http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWsQscb6lfM

http://unfccc.int/files/press/news_room/application/pdf/100806_speaking_notes.pdf

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has just held its regular half yearly conference to further the working parties of the Kyoto Protocol :-

http://unfccc.int
http://unfccc.int/2860.php

A number of Press commentators have been critical of proceedings, indicating that there has not been much progress at Bonn, and in fact the conference could show some ground having been lost :-

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c9213b40-a180-11df-9656-00144feabdc0.html

“Hopes of early global warming deal cool : By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent : Published: August 6 2010 : Hopes that international climate change negotiations would produce a deal this year have been dashed as progress made at last year’s Copenhagen summit appeared to be reversed in the latest talks. Negotiations on a global warming treaty ended on Friday night amid acrimony and accusations of backsliding. Jonathan Pershing, US deputy special envoy for climate change, told reporters: “I came to Bonn hopeful of a deal in Cancún [where governments will hold a meeting in December], but at this point I am very concerned, as I have seen some countries walking back from progress made in Copenhagen.” Other people involved in the talks also spoke of their frustration that principles established at the Copenhagen summit – which failed to produce a full agreement but resulted in a partial accord accepted by the vast majority of governments – were reneged upon. The Copenhagen Accord marked the first time that both developed and big developing countries agreed to place limits on their greenhouse gas emissions. Developed countries committed themselves to absolute reductions by 2020, while developing nations including China, India and Brazil agreed to slow the rate of growth of their emissions. At the weeklong Bonn talks, some developing countries wanted to water down this agreement, by making industrialised countries’ obligations binding while the commitments of developing countries would be voluntary. That arrangement is not acceptable to many rich nations, which point out that the world’s main emerging economies are responsible for nearly 40 per cent of global emissions. China is the world’s biggest emitter, while India is rising up the table fast…”

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/338343,cancun-deal-no-closer.html

“Third round of climate change talks brings Cancun deal no closer : Posted : Fri, 06 Aug 2010 : By : dpa : Bonn – A third round of climate change talks in Bonn has brought little prospect of reaching a new deal at a UN summit in Mexico later this year, as a week of discussions ended on Friday without progress. The UN’s new climate change chief, Christiana Figueres, urged governments to “agree to further compromises” in the coming months in order to “deliver clear and unmistakeable progress” in the city of Cancun…Delegates in Bonn worked on new proposals for partial agreements to be reached in Cancun, but made no progress on binding targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, or on the shape of a future deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol which expires 2012. “It’s hard to cook a meal without a pot, and governments are much closer now to actually making the pot,” Figueres said optimistically. “However governments also need to decide what exactly they are going to cook in the pot,” Figueres added. “To receive the desired outcome in Cancun they must radically narrow down the choices that are now on the table.” Individual agreements reached in Cancun could include issues such as forest protection, financial aid to help developing nations adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change as well as the delivery of low-carbon technologies to such countries. However, an overarching agreement would still be necessary to implement any decisions reached in Cancun. Such a deal is looking unlikely to emerge before the 2012 UN climate change summit in South Africa. Developing countries said a lack of transparency regarding the disbursement of emergency funds by rich countries, as agreed in Copenhagen, made it hard for them compromise on any future deals. US climate change legislation has stalled in the Senate, where it has met with fierce opposition, making it unclear to other states to what extent they can expect the US to cooperate on any new pledges…”

http://www.aolnews.com/story/climate-talks-appear-to-slip-backward/1192598?cid=7

“Climate talks appear to slip backward : By ARTHUR MAX : 6 August 2010 : BONN, Germany -Global climate talks appeared to have slipped backward after five days of negotiations in Bonn, with rich and poor countries exchanging charges of reneging on agreements they made last year to contain greenhouse gases. Delegates complained that reversals in the talks put negotiations back by a year, even before minimal gains were scored at the Copenhagen summit last December. “It’s a little bit like a broken record,” said European Union negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger. “It’s like a flashback,” agreed Raman Mehta, of the Action Aid environment group. “The discourse is the same level” as before Copenhagen. The sharp divide between rich and poor nations over how best to fight climate change — a clash that crippled the Copenhagen summit — remains, and bodes ill for any deal at the next climate convention in Cancun, Mexico, which begins in November…Dessima Williams of Granada, who speaks for island states, charged that rich countries were “backsliding” on pledges of help to the poorest countries. Devastating floods in Pakistan, deadly fires and drought in Russia, a food crisis in West Africa — and reports that the first decade of this century was the hottest on record — provided a stark backdrop to the talks. “The situation in all of our countries is worsening,” Williams said. In Bonn, negotiating text doubled in length over the last week as countries put forward claims that had been deleted last year and delegations jockeyed for last-minute advantage before heading into the final stage of negotiations before Cancun…”

You have to remember that items “deleted” in Copenhagen were not agreed by all States. The so-called “Copenhagen Accord” which was only negotiated and “accorded to” by a small number of countries did not fully represent the Copenhagen 2009 conference positions of all the parties to the Kyoto Protocol.

The seesaw politicking between industrialised and developing countries will continue unless they can agree a “no regrets” shape of the “cooking pot” that Christiana Figueres metaphors.

What are the key issues ?

1. Poorer countries want richer countries to finance their Adaptation to Climate Change. Adaptation will include assistance with improving defences against rising instances of Climate Change-aggravated natural disasters such as floods and droughts. They don’t want aid. They want trade. They want the richer countries to accept their historic responsiblity for Climate Change, and pay their ecological debts.

2. Poorer countries want richer countries to finance their Mitigation strategy. Mitigation will include transfer of Green Energy, Renewable Energy technologies so that poorer countries can skirt High Carbon development paths, avoiding the history of High Emissions of richer countries. They don’t want aid. They want trade. They want the richer countries to accept that the poorer countries have spare, unused Carbon Rights that can be sold to the richer countries to offset the richer countries’ high emissions.

3. Poorer countries want richer countries to permit the poorer countries to continue Economic Development. They want such things as the clean water, electric light, good health services, education, industrial production and transportation that richer countries take for granted. They don’t want aid. They want trade. The poorer countries want the richer countries to fairly open up their markets to poorer country products – but currently the poorer country exports to richer countries are undervalued, for a variety of reasons.

4. Poorer countries want richer countries to make firm commitments to reducing richer country Greenhouse Gas Emissions. They don’t want aid. They want trade, but it won’t be physically possible to grow enough new or replacement forest in the poorer countries to permit the richer countries to carry on burning at such high rates.

Currently, the UNFCCC has passed around the hat for “donations” – pledges from the richer countries to reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions. The sum of the collected reductions pledged does not add up to what the Science demonstrates is needed.

Under the policy of “I won’t if you won’t”, China is not prepared to commit to a legally binding emissions reduction trajectory if the United States of America does to commit to a legally binding emissions reduction trajectory. Token gestures will be offered, but no firm progress can be made.

The missing saucepan is Contraction and Convergence, the proposal from Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute. If the world could agree to move towards equal per person Greenhouse Gas Emissions rights under a Global Carbon Budget as determined by the Science, in an agreed period of Convergence, then the responsibilities of each country, richer or poorer, could become clear.

Under the Contraction and Convergence framework, everybody would have to do some work, but nobody would risk losing out, have to skim billions from their own Economy to send abroad in the form of Adaptation Aid, or re-assign billions in their domestic budgets to pay for Carbon Credits.

Moving money around, as currently proposed in the multi-billion dollar Mitigation and Adaptation Fund plans, would not necessarily solve any problems. We have numerous examples of money becoming worse than useless in this way – just look back over the history of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Some milestones are inevitable. The world has to spend a large amount of money in the next few decades on re-vitalising energy, regardless of any emissions commitments. It would take similar sums of money to revive the energy sector in a Low Carbon form, creating new opportunities for companies, community projects and engineers.

The world has to increase its “Carbon Sinks” rapidly over the next few decades – principally by stopping deforestation and forest degradation – and conversely reforesting and afforesting new areas. This will take monetary investment, but also reap wide economic paybacks, just like the Green Energy sector.

In order to shore up the global economy, and protect numerous sources of cheap raw resources, money needs to be spent on avoiding devastation from increasingly violent and frequent natural disasters associated with extreme weather. People who cannot farm cannot trade and cannot eat. People who are forced to migrate cannot farm reliably. People who lose crops due to wild weather cannot farm reliably. People in stressed environments cannot afford agrochemicals, so will need to farm organically, and harvest rainwater more efficiently.

Decarbonisation is urgent, and the High Emissions countries have to commit to it, deliberately and effectively. Carbon Trading cannot provide the richer countries with sufficient leeway in “offsets” to carry on emitting at the same rates as today.

If the richer countries start major decarbonisation now, it won’t cost them as much as it will do in a decade’s time.

It’s time to stop haggling and horsetrading over economic development and Carbon Finance, and who is a “developing country” and who isn’t, and get on with emissions reductions in the countries of major emissions origin – the industrialised/industrialising nations – the “major emitters” :-

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Major_Economies_Forum_on_Energy_and_Climate

“The 17 countries participating in the forum account for approximately 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.”

What she writes about is Environment in general, but she takes in Policy, Politics, Economics and Science, and her output is normally balanced, accurate, and free from interference from propaganda and propagandists. Well-rounded, I’d say. Informative and straight.

So how come she’s writing a Financial Times article with quotations from extreme Climate Change sceptics and deniers ?

I suspect a heavy editorial hand :-

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6d1fd25c-9a69-11df-87fd-00144feab49a,dwp_uuid=728a07a0-53bc-11db-8a2a-0000779e2340.html

“Research says climate change undeniable : By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent, Published: July 28 2010″

This particular article, when picked up by CNN, has been heavily criticised by a Climate Change Science web log “The Way Things Break” :-

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/07/29/climate.change.noaa.ft/#fbid=Sv6nSUfQRmO

http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/new-study-lays-out-11-indicators-of-a-warming-world-media-focuses-on-contrarian-views/

“New study lays out 11 indicators of a warming world, media focuses on contrarian views : July 29, 2010 : Mainstream media reports continue to mislead in the name of “balance”…”

Whoops, cat !

What to make of this ?

Well, first off, I’d suggest that the views of the Climate Change sceptic-deniers quoted by Fiona Harvey are really quite outlandish, not-stand-up-in-a-court-of-law-type claims.

I think that Fiona Harvey was probably under orders to include sceptical-denial views, and chose some hugely outrageous examples in order to do what she was told, yet at the same time indicating to her readership how sane the Science appears by comparison.

For example, would you trust this man’s opinion on Climate Change Science :-

“…David Herro, the financier, who follows climate science as a hobby, said NOAA also “lacks credibility”…”

Maybe Fiona Harvey was instructed to pull as much web traffic to the Financial Times as possible, by offering up something a little itchy and scratchy for the media-followers to get their complaining teeth into.

Maybe Fiona Harvey has written in such a way as to protect her job, or maybe she genuinely believes that ridiculous, inaccurate and highly contentious sceptic-denier opinions need to be aired, one more tiresomely time.

Maybe, and this is a bit of a long-shot, maybe somebody from the corporate world has decided to shove the Financial Times around a bit for being so…so…scientific about Climate Change, and demanded some “balance”.

After all, Climate Change policy is going to involve spending some money in new directions, and that’s going to cost a bit, for a few years. And some people need to be protecting their baselines in the short-term from all that regulation and taxation that will drive the Renewable Energy transition.

Anyway, I give you the Financial Times article in a bit more detail, editing out all the doubt. If you get blocked from reading it through the URL Uniform Resource Locator HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol Internet Address, try Googling the headline and click their link – it should show the article in full :-

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6d1fd25c-9a69-11df-87fd-00144feab49a,dwp_uuid=728a07a0-53bc-11db-8a2a-0000779e2340.html

“Research says climate change undeniable : By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent, Published: July 28 2010″

“International scientists have injected fresh evidence into the debate over global warming, saying that climate change is “undeniable” and shows clear signs of “human fingerprints” in the first major piece of research since the “Climategate” controversy.”

“The research, headed by the US National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration, is based on new data not available for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report of 2007…”

“The NOAA study drew on up to 11 different indicators of climate, and found that each one pointed to a world that was warming owing to the influence of greenhouse gases, said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the UK’s Met Office, one of the agencies participating.”

“Seven indicators were rising, he said. These were: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, marine air temperature, sea level, ocean heat, humidity, and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the earth’s surface. Four indicators were declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers, spring snow cover in the northern hemisphere, and stratospheric temperatures.”

“Mr Stott said: “The whole of the climate system is acting in a way consistent with the effects of greenhouse gases.” “The fingerprints are clear,” he said. “The glaringly obvious explanation for this is warming from greenhouse gases.””

“Some scientists hailed the study as a refutation of the claims made by climate sceptics during the “Climategate” saga. Those scandals involved accusations…of flaws in the IPCC’s landmark 2007 report, and the release of hundreds of emails from climate scientists…”

““This confirms that while all of this [Climategate] was going on, the earth was continuing to warm. It shows that Climategate was a distraction, because it took the focus off what the science actually says,” said Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics.”

“…Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of NOAA, said the study found that the average temperature in the world had increased by 0.56° C (1° F) over the past 50 years. The rise “may seem small, but it has already altered our planet … Glaciers and sea ice are melting, heavy rainfall is intensifying, and heat waves are more common.””

It’s time we started getting our truth unadulterated and undiluted, in my view.

You, editorial line management at the Financial Times, unhand that young woman freethinker !

The story she covered was about Science and the reality and gravity of the situation. That message should be presented unmuddled and uncompromised, or the Financial Times editors are not doing their job properly, in my view.

Don’t they owe their readership the most accurate information on the real risks and opportunities accruing from Climate Change ?

If companies and investors get in at the basement of the Low Carbon Transition, if capital and assets are directed towards the development and deployment of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, then in the mid- to long- term, these players will be in the best financial position.

Those considered the most appropriate people were appointed to positions in the central Cabinet, people from both political parties, with the aim and ambition of working together closely and fraternally.

Back room agreements were painstakingly forged, deals were clearly made, and explained publicly in a transparent fashion. In the day-to-day operation of Government, it is made clear who is speaking on behalf of themselves, their party or the Coalition.

This is probably the best example of cooperative, progressive politics since…I don’t know when. But all Christopher Booker seems to want to do is snipe, moan and smear, and appears to throw in as many factually incorrect allegations and fake statistics about wind power as he possibly can.

I certainly wouldn’t pay him to write such divisive, unreferenced, unverified stuff. What’s he trying to do ? Split public opinion ? :-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1298176/Chris-Huhne-Has-minister-history-unfit-job.html

“Has any minister in history seemed more hopelessly unfit to do his job? : By CHRISTOPHER BOOKER : 28th July 2010 : The penny is fast dropping that by far the most disastrous appointment made by David Cameron to his Coalition Cabinet was that of the ultra-green, Lib Dem millionaire Chris Huhne as our Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. Yesterday, after Mr Huhne issued his first annual statement on Britain’s energy future, it was clear that we should all be very, very concerned about the future of Britain. As was only too predictable, the overall theme of Mr Huhne’s message was that ‘climate change is the greatest global challenge we face’. We must do everything we can and more to cut down very drastically on our ‘carbon emissions’, as we are now legally committed to do by the Climate Change Act – at a cost of £18 billion a year. But in the real world, the £100 billion-plus energy question that confronts us all in Britain today is how we are going to fill that massive, fast-looming gap in our electricity supplies when the antiquated power stations which currently supply us with two-fifths of the power needed to keep our economy running are forced to close…Like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown before him, he dreams we can somehow fill that gap by erecting 6,000 wind turbines in the seas around Britain’s shores, and thousands more across many of the most beautiful parts of our countryside. What is truly terrifying about Mr Huhne as our energy minister is that he seems so astonishingly ignorant about even the most basic principles of how electricity is produced…The Huhne solution to producing Britain’s energy is naivete verging on madness. But, most disturbingly of all, Mr Huhne is so infatuated with wind power that he seems to have convinced himself that, in cash terms, it is ‘intensely competitive’ with other means of making electricity. To make such a claim makes me believe that he’s never done a moment’s homework on the actual cost of wind power…If it wasn’t for the 100 per cent subsidy we all unwittingly pay to the developers of wind turbines – through a xompulsory levy in our electricity bills – no one would dream of building these ludicrously inefficient machines at all. Yet Mr Huhne tries to kid us into thinking that they are ‘intensely competitive’…”

I don’t know what Christopher Booker thinks he can achieve by apparently attempting to smear Chris Huhne. Huhne seems to be rather Teflon-covered, so Booker would need to do better that this, anyway.

Plus, you would have thought that Christopher Booker would be happy to have a more “libertarian” “conservative”, “right-wing” party, at least partially in power at last after 13 years. He probably believes in less taxes for the wealthy and businesses, less red tape in terms of regulatory control over business and financial activities; and he probably believes that a “small government” anti-Nanny State party like the Conservative Party can deliver that for him.

To his chagrin, he might find that more regulation and State intervention are necessary in the next decade or so – to compensate for the very lack of investment in energy infrastructure and plant he is fundamentally complaining about.

If you want more energy to meet the looming 2015 or 2017 “Energy Gap”, you are going to need more governance, because the private sector have been putting profit before investment ever since Our Dearly Beloved Margaret Thatcher The Chemist, Daughter Of A Most Grantham Grocer went down the route of the privatisation (selling off cheaply) of all public assets.

Keeping the Lights On now requires bold, central moves, and involves large amounts of tax revenue to be circulated through job creation and new energy projects, stimulating the Holy Economy like no other sector possibly can.

I mean, what else is going to give the Economy emergency resuscitation ? Manufacturing is dead. The Property bubble is well and truly burst. Financial Products are down the tube. Agriculture is flat. Technology is Chinese. Toys are Chinese. IKEA is Chinese. Everything we buy is made in China, in fact. Where’s the return on investment in Europe ? Only Energy provides the possibility of an expansion, of a strong, stable Economy.

You can forget Nuclear Power. Too expensive.

Spending money on wind turbines is never wasted. The fuel to drive wind turbines is free – not like the volatile prices we have seen for Fossil Fuels in the recent years.

There is a positive, significant rate of return on investing in wind power – and it has nothing to do with Government subsidies.

Wind Power is glorious, and if the turbulence profile outside my back door weren’t so choppy, I’d like to have a turbine in my back yard. Free power would increase my property value by 200% or so.

Image Credit : Gilbert & George, “Nettle Dance”, White Cube

I’m in the Climate Union. Are You ?

Soon we could all be, if the expansionist plans of a group of social campaigners come to fruition.

Taking in the unions, faith communities and the usual rag-tag bunch of issues activists, the Climate Union aims to establish itself as a political force for Low Carbon.

First of all, however, it has to tackle the uneasy and prickly problem of the exact name of the movement, and the principles under which it will operate.

The flag has been flown : a set of principles has been circulated for discussion amongst the “Climate Forum”. I cannot show you the finalised document yet, but I can offer you my comments (see below).

If you want to comment on the development of this emerging entity, please contact : Peter Robinson, Campaign against Climate Change, mobile/cell telephone in the UK : 07876595993.

Comments on the Climate Forum Principles
Jo Abbess
28 June 2010

I am aware that my comments are going to be a little challenging. I made similar comments during the review of the ClimateSafety briefing, which were highly criticised.

I expect you to be negative in response to what I say, but I think it is necessary to make sure the Climate Forum does not become watered-down, sectorally imprisoned and politically neutered, like so many other campaigns.

Comments on paragraph :-
“While there is an increasing awareness of the climate science, many governments are in practice opposed to implementing radical measure[s] to combat climate change [largely] because…such measures would appear to be in conflict with the interests of business, but also because they are uncertain if they would carry the majority of the public with them. The problem is that those in power do not necessarily have the will to bring about the legislation and the required actions.”

I would contest the assumption that “governments are in practice opposed to implementing radical measure[s]“.

My reasons are that I think that the reality of the situation is that governments are a little bit like mushrooms – kept in the dark and fed rotten sewage.

Although the governments do have access to the best Scientific information about Climate Change, they don’t always absorb it. On the other hand, they often do not have access to the best Economic information.

Governments often listen to some of the best Scientific information, and invest trust in the Scientific institutions. However, they have both a demon and an angel on their shoulder when it comes to Economic information.

The European Union is a classic example, of attempting to mesh together the best of Socialism and the worst of Neoliberalism. There are agents of Capitalism whispering into the ears of the inner circle policymakers the whole time, as evidenced by the work of such organisations as the Corporate Europe Observatory.

In the United Kingdom, when the “Recession”, sorry “Downturn” hit, Keynes and his pluralism was resurrected, but he has now been slain once more by the “Emergency Cuts Budget”.

The fight in Government is not over the Science. The anti-science crowd have picked off a few Members of Parliament with their vulture media tactics, but most MPs are on the ball as regards the Science of Climate Change, as are most of the Government Civil Services and Departments.

The synaptic gap is in translating that knowledge into effective Economic Policy, in my view. Pricing Carbon is not the solution, and even if it has an impact, it will not be a very large part of the solution. Public Finance for such things as Carbon Capture and Storage and New Nuclear will not achieve much – they are classic money pits schemes (or “boondoggle”, another American expression).

I think that the emphasis should be on educating the Government about the need to totally reform the Energy systems, the sourcing of Energy, and the use of Energy.

The reason why I think this is important can be seen in the approach taken to tobacco control. Since there was an enormous amount of money, both public and private, invested in the tobacco industry, it was not politically possible to close down the corporations that produced cigarettes.

Yet a total ban on cigarette smoking was indicated as necessary to the maintenance of public health.

Instead of shutting down the industry, the European governments began a two-pronged campaign, to outlaw smoking in various environments, and also to educate people.

After about 10 years, the tobacco industry saw the way things were going and went off to kill teenagers in China instead, in pursuit of the profit they continue to owe their shareholders.

I don’t think we have 10 years to effect a proper Climate Policy, and we certainly cannot continue to outsource Carbon Dioxide emissions to China through globalisation.

We need something more radical. For example, I suggest that we should call for a ban on the use of Coal to generate Electricity.

The other strand of the current situation is what the public appear to think when they answer opinion polls. Firstly, and importantly, their views don’t actually count towards setting Policy, as the Government is responsible to enact the Climate Change Act, not follow the whims of anti-wind farm lobby groups, pro-Carbon and anti-tax groups (for example).

Climate Change is not an issue about which people are entitled to vote. The cross-party imperative for Policy action is there, regardless of what Nigel Lawson, Christopher Booker, Steve McIntyre and James Delingpole think.

The Government has a mandate from the Climate Change Science, not from the people. However, it would be helpful if the people were more educated about the Science, and I would urge that the Climate Forum addresses directly the anti-science problems in the Media, where most people get their beliefs from.

Also, if would be helpful if the public could be asked to rally behind a basket of sensible, inclusive Policy measures – not taxation – but targeted spending and selective subsidies.

This is where the “One Million Green Jobs” initiative from the Campaign against Climate Change and the unions is so pertinent. A common, progressive agenda would help public debates to have better cohesion and less acrimony.

As for the phrase, “uncertain if they would carry the majority of the public with them”, I don’t believe that the public need to be encouraged to give the Government a “mandate”.

I believe it is naive, foolish and a waste of time and personal energy to suggest that the public need to be rallied to give the Government “a message”.

The Government already have the necessary information to act. What is needed is a general education of both Government and public about what is likely to work in terms of Social and Economic “engineering”.

It’s not about “voluntary behaviour change”. The Act on CO2 campaign asked everyone to drive 5 miles less a week. But over 50% of the population of driving age don’t have access to a car.

Public guilt-tripping is not only irrelevant, it’s unproductive. People who care are already doing the 10:10 initiative, or gave up flying and most home heating years ago.

People who know the problems and have decided to take personal action have already started their journey. The travel that needs to happen is in the field of those who provide us with our energy and fuel.

There has to be a new understanding that the Energy corporates must change – that BP, for example, must turn its production to Renewables or face corporate extinction.

There has to be massive disinvestment away from Carbon Energy and investment into Renewable Energy.

That can start with each one of us expressing a consumer “preference” in the way that we use our money, but it has to be carried higher and wider, with such activities of those of FairPensions.

In the end, it’s not the way we are taxed, but the way the whole Society uses money that determines our survival.

The Church of England, for example, has recently reported that their Commissioners have made a handsome profit on their investments. Which companies are in the top 20 shares held ? BP is one of those companies.

Yet the Church of England, in their Fifth Mark of Mission, say they want “To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth”. They can’t do that if they continue to invest in BP.

It is this kind of dilemma that needs to be addressed, not the debate about whether it is more energy efficient to use paper towels or hand dryers in public toilets.

If all the energy supplied to our homes and all the energy used in our transport systems were green, then it would not matter if we left the porch light on overnight by mistake.

There has to be a major shift in campaigning perception in my view. The energy system itself needs to be overhauled, not public opinion.

And anyway, what counts in Government is not public opinion, but the usual tendency of political views to be compromised by whichever business lobby is in the ascendance.

If the Government could be encouraged to make a clear statement about complete energy transition, a step far, far beyond the work of the Low Carbon Transition plan set out last year, then the tipping point might be near at hand.

It’s true that tackling the belief system of the Government would be helped by seeding the right ideas into the “Twittering classes”, who are strongly networked to the Government, but the major thrust of the Climate Forum surely has to be Government-facing, not public-facing.

I don’t want the Climate Forum to be a Government stooge. I don’t want the Climate Forum to end up as an outsourced public relations exercise – the Government have been using the NGOs to propagandise their plans for years. Gordon Brown and his Office were famously behind the Make Poverty History campaign from its inception.

I’m not against the whole concept of Government. In fact, I think organised government is the only way forward out of the Carbon mess. However, I think the Climate Forum needs to pitch itself as being opposed to lax regulation and weak thinking in Government, more than simply being a Social tool for change.

Reply from Ruth :-

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“Jo, really interesting stuff – thank you. I can’t quite see how the Climate Forum could be “government-facing”, with any clout without a huge supporter base, demonstrated by ralleys, lobbying post cards etc?”

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Reply to Ruth :-

=x=x=x=x=x=x=

Hi Ruth,

The current “campaign” mechanism has its focus on what individuals should be doing. The central theory is about how to change the behaviour of citizens and consumers. Even the 10:10 campaign is a glorified “Are you doing your bit ?”, “Lights Off” or “Save It” campaign.

When campaigns want people to act politically, the message is all about how the people have to mobilise, the people have to carry placards, write postcards, write to their MP, lobby Parliament, e-mail the media. The people have to take all this action. And for what ? To get our million man marches ignored by the political elite, or our petitions fobbed off by the Secretary of State.

Taking the message to Government doesn’t need to be backed up by getting 2 million people on the streets. In fact, in 2003 we managed to get 2 million people on the streets against the scheduled assault on Iraq. Did it make any difference ? No. Because the Government are not obliged to listen to “campaigners” and “protesters”, or act on what they demand.

The Government has to be analysed and critiqued within its own walls, using its own language, deploying its own policies. What level of authority do we need to accumulate to make a real difference ? Do we need maximum “bums on seats” in a campaign, or maximum political crowbars ?

Christian Aid and Oxfam love postcard campaigns. It means the paid staff need to do little work to respond to peoples’ concerns. Worried about Climate Change ? Fill in one of our postcards, then. I have heard an Oxfam campaigns worker recently say that much of their campaigns activity is “outsourced” to local activists, implying that it gave people something to do, even though it was ineffective.

Not cynical, just observant.

jo.

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Reply from Tony :-

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Dear Jo

Could you suggest a specific rewording of that paragraph that you referred to (and any others) based on your considered arguments? That is what Peter and Ann are looking for.

…

Regards

Tony

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Reply to Tony :-

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Dear Tony,

Thanks for asking for my wording.

What I was trying to explain in my comments is that I disagree pretty fundamentally with some of the theories the principles document is based on.

My comments are therefore in relation to the whole document.

My re-wording would take in an entire re-write of the document to place emphasis on effective political engagement with all those who have genuine decision-making authority, particularly and especially in regard to the energy companies.

Those mostly private organisations that provide us with energy and fuel need to be changing their behaviour, not our neighbours in our streets.

Those citizens who care are already committed. We don’t need another “campaign”. We need a networked research and response unit, continuously analysing the state of play in policy and corporate activities and feeding this back to everyone involved in a common, plain language.

I think that the focus of the Climate Forum should be holding the government and corporations genuinely and concretely accountable. And that is not going to be done by the normal “campaign” methods.

I have no idea whether other people feel the same way, so I don’t know if it’s worth trying to put in the energy to do another re-write of the document now, myself.

All I know is, if views like mine are not taken into consideration, then the membership of the movement risks being confined to “the usual suspects”.

Peter and Ann are looking for a re-wording of some of the paragraphs. Unfortunately, I question the whole of the document and the theories on which is is based.

If we want the same-old same-old piecemeal campaigning, then by all means, go ahead on the basis of the social theory that you need to “mobilise” people in order to have political change.

If you want a really different kind of organisation, with urgency and scope, you need a really different kind of movement tool.

Regards,

jo.

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Unpicking Kyoto
Jo Abbess
20 June 2010

CONTINUED FROM PART 1 AND PART 2

PART 3

Linking Climate Change to Trade

America and China are both “Carbon Intensity” first-movers – competing to make commitments that their economic production has falling associated Carbon Dioxide Emissions. The United States, China and Canada all continue to claim that their commitments on Climate Change amount to reductions in “carbon intensity”, rather than actual reductions in levels of emissions. This is a piece of policy propaganda, as proposed by linguistic strategists. A reduced carbon intensity of production would still allow countries to follow a path of economic growth, and increase carbon emissions overall. What is clear is that lower carbon intensities is not enough.

Behavioural economists, who look at both individual behaviour and collective social responses, have concluded a number of useful facts about humankind and its uses of resources. A good summary of what we know is provided by John Gowdy, writing in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 68 in 2008, “Behavioral economics and climate change policy” :-

http://www.sciencedirect.com

Some of his policy “clues” point the way.

In section 5.5, he writes, “Policy Clue 2: the ability to cooperate with unrelated others is an almost unique characteristic of the human species”. And then in section 5.8, he writes, “Responding to the climate change threat depends on returning to the level of human cooperation that prevailed in pre-industrial societies. Humans may be unique among mammals in the extent of their cooperation with others, but it is also true that humans are almost unique in the extent to which they are willing to annihilate members of their own species that do not belong to the “in” group. Experiments and observation show that people are more willing to cooperate with “like” others than with outgroup persons. The task of climate change policy is to make our entire species the “in” group. This was Georgescu-Roegen’s admonishment for sustainable behavior: “Love thy species as thyself.”"

It will remain vitally important to continue Climate Change negotiations on a global scale, emphasising all sectors of society and business, and emphasising the common risks. We’re doing Climate Change policy not just for the poor, and not just for the poor in Sub-Saharan Africa, Bangladesh and the Maldives; we’re doing it for ourselves, and that includes the poor in Sub-Saharan Africa, Bangladesh and the Maldives, because they are us, and we are them.

But cooperation is not all that is required. In section 5.6, Gowdy writes, “Policy Sub-Clue 2a: cooperation depends on the ability to punish free-riders…These findings and other gametheoretic experiments are valuable in informing climate change policy. [Joseph] Stiglitz (2006) calls for using the international trade framework to impose penalties on countries (such as the U.S. under the Bush administration) that refuse to cooperate in reducing CO2 emissions. He suggests that Japan, Europe, and other signatories of the Kyoto agreement should bring a WTO case against the U.S. for unfair trade subsidization arising from U.S. energy and environmental policies. “With a strong international sanction mechanism in place, all could rest assured that there was, at last, a level playing field” (Stiglitz, p. 2–3).”

This is a strong articulation that Climate Change should be linked tightly to trade, which makes a lot of sense. In the referenced article “A New Agenda for Global Warming”, published by Economists’ Voice, July 2006, Joseph Stiglitz argues for a global carbon tax, which has been contested from many quarters, for a variety of reasons. However, other parts of his proposals seem indispensable : enforcement, cooperation and using the World Trade Organisation as the vehicle.

Copy of Economists’ Voice Joseph Stiglitz article

“The first step is to create an enforcement mechanism to prevent a country like the United States, or any country which refuses to agree to or to implement emission reductions from inflicting harm on the rest of the world. It is, perhaps, predictable that it would be the United Sates, the largest polluter, that has refused to recognize the existence of the problem…Fortunately, we have an international trade framework that can be used to force states that inflict harm on others to behave in a better fashion. Except in certain limited situations (like agriculture), the WTO does not allow subsidies—obviously, if some country subsidizes its firms, the playing field is not level. A subsidy means that a firm does not pay the full costs of production. Not paying the cost of damage to the environment is a subsidy, just as not paying the full costs of workers would be. In most of the developed countries of the world today, firms are paying the cost of pollution to the global environment, in the form of taxes imposed on coal, oil, and gas. But American firms are being subsidized—and massively so.”

Stiglitz goes on to propose “border tax adjustments”, that countries should impose import taxes on American products, but that proposal has received very short shrift from a wide audience, particularly those that argue that American manufacture is much less carbon intensive than (for example) Chinese; yet China as a whole emits far, far less than America, so an import tax would be perverse.

Without setting a global carbon tax, or creating carbon border tax adjustments, it would still be possible to create the “level playing field” that Stiglitz proposes, through several mechanisms in the trade system :-

1. Green Trade

The vast majority of international trade is conducted through contracts of procurement, between companies/firms, or from public sector organisations and companies/firms. It would be possible for the World Trade Organisation to assert that procurement contracts should be based around “green trade” principles as a very basic start. What “green trade” means would need to be ironed out, but it would be easy to make a start. Many local authorities in the United Kingdom have a “green procurement” policy that dictates a large proportion of their spending. This is an excellent model to adopt on the global level.

2. Abolish Fossil Fuel Subsidies and “Dirty” Energy Investment

Since energy is considered a basic utility in most developed countries, its provision is assured by global subsidies on Nuclear, Oil, Gas and Coal energy, offering tax breaks and public infrastructure and plant investment. For example, the United Kingdom Government is likely to offer public money for the liability insurance required from the building and operation of a new fleet of nuclear reactors.

The G20 economic leadership group has made it clear that they would consider phasing out subsidies to fossil fuel industries, and this could become the basis for a more general understanding about what should be invested in and what should not.

A very practical first step would be to ban new coal-fired power plants.

3. Development Rights

In some cases, the exploitation of fossil fuel and other mineral resources causes a “curse” to fall on the countries of extraction – the citizens of the country suffer environmental pollution, but very little in terms of monetary benefit from the exploitation of those resources, often conducted by foreign companies. Examples could include the Niger Delta, Iraq, West Papua, Colombia, and even coal mining areas in industrialised countries. The “resource curse” usually results in a reversal of social and economic development – yet the world has undertaken to uphold the Millenium Development Goals and other targets.

The World Trade Organisation could insist on “conflict-free petrol” or “social development Natural Gas” as a recognition of global development rights.

A lot of the debate around the Kyoto Protocol focuses on development rights – should the global carbon budget be shared per person ? Meaning that poorer, undeveloped people get the opportunity to sell carbon, and the right to continue to grow their economies.

If development rights were enshrined in global trade rules, overcoming the “resource curse”, then this would answer many of the UNFCCC calls, without recourse to universal carbon budgeting.

4. Green Development

The poor have the right to follow an economic development path – but they also have the right to follow a green economic development path. The poor have a human right to access to green energy, and access to green markets.

The way that green energy is delivered to the developing countries will have to be different to the way that energy has been organised in industrial countries – which has been so wasteful and polluting.

For example, in rural Africa, India and China, green electricity may be highly localised and not available on a national grid.

For global support of the growth of green energy systems, international trade must “pay back” for the raw resources from developing countries. Transnational and global companie should be required to pay a certain percentage of their profits towards green electrification in developing countries where they source their cheap raw materials.

The poor need access to green markets. This is best achieved by expanding the Fair Trade system to incorporate green principles.

If these four principles were undertaken, it may not be necessary to enforce border tax adjustments on carbon (which would punish developing countries, perversely), or set a global carbon tax (the effectiveness of which is questionable).

It might even get the Doha Development Round talks re-started :-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doha_Development_Round

I sometimes read the Foreign Affairs magazine, as the articles are written by influential people, some of whom appear to be remarkably knowledgable and sane.

However, trying to read a recent piece by BP’s Chief Economist Christof Ruehl was a journey with little progress, so I’m sorry to admit I couldn’t bring myself to finish digesting it.

The man’s head appears to have been spun, or he might have had a mission to spin his readership. All the same, it’s worthy of a Koan award (see YouTube on this page).

“Global Energy After the Crisis : Prospects and Priorities” by Christof Ruehl, Chief Economist of BP plc, writing in Foreign Affairs Magazine, Volume 89, Number 2, March/April 2010 :-

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/trinidad_and_tobago/STAGING/home_assets/christof-ruehl-global-energy-after-crisis.pdf

NOTES ON THE ARTICLE

“Nonrenewable fossil-fuel energy and nuclear energy are produced by first converting and then burning natural resources.”

I beg your pudding ? Nuclear fuel is “burned” ?

“Because these resources are finite and unevenly distributed, they seem to become increasingly hard to come by when global economic activity expands.”

They don’t “seem” to become harder to come by, they “actually” become harder to come by, as time goes by, because they’re finite. It’s got little to do with the state of consumption rates in the economy. It’s got to do with the cumulative extraction amounts compared to the finite total sum.

“…the fear that the atmosphere’s capacity to absorb carbon emissions caused by humans may be exhausted long before humans’ capacity to find hydrocarbons in the earth’s crust and burn them for energy is.”

No, really, there’s no problem with continuing to pile increasing amounts of Greenhouse Gas into the atmosphere. The atmosphere can take it – it’s got over 99% capacity left. The atmosphere can continue to absorb carbon emissions for practically ever. The problem is that the carbon dioxide is not being absorbed out of the atmosphere fast enough by the plants and strata on the land and at sea to sustain a habitable environment.

“In many places, the main means of addressing these concerns has been to rely on markets, which make it easier to diversify supply and demand, substitute fuels, and make the most of the gains in efficiency brought on by technological change.”

I’ve got some news for you – the only substitution in fuels going on at the moment in BP is from dirty fossil fuels to extra-dirty fossil fuels. And as for technology, well, the more technology is deployed, the higher the carbon emissions. As technology gets more efficient, it gets more economic to roll out more technology leading to more emissions, not less.

“markets…the idea of putting a price on carbon has extended this approach to protecting the environment.”

Pardon ? How does putting a price on increasing volumes of trade protect the environment ? The more fossil fuels get traded, the more carbon emissions there are.

“But now global energy consumers are losing trust in these pricing mechanisms. In the five years prior to the summer of 2008, oil prices rose by 370 percent, traded coal by 460 percent, and natural gas by 120 percent. The prices of other raw materials, metals and even food increased in lockstep.”

Well, it’s not the price on carbon that’s caused this massive rise in the cost of energy and basic resources. Carbon pricing has not been comprehensively applied yet, although there are strong intentions to do so, even though there has not been much acceptance of the idea (for a range of very sound reasons).

“The only other time since World War II that prices rose that much was in the early 1970s. Back then, as recently, prices were driven by a surge in global economic growth.”

That’s potentially a bit of historical revisionism – in the early 1970s the American oil production peaked, so you could say that higher prices were a direct result of scarcity conditions.

“Yet the composition of growth differed markedly in these two instances. In the 1960s and early 1970s, economic growth – and with it growth in energy consumption – was driven by mature high-income economies; in the early years of this century, emerging-market economies got into the driver’s seat.”

It wasn’t the “driving seat” the emerging-market economics jumped into. The economic growth of such countries as China was the result of the globalisation pact – outsourcing production to China created massive trade volumes.

“Measured at market exchange rates, the contribution to global growth of the economies outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development grew from about 20 percent in the early 1990s to 50 percent today.”

Note : the measurement is described in units of percentage of global growth. So, this is not the size of whole economies that are being compared, but the rate at which they are growing – that is, creating debt and printing more money to put into circulation.

“And the rising influence of the developing world is disproportionate in energy markets: the non-OECD countries’ share of the growth in global energy consumption rose faster than their share of global economic growth over the same time period; it accelerated to more than 90 percent.”

Well, that’s to be expected. The non-OECD countries have not been great users of energy in the past, but to support their globalised activities, they need to use more energy. This is a real amount, counted in real units of energy, but priced in US Dollars.

Economic growth will be denominated in US Dollars too, so all prices depend on the purchasing parity power of the US Dollar, which has been sliding deep, deep down as the American economy has been falling of the Ponzi Scheme cliff.

“Energy intensity, the energy needed to produce one unit of GDP, in the developing world is three times as great as it is in the developed world. Using other exchange-rate definitions lessens these diffferences…”

But…GDP includes exports and includes imports…if China (for example) was selling raw materials at a discount to the United States (for another example), then their GDP will always be at a disadvantage.

It’s not energy intensity we are looking at here, but trade parity.

And of course, using other Exchange Rate definitions will certainly lessen the differences !

“Something will have to give over the next few decades: either energy efficiency will have to increase or growth in the emerging-market economies will slow down. No one wants growth to slow, but how can efficiency increase, especially in light of the economic crisis of 2007–9? On the back of tremendous volatility in the energy markets, the global recession caused demand to fall, spare capacity to rise, and prices to drop for all major fuels.”

Why does anything have to “give” ?

And you cannot compare energy efficiency with cost efficiency, as Christof Ruehl does here. Energy efficiency actually still implies Carbon Dioxide emissions efficiency, as over 90% of the energy in major countries is Fossil Fuel-based. It is still comparatively cheap to burn Coal, compared to Natural Gas, so burning Coal is more cost efficient, despite all the attempts to create emissions trading markets. Yet Coal is less carbon-efficient than Natural Gas. So more cost-efficient can mean less carbon-efficient.

“At market exchange rates, the average per capita income in non-OECD economies is $2,300, compared with $32,000 in the OECD.”

Why is that ? Because raw material sourcing economies don’t have as much PPP purchasing parity trading power with other countries. The rich countries have continued with their “extractative” model of governing world trade, putting all the resources of the poor countries at the disposal of the rich countries at low cost.

“Developing countries are energy intensive partly because of various ine/ciencies, particularly the widespread subsidization of energy.”

And the OECD countries don’t subsidise energy ? (They do, actually. Huge amounts.)

The non-OECD countries are actually more efficient in energy terms, as the majority of people on the planet use around a tenth of the energy that Europeans (for example) use.

“But the main explanation lies in the nature of economic growth. Comparing growth in developing and mature economies is like comparing apples and oranges: In mature economies, growth only gradually reshapes the sectoral composition of GDP and employment, and its principal effect is to expand the service sector. But in emerging-market economies over the last few years, growth has caused unprecedented structural transformation. Hundreds of millions of people have left low-energy-intensive activities, such as agriculture, for energy-intensive activities, such as construction and industry. And it is this process of industrialization that increases an economy’s energy intensity.”

Er, yes. That’s what “economic development” has been doing everywhere in developing economies : building energy-intensive infrastructure and energy-intensive manufacturing and energy-intensive transport.

And the only reason that “mature” economies can progress along carbon-efficient paths to a service-based model is because all the carbon-intensive manufacture and industry has been outsourced to developing countries.

“Since the late 1990s, growth in power generation has been accelerating in the non-OECD countries and decelerating in the OECD countries.”

Yes, non-OECD countries have been developing. That’s the pearl we offered them in order to allow us to continue to strip their territories of natural resources at low prices.

“Another pattern has emerged: power-generation growth in the non-OECD countries overall exceeds GDP growth, and this is not the case in the OECD countries.”

Yes, that’s because the non-OECD countries choose much cheaper, dirtier fuels, because they are poorer.

It’s no good. I can’t read any more of this.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100025341/climategate-mad-sunday/

I have been rubbing my chin and hmmming quietly to myself, as I to try to understand it, and I think I might have a thread of an idea : money, or rather, the use of money…

Here is a short, very polite enquiry note I have written to him using his online contact form :-

http://jamesdelingpole.com/contact/

Dear James,

I am researching a short article on the possible relationships between financial investments and politics in the Media.

It occurs to me that not only do journalists follow the whims and wiles of their editors, who follow the foibles and fetishes of those who own their media vehicle, and those who advertise in their media; but that journalists may have personal investments, in say, pension funds, estates or businesses that may affect their public pronouncements.

Would you, James Delingpole, be prepared to go on the record about where you keep your money ?

Would you be willing to say publicly whose pension fund(s) you are relying on, and which kind of investments you are prepared to accept in making returns on that capital ?

Is your money ethically invested ? Do you take into account the risks and opportunities of fluctuating conditions when you decide your investments ? Do you follow future projections when making your financial decisions ?

Would you be willing to declare your interests in business and your professional associations ?

Would you be ready to admit which investments you have made, in order that I may ascertain whether this might influence your attitudes and opinions ?

You have the privilege of a very wide readership, and thus an influential platform from which to lead opinion, and so I feel it is important to discover whether your professed political positioning may relate to how you use your money.

Can you, hand on honest heart, declare that your writing is independent of your money, and that your politics is free from the influence of your investments ?

Inquisitively yours,

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/807821-pensioners-burn-books-for-warmth

“Miles Erwin – 5th January, 2010 : Pensioners burn books for warmth : Hard-up pensioners have resorted to buying books from charity shops and burning them to keep warm. Volunteers have reported that ‘a large number’ of elderly customers are snapping up hardbacks as cheap fuel for their fires and stoves…”

I have taken a fat orange highlighter pen to his more tendentious and incensing statements, and am scratching comments in the margins to indicate my extreme displeasure.

What is it about Anthony Giddens’ phraseology that so irritates me ? I’ll pass over the more nebulous, inaccurate rubbish like his mention of “political scientists” – politics is no more science than the study of fine art. And I’ll try really hard not to call him ideologically-challenged, based on his references to unproven economic theories as if they were axiomatic facts.

My key dislike to his approach seems to be crystallising around his dismissiveness of other peoples’ points of view; his loose, callous talk is likely to alienate a good many people, and he needs repudiation.

Climate Change needs a confederate, collaborative approach. It needs cross-party, cross-sector cooperation. It does not need Anthony Giddens trying to define some kind of unique niche, putting his unique ideological position, and that of his close colleagues, on the pedestal of correctness and efficacy.

Allow me to quote more from Pages 4, 5 and 6 of the Introduction to his book “The Politics of Climate Change”, my copy of which I have so far been able to resist the temptation to shred to make a cosy blanket for my compost bin worms :-

START OF QUOTATION

As for SUVs, so for the world: there is a long way to go before rhetoric becomes reality. Politicians have woken up to the scale and urgency of the problem and many countries have recently introduced ambitious climate change policies. Over the past few years, a threshold has been crossed: most political leaders are now well aware of the hazards posed by climate change and the need to respond to them. Yet this is just the first wave – the bringing of the issue onto the political agenda. The second wave must involve embedding it in our institutions and in the everyday concerns of citizens, and here, for reasons just mentioned, there is a great deal of work to do. The international community is on board, at least in principle. Negotiations aimed at limiting global warming have taken place at meetings organized by the United Nations, starting in Rio in 1992, moving on to Kyoto in 1997 and then to Bali in 2007, in an attempt to get global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. They are still continuing, but have produced little in the way of concrete results so far.

Much of this book concentrates on climate change policy in the industrial countries. It is these countries that pumped most of the emissions into the atmosphere in the first place, and they have to take prime responsibility for controlling them in the near fuure. They must take the lead in reducing emissions, moving towards a low-carbon economy and making the social reforms with which these changes will have to be integrated. If they can’t do these things, no one else will.

I want to make the somewhat startling assertion that, at present, we have no politics of climate change. In other words, we do not have a developed analysis of the political innovations that have to be made if our aspirations to limit global warming are to become real. It is a strange and indefensible absence, which I have written this book to try to repair. My approach is grounded in realism. There are many who say that coping with climate change is too difficult a problem to be dealt with within the confines of orthodox politics. Up to a point I agree with them, since quite profound changes will be required in our established ways of political thinking. Yet we have to work with the institutions that already exist and in ways that respect parliamentary democracy.

The state will be an all-important actor, since so many powers remain in its hands, whether one talks of domestic or or international policy. There is no way of forcing states to sign up to international agreements; and even if they choose to do so, implementing whatever is agreed will largely be the responsibility of each individual state. Emission trading markets can only work if the price of carbon is capped, and at a demanding level, a decision that has to be made and implemented politically. Technological advance will be vital to our chances of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but support from the state will be necessary to get it off the ground. The one major supra-national entity that exists, the European Union, is heavily dependent on decisions taken by its member nations, since its control over them is quite limited.

Markets have a much bigger role to play in mitigating climate change than simply in the area of emissions trading. There are many fields where market forces can produce results that no other agency of framework could manage. In principle, where a price can be put on an environmental good without affronting other values, it should be done, since competition will then create increased efficiency whenever that good is exchanged. However, active state intervention is once again called for. The environmental costs entailed by economic processes often form what economists call ‘externalities’ – they are not paid for by those who incur them. The aim of public policy should be to make sure that, wherever possible, such costs are internalized – that is, brought into the marketplace.

‘The state’, of course, comprises a diversity of levels, including regional, city and local government. In a global era, it operates within the context of what political scientists call multilayered governance, stretching upwards into the international arena and downwards to regions, cities and localities. To emphasize the importance of the state to climate change policy is not to argue for a reversion to top-down government. On the contrary, the most dramatic initiatives are likely to bubble up from the actions of far-sighted individuals and from the energy of civil society. States will have to work with a variety of other agencies and bodies, as well as with other countries and international organizations if they are to be effective.

One can’t discuss the politics of climate change without mentioning the green movement, which has been a leading influence on environmental politics for many years. It has had a major impact in forcing the issue of climate change onto the political agenda. ‘Going green’ has become more or less synonymous with endeavours to limit climate change. Yet there are big problems. The green movement has its origins in the hostile emotions that industrialism aroused among the early conservationists. Especially in its latter-day development in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, the greens defined themselves in opposition to orthodox politics. Neither position is especially helpful to the task of integrating environmental concerns into our established political institutions. Just what is and what is not valuable in green political philosophies has to be sorted out.

END OF QUOTATION

Anthony Giddens writes : “As for SUVs, so for the world: there is a long way to go before rhetoric becomes reality.” He fails to address one of the key problems with politics – a general inertia, a resistance to change. By constantly making reference to “public opinion”, often constructed by the Media, politics dare not tread outside the narrow trammels of expectation. As it has been, in policy, so shall it be.

He also omits to see the larger picture : that politics must move not only faster, but wider, into the strange realm of change. Voluntary targets on Carbon Emissions can never be enough. There must be Zero Tolerance on Carbon. But this cannot be completely managed from Central Government.

Anthony Giddens writes : “Yet this is just the first wave – the bringing of the issue onto the political agenda. The second wave must involve embedding it in our institutions and in the everyday concerns of citizens…” Here he is taking quite a liberty in defining what is happening, taking the credit for what is happening, and showing remarkably fascistic tendencies in asserting the need for central politics to influence the minds of the electorate. Is it the responsibility of the Central Government to impress upon all the national institutions and the peoples the necessity of policy on Climate Change ? How is democracy involved in this process ? And are not people responsible for their own approach to their growing knowledge of the onset of Global Warming ?

Anthony Giddens writes : “The international community is on board, at least in principle.” Is that “on board” with his ideas ? Is Anthony Giddens somehow in command of the ideological framework that is necessary to communicate to get movement on Climate Change ? Is Anthony Giddens setting the agenda ?

Anthony Giddens writes : “The state will be an all-important actor, since so many powers remain in its hands, whether one talks of domestic or or international policy. There is no way of forcing states to sign up to international agreements; and even if they choose to do so, implementing whatever is agreed will largely be the responsibility of each individual state.”

There is a huge element that he does not discuss here : the corporate organisations to which most governments outsource functions of trade, social utilities and Energy. Many transnational corporations are global companies of such size they dwarf the economies of individual governments.

In a sense, it does not really matter if the nations sign up to a treaty on Climate Change. Without the cooperation of the corporations, a Climate Change treaty ain’t going nowhere, fast.

The question of how individual nation states can implement Climate Change depends to a huge extent on how they can break the tourniquet of “business interests” that dictate or lead many national policies on trade, manufacture and infrastructural provision.

Many corporates have viewed signing up to Climate Change control as signing their own death warrants. And it’s the corporates that will be relied upon to implement nations’ Climate Change policies.

Anthony Giddens write : “Emission trading markets can only work if the price of carbon is capped, and at a demanding level…” Er, no. The amount of Carbon needs to be capped, not the price. There are always going to be forces that operate to keep the price of Carbon low. In fact the theory of the “efficiency” of markets leads to this potential outcome – that Carbon will be priced according to the needs of the international business community. The amount of Carbon available as permits or national allowances needs to be capped and ratcheted downwards, year on year, in order to stimulate Carbon reductions. If a “floor price” on Carbon is deliberated, it will guarantee large sums of money are made available to expensive technological approaches to Carbon Emissions reductions, such as Nuclear Power and Carbon Capture and Storage. However, that would mitigate against cheaper or near-zero-cost options, as all the funds would be sucked out of the economy to pay for the expensive stuff.

Anthony Giddens writes : “Technological advance will be vital to our chances of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but support from the state will be necessary to get it off the ground.” Here he buys into several myths at once. He seems to be assuming that technology can continue to advance at the same pace as it has in the past. Many technologies have reached their zenith. Some recent proposals investigated violate the Laws of Physics or use more Fossil Fuel Energy than in the past. For example, some forms of BioDiesel, trumpeted only a few short years ago as the ultimate vehicle fuel solution, have turned out to have shortcomings in several of its incarnations.

Plus, throwing more money into Research and Development will not necessarily guarantee the same kinds of returns on investment in future. The reason ? Most technological advances deployed to markets cause higher Energy consumption.

In addition, we don’t need yet more Research and Development, effectively delaying concrete action. Most, perhaps all, of the technologies we need to solve Climate Change are already tried and tested.

Any new Energy infrastructure requires massive investment. If the current corporate network feels they cannot do this kind of investment, because they don’t want to hurt the feelings of their shareholders, then states around the world will have to stump up taxpayer cash for the Energy Revival. In this case, the nation states should retain the profit from these investments. The states should own the new technologies and plant and pipeline and wire grids.

Anthony Giddens states the Classical Economist’s golden rule : “In principle, where a price can be put on an environmental good without affronting other values, it should be done, since competition will then create increased efficiency whenever that good is exchanged.” But Carbon is an environmental “bad”, not “good”. Nobody wants Carbon Emissions to be on their books, but they are stuck with Carbon Assets. And as always, Carbon Emissions will be hidden in trade, as nobody wants to buy it. People will resist accounting for Carbon Emissions in all forms of exchange. They call this “Carbon Leakage”.

And here is my big question : how is putting a price on Carbon Emissions going to stop them ? Carbon Emissions are one of the foundations of the global Economy. Taxing Carbon is like a universal tax on everything.

Anthony Giddens writes : “The aim of public policy should be to make sure that, wherever possible, such costs are internalized – that is, brought into the marketplace.” No, not “internalized” – Carbon Emissions externalities should be eliminated, not costed. This is where the notion of environmental taxation really falls down in a heap. The aim of public policy should be to eliminate Carbon Emissions, not charge people for them.

Anthony Giddens writes : “To emphasize the importance of the state to climate change policy is not to argue for a reversion to top-down government. On the contrary, the most dramatic initiatives are likely to bubble up from the actions of far-sighted individuals and from the energy of civil society.” But these “far-sighted individuals” don’t have any influence beyond “civil society”, and even there, they don’t have much influence. It’s patronising to ask people to Keep Calm and Carry On Campaigning and lobbying and marching and writing letters and Climate Camping when experience shows that policy is unaffected by these actions.

Anthony Giddens carries on patronisingly, “One can’t discuss the politics of climate change without mentioning the green movement, which has been a leading influence on environmental politics for many years. It has had a major impact in forcing the issue of climate change onto the political agenda.” He omits to alight on a huge ideological problem : that the political agenda effectively ignores the green movement.

Anthony Giddens then gets my goat : “The green movement has its origins in the hostile emotions that industrialism aroused among the early conservationists. Especially in its latter-day development in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, the greens defined themselves in opposition to orthodox politics. Neither position is especially helpful to the task of integrating environmental concerns into our established political institutions. Just what is and what is not valuable in green political philosophies has to be sorted out.”

It is at this point that I throw the book on the floor, uttering choice words of dubious meaning. I do then have to apologise to the people around me, as I pick up the book.

What was it that so disgusted me ?

The key to any democratic evolution is debate – it is people taking up a position and opposing others who have another position. Opposition is the heart of politics. Being in opposition to the “ruling” party, or the prevailing dogma is not wrong; it’s not “hostile”.

I’d hate to have a conversation with Anthony Giddens over dinner. If I took up a position that was different to his, he’d call me “hostile”.

This is where Anthony Giddens has “demonised the opposition” and loses all shreds of intelligent analysis.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/solution-to-the-carbon-problem-could-be-under-the-ground-1660002.html

“Solution to the carbon problem could be under the ground : Hope for the fight against climate change as study finds greenhouse gas can be buried without fear of leaking : By Steve Connor, Science Editor : Thursday, 2 April 2009 : Carbon dioxide captured from the chimneys of power stations could be safely buried underground for thousands of years without the risk of the greenhouse gas seeping into the atmosphere, a study has found.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090401134602.htm

“Carbon Capture Has A Sparkling Future, New Findings Show : ScienceDaily (Apr. 2, 2009) — New research shows that for millions of years carbon dioxide has been stored safely and naturally in underground water in gas fields saturated with the greenhouse gas. The findings – published in Nature April 1 – bring carbon capture and storage a step closer. Politicians are committed to cutting levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide to slow climate change. Carbon capture and storage is one approach to cut levels of the gas until cleaner energy sources are developed.”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/02/2533070.htm?section=australia

“Natural carbon capture encourages scientists : By Richard Lindell for AM : Posted Thu Apr 2, 2009 12:12pm AEDT : CO2 capture: scientists say they can use the earth’s natural ability to hold gas as a way of countering emissions. Researchers have found that nature has been storing CO2 safely in water within gas fields for millions of years. The findings, published this morning in the scientific journal Nature, are an important step in proving the viability of carbon capture and storage in depleted oil and gas fields. The lead researcher, Dr Stuart Gilfillan from the University of Edinburgh, says if CO2 is injected into a depleted oil or gas field he would expect that CO2 would dissolve into that water over time…Dr Gilfillan says his team was able to show there was no leakage from the fields, which occur naturally around the world.”

http://www.nerc.ac.uk/press/releases/2009/08-carbon.asp

“Carbon capture has a sparkling future : 2 April 2009 : New research shows that for millions of years carbon dioxide has been stored safely and naturally in underground water in gas fields saturated with the greenhouse gas. The findings – published in Nature yesterday – bring carbon capture and storage a step closer. Politicians are committed to cutting levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide to slow climate change. Carbon capture and storage is one approach to cut levels of the gas until cleaner energy sources are developed. But the risks around the long-term storage of millions of cubic metres of carbon dioxide in depleted gas and oil fields has met with some concern, not least because of the possibility of some of the gas escaping and being released back to the atmosphere. Until now, researchers couldn’t be sure how the gas would be securely trapped underground.”

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Storing–underground-is-safe.5132672.jp

“Storing underground is safe, say Scots experts : Published Date: 02 April 2009 : By Jenny Haworth : CARBON dioxide can be stored safely underground for millions of years, Scots scientists have shown. Their research demonstrates that the technique of capturing from power stations and storing it underground could be used safely. Hope is being pinned on the technology, known as carbon capture and storage, to enable fossil-fuel power stations to continue operating without adding to climate change. There have been concerns about the risks of storing underground in depleted gasfields and oilfields, with fears it could escape back into the atmosphere. However, scientists from the universities of Edinburgh and Manchester analysed nine gasfields around the world and discovered had been stored in them naturally for millions of years. Mainly the gas was dissolved in water.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/carboncapture/5088287/Carbon-capture-and-storage-moves-a-step-closer.html

“Home > Earth > Energy > Carbon Capture : Carbon capture and storage moves a step closer : Greenhouse gases can be stored safely stored under the sea for millions of years, scientists have discovered, in a major step forward in the fight against climate change. : By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent : Last Updated: 11:06AM BST 01 Apr 2009 : Storing carbon dioxide underground in a process known as carbon capture and storage or CCS would enable fossil fuel power stations in countries like India and China to continue operating without harming the environment. The technology is also being considered by the British Government as a way of enabling new coal-fired power stations like Kingsnorth to continue operating while meeting ambitious climate change targets on cutting carbon emissions. However, until now it has not been certain whether it would be safe to store the carbon dioxide underground over a long period of time without leakage occuring. Now a study published in the journal Nature has shown that for millions of years carbon dioxide has been stored safely and naturally in underground water in gas fields saturated with the greenhouse gas. In the first real studies into greenhouse gas storage, rather than looking at computer models, scientists examined how the carbon dioxide dissolved in nine gas fields in North America, China and Europe. These gas fields were naturally filled with carbon dioxide thousands or millions of years ago.”

But the future is not all bright or all right :-

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/04/01/tech-090401-carbon.html

“Nature’s underground carbon stores aren’t rock solid : Instead, they’re wet and fizzy like bottled drinks, study finds : Last Updated: Wednesday, April 1, 2009 | 6:00 PM ET : CBC News : Carbon dioxide stored in water can erupt back into the atmosphere through natural vents such as the Chaffin Ranch geyser in Utah. Carbon dioxide stored underground in nature eventually ends up mainly in fizzy water, not rocks — and that could have implications for artificial carbon capture and storage projects. A new study by British, Canadian and U.S. researchers, published in Thursday’s edition of Nature, sheds some light on the conditions that allow carbon dioxide to be safely stored underground for thousands or millions of years, as well conditions under which it might leak back out into the atmosphere.”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/02/fizzy_water_carbon_capture/

“Carbon capture would create fizzy underground oceans : North Sea could turn to Perrier, cautions prof : By Lewis Page : Posted in Environment, 2nd April 2009 13:23 GMT : New research has possibly given a boost to the idea of carbon capture, indicating that CO2 is sometimes held dissolved in underground water for millions of years. However, it is acknowledged that CO2 contained in subterranean water is prone to bubble out again, and often does so – famously at naturally-sparkling springs, for instance. The new information comes from a novel carbon-sequestration study carried out by government-funded researchers in the UK and Canada. Rather than using computer modelling, the scientists examined nine gas fields in North America, China and Europe. They used isotopes of carbon and noble trace gases (helium, neon) as tracers to work out what had happened to CO2 naturally present in the ground many millennia in the past.”

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?STORY_ID=13226661

“Carbon capture and storage : Trouble in store : Mar 5th 2009 : From The Economist : Politicians are pinning their hopes for delivery from global warming on a technology that is not quite airtight : A RECENT American television advertisement features a series of trustworthy-looking individuals affirming their faith in the potential of “clean coal”. One by one, a sensible old lady in a hat, a lab-coated scientist standing by a microscope, a fresh-faced young schoolteacher, a weather-beaten farmer and a can-do machinist face the camera square-on and declare, “I believe.” The idea that clean coal, or to be more specific, a technology known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), will save the world from global warming has become something of an article of faith among policymakers too. CCS features prominently in all the main blueprints for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The Stern Review, a celebrated report on the economics of climate change, considers it “essential”. It provides one of the seven tranches of emissions cuts proposed by Robert Socolow of Princeton University. The International Energy Agency (IEA) reckons the world will need over 200 power plants equipped with CCS by 2030 to limit the rise in average global temperatures to about 3°C—a bigger increase than many scientists would like…
The problem with CCS is the cost. The chemical steps in the capture consume energy, as do the compression and transport of the carbon dioxide. That will use up a quarter or more of the output of a power station fitted with CCS, according to most estimates. So plants with CCS will need to be at least a third bigger than normal ones to generate the same net amount of power, and will also consume at least a third more fuel. In addition, there is the extra expense of building the capture plant and the injection pipelines. If the storage site is far from the power plant, yet more energy will be needed to move the carbon dioxide.”

But why do we go along with the general happy wave of optimistic propaganda about the future developments of technology ?

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/04/facing-decline-facing-ourselves.html

“Wednesday, April 01, 2009 : Facing Decline, Facing Ourselves : Of all the fallacies that surround the contemporary crisis of industrial civilization, and have done so much to bring that crisis down on us, the most seductive is the assumption that it’s a technical problem that can be solved by technical means. That’s an easy assumption to make, for a variety of reasons, but it puts us in the situation of the drunkard in the old joke who looks for his keys under the streetlight half a block from the dark sidewalk where he dropped them, since under the streetlight he can at least see what he’s doing. The technical aspects of our predicament, though challenging, are the least of our worries; it’s the other aspects that have proven intractable. Consider the project of cutting US per capita energy consumption to a third of its present level. Given that the average European uses a third as much energy each year as the average American, and in many ways gets a better standard of living out of it, this is far from impossible; a great deal of the technology is sitting on the shelf only one continent away, in effect, and simply needs to be put to work. Now of course such a project would require a great deal of investment in railways, mass transit, urban redevelopment, and the like, but what’s been spent on recent military adventures in the Middle East would cover much of it – and let’s not even talk about what could be done with the funds being wasted right now to prop up Wall Street banks looted by their own executives in the final blowoff of an epoch of corporate kleptocracy. The return on the investment needed to cut our energy use to European levels, in turn, would be immense. Since the US still produces more than a third of the oil it uses, to name only one result, we would no longer be sending billions of dollars a year to line the pockets of Middle Eastern despots; we’d be a net exporter of oil – even, quite conceivably, a member of OPEC. So why isn’t so sensible a project being debated right now in the halls of Congress? Why, more broadly, has energy conservation through lifestyle change – arguably the single easiest and most cost effective option we have on hand in dealing with the end of the age of cheap oil – been entirely off the political and cultural radar screens since the end of the 1970s, so much so that most of those who have noticed that we’re running out of cheap abundant energy have framed the issue entirely in terms of finding some technical gimmick that will let us keep on living the way we live now?”

CCS is coming. It will be slow. It will not be universal. It will be an expensive niche product, attracting high Carbon Credits, which means it will be mostly in China, under a “transfer of technology” agreement. It’s going to remain expensive.

Real, deep Carbon cuts are going to cost you nothing, actually. In the end, universal recession will put the brakes on the burning of Fossil Fuels and the globalised trade in trees, Indonesian/Malaysian rainforest palm oil, and Amazonian-ranched meat and soya will collapse.

I noticed he was carrying a camera with quite a large lens, so I said to him, “You can’t believe anything you read in the papers”, trying this gambit to get him to spill about what he was doing.

He gave a non-commital response, and we didn’t strike up.

As we continued the journey, I noticed he kept checking his mobile phone, so just before he got off the train, I asked him, “So, what have you been shooting ?”

“Just some flowers”, he said, a little nervously, and then conspiratorially he showed me his digital frame and clicked through some of the said still life shots, “Flowers, and some vegetables”, he commentated.

I congratulated him on his shots, and I asked him where he would post them. He wasn’t sure, so I called out to him as he left “Indymedia ! Indymedia !”

At least he wasn’t injured, unlike some poor fellow mentioned here :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/02/g20-protests-london

“Police have been criticised for the force they used to break up protests yesterday, with baton-wielding officers said to be pushing through a line of tents and bicycles and charging a sitdown protest. One photographer has also contacted the Guardian alleging police prevented him doing his job and attacked him, leaving him with a broken arm. He said he was furious at the treatment by officers who appeared to be lost in a “red mist” of anger. “I covered the poll tax riots,” he said. “Yesterday made them look like a Sunday afternoon picnic.” ”