The industrial capacity exists to transition to entirely renewable sources of energy within a matter of a few decades or less, as a recent study by Stanford researcher Mark Jacobson concluded for the United States. However, the level of planning and coordination on an international basis needed to implement such a transition comes into immediate conflict with the division of the world into rival nation-states and private ownership of the world’s productive resources.The 800 pound gorilla in the rooms of the Paris conference is the private ownership and control of the world's economies by tiny classes of capitalists. As long as nations are controlled by these people, so long will we be observing conferences where capitalist leaders pontificate about the threats of climate destabilization and make empty promises of doing better to mitigate its effects.
The pledges put forward correspond to the needs of the banks and major transnational corporations.
At the same time we are seeing nations lining up mostly in two blocs, both armed with nuclear weapons, with one bloc (US Empire) thoroughly dominated by capitalists whereas the other bloc (led by China and Russia) using capitalists to drive production at a frenetic pace in order to protect themselves from the virulent imperialism of the first bloc. Whether the latter bloc can maintain control of their own capitalists is a matter of pure speculation. In any case, humanity is caught between the Charybdis of climate destabilization and the Scylla of nuclear war. Only an informed and aroused people all over the world can prevent the extinction of humans.