In the run-up to the UN Climate talks in Paris this December, it is clear that substantial, immediate cuts to global greenhouse gas emissions are needed if we are to keep global warming to less than 2C and avoid the most catastrophic climate effects. While the science is clear, the likelihood of such decisive action by the assembled governments is rather less so.She goes on in detail to describe the failed results of each of these conferences, but she ends with this ambiguous conclusion:
One conclusion to be drawn from all this is that we cannot rely on our governments to come to a deal that will actually achieve the necessary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, but then we have already learnt that lesson from summits from Copenhagen on. This does not mean however that the talks are unimportant. What is often lost in the technical discussion and diplomatic wrangling around the climate summits is that climate change is not a technical problem, but a political one.There is nothing in her article to indicate that a change in the economic system is imperative, or that it is the system of capitalism that make climate destabilization inevitable. So her final solution is for large demonstrations to convince our masters that they must enact political solutions within the system of capitalism. She, too, appears to be a liberal believer in the capitalist mantra that there is no alternative.
