Imperialism Kritik Index
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Link: Global Warming( ) Pressuring China to cut carbon emissions is a way of containing their economic growth, ensuring America’s imperialist privilege without making similar environmental commitments.Johnson, 2016 [Emma Johnson, writer for the Militant. “‘Climate’ summit: Imperialist rivalry and attacks on semicolonial peoples.” 1/4/16, http://www.themilitant.com/2016/8001/800105.html] After two weeks of squabbling, government officials from nearly 200 countries attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris signed an accord Dec. 12, ostensibly to cut carbon emissions — a by-product of burning fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal that dumps greenhouse gases and other pollutants into the atmosphere.¶ But like its predecessors, the Paris talks actually centered on imperialist rivalries, as the ruling families in Washington, Berlin, Paris and elsewhere vied for business and trade advantage, efforts to suppress competition from “emerging nations” like China, India and Brazil, and steps to keep the toilers there under control. They ignored the pressing need for electrification and other industrial development in the semicolonial world.¶ Ever since the 2009 round of talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, collapsed without a deal, President Barack Obama has been pushing for some kind of agreement as part of his “legacy.” He hailed the Paris accord as a “turning point for the world” and “the best chance we have to save the one planet that we’ve got.”¶ Previous climate gatherings have foundered as conflicting capitalist interests made it impossible to reach any concrete overall plan and enforce it.¶ So in Paris, this approach was abandoned. The new agreement sets only an abstract “goal” — to allow global temperature increases to go no higher than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit over temperature levels before the onset of the industrial revolution, and then “pursue efforts” to do better. Its only binding requirement is that signers make and publicize a plan to cut emissions at home, and, starting in 2023 to reconvene every five years to hear how everyone’s doing.¶ Obama had an additional reason to insist on a nonbinding deal. That way he can sign it as an executive order, avoiding having to submit it to the Senate for a vote, where he would lose. Most Republicans and many Democrats oppose the deal as interference with Washington’s imperial power.¶ After the Kyoto climate conference in 1997, several governments in Europe committed to reduce carbon emissions. The Paris deal nullifies these promises. French President Francois Hollande immediately announced Paris would revise its targets downward before 2020 and invited others to do the same.¶ This was an easy promise, since it will cost Paris nothing, while putting pressure on its rivals. France derives more than 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear power — which does not produce carbon emissions — far more than any other country in Europe.¶ The German government decided in 2011 to phase out nuclear power and replace it with solar and wind energy. In the meantime, reliance on coal, which accounts for nearly half of the country’s electricity production, has increased.¶ The “cap and trade” business in carbon emissions, which took off in the beginning of the 2000s, was left undisturbed and virtually undiscussed. These schemes involve setting overall caps on emissions but allow businesses and governments to buy and sell the “right” to pollute. The abundant supply of these credits has led the price to plunge from $32 to $4 per ton of carbon, making it much cheaper to buy them than to invest in cleaner technology.¶ Capitalist traders hope that a new Chinese cap-and-trade plan will revive this market and make it more profitable.¶ Many capitalists expect the conference decisions will open new opportunities for “green” profit. “The global market for low-carbon goods and services is already worth $5.5 trillion a year and this deal will turbochange the amount of capital chasing new low-carbon investment opportunities,” Abyd Karmali, managing director for climate finance at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, told the Financial Times Dec.13.¶ A feature of all the climate talks has been attempts by Washington and other imperialist governments to blunt rising competition from China, India and a variety of “emerging economies.” Arguing that China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter and India the fourth, they make pious proclamation about saving the environment, then demand capitalists in these countries make deep cuts in their carbon emissions.¶ But U.S. emissions are nearly three times higher per capita than China’s and 10 times higher than India’s.¶ The conference — attended by some 40,000 people — was surrounded by hordes of delegates from nongovernmental organizations, environmental profiteers and groups best known for claiming the world will come to an end unless all working people give up their “privilege.”¶ The Weekly Standard complained Dec. 14 that Beijing scored too many victories. “The first was the right to continue using carbon-emitting fossil fuels to keep its factories running at a low cost while we force ours to switch to more costly fuels,” the paper said. The second was “in the competition to provide new power plants for developing countries. The Obama administration has ended most public financing of coal-fired power plants. Not China.”¶ The target here is the Chinese government’s financing of 92 new coal-powered plants in 27 countries, many in Africa, “to the probable tune of over $100 billion” the Standard laments.¶ Expansion of energy is an absolute necessity for developing the economic and cultural level of working people in Africa, Asia and Latin America. According to the International Energy Agency, 1.2 billion people, 17 percent of the world’s population, still had no access to electricity in 2013 and “many more suffer from supply that is of poor quality.” Link: Global Warming( ) American-led efforts to reduce global emissions have become a form of “environmental imperialism” meant to limit the economic growth of developing nations, particularly China.Powell, 2015 [Bill Powell, Senior Writer TIME Magazine. “Airpocalypse Now: China and Climate Change.” December 3, 2015. http://www.newsweek.com/2015/12/11/airpocalypse-now-400422.html In the United States, Obama is waging what his critics call “a war on coal.” He views climate change as one of his “legacy” issues, and his Environmental Protection Agency, under the guise of its Clean Power Plan, effectively refuses to sign off on new coal-fired electricity generation (something 24 states have filed suit against). China—along with several of its neighbors in Southeast Asia—believes the United States has tried to extend that war beyond its borders. Beijing, diplomats say, thinks the U.S. has put pressure on the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank to withhold financing from coal-fired power plant projects.¶ Some in Beijing suspect this was also partly behind Washington’s reluctance to back China’s drive to launch its so-called Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. “We believe all the talk about lending standards and best practices and all of that—which the U.S. used to hold back its support—was only part of the story. You were concerned we’d finance coal-fired power, and we will,” says a member of a Chinese think tank who often advises Beijing’s powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). The Obama administration denies that fear of coal project financing has anything to do with its tepid support for the AIIB.¶ As the Paris conference drew nearer, the U.S. publicly heaped praise on China for the targets it has set to reduce CO 2 emissions—reducing their growth and then moving to outright cuts around 2030. “This is the political breakthrough we've been waiting for,” cheered Timothy Wirth, a former U.S. undersecretary of state for global affairs and now vice chairman of the United Nations Foundation, when Xi first made his promise to Obama to limit emissions. In private, there is far more skepticism—and for good reason. In truth, the commitment Beijing made was far less dramatic than it seemed. The peak date for emissions was in line with forecasts already made by several state-backed think tanks: The China Academy of Social Sciences said in a 2014 study that slowing rates of urbanization would likely mean industrial CO 2 emissions would peak around 2025 to 2030 and start to fall by 2040.¶ Furthermore, China has made it clear that it won’t be legally bound by whatever comes out of the Paris summit. “The time line China has committed to is not a binding target,” says Li Junfeng, an influential Chinese climate policy adviser linked to the NDRC. In mid-November, Kerry confirmed that the so-called COP21 agreement in Paris will not be a treaty and thus not legally binding on the signatories.¶ There are several reasons for that. For years now, ever since the West—the United States in particular—began to obsess about “climate change,” suspicions were rampant in China. At a climate conference I attended nearly a decade ago, one Chinese delegate took to the floor to rant about “outside forces” trying to keep China down by changing the global energy rules overnight: “You got to build your economies on cheap energy—coal and oil—but now that we’re growing fast, you’re not supposed to use coal and oil anymore.” This, he said, was “ladder-up economics.” Just as China began to rapidly climb up the ladder, economically speaking, the West was trying to yank it up.¶ Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> 2012 2012 -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? 2012 -> Aa and na members Dying from Tobacco 2012 -> [Baby Crying] 01: 04 [Ching 2012 -> Unit Name / Nom de l’unité uic / ciu dates 2012 -> What We Owe Jehovah’s Witnesses 2012 -> Oceans Challenge Badge 2012 -> Canadian cycling olympians 2012 -> Greg landry, june olkowski and tom lysiak 2012 -> William goldman 2012 -> Does translocation and restocking confer any benefit to the European eel population? 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