lake City.'”

Then: “In 1949 they were convicted of criminal conspiracy. The ring leader, General Motors' Treasurer H.C. Grossman, was fined one dollar.” (See Andew Nikiforuk, 'The Energy of Slaves' for quotes.)

With the collapse of the Wall Street Banks, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stern, Merrill Lynch and others, in 2008. and the bailout of “Too big to Jail” Goldman Sachs and AIG along with the Acquisition and Merger of others (with billions of dollars from the taxpaying public and Quantitative Easing) we now have even larger Super Banks. Threatened with bankruptcy, General Motors and Chrysler also became beneficiaries of the taxpayers “generosity.”

Some time ago a proposal was put forward here in New Zealand/Aotearoa by socialists for 'Free and Frequent Public Transport,' as an alternative to the continuation of our car culture and the endless expense of building and maintaining motorways. Money previously spent on fares for public transport would become freely available to be spent in retail shops, theatres, swimming pools, sports events and other activities, which in turn could be taxed.

Getting cars off the roads, would have reduced the number and cost to the State of serious traumas and deaths caused by car accidents (including to pedestrians), spinal and head injuries, the costs of funerals, loss of family income, increased insurance premiums, and maintenance of on-going care and services to paraplegics and brain damaged individuals, and continued family support. There would be a reduction in respiratory illnesses, heart diseases, cancers and deaths caused by atmospheric pollution – and other benefits.

Strangely, under capitalist “economics”, all these unnecessary accidents and costs are added to the GDP as indicators of progress.

Other benefits would include; less stress on bus drivers attempting to meet tight schedules in high density traffic, no expensive computer installations except for emergency needs, no ticketing distractions, as well as less road rage. There would of course be less resource depletion; of steel, rubber, synthetics and plastics in manufacturing of cars, and more conservation of energy including fossil fuels. Can't be done! Well there are trials being run in a number of major cities around the world right now of free and frequent public transport.

The above is about our own energy consuming Trojan Horse car culture, already installed within the city gate and our own psyche, while the battle for our future rages with many of us disarmed by being in kind of deluded rapture.

All that is needed is for us to be fully aroused from our social stupor and become conscious our own complicity and responsibility. Because what is holding us back is ourselves. But that means challenging the system of ideas that perpetuates this paradox and those who benefit from the chaos and carnage.

Cassandra was right! There were consequences for those Trojans who scoffed at her, as there will be for us. But unlike Cassandra we have a choice. We can change the future.

Tom Wessels says: “Large-scale change in complex systems never comes from the topdown; it always bubbles up from the bottom. That means that large-scale social, political, and economic change comes from the citizenry, whom elected officials will follow when its collective voice becomes loud enough.” Well history will tell if he is right. It may need more than a little shove.

Rivers of life and rivers of death

RIVERS OF LIFE AND RIVERS OF DEATH

by Len Parker

Water is life. The right to water versus water rights has a long and ancient history. Its use and abuse is at the heart of civilization.

From the time of Moses fracturing (fracking?) the rock to bring forth water for the patched tribe of Israel; to the bad irrigation methods of the ancients covering the land with salt so crops no longer grew; to the range wars in old cowboy movies where the poor farmers and townspeople fought the greedy rancher barons over right of access; water has always been in dispute.

New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key opened a Pandora's box with the proposed partial sale of state owned assets; including the publicly funded and constructed hydro-dams and the rights to water in the rivers behind them.

It raised once again the ire of Maori as to the actual ownership of water. Their concern is to what it will mean if the water behind the dams and in the rivers becomes integral to a part public-privately owned asset under new company law.

Under the Treaty of Waitangi, Maori are the guardians (kaitiaki) of New Zealand/Aotearoa rivers, lakes. streams and springs. Maori have, over many years, pointed out the ecological degradation of waterways and fisheries caused by pollution, run-off of nitrates and human waste.

The Crown authorities, on the other hand, have been reluctant to acknowledge or release information on the extent of this damage, take responsibility for it, or charge the polluters. Rather, in the interest of trade, tourism and profit, New Zealand has been sold to the world as clean and green.

Behind the curtain in this Wizard of Oz fantasy journey on their 'Yellow Brick Road' is a hidden reality the right to pollute waterways and control their flow, in the interests of energy, growth and maximizing profit.

Increasing public ecological awareness, however, is challenging this licence.

The Crown, in the need for energy to drive industrialized society, constructed large dams at public expense to ensure electricity supply. Now, with the proposed partial sale of these revenue generating assets, the Government has raised the question of ownership of the very water itself.

Not only has the question become: Who owns the water? But who is ecologically responsible for its quality?

If there is one natural law that overrides any that human ingenuity has constructed, it is surely the right to self-preservation. This includes access to clean, uncontaminated water; not as a commodity but as a right, something owned in common.

Maori elders have eloquently defended their customary rights and claims under the Treaty of Waitangi, and have challenged the Government' s plan to sell power generating entities to private investors. Maori concerns for future access to this traditional taonga acknowledge that it will benefit us all.

Contrary to the deliberate misinformation and propaganda spread in regard to Maori claims to “ownership” of water, Maori Council co-chairman and retired High Court judge Sir Eddie Durie said that it was untrue that his group was trying to assert that Maori owned the water in rivers and lakes:

But they [Maori] are saying there are particular streams, rivers, aquifers and springs that they have used, and as a result of that use have acquired a customary law interest [right] in those things.

Some argue that because we - as the public and rate-payers - are required to pay for water, including the waste water, it means it can be owned. This reminds me of a religious minister's answer when asked, if religion was free, why was he charging? - “It is free, he said; but you have to pay for laying it on.”

Te Arawa's Tony Wihapi said:

Te Arawa accepted that no one owned the water – until the Crown said it was going to give 49 percent of it away. That meant Maori had to act, while acknowledging. [this] ...Arawa accepted the right of the Crown to use that water for the good of the nation.

With this right of use must come the responsibility to keep these facilities in pristine condition. Customary rights can be respected and honoured while its fishing, traditional use, navigation and spiritual values and mana are preserved. Private profit driven interests will not guarantee this.

What is at stake with any privatization is the enclosure of the commons and disrespect for historic Maori generosity and rights under the Treaty. Few will accept that private shareholder ownership and exploitation for profit will be in the interest of or for the public good.

The idea of owning a resource such as water, on which all life depends – the birds, the trees, the animals, the fish of the sea including ourselves - would seem the height of arrogance. That water can be commodified or privately owned, is truly a notion that only those obsessed with private property could think up.

In the United States, the home of “free enterprise”, Texas oil billionaire T. Bone Pickens acquired 200,000 acres (about 80,000 hectares) of groundwater rights in Roberts County, “from which he expects to make more than US$1 billion on a US$75 million investment.” He is also seeking the right to pump Ogallala aquifer water and sell it to El Paso, Lubbock, San Antonio and Dallas.

In her book Blue Covenant, Maude Barlow also describes how Dorothy Timian-Palmer, former water manager for Carson City and now president of Vidlers, also lays claim to vast water reserves. Timian-Palmer's company has acquired more than 135,000 acre-feet of water rights in Nevada and Arizona. In 2007 it was estimated to be worth US$500 million. “The company is holding on to most of the water and planning to buy up more because the price of water is steadily going up in the American Midwest.”

“No one owns the water!” says John Key. Yeah right!

Water naturally flows if unimpeded, is heated by the sun, evaporates as clouds and is distributed around the world where it is deposited as rain. It is then recycled through respiration of plants or further evaporation from lakes, rivers and the great oceans, and in time may reach the aquifers, in the hydrological cycle.

Greek philosopher Heraclitus may have rightly said “We cannot step in the same river twice”, but someone, somewhere, on this planet will drink of this water or be showered by its rain. Or, increasingly nowadays, they may swept away by torrential deluge or hurricane, buried under a landslide or frozen to death in extreme weather conditions.

Over eons of climate change, the advance and retreat of glaciers have carved out the paths of rivers, and ground up and deposited the rocks, pebbles and fertile soil on the river beds.

By building large dams on these rivers, however, human ingenuity has created great lakes that have changed the environment both behind the dams and below them, as decaying vegetation within the lakes has produced methane and the release of CO₂. They also restrict navigation, and there is even evidence that large dams can cause earthquakes.

As the stilled water behind the dam heats up there is loss from evaporation. When flood-gates are opened this potential energy (as kinetic energy) flows out and erodes the river bed below the dam. Cold water salmon can no longer successfully lay their eggs or breed above or below the dam.

Globally, this practice has led us to the brink of disaster. While we have been able to construct large dams and generate much needed energy, we have also created a serious dilemma. This is compounded by the delay in building wave, wind and solar alternative renewable forms.

Fortunately in Aoteroa, as a country in the South Pacific we border no other country. Elsewhere in the world, wars can and will be fought between states over access to water. Where rivers flow between nations and there is scarcity or where dams impede their flow disputes arise. There is conflict between Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt over the Nile; between Syria and Israel over the river Jordan and Palestinian aquifers; between China, Burma, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia over the Lancang Jiang where it becomes the mighty Mekong; between Pakistan and India over the Indus.

China ...is building a cascade of eight huge dams on the main stem of the Mekong … The first two are already operating and generating concern downstream all the way to the sea. As the turbines are switched on and off to meet demand for power...water levels in the river fluctuate by up to a meter a day for hundreds of kilometers downstream... Even big boats find it difficult because of the surges from the dams. Local fishers are losing their livelihoods as a result. (Pearce, When Rivers Run Dry)

Some rivers like the Yellow River in China and the Colorado in the U.S., the Rio Grande that borders Mexico and even the Indus on many occasions never reach the sea. Egypt. which has for thousands of years relied on the floods from the Nile to enrich the fertile plains, has to import wheat as the silt backs up behind the Aswan Dam.

How does this effect us? We are part of a global village, and what effects one effects all – eventually. It is not generally appreciated that the vast quantities of water used in agriculture and farming are exported as virtual water in our products.

Fred Pearce records that:

...It takes 1,000 litres [of water] to grow a kilo of wheat, 500 litres for a kilo of potatoes and 11,000 litres to grow the feed for enough cow to make a quarter-pound hamburger' and between 2,000 and 4,000 litres for that cow to fill its udders with a litre of milk. (When Rivers Run Dry)

The battle over the rights to the foreshore and seabed in New Zealand/Aoteraroa was waged against the deception of both Labour and National. These parties claimed that no one owned these natural resources (a self-evident truth), while effectively dishonoring the treaty signed with Maori in 1840 as to their customary rights.

Yet the Crown reserves the 'legal' right to issue permits for exploration and exploitation of oil deep beneath the ocean floor to private corporate interests. They ignore the possibility of accidents, as in the Gulf of Mexico, and consequent pollution of the ocean and damage to the fisheries. And who pays?

Does Crown ownership mean the right to allocate public assets to whoemver they choose? Under globalization and the “free-market”, to subservient governments such as Key's National Party, it means privatization of state owned assets for profit – water included.

Therefore the question is, as Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke point out in their book 'Blue Gold':

If water is essential to life itself, then is it simply a basic human need or is it a fundamental human right?

That was the debate on the floor of the Second World Water Forum in The Hague in the Netherlands, in March 2000.

What role if any did New Zealand play at that Forum?

The title of the conference sounded like an official United Nations meeting about conserving world water resources, but it wasn't ...It was convened by big business lobby organizations like Global Water Partnership, the World Bank and the leading for-profit corporations on the planet ...the discussions focused on how companies could benefit from selling water to markets around the world.

While United Nations officials were in attendance, along with a Ministerial Conference attached to the event... they didn't organize it.

The main players and instigators were some of the largest corporate water giants like Vivendi (now Viola); and Suez; Lyonaise des Eaux; and Severn Trent Plc, as well as food giants like Nestle and Unilever.

What happened at the World Water Conference is the story of the separation of water from the land and from 'the commons' which it is.. The debate over whether water should be designated a 'need' or a 'right' was not simply a semantic one, but went to the heart of the matter.

Under the banner of the “Blue Planet Project” representatives of environmental, labour, and public interest groups from both industrialized and non-industrialized nations insisted that water be recognized as a universal right.... The World Water Forum [Big Business] wanted water to be officially designated as a “need” so that the private sector, through the market, would have the right and responsibility to provide this vital resource on a for-profit-basis.

A statement, signed by government representatives (the Ministerial Declaration) deferred to the corporate interests declaring water a basic need. It said nothing about water being a universal right.

Cash-starved governments have been rapidly turning to privatizing water or entering into Public-Private Partnerships. But experience shows the price of water supplied under private corporations or Public-Private Partnership models is consistently higher than under municipal governments.

Having given substantial tax cuts to corporate interests, governments no longer have sufficient revenues to balance their budgets. Although they still receive large tax returns on state-owned public assets such as power generation, their sale is demanded by international creditors, the World Bank and institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the secretive TPPA to repay debt. This is why Prime Minister Key is determined to privatize the final part of power generation here.

Under deregulated privatized power distribution in Aotearoa, we have experienced constantly rising prices. The reason is simple: Private shareholders expect maximum returns on investment and CEOs are obliged under law to deliver, so they cut back on maintenance, staffing and wages and out-source maintenance contracts and raise prices.

Efficiency it isn't! To add to profits, capitalism encourages waste. The more electricity the directors and management can sell, the greater the profit they hope to achieve. This much-hyped competition doesn't last as corporate raiders take-over their competitors through mergers and acquisitions. If the owners are off-shore the profits will follow. Even local shareholders can find ways to stash their accumulated dividends in tax-havens, reducing internal revenue even further.

In 1998 the first modern “water war' came to international attention when:

the indigenous people of Chochabamba, Bolivia, led by Oscar Olivera, rose up against the privatization of their water services. [U]nder World bank supervision, the Bolivian government passed a law privatizing Chochabamba's water system and gave the contract to U.S. giant Bechtel, which immediately tripled the price of water, cutting off those who could not pay...The company even charged them for rainwater they collected in cisterns.

As a result...the 'Coalition in Defence of Water and Life'.. was formed and organised a successful referendum demanding the government cancel its contract with Bechtel. When the government refused to listen, many thousands took to the streets in non-violent protest and were met with army violence that wounded dozens and killed a seventeen-year-old boy. On April 10 2000 the Bolivian government backed down and told Bechtel to leave. (Barlow)

More recently, after being bailed out by the taxpayers during the crisis on Wall Street, insurance giant AIG went down to the poor mining towns of Middlesboro and Clinton in Kentucky (average income US$13,189 with 30% unemployed). There, they bought up the water rights and upped the water charges by 50%. After a dispute with the local people, the charge was reduced to 30%, still beyond reach of many.

To make it harder for Clinton residents to file complaints (about billing). AIG closed the utility's local office as soon as it took over the company. Pleas made by phone were rejected.

Similarly:

In 2000, furious farmers in [India's] Andhra Pradesh chased the then World Bank head James Wolfensohn away from a privatization public event sponsored by politicians friendly to the World Bank agenda. The ministry ...admitted that consumers would bear the burden of this change with tenfold increases in water rates. (Barlow).

Even at this midnight hour, resistance to the sale of New Zealand's remaining State owned assets must be supported. Yes, “There Must be Another Way” but it isn't under capitalism.

So who will pay the Ferryman? Who will bear the real long-term cost and consequences of the sale of these assets? Surrendering them up to private interests would seem to be their death knell and our vulnerable Achilles' heel hidden behind a statement of perfidious and dishonest intent by John Key.

The value of nothing, and the fire next time

The Value of Nothing and the Fire next Time

by Len Parker 

Twenty years after the first Rio Conference, the Rio+20 Earth Climate Conference 2012 is at an end. As predicted, it proved another talkfest and insult to our intelligence - with no real resolution for effective action.

I recall a previous occasion on which the optimistic hopes of a young girl - determined to address the “world leaders” to remind them of their responsibility to address environmental concern with urgency - were destined to be dashed.

A decade ago, a 12 year old Canadian, Severn Cullus-Suzuki, the founder of the Environmental Children's Organisation, addressed the suits at the United Nations and received a standing ovation. Her speech went viral on the internet.

She told the delegates: “If all the money spent on war was spent on ending poverty and finding environmental answers what a wonderful place this would be.

“In school,” she said, “you teach us not to fight with others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share, not to be greedy. Then why do you go out and do things you tell us not to do?”

Later, in an article in Time magazine under the heading  "The Young Can't Wait”, a more mature and experienced young woman, disillusioned with the suits, said: “I thought I had reached some of them, that my speech might actual spur some action.”

“A decade later - after I sat through many more conferences - I'm not sure what has been accomplished … I have learned that addressing our leaders is not enough.”

She quotes Gandhi: “We must become the change we want to see.”

At the 2012 Rio+20 Summit the suits again heard from another teenager, this time from New Zealand. Brittany Trilford, a 17-year-old Queen Margaret College student, won the 'Date with History' youth video speech contest, and the opportunity to address the Summit.

In conclusion, she said; “You have 72 hours to decide the fate of your children – my children – my children's children – and I start the clock now.”

Sorry Brittany, looks like they were looking at their Blackberries to check their shares or see if it was time for lunch.

There is a saying: “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” I thought this was a wise remark of my grandmother. Only recently I found it was a quote from Oscar Wilde in his book The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The story of Dorian Gray, as with that of Dr Faustus, is about a man who sells himself to the devil for eternal youth - at least until the day of settlement. Before that time, however, he is reminded of his bargain by a portrait of himself that not only records his real age but his sins of commission, debauchery and self-indulgent riotous living.

It would appear that the day of reckoning for the Wall Street banksters, the neocons, capitalist free-marketeers, and those raping the earth – though not far off - has not yet come. The parasitical derivative dealers, reckless currency and futures traders – with their extortionate bonuses still paid - are bailed out by the global working class and the poor by attacks on our wages, health, education and welfare. But, according to the rich, it is our own excesses that are responsible for our predicament.

On this finite planet we inhabit, constant capital development demands ever-expanding growth that is irresponsible and unsustainable.

“As long as these resources remain, the demands of the rich can be met [or so they believe]– which may explain why so many of the rich see no problem. The poor experience a very different reality, but in a market economy their experience doesn't count.”

(from the introduction to The Case Against the Global Economy edited by: Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith)

Our strange new virtual world of financializatio was born out of market deregulation, a revolution in electronic communication, the invention of derivatives and puzzling complexity. The rich still get richer, while we may all drown - not only in the toxic debt the speculators and merchants of death have created, but in a rising tide of global warming. This does not “raise all boats” as promised, but threatens system collapse and perhaps billions of our lives.

This toxic debt, so vast it can never be repaid, accumulates, while the global crisis deepens. We, and Mother Earth become breathless with toxic gases while our future existence and possibly all life on the planet is threatened.

As an eco-socialist it will seem strange to quote from a speech that Senator Robert Kennedy gave at the University of Kansas in 1968 shortly before his assassination, but it is instructive - and may even have contributed to his death:

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, … is over $800 billion a year [now in the trillions] but that Gross National Product – if we judge the United States of America by that – that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public officials. It measures neither our wit or nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

When have we heard a speech of such eloquence and substance from any of our politicians here?

New Zealand's Marilyn Waring, when she became a politician, also discovered the things she valued most about New Zealand counted for nothing: “its pollution-free environment; its mountain streams with safe drinking water; the accessibility of national parks, walkways, beaches, lakes, kauri and beech forests; and absence of nuclear power and energy.” Unfortunately for Marilyn, all these are now under attack from miners, loggers, and farmers' cattle polluting our streams.

The dirty secret of capitalism is not simply profit but accumulation, acquired through the exploitation of human labour power and the earth's resources in unsustainable endless growth.. Paradoxically, everything is measured but that which really matters.

This new virtual world of debt is 'measured' at many times the total global GDP - between $685 trillion and more than a thousand trillion. Don't try and imagine it, it is impossible. Raj Patel in his book The Value of Nothing writes:

... to borrow a trick from the brilliant essayist John Lancester, if you were to count a dollar per second, it would take twelve days to count a million, thirty-one years to count a billion, and for a trillion a thousand more fold, it'd take six times all recorded history.

Mind-boggling if you are on the minimum wage.

The deregulation of the global financial system opened up a casino economy. According to a US Federal Reserve report in the late 1990s:

...about 85 percent of dollar transactions were in cash at banks, supermarkets, gas stations, restaurants and the like... the trillions sloshing back and forth between countries, within and between corporations, and between large investors and entrepreneurs are transferred from one account to another through an electronic network.

(Richard Barnet and John Cavanagh “Electronic Money and the Casino Economy” in The Case Against the Global Economy)

Barnet and Cavanagh add that while “the number of electronic transfers amounts to only 2 percent of the total transfers”, yet they “involve five out of every six dollars that move in the world economy.” That was then. Now? Wow! Who knows?

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Gross National Product (GNP) are inventions: a construct by accountants and economists that “does not take account of the extraction of natural resources which it treats as income, rather than the depletion of an asset, which it is, and ignores transactions that are not conducted through money.”

It also ignores “much of the most important work in society...that which we do for ourselves within our homes, extended families, communities: childcare, cooking, cleaning, home repairs and similar.”. But it counts family breakdown and disease as economic booms - “divorce lawyer bills, moving costs, and two households where one existed before...”

It doesn't record the damage we do to the environment and other species, “over which we have dominion” according to biblical literalists and very materialistic Christian religious fundamentalists awaiting the rapture. We can do as we like unto the day of reckoning.

Human myth and literature, however, is full of many legends dealing with the consequences of greed and selfishness. The Israelites worshiping the golden calf; Jesus throwing the money changers out of the temple; King Midas turning everything he touched into gold, including his beloved daughter; Odysseus being tempted by the Greek Sirens' song to his potential doom and having to be restrained; Shylock in The Merchant of Venice wanting his pound of flesh; crooked lawyers in Dicken's Bleak House.

Then there is the simple honesty of children, unaware of the consequences of their actions who see things as they are in “The Emperor's New Clothes”. It is the innocent child who announces to the cowardly crowd of servile toadies that in fact the King had no clothes. Thank you Severn and Brittany for speaking out!

What is missing is how we got here - the origin and consequences of the mode and relations of production and ideologies that arise from them. In other words, the class nature of society. While fundamentalists might deny evolution and Darwin, they surely are the greatest proponents of social-Darwinism. The term “the survival of the fittest” was never actually used by Darwin in his Origin of Species, but adopted to justify the privilege, power and property of the owners of the means of production.

“The survival of the fittest”, like “nature red in tooth and claw”, is a concept that belongs to parasitic, competitive and individualistic capitalist society. They are insufficient to describe the natural world of coexistence and interdependence (symbiosis), that represents our future if we choose to make one.

Brilliant young people like Severn and Brittainy are right to be angry. Time is short for us to learn what is of real value and to act. They are right also to believe that “another world is possible”, one not based on profit driven endless production for production's sake and consumption in a finite world, but on sharing, cooperation, and real needs.

While the God of the Bible, after the flood, may have promised the 'fire next time', let us make sure it isn't the consequence of human produced global warming. Above all, we must not let the capitalist suits and their spin doctors. with their all consuming obsession with market forces, extinguish the fire in Brittany's heart.

And it's a big socialist HELLO...

... to our new friends at the Hobgoblin Network.

Thanks for the link, comrades. You might be interested in participating in Ecosocialist Aotearoa FB or email groups. The links are on the side of this blog. Please stay in touch.

Madmen, methane, and me

Madmen, methane and me

by Len Parker

There is an obvious irony and even hypocrisy in the fact that, while I worry about the impact of peak oil, climate change and global warming – and contemplate a possible 'perfect storm' with the eventual collapse of capitalism - I still drive a car on which I have a sticker: “Stop deep sea oil drilling.”

However, most people will agree, getting around a city the size of Auckland, picking people up and carrying materials without a car is a bit of a bummer with our present public transport system.

While it would seem the debate amongst most scientists is over regarding the human influence on global warming, there are still those who are yet to be convinced or are in denial. They will revolt only when we can no longer afford fuel to get to work (if they still have jobs). Equally as cynical, the little known Bolivian accords are more likely to take climate change more seriously and deliver more action than the current talk-fest Rio conference will.

Nevertheless, in this energy drive economy, the common understanding among most geophysicists and geologists is that the arrival of peak oil - oil that is easily accessible - is here and an undeniable reality, while the discovery of new sources has fallen behind demand. There are, however, vast quantities of less accessible hydrocarbons in rocks deep in the earth, and in the oil shales in Canada and elsewhere.

Very angry grizzly bears in Canada will tell you about the damage being done to their habitat as trucks fifty feet high and forty feet wide - the biggest in the world - deliver the mined shale to conveyor belts for processing, using vast amounts of energy to do so.

There are also enormous quantities of frozen methane (a potential alternative hydro-carbon fuel) buried in the permafrost in Siberia, and now bubbling up from the melting tundra. There is an even greater quantity (thousands of gigatonnes, as much as all the rest of the traditional fossil fuel deposits) in frozen water molecules deep in the rocks and sediment beneath the world's ocean floor, locked-up in the form of clathrates or gas-hydrates.

Methane is known to be a powerful greenhouse gas. If just 10% of the methane hydrates were to reach the atmosphere in a few years, it would be equivalent to raising the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere by a factor of 10. These reservoirs are extremely unstable - a slight increase in temperature and pressure can cause them to destabilize.

While David Archer, in his book The Long Thaw, thinks this is unlikely to happen any time soon, Mark Maslin points out in The Coming Storm: 

These reservoirs … pose a major risk as warming will heat up both the oceans and the permafrost and could cause ice surrounding the methane to melt, pumping hugh amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is 21 [Archer says 30] times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. If enough is released into the atmosphere it would raise temperatures even more rapidly, releasing still more gas-hydrates in a runaway greenhouse effect.

In fact, it could even trigger massive explosions with unknown consequences.

There have of course been numerous recorded "ice ages" known to geological science, and subsequent periods of warming with little ice ages. These have been attributed to various interactive causes, earth wobbles etc.

While scientists tend to be very conservative in their pronouncements, Archer concedes that:

The hothouse climate of 40 million years ago probably did not have much methane hydrate in it... The hydrates we have today probably grew in the cooler times more recently than that. If the earth returns to a hothouse climate, it seems inevitable that it would eventually lose most of that methane. It is an open question... Hydrate stability calculations suggest that hydrates could ultimately release as much carbon as the CO2 released from fossil fuels, doubling the long-term climate impact of global warming,

With most of these frozen hydrate deposits found deep beneath the sediment on the continental shelves, including that of New Zealand, why are we risking releasing methane into the atmosphere by such cavalier methods as drilling deep sea oil wells into the ocean floor?

Did methane play any part in the explosion in the BP well in the Gulf of Mexico?

Surprise, surprise! According to Maslin's map, there just happens to be a large deposit of frozen gas-hydrates off the East Coast of the North Island, in the area where a South American oil exploration company has contracted rights to drill an exploratory deep sea oil well.

This seems is to be in total disregard of the lessons learnt from the disastrous oil well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, the existence of the fault-line off our coast and the historic record of the 1931 Napier earthquake. This is also magnified by new irrefutable evidence of ocean warming from our own scientists and oceanographers, here in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Of course, there are those who only see dollar signs and have myopic short term vision - or perhaps see economic collapse from an energy crisis as a more immediate concern.

I mentioned this 'frozen fire' deposit to James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) when he was here recently to warn and hopefully convince us of the urgent need for action on climate change. He expresses this cogently and with great authority in his book Storms of My Grandchildren.

Subsequently, by chance, I picked up some throw-out books from the local library. One of these was a novel with the title Frozen Fire. One of the coauthors, Marianna Jameson, is a senior technical writer and editor in the aerospace, defense software and the environmental engineering industries. Interesting!

It is a horrendous novel of intrigue, greed, and national security. A maniacal privateer has an insane plan to mine and monopolise the frozen gas-hydrate from the ocean floor in the Caribbean, to out-flank and ruin the oil companies. Equally insane are the greenies out to destroy his plan, who - like the right-to-lifers who blow up abortion clinics - are responsible for a massive explosion that subsequently kills all the animal life in the sea and many of the people in the immediate region of the Caribbean and Florida coast. The world is saved eventually by methane-eating bacteria cultivated by a brilliant biologist.

I found this interesting, as the first patent on a living organism, leading to the controversial patenting of the human genome itself, was that given in the USA to Chakrabaty for a similar organism that eats oil.

Marianna Jameson's historic connections suggested to me that this madness and rivalry in the search for other sources of energy with a fossil fuel origin - rather than wind, wave and solar power – by mining the frozen methane from the ocean floor for profit and private gain may not be so far from the truth as to what is being planned. Paranoia, maybe?

With all the damage being done to our planet and environment, this seems to me even more reason why we need take all this seriously. We must act with speed and determination to prevent deep sea mining and fracking and challenge the profit driven ideology behind it. We must also challenge an economic system dependent on limitless growth, eternal frontiers and manifest destiny, before we are hit with the coming perfect storm.