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The climate change crisis is not a primarily technical or

scientific problem, the key problem is political.

EDITORIAL: Climate change is a political problem

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Blue Mountains Mayor Mark Greenhill told ABC News

Breakfast on October 18: The climatic conditions that fuelled

that fire yesterday were just unprecedented ... an

unprecedented disaster.

More than 100 fires broke out across New South Wales on

October 17. By October 19, they had destroyed at least 193

homes in the Blue Mountains alone and caused at least one

confirmed death.

The bushfire emergency, unprecedented for October,

occurred mere days after the Daily Telegraphran a story on

a leaked report (http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw

/intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change-draft-report-warns-australia-

will-be-a-hot-spot-as-world-gets-warmer/story-fni0cx12-1226739257734 ) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

finding that, across NSW, very high and extreme fire danger days will increase by up to 30% by 2020 and up to 100%

by 2050.

Despite this, when Greens MP Adam Bandt made this obvious link on the same day as the fires, he was roundly

attacked by the environment minister Greg Hunt and Melbourne shock jock Neil Mitchell for politicising the catastrophe

and being insensitive.

But the time has long since past for this head-in-the-sand rhetoric. Bandt stated what is blindingly obvious the growing

reality of climate change is taking place with more frequent and worse extreme weather events across Australia, with

devastating consequences.

The climate change crisis is not a primarily technical or scientific problem. Plenty of work has gone into solutions.

In Australia, Beyond Zero Emissions (http://bze.org.au/zero-carbon-australia-2020) developed a detailed, fully costed plan three

years ago for a 10-year transition to a zero-carbon economy with 100% renewable energy. Ironically, one of the people

who launched the plan in Sydney (https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/45022) was Malcolm Turnbull now a member of a

government moving in the opposite direction.

Based on such work, and believing the profit-driven private sector cannot make it happen, the Socialist Alliance

developed a climate charter (http://www.socialist-alliance.org/policy/environment-climate-change/climate-change-charter) , a plan driven

by public ownership over, and investment in, key sectors of the economy to make BZE's proposals a reality.

In the September elections, the Socialist Alliance raised the demand to nationalise Australia's mining sector

(http://www.socialist-alliance.org/news/take-back-wealth-five-reasons-nationalise-mines
) and put it under community control to break

the power of mining oligarchs and help bring about such a public-driven transition.

In the current political climate, such measures may sound extreme but it is far more extremist to advocate allowing

the status quo to continue, almost certainly condemning the planet to catastrophe.

The key problem is political. Power is wielded by a corporate oligarchy committed to destructive practices.

In Australia, the government refuses to even pretend to act. But on the other side of the equation, the carbon price

agreement between Labor and the Greens fell drastically short of the type of measures required to combat the problem.

Not only did it heavily compensate big polluters (https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/54445) in such a way as to undermine any

potential to force big business to shift to sustainable practices, it was also set to transition to an emissions trading

scheme (ETS) by 2015.

It placed the climate emergency in the hands of the sort of market forces that brought us the disaster of the global

financial crisis. An ETS in Europe has failed to lower carbon emissions (https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/47831) , let alone drive

the sort of far-reaching transformation required to deal with the scale of the crisis.

There is nothing for it but to build a movement that confronts the power of corporate oligarchs based on the desperately

urgent need for a radical reorganisation to a zero-carbon, renewable-energy fuelled economy.

From GLW issue 985

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