Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IDN
BY JULIO GODOY*
BERLIN (IDN) – Catch 22, the title of the novel by U.S. author Joseph Heller, has become since the book’s publication in the early 1960s a synonym of for a no-win situation. The title refers to a fictive, absurd military rule, which in the novel states that soldiers who declare themselves insane must be healthy to do so and consequently have no excuse to fulfil their dangerous army missions. However, in its popular interpretation, catch 22 epitomises the perplexity of a situation in which whatever you do is wrong.
The present global crisis in its multidimensionality — environment, economy, food scarcity, hunger, and other forms of social injustice — is a catch 22 kind of situation. In order to forestall climate change, humankind has to reduce man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. At the same time, the recession affecting most of the industrialized world has forced governments to pour billions of dollars to prevent massive unemployment, and to rescue some of the very old industries — automobile, to name but one — that are the main culprits for causing climate change.
These rescue packages have drained resources from state finances that could otherwise have been used to manage the structural change needed to forestall climate change. Although the crisis has heralded the return of the state intervention in the economy, the state re-entering the scene is a weak, impotent and highly indebted. It is also a state whose actions during the past two decades contributed to erode the legitimacy of progressive taxation tariffs. The crisis has also increased the injustice of the tax systems — those who are paying the bills are the least able to do so.
It is conventional wisdom that in order to triumph over the economic crisis, it is urgent to stimulate international trade. But foreign trade, with its lengthy transports, by air or by sea, all fuelled with fossil combustibles, also contributes to climate change. Unless transport becomes carbon free, and this won’t happen tomorrow, this contribution shall remain important.
It is not a surprise therefore that despite all the talk about climate change and global warming, the most recent estimates of energy consumption still anticipate that oil, coal, and similar fossil fuels will provide up to 80 percent of energy supply by the year 2030. Were such alarming forecasts to become true, then average global temperatures would rise by up to six Celsius degrees, with all the unimaginable environmental consequences.
Climate change is also likely to reduce productivity in agriculture in developing countries, and thus contribute to increase the number of people, especially children, suffering of malnutrition. This is a conclusion agreed upon by numerous research institutes and organisations across the world. As if the present food supply conditions reigning in most developing countries were not dramatic enough, climate change is adding up to scarcity.
THE COLLATERAL DAMAGE
What to do against this collateral effect on climate change? Invest more in agriculture — in infrastructure essential for local farming in developing countries, for instance in irrigation systems, in roads and silos, and in the production of food locally consumed. But water, an important input in agriculture, is already insufficient in large regions of Africa, and is likely to become even scarcer, as a consequence of droughts caused by climate change. Again, many forms of food production, the breeding of cattle, or pigs, for instance, heavily contribute to climate change.
The estimates of the energy supply necessary to fuel economic growth in developing countries and to match their peoples’ reasonable development demands are so gigantic, that, in view of the environmental consequences of traditional energy generation, one can only gasp at the perspective. As the International Energy Agency estimates in its latest outlook, universal access to electricity could be achieved with an investment of 35 billion U.S. dollars per year during the next 20 years.
So far, the answer to this demand has been nuclear energy. But this answer generates new technical and environmental problems, which even the most advanced nations on earth have been so far unable to resolve. The alternative — the use of renewable sources, such as sun and wind — has proven to be performing in the industrialized world.
For instance, thermal solar generators, which exceed by far the efficiency and generation capacity of photo voltaic, have been successfully in function in the U.S. for more than two decades. Recently, new thermal solar generators have started operating in Spain. But again, renewable energy demands massive investments. If the recent history of privatisation of public services in developing countries is any indication, private capital cannot be an appropriate source of such investments.
All this begs the question: Who is going to pay the bills, either to meet environmentally sound development demands or to avoid humanitarian catastrophes caused by climate change — catastrophes that are similar, or even worse, to those of Biafra in the early 1970s or of the Sudan throughout the last decade?
Most states in Africa, Asia, and Latin America continue to be financially and institutionally weak, and thus unable to carry out the enormous tasks that lay ahead. The industrialized countries, liable of having created the environmental conditions that have led to global warming, continue so far owning their responsibility. Some leaders are calling for the creation of a new UN environmental agency, in charge of putting into practice the complex political measures needed to counter climate change. Is yet another bureaucracy the only way out of this catch 22? (IDN-InDepthNews/17.11.09)
Copyright © 2009 IDN-InDepthNews Service
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*Julio Godoy is a free-lance journalist contributing among others to Inter Press Service news agency and Tierramérica.
*This article appears in November issue of GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES, a monthly magazine for international cooperation, produced by Global Cooperation Council in partnership with IPS-Inter Press Service Europa.
