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Big Bunny
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Re: The Propaganda Continues VII
« Reply #270 on Jun 22, 2012, 1:01pm »
21 June 2012 Last updated at 08:58 GMT
Rio+20: Sir Paul backs Greenpeace Arctic campaign
By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News, Rio de Janeiro
Greenpeace is launching a campaign to have the Arctic region declared a sanctuary by the United Nations.
The group aims for a million signatures on a petition calling for an end to oil exploration and unsustainable fishing, which will be planted on the sea bed.
Celebrities such as Sir Paul McCartney, actor Robert Redford and the boy band One Direction are among the backers.
The move comes as a response to what the environment group regards as the "epic failure" of the Rio+20 summit.
'War footing'
The summit aimed to put the global economy on a more sustainable footing - enhancing economic wealth, especially for the poorest on earth, while protecting the environment.
But environment groups are bitterly disappointed that governments have chosen not to press forward on issues such as ending fossil fuel subsidies, enhancing energy efficiency and espousing the idea of a "green economy".
"The fightback starts here," said Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International.
"The Arctic is coming under assault, and needs people from around the world to stand up and demand action to protect it.
"A ban on offshore oil drilling and unsustainable fishing would be a huge victory against the forces ranged against this precious region and the four million people who live there."
Mr Naidoo, who previously campaigned to end apartheid in his native South Africa, told the Guardian newspaper on the fringes of the Rio+20 summit that Greenpeace was moving to a "war footing" as a result of the Rio outcome.
The first 100 signatories on the new petition include explorers, business leaders, actors and musicians.
Film director Pedro Almodovar and his sometime leading lady Penelope Cruz, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, actor Javier Bardem and businessman Sir Richard Branson are on the list unveiled at Rio+20.
"It seems madness that we are willing to go to the ends of the earth to find the last drops of oil when our best scientific minds are telling us we need to get off fossil fuels to give our children a future," said Sir Paul.
"At some time, in some place, we need to take a stand. I believe that time is now and that place is the Arctic."
Thom Yorke added: "An oil spill in the Arctic would devastate this region of breathtaking beauty, while burning that oil will only add to the biggest problem we all face, climate change."
Another signatory, Xena and Battlestar Galactica actress Lucy Lawless, is due to be sentenced in September for blocking operations on a Shell oil rig in the Arctic earlier this year.
The Arctic is warming up faster than almost any other part of the planet.
The area of ocean covered by sea ice each summer is shrinking. If current trends continue, it will set a new record low for the satellite era this year.
As the sea ice recedes, it becomes easier for companies to prospect for oil and gas, with the US, Canada, Greenland and Russia among countries pursuing this nascent industry.
Greenpeace is calling for an agreement to ban environmentally damaging activities in the Arctic region, just as they were banned in the Antarctic 21 years ago under a protocol added to the Antarctic Treaty.
It is not the first organisation to call for such an agreement. Proposals date back to the 1970s, but have never gained political traction.
In 2007, acting under instruction from Moscow, explorer Artur Chilingarov planted a Russian flag on the seabed beneath the pole, laying claim to the area.
The Greenpeace action aims to counteract that by planting a scroll signed by at least a million people in the same place, claiming it as a sanctuary.
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our childrens future."
John F. Kennedy
Big Bunny
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Re: The Propaganda Continues VII
« Reply #271 on Jun 22, 2012, 1:29pm »
Rio+20 Earth summit talks turn into rubber-stamp job
UN chief urges leaders to be more ambitious after concerns they will sign a pre-negotiated text but won't commit on key issues
Jonathan Watts and Adam Vaughan
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 June 2012 22.20 BST
Delegates and non-governmental organisations at the UN's huge Rio+20 conference have expressed dismay that world leaders arriving on Wednesday to thrash out a deal will do little more than rubber-stamp a negotiating text that contains few concrete measures and has been largely locked down.
Campaigners had hoped the arrival of world leaders such as the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg and Russian president Vladimir Putin would mean the ambition of the final agreement could be raised.
The text, made public on Tuesday, was greeted with disappointment by those who urged negotiators to be more ambitious on issues such as clean energy and water provision for the poorest. But it emerged that delegates' presence would be reduced to a largely ceremonial role, making at most minor tweaks to the agreement.
The Brazilian hosts seem to be trying to avoid a repeat of the shambles at the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009, which ended without a substantive deal after hours of tense negotiations.
A spokesperson for the UK delegation said: "All countries have agreed to it, but it has to be put to the heads of state in the next few days ... we don't expect the text to get reopened, or to get significant changes ... There will be very little, if any, change."
Clegg, leading the UK delegation, described the text as "a real step forward", but added: "It may not be as ambitious as if I were able to write it myself ... But, by definition, any text that is agreed by 190 countries will always involve compromises and dilution ... The key is what direction does this point us all in.
"My view is that the draft text assembled by the hosts unambiguously pushes us all towards a world where we treasure, measure and protect sustainable development in a way we have never done before."
The UN major group of NGOs, an umbrella group, condemned the document. "With governments only trying to protect their narrow interests instead of trying to inspire the world ... it will be a big failure ... You cannot have a document called the Future We Want without any mention of planetary boundaries, tipping points or planetary carrying capacity ... The text as it stands is completely out of touch with reality."
Although it promises to establish sustainable development goals and other objectives in 26 areas, the terminology is vague.
Most timetables, targets, financing figures, methods of monitoring and strong language on commitments were stripped from the document by the hosts in an attempt to secure a compromise before the leaders arrived.
The word "encourage" appears 50 times, "we will" only five; "support" is used 99 times, "must" just three.
In a press conference after his opening address, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon acknowledged that negotiations had failed to live up to expectations: "Some member states hoped for a bolder ambitious document. I also hoped that we could have a more ambitious outcome document.
"But you should understand that negotiations have been very difficult and very slow because of all these conflicting interests."
The document was practical and far-reaching, he added, but its significance would depend on the political will of national leaders.
The document will be discussed at high-level talks this week. It is thought unlikely negotiations on the wording will be reopened, but Ban urged world leaders to be more ambitious.
"Why do we have a summit meeting? The leaders are the ones who can make a political decision. Depending on the political priorities they choose, the consequences will be huge. If these actions are not implemented, then this will merely be a piece of paper," he said.
Brazil has declared the preliminary talks a success. With a draft agreement in place, it hopes leaders can now concentrate on how to build political momentum and policies that will support the broad goals on water, energy provision, sustainable agriculture and ocean protection.
The UN environment programme will also be strengthened, and studies will begin on alternatives to GDP as a measure of national wellbeing, and the valuation of ecological services.
Eurozone crisis and US presidential race 'damaged Rio+20 prospects'
'Mother of sustainability' Gro Harlem Brundtland laments the absence of Barack Obama and David Cameron from the summit
Jonathan Watts in Rio de Janeiro
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 June 2012 12.53 BST
Building a global consensus on sustainability is becoming increasingly difficult as a result of economic crises and a US political climate that is increasingly hostile to action on climate change, according to Gro Harlem Brundtland, one of the chief architects of the first Rio Earth summit in 1992.
The former Norwegian prime minister lamented the absence of Barack Obama, David Cameron and many other leaders from the follow-up Rio+20 conference currently taking place in Brazil, but said they faced circumstances that are very different from those of the 1992 summit.
"The absences are not good and they don't look good. One explanation is the terrible difficulties in Europe. The Europeans would normally feel like they should be here," she told the Guardian. "The financial and economic problems that some countries face don't make it easier for them to agree on things that they would have agreed to before 2008."
In the US, she saw a worrying decline in political support for environmental issues. "The election scene is an obvious factor in the decision by Obama not to be here. The climate issue on the American scene has been really difficult for years and in many ways it is worse now than three or four years ago. The Republican right the Tea party, etc are building around climate denial. In that sense, the American scene is deteriorating on these issues."
Bruntland was speaking on the sidelines of the Rio+20 conference, prior to UN member states accepting a draft agreement that was widely criticised for setting inadequate targets to draw the global economy off an environmentally destructive path.
Bruntland said she could understand why people felt disillusioned and why many participants felt powerless, but she said strong action was needed to offset a degree of environmental decline that is pushing at planetary boundaries with an impact on food security and commodity prices.
"We are not going to get out of the crisis without turning some stones and taking seriously the need to create jobs and make changes. Forward-looking leaders should be taking that on board to create a sustainable development model instead of digging down and not daring to take initiatives with a longer-term perspective."
Few people know the risks and opportunities better. In 1983, Brundtland was given arguably the most important task in the world: to plot a new path for humanity that restores the balance between economic growth and environmental protection, or as it often appeared in the headlines, to "save the planet".
The Bruntland Commission went on to define what is now referred to as "sustainable development" and paved the way for the '92 summit that established the architecture of global environmental governance, including key conventions on climate and biodiversity.
Since then, poverty rates have improved but the global environment has deteriorated sharply as 1.6 billion people have been added to the population and consumption levels have increased in rich nations and the growing middle class of emerging economies.
Bruntland said the decline of the environment was predicted in 1992, but the measures that were put in place to address it have not been properly carried out. The shortcomings were in the implementation not the original strategy, she said.
"There are no gaps," she said. "We don't need to reinvent the wheel and think of new concepts and strategies. The point is the lack of political follow-up to the decisions that were made and the concepts that were agreed in Rio twenty years ago."
While the first Earth summit was driven by optimism and idealism to save the planet, negotiators at the Rio+20 gathering appear to have appealed instead to baser human instincts: self-survival and profit.
One of the key tools mentioned in the draft document is the promotion of a "green economy", which aims to create jobs and profits through low-carbon, resource-saving businesses. There are also moves to put an economic value on environmental services provided by nature, and to incorporate environmental factors alongside GDP as a measure of national well-being.
A key objective of the talks is to interlink "three pillars" economy, society and environment. This has alarmed many conservationists who say the environment should be given higher priority because it is the base without which it is impossible to build either an economy or a society.
Bruntland says humanity's dependence on the earth should remain in people's minds, but it would be naive to pursue a strategy that was unlikely to secure widespread support.
"People will struggle for their own lives and social needs. So unless we can deal with all three issues together then we will not succeed in saving the environment," she said. "Idealism isn't enough. We see that. But it mustn't be left behind because then we are worse off."
The "mother of sustainability" as she is sometimes known, expressed alarm at many of the trends she had observed since she started in this field.
She said: "We are approaching the kinds of limits in many areas that lead to increased pressure on the environment and the prices of commodities.
"No doubt. Food security is in quite bad shape. When you look at rise in global population from 7 to 9 billion in the coming decades, the additional food that needs to be produced is enormous. We need about 45% more food by 2050 than we have today. So yes, it is already having an effect, which only adds to the necessity of changing this."
Like many scientific institutions, she believes the key to a solution would be the provision of contraception to the 215 million women in the world who want family planning, but this has lagged due to growing political sensitivities surrounding the issue.
"This issue has become a difficult issue to talk about. As soon as you say that the sum of the total population adds to the burden on our combined resources then some people don't like to hear that, although it is an obvious self-evident truth," she said.
Bruntland sees the agreement on sustainable development goals as the defining issue for Rio+20, but she is also exploring other approaches beyond high-level negotiation.
As well as advising the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, Bruntland is in Brazil as a representative of the Elders a group of senior statesman including Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Tutu, Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson who are committed to a more equitable and sustainable world. They have held joint events with youth groups in a cross-generational attempt to raise awareness, pass on knowledge and jointly search for solution.
Asked if humanity has to wait until the expected peak of the human population in 2050 before we can expect an improvement in the environment, she gives a swift response: "No we cannot do that. It would be a disaster. Rio+20 has to be a turning point for future generations and for the planet."
Rio+20 politicians deliver 'new definition of hypocrisy' claim NGOs
Greenpeace, WWF and Oxfam criticise world leaders for shirking responsibilities and say civil society must act in their place
Liz Ford in Rio de Janeiro
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 June 2012 17.54 BST
World leaders at the Rio+20 Earth summit in Brazil delivered a "new definition of hypocrisy" for standing in the way of progress and failing so far to challenge the text of the draft outcome document, NGO leaders said on Thursday.
Daniel Mittler, political director of Greenpeace, said: "The epic failure of Rio+20 was a reminder [that] short-term corporate profit rules over the interests of people." He said the outcome of the conference was "nothing short of disastrous", as governments came offering no money or commitments to action.
"They say they can't put money on the table because of the economic crisis, but they spend money on greedy banks and on saving those who caused the crisis. They spend $1 trillion a year on subsidies for fossil fuels and then tell us they don't have any money to give to sustainable development."
Lasse Gustavsson, executive director for conservation at WWF, said two years of "sophisticated UN diplomacy has given us nothing more than more poverty, more conflict and more environmental destruction". He said WWF had participated in numerous preparatory committee meetings in the runup to Rio, but there was very little to show from its efforts.
Sharan Burrow, general secretary at the International Trade Union Confederation, who flew to Rio on Wednesday after attending the G20 meeting in Mexico, criticised leaders for their lack of courage in not challenging the document text, written by a team of negotiators, and for doing nothing to adopt a new model of development.
She told the meeting that people should show politicians how they felt by not voting for them if they did not take decisive action. "The world we want will not be delivered by world leaders, who lack courage to come here and sit at the table to negotiate," said Burrow. "They take no responsibility. The reality is we are living beyond our planetary means."
A recent poll of 175 million members of the trade union movement around the world found that the majority were disillusioned and had no hope that the next generation would fare better, she said. Leaders, she said, needed to seriously invest in green job creation.
But although politicians have failed to impress at Rio, the NGOs agreed the conference provided an opportunity to mobilise people to act.
Gustavsson said the 3,000 side events had shown the commitment and "strong leadership" of civil society groups, city mayors and the private sector. "Sustainable development will have to happen without the blessing of world leaders. Governments will need to play catch-up," he said.
Barbara Stocking, chief executive of Oxfam GB, said it was time to "pick up and move on. Civil society has to take action. They must do what they do." She added that a meeting in Rome on Friday among four European leaders could put in motion a financial transaction tax (FTT), which could generate millions that could support efforts to alleviate poverty.
The tax is opposed by the UK prime minister David Cameron, but has found support, at least in theory, among other European leaders. Friday's talk will primarily be about the Eurozone crisis, but the FTT will also be under discussion. "The key thing will be to get an agreement and get this under way," Stocking said. The money made on the tax should be spent on climate change adaption and development, she added.
Peter Lehner, executive director of the National Resources Defence Council, said his organisation had launched a website, cloud of commitments, that would track the promises made by countries and the private sector at Rio
He said it was "critical that we don't equate Rio with a document. It's not what it should be about. We don't save the world with a document." He added that Rio+20 could be a catalyst for action: "People are armed for real action. The document could do a lot more but the important thing is to see Rio as a catalyst for people around the world. Now it's our turn to take the energy of people and convert that into action."
Rio+20 protesters perform 'ritual rip-up' of negotiated text
Anger rises at Rio Earth summit, as raucous demo focuses on Future We Want text that 'moves us forward by inches'
Jonathan Watts, in Rio de Janeiro
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 June 2012 19.41 BST
Protest erupted in the Rio+20 conference centre on Thursday as civil rights groups carried out a "ritual rip-up" of a negotiating text that they condemn as a betrayal of future generations.
Climate campaigner and founder of 350.org Bill McKibben joined youth delegates, indigenous groups and environmental NGOs in the raucous demonstration, which included speeches and songs in the walkway outside the plenary pavilion.
"We were promised leaps and bounds but this agreement barely moves us forward by inches," shouted Cam Fenton, a Canadian in the Major Group of Children and Youth, as protesters ripped up a giant mock text that they called "The Future We Bought".
"World leaders have delivered something that fails to move the world forward from the first Rio summit, showing up with empty promises at Rio+20," said Miariana Calderon, a young woman from California. "This text is a polluters' plan, and unless people start listening to the people, history will remember it as a failure for the people and the planet."
A short distance away, the Earth summit was underway, but negotiations on the outcome text the Future We Want were finished before the arrival on Wednesday of more than 150 world leaders and ministers.
Despite widespread disappointment at the weak content, the visiting leaders Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg and other national representatives have largely been given a ceremonial role in the talks.
Eleven-year-old Ta'Kaiya Blaney of the Sliammon nation, an indigenous group from British Columbia, sang to the gathering and appealed for action. "What are we going to leave for future generations. There'll be no environment left without change. It needs to come not tomorrow, but today."
"This kind of action is important. If change is to come it won't be inside the conference halls, it will be made here outside. These meetings just ratify weakness of what we have done," said McKibben. "The script doesn't seem to advance anything. The real news today is that sea ice in the Arctic is at a record low for the date and that every state in the United States, except for North Dakota, has temperatures above 90 degrees."
Security were said to have declared the protest "an unsanctioned action", which meant that participants risked losing their venue passes. "What use is this anyway," said one speaker.
The police presence was much higher outside the conference venue than in previous days. Ranks of riot police lined up outside the main entrance, armed troops patrolled in dinghies on the nearby lake and navy frigates cruised alongside the ocean highway that delegates take from hotels to the RioCentro conference venue.
Climate change envoy warns against cutting investment in green energy
John Ashton warns that failure to deal with climate change would amplify problems such as water and food insecurity
Juliette Jowit, political correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 22 June 2012 02.27 BST
The government's climate change envoy has warned that failure to take more action to invest in a low carbon economy is a threat to the future "prosperity and security" of the British people.
John Ashton, who has just stepped down from his post at the Foreign Office, told MPs that the UK was still considered an influential global player on climate change, but signalled that position was at risk as the country was falling behind on investment in energy efficiency and clean energy.
This in turn would make it harder to meet global targets to limit global warming to 2C - the level at which experts consider most countries will cope with the ensuing disruption to weather patterns.
"Failure to deal with climate change would amplify already dangerous stresses arising from food, water and energy insecurity," Ashton told the energy and climate change select committee. "This potentially unmanageable combination of stresses poses a systemic risk to the security and prosperity of our country."
In 2004 the government's then chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, made headlines around the world when he declared that climate change was "the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism".
However, the growing political consensus for tackling climate change, which culminated in the 2008 Climate Change Act committing the UK to binding emissions reductions, has appeared to be breaking down in the last two years as lack of economic growth and savage public spending cuts have eroded support for sometimes costly policies.
These issues came to a head in February when more than 100 Conservative MPs signed a letter to the prime minister, David Cameron, calling for an end to onshore windfarms.
Ashton, who left his six-year post two weeks ago, said he sympathised with concerns that UK efforts to combat climate change would be an expensive failure if other countries did not follow suit. However in a thinly-veiled warning about the damage done by draining political support for 'green' policies, he said the UK's diplomatic efforts to persuade other countries to reduce the world's reliance on oil and other fossil fuels "depends on what we are doing at home" and the "consensus across the political spectrum".
Ashton also told MPs that far from leading the world, the UK was falling behind important economic competitors such as Germany, Korea, China and Japan in some of the big future industries such as offshore wind energy and carbon capture and storage systems for gas and coal power stations.
"Internationally we must resolve the false choice, exacerbated by the current crisis, between economic security and climate security," said Ashton. "A rapid shift to low carbon growth is essential for security, competitiveness and prosperity, not an intolerable risk to competitiveness, jobs and growth."
"Politically we must address this not as a distraction from our current problems, but as part of the solution to them," he added.
Tory committee member Dr Phillip Lee challenged Ashton, however, suggesting that there were still hundreds of millions of people who wanted a better standard of living in developing countries like China, and in the UK during the recession, who would not support policies which pushed up the price of energy and so goods and services they wanted to buy.
"It's seen that going green is going to slow down the growth that we need," added Lee.
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our childrens future."
John F. Kennedy
Big Bunny
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Re: The Propaganda Continues VII
« Reply #272 on Jun 22, 2012, 1:31pm »
Rio+20 draft text is 283 paragraphs of fluff
World leaders have spent 20 years bracing themselves to express 'deep concern' about the world's environmental crises, but not to do anything about them
In 1992, world leaders signed up to something called "sustainability". Few of them were clear about what it meant; I suspect that many of them had no idea. Perhaps as a result, it did not take long for this concept to mutate into something subtly different: "sustainable development". Then it made a short jump to another term: "sustainable growth". And now, in the 2012 Rio+20 text that world leaders are about to adopt, it has subtly mutated once more: into "sustained growth".
This term crops up 16 times in the document, where it is used interchangeably with sustainability and sustainable development. But if sustainability means anything, it is surely the opposite of sustained growth. Sustained growth on a finite planet is the essence of unsustainability.
As political economist Robert Skidelsky, who comes at this issue from a different angle, observes in the Guardian today:
"Aristotle knew of insatiability only as a personal vice; he had no inkling of the collective, politically orchestrated insatiability that we call economic growth. The civilization of "always more" would have struck him as moral and political madness. And, beyond a certain point, it is also economic madness. This is not just or mainly because we will soon enough run up against the natural limits to growth. It is because we cannot go on for much longer economising on labour faster than we can find new uses for it."
Several of the more outrageous deletions proposed by the United States such as any mention of rights or equity or of common but differentiated responsibilities have been rebuffed. In other respects the Obama government's purge has succeeded, striking out such concepts as "unsustainable consumption and production patterns" and the proposed decoupling of economic growth from the use of natural resources.
At least the states due to sign this document haven't ripped up the declarations from the last Earth summit, 20 years ago. But in terms of progress since then, that's as far as it goes. Reaffirming the Rio 1992 commitments is perhaps the most radical principle in the entire declaration.
As a result, the draft document, which seems set to become the final document, takes us precisely nowhere: 190 governments have spent 20 years bracing themselves to "acknowledge", "recognise" and express "deep concern" about the world's environmental crises, but not to do anything about them.
This paragraph from the declaration sums up the problem for me:
"We recognise that the planet Earth and its ecosystems are our home and that Mother Earth is a common expression in a number of countries and regions and we note that some countries recognise the rights of nature in the context of the promotion of sustainable development. We are convinced that in order to achieve a just balance among the economic, social and environment needs of present and future generations, it is necessary to promote harmony with nature."
It sounds lovely, doesn't it? It could be illustrated with rainbows and psychedelic unicorns and stuck on the door of your toilet. But without any proposed means of implementation, it might just as well be deployed for a different function in the same room.
The declaration is remarkable for its absence of figures, dates and targets. It is as stuffed with meaningless platitudes as an advertisement for payday loans, but without the necessary menace. There is nothing to work with here, no programme, no sense of urgency or call for concrete action beyond the inadequate measures already agreed in previous flaccid declarations. Its tone and contents would be better suited to a retirement homily than a response to a complex of escalating global crises.
The draft and probably final declaration is 283 paragraphs of fluff. It suggests that the 190 governments due to approve it have, in effect, given up on multilateralism, given up on the world and given up on us. So what do we do now? That is the topic I intend to address in my column next week.
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our childrens future."
John F. Kennedy
Big Bunny
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Re: The Propaganda Continues VII
« Reply #273 on Jun 22, 2012, 1:58pm »
Rio+20 summit must move world beyond 'grow now, clean up later'
The Earth summit has to ensure sustainability is at the heart of growth models the swelling global population depends on it
Connie Hedegaard
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 June 2012 15.33 BST
Growth in itself is neither our enemy nor our problem. But what kind of economic growth do we need? And do we want growth at any cost?
A child born today is one of seven billion people on Earth, and during its lifetime will see the world's population grow by another 3 billion.
At the same time, more people enter the global middle class. That is good news. But more people and a bigger middle class will inevitably put further strain on the planet's capacity to meet our needs. By the time the child born today turns 18 in 2030, the world, will need at least 50% more food, 45% more energy and 30% more water, according to the UN. How are we going to cope with that?
These numbers show that, as world leaders join the Rio+20 summit tomorrow, continuing with business as usual is clearly not an option. It would be wrong to believe it is the cheap option. It is not. On the contrary, it would be very costly in economic, environmental and human terms.
For instance the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) reported earlier this month that damage from climate change could cost Latin American and Caribbean countries $100bn per year by 2050. Not a small figure. This is one example of why we need a more sustainable growth model that captures the value of a country's natural wealth, of a clean environment, of social cohesion.
The traditional way of measuring economic growth based on GDP alone is not sufficient. GDP is nothing more than a measure of production. It takes no account of human wellbeing or natural wealth.
For example, GDP gives no value to a forest until it is chopped down and turned into timber. Likewise, natural disasters that kill people and destroy infrastructure and cultural heritage are positive for GDP because the reconstruction works that follow boost economic activity.
Putting a price on environmental pollution is also crucial to building a sustainable model for global growth. The cost of production cannot be the only factor determining the price of a product. The true cost of its environmental impact also needs to be factored into the price if people are to have an incentive to buy the least harmful and resource-intensive products available.
That is why the Global Sustainability Panel report recommends that, by 2020, all governments establish price signals that value sustainability. This would help guide the consumption and investment decisions of households, businesses and the public sector in a more sustainable direction.
The "grow now, clean up later" mantra is no longer viable. Polluters must be made to pay now instead of sending an unpayable bill to future generations. But we must do this in a smart way. Putting a price on carbon emissions is one of the ways to raise additional money for investments in sustainable development, especially in developing countries.
The EU is already moving in this direction. We have a price on carbon, binding targets for reducing carbon emissions and increasing renewable energy, and an array of energy efficiency measures. And we are looking at smarter ways to use the tax system so that in future we tax less what people earn and more what they burn in terms of fossil fuels.
But developed countries cannot tackle environmental challenges alone. The reality is that today emerging economies account for the biggest growth, not least in energy consumption and emissions. We are at a point where all countries have to act, in line with their respective capabilities and responsibilities.
As for state subsidies for fossil fuels, they have no place in today's world. They must be phased out as the G20 has pledged. In 2011, fossil-fuel worldwide received about six times more government subsidies than were given to the renewable energy industry, according the International Energy Agency (IEA).
With the current economic and climate crisis, how smart is it that governments worldwide spend $400bn a year of taxpayers' money subsidising dirty fuels that exacerbate climate change and air pollution? We would do better to spend this money on improving energy efficiency and promoting clean and affordable energy for all.
Last year, global greenhouse gas emissions reached their highest ever level. This underlines once again the need for urgent action on a truly global scale.
We must use the Rio+20 summit to kick off the global transition to a sustainable growth model for the 21st century. Inclusive, greener growth needs to be at the heart of the global economic agenda from now on if a growing world population is to enjoy prosperity, without exhausting the planet's finite resources for future generations.
Rio cannot afford not to have concrete results. Rio must get it right.
Connie Hedegaard is the EU Commissioner for Climate Action
Rio's reprise must set hard deadlines for development
Twenty years ago we saw breakthrough: this time we need follow through. The state of the planet is a shared responsibility
Nick Clegg
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 June 2012 19.59 BST
Twenty years ago the world's leaders did something tremendous. Meeting at the historic Earth summit in Rio, governments agreed that we must start living within our means. They saw that hoovering up or wrecking precious natural resources to get rich quick today would only leave us poorer tomorrow. Development would have to become more sustainable. Everybody would have to play their part.
Tomorrow morning I arrive in Brazil for Rio's 20-year reprise. I don't expect this week's meeting will be as show-stopping as that in 1992, but it matters just as much.
The legacy of the original Earth summit is under serious threat. There has been important progress, but actions have not met ambitions. Too many people still lack food: tonight, one billion will go hungry. There isn't enough clean energy: right now women in some of the poorest communities are fuelling their homes with tyres and plastics. Despite the noxious fumes produced, they rely on anything that will burn. Dirty water and poor sanitation kill a child every 30 seconds.
These aren't someone else's problems. We have a moral duty to help prevent this suffering, and we all share responsibility for the planet we leave behind. And in a global economy, resource scarcity affects everyone: food costs more; heating bills rise; far-flung conflicts drive extremism on our streets. In just 40 years the earth's population could increase by a staggering two billion. What will happen if there isn't enough food, water or energy for all those people? There'll be greater poverty, worse disease, more war and we will all bear the cost.
So if 1992 was a breakthrough, 2012 must be about follow-through. Despite our continuing difficulties, developed economies must not sacrifice long-term sustainability in the name of short-term growth. It's a false choice: we need to strive for both. And the opportunities in the green economy are enormous. Last year the UK's low carbon sector grew by almost 5%.
In these uncertain times nations must also resist the temptation to turn inwards. Of course, individually, we must each do our bit. I'm proud that the UK is sticking to our commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on development by 2013. But it's a fact of modern politics that governments can only foster prosperity by working together. And in Rio we need a show of solidarity to drive three big shifts.
First, we want more national governments to broaden their understanding of wealth. Gross domestic product is vital in measuring economic performance, but it doesn't capture the full picture. It says nothing about natural capital the forests, farmland, rivers, and coastline on which future prosperity depends. The UK is working on a kind of "GDP+" so that, by 2020, our national accounts reflect these assets. Botswana has pioneered this kind of thinking since the 1980s. The government calculates the cost to the environment from mining and then invests in other parts of the economy, like education, to offset the damage. We want to see others follow suit.
Second, Rio must set out a plan for the future. The best way to drive progress is through clear ambitions with hard deadlines. The millennium development goals were designed to alleviate poverty throughout the world, and have galvanised dozens of states and international organisations around that task. The UN's High Level Panel co-chaired by the prime minister and the presidents of Liberia and Indonesia will lead an inclusive, transparent process to help shape a new generation of development goals when the millennium development goals expire in 2015. Rio will be a critical step along the way. We're proposing a package of sustainable development goals to rally the international community around ensuring that all people, everywhere, have access to food, clean water and green energy. Agreeing these will be a huge undertaking but this week we need to get them off the ground.
And finally, we need to bring business in. Using resources responsibly is in business's own interests too. Pepsi depends on water, Unilever depends on fish stocks and agricultural land, and every firm relies on a stable fuel supply. But while nine out of 10 chief executives say sustainability is fundamental to their success, only two out of 10 record the resources they consume. So the UK will press for governments to come together, working with those companies already blazing a trail, to give "sustainability reporting" a global push. By agreeing common standards and practices we can get many more firms on board. And in the UK, from the start of next financial year, all firms listed on the London Stock Exchange will have to report the levels of greenhouse gases they emit.
On each of these fronts, ambition will be key. We must revive the spirit of our predecessors to get the world on to a more sustainable path. Twenty years on from the Earth summit, we need to get back on track.
Rio+20: protecting the environment is not enough
A three-dimensional approach to development is now needed one that combines social, economic and environmental concerns
Antonio Patriota
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 June 2012 10.22 BST
Rio+20 is a landmark for the future. As more than 190 countries gather in Rio, we are witnessing a historic moment. The recent global crisis has shown that old-fashioned views about development are misleading. It is now time to rethink the very foundations of how we consider development, wellbeing and wealth.
Over the past four decades, the world has increasingly realised that our natural resources are under serious pressure. A growing awareness of the need to ensure sustainability has led a whole new generation to consider the requirements of sustainable development in its decisions to produce or consume. This is no small achievement. Rio 92 was a major step forward. Important legal texts on key issues were adopted. These conventions ensured important progress that we must maintain and build on.
We now face a complex challenge. Protecting the environment is not enough. We need to encourage public and private decision-makers to incorporate environmental and social concerns into economic planning and growth strategies. This will require a new thinking from policymakers, experts, business people, project managers and many other public and private actors in order to plan and implement sustainable development initiatives.
From now on, a three-dimensional approach to development is crucial, one that combines social, economic and environmental concerns. Rio+20 is endeavouring to become the launch pad for this new development model. This is why one of the main topics of Rio+20 is building consensus around the need for "sustainable development goals". They will offer a blueprint for international co-operation on sustainable development for years to come. Future strategies, be it for governments, entrepreneurs or civil society, must offer a balanced and integrated approach encompassing the three pillars of sustainable development.
In order to achieve this result, Brazil decided to adopt new methods. Innovative tools for multilateral meetings were introduced, bringing national governments and global civil society together. The Dialogues for Sustainable Development, a Brazilian initiative enthusiastically embraced by the UN, opened straightforward means of communication between interested groups and civil society on key aspects of decision-making. Through an online platform, more than 1 million votes were cast, expressing views on 10 issues related to the conference. Topics ranged from energy and water to sustainable cities and food security. During four days in Rio, sharing the venue of the summit, experts, businessmen, activists and journalists engaged in live debates and streamlined the proposals that will be handed to the heads of state and government. The "Rio dialogues" were so successful that the UN is now considering turning this initiative into a standard practice for future summits.
Another key objective of Rio+20 is the strengthening of the UN framework for sustainable development, with a view to greater efficiency and consistency across issues.
Rio+20 has launched an important debate on green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication, based on the understanding that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. A green economy only makes sense for developing countries if it is accompanied by a significant improvement in the living standards of the population, with special attention to the most vulnerable.
Rio+20 involves an assessment of the past 20 years and a look into the next few decades. We are confident that this message will echo through the years, fostering new initiatives which can lead to a more sustainable future for all.
Rio+20 has Unilever but not Cameron a sign of our unsustainable times
In 1992, it was the EU and other developed nations that called the shots. Twenty years on, the geopolitics looks very different
Jonathon Porritt
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 June 2012 08.30 BST
More than 100 world leaders will have descended on Rio this week to sign up to some kind of high-level communique currently being cobbled together by droves of "sherpas" grinding their way through the most God-forsakenly inadequate draft statement I've ever seen.
David Cameron will not be among those leaders Nick Clegg and Caroline Spelman are flying the UK's increasingly tattered sustainable development flag.
I rather doubt that anyone will be listening to either of them, but they might be struck by the fact that the UK delegation in Rio is made up not just of ministers and officials but of representatives both of civil society (in the shape of Oxfam and WWF) and of big business (Unilever and Aviva).
I see this as a sign of our unsustainable times. Twenty years on from the 1992 Earth Summit, it seems to be almost universally accepted that governments have less scope and less appetite for governing, and that much more influence (if not power) has flowed over to big business and capital markets.
That's not necessarily seen as a good thing by most people in the NGO community. In their eyes, no amount of "corporate responsibility" can possibly compensate for the damage done in the name of profit maximisation.
At the same time, NGOs are deeply concerned that the UN itself has been significantly weakened since 1992. The United Nations Environment Programme has been starved of the funds it needs; the Commission on Sustainable Development (set up after the 1992 Earth Summit) is seen as a useless talkshop; and no amount of UN eco-blather can counter the real power exercised by the World Trade Organisation.
The debate going on now at Rio+20 on "governance for a sustainable world" is therefore a predictably strangulated process or, rather, a process strangled by powerful nations that have no intention of giving up any more sovereignty.
It's now a widely held view that all UN processes with a direct bearing on sustainability (including the stalled talks on climate change) are not fit for purpose. Gridlock rules. But nobody can think of any better way of doing things.
That's the vacuum into which powerful multinational companies are now entering somewhat nervously, it has to be said. In Rio on Monday, for instance, there was an announcement of a significant new voluntary agreement on the part of the Consumer Goods Forum to help end tropical deforestation by ensuring that none of the raw materials those companies source will contribute to further forest loss. It's an agreement brokered by Unilever and other fast-moving consumer goods companies and global retailers. Even the NGOs acknowledge that it could make a big difference.
Indeed, there's a constant buzz of interest in Rio about new partnerships of one kind or another: cross-sector "coalitions of the willing"; big corporates and UN agencies (including the World Health Organisation and Unicef) joining forces; and more and more NGOs "accepting reality" through increasingly creative partnerships with progressive companies. Toss into that swirling mix an infusion of megabucks from philanthrocapitalists such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and you can see why today's global governance map looks so radically different 20 years on.
So does that mean governments have written themselves out of today's "save the Earth" script? By no means. But the governance map is increasingly divided between nations that are still making things happen and those paralysed by economic problems or vacillating leadership. A once-unified EU exemplifies that trend, with Germany, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries just getting on with it, and countries like the UK, Spain, Portugal and Italy completely losing the plot.
Not that the EU counts for as much as it once did. Far more attention in Rio today is being paid to what China and Brazil are bringing to the party than anything coming from exhausted OECD countries.
Although it's almost impossible to exaggerate the level of environmental damage done by China's growth-at-all-costs strategy over the past 20 years, there's now an inspiring willingness to start doing things differently.
At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, it was the EU and other developed nations that called the shots. Twenty years on, the "geopolitics" of sustainability looks very different though it has to be said there's nothing much to show for it as yet. Indeed, the net sum of political leadership on show in Rio this week is still distressingly inadequate.
Palm trees and controversy: the world's top judges and lawyers at Rio+20
The influence of UK supreme court judge, Lord Carnwath, led to the world congress's most important recommendation
Stanley Johnson
guardian.co.uk, Friday 22 June 2012 16.26 BST
The world congress on justice, governance and law for environmental sustainabilty, which took place June 17-20 under the sponsorship of the UN environment programme, held both its opening and concluding sessions in the magnificent setting of Rio de Janeiro's Tribunal de Justiça. Chief justices, heads of jurisdiction, attorneys general, chief prosecutors, and other high-ranking representatives of the judicial, legal and auditing professions have been present in Rio over the last few days with the object of feeding their own recommendations into the work of the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development now taking place at heads of state and heads of government level.
The Bible speaks of "deep calling unto deep". Well here, over the last few days, it has been "summit calling to summit". On the first day we heard some moving statements by their supreme honours, if that is the right way to address the world's chief justices. Ricardo Luis Lorenzetti, president of Argentina's supreme court, told the august gathering that it was the duty of the judiciary to stop the politicians reneging on their promises. "The key role of the judiciary is that we do not depend on election" he said.
For the next three days participants repaired to a luxurious seaside hotel at Mangaratiba about 100 miles south of Rio. There, amid the sound of waving palm trees and the lapping oceans, they sat down to work out exactly what message it was they wanted to convey to the world's political leaders.
The UK's own supreme court was represented by Lord Carnwarth. Supreme court justices are on the whole modest men. Supremely modest, no doubt. Such a one is Lord Carnwarth. He would the last to claim that he exercised any influence over the deliberations which took place in the Portobello Resort.
Yet this reporter can testify to the fact that Lord Carnwath's subtle chairing of one of the world congress's key sessions led to possibly the congress's most important recommendation, namely that it was time to strengthen public participation in decision-making, and also to improve access to justice and information. The session considered the vital role of the judiciary (including public prosecutors and auditors) in the implementation and enforcement of environmental law.
Back in Rio's Tribunal de Justiça, Achim Steiner, Unep's executive director, had stressed on the opening day that: "Citizens have to be able to take their own governments to account for failure to uphold commitments they have entered into". Sitting as one of Lord Carnwath's panelists that morning in the Portobello resort, Syeed Mansoor Ali Shah, one of Pakistan's high court justices, confimed that his court had established rules under which the court would accept complaints and petitions "even if they are written on a grubby postcard in half-formed letters''.
Of course, there was controversy, even in that luscious environment. You can't put 100 lawyers in a room together and not expect some controversy. One bone of contention was whether or not to mention the question of ecocide. Louise Kulbicki, an invited participant from Legal Outreach, an organisation dedicated to "eradicating ecocide" argued passionately and not without support that the congress should urge the UN to add ecocide to its list of heinous crimes. She even read out a perfect plausible definition of ecocide to the gathering.
Kublicki later protested that her point of view had been ignored in the congress's final declaration. There will in due course be a full report of the congress's deliberations published by the UN. If Kublicki finds there is still no record of her interventions, she will no doubt know where to send her postcard.
Judges for the environment: we have a crucial role to play
Rio+20 missed an opportunity to emphasise how people can effect real change through courts
Robert Carnwath
guardian.co.uk, Friday 22 June 2012 19.28 BST
While politicians may have failed to agree any headline-grabbing commitments in the main event at Rio this week, a sister conference quietly showed how judges in courts and tribunals across the world are adapting to give practical effect to laws for the protection of the environment. It also pointed the way to strengthening them nationally and internationally in the future.
The world congress on justice, governance and law for environmental sustainabilty was a gathering in Rio of more than 150 judges, prosecutors, public auditors and enforcement agencies from some 60 countries, hosted by the UN environment programme (UNEP). The event marked a decade of progress since the global judges' symposium in Johannesburg in 2002, which spelled out for the first time in unequivocal terms the crucial role that judges have to play in interpreting and enforcing environmental law, nationally and internationally.
One of the purposes of this week's Rio congress was to review progress and to learn from our successes and failures. There is now widespread acknowledgement of an international "common law" of the environment based on principles such as sustainability, and inter-generational equity. There is now greatly expanded awareness of environmental issues among the judiciary, and the development of specialist courts and tribunals in many countries.
A recent study identified over 360 specialist environmental courts or tribunals in forty-two countries. Brazil itself has an impressive record of specialist judges developing flexible and effective approaches to environmental crimes. In the Amazon area, an environmental court judge has developed new remedies. The judge regularly orders offenders to attend an environmental night school he has created; makes community service directly relate to the offence (eg sentencing waste dumpers to work in a recycling plant, illegal foresters to plant trees, wildlife poachers to work for wildlife recovery groups); and provides community education through billboards on buses and environmental comic books.
Since 2002, a judicial taskforce, of which I was part, has developed a programme of work to improve the understanding and practice of environmental issues among judges across the world. Our initiatives included the preparation of accessible information for judges, such as a manual on environmental law, and organisation of a series of regional training events. For example, in 2007 I took part in a training event in Nairobi for African judges, co-hosted by the Commonwealth Magistrates and Judges Association. In Europe, we established the EU Forum of Judges for the Environment (EUFJE), through which judges exchange information and ideas.
There has been progress also on public involvement, information and access to justice under Rio Principle 10. In Europe, the Aarhus Convention applies across over 45 European countries. This provides a legally-binding framework for access to information, the right to participate in environmental decision-making, and access to justice to challenge the legality of environmental decisions. Kofi Annan described the convention as "by far the most impressive elaboration of principle 10 of the Rio Declaration (and) the most ambitious venture in the area of environmental democracy so far undertaken under the auspices of the United Nations". In February 2009 the UNEP governing council proposed the extension of similar principles internationally.
However, among the judges at the Rio+20 congress there was disappointment that the draft "common vision" document at the main event did not contain a more explicit commitment to extending these principles of how people, through the courts, can help effect real change, worldwide. It appeared to us to be something of a missed opportunity. The congress adopted a declaration re-emphasising the importance of judicial capacity-building, and calling on governments to strengthen UNEP's role, and to develop more effective institutions for dealing with transborder crime and international environmental disputes.
The congress included a series of workshops on different themes. The involvement of public auditors gave us a new perspective, emphasising the need for effective monitoring of the work of governments and enforcement agencies. I chaired a lively session on "new and emerging environmental sustainability issues", in which we heard powerful presentations from two specialist judges, from Pakistan and India, and from representatives of Interpol and CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species).
The Johannesburg global symposium was an important step forward. Fundamental was the recognition that laws are nothing without judges and courts familiar with the issues, with the power to enforce them, and able to provide accessible justice to individuals and representative agencies. The Rio+20 congress was a reaffirmation of that commitment.
Lord Carnwath of Notting Hill is a judge at the UK supreme court
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our childrens future."
John F. Kennedy
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Re: The Propaganda Continues VII
« Reply #274 on Jun 23, 2012, 12:33am »
23 June 2012 Last updated at 00:55 GMT
Rio summit ends with warning on corporate power
By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News, Rio de Janeiro
The UN sustainable development summit in Brazil has ended with world leaders adopting a political declaration hammered out a few days previously.
Environment and development charities say the Rio+20 agreement is too weak to tackle social and environmental crises.
Gro Harlem Brundtland, author of a major UN sustainable development report 25 years ago, said
corporate power was one reason for lack of progress
Nations will spend three years drawing up sustainable development goals.
They will also work towards better protection for marine life on the high seas.
But moves to eliminate subsidies on fossil fuels - recommended in a number of authoritative reports as likely to boost economies and curb CO2 emissions - came to naught.
Plans to enshrine the right of poor people to have clean water, adequate food and modern forms of energy also foundered or were seriously weakened during the six days of preparatory talks.
And many governments were bitter that text enshrining women's reproductive rights was removed from the declaration over opposition from the Vatican backed by Russia and nations from the Middle East and Latin America.
'No leadership'
The UN had billed the summit as a "once in a generation chance" to turn the global economy onto a sustainable track.
"It absolutely did not do that," said Barbara Stocking, chief executive of Oxfam GB.
"We had the leaders of the world here, but they really did not take decisions that will take us forward," she told the BBC.
"It was a real lack of action that is very worrying, because we know how difficult the situation is in much of the world in terms of environment and poverty, and they did not show the leadership we needed them to bring."
The president of the most impoverished country in the western hemisphere, Haiti's President Michel Martelly, said the summit could have delivered more.
"I feel like these poor countries, these countries that are always being hit by catastrophe - things have not changed much," he told the BBC.
"So on this summit I will say that much more effort needs to be done so we can correctly and precisely come out with resolutions that will have an impact on the lives of people being affected."
Cash concern
Developing countries had argued that they needed financial assistance in order to meet the costs of switching onto a green development path.
But with the US in an election year and the EU deep in eurozone mire, any mention of specific sums was blocked.
As a consequence, developing countries refused to let the declaration endorse green economics as the definitive sustainable development path.
Prof Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist and special adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said support was needed.
"Those of us who look at this day in, day out know that many poor countries need that kind of help," he said.
"And it does not do any good to cite large ambitious promises many years out, and then behind the scenes to say 'we're not going to talk about how they're going to be fulfilled."
But Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and deputy head of the US delegation here, said the US was fully behind the "green economy" - and that the summit could help deliver the vision.
"The negotiated document, which is really the first time we have a multilateral document that talks about the green economy that has broad-based support - that is a big push," she said.
"But probably more important are the connections that are being made between businesses large and small, civil society, academia and of course governments at the national and sub-national level - all those things are pushing the green economy forwards."
Norwegian would
The need to put the world on a sustainable track, and the perils of not doing so, were outlined most influentially in a 1987 commission chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, then Prime Minister of Norway.
Speaking to BBC News in Rio, she reflected on the lack of real progress since then.
"Obviously when you look back 25 years now, less than one would have expected has happened - that's clear - but you can't think you can turn the world round in 25 years," she said.
She said there were "complex reasons" why governments had been unable to take the vision further - including the power of corporations.
"I think [the allegation] is justified - it's not the whole truth but it certainly is a big part of it," she said.
"In our political system, corporations, businesses and people who have economic power influence political decision-makers - that's a fact, and so it's part of the analysis."
The next key date on the sustainable development journey is 2015.
The sustainable development goals should be decided and declared by then; also, the UN climate convention will have what some, with trepidation, are calling its "next Copenhagen" - the summit that should in theory usher in a new global agreement with some legal force to tackle global warming.
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our childrens future."
John F. Kennedy
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Re: The Propaganda Continues VII
« Reply #275 on Jun 26, 2012, 6:52am »
After Rio, we know. Governments have given up on the planet
The post-summit pledge was an admission of defeat against consumer capitalism. But we can still salvage the natural world
George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 June 2012 20.30 BST
Our children must experience something of the delight in the natural world and of the peaceful, unharried lives with which we have been blessed'. Photo: Alan Novelli/Alamy
It is, perhaps, the greatest failure of collective leadership since the first world war. The Earth's living systems are collapsing, and the leaders of some of the most powerful nations the United States, the UK, Germany, Russia could not even be bothered to turn up and discuss it. Those who did attend the Earth summit in Rio last week solemnly agreed to keep stoking the destructive fires: sixteen times in their text they pledged to pursue "sustained growth", the primary cause of the biosphere's losses.
The efforts of governments are concentrated not on defending the living Earth from destruction, but on defending the machine that is destroying it. Whenever consumer capitalism becomes snarled up by its own contradictions, governments scramble to mend the machine, to ensure though it consumes the conditions that sustain our lives that it runs faster than ever before.
The thought that it might be the wrong machine, pursuing the wrong task, cannot even be voiced in mainstream politics. The machine greatly enriches the economic elite, while insulating the political elite from the mass movements it might otherwise confront. We have our bread; now we are wandering, in spellbound reverie, among the circuses.
We have used our unprecedented freedoms secured at such cost by our forebears not to agitate for justice, for redistribution, for the defence of our common interests, but to pursue the dopamine hits triggered by the purchase of products we do not need. The world's most inventive minds are deployed not to improve the lot of humankind but to devise ever more effective means of stimulation, to counteract the diminishing satisfactions of consumption. The mutual dependencies of consumer capitalism ensure that we all unwittingly conspire in the trashing of what may be the only living planet. The failure at Rio de Janeiro belongs to us all.
It marks, more or less, the end of the multilateral effort to protect the biosphere. The only successful global instrument the Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer was agreed and implemented years before the first Earth Summit in 1992. It was one of the last fruits of a different political era, in which intervention in the market for the sake of the greater good was not considered anathema, even by the Thatcher and Reagan governments. Everything of value discussed since then has led to weak, unenforceable agreements, or to no agreements at all.
This is not to suggest that the global system and its increasingly pointless annual meetings will disappear, or even change. The governments which allowed the Earth Summit and all such meetings to fail evince no sense of responsibility for this outcome, and appear untroubled by the thought that if a system hasn't worked for 20 years, there's something wrong with the system. They walk away, aware that there are no political penalties; that the media is as absorbed with consumerist trivia as the rest of us; that, when future generations have to struggle with the mess they have left behind, their contribution will have been forgotten. (And then they lecture the rest of us on responsibility.)
Nor is it to suggest that multilateralism should be abandoned. Agreements on biodiversity, the oceans and the trade in endangered species may achieve some marginal mitigation of the full-spectrum assault on the biosphere that the consumption machine has unleashed. But that's about it.
The action if action there is will mostly be elsewhere. Those governments which retain an interest in planet Earth will have to work alone, or in agreement with like-minded nations. There will be no means of restraining free riders, no means of persuading voters that their actions will be matched by those of other countries.
That we have missed the chance of preventing two degrees of global warming now seems obvious. That most of the other planetary boundaries will be crossed, equally so. So what do we do now?
Some people will respond by giving up, or at least withdrawing from political action. Why, they will ask, should we bother, if the inevitable destination is the loss of so much of what we hold dear: the forests, the brooks, the wetlands, the coral reefs, the sea ice, the glaciers, the birdsong and the night chorus, the soft and steady climate which has treated us kindly for so long? It seems to me that there are at least three reasons.
The first is to draw out the losses over as long a period as possible, in order to allow our children and grandchildren to experience something of the wonder and delight in the natural world and of the peaceful, unharried lives with which we have been blessed. Is that not a worthy aim, even if there were no other?
The second is to preserve what we can in the hope that conditions might change. I do not believe that the planet-eating machine, maintained by an army of mechanics, oiled by constant injections of public money, will collapse before the living systems on which it feeds. But I might be wrong. Would it not be a terrible waste to allow the tiger, the rhinoceros, the bluefin tuna, the queen's executioner beetle and the scabious cuckoo bee, the hotlips fungus and the fountain anenome to disappear without a fight if this period of intense exploitation turns out to be a brief one?
The third is that, while we may have no influence over decisions made elsewhere, there is plenty that can be done within our own borders. Rewilding the mass restoration of ecosystems offers the best hope we have of creating refuges for the natural world, which is why I've decided to spend much of the next few years promoting it here and abroad.
Giving up on global agreements or, more accurately, on the prospect that they will substantially alter our relationship with the natural world, is almost a relief. It means walking away from decades of anger and frustration. It means turning away from a place in which we have no agency to one in which we have, at least, a chance of being heard. But it also invokes a great sadness, as it means giving up on so much else.
Was it too much to have asked of the world's governments, which performed such miracles in developing stealth bombers and drone warfare, global markets and trillion-dollar bailouts, that they might spend a tenth of the energy and resources they devoted to these projects on defending our living planet? It seems, sadly, that it was.
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our childrens future."
John F. Kennedy
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Re: The Propaganda Continues VII
« Reply #276 on Jun 26, 2012, 6:58am »
My Ghanaian grandfather would agree that Rio+20 may yet be a turning point
Africa no longer looks to the north alone for its salvation but to its own resources and to India, Brazil and China
Paul Boateng
guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 June 2012 11.30 BST
In Africa, rain is widely seen as a blessing. Photograph: Dan Chung for the Guardian
The storm clouds above the Riocentro conference centre as the Amazonian winter came in were seen by some as an ill omen. The emerging outcomes of the Rio+20 Earth summit have been long on rhetoric and short on specifics, and with a marked lack of firm commitments from the political leaders present. Aggrieved nature biting back?
My late grandfather, who farmed a medium-sized cocoa farm sustainably and successfully in the Akyem region of the old Gold Coast now Ghana would have viewed the scene differently. In Africa, rain is widely seen as a blessing. The great fear in Africa, where I now spend much of my working life, is the absence of rain.
No continent stands to lose more than Africa from climate change. As competition intensifies for scarce resources, it is already having and will continue to have severe consequences for Africa's economic growth, food security, poverty reduction and conflict resolution. Although the least responsible continent for climate change, Africa is most vulnerable to its affects. Some models suggest that a global temperature increase of about 1.5C by 2040 could lead to an annual loss in Africa's GDP of 1.7%.
The poorest will be hit hardest, and the inequalities already emerging in Africa's fast-growing economies will be exacerbated. Ghana's economy was one of the fastest growing in the world last year, and economic growth is proceeding quickly across the whole continent even at a time of global recession, and not simply in commodity-driven markets. But growing inequalities are now to be found across Africa in health, education, employment and access to food and clean water. Without financial support to address the impact of climate change, these inequalities are destined to get much worse.
South Africa's international relations minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, said to me in the margins of the conference: "We simply want delivery on what has already been promised." South Africa has played a crucial role in a conference where the shift in the balance of global economic power was manifest in the prominence of India and China.
Britain, even in the absence of David Cameron, was a bigger hitter than most of the other developed economies. At least in Britain we continue to deliver on our development pledges. Long may that continue. At the 2009 UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, developed countries committed themselves to contributing $100bn a year by 2020 to help poorer nations cope with the impacts of climate change, with $30bn in financing to be in place by 2012. This simply hasn't happened.
The reality is that finding the resources for a green economy cannot be left to governments alone. The next generation of millennium development goals, now apparently to be enhanced by the sustainable development agenda, will need to reflect that if they are to make a difference to the lives of the poor.
In Rio, an exciting new partnership between the universities of Newcastle and Agostinho Neto, in Angola, was showcased. Significantly, this is funded by an Angolan bank. Southern hemisphere co-operation was a major emerging theme of the conference. Africa increasingly no longer looks to the north alone for its salvation but to its own resources and those stimulated by partnerships with India, Brazil and China.
Around 60% of the world's uncultivated arable land is to be found in Africa, so research and development in sustainable agriculture is key. This would have pleased my grandfather. Part of his land was given over in colonial times to the West African Coca Research Institute. So for agriculture and science development, along with south-south co-operation, Rio+20 may yet prove to be a positive turning point. As the African blessing goes: Pula! Pula! Let it rain three times over and more.
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"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our childrens future."
John F. Kennedy
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Re: The Propaganda Continues VII
« Reply #277 on Jun 28, 2012, 8:26am »
27 June 2012 Last updated at 18:51 GMT
Europe refuses UK air pollution reprieve
By Roger Harrabin Environment analyst
Government plans to delay air pollution improvements in 12 UK areas have been refused by the European Commission, which says air quality must improve.
The UK may now face fines if it fails to improve air quality quickly.
Air pollution reduces average life expectancy in the UK by up to eight months, according to the government's own statistics.
But ministers have been slow to meet agreed European standards on cutting levels of the pollutant NO2.
This comes mainly from vehicles. It causes problems with breathing - particularly for people with heart or lung problems.
The UK has been denied permission by the commission to delay air quality improvements in 12 areas - Aberdeen and north-east Scotland; Belfast; Birkenhead; Brighton; Bristol; Liverpool; Preston; Sheffield; south-west England; south Wales; Swansea and Tyneside.
Second-biggest threat
A judgement will be made at a later date on government plans to delay meeting NO2 standards in major cities until 2020 - or in the case of London, 2025.
London has the worst air of any European capital, and the UK is likely to be fined over the failure.
Air pollution is recognised by the government as the second-biggest public health threat, after smoking. It costs the UK an estimated £20bn a year - that's more than twice the amount estimated for obesity, which gets far more publicity.
Daniel Instone, giving evidence on behalf of Defra, said ministers were considering a nationwide network of low-emission zones in which the most polluting vehicles were banned.
Simon Birkett, a campaigner from Clean Air in London, said the commission's ruling suggested that such a network would now be inevitable.
NO2 pollution affects long-term health. Experts giving evidence to the Environment Committee, EFRA, said the health of Olympic athletes visiting over the summer should not be harmed as long as the UK avoids a heat-induced smog episode.
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our childrens future."
John F. Kennedy
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Re: The Propaganda Continues VII
« Reply #278 on Jun 28, 2012, 7:15pm »
He would say that:
Climate change fears overblown, says ExxonMobil boss
Rex Tillerson acknowledges man-made global warming in speech, but says society will adapt to climate change
Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 June 2012 10.50 BST
ExxonMobil chief executive, Rex Tillerson, has said fears about climate change, drilling and energy dependence are overblown.
In a speech on Wednesday, Tillerson acknowledged that burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet, but said society will be able to adapt. The risks of oil and gas drilling are well understood and can be mitigated, he said. And dependence on other nations for oil is not a concern as long as access to supply is certain, he said.
Tillerson blamed a public that is "illiterate" in science and maths, a "lazy" press, and advocacy groups that "manufacture fear" for energy misconceptions, in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations.
He highlighted that huge discoveries of oil and gas in North America have reversed a 20-year decline in US oil production in recent years. He also trumpeted the global oil industry's ability to deliver fuels during a two-year period of dramatic uncertainty in the Middle East the world's most important oil and gas-producing region.
"No one, anywhere, any place in the world has not been able to get crude oil to fuel their economies," he said.
In his speech and during a question-and-answer session afterwards, he addressed three major energy issues: climate change, oil and gas drilling pollution, and energy dependence.
Tillerson, in a break with predecessor Lee Raymond, acknowledged that global temperatures are rising. "Clearly there is going to be an impact," he said. But he questioned the ability of climate models to predict the magnitude of the impact. He said that people would be able to adapt to rising sea levels and changing climates that may force agricultural production to shift.
"We have spent our entire existence adapting. We'll adapt," he said. "It's an engineering problem and there will be an engineering solution."
Andrew Weaver, the chairman of climate modelling and analysis at the University of Victoria in Canada, disagreed with Tillerson's characterisation of climate modelling. Weaver said modelling can give a very good sense of the type of climate changes that are likely, and that adapting to those changes will be much more difficult and disruptive than Tillerson seems to be acknowledging.
Steve Coll, author of Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, said he was surprised Exxon would already be talking about ways society could adapt to climate change when there is still time to try to avoid its worst effects. Also, he said, research suggests that adapting to climate change could be far more expensive than reducing emissions now. "Moving entire cities would be very expensive," he said. Legislation or regulation that would help slow emissions of global warming gases would likely lead to lower demand for oil and gasoline, and could reduce Exxon's profit.
Tillerson expressed frustration at the level of public concern over new drilling techniques that tap natural gas and oil in shale formations under several states. He said environmental advocacy groups that "manufacture fear" have alarmed a public that doesn't understand drilling practices or maths, science or engineering in general. He blamed "lazy" journalists for producing stories that scare the public but don't investigate the claims of advocacy groups.
Drilling for oil and gas will always involve risks of spills and accidents, he said., but those risks are manageable and worth taking because they are small given the amount of energy they produce.
Drilling in shale formations, he said, only poses a small risk to those living nearby. It is neither life-threatening nor long-lasting and can be controlled in the event of an accident.
Drillers force millions of gallons of water mixed with sand and some hazardous chemicals into shale formations. The technique breaks up rock and creates escape routes for oil and gas. If the drilling wastewater is not treated properly or if it seeps through cracked drilling pipes, it could contaminate drinking water.
The industry's biggest challenge, he said, is "taking an illiterate public and try to help them understand why we can manage these risks".
Tillerson made a distinction between energy security and energy dependence. He said that energy security making sure that the economy has access to energy is crucial.
But he said access to energy is not in peril. "Some of the fears around energy security are not well founded," he said.
The quest for energy independence, though, is misguided, he said. It doesn't matter where the US gets oil because crude is priced globally. Even if the US used only oil from north America, a disruption in the Middle East would increase global prices, hurt the US and global economies, and force Americans to pay more at the pump.
Even if the US no longer needed Middle Eastern oil, it would likely want to play a major role in helping maintain the region's security, Tillerson said.
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our childrens future."
John F. Kennedy
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Re: The Propaganda Continues VII
« Reply #279 on Jun 28, 2012, 7:29pm »
Detained anti-whaling activist urges Costa Rica to drop charges
Paul Watson, who is awaiting extradition decision for alleged navigational infringement, says case is 'highly political'
John Vidal, environment editor
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 June 2012 16.42 BST
Captain Paul Watson, the flamboyant head of marine enforcement group Sea Shepherd and star of Discovery channel series Whale Wars, has appealed to the Costa Rican government to drop charges made against him nearly 10 years ago following a confrontation with a fishing vessel.
Watson has been detained in Frankfurt, Germany, for 45 days pending a formal decision by the Central American country's government to demand his extradition to Costa Rica, to face charges laid in 2002. He has been released on bail of 250,000 and must report daily to the police in Frankfurt.
"Costa Rica has not delivered the papers. It should dismiss these charges because they make no sense. This is highly political," he told the Guardian.
California-based marine conservation organisation Sea Shepherd suspects that Costa Rica may have made a deal with Japan to have him extradited. Watson has been labelled an "eco-terrorist" by Japan's government following a series of encounters with Japanese whalers in the Antarctic. Interpol has listed him as "wanted" at the request of Japan.
But Watson points out that Costa Rican president, Laura Chinchilla Miranda, met Japanese emperor Akihito in November 2011 and within six months Japan gave Costa Rica $9m to help protect its national parks.
"It is suspicious that within months of the meeting of the two heads of state I should be arrested on a 10-year-old charge from the Costa Rican government and that Costa Rica [should] receive $9m dollars from the Japanese government. There certainly is a great deal of circumstantial evidence to suggest that Japanese pressure had a hand in Costa Rica's decision to have [me] arrested and detained in Germany awaiting extradition," said Watson.
The alleged incident in 2002 is hotly disputed. Two Costa Rican fishermen have accused Watson of ramming their boat, the Varadero I, causing injuries to two people. Watson was charged at the time with violating navigational regulations but was allowed to leave the country.
But Watson counters that the incident did not occur in Costa Rican waters, did not cause any injuries or property damage and that the Varadero I was a notorious shark-fishing boat, whose owners had been convicted the previous year of illegal fishing in the Galapagos Islands.
In a separate development, charges made against Sea Shepherd and Watson by a Maltese fishing company have been dismissed by a British court. Maltese fish brokerage firm Fish & Fish brought a case against the group after Sea Shepherd deliberately released 800 bluefin tuna that one of the company ships had caught off the Libyan coast in 2010.
But Mr Justice Hamblin of the admiralty court ruled that Britain was not the proper place to file the suit. Fish & Fish will have to pay 250,000 of Sea Shepherd's legal fees.
"What we did in 2010 we have no apologies for," said Watson. "We freed 800 large endangered bluefin tuna illegally caught by poachers off the coast of Libya. We cut the nets and when the Maltese company that claimed ownership of these liberated fish sued us, we stood our ground in court and we won, the tuna won, and the poachers lost."
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our childrens future."
John F. Kennedy
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Re: The Propaganda Continues VII
« Reply #280 on Jun 29, 2012, 11:36pm »
Fracking: where's the debate about its climate change risks?
Fracking looks set to be given the green light in the UK, but there is a worrying lack of discussion about its climate implications
Rarely a day goes by, it seems, when "fracking" isn't in the news. It's either being hailed as a miracle energy source, or it is being condemned as yet another polluting fossil fuel.
Today's headlines largely focus on the findings of a joint report (pdf) by the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering which concludes that hydraulic fracturing of shale gas "fracking" should be allowed to proceed in the UK, but only with tight regulation and monitoring. Published ahead of the government's anticipated "green light" for fracking later this summer, the report calls for a long parade of checks and balances, as you might expect it to:
Monitoring should be carried out before, during and after shale gas operations to inform risk assessments. Methane and other contaminants in groundwater should be monitored, as well as potential leakages of methane and other gases into the atmosphere. The geology of sites should be characterised and faults identified. Monitoring data should be submitted to the UK's regulators to manage potential hazards, inform local planning processes and address wider concerns. Monitoring of any potential leaks of methane would provide data to assess the carbon footprint of shale gas extraction.
But what is missing from much of today's media coverage is mention of - for me at least - the most important paragraph in the whole report:
This report has analysed the technical aspects of the environmental, health and safety risks associated with shale gas extraction to inform decision making. Neither risks associated with the subsequent use of shale gas nor climate risks have been analysed. Decision making would benefit from research into the climate risks associated with both the extraction and use of shale gas. Further benefit would also be derived from research into the public acceptability of all these risks in the context of the UK's energy, climate and economic policies.
Yes, there are plenty of concerns about the possible localised environmental impacts of fracking, such as earth tremors, aquifer contamination, and surface leaks. As the report concludes, these need constant and tightly-regulated assessment if extraction is to get under way on a commercial scale. But this is a side salad compared to the picnic hamper of unanswered questions that still hang over fracking when it comes to its possible contribution to climate change.
With nice timing but largely ignored by the media is a report out today by the Committee on Climate Change, a statutory body set up to advise the UK government on greenhouse gas emissions. It urges the government to give up on its "dash for gas" in order to help avoid dangerous levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Its chief executive, David Kennedy, said:
[Ministers] must rule out the dash for gas, and set clear carbon objectives in the context of draft energy legislation and the forthcoming gas generation strategy. Our analysis shows that power sector decarbonisation is economically sensible, even in a shale gas world.
To frack, or not to frack, is arguably the most pressing environmental decision facing the "greenest government ever" at present. There are clearly huge temptations to proceed: its advocates say it is an abundant and cheap source of energy that could help to re-ignite our flailing economy. And voices such as James Lovelock say that fracked gas is a lesser evil than coal so we should use it as a bridging technology to "buy us some time".
But there are plenty of legitimate environmental concerns, too, not least that the climate risks have yet to be fully analysed or face democratic scrutiny. And there are worries that fracking will likely hinder or damage the fledgling renewables sector.
Visit the Department for Energy and Climate Change's webpage on shale gas and there is no mention of climate risks. The only direct reference I can find is an archived article by the former energy secretary Chris Huhne from last November:
Every national scientific academy in the world agrees: climate change is a real and growing threat. We face ambitious, legally binding carbon emissions and renewable energy targets. Yes, gas will help us meet them. But we should not bet the farm on shale.
He didn't say, though, how this was to be achieved, other than earlier stating: "With carbon capture and storage technology, [shale gas] can provide a significant amount of low-carbon electricity in the long term." And we all know how well CCS is coming along, don't we?
Is the UK government really going to breezily "green light" fracking, as seems highly likely, given what the Committee on Climate Change has said today? Is it really going to push ahead, without having fully investigated and discussed the possible climate implications of fracking?
I, for one, don't feel we have even begun having this important national debate.
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our childrens future."
John F. Kennedy
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Re: The Propaganda Continues VII
« Reply #281 on Jun 29, 2012, 11:50pm »
While Colorado burns, Washington fiddles
Drought, wildfires, storms, floods climate change is happening, but the real disaster is our Big Energy-owned politicians' inaction
Bill McKibben
guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 June 2012 21.11 BST
The Waldo Canyon wildfire burns as it moved into subdivisions and destroyed homes in Colorado Springs. Photograph: Galon Wampler/AP
In the political world, this was the week of the healthcare ruling: reporters hovered around the supreme court, pundits pundited, politicians "braced" for the ruling, "reeled" in its aftermath. It provoked a "firestorm" of interest, according to one magazine; it was, said another, a "category 10 hurricane".
But in the world world, there was news at least as big, but without the cliched metaphors. News that can be boiled down to a sentence or two:
You ever wonder what global warming is going to look like? In its early stages, exactly like this.
Global warming is underway. Are we waiting for someone to hold up a sign that says "Here's climate change"? Because, this week, we got everything but that:
In the Gulf, tropical storm Debby dropped what one meteorologist described as "unthinkable amounts" of rain on Florida. Debby marked the first time in history that we'd reached the fourth-named storm of the year in June; normally it takes till August to reach that mark.
In the west, of course, firestorms raged: the biggest fire in New Mexico history, and the most destructive in Colorado's annals. (That would be the Colorado Springs blaze: the old record had been set the week before, in Fort Collins.) One resident described escaping across suburban soccer fields in his car, with "hell in the rearview mirror".
The record-setting temperatures (it had never been warmer in Colorado) that fueled those blazes drifted east across the continent as the week wore on: across the Plains, there were places where the mercury reached levels it hadn't touched even in the Dust Bowl years, America's previous all-time highs.
That heatwave was coming at just the wrong time, as farmers were watching their corn crops get ready to pollinate, a task that gets much harder at temperatures outside the norms with which those crops evolved. "You only get one chance to pollinate over 1 quadrillion kernels," said Bill Lapp, president of Advanced Economic Solutions, a Omaha-based commodity consulting firm:
"There's always some level of angst at this time of year, but it's significantly greater now and with good reason. We've had extended periods of drought."
In the markets, all this news was taking its toll: prices for corn and wheat were spiking upwards, rising almost a third on global markets as forecasters suggested grain stockpiles could shrink by as much as 50% as the summer wears on. But in the political world, there wasn't much reaction at all.
The Obama administration said it would grant Shell leases to drill for more oil in the Arctic, and they auctioned off a vast new tract of federal coal land at giveaway prices even though it's the carbon in that coal and oil that drives the droughts and fires. Even that didn't satisfy the GOP, as Mitt Romney demanded yet more pipelines and wells.
Amid it all, the CEO of the biggest oil company in the world, Exxon, gave what may go down in the annals as the most poorly timed not to mention, arrogant speech in the firm's history: Rex Tillerson, speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations, admitted what his company spent many years denying, that humans were heating the planet. But then he added:
"We have spent our entire existence adapting, OK? So we will adapt to this. Changes to weather patterns that move crop production areas around we'll adapt to that. It's an engineering problem, and it has engineering solutions. And so I don't the fear factor that people want to throw out there and say, 'We just have to stop this,' I do not accept."
Against the backdrop of the burning Rockies, it's pretty clear this is not an engineering problem. Engineers, in fact, have performed admirably. One day last month, Germany generated more than half its electricity from solar panels. We've got the technical chops to solve our troubles.
No, this is a greed problem. In the last five years, Exxon has made more money than any company in history. For the moment, Exxon and other's desire to keep minting money and our politicians' desire for a share of that cash has conspired to keep our government, and most others, from doing anything to head off the crisis.
And unlike the healthcare predicament, this crisis comes with a time limit. If we play politics for a generation, then weeks like the one we've just come through will be normal, and all we'll be doing as a nation is responding to emergencies. As one scientist put it at week's end, the current heatwave is "bad by our current definition of bad, but our definition of bad changes."
Another way of saying that is: there are disaster areas declared across the country right now, but the biggest one is in DC.
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our childrens future."
John F. Kennedy
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Re: The Propaganda Continues VII
« Reply #282 on Jun 29, 2012, 11:53pm »
Environmentalism is not a religion
Of all the nonsense climate change deniers throw at the green movement, there one criticism that does real damage, says James Murray
By James Murray for BusinessGreen, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 June 2012 15.26 BST
Banner on trailer protesting against windfarms in Carmarthenshire, Wales, 25 October 2010. Photograph: Keith Morris/Alamy
Of all the blithering nonsense climate deniers throw at the environmental movement, there is perhaps one criticism that does real damage that "green is the new religion".
We can handle the scientifically illiterate and ethically questionable attempts to undermine evidence of climatic change using cherry-picked data and discredited theories, just as we can counter the increasingly futile attempts to question the importance of the green economy and the efficacy of clean technologies. The scientific evidence linking greenhouse gas emissions and potentially dangerous levels of climate change is now so well proven, and the physical demonstration of effective clean technologies so prevalent, that the guileless smears attempted by self-styled "climate sceptics" lack their former sting.
They are fighting a losing battle with science and evidence, hence the increasingly vocal suggestion that green is the new religion. This line of attack is hugely effective and highly damaging for three main reasons.
Firstly, and most importantly, if you can convince people to see environmentalism as a religion, then you move green issues from the field of science and data into the field of theology and belief.
Religion can mean a "pursuit or interest followed with great devotion" a definition which could just about allow environmentalism to be classified as a "religion". But it is more commonly defined as "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods", or "a particular system of faith and worship". Equate "greens" with this type of religion, with faith and deities, adherence and heresy, and it becomes all but impossible to prove or disprove the central tenets of environmentalism.
"Climate change is a matter of faith," say the climate sceptics, "green actions are acts of religion they have no place in the real world of politics and business." Frustratingly, you can argue against this accusation all you like, but any response is tainted in the eyes of your critics by the fact it is made with a "religious conviction" that will brook no argument.
Secondly, this trope is doubly clever because like all good smears it draws on the weaknesses of its target. Some environmentalists are occasionally guilty of the worst excesses of religion. There is a tendency to drown out legitimate criticism in the most forceful terms, an inclination towards proselytization that can alienate many people, and an occasional willingness to cling to sacred cows even when the scientific evidence suggests we should at least discuss their being slayed (I'm thinking nuclear power and GM as prime examples). The image of environmental campaigners filled with passionate, but not religious, conviction makes the suggestion that environmentalism has become a religion look convincing.
Thirdly, if you can convince people that green is a religion then you allow anyone who disagrees with environmental policies or business models to wrap themselves in the comforting blanket of heresy. You create a powerful narrative of brave resistance which appeals to iconoclasts, rationalists, and sceptics (in the true sense of the world) everywhere.
All of which brings me, somewhat circuitously to the Guardian and Simon Hoggart's second assertion in as many weeks that wind turbines are like church spires, in that "they achieve nothing but have a purely religious significance" an argument that was expounded by drawing on James Lovelock's recent claims that environmentalism has become a religion.
"He's right," Hoggart wrote of Lovelock's latest comments. "[Environmentalists] accuse their opponents not just of being mistaken, but of heresy. They put too much importance on symbolic acts; just as your marrow at the harvest festival doesn't end world hunger, so you won't save the planet by cycling to work. Wind turbines, like spires, reach for the skies to no apparent effect. Facts that contradict dogma have to be concealed, as in the East Anglia data hush-up. Allies who change their minds can be denounced as apostates."
Now Simon Hoggart is one of the best and most respected journalists working in Britain today, but, like his stable-mate at the Guardian, Simon Jenkins, he has decided wind turbines are loathsome and that anything to do with climate change and environmentalism should face the same cynicism that serves his peerless political sketch-writing so well.
As such, Hoggart can argue greens have been captured by "religious fervour", wind turbines serve no purpose beyond the symbolic, the only take away from the University of East Anglia affair was the ludicrous assertion that data was "hushed-up", and one of the UK's most intelligent journalists is happy to declare that "I have no idea who is right about climate change".
Without wishing to accuse Hoggart or many of the other commentators who have made similar points in recent years of heresy, this is all utterly nonsensical.
Environmentalism is not a religion in any real sense of the word. Yes, some of its supporters display levels of conviction that can look religious, but the central tenets of environmentalism, not to mention green policies and campaigns, are based on evidence and the application of scientific reason.
We might sometimes disagree on the evidence and the conclusions, but no one is using faith as an argument to advance their case. Those who do are quickly discredited and are increasingly confined to the more "out there" extremes of the environmental movement.
I'm sure Hoggart is being truthful when he says he does not know who is right about climate change, but if he wanted to apply the same standards of knowledge to other areas he would have to admit he is not sure who is right about the link between smoking and cancer the medical establishment, or the discredited hacks who spent years providing dodgy research to the tobacco companies. He can argue that wind turbines look ugly, but to argue that they have "no apparent effect" is to dismiss reams of independent evidence to the contrary, not least the energy meters attached to any wind turbine recording the power being fed into the grid.
People who suggest climate change might not be happening are not heretics, but they are guilty of a quite staggering lack of intellectual rigour and those who suggest green is a religion, including the estimable James Lovelock, are guilty of a remarkable category error.
You can call environmentalism an ideology, a political movement, even a lifestyle; but it sure as hell isn't a religion.
James Murray is the editor of BusinessGreen
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our childrens future."
John F. Kennedy
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Re: The Propaganda Continues VII
« Reply #283 on Jul 20, 2012, 4:05pm »
Emails reveal UK government's moves to protect nuclear power from bad news
Government officials worked closely with E.ON and RWE to soften the impact of a major blow to plans for a new nuclear programme
Rob Edwards
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 July 2012 12.31 BST
Government officials worked closely with two energy companies to soften the impact of a major blow to ministers' plans for a new programme of nuclear power stations, internal emails reveal.
The revelation is further evidence of how Westminster has collaborated with the industry to try and protect nuclear power from bad news, first exposed by the Guardian in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident in Japan last year.
The German utilities, E.ON and RWE, announced on 29 March that they were abandoning plans to build two nuclear power stations at Oldbury in Gloucestershire and Wylfa in Anglesey. The decision was blamed on the German government's retreat from nuclear power after Fukushima and doubts about financing.
Two days before the announcement, Hergen Haye, head of new nuclear at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc), wrote to E.ON and RWE. He asked if he could be informed when the companies had told Carwyn Jones, Labour's first minister for Wales, of their decision.
Haye told the companies that this was "in order for us to share our press lines to co-ordinate a united message". The companies' proposed press statements looked "broadly fine", he said, but promised to forward "any detailed comments".
He asked about "engagement plans and timing" for telling local authorities. "Also we have been thinking about some difficult/defensive line issues and would be grateful for sight of what you may say," he said.
He wanted to know how the companies would respond to journalists questioning whether the UK government could have done something differently to prevent the pull out. "Do you think it is possible for new nuclear to be built in the UK?" Haye asked.
E.ON responded the next morning by saying it believed that ministers were "putting in place a framework which will make it possible for new nuclear". Its withdrawal was "not a reflection on the work done by the UK government".
At the same time, RWE gave details of when it was informing Jones, as well as Labour's shadow energy minister, Tom Greatrex, the commercial secretary to the Treasury, Lord Sassoon, and a raft of other politicians and local stakeholders.
"We think it is possible for new nuclear to be built in the UK," RWE said. "As you can see from the press release, we are not making any comment on the UK policy position."
The emails, large portions of which have been censored, were released by Decc in response to a request under freedom of information legislation. One from RWE is marked "strictly private and confidential".
The environmental group Greenpeace accused ministers of trying to mislead the public. "The government has been colluding with the nuclear industry to try to media manage the collapse of their hopes," said nuclear campaigner, Richard George.
"In reality the cost of new nuclear power has doubled in recent years and continues to rise. Instead of trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes, the government should accept their nuclear dream is over and back renewable energy."
Decc insisted that it worked with potential nuclear investors in exactly the same way as it worked with other energy investors, including those in the renewable industry. "It was important to understand why the consortium decided not to take forward their interest in UK nuclear new build," said a Decc spokesman.
"As they made clear, their decision was based on pressures elsewhere in their businesses and not any doubts about the role of nuclear in the UK's energy future."
China in talks to build UK nuclear power plants
British officials talking to Chinese about plan that could see up to five reactors being built at cost of £35bn, sources say
Terry Macalister and Fiona Harvey
guardian.co.uk, Friday 20 July 2012 20.20 BST
China is poised to make a dramatic intervention in Britain's energy future by offering to invest billions of pounds in building a series of new nuclear power stations.
Officials from China's nuclear industry have been in high-level talks with ministers and officials at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) this week about a plan that could eventually involve up to five different reactors being built at a total cost of £35bn.
Greenpeace described the move as desperate, while others warned of security fears, but the government has been courting China as the UK atomic programme has been hit by rows over subsidies and worries that EDF the French company with the most advanced plans to build new reactors in the UK could be hampered by the change of government in Paris.
China has operated its own atomic plants since 1994. It is awash with cash from its hugely successful industrial expansion and sees the UK as a potential shop window for exporting its atomic technology and expertise worldwide.
Companies from China have already invested in or taken over other infrastructure assets in Britain, such as Thames Water, the port of Felixstowe and the Grangemouth oil refinery. They also own businesses ranging from Weetabix to the Gieves & Hawkes tailoring brand.
The China National Nuclear Power Corporation (CNNPC), which is keen to invest in Britain, has just unveiled plans to raise about £17bn through a domestic share offering.
A team from the Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute (SNERDI), an arm of the huge China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), met senior DECC officials over the last few days, three different sources confirmed.
The first part of the plan involves CNNC and another state-owned firm, China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corporation, bidding in two separate groups against each other for a stake in the Horizon consortium, which wants to construct new atomic plants at Wylfa in Wales and Oldbury in Gloucestershire.
But sources close to the Chinese say they are also interested in other locations at Bradwell in Essex, Heysham in Lancashire and Hartlepool in County Durham.
EDF has the right of first refusal to operate on these sites but CNNC wants to use an existing technology tie-up with US-based nuclear engineering group Westinghouse to potentially build three more reactors.
The Chinese accept they would need to bring in a UK utility firm to operate the plants and overcome any political or public resistance to their plans.
"The Chinese have the money and the experience," said the well-placed source. "They see setting up in the UK as an opportunity to show they can operate in one of the world's toughest regulatory environments so they can then move into other markets in Africa and the Middle East."
The DECC was unwilling to comment on whether it had met SNERDI officials this week, saying such meetings would be commercially confidential. A DECC spokesman would only say: "The UK is open for business and actively welcomes inward investment to our energy sector, but any potential nuclear operator is, and would be, subject to rigorous scrutiny through the established regulatory process."
Keith Parker, chairman of the Nuclear Industry Association in London, said it was "highly encouraging" that China wanted to invest in the UK. "They have 14 of their own reactors in operation and 25 under construction and they use both [French multinational] Areva and Westinghouse designs that could be used here. It was clear from my discussions with them that they have international ambitions."
In May, the energy minister Charles Hendry told the Energy and Climate Change select committee that he had no objection to Chinese firms being involved in the UK.
"In China, there are different companies who have experience of building dozens of nuclear power stations on time and on budget, and so there is no suggestion that these are companies that do not have expertise in this sector. They have extremely well-proven expertise in this sector, and in looking at how we take this forward in the United Kingdom I think we should be guided by where that expertise has already been proven."
But Greenpeace said the bid to woo China was a last throw of the dice by the government. "This is a sign of desperation," said Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace. "Chinese nuclear players have state backing, which could help solve the issue of financing colossally expensive new nuclear power stations in the UK. But this just means that the money from UK taxpayers will flow to the Chinese government, rather than to France."
The potential for political conflict has been highlighted by the former Downing Street energy policy director Nick Butler. He wrote in a recent Financial Times blogpost that Chinese involvement in the UK energy business could be a concern [subscription required]: "They will be inside the system, with access to the intricate architecture of the UK's National Grid and the processes through which electricity supply is controlled, as well as to the UK's nuclear technology.
"Perhaps that doesn't matter. Perhaps a Chinese wall exists between the Guangdong Holding company and the government in Beijing. Perhaps we have reached a level of globalisation in which the nationality of ownership is irrelevant.
"But even if all those things are true, it seems regrettable that in return for this investment the Chinese are not being required to halt the cyberattacks and the theft of intellectual property in which they are now the world leaders."
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Jul 20, 2012, 4:08pm by
Big Bunny
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
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"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our childrens future."
John F. Kennedy
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Re: The Propaganda Continues VII
« Reply #284 on Jul 21, 2012, 7:11am »
Average Chinese person's carbon footprint now equals European's
The per capita emissions of the world's largest national emitter is almost on a par with the European average, new figures show
Duncan Clark
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 July 2012 16.21 BST
The average Chinese person's carbon footprint is now almost on a par with the average European's, figures released on Wednesday reveal.
China became the largest national emitter of CO2 in 2006, though its emissions per person have always been lower than those in developed countries such as Europe.
But today's report, which only covers emissions from energy, by the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the European commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) show that per capita emissions in China increased by 9% in 2011 to reach 7.2 tonnes per person, only a fraction lower than the EU average of 7.5 tonnes:
The figure for the US is still much higher at 17.3 tonnes though total Chinese CO2 emissions are now around 80% higher than those of America. This widening gap reflects a 9% increase in total emissions in China in 2011, driven mainly by rising coal use, compared with a 2% decline in the US.
Total emissions in Europe and Japan also fell last year, by 3% and 2% respectively. But emissions rose across much of the developing world, including India, which saw a 6% increase. As a result, OECD nations now account for only around a third of the global total.
The figures published on Wednesday like most official data on carbon emissions are based on where fossil fuels are burned. A recent UK select committee report argued that it was also important to consider the import and export of goods when considering national responsibility for climate change. This would affect today's data, because previous studies have suggested that almost a fifth of Chinese emissions are caused by the production of goods for export.
In addition, the new county data exclude international travel, which accounts for 3% of the global total and is likely to be heavily weighted towards richer countries. Non-CO2 greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide are also excluded.
For these reasons, the total carbon footprint of the average European most likely remains substantially higher than that of the average Chinese person. In addition, Europe, the US and other developed countries have contributed a disproportionate share of the historical emissions that have caused the warming to date and will remain in the atmosphere for decades or centuries to come.
But a recent study showed that even when imports and international travel are taken into account, the developed world now accounts for less than half of current global emissions. Moreover, China's emissions may be even higher than reported today according to another study showing that the country's official energy statistics were as much as 20% lower than they should be.
Owing to factors such as these, precise national emissions figures will remain the subject of debate. Globally, however, the picture is clear. Total emissions from fossil fuels and cement increased by 3%, leaving global emissions at a record 34bn tonnes of CO2. That is less than the rise in 2010, when emissions shot up by 5% as the world economy bounced back from recession, but higher than the average annual increase for the past decade, which stands at 2.7%. This suggests that efforts to curb global emissions have so far failed to make any impact.
The continued steep rise in global carbon emissions will make it even more difficult for the world's nations to fulfil their stated aim of limiting temperature rise to 2C, considered a danger threshold after which the risks of irreversible climate change increase.
According to the report, if global emissions continue on their current trend, the world will commit itself to 2C of warming within two decades.
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our childrens future."
John F. Kennedy
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