Tag: Paul Virgo

Europes Dash for Gas Presents Pitfalls for Africa — Global Issues

Don’t Gas Africa protest during COP27. Credit: Don’t Gas Africa
  • by Paul Virgo (rome)
  • Inter Press Service

ROME, Dec 14 (IPS) – One of the knock-on effects of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine is that European countries have embarked on a ‘dash for gas’ to find alternatives to Russian energy supplies.

A flurry of deals has ensued with several African States being enticed by the prospect of lucrative energy contracts.

A new report, however, has warned that helping Europe continue its addiction to imported fossil fuels risks having devastating long-term effects for African societies.

The Fossil Fuelled Fallacy: How the Dash for Gas in Africa will Fail to Deliver Development argues the pitfalls are plentiful.

The first is that feeding the West’s fossil-fuel habit will accelerate the climate crisis, which is already having disproportionately severe effects on African communities.

Drought, wildfires, flooding, disease and pest invasions will increase in their severity and frequency with this ‘new scramble for Africa’, pushing developmental goals further out of reach.

The report, which was presented at COP27, also argues that, even if the planet were not overheating because of human-caused emissions, further facilitating the ‘dash for gas’ would not be wise.

Many African states looking to expand gas production will be building the infrastructure from scratch, so projects will take years, perhaps decades, to become operative, it says.

With renewable energy sources increasingly competitive, the projects are unlikely to benefit from the current favourable prices, so there is a risk they will not be able to operate for their entire intended lifespan, saddling African States with debts, forgone revenues and huge clean-up costs.

“African countries’ plight to help satisfy Europe’s dash for gas is a dangerous and short-sighted vision fuelled by a capitalist utopian dream that has no place in Africa’s energy future,” Dean Bhebhe, the Co-Facilitator of Don’t Gas Africa, a network of African-led civil society organisations that produced the report, told IPS .

“Investment in fossil gas production will lock Africa into another cycle of poverty, inequality and exploitation while creating a firewall for Africa to leapfrog towards renewable energy”.

The reports points out that fossil-fuel infrastructure projects do not have a good track record on combatting energy poverty and advancing development on the continent.

It gives the example of Nigeria, saying that, despite decades of fossil-fuel production, only 55% of the population had access to electricity there in 2019.

It says that jobs in fossil-fuel industries in Africa tend to be short-term, precarious, and concentrated in construction, while green jobs are longer term and have the potential to bring benefits to the entire continent, rather than just a handful of nations with fossil-fuel reserves.

Furthermore, the pollution and environmental degradation caused by expanding gas production would endanger the lives and livelihoods of many, the report says, arguing fossil-fuel infrastructure in Africa has been shown to force communities from their land and disrupt key fisheries, crops and biodiversity.

Among the examples it gives is that of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), which will run from Uganda to Tanzania and is set to force around 14,000 households across the two countries to move.

The report also argues that allowing high rates of foreign ownership of Africa’s energy system would pull wealth out of the continent at the expense of African citizens.

It says that any investment in fossil fuels displaces investment from clean, affordable renewable energy systems that can bring immediate benefits to African communities.

It says, for example, that the potential for wind power in Africa is almost 180,000 terawatt hours per year, enough to satisfy the entire continent’s current electricity demands 250 times over.

“As the UN Secretary General António Guterres said this year, investing in new fossil fuel production and power plants is moral and economic madness” Bhebhe said.

“New gas production would not come on-line in time to address Europe’s fossil-fuel energy crisis and would saddle the African continent with stranded assets”.

The report says that the arguments used by some African leaders and elites to justify expansion in gas production on the basis of climate justice, on the grounds that now it’s ‘own turn’ to exploit fossil fuels to deliver prosperity, are bogus.

The conclusion is that, rather than replicating the fossil-fuelled development pathways of the past,

Africa should opt for a rapid deployment of renewables to stimulate economies, create inclusive jobs, boost energy access, free up government revenues for the provision of public goods, and improve the health and wellbeing of human and non-human communities.

“We need an end to fossil-fuel-induced energy Apartheid in Africa which has left 600 million Africans without access to modern clean renewable energy,”Bhebhe said.

“Scaling up cost-effective, clean, decentralized, renewable energy is the fastest and best way to end energy exclusion and meet the needs of Africa’s people. Policymakers in Africa need to reject the dumping of dirty, dangerous and obsolete fossil-fuel and nuclear energy systems into Africa.

“Africa must not become a dumping ground for obsolete technologies that continue to pollute and impoverish”.

Freddie Daley, the lead author of the report, echoed those sentiments.

“The idea that fossil gas will bring prosperity and opportunities to Africans is a tired and overused fallacy, promulgated by those that stand to benefit the most: multinational fossil fuel firms and the elite politicians that aid and abet them,” said Daley, a research associate at the University of Sussex in the UK.

“Africa has the opportunity to chart a different development path, paved with clean, distributed, and cheap energy systems, funded by African governments and those of wealthy nations that did the most to create this crisis. We cannot let Africa get locked-in to fossil fuel production because it will lock-out Africans from affordable energy, a thriving natural world, and clean air.”

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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Leaders Told To Put Kids First at COP27 — Global Issues

Credit: Parents for Future UK
  • by Paul Virgo (rome)
  • Inter Press Service

ROME, Nov 15 (IPS) – Lea is a three-year-old from Mexico who loves ladybirds. Siddhiksha, a six-year-old from India, has a passion for trees and wild animals. Rachelle is a 12-year-old Tanzanian who is wise beyond her years. They are smart and adorable and they are among the stars of a short film that is aiming to remind the leaders taking part in the COP27 UN Climate Conference that they have a duty of care towards young and future generations.

“My biggest anguish is literally not knowing what the world is going to be like,” says Cora, 13, from Brazil, in the film.

“I’m afraid the world could suck, with a lot of species not being able to survive 50 years from now”.

Meera, a 15-year-old from Chennai, India, says she sees the effects of the climate crisis every day.

“Lately, I’ve noticed that it’s very hot in Chennai and there are many unseasonal floods in Bangalore.

“There are forest fires all over the world almost every day.

“This is actually becoming scary and serious”.

The video was produced by the Our Kids’ Climate and Parents For Future Global networks to send the message that it’s time to put ‘Kids First’ and deliver real climate action.

“The aim was to create a film that the kids could identify with, using a kids’ perspectives, making kids feel empowered and recognised,” Sandra Freij, the photographer and filmmaker who directed and produced the short, told IPS.
“We wanted to put kids’ voices before the decision-makers at COP because their voices need to be heard and they have so much to say”.

Children from 16 different countries feature in the film, speaking about their dreams and fears for the future.
Freij had the tough task of selecting them from contributions from almost 100 children sent in by parents from all over the world.

“It was super important for us to make sure we did not put words into their mouths. When we invited them to speak about their dreams we encouraged them to speak about simple things like football or rainbows,” she said.

“I never imagined we’d receive messages of such a grown-up nature.

“It was an emotional few months receiving message after message from kids that have connected the dots and who experience grief and fear about what the future holds”.

Our Kids’ Climate and Parents For Future Global are among several groups of people who are channelling their concerns about the impact the climate crisis will have on their children into action to bring about positive change.

Other groups include India’s Warrior Moms, who focus on the need to fight air pollution, and Britain’s Mothers Rise Up.

The latter group hit the headlines in June when they staged a spectacular song-and-dance protest outside the headquarters of Lloyd’s of London, inspired by the Let’s Go Fly a Kite scene in Mary Poppins, to tell the insurance giant to stop underwriting the fossil-fuel projects that endanger our children’s future.

Parents For Future is a network of independent national groups from countries both in the Global South and North.
The national and local groups take action that is most fitting to their contexts.

Parents for Future Italia, for example, prepared an ‘eco-manifesto’ outlining the policies the country needs to adopt to deliver climate action ahead of Italy’s general election in September.

Then these groups join forces at the global level.

Among other things, Parents for Future Global has been working hard to support the campaign for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. What makes this cooperation between different national groups possible is the recognition by all involved that you cannot solve the climate crisis unless you tackle the injustices that cause it.

And that means the countries of the Global North owning up to being largely to blame and taking action to remedy that via, among other things, loss-and-damage compensation.

Parents for Future Global’s demands for COP27 are that nations must agree to no new coal, oil and gas projects and to stop subsidising existing fossil-fuel projects and that they pledge to start paying for loss and damage.

The actions of these determined parents have not gone unnoticed.

“World leaders better watch out,” Dr Maria Neira of the World Health Organization said at the launch of the #KidsFirst film at COP27. “There is nothing worse or better than a mom fighting for the health of her children. “Now I have a lot of hope. This battle will be the one that we are going to win.”

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



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Campaign for a Fossil Fuels Non-proliferation Treaty Gathers Steam — Global Issues

Petrol pump in Rome. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS
  • by Paul Virgo (rome)
  • Inter Press Service

ROME, Nov 03 (IPS) – When it comes to moral endorsements, having the Vatican’s backing takes some beating. So the international campaign for a legally binding Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty took a huge step forward in July when Cardinal Michael Czerny, the prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, gave it his total support.

“The planet already is 1.2°C hotter (with respect to pre-industrial levels), yet new fossil fuel projects every day accelerate our race towards the precipice,” the Czech-Canadian prelate said.

“Enough is enough. All new exploration and production of coal, oil, and gas must immediately end, and existing production of fossil fuels must be urgently phased out.

“This must be a just transition for impacted workers into environmentally sound alternatives. The proposed Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty holds great promise to complement and enhance the Paris Agreement”.

The name of the proposed treaty has a familiar ring as it is inspired by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) that came into force in 1970 and successfully helped reduce the threat of nuclear war.

The supporters of the proposed treaty say that, like atomic bombs, fossil fuels pose an existential threat to humankind as they are the main cause of the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving the climate crisis.

“Fossil fuels have been equated as weapons of mass destruction because of the way they threaten our ability to protect livelihoods, security, and the planet,” Rebecca Byrnes, the Deputy Director of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, told IPS.

“Fossil fuels are responsible for 86% of carbon emissions in the past decade. So despite our efforts over the last 30 years, emissions have continued to increase, and this hasn’t changed since the Paris Agreement was signed seven years ago”.

Under the Paris Agreement, the international community agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions to a degree necessary to try to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C, and, failing that, to keep them “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels.

But Byrnes said that, as things currently stand, governments plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels consistent with limiting global temperature rises to within a 1.5-degree trajectory by 2030, and 10% more than their own climate pledges.

So, she argued that a separate treaty specifically dealing with fossil fuels is needed to stop States from making empty pledges on climate policy.

“We need both domestic action and international cooperation to explicitly stop the expansion of fossil fuel production and therefore emissions,” she said.

“Only addressing half of the equation has allowed countries and companies to claim climate leadership while also supporting new coal, oil and gas extraction projects, directly or indirectly.

“In countries that are particularly dependent on fossil fuel profits for government revenue and economic development, fossil fuel supply is now a driver of demand.

“It will not be possible to reduce demand for, and therefore emissions from, fossil fuels without first breaking this fossil-fuel lock-in through phase-out, economic diversification measures and finding new development opportunities.

“A Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty will complement and implement the Paris Agreement by directly addressing the supply side of the equation and providing support to fossil-fuel-dependent developing countries to make this transition”.

One of the positive aspects of the treaty would be that it would help put an end to the perverse situation in which States are sometimes forced to pay compensation to polluters when they put a halt to fossil-fuel projects because of the protection that corporations enjoy under legal mechanisms such as the Energy Charter Treaty.

“A Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty will mitigate the risk of legal liability faced by country governments in both national courts and international tribunals, by providing legal justification for phase-out policies,” Byrnes said.

Critics have suggested the plan is simply too ambitious to ever come to fruition.

The treaty campaign might have the Vatican on its side, but the fossil-fuel lobby has powerful allies, lots of money and it has not been shy about using its clout to sow doubt about the climate crisis and stop or delay emissions cuts.

“Some of the criticism we get on the idea of the treaty is that it’s unfeasible and that we don’t have time to negotiate something like this,” said Byrnes.

“The same was erroneously said about weapons treaties.

“But we don’t have time for more of the same. We know it’s unlikely that oil-producing countries will enthusiastically embrace a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and the fossil fuel industry has huge influence.

“But so did the tobacco industry at one point before the formation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

“Just creating the concept of a treaty is already sparking new ambition and new conversations”.

Indeed, the treaty campaign is on a roll.

It has the support of over 100 Nobel Laureates, including the Dalai Lama, and dozens of the world’s biggest cities, such as London, Barcelona, Paris, Montreal, Lima, Buenos Aires and Los Angeles.

In September the World Health Organization joined the host of international organizations backing the campaign.

“The modern addiction to fossil fuels is not just an act of environmental vandalism. From the health perspective, it is an act of self-sabotage,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Vanuatu became the first nation-state to call for a fossil fuel treaty in the speech made by President Nikenike Vurobaravu at this year’s United Nations General Assembly.

And on October 20 the European Parliament called on nation-states to “work on developing a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty” in a resolution outlining its demands for COP27.

“The world has seen treaties deliver when the world has needed to manage, restrict and phase out dangerous products, including weapons of mass destruction, ozone depleting substances and tobacco,” concluded Byrnes .

“Today, we see oil and gas are fuelling war in Ukraine and elsewhere, and are a paramount danger that demands of us and world governments to rally behind a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty”.

It is possible to endorse the call for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty via the campaign’s website.

Furthermore, the Parents For Future Global network of climate parent groups has launched a letter that people can sign online to express their support.

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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Farm-Kids-Turned-Scientists Give Back on the Climate-Crisis Front Line — Global Issues

Dr Alice Karanja is a post-doctoral research fellow at the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) in Nairobi, Kenya, where her research focuses on restoration of agricultural landscapes based on regenerative agriculture for biodiverse, inclusive, safe, and resilient food systems. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS
  • by Paul Virgo (rome)
  • Inter Press Service

ROME, Oct 31 (IPS) – Dr Alice Karanja knows from personal experience the tough choices the climate crisis is putting people before in the Global South. Choices such as whether to have a healthy diet or give your children an education. Choices such as whether to go hungry or allow your children to have any schooling at all.

Having grown up on a small farm in Kenya, Karanja’s family made those tough calls and the huge sacrifices necessary to enable her to go all the way in education, obtaining a PhD in Sustainability Science from the University of Tokyo, Japan.

“I grew up on the slopes of Mount Kenya to a smallholder farming family,” Karanja told IPS at the recent World Food Forum at the Rome headquarters of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“Both my parents are small-scale farmers. My motivation for my work is inspired by what I saw when I was growing up.

“I observed my parents and how they were affected, and still are affected, by climate change in terms of extreme weather patterns, prolonged droughts, inconsistent rainfall patterns.

“The income that they got from their farms sometimes was mostly used to support us with education or health, while the expectation was that we could diversify our diets at home.

“In Africa one of the issues that is affecting us regards the limited set of crops that are grown, mostly maize, wheat and rice. So when people grow maize, they expect then to get some income to get some vegetables or fruit to include in their diets. But often, because of climate change, that money can only be channeled to other needs of the household.”

Karanja is now using her skills to help people just like her parents.

She is a post-doctoral research fellow at the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) in Nairobi, Kenya, where her research focuses on restoration of agricultural landscapes based on regenerative agriculture for biodiverse, inclusive, safe, and resilient food systems.

She also plans to pilot food-tree portfolios in Zambia to help smallholder families obtain year-round access to nutritious foods, diversify their incomes, and boost their resilience to increased food prices and climate change.

“Most of my work is at the intersection of resilience to climate change in terms of livelihoods, food security and conservation and the use of agro-biodiversity for improved diets,” Karanja said.

“For the past two years in my work at ICRAF, I have been looking at the role of agricultural biodiversity and the interplay it has with dietary diversification, also looking at how this interplay affects nutritional status, especially for women and children”.

Many other experts selected to take part in the Young Scientists Cohort (YSG) at the World Food Forum had similar stories.

Ram Neupane decided to study agriculture after being born on a small family farm in Gorkha, Nepal, and seeing the economic and psychological implications of devastating plant diseases.

Ram Neupane. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS

“Climate change is a tentacular threat to all aspects (of life) and plant health is affected too,” Neupane, who is pursuing a dual-title doctorate in plant pathology at Penn State University in the United States thanks to a scholarship, told IPS.

“Novel pathogens and viruses are emerging right now because of climate change. I am from one of the more rural parts of Nepal. I was raised in a farming family, so I have first-hand experience of the impact on the farming community there. For example, in my village, the main crop is rice and most of the rice is rain fed.”

“When there is rainfall, farmers plant their rice. Due to climate change there has been irregularities in the timing and frequency of rainfall and this is affecting planting times.

“This, in turn, affects the whole cropping system.

“This has led to flows of people going from more rural areas to urban areas because farming is no longer profitable”.

Dr. Peter Asare-Nuamah, a lecturer at the University of Environment and Sustainable Development, Ghana, employs his quantitative and qualitative research skills and experience to offer solution-oriented contributions to issues of climate change, food security, adaptation and environmental management, particularly in smallholder agriculture systems in developing economies.

“I chose this (career path) because of what I saw about climate change,” Asare-Nuamah told IPS.

“I work within the context of climate change and smallholder agriculture systems.

“I was born in a rural farming community where we engage in cocoa, cassava and other food crops, and you could see the impact of climate change.

“At the time the conversation about the impact of climate change was not so high, it had to do with high political level discussions, and I thought there was a need to engage individuals in the conversation on how to address climate change.

“People from my community are suffering. They plant (crops) and because of the absence of rainfall, the plants do not ripen. Even if they ripen, they give very low yields.

“There are pests and disease all over the world and in Ghana we are currently suffering with fall armyworm, which has arrived because of climate change and is having devastating consequences.

“Smallerholder farmers feed a lot of the population of the African continent but they have not been able to push themselves out of poverty and they continue to struggle.

Dr. Peter Asare-Nuamah, lecturer at the University of Environment and Sustainable Development, Ghana. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS

Education is an issue. Basic necessities are also an issue.

“So all this combines to put them in a position where they are highly vulnerable.

“Even though African economies contribute less than 3% to global carbon emissions, the impact is so high in this part of the continent.

“This calls for the need to address climate change, how developed economies, which have contributed so much to climate change, can come together and help smallholder farmers and developing economies to mitigate some of the challenges caused by the actions and inactions of some of the developed economies.

“So these are the issues that drove me personally to go into the climate change arena, so I can contribute to making sure that we have solutions for smallholder farmers, we have conversations, we have financing, and we are able to build the capacities of smallholder farmers”.

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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Civil Disobedience How to Make Enemies and Influence People — Global Issues

XR Red Rebels at a climate protest in Rome. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS.
  • by Paul Virgo (rome)
  • Inter Press Service

ROME, Sep 22 (IPS) – Radical climate groups undeterred by risks and unpopularity as long as message gets acrossBlocking metros and highways in rush-hour traffic to stop commuters getting to work. Vandalizing petrol pumps to put them out of use.
Halting sporting events such as the French Open and the British Grand Prix. Disrupting bemused art lovers by gluing oneself to priceless masterpieces.

The methods used by the radical climate groups that have sprouted up in many countries in recent years, such as Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil (JSO) and Insulate Britain, seem better suited to alienating people than bringing them on board efforts to stop the looming environmental catastrophe. And alienate people they have.

The reaction to a series of road-block protests in Rome in June by Italy’s Ultima Generazione (UG – Last Generation) group is a good example. Videos released by the group have you on the edge of your seat in fear for the protestors. In one, a car drives so close to a young woman sitting in the road that she appears to go under the vehicle.

In another, motorists violently drag protestors from the highway, with a young male protestor getting pulled away by his pony tail.
The online abuse is high voltage too, with group members getting called everything, from spoilt brats to terrorists.

Many commentators cannot understand why the protests hit ordinary people going about the business, rather than the rich and powerful. Other actions, such protestors gluing themselves to Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera at the Uffizi’s gallery or throwing paint over the Ecological Transition Ministry, have generated bafflement too.

The actions have not just come under fire from people unaware of the scale of the environmental crisis.

Even Adrian Ramsay, the co-leader of the Green Party in England and Wales, told The i newspaper that “we don’t always agree with their tactics” when asked about Insulate Britain blocking motorways.

But, with the effects of the climate emergency increasingly manifest, these groups are not worried about being unpopular, as long as their message is heard.

“The main aim of our protests is to break the wall of indifference and polarize people,” Beatrice Costantino, a qualified vet who quit her career to dedicate herself full-time to fighting the climate emergency with UG, told IPS.

“We cannot have a constant, deep discussion on climate and ecological emergency without touching people’s emotions. We don’t want to make people feel guilty for driving a car or not doing much to have a lighter carbon footprint. “But we do want them to remember that they’re citizens and members of a community.

“So they have rights, as we live in a democracy, but they also have duties. We cannot offload our social responsibilities anymore and we must accept that our inaction is the biggest part of the problem. We cannot ask the government to change if we don’t put enough pressure on it and we are not willing to lose our privileges, our goods and our liberty for the (common) good and the truth”.

The group that led that way in adopting non-violent civil disobedience to demand climate action was Extinction Rebellion in the UK in 2018. UG and JSO are among several younger, even more radical groups that are part of the international A22 network.
Stop Old Growth in Canada, Derniere Renovation in France and Declare Emergency in the United States are other members.

They are inspired by examples of the successful use of civil resistance in the past, such as with the Suffragettes and the civil rights movement in the United States.

They believe that small groups of determined people can garner the active support of a relatively small proportion of the population, perhaps as low as 1% or 2%, to reach a sort of social tipping point that generates rapid change.

“We’re confident that this is the number of people that we really need for a non-violent revolution, as it has happened like this most of the time in the past,” Costantino said.

“When people are constantly bombed by news about climate crisis and people struggling against it, they start looking for more information, discussing it with friends and family, reflecting within themselves”.

She says the actions of the A22 network have produced results already.

“In Canada in 2021 more than 1,000 people protested against the destruction of virgin forests, going into the forests, blocking trucks, climbing up trees and tying themselves to them.

“But they received little media attention and lots of Canadians were not aware of the problem or didn’t care. “Now the Save Old Growth campaign is disrupting the public with fewer than 70 people. “They have been on the national news, they have been taken to prison and they have shocked the nation. “According to polls, now more than 80% of Canadians are worried about the problem and want the government to stop the destruction of their forests”.

Another characteristic of these protestors is their fearlessness when it comes to putting their safety and freedom on the line.
Indeed, many have faced prison for the cause, including 51 JSO supporters jailed on September 15 after taking action at the Kingsbury Oil Terminal in Britain.

Whether the majority like these tactics or not, with more protests planned in the coming weeks and months, we are certain to hear more about these groups. “What’s the price of inaction?” said Costantino.

“If we don’t cut emissions immediately, more than three billion people will be forced to leave their homes by 2070. “We must open our eyes and understand that our parents, our children, our loved ones are going to die in huge numbers if we don’t act now”.

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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Climate Collapse Is Not Inevitable But Great Leap Needed — Global Issues

74% of people in G20 countries want economic systems to change, survey finds. Credit: Paul Virgo / IPS.
  • by Paul Virgo (rome)
  • Inter Press Service

ROME, Sep 08 (IPS) – In 1972 the Club of Rome alerted the world to the harm human economic systems were doing to the health of our planet in its seminal, best-selling report, The Limits to Growth. With the devastating impacts of the climate crisis hitting home harder than ever, especially in the Global South, that warning about the dangers of exponential economic growth has been fully vindicated.

The club, an international network of scientists, economic experts and former heads of State and government, is marking the 50th anniversary of that landmark work with a new contribution that builds on ‘Limits’ and the dozens of other reports that it has released over the last half century to consolidate the case for an overhaul of the prevailing economic paradigm.

‘Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity’, which is coming out late in September, warns that if the world continues with the economic policies of the last 40 years, the rich will get richer while the poor fall farther behind, creating extreme inequalities and growing social tensions within and between countries.

In this ‘Too Little, Too Late Scenario’, political division and lack of trust will make it increasingly difficult to address climate and ecological risks, with regional societal collapse, driven by rising social tensions, food insecurity and environmental degradation, increasingly likely.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be like this.

If humanity snaps out of its collective denial, it can move to a ‘Great Leap’ scenario in which global temperatures are stabilized at below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

To bring this about it is necessary to address the fundamental inequalities that are the root cause of the ecological crisis by: ending poverty through reform of the international financial system; addressing gross inequality by ensuring that the wealthiest 10% take less than 40% of national incomes; empowering women to achieve full gender equity by 2050; transforming the food system to provide healthy diets for people and planet; and transitioning to clean energy to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

“With bold action now a large population can thrive on a livable planet,” Owen Gaffney, one of the six authors of the new report, told IPS.

“We argue that we need five transformations in parallel at speed with the biggest effort this decade on poverty, inequality, food, energy and gender equity”.

“This is the minimum. This does not lead to some utopia, but this leads to societies that are functional enough to deal with the scale of the crises we know are coming.”

Gaffney, a sustainability analyst at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, said that it is necessary to break away from “a system that will create the first trillionaire this decade” and distribute wealth more fairly to create a system that benefits the majority in the long run.

“High wealth inequality has a destabilizing influence in societies,” he said.

“It erodes social cohesion. Compare Sweden to the United States. In the US there has emerged an ‘elite versus the rest’ worldview. This, compounded by race and religious divisions, has contributed to an increasingly dysfunctional society.

“In more economically equal societies there is more trust in governments. We need trust in governments to allow societies to take large, long-term decisions”.

Earth for All, which is the result of a two-year research project, goes on to give 15 policy recommendations with the greatest potential to accelerate these turnarounds.

It also calls for the creation of a novel financial innovation, the Citizen’s Fund, which would distribute the wealth of the global commons to all people as a Universal Basic Dividend, in order to tackle inequality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and provide a safety net for the most vulnerable through economic shocks.

Furthermore, the book tackles the fierce debate between supporters of ‘degrowth’ and advocates of ‘green growth’.

It sides with the latter, saying the ‘Giant Leap’ would not spell the end of economic growth, but the end of the directionless economic growth that is destroying societies and the planet.

“Exponential economic growth comes hand in hand with exponential growth in material consumption, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in the current economic system,” said Gaffney.

“This does not necessarily need to be the case. An energy transformation to clean energy will cause economic growth in the clean energy sector and a contraction of the fossil fuel sector.”

“So, it depends what is growing. If we have growth in circular economies and regenerative economies, this is good.”

“If we continue growing the linear ‘take, make, break, waste’ model then we don’t have a long future on Earth”.

Although the solutions proposed in the book are largely macro-economic ones that can only be implemented by governments, the book is also a statement against climate doomism and a call to action for everyone.

Gaffney points to the impact social movements like Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion are having and to a survey done for Earth4All with Ipsos MORI of G20 countries which suggests that 74% of people in G20 countries want economic systems to change.

He hopes that we are reaching a positive “social tipping point” in which these new ideas take hold and embed in the political sphere rapidly.

Remarkably, one of the authors of the report is Norwegian climate expert Jorgen Randers, who was also among the co-authors of The Limits to Growth.

“We are standing on a cliff edge,” Randers said. “In the next 50 years, the current economic system will drive up social tensions and drive down wellbeing.”

“We can already see how inequality is destabilising people and the planet.”

“Unless there is truly extraordinary action to redistribute wealth, things will get significantly worse. We are already sowing the seeds for regional collapse.”

“Societies are creating vicious cycles where rising social tensions, which are exacerbated by climate breakdown, will continue to lead to a decline in trust.”

“This risks an explosive combination of extreme political destabilisation and economic stagnation at a time when we must do everything we can to avoid climate catastrophes.”

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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