[Can China emerge to fulfill its claim that its goal is a new
ecological civilization, that is, become the global leader opening a
global ecosocialist path?This contingency will likely only be realized
with class struggle led by China’s working class and allies.]
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HOW CHINA CAN PREVENT CLIMATE CATASTROPHE? MOVING HUMANITY TOWARD
GLOBAL ECOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION  
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David Schwartzman
April 11, 2023
MR OnLine
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*
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_ Can China emerge to fulfill its claim that its goal is a new
ecological civilization, that is, become the global leader opening a
global ecosocialist path?This contingency will likely only be realized
with class struggle led by China’s working class and allies. _

Longji Dragon back Terraces, China, (Source: McKay Savage, Wikimedia
commons)

 

Climate catastrophe? Aren’t we already witnessing climate
catastrophe? As the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) report tells us, there is still a chance to keep warming
at no more than the 1.5°C target, but tipping points to climate
catastrophes much worse than we are witnessing now will kick in if
this target is breached. According to Kevin Anderson, a climate
scientist at Manchester University, this IPCC report is too optimistic
and neglects the interests of most of humanity living in the global
South. Anderson estimates there is a 50 percent chance of meeting the
1.5°C target if global carbon dioxide emissions are reduced to zero
by 2040.1
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It is now crystal clear that ongoing wars, in particular the Ukraine
war, create huge obstacles to the global cooperation necessary for any
chance of meeting the 1.5°C warming target. Please take note of
the _Science_ editorial of April 1, 2022, “To solve climate, first
achieve peace,” which recognized this obstacle and called for the
imperative cooperation of the United States and China to reach the
goal of climate security.2
[[link removed]] Following
the lead of China’s peace plan, we should support the call for an
immediate ceasefire in the Ukraine war, and for all parties involved
to negotiate.3
[[link removed]] China
is now being recognized as the leading peace force in the world with
the recent success in bringing about better relations between
long-term enemies Iran and Saudi Arabia, a reduction in tensions to
the dismay of the United States and Israel, and likewise a potential
basis for more effective struggle against these two repressive regimes
by their own citizens. Since conventional oil has the lowest
greenhouse gas footprint of the fossil fuels (with coal and natural
gas having the highest footprint, to be phased out first), we should
recognize the potential of oil-producing countries such as Saudi
Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela of extracting the minimum amount of
conventional oil necessary as an energy source to rapidly build
renewable energy technologies especially in the Global South, while
phasing out global fossil fuels as quickly as possible, and at the
same time earning revenues from such production for improving the
quality of life of their own people.4
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It is precisely in the Middle East that China can take an historic
lead in promoting a renewable energy transition and confront the
increasing climate threat. China is the world leader in green capital,
actually creating renewable energy supplies, but this green capital is
still coupled in the Chinese economy with powerful sectors dedicated
to continued implementation and imports of fossil fuels, as well as an
ambitious plan to build hundreds of new nuclear fission reactors.5
[[link removed]] Can
China emerge to fulfill its claim that its goal is a new ecological
civilization, that is, become the global leader opening a global
ecosocialist path?6
[[link removed]] This
contingency will likely only be realized with class struggle led by
China’s working class and allies. How can China become the global
leader for climate security? One example is the termination of
China’s plan to build hundreds of nuclear reactors, the rapid
phaseout of coal, and the accelerated creation of renewable energy
supplies. In a new Belt and Road Initiative, China could build solar
power in the Arabian and Saharan Deserts to supply electricity to the
whole region and Africa, indeed the whole world, while powering direct
air capture of carbon dioxide (DAC) and permanent burial of carbon as
carbonates in the crust of Oman. DAC with permanent burial in the
crust as carbonates is a carbon removal technology that will be
imperative, along with restoring natural ecosystems and replacing
industrial agriculture with agroecologies, given that the atmospheric
carbon dioxide level must be brought down to below 350 parts per
million and kept there as the ocean re-equilibrates with the
atmosphere.7
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Of course, unless global fossil fuel consumption is ended soon, at the
same time as there is a significant buildup of renewable energy
supplies, the 1.5°C warming target will be exceeded. Therefore, the
enemy of humanity, militarized fossil capital and its political
instruments, must be defeated by a transnational movement led by the
working class and its allies, in particular Indigenous communities.
Promoting a global Green New Deal (GND) with a progressively increased
ecosocialist character is a viable strategy to defeat militarized
fossil capital, and in its initial stages should capture truly green
capital as an ally.8
[[link removed]] But
green capital is a problematic ally, since it is also a driver of
extractivism with its negative impacts. Therefore, transnational class
struggle must also confront green capital with the goal of minimizing
these impacts, with full respect for the rights of the peoples
impacted, notably Indigenous communities around the world and peoples
in the Global South. There are already solutions available that can
sharply reduce the negative impacts of extractive mining, particularly
as renewable energy infrastructure replaces fossil fuels.9
[[link removed]] The
defeat of militarized fossil capital and an ecosocialist path forward
will very likely require the emergence of a global subject with
sufficient power to prevail.10
[[link removed]] Likewise,
the emergence of China as the global leader of struggle for climate
security can inspire the transnational working class and its allies to
champion a global GND to make this goal possible.

We should recognize China’s enormous achievement of lifting hundreds
of millions out of poverty in just a few decades, bringing the Chinese
people’s life expectancy to a global rank in 2020 of 45, with the
United States ranking 51st, Cuba 49th.11
[[link removed]] Hence,
there is a strong basis for hoping that China, with its Communist
Party in leadership, can lead an ecosocialist path forward for
humanity in the next few decades, which is critical for any chance at
meeting the 1.5°C warming target. The fate of 8 billion people on our
planet literally rests in the hands of China’s workers, farmers,
scientists, and engineers.

Notes

1
[[link removed]].
Kevin Anderson, “IPCC’s Conservative Nature Masks True Scale of
Action Needed to Avert Catastrophic Climate Change
[[link removed]],” _The
Conversation_, March 24, 2023.
2
[[link removed]].
H. Holden Thorp, “To Solve Climate, First Achieve Peace
[[link removed]],” _SCIENCE_ 376,
no. 6588 (March 31, 2022).
3.
[[link removed]] Patrick
Wintour, “Chinese Peace Plan for Ukraine Greeted Cautiously by the
West
[[link removed];],” _Guardian_,
February 18, 2023; “China’s Position on the Political Settlement
of the Ukraine Crisis
[[link removed]],”
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China,
February 24, 2023.
4
[[link removed]].
David Schwartzman and Quincy Saul, “The Path to Climate Justice
Passes Through Caracas,” _Counterpunch_, March 11, 2019.
5
[[link removed]].
“Beijing ‘Doubling Down on Fossil Fuels’; China’s CO2
Emissions Increase; Coal Production Growth
[[link removed]],”
Carbon Brief, March 17, 2022; Nick Ferris, “Weekly Data: China’s
Nuclear Pipeline as Big as the Rest of the World’s Combined
[[link removed]],” _Energy
Monitor_, December 20, 2021.
6
[[link removed]].
David Schwartzman, “China and the Prospects for a Global Ecological
Civilization
[[link removed]],” _Climate
& Capitalism_, September 17, 2019.
7
[[link removed]].
Douglas Fox, “Rare Mantle Rocks in Oman Could Sequester Massive
Amounts of CO2
[[link removed]],” _Scientific
American_, July 1, 2021; Peter Schwartzman and David Schwartzman,
“Can the 1.5 ℃ Warming Target Be Met in a Global Transition to
100% Renewable Energy? [[link removed]]”
AIMS Energy 9, no. 6 (2021): 1170–91.
“Surface Area in the Sahara Desert Required to Power the World with
Solar Energy Only – World of Engineering
[[link removed]],” China Solar
Thermal Alliance, December 8, 2022. The China Solar Thermal Alliance
is an ongoing initiative to build concentrated solar power in deserts.
Note that the computed 23,398 terawatt-hour = 2.7 terawatt-year is
about the annual global electricity consumption level, while the
present primary global primary energy consumption level is 19
terawatt-year, which would require about 11 percent of the Sahara
Desert. This could be reduced by siting concentrated solar power on
other deserts including the Arabian Desert, along with oceanic wind
farms and photovoltaics on roofs and floating platforms. Global energy
needs will very likely require even more than 19 terawatts for climate
adaptation and mitigation, see footnote 9.
8
[[link removed]].
David Schwartzman, _The Global Solar Commons, the Future that Is
Still Possible: A Guide for 21st Century Activists
[[link removed]]_ (Galesburg,
Illinois: Solar Utopia.org Press, 2021).
9
[[link removed]].
Peter Schwartzman and David Schwartzman, _The Earth Is Not for
Sale_: _A Path Out of Fossil Capitalism to the Other World That is
Still Possible_ (Singapore: World Scientific, 2019); David
Schwartzman, “A Critique of Degrowth
[[link removed]],” _Climate
& Capitalism_, January 5, 2022.
10
[[link removed]].
David Schwartzman and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro, “Prefiguration and
the Emergence of the Global Subject,” _Science & Society _86, no.
4 (2022): 564–83; Robert Latham, “Organizing Anticapitalist
Internationalism in Contemporary and Historical
Perspective,” _Rethinking Marxism_ 34, no. 4 (2022): 449–68.
11
[[link removed]].
See footnote 6. World Bank Group Wikipedia, list of countries by life
expectancy. The latest data for life expectancies will likely show
even higher values for China and Cuba than the United States given the
COVID deaths/population ratios of the three countries with the United
States/China rate = 47.66, United States/Cuba = 4.13. “Mortality
Analyses [[link removed]],” Johns
Hopkins University & Medicine, accessed March 30, 2023.

_DAVID SCHWARTZMAN is the co-author of The Earth is Not for Sale._

_Monthly Review began publication in New York City in May 1949. The
first issue featured the lead article “Why Socialism?”
[[link removed]] by Albert
Einstein. From the beginning, Monthly Review spoke for a critical
but spirited socialism, independent of any political organization. _

_Under the current editorial committee, led by John Bellamy Foster,
the magazine continues its long tradition of analyzing what is new
together with the equally vital task of seeing the longer process.
That tradition, as summarized by Paul Sweezy, is to see “the present
as history.” In 2006, MR began a daily web magazine, MRzine
[[link removed]], which in 2017 was migrated to a
new project, MR Online [[link removed]], a forum for
collaboration and communication between radical activists, writers,
and scholars around the world._

* Climate Change
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* China
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* transnational movements
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