Options for Ecosocialists in 2008

(The general line of document below was endorsed by a meeting of the Green Left (a group within the Green Party of England and Wales) at their meeting this month. Sean Thompson was at the founding meeting of the Ecosocialist International Network on Paris in October. He has been a socialist activist in Britain for many years; he is the a GPEW representative in the Stop the War Coalition - NB: This intro taken from Climate and Capitalism)

Sean Thompson, January 2008

I woke up on New Years Day with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I had just survived an medical emergency, so I was mightily pleased to be waking up at all. On the other, the situation facing the Left in Britain has seldom seemed bleaker. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, the erosion of civil liberties grinds on relentlessly, the privatisation of our education and health services gathers pace, as does the rate of global warming - and as I write, the government has announced a new nuclear power programme. I have been politically engaged since the early sixties, and during that time the left has never been weaker or more fragmented than it is today.

Given that Rosa Luxemburg’s description of the choice before us being socialism or barbarism has never been more stark it would be easy to surmise from the above that my view is that that there is no future for the left nor possibility of humanity’s self emancipation – in short that we are all fucked. I admit that any sober assessment of our situation must lead to the conclusion that at the moment the odds seem to be heavily on barbarism (but then, when weren’t they?), but there are a few glimmers of hope to be seen and there remains no alternative for us to but continue to work against the odds. So in the short dark days of January 2008, we ecosocialists (or green socialists or socialist greens or whatever) need to plan a course of action for the coming year.

Vacuum on the left

Ever since the mid seventies I have believed that a regroupment and refoundation of the left in Britain was a necessary precondition for the building of a mass party of humanist and environmentally aware socialism based within the working class and its institutions. I remain convinced that such a project must remain the central task for us today, in parallel with and informed by our activities as trade unionists, anti war activists or in whatever areas of day to day resistance to capitalism we are jointly and severally able to engage.

The leverage for such a refoundation could conceivably be based on one (at least) of three main agencies; the Left in the Labour Party and the Trade Unions, a regroupment of the far left sects or the developing social movements, in particular the green movement. 2007 wasn’t a good year for any of those three potential routes to progress.

Despite the trajectory of the Labour Party since the mid eighties, from a notionally social democratic party to Blair’s corrupt, neo liberal election machine, there was always a residual organised left within it, with a real, if declining, base within the trade union movement and among elements of the trade unions bureaucracies. Socialists within the Labour Party had a good(ish) case when they argued that all attempts to build an alternative to Labour to its left by small groups recruiting in ones and twos had failed in the past and that the natural home for socialists was within the Party in order to fight for its rebirth. However, last summer, the remnants of the Left in the Labour Party failed even to get to the starting line in NuLab’s leadership race and at its conference in September the Trade Union bureaucracy gave away the last tenuous ribbons of democratic control by party members. NuLab is now explicitly and irreversibly a party of the right.

However, while the vast majority of the Trade Union bureaucracy appears to be welded immovably to the apparatus of NuLab, there is growing dissent and disillusionment with the whole Blairite/Brownite project on the part of growing numbers of trade union activists, including a minority of the bureaucracy. Thus, despite the steady erosion of membership, the traditional ‘official’ sections of the Labour Movement remain a key battle ground for socialist ideas.

In a touching, if slightly embarrassing, example of the triumph of hope over experience, I have been involved in many of the attempts at regroupment of the left, from the Socialist Movement and the Chesterfield Conferences, through the SLP and the Socialist Alliance to Respect. All of these initiatives have failed, most recently last autumn, when the SWP leadership’s hysterical reaction to their erstwhile greatest ally, George Galloway’s, rather modest criticisms of their incompetence and autocracy led to the implosion of Respect. So now we have the absurd spectacle of two ‘Respects’. The SWP’s version of Respect now effectively consists just of the SWP – a ‘united front of a special type’ indeed. Respect Renewal contains the best elements of the original initiative, including Ken Loach, the impressive Salma Yaqoob and the ISG/Socialist Resistance group (and, for better and/or worse, the Gorgeous One). Sadly however, it seems unlikely that RR will be able to become a viable national organisation with a real popular base.

Finally, and most ludicrously, in November the Green Party’s electoral obsessives’ wing overwhelmingly won the day in a referendum aimed at making the Green Party look like a miniscule copy of the three ‘grown-up parties’ for PR purposes. On first sight, the modest growth of the Green Party seems like good news for the left. With over seven thousand members, over a hundred local councillors and two MEPs, and with policy positions that place it well to the left of the three neo-liberal parties, the Green Party would seem to be naturally a major player in the development of a mass movement of the left. However, in reality it has an active membership of probably less than 1500, its political composition is an extraordinarily eclectic (and incompatible) mish-mash ranging from reactionary Neo Malthusians, through hippy lifestylists to socialists trying to develop a modern environmentally aware praxis. The dominant politics of the organisation is a narrow obsession with ‘environmental’ issues largely divorced from their social and political context, married to an exclusively electoralist practice with not one whit of analysis of the nature of the state or structure of society.

As it currently operates, the Green Party is likely to remain within the comfortable minority niche it has established for itself, unable – and to a large extent unwilling – to develop a base among working class communities and organisations.

So there is a vacuum on the left and, with the exception of activism within the trade unions, no consensus among socialists on which way to move forwards organisationally.

This situation cannot just be willed away, it is only through activity and over a period of time, that the issues willed be clarified. It is possible that our comrades in Socialist Resistance might be right and there is a realistic chance for Respect Renewal to consolidate and begin to grow as a core of a genuinely broad based socialist party. It is possible that a significant group of left trade unions and trade union bureaucrats will definitively break from NuLab and form the basis for a new party of labour. It is even possible that we in Green Left will succeed in moving the Green Party away from the electoralist anoraks and towards a more explicit understanding of the socialist implications of its egalitarian, environmentalist and fuzzily anti-capitalist program and recognition of the role it could play in rebuilding the left. All of the above are possible, but unfortunately I don’t think any of them are likely.

What next for Green Left

We have to move Green Left on from being little more than an internal email discussion group to being an activist group that has clear (if minimal) strategic objectives. As socialists who recognise the scale and urgency of the crises that capitalism brought upon mankind, our aims and objectives have to be more ambitious than maintaining a left discussion group in the Green party.

Ian Angus has written that ‘It is far easier to write socialist essays about climate change than to actively build movements against it. But, as Marx wrote, interpreting the world is not enough — the point is to change it. The time is ripe for ecosocialists to move beyond criticizing capitalism, into supporting, building, and learning from real movements for change. If we don’t do so, all of our words and theories will be irrelevant.’

He has also described the role of ecosocialists as ‘making the greens redder and the reds greener’. I think that what this all means for us in Green Left is that we need to have a twin track strategy over the next year.

Our internal strategy

We have to work within the Green Party to spread a wider understanding that, as Ian says ‘ecological destruction is not an accidental feature of capitalism, it is built into the system’s DNA.’ We need to be developing an understanding among fellow party members that the system’s insatiable need to increase profits – ‘the ecological tyranny of the bottom line’ - cannot be reformed away.

We are not going to do that by endless abstract discussions – although formal debate does have its place. And we are certainly not going to do it by getting bogged down in endless navel gazing and inward looking arguments about abstruse points of internal organisation.

Firstly, we need to do it by involving Green Party members in real world campaigns and day-to-day agitational, rather than simply propaganda activity in the wider movement; for example getting our local parties working with local CND or StWC branches, with tenants involved in DCH, with local community groups and civil rights activists in the defence of refugees and with trade unionists in local campaigns to organize low paid workers – and continually explaining the commonality of these and the environmental concerns of the membership.

Secondly, we need to be making proposals within the Party for action that promote debate and raise awareness among rank and file party members that chime with their level of consciousness but which move them to begin to question some of the fundamental assumptions of bourgeois ideology and which raise demands that cannot be met within the limitations of a capitalist state. In other words, we should be developing transitional demands.

For example, the Justice for Palestinians motion at our Spring Conference in a few weeks (modesty forbids me from mentioning its author) is not dramatically different from the rather anodyne motion on Israel and Palestine from Richard Lawson – except that while the latter merely states opinions that I broadly share (except for the issue of the Two State Solution) the former commits the party to campaigning for the release of Hamas MPs and to supporting the boycott campaign against Israel. In other words it challenges Greens to move from sentiment to action on the side of the oppressed. Similarly, the proposed amendment to the MfSS section on Income and Economic Security (oh dear, I’m blushing) doesn’t make a stirring – and to most GP members incomprehensible – call to ‘expropriate the expropriators’. Instead it calls for a minimum wage to be based on a widely recognized benchmark of decency – and calls for a maximum wage tied to it. Such a call widely resonates with Greens’ (and very many non Greens’) sense of justice, but at the same time it challenges the structure of capitalism and the state. If the Old Man was with us today he would probably agree that this was an example of transitional politics (although obviously he would condemn it as he hadn’t thought of it himself).

As a continuation of this strategy I suggest that at the Autumn Conference we should press for the GP to affiliate to the Cuba Solidarity Campaign and the Cuba Organic Support Group (COSG is an organisation which supports the organic movement in Cuba through speakers, publicity and the promotion of Gardening Brigades to Cuba). In addition, if the vote goes with us at Reading, we should perhaps move for affiliation to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Thirdly, as a continuation of the approach described above, we should be making a consistent attempt to develop the consciousness of our activists by organising debates and discussions, whether within the context of ‘official’ political education programmes as we are starting to do in London, or independently as Green Left.

Fourthly, we should be seeking to challenge the electoralist anoraks and amateur bonapartists within the structure of the party at every opportunity. We should try to ensure that we have as many left candidates as possible for GPEX in the Autumn – to let posts on our leading committee go uncontested is unforgivable.

Our external strategy

But working within the Green Party is not enough. The second track of our strategy must be to work, as an organised group of independent ecosocialists, within the broader movement. In other words, if our work within the Green Party is fundamentally about ‘making greens redder’, then our external work must be about ‘making reds greener’. Central to this, I think, is the establishment of a network of green socialists (or whatever) in Britain.

One of the high points of 2007 for me was the meeting in Paris which established the fledgling Ecosocialist International Network. At that meeting were twenty comrades from Britain, including members of Green Left, the Red-Green Study Group, Socialist Resistance and the Alliance for Green Socialism, along with two SWP members who play a leading part in the Campaign Against Climate Change. While it was heartening to see that among the thirteen countries represented at the meeting, the largest contingent was from Britain, but it was salutary to note that among the British groups there had previously been an absolute minimum of contact and even less collaboration.

Consequently, on leaving hospital just before Christmas, I wrote on behalf of Green Left to all the British participant in the Paris ecosocialist meeting, to suggest that all the groups and/or individuals who were at the Paris event have an initial meeting to exchange experiences and to explore potential areas of practical joint activity. I immediately received a positive response from Edward Maltby, a Paris based AWL member who was at the initial meeting and in the last day or two have received expressions of support from Alan Thornett of Socialist Resistance and Richard Kuper of the Red-Green Study Group. I propose that we should now get moving on organising the meeting as soon as possible, but leaving ourselves with a bit of space in order to give us time to cast the net wider than the original participants. If we can establish a formal (though necessarily loose) network by late Spring I believe that it should be the focus of Green Left’s external orientation in the coming year.

While we obviously shouldn’t approach the initial meeting in a prescriptive way, I think that we should have a couple of modest proposals for practical joint activity by members of the network. At the same time I think that we should be very open to any suggestions from any of the other participants.

In addition a modest programme of activity aimed, I would have thought, at providing a socialist alternative to SERA, we should consider two slightly longer term projects. The first is to either assist the Greeks in setting up a European network meeting in the summer or early autumn or to do it ourselves. I think it very important that at this stage we, either as Green Left alone or a wider British ecosocialist network, make contact with the constituent members of the Nordic Green Left, Groen Links and perhaps the Dutch Socialist Party with a view to involving them in a European meeting.

The second project is that we (as part of a wider network) should organise an ecosocialist delegation to Cuba next winter. Such an initiative could support and promote our work within the Green Party and be a useful promotional gambit in spreading the key concepts of ecosocialism with the wider labour movement.

While there may or may not be a long term possibility for socialists to transform the Green Party, or for Respect Renewal to develop a real popular base, or for socialist to build any meaningful opposition in NuLab, or for the AGS to achieve whatever it is trying to achieve, I believe that the establishment of an ecosocialist network will make a positive – and, I believe essential, contribution to the rebuilding of our movement. An emphasis on the fact that our joint commitment to developing a dynamic ecosocialist praxis is far more significant than the varying tactical choices we have individually made about membership of this or that organisation is vital for building the network. And our explicit recognition that none of us hold sole copyright on the Way, the Truth and the Correct Line can help us to start to develop new ways and areas of joint work that can prefigure not just a renewed socialist politics but a renewed socialist movement.

Venezuela: Draft program and principles of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV)

[Below, Links provides translations of the draft program and principles of the provisionally named United Socialist Party of Venezuela, which are
currently being discussed at its founding congress. The documents were drafted by the provisional leadership of the PSUV.

[Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez made his first public call for the creation a political instrument to unify the country's revolutionary forces in December 15, 2006. Convened on January 12, 2008, some 1676 congress delegates elected from almost 15,000 socialist battalions -- local units of the PSUV -- will discuss and debate this draft program, as well as the proposed priniciples and statutes of the new party, over the next two months. In between congress sessions, delegates will return to their local regions and battalions to ensure the widest possible discussion of these documents among the ranks of the new party.

[The documents were translated by Federico Fuentes and Kiraz Janicke. Fuentes and Janicke are members of the Australian Democratic Socialist Perspective living in Venezuela, where they have been reporting for Green Left Weekly. Fuentes works at the Miranda International Centre, in the "The Political Instrument for the 21st Century" program.
Janicke also writes for Venezuela Analysis.]

***
I. About the program

All revolutionary organisations contain three essential elements:

1. A politico-ideological doctrine

2. A critical analysis of the past and present, and

3. A program for an ideal future with the methods of action through which to make possible the transition from the present to this ideal future.

This program for the future is a “catalogue” of solutions to the evils of the past and present. It is the product of a mixture of discontent with what one has and the hope for what one aspires to have; an amalgam of bitterness and illusion. There are programs that focus essentially on the ethical and legal and there are others that seek to first find a solution to the social-economic problem.

The methods of action contemplate, in a mixed or simple form, one of various types of “evolutionism” or “revolutionism”. Although, in some cases, those that adopt a “gradualist” evolutionary method to start with, get to a point where they agree to accept the possibility of “revolution” as a last resort, once the doors in the democratic system have been closed off.

Of course, all methods of action lead to an end: the taking and exercising of power. This is because possessing power signifies the possibility – the only concrete one – of directly carrying out in practice the programs for substituting one political structure for another, and for changing a defective society for an ideal society. A political party that does not aspire in some way to take power has no reason to exist.

Therefore, all programs should contain a “catalogue” of solutions and the manner in which (times, moments and places) these solutions can be carried out, understanding that not all elements of this program can be applied rigidly, indiscriminately and indefinitely in times or places where conditions are not the same or similar to those when they were first conceived of. That is why, although the Declaration of Principles or the Statutes of an organisation tend to be more permanent, its program or programs of action have to be periodically revised by the organisation (leadership bodies and congresses). New possibilities and new necessities are constantly emerging, as well as new problems and new solution. In regards to the “Programs” of the traditional politics, they were something which that that were to suffer from were not to be told about.

II. The program of the PSUV

1. Defence of the revolution. Build socialism

Taking as its starting point the championing and unconditional defence of the government of the Bolivarian revolution, led by President Hugo Chavez, and the will of the Venezuelan people to construct the socialism of the 21st century, the program of the PSUV is the instrument with which to set out the objectives, forms and methods of this revolutionary project, and express them at each moment through slogans that can facilitate the transition from the immediate reality to the end goal; slogans that, by definition, adapt themselves permanently to the immediate circumstances.

2. Internationalism

The Bolivarian socialist revolution is unfolding within an international framework and a national reality. The programmatic definitions are therefore rooted in two different spheres: on one side, in the will for transformation based on an interpretation of the material fundamentals of historical development at the world scale and, on the other, in the immediate conditions of our country at a given moment.

Basing itself on the Bolivarian tradition, the program of the PSUV champions internationalism and takes as its starting point the belief that the grand objectives of the revolution will have only been obtained when the Latin American and Caribbean people obtain unity and national and social emancipation, and together with the people of all the world we have buried capitalism in order to open the door to a new era in the history of humanity.

But the concept of internationalism that the Party holds is not one of simple “international fraternisation between peoples”, nor one of simply exhortations for “tolerance”. The Party fights to create a truly international united front of the peoples that is anti-imperialist and confronts the aberrations that imperialism pretends to universalise where they appear.

The PSUV will work tiresomely to:

* Favour all activities that favour the unity of the people based, more than just on a simple exchange, but on the principle of “doing things together”, so that the people get to know each other and feel a commitment to each other.

* Diversify international relations and create new alliances in order to construct new axes, different to those favoured by the interests of the international market, transnationals and neoliberalism.

* Favour a solidarity-based exchange of resources with other countries, particularly with Latin America and the Caribbean, where the solidarity-based and humanist dimension prevails over merely commercial interests.

3. Build Popular Power. Socialise power

The program of the PSUV has as its objective making reality the slogan “in order to end poverty you have to give power to the poor”, or better said: the people. That is to say, build a government based on Councils of Popular Power, where workers, campesinos, students and popular masses are direct protagonists in the exercising of political power.

The program of the PSUV proposes the socialising of political power, establishing the direct exercising of decision-making power by the masses in their organisations; their unrestricted right to scientific research and the free artistic creation, and the democratisation of access to all cultural policies.

The PSUV will carry out a constant struggle to:

* Promote democracy and a assembly-based culture within the Party, and in all spheres where it is present (communities, work fronts, areas of study, activity etc.)

* Struggle to make self-government a reality, with cities, communal councils and communes as the basic political units.

* Promote, where necessary, the creation of new territories and/or municipalities in areas of human settlements, that, for historic, geo-political, cultural, productive or strategic reasons require the overcoming of fragmentation, along with the creation of their respective self-governments.

* Struggle for the transference of the largest amount possible of the planning, execution and control over public policies to these city governments, communes and community councils by the constituent powers and its institutions.

* Promote direct and constant participation. That the largest amount of men and women possible be involved in the resolution of all the problems posed by the struggle in its different phases and levels: from the socialist cities to the commune and the communal councils in different areas (popular power, social missions, water committees, sports committees, cultural committees, housing committees etc) up to the military reserves. In regards to the specific area of industrial workers, two fundamental axes for the implementation of this task should be the concepts of popular control and self-management.

4. Planned economy. Communal state

The program of the PSUV proposes to move in the direction of a democratically planned and controlled economy, capable of ending alienated labour and satisfying all the necessities of the masses. Throughout this period of transition, which at this moment marches from a state capitalism dominated by market forces towards a state socialism with a regulated market, the aim is to move towards a communal state socialism, with the strategic objective of totally neutralising the law of value within the functioning of the economy.

The PSUV proposes to build:

* A productive, intermediary, diversified and independent economic model based on the humanistic values of cooperation and the preponderance of common interests.

* A society that prohibits latifundio, transferring these lands into property of the revolutionary state entities, public companies, cooperatives, communities and social organisations capable of administering and making the land productive.

* A society that prohibits monopolies and the monopolists of the means of labour, that is to say, of the “sources of life” [1], or any other activities, agreements, practices, behaviours or omissions by them that make vulnerable the methods and systems of social and collective production.

* A society with property models that privileges public, indirect and direct social, communal, citizens’ and collective property, as well as mixed systems, respecting private property that is of public utility or general interest and which is subjected to contributions, charges, restrictions and obligations.

* A society that defends non-alienated labour, with sufficient free time so that human beings have time for voluntary work and rest time for scientific and humanistic creation, as opposed to the capitalist productive system that revolves around the prolongation of the work day, the prolongation of free labour (for the capitalist owner) or increasing “productivity”, that is, accentuating the stress levels of the labour force.

* A society that is inclined towards collective forms of property and labour, that is capable of distributing the “social product” in order to maintain the means of production, broaden out production, create funds or insurance against accidents or natural phenomena, cover administration costs, satisfy collective necessities (schools, hospitals etc.) and sustain people who are unable to work, and afterwards proceed in “dividing up” for consumption purposes.

5. Defence of nature. Planned production

The program of the PSUV proposes the preservation of nature and the planning of production for the satisfaction of collective necessities in harmony with the requirements of the ecosystem.

The PSUV fights for:

* The non-proliferation of highly contaminating industries that are not of a highly strategic interests for all the nation.

* The development of technologies in accordance with the socialist and humanist model of society.

* Respecting for popular, traditional and millenarian technologies which produce in harmony with human beings and nature.

* The preservation of water basins and sources of water.

* Raising consciousness about the preservation of nature and against the consumerist model of society that leads to the production of useless objects at the cost of exhausting natural resources.

* The promotion of consumption of ecological products.

* The promotion of collective and public transport use.

* The promotion of developing alternative sources of energy.

* Raising consciousness about saving energy usage.

6. Defence of the revolution and sovereignty

The program of the PSUV takes up the issue of the defence of the revolution, national sovereignty and public security through an indissoluble union of the FAN (National Armed Forces) and the people in arms.

In this sense, the PSUV takes up the tasks of:

* An alliance with the Armed Forces. A central issue of revolutionary strategy is the alliance of the people as a whole with the National Armed Forces, as well as the workers with the middle classes of the countryside and city (small and medium-sized peasantry, small industrial and commercial bourgeoisie in urban and rural areas).

* The organisation of Popular Militias.

* The organisation of Defence Committees in the Communal Councils, together with the reserves.

* The application of the principles of integral military defense and popular war of resistance.
7. A state based on Popular Power

The program of the PSUV proposes the construction of a state based on Councils of Popular Power, with the full and democratic participation of workers, campesinos, students, housewives, intellectuals, artists, small producers and petty traders from the countryside and cities, guaranteeing the widest possible participation and protagonism of the people in determining and realising their destiny.

Based on these fundamentals, the search, elaboration and formulation of a Program of Action is the most delicate task of the Party. It is also the issue that verifies if its leadership bodies respond or not to the expectations of the Party militants, whom, by definition, must be the most finely honed antennas for detecting all the necessities and requirements of the people as a whole, as well as the changes in collective behaviour and transformations in the mood of the masses.

[1] The addition of “sources of life” is to point out that land is understood to be a means of labour.

Draft declaration of Principles of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV)

1. The Threat

With the beginning of the 21st century, humanity has entered full speed into the most dangerous crossroads in history. Capitalism, in its imperialist phase, has reached its limits. After the successive palliative postponements of a structural crisis, which has been corroding the foundations of the system for decades, the dominant socioeconomic mechanisms in the planet are jammed and threatening to explode. The crisis of this irrational mode of production, based on the exploitation of countries, classes and individuals -- along with the destruction of nature -- pushes the imperialist centres of the world economy further into competition in a savage struggle for control over markets.

Pushed, firstly by the logic of this competition, and then by the necessity to find rentable forms in which to invest massive amounts of excess capital (above all in the arms industry); and at the same time, by the imperative of destroying excess commodities in order to fix up the mechanism and reinitiate the economic cycle, imperialism is dragging the world to war. With the current level of scientific and technological development, unlike the two world wars of the 20th century, this war will not limit itself to destroying human lives, goods and commodities, so that they can once again be produced and sold: it will end all forms of life on this planet.

The atrocities committed by the United States and smaller powers in the invasion of Iraq is only an ominous prologue to what awaits humanity if it is not able to put a brake on this deadly dynamic. Stopping imperialism and impeding war are therefore the most transcendental priorities for the peoples.

***

With the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s, the floodgates that stopped capital easing its crisis were broken, unloading it, without extenuating circumstances holding it back, onto the dependent nations and its workers, peasants and middle classes. Since then, the brutal cost of sustaining the system has fallen on the shoulders of thousands of millions of people. The price of the capitalist crisis in the imperialist centres is the dizzying increase of misery in the Third World. An unprecedented concentration of wealth into the hands of a few has as its consequence degradation, suffering, hunger and death for the immense majority of humanity, including in an increasing manner the peoples of the imperialist countries.

This avalanche of poverty is the other side of the crisis that threatens life on Earth. Faced with the growing incapacity of the institutions and alliances with which it maintained its power in the 20th century, imperialism now appeals to the desperate necessities of millions of human beings in order to pit one against another in fratricidal wars, which can result in nothing but destruction, degradation and death on a scale never seen before.

2. Defeat poverty

Ending poverty, abandonment, marginalisation and the forced dehumanisation of hundreds of millions of people is therefore another priority, inseparable from the previous one, in this current historical moment in which we live: without ending the polarisation of wealth and the growth of poverty beyond anything ever seen in history, war will be inevitable.

At the same time, world history, and most clearly of all, the Venezuelan experience, has demonstrated that capitalism, even less so in the era of the crisis of imperialism, far from ending poverty, increases it everyday with its irrational evolution, showing the world that socialism is the only rational, necessary and possible direction to take at this crossroads for humanity.

3. Exercising power

The conclusion is clear: in order to end poverty, it is necessary to give power to the poor and build socialism; to impede war, it is necessary to end imperialism.

4. The necessity of internationalism

The Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela has placed itself at the vanguard of this struggle, which from within our national borders has projected itself to the world as a whole. The Bolivarian ideal -- that Latin American internationalism, which 200 years ago raised the banner of union south of the Río Bravo, independence, sovereignty and the search for the largest sum of happiness possible for the peoples -- defeated at the time by the collusion of imperialism with the local oligarchs, today is being reborn through the socialist revolution which, from Venezuela, marks out a horizon of life, peace, liberty, democracy and happiness for all, converting itself into a beacon for thousands of millions of human beings in America and the world.

Venezuela is the victim of attacks, conspiracies and war preparations by the United States not just because of its immense petroleum wealth, which the greed of the industrial powers have always longed for, but because the Bolivarian Revolution is an example for a world submerged in capitalist crisis.

5. Defence

The defence of sovereignty is identified with defence of the Bolivarian Socialist Revolution. It converts itself into a landmark as to whether imperialism can advance or not in its bellicose, annexationist, divisive and destructive dynamic across the world.

6. Unity

In order to confront such an enormous challenge, the Bolivarian Revolution needs to accrue, consolidate and articulate, with maximum efficiency, the union of the Venezuelan people as a whole; it needs to work tirelessly for Latin American-Caribbean unity. It must join with the nations of the South and the peoples of the entire world to create a force capable of countering, neutralising and defeating imperialism.

The (Bolivarian Party for the Socialist Revolution) of Venezuela is the instrument for carrying out these strategic tasks that history has placed once again on the table, now behind the banner of socialism. Above all, it will be the political instrument for uniting into revolutionary and socialist action all the victims of capitalism in Venezuela. This social and political unity of the grand majorities will allow the Bolivarian Revolution to carry out the tasks it has set for itself: education, health, housing, work and wellbeing; and will allow for the preparation of the people as a whole, so that together with the FAN [National Armed Forces] at the vanguard, it will be possible to face up to the challenge of defending our sovereignty in the face of the threats of invasion and violence that imperialism will use as a last recourse in order to impede the advance of the Revolution.

The Party (Bolivarian Party for the Socialist Revolution) of Venezuela is born as an expression of the revolutionary will of the people and their political leadership. It is the product of the revolutionary unity of the majorities and sees the supreme value of a plural, multifaceted unity that encompasses the broadest diversity in regards to ethnic, ideological and political origins, and around which the destiny of the homeland will be forged. Given that it summarises the most outstanding effort towards national and social emancipation of our past, the most genuine Latin American internationalism, and because it has been the motor of the socialist revolution underway in Venezuela, Bolivarianism is at this moment in history the point of unity of all the perspectives of revolutionary and socialist thought.

7. Direct participation

This unity requires the full and democratic participation of workers, peasants, youth, intellectuals, artists, housewives, small producers and petty traders from the countryside and the city, in the formation and running of all its component organs, in discussion and decision making in regards to programs and strategies, and in the promotion and election of its leadership.

An instrument of struggle made up of millions of free men and women, the Party (Bolivarian Party for the Socialist Revolution) of Venezuela at the same time ratifies the necessity for an effective centralisation for action in the great battles already laid out: against poverty, against exploitation, against the degradation of human beings, against internal reaction and their imperialist masters. A tool for the unification of the grand majorities, the Party (Bolivarian Party for the Socialist Revolution) of Venezuela is born nevertheless with the conviction that it faces a constant military threat from internal and external enemies of the Revolution, which is why it assumes responsibility, at all levels, for the defence of the homeland, in order to confront and defeat imperialism if it dares to tread on our land.

Brought to life by the government of the Bolivarian Revolution and under the impulse of President Hugo Chavez, the Party (Bolivarian Party for the Socialist Revolution) of Venezuela nevertheless is not the government. It is the political controller of the objectives of the government and will keep a watch over it to ensure these objectives are carried out. At the moment of its conception into national and international political life, the nexus point between the government and the Party is Commandante Chavez, and the full adoption by the Party of the five motors and the seven strategic guidelines that today summarise the program, the strategy and the tactics of the Bolivarian Revolution.

8. The principal responsibility

The responsibility of the Party consists in organising the people on a territorial basis and through fronts: workers, peasants, students, youth, intellectuals, artists, housewives, small producers and petty traders from the countryside and the city, around their necessities and concrete demands and in the function of those strategic and tactical guidelines and the Program adopted by the Founding Congress of the Party (Bolivarian Party for the Socialist Revolution) of Venezuela. The Party is therefore the point where the expression of popular will and the application of those guidelines of the Revolution (from the construction of houses, sanitary attention, education, up to the armed defence against an eventual foreign invasion) come together.

9. Overcome fragmentation and anarchy

This symbiosis, the dialectical interaction which must materialise constantly in the Party, overcomes all notions of abstract autonomy, as much from the government, as from the social movements, in order to make way for a constantly changing synthesis, in which the Party acts at the same time as a two-way transmission belt and leading motor.

The Party is constantly constructing spaces of unity within diversity. Considering the construction of socialism as a great strategic objective, the Party treats all tactical and programmatic proposals, concrete actions, and decisions taken in line with this objective with the necessary tolerance and broadness, in order to achieve consensus amongst the forces that support the Bolivarian Revolution. The Party understands the possibility and necessity of diverse layers of the population coming onboard the process of constructing socialism as a result of a collective or individual understanding of the risk that the prolongation of capitalist society means.

10. Original and creative

Following Simon Rodrigez’s maxim, “we invent or we err”, the socialism of the 21st century that the Party (Bolivarian Party for the Socialist Revolution) of Venezuela fights for will be original, its own, creative and will have a profoundly collectivist sense of exercising power. The Party will go to great efforts to educate itself and others in human experiences that have distant antecedents, such as American Indian cosmovision and primitive Christianity and more recent experiences like those that from the 20th century that gave rise to the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba. But the socialism of the 21st century will be the consequence of a creative praxis, the free exercise of the will and desires of the Venezuelan people. It will be “neither imitation nor copy”, to borrow the expression of José Carlos Mariátegui, but rather a “heroic creation”. It recognises the diversity of our origins and values the Indigenous, European and African roots that gave rise to our great South American nation. It incorporates from the doctrine of Simon Bolivar, in particular his anti-imperialist vision and his ideas about the necessity of the union of Latin American and Carribean countries; from Simon Rodriguez, his struggle of a liberating, popular education for all; and from Ezequiel Zamora his struggle for social property of land, his confrontations with the oligarchic powers and his program of social protection.

11. The construction of socialism: the only way out

Just as it is indisputable that private property over the means of production in any society determines the relations of labour, human relations and all aspects of life, negating the objectives of a humanist, solidarity-based, socialist society, it is no less true that the transition, above all at this current moment in humanity, demands a careful, objective evaluation of each step taken, in order to always, and at all times, guarantee the conscious participation of the majority and the necessary efficiency to carry out all the requirements of national life, including its defence.

One does not have to be religious in order to identify with and be at one with basic principles of Christ that champion justice, equity and human and fraternal relationships between persons. “You will not oppress the poor and needy day labourer, be they from amongst your brothers or a foreigner that lives in the lands within your city”, “Woe to me if you build your house without justice, and your rooms without equity, living off your neighbour for free, and not giving him the salary for his work!”, “No one can serve two masters because he will loathe one and love the other. You can not serve both God and wealth”, “Blessed are the poor, because for them is the kingdom of heaven, blessed are those that have a hunger and thirst for justice, because they will be quenched, blessed are the merciful, because they will receive compassion”.

One does not have to be an atheist in order to agree with Marx’s scientific analysis which led him to affirm: “in the capitalist system of production, labour is external to the worker it does not belong to his essential being; that he, therefore, does not confirm himself in his work, but denies himself, feels miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical energy, but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind. The worker feels himself only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself. This produces the reversion of all human values”.

The exploitation of human by human is an impediment to being able to see and recognise the human being within oneself and the one in front of them; it contradicts the sentiments of solidarity; it mutilates the ties of friendship. Capitalism kills by hunger or by glut, but it always kills.

Capitalism contradicts the human condition and goes against the survival of the species. The planet is being destroyed. The irrational imperative for growth is provoking the destruction of ecosystems and threats to extinguish the sources of life on Earth. This catastrophic dynamic is caused by the irrationality of a socioeconomic system that omits the necessities of humanity and acts under the obligation of its own logic, compelled towards constant growth in the pursuit of profit. In this crazy race, capitalism provokes periodic moments of crisis where, again in the pursuit of profit, it is necessary to destroy massive amounts of human lives and material goods.

Ever since human society was divided into classes, there has been resistance and struggle against oppression and exploitation. But with the victory of capitalism over feudalism and the dominance of the capitalist mode of production at the world scale, the social struggles of the industrial workers' movement fused with the most advanced thought of its time and gave rise to the struggle for a socialism based on science and the most deeply felt sentiments of human beings.

Simultaneously, in our continent, Simon Bolivar was laying the foundations for national and social emancipation with his liberatory struggle and his humanist and revolutionary vision, affirming words that today are fundamental for the union of our peoples and the social transformation of our time.

Faced with the crisis of the system and the grave threats that come with it, the contemporary challenge consists in guiding action in such a way that the exploited and oppressed masses of Venezuela assume the maximum amount of knowledge of history, the economy and political theory, in order to tackle the immense task of responding in an original manner, embedded in concrete reality, to the roots of what it means to be Venezuelan, the cultural particularities, including of each region and social group, in front of every normal day demands, each difficulty put forward by the transition from capitalism to socialism.

For the Party (Bolivarian Party for the Socialist Revolution) of Venezuela there are no recipes from a manual, nor can there be, nor impositions by anyone who is not the conscious, organised Venezuelan people themselves, standing up and ready for combat

***

Inter-imperialist competition opens up cracks between the owners of the world and by default creates a multi-polar world in constant turmoil, to which the United States can only counterpose its military supremacy. Simultaneously, due to the demands to maintain its rate of profit, the out of control voracity of imperialism subjugates the bourgeoisies of sub-developed countries beyond what is tolerable. Those who for two centuries were submissive minor partners, who benefited from the looting of their own peoples, see themselves pushed into conflicts that fracture their former association of convenience. While the disputes between imperialists paralyses the world institutions that came into being at the end of the Second World War, and fragments at every point on the globe the hegemonic bloc comprised of imperialists and subordinated capital, the combined impact of this phenomena, within a framework of constant and growing popular rebellion, has worked towards demolishing the institutions through which political power was sustained in countries with dependent and sub-developed economies. The world is therefore witnessing realignments of all types, always to the detriment of the power of the United States.

This conjuncture opens up the perspective of calling for an international anti-imperialist bloc on a grand scale, with the participation of national, provincial and local governments, different types of social movements and political forces from a broad ideological viewpoint. The idea is to unite in action hundreds of millions of people throughout the entire world against imperialism and its wars.

Similarly, in Latin America there exists the possibility of producing a qualitative transformation in the politico-organisational reality of tens of millions of exploited and oppressed. The Party (Bolivarian Party for the Socialist Revolution) of Venezuela therefore sees the necessity of forging instruments in which they can converge, and at the same time remake universal revolutionary thought, as the vanguard in an era of immense challenges and great victories: capitalism is international; the revolution is international; our thought and the action must be international.

Action in function of the notion of a global anti-imperialist bloc and the revolutionary and socialist convergence of the Latin American-Caribbean peoples, will guide the steps taken by the Party (Bolivarian Party for the Socialist Revolution) of Venezuela with the certainty that making these objectives a reality will change the relationship of forces at the international scale and inaugurate a new historic era.

The agony of imperialism is an unavoidable fact. The Party (Bolivarian Party for the Socialist Revolution) of Venezuela is born in order to defend the homeland, to lead the revolution towards its emancipatory objective, to join with all the other peoples of the world in the task of burying imperialism and building a new world, fit for a free and full humanity

Chavez Announces Project to Combat Food Shortages in Venezuela

Chris Carlson, January 21, Venezuelanalysis.com

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez focused on the persistent shortages in the nation's supply of milk and meat products during his Sunday TV and radio show Aló Presidente yesterday. The president inaugurated a "socialist" milk processing plant, as well as an agro-industrial complex with the goal of increasing national production and solving food shortages in the country.

"We have to raise national production of meat and milk," said Chavez during the show. "We are going to transform Venezuela into a true superpower in food production."

The show was aired Sunday from a rural town near the Colombian border in the western state of Zulia where the Chavez government plans to install a "mega-project" for the production of milk and other products. The pilot program is meant as a solution to persistent food shortages that have affected the country since last year.

The president began the show by awarding land titles to local farmers, emphasizing the damage that concentrated land ownership does to national production, and insisting that the government carry forward with land reform policies.

He also announced a new program of low-cost credits to small producers as a way to increase investment in the agricultural sector.

"I have approved an extraordinary amount for the agricultural sector," said Chavez. "We are going to increase short-term credit, with low interest, and we are going to raise food production in Venezuela."

President Chavez also announced the creation of a cattle-producing complex in the region that will provide inputs to a "socialist" milk-processing plant inaugurated nearby.

The milk plant, which Chavez claims to be one of the largest in Latin America with a capacity of 1 million liters of milk per day, was bought by the Venezuelan government from the Italian multinational Parmalat for BsF. 800 million (US$ 372 million) after the company abandoned it.

Chavez said the plant is now operating, but producing only 60 thousand liters per day, which is 6 percent of its capacity. The Venezuelan government hopes the plant will be producing 400 thousand liters per day by next month, and 800 thousands liters per day by 2009.

The Venezuelan president explained the reasons for the shortages of milk and beef products that the country has experienced over the last year. Chavez referred to a chart showing how national milk production has remained relatively equal in recent years, whereas national consumption has exploded in the last two years. He insisted that it is the same situation with beef, forcing the country to import large amounts of milk and beef.

Chavez explained that world milk consumption had also grown by 20 percent in the last 10 years, in part due to China's increased consumption of milk, whereas milk production has only grown by 1 percent, causing world-wide shortages.

The Venezuelan government has made the claim that these shortages, as well as government price controls, have led to speculation on the part of large dairy producers who sell their production to producers of cheese and other goods in order to avoid the price controls.

In response, Chavez threatened to expropriate dairy farms that refuse to sell their production, or who sell it abroad. At the same time, he announced a 40 percent increase in the price of milk to help milk producers.

"I am aware that the price of milk is coming up short. That's why I am willing to elevate it a little to benefit all the primary producers," he said, but he issued a warning to large milk companies.

"I am going to warn the large milk-processing companies: Any producer that doesn't sell their milk to the nation will be treated as a traitor," he said.

But ultimately the government strategy is to increase national production through the construction of these "socialist" milk-processing plants, along with cattle-producing zones in the surrounding areas to supply them. The milk plants are placed under the management and control of the local communal councils in the surrounding communities, with support from the national government in the form of credit and technical assistance.

The strategy also includes a continuation of turning unproductive land over to small producers for the production of crops or livestock. The president of the National Land Institute announced yesterday that the government distributed some 50,000 hectares (123,000 acres) in the last year and that they would continue with this in 2008.

"This year the expropriation of land will be projected to the development and production of cattle-producing farms around these milk-processing plants," he said.

Chavez assured that the nation's supply of cattle had already increased from 10 million head to 12 million head, and that by next year this number would reach 16 million. He assured that Venezuela would become a cattle "superpower" in the near future.

"We want to strengthen national production so we are fully supplied by February of 2009," he said.

Rich countries owe poor a huge environmental debt

January 21, The Guardian

The environmental damage caused to developing nations by the world's richest countries amounts to more than the entire third world debt of $1.8 trillion, according to the first systematic global analysis of the ecological damage imposed by rich countries.

The study found that there are huge disparities in the ecological footprint inflicted by rich and poor countries on the rest of the world because of differences in consumption. The authors say that the west's high living standards are maintained in part through the huge unrecognised ecological debts it has built up with developing countries.

"At least to some extent, the rich nations have developed at the expense of the poor and, in effect, there is a debt to the poor," said Prof Richard Norgaard, an ecological economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the study. "That, perhaps, is one reason that they are poor. You don't see it until you do the kind of accounting that we do here."

Using data from the World Bank and the UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the researchers examined so-called "environmental externalities" or costs that are not included in the prices paid for goods but which cover ecological damage linked to their consumption. They focused on six areas: greenhouse gas emissions, ozone layer depletion, agriculture, deforestation, overfishing and converting mangrove swamps into shrimp farms.

The team calculated the costs of consumption in low, medium and high income countries, both within their borders and outside, from 1961 to 2000. The team used UN definitions for countries in different income categories. Low income countries included Pakistan, Nigeria and Vietnam, and middle income nations included Brazil and China. Rich countries in the study included the UK, US and Japan.

Striking disparities

The magnitude of effects outside the home country was different for each category of consumption. For example, deforestation and agricultural intensification primarily affect the host country, while the impacts from climate change and ozone depletion show up the disparity between rich and poor most strikingly.

Greenhouse emissions from low-income countries have imposed $740 billion of damage on rich countries, while in return rich countries have imposed $2.3 trillion of damage. This damage includes, for example, flooding from more severe storms as a result of climate change.

Likewise, CFC emissions from rich countries have inflicted between $25 billion and £57 billion of damage to the poorest countries. Increased ultraviolet levels from the ozone hole have led to higher healthcare costs from skin cancer and eye problems. The converse figure is between $0.58 and $1.3 billion.

The team publish their results today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."We know already that climate change is a huge injustice inflicted on the poor," said Dr Neil Adger at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich, who was not involved in the research, "This paper is actually the first systematic quantification to produce a map of that ecological debt. Not only for climate change but also for these other areas."

"This is an accounting tool that allows you to say how much the high-income world owes the low-income world for the environmental externalities we impose on them," he said.

The team confined its calculations to areas in which the costs of environmental damage, for example in terms of lost services from ecosystems, are well understood. That meant leaving out damage from excessive freshwater withdrawals, destruction of coral reefs, biodiversity loss, invasive species and war. So the researchers believe the figures represent a minimum estimate of the true cost.

"We think the measured impact is conservative. And given that it's conservative, the numbers are very striking," said co-author Dr Thara Srinivasan, who is also at Berkeley.

Biofuel boom costs Indonesians dear

Step Vaessen, January 19, Al Jazeera

Indonesia is struggling with a potential food crisis, because of rapidly increasing prices of one of its staple food items.

The cost of soya bean has doubled on the world market in recent months, making imports of the commodity increasingly expensive.

The main cause of the price rise in Indonesia is shifting production in the US.

Biofuels phenomenon

A US energy bill signed into law last September, encouraged a massive increase in the production of biofuels like ethanol.

Soya bean and corn, once used mostly for food, are now being converted into fuel.

That means soaring prices for Indonesia's "food of the poor".

Take the case of Tukino. His family has been running a home factory for the last 34 years, making bean curd, one of Indonesia's most popular dishes.

Bean curd is a staple of Indonesian dietBut never before has soya bean been so expensive.

The price has doubled during the past few weeks.

Analysts say this is because US farmers are replacing the crop in order to grow corn for biofuel instead.

Tukino says: "We are really suffering from this. We are sweating here everyday just to make ends meet.

"I am trying to run a business but if this situation continues a lot of people have to be laid off."

Bean-curd factories like the one run by Tukino's family went on strike for three days to protest against the price increase.

But after consumers began to complain, they decided to operate again.

Nutritious and cheap

Bean curd has kept many poor Indonesians healthy for a very long time.

It is very nutritious and it used to be very cheap, but now Indonesia's favourite food is becoming very expensive and hard to get. And this is already creating unrest.

To calm down sentiments, bean curd and tempeh, another popular soya bean dish, are being sold again on the market, much to the relief of many Indonesians.

But while the price is still the same, the sellers have made the portions much smaller.

One resident of Jakarta said: "My children don't want to eat anything when there is no tempeh or bean curd. They simply don't feel well if I don't serve it to them.

"Normally I could buy it at a food stall, but there hasn't been enough in the market for quite a while."

Farmers' view

The Indonesian Farmers Union says the country should become self-sufficient again and start growing soya bean as it used to do in the past.

Henry Saragih, from the Indonesian Farmers Union, says: "This is a basic need which is now very hard to get.

"This is not only turning in to a social crisis, but this could also cause hunger and malnutrition."

The government admits that it should have worked harder to achieve self-sufficiency.

Sutarto Alimoeso, an agriculture ministry official in charge of food crops, told Al Jazeera: "This is an international problem, we cannot stop free trade.

"But we should indeed have protected our farmers more. There is not a single country that doesn't protect its own farmers. We should have been braver."

For the time being the Indonesian government has decided to control the price of soya bean by asking the state food company to buy stock overseas.

This could prevent a deepening food crisis in the country for now.

Still, in the long term, other measures may have to be found.

Fossil Fools' Day

Link: http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/736/38101

Call for a national day of action against climate change on April 1, 2008 The latest research shows that the effects of climate change are speeding up, with real dangers of self-perpetuating, or “runaway”, global warming. At the same time, global carbon emissions are rising at higher rates than ever before. Australia continues to hold the position of the highest greenhouse gas emitting country per capita, and is the world’s biggest exporter of coal.

The message is clear — the world can’t wait. For far too long fossil fuel industries and other dirty industries have been dangerously fooling around with the planet and our future.

This is a call from Resistance and the Australian Student Environment Network for a national day of student action against the fossil fools in industry and parliament, who are pushing the earth towards climate chaos.

The movement for action on climate change has made a lot of progress in the past two years. We forced climate skeptics to acknowledge the problem and helped to get rid of the Howard government for its inaction on climate change. While the Rudd government’s decision to ratify Kyoto represents a victory for the movement, our job is far from over.

The reality is that if Australia does not move immediately to break its dependence on fossil fuels, no meaningful emission reduction targets will be met. We have to demand that state and federal governments stop the expansion of the coal industry, reverse the approval of the pulp mill in Tasmania, keep electricity generation in public hands and shift the billions of dollars of government funds currently spent each year to subsidise the fossil fuel industries into renewable energy industries.

As students and young people, we have an important role to play in propelling the climate action movement forward and forcing the government to take the necessary action. We have to break the bipartisan consensus on mythical “clean coal” technology and uranium mining. We have to end the wars for oil. And we want to see investment into our universities for researching renewable, not fossil fuel and nuclear, technologies.

The youth blocs of high school and university students at Walk Against Warming in 2007 were an example of what we can organise on a much bigger scale this year, as we build the student environment movement. Resistance and the Australian Student Environment Network are calling on everyone concerned about climate change to initiate discussions and start planning a nationally-coordinated day of student action on April 1 — Fossil Fools’ Day, as part of an international day of action planned for that day.

Climate change, sea level rise to cost Vietnam dearly

Quang Duan, January 12, Thanhnien News

Vietnam is highly vulnerable to climate change, with rising sea levels to affect vast areas of the country, including heavily populated regions, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) said Friday.

A sea level rise of one meter will flood up to 12 percent of Vietnam's land and affect nearly 11 percent of its population, according to a MARD report released at a climate change conference in Hanoi.

A one meter sea level rise would inundate about 5,000 square kilometers of northern Vietnam's Red River Delta and up to 20,000 square kilometers in the Mekong Delta in the south.

River and sea dike systems would crumble in destructive typhoons and storms caused by climate change, the report said.

Higher sea levels would also decimate the nation's crops, with food output reduced by 12 percent, or five million tons a year.

Extreme weather would cause natural disasters such as severe floods, which could lead to outbreaks of human and animal diseases.

Deputy Minister Dao Xuan Hoc action must be taken immediately or it would be too late.

The ministry is conducting research to develop a plan to promote afforestation, the use of environmentally-friendly production technology and upgrades of the nation's dikes and irrigation systems.

Hoc said scientists were drafting plans for reinforcing dikes in the Mekong Delta and the central region.

The resettlement of vulnerable residents from flood and landslide-prone areas had already been carried out effectively.

However, the number of residents that still need to be resettled was massive, he said.

Southern hub concern

In a talk with Thanh Nien on the sideline of the conference, Hoc said the ministry was conducting studies on how to reduce flooding in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC).

Under a draft plan, the city will build eight major drains at a cost of about VND8 trillion (US$500 million) in the precincts of the Saigon and Dong Nai rivers.

Hoc said the plan would be put to the city administration before being submitted to the government.

The ministry also recommended the municipal administration increase the capacity of water reservoirs in order to reduce city flooding.

Answering my question

[I posted an email to an Engineers and Scientists for Sustainability group that i was briefly involved with at the University of WA, about the question of CO2 vs CO2e and stabilisation targets. This is very good and clarifying response i recieved from a friend of mine.]

On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 12:16:58PM +0900, Trent Hawkins wrote:
> Great article, but im confused. The articles talks about 450ppm CO2 (only)
> as being the oldskool theoretical benchmark, whereas i thought it was 450ppm

Yes, this point is confusing and being an op-ed I'll wait for a paper or further statement to clarify.

Now, apart from being a "total GHG" v CO2 issue, it's also an issue whether they're talking about stabilisation concentration or not.

> CO2e. See the confusion is that we are already somewhere close to 450ppm
> CO2e, round about 430-440 at the moment. Given the lag in the system, this

There is a lot of confusion about this point in general. What you say is both true and false. This is actually best described in terms of forcings, not gas concentrations, but I'll try to use the latter.

The current CO2 concentration is about 383ppm. There have been also increases in other greenhouse gasses, like CH4, NOx, CFCs, etc, which add approximatelly 70ppm CO2 equivalent worth of forcing on top of that.

However, there are other additional manmade forcings, such as SO2, which effectively cancel out the non-CO2 gases in the atmosphere.

So the nett effect _currently_ is about 375ppm CO2e.

Now some vocal people like Monbiot, Tim Flannery have made statement along the lines of what you're saying. There's an article about this at realclimate, here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/co2-equivalents/

(Monbiot is now calling for reductions of 110%, see: http://www.beyondzeroemissions.org/node/251)

However, there's an additional uncertainty here, because some of the negative forcing agents have much shorter lifetimes than the long-lived greenhouse gasses and so may precipitate out quickly if they stop being emitted.

To be honest, I haven't found a clear explanation (by a climatologist) which address this issue adequatelly. I think one could expect that if all emissions ceased today, the effective forcing would go up, but probably not up to 430-440ppm CO2 equivalent levels.

> would mean that we pretty much need to be doing what the article suggests
> and stabilise carbon emissions ASAP. Obviously Hanson's research says we
> need to aim for 350ppm CO2 (only) and we are currently at 380ppm +, then we
> need to basically have negative GHG emissions, but is this really anything
> overwhelmingly different to what previous studies have shown?

So, is this saying anything overwhelming different? It seems to be, but I can't be sure, because the op-ed isn't clear. Hansen has previously advocated keeping CO2 levels below 450-475ppm (see attached letter and paper), resulting in an additional temperature increase of ~1degC (~1.8degC above pre-industrial).

Now, it _seems_ he's advocating 350ppm or somewhere closer to 1.5degC above pre-industrial. With last year's record arctic ice-melt, it's plausible his position has changed, but we'll have to wait for more information to be sure.

Alternatively, it is possible that he was just talking about 350ppm _stabilisation_, which is broadly consistent with not passing 450ppm at all (and the AR4), as well as 450ppm CO2e stabilisation.

As far as negative GHG emissions are concerned, then no, we wouldn't have to extract GHGs out of the atmosphere if we suddenly stopped emitting today (to reach 350ppm CO2 stabilisation). All we'd need to do is reduce our emissions by more than the airborne fraction.

The airborne fraction is the proportion of our emissions that ends up in the atmosphere and has historically been around 58% (though is likely to increase, and probably is already beginning to). The other 42% has been absorbed by the ocean and biosphere.

Now, the nett CO2 flux between the ocean and atmosphere is mostly dependant upon the CO2 concentration in the two systems and the temperature. (Think of the CO2 flux in a shaken beer bottle) i.e. additional emissions only have a slight effect on it in the short term.

So that if we bring emissions down by about 60% globally, the atmospheric concentration should stabilise, for a while. If we decrease by more then it would decline.

There's a good piece which touches on this issue here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/11/how-much-co2-emission-is-too-much/

Of course the reality of the situation is that we won't suddenly stop emitting, hence we should be cutting emissions as fast as possible.

Remember This: 350 Parts Per Million

[This is quite an interesting article, however the one confusion that i have is the distinction between CO2 and CO2e. I thought that the Stern report and other reports have indicated the need to stabilise CO2e to approx 450ppm to avoid anything more than a 2degC temp increase? Yet here it talks about 450ppm in terms of CO2 (only). Perhaps someone reading my blog can help?

Nonetheless i think the last point is the key one, i.e. the analogy with Cholesterol. What we need is a qualitative change in the way humanity interacts with nature, that is - to stop climate change we need social change. The key question for environment activists is how are we going to acheive it? Well to borrow a phrase from Lenin, without Marxist theory you can't have proper practice.

I hope to write about this question soon, as i feel there is an ever pressing need to outline some of the key tasks of eco-socialists, such as the need for a class analysis of society, what specific features of capitalism are responsible for climate change, how democratic centralised planning of socialised means of production can avert the crises (and even achieve negative GHG emissions reductions), the need to connect the organised sections of the working class with the environment movement, and the vital role a Leninist Party can play in leading the environment movement to achieve its necessary tasks - putting the strategic (and polluting) industries under control of the world's working people.

But in the meantime to borrow another phrase from Lenin (although he also borrowed this one from Napolean) we need to "engage and then see", throw ourselves into the environment movement and then see what the key problems are and how we can assist.]

Bill McKibben, December 28, 2007, Washington Post

This month may have been the most important yet in the two-decade history of the fight against global warming. Al Gore got his Nobel in Stockholm; international negotiators made real progress on a treaty in Bali; and in Washington, Congress actually worked up the nerve to raise gas mileage standards for cars.

But what may turn out to be the most crucial development went largely unnoticed. It happened at an academic conclave in San Francisco. A NASA scientist named James Hansen offered a simple, straightforward and mind-blowing bottom line for the planet: 350, as in parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It's a number that may make what happened in Washington and Bali seem quaint and nearly irrelevant. It's the number that may define our future.

To understand what it means, you need a little background.

Twenty years ago, Hansen kicked off this issue by testifying before Congress that the planet was warming and that people were the cause. At the time, we could only guess how much warming it would take to put us in real danger. Since the pre-Industrial Revolution concentration of carbon in the atmosphere was roughly 275 parts per million, scientists and policymakers focused on what would happen if that number doubled -- 550 was a crude and mythical red line, but politicians and economists set about trying to see if we could stop short of that point. The answer was: not easily, but it could be done.

In the past five years, though, scientists began to worry that the planet was reacting more quickly than they had expected to the relatively small temperature increases we've already seen. The rapid melt of most glacial systems, for instance, convinced many that 450 parts per million was a more prudent target. That's what the European Union and many of the big environmental groups have been proposing in recent years, and the economic modeling makes clear that achieving it is still possible, though the chances diminish with every new coal-fired power plant.

But the data just keep getting worse. The news this fall that Arctic sea ice was melting at an off-the-charts pace and data from Greenland suggesting that its giant ice sheet was starting to slide into the ocean make even 450 look too high. Consider: We're already at 383 parts per million, and it's knocking the planet off kilter in substantial ways. So, what does that mean?

It means, Hansen says, that we've gone too far. "The evidence indicates we've aimed too high -- that the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2is no more than 350 ppm," he said after his presentation. Hansen has reams of paleo-climatic data to support his statements (as do other scientists who presented papers at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco this month). The last time the Earth warmed two or three degrees Celsius -- which is what 450 parts per million implies -- sea levels rose by tens of meters, something that would shake the foundations of the human enterprise should it happen again.

And we're already past 350. Does that mean we're doomed? Not quite. Not any more than your doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high means the game is over. Much like the way your body will thin its blood if you give up cheese fries, so the Earth naturally gets rid of some of its CO2each year. We just need to stop putting more in and, over time, the number will fall, perhaps fast enough to avert the worst damage.

That "just," of course, hides the biggest political and economic task we've ever faced: weaning ourselves from coal, gas and oil. The difference between 550 and 350 is that the weaning has to happen now, and everywhere. No more passing the buck. The gentle measures bandied about at Bali, themselves way too much for the Bush administration, don't come close. Hansen called for an immediate ban on new coal-fired power plants that don't capture carbon, the phaseout of old coal-fired generators, and a tax on carbon high enough to make sure that we leave tar sands and oil shale in the ground. To use the medical analogy, we're not talking statins to drop your cholesterol; we're talking huge changes in every aspect of your daily life.

Maybe too huge. The problems of global equity alone may be too much -- the Chinese aren't going to stop burning coal unless we give them some other way to pull people out of poverty. And we simply may have waited too long.

But at least we're homing in on the right number. Three hundred and fifty is the number every person needs to know.