http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/glenn-beck/transcript/beck-americas-energy-under-attack

Thank you, Coal.

Thank you for the asthma, the mercury, the mountain top removal, the birth defects, the mine fatalities, the grossly inefficient electricity networks, the lack of investment in electricity networks, the smog, the heat, and above all, thank you for giving us Glenn Beck, on a platter – this is so much fun to watch !

Dropping The Campaign Wrecking Ball Intelligent commentators, authors and policy people are often suspicious of campaign groups. At the back of their minds they are drawing on a cultural discourse, primarily conducted in the media, that equates campaigners with mini-Hitlers – spreading disinformation and cult behaviour. It is true that – as Mein Kampf reveals – the National Socialists in Germany used the latest communications tools to coerce and channel the energy of democracy towards their goals. Some of the Nazi ambition was for democratic engagement, involvement in the process of rebuilding the country. Yet some of the methods were perverse, and caused an inexorable descent into the abuse of power.

We’re never going to make any progress on climate change if those advocating for energy change are equated to early 20th Century dictators and totalitarians.

Energy is a Social Good

I recently wrote an essay called “Energy for Democracy” making a first attempt at connecting the dots on grassroots democratic mobilisation and energy change. The subject set was in the field of “Environmental Communication”, and so I went back and looked at the development of mass media, advertising and public persuasion. I then went on to think about how propaganda and governance are interrelated. And I also looked at philosophy, and politics. I looked at the early 20th Century ideological splits in Europe, and the part that industrial development played. I looked at how democratic and other forms of socialism dealt with the problem of energy.

I posited that, since energy is produced for the Common Good, it should be subject to democratic management. I found myself “channelling” the spirit of Ramsay Macdonald, and going back to the questions of society and the integration of new industries that were pervasive before the two so-called “World Wars”.

Energy Of A Similar Wavelength

And today I find this very theme picked up by Ulrich Beck in The Guardian newspaper, along with the expression “energy change”, which is a term I am using increasingly to encapsulate the pivotal and essential response to climate change :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/20/germany-nuclear-power-renewable-energy

“Germany is right to opt out of nuclear”, he headlines, “The rejection of nuclear power is a result not of German angst but of economic thinking. We must invest in renewable energy”.

I was gladdened when he stepped from economics to democratics :-

“…Ultimately, the rejection of nuclear is not a result of German angst but of economic thinking. In the long run, nuclear power will become more expensive, while renewable energy will become cheaper. But the key point is that those who continue to leave all options open will not invest…People everywhere are proclaiming and mourning the death of politics. Paradoxically, the cultural perception of the danger may well usher in the very opposite: the end of the end of politics…what is denounced by many as a hysterical over-reaction to the “risks” of nuclear energy is in fact a vital step towards ensuring that a turning point in energy generation becomes a step towards greater democracy…The novel coalition between the state and social movements of the kind we currently see at work in Germany now has a historic opportunity. Even in terms of power politics, this change of policy makes sense…”

The British are stumbling towards democracy, too, but they keep tripping over old divisiveness, and create new divisions too, just to complicate matters.

People Power – Not Potty Nor Puny

The Climate Camp has just been a baby step on the pathway to democratic movement on energy. Camping in coal trucks and dropping banners from power station cooling stacks has been a sign that democracy has been ailing – if there were genuine engagement between the governments, private enterprises and “campaign” groups over the future scenarios for energy, then people wouldn’t need to camp outside banks and coal-fired power plants.

As a consumer of mainstream media, all you see is the blockade of a Biofuel refinery, or people gluing themselves to the entrance of the Royal Bank of Scotland, or the occupation of a plant nursery at the site of a proposed runway. If you think “what a ramshackle bunch of unwashed hippies, straining the last of their voices, railing at the State, in a vain attempt to roll back the tide of industry, progress and Thorium reactors”, then you haven’t understood the bigger picture.

People want to be engaged in the decisions made about energy in this country – properly engaged. People want to use their knowledge to influence decisions. If the only means they have of expressing their democratic will and their opposition to hydraulic fracturing is to D-lock themselves to Shale Gas drilling equipment, then perhaps they might just do that. This might happen in Poland too. The alternative would be a proper discussion between the people groups and the governments. Where’s the European Union environmental legislature while all of this is happening ? Shale Gas could destroy Poland.

Energy Collectives – Expressing Collective Democratic Will

Groups like Fair Pensions are building momentum between people groups and investing institutions – raising the flag for clean energy. This isn’t about fighting – let’s drop the battlefield language, including that word “campaign”, which is so often used in a derogatory, dismissive, belittling way. This is about getting people working together on a new, sustainable future, and it requires all the righteous anger rising up to be channelled into a positive, productive movement, fully expressing the will of the people.

Consultations and placard-waving demonstration protests are not the way forward – we need energy change, and that’s going to require a whole lot more democratic energy. People don’t want dirty energy, and they don’t want nuclear power. Dirty energy should be asked to leave the building, nicely, politely. Firm but fair.

Group Thinking – Democratic Intelligence

Investment in renewable and sustainable energy is creating long-lasting assets for the UK and other countries. We don’t need and we don’t want dirty, radioactive energy any more. A thousand cheers for German democracy !

James Delingpole hardly ever sets his delicate foot in Wales, the country he archaically refers to as “the Principality”, apart from, ooh, about ten days a year when he holidays there, but nonetheless, feels he has some kind of inherited ex-colonial right to be affronted that large electricity generation and transmission infrastructure are going to be built there :-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100088906/wales-is-in-danger-why-isnt-the-prince-of-wales-saving-it/

He gets top marks for being rather offensive himself – achingly rude, in fact, about the Welsh Assembly, besides his getting untethered about the wind farms and pylons for the transmission cables :-

“…The wind farms are bad enough on their own. But to make matters far worse [...], in order for these bird-crunching, bat-chomping, view-blighting, rent-seeking monstrosities to be connected to the grid a huge 400kv power line is going to be constructed all the way from Montgomeryshire through some of Britain’s most spectacular scenery to the equally beauteous Shropshire…”

James, James, you really ought to calm down, dear. Your caring State will put up some lovely, smart metal giants, and after a while you won’t notice them any more, honest. You’re never there, anyway, to be able to notice them in the first place. The National Grid so desperately need this new infrastructure to enable the new nuclear power station at Wylfa to get connected efficiently to the UK grid. Yes, that’s right – some of the new transmission cables and pylons are to integrate new nuke power :-

http://www.horizonnuclearpower.com/files/downloads/wylfa_information_pack.pdf

Well, OK, it’s also to cope with the power feeds from new offshore and onshore wind farms as well, but, if you will keep leaving all your lights on at home when you’re out, what do you precisely expect, Britain ? People are not voluntarily changing their behaviour, taking the hint that less is more, so new generating capacity has to be put somewhere. And pseudo-democratic anti-wind farm protest groups don’t convince me, especially if the allegations are true and they’re being financed by a TV personality…We can’t go on relying on Middle East or Norwegian Natural Gas to keep the turbines turning :-

It’s not really much use anarchic farmers taking up their pitchforks, and the master landowners taking to their Land Rangers to protest this – new infrastructure is required, whether the people want it or not.

It’s all been in the public domain for years – start with the ENSG “vision” and TAR reports – so it’s a bit rich stirring up public sentiment against it now :-

http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/what_we_do/uk_supply/network/deliv_access/deliv_access.aspx

If we continue to pump carbon dioxide emissions into the air, the precious landscapes will suffer irreversible Climate Change – just look at the South East of England this Spring and imagine the same kind of drought in lovely Wales. It would rapidly turn James Delingpole’s holiday horizon into a bleak post-agricultural dustbowl wasteland.

We have to go low carbon, and we have to choose wisely, and spread the benefits and deficits as fairly and as logically as possible. This is what the experts and engineers have been planning for a while now. If the various anti-wind farm campaigns could come up with something credible as an alternative, we should hear it; but simply shouting “no” and waving a few placards doesn’t cut it as rational.

Yes, yes, I agree, the new transmission cables should go underground, and it should be done properly first time. The new cables should be laid into chambers that have capacity to take new cables as time goes by – as more power comes on-stream from the sea, from Ireland and Scotland.

I suppose the alternative is that Wales could fully devolve and instead of permitting massive “industrialisation” of the landscape, in order to sell the power to England, they could build local, resilient grids for themselves. They might find they produce way too much juice, and still be looking for an export market, but they’d be lucky if they could sell power to Ireland, where the economy might just fall through a hole in the road.

On the other hand, if the economy in Ireland recovers after the “austerity measures” that have deliberately impoverished the country, then Ireland would be building their own wind farms on their West coast and could sell the power to Wales.

So Delingpole could keep his pristine camping horizon, but he’d need to bolster Ireland’s economy somehow, or incite Wales into declaring full independence, including energy independence, from England.

And if he really, really wants England’s economy to completely crumble, he might want to persuade Scotland to go it alone, too. They’ve got oodles of electrical generation already, and more from renewables will mean they could win back the wealth they lost from giving away the North Sea oil and gas to England.

What’s it to be, James ? Continued enslavement to multinational oil and gas companies ? Or energy security and a strengthening of the Union in the Kingdom ?

I receive another letter from Iain Duncan Smith MP on vellum yellow with sickly pale green type. “Dear Mrs [sic] Abbess”, the letter reads, “Further to our previous correspondence regarding Stop Climate Chaos Big [sic] campaign, please find enclosed a reply from Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary.” I asked Iain Duncan Smith in person for his own and personal support for a strong Energy Bill. What did he do ? Pass my letter on to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). I would have prefered a personal commitment to the issue, but, sadly, it was not to be.

The Rt Hon continued, “I hope you find his letter reassuring…” Reassuring ? What ? Am I some kind of emotionally incontinent complainant ? “…and helpful. However, please don’t hesitate to contact me again if I can be of further assistance.”

No, I didn’t find the letter from Chris Huhne helpful. I found it nauseatingly stuffed full of compromise. It explained to me that the ECO (Energy Company Obligation) would be replacing both the CERT (Carbon Emissions Reduction Target) and the CESP (Community Energy Saving Programme). In a section headed with “Warm Homes Amendment”, the letter explained the Green Deal would be “underpinned” by the ECO. “The Government’s ambition on reducing emissions” boomed the missive from DECC, “is clearly set out in the legally binding Climate Change Act and the projected contribution of the Green Deal towards this is analysed in the Energy Bill impact assessment…We want the Green Deal to achieve the largest market possible, but it would not be appropriate to set specific targets for this scheme.”

I beg your pardon ? First the letter emphasises the legally binding Climate Change Act, which has legally binding carbon emissions reductions, and then the letter says that one of the key policy vehicles to deliver the Carbon Budget under the Climate Change Act should not have any measurable goals. So, tell me, why are we doing this Green Deal, again ? If we can’t measure out and plan its impacts, how do we know if it’s going to reach the right level of achievement ? Since this is one of the main proposals in the Energy Bill, it seems daft, if not a downright compromise, not to lay out expectations in numbers and percentages.

I wonder what on Earth could have brought this remarkably low ambition about. The next sentences inform me. “Our view is that businesses do not need Government targets, they need the opportunity to make reliable profits. The Green Deal mechanisms make business sense – as a commercial opportunity as well as a money saver.” So there it is, in black and white – the Green Deal is not about achieving carbon dioxide emissions reduction goals – it’s all about privatised energy companies turning a profit, and a reliable one at that. So presumably, if the energy companies don’t think Green Deal opportunities are going to make them money, they will whinge and moan and wheedle about how they can’t take part, and they won’t take part, and ambition and achievements will be as low as the CERT and CESP.

As if to anticipate my hollow laughter, the letter continues, “However, the Green Deal is not the sole mechanism for achieving our carbon budget and fuel poverty targets – it will be integrated with a wider set of policies, not least the future ECO. We are working to ensure that the policy landscape as an integrated whole is fit to deliver our ambitions for the household sector to 2022.”

This is truly a cheapskate policy. The Green Deal is supposed to be cost-free : homeowners and landlords apply for loans from energy companies, to fit insulation and renewable energy to their properties, and the loans are repaid from the energy savings – meaning the property owners pay nothing extra overall, and the energy companies continue to make the same level of profit. If it does work in the manner intended, the Government will not have to spend any public money on subsidies to raise levels of home insulation, solar power, wood burners, double glazing and the like. It is utterly ridiculous not to set any ambition for real emissions reductions through the Green Deal if it’s going to cost nobody a penny more than they spend today.

The Energy Company Obligation is supposed to offer ways for energy companies to keep returning a healthy dividend to their shareholders, even while they sell less high carbon energy overall. The other option would be to increase the amount of low carbon energy they supply – but it’s expensive to invest in new forms of low carbon energy, and it would dent energy company shareholder earnings, or raise consumer energy prices. So, obviously, energy companies are going to be reluctant to spend on new low carbon energy resources. And so, barring more state control over energy, it would seem to make most sense to push schemes like the Green Deal, selling less energy but more energy services.

Without ambition, the people are disappointed. Without a strong Green Deal, the people will be left paying big energy bills, and kept dependent on energy companies for home comfort. Chris Huhne, what a waste of a great policy idea !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz2j3BhL47c

I was encouraged to take in the audiovisual presentation of “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace”, wherein Adam Curtis demonstrates what appears to be a lack of understanding regarding failure in the financial markets. Most foundational year ecologists can tell you that systems are self-correcting, that virtual bubbles get popped, that hubris gets torn down, that over-population gets underfed. Rabbits and foxes. Owls and mice. George Monbiot’s “War On Slugs” because of missing hedgehogs and thrushes. It all depends on the natural resources available to feed the participants in the game. The global economy can only accelerate growth so much before it implodes. There are Limits to Growth. Curtis could be said to be expressing his suspicions that the fake “Knowledge Economy”, the Asian “Shock Doctrine” and the Property Crash were an artefact of a secret evil cabal formed from the vaguely impressed followers of Ayn Rand – but the rest of us all know that’s silly. She was a lovely, sensitive, principled woman, although she could have done with a little more kindness in her life to inspire altruism in her worldview.

Adam’s next splurge is going to try to tear down the foundations of environmentalism itself, and I think somebody should take him to one side and challenge him about his stance – apparently trying to annoy the Greens and the social action movement collectively, all in one over-energetic Guardian “grudge” piece :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/29/adam-curtis-ecosystems-tansley-smuts

He can’t seem to bear the thought that people, as Ayn Rand advised, should act on their own free will, their enlightened libertarian self-interest, and form associations around causes that they believe in. I’ve taken part in enough democracy to know that UK Uncut is the closest thing to pure people power since Climate Camp pulled together. You cannot fight the imposition of social injustice with a massive, slow-moving bureaucratic organism – you need runners and movers and shakers to get out there and nudge like crazy.

People need to take responsibility for their actions, and we have to trust them to have thought long and hard about the ethics of their intentions and intended actions before they take part in public life in any way. Personally, my political action does not include the destruction of private or public property, nor the harming of other people, animals or other lifeforms. My non-violent direct action is as non-violent as it can be. I would certainly recommend this path to anyone, but I know some people find it hard to take this kind of advice on board. Adam Curtis has to be included in the set of people who act through violence, in my view, poking a big stick in the faces of the peace-loving philosophers of Nature.

This is what democracy looks like : a group of individuals – really individually unique individuals – not pigeonholed segments of an market audience – get talking about what’s wrong and fixing on one thing that they can all agree needs to be opposed – or built – then going out and doing something about it. The best organisations have an almost completely flat hierarchical structure, with small cells of between 5 and 13 people, with equal rights and remuneration, cooperatives, taking on their own tasks, and using interconnecting information people to keep the cells working together. This is a model of organisation drawn directly from Nature, and can be seen in everything from the self-teaching human brain with its delegated centres of executive control, to the way that birds fly in formation.

I don’t agree with everything from James Lovelock’s internal picture of the Gaia universe, but I will agree on this – the ways that people work together best are based on models drawn from the carefully studied ecosystems around us, and our own physical make-up. It’s natural, and it’s efficient. Each person has a task that’s unique to them, that is their personal interest and is the focus of their own individual attention. This is how we get democracy done. By behaving like a self-organising, self-correcting ecosystem. And this is how both Social Change and Climate Change can be addressed – by small, local groups doing action, education, training and political engagement at the grass roots level, or rather, the tree roots level, above which we can grow a strong new trunk to hold our New Low Carbon Nation together. Al Gore spoke of his gameplan as a series of one-to-one conversations. This is a model of political and social influence we can all follow.

Image Credit : Funk the Cuts

Image Credit : Earth Beat Radio

New Year, new hate campaign against Climate Change scientists :-

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110126_SingingInTheRain.pdf

“Singing in the Rain : 26 January 2011 : In the past 2 – 3 weels I received a deluge of nasty-language messages saying that I should be fired, deported, run over, etc. Such a sudden burst of malice seems unlikely to be spontaneous.”

“Perhaps recent articles and internet stories provided stimulation, e.g., an article by Pat Michaels in the Washington Times and a statement by Richard S. Courtney on a blog. Michaels distorts the facts and uses quotes out of context. The Courtney statement [...] mischaracterizes my testimony.”

“…The essence of my testimony, in both trials, was that the evidence for human-caused climate change is clear. I emphasized that the UK government, the fossil fuel industry, and the utility EON were aware of the effect of continued coal-burning on the future of young people. But instead of addressing the problem effectively, they engaged in greenwash…”

Over at MediaLens, the two (three) Davids are blanking the “every little bit helps” approach :-

“Focusing on personal consumption, and each of us ‘doing our bit’, is what we mean by the ‘debate’ being stuck on square one.”

Asking the general public to kindly remember to switch off their lights has had about as much impact as a light dusting of sugar. Looks pretty, but causes coughing fits when eating the cake.

I can’t wait for their comments on Climate Week :-

http://www.climateweek.com/

“One week to show how we can combat climate change…inspiring millions to act.”

Supported by David Cameron ! Sponsored by Tesco (owners of a very large and unnecessary carbon footprint) !

A zero carbon supermarket ? I really cannot believe it :-

http://www.greenweblog.net/2010/02/03/tesco-opens-world%E2%80%99s-first-zero-carbon-supermarket/

Note in the following that Tesco don’t intend to carbon label their transport systems, warehousing or stores – only the products that consumers buy :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/13/tesco-carbon-labels