There’s no reason why facing up to the challenge of climate change should not result in wide benefits to human society, including economic benefits. That’s the argument of the multiple authors of Reframing the Problem of Climate Change: From Zero Sum Game to Win-Win Solutions. The book is based on papers presented at a 2010 international conference in Barcelona. They cover a wide range of topics and disciplines but centre around the proposition that it is a mistake to think of action on climate change as though gains can only be made at the expense of losses.

This zero sum mentality the editors see as an understandable consequence of the complexity of the challenge posed by climate change, a complexity not only of the climate system but also of its effects on society and the economy.  But it is a mentality which needs to be overcome. We need not be trapped in a tragedy of the commons.  Renewable energy is unlimited and the book argues that the transformation to such energy can not only solve the climate problem but also alleviate many other global problems.

In reporting the current status of climate science the book points to the fact that uncertainty is inherent in climate change predictions. Both natural variability and the incompleteness of scientific understanding contribute to this uncertainty. We know that the temperature will warm, that sea level will rise, that global food security and human health will be threatened, but it is not possible to accurately quantify these. It is important that the public understand that uncertainty is integral to the projections, but far from lessening the need to cut global greenhouse gas emissions this uncertainty makes it all the more imperative that we do so.

When climate action is framed as a cost, with debate centred on who will pay, surveys indicate that the public become divided and consensus is made difficult. However support for action increases if the economic benefits of a re-tooled low-carbon economy are communicated. Win-win gathers more public support than win-lose.

The question then is whether a green growth economy is feasible. At the centre of the book is a chapter examining, as an example, the European proposal to increase the 2020 emissions reduction target from 20% to 30%. Conventional assessment considers this would jeopardise economic growth. The writers consider that such assessment fails to take into sufficient account factors which, on the contrary, point to economic growth as a result of raising the target. The factors they highlight in particular are investment and learning-by-doing. The European economy needs a substantial increase in investment if it is to be revitalised. An ambitious climate policy can stimulate that. Green technology can be part of a surge of new investment which is not just a reallocation of existing investment.  Once under way new investment accelerates learning-by-doing and therefore increases labour productivity and decreases unit production costs. More investment follows in a virtuous cycle.  The economy grows along a new green path. The win-win outcome provides emissions reduction, economic growth and additional jobs.

Further chapters of the book pursue the theme into some of the complexities involved. One talks of the actor-driven dynamics of decarbonisation and after a long technical discussion of various models emerges with a list of obvious win-win options which depend strongly on actor initiatives, either on governmental, business, civil society or individual levels. Heading the list is a general increase in employment associated with the introduction of renewable energy technologies. Particular examples include investment in concentrated solar power in low-latitude desert areas, smart grids to enhance international cooperation and interdependence in renewable energy production, and the development of energy storage technologies. The writers point to how the transfer of technological knowhow and capital from developed to developing countries will help the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals. They acknowledge that the communication of knowledge is paramount in all of this and call on science not to shy away from active participation in media campaigns, aggressively delivering findings in unambiguous ways that can be easily understood by the public.  Public support prods governments to commit to long-term climate policy which in turn makes firms willing to invest in renewable energy.

Another chapter emphasises the role of government. It recognises that left to themselves markets may make a gradual transformation to low-carbon energy infrastructure, but this is unlikely to be rapid enough to match the extent and urgency of the climate problem. Governments must play a critical role in setting policies that will spur the attraction of private investment.

An interesting chapter centres on reforestation in the Mediterranean region as an example of a win-win strategy that has captured the imagination of environmentalists and investors.  It explains the role of forests in the region as a hydrological buffer that greatly alleviates the problems arising from the combination of droughts and floods expected from climate change. Forests also mitigate climate change by capturing carbon and open up biofuel possibilities on land where they don’t compete with food production.

The book comes at its theme from a variety of directions – climate science, economics, politics, sociology, ecology – of which I’ve touched on only a few. The editors describe it as written by scientists, but not for scientists. They aim to address businesses, policy makers and the general public. That doesn’t mean it is an easy read. Its chapters often require sustained attention. But they also reward it. They are a serious approach to a very serious question.  Is the necessary decarbonisation of our present fossil-based economy a costly burden?  Their answer is no. Quite the contrary. It is an opportunity to greatly benefit human society if we will take it. It’s not as if the technologies to make the transition are not available.  They need only to be taken up. There are complexities to be managed in moving investment in that direction, and the book doesn’t minimise those. Entrenched economic patterns are not easily replaced. But, in the words of one of the book’s section headings, “it can be done”.

Kristin Shrader-Frechette of the University of Notre Dame is rigorous in the presentation of her argument in What Will Work: Fighting Climate Change with Renewable Energy, Not Nuclear Power. In recent times a number of leading environmentalists have concluded nuclear power has to be employed to enable the transition away from fossil fuels. Shrader-Frechette disagrees. There is no “devil’s choice” between expanding nuclear fission and enduring climate change. Nuclear power is not needed, and it’s certainly not desirable.

Not that the author in any way downplays the need to give up the use of fossil fuels. She fully accepts the science of climate change and what is needed to avoid climate-related catastrophe. Objections to taking action are listed in detail and briskly dismissed. The people who deny climate change for profit are categorised and exposed for their role in misleading the public. Among them, sadly, are the American politicians who repay campaign fund donations from fossil-fuel companies by denying or delaying climate change issues.

But Shrader-Frechette rejects the argument that nuclear power is necessary in the energy mix if we are to address climate change quickly enough to be effective. A substantial part of the book is devoted to showing that nuclear energy is not only undesirable but also diverts much-needed investment and government subsidy from energy efficiency and renewable energy development. Far from being part of the solution it gets in the way of solution.

Nuclear generation is not carbon free if all the stages in its production are counted. The author agrees that the greenhouse gas emissions component of nuclear power is considerably lower than coal and lower than gas. Nevertheless it is higher than solar and wind. That’s with high-grade uranium ore. But when lower-grade uranium is employed nuclear generation’s emissions profile rises to be level with that of gas, and very much higher than wind and solar.

Rapid implementation of nuclear is offered as one of its advantages over renewables, but the author explains why she considers that claim is flawed. Reactors have typically taken many years to build and though claims are made that future reactor construction times will decrease, the newer reactor designs are untested.  Renewable technologies already offer the prospect of speedier implementation.

In the matter of cost the author claims nearly all nuclear-fission estimates are well understated. In many cases full-liability insurance costs are excluded, interest rates and construction times are underestimated, reactor load factors and lifetimes overestimated. Nuclear power by her analysis is far more expensive than the combination of energy efficiency programmes and renewable energy sources that she favours.

In a closely-argued chapter looking at the health effects of nuclear accidents at Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island she considers studies and hypotheses which she concludes demonstrate that nuclear fission is an extremely risky technology for human health.

She wraps up her case against nuclear generation with a consideration of environmental justice, noting amongst other things that indigenous people and minorities are most exposed to radiation danger, that in the US commercial reactors are disproportionately sited in the poorest parts of the country and that regulation standards protect US children less well than adults.

The author’s case is impressively and carefully documented. I’m in no position to evaluate the relative merits of the many studies she refers to and I’m well aware that the arguments are fiercely contested. I’ve tended to think that if a measure of nuclear generation is the only way of successfully stopping the burning of fossil fuel then we may regretfully have to take it. So the question in my mind in reading a book like this is whether renewable energy alone can really suffice.

Shrader-Frechette refers throughout the book to that question but towards the end turns her full attention to it. Typically, she provides a comprehensive list of reasons. Heading the list is the employment of energy efficiency and conservation as the cheapest ways to address climate change. These measures are both comprehensive, covering a wide range of emissions, and profitable. The book estimates that every dollar invested in energy efficiency displaces 6.8 times more carbon-equivalent emissions than investments in nuclear power.

Turning to renewables, she focuses particularly on wind and solar. Wind energy is inexpensive, plentiful, and easier to implement than atomic power. One of the reasons it is not now more available lies with the successful lobbying of campaign donors in the fossil fuel and nuclear industries resulting in billions of dollars misspent on nuclear energy subsidies in the US. Those same industries have misleadingly emphasised the need for baseload power. Solar PV, like wind, is an inexpensive and plentiful alternative to nuclear.

Markets are recognising the economic advantages of renewables over nuclear. Renewables are getting cheaper while nuclear is getting more expensive. Renewables also have the capacity to supply all global energy needs as nuclear does not. The book sets out the guidelines that many scientists and international energy agencies have proposed for the transition from fossil to renewable non-nuclear energy, a transition which the author considers can be made easily and smoothly.  As to the question of whether it can be made quickly enough to adequately address climate change, she points to the commitments in the past which produced rapid changes, including the 25-year phasing out of chlorofluorocarbons. Similar commitment can see the phasing out of both fossil fuels and nuclear energy, replaced by renewable technologies, conservation and efficiency programmes.

My country New Zealand thankfully does not have to even think about nuclear power. Our renewable energy resources are ample to replace fossil fuel use, if we ever find the resolve to do so. But it’s a live issue for many countries and Shrader-Frechette’s advocacy bears on a question of major importance for policy makers. The author supports her case with a wealth of detailed and tightly-packed reference.  Her treatment is exhaustive, but always clearly signposted with frequent overviews and summaries. The result is a book clearly worth respect in the melee of opinion on the makeup of a low-carbon future.  If indeed that is the future we embrace soon enough to avoid the direst consequences of continued burning of fossil fuel.

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It’s all too easy for wealthy America and Europe to treat climate-induced migration as a border security issue. Gregory White, Professor of Government at Smith College in Massachusetts, argues in his recent book Climate Change and Migration: Security and Borders in a Warming World that a security-minded response to the phenomenon is both inappropriate and unethical. It’s not a judgment the book rushes to; White provides ample and thoughtfully-presented material in its support.

The dynamics of globalisation have brought with them an increasing preoccupation with border security, particularly in the countries of the North Atlantic. Immigration is a hot electoral issue and the spectre of climate-induced migration adds to the already fraught subject. White writes of how easily deep fears can be aroused and of media-savvy politicians all to ready to play on them, along with the “media’s panic entrepreneurs”.

He doesn’t downplay the possibility of migration forced by climate change. He is fully aware of   the science and includes a section of the book explaining it in broad terms and stressing the high credibility of climate change models. He surveys the situation of Bangladesh and notes that India’s high-tech “separation barrier”, originally proposed as a protection against Islamist threat, is today often spoken of in relation to climate refugees. He also writes realistically of the South Pacific Island states, and along the way corrects the myth that New Zealand generously extended immigration to Tuvalu in response to the threat of rising sea levels. That always sounded too good to be true.

In the case of Africa the likelihood of climate refugees becoming a threat to European countries is, in his view, overplayed. African history is a history of migrations, and the bulk of it is local, urban, and/or within a sub-region. “…the research is persuasive that in most instances of environmental change, people move to nearby destinations as part of household strategies; they also eventually seek to return to their points of origin.” He grants that climate-induced migration will likely intensify and flows to the Maghreb and Europe will increase, but nevertheless considers that much of the increased African migration will remain regional, rural to urban and south to south.

The heightening of migration security measures in the North Atlantic states has brought into prominence the transit states which adjoin advanced-industrialised countries (or group of countries) or offer reasonable access to them. States such as Mexico, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Turkey. The advanced countries’ concern with security has meant their taking steps to thicken their borders, so to speak, by engaging their neighbours in the task of assisting to repel would-be migrants.  The attributes of these transit states make for very interesting reading. They are themselves invariably countries of emigration but are often eager to participate in controlling the non-nationals using their country to transit to an advanced-industrialised country. Such co-operation is seen as a way of advancing their sovereignty claims and their credibility as a trusted diplomatic partner. White shows all this working out in the political life of Morocco which he takes as an example. 2.6 million Moroccans live officially in Europe. 8.6 per cent of its people live abroad but remain significant for its economy. The country is not keen to slow this emigration, but it is willing to aid control of transit migrants seeking to access Europe. White points out that the invasion of transit migrants is easily exaggerated. He refers to estimates that around 120,000 people enter the entire Maghreb each year, not insignificant but certainly not the horde some analysts and media claim.

The securitising of the issue of climate-induced migration is described as misguided. It fails to solve the problem and is actually imprudent because it employs resources against a threat more supposed than real. White also gives welcome attention to the ethics. If outsiders are seeking access because of injustice then the border fence is an especially glaring display of power. Questions of justice must be raised if people on the inside are consuming inordinate amounts of energy, enjoying luxury items, and leaving behind large amounts of waste and pollution. Borders are ethical sites.

Much preferable to the security discourse are alternative approaches which White promotes in his final chapter. He writes of the role of what he calls global governance, a broad concept engaging international institutions rooted in the liberal tradition of international relations. A wide range of institutions provide a kind of toolbox of international responses which centre on constructive assistance for climate refugees, helping with resettlement, accepting a proper measure of global responsibility. He writes also of the importance of addressing the nexus of development and climate. Development solutions need to have environmental implications at their core. The book offers many examples of adaptation measures already proving their worth in the Sahelian region. Policies which address both mitigation and adaptation from local to international levels provide a much more constructive approach to climate disruption than a focus on the security of borders.

White’s book is packed with informative discussions of the ways in which concern about climate-induced migration has impacted on the North Atlantic industrialised nations and their relations with their near neighbours. He advances an argument, but not without carefully exploring the positions that he finally cautions against. I appreciated the thoroughness of those explorations, which made his conclusions all the more telling. High alarm and calls to strengthen border security may go down well with an anxious electorate, but they are a deflection from the real task of constructively addressing climate change and helping with adaptation for vulnerable communities already experiencing its effects. Border security may have a measure of legitimacy but it is a long way from the central and over-riding requirements to assist people in the situations where they are coping with a changing environment and to find ways to cut back on the emissions which are causing the changes.

How far ethical considerations will be allowed to impact on the perceived security of wealthy nations may be moot, but I certainly appreciated White’s readiness to point them out and assume that we can be affected by them. If we lose hold of a sense of justice and global community in the swirl of political life we are lost indeed.

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Nancy Lord is a writer who has spent her adult life in Alaska. In her new book, Early Warming: Crisis and Response in the Climate-Changed North, she tells the stories of people and places and natural environments on whom climate change is impacting in her part of the world. She is climate science savvy, understanding why “in the north we live with disappearing sea ice, melting glaciers, thawing permafrost, drying wetlands, dying trees and changing landscapes, unusual animal sightings, and strange weather events”.

The science is woven into a narrative of her visits to people living in the midst of the change, some of them tracking the changes, some facing the challenge of re-shaping their lives to adapt to what is happening. Always the landscape figures strongly as the writer communicates a lively sense of place, whether in the wild or in the crumbling coastal villages where the people wonder what the uncertain future holds for their communities.

In her own region of the Kenai Peninsula a crucial question is what the rising temperatures in the streams mean for the survival of the salmon which are such an important part of the local economy. Salmon are adaptive, but the changes to both freshwater and marine conditions are happening so rapidly and on such scale that the possibility of fishery collapse looms. Lord spends time with a stream ecologist measuring rises in stream temperatures and incidentally noticing the vast damage done to spruce forests by the spruce bark beetles which have flourished under the warming temperatures. Kenai wetlands generally are drying. Areas once dominated by herbaceous plants have been converting to shrub land, an invasion unique in the last eighteen thousand years and accelerating.

Lord travels into the remote Mackenzie Mountains of Canada’s Northwest Territories to look at the boreal forest region, that massive wilderness storehouse of carbon that circles the Northern Hemisphere. A ten day raft and canoe trip down the Mountain River led her party to the Mackenzie River Valley. Some promising conservation efforts are slowly moving ahead, but the development with which it is being “balanced”, particularly in the form of an eight-hundred-mile-long pipeline to carry natural gas from Arctic gas fields to Alberta, moves more quickly. The irony of such a balance, which reminded me of the New Zealand government’s rhetoric, is difficult to miss. However the indigenous population who are urging conservation first seemingly also hope to share in the profits which will accrue from the pipeline.   In this section of the book Lord focuses as well on the permafrost and the huge amount, including that in the Mackenzie River Valley, which is now within two degrees Fahrenheit of thawing, with all the potential release of carbon that represents.

“O Canada, I thought with trepidation. Can your few people stand up to the power of corporations and the lure of economic development?”

Sea ice and the bears whose habitat it provides is the subject of another section of the book, when Lord spends a week with teacher friends in Kaktovik village on Barter Island in the Beaufort Sea. It was winter, but there was sufficient light for a three hour walk along the beach before early afternoon dusk.  The coastal erosion was obvious. It’s always a factor along this coast, but Lord points out how the warming climate exacerbates it in two ways: thawing permafrost loosens the earth and the loss of sea ice leaves coastline open to sea action, especially storms. She dwells on the frightening implications of the acceleration of sea ice summer melt, remarking that white sea ice reflects about 80 percent of the sun’s heat whereas blue water absorbs about 90 percent.  She  patiently explains the effects on the polar bear population for which the village is famous. The 300 Inupiat who inhabit the village are threatened by the washing away of the land. Lord reflects on the young people of the school she had spoken with:

“They may see within their lifetimes physical changes that, in earlier eras, took place over thousands of years. All of them will have to decide how, and where, and for what, they’ll live.”

The Alaskan village most famous as a victim of climate change is Shishmaref, and Lord records a visit during which she was taken to Tin Creek, the preferred mainland location for a new site for the island village under severe siege from the sea.  But possible relocation is a long tedious business, and the conclusion is by no means assured. The cost is great and the impediments many. And Shishmaref is only one of six villages on the “immediate action” list. For that matter the vast majority of the 213 villages in Alaska are seriously affected by erosion and flooding. It’s not hard to believe the US will avoid the issue and simply wait for the villagers to finally disperse when the anxieties and strains become too great, surrendering their community bonds and culture. Lord records that she was often asked direct questions when she met villagers, such as “What do you think of us?” She interprets them as in part an expression of pride but also in part a show of insecurity: Do we matter? Are we important enough to save?  Is anyone going to help?

Finally the book turns to the oceanic realm, specifically the Bering Sea. It sketches a complex picture. Fishing management in the face of pressure to allow bottom trawling is demanding enough but it assumes added complexity from the changes in sea ice cover and the movement of species as the region warms and a primarily cold Arctic ecosystem changes rapidly to sub-Arctic conditions. Lord movingly records a gathering of tribal elders to share their perspectives and local knowledge with field scientists. She also reminds readers that the climate change threats becoming apparent in the Bering Sea’s rich ecosystem extend in a variety of ways to the oceans which cover three quarters of the earth and house 90 percent of the planet’s biomass. The effects of ocean acidification, on track by the century’s end to be at a level last seen more than 20 million years ago, are highlighted in her descriptions of  the work of scientists measuring the pH of Alaskan seawater, “already low enough to be corrosive to shell building”. One of the scientists declares:

“Alaska will be ground zero for ocean acidification, just as it is for climate change.”

There is no hype in Lord’s book. The many human stories which it touches on are respectful of the capacity of the people involved to respond to the challenges that face them. The threats to whole eco-systems are described in restrained terms. The book takes pleasure in the landscapes and peoples of the north. But there is no mistaking the magnitude of the changes that are upon them, or the ever-growing threat from the fossil fuels that continue to be tapped even in a region so gravely threatened by their exploitation. Alaska’s congressional representative dismisses global warming as a myth and champions the production of fossil fuels.

Against the bluster of denial, Nancy Lord’s sane, educated and humane writing chronicles the reality that is already upon us in a key region of the planet.

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I warm to any writer who identifies the solution to climate change in the simple terms employed by Patrick Bond in his recent book Politics of Climate Justice: Paralysis Above, Movement Below: leave fossil fuels in the soil, halt deforestation, transform our economies so that renewable energy, public transport and low-carbon systems replace those currently threatening the planet. Short and simple to articulate, he comments, but apparently impossible to implement.

Bond writes from Africa, where he is a professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He carries a deep sense of the damage that climate change is causing and will cause to African societies, and calls for justice not only in the mitigation of further climate change but also in substantial transfers of wealth to enable poor countries to cope with the adaptation and mitigation measures demanded of them. He sees this as the payment of an ecological debt.

Carbon trading he regards as a charade that will do nothing to reduce global warming. It has been accepted as the primary capitalist management technique but offsetting emissions is not the same as cutting them, and to date there is little sign that the wealthy countries are achieving emissions cuts by emissions trading. Shifting, stalling and stealing are the words he uses to describe such trading, as capitalism frantically seeks new ways to address its crises and avoid threats to its over-accumulated capital.

He points to the vast devaluation of energy capital which lies ahead. Around 80 per cent of fossil fuel reserves must stay below ground if global climate managers succeed in keeping warming to 2 degrees. That represents some substantial currently accounted assets which will be worthless, a dire prospect for some very large firms and for some countries.

Carbon trading not severely focused on emissions reduction is certainly open to  the failures of which Bond is so aware, and one can understand his suspicions and appreciate the weaknesses to which he points. It can amount to little more than shifting the deckchairs on the Titanic if it deals only in the illusion of reduction. He takes the reader through a complex set of arguments as to why carbon trading is not working and is unlikely to do so, especially when it is co-opted by the financial markets or used as a thinly-disguised exploitation of the South by the wealthy North. And he is right to point out that even if carbon markets work it can only be at the margins, and that full solutions require radical transformative regulations and public investments if we’re to break through to the new energy and related systems the planet requires.

Nevertheless I balked when he described people like Mary Robinson, Nicholas Stern and Al Gore as part of a paralysed elite trapped in market solutions. Stern strikes me as discriminating and often critical in his estimation of market solutions, and he is adamant, in his book  Blueprint for a Global Deal that combating climate change is inextricably linked with poverty reduction as the two greatest challenges of the century and that we shall succeed or fail on them together.  Al Gore in his 2009 book Our Choice expressed preference for a carbon tax over carbon trading, but recognised that the ascendance of market fundamentalism in the US meant that only a cap and trade system had any likelihood of acceptance. He also wrote of the importance of direct regulation.

Climate finance is a major concern for poorer countries faced not only with adapting to the early impacts of climate change but also the challenge of developing their economies without the fossil fuel energy sources which were used by the world’s richer economies in their development.  That there is a debt owing to such countries is a notion hard to argue with for anyone who has a feeling for justice in human affairs. Bond puts the case for a very substantial transfer of funds from the rich countries to the poorer, but in ways which ensure that they go to poor people, not to venal elites, and which also ensure developing economies emancipated from current fossil fuel dependency. He sees little chance of such finance being provided through market-centred emissions trading. The Green Climate Fund looks like a step in the right direction, but Bond sees it as too dependent on carbon markets to provide much of the funding and as open to rewarding allied Southern elites and investing in false solutions.

Governments of developing countries are often susceptible to bullying and bribing from the more powerful governments in international negotiations and persuaded to scale back their best intentions, as Bond explains in the course of a quite complex narrative of the politics involved in climate finance.  He rests more hope on the contribution that civil society can bring to the process of negotiation. He advances the kind of demands that have been put together by such groups as the World Council of Churches, Action Aid, Africa Action, the Third World Network and the radical Cochabamba Conference in Bolivia in 2010. On the matter of the distribution of climate debt repayments, assuming they ever become part of Northern climate concessions, he draws attention to the idea of simply passing a universal monthly grant to each African citizen through an individual Basic Income Programme payment. This would bypass the corruption which too easily assails African governments.

The claims of full climate justice owed to poorer countries can seem like crying for the moon. But Bond sees hope in the development of grassroots activist movements and in his final chapter offers an analysis of how they might better combine their energies and concerns to challenge the dominance of the failing climate solutions currently employed. Eco-socialism and eco-feminism feature as important directions in his analysis.

The world needs to be constantly confronted with what climate change means for the precarious livelihoods of poorer populations, and challenged to accept a fair measure of responsibility to assist them. Bond’s book does a valuable service both to those populations and to our own moral awareness, supposedly one of the characteristics that mark us out as civilised human beings. I sometimes felt he was too exclusive in his judgments of people less progressive politically and economically than he deems necessary for effective climate change activism, but his insistence that we address the injustices being suffered is absolutely right. It’s also a necessary part of any effective response to the dangers ahead.

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A couple of months ago when the publishers sent me a review copy I’d requested of The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth they enclosed another shorter book in case I might like to review it as well. I thought from the title it was possibly too similar to The Ecological Rift to warrant a further review. And it is similar in its broad thesis. But it’s also short and punchy, and encouraged by Naomi Klein’s recommendation of it as “relentlessly persuasive” and “indispensable” I read it through and decided to give it mention on its own account. The title is What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism. It’s written by Fred Magdoff, professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont, and John Bellamy Foster, one of the authors of The Ecological Rift.

Why aren’t we responding rationally to the enormous threat of climate change and other major environmental warnings? Why do we persist in behaviours which are clearly dangerous to the human future and already impinging negatively on the welfare of some populations? Why does reckless disregard mark so much of our economic activity? Magdoff and Foster reply that capitalism, “so much part of our lives that it is invisible, like the air we breathe”, is unable to pursue any course other than relentless growth. Nor in its drive for profit and accumulation is it able to take into account the human and environmental cost of its exploitation of natural resources. The phenomenon of “cheap” coal is one example offered. “There is nothing in the nature of the current system … that will allow it to pull back before it is too late.” They hold out scant hope for the green capitalism that some see developing.

My heart sinks when I read such analyses. Not that I want to quarrel with the perception that the capitalist economy is unsustainable ecologically, slanted heavily in favour of the rich and simply unjust in what it provides for the poor. It’s just that waiting until it is replaced by something else is not feasible in the face of the urgent problems confronting us. It was therefore with some relief that I discovered in the final chapter that the authors recommend struggling here and now, within the existing system, to address urgent environmental problems, while at the same time creating an expectation for bigger changes to follow.

The steps they suggest worth engaging with are not unfamiliar to many of us and are demanding to champion in the current economic setting. They include: the institution of a carbon tax of the kind espoused by James Hansen, with the proceeds returned to the population on an equal per capita basis; blocking the building of new coal plants (without carbon capture and storage, which is not currently feasible) and closing old ones; blocking any development of tar sands or oil/gas shale production; energy efficiency combined with reducing energy use; renewable sources for all energy production; more sustainable agriculture; and much else. There’s plenty to be getting on with. The authors speak of it as working in the interstices of the current system “towards a new social metabolism rooted in egalitarianism, community, and a sustainable relation to the earth”. They call it the ecological revolution and it will depend on forces from the bottom of society.

There’s much thoughtful detail along the way to buttress the central argument of the writers. The gross disparities in income and wealth, of which the book reminds us, are in themselves enough to expose the human failures of capitalism. In the US the richest 400 individuals in 2007 had a net worth equal to that of the bottom 150 million people. One fascinating sidelight for me was the reference to Plato, some 2400 years ago, writing in very specific terms of the erosion of soil from hills around Athens as a result of deforestation. There’s not much doubt about what he would have made of climate change.

Socialism and capitalism are abstract terms. They’re worth examining and debating. But wherever one falls on the political spectrum it’s hard to argue with the blunt concrete conclusion of the book that the important questions are: “What about the people?” and “What about the local, regional and global ecosystems on which we all depend?” – rather than “How much money can I make?”

As my own country New Zealand launches into a frenetic new round of coal, gas and oil exploration, in flat contradiction of all the scientific warnings, I finished the book wondering whether those first two questions have any chance of being listened to by the foolish politicians who are so busy answering the third in glowing terms.

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I wouldn’t normally seek a text book for review, but a pre-publication recommendation described this one as excellent reading for any lay person interested in the subject. I’d also seen the author, Andrew Dessler, in an television interview which I wrote about, which was further encouragement. The book is An Introduction to Modern Climate Change. Dessler is a climate scientist but he’s also versed in the politics of the matter, having worked as a Senior Policy Analyst during the Clinton administration. His text book, a little unusually, covers both the science of climate change and the policy response to the issue.  It makes excellent sense to consider them together.

The science carries such grave implications for human welfare that it demands policy responses. Dessler sets much store by an electorate educated in both the science of the changing climate and the steps that are needed to avoid its worst consequences in the future.  Not all of the electorate is likely to become as educated in the science as this book allows, but the broad scientific outline on which the book is based is certainly capable of wide dissemination across the community.

Dessler has deliberately avoided advocacy, placing his faith in a dispassionate presentation of the facts. That’s an entirely appropriate stance for a university text book, respecting the rationality of academic discourse. Whether such approaches can prevail against the unreason rampant in some sectors of society on this issue is perhaps moot, but Dessler firmly believes that an unbiased assessment of the facts will bring the majority of people to see, as he does, that climate change poses a serious risk which we should head off by reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases.

The book’s material comes from a one-semester paper for nonscience majors at Texas A&M University. It assumes no prior knowledge of any field of science, though does assume a knowledge of simple algebra. This doesn’t make it lightweight. The science section of the book is thorough and demanding, while always well-explained and accessible to any general reader prepared to devote time to follow it. The policy section lays out the possible solutions dispassionately. Chapter summaries and end-of-chapter problems for students to address all aid in consolidating the reader’s grasp of the material as it develops.

I occasionally found myself wondering how the Governor of Texas, so confident in his denial of climate science, would fare if he took this undergraduate course in his own state’s oldest public university.

I occasionally found myself wondering how the Governor of Texas, so confident in his denial of climate science, would fare if he took this undergraduate course in his own state’s oldest public university. It’s a measure of the extraordinary torrent of denial that has accompanied the development of climate science that Dessler’s opening chapter on the distinction between weather and climate should include a section to explain the book’s credentials as a communication of the great weight of expert scientific opinion represented by the IPCC reports.

The science section of the book first examines the evidence that the climate is warming. There follow clear explanations of some basic concepts: the physics of electro-magnetic radiation and how it explains that greenhouse gases warm the planet;  the carbon cycle, our perturbation of it, and how this helps our understanding of what happens to carbon dioxide after it is emitted into the atmosphere;  the role of time lags, radiative forcing and feedbacks; climate sensitivity.  Finally the science section pulls together the abundant evidence that it is the increase in greenhouse gases due to human activities which is responsible for the present-day warming.

Dessler communicates well with the non-scientist, as I can attest, being one myself. The progression is clear, the high significance of feedbacks in the process is well-explained, the absence of alternative factors to account adequately for the warming fully explored. One is left highly respectful of the patient discovery which over time has built up such a clear understanding of the climate consequences of our exploitation of fossil fuels.

The book then moves to the future projections of the science. Dessler provides a very useful summary of the sometimes confusing body of alternative scenarios in the IPCC literature and how they are projected to affect future levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. One feature he highlights among the projections is that unevenly distributed growth scenarios, where the rich get richer and the poor remain poor, result in higher atmospheric emissions than those where similar economic growth is more evenly distributed. Across the scenarios, predictions of warming by the end of the century range from 1.8-3.6 degrees. He includes at this point a reminder that climate change does not stop in 2100.

The likely impacts are serious and probably negative for human society. Warming may not be uniform but will overall increase every decade, precipitation distribution will change and more rainfall will come in heavier downfalls, sea level will rise and the oceans will become more acidic. Poor countries are likely to have a harder time adjusting to the impacts than wealthy countries. Lurking in the background is the possibility of abrupt changes, low-probability but high-consequence events.

What we do about climate change is discussed under the three headings of adaptation, mitigation and geoengineering. Lags in the climate system mean that there is climate change ahead to which we can only adapt. Mitigation options are explained, with special attention paid to the market-based approaches through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system. Geoengineering is broken into two categories – solar radiation management and carbon cycle engineering – and noted as a last-ditch approach.

A brief history of climate science and politics follows, ranging from Arrhenius to the IPCC for the science and on the political side describing the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto protocol.  It leads into a final discussion of the action required to keep below 2 degrees of warming, a target, he points out, that has been arrived at through political compromise not scientific analysis.

The book is exemplary in its clarity and completeness. It is a reminder once again of how solid the science of climate change now is, and of how seriously its projections of the future, with all their attendant uncertainties, should be taken in our policy formulations. But how many more reminders will we need? Dessler’s presentation may be measured, but it’s not difficult to sense the mounting urgency behind his exposition.

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In 1932 I was born into a world of 2 billion people.  Nearly 80 years on there are 7 billion, more than three times as many. My own small country New Zealand has nearly tripled its population in that time. I confess to feeling anxiety about the capacity of the globe to sustain this level of population, let alone the further billions we can expect this century. Does that make me a populationist? That’s the term used by Ian Angus, editor of online journal Climate and Capitalism, and Simon Butler, coeditor of Australian Green Left Weekly, in their new book Too Many People? Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis to describe people who attribute social and ecological ills to human numbers. The authors don’t. They attribute climate change and other ecological challenges to the growth imperative of capitalism, and their book takes issue with those who see “overpopulation” as a cause of the threats to the environment.

Whether there are too many people on the planet is not a question which can be lightly answered, say the authors. They agree that infinite growth is impossible on a finite planet, but consider it untenable to jump from there to the conclusion that the environmental crisis proves that we have exceeded the maximum number of people the earth can support. The high level of greenhouse gases points not to there being too many people but to the need to change human activity. Greenhouse gas emissions are not correlated with population growth.  Almost all of the population growth is occurring in countries with low emissions but almost all of the emissions are produced in countries with little or no population growth.

On the question of food shortages being due to overpopulation the authors argue that there is sufficient food but the existing global food system is grossly inequitable, wasteful and inefficient, preventing the food being available to hungry people.  To those who claim that the only way to feed so many people will be by industrial farming which carries environmental hazards with it, they argue that there is evidence that ecologically sound farming is in fact able to feed projected mid-century levels of population.  In an interesting discussion they cite the findings of the Agrimonde project as offering reasons for optimism, albeit against the likelihood that giant corporations will resist conversion to ecological agriculture and unabated climate change could harm many crops.

The book stoutly defends the world’s poorer peoples against accusations that they are having too many children and somehow thereby adding to the world’s environmental problems more significantly than the reined-in populations of the developed world. Any distancing of the North from the South, as in the immigration policies practised or advocated, is unjustified in view of the wealth the North has obtained from the exploitation of the South, including these days the export of dirty industries.

Sectors of society in the richer nations are also defended against the claim that their consumerism is responsible for the danger we are in. “In 2009, 43.6 million Americans lived on incomes below the official poverty line. If anyone is consuming the world into ecological catastrophe, it isn’t them.” The income disparities in the developed countries today are huge. The 147 individuals who topped the 2002 Forbes “World’s Richest People” list had total wealth equal to the total annual income of three billion people, half of the world’s population.

The authors let George Monbiot say what they are honing in on:

“It’s time we had the guts to name the problem. It’s not sex; it’s money. It’s not the poor; it’s the rich.”

The individual greed and gluttony of some of the rich is distressing enough, but it is their ownership of ecocidal organisations and institutions which causes the worst damage. Corporations are the drivers of the consumer society, relentless in their drive for growth, their stimulation of a sense of need through advertising, their waste on a gigantic scale. Fossil fuels are the very basis of the power of the corporate world. And the book includes the military as the biggest polluter on earth.

So it’s not population growth that is the cause of our ecological troubles. It is capitalism’s need for growth. To focus on overpopulation is to divert attention from the real environmental vandals.

The book argues its case vigorously and interestingly, though its rigour seems excessive at times. I refuse to regard Lester Brown or Jeffrey Sachs as populationists, for instance, in the sense in which the book defines the term, yet they are so accused. They and others like them are certainly concerned that the world’s human population should level off, as I am, but I don’t see in their writing the facile argument that overpopulation in poorer countries is the cause of our environmental dangers.  The book comes up with some real enough and alarming enough examples of such attempts to shift the responsibility which belongs to the developed societies, and rightly exposes them, but it also does some tilting at windmills when it turns on people who would for the most part agree with the contention that we need governments who will move immediately to transform the most destructive features of capitalism. The prescriptions that the book provides are not confined to the eco-socialist position the authors represent, and where common ground exists it strikes me as sensible to occupy it in mixed company.

What I would judge to be their common ground prescriptions include rapidly phasing out fossil fuels and replacing them with clean energy sources such as wind, geothermal, wave, and, above all, solar power; actively supporting farmers to convert to ecological agriculture; introducing free and efficient public transport networks; restructuring existing extraction, production, and distribution systems to eliminate waste, planned obsolescence, pollution, and manipulative advertising; retrofitting existing homes and buildings for energy efficiency, and establishing strict guidelines for green architecture in all new structures; ensuring universal availability of high-quality health services, including birth control; launching extensive reforestation and biodiversity programs.  Other prescriptions such as the cessation of military operations may be more divisive, but there’s plenty here that can unite people of different political persuasions.

However, the authors from their political perspective provide an ever-necessary reminder that the world’s poor are the first victims of ecological disaster, not the cause. And that is a fact which is receiving far too little attention from the more powerful countries. Over-population may be a matter which needs addressing, as the writers themselves somewhat reluctantly allow, but it’s not up there with the urgent requirement to fashion economies which no longer use fossil fuel energy and which respect the ecologies within which they function.

[Paul McCartney]

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Canadian investigative journalist William Marsden doesn’t hide his anguish or his anger as he reports the maddening incapacity of political leaders and negotiators to come to terms with climate change. Nor should he. It’s a sorry story he has to tell in his new book Fools Rule: Inside the Failed Politics of Climate Change. Marsden’s book treats three sobering realities. One is the science. He writes of the utter desperation of scientists “as they pile proof upon proof only to see it disappear into the smoke of denial or crash against the excuse of political and economic expediency”.  He fully grasps the scientific picture and the mounting threats it points to. Regarding the work of glaciologists as fundamental to understanding climate change, he has buttressed his acquaintance with the science by spending time with working scientists in the Canadian Arctic. Last year glaciologist Martin Sharp agreed to Marsden tagging along with his team working on the Devon Island ice cap. Consequently the book includes a lively narrative of the conditions under which those scientists work when on the ice. He leaves the reader in no doubt that the science is “overwhelming and frightening”.

The second reality is that the nations of the world in a position to profit financially from continuing development of fossil fuels seem determined to carry on doing so, in spite of any lip service they pay to combating climate change. Indeed, if the enticements look right they’ll back away from tackling climate change in any meaningful way as Marsden’s own country Canada has done under the leadership of Stephen Harper. Marsden is scathing of Harper’s retreat from what once looked like a promising start to the transformation of the energy grid to clean technology under the Liberals.

Nowhere is the determination to carry on with the exploitation of fossil fuel resources more apparent than in the deliberations of the Arctic Five – Canada, Russia, the US, Norway and Denmark – over the possibilities opened up by a warmer Arctic. Marsden points out that they could pledge to chart a new course for the world that steers away from further polluting the atmospheric space. But there is no sign that such a possibility has even entered their heads. They remain consumed by “the cosmic wheel of materialistic self-interest, personal wealth accumulation, and economic competition. They feel these are forces they cannot stop even if they wanted to”.  These nations are not alone in looking to the continued exploitation of fossil fuel resources. Australia plans to double coal exports at the same time as undertaking a modest reduction of emissions by 5 percent below 2000 levels by 2020. Marsden doesn’t cover New Zealand, but our government, similarly modest in its emission reduction targets, loudly proclaims its intention to prospect for and develop fossil fuel sources as a means of increasing our national prosperity.

Marsden doesn’t exempt China or India from responsibility in this matter. “The point is, there are no good guys in this story. We all ultimately have to be held accountable. No country gets a pass.” But he immediately acknowledges that this doesn’t absolve us of a moral responsibility to look to the welfare of poorer countries.

In the light of the widespread intention to continue in the discovery and use of fossil fuels it’s not surprising that the third reality Marsden highlights is that international negotiations are going nowhere. The science is not totally ignored by the nations of the world. Indeed by the most threatened among them it is all too apparent that its warnings are already being realised. But they are not big players on the international negotiating scene and can be bullied into the appearance of acquiescence in agreements which take little account of their plight. International negotiations are presented as a response to the science of climate change, but as Marsden has seen in his attendance at international meetings since 2009 many participants are so absorbed in the protection of what they see as their national economic interests that it seems almost impossible that anything can come of all the talk.

When you are at the table and you are negotiating a bit more tons, or a bit less, it’s insignificant compared with what you would need to do if you believe all these scientists

Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh was quite explicit:  “I went to Copenhagen not to save the world. I went to Copenhagen to protect India’s national interest… India’s right to foster economic growth.” Marsden reports US negotiator Jonathan Pershing’s obsessive focus on what he regards as the politically possible, never mind that climate change is, in Marsden’s words, “a rising sea, a tsunami, an earthquake, a hurricane, a flood, a drought that sweeps away society’s backup plans”. The gap between what is required and what is regarded as possible is very wide. A former Canadian environment minister said to Marsden “When you are at the table and you are negotiating a bit more tons, or a bit less, it’s insignificant compared with what you would need to do if you believe all these scientists”.

Marsden was at Copenhagen and Cancún and some of the in-between meetings. He exposes the Copenhagen Accord for the face-saving expedient it was and concludes of Cancún: “In a world smothered in lies, Cancún bamboozled with the best.” His reportage of the details of the conferences builds an ample foundation for such judgements.  It’s a sad chronicle of avoidance and delay in the face of inexorably advancing climate change, and it is the powerful countries which are most responsible. American intransigence is highlighted, “leading everyone in a race to the bottom”, partly because they know they could never get a climate change treaty through the Senate.

The domestic scenes in the US and Canada receive special attention in the course of the book. The failure of the American climate bill to proceed in the Senate showed that oil, coal and gas companies were the masters of the senate. For a time it also looked as if they would succeed in their support of Proposition 23 in California which would have effectively put a stop to California’s legislative attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Marsden tells the story of their campaign, with their failure one of the few bright spots in the generally grim picture his book paints.  In Canada fossil fuel interests have successfully thwarted effective emission reduction regulations with unrelenting lobby pressure. The massive tar sands projects has led the government to make the unproven technology of carbon capture and storage a cornerstone of its carbon reduction strategy in a country with ideal resources for renewable energy.

Climate change “is poised to roll over our capitalist world with a furious vengeance”

The three contradictory realities surrounding climate change cannot continue to co-exist. Marsden in conclusion points out that climate change “is poised to roll over our capitalist world with a furious vengeance”. We have so far met it with a monumental political failure. We have allowed our political system to be “hijacked by corporations and run by liars and propagandists”.  It may be a lame hope to imagine the same politicians awarding legitimacy to scientific and technical experts and framing a new world vision accordingly. But it’s the only hope we have, and our brains do have an amazing ability to chart new courses, if we will use them.

If an appeal to human intelligence is all we have left Marsden is certainly a worthy advocate. His book is a thorough journalistic exposure of the denial which currently undermines our political negotiations and an affirmation of the primacy of the science which points to inescapable climate change.

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Why do we continue with business as usual when we know that it is leading us to disastrous climate change? According to the authors of The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth it is because our capitalist economic system is driven by forces which cannot stand back and weigh the consequences of their drive. The blind accumulation of private wealth at the expense of the environment has enormous momentum which the system is not geared to control.

The authors, John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York are all sociology professors. They write from the broadly Marxist standpoint exemplified by the Monthly Review magazine of which Foster is the current editor. As might be expected, their attack on capitalism is not limited to its environmental devastation but also takes in its exploitation of human labour for private profit. One of the interests of the book, for me with only a superficial acquaintance with Marx’s thought, was its explanation of the unity which Marx saw in nature and society and which western Marxism failed to sustain. The authors point, for example, to Marx’s interest in soil science and awareness of the nutrient depletion accompanying a more industrialised agriculture. Nature as well as human society needed to be protected from the capitalist juggernaut.

The first thing I always look for in social science writing on climate change is whether there is a full recognition of the seriousness of the physical science. There is in this book. James Hansen is the climate scientist the authors most frequently refer to when facing up to the dangers ahead, and they accept 350 ppm concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere as the threshold beyond which it is unwise to allow the build-up to continue.  Early in the book they acknowledge the “planetary boundaries” project of the multi-disciplinary team led by Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and what it portends for the human future. There is no glossing over of the peril in which we stand if business as usual continues.

However the authors see little possibility of changing our current direction without radically changing the economic organisation of society. This is where they part company with those who consider capitalism can be manoeuvred into decarbonising the economy. They are scathing of cap-and-trade schemes which they see as full of holes to pacify the interests of capital, though they welcome James Hansen’s robust advocacy of a simple carbon tax with the proceeds returned to the population at large.

Capitalism rampant is no respecter of the environment, and the book is surely right to point out how orthodox economics shows itself seemingly incapable of taking ecological costs into account in its championing of economic growth as the key to prosperity.  I found its chapter on “capitalism in wonderland” a welcome relief from the endless stream of discussions in mainstream media of how to get growth back into the economy, with never a mention of ecological constraints. Their discussion of the position of economist William Nordhaus, while acknowledging that he accepts climate change is under way and will need to be addressed in due course, highlights his apparent failure to grasp just how fundamentally that change will impact on the economy of future societies if not abated by early steps to rein in emissions. They tend to lump Nicholas Stern in the same category, which I thought failed to allow for the sensitivity he has shown to the science and the consequent developments in his thinking. They do partly acknowledge this, but ultimately see him as remaining in the capitalist world and hesitating to enter the socialist-oriented landscape necessary for an adequate tackling of the ecological challenge.

…there seems little likelihood of our forsaking a market economy – or, for that matter, little indication that a viable alternative is shaping…

This is something of a nub of the book for readers whose concern is whether we will meet the challenge of climate change. Few would argue with Marx’s declaration that the earth cannot be regarded as the private property of individuals any more than human slaves can. Even societies or nations are not its owners. “They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations as boni patres familias [good heads of the household].” The question is whether a capitalist economy can be tempered to conform to this underlying vision or whether the treadmill of capitalism will not allow any deflection from treating nature as a resource to be plundered for profit without pause or measure. It’s an important question because there currently seems little likelihood of our forsaking a market economy – or, for that matter, little indication that a viable alternative is shaping. The socialism of Chavez or even Morales is hardly compelling, though they are the two national leaders to whom the book points.

To accuse Bill McKibben of market fetishism or Nicholas Stern of establishment timidity or Al Gore of denial because of his advocacy of sustainable capitalism strikes me as sectarian.  I favour a broad church approach, taking assistance wherever it is offered and being content with a degree of muddle provided we end up with sufficient regulatory constraint to prevent the worst dangers of business as usual.

However, that said, the book offers many valuable insights into the workings of untrammelled capitalism and the ways in which the increase of private wealth tells against the social and ecological good. The case for a stationary state of no-growth economies is interestingly made. Those who hope that it may still be possible to put the brakes on reckless capital accumulation from within the capitalist system have to reckon with the strength of the accumulation drive, which in the striking words of Marx, “gives capital no rest and continually whispers in its ear ‘Go on! Go on!’”

The book is a substantial collection of the authors’ writing over a period of years which has been added to and in some cases partly reshaped for the purposes of the book. This review has concentrated on the climate change issue and doesn’t reflect the full scope of the book which explores many aspects of Marxist thinking in relation to the environment and more generally, sometimes quite technically. There is plenty to engage the reader interested in understanding what a Marxist approach has to offer by way of analysis of the present and hope for the human future.

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