WORLD NEWS (FEBRUARY, 2007):
Rising Tide occupy Carbon neutral company
Today we have occupied - and with any luck shut down - the head office of the Carbon Neutral
Company (CNC) here in King’s Cross. CNC is one of many businesses which sell 'carbon offsets' to
people and companies that want to cancel out their contribution to climate chaos (also known as
‘global warming’). CNC claims that it will neutralise the carbon dioxide (CO2) given off by, say,
Silverjet (a private jet airline), and that it will do this by paying people in developing
countries to cut their own emissions with schemes that involve renewable energy or tree planting.
So what's the problem?
P R E S S R E L E A S E
LONDON RISING TIDE OCCUPY HEAD OFFICE OF CARBON NEUTRAL COMPANY IN LONDON
London Rising Tide has occupied the head office of the Carbon Neutral Company (formerly Future
Forests) on the day they had been invited to appear before the All Party Parliamentary Committee
on Climate Change, that is chaired by the Carbon Neutral Company.
This is what they have to say:
CARBON 'OFFSET' = CLIMATE UPSET
Carbon offsetting: an excuse for no action?
Climate chaos is an issue of justice: it is hurting the world’s poorest (and least-polluting)
people first and hardest, causing massive disasters and threatening millions of species worldwide.
Many people are now questioning whether offsetting allows some of us in the richer, developed
world to carry on with our massively polluting lifestyles, instead of lowering our own emissions.
Those who are buying offsets are often doing so with the best of intentions, but the fact remains
that it’s a smokescreen that has to stop.
If we compare the planet to a running bath, full almost to the brim with CO2, to offset CO2
emissions is like saying “I won’t turn off my tap. I’ll pay someone else £10 to pay someone else
£2 to turn off their own tap.” (Guess who pockets the change?) The reality is that we need to turn
off both, if we’re to have a chance of cutting CO2 emissions by 50% before 2016 (which is the
single most important task facing you and me, right here, right now in 2007.)
Not only is tree planting a discredited failure when it comes to soaking up carbon, many other
offset schemes are looking pretty shabby when looked at in detail by independent third parties.
Yesterday, Carbon Trade Watch released a report called The Carbon Neutral Myth - Offset
Indulgences for your Climate Sins that gave a lot of evidence and information as to why
offsetting is ineffective, injust and damaging to the climate change debate. (PDF)
Who are we?
Our group is called London Rising Tide (LRT), and we are part of a wider national and
international movement that believes passionately in taking direct action for 'climate justice'.
We reckon it’s well past time for us to get creative, to get movement-building, to drown out the
rising tide of corporate 'greenwash' (ie. profit-driven lies), to get food growing with neighbours
and friends, and to get seriously disobedient, (but to do it with a good bit of humour).
A while ago, we were asked by the All Party Parliamentary Committee on Climate Change to make a
submission about planned Climate Bill. The Committee is administrated by the Carbon Neutral
Company. After thinking long and hard about it, this was our response:
"We're declining the invitation to address the meeting, since we believe in the creation of mass
movements striving for systemic social and ecological change. Engaging with the committee would be
a distraction from that, as it's not in the interests of either Parliament or private companies to
call for - or work for - such change. Also, we are deeply sceptical about the apparent
privatisation of the committee process, especially when the company concerned is profiting
handsomely from the sale to the public of the phony solution that is the carbon offset."
To speak to people currently taking part in the action, call 07933 319 609
To speak to someone for comment or more information, call 07989 130846
London Rising Tide,
c/o 62 Fieldgate Street,
London E1 1ES
Email: london@risingtide.org.uk; T: 07708 794665
Web: londonrisingtide, artnotoil, shelloiledwildlife
See also The Camp for Climate Action: climatecamp, & cheatneutral
posted by Derek Wall
ESEI editors note:
I am aware of early sugestions for carbon trading as a mechanism for
positive change, in, for example, Michael Jacobs book, The Green
Economy: Environment, Sustainable Development and the Politics of the
Future (Pluto Press, 1991).
Frankly, in a fair and decent world, where those with credits spare
and those who "need" extra, obeying rules set internationally to
reduce the available credits year-on-year, and following ethical
values regarding how the poorest in developing countries are impacted
by their government selling credits for cash, could have worked out
well...
But, naturally, that is not our world, it is a fictional utopian world
for the hopeful (or naive). Instead, the fundamental problem with
carbon trading is greed and profit seeking, with a side-order of
greenwash in that companies can be seen to be "doing something" whilst
continuing to emit like crazy. And, the poor cannot really be expected
to stay way way below a decent level just so the rich can get richer -
contraction and convergence can only be sustainable if those at the
bottom rise up a little to meet us well below halfway - ie, far below
where the lip-service brigade in the West see C&C leading.
Even, today, despite the media hype, in China where the gap between
rich and poor is expanding, the trickle-down economics myth is typically
slow and resource hungry, unsustainable by definition, and the poorest
northern rural communities are still so poor that marriages are set for
winter, so the bride's family can check that the groom's home does not
have a white back interior wall (ie, lots of frost inside).
So, I guess Rising Tide, whilst looking a wee bit like they are attacking
the good guys at first glance, might have a point?
- Tim
Global warming: enough to make you sick
Rising temperatures are redistributing bacteria, insects and plants,
exposing people to diseases they'd never encountered before
By Jia-Rui Chong, L.A. Times Staff Writer
February 25, 2007
CORDOVA, ALASKA — Oysterman Jim Aguiar had never had to deal with the
bacterium Vibrio parahaemolyticus in his 25 years working the frigid waters
of Prince William Sound.
The dangerous microbe infected seafood in warmer waters, like the Gulf of
Mexico. Alaska was way too cold.
But the sound was gradually warming. By summer 2004, the temperature had
risen just enough to poke above the crucial 59-degree mark. Cruise ship
passengers who had eaten local oysters were soon coming down with diarrhea,
cramping and vomiting — the first cases of Vibrio food poisoning in Alaska
that anyone could remember.
"We were slapped from left field," said Aguiar, who shut down his oyster
farm that year along with a few others.
As scientists later determined, the culprit was not just the bacterium, but
the warming that allowed it to proliferate.
"This was probably the best example to date of how global climate change is
changing the importation of infectious diseases," said Dr. Joe McLaughlin,
acting chief of epidemiology at the Alaska Division of Public Health, who
published a study on the outbreak.
The spread of human disease has become one of the most worrisome subplots in
the story of global warming. Incremental temperature changes have begun to
redraw the distribution of bacteria, insects and plants, exposing new
populations to diseases that they have never seen before.
A report from the World Health Organization estimated that in 2000 about
154,000 deaths around the world could be attributed to disease outbreaks and
other conditions sparked by climate change.
The temperature change has been small, about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the
last 150 years, but it has been enough to alter disease patterns across the
globe.
In Sweden, fewer winter days below 10 degrees and more summer days above 50
degrees have encouraged the northward movement of ticks, which has coincided
with an increase in cases of tick-borne encephalitis since the 1980s.
Researchers have found that poison ivy has grown more potent and lush
because of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
In Africa, mosquitoes have been slowly inching up the slopes around Mt.
Kenya, bringing malaria to high villages that had never been exposed before.
"It's going to get very warm," said Andrew Githeko, a vector biologist who
heads the Climate and Human Health Research Unit at the Kenya Medical
Research Institute in Kisumu. "That's going to mean a huge difference to
malaria."
Githeko, 49, grew up in the central highlands in a tiny village near the
town of Karatina, about 5,700 feet above sea level.
His home was different from most of Africa. The air was damp and chilly. On
clear days, he could see the glaciers on Mt. Kenya, the second-highest peak
in Africa at 17,058 feet.
When he was a child, lowland diseases like malaria were unknown in Karatina.
But perhaps 10 years ago, a smattering of cases began to appear.
He had long ago left his home to study the great plagues of Africa — Rift
Valley fever, malaria, cholera and others. The appearance of malaria in the
highlands, however, was a mystery worth returning home for.
Githeko dispatched a colleague to collect mosquito larvae in puddles and
streams around Mt. Kenya, some as high as 6,300 feet. Tests later identified
some of the mosquitoes as Anopheles arabiensis, one of the species that
carry malaria.
Githeko's findings, published in 2006, marked the highest A. arabiensis
breeding site ever recorded in Kenya and was the first published report of
malaria infections in the central highlands, he said.
He knew by watching Mt. Kenya's gradually disappearing glaciers that his
world was warming, and that lowland diseases would eventually work their way
higher. "But we did not expect this to happen so soon," he said.
Githeko's work has been echoed in a small number of studies around the
world.
In 1996, health authorities reported a human case of tick-borne encephalitis
in the Czech village of Borova Lada, elevation 3,000 feet. Until then, the
Ixodes rinicus tick, which carries the disease, had never been seen above
2,600 feet.
The case caught the attention of Milan Daniel, a parasitologist the
Institute for Postgraduate Medical Education in Prague who has been studying
the movement of ticks in the Czech Republic for half a century.
He scoured the Sumava and Krkonose mountains and found that the ticks had
migrated as high as 4,100 feet largely because of milder autumns over the
last two decades, according to a series of studies published over the last
four years.
From 1961 to 2005, the mean temperature in the Krkonose Mountains had
increased about 2 1/2 degrees.
"This shift of the ticks," Daniel said, "is clearly connected with climate
changes."
According to a landmark United Nations report released this month, global
warming has reached a point where even if greenhouse gas emissions could be
held stable, the trend would continue for centuries.
The report painted a grim picture of the future — rising sea levels, more
intense storms, widespread drought.
Predicting the future of disease, however, has proven difficult because of
myriad factors — many of which have little to do with global warming.
Diseases move with people, they follow trade routes, they thrive in places
with poor sanitation, they develop resistance to medicines, they can blossom
during war or economic breakdowns.
"No one's saying global warming is the whole picture here," said Dr. Paul R.
Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global
Environment at Harvard University. "But it is playing a role. As climate
changes, it's projected to play an even greater role."
In a Beltsville, Md., laboratory filled with bathroom-sized aluminum
chambers, U.S. Department of Agriculture weed physiologist Lewis Ziska is
peering into the future of one of the key components of global warming —
rising carbon dioxide levels.
CO2 levels have been on the rise since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution
more than 200 years ago. Today, they are at their highest point in more than
650,000 years.
In the tightly sealed chambers, Ziska re-created pre-industrial conditions
by turning down the concentration of carbon dioxide to 280 parts per
million. In another box, he simulated the present with 370 parts per
million. In a third box, he pumped up the carbon dioxide to 600 parts per
million, the estimate for 2050.
Much of Ziska's work has centered on ragweed, a noxious plant that sets off
allergy sufferers, such as Ziska himself. The weeds inside the tanks suck up
carbon dioxide. "It's like feeding a hungry teenager," he said.
Collecting yellow pollen in plastic bags fitted around the plants, Ziska
found that current conditions produced 131% more pollen than pre-industrial
conditions. Future conditions produced 320% more.
"For us weed biologists, this is the worst of times and the best of times,"
he said.
The impact of global warming has not been all bad. Researchers recently
found that rising temperatures have helped reduce some diseases related to
cold weather. One British study found that the number of children infected
with a cold-like virus known as respiratory syncytial virus has been
declining with warming temperatures.
Combining meteorological data and emergency room admission rates from 1981
to 2004, physiologist Gavin Donaldson at University College London found
each increase of 1.8 degrees clipped three weeks off the end the virus'
winter season.
"A small amount of warming can go a long way, as far as changing disease
transmission dynamics," said Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of Global
Environmental Health at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Given the gradual pace of warming, there are also some chances to adapt.
After Prince William Sound's Vibrio outbreak in 2004, the state required
more oyster testing in some areas. In the last two years, there have been
only four cases of Vibrio food poisoning.
Life in Aguiar's remote inlet has largely returned to the way it was before.
This winter has been cold. Aguiar, a bear of a man with a riotous beard,
huddled inside the houseboat for warmth recently as the temperature outside
hovered around 20 degrees. The pale Northern Lights pulsed over the
snow-laced Chugach Mountains, and skins of ice grew on the still water.
Come summer, Aguiar will start sending oyster samples to the state. When the
temperature hits about 55 degrees, he'll drop his oyster baskets 60 or 100
feet in the water for about 10 days to clear out the bacteria.
It's a solution he can live with in a warming world.
"It's not all evil," he said. "I just don't like to see rapid change."
L.A. Times
WORLD NEWS (JANUARY, 2007):
World May Be Facing Highest Grain Prices in History
Earth Policy Institute
Eco-Economy Update
12 pm EST, January 4, 2007
DISTILLERY DEMAND FOR GRAIN TO FUEL CARS VASTLY UNDERSTATED
World May Be Facing Highest Grain Prices in History
Lester R. Brown
www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2007/Update63.htm
Investment in fuel ethanol distilleries has soared since the late-2005 oil price
hikes, but data collection in this fast-changing sector has fallen behind.
Because of inadequate data collection on the number of new plants under
construction, the quantity of grain that will be needed for fuel ethanol
distilleries has been vastly understated. Farmers, feeders, food processors,
ethanol investors, and grain-importing countries are basing decisions on
incomplete data.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) projects that distilleries will
require only 60 million tons of corn from the 2008 harvest. But here at the
Earth Policy Institute (EPI), we estimate that distilleries will need 139
million tons--more than twice as much. If the EPI estimate is at all close
to the mark, the emerging competition between cars and people for grain will
likely drive world grain prices to levels never seen before. he key questions are:
How high will grain prices rise? When will the crunch come? And what will be the
worldwide effect of rising food prices?
One reason for the low USDA projection is that it was released in February
2006, well before the effect of surging oil prices on investment in fuel ethanol
distilleries was fully apparent. Beyond this, USDA relies heavily on the
Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), a trade group, for data on ethanol
distilleries under construction, but the RFA data have lagged behind
movement in the industry.
We drew on four firms that collect and publish data on U.S. ethanol distilleries
under construction. RFA is the one most frequently cited. The other three
firms are Europe-based F.O. Licht, the publisher of World Ethanol and Biofuels
Report; BBI International, which publishes Ethanol Producer Magazine; and the
American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE), publisher of Ethanol Today.
Unfortunately, the lists of plants under construction maintained by RFA,
BBI, and ACE are not complete. Each contains some plants that are not on the
other lists. Drawing on these three lists and on biweekly reports from F.O. Licht,
EPI has compiled a more complete master list. For example, while we show 79
plants under construction, RFA lists 62 plants. (We welcome any information that
will improve this list, which can be viewed at
www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2007/Update63_data.htm)
According to the EPI compilation, the 116 plants in production on December
31, 2006, were using 53 million tons of grain per year, while the 79 plants
under construction--mostly larger facilities--will use 51 million tons of grain
when they come online. Expansions of 11 existing plants will use another 8
million tons of grain (1 ton of corn = 39.4 bushels = 110 gallons of ethanol).
In addition, easily 200 ethanol plants were in the planning stage at the end
of 2006. If these translate into construction starts between January 1 and June
30, 2007, at the same rate that plants did during the final six months of 2006,
then an additional 3 billion gallons of capacity requiring 27 million more tons
of grain will likely come online by September 1, 2008, the start of the 2008
harvest year. This raises the corn needed for distilleries to 139 million
tons, half the 2008 harvest projected by USDA. This would yield nearly 15 billion
gallons of ethanol, satisfying 6 percent of U.S. auto fuel needs. (And this
estimate does not include any plants started after June 30, 2007, that would
be finished in time to draw on the 2008 harvest.)
This unprecedented diversion of the world’s leading grain crop to the production
of fuel will affect food prices everywhere. As the world corn price rises,
so too do those of wheat and rice, both because of consumer substitution among
grains and because the crops compete for land. Both corn and wheat futures
were already trading at 10-year highs in late 2006.
The U.S. corn crop, accounting for 40 percent of the global harvest and
supplying 70 percent of the world’s corn exports, looms large in the world
food economy. Annual U.S. corn exports of some 55 million tons account for nearly
one fourth of world grain exports. The corn harvest of Iowa alone, which edges
out Illinois as the leading producer, exceeds the entire grain harvest of
Canada. Substantially reducing this export flow would send shock waves throughout
the world economy.
Robert Wisner, Iowa State University economist, reports that Iowa’s demand
for corn from processing plants that were on line, expanding, under construction,
or being planned as of late 2006 totaled 2.7 billion bushels. Yet even in a
good year the state harvests only 2.2 billion bushels. As distilleries compete
with feeders for grain, Iowa could become a corn importer.
With corn supplies tightening fast, rising prices will affect not only products
made directly from corn, such as breakfast cereals, but also those produced
using corn, including milk, eggs, cheese, butter, poultry, pork, beef,
yogurt, and ice cream. The risk is that soaring food prices could generate a
consumer backlash against the fuel ethanol industry.
Fuel ethanol proponents point out, and rightly so, that the use of corn to
produce ethanol is not a total loss to the food economy because 30 percent
of the corn is recovered in distillers dried grains that can be fed to beef and
dairy cattle, pigs, and chickens, though only in limited amounts. They also
argue that the U.S. distillery demand for corn can be met by expanding land
in corn, mostly at the expense of soybeans, and by raising yields. While it is
true that the corn crop can be expanded, there is no precedent for growth on the
scale needed. And this soaring demand for corn comes when world grain production
has fallen below consumption in six of the last seven years, dropping grain
stocks to their lowest level in 34 years.
From an agricultural vantage point, the automotive demand for fuel is
insatiable. The grain it takes to fill a 25-gallon tank with ethanol just
once will feed one person for a whole year. Converting the entire U.S. grain
harvest to ethanol would satisfy only 16 percent of U.S. auto fuel needs.
The competition for grain between the world’s 800 million motorists who want
to maintain their mobility and its 2 billion poorest people who are simply
trying to survive is emerging as an epic issue. Soaring food prices could lead to
urban food riots in scores of lower-income countries that rely on grain imports,
such as Indonesia, Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, and Mexico. The resulting political
instability could in turn disrupt global economic progress, directly
affecting all countries. It is not only food prices that are at stake, but trends
in the Nikkei Index and the Dow Jones 500 as well.
There are alternatives to creating a crop-based automotive fuel economy. The
equivalent of the 2 percent of U.S. automotive fuel supplies now coming from
ethanol could be achieved several times over, and at a fraction of the cost,
by raising auto fuel efficiency standards by 20 percent.
If we shift to gas-electric hybrid plug-in cars over the next decade, we
could be doing short-distance driving, such as the daily commute or grocery
shopping, with electricity. If we then invested in thousands of wind farms to feed
cheap electricity into the grid, U.S. cars could run primarily on wind energy--and
at the gasoline equivalent of less than $1 a gallon. The stage is set for a
crash program to help Detroit switch to gas-electric hybrid plug-in cars.
It is time for a moratorium on the licensing of new distilleries, a time-out,
while we catch our breath and decide how much corn can be used for ethanol
without dramatically raising food prices. The policy goal should be to use
just enough fuel ethanol to support corn prices and farm incomes but not so much
that it disrupts the world food economy. Meanwhile, a much greater effort is
needed to produce ethanol from cellulosic sources such as switchgrass, a feedstock
that is not used for food.
The world desperately needs a strategy to deal with the emerging food-fuel
battle. As the leading grain producer, grain exporter, and ethanol producer,
the United States is in the driver’s seat. We need to make sure that in trying
to solve one problem--our dependence on imported oil--we do not create a far
more serious one: chaos in the world food economy.
# # #
Lester R. Brown is President of the Earth Policy Institute and author of
Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble.
For additional information on this topic see:
www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2006/Update60.htm &
www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2006/Update55.htm
U.S. corn volume for ethanol may double forecasts, group says
By Christopher Martin
Bloomberg
January 4, 2007
A surge in U.S. ethanol production will demand half the country's corn
supplies in 2008, more than double the amount forecast by the Agriculture
Department, according to the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental
advocacy group.
Ethanol production from existing distilleries and those under construction
across the U.S. will pull about 139 million tons of corn from the 2008
harvest, Lester Brown, president of the institute, said on a conference
call. Agriculture Department data forecast ethanol production will consume
about 23 percent of total U.S. corn supplies by 2015.
Rising demand for alternative fuels to gasoline will boost corn prices,
which reached a 10-year high of $3.94 a bushel in November, to $5 a bushel
within the next two years. Rising demand for corn as a fuel source will
reduce amounts available for animal feed or sweeteners, and reduce exports.
The U.S. is the world's largest corn producer and exporter.
"We're looking at a fundamental shift in the global food economy," Brown
said. "The price of grains is going up to their oil-equivalent price. It
could create urban food riots in poorer countries."
Brown recommends the U.S. issue a moratorium on new ethanol plants, shifting
to producing the fuel from switch-grass instead of corn, and improving the
fuel economy of cars and trucks to reduce demand.
U.S. demand for corn used to make ethanol, a gasoline additive, will rise 34
percent to a record 2.15 billion bushels in the marketing year that began
Sept. 1, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Dec. 11.
Factories Boost Output
The 110 factories now producing ethanol in the U.S. have boosted their
annual capacity by 12 percent in the past six months, to 5.3 billion
gallons, according to the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington. An
additional 6 billion gallons of capacity will be added in the next two years
as 79 new plants or expansions are completed, the association said.
Brown says that forecast, and the February forecast by the Agriculture
Department, underestimate the number of new plants that are already under
construction and will begin buying corn from the 2008 harvest.
"We've compiled the longest list of plants under construction and called
developers to find out if they're on track," Brown said. "That's the
difference in our data. They are lagging badly."
To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Martin in New York at
cmartin11@bloomberg.net
See Also:
The Magic Mountain - Trickle-down economics in a Philippine garbage dump,
by Matthew Power
Harpers Magazine
SOURCE: BlueGreenEarth/ESEI Forum
|
For the first time the Rossport Five talk directly about
their experiences confronting themight of Shell Oil.
The End of Suburbia 52-minute version is online at YouTube.