30/12/07

Elaine Browne Quits the U.S. Green Party
Editor’s note: For some time it has been an open secret in U.S. radical circles that the Green Party is dominated by a “Demogreen” current that believes the organization’s main role is to influence the Democratic Party, rather than to build an independent radical alternative. The conflict between the party’s “moderate” leadership and the its radical wing seems to be intensifying, as this statement by long-time civil rights activist Elaine Brown illustrates. It was issued on December 28, 2007.
climateandcapitalism.com/?p=298

29/12/07

People’s Protocol on Climate Change (Draft)
Preamble
The planet is experiencing a climate crisis of catastrophic proportions. Drastic action is required to reverse the situation. Global temperatures have increased twice as fast in the last 50 years as over the last century and will rise even faster in the coming decades. Eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) are among the 12 warmest years on record. This is disrupting weather patterns, severely damaging the environment, and destroying lives and livelihoods - especially of the poorest and most vulnerable.
http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=297

27/12/07

U.S. Ethanol and Amazon Forests: Echoes of Engels
In The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man, Friedrich Engels wrote:

“Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unfore–seen effects which only too often cancel the first. …”
http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=296

24/12/07

The Bali Conference on Climate Change: An Initial Balance Sheet
By Daniel Tanuro
How should we judge the outcome of the Bali Conference? The fact that the IPCC targets were not explicitly and directly included in the roadmap has lead some to call it a pointless meeting, a victory for the USA, etc. This view was expressed by George Monbiot in his Guardian column on December 17 ("we have been suckered by the US, once again")
http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=295

22/12/07

Iraq and Climate Change
by Michael T. Clare
From Foreign Policy in Focus, December 7, 2007
When our grandchildren and more distant descendants assemble in such classrooms as may be available and ask their teachers, “Why did our ancestors not take effective action to prevent the catastrophic effects of climate change?” one of the answers will surely be, “The war in Iraq.”
climateandcapitalism.com/?p=294

20/12/07

Health Care: “Climate Change Will Ride Across This Landscape as the Fifth Horseman”
Excerpt from a lecture entitled Climate change and health: preparing for unprecedented challenges, presented by Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, in Bethesda, Maryland on December 10

As the climate scientists tell us, even if greenhouse gas emissions were to stop today, the consequences will be felt throughout this century. In the language of the scientists, human activities have committed this planet to climate change. The emphasis now is on the ability of our human species to adapt to changes that have become inevitable.

18/12/07

Biofuels – A New Threat to Climate and Climate Justice
Text of a flyer distributed by Biofuelwatch at the UN climate talks in Bali.
“The biodiversity and livelihoods of Africans should not be considered expendable for the cause of climate change solutions.” African Biodiversity Network”

17/12/07
Suckered Again: The Bali Deal is Worse Than Kyoto
By George Monbiot, The Guardian, December 17, 2007
‘After 11 days of negotiations, governments have come up with a compromise deal that could even lead to emission increases. The highly compromised political deal is largely attributable to the position of the United States, which was heavily influenced by fossil fuel and automobile industry interests. The failure to reach agreement led to the talks spilling over into an all-night session.”

15/12/07

Brazilian Indigenous Peoples Protest Agribusiness and Biofuels
Rainforest Action Network reports this protest in Brazil, Thursday December 14

Indigenous Peoples Condemn Exclusion from Bali Talks
Statement of the International Forum Of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change at the High Level Segment Of the 13th Conference of the Parties

14/12/07

Hoodwinked in Bali on Carbon Credits by Daphne Wysham
The Nation, December 12, 2007 Nusa Dua, Bali
It’s the second week of the UN Climate Change Conference and the air is heavy with humidity, but despite being the rainy season, it hasn’t rained heavily in weeks. The rooms in the conference facilities where people are clustered around computers feel like saunas, an appropriate thing, I suppose–reminding us not only of where we are, in tropical Bali, but also of why we’re here. The world has a fever, and we’re here to begin to bring the temperature down before it’s too late. The question is, will the 15,000 or so government and nongovernment actors here deliver the goods, or have events been set in motion to make such a breakthrough impossible?

13/12/07

Beyond the Point of No Return By Ross Gelbspan
As the pace of global warming kicks into overdrive, the hollow optimism of climate activists, along with the desperate responses of some of the world’s most prominent climate scientists, is preventing us from focusing on the survival

Poor Hit Hardest by Climate Change By Michael Casey
Associated Press
BALI, Indonesia — Surrounded by rising seas and short of water, the glitzy city state of Singapore has built one of the world’s largest desalination plants and is paying Dutch experts tens of millions of dollars to devise ways to protect their island.

Climate Change Debate Fuels Greenwash Boom Pratap Chatterjee
from CorpWatch, December 11th, 2007
On the Indonesian island of Bali, thousands of senior government officials are negotiating a plan to slow global warming. The meeting, which will focus on how to limit the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, will run for the first two weeks of December and include 192 countries. This year’s conclave is the 13th in a series launched by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that came into force in 1994.

9/12/07

Climate Protests Around the World
Reports on the December 8 International Global Warming Protests are starting to arrive. Daniel Tanuro, the ecological correspondent of La Gauche, newspaper of the Belgian Socialist Workers Party, sent C&C a report on a successful action in Brussells.

Bog Barons: Indonesia’s Carbon Catastrophe
By Fred Pearce
From New Scientist, December 1, 2007
I am standing in the heart of the world’s second largest tropical peat swamp, the Kampar bog in central Sumatra, watching the swamp’s water drain away along a small canal. Across the western side of the bog there are dozens more drains. The peat bog is bleeding to death before me.

8/12/07

Up In Smoke: A Decade of Canadian Inaction on Climate Change
By Scott Harris
Thanks to Oil Sands Truth for drawing this article to our attention. It originally appeared in Vue Weekly, “Edmonton’s 100% Independent News and Entertainment weekly.”

7/12/07

Indigenous Peoples Protest Exclusion from Bali Talks
Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia- Indigenous peoples representing regions from around the world protested outside the climate negotiations today wearing symbolic gags that read UNFCCC, the acronym of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, symbolizing their systematic exclusion from the UN meeting.

6/12/07

Bali 2007 – Voices from the South Demand Climate Justice
By Joan Martinez-Alier and Leah Temper
Kyoto has failed. Despite so many admonitions from the IPCC, the reality is that emissions of carbon dioxide in the world are going up by over 3 per cent per year. This is the failure of the countries that signed up to Kyoto, and even more so, of those like the United States who stayed outside the timid Kyoto framework, and also of those not included in Annex I of the Rio de Janeiro treaty of 1992.

4/12/07

Ottawa’s Greenhouse Gas Policy Will Reward Tar Sands Companies for Polluting

3/12/07

Report Exposes Flaws and Fraud in Kyoto’s “Clean Development Mechanism”
The Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is set to provide massive subsidies to hydropower developers while increasing greenhouse gas emissions, according to an investigation by International Rivers. As of November 1, 2007, 654 hydro projects had received or applied to receive carbon credits from the CDM. If approved, these credits would provide hydro developers with a windfall of around a billion dollars each year. Hydro is now the most common technology in the CDM, representing a quarter of all projects in the project pipeline.

2/12/07

Quebec Socialists Critique Ecoliberalism
A presentation from the conference “Vers l’écosocialisme?” held in Montreal on November 10, organized by Gauche socialiste and Masse critique.
Que proposent les écosocialistes — En premier lieu une lutte au gaspillage. En ce sens, il faut aller au-delà des ajustements proposés par les écolibéraux. La solution n’est pas une “limitation “générale de la consommation ou la substitution des produits consommés par d’autres qui incorporent des nouvelles technologies. C’est le type de consommation actuel, fondée sur l’ostentation, le gaspillage, l’aliénation marchande et l’obsession accumulatrice qui doit être mis en question.

Comments, criticisms and suggestions are always welcome.
Ian Angus, Editor
Climate and Capitalism
http://climateandcapitalism.com/
email: ecosocialism@gmail.com