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New Light on Copenhagen Climate Talks
On Sept. 1, the European Union stopped manufacturing and importing incandescent light bulbs. Europeans will now turn to the much more efficient compact fluorescent, halogen and LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs. Incandescents, critics argue, waste up to 95 percent of energy as heat, using only 5 percent for light. The EU hopes to save the equivalent of 11 million households’ energy usage through the year 2020, worth $7.33 billion per year to the European economy.
The ban precedes the December 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, held by the United Nations to update the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Greenhouse-gas emissions now occur faster than ever. Copenhagen will be critical to the success or failure of establishing a practical, binding global plan of action before human-caused climate change reaches the point of no return, creating a cascade of catastrophes.
Eventually, global warming will become irreversible if action is not taken. Greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere are measured in “parts per million” (PPM). Environmentalist Bill McKibben says that a sustainable level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 350 PPM. He has named his organization 350.org to reinforce the point. We are currently at 387 PPM and climbing. McKibben and 350.org are calling for a global day of action, on Oct. 24, to pressure governments before the Copenhagen summit.
A new generation of environmental activists is already in motion. This week, two young people were arrested in West Virginia for halting a Massey Energy Co. mountaintop coal-mining operation with a weeklong “tree sit,” and six people in London were arrested at the Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters for protesting the bank’s investment in fossil fuels. They glued themselves together and to the floor of the bank to hamper their removal, leading Reuters to headline its story “Protesters stick together in UK bank demonstration.”
The road to Copenhagen also is paved with gold: money being spent by the wealthy oil, gas and coal industries to derail or weaken any outcome. The American Petroleum Institute (API) has launched an “AstroTurf” (not to be confused with grass roots) campaign in the U.S., paying for and organizing rallies, largely attended by oil, gas and coal company employees, under the banner of “Energy Citizens.” Employees are bused in to the staged rallies with signs proclaiming “I’ll pass on $4 gas” and “Congress, don’t take away my job!” Similarities to the organized mobs at health care reform town-hall-style meetings are not merely coincidental; former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey’s group FreedomWorks, funded by, among others, oil and pharmaceutical corporations, is listed as a consultant to each industry campaign.
The API is attempting to undermine the U.S. Senate’s consideration of climate-change legislation, and it just might succeed. The House bill, referred to as the American Clean Energy and Security Act or the Waxman-Markey climate bill, is up for consideration by the Senate in September. Fast action would be required in order to grant President Barack Obama the room to negotiate at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh in late September, a key step in the lead-up to Copenhagen. But Sens. Barbara Boxer and John Kerry said this week that the bill will be delayed, citing the health-care debate and the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy. How ironic. Every week that the health care and energy bills are delayed is a victory for the opponents of change, which is especially sad since these were two of the most important issues to Kennedy.
Genuine citizen action, in the U.S. and
beyond, will be critical to counter industry influence over the
Copenhagen talks. There is a light at the end of the climate tunnel—it
just isn’t incandescent.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
- Posted in
13 Comments so far
Show AllThe new generation of activists are clearly vital. Climate Camp is a movement that was started in UK by 'veteran' activists from Reclaim the Streets, Earth First and others. It is using radical approaches to direct action, education, sustainable living and developing a new social movement. It is spreading quickly throughout the world but as yet, its unique methods have not been picked up on by activists in the states. I recommend that anyone takes a little time to check their website and judge the efficacy of their techniques and ethos for yourselves:
www.climatecamp.org.uk
The closing down of the HQ for Royal Bank of Scotland was one of many actions from a week long Climate Camp that was held on London's Blackheath this year. The same day, another affinity group used nudity, media savvy and superglue to close down a PR company famous for green wash, while more climate campers held a rally with people of the Cree Nation outside BP's HQ which was aired on the BBC news and held a rally outside the Shell HQ, (Where, with slight adjustment to the entrance sign, the building became "hell Centre".
Thanks to Amy for an excellent article!
Canada's official opposition, the Liberal Party of Canada, has just announced they will attempt to bring down the Conservative Harper government at the first available opportunity. One of the officially stated reasons for doing so, is so that we may have a change of government in time to send leaders instead of obstructionists to Copenhagen. So there is some hope from another angle Amy.
If China and India aren't on board....its a waste of breath and time.
They don't use up as much energy. They're the ones trying to go green as well. Wished the US would try and just beat 'em to it.
India's policy on climate change is that they will only commit to limit their per capita emissions to below the average of the developed world. This is a perfectly reasonable stance that gives us a good indication of the magnitude of the changes that we need to make.
India and China could probably be convinced to alter their policies in response to a serious effort in the developed world but the pitifully small efforts we have been talking about so far are worthy of only ridicule.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
First, the United States is responsible for 50% of the TOTAL greenhouse gas emissions yet only representing one fifth of the total world population. The US was once the leading exporter of oil, and achieved its global economic dominance by subsidizing oil's true costs.
Second, such past behaviors of the US have perpetrated massive social inequities to innocent victims who had no role in producing climate change. For example, the whole continent of Africa represents only 3% of global greenhouse emissions yet there are many millions of climate refugees facing starvation as a direct result of climate change brought about in large part by the US.
Third, the logic you employ is tragically backwards. If the US, as a global heavyweight, won't lead in addressing climate change,
there's not a snowball's chance in hell the rest of the world will successfully implement the necessary course corrections to escape irreversible climate change impacts that will condemn the planet and its inhabitants to a hellish existence.
In my view it is never a waste to engage the struggle. Pinning your hopes on other countries or people is just another excuse to remain mired in apathy.
Unfortunately, all we have at this point is a "climate" bill called the ACES Act -- dominantly written by corporate lobbyists and greenwashed by corporatized environmental organizations such as EDF, The Nature Conservancy, NRDC, and WWF.
Dr. James Hansen (IPCC's leading climate scientist) is on record referring to the ACES Act's half-measures and corporate giveaways of cap and trade as "Worshipping the Temple of Doom". Dr. Hansen has stated the ACES Act will do more harm than good, but until We the People wake up and demand a meaningful bill that can pass scientific muster and efficacious policy directives, quite frankly, the planet's toast.
We have very little time to get this one right. So far IPCC's predictions have been hopelessly conservative as to when these changes will occur. Already positive feedback loops have begun as evidenced by melting permafrost which releases methane (25 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas!); forest fires dumping massive loads of CO2 and soot particulates further worsening climate change; and melting sea ice and glaciers which once reflected the sun's heat away from earth but now allow oceans and continents to absorb more solar radiation-- thus accelerating climate change.
What to do? Sign-up at http://www.climatesos.org/ and help spread the word!
snowball's chance in hell... good one, Davian.
Dear Amy,
Lightbulbs ain't gonna get it done, so perhaps it was a poor choice of lead. (or mercury) Even though it does imply that the US hasn't taken even the tiniest, easiest, cheapest, most profitable steps possible, most people in the US (don't know about your readers) don't get 'implications' when it comes to climate. They have to be smacked in the head and still usually don't get the seriousness of the situation. Eyes glaze over, ear wax closes holes with even the tiniest bit of truth.
For politicians to move against such rabid malevolence on the corporate denier-delayer front, we would have to be overwhelming in numbers and determination. We don't have that yet, and developing it in time looks...well, I wouldn't bet the solar-powered permacultured suburban homestead on it.
Try a Transition Town approach. Positive, mutual self-interested motivation toward resilient communities. Have you done a show on permaculture or the Transition Town movement?
We're going to have to make *massive* *fundamental* changes *SOON* if we want high-order life to survive.
The Number One problem, the problem that drives all others, is overpopulation.
The second problem, or perhaps it's only a different face of the same problem, is that we don't lock up the clever, greedy psychopaths, we allow them to make our laws! All around the world, their number one law is "we own everything, you own nothing, so we will live in luxury on the fruits of your labor because God says so and we have big clubs to remind you if you forget your place". We *must* change that. Nobody, no matter how subtly or indirectly (e.g. overbreeding to create the "need" for Lebensraum), can ever be allowed to claim ownership over anyone else's means of living.
I don't know whether we can solve the psychopaths-in-high-places problem without an all-in world war, since they have a rather firm grip on every country in the world, but for sure the place to start is where we are.
These psychopaths could not exist without us - without our work, our money. They produce nothing - they just take. They are, for the most part, useless parasites. Or they are like queen bees, lolling helplessly while armies of worker bees tend to them. They could not survive without our participation and our assent.
Once we-the-people realize this, we will find ways to resist and say Hell No. Massive peaceful resistance is called for.
Joe
Mairead, Joe,
I don't see it. Although overpopulation makes all other problems worse, it is hardly the main problem or the origin of anything. The root of the problem must be one that has no cause itself, right? because if it had a cause then the cause of the cause would become the root problem. But overpopulation obviously has causes. Not one but several, at least. At the root of all of them are psychological conditions, which are caused by things we can no longer control (they're in our individual or species past) and are now self-perpetuating.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
W.H. Auden, "September 1, 1939"
We can't change the past but we can treat the problem that's present. Structural factors and traditions and conditions all have to change too, and can, but the psychological problems, individual and systemic, have to be treated for us to get out of this.
Someone asked the Dalai Lama why he didn't fight the Chinese when they invaded Tibet, and he thought, then said "The mind might be convinced to fight, but you could never convince the heart. And then you would be divided, and the war would be inside you."
One of the psychological problems is splitting and projection, which makes us think the problem that suffuses us all is entirely in someone or something else. The psychopaths could indeed not exist without us, since they ARE us. Hell no and all-out war probably won't work, since you're saying and waging it against parts of yourself as well as "them". We need to recognize our part in the system and change it. It works best when the treatment for the emotional problems are also political and structural solutions. Permaculture, gardening, bicycling, (to therapy, for one) are excellent examples.
Our solutions have to end the wars inside and outside. Massive imagination is called for.
How many dying species does it take to change a light bulb?
Homo Cleverass.
Corp is Borg.