Amidst a wave of new climate research showing increasingly severe danger from global warming, the successor committee to the 1997 Kyoto Accord will be convening in Copenhagen this December.

According to a recent UN report, the current pace of climate change will lead to nearly 70 percent desertification of the planet by 2025, putting global food security at enormous risk.

Other research points to rapidly rising levels of oceanic acidity, with 50% of the Arctic Ocean becoming corrosively acidic by 2050. “Over the whole planet, there will be a threefold increase in the average acidity of the oceans… That level of acidification will cause immense damage to the ecosystem and the food chain,” states Professor Jean-Pierre Gattuso, of France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

The UN Environment Program released an update of its climate change assessment in September, concluding that the “pace and scale of climate change may now be outstripping even the most sobering predictions of the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).” The report suggested that if the worst effects of global warming are to be avoided it will require “immediate, cohesive and decisive action.”

Yet the status of discussions leading into the climate summit at Copenhagen reveals a commitment to business as usual.

The position of the U.S., as the world’s second highest emitter of greenhouse gases, is vital to the success of the conference.

If the U.S., which never signed the Kyoto treaty, hasn’t passed domestic climate change legislation, it will deeply undermine the possibility for any substantive agreement in Copenhagen. The Obama administration’s top energy adviser, Carol Browner, speaking recently about the chances for passage of the Senate’s Kerry-Boxer climate bill prior to the conference, stated flatly that it’s “not going to happen.”

In June, following the IPCC’s call for a 25-40% emissions reduction by 2020, U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern called the target “not feasible,” “not necessary,” and “not in the cards.”

Instead, the Obama administration is pressing for a fundamental change in how carbon deductions are counted internationally, such that each country would decide unilaterally how to meet its targets. A draft U.S. proposal includes a clause specifying that emissions reductions would be subject to “conformity with domestic law,” which legal experts say is designed to protect U.S. corporations from having to follow any potential international standards.

All this is fundamentally at odds with polls consistently showing U.S. public support for environmental regulation. A June poll by ABC News/Washington Post found 75% in favor of regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Obama administration’s forceful retreat from the already limited restrictions set under the Kyoto framework has thrown pre-conference negotiations into disarray.

”The odds of concluding a final comprehensive treaty in Copenhagen are vanishingly small,” said Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Yet the 1997 Kyoto protocol itself has done very little to alter the path of climate change.

Kyoto established a “cap-and-trade” market system based on exchangeable credits representing carbon emissions. It has enriched the oil and coal industries through the public subsidizing of carbon credits, while failing to make significant progress toward its stated goal of reducing carbon emissions by 5.2% below 1990 levels.

An increasing number of environmental advocates view carbon-offsetting schemes, such as the Kyoto Protocol or the U.S. House’s recent Waxman-Markey Bill, as little more than pollution as usual.

In a recent interview with Democracy Now, Ted Glick, policy director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, explained the forces shaping U.S. climate legislation, saying that the “problem is that the U.S. Congress continues to be a stronghold of the coal interests and oil interests.”

While this is true, the root of the problem lies far deeper. Under capitalism, corporations and nations compete fiercely for profits while working to externalize all human and environmental costs. Industries push their own national governments to enforce their right to pollute, as a way to win maximum competitive advantage.

What is urgently needed is massive public investment in renewable energy and mass transit programs. Wind and solar power alone are each capable of scaling to meet all the world’s energy needs, even with current technology. Ultimately, the crisis is not a failure of technology, but rather the product of an irreconcilable conflict of interests between corporations and the vast majority of the world’s population.

It is frequently argued by corporate commentators that a switch to renewable energy would damage the economy. The reverse is true: a massive public investment in clean energy would provide an enormous boost to the economy and create millions of jobs. Workers in polluting industries could be re-trained with full pay and benefits. In a recent study by Greenpeace International and the European Renewable Energy Council, it was found that a program to move from coal to renewables for electricity generation would create three new clean-energy jobs for every one lost by coal corporations.

Such a program would, however, cut sharply into the profits of the corporate Goliaths of the fossil fuel industries, who are the real source of resistance to renewable energy.

Capitalism’s rapid and unwavering destruction of the environment demonstrates its complete incapacity to address the present and future needs of humanity and its supreme commitment to short-term profits for the few.

Only the creation of a socialist planned economy, owned and democratically controlled by working people and consumers, can solve the environmental crisis and sustainably harness technology to meet global human needs.