Third, the global economy is driven by 'bubble' finance which militates against sustainability.

Finally, the global economy is driven by Cartesian Dualism, and 'autonomous individualism': what Professor Michael S. Northcott calls the 'mechanistic modelling of human behaviour'. [AA]

It's fortuitous that Nicholas Stern's article appeared on the same day as the BBC carried a report "Teenage pupils get class therapy".

This is described as a trial project involving 7,000 secondary school pupils deemed to be at high risk of depression:

The programme is based largely on cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) which aims to help people to pinpoint - and then change - thoughts and actions that cause emotional problems.    [BBC]

The likelihood that such problems will not be remediated by changing teenagers "thoughts and actions" seems not have occurred to those responsible for its inception.

Professor Gareth Williams' article in Medical Sociology - no longer available - presented a thorough investigation into the loss of meaning and self-respect experienced by older workers who were victims of the de-industrialisation policy of the 1980s.    [GW]

The likelihood that present-day teenagers are well aware of the limited - and unrewarding - choices awaiting them when they leave school, seems also to be outside the range of policy makers' understanding.

CBT is a therapy designed to persuade its clients to 'fit in', and is placed in its wider socio-economic context by David Smail's map of the wider forces giving rise to 'mental illness'. [DS]

Mental Illness_Cartesian Dualism

Oliver James

'Standortkonkurrenz'

The Problem of Moral Indifference

DR Congo   DR Congo   OpEdNews   Democracy Now   SpinWatch   Johann Hari_Congo

Oil rebels declare war in Nigeria     Militants attack Nigeria pipeline

Britain to train army in Nigeria to combat delta rebels

Nigeria's Blood Oil     Guardian_Nigeria

Not carbon offsets, but carbon upsets

Cap-and-trade has had the perverse effect of subsidising politically dominant industries. We should try something else ...

In theory, carbon offsets are a way to lower the cost of emissions reductions.

Credits are awarded when a project is less greenhouse gas-intensive than it would have been in the usual course.

These credits can then be sold to polluters and used to satisfy their emissions reduction obligations which would have been more expensive to undertake directly.

In practice critics have pointed to numerous problems with offsets.

Most fundamentally, they fail to incentivise the kind of structural transformation toward a low-carbon future that we desperately need.

Here's where "carbon upsets" come in: Rather than award credits based on development that moves us toward a cleaner but still very dirty future, why not award credits to legal and political actions that have more dramatic impact?

For instance, rather than bribe fossil fuel companies to stop flaring natural gas, why not reward indigenous groups that entirely block new exploration activities?

Rather than transfer money to logging operations for incremental replanting programs, why not award credits to forest-dwelling communities that successfully fight to stop logging altogether? ...

Guardian  29 Aug 2010    Is the coalition eco-friendly?

Housebuilders to win reduced carbon target

Are carbon offsetters taking us for a ride?

Carbon offset projects

Rich countries accused of carbon 'cheating'

"These are double standards that make us question the legitimacy of the whole process," added Kevin Conrad, lead negotiator for Papua New Guinea and chairman of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations.

"If rich states tell us we have to adopt robust standards (for REDD) and then use forestry as their biggest get-out clause - it's double standards, it's climate fraud."

Diplomats from developing countries have also criticised the proposals, which are under discussion during a fortnight of talks in Bonn under the UN climate convention (UNFCCC).

Some have suggested that rich countries would operate their forestry sectors under looser accounting rules than developing nations would face under the REDD mechanism (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) ...

Some rich countries are seeking new rules under the UN climate convention, which campaigners say would allow them to gain credit for "business as usual".

BBC NEWS  11 June 2010        

After decades of clocking off, can the UK's factory gates open again?

On the global stage, the UK remains the world's sixth biggest manufacturer and is home to world renowned businesses such as Rolls-Royce and JCB.

But it has also lost some big names to overseas predators – most recently the Birmingham-based chocolate-maker, Cadbury – something that reverberates right along such companies' supply chains. It is a trend that is all too familiar to Warwickshire industrial estate owner Bruce Undy.

"We have seen a dramatic reduction in large companies that smaller companies supplied, either directly or indirectly," says Undy, who is regional chairman for the Federation of Small Businesses in Warwickshire and Coventry ...

Another hurdle facing the manufacturing sector is that of depleting skills. Digby Jones, former head of business group CBI, saw many experienced UK workers laid off during the recession and believes they will be hard to win back. Nor is there much new talent emerging to replace those lost workers, he argues ...

In the West Midlands the skills shortage has been particularly debilitating. A recent report compiled with the help of regional development agency Advantage West Midlands highlighted a link between the regional unemployment rate of 27.5% in 2007 – higher than the national average – and the fact that nearly 18% of people of working age have no formal qualifications ...

Observer  11 Apr 2010

Heavy industry claims carbon emission targets are 'death by a thousand cuts'

In the next month, the European commission will decide how industry will meet tough new targets for the third phase of the EU emissions trading scheme, which begins in 2012. The scheme sets a cap on companies' emissions by issuing permits to pollute and imposes a penalty if they exceed this.

Under the scheme, which runs until 2020, the cap is tightened each year. The EU wants the scheme to achieve its targets of reducing Europe's emissions by a fifth in 2020 compared with 2005 levels. But industry fears the extra costs will put them at a disadvantage against rivals outside the EU ...

Observer  11 Apr 2010    Rebalancing the Economy

Manufacturing sector

Officers from HM Revenue & Customs searched both residential properties and offices in both Gravesend and London targeting an alleged network of organised crime.

Members are believed to have been trading large volumes of high-value carbon credits from overseas sources free of VAT.

Tax investigators believe these may then have been sold on to businesses in the UK charging VAT that is never paid to the authorities.

Officers said further arrests are likely, adding that the proceeds of this alleged crime have been "used to finance lavish lifestyles and the purchase of prestige vehicles".

The Treasury removed VAT from carbon credits on July 31 as a temporary measure until the European Union works out a common policy to tackle fraudsters ...

Telegraph  19 August 2009

The Kyoto process has failed to deliver meaningful reductions in emissions and the Copenhagen climate meeting is doomed to failure.

The only solution is to abandon the cap-and-trade approach, re-frame climate change as an energy issue rather than a "green" issue, and persuade governments to invest massively in clean technology to provide increasing energy in a way that protects the climate.

That is the thesis of Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, who founded the Breakthrough Institute in California to smash the jam on the climate and energy debate ...

Shellenberger and Nordhaus' figures suggest that when you take into account the differing economic growth rates between the US and Europe, the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) has brought barely any emissions cuts ...

They believe that cap-and-trade will never produce the desired results. Its energies are subverted by the sort of political manoeuvring which is hampering the Waxman-Markey Bill.

It is the best-established industries with the biggest voices inside government which benefit most, whilst investment in cutting-edge technologies which might provide our future clean energy continues to be starved ...

BBC  05 August 2009

Fifty years ago, political scientist Harold Lasswell explained that some policies are all about symbolism, with little or no impact on real-world outcomes. He called such actions "magical solutions," explaining that "political symbolization has its catharsis functions."

Climate policy is going through exactly such a phase, in which a focus on magical solutions leaves little room for the practical ...

What is missing from the debate over targets and timetables is any conception of the realism of such proposals. If a proposal is not realistic, it is not really a policy proposal but an exercise in symbolism, a "magical solution."

Symbolism is of course an essential part of politics, but when it becomes detached from reality — or even worse, used to exclude consideration of realistic proposals — the inevitable outcome is that policies will likely fail to achieve the promised ends.

This outcome is highly problematic for those who actually care about the substance of climate policy proposals.

The U.K. targets are a perfect example of what happens when symbols become disconnected from reality. To achieve a 34 percent reduction from 1990 emissions by 2022 while maintaining modest economic growth would require that the U.K. decarbonize its economy to the level of France by about 2016.

In more concrete terms, Britain would have to achieve the equivalent of deploying about 30 new nuclear power plants in the next six years, just to get part way to its target. One does not need a degree in nuclear physics to conclude that is just not going to happen.

Colin Challen, Member of Parliament (Labour) and chairman of its All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group, has concluded that the U.K. targets are "well beyond our current political capacity to deliver." ...

For climate policy to actually succeed in reducing emissions, it must move beyond "magical solutions" to those that actually work. This means closing the large gap between aspirational goals and actual policy implementation ...

Guardian  31 July 2009

The system of trading carbon emissions at the heart of the ambitious low-carbon plan announced by the government last week is seriously flawed and close to becoming irrelevant, according to researchers behind a new analysis.

So-called "hot air" carbon credits – those which do not result in any actual emissions cuts – could be so numerous that companies covered by the EU Emissions Trading Scheme would not have to make any cuts to their own emissions until 2015, says the report from climate campaign group, Sandbag. The hot air permits result from the over-allocation of emissions allowances and from those going unused as the recession cuts economic activity.

The ETS covers 50% of the UK and EU's carbon emissions, mainly in the energy, cement, steel, glass and manufacturing sectors. Companies in these sectors are allocated allowances for the carbon they emit, with the total number shrinking over time, theoretically forcing companies to buy additional permits to pollute if they do not cut their emissions.

A large proportion of the UK's promised cut of 34% by 2020 will come via British companies in the ETS. Globally, the carbon trading market was worth €92bn (£79bn) in 2008, trading 5bn tonnes ...

"With too many rights to pollute in circulation, the scheme is in danger of being rendered irrelevant," said Sandbag founder, Bryony Worthington. "At a time when other countries are looking to set up their own trading schemes and the world is set to debate a global deal on how to tackle climate change, [this] flagship policy urgently needs rescuing – starting with much tougher caps." ...

The potential hot air credits identified by Sandbag include 400m tonnes which industry will not need in the current 2008-12 ETS trading period. These could be sold as windfall profits, raising £5bn at current prices, or banked for the next period, depressing the future price. A further 300m ETS permits exist in a reserve, which supplies them to newly formed businesses. Lastly, companies have the option to offset their emissions by buying credits from outside the EU, usually from hydroelectric or other schemes in China and India. On current trends 900m of these could be available up to 2012, and bankable for use up to 2020.

The non-EU credits come mainly from the UN's clean development mechanism, which is widely acknowledged to be flawed. It includes many projects that would have happened without CDM funding, meaning the carbon reductions are not true cuts. Campaigners also argue it allows rich nations a "get out of jail free card", when they should be making cuts in their own countries.

"Concern remains about the extent to which British companies can purchase credits overseas instead of cutting emissions at home," said Yeo. Sandbag estimates the British companies could spend up to £1.7bn overseas on credits by 2012 ...

Guardian  20 July 2009

ETS S.O.S.

... it is widely acknowledged that the complexity of the Waxman-Markey Bill coupled with cap-and-trade policies have created a truckload of political pork which is being fought over by fossil fuel industries who are running a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign.

President Obama hoped to raise billions of dollars by auctioning pollution permits, having witnessed European utilities make windfall profits by charging customers for pollution permits that they had been given free of charge ...

BBC NEWS 02 June 2009    Climate Progress     treehugger

A vital meeting in Copenhagen this weekend that will help shape the agenda for the most important climate change talks since the Kyoto protocol has been hijacked by some of the biggest polluters in the world, critics claimed today.

Among those attending the World ­Business Summit on Climate Change is Shell, which has just been named by environmentalists on the basis of new research as "the most carbon-intensive oil company in the world".

There is concern that the big energy companies will be pushing carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a way of keeping the oil-based economy running.

At the meeting yesterday, the United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, and Nobel prize winner Al Gore urged more than 500 business leaders – including the chief executives of PepsiCo, Nestlé and BP – to lend their corporate muscle to reaching a global deal on reducing greenhouse gases ...

"The Danish government appears to be under the impression that some of the world's most polluting companies are going to put forward tough measures to tackle climate change," said Kenneth Haar, a researcher with CEO.

"But unfortunately this doesn't seem likely to be the case. The majority of the corporations attending the World Business Summit on Climate Change seem more intent on pursuing business as usual – with the promise that future technologies will resolve the problem at a later date.

"Corporate lobbyists have been trying to influence the UN climate talks from the start. But now they are being invited to set the agenda before the negotiators have even sat down. If their demands are listened to, we might as well give up the fight against climate change now."

Six of the companies involved in the summit have been nominated for Climate Greenwash Awards because of their failure to live up to their PR spin on tackling climate change ...

... a report, Irresponsible Energy, produced by Greenpeace and others, concludes: "Using ever greater quantities of energy to produce billions of barrels of otherwise inaccessible oil appears to be a strategy for disaster. It appears, however, Shell's strategy."

In his address yesterday, Ban said: "Continuing to pour trillions of dollars into fossil-fuel subsidies is like investing in sub-prime real estate. Our carbon-based infrastructure is like a toxic asset that threatens the portfolio of global goods, from public health to food security." ...

Guardian 24 May 2009

Big Oil Warms to Ethanol

As Congress weighs imposing a mandatory limit on climate-altering gases — an outcome still far from certain — it is likely to turn to a system that sets a government ceiling on total emissions and allows polluting industries to buy and sell permits to meet it ...

How did cap and trade, hatched as an academic theory in obscure economic journals half a century ago, become the policy of choice in the debate over how to slow the heating of the planet? And how did it come to eclipse the idea of simply slapping a tax on energy consumption that befouls the public square or leaves the nation hostage to foreign oil producers?

Cap and trade ... is almost perfectly designed for the buying and selling of political support through the granting of valuable emissions permits to favor specific industries and even specific Congressional districts. That is precisely what is taking place now in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has used such concessions to patch together a Democratic majority to pass a far-reaching bill to regulate carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade plan ...

NYT 16 May 2009

Carbon trading, its backers claim, brings emissions reductions and supports sustainable development in the global south. But, argues Kevin Smith, it may do neither, and is harming efforts to create a low-carbon economy ...

The free-market logic behind the scheme looks simple on paper. Countries taking part in ‘cap and trade’ schemes like the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) have a limit set on the amount of carbon they can emit in a given time period (the ‘cap’). This allotted amount of carbon is carved up and allocated between different industrial locations in the country. If, for example, a cement factory goes over its allocated portion of carbon emissions, it has to purchase spare emissions from another market participant, for example, a power station that has emitted less than its allocation, and can therefore profitably sell them on (the ‘trade’).

The problem lies in the fact that carbon trading is designed with the express purpose of providing an opportunity for rich countries to delay making costly, structural changes towards low-carbon technologies. This isn’t a malfunction of the market or an unexpected by-product: this is what the market was designed to do. The economist John Kay wrote in the Financial Times: ‘when a market is created through political action rather than emerging spontaneously from the needs of buyers and sellers, business will seek to influence market design for commercial advantage.’ In terms of climate change and carbon trading, the ‘commercial advantage’ (at least in the short term) lies in avoiding the costly structural changes, and industry has influenced every stage of the design and implementation of the carbon market to this end.

Businesses and industries in the global north have avoided making these infrastructural changes by ensuring that the price of carbon permits is kept absurdly low. It is much cheaper for industry to purchase cheap carbon credits to make up any emissions short-falls than to implement the technologies that would actually bring about real emissions reductions at the source ..

.

The Ecologist 10 March 2007

Since my colleagues and I published the Stern Review on the economics of climate change in 2006, it has become apparent that the risks and potential costs are even greater than we originally recognised.

Global emissions of greenhouse gases are growing more quickly than projected, the ability of the planet to absorb those gases now appears lower than was assumed, the potential increases in temperatures due to rising gas concentrations seem higher, and the physical impacts of a warming planet are appearing at a faster rate than expected.

So, whereas our review recommended that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases should be stabilised within a range of 450 to 550 parts per million of carbon dioxide-equivalent, it now seems that our target should not exceed 500 ppm ...

This means that annual global emissions must peak within the next 15 years before falling to half their 1990 level by 2050.

Beyond that, we will need to limit human additions to atmospheric greenhouse gases to under 10 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent per year, compared with the current 45 gigatonnes ...

The key to these major reductions in emissions - whilst maintaining development and growth - is the rapid dissemination and use of low-carbon technologies ...

First, action is needed to further spread existing low-carbon technologies, such as "green" household appliances. This can be done by creating carbon markets in which the price of emitting carbon reflects the potential impact of those emissions, and by introducing energy-efficiency standards to incentivise innovation, for example.

Second, we need more support for the development and scaling-up of technologies that could become commercially viable within the next 15 years, such as second-generation biofuels - which do not directly affect food production - and carbon capture and storage.

CCS is crucial for countries with fast-expanding economies, such as India and China, which currently rely on coal-fired power stations for growth. We need about 30 CCS demonstration projects, on a commercial scale, carried out in developed and developing countries over the next 10 years. This technology needs to spread through international and public-private collaborations.

Third, more effort is required to stimulate new breakthrough technologies that will lead to major cuts in emissions beyond 2030. A well-functioning global carbon market would drive these, but public funding for energy research and development should be doubled now from its present global level of about $10 billion per year, with a medium-term target of around 0.1 per cent of world GDP, or about $50 billion per year ...

In the long term, investments in low-carbon technologies could provide sustainable and well-founded economic growth, in contrast to the recent booms, and eventual busts, driven by flaky dotcom ventures or inflated house prices.

Continued unchecked, emissions and high-carbon growth are not sustainable. In 2009, we have a real chance to set a path towards a low-carbon future. It is the only realistic future for growth and for overcoming world poverty.

Nicholas Stern 21 January 2009

One last chance to save mankind

The planet is now so vandalised ...

Winhill Nov 25 08, 2:34am The first step is to get rid of the crazy carbon trading paradigm. It has completely taken over and has now become one of the biggest obstacles in the way of progress on this.

The man who came up with pollution trading was the same man who came up with one of the main financial instruments that are believed to be behind the financial crisis (his name is Richard Sandor). Coincidence? They are startlingly similar ideas. Look where the first one got us.

The public and even you George don't seem to be aware of the full degree of what has happenned - not just the policy but the whole debate has been hijacked. Everything that is proposed is based on 'market based mechanisms' which nearly all the evidence suggests simply do not work, besides their other problems.

If you do not support them you are just not allowed at the discussion table.

Sorry not much hope there.

Guardian 25 November 2008

Save the Planet!

World Carbon Standards to Relax

SourceWatch

Carbon Credit Commerce

Free Market, Cleaner Air

Economist Strikes Gold In Climate-Change Fight

Richard Sandor "The Carbon King" strikes gold

Heroes of the Environment

Profile

Tony Blair said the Stern Review showed that scientific evidence of global warming was "overwhelming" and its consequences "disastrous" ...

[He] said the consequences for the planet of inaction were "literally disastrous".

"This disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future many years ahead, but in our lifetime," he said.

"Investment now will pay us back many times in the future, not just environmentally but economically as well."

"For every £1 invested now we can save £5, or possibly more, by acting now.

"We can't wait the five years it took to negotiate Kyoto - we simply don't have the time. We accept we have to go further (than Kyoto)." ...

BBC NEWS 31 October 2006

Wikipedia

At-a-glance: The Stern Review

Nicholas Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford