Statement on the climate conference of Copenhagen

ΚΚΕ delegation in the European Parlιament

PRESS RELEASE

Strasbourg, 24.11.2009

Statement of the KKE European Parliament Delegation

on the Climate Conference of Copenhagen

The increasing threats for the environment and the health, especially the dangerous climate changes with the global warming are all results of the industrial development on the basis of the capitalist profit, the commercialization of land, air, energy and water.

These phenomena can not be dealt with or mitigated by the capitalist power that is to say by them who are responsible for the creation of these problems. It has been shown in practice that the strategies and the measures that they propose have as their main target the further profit making of the capitals that will be invested as well as the procuration of accessional emission rights, and not the solution of the environmental problems in combination with the satisfaction of the popular needs.

The position of KKE is totally different: In order to plan and implement a development path that will contribute to the counterbalance of the “man – nature relation” and the satisfaction of the popular needs, n the capitalist production relations must be overthrown.

Consequently behind the hypocritical declarations about the “respect of the environment” of the EU, the bourgeois governments -conservative or social democrat ones- and their interstate organizations, behind their proposals for “sustainable green economy” and “low carbon” economic development conceal:

• The intensification of the imperialist contradictions in the field of energy both within the EU as well as between the EU , the USA, Japan, China, Russia, India etc.
• The pursuit for a profitable way out for the over-accumulated capital through the “sustainable green economy”, the commercialization of the environmental protection, the addressing, in our case, of the climate change.
• The promotion of class-collaboration by appealing to the universal character of the problem.
• The advance of the EU directions referring to the capitalist restructuring, the intensification of the exploitation of the workers giving priority to the generalized application of temporary, flexible forms of employment, the strike against the Collective Labour Agreements and the social security system, the cuts on health care, welfare and education system.
• The acceleration of capital concentration and centralisation.

Thus, the way to the Climate Conference of Copenhagen is paved with all these materials and with the intensification of the inter-imperialist contradictions. Suffice it to say that the initial target of developing a new and single international agreement (different from the “Kyoto era” where the UNFCCC coexists with the “Kyoto Protocol”) with legally binding targets, mechanisms and measures, seems to be abandoned, as various sources talk more and more often and loudly about a “political agreement” of general character.

The European Union tries, in the framework of the inter-imperialist contradictions, to establish and to pave the way for further EU monopoly investments, for the “low-carbon technologies” and at the same time it tries to satisfy the expectations of the financial capital for profit making through the “emissions stock market”.

Thus, the EU is trying to achieve in Copenhagen the targets it did not accomplish in the Conference in Bali, December of 2007 (COP-13) and in the Conference in Poznan, December 2008 (COP-14), promoting concrete positions and proposals and presenting them with scientific facts of disputed validity.

In the Document of the European Council there is a special and well-documented reference to the financing of developing countries (ANNEX II) in order to deal with and adapt to the climate changes, though without any quantitative commitments.

On the other side, in other community documents, such as the Statement of the Committee COM(2009) 475 (10-9-2009) on the “Reinforcement of the international financing for the addressing of the climate changes… in view of the Copenhagen Agreement” there is word about an amount of up to 100 billion euros annually, from which 20-40% will be covered by “domestic private and public resources” (which means full adaptation of the domestic economies to the choices of the international monopolies), 40% by «the global market of carbonaceous emissions» and the rest by «international public financing».

But what does “Financing the developing countries” mean? What does the EU mean when it uses the phrase?

1. First of all they don’t talk about the developing countries in general. They talk about the “Least Developed Countries” (LDCs) of Africa and the small insular states. ( see point 3)

2. Further exsanguinations of the workers of the EU countries with “green taxes” so as to promote “innovative” “low- carbon” and high cost technologies which the EU monopolies will install with excellent economic terms in their favor. 

3. Reinforcement of the imperialist presence of the developed European countries in areas of geostrategic interests, first and fore most in Africa.

4. Shaping of a development model for the “financed” country according to the economic interests of the EU and the partner domestic capital, always on the basis of “low- carbon economy” and not according to the criteria of domestic production and development prospects.  

5. And, of course, through the pollution stock market, as they wish to reform it in combination with the “Clean Development Mechanism”, it means the credit of “green house emission” rights, in favor of the EU monopolie’s, to parent companies or affiliated companies that have their headquarters in European countries.

All the above demonstrate that the strategies of the European Union and the European Parliament, as it is written in the relative motion for resolution, for the Climate Conference of Copenhagen, express the interests of the capital and are against the interests of the working class, the popular strata and the people of the developing countries. 

KKE is radically opposed and struggles against the strategy of the capital and the EU for the climate changes. Therefore it opposes the European Parliament’s motion of resolution referring to “the EU strategy for the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen”.

KKE struggles for the combined satisfaction of the popular needs, according to the wealth that our country produces. The protection of the environment is one of these basic needs, but we do not consider it to be an “independent variable”.

The political requirements, to achieve the abovementioned goal, are the socialisation of the basic means of production and the central planning of the economic life, controlled by the people and the workers, a popular power and economy. That is the basic requirement for the protection of the environment and the satisfaction of the contemporary needs of the working class and the popular strata.