With a growing trend towards a new cold war against Moscow and Beijing
The West wants Russia and China to participate in solving the climate crisis
China is building coal-fired power plants, which poses a threat to the global climate.
Reuters
The horrific fires in California, as huge as they are, hold even worse outcomes from climate change in the future.
AFP
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As the United Kingdom prepares to host the climate conference in Glasgow next month, London continues to pursue two contradictory policies that undermine their chances of success.
On the one hand, it seeks to unify efforts to address the climate crisis through countries that agree on goals to reduce emissions from burning coal and oil, but at the same time, it has joined with the United States to escalate into a new cold war, aimed at confrontation with China and Russia .
The two policies are characterized by their completely opposite goals, to persuade China, which is responsible for 27% of carbon emissions in the world, to reduce the construction of coal-fired electric stations, but at the same time make it a pariah state, so that political, commercial and intellectual relations with it are reduced to a minimum. .
In practice, this means determining which threats are the greatest.
Is the reported thawing of permafrost covering 65% of Russia's area, releasing toxic amounts of methane?
Or Russian President Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea, support for rebels in eastern Ukraine, military intervention in Syria, and the construction of Nord Stream 2 pipelines to transport gas from Russia to Germany?
Is the danger posed by China's claim to the Spratly Islands, and the possibility that it could invade Taiwan greater, or the danger posed by the construction of hundreds of coal-fired power plants during its next five-year plan, thus making the planet even more polluted?
Seen as such, this balance of risks is critically assessed by prioritizing climate change mitigation, when compared to traditional security threats from competing nations.
In other words, the greatest danger facing the Western world is not the unlikely possibility that Chinese President Xi Jinping will invade Taiwan, or Putin will do the same in Ukraine, but the disappearance of ice from the Arctic, causing sea levels to rise. .
British writer and journalist, Anatole Levin, points out in his famous book, "Climate Change and the Nation State", that the tension between the United States and China, over fortifying the coral reefs and sandy beaches of the South China Sea, could end, if the two countries failed to put an end to it. The climate change crisis is not due to a military conflict, but rather to raising the water level in the seas, and hurricanes that will lead to drowning “the causes of this tension under water again.”
It must be clear that the degree of cooperation is necessary to stop global warming if possible, because reducing this temperature would be impossible in light of the escalating war between Beijing and Washington, but unfortunately, the two issues of the climate crisis and the renewal of the Cold War remain separate in the minds of each of the elites. the political and the general public, a blindness resulting from various but huge forces.
It includes the difficulties that people face in general, such as the huge disasters that happen to them and that they have never faced, and they have no experience with.
The most recent of these examples is the catastrophic postponement in Europe and the United States in 2020 in order to understand the seriousness of the “Corona” pandemic, which was not limited to East Asia.
The horrific consequences of the climate crisis still exist in the future, although there may be signs of disasters in wildlife fires in Australia and California, and increasing desertification in countries in the Middle East and North Africa, from Iraq to Chad.
People may talk about making sacrifices for their grandchildren and future generations, but they rarely do so in practice.
People may be worried about climate crises, but that doesn't mean they're ready to accept higher fuel taxes.
Political leaders in both democratic or authoritarian countries understand that people hate governments that lower their standard of living, unless they fear a major threat, such as war or a pandemic, and may not accept such a reduction either.
At the governmental level, another powerful motive is that political, bureaucratic, and military powers feel comfortable in the Cold War world of great powers facing off.
It was this confrontation that gave them enormous influence and huge budgets during the original Cold War against communism and the former Soviet Union, and there is no reason why it should not happen again.
"This helps explain the enthusiasm with which the Western security elite embrace the idea of a new Cold War against Russia and China, an analogy that is false and wholly unnecessary," wrote journalist Levin.
In terms of realpolitik, Russia and China do not pose the threat that the West portrays.
Even if Russia is a nuclear superpower, it is still weaker in Europe than at any time since the 17th century.
Even if China has the second largest economy in the world, but to claim that it now has the largest naval power in the world by counting all the ships in its waters is a misleading threat.
Former US presidents Donald Trump and current Joe Biden share the emphasis that China is a competitor to the United States, but that has other reasons, and anti-China is an issue among the few things that both parties have agreed on in Congress. This is completely different from the topic of the vaccination campaign against "Corona", and other measures against the pandemic, which led to sharp divisions in Congress. In such a bipartisan landscape, it is not surprising that the embattled Biden reinforces his enemies the idea that China is an enemy of the United States, and calls on Americans to rally around their country's flag, in the hope that they will.
Whether or not the climate crisis is believed or not is one of the most divisive crises in American politics. Convincing that it will not happen or that it is being exaggerated has become part of the republican identity. About 100 world leaders in Glasgow, who will meet at the end of this month to November 12, will realize that the fragile Democratic control of Congress will soon end, which will hinder any other measures to control the climate, so why should they do what America cannot, or She wouldn't do it at all? They are also aware that Trump or the Republican Party will return to the White House in 2024.
The World Summit will be pregnant with rhetorical appeals for steps and international solidarity, and as was the case during the “Corona” pandemic, the real work, if it takes place at all, will be through the work of the countries that will work to preserve their interests.
Despite the dire predictions of climate catastrophe, the moment when these countries believe they will face an existential threat has yet to arrive.
• It should be clear that the degree of cooperation is necessary to stop the rise in global temperature if possible, because reducing this temperature will be impossible in light of the escalating war between Beijing and Washington.
• The two American presidents, the former Donald Trump and the current Joe Biden, share the emphasis that China is a competitor to the United States, but that has other reasons, and the hostility to China is an issue among the few things that the Republican and Democratic parties have agreed upon in Congress.
Patrick Cockburn ■ British journalist specializing in the Middle East
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