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Climate change or system change? The real challenge turally linked to agricultural monoculture. Global marketers source food from one or two giant monocultural farms, rather than from hundreds of diversified farms. Monocultures rely on agrochemicals and mechanised equipment, and deplete the soil of its ability to sequester carbon.
Helena Norberg-Hodge, Steven Gorelick & John Page
In Byron Shire we can be very proud of the various community initiatives aimed at tackling climate change. Just look at the extraordinary and inspiring Bentley campaign, or COREM (CommunityOwned Renewable Energy Mullumbimby) or the now fully subscribed Enova: we are certainly doing our bit to reduce emissions and promote a more sustainable development path. At the grassroots, both here and elsewhere, people are clamouring for change. A peaceful revolution is in the air. That’s the good news. The bad news is that our governments are increasingly indebted to global banks and corporations. Their hands are tied; democracy is dying. The recent Paris conference was supposed to be about tackling climate change, and yet the most effective steps to reduce CO2 emissions were never even discussed. Instead, delegates quibbled over piecemeal quasi-solutions while leaving the systemic root causes of the problem unchallenged.
Fundamental shift In order to limit warming to the two-degree Celsius benchmark, there will need to be a fundamental shift in the economy: away from growth-at-any-cost globalisation, towards more diversified, localised economies that serve the real needs of people and the planet. \
Dietary changes
Such a shift would not only substantially reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it would bring a range of other benefits too: it would help to create more jobs; limit the power of global corporations; reverse the erosion of democracy; and reduce fundamentalism, ethnic conflict and even terrorism. And this is its great strength. Here is an opportunity to unite diverse single-issue campaigns across the social and environmental divide – to create a movement powerful enough to overthrow the de facto government of global corporations and banks. Here are five ways that globalisation leads to increased greenhouse gas emissions: 1. Globalisation promotes unnecessary transport. In the global economy, a lot of trade is ‘redundant’. This is particularly true in the global food system, where huge supermarket chains contract with commensu-
time while I would just steadily by Ian Rogers improve my position and that’s Play at Byron Services Club, Mon 7pm how I would get them.’ Illingworth explained, ‘I had Max Illingworth has become a few training sessions with Australia’s fifth ever home-grown [Indian GM] Ganguly before the Grandmaster after a stunning tournament. This was a big help performance at the Australian for sure. I was solving tough puzMasters in Melbourne before zles to help me think like a superChristmas. Grandmaster and he gave me one After starting with six wins in very good opening suggestion. his first seven games, the 23-year‘I felt the difference in my old from Dee Why secured his games. I think it’s the first tourthird and final Grandmaster nament where for [most] rounds ‘norm’ with two rounds to spare, I was actually thinking through becoming the first local player to my decisions the way a super complete the title at home. GM would.’ Illingworth has long been Illingworth thanked his suptipped as Australia’s next port team – ‘integral to my sucGrandmaster but poor recent cess’ – and praised the organisaresults in Malaysia and the Isle tion at Melbourne Chess Club, of Man would have dented a less a venue he has in past vowed to determined player’s confidence. avoid in summer but which now ‘I’m extremely happy I man- boasts air conditioning. aged to basically reverse my Illingworth suffered the typical chess style in one month,’ said post-GM title let-down, losing in Illingworth on his return to the last round and thus allowing Sydney after the tournament. Azerbaijan IM Kanan Izzat to ‘I changed my decision making snatch first place, but he doubts process for the better. that he will have any trouble set‘Basically I was a lot more ting new goals. patient, not trying to force the ‘I don’t feel much change from position but going for more indi- attaining the GM title. I’m just as rect play. My opponent would keen to improve and remain just play forcing moves a lot of the as involved in the chess world.’
CHESS
12 December 30, 2015 The Byron Shire Echo
rately large farms to supply all their stores. This is why supermarkets on the Citrus Coast of Spain carry imported lemons while local lemons rot on the ground.
Wasteful freight The US company Trident ships about 30 million pounds of fish annually to China for filleting, and then ships the fish back to the US for sale. In addition, many manufactured goods consumed in Northern countries are no longer produced regionally, but in the global South. 2. Globalisation promotes rampant consumerism. Governments worldwide are blindly promoting a model of global growth through increased consumerism. Whenever there is an economic slowdown, there are active attempts to ‘stimulate consumer spending’. Globalisation promotes
a consumer monoculture. People around the world are bombarded with media images that romanticise western consumer lifestyles, and denigrate local traditions. Millions of people are abandoning local food and clothing for McDonald’s hamburgers and designer jeans. In the process, the use of energyintensive resources is rising, along with GHG emissions. 3. Globalisation is making the food system a major climate-changer. a) Globalisation leads to redundant trade, as described above, with thousands of miles of needless transport adding to food miles and GHG emissions; b) The global food economy requires far more processing and packaging than local food systems. In the US, for example, more than onethird of the energy used by the food system is used for packaging and processing. c) Globalisation is struc-
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d) Globalisation is leading to dietary changes that exacerbate GHG emissions. Thanks to the promotion of western diets, global meat consumption is expected to double by 2050, and most of it will be raised on factory farms that are major GHG emitters: factory-farmed broiler chickens, for example, produce seven times more emissions than backyard chickens. e) The global food system destroys rainforests and other wild ecosystems. Brazil, for example, is converting large swathes of the Amazon to soybean production, while Indonesia’s rainforests are being displaced by palm oil plantations. 4. Globalisation replaces human labour with energyintensive technologies. Globalisation is both scaling up and speeding up the economy – trends that replace human labour with technology dependence. Robots and computer algorithms, in both manufacturing and finance, do work that was once done by people. This is not about ‘efficiencies of scale’. Governments use tax breaks, tax credits, accelerated depreciation and other subsidies to encourage technology use, while payroll taxes discourage employment. In the end, the global economy is using taxpayer money to subsidise the destruction
of jobs, and increases in GHG emissions. 5. Globalisation promotes energy-intensive urbanisation. Compared to the genuinely decentralised towns and villages that still exist in the less industrialised world, urbanisation is extremely resource-intensive. Material needs of highlyurbanised populations are brought in on vast energyintensive infrastructures. Almost all the food consumed by city dwellers is typically grown on chemical- and energy-intensive farms and brought into the cities on roads purpose built to accommodate huge trucks. Providing water involves enormous dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts. Energy production means huge, centralised power plants, coal or uranium mines, and thousands of miles of transmission lines.
Fiddling while the planet burns Attempts to reduce GHG emissions while further deregulating trade are an exercise in futility. Not only does trade deregulation accelerate climate change, it makes it more difficult for governments to enact policies aimed at reducing emissions. Most ‘free trade’ treaties include investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) that allow corporations to challenge laws that might reduce corporate profits. Corporations have already used ISDS provisions more than 500 times to challenge government laws and regulations – including environmental laws. For example, the Swedish energy giant Vattenfall sued Germany for 3.7 billion euros over their decision continued opposite
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