A Pacific Climate Change Warrior paddles into the path of a ship in the world’s biggest coal port to bring attention to the impact of climate change on low-lying islands. Courtesy of Dean Sewell/Oculi for 350.org

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 18 2014 (IPS)

Climate Change Warriors from 12 Pacific Island nations paddled canoes into the world’s largest coal port in Newcastle, Australia, Friday to bring attention to their grave fears about the consequences of climate change on their home countries.

The 30 warriors joined a flotilla of hundreds of Australians in kayaks and on surfboards to delay eight of the 12 ships scheduled to pass through the port during the nine-hour blockade, which was organised with support from the U.S.-based environmental group 350.org."Fifteen years ago, when I was going to school, you could walk in a straight line. Now you have to walk in a crooked line because the beach has eroded away." -- Mikaele Maiava

The warriors came from 12 Pacific Island countries, including Fiji, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Micronesia, Vanuatu, The Solomon Islands, Tonga, Samoa, Papua New Guinea and Niue.

Mikaele Maiava spoke with IPS about why he and his fellow climate change warriors had travelled to Australia: “We want Australia to remember that they are a part of the Pacific. And as a part of the Pacific, we are a family, and having this family means we stay together. We cannot afford, one of the biggest sisters, really destroying everything for the family.

“So, we want the Australian community, especially the Australian leaders, to think about more than their pockets, to really think about humanity not just for the Australian people, but for everyone,” Mikaele said.

Speaking at the opening of a new coal mine on Oct. 13, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that “coal is good for humanity.”

Mikaele questioned Abbott’s position, asking, “If you are talking about humanity: Is humanity really for people to lose land? Is humanity really for people to lose their culture and identity? Is humanity to live in fear for our future generations to live in a beautiful island and have homes to go to? Is that really humanity? Is that really the answer for us to live in peace and harmony? Is that really the answer for the future?”

Mikaele said that he and his fellow climate warriors were aware that their fight was not just for the Pacific, and that other developing countries were affected by climate change too.

“We’re aware that this fight is not just for the Pacific. We are very well aware that the whole world is standing up in solidarity for this. The message that we want to give, especially to the leaders, is that we are humans, this fight is not just about our land, this fight is for survival.”

Pacific Climate Change Warrior Mikaele Maiava from Tokelau with fellow climate change warriors at the Newcastle coal port. Courtesy of Dean Sewell/Oculi for 350.org

Mikaele described how his home of Tokelau was already seeing the effects of climate change,

“We see these changes of weather patterns and we also see that our food security is threatened. It’s hard for us to build a sustainable future if your soil is not that fertile and it does not grow your crops because of salt intrusion.”

Tokelau’s coastline is also beginning to erode. “We see our coastal lines changing. Fifteen years ago when I was going to school, you could walk in a straight line. Now you have to walk in a crooked line because the beach has eroded away.”

Mikaele said that he and his fellow climate change warriors would not be content unless they stood up for future generations, and did everything possible to change world leaders’ mentality about climate change.

“We are educated people, we are smart people, we know what’s going on, the days of the indigenous people and local people not having the information and the knowledge about what’s going on is over,” he said.

“We are the generation of today, the leaders of tomorrow and we are not blinded by the problem. We can see it with our own eyes, we feel it in our own hearts, and we want the Australian government to realise that. We are not blinded by money we just want to live as peacefully and fight for what matters the most, which is our homes.”

Tokelau became the first country in the world to use 100 percent renewable energy when they switched to solar energy in 2012.

Speaking about the canoes that he and his fellow climate warriors had carved in their home countries and bought to Australia for the protest, he talked about how his family had used canoes for generations,

“Each extended family would have a canoe, and this canoe is the main tool that we used to be able to live, to go fishing, to get coconuts, to take family to the other islands.”

Another climate warrior, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, from the Marshall Islands, brought members of the United Nations General Assembly to tears last month with her impassioned poem written to her baby daughter Matafele Peinam,

“No one’s moving, no one’s losing their homeland, no one’s gonna become a climate change refugee. Or should I say, no one else. To the Carteret islanders of Papua New Guinea and to the Taro islanders of Fiji, I take this moment to apologise to you,” she said.

The Pacific Islands Forum describes climate change as the “single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and well-being of the peoples of the Pacific.”

“Climate change is an immediate and serious threat to sustainable development and poverty eradication in many Pacific Island Countries, and for some their very survival. Yet these countries are amongst the least able to adapt and to respond; and the consequences they face, and already now bear, are significantly disproportionate to their collective miniscule contributions to global emissions,” it says.

Pacific Island leaders have recently stepped up their language, challenging the Australian government to stop delaying action on climate change.

Oxfam Australia’s climate change advocacy coordinator, Dr Simon Bradshaw, told IPS, “Australia is a Pacific country. In opting to dismantle its climate policies, disengage from international negotiations and forge ahead with the expansion of its fossil fuel industry, it is utterly at odds with the rest of the region.”

Dr. Bradshaw added, “Australia’s closest neighbours have consistently identified climate change as their greatest challenge and top priority. So it is inevitable that Australia’s recent actions will impact on its relationship with Pacific Islands.

“A recent poll commissioned by Oxfam showed that 60 percent of Australians thought climate change was having a negative impact on the ability of people in poorer countries to grow and access food, rising to 68 percent among 18 to 34-year-olds,” he said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

U.S. climate emissions have already begun to come down, currently resting at their lowest point in a decade and a half. Credit: Bigstock

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Sep 27 2013 (IPS)

The United States has formally told the United Nations that it is on track to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 17-percent by the end of the decade, assuming that currently proposed regulations are implemented.

That figure would be in line with a central goal President Barack Obama laid out in a watershed climate-focused plan unveiled in June. While environmentalists have been generally supportive of that initiative, known as the Climate Action Plan, the 17-percent goal (to be reduced below 2005 levels) has struck some as too cautious.“Other nations like Mexico, China and those in the E.U. are watching closely to see whether the U.S. will make good on its promises." -- Lou Leonard of WWF

On Thursday the United States handed over two reports to the United Nations, one charting the country’s progress on cutting emissions and a second that, for the first time, forecasts estimated future improvement. The reports come a day before a U.N. panel is set to unveil its fifth major update analysis on the causes and ramifications of climate change.

“This biennial report is the first ever of its kind, and will serve as a benchmark for other countries, and will hold them accountable for action on climate change,” Heather Zichal, President Obama’s top aide on climate change, told an audience here on Wednesday.

“The world looks to the United States for leadership on climate change, and we feel we must deliver it both at home and abroad … In his speech [in June], President Obama made clear that if Congress wouldn’t take action on climate change, put our nation on the path to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent by 2020, he would.”

While the United Nations has required four-yearly reporting on countries’ existing emissions-reduction policies, the United States was reportedly central in pushing the new biennial, forward-looking reporting on what countries are planning to do to combat climate change. (The U.S. biennial report is actually still in draft form, open to public comment through late October.)

The reports find that U.S. climate emissions have already begun to come down, currently resting at their lowest point in a decade and a half. Officials now estimate a range of potential emissions cuts by 2020 – depending on how implementation of regulations proceeds, greenhouse gases could come down by 14 to 20 percent below 2005 levels.

Under the hood

To get anywhere near those levels, the administration says the country will need to impose restrictions on the carbon output of both new and current power plants. It will also need to ratchet up energy efficiency standards while tamping down on two particularly noxious gases, methane and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).

U.S. regulators have taken initial steps on several of these issues, most recently last week’s proposal to significantly limit carbon emissions from current power plants (a similar proposal for current power plants is expected next June). Yet nearly all of these regulatory measures remain highly controversial, with the business lobby and Republican lawmakers offering varying levels of pushback.

“Today’s report provides a first chance to look under the hood of the President’s Climate Action Plan,” Lou Leonard, head of climate change programmes for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), said Thursday.

“Other nations like Mexico, China and those in the E.U. are watching closely to see whether the U.S. will make good on its promises and show global leadership. As the first-of-its-kind report under new international guidelines, the assessment should set a strong example of transparency and thoroughness.”

Leonard noted that the report shows the 17 percent target is “achievable but by no means yet certain”.

Further, implementation of many of these regulations will require significant cooperation with local-level forces.

“To ensure we reach and surpass the 2020 goals, action in U.S. cities and counties is another critical piece of the puzzle, and hundreds of communities are doing their part by strengthening building codes, promoting clean energy and building smarter transportation,” said Brian Holland, director of climate programmes at ICLEI USA, a network of 450 local governments.

“Federal collaboration and support for local government action has been instrumental in achieving emissions reductions in leading cities. Much more will be necessary to stabilise global climate in the long run.”

Schizophrenic approach

Others are questioning both Obama’s goal and his route to achieving it. Currently the president’s energy approach is known broadly as “all of the above”, a catchphrase meant to suggest (particularly to conservatives) that he will not be making ideologically driven energy decisions.

Yet a rising chorus has warned that continued reliance on fossil fuels is undercutting the quick scale-up in renewable energy technologies that many feel is necessary to make real progress on cutting U.S. – and global – carbon emissions.

This is particularly true with regard to the new surfeit of cheap U.S. natural gas following the introduction of technologies allowing for a process known as hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”). While this glut has accounted for much of the United States’ dip in emissions in recent years, as gas has increasingly supplanted coal, it has also come to define U.S. energy policy for the foreseeable future.

“You can’t solve climate change with an ‘all of the above’ approach – you have to go ‘all in’ on a clean energy future. The White House continues to have a schizophrenic approach to climate policy,” Jamie Henn, communications director for 350.org, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“On the one hand, the Obama administration is taking important steps forward with investments in renewable energy and the recent power plant regulations. On the other, they’re letting fracking go unregulated, still deliberating on the Keystone XL [crude oil] pipeline, and weakening key international climate policies.”

While the United States set records last year for new wind power installations – and is setting similar records this year with solar – the federal regulatory regime overseeing incentives for renewable energy here remains notably uneven, leaving investors and utilities with little long-term confidence. Fixing this issue, many argue, would allow both for this sector to blossom and for the federal government to substantially increase its emissions-reduction goals.

“A 17-percent reduction in emissions is actually far below what we should be making,” Henn says. “If anything, the [new U.N.] report underlines the need for more immediate and ambitious action.”

Advocates say the official social cost of carbon (SCC) has a significant impact on the cost-benefit rationale for strengthened carbon-related regulation. Credit: Bigstock

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Aug 17 2013 (IPS)

The U.S. Department of Energy has announced it is accepting a petition from a conservative advocacy group critical of a recent substantial increase to official calculations of the so-called “social cost of carbon”.

Since 2010, Washington officials have estimated that the damages resulting from the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could be quantified at around 22 dollars per tonne, representing the net impact of both pollution and climate change on human health and safety, agriculture, the environment, energy costs, etc.“The irony of their complaints is that the current figures for the social cost of carbon are likely far too low." -- Jamie Henn of 350.org

But following on a little-publicised inter-agency review, in June the government began to use a new figure, 36 dollars per pound, an increase of some 60 percent.

According to government officials, that’s in line with similar figures being used by some European countries. Advocates say the official social cost of carbon (SCC) has a significant impact on the cost-benefit rationale for strengthened carbon-related regulation.

“The social cost of carbon is a powerful metric to help make the risks of climate change more tangible – it’s the difference between saying, ‘cigarettes are probably unhealthy for you’ and ‘cigarettes cause cancer’,” Jamie Henn, communications director for 350.org, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“As people start to make the direct link between carbon emissions and the problems in their communities, from high asthma rates to extreme weather, they’re going to start to demand more action.”

SCC figures can also be used to put a specific “social harm” price tag on the emissions of particular companies or facilities. Henn notes that the oil giant ExxonMobil, for instance, estimates that it put out around 125 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent last year – potentially costing society some 4.5 billion dollars a year, according to the new SCC number.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama has promised wide-ranging regulatory action during his second term in office to counter the ongoing lack of climate-related legislation coming from the U.S. Congress. That prospect has led to a significant ramping up in lobbying efforts in recent months by the oil-and-gas sector and powerful U.S. business interests.

A quiet revision

At the heart of the pushback against the SCC revision is the fact that, unusually, the change was made with almost no publicity. Instead, President Obama’s administration simply integrated the new number into an obscure report on new energy efficiency requirements for microwave ovens – requirements that were to go into effect on Friday.

Since June, however, critics of government action on carbon pollution and climate change have seized on the issue, attempting to force the administration to backtrack on the new rule. On Friday, the Energy Department accepted a petition filed by the Landmark Legal Foundation, a conservative legal advocacy group based, accusing the government of a lack of transparency in the process.

The Department of Energy’s “unannounced, dramatically increased, and improperly altered [SCC] valuation presented for the first time in this microwave oven regulation will certainly become the standard by which all other agencies will place a purportedly beneficial economic value on new carbon regulations,” the foundation states.

“Landmark objects to the Department’s … decision to utilize an ‘Interagency Update’ to justify increasing the ‘social cost’ of carbon dioxide without any opportunity for public comment.”

On Friday, the Department of Energy publicly announced that it would be opening Landmark’s petition to public comment for 30 days (the announcement also includes a copy of the petition). Neither the department nor Landmark responded to IPS’s request for comment.

“It’s no wonder that the fossil fuel industry and their allies are so worried about the calculations,” 350.org’s Henn says.

“The irony of their complaints is that the current figures for the social cost of carbon are likely far too low. Scientists are making it increasingly clear that we’re approaching dangerous climate tipping points, beyond which the damage to our planet and society are incalculable. In the end, it’s hard to put a price tag on a liveable planet.”

Indeed, some scientists have suggested far higher ranges for SCC figures, from 55 to as high as 900 dollars a ton. The U.S. government itself estimates that the official SCC figure will rise to more than 70 dollars a ton by 2050.

War on SCC

The new SCC figures have also caught the attention of lawmakers, bolstered by support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country’s largest business lobby group.

In mid-July, an Obama administration official was summoned to testify before a Congressional oversight committee on the issue. When lawmakers complained about the lack of legislative or public input, the official, Howard Shelanski, noted that the inter-agency revisions were based on three publicly created, peer-reviewed computer models.

“It is important to note that the only changes made in May 2013 to the SCC estimates reflect the refinements made to the underlying models,” Shelanski stated in testimony. “In other words, all of the changes to the social cost of carbon values were the result of updates to … models that were made by the model developers themselves.”

He also stated that the SCC has been referenced in all energy efficiency rulemaking in recent years, and hence has been open to public input since at least 2010. Indeed, the government has been trying to evaluate the financial impact of pollution for far longer, with little partisan pushback.

“We’ve actually been on the books using cost-benefit analysis, evaluating the costs of pollution, for a very long time – the [1963] Clean Air Act requires us to do that, but this analysis has become more robust since that time,” Elizabeth Perera, a senior Washington representative for the Sierra Club, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“And let’s remember, this is a very market-based approach, a very bipartisan approach to dealing with pollution.”

Republican lawmakers were dissatisfied with Shelanski’s rebuttal, however. In early August, the House of Representatives voted to disallow another key regulatory agency, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), from using any SCC value in its energy regulations without specific Congressional approval.

The bill has little chance of becoming law, but represents only one piece of a broader push by the right against SCC implementation. Some lawmakers worry that a currently pending EPA regulation could result in a significant scaling back of the use of coal in the United States.

“The EPA’s policies have real-world consequences,” the SCC amendment’s sponsor, Representative Tim Murphy, said following its passage. “We’ve already seen what the ‘social cost’ of the War on Coal is today – the cost is jobs.”

Natural gas extraction methods are extremely controversial in the United States. Above, a shale gas drilling site. Credit: Bigstock

By Jared Metzker
WASHINGTON, Jun 14 2013 (IPS)

Energy specialists say that advancements in fossil fuel extraction technologies have sparked a “revolution” in U.S. energy production, especially given radical recent changes in the global energy market and the U.S. role within it.

New extraction methods, such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), have allowed producers to access natural gas and oil (known as “tight” or “unconventional” oil) in recent years that was once inaccessible.

Such access, brought about by technologies developed and still used primarily in the United States, have already changed the country’s approach to producing and consuming energy.

“The tight oil boom holds the potential to free [the United States] from spending literally trillions of dollars to buy petroleum products from the politically unstable areas of the world,” Pete Domenici, a former senator and currently a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Centre (BPC), a Washington think tank that hosted a discussion on energy Wednesday.

“Tight oil has truly been an unexpected gift to our nation and to our hemisphere.”

Propelled by the boom in U.S. production, North America is today the fastest-growing region in the world in terms of fossil fuel production. As Daniel Yergin, an energy scholar, pointed out during Wednesday’s conference, the United States produces 43 percent more oil than it did in 2008 – the equivalent, he said, of having another major producing country enter the market.

A recent study by CitiGroup indicates if this growth continues, real gross domestic product (GDP) in the United States could increase by 3 percent, a bump that analysts say would help lower the country’s deficit and create jobs."The exploitation of these new, extreme sources of carbon-based energy is moving us in the wrong direction."
-- Jamie Henn

It would also give the United States more flexibility in dealing more harshly with oil-producing adversaries, such as Iran.

A new role in the global energy market

Yet while many had hoped that increased U.S. production would significantly reduce prices both in the United States and internationally, others believe it will have the opposite result.

Participants in Wednesday’s discussion generally agreed that the United States will likely become an exporter of both liquefied natural gas (LNG) and even crude oil in the near future. Like other exporters, it will prefer higher world energy prices.

“The U.S. no longer looks at prices purely from a consumer’s perspective,” Katherine Spector, head of commodities strategy at CIBC World Markets, said Thursday. Instead, she suggested that the country now looks for “goldilocks” prices: those that are neither too high nor too low.

Her statement corroborates analysis, such as that of Public Citizen‘s Energy Program, a non-profit public advocacy group, which concluded that “because oil prices are priced globally, the domestic oil boom can’t – and won’t – provide relief for consumers”.

Opponents of U.S. LNG exports have sought to prevent them, but in recent months two deals were reached with the Obama administration to allow U.S. companies to liquefy and export gas.

Along with what Domenici called a formerly “heretical” notion that the United States may export light crude oil, the deals represent a drastic shift from the country’s current model, under which its fossil fuel-related exports are almost exclusively finished petroleum products.

Holding back alternatives

Meanwhile, environmentalists are increasingly warning that the new technologies could worsen global warming, despite widespread suggestions that natural gas burns more cleanly than coal, for example.

“We are already seeing the devastating effects of global warming due to an overuse of fossil fuels,” Jamie Henn, communications director for the environmental advocacy group 350.org, told IPS. “The idea should be to de-carbonise the economy, but the exploitation of these new, extreme sources of carbon-based energy is moving us in the wrong direction.”

Henn also pointed to an additional danger of non-U.S. companies, with less advanced technologies, trying to replicate these extraction methods and potentially leading to environmental disaster. Leaking methane from fracking operations is one of the most potent climate change-causing greenhouse gases.

While Henn would like to see the global energy market transition away from fossil fuels and towards alternative energy sources, he said the primary obstacle is money.

“We already have access to cleaner, renewable energy sources,” he says. “But the transition to these sources is being held back because more profit can be made by exploiting these new, extreme sources of fossil fuels.”

In order for the North American production boom to continue, experts who spoke Wednesday said investments in controversial infrastructure projects, such as the Canada-United States Keystone XL pipeline and LNG export terminal facilities, will have to be realised.

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was one of the speakers in favour of these investments.

The senator pointed to Canada’s “abundant” supply of heavy crude oil, which she said is well-suited for the Gulf of Mexico refineries, and a problem of “too much oil and too few pipelines”, thus advocating for the controversial Keystone pipeline, which is currently pending U.S government approval.

She also stated her support for investment in U.S. capabilities to liquefy and export its natural gas surplus, saying it could lead to a “golden age of gas”.

Objections to the Keystone project have come to define the environmental movement in Washington over the past year, but the proposed LNG export terminal facilities also raise important environmental concerns.

Without strong government policies regulating emissions from natural gas production and use, the likely results of U.S. LNG exports would be “an increase in domestic greenhouse gas emissions, and questionable, if any, benefits to the global climate”, James Bradbury, a senior associate on climate and energy issues at the World Resource Institute, a Washington think tank, told IPS.

Furthermore, facilities that liquefy natural gas consume substantial electricity, while public debate has barely begun here on how energy prices would change once significant U.S. natural gas becomes available on the global market.

“Any amount of LNG exports would put upward pressure on U.S. natural gas prices,” Bradbury says. “This would make natural gas less competitive in U.S. electricity markets, likely causing a shift toward greater coal-fired power generation. This would cause an increase in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.”

At prestigious Harvard University, nearly three-quarters of students voted in favour of divestment. The school's endowment is 32 billion dollars. Credit: First daffodils /cc by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Feb 8 2013 (IPS)

A months-old national campaign to convince U.S. colleges, universities and city governments to withdraw investments from the world’s largest oil and gas companies has seen some notable initial successes.

On Tuesday, a city supervisor in San Francisco introduced resolutions calling on the city’s retirement fund to “divest” all money it has in fossil fuel companies and gun manufacturers. That followed a significant recent decision by the city of Seattle’s two-billion-dollar retirement fund to actively shed its stocks in companies that contribute to climate change.

And Wednesday, former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, a prominent climate activist and Harvard alum, sided with a strengthening campaign to get that school to back out of its oil and gas investments.

“If I were a student, I would support what you’re doing,” Gore told students, speaking on campus at Harvard. “But if I were a board member I would do what I did when we took up the Apartheid issue. This is an opportunity for learning and the raising of awareness, for the discussion of sustainable capitalism.”

In fact, the divestment movement here in the U.S., which has burgeoned following the November presidential election, took its inspiration from the anti-Apartheid experience.

“During the 1980s, 155 schools came out against the South African Apartheid, and so we’re modelling a lot of what we’re doing now on that,” Jamie Henn, communications director for 350.org, an advocacy group that has spearheaded the divestment push, told IPS.

“So, it made perfect sense for us to start with universities, as these institutions have a special responsibility to make their investments live up to their missions. Many have publicly committed to sustainability and solving the big issues of the day, yet many are still putting tens of millions of dollars into companies that are wreaking havoc on the planet.”

Hampshire College, a small school in Massachusetts, was the first to follow the campaign’s lead; in 1979, it was also the first school in the United States to divest from South African holdings. Two more colleges have now followed suit.

While these are each small and notably progressive schools, Henn reports that student groups have sprung up around the issue on the campuses of at least 230 schools, including at each of the elite Ivy League schools and several large state schools. At least 20 institutions have now started processes to look at divestment options.

“We’ve been blown away by how quickly the campaign has spread – right now it’s the fastest-moving student environmental campaign of the past decade, maybe ever,” Henn says.

“And an increasing number of students are also increasing pressure on politicians to take action. Look at these numbers – Harvard’s endowment is 32 billion dollars. That perks up the ears of a lot of people.”

Little risk

The Harvard administration was initially cold on the idea of divestment, however, reportedly refusing for months to agree to a meeting between the school president and student representatives on the issue. But following a concerted campaign – and a campus-wide referendum in which nearly three-quarters of students voted in favour of divestment – recent weeks have seen a significant softening of tone.

“Finally, at the end of the semester, the administration felt enough pressure to agree to a meeting with a couple of members of the school’s board, and that took place last Friday,” Alli Welton, a co-coordinator of Divest Harvard, a student group, told IPS.

“In that meeting, the board members said they were very concerned about climate change, but questioned whether divestment would have a significant impact on the issue. However, they also noted that divestment of direct holdings wouldn’t have a large impact on the school’s endowment.”

Indeed, that latter contention is supported by a recent report by Aperio Group, an investment management firm, which found that divesting of climate change-related holdings would bring with it remarkably little risk for university endowments.

Welton notes that negotiations between students and the administration are going to continue (“That’s pretty good after a semester of not talking to us”), with a decision slated for February 15. While she says she’s “very encouraged” by the administration’s new willingness to talk, Welton refers to a far larger impact on the student body.

“I’ve never seen anything like this happen around climate change on campus – it seems like students know a lot more about this issue and are feeling its urgency,” she says. “It really feels as though divestment is a very clear way that we can effect change.”

Critically for such a large issue as climate change – and one on which many activists have repeatedly felt let down by failures at the national and international levels to agree on substantive long-term solutions – Welton notes that organising around investments makes a massive issue feel more immediate.

“These local-level initiatives make climate change more accessible for people, and make it more possible for them to get involved,” she says. “We can see very clearly that we’re part of something gigantic, and that definitely creates identity for a national and even international movement.”

To the cities

According to 350.org’s Henn, the second phase of the organisation’s divestment strategy will focus on city governments and pension funds. In this, Seattle’s actions have already become a model of sorts.

Led by the city’s mayor, Mike McGinn, in turn responding to exhortations by 350.org, last month Seattle’s retirement and pension funds reported that they had some 17 million dollars invested in oil and gas companies. On Jan. 31, those funds moved to create a mechanism to look into how potential divestments could take place.

“This was a critical first step, as there was no such mechanism even in existence,” Aaron Pickus, a spokesperson for the mayor, told IPS.

While no decision has yet been made on how that money should now be used, Pickus says, “There has been a general request that it not be re-invested in companies that are polluting our climate.”

The public response has been positive, he notes, even while constituents understand that the city is at the beginning of a process that could span the next half-decade.

“There is a rapidly growing sense that something – in fact, many concrete things – need to start happening to change the trend on how we approach climate change,” Pickus says.

“That includes how we invest – not just in pensions but also, more generally, how we’re spending taxpayer money. For instance, are we going to invest in new, wider highways or in green transit options?”

A street in New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy, which wreaked havoc along much of the East Coast. Credit: May S. Young/CC by 2.0

By Rebecca Hanser
NEW YORK, Nov 1 2012 (IPS)

As the East Coast deals with the havoc and devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy, climate scientists are seeing yet another reason to put climate change and global warming on the current political agenda.

The storm has reignited the hotly debated topics of climate change and global warming, which environmentalists blame for Hurricane Sandy. With recovery an immediate concern, environmental groups also worry about different forms of pollution resulting from the storm.

“Sandy is what happens when the temperature goes up a degree. The scientists who predicted this kind of megastorm have issued another stark warning: if we stay on our current path, our children will live on a super-heated planet that’s four or five degrees warmer than it is right now,” said Bill McKibben, president and co-founder of the climate advocacy movement 350.org, in a press release.

Global warming is caused mainly by human activities such as burning fossil fuels like coal. This operation and others lead to higher concentrations of greenhouse gasses that raise the temperatures of both the oceans and the earth’s atmosphere.

“The fossil fuel industry is causing the climate crisis, leading to more extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy,” McKibben said. “We’re calling on Big Oil to stop spending millions to influence this election and donate the money to disaster relief instead.”

A recent report published by the Rainforest Action Network demonstrated that banks that finance and invest in carbon intensive companies are also responsible for the deteriorating global climate. They also do not properly measure their carbon footprints, despite sufficient and available guidelines to help them do so, according to the report, “Bankrolling Climate Disruption: The Impacts of the Banking Sector’s Financed Emissions“.

Climate change controversy

Not everyone agrees with the claim that global warming and climate change alone have paved the way for Hurricane Sandy.

“It’s a probabilistic issue. You can’t say that Sandy occurred because of climate change, but what you can say is that that such storms are much more likely to happen with contributing factors that include things directly related to climate change,” Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at Environmental Defence Fund, told IPS.

“Could Sandy have happened without climate change? Sure. Is it likely? No,” Hamburg added.

David Biello, an environmental journalist and associate editor at Scientific American, agreed. “Global warming didn’t spawn Sandy but it certainly contributed to the impact, with a couple of features definitely worsening it,” he told IPS.

“Higher sea surface temperatures have made the storm surge stronger,” he explained. “Normally hurricanes come up to the coast and turn right back into the ocean, but as a consequence of the major meltdown of Arctic sea ice this summer, there was a weather pattern preventing Sandy from taking that course, and [it] steered it back into land.”

One conclusion on which experts do agree is that the frequency and intensity of hurricanes like Sandy will increase over time.

“Global warming was probably a small but significant factor for Sandy. But it’s a factor that will grow over time,” Michael Oppenheimer, climate scientist and professor at Princeton University, told IPS.

“Such massive storms only happen once every 100 years, and now this kind of event is becoming more frequent, which is a huge challenge for human adaptation and resilience of our infrastructure,” Biello elaborated.

Hamburg agreed, noting, “we’re not seeing more hurricanes…It is more the different types of storms, the intensity of the storm surge.”

A political storm

Hurricane Sandy has broken the so-called “climate silence” of this year’s elections. The storm has thrown a wrench into campaign efforts, halting activities Monday and Tuesday as it became impossible to ignore the topic of climate change, which has penetrated the national dialogue.

“The presidential candidates decided not to speak about climate change, but climate change has decided to speak to them,” said Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, in a press release.

Biello, the environmental journalist, believed otherwise. “I’d like to think so, but we’ve had several wake-up calls along the way, of which the biggest was Katrina, which wiped…New Orleans of the map. Unfortunately, up until now, not much progress has been made.”

Immediate concerns

The New York-based organisation Riverkeeper expressed concern about the increase in water pollution due to floating debris, oil spills, and other chemicals leaking from the fuel tanks of swamped vehicles and boats, all of which are contaminating the waters of the Hudson River and New York Harbour.

Riverkeeper also stressed the danger to public health caused by sewage overflows, which are already considered a “chronic problem”.

In a press release, the group explained that although sewage overflow is common during moderate or heavy storms, the contamination with Sandy was different because during the storm surge sewage, spilled back onto roads and into homes instead of being discharged into the river or harbour.

“This storm is not yet over,” said U.S. President Obama in a speech Tuesday at the Red Cross headquarters. “There is no time for inaction. Recovery is going to take a significant amount of time.”