Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced that by 2050 ‘a million species could face extinction'! In the same year Tony Blair publicly announced that cutting carbon dioxide emissions was ‘essential to avert disaster' yet recently leaked documents reveal that the UK government was simultaneously attempting 'to remove targets that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions during high-level meetings to formulate Europe's climate policy' (The Independent, 16.01.05).

The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee has described the Government's G8 climate change objectives as being "dismally unambitious," and suggested that the focus on climate change science and the development of low carbon technologies "is creating the appearance of activity…whilst evading the harder national and international political decisions which must be made if there is to be any solution."

IT'S A SHAM, a facade, an act, a rip-off, a con, a trick ... Tony Blair is the Greenwash Guru!

The G8's UNACCEPTABLE Solutions

Kyoto & The Carbon Market

The G8 will argue that market environmentalism and the Kyoto Protocol will save the day; A Protocol, let's remember, which is not only a flawed method of reducing CO2 emissions but as a result of carbon trading involves turning the atmosphere into a giant commodity to be bought and sold like barrels of oil by traders, governments and corporations. The result is a further deepening of the world's already gaping imbalances of power whilst not even effectively reducing emissions into the bargain!

Emissions trading projects have opened the door to a new form of colonialism where... "overconsumptive lifestyles of those in richer nations is pushed onto the poor as the South becomes a carbon dump for the industrialized world." ( Bachram, H in "Capitalism Nature Socialism" . Vol 15. No4, 2004 ).

Nuclear Energy

Where we may see a change in policy is the move towards nuclear energy. The struggle against Nuclear energy is indeed coming to a head, with world leaders beginning to take action on future oil shortages by recommending nuclear energy as the way forward. This is being pushed bythe US dominated nuclear lobby which includes influential groups such asthe Business Roundtableand the World Nuclear Association. Activists across the world have known for a long time that nuclear energy will only leads to further problems. At the G8 the 8 most powerful leaders in the world will meet and almost certainly promote the nuclear energy option, attempting to make it sound like the safe and acceptable choice.

The G8 is the perfect opportunity to tell them where to stick their nuclear power plants.

Market Solutions, African Aid and Oil

"Oil extraction has been a curse for most people living in oil-rich countries in the Global South and has worsened poverty, rather than reduced it. Where oil is extracted there are regular patterns of conflict and human rights abuses; air, water and land pollution; and governments insulated by oil money and un-accountable to their populations. The links between oil extraction and consumption and climate change are well-known to everyone but George Bush;" – corporate watch

The major themes of the G8,  poverty and climate change and their solutions are inseparable.  However,the G8 grew out of the 1973 oil crisis and isintrinsically linked with the oil market. The majority of  the top twenty oil companies are based in G8 countries, and all have close links withgovernment. It is thisdirect involvement of corporate stakeholders, working with development banks ( including the G8 drivenWorld Bank -the dominant player in the carbon market.- and quangos (e.g. the Commonwealth Business Council ) that determines its agenda:- neoliberal enterprise masquerading as a market solution to poverty and climate change.

For instance, Oil company Shell has deep involvement with the G8 summits as well as devastating oil projects in Africa and has just released a report entitled " Enterprise Solutions to Poverty".  Shell International also co-manage the projects set up by the Commission For Africa’s Business Contact Group, in particular the Business Action For Africa project which is being formally launched at the G8 Business Summit at the Barbican in  London on  6^th and 7^th July. This is being chaired by, along with Shell boss  Jeroen van der Veer, the ubiquitous ex-Shell chairman Mark Moody Stuart.

Stuart's involvement with G8 projects is disturbing – He was put in charge of the G8 Renewables Taskforce while still Shell chairman ! He was also fronted the 'Business Action for Sustainable Development' (BASD)  (whose members also include BP) initiative whose sustainable development projects for Africa included several nuclear energy projects and the Chad– Cameroon pipeline funded by the World Bank and built by major polluters ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco). These oil companies are also key members of the Corporate Council for Africa  which is also part of the Business  Contact group.

NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development ) are co-sponsors of the G8 Business Action for Africa (London July 6-7). This quango was born out of G8 meetings plus private meetings involving Blair, Clinton, The IMF and The World Bank and adopted by African leaders.  NEPAD’s projects include: the Kenya-Uganda Oil Pipeline, West Africa Gas Pipeline (WAGP), and the Libya-Tunisia Gas Pipeline. NEPAD is not supported by many African people - they are sceptical of their leaders’ involvement and many civil groups have rejected it seeing it as being a tool of the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and G8 elite.

With an unhealthy dose of Greenwash, whilst eyeing up Africa’s oil, the G8 promotes corporate oil and mining projects run by companies with bad track records on pollution and human rights in Africa,whilst claiming to alleviate poverty and halt global warming.

Exploitation of Alternatives

Yet we have to be careful with the green alternative energies as well. Just as the oil industry exploits people and planet for financial gain, so could alternative power could be exploited if it were controlled by big companies and not owned by communities. The natural world can provide us with the resources we need to sustain our communities but we need a radical rethink about how our societies can dramatically cut our energyconsumption.

Solutions to this problem will not come from career path politicians or oil executives but from the bottom up, from the grassroots, from us.

The 8TH – An International Day Of Action Against The Root Causes OfClimate Change.

The 8th of July has been called as an international day on action against the root causes of climate change. Actions are planned around the world, Venezuela, New Zealand, Iceland, Australia, the Philippines, as well as in Scotland itself ( see www.dissent.org.uk/g8climateaction ). A global movement for climate justice is coming together. It is saying 'no' to G8, World Bank,IMF, UN & corporate market-based 'solutions' to the climate crisis, and 'yes' to a post-oil, post-poverty, post-capitalist future.

We have a unique opportunity and a global responsibility to take action for the millions of repressed people, for ecosystems and for future generations. We believe that anti-capitalist environmentalists and all those committed to a sustainable, socially just world, can work together over the linked issues of oil, war, climate change, and use the moment of the G8 summit in the UK to expose the hypocrisy of the government's green rhetoric. We can demand a stop to their plans for new roads, wars for oil, airport expansions and support of the oil, gas and nuclear industries with loans and grants that perpetuate north-south, north-east exploitation and neo-colonialism.

Above all at the 2005 G8 summit we can unite in our opposition to climate chaos and the capitalist system creating it.

Come to Scotland with your inspired ideas for action and join us on the streets and on the golf courses. Or do whatever you can wherever you are to resist the fossil fuel madness and make the dream of a socially just, sustainable future a reality.