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Street Cred
Dispatches from a global-warming march
Bill McKibben, Grist
MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Why would anyone spend their Labor Day weekend wandering the shoulder of a highway? It’s possible no one will — but if they do, it may signal the next wave in the global-warming fight. And not a moment too soon.
By now, after almost 20 years, there’s an amazing array of people working on global warming. The environmental movement has largely become the climate-change movement (the leaders of its major organizations, the Green Group, chose the issue as a top priority at least through 2008). There are committed engineers building the next generation of windmills, and economists figuring out a thousand schemes for trading carbon emissions, and pollsters running focus groups, and documentarians trying to follow up on Al Gore’s success, and vice presidents for campus facilities installing new light bulbs in every dorm, and on and on and on.
What there haven’t been, oddly, are any people in the streets. That’s about to change. The end of this summer will see the first few mass demonstrations in U.S. history about climate change. The Chesapeake Climate Action Network gathered supporters outside the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration over the weekend, for instance, to demand that its bureaucrats own up to the link between climate change and hurricanes.
(30 Aug 2006)
Global warming impacts on World Bank programmes
Ireland Online
About one quarter of World Bank development programmes may be at risk because of climate change, the organisation warned at an environmental summit.
Projects in small island states are already being affected because of rising sea levels and storm surges, which have affected the water supply and infrastructure, World Bank environment director Warren Evans said yesterday.
He said dry countries in sub-Saharan Africa also were bearing the brunt of the damage because of the impact of climate change on crucial farm production.
“A large number of projects we finance are at some risk of not succeeding because of climate change,” Evans said. A World Bank report on Managing Climate Risk said this could be as high as one quarter.
The report urged the international community to integrate climate risk concerns now in development strategies in order to safeguard economic growth and poverty reduction gains in the short and long term.
The warnings came at the opening of a conference of the Global Environmental Facility – a partnership with the UN Development Programme, the UN Environment Programme and the World Bank and the biggest source of funding for projects to combat pollution and promote sustainable development.
(30 Aug 2006)
Related:
WB: Beware climate backlash (Fin24)
Climate change a threat to development-World bank (Reuters/Alertnet)
Global Environment Facility (GEF)
Investment Implications of an Abrupt Climate Change (PDF)
Eric Sprott & Kevin Bambraugh, Sprott Asset Management
56-page report, available online
(May 2006)
UK climate change protesters feel the heat
Martin Wainwright, The Guardian
Tensions rose yesterday between police and a small but determined camp of climate change protesters who hope to disrupt Britain’s biggest power station today.
Activists from across the country refused to allow officers to enter a field near the giant cooling towers of Drax in North Yorkshire after previously amicable negotiations over regular informal patrols broke down.
There were also protests about allegedly heavy-handed searches as a shuttle bus ferried protesters from Selby rail and bus stations three miles away. The North Yorkshire force invoked section 60 of the Public Order Act late on Tuesday to search “suspicious” newcomers to the two-acre field.
The largely peaceful atmosphere, as the camp busied itself with painting banners and constructing a giant ostrich for today’s demonstrations, also soured following a chainsaw attack on timber power line poles at Fryston, some 20 miles west along the “megawatt valley” line of power stations beside the M62 motorway. Police are not linking the incident to the Climate Change Camp but it rang warning bells about the range of possible targets for today’s direct action. Although heavily outnumbered by police from five forces, with specialist back-up units from as far away as London, the protesters were adamant that they would attempt to shut down Drax, however briefly.
The power station is the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the country and supplies an average of 7% of the national grid’s electricity.
(31 Aug 2006)
UK conservatives push market approach to climate change
Original: Climate change brings us an uncomplicated choice
Zac Goldsmith, The Guardian
Cameron’s Conservatives have recognised that we can benefit the economy and the environment at the same time
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The Archbishop of Canterbury recently described the economy as “a wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment”. Calling for an immediate response to climate change, he said “the Earth itself is what ultimately controls economic activity because it is the source of the materials upon which economic activity works”.
His view, echoed by the likes of Nobel economics laureates Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz among a great many others, is that we need a new type of market economics – an approach that actually takes the planet into account. It may seem like an obvious call, but it’s an approach that until recently couldn’t have been further from that of our current, or previous governments. We have had strong words – but little action.
…We cannot, for instance, radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions without major investment in new, clean technology – there are opportunities to be found in the need for change. For those at the forefront of delivering a low-carbon economy, these opportunities will come from developing high-value jobs, greater energy efficiency, and secure, affordable energy supplies.
The UK has the opportunity to become a leader in new renewable energy technologies, with London becoming a major financial centre at the heart of trading carbon and raising capital for the “new investment frontier”. In doing so we will enhance our competitive advantage, not reduce it.
Indeed, where companies have already begun to invest in low carbon technologies and energy efficiency, they are being rewarded financially. Dupont, for instance, has reduced its emissions by 72% since 1990, saving more than $3bn in the process. GE has promised to double its investment in environmental technologies to $1.5bn by 2010. Goldman Sachs, Wall Street’s best-known investment bank, is currently ploughing more than $1bn into clean technologies.
These initiatives are happening both as a result of consumer pressure and because they make financial sense. But it is the role now of government to provide a more stable, long-term policy framework in order to help unleash the wave of innovation that is needed.
Recently, the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change wrote to the government calling for more support for this transition to a low-carbon economy. It is these long-term policies that the quality of life policy group is helping the Conservative party to develop. We must establish how to build consensus in society on high-impact actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and seek ways to revitalise the international political process around global solutions to climate change. Britain can be used as proof that you can reduce carbon emissions without losing economic advantage or sacrificing quality of life.
Zac Goldsmith is the deputy chair of the Conservative party’s quality of life policy group.
(31 Aug 2006)
The UK conservative certainly have a different take on global warming than US conservatives.
