But declaring there was a major problem, the world's leaders postponed even beginning to do anything about it for two years. And all they agreed to discuss at that date was an attempt to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, whereas even an 80 percent cut in emissions would not be enough to guarantee keeping global warming below 2 degrees.9
Governments which have proclaimed averting climate change to be at the top of their agendas have proceeded to act as if the appearance of doing something was more important than the reality. Tony Blair spoke of climate change as the "most serious issue facing mankind" .10 His government committed to aim at a global figure of 666 ppm carbon dioxide equivalent (a fitting figure). Yet the Stern report commissioned by it estimated that with 650 ppm there was a 60 to 95 percent chance of $3 \textdegree C$ of warming, and an Environment Department report in 2003 had found that with "with an atmospheric C0<sub>2</sub> stabilisation concentration of 550 ppm, temperatures are expected to rise by between $2 ^ { \circ } \mathrm { C }$ and $5 ^ { \circ } \mathbf { C } ^ { \mathfrak { n } }$ 1 1
Watching such behaviour is a bit like watching a car crash in slow motion, with the driver aware of disaster ahead but ploughing on regardless.
Competition, accumulation and climate change
What explains this behaviour? The easy answer from part of the environmental movement has been "Greenwash", that is, governments are simply pretending to care about the issue for reasons of popularity. That will be true of some politicians. But it does not explain the behaviour of all the major players in the system. Many of them, perhaps even most, have come to see that climate change will wreak havoc on the physical and biological environment that the system operates in and therefore on the system itself. They see the need to take action, yet are half paralysed when it comes to doing so.
Neither is the paralysis explained simply by the pressure on the politicians by lobbying, bribery and blackmail by particular big corporations which fear a loss of profits from any shift away from carbon-based production and transportation. These corporations are often powerfully placed and could, for instance, delay even recognition of climate change by the US government for several years. But they have faced some opposition from other capitalist interests which do have a direct financial interest in trying to avoid climate change-the insurance corporations, for instance. What has to be explained is the relative ineffectiveness of these counter-pressures.
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The Runaway System