Greenhouse gas | ukwatch.net

Where there's brass there's muck

tim — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:55:25 +0000

The environmental crisis that currently faces our planet is a matter of life or death. The potential for human suffering through environmental devastation over the coming decades is truly staggering. It is unquestionable that the time to act is now. The state and corporations would have us believe that environmentalism is a matter of personal choice. That buying energy-saving light bulbs, carbon-neutral flights or so called “biofuels” have the potential to stall (or even stop) the coming crisis.

Even those within the environmental movement will preach the virtues of “ethical” lifestyle. They argue that it is only a matter of persuading enough consumers to “buy into” environmentalism (with a price-tag far beyond the budget of most working people). While some of these efforts have some impact as shortterm solutions, they fail to address the very system that drives and sustains the destruction of our environment – capitalism.

Calling for increased state intervention to meet environmental targets is equally counterproductive. The state exists for the maintenance and protection of capitalism. Since targets and promises were set there has been no government that has ever reached a target it set to tackle on climate change. Creating a sustainable future for our planet is not in the interests of profit.

Ecology IS a class issue. How many working class people do you know with a private jet? The ruling classes have used the corporate mass media to fight environmentalism at every turn. We live in a truly crazy world where despite scientific proof that humanity is responsible for climate change you are still able with enough money, influence and power to deny this is the case. And why? Because the bottom line is that environmental destruction equals profit.

And who suffers? We already know that those countries in the developing world are likely to suffer the worst affects of Climate Change. Droughts, floods and food shortages affect millions when there is no infrastructure to protect impoverished populations. We have seen in the catastrophic events that followed hurricane Katrina the people who suffer the worst in the face of environmental destruction– the urban working poor.

Last year throughout the UK there was a great deal of hardship following the floods as those in the poorest and worst affected areas lost everything when insurance companies refused to pay out. Across the world working people are poisoned by pesticides, power plants and industrial by-products.

Our message is simple. If we want to great a truly free society, a truly sustainable society then it has to be one which is free from capitalism. Working people across the world have to rise up and fight the system that oppresses and alienates them every day. It’s about time we gave bosses and politicians the boot and built a better future for everyone.

Camp For Climate Action

Despite coal representing the most polluting of fossil fuels, the government plans to build six more atmospherecrunching power stations. Collectively these will emit around 50 million tons of C02 a year!

The camp for climate action represents a radical attempt to build a mass movement against climate change through self-organisation and collective effort. The Camp for Climate Action will be taking place at Kingsnorth coal-fired power station, Kent, 3rd to 11th August. www.climatecamp.org.uk

Leave it in the ground!

tim — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:30:44 +0000

A new open cast coal mine site is about to get under way in beautiful Derbyshire unless we stop it. Lodge House site which is east of the village of Smalley and spans either side of Bell Lane, is one of seven new sites that UK Coal is to open cast.

The area is about to be devastated. Despite objections from local councils, residents and local environmental groups the Secretary of State granted planning permission in 2007. The 122 hectare site will have one million tonnes of coal ripped out over 5 years and UK Coal claims that it will be returned back to its natural state afterwards.

However residents fear there may be more to the plot, as they were excluded from parts of the planning meeting under grounds of commercial confidentiality. According to campaigners UK Coal are one of those companies that looks to maximise their profits by raping the land and profiting from it any way they can. After coal extraction, they often turn the area into business parks, housing and industrial estates. According to their website in some cases they return it to farmland and charge the farmers rent or in low grade land grow energy crops. They are apparently even into wind power, but have yet to erect a single turbine.

Coal is not clean energy and is a major contributor to climate change. With the new onslaught of proposed power stations, UK Coal are looking to cash in on climate devastation and destruction unless we stop them.

The area is rich with wildlife and backs onto Shipley County Park. Some houses, (the sort of place you dream of living in) have been shuttered up and items like toys, dog kennels and other personal bits remain looking like something from a hurried evacuation from a war zone. UK Coal has stated that the site will be returned to farm land, but they are able to expand beyond the 122 hectares without needing further planning permission.

www.leaveitintheground.org.uk

The global warming deniers

tim — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:27:08 +0000

I am finding it increasingly difficult to maintain my optimism that we can stabilise global temperature increases below the “danger level” of 2°C. First, there is no sign that emissions are being reduced; rather, the opposite is happening. Second, it is becoming clear that the danger level for temperature increase is a good deal lower than 2°C.

The Arctic Sea ice cover is already approaching a new low. The new topic of speculation is not whether the Arctic ice will disappear completely in the summer months by 2080, but whether this will happen by 2018. An ice-free North Pole will have a significant effect on the planet’s energy balance, given the important role this huge white “mirror” plays in reflecting incoming solar radiation. Once it is gone, the warming process can only speed up further. Already, a new study suggests that an ice-free Arctic Ocean will dramatically increase warming in surrounding land areas, accelerating the degradation of permafrost and resulting in huge releases of carbon and methane – driving yet more warming. Setting a danger level of 2°C, as the UK and EU have done, now looks dangerously optimistic.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported last year that emissions cuts within a decade could still keep temperature hikes below 2°C. But global emissions are rising year on year, not falling. Many climate models are underpinned by an assumption of 1.5 per cent increases annually in carbon releases. Instead, they have been running at more than 2 per cent.

In the words of the Tyndall Centre scientist Kevin Anderson: “Since 2000 the world has gone ballistic in terms of carbon emissions.” Anderson has recently revised his projections for climate change and now thinks that the “best we can expect” is stab ilising atmospheric concentrations at 650 parts per million CO2 equivalent, equating to warming of about 4°C. He suggests we “mitigate for 2°, but adapt for 4°”.

Adapting to 4°C of warming would be quite a challenge. With this level of temperature change, we can expect a huge increase in drought-prone zones, a mass extinction of half or more of the life on earth, hundreds of millions of refugees from areas deprived of fresh water or inundated by rising seas, and widespread starvation due to food and water shortages.

The Stockholm Network’s Carbon Scenarios report (which I helped draft) reaches a similar conclusion, projecting a warming of nearly 5°C if global policy on climate continues to fail. Against this terrifying backdrop, the denial lobby flourishes, its success almost calling into question the capacity of mankind for reasoned thought.

Nigel Lawson’s dreadful book, laughably entitled An Appeal to Reason, has been riding high in the sales charts and is only one of several denialist tomes on global warming. The last time I looked, four out of five of Amazon’s top sellers on climate were penned by deniers. And these are not just views from the fringe. A MORI poll reported by the Observer last month found six out of ten people think, wrongly, that “many scientific experts” disagree on whether human beings are causing climate change. Four out of ten people asked believed that the impact had been exaggerated.

Many climate-change sceptics like to think they are proudly independent people, refusing to be cowed by UN-sponsored orthodoxy from the IPCC. In fact, the arguments of climate sceptics have largely been moulded by a far more sinister force – the US-based conservative think tanks. A recent academic survey of environmentally sceptical books found that 92 per cent were linked with these think tanks, which include the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Since the early 1990s, these and other industry-funded front groups have been leading an anti-environmental backlash, changing the tenor of the political debate on environmental issues and bombarding the media and the public with disinformation.

The authors of the study, published in the June edition of a journal called Environmental Politics, argue that, far from being a true grass-roots movement, “environmental scepticism is an elite- driven reaction to global environmentalism, organised by core actors within the conservative movement”. The “self-portrayal of sceptics as marginalised ‘Davids’ battling the powerful ‘Goliath’ of environmentalists and environmental scientists is a charade”, given that the “sceptics are supported by politically powerful conservative think tanks funded by wealthy foundations and corporations”.

Next time someone insists global warming isn’t happening, ask yourself where their views come from – and whose interests they serve.