COP and CARB: An Ecosocialist Reflects
Photo Credit: Mídia NINJA/flickr CC BY-NC 2.0
“Climate Criminals put Profits over Humanity.” So reads the title of the Indigenous Environmental Network statement on the 2023 Conference of the Parties in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. COP 28, the twenty-eighth United Nations summit on climate, ended late last year, repeating the decades-long failure to plan a disciplined international fossil fuel drawdown. Although long-held scientific consensus calls for that drawdown, the heads of powerful states and their minions who dominated the Conference appear to be more willing to preside over the end of the world than the end of carbon-dependent capitalism.
Just more “blah, blah, blah”
The early years of the COP held some promise as these international gatherings seemed to address both the seriousness of the crisis and the need for global cooperation. This year, the empty and self-congratulatory concluding statements from COP 28 President Sultan al-Jabar of the United Arab Emirates, echoed by other heads of petrostates, came as no surprise to climate activists protesting outside the UN meetings. With an ever-increasing number of fossil fuel lobbyists—over 2,400 in Dubai—it’s no wonder that industry interests trumped the need for drawdown commitments with teeth. Absent credible fossil fuel phase out plans, COP28 doesn’t amount to much more than Greta Thunberg’s characterization of past COPs: just more “blah, blah, blah.”
Also missing from commitments needed in Dubai was a plan–with a budget– to take care of workers affected by fossil fuel phaseout. The UN’s own International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) demanded “. . . adoption of a Just Transition Work Programme that ensures labour issues are central to climate policy.” It didn’t happen. Likewise, loss and damage compensation for most-harmed countries remains uncommitted. If the phrase “Just Transition” has any meaning, it requires a “polluters pay” framework for the wealthy nations and corporations who have most benefited from fossil fuels to provide the financial resources that most-affected workers, communities, and countries will need on the path to climate mitigation and adaptation.
Closer to home: CARB
Having never attended a COP, I still find the dynamics in Dubai unpleasantly familiar from my observation of California’s major climate planning process, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) Scoping Plan. Though hosting fewer than the 475 carbon capture lobbyists attending COP 28, the state CARB hearings in 2022 reflected the outsized influence of the Carbon Capture and Storage Coalition on the planning board. With the fossil-fueled fantasy of carbon removal technology—as yet unproven—California’s oil and gas industries shoved the “real zero” demands of CARB’s own Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (EJAC) off the agenda to be replaced by a vague promise of “net zero,” requiring no production or extraction reductions. Like the Climate Justice Alliance and other frontline climate activists at COP 28, EJAC was marginalized and rejected.
Though the International Trade Union Confederation at COP 28 had way more standing than our rag-tag committee with a petition from 135 unionists at the CARB hearings, we were both dismissed. Neither the ITUC demand for a labor-focused climate plan at COP 28, nor our demand for inclusion of the CA Climate Jobs Plan in CARB’s blueprint made a dent in the industry-dominated agreements in Dubai or Sacramento. The only “union” mentioned in CARB’s draft plan was the “European Union.”
In addition to the parallels between Dubai and Sacramento—capitalist capture on the inside and urgent protest on the outside—there was a new development at COP28. Remaining the elephant in the climate movement room for far too long, war became a central theme in the protests at this COP. International outrage and organizing responding to the Israeli attacks on Gaza brought the issue of war and militarism to the well-fortified gates of power, making the exclusion of this crucial global issue more visible.
No More Fossils: Photo Credit: Konrad Skotnicki/wschod Mídia NINJA/flickr CC BY-NC 2.0
Lessons and strategies
What lessons can ecosocialists extract from global climate planning at COP28 and the similar dynamics in Sacramento? What strategies emerge now that climate denial is no longer a viable fossil fuel defense and our opposition now lobbies for eco-modern mirages to prolong their profits? How can CA DSA respond?
Capitalist control of the process, with big oil calling the shots, is enough to turn Pollyanna into a doomer. But in DSA, we have a vision and an organization to build power for a future beyond capitalism and its carbon dependence. We can lend muscle to the labor, anti-war, and frontline groups currently barred from power and relegated to protest. Our national DSA Green New Deal Commission gives us guidance to create Building for Power campaigns: labor and community coalitions to win union jobs for climate mitigation.
Recent collaboration between our GND Commission and our International Committee brought us a webinar linking current anti-militarism activism and climate movements. Targeting local war profiteers, as suggested in that presentation, certainly has possibilities here in a state where the military/tech/higher education complex swells the economy.
Less developed within DSA is the potential to build working class power in coalition with climate-vulnerable communities. But environmental racism does have formidable foes in our state, and we can learn from them. We’ll have a chance this year in a statewide referendum fight to defend drilling restrictions passed by the state legislature in 2022. The Western States Petroleum Association and their astroturf creations have put a measure on the November state ballot to roll back the legislation. Voices in Solidarity Against Oil in Neighborhoods (VISION), a climate justice coalition, and their frontline allies, will work to defeat the measure.
We know a better world is possible. Get in touch with our CA Ecosocialist Working Group to join us in struggle to create it.