Opinion: Doug Hamilton: We can have an impact on global warming in our community - Boulder Daily Camera

Doug Hamilton: We can have an impact on global warming in our community

I have been thinking a lot about COP28 — the United Nations Climate Change Conference. After 28 years of this summit with no real progress, it is easy to feel powerlessness about our predicament. What is so frustrating is that we have all the tools needed to avoid climate change. However, to succeed, we need to start building communities based on the foundations of democratic collective action and caring for people.

This month, COP28 was held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It was shocking to see the “corporatization” of the event and its massive carbon footprint from over 470,000 attendees. It feels like we are living through the “regulatory capture” of the climate change movement by the global capitalists — pushing high-tech, expensive solutions that will allow us to keep on burning more fossil fuels.

If this year COP28 was noteworthy, it was because it was the first time in the history of the conference that its official statement mentioned a move away from carbon energy sources; committing all signatories to do so “in a just, orderly and equitable manner” to mitigate the worst effects of climate change and reach net zero by 2050.

But the statement emanating from COP28 is just an observation of the bare minimum required to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celcius. There is no commitment to how we are going to get there. To limit global warming to the 1.5 degrees Celcius temperature rise agreed to at the Paris Climate Summit (COP21), global greenhouse gas emissions should have been decreasing by more than 7% each year from 2020 to 2030. Instead, carbon dioxide emissions are increasing with no sign of reversing. This fact isn’t promising.

Climate change strikes right at the power center/Achilles heel of our capitalist economic system — the independence of the individual to do what’s only in their own personal interest. This leads to overproduction, waste, hoarding and greed. But the solution to climate change calls for collective action and requires real international collectivism between people in different parts of the world to allocate resources according to people’s needs.

We are not going to make a dent in reducing greenhouse gas emissions if we have to rely on the anarchy of capitalism to determine how much, and of what, gets produced and requires continual expansion to maintain itself. The system is designed to keep stoking the fire until everything burns down. That outcome will be very painful for those around when it happens (which will be me and my children).

But there is good news. What differentiates humans from any other animals is that we have the ability to change our material conditions through our collective labor. Every day, we can wake up and decide to do things differently. While you may not have realized it, we have lived through several cultural revolutions just in our lifetimes: for example, gay rights, 10 years ago, our LGBTQ neighbors didn’t have the freedom to marry who they chose, now it’s widely accepted. Nor would anyone have thought five years ago that 20 million people would be protesting in the streets over the brutal murder of George Floyd. But the Black Lives Matter protests have fundamentally changed many Americans’ views on policing, capitalism and the carceral state. Even within the last few months, before the brutal attack by Hamas fighters on the civilians and military of Israel, very few Americans would have understood the plight of the Palestinian people, but now hundreds of thousands are protesting for a ceasefire, lasting peace and accountability. These struggles are far from over, but they have all hit, what feels like, a tipping point.

While some will argue that we don’t have the power to affect global climate change at a local level, we actually can start, here at home, practicing the collectivism we will need to succeed in a post-carbon world. We can i) build denser and less car-dependent communities; ii) build biking, walking and public transportation systems robust enough to move people around safely and quickly; iii) strengthen laws to all for worker collective action; iv) create a public bank and allow for easy transition from privately held workplaces to employee-owned and led enterprises; v) fund, and build, lots of social housing and local medical care networks; vi) allow worker-led organizations the power to coordinate with each other, and consumers, to balance supply and demand; vii) build local, community-owned renewable power systems; viii) allow workers to work less at their job in exchange for participating in their community; and ix) guarantee people jobs, housing, safe and quality schools, as they transition from a high carbon world to a low carbon one.

If the human race is going to escape the worst effects of the predicted global burning, we aren’t going to do it as individuals looking out for ourselves, we are going to have to work together with democratic collective action to build an economy and community that puts people first.

Doug Hamilton is a parent, lawyer, U.S. Military Veteran, engineer and human who believes in free public spaces and a more participatory society. Contact him at hamilton1801@aim.com or @doug_c_hamilton on X (formerly Twitter).