climate change

By Dano T Bob - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 12, 2015

Ye ole UN Climate talks in Paris are now under way. Amid attempts by the French government to shutdown demonstration aimed at forcing those meeting to actually do something real to combat the serious global threat of climate change, there are still activists around the globe making their voices heard. Springing off from last year’s successful Climate March in New York City during the unfruitful UN talks there, this year has already seen the Northern California Climate Mobilization in Oakland, California, and today’s NYC Climate rally and the forthcoming Los Angeles Climate rally, as well as many others from around the globe.

So, will government representatives from various world countries come to an agreement to cap emission, and if so, will it matter and will they actually, really cap emissions, unlike previous failed, unenforced agreements? And what would a model for a successful way to deal with climate change and carbon emissions look like and how would it be implemented? Surprise! I’ve got some opinions on this.

One model that differs from the current approach that has promise is a global Carbon Tax. Publications as diverse as Jacobin and the Economist have both endorsed the idea. Ways to do a Carbon Tax vary, with Suresh Naidu arguing in Jacobin, “But if we were mobilizing around just one demand today, we could do worse than a global carbon tax, with revenues redistributed directly back to people through a global universal basic income.” They key also for the author is an international approach (although great U.S. based work on this is taking place as well, which we will address in a bit), and the UN talks present just such an opportunity. The Economist authors substitute a Green Climate Fund for the more radical Universal Basic Income idea, stating, “A carbon tax, collected by individual countries, looks a far more effective tool. Countries could be required to impose the common price as long as all others do too, and domestic revenues from the tax could be recycled internally. Transfers to developing or reluctant countries, such as through the Green Climate Fund, could be set up to address concerns about fairness.”

Another thing currently not being considered in the Paris meetings is the Carbon Budget. This idea hinges on the fact that, “if you add up all the targets and pledges made by 146 countries at the UN Climate talks in Paris, the world is on track to burn its carbon budget — the amount of carbon dioxide it can emit while restricting global warming to a ‘safe’ two degrees — in the next 25 years.” So, for all the promised pledges of emission cuts, enforceable or not, are we doing enough? This answer is a resounding "NO!" and this is serious problem. So, not only do we as concerned humans need to be clamoring for something like a Carbon Tax, but it must hit the proper targets based on the Climate Budget and we must make our governments comprehend and understand this fact and agree to factor this in at climate talks.

So, while a global Carbon Tax is needed, which even the likes of the Wall Street Journal editorial page have toyed with, what are the prospects here in the US of getting one passed in the meantime? While countries in Africa, Asia and Europe have already implemented such measures, it has been much harder here at home in the belly of the global capitalist energy corporation beast. But, there is hope. Even places with traditional oil extraction economies, such as Alberta, Canada are pushing ahead with a strengthened Carbon Tax.

By Blake Deppe - People's World, December 4, 2015

PARIS -- In the Climate Generations event area here at COP 21, the Trade Union Forum on Climate and Jobs presented on Dec. 3 an event called Resisting Extreme Extraction. Labor organizations including the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), the Argentine Workers' Central Union (CTA), and the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) addressed the audience with a clear declaration: that fracking, in every country and every part of the world, has got to go.

These organizations are part of the Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, an initiative coordinated by the International Program for Labor, Climate and Environment (IPLCE). Their call for a global moratorium on the harmful natural gas extraction process is bolstered by the findings of Robert Howarth, the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology at Cornell University. He published his findings about the disastrous effects of fracking in an article titled A bridge to nowhere: methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas, and shared them at COP 21.

"Natural gas is widely promoted as a 'bridge fuel,' " Howarth said, referencing the publication. "It is said that it allows continued use of fossil fuels while reducing greenhouse gas emissions compared to oil or coal. And since 2009, over 40 percent of natural gas has come from shale gas, which is such a driver for climate change, because of methane. Most climate scientists, in their studies, are focusing on carbon, but methane is 120 times more powerful while both gases are in the atmosphere."

He explained that carbon, of course, is the larger instigator behind climate change, as there is more of it in the atmosphere, but in terms of actually slowing global warming, there is a key difference between the two. "Because of its long residence time," he said, "reductions in carbon emissions can only slowly change the atmospheric concentration." On the other hand, "methane emissions reductions lead to almost immediate reductions in atmospheric concentration. If we cut methane emissions today, we could really slow warming and prevent the [planet] from exceeding that two degree mark."

What Howarth is referring to is the very goal of COP 21: to avert a planetary warming of two degrees Celsius. This is a slightly more realistic ambition - in comparison with last year's climate conference in Copenhagen, which sought to avoid 1.5 degrees of warming - and one based on assessments made on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

But curbing that methane output can best be done by putting an end to fracking, and increased transparency, based on recent studies not funded by the fossil fuel industry, is shifting public opinion on this false 'energy alternative.' "There have been about 32 new research papers published on fracking recently," said Hogarth. This, he conveyed, provides an excellent counterbalance to the problematic studies carried out by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Environmental Defense Fund, with the latter in particular notorious for its biased and industry-collaborative approach. He said that both the agency and the EDF "misuse their instruments during their studies, and thus draw unrealistic conclusions about fracking. The truth is, it is globally warming the planet today."

By Natalia Paramonov - EcoDefense, December 2015

In four hours of flight from Moscow, in the middle of the country, lies the coal heart of Russia.

Coal mining and burning are generally known to be polluting atmosphere with loads of CO2 and causing climate change. But people of Kuzbass have little concern about global problems. They get used to open-cut mines operating and huge trucks roaring right out of their windows. Shot operations destroy houses, and spoil piles grow up around. Air and rivers are contaminated with coal dust, and fertile land is being devastated.

These particular problems can be discovered only by visiting surroundings of Novokuznetsk. Bad news about violations over environmental rights in Kemerovo Oblast would never reach Moscow themselves. They are hidden behind companies' ambition to get coal at any cost.

Number of official statistics provides evidence for contamination of air, water, and soil, high mortality and sickness rates in Kemerovo Oblast. Local authorities and regulatory bodies, however, prefer to avoid looking into particular cases. There is Kemerovo Oblast with a range of general environmental problems, but there are no particular people whose violated rights need to be protected. This way, there are no victims and no need to pay out compensations or think about mine reclamation.

This report begins with statistic data which reflect environmental conditions in Kuzbass, followed by testimonies of the local residents. Interviews with those suffered from coal production but unable to get it acknowledged and fully compensated by the state are enclosed in the appendix.

Behind every figure of the official statistics presented below, there are lives of people who live in Kuzbass and battle for their rights.

Read the report (PDF).

By various - Carbon Trade Watch, December 2015

Over twenty years have passed since governments within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) began to discuss the impending climate crisis. Year after year, we witness the talks moving further away from identifying the root causes of climate change while the increasing impacts affect even more peoples and regions. Every meeting has given more space for corporate involvement and less to the voices of those directly affected by these climate policies. Despite the promoters’ fancy “green” campaigns and videos, the main focus at the climate negotiations continues to be about saving the free-market economy for those who are holding the cards – the biggest transnational corporations and financial institutions. The same corporations that are largely behind the destruction of forests, rivers, diversity, territories – as well as the violation of human and collective rights and so on – are also the main polluters and plunderers of the Earth.

The climate crisis poses a real threat to the current economic model which is based on the continuous extraction and production of fossil fuels, hydrocarbons and “natural resources” such as land, minerals, wood and agriculture. If talks were to seriously address climate change, there would need to be a discussion on the many ways to support the hundreds of thousand of small-scale farmers, fishers, Indigenous Peoples, forest-dwelling communities and others whose territories and livelihoods are at risk from capital expansion, and how to transition to different economic systems where fossil fuels could be kept underground; where the consumption “mantra” would shift towards more local, diverse and collective discourses and practices. However, the hegemonic and colonial powers are once more violently closing doors, creating more “structural adjustments” and, ultimately, harming the people who are the least responsible for current and historical pollution levels suffering the most from the impacts.

The fallacy that we can continue with the same economic model is irremediably flawed, bankrolled by big polluters, and intrinsically linked to land and livelihoods grabbing, especially in the Global South. Nonetheless, mechanisms like carbon markets, which expand the extractivist and free-market logic, continue to be promoted as unilateral, program- matic “solutions” to mitigate climate change and address deforestation and biodiversity loss. From carbon trading to forests and biodiversity offsets, the climate crisis has been turned into a business opportunity, worsening the already felt impacts, especially for those who are the least responsible. Debates over molecules of carbon being accounted for and “moved” or “stored” from one location to the other detracts from the necessary debates on shifting away from extraction, unjust power structures and oppression. While being fully informed of the causes of climate change, international climate negotiations strive to ensure that the hegemonic economic model expands and rewards polluters.

The consequence is that “climate policies” (aka economic policies) finance the most destructive industries and polluters, often destroying genuinely effective actions that support community livelihoods and keep fossil fuels in the ground. Moreover, these policies further the “financialization of nature” process, which presupposes the separation and quantification of the Earth’s cycles and functions – such as carbon, water and biodiversity – in or-der to turn them into “units” or “titles” that can be sold in financial and speculative markets. With governments establishing legal frameworks to set these markets in place, they also have provided the financial “infrastructure” for negotiating financial “instruments”, by using derivatives, hedge funds and others. While financial markets have a growing influence over economic policies, the “financialization of nature” hands over the management to the financial markets, whose sole concern is to further accumulate capital.

Read the report (PDF).

By the admin - Systemic Disorder, November 11, 2015

The text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership can now be viewed by the public, thanks to the New Zealand government, and it is every bit as bad as activists have been warning.

The TPP, if enacted, promises a race to the bottom: An acceleration of jobs to the countries with the lowest wages, the right of multi-national corporations to veto any law or regulation their executives do not like, the end of your right to know what is in your food, higher prices for medicines, and the subordination of Internet privacy to corporate interests. There is a reason it has been negotiated in secret, with only corporate executives and industry lobbyists consulted and allowed to see the text as it took shape.

The threat from the TPP extends beyond the 12 negotiating countries, however — the TPP is intended to be a “docking” agreement whereby other countries can join at any time, provided they accept the text as it has been previously negotiated. Moreover, the TPP is a model for two other deals: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union, and the Trade In Services Agreement (TISA), an even more secret “free trade” deal being negotiated among 50 countries that would eliminate any controls on the financial industry.

The elimination of protections is precisely what U.S. multi-national corporations intend for Europe by replicating the terms of the TPP in the TTIP, a process made easier by the anti-democratic nature of the European Commission, which is negotiating for European governments. Already, higher Canadian standards in health, the environment and consumer protections are under sustained assault under the North American Free Trade Agreement. The TPP is an unprecedented corporate giveaway, going well beyond even NAFTA, which has hurt working people and farmers in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

More than 300,000 jobs in the U.S. alone may be eliminated by the passage of the TPP. The Wall Street Journal, in an article celebrating victory for multi-national capital, nonetheless reported that 330,000 manufacturing jobs would be lost, basing this estimate on an estimated US$56 billion increase in the national trade deficit. That forecast is based on a U.S. Department of Commerce estimate that 6,000 jobs are lost for every $1 billion of added trade deficit.

By Michael Ware and Ragina Johnson - Socialist Worker, October 27, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

THE LATEST world summit conference on climate change, due to begin in Paris on November 30, will take place against the backdrop of continuing climate disasters--including a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that the planet suffered its hottest summer ever recorded, and possibly the hottest in 4,000 years.

That ought to give some urgency to the two-week-long meeting--officially called the 21st Congress of the Parties for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP 21--that is supposed to finally produce a binding international treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions, with the goal of keeping the global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius.

But there's lots of reasons to doubt the resolve of world leaders--the recent failure of preparatory talks in Bonn, the lack of ambition or action by powerful governments in the past and, of course, the dismal record of previous COPs to accomplish anything meaningful. Whatever agreement is struck in Paris, it won't do nearly enough.

Climate justice activists worldwide will send a different message from the politicians' hot air--and show their determination to be heard with events and actions throughout the fall, culminating in large protests in Paris itself.