Environmental justice, oil shale, solar, wind, ccs, oil subsidies, independent media.

Just to fill a void in the number of posts recently i thought i`d share a few of the stories that have caught my eye.

Firstly, as i`ve been reading Laura Westra's book about environmental justice and human rights I was interested to read in De Smog Blog that the tiny Arctic village of Kivalina has joined up with some litigators who previously worked on Tabacco and it's link to cancer. The parralles are facinating, and hopeful:

From a legal point of view, it is not enough to prove that burning fossil
fuels is damaging to the environment. They must also demonstrate that Big Oil
conspired to lie about their product to the public. They have a lot to work
with.

For instance, ExxonMobil was specifically implicated by the Union
of Concerned Scientists of funding a Big Tobacco-style PR campaign to
misinform the public on climate science.


While the fossil fuel lobby has been highly successful at delaying meaningful regulation around climate change, they may have over-played their hand. By investing so heavily in distorting public debate around climate change, they have given lawyers like Susman and Berman plenty of potential evidence to drag into the light of day.

In a not unconnected development, Alberta is expecting a rapid ramping up of its oil shale extraction. Many of the effected lands are of disputed soverignty, indigenous groups are not seeing the benefits of these hugely distructive schemes.

In better news, solar is expected to achive grid-connected price parity by 2015! In other words, solar power from pv will cost the same per KWh as electricity from the grid. This isn't the same as having producing power for the same cost as fossil fuels, but it dosent have to be, solar can work without a complex transmission system and such small scale on site uses will make the economics work. Things aren't exactly bleak for the wind industry either; the only real question is how quickly new manufacturing capacity can be brought online. Meanwhile the fossil fuel industry is doing its best to talk up carbon capture and storage.

But weather it's a new renewable energy paradigme that you are after, or an altered version of fossil fuel power sans carbon emissions, one thing that we can surely agree on is the stupidity of the world bank (world development bank?) subsidising old coal power technology.

Fortunately for our fight against climate change, and for broader struggles against corporate power and state complicity there is a growing base of indipendent media. Notably The Real News Network has just teamed up with Celsias to improve coverage of climate change and related issues. That is exciting as i`m a big fan of both these organisations.

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The World Bank: Part of the climate change solution?

In its latest report "Correcting the World’s Greatest Market Failure: Climate Change and the Multilateral Development Banks" the World Resources Insitute is skeptical about involving the world bank in the fight against climate change (PDF)--for various reasons i`m downright doubtfull.

“The World Bank needs to demonstrate leadership to steer investment towards
low carbon, environmentally sustainable development choices,” said Jonathan
Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, which produced the analysis.
“This will be difficult to achieve while simultaneously investing in many
‘business as usual’ projects, such as coal-fired power.”

WRI are writing about an important issue here, the dual roles of funding polluting projects and selling emissions permits. However, the IPS has already covored this ground in a report entitled simply World Bank: Climate Profiteer.

Related:

• World Bank Posts
• Finance

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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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