Archive for June, 2011
California delays its carbon-trading program until 2013
June 30th, 2011
Cross-posted from The Los Angeles Times
The cap-and-trade program, which would force industries to cut greenhouse gases by the end of the decade, continues to be challenged in court.
Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, says the delay in the cap-and-trade program, slated to take effect in January, is proposed because of the “need for all necessary elements to be in place and fully functional.” (Robert Galbraith / Reuters / October 13, 2010)
By Margot Roosevelt, Los Angeles Times
June 30, 2011 – Facing continued litigation, California officials will delay enforcement of the state’s carbon-trading program until 2013, state Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols announced Wednesday.
The delay in the cap-and-trade program, slated to take effect in January, is proposed because of the “need for all necessary elements to be in place and fully functional,” she said.
But in testimony before a state Senate committee,Nichols said the postponement would not affect the stringency of the program or the amount of greenhouse gases that industries will be forced to cut by the end of the decade.
Carbon-market executives mostly shrugged at the news.
The air board “has given firms a breather, not a pass,” said Josh Margolis, chief executive of CantorCO2e, an emissions-trading company. “Companies will need to make the same reductions, but they will face a steeper slope.”
Ricardo Bayon, a carbon-market expert with San Francisco-based EKO Asset Management Partners, said, “This is still a green light on cap-and-trade. The program still begins in 2012, but regulated entities would not need to prove compliance until 2013. It is like giving students more days to turn in their homework for the year.”
The cap-and-trade program, championed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is a centerpiece of the state’s landmark effort to cut planet-warming gases to 1990 levels by 2020. It accounts for a fifth of the planned cuts under the state’s 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act.
Under the program, 600 industrial facilities, including cement manufacturers, electrical plants and oil refineries, would cap their emissions in 2012, with that limit gradually decreasing over eight years.
Several neighborhood organizations and environmental justice groups that focus on local pollution are fighting the program in court, saying it would allow industrial plants to avoid installing the strictest pollution controls.
A San Francisco judge ruled in March that the air board had not sufficiently analyzed alternatives to the trading program, as required under California’s Environmental Quality Act. The agency appealed the decision, and an appeals court ruled last week that officials could continue working on the regulation pending the court decision.
The board is drafting an analysis of alternatives, which is to be considered for adoption Aug. 24, Nichols said.
Bill Gallegos, executive director of Communities for a Better Environment, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the carbon-trading program, said environmental justice groups will press Gov. Jerry Brown to reject the program.
“Cap-and-trade is the wrong way to achieve greenhouse gas reductions,” he said. “It can easily be subject to fraud.”
In the wake of the failure of national climate legislation in Congress last year, California’s program would be North America’s biggest carbon market, three times larger than a utility-only system in the northeastern U.S.
By 2016, about $10 billion in carbon allowances are expected to be traded through the California market, which is slated to link to similar markets in several Canadian provinces.
“We cannot afford to let up in our efforts,” Nichols said, adding that Congress’ failure to pass a national carbon-trading bill “squandered the opportunity to reap major public health, air quality and economic benefits.”
State Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), author of the original California climate legislation, said, “This modest delay in implementation is prudent. The one-year period will allow us to road test market mechanisms to see how they work while ensuring that the greenhouse gas pollution reductions required by the program remain intact. By getting this right, California can serve as a model for other states and countries.”
Scientists say that carbon dioxide and other gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, are trapping heat in Earth’s atmosphere, leading to dangerous climate change, including rising sea levels, longer droughts, floods and melting glaciers.
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
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Photo Essay from the Tree Biotechnology 2011 Conference Field Trip Hosted by Veracel
June 30th, 2011
On Wednesday, July 29th, around 200 participants divided into 4 groups toured various facilities owned by pulp company Veracel. This photo essay explains what we learned on the field trip.
Photos and commentary by Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project (Exception: the last two photos are by GJEP Co-Director/Strategist Orin Langelle)
First Stop: Veracel Forest Preserve where children and visitors are “educated” about the importance of eucalyptus pulp and the “greenness” of Veracel. Note that the human figure in the poster is exhibiting total dominance over the trees.
On the way into the forest preserve, children and visitors are presented with a native forest monster and representations of some of the scary wildlife that live in forests.
Veracel forest monster
Scary forest raptor
On the way through the 6,000 hectare forest preserve (80% of which is forested), a mixture of formerly logged lands and primary forest, participants were treated to a canopy rope bridge and photo shoots with 4 large trees we encountered on the path. Most of the forest contained very young trees.
canopy rope bridge
one of the four big trees
The primary Mata Atlantica forest once stretched over much of the eastern edge of Brazil. Large swaths of it have been eliminated and replaced with eucalyptus plantations. Veracel took us next to the tree nursery where they propogate the 17 million eucalyptus clones they produce annually. Henry Ford would have been proud. The nursery was a very efficient assembly line operation.
Taking Cuttings to propagate new clones
“Clonal Garden”
Assembly line for clones 1
Assembly line for clones 2
Assembly line for clones 3
All the happy clones together
The next step for these clones, of course, is to be transformed into large-scale monoculture eucalyptus plantations. Veracel harvests 11,000 of these 7 year old eucalyptus trees every day for their pulp mill. Virtually the entire timbering operation is heavily mechanized to employ the fewest people possible, and uses an assortment of chemicals, from a petroleum-based hydrophilic polymer that is planted with the seedlings, to glyphosate-based herbicides that are applied to keep out competition plants, to the insecticides used to control “pests.” In this way, Veracel can maximize its potential for profits.
The eucalyptus plantation up close and personal
The mechanical harvester rapidly gobbles up the trees
The jaws of the harvester up close and personal
This employee, clearly bored, awaits his cue to show the visitors how the mechanized planter works
After a couple of tries, they were finally successful in showing how the mechanized planter works
The result. Note the petroleum-based polymer gel at the base of the seedling
Despite several quotes from Rachel Carson, John Muir, Emerson and other naturalists posted at the nature preserve, the plantations rely heavily on chemical applications. The guide informed me that the trees get three applications of toxic herbicide over their 7 year life span. As a result, the plantations of non-native trees are devoid of understory plants or biodiversity. Social movements in Brazil call them “green deserts” for this reason.
the ground beneath the plantation is barren of other life forms
Rachel Carson quote in the Veracel forest preserve. Too bad they don’t listen to her.
The ultimate purpose for the clones:
massive pile of eucalyptus chips at the Veracel pulp mill
From standing trees to boiled, bleached pulp in one day
The reason Veracel needs to greenwash their image: their giant stinking, polluting pulp mill
The stench of the pulp mill. “It smells like money”.
Veracel’s vision for the future: Make more money!
One of the obstacles, according to Veracel, of their achieving maximum productivity, is people breaking into their plantations. On the way to the plantation, we passed what appeared to be an MST (Landless Workers’ Movement) encampment–black plastic shelters with a red MST flag flying high over them. Indeed, elsewhere in Brazil, the MST as well as indigenous Tupinikim and Guarani populations, have taken over eucalyptus plantations and found better uses for the land. In the case of the MST as encampments for landless peasants. In the case of the Indigenous Peoples, as a retaking of their ancestral lands from which they were forcibly removed when the timber company was given the land for plantations. The cases we had previously documented were on Aracruz Cellulose land in Espirito Santo, but it seems to be occuring here in Bahia as well. Below are photos from the encampments in Esprito Santo:
MST encampment in former eucalyptus plantation. The sign says “Eucalyptus plantations are not forests”. Photo: Langelle/GJEP-GFC
Indigenous community re-takes traditional lands, removes eucalyptus plantation. Photo: Langelle/GJEP-GFC
Eucalyptus plantations have been such a smashing success in other parts of the world, that now GE tree company ArborGen is trying to engineer them to be cold-tolerant so that the joy of eucalyptus plantations can be spread to new and untrammeled lands. In the United States they hope to sell half a billion GE cold tolerant eucalyptus plantations annually for plantations from Texas to Florida. They’re invasive? Flammable? Dry up ground water and worsen droughts? So? What’s your point. They will make a lot of money for a few powerful people.
To learn more or to sign our petition to the US Department of Agriculture opposing GE eucalyptus in the US, click here
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Wednesday Blog Post from the Tree Biotechnology 2011 Conference: Which Side Are You On?
June 29th, 2011
By Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project
Today was the conference field trip sponsored by Veracel—the pulp giant of Bahia, Brazil. Over the course of the 11 hour field trip I snapped about 350 photos—of everything from their greenwash “forest preserve” to their stinking smoking pulp mill, to their eucalyptus nursery assembly line, to their endless eucalyptus plantations and everything in between. They were just as friendly as can be…
Now, However, it is going on 8:30pm. So I will save my blog post and photo essay from this little treasure trove until tomorrow. For now, some thoughts that demanded to be written down on Monday night—2 nights ago. I hope you enjoy this little rant of mine.
—–
Monday, June 27, 2011
Thoughts have been pouring through my head this evening, and so I decided to try a little “Breakfast of Champions” Vonnegut-style stream of consciousness writing. Course it won’t have his cool pictures. Though I can at least draw an asshole *. But its hard to write stream of consciousness with this new computer whose keyboard is ever so slightly smaller than the one I am used to—which had a problem with the key with ? and / on it. It kept falling out at the most inopportune moments. One doesn’t realize how much one counts on the ? and / key until it falls out.
So I am here in this little “hippy” tourist town of Arraial d’Ajuda (don’t ask me to pronounce it) on the coast of Bahia, Brazil. I am here to monitor and learn from a conference of tree geneticists, tree engineers and foresters gathered from the far reaches of the planet—many to practice their English, as they listen to highly technical presentations by native English speakers reciting their powerpoints as though they were a sports announcer describing a horserace.
The one thing I have most enjoyed about this place is the nights when I can enjoy the dark and secret hammock of my balcony next to the beach resort where the conference is being held.
It is peaceful out there on the terrace and the wind makes light ruffling noises with the palm fronds that reminds me of the sound of rain dripping from maple leaves after a downpour.
The simple things are what thrill me now. The quiet secret escapes. At one time travel was thrilling—the newness of it all, the adventure of not knowing what came next. Well, that wore off a LOOONNGGG time ago. Now the idea of sitting in stale overcrowded airports or big surreal metal tubes that hurtle through the sky at some ridiculous velocity is just not something I look forward to anymore.
And this is my…hmmm…fourth, fifth time to Brazil? Which is all well and good but truth be told I’d rather be in Chile. Even though I barely understand a word of the heavily accented Spanish there and the taxicab drivers are most unpleasant, the people there—the Mapuche people—are amazing. We went there after our first trip to the bizarre and incomprehensible world of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) in Buenos Aires—where we first made the argument to UN delegates that GE trees should be banned globally. We brought over a Mapuche representative named Lorena to testify to the delegates about the impacts that tree plantations and their associated toxins were having on rural Mapuche communities—and how this would only worsen with GE trees. And we formed a partnership with them to stop GE trees. But we haven’t been back in a while. Too long.
But that trip to Buenos Aires was when we got a real taste for how the UN actually works. The reason that GE trees were permitted in carbon offset forestry projects, we found out, was because Norway had tried to get them banned. Brazil and China objected strenuously, and hence, since they could not be banned, they were de facto allowed. Welcome to the UN FCCC, boys and girls.
We then brought our demand to ban GE trees globally to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP-8) in Curitba, Brazil in 2006.
The demand got surprisingly far considering it was our first time there. We caught the industry off-guard. They would not allow that to happen again. When we confronted them a second time at the next CBD in Bonn (COP-9) in 2008, they would be there with their hench men, the PRRI—pro-industry scientists posing as public interest researchers—who would present intervention after intervention about why GE trees were the best thing since sliced bread and would surely be the salvation of the world’s forests (despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary).
Industry even wheedled their way into the delegations of governments. GE tree company ArborGen got themselves on the official delegation of Brazil. As these UN meetings are based on consensus decision-making (or so they say), when Canada, New Zealand and Brazil formed a block to reject any decision to restrict GE trees, the best we could get was a reaffirmation of language from the previous COP warning of the dangers of GE trees and urging countries to adopt precautionary measures regarding GE trees.
But because the decisions of the CBD are all voluntary in their complicity and the number one driver of GE trees—the US—isn’t even signed onto the CBD (just as they are the number one producer of greenhouse gas emissions but are not signed onto the Kyoto Protocol climate agreement; and just as they are the biggest consumer of all things crap on the planet yet will not sign on to commitments to end child labor, or landmines, or basically anything that doesn’t totally suck… Wonderous place this ole U S of A.
And all so the rich can get richer and the poor poorer, the planet and all of its inhabitants continue to suffer. Meanwhile so-called “scientists” natter on endlessly about their findings on how the now believe they now have evidence that environmental conditions and/or environmental changes contribute to genetic changes in various lifeforms. Holy crap. Ecosystems, web of life, hello? Oh, but the web of life was covered on the first night by the main speaker. He presented it as a paradox. He said,
1) we all know everything is connected to everything else.
2) If this were true, evolution would be impossible
3) Therefore we need to understand genetic interactions.
What the…
I have to admit that he lost me on that one. From an ecological standpoint there can be no evolution without first the premise that everything is interconnected. What would drive evolution otherwise? Species evolve according to the stresses or changes in their environment–because there are inherent connections between and among those species and their environment. It ain’t called the web of life for nothin’.
Then you add onto that cellular knowledge, instinct and intuition—oh and life itself—the unmeasurable aspects to species interactions and behaviors—and, THAT my friends is the great paradox of reductionist thinking in the natural world. The natural world is the opposite of reductionist, the opposite to compartmentalization. It is encompassing, it is diverse, it is unpredictable and wild. It will never conform to the maps and equations and mathematical models that are imposed upon it. It may tolerate them for a while, but ultimately life will break free of the shackles of human thought limitations and do its thang. Anyone who doubts this has not been paying attention to the history of the rise and fall of empires throughout human history. They rise, they devastate or eat up their natural surroundings in the pursuit of their lust for more, more, more. Then they exceed the limits of their ecological boundaries, cannot adjust, and pass from existence.
Can we, as the present race of dominant humans, change this trajectory? Can we redirect our meager existences to shift the dominant paradigm to one that is harmonious with, rather than in constant conflict with, the non-dominant-human world? Now is the time to find out. There is no time to lose.
As the old Wobbly song demands, “Which side are you on?”
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Small insights about the big picture in climate negotiations
June 29th, 2011
Money, or rather lack of it, was one motivation for accusations that the United States was negotiating in bad faith. The U.S. refusal to discuss the sources of the $100 billion Green Climate Fund by 2020 agreed in Cancún, the U.S. suggestion that the fund might not reach $100 billion, and its meager contribution to the Fast Start Finance promised by developed countries in Cancún, reinforced an impression that the United States was negotiating in bad faith: the U.S. government would not pay the costs of adaptation to, and mitigation of, climate change on anything near the scale of its historic and current responsibility as a major emitter of GHGs.
But perhaps at the core of the accusations of bad faith, and not just those directed at the U.S. delegation, was the belief that no matter what position papers parties advanced, no matter the extent of consensus among parties for some of those positions, the decision-making process would be controlled by a few developed countries and the UNFCCC secretary. At a Friends of the Earth (FoE) press conference, Michelle Maynard of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, said that she could still not get a satisfactory answer about who wrote the Cancún CoP decision document that was presented to delegates with less than three hours time to review on a take-it-or-leave -it basis. In Bonn, Maynard put the question to Patricia Espinosa, the President of the Cancún CoP, who replied that the decision was the result of a “new methodology.” As to the rumor that the decision was drafted under the supervision of a “U.S. legal expert,” Secretary Espinosa had nothing to say.
Last year Martin Khor, executive director of the South Centre, characterized the Cancún decision-making process as uncannily like that of the opaque “Green Room” process of the World Trade Organization negotiations. Will the Green Room become the new normal of convention negotiations and if so, will that process be used to decide on an agricultural work program in advance of a work program in any other economic sector? Will agriculture, along with forestry, be reduced to providing carbon emissions offsets for other sectors to buy, in order to comply with voluntary or mandatory GHG caps?
South Africa, the president of the 2011 CoP, has announced that agreement to commit to an agricultural work program will be its signal achievement. To procure an African consensus for the CoP, South Africa will host a September 1–3 meeting of African agriculture, environment and finance ministers, financed and co-organized by the World Bank. The bank has a long announced interest in expanding its $2.1 billion in Bio-Carbon Funds by a CoP decision to allow agricultural land based carbon emissions offset credits to provide an underlying asset for the carbon derivatives market. Despite the mandate, from Cancún previous decisions, to have a balance between the funding of adaptation and mitigation projects, including carbon emissions offsets, the bank’s Global Environmental Facility has invested just $50 million in adaptation.
In Bonn, the Substantive Body on Scientific and Technology Advice (SBSTA), refused to establish an agricultural work program. However, the 2011 chair of the ad hoc working group on Long-Term Cooperation is Daniel Reifsnyder, a U.S. official. The U.S. and other developed country supporters of an agriculture program, with the aid of an African “consensus” on agriculture resulting from the September 1–2 meeting, and the bank’s offer of public money to support African carbon offset projects, in exchange for African support, may be able to forge an agreement to launch an agricultural work program.
Since U.S. Vice President Al Gore made inclusion of carbon markets a condition of the U.S. signing on to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the carbon market designers have struggled to make the markets work to reduce GHGs. The U.S. failure to join the Kyoto Protocol after developing countries reluctantly agreed to inclusion of a carbon market provision is one of those demands that may or may not have been demanded in bad faith. Now, when Japan, Russia, Canada and the United States oppose an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, with its mandatory caps on GHGs, “new market mechanisms” are proposed in addition to the ones that haven’t worked.
IATP has written elsewhere about the many vulnerabilities to failure of carbon markets. A broad range of these vulnerabilities were presented at the IATP and FERN co-organized side event on June 14. IATP has recommended a due diligence review of carbon emissions market performance before parties commit to supporting “new market mechanisms.”
Carbon market failure would not be a matter of gravest concern if other programs to reduce GHG were working. At this point, however, parties cannot even agree on a target year for the peaking of GHGs nor what that target should be, nor whether developing countries should be obliged to assume reduction commitments that the developed countries have been unable to achieve. Instead there is a mercantile approach to climate governance, trying to lock in climate commitments from other parties, while ensuring that none of those commitments damage trading interests. Such language is included in a proposed draft LCA decision for a SBSTA program in agriculture that may be agreed during the next CoP, November 28 to December 10 in Durban, South Africa.
It will be a tragedy if Bolivia alone opposes such a Durban decision, due to a Green Room procedure that excludes most parties, as Bolivia did in Cancún. Instead there is ample substantive grounds to oppose a decision whose implementation would almost certainly benefit carbon market investors far more than it would enable agricultural producers and rural communities to take urgently needed action to adapt to climate change.
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Small insights about the big picture in climate negotiations
June 29th, 2011
Money, or rather lack of it, was one motivation for accusations that the United States was negotiating in bad faith. The U.S. refusal to discuss the sources of the $100 billion Green Climate Fund by 2020 agreed in Cancún, the U.S. suggestion that the fund might not reach $100 billion, and its meager contribution to the Fast Start Finance promised by developed countries in Cancún, reinforced an impression that the United States was negotiating in bad faith: the U.S. government would not pay the costs of adaptation to, and mitigation of, climate change on anything near the scale of its historic and current responsibility as a major emitter of GHGs.
But perhaps at the core of the accusations of bad faith, and not just those directed at the U.S. delegation, was the belief that no matter what position papers parties advanced, no matter the extent of consensus among parties for some of those positions, the decision-making process would be controlled by a few developed countries and the UNFCCC secretary. At a Friends of the Earth (FoE) press conference, Michelle Maynard of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, said that she could still not get a satisfactory answer about who wrote the Cancún CoP decision document that was presented to delegates with less than three hours time to review on a take-it-or-leave -it basis. In Bonn, Maynard put the question to Patricia Espinosa, the President of the Cancún CoP, who replied that the decision was the result of a “new methodology.” As to the rumor that the decision was drafted under the supervision of a “U.S. legal expert,” Secretary Espinosa had nothing to say.
Last year Martin Khor, executive director of the South Centre, characterized the Cancún decision-making process as uncannily like that of the opaque “Green Room” process of the World Trade Organization negotiations. Will the Green Room become the new normal of convention negotiations and if so, will that process be used to decide on an agricultural work program in advance of a work program in any other economic sector? Will agriculture, along with forestry, be reduced to providing carbon emissions offsets for other sectors to buy, in order to comply with voluntary or mandatory GHG caps?
South Africa, the president of the 2011 CoP, has announced that agreement to commit to an agricultural work program will be its signal achievement. To procure an African consensus for the CoP, South Africa will host a September 1–3 meeting of African agriculture, environment and finance ministers, financed and co-organized by the World Bank. The bank has a long announced interest in expanding its $2.1 billion in Bio-Carbon Funds by a CoP decision to allow agricultural land based carbon emissions offset credits to provide an underlying asset for the carbon derivatives market. Despite the mandate, from Cancún previous decisions, to have a balance between the funding of adaptation and mitigation projects, including carbon emissions offsets, the bank’s Global Environmental Facility has invested just $50 million in adaptation.
In Bonn, the Substantive Body on Scientific and Technology Advice (SBSTA), refused to establish an agricultural work program. However, the 2011 chair of the ad hoc working group on Long-Term Cooperation is Daniel Reifsnyder, a U.S. official. The U.S. and other developed country supporters of an agriculture program, with the aid of an African “consensus” on agriculture resulting from the September 1–2 meeting, and the bank’s offer of public money to support African carbon offset projects, in exchange for African support, may be able to forge an agreement to launch an agricultural work program.
Since U.S. Vice President Al Gore made inclusion of carbon markets a condition of the U.S. signing on to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the carbon market designers have struggled to make the markets work to reduce GHGs. The U.S. failure to join the Kyoto Protocol after developing countries reluctantly agreed to inclusion of a carbon market provision is one of those demands that may or may not have been demanded in bad faith. Now, when Japan, Russia, Canada and the United States oppose an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, with its mandatory caps on GHGs, “new market mechanisms” are proposed in addition to the ones that haven’t worked.
IATP has written elsewhere about the many vulnerabilities to failure of carbon markets. A broad range of these vulnerabilities were presented at the IATP and FERN co-organized side event on June 14. IATP has recommended a due diligence review of carbon emissions market performance before parties commit to supporting “new market mechanisms.”
Carbon market failure would not be a matter of gravest concern if other programs to reduce GHG were working. At this point, however, parties cannot even agree on a target year for the peaking of GHGs nor what that target should be, nor whether developing countries should be obliged to assume reduction commitments that the developed countries have been unable to achieve. Instead there is a mercantile approach to climate governance, trying to lock in climate commitments from other parties, while ensuring that none of those commitments damage trading interests. Such language is included in a proposed draft LCA decision for a SBSTA program in agriculture that may be agreed during the next CoP, November 28 to December 10 in Durban, South Africa.
It will be a tragedy if Bolivia alone opposes such a Durban decision, due to a Green Room procedure that excludes most parties, as Bolivia did in Cancún. Instead there is ample substantive grounds to oppose a decision whose implementation would almost certainly benefit carbon market investors far more than it would enable agricultural producers and rural communities to take urgently needed action to adapt to climate change.
Court Ruling on Cap-and-Trade Brings Environmental Justice Advocates to California Capitol for State Hearing
June 29th, 2011
Communities of Color Rising to Hold Gov. Brown to Implement AB 32 Equitably
Sacramento, CA—A coalition of Environmental Justice groups are committed to continue lifting California forward by stopping Cap-and-Trade and implementing AB 32 equitably. On June 24, 2011 the Appellate Court issued a stay order allowing the California Air Resources Board to move ahead in the erroneous planning of a Cap-and-Trade program, jeopardizing AB 32, California’s landmark Global Warming Solutions Law.
On Wednesday, June 29, Environmental Justice leaders from Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) and Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment (CRPE), and others, will attend a Hearing on AB 32 Market Mechanisms and testify their opposition to the ARB’s use of a Cap-and-Trade program, a scientifically proven false-solution to Climate Change and reducing Greenhouse Gases (GHGs). CBE and CRPE have long been proactive players in the successful implementation of AB 32. Together they are leading a statewide coalition to stop Cap-and-Trade and prevent the ARB from destroying California’s leadership in reducing GHGs and invigorating an ecological economy.
PRESS BRIEFING:
When: JUNE 29, 2011 3:00 PM
Where: West Steps, Capitol Building, Sacramento, CA
For more information about the coalition or interviews, please contact Evelyn Rangel-Medina at evelyn.rangel.medina@gmail.com or (702) 534-9115.
For information, contact:
Bill Gallegos, CBE (323) 573-5310
Caroline Farrell, CRPE (661) 326-8518
Evelyn Rangel-Medina, CrossRoots (702) 534-9115
Joaquín Quetzal Sánchez, CrossRoots (917) 575-3154
###
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Invitation to German Climate and Energy Camp
June 29th, 2011
Our friend Tadzio Mueller sends this invitation to climate advocates…– the GJEP team
We´re organising a polish-german Climate Camp in the german region of Lausitz. It´ll take place from August 7th to 14th. We´ll get together on this grassroots space to share and exchange knowledge on climate-related topics. The focus will be on CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage), but energy struggles and the nuclear withdrawal will be just as important topical cornerstones.
The camp is taking place in the Lausitz (Lusatia) region, because Vattenfall is planning to build the first large scale CCS power plant in Brandenburg and expand the open-cast mining site of Jänschwalde Nord to produce and burn harmful coal.
The camp comes alive with the ideas and contributions of its participants. The more of you join, the more inspiring an experience it will be for all of us. So pass it on, come along, join the struggle. Against CO2-dumps. For climate justice and energy sovereignty!
Read our call in english:
http://www.lausitzcamp.info/international-information/english/call/
Check out our website:
http://www.lausitzcamp.info/
And: the west german climate camp is also happening this summer:
http://www.klimacamp2011.de/
Regards and solidarity,
the Lausitzcamp prep-team
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Big Polluters Lining up at Renewable Energy Trough
June 29th, 2011
Our friend Ananda Lee Tan, North American Program Coordinator for the Global Alliance Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) sends us this post to draw attention to the burgeoning field of biomass energy… — The GJEP team
Big Polluters Lining up at Renewable Energy Trough
by Ananda Lee Tan
Between the pollution trading markets and increasing public handouts for bad corporate behavior, U.S. energy corporations have been laughing all the way to the bank.
Hence it comes as no surprise that some of the most polluting and risky power companies have banded together once again, to lobby DC for more subsidies and incentives to help finance their plans for more dirty power plants.
This time they have crafted a shrewd and conniving scheme to:
1. Seek cover under the aegis of Renewable Energy such as wind and solar.
2. Get large logging firms and waste industries to rally behind the concept of burning biomass.
A new report, released yesterday by the Biomass Accountability Project - highlighted the billions of taxpayer dollars being handed out for biomass electricity projects. The report highlights the range of subsidies being sought as well as the huge public health and climate impacts that result from burning biomass.
Contrary to biomass industry claims of “carbon neutrality”, biomass burners actually produce more climate pollution per unit of electricity than coal power. Even the US EPA was forced to retract public statements supporting such misleading claims, after strong criticism from scientists about false carbon accounting, and legal challenges targeting the integrity of biogenic carbon data on EPA web pages.
While biomass carbon-intensity underscores how federal and state renewable energy designations constitute perverse subsidies, the actual potential of burning biomass is what illustrates the insanity of this option. According to Harper’s Index of January 2006, if every standing tree in the U.S. were to be burned for energy production, we would generate only 1 years worth of energy for the entire country – hardly an attribute that qualifies as being renewable.
Alongside warnings from various medical associations, the proliferation of biomass and waste incinerators is being recognized as a major infraction of civil rights and environmental justice. The vast majority of these polluting facilities are built in poor, people of color communities around the country – often communities that suffer a disproportionate share of health impacts from industrial pollution and waste. According to Robert Bullard, author of Dismantling Energy Apartheid in the United States , in the State of Georgia, 7 of the 12 existing biomass incinerators are in counties where the African American population far exceeds the state average, and 6 of the 9 new incinerators are being sited and constructed are in majority black counties.
However, the new biomass subsidies report also highlights hope – a vast number of new incinerator proposals are being defeated by community activists and grassroots groups across the nation. From Springfield, Massachusetts to Valdosta, Georgia – average citizens have been stepping up to protect their communities where lawmakers are failing, forcing elected officials to turn down these polluting smokestacks in their backyards.
So while the biomass burners lobby federal and state policymakers for the corporate welfare historically provided Big Oil, King Coal and Wall Street, the average American is not so easily fooled. Almost every week, another community stands up to stop these expensive, toxic smokestacks from being built in their backyard.
A number of DC greens are starting to take notice of the biomass threat as well, after being alerted by frontline communities of climate subsidies outside the beltway.
Now, we simply need to work together to keep the pollution peddlers away from the public purse, and protect our communities for the future of the planet.
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
REPORT RELEASE: Billions in Taxpayer and Ratepayer Dollars Funding for Dirty Biomass Electricity
June 29th, 2011
A report released today by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Biomass Accountability Project details how taxpayers and rate-payers are subsidizing hundreds of dirty biomass combustion
power facilities through programs intended for clean, renewable energy. The report, Biomass Electricity: Clean Energy Subsidies for a Dirty Industry, analyzes federal and state subsidies for electricity generated by burning “biomass.” It describes why funding biomass burning as so-called “renewable energy” is highly controversial and describes opposition from health, environmental, and fiscal watchdog groups, and local communities. The report lists over twenty facilities cancelled in the last eighteen months due in part to public opposition.
According to the report, burning biomass for electricity emits more carbon dioxide per megawatt of energy produced than fossil fuels and causes air pollution that contributes to asthma, heart disease, cancer and more. “Our nation is demanding fiscal accountability in government programs. Voters don’t want to subsidize a polluting industry that wrongfully calls itself “green,” said Meg Sheehan, spokesperson. “The U.S. Senate recently voted to end all taxpayer subsidies for ethanol biofuels due to its negative impacts. The reasons for ending subsidies for biomass combustion electricity are even more compelling. Congress must keep biomass combustion power out of any future Clean Energy Standard,” added Sheehan.
The report documents various federal taxpayer subsidies including cash grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), tax credits, and loan guarantees. It describes how state “renewable portfolio standard” (RPS) programs promote dirty biomass combustion power. “Biomass combustion for electricity should not be in state RPS programs,” said Sheehan. The report says the U.S. already gets about 50% of its so-called “renewable energy” from burning biomass, from about 255 existing facilities. “The industry wants to add another 234 biomass facilities and this is a climate and public health disaster,” said Dr. William Sammons, a pediatrician who has been assisting local communities in understanding health threats from biomass incinerators.
Most biomass facilities are proposed for communities of people of color and working poor around the U.S.–who are already burdened with a disproportionate amount of industrial pollution. “While the biomass industry continues to lobby politicians to give them public handouts, the average American is not so easily duped,” said Ananda Lee Tan, with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. “Almost every week, another community stands up to successfully stop these expensive, toxic smokestacks from being built in their backyard.”
Report available at www.nobiomassburning.org and www.no-burn.org
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
REPORT RELEASE: Billions in Taxpayer and Ratepayer Dollars Funding for Dirty Biomass Electricity
June 29th, 2011
A report released today by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Biomass Accountability Project details how taxpayers and rate-payers are subsidizing hundreds of dirty biomass combustion
power facilities through programs intended for clean, renewable energy. The report, Biomass Electricity: Clean Energy Subsidies for a Dirty Industry, analyzes federal and state subsidies for electricity generated by burning “biomass.” It describes why funding biomass burning as so-called “renewable energy” is highly controversial and describes opposition from health, environmental, and fiscal watchdog groups, and local communities. The report lists over twenty facilities cancelled in the last eighteen months due in part to public opposition.
According to the report, burning biomass for electricity emits more carbon dioxide per megawatt of energy produced than fossil fuels and causes air pollution that contributes to asthma, heart disease, cancer and more. “Our nation is demanding fiscal accountability in government programs. Voters don’t want to subsidize a polluting industry that wrongfully calls itself “green,” said Meg Sheehan, spokesperson. “The U.S. Senate recently voted to end all taxpayer subsidies for ethanol biofuels due to its negative impacts. The reasons for ending subsidies for biomass combustion electricity are even more compelling. Congress must keep biomass combustion power out of any future Clean Energy Standard,” added Sheehan.
The report documents various federal taxpayer subsidies including cash grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), tax credits, and loan guarantees. It describes how state “renewable portfolio standard” (RPS) programs promote dirty biomass combustion power. “Biomass combustion for electricity should not be in state RPS programs,” said Sheehan. The report says the U.S. already gets about 50% of its so-called “renewable energy” from burning biomass, from about 255 existing facilities. “The industry wants to add another 234 biomass facilities and this is a climate and public health disaster,” said Dr. William Sammons, a pediatrician who has been assisting local communities in understanding health threats from biomass incinerators.
Most biomass facilities are proposed for communities of people of color and working poor around the U.S.–who are already burdened with a disproportionate amount of industrial pollution. “While the biomass industry continues to lobby politicians to give them public handouts, the average American is not so easily duped,” said Ananda Lee Tan, with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. “Almost every week, another community stands up to successfully stop these expensive, toxic smokestacks from being built in their backyard.”
Report available at www.nobiomassburning.org and www.no-burn.org
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
By Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project
More analysis of the presentations at the opening night of the Tree Biotechnology 2011 conference in Arraial d’Ajuda Brazil.
The logo of the conference, I should mention, is quite interesting. It is a tree made out of double helixes. There is a brown double helix as a curvy trunk, and bursting forth from its top is a spiral of green double helixes. It reminds me of a dandelion head being blown by a child. The scientists assembled here like to think they can manipulate the DNA of trees just as easily as the artist used them to make this logo.
On Sunday night, following the presentation by the CEO of event co-host Veracel, the hour long keynote presentation was given by Ron Sederoff, a veteran tree geneticist from North Carolina State University. He started off by describing how appropriate this gathering was in 2011—the International Year of Forestry. This was a perhaps Freudian slip. 2011 is the UN declared International Year of Forests—not the year of the industry that has become fabulously well to do at their expense. Though, with the UN being more and more controlled by business, it might as well be the International Year of Forestry. Especially since the UN doesn’t even have a proper definition of forests.
Ron’s first encounter with GE trees, he recalled, was a science symposium organized by timber multinational Weyerhaeuser back in 1984.
He spoke at length about just how far the science has come in the past 25 years, but also stressed just how much further it has to go to really be practically useful. This was echoed by a young woman I overheard during one of the breaks, who said “It seems like no matter how far we get, we still have the same distance to go.” This subtle vibe of frustrated pessimism hung like a thin fog over many of the breaktime conversations, when people left their powerpoints behind and talked candidly about where they felt their work was going.
In noting the different things he and his fellow tree geneticists and tree engineers had learned over the years, Ron included the “unanticipated difficulties in public acceptance.”
This one struck me. Really? I thought. My god, there was so much opposition to genetically engineered crops from the beginning, with people pulling crops in the US and Europe, and the EU banning the import of GMO foods or seeds. Then on the other side, there were the active radical environmental campaigns to protect forests through the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s. Our organization in the 1990s was involved in both the anti-biotechnology movement and the forest protection movement, so our launch of the campaign to stop genetically engineered trees in 2000 was a natural step—especially when we learned that no one else had yet taken up the cause (which was mainly because no one had heard about GE trees yet).
I find it hard to imagine that Ron and his colleagues did not foresee massive public opposition to their Frankentree designs. We understood it instantly.
He then launched into a list of hurtles yet to be conquered. 1) Most gene functions remain unknown; 2) Pleitropy is still to be defined; 3) feedback control is limited; 4) the science is confounded by redundancy and lethality; and 4) there are multiple levels of regulations. He added another question to be answered: to what extent does diversity depend on new genes, or merely new interactions between old genes?
About the direction of sequencing DNA he quoted a colleague who said, “it’s the wild west out there.” This is another theme that has been repeated through the week. While I think they mean it to say that its in a stage where anything is possible, it could be taken in a much different way. I could imagine Ward Churchill, for example, having a field day with the idea. Probably discussing Manifest Destiny as the common thread—the imperative to conquer this country from coast to coast irrespective of the consequences; with the imperative to create, as Ron called “The I-Tree Video Game”– a computer program that could be used to determine what gene needs to be changed (what switch needs to be turned on or off) to get a particular desired result. He described a systems theory approach where: “to the extent that [plants are machines], they can be described by the behavior of their components and consequently in mathematical models, which can then be used to make predictions. In this way you could make the tree do anything you wanted it to, just by running the computer program.
But probably the most enlightening part of the keynote was the discussion of genetic engineering with regard to restoring threatened species like the American Chestnut. Don went back to describe the dense stands of chestnuts, and their great economic and social value. He described the consequences of the Chestnut blight (a fungal infestation), which, he said, killed 4 billion trees and was “the greatest ecological disaster in the US.” I’m not sure I agree with that assessment, but it certainly had extensive ramifications, including the replacement of the vast stands of chestnut in the Southeast with stands of pine and poplar.
The pine plantations of the Southeast have themselves been ecologically disastrous. But the native forests throughout the east survived and adapted to the loss of the chestnut, though they are now struggling with new diseases and pests, which, like the chestnut blight, were imported from afar. The native hardwood forests of the southeast—the ones that have survived the onslaught of loblolly pines—are some of the most biodiverse forests on the planet.
And they have a new exotic threat to worry about. ArborGen’s cold tolerant GE eucalyptus (which they plan to sell by the billions for planting in the US South) came from a hybrid created in Brazil [eucalyptus, mind you, are native to Australia] that was sent to New Zealand for genetic modification, then shipped to the US for outdoor field trials. I think some important lessons were lost somewhere along the way…
Eucalyptus Globulus was imported into California in the middle 1800s. It now has invaded vast regions of the state and California spends millions annually on eucalyptus eradication due to its propensity to exacerbate wildfires. But sure, plant billions of GE cold-tolerant eucalyptus across the South, what could it hurt…
But back to the American chestnut. Ron anticipated that GE chestnut trees (engineered to resist the fungal blight) would be the first forest tree to apply for regulatory approval for release into forests in the US. [I don’t know if he hadn’t heard of ArborGen’s pending request to deregulate their GE cold tolerant eucalyptus trees in the US, or he was saying that GE chestnuts would receive permission to plant within wild forests, rather than plantations.]
His argument for allowing the unregulated release of GE chestnuts was that there would be, “little ecological damage compared to what’s already happened.” Hmmm… He said that quite confidently for someone who only a little while earlier had talked about how little is known about how manipulated trees relate in a forest setting.
A forest ecosystem is wildly complex and biodiverse, with little known about the natural interactions between soils, fungi, insects, understory plants, wildlife and trees. What is known, however, is that mychorrhizal fungi are instrumental in nutrient uptake in trees, creating symbiotic relationships with and between tree species. Adding to the mix a tree engineered to resist fungus could indeed create some serious problems.
Pandora’s Box [of GE trees] must remain closed. Besides, there has been quite a lot of progress with non-GMO chestnuts. He didn’t mention those.
But Ron was quite determined. He said, “If GM chestnut can’t get approved, I don’t think any GM tree can get approved.” Interesting point…
Stay tuned for more tomorrow, when we all go on a field trip to the operations of Veracel. Fun, fun…
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
KPFK Earth Minute on GE Tree Conference in Bahia, Brazil
June 28th, 2011
To listen to the earth minute, go to: http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/mp3/kpfk_110628_070010sojourner.MP3
and scroll ahead to minute 42:40.
Text of the Earth Minute is below:
I am writing this week’s Earth Minute from the 2011 Tree Biotechnology Conference in Bahia, Brazil.
It is a global gathering of 300 or so scientists, foresters and industry representatives, who are discussing the future of high tech tree breeding and genetically engineered or GE trees.
The take away message from the conference’s keynote speaker, a veteran tree biotechnologist, was that in the past 25 years, the science has made great strides, but still very little is known about how genes function in trees, or about how GE trees will react in a forest ecosystem.
Additionally, a UN survey found that the second greatest concern of tree engineers about GE trees was unintentional contamination. Even so, GE tree company ArborGen (a co-sponsor of this event) is requesting permission to sell their GE eucalyptus trees at the rate of half a billion per year, for planting over millions of acres from Texas to Florida.
Fortunately groups around the world are galvanizing to stop GE trees. For more information, go to stopgetrees.org.
From Brazil, for the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show this is Anne Petermann, from Global Justice Ecology Project.
To view today’s Action Alert against GE trees, go to: http://forests.org/shared/alerts/sendsm.aspx?id=frankentrees
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Forwarded by Co-Director/Strategist Orin Langelle at the Blue Mountain Center Artist’s Residency
June 28th, 2011
Big Night at Indian Lake Theater
Cross-Posted on June 28, 2011 from Blue Mountain Center
This past Saturday was a big night for Indian Lake. Not only did the class of 2011 graduate from Indian Lake High School, but also the Hollywood hit Bridesmaids came to the Indian Lake Theater. It was a celebratory night in town and over one hundred seats were filled. Blue Mountain Center’s first session residents were up for a good time and arrived to the show decked out in full bridesmaid regalia to participate in the theater’s costume contest. Five BMC representatives sported dresses collected from a variety of fashion outlets, from the Old Forge thrift store to our very own costume closet. Needless to say, both the movie and costumes were thoroughly enjoyed–and more than one Blue Mountaineer walked away with a prize!
-SMK
Resident Orin Langelle took the photograph above of our bridesmaid costumes. Langelle is working on four decades of his concerned photography here at Blue Mountain Center. To sample his latest photographic essay, please go to Chiapas, Mexico: From Living in the jungle to ‘existing’ in “little houses made of ticky-tacky…” More of his work work can be found at Climate Connections.
About Blue Mountain Center
The Center is a turn-of-the century Adirondack lodge in a pristine and peaceful setting of woods, lakes and mountains. Life at Blue Mountain Center is organized to maintain privacy and quiet. The atmosphere is informal and cooperative. Writers are lodged in individual bedroom/studies in the Main House or the Grey Cottage; visual artists and composers have separate studios. Breakfast and dinner are served in the dining room. Linens and laundry facilities are provided. The amenities of the Center, including a tennis court, lakes, boats and hiking trails, promise even the most diligent worker diversion and relaxation. The telephone is considered something of an outsider at the Center. There is a phone for guests’ use, as well as a computer with email access and a laptop connection. To foster serenity, TV and cellular phones are not welcome.
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog