Of course, Pat Michaels is “right-wing”, but that’s not what I meant.

Some folk will be surprised that I agree with anything that Patrick Michaels says, as he is consistently inaccurate about the Science of Global Warming.

However, he is right that a Carbon Tax is the wrong way to proceed.

Carbon pricing, whether by direct taxation or by a trading scheme, effectively creates a double disincentive for change.

We have a large number of companies and organisations that are highly dependent on the use of Fossil Fuels. Carbon pricing will make these companies and organisations less financially efficient, and they will try anything they can to pass on the costs of Carbon to their consumers and clients, in order to remain profitable.

Carbon Taxation will therefore stimulate cost offsetting, but not Carbon reductions.

Moreover, if companies that make and sell energy are forced to pay for Carbon, they will have less funds available to deCarbonise their businesses; less capital to invest in new lower Carbon technologies.

Carbon Pricing will not alter the patterns of emissions significantly, if at all.

We have to face facts : the economists are largely wrong about environmental taxation. Record fines and levies demanded of Fossil Fuel companies in the last ten years have not stopped the spills, the leaks, the poisonings of waterways; nor have they helped the companies change course and start to develop Renewable Energies.

The pricing of large scale environmental pollution is a failed disincentive.

The way to prevent Carbon Dioxide emissions is to stop focussing on the outflow of the “Carbon pipe”, and instead look at the source, where the Fossil Fuels enter the economy.

A few simple measures could re-structure thinking and re-orient direction very quickly :-

1. Ban new coal-fired power plants

Coal is Climate Enemy Number 1. There is great justification for banning it from being burned in thermal power plants. This regulatory measure will be relatively straight-forward to implement in all countries, because coal-fired power plants are all built by a small number of large companies, or government departments. If we have a Coal Non-Proliferation Treaty, it will be a matter of months to get the whole world, even China, to sign up. They know what coal does to their own air.

2. Green procurement

There are many levels of government, both national and regional, that ostensibly enact the articles of the United Nations treaties. The United Nations could agree to require “green procurement” from all public bodies, and this would have a massive impact on the demand for green energy and clean technologies. How would this work in practice ? For example, my local government, when commissioning public services and purchasing energy and manufactured goods and vehicles, should specify in the contracts signed with companies for this procurement that all products, services and energy should be green and clean.

3. Green investment

Despite the fact that during the 1980s and 1990s governments loosened their control from their national banks, in the recent few years, public money has been used to “bail out” banks threatened by the credit crisis. Governments in industrialised countries are now major shareholders in many banks, so they could start to regulate that investment should be directed towards energy efficiency, energy demand reduction and green energy. The “stimulus” could become genuinely “green”. If the banks stop creating credit lines for Fossil Fuels and start lending to clean technology for new energy facilities that get built, that would create a huge gradient of deCarbonisation. The world needs to spend a lot of money on new energy systems in the next few decades. It had better be green investment.

4. Create a green power gradient

One of the biggest problems with energy is the electricity production system. It is irrational to continue to burn Fossil Fuels very inefficiently to generate electricity. The governments of the world need to have a clear and robust set of strategies to affirm the preference for green power – both in electricity sales and in building new power plants. It doesn’t take much of a “subsidy gradient” to tip the balance in favour of green power production. Simply giving tax breaks to green electricity suppliers, and tax breaks to green power developers, and enforcing rules for the banks to offer cheap credit to new green power developments, can create a trend. Other measures could include targets for how much green power, in terms of a percentage, energy suppliers have to offer to their customers and clients.

When people advocate Carbon Taxation to me, my first reaction is : who is going to be in charge of the tax revenue ? And will they spend it appropriately ?

It is much more efficient and effective in my view to tilt the scales in favour of making sure that new money is green money.

Money is created by inventing an obligation to pay back with interest – known as a debt or loan. Those with the accredited authority to create money in this way are the banks and international financial institutions, who have a legal obligation to secure the money and make sure the investment becomes “realised” in the form of a healthy return. Returns on investment are made by people, organisations, companies and countries that take the debt-loans and work hard and pull in more natural resources to increase production. This is called “economic growth”.

The ex-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for the abolition of heinous, onerous world debts that poorer countries, for example the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), have become saddled with, due to a combination of poor governance and economic imbalance (and immorally high interest rates).

Yet, it has been hard for all these debts to be written off. Despite polite, acquiescent noises, it has proved hard to get the nations to comply with their own promises on this, just as it is hard to encourage them to fulfil their international aid obligations by contributing 0.7% of GDP.

It’s even harder to raise finance for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation. I think trying to raise cash at the end of the value chain is too hard, and liable to be ineffective – and I think we should “tax” at source. Why should the banks be permitted to create money without some obligation to the poor and environmental issues ?

If I were in a position to have any input whatsoever, I would recommend that as part of the normal process of creating new money, banks are obliged to cancel part of the global unpayable debt, and be required to favour Climate Change lending over other kinds of lending.

A good reason for strong action on reducing debts from poorer countries is that these countries will be really struggling to finance Climate Change Adaptation in future, if they continue to be burdened with massive international debt.

Having the debts of the poorer countries cancelled will be part of what the developed countries should do to compensate for the coming Climate Changes.

Nicholas Stern and others have been promoting the idea that the developed countries should create a mega-fund to finance Climate Change projects in poorer countries for both Adaptation and Mitigation.

The developed countries will need to finance the mega-fund by using the services of the banks, since they are struggling with the credit crisis. The banks should be required to make credit easily available to developed countries who wish to finance Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation, both in their own countries and in poorer countries.

This would not be a system of taxation, but a system of targeted spending, a much more efficient economic solution.

To solve Climate Change, we need new energy systems, which needs new investment, and that’s where Pat Michaels is right, even though he is off-target with most of the rest of his pronouncements.

[ YouTube Credit : The link to the video above comes thanks to the endeavours of that most fair and balanced individual James "no net global warming since 1998" Delingpole. "No net global warming since 1998" ? James ! You're quoting Pat Michaels, but did he perhaps make that up ? Or was it something that Christopher Monckton might have made up ? ]

The BBC puts the blame on Climate Change – almost – in a report on the Russian heatwave-wildfire disaster.

But they just can’t bring themselves to admit it as an organisation – and put the claims into the mouths of others – using quotation marks in the headline (‘partly to blame’) and ascribing the opinion to “researchers”, the “UK Met Office” and “experts” :-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10919460

“10 August 2010 : Climate change ‘partly to blame’ for sweltering Moscow : By Katia Moskvitch : Science reporter, BBC News : Global climate change is partly to blame for the abnormally hot and dry weather in Moscow, cloaked in a haze of smoke from wildfires, say researchers. The UK Met Office said there are likely to be more extreme high temperatures in the future. Experts from the environmental group WWF Russia have also linked climate change and hot weather to raging wildfires around the Russian capital. Meteorologists say severe conditions may linger for several more days…”

Well, I’ve got a bit of a question to pose – it might not be possible to ascribe the current weather conditions in Russia (and Pakistan and China and and and…) to Climate Change, statistically. I mean no one weather event can be said to have been caused 100% by Climate Change. But would these extreme weather events have happened without Climate Change ?

That is by far the most important question to ask, and Michael Tobis does just that :-

http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/08/moscow-doesnt-believe-in-this.html

“…Are the current events in Russia “because of” “global warming”? To put the question in slightly more formal terms, are we now looking at something that is no longer a “loading the dice” situation but is a “this would, practically certainly, not have happened without human interference” situation? Can we phrase it more formally? “Is the average time between persistent anomalies on this scale anywhere on earth in the undisturbed holocene climate much greater than a human lifetime?” In other words, is this so weird we would NEVER expect to see it at all?…”

Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph is more certain :-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/7937269/Pakistan-floods-Climate-change-experts-say-global-warming-could-be-the-cause.html

“Pakistan floods: Climate change experts say global warming could be the cause : The world weather crisis that is causing floods in Pakistan, wildfires in Russia and landslides in China is evidence that global warming predictions are correct, according to climate change experts. : By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent, Published: 10 Aug 2010 : Almost 14 million people have been affected by the torrential rains in Pakistan, making it a more serious humanitarian disaster than the South Asian tsunami and recent earthquakes in Kashmir and Haiti combined. The disaster was driven by a ‘supercharged jet stream’ that has also caused floods in China and a prolonged heatwave in Russia. It comes after flash floods in France and Eastern Europe killed more than 30 people over the summer. Experts from the United Nations (UN) and universities around the world said the recent “extreme weather events” prove global warming is already happening. Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-president of the body set up by the UN to monitor global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said the ‘dramatic’ weather patterns are consistent with changes in the climate caused by mankind. “These are events which reproduce and intensify in a climate disturbed by greenhouse gas pollution,” he said. “Extreme events are one of the ways in which climatic changes become dramatically visible.”…”

Meanwhile, back in never-ever-a-problem-land :-

The illustrious German Advisory Council on Global Change, the WBGU, or “Wissenschaftliche Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveraenderungen” in longhand, have done some excellent work on proposals for a global Carbon framework.

As part of their 2009 paper entitled in English “Solving the climate dilemma: The budget approach” they came to some useful conclusions, but also some startlingly unworkable recommendations :-

http://www.wbgu.de/wbgu_sn2009_en.pdf
http://www.wbgu.de/wbgu_sn2009_en.html

Consider for one moment the implications of the following graph for proposed future emissions :-

The first question one could ask is, “why does the red curve for industrialised countries drop so fast ?” And the answer for that would be that the WBGU propose an immediately effective “convergence” of carbon emissions rights.

As of today, they say, we should treat everyone has having the same rights to emit, and that means that those who are over-emitting need to cut their emissions the fastest.

Of course, that will never happen. The United States of America will never agree to it.

Besides which, a principled policy of “equity today” is impossible to achieve in practical terms. Even though the wealthy industrialised countries nominally have the greatest financial capacity to act on carbon emissions, they also have the highest lock-in to high-carbon systems, which will make action more expensive than in other parts of the world.

The WBGU partly address this problem by proposing that lack of achievement in industrialised countries can be compensated for by Carbon Trading with developing countries, who will have emissions rights to spare :-

But have you seen how much Carbon they expect to be traded ? It’ll never happen. The rate at which the Carbon Markets are building will never support those kind of traded flows of emissions rights. America has a partial Carbon Market in operation, but not an overall federal commitment – and failing generally to get Climate Change legislation.

Australia is still struggling with the politics of developing Carbon finance, and the European Emissions Trading Scheme has been plagued by volume-pricing “elasticity” issues. China’s Carbon Market is lightyears away, and there are numerous abuses of the globally dispersed markets that are in place already, including fake permits, tax dodges and market “swamping”.

The Clean Development Mechanism, the chief “flexible mechanism” of Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol, isn’t working very well, and the World Bank cannot see high levels of new certified Carbon being made available to market in the near future.

So, the WBGU proposal looks highly unlikely from the practical point of view, but what about the ethics behind it ?

The reason why the WBGU propose “equity, today” is to circumnavigate a common skirmish of accusation around what is known as the “grandfathering” of Carbon emissions rights.

The industrialised countries start their Carbon Descent from a position of high emissions, and many organisations agree that this effectively means that the industrialised countries have been granted free emissions rights over and above their fair share “entitlement”.

Other groups that take this approach include EcoEquity with their framework they call “Greenhouse Development Rights”, which has been adopted by many Non-Governmental Organisations.

Pinning down countries like the United States of America over this issue would be near-nigh impossible for this one simple reason – there is another way of looking at the situation.

The Americans have been operating on the basis of “Economic Production is Good” for over 60 years. They haven’t had an agenda of “Greed is Good”. Instead, they have been living by the simple rules of meritocracy, the “American dream” of personal advancement and the benevolent, if patronising, concept that economic development can help the whole world. Their economic expansion has not been a moral issue, they’re not guilty of any crimee, and they would not permit anyone to try to make it so.

It’s no use trying to pin “historical responsibility” on countries such as the United States of America. Back in the day, nobody realised that excessive Carbon Dioxide emissions could be so dangerous, so nobody should be to blame for past behaviour.

Why should “the polluter pay” ?

The WBGU shoot themselves in the foot when they suggest that in addition to incredibly high rates of Carbon Trading, which would cost America a lot of money; that America and its industrial peers should also donate huge sums of money for “adaptation” funds, money that would also be used to halt deforestation in the Global South.

America won’t play, because it won’t pay. And it definitely won’t pay twice. There’s no way to get the American administration to accept that they owe the world.

There’s also no way that the WBGU proposals can be tinkered with to give more acceptable numbers. The number of parameters in any global Carbon framework has to be kept to the absolute minimum. No use of ethical reasoning will hold sway.

The only logical, agreeable framework for the United Nations decarbonisation treaty will be the straight-forward proposals of Contraction and Convergence, whereby the world will approach equity, tomorrow, under a safe global carbon budget, at rates that can be easily accommodated in the global economy.

America will not agree to anything less. And without America, a global treaty cannot be made.

Cap and Trade is….going….down. And that’s probably a good thing :-

http://www.examiner.com/x-12720-DC-Policy-Reform-Examiner~y2010m3d31-Capandtrade-dropped-from-Senates-energyclimate-change-bill

“Cap and trade dropped from Senate’s energy-climate change bill : March 31 : DC Policy Reform Examiner JoAnn Blake : Cap and trade, a centerpiece of the Waxman-Markey Bill passed by the House, won’t be included in the upcoming Senate version of the bipartisan energy-climate change legislation, according to its sponsors. Viewed [ BY ECONOMISTS ] as an effective environmental program that uses the market’s power to reduce pollution, the program became known as “cap-and-tax,” a name given to it by conservative groups in the past year. “The term itself became too polarizing and too paralyzing in the effort to win over conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans to try to do something about climate change and our oil dependency,” says Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, in a March 26 article in The New York Times. The idea actually began as a Republican plan 20 years ago under the first Bush administration to reduce sulfur dioxide pollution or “acid rain” and was successful at a lower cost than had been estimated. The Times article suggests that while trying to gather a majority to pass the bill, Reps Waxman and Markey gave out too many concessions and exemptions to utilities, refiners, oil drillers, heavy industries and other groups. A number of companies, including big utilities and Goldman Sachs, stood to reap windfall profits because they would be get free allowance coupons. Initially, President Obama had proposed a 100 percent auction of permits with a large tax rebate going to consumers to cover their higher energy costs, but the simplicity of the concept became lost in House negotiations. Senators Lindsay Graham (R-S.C), John Kerry (D-Mass) and Joe Liberman (I-Conn) are putting together a different bill, but one also containing compromises, expected to be introduced in April.”

You can expect various commentators to wring their hands and try and fight it :-

http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/31/pollution-limits-carbon-price-clean-energy-investments/

But remember, the guys selling you Cap-and-Trade are the same guys who brought you the Financial Services Bubble.

And this time, the commodity they’d like to sell you is literally vapour !

A number of prevalent ideological frameworks employed for constructing policy to address Global Warming appear to have faulty foundational analysis and are therefore ineffective in addressing Carbon Dioxide Emissions. Politically implementable options that could lead to effective action to combat Climate Change are being kicked into the long grass at every turn, in policy, in investment and in society.

Reasonable proposals are being made over-complex to implement, or delayed by every means possible. The dominant memes of economics hinder good decision-making; for example, not all natural capital can be valued as a commodity, and yet Carbon markets and Carbon tax regimes are the most ubiquitous proposals.

The cheapest options for efficiency are overlooked for subsidy-attracting large-scale projects; and wholescale sustainability approaches are being discarded in favour of focus on obsessional marginal issues such as recycling.

The imperative to deliberately orient investment towards Low Carbon energy is lost in the haze of planning based on non-solutions such as the renaissance of Nuclear Power and Carbon Capture and Storage in the pursuit of so-called “Clean” Coal.

Blue Sky Thinking

The essential elements of a global deal, as considered by such economists as Nicholas Stern could be described as dangerous wishful thinking.

The 2009 UNFCCC Copenhagen Accord stated as its first goal to keep global temperatures within a rise of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Yet such a target is useless without the means to satisfy it. A global treaty means nothing without a mechanism to make it happen.

The situation is dire : the Earth has already warmed up by around 0.8 degrees Celsius, and even if net emissions stopped tomorrow we are still committed to a further 0.6 degrees Celsius or so rise, because of the time lag in the Earth system reaching a new equilibrium (Reference : Hansen et al. 2004).

Research raises the possibility that the current level of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is already the highest that could be consdered safe, or may in fact be too high. This implies that the Carbon Budget for a safe Climate is effectively zero, which means that any emissions must result in zero increase in atmospheric accumulation.

Net emissions to air we make from this point on could throw us over the 2 degrees Celsius threshold before 2050. If the sensitivity of the Climate is higher than we have so far calculated, then 2 degrees Celsius could be reached significantly sooner. This makes the goal of 2 degrees Celsius, or any concentration target, such as 550 ppmCO2e, invalid.

The goal should be Zero Net Emissions as soon as possible. At a very minimum, the goal should have a milestone of no further annual increase in Net Carbon Dioxide Emissions to Air. Keeping the 2 degrees Celsius target in the global agreement just builds in delay, because of the inevitable arguing about Climate sensitivity and responsibilities for cutting back emissions.

It is up to all of us to adopt the responsibility of cutting emissions, from now on : there can be no exceptions. That’s all countries, all sectors, whether they’re explicitly party to the global deal or not.

There must be a general admission that we are already experiencing dangerous Climate Change and make serious national commitments.

We do need to stop being dictated to by economists, who acted as an elite at the UNFCCC Copenhagen Climate Talks to elbow out the demands of the AOSIS for a long-term target of 350 ppm.

It can be reasonably argued that we already have dangerous Climate Change. Just look at the Arctic. If we peak and sharply reduce net anthropogenic emissions, then the net accumulation in the atmosphere will reduce over time, and we could encourage that with a- and re-forestation, and some (gulp) geoengineering if that can be made to work.

In addition, it’s hard to get people to sign up to 2 degrees C, 350.org or 1.5 degrees C, because there just doesn’t seem a way to get the necessary actions done to get that goal/target. Nobody has any clue at the top of the decision-making stack about how to get any targets implemented.

The engineers could save the world, but they have no communications skills.

We need a permanent session of the UNFCCC to get some traction on this problem, not yearly press fests.

Research & Development

Although it is absolutely vital to conduct research into Climate Change, directing most financial resources into Reearch and Development could be said to be a symptom of a wider inability to commit to action on Carbon Dioxide emissions.

As for technology, ploughing continued revenue into Renewable Energy research won’t uncover a magical solution – we do need to go with what we currently have and start de-Carbonisation with the Energy technologies already proven. We don’t have time to wait another 30 – 50 years for the eventual possible development of Nuclear Fusion, for example, if the already present effects of Climate Change continue to aggravate Earth life support systems.

We are being sidetracked from building the new Renewable Energy infrastructure by the well-funded lobbying factions of Fossil Fuel corporates and failed technologies supported by mining interests such as Coal and Nuclear Fission.

Energy Conservation

We are being sidetracked from Energy Demand Reduction by a number of ruses. Those who would be entrusted with investment in the requisite new energy infrastructure (Big Energy supply companies) are obviously more interested in big ticket, fat subsidy projects, constructing new plant; and very uninterested in low cost domestic insulation programmes. Big Energy is interested in the profits to be made on selling more Energy, not the one-time sales to be made from selling insulation. Although there are moves to change this with the introduction of the ESCos (Energy Services Companies) concept, there is still an implied profit-squeeze in concentrating on negawatts than megawatts.

The obsession for high quality buildings and services in public life coupled with the continual cost-cutting of construction companies leads to wonderful looking buildings with appalling Energy peformance. Also, the Health and Safety forces that exist don’t yet take into consideration the overheating of modern buildings in their risk assessments of infrastructure.

Energy is generally too cheap in monetary terms compared to other products, and so its use is profligate, especially in public and corporate environments. However, charging more for Energy would result in inflationary forces felt by citizen-consumers rather than corporates or public sector facilities management, so there will remain a tendency to waste.

Energy Conservation is the bad fairy at the christening and rarely gets discussed (Reference : MacKay).

The Notion of Carbon Pricing

There is no particular reason why pricing Carbon would create an incentive to de-Carbonise.

There has already been strong consideration of balancing Carbon taxation with a relaxation in income taxation, which would make Carbon a little more expensive, but the tax-freer income would expand Carbon consumption.

Carbon-based Energy is the most dominant form of Energy in the global economy, and the economy is highly dependent on Energy. If Carbon pricing were implemented, either through a Cap-and-Traded market, with or without a floor price, flat taxation or otherwise, the economy would experience inflationary pressure, and pretty soon, everything would become more expensive, and the relative cost of Carbon would return to its low levels as at present.

The current sub-global implementation of a Carbon market has given high volumes of trade, but has not significantly reduced overall Carbon consumption – a very inefficient way to control Carbon.

Despite numerous parties talking up the concept of an imminent Carbon pricing policy, globally this market framework has not matured, and probably won’t. It won’t take more than a niche slice of the overall marketplace.

Plus, there will remain strong influences to keep the price of Fossil Fuels relatively low, whether or not there is a Carbon price, as a stable economy is worth so much (Reference : international diplomatic mission by Gordon Brown during the oil price spike of 2008).

The Petroleum Oil market in particular is not a free market, and it does not conform to the laws of supply and demand. Therefore it is not surprising that prices can and are always managed.

There are also problems with “who pays”. Carbon pricing allow the price for the externalities of Carbon Dioxide and Methane Emissions to be passed on to the final consumer in the global supply chain. It’s not the polluter who will pay.

Also, there are problems with any proposal for a piecemeal implementation of Carbon pricing – one of which being the inherent cross-border issues, where Carbon has a different price on either side of a trading border, distorting global trading arrangements, leading potentially to dirty manufacture located in regions where there is no Carbon pricing (“Carbon leakage”). If the Carbon market is not universal, then leakage will be a serious drawback.

To add to the problems, the speed of implementation of a global Carbon market is likely to be slow. Some of the large Energy companies profess support for pricing Carbon in a capped market, or Carbon taxation, but they know how long such a regime could take to implement, and it has to be in their best interest to throw policy action as far into the future as possible to protect their business profits now.

These obvious flaws in the proposals to price Carbon seem to have been ignored – Carbon pricing is still fairly universally pushed as an ideology, and the IPCC reports take Carbon pricing as a virtual given.

The whole IPCC negotiation process is infected with proposals for various forms of Carbon pricing – whenever someone boldy suggests that de-Carbonisation should be incentivised by scarcity in Carbon Credits, somebody else tries to put a monetary figure on that. But paying for Carbon has the deleterious impact that those who are subject to Carbon pricing lose the financial leeway to pay to de-Carbonise their Energy and processes.

It has to be questioned if Carbon is pliable to pricing. Since it is such a large part of developed economies, it might not be possible to price it out.

By comparison, Sulphur Dioxide was an environmental bad arguably solved by a market upheld by various regulatory changes, such as the Clean Air Act in the United States. However, this pollutant did not figure in high percentage terms in the wider economy.

This is even more true of the market set up to control ozone-destroying chemicals – replacement chemicals were available for CFCs and HFCFCs – which constituted only a small part of the economy – and the market provisions of the Montreal Protocol were arguably implemented very inefficiently.

There is even evidence to suggest that some environmental bads do not get fixed by pricing or fines – there is still oil between sandy layers on the beaches resulting from the ExxonValdez mass oil spill, and there are continuing spills and leaks from various embedded processes such as Nuclear Energy, Coal and Tar Sands mining and refining. (Reference : “Silent Spill: The Organization of an Industrial Crisis”).

Carbon Charity

Considering the failure of commoditising Carbon to achieve any noticeable change, it is dubious whether the global Climate Change Fund for Mitigation and Adaptation will reach its intended targets (Reference : Gordon Brown and Meles Zenawi). Economists such as Nicholas Stern accept the concept that developed nations need to engage in both technology and financial transfer to the developing nations.

The Kyoto Protocol gave provisions for the so-called Clean Development Mechanism which originally proposed that developing countries were to be considered as having juicy spare unused Carbon Emissions to sell to the industrialised world in exchange for green technology. In reality it has offered a bonanza of opportunities to multinational corporations who could mop up the entire value of the Carbon traded, by investing in new clean production in developing nations.

But nothing has emerged that will transfer value to the developing nations themselves for Mitigation and Adaptation, apart from direct funding, but this will clearly be prone to the same reluctance to participate as the Make Poverty History and calls for debt “jubilees” of the past.

Sadly, precedents in global funds for the benefit of the less wealthy have a bad track record. Despite agreeing to contribute aid of 0.7% of GDP to go towards the Millenium Development Goals, wealthy nations have not contributed accordingly, plus they keep several countries in debt.

It has to be asked : how is the value actually transfered ? Money is only a virtual value, and is denominated in units that pertain to the purchasing power of industrialised economies in industrialised economies.

It may be better to replace ideas of an M&A Fund with a kind of FairER Trade – a framework that reinvigorates honest trade and not just fudged attempts at offsetting emissions. The Doha process has stalled and would need some assistance. How about trying to frame Climate action in terms of Trade action ?

In my view, what must happen is that international companies who conduct any trade from developing to developed nations must be obligated by that trade to bring education, health, Climate Change Adaptation and help with
indigenous green Energy and Agriculture for Climate Change Mitigation.

It is calculated that the Global South is the major producer of natural resources for the Global North. It should therefore be reasonable to insist that whichever organisation trades the goods should get directly involved in “philanthropy” in achieving the Millenium Development Goals and Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in the country of origin.

Obviously, this wouldn’t work without completely cancelling the international debt of the Least Developed Countries.

This process I am trying to flesh out is that companies should support the sustainability of the supply networks that they use for their product sales. In other words, it is self-help. For example, it is in the interests of a company that buys coffee from Ethiopia to protect future supplies of coffee from Ethiopia.

Technology & Innovation

If you are an Energy engineer, it’s hard to be “technology-neutral”. Some are genuinely better than others in terms of overall costs, day-to-day costs, operational simplicity and the sustainability of resources and plant construction. It’s a sincere disappointment that this knowledge does not appear to be transferable to the mind and body politic.

There are some technological and social conflicts to overcome, the classic example being the astroturf resistance to wind turbines on the land. Blocks to the ramping up of Renewable Energy technologies are limitations that dictate a strong hand as regards a deliberate suite of investment instruments.

Then there are the non-solutions that offer complexity and uncertainty and are guaranteed to be expensive. The only way to encourage investment in new Nuclear Power for example, is to offer “hidden” subsidies in the form of the state underwriting the insurance for new reactors and the final clean up of the radioactive waste.

It is true that the industrialised economies need to do some serious investment in Energy in the next 40 years, and the priviatised Energy companies are obviously reluctant to spend the money, but it should be political dynamite that taxpayer money is being pocketed for new Nuclear and Carbon Capture.

Exaclty how much will taxpayers be forced to pay out to prop up Nuclear Power ? Haven’t we done enough bailing out of Nuclear Power (Reference : British Energy) ? Should public money be extorted to fund the profit-making activities of mining companies who will be the organisations entrusted with the Carbon Capture and Storage projects ?

The United Nations seems to regard the expertise and intervention of the corporations in policy matters as neutral and have sought their advice extensively, but this leads to the clear imposition of corporate influence in the IPCC reports. The technology corporates will by nature seek a compromise on action that involves real investment. In the past Big Energy companies have financed anti-Science campaigns, so there’s no reason to think they won’t continue to press for compromise. How much can we trust the corporate block when it promotes complex and expensive technologies ?

We cannot spare the material resources and Fossil Fuels that are required for the total overhaul of the Energy system over to Renewables to be used to support Energy-hungry Nuclear plant building and Energy-hungry “Clean” Coal. We need to commit all our resources to getting over the “Primary Investment Hump/Hurdle” for Renewables.

Maybe a system of Energy Bonds, where publics explicitly choose to fund new Renewable Energy Deployment, may offer a way of using funds in the best way.

Survival & Rights

There is a continued error in focussing on so-called “equity” in Carbon Allowances for the future (Reference Copenhagen Synthesis Key Message 4).

This is described by many as the “equal right to pollute” for each person on Earth.

A per capita Carbon Quota would be the simplest basis on which to form a global agreement, avoiding the problematic discussion of “historial responsibility” for Global Warming.

It is naively hoped that people will be naturally attracted to the ethical position of asserting equal Carbon Permits.

There is some kind of redistributive effect implied in the choice of this language. Of course fair shares per capita is the only fair outcome. How else would the developing nations be encouraged to sign up ?

But instead of trying to concentrate on Equity, we should be really focussing on Survival – since not everyone will want to subject their lives and businesses to self-control in Carbon.

I would suggest that we start from a position of recognising that all of us have used up a large part of our Carbon Budget for the rest of the Century, and then try to agree Access to Energy in future.

This discussion, about negotiating for our fair Energy Rights would have a stronger resonance for most people.

This new incentive system could be voiced in terms such as “I have the right to green Energy, Carbon-free fresh water” or “I have the right to clean transport; a properly insulated home…and a guilt-free lifestyle.”

Precautionary Principle – Risk Assessment

It seems that in all areas of public life, Health and Safety are paramount, except as regards the detrimental climatic possibilities of Global Warming.

Risk elimination cannot be achieved by denial in the Media – it may calm people for a while, but leave them with an angry shock of realisation later on.

A risk assessment that has some kind of impact would not be limited to sharing percentages with people – the table of risks of going over certain thresholds – because nobody seems to understand what the thresholds imply.

Here are some risk factors that should be part of the debate :-

(a) The risk of Climate Change causing serious disruption to a number of things like food production, trade of all kinds of naturally sourced products, insurance and disaster aid costs and passenger travel.

(b) The risk of a Carbon Pricing structure on the general Economy. That is, Carbon Pricing was originally proposed as a “choke” mechanism, a kind of Damocles Sword hanging over things; the threat should have precipitated change, reduction in emissions, but it did not.

(c) The risk that Peak Carbon Energy comes sooner rather than later.

(d) The risk that the Energy infrastructure will break down without serious state intervention worldwide (and while we bail out Energy, let’s make it Green).

(e) The risk that none of the policies so far proposed (including Carbon Taxation, Carbon Trading (under a Cap or not), Carbon Disclosure, Carbon Accounting have any impact whatsoever on Carbon Emissions.

Marginal Issues

People feel tied in what they feel permitted or have the capacity to address.

Yet we need to think bigger : Climate Change action has to be far larger than turning off the lights and unplugging phone chargers (Reference : Obama, ActOnCO2), or recycling.

The importance of the elimination of waste in creating a sustainable matrix in the use of material resources and Energy points to a re-analysis of most applications of technology, especially in transport and industrial activity. How sustainable can heavier-than-air aeroplanes ever be ? The alternative would be lighter-than-air-craft. And on what basis should the global manufacture of motor vehicles, earth-moving vehicles included, be allowed to grow ?

There are central questions about the increase in transportation, both in terms of passenger movements and freight in particular, which has been brought on by extensive development of global trade networks, most notably in food exports/imports. What seems to be increasing is needless trade, where nations literally exchange entirely equivalent products, owing to local production cost factors (Simms A. et al., 2009). Since all transportation requires the use of Energy, this is therefore the largest growing problem. Including transportation in the EU ETS will not affect this problem, as although transport is the fastest growing sector, it is not the largest.

Piecemeal Pie

The ultimate imperative, goal, must be de-Carbonisation of the sources of Energy.

Nobody should disagree with this goal unless they’re a raving sceptic, but even raving deniers could be persuaded to accept if they understood anything about Energy. We have to spend trillions in the very near future on Energy renovation, so why not make it clean Energy ? It has plenty of bonuses, even for those who don’t believe in Global Warming.

The “sales potential” and “market penetration” of any proposed policy or framework must be assessed and scoped before it is promoted or prioritised. It’s not enough just to try ideas out in a “market research” way to test the public for volatility or vote-ability.

NGOs and Governments are using the language of imperative to back up a number of policy proposals – yet this imperative to “act” has not yet reached clarity on the exact actions, tasks and actors responsible, leaving the public mind space open to “bait and switch” tactics from those with vested interests.

It is laudable that the United Kingdom pass the Climate Change Act, but it was incredibly short on mechanism to implementation.

If you look at action emerging at different levels in government you can see a gaping void. For example, Local Authorities all set about doing Climate Change Strategies and urban groups in particular centred on implementing Combined Heat and Power but nobody can say who will pay for it. This is the “dance of the questionners” – bold plans but no budgets.

Piecemeal measures will not succeed.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020288/climategate-we-won-the-battle-but-at-copenhagen-we-just-lost-the-war/

Delingpole writes : “Copenhagen never really had anything to do with “Climate Change”. Rather it was a trough-fest at which all the world’s greediest pigs gathered to gobble up as much of your money and my money as they possibly could, under the righteous-sounding pretence that they were saving the planet.”

I think that he’s partially on the right track : for many, many people, Climate Change is something they can make money from. Creating a commodity from a previously unvalued polluting gas, creating positive value from a negative waste product, is only going to lead to the massive-est market on Earth. And we all know who’s going to gain from that Carbon Trade, don’t we ? Not you and me, that’s for sure.

How can James Delingpole be so incisive, so knowledgeable, so right ? Maybe he knows a banker or two and sees the inner working of their “muck to brass” minds.

However, I have to part company with “Dr Strangelove” as his weblogging colleague Will Heaven epithetises him, in this paragraph :-

“This nauseating piggery took two forms. First were the Third World kleptocracies – led by the likes of Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe – using “Global Warming” as an excuse to extort guilt-money from the Western nations.”

Actually, funds transfer from the Global North to the Global South is intended as a way to recognise some kind of responsibility on the part of the Global North for the ongoing and worsening Climate Change damages to the Global South environment and economies.

It’s not about stealing, it’s about demanding reparation on the basis of guilt. Some feel that that guilt should be made historical, and that the Global North should pay for the sins of the past. Others think the Global North did not know they were doing wrong so they can’t be held to blame for the sins of past emissions.

But anyway, this transfer of money from Global North to Global South is intended to be mostly through the letterbox of Carbon Trading – squeezing it through a market, in a kind of global offsetting program. Only a very small part of the funds transfered would come straight out of national budgets, and most likely a lot of it will have already been earmarked for Development Aid – something I feel James Delingpole would probably support with half an hour’s education on the subject of global trade imbalance and how the Global North feeds off the Global South for all its raw resources, pretty much.

James continues, more correctly : “Second, and much more dangerous, were the First World Corporatists who stand to make trillions of dollars using the Enron economics of carbon trading. Never mind all the talk of President Obama’s trifling $100 billion pledge. This is very small beer compared with the truly eye-watering sums that will be ransacked from our economies and our wallets over the next decades in the name of “carbon emissions reduction.””

Yes, the bankers are all lining/queuing up to have a hand in the till of the Global Carbon Exchange. They have consortia and contracts-in-principle. They give themselves fancy names like “BlueNext”. All leading up to the biggest speculative bubble since the dawn of financial dis-rectitude, or maybe the tulip mania of 1637.

James ramps up the anti : “…it was at Kyoto that the mechanisms for establishing a global carbon market were established. Carbon trading could not possibly exist without some form of agreement between all the world’s governments on emissions: the market would simply collapse. By keeping Kyoto alive, the sinister troughers of global corporatism have also kept their cash cow alive.”

Too spot on, mate ! Many reams of trees have been coated in ink to tell the story of how the Clean Development Mechanism, and its inherent acceptance of Carbon Trading, were slotted into the Kyoto Protocol, probably at 5.30am on the last day of the negotiations.

So, James, we find ourselves almost on the same hymn sheet. You disfavour corporate and market mechanisms to resolve the Climate Change treaty, and I don’t like them much either.

What could stop all this “big government” and “first world corporatism” and still allow for some kind of rational global deal ? Is there a way we could work together on this ? What platform could we share ?

Could it be this ? That we need to go cold turkey from Fossil Fuels at least by mid-this-Century. That’s mandatory, whether or not large numbers of the population believe in the Science of Global Warming.

Peak Oil means that the end of petrol and diesel will come. Thing is, Peak Coal won’t be far behind that, so we cannot rely on the hard black rock stuff to fill the gaps that sweet crude leaves behind.

Have you thought about the other environmental disbenefits from the global industry in the mining and transporting and refining of Fossil Fuels ? For the sake of glossy petrel birds everywhere, let’s can the crude trade; and for the sake of childhood lung function, let’s drop cars and coal. Let us have widely dispersed, secure supplies of indigenous Renewable Energy. Surely you can see the ultimate sense in that ?

Reaction from the Developing countries is general dismay. The Non-Governmental Organisations, “civil society”, feel they have been blocked from taking part. It’s been a complete shambles.

The time has come to start spelling out the future in graphic, technical detail – not just about the damages that Climate Change will bring – but about the only real solutions.

Real solutions do not include Carbon Trading, nor Carbon Taxation. They don’t include technofixes and technofudges like Carbon Capture and Storage and New Nuclear Power. They certainly don’t include partial commitment on Avoided Deforestation.

We have to say it and say it again : whether the leaders and corporations agree or not, the future is Carbon Emissions Reductions. The Consumer Economy is being eroded by the minute. Peak Oil, Coal, Natural Gas and Uranium are just around the corner.

Several key minerals and metals used in hi-tech manufacturing are facing acute shortages. Drought and flooding is compromising food harvests. Warmer nights are threatening forests and crops too. Freshwater stress is ramping up.

Things have to change. Things will inevitably change, whether we call for it or not, whether we have a Climate deal or not.

There are Limits to Growth and we’ve crossed several boundary conditions for serious change to be enabled.

The so-called “Recession” is probably permanent. Renewable Energy will have to be rolled out with increasing acceleration as Fossil Fuels face supply constraints. Some things in the Economies will just stop working.

Social services around the globe are already adversely affected, bringing productivity down. There has been a huge lack of investment in Energy, a trend which will be hard to reverse, since we need huge new systems to replace the failing Fossil Fuels and Nuclear plant.

Without a “Green” New Deal to start us on the path to Zero Carbon Energy the whole of the industrialisation of the Global North and West will have been in vain – Developed countries face the sharpest crash ever experienced.

I’m not telling you that a network or group will rise up, revolt and make this happen – I’m telling you it’s going to happen anyway. You won’t need to be prepared to make sacrifices for Carbon Emissions Reductions – sacrifices will come to you anyway.

Without a truly meaningful agreement on Climate Change, the global trade system, particularly in food, could partially collapse within five years. Just go ogle “Peak Rice”, and check the IRRI figures sourced from the USDA on global imports and exports of rice :-

http://beta.irri.org/solutions/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=250

Your standard of living is seriously under threat of extinction.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6955990.ece
“Developing nations stage walkout over Copenhagen stalemate” 14 December 2009

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8412483.stm
“Developing nations return to Copenhagen climate talks” 14 December 2009

Is it any wonder, when the Developed (rich) countries are aiming for a stitch-up, sealing the deal in their favour ? :-

http://johannhari.com//2009/12/10/our-leaders-are-staging-a-scam-in-copenhagen
“Our leaders are staging a scam in Copenhagen” 10 December 2009

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/984a0e00-e5e4-11de-b5d7-00144feab49a.html
“Carbon trading: Emissions cuts at the lowest price – in theory” 13 December 2009

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1235629/Is-Blair-trying-cash-climate-change–Ex-PM-arrives-summit-urge-greenhouse-gas-deal.html
“Is Blair trying to cash in on climate change?: Ex-PM arrives at summit to urge greenhouse gas deal” 14 Decemer 2009

http://www.joabbess.com/2009/12/07/i-wont-wear-a-wristband-for-carbon-trading/

The Story of Cap & Trade from Story of Stuff Project on Vimeo

So, tens of thousands of people have made their way to the Copenhagen Climate Change negotiations. Now that they’re sealed in the conference, in all that holy, heady air of importance and relevance, they won’t be able to escape the dominant narrative of the agenda : the implementation of Carbon Trading.

This could be the largest appropriation of commonly owned resources the world has even known. By the banks :-

http://www.bluenext.fr/

Carbon Trading. Will it work ? Many people fear it will not have the kind of weight and reach of other policies. Some even conclude it will be as unworkable and unproductive as the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme has been.

Can you price Carbon ? Can you give Carbon emissions a price that deters people from making future emissions ? There is a very widely held notion that environmental taxation, markets or fines are effective. But can this kind of policy framework be effective for the most prevalent of environmental bads : Carbon ?

Sometimes the obvious limitations of the policymaking proposals make me feel like I’m living in a cartoon, probably the same way that Kartoon Kate feels :-

Friends of the Earth recently published their report on the basic element of Carbon Trading : offsets, calling them a Dangerous Distraction :-

http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefing_notes/dangerous_distraction.pdf

“Where there’s muck, there’s brass”, as some people in England say. Waste and pollution can be big moneymakers for some, as local and national government bodies strive to ensure a safe, clean environment for their citizens.

Dealing with Carbon pollution is, however, in a different league of Big Dirt than the municipal waste stream, litter picks and recycling efforts. It’s even in a much larger landscape than Energy supply infrastructure and global fuel distribution systems.

Carbon emissions are in everything we do, practically, from texting to flying; from cooking to holidaying; from home comfort to laundry.

We can have school poster competitions that influence dog walkers to clean up after their pooches and hounds, but it’s not going to be so easy to cut the Carbon from our entire civilisation.

Money talks. And fines and taxes speak more loudly than mere warnings. It seems obvious, at first glance, that an international market in Carbon credits would help to drive down emissions all across the globe.

But will it ? And will it manage a sizeable reduction in time, the time by which the scientists say we need to see major change ?

A new TV documentary airing in Canada poses the question. “Carbon Hunters” may not come to European channels, but if you want to know more, you can contact Kevin Smith at CarbonTradeWatch, an organisation that does what it says on the can :-

http://www.carbontradewatch.org
“Contact Us” —> Kevin Smith.