6. Propuesta de Plan Estratégico
6.6. Planes de acción
“The IPCC is what it is. It isn’t an activist organization, and it doesn’t include the full range of climate change possibilities in its reports. It produces summaries on the scientific consensus about global warming – and it is a profound commentary on how badly capitalism has damaged our world that the IPCC’s conservative statements of fact constitute a powerful indictment of the capitalist system.”
(Ian Angus 2007a)
In this chapter I present an overview of the discovery of anthropogenic global warming and of official responses in the form of the establishment of a set of institutions to address the dangers it poses. The origins and evolution of the two primary institutions established to deal with climate change, the IPCC and the UNFCCC, are discussed at the ‘world order’ and ‘forms of state’ levels in this chapter (refer to Chapter 3, Figure 6: Spheres Redux Version II), and constitute necessary background information to my overview of the ‘social dynamics,’ the climate
movement operating within the domain of civil society, in Chapter 6. My analyses in both this chapter and the next also include some discussion of the roles of different factions of capital and of labour (Cox’s ‘social forces’). This analysis is furthermore conducted with reference to the material capabilities of different actors, dominant institutions, social facts, and competing ideas (refer to Chapter 3, Figure 5: Forces Redux Version II). The analysis in this chapter demonstrates the validity of
ecosocialist claims that the institutional arrangements making up the official climate change ‘regime’ are incapable of achieving their stated aim of avoiding dangerous climate change (for example, refer to the ecosocialist positions represented in the writings of Angus 2016; Foster 2017b; Klein 2014; Kovel 2007; Longo, Clausen & Clark 2015; Löwy 2015; Tanuro 2013; Tokar 2014; Williams 2010).99
99 ‘Regimes’ are central to neo-‐liberal institutionalist IR theories, which build on the
work developed by Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye (Burchill 2013). Citing Stephen Krasner’s definition of a regime as a set ‘of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-‐making procedures,’ Zelli (2011, pp. 255 – 256) points out that “a regime can be identical with a single treaty, but usually embraces a larger set of agreements under the same legal umbrella and associated policy processes,” including not only treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol but also the UNFCCC and regulations of other
Ecosocialists and other climate justice activists and advocates focus most of their critique of the formal climate change regime mechanisms on the serious
inadequacies of the UNFCCC’s outcomes (particularly since COP-‐15 in Copenhagen in 2009, which is discussed in more detail in Chapter 6). Like other analysts writing about official responses to climate change, ecosocialists widely (and appropriately) cite the content of IPCC reports on the physical science of climate change to
corroborate their evaluations of the severity of anthropogenic global warming and the urgent need to take immediate effective action in order to mitigate further warming. Ecosocialist discussions of the IPCC include critiques of this institution, particularly related to its inherent tendencies to err on the side of conservatism (Angus 2007a). In this chapter I build on ecosocialist critiques of this
intergovernmental scientific body by discussing its origins and evolution and demonstrating that the entire climate change regime (including the IPCC) was designed to forestall and prevent socially just and ecologically benign solutions to anthropogenic global warming. I would like to emphasise that, far from seeking to criticise the many scientists who volunteer their time and services (often at great personal cost) to produce the IPCC assessment reports, my aim is rather to
demonstrate that these scientists work within a context that is designed to constrain the use of scientific evidence to support rational policymaking in achieving GHG emission reductions and reorganising social relations of production appropriately.100 By way of introducing the key issues and actors involved, my discussion begins with how the first US Bush Administration responded to a prominent scientist’s testimony about dangerous anthropogenic global warming.
organisations which also regulate policies relevant for climate change (for example, the WTO). De Lucia (2009, Note 5, p. 240) similarly refers to the climate regime as
comprising “primarily of the climate regime proper (UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol and related organs and bodies), but also of other UN agencies and institutions such as UNEP, UNDP, other international organizations such as the World Bank etc.”
100 This is an issue that at least some IPCC scientists seem to be aware of, as evidenced
by the comments one of the IPCC authors made at a February 2017 Expert Meeting on Communications organised by the IPCC to discuss its communication strategies for AR6. In response to a colleague who argued that the IPCC had failed in its efforts to
communicate the urgency of the situation, one of the participant scientists said: “The mandate of the IPCC is to be relevant without being prescriptive…. This is very
[restricting]… In a sense, we are like a physician who is allowed to diagnose a sickness, to comment on a list of potential treatments, but who is prevented… [from]