Author: R J Adams

In 2015, politicians met in Paris and agreed to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The meeting was hailed as a breakthrough. Now, one year later, that limit seems almost impossible to achieve. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meets in Geneva this month it will discuss research that shows global temperatures this year twice peaked at 1.38 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

It seems the only hope of slowing this advance is to shut down all coal-burning power stations and ban the use of combustion engines across the globe within fifteen years – according to a report in the Guardian newspaper.

“If the world puts all its resources into finding ways to generate power without burning fossil fuels, and if there were international agreements that action must happen instantly, and if carbon emissions were brought down to zero before 2050, then a rise of no more than 1.5C might just be achieved,” said Dr Ben Sanderson of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. “That is a tall order, however.”

The problem was made particularly severe because moving too quickly to cut emissions could also be harmful, added Field. “If we shut down fossil fuel plants tomorrow – before we have established renewable alternatives – we can limit emissions and global warming, but people would suffer. There would be insufficient power for the planet. There is an upper limit to the rate at which we can move to a carbon-free future.”^[1]

Banning all combustion engines means taking every petrol or diesel driven vehicle off the road. Global economies would collapse. Even if alternatively powered cars could be produced at reasonable cost, it seems unlikely that 48-ton trucks can ever be developed to run on alternative fuels, and certainly not within a fifteen year time-span.

The situation is now so bad that not only do we need to reduce our CO2 emissions to zero, but we must also develop a method to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and store it on Earth. At present, the technology just isn’t available to do that.

“Some negative emission technology will inevitably have to be part of the picture if you are going to keep 1.5C as your limit,” said Professor Jim Skea, a member of the UK government’s committee on climate change. “There will always be some human activities that put carbon into the atmosphere and they will have to be compensated for by negative emission technology.”

But what form that technology takes is unclear. Several techniques have been proposed. One includes spreading crushed silicate rocks, which absorb carbon dioxide, over vast tracts of land. Another involves seeding oceans with iron to increase their uptake of carbon dioxide. Most are considered unworkable at present – with the exception of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. Under this scheme, vast plantations of trees and bushes would be created, their wood burned for energy while the carbon dioxide emitted was liquefied and stored underground.

Unfortunately, ‘bioenergy with carbon capture and storage’ would mean covering so much of the planet with plants used for combustion that there wouldn’t be sufficient left to grow enough food to feed us all.

Basically, it would seem that scientists now believe that unless we can develop clean technology to produce all the energy we need, and convert every vehicle on the planet to run on non-CO2 producing fuel, and do it all in such a way that the world economy isn’t affected, within fifteen years, we’re all doomed.

Cambridge University climate expert Professor Peter Wadhams provides the last word on the subject:

…I think we just have to hope that some kind of extraction technology, as yet unimagined by scientists, is developed in the next couple of decades. If not, we are in real trouble.”

There is, however, another alternative. We can all follow the lead given to us by U.S. Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, and become climate change deniers. He believes all the world’s scientists are wrong, and climate change is just a malicious rumour put about by the Chinese for their own nefarious (and somewhat vague) purposes.

We could all follow Mister Trump’s lead, bury our heads in the sand and hope we don’t eventually end up as the latest edition to the McDonalds’ burger range. Unfortunately, he has such a poor record for being right on anything that most bookies would place him as a rank outsider on this one.

Personally, if this writer were a betting man, he’d know where to put his money. Even if it’s unlikely he’d still be around to collect the winnings.

^{[1] “Scientists warn world will miss key climate target “ Guardian, August 6th 2016}

We can all breathe a sigh of relief now that the U.S. political conventions are over. In Europe, there wasn’t as much coverage as that shown by the American media, but as the Daily Show is transmitted in the U.K., (albeit a day or two late) and it covered both conventions in detail over six nights, we saw sufficient to realise that Hollywood-style glitz and stardust certainly isn’t dead. It was alive and in robust good health at both conventions.

What was sadly lacking was any hint of truth, sincerity, or honour. Both the Republican and Democratic conventions were about inciting strong emotion. The only difference between the audiences at the conventions and those of a football game was the latter are probably better behaved and less prone to chant anti-social slogans at the goading of the person on the podium.

The question now is: where do we go from here?

Most sane folks would probably settle for Clinton, given the somewhat dubious (at best) alternative. But what has Clinton got to offer the country, and the world?

More of the same?

More of the same, may not seem all that dreadful – after all, Obama wasn’t such a bad president, was he?

No, not if you conveniently forget about his 465 drone strikes on Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, that had killed 2,464 people as of January 2015. At least 314 of those have been civilians, including children. That’s nine times as many drone strikes as under his predecessor, George W Bush, and these are very conservative figures.^[1]

Or, if you conveniently forget those imprisoned for years without trial at Guantanamo Bay – many of whom died there – a ‘facility’ that Obama promised to close “within a year” of becoming president, or, the 3,050 U.S. servicemen still actively serving in Iraq and the 10,000 still on active duty in Afghanistan, bogged down by the Taliban just as the Russians were in the 1980s.

It’s also necessary to forget the fervour portrayed by Obama in attempting to force through the Trans Pacific Trade Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, both designed to transfer more powers to the corporate establishment and debilitate the rights of working people – that is, if we want to regard the Obama presidency as ‘not so bad’.

Not that any of this means Hillary Clinton will necessarily continue the ‘Obama Doctrine’. Provided we forget that her husband – with her backing – was responsible for the North American Free Trade Agreement that resulted in thousands of US jobs being shipped to Mexico, or, that he instigated the ‘Three Strikes’ law (Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994) that resulted in over two million Americans being incarcerated and 160,000 serving life sentences for petty crimes, or, his Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which crippled many poor black families, or, how he joined up with the Republicans in 1999 to repeal Glass-Steagall and set the scene for the crash of 2008, or, his drastic and unnecessary increase in sanctions against Iraq, from 1993 onwards, that crippled the Iraqi economy and directly led to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children – one reason put forward by Osama bin Laden for the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Or, without doubt, his worst act of omission: failing to commit U.S. troops to support a paltry collection of U.N. peacekeepers in Rwanda. Knowing what was happening in that country, aware of the impending genocide, he did nothing. His inaction contributed to the appalling suffering and deaths of perhaps a million innocent people.^[2]

Doing nothing when people are in danger seems a recurring problem for the Clintons. Was Benghazi, perhaps, a ghostly reminiscence of Rwanda?

Okay, so Hillary Clinton may not be the greatest presidential candidate ever, but she is a woman. That’s the most important criteria for many.

Why will being a woman make her a better president?

It won’t, of course. History shows us that women in power behave just like men, and we can be assured that Clinton will, too.

With regard to her Republican competitor it’s equally difficult to find anything good to recommend him. Donald Trump, by anyone’s standards, is an arsehole. He runs roughshod over any who stand in his path. He’s a narcissist par excellence, and the idea of him being in control of the nuclear codes that could destroy the world truly doesn’t bear thinking about.

Consequently, when every factor is taken into consideration, the decision that folks in the U.S. have to make come November, is between a madman (a la ‘Dr Strangelove’) and a committed neoliberalist liar hellbent on implementing the already discredited U.S. ‘New World Order’, and burying the last vestiges of democracy forever.

All Americans should ensure they have a coin in their pockets come polling day.

^{[1] “Almost 2,500 now killed by covert US drone strikes since Obama inauguration six years ago: The Bureau’s report for January 2015” The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, February 2015}

^{[2] “15 Ways Bill Clinton’s White House Failed America and the World” AlterNet, June 2015}

It’s amazing how quickly perceptions can change. Only yesterday Hillary Clinton was considered cold, calculating, and a totally establishment-immersed politician; a hawk of the Democratic party.

Today, thanks to the glib tongue of her ex-president husband, she’s warm, kind, and caring…

“I married my best friend,” he said. “We’ve been walking and talking and laughing together ever since.”^[1]

…a champion for all American people.

At least, that’s how the media portrays it.

There’s no doubt Bill Clinton did a good job. His rendition of their early life and love would bring a tear to any eye. But, let’s not forget, even Crippen was capable of intense love, and the Clinton’s marriage may have endured for more practical reasons than adoration, particularly given Bill’s ability to spread his ‘love’ around.

Can anyone change their character and personality overnight? Of course not. Hillary Clinton is the exact same person she was yesterday, last week, and probably forty years ago when she married her husband. They were both at law school together.

Glib talking and glitz are the prerequisites of U.S. political conventions. They’re meaningless tinsel, designed only to stir the right emotions. Reality, truth, and sincerity are low down on the menu, if listed at all. Or, maybe they’re ‘Off’ – “sorry, sold out” – on that particular day.

The Clintons are surrounded by controversy: mafia involvement, murder, financial malpractices, rape and sexual harassment….the list does tend to go on and on. While much of it is hard to prove and some, at least, no more than malicious gossip, the sheer weight of accusations surrounding this couple would most certainly have instigated serious criminal investigations into the activities of any less powerful individuals.

Given that the prerequisite for a U.S. president has always been an unblemished record and personal life, Hillary Clinton hardly seems a suitable candidate. She is known to have lied publicly (remember how she ducked low to avoid the bullets while leaving her helicopter in Iraq?), and her latest email débâcle would have seen a lesser mortal incarcerated.

It’s surely an indicator of the decline in political standards everywhere that neither Clinton, nor her opponent in the upcoming presidential campaign, are remotely suitable for the office they’re hoping to fill. It leaves Americans in a dilemma, between a twisted, egomaniacal, businessman on one side, and an untrustworthy, establishment hawk with, at best, a dubious résumé, on the other.

The world is in crisis mode, but to many Democrats the glib tongue of Bill Clinton conveniently transformed his wife into a global messiah overnight.

We’ll have to see if this Clinton magic spell is sufficiently durable to last until November.

^{[1] “US election: Bill Clinton backs ‘best friend’ Hillary to lead US” BBC, July 27th 2016}