The 21st U.N. meeting on climate change is set to convene in Paris on Nov. 30, 2015. While politicians speechify and demonstrators demand the first binding international treaty, neoliberal pundits cook up alibis. A case in point is a Nov. 4 New York Times opinion piece by former BP chief scientist Steven Koonin.
For years hired corporate guns denied that global warming was happening. Then they grudgingly admitted that it was happening, but who was to say that human activity was the cause? Then they tried on the line that climate change was great for business, since oil and gas exploration opened up in the Arctic as the ice melted.
Non-billionaires were unimpressed. They watched ever-more devastating hurricanes, typhoons, droughts, floods, forest fires. Month after month new records were set for the hottest global temperatures. So shyster Koonin pulled out a final argument. Because the Earth’s biosystem is so huge, greenhouse gases will continue to increase planetary warming for decades or centuries, no matter what’s done now. So, hey, now it’s too late! We’ll just have to learn to “adapt.”
A much more realistic plan is to build a broad, anti-capitalist movement to take the reins of power and direct all society’s resources into combating climate change, while aiding those most affected around the world.
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