Marx and the Global Environmental Rift

John Bellamy Foster, November 28, Monthly Review

Ecology is often seen as a recent invention. But the idea that capitalism degrades the environment in a way that disproportionately affects the poor and the colonized was already expressed in the nineteenth century in the work of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Writing in Capital in 1867 on England's ecological imperialism toward Ireland, Marx stated: "For a century and a half England has indirectly exported the soil of Ireland, without even allowing its cultivators the means for replacing the constituents of the exhausted soil." Marx was drawing here on the work of the German chemist Justus von Liebig. In the introduction to the seventh (1862) edition of his Organic Chemistry in Its Applications to Agriculture and Physiology Liebig had argued that "Great Britain robs all countries of the conditions of their fertility" and singled out Britain's systematic robbing of Ireland's soil as a prime example. For Liebig a system of production that took more from nature than it put back could be referred to as a "robbery system," a term that he used to describe industrialized capitalist agriculture.1

Following Liebig and other analysts of the nineteenth-century soil crisis, Marx argued that soil nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) were sent in the form of food and fiber sometimes hundreds and thousands of miles to the cities, where, instead of being recycled back to the land, these nutrients ended up polluting the urban centers, with disastrous results for human health. Meanwhile, faced with an increasingly impoverished soil, Britain, as Liebig pointed out, imported bones from Napoleonic battlefields and from Roman catacombs together with guano from Peru in a desperate attempt to restore nutrients to the fields. (Later on the invention of synthetic fertilizers was to help close the nutrient gap, but this was to lead to additional environmental problems, such as nitrogen runoff.)

In addressing these environmental issues Marx took over the concept of Stoffwechsel or metabolism from Liebig,2 describing the ecological contradiction between nature and capitalist society as "an irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism." Indeed, "capitalist production," Marx explained, "only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth -- the soil and the worker." This rift in the metabolic relation between humanity and nature could only be overcome, he argued, through the systematic "restoration" of the metabolism between humanity and nature "as a regulative law of social organization." But this required the rational regulation of the labor process (itself defined as the metabolic relation of human beings to nature) by the associated producers in line with the needs of future generations. "Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together," Marx stated, "are not owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations as boni patres familias [good heads of the household]."3

Marx's ecological discussions, coupled with those of Engels, therefore went well beyond the general understanding of his time. Today the ecological issues that Marx and Engels addressed (albeit sometimes only in passing) read like a litany of many of our most pressing environmental problems: the division of town and country, the degradation of the soil, rural isolation and desolation, overcrowding in cities, urban wastes, industrial pollution, waste recycling in industry, the decline in nutrition and health, the crippling of workers, the squandering of natural resources (including fossil fuel in the form of coal), deforestation, floods, desertification, water shortages, regional climate change, conservation of energy, the dependence of species on changing environments, historically-conditioned overpopulation tendencies, and famine.

Marx saw the materialist conception of history as related to the materialist conception of nature, the science of history as related to the science of nature. He filled his natural science notebooks with studies of geology, chemistry, agronomy, physics, biology, anthropology, and mathematics. He attended the lectures at the Royal Institution in London of the Irish-born physicist John Tyndall. Marx was fascinated by Tyndall's experiments on radiant heat, including the differentiation of the sun's rays.4 It is even possible that he was in the audience in the early 1860s when Tyndall presented results of his experiments demonstrating for the first time that water vapor and carbon dioxide were associated with a greenhouse effect that helped to retain heat within the planet's atmosphere. (No one at that time of course suspected that the greenhouse effect interacting with carbon dioxide from the human burning of fossil fuels might lead to human-generated global climate change -- a hypothesis not introduced until 1896 by the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius.)

Today the dialectical understanding with regard to nature-society interactions that Marx and Engels embraced is increasingly forced on us all, as a result of an accelerating global ecological crisis, symbolized above all by global warming. Recent research in environmental sociology has applied Marx's theory of metabolic rift to contemporary ecological problems such as the fertilizer treadmill, the dying oceans, and climate change. Writing on the social causes of the contemporary "carbon rift," stemming from the rapid burning up of fossil fuels, Brett Clark and Richard York have demonstrated that there is no magic cure for this problem outside of changes in fundamental social relations. Technology is unlikely to alleviate the problem substantially since gains in efficiency, according to what is known as the "Jevons Paradox" (named after William Stanley Jevons who wrote The Coal Question in 1865), lead invariably under capitalism to the expansion of production, the accompanying increases in the throughput of natural resources and energy, and more strains on the biosphere. "Technological development," Clark and York therefore conclude, "cannot assist in mending the carbon rift until it is freed from the dictates of capital relations."5

The only genuine, i.e. sustainable, solution to the global environmental rift requires, in Marx's words, a society of "associated producers" who can "govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature."6 The goals of human freedom and ecological sustainability are thus inseparable and necessitate for their advancement the building of a socialism for the 21st century.


Notes

1 Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage, 1976), 860; John Bellamy Foster, Marx's Ecology (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), 164. See also Erland Mårald, "Everything Circulates: Agricultural Chemistry and Recycling Theories in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century," Environment and History, vol. 8 (2002), 65-84.

2 As indicated in the editor's notes to the Penguin/Vintage edition of Capital, vol. 3: "Liebig is referred to several times in both this volume and Volume 1, and it seems that Marx took from Liebig the concept of metabolism (Stoffwechsel) that he applied there, suitably transformed, to the analysis of the labour process (Chapter 7)." In Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3 (New York: Vintage, 1981), p. 878.

3 Foster, Marx's Ecology, 155-70. See also Paul Burkett, Marx and Nature (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999); Paul Burkett and John Bellamy Foster, "Metabolism, Energy, and Entropy in Marx's Critique of Political Economy," Theory & Society, vol. 35 (2006), 109-56.

4 Spencer R. Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 3-4; Y. M. Uranovsky, "Marxism and Natural Science," in Nikolai Bukharin, et. al., Marxism and Modern Thought (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1935), p. 140. In 1865 Engels reported that a chemist that he had just met -- probably Carl Schorlemmer, who was to become one Engels and Marx's closest friends, a Fellow of the Royal Society and the first individual in England to occupy a chair in organic chemistry -- had explained to him Tyndall's "sunbeam experiment." See W. O. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels (London: Frank Cass, 1976), vol. 1, p. 262.

5 Brett Clark and Richard York, "Carbon Metabolism: Global Capitalism, Climate Change, and the Biospheric Rift," Theory & Society, vol. 34 (2005), p. 419. For further work on the metabolic rift and global ecological crisis see Rebecca Clausen and Brett Clark, "The Metabolic Rift and Marine Ecology," Organization & Environment, vol. 18, no. 4 (2005), pp. 422-44; Philip Mancus, "Nitrogen Fertilizer Dependency and its Contradictions," Rural Sociology, vol. 72, no. 2 (June 2007).

6 Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 959.

John Bellamy Foster John Bellamy Foster is professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, author of Marx’s Ecology and Ecology Against Capitalism, and editor of Monthly Review.

RWE abandons power plant project after local vote

Vera Eckert and Tom Kaeckenhoff, Nov 25, 2007, Reuters

FRANKFURT, Nov 25 (Reuters) - German utility RWE said on Sunday it would give up a 2 billion-euro ($2.96 billion) plan for a huge coal-fired power generation plant after local residents of the targeted site at Ensdorf on Sunday voted against a change of land utilisation plans.

"We regret that the majority of the population decided against the power plant but honour our pledge not to build it against the wishes of the residents," said a spokeswoman for the company's power production arm, RWE Power.

"We will analyse the reasons and study other options, but there are no concrete alternative plans for the Ensdorf location," she added.

In a vote, in which a qualifying 70.19 percent of residents participated, 70.03 percent said no to the plant and 29.97 percent opted in favour, said a civil servant in the town's administration, who helped facilitate the voting process.

"The town council has said it will follow the citizens' vote so the land utilisation plans will not be altered, which to me means the plant won't be built," he said.

The town council next meets on Dec. 12-13, he said.

Some 5,600 residents of Ensdorf in western Germany's Saarlouis district with voting rights were asked to participate.

RWE executives earlier this month said if there was too much opposition, they would call off the project.

RWE a year ago published its intentions to build two generation units of 800 megawatts each at Ensdorf, which were envisaged to start production in 2012.

The company said at the time that the investment also hinged on planning security under German laws -- where a pending tightening of cartel rules could prohibit such projects -- and on carbon dioxide quotas, which add to power production costs.

BUND, the German arm of Friends of the Earth, has warned of high sulphur dioxide and noxious dust particles emissions emanating from the new plant. Environmental organisations NABU and Greenpeace are also opposed.

But RWE has said the modern plant would be emitting far less CO2 than older installations. (Reporting by Vera Eckert and Tom Kaeckenhoff; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

After Walk Against Warming: where next for the movement?

Kamala Emanuel, November 16, GLW

November 11’s national Walk Against Warming was an important initiative for the climate change movement. It was smaller than the 100,000 people organisers had hoped for, but the fact that tens of thousands joined the biggest political demonstration of the election period confirms the opinion poll findings that climate change is a grave concern for large numbers of people.

When liberal “conventional wisdom” promotes the view that it is enough to vote for parties with the right policies, it can be difficult to convince people to rally in an election period. It can be harder again to convince the social movement peak bodies — often the ones with the resources and weight to pull off big mobilisations — to call such demonstrations. So the timing of the rallies, two weeks before the election, was to the credit of the organisers and an important way for ordinary people concerned about global warming to demand government action.

Nevertheless, the three key limitations revealed by the rallies pose serious questions for the climate change movement.

The capital city rallies weren’t built around clear demands. Posters and fliers carried the slogan “One planet. One climate. Last chance”, or modifications of this. But in the absence of clear, concrete demands, the way is open for the manoeuvring of the ALP and Coalition, which can claim to be “against warming” too. If we’re not explicit about what needs to be done, we dilute the pressure on them to act.

Linked to this was the decision to invite Labor and Coalition speakers to address the rallies, despite their refusal to commit to the measures necessary to prevent climate disaster. In this, the rally-goers were far in advance of the organisers, heckling and turning their backs on Labor’s Peter Garrett in Sydney, and elsewhere giving them a cold reception (compared, for example, to the enthusiastic reception given to Greens speakers such as Bob Brown).

A third shortcoming was the lack of democracy in the organising of the rallies. Conservation councils in each state organised or, in some instances, co-organised the capital city rallies with other environment peak groups (e.g., Greenpeace in Melbourne). With some exceptions (for example Hobart and in regional centres like Wollongong), meetings were not open to all activists or groups, or were only opened up once all the decisions had been made and the conservation groups were looking for people to spread the word. This restricted discussion and collective decision-making about such issues as which demands and speakers would be best, and reduced the sense of ownership of the event that comes through such democratic participation.

The Sydney rally organisers initially invited Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union mining division secretary Tony Maher — who promotes “clean” coal — to speak at the rally. He was pulled after an email campaign initiated by CFMEU member and Anvil Hill Alliance activist Graham Brown — but this wouldn’t have been necessary had the organising taken place in an inclusive way.

Given the urgency of global action to avoid runaway climate change, this is not a campaign we can afford to lose. To be most effective, this movement will need democratic processes and structures, to give participants the benefit of a range of ideas for tactics, demands and priorities, and to ensure the greatest number of people feel empowered to take action together.

It’s clear the movement is diverse and needs to be so. There are numerous specific campaigns that must be waged through a combination of measures — in the streets, in direct actions, in the courts. These include the campaigns to stop the Anvil Hill coalmine in the Hunter Valley, halt the expansion of the Newcastle coal export facilities, stop the Gunns’ pulp mill and associated native forest logging in Tasmania and many others. They are campaigns on their own, but winning each of them will be essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and/or maintaining and increasing the carbon sink (the Earth’s ability to absorb the greenhouse gases released into the air).

But as well as supporting these discrete campaigns, we also need to strive for unity across the climate change movement around broader demands, such as for the immediate and deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions required to keep global warming below at most 1.5-2°C and in the longer term to bring the temperature down; for rejecting the non-solutions of nuclear power and “clean coal”; for vast expansion of renewable energy production, alongside efficiency measures; and for an expansion of public transport — which really needs to be free, if it’s to be taken up on the scale necessary to get cars off the roads.

To support such campaigns and demands, the movement will need to be independent of the vested interests of the fossil fuel and other greenhouse polluting industries, and their Coalition and Labor lackeys. It will also need to avoid false friends like the nuclear lobby with their cynical attempts to reinvent nuclear power as the solution to climate change. This is not to advocate refusing to work with members of the ALP, or anyone else, to halt climate change. But we do need to oppose attempts to subordinate the tactics and demands we adopt to the electoral interests of the corporate parties that have shown their inclination to put profits ahead of the planet.

In this light, the plans by Melbourne Friends of the Earth to hold a post-election “Where next?” forum for the movement is a welcome initiative. Within the movement, we sorely need such discussions on how to advance this struggle — the efforts of the “greenhouse mafia” of major greenhouse polluters to stymie action that could cut into their profits means that stopping global warming will take a colossal struggle. The left will need to find ways to construct broad alliances to ensure real measures are taken to halt the warming — and that such measures are not only environmentally, but also socially, sustainable.

[Kamala Emanuel is a NSW Senate candidate for the Socialist Alliance.]

The western appetite for biofuels is causing starvation in the poor world

George Monbiot, November 6, Guardian

It doesn't get madder than this. Swaziland is in the grip of a famine and receiving emergency food aid. Forty per cent of its people are facing acute food shortages. So what has the government decided to export? Biofuel made from one of its staple crops, cassava. The government has allocated several thousand hectares of farmland to ethanol production in the district of Lavumisa, which happens to be the place worst hit by drought. It would surely be quicker and more humane to refine the Swazi people and put them in our tanks. Doubtless a team of development consultants is already doing the sums.

This is one of many examples of a trade that was described last month by Jean Ziegler, the UN's special rapporteur, as "a crime against humanity". Ziegler took up the call first made by this column for a five-year moratorium on all government targets and incentives for biofuel: the trade should be frozen until second-generation fuels - made from wood or straw or waste - become commercially available. Otherwise, the superior purchasing power of drivers in the rich world means that they will snatch food from people's mouths. Run your car on virgin biofuel, and other people will starve.

Even the International Monetary Fund, always ready to immolate the poor on the altar of business, now warns that using food to produce biofuels "might further strain already tight supplies of arable land and water all over the world, thereby pushing food prices up even further". This week, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation will announce the lowest global food reserves in 25 years, threatening what it calls "a very serious crisis". Even when the price of food was low, 850 million people went hungry because they could not afford to buy it. With every increment in the price of flour or grain, several million more are pushed below the breadline.

The cost of rice has risen by 20% over the past year, maize by 50%, wheat by 100%. Biofuels aren't entirely to blame - by taking land out of food production they exacerbate the effects of bad harvests and rising demand - but almost all the major agencies are now warning against expansion. And almost all the major governments are ignoring them.

They turn away because biofuels offer a means of avoiding hard political choices. They create the impression that governments can cut carbon emissions and - as Ruth Kelly, the British transport secretary, announced last week - keep expanding the transport networks. New figures show that British drivers puttered past the 500bn kilometre mark for the first time last year. But it doesn't matter: we just have to change the fuel we use. No one has to be confronted. The demands of the motoring lobby and the business groups clamouring for new infrastructure can be met. The people being pushed off their land remain unheard.

In principle, burning biofuels merely releases the carbon the crops accumulated when growing. Even when you take into account the energy costs of harvesting, refining and transporting the fuel, they produce less net carbon than petroleum products. The law the British government passed a fortnight ago - by 2010, 5% of our road transport fuel must come from crops - will, it claims, save between 700,000 and 800,000 tonnes of carbon a year. It derives this figure by framing the question carefully. If you count only the immediate carbon costs of planting and processing biofuels, they appear to reduce greenhouse gases. When you look at the total impacts, you find they cause more warming than petroleum.

A recent study by the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen shows that the official estimates have ignored the contribution of nitrogen fertilisers. They generate a greenhouse gas - nitrous oxide - that is 296 times as powerful as CO2. These emissions alone ensure that ethanol from maize causes between 0.9 and 1.5 times as much warming as petrol, while rapeseed oil (the source of more than 80% of the world's biodiesel) generates 1-1.7 times the impact of diesel. This is before you account for the changes in land use.

A paper published in the journal Science three months ago suggests that protecting uncultivated land saves, over 30 years, between two and nine times the carbon emissions you might avoid by ploughing it and planting biofuels. Last year the research group LMC International estimated that if the British and European target of a 5% contribution from biofuels were to be adopted by the rest of the world, the global acreage of cultivated land would expand by 15%. That means the end of most tropical forests. It might also cause runaway climate change.

The British government says it will strive to ensure that "only the most sustainable biofuels" will be used in the UK. It has no means of enforcing this aim - it admits that if it tried to impose a binding standard it would break world trade rules. But even if "sustainability" could be enforced, what exactly does it mean? You could, for example, ban palm oil from new plantations. This is the most destructive kind of biofuel, driving deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia. But the ban would change nothing. As Carl Bek-Nielsen, vice chairman of Malaysia's United Plantations Berhad, remarked: "Even if it is another oil that goes into biodiesel, that other oil then needs to be replaced. Either way, there's going to be a vacuum and palm oil can fill that vacuum." The knock-on effects cause the destruction you are trying to avoid. The only sustainable biofuel is recycled waste oil, but the available volumes are tiny.

At this point, the biofuels industry starts shouting "jatropha". It is not yet a swear word, but it soon will be. Jatropha is a tough weed with oily seeds that grows in the tropics. This summer Bob Geldof, who never misses an opportunity to promote simplistic solutions to complex problems, arrived in Swaziland in the role of "special adviser" to a biofuels firm. Because it can grow on marginal land, jatropha, he claimed, is a "life-changing" plant that will offer jobs, cash crops and economic power to African smallholders.

Yes, it can grow on poor land and be cultivated by smallholders. But it can also grow on fertile land and be cultivated by largeholders. If there is one blindingly obvious fact about biofuel, it's that it is not a smallholder crop. It is an internationally traded commodity that travels well and can be stored indefinitely, with no premium for local or organic produce. Already the Indian government is planning 14m hectares of jatropha plantations. In August, the first riots took place among the peasant farmers being driven off the land to make way for them.

If the governments promoting biofuels do not reverse their policies, the humanitarian impact will be greater than that of the Iraq war. Millions will be displaced, hundreds of millions more could go hungry. This crime against humanity is a complex one, but that neither lessens nor excuses it. If people starve because of biofuels, Ruth Kelly and her peers will have killed them. Like all such crimes, it is perpetrated by cowards, attacking the weak to avoid confronting the strong.

www.monbiot.com

Aust power stations among world's worst CO2 polluters

Michael Edwards, November 15, ABC News

Australia's energy industry representatives have admitted Australia does have some of the world's dirtiest power stations and is the world's worst per capita greenhouse polluter.

According to the study by the Washington-based Centre for Global Development, Australian power plants produce more carbon dioxide emissions per person each year than the United States, and almost five times as much as China.

But clean coal advocates say the Australian energy industry is working on a cleaner, greener future.

Early on Wednesday morning, 15 Greenpeace activists snuck into the Munmorah Power Station on the New South Wales central coast.

They chained themselves to the plant's coal-feeder belt. All were arrested, but they claim to have reached their objective of disrupting production at the plant.

Greenpeace says the Munmorah Station represents an old style of power production and its carbon emissions are harmful to the environment.

Greenpeace campaign director Steve Campbell says the activity is part of a fight against coal-fired electricity generation, and he has warned other electricity generators to expect similar treatment.

"Greenpeace around the world has been campaigning against coal for some time and in the last couple of years of course we've been very active to stop the opening of a coal mine in the Hunter Valley, which is Anvil Hill," he said.

"But we are also escalating our focus on coal-fired power generation because clearly this is the biggest issue for Australia in terms of our own CO2 emissions."

Bayswater and Eraring

Two other New South Wales power stations could be on their hit list. The Bayswater and Eraring plants in the Hunter Valley have been identified within a list of the top 100 greenhouse gas emitters in the world.

They are named in an international study of the world's 50,000 power stations, which ranks Australia as the world's worst greenhouse gas emitter on a per capita basis.

The study says Australian power plants produce more than 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per person each year.

By comparison, the United States comes in second at more than nine tonnes per person, while China is down the list with two tonnes per person.

Frank van Schagen is the head of the Cooperative Research Centre for Coal in Sustainable Development. He says the numbers speak for themselves.

"Australia's average efficiency for coal-fired generation is about 36 per cent in energy conversion - internationally, if you took a global average, it's about 30," he said.

"So Australia has some of the best, and it also has some of the oldest, but it doesn't have the worst, shall we say."

Each of these stations produce more than 18 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. The operators of the two plants declined to comment on the study.

Brown or black coal

Both the Bayswater and Eraring Plants burn black coal.

To Greens Senator Bob Brown, the whole picture of CO2 emissions from electricity production must include the impact of brown coal-fired power stations such as the Hazelwood plant in Victoria.

"It doesn't take into account the fact that some power stations are putting out two, three, four times as much as electricity as others," Senator Brown said.

"When you look at it per unit of electricity, those brown coal-burning stations in Victoria go right to the dirtiest top of the league.

"Coal itself is a huge menace in terms of greenhouse gas production going into the atmosphere and the threat that's now creating for the world's environment and economy.

"But brown coal is 30 to 50 per cent worse in greenhouse gas emissions for the amount of electricity being produced, even than black coal."

But Mr van Schagen says the future of coal-fired electricity generation is not all bleak.

He says the rapid development of clean coal technologies is making it an environmentally sustainable option.

"What we have is a legacy in Australia of a dependence on cheap coal-fired power electricity, and what's been happening over the last number of years is organisations such as mine and others around the world have been working to look at potential ways of reducing emissions from power stations," he said.

"Hence we have activities that are looking at capturing the CO2 and storing some in aquifers, so potentially reducing emissions from coal-fired power stations to, say, 10 per cent or less than they currently emit."

Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Labor's environment spokesman Peter Garrett were not available for comment.

Munmorah operator Delta Electricity says Greenpeace's actions have not disrupted power generation.

Morales Says Rich Nations Must Pay

FRANK BAJAK, November 3, AP

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — The world's richest nations must be made to pay for the damage their profligate use of natural resources has caused in Bolivia and other developing countries, President Evo Morales said Friday.

"It's not possible that some in the industrialized world live very well economically while affecting, even destroying others," he told The Associated Press in an interview.

The first indigenous president of this country — whose rapidly melting glaciers scientists count among the most profound signs of global warming — said he and other Latin American leaders were exploring possible legal means for demanding compensation for the developed world's "ecological debt."

"If there is understanding, that would be great. But if not, there will have to be international legal responsibility," said the scrappy coca union leader, who turned 48 a week ago.

In a wide-ranging 70-minute interview in the living room of the presidential residence, Morales said his version of socialism requires state control of all basic services, including telecommunications.

He also reiterated his call for the United States, which he accuses of trying to undermine his government, to pull all of its soldiers out of this Andean nation.

Morales told the AP he was willing to help Colombia reach peace with its main rebel movement, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which he said was no longer justified in spilling blood after more than four decades of conflict.

On Bolivia's divisive domestic front, Morales said he ordered troops to withdraw from the main airport in the country's eastern lowlands last month to avoid bloodshed during a standoff over landing revenues. He said he received intelligence that the crowd that took over the airport included armed separatists looking to provoke a fatal confrontation.

Morales, an Aymara Indian whose father was a community leader, also said proudly that this majority indigenous nation will next week become the first to ratify the Sept. 13 declaration by the United Nations endorsing the rights of the world's native peoples.

The United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were the only countries to vote against the declaration.

After winning the presidency in December 2005 with 54 percent of the vote, Morales has increased Bolivia's annual natural gas revenues from $300 million to $2 billion a year by exerting greater state control of the industry.

He has nationalized a tin smelter, most of Bolivia's largest tin mine and the country's railroads, and government officials have suggested they intend to move to nationalize electric utilities.

His government this year completed the re-nationalization of water companies, a demand sparked by widespread popular protests. It is currently negotiating the re-nationalization of the country's main telecommunications company, Entel, which is owned by Telecom Italia SpA.

"It's communication. You want to communicate, right?" Morales said. "It's a basic service. It's a human right."

"Just because you talk on the phone doesn't mean a few people are getting rich," said Morales, seated on a couch wearing fur-lined slippers he said were given to him by fans in a former Soviet republic whose name escaped him.

Morales has allied himself closely with Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's leftist president, and Fidel Castro, Cuba's aging leader.

Asked if his vision of socialism follows the Chavez mold, Morales said the communal structure of Bolivia's indigenous societies and their "way of living in harmony with Mother Earth" set South America's poorest country on a different road.

"This is not the socialism of a leftist. It's the socialism of humanity."

His politics have not endeared him to the United States, which was his nemesis in the late 1980s and 1990s when he led coca-leaf growers in protests against Washington-directed forced eradication campaigns.

Expanding on public remarks last month in which he expressed his desire that all U.S. military personnel leave Bolivia, Morales said he wants all armed foreign troops out.

He said the only Venezuelan soldiers in the country are unarmed pilots who fly him around in loaned helicopters.

"As far as I know, the only armed soldiers I've seen are those from the United States," he said.

The U.S. Embassy would not say how many troops or military contractors it has in the country, but they are believed to not exceed a few dozen.

Blinking from a nap and blowing his nose when the afternoon interview began, Morales was asked how much sleep he gets nightly given his penchant for brutally long work days.

"Less than four hours," he said, though he said he always catnaps during helicopter flights.

"I'd like to get more rest, but you just can't."

Rally organisers 'may be charged'

MICHELLE PAINE, November 02, Mercury Newspaper

MORE than 500 students rallied in Hobart yesterday to protest against Gunns' proposed pulp mill.

Most walked out of class to take part in the lunchtime event in front of Parliament House. But an unplanned march through the streets of Hobart afterwards may lead to a legal backlash.

Tasmania Police told the ABC yesterday they were considering charging organisers because the march could have posed a safety risk to protesters, the public and traffic.

"We're not allowed to vote, but we are the generation which will be affected by the pulp mill the most. This is the reason we are showing our dissent by voting with our feet," said rally speaker and organiser Gabby Forward, from Fahan School.

Greens senator Christine Milne was among the speakers. The crowd included students from more than a dozen public and private schools and colleges around Hobart, including some in uniform.

Ms Forward, 15, said most people's parents had given them notes to their schools to excuse their absence.

"Most were allowed to go but a couple of schools threatened suspension, even if they had notes from their parents," Ms Forward said.

She said two private schools had done this.

"We were expecting maybe 50 people, and then the interest started to grow. We hadn't planned the march because we didn't realise how big it would be," she said.

The organisers had told Tasmania Police about the rally, but the march happened spontaneously, she said.

The march organisers were questioned by police mid-march, she said.

Co-organiser Amyris Cauchi, 18, said she was thrilled with the turnout.

Education Minister David Bartlett said before the rally that it was up to parents and school communities to decide on participation.

Liberal education spokesman Sue Napier said Mr Bartlett should require, at least for public schools, that absentees had parental approval.

Students are planning another rally at Launceston's Civic Square next Thursday at 1.15pm.

Australia scores badly on emissions growth report

Tim Colebatch and Jewel Topsfield, November 1, The Age

AUSTRALIA is the ninth biggest contributor to increased global carbon emissions, a new World Bank report has found.

The bank report shows that between 1994 and 2004, Australia's annual emissions of carbon dioxide (the world's main greenhouse gas) increased by 107 million tonnes, or 38 per cent. Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull declared yesterday that Australia was "leading the world on climate change".

Australia's emissions grew by more than the combined increase in emissions by Britain, France and Germany, which have 10 times our population.

In Denmark, which has become the world leader in wind energy, carbon dioxide emissions fell by 9 million tonnes, or 13 per cent.

The report, Growth and CO2 Emissions: How do different countries fare?, released in October, examined the trends among the world's 70 biggest producers of greenhouse gases. Australia was almost unique in being a developed country whose emissions are not only very high but growing rapidly.

It said that on a population basis, Australia had the sixth highest emissions of carbon dioxide — 19.36 tonnes per head in 2004, roughly three times that of Sweden and Switzerland, more than five times that of China, 19 times that of India and 72 times that of Bangladesh.

The figures undermine the Government's efforts to present Australia as a world leader in tackling climate change.

Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd this week pledged not to sign any new agreement on climate change that does not include developing countries, but the figures show why developing countries will not agree to cut their emissions.

For Australia, there was some good news in the report. First, the bank found the rate of Australia's emissions growth fell sharply in the second half of the decade, suggesting that government, business and households' efforts to slow the pace had some effect.

Second, the figures show no strict correlation between emissions and incomes. Switzerland, Sweden and France, which are as rich as Australia or richer, all produce only a third as much carbon dioxide per head as Australia. All rely heavily on nuclear and hydro power for their electricity.

Australia's emissions are high largely because it relies on heavily polluting coal for electricity; specialises in energy-intensive industries such as aluminium; has a large car fleet with poor fuel efficiency; and lags behind Europe in energy efficiency standards for buildings and appliances.

Mr Turnbull said the post-Kyoto agreement was now the main issue in the climate change debate, and he accused Labor of again adopting a Coalition policy.

"Climate change is the biggest economic challenge the world faces," Mr Turnbull said. "You have to ask yourself whether a team which was wrong all year, and then in the space of a few hours does a complete backflip, has either the commitment, the capacity or the competence to get the job done.

"Australia is leading the world on climate change. We are going to meet our Kyoto target. We are leading the world to reduced deforestation, the second largest source of emissions. Who is leading the world in clean coal research? Australia. Who is slapping the coal industry in the face? Labor."

But Mr Rudd denied that Labor's post-Kyoto policy was a copy of the Government's. "Mr Howard, as a climate change sceptic, has never embraced a carbon target for Australia in the existing commitment period," he said. "His historical scepticism, rejection entirely of the Kyoto framework, stands on the record."

Mr Rudd's plan for Labor to lift its target for "new" renewable energy to 20 per cent of electricity demand by 2020 left the Coalition having a bet both ways yesterday. While Mr Turnbull and Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce criticised Labor's target for shutting the door on future coal-fired power stations, Mr Howard said he was considering adopting it as Government policy.

The coal miners' union, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, said employers were relaxed about it.

"That's what they tell us privately, they're relaxed about emissions trading. Really, it's political scare campaigning by the Government," the union's Tony Maher told the ABC. "You've got to bear in mind the energy growth between now and 2020 will be between 30 and 40 per cent, so there's plenty of room for various energy sources."

Opposition resources spokesman Chris Evans said the renewable energy target would deliver only half the new capacity needed to meet future energy demands.

Meanwhile, the Victorian Government said that proposed legislation creating renewable energy targets, introduced in State Parliament yesterday, would be the first in Australia to cut greenhouse emissions. Under the targets, which would see 10 per cent of electricity come from renewables by 2016, retailers will be obliged to provide incentives to householders to install measures such as energy-efficient lighting and ceiling insulation.

Victorian Energy Minister Peter Batchelor said the scheme aimed to cut the average household power bill by about $45 a year.

With PETER KER and AAP

http://www.worldbank.org

If socialism needs a prefix, it should be ‘revolutionary’ rather than ‘eco’

Pinched from climateandcapitalism.blogspot.com

“Shaking off the productivist dross of Marxism”

Ecosocialism or Barbarism. Edited by Jane Kelly and Sheila Malone. Published by Socialist Resistance, London, 2006. £10, €15, ISBN 0-902869-97-3. 130 pages

Reviewed by Helen Ward.
from Permanent Revolution, Autumn 2007

Environmental challenges such as climate change have finally come to the top of the political agenda, with everyone from the Women’s Institute to George Bush putting forward their plans to save the planet. This book is the response from Socialist Resistance.

The timing of its publication is no accident. Both Socialist Resistance and their international organisation, the Fourth International, are in the process of a radical re-think with proposals to change their “political programme, perspectives and public profile towards being an anti-capitalist, ecosocialist organisation”.[1]

This move is based on a new perspective of catastrophic social and ecological crisis that demands an urgent response. “At the core of this change is the contention that free-market, privatising neoliberalism has over 20 years arrived at a new and deadly phase – what we call ‘savage capitalism’.” The book compiles a set of arguments for ecosocialism, ending with the eco-socialist manifesto drafted by Joel Kovel and Michael Löwy in 2001.[2]

Much of the book is a useful description of environmental problems, with a consistent argument that these are inherent in the capitalist mode of production and that they can only be resolved by a socialist solution rather than a series of reforms within capitalism. This argument is used to challenge the leadership of the environmental movement, in particular the various Green Parties.

“It is not a matter of contrasting “bad” ecocidal capitalist to “good” green capitalists; it is the system itself, based on ruthless competition, the demands of profitability, and the race for rapid profit, which is the destroyer of nature’s balance…Partial reforms are completely inadequate.” (p6)

In common with left greens including Joel Kovel [3] and Derek Wall [4], the book includes visions of a future without capitalism where people live in harmony with the environment, a transition,

“not only to a new mode of production and an egalitarian and democratic society, but also to an alternative mode of life, a new ecosocialist civilization, beyond the reign of money, beyond consumption habits artificially produced by advertising, and beyond the unlimited production of commodities, such as private automobiles, that are harmful to the environment.” (p7)

This green and pleasant vision is fine but why a new label, ecosocialism, to sum it up? It suggests that Marxist socialism per se is not “eco” and that ecologism is not “socialist”. The first article from Michael Löwy, an academic and long-standing member of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) the French Section of the Fourth International, is called “What is ecosocialism?”:

“It is a current of ecological thought and action that appropriates the fundamental gains of Marxism while shaking off its productivist dross.” (p4)

The charge of productivism is the one constantly levied at socialists by Greens and ecologists. But is it true? Two examples are usually cited. First, that Marx described a fundamental contradiction in capitalism between the forces of production and the social relations of production, with the latter acting as a brake on the former; more specifically, that private capitalist property relations impede the rational, optimal exploitation of nature.

Marx argues for an expansion of the forces of production to be able to meet widespread need. This can clearly be interpreted as “productivist”, but that ignores both the context in which Marx was writing, and his related discussions of the way production should be used to meet human need rather than constantly expand capital and profit.

Indeed, as Löwy himself points out, “For Marx, the supreme goal of technical progress is not the infinite accumulation of good (“having”) but the reduction of the working day and the accumulation of free time (“being”).”

Marx is also accused of conflating expansion of productive forces with progress, but taking his writings in historical context this seems an unfair critique. There was a desperate need to expand production to meet the very basic needs of humanity. We can see how expansion of productive forces under capitalism has been contradictory, with the production of goods for profit rather than need, the expansion of unnecessary things that advertisers then have to persuade us that we need, and the production of luxury goods for a decadent layer of society. Nonetheless, the development of the productive forces, through computing, for example, does have huge potential for reducing the working day – but capitalist social relations obstruct this use of new technology.

The second example Greens cite of socialism’s “productivism” is the Soviet Union, China and other “socialist” states. Yes, the Soviet Union was “productivist”, with maximum volume of the goods being integral to their planning system than quality or usefulness of these products. But we need to reassert that this was not socialist – it was a distortion in which the transition to socialism was blocked by a brutal and bureaucratic dictatorship.

It seems that this charge is one of the reasons for the adoption of the “eco” label. The second is the primacy the ecological question attains for the FI in a set of catastrophist perspectives.

Löwy argues: “The ecological issue is, in my opinion, the great challenge for a renewal of Marxist thought at the threshold of the 21st century.” This, taken together with the prediction of imminent environmental collapse, leads them to adopt the new turn, and the addition of eco- is a way of signalling a break with the past.

Many Greens also think that Marxism has scant regard for the eco-system, a criticism linked to the idea of productivism. In fact Marx and Engels both had quite a lot to say about the way capitalism mis-uses non-renewable resources and degrades the environment. But for Marx it was capitalism itself – a system wedded to accumulation for its own sake – that was responsible for this state of affairs and this puts an unbridgeable gulf between him and those Greens who believe that a benevolent form of capitalism can be built that lives in harmony with people and nature more generally.

Forerunners of Socialist Resistance have often promoted a red-green alliance, part of a rainbow coalition, but now propose a more strategic amalgam. “The convergence of these movements could form a new vision for society – ecosocialism”. And failure to advance ecosocialism will, the book argues, lead to barbarism.

So what new strategy and programme is being advanced to avert the possibility of barbarism? There are some good sections outlining the need to link the struggle for immediate reforms to the goal of revolutionary social change. Jane Kelly and Phil Ward correctly criticise the Green Party, arguing that “…the Greens do not differ fundamentally from social democracy in the belief that capitalism can be reformed”. (p51) They also recognise that the revolutionary programme for the environmental change is not well thought through – a position we would agree with, including in our own tendency historically.

In an attempt to start that programmatic re-elaboration, they look to ways to link socialist and green demands. At the heart is the idea that we strive for production for need rather than exchange – a basic socialist goal and one not possible to achieve under capitalism. But reforms are also needed in the short term: to reduce carbon emissions, promote renewable energy, insulate homes etc. The key programmatic question is how to apply the transitional method to achieve these. Kelly and Ward agree that transitional demands are needed, arguing that immediate reforms cannot be fully achieved “without the control of ordinary working people; issues of workers’ control, workers’ democracy and socialist solutions are paramount.” (p54) They also refer to the way that many socialist goals, such as socialisation of domestic labour through a revolution in the way we live, would be much more environmentally sustainable than the individualised consumption under capitalism.

But the laudable aim of developing a transitional programme is unfortunately not achieved either in the ecosocialist manifesto (pages 116-120), the resolution of the International Socialist Group from April 2006 (pages 68-73); nor in the recent Socialist Resistance conference document.

All of these programmes and manifestoes are actually limited to a progressive goal (socialism, or rather ecosocialism) and a series of mostly fine reforms, such as an end to airport expansion, “an international treaty that goes well beyond Kyoto”, “global action to help third world countries in sustainable development”.

But how? This is where transitional method should come in, but is lacking. At the heart of transitional demands is the linking of struggles for reforms with the struggle for power. The struggle for power is a fight against capitalism, which will be a vicious fight given the strength and resources of the state and international organisations that will defend their power to the death. This will take a revolution – a violent overthrow of the old order to have any hope of moving to the goal of socialism.

A transitional programme embeds this struggle in the fight over reforms. For example, the correct demand for cheap and integrated transport systems needs to be elaborated to include the role of workers in transport industries taking control of the planning and investment of their companies. They should link to local workers and users of transport to determine priorities.

These action committees would inevitably come up against the owners of the transport companies and the state that backs them up, and to win the battle the workers would need to take on larger issues of ownership and planning and, eventually, control over the local state.

Revolutionary socialists differ from reformist Greens and even the most militant eco-warriors on two key questions. The first is the question of the state. We understand that the state is not neutral and will have to be smashed. The Greens want to reform it and the eco-warriors want it to go away but are not in general willing to see the need for another form of power to replace it.

The second is the role of the working class. The most left of the Greens will see the workers’ movement having a role in eco struggles, but also see the obstacle of workers with vested interests in many polluting industries. “Ecosocialists know that the workers and their organizations are an indispensable for any radical transformation of the system,” writes Löwy. (p5) But that is not the same as understanding the primacy and centrality of the working class; the working class not as a constituent part of the ecosocialist coalition but as the leadership of it.

The lack of a discussion of the state in relation to revolutionary strategy, and of the centrality of the working class in any socialist movement is a major weakness in the ecosocialist project since it is on these issues that there will be most disagreements with many “greens”. Any new international party or movement for socialism, with or without a prefix, needs to be founded on a shared understanding of the state and the working class, otherwise it will shatter at the first test of real struggle where a choice between the interests and organisations of the working class is pitted against the corporations and institutions of the capitalist state, be they neo-liberal or even reforming “Green” liberals.

Developing a practical, working class response to climate change and other environmental threats is one of the most important challenges facing the left today. But we are certain that if socialism needs any prefix, it should be “revolutionary” and not “eco”.

Footnotes
[1] Socialist Resistance. “Savage Capitalism – The Ecosocialist Alternative”. IV Online magazine: IV392 - September 2007, on http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1311

[2] The manifesto is also available online www.iefd.org/manifestos/ecosocialist_manifesto.php

[3] Kovel J (2002) The Enemy of Nature. The end of capitalism or the end of the world?. New York: Zed Books

[4] Wall D (2005) Babylon and Beyond. The economics of Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Globalist and Radical Green Movements. London: Pluto Press

Clean coal a furphy: Dr Karl

Paul Bibby, November 1, Sydney Morning Herald

Celebrity physicist Karl Kruszelnicki has described clean coal as a "complete furphy" and likened it to Nazi propaganda.

"Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, said if you're going to tell a lie, tell a big one, and this is a beauty," Dr Kruszelnicki said today.

The scientist is running for the Senate on the Climate Change Coalition ticket.

"It is a furphy, a pork pie to cover up the fact that there is no such thing as clean coal," he said at Customs House in the Sydney CBD.

Dr Kruszelnicki used a scale model of Sydney and a $10 tent to demonstrate what he said was the "myth of carbon capture".

Sydney alone would produce a cubic kilometre of compressed carbon dioxide every day as a result of the process, far more than could possibly be stored under ground, he said.

"You can't build a box big enough to store that every day, there is nowhere big enough under ground to put it and the ocean is not an option,"

"One cubic kilometre of CO₂ to get rid of every day? It's not possible! But they don't tell you that that's what they've got to get rid of. They make reassuring noises that they're spending millions looking for underground caverns. But I'm here to tell you that they're not going to find it.

"Carbon dioxide is always carbon dioxide - it isn't going anywhere. It will get back into the environment. The point is that they can only store 1000 of 1 per cent, not all of their daily output."

Dr Kruszelnicki was joined by fellow Climate Change Coalition candidates, who are seeking positions in the Senate and House of Representative seats across the country.

AAP reports: Dr Kruszelnicki said political promises including a $20 million plan for exploration of underground caverns would be a waste of taxpayer dollars.

As well, any storage facility would eventually wear down and would release the stored carbon dioxide back into the environment, he said.

His political party is recommending a 40 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 and a 70 per cent reduction by 2050.

Underground thermal energy accessed in South Australia could provide 100 per cent of Australia's baseload electricity for the next 75 years and then be supplemented by other renewables, he told reporters.

"If we tried really hard we could have all of the electricity in Australia made without carbon by 2020 using a mixture of renewable energies including hot rocks and the wind and the waves and the sun."

Dr Kruszelnicki was joined today by his running mate on the Senate ticket, Patrice Newell, a resident of the Hunter coalmining region, who challenged suggestions that the coal industry would suffer major job losses if Australia made a dramatic switch to renewable energy sources.

"I know that for a fact that they would be quite happy to have a job in the renewable industry," Ms Newell said.

"It's not that it's a commitment to a coal job, they want a commitment to a job."

Dr Kruszelnicki said Australia must decide where it wanted to focus its energy prospects for the future.

"We've got two choices in 15 to 20 years from now," he said.

"Either to make money, we sell dirt overseas, coal, or we sell the (renewable energy) technology without burning dirt."

The collision of capitalism and nature

MIKE DAVIS, November 2, 2007, US Socialist Worker

DESPITE THEIR nonstop coverage, nearly all of the media accounts of the wildfires in Southern California missed the deeper causes of the catastrophe--years of destructive land development driven by the thirst for profit, and the failure of politicians to do anything to protect the environment or residents’ safety.

MIKE DAVIS grew up in the back country of eastern San Diego County, close to where the fires hit hardest, and lives in the city today. He has written extensively about California in such books as City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear. He talked to Socialist Worker about this latest not-so-natural disaster in southern California.

THE MEDIA verdict on this disaster seems to be that the federal government and the state and local authorities did a great job, and everyone who evacuated to the Qualcomm football stadium is getting the royal treatment. What’s left out of this picture?

THERE’S BEEN a fractal class bias at absolutely every level of the coverage.

If you look at the international news, it’s all about the fires threatening Malibu. If you look at the coverage in San Diego, what gets the attention is the Witch Creek fire threatening Republican north county, rather than the Harris fire threatening more Democratic south county.

There are a lot of invisible victims who aren’t enjoying backrubs and nouvelle cuisine down at Qualcomm stadium.

This has turned into a carefully managed, semi-hysterical celebration of Republican values--all drawing a marked contrast to New Orleans. The Copley- and Murdoch-controlled media--which is the media, largely, in San Diego--is congratulating us that we have leaders with such fine law enforcement and military experience.

Meanwhile, Arnold Schwarzenegger was going around the stadium, saying people are happy, and everything’s wonderful--they have yoga, they have massage, they can get Padres autographs. When a newswoman had the temerity to confront him, he grabbed her arm so hard that it looked like he was going to break it, and he started shouting at her, “All you have to do is look around here and see how happy people are.”

The only discordant note is from Duncan Hunter, the right-wing Republican presidential candidate, who seems to think he’s in Iwo Jima and not San Diego County. He’s been blasting the authorities for not letting the Marines fight the fire--though the Marines have very little capability to do that.

But the consistent representation is--to use the words of Geraldo Rivera--that this is the “anti-Katrina.” Or as another Republican said, “We have a civilized evacuation.”

CAN YOU talk more about the invisible victims?

THERE ARE basically four different kinds of society in the backlands of San Diego and Southern California.

First, there are the native Californians. San Diego has more Indian reservations than any county in the country, and I think five or six reservations have been burned or evacuated.

Then, there are the bikers and construction workers--ordinary working people, Mexican as well as anglo, who have lived in traditional small towns for generations. This is the kind of society I grew up in, on the edge of the back country in eastern San Diego County.

In addition, there are the new subdivisions--sprawling planned communities, some of them with biotech companies and so on, along the corridor of the I-15 freeway, which links San Diego with Riverside to the north. These have been some of the worst hit areas.

Finally, there are the luxury lifestyles--castles and Beverly Hills-like subdivisions somehow smuggled into the depths of some of the deepest canyons and most inaccessible back country.

Recently, I had a reunion with some of the guys I grew up with 50 years ago and haven’t seen since the Vietnam War. And we were incredulous at all the mansions on brush-covered hilltops where we had hunted rabbits as kids--in areas where wildfires were bound to occur.

Throughout this back country, there’s a long-running, low-intensity class struggle of the blue-collar residents trying to preserve not just rural lifestyles, but to be able to afford to live here--against the encroachment of the McMansions, the subdivisions and the traffic jams. It’s polo versus rodeo.

Some of the victims of this fire are people living in trailers or shacks, or on modest ranches. But their agony isn’t what the news focuses on. Instead, the news is focused on the solidly Republican suburbs and country mansions.

Rancho Santa Fe, which is partially burned, is one of the five or six richest communities in the United States. Chalmers Johnson’s wife Sheila told me that she heard what happened in Rancho Santa Fe was that when the rich people fled, they locked their electronic gates to keep looters out--forgetting that this would also keep the firefighters out. The firefighters couldn’t get in, and some of these unbelievably gigantic homes burned to the ground.

AS ALWAYS, the media are focused on how the fires started, rather than the deeper causes. Can you talk about some of the factors like development and climate change?

THE LOS Angeles Times had an article that said climate change wasn’t a factor in the fires. This is probably balderdash. Everything that’s happening, including the dramatic number of mega-fires in the rest of the West, accords with the simulations generated in the climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Not only are extreme events becoming more common, but it’s possible that the base climate of the Southwest and most of the rest of the West is itself changing. One of my old buddies who I saw at the reunion just retired from the state park service as a ranger, and he’s horrified by what he sees happening. He says that the pine forests in the San Bernardino Mountains are dead--they’re just fuel.

In other words, what we’re seeing are not simply extreme events, but epochal changes in the environment and vegetation.

On the other hand, the tendency--even among people who a few years ago were denying climate change--to blame everything on the climate is a kind of one-stop response that avoids any political responsibility.

The truth is that much of the fire destruction is the result of political decisions, backed up by the power of developers and real estate interests, to override any public opposition to controlling growth in the backlands and the spread of luxury lifestyles like a fungus across the landscape.

After the 2003 fire, a coalition of backlands people and environmentalists put an initiative on the ballot in San Diego to restrict development in the back country. They were crushed. They got outspent by 10- or 20-to-1 by an opposition that was supposed to be led by farmers. But when our local muckraking paper, the San Diego Reader, investigated, it turned out the opposition was funded by the large developers who want to open up the whole countryside to pink stucco and tile roofs.

The problem is essentially unsolvable unless you’re willing to deal with the political economy of land ownership and land inflation.

Property values have risen along the coast to such an incredible extent. In San Diego County, only 12 percent of the population earns enough to buy the median new house--at least before the mortgage meltdown.

So people are forced inland. But people who live on the coast are either so wealthy, or their wealth has been so augmented by the rise in property values, that they’re now buying second homes. Increasingly, you see these second homes throughout the back country--and not just cabins, but 4,000-square-foot houses.

So although I think climate change is a crucial part of the background, the real essence of the problem is this sprawl that’s ultimately driven by the lack of any real social regulation over land speculation and land inflation. And that, of course, is exactly the same issue that the Karl Marx of California, Henry George, was addressing in the 1870s.

WHEN WILDFIRES struck southern California in 2003, you pointed out how the Republican power structure’s obsession with keeping taxes low starved the local government for revenue, leaving San Diego County the only large county in the state without a unified fire department. Has this aspect of the situation changed at all?

NOTHING HAS changed. The response to the devastation of 2003 was a series of thunderous “no” votes against controlling growth or enlarging firefighting resources.

The one positive thing was that an outspoken maverick named Mike Aguirre was elected city attorney partially because he appealed to people about the deterioration of services.

He pointed out that the city government doesn’t hesitate to throw tens of millions of dollars in tax subsidies to the Spanos family, extremely conservative Republicans who own the Chargers, or to John Moores, the Padres owner and Clinton supporter, for whom the city built a stadium. Meanwhile, you have potholes in your street, the fire chief quit because he’s so frustrated with the lack of resources, and there’s no affordable housing.

Recently, Aguirre has been crucified in the local newspapers, where we’re totally at the mercy of Copley press, except for one of the weeklies. They’ve been crusading against Aguirre because he dared to come out and say we need water conservation measures. I’m not sure my kids can even remember what rain looks like, but the mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders, who’s now being lionized as a great hero, said that was alarmist nonsense.

So you end up with this irony--the very Republicans who should be wearing sackcloth or running to hide in Paraguay are instead being treated like American heroes, whose conservative values have triumphed over tragedy.

All of this is drawn in a continuous, invidious and basically racist comparison with New Orleans and the victims of Katrina--even though, with the exception of blue-collar people in the eastern part of the country, the scale of loss isn’t close to the same magnitude.

SOME RIGHT-wingers--like Duncan Hunter, the Republican presidential contender and representative to Congress from the San Diego area--are using the fires as an excuse to renew calls to militarize firefighting and essentially expand the domestic reach of the Pentagon.

DUNCAN HUNTER is a one-trick pony. He’s saying exactly the same thing he did in 2003--to send in the Marines, like we need to storm the beaches. And of course, people are pointing out in the background that the reason aircraft didn’t fly was because there were gusts of wind up to 70 miles an hour.

You just push a button, and you get the same response from him. But it’s very sinister to watch him, Brian Bilbray and Darrell Issa, the three suburban San Diego Republicans, smiling and gloating over this chaos.

Another dimension--homeland security linkage of all this--is that the Bush administration has sent in the FBI. There’s a big arson investigation of the fires in northern San Diego County and Orange County.

They’re probably going to have trouble blaming Iran for the fires. But I wouldn’t be surprised if an undocumented immigrant is arrested at some point.

Among the communities that burned, Escondido in north county is notorious nationally for trying to outlaw renting homes to people without proper papers. And there are other communities, like Fallbrook and Poway, where the Minutemen come to spit at Mexican day laborers in front of Home Depot.

But as my witty friend Sheila Johnson again pointed out, it’s going to be very ironic, because the same Mexican workers they’re trying to deport are going to be the very people they beg to rebuild their homes.

YOU’VE MADE the point that disasters like these won’t be solved with a technical or scientific fix, but by taking up the political and social questions involved. Why?

THE SOLUTION has to lie in changing power relations within communities and within the region. In truth, the issues of affordable housing, job creation for youth, protecting the environment and dealing with congestion are all part of a single fabric.

The problem in the past has been that groups like the Sierra Club tend to be focused just on the open space and environmental side of it. They haven’t given answers to people who are worried about growth or jobs. Nobody’s making the elementary point that we need massive reinvestment in the inner cities, and making communities more environmentally stable, and more conservation and restoration work in the hills.

What’s needed is a populist politics that relates these issues and shows that at the end of the day, you have to fight to try to change the balance of power.

Once again, the Democrats are missing an opportunity because they’re not prepared to take on the real issues. They’re too gutless to attack the invidious comparison of the wildfires to New Orleans, or the self-celebration of these corrupt Republicans.

It may partially be the bias of the media, but on five local TV stations, I’ve yet to see a Democrat. That’s because they just yield the ground, just as over the war and everything else of fundamental importance. And besides, most of the Democrats here get money from the same developers.