Climate Camp in The City

A really great event. The whole day would have been like this--peaceful, musical and educational--if the violent thugs (guardian/times) hadn't been out in force.

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Climate Camp in The City: Final Update

Final update on The Swoop, for the April 1st Climate Camp in the City
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20

Hi campers, not long to go before we join each to set up camp in the city
on April 1st! This is the final update, please read it carefully and
forward it to all your friends who are coming…

WHAT TO BRING:

We hope many of us will be staying overnight, please bring a popup tent,
food, 4 litres of water, warm clothes, hand cleaning gel (for hygiene, we
might not get water) and whatever you might need for 24 hours of rebel
camping adventure. (a full list is here
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20/what-to-bring)

HOW TO DO IT:

1) SYNCHRONIZE YOUR WATCHES: It is important that we swoop at exactly the
same time, and those arriving too late or too early might not make it in.
You can use the speaking clock or this: http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com

2) PLUG IN: Sign up to text messages here:
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20/text-updates You will only get text
messages if there is a change of plan.

3) PREPARE: Print out the map from http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20/map
and if you still need somewhere to sleep the night before check
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20/sleepspace Remember that there may be
limited toilet facilities so don’t arrive with bursting bowels !!!

3) SWOOP DOWN: Arrive at 62 Bishop's Gate, the European Climate Exchange
at 12:30 on the dot. Swoop swiftly and stealthily from a location of your
choice. It might be good to avoid Bank and Liverpool Street stations where
other protest groups are meeting at 11.00am as you may be unable to leave
due to police Kettles (when police surround a crowd). Avoid kettles at all
costs and if when you get to the Climate Exchange the police invite you
into a protest pen, say “no thanks, we’ll camp elsewhere”, keep moving and
wait for text messages.

4) SPREAD INSPIRATION: You can use your phone to send reports, pictures,
audio etc from the streets to Indymedia. Its very easy – see
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/03/425262.html for numbers and
details.

If you are covering the action using twitter, please include the hashtags
#g20cc or both #g20 and #protest so we can pull tweets into one single
feed of the event.

5) AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST - ENJOY: The next few days will be extraordinary
days for extraordinary times...

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Kevin Smith on Climate Camp and carbon trading.

The police are maintaining there war of words against the Climate Camp. A recent police stopry was covored widely in the press--across ideological lines--from the Guardian to the Daily Mail. This story told of a fiorthcoming 'summer of rage' and went on to conflate general economic tensions relating to the financial crisis with the motives of climate change activists who dont believe in carbon trading. It is an interesting conflation, and one that we wish the public where generally more willing to make; if the neoliberal economic model has hit crisis point then do we really want to apply that same model of trading--this time in carbon certificates--to the problem of climate change? Wouldnt we be better with an approach that we know will work such as simply replacing fossil fuel plants with renewable generation, or increasing the energy eficiency of transport?

On cap and trade Kevin says:

This is a policy option that has been aggressively promoted not because of its
track record in reducing pollution (because it hasn't got one) but because of
its compatibility with the market-obsessed economic agenda of recent decades.
The concept of the omnipotence of markets has had an enormous crisis of
legitimacy in the wake of the financial crisis but the UK government is still
making futile attempts to apply the same failed market logic to the problem of
climate change.

But while the climate camp strives to think the unthinkable; environmental protection not based on markets...the police are trying to persuade the public to accept the unacceptable. Protest is not just protest it is highly disruptive 'social unrest' which requires far more strident policing.

The climate camp's plans to target the carbon markets on 1 April is one of the
protests that were described in the Guardian by Superintendent David Hartshorn
as kick-starting a "summer of rage". Using the threat of social unrest provoked
by the recession could be interpreted as an attempt to justify increasingly
draconian policing of protest. However there's a great deal of evidence to
suggest that this policing trend had started long before the recession began.

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Climate Camp Article in Guardian (Carbon Trading)

When it comes to reducing emissions via carbon trading I guess the question we want people to ask is:

Do we want to place our faith in the same set of principles that lead to the financial crisis?

The economy is important but our natural environment is foundational to life. Lets not gamble on this one. Stopping the construction of new coal plants is a lot more concrete than trading in abstract units of 'avoided emissions' and the more abstract you get the more profiteering and confusion is possible.

The organisers of Climate Camp, a protest group that has previously demonstrated at coal power stations and Heathrow airport, have chosen London's financial centre as the target of their main summer protest this year.

The decision to target the City is aimed at throwing a spotlight on the carbon trading system, one of the central planks of the EU's attempts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from businesses. Carbon trading in the US is also being pushed by the Obama administration, but the activists say they want to highlight the failure of the mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The precise form of the protest and where it will take place are yet to be decided, although a spontaneous snowball fight that broke out between environmental activists and bankers after the heavy snowfall on 2 February may have inspired the group to target the City. The action may also strike a chord with public anger at huge public bail-outs of the banks.

(article in the Guardian)

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Cost of living

The UN High Commissioner for refugee reports that climate change is exacerbating conflicts that are displacing 37 million people - and rising. They warn that this is the beginning of a trend. No shit.
Meanwhile the Washington horse trading continues around whether or not to do anything about anything at all, or just plod on in ever decreasing 4 year circles of election expediency. Does Obama think the American way of life is negotiable? Does McCain? Hmm

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New Institute for Policy Studies Report: "World Bank: Climate Profiteer"

Stephen Colbert famously claimed at a whitehouse dinner for the press corp that 'facts have a well known liberal bias'. On that basis the IPS is a liberal thinktank but in reality as notable by the funding levels, the IPS isn't an instrument for funding policy for the wealthy elite who simply differ in views from conservatives, unlike some thinktanks there isn't much corporate funding to be seen.

IPS have just released a report into the World Banks involvement in carbon markets. It's a bit of an odd one really, they are both funding the most polluting and destructive practices around, and projects to reduce the level of carbon. They proffit handsomely in the latter!

“World Bank: Climate Profiteer,” a new report from the Institute for Policy
Studies, shows how the World Bank’s growing engagement in carbon markets is
dangerously counter-productive. The Bank’s $2 billion, and growing, carbon
finance portfolio is forging a path through the $60 billion international carbon
market toward a dirty energy future. And while the World Bank continues to fund
greenhouse gas-emitting coal, oil and gas projects, it skims an average 13% off
the top of carbon deals. That means an estimated $260 million in the Bank’s
pocket. The report recommends that the Bank get out of the carbon markets, stop
fossil fuel financing, and begin to calculate its own significant impact on the
global climate.

Download IPS Report.
Read two page commentary on the report.

Related:

• Previous IPS Report on Military vs Climate Security
• The question of carbon trading is itself not free from criticism.
  

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Review: EU approves energy and climate change package.

The EU Comissions has today announced (official statement) what it calls a 'climate change package'. These measures are the follow up from a previous meting (march 9th, Guardian) where a 20% reduction target for energy usage and carbon emissions was made alongside a pledge to increase European renewable energy penetration to 20% (from the current 8%). A two page citizens guide is avialable to explain the motivations behind the climate package and the elements that it is trying to balance.

The citizens guide is the straightest talking policy document i have ever seen:

What is the problem?

• The EU needs to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. This is not happening fast enough.
• Dependence on imports of oil and gas is growing. The EU needs to find new energy alternatives and to produce more of its own energy.

According to EurActiv some of the most significant issues are:

• Total EU industrial emissions in 2020 capped at 21% below 2005 levels which equates to a 1.7% annual reduction. [I thought the 20% was on 1990 levels is this back tracking?]
• The scheme will be enlarged to include new sectors, including aviation, petrochemicals, ammonia and the aluminium sector...around 50% of all EU emissions will be covered. [Road Transport, Shipping, Buildings, Waste, Agriculture and Forestry will remain excluded].
• In order to achieve an average 10% reduction of greenhouse gases from sectors not covered... the Commission has set national targets according to countries' GDP. Richer countries are asked to make bigger cuts – of up to 20% in the case of Denmark, Ireland and Luxembourg – while poorer states...will in fact be entitled to increase their greenhouse emissions in these sectors – by up to 19 and 20% respectively for Romania and Bulgaria. [Understandable but environmentally inadequate if this principal where to be expanded to the rest of the world at Romanian development levels...what we need is a deal where such countries take on these targets and the wealthy take on a portion of the costs]
• Smaller installations, emitting under 10,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, will be allowed to opt out from the ETS, provided that alternative reduction measures are put in place. [I see why--red tape--but i wonder how significant this is are we talking about double digit percentages that can opt out?]
• Industrial greenhouse gases prevented from entering the atmosphere through the use of so-called carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology are to be credited as not emitted under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. [I fully support this...its long past time such schemes where implemented]
• The proposal foresees a huge increase (up to 60% of total credits) in auctioning as early as 2013. It adds that "full auctioning should be the rule from 2013 onwards for the power sector", which is expected to lead to a 10-15% rise in electricity prices. In other sectors, free allocations will gradually be completely phased-out on an annual basis between 2013 and 2020. Nevertheless, certain energy-intensive sectors could continue to get all their allowances for free in the long term if the Commission determines that they are at significant risk of relocation to third countries with less stringent climate protection laws. [This increase in auctioned credits appear to me as the start of a serious emissions trading scheme, it is the most efficient way to do things and has the added benefit of brining in large revenues which if sensibly hypothicated to renewable energy projects, and --my personal favourite--paying for international climate funds e.g REDD, Tech Transfer, Adaptation, can go a long way to helping the world cope with and mitigate climate change.]
• The distribution method for free allowances will be developed at a later stage by expert panels within the Commission (through the so-called 'comitology procedure'). [It's going to be some kind of grandfathering but the good news is that this part is becoming rapidly less relavent]
• Competativeness concerns are a significant so decision on these issues has been put of untill 2011. Nevertheless, the text warns that if no global pact is reached by then, some sort of "carbon equalisation system" will be introduced – whether in the form of additional free allocations or by making third-country producers of carbon-heavy goods participate in the ETS in order to access the EU market. [Translation: shit gets ugly if we dont reach a global deal...is forced participation of foreign firms a tariff on high carbon goods? The avoidance of such tarrifs is apparently the reason the Kyoto protocol was initiated.]
• Assuming a global climate change deal is reached, member states will continue to be entitled to meet part of their target by financing emission reduction projects in countries outside the EU, although the use of such credits will be limited to 3% of member states' total emissions in 2005 –around one quarter of the total reduction effort. [This is still a significant amount of carbon trade, but it seems to me that markets and trade of all kinds in carbon makes this kind of limit hard to measure: how do personal and business offests work into this, or internal business trades...i think this is all getting murky we need a global treaty with a cap.]

The talk on competativeness and forced involvement in the EU ETS for foregin companies trading into europe brings up our old friend the WTO (past article). Commission President José Manuel Barroso:

"If our expectations about an international agreement are not met, we will look at other options such as requiring importers to obtain allowances alongside European competitors, as long as such a system is compatible with WTO requirements."

On the issue of cuts in emissions from industries not included in the ETS, national targets vary dramatically based on prosperity, but buy in large everyone has been hard done by; some have been more stoic but it's ammusing none the less. Germany's economy minister is quite typical:

"We really don't need this plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it will destroy jobs in industries which consume a lot of energy"

The main points that i have seen made on this are 'its simply not good enough' and 'it's to far, its to tough on this country, why do we need to take orders from Brusselles.' The former has been the message of Rajendra Pachuri of the IPCC, and the science if you would care to read it, the latter is from the likes of the Times and other right leaning papers.

Related:

• Extensive coverage of this "climate change package" and its role in Eu climate policy can be found on the EurActiv website.
• The climate change package and associated documents.

Related General Articles:

• AFP "EU sets emissions targets to fight climate change"
• Earth Times "EU approves ambitious energy and climate change package - Summary"

Articles on the main issues:

• The cap and rate of cuts: WWF critical of draft EU climate law. CAN Europe reaction.
  
• New sectors included: Refineries, Airlines, Phased into ETS (Reuters)
  
• Distribution of Non-ETS emissions cuts: EU faces tough climate change road. (BBC)
  
• Increase in auctioning: EU's Barroso says pollution permits to be auctioned (Guardian) All carbon credits for EU ETS Phase 3 to be auctioned for power sector (Forbes)
  
• Carbon Capture and Storage: Could Carbon Capture Replace Cuts? (BBC)
  
• Competativeness: EU Threatens Trade Partners (AFP) Editorial (FT)
  
• Carbon trade with other nations: CAN Europe reaction.
  

[UPDATE]

• Celsias has just posted an article on this topic.
• Treehugger has also briefly covored the issues.
  

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False Solutions to Climate Change

I recently wrote a post in which i set out the framework in which the term 'false solutions' is used. It is quite an interesting term actually--i`m sympathetic to there meaning but a solution can't be false, only effective or ineffectve. A false solutions is one which when interpreted, not for its effect on carbon emissions per se but on existing values and institutions which currently cause climate change, is found to only deepen the problem. An example might be biofuels when they are grown in good yields on agricultural land: even if the emissions effects are as desired the social effects (displacing native substitence farmers) and the economic effects (solidifying wealth in the hands of the already rich) are issues which are already significantly to blame for deforestation in the global south.

To look futher at this problem i encourage you to follow this link to "Fighting False Solutions Interview: Kevin Smith & Jutta Kill" over at Celsias.

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