Link of the Day: An interesting socialist analysis of the Cancun climate conference: Patrick Bond of the University of KwaZula in South Africa, writing a Socialist Project bulletin, says that Climate Capitalism Won at Cancun, But Everyone Else Loses, as unworkable elite proposals set back the fight against global warming.

(“Most specialists agree that even if the unambitious Copenhagen and Cancun promises are kept (a big if), the result will be a cataclysmic 4-5°C rise in temperature over this century, and if they are not, 7°C is likely. Even with a rise of 2°C, scientists generally agree, small islands will sink, Andean and Himalayan glaciers will melt, coastal areas such as much of Bangladesh and many port cities will drown, and Africa will dry out – or in some places flood – so much that nine of ten peasants will not survive.

(“The politicians and officials have been warned of this often enough by climate scientists, but are beholden to powerful business interests which are lined up to either promote climate denialism, or to generate national-versus-national negotiating blocs destined to fail in their race to gain most emission rights. As a result, in spite of a bandaid set of agreements, the distance between negotiators and the masses of people and the planet grew larger not smaller over the last two weeks.

(“To illustrate, smaller governments were ‘bullied, hustled around, lured with petty bribes, called names and coerced into accepting the games of the rich and emerging-rich nations,’ says Soumya Dutta of the South Asian Dialogues on Ecological Democracy.”)