Posts Tagged ‘biofuels’

April 21st, 2010 will Mark the fall of the Mainstream Environmental ‘Movement’

For many in the climate justice movement, the growing trend of cozy alliances between many of the mainstream ENGOs with multinational corporate partners has been a toxic recipe; the price of which may be nothing less than complete ecological devastation. The result of these unscrupulous relationships is undeserved legitimacy for transnational corporations, as compromised NGOs run hand in hand with CEOs and executives in a race to the lowest common denominator. The common denominator is money and the finish line is paved in gold – but at what cost? Species extinction is happening at a scale of epic proportions, droughts and storms are happening at unparalleled magnitude; irreversible climate change catastrophe now stares at us in the face. The most inconvenient truth of all – that today – we now stand on the cusp of epic collapse of civilization. Has Earth Day become nothing more than a day of greenwash opportunism and will it mark the fall of the mainstream environmental movement.

Creating Climate Wealth Summit

Invitation from the ‘Earth Day Network’:

“Please join Earth Day Network and the Carbon War Room on April 21, 2010 from 6:00 p.m.-10:00p.m. at the Ronald Reagan Building for a celebration on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day! Join Sir Richard Branson, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and celebrities. Join attendees from the Creating Climate Wealth Summit, our keynote speakers Richard Branson and Lisa Jackson, and enjoy a night conversing with other professionals that are making a difference in the climate change market! Held at the beautiful Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington, D.C., this night will not only bring together those that are making a difference in the climate marketplace, but it will provide superb dining, excellent entertainment and a night of networking not to be missed! Seats are limited and will sell out; tickets will only be available in advance. Purchase before March 31, 2010 and receive a 10% discount! Ticket prices: $450 – Full Ticket, $295 – Non-profit and Academic, Please contact us regarding government rates. Leadership Celebration Dinner Guests include Richard Branson; Founder and Chairman, Virgin Group Denis Hayes Honorary Chair, Earth Day Network Organizer, Earth Day 1970 Lisa Perez Jackson Administrator, EPA.”

Executive board members of the ‘Carbon War Room’ include CEO of Virgin Unite and former CEO of Richard Branson’s Virgin Mobile (partner of original Havas tcktcktck campaign), and George Polk; currently leading a new $1 billion initiative by George Soros to invest private equity in climate change business models.

Richard Branson is ubiquitous. His corporations Virgin and Virgin Atlantic are partners in ‘The Climate Group’ (comprised of corporations and government) and he has worked with tcktcktck in the past. In 2007, HSBC announced that The Climate Group, along with WWF, Earthwatch, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, would be a partner in the HSBC Climate Partnership, and donated US$100 million to the group – the largest-ever single corporate donation. As of December 2008, The Climate Group coalition includes more than 50 of the world’s largest corporations and sub-national governments, as well as several partner organizations. The Climate Group also works on other initiatives, one being that of the ‘Voluntary Carbon Standard’, a new global standard for voluntary offset projects.

‘Sir’ Richard Branson is presently working with the New Royal Society initiative on ‘solar radiation management’ with “the right stakeholders” to “create a strategic roadmap for governance and regulation” in the geoengineering “battle area.” As well, Branson is fervently developing “tourism ventures into space”. You can book your place in space on Richards “sexiest spaceship ever” at your earliest convenience, because, according to Richard, “Everybody should have the chance to experience space travel one day”. Branson also has massive investments in biofuel research including palm and soy – both of which have had devastating consequences.

Turning food and Displacement into Corporate Profits

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Fossil ‘Fools Day Protests Set for 30 Cities; Target Coal, Oil, Natural Gas and Big Banks

SAN FRANCISCO—More than 30 cities throughout North America have organized demonstrations against the fossil fuel industry, corporate banks and big environmental organizations for April 1’st national Fossil ‘Fools’ Day. Demonstrations are being coordinated by Rising Tide North America , which has also launched an online campaign targeting “Big Green” groups that have taken money from the worst corporate polluters. Key targets of the campaign include Conservation International, National Wildlife Federation and Environmental Defense.

http://bit.ly/8XDk09

The National Day of Action – organized by Rising Tide North America, Mountain Justice, a coalition of Canadian climate activists and others – will feature clownish parades, flyering, subversive advertising, creative street theater, and non-violent direct actions targeting the coal, oil, natural gas and banking sectors. Cities where actions will take place include Asheville, Boulder, Chicago, Edmonton, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Ottawa, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto and Washington D.C. Corporations targeted will include Chevron, JPMorgan Chase, NW Natural Gas, Pepco and Shell. Read the rest of this entry »

Just when you thought the biofuels bad dream was about over along comes the nightmare of “biomass.”

by Rachel Smolker on CommonDreams.org

Last week President Obama announced his plans to ensure that the mandate for biofuels, 36 billion gallons by 2022, voted into law in the Energy Independence and Security Act in 2007, is met, and to provide huge new supports through the USDA for the cutting, harvesting and transport of biomass (aka forests, plants) to be delivered to incinerators and burned as “renewable” electricity and heat.

The transportation biofuel mandate was adopted without clear consideration of the impacts of production on food, public health, direct and indirect land use, greenhouse gas emissions, soils, water or biodiversity. Since being passed into law, the critique of biofuels, particularly corn ethanol, has only grown deeper and more damning. Cellulosic fuels, not much available yet, will, according to mythology, avert these concerns because they are made from the inedible parts of plants. True, we do not eat forests, but creating huge new demands for wood is a recipe for disaster.

Lucky, technological hurdles have slowed the development of cellulosic fuels, but no such hurdles lie in the way of burning biomass for electricity and heat. Across the country, communities are being offered “green jobs” cutting, hauling and chipping their forests to feed the gaping maws of a new generation of “green energy” utilities being constructed or retrofitted in their neighborhoods. At least 200 new burners are proposed around the country. Further, many facilities that burn coal are seeking to co-fire biomass under the assumption that burning trees is a step up from burning coal. It’s not.

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http://www.whatiscop15.net/

Rising Tide North America is pleased to announce www.WhatIsCop15.net – an instant archive project compiling some of the incredible work of the global climate movement at and in the lead up to the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen (the 15th Conference of the Parties or COP15).

Much has been said about the failure and collapse of the climate of COP15 last weekend to reach a binding agreement, and you’ll find lots of analysis at www.WhatIsCop15.net.

But the real story from the climate summit — which at best was expected expand the carbon market and entrench corporate control of climate policy — is a happy one.

It’s the massive organizing success and coming of age of the climate justice movement. 100,000 in the streets, tens of thousands in attendance at the climate justice oriented Klimaforum, and countless actions against the root causes of climate change.

Moreover, the sham of polluter-dominated climate policy political sausage making – which expelled groups like Friends of the Earth and Via Campesina from its proceedings – was revealed to millions of onlookers, as was Obama’s complicity in the whole affair.

Depressing as the state of things is, the understanding that there will be no just climate solutions without massive social change has crystallized for score of people in the past weeks: the movement of people demanding a radical shift in the existing order is growing by leaps and bounds, and we must celebrate this awakening!

www.WhatIsCop15.net compiles images, reports, videos, reflections and education resources from COP 15, to thank those who organized for climate justice in Copenhagen and to inspire those of us who weren’t there to equally monumental actions.

Whether you’ve been struggling to keep up with the news or were there in Copenhagen, we invite you to learn, enjoy, and spread the word about the online archive! We’d love it if you contributed content as well!

Which direction do you fancy?

(at risk of offense to those that worked stalwartly at ends that haven’t borne fruit-where-expected, as revealed by Copenhagen)

Here in Riau, Indonesia, signs of the struggle to save the last of Sumatra’s forest is everywhere. Daily, the papers cover stories of timber and oil palm companies destroying forests, engaging in corruption, driving land conflicts, sponsoring violence, and marginalizing indigenous peoples.

Today, on the way to a meeting with the local NGO Elang, I passed villagers from the Kampar Peninsula, a carbon-rich and biodiverse ecoystem that is under attack by Sinar Mas’ oil palm operations and their timber division Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), on a hunger strike.

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by Takver – Climate Indymedia

Greenpeace and Indigenous Climate activists in Indonesia have
unfurled a 20 metre by 30 metre banner protesting Deforestation
which said, “Obama you can stop this,” calling on President Obama to take
a leadership role in climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December
and at APEC in Singapore this weekend.
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article from grist:
by TOM PHILPOTT
What do industrially produced meat and corn-based ethanol have in common?

Well, they both thrive on the assumption that it’s good idea to devote vast swaths of land to an incredibly resource-intensive crop—corn—and then run that crop through an energy-sucking process to create a product of dubious value.

And .. they both got tagged as major drivers of climate change this past week.

Ethanol took the harder blow of the two, I think. It came wrapped in the Oct. 23 issue of Science. In a concise and devastating “policy forum” piece, a team of authors led by University of Minnesota researcher Tim Searchinger fingered a gaping defect in existing European and pending U.S. climate policy: biofuel gets treated as carbon-neutral, ignoring carbon emissions from land-use change. According to the paper ($ub req’d),  the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union’s cap-and-trade law, and the final version of Waxman-Markey (the House climate bill that passed over the summer) all contain the a “far-reaching but fixable flaw”:

[They] does not count CO2 emitted from tailpipes and smokestacks when bioenergy is being used, but it also does not count changes in emissions from land use when biomass for energy is harvested or grown. This accounting erroneously treats all bioenergy as carbon neutral regardless of the source of the biomass, which may cause large differences in net emissions. For example, the clearing of long-established forests to burn wood or to grow energy crops is counted as a 100% reduction in energy emissions despite causing large releases of carbon.

Or, as Searchinger put it to a Wall Street Journal reporter, “Literally, in theory, if you chopped up the Amazon, turned it into a parking lot, and burned the wood in a power plant, that would be treated as a carbon-emissions reduction strategy.”
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Rising Tide North America, with Carbon Trade Watch and the Camp for Climate Action would like you to join us on the October 24th day of global climate action to spread the word about the biggest financial scam in history – Carbon Trading.

In order to stabilize the climate before billions of people around the world suffer the consequences, it is imperative that carbon-trading schemes are stopped and real, democratically determined solutions are implemented.

www.350Reasons.org

We cannot afford to waste any more valuable time and resources relying on such market-driven strategies to deliver science-based goals (such as 350 ppm of CO2) when so many lives and livelihoods are at stake. If we truly wish to protect people and planet, then we must put climate justice before corporate profits.  However, first and foremost, we need to dispel the misguided notion that carbon trading has anything at all to do with climate change mitigation, or the present and future wellbeing of our communities.

We are proud to announce the launch of www.350reasons.org – a website presenting 350 reasons why carbon trading will not serve to stabilize the climate. A staggering amount of reasons sent in by site visitors was pored over, organized, and consolidated into an upcoming on-site gallery– 35 exemplary ones  are included in the 350 Reasons ‘zine (downloadable below).  Visit 350reasons.org for printable format versions

Online Reading version

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(New York) Climate justice activists from Rising Tide North America and Climate SOS in New York took to the streets on the final day of the UN Climate summit, making housecalls to the New York offices of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and the Nature Conservancy. NRDC’s street-level banner was festooned with a 14 foot mock “Climate Bill” in the form of $2 trillion bank note (the approximate value of a U.S. carbon market). Imagery on the giant spoof bill critiques roles of many large environmental groups in their push for passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA), chiefly for its advocacy of an carbon market. Following NRDC, the offices of EDF and The Nature Conservancy received delivery visits where activists desperately tried to present organizational representatives with their version of the “green”.

These organizations are leading members of the US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), which has united them with highly polluting corporations such as Dow, DuPont, General Electric and Alcoa Aluminum under the auspices of lobbying Congress to reduce emissions. This unsavory alliance played a major role in crafting the Waxman-Markey ACESA bill (HR 2454) passed by the US House of Representatives in July, and expected to make its way for a Senate vote imminently. Read the rest of this entry »

BioTech company Novozymes offers promises of greener futures through the re-engineering of our world without reductions or changes in behavior are another unfortunate mark of how the Corporations-Will-Save-Us mentality is putting us into one hell of a handbasket…  With biofuels/biomass – the math is bad, the solutions short-term, and the long-term impacts are abominable.

Below is the press release:

Novozymes to Share Insights at United Nations Summit on Climate Change

Biotech to play a leading role in achieving a low-carbon economy.

Franklinton, NC, USA – Heads of state, United Nations agency heads, and CEOs of the world’s top businesses will gather in New York on Tuesday, September 22, at the United Nations Summit on Climate Change to explore the role business and society can play in advancing global efforts to fight climate change. Read the rest of this entry »

U.S. biofuel makers want CO2 credits in climate bill

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Makers of biofuels and plastics and chemicals made from crops want U.S. senators to change the climate bill to give them free pollution permits that would be needed to emit greenhouse gases under the legislation.

Companies that make the alternative motor fuel ethanol and plastics from renewable biomass, rather than fossil fuels, have visited Senate offices to urge that 1 percent to 5 percent of the emissions permits in a cap and trade program outlined in the bill be given to the businesses from 2012 to 2050.

Such credits were not included for those industries in the House of Representatives version of the bill passed in June. Democratic leaders hope the full Senate will vote on the legislation in October.

The biofuels industry, most of which has the capability to also make bio-plastics and chemicals similar to petroleum-based chemicals, is far smaller than the oil refining industry, which would get 2 percent of the permits to pollute under the bill.

But Brent Erickson, an executive vice president at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, said makers of biofuels and plastics made from plants should get a share of the permits because their products are renewable.

“No offense to refiners, but they’re taking carbon that’s been buried in the ground for millions of years and releasing it into the atmosphere,” he said. “And we’re taking carbon that’s in the atmosphere and recycling it through plants, and it ought to be treated differently.”

A study in Yale University’s Journal of Industrial Ecology published this year found that ethanol made from corn had lifecycle carbon dioxide emissions about 50 percent lower than gasoline. Ethanol producers say cellulosic ethanol, a second generation fuel made from non-food crops that’s not available yet in commercial amounts, is even cleaner.

Erickson said such incentives in the climate bill could benefit companies such as Archer Daniels Midland Co, DuPont Co, Dow Chemical Co and Metabolix Inc.

BIO also hopes companies that are looking to make fuels and products from algae will get incentives under the climate bill. No company makes commercial amounts of fuel from algae yet, but interest in the industry has grown over the last two or three years.

Exxon Mobil Corp, for instance, said last month it will invest $600 million over the next five to six years on trying to develop biofuel from algae.

The bill passed by the House would give about 85 percent of the credits away in the first years of a cap and trade program on greenhouse gas emissions and auction about 15 percent of them.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Christian Wiessner)

© Thomson Reuters 2009.

source: ETC Group and Biofuelwatch

By Stephen Leahy*