The article Global Energy Security: Africa’s Strategic Importance   in last week's issue of The African Executive inadequately addressed the strategic opportunities of Africa in the context of the collision between the Group of 77 and China on the one hand and NATO on the other in the area of Energy and Climate Change.

 Learning from the past inability of the Group of 77 (G77) and China to assert force to back our demand for a climate bank at the UNFCCC, and our general inability to back up any of our other demands for sustainable development since 1989 with force and thus get them implemented, and our inability to make any headway at any of the CoPs of the UNFCCC, we realise that we are now in the end game. The UNFCCC and the WTO and any other forum where the interests of the G77 countries are at issue are now destroyed. We are now in the end-game because as Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency said, an exit from hydrocarbons is needed now. He begs for a peaking of GHG emissions in 2017 at the latest and a steep decline thereafter as indeed do we. But we do not only beg. We as a group are committed to enforcing this energy and climate change policy if need be by using the threat of force. Fatih Birol says that subsidies should be removed. 

Our message to NATO countries is: Yes. Removing subsidies is one part: but think about it. Even if all countries stopped supporting the poor and allowed the hydrocarbon prices even of hydrocarbons extracted in their own countries to be a "global market price", this "global market price" would continue to be determined by the United States of America and Europe as they print their United States Dollars and their Euros and thus provide the currency and the liquidity for the purchase of these commodities. In addition we know that these countries enforce this seigneurage advantage of NATO countries through bombings and destabilisation. The "global market price" will simply perpetuate the seigneurage advantage of the US dollar and the Euro and the other NATO country currencies who print money and whose currency is accepted by OPEC.

The only feasible economic policy for both a medium term benefit to Africa in terms of the use of hydrocarbons for our own development and as well as an exit from hydrocarbons by 2030 or 2040 is to limit the money available for buying the oil, and, in addition, to limit the underlying value of that currency, which is the oil, or more precisely, the permits to extract hydrocarbons. Thus the Group of 77 (G77) and China position on energy and climate change is to enforce a global economic regime based on an energy backed currency unit.

We support and are actively working towards the switch from market capitalist competition for hydrocarbons globally to a model of cooperation and survival using an energy backed currency unit (EBCU). The EBCU uses the value of rapidly declining GHG emission permits allocated on the basis of population to underlie the currency. This is the socialist and communist global revolution combined with the temporary strength of state capitalism given from the exploitation of hydrocarbons over the last 20 years, that is being pursued by G77 and China to but NATO capitalism back in its box and exit from hydrocarbons and capitalism all together on the global stage thereafter.

It is true we have not been able to stick to socialist African nation states with our own money systems and our own legal systems based only on a very weak form of nationalism and, derived from that, a very weak form of socialist internationalism. Maybe that was a good thing otherwise global emissions would already be through the roof. But now, as I said, we are in the end game. There is no time for bourgeois revolution in African countries let, alone the rest of G77 countries excluding China. As we said, if there had been bourgeois revolutions, we would have an autonomous Naira or shilling like the yuan; and if we had had a proletarian revolution, we would be where China is today. But as I said, we didn’t and in any case as I also said this was rather useful for the earth, to say the least.… and in any case we would probably have been bombed by NATO by now.

Let us turn to the future and to our energy and climate change position again. Assuming we skip the bourgeois revolution in Africa and have the proletarian revolution, which in will be under various leaders and is going on in any case, what will our economic policy be? Our policy will the same as the policy of the whole of G77 and China and indeed this is why we have declared this position on behalf of all of Group of 77 (G77) and China.

On the global stage, our economic policy shall be the Energy Backed Currency Unit to put the white man's credit and his genocidal hydrocarbon geo-politics back in its box (in other words we are committed to a global 'positive money' currency with the emission permits as the underlying value); and at the national level we shall have positive national currency spent as a universal income grant into circulation in consensus local bodies for agriculture and forests and grasslands and health at home. We urge all citizens and leaders of Group of 77 (G77) and China to work to implement this position and pursue this policy internationally and at home: globally, let us work to enforce our position with an oil embargo against NATO as necessary, to create the space and the political momentum to bring in the EBCU backed by emission backed permits based on contraction and convergence / cap and share; and positive money for universal income grants and land redistribution at the national level.

There must also be border controls to prevent muddling up of global and national trade: global trade will decline with declining hydrocarbon exploitation, and national trade will be denominated in the national people’s currencies.  

By Anandi Sharan  
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