A-Infos (en) Sicilia Libertaria: Opening - Climate and carnivals. The post-Cop world - ZERO CAPITALISM (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

There are fields, sectors, areas where the sidereal distance between the 
desires of those who participate and the reality of the forces at play 
is more evident. One of these is the climate. And the clearest proof is 
in the COP, the conferences on climate change that are organized every 
year in an itinerant manner - each time in a different state, as if it 
were a prize - under the aegis of the UN. In the period between November 
and December, the media coverage of COP28 in Dubai was notable, 
confirming the growing attention that the ecological mobilization of 
recent years has managed to obtain. But the good news ends here. Because 
it is impossible not only to be passionate but also to be able to 
translate for people who are not experts in the supposedly technical 
debate that emerges from these meetings which are gradually becoming 
more and more gigantic - at least 100 thousand people have flown to the 
United Arab Emirates and for many these the conference meant only a 
positioning work. We can really rejoice because at COP28 in Dubai, for 
the first time since the 1992 Kyoto Protocol, fossil fuels were 
mentioned in the final declaration (and among other things only with 
this vague formula, without mentioning either oil or gas)? Can we really 
rejoice because the states have promised a process of "transition from 
fossil fuels", whatever that means, without indicating times and 
methods, at least 30 years behind requests, sensitivities and needs?

A handful of data is enough to overturn all expectations and narratives 
around these conferences. Between 1992 and 2022, more greenhouse gas 
emissions were produced than were emitted between 1750 and 1990, as if 
to say that since there has been a global policy to combat global 
warming the rate of emissions has increased . The Cops had to resolve 
the damage and instead they made it bigger. What has changed is the 
center of production of these emissions, with the United States 
remaining almost constant, China replacing Europe and the different 
geography of the so-called petrostates, whose economy is mainly based on 
the exploitation of hydrocarbons , which passed from Latin American to 
Middle Eastern ones.

The sooner we realize that "global climate governance" has failed, 
simply because relying on governments has never led to anything good, 
the sooner we will be able to build an alternative. As researcher 
Emanuele Profumi observes, the major deception of the COP lies in the 
fact that "although global warming should be considered a typical case 
of market failure (due to the inability to correctly account for 
negative externalities, i.e. emissions in excess), it can only be 
resolved through the creation of new markets capable of giving a price 
to nature". Even more: thanks also to COP policies, emissions are no 
longer considered by companies and states as a pollution problem to be 
solved, not even a mere consequence of industrial production but a 
product, a commodity. Once again, therefore, the capitalist regime 
metabolizes crises and turns even its deleterious effects into an 
opportunity for profit. It is no coincidence that governments and 
companies have also started to chatter about the green economy, also 
encouraged in this sense by some environmentalist associations for whom 
the only way to counteract the "bad" capitalism of coal, oil and gas is 
to create another one , identical in manner and form but without the 
emissions, which define "green" and therefore implicitly good. Well, if 
this is the model to cheer for at the next Cop, then we would be quicker 
to organize a counter-Cop and imagine a post-Cop world, where no person 
feels the need to delegate their destinies to national delegations any 
more than to conferences on climate change have the task of filling the 
agendas of ministers and undersecretaries: this is what emerged from 
some confidences of the Italian troops, who from Minister Fratin to 
Deputy Minister Gava looked like a Brancaleone army, amidst random 
nationalistic slogans (the Mattei plan also to feed the whole of 
Africa!) and messages of thanks to Eni for having included the energies 
most dear to the six-legged dog (capture and storage of carbon and 
biofuels). On the other hand, there is information that has decided to 
become active, and thank goodness. But it always does so within the 
framework of a blind and petty vision of a liberal progressivism for 
which the Cops are in any case a moment of democracy, the only place 
where the "vulnerable countries", as they define them, have a say. 
Reversing reality as usual. Just one example in this sense: at the time 
of the final decision, the COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber first had the 
draft of the final document voted on, without worrying about the 
absences of the "vulnerable countries", and then opened the discussion 
with the representatives of the "vulnerable countries" who in fact 
protested against the abuse. Except that the journalists present in 
Dubai were not interested in this because it was not functional to the 
story they have been pushing for years about COPs as the only, albeit 
imperfect, instrument of climate democracy. They are the same people, so 
to speak, who continue to justify the ignoble presence of fossil fuel 
companies at the COP - in Dubai there were over 2 thousand delegates 
from companies like Eni, Shell, Q8 and so on - because "hey, even with 
them you have to dialogue". That is, if they could, they would even 
start a dialogue with the military: who, of course, are not even asked 
to count their emissions. Here it is not a question of understanding why 
"something went wrong despite good intentions", as I read somewhere, but 
of assuming that nothing good can simply ever come from there, from the 
COP. The activists of the Earth Social Conference understood this, the 
COP counter-summit which was held in Colombia from 5 to 10 December, 
organized by the movements for climate justice. In an interview given 
before the start of COP28, Karim, an activist from Earth Social 
Conference, predicted how it would go: "it will end with a non-binding 
agreement, it will be agreed behind the scenes and we will try to leave 
the summit with the perception of not having completely failed. The 
agreement will not result in any significant deviation from business as 
usual. What will console us will be the hopes of Cop29 next year. And 
the world will remain on the highway towards climate hell with its feet 
firmly on the accelerator." Karim and people like her don't have 
divination skills, they simply stopped making their wishes pass as 
reality. Instead, the invitation to create an international network that 
goes beyond governmental ambitions and begins to create a post-COP 
world, where instead of governments and their puppet delegations, in 
place of those who created the damage and promises to have the cure, 
there are those who want to build another world. Ultimately, zero 
emissions means zero capitalism.

Andrea Turco

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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