Why Aerial Firefighting Planes and Helicopters are a Waste of Money.

Water bombing and magic bullets.
by Roger Underwood

Back in the summer of 1960/61, when I was training to become a forestry officer, I was unlucky enough to be caught up as a firefighter in the great bushfires of that year. In the Dwellingup Fire, three towns were burnt out; a further town was burned out at Karridale, and in the lower southwest a massive fire took out thousands of hectares of beautiful karri forest south of Pemberton. This last fire was only contained when it ran into the southern ocean near Windy Harbour.

It was in the wake of these fires that I first began to glimpse the depth of the ignorance about bushfires that was then, and is still today, evident in Australian society.

This was demonstrated by a series of letters to the editor published in The West Australian newspaper in which well-meaning citizens proposed solutions to the bushfire problem in south-west forests. Many of these suggestions were so outlandish as to be laughable – for example, one writer urged the government to construct low stone walls all through the forest, modelled on the drystone walls he had seen on the moors of Scotland. Another advocated the installation of a reticulated sprinkler system over millions of acres of forest. How construction and maintenance of this system was to be funded, and where the water was to come from, were not explained.
More recently I recall a Perth environmentalist proposing that the government should station an army of firefighters permanently in the forest throughout the fire season, day and night. They would be so numerous, and so well placed, that any fire that started could be attacked and suppressed within minutes of starting. There was no suggestion as to how this army was to be recruited, trained, sustained in the field and paid-for. Given that a fire in heavy fuels in the jarrah forest, under quite normal summer weather conditions, can escalate from a spot fire to a crown fire in about fifteen minutes, I estimate that the number of firefighters needed to cover the two million hectares of forest would need to be of the order of 4 million men.

And only the other day I read a proposal from a learned professor at the Australian National University, that the entire Australian forest estate be crisscrossed with parallel roads, two hundred metres or so apart, allowing the intervening strip to be regularly subjected to controlled burning, thus enabling wildfires to be contained in the low-fuel strips. No thought was given to the cost of building and maintaining the roads, especially in mountain country, let alone the fact that it would not work. Fires in heavy fuels in eucalypt forest can throw spotfires for kilometres, making any network of narrow fuel reduced strips just as meaningless as a low stone wall.
The modern equivalent of these stories are the calls for the government to increase its fleet of aerial water bombers, specifically the gargantuan DC10, or Very Large Air Tanker (VLAT). There are letters to the editor nearly every day, supported by calls for more and larger aircraft from retired politicians on talk-back radio, representatives of the aviation industry and journalists. Water bombing aircraft are also beloved of the uniformed firemen who dominate our emergency services, because they are the ultimate expression of "wet firefighting". Wet firefighting is fighting fires with water; uniformed firemen everywhere have been trained to know it is the only approach.

Thus, the water bomber is seen as the magic bullet, the answer to the bushfire maiden's prayer.

Interestingly, nothing along these lines is heard from the land management fraternity (of which I am one). We advocate fire prevention and damage mitigation, with desperate firefighting seen as the last resort, only needed when an effective land management program has broken down. We understand that forest fires must be fought "dry", that is, with bulldozers constructing containment lines. In this approach water is used for mopping up the fire edge, not for constructing the edge, which (in forest country) it cannot do. We regard the growing reliance on water bombing as a foolish approach to bushfire management.

Here I need to pause briefly and remind myself of the cautionary words of my father (who was a scientist, a philosopher, a teacher and a man of great tolerance): “Roger,” he admonished me one day when I was sounding off about something, “there is a big difference between being a fool and being simply miss-informed”.

This is all very well. But when it comes to bushfires, the misinformed are now in charge, or they are subject to political influence and manoeuvring by lobby groups who have no interest in effective bushfire management, such as the Australian greens. Misinformation thus leads to foolish decisions, and these in turn lead to bushfire disasters.

The calls for investment in more and bigger aerial water bombers rather than in effective pre-emption of bushfire damage is a classic demonstration of misinformed people making foolish proposals. Every experienced fire fighter in Australia (and in the USA and Canada) knows that water bombers can never control an intense forest wildfire.

Consider these factors:
• Firstly, because of atmospheric turbulence and smoke, water bombing aircraft cannot get at the seat of a rampaging forest fire; they must stand off from the head, and then the drop is evaporated by radiant heat well before the flames arrive;
• Secondly, in tall, dense forest, the water drop often cannot penetrate the canopy in sufficient volume to make a difference - it is intercepted by the tree crowns. This occurred over and again in the recent fire in ash forest in the Otway Ranges in Victoria - the water simply did not get to the ground.
• Thirdly, water bombers cannot (or do not) operate at night and under high winds, the very conditions when the most damaging forest fires occur. Three of the last four towns to burn in WA, and both towns that burned in Victoria in 2009, burned at night.
• Fourth, water bombing is extremely dangerous for aircrew as the aircraft are operating at low altitude, in uncontrolled airspace with poor visibility. It is only a matter of time before there is a shocking accident and an aircrew fatality.
• Water bombing can also be dangerous to people on the ground. If the drop from a Very Large Air Tanker is made from only marginally too low, the huge tonnage of water is capable of smashing houses and vehicles and killing firefighters;
• Fifth, water bombers use vast quantities of fresh water, probably one of the most precious resources in Australia, especially in Western Australia where the current drought is over 30 years in duration and reservoirs and ground water aquifers are drying up. Sea water could be used, provided the tankers have access to it, but dropping salt water onto catchment areas or farms would only add to the problems caused by the fire.

Finally, the whole business is obscenely expensive. The merest little helicopter water bomber costs a dollar a second for every second it is in the air, while the "Elvis" firecrane hired from the USA is about ten times more expensive. The Very Large Air Tanker operating out of NSW this year is said to cost nearly $50,000 an hour for every hour it is in the air, and not much less when it is simply on standby on the ground. And to this must be added the cost of the smaller aeroplane that flies ahead of the VLAT to mark its dropping target.

I have no idea what the "carbon footprint" of a VLAT is, as it has never been mentioned, especially by the environmentalists who are so enamoured of it, but it must be significant. I am happy to see a small number of light water bombers stationed around the southwest, because they can do useful work assisting ground crews in the control of relatively mild-intensity bushfires, and under some circumstances can "hold" a fire in a remote spot until the ground crews arrive, or can drench a house threatened by a grass fire. What I oppose is the ramping-up of the business to the extent we are now seeing in Australia, along with all the publicity that suggests this is not just a good thing, but is the responsible thing to do (when the opposite is the case). And I hate the sheer waste involved, not just of dollars, but the futile dropping of precious fresh water onto a raging forest fire, making not one iota of difference.

How well I recall the most recent bushfire in Kings Park in Perth. The air was thick with water bombing helicopters and fixed wing aeroplanes, dropping load after load of water, but the fire was only contained when it ran into the Swan River. Remembering this reminded me of the words of Stephen Pyne, the world's foremost bushfire historian and commentator:
"Air tankers are primarily political theatre, and only secondarily part of fire control. They have their place. But they dislodge attention from truly effective measures".

My frustration over all this is made more acute by re-reading the analysis of the trials of the DC10 VLAT by the CSIRO. After a number of water dropping trials, the CSIRO concluded:
1. Most of the drops featured a distinct pattern of break-up of the drop cloud in which a series of alternating thick and thin sections could be seen. The resulting drop footprints exhibited a corresponding pattern of heavy and light sections of coverage. Many of the light-coverage sections within the footprints were observed to allow the fire to pass across them with minimal slowing effect on spread rates.
2. Two drops delivered in open woodlands (as opposed to heavy forest) penetrated through the canopy and provided a good coverage of surface fuels. One of these drops rained gently through the canopy under the influence of a headwind. Another drop caused severe damage, snapping off trees ...This drop could have potentially injured people or damaged buildings....

The CSIRO scientists also looked at the effectiveness of the DC10 dropping fire retardant chemicals in the forest across the path of the headfire, a technique frequently recommended by supporters of aerial tankers. They concluded that this approach would only succeed for very low intensity fires, due to the ease with which a more intense fire would spot over the retardant line.

Overall, the CSIRO's conclusion of this study was that:
on the evidence collected, this aircraft is not suitable for achieving effective [bushfire] suppression under most Australian conditions.
Unfortunately, the CSIRO did not look at the Western Australian situation, where there are significant operational constraints. As far as I know we have only two airfields in the south west that the DC10 can use - Perth Airport, where it would compete for airspace with passenger jumbo jets, and the military airfield at Pearce which is well north of the south-west forest zone, giving long ferry times between drops. Furthermore, the operation of the DC10 requires a staff of over thirty, most of whom are doing nothing for most of the time. During a fire attack, the VLAT is led in by a second aircraft, whose job is to mark the drop zone. This is further crowding the air space over the fire. Turn-around re-fuelling and water or retardant reloading of the VLAT between drops takes up to an hour on the ground ... by which time the fire could already have outflanked the initial drop.

Despite all this, calls for the acquisition of a DC10 water bomber continue to come in thick and fast.

The explanation for this popularity was given to me by a Californian fire chief with whom I became friends at an international conference on bushfires in Washington in 2011. There was not a single bushfire professional in the USA who supported the massive investment in aerial water bombing that has occurred in recent years, he said. In the first place it was known that they were ineffective on anything but a relatively mild forest fire, and even then only operated as support to firefighters on the ground. In the second place, their cost was so great that every other part of the fire and forest management system had to be sacrificed to fund them.

On the other hand, my friend explained, the whole shebang had taken on a political and media life of its own. Nobody cared whether or not it was cost-effective; the important thing was that it made fantastic television and the politicians and emergency service chiefs who ordered them could bask in a glow of popular acclaim, and adulation in the media. City people, with no bushfire experience or any understanding of the effectiveness of the water bombers, are seduced by their glamour and drama. Water bombing, as a friend remarked, is not firefighting but "theatre for the masses".

As I write, the support for water bombers in Australia is becoming almost hysterical. The Gold Medal goes to radio compere Ian McNamara of "Macca on a Sunday Morning" fame. He said it is a "no brainer" not to have multiple air forces of water bombers stationed all over the country, the more the better. This opinion is supported by the greens who see the water bomber as a substitute for fuel reduction burning, which they hate.

However, the most insidious contribution to the water bombing issue comes from an alliance between the Australian aviation industry and Australian journalists. The aviation industry sees the ramping-up of aerial firefighting simply as good business. They have no interest in its effectiveness ... their game is to sell or hire more aircraft, and the bigger and more expensive the aircraft, the better. And they need no advertising program! This is provided for free by the Australian media.

The approach of the aviation industry is reprehensible, but understandable, because it is the way salesmen and business lobbyists always operate. What is not acceptable is the way the love affair between journalists and aerial water bombers is leading to terrible investment decisions by governments. Cost/effectiveness is never discussed. It is enough that water bombers make grand television and dramatic pictures. The West Australian newspaper these days rarely has a photograph of a firefighter. Every fire story is accompanied by a picture of a water bomber, sweeping in overhead and ejecting its load of water. The West Australian also has aviation correspondent Geoffrey "Biggles" Thomas, who writes a regular column. He is an unabashed supporter of the aviation industry, and blatantly promotes investment in more and bigger water bombers.

I realise I am wasting my breath. With the adulation of the media, the lobbying of gullible politicians by the aviation industry, the support from populists like "Macca", and the influence of the greens and the uniformed firemen, the outcome is foregone. By next summer Western Australia will be mimicking the basket-case jurisdictions in Victoria and NSW, and will be acquiring more helicopters, perhaps even the proven-to-be-useless DC10. All of this will be funded by a multi-million dollar budget ... while at the same time, resourcing of fuel reduction burning and other programs for improving bushfire prevention, damage mitigation and townsite protection, will languish.

I do remember my father's words - you cannot call someone stupid who is merely misinformed. But in the bushfire world I have seen, too many times, the dangerous outcomes that flow when the misinformed make foolish decisions.

As I wrote elsewhere a year or so ago:
... the most fundamental tool of the bushfire manager is not the fire tanker, the bulldozer, or even the water bomber. It is the match. The only way to minimise fire intensity and damage is by reducing the amount of fuel before a fire starts. Military people refer to this approach as the pre-emptive strike … we call it fuel reduction.

I also remind myself of the words of the great Victorian forester and administrator Alf Leslie. He had a favourite saying: “When it comes to public policy, stupidity nearly always wins”.

Never is this better illustrated than in the way our bushfire authorities and the greater community have been seduced by the glamour of the water bomber. This is the ultimate in stupid policy: a publicly funded program that is obscenely expensive but basically useless.

January 18, 2016

Lessons from a would-be suicide bomber on how to defeat terrorism

Lessons from a would-be suicide bomber on how to defeat terrorism

January 13, 2016

Andrew MacLeod

Visiting Professor, Public Policy, King's College London

A picture given to me for my 40th birthday hangs in my home study. It is a lovely still-life of a fruit bowl masterfully drawn in coloured pencil. Amarah (not her real name), a 19-year-old intern, drew it for me during the time I worked for the United Nations in Islamabad.

Amarah had had a tough life until then. She was not well-off and struggled to stay at university. She was an only child brought up by a single parent. What was more difficult was that she was brought up by a single father. In her culture this made for a very bleak future for a young woman.

Amarah was volunteering with the massive two-and-a-half-year-long relief and reconstruction campaign following the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. Over the time we worked together, our conversations covered many subjects, from religion (she, a devout Muslim, and I, an avowed atheist) to politics (Pakistan was still a dictatorship), to life in general.

By the time I turned 40 we had become close friends – perhaps too close for our age, religious and cultural differences – hence why the picture has such meaning. I liked her and hoped that she would have a good life.

“What will you do after you graduate?” I once asked her.

“I want to be a suicide bomber,” she said in a matter-of-fact way.

“How would you feel if I died in your attack?” I asked.

“I would be upset,” she said, “not because you would die, but because as a non-believer you would go to hell. I like you and would miss you in paradise. I would like to see you for eternity but can’t. That makes me sad.”

In a strange way it was a lovely thing to say – how much she would want to spend eternity with me even though she would have taken me from “this life” on earth.

Suicide bombing is evil, as is terrorism. There is no justification for it and it must be defeated. But how? Many people like to say that terrorists are insane. They would read the above story and think Amarah was mad and perhaps I was nuts to listen to her.

There is another view, however. To defeat terror we must understand it. Listening to Amarah’s thinking process and justification is critical to finding a path to achieve this.

Theological foundations

Most Muslims, Jews and Christians believe in the same Abrahamic God. Gaining access to God’s afterlife is the key reward for following the codes of conduct set out by their religious traditions.

The Qur’an, Torah and New Testament give Muslims, Jews and Christians guidance on how to reach eternity with their common God through righteousness and piety.

However, all three texts also have episodes of violence and butchery between their pages which, when taken out of context or manipulated by evil, have been used to motivate and encourage acts of violence.

So are the perpetrators of this evil “crazy”? And how do we defeat them?

Imagine if your life was pretty bleak and you had to have 60 years of miserable existence before gaining entrance to heaven. Imagine, then, if someone showed you a shortcut to escape this difficult life and gain access to heaven early.

Would following the shortcut be crazy? Or would it be logical?

If you were told that dying while trying to rescue a drowning child at sea would gain you access to heaven, would a believer attempt it? Such altruism surely would be rewarded? What about trying to kill an infidel who is intent on corrupting the “lifestyle” that God wants humanity to follow?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks calls this thought process “altruistic evil” because of the flawed belief that such evil is what “God wants”.

Today, nearly a decade on, Amarah no longer wants to explode. Instead she works in the Pakistan arm of a major international bank. Creating a career and a sense of hope for Amarah removed the desire to take the shortcut to heaven.

Defeating terror

Amarah’s story provides guidance on how to defeat terror in three ways.

Long-term education support programs for susceptible communities, foreign and domestic, need to be followed.

A ruthless crackdown on fundamentalist social media recruiting, like with anti-paedophilia programs, must occur.

Organisations, like Islamic State, that provide the logistics and planning for terrorist attacks must be defeated. Strong foreign and domestic security responses by armed and security forces must take place – including judicious use of drones and military action where necessary.

The motivation to shortcut the way to heaven must be tackled. Long-term economic growth in foreign and domestic susceptible communities is key to the long-term defeat of the shortcut’s allure.

We must make life worth living for all. Economic disadvantage – including leaving people to fester in refugee camps – does not help this aim.

Killing innocents as collateral damage is also a powerful motivator. Military action – while often necessary – has consequences and needs to be very carefully balanced.

Only with a long-term approach of education, economic growth and security action can terrorism be defeated.

Historic event or a fraud? Critical thoughts on the Paris Climate Accord

The following article appeared in On Line Opinion on January 11, 2016. The author Saral Sarkar provides many perceptive insights into the recent Paris climate talks which show that we still have a long way to go to solve our global climate change problems. His article concluded with several paragraphs on his belief in eco-socialism which I found not to be based in real-world reality so I've excluded them from this blog article. Please go to http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=17946 if you want to read his full article.

Historic event or a fraud? Critical thoughts on the Paris Climate Accord

By Saral Sarkar
Posted Monday, 11 January 2016

Considering that so much depends on whether global warming can be arrested soon, it was no wonder that all thinking people had turned their attention to Paris, where on 13^th December the COP21 "successfully" ended, with great jubilation. I too followed the process through the media.

Positive and Negative Reactions

A day after, I read the following comments: "Today is a historic day: as tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Paris, politicians finalized a major new global climate agreement". And "It's a fraud really, a fake,"… "It's just bullshit…"¹ The first was made by May Boeve, the US national organizer of 350.org, a big NGO, that is playing a leading role in the climate justice movement, the second by James Hansen, a former NASA scientist, considered the father of climate change awareness. Which one can we regard as the correct assessment?

Given that nobody in my position has the time and energy to read all the reports and comments on the COP21, I hope that my readers would forgive me if I have overlooked some important point in the agreement or an important comment on it. But fairness demands that I also mention a middle position, for example that of Thomas Friedman, a liberal columnist of the New York Times. He wrote:"I had low expectations for the U.N. climate meeting, and it met all of them – beautifully. I say that without cynicism. Any global conference that includes so many countries can't be expected to agree on much more than the lowest common denominator."

That is understandable. As far as I could follow, nobody had big expectations. But then I do not understand how May and other prominent people of big NGOs can be so enthusiastic about it. Bill McKibben wrote: "With the climate talks in Paris now over, the world has set itself a serious goal."  I have doubts. Was the goal really set seriously? Friedman wrote: "But the fact that the lowest common denominator is now so high [he means the target 1.5⁰ Celcius] – a willingness by 188 countries to offer plans to steadily and verifiably reduce their carbon emissions – means we still have a chance."  Again I have doubts. I would very much like to agree with Boeve, McKibben, and Friedman. But at present at least, I cannot, for reasons I shall present below.

Why Call it a Fraud?

I too think, like Hansen, the accord was a fraud, but for reasons very different from those of his. I think it was only because they were afraid of being branded as the guilty in case the COP21 failed to reach an agreement that the major CO₂ emitter countries reluctantly decided to sign this very weak paper. But paper, as the Germans say, is patient. If you want evidence, then look at the position with which the government of India went to Paris. Only a few months before the COP21 began, the government of India had announced the policy decision to double India's coal production in the next 5 years. Just a few days before he left for Paris, Mr. Javadekar, India's environment minister, had said in an interview: "I'm asking the developed world to vacate the carbon space so that we can park our development."

Retorting to US Secretary of State John Kerry's criticism of India's decision to double its coal production, Javadekar had remarked it was "absolutely unfair and unacceptable," especially since the CO₂ reduction targets announced by the developed countries would fail to arrest the climate change crisis, which they had a historical responsibility of fixing after a century of pumping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.He also warned the Americans against "bullying" India.

Or take the case of Norway, very rich in oil and gas. Just twelve days after they signed the Paris accord, the prime minister of the country said:"We believe that in a situation in which we shall have attained the goal of Paris, there will be demand for Norwegian oil and gas."

So they are continuing with all the plans and projects for extracting oil and gas from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. While claiming that they want to protect the Arctic from the effects of global warming, they are speculating on the melting of the arctic ice that will make more access to oil and gas possible. It seems they are saying (in German): Wasch mir den Pelz aber mach mich nicht nass, or (in English): We want to eat the cake and have it too.

These are actually irreconcilable positions. We can formulate them as two most fundamental controversial questions:

(1) Should the underdeveloped countries be allowed to develop their economies to the level reached by the USA or Germany?

(2) And must the economies of the developed countriesbe scaled down, in order to vacate the carbon space in favor of the former?

In Paris, these questions were probably not put on the table in these stark terms. In the interview referred to above, Mr. Javedkar, while asserting India's right – implicitly the right of all underdeveloped countries – to development, did not raise the second question. The Paris accord too recognizes all underdeveloped countries' "right to development". It "… aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, in the context of sustainable development and effortsto eradicate poverty, … " (Article 2). But it does not mention the second question.

It appears that all participants in COP21, the big and small environment NGOs, publicists, and activists take it as a matter of course that the answer to the first question is Yes, and that to the second is No. The controversy was just papered over. It is simply taken for granted that a deus ex machina, namely technological development, would enable humankind to solve the problem of global warming without causing any pain to anybody, and that it only needs some more time and large investments in renewable energies and efficiency-raising technologies.

In the rich, developed countries, a large part of the hope of technology optimists is placed on the carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, although not even its feasibility has yet been established. Bill Mckibben, founder and leader of 350.org, charts the strategy for the coming years. The state(s) must do the following:

You've got to stop fracking right away … . You have to start installing solar panels and windmills at a breakneck pace – and all over the world. The huge subsidies doled out to fossil fuel have to end yesterday, and the huge subsidies to renewable energy had better begin tomorrow. You have to raise the price of carbon steeply and quickly, so everyone gets a clear signal to get off of it.

And he lays down the task of the movement as follows:

There can be no complacency after the Paris talks. Hitting even the 1.5C target will need drastic, rapid action. Think of the climate movement as personal trainers – for the next few years our job is to yell and scream at governments everywhere to get up off the couch.

The most popular article of faith of environmental NGOs and activists (not of governments) is that – given the right policy decisions such as those laid down by McKibben in the above quote, and correspondingly large amounts of state subsidies – it would be possible in two to three decades to meet 100 percent of humanity's energy needs by means of renewable energy technologies, so that burning fossil fuels would not be necessary at all; there would also be no need for the CCS technology.

Hansen calls the accord a fraud, mainly because he sees no concrete action plan in it, only promises that, moreover, the signatory states are required to implement gradually, beginning only in 2020. His idea was a tax or price or fee of $15 a tonne of CO₂ to be paid by major emitters. He argued that only this measure could force down CO₂ emissions quickly enough. But he found no support, not even among big environment groups, because, as he said, nobody wants to scare people off by talking off new taxes.

I could have supported the tax proposal of Hansen if he had stopped there. But, like the others mentioned above, he too believes that ultimately it is only by replacing fossil fuel energies with clean energies that we can avert climate catastrophes. For he says in the same interview: "We need to have a rising fee on carbon in order to move to clean energy."

Unlike Hansen, I see the fraud taking place since long, and it is contained in the very conceptions of the proposed solutions – in all parts thereof and both in their short as well as long-term versions. Firstly, the whole COP process from the very beginning, i.e. since 1992 onwards, is swearing to promote sustainable development and eradicate poverty while at the same time protecting the environment and averting global warming. The COP21 did the same. Otherwise the developing countries would not have taken part in the process. But how do you, in the short term, eradicate poverty in developing countries, e.g. in India, South Africa or Colombia, if you make power much dearer by (a) imposing a tax of $15 a tonne of CO₂ payable by major emitters (that includes India), (b) by ending all subsidies to fossil fuels, and (c) paying huge subsidies to renewable energies (where will the huge sums come from)?

Most persons, groups, parties etc. mentioned above simply assume that economic growth i.e. growth in prosperity can and will continue without any problem when the fossil fuel energies have been replaced with "clean" energies. As against that, I (and my political friends, e.g. Ted Trainer) believe since long that it is absolutely necessary that the major industrial countries, including China, India, Brazil etc. purposely bring about a contraction of their economies – in order not only to stop burning more and more fossil fuels but also to reduce the general level of environmental pollution. We do not think that economic growth would be possible if we really want to save the biosphere. I can also cite evidence supporting this belief: In recent history, the only time CO₂ emission and general environmental pollution went down in a large region were the 1990s, i.e. after the Eastern European economies, especially the then second biggest economy of the world, that of the Soviet Union, collapsed. But in the Paris accord there is no mention of this necessity. The whole de-growth movement has been totally ignored, also by the big environmental NGOs. They simply believe in miracles.

One may ask why I doubt that it would be possible, if not soon, then at least in the near future or in the long term to fully or at least largely replace fossil fuel energies (and other nonrenewable resources) with renewable ones. After all, technological progress is taking place all the time! Basing myself on Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's differentiation between feasible and viable, I have been expressing this doubt for the last 25 years. It is not possible to repeat all my arguments here; interested people may read some of my writings. Here I only want to refer to two sets of facts that serve as indications that my doubt may be justified.

Already in 1994, Eurosolar and its friends and associate organizations claimed in a full-page advertisement in the German print media that solar energy based on the technology developed till then could compete with fossil fuel energies. But today, after twenty more years of research and development, we see that solar energy is still neither competitive nor viable without large subsidies. That is why even today new coal-fired power plants are being built? India is very rich in sunshine and wind. Still its government wants to double coal production in order to supply energy to the masses. Why? And why do its politicians say, it is only coal that India has for energy? Are the Indian engineers stupid or ignorant? Or have they all sold away their conscience to the coal lobby?

Protagonists of green growth, i.e. growth based on 100% transition to renewables are all very intelligent people. Yet they are ignoring these facts and questions. If they are not intentionally bluffing, then they are, I believe, suffering from an illusion.

There are some more reasons why I criticize the big environmental NGOs.

(1) They – unlike Hansen, who has called the whole agreement a fraud – have exonerated the political class (the authors of the Paris Deal) from all guilt, as if they are not always ready to fulfill the wishes of big corporations, as if they are actually good people who, like the NGOs, care for the interests of the masses, the only "villains" being the fossil fuel industries. Opposing these villains are, in their view, the good "ordinary people", the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, as if they do not want to consume more and more energy and other products of fossil fuels. This is too naïve, if it is not a fraud too.

(2) They have isolated the climate crisis from all other crises involved in mankind's present predicament, as if they are not interconnected. They simply ignore the totality of the crisis.

(3) They do not seem to know that the $100 billion that the politicians of the rich countries have promised to pay to the victims of global warming will first have to be generated by producing more green house gases.

(4) It appears, moreover, that they have not noticed that these are all only promises. Don't they know that governments, especially in times of economic crisis, never deliver what they promise? The UNHCR, for example, recently reduced the food ration to the Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan etc. because they haven't received all the money that was promised to them.

But the more basic problem I have with those who are euphoric about the Paris accord is that the signatory governments as well as the NGOs, green and left parties etc. do not even mention the real and deeper causes of the ecological, economic, political and social miseries of humankind, of which climate change and large-scale migration are just currently the most glaring manifestations. These real and deeper causes are thecontinuously growing demands, aspirations and ambitions of a continuously growing world population, while our resource base is continuously dwindling and the ability of nature to absorb man-made pollution is continuously diminishing – in short, the lunatic idea that in a finite world infinite growth is possible.

Is the System Question Irrelevant?

What I, moreover,found very strange is that, all along, all people involved in the COP process assumed that the envisioned drastic changes in such a vital factor as the energy supply base of the modern industrial economies could be undertaken without requiring any changes in the current political-economic system.

Of course, one could not expect from the politicians who signed the deal that they would include in it a clause stating that the system they have built up and which has made them rich and powerful also needs to be changed. But how come also the rest of the involved people did not have the slightest doubt that the huge problem can be solved within the framework of capitalism and free market economy? Outside this circle, however, in the context of the problems at hand, the system question had already been posed several hundred times, in speeches and writings, before the COP21 began. In TV news broadcasts, I have even a few times seen pictures of radical leftist protesters carrying banners and placards with the slogan "System change, not climate change".

Can't one expect of honest and thinking NGO and media people that they also at least consider the possibility that the technological breakthroughs – 100% renewable energy, CCS etc., on which they are placing all their hopes – do not occur or do not occur in time? If they do not occur, shouldn't one have a plan B for averting the catastrophes? In plain English, if humanity can no longer indulge in the growth compulsions inherent in capitalism with its principle of competition in a free market economy, shouldn't the state(s) step in and order a stop in further economic growth? Shouldn't the state(s) then tell the people that they have to accept a contracting economy and all the consequences thereof? Shouldn't the state(s), from then on, plan an orderly withdrawal from the present mad economic system?

Unfortunately, many people who do raise the system question – there are even some prominent people among them – often do that half-heartedly. They often question "capitalism as we know it or as it is today" or "globalized neo-liberal capitalism", as if a better form of capitalism is conceivable, as if it could be made ecological, social or humane, and compatible with economic contraction. I do not think such half-hearted critiques are of any use. Such people do not realize that as long as the motive of profit maximization and the principles of private ownership of means of production, selfishness, and competition remain – and these are the most essential elements of capitalism –, there would always be a compulsion to grow, whatever that may cost human society and nature. That will bring to nought all efforts to overcome the climate crisis and many other crises.

Saral Sarkar is an Indian academic resident in Germany who writes about Eco-Socialism.