Northern California climate activists set sights on COP21

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4 SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 2015 As governments and some 40,000 corporate nego­ tiators, scientists of different persuasions and other mostly corporate-friendly parties prepare to attend the Nov. 30-Dec. 12 United Nations Conference of Par­ ties (COP21) in Paris, environmental and climate-cri­ sis organizations are preparing massive and perhaps unprecedented mobilizations around the world.

Fear is widespread that this 21st UN-sponsored cli­ mate meeting will propose nothing to stop the earth’s temperature from rising beyond the point of no re­ turn—the point where catastrophic and irreversible changes threaten all life on earth. Few environmental and related movement organizations believe that the world’s greatest polluters have any intention of sub­ ordinating their profitable fossil-fuel extraction to the interests of humanity. Indeed, the greatest of the pol­ luters, the U.S. and China, have every intention of in­ creasing their production and use of fossil fuels!

Activists from 350.org and a broad range of other concerned organizations on the East Coast are mak­ ing preparations for a massive mobilization in Boston on Dec. 12, the last day of COP21. They chose the last day of COP21 to indicate their lack of confidence in any of the “solutions” proposed to date and to state unequivocally that only a massive international move­ ment, a “movements of movements,” is capable of sav­ ing the earth and its inhabitants from the destructive forces of today’s profit-driven polluters.

In Northern California, a broad coalition of environ­ mental groups, labor unions, social justice, antiwar, and human rights groups, and a number of socialist ... Climate (continued from page 1: “Scientists: End fossil fuel combustion now!”) tions since the last IPCC report show the world’s ice masses in serious and irre­ versible decline. There has been a 50% loss in Arctic sea ice over the last decade. The 2015 winter maximum Arctic sea ice extent was the lowest on record in Febru­ ary and came 15 days earlier than usual. The lowest summer minimum was in 2012.

In the warm season, thick, old multiyear ice is being exported out of the re­ gion through the Fram Strait between northwest Greenland and Canada and into the Beaufort Gyre, where it meets its doom. Consequently, the North Polar ice cap has lost a tremendous amount of mass as it becomes increasingly thinner, younger, and vulnerable to melting.

A warmer Arctic is also having a strong influence on weather patterns in temper­ ate regions because of the heat imbalance between the North Pole and the Equator, affecting the behavior of the Jet Stream and Polar Vortex. Most importantly, the dramatic loss of albedo or reflectivity due to there being less white ice and more dark water constitutes a positive feed­ back that is further warming the region and melting yet more ice.

Seasonal snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere, which has been below av­ erage for 10 years in a row, plays an im­ portant role in how much solar energy is reflected or absorbed. Snow cover re­ flects 90% of the sunlight that reaches it, whereas, snow-free land and dark ocean absorb so much more.

The timing of seasonal snow melt also affects the length of the growing season, the dynamics of spring river runoff, per­ mafrost thawing, and wildlife popula­ tions. Evidence is emerging that over the long term, amplified warming of the Arc­ tic is driving the rate of snow cover loss and other ecosystem responses. The rate of loss in the Northern Hemisphere has been 19.8% per decade, which exceeds the rate of summer sea ice loss.

The state of the permafrost is another serious matter. It comprises one quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere and stores massive amounts of carbon as CO2 and methane. The upper active layer that seasonally thaws has been growing with rising temperatures and losing its parties, has been meeting in Oakland union halls for the past two months to plan a mass march and rally through downtown Oakland on Nov. 21.

Leading organizations include 350.org chapters in all Bay Area counties, the Sunflower Alliance—which focuses on defending frontline communities—Sys­ tem Change Not Climate Change, and a host of groups aimed at fighting California fracking, coal transport, explosive bomb trains, and environmental racism. So­ cialist Action, Solidarity, DSA, ISO, and CoC have also been actively building this effort.

The Northern California Climate Mobilization (NCCM) traces its origin to its Sept. 21, 2014, mobilization of 5000 in Oakland in solidarity with the historic New York City march of 400,000 on the same date.

The coalition’s meetings have democratically dis­ cussed, debated, and hammered out an impressive list of points of unity and demands, perhaps the most advanced in the U.S. climate-crisis movement to date.

The Northern California Climate Mobilization de­ mands reflect a growing awareness that the powers that be have no intention of implementing any “solu­ tions” other than the ineffective palliatives that meet the corporate-driven headlong rush for increased fos­ sil fuel extraction, not to mention endless oil wars for imperial domination.

This is in contrast to the 350.org-sponsored mass march through Midtown Manhattan last year, which had no formal demands or speakers, and was led by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, former Vice Presi­ dent Albert Gore, and an assortment of some 25 elect­ ed Democrats.

This year, after another 12 months of capitalism’s label “permanent.” As a result, coastlines are collapsing.

On Alaska’s North Slope, researchers found that 55% of the soil carbon float­ ing in rivers is being oxidized into car­ bon dioxide as bacteria devour organic matter and belch CO2 . Methane is rising from lakes in plumes. On the continental shelves around the Arctic Circle, thawing methane hydrates are becoming increas­ ingly unstable as sea ice melts, triggering unprecedented emissions from subma­ rine sediments beneath the seafloor.

Russian scientists have found methane hotspots in the Laptev Sea, and over 250 plumes were seen rising near Spitsber­ gen due to a one-degree centigrade tem­ perature increase in the current. In au­ tumn, over the Eurasian and North Amer­ ican shelves, methane levels are between 20 and 25 parts per billion. The release of these greenhouse gases from the tundra and seabed are a positive feedback that can erupt into an enormous carbon bomb if things keep heating up.

Ordinarily, the Greenland Ice Sheet is frozen to its land base. However, rivers of melt-water are cutting walls and steep canyons into the ice, and water is plung­ ing into moulins or sinkholes, causing the society and to the global south by providing funding for developing countries and vulnerable communities worldwide to adapt to the impacts of climate change and convert to sustainable economies.

● “A world with an economy that works for people and the planet:

Billions of dollars for energy efficiency and con­ servation. We need a just transition to a sustainable, demilitarized economy based on renewable energy, clean transportation, and jobs for all at union wages. Convert water-wasting, polluting factory farms to sus­ tainable organic agriculture. End corporate person­ hood; end ‘money equals free speech’; end billionaire purchase of elections.

● “A demilitarized world with peace and social jus­ tice for everyone; where Black Lives Matter; where good jobs, clean air and water, and healthy communi­ ties belong to all:

“End all forms of oppression and discrimination. No to environmental racism and pollution of indigenous, low-income, and frontline nations and communities. Respect all indigenous lands. No militarized police. No wars. No nuclear weapons or power. A true eco­ logical approach must integrate questions of justice to protect biodiversity, honor all life on earth, and lift all people out of poverty.” (See NorCalClimateMob.net.)

California, which has experienced 1.3 degrees Cel­ sius of warming in the last 100 years—and the rate of warming has accelerated in recent decades—is currently in the midst of a historic drought that has completely eliminated drinking water in some areas. There is no time to wait while the capitalists talk it over.

The only way to prevent further devastation is to build a powerful worldwide mobilization whose focus goes far beyond targeting climate-change deniers and a few egregious corporations, but leads in the direc­ tion of challenging capitalism itself—the polluting and pillaging system ruled by the minority corporate elite who are destroying the planet. n ice to slip from its moorings underneath and toward the sea. The volume of meltwater into the ocean from the Isortoq, a terrestrial river, is astonishing, over twice the flow of the Colorado River.

Superglacial lakes can also drain in hours, releasing up to 30 million cubic meters of freshwater to the sea. The con­ tinent is actively deglaciating. There has been a marked speed-up since 2010, with a 2-3% increase each summer in the ac­ celeration rate.

Antarctica is another story. Although its sea ice extent has been increasing re­ cently, it does not cancel out the losses in the Arctic Ocean, which are much greater than the gains around the South Pole. The increase in sea ice there is due to west­ erly winds in the Southern Hemisphere forcing the ice away from the continent, pushing the edges out, and creating spac­ es for more ice-making. This is occurring, ironically, because global warming has increased the temperature gradients be­ tween the pole and the Equator, making the westerlies stronger.

Also, the ozone hole over the region has had an impact. Normally, the ozone (continued on page 11, in “‘Two Trains Running’”)