Bali | ukwatch.net

We've been suckered again by the US. So far the Bali deal is worse than Kyoto

JamieSW — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:38:44 +0000

“After eleven days of negotiations, governments have come up with a compromise deal that could … even lead to emission increases. … The highly compromised political deal … is largely attributable to the position of the United States which was heavily influenced by fossil fuel and automobile industry interests. The failure to reach agreement led to the talks spilling over into an all night session …”(1)

These are extracts from a press release by Friends of the Earth. So what? Well it was published on December 11th – I mean to say, December 11th 1997. The US had just put a wrecking ball through the Kyoto Protocol. George W Bush was innocent; he was busy executing prisoners in Texas. Its climate negotiators were led by Albert Arnold Gore.

The European Union had asked for greenhouse gas cuts of 15% by 2010. Gore’s team drove them down to 5.2% by 2012. Then it did something worse: it destroyed the whole agreement.

Most of the other governments insisted that the cuts be made at home. But Gore demanded a series of loopholes big enough to drive a Hummer through. The rich nations, he said, should be allowed to buy their cuts from other countries(2). When he won, the protocol created an exuberant global market in fake emissions cuts. The western nations could buy “hot air” from the former Soviet Union. Because the cuts were made against emissions in 1990, and because industry in that bloc had subsequently collapsed, the FSU countries would pass well below the bar. Gore’s scam allowed them to sell the gases they weren’t producing to other nations. He also insisted that rich nations could buy nominal cuts from poor ones. Factories in India and China have made billions by raising their production of potent greenhouse gases, so that carbon traders in the rich world will pay to clean them up(3).

The result of this sabotage is that the market for low carbon technologies has remained moribund. Without an assured high value for carbon cuts, without any certainty that government policies will be sustained, companies have continued to invest in the safe commercial prospects offered by fossil fuels rather than gamble on a market without an obvious floor.

By ensuring that the rich nations would not make real cuts, Gore also guaranteed that the poor ones scoffed when we asked them to do as we don’t. When George Bush announced, in 2001, that he would not ratify the protocol, the world cursed and stamped its feet. But his intransigence affected only the United States. Gore’s team ruined it for everyone.

The destructive power of the US delegation is not the only thing that hasn’t changed. After the Kyoto Protocol was agreed, the British environment secretary, John Prescott, announced that “this is a truly historic deal which will help curb the problems of climate change. For the first time it commits developed countries to make legally binding cuts in their emissions.”(4) Ten years later the current environment secretary, Hilary Benn, told us that “this is an historic breakthrough and a huge step forward. For the first time ever all the world’s nations have agreed to negotiate on a deal to tackle dangerous climate change.”(5) Do these people have a chip inserted?

In both cases the United States demanded terms which appeared impossible for the other nations to accept. Before Kyoto, the other negotiators flatly rejected Gore’s proposals for emissions trading. So his team threatened to sink the talks. The other nations capitulated, but the US still held out on technicalities until the very last moment, when it suddenly appeared to concede. In 1997 and in 2007 it got the best of both worlds: it wrecked the treaty and was praised for saving it.

Hilary Benn is an idiot. Our diplomats are suckers. United States negotiators have pulled the same trick twice and for the second time our governments have fallen for it.

There are still two years to go, but so far the new agreement is even worse than the Kyoto Protocol. It contains no targets and no dates. A new set of guidelines also agreed at Bali extend and strengthen the worst of Al Gore’s trading scams, the clean development mechanism(6). Benn and the other dupes are cheering and waving their hats as the train leaves the station at last, having failed to notice that it is travelling in the wrong direction.

Though Gore does a better job of governing now that he is out of office, he was no George Bush. He wanted a strong, binding and meaningful protocol, but US politics had made it impossible. In July 1997 the Senate had voted 95-0 to sink any treaty which failed to treat developing countries in the same way as it treated the rich ones(7). Though they knew this was impossible for developing countries to accept, all the Democrats lined up with all the Republicans. The Clinton administration had proposed a compromise: instead of binding commitments for the developing nations, Gore would demand emissions trading(8). But even when he succeeded he announced that “we will not submit this agreement for ratification [in the Senate] until key developing nations participate”(9). Clinton could thus avoid an unwinnable war.

So why, regardless of the character of its leaders, does the United States act this way? Because, like several other modern democracies, it is subject to two great corrupting forces. I have written before about the role of the corporate media (particularly in the US) in downplaying the threat of climate change and demonising anyone who tries to address it(10). I won’t bore you with it again, except to remark that at 3pm eastern standard time on Saturday there were 20 news items on the front page of the Fox News website. The climate deal came 20th, after “Bikini-wearing stewardesses sell calendar for charity” and “Florida store sells ‘Santa Hates You’ T-shirt”(11).

Let us consider instead the other great source of corruption: campaign finance. The Senate rejects effective action on climate change because its members are bought and bound by the companies which stand to lose. When you study the tables showing who gives what to whom, you are struck by two things(12).

One is the quantity. Since 1990, the energy and natural resources sector (mostly coal, oil, gas and electricity) has given $418m to federal politicians in the US(13). Transport companies have given $355m(14). The other is the width: the undiscriminating nature of this munificence. The big polluters favour the Republicans, but most of them also fund Democrats. During the 2000 presidential campaign, oil and gas companies lavished money on George Bush, but they also gave Al Gore $142,000(15), while transport companies gave him $347,000(16). The whole US political system is in hock to people who put their profits ahead of the biosphere.

So don’t believe all this nonsense about waiting for the next president to sort it out. This is a much bigger problem than George W Bush. Yes, he is viscerally opposed to tackling climate change. But viscera don’t have much to do with it. Until the American people confront their political funding system, their politicians will keep speaking from the pocket, not the gut.

References:

1. Friends of the Earth UK, 11th December 1997. Kyoto Deal Will Not Stop Global warming. Press release.

2. Through Emissions Trading, Joint Implementation and the Clean Development Mechanism.

3. See Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, September 2006. Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power. Development Dialogue 2006, no 48. http://www.dhf.uu.se/pdffiler/DD2006_48_carbon_trading/carbon_trading_we…

And:

Michael Wara, 8th February 2007. Is the global carbon market working? Nature vol 445. p 595.

4. Department of the Environment, Transport & The Regions, 11th December 1997. Historic Agreement Reached In Kyoto On Climate Change. Press release 509/Environment.

5. No author, 15th December 2007. Deal agreed in Bali climate talks.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/dec/15/bali.climatechange4

6. United Nations Climate Change Conference, 15th December 2007. Decision -/CMP.3
Further guidance relating to the clean development mechanism.
http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/cop_13/application/pdf/cmp_guid_cdm.pdf

7. You can read the Byrd-Hagel Resolution at http://www.nationalcenter.org/KyotoSenate.html

8. You can see how these two issues were played against each other in this statement by the Senate Republican Policy Committee: http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/ENVIROmw102197.pdf

9. CNN, 11th December 2007. Clinton Hails Global Warming Pact. http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/12/11/kyoto/

10. See in particular George Monbiot, 2007. Heat: how to stop the planet burning. Chapter 2. Penguin, London.

11. http://www.foxnews.com/, viewed at 8.21pm UK time, 15th December 2007. Updated on the hour.

12. http://www.opensecrets.org/ gives an almost-comprehensive account.

13. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.asp?Ind=E

14. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.asp?Ind=M

15. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.asp?Ind=E01&Cycle=2000&reci…

16. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.asp?Ind=M&Cycle=2000&recipd…

Stop Taking It Out of the Ground

Ellie Keen — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:56:48 +0000

About ten thousand delegates from more than 180 nations are meeting in Bali to attempt to extend the Kyoto Protocol Global Warming Pact beyond 2012. Opposition from the United States, Canada, and Japan is likely to stand in the way of any attempts to include emission reduction targets in a “road map” for future global warming talks. The US said a proposal for wealthy nations to reduce emissions by 25-40% by 2020, was “totally unrealistic” and “unhelpful”. Meanwhile climate change activists in cities around the world held rallies and demonstrations on Saturday December 8th to urge leaders at the Bali conference to take action against global warming.

George Monbiot is a columnist for the Guardian newspaper and author “Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning.” In Heat, Monbiot advocates a goal of ninety percent reduction in carbon emissions by the year 2030 in order to save the planet.

Kolhatkar: Is it true that even the most drastic cuts being recommended at the table in Bali are not realistic, not based on current science and just not going to be good enough to save the planet?

Monbiot: That’s right. If you look at the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it shows that if we’re going to avoid 2 degrees Celsius, that’s 3.6 degrees Farenheit of warming, above pre-industrial levels – and that’s really the critical cutoff point; we have to avoid that level of warming – then we need a global cut of 85% of carbon emissions by 2050. Now, a global cut of 85% means that in the rich nations the cut has to be a lot higher if it’s going to be distributed equally, if everybody’s going to produce the same amount of carbon dioxide. And that means that in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, we’re talking about the high 90s. My calculation suggests 98.3% in the U.S. corresponds to an 85% cut worldwide. So, we’re really talking about a complete de-carbonization of the global economy if we’re to have a high chance of preventing 2 degrees Celsius of warming.

Kolhatkar: Why is it that even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is looking at science that seems to be out of date?

Monbiot: One of the really frightening things that we’re discovering about climate change is that the events are overtaking the science and as quickly as people can research the events, the events move on. For example at the moment, we have a rate of growth in carbon emissions which outstrips even the IPCC’s worst case scenario. So, when the panel says we’ve got this very high case where there would be a great deal of emissions – and we call that the A1F1 case – we’re actually finding that right now it’s worse than that.

But we’re also seeing that there are various effects called “feedbacks” which the panel hasn’t yet taken into account – it intends to do so in the future – but they greatly accelerate climate change. A positive feedback is a process that accelerates itself and there are several of these which take place as far as climate change is concerned. For example, when the oceans get warmer, less carbon dioxide can be absorbed in the water. It’s just like a bottle of Coca-Cola – as you warm it up, the carbon dioxide outgasses because it’s a simple physical property of water that it can hold less gas when it warms up. As that takes place, that carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere and makes the oceans even warmer and so less carbon dioxide is absorbed by them and thus the process goes on. It’s these feedbacks that the IPCC admits have not yet been taken into account when calculating the necessary cut. Taken into account, the cut could be even worse.

Kolhatkar: Given the real numbers, the Kyoto Protocol and its call for cuts of about 5% of carbon emissions below 1990 levels in the next 5 years, sound ludicrous now.

Monbiot: It’s a complete joke, to be honest. And, not only are the numbers completely out of scale by more than an order of magnitude with the necessary cut, but not even that cut is being achieved! Not even the 5% is being achieved! The Kyoto Protocol has failed. And, I hate to say this but it’s failed because primarily of the position taken by the U.S. delegation during the negotiations in 1997. And, I hate to say this even more but that delegation was led by Al Gore. And what Gore negotiated was the institutional failure of the Kyoto Protocol. And he undermined it primarily by creating some different standards for different nations. He was talking about the U.S. making a cut against what it would otherwise have produced, rather than a cut from the carbon levels which were already taking place, which is a whole different ballgame. And he also said there’s got to be emissions trading – we’ve got to be able to buy cuts from other nations and that’s been incredibly destructive to the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol.

Kolhatkar: And, ironically this week Al Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize along with the IPCC. Gore is in Bali right now taking what seems to be a different position than 1997. Is he actually backing the science that you quote or are his numbers also an underestimate?

Monbiot: They’re still too low but there’s no question that Al Gore, in common with almost every other leader, makes an awful lot better job of governance when he’s out of office. Just like Clinton, just like Tony Blair on this other side of the Atlantic – they say all the right things when they can no longer influence the outcome. And, I’m sorry if I sound cynical, you know. I don’t mean to pour cold water on his prize and all the rest of it. I think he’s done some great stuff since he’s been out of office but I also want people to remember what happened when he was in office and he sunk the Kyoto Protocol.

Kolhatkar: What do you think about the discussions between finance ministers during this Bali Climate Conference to have an exchange of green technology and a trade in green goods? Developing nations are calling on rich nations to share the technology that they say they require in order to cut carbon emissions.

Monbiot: Well, fine, but I’ve had a horrible revelation over the past few days and it’s something which has gradually been building up in my consciousness and it suddenly hit home as I researched the figures, which is that while there are plenty of schemes for sharing technologies and for introducing alternative technologies and, indeed, for encouraging consumers to reduce their demand for fossil fuels and all the rest of it, as far as I can discover, nowhere on earth, in no nation is there a scheme for reducing the supply of fossil fuels. You can say what you like about demand but if you’re still digging the stuff out of the ground – the coal and the oil and the gas – it’s going to get burned! There’s no other reason it’s taken out of the ground. They don’t get it out of the ground as a hobby. It’s going to get burned!

Kolhatkar: Now, aren’t we to assume that the supply will simply follow the demand?

Monbiot: Well, the demand will follow the supply if the supply is there, because we will use what energy is available to us. But, unless you have a plan for reducing supply, your plans for reducing demands are a complete waste of time. They’re just not going to materialize.

Kolhatkar: What about the assertion by the United States and other nations that global warming reduction has to be somehow consistent with their national economies? This is the main U.S, line, that the reason they won’t accept these cuts is that it would impact the economy of the U.S.

Monbiot: Let’s look at the big picture here. At current rates of growth, roughly 3% of the global level, the size of the economy doubles every 23 years. It’s an exponential function and this means that in the 92 years between now and the end of the century, it increases by 16 times the level of economic activity. Now, a very interesting series of equations published recently on this side of the Atlantic prove that that level of economic activity effectively equates into resource use. And, that a doubling in the level of activity doubles the amount of resources that human beings have ever used. What that means is that in the next 23 years between now and 2030, we will use as many economic resources as humanity has used since it first stood on two legs – over 3 million years or so. And this is simply unsustainable! We cannot sustain that rate of growth. Even 3% is way beyond the levels of sustainability. By the end of the century, we will have used 16 times the resources that humanity has used since it first stood on two legs. There is not 16 times that level of resources on earth. They do not exist. Far from allowing the rates of economic growth to dominate our policy on climate change, our policy on climate change should dominate rates of economic growth.

Kolhatkar: What about the United States saying that it would come up with its own plan to cut global warming gasses by mid-2008? Any ideas on what that might look like?

Monbiot: Yes, I have a pretty good idea of what it would look like. It will be entirely voluntary. It would probably have to do with the carbon intensity of the economy. This is the formula that George Bush keeps using which is that we will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced per unit of economic productivity rather than reduce it in absolute terms (which is what we need to do), and it will be completely useless. The only way we’re going to crack this problem is through international agreement and everybody setting the same standards for themselves. So, in other words, a binding international agreement.

Kolhatkar: This past Saturday was declared a global day of action on climate change and there were rallies and demonstrations in cities around the world. Do you feel that that sort of protest is increasing in intensity fast enough?

Monbiot: No, not fast enough. And, by itself, it doesn’t go far enough. A group of us preceded that protest on Wednesday when we went down to a large open-cast coal mine which is being built here in South Wales. We occupied that mine and we sat on the excavating equipment and we stopped it from operating for the day. And that’s what I want to see a lot more of. This is the only way in which we’re really going to register our protest is to get in front of the mining equipment and to stop this fossil fuel from being extracted. Unless we do so, we are doomed to runaway climate change. We cannot prevent it without stopping that fossil fuel from coming out of the ground. Some of us are now prepared to risk arrest and imprisonment in order to do that. It’s got to that level of desperation and a group of us decided that we’re going to keep doing this until we can no longer do it, in other words, probably until we’re all in prison.

Kolhatkar: Is this an organized group or is it just individuals?

Monbiot: No, it’s self-organized. In this case, we simply put out a call – this is where we’re going to be, this is what we’re going to do, here’s the date – and anyone can set up their own group amongst people they trust and come down and join us. And, it worked very well and that’s what we want to see a lot more of.

Kolhatkar: Here in the United States, there were demonstrations but they were not very widely reported. It was not something that necessarily distracted most Americans from their holiday shopping. But based on what you and most other people paying attention to the environment say, it’s really here in the United States that there needs to be the most action.

Monbiot: Yes, it really is. And the U.S. sets the pace for everybody else. It’s also the case that the United States is the place where things happen. When you want something to happen, and when the government in the U.S. is prepared to allow it to happen, it can happen very, very quickly there because you remain the technological and the economic powerhouse. You remain the place where things can switch.

We saw this most clearly when the United States entered the 2nd World War. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, there was this extraordinary economic and technological transformation which took place not within decades, not within years, not within months, within days! It was quite phenomenal! Now, this is what won the war for the allied cause. It was the turnaround in the United States. And, we saw for example, a largely civilian economy switched over to a military economy within 90 days. The whole process really took place within 90 days. General Motors, which never looked at a piece of military technology before then, suddenly became a military technology company. It turned out a fighter bomber within 90 days of having been given the instructions to do so. It designed, it prototyped, it tested and then it was working at full commercial operation turning out fighter bombers. Now, that was in 1942. This was in the days before just in time production and modular delivery and all the rest of it. This was in the days when industry and manufacturing was quite primitive compared to today. We could turn the whole global economy around within a month if we wanted to now. All that is lacking is the political will.

Kolhatkar: In this final week of the Bali Climate Conference, if most nations who are attending, minus, of course, the U.S. and perhaps Canada and Japan, do turn out a document that has more drastic cuts than the Kyoto Protocol, even if it is not going to save the planet, I’m assuming you’ll think that it’s a step in the right direction? Are you hopeful, at least, that the people are coming together at such a large scale to discuss this issue on an international level?

Monbiot: Well, I suppose it’s what Gramsci says: it’s the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will. I keep hoping but I’m not hearing the right signals coming from governments at the moment and I’m hearing an awful lot of “greenwash”, an awful lot of discussion aimed at assuaging public opinion, but very little aimed at actually dealing with the problem. By greenwash, I mean environmental whitewash. That’s a term used to denote an impression of action without creating any action and so far that’s all we have seen from these negotiations and it needs to go a heck of a lot further and faster than that.

This interview aired on Monday December 10th on Uprising, uprisingradio. Special thanks to Julie Svendsen for transcribing the interview. Uprising is hosted and produced by Sonali Kolhatkar. Assistant Producer is Gabriel San Roman.

Rigged

JamieSW — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:22:38 +0000

Ladies and gentlemen, I have the answer! Incredible as it might seem, I have stumbled across the single technology which will save us from runaway climate change! From the goodness of my heart I offer it to you for free. No patents, no small print, no hidden clauses. Already this technology, a radical new kind of carbon capture and storage, is causing a stir among scientists. It is cheap, it is efficient and it can be deployed straight away. It is called … leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

On a filthy day last week, as governments gathered in Bali to prevaricate about climate change, a group of us tried to put this policy into effect. We swarmed into the opencast coal mine being dug at Ffos-y-fran in South Wales and occupied the excavators, shutting down the works for the day. We were motivated by a fact which the wise heads in Bali have somehow missed: if fossil fuels are extracted, they will be used.

Most of the governments of the rich world now exhort their citizens to use less carbon. They encourage us to change our lightbulbs, insulate our lofts, turn our TVs off at the wall. In other words, they have a demand-side policy for tackling climate change. But as far as I can determine not one of them has a supply-side policy. None seeks to reduce the supply of fossil fuel. So the demand-side policy will fail. Every barrel of oil and tonne of coal that comes to the surface will be burnt.

Or perhaps I should say that they do have a supply-side policy: to extract as much as they can. Since 2000 the British government has given coal firms £220m to help them open new mines or to keep existing mines working(1). According to the energy white paper, the government intends to “maximise economic recovery … from remaining coal reserves.”(2)

The pit at Ffos-y-fran received planning permission after two ministers in the Westminster government jumped up and down on Rhodri Morgan, the First Minister in Wales. Stephen Timms at the department of trade and industry listed the benefits of the scheme and demanded that the application “is resolved with the minimum of further delay”(3). His successor, Mike O’Brien, warned of dire consequences if the pit was not granted permission(4). The coal extracted from Ffos-y-fran alone will produce 29.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide: equivalent, according to the latest figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to the sustainable emissions of 55m people for one year(5).

Last year British planning authorities considered twelve new applications for opencast coal mines. They approved all but two of them. Two weeks ago Hazel Blears, the secretary of state in charge of planning, overruled Northumberland County Council to grant permission for an opencast mine at Shotton, on the grounds that the scheme (which will produce 9.3m tonnes of CO2) is “environmentally acceptable”(7).

The British government also has a policy of “maximising the UK’s existing oil and gas reserves”(8). To promote new production, it has granted companies a 90% discount on the licence fees they pay for prospecting the continental shelf(9). It hopes the prospecting firms will open a new frontier in the seas to the west of the Shetland Isles(10). The government also has two schemes for “forcing unworked blocks back into play”(11). If oil companies don’t use their licences to the full, it revokes them and hands them to someone else. In other words it is prepared to be ruthlessly interventionist when promoting climate change, but not when preventing it: no minister talks of “forcing” companies to reduce their emissions. Ministers hope the industry will extract up to 28 billion barrels of oil and gas from the continental shelf(12).

Last week the government announced a new tax break for the companies working in the North Sea. The Treasury minister Angela Eagle explained that its purpose is “to make sure we are not leaving any oil in the ground that could be recovered.”(13) The government’s climate change policy works like this: extract every last drop of fossil fuel then pray to God that no one uses it.

The same wishful thinking is applied worldwide. The International Energy Agency’s new outlook report warns that “urgent action is needed” to cut carbon emissions. The action it recommends is investing $22 trillion in new energy infrastructure, most of which will be spent on extracting, transporting and burning fossil fuels(14).

Aha, you say, but what about carbon capture and storage? When governments use this term, they mean catching and burying the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels. It is feasible, but there are three problems. The first is that fossil fuels are being extracted and burnt today, and scarcely any carbon capture schemes yet exist. The second is that the technology works only for power stations and large industrial processes: there is no plausible means of catching and storing emissions from cars, planes and heating systems. The third, as Alistair Darling, then in charge of energy, admitted in the House of Commons in May, is that the technologies required for commercial carbon capture “might never become available”(15). (The government is prepared to admit this when making the case – as Darling was – for nuclear power, but not when making the case for coal).

Almost every week I receive an email from someone asking what the heck I am talking about. Don’t I realise that peak oil will solve this problem for us? Fossil fuels will run out, we’ll go back to living in caves and no one will need to worry about climate change again. These correspondents make the mistake of conflating conventional oil supplies with all fossil fuels. Yes, at some point the production of petroleum will peak then go into decline. I don’t know when this will happen, and I urge environmentalists to remember that while we have been proved right about most things we have been consistently wrong about the dates for mineral exhaustion. But before oil peaks, demand is likely to outstrip supply and the price will soar. The result is that the oil firms will have an even greater incentive to extract the stuff.

Already, encouraged by recent prices, the pollutocrats are pouring billions into unconventional oil. Last week BP announced a massive investment in Canadian tar sands. Oil produced from tar sands creates even more carbon emissions than the extraction of petroleum. There’s enough tar and kerogen in North America to cook the planet several times over.

If that runs out they switch to coal, of which there is hundreds of years’ supply. Sasol, the South African company founded during the apartheid period (when supplies of oil were blocked) to turn coal into liquid transport fuel, is conducting feasibility studies for new plants in India, China and the US(16). Neither geology nor market forces is going to save us from climate change.

When you review the plans for fossil fuel extraction, the horrible truth dawns that every carbon-cutting programme on earth is a con. Without supply-side policies, runaway climate change is inevitable, however hard we try to cut demand. The talks in Bali will be meaningless unless they produce a programme for leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

References:

1. Under two schemes: Coal Investment Aid and the UK Coal Operating Aid Scheme. See Department of Trade and Industry, 2006. Coal Industry in the UK. http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/sources/coal/industry/page13125.html

and

DBERR, 2007. UK Coal Operating Aid Scheme: Coal Subsidy Programme / 823100 Cops0010 – Expenditure Profile by Tranche. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file34209.xls

2. Department of Trade and Industry, May 2007. Meeting the Energy Challenge: a white paper on energy. Para 4.07, page 107.

3. Stephen Timms MP, Department of Trade and Industry, 20th January 2004. Letter to Rhodri Morgan AM.

4. Mike O’Brien MP, Department of Trade and Industry, 14th December 2004. Letter to Rhodri Morgan AM.

5. The scheme will extract 10.8 million tonnes of coal. Average C/tonne of coal = 746kg (http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html). CO2 is 3.667 times the weight of C. The figure for sustainable emissions – 0.537t/person/year – is explained in the column I wrote last week: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/12/04/what-is-progress/

6. 3.4 million tonnes of coal.

7. Banks Developments, 29th November 2007. Banks Group’s Shotton surface mine proposals approved. http://www.banksdevelopments.com/news/153/

8. Department of Trade and Industry, 19th December 2006. West of Shetland task force forge ahead into new year. http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?ReleaseID=251607&NewsAr…

9. Under the “Frontier” and “Promote” licences. Department of Trade and Industry, 16th March 2006. Shake-up Of Unused Blocks Keeps Pressure On North Sea Exploration.
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?ReleaseID=191617&NewsAr…

10. Department of Trade and Industry, 19th December 2006, ibid.

11. Department of Trade and Industry, 1st February 2007. Oil is well under the North Sea.
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?ReleaseID=261127&NewsAr…

12. The formula they use is “oil equivalent”. Department of Trade and Industry, 6th September 2005. North Sea Licences Surge To All Time Record.
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/content/detail.asp?ReleaseID=168865&NewsAreaID=2&N…

13. Quoted by Ed Crooks, 7th December 2007. Boost for North Sea Companies. Financial Times.

14. International Energy Agency, 2007. World Energy Outlook, 2007, Table 1.9, p95. http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/

15. Alastair Darling, 23rd May 2007. Parliamentary answer. Column 1289. http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/c…

16. Ed Crooks, 9th November 2007. Pay-off time for Sasol pioneers? Financial Times.