By Simon Leufstedt on February 13th, 2010
The 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen, which many have said was our last chance to take action against “the greatest threat the world has ever faced”, ended in a failure.
For over 15 years delegates and politicians from around the world have discussed, debated and negotiated the questions of dealing with manmade climate change in various COP (Conference of the Parties) summits. So why haven’t they made any real progress yet?
That is a big question that covers a whole range of topics and issues that I won’t go into. Instead I will try to focus on the actual politics and tactics used at the COP summits. I will try to see if uneven development and inequality plays any part in how the actual negotiations plays out, how the delegates attending perceive climate justice and fairness, and if all this combined somehow sabotages the efforts to secure a climate deal.
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By Dr Gideon Polya on July 15th, 2009
As evident from the failed G8 meeting at L’Aquila, Italy, the worst greenhouse gas polluters of the First World support cap-and –trade emissions trading scheme (ETS) approaches to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution despite contrary advice from top climate scientists and climate economists. In short, a Carbon Tax is the best way and Carbon Trading is flawed, will not work, is inequitable and will lead to a carbon pricing “bubble” and another market meltdown. Further, top climate scientists say that we must be urgently REDUCING GHG pollution rather than INCREASING it (see “300.org – return atmosphere CO2 to 300 ppm”).
Nevertheless, environmentalists and environmentalist groups are being seduced into supporting the Carbon Trading ETS approach e.g. that of Obama that is now before the US Senate and the disastrous, proposed, pro-coal Australian ETS . The weak argument they offer is that “something is better than nothing”.
The pro-coal, pro-war Rudd Labor Government of Australia was elected in November 2007 with promises to the electorate that it would stop Australia’s involvement in Occupied Iraq (18 months since the election, two thirds of Australian troops are still there and there has a big boost to Australian forces in Occupied Afghanistan) and that it would take strong action on man-made climate change (but its post-election actions have been largely confined to rhetoric and propaganda while Australia’s world-leading per capita Domestic and Exported greenhouse gas pollution continues unabated).
The Rudd Labor Government did sign up Australia to the Kyoto Protocol in 2007 (a decade late) but balanced this by helping the US sabotage the Bali Climate Conference by refusing to agree to definite targets. As a ploy to avoid having to do anything concrete to decrease Australia’s world-leading Domestic and Exported greenhouse gas pollution (54 tonnes per person per year as compared to a world average per capita GHG pollution of 6.7 tonnes per person per year), the Australian Government appointed an economist Professor Ross Garnaut to research climate change for about a year and then proceeded to propose a softened version of Professor Garnaut’s final recommendations.
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By Dr Gideon Polya on July 5th, 2009
A number of eminent scientists, economists and writers variously argue strongly FOR a global Carbon Tax that will directly put a price on greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution and enable urgently required rapid transformation to a non-carbon economy.
They variously argue AGAINST carbon pricing based on a Kyoto Protocol-based Cap-and Trade Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) of which the pro-coal Australian Government’s carbon pollution-increasing and misleadingly named Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) is a spectacularly flawed, irresponsible, anti-social, anti-humanity, anti-environment, anti-Planet and disastrous example.
Thus the pro-coal Australian ETS involves a rigged auction involving only major polluters and then extraordinarily hands most of the receipts back to the major polluters. The proposed Australian ETS is estimated to mean an increase in Australian domestic and exported greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution by 80% on 2000 levels by 2050 (see my letter in the leading Australian newspaper The Age, 14 June, 2009).
Well, we hear plenty from ignorant and dishonest politicians about their pet Cap-and-Trade Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). Indeed such a scheme is a key part of the Obama Administration Waxman-Markey energy, climate and cap-and-trade Bill that has just passed the US House of Representatives and now faces the US Senate.
But what do top climate scientists and climate economists say? Below are some key comments made by experts who press for a direct, global Carbon Tax rather than failed, worse than ineffective, dishonest, risky and market manipulatable Carbon Trading (for detailed, extensive and updated documentation of such views see the website of the Melbourne-based Yarra Valley Climate Action Group).
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By Simon Leufstedt on December 11th, 2008
George Monbiot talks with Yvo de Boer, the current Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in the first of a series of interviews from the Guardian. In the video you can, for example, see Yvo de Boer defend George Bush and expensive Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects.
In the first of a remarkable series of video interviews, Britain’s leading green commentator, George Monbiot, charges the UN’s leading climate change official with lacking ambition for a global emissions deal, and takes him to task over expensive carbon offset schemes and his support for the US president, George Bush. In the coming weeks, Monbiot takes on the bosses of Shell and the International Energy Agency and more.
Watch George Monbiot meets Yvo de Boer on the Guardian.
