US, India and China Talk Climate

Byoliveridley

The Obama administration is hoping to win new commitments to fight global warming from China and India in back-to-back summits next month, the Guardian has learned, including the first Indian emissions trading scheme.

The US hopes the new commitments will breathe life into the moribund negotiations to seal a global treaty on climate change in Copenhagen in December, by setting out what action each country will take. But many observers say such bilateral deals also risk seriously weakening any Copenhagen agreement by allowing the idea of a global limit on greenhouse gas emissions to be abandoned.

The Guardian

So, as part of Blog Action Day 2009, which is focusing on climate change, I bring you news that the US administration is back, taking some kind of a leadership role in climate change by talking to India and China. The notion that somehow what the US, Europe and Canada do in response to climate change is pointless because China and India are not going to participate is misleadingly inaccurate, sometimes deliberately so. I had written in June about India’s very ambitious solar policy, and China has similar, fairly comprehensive programs on climate change.

The concern that bilateral talks will somehow sabotage the multilateral Copenhagen negotiations is, I think, overstated. More talk is always better, and good things happen when the world’s most high profile polluter signals its willingness to talk, and even initiate talks with countries whose development paths are at a critical stage.

I have not been super hopeful about how things are going to turn out in the next few years. But things have changed quite a bit in the past year. The US appear to have their own climate bill brewing. Europe makes the right noises and has a head start,making the mistakes early. Unfortunately, Canada has given up the ghost thanks to our troglodyte oil man administration. Our main hope now is that the US passes a strong enough bill to affect Canada. Or there is an election leading to a change in administration and Mr Michael Ignatieff and the “liberals” are true to their word on a new, sustainable energy policy.

Canada is now the worst laggard, having extremely high per capita emissions and policy to increase these emissions while actively sabotaging climate talks. We emit a full 2% of all global warming contributors while accounting for about 0.5% of the world’s population. It is understandable given our development path how we got there, but not trying to fix it is criminally negligent and morally bankrupt.

Apparently, the Canadian people could care less, polls indicate that the business as usual administration is increasing its support among Canadians. What is the average Canadian’s responsibility if he/she knowingly supports policy that could lead to mass homelessness, flooding, starvation, wars, species extinction, etc?

On Climate blog action day, I am sad to report that my adoptive country will do nothing but soldier on in its destructive behaviour. No point calling my local MP, she agrees with me!

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    Chinese coal mines in BC: Missing the forest for the trees

    Byoliveridley

    The story of a Chinese company in BC hiring Chinese workers has received a lot of attention. Much of the attention has focused on the company’s decision to game the temporary worker system in order to avoid hiring “Canadian” workers. Many of the objections are made on nationalistic grounds, “OMG, THEY”RE TAKING CANADIAN JOBS”, which then leads down the path of racist anti-Chinese sentiment. This Tyee article (disclaimer: I am a Tyee monthly funder, but obviously have no editorial input!) summarizes the issues involved very well. Recent changes to Canada’s immigration laws make this kind of hiring logical, because it is now okay to pay temporary workers with little/no bargaining power 15% less than you would pay locals. Of course you have to document that there were no qualified locals, but as this particular incident indicates, there’s little/no actual enforcement unless a fuss is made.

    I find temporary worker programs to be problematic because they provide no path to citizenship, no permanence for the people who want it, and cause ugly divisions in the community. If you think there are not enough “workers” in your community, open your borders, let them in and pay well, you’d be surprised.

    I wanted to highlight two obvious issues that to my mind are as important:

    1. Carbon Bomb. It’s a coal mine! How many people in BC, which preens gloriously on its carbon tax, are aware that coal is BC’s Number One export? What is the point of having a carbon tax for consumers when producers get to make money off that carbon for free? Whether the coal is burned in BC, or in China, it causes the same damage. Whether the coal is used to generate power, or to make steel, it puts out the same amount of carbon dioxide. Whether the mine uses Chinese workers or locals, it produces the same climate changing emissions. So, why instead of making coal producers pay the real costs of their product, are we enabling them to evade carbon taxes, royalties, and save even more money by reducing wages? Also, coal mining is not employment intensive, as countless other people have pointed out. So it’s not really about the jobs either. Kevin Washbrook of StopCoal made this point as well in the Tyee article I linked to earlier.
    2. Does this mine have right to be there? The West Moberley First Nation, part of a Treaty 8 band is opposed to the project on its land. That should be the end of the story. The state of Canada has responsibilities as a settler entity to obtain free, prior and informed consent on development from the people it colonized. The US is a bit more honest in this regard as it regards the colonization as a thing of the past and gives its indigenous peoples little/no rights. Canada’s different, the indigenous here have specific standing because of Canada’s existing colonial links and Canadian governments and courts routinely confirm this standing. The BC government is currently negotiating treaties with many First Nations communities including the West Moberley First Nation.

    We’re trying to set up a climate and environment disturbing, cost and tax evading coal mine on land that belongs to someone else using easily exploited temporary workers we can be racist towards.

    coal

  • Big Wool and Fast Fashion

    Byoliveridley

    Cute sheep or not, factory farming is always impactful

     

    According to one analysis of wool production in Australia, by far the world’s top exporter, the wool required to make one knit sweater is responsible for 27 times more greenhouse gases than a comparable Australian cotton sweater, and requires 247 times more land.

    Source: Big Wool wants you to believe it’s nice to animals and the environment. It’s not.

    This is an interesting article in Vox on the outsized impacts of large-scale factory farming wool impacts. The article goes into further detail comparing wool to synthetics on impact (Both big, but different), and why plant-based alternatives like Tencel and Hemp and recycling have not taken off. It also discusses the increasing trend of wool blends.

    Widespread cheap synthetics have enabled fast fashion, making it possible for brands to produce stupefying volumes of disposable fabrics. These are now very commonly combined with wool to create hybrid garments. According to the Center for Biodiversity and Collective Fashion Justice’s recent analysis of 13 top clothing brands, more than half of wool items were blended with synthetics, giving them in-demand properties like machine washability

    Of course when you blend a wool and a synthetic, it is now landfill material. The issue with clothing (same as the issue with most scaled up factory production) is scale and economics. Fast fashion makes clothes that fall apart in 6 months and are impossible to fix. So whatever the raw material used, this trend ensures high production, quick profit, large impact and large waste. In addition, factory-scaled animal production is not really compatible with animal welfare.

    Unless the system changes, which will require a massive re-examination and re-jigging of our financial systems and reward/responsibility mechanisms, we will always have this issue.

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    Sunita Narain on the Tata Nano

    Byoliveridley

    nano.jpg Unless you have been living under a rock recently (hey, nice way to start a blog post, insult your reader(s)), you must have heard of the Tata Nano, the much ballyhooed cheapest car ever built. People ask me (after all, I am Indian and pretend to know a lot about the environment) what I think of the Nano. Well, it’s hard to summarize in an elevator pitch. Obviously, given the state of public transportation in the cities, people want private vehicles to travel in, more convenient, fewer people to jostle against, etc. People previously riding scooters and motorcycles (and carrying entire families in a two wheeler) would prefer this car. But, traffic’s going to get worse, and cars occupy a lot of road space while not carrying that many people.

    Anyway, my thoughts aside, Sunita Narain (one of India’s most famous environmental activists) and director of  The Center for Science and Environment (India’s most active Environmental NGO) writes one of her typically insightful editorials in Down to Earth, the CSE’s flagship publication.

    Let’s take the ‘affordability’ question first. The fact is that cars—small or big—are heavily subsidized. The problem is that when economists (including those who run the government) fret and fume about mounting subsidy bills, they think of farmers—fertilizer, electricity and food—not our cars. But subsidy is what they unquestionably get.The subsidy begins with the manufacture of cars. When we read about the Singur farmers’ struggle to stop government from acquiring their land for the Tata car factory we don’t join the dots. We don’t see this as the first big subsidy to motorization. The fact is, in Singur the manufacturer got cheap land, interest-free capital and perhaps other concessions—the Left Front government in West Bengal never made public full details of its attractive package. This brought down the cost of production and allowed the manufacturer to price the Nano at Rs 1 lakh

    The Nano-flyover syndrome | Editor’s Page | Down To Earth magazine

    All very true. Cars are heavily subsidized, taxation, parking, you name it, money quote…

    Since cars take up over 75 per cent of the road space, even though they move less than 20 per cent of the people, it is obvious whom this expenditure benefits the most.

    Yes, cars are not a very efficient way to move people, they’re convenient because Indian cities are not being planned to prioritize public transport that is convenient, safe and clean. India’s  per capita income (nominal) is about a $1000 per year and the nano, even in its cheapest form, is about 3 years worth of the average income. So, your average Indian, even if she lives in a city and makes twice this average, will not buy this car. So, she’s stuck on the bus which crawls ever so slowly due to all these nanos flitting about. Or, she’s on a scooter/bike facing ever increasing pollution due to these cars and risking life and limb as traffic pushes vehicles closer and closer together.

    But of course, this seems to be the pattern of development and optimists will argue that at some point in time, the infrastructure will catch up to the point that there will be room for all these cars and money for all the people to buy all these cars. But as Ms. Narain points out, 20% of Delhi is already covered with roads (hard to get that number in context though, I have no idea what percent of NYC is road covered, for instance!), so finding room to build more roads is going to be hard.

    Something’s gotta give, I don’t know what!

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    NC House Smoking Bill passes committee

    Byoliveridley

    Updates on the smoking bills I mentioned last week….

    Bill Would Extinguish Indoor Smoking Statewide :: WRAL.com

    Dismissing North Carolina’s heritage as a tobacco state, a House committee on Tuesday passed a far-reaching indoor smoking ban.

    The Judiciary Committee passed the ban by a 9-4 vote. The measure would prohibit smoking in all indoor workplaces in North Carolina, including bars and restaurants. The rules also would apply to private clubs, except those with nonprofit or tax-exempt status.

    The measure would be complaint-driven — local health departments would act on complaints from the public — and violators would first receive warnings.

    “This was a significant and important event to advance the public’s health in North Carolina,” said Dr. Leah Devlin, director of the state Division of Public Health.

    But critics of the legislation, House Bill 259, pointed out that it faces an uphill battle on the House and Senate floors.

    “What they really want is a complete prohibition of indoor smoking in North Carolina,” said state Rep. Paul Stam, R-Wake. “We all know smoking is nasty and dangerous. The question is whether, in a free society, you let people do some things that are nasty and dangerous.”

    Some opponents said passing the bill could set the stage for similar bans inside personal vehicles and homes.

    “You want to smoke and you own the building. Is it really that bad for the public?” asked state Rep. Ronnie Sutton, D-Robeson.

    Yes Paul and Ronnie, not only did you construct a straw man, you blew smoke on it, gave it lung cancer, tortured it with cigarette butts and finally set it on fire. Sheesh, what asses.

    Update

    From Laura Leslie, WUNC (our local NPR affiliate) reporter who maintains a reporter’s blog at WUNC

    Under the current version of the bill, which isn’t available on the web just yet, only NON-profit clubs could allow smoking – like the Elks Lodge, for example.

    So for the standard nightclub or bar, smoking would be banned.

    Hope it helps – and thanks very much for reading!!
    Laura

    So, that’s a lot of progress on the house bill, making it very close to the senate bill.

  • Coal Fired Power Plants – Moratorium needed

    Byoliveridley

    Cleaner Coal Is Attracting Some Doubts – New York Times

    Within the next few years, power companies are planning to build about 150 coal plants to meet growing electricity demands. Despite expectations that global warming rules are coming, almost none of the plants will be built to capture the thousands of tons of carbon dioxide that burning coal spews into the atmosphere.

    This is batshit insane and irresponsible. The US of A does not have a carbon policy (other than use as much as you possibly can!), and, only in the last few months have phrases like cap and trade and carbon taxes been used in respectable society. I am not going to get into the policy solutions here, there are much better discussions going on elsewhere.

    My question is this. When you know that 150 coal fired power plants are going to have a significant effect on the carbon emissions, how can you even think of approving them unless you have a carbon emissions mitigation policy in place already? If you let them be built, they will somehow grandfather themselves out of the controls. The power of existence is a big deal. Will anyone dismantle one of these once they’re operational? Think of the children!!

    There needs to be a moratorium on any large new power plants and other global warming sources until this country has figured out what emission targets it’s going to meet, how it’s going to meet them, and when it is going to meet them. Only then can the market decide which choices are feasible and which ones just don’t make sense. How will I know whether gasification or conventional burning/sequestration is better unless I have the metrics to measure them by? Depending on the emission reduction targets, they could both be economically viable, or neither.

    Something tells me that the word “moratorium” and the phrase “coal fired power plant” will never be uttered in the same sentence.

3 Comments

  2. I was also excited about the topic of Blog Action Day this year. I’m v. interested to read an int’l enviro policy blog from the perspective of someone outside the US… I’m used to the heaps of American guilt about emitting so much CO2 while having relatively so few people, but I didn’t really think about the fact that we aren’t the only ones in that boat! Definitely going to read more. The eco-fem slant also intrigues me [mentioned on about page??], I took a class in enviro ethics by a very serious eco-feminist.

    I’m also impressed with how long you’ve kept your blog up, and your turtle is adorable. 🙂

    http://jenclinton.wordpress.com

  3. Jen:

    Thanks for the kind words. I used to be a lot more serious about blogging a few years back, but I’ve kept this going as a reminder that while writing for me is a lot more difficult now than it used to be, it will come back soon enough 🙂

    Guilt, yeah, reasonably effective, but righteous anger is better!

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