OP Rana

Capital game in climate deal

By OP Rana (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-12-17 07:59

Let's travel back in time to Rio de Janeiro 1992, where developed countries promised to pay damages for their past sins. But did they? No. They kept negotiating to defer their obligations. So what is the guarantee that they will keep their word this time, when the pledge is potential, not binding?

There is vital link between Chris Huhne's remark that the deal would give industry more confidence to invest in low-carbon economies and the US' statement that most of the climate fund would come from the private sector. The global economic crisis is not yet over and the world, developed countries in particular, are looking for a profitable way out of it.

Mitigation of climate change, like the mitigation of any crises, has become a game of profit. The private sector will contribute to the climate fund only if it is certain of making a profit from its "investment". And if it does invest and make a profit, it would want the climate crisis to continue. Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek puts this game in the right perspective in his book, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce: " far from endangering capitalism, a widespread environmental catastrophe may well invigorate it, opening and hitherto unheard-of spaces for capitalist investment."

Billions of people across the world have been cajoled into believing in the "eco-friendly" activities of multinationals and big industries, which in fact have caused, and are causing, the greatest harm to planet Earth. Corporate houses know the advantages of "going green". A "green tag" helps them to fool the people into believing they are the saviors of the environment and to continue making more profits.

"The bourgeoisie (capitalism) cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society ," Marx said. "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere."

But capitalist pundits say Marxism is dead. Even if it is, "the naked emperor continues to haunt us in new clothes, chief among them ecologism", says Zizek. It is to counter this "ecologism" (or environmentalism) that capitalism is trying to "nestle" on climate change, because, as Zizek says: " the ideological version of radical capitalism which is emerging as hegemonic out of the present crisis is that of a socially responsible 'eco-friendly capitalism'." And Cancun has prepared its "nest".

The author is a senior editor at China Daily.

(China Daily 12/17/2010 page9)