Climate Carbon Net-Zero: Biden’s Fancy Footwork
https://socialistaction.org/2021/02/09/climate-carbon-net-zero-bidens-fancy-footwork/
February 9, 2021
By James Fortin
Both the Democratic Party and much of the major media have doted on the
progressive steps the Biden administration will take regarding the
climate crisis. While legislation addressing the climate catastrophe on
our doorstep has not yet been forthcoming, Biden’s flurry of executive
orders portray him as seriously addressing the issue.
Indeed, Biden’s initial executive orders are intended to impress many
citizens especially his supporters in the anti-climate change movements.
Climate activists already claim that he is earnest about ending global
warming particularly when compared to former president Trump’s overt
anti-science, pro-Big Oil agenda. By a stroke of the pen Biden has
rejoined the Paris Climate Accords, mandated all branches of government
to consider climate ramifications in their actions, and cancelled the
Keystone XL pipeline intended to carry oil across Native American lands
to refineries in the south.
Corporate history of concealment and lies
Biden no doubt has projected the look of the good guy, trying to do the
right thing about climate. Yet he has been mostly silent on what his
climate plans may eventually entail. Close advisors to Biden indicate
that he will seek “middle ground” on solutions though, and in fact
support as one “solution,” the lesser-evil fossil fuel natural gas.
Still others say Biden favors nuclear power. Where the scientific facts
of climate change have encountered a corporate wall of concealment,
denial, and inaction spanning 60 years will Biden take on the
scientifically-backward, and even criminal, environs that have stymied
action on climate solutions for decades? TBD, but it does not look good.
While the scientists at ExxonMobil knew as early as 1977 of the emerging
dangers that greenhouse gases posed to the Earth’s stability, they did
nothing. In fact, the world’s largest oil and gas producer hid this
information from the public while internal corporate management
repeatedly exchanged memos on the issue. It took an entire decade, but
only after alarming testimony about global warming had been presented to
Congress, that Exxon finally acted. It initiated an onslaught of
misinformation. Using consultants to confuse the public and paid climate
denier operatives to offer “expert” testimonials, the company became
what Scientific American magazine called “a leader in campaigns of
confusion.”
Exxon was quickly joined in sowing doubt by other fossil fuel players as
well as a host of individuals on the payroll of Big Oil. Brenden DeMelle
of DeSmog has identified what amounts to a professional, climate-denier
school of mis-thought describing them as having “made a living out of
denying the science of climate change.” Flooding the newsrooms, talk
shows, and anywhere they might get an invitation, these so-called
“experts” often started out their statements with “I’m not a climate
scientist, but…” before launching into a series of carefully rehearsed
talking points meant to confuse the public on the climate change issue.”
The fossil fuel industry has had many defenders. The Koch brothers,
Heartland Institute, and American Petroleum Institute have expended
millions of dollars to sway public opinion, also promoting climate
change confusion and disinformation. Not to be denied a fair share of
the booty in exchange for doing their part to protect the fossil fuel
despoilers have been well-financed members of Congress. Based on records
from the Federal Election Commission, for the single campaign cycle,
2019-2020, the top 20 Congressional recipients of fossil fuel campaign
contributions have received between a quarter million and one million
dollars each in campaign contributions, hundreds of other Congresspeople
receiving lesser amounts. One such recipient, James Inhofe, Senator from
Oklahoma, has returned the favor over the decades with comments such as
“man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the
American people.” Money well spent according to some.
The magnitude of harm caused by the concealment and then denial of the
consequences of global warming cannot be overstated. While the profits
accrued over a half-century by the fossil fuel corporations have been
endlessly thrilling for the 1%, the consequences of the relentless
destruction of our planet have been frightfully mind-numbing for the 99%.
We are again witnessing for the first time in millennia the simultaneous
rapid melting at the two poles — the Antarctic ice shelves and the
miles-thick ice of Greenland — with a corresponding sea level rise just
in its infancy. Entire ecosystems are under attack as evidenced by the
destruction of the Amazon rainforest, the bleaching of coral reefs, and
extinction of plants and animals, north and south. Ocean storms of
previously abnormal proportions and frequency are now regular features
of our climate. They join the massive wildfires consuming a million
square miles in the American West, broad sections of the Australian
continent, and those fires occurring in the Russian Arctic itself. Even
the small Pacific archipelago nation of Tuvalu is planning to relocate
its entire population to Fiji, their current islands soon to be swamped
by rising seas. These features in their composite are telling tales for
the average person for whom environmental science is abstract that
something just is not right.
As ever-increasing millions of Americans came to believe that climate
change was occurring, Big Oil and its cohorts again changed course.
Realizing they could no longer simply deny the global facts, their
tactics would need to change. The American Petroleum Institute tells us
that we cannot jeopardize jobs while seeking solutions to climate
change. Pundits in the service of fossil fuel maintain that it is our
fault, the majority, due to our wasteful habits, and that the 99% need
to be more prudent. While privatizing profits, but socializing the
impact of carbonized air, the spokespeople for the interests of the
ruling class and their oil firms now inform us “we are all in this
together,” wanting to isolate and minimize those demanding that oil be
kept in the ground.
The accommodation to carbon pollution is on
For the majority, how society will now tame the climate monster
unleashed by the fossil fuel giants has reached paramount importance.
For the ruling class, it’s how do they best throw a bone while leaving
their towering financial status mostly untouched. It is here that Joe
Biden has an important role to play.
Democratic climate legislation is yet to be seen but Biden’s initial
executive actions hint as to where he is headed. His executive order to
pause new oil and natural gas leasing on federal lands and offshore
depths, pending review, changes little. It does not affect the tens of
millions of acres already leased from the government where drilling and
fracking can continue unabated. It also ignores oil and gas development
on state and private lands where 90% of fracking now occurs. While Green
New Deal supporters welcome his order and hope for even more action, the
reality is that oil and gas producers can continue their current level
of drilling and production for years, likely decades.
As for Biden rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, most climate
scientists acknowledge that the Paris Agreement has been ineffectual
over the course of 5 years to reverse the onward march of the warming
atmosphere. Rejoining is just for show, and in effect a “hail Mary” pass
just for his climate fans.
Similarly, with the permit revocation for the Keystone XL pipeline Biden
has allied with the rights and aspirations of the Indigenous, but its
effect on oil production will be negligible as noted by Peter Kalmus, a
climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab: “If every day from here
on out we make progress equivalent to shutting down the Keystone XL
pipeline it might be OK. We need a Keystone a day. That’s what “out of
time” really means.”
Falling back to net-zero emissions
Notwithstanding the hopes of his campaign supporters, Joe Biden made
clear during his run for President his climate intent. “I never said I
opposed fracking … we can capture emissions from the factory and capture
the emissions from gas, we can do that.” Instead of an aggressive
campaign against the fossil fuel criminals, being “bold” so to speak,
Biden in effect will make it a decades-long slow march – without a
predictable positive outcome.
Key to Biden’s climate plan is the promotion of net-zero carbon
emissions by 2050. Net-zero emissions, however, is a fossil
fuel-friendly charade that obscures the real needs of our overloaded
carbonized atmosphere. In a net-zero scenario, oil and natural gas can
continue to be drilled and pumped, fracking will proceed with more and
deadlier destruction to water supplies and community health, atmospheric
warming emissions of all manner will proceed with abandon to possible
cinch world death by carbon. In theory, and as if by magic, proponents
maintain that enough offsets to the rising levels of carbon dioxide will
be developed to balance out carbon dioxide emissions, pound for pound.
Numerous examples of carbon reduction schemas have been offered up by
the anti-climate change movement. No doubt, over time some actions will
have the capacity to significantly reduce CO2 emissions from particular
economic sectors, but several questions are posed. Will there be
sufficient, genuine carbon offsets overall to reach net-zero by 2050?
And what will become of the overwhelming current, and massively
expanding volume of carbon dioxide already in place and growing? Can
humanity wait 30 years to see if the experiment will work?
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that
it will take the removal from the atmosphere of somewhere between 100
billion and one trillion tons of carbon dioxide in the remaining century
to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, far more than can be
achieved by planting new forests. While contributing to a carbonless
future at some point, it is an inadequate solution at this time. Hence,
the introduction of technology by the Bidenites.
Much of the technology upon which net-zero heavily relies is risky,
untested, or unproven. But the one hoped-for solution that most excites
the parties that just cannot bring themselves to say “keep the oil in
the ground” is carbon capture. Carbon capture is technology in its
infancy. Technologically, it can be done. Experiments are occurring.
Right now it is massively expensive.
An experimental, carbon-dioxide extraction plant being built by
Occidental Petroleum in Texas is expected to come online by 2025. It’s
goal: remove one million tons of carbon per year through direct air
capture to offset emissions. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? One million
tons of CO2. At this rate of extraction over 50 years, however, we will
need 20,000 of these complex plants operational by 2050, each about a
half city block square in size, scattered across the globe to solve the
carbon question. And where exactly do we park one trillion tons of
carbon dioxide? Occidental says it will pump it deep underground, where
it will remain for millions of years. And, as many scientists fear, the
carbon may escape back into the atmosphere. It’s science fiction
imaginable, climate change regrettable. Too little too late. It’s easier
to keep oil in the ground no matter the tears the fossil fuel giants
will shed. But not according to Joe Biden.
We should expect that Occidental and all the others will claim carbon
capture to be the silver bullet for the climate crisis, and why wouldn’t
they? They have no reasonable or palatable alternatives at present to
get to net-zero carbon emissions. And that is where we in the
anti-climate change struggle must be on guard. It will not be long
before we again hear that nuclear power is the solution to getting to
net zero.
Based on the amount of CO2 now in the atmosphere, some elements of
climate change are already baked in, such as rising sea levels. The half
century of concealment and denial, setting back the time frame for
initial work to alter climate warming, has made certain that global
temperatures will rise for decades more, even if efforts to cut back on
fossil fuels were in place today. As one environmental writer for the
New York Times commented, “Again and again, climate scientists have
shown that our choices now range from merely awful to incomprehensibly
horrible.”
Compounding the science of course, will be the efforts of fossil fuel
industry mouthpieces, lobbyists, and their Congressional accomplices.
Who will decide what programs constitute a carbon dioxide offset? How
will the program be administered to ensure that offsets are in fact
enacted? The obstacles to a net-zero 2050 will be legion.
Biden has commenced his slow walk down the hope-and-pray road to
net-zero greenhouse gases. As to be expected, neither Biden, nor any
cabinet choice, nor any Democratic member of Congress has mentioned
curtailing the single largest user of fossil fuels and the greatest
single contributor to climate change — the U.S. military. That, or even
token cuts, is off the net-zero elimination table for both Democrats and
Republicans alike. The fossil fuel-frenzied military instrument of
subjugation of people around the world, and its protection of the ruling
class’ economic interests, anywhere and everywhere, will forever take
precedent over the need for a habitable Earth.
Climate salvation means breaking away from fossil fuel capitalism
All the yet-to-be-implemented proposals from Biden to solve the climate
crisis surely will dazzle some, but likely will not solve the crisis we
face. Not by 2050, not ever. In effect partnering with Big Oil, Biden
has chosen to ally with the very same climate criminals who brought us
to this point in the first place. The 99% need a plan that is the
antithesis of what serves the interests of the 1%.
For starters socialists call for a national emergency declaration in
which the first step is the nationalization of Big Oil and the banks
that finance their rapacious destruction of the planet’s ecosystems. The
99% cannot partner with institutions that are complicit with the
criminal past and who continue to place profits above the needs of
humanity and global climate rescue. They need to be placed under
democratic control of the majority. As during WWII, when working people
proved they could run the country in every detail under a national
wartime footing, socialists demand that the economy be mobilized again,
this time to create a clean, just, and environmentally sustainable
economy and infrastructure.
Science — not corporate lobbyists and NGO mouthpieces — will assume a
leadership role in guiding an alliance of environmental scientists,
democratically elected workplace councils, labor unions, and
representatives of the oppressed communities to ensure that all the
resources of the nation are laser focused on a just transition. In
practice, science must be placed at the sails and working people at the
helm in order to defeat climate change.
Editor: Future articles of socialist analysis will provide additional
insights to the climate crisis and the movements in opposition . Please
be sure to follow us.
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