The Zapatistas journey through Europe is well underway!
The Zapatistas’ “Journey for life” in Europe is well underway. After the arrival of their first group, “Squad 421”, last June in Vigo, the “Extemporaneous” delegation touched down on September 15.
This delegation is made up of more than 170 Zapatistas and a number of members of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI). From Vienna, Austria, they started spreading throughout the continent, heading towards wherever they were invited. Until December 15 they will meet with grassroots movements, collectives, groups and organisations that fight for a better world, while sharing experiences, plans and visions.
The Zapatistas split Europe into three zones, and, subdivided into delegations of five members each, they spread throughout the countries in each particular zone for three to four weeks before moving on to the next.
Sweden was one of the countries in the first zone and hosted a Zapatista delegation from September 23 to October 9. Throughout this period the Zapatistas met, listened to and talked with many different groups and organisations in Gothenburg, Jönköping, Stockholm, Uppsala, Östersund and Malmö.
These groups are active in Sweden on a variety of different topics including human rights, migration, labour rights, climate, feminism and indigenous populations. The meetings included presentations both by local groups and by the Zapatistas, on their history, struggles and actions, as well as Q&A sessions on empowerment and practices.
DiEM25 was represented at all times by members of the local Spontaneous Collectives (DSCs), who participated in the organising of the visit as well as in meetings and events themselves.
On October 9 we accompanied the delegation to Copenhagen, where we met with the Zapatista delegation that had been visiting Denmark at the same time. An amazingly fruitful and life-changing experience ended in the best way possible. Inspired by revolutionary internationalism, representatives of grassroots movements in Denmark, Sweden and Norway sat together and talked with the Zapatistas about the experience gained during their visit and how we can together make our movement stronger and conduct our struggles more effectively.
The Zapatistas expressed their hope and optimism due to the multitude of groups in Sweden that resist and fight for alternative visions. Commenting on the fact that all of of these groups – most of which are small – fight for the same broad causes and share the same goals, they suggested that they find ways to forge alliances in order to build a bigger, stronger coalition that will be vital in bringing about the change we all want to see.
Soon, DiEM25 members in the Netherlands and in Portugal will share their experiences from the Zapatistas’ visit to their countries.
COP26 is doomed, and the hollow promise of ‘net zero’ is to blame
Make no mistake, the money is here, if the world wants to use it,” said Mark Carney, the former Bank of England governor who today serves as UN climate envoy, while also representing an alliance of financiers sitting on a pile of $130tn worth of assets. So, what does the world want? If only humanity had the power to organise a global poll based on one-human-one-vote, such a species-wide referendum would undoubtedly deliver a clear answer: “Do whatever it takes to stop emitting carbon now!” Instead, we have a decision-making process culminating in the colossal fiasco currently unfolding in Glasgow.
The failure of Cop26 reflects our failed democracies on both sides of the Atlantic. President Biden arrived in Glasgow as his people back in Washington were pushing his infrastructure bill through Congress – an exercise that decoupled the bill from any serious investment in renewables and funded an array of carbon-emitting infrastructure such as expanded roads and airports. Meanwhile in the European Union, the rhetoric may be painted in bright green, but the reality is dark brown – with even Germany looking forward to copious amounts of Russian natural gas in exchange of green-lighting the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The EU should be creating a pan-European Renewable Energy Union, but alas our leaders are not even debating this idea.
There are three reasons Cop26 is proving such a spectacular debacle. The first reason is a planet-wide collective action problem over “free-riding”. Large businesses, as well as states, take a leaf out of St Augustine’s prayer, “Lord please make me chaste but not just yet”. Everyone prefers a planet on which no one emits carbon to a planet that sizzles. But everyone also prefers to delay paying the cost of transition if they can get away with it. If the rest of the planet does the right thing, the planet is saved, even if you selfishly postpone your own conversion to environmental probity. And if the rest of the planet does not do the right thing, why be the one sucker who does?
The second reason is a global coordination failure. In one sense, Carney is correct: mountain ranges of cash are lying idly in the global financial system, its ultra-wealthy owners keen to invest it in low-carbon activities. But a private investment in, say, green hydrogen will only return profits if many other investors invest in it too – and so the investors all sit around waiting for each other to be the first. Meanwhile, corporations, communities and states join this waiting game, unwilling to take the risk of committing to green hydrogen until big finance does. Tragically, there is no global coordinator to match the available money, technologies and needs.
The third reason is simply: capitalism. It has always gained pace through the incessant commodification of everything, beginning with land, labour and technology before spreading to genetically modified organisms, and even a woman’s womb or an asteroid. As capitalism’s realm spread, price-less goods turned into pricey commodities. The owners of the machinery and the land necessary for the commodification of goods profited, while everyone else progressed from the wretchedness of the 19th century working class to the soothing fantasies of mindless petit-bourgeois consumerism.
Everything that was good was commodified – including much of our humanity. And the bad externalities that the same production process generated were simply released into the atmosphere. To power the capitalist juggernaut, carbon stored for millennia in trees and under the surface was plundered. For two centuries immense wealth – and corresponding human misery – was produced by exploitative processes that depleted “free” natural capital, carbon in particular. Workers around the world are now paying the cost to nature that the capitalist market never bore.
Free-marketeers would like us to believe that business has now yielded to science, and is ready and willing to step into the void of government inaction. We must not believe this for a moment. Yes, Carney is right that the money for the belated green transition is available, and it is ample. Those who possess it will undoubtedly invest it to supply, say, green hydrogen if we, society, pay them to do so. But at the same time, they will not voluntarily cease production processes that continue releasing carbon into the atmosphere.
This is why polluters adore net zero targets: because they are a brilliant cover for not restricting emissions. In exchange for non-verifiable offsets, they are allowed to continue plundering the planet’s remaining stored carbon, until the point arrives when their marginal private cost surpasses their revenue from the last unit sold. By cynically placing net zero at its centre, Cop26 became nothing more than an expensive cover-up for continued toxic emissions. Hiding behind Cop26, the great and the good lie to the young, lie to vulnerable people and even lie to themselves by repeating the truth that the “money is there” to be invested in the planet’s salvation.
What needs to be done? Two things at the very least. First, a complete shutdown of coalmines and new oil and gas rigs. If governments can lock us down to save lives during a pandemic, they can shut down the fossil fuel industry to save humanity. Second, we need a global carbon tax, to increase the relative price of everything that releases more carbon, and from which all proceeds should be returned to the poorer members of our species.
To earn a shot at rising to the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced, we must first confront both the funders and the owners of the fossil fuel industries. Though this clash will not guarantee our future, it is a necessary condition for us to have one.
This article was originally published by The Guardian.
Photo by Piyush Priyank on Unsplash
What is at stake after Berlin’s referendum for the expropriation of big corporate landlords
It was the mid-1990s and Berlin was suffering a fiscal crisis. Neoconservatism was the dominating ideology, spreading entrepreneurialism as the new mantra for urban development, preaching structural urban reforms to turn cities into attractive sites for international investment. This was the economic-political ambience, in which the privatisation of the city’s State-owned housing stock was presented as a no-brainer.
Years later, the no-brainer has proved how massive a failure it was. It led to an exponential increase in rents, mainly affecting lower income households, without leading to any improvement of the housing stock.
In January 2019, in view of skyrocketing rents and under pressure by social movements, the city’s government approved a five-year (2020-2025) rent-freeze, despite landlords’ fiery opposition and Angela Merkel’s federal government’s hostility. The so-called Mietendeckel was passed in January 2020 and came into effect on February 23 2020. It didn’t last long: in April 2021, Germany’s highest court ruled it unconstitutional.
But citizens refused to go away quietly. Deutsche Wohnen & Co enteignen, a campaign for a referendum in favour of the expropriation of big corporate landlords already underway since 2018, received a massive boost. The proposal would socialise 240,000 units, owned by 12 big corporate landlords, each having in its portfolio more than 3,000 apartments in the state of Berlin.
Big corporate landlords in an unequal property structure
It’s strange how normalised the workings of speculators has become. Investment funds, vulture capital, banks, insurance companies and other professional financial market players: these are some of the actors investing massively in commercial real estate around the world, but who are also active in the housing market – even more so after the financial collapse of 2008, which created unprecedented opportunities for big capital to buy cheap, fix, and resell at a much higher price.
Berlin’s housing market proved highly attractive for these companies due to the potential of a collapsing property structure to yield profit out of rent extraction. As for the ”buy it, fix it, sell it” scheme, the “fix it” part was ignored. In 2019, the total number of properties owned by the biggest corporate landlords was 240,000, all privatised after 2000 and still crumbling.
These companies distort the already extremely volatile and speculative property structure of Berlin, at the expense of tenants. According to a report published by Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung in 2019:
- 16,5% of the total stock belongs to financial market investors,
- 25,1% is distributed among big private owners,
- 17% is distributed among small property owners,
- 16% belongs to the six state-owned housing companies of Berlin,
- 15,3% belongs to homeowners with one or two properties,
- 10% belongs to housing co-operatives,
- Another 20.000 belong to the church and charitable foundations.
It will be difficult to ignore a request made by such a clear majority.
Those against
Prior to the referendum, the government of Berlin, led by the Social Democrats (SPD), bought an estimated 15,000 homes back from Deutsche Wohnen, the biggest corporate player in the Berlin housing market. Some media sources announced this as a victory for the people and a retreat by the government. It was neither.
The purchase turned into a key argument for the government against the referendum, suggesting that it was unnecessary since politicians were already doing their job to socialise properties. Additionally, the city bought these properties back at market prices, even though their condition was worse than it was before their initial privatisation. This was not expropriation, but a State intervention in favour of big capital.
The campaign, for its part, clearly spelled out the meaning of expropriation (enteignen) and specifically Article 15 of the constitution, according to which “Land… may be transferred to common property… for social purposes.”
There were two main arguments coming from those opposing expropriation – that is, the CDU (Christian Democrats), SPD and FDP (liberals). The first is that it scares investors away by sending a message that the State is expropriating property. After housing, what would be socialised next?
Secondly, they argue that the proposal would also expropriate housing co-ops (Genossenschaften). The campaign, for their part, insists that cooperatives serve the public interest by providing adequate housing at low prices and are therefore excluded from the proposal.
The soft spots
One fourth of the population, according to estimations, was unable to vote: Berlin residents without EU citizenship. This partly explains why, despite the high turnout in real numbers and the high vote share in favor of the referendum (59,1%), it still remained low considering the fact that 84% of the total population of the city are tenants. Many of those tenants, living in investment-starved, dilapidated housing, simply had no right to vote.
The “Right to the City” group, an English-speaking working group of Deutsche Wohnen & Co enteignen, has tried to include migrants in the campaign. Although insisting that they cannot speak on behalf of all migrant groups in Berlin, they attempt to represent immigrant experiences in accessing housing and thereby add diversity to the campaign.
There is also no single, mature and active tenant union to provide the organising needed for a long-lasting struggle against corporate landlords, despite low home ownership rates. The Berlin Tenants’ Association, with 180,000 members, does little more than providing legal assistance to members. In 2020, the Tenants’ Union of Berlin was founded, with a more militant mission: providing a long-term base for organising, testing new ways of contending housing disputes such as direct action and rent strikes, safeguarding tenants’ rights but also tenant agency and sharing knowledge for the purpose of self-empowerment of the tenants. The MGB seeks more radical action, but there is still a long way to go.
Organise, convince, expropriate!
The counter-arguments were not enough to overturn the wave of civic rage unleashed after years of speculation and exploitation at the expense of the poor.
This was due to the impeccable organisation of the campaign, crushing defamation. The main organising body, primarily charged with resource management (coming from voluntary contributions), ensured access to decision-making for all participating members. The main executing bodies were organised at neighbourhood level, divided into sub-groups (for legal support, awareness raising, collective participation etc.), while the whole campaign was not geared around large-scale, central protests but into local, decentralised actions, organised by grassroots action groups.
Areas dominated by suspicion of the new left and marked by a strong right-wing presence, such the district of Marzahn – a working-class neighborhood but stronghold of the far-right AfD – were tackled by militant segments of the campaign who charged themselves with the difficult task of fitting in and helping raise local awareness. For example, activist groups from the guaranteed pro-referendum neighbourhood of Friedrichschain made it their job to fill in information gaps with their field actions in Marzahn.
In total, 1,035,950 people (56,1%) voted in favor of expropriation and 715,698 (40,86%) opposed it. Central districts, like Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, voted “yes” overwhelmingly, as did the majority of voters in Marzahn.
There were only two districts in which a majority was against expropriation: Steglitz-Zehlendorf and Reinickendorf, both strongholds of the CDU with high levels of homeownership.
The referendum explicitly calls for expropriation of the stock at below-market prices.
Landlords’ defiance and the strategically elusive demand of the campaign
On Monday, a day after the referendum, the firm Akelius transferred its Berlin portfolio of 13,700 properties to Heimstaden. On that same day, Vonovia, the second largest corporate player, acquired a majority stake in Deutsche Wohnen stock.
That purchase took place for two main reasons. First, Vonovia believes that the expropriation will not take place. Second, it hopes that if the city does socialise units, it will do so at market prices, and such a transaction would be highly profitable. That would violate the essence of the referendum, which explicitly calls for the expropriation of the stock at below-market prices.
The referendum did not come together with a pre-crafted proposed legislation on behalf of the campaigners. This is because in 2014, a similar law put on the ballot was legally discredited, leading to the cancellation of the whole campaign. This time the organisers preferred a different approach, so as to not jeopardise the referendum taking place. The city government, therefore, is responsible for turning the referendum’s text into law.
Several committees in both the Federal Parliament (Bundestag) and the Senate of Berlin confirm that the expropriation request is legally valid and compatible with the constitution. If the call for expropriation is followed to the letter and to the spirit, companies will still be compensated, but not at market prices. The State will then have to set the compensation and decide which entity is to manage the socialised housing stock.
Many activists have pinned their hopes on the Bezirke, the district-level councils that played a key role in preventing evictions and controlling rents. The Bezirke, nominating leftists and activists, usually offer the strongest tenants’ protection because of two key tools:
- the Vorkaufsrecht, which gives a Bezirk a right-of-first-refusal on properties,
- the Milieuschutzgebiet, which means that in the poorest areas with larger swathes of people in need of social protection, the conversion of a tenure into property (mainly the conversion of rented houses into privately owned properties) cannot take place without the approval of the Bezirk.
But the campaigners have defence enough. Their intention is to push for the expropriation to be implemented, and they are focused on the district level and local representatives to enforce the popular will in the city’s Senate.
However, it is the skeptical SPD that holds a majority both in the city and in the federal level. Yet they cannot govern alone. The composition of the new administration, whether it will be a conservative or progressive coalition, will play a key role.
According to the activists, the law can be drafted by the spring of 2022 and the expropriation will cost between 9 and 10 billion euros. If their local representatives or the government try to bypass them, they will call for a new referendum, this time spelling out their 21-page long legislative proposal. A vote in favour would mean that the proposal would become law, bypassing the parliament altogether.
What does the referendum result mean to housing activists everywhere?
The decision of Berliners to expropriate corporate landlords will surely be a point of reference for housing movements everywhere. The housing crisis is raging worldwide. Since the financial collapse of 2008, housing precarity is eating its way into the core of societies, unsettling even those defining themselves as part of the middle class who were previously protected by the alleged robustness of their housing system. Now these too are collapsing under the pressure of finance and speculation.
Varoufakis on Merkel: What he said and how Bild distorted it
Yesterday, German tabloid Bild published an interview with DiEM25 co-founder Yanis Varoufakis on the topic of the Greek debt crisis and Angela Merkel’s legacy.
In typical fashion, Bild reproduced the usual lies and smears regarding Varoufakis’ time as Minister of Finance in Greece in 2015, and had a few choice words in describing him personally.
Varoufakis – and all of us at DiEM25 – wear these with pride, coming from a publication that is notoriously deceitful, racist, sexist, sensationalist and, as recently revealed by The New York Times, run in a sexual harassment-riddled culture.
Since Varoufakis’ answers were heavily edited, we have decided to provide them in full below.
BILD: Will we ever get our money back?
Yanis Varoufakis: If you are one of the German or Greek oligarchs who benefitted immensely from the Greek state’s bailout, you have already received gargantuan returns – and you will receive even more in the future. Alas, if you a German or a Greek worker or middleclass person, you will be paying, and paying and paying…
BILD: In 2015 you told us that it was stupid to throw all these billions to a black hole. Do you think the same today?
Yanis Varoufakis: In 2015, Greece’s national income was at €175 billion while its state’s debt was at €309 billion. What I told you then was that the new bailout loan would fall into the black hole of Greece’s deepening bankruptcy. As we speak, Greece’s national income is struggling to reach €168 billion (even after a good tourist season) while our state’s debt is approaching €400 billion. I fear I was right.
BILD: Your last words to Merkel and Schäuble. Mrs Merkel, Mr Schäuble, to paraphrase Tacitus, you succeeded in turning Greece into a Desert and then you called it Peace. In conclusion, who was right? Her or him?
Yanis Varoufakis: Merkel wasted her enormous political capital to maintain ‘business as usual’ for as long as she was Chancellor, leaving a mess behind for her successors. Schäuble followed a good instinct when he advocated a drastic change (Grexit) but had no plan either for forcing it or for what would come after. In short, they were both wrong, each in a different way.
Your NHS Needs You!
While generations of us have been lovingly patched up by our NHS, proud to fund it with our taxes, successive UK governments have been quietly privatising it.
Decades of academic research, and the brave campaigning of doctors and nurses, has exposed how this stealth privatisation plot smuggled in private providers and US corporations while selling off NHS land and buildings.
Now, public health experts are sounding the alarm that the current Health and Care Bill is likely to be the nail in the coffin for our cherished public health service.
They are warning that the Bill will pave the way for the English NHS to be replaced by the profit-making American system, in which private health providers are incentivized to cut and deny care to increase profits.
The Bill is rapidly making its way through Parliament, set to become law early next year — so we do not have much time.
This is why today we are launching a national campaign to save the NHS. It’s called Your NHS Needs You! and is supported by unions, campaign groups, doctors, celebrities, and MPs from Labour and the Greens.
The campaign exposes the truth about what is happening to the NHS, and invites you to take 5 actions to save the NHS listed on our website yournhsneedsyou.com
What can I do?
Take our five actions to stop the bill, and build the campaign to renationalise our NHS before it’s too late.
These Five Actions are just the beginning. If enough people do them, we lay the ground for other kinds of action, from marches to strikes.
The campaign is currently supported by a long list of actors, comedians, writers, and politicians who have recorded videos for us.
They include: Brian Eno, Russell Brand, Jo Brand, Frankie Boyle, Steve Coogan, Stephen Fry, David Tennant, Romesh Ranganathan, Shappi Khorsandi, Marcus Brigstocke, Rachel Parris, Emma Kennedy, Kerry Godliman, Josie Long, Jess Fostekew, Cariad Lloyd, Suzi Ruffell, Jen Brister, Joe Lycett, Robin Ince, Angela Barnes, James Acaster, Ed Gamble, Lee Ridley, Tom Allen, Graeme Garden, Deborah Francis-White, Saffron Burrows, Juliet Stevenson, Samuel West, Vicky Mclure, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Charlotte Church, Clean Bandit, UB40, Captain Ska, Reverend and the Makers, Yanis Varoufakis, Peter Stefanovich, Lemn Sissay, Michael Rosen, Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Becky Long-Bailey, Barry Gardiner, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Dawn Butler, Richard Burgon, Margaret Greenwood, Caroline Lucas, and Amelia Womack.
The campaign is also supported by Unite, DPAC, People’s Assembly, EveryDoctor, and We Own It. And new groups are lending their support each day.
MeRA25 MP brutally assaulted by riot police during peaceful demonstration
Ιn many ways, it was a typical day in Greece under the Mitsotakis government: Any and all protests, marches and gatherings, being met with severe crackdown from heavily-armoured riot police.
What has also become “the norm”, is that the police does not shy away from using excessive force even against Members of Parliament.
MeRA25, being the only parliamentary party to have a constant presence in civil protests, marches and gatherings, was once more on the receiving end of this treatment. In this particular case Maria Apatzidi, our youngest MP, was graced with a black eye and bruised arm for her “audacity” to question riot police about their use of excessive force against peaceful demonstrators.
Photo (c) George Kontarinis/Eurokinissi
What was not “business as usual”, was the cause of the protest. Just the day before, Greek police was engaged in a car chase. The driver of the car, suspected of driving a stolen vehicle, would not respond to calls from the DIAS police to stop the car. When they finally cornered him, (ignoring direct orders from HQ to abandon the chase) they fired no less then 36 bullets towards the vehicle, killing one of the passengers on the spot (all of 18 years old) and severely injuring the other two (16 and 20 years old.). This unheard-of practice forced the Ministry of Civil Protection to immediately order the detention of the policemen involved, and begin a rapid investigation in the how’s and why’s.
Other government officials were not impressed. Minister of Agriculture Adonis Georgiadis, known for his extreme far-right ideas and a regular in TV panels 24/7, 365/y, rushed to congratulate the mafia-style spray of bullets as “exemplary work”, thus signaling that there is going to be an “understanding” from the part of the government when the investigation reaches its conclusion.
This event by itself is a worrying sign of a western democracy distancing itself from the separation of powers, a vital component of a democratic state. The fact that policemen have come to repeatedly beat MPs, their superiors, without fear of consequences, is even more worrying, and even more telling.
MeRA25 will never “get used” to this. We will continue to be present whenever peaceful demonstrators demand social justice, government accountability and a functioning democracy.
And will not stop until all these become “a typical day in Greece”.
Our Campaign Accelerator programme is now open for applications
You can now join our Campaign Accelerator programme. The deadline to apply: November 1, by the end of the day! Just fill out the form!
Campaign Accelerator is our incubator for grassroots activism.
Here’s how it works: You tell us about a local issue that’s making you angry. If we select your issue, we’ll help you build a campaign to tackle it.
You execute the plan and remain in control of your campaign at all times.
Are you up to the challenge? Let’s do this! Click the link below to get started. The form will be open until November 1, by the end of the day.
Apply for Campaign Accelerator.
Are you up to the challenge?
Let’s do this! Let’s build a campaign together.
Still got questions? Check out a presentation of a winning Campaign Accelerator project.
Read more about Campaign Accelerator. Or send a message to [email protected] !
PS That deadline again: November 1 
COP-OFF — DiEM25’s Alternative Climate Conference, Nov 14 – 16
As our planet’s clock approaches midnight, world leaders are set to converge next month in Glasgow at COP26 in order to come up with new excuses, new symbolic targets and new ways to silence the real progressive voices who oppose them.
Climate change is real, it’s here, and it’s an emergency. But history has shown us that those who were supposed to lead us out of this crisis are so blinded by capital and powerful private interests that they’ve decided Earth itself is a small price to pay for the yachts, mansions, private jets and record profits of the 1%. They will gather, mingle over dinner and drinks, and preach their commitment to insufficient goals and targets. Then fail to meet even those.
We refuse to sit in the back while no one drives. This November, join Noam Chomsky, Yanis Varoufakis, Caroline Lucas and many other progressives in saying: COP OFF!
On November 14, 15 and 16, DiEM25 will gather progressives from around the world to discuss some of the most pressing issues of our time, with ideas you won’t hear at COP26. Why? Because of the danger they pose to business-as-usual: real change, real goals and real solutions. Check out the full programme below.
Full programme:
Sunday, November 14
18:00: Measuring and powering progress: Shattering paradigms of growth
Guests: Jason Hickel (economic anthropologist), Max Ajl (author)
Moderator: Defne Dalkara
20:00: Social change NOW: News from the ground
Guests:,Marijn van der Geer (Extinction Rebellion), Zack Exley (political consultant), Johannes Fehr (MERA25, DiEM25’s electoral wing in Germany)
Moderator: Antonia Jakobi
Monday, November 15
16:00: Justice for all beings: Animals and the green transition
Guests: Steve Best (philosopher), Christine Teunissen (Party for the Animals NL), Anita Krajnc (Animal Save Movement)
Moderator: Dušan Pajović
18:00: Same storm, different boats: The Global South
Guests: Harpreet K Paul (Perspectives on a Global Green New Deal), Joenia Wapichana (Congresswoman Brazil), Manon Aubry MEP (Global Alliance for a Green New Deal)
Moderator: Lucas Febraro
20:00: Visionary realism: A green future beyond capitalism
Guests: Yanis Varoufakis (economist, co-founder of DiEM25), Ann Pettifor (economist), Noam Chomsky (philosopher, Advisory panel member of DiEM25)
Tuesday 16.11.2021
16:00: Wars on life: Armed forces and the climate emergency
Guests: Lorah Steichen (National Priorities Project), Medea Benjamin (Co-founder of Code Pink), Doug Weir (Director of Conflict and Environment Observatory)
Moderator: Amir Kiyaei
18:00: Green New Deal(s): The next era of politics
Guests: Dušan Pajović (Green New Deal for Europe campaign coordinator for DiEM25), Caroline Lucas (Green Party UK), Paola Vega Rodriguez (Costa Rican political scientist)
20:00: A feminist ecology: Destroying the gender hierarchy
Guests: Sabrina Fernandes (sociologist)
Moderator: Maja Pelević
COP OFF: DiEM25’s Alternative Climate Conference, will be livestreamed on DiEM25’s YouTube channel. Click here for the event page.
COP26: Johnson & Extinction vs Progress
The Last Carbon Problem
We know we have to reduce CO2 emissions to reach a Net Zero CO2 emissions steady state, in which whatever CO2 we do emit into the atmosphere is either matched by its return to the lithosphere, or, by its long-term sequestration within the biosphere in such a way that is doesn’t cause further heating. But we don’t know any scalable way of doing this.
We only know one practical way to do this, by rewilding. But planetary space for it is finite and limited by the need to set aside land for agriculture — to feed ourselves.
We know that if we move to plant-centred diets, we’ll need less land for food production. This would make space to rewild about 30% of the planet, still allow us to feed ourselves, and take out about half of the atmospheric CO2 emitted to date. But this still leaves both the problem of the other half of the CO2 already up there, and the emissions we make between now and the achievement of a zero emissions steady state. Current global emission rates continue to break records, and we have no certainty about if and when “peak” emissions will occur.
So, the key fact is this: whatever CO2 we emit during carbon descent, offset by maximal rewilding, will determine steady state concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere after transition, and the levels of existential risk we’ll have to live with until such a time when we manage to invent some (currently unknown) workable method of taking atmospheric CO2 out at scale, or until we are beaten to it and have an extinction event. This means we face not just the challenge of making a transition, but the challenge of doing so:
- using absolutely minimal new emissions to effect the descent,
- through focus on absolute zero, not net zero (because we’ll need every bit of land available just to deal with a part of what we have already put up there), and,
- so as to maximise the quantum of global land (and sea) that can be set aside (forever) for rewilding efforts.
This is actually about efficiency (delicious), for survival.
Emissions Efficiency and the Loci of Future Production
The geographic location of food, power, manufacturing production, etc, has always borne relation to cash-cost drivers, and the same holds for carbon emission costs once accounted for properly: whole life emissions costs, such as emissions associated with embodied costs in production, costs in use and end of life costs associated with disposal, recycling/upcycling etc. If, as and when, these drivers take effect we’ll see a wholesale change to the current geographic disposition of global production.
While the embodied emissions costs will tend to militate in favour of continuing to make food or manufactured products wherever they are currently made, once we start to account for whole lifecycle emissions costs then this new geography of production will start emerging. Most obviously if the raw materials and the consumers, or upcyclers, of a product are all in one country, this will militate in favour of making things in that same place.
The emissions efficiency principles involved will hold for everything. So we’ll tend to have solar production in places like the Sahara (where PV or Concentrated Solar embodied and end of life emissions are the same as in the UK, but energy outputs are 2x or 3x higher (intercontinental distribution losses are only about 10%)), rewilding efforts would focus on the Amazon first (rather than our back gardens, since ecological intensities are vastly greater there), and we’ll localise our economies, with local seasonal food for local markets and re or upcycling of stuff at the locus of consumption and waste flows, namely locally.
The new patterning will have nothing to do with national borders or societal effects, just the science based drivers of emissions reductions.
A Global Plan, Global Regulation and A Global Social Settlement
To be efficient we need a climate and ecology-based global plan within which to channel our (national/ regional/ local/ street based) efforts. There isn’t one now and, though it will suit vested interests, everyone doing their well meaning/ unknowing / unplanned best is just not going to be it since much of what we do will just be creating the wrong assets in the wrong locations and, more fundamentally, the lack of an agreed, science based-plan against and within which to draw up national/ regional/ local/ neighbourhood/ street-based plans will continue to allow those with no interest in the common good to muck things up (usually while claiming otherwise).
Alongside, or nested within a science based Global Plan, we’re also going to need some black and white Global Regulation to stop the most appalling stuff outright. However lovely UK plans and regulations might be (dream on), if Bolsonaro’s corporates keep taking down the Amazon, or the Canadians keep at it with the tar sands, or if the UK government keeps licensing development of new oil fields etc, we’re all up the creek…we need some basic global do’s and don’ts.
Of course, there will also be new “winners” and “losers” flowing from implementation of any emission plans and regulations, particularly so when really driven hard at minimising Last Carbon. And if we are going to get different peoples across the globe to sign up to these, we are going to need to put together matching arrangements for compensation. We’re going to need a Global Social Settlement of some kind and it will need to be sufficient to help and allow developing countries to develop and to persuade wealthy countries to consume less. Without an acceptable Settlement for all, we’ll get nowhere.
This is all bloody tricky, but that doesn’t stop it being what is needed.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (“UNFCCC”), the Emissions Target, and Progress to Date
The UNFCCC treaty was agreed in 1994, to “prevent dangerous human interference in the climate system.” The success yardstick is whether we manage to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change so that, in turn, we can ensure food production and sustainable development.
While all Parties committed to work towards this objective, the UK as an “Annex II” Party, (a developed country) also committed to provide financial and technical support to other developing countries and to those with economies in transition, both to reflect historic responsibilities for climate emergency and the need for development.
Science, unadulterated by politics, perhaps exemplified by the Tyndall Centre and the group of (UK plus 1 Chinese) universities that underpin it, is telling us we need CO2 emissions reductions at 15% per annum from now until 2030 to try to keep global heat lift to 1.5%, to stand a chance of avoiding the worst of the effects of higher heat levels, and the potential for runaway feedbacks.
A Conference of the Parties (“COP”) has taken place every year since the 1994 treaty was signed to try to make progress. But, so unsuccessful have efforts been to reach a cohesive Global Agreement that at the “Paris COP 21” in 2015, it was agreed that each country would simply offer up its own Nationally Determined Contribution (“NDCs”), of whatever kind, and then try and improve on them every 5 years so, no cohesion…no plan.
Alongside commitments to national emission reductions, it was also agreed at Paris that the NDCs of Annex II countries would set out contributions to Developing Countries and those with Economies in Transition, amounting collectively to $100 billion per year by 2020. In this regard it is of critical relevance to note both the poverty of the $100 billion target rate and, further, the gap between on the ground implementations enabled through the fund, and the pledge rate. The pledge rate is well below the $100billion per year, and the pledges aren’t being fulfilled.
The commitments made at Paris, if implemented, would still leave us in a lot of trouble, with a heat trajectory likely heading for between 2.1 and 3.5 degrees. Unfortunately, relative to these commitments, actual global reduction implementation will put us on course for a much, much higher lift, since we collectively keep on failing to do what we say we are going to do….we are in for at least 4 degrees, with huge Last Carbon concentrations we can do nothing about.
This is the stuff of extinction.
Johnson’s COP26 Contribution
Johnson’s “10 point plan” for a “Green Industrial Revolution” promises a 78% reduction in UK emissions levels on those of 1990, by 2035, and is predicated on a claimed 43% in emissions reduction to date. So, the new claim is suggesting 35% further reductions over the next 14 years – a rate of about 2.5% emissions reduction per year.
This is all rubbish.
Johnson (along with everyone else) uses an IPCC framework for measuring and presenting national emissions that focuses on emissions flowing from national energy production. This framework represents emissions from nations with services dominated economies (all wealthy developed nations) as considerably lower than would be the case if national emissions were charted by national consumption. A study commissioned by the WWF, researched and produced by a team at Leeds University, reported in April 2021 that, when measured by consumption, the UK managed an emissions reduction of about 15% over the period between 1990 and 2016,
So, the UK has actually achieved roughly a 0.5% reduction per year to date, and using a rough pro rata calculation we can see that Johnson’s plans going forward will amount to reducing emissions at a rate of about 0.9% per year over the 14 years period of his plan, when based on national consumption. On this basis, it looks like the UK will be making “real” emission reductions at about 1/15 of the speed needed. Unfortunately there is another problem with this trajectory.
It assumes that the spending rate Johnson outlines, (between £12 billion and £48 billion over the period, call it £30 billion overall or £2 billion per year), can effect reductions at the rate he promises. The first problem with this is that his plan focuses on reducing emissions flowing from energy production, the easier side of the emissions equation, rather than the more difficult and much more expensive business of reducing emissions flowing from consumption which his plan scarcely addresses at all.
Two points of reference to exemplify the spending rate problem:
- investment in funds to insulate homes and public buildings at £1 billion is posited in Johnson’s plan. “Residential Retrofit”, a book by Marion Baeli, provides 20 one-off construction case studies, of varying age and size, for the sake of argument typifying the UK pre 1980 housing stock. The average cost of the insulation element in the retrofits studied is £35k. There are c. 20 million pre 1980s houses in the UK…allowing for a mass programme using multi-purposed corporates, you might need £20k / house to deal with the easiest/ worst/ most efficacious etc bits… so about £400 billion, and that is just for insulating our homes never mind anything else whatsoever.
- the 2006 Stern Review which suggested a budget for (everything related to) transition (down to 20% of 1990 emissions levels) of 1% of GDP for 20 years, so, say, £20 billion x 20 years, also, coincidentally about £400 billion overall. This would have been spending at 10 times the rate Johnson is now proposing over 20 rather than 14 years but, that was then, with more time to work with greater efficiency
So the supposition that Johnson’s plan could achieve even a reduction rate at 1/15 of what is needed, is also ridiculous by reference to the spending rate he posits.
Sadly, that is not it:
- he is also proposing to spend on the wrong things,
- Blue Hydrogen, CCS and the establishment of an Offsetting Marketing all of which are designs to enable existing emitters to carry on emitting by planting trees…but the land available to do this is finite, we know we need every bit of it for rewilding to minimise Last Carbon, and these programmes are just a way eating into that resource while allowing emitters to carry on emitting,
- Nuclear Fusion which at this juncture is more or less Dr Strangelove Secret Weapon type stuff, and new Nuclear Fission which costs more than wind or solar and carries well established dangers
- he is also proposing (taxpayer funded) spending through big corporates, in relation to which:
- successive UK governments, new labour/ coalition/ conservative have provided near non stop illustration of the excessive costs of using private corporates to provide taxpayer funded public services, with the Covid period being only the most nakedly egregious. By way of example, Test and Trace spending allocations in the UK (£37 billion), with the spend channeled through a single private sector corporate is c.20 times higher than the equivalent in Germany where the spend has been channeled through Federal and Regional Public Service Providers… (this is a considerably lower multiple than some social media speculation has suggested but remains quite clearly ridiculous)
- by way of contrast, during the pre war US New Deal the collosal cost of residential electrification was substantially channelled through community owned vehicles, and were some 8/13th of those anticipated using private corporates
- he is also effecting a negative Annex II contribution comprising a total funding rate into the agreed UNFCCC financial mechanisms, as of June 2021, of $0.53 billion/ year but, given the UK cut its Overseas Development Aid budget from 0.7% to 0.5% in 2020, a drop of c. 5.8 billion/year, overall his contribution is a net reduction of funding of over $5 billion per year,
- and, for the record, all his competitive comparisons are based on the IPCC presentational method nonsense.
Taken as a whole Johnson’s proposed UK NDC bears no resemblance to what is necessary.
The Outline of an Alternative (COP THIS) UK NDC
The UK’s NDC should focus on what is necessary globally first: getting a Global Emissions Reduction Plan, appropriate Global Regulation and an agreeable Global Social Settlement. This is about making an appropriate Annex II type contribution that helps instigate such frameworks, and then playing our part and nesting the UK’s own “internal” efforts on emissions reductions within them.
For clarity, the existing Paris agreement where everyone does their own thing, though better than nothing, will leave an existential Last Carbon problem if indeed it ever gets us to a steady zero-carbon state at all.
The Contribution:
- set up a new Global Environmental Justice Commission, drawing on principles outlined in DiEM25’s Green New Deal for Europe, and comprising representatives drawn from global civil society including institutions of research and higher education, democracy and equity. Task the Commission to produce (nascent) Global Emissions Reduction Plans, to include both the decarbonisation of energy and plans for land use and rewilding, accompanied by a basic scheme for Global Regulations, and to outline an appropriate scale Global Social Settlement, and then
- adhere to the above in respect of the UK’s “internal” emissions and rewilding etc plans, and…
- instigate and offer a new (nascent Global) Environmental Union with any Parties also willing to adhere. The Environmental Union, again drawing on principles outlined in DiEM25’s Green New Deal for Europe, to comprise a common set of law and tax structures to be applied within signatory countries, and an agreed rate of wealth transfer from Annex II participants to developing countries and those with economies in transition.
Opinion on the Annex II Contribution
While it would be for the Environmental Justice Commission to set out the broad thrust of an appropriate contribution from each Country, and for the people and/or representatives of each country to agree to join the Environmental Union on the basis of such contributions, it will be for progressives, as others, to make their case to the Commission, particularly in respect of an appropriate Global Social Settlement and, while a global plan would essentially just follow the science, it will be the success or otherwise of reaching a good settlement that will determine whether or not we can beat extinction.
Central to any chance of success will be:
- wealthy countries acknowledging that their own consumption has driven the crisis, the persuasion of people within those (Annex II) countries to rethink life, consume a lot less, and agree to provide appropriately scaled financial support to developing countries to help their sustainable growth and,
- that progressives persuade the Environmental Justice Commissions that a change to the DNA of capitalism (the mono-purposed corporate, and whilst we are at it, twin purposed Coops etc) is effected, so that they become triple purposed to people, planet and profit and, so that their Limited Liability Status is removed where they do not do so.
On what is “appropriately scaled” financial support, perhaps it is worth thinking about the 66 billion euros per year of solidarity wealth transfers from West Germany to the 17 million people of East Germanys over a 30 years period to level up post unification.
This puts into apt perspective the totally inappropriate scale of the $100 billion annual transfers from Annex II countries agreed at Paris COP21. There is little question a starting number should be at least $1trillion per year to be meaningful, and the UK might be offering, say, $50 billion per year of this paid perhaps from a “Future Life” tax raised in place of death duties and designed to affect the wealthiest c. 20% of the UK population. Over 20-40 years, this would amount to the transfer of £1 to £2 trillion of the UK’s £11.5 trillion household wealth to developing nations, and would enable those gifting inheritance to enhance the life chances of their own children by recognising the interdependencies we all share.
A second key feature of a workable settlement will also be delivering a national emissions reduction rate, by reference to emissions from national consumption, in excess of the 15% per annum science demands of the UK, again, to enable space for developing economies to develop.
The UK should be prepared to act as unilateral instigators of these transnational frameworks in the first instance, and then also get real about the scale of wealth transfer needed, knowing that such an approach would not only win hearts and minds in developing countries, but would send shockwaves through the peoples of fellow Annex II countries and, perhaps, the UK wouldn’t be alone amongst Annex II countries for too long.
DiEM25’s Green New Deal for Europe offers numerous solutions to the issues highlight in this article.