Mobilization for Climate Justice

Archive for May, 2011

Tuesday, May 31, 2011 

Lil’wat at the UN Permanent Forum: Colonialism, sovereignty and human rightsMay 30, 2011
Lil’wat, St’at’imc Press Statement

A Lil’wat delegation to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues addressed the lack of implementation of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

Posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com at 8:36 AM 

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Source: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2011/2011-05-30-03.html

BERLIN, Germany, March 30, 2011 (ENS) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Monday that her government has decided to close all 17 nuclear power plants in the country by 2022. In the wake of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, and amidst widespread public protests against nuclear energy, Merkel said Germany plans to replace atomic power generation with renewable sources of energy.

“We believe that we, as a country, can be a pioneer for a new age of renewable energy sources,” Merkel said at a news conference shortly after her center-right coalition government drew up a timetable for the nuclear phaseout.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel announces the new policy with members of her government. (Photo courtesy Office of the Chancellor)

“We believe that we can show those countries who decide to abandon nuclear power – or not to start using it – how it is possible to achieve growth, creating jobs and economic prosperity while shifting the energy supply toward renewable energies,” said Merkel.

Nuclear power currently supplies about 22 percent of Germany’s energy needs.

If the plan is approved by Parliament, Germany will become the second major industrialized nation to abandon nuclear power. Italy too has abandoned nuclear energy, which was voted down in a referendum after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Merkel, who holds a doctorate degree in physics, said the decision was taken in view of Japan’s ongoing nuclear crisis.

Japan and Tokyo Electric Power Co. are still struggling to control radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, damaged when the March 11 earthquake and tsunami caused the loss of power to its nuclear fuel cooling systems. Hydrogen gas explosions and a meltdown of the power plant’s nuclear fuel spread radiation into the atmosphere, the soil and the Pacific Ocean.

Anti-nuclear protesters march in Bonn, May 28, 2011 (Photo byBurger Blog Blankenheim)

“We are well aware of the fact that we in Germany need not expect the sort of natural disaster that struck Japan. Our nuclear power plants are some of the safest in the world,” said Merkel in April. “Nevertheless, the world must now analyze the actual risks without any foregone conclusion, and must find new answers to new questions.”

“Although Japan is a highly developed industrialized nation, it was powerless to prevent a nuclear threat in the wake of a natural disaster. That is the reality,” Merkel said.

According to the Merkel government’s plan, the country’s seven oldest reactors, which were taken offline following the Fukushima disaster, will not be restarted. The Kruemmel plant, which has been offline for years due to technical problems, will not be restarted either.

The plan also calls for one of the older nuclear plants to be kept on “standby” from 2013, in case of electricity shortages. Another six plants will be closed by the end of 2021 and the three newest will remain operational until 2022.

Germany’s four top nuclear energy firms – Eon, RWE, EnBw and Swedish-based Vattenfall – last month prepared a lawsuit against the German government’s decision to idle seven of Germany’s 17 nuclear power stations by 2021. It expected to be filed by RWE.

The four nuclear energy firms warned that Germany could face widespread winter blackouts, if the government phases out nuclear power, a finding challenged by a recent study conducted by the nonprofit German Watch.

Protesters with Greenpeace Germany unfurl anti-nuclear banners at Berlin’s Brandenberg Gate, May 29, 2011 (Photo courtesy Greenpeace Germany)

On Monday, the Federation of German Industry, BDI, said the shutdown could force Germany to build more coal and gas power plants to stabilize the energy supply and price, leading to more greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2000, the coalition government of the Social Democratic Party and the Green Party announced their decision to phase out nuclear power plants by 2020.

Last fall, Merkel announced that she would extend the life of Germany’s nuclear plants of 12 years on average. But she revised that position in March as a result of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan and of late March elections in two German states accompanied by direct protest actions throughout Germany.

Since then, there has been mounting public pressure on the Merkel government to phase out nuclear power. On Saturday, there were nationwide demonstrations in at least 20 cities attended by over 100,000 to protest against nuclear energy. In Berlin alone, over 20,000 persons demonstrated.

During the previous week, hundreds of anti-nuclear demonstrators marched in the streets of Berlin in the pouring rain in protest of the annual convention nuclear technologists at the Berlin Congress Center.

Chancellor Merkel said today that her government plans to replace nuclear energy with renewable sources of power.

She said, “We don’t only hope to give up nuclear energy by 2022, but also to reduce our CO2 emissions by 40 percent and double our share of renewable energies, from about 17 percent today to then 35 percent.”

According to government data, the German renewable energy sector already employs some 370,000 people.

Federal Secretary of the Environment Norbert Röttgen said today that Germany’s renewable energy industry must be subsidized to give it a stronger market and competition orientation.

Röttgen stressed that the coalition government intends to bring the entire country into agreement with its new nuclear policy. “A consent is to be aimed at also in the ultimate nuclear waste disposal question,” he said.

{Tina Gerhardt in Berlin contributed to this report.}

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Source: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2011/2011-05-30-03.html

BERLIN, Germany, March 30, 2011 (ENS) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Monday that her government has decided to close all 17 nuclear power plants in the country by 2022. In the wake of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, and amidst widespread public protests against nuclear energy, Merkel said Germany plans to replace atomic power generation with renewable sources of energy.

“We believe that we, as a country, can be a pioneer for a new age of renewable energy sources,” Merkel said at a news conference shortly after her center-right coalition government drew up a timetable for the nuclear phaseout.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel announces the new policy with members of her government. (Photo courtesy Office of the Chancellor)

“We believe that we can show those countries who decide to abandon nuclear power – or not to start using it – how it is possible to achieve growth, creating jobs and economic prosperity while shifting the energy supply toward renewable energies,” said Merkel.

Nuclear power currently supplies about 22 percent of Germany’s energy needs.

If the plan is approved by Parliament, Germany will become the second major industrialized nation to abandon nuclear power. Italy too has abandoned nuclear energy, which was voted down in a referendum after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Merkel, who holds a doctorate degree in physics, said the decision was taken in view of Japan’s ongoing nuclear crisis.

Japan and Tokyo Electric Power Co. are still struggling to control radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, damaged when the March 11 earthquake and tsunami caused the loss of power to its nuclear fuel cooling systems. Hydrogen gas explosions and a meltdown of the power plant’s nuclear fuel spread radiation into the atmosphere, the soil and the Pacific Ocean.

Anti-nuclear protesters march in Bonn, May 28, 2011 (Photo byBurger Blog Blankenheim)

“We are well aware of the fact that we in Germany need not expect the sort of natural disaster that struck Japan. Our nuclear power plants are some of the safest in the world,” said Merkel in April. “Nevertheless, the world must now analyze the actual risks without any foregone conclusion, and must find new answers to new questions.”

“Although Japan is a highly developed industrialized nation, it was powerless to prevent a nuclear threat in the wake of a natural disaster. That is the reality,” Merkel said.

According to the Merkel government’s plan, the country’s seven oldest reactors, which were taken offline following the Fukushima disaster, will not be restarted. The Kruemmel plant, which has been offline for years due to technical problems, will not be restarted either.

The plan also calls for one of the older nuclear plants to be kept on “standby” from 2013, in case of electricity shortages. Another six plants will be closed by the end of 2021 and the three newest will remain operational until 2022.

Germany’s four top nuclear energy firms – Eon, RWE, EnBw and Swedish-based Vattenfall – last month prepared a lawsuit against the German government’s decision to idle seven of Germany’s 17 nuclear power stations by 2021. It expected to be filed by RWE.

The four nuclear energy firms warned that Germany could face widespread winter blackouts, if the government phases out nuclear power, a finding challenged by a recent study conducted by the nonprofit German Watch.

Protesters with Greenpeace Germany unfurl anti-nuclear banners at Berlin’s Brandenberg Gate, May 29, 2011 (Photo courtesy Greenpeace Germany)

On Monday, the Federation of German Industry, BDI, said the shutdown could force Germany to build more coal and gas power plants to stabilize the energy supply and price, leading to more greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2000, the coalition government of the Social Democratic Party and the Green Party announced their decision to phase out nuclear power plants by 2020.

Last fall, Merkel announced that she would extend the life of Germany’s nuclear plants of 12 years on average. But she revised that position in March as a result of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan and of late March elections in two German states accompanied by direct protest actions throughout Germany.

Since then, there has been mounting public pressure on the Merkel government to phase out nuclear power. On Saturday, there were nationwide demonstrations in at least 20 cities attended by over 100,000 to protest against nuclear energy. In Berlin alone, over 20,000 persons demonstrated.

During the previous week, hundreds of anti-nuclear demonstrators marched in the streets of Berlin in the pouring rain in protest of the annual convention nuclear technologists at the Berlin Congress Center.

Chancellor Merkel said today that her government plans to replace nuclear energy with renewable sources of power.

She said, “We don’t only hope to give up nuclear energy by 2022, but also to reduce our CO2 emissions by 40 percent and double our share of renewable energies, from about 17 percent today to then 35 percent.”

According to government data, the German renewable energy sector already employs some 370,000 people.

Federal Secretary of the Environment Norbert Röttgen said today that Germany’s renewable energy industry must be subsidized to give it a stronger market and competition orientation.

Röttgen stressed that the coalition government intends to bring the entire country into agreement with its new nuclear policy. “A consent is to be aimed at also in the ultimate nuclear waste disposal question,” he said.

{Tina Gerhardt in Berlin contributed to this report.}

QUEBEC — Opponents of shale gas development in Quebec have warned that they might engage in civil disobedience to keep the industry from taking off in the province.

One protest leader said people would tie themselves to gas companies’ machinery and block their trucks if exploration activities went ahead.

Several dozen opponents of shale gas are marching through Quebec to warn of its possible environmental impact.

Event spokesman Philippe Duhamel said Monday that the march was just the beginning. He said there would also be training sessions on how to organize sit-ins and occupy exploration sites.

He said protesters actually got the idea from a gas-industry executive who said he would pull out of Quebec at the slightest hint of a work stoppage.

“He thought he was making a threat. We, on the other hand, believe he gave us the recipe (to block the project),” Duhamel said.

“Now it’s up to us to put the ingredients together.”

The 600-kilometre march stopped Monday in front of Quebec’s national assembly.

Quebec appears to be sitting on massive natural-gas deposits, but plans to push ahead with development have already been delayed by a public backlash.

Evidence of soil contamination in exploratory wells, and reports of environmental damage in the United States, helped build public opposition to the industry.

Duhamel said Monday that, if the Charest government doesn’t halt development over the longer term, “the people will have to stop it themselves.”

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

QUEBEC — Opponents of shale gas development in Quebec have warned that they might engage in civil disobedience to keep the industry from taking off in the province.

One protest leader said people would tie themselves to gas companies’ machinery and block their trucks if exploration activities went ahead.

Several dozen opponents of shale gas are marching through Quebec to warn of its possible environmental impact.

Event spokesman Philippe Duhamel said Monday that the march was just the beginning. He said there would also be training sessions on how to organize sit-ins and occupy exploration sites.

He said protesters actually got the idea from a gas-industry executive who said he would pull out of Quebec at the slightest hint of a work stoppage.

“He thought he was making a threat. We, on the other hand, believe he gave us the recipe (to block the project),” Duhamel said.

“Now it’s up to us to put the ingredients together.”

The 600-kilometre march stopped Monday in front of Quebec’s national assembly.

Quebec appears to be sitting on massive natural-gas deposits, but plans to push ahead with development have already been delayed by a public backlash.

Evidence of soil contamination in exploratory wells, and reports of environmental damage in the United States, helped build public opposition to the industry.

Duhamel said Monday that, if the Charest government doesn’t halt development over the longer term, “the people will have to stop it themselves.”

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

QUEBEC — Opponents of shale gas development in Quebec have warned that they might engage in civil disobedience to keep the industry from taking off in the province.

One protest leader said people would tie themselves to gas companies’ machinery and block their trucks if exploration activities went ahead.

Several dozen opponents of shale gas are marching through Quebec to warn of its possible environmental impact.

Event spokesman Philippe Duhamel said Monday that the march was just the beginning. He said there would also be training sessions on how to organize sit-ins and occupy exploration sites.

He said protesters actually got the idea from a gas-industry executive who said he would pull out of Quebec at the slightest hint of a work stoppage.

“He thought he was making a threat. We, on the other hand, believe he gave us the recipe (to block the project),” Duhamel said.

“Now it’s up to us to put the ingredients together.”

The 600-kilometre march stopped Monday in front of Quebec’s national assembly.

Quebec appears to be sitting on massive natural-gas deposits, but plans to push ahead with development have already been delayed by a public backlash.

Evidence of soil contamination in exploratory wells, and reports of environmental damage in the United States, helped build public opposition to the industry.

Duhamel said Monday that, if the Charest government doesn’t halt development over the longer term, “the people will have to stop it themselves.”

A Brazilian rancher supplying sugarcane to a joint venture partner of energy giant Shell has reportedly issued a death threat against a political opponent.

José Teixeira, who is also a state deputy, is said to have recently warned a political rival that, ‘If it were up to me, you’d be under the ground.’

Teixeira is renting out part of his ranch for sugarcane production, even though the Government has confirmed that the land belongs toGuarani Indians.

Shell and Brazilian ethanol company Cosan are now united in a $12 billion joint venture company called Raizen, to produce ethanol to sell as a biofuel. Cosan is buying sugarcane grown on Guarani land that Teixeira continues to occupy. Survival has urged Shell and Cosan to stop using sugarcane grown on the Guarani’s land, but the companies continue to use it.

The Guarani of Guyraroká community were evicted from their land decades ago by ranchers. For years they lived destitute on the roadside. Despite now occupying a fraction of their land their lives and livelihoods are at risk as they have very little space to plant crops or hunt game.
http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/guarani/despair#main

The current boom in sugarcane production is taking over the Guarani’s ancestral land
© Sarah Shenker/ Survival

They warn that the chemicals used on the sugarcane plantations are polluting the rivers they use for drinking, bathing and fishing, and provoking acute diarrhoea. They report that the vinhoto – the by-product of ethanol production – is causing intense headaches amongst adults and children.

Guarani health agent Senilda Esnade told Survival, ‘In the past, the children were happy. They had clean water, they ate traditional, healthier food. It’s different now; often, the children grow up eating food that is contaminated. If we had our own land, we’d be able to revive what we’re losing’.

Survival’s Director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘The deputy’s death threat is yet more evidence of the brutality linked to the land struggle in the Guarani’s area. Shell and its partners cannot continue to profit from their use of Guarani territory while the Guarani themselves are squeezed on to smaller and smaller patches of land. The company must abide by the international norms requiring respect for indigenous rights, which its own policy statements claim to support’.

Download Survival’s report about the Guarani’s land situation, sent to the United Nations last year in English or Portuguese” (pdf, 2.5 MB).

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

A Brazilian rancher supplying sugarcane to a joint venture partner of energy giant Shell has reportedly issued a death threat against a political opponent.

José Teixeira, who is also a state deputy, is said to have recently warned a political rival that, ‘If it were up to me, you’d be under the ground.’

Teixeira is renting out part of his ranch for sugarcane production, even though the Government has confirmed that the land belongs toGuarani Indians.

Shell and Brazilian ethanol company Cosan are now united in a $12 billion joint venture company called Raizen, to produce ethanol to sell as a biofuel. Cosan is buying sugarcane grown on Guarani land that Teixeira continues to occupy. Survival has urged Shell and Cosan to stop using sugarcane grown on the Guarani’s land, but the companies continue to use it.

The Guarani of Guyraroká community were evicted from their land decades ago by ranchers. For years they lived destitute on the roadside. Despite now occupying a fraction of their land their lives and livelihoods are at risk as they have very little space to plant crops or hunt game.
http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/guarani/despair#main

The current boom in sugarcane production is taking over the Guarani’s ancestral land
© Sarah Shenker/ Survival

They warn that the chemicals used on the sugarcane plantations are polluting the rivers they use for drinking, bathing and fishing, and provoking acute diarrhoea. They report that the vinhoto – the by-product of ethanol production – is causing intense headaches amongst adults and children.

Guarani health agent Senilda Esnade told Survival, ‘In the past, the children were happy. They had clean water, they ate traditional, healthier food. It’s different now; often, the children grow up eating food that is contaminated. If we had our own land, we’d be able to revive what we’re losing’.

Survival’s Director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘The deputy’s death threat is yet more evidence of the brutality linked to the land struggle in the Guarani’s area. Shell and its partners cannot continue to profit from their use of Guarani territory while the Guarani themselves are squeezed on to smaller and smaller patches of land. The company must abide by the international norms requiring respect for indigenous rights, which its own policy statements claim to support’.

Download Survival’s report about the Guarani’s land situation, sent to the United Nations last year in English or Portuguese” (pdf, 2.5 MB).

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

A Brazilian rancher supplying sugarcane to a joint venture partner of energy giant Shell has reportedly issued a death threat against a political opponent.

José Teixeira, who is also a state deputy, is said to have recently warned a political rival that, ‘If it were up to me, you’d be under the ground.’

Teixeira is renting out part of his ranch for sugarcane production, even though the Government has confirmed that the land belongs toGuarani Indians.

Shell and Brazilian ethanol company Cosan are now united in a $12 billion joint venture company called Raizen, to produce ethanol to sell as a biofuel. Cosan is buying sugarcane grown on Guarani land that Teixeira continues to occupy. Survival has urged Shell and Cosan to stop using sugarcane grown on the Guarani’s land, but the companies continue to use it.

The Guarani of Guyraroká community were evicted from their land decades ago by ranchers. For years they lived destitute on the roadside. Despite now occupying a fraction of their land their lives and livelihoods are at risk as they have very little space to plant crops or hunt game.
http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/guarani/despair#main

The current boom in sugarcane production is taking over the Guarani’s ancestral land
© Sarah Shenker/ Survival

They warn that the chemicals used on the sugarcane plantations are polluting the rivers they use for drinking, bathing and fishing, and provoking acute diarrhoea. They report that the vinhoto – the by-product of ethanol production – is causing intense headaches amongst adults and children.

Guarani health agent Senilda Esnade told Survival, ‘In the past, the children were happy. They had clean water, they ate traditional, healthier food. It’s different now; often, the children grow up eating food that is contaminated. If we had our own land, we’d be able to revive what we’re losing’.

Survival’s Director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘The deputy’s death threat is yet more evidence of the brutality linked to the land struggle in the Guarani’s area. Shell and its partners cannot continue to profit from their use of Guarani territory while the Guarani themselves are squeezed on to smaller and smaller patches of land. The company must abide by the international norms requiring respect for indigenous rights, which its own policy statements claim to support’.

Download Survival’s report about the Guarani’s land situation, sent to the United Nations last year in English or Portuguese” (pdf, 2.5 MB).

Think green technology is new? Think again! In the early 20th century, electric taxi cabs zoomed along Manhattan’s streets, solar heaters warmed water for showers in Southern California, and windmills drew up water in the drought-ridden prairie states of Nebraska and Kansas, helping westward expansion as much as the steam engine, but forgotten in the annals of history.

Alexis Madrigal’sPowering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology, provides both a history of such alternative energy technologies that have existed over the past century, and considers the promise green technology holds for the future.

Looking at examples of technological innovations predating the 1970s, Madrigal – Senior Editor at The Atlantic and former staff writer for Wired - reveals a history of “what was” and “what might have been.” It is a history of which there is hardly any institutional memory and which, as Madrigal puts it, remains “criminally obscure.” Madrigal sets the stage by opening with the fact that some venture capitalists, the very people who previously refused to acknowledge the limits of growth, have begun to factor the environment’s precarious state of the environment into their entrepreneurial activities. (An anecdote that brings to mind the Stern Report.)

So what was? In the book’s first section, Madrigal focuses on five different past models of energy, some still, some no longer with us: steam power, windmills, oil, wave motors and compressed air. In the 19th-century west, a dearth of water was (as it remains now) the largest factor upon which survival to growth was contingent. Windmills allowed water to be drawn up from deep underground. Innovations advanced upon existing designs. In 1854 Daniel Halladay designed the first windmill with sails or blades that self-regulated or adjusted to the direction of the wind. These innovations in design, such as changing the shape of the sails, making the mills out of steel, or adding gears, allowed an exponential growth in energy harnessed.

Relative to the growth in these technological innovations, the number of companies specializing in windmills grew, too. Aermotor, which sold its first windmill in 1882 and operates to this day, was one of the largest windmill companies, selling 20,000 windmills within 10 years of operation. Yet not everyone could afford the mills sold by these growing new companies, so many farmers in the west built their own, using materials readily available.

The book’s second section explores technological innovations that almost made it, including the electrical vehicles zipping about 1890s Manhattan’s streets and the solar water heaters abundant in 1950s California; as well as solar homes, plentiful until the 1940s; and the solar research institute that almost shifted our main energy source to solar in the 1970s.

In the early 20th-century, solar energy looked poised to take over the energy market in California. The California-based Day and Night Solar Heater company produced solar heaters in the 1920s in such abundance that they had to move to larger quarters twice as demand grew. But a number of developments quickly changed the direction of this energy market. As Madrigal outlines, larger gas manufacturing plants were built and the gas industry consolidated. Meanwhile, natural gas was discovered in southern California. Together, these factors led gas to be more affordable than solar energy in California.

Elsewhere, a shift from solar energy to electricity, usually derived from coal-powered plants, took place. As home developers sought to bring down the upfront cost of houses, electric water heaters took off. These heaters were cheaper to produce and sell, thus bringing down the cost of the house sold by developers. But they increased the costs incurred by the buyer as a result of running them over a lifetime were higher. This logic still dominates today and is one of the factors impeding greater implementation and use of renewable energy.

As “the U.S. domestic solar hot water industry slowly withered away,” Madrigal tells us “other countries picked up where American RD had left off” with notable expansions in Turkey, the European Union and China. By 2007, Chinese solar heater production outpaced the Americans’ by 160 times. As Madrigal grimly concludes, “Like so many other renewable energy industries, a field that the United States once dominated has moved on to greener pastures. A technology invented and improved in the United State is a dim memory here and a thriving industry elsewhere.”

Not only solar water heaters but also solar homes previously abounded in the U.S. Subsequent to World War II, “as rationing ratcheted up American consciousness about energy, the fuel-saving solar homes began to look particularly interesting” Madrigal explains. Yet as prefabricated construction took off in the 1940s, even the simplest elements of solar houses, for example, installing large south-facing windows, went the way of the solar water heaters. Thus, “millions of homes [have] been built without solar planning or climate considerations.” As a result, Madrigal concludes, “an opportunity was lost to build a less energy-intensive stock of American houses, and we’ll be dealing with the consequences of those decisions for decades to come.”

The solar water heater and solar homes were not the only ventures into solar energy in previous decades. In 1973, as a result of the OPEC oil embargo that “shocked Americans out of their energy trance,” the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) was born.” It was to advance “all of the solar energy technologies and all aspects of the process of moving a technology through the initial research stages to utilization in the commercial marketplace.” But inadequate federal funding; too broad an array of technologies to research; and an unsuited director impeded SERI’s initial ability to fulfill its promise.

After a change at the helm, SERI’s funding increased five-fold in two years. Research interests narrowed their focus on solar power. The cost of photovoltaic modules dropped and solar was taking hold. But SERI went even further, taking a long view and outlining its ambitious plans in a report that “sketched out an alternative vision for the American energy system that its authors felt would be cheaper and less environmentally destructive.”

“Politics,” Madrigal shares, “however, would intervene before Hayes’s team had a chance to test their optimism. Jimmy Carter was crushed in the November election by former General Electric spokesman, Ronald Reagan.” As a result of this political shift, “the brief but grand solar experiment of the 1970s was over, and more than twenty-five years would pass before renewable energy funding would reach the levels it had enjoyed before.” In the book’s remaining two sections, Madrigal explores, first, what he calls the “great energy rethink” or how to retool. In an opening section, Madrigal discusses thermodynamics (how heat dissipates and what work the released energy accomplishes) and, relatedly, energy efficiency. He then discusses transcendentalism, both Thoreau’s Walden Pond and the Back to the Land movement, arguing that individualist or survivalist approaches will not solve climate change. “To reduce the carbon footprint of the country [U.S.] – which is more than twice the global average – society has a whole has to change.” And for that to happen, Marigal argues, one must organize politically or socially.

Subsequently, Madrigal discusses technology. To be sure, efficiency and models of scale reduce costs. But technological development, Madrigal pinpoints, is as much about advances in research and design as it is about who gets funded. “The vast majority of funds disbursed by the Department of Energy [...] went to large corporations like Lockheed and Exxon.” As a result, while advances could be made on scale, the number of innovators (and approaches) at work are reduced.

In the book’s final section, Madrigal explores energy’s future, invoking Google’s 2007 formulation: “REC” or how to ensure that renewables are cheaper than coal. Madrigal focuses mostly on wind energy, talking about various factors that lead to or build a reliable alternative energy industry. He discusses the problem of fickle federal funding: “Businesses live in constant fear that their tax incentives or other support would be cut by capricious lawmakers, which made it harder to make sound long-term decisions … The production tax credit, the main governmental support for the wind industry, has been extended for arbitrarily short periods of time for almost two decades.” By contrast, in California, as a result of federal and state funding, wind energy was ramped up early on and by 1985 generated “almost 90% of the world’s wind electricity.” It was an edge that California would not hold and Madrigal discusses why.

Aside from consistent funding, record keeping is vital. Particularly, looking ahead: given the ramped up research in clean technology and the corollary likely failure of a large swatch of it, Madrigal argues for the usefulness of data, so that even when an innovation fails, lessons learned can be applied to future ventures. As an energy researcher put it in the book: “‘The Danish have preserved knowledge … codified it in reports and kept a lot of the same people employed in the industry for 20 or 30 years. That just doesn’t happen at all in the United States.’” Knowledgeable workers form an important but all too often overlooked resource that Madrigal calls “human archives.”

What Madrigal’s volume offers is a look at an array of technological innovations, some of them crackpot and some of them very likely alternatives, for how to produce energy in an environmentally sustainable manner. It is a history well worth knowing and exploring, to avoid reinventing the wheel anew with every innovation, as advances in green technologies need to be and will be ratcheted up. Madrigal pinpoints the myriad reasons for failure: technological flaws, lacking or inconsistent federal funding; competing federally subsidized fossil fuels; and changes in political figureheads or legislation. It remains to be how the current administration will draw on each of these aspects, in order to promote clean technology and in particular renewable energy.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Think green technology is new? Think again! In the early 20th century, electric taxi cabs zoomed along Manhattan’s streets, solar heaters warmed water for showers in Southern California, and windmills drew up water in the drought-ridden prairie states of Nebraska and Kansas, helping westward expansion as much as the steam engine, but forgotten in the annals of history.

Alexis Madrigal’sPowering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology, provides both a history of such alternative energy technologies that have existed over the past century, and considers the promise green technology holds for the future.

Looking at examples of technological innovations predating the 1970s, Madrigal – Senior Editor at The Atlantic and former staff writer for Wired - reveals a history of “what was” and “what might have been.” It is a history of which there is hardly any institutional memory and which, as Madrigal puts it, remains “criminally obscure.” Madrigal sets the stage by opening with the fact that some venture capitalists, the very people who previously refused to acknowledge the limits of growth, have begun to factor the environment’s precarious state of the environment into their entrepreneurial activities. (An anecdote that brings to mind the Stern Report.)

So what was? In the book’s first section, Madrigal focuses on five different past models of energy, some still, some no longer with us: steam power, windmills, oil, wave motors and compressed air. In the 19th-century west, a dearth of water was (as it remains now) the largest factor upon which survival to growth was contingent. Windmills allowed water to be drawn up from deep underground. Innovations advanced upon existing designs. In 1854 Daniel Halladay designed the first windmill with sails or blades that self-regulated or adjusted to the direction of the wind. These innovations in design, such as changing the shape of the sails, making the mills out of steel, or adding gears, allowed an exponential growth in energy harnessed.

Relative to the growth in these technological innovations, the number of companies specializing in windmills grew, too. Aermotor, which sold its first windmill in 1882 and operates to this day, was one of the largest windmill companies, selling 20,000 windmills within 10 years of operation. Yet not everyone could afford the mills sold by these growing new companies, so many farmers in the west built their own, using materials readily available.

The book’s second section explores technological innovations that almost made it, including the electrical vehicles zipping about 1890s Manhattan’s streets and the solar water heaters abundant in 1950s California; as well as solar homes, plentiful until the 1940s; and the solar research institute that almost shifted our main energy source to solar in the 1970s.

In the early 20th-century, solar energy looked poised to take over the energy market in California. The California-based Day and Night Solar Heater company produced solar heaters in the 1920s in such abundance that they had to move to larger quarters twice as demand grew. But a number of developments quickly changed the direction of this energy market. As Madrigal outlines, larger gas manufacturing plants were built and the gas industry consolidated. Meanwhile, natural gas was discovered in southern California. Together, these factors led gas to be more affordable than solar energy in California.

Elsewhere, a shift from solar energy to electricity, usually derived from coal-powered plants, took place. As home developers sought to bring down the upfront cost of houses, electric water heaters took off. These heaters were cheaper to produce and sell, thus bringing down the cost of the house sold by developers. But they increased the costs incurred by the buyer as a result of running them over a lifetime were higher. This logic still dominates today and is one of the factors impeding greater implementation and use of renewable energy.

As “the U.S. domestic solar hot water industry slowly withered away,” Madrigal tells us “other countries picked up where American RD had left off” with notable expansions in Turkey, the European Union and China. By 2007, Chinese solar heater production outpaced the Americans’ by 160 times. As Madrigal grimly concludes, “Like so many other renewable energy industries, a field that the United States once dominated has moved on to greener pastures. A technology invented and improved in the United State is a dim memory here and a thriving industry elsewhere.”

Not only solar water heaters but also solar homes previously abounded in the U.S. Subsequent to World War II, “as rationing ratcheted up American consciousness about energy, the fuel-saving solar homes began to look particularly interesting” Madrigal explains. Yet as prefabricated construction took off in the 1940s, even the simplest elements of solar houses, for example, installing large south-facing windows, went the way of the solar water heaters. Thus, “millions of homes [have] been built without solar planning or climate considerations.” As a result, Madrigal concludes, “an opportunity was lost to build a less energy-intensive stock of American houses, and we’ll be dealing with the consequences of those decisions for decades to come.”

The solar water heater and solar homes were not the only ventures into solar energy in previous decades. In 1973, as a result of the OPEC oil embargo that “shocked Americans out of their energy trance,” the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) was born.” It was to advance “all of the solar energy technologies and all aspects of the process of moving a technology through the initial research stages to utilization in the commercial marketplace.” But inadequate federal funding; too broad an array of technologies to research; and an unsuited director impeded SERI’s initial ability to fulfill its promise.

After a change at the helm, SERI’s funding increased five-fold in two years. Research interests narrowed their focus on solar power. The cost of photovoltaic modules dropped and solar was taking hold. But SERI went even further, taking a long view and outlining its ambitious plans in a report that “sketched out an alternative vision for the American energy system that its authors felt would be cheaper and less environmentally destructive.”

“Politics,” Madrigal shares, “however, would intervene before Hayes’s team had a chance to test their optimism. Jimmy Carter was crushed in the November election by former General Electric spokesman, Ronald Reagan.” As a result of this political shift, “the brief but grand solar experiment of the 1970s was over, and more than twenty-five years would pass before renewable energy funding would reach the levels it had enjoyed before.” In the book’s remaining two sections, Madrigal explores, first, what he calls the “great energy rethink” or how to retool. In an opening section, Madrigal discusses thermodynamics (how heat dissipates and what work the released energy accomplishes) and, relatedly, energy efficiency. He then discusses transcendentalism, both Thoreau’s Walden Pond and the Back to the Land movement, arguing that individualist or survivalist approaches will not solve climate change. “To reduce the carbon footprint of the country [U.S.] – which is more than twice the global average – society has a whole has to change.” And for that to happen, Marigal argues, one must organize politically or socially.

Subsequently, Madrigal discusses technology. To be sure, efficiency and models of scale reduce costs. But technological development, Madrigal pinpoints, is as much about advances in research and design as it is about who gets funded. “The vast majority of funds disbursed by the Department of Energy [...] went to large corporations like Lockheed and Exxon.” As a result, while advances could be made on scale, the number of innovators (and approaches) at work are reduced.

In the book’s final section, Madrigal explores energy’s future, invoking Google’s 2007 formulation: “REC” or how to ensure that renewables are cheaper than coal. Madrigal focuses mostly on wind energy, talking about various factors that lead to or build a reliable alternative energy industry. He discusses the problem of fickle federal funding: “Businesses live in constant fear that their tax incentives or other support would be cut by capricious lawmakers, which made it harder to make sound long-term decisions … The production tax credit, the main governmental support for the wind industry, has been extended for arbitrarily short periods of time for almost two decades.” By contrast, in California, as a result of federal and state funding, wind energy was ramped up early on and by 1985 generated “almost 90% of the world’s wind electricity.” It was an edge that California would not hold and Madrigal discusses why.

Aside from consistent funding, record keeping is vital. Particularly, looking ahead: given the ramped up research in clean technology and the corollary likely failure of a large swatch of it, Madrigal argues for the usefulness of data, so that even when an innovation fails, lessons learned can be applied to future ventures. As an energy researcher put it in the book: “‘The Danish have preserved knowledge … codified it in reports and kept a lot of the same people employed in the industry for 20 or 30 years. That just doesn’t happen at all in the United States.’” Knowledgeable workers form an important but all too often overlooked resource that Madrigal calls “human archives.”

What Madrigal’s volume offers is a look at an array of technological innovations, some of them crackpot and some of them very likely alternatives, for how to produce energy in an environmentally sustainable manner. It is a history well worth knowing and exploring, to avoid reinventing the wheel anew with every innovation, as advances in green technologies need to be and will be ratcheted up. Madrigal pinpoints the myriad reasons for failure: technological flaws, lacking or inconsistent federal funding; competing federally subsidized fossil fuels; and changes in political figureheads or legislation. It remains to be how the current administration will draw on each of these aspects, in order to promote clean technology and in particular renewable energy.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Actions, Videos

Tagged as action, human rights, protest

From Nick Buxton: I enclose an interview I carried out with US activist, Tim DeChristopher, who disrupted an oil and gas auction in Utah in 2008 and now faces up to ten years in jail. It has just been published in the UK magazine, Red Pepper (http://www.redpepper.org.uk/time-to-be-honest/) and I attach the text below. It is a provocative read  – at times inspiring, at times troubling – with some important messages, particularly for the mainstream environmental movement here in the US. –Nick

Time to be honest
Nick Buxton speaks to Tim DeChristopher, an activist shaking up the mainstream US environmental movement

Tim DeChristopher caused consternation among oil executives and their US government cohorts in December 2008 when he won 14 bids at an auction of oil and gas leases in Utah – worth $1.8 million dollars – and then announced he had no intention of using or paying for them. It turned out he was a 28 year old economics student from Salt Lake University, who came to the auction to take direct action to keep fossil fuels in the ground in an area known for its natural beauty.

Forcing delays in the auction in the dying days of the Bush presidency, his action proved successful as most of the leases were subsequently cancelled by the Obama administration. However this environmental victory did nothing to prevent the legal system punishing DeChristopher for his principled audacity. In March 2011, an eight person jury – confined by the parameters set by the judge who disallowed any examination of his motives – found DeChristopher guilty. He will face sentencing on 23 June, and could face up to ten years in jail and up to $750,000 in fines.

Since his arrest, DeChristopher has emerged as a leading and critical voice in the US environmental movement, calling for more radical direct action and slamming the major environmental groups for pursuing a strategy of ‘incrementalism’ that has not delivered results.  He has also urged environmentalists to be honest and not pretend we can stop climate change; but instead look to stop its worst effects and make sure that we undermine the structures and corporations that will try to benefit from the climate crisis. Red Pepper writer Nick Buxton spoke with DeChristopher at a student-led conference on sustainability at the University of California of Davis on 30 April 2011.

What were the influences that led you to disrupt the auction in Utah?

Well I was always interested in the environment. After high school, I spent five and a half years working with so-called ‘troubled youth’, taking them out into the wilderness. It soon became clear to me that they were good kids, but ones who didn’t fit into a broken system. As I explored this, I could see that all decisions for organising the world were based around and argued in terms of economics, and that is why I went to study economics at Salt Lake University.

While at university, I helped set up a group focused on outdoor conservation and recreation, and started to get involved in environmental campaigning and the fight against the climate crisis. By 2008, I had made a personal commitment to take direct action, such as the one I took at the oil and gas auction, if an opportunity presented itself.

What did you learn from your experience of taking direct action?

I went into the auction with the typical direct action mindset: that if I could take direct action to keep the oil in the ground then it would be worth it. I have since learned that the indirect impacts of direct action are even more powerful, in terms of inspiring others to take action and stimulating discussion on what our role as citizens should be.

I also went in thinking that I was sacrificing my freedom by taking such an action. This is not really the case. The sacrifice had happened before: when I had spent years being obedient to a system that is powerful and destructive; when I accepted the myth I had no power to change things; when I voluntarily disempowered myself.

The moment I fully resisted this system, I discovered real power and liberation. I would never go back.

Why do you think environmental movements, particularly in the US, have been so ineffectual in mobilising an effective response to the greatest crisis humanity faces?

I think it is because we are a nation of people who consume a lot, and have therefore become far too comfortable with the system to dare to change it. The main control the system has is through scaring people that they have too much to lose by challenging it, and that we need to hold on to what we have.

I think also the problem is that we have too many rich people in the leadership of the environmental movement, who have benefited from the status quo. It is hard to change the world when you have little personal investment in changing it.

What do you say to the mainstream environmental groups, who argue that working within the system is the only way to deliver environmental policies?

We have had plenty of opportunity to work within the system. In the 1980s and 1990s, asking the power structures to do the right thing was perhaps a reasonable strategy, but not any more. A huge amount of money has been spent and it has failed catastrophically. Environmental groups got into bed with corporations such as Shell and Dupont – in alliances such as the Climate Action Partnership – to produce a US climate bill last year that was worse than nothing, strengthened the fossil fuel industry and completely deflated the climate movement.

The reality is that the green movement has spent a lot of time studying science and economics, but not history – understanding how change happens in this country.

We can, for example, learn a great deal from the experiences of the Freedom Riders in the civil rights movement who decided to act and directly challenge bus segregation, against the advice of Martin Luther King who said it was a bad idea. The first group of students was repeatedly attacked and almost killed, but prior to their journey they had already sent a message to ask others to pick up where they left off. And they did. Students and activists soon filled the jails of Mississippi and they brought about an end to bus segregation. The key is they never had an end date to their actions, and they won.

In the US, we are gearing up for a huge summer of direct action against coal, and particularly the devastating practice of mountain top removal in the Appalachian mountains. We have a huge march on Blair Mountain in early June, and then are calling on people to join a rolling programme of busloads of arrests every day after that over the summer.

At a US youth environmental conference, called Powershift in April 2011, you caused a stir when you said we should face up to the truth that we have already lost the battle against climate change. Can you say more about this and the challenges environmental movements now face?

Our challenge has changed. It is no longer about just reducing emissions. We have to work out how to hold on to our humanity as we head to increasingly difficult times.

The turning point for me was when Terry Root, a lead author of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told me privately after an event at Stanford University that it was too late to stop a climate crisis, that her generation had failed mine. I was shocked and asked why she had not said that on the public panel. And she said that she was scared that saying the truth would paralyse people. And it is true, what she said did first put me into a dark place of despair. I found myself mourning my own future, knowing it could be nothing like my parents. But sharing that grief with others, I found knowing the truth also empowered me to fight back in a more serious way.

I can see why scientists and environmentalists shy away from talking about the truth. No-one enters the world of climate science to help humanity through a grieving process. But we are at a time in our movement where we need to be honest about these things

How should confronting that truth of climate change shape our actions?

First I think it is crucial that we don’t reinforce current power structures. I received a letter after my Powershift conference speech saying that I should be careful not to dismiss those in power, saying that the US Department of Defence is a great ally because they recognise the dangers of climate change and are acting to address it. I don’t care if the military is taking climate change seriously. But you can be sure they are not a group whose power I want to reinforce when things become ugly.

We can already see where the system has collapsed for economic or environmental reasons how power structures will respond. We saw this in Darfur where environmental catastrophe didn’t lead to everyone thinking, hey, this is clearly a sign that we must rethink how we live. Instead, it led to governing forces scapegoating certain groups, with deadly results. The greatest impact in Darfur was not the environmental catastrophe itself, but the response of those in power to it.

So in all our actions we need to look to overturn these power structures. We should not be asking major corporations like Walmart or institutions like the military to be kinder and gentler. We need to start working now on putting in place power structures that share our values as we enter difficult times. When things get ugly, and access to resources becomes difficult, we want to have trust that those making decisions will act justly, and not just favour the strong. This will mean allying now not with people at the top who have caused the crisis; but with people at the bottom, in particular those who have suffered from climate change.

We also need to stop being defensive against accusations that our demands will lead to damaging the economy. Mainstream green groups typically respond by talking about growth, green jobs, and the advantages for corporations of the green economy.

But I believe we should embrace the charges. No, we are not trying to disrupt the economy, but yes we do want to turn it upside down. We should not try and hide our vision about what we want to change, of the healthy, just world that we wish to create. We are not looking for small shifts: we want a radical overhaul of our economy and society. I think once we start talking about it, we will find more allies than we expect: trade unions, health workers, LGBT groups and so on.

Where do you think activists should invest their energies, locally or nationally?

In a hyper-individualised society, it is no surprise that climate action has been focused up to now on personal responsibility to limit consumption. We receive typically about three thousand adverts every day to consume, so green consumption bolsters that. The mentality is that the problem is one of individual and consumer habits, and that the answer to the climate crisis is lifestyle changes. This reinforces the idea that our primary identity is as a consumer, and reinforces a system that is the main problem. How can we recover and assert a system based on us as human beings rather than consumers?

A lot of us obviously start small-scale, local, in our social and environmental activities but we invariably come up against roadblocks imposed by the larger power structures. We can’t have a sustainable aspect of an unsustainable system. So we need to be clear from the outset that we want to change a larger system; to always challenge those roadblocks.

Do you maintain hope in this situation?

I have hope in the end in the ability of people to build a better world in the ashes of this one. I am not sure if that is a hopeful vision or not.

However, the future is not determined and we can still shape it. I was born the year Reagan took office, and grew up in a world where corporations were all-powerful and it was accepted there was nothing you could do to challenge them. Yet we have seen just this year in the Middle East, and in Wisconsin  in the US, that people power is not an idealistic concept. It is the only thing that can bring about real change.

I know it will mean navigating the most intense period of change we have ever seen, but there is still a huge range in what our future could look like. That is why it is even more important to keep fighting.

From Nick Buxton: I enclose an interview I carried out with US activist, Tim DeChristopher, who disrupted an oil and gas auction in Utah in 2008 and now faces up to ten years in jail. It has just been published in the UK magazine, Red Pepper (http://www.redpepper.org.uk/time-to-be-honest/) and I attach the text below. It is a provocative read  – at times inspiring, at times troubling – with some important messages, particularly for the mainstream environmental movement here in the US. –Nick

Time to be honest
Nick Buxton speaks to Tim DeChristopher, an activist shaking up the mainstream US environmental movement

Tim DeChristopher caused consternation among oil executives and their US government cohorts in December 2008 when he won 14 bids at an auction of oil and gas leases in Utah – worth $1.8 million dollars – and then announced he had no intention of using or paying for them. It turned out he was a 28 year old economics student from Salt Lake University, who came to the auction to take direct action to keep fossil fuels in the ground in an area known for its natural beauty.

Forcing delays in the auction in the dying days of the Bush presidency, his action proved successful as most of the leases were subsequently cancelled by the Obama administration. However this environmental victory did nothing to prevent the legal system punishing DeChristopher for his principled audacity. In March 2011, an eight person jury – confined by the parameters set by the judge who disallowed any examination of his motives – found DeChristopher guilty. He will face sentencing on 23 June, and could face up to ten years in jail and up to $750,000 in fines.

Since his arrest, DeChristopher has emerged as a leading and critical voice in the US environmental movement, calling for more radical direct action and slamming the major environmental groups for pursuing a strategy of ‘incrementalism’ that has not delivered results.  He has also urged environmentalists to be honest and not pretend we can stop climate change; but instead look to stop its worst effects and make sure that we undermine the structures and corporations that will try to benefit from the climate crisis. Red Pepper writer Nick Buxton spoke with DeChristopher at a student-led conference on sustainability at the University of California of Davis on 30 April 2011.

What were the influences that led you to disrupt the auction in Utah?

Well I was always interested in the environment. After high school, I spent five and a half years working with so-called ‘troubled youth’, taking them out into the wilderness. It soon became clear to me that they were good kids, but ones who didn’t fit into a broken system. As I explored this, I could see that all decisions for organising the world were based around and argued in terms of economics, and that is why I went to study economics at Salt Lake University.

While at university, I helped set up a group focused on outdoor conservation and recreation, and started to get involved in environmental campaigning and the fight against the climate crisis. By 2008, I had made a personal commitment to take direct action, such as the one I took at the oil and gas auction, if an opportunity presented itself.

What did you learn from your experience of taking direct action?

I went into the auction with the typical direct action mindset: that if I could take direct action to keep the oil in the ground then it would be worth it. I have since learned that the indirect impacts of direct action are even more powerful, in terms of inspiring others to take action and stimulating discussion on what our role as citizens should be.

I also went in thinking that I was sacrificing my freedom by taking such an action. This is not really the case. The sacrifice had happened before: when I had spent years being obedient to a system that is powerful and destructive; when I accepted the myth I had no power to change things; when I voluntarily disempowered myself.

The moment I fully resisted this system, I discovered real power and liberation. I would never go back.

Why do you think environmental movements, particularly in the US, have been so ineffectual in mobilising an effective response to the greatest crisis humanity faces?

I think it is because we are a nation of people who consume a lot, and have therefore become far too comfortable with the system to dare to change it. The main control the system has is through scaring people that they have too much to lose by challenging it, and that we need to hold on to what we have.

I think also the problem is that we have too many rich people in the leadership of the environmental movement, who have benefited from the status quo. It is hard to change the world when you have little personal investment in changing it.

What do you say to the mainstream environmental groups, who argue that working within the system is the only way to deliver environmental policies?

We have had plenty of opportunity to work within the system. In the 1980s and 1990s, asking the power structures to do the right thing was perhaps a reasonable strategy, but not any more. A huge amount of money has been spent and it has failed catastrophically. Environmental groups got into bed with corporations such as Shell and Dupont – in alliances such as the Climate Action Partnership – to produce a US climate bill last year that was worse than nothing, strengthened the fossil fuel industry and completely deflated the climate movement.

The reality is that the green movement has spent a lot of time studying science and economics, but not history – understanding how change happens in this country.

We can, for example, learn a great deal from the experiences of the Freedom Riders in the civil rights movement who decided to act and directly challenge bus segregation, against the advice of Martin Luther King who said it was a bad idea. The first group of students was repeatedly attacked and almost killed, but prior to their journey they had already sent a message to ask others to pick up where they left off. And they did. Students and activists soon filled the jails of Mississippi and they brought about an end to bus segregation. The key is they never had an end date to their actions, and they won.

In the US, we are gearing up for a huge summer of direct action against coal, and particularly the devastating practice of mountain top removal in the Appalachian mountains. We have a huge march on Blair Mountain in early June, and then are calling on people to join a rolling programme of busloads of arrests every day after that over the summer.

At a US youth environmental conference, called Powershift in April 2011, you caused a stir when you said we should face up to the truth that we have already lost the battle against climate change. Can you say more about this and the challenges environmental movements now face?

Our challenge has changed. It is no longer about just reducing emissions. We have to work out how to hold on to our humanity as we head to increasingly difficult times.

The turning point for me was when Terry Root, a lead author of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told me privately after an event at Stanford University that it was too late to stop a climate crisis, that her generation had failed mine. I was shocked and asked why she had not said that on the public panel. And she said that she was scared that saying the truth would paralyse people. And it is true, what she said did first put me into a dark place of despair. I found myself mourning my own future, knowing it could be nothing like my parents. But sharing that grief with others, I found knowing the truth also empowered me to fight back in a more serious way.

I can see why scientists and environmentalists shy away from talking about the truth. No-one enters the world of climate science to help humanity through a grieving process. But we are at a time in our movement where we need to be honest about these things

How should confronting that truth of climate change shape our actions?

First I think it is crucial that we don’t reinforce current power structures. I received a letter after my Powershift conference speech saying that I should be careful not to dismiss those in power, saying that the US Department of Defence is a great ally because they recognise the dangers of climate change and are acting to address it. I don’t care if the military is taking climate change seriously. But you can be sure they are not a group whose power I want to reinforce when things become ugly.

We can already see where the system has collapsed for economic or environmental reasons how power structures will respond. We saw this in Darfur where environmental catastrophe didn’t lead to everyone thinking, hey, this is clearly a sign that we must rethink how we live. Instead, it led to governing forces scapegoating certain groups, with deadly results. The greatest impact in Darfur was not the environmental catastrophe itself, but the response of those in power to it.

So in all our actions we need to look to overturn these power structures. We should not be asking major corporations like Walmart or institutions like the military to be kinder and gentler. We need to start working now on putting in place power structures that share our values as we enter difficult times. When things get ugly, and access to resources becomes difficult, we want to have trust that those making decisions will act justly, and not just favour the strong. This will mean allying now not with people at the top who have caused the crisis; but with people at the bottom, in particular those who have suffered from climate change.

We also need to stop being defensive against accusations that our demands will lead to damaging the economy. Mainstream green groups typically respond by talking about growth, green jobs, and the advantages for corporations of the green economy.

But I believe we should embrace the charges. No, we are not trying to disrupt the economy, but yes we do want to turn it upside down. We should not try and hide our vision about what we want to change, of the healthy, just world that we wish to create. We are not looking for small shifts: we want a radical overhaul of our economy and society. I think once we start talking about it, we will find more allies than we expect: trade unions, health workers, LGBT groups and so on.

Where do you think activists should invest their energies, locally or nationally?

In a hyper-individualised society, it is no surprise that climate action has been focused up to now on personal responsibility to limit consumption. We receive typically about three thousand adverts every day to consume, so green consumption bolsters that. The mentality is that the problem is one of individual and consumer habits, and that the answer to the climate crisis is lifestyle changes. This reinforces the idea that our primary identity is as a consumer, and reinforces a system that is the main problem. How can we recover and assert a system based on us as human beings rather than consumers?

A lot of us obviously start small-scale, local, in our social and environmental activities but we invariably come up against roadblocks imposed by the larger power structures. We can’t have a sustainable aspect of an unsustainable system. So we need to be clear from the outset that we want to change a larger system; to always challenge those roadblocks.

Do you maintain hope in this situation?

I have hope in the end in the ability of people to build a better world in the ashes of this one. I am not sure if that is a hopeful vision or not.

However, the future is not determined and we can still shape it. I was born the year Reagan took office, and grew up in a world where corporations were all-powerful and it was accepted there was nothing you could do to challenge them. Yet we have seen just this year in the Middle East, and in Wisconsin  in the US, that people power is not an idealistic concept. It is the only thing that can bring about real change.

I know it will mean navigating the most intense period of change we have ever seen, but there is still a huge range in what our future could look like. That is why it is even more important to keep fighting.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Leave a Comment

Filed under Climate Justice, Forests and Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, REDD, UNFCCC

Tagged as indigenous peoples, indigenous rights, REDD

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog