RMT, which represents a substantial proportion of the Vestas workforce, are also writing today to Climate Change Secretary Ed Milliband and Vestas company chiefs in Denmark seeking urgent talks aimed at saving the factory which is due to close next Friday.

At a rally at the factory last night, RMT general secretary Bob Crow confirmed that the union was making contingency arrangements to get food, water and other supplies into the factory, including the possible use of a helicopter, to prevent the workers from being starved into submission.

Bob Crow, RMT general secretary, said today:

The whole of the trade union and environmental movement should be proud of the courage and determination being shown by the workers at Vestas in the teeth of threats and intimidation. We all have a duty to ensure that they are not beaten into submission.

This dispute brings together two crucial issues: the right to protection from companies who abuse the law to hire and fire and the right to live in a world where the environment and sustainability are absolute priorities.

We are demanding an urgent intervention from Ed Milliband today. The government stand accused of sheer hypocrisy over their public announcements on climate change while our only wind turbine factory faces the axe. If the government can nationalise the banks at the drop of a hat there is no reason whatsoever why they can’t nationalise Vestas.

Last week’s G8 meeting presents a worrying model of how climate talks
will play out in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit in December.

While rich countries fail to grasp the scale of the solution required to deal
with climate change, larger developing countries are blamed for a lack
of ambition.

While the very richest can’t agree on meaningful, let alone ambitious,
targets for reducing their own emissions, one of Ed Milliband’s key
challenges for the year is to get developing countries to “move away
from business as usual”.

The hypocrisy springs from an inability or unwillingness to grasp the
nature of the environmental problem. Meanwhile, countries like Bolivia
are proposing real solutions, and ones which terrify Western leaders:
you can’t, they believe, deal with climate change unless you accept that
rich countries are in significant debt to the poorest and embrace the
concept of redistribution.

Their argument is simple and based on a premise which isn’t disputed.
The rich world has gobbled up far more than its fair share of the
earth’s atmosphere in order to develop. In essence, industrialised
countries colonised the atmosphere, in the same way they did other
resources.

Those rich countries now owe poorer countries a two-fold ‘climate debt’:
first for over-using the Earth’s capacity to absorb greenhouse gases and
thereby denying atmospheric space to those who need it most. Second for
the destruction that those emissions are causing.

The solution: rich countries need to ‘pay’ through redistributing a
fairer share of limited atmospheric space, as well as helping poorer
countries adapt to the mess they find themselves in. Environmental
justice is little different from other forms of economic justice –
redistribute resources so that those who’ve lost out from a specific
model enjoy the same benefits as those who’ve done well from it.

But ‘those who’ve done well’ often don’t see things in the same way. The
limited and hazy agreements made by the G8 go nowhere near a fair
distribution of the earth’s atmosphere. Right up to 2050, even if an 80%
cut in emissions were to be implemented, the G8 will consume far more of
the earth’s limited resources than they deserve, such is the scale of
their current over-use.

The G8 could get away with cutting emissions by less than they should
because they are demanding steep developing country cuts as well –
recognising the need for overall emissions to shrink. In effect
developing countries would ‘subsidise’ the necessary reduction which
rich countries should really be taking, thereby preventing the
developing world accessing the environmental space they need to build
decent standards of living.

The climate debt of the rich world would just keep getting bigger. But
rather like the banks who gambled with the future of millions of people,
the richest propose that many of their debts to the poor simply be
written off.

Payment of the other part of the debt – to help clean up the mess – is
even further ‘off track’, with tiny amounts of money committed to
helping developing countries adapt and develop (or share, through
relaxed intellectual property rights) new technologies to help their
lower-carbon growth. Instead, proposals on the table to date include
large quantities of new loans (so the real creditors become the debtors
in economic terms) run through the World Bank, an institution which has
championed high carbon growth for decades.

So the battle lines are drawn. Developing countries will not sit idly by
while the rich go on consuming their dwindling chances for development
and justice. They don’t see why they should make the first move –
sacrificing their own development before the rich pay off their debts.

That’s why Bolivia has received substantial support for its proposals
from a range of developing countries. It has also received support from
civil society across the world, especially the Climate Justice Now
Network, an umbrella covering groups like Friends of the Earth, World
Development Movement, People & Planet and Christian-Aid.

Developed countries will spend the next six months in the run-up to the
Copenhagen summit trying to marginalise these countries – doubtless with
a good bit of bribery and arm-twisting along the way, helping them to
meet the ‘ambition’ the rich feel that the poor somehow owe them.

Of course, achieving a just outcome would not be easy. Predicting the
future impacts of climate change is very difficult. Moreover, it would
mean big changes to the way those who currently run the world live, and
more political vision than we’ve seen for many decades. But the
principles are clear: that the polluter pays for the excessive
consumption of the rich, not the poor, and that in a civilised society
redistribution is a critical way of righting historical injustice.

The developing world has set out its ambitious agenda. It’s for us to
move away from business as usual if we’re to come close to meeting it.

Nick Dearden is director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign, which is part of
the Put People First platform.

Given that China is already the world’s largest carbon emitter and its emissions continue to rise rapidly in line with its industrialization and urbanization, there is no disagreement that China eventually needs to take on binding greenhouse gas emissions caps.

However, the key challenges are when that would occur and what credible interim targets China would need to take on during this transition period. This paper takes these challenges by mapping out the roadmap for China’s specific commitments towards 2050. Specifically, I suggest that China make credible quantified domestic commitments during the second commitment period, commit to voluntary no lose targets during the third commitment period, adopt binding carbon intensity targets during the fourth commitment period, and take on binding emissions caps starting the fifth commitment period and aimed for the global convergence of per capita emissions by 2050. These proposed commitments should be viewed as China’s political commitments, not necessarily China’s actual takings in the ongoing international climate change negotiations, in order to break the current political impasse between developed and developing countries. It is worthwhile China considering these political commitments either on its own or through a joint statement with U.S. and other major countries, provided that a number of conditions can be worked out. These commitments are principles, and still leave flexibility for China to work out details as international climate change negotiations move on. But in the meantime, they signal well ahead that China is seriously committed to addressing climate change issues, alleviate, if not completely remove, U.S. and other industrialized country’s concerns about when China would get in, an indication that the whole world has long awaited from China, help U.S. to take on long-expected emissions commitments, and thus pave the way for reaching an international climate agreement at Copenhagen.

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FLORENCE, May 31 (IPS) - Millions of people will soon have to leave their homeland as a result of global warming, says a report on environmental refugees by the Italian environmental association Legambiente. Half of them will move due to natural catastrophes, the rest will be hit by desertification and rising sea levels.

“For the first time, environmental refugees have outnumbered refugees escaping from war,” Legambiente international coordinator Maurizio Gubbiotti tells IPS. “Environmental refugees are the real emergency of the future. And there is a devastating social emergency behind the environmental and climatic crisis we face today.”

Gubbiotti spoke to IPS at the Terra Futura (Earth of the Future) meeting held in Florence this week on good practices in environmental and economic sustainability. Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: How serious is the crisis for environmental refugees?

Maurizio Gubbiotti: The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees foresees about 200-250 million environmental refugees by 2050. Our report shows there is a major crisis already.

It is really difficult to assess the real dimension of the problem, because a single hurricane can have a dramatic impact on the figures. The tropical cyclone Nargis which devastated Myanmar in May 2008, with a death toll of 140,000, created 800,000 displaced persons.

IPS: What are the areas most at risk?

MG: All the areas that are already quite poor and fragile. The African continent, and costal areas in Asia, in particular Bangladesh and the Pacific islands. But also the Mediterranean region and Latin America are at risk.

And the Maldives islands, where 85 percent of the biggest island is threatened by rising seas, and about 300,000 people will have to move soon. In French Guyana, we foresee about 600,000 environmental refugees in the coming years.

IPS: Where will these people go?

MG: About 300 people each month die trying to reach the borders of Europe crossing the Mediterranean. We notice them only when they migrate to industrialised countries. But actually most environmental refugees can only travel to surrounding countries, aggravating the situation of other poor countries.

Many are internally displaced. There are no figures on people who are internally displaced for environmental reasons, but I believe that about 50 percent of environmental refugees do not have the resources to flee their countries.

IPS: Do environmental refugees have legal status?

MG: They are not recognised as refugees under international law, as the Geneva Convention adopted by the United Nations in 1951 only covers political or racial refugees. They have no rights. We think it is time to put the status of environmental refugees on the international agenda.

We hope to contribute to the international debate with our report, that will be presented in mid-June in Rome at the joint civil society-government meetings of the G8, that will bring NGOs together with the ministries of international cooperation of the eight richest countries.

IPS: What is the way out?

MG: There is only one possibility to get out of this environmental and humanitarian crisis: we have to invest both in the environment and in human rights.

We must invest in overcoming our dependence on oil and carbon in favour of renewable sources, and in sustainable agriculture and waste recycling. We have to allocate funds for the mitigation of the damages of climate change, and abandon European agriculture protectionist policies which support our crops but prevent products of poor economies from being competitive.

But the environmental crisis needs also a social answer. We are not just talking about land, but about people. Migration is considered by politicians a matter of public order. We must understand that behind this phenomenon there is a demand of survival: these people have no future and no chance to survive in their homeland.

IPS: Can individual countries act alone?

MG: No. We need global solutions. We have to give strength to the United Nations, to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the Kyoto Protocol. But the key to make these organisations effective is multilateralism, deciding together.

We have much hope in the new multilateral season inaugurated by United States President Barack Obama. It is the right time to end the bilateral approach to poverty, where the rich countries decide what is good for the poor ones. (END/2009)

In May I attended the convention of the European Cyclists’ Federation  (ECF)www.ecf.com in Brussels, a truly inspiring event that left me with the conviction that cycling really does provide most of the answers to the problems of mobility in a carbon constrained world.

There were some amazing cycles there, and some amazing cyclists, like Xavier van der Stappen who pedalled his velomobile all the way from Dakkar in west Africa to Paris www.parisdakarnooil.org. Velomobiles <www.velomobiling.com> could become the personal transport vehicles of the future, the streamlined design and reclining position making pedalling much easier – so easy that the world record speed is over 100kph!  And some of them, Xavier’s included, have electrical assistance, making getting up the hills even easier.

Add to this the optional roof to keep off the rain and you have answers to two of the main reasons for not cycling.  As for the third reason, fear of traffic, velomobiles can overcome that too.  When I was over there I visited Johan Goossens, a wind turbine engineer who is helping to organise the zero carbon caravan in Belgium. He also has a velomobile, and it was so heartening to see him as he cycled off to work, going as fast as the traffic, and cycling along with it, so different from my own experience of cycling in Britain on my mountain bike, constantly being forced into the gutter by motorists.  Johann’s velomobile was also a bright yellow, so even the doziest of motorists should notice him!

There were many innovations at the ECF conventions, in bikes and also accessories , such as the reelight, a flashing light which is attached to the wheel near the hub (red on the back, white on the front) powered by a magnetic dynamo, and are now to be distributed by Raleigh in Britain.

There were many electric bicycles on display, as well as a lot of folding bikes, which integrate easily into our current transport system and can help us make the transition.

There were also a number of excellent ideas for carrying loads – like the Zigo, <www.myzigo.com> which can convert from a bicycle to a child carrier on the front of the bike (carrying two children) to a pram, and the Yubaride www.yubaride.com a heavy load carrying bicycle which could easily substitute for a car for many shopping trips.

It is innovations like these that can make the change to a zero carbon world.  Too often lack of R&D to replace fossil fuels is holding us back.  In Britain military R&D is 85 times larger than renewable energy R&D.  This will guarantee a world where we attempt to solve the problem of resource shortages by armed conflict, as we did in Iraq.  Is this the kind of world we want to see?  We should be replacing oil, not stealing it. 

I am still a few years shy of 30, yet it feels already to me that being involved in environmental campaigning is a long-haul (pun not entirely intended).

There are many problems facing environmental campaigners, but I have begun to feel that some of the strategies are looking at human nature and the zero-carbon transition from the wrong angle.  Environmentalists always say this is a critical time, that the window of opportunity is closing. So I’ll just have to hope that the facts surrounding human-induced (anthropogenic) climate change, unsustainable resource use and wide-spread environmental degradation persuade you that, yes, this time we really are in a pickle and now is the time to be acting. Acting big, thinking big. Piecemeal solutions will only delay the inevitable, we need to take our lives back to the drawing board and start afresh.

And this is where the problem lies. Campaigners have long seen the ecological problems inherent in our lifestyles, and made it known that we should change our behaviour accordingly. Now we all know it is for a good cause, we /should/ all be doing this.

We, as a society are not though. Why? Consider this. Environmental campaigns as a generalisation are designed by environmental campaigners, who are willing to make such changes. Obviously you might say! Aha….! You probably already see where I am going here. Seeing this problem from our own logic is illogical. Clichés such as preaching to the converted don’t really do this justice. I believe there is more equivalence in the self-regulation of financial markets by financiers. It has no outside perspective. I’d like to quote <http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/apr/18/boris-cyrulnik-children-trauma> the psychologist Boris Cyrulnik, that being able to “put yourself in the place of another is probably the foundation of morality”.

Having gone this far, I should not stop at saying that we are missing a perspective in how we try tackle the problems we face. We are forgetting human nature. What we believe is right in ourselves, our own empirical views, cannot easily be projected onto the rest of mankind. What we want is a better world, and yet we send out a message of sacrifice based on moral and ethical principles. We say, or appear to say, no to this, no to that, alongside dire predictions of the future. Fear is not the best motivator. Neither is preaching, and whether you agree it is preaching or not, what matters is public perception.

Human nature is to avoid losses, to make our lot better. If the message to people is one of sacrifices without gains, it is bound to fail. It is also human nature to filter out facts which scare us, and to filter out situations we perceive as being beyond our control. People are saturated with fearful, accurate, stories in the media. They see the gap between rhetoric and action at political level, and the sheer scale of the problem is daunting. Is it any wonder people are finding it hard to be individually motivated?

But all is not lost, this our chance to take this vital window in human history and change our bad habits for, yes for, something better.

No longer do we need to talk of sacrifices, just of changes, improvements. Forgotten amongst the increasing inertia of our modern lives is the concept of well-being. Now it has been captured by think-tanks (such as the New Economics Foundation), development workers and psychologists. Indeed, a quick read of Oliver James’ ‘Affluenza’, or the ‘Selfish Capitalist’, will convince any reader that our ill-conceived bout of debt-fuelled consumerism has left us not only economically and ecologically bankrupt, but emotionally bankrupt too. Cyrulnik <http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/apr/18/boris-cyrulnik-children-trauma> sheds some light at the root of our modern emotional malaise by pin-pointing an inverse correlation between wealth and the strength of family relationships.

Let’s face it, apart from the first moments, stuff does not make us happy. It lurks in our houses demanding attention to justify it’s purchase. It fills our lives with demands and noise and more costs and…you know it, deep down. It fills a hole, gives us moments to aim for, but it is only fleeting.

Changing our modes of buying can bring real changes to our well-being, and so too, to the environment. Buying less is the first step, separating our needs and wants. Try a little experiment, don’t spend anything for a day. You’d be surprised how impulsive you begin to feel, just to buy something, anything. It’s a good feeling when after a while you enter a shop and realise you didn’t want anything and leave again. You become aware of how accustomed you have become to finding satisfaction in consumerism. And of course, the guilt when you get home and wonder whether you should have bought it.

It is not just about buying fewer commodities. Money can be put towards clearing our debts, living within our means….but much more than that. Money can be used to help others and ourselves, to enjoy food and music, culture and beauty. An economy does not just have to revolve around stuff. It can meet needs and free time and resources for well-being. Life is short from any perspective, surely it deserves a better consideration.

The study uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a detailed computer simulation of global economic activity and climate processes that has been developed and refined by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change since the early 1990s. The new research involved 400 runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters, selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge. Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well - such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries.

Study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint Program and director of MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, says that, regarding global warming, it is important “to base our opinions and policies on the peer-reviewed science,” he says. And in the peer-reviewed literature, the MIT model, unlike any other, looks in great detail at the effects of economic activity coupled with the effects of atmospheric, oceanic and biological systems. “In that sense, our work is unique,” he says.

The new projections, published this month in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate, indicate a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees. This can be compared to a median projected increase in the 2003 study of just 2.4 degrees. The difference is caused by several factors rather than any single big change. Among these are improved economic modeling and newer economic data showing less chance of low emissions than had been projected in the earlier scenarios. Other changes include accounting for the past masking of underlying warming by the cooling induced by 20th century volcanoes, and for emissions of soot, which can add to the warming effect. In addition, measurements of deep ocean temperature rises, which enable estimates of how fast heat and carbon dioxide are removed from the atmosphere and transferred to the ocean depths, imply lower transfer rates than previously estimated.

Prinn says these and a variety of other changes based on new measurements and new analyses changed the odds on what could be expected in this century in the “no policy” scenarios - that is, where there are no policies in place that specifically induce reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Overall, the changes “unfortunately largely summed up all in the same direction,” he says. “Overall, they stacked up so they caused more projected global warming.”

While the outcomes in the “no policy” projections now look much worse than before, there is less change from previous work in the projected outcomes if strong policies are put in place now to drastically curb greenhouse gas emissions. Without action, “there is significantly more risk than we previously estimated,” Prinn says. “This increases the urgency for significant policy action.”

To illustrate the range of probabilities revealed by the 400 simulations, Prinn and the team produced a “roulette wheel” that reflects the latest relative odds of various levels of temperature rise. The wheel provides a very graphic representation of just how serious the potential climate impacts are.

“There’s no way the world can or should take these risks,” Prinn says. And the odds indicated by this modeling may actually understate the problem, because the model does not fully incorporate other positive feedbacks that can occur, for example, if increased temperatures caused a large-scale melting of permafrost in arctic regions and subsequent release of large quantities of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. Including that feedback “is just going to make it worse,” Prinn says.

The lead author of the paper describing the new projections is Andrei Sokolov, research scientist in the Joint Program. Other authors, besides Sokolov and Prinn, include Peter H. Stone, Chris E. Forest, Sergey Paltsev, Adam Schlosser, Stephanie Dutkiewicz, John Reilly, Marcus Sarofim, Chien Wang and Henry D. Jacoby, all of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, as well as Mort Webster of MIT’s Engineering Systems Division and D. Kicklighter, B. Felzer and J. Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.

Prinn stresses that the computer models are built to match the known conditions, processes and past history of the relevant human and natural systems, and the researchers are therefore dependent on the accuracy of this current knowledge. Beyond this, “we do the research, and let the results fall where they may,” he says. Since there are so many uncertainties, especially with regard to what human beings will choose to do and how large the climate response will be, “we don’t pretend we can do it accurately. Instead, we do these 400 runs and look at the spread of the odds.”

Because vehicles last for years, and buildings and powerplants last for decades, it is essential to start making major changes through adoption of significant national and international policies as soon as possible, Prinn says. “The least-cost option to lower the risk is to start now and steadily transform the global energy system over the coming decades to low or zero greenhouse gas-emitting technologies.”

This work was supported in part by grants from the Office of Science of the U.S. Dept. of Energy, and by the industrial and foundation sponsors of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

Link to original article

The report, “Adaptation of Forests and People to Climate Change – A Global Assessment”, by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) and the Collaborative Partnership on Forests
(CPF) was released at the UN Forum on Forests meeting currently underway in New York.

A panel of 35 forestry scientists behind the report concluded that forests’ critical role as giant carbon sinks is at risk of being turned around to make them net emitters of greenhouse gases. Higher temperatures would likely cause greater degradation and retreat of forests through increased fire, drought, disease and pest attack.

Instead of absorbing 25 per cent of all carbon emissions as they currently do, much forest area would begin emitting more than is absorbed as dying trees release their great volumes of stored carbon back into the atmosphere. The report estimates that point will be reached if global surface temperatures rise 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) or more above pre-Industrial levels.

“We normally think of forests as putting the brakes on global warming, but in fact over the next few decades, damage induced by climate change could cause forests to release huge quantities of carbon and create a situation in which they do more to accelerate warming than to slow it down,” said Risto Seppälä, from the Finnish Forest Research Institute and chair of the panel.

Such a scenario is one example of global warming ‘feedback’, where initial warming triggers environmental changes that themselves lead to more warming. Some scientists fear that if global surface temperatures rise beyond so called ‘tipping points’ such feedbacks will cause runaway climate change.

Professor Seppälä said there was an urgent need to focus on the “wider application of well-understood sustainable forestry practices” to help forests avoid some of the damage induced by climate change.”

The report also says that forests could expand in cooler latitudes and allow an increased supply of timber: “The combination of warming temperatures and the fertilizing effect of increased carbon in the atmosphere could fuel a northward expansion of what is known as the boreal forest, the coniferous timber lands that run across the Earth’snorthern latitudes and include forests in Canada, Finland, Russia and Sweden.”

The expansion would be short-lived and eventually offset, however, by the threats described above if climate change was allowed to continue unchecked.

The director of the UN Forum on Forests Secretariat, Jan McAlpine, warned delegates at the opening of the two-week New York meeting that time was up for negotiations on global forest protection.

“At this session, member states need to step forward and finally reach agreement on the ways and means to finance sustainable forest management. This is a 17-year-old discussion and it is time to stop talking and take action,” McAlpine said.

Published today by the prestigious international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), the researchers have coined a new term, ‘tipping elements’, to describe those components of the climate system that are at risk of passing a tipping point.

The term ‘tipping point’ is used to describe a critical threshold at which a small change in human activity can have large, long-term consequences for the Earth’s climate system.

In this new research, lead author Prof Tim Lenton of the University of East Anglia (UEA) and colleagues at the Postdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK), Carnegie Mellon University, Newcastle University and Oxford University have drawn up a shortlist of nine tipping elements relevant to current policy-making and calculated where their tipping points could lie. All of them could be tipped within the
next 100 years.

The nine tipping elements and the time it will take them to undergo a major transition are:

• Melting of Arctic sea-ice (approx 10 years)
• Decay of the Greenland ice sheet (more than 300 years)
• Collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet (more than 300 years)
• Collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation (approx 100 years)
• Increase in the El Nino Southern Oscillation (approx 100 years)
• Collapse of the Indian summer monsoon (approx 1 year)
• Greening of the Sahara/Sahel and disruption of the West African monsoon (approx 10 years)
• Dieback of the Amazon rainforest (approx 50 years)
• Dieback of the Boreal Forest (approx 50 years)

The paper also demonstrates how, in principle, early warning systems could be established using real-time monitoring and modelling to detect the proximity of certain tipping points.

“Society must not be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change,” said Prof Lenton.

“Our findings suggest that a variety of tipping elements could reach their critical point within this century under human-induced climate change. The greatest threats are tipping of the Arctic sea-ice and the Greenland ice sheet, and at least five other elements could surprise us by exhibiting a nearby tipping point.”

‘Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system’ by Tim Lenton (UEA and Tyndall Centre), Hermann Held (PIK), Elmar Kriegler (Carnegie Mellon University and PIK), Jim Hall (Newcastle University and Tyndall Centre), Wolfgang Lucht (PIK), Stefan Rahmstorf (PIK) and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (PIK, Oxford University and Tyndall Centre) is published by PNAS in the week beginning Monday February 4.

The findings are based on a critical review of the literature, the results of a recent workshop held at the British Embassy in Berlin which brought together 36 international experts in the field, and an elicitation exercise involving a further 52 international experts.

http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/media/press_releases/UEA_tipping_elements_0408.pdf

In particular, Germany is balking at original commitments and seeking concessions for its heavy industry. Along with Germany, Poland and Italy are also seeking concessions, particularly in the wake of the global credit crunch. Poland seems to have been satisfied with some payments its going to receive. But the ‘difficult’ Berlusconi and the under-pressure Merkel could wreck both Poznan and the EU commitments.

What can you do?

You could be a bored cynic. Or, you could join with campaign groups who are staging protests to encourage public democratic action:

• Avaaz are running a campaign to urge Merkel to lead on climate

• Coalition Time To Lead are also running a petition

• The Uk Youth Delegation to Poznan are urging you to jam Gordon Brown’s phone

Background to the EU promises

In January 2008, the Commission proposed the EU make a 20% cut in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, or a 30% cut if other countries agree to cut their emissions too. But the proposal also allows a large part of these cuts to be achieved by buying carbon credits for projects to reduce emissions in developing countries. This is one major criticism of the UK Climate Change Bill–what’s the point of an 80% target if the UK can achieve most of that by paying (’offsetting credits’) for it to be done abroad? That option does nothing to encourage behaviour change where it’s needed most–in developed Western industries.

On the targets being debated in Poznan to replace Kyoto–remember that?–even the targets being discussed there (50% by 2050… confused yet?) is viewed as too low by some. Which could be ok if the EU’s new agenda, of making Europe carbon free to lure China into an agreement, works out. (For an audio overview of EU proposals, listen to David Adam at the Guardian).

When these carbon credits from outside Europe are taken into account, the cuts required by Europe are significantly lower than the Commission’s proposal suggests. Even the proposal to cut European emissions by 30% only means around 22% in reality.

As the Time to Lead coalition of Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, through the coordination of the Climate Action Network (CAN), say: “If other developed countries followed this lead, we would not make the cuts we need globally, so this proposal is not consistent with the commitments made by European leaders to keep global warming below 2ºC.”

Does everyone ageee 2ºC is the target?

No. In fact, organisations such as PIRC, who recently gave evidence to the UK parliamentary audit committee, believe that this is too high. There are also people arguing convincingly that 2ºC is a political target only, and bears no real resemblance to what is an actual ’safe’ figure. Hence their latest report, Climate Safety. It seems that 2ºC might in fact be the cover for shifting us towards what is ‘politically acceptable’ rather than what is needed. Why would the UK agree to the necessity for 80% cuts but then agree that across Europe only 30% (or 20%) is required? Someone who has been explaining it far, far better than I can here is Kevin Anderson from the Tyndall Centre. It’s worth reading his powerpoint, via the Transition Culture Blog (probably the best tited blog post ever on climate: 9 degrees, the Wizard of Oz, and Sex).

The EU Emission Trading Scheme

It’s not only the targets that will be debated these next two days. The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is also on the table.

The House of Lords EU Committee yesterday called for “ambitious reforms to the EU’s Emissions Trading System, pointing out that as the EU’s main tool in reducing carbon emissions it is vital that the system is a success.” In particular they focused on the resistance from countries such as Poland, arguing that:

The Committee received evidence that Member States such as Poland, with a high reliance on coal burning to generate power, were opposed to moves to ensure all carbon permits in the power industry were auctioned rather than given away as was the case in phase 1 of the ETS. The Committee argue that the EU should aim for 100% auctioning of allowances by 2013, and where exceptions are made for certain Member States it should be on the understanding that the time limited transition period is used to develop and trial clean coal technologies. [Original emphasis]

However, the EU ETS scheme should be thoroughly assessed for its contribution to fighting climate change. As the House of Lords themselves admit: “The EU ETS has become the cornerstone of UK and EU climate change policy but at the end of its first stage its record - in delivering reductions in greenhouse gas emissions - is as yet unproven.”

What is proven is its abiity to make big companies lots of money, for example:

The biggest beneficiary, according to Carbon Market Data, has been ArcelorMittal. In 2007, the world steel production leviathan had a “huge surplus” of 18.5m tonnes of CO₂ in allowances. ArcelorMittal’s power in negotiating additional carbon subsidies was demonstrated in Belgium at the beginning of 2008, when the firm said it would not reopen a blast furnace in the Liège – raising attendant concerns about lost jobs – without significant extra emissions permits. The Belgian federal and regional authorities freed these up by stripping the carbon allowances from electricity generation plants.

And which desperately in need country, trying to pull itself out of poverty while suffering the worst effects of climate change, is rightly benefitting most? India? Bangladesh? Vietnam?

On the buying side, London is a winner. It is, according to the World Bank, the “carbon finance hub of the world,” a position it consolidated in 2007. The United Kingdom is responsible for nearly 60% of purchases of CDM carbon credits, with London-based institutions, such as compliance buyers, project developers and banks, accounting for the bulk of this…

…other regions of the world profit far less. India supplies 6% of carbon credits, and the rest of Asia (excluding China) 5%. The whole of Africa, notwithstanding its huge renewable energy potential (solar power, for example), supplies only 5%.

London Banks. Hold on–those same banks being bailed out with our taxes…?

This is why pressure groups such as Ieta, which John Vidal in the Guardian on Wednesday noted was the largest delegation (bigger than most countries) in Poznan, with 256 delegates, are attending, to ensure that carbon markets keep working for those who can make money out of them.

As I argued back in my thesis in 2005, carbon markets seem, in the cold light of day, well, another market. And aren’t capitalist markets as we have them exactly what has brought us to this global crisis in the first place? As the Transition Culture blog says, ‘economic growth was a good idea at the time, but…’. And proof that left and right do meet at the other end of the circle: the scpetical scientist Jennifer Marohasy is also launching/promoting a fundraising campaign to resist an ETS for Australia.

And six of the best…

These have been some of my favoured reads on Poznan over the last few days:

• Amplified Green: half-way to Copenhagen
• The WDM Poznan blog: a human face on climate change
• Lo CO2 Travel: Australians go overland to Poznan (22,236km)
• Greenpeace: Pressure builds on Poznan
• Just in Just Out: for quick moving updates and info
• My Trees: Why does Poznan matter?
• Planey in Limbo: 25-hour coach journey to get to Poznan

Yes, we know that’s seven. Want one more? But don’t worry, it’s not all positive and enlightened inspiration. There are those using Poznan as a hook to explain how they still aren’t quite able to get to grips with the Greenhouse effect.

(x-posted at The Current Climate)