Oil Profits Ignore Actual Cost of Oil

Image by SkyTruth via Flickr

Published on Tuesday, June 8, 2010 by The Guardian/UK
The Oil Firms' Profits Ignore the Real Costs
The energy industry has long dumped its damage and, like the banks, made scant provision against disaster. Time to pay up

by George Monbiot
Has BP ever made a profit? The question looks daft. The oil company posted profits of $26bn last year. There's no doubt that BP has been pumping money into the pockets of its shareholders. The question is whether this money is what the company says it is. BP calls it profit. I call it the provision the firm should be making against future liabilities.

Despite an angry letter from two US senators and a warning from Barack Obama about spending big money on their shareholders while nickel-and-diming coastal people, despite the fact that it has no idea what its total liabilities in the Gulf of Mexico will be, BP seems to be planning to pay a dividend this year. It's likely to amount to more than $10bn. As the two senators noted, by moving money "off the company's books and into investors' pockets", BP "will make it much more difficult to repay the US government and American communities".

Pollution has been defined as a resource in the wrong place. That's also a pretty good description of the company's profits. The great plumes of money that have been bursting out of the company's accounts every year are not BP's to give away. They consist, in part or in whole, of the externalised costs the company has failed to pay, and which the rest of society must carry.

Does this sound familiar? In the 10 years preceding the crash, the banks posted and disposed of stupendous profits. When their risky ventures failed, they discovered that they hadn't made sufficient provision against future costs, and had to go begging from the state. They had classified their annual surplus as profit and given it to their investors and staff long before it was safe to do so.

Last week the British government bumped into another consequence of failing to take future costs into account. Chris Huhne, the new secretary of state for energy and climate change, revealed that nuclear decommissioning liabilities will cost the government £4bn more than it was expecting to pay over the next three years. This will cancel out two-thirds of the vicious cuts the government has announced and swallow most of his department's budget. As Huhne pointed out: "It is a classic example of short-termism. I cannot think of a better example of a failure to take a decision in the short run costing the taxpayer a hell of a lot more in the long run."

The decommissioning costs imposed on society by nuclear power will be dwarfed by those that are imposed by the fossil fuel industry. They include, but are not confined to, the money that will have to be spent on adapting to climate change. The United Nations estimates this cost at $50bn–$170bn a year, but a report last year by British scientists suggested that this is around three times too low, as it counts only a small proportion of likely impacts.

The UN has hired the consultancy Trucost to estimate the costs dumped on the environment by the world's 3,000 biggest public companies. It doesn't report until October, but earlier this year the Guardian published the interim results. Trucost had estimated the damage these companies inflicted on the environment in 2008 at $2.2 trillion, equivalent to one third of their profits for that year. This too is likely to be an underestimate, as the draft report did not try to value the long-term costs of any issue except climate change. Nor did it count the wider social costs of environmental change.

A paper by the New Economics Foundation in 2006 used government estimates of the cost of carbon emissions to calculate the liabilities of Shell and BP. It found that while the two companies had just posted profits of £25bn, they had incurred costs in the same year of £46.5bn. The oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon well is scarcely more damaging, and its eventual impacts scarcely more expensive, than the oil that is captured by neighbouring rigs then processed and burnt as intended.

The total costs imposed by the oil companies, which include the loss of human lives and the extinction of species, cannot be accounted. But even if they could, you shouldn't expect the companies to carry them. They might be incapable of capping their leaks; they are adept at capping their liabilities. The Deepwater Horizon rig, which is owned by Transocean, is registered in the Marshall Islands. Most oil companies pull the same trick: they register their rigs and ships in small countries with weak governments and no international reach. These nations are, in other words, incapable of regulating them.

Flags of convenience signify more than the place of registration: they're an unmistakable sign that responsibilities are being offloaded. If powerful governments were serious about tackling pollution, the first thing they would do would be to force oil companies to register their property in the places where their major interests lie.

US lawyers are drooling over the prospect of what one of them called "the largest tort we've had in this country". Some financial analysts are predicting the death of BP, as the fines and compensation it will have to pay outweigh its earnings. I don't believe a word of it.

ExxonMobil was initially fined $5bn for the Exxon Valdez disaster, in 1989. But its record-breaking profits allowed it to pay record-breaking legal fees: after 19 years of argument it got the fine reduced to $507m. That's equivalent to the profit it made every 10 days last year. Yesterday, after 25 years of deliberations, an Indian court triumphantly convicted Union Carbide India Ltd of causing death by negligence through the Bhopal catastrophe. There was just one catch: Union Carbide India Ltd ceased to exist many years ago. It wound itself up to avoid this outcome, and its liabilities vanished in a puff of poisoned gas.

BP's insurers will take a hit, as will the pension funds which invested so heavily in it; but, though some people are proposing costs of $40bn or even $60bn, I will bet the price of a barrel of crude that the company is still in business 10 years from now. Everything else – the ecosystems it blights, the fishing and tourist industries, a habitable climate – might collapse around it, but BP, like the banks, will be deemed too big to fail. Other people will pick up the costs.

There is an alternative, but it is unlikely to materialise. Just as Norway has treated its oil money not as profit but as provision against a tougher future, so the governments in whose territories oil companies work should force them to pay into a decommissioning fund. The levy should reflect the costs that economists are able to calculate, plus a contingency for those we can't yet foresee.

This would outrage the oil firms, as it would render many of them unprofitable. But there's a simple answer to that: the money currently defined as profit is nothing of the kind.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper. Visit his website at www.monbiot.com

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I Believe by Samir Doshi

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Published on Sunday, April 18, 2010 by Burlington Free Press (Vermont)
I Believe.

by Samir Doshi

Advocates of the sustainability movement envision a future where our global society evolves toward a culture of environmental protection, social equity, democratic participation and representation, and an economy that is predicated on the Earth as the source of capital instead of just another resource.

Unfortunately, many do not see a worldwide transition toward a sustainable and desirable future without a catastrophic event that awakens people to transition past the current direction of the status quo. The thought being that unless we are on the brink of a collapse, our society as a whole will not act, as our priorities lie elsewhere.

Author Bill McKibben and climatologist James Hansen feel we already are at a "tipping point" in regard to our impact on the climate, and if we do not decrease the current level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, we will witness large-scale environmental and societal consequences in the coming decades.

In his book "Revenge of Gaia," renowned scientist James Lovelock states that we have 10 years to act to avoid a large collapse, but we already are past certain tipping points, and some consequences cannot be avoided. The attempts to convey this urgency have had some results at the governmental level, but rates of soil erosion, deforestation, hunger, carbon emissions, biodiversity loss and poverty continue to rise. Sure, there are numerous initiatives and organizations that are operating at a local level to help foster this transition, but haven't we seen similar efforts during the past decades while still increasing our overall impact?

There are numerous examples to show the level of participation and attention toward these issues is larger than ever before.

Last October, McKibben and his advocacy group 350.org helped to organize the largest worldwide environmental rally to support action to reduce our carbon footprint - more than 5,200 events in 181 countries came out in full force.

In another laudable effort, Elinor Ostrom won the 2009 Nobel Prize in economics for examining the role that common-pool resources have in bringing stakeholders together to work toward sustainable and equitable solutions for all parties involved. Ostrom's research re-examines Garret Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons," a widely referenced theory contending that population growth and individual selfishness take precedence over long-term interests of social and environmental welfare.

Paul Hakwen's recent book, "Blessed Unrest," documents how the world's largest movement of more than a million organizations emerged without any unified leader or common cause and ultimately can benefit environmental health and social equity.

Nevertheless, according to the latest Pew and Gallup polls, we see sustainable transitions take a back seat to economic development and growth, and in the U.S., national security. Again, it seems that only a catastrophic event can cause people to understand the link between the current ecological, social, and economic recessions. Neither Hurricane Katrina nor any of the recent widespread heat waves or droughts has inspired national collective and public action toward reducing natural-resource mismanagement.

Is a larger and more-devastating event needed to spur action? What about something on the order of the fantastical and unrealistic apocalyptic movie "The Day After Tomorrow," where climate change causes an overnight ice age?

Perhaps we should alter our strategy. What if we could choose hope rather than despair to instill the will for a transformation? Instead of a debilitating phenomenon, could we create something phenomenal that could inspire people so that a transformation is not only possible, but it is desirable? Remarkable and powerful initiatives are happening today that affect such grand scales they seem to be unrealistic. I believe we can realize the impossible, and it can catalyze action at a global level that will lead to a sustainable transformation.

The best example of achieving the impossible is forestry scientist Willie Smits' work in Borneo. Smits founded the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS) in 1991 and set out to protect orangutans that were losing their rainforest habitat in Borneo to huge levels of deforestation to develop palm plantations for biofuel oil. Smits thought that in order to save the ape species from extinction, he would have to restore their habitat.

In fewer than five years, BOS transformed 5,000 acres of degraded and lifeless tropical wasteland into a regenerated rainforest with more than 1,000 indigenous tree species, 100 native bird species, 25 percent more rainfall and 3,000 new jobs that use the sap from the native sugar palm to develop new products.

Amory Lovins, founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, has called Smits' efforts the "finest example of ecological and economic restoration in the tropics."

Similar efforts have been occurring in New England for many years. Nearly 30 years ago, biologist and ecological designer John Todd looked at the role of vegetation and aquatic microorganisms in breaking down wastes and producing beneficial products. The research progressed into the founding of the Eco-Machine, a technology that has been used to treat human and industrial wastewater and also paved the way for the field of biomimicry. There are over 100 different Eco-Machines treating waste in numerous countries worldwide.

Along with several organizations in New England and in the Southeast, I am working toward developing similar stories in the Appalachian coal fields. Through the single-resource dependency of coal and mountaintop-removal surface mining, Appalachian communities suffer some of the highest levels of environmental degradation, poverty, infant mortality, heart disease and high-school dropout rates in the country.

It is incredible this is occurring in the most biologically diverse temperate forest system in the world, and one of the most culturally storied regions in our country. More than a million acres, 1,200 miles of streams and 450 mountains have been blown up - the tonnage of explosives used in two weeks to remove mountaintops in Appalachia is equivalent to one of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War II. The coal fields have been labeled appropriately as America's "sacrifice zone" in order to perpetuate our addiction to coal.

While we need to stop the removal of mountains, we also need to help transition the area toward a more-diversified and resilient economy. In collaboration with universities and nonprofit organizations, we are researching how to regenerate the mined landscapes to develop native ecosystems that can support an industrial ecology of locally produced carbon-negative biofuel feedstocks, biochar and Agro-Eco-Park developments.

We are also working with newly established enterprises on agroforestry, sustainable agriculture and renewable-energy developments. As a partner in the Appalachian Transition Initiative headed up by David Orr and Bill Becker, we are working with local communities to transition their ecology and economy toward a resilient infrastructure, something many community members previously thought was impossible - but now feel is inevitable.

Similar to what Smits said of Borneo, Orr has stated Appalachia can be the proving ground for degraded rural landscapes all over the world: "If we can do it here," he says, "we can do it anywhere."
Copyright ©2010 Burlington Free Press
Samir Doshi is a doctoral candidate at the University of Vermont's Gund Institute and Rubenstein School for Environment and Natural Resources. His research explores the role that ecological design can play in the relationship between natural and social communities in Appalachia. He has worked as a farmer in New Zealand, developed water conservation projects in Fiji, helped establish and taught in a nonprofit school in India and even was a dishwasher for the 14th Dalai Lama. Contact Samir Doshi at Samir.Doshi@uvm.edu.

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World's Top Firms Cause $2.2 Trillion of Environmental Damage

Published on Friday, February 19, 2010 by the Guardian/UK
World's Top Firms Cause $2.2 Trillion of Environmental Damage, Report Estimates
Report for the UN into the activities of the world's 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment

by Juliette Jowit

The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world's biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found.

[Black clouds over the central business district, Jakarta. The report into the activities of the world's 3,000 biggest public companies has estimated the cost of use, loss and damage of the environment. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images]Black clouds over the central business district, Jakarta. The report into the activities of the world's 3,000 biggest public companies has estimated the cost of use, loss and damage of the environment. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils.

Later this year, another huge UN study - dubbed the "Stern for nature" after the influential report on the economics of climate change by Sir Nicholas Stern - will attempt to put a price on such global environmental damage, and suggest ways to prevent it. The report, led by economist Pavan Sukhdev, is likely to argue for abolition of billions of dollars of subsidies to harmful industries like agriculture, energy and transport, tougher regulations and more taxes on companies that cause the damage.

Ahead of changes which would have a profound effect - not just on companies' profits but also their customers and pension funds and other investors - the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment initiative and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly ordered a report into the activities of the 3,000 biggest public companies in the world, which includes household names from the UK's FTSE 100 and other major stockmarkets.

The study, conducted by London-based consultancy Trucost and due to be published this summer, found the estimated combined damage was worth US$2.2 trillion (£1.4tn) in 2008 - a figure bigger than the national economies of all but seven countries in the world that year.

The figure equates to 6-7% of the companies' combined turnover, or an average of one-third of their profits, though some businesses would be much harder hit than others.

"What we're talking about is a completely new paradigm," said Richard Mattison, Trucost's chief operating officer and leader of the report team. "Externalities of this scale and nature pose a major risk to the global economy and markets are not fully aware of these risks, nor do they know how to deal with them."

The biggest single impact on the $2.2tn estimate, accounting for more than half of the total, was emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change. Other major "costs" were local air pollution such as particulates, and the damage caused by the over-use and pollution of freshwater.

The true figure is likely to be even higher because the $2.2tn does not include damage caused by household and government consumption of goods and services, such as energy used to power appliances or waste; the "social impacts" such as the migration of people driven out of affected areas, or the long-term effects of any damage other than that from climate change. The final report will also include a higher total estimate which includes those long-term effects of problems such as toxic waste.

Trucost did not want to comment before the final report on which sectors incurred the highest "costs" of environmental damage, but they are likely to include power companies and heavy energy users like aluminium producers because of the greenhouse gases that result from burning fossil fuels. Heavy water users like food, drink and clothing companies are also likely to feature high up on the list.

Sukhdev said the heads of the major companies at this year's annual economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, were increasingly concerned about the impact on their business if they were stopped or forced to pay for the damage.

"It can make the difference between profit and loss," Sukhdev told the annual Earthwatch Oxford lecture last week. "That sense of foreboding is there with many, many [chief executives], and that potential is a good thing because it leads to solutions."

The aim of the study is to encourage and help investors lobby companies to reduce their environmental impact before concerned governments act to restrict them through taxes or regulations, said Mattison.

"It's going to be a significant proportion of a lot of companies' profit margins," Mattison told the Guardian. "Whether they actually have to pay for these costs will be determined by the appetite for policy makers to enforce the 'polluter pays' principle. We should be seeking ways to fix the system, rather than waiting for the economy to adapt. Continued inefficient use of natural resources will cause significant impacts on [national economies] overall, and a massive problem for governments to fix."

Another major concern is the risk that companies simply run out of resources they need to operate, said Andrea Moffat, of the US-based investor lobby group Ceres, whose members include more than 80 funds with assets worth more than US$8tn. An example was the estimated loss of 20,000 jobs and $1bn last year for agricultural companies because of water shortages in California, said Moffat.
© 2010 Guardian/UK

Loan Guarantees Distort Capital Markets

Obama’s Nuclear Option


Posted on Feb 16, 2010

By Amy Goodman

President Barack Obama is going nuclear. He announced the initial $8 billion in loan guarantees for construction of the first new nuclear power plants in the United States in close to three decades. Obama is making good on a campaign pledge, like his promises to escalate the war in Afghanistan and to unilaterally attack in Pakistan. And like his “Af-Pak” war strategy, Obama’s publicly financed resuscitation of the nuclear power industry in the U.S. is bound to fail, another taxpayer bailout waiting to happen.

Opponents of the plan, which includes a tripling of existing nuclear plant construction-loan guarantees to $54.5 billion, span the ideological spectrum. On its most basic level, the economics of nuclear power generation simply doesn’t make sense. The cost to construct these behemoths is so huge, and the risks are so great, that no sensible investor, no banks, no hedge funds will invest in their construction.

No one will loan a power company the money to build a power plant, and the power companies refuse to spend their own money. Obama himself professes a passion for the free market, telling Bloomberg BusinessWeek, “We are fierce advocates for a thriving, dynamic free market.” Well, the free market long ago abandoned nuclear power. The right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation remarked, “Expansive loan guarantee programs ... are wrought with problems. At a minimum, they create taxpayer liabilities, give recipients preferential treatment, and distort capital markets.”

Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a longtime critic of the nuclear power industry, told me, “If you buy more nuclear plants, you’re going to get about two to 10 times less climate solution per dollar, and you’ll get it about 20 to 40 times slower, than if you buy instead the cheaper, faster stuff that is walloping nuclear and coal and gas.”

In his 2008 report “The Nuclear Illusion,” Lovins writes, “Nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete—so hopelessly uneconomic that one needn’t debate whether it’s clean and safe; it weakens electric reliability and national security; and it worsens climate change compared with devoting the same money and time to more effective options.”


The White House Office of Management and Budget, in the same statement announcing the $54.5 billion for nuclear power, also listed a “credit subsidy funding of $500 million to support $3 [billion] to $5 billion of loan guarantees for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.” Thus, just one-tenth the amount for nuclear is being dedicated to energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. At the same time, the Obama administration plans to cancel funding for the hugely unpopular Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility. Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists told The Christian Science Monitor the Obama administration “doesn’t have a plan for [storing] radioactive waste from a new generation of nuclear power plants. That is irresponsible.”

The waste from nuclear power plants is not only an ecological nightmare, but also increases the threats of nuclear proliferation. Obama said in his recent State of the Union address, “We’re also confronting perhaps the greatest danger to the American people—the threat of nuclear weapons.” Despite this, plans that accompany what Obama has proposed, his “new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,” include increased commercial “nuclear fuel reprocessing,” which the Union of Concerned Scientists calls “dangerous, dirty and expensive,” and which it says would increase the global risks of both nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.

Both Lovins and the Union of Concerned Scientists debunk the myth that nuclear energy is essential to combat global warming. Lovins writes, “Every dollar invested in nuclear expansion will worsen climate change by buying less solution per dollar.” Obama said that this first tranche of public funding, which will benefit the energy giant Southern Co., “will create thousands of construction jobs in the next few years, and some 800 permanent jobs.” Yet investment in solar, wind and cogeneration technologies could do the same thing, quickly creating industries here in the U.S. that are thriving in Europe. What’s more, the risks of failure of a windmill or a solar panel are minute when compared with nuclear power plant disasters like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

From economics, to the environment, to the prevention of nuclear threats, Obama’s nuclear loan guarantees fail on all counts.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 800 stations in North America. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2010 Amy Goodman

Distributed by King Features Syndicate

California Consumers To Benefit Directly From Emissions Permits

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Published on Thursday, January 14, 2010 by YES! Magazine

Reaping the Dividends of Reduced Emissions

California residents stand to gain a lot from the state's efforts to cap greenhouse gases: less pollution, greener infrastructure, and a yearly check in the mailbox.

by Mike Sandler

 Copenhagen produced practically nothing. Congress seems paralyzed. Powerful lobbies say we should delay responding to the climate crisis until after the economy recovers. But some good news recently came out of California, where a state advisory committee recommended a policy that caps greenhouse emissions and sends money back to the people.
As part of its implementation of AB32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, the California Environmental Protection Agency convened a panel of economists, academics, and legal experts to form the Economic and Allocation Advisory Committee (EAAC), which presented its findings on January 11th, 2010. Despite intense pressure from utilities and petroleum lobbyists, who asked for free allowances and tons of questionable offsets, the EAAC recommended that the state sell (auction) 100 percent of emissions permits, requiring polluters to pay for the emissions they produce and to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit over time.

The Story of Cap & Trade :: Annie Leonard's newest video asks tough questions about who cap and trade really benefits—and what effect it would have on climate change.

The revenues collected would be used in a variety of ways, but the majority of the money would be returned to California households through either cash "dividends" or tax cuts. The EAAC states that climate dividends could be sent to Californians as checks in the mail or through an electronic funds transfer system, and cites the precedent of the Alaska Permanent Fund, which sends revenues from fees on oil companies back to Alaskans each year.
The EAAC report notes that dividends provide several benefits. They preserve public ownership of a common asset-the air we breathe-which we all share equally. And returning the bulk of allowance value to households helps residents afford energy-saving reforms like retrofitting their homes. It's also a boon to low-income people who can least afford increases in energy and fuel prices.
The EAAC proposes the cap and dividend approach for "roughly 75 percent" of allowance value, with the remaining 25 percent "devoted to financing investments and other public expenditure," including research and development of clean energy technologies. The EAAC estimates that if the 75 percent dividend recommendation were implemented, each California family of four would receive an annual dividend of $388 in 2012, rising to $1,036 in 2020, adding a total of $7,004 to family incomes over the eight-year program.
The 75-25 split between consumers and investments is also found in a bill being considered in the U.S. Senate, the Carbon Limits and Energy for American Renewal (CLEAR) Act, introduced by Senators Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) and Susan Collins (R-Maine). The Cantwell CLEAR Act provides an alternative to the climate bill that passed the U.S. House, known as Waxman-Markey. Groups such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace criticized Waxman-Markey for giving away free allowances to the utilities (once again "on behalf" of consumers) and for allowing too many iffy offsets that dilute the market for permits. The Senate version of Waxman-Markey has not moved for several months. If the Senate remains stalled, then California's AB32 will proceed, and in 2012 Californians will face a carbon price, but perhaps also receive dividends in return.
But don't go to the ATM just yet. Numerous political obstacles remain. Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay who is now running for Governor, has called for the suspension of AB32 due to fears of impacts on the state's ailing economy, and State Assemblyman Dan Logue is collecting signatures for a statewide initiative to halt the emissions reductions as long as state unemployment is above 5.5 percent. The utilities still want handouts, and will be pressuring the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and elected officials to provide them with free allowances, or to run the consumer "rebates" through their utility bills (prolonging the low-carbon transition by shielding consumers from the price of carbon).
The EAAC recommendations also offered the option of tax cuts to consumers instead of dividends. Unfortunately, tax cuts favor wealthier families, and provide a less visible (and therefore less politically popular) use of allowance value. Dividends could also be hijacked by legislators who would prefer to spend the money on other projects or fill the State's gaping budget deficit. Spending the revenues on other uses is tempting, but by neglecting consumers, it could accidentally help build the constituency for Whitman, Logue, and other enemies of the carbon cap. Dividend supporters prefer to reserve a majority of permit revenues for consumers to help households deal with potential price impacts. With political support for AB32 solidified, the private sector will respond to the escalating carbon price by investing in new technologies, and legislators can fund worthy energy projects by instituting carbon fees and diverting subsidies away from fossil fuels.
Although it faces obstacles, the EAAC recommendation is remarkable in that it puts people first, bypassing powerful lobbyists and special interests. Perhaps such linking of climate solutions with household economics will counteract the economic scare tactics of climate deniers, give some momentum to the cap and dividend approach in the CLEAR Act, and help climate activists get past their post-Copenhagen blues.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Mike Sandler wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Mike is co-founder of the Climate Protection Campaign, based in Sonoma County, California.

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Nuclear Information and Resource Service Request Action

Nuclear Information and Resource Service 

DON'T NUKE THE CLIMATE!

SEND A MESSAGE TO YOUR SENATORS NOW;

CALL THEM AND TAKE ACTION DECEMBER 11 & 12!

December 3, 2009

Dear Friends,

The Copenhagen climate negotiations begin next week, and the world's attention will be focused on the climate crisis.

Whether or not anything substantive comes out of Copenhagen, we who believe in a clean, safe, sustainable and affordable energy future have our work cut out for us.

Too many governments support their nuclear industries and seek to reverse our victory at COP 6 in 2000: they want to declare nuclear power as an acceptable means of addressing climate change.

In the U.S. too many in the administration (we're looking especially at you, Steven Chu!) the media, and in Congress--even some who should know better--are also supporting the nuclear industry.

We need to raise our voices louder than ever now. Take the first step and send a letter to your Senators and President Obama here.

And read on for more actions you can take, and more news from Washington.

It's as if there has been an ongoing collective case of amnesia. Some Senators in particular seem to have forgotten nuclear power's inherent dangers from accidents and everyday "routine" radiation releases, forgotten that there is no solution to the radioactive waste problem, forgotten that uranium mining devastates the environment and surrounding communities. They seem to forget, on a daily basis, the spiraling cost estimates for new reactor construction. How else can one explain recent media estimates of $4,000/kw for a new reactor when utilities' own cost estimates run as high as $9,000/kw?

They seem to suffer not only from amnesia, but wear blinders as well--not even noticing the cover story in the November 2009 Scientific American that lays out a concrete plan for the U.S. to be 100% renewable-powered by 2030!

The good news, however, is that Senators Kerry, Graham and Lieberman appear to be making little progress in selling the notion of adding billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts for the nuclear industry to the Senate climate bill. As we predicted, those Senators who most want to divert taxpayer money to nuclear power are the least likely to support any real climate bill. And those who most want a climate bill recognize that nuclear power is not a genuine climate solution.

That gives us all more time to raise our voices and more reason to keep up the pressure.

1. Send a letter to your Senators and President Obama now, here. This letter will remind them of the inherent dangers and problems of nuclear power and explain that a climate bill that includes nuclear power (and coal, and offshore oil!) is not a climate bill at all--it's a bailout for the energy lobby. We need a new vision for the future, and there is still time to achieve that!

2. Support anti-nuclear campaigners in Copenhagen. If you haven't done so yet, sign the Don't Nuke the Climate petition here. We're closing in on 50,000 signers, let's get there this week! Organizations: endorse the Don't Nuke the Climate campaign here.

3. Support Don't Nuke the Climate Action Days on December 11 and 12. Organize actions outside your Senators' district offices, at Federal Buildings, on campus, wherever is appropriate for you. List your action on the International Action Page here. Let us know about your action (nirsnet@nirs.org), and we'll alert people in your region.

Here in D.C., we'll be gathering outside the Department of Energy headquarters for street theater at 11 am on Friday Dec. 11. Join us if you're in the area!

4. Tie in your action with the National Don't Nuke the Climate Call-in Day December 11 or just call your Senators (202-224-3121) on Friday, Dec. 11. Ask your friends and colleagues, congregations and college roommates, everyone you know, to call on Dec. 11 too. Keep the Senate phones busy all day long! Bring cellphones to your action and ask everyone passing by to call their Senators. Bring cellphones to a coffeeshop, bar, food co-op, shopping mall, wherever you go: ask everyone to call….Even if there is no action in your region, call!

We don't have the money to compete with the nuclear industry (which may be the real source of all that amnesia….); so we need to compete with numbers--that means all of us and more. Post this on Facebook, myspace, etc. Tweet it. Send to your lists and your friends. Spread the word….

And if you can help us with financial support this Holiday season to continue building this campaign, we'll be eternally grateful. You can do so here. If you can't, we know how it is, but don't forget to call your Senators December 11: 202-224-3121.

Thanks for all you do,

Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
nirsnet@nirs.org
www.nirs.org

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Whole Earth Economics

Image by United Nations Photo via Flickr

Published on Friday, November 13, 2009 by Montreal Gazette

Economics without Ecocide

The G20 Framework vs. A Whole Earth Perspective

by Peter Brown & Geoffrey Garver

Guiding the global economy now is apparently in the hands of the G20. In September, at their meeting in Pittsburgh (their third in a year), the G20 leaders adopted what they called a "Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth."
The framework is cast as "a process for economic co-operation and coordination to help ensure that post-crisis policies avoid a return to dangerous imbalances that undermine long-term economic growth."
Unfortunately, with the ecological base of the economy falling apart, the Pittsburgh framework will be looked back on as part of the fiddling going on as Rome burned - or, more aptly, as the planet heated up.
Its fundamental flaw? It falls hopelessly short of addressing - or even recognizing - the real crisis facing the economy: The global ecological crisis, and the unwillingness of the global community to steer the economy away from ecological collapse.
This flaw becomes starkly clear when the G20's program for the economy is examined through the lens of five simple questions: What is the economy for? How does it work? How big should it be? What is fair? and How should it be governed?
Fortunately, an alternative is possible that provides better answers to those questions. It would move the economy toward a mutually enhancing relationship with a flourishing and prospering Earth - if the political will is found to seek a new way. We start by looking at the first two questions. Under the G20 framework, what is the economy for, and how does it work? And what are some better answers to those questions?
The economy is for enhancing ecological and human integrity.
The G20 framework: A key agreement among the G20 was to continue economic stimulus efforts until "recovery is secured" and then to responsibly wind down stimulus programs. But this whole program defines "recovery" in terms of Gross Domestic Product, with sustained growth in GDP as the overarching solution to all of the world's economic problems - and, by implication, its other woes.
A whole Earth perspective: GDP is not a good in itself - we value growth in GDP because we see it as the means for assuring stability in employment, security of income, and access to what we need to be healthy and happy. But the great threat that now hangs over the world is massive ecological instability in climate, food supply, clean water, biodiversity, ocean health and much more. Rising numbers of environmental refugees are already tragic human emblems of the current degrading of the Earth. These instabilities are the result in large part of the global explosion in economic growth in the last century.
In short, the G20 has it backward. The overarching goal of the economy should be to ensure the Earth's ecological integrity and resilience so as to prevent the collapse of Earth's life support systems. Essential for achieving this goal will be either a strategy for decoupling growth from climate change and other ecological degradation (a virtually impossible prospect given trends) - or de-growth and steady state strategies, such as those developed by ecological economists like Peter Victor (http://www.managingwithoutgrowth.com/About_the_Book.html) of York University and promoted by groups like the Centre for Advancement of a Steady State Economy, or CASSE (http://www.steadystate.org).
The economy works according to the laws of science.
The G-20 framework: The G20 agreed to review at an international level the efforts by countries such as the U.S. to increase savings and by others like China and Japan to increase domestic spending and shift away from export-driven economies. This includes mechanisms for "mutual assessment" of each other's performance on these matters, as well as review by the IMF.
A whole Earth perspective: The G20 approach to balance of payments shows no concern for the health of the biosphere on which the economy, and all of life, ultimately depends. Seeking more balance is a start, but trade policies should drive countries away from not hyperactive dependence on an import-export market that enhances carbon emissions and other ecological harms. Urgent action is needed to monitor the current behaviour and past record of nations with respect to their impact on the integrity and resilience of the Earth's interconnected ecosystems. The monitoring must be connected to positive and negative incentives or sanctions to move the world's nations toward responsible stewardship, with an emphasis on over consumers like Canada and the United States.
The economy must stay within the Earth's ecological limits
The G-20 framework: The G20 agreed on "specific commitments to increase access to food, fuel and finance among the world's poorest, with a new World Bank Trust Fund to finance investments in food security, a commitment to fund programs that expand access to renewable energy and a call to identify new ideas to strengthen the poor's access to financial system." This is done in the spirit of "making the policy and institutional changes needed to accelerate the convergence of living standards and productivity in developing and emerging economies to the levels of the advanced economies."
A whole Earth perspective: Addressing poverty and working toward the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals is laudable, but raising developing world consumption without contracting "the levels of advanced economies" is a nightmare scenario. It ignores completely the Earth's ecological capacity and the massive destabilization the of the Earth's life support systems the economy is already causing. The G20 needs urgently commit resources and brainpower to a more rigorous evaluation of the Earth's capacity to withstand climate change and other ecological impacts of the economy, and then to develop policies that ensure that the global economy respects those limits.
In the Sept. 24, 2009, issue of Nature, a team of researchers led by Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre proposed a series of "planetary boundaries" for ensuring the ecological stability of the planet. This is the kind of work the G20 should explicitly and urgently support and expedite.
The economy must be fair to people and other living things, now and in the future
The G20 framework: The G20's disastrous goal of bringing developing world consumption levels up to developed world levels at least reflects a notion of fairness. The G20 also agreed to rein in compensation of bankers; yet took no action on a French proposal for a .005-per-cent tax on the $800-trillion global foreign currency market, which could yield $33 billion annually just covering the dollar, yen, euro and pound.
A whole Earth perspective: Fairness is about providing both human and non-human communities of life, and both present and future generations, equitable access to the Earth's life support systems. Money gives people this access, along with the ability to lay down an ecological footprint. The G20's timid gesture on banker compensation shows starkly the enduring power of the global financial elite to keep in place the current grossly inequitable system of access to the fruits of the Earth. The failure to rein in - or at least tax - rampant speculation in the global currency market, and to use the proceeds toward the Millennium Development Goals, is likewise a missed opportunity for fairer sharing.
Keeping in mind the millions of other species with which humans share the Earth, equitable access means not allowing people individually or collectively to take too much. The policy of bringing the world's poor to developed world levels of consumption is a disaster if it does not address patterns of overconsumption in rich countries. Contraction and convergence, informed with rigorous information on the Earth's ecological capacity, is fundamental to a fair approach to the economy.
Governance reform is essential for a human economy that lives within its means
The G20 framework: The G20 agreed that the G20 forum will now be the main venue for discussing global economic issues from now on. But the criteria for admission are based on GDP (the G20 represent 85 per cent of world output). The G20 also agreed to give greater shares at the IMF and World Bank to China and other Asian countries - several of which want explosive growth in GDP at the expense of the environment. They also agreed vaguely "to phase out fossil fuel subsidies over the medium-term while providing targeted support to help the poorest."
A whole Earth perspective: Including more countries in the G20 is welcome. But, just as world leaders should include ecological economists and scientists among their top economic advisers, the G20 and global financial institutions would do well to give a strong voice to countries, like Costa Rica, with relatively low per capita ecological impact along with relatively high levels of well being. As to fuel subsidies, in a world facing catastrophic climate change, nothing less than urgent, expedited action to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and to support rapid transition to low or zero carbon alternatives is acceptable.
But the real global governance problem is the lack of strong global institutions to oversee the security of Earth's life support systems. Increasingly, global environmental problems require a fully functioning global system of environmental rulemaking and enforcement, supported with greatly expanded research into the Earth's ecological capacity and ways for the human economy to stay within it. Global rules and institutions also must recognize and respond to local needs and circumstances, and empower rather than overly constrain local efforts to maintain ecologically enhancing economies.
The G20 leaders pledged to do their utmost to achieve agreement on climate change at Copenhagen. A new climate treaty could serve as a starting point for the structural changes to global governance needed to face up to the stark reality that for the first time in the millennia of human history, the human economy is now running down the Earth's ecological capacity faster than it can regenerate. We will find out in Copenhagen whether the G20 will provide leadership in that direction. But the Pittsburgh summit was not promising.

© 2009 Montreal Gazette

Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver are co-authors of Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy (Berrett Koehler 2009). Their website is www.moraleconomy.org.

Global Warming and Greenfield

Image via Wikipedia

 Forward by Drew Hutchison


What I find so absurd about the support given to the proposed bio-mass plant in Greenfield is that it is contraindicated by global events. The amount of CO2 emissions from the plant will be greater per ton than the present coal fired plant in Holyoke. While I respect that our forests are a great resource that are underutilized commercially, they do a great job of sequestering excess carbon. Sustainable harvesting may be possible, but what cannot be denied is that the rate of carbon emitted will enter our atmosphere immediately and exacerbate a severe climate crisis.
We may have already reached the tipping point where our efforts to halt wide spread environmental catastrophe are in vain. Greenfield can be ahead of the curve in being proactive about energy usage and fostering environmentally friendly employment. Unfortunately, pro business ideology or ignorance seems to have blinded some to the inherent flaws in the proposed plant. I applaud Mayor Martin for his tireless efforts to help Greenfield move forward. We need his energy and leadership during these times of fiscal crisis. Building the bio-mass plant in my view will possibly help the coffers in the short term. It will likely be a hulking dinosaur within a decade, mothballed because politics will eventually catch up with what the science has clearly been telling us for some time. In order to avert this blunder, I personally hope the plant is not built, but if it is, it should be fitted to also run on natural gas.





Published on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

Climate Change Deniers Are Not Skeptics - They're Suckers

My fiercest opponents on global warming tend to be in their 60s and 70s. This offers a fascinating, if chilling, insight into human psychology

by George Monbiot

There is no point in denying it: we're losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease. It exists in a sphere that cannot be reached by evidence or reasoned argument; any attempt to draw attention to scientific findings is greeted with furious invective. This sphere is expanding with astonishing speed.

A survey last month by the Pew Research Centre suggests that the proportion of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that the world has been warming over the last few decades has fallen from 71% to 57% in just 18 months. Another survey, conducted in January by Rasmussen Reports, suggests that, due to a sharp rise since 2006, US voters who believe global warming has natural causes (44%) outnumber those who believe it is the result of human action (41%).
A study by the website Desmogblog shows that the number of internet pages proposing that man-made global warming is a hoax or a lie more than doubled last year. The Science Museum's Prove it! exhibition asks online readers to endorse or reject a statement that they've seen the evidence and want governments to take action. As of yesterday afternoon, 1,006 people had endorsed it and 6,110 had rejected it. On Amazon.co.uk, books championing climate change denial are currently ranked at 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 and 8 in the global warming category. Never mind that they've been torn to shreds by scientists and reviewers, they are beating the scientific books by miles. What is going on?
It certainly doesn't reflect the state of the science, which has hardened dramatically over the past two years. If you don't believe me, open any recent edition of Science or Nature or any peer-reviewed journal specialising in atmospheric or environmental science. Go on, try it. The debate about global warming that's raging on the internet and in the rightwing press does not reflect any such debate in the scientific journals.
An American scientist I know suggests that these books and websites cater to a new literary market: people with room-temperature IQs. He didn't say whether he meant fahrenheit or centigrade. But this can't be the whole story. Plenty of intelligent people have also declared themselves sceptics.
One such is the critic Clive James. You could accuse him of purveying trite received wisdom, but not of being dumb. On Radio 4 a few days ago he delivered an essay about the importance of scepticism, during which he maintained that "the number of scientists who voice scepticism [about climate change] has lately been increasing". He presented no evidence to support this statement and, as far as I can tell, none exists. But he used this contention to argue that "either side might well be right, but I think that if you have a division on that scale, you can't call it a consensus. Nobody can meaningfully say that the science is in."
Had he bothered to take a look at the quality of the evidence on either side of this media debate, and the nature of the opposing armies – climate scientists on one side, rightwing bloggers on the other – he too might have realised that the science is in. In, at any rate, to the extent that science can ever be, which is to say that the evidence for man-made global warming is as strong as the evidence for Darwinian evolution, or for the link between smoking and lung cancer. I am constantly struck by the way in which people like James, who proclaim themselves sceptics, will believe any old claptrap that suits their views. Their position was perfectly summarised by a supporter of Ian Plimer (author of a marvellous concatenation of gibberish called Heaven and Earth), commenting on a recent article in the Spectator: "Whether Plimer is a charlatan or not, he speaks for many of us." These people aren't sceptics; they're suckers.
Such beliefs seem to be strongly influenced by age. The Pew report found that people over 65 are much more likely than the rest of the population to deny that there is solid evidence that the earth is warming, that it's caused by humans, or that it's a serious problem. This chimes with my own experience. Almost all my fiercest arguments over climate change, both in print and in person, have been with people in their 60s or 70s. Why might this be?
There are some obvious answers: they won't be around to see the results; they were brought up in a period of technological optimism; they feel entitled, having worked all their lives, to fly or cruise to wherever they wish. But there might also be a less intuitive reason, which shines a light into a fascinating corner of human psychology.
In 1973 the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker proposed that the fear of death drives us to protect ourselves with "vital lies" or "the armour of character". We defend ourselves from the ultimate terror by engaging in immortality projects, which boost our self-esteem and grant us meaning that extends beyond death. More than 300 studies conducted in 15 countries appear to confirm Becker's thesis. When people are confronted with images or words or questions that remind them of death they respond by shoring up their worldview, rejecting people and ideas that threaten it, and increasing their striving for self-esteem.
One of the most arresting findings is that immortality projects can bring death closer. In seeking to defend the symbolic, heroic self that we create to suppress thoughts of death, we might expose the physical self to greater danger. For example, researchers at Bar-Ilan University in Israel found that people who reported that driving boosted their self-esteem drove faster and took greater risks after they had been exposed to reminders of death.
A recent paper by the biologist Janis L Dickinson, published in the journal Ecology and Society, proposes that constant news and discussion about global warming makes it difficult to repress thoughts of death, and that people might respond to the terrifying prospect of climate breakdown in ways that strengthen their character armour but diminish our chances of survival. There is already experimental evidence that some people respond to reminders of death by increasing consumption. Dickinson proposes that growing evidence of climate change might boost this tendency, as well as raising antagonism towards scientists and environmentalists. Our message, after all, presents a lethal threat to the central immortality project of western society: perpetual economic growth, supported by an ideology of entitlement and exceptionalism.
If Dickinson is correct, is it fanciful to suppose that those who are closer to the end of their lives might react more strongly against reminders of death? I haven't been able to find any experiments testing this proposition, but it is surely worth investigating. And could it be that the rapid growth of climate change denial over the last two years is actually a response to the hardening of scientific evidence? If so, how the hell do we confront it?

© 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited

George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper. Visit his website at