Editorial: Their disasters, our lives

EDITORIAL THEIR DISASTERS, OUR LIVES f you were sceptical of the existence of climate change and its effects, the events of this summer might help you change your mind. The floods in Britain, first in Yorkshire, then a month later in Gloucestershire, the worst in a hundred years, were the ones to make the headlines in Britain. But much worse were those in South Asia, especially India and Bangladesh. With at least 2000 people killed and19 million stranded, whole villages have been washed away, crops destroyed and cattle drowned or dispersed. On August 11, the Guardian reported, 'much of a thick band of the sub-continent - from Nepal to the low-lying Bangladeshi delta system - [is] under water.' At the same time floods in China have claimed more than Climate change is clearly exacerbating phenomena such as the Monsoon, which normally has the positive effect of both irrigation and fertilisation as it brings silt from rivers to feed the land. But there are other reasons that make these floods worse - all over the world. In South Asia, it is of course the poor who are the first to suffer. Flimsy dwellings, often sited in unhealthy areas next to rubbish dumps and with no proper drainage or sanitation, cannot stand up against the rising waters. Their inhabitants also suffer from the reluctance or inability of the government to provide adequate food and clean water, leading to the spread Even in a developed country like Britain, hundreds of thousands have suffered from the recent flooding. So many houses have been built on flood plains, so many gardens have been concreted over to provide standing room for cars, and so many gardens and green spaces are being sold off to developers at exorbitant prices because of the housing shortage, it is becoming impossible to manage the effects of too much water. Privatisation has also played its part - water companies making big profits for their shareholders have failed to upgrade ageing pipes and drains, or to maintain existing ones, so that the water from heavy and sudden rain storms, which we can expect more of, cannot be safely carried away. At the same time southern Europe has experienced a heat wave with temperatures of over 45 degrees. Forest fires have burned out of control, more than 3,000 in Greece alone, and ancient woodland and olive groves have been lost. But here also the profit motive has played a part with evidence of deliberate setting of fires in Italy and Greece by developers wanting to build houses on protected land. The pace of changes caused by global warming is much faster than most predicted, but the slowness of governmental responses, all over the world (with a few honourable exceptions as in Cuba or Venezuela), is shocking. The Gö meeting in June this vear decided to leave it until the end of 2009 - two years - before taking any decisions on the level of cuts in emissions needed! Fearful of upsetting big business, such as big oil, aviation, construction or the car industry, while at the same time complacently waiting on other sectors which stand to make a packet out of technical fixes, governments like Britain's New(ish) Labour, even under the new PM Brown, are prevaricating behind a smog of promises and dependence on carbon trading. Having agreed to the European target of 20% cut in carbon emission by 2020 they don't want to undermine capital's ability to make profits, its reason for existence, and are considering reducing Britain's target to a pathetic 9%. 1 IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN You could call it fiddling while Rome burns, but now we are talking about the whole planet. And while the planet drowns or burns, in Iraq and Afghanistan the imperialist project is fast unravelling, with US politicians and UK military top brass calling for withdrawal, 'as we are making things worse'. As if they weren't warned of this at the very beginning. Now after countless Iraqi and Afghani deaths and maimings, as well as growing US and UK military casualties, there is a slow realisation that the quagmire into which imperialist forces have been sucked is not so easy to get free of. So they blame the victims, the responsibility for the lack of 'law and order' is laid at the door of the weak governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is obvious to most people in Britain that our support for the US occupation of parts of the Middle East makes terrorist attacks here more, not less, likely. Nonetheless the government has used this fear to pass laws restricting our civil rights in the name of the 'war on terror'. The newest law allows suspects to be held for 28 days in custody without charge. The right to stop and search without giving any reason has been used against legitimate protest. In mid- August, Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 was being used against protesters of the Camp for Climate Action at London's Heathrow Airport, called to highlight the government's refusal to take the issue of air flights and climate change seriously. In the US, Hurricane Katrina gave us a foretaste of the ways in which climate change refugees can expect to be treated; in Britain protesters can now expect to be deemed 'terrorists'. Both these events may seem marginal to the lives of most people, but the effects of global warming could change all that.