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Climate Crisis and the Global Supply Chain
Since December of 2016, 189 parties have signed the Paris Agreement ensuring that efforts are being made to keep the global pre-industrial temperature rise below 2 °C this century, and pursuing efforts to keep it below 1.5 °C. According to the United Nations United in Science 2020 report, we are not on track to meeting these goals. The report states that COVID-19 lockdowns reduced emissions for a short time due to economic shutdown, but they are now back to early 2019 levels and 2020 is set to be the hottest year in a 5 year period. The Emissions Gap Report 2019 showed that the cuts in global emissions required per year from 2020 to 2030 are close to 3% for a 2 °C target and more than 7% per year on average for the 1.5 °C goal of the Paris Agreement.
The effect even a 1.5 °C target will have on ecosystems will be significant. According to a report by Carl-Friedrich Schleussner of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany the additional 0.5 ◦C increase in global-mean temperature “marks the difference between events at the upper limit of present-day natural variability and a new climate regime, particularly in tropical regions” (Schleussner et al., 2015). According to scientific modelling reports of 2 ◦C increase in global-mean temperature means Yemen will literally be uninhabitable without permanent air conditioning (Paul J. S. & Eltahir E. A. B., 2015). The amount of people in Central America who will be exposed to water scarcity with a 1.5◦C increase in global mean temperature will be 6 million more people, and 10 million at 2◦C (Carbon Brief).
Accepting even a 1.5◦C increase in global mean temperature means experiencing both the mass extinction of the human species as well as an uncountable number of other species all in the name of continuing the capitalist system of unlimited economic growth based on natural resource extraction. Joeri Rogelj, of the Austria-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) modeled a series of energy-economy-environment scenarios which keep the warming rate below1.5 ◦C by 2100. In 2012, the total annual global emissions of greenhouse gases were approximately 52 GtCO2e. These emissions must soon drop to a net of 41 GtCO2e if we are to have a feasible chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C (Rogelj et al., 2015). This means that we need to completely transform our global supply chain, but we also need to extract 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The problem with these models, and the policy that they can enact, is that they assume that unlimited economic growth, or “green growth” can be accomplished. In reports published by Jason Hickel (Hickel, 2019) green growth theory asserts that continued economic expansion is compatible with our planet’s ecology, as we will be able to absolutely decouple GDP growth from resource use and carbon emissions with technological innovation and substitution. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreements are based on these models and science. There is no empirical evidence based on historical trends that this can be achieved however, and is unlikely to be achieved at a rapid enough rate to prevent global warming over 1.5°C or 2°C (Hickel, 2019).
At the same time, Hickel finds in his 2020 peer reviewed ScienceDirect article that as of 2015, the USA was responsible for 40% of excess global CO2 emissions. The US is the only country to have left the Paris Agreement (Paris Agreement, . The Global North was responsible for 92% (Hickel, 2020). By contrast, most countries in the Global South were within their boundary fair shares, including Costa Rica (Hickel, 2020). Hickel also relates this to global income inequality, which he reports has tripled since 1960 ( Hickel, 2017). Hickel cites that in 2015, Europe and North America had 84% of the world’s wealth in per-capita terms, while the rest of the world had only 16% (Hickel, 2017). Hickel cites that global inequality is a political tool to keep power in the hands of the core to control the periphery (Hickel, 2017). Western control over global trade has kept wages artificially low, a phenomenon known as ‘unequal exchange’ (Hickel, 2017). United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimates that because of asymmetries built into the WTO trade system after the Uruguay Round in 1986 (rich countries maintaining market protections while denying them to poor countries), developing countries were losing around $700 billion annually in potential export revenues (Hickel, 2017). According to the World Bank International Debt Statistics Database, developing countries pay more than $200 billion in interest on external debts each year (Hickel, 2017). As long as the structure of the global economy remains organised in the interests of rich countries in these ways, inequality will continue to increase. Likewise, as long as the owners of capital hold more power than the earners of wages do, inequality will tend to increase (Hickel, 2020).
A report by Pendrill et al. (2019) uses environmental input-output theory to cite that deforestation is the second largest source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, which is largely driven by expanding forestry and agriculture. They find that depending on the model used, 29%-39% of tropical deforestation emissions were attributed to the production of goods for export in international trade (Penrill et al., 2019). They highlight that efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from land-use change must take into account the international demand driving deforestation, and that policy measures that address international supply-chains if emissions are to be effectively reduced (Penrill et al., 2019).
It is scientifically inaccurate in to assume that the holders of power and wealth in the Global North will be redistributing their wealth to the Global South in time to get on track to carbon neutrality by 2050, which is needed if we are to stay below 1.5°C (Rogelj et al., 2015). We need to extract more carbon from the atmosphere than we are emitting in order to save billions of human and non-human lives and species from extinction. Wealth inequality is growing and congruent with carbon emissions.
Green capitalism enables capitalism and capitalism, along with other social hierarchies like the state and colonialism, is the reason for the climate crisis that we are currently in the midst of. Climate change and the interrelated crises such as the food, fuel, water and biodiversity crises must be looked at as an opportunity to re-analyze development and economic growth in ways that promote the redistribution of global power and wealth while simultaneously protecting the environment. The global supply chain has a small window of time to experience a complete reconfiguration. Supply chain management network projects must oppose the current system of capitalism or else risk replicating it.