Frankly, I’m not betting the farm on Obama vetoing the bill, particularly if Republicans in exchange go along with his cherished hike in infrastructure spending, designed precisely to create jobs. As the article says, even his Democratic base is split on the pipeline, at a time when jobs truly are THE issue in this election.

The case for a veto no matter what is, I believe, stronger. Politically, he shows backbone and principle, can blast Republicans for the same anti-job position they want to pin on him, and secures the grassroots support he so desperately needs from his environmental base, the same base he has mutilated into apathy with other antagonistic ecodecisions.

But then again, on the subject of backbone and principle, the president has been quite convincing of late that he doesn’t have any when it comes to climate change. The signs are anything but reassuring.

The U.S. was one of the countries that most blocked progress (even simple steps) at Durban. Obama’s new all-or-nothing energy policy proudly includes record hikes in American oil and gas exploration. And when he “killed” Keystone, I’ve warned earlier that we would be ill advised to celebrate much, so absent from his statement was any mention of climate change. Now, if he was willing to turn on the climate at these crucial moments, what makes us think he’ll stick to the Keystone decision in the face of potential political risk?

The writing is all over the wall, folks. This man has simply abandoned the climate in favor of his reelection. He fails to see the political, historical and economic value (to him!) of standing up to the Republicans on this all-important issue. So don’t let his support of cleantech fool you. On Keystone, we simply do not know which way he’ll go.

Last year we reported a talk he gave to a posh gathering in London, chaired by no less a personage than Prince Phillip, in which he said only “flat earthers” disagree with his view that only population reduction can save the planet. Contraception, he said, “is the humane way, the powerful option which allows all of us to deal with the problem, if we collectively choose to do so.”

We haven’t previously mentioned that Sir David is also a patron of World Land Trust. This week he spoke on behalf of that group to yet another posh meeting in London, this one attended by “lawyers, city investors and business people.” (The meeting is reported in the UK Guardian.)

He repeated his message that Third World overbreeding is a huge threat, but this time he was less sanguine about the efficacy of “the humane way.”

In fact, he said, it just isn’t possible to stop population growth in time to save the planet. “Nothing we can do will stop that increase. We may be able to slow it, but stop it in our lifetimes we cannot.”

Since the population bomb can’t be stopped, Attenborough says we need to focus on “making sure mankind doesn’t spread willy nilly over every square yard of the globe.”

How? By buying large tracts of rainforest, and converting them into private wildlife reserves.

Two questions arise immediately. Who will pay for this land? And what happens to the people who live there?

The answer to the first question is simple. Attenborough thinks big businesses should contribute the needed cash to World Land Trust, which will buy the land and hand it over to local NGOs that promise to keep it safe.

Some might object that business doesn’t have a great record of environmental protection, but Attenborough is more than willing to slather greenwash over any corporation that makes a tax deductible donation. Businesses may have defiled the earth in the past, but they just didn’t know better. Today, he says, “Wealth empowers, and businesses have by no means been slow in helping. We’ve gone to multinationals over and over again.”

As for the second question – WLT preserves are no-go areas for those overbreeding locals. According to the WLT website, donors may be allowed to visit as ecotourists, but no one else gets in. “If there is occasional incursion into the forests this is quickly dealt with by the park wardens who are familiar with the borders.”

WLT is all in favor of REDD+, the UN-sanctioned program to privatize Third World forests and use them for carbon trading. In a recent statement, WLT president John Burton described the plan as “by far the best option on the table for raising significant funds for biodiversity conservation.”

The people who actually live in those forests, in contrast, say that REDD+ “threatens the survival of Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities and could result in the biggest land grab of all time.”

Through Optimum Population Trust, Attenborough works to prevent poor people from coming to England. And through World Land Trust, he works to prevent them from living in their homelands.
And his rich donors, who do more to destroy the earth every day than his Third World victims do in their lifetimes, get tax deductions and carbon credits.

The government of Iran spent the most on promoting fossil fuel consumption in 2010, doling out $81 billion in subsidies. This equaled more than 20 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Saudi Arabia was a distant second at $44 billion. Rounding out the top five were Russia ($39 billion), India ($22 billion), and China ($21 billion).

Kuwait’s fossil fuel subsidies were highest on a per capita basis, with $2,800 spent per person. The United Arab Emirates and Qatar followed, each spending close to $2,500 per person.

Carbon emissions could be cut in scores of countries by simply eliminating fossil fuel subsidies. Some countries are already doing this. Belgium, France, and Japan have phased out all subsidies for coal, for example. As oil prices have climbed, a number of countries that held fuel prices well below world market prices have greatly reduced or eliminated their motor fuel subsidies because of the heavy fiscal cost. Among those reducing subsidies are China and Indonesia. Even Iran, which was pricing gasoline at one fifth its market price, dramatically reduced its gasoline subsidies in December 2010 as part of broader energy subsidy reforms.

In contrast to the $500 billion in fossil fuel supports in 2010, renewable energy received just $66 billion in subsidies — two thirds for electricity generation from wind, biomass, and other sources, and one third for biofuels. Not only do fossil fuel subsidies dwarf those for renewables today, but a long legacy of governments propping up oil, coal, and natural gas has resulted in a very uneven energy playing field.

A world facing economically disruptive climate change can no longer justify subsidies to expand the burning of coal and oil. The International Energy Agency projects that a phaseout of oil consumption subsidies by 2020 would cut oil use by 3.7 million barrels per day in that year. Eliminating all fossil fuel consumption subsidies by 2020 would cut global carbon emissions by nearly 5 percent while reducing government debt. Shifting subsidies to the development of climate-benign energy sources such as wind, solar, and geothermal power will help stabilize the earth’s climate.

This data highlight is adapted from World on the Edge by Lester R. Brown. For more data and discussion, see the full book at www.earth-policy.org.

Yes, it’s great that the pipeline is dead, and everyone from Bill McKibben and 350.org to every single demonstrator who got this done by leading the charge against the project against all odds, deserves our sincerest and most heartfelt congratulations and gratitude. It really would have been game over for the climate had the pipeline gone through.

But as we get past the celebration and refocus on the hard work ahead to ensure that the game is won in the end, it’s crucial to note what the president’s Keystone statement says about our chances for victory. And it’s not one bit encouraging.

Two things stand out. First, there’s not a single mention of the climate threat as one of the motivations behind the decision, when in fact it should have been the MAIN motivation. He blames it on the administration’s inability to meet the arbitrary Republican deadline.

What??!! Are you kidding me? You mean to say he would have gone along if Republicans had been more lenient and agreed to more time? This alone raises a huge red flag, the same he raised with his stance at Durban, where the U.S. shocked everyone with its inexplicable foot dragging and outright opposition to any significant progress.

Second, Obama once again boasts about his perplexing all-of-the-above energy policy, which includes the support of domestic oil, gas and coal in addition to renewables. Congratulate me, he seems to say, because oil and gas are up in America, alongside increases in solar and wind.

This is simply mind blowing. The planet risks an end-of-the-world scenario in a few decades with today’s runaway climate change and record increases in carbon and methane emissions. The latest science is the scariest yet, saying we’re this close to passing the dreaded 2 degree C temperature rise, and dreaded indeed it is. Avoiding that threshold already requires a herculean task, which leaves zero room for NEW fossil-fuel generation that locks in tipping-point emissions for decades more.

So why is the president of the United States, the same one who once promised with inspiring passion to halt the rise of the oceans, feeling great about today’s increase in oil and gas production? That’s the alarming part of his statement, the fact that this is something he is PROUD of, not something he apologetically laments being cornered into by politics.

No, he’s not sorry at all. Not one iota. He is concerned solely, it seems, with enhancing our security by ending the country’s reliance on foreign oil and replacing it with an all-of-the-above American menu. His often stated concern over climate change, we are then led to think, must be blurred by the 1990s assumption that we have a long time to solve this mother-of-all problems.

Mr. President, we do not have that luxury. You have to stand for the end of fossil fuels TODAY. Stopping Keystone helps, but you can’t stop there. When you signed up for the job, you told us you knew damn well that you would be the final president with any chance at preventing irreversible climate change. If you lose this year, we all know your Republican successor will lose the game in regulation, so we’re still cheering for you, because you may still be able to pull it off, even if it takes double-overtime. But not like this, Mr. President.

Not like this.

A report released by the China Council of International Cooperation on Environment and Development included the influential opinions of over 200 experts (both international and domestic), and it ultimately concluded that China has the potential to create more than 9.5 million jobs over the next five years. The catch is that this would be contingent upon China replacing the current industry jobs that are less eco-friendly with jobs that focus on renewable technologies and green energy.

The aforementioned council has thus advised China’s government to move forward fiscally and to spend 5.8 trillion yuan toward green ventures. The council calculated that doing such would result in a green GDP boost of 8 trillion, and that the energy-saving processes would also save 1.4 trillion yuan. The current, dirty parts of the economy result in both a loss of jobs and GDP. Li Ganje, the vice minister of Environmental Protection, explains, “The industrial sector is still the prime energy consumer and a major cause of pollution, so greening the sector is key for China’s green transformation.”

The council’s report was not altogether positive; it also outlined the repercussions of the current environmental state, and says, “The blind pursuit of economic growth has now become a huge obstacle for China’s green growth.”  Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN’s Environment Program, commented with the release of the report, citing health repercussions: “They are paying a price first of all individually by premature deaths. . . . Respiratory diseases and premature deaths in the hundreds of thousands.”

Is China serious about making big changes, or are they too dependent on the current system? Join in the discussion in the comments below and/or share the piece.

Locog, the organizing committee for the Olympics, originally claimed that the 2012 event would be the “greenest games ever.” Promises were made that were contingent on the support and participation of Locog’s 55 sponsors, but not everyone was willing to comply.

One of Locog’s sustainability pledges is that 70 percent of all waste will be recycled or composted. Coca-Cola has now partnered up with Sita UK to make Locog’s vision feasible. The beverage giant has promised to recycle all clear plastic PET bottles and intends on recycling the materials into 80,000 new Coke bottles. To do this, Coca-Cola will be joining forces with Eco Plastics and will open a new recycling plant in north Lincolnshire. Coca-Cola manager Jon Woods commented on Coke’s environmental initiatives, stating that they are the company’s “most sustainable sponsorship activation” thus far.

Meanwhile, London’s Tower Bridge will be undergoing some major changes. They’ve received final approval to renovate the lighting system into a greener, LED setup. The changes will be far more energy efficient, as energy consumption is expected to be reduced by up to 40 percent.

London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, says, “The spectacular view of Tower Bridge from my office in City Hall is one of my favourites in London, and it’s fantastic to now be able to crack on with this work to make it even better, brighter and greener and at no cost to the taxpayer.” Johnson continued, saying, “This city is going to be watched by the world next summer and this grand old lady of London, one of our best loved landmarks, is now set to play a sparkling role in the celebrations. But what’s more, this is another lasting legacy stemming from the Games which will benefit the city for decades.”

The Tower Bridge renovations will be made possible through Olympic sponsors EDF Energy and GE. Hopefully, more sponsors will step up to the plate by chipping in and making the necessary changes to ensure that the 2012 Olympics will be as green and eco-friendly as possible, so that the games can run as smoothly as a brand new garage door.

Join in the discussion in the comments below and/or share the piece.

“Seven episodes of the multi-million-pound nature documentary series will be aired in Britain. However, the series has been sold to 30 world TV networks as a package of only six episodes. These networks then have the option of buying the seventh “companion” episode — which explores the effect man is having on the natural world — as well as behind the scenes footage. The six-episode series has been sold to 30 broadcasters, ten of which have declined to use the climate change episode, “On Thin Ice”, including the US. In America, the series is being aired by the Discovery channel, which insists that the final episode has been dropped because of a “scheduling issue”.”

This is typical cowardly behavior by the BBC which has an appalling record of lying by omission and commission, most notoriously about the 12 million Muslim war-related deaths (about half of them children) in the 1990-2011 US Alliance War on Muslims (for details and documentation not reported by the holocaust-ignoring BBC see “Muslim Holocaust, Muslim Genocide“), noting that holocaust ignoring is far, far worse than repugnant holocaust denial because at least the latter admits the possibility of public discussion). This Mainstream media lying by omission has dire consequences – thus it has just been announced that 2,500 child-killing US Marines are to be stationed in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia where US lackey Apartheid Australia is remorselessly continuing a racist process of Aboriginal Ethnocide and Aboriginal Genocide.

What I suppose might well be covered in the “On Thin Ice” seventh episode of David Attenborough’s “Frozen Planet” series could be related to the 4 October 2011 press release from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSDIC) which includes a map showing the approximate halving of Arctic summer sea ice extent in recent decades and states:

“This September, sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean fell to the second-lowest extent in the satellite record, which began in 1979. Satellite data analyzed by NSIDC scientists showed that the sea ice cover narrowly avoided a new record low, while other data sources showed that ice extent matched or even fell below the record-setting low extent in 2007… NSIDC Director Mark Serreze said, “It looks like the spring ice cover is so thin now that large areas melt out in summer, even without persistent extreme weather patterns… The big summer ice loss this year is setting us up for another big melt year in 2012. We may be looking at an Arctic Ocean essentially free of summer ice only a few decades from now”.

The US, a major annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) polluter, has 4.4% of the world’s population, consumes 25% of its resources and is hell-bent on remorseless GHG pollution that is worsening a Climate Genocide that is set to kill 10 billion non-Europeans this century.

The Murdoch Media Empire is pretty bad when it comes to perversion of the truth, especially in relation to irresponsible and anti-social man-made climate change denialism (and hence “Boycott Murdoch Media“) but other media are heavily involved also. Thus in Australia, where Murdoch Media have 70% of the city newspaper readership, I understand that it is the major national TV channel Channel 9 (non-Murdoch) that has purchased “Frozen Planet” – but apparently only the first 6 episodes (e.g. see its promotion here).

This is yet another instance of the operation of what has been called Murdochracy (Big Money buys truth and votes) and Lobbyocracy (Big Money buys politicians and policy) in the Western democracies. In the West the 1% have substituted Murdochracy and Lobbyocracy for Democracy at the expense of the 99% and of rational risk management that is crucial for societal safety.

The WBGU that advises the German Government on climate change in 2009 estimated that for a 75% chance of avoiding a disastrous 2C temperature rise the world can emit no more than 600 billion tonnes of CO2 between 2010 and zero emissions in 2050. The climate criminal US is set to use up its “fair share” of this terminal global GHG pollution budget in about 2013. However it is estimated that Australia, an even worse per capita Greenhouse gas (GHG) polluter than the US, had already used up its “fair share” by mid-2011 and is now stealing the entitlement of wretchedly poor countries such as drought-devastated Somalia and inundation-threatened Bangladesh (see “Shocking analysis by country of years left to zero emissions“).

The climate criminality of the US and its lackey Australia are revealed by the following 2005-2008 data on “annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution” in units of “tonnes CO2-equivalent per person per year”: 0.9 (Bangladesh), 0.9 (Pakistan), 2.2 (India), less than 3 (many African and Island countries), 3.2 (the Developing World), 5.5 (China), 6.7 (the World), 11 (Europe), 16 (the Developed World), 27 (the US) and 30 (Australia; or 54 if Australia’s huge Exported CO2 pollution is included) (see “Climate Genocide”).

What can decent, pro-Planet people do in the face of media censorship in the face of a worsening climate emergency? Decent people can (a) inform everyone they can about the threat and the Mainstream media censorship and (b) urge sanctions and boycotts against all people, politicians, countries and corporations complicit in the worsening climate genocide.

Greenpeace UK’s executive director, John Sauven, said in a statement that the energy giant should now come clean about other suspected spying cases across Europe. “The company should now give a full account of the spying operation it mounted against its critics. As one of the six companies with a monopoly over electricity supply in this country and a major sponsor of the Olympics, EDF has a duty to come clean”, Sauven said.

The Guardian writes:

“EDF and Greenpeace have fought for years over France’s power production, more than three-quarters of it nuclear. According to confidential court testimony released by a French website, Mediapart, two years ago, EDF had organised surveillance not only of Greenpeace in France, but broadly across Europe since 2004.

In 2006, EDF hired a detective agency, Kargus Consultants, run by a former member of France’s secret services, to find out about Greenpeace France’s intentions and its plan to block new nuclear plants in the UK. The agency hacked the computer of Yannick Jadot, Greenpeace’s then campaigns director, taking 1,400 documents.”

Justin McKeating writes that this verdict shows that the nuclear industry cannot be trusted. “The history of nuclear power is littered with tales of dirty tricks, propaganda and deceit. EDF’s espionage is merely the latest example in a long line”.

The whole text is definitely worth a read, so be sure to read it. Here are some key quotes:

“The 99 per cent pay for wealth disparity with lost jobs, foreclosed homes, weakening pensions and slashed services, but Nature pays, too. In the world the one-percenters have created, the needs of whole ecosystems are as easy to disregard as, say, the need the young have for debt-free educations and meaningful jobs.

[…] Extreme disparity and deep inequality generate a double standard with profound consequences. If you are a CEO who skims millions of dollars off other people’s labour, it’s called a “bonus”. If you are a flood victim who breaks into a sporting goods store to grab a lifejacket, it’s called looting. If you lose your job and fall behind on your mortgage, you get evicted. If you are a banker-broker who designed flawed mortgages that caused a million people to lose their homes, you get a second-home vacation-mansion near a golf course.

If you drag heavy fishnets across the ocean floor and pulverise an entire ecosystem, ending thousands of years of dynamic evolution and depriving future generations of a healthy ocean, it’s called free enterprise. But if, like Tim DeChristopher, you disrupt an auction of public land to oil and gas companies, it’s called a crime and you get two years in jail.

[…] The same bottom-line quarterly-report fixation on profitability that accepts oil spills as inevitable also accepts unemployment as inevitable. Tearing apart wildlife habitat to make a profit and doing the same at a workplace are just considered the price of doing business. Clearcutting a forest and clearcutting a labor force are two sides of the same coin.

[…] The fundamental contradiction of our time is this: We have built an all-encompassing economic engine that requires unending growth. A contraction of even a per cent or two is a crisis, and yet we are embedded in ecosystems that are reaching or have reached their limits.

[…] Like so much else these days, the crash, as it happens, will not be suffered in equal measure by all of us. The one percenters will be atop the hill, while the 99 per cent will be in the flood lands below swimming for their lives, clinging to debris or drowning. The Great Recession has previewed just how that will work.
An unsustainable economy is inherently unfair and worse is to come. After all, the car is heading for the cliff’s edge, the grandkids are in the backseat, and all we’re arguing about is who can best put the pedal to the metal.

Another good read on the Occupy movement and the ecological crisis is this piece by Ian Angus and Simon Butler on Grist. They have a little different angle where they focus on our capitalistic system and overpopulation. “The capitalist system and the power of the 1%, not population size, are the root causes of today’s ecological crisis,” they write.

Groups such as the Chamber of Commerce support the pipeline because it would create a lot of jobs, thus stimulating the economy. According to TransCanada, a minimum of 20,000 jobs would be created through the building of the pipeline. These are jobs you can’t just bring out from behind your garage door. And there are a number of unions that are currently advocating the project such as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the International Union of Operating Engineers.

However, you would be hard-pressed to find an environmentalist who supports the pipeline project. The environmental concerns involve greenhouse gas emissions, damage to Alberta’s forests, the possibility of oil spills, and more.

Tiernan Sittenfeld is an important official in the League of Conservation Voters (LCV). According to Sittenfeld, the pipeline issue is a pivotal concern in the upcoming presidential election.

“This is not just about what LCV, which spent nearly $1 million to help elect Obama in 2008, or any other group that engages in electoral politics do in the upcoming election,” explained Sittenfeld. “It’s about people out there who care deeply about the environment, how much they volunteer, how many doors they knock on, how much money they contribute directly. We have LCV supporters who maxed out to the Obama campaign in 2008 who have told us they are not going to give this time around if the president approves this pipeline.”

Environmentalist Bill McKennan agrees with Sittenfeld and was among Friday’s crowd of pipe protestors. He declared, “I suppose you could look at our circle around the president as a kind of … symbolic house arrest.” McKennan continued, “We are very hopeful, indeed confident, that the president will do the right thing here.”