By *Terry Townsend*

/A talk to the Climate Change Social Change Conference held in Sydney
from April 11 to 13, organised by /Green Left Weekly
<http://www.greenleft.org.au>/. For more articles, audio and video from
the conference, click here. <http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/138>
/

April 13, 2008 -- I’m sure everybody here is aware of the basic facts of
global warming and the likely consequences if rapid and serious action
is not taken. There is virtually unanimous agreement among scientists
and activists, and increasingly among millions of ordinary people, about
the degree of the problem and the time frame we have to make fundamental
changes to address it.

The main “solutions” being offered by the capitalist class, its
politicians and the corporate-dominated mass media — and endorsed by
some key peak environmental organisations — are consciously designed to
shift the responsibility for, and the major costs of, addressing global
warming away from the most polluting corporations and to preserve the
basic structure and mechanisms of Western capitalist economies. They are
also designed to delay the necessary political, economic and social
changes for as long as possible, and to keep them to the minimum that
are compatible (in their assessment) with both the survival of
capitalist society and ameliorating the worst of climate change.

This is why major-party politicians and the corporate media — and again
unfortunately some peak environment groups – do not place serious
demands on big business, but endorse — even celebrate — big business’
preferred measures of emissions trading, “green” taxes, carbon
offsetting projects in the Third World and capitalism-friendly publicly
subsidised techno-fixes such as so-called clean coal and agro-fuels.

These false “solutions” are not only inadequate, they are
counterproductive. However, since other speakers and workshops will be
focusing on those, I’ll concentrate on another of the establishment’s
favoured — and ultimately also counterproductive — “solution” — one that
is intertwined with the others. The push for all individuals to
voluntarily consume a little less, and “buy green” whenever they can.
That the answer to global warming is for all of “us” — consumers,
workers, residents, pensioners — to voluntarily change our wasteful
behaviour.

Full article at: http://links.org.au/node/386

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