Entrance to the Hangar Convention Center of the Amazonia in the northeastern Brazilian city of Belém. The climate summit, which began on November 10 and is due to conclude on Friday the 21st, is debating issues such as the phase-out of fossil fuels and adaptation goals. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 20 2025 (IPS)

The heat in the Hangar Convention Center of the Amazonia, in the northeastern Brazilian city of Belém, has reached the negotiation rooms of the climate summit. Over the past 72 hours, one of the most delicate and significant discussions of this climate meeting has been taking place: the path to progressively abandon the production and use of coal, gas, and oil.

In recent hours, a global coalition of rich and developing countries, led by Colombia, has doubled down on pushing for a fossil fuel phase-out roadmap, while major producer countries resist it.

“The plan must have differentiated commitments, the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies, and the reform of the international financial system, because foreign debt payments are punishing us,” Colombian Environment Minister Irene Vélez explained to IPS.

For the official, the 30th United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP30) on climate change must result in a roadmap. “People are mobilizing, demanding climate action; we have to start now,” she urged.

In Belém, the gateway to the planet’s largest rainforest, it is no longer just about reducing emissions but about transforming the foundation of the energy system, thus acquiring a moral, political, and scientific urgency. What was initially meant to be the “Amazon COP” has mutated into the “end-of-the-fossil-era-COP,” but the roadmap to achieve it is a toss-up.“The plan must have differentiated commitments, the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies, and the reform of the international financial system, because external debt payments are punishing us” –Irene Vélez.

Two years after the world agreed at COP28, held in 2023 in Dubai, to move away from fossil fuels, Belém is the moment of truth, upon which the effort to keep global warming below the 1.5° Celsius limit largely depends—a goal considered vital to avoid devastating and inevitable effects on ecosystems and human life.

Thus, the discussion among the 197 parties to the United Nations climate convention has shifted from the “what” to the “how,” and especially to the “when,” questions that have turned potential coordinates into a geopolitical labyrinth.

In that vein, a coalition of over 80 countries emerged on Tuesday the 18th to push the roadmap, including Colombia, Chile, Guatemala, and Panama among the Latin American countries.

One challenge for the roadmap advocates is that the issue is not explicitly part of the main agenda, a resource that the Brazilian presidency of COP30 could use to shirk responsibility on the matter.

The issue appears on the thematic menu of COP30, which started on the 10th and is scheduled to conclude on the 21st, and whose official objectives include approving the Global Goal on Adaptation to climate change and securing sufficient funds for that adaptation.

Approximately 40,000 people are attending this climate summit, including government representatives, multilateral agencies, academia, and civil society organizations.

An unprecedented indigenous presence is also in attendance, with about 900 delegates from native peoples, drawn by the ancestral call of the Amazon, a symbol of the menu of solutions to the climate catastrophe and simultaneously a victim of its causes.

Also present and very active in Belém are about 1,600 lobbyists from the hydrocarbon industry, 12% more than at the 2024 COP, according to the international coalition Kick Big Polluters Out.

The clamor from civil society demands an institutional structure with governance, clear criteria, measurable objectives, and justice mechanisms.

“The roadmap has become a difficult issue to ignore; it is already at the center of these negotiations, and no country can ignore it. The breadth of support is surprising, with rich and poor countries, producers and non-producers, indicating that an agreement is about to fall,” Antonio Hill, Just Transitions advisor for the non-governmental and international Natural Resource Governance Institute, told IPS.

Activists protest on Wednesday the 19th against fossil fuel exploitation at the entrance to the venue of the Belém climate summit, in the Amazonian northeast of Brazil. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Poisoned

The push for the roadmap comes from the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, promoted by civil society organizations, strongly adopted by Colombia, and which so far has the support of 18 nations, but no hydrocarbon-producing Latin American country, such as Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, or Venezuela.

Colombia, despite also being a producer and exporter of fossil fuels, has presented its Roadmap for a Just Energy Transition, with which it seeks to replace income from coal and oil with investments in tourism and renewable energy.

Colombia’s 2022-2052 National Energy Plan projects long-term reductions in fossil fuel production. The country announced US$14.5 billion for the energy transition to less polluting forms of energy production.

But for the rest of the region, the duality between maintaining fossil fuels and promoting renewable energies persists.

A prime example of this duality is the COP30 host country itself, Brazil. While the host President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and his Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, have insisted on the need to abandon fossil fuels, the government is promoting expansive oil and gas extraction plans.

In fact, just weeks before the opening of COP30, the state-owned oil group Petrobras received a permit for oil exploration in the Atlantic, just kilometers from the mouth of the Amazon River.

But Lula and his team committed that this summit in the heart of the Amazon would be “the COP of truth” and “the COP of implementation,” and the issue of fossil fuels has become central to the negotiations, which Lula joined on Wednesday the 19th to give a push to the talks and the outcomes.

In their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—the set of mitigation and adaptation policies countries must present to comply with the Paris Agreement on climate change signed in 2015 at COP21—Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, or Chile avoid mentioning a managed phase-out of fossil fuels.

Simply put, they argue they cannot let go of the old vine before grasping the new one. This stance also involves a delicate aspect, as nations like Ecuador depend on revenues from hydrocarbon exploitation.

Therefore, the Global South has insisted on its demand for funding from rich nations, due to their contribution to the climate disaster through fossil fuel exploitation since the 17th century.

The result of the presented policies is alarming: although many countries have increased their emission reduction targets on paper, they lack details on phasing out production. The only existing roadmap is the growing extractive one.

In fact, the Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement process, originating from COP28, demanded that countries take measures to move towards a fossil-free era.

The argument is unequivocal: various estimates indicate that fossil fuels contribute 86% of greenhouse gas emissions, the cause of global warming.

But a key point is where to start. For Uitoto indigenous leader Fanny Kuiru Castro, the new general coordinator of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin –which  brings together the more than 350 native peoples of the eight countries sharing the biome–, the starting point must precisely be at-risk regions like the Amazon.

“It is a priority. If there isn’t a clear signal that we must proceed gradually, it means the summit has failed and does not want to adopt that commitment. We will have another 30 years of speeches,” she told IPS, alluding to that number of summits without substantial results.

In the Amazon, oil blocks threaten 31 million hectares or 12% of the total area, mining threatens 9.8 million, and timber concessions threaten 2.4 million.

And in that direction, a major obstacle arises: how to finance the phase-out. The roadmap has a direct link to the financial goals aimed at the Global South, with a demand for US$1.2 trillion in funding for climate action starting in 2035.

“Can the COP deliver the financial backing that countries need to reinvent their economies in time to guarantee just and inclusive development?” Hill questioned.

The atmosphere in Belém is of a different urgency compared to Dubai or Baku, where COP29 was held a year ago. The roadmap to a world free of fossil fuel smoke remains a blurry map, drawn freehand on ground that is heating up far too quickly.

In Belém, humanity is deciding whether to brake gradually or to accelerate, with the air conditioning on and a full tank.

Demonstrators demand clarification of the murder of land rights activist Samir Flores and the shutdown of a thermoelectric plant in the state of Morelos, in central Mexico, in a February 2019 protest on Mexico City's emblematic Paseo Reforma. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, May 20 2020 (IPS)

Since 2012, Teresa Castellanos has fought the construction of a gas-fired power plant in Huexca, in the central Mexican state of Morelos, adjacent to the country’s capital.

“We don’t want the power plant to operate, because it will cause irreparable damage, polluting the water and air. This project was imposed on us; we have to defend the water and the land. This is not an industrial zone,” the activist, coordinator of the Huexca Resistance Committee, told IPS.

During the tests, the constant noise of the turbines also altered the life of this small community of just over 1,000 people, mostly farmers, near the Cuautla River, within the rural municipality of Yecapixtla."Development banks must have safeguards and principles for sustainable investment. National regulations are needed, which define climate finance and green finance, what principles govern them, what are the climate risks. The trend should be to increasingly finance green projects and less and less hydrocarbons." -- Liliana Estrada

The Central Combined Cycle Plant, located in Huexca and with a capacity of 620 megawatts based on gas and steam, is part of the Morelos Integral Project (PIM), developed by the state Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). It also consists of an aqueduct and a gas pipeline that crosses the states of Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala.

The People’s Front in Defence of Land and Water of Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala and its ally, the Permanent Assembly of the People of Morelos, have managed to get several court orders that have blocked the operation of the plant, the 12-km aqueduct and the 171-km gas pipeline since 2015.

Castellanos, who has won an international and a national award for her activism, has been involved in the battle against the plant from the very start, which has earned her persecution and threats.

The opposition to the power plant by local communities that depend on planting corn, beans, squash and tomatoes and raising cattle and pigs, focuses on the lack of consultation, the threat to their agricultural activity, due to the extraction of water from the rivers, and the discharge of liquid waste.

In February 2019, a public consultation that did not meet international standards supported the completion of the project.

A few days earlier, activist Samir Flores had been murdered, a crime that remains unsolved – just one more instance of violence against environmentalists in Mexico. Despite Flores’ murder, the government of leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador went ahead with the referendum and upheld the result.

Public funds have fuelled the conflict, as the state-owned National Bank of Public Works and Services (Banobras) lent some 55 million dollars for the pipeline.

As in the case of other projects, development banks have become a financial pillar for the oil industry in Latin America’s second-largest nation, population 130 million.

The National Bank of Foreign Trade (Bancomext), Banobras and Nacional Financiera (Nafin) have funneled millions of dollars into building pipelines and oil and gas facilities in recent years, even though the climate change crisis makes it necessary to abandon such investments.

They have also financed renewable energy projects, but in much smaller amounts than fossil fuels.

The construction and operation of the Central Combined Cycle Plant, of the state Federal Electricity Commission, financed with public funds, unleashed a conflict with residents of Huexca, a small community in the central Mexican state of Morelos, which has brought the operation of the thermoelectric plant to a halt. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Energy reform pillar

The energy reform that then conservative president Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) enacted in 2013 opened the sector to private capital, broke the monopoly of the state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) oil giant and CFE, and made Mexico an attractive market for international investment in the sector.

To support this transformation, the state development banks also opened their coffers.´

Since 2012, Banobras, which finances infrastructure and public works and services, has lent at least 721 million dollars for the construction of gas pipelines, 10.2 billion dollars for oil and gas projects, 251 million dollars for electrical cogeneration, from steam generated in hydrocarbon plants, and eight million dollars for the construction of a thermoelectric plant that will burn fuel oil in the northwestern state of Baja California Sur.

Bancomext, which provides financing to exporters, importers and nine strategic sectors, has delivered some 500,000 dollars to oil companies in the eastern state of Tamaulipas and another 446 million dollars in Mexico City. It has also provided 65.4 million dollars to gas initiatives in the northern state of Nuevo Leon and 626.7 million dollars in Mexico City.

In addition, it has contributed 1.5 billion dollars for the supply of gas through pipelines to the final consumer; 324 million dollars for the extraction of oil and gas; 216 million dollars for the construction of public works for oil and gas; 126 million dollars for the manufacture of products derived from oil and coal; nearly seven million dollars for oil refining; 0.65 million dollars for the commercialisation of fuels; 0.25 million dollars for the drilling and maintenance of hydrocarbon wells; as well as 0.25 million dollars for oil platform maintenance and services.

In February, Bancomext granted a loan of 7.1 million dollars to Grupo Diarqco, in what it presented as the first credit to a private Mexican company in the industry, to exploit an oil field in the southeastern state of Tabasco.

Nafin, which grants credits and guarantees to public and private projects, created in 2014 the Energy Impulse Programme for these initiatives, endowed with more than a billion dollars.

It also manages, along with the economy ministry, the Public Trust to Promote the Development of Energy Industry National Suppliers and Contractors, designed for the industrial promotion of local production chains and direct investment in the energy industry, which this year has a fund of some 41 million dollars.

Missing: social and environmental safeguards

As in the case of the Morelos Integral Project, the gas pipelines have been a source of conflict with local communities, arising from the lack of socio-environmental safeguards and standards to guarantee that a project and its financing will respect the human rights of potentially affected communities.

Nafin and Banobras lack such safeguards, while Bacomext has had an “Environmental and Social Risk Management System Guide” since 2017, with no evidence of whether and how it has been applied to energy projects financed since then.

Since 2003, three platforms of international standards have emerged, to which Mexico’s development banks have not adhered, on human rights; social and environmental assessments and impacts; the application of safeguards; stakeholder participation; complaint resolution; and transparency.

The planet needs 80 percent of the global hydrocarbon reserves to stay underground in order for the temperature increase to remain at 1.5 degrees Celsius, as set out in the Paris Agreement on climate change.

The treaty, signed by 196 countries and territories in 2015, will enter into force at year-end and is considered indispensable to avoid irreversible climate disasters and human catastrophes.

Liliana Estrada, a researcher with the Climate Finance Group of Latin America and the Caribbean, told IPS that most investment in energy still goes to fossil fuels.

“After the reform, they have to enter into strategic projects and follow the guidelines of the government; they cannot go against these strategic lines. The gas and gas pipelines became strategic,” with the boost to the megaprojects of the López Obrador administration, said the representative of this coalition of non-governmental organisations and academics.

These credits are part of the fossil fuel subsidies that Mexico has pledged, to several international bodies, to eliminate.

The Mexican energy industry has also attracted international private banks, which have lent 55.95 billion dollars to 12 corporations, according to “Banking on Climate Change: Fossil Fuel Finance Report 2020”, released in March by six international environmental organisations.

The CFE received some 5.4 billion dollars from 12 banks between 2016 and 2019, and Pemex received 48.3 billion dollars from 20 foreign banks.

Based on Huexca’s experience, Castellanos demanded that these investments be stopped.

“If it’s our company, as the government says, then we can close it down. We have to defend the space in which we live, because we only have one planet and it belongs to all of us, it belongs to every living being, and it is our obligation to contribute something to this planet, because we are only here for a short while, we are guests of the earth”, she said.

Estrada called for sustainable financing regulations and questioned the lack of government leadership in this regard.

“Development banks must have safeguards and principles for sustainable investment,” she said. “National regulations are needed, which define climate finance and green finance, what principles govern them, what are the climate risks. The trend should be to increasingly finance green projects and less and less hydrocarbons.”

Employees work on the solar panels of the El Romero plant, with a capacity of 196 megawatts, in the desert region of Atacama in northern Chile, a country that has set out to develop its solar power potential. CREDIT: Acciona

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Apr 29 2020 (IPS)

The oil slump, global recession and uncertainty about the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic will fuel the appetite for cheaper fossil fuel energy and delay investments in renewables, affecting the targets of the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The countries of the developing South, and in particular oil exporters, will be affected as suppliers to shrinking economies and as seekers of investment in clean energy, in a world that will compete fiercely for low-cost recovery, warned experts consulted by IPS.

The crises, “in view of the abundance and low prices of oil, far from accelerating a change of era that would leave behind fossil fuels and embrace renewable energies, will postpone for a long time that aim, outlined in the SDGs,” said Venezuelan oil expert Elie Habalián.

One of the targets of SDG 7, which calls for affordable clean energy, is to “increase substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix” by 2030.

This is in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change, signed in 2015, which enters into force at the end of this year. The accord includes energy transition measures: national contributions to replace fossil fuels with clean energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and curb the increase in temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

These commitments are undermined by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which will cause a severe recession, with the global economy projected to shrink three percent this year and six percent in large countries in the North like the United States and in the South like Brazil.

With that forecast, “it seems that the efforts of governments will tend to sustain and deepen the extractivist model, including hydrocarbons,” said researcher María Marta di Paola, of Argentina’s Environment and Natural Resources Foundation.

In 2018, according to British oil giant BP, global consumption of primary energy (the energy embodied in natural resources before undergoing any human-made conversions or transformations) was 13,865 million tons of oil equivalent (Mtoe), with a predominance of fossil fuels: oil 33.6 percent, coal 27.2 percent and gas 23.8 percent.

Hydroelectricity represented 6.8 percent and sources strictly considered renewable (solar, wind, geothermal, marine, biomass) contributed just 561 Mtoe, or 4.04 percent.

The Paris Agreement, aimed at adapting to and mitigating the climate emergency, establishes that developing countries will take longer to comply with the agreement and that the reductions to which they commit will be made on the basis of equity and in the context of their fight against poverty and for sustainable development.

But in the face of the crises caused by the pandemic, many of the 196 signatory countries, “seeking to take advantage of their installed capacity and regulate impacts on employment and consumption, will relax environmental standards and miss the opportunity to begin a clean, fair and inclusive energy transition,” said Di Paola.

Lisa Viscidi of the Washington-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue said that “although rates of return are currently higher for renewables than for fossil fuels, there are indications that it will be difficult to attract investment in solar or wind energy before demand recovers.”

View of a gas plant in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, a major oil exporter. The outlook of abundant oil and lower prices in the midst of the crisis points to intense demand for and use of fossil fuels in the short and even medium term. CREDIT: ADNOC

She cited “the plunge in demand for electricity due to the self-isolation (to curb the spread of COVID-19), which strongly impacts the auctions of renewables, leading to their cancellation” – a reference to the mechanism for buying and selling electricity between suppliers and distributors.

With the collapse of oil prices, governments like those of Latin America “will not be inclined towards renewable energy for now, calculating that it could have higher costs,” said Viscidi, head of the energy area in her organisation.

But also when the current world health crisis ends, “the post-pandemic economy will pose insurmountable obstacles for many countries in the global South to achieve a transformation of their energy mix,” said Alejandro López-González, an expert in sustainability from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Spain.

This, he argued, is because “the transformation of the energy mix in countries of the South depends on trade in commodities with industrialised countries,” that is, on securing good markets and prices for their products, which provide revenue with which to adopt cleaner energy sources.

Throughout the developing South, the global recession will result in fewer exports, business closures, job losses, lower tax revenues and reduced investment, according to projections by multilateral bodies, leaving capital- and technology-intensive initiatives, such as solar or wind farms, without resources.

Currently, in the developing South, only India, with solar and wind energy plants, and Brazil (wind and biomass) are attempting to keep up with the giants that possess large non-conventional clean energy installations: China, the United States, Germany and Japan.

In 2018, renewable energies represented only 9.3 percent, or 2,480 of the 26,615 terawatts (1 Tw = 1 billion kilowatts) of electricity generation in the world, versus 10,100 Tw contributed by coal, 6,189 by gas and 4,193 by water sources.

Peter Fox-Penner, head of Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy, said in an article distributed by The Conversation that “Economy-driven demand reductions, which are likely worldwide, will hurt new renewable installations.

“Utilities will tighten their budgets and defer building new plants. Companies that make solar cells, wind turbines, and other green energy technologies will shelve their growth plans and adopt austerity measures,” in the context of the global recession, he wrote.

But “Countervailing factors will partly offset this decline, at least in wealthy countries,” Fox-Penner said. “Many renewable plants are being installed for reasons other than demand growth, such as clean power targets in state laws and regulations,” and public pressure that forces utilities to close down coal-fired power plants, he added.

The outlook for oil

Along these lines, Venezuelan economist José Manuel Puente predicted that “the energy transition will happen, there are more and more regulations, electric and hybrid cars, and the problem for Venezuela, Nigeria or Mexico is that we will remain poor countries with deposits of black sludge underground.”

López-González is also in favour of countries like Venezuela – with an enormous potential for wind energy due to the strong, constant trade winds that blow in the northwest – fully exploiting their hydrocarbon resources in order to finance changes in their energy mix.

But these strategies were suspended for members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and for other crude oil producers, when oil prices collapsed to the point that on Apr. 20 they reached negative values, for the first time in history.

U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate was quoted that day on the New York futures market at -37 dollars per barrel, 50 dollars below its opening price that day of 13 dollars.

The prices plunged because, as stockpiles overwhelmed storage facilities, buyers did not want to be forced to receive agreed shipments for delivery on that “Black Monday”, and preferred to assume the cost of getting out of the commitment.

That day illustrated the decline in demand that had already started before the arrival of coronavirus in Europe and the Americas, and which gave rise in March to a supply reduction agreement between the 11 OPEC partners and 10 other exporters.

The recession triggered by COVID-19 will mean that the world will consume 30 percent less this year: 70 million barrels a day of oil, down from 100 million in 2019.

This oil crisis “brings very bad news for producers in the Gulf, Russia, Mexico, Venezuela and others: it is the end of absolute income, and the extreme minimisation of the differential income of oil,” said Habalián, a former Venezuelan ambassador to OPEC.

For years, oil exporting nations benefited from setting reference prices for oil before it reached the markets. And in addition, due to the wide gap between costs and prices, they piled up profits that are being pulverised by the current crisis.

Also affected are dozens of companies facing bankruptcy since the growing demand and strong oil prices had allowed them to extract, mainly in the United States, shale oil and gas by means of fracking (hydraulic fracturing), an environmentally questionable technique.

Finally, the energy landscape will be impacted by the behaviors that consumers adopt in the wake of the pandemic – such as their use of energy or demand for travel – or by changes in labour relations after the extensive experiment in off-site work as a result of the COVID-19 self-isolation.

The immediate must-do “no-brainer” actions to be completed by 2020 include the elimination of an estimated 600 billion dollars in annual subsidies to the fossil fuel industries. Credit: Bigstock

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 24 2017 (IPS)

The Carbon Law says human carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions must be reduced by half each decade starting in 2020. By following this “law” humanity can achieve net-zero CO2 emissions by mid-century to protect the global climate for current and future generations.

A “carbon law” is a new concept unveiled March 23 in the journal Science. It is part of a decarbonization roadmap that shows how the global economy can rapidly reduce carbon emissions, said co-author Owen Gaffney of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, one of international team of climate experts.“Coal power plants under construction and proposed in India alone would account for roughly half of the remaining carbon budget.” --Steven Davis

To keep the global temperature rise to well below 2°C, emissions from burning fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) must peak by 2020 at the latest and fall to around zero by 2050. This is what the world’s nations agreed to at the UN’s Paris Agreement in 2015. Global temperatures have already increased 1.1 degrees C.

“After the Paris agreement we began to work on a science-based roadmap to stay well below 2C,” Gaffney told IPS.

The “carbon law” is modelled on Moore’s Law, a prediction that computer processing power doubles every 24 months. Like Moore’s, the carbon law isn’t a scientific or legal law but a projection of what could happen. Gordon Moore’s 1965 prediction ended up becoming the tech industry’s biannual goal.

A “carbon law” approach ensures that the greatest efforts to reduce emissions happen sooner not later, which reduces the risk of blowing the remaining global carbon budget, Gaffney said.

This means global CO2 emissions must peak by 2020 and then be cut in half by 2030. Emissions in 2016 were 38 billion tonnes (Gt), about the same as the previous two years. If emissions peak at 40 Gt by 2020, they need to fall to 20 Gt by 2030 under the carbon law. And then halve again in 2040 and 2050.

“Global emissions have stalled the last three years, but it’s too soon to say if they have peaked due largely to China’s incredible efforts,” he said.

Source: N. CARY/SCIENCE

The Science paper, “A roadmap for rapid decarbonization”, notes that China’s coal use swung from a 3.7 percent increase in 2013 to a 3.7 percent decline in 2015. Although not noted in the paper, China’s wind energy capacity went from 400 megawatts (Mw) in 2004 to an astonishing 145,000 Mw in 2016.

“In the last decade, the share of renewables in the energy sector has doubled every 5.5 years. If doubling continues at this pace fossil fuels will exit the energy sector well before 2050,” says lead author Johan Rockström, director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

The authors pinpoint the end of coal in 2030-2035 and oil between 2040-2045 according to their “carbon law”. They propose that to remain on this trajectory, all sectors of the economy need decadal carbon roadmaps that follow this rule of thumb.

“We identify concrete steps towards full decarbonization by 2050. Businesses who try to avoid those steps and keep on tiptoeing will miss the next industrial revolution and thereby their best opportunity for a profitable future,” said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

Elements of these roadmaps include doubling renewables in the energy sector every 5-7 years, ramping up technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere, and rapidly reducing emissions from agriculture and deforestation.

The immediate must-do “no-brainer” actions to be completed by 2020 include the elimination of an estimated 600 billion dollars in annual subsidies to the fossil fuel industries and a moratorium on investments in coal. Decarbonization plans must be in place for all cities and major corporations in the industrialized world.

Rapidly growing economies in India, Indonesia and elsewhere should receive help to take a green path to prosperity. They cannot use coal as China did because CO2 emissions are cumulative and there is little room left in the global carbon budget, said Gaffney.

This is an extremely urgent issue. India is already on the brink of taking the dirty carbon path.

“Coal power plants under construction and proposed in India alone would account for roughly half of the remaining carbon budget,” said Steven Davis of the University of California, Irvine about his new study that will be published shortly.

Davis, who was not involved in the carbon law paper, agrees that rapid decarbonization to near-zero emissions is possible. Cost breakthroughs in electrolysis, batteries, carbon capture, alternative processes for cement and steel manufacture and more will be needed, he told IPS.

All of this will require “herculean efforts” from all sectors, including the political realm, where a cost on carbon must soon be in place. Failure to succeed opens the door to decades of climate catastrophe.

“Humanity must embark on a decisive transformation towards complete decarbonization. The ‘Carbon law’ is a powerful strategy and roadmap for ramping down emissions to zero,” said Nebojsa Nakicenovic of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria.

Experts predict that in the long term, shale gas production will not be sustainable in the United States. The photo shows a shale gas well in Montrose, in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
WASHINGTON, Oct 7 2015 (IPS)

The emergence of fracking has modified the global market for fossil fuels. But the plunge in oil prices has diluted the effect, in a struggle that experts in the United States believe conventional producers could win in the next decade.

The U.S. oil industry had peaked – when the discovery of new deposits and output from existing wells begins to fall – which made the country more dependent on imports. But the equation was turned around thanks to the new technique.“The bubble won’t explode, but it will progressively deflate. At current prices, we would see a relatively quick shrinking of capital availability for the shale sector, because those companies are producing at a loss.” -- David Livingston

The innovative technology of hydraulic fracturing or fracking and the discovery of large deposits of shale gas and oil, along with massive investment flows, led to predictions that the United States would become autonomous in fossil fuels this decade. But these forecasts have been undermined by the drop in prices.

“The world is entering a new era of uncertainty in the geoeconomics of oil,” said David Livingston, an associate in the Energy and Climate Programme of the U.S. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It is far from certain that the notoriously volatile oil market will become less cyclical.”

The analyst told IPS that as a result of domestic U.S. demand, “Companies will lose spare capacity, between what they can produce and what they produce, which is important, because the market is determined by that capacity.”

After 2003 international oil prices climbed, to 140 dollars a barrel in 2008, when the global financial crisis brought them down.

This decade they rallied, to around 100 dollars a barrel. But they have fallen again since late 2014, to about 40 dollars a barrel.

That means U.S. producers, in particular shale gas producers, are facing extremely low prices, overproduction, a lack of infrastructure for storing the surplus and a credit crunch for the industry’s projects, even though prices have gone down.

In addition, China’s economic slowdown and Europe’s stagnation are hindering the recovery in demand for energy.

The development of shale oil and gas has also put the U.S. industry on a collision course with the members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), especially since one of its widely touted objectives is to reduce imports from that bloc.

A warning about the danger of methane emissions in one of the shale gas Wells in Dimock, Pennsylvania. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Since November 2014, OPEC has kept its production quotas stable, as part of a strategy imposed by the bloc’s biggest producer, Saudi Arabia, aimed at keeping prices low and discouraging the development of shale deposits, which are much more costly to tap into than the organisation’s conventional reserves.

In late 2014, the Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy put the cost of producing a barrel of shale oil in the United States at 65 dollars a barrel, which means the industry is operating at a loss. The average cost of extracting a barrel of conventional oil in that country is 13 dollars, compared to five dollars in the Gulf.

For Miriam Grunstein, a professor at the Centre for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) in Mexico, the outlook is very uncertain.

“There are doubts for several reasons. First of all, due to the low prices,” she told IPS from Mexico, which has begun to explore its significant reserves of shale gas.

“Although it has forced many companies to improve their operating capacity, reduce investments and achieve greater efficiency, they are in an environment where they have to look for markets, in Europe or Asia. But that requires liquefaction infrastructure, which implies major investments,” she added, referring to the current situation faced by shale gas producers.

In June, the United States produced 9.3 million barrels per day of crude oil, about half of which was shale oil, according to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The prospects for the industry are beginning to look less promising. In its Drilling Productivity Report published in late August, the EIA projected a fall in shale gas production in September, for the first time this year, to 44.9 billion cubic feet per day.

The agency stressed that output from new wells is not enough to offset the decline in existing wells.

For Livingston, “OPEC as an institution – and Saudi Arabia, its leader – is likely to emerge from this paradigm shift stronger than before in many ways. With its new strategy – one born out of necessity – the kingdom is emphasising market share, rather than price, while also moving to delegate the burden of balancing the world oil market to the U.S. shale industry.”

The United States would become the new “swing producer”, although without achieving the same power as the Gulf producers in influencing the market.

In the long run, total U.S. oil production will tend to drop, according to EIA projections. In 2020, crude oil production is expected to stand at 10.6 million barrels per day; in 2030, 10.04; and 10 years later, 9.43.

In the case of shale gas, projections are favourable, but at higher prices. In 2020, the country should be producing 15.44 trillion cubic feet per day; 10 years later 17.85; and in 2040, 19.58.

In total, the EIA forecasts that the country will produce 28.82 trillion cubic feet per day of natural gas in 2020; 33.01 in 2030; and 35.45 in 2040.

But the average price will go up. This year, the Henry Hub reference price for U.S. natural gas has stood at 2.93 dollars per million British thermal units (Btu), the heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of water.

The price should go up to 4.88 dollars per Btu in 2020; to 5.69 in 2030; and to 7.80 in 2040.

“The bubble won’t explode, but it will progressively deflate. At current prices, we would see a relatively quick shrinking of capital availability for the shale sector, because those companies are producing at a loss,” said Livingston.

Grunstein said: “Saudi Arabia’s aim is to keep the United States from becoming a major exporter. The strong markets exert the most pressure. If demand does not recover, the demand-price ratio is awkward. Consumption is needed, and I don’t see where it would come from.”

Livingston said one option is to review the 1970s-era ban on exporting U.S. crude oil, because “If production rises, refineries can’t process it and therefore new markets are needed.”

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

By Hazel Henderson
ST. AUGUSTINE, Florida, Aug 27 2015 (IPS)

Millions in the New York City area are excited about Pope Francis’ visit on Sep. 25 to address the U.N. General Assembly as worldwide consensus grows on the need to shift global investments from fossil fuels to clean, efficient, renewable energy in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) scheduled to replace the expiring Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). 

Private investments worldwide in the clean energy transition now total 6.22 trillion dollars while successful U.S. students’ divestment networks have forced over 30 college endowments to divest.  Over 200 institutions have divested worldwide, including the U.S. cities of Minneapolis and Seattle, Oxford in the United Kingdom and Dunedin in New Zealand.

Hazel Henderson

The Episcopal Church and the Church of England, in a faith-based consortium, are calling on Pope Francis to urge divestment for all religious and civic groups.  Islamic Climate Change Symposium leaders cited the Quran earlier this month in calling 1.6 billion Muslims to act in phasing out fossil fuels by 2050.

Backlash from traditional Wall Streeters has joined some U.S. Catholic organisations with millions still invested in fossil energy, fracking and oil sands.  The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has guidelines against investing in abortion, contraception, pornography, tobacco and war but is silent on energy stocks.

Reuters reports that Catholic dioceses in Boston, Baltimore, Toledo and much of Minnesota in the United States have millions of dollars in oil and gas stocks, making up between 5-10 percent of their holdings.  It has been reported that Chicago’s Archbishop Blasé Cupich, appointed by Pope Francis, will re-examine over 100 million dollars in fossil fuel investments.

Wall Street is also re-examining its positions on fossil fuels.  A survey of asset managers in Institutional Investor, July 2015, found that 77 percent expected the carbon-divestiture movement to continue and gain momentum.  Yet, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson has claimed that the models on climate change “aren’t that good” and has no plans to invest in renewable energy.

Recently, many large companies have been calling for and budgeting for carbon pricing – favoured by most economists.  Britain’s BG Group, BP, Italy’s ENI, Shell, Norway’s Statoil and France’s Total sent an open letter to world governments and the United Nations in June asking them to accelerate carbon pricing schemes.The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has guidelines against investing in abortion, contraception, pornography, tobacco and war but is silent on energy stocks

The ethical investing movement now accounts for one-sixth of all holdings on Wall Street and the U.N. Principles of Responsible Investing counts signatory institutions with 59 trillion dollars in assets under management.

Hybrid approaches include venture philanthropy and “impact” investing, while a recent CFA Institute survey found almost three quarters of investment professionals use environmental, social and governance information in their investment decisions.

Against this backdrop, Timothy Smith, pioneer founder of the Interfaith Council on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) and now Senior Vice-President of Walden Asset Management, says that the “visit of the Pope in the wake of his prophetic Encyclical on climate is a clarion call – to ramp up our efforts to combat climate change with concrete actions,” adding that “it’s not the Pope’s job to present a specific game plan for Americans.  That is our job.”

Through ICCR, religious investors have worked for two decades on these issues.  Firms like Walden, Ceres and others have joined up to combat climate change, promoting efficiency and renewable resources.  All this new activity within the climate debate provides the greatest challenge yet to business-as-usual capitalism.

Many financiers in the global casino still see themselves as “masters of the universe” because they control capital flows, most investments, pension funds, influence monetary policies, capture politicians and regulators, while funding friendly academics and think tanks.

The recent jitters of stock markets have again revealed their fragility and the increasing turbulence and volatility caused by computerized algorithms accounting for over half of all activity.  High-frequency trading (HFT), “flash crashes”, are continuing with little regulation.  Foundations are crumbling from these many new challenges as small investors flee. 

Crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending, local and cryptocurrencies, credit unions and cooperative enterprises are flowering along with hybrid start-ups in the “shareconomy” – AirBnB, Uber, Lyft, Task Rabbit and the growth of farmers markets, swap sites for tools, clothes and second-hand exchanges.

Many reformers of capitalism try to change its culture, of short term gain and speculative trading.  The U.N. Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System will release its report to the General Assembly on Sep. 25, with global research on current practices and potential reforms.

A promising new effort to mobilise U.S. public opinion is JUSTCapital, founded by luminaries Deepak Chopra, Arianna Huffington and hedge fund philanthropist Paul Tudor Jones.  CEO Martin Whittaker says: “We are addressing some of the core questions affecting capitalism and corporations in the 21^st century.  We are applying policy, research and surveys to define ‘just business behaviour’ in the eye of the public, using this definition to evaluate and rank the performance of the largest publicly traded American companies.”

While such caring financiers are quietly exploring reforms, the biggest threat is the fragility of global market structures from automation, algorithms, HFT and artificial intelligence which financiers still believe they can control.

Yet these same computers can now run markets more efficiently than humans.  Matching and trading buy and sell orders in transparent computerised black boxes makes human traders redundant, as well as reducing insider trading, speculating, front-running, naked short-selling, fixing interest rates and today’s widespread greed and corruption.

Capitalism’s greatest challenge is its reliance on rollercoaster national money systems and currencies.  Central bankers and governments’ tools fail along with economic theories as social movements are now aware of money-printing and the politics of money creation and credit-allocation, revealed in all its favouritism and inequalities.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Jed Alegado
MANILA, Aug 7 2015 (IPS)

Renewable energy is now being seen by many people around the world as a cost-effective development solution both for developed and developing nations. Countries have slowly been realising that the use of coal and the huge amount of carbon emissions it generates harms the environment and impacts our daily activities.

Jed Alegado

In fact, according to Christine Lins, Executive Secretary of the Renewable Energy Network for the 21st Century, “last year, for the first time in 40 years, economic and emissions growth have decoupled”.

“If you look back 10 years ago, renewable energies were providing 3 per cent of global energy, and now they provide something close to 22 per cent, so that has really sky-rocketed,” noted Lins.

This is being led most obviously by countries like Uruguay, which aims to generate 90 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2015, and Costa Rica, which maintained 100 percent renewable energy generation for the first 100 days of this year.

These countries are not alone and are fast becoming the norm rather than the ‘alternative’. Even small developing countries such as Burundi, Jordan and Kenya are leading the world in investments in renewable energies as a percentage of GDP.Recently, the Philippine government gave the go-ahead for the construction of 21 coal-powered projects despite President Aquino’s promise in 2011 to “nearly triple the country’s renewables-based capacity."

Philippines’ dependence on coal

In 2008, the Philippines has enacted the Renewable Energy Act of 2008 aiming to “increase the utilization of renewable energy by institutionalizing the development of national and local capabilities in the use of renewable energy system…and reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels.”

However, after seven years of its implementation, the Philippines hasn’t yet fully maximised the use of renewable energy, according to Advocates of Science and Technology for the People (AGHAM), an NGO based in the Philippines promoting the use of local science and technology practices.

Recently, the Philippine government gave the go-ahead for the construction of 21 coal-powered projects despite President Aquino’s promise in 2011 during the launch of the Philippine government’s National Renewable Energy Plan to “nearly triple the country’s renewables-based capacity from around 5,400 MW in 2010 to 15,300 MW in 2030.”

In the next five years, the new coal plants that are expected to be constructed are the following: Aboitiz company Therma South Inc.’s 300-megawatt(MW) plant in Davao City (2016); the 400-MW expansion of Team Energy’s Pagbilao coal-fired power plant in Quezon (2017); the 600-MW Redondo Peninsula Energy, Inc. plant in Subic, Zambales (2018); San Miguel Corp. Global’s 300-MW plant in Davao (2017) and a 600-MW plant in Bataan (2016).

While the government has provided incentives to companies to make use of renewable energy, the private sector is not keen on doing so because of the profit generated by coal. Furthermore, they are also looking at the short-term gain of using it – the relatively cheaper price of harnessing the so-called “dirty energy.”

The path to low-carbon development

A report titled “Powering up against Poverty: Why Renewable Energy is the Future” released last week by the international development organisation Oxfam argues that renewable energy is in fact a more affordable energy source than coal for poor people in developing countries.

The report argues that as a result of the changing energy landscape around the world, the decreasing price of renewable energies, and the often remote location of the majority of people who don’t have access to electricity, renewable energy may actually offer a more reliable and effective energy source.

Furthermore, the report stated that, “Four out of five people without electricity live in rural areas that are often not connected to a centralized energy grid, so local, renewable energy solutions offer a much more affordable, practical and healthy solution than coal.”

“But as well as failing to improve energy access for the world’s poorest people, burning coal contributes to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year due to air pollution and is the single biggest contributor to climate change.”

This supports statements made this year by the World Bank, IMF and former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, who have all argued that renewable energy and not fossil fuels are key to improving energy access and reducing inequality, especially in developing countries.

The road to Paris and beyond

If the Philippines wants to show to the world that our country is the rallying point against climate change especially in the global climate talks, our government needs to walk the talk on renewable energy. Indeed, climate adaptation practices are not enough. We need to show other countries and lead the way towards climate change mitigation by leading the path to sustainable development and use of renewable energy.

Similarly, countries under United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s Conference of the Parties must agree on a fair and legally binding agreement in Paris on December. We cannot afford another failed climate negotiations like the one in Copenhagen in 2009 to happen again.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

The Clean Power Plan could prove to be the green legacy of Obama’s presidency. Credit: Bigstock

By Nora Happel
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 7 2015 (IPS)

This week, U.S. President Barack Obama formally unveiled the details of his Clean Power Plan (CPP), a comprehensive carbon-cutting strategy he described as “the biggest and most important step…ever taken to combat climate change” in a prior video address posted on Facebook.

As set down in the final rule from Aug. 3 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the CPP requires power plant owners to reduce their CO2 emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Between 2005 and 2013, carbon dioxide emissions have fallen by 15 percent, meaning the U.S. is about halfway to the target."These polluters are resorting to the same dirty and desperate playbook of doomsday predictions they have used since President Nixon first signed the Clean Air Act in 1970." -- Sara Chieffo

States are allowed to create their own plans on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from existing fossil fuel-fired electric generating units (EGUs). Initial versions of these plans will have to be submitted by 2016, final versions by 2018.

Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the U.N. Secretary-General, told journalists at a U.N. press conference in New York: “The Plan is an example of the visionary leadership necessary to reduce emissions and to tackle climate change.”

At a meeting between President Obama and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the Oval Office on Tuesday, the U.N. chief commended Obama’s leadership role in addressing climate change: “I would like to congratulate you and highly commend your visionary and forward leadership announcement of yesterday on a Clean Power Plan. […] The U.S. can and will be able to change the world in addressing [the] climate phenomenon.”

The U.S. is the world’s biggest CO2 emitter after China. Yet, the praise given to Obama for his efforts in cutting CO2 emissions seems to suggest a shift in the perception of the U.S. as one of the largest climate offenders to a model and leader in combating climate change.

The announcement of the plan follows a series of recent diplomatic achievements by the U.S. government such as the Iranian nuclear deal and the normalisation of diplomatic relations with Cuba. Many observers attribute these significant moves by the U.S. president shortly ahead of the end of his presidency to his endeavors in building a legacy on the foreign policy front.

The CPP could prove to be the green legacy of Obama’s presidency. Sara Chieffo, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), told IPS: “This historic plan puts in place the first-ever national limits on carbon pollution from power plants – the nation’s single largest source of the pollution fueling climate change.

“When taken together with other major advancements by the Obama Administration, like increasing fuel efficiency standards for vehicles and investments in renewable energy, the Clean Power Plan represents a significant reduction in carbon pollution by 2030, as well as a boon to public health.

“By taking these steps the Obama Administration is demonstrating true leadership in reducing carbon pollution, strengthening the growing movement for global action.”

However, as for the Iran nuclear deal and the agreement with Cuba, Obama’s success in implementing the CPP and the legacy built upon it will be largely dependent on Congress and the courts.

Following widespread criticism, the CPP underwent various modifications until the final rule was published on Monday. Compared to former versions, the final rule is now focusing much more on fossil fuel-fired power plants as CO2 emitters and less on states achieving their targets, as explained by Jody Freeman in an article for Politico.

“[R]evisions to the final rule will make it harder for opponents to argue it intrudes on state sovereignty. This has been one of the highest-profile claims against the draft plan, which asked states to meet individual, state-level emissions targets. But the new structure of the final version lets states meet their obligation simply by applying the EPA’s uniform national rates for coal and gas units to the power plants in their jurisdiction—the most straightforward compliance plan imaginable.”

Prior to the announcement of the Clean Power Plan, legal discussions have centered on another EPA regulation already in place since 2011, the mercury and air toxic standards (MATS) meant to limit hazardous air pollutant emissions from fuel-fired power plants.

In a June 29 ruling on Michigan vs. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the EPA regulation with a 5-4 majority, stating the EPA did not properly consider the costs of the regulation as required by the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court remanded the case to the D.C. Circuit for further consultations and proceedings consistent with the Court’s opinion.

The 2011 initiative by EPA to regulate emissions of toxic air pollutants has been challenged by industry groups and about 20 states. Although the Supreme Court decision can be seen as a major setback for the EPA and its environmental initiative, it also facilitates the Clean Power Plan by preventing the existence of a double-regulation, “[o]ne of the challengers’ primary legal arguments against the Plan”, as pointed out by Brian Potts and Abigail Barnes in a recent Forbes article.

“Ironically, this decision could pave the way for another landmark (and nearly just as expensive) EPA regulation, the Clean Power Plan—but only if the agency lets its beloved mercury rule die on the vine.”

Indeed, there is optimism that the Clean Power Plan in its final version will be able to stand firm in the face of the lawsuits expected to be brought against it.

Sara Chieffo told IPS, “With a coalition of public health officials, faith leaders, businesses, and the millions of concerned citizens from across the country calling for climate action, the only ones challenging the Clean Power Plan are big polluters and their allies in Congress and state legislatures.

“These polluters are resorting to the same dirty and desperate playbook of doomsday predictions they have used since President Nixon first signed the Clean Air Act in 1970. But time and again, history has proven that cleaning up our air is good for our health and our economy.

“We are confident that elected officials across the country are going to side with their constituents’ overwhelming support for climate action, instead of polluters who are putting their profits ahead of our health,” she added.

The announcement of Obama’s Clean Power Plan comes a few months ahead of the much anticipated Climate Conference (COP21) in Paris. As stated by Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, the U.S. government’s initiative will play a vital role in turning the Conference in Paris into a success.

“President Obama’s leadership by example is essential for bringing other key countries on board and securing a universal, durable and meaningful agreement in Paris in December,” he said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Exxon was responsible for the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. Here, part of the spill in the Chenega Bay, Evans lsland (Prince William Sound). Credit: ARLIS Reference.

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
SAN JOSE, Jul 17 2015 (IPS)

For decades, executives and decision makers at major U.S. and European fossil fuel companies were aware that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions caused global warming, but still provided millions in funding to boost disinformation campaigns and sponsor scientists who denied climate change.

As early as 1981, more than a decade before the first meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), leaders at oil giant Exxon acknowledged the connection between fossil fuels and climate change.“Their aim was to sell doubt. They don't have to disprove climate change, [they] just have to make people believe there was not consensus." -- Nancy Cole

The revelations emerged as part of a report released by the Washington, D.C.-based Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), called the Climate Deception Dossiers, which explores the tactics promoted by companies such as ExxonMobil, Shell, Peabody Energy, Chevron and Conoco-Phillips to undermine climate science.

“They were already factoring the risks of climate change in their business as early as 1981, and 34 years later they continue to lie to the people and undermining climate science”, Nancy Cole, Director of Campaigns for the UCS Climate and Energy Program and contributor to the report, told IPS.

The Dossiers show how Exxon and other major companies funded a vast disinformation campaign that included climate deniers, contrarian think tanks and public relations firms, with evidence pointing in their direction as recently as 2015.

“Their aim was to sell doubt. They don’t have to disprove climate change, [they] just have to make people believe there was not consensus,” said Cole.

One of the climate rebukers is Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, an engineer affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who received more than 1.2 million dollars in big-oil funding between 2001 and 2012 and whose salary relied exclusively on their grants, according to UCS.

For years, Soon’s academic papers have largely overstated the solar influence in global warming and have been methodically discredited by fellow researchers, scientific journals and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but have been used by conservative politicians and big oil companies to cast doubt on the climate consensus.

A 2014 e-mail by climate scientist Lenny Bernstein, an Exxon employee during the 1980s, revealed that the company was aware as early as 1981 of CO2 emissions. The oil giant decided against exploring the Natuna gas field, off the coast of Indonesia, after being alerted about the massive amount of CO2 trapped in it and the potential for future carbon-cutting regulations.

If exploited, its release would have been the single largest source of global warming pollution at the time, accounting to roughly one per cent of the world’s emissions in 1981.

“In the 1980s, Exxon needed to understand the potential for concerns about climate change to lead to regulation that would affect Natuna and other potential projects,” wrote Bernstein, a veteran of almost 30 years in the industry.

The full UCS report includes over 330 pages of document from around 85 internal company and trade association documents spanning 27 years.

For instance, during the 2009 discussion of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which proposed a federal carbon emission reduction plan, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) hired a PR firm which forged letters from diverse organisations to lobby congressmen and women against the bill.

Another major player in the report is the American Petroleum Institute (API), self-proclaimed “only national trade association that represents all aspects of America’s oil and natural gas industry”.

A 1998 internal API strategy document outlines the roadmap devised to confront the ever-growing climate change science and explicitly aimed to confuse and misinform the public, by sponsoring contrarian scientists and targeting teachers, schools and students across the United States.

The document states that victory would be achieved when “average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science.” IPS reached out to API by e-mail but got no answer.

Their modus operandi mimics that of tobacco companies, according to former U.S. Department of Justice lawyer Sharon Eubanks who led the Department’s successful lawsuit against the tobacco companies.

“It’s like what we discovered with tobacco – the more you push back the date of knowledge of the harm, the more you delay any remediation, the more people are affected,” Eubanks told DeSmog website.

This was echoed by Katherine Sawyer, the International Climate Organiser at the watchdog group Corporate Accountability International, who told IPS that “we wouldn’t let the tobacco industry create tobacco control policy, so why are we letting the fossil fuel industry create climate change policy?” – referring to their participation in U.N. processes.

Some fossil fuel companies appear, at least publicly, to be willing to contribute to a solution. Six major European companies (Shell, BP, Total, Statoil, BG Group, and Eni) sent an open letter to the UNFCCC and the French Government stating they can take faster climate action if governments provide a global interlinked system of carbon pricing.

“If governments act to price carbon, this discourages high carbon options and encourages the most efficient ways of reducing emissions widely,” states their letter.

But the decades-long opposition of fossil fuel companies has eroded their credibility among climate scientists, activists and much of the public.

“For 20 years, the world’s largest polluters have stymied progress in the UNFCCC by exerting undue influence over the treaty process—from direct lobbying to sponsoring the talks themselves,” said Sawyer, recalling that this year’s COP21 climate talks in Paris will be sponsored by corporations like EDF and ENGIE whose coal operations contribute to the equivalent of nearly 50 percent of France’s emissions

“In order for the UNFCCC process to create the meaningful policy our planet desperately needs, negotiators need to kick big polluters out,” she said.

Throughout the world, fossil fuel companies have been hit both in their image and their financial appeal after years of campaigning by divestment groups, organisations that promote getting rid of stocks, bonds, or investment funds linked to high-carbon industries such as coal, oil, and carbon.

“I definitely feel like the fossil fuel divestment movement is David against Goliath,” Perri Haser, lead organiser of the divestment campaign at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, told IPS. “But here’s the thing about David and Goliath: we know how that story ends.”

A 2013 report highlighted how 90 companies, 50 of them publicly traded, were responsible for almost two-thirds of the world’s industrial carbon emissions over the past two and a half centuries.

That several major oil companies acknowledged risks from CO2 emissions as early as the 1980s doubles its significance since more than half of all industrial carbon emissions from 1750 onwards have been released since 1988.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Candlelight vigil co-organised by 350.org, the global grassroots climate movement, held just before the Pope's visit to the Philippines in January this year. Photo credit: LJ Pasion

By Edwin Gariguez
MANILA, Jun 17 2015 (IPS)

My country, the Philippines, is one of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Even though we are among those countries that hardly contributed emissions and benefited least from burning fossil fuels, we find ourselves at the frontline of the climate crisis.

The catastrophe we experienced from Super Typhoon Haiyan [in early November 2013], one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, which killed thousands and damaged billions of properties, is proof to this. Almost two years later, our people are still struggling to recover from its devastating impact.“If it is wrong to wreck the planet, then it is wrong to benefit from its wreckage; a growing global movement to divest from fossil fuels takes this ethos at heart”

It should therefore not come as a surprise that concern about climate change is higher in the Philippines than elsewhere. A recent public consultation showed that 98 percent of Filipinos are “very concerned” about the impacts of climate change, compared with a global average of around 78 percent.

The Church cannot remain a passive bystander. It is our moral imperative to give voice to the voiceless.

The Catholic Church in the Philippines has pronounced its strong opposition to coal mining because it will make our country contribute to climate change, and endanger ecosystems as well as the health and lives of people.

Our churches have often led the struggles against dirty energy. In my hometown of Atimonan, Quezon, for example, more than 1,500 protesters led by church leaders staged a demonstration against a proposed coal-fired power plant last week.

Similarly, Catholic priests in Batangas are at the forefront of the fight against the construction of a new coal power plant. Last month, about 300 priests held a prayer rally ahead of a committee hearing that discussed the project.

Pope Francis also understands that climate change is not only an environmental issue but a matter of justice. His upcoming encyclical is anticipated to bring the link between climate change and the poor to centre stage.

In the Philippines, we are grateful that Pope Francis came to visit and held mass in areas hit the hardest by Typhoon Haiyan.

We admire him for standing in solidarity with us, using his position to inject momentum for faith communities around the world to take a moral stance on climate change.

A papal encyclical is an extraordinary way to send a powerful message to world leaders whose actions to date lag far behind the scale of the response that is necessary.

We hope that the Pope’s message will remind world leaders of their moral duty to act as we approach the climate summit in Paris [in December], where a new international climate agreement is supposed to be reached.

The moral imperative to act could not be stronger and the world now needs to stand united in the face of the climate crisis that knows no geographic boundaries, while the worst impacts still can be avoided.

Through the Pope’s encyclical, the Church will raise critical issues that need to be taken into account in the global response to this unprecedented threat.

Global capitalism has lifted millions out of poverty by burning fossil fuels. On the flipside, it has also created vast inequalities and sacrificed the environment for the sake of short-term gain. Now is the time to break the stranglehold of fossil fuels over our lives and the planet.

If it is wrong to wreck the planet, then it is wrong to benefit from its wreckage; a growing global movement to divest from fossil fuels takes this ethos at heart.

The Pope’s critique of today’s destructive, fossil-fuel dependent economy will not go down well with the powerful interests that benefit from today’s status quo.

But we, the Church and the people of the Philippines, will stand alongside the Pope as strong allies in the struggle for a socially just, environmentally sustainable and spiritually rich world that Pope Francis and the broader climate movement are fighting for.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

NGOs call for an energy revolution at the Bonn talks. Credit: IISD

By Chris Wright and Jed Alegado
MANILA, Jun 16 2015 (IPS)

(Last week, Australian Climate Activist offered an apology to the Philippines for his country’s lack of action. Today, he partners up with climate tracker from the Philippines Jed Alegado to talk about what the Philippines can do to show its leadership in tackling climate change.)

There has been a lot of pressure on the Philippines in the last week. Climate Change Commission Secretary Lucille Sering faced a senate hearing about the Philippines’ commitment to its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs.

Under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), INDCs were introduced in Warsaw in 2013 to hasten and ensure concrete climate action plans from countries.We have already seen this year how cities like New Delhi and Beijing have become almost unlivable due to the dangerously polluted air. What will happen to the Philippines if it follows a similar path?

During the visit of French President Francois Hollande to the Philippines last February, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III announced that his country’s INDC will be submitted by August this year after he delivers his final State of the Nation Address. However, during the Senate hearing last week, Sering said that the Philippines aims to submit the INDC before the October 2015 deadline.

In an interview last month, civil society representative to the Philippine delegation, Ateneo School of Government Dean Tony La Vina, clarified the process conducted by the Philippine government for its INDC. According to La Vina,  INDC orientation and workshops were conducted among government agencies in January 2015. A technical working group was formed last March followed by stakeholder discussions last month which included civil society groups, key government agencies and the private sector.

For a country which has played a leadership role and has become a rallying point for the global call for climate action due to its former lead negotiator Yeb Sano and the Super Typhoon Haiyan which wreaked havoc in the central Philippines in 2013, there has been a lot of pressure for the Philippines to come up with a definitive and clear commitment for its INDC.

Last month, Sering announced that the Philippines’ INDC might focus on a renewable energy and low-carbon sustainable development plan: “low emission and long-term development pathway to involve private sector and other stakeholders”. Sering also said that the Philippines intends to increase the use of renewable energy.

However, last week, the Palawan Community for Sustainable Development gave the go-ahead to a company to construct a coal-powered plant in Palawan in the western part of the Philippines, often described as the country’s last frontier. Environmental NGOs based in the province have been trying to stop the construction of this 15-megawatt coal plant to be built by one of the major construction companies in the Philippines.

In the past two years, the government has also approved the construction of 21-coal powered projects despite the President Aquino’s declaration that the Philippines intends to “nearly triple the country’s renewable-energy-based capacity from around 5,400 megawatts in 2010 to 15,300 MW in 2030.”

In spite of these events happening in the Philippines, the second week of the Bonn intersession has also been characterised by developing countries who have stood proud and shown the world just what they can do to stop global warming.

Reform, Accountability and Ambition

It may therefore be timely for the Philippines to take some lessons from three recent INDC announcements that have each drawn great praise at the U.N.

Step 1: Reform

The first lesson comes from Morocco, which this week came out as the first country to address “fossil fuel subsidy reform” in their Climate Action Plan. As the first Arab country to make an international Climate Action Plan, they naturally shocked a lot of people.

However, when you dive into their commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 32 per cent by 2030 compared to what they call “business as usual”, I guess it’s understandable that some of us are having apprehensions.

But what is good about their efforts is to “substantially reduce fossil fuel subsidies”. This is one of the truly ‘unspoken’ aspects of transitioning away from fossil fuels.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we need to stop using fossil fuels as soon as possible to keep us below two degrees of warming. In order to give Filipinos a chance at a safe future, we need a global phase-out of fossil fuels by 2050, and the first step to get there is to cut fossil fuel subsidies.

Globally, the IMF estimates that the fossil fuel industry receives 10 million dollars every minute. If the world is ever going to move into a fossil-free future, reforming these subsidies will be critical. This is one way the Philippines can show some real leadership with their Climate Action Plan.

Step 2: Accountability

Late last week, Peru publicly announced their Climate Action Plan. While they haven’t yet officially submitted it to the U.N., what they have produced is very impressive.

In developing their Climate Action Plan, Peru has carefully calculated exactly how much emissions they can cut based on a concrete number of projects which they clearly outline in the plan. As such, their plan to cut emissions by 31 per cent based on business as usual is backed up by 58 clearly outlined different mitigation projects.

This makes it very easy for Peru to ask for support from developed countries to help them improve on their commitments. In fact, they have even outlined how they can increase their emissions cuts to up to 42 per cent with an extra 18 projects.

While they haven’t made a specific ask for international assistance to meet this difference, this level of transparency could make it a very simple step in the future. What’s more, they have now opened this plan up to public consultations until July 17.

They will be holding workshops across Peru and asking a wide range of citizens what their views on the Climate Action Plans are.

If the Philippines want to ask for international support to help increase their ability to combat global warming, this level of international and domestic transparency will be a critical step to take.

Step 3: Ambition

It is definitely true that the Filipinos have not caused climate change. In fact, the Filipinos are among the smallest contributors to climate change per person. What’s more, the energy needs across the country are critical. But is coal really the answer?

With 26 coal plants planned over the next ten years, what will become of the air that everyone has to breathe? We have already seen this year how cities like New Delhi and Beijing have become almost unlivable due to the dangerously polluted air. What will happen to the Philippines if it follows a similar path?

One country seeking to link their development needs to combatting climate change is Ethiopia. Yesterday they released a Climate Action Plan which aims at a 64 per cent reduction on their business as usual predictions.

With 94 million people, and over a quarter of those in extreme poverty, Ethiopia is a great model for the Philippines to follow. They have focussed their emissions cuts around agricultural reform, reforestation, renewable energy and public transport. These are all reforms which are possible for the Philippines to also make.

Ethiopia is not simply giving in to a broken development model that relies on fossil fuels, but neither is it living a “green” fantasy. It is among the fastest growing countries in the world and the fastest growing non-oil-dependent African country.

With international support, it plans to double its economy while still achieving carbon-negative growth. This, Ethiopia believes, is best for not only for the health of its economy in the long term, but their people.

If the Philippines is going to show the type of global leadership it has strived for over recent years at the U.N. climate negotiations, there are three easy steps for them to take forward; Reform, Accountability and Ambition.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Campaigners at the September 2014 NYC Climate March say, “We need a cooperative model for climate justice.” Credit Roger Hamilton-Martin/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 16 2015 (IPS)

The United Nations, which is tasked with the protection of the global environment, has asserted that climate change affects people everywhere – with no exceptions.

Still, one of the greatest inequities of our time is that the poorest and the most marginalised individuals, communities and countries — which have contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions — often bear the greatest burden, says the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.“Our climate-impacted communities have a moral and legal right to defend our human rights and seek Climate Justice by holding these big carbon polluters accountable." -- Tuvalu delegate Puanita Taomia Ewekia

With an increasing link between climate change and human rights, Greenpeace Southeast Asia, which is conscious of the growing threat of rising sea levels to Pacific island nations, is seeking “climate justice,” including both redress and accountability.

“For the first time anywhere in the world,” says Greenpeace, it will submit a petition to the Philippines Commission on Human Rights asking the Commission to investigate the responsibility of the world’s biggest polluters for directly violating human rights or threatening to, due to their contribution to climate change and ocean acidification.

Anna Abad, climate justice campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia, told IPS: “The filing of the human rights petition before the Philippine Commission on Human Rights is a first step to investigate the responsibility of the Carbon Majors (a.k.a. big carbon polluters) for their human rights violations or threatened human rights violations resulting from climate change and ocean acidification impacts.”

Asked whether there is a possibility of the issue being taken up either by the Security Council or the International Court of Justice, she said Greenpeace Southeast Asia is also exploring other avenues – both legal and transnational – to amplify the urgency of climate justice and to ensure that those responsible for the climate crisis are held accountable for their actions.

“This is a collective effort between our partners and allies. With the climate justice campaign, we have certainly begun the trial by public opinion,” Abad said.

Zelda Soriano, legal and political advisor from Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said climate change is a borderless issue, gravely affecting millions of people worldwide.

“The U.N. Human Rights Council has recognised that climate change has serious repercussions on the enjoyment of human rights as it poses an immediate and far-reaching threat to people and communities around the world.”

In this light, she said, “We view climate change as a social injustice that must be addressed by international governments and agencies, most especially those responsible for contributing to the climate crisis.”

Last week, the President of Vanuatu Baldwin Londsdale joined climate-impacted communities from Tuvalu, Kiribati, Fiji and the Solomon Islands, as well as representatives from the Philippines, at “an emergency meeting” in Vanuatu vowing to seek ‘Climate Justice’ and hold big fossil fuel entities accountable for fuelling global climate change.

The Climate Change and Human Rights workshop was held on board the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, with the participation of about 40 delegates and civil society groups from Pacific Island nations.

“It is now more important than ever before that we stand united as affected communities in the face of climate change, rising sea-levels and changing weather patterns. Let us continue to stand and work together in our fight against the threats of climate change,” Londsdale told delegates.

The workshop concluded with participants signing on to the ‘People’s Declaration for Climate Justice,’ which was handed over to the President of Vanuatu.

According to Greenpeace, human-induced climate change is forecast to unleash increased hardship on the Philippines and Pacific Island nations due to stronger storms and cyclones.

A new study, Northwestern Pacific typhoon intensity controlled by changes in ocean temperatures, suggests that with climate change, storms like Haiyan, which in 2013 devastated Southeast Asia and specifically the Philippines, could get even stronger and more common.

It projects the intensity of typhoons in the western Pacific Ocean to increase by as much as 14 percent – nearly equivalent to an increase of one category – by century’s end even under a moderate future scenario of greenhouse gas emissions.

Greenpeace says it believes that those most vulnerable will continue to suffer, representing a violation of their basic human rights.

According to Greenpeace, recent research has shown that 90 entities are responsible for an estimated 914 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) of cumulative world emissions of industrial CO2 and methane between 1854 and 2010, or about 63 percent of estimated global industrial emissions of these greenhouse gases.

Abad said: “These big carbon polluters have enriched themselves for almost a century with the continued burning of coal, oil and gas. They are the driving force behind climate change.”

She said time is running out for these vulnerable communities and the world’s big carbon polluters have a moral and legal responsibility for their products and to meaningfully address climate change before it is too late.

Tuvalu delegate Puanita Taomia Ewekia was quoted as saying: “Climate change is not a problem for one nation to solve alone, all our Pacific Island countries are affected as one in our shared ocean.”

She said governments must stand up for their rights and demand redress from these big carbon polluters for past and future climate transgressions.

“Our climate-impacted communities have a moral and legal right to defend our human rights and seek Climate Justice by holding these big carbon polluters accountable and to seek financial compensation,” she declared.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Dja Abdullah, just one victim of the gathering pace of climate change fuelled by coal-fired power stations, has walked 300 km with his cattle in search of fresh pasture in the Sahel region of Mauritania. Credit: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam

By Sean Buchanan
LONDON, Jun 6 2015 (IPS)

As heads of state and government of the G7 states prepare for their Jun. 7-8 summit in Germany, Oxfam has released a new report titled Let Them Eat Coal which they may find hard to digest.

According to the report, coal plants in the G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and United States – are on track to cost the world 450 billion dollars a year by the end of the century and reduce crops by millions of tonnes as they fuel the gathering pace of climate change.“Coal-fired power stations … increasingly look like weapons of destruction aimed at those who suffer the impacts of changing rainfall patterns as well as of extreme weather events” – Professor Olivier de Schutter, former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food

Launching the report, which has been endorsed by business leaders, academics and climate experts, Oxfam warns that coal is the biggest driver of climate change, which is already hitting the world’s poorest people hardest and making the fight to end hunger tougher.

Noting that the G7 countries remain major consumers of coal, Oxfam is calling on the G7 leaders meeting in Germany to shift from coal to renewable energy sources which offer a safer and cost effective alternative and the prospect of millions of new jobs around the world.

This, it says, would also be a giant step towards those countries not only meeting current emissions targets but moving closer to what is urgently needed.

The international agency reports that Africa, for example, faces costs of 84 billion a year by the end of the century due to the damage caused by G7 coal emissions. This is 60 times the amount Africa currently receives from the G7 in aid to support agriculture and food production.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that Africa’s food production systems are highly vulnerable to climate change, with declines likely in cereal crops across the continent of up to 35 percent by mid-century. Oxfam warns that seven million tonnes of staple crops could be lost annually by the 2080s because of G7 coal emissions.

Celine Charveriat, Oxfam International’s Director of Advocacy and Campaigns, said: “The G7 leaders must stop using emissions growth in developing countries as an excuse for inaction and begin leading the world away from fossil fuels by starting with their own addiction to coal.

“The G7’s coal habit is racking up costs for Africa and other developing regions. It’s time G7 leaders woke up to the hunger their own energy systems are causing to the world’s poorest people on the frontline of climate change.

Referring to the U.N. Climate Change Conference scheduled for December in Paris, Charveriat said: “Ahead of a new climate deal due to be struck at the end of this year, G7 leaders can give the global fight against climate change the momentum it needs by shifting away from coal. This will make significant additional cuts in their emissions, create jobs and be a major step towards a safer, sustainable and prosperous future for us all.”

Globally, coal is responsible for almost three-quarters (72 percent) of power sector emissions, and while more than half of today’s coal consumption is in developing countries, the scale of G7 coal burning is considerable – if G7 coal plants were a country, noted Oxfam, it would be the fifth biggest emitter in the world.

G7 coal plants emit double the fossil fuel emissions of Africa and ten times as much as the 48 least developed countries.

At the 2009 Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen, all countries agreed to prevent warming of more than 2°C to avoid runaway climate change. Since then, said Oxfam, five of the G7 countries – France, Germany, Italy, Japan and United Kingdom – have been burning more coal, and the world is now heading for an increase in global warming by 4°C.

Climate experts, business leaders and development specialists who are backing the Let Them Eat Coal report include Professor Olivier de Schutter (former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food), Nick Molho (Chief Executive of the Aldersgate Group of business, political and civil society leaders), Sharon Burrow (General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation) and Dessima Williams (former Ambassador of Grenada to the United Nations and former Chair of the Alliance of Small Island Developing States).

According to de Schutter, “climate disruptions are already affecting many poor communities in the global South, and coal-fired power stations are contributing, every day, to make this worse. They increasingly look like weapons of destruction aimed at those who suffer the impacts of changing rainfall patterns as well as of extreme weather events.”

Oxfam says that the G7 countries must lead the way because they are most responsible for climate change, and because they have the most resources to decarbonise their economies and fund both emissions cuts and adaptation so that developing countries can protect themselves from climate change and develop in a low-carbon way.

Oxfam is also calling on the G7 to stand by existing commitments to jointly mobilise 100 billion dollars a year by 2020, and to make visible progress in both raising public finance over the next five years and increasing the proportion of funding for adaptation to climate change.

Edited by Phil Harris    

A scene from the Dec. 12, 2009 march in Copenhagen to ask world political leaders to be courageous, stop talking and act now. Nasseem Ackbarally /IPS

By Chris Wright
BONN, Jun 4 2015 (IPS)

I remember pretending not to be so excited. There was this nervous energy that kicked up my heels as I prowled through the U.N. negotiations that afternoon. You could feel it all around. Circling our meeting point like sharks quietly rounding our prey. If you knew what to look for, you would know exactly what was about to happen.

All it took was a side glance, and a slip of a white t-shirt, and the voices rose up.The young people who were escorted out by security guards that day have returned home, only to be disappointed. For three years they have continued to raise their voices, only to watch them fall on the deaf ears of ageing politicians and old media conservatives.

For the rest of the afternoon, young people screaming out for climate justice with songs that rocked the South African Apartheid movement held the U.N. climate negotiations hostage.

That was back in 2012, on the last scheduled day of climate negotiations. Little did we know how important that one day would be.

For the next 48 hours, the energy that filled the metallic conference centre sent negotiators into a frenzy of compromise that has lasted until today.

Since young people’s voices rung free through the halls that fateful afternoon in Durban, the U.N. climate negotiations has kicked into rounds and rounds of discussions all leading to what many believe could be a game-changing climate agreement in Paris in December.

But the young people who were escorted out by security guards that day have returned home, only to be disappointed. For three years they have continued to raise their voices, only to watch them fall on the deaf ears of ageing politicians and old media conservatives.

As Avik Roy, a youth activist and writer from India, recently argued, “India is world’s largest democracy, but since the last year the state has actively been attempting to stifle the voices of activists that threatens to ask uncomfortable questions.”

Avik is a close friend of mine, and a journalist at that. He cares passionately about the fate of Indian’s impacted by climate change, especially the now more than 2000 people have died in recent heat waves.

But he is not alone.

In India, he is joined by young writers such as Dhanasree Jayaram, Mrinalini Shinde and Ritwajit Das who have all called out the Modi government in recent weeks for what they believe to be an obsessive compulsion towards coal expansion.

Not only has Dhanasree called out the Indian government’s for its domestic coal expansion and its impact on its citizens, but Mrinalini has given her voice to support the thousands of young people across India calling for an end to crony, state-sponsered coal development in Australia.

However, as Ritwajit, an environmental entrepreneur mentioned recently, anyone calling for environmental protection in India is immediately labelled “a roadblock for economic development”.

But their fight continues.

As it does across Latin America, where young people like Lais Vitória Cunha de Aguiar (Brazil), Itzel Morales (Mexico), Maria Rinaudo Mannucci (Venezuela) and Bitia Chavez (Peru) have been calling on their governments government to protect their long-term social and economic stability without exploiting their vast fossil fuel reserves (Add link).

Each of them faces unique battles. In Brazil, Lais is working to convince her fellow Brazilians that newly found oil reserves must be left in the ground. In Peru and Mexico, Bitia and Itzel continue to struggle to free their economies from the iron grip of fossil fuels which they believe they will be able to do one day.

Especially with support from those such as Santiago Ortega in Colombia and Stephanie Cabovianco in Argentina, who are trying to inspire “cultural change” across Latin America that may lead to the continent realising its incredible renewable energy opportunities.

Across the Western Hemisphere, the Divestment movement has been a key driver of that same cultural change around fossil fuels. In the UK, young people such as the UKYCC’s Freya Palmer and Entrepreneur David Saddington are on the front lines of these movements.

David believes that “the biggest challenge to stopping Fossil Fuel usage in the UK is the lack of debate surrounding our energy future”.

Rather than sit down and wait, it is young people like David and Freya who are driving these debates and supporting divestment movements such as those in Edinburg University.

The same goes for the U.S., where young people like Sarabeth Brockley and Alex Lenferna have been critical in driving the divestment movement across campuses from Seattle to Pennsylvania. Alex recently celebrated leading Seattle University’s decision to end their investments in thermal coal, and now has his sights set on spurring on the Divestment movement across Africa.

There, he’ll be relying on support from fellow South African Ruth Kruger to shift their home nation away from their “enormous coal reserves” and towards a policy future that doesn’t “trivialise things like human rights”.

To do so, they will have to challenge the narrative of divestment. In a recent think piece, Catalan activist, Anna Perez Catala argues that for the divestment movement to have an impact in her own region, it will need to incorporate a message of hope, and inspire opportunities for young people on the wrong side of an employment crisis.

This reality resounds across the EU, where young people such as Federico Brocchieri (Italy), Anton Jeckel (Germany) and Morgan Henley (The Czech Republic) have called out so-called European leaders in the climate change debate for their fondness to the fossil fuel industry.

However, the biggest divestment shift yet has come from Norway. This Friday, the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund is expected to formally divest close to 900 billion dollars from fossil fuels.

This has come on the back of a long and passionate push from young people across Europe, but has been supported by people as far away as the Philippines. Campaigners there such as Denise Fontanilla argue that Norweigan foreign funds have funded between 50-70 percent of coal plants across the tropical island nation.

It is young people just like this, fighting battles that everyone else told them they could never win, that are the reason the tide is now turning against the Fossil Fuel industry.

Right now, being surrounded by such an amazing global family of young climate activists, I feel just as excited as I did back then, three years ago, screaming my lungs out.

With a growing movement of young writers all around the world calling on greater climate action from Madagascar, Trinidad and Tobago and even Tajikistan our calls are now louder than ever.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Demonstrators protesting at the Business & Climate Summit in Paris, May 20. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, May 21 2015 (IPS)

When it comes to climate change, business as usual is simply “not an option”.

That was the view of Eldar Saetre, CEO of Norwegian multinational Statoil, as international industry leaders met in Paris for a two-day Business & Climate Summit, six months ahead of the next United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21 ) that will also be held in the French capital.

Subtitled “Working together to build a better economy”, the May 20-21 summit brought together some 2,000 representatives of some of the world’s largest retail and energy concerns, including  companies that NGOs have criticized as being among the worst environmental offenders.

At the end, business leaders proclaimed that they wanted “a global climate deal that achieves net zero emissions” and that they wanted to see this happen at COP 21.

Throughout the conference, participants stressed that businesses will have to change, not only to protect the environment, but for their own survival. “Taking climate action simply makes good business sense. However, business solutions on climate are not being scaled up fast enough,” declared the summit organizers.

They pledged to lead the “global transition to a low-carbon, climate resilient economy.”

Saetre, for example, said his company wanted to achieve “low-carbon oil and gas production” and that it had embarked on renewables in the form of offshore wind energy. But he said that fossil fuels would still be needed in the future, alongside the various forms of renewable energy.

Acknowledging the widespread scepticism about multinational companies’ commitment, business leaders said that they could not “go it alone”, and called for support from governments as well as consumers.

Mike Barry, Director of Sustainable Business at British retailer Marks & Spencer, told IPS in an interview that global commitment was important in the drive to transform industry to have more environmentally friendly practices.

“Collective action can bring about real change,” he said. “We’re here today because we believe that climate change is happening and it’s going to have a significant impact on our business in the future and our success.

“Our customers would expect us to take the lead on this, and we want governments to take this seriously as well in the run-up to COP 21 [the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to be held in Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11].”

He said that Marks & Spencer and other companies in a network called the Consumer Goods Forum wanted to “stand shoulder to shoulder with government to say ‘this matters and we’re here to help’.”

But government consensus on how to address climate change has proved difficult, and even French President Francois Hollande, who opened the summit, conceded that it would require a miracle for a real agreement to be reached at COP 21.

“We must have a consensus. It’s already not easy in our own countries, so with 196 countries, a miracle is needed,” he said at the Business & Climate Summit, expressing the conviction, however, that agreement will be reached through negotiation and “responsibility”.

Hollande and other officials said the involvement of businesses was essential, and France, with its huge oil and electricity companies, evidently has a big role to play.

However, demonstrators outside the summit, held at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), slammed big business.

“These multinationals (and the banks that finance their activities) are in fact directly at the origin of climate change,” read a statement from organisations including Les Amis de la Terre (Friends of the Earth, France) and the civil disobedience group J.E.D.I. for Climate.

Saying that it was ironic to have fossil-fuel companies represented at the summit, the groups asked: “Can one imagine for a second that the tobacco industry would be associated with policies to combat smoking aimed at ending the production of cigarettes? No, that would be the best way to ensure that the world continued to chain-smoke.”

The protesters added that if Hollande and his ministers wanted to show a real commitment to the environment, they should make it clear that “the climate is not a business”.

“The fight against climate change is not the business of fossil-fuel multinationals: they belong to our past,” the groups said in a joint release, handed out on the street.

At the summit, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said that businesses should not be “demonised” and she called for collaboration rather than confrontation.

“We all start with a carbon footprint,” she said. “It is not a question of demonising anyone but realizing that we’re all here … This is not about confrontation. This is about collaboration. If you’re thinking about confrontation, forget it. Because we’re not going to get there.”

The summit – co-hosted by Entreprises Pour l’Environnement, an association of some 40 French and large international companies, and UN Global Compact France, a policy initiative for businesses – also addressed the vulnerability of island states in the face of climate change.

Tony de Brum, the Marshall Islands’ Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that island states in the Pacific and elsewhere had an interest in keeping pressure on carbon emitters because their populations’ survival was at stake.

Angel Gurría, Secretary General of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), also highlighted the threat to vulnerable countries, saying that for them, climate change is not about protecting the environment for future generations, but “it’s about how long the water will take to overcome the land.”

Gurría said that greater reductions in carbon emissions were required than has so far been proposed by states, and he stressed that countries over time needed to “develop a pathway to net zero emissions globally” by the second half of the century.

“Governments at COP 21 need to send a clear directional signal that will drive action for decades to come,” he said. “We are on a collision course with nature, and unless we seize this opportunity, we face an increasing risk of severe, pervasive and irreversible climate impact.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

Edinburgh Castle, symbol of the Scottish capital, whose university has just decided not to disinvest in fossil fuels. Photo credit: Kim Traynor/CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

By Kirsty Haigh, Eric Lai, and Ellen Young
EDINBURGH, May 17 2015 (IPS)

The University of Edinburgh has taken the decision to not divest from fossil fuels, bowing to the short-term economic interests of departments funded by the fossil fuel industry, with little to no acknowledgement of the long-term repercussions of these investments.

The decision, which was announced on May 12, exemplifies the influence that vested interests have gained over academic institutions in the United Kingdom.“Our university has decided to take a reactionary approach to climate change, failing to make any statement of commitment to the staff and students who have been demanding divestment from fossil fuel companies for the past three years”

Collectively, U.K. universities invest over eight billion dollars in fossil fuels, more than 3,000 dollars for every student. The University of Edinburgh has the country’s third largest university endowment, after Oxford and Cambridge, totalling 457 million dollars, of which approximately 14 million is invested in fossil fuel companies, including Total, Shell and BHP Billiton.

Our university has decided to take a reactionary approach to climate change, failing to make any statement of commitment to the staff and students who have been demanding divestment from fossil fuel companies for the past three years.

Announcing it decision, the university said: ”The university will withdraw from investment in these [fossil fuel consuming and extracting] companies if: realistic alternative sources of energy are available and the companies involved are not investing in technologies that help address the effects of carbon emissions and climate change.”

However, given the fossil fuel industry’s continued destruction of the planet, the university’s approach leaves far too much to the imagination and indeed allows for the potential to not divest from harmful industries at all.

We are going to find our existence completely altered – and in a way that we do not want – if   we do not stop extracting and burning fossil fuels, and we know the big fossil fuel companies have no intention of stopping.

Climate change not only poses a massive economic threat but also presents the world’s biggest global health hazard – and its effects are hitting the poorest parts of the world hardest. The University of Edinburgh is fundamentally failing to acknowledge the part it is playing in funding climate chaos.

Our university claims to be a “world leader in addressing global challenges including … climate change” but if the university had any desire to take the moral lead, it would have divested. Divestment would have seen Edinburgh join a global movement of universities and numerous other forward-thinking organisations in divorcing itself from the tightening grip of the fossil fuel industry.

The University of Edinburgh came down firmly on the side of departments funded by the industry which have been scaremongering throughout the process

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests have revealed, for example, that the university’s Geosciences Department has received funding from a range of fossil fuel companies over the past 10 years, including BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips, as well as grants and gifts of money from Total and Cairn Energy.

Sixty-five students in the university’s School of Engineering have already signed an open letter to the Head of the School, Prof Hugh McCann, angered by his public opposition to fossil fuel divestment.

Their letter states: “The School of Engineering has and will continue to have a pivotal role in the university’s future. It is after all engineers who will be on the frontlines of the transition to a low carbon society.

“By basing its argument against divestment on engineering students’ chances of employment in one dead-end industry, the school appears to be failing to prepare its students for careers in the rapidly changing energy markets of the 21st century, whilst neglecting the faculty’s broader responsibility to the student body as a whole. As a consequence, they gamble employment against our common future.”

Divesting is a way of taking on and dismantling the big fossil fuel companies and the power they hold over our society and governments. We rightly condemn companies that do not pay their taxes or who exploit their workers, and so we must do this to the companies who are threatening our very existence.

Divestment is also about creating more democratic institutions where those who are part of universities can have a say in how their money is spent and invested. The university’s announcement has shown that we still have a long way to go in creating transparent, democratic and ethical institutions. It brings into question the validity of the university’s decision-making process.

For the past three years, students, staff and alumni have supported full divestment – yet the University of Edinburgh has ignored their calls. The consultation run by the university found staff, students and the public in favour of ethical investment. A year later we still have zero commitment to change.

A process which began with promise has been allowed to descend into a complete breakdown in communication between students and the university. Serious questions need to be asked about why the decision was taken in favour of the views from the university’s Department of Geosciences, which freely admits its vested interested in maintaining the status quo for financial reasons.

The University of Edinburgh needs to invest in alternatives to dirty and unhealthy energy sources. These alternatives will create new jobs, so that when the fossil fuel industry ceases to exist there is something to replace it and our students are trained to work in it.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Coal mining in India. Coal-fired plants contribute 60 percent of India’s energy capacity and are a large source of the air pollution that is taking a toll on people’s health and their livelihoods. Photo credit: The Hindu

By Chaitanya Kumar
NEW DELHI, Mar 19 2015 (IPS)

In November last year, India’s power minister Piyush Goyal announced that he plans to double coal production in India by the end of this decade and, in an effort to enhance production, the Indian government has started a process of auctioning coal blocks.

Coupled with the auctions is the disinvestment of Coal India Limited (CIL), the world’s largest coal mining company, and both actions can provide short-term reprieve to India’s energy and fiscal deficit woes.

However, there are four reasons why investors and the government should be wary of investing in coal for the long run (10-15 years).

The first stems from the fact that it is rapidly becoming clear to big business and governments around the world that a large proportion of coal and other fossil fuels should be left in the ground. The second is that coal consumption is declining in many parts of the world, with economics increasingly in favour of alternate sources of energy, such as wind and solar.“A systematic effort is now under way to dilute environmental, land and forest laws … The latest land ordinance passed by the [Indian] government has done away with two key pillars of the process of land acquisition: social impact assessment and community consent”

Reasons three and four have to do with growing resistance from tribal and grassroots communities, and the fact that India will be forced to take some form of action as air pollution becomes increasingly dangerous.

Despite its plans for coal production, the Indian government has been giving the right indicators on its pursuit of renewable energy, but this ambition – though welcome – is being counterbalanced by the country’s continued lust for more coal.

Call it an addiction that is hard to let go or sustained pressure from big corporations and their existing investments in coal, the Indian government has turned its eye on the vast domestic reserves in the country.

Growing resistance from tribal and grassroots communities

A systematic effort is now under way to dilute environmental, land and forest laws in the country. The latest land ordinance passed by the government has done away with two key pillars of the process of land acquisition: social impact assessment and community consent. The ordinance is facing stiff resistance from opposition parties and the general masses of India.

Any project, either private or under a public private partnership (PPP), previously required the consent of 80 percent of the community that the project impacted but no such consent is now required.

Social impact assessments that factors in effects on the environment and human health, among others, were mandatory for projects and while such assessments were shoddy in the past, doing away with them completely sets a poor precedent for industrial practices and gives even less of a reason for companies to clean up their acts.

A lack of social impact assessment also adds to the ambiguity that exists in offering the right compensation as part of the rehabilitation and resettlement plan embedded in the land ordinance.

In the context of coal, the efforts of the government to re-allocate 204 coal blocks and begin mining will be met by stiff resistance from impacted communities. “There is a fear that we will witness greater state violence on people as they begin resisting projects that have immediate impacts on their lives and livelihoods”, says Sreedhar, a former geologist who now runs a network of activists called Mines, Minerals & People.

The Mahan coal block, forcefully pursued by the Essar company, is a case in point where local communities have been resisting open cast mining for several years. The mine is located in what is one of the last remaining tracts of dense forests in central India. Mahan has subsequently been withdrawn from the auctions, a victory celebrated by the local communities.

Foreign investors are especially wary of pumping money into projects that can see resistance from local communities. The high profile cases bauxite mining plans by British resources giant Vedanta in ‘sacred’ hills in eastern India and the plans of South Korea’s POSCO steel-making multinational to open a plant in the eastern state of Odisha have become strong deterrents for big money to enter India.

While the government’s efforts at allaying fears may work, there is a difference in rhetoric and on-the-ground reality because it will not be easy to simply wish away people’s concerns.

Visible resistance has taken shape in the state of Chhattisgarh where twenty tribal gram sabhas in the Hasdeo Arand coal field area of the state passed a formal resolution under the forest rights act against coal mining in their traditional forest land.

“There has to be an assessment of India’s energy needs alongside an evaluation of the forests that we stand to lose from coal mining. Allocation of coal blocks in dense forests is imprudent,” says Alok Shukla, an activist from Chhattisgarh who is mobilising tribal communities to uphold their forest rights.

These struggles might only intensify as government efforts are aggressively under way to further dilute tribal rights and open up inviolate forests for coal mining.

Air pollution is becoming hazardous and India will be forced to act

As the pressure to act on air pollution builds, India will have to enforce strict emission norms on coal plants and their operators. Installing flue-gas desulphurisation scrubbers should be mandatory on any new plant that is set to operate in coming years. These devices are very effective in limiting dangerous pollutants from escaping into the atmosphere but come at a heavy cost for investors and coal power generators. 

But why would the government work towards increasing operational costs for power plants in the pipeline? Here’s why – air pollution is killing Indians every year and is now the fifth largest contributor of deaths in the country. The fact that 13 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in India is a cause for great alarm. A study has indicated that one in three children have shown a reduction in lung function in Delhi.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) report, which makes this claim, advises that fine particles of less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter (PM2.5) should not exceed 10 micrograms per cubic metre. Delhi tops the list at 153 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic metre and it is only getting worse.

In Delhi, for instance, coal roughly contributes 30 percent of recorded air pollution (particulate matter) and the numbers are higher in the coal clusters of the country. Coal-fired plants contribute 60 percent of India’s energy capacity and are a large source of the air pollution that is taking a toll on people’s health and their livelihoods.

A recent report on coal pollution in India by Urban Emissions and Conservation Action Trust reveals a shocking statistic – in another 15 years between 186,500 and 229,500 people may die premature deaths annually as a result of a spike in air pollution caused by coal-fired power plants.

In dealing with air pollution, curbing the effects of harmful pollutants like nitrous and sulphur oxides from coal power plants is critical and there is growing pressure on the central government to introduce strict emission standards. India is the only major coal-powered nation that does not have any concentration standards for these pollutants, a requirement that should soon be in place.

Both domestic and international pressure can move India to clean up its air. The government cannot afford to have an ‘airpocalypse’ on its hands.

All is not well with the coal industry in India  

Undaunted, Narendra Taneja, energy cell convenor of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has claimed that coal and gas will remain the mainstay of the country’s economy for the next 50-60 years.

The impossibility of this claim becomes apparent when we look at the actual reserves of extractable coal. Only one-fifth of the coal reserves of CIL are extractable and if the ambitious doubling of domestic production happens, the known reserves are expected to last for less than two decades.

Coal mines that expire before the lifetime of new coal plants scream for greater economic prudence from investors.

India’s ambitious renewable energy expansion plans need to be complemented by a phase-out plan of coal. The world needs stronger political leadership from India as it tries to tackle the twin challenges of poverty and climate change.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Little girls in Timor-Leste cross a rice field after heavy rains carrying water in plastic containers. Credit: UN Photo/Martine Perret

By Corinne Schuster-Wallace and Robert Sandford
HAMILTON, Canada, Feb 25 2015 (IPS)

We have entered a watershed year, a moment critical for humanity.

As we reflect on the successes and failures of the Millennium Development Goals, we look toward the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals to redress imbalances perpetuated through unsustainable economic growth and to help achieve key universally-shared ambitions, including stable political systems, greater wealth and better health for all.Threat of a global water crisis is often mischaracterised as a lack of water to meet humanity’s diverse needs. It is actually a crisis of not enough water where we want it, when we want it, of sufficient quality to meet needs.

More than any other resource, freshwater underpins sustainable development. Not only is it necessary for life and human well-being, it’s a key element of all human industry.

And a U.N. report launched Feb. 24, “Water in the World We Want,” outlines what must be done within the world’s water system.

Effective management and universal provisioning of drinking water and sanitation coupled with good hygiene are the most critical elements of sustainability and development, preventing disease and death and facilitating education and economic productivity.

While 2 billion people have gained access to improved drinking water since 2000, it is estimated that just as many do not have access to potable quality water, let alone 24-7 service in their homes, schools and health facilities. Furthermore, 2.5 billion people without adequate access and 1 billion with no toilet at all.

If we don’t regain momentum in water sector improvements, population growth, economic instability, Earth system impacts and climate disruption may make it impossible to ever achieve a meaningful level of sustainability.

If this occurs we could face stalling or even reversal of development, meaning more people, not fewer, in poverty, and greater sub-national insecurity over water issues with the potential to create tension and conflict and destabilize countries.

Threat of a global water crisis is often mischaracterised as a lack of water to meet humanity’s diverse needs. It is actually a crisis of not enough water where we want it, when we want it, of sufficient quality to meet needs.

Moreover, changes in atmospheric composition and consequent changes in our climate have altered the envelope of certainty within which we have historically anticipated weather, producing deeper and more persistent droughts and more damaging floods. These changing water circumstances will cascade through the environment, every sector of every economy, and social and political systems around the world.

So what in the world do we do?

To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, every country must commit funding, institutional resources and tools to the cause — including major realignment of national economic priorities where needed.

New mechanisms are required for transferring and sharing not only money but knowledge, data, technology and “soft” solutions proven in different contexts. Engagement of the private sector is critical in this transfer of technologies and know-how.

National governments must prioritize water, wastewater, and sanitation management, supported by a dedicated and independent arm’s length water agency.

The balance between environment, human security, and economic viability need to be articulated in a manner which holds all nations accountable for helping one another achieve the highest global standard for sustainable development, does not tolerate compromise, yet provides flexibility on the mechanisms by which to achieve those outcomes.

If we want to live in a sustainable world we have to provide clean and reliable sources of water to the billions of people who do not enjoy this basic right today and provide sanitation services to the more than two and a half billion people on Earth who lack even basic toilets.

Agriculture and energy sectors must be held accountable for water use and other system efficiencies while maintaining or increasing productivity. Companies that rely on, or have an interest in, water have a key role to play in financing and implementing sound water, sanitation and wastewater management strategies. Such companies must step up to the plate or risk significant losses. This is no longer simply corporate social responsibility but sound economic investment.

To ensure financial resources for implementation, new and emerging opportunities must be explored in parallel with more efficient expenditures, taking maximum advantage of economies of both scope and scale and accounting for trickle through benefits to many other sectors.

Additional funds can be freed up through phased redirection of the 1.9 trillion dollars currently granted as subsidies to petroleum, coal and gas industries. Corruption, a criminal act in its own right, siphons up to 30 percent of water sector investments which could be viewed as a crime against humanity within the context of sustainable development.

We can still have the sustainable future we want. But only if the world finds renewed determination and resumes the pace needed to reach our water-related development goals.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

If we keep on burning coal, oil and gas at ‘business as usual’ levels, our grandchildren will inhabit a planet some 5 degrees Celsius hotter by the end of the century. Credit: Bigstock

By Rob McCreath
BRISBANE, Feb 10 2015 (IPS)

Nothing is more important to farmers like me than the weather. It affects the growth and quality of our crops and livestock, and has a major impact on global food supply.

The world’s weather is being messed up by global warming, mainly caused by the burning of fossil fuels, which releases heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.If your bank lends money to coal, oil and gas projects, then take your business to one that doesn’t. It will put a smile on your face.

Every national science organisation in the developed world agrees that global warming is real and caused by human activities. That’s good enough for me.

If we keep on burning coal, oil and gas at ‘business as usual’ levels, our grandchildren will inhabit a planet some 5 degrees Celsius hotter by the end of the century – rendering large parts of it uninhabitable, including many currently densely populated areas, which will be under water due to melting glaciers and ice caps.

The impacts on farming in Australia (and everywhere else) of such a rise in temperature would be very severe indeed.

To avoid such a bleak future, we simply must stop putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. If our politicians had any common sense, they would change quickly to renewable energy, but sadly they are captives of the fossil fuel industry that funds their re-election campaigns.

Just look at the Nationals, who in spite of claiming to represent farmers, this month declared donations of 30,000 dollars from oil & gas company Santos, 25,000 from coal miner Peabody, and 50,000 dollars from prominent climate change denier and coal & oil company director Ian Plimer.

So, for the sake of future generations, we have to make this change happen ourselves, and the best way to do this is to disrupt the business model of companies trying to make money from fossil fuels by pulling the financial rug out from underneath them.

It’s called divestment, which is simply the opposite of investment. Here’s how it works. If you’ve got shares in fossil fuel companies, then sell them and invest in something that won’t wreck the planet.

If your super fund invests in fossil fuels, then transfer your money to a fund that doesn’t. If your bank lends money to coal, oil and gas projects, then take your business to one that doesn’t. It will put a smile on your face.

The global movement to divest from fossil fuels is gaining momentum, and the more people that take part, the better it works. Share prices (just like wheat and cattle prices) are set by supply and demand, so as more people sell, the price falls.

When a company’s share price falls far enough, it finds it more difficult to borrow money, with which to fund its next coal mine. Take oil and gas company Santos, for example. Due mainly to the recent plunge in oil prices, in the past six months its share price has dropped by almost 50 percent.

As a result, the company has announced plans to cut back on expenditure and reduce its operations.

On the flip side, the more money that flows into companies involved in renewable energy, energy efficiency and green technology, the faster they will grow and the sooner we can put a lid on runaway climate change.

A brave new world awaits. Let’s divest together and change the future!

Global Divestment Day will be taking place on Feb. 13-14. Hundreds of events spanning six continents will be taking place. Join an event near you. For more information visit: gofossilfree.org

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Oil pumps in southern Russia. Photo: Gennadiy Kolodkin/World Bank

By Miriam Pemberton
WASHINGTON, Dec 20 2014 (IPS)

After months of whispered warnings, Russia’s economic troubles made global headlines when its currency collapsed halfway through December. Amid the tumbling price of oil, the ruble has fallen to record lows, bringing the country to its most serious economic crisis since the late 1990s.

Topping most lists of reasons for the collapse is Russia’s failure to diversify its economy. At least some of the flaws in its strategy of putting all those eggs in that one oil-and-gas basket are now in full view.Moscow’s failure to move beyond economic structures dominated by first military production, and now by fossil fuels, can serve as a cautionary tale and call to action.

Once upon a time, Russia did actually try some diversification — back before the oil and gas “solution” came to seem like such a good idea. It was during those tumultuous years when history was pushing the Soviet Union into its grave. Central planners began scrambling to convert portions of the vast state enterprise of military production — the enterprise that had so bankrupted the empire — to produce the consumer goods that Soviet citizens had long gone without.

One day the managers of a Soviet tank plant, for example, received a directive to convert their production lines to produce shoes. The timetable was: do it today. They didn’t succeed.

Economic development experts agree that the time to diversify is not after an economic shock, but before it. Scrambling is no way to manage a transition to new economic activity. Since the bloodless end to the Cold War was foreseen by almost nobody, significant planning for an economic transition in advance wasn’t really in the cards.

But now, in the United States at least, it is. Currently the country is in the first stage of a modest defence downsizing. We’re about a third of the way through the 10-year framework of defence cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011.

Assuming Congress doesn’t scale back this plan or even dismantle it altogether, the resulting downsizing will still be the shallowest in U.S. history. It’s a downsizing of the post-9/11 surge, during which Pentagon spending nearly doubled. So the cuts will still leave a U.S. military budget higher, adjusting for inflation, than it was during nearly every year of the Cold War — back when we had an actual adversary, the aforementioned Soviet Union, that was trying to match us dollar for military dollar.

Now, no such adversary exists. Thinking of China? Not even close: The United States spends about six times as much on its military as Beijing.

Even so, the U.S. defence industry’s modest contraction is being felt in communities across the country. By the end of the 10-year cuts, many more communities will be affected. This is the time for those communities that are dependent on Pentagon contracts to work on strategies to reduce this vulnerability. To get ahead of the curve.

There is actually Pentagon money available for this purpose. Its Office of Economic Adjustment exists to give planning grants and technical assistance to communities recognising the need to diversify.

As we in the United States struggle to understand what’s going on in Russia and how to respond to it, at least one thing is clear: Moscow’s failure to move beyond economic structures dominated by first military production, and now by fossil fuels, can serve as a cautionary tale and call to action.

Diversified economies are stronger. They take time and planning. Wait to diversify until the bottom falls out of your existing economic base, and your chances for a smooth transition decline precipitously. Turning an economy based on making tanks into one that makes shoes can’t be done in a day.

This story originally appeared on Foreign Policy in Focus.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Young protesters at the U.N. climate talks in Lima, Peru highlight out-of-touch North American energy policies. Credit: Adopt a Negotiator.

By Leehi Yona
LIMA, Dec 13 2014 (IPS)

While U.S. and Canadian officials delivered speeches about how the world needs to step up to their responsibilities at the U.N. climate negotiations in Lima, Peru, activists from North America demanded clear answers back home on their governments’ relationships with fossil fuel corporations, as well as the future of several major oil projects across the continent.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke Thursday about the role each country should play on tackling climate change and referred to the U.S.-China agreement announced in November. The agreement, which pledged unforeseen emissions reductions for both countries, has been lauded by many countries as a progressive step forward at the U.N. negotiations.“Under Stephen Harper, Canada has no climate policy beyond public relations.” -- Canadian MP Elizabeth May

However, civil society delegates have expressed concern over the disconnect between the messaging the United States has been taking in Lima, and its domestic fossil fuel reliance.

This international discourse collides with Washington’s hesitance to repeal the Keystone XL pipeline, a proposed project that would transport over 800,000 barrels of bitumen a day from the Alberta tar sands to Texas oil refineries.

“The best way the U.S. can support progress in the U.N. Climate Talks is to start at home by rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline now,” said Dyanna Jaye, a U.S. youth delegate attending the conference with SustainUS.

TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline has been stalled in political procedures since 2011. Once considered to be a done deal, the project has grown to be a bone of contention among environmental groups, who have mobilised to put pressure on President Barack Obama to reject it.

Having been presented as a bill to Congress numerous times, it most recently passed a House of Representatives vote but failed in the Senate by only one vote on Nov. 5.

Youth have taken a leading role on been pushing for Kerry to reject Keystone XL, shining a spotlight on the influence of the fossil fuel industry in hindering progress.

Following Kerry’s speech to the U.N. on Thursday, Jaye and other U.S. and Canadian youth activists organised an action in protest of proposed pipelines through the two countries.

Calling for the industry to be kicked out of the negotiations, youth have highlighted that a successful deal in Lima would necessitate a phasing out of fossil fuel use to zero production by 2050, as stated in a World Wildlife Fund report.

“Dirty fossil fuel projects like Keystone XL clearly fail the climate test,” Evan Weber, executive director of US Climate Plan, told IPS. “We’ll be drawing the line on any new fossil fuel infrastructure and calling for investment in renewable energy solutions.”

Protesters emphasised the need for domestic action at home in order for there to be any progress at the United Nations

The United States, however, isn’t the only country whose domestic issues directly contradict their statements here at COP20. The Canadian government has been criticised for their lack of domestic ambition and their close relationship with fossil fuel companies at this conference.

At the talks, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq stated on Dec. 9 that Canada is “confident [they] can achieve a climate agreement” at these talks, “however it will require courage and common sense.”

While the government has attempted to portray itself as a climate leader in these negotiations, members of civil society have pointed out discrepancies between the emissions goals they are promising and the emissions trajectory the country is actually on track to produce.

“Under Stephen Harper, Canada has no climate policy beyond public relations,” said Elizabeth May, a Canadian Member of Parliament and leader of the Canadian Green Party attending COP 20.

“The zeal to exploit fossil fuels has led to the evisceration of ‎environmental laws. We have distorted our economy in the interests of exporting bitumen,” she told IPS.

Canada has once again entered into the non-governmental spotlight at U.N. climate negotiations. On Tuesday, uproar ensued when Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated that any regulation of the oil and gas industry would be “crazy” considering the industry’s current financial state.

On the conference’s last day, Canada was also awarded a Fossil of the Day, a daily non-prize awarded by civil society during the Climate Talks to the most regressive country, for its consistent meddling with and lack of participation in the U.N. process.

“As members of civil society, we’ve seen Canadian negotiators prioritise fossil fuel companies over public interest time and time again in Lima,” Catherine Gauthier of ENvironnement JEUnesse, a Québec youth environmental organisation, told IPS.

Both countries have come under scrutiny for their promotion of climate action on the international level while promoting tar sands expansion and shale gas fracking projects at home. Shale gas has particularly been promoted by both governments as a bridge fuel to help wean societies off fossil fuels with the goal of increasing renewable energy sources.

“The use of fracking as a bridge fuel is the biggest lie the American public has ever been fed,” Emily Williams of the California Student Sustainability Coalition told IPS. “It poisons our health and our communities, and destroys our environment. It cannot be part of the climate solution as it starves the renewable energy revolution of the investment it needs.”

Both Canada and the United States have been active in calling for swift action on the international level when it comes to climate change. The U.N. negotiations are currently running over time in Lima as countries work towards a compromise agreement.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

A group of activists protests minutes before the start of an event organised by the oil giant Shell at COP20 in Lima. Credit: Adopt a Negotiator

By Leehi Yona and Diego Arguedas Ortiz
LIMA, Dec 8 2014 (IPS)

Even as the presence of major oil and gas corporations is nearly ubiquitous at the U.N. climate talks in the Peruvian capital known as COP20, fossil fuel divestment campaigns have gained ground in various countries and are moving to counter the influence of the “dirty energy” lobby here.

As the COP20 enters its second and final week, delegates from 195 countries are still trying to address the urgency of climate change by reaching an international agreement to decelerate global warming. However, activists are worried that the influence of fossil fuel companies within COP20 might slow down an already sluggish process.The premise is simple, according to the movement organisers: if it is morally wrong to wreck the planet, it is morally wrong to profit from that wreckage.

In response to climate inaction, student organisers have called for fossil fuel divestment. The movement aims to disinvest endowments from a list of 200 companies that are ranked by the largest known fossil fuel reserves.

Divestment campaigns advocate full divestment from the list, which includes Gazprom, Petrobras, PetroChina, Chevron and ConocoPhillips, among other major companies. The intention of the campaign is both to erode financial support for major oil corporations, as well as revoke their own moral license.

Maddy Salzman, a former organiser of Fossil Free Washington University, sees divestment as a potential solution to the current stalemate on climate action. “The necessary legislation and investment decisions cannot and will not be made in our current political system, and as citizens we must play a role in making the changes we believe in,” she told IPS.

The motivation behind the campaign stems from a 2011 Carbon Tracker Initiative report which warned that about four-fifths of the total known fossil fuel reserves worldwide must remain in the ground in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

The premise is simple, according to the movement organisers: if it is morally wrong to wreck the planet, it is morally wrong to profit from that wreckage.

There are hundreds of campaigns across four continents seeking fossil fuel divestment. While most of these campaigns target university endowments, they also include state pension funds, cities, and places of faith.

Some campaigns, including at U.S. and Canadian universities, have already succeeded in obtaining commitments from their investment officers to divest their funds.

Divestment campaigns, while local, connect to broader international issues. Students involved with fossil fuel divestment campaigns are quick to acknowledge that their movement is a global one – an international solution that parallels the stalemate at the U.N.

In fact, they’ve recently launched Global Divestment Day, a day of action to elevate the growing momentum around fossil fuel divestment campaigns.

In the case of the U.N. climate negotiations, divestment has helped shed light on the influence of the fossil fuel industry at these talks.

“Even here at the annual meeting to create global policy to respond to climate change, fossil fuel companies have an influential pressure and continue to dilute the strength of the outcome of the COPs,” Dyanna Jaye, chair of the Virginia Student Environmental Coalition, told IPS.

“While the science becomes increasingly alarming, we continue to be fed another profit-driven story about continuing the use of fossil fuels,” said Jaye, a youth delegate with the SustainUS youth advocacy group in Lima.

On Monday, climate activists at the U.N. talks protested outside an event hosted at the conference venue by fossil fuel giant Shell. The event, initially titled “Why Divest from Fossil Fuels When a Future with Low Emission Fossil Energy Use is Already a Reality?”, has since changed names and times on multiple occasions.

Sally Bunner, an organiser with Earlham College Responsible Energy Investment, explains why fossil fuel companies cannot be part of a solution at COP20.

“Fossil fuel companies are irresponsible, because it has been proven for many decades that the extraction and burning of fossil fuels poisons people, water, air, and soil,” she said, referring to human rights implications. “Unfortunately, the fossil fuel industry hasn’t switched to a better form of energy production because it’s not profitable for them to do so.”

The Shell event is not the only example of industry presence at the conference. Oil companies have been meeting with delegations from numerous countries negotiating in Lima. On Saturday afternoon, the British Columbia Minister of Environment, Mary Polak, tweeted that she was going to meet the Climate Change Advisor for Chevron, a major player in the fossil fuel industry.

Questioned in the social network about the motives of their meeting, Polak answered that “you can’t change oil company behaviour if you won’t talk with them.”

Representatives from both Chevron and TransCanada have participated in closed stakeholder meetings with the Canadian delegation, designed to brief Canadian non-governmental organisations.

While they are allowed to be present in those meetings, many youth delegates have noted the disproportionate representation of a stakeholder that comprises such a small number of the general Canadian population.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Photo courtesy of FoEI

By Dipti Bhatnagar
LIMA, Dec 3 2014 (IPS)

World governments gathered in Lima, Peru for the latest round of U.N. climate negotiations should have finance on their mind.

Making a just transition to a climate-safe future means helping developing countries to deal with damage from climate change, equipping them with the technology and skills to adapt to new circumstances, and to continue to develop on their own paths in the face of the climate crisis.The GCF still suffers from dismally low finance pledges compared to what is really needed to stop the climate crisis. The lack of rules for what constitutes as climate finance is the most worrying.

This is the repayment of the ‘climate debt’. All this requires money – money which developed countries, as the largest historical contributors to climate change – should provide. Some countries have already made announcements about the finance they are contributing.

But guess what? Some of this funding is being spent on projects which worsen and compound the climate crisis.

Let’s take the Cirebon power plant in Indonesia as an example. By some truly confusing logic, this pollution-belching coal-fired plant counts as part of Japan’s efforts to combat climate change. Why? Because Cirebon and two others like it in Indonesia were funded by Japan using climate finance funds, according to a Dec. 1 report by the Associated Press.

In other words, Japan financed a coal-fired power plant in a developing country using money that was supposed to help developing countries tackle climate change. The flimsy reasoning behind this claim is the idea that because this plant uses newer, more expensive technology than Indonesia would have afforded alone, the emissions are somehow ‘cleaner’.

Coal is by far the carbon heaviest fossil fuel, posing multiple dangers to the environment, atmosphere and human health. The Associated Press goes on to say “Villagers nearby also complain that the coal plant is damaging the local environment, and that stocks of fish, shrimp and green mussels have dwindled.”

Friends of the Earth Indonesia/WALHI has been campaigning against these plants, and condemning the warped thinking that this plant is marginally better than some hypothetical dirtier plant. It is dirty and it contributes to climate change and wrecks local livelihoods. Financing should not go to dirty energy.  Simple as that.

Japan plans to finance more of these projects in other parts of the world. Japan’s dirty energy corps seems to have done an impressive job of convincing the government that financing their polluting activities is actually helpful for developing countries.

Friends of the Earth Japan is also campaigning on this issue at home, pressuring the Japanese government to be more responsible with their financing and not fund dirty energy.

The lack of coherent rules defining proper  climate finance is very worrying. The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has been set up to manage the transfer of much needed finance from developed to developing countries.

But the GCF still suffers from dismally low finance pledges compared to what is really needed to stop the climate crisis. The lack of rules for what constitutes as climate finance is the most worrying.

In a letter sent to the GCF in May 2014, social movements and civil society organisations, mostly from the Global South, urged that dirty energy be excluded from the GCF funding list and stressed the importance of real climate finance.

“The Green Climate Fund is of vital concern for us, as the mobilization of unprecedented levels of finance is urgently needed as part of an immediate as well as strategic response to the climate crisis. We urge you to make it an explicit policy that GCF funds not be used for financing fossil fuel and other harmful energy projects. We note with grave concern and alarm how other international financial institutions have been financing these types of projects under their ‘climate’ and ‘clean energy’ programs,” the letter said.

Yet the atmosphere at the climate talks in Lima, and in much of the reporting on the talks so far, is shockingly optimistic. The recently announced US-China deal has been celebrated by many, but the deal is hollow. It provides paltry insufficient, non-binding pledges to reduce emissions that are completly out of sync with what scientists tell us is needed to stop catastrophic climate change.

As long as deals and promises are made more for their symbolic nature than for their actual substance, we will continue to undermine real climate action and we will miss real opportunities to overcome the climate crisis and create a just and secure future for everyone.

Asad Rehman of Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland compared the lack of a regulatory framework with binding emissions targets and meaningful financial commitments to the ‘Wild West’, where countries are free to reduce or not to reduce emissions and to finance polluting activities in the pursuit of profit, as if our planet was not experiencing a grave start of a massive climate crisis.

Worse than the empty efforts of some rich countries is the absence of meaningful oversight of climate finance. Without adopting a shared understanding that climate finance is to help developing countries implement renewable, community-owned energy and to tackle climate change, and without clear guidelines on how the money should be used, we will continue to see half-hearted measures at best and countries exploiting the crisis for their own profit.

“Climate finance is such a mess. It needs to get straightened out,” said Karen Orenstein of Friends of the Earth U.S. “It would be such a shame if those resources went to fossil fuel-based technologies. It would be counterproductive.”

Not only should this round of U.N. climate talks emphatically refute fossil fuels and explicitly rule out any further use of climate funding for dirty energy projects, but they should also adopt real, meaningful clean energy solutions.

The GCF should be funding energy transformation ideas such as the Global feed in Tariff (GfiT), which would subsidise renewable energy until such time as it becomes cheaper than fossil fuel energy through wider adoption and improvements in technology.

Within the U.N., rich developed countries must meet their historical responsibility by committing to urgent and deep emissions cuts in line with science and equity and without false solutions such as carbon trading, offsetting and other loopholes.

They must also repay their climate debt to poorer countries in the developing world so that they too can tackle climate change. This means transferring adequate public finance, technology and capacity to developing countries so that they too can build low carbon and truly sustainable societies, adapt to climate change already occurring and receive compensation for irreparable loss and damage.

But the U.N. talks are heading in the wrong direction, with weak voluntary non-binding pledges and pitiful finance pledges from developed countries, with huge reliance on false solutions like carbon trading and REDD.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Jagoda Munic

By Jagoda Munic
LIMA, Dec 1 2014 (IPS)

In November, the world’s top climate scientists issued their latest warning that the climate crisis is rapidly worsening on a number of fronts, and that we must stop our climate-polluting way of producing energy if we are to stand a chance of avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.

Science says that the risk of runaway climate change draws ever closer. Indeed, we are already witnessing the consequences of climate change: more frequent floods, storms, droughts and rising seas are already causing devastation.Our governments’ inaction is obvious: they have failed to create a strong and equitable climate agreement at the U.N. for 20 years and their baby steps in Lima do not take us in the right direction.

Around the world people and communities are paying the cost of our governments’ continued inaction with their livelihoods and lives and this trend is likely to increase significantly in the future.

Good energy, bad energy

The fact is – our current energy system – the way we produce, distribute and consume energy – is unsustainable, unjust and harming communities, workers, the environment and the climate. Emissions from energy are a key driver of climate change and the system is failing to provide for the basic energy needs of billions of people in the global South.

The world’s main sources of energy like oil, gas and coal are devastating communities, their land, their air and their water. And so are other energy sources like nuclear power, industrial agrofuels and biomass, mega-dams and waste-to-energy incineration. None of these destructive energy sources have a role in our energy future.

There are real solutions to the climate crisis. They include stopping fossil fuels, building sustainable, community-based energy systems, steep reductions in carbon emissions, transforming our food systems, and stopping deforestation.

Surely, a climate-safe, sustainable energy system which meets the basic energy needs of everyone and respects the rights and different ways of life of communities around the world is possible: An energy system where energy production and use support a safe and clean environment, and healthy, thriving local economies that provide safe, decent and secure jobs and livelihoods. Such an energy system would be based on democracy and respect for human rights.

To make this happen we urgently need to invest in locally-appropriate, climate-safe, affordable and low impact energy for all, and reduce energy dependence so that people don’t need much energy to meet their basic needs and live a good life.

We also need to end new destructive energy projects and phase out existing destructive energy sources and we need to tackle the trade and investment rules that prioritise corporations’ needs over those of people and the environment.

So the goals are set, and it is time to act immediately towards a transition period in which the rights of affected communities and workers are respected and their needs provided for during the transition.

Climate politics at odds with climate science

So how are our governments tackling the issue? In the 20 years of the U.N. negotiations on climate change, we haven’t stopped climate change, nor even slowed it down.

Proposals on the table, negotiated by our governments, now are mostly empty false solutions, including expanded carbon markets, and a risky method called REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), which will not prevent climate change, and will impact and endanger poor and indigenous communities while earning money for big corporations.

Our governments’ inaction is obvious: they have failed to create a strong and equitable climate agreement at the U.N. for 20 years and their baby steps in Lima do not take us in the right direction. The reason is that, unfortunately, the U.N. climate negotiations are massively compromised because the corporate polluters who fund and create dirty energy are in the negotiating halls and have our governments in their pockets.

Major corporations and polluters are lobbying to undermine the chances of achieving climate justice via the UNFCCC. Much of this influence is exerted in the member states before governments come to the climate negotiations, but the negotiations are also attended by hundreds of lobbyists from the corporate sector trying to ensure that any agreement promotes the interests of big business before people’s interests and climate justice.

If we want any concrete agreement that would ensure the stopping of climate change for the benefit of all, we must stop the corporate takeover of U.N. climate negotiations by those corporate polluters.

There is also an issue of historic responsibility. The world’s richest, developed countries are responsible for the majority of historical carbon emissions, while hosting only 15 percent of the world’s population.

They emitted the biggest share of the greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere today, way more than their fair share. They must urgently make the deepest emission cuts and provide the most money if countries are to fairly share the responsibility of preventing catastrophic climate change.

Of course, tackling climate change and avoiding catastrophic climate change necessitates action by all countries. But the responsibility of countries to take action must reflect their historical responsibility for creating the problem and their capacity to act.

While the emissions of industrialising countries like China, India, South Africa and Brazil are rapidly increasing, these nations made a much smaller contribution to the climate problem overall than the rich developed countries, and their per capita emissions are still much lower.

Industrialised countries’ governments are neglecting their responsibility to prevent climate catastrophe and their positions at global climate talks are increasingly driven by the narrow economic and financial interests of wealthy elites and multinational corporations. These interests, tied to the economic sectors responsible for pollution or profiting from false solutions to the climate crisis like carbon trading and fossil fuels, are the key forces behind global inaction.

This year in Lima there are big plans to expand carbon markets. Friends of the Earth International argues that carbon markets are a false solution to climate change that let rich countries off the hook and do not address the climate crisis. Expanding carbon markets will make climate change worse and cause further harm to people around the world while bringing huge profits to polluters.

The U.N. climate talks are supposed to be making progress on implementing the agreement that world governments made in 1992 to stop man-made and dangerous climate change. The agreement recognises that rich countries have done the most to cause the problem of climate change and should take the lead in solving it, as well as provide funds to poorer countries as repayment of their climate debt.

But developed countries’ governments have done very little to deliver on these commitments and time is running out. What’s more, rich countries continue to further diminish their responsibilities to tackle climate change and dismantle the whole framework for binding reductions of greenhouse gases, without which we have no chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change.

What needs to happen in the climate talks?

Within the U.N., rich developed countries must meet their historical responsibility by committing to urgent and deep emissions cuts in line with science and justice and without false solutions such as carbon trading, offsetting and other loopholes.

They must also repay their climate debt to poorer countries in the developing world so that they too can tackle climate change. This means transferring adequate public finance and technology to developing countries so that they too can build low-carbon and truly sustainable economies, adapt to climate change and receive compensation for irreparable loss and damage. This will help ensure a safe climate, more secure livelihoods, more jobs, and clean affordable energy for all.

For now, the U.N. talks are still heading in the wrong direction, with weak non-binding pledges and insufficient finance from developed countries, and huge reliance on false solutions like carbon trading and REDD.

Unfortunately, if the U.N. climate negotiations continue in the same manner, any deal on the table at the U.N. climate negotiations in Paris next year will fall far short of what is required by science and climate justice.

To achieve a binding and justice-based agreement based on the cuts needed, as science tells us, our governments must listen to those impacted by climate change, not to corporations, which, by definition aim at more profits, not a safer climate.

Movement building and climate justice

Preventing the climate crisis and the potential collapse of life-supporting ecosystems on a global level, requires long-term thinking, brave leaders and a mass movement. We have to challenge the corporate influence over our governments and exert real democratic control over the energy transition so that the needs and interests of people and the planet take priority over private profit.

And at the heart of this movement we need climate justice – action on climate change that is radical, that challenges the system that has led to the climate catastrophe, and that fights for fair solutions that will benefit all people, not just the few.

It is already happening. In September we saw massive mobilizations around the world, with hundreds of thousands of people marching and actions across every continent, including 400,000 people on the streets of New York.

And at the latest U.N. talks in Lima, we see people from all walks of life – indigenous people, social movements, youth, farmers, women’s movements – from across Peru, Latin America, and around the world joining together in the People’s Summit to collectively articulate the peoples’ demands and the peoples’ solutions to climate change.

But we need to grow much bigger and much stronger. We are calling on people to join the global movement for climate justice, which is gaining power and integrating actions at local, national and U.N. level. The solution to the climate crisis is achievable and it is in our hands.

This article originally appeared on Commondreams.org.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Ranking of recoverable shale oil and gas reserves, which have revolutionised the global map of fossil fuels. Credit: ProfesionalMovil

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Nov 26 2014 (IPS)

Shale fever and the political chess among major oil producers and consumers have put OPEC in one of the most difficult junctures in its 54 years of history.

“OPEC was spoiled for several years by high prices of around 100 dollars a barrel,” Elie Habalián, a former Venezuelan OPEC (Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) governor, told IPS. “If it had had the foresight to keep prices down to around 70 dollars a barrel, shale oil would not have begun to pose such stiff competition.”

The 12-member group – made up of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela – may agree to cut output, which would entail sacrificing markets, during its Nov. 27 ministerial meeting in Vienna – the 166th held since the organisation was founded in September 1960.

Oil prices, which climbed after 2003 to over 140 dollars a barrel in 2008, plunged as a result of the global financial crisis that broke out that year, but recovered this decade and have remained at around 100 dollars a barrel.

In the meantime, the production of unconventional oil and gas began to expand in the United States. Shale, a common type of sedimentary rock made up largely of compacted silt and clay, is an unconventional source of natural gas and oil, which is trapped in shale formations and recovered by hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”.

“Fracking” involves pumping water, chemicals and sand at high pressure into the well, a technique that opens and extends fractures in the shale rock to release the natural gas and oil on a massive scale.

With the technology and capital available in the 20th century, these unconventional resources were not recoverable.

Habalián pointed out that after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, “the West and Japan adopted a strategy to achieve a stable market under their control rather than under that of the exporting countries.”

That strategy has run into surprises. For example, 40 years ago no one foresaw that China, along with India and other emerging powers, would become a fast-growing economy with a voracious appetite for fossil fuels, which gave a boost to producers of oil and gas.

“But with the high prices, while the exporters financed geopolitical campaigns, like the conflicts in the Middle East or the influence of Venezuela in Latin America under the presidency of Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), the big corporations were investing in technology and new areas of business,” said Habalián.

The shale boom “has merely accelerated the results of that permanent strategy by the West. Shale oil is here to stay, the price will drop as the technology advances, and that will bring down the prices of, and set a cap on, OPEC’s oil,” the expert said.

Map of proven global reserves of conventional oil, where new actors have also reduced OPEC’s grip. Credit: Fastcompany.com

Fracking is a costly procedure that requires high crude prices to make it profitable. It is also criticised for its environmental effects, as it involves consumption of enormous amounts of water and the creation of cracks in the rocks deep below the surface, with consequences that have yet to be determined.

Shale oil is already a major actor in the global energy market, with daily output of 3.5 million barrels, mainly in the United States, which recently overtook Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s largest oil producer, with more than nine million barrels a day.

For decades Saudi Arabia was the biggest producer and the de facto leader of OPEC, because to its production of nearly 10 million barrels a day is added a spare production capacity of two million barrels which has enabled it to increase or reduce output in periods of market scarcity or abundance.

The market, of some 91 million barrels consumed daily, of which OPEC contributes one-third, is showing signs of being oversupplied because of the rising offer of shale oil, Europe’s fragile economic recovery, and the slowdown of emerging economies, from China to Brazil.

Crude oil is about 30 percent cheaper than one year ago. The European benchmark North Sea Brent stands at 80 dollars a barrel, compared to 110 dollars a barrel at the close of 2013. The U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate is trading at 75 dollars a barrel, and Venezuela’s dense cocktail at less than 70 dollars a barrel, down from a high of more than 100 dollars a barrel.

Saudi Arabia “appears determined to respond aggressively in defence of its market share, even if that means lower prices for a few years,” Kenneth Ramírez, a professor of geopolitics and oil at the Central University of Venezuela, told IPS.

The Saudis are thus apparently facing off with Iran, their rival in the Islamic world – and which, like Venezuela, Russia or Nigeria, needs the biggest possible influx of revenue in the short term – and would discourage, with flows of low-cost conventional oil, the development of its big future rival: shale oil.

In addition, according to analyses like those of Habalián and Ramírez, low prices and a market with a greater supply of crude would “punish” nations like Syria or its big supporter, Russia, which is clashing with the West over the conflict centred in Ukraine.

In the immediate future, OPEC could opt for the Saudi proposal of maintaining the status quo and letting oil prices slide to 70 dollars a barrel or lower, with the aim of slowing down the development of shale oil while waiting for a recovery of Europe or China and other emerging economies.

Venezuela has tried to push another option, with an intense tour by Foreign Minister Rafael Ramírez to the capitals of oil producing countries, from Mexico City to Moscow through Tehran, but conspicuously avoiding Riyadh. The idea is to cut production to shore up prices, betting that the capacity to extract shale oil will decline in a few years.

One component that contributes to a move in that direction, said Habalián, is the pressure from environmentalists, especially in the United States and Canada, who oppose the extraction of shale oil and gas because of its impact on water sources, the injection of chemicals and the fracturing of rock deep underground.

A third option, said Ramírez, would be to ratify OPEC’s production ceiling of 30 million barrels a day, which would remove a small portion of the partners’ current excess supply “and although it would have a small impact on prices, it would send a signal that the organisation is not on the ropes.”

But in the medium to long term, Habalián observed, a new energy architecture in line with the market stability sought by the West continues to be bolstered, in the face of an OPEC strained by political and budgetary urgencies.

Editedo by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

UN Climate Wall at COP 15, Copenhagen. Credit: Troels Dejgaard Hansen/cc by 2.0

By Joel Jaeger
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 19 2014 (IPS)

– In recent days, two major developments have injected new life into international action on climate change.

At the G20 summit in Australia, the United States pledged 3 billion dollars and Japan pledged 1.5 billion dollars to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), bringing total donations up to 7.5 billion so far. The GCF, established through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, will distribute money to support developing countries in mitigating and adapting to climate change."While the figures might sound big, they pale in comparison to the actual needs on the ground and to what developed countries spend in other areas – for instance, the U.S. spends tens of billions of dollars every year on fossil fuel subsidies.” -- Brandon Wu of ActionAid USA

The new commitments to the GCF came on the heels of a landmark joint announcement by U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, creating ambitious new targets for domestic carbon emissions reduction.

The United States will aim to decrease its greenhouse gas emissions between 26 and 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. China will aim to reach peak carbon emissions around the year 2030 and decrease its emissions thereafter.

The two surprising announcements “really send a strong signal that both developed and developing countries are serious about getting to an ambitious climate agreement in 2015,” said Alex Doukas, a climate finance expert at the World Resources Institute, a Washington, DC think tank.

The GCF aims to be the central hub for international climate finance in the coming years. At an October meeting in Barbados, the basic practices of the GCF were firmly established and it was opened to funding contributions.

The 7.5 billion dollars that have been committed by 13 countries to the GCF bring it three quarters of the way to its initial 10-billion-dollar goal, to be distributed over the next few years. The gap may be closed on Nov. 20 at a pledging conference in Berlin. Several more countries are expected to announce their contributions, including the United Kingdom and Canada.

While the fund is primarily designed to aid developing countries, it has “both developed and developing country contributors,” Doukas told IPS. “Mexico and South Korea have already pledged resources, and other countries, including Colombia and Peru, that are not necessarily traditional contributors have indicated that they are going to step up as well.”

The decision-making board of the GCF is split evenly between developed and developing country constituencies.

“For a major, multilateral climate fund, I would say that the governance is much more balanced than previously,” Doukas said. “That’s one of the reasons for the creation of the Green Climate Fund, especially from the perspective of developing countries.”

As IPS has previously noted, the redistributive nature of the GCF acknowledges that the developing countries least responsible for climate change will often face the most severe consequences.

Advocates hope that the United States’ and Japan’s recent contributions will pave the way for more pledges on November 20^th and a more robust climate finance system in general.

According to Jan Kowalzig, a climate finance expert at Oxfam Germany, the unofficial 10-billion-dollar goal for the GCF was set by developed countries, but developing countries have asked for at least 15 billion dollars.

The 10-billion-dollar goal is “an absolute minimum floor for what is needed in this initial phase,” he told IPS.

Brandon Wu, a senior policy analyst at ActionAid USA and one of two civil society representatives on the GCF Board, asserts that the climate finance efforts will soon need to be scaled up drastically.

“While the figures might sound big, they pale in comparison to the actual needs on the ground and to what developed countries spend in other areas – for instance, the US spends tens of billions of dollars every year on fossil fuel subsidies,” he told IPS.

The GCF may run into problems if countries attach caveats to their contributions, specifying exactly what types of activities they can be used for.

“Such strings are highly problematic as they run against the consensual spirit of the GCF board operations,” Kowalzig said.

He also warned that some of the contributions may come in the form of loans which need to be paid back instead of from grants.

After the pledging phase, much work remains to be done to establish a global climate finance roadmap towards 2020.

“The Green Climate Fund can and should play a major role,” Kowalzig said, “but the pledges, as important and welcome as they are, are only one component of what developed countries have promised to deliver.”

The other major development of the past week, Obama and Xi’s carbon emissions reduction announcement, also deserves both praise and scrutiny.

In an op-ed in the New York Times, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made clear the historic nature of the agreement.

“Two countries regarded for 20 years as the leaders of opposing camps in climate negotiations have come together to find common ground, determined to make lasting progress on an unprecedented global challenge,” he wrote.

While Barack Obama may be committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, Congress has expressed reservations. Mitch McConnell, soon to be the Senate majority leader, has called the plan “unrealistic” and complained that it would increase electricity prices and eliminate jobs.

On the Chinese side, Xi’s willingness to act on climate change and peak carbon emissions by 2030 was a substantial transformation from only a few years ago.

Andrew Steer, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute, said in a press release that China’s announcement was “a major development,” but noted that a few years difference in when peak emissions occur could have a huge impact on climate change.

“Analysis shows that China’s emissions should peak before 2030 to limit the worst consequences of climate change,” he said.

Researchers have said that China’s emissions would have peaked in the 2030s anyway, and that a more ambitious goal of 2025 could have been possible.

Still, the agreement indicates a new willingness of the world’s number one and number two biggest carbon emitters to work together constructively, and raises hopes for successful negotiations in December’s COP20 climate change conference in Lima, Peru.

Héla Cheikhrouhou, executive director of the GCF, was unapologetically enthusiastic about the new momentum built in recent days.

“This week’s announcements will be a legacy of U.S. President Obama,” she announced. “It will be seen by generations to come as the game-changing moment that started a scaling-up of global action on climate change, and that enabled the global agreement.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The as-yet unfinished exhibit area which forms part of the temporary installations that the host country has built in Lima to hold the COP 20, which runs Dec. 1-12. Credit: COP20 Peru

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Nov 17 2014 (IPS)

This December, 195 nations plus the European Union will meet in Lima for two weeks for the crucial U.N. Conference of the Parties on Climate Change, known as COP 20. The hope in Lima is to produce the first complete draft of a new global climate agreement.
However, this is like writing a book with 195 authors. After five years of negotiations, there is only an outline of the agreement and a couple of ‘chapters’ in rough draft.

The deadline is looming: the new climate agreement to keep climate change to less than two degrees C is to be signed in Paris in December 2015.

“A tremendous amount of work has to be done in Lima,” said Erika Rosenthal, an attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental law organisation and advisor to the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).Climate science is clear that global CO2 emissions must begin to decline before 2020 – otherwise, preventing a 2C temperature rise will be extremely costly and challenging.

“Time is short after Lima and Paris cannot fail,” said Rosenthal. “Paris is the key political moment when the world can decisively move to reap all the benefits of a clean, carbon-free economy.”

Success in Lima will depend in part on Peru’s Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal. As official president of COP 20, Pulgar-Vidal’s determination and energy will be crucial, most observers believe.

Climate change is a major issue in Peru, since Lima and many other parts of the country are dependent on freshwater from the Andes glaciers. Studies show they have lost 30 to 50 percent of their ice in 30 years and many will soon be gone.

Pulgar-Vidal has said he expects Lima to deliver a draft agreement, although it may not include all the chapters. The full draft with all the chapters needs to be completed by May 2015 to have time for final negotiations.

The future climate agreement, which could easily be book-length, will have three main sections or pillars: mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage. The mitigation or emissions reduction pillar is divided into pre-2020 emission reductions and post-2020 sections.

Peru’s environment minister, Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, during one of the many events held to promote the COP 20. As chairman of the conference, his negotiating ability and energy will be crucial to the progress made towards a new draft climate agreement. Credit: COP20 Peru

Both remain contentious, in terms of how much each country should reduce and by when.

Climate science is clear that global CO2 emissions must begin to decline before 2020 – otherwise, preventing a 2C temperature rise will be extremely costly and challenging.

However, emissions in 2014 are expected to be the highest ever at 40 billion tonnes, compared to 32 billion in 2010. This year is also expected to be the warmest on record.

In 2009, at COP 15 in Copenhagen, Denmark, developed countries agreed to make pre-2020 emission reductions under the Copenhagen Accord. However, those commitments fall far short of what’s needed and no country has since increased their “ambition”, as it is called.

Some – like Japan, Australia and Canada – have even backed away from their commitments.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon held a special summit with 125 heads of state on Sep. 24 in hopes countries’ would use the event to announce greater reductions. Instead, developed countries like the U.S. made general promises to do more while hundreds of thousands of people around the world marched to demand their leaders to take action.

The ambition deadlock was evident at the U.N. Bonn Climate Conference in October with developing nations pushing their developed counterparts for greater pre-2020 cuts.

However, the country bloc known as the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) proposed a supplementary approach to reducing emissions that involves countries sharing their knowledge, technology and policy mechanisms.

Practical, useful and necessary, this may become a formal part of a new agreement, Rosenthal hopes.

“There were very good discussions around renewable energy and policies to reduce emissions in Bonn,” agrees Enrique Maurtua Konstantinidis, international policy advisor at CAN-Latin America, a network of NGOs.

“Developed countries need to make new reduction pledges in Lima,” Konstantinidis told TA.

This includes pledges for post-2020 cuts. Europe’s target of at least 40 percent cuts by 2030 is not large enough. Emerging countries like China, Brazil, India and others must also make major cuts since the long-term goal should be a global phase-out of fossil fuel use by 2050 to keep temperatures below 1.5C, he said.

This lower target is what many African and small island countries say is necessary for their long-term survival.

The mitigation pillar still needs agreement on how to measure and verify each country’s emission reductions. It will also need a mechanism to prevent countries from failing to meet their targets, Konstantinidis said.

Ironically, the most advanced mitigation chapter, REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), is the most controversial outside of the COP process.

REDD is intended to provide compensation to countries for not exploiting their forests. Companies and countries failing to reduce emissions would pay this compensation.

The Peruvian government wants this finalised in Lima but many civil society and indigenous groups oppose it. Large protest marches against REDD and the idea of putting a price on nature are very likely in Lima, Konstantinidis said.
“Political actors appear totally disconnected from real solutions to tackle global warming,” said Nnimmo Bassey of the No Redd in Africa Network and former head of Friends of the Earth International.

REDD is a “financial conspiracy between rich nations and corporations” happy to trade cash for doing little to reduce their carbon emissions, Bassey said in an interview.

The only way to stop this “false solution” is for a broad alliance of social movements who take to the streets of Lima, he said.

The adaptation pillar is mainly about finance and technology transfer to help poorer countries adapt to the impacts of climate change. A special Green Climate Fund was set up this year to channel money but is not yet operational.

At COP 15, rich countries said they would provide funding that would reach 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 in exchange for lower emissions reductions. Contributions in 2013 were only 110 million dollars.

Promises made by Germany and Sweden in 2014 amount to nearly two billion dollars, however, payments will be made over a number of years. It is also not clear how much will be new money rather than previously allocated foreign assistance funding.

“Countries need to make new financial commitments in Lima. This includes emerging economies like China and Brazil,” said Konstantinidis.

Loss and damage is the third pillar. It was only agreed to in the dying hours of COP 19 last year in Warsaw, Poland. This pillar is intended to help poor countries cope with current and future economic and non-economic losses resulting from the impacts of climate change.

This pillar is the least developed and will not be completed until after the Paris deadline.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Governments continue to subsidise exploration for fossil fuels despite pledges to support the transition to clean energy. Credit: Flickr/Leszek Kozlowski

By Shelagh Whitley
LONDON, Nov 11 2014 (IPS)

Just a week after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave its starkest warning yet that the vast majority of existing oil, gas and coal reserves need to be kept in the ground, a new report reveals that governments are flagrantly ignoring these warnings and continuing to subsidise exploration for fossil fuels.

The report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and Oil Change International (OCI) shows that G20 governments are propping up fossil fuel exploration to the tune of 88 billion dollars every year through national subsidies, investment by state owned enterprise and public finance.

Shelagh Whitley, Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI)

And this is only a small part of total government support to producing and consuming fossil fuels, which is estimated at 775 billion dollars a year.

The G20 continues to provide these subsidies – mostly hidden from public view – in spite of repeated pledges to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, address climate change, and support the transition to clean energy.

The subsidies provided to exploration by the G20 alone are almost equivalent to total global support for clean energy (101 billion dollars), tilting the playing field towards oil, gas and coal.

The report also shows that G20 governments spend more than double what the top 20 private companies are spending to look for new oil, gas and coal reserves. This suggests that companies depend on public support for their exploration activities.“Fossil fuel exploration subsidies are fuelling dangerous climate change; this support is increasingly uneconomic; and oil, gas and coal will not address the energy needs of the poorest and most vulnerable”

As finding fossil fuels gets more risky, expensive and energy intensive, and the prices of oil, gas and coal continue to fall, companies are only likely to become more dependent on tax payers’ money to continue exploration.  This was also demonstrated by the recent request by the United Kingdom’s oil and gas industry for further tax breaks to address rising operating costs in the North Sea.

Some will claim that although these subsidies are uneconomic, exceptions can be made. After all, the arguments go, we need fossil fuels to provide energy access – and we can keep burning oil, gas and coal if we just use carbon capture and storage.

This simply isn’t true. Doing so will drive dangerous climate change, with the impacts falling first on the most vulnerable people in the poorest countries and regions.

First, when it comes to energy access, it is actually through clean energy that we will be able to provide heat and electricity to the poorest.

According to the International Energy Agency, most new investment needs to be in distributed energy, including in mini-grid and off-grid options that most often rely on renewable energy sources. If G20 governments redirected 49 billion dollars a year – just over half of what they currently provide in support to fossil fuel exploration – we could achieve universal energy access as soon as 2030.

Second, there has only been very limited application of carbon capture technology so far.

The first and only full-scale ‘commercial’ carbon capture and storage project, launched this year in Canada, relies on government subsidies and sells the captured carbon to the oil industry, which uses it to extract even more fossil fuels. It is not a sustainable model.

In short: fossil fuel exploration subsidies are fuelling dangerous climate change; this support is increasingly uneconomic; and oil, gas and coal will not address the energy needs of the poorest and most vulnerable.

The G20 countries have the resources to support a transition to clean energy. They can set an example for the world by shifting national subsidies, investment by state-owned enterprise and public finance away from fossil fuels and toward renewables and efficiency.

G20 leaders meeting in Brisbane this week must recognise this and make good on their existing pledges. Immediately phasing out fossil fuel exploration subsidies would be the right place to start.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Flooding on the A361, the main road from Taunton to Glastonbury, England. Scientists warn that climate change is well underway, producing costly and tragic extreme weather events. Credit: Mark Robinson/cc by 2.0

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Nov 3 2014 (IPS)

“Greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are higher than ever, and we’re seeing more and more extreme weather and climate events….We can’t prevent a large scale disaster if we don’t heed this kind of hard science.”

Question: Is that statement about the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report from Greenpeace or the U.S. State Department?The fact that Kerry must appeal to the fossil fuel industry’s sense of morality rather than tough regulations on CO2 emissions makes plain the industry’s naked power in the U.S. political system.

Answer: It’s by John Kerry, U.S. secretary of state, the second most powerful official in the Barack Obama administration.

Important officials in many other countries have made similar statements about the IPCC Synthesis Report released Nov. 2 in Copenhagen. Canada’s Stephen Harper government remains in denial and has been silent.

“The longer we are stuck in a debate over ideology and politics, the more the costs of inaction grow and grow,”said Kerry in a statement.

The IPCC Synthesis Report distills seven years of climate research by thousands of the world’s best scientists and concludes that climate change is well underway, producing costly and tragic extreme weather events. These will grow worse than anyone can imagine unless humanity weans itself off fossil fuels.

Climate change is actually easy to understand and can be summed up in less than 60 seconds:

For decades humanity has pumped hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels —coal, oil and natural gas.

Measurements show there is now 42 percent more CO2 in the atmosphere than 100 years ago. It is long-established science that CO2 acts as blanket, keeping the planet warm by trapping some of the sun’s heat. Each year our emissions of CO2 is making that blanket thicker, trapping more heat.

That fossil-fuel CO2 blanket has raised global temperatures 0.85C. It would far hotter if not for the oceans absorbing 95 percent of the extra heat trapped by the blanket. But the oceans won’t help us for much longer. 2014 will be the warmest year on record.

“Urgent action is needed to cut global greenhouse gas emissions,”said Michel Jarraud, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization.

“The longer we wait, the more expensive and difficult it will be to adapt –to the point where some impacts will be irreversible and impossible to cope with,” Jarraud said in a comment about the Synthesis Report.

There is nothing fundamentally new in this latest IPCC document. All that’s really changed is the urgency and desperation in the language climate scientists now use.

Everyone knows by now that fossil fuels have to be phased out and replaced by energy sources that don’t add more CO2 to the stifling blanket we’ve woven.

And we already know how to make the low-carbon transition because it is “hardly rocket science,” said Bob Watson, former chair of the IPCC.

To reiterate the steps: big increases in energy efficiency, massive roll outs of renewable energy, shutting down most coal plants, a carbon price, etc. There are dozens of studies on how to do this with no new technology. All of this can be achieved with very little extra cost to the global economy, according to The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate.

These studies end up concluding that what’s missing in a shift to low-carbon living is political will or political courage. Left unsaid is the incredibly powerful and influential fossil fuel industry, their bankers, investors, lawyers, public relations consultants, unions and others all fighting desperately to keep humanity addicted to their products.

That means opposing low-carbon alternatives and branding grandparents who worry about their grandchildren’s future as “green radicals”.

“Think of this as an endless war,”public relations consultant Richard Berman told oil and gas industry executives last June in Colorado.

It’s a dirty war against environmental organisations and their supporters. Industry executives must be willing to exploit emotions like fear, greed and anger of the public against green groups and individuals, Berman said, according a recent New York Times article.

A tobacco industry PR specialist, Berman was speaking at an event sponsored by the Western Energy Alliance, a group whose members include Devon Energy, Halliburton and Anadarko Petroleum. The speech was secretly recorded by an energy industry executive offended by the tactics.

Berman advised major energy corporations secretly financing anti-environmental campaigns not to worry about offending the general public because “you can either win ugly or lose pretty,” he said.

‘Big Green Radicals’ is Berman and Co.’s latest multi-million-dollar campaign and it targets groups like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. It has also aggressively attacked groups opposing fracking and lobbies to prevent stricter controls over the process that pollutes both air and water.

Berman also promises strict confidentiality for anyone who funds his efforts, saying: “We run all of this stuff through nonprofit organisations that are insulated from having to disclose donors.”

Berman is hardly alone in his efforts. The fossil fuel industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on PR, advertising and lobbying in the U.S., Canada, Australia and elsewhere.

“Those who choose to ignore or dispute the science so clearly laid out in this report do so at great risk for all of us and for our kids and grandkids,” Secretary Kerry said to conclude his statement on IPCC Synthesis Report.

The fact that Kerry must appeal to the fossil fuel industry’s sense of morality rather than tough regulations on CO2 emissions makes plain the industry’s naked power in the U.S. political system.

In Copenhagen on Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was able to say what Kerry couldn’t and urged big investors such as pension funds and insurance companies to reduce their investments in fossil fuels and invest in renewable energy instead.

That’s a start but far more action is needed by everyone who believes that our children and grandchildren have a right to a liveable planet.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Technicians discuss their work near two drill rigs at the Vaca Muerta oil field in Loma Campana, in southern Argentina. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
NEUQUÉN, Argentina, Oct 27 2014 (IPS)

In Argentina they call it “yeil”, the hispanicised version of “shale”. But while these unconventional gas and oil reserves are seen by many as offering a means to development and a route towards energy self-sufficiency, others believe the term should fall into disuse because the global trend is towards clean, renewable sources of energy.

Wearing an oil-soaked uniform, the drilling supervisor in the state oil company YPF, Claudio Rueda, feels like he is playing a part in an important story that is unfolding in southern Argentina.

“Availability of energy is key in our country,” he told IPS. “It’s an essential element in Argentina’s development and future, and we are part of that process.”

The first chapter of the story is being written in the Vaca Muerta shale oil and gas field in Loma Campana in the province of Neuquén, which forms part of Argentina’s southern Patagonia region, where rich unconventional reserves of gas and oil are hidden in rocky structures 2,500 to 3,000 metres below the surface.

According to YPF, reserves of 802 trillion cubic feet of reserves put Argentina second in the world in shale gas deposits, after China, with 1,115 trillion cubic feet.

And in shale oil reserves, Argentina is now in fourth place, with 27 billion barrels, after Russia, the United States and China.“Staking our bets on fracking means reinforcing the current energy mix based on fossil fuels, and as a result, it spells out a major setback in terms of alternative scenarios or the transition to clean, renewable energy sources.” -- Maristella Svampa

According to projections, Argentina’s conventional oil and gas reserves will run out in eight or 10 years and production is declining, so the government considers the development of Vaca Muerta, a 30,000-sq-km geological formation, strategic.

“Nearly 30 percent of the country’s energy is imported, in different ways – a huge drain on the country’s hard currency reserves,” Rubén Etcheverry, coauthor of the book “Yeil, las nuevas reservas” (Yeil, the new reserves) and former Neuquén provincial energy secretary, said in an interview with IPS.

“We have been in intensive therapy for the last five years, with respect to the trade balance and the energy balance,” he said in Neuquén, the provincial capital.

“We went from exporting nearly five billion dollars a year in fuel, 10 years ago, to spending 15 billion dollars on imports; in other words, the balance has shifted by 20 billion dollars a year – an enormous change for any economy of this size,” Etcheverry said.

Imports include electricity and liquefied gas, natural gas and other fuels.

Diego Pérez Santiesteban, president of Argentina’s Chamber of Importers, said that at the start of the year, energy purchases represented 15 percent of all imports, compared to just five percent a year earlier.

Since 2009, accumulated imported energy has surpassed the Central Bank’s foreign reserves of 28.4 billion dollars.

Etcheverry sees Vaca Muerta as key to turning that tendency around, because the reserves found deep under the surface would be “enough to make us self-sufficient, and would even allow us to export.”

According to the expert, Argentina could follow in the footsteps of the United States, which thanks to its shale deposits “could become the world’s leading producer of gas and oil in less than 10 years.”

Shale gas and oil are extracted by means of a process known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking, which involves pumping water, chemicals and sand at high pressure into the well, and opening and extending fractures deep under the surface in the shale rock to release the fossil fuels.

But there is a growing outcry around the world against the pollution caused by fracking in the water table and other environmental impacts in wide areas around the deposits.

And in Argentina many voices have also been raised against the energy mix that has been chosen.

“This is an environmental point of view that goes beyond Vaca Muerta. The option that they are trying to impose in Argentina, as a solution to the energy crisis…has no future prospects,” said ecologist Silvia Leanza of the Ecosur Foundation.

“We’re basing all of our economic expansion on one asset here – but how many years will it last?” she asked.

Fossil fuels make up nearly 90 percent of Argentina’s energy mix. The rest is based on nuclear and hydroelectric sources, and just one percent renewable.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that the burning of fossil fuels to generate energy is the main cause of climate change.

“This situation, along with the greater availability of renewable sources, indicates the end of the era of dirty energy sources,” Mauro Fernández, head of Greenpeace Argentina’s energy campaign, said in a report.

This country’s dependence on fossil fuels has made carbon dioxide emissions per capita among the highest in the region: 4.4 tons in 2009, according to the World Bank.

Fernández said unconventional fossil fuels are not only risky because of fracking, but are also “a bad alternative from a climate and energy point of view.”

“Unconventional deposits look like a new frontier for doing more of the same, fueling the motor of climate change,” he complained.

Argentina has set a target for at least eight percent of the country’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2016.

“Staking our bets on fracking means reinforcing the current energy mix based on fossil fuels, and as a result, it spells out a major setback in terms of alternative scenarios or the transition to clean, renewable energy sources,” said sociologist Maristella Svampa, an independent researcher with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council.

“In the last decade, fracking has certainly transformed the energy outlook in the United States, making it less dependent on imports. But it has also made it the place where the real impacts can be seen: pollution of groundwater, damage to the health of people and animals, earthquakes, greater emissions of methane gas, among others,” she said.

Carolina García with the Multisectoral Group against Hydraulic Fracturing said that because of its rich natural resources, Argentina has other alternatives that should be tapped before exploiting fossil fuels “to the last drop.”

“We finish extracting everything in the Neuquén basin and what do we have left?” she commented to IPS.

Etcheverry mentioned the possibility of using solar energy in the north, wind energy in Patagonia and along the Atlantic shoreline, geothermic energy in the Andes, and tidal and wave energy along the coast.

But the author said that for now the costs were “much higher” than those of fossil fuels, because of technological reasons, transportation aspects and energy intensity.

He also said oil and gas are still necessary as energy sources and raw materials for everyday products.

For that reason, Etcheverry said, the transition from the fossil fuels era “is not simple.” First it is necessary to improve energy savings and efficiency, in order to later shift to less polluting fossil fuels, he added.

“In the first stage it would be a question of moving from the most polluting fossil fuels like coal and oil towards others that are less polluting, like natural gas. And from there, creating incentives for everything that has to do with clean or renewable energies,” he said.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Pacific Climate Warriors organised a canoe flotilla in Australia on Oct. 17 to protest against the Australian coal industry and call for action on climate change. Credit: Jeff Tan for 350.org

By Kaio Tiira Taulu
TUVALU, Oct 25 2014 (IPS)

The fate of my country rests in your hands: that was the message which Ian Fry, representing Tuvalu gave at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen five years ago. This is also the message that the Pacific Climate Warriors have come to Australia to bring.

We have come here, representatives of 12 different Pacific island nations, which are home to 10 million people, to ask the people of Australia to reject plans to double Australia’s exports of coal and to become the biggest exporter of gas in the world.

We want Australia (and other industrialised countries which also rely on the burning and extraction of fossil fuels) to understand that for every kilo of coal which they dig, or every gas well they make, there is someone in the islands who is losing their home.“We want Australia (and other industrialised countries which also rely on the burning and extraction of fossil fuels) to understand that for every kilo of coal which they dig, or every gas well they make, there is someone in the islands who is losing their home”

My home, Tuvalu, is a series of three islands and six atolls halfway between Hawaii and Australia. Tuvalu is the fourth smallest country in the world and home to 11,000 people and most of us have been there for generations

Tuvalu, like many of our island neighbours, is living on borrowed time with climate change expected to displace over 300 million people worldwide before 2050. The displacement has already started to happen with thousands of my countrymen forced to leave by the rising King Tides and the long drought affecting our food supplies.

One family drew international attention when they became the first refugees to seek asylum in New Zealand based on grounds of climate change.

Aside from the humanitarian cost, there is also the loss to culture and diversity with several thousands of years of civilisation and history wiped from the face of the planet. And there is nothing that we can do about this except hope that you and your country will see the value of keeping our island above water and make the decision to turn away from fossil fuels.

This is the reason I have joined with the Pacific Climate Warriors to come to Australia and represent my country and our region.

For years our leaders have tried to convey our message in the halls of power to politicians, diplomats and whoever else would listen, but the arguments of economic growth have always taken precedence over the arguments for our survival.

I now come as an envoy to ask the people of Australia to please consider the plight of the 11,000 people in Tuvalu and the further millions in other Pacific islands and other low lying nations which may expect to be wiped out by climate change.

In my time in Australia I have heard plenty about the importance of the Australian coal industry and the jobs and economic growth that it generates, yet it is us in the islands who are paying the price with our land, our culture and our livelihoods. This hardly seems a fair price to pay when we gain nothing from this industry.

This is why it incenses me so much to hear that coal is good for humanity or coal will be the solution to poverty. Coal will benefit only the wealthy whereas it will be the poor, like us, who suffer.

This is why it is the ultimate insult to hear that wealthy corporations are acting in the interests of the world’s poor when they dig and burn coal.

The Australian people have the power to decide the fate of my country and others in the Pacific. You need to let your government know that you have considered the matter carefully that you choose human life over the digging and export of coal.

If you do not, you must be ready to open your borders for the flood of climate refugees who will end up on your doorstep.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

A billboard in Astana with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and the slogan “Our Strength” emphasises the country’s Strategy 2050 project that focuses on renewable energy. Regional analysts are unsure how committed Kazakhstan really is to pushing and promoting green energy. Credit: David Trilling/EurasiaNet

By Paolo Sorbello
ASTANA, Oct 24 2014 (EurasiaNet)

From small villages to big cities, wherever you go in Kazakhstan these days, billboards offer reminders that Astana is gearing up to host Expo 2017, the next World’s Fair. Kazakhstan helped secure the right to host the event with a pledge to emphasise green energy alternatives. But now it appears that Kazakhstan is red-lighting its own green transition.

Green energy has been the rage in Kazakhstan in recent years, but the country’s strongman president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, seemed to shift gears out of the blue in late September.

“I personally do not believe in alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar,” the Interfax news agency quoted Nazarbayev as saying on Sep. 30 during a meeting with Vladimir Putin in the Caspian city of Atyrau. And echoing a familiar Kremlin refrain, Nazarbayev added that “the shale euphoria does not make any sense.”Despite the great efforts that were put into branding Astana Expo 2017 as the virtuous, green choice of an oil-exporting country, Nazarbayev’s remarks reveal “that the rhetoric around the Expo is just a cosmetic policy aimed at the construction of an image of Kazakhstan that is close to the Western agenda.” -- Luca Anceschi

For a country where the decisions of one man set the political agenda, it was a stunning change of course. Only last year, Nazarbayev’s office pledged to spend one percent of GDP, or an estimated three to four billion dollars annually, to “transition to a green economy.”

“Kazakhstan is facing a situation where its natural resources and environment are seriously deteriorating across all crucial environmental standards,” stated a widely touted “Strategy Kazakhstan 2050” concept paper. A “green economy is instrumental to [a] nation’s sustainable development.”

Moreover, a switch to renewables would free oil and gas for more lucrative exports, rather than subsidised domestic use.

While Kazakhstan generates 80 percent of its electricity from coal, state media has trumpeted the potential of green energy, showing Nazarbayev touring a solar-panel factory under construction or an official promising Kazakhstan will build the world’s first “energy-positive” city.

Officials often talk of weaning Kazakhstan’s economy off its hydrocarbon dependence. Ultimately, if Nazarbayev wants to fulfill a pledge to make Kazakhstan a middle-income nation by 2030, officials have acknowledged that Kazakhstan must diversify its energy sources.

So Nazarbayev’s comments have left analysts scratching their heads: Is Kazakhstan’s focus shifting, or was Nazarbayev just reminding trade partners – especially Russia – that oil and gas will remain a priority for Astana? Nazarbayev concluded by saying that “oil and gas is our main horse, and we should not be afraid that these are fossil fuels.”

Context is key, according to Marat Koshumbayev, deputy head of the Chokin Kazakh Research Institute of Energy in Almaty. “While sitting next to [Putin], it is normal that Nazarbayev would emphasise fossil fuels. It’s worth noting that during similar events in the West, the focus is still on renewable energy, efficiency, and reduction of carbon emissions,” Koshumbayev told EurasiaNet.org.

The energy networks of Kazakhstan and Russia are strongly interconnected. Most Kazakh oil exports to Europe go through the Russian hubs of Samara and Novorossiysk, while Russian oil flows through Kazakhstan’s pipeline network to China. In addition, Kazakhstan is a key cog in Putin’s pet project – the formation of a Eurasian Economic Union.

Although the context of the meeting may have played a role in Nazarbayev’s declaration, the president has sown doubt about how serious Kazakhstan is about green energy, said Luca Anceschi, an expert on the country at the University of Glasgow. Despite the great efforts that were put into branding Astana Expo 2017 as the virtuous, green choice of an oil-exporting country, Nazarbayev’s remarks reveal “that the rhetoric around the Expo is just a cosmetic policy aimed at the construction of an image of Kazakhstan that is close to the Western agenda.”

Nazarbayev, Anceschi added, was warning Astana policymakers to keep the focus on the current economic course. “It’s a clear message that diversification efforts will slow down, with the hope that [the long-delayed, super-giant oil field] Kashagan will come in to solve all problems,” he said.

Koshumbayev agrees Nazarbayev is backtracking. “Unfortunately,” he said, “for the development of renewable energy, more is needed than just Strategy 2050 and the officials who promote it, and Nazarbayev knows this.”

In policy circles in Astana and Almaty, “alternative” energy refers broadly to non-hydrocarbon resources, including, for example, nuclear. Nazarbayev does appear to believe in the power of the atom. During the meeting with Putin in Atyrau, he inked terms for Russia and Kazakhstan to construct a nuclear power plant.

According to the plan, construction will start in 2018, although it is still unclear if the plant will be built near the old Soviet nuclear hub of Semipalatinsk, in the northeast, or in the industrial west, near the Caspian shore.

Even if Kazakhstan shifts away from green energy, some progress is likely to continue. Two wind farms, one in the north and one in the south, received a financial green light in the past months. In the Zhambyl Region, the local government, with some private Lithuanian financing, has agreed to build a 250MW wind farm for 550 million dollars. And in the Akmola Region, near the capital, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has agreed to fund a 50MW, 120-million-dollar wind farm.

But for one opposition leader, Nazarbayev’s comments prove these projects are mainly for show.

“Our regime has a feudal mentality. Showing off wealth is a fundamental indication of one’s status,” said Pyotr Svoik, a former deputy natural resources minister turned opposition activist. “That’s how we get an Expo branded ‘energy of the future’ while producing only marginal amounts of renewable energy.”

Editor’s note:  Paolo Sorbello is a freelance reporter who specializes in Central Asian affairs. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Edited By Kitty Stapp