Cop21 Part III; Civil Society Groups Trying to Bring the Truth, & a Few Other Bits and Bobs

(cross-posted at Café Babylon.net)

climate change refugees

climate refugees

Given that France has cancelled all outdoor public demonstrations near the conference, civil society groups may never be allowed in the conference doors, nor be seen or heard nearby.  Some groups have been going to great lengths to get their messages to the Oligarchs.  The Deciders.  Never mind the plethora of Fossil Fuel Lobbyists.  I love this:

Brandalism at COP21 Paris 2015: Press release

“Over 600 artworks critiquing the corporate takeover of the COP21 climatetalks were installed in advertising spaces across Paris this weekend -ahead of the United Nations summit beginning Monday 30 November.

Amidst the French state of emergency banning all public gatherings following the terrorist attacks on 13 November in Paris, the’Brandalism’ project has worked with Parisians to insert unauthorised artworks across the city that aim to highlight the links between advertising, consumerism, fossil fuel dependency and climate change.

brandalism

The artworks were placed in advertising spaces owned by JC Decaux -one of the world’s largest outdoor advertising firms and an official sponsor to the COP21 climate talks.Other prominent corporate sponsors of the climate talks such as AirFrance, GDF Suez (Engie) and Dow Chemicals are parodied in the posters -whilst heads of state such as Francois Hollande, David Cameron, BarackObama, Angela Merkel and Shinzo Abi also feature.

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The artworks were created by over 80 renowned artists from 19 countries across the world including Neta Harari, Jimmy Cauty, Banksy-collaborator Paul Insect,Escif and Kennard Phillips – many of whom featured at Banksy’s Dismalandexhibition in England this summer.

Joe Elan from Brandalism said, “By sponsoring the climate talks, major polluters such as Air France and GDF-Suez-Engie can promote themselves as part of the solution – when actually they are part of the problem.”

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Their art gallery.

From IndigenousRising.org: Indigenous Peoples:UN Paris Accord could end up being a Crime against Humanity and Mother Earth’ press release:

“November 30, 2015 (Paris) – Indigenous Peoples from the Americas attending the United Nations World Climate Summit in Paris warn that the Paris climate accord will harm their rights, lands and environment and do nothing to address climate change.

“We are here in Paris to tell the world that not only will the anticipated Paris Accord not address climate change, it will make it worst because it will promote false solutions and not keep fossil fuels from being extracted and burned. The Paris COP21 is not about reaching a legally binding agreement on cutting greenhouse gases. In fact, the Paris Accord may turn out to be a crime against humanity and Mother Earth,” according to Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of Indigenous Environmental Network based in Minnesota on Turtle Island also known as the United States. Goldtooth recently won the Gandhi Peace Award.”  [snip]

(a lot more is here, and their flickr photos are here.)

After railng against all carbon market solutions, this:

“According to the Global Alliance against REDD, “Instead of cutting CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions, the UN, the US, the EU, China, Norway and climate criminals like BP, Total, Shell, Chevron, Air France and BHP Billiton are pushing a false solution to climate change called REDD.”
According to Nnimmo Bassey, co-coordinator of the No REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), in Africa Network, “REDD may result in the largest land grab in history. It steals your future, lets polluters off the hook and is new form of colonialism. We demand that states and corporations stop privatizing nature!”

Their COP21 solgan is: ‘No War, No Warming – Build an Economy for People and Planet’  (an excerpt)

“Climate justice seeks to address much more than greenhouse gas emissions, but the root systemic causes of climate change itself. Climate justice is about social and economic justice, and how democratic, peaceful and equitable solutions, not military violence, best serve the interests of humanity. The fossil fuel economy is a driver of this multi-faceted crises facing the world: causing resource wars; polluting our air, water and land; creating illness and death to people and of ecosystems; privatization of nature; economically exploiting Indigenous communities, communities of color and the working poor; forcing mass migrations; and, depriving millions of adequate food, access to water, housing, healthcare and healthy and safe employment.

As part of a global climate justice movement, we oppose the bombing of Syria. Over many decades we have witnessed that Western militarism has only increased the instability of the Middle East and other regions. This militarism abroad has also escalated the military complex at home in the United States, where communities resisting the industries causing climate change, have been heavily policed and targeted by police violence”.

Their demands:

  1. Establish mandatory–not voluntary–emissions cuts at the source
  2. Leave fossil fuels in the ground
  3. Reject Fracking, Nuclear Power, Carbon Markets, and other dangerous technologies and false solutions
  4. Strengthen the inclusion of human rights and particularly the rights of Indigenous Peoples
  5. Support Community-Rooted Solutions; including regional and local economic structures that support the production of renewable energy

As to #3 and nulclear power, I’d provided a link in part I that claimed renowned climate scientist James Hansen would be at COP21 advocating for an increase of nuclear power plants.  Curious to discover the logic of that, given the many inherent dangers, I found this at the website he shares at Columbia in a section toward the end in which he claims to debunk science myths:

“If we care about climate, a “carbon-free portfolio standard” would make more sense than RPS.  However, the best approach is a rising carbon fee that allows efficiency, renewables, nuclear power, and carbon capture to compete fairly.

Nuclear waste and nuclear safety: killing nuclear in the U.S. would make a safer world.  Conventional nuclear reactors fission only about 0.6% of the mined nuclear fuel.  The rest remains as very long-lived radioactive “waste”. In fact this waste can be used as fuel for “fast” reactors, which combined with recycling facilities can raise this figure up to about 99%.  Fast reactors have the potential to leave a significantly smaller amount of waste which is dangerous for a few hundred years rather than tens of thousands of years.

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Referencing “beliefs” rather than “evidence, and Helen Caldicott:

“Caldicott’s assertions were nothing more than her belief.  George Monbiot, a respected British journalist, explored in detail the sources of Caldicott’s assertions.  The resulting article that he wrote begins:

“Over the past fortnight I’ve made a deeply troubling discovery. The anti-nuclear movement to which I once belonged has misled the world about the impacts of radiation on human health. The claims we have made are ungrounded in science, unsupportable when challenged and wildly wrong. We have done other people, and ourselves, a terrible disservice.”

His math on ‘saved lives’, nukes v. smog, is noteworthy as well, but he doesn’t really address ‘quality of life’ so much, and as to the big three nuclear reactor meltdowns notes that ‘Sure, there were some airline accidents while the technology was being perfected’, or close.  Apparently birth defects due to radiation poisoning are also ‘just a belief’.  Perhaps he and George should study the horrific effects that depleted uranium bombs have had on the babies in Iraq and other theaters of war that ‘belief-based scientists’ say is already proving to be multi-generational.

His carbon-taxing plan confused me, so if this is the same carbon taxing plan, the CBO says while there would be pros and cons, one big con would be that it would hit the low-income Rabble classes the hardest.

As to ‘Climate justice is about social and economic justice, and how democratic, peaceful and equitable solutions, not military violence, best serve the interests of humanity’ above, Kate Aronoff writing at Jacobin gave me the shivers the other day in her ‘The War on Climate Change; Framing climate change as a national security threat risks inviting the conventional response: more militarism.’, including:

“A truly comprehensive agreement to take on climate change at the international level would bring about a more peaceful world — eventually — by greatly diminishing the possibility of massive land loss and a rise in temperatures that is, as climate scientist Kevin Anderson has said, “incompatible with organized global community.” It’s impossible to imagine any peaceful vision for the future without serious mitigation. That so many are now raising the question of the relationship between global warming and national security, rather, begs the question: should a climate strategy also be a counterterrorism strategy?”

She rightly points out that the bombing of Syria continues apace, including the vengeful Hollande’s, outdoor demonstrations and protests have been cancelled, multiple thousands of police are evident, European xenophobia is on the rise, and of course, the Pentagon has been hatching plans since at least 2003 to ‘weather climate change storms’.  They cast their role almost as the National Guard ‘helpers keeping civil order’:

“Their 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap envisioned that, as climate change accelerates, “the Department’s unique capacity to provide logistical, material and security assistance on a massive scale or in rapid fashion may be called upon with increasing frequency.” The roadmap laid out a plan for confronting climate change’s “threat multiplier” as it relates to national and military interests at home and abroad, where rising sea levels put coastal bases at risk, wildfires might disrupt training activities, and drought-induced food shortages could require more boots on the ground to handle the armed insurgencies and mass migrations that appear to follow them.”

There’s loads more, of course, some I agree with, some…not so much.  But she’s indeed correct that given the West’s huge panic over Daesh/IS, it’s entirely possible that that subject is being discussed far more than carbon emission targets, especially since the framework had pretty much been agreed on before the first world leaders jetted in to meet, greet, and exhibit maximum bonhomie with one another.

The Guardian wrote ahead of the conference:

 What is likely to be agreed in Paris?

We know already what the biggest emitters have committed to. The EU will cut its emissions by 40%, compared with 1990 levels, by 2030. The US will cut its emissions by 26% to 28%, compared with 2005 levels, by 2025. China will agree that its emissions will peak by 2030.

Nations responsible for more than 90% of global emissions have now come up with their targets – known in the UN jargon as Indended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs . These include all of the major developed and developing countries, though their contributions vary: in the case of developed countries, actual cuts in emissions, but for developing countries a range of targets including limits on emissions compared to “business as usual”, and pledges to increase low-carbon energy or preserve forests.”

I’ve read different and much longer time frames, so who knows?  But Michael Hoexter writing at Naked Capitalism says that no one will think to analyze any changes from the Kyoto protocols among even the signatory nations, and his answer was: Pfffffft.

It was a little bit fun to read that as Barack Obama has been designated as ‘the leader’ of COP21, he has been urging that “…parts of Paris climate deal must carry legal force; President offers apparent compromise over the periodic review of emission reduction targets as Hillary Clinton goes on attack against Republicans back in US’

And of course, he knows that the US Congress will never, ever, approve any treaty that might come out of COP21, as it never did for the Kyoto protocols, as one of the top global ‘leaders’ of greenhouse gas emissions, ha ha.

‘‘Success is just progress’: Naomi Klein’s cautious optimism for COP21’Klein and a few friends have a manifesto somewhere from their #theLEAP conference in Paris, but I can’t find it.

Well, goddam; I give up.  It turns out that Ralph Nader was right: Only the rich can save the world.

…………………………………………………………………………………….

*Bonus material: At the end of oneCOP21 parts I’d mentioned that Edward Bernays was chuckling from his grave.  He was, of course, the creator of modern propaganda and ‘public relations’, using the psychoanalytical theories of his uncle Sigmund Freud and others in what he claimed was a necessity given the danger and ‘irrationality’ of the herd instinct in the human sphere.  From Nov 11, 2015 ‘Controlling Consciousness’, from the Public Good Project.  You don’t have to like it or agree, but considering it is better than never having been introduced to the idea, I think.

“The role of public relations (PR) in producing ‘discursive monoculture’ is currently in vogue with communication scholars. As an instrument of social control, the goal of PR is to dominate discourse, and to keep out alternative views.

Using PR, the donor elites in the US — MacArthur, Ford and Open Society foundations — set the civil society agenda. Human rights indicators — set by governments, NGOs and civil society — thus reflect the interests and bias of ‘the power elite’.

Access to communication technology and services is one obstacle to democratic renewal; overcoming the obstacle of communication gatekeepers requires that they be recognized as such. There are no neutral players in the netwar of ideas about privatization.

Consumers remain largely unaware that investigative journalism in mainstream media is extinct. Corporate and government public relations agents have filled the void with propaganda posing as news.

Wall Street’s vertical integration of controlling consciousness is based on five components: ownership of media, fabrication of news, integration of advertising with state propaganda, financing of foundations and brokerages, and co-option of NGOs and grassroots groups.”

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wendy davis's picture

thank you for centering the images, JtC. please let me know where to send your $1.99 when i can scrape it together.

also:

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thanks for the Cop21 Pt.III, good stuff!

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wendy davis's picture

i wish more here shared your views, JtC. ah, well...as kurt vonngegut would say, "and so it goes".

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Unabashed Liberal's picture

series is super educational; really striking graphics, too. So much info to absorb, I usually need to do a couple of close readings to 'get it.' (Which is fine, since I'm one of the least knowledgeable folks here regarding environmental issues.)

Also, thanks for the bonus material on Bernays and PR. There's a very interesting book (by Chomsky and Herman??) called "Manufacturing Consent," that folks might want to read. (I need to reread it.)

Gotta run, now, and listen up--House Majority Speaker Paul Ryan is going to pontificate about his so-called conservative 'vision.' (C-Span) He's supposedly going to cover tax and entitlement 'reform.' Ugh!

Really look forward to more of your informative essays.

Have a good afternoon, Everyone!

Mollie


"Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare."--Japanese Proverb

Postscript: If I hear anything substantive from Ryan's remarks, I'll post a blurb at EB this evening.

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

wendy davis's picture

i'm kinda learning a lot on the fly, myownself.

yes, i know the book's title, but haven't read it. i will say that i've read some critiques that indicate that he manufactures some, himself, though. i can't remember what finally caused me to wonder if it weren't so, really.

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Unabashed Liberal's picture

incredible. I just watched it five times in a row.

Hope folks who may not have enough time to explore every link, or all the backup material, will take time to watch this extraordinary video of Tom Goldtooth, with narrator Nnimmo Bassey (?).

For cryin' out loud, some of what those two are saying, I've never heard from our mainstream environmental leaders.

Also, thought the young woman in the beginning of the video nailed it--without any 'jargon.' Wink

FWIW, here's a quote from the President about his proposed 'carbon tax.'

"Under my plan of a "Cap and Trade System," electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket, even, ah, regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad . . ."

There is a video of him saying this (I've keep this quote on a sticky note, along with scores more of them) that has a San Francisco Chronicle logo in the corner. If I can find it pretty easily and quickly, I'll come back by, and post it as an update.

Also, I read the CBO Report/Analysis that you provided, hope others will. Both a Carbon Tax and a VAT tax are likely coming down the pike (US). That's 'why' lawmakers are getting ready to further slash taxes for 'the wealthy' and for corporations--making the cuts 'revenue neutral.' They are going to pass the burden of taxes in the US on to the masses, in a manner that will especially be harmful to the most vulnerable folks (poor and working classes), as well as the middle class.

Thanks for all you do, WD!

Mollie


"Every time I lose a dog, he takes a piece of my heart. Every new dog gifts me with a piece of his. Someday, my heart will be total dog, and maybe then I will be just as generous, loving, and forgiving."--Author Unknown
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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

wendy davis's picture

mollie. the layout here still baffles my goofy brain. well, quite a scam is REDD. i forget if the video said that there are already genetically engineered trees, and they will be purrrrfect for ruinous monoculture plantations. i got a good one i'll put in at the bottom of the thread...

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wendy davis's picture

‘Darkening the White Heart of the Climate Movement’

i feel their anger over further evidence of neo-colonization.

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mimi's picture

say it all without words. to see Besoz and Gate all smiling and Tom Goldtooth at the same time talking... is enough to get it in a second. The art images are also hitting the point. ABE and Obama's ... you can't misunderstand. Good ones.

Have to read later slowly, but you sounded in one comment as if we wouldn't be on the same wavelength with your diary. Not me. Thank you for putting it all together. All the greenwashing ads ... are easy to look through for what they are. Don't worry. I think people are not that easily deceived.

Thank God for artists. Bless them.

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wendy davis's picture

and under oppression, art has flourished, and has been vital, and i do make diaries that reflect that, and showcase 'the people's art', id call it, much like the brandalists did. images stay with one in much the same way the best social songs do, don't they?

as for my comment you're referencing, it's a bit hard to know how to frame the answer well. for one thing, of course, it was the dearth of comments. for another, it was the push-back i'd received on critiquing various 'brands' in the climate movement, which thank goodness has now been reframed as 'climate justice' in some venues, perhaps with the help of the global indigenous.

the reason i posted the 'controlling consciousness' piece was to show how far 'branding' matters, and how easy it is to sell that brand so that few will even question the players' motives, clay feet, funding, and so on. i'd mentioned to a commenter at the café that the reason she reckoned progressives were the easiest marks for that was because there really isn't any Letfist movement left in this country to speak of, so the putative left hags on to heroes and icons that really don't serve the 99% or the planet well.

i can't say i understand how ppm carbon dioxide really interact with rising ocean temps, but they obviously have a deep relationship, right? and yet most of the bigs in the climate science movement never discuss that number as they call for capping the change at 2 degrees C, 1.5, or what have you. the 350.org brand, perhaps? the hansen brand (another 'god') is huge, and he's at cop 21, got a spread at the guardian, but really never said what he was advocating (possibly in side meetings?) vis a vis china and a host of small nuclear plants, tra la la.

naomi klein, yes, we love her, but she is not anti-capitalist, and is busy working on public/private 'solutions' that will entail trillions of investments in those same green tech solutions that will yield the Lords of Capital the same measure of profits over time. and yeah, i object. it's not Bidness that can save the planet, no matter how much the players claim it to be so.

the tweet concerning 'browning the white' of the climate march in london: it was avaaz again that put them in their places, and called the cops on them. avaaz clients are all over this movement, and the rockerfellers funded the 2014 climate march, pffft. yes, i really despise corporate gate-keeping and false gods, so i guess it's small wonder that not everyone here is eager to comment on this latest diary. but as i said, so it goes, and i've lost plenty of commenters at the café over the past couple years, too.

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dearth of comments, much of the time things don't get wound up here until late morning and into the afternoon. Some days it's just slow, like all sites experience from time to time, and it's hard to judge when traffic will be heavy or light. I wouldn't take it as a reflection of your work, it's the nature of the beast and all that jazz.

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mimi's picture

as it takes me several reads and checking all of what I didn't know or didn't understand. Mostly I can't do it, as all in all it takes a lot of time for me to do so.
I would have to dig in to one issue to make up my mind if the "god" Hansen or the "god" McKibben or the "godess" Naomi Klein are all in bed with the "Lords of Capital". I almost would say, who can really NOT be in bed with the Lords of Capital these days and survive. But it looks to me that they try not to be. I would really have to concentrate on that one issue. I didn't. McKibben calls for divesting, so he asks to get out of the bed of Lords of Capital, right?

The relationship between the parts per million Carbon Dioxide in the air to the warming of the oceans and the surface of the earth is explained and you can find it on various wikipages for a start. I haven't followed how they calculated how much lower the ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere needs to be to not cause more than 1.5 degree celsius temperature increase. I trust that with that much publicity some scientist have made the correct calculations.
link>

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a trace gas in Earth's atmosphere constituting about 0.04% (400 parts per million) of the atmosphere. Incoming solar radiation to the Earth equals 341 (thermal) watts per square meter (Trenberth et al., 2009). Some of the solar radiation is reflected back from the Earth by clouds, the atmosphere, and the Earth's surface (102 watts per square meter). Some of the solar radiation passes through the atmosphere. About half of the solar radiation is absorbed by the Earth's surface (161 watts per square meter). Solar radiation is converted to heat energy, causing the emission of longwave (infrared) radiation back to the atmosphere (396 watts per square meter). Some of the infrared radiation is absorbed and re-emitted by heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases in the atmosphere. Outgoing infrared radiation from the Earth equals 239 watts per square meter.

Radiative forcing

A number of natural and man-made mechanisms can affect the global energy balance and force changes in Earth's climate.[34] Greenhouse gases are one such mechanism.[34] Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere absorb and re-emit some of the outgoing energy radiated from Earth's surface, causing that heat to be retained in the lower atmosphere.[34] Some greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere for decades or even centuries, and therefore can affect Earth's energy balance over a long time period.[34] Factors that influence Earth's energy balance can be quantified in terms of "radiative climate forcing."[34] Positive radiative forcing indicates warming (for example, by increasing incoming energy or decreasing the amount of energy that escapes to space), whereas negative forcing is associated with cooling.[34]

Again radiative forcing:

Earth absorbs some of the radiant energy received from the sun, reflects some of it as light and reflects or radiates the rest back to space as heat.[34] Earth's surface temperature depends on this balance between incoming and outgoing energy.[34] If this energy balance is shifted, Earth's surface could become warmer or cooler, leading to a variety of changes in global climate.[34]

And again, because it's so much fun:

In climate science, radiative forcing or climate forcing is defined as the difference of insolation (sunlight) absorbed by the Earth and energy radiated back to space.[1] Typically, radiative forcing is quantified at the tropopause in units of watts per square meter of the Earth's surface. A positive forcing (more incoming energy) warms the system, while negative forcing (more outgoing energy) cools it. Causes of radiative forcing include changes in insolation and the concentrations of radiatively active gases, commonly known as greenhouse gases and aerosols. (ie water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. Without greenhouse gases, the average temperature of Earth's surface would be about 15 °C (27 °F) colder than the present average of 14 °C (57 °F).[2][3][4]

With the ocean's water it's a little bit like this:

Carbon enters the ocean mainly through the dissolution of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is converted into carbonate. It can also enter the oceans through rivers as dissolved organic carbon. It is converted by organisms into organic carbon through photosynthesis and can either be exchanged throughout the food chain or precipitated into the ocean's deeper, more carbon rich layers as dead soft tissue or in shells as calcium carbonate. It circulates in this layer for long periods of time before either being deposited as sediment or, eventually, returned to the surface waters through thermohaline circulation.[4]

Oceanic absorption of CO2 is one of the most important forms of carbon sequestering limiting the human-caused rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However, this process is limited by a number of factors. Because the rate of CO2 dissolution in the ocean is dependent on the weathering of rocks and this process takes place slower than current rates of human greenhouse gas emissions, ocean CO2 uptake will decrease in the future.[2] CO2 absorption also makes water more acidic, which affects ocean biosystems. The projected rate of increasing oceanic acidity could slow the biological precipitation of calcium carbonates, thus decreasing the ocean's capacity to absorb carbon dioxide.[12][13]

Heh. I wanna go to bed now. In case you knew all that and I misunderstood your comment, sorry for that. Looking this up, I got flashbacks to my youth when I had to dig into this stuff and I am so glad I don't have to do it again. I rather learn an instrument and play some music these days and let 'em scientist do the nitty-gritty stuff. Atmospheric science is "plain awful". Smile

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wendy davis's picture

for the wiki concerning it; i had read there and other places as well. other scientists claim other complex algorithms are necessary, and say the two are only minimally related. as to the 'the science', i just read a 2012 piece at scientific american noting the the ICCP (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has consistently underestimated the pace and impacts of global warming, and they are the 'go to' agency of record. so no, i reckon we can't assume some scientists made the right claims, and that only too often the calculations are political, not science-based in many cases, as dahr jamail noted so well.

your "I almost would say, who can really NOT be in bed with the Lords of Capital these days and survive" is just what the capitalists mean for you to believe, as in: all solutions come through bidness and Mr. Market. i won't spend the time explaining what a distraction i believe mcKibben's divestment plans have been, nor his carbon-trading and other bidness fixes. i kinda wanted to answer your other comment and questions, and its a busy day here.

and the 'pubic/private partnerships' are quite capitalistic, and goodness knows, naomi klein knows 'shock doctrine emergencies' better than anyone, yes? but i'd say those are the 'partnerships' to be most wary of; they glitter, since most believe the multi-billionaires can save us™, and government never will be able to. read: TINA. but rather than being anti-capitalist, as touted, she is not, even if she believes that's where the solutions lie: with those who can reap mega profits while 'saving the planet'.

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mimi's picture

as difficult as the science behind the climate change is, I wouldn't be surprised if scientist's estimates and calculations have underestimated or prognosticated the effects wrongly. I am not that much of an atmospheric science student to make a judgement about it. It helps if someone would use clear language, if making arguments as to where are the "calculating mistakes".

Don't worry to answer to me. I just would beg you to use less sarcastic or ironically loaded cool language and use more scientifically valid language. I think I am able to recognize if science commentators post scientific language comments that are politically motivated. There was at least one over at the other site and I simply don't read that anymore. He sounded very scientific ... At the same time I don't like to presume that people who have engaged on the activist side of the science issues of climate change are all in bed with the capitalist. If McKibbens divestment plans are a distraction, it should be easily to explain why.

I heard this morning a pretty simple and clear cut piece on France 24 and on Democracy Now. I think I understood why cap and trade is a hoax of a solution.
Climate Scientist James Hansen Warns World is on Wrong Track to Prevent Runaway Global Warming is another piece, I think I can understand. I am not sure if the money Hansen suggests to collect through a fee on carbon emitted, money he wants to be 'invested' back to the "public" (in contrast to be invested into corporations), is clear or a solution. What does he really mean with that? It will not automatically lead to a shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy production. The public is who? The government? Which is bribed by the corporations? If that's what you are criticizing I understand it and like to hear more about it. If the public is the end user of energy, I wonder how they could become the receiver of that carbon tax money income. It's way too convoluted a path to believe in as a solution.

If you listen to the interview African Women, Hit Hardest by Climate Change, Forge New Solutions Across the Continent you know that they are on the right track. They know where funds for developing renewable energy production in the Third World would end up. Certainly, not in projects that help the people / women on the ground, whose livelihood is dependent on stable climate, enough clean ground and surface water and less droughts. Money pledged to help and put into a fund will enable the money suckers to be bribed and direct it away from real solutions. I might say serious African (unbribable) women know "their men". I am not supporting them, because they are women, but because they know how "their men" would use the funds in all likelihood in ways that won't end up helping the civilian population on the ground. So, that's why I trust them more than either foreign (Western) women (ahem like HRC) to know best what to do to help the "native or indiginous" women, who have to feed their families and can't do without enough clean water and dried-to-stone soil. Those who work the soil on the ground can't be deceived and cheated, they can only be bribed and gender or race is not part of that. We are all equal opportunity bribable people.

The only thing I am doubtful of is that the people who have given some thoughts about all of it and may have suggested solutions, solutions that also might not work, do so intentionally. That's why I was defending people like McKibben. And I will read not what others write about Naomi Klein, but read her own words and books. I am tired of the online noisy discussions. The private/public partnerships sound like "fogging up" the issues. I guess people are again so afraid of anything socialistic. Gosh, that is so annoying. I can't read it anymore. So, I guess we have to become socialistic capitalist or capitalistic socialists, right? Forget about it. No indigenous woman in the Third World countries villages, those getting hit most by climate change, gives a damn about those war of word online. It doesn't help them at all.

Isn't it as easy as making it non-profitable for the coal and fossil fuel companies to get this "black gold" out of the ground by making it extremely expensive through a fee or tax to the consumer? If that happens at least more will left in the ground and companies try to shift away to renewable energy production. That isn't the end of the story, because that in itself will help those companies in the end to make profits (developing the renewable energy production infrastructure) as well. It is probably unavoidable, but hopefully it will help to stop the warming of the atmosphere and oceans.

I decided that wind energy is the best energy to engage in. Even better than solar. Do we already know how much non-recyclable materials and junk we produce alongside with the millions of panels? How much exploitation will take place to get to the material solar panels are made of? You may know. I hadn't the nerves and time to find out. All I know is that when my son started to work for a solar company (as a low-level worker on the ground) the first representation they got from the company was to explain how much environmental trash this solar technology is producing as well. So much for that. People know when they produce trash. May be it's just (for the time being) less dangerous trash as the trash produced by coal, fossil fuel and nuclear energy production methods. What it really means is certainly hard to find out through reading political blog comments, that's for sure.

So, I hope, my brain is not yet so calcified, that I can't use other sources to understand what is a fraud, a political motivated manipulation, a bribed engagement in untruthful scientific data production etc.

I am simply tired of reading blogs. And I have difficulties to not stumble over words, sarcastically, cultural jargon, ironic and/or cool ones. To me it's not cool, but a distraction and a nuisance. Sorry for sounding cranky. You have to understand that what you put online is read by people that are not from your cultural and educational background. So there is ample confusion, misunderstanding and wasted emotions going with it. Clear language is helpful.
Pardon I hope you don't mind me saying all that. I mean not to offend.

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enhydra lutris's picture

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

wendy davis's picture

enhydra lutris. 'sea otter'; how lovely. we watched them play off the pacific coast once; dayum, what clever and fun-loving critters. river otters love to play, too, and create muddy slides for frolicking. but oh, my: watching sea otters crack open hard-shelled food with stones as they float on their backs is simply sublime.

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mimi's picture

Are Driving War and Catastrophic Conflicts from Syria to Africa.
here. Even Sec. of State Kerry used the "right words" a short while ago, at least this time. But are you convinced by his words, his pro-war intentions and actions certainly wouldn't miraculously chase the droughts away....

SEC. JOHN KERRY: For example, in Nigeria, climate change didn’t lead to the rise of the terrorist group Boko Haram, but the severe drought that that country suffered and the government’s inability to cope with it helped create the political and economic volatility that the militants exploited to seize villages, butcher teachers, and kidnapped hundreds of innocent schoolgirls. It’s not a coincidence that immediately prior to the civil war in Syria, the country experienced its worst drought on record. As many as 1.5 million people migrated from Syria’s farms to its cities, intensifying the political unrest that was just beginning to roil and boil in the region.

No Islamic State Defeat Without Ground Force, Kerry Says
John Kerry on Climate Change: The Fight of Our Time
Kerry says raids not enough after UK strikes ISIS
The above links make him sound like blowing wind from different direction, dependent on whom he addresses with his speeches. He gets a lot of praise in this Rolling Stones article:

In the climate wars, however, Kerry is a forgotten soldier. Al Gore won all the glory (and the ridicule), and President Obama has the muscle. But the truth is, no one has done more in the trenches of this battle than Kerry. He has been in the fight since the first Earth Day, in 1970, and has not let up since, participating in practically every climate conference and U.N. climate meeting in the past 30 years. It helps that he is from an environmentally conscious state like Massachusetts, but his interest in climate change has been anything but politically expedient – he did not shy away from talking about it when he ran for president in 2004, even when pollsters told him it was foolish. He pushed hard for cap-and-trade legislation in Obama's first term (and, despite Obama's less-than-full-fledged support, might have gotten it done had not his pal Sen. John McCain, long a supporter of action on climate change, gone MIA on the issue after he lost the 2008 election). As secretary of state, Kerry was one of the prime movers behind last year's historic U.S.-China deal, in which China agreed to significant carbon reductions and which helped break the bottleneck in U.N. climate negotiations. (I traveled for several days with Kerry in China last year while he was working on a trade agreement with the country, and was astonished by how he opened every meeting, no matter what the subject or who the Chinese officials were, with a few words about the urgency of climate change.)

I never was aware of Kerry's work to fight against climate change in the trenches. Was the hard work effective?

ASAD REHMAN: I think it’s very difficult for anybody, now, not to make the connection between climate change, war, conflict. Climate change exasperates existing tensions. It exasperates every inequality, it drives conflict and war. We have seen that, both in Syria, as John Kerry mentioned, but we also saw it in Darfur, in Nigeria, and we’ve seen it in other places. The reality is, climate change is both creating the conditions for social upheaval in many places, as people face water stresses, they see their agricultural yields collapse, as people move from rural to urban areas, all existing tensions become exasperated. So, if we really want to deal with the issues of military and conflict, we should go to the root cause, and the root cause is inequality as well as climate change.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to get to inequality, but the issue of climate in Syria, explain.

ASAD REHMAN: Well, Syria — it suffered, from 2006 to 2011, five years of the worst drought ever in Syrian history. Between 1.5 to two million people moved from rural to urban areas, exasperating existing social political tensions in those cities. Eighty percent of livestock died. So, of course, in those situations, just as we know in the Arab Spring, where the agriculture and the harvest collapse, food prices increase tripled, those created the social tensions which led to the Arab Spring. A similar situation existed in Syria and that’s the main connection between the two.

AMY GOODMAN: Inequality.

ASAD REHMAN: Well, we live in a broken economic system, don’t we, where we have 85 families who own 50 percent of global wealth, we have 80 percent of the world’s population, the majority of the world’s population only own five percent of the world’s wealth. We have — many of our citizens, our fellow citizens — 2.5 billion who don’t have access to a toilet, just under a billion who don’t have access to electricity. The reality is, of course we have enough finance, we have enough money, what we don’t have is a political will to spend it in the right direction, and the right places.

I wonder if the war-hawkishness is used to white-wash the lack of serious fights against climate change, or if the climate change is used to green-wash the war-hawkishness.

yeah, and I don think that Mr. Besoz and Mr. Gates just try to make sure that they spend in the right direction, so that the political will coincides with their profit-making will. Hard to believe their "good words".

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wendy davis's picture

mimi. but i would have to parody the 'never let a good crisis go to waste', as seems to be going on. now keep in mind that the apparent counterinsurgency plans for the coming diasporas, water and food wars, tra la la...plans have been afoot in the pentagon and other security state acronym agencies since at least 2003, one might wonder your same questions.

but luke osborne’s ‘Obama’s Cop21 Climate Speech Signals Coming Authoritarian Rule Over Unfolding Climate Disaster’ echoes what i’d brought from kate aranoff’s piece at jacobin. an excerpt:

“It is for this reason that Obama’s characterization of the continuation of the climate summit in the face of violence as an “act of defiance” must be seen for the Orwellian appropriation of reality that it is. The only act of defiance that occurred were those few people who protested in spite of the French imposition of rights restrictions, but Obama would take hold of that spirit, however limited it may have been, and make it the property of his elite audience. This then raises the obvious question, who exactly was Obama referring to when he said, “What greater rejection of those who would tear down our world than marshaling our best efforts to save it?” Was Obama speaking of the terrorists who were unable to prevent the climate summit from occurring (but who managed to have the French government reactively undermine its own supposedly core Western principles), or was the president speaking of the activist rabble who, out of an elite preserving security-state decision, was unable to show up at their doorstep and interrupt their party? In either case, the “best efforts” that were “marshaled” was Obama’s recognition of the world’s cream of the crop, and was an expression of flattery likely meant to entice world leaders to see themselves as potential members of his club against a backdrop of disempowered people who had been dissuaded from coming out.

If, then, by saving “our” world Obama is in fact tacitly supporting the dissolution of widely understood basic rights enshrined in the very Western civilization he is ostensibly looking to preserve, his call to action is not directed at the majority of people, but fittingly, it is aimed at those high level statesmen in attendance whose views fall in line with elite US interests. His stated goal to “protect our people and uphold the enduring values that keep us strong and keep us free,” could just as easily refer to the enduring values that keep the elite classes, his people, strong and free, and by free, this would mean free to do as they please without repercussions, in spite of their growing fears of system destabilization and the resulting desire to fortify themselves and weather mass social discontent.”

many of the NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are trying once again to lead a putch against maduro in venezuela, and starting the campaigns claiming x,y, or z and supporting the heavily neo-liberal capitalist opposition, yada, yada, because duly elected socialist governments cannot be allowed to stand. ones in which oil companies, central banks, have been privatized, or at least partially, set a very bad example for capitalism. so the MSM pick up the stories of run-away inflation, capital controls of capital flight, 'no toliet paper!!! in stores, and undermine socialism as more corrupt than...er...you know.

anyway, gotta scoot. hard stuff to internalize, i do get that.

on edit: on the other hand, we may just see everything quite differently; i just see the possibility of a world not run by capital. it will come, the only matter is when, i think.

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.”

~ douglas adams

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mimi's picture

to what Obama says. Smile
But I will read through your links and this comments again a bit later. I think we are on the same wavelength. Really.

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joe shikspack's picture

great diary, thanks for posting it here.

i saw your comment about the lack of comments. we are still a small site and on any given day the numbers of people who participate in diaries can be pretty small, though i suspect (and jtc could confirm this probably) that more people read than participate.

anyway, the lack of comments may just mean that people felt that you said everything that needed to be said and couldn't think of anything much to add.

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wendy davis's picture

alternative explanation, joe. (smile)

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wendy davis's picture

Gates’ Nuclear Folly: the Breakthrough We Really Need is Fast Implementation of Renewables’, by Linda Pentz Gunter of beyondnuclear.org

some snippets:

"The first question that crossed my mind when reading about the latest Bill Gates investment venture was “is this a cover to divert yet more money into nuclear energy?” Gates unveiled his Breakthrough Energy Coalition at the start of the COP21 climate talks in Paris with much fanfare but few details, including the size of the financial commitment.

My suspicions were triggered not only by Gates’ already public commitment to nuclear energy research, but by the name selected for this collection of 28 of the world’s richest people (mainly men.) The Breakthrough Institute, after all, is the name of the pseudo-green nuclear energy front group whose people promoted and starred in the 2013 nuclear power propaganda film, Pandora’s Promise. But so far the Breakthrough Institute is lying low on the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, although I suspect not for long. [snip]

(clean energy, new technology, innovation, flexible what.ev.ers, etc.)

"So who are these guys and what are they really up to? A review of Coalition members yields a mixed bag full of red flags proudly flying the radiation symbol. Gates is already squandering part of his wealth on Terra Power LLC, a nuclear design and engineering company seeking an elusive, expensive and futile so-called Generation IV traveling wave reactor that can never deliver electricity in time.

Mukesh Ambani is an investor in Terra Power. Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, is betting his money on the perpetually-40-years-away nuclear fusion dream, which, even if it were ever to work, will be far too expensive to apply to developing countries.

Virgin Group founder, Richard Branson, publicly touts nuclear energy and put his name on Pandora’s Promise as executive producer. “We should continue to develop advanced nuclear power to add to the mix,” he said in promoting the film via the Breakthrough Institute’s website. (See our debunk of the film’s numerous errors of fact and omission.)" etc.

the warm and fuzzy trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fm8SVLOacQ

now of course, some folks may seriously think nuclear power is either THE answer, or part of the answer. i'm not one of them. is whole earth catalog stuart brand really now one of them? ay yi yi.

speaking of which: 'Tokyo 2020 in the Shadow of Godzilla' (Olympic games and fukushima might not be such a grand idea.)

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