December 4, 2023
Image Source: The Transition to Extinction
Steven Nowakowski from Rainforest Reserves Australia demonstrates here how Queensland is destroying its last remnant forests to meet Net Zero. Steven also explains why Net Zero can never be achieved with just wind and solar.
Aug 16
20232
"Net Zero" Bill Gates Breakthrough Energy Coalition Breakthrough Energy Ventures Climate First Nations KOBOLD Metals Nuclear TerraPower Uranium We Don't Have Time
June 25, 2023, The Economist: “America aims for nuclear-power renaissance – The Biden administration is pouring billions into the industry. The payoff isn’t certain”
WKOG: The nuclear renaissance is not confined to France. It is happening in the United States, Canada, Sweden, Australia, UK, India, Japan, South Korea, etc. Behind the veneer of a global “green” energy transition that places solar and wind at the marketing forefront, a nuclear renaissance is quietly sweeping the globe. While the relationship between public policy and public opinion regarding nuclear energy is closely monitored via think tanks and polling, influencers, social networks for climate, and youth are corralled and deployed to build support for nuclear energy. For the monumental task of obtaining social license, for a highly unpopular form of energy (and waste), fear is deployed as a means of obtaining consent, as is framing (language) and oppression. The sole focus on climate change (end of the world narrative) while the decimation of the natural world continues unabated, in which the only solution presented is that of technology (with zero attention to imperialism /militarism, the abolishing of NATO, etc.), the language of “net zero” (carbon markets, etc., nothing to do with zero emissions), coupled with the sky-rocketing cost of living amidst the greatest wealth transfer in history (anxiety, depression, oppression) – – through these means, civil society is being conditioned to accept a vast expansion of nuclear power. Nuclear energy is being re-branded as “green”. Billions of tax dollars are now being directed to extending the lives of at-risk nuclear plants – and for the first time – nuclear plants which have closed. (See Quebec and Michigan).
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Published in La Relève et La Peste
Text prepared by Laurie Debove, January 30, 2023
Translation by Dennis Riches
Translator’s introduction
This interview published in January 2023 has a message for Oliver Stone and all the other cheerleaders of a nuclear renaissance. Oliver Stone’s new film Nuclear Now is just a rehash of Nuclear Then. The discussion below illustrates that there is nothing new about the nuclear renaissance being promoted as a solution to global warming and fossil fuel shortages caused by war. Anti-nuclear arguments were valid then and they still are now, and there isn’t really anything new to add to them. The first expansion of nuclear energy between the 1960s and 1980s also used finite oil supplies and wars as the rationalization for the rapid construction of nuclear energy. As soon as the nuclear construction boom was complete, we saw a decade of cheap oil during the 1990s and the world stopped caring about the issue for a while. As the interview below illustrates once again, plus ça change…
Introduction
The government is doing everything to revive the nuclear industry in France at a rapid pace, to the detriment of the public debate underway until February 27, a debate which is supposed to take account of the opinion of the population on this subject. To get a historical and technological perspective on this issue, we interviewed two people from Grenoble who belong to “Pièces et main d’oeuvre.” They have been active in the fight against nuclear power since the 1970s. We met in a Grenoble café, and in the text below their answers have been edited and compiled into one common voice.
LR&LP: Could you introduce yourselves and your organization?
P.M.O: “Pièces et Maind’oeuvre” is the name we have given to the activities we have been carrying out since autumn 2000 in Grenoble. It is a critical survey to understand both the city in which we live, the first technopole in France, entirely shaped and driven by innovation, that links research and industry; and it’s an attempt to understand the time in which we live, which is that of innovation.
The whole economy, our social organization, and the reason for living now is innovation. It is the idea that we always need something new in terms of techno-science, the engine of the economy and growth, to concretely organize our lives. This critical investigation led us to consider that technology is the major fact of our time. We produce ideas and participate in demonstrations because we believe that ideas can change and transform the course of the world, that they can oppose technology.
LR&LP: What led you to look at nuclear, and what are the biggest pitfalls you found?
P.M.O: The interest in nuclear power long predates the creation of the collective. I myself am an offshoot of the anti-nuclear movement that began in 1945 with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where immediately the left and the communists declared that it was scientific progress with a French origin, while Albert Camus denounced it as a horrible development, that we would have to choose between collective suicide and rescue.
Throughout the 1940s, 50s and 60s, a divisive critique of nuclear power developed. The communists were launching a peace movement that is anti-nuclear because only the United States had the bomb, and they did not want to let them have such a strategic advantage over the USSR and the socialist camp. But in reality, the Soviets were clandestinely preparing the Hydrogen Bomb, even more powerful than the Atomic Bomb.
The struggle was therefore instrumentalized, and it was at this time that US President Eisenhower launched the program “Atoms for Peace,” saying that the atom can also have a civilian application in the form of nuclear power plants and research. It therefore proposed technology transfers from the United States to more than twenty countries that wanted to manufacture reactors.
A new divide was emerging: many people including Murray Bookchin, André Breton and his anti-nuclear committee in France said that it was abominable because they saw very well the confinement that it implies. For them, we were putting humanity in a cage that it would not be able to break out of for thousands of years or more. The moment we manufacture nuclear power, we manufacture the consequences of nuclear power and especially its waste.
As we supply the whole of society with nuclear power, we must maintain a scientific clergy of nucleocrats because it is a very complicated and dangerous technology, and on the other hand we must protect these nuclear power plants, mineral mines, transport, and waste with a dedicated militia because we do not want it to fall into the wrong hands.
With the civilian atom, there is therefore an entire electro-totalitarian society that is being set up with a state apparatus, a police, and a particular political organization. No more dreams and utopias of self-management or anarchy. Nuclear waste cannot be managed by just anyone. There is a ratchet effect in it where there is no turning back.
And this is a completely different type of criticism. It is the matrix and the origin of the modern ecological movement that started again at the end of the 1960s with in particular Pierre Fournier and the magazine La Gueule Ouverte (The Open Mouth), Giono, Ellul, Charbonneau, Camus, Breton, Pierre Fournier and small associations whose names have been completely forgotten: Jean Pignero, Emile Prémilieu, Esther Davis, Solange Fernex, all these people who in the 1950s and 1960s struggled to investigate radioactivity, radium, and ionizing rays.
Illustration by La Gueule Ouverte
LR&LP: Here we are in 2022, and the Autorité de Sureté du Nucléaire (Nuclear Safety Authority) has launched an alert on the failures of the French nuclear fleet. Having seen both the establishment and the evolution of this fleet, was this predictable, and what do you think of the French nuclear recovery plan, imposed by the government, while we see that the [nuclear power plant] EPR of Flamanville has ten billion euros of additional cost as well as twelve years of delay in its construction?
P.M.O: That nuclear power plants wear out, like all factories, is a banality. The life cycle of a nuclear power plant is 100 years on average, from the time construction starts to the time it is decommissioned. Nuclear power costs a fortune, but no matter how much cheap French electricity is promoted, it is a lie. Over time, the state has financed EDF less so we have maintained the plants less. We have fewer trained specialists, and the private sector has not taken over of the cost.
Today we are witnessing a repeat of what happened in 1974 after the Yom Kippur War, when Arab countries punished the West by tripling oil prices. We did not have oil, but nuclear was an alternative, so Pompidou, Giscard d’Estaing and the Prime Minister at the time, Messmer, launched a plan to nuclearize France to compensate for the deficit in oil imports. The uranium came from Niger. We had the skills because the CEA existed since 1945 [for the bomb program]. EDF placed the orders and they manufactured nuclear power plants at a rapid rate.
It is striking to observe how Pierre Messmer’s speech on TV in 1974 and Emmanuel Macron’s speech in Belfort in 2021 are like twins! The recovery is justified by a drop in supplies: at the time the cause was the Arab countries and today it is the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
In the same way, there was an increase in demand at the time because people were forced to equip themselves with electric household appliances, and today it is the means of electric transport and gadgets like smartphones that create this additional demand. On the one hand, industry creates the demand and therefore the problem, and on the other hand it comes with the solution that the population cannot refuse.
The surprise is that we re-apply the same old methods with the same old arguments. It is a headlong rush to ignore the current disaster. We cannot have such a demand for electricity. It is neither sustainable nor reasonable.
We are embarking on a replay of the program of forty years ago rather than confronting an element that is the hardest physics: the question of the entropy of energy and matter (theorized by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen). It is the key point denied. There is also the denial of the poisoning of the environment with radioactivity. We live in a world where radioactivity is anthropogenic. Physics teaches us that this is not going away. We could have anticipated all this.
LR&LP: History repeats itself, and yet according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive more than 1/4 of French people have no idea of the number of reactors in service, and they underestimate the size of the French nuclear fleet. Nor do they know that nuclear power accounts for only 20% of final energy consumption among consumers in France [energy as opposed to electricity]. What explains this popular lack of knowledge about nuclear power? And why is it important for civil society to take up these questions usually reserved for specialists?
P.M.O: This question refers to what a city is and what a citizen is. In Athens, in the fourth century BC, citizens (not slaves) were deemed competent to judge all affairs of the city. They meet on the agora, and the technicians were subordinate to the citizens. Decisions were made collectively.
All citizens were informed and lived in a society where there was a relative general understanding of technical problems. Technology had not reached such a stage of complexity that the issues were too difficult to understand for the majority. There were still no experts who put a screen between political decisions and facts.
Later, a technocratic class developed. In the same way that technology has become the real politics of our time, the real ruling class of our time is technocracy: the class that has produced and is the product of technology (engineers, business leaders, some elected officials). This class of power constantly wants an increase in power, either out of passion for knowledge, or because it sees very tangibly what it can be used for. Think of such people as Louis Néel, Nobel laureate in physics in 1970, who founded the CEA Grenoble: science for industry and innovation.
These people are keeping citizens in ignorance. The elected official will then surround himself with scientific advisors that he cannot control since he does not know how to solve their equations. In Grenoble, elected officials are often technocrats themselves. There is a homogeneity of the ruling class around goals, reasoning, and way of thinking. They themselves do not consider themselves competent for everything: computer science is different from chemistry, etc.
The basic citizen has integrated this and understood that he does not understand anything, or not much. The citizen therefore relies on those who know.
Furthermore, to have electricity, you just have to press a button at home. This has made the understanding of the production energy a virtual understanding. With this phenomenon of extreme centralization and the nuclear power complex, no one knows what it costs to produce electricity.
When there was a small hydropower plant for a village in the mountains, it was in front of everyone’s eyes, so the inhabitants kept a certain control and awareness of what they produced. Today we have a total loss of this autonomy. This is why the technocratic system and technology have the power to change the world, yet it is not compatible with participatory democracy.
LR&LP: However, a public debate has been launched to ask citizens for their opinion. In your opinion, can participating in this public debate allow the French population to regain control over the decisions made on energy production in France? If not, what should everyone do for an informed debate on nuclear technology?
P.M.O: Public debates are like the bullfighter’s cape. The authorities know very well that there will be rants, foghorns, banners, and they find it very good since then the protest is confined to the “public debate”. Chantal Jouanno, the president of the National Commission for Public Debate (CNDP) said the banners are welcome in 2022 because of a precedent in the history of French public debate.
In 2009-2010, the government launched a major public debate on nanotechnology in France whereas those of the CNDP were normally targeted more locally. This time, the French were asked about a much broader social issue, while Nicolas Sarkozy had launched a second nanotechnology R&D center in Saclay. Political decisions had already been taken a long time before.
We then decided to dismantle this communication operation to show how it works, how it is prepared, and who manages the public debate. Then we launched a campaign to sabotage these meetings, which were in our eyes a firewall since the second center was already being built. Twelve out of seventeen meetings were cancelled. At the time, the CNDP and the government decided that the CNDP would never again be used for such broad subjects.
A yes or no outcome will have no impact. Sociologists themselves have defined public debate by saying “involvement is enforced acceptance.” For us, participation is therefore accepting, as we have written about extensively. To believe that they will take into account the opinion of citizens on such a vast social project is illusory.
The only real public inquiry on nuclear power ended in a fiasco. That was in Plogoff. The Bretons there refused the public inquiry and fought for weeks against the police. Every evening, hundreds of people gathered to throw stones and slurry because, for them, every form of pseudo-consultation was a smokescreen. This explains why there has never been a nuclear power plant built in Plogoff while they have been built everywhere else.
LR&LP: Power is in the hands of technocrats. “Participation is enforced acceptance.” Therefore, how can a citizen regain an influence in energy production?
P.M.O: When we talk about an industrial society where everything is interconnected, where survival depends on the connection to the technotope, it is almost illusory to ask the question in these terms. You would really have to have the means to live independently to do that. At the margins, some manage to disconnect from the EDF network, but how many can really do that? Only a few who have a little space and means, autonomy in their way of life and their habitat. These initiatives must be supported and encouraged, but they do not reflect the capacities of the majority.
Many people are aware of the fact that we have been taken hostage. When we talk about “the machine,” that’s what we’re talking about. It is almost illusory and utopian to think that we can avoid being incarcerated in “the machine.”
The only force likely to turn the tide would be a collective realization that it is not sustainable to continue to consume so much energy, physically and materially, because of entropy and its effects. We would then have to decide to get rid of this energy-intensive and material-intensive lifestyle, and give up certain habits, but it remains an abstract goal.
The problem is that people do not necessarily demand democracy. They are like passengers on a train who, of course, don’t want to be able to drive it. Most people just want a society that works. The question is how.
Further reading
The latest book published by Pièces et Main d’oeuvre:
Feb 06
20232
"Net Zero" BECCS Biomass CCS EOR Greta Thunberg Just Stop Oil Naomi Klein Tzeporah Berman XR
February 2023
By Michael Swifte
Ahmad Al Khowaiter, Chief Technology Officer, Saudi Aramco, [Image credit: Aaron M. Sprecher / Bloomberg] – Quotes transcribed from the video ‘Decarbonization of oil and gas – 2019 Global Energy Forum’
“What we think of as a waste product can actually become a very valuable product.”
“CO2 is a valuable feed stock, we should not forget that.”
[Source: Atlantic Council, Decarbonization of oil and gas – 2019 Global Energy Forum, January 13, 2019]
Introduction
The Goal
Defining ‘Action’
A diabolical concession to carbon capture and storage
Public failures
Strategic climate justice failure – a timeline
Value adding CO2 as a waste product
Pipelines and storage deliver transition
Evidence of a CCUS boom
Boondoggles do damage
Fast moving and dangerous
Conclusions
This briefing represents 10 years of research and activism starting with the fracking boom impacting my home state. A few years into the fracking boom I experienced the take-over of environmental/anti-fossil fuel activism by climate NGOs funded primarily through US based philanthropies working with Australian philanthropists.
I vowed to learn every possible lesson from the fracking boom and employ those lessons against the next phase of fossil fuel extractivism. I have always seen fossil fuel extraction as a dirty and destructive industry and a pillar of globalist hegemony. Like fracking, CO2 enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) had been practiced/developed for decades before appearing as a ‘solution’ in the energy market place. Like fracking, efforts to advance carbon capture and storage for CO2-EOR have received weak resistance in legislatures as new subsidies and other industry development supports have been established.
It is lamentable that the many technical experts, pundits and spokespeople who offer positions on climate and energy refuse to speak about the political will. As a generalist and an independent activist and researcher, I don’t have the credentials or the backing of any institutions to give me a veneer of credibility. What I do have is a working understanding of critical theory, psywar and the networked nature of modern power.
As a generalist I can comprehend enough organic chemistry to feel confident that my statements about industry readiness for a carbon capture and storage (CCS) boom are substantive. I offer this briefing with the expectation that anyone who disagrees with my assertions will take the time to critique my work in good faith. It is most likely that this briefing will be met with silence by the climate campaigners who ought to care that the establishment is once again ensuring that business as usual continues. It is the silence of climate campaigners that I contend is the most dire outcome stemming from their reliance on billionaire philanthropists and their agents. It is in the space created by the shared silences of industry, government, media and non government organizations (NGO) that the forces engineering business as usual operate.
Sustainable Development Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
Climate change presents the single biggest threat to development, and its widespread, unprecedented effects disproportionately burden the poorest and the most vulnerable. Goal 13 calls for urgent action not only to combat climate change and its impacts, but also to build resilience in responding to climate-related hazards and natural disasters.
Q. What is ‘climate action’?
A. It is primarily/ostensibly about reducing emissions but it also includes adaptation plans.
Some defined actions:
Q. Are fossil fuels being phased out?
A. No. The only commitments being made are for phasing out ‘unabated’ fossil fuels. Much of the phase out action involves the replacement of retired energy generation. Conventional coal fired power has been a particular focus of phase-out commitments.
[Further reading] https://wesuspectsilence.wordpress.com/2022/07/04/when-thinking-about-fossil-fuel-phase-outs-the-key-word-is-unabated/Q. What have climate negotiations delivered?
A. Treaties, agreements and shared commitments, none of which specify phasing out of fossil fuels. All the measures were developed for mitigation and management of emissions. Carbon accounting is a primary emissions management tool.
Consensus Mechanisms
[Further reading] https://unfccc.int/process/the-kyoto-protocol/mechanisms [Further reading] file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/20220317-CSUs_under_Article_6_Mar_2022_vf.pdf
A diabolical concession to carbon capture and storage
Q. How did ‘they’ turn climate activism into an ineffective force for the environment?
A. At Wrong Kind of Green we contend that an expansive network of philanthropies/NGOs and their connections in government, corporations and the media work under prescribed narratives and talking points defined by funders and in so doing become useful idiots for the global governance agenda. We call this networked formation the ‘non profit industrial complex’. We call the process by which networks are exploited and messaging shaped to control global consensus mechanisms and manufacture the consent of the general public, ‘networked hegemony’.
[Further reading] https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2017/07/27/avaaz-the-globes-largest-most-powerful-behavioural-change-network-part-i/Q. What is the Design to Win plan?
A. The Design to Win plan was produced in 2007 for a collection of philanthropic foundations to further their ‘climate’ ambitions. It contains positions in support of “unavoidable” fossil fuels and the deployment of carbon capture and storage. The Design to Win plan launched John Podesta’s ClimateWorks Foundation which became his vehicle for establishing a vast network of NGOs of varying types including re-granting NGOs which disseminated the prescribed narratives and talking points to smaller NGOs. The media helped to reinforce prescribed narratives through amplifying selected NGOs and spokespeople, and participated in considerable silences regarding the growing political will for carbon capture and storage.
[SOURCE] https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/09/11/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-volume-ii-act-i-a-design-to-win-a-multi-billion-dollar-investment/ [Further reading] https://www.climateworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/Design-to-Win.pdfThe 2007 report Design To Win: Philanthropy’s Role in the Fight Against Global Warming would serve to shape the future of the climate movement. The result of a commissioned study funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Energy Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the Oak Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Design To Win “served as a catalyst for an unprecedented outpouring of funding on energy and climate issues. Implicit to the report was the idea that the ‘market knows best’ and that the role of regulators is to create the right conditions and send the right signals for a transition to a low-carbon economy.
Q. What is ‘net zero’?
A. Net Zero is an accounting outcome derived through the mitigation and management of emissions. Because it is based on results that appear on a ledger where actual emissions and various instruments representing offsets or avoided emissions are turned into numbers. Net Zero and other emissions mitigation and management schemes can and are being gamed.
[Further reading] https://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/fossil-fuels-net-zero-carbon-emissions-scam-is-something-humanity-doesnt-have-time-for/ [Further reading] https://medium.com/@kim.hill/unpacking-extinction-rebellion-part-i-net-zero-emissions-5a5eed68d9ceQ. What is BECCS?
A. The use of biomass as an industrial feed stock with carbon capture and storage applied. When biomass pellets produced from agroforestry trimmings, whole trees or timber industry waste is deemed carbon neutral, it provides a negative value on Net Zero ledger when CCS is applied. Biomass is widely reported as “renewable” when used in place of coal in conventional power plants.
[SOURCE] [Download link] https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2022/beccs-factsheet/ [Further reading] https://www.chathamhouse.org/2022/10/why-burning-biomass-not-zero-carbonThe idea behind BECCS, Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage, is in part quite similar to CCS, Carbon Capture and Storage. However where BECCS goes a step beyond CCS is that Drax and other biomass burning companies proposing to use the technology argue that if they can capture the emitted CO2, burning biomass can become carbon negative and a climate solution! (This is based on the false premise that burning wood is carbon neutral) In 2019, Drax announced its ambition to become a “carbon-negative” company by 2030. Drax proposes that it will continue burning biomass and that with BECCS technology it will be able to capture up to 16 million tonnes of the CO2 it emits through its wood burning per year.
Q. Why is Farhana Yamin a pivotal figure in climate action?
A. Because she spent decades working as a policy wonk for the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) and for the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, one of the key funders of Extinction Rebellion (XR). Shortly before joining XR with the sustainable development goals (SDG) tucked under her arm, Yamin’s think tank Track 0 produced the perfect articulation of the concession position engendered in global climate activism by John Podesta, and a range of billionaire donor advised funders and impact philanthropists.
The concession position, formulated in the mid 2000s and carried forward in the IPCC modelling, is to allow a little BECCS in exchange for a renewables revolution. The Track 0 rationale explains that to implement BECCS will require the implementation of CCS. The concession to BECCS is thus tethered to accepting some CCS. Because the BECCS concession is never included in any climate campaigner talking points and does not suit the prescribed narrative that asserts that there is political will to phase out fossil fuels, it is almost entirely excluded from discussion. It is as if the work of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative which is supported by the National Grid, the North Sea Transition Authority, and the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy doesn’t exist. The collective narrative driven silence creates a false reality as the context for XR and Just Stop Oil (founded by XR founder Roger Hallam) activism.
[SOURCE] https://climatenetwork.org/resource/a-compendium-of-solutions-for-achieving-the-sustainable-development-goals-and-staying-below-2ac-or-1-5aoc/Bioenergy production can be integrated with existing CCS technologies relatively simply and there are no technical implications of capturing a CO2 stream from biomass (Gough and Upham, 2010; Muratori et al., 2016). BECCS could complement the current expansion of the use of biomass as fuel (Rhodes and Keith, 2008). However, the success of BECCS is dependent on upcoming developments in CCS, where there are significant uncertainties surrounding CO2 transport networks, storage capacities, legality, social acceptability and technology incentives (McGlashen, Shah and Workman, 2010).
Q. How does the work of Biden administration senior advisor for ‘clean energy’ John Podesta intersect with the work of billionaire hedge fund manager Chris Hohn?
A. Both provide funding to Bellona Europa which has been creating opportunities for BECCS for at least 2 decades. Both have extensive interests in climate activism and steering industry toward greater emissions reductions using CCS and BECCS.
Bellona Europa works primarily on industrial decarbonisation, energy systems, circularity, sustainable finance, and negative emissions (carbon dioxide removal).
[SOURCE] https://bellona.org/about-bellonaTo back and support our work, our funders are mainly European and International philantropies: CIFF (Children’s investment fund), ECF (European Climate Foundation) and Climateworks. We also receive grants at the EU level (EU Horizon 2020 project, “European Negative Emissions Projects” ) and at the national level (Norwegian, Nordic & EEA grants for research).
“Industrial sectors such as cement and steel production are responsible for nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. We need the right regulatory, policy and financial frameworks to bring industry emissions down. We focus on things like carbon performance regulation, heating and cooling legislation, innovation, carbon capture and storage technologies and enforcement through carbon disclosure and shifting investor behaviour. We want to ensure that Europe leads the way in industrial decarbonisation and accelerate industrial decarbonisation at a global scale.”
[SOURCE] https://ciff.org/priorities/climate-change/‘An Industry’s Guide to Climate Action, CHAPTER 3 summary: The Dawn of a New Industry’ (Funded by the Childrens Investment Fund Foundation)
As the transformation of the energy system continues and new technology options are developed and brought to maturity, measures that can provide effective and deep emission reductions to industry processes are needed today. • The capturing of CO2 emissions from industrial clusters and their transport and permanent offshore storage in deep geological formations (CCS) constitutes an essential part of the solution
[SOURCE] https://bellona.org/publication/an-industrys-guide-to-climate-change [Further reading] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/09/02/president-biden-announces-senior-clean-energy-and-climate-team/ [Further reading] https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/01/06/a_british_billionaires_big_investments_in_us_environmental_politics_121359.html [Video] ‘Sir Chris Hohn: The Full Interview’ https://youtu.be/xqP6091Wf9oCCS buys humanity time and industry a functional climate transition.
Q. Why is biomass with CCS (BECCS) so crucial to net zero accounting?
A. Because BECCS is the combination of the biomass double counting scam and the near zero emissions projections for CCS. BECCS has erroneously been labeled a ‘negative emissions technology’.
BECCS employs biomass as a feed stock, and the ‘technology’ is collectively known as carbon capture and storage. The biomass accounting scam labels trimmings from agroforestry including whole trees that, in theory, are permanently sequestering CO2 as ‘carbon neutral’. This means that when biomass is used as a feed stock, the emissions created by this ‘carbon neutral’ product acquire a negative value on the Net Zero ledger. The logic goes that with BECCS as the crucial supplier of negative net zero accounting value, variously derived carbon offsets, mitigation of fugitive emissions, and the assumption that CO2 storage works effectively, the net zero ledger can be brought to zero.
[Further reading] https://www.drax.com/sustainability/sustainable-bioenergy/ipcc-on-biomass-power-generation-carbon-accounting/ [Further reading] https://www.nrdc.org/experts/sasha-stashwick/how-biomass-industry-sent-sustainability-smoke
Above: The Climate Group, July 7, 2016, “Bold New Climate Policy In Canada’s Oil Sands – Business & Climate Summit 2016”. The panel discussion featured Steve Williams, President and CEO of Suncor, Nigel Topping, CEO of We Mean Business, and Tzep Berman, “environmentalist”. On July 19, 2016, Berman would announce her new appointment as co-chair of the newly formed Alberta Governments Oil Sands Advisory Group. Two years later, The Climate Group (a co-founder of We Mean Business) and Callum Grieve (The Climate Group, We Mean Business) would play a quiet yet pivotal role in the “discovery” and rise of Greta Thunberg.
Tzeporah Berman heads up the campaign for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, she has a long history as a well connected environmental campaigner. In 2016 Berman joined UK High Level Climate Action Champion for COP 26, Nigel Topping (We Mean Business, Grantham Institute, UK Infrastructure Bank) and Suncor CEO Steve Williams to develop a ‘groundbreaking’ deal on emissions caps on Canadian tar sands. In 2021 Suncor acquired a stake in carbon capture technology company Svante. Suncor is part of the Pathways Alliance which has plans to emulate the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line as the basis for new gas and tar sands decarbonisation hubs. Chevron recently bought a stake in Svante who have made long term investments in carbon capture technology. Svante have stated their technology is for “rapid deployment”.
[Further reading] https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2016/08/31/watch-albertas-environment-minister-commends-leap-manifestos-tzeporah-berman-for-helping-craft-the-tarsands-deal/ [Further reading] https://globalnews.ca/news/7705834/suncor-energy-svante-carbon-capture-investment/ [Further reading] https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-environment/pathways-alliance-president-says-oil-industry-will-be-judged-on-climate-goals-1.6147569 [Further reading] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chevron-invests-carbon-capture-removal-213000800.html [Further reading] https://esgtelegraph.com/environment/carbon-capture-tech-provider-svante-raises-over-300-million/
Screenshot: Tzeporah Berman joins Christiana Figueres Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson (co-founded the Carbon Disclosure Project which co-founded We Mean Business), for an episode of “Outrage & Optimism”. The initial funding for Global Optimism (rebranded to Outrage & Optimism) was provided by We Mean Business. In 2020, Figueres and Rivet-Carnac published The Future We Choose.
In 2019, the Climate Breakthrough Project awarded Tzeporah Berman with two million dollars. The Climate Breakthrough Project was launched in 2015 under the name the Climate Strategies Accelerator. It is an initiative of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in partnership with the Oak Foundation, the IKEA Foundation, the JPB Foundation, and the Good Energies Foundation.
Tzeporah Berman has never mentioned the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line (ACTL) let alone contributed to any effort to unpack the project and contribute to public understanding. The North West Refining, Sturgeon plant was already under construction when Berman met with Topping and Williams. The brains behind the project, Ian MacGregor had already explained the scale of the vertically integrated refinery-pipeline-storage project in a speech to the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers 33rd Consolidated Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. The ACTL has been called the “world’s largest CO2 pipeline”. With the Canadian government poised to introduce an American style tax credit for CCS, it seems like tar sands extraction and refining, gas extraction and CO2 enhanced oil recovery have a firm future in Alberta.
Recent statements from Alberta premier Danielle Smith make it very clear that the province is about to be subject to a CCUS boom.
“We are working with the federal government closely on technologies like carbon capture utilization and storage, hydrogen, critical minerals,”
[SOURCE] https://youtu.be/xE-hNQkX7CI [Further reading] https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/opinion-us-climate-action-a-roadmap-for-canada-to-support-carbon-capture-and-storage/ar-AA122faE [Further reading] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-premier-danielle-smith-sovereigty-act-just-transition-1.6709043 [Ian MacGregor and the ACTL] https://youtu.be/y4r1_4t_eiM
JB Noisecat left 350 dot org in early 2019 and joined Data for Progress, the progressive polling agency/think tank, taking on the role of Vice President of Policy & Strategy. As a member of Data for Progress, along with Sean McElwee, Noisecat advised the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force in advance of the Biden campaign’s final policy statements. He would go on to proclaim that Biden’s “build back better” plans “are a Green New Deal in all but name”. Data for Progress never had a problem with CCS, indeed they redefined “non-renewable clean energy” to include CCS, hydrogen and nuclear in their ‘scorecard’ on Jay Inslee’s policy agenda in June 2019. Noisecat went on to join the NDN Collective who are recipients of significant funding from the Bezos Earth Fund.
[Further reading] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/20/joe-biden-has-endorsed-the-green-new-deal-in-all-but-name [Further reading] https://www.filesforprogress.org/reports/gnd_scorecards/Inslee.pdf
It could be argued that Data for Progress, with the help of the World Resources Institute, authored the original Green New Deal document in September 2018. The Green New Deal became an election vehicle for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and a campaign focus for the Sunrise Movement. AOC and Sunrise cofounder Varshini Prakash also helped CCS and nuclear pass the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force. If you follow the money and consider how First Nations and frontline communities were marginalised from the Green New Deal process, it’s hard not to see it as a cynical ploy to get another neoliberal Democrat president into place.
[Further reading] https://www.dataforprogress.org/green-new-deal-report [John Washington to New Consensus] https://youtu.be/fEA_9iKtSTYJB Noisecat seems to have helped keep “the door open” for CCS in his time since leaving the world’s most influential climate campaigning organisation (350 dot org). Any number of climate NGOs have signed open letters stating their opposition to CCS citing multiple concerns. Noisecat transformed from a climate campaigner, utterly opposed to new fossil fuel extraction, to the spokesperson for a kind of mute reformism. The passing of the Inflation Reduction Act with its “monumental enhancements” to the 45Q tax credit is testament to Noisecat’s failure.
Above. January 2019: Greta arrives at Davos at the invitation of former U.N. Secretary Christiana Figueres (co-founder of Outrage & Optimism funded by We Mean Business). Here, a young Greta Thunberg will be introduced to the World during the Fourth Industrial Revolution Panel session led by Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce. In this photo, taken at the Arctic Basecamp, We Mean Business CEO Nigel Topping (UK High Level Climate Action Champion, COP26, Former Arctic Basecamp advisory board member), appears at the very right of the frame. To Thunberg’s right is Johan Rockstrom, chair of the Earth Commission (launched 2019) and steering committee member of the Global Commons Alliance.
Greta Thunberg is young and cannot be considered a failure, but a critical investigation of her messaging and content is always required. An important part of that critical view is consideration of Greta’s advisers and enablers. Cory Morningstar’s ‘The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg’ series, provides a compelling picture of a child with elite connections propelled into celebrity by philanthropically funded entities to direct the discourse away from the mitigation plans of the global climate consensus machine. While Greta has many minders, the only acknowledged adviser is Johan Rockstrom who wears a Sustainable Development Goals badge at public events and takes a position against degrowth.
[SOURCE] https://today.rtl.lu/news/science-and-environment/a/1448687.html [Further reading] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/29/johan-rockstrom-interview-breaking-boundaries-attenborough-bidenIt’s naive to say ‘Let’s go for de-growth, let’s completely divest, or let’s think of post-capitalist model and throw GDP in the waste bin’. We have to work with the economic machinery that we have in our engine room.
Greta has demonstrated a pattern of not speaking to the substance of mitigation plans relying on generalised statements that raise no questions about specific actors. Kevin Anderson who told me he is not an ‘adviser’ to Greta also acknowledged that she did not pay attention to the output of the IPCC Working Group 3 on mitigation when it was relevant to the discourse. I would argue that this inattention worked to protect the interests of those who would see enough fossil fuel CCS established to allow the implementation of CO2 storage for biomass with CCS. But, Greta is too young to know that she is enjoined to a long held compromise position held by organisations like the Bellona Foundation, WWF and the European Climate Foundation.
Climeworks: “On 10th March 2020 we had the honor of welcoming the inspiring Greta Thunberg to our direct air capture plant in Hinwil. The Swedish environmental activist was curious about our climate solution and wanted to learn more about it. She was accompanied by her father Svante as well as a BBC Studios film crew who, for a year, will be following Greta around the world to create a documentary.”
Michael Swifte @empathiser – July 24, 2019
What about the IPCC ‘pathways’ that never get discussed? They embed #BECCS and mask the political will for fossil fuel based #CCS ie hydrogen energy and industrial clusters linked to North Sea export hubs. #netzeroemissions
https://twitter.com/empathiser/status/1153941328431943682
Kevin Anderson @KevinClimate – July 24, 2019
[Further reading] https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/10/19/perfect-distractions-and-fantastical-mitigation-plans/Agree. Greta is principally focussing on the IPCC’s Working Group 1 (the physical science), much less on the ‘cost-optimised” procrastination that dominates Working Group 3 (on mitigation).
https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1153942871080394752
Above: April, 2019 newsletter, We Mean Business. The combined market cap of the We Mean Business Coalition partner initiatives exceeds US$25 trillion dollars – equivalent to almost one-quarter of global GDP. [Source: WE MEAN BUSINESS COALITION SUBMISSION TO THE GLOBAL STOCKTAKE, March 2022]
In her climate book in Chapter 4 Greta provides an essay called ‘We are not moving in the right direction’. In it Greta develops the linguistic conflation that she carried to her public interviews while promoting the book. The linguistic conflation goes like this: direct air capture (DAC) as practiced at the Orca facility in Iceland is carbon capture and storage, and therefore any mention of carbon capture and storage is a reference to direct air capture. This conflation has resulted in statements by Greta that either sound like an endorsement of large scale fossil fuel CCS (but are not), or statements about DAC as a form of CCS that can easily be refuted by the existence of facilities like the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line.
No respectable adult public figure could get away with such a gross conflation, and since Greta is young, it is not fair to contend that she is acting on behalf of some kind of self serving agenda. Looking at the extensive list of accomplished and well positioned expert contributors, and being mindful of the extensive editorial effort it takes to produce a non-fiction book, it’s reasonable to assume that there were many adults of professional standing who let Greta’s conflation make it into the book and into her collection of talking points for its promotion.
Interview with Samira Ahmed:
Greta Thunberg: The Climate Event | Southbank Centre – 31 October 2022
[SOURCE] https://youtu.be/ropBOwPvmLM
Samira Ahmed:
“I wonder if there are any technologies which have impressed you which you think are a legitmate part of the solution?”
Greta Thunberg:
“I mean, many. I mean, for example carbon capture and storage is something we must invest every possible resource in.”
Zoom call with Bjork:
“I haven’t met a politician ready to do what it takes”: Greta Thunberg and Björk in conversation
[SOURCE] https://www.newstatesman.com/environment/2022/10/greta-thunberg-bjork-guomundsdottir-interview-climate-change
BG: In your book, you point out that if there were as many carbon capture storage (CCS) facilities in the world as there are oil refineries, you’d start to see some results. Every country needs to be doing them, and it’s one solution of thousands. The fact that there is one place in Iceland doing it now, unfortunately, is not going to change a lot.
GT: Yes, the largest carbon capture storage facility in the world is in Iceland. And I remember in Stockholm, there were big campaigns where energy companies posted pictures of that facility saying, “Yeah, this is the future.” It was greenwashing! That facility, if all goes according to plan, will be able to capture about three seconds’ worth of our annual carbon dioxide emissions, according to one climate scientist’s calculations. They are not only being used as a way of greenwashing and legitimising the bad things we are doing now, but we also fail to invest in them – which is very contradictory, to say the least!
Catherine McKenna is the former environment minister of Canada, a Powering Past Coal Alliance leader, and the current chair of the United Nations – High-level Expert Group on the Net-zero Emissions Commitments of Non-State Entities. McKenna was one of the earliest and most prolific users of the terms “unabated” and “traditional” regarding coal and other fossil fuels. Under her leadership Canada, and Alberta in particular, made huge strides towards large scale CCUS for tar sands and gas.
When visiting the SaskPower – Boundary Dam facility in 2016 McKenna articulated a position in favor of CCS/CCUS as a climate ‘solution’ that would benefit Canada.
[SOURCE] https://leaderpost.com/business/energy/environment-minister-mckenna-says-carbon-capture-part-of-solution-to-climate-changeSo when you have carbon capture and storage, that’s certainly an innovative solution — a made-in-Canada solution
In June of 2021 the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) which has long held a position in favor of CCS/CCUS as part of their ‘2 degree solution’, joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance.
The PPCA is a coalition of national and sub-national governments, businesses and organizations working to advance the transition from unabated coal power generation to clean energy.
Photo: “Naomi Klein speaks to the media before an event on December 12, 2019 in Berlin, Germany.” (Photo: Carsten Koall/Getty Images)
Naomi Klein writes non-linear prose, or what I like to call “project managed prose”. A journalist who is one of the sources for her book ‘This Changes Everything’ told me that she largely assembles the prose from research provided by assistants. Klein’s chapters are built around themes rather than developing a compelling thesis. Instead of framing the use of anthropogenic CO2 as a new “fossil fuel frontier”, Klein used her acknowledgement of the capacity of CO2-EOR (enhanced oil recovery) to vastly expand proven oil reserves as an opportunity to speak against “overall emissions” rather than the growing political will and the track record of the fossil fuel industry as exemplified by the fracking boom.
In the years following the release of Klein’s book, she has never returned to the subject of CO2-EOR in the US or Canada. In that time extensive efforts have been made in the US to furnish big oil, gas, coal and biomass with a tax credit that will operate as an effective subsidy. In Canada the largest CO2 pipeline on earth, the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, was built to supply CO2 captured from tar sands to a CO2-EOR project.
This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein, 2014
Chapter. ‘NO MESSIAHS: The Green Billionaires Won’t Save Us’.
We need to consider what is meant by “overall carbon footprint”. How can we include the emissions from oil that is sold on and its emissions created in another country. Klein’s book was written before the ‘scopes of emissions’ were well understood.
While more research is needed on the overall carbon footprint of EOR, one striking modeling study examined a similar proposal that would use CO2 captured not from the air but directly from coal plants. It found that the emissions benefit of sequestering CO2 would be more than canceled out by all that extra oil: on a system-wide basis, the process could still end up releasing about four times as much CO2 as it would save.52 Moreover, much of this is oil that is currently considered unrecoverable—i.e., not even counted in current proven reserves, which as we know already represents five times more than we can safely burn. Any technology that can quadruple proven reserves in the U.S. alone is a climate menace, not a climate solution.
pp 214
[Scopes of emissions] https://plana.earth/academy/what-are-scope-1-2-3-emissions
Above: Author Naomi Klein and World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab endorse “The Future We Choose“. Today’s liberal “activism” now flourishes alongside corporate “activism”. Following a full decade of the marketing campaign “Together”, this largely normalized alliance goes almost undetected by the citizenry and climate activists alike.
2003
Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum launched with the help of the International Energy Agency
2005
European Union Carbon Capture and Storage Stakeholder Dialogue:
“We’ll never reach negative emissions without CCS.” Anonymous former Climate Action Network Europe representative.
2007
Design to Win plan completed.
2008
ClimateWorks Foundation and European Climate Foundation are created.
2010
Clean Energy Ministerial launched by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
2010
350.org sabotage of the People’s Agreement of Cochabamba.
2011
1 Sky and 350 merged with the help of the Clinton Global Initiative and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Sustainable Development Program.
2014
People’s Climate March demonstrates coordinated messaging strategy and the dominance of movement generation by philanthropy. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund – Sustainable Development program played a central role in establishing the ‘This Changes Everything’ project which went beyond the book and documentary establishing the concept of ‘Metrics as a proxy for social change’.
2015
Naomi Klein’s ‘This Changes Everything’ treated like a holy text within the climate justice movement.
2015
Paris Agreement produces Nationally Determined Contributions placing focus on emissions reduction and management.
2018
Greta and Extinction Rebellion arrive around the same time the IPCC released it’s AR5 report. While much focus was put on the dire warnings from IPCC Working Group 1 (‘the science’ and budgets), the output of Working Group 3 (mitigation) were almost entirely ignored.
2019
Greta Thunberg visits New York at the invitation of Antonio Guterres who sent his assistant to speak the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative the night before Greta’s big speech.
2021
Glasgow COP 26. All fossil fuel phase-out commitments contain the qualifier ‘unabated’. IEA modelling contains multiple uses of the qualifier ‘unabated’, but this fact is almost entirely ignored by the climate justice movement and their networks.
2022
CCUS boom begins. New projects announced on every continent. The Alberta Carbon Trunk Line and the Northern Endurance Partnership/East Coast Cluster are almost entirely ignored.
Anthropogenic CO2 is seen as valuable for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), a practice used to access the remnant oil in depleted oil fields. Liquefied CO2 is pumped into depleted wells along with water in a process called water alternating gas (WAG) miscible flooding. The CO2 is said to integrate with the rock matrix during the WAG process, thereby sequestering it.
The oil industry, especially in the US, has known for decades what could be achieved if they had access to anthropogenic CO2. Companies like Exxon have been tapping geological formations called CO2 domes for decades. The naturally occurring CO2 that accumulates in these domes is liquefied and used for EOR.
Public figures like Naomi Klein are more than aware of the potential increase in proven oil reserves if anthropogenic CO2 can be deployed for EOR. In her book ‘This Changes Everything’ Klein cites research asserting that CO2-EOR using anthropogenic CO2 could quadruple proven US oil reserves. It is clear that almost nobody, not even Klein herself, have acted to resist the efforts to develop financial instruments and effective subsidies for CO2-EOR, and the other forms of energy production that will produce captured CO2.
[Further reading] https://nmpoliticalreport.com/2020/12/14/why-energy-companies-are-drilling-for-a-greenhouse-gas-in-new-mexico/ [Video] ‘Exploiting science to increase oil recovery’ https://youtu.be/oSQt5tRVvAATwo crucial technological developments that are applied widely in fossil fuel refining and processing need to be understood in the context of the oil and gas industry’s plans for blue hydrogen production and the expanding deployment of biomass as a feed stock for decarbonisation.
It is important to understand that the energy and refining industries produce and use hydrogen routinely. Industry has the capability to direct CO2 streams that would otherwise be vented to the atmosphere into transport and storage infrastructure such as pipelines and export hubs.
Steam methane reforming is the most common method for producing hydrogen from gas, biomass and derivatives from oil. Refiners use high pressure steam (H2O) with gas (CH4) to produce hydrogen (H2) and CO2. The CO2 is conventionally vented off (grey hydrogen), but can be captured for storage and other uses (blue hydrogen).
Cracking is a key technology in the evolution of processing oil, gas, coal and biomass. Unlike fractional distillation which is the foundational technology used by the fossil fuel industry to separate various compounds found in extracted feed stocks (oil, gas, and coal), cracking separates feed stocks into their constituent molecules. These molecules can be reconstituted into synthetic fuels. Cracking is generally seen as a set of more efficient process for producing alkines (derivatives from refining).
Hydrocracking is used extensively in combination with catalytic cracking by refiners for conversion/purification of feed stocks. Industry leaders regard hydrogen as ‘indispensable’ to the refining industry, and for future transport and energy needs. The oil, gas, biomass and coal industries are well positioned to deploy blue hydrogen when access to CO2 transport and storage is made available because existing technology allows for minimal retooling to capture waste CO2.
[Further reading] https://www.frompollutiontosolution.org/hydrogen-from-smr-and-ccs [Further reading] https://fsc432.dutton.psu.edu/2014/07/06/hydrocracking-vs-catalytic-cracking/ [Further reading] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/20100917_china_clean_energy_lunch_and_panel_3.pdfThe CCUS boom has begun. This can be discerned by a dramatic increase in political support for approval and financing of CCS projects, and the number of new projects being announced. The most advanced projects rarely receive attention from climate campaigners, and their connections in the mainstream and liberal media.
Navigator and Summit CO2 pipelines, Oxy Low Carbon DAC for CO2-EOR, Houston Ship Channel, monumental expansions to the 45Q tax credit and other support under the IRA
[Further reading] https://www.agweek.com/business/adm-partnering-on-carbon-pipeline-out-of-iowa [Further reading] https://gcaptain.com/exxon-sets-sail-on-massive-houston-ship-channel-carbon-capture-project/ [Further reading] https://www.thebalancenewsletter.com/oxylowcarbonventuresdac [Further reading] https://carboncapturecoalition.org/inflation-reduction-act-of-2022-makes-monumental-enhancements-to-the-foundational-45q-tax-credit/
Alberta Carbon Trunk Line and associated refining and extractive projects, Pathways Alliance plans to emulate the ACTL, CCS tax credit proposed
[Further reading] https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/opinion-us-climate-action-a-roadmap-for-canada-to-support-carbon-capture-and-storage/ar-AA122faE [Further reading] https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-environment/pathways-alliance-president-says-oil-industry-will-be-judged-on-climate-goals-1.6147569 [Further reading] https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/10/26/Industry-Carbon-Capture-Steamroller-Could-Crush-BC-First-Nations/ [Further reading] https://www.ogci.com/ogci-climate-investments-continues-to-back-svante-a-new-unicorn-in-latest-funding-round/Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE blue hydrogen and blue ammonia projects
[Further reading] https://www.aramcolife.com/en/publications/the-arabian-sun/articles/2021/week-47-articles/ccus-efforts-day-to-day-effort-at-hawiyah-ngl-plant [Further reading] https://www.jwnenergy.com/article/2022/9/1/qatar-to-tap-global-hydrogen-market-with-1-billion/ [Further reading] https://gulfbusiness.com/harnessing-the-power-of-hydrogen-in-the-uae/Northern Endurance Partnership, East Coast Cluster, Porthos
[Further reading] https://www.business-live.co.uk/economic-development/chamber-backs-humber-2030-vision-25596678 [Further reading] https://www.business-live.co.uk/economic-development/east-coast-cluster-chief-latest-24770094 [Further reading] https://www.edie.net/government-unveils-ccus-project-shortlist-to-help-decarbonise-industrial-clusters/ [Further reading] https://www.equinor.com/news/uk/20220512-east-coast-cluster-carbon-storage-licences [Further reading] https://carbonherald.com/eus-ccus-zero-emission-network-will-accelerate-carbon-capture-in-the-region/ [Further reading] https://www.porthosco2.nl/en/ [Further reading] https://www.gasworld.com/story/denmark-accelerates-development-of-ccs-chain/2119229.article/Exploration acreage for Woodside, Total, Chevron and Santos, CCS decarbonisation hub proposed for Darwin
[Further reading] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220908006060/en/Chevron-Granted-Interest-in-Three-Permits-to-Assess-Carbon-Storage-Offshore-Australia [Further reading] https://www.inpex.co.jp/english/news/assets/pdf/20220824.pdf [Further reading] https://energyclubnt.com.au/news/12891148 [Further reading] https://stockhead.com.au/energy/pilot-on-the-fast-track-to-becoming-one-of-australias-first-offshore-ccs-operators/ [Further reading] https://www.santos.com/news/santos-announces-fid-on-moomba-carbon-capture-and-storage-project/Japan and South Korea making deals for import of blue hydrogen and blue ammonia, Malaysia, Indonesia and China all pursuing CCS, CCUS and decarbonisation hubs.
[Further reading] https://www.hydrocarbononline.com/doc/inpex-takes-fid-on-kashiwazaki-clean-hydrogen-ammonia-project-in-niigata-prefecture-japan-0001 [Further reading] https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/adnoc-sells-first-blue-ammonia-cargo-to-japans-itochu-amid-clean-energy-push/ [Further reading] https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2022/08/419_333847.html [Further reading] https://www.reuters.com/article/malaysia-petronas-idUSL1N32P0DJ [Further reading] https://www.upstreamonline.com/energy-transition/pertamina-and-marubeni-to-develop-decarbonisation-projects-in-indonesia/2-1-1171212#:~:text=Pertamina%20and%20Marubeni%20to%20develop%20decarbonisation%20projects%20in%20Indonesia [Further reading] https://www.upstreamonline.com/energy-transition/offshore-china-harbours-huge-carbon-capture-potential/2-1-1390955The fracking boom was a boondoggle. It did damage to nature and delivered throughput of resources for business as usual. Many critics point to fundamental signifiers of the boondoggle that is the fracking industry. David Wallace-Wells summed up the loss making mega-venture that has only recently begun turning a profit.
[SOURCE] https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3784151/david-wallace-wells/hardly-anyone-talks-about-how-fracking-was-extraordinaryPerhaps the most striking fact about the American hydraulic-fracturing boom, though, is unknown to all but the most discriminating consumers of energy news: Fracking has been, for nearly all of its history, a money-losing boondoggle, profitable only recently, after being propped up by so much investment from venture capital and Wall Street that it resembled less an efficient-markets no-brainer and more a speculative empire of bubbles like Uber and WeWork.
Countless commentators and members of the public have asserted to me that carbon capture and storage is a ‘boondoggle’ or words to that effect. Each of them has neglected to explain how CCS being a boondoggle obviates the need to be vigilant in monitoring the political will. In these discussions I raise the specter of a new fossil fuel extraction boom and point to the Halliburton Loophole that laid the crucial groundwork for fracking in the US, but commentators and members of the public generally refuse to join the dots.
In a recent explainer, Food and Water Watch asserted that CCS was a ‘boondoggle’, but laid most of the responsibility at the feet of “industry execs”. We know from the fracking boom that to build a boondoggle takes extensive and coordinated efforts over time. We know that efforts to establish the fracking boom required subversion of regulatory processes and protections. Why is it that Food and Water Watch can properly identify the threat, but seem unmotivated to unpack the political will?
Carbon Capture is a Multi-Purpose Boondoggle
[SOURCE] https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2022/09/09/carbon-capture-and-storage-explained/There’s hardly a dirty energy that carbon capture doesn’t prop up. The fossil fuel industry plans to use it to revive dying coal and fracked gas plants. If allowed, they’ll attach it to hydrogen power generation derived from fracked gas.
New developments are coming thick and fast as part of the CCUS boom. The recent announcement that the ADNOC CEO will be appointed to COP28 as president is of special significance. ADNOC are leading proponents of blue ammonia which is a stable carrier for hydrogen and a useful product for chemicals manufacturers who want to go net zero. They are also, along with Saudi Arabia, Canada and the US, leading proponents of CO2-EOR. The COP 28 team are reportedly sharing an office building with ADNOC.
[SOURCE] https://www.politico.eu/article/cop28-climate-team-uae-shares-offices-un-abu-dhabi-national-oil-company-ahmed-al-jaber/ [Further reading] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/12/cop28-uae-sparks-backlash-by-appointing-oil-chief-as-president.html [Further reading] https://www.adnoc.ae/en/news-and-media/press-releases/2021/oil-and-gas-industry-to-play-an-important-role-in-providing-practical-solutions-to-climate-change [Further reading] https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/adnoc-sells-first-blue-ammonia-cargo-to-japans-itochu-amid-clean-energy-push/The main COP28 team is using two stories of an 11-floor office building in Abu Dhabi also used by the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology located next to ADNOC’s headquarters.
When a group of young climate campaigners, including Greta Thunberg, met with the IEA boss Fatih Birol in Davos recently, neither the young panelists, nor any of the assembled media took the opportunity to ask the long term supporter of fossil fuel CCS about his frequent statements in support of CCS or his organisation’s consistent work to forward CCS under the banner of ‘clean energy’.
[SOURCE] https://www.youtube.com/live/69p4-B2R4Ho?feature=share [Further reading] https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/a86b480e-2b03-4e25-bae1-da1395e0b620/EnergyTechnologyPerspectives2023.pdf [Further reading] https://www.iea.org/news/iea-workshop-highlights-crucial-role-of-carbon-capture-technologies-for-clean-energy-transitionsThe CO2 pipeline frenzy in the US mid west states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska appears to have accelerated after the Inflation Reduction Act delivered the long anticipated 45Q tax credit expansions. Land owners, including First Nations report aggressive tactics from pipeline and CO2 storage companies. Land owners in North Dakota recently provided testimony in support of a bill sponsored by a republican state senator. The bill would give greater negotiating rights to land owners against the might of pipeline and storage companies.
[Further reading] https://www.ndlegis.gov/assembly/68-2023/testimony/SNATRES-2228-20230127-16957-F-HAUPT_MICHAEL_L.pdf [Further reading] https://www.ndlegis.gov/assembly/68-2023/testimony/SNATRES-2228-20230127-16679-A-DAHL_STACEY_A.pdf [Further reading] https://www.inforum.com/news/north-dakota/bills-target-co2-pipelines-in-north-dakota-energy-industry-worries-about-impacts-to-oil-coal [Further reading] https://www.mitchellrepublic.com/opinion/guebert-the-great-carbon-boondoggle-part-1 [Further reading] https://bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/project-tundras-carbon-storage-plans-approved-by-north-dakota-regulators/article_7e9e473c-3657-55e1-a3ef-92b2502f5fed.html [Further reading] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/north-dakota/articles/2022-04-20/officials-mark-start-of-co2-pipeline-used-for-oil-recovery [Further reading] https://www.kfyrtv.com/2022/05/25/100-million-loan-approved-project-tundra/ [Further reading] https://americanpolicy.org/2022/08/08/carbon-capture-pipelines-environmental-idiocracy/Behind all the discussion around ‘Exxon knew’ is the reality that oil companies in the US have been tapping naturally occurring CO2 domes to supply enhanced oil recovery projects for decades. It’s reasonable to assert that the oil industry has retained latent demand for anthropogenic CO2. It’s reasonable to assert that if Exxon knew, then they also knew that they can exploit the political and lobbying environment to engineer demand for CCS to supply anthropogenic CO2 for EOR. One of the benefits to Exxon from hiding their knowledge of the science of climate change is avoiding scrutiny of the methods used in CO2-EOR, the risks posed by the pipelines used to transport CO2, and the potential to massively expand proven reserves.
It’s clear that Exxon have a significant interest in CO2-EOR and CCS. Exxon are a partner in multiple CCS projects including Chevron’s Gorgon Gas Project and with Pertamina in a cooperation agreement on developing CCS and CCUS in South Sumatra, East Kalimantan, and West Java.
Climate campaigners find it extremely difficult to comprehend the contentions made by Wrong Kind of Green members that philanthropy, through setting the terms of funding, and through expansive networks, has effectively shaped climate campaigning through constraining the acceptable limits of discussion. Rather than attempting to falsify our contentions by looking at the networks, talking points and funding highlighted in our analyses, climate campaigners merely dismiss our arguments without investigation or ignore us completely. Climate campaigners need to realise that the ultimate objective of the powerful is always more business as usual which is what CCS, CCUS and BECCS provide.
The media, through silence and echoing supplied talking points, smooths the path for philanthropy to continue fostering the conflated logics and errant silences of climate campaigners. There are any number of media organs in thrall to the false narratives provided by captive thinkers working at the behest of climate NGOs. The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Intercept, and The Atlantic are prominent among the many captive agencies. The collective effect of narrative adherence is repetition which produces a sense that certain assertions of fact are true. This can be observed in the misreporting of the modelling produced by the International Energy Agency.
It is highly likely that governments have engaged nudge units to develop guides to framing issues to elicit public compliance with the net zero agenda. We know that the UK has engaged the Nudge Unit who developed ‘principles for successful behaviour change’ on behalf of the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. While corporate behaviour is heading very quickly toward installing significant decarbonisation infrastructure with the full support of governments, ordinary people are being encouraged to accept the impacts of net zero strategies. We should not assume that community consultations and public feedback will do anything to slow the long term plans for CCS, CCUS and BECCS, indeed it is likely the nudge units will adapt their messages to ensure compliance with the existing agenda to deliver business as usual, but with some CO2 abatement.
In order to shape the direct actions of activists, the statements of experts, and the language of the global consensus machine, networked power – constituted by the collective agenda of governments, corporations and philanthropy – appeals to self interest. Self censorship is an immediate response to the perceived risk of speaking outside the acceptable limits of discussion. The collective effect of self interest is the reinforcement of the power of the assigned/acceptable/prescribed talking points and the logical conflations embedded within them.
Decisive direct action that contributes to the public consciousness of what is really happening in the extractivist industries is what is necessary. If Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and other groups really wanted to confront the projects of the most wealthy oil, gas, coal and biomass proponents then they would be occupying and protesting the many new decarbonisation hubs in planning or under construction. If Just Stop Oil were intent on truly disrupting powerful oil and gas interests then they would be, for example, occupying sites in Hull and Middlesborough where BP and Equinor are developing new blue hydrogen projects. The UK Climate and Energy Minister, Graham Stuart has made it very clear that the political will is behind the decarbonisation plans of big oil, gas, coal and biomass. There is no excuse for not identifying the political will. It is right to ask why groups like Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil will not acknowledge the projects being built at their back door.
Plans for large scale CCS are part of the big oil and gas long game. The burning of biomass as a feed stock with CCS is the crucial linchpin in the net zero plans. We know that billionaire philanthropists like Chris Hohn, their impact philanthropy agents like John Podesta, and their well funded re-granting NGOs like the European Climate Foundation headed up by Laurence Tubiana hold strongly to this position. These individuals know on a deep level that BECCS is part of the long game to value-add CO2 as a waste turning it into feed stock to perpetuate the stranglehold of big oil and gas.
If you want to understand why the COP 26 phase-out commitments specified “unabated” fossil fuels, why COP 27 was overloaded with oil and gas executives, and why COP 28 will be headed up by a proponent of blue ammonia and CO2 enhanced oil recovery, then I suggest watching the Atlantic Council video I linked at the start of this briefing:
[Michael Swifte is an Australian activist and a member of the Wrong Kind of Green critical thinking collective.]
Aug 31
20220
"Net Zero" Activism BigGreen discourse carbon capture and storage carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) climate activism energy sector frontline action psywar reforms
July 4, 2022
By Michael Swifte
[*This textual analysis is a follow up to my op-ed for Off-Guardian in November 2021. It’s a long read, but you will see how the realities I pointed out in during COP 26 were papered over through management of language in the intervening months.]
Qualifying language makes a statement less certain. Any leader who says that they want to “phase out fossil fuels” will receive applause from climate warriors and have their message amplified in the media. For media organs like The Guardian and the various climate activist NGOs and think tanks, applause is all that matters. When conforming to particular attention-metrics yielding narratives, climate warriors and their stenographer friends in the media will ignore crucial qualifying language.
The word ‘unabated’ is the preeminent qualifier applied to language relating to phasing out fossil fuels under net zero modelling and commitments. Its application makes statements and commitments less certain by assigning them to one category of fossil fuels – those with CO2 abatement applied. When stenographers and narrative slaves choose not to attend to the uncertainty caused by the qualifier ‘unabated’, they are choosing to misinform the people.
The think tank E3G put out a good explainer on the meaning of ‘unabated’ ahead of COP26 in June 2021. In essence ‘unabated’ means: without some form of carbon capture and storage applied.
In May and June 2021, the term featured prominently in the IEA’s Net Zero Energy report and the official communiques from meetings of G7 Ministers and Leaders.
The term appears 52 times in the IEA Net Zero by 2050 report. In the Summary for Policy Makers – ‘Priority Action’ section, a call is made for a “massive clean energy expansion”.
Policies should limit or provide disincentives for the use of certain fuels and technologies, such as unabated coal?fired power stations, gas boilers and conventional internal combustion engine vehicles.
There are any number of examples of stenographers and pundits ignoring the qualifying term in question. Fiona Harvey ignored the ‘unabated’ qualifier when the IEA Net Zero by 2050 report was released in May 2021.
No new oil, gas or coal development if world is to reach net zero by 2050, says world energy body: Governments must close gap between net zero rhetoric and reality, says International Energy Agency head
When discussing Fatih Birol’s position on new technology, Harvey underplays the scope of CCS technology in development. The role projected for biomass as a feed stock and fossil hydrogen production at new decarbonisation hubs in Europe should be explored. The decarbonisation hubs planned around the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line should be considered when claims that CCS has not been proven ‘at scale’ are made. Blue ammonia import deals being hammered out in Asia should be analysed and the oil and gas giants like Saudi Aramco and Woodside making those deals should be investigated. The new CO2 pipelines proposed for Iowa, North Dakota, Illinois, Nebraska and Wyoming should be explained in terms of the political will and long term legislative efforts behind their development.
The crucial new technologies in development are: advanced batteries, particularly for use in electric vehicles; hydrogen; and carbon capture.
Damian Carrington provided a classic example of misrepresentation through silence in September 2021.
In May, an IEA report concluded that there could be no new oil, gas or coal development if the world was to reach net zero by 2050.
The Executive Director of the IEA, Fatih Birol used the ‘unabated’ qualifier in a session on ‘Navigating the Energy Transition’ at Davos Agenda in January 2022. He wasn’t ignoring the qualifier, but rather he was forefronting energy efficiency. His comments were largely ignored.
Either we continue to use unabated fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – and live with climate change, much more frequent extreme weather events, or we change the way we produce and consume energy.
The recent ‘carbon bombs’ series at The Guardian entirely avoided the crucial qualifier and reasserted the unqualified claim made a year earlier.
The IEA advised almost exactly a year ago that no new gas, oil or coal development could take place from this year onwards if the world was to limit global heating to 1.5C.
The Guardian seem to be keen to avoid mention of the over-reliance on CCS in modelling and phase out-out commitments. In order to make the ‘carbon bombs’ argument they need to frame out the political will for CCS and the state of its development. In their 13 May 2022 article they included a picture of the Saudi Aramco, Hawiyah NGL gas plant which deploys CCS and pipes the produced CO2 to an enhanced oil recovery project. They did not mention that the Hawiyah NGL plant was a CCS facility. Surely a gas CCS plant is not a prime example of a carbon bomb?
The 195 projects listed in The Guardian ‘carbon bombs’ series were identified in the study titled ‘“Carbon Bombs” – Mapping key fossil fuel projects’. The study which was revised in February 2022 makes no specific mention of “unabated” fossil fuels, biomass or CCS, but it does contain an assertion that completely negates the existence of the ‘unabated’ qualifier and the stated strategies for deploying large scale CCS outlined in the IEA Net Zero by 2050 report.
The recent IEA roadmap for net zero by 2050 which arrived at the conclusion that no new oil and gas fields nor coal mines are needed (Bouckaert et al., 2021) aligns well with the argument
The IEA Net Zero by 2050 report uses the ‘unabated’ qualifier liberally, but it also spells out clearly the infrastructure needed for large scale CCS.
And the required roll?out of hydrogen and CCUS after 2030 means laying the groundwork now: annual investment in CO2 pipelines and hydrogen-enabling infrastructure increases from USD 1 billion today to around USD 40 billion in 2030.
Fossil Fuel Treaty, an organisation spearheaded by Tzeporah Berman made a subtle acknowledgment that the IEA modelling allows future opportunities for CCS in their May 2021 media release. In doing so they contradicted their headline. They also made no mention of the crucial qualifier.
Headline:
New IEA scenario finds fossil fuel expansion is needless and incompatible with 1.5°C
Subtle acknowledgement:
At the same time, the IEA net zero report ignores the imperative of winding down oil, gas and coal production.
In an April 2022 media release Fossil Fuel Treaty selectively quoted the IPCC Working Group 3 on mitigation AR6 contribution, and provided a misleading headline. The term ‘unabated’ appears 21 times in the report. Section C on ‘system transformation’ contains the quote provided by Fossil Fuel Treaty in their media release. For contrast: the text immediately following the quote that was selected by Fossil Fuel Treaty contains an explanation of how “modelled mitigation strategies” support “transitioning from fossil fuels without CCS”.
Headline:
IPCC report reaffirms urgency to phase out fossil fuels to stave off climate crisis
Carefully selected IPCC quote:
all global modelled pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot
Here’s the full quote from the ‘Working Group III Contribution
to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6)’.
C.3 All global modelled pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C (>50%) with no or limited overshoot, and those that limit warming to 2°C (>67%) involve rapid and deep and in most cases immediate GHG emission reductions in all sectors. Modelled mitigation strategies to achieve these reductions include transitioning from fossil fuels without CCS to very low- or zero-carbon energy sources, such as renewables or fossil fuels with CCS, demand side measures and improving efficiency, reducing non-CO 2 emissions, and deploying carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods to counterbalance residual GHG emissions.
Oil Change International (OCI) need to be called out for their vigorous efforts at ignoring the crucial qualifier. The headline on their press release following the publication of the IEA Net Zero by 2050 report fails to reflect the space held for CCS in the future. They selectively quote the report which contains the contradictory phrase that helped facilitate misrepresentation. This can be seen in the quote provided in David Turnbull’s comment. The authors celebrated the IEA report as a “tremendous win” while simultaneously acknowledging the projected “4,000 percent increase in carbon capture and storage by 2030”. One of the authors went on to argue that the IEA is not “accelerating the phase-out of fossil gas and coal” by “banking” on CCS. This is, in effect, an admission that the IEA are promoting a phase out of ‘unabated’ fossil fuels rather than all fossil fuels as their headline and selective quoting suggests.
Headline:
IEA’s first 1.5°C-aligned scenario bolsters call for no new fossil fuel extraction
David Turbull:
Critically, the 1.5°C-aligned scenario finds “no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply.” This represents a break from past IEA reports that boosted new oil and gas development by focusing on scenarios that steered the world towards catastrophic levels of warming. As next steps towards reform, energy analysts are calling on the IEA to transform the WEO to focus on 1.5°C-aligned policies and investments and fix persistent modelling flaws. The new scenario continues to underestimate wind and solar while overselling riskier, more polluting alternatives.
Kelly Trout:
It’s huge to have the world’s most influential energy modellers bolstering the global call to stop licensing and financing new fossil fuel extraction. Governments, banks, and Big Oil and Gas companies can no longer use the IEA as a shield to claim that their support for fossil fuel expansion is consistent with the Paris Agreement. The IEA’s own modelling now shows new oil and gas fields are not compatible with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees.
David Tong:
Today’s report is a tremendous win for climate advocates who have been demanding that the IEA align its analysis and communications with the critical 1.5?C limit. While we applaud the IEA for taking this step, they can rest assured that advocates will continue pushing for the institution to complete the job. Gambling the climate on a 4,000 percent increase in carbon capture and storage by 2030 is extraordinarily risky and, the IEA’s own analysis shows, not necessary. Instead of banking on a consistently underperforming and still polluting technology, the IEA should be accelerating the phase-out of fossil gas and coal by relying on proven wind and solar solutions.
At the same moment that the OCI authors were ignoring the crucial qualifier, Kelly Trout was unironically pointing out the difference between the IEA headlines and their CCS gamble without ever mentioning the word ‘unabated’ or quoting one of the 52 instances in which the word appears in the IEA report. Again, the headline didn’t match the details revealled in the body.
Headline:
IEA’s First 1.5°C Climate Model Rejects New Fossil Fuel Extraction
Body:
Clinging to fossil gas. By gambling on a massive scale-up of CCS taking away some of its emissions, the IEA’s 1.5°C scenario also makes room for dangerous levels of fossil gas reliance this decade.
A year after the IEA Net Zero by 2050 report was released and 6 months on from COP 26, David Tong and Kelly Trout, along with an extensive list of NGO supporters, produced ‘Big Oil Reality Check 2022’. This time the introduction continued the misrepresentation of the IEA Net Zero by 2050 report and the World Energy Outlook 2021.
Also in 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) concluded that there is no room for new fossil fuel expansion beyond fields and mines already under development in its first-ever full 1.5°C-aligned scenario
Here are some quotes directly from the OCI report that reveal the real agenda.
To achieve its targets while continuing to produce fossil fuels, Shell plans to use large volumes of carbon sequestration and offsets
Equinor plans to rely heavily on CCS
ExxonMobil expressly aims to rely heavily on CCS
BP’s targets explicitly depend on CCS
Though Eni has set a 2050 “net zero” target…the company’s climate goals depend on extensive uses of CCS
TotalEnergies plans to rely significantly on technological CCS, alongside afforestation and other “nature based solutions”
The IEA’s 1.5°C scenario depends on less carbon dioxide removal than some other scenarios, but still includes a 4,000 percent increase in energy sector CCS by 2030
On 4 November 2022, a week before the first draft text came out, The Guardian reported on the commitments lauded by the UK establishment. On that day COP 26 produced multiple statements with the word ‘unabated’ used frequently as a qualifier when discussing coal phase-outs and fossil fuel phase-outs. Again the headline misrepresented statements being cited.
Headline:
More than 40 countries agree to phase out coal-fired power
Reasserting an untruth:
The IEA has said all new development of fossil fuels must cease from this year, if the world is to stay within the 1.5C limit.
39 countries signed the ‘Statement on International Public Support for the Clean Energy Transition’.
the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and IEA net-zero analysis show that in the pathways consistent with a 1.5°C warming limit and the goals of the Paris Agreement, the global production and use of unabated fossil fuels must decrease significantly by 2030;
45 countries signed the ‘Global Coal to Clean Power Transition Statement’.
Unabated’ coal power generation is described by the G7 and the IEA as referring to the use of coal power that is not mitigated with technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, such as Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS).
On the same day that the transition statements were released the UNFCCC put out a misleading headline that was not supported by the body of the text.
Headline:
End of Coal in Sight at COP26
Body:
At least 25 countries and public finance institutions commit to ending international public support for the unabated fossil fuel energy sector by the end of 2022
On 10 November 2021 the first draft agreement was released. The word ‘unabated’ does not appear and the phase out commitment is specific to coal and subsidies.19.
Calls upon Parties to accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels;
On 11 November 2021 it was reported that climate advocates found the first draft to be “vague” and lacking in ambition. A new draft would need to be hammered out.
A new version of the draft agreement text is expected to be published at some point Thursday night, but COP26 President Alok Sharma made it clear the negotiations are far from over — so don’t be surprised if they continue past the deadline.
When The Guardian reported on the second and final draft on 12 November 2021 they quoted both key phase-out texts, but focused on the word “inefficient” with regard to subsidies rather than “unabated” with regard to mitigation. The headline asserts that the language has “softened”, but there’s nothing in the article to suggest that the inclusion of the word ‘unabated’ was part of that softening.
Headline:
Second Cop26 draft text: Coal phaseout remains in but some language softened
Body:
The latest draft proposal from the Cop26 chair, released soon after 7am on Friday in Glasgow, calls on countries to accelerate “the phaseout of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels.The addition of “inefficient” could help countries that want to retain some fuel subsidies for the poor, while removing subsidies for major fossil fuel interests. This change to the language could also provide cover for countries that want to retain subsidies, however.
The word ‘unabated’ appears 3 times in the article. 2 of those instances can be found in a quote by Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change. In the quote he sums up the concession position on CCS held by the members of the Design to Win group of philanthropies and many of the recipients of funding spearheaded by John Podesta.
The call for countries to phase-out unabated coal power and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies is very important and historic. Unabated coal power releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and all subsidies for fossil fuels are inefficient.
Item 19 in the first draft agreement became item 20 in the second and final draft. Unlike the transition commitments made a week before, the qualifier ‘unabated’ is only applied to coal power rather than to fossil fuels in general.
20. Calls upon Parties to accelerate the development, deployment and dissemination of technologies, and the adoption of policies, to transition towards low-emission energy systems, including by rapidly scaling up clean power generation and accelerating the phaseout of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels;
In a 12 November 2021 article titled ‘COP26 cop-out on coal as fossil fuel phaseout diluted’, Helen Mountford, World Resources Institute vice-president for climate and economics identified the inclusion of the word ‘inefficient’ as a weakening point.
but the reference to “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies “does weaken that a little”.
On 13 November 2021 statements from Greenpeace International Executive Director Jennifer Morgan were published. Morgan described the outcomes from COP 26 as weak, but stated they send a “signal”. The inclusion of the word ‘unabated’ in relation to phasing out coal power suggests to me that coal extraction will only end when we have dug it all up. Does Morgan not see this?
It’s meek, it’s weak and the 1.5C goal is only just alive, but a signal has been sent that the era of coal is ending. And that matters.
Morgan, who is now Germany’s special climate envoy described the phase-out item as a “breakthrough” despite its weakness. It’s hard to tell if the inclusion of the word ‘unabated’ is the reason Morgan perceives the phase-out item as weak. Greenpeace International have provided weak resistance to CCS development, but are on record as critical of an over-reliance on CCS and offsets.
The line on phasing out unabated coal and fossil fuel subsidies is weak and compromised but its very existence is nevertheless a breakthrough, and the focus on a just transition is essential.
On the night before Greta Thunberg’s big speech in New York in September 2019 the UN Secretary General’s special adviser gave an address to the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI). I don’t believe the remarks were ever meant to be made public, but a group of activists made it into the swanky event. It’s unlikely they knew the significance of the transcript they provided to the journalist Emily Atkin who was a favourite of Bill McKibben at the time. It’s unlikely that any of the activists were aware of the embargoed media release which contained an announcement of the OGCI’s massive global ‘Kickstarter’ plan to fund CCS decarbonisation hubs.
Your industry has the assets and the expertise to demonstrate the ambition we need and to lead the way. The world needs, and is demanding, an ambitious road map to reduce the carbon intensity of your industry, and to demonstrate your commitment to align with the goals of the Paris agreement.
Robert Orr, Special Adviser to Antonio Guterres, September 22, 2019
At the completion of COP 26 Guterres gave a pre-recorded address in which he neglected to acknowledge the ‘unabated’ qualifier.
I reaffirm my conviction that we must end fossil fuels subsidies. Phase out coal.
Guterres continues to ignore the qualifier. In recent tweets Guterres has echoed the sentiments he expressed at COP 26, but not the sentiments he expressed via his assistant in that luxury New York hotel with the world’s wealthiest oil and gas executives.
17 June 2022:
For decades, the fossil fuel industry has invested in pseudo-science & public relations, with a false narrative to minimize their responsibility for climate change & undermine ambitious climate policies. They exploited the same scandalous tactics as Big Tobacco decades before.
19 June 2022:
The only true path to energy security, stable power prices, prosperity & a livable planet lies in abandoning polluting fossil fuels – especially coal – and accelerating the renewables-based energy transition. Renewables are the peace plan of the 21st century.
Why has Guterres neglected to attend to the significance of the ‘unabated’ qualifier? Is he too a narrative slave like most of the climate justice movement? It’s clear that in not attending to the qualifier he poses no threat to the OGCI.
In the muddied waters of time, most of the disingenuousness, douchebaggery and outright deception will be disappeared or be forgotten. Is this what the stenographers, pundits, NGO spokespersons and leaders are hoping for? How will the narrative framers respond as many of the projects they currently ignore come to fruition? Perhaps John Podesta and the billionaire philanthropists he represents have already got a plan?
We should remember that the captains of industry always like to turn a waste product into a feed stock for value adding. There are numerous examples of waste products being used as fillers, and there are celebrated examples of companies transforming their waste products into cost lowering and even profitable revenue streams. CO2 has, for decades, been viewed by the fossil fuel industry as a waste product that could be transformed into a valuable feed stock. This is precisely what is being deployed by virtually every major fossil fuel company on the planet. Is it conceivable that the oldest and wealthiest pillar of industrial globalist power could contrive to use philanthropy and every other covert means available to shape and compromise the resistance to their efforts? It certainly is!
[Michael Swifte is an Australian activist and a member of the Wrong Kind of Green critical thinking collective.]
Sep 11
20200
Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Whiteness & Aversive Racism
"Net Zero" 350.org 45Q tax credits Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Data for Progress Ed Markey End Polluter Welfare Act 2020 Green New Deal Jemez Principles Just Transition Principles Justice Democrats New Consensus Nuclear Private Activity Bonds Sunrise Movement
Wrong Kind of Green
September 11, 2020
By Michael Swifte
Is this a people’s plan or is this a process to get elected officials a policy in a timeline that will allow them to promote it around the 2020 election?
— John Washington speaking on behalf of Climate Justice Alliance to New Consensus and networks on 18 March 2019 [Source]
False Solutions continue to poison, displace, and imprison communities
Nuclear, fracking, “clean coal”, incineration and even prisons are offered as economic transition solutions to the climate crisis, but only continue to harm the health of people and the planet. The path of extracting, transporting, processing, and consuming these technologies is paved with communities riddled with cancer, reproductive and respiratory disease, among other devastating health impacts. These false solutions turn low-income communities, communities of color and indigenous communities into sacrifice zones. These do not move us toward a just transition.
— Climate Justice Alliance, Just Transition Principles, 21 April 2017 [Source]
You could say that the Green New Deal died when the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force recommendations came through, or perhaps that was the moment we knew that the Jemez Principles and the principles of a Just Transition had been abandoned more than a year before? Perhaps they were abandoned shortly after John Washington’s straight forward, perfectly articulated warning to New Consensus? Or perhaps they were abandoned as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey prepared the Green New Deal resolution with it’s “clean” and “net zero” language replacing the language of fossil fuel phase outs and 100% Renewables? Perhaps the Sunrise Movement, New Consensus, Justice Democrats and Data for Progress all fell in line with the net zero language of ruling class carbon accounts while paying lip service to fighting fossil fuels and pushing the advocates for First Nations and frontline communities further from the negotiating table?
I’ve looked and I’ve watched and I may be wrong, but it seems like the concerns of the Climate Justice Alliance fell off the map in March 2019 after they presented their position on the importance of observing the Jemez principles in the development of the Green New Deal to New Consensus and its connected networks. At some point between the first promises of a fossil fuel phase out and no new nuclear energy that were part of the notional Green New Deal endorsed by 350 dot org and 600+ of their NGO friends in January 2019, and the release of the Unity Task Force recommendations, any notion of actually centering-frontline-communities in the development of a Green New Deal were, it seems, abandoned. Not long after the Green New Deal Resolution was introduced on 7 February 2019, 350 dot org’s Julian Brave Noisecat took up a key position at Data for Progress whose September 2018 report on the Green New Deal more completely resembles the net zero language of “clean energy” rather than the phase out language of “100% Renewables”. The exact phrase Bria Viniate used in reference to the Ocasio-Cortez/Sunrise version of the Green New Deal in Vogue shortly before the November 2018 midterms is “100% Renewables”. The new phrase at the center of the Green New Deal after the introduction of the Green New Deal Resolution is “100% clean, renewable and zero emissions”.
Jemez Principles: https://www.ejnet.org/ej/jemez.pdf
Just Transition Principles: https://climatejusticealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/CJA_JustTransition_Principles_final_hi-rez.pdf
People of Color Environmental Justice: “Principles of Working Together” http://www.ejnet.org/ej/workingtogether.pdf
Green New Deal Resolution: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/hres109/text
Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force Recommendations: https://joebiden.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/UNITY-TASK-FORCE-RECOMMENDATIONS.pdf
Data for Progress – Green New Deal Report: https://www.dataforprogress.org/green-new-deal/
19 November 2018 – January 10 2019
When First Nations groups like the Lakota Law Project celebrated the creation of a Green New Deal in November 2018 they did so after hearing Ocasio-Cortez tell of her experiences at Standing Rock and saying “we have to get to 100 percent renewable energy in 10 years”.
Now, we find ourselves in this struggle together. Every aspect of the Green New Deal must be implemented now.
— Chase Iron Eyes, Lakota People’s Law Project lead counsel [SOURCE]
In December 2018 Climate Justice Alliance issued a statement that made it clear that it’s primary demand was that Green New Deal builders go to the grass roots and take direction from there.
The proposal for the GND was made public at the grasstops level. When we consulted with many of our own communities, they were neither aware of, nor had they been consulted about the launch of the GND.
— Climate Justice Alliance [SOURCE]
In January of 2019 Climate Justice Alliance and Indigenous Environment Network made very clear the commitments that would need to be upheld to keep a Green New Deal functioning.
What we want to do is strengthen and center the Green New Deal in environmental justice communities that have both experience and lived history of confronting the struggle against fossil fuel industries,
— Angela Adrar [SOURCE]
The way that the plan was developed and shared is one of its greatest weaknesses,
— Angela Adrar [SOURCE]
One of the most significant statements, attributable to Angela Adrar, is hard to date. The comment appears in the Green New Deal section of the CJA website but I could not find it in any published documents. It contains a dire warning about “Net Zero” and the burden that will be felt by frontline communities.
Allowing for neoliberal constructs such as Net Zero emissions, which equate carbon emission offsets and technology investments with real emissions reductions at source, would only exacerbate existing pollution burdens on frontline communities.
— Angela Adrar [SOURCE]
On the eve of the release of the letter to congress from 626 environmental groups including 350 dot org Tom Goldtooth from Indigenous Environment Network reaffirmed the need for Green New Deal proponents to engage under the appropriate principles.
We’re asking that leadership of the Green New Deal meet with us and have a discussion how we can strengthen this campaign with the participation of the communities most impacted.
— Tom Goldtooth [SOURCE]
Speaking upon the release of the letter of 626 groups and in reference to the input from IEN and CJA, Goldtooth indicated that commitment to “real solutions” were hard won. It’s important to note that at the time of the release of this letter Ocasio-Cortez was on record supporting “100% Renewables” having tweeted a call for a “wartime-level” mobilization in a January 2, 2019 tweet. [LINK]
Of course, we really had to assert ourselves on different issues that are very dear to us on seeking real solutions to mitigate climate change.
— Tom Goldtooth
Goldtooth goes on to make it very clear that “real solutions” do not include carbon capture utilization and storage.
The techno fixes are very critical as well. In our analysis, it’s part of the false solutions. Carbon capture and storage, for an example, the technology is still being tested out there, concerns around leakage, and a lot of the private sector, the polluters, will benefit now, only to find out that there’s complications, and really justifying the offset regimes that happen in this scenario to where carbon capture and storage just isn’t working. Carbon capture use and storage and these other areas are very critical concerns with us. We have formed solidarity with other entities that have been addressing this issue as well. And so, we’re very thankful to all the other green groups, the six hundred and twenty some signatures, that they stand with us in looking for real solutions. [SOURCE]
Below is a key passage from the strongly aspirational letter of the 626 groups, January 10, 2019. The claims within have been rendered into empty promises since the introduction of the Green New Deal Resolution. More than a dozen bipartisan bills aimed at expanding fossil fuel extraction are making their way through congress. Bills designed; to expand the refining and use of fossil fuels through 45Q tax credits & modifications to the tax code; develop pipeline corridors; provide support and funding for R&D; and enable the use of financial instruments like private activity bonds. Scarce little has been done by Green New Deal Resolution cosponsors, proponent NGOs or climate justice and progressive NGOs to fight against the bipartisan 45Q bills or indeed in support of the solitary bill designed to eliminate the 45Q tax credit, the End Polluter Welfare Act 2020.
Further, we will vigorously oppose any legislation that: (1) rolls back existing environmental, health, and other protections, (2) protects fossil fuel and other dirty energy polluters from liability, or (3) promotes corporate schemes that place profits over community burdens and benefits, including market-based mechanisms and technology options such as carbon and emissions trading and offsets, carbon capture and storage,nuclear power, waste-to-energy and biomass energy. [Source]
4 February 2019 – 18 March 2019
Julian Brave Noisecat was able to see and respond to the language of the Green New Deal resolution before it was introduced. On February 4, 2019 Noisecat made comments published in Politico that show him attempting to bridge the contradiction between fighting for a fossil fuel phase out and fighting for net-zero.
The language I read was clean, renewable, zero emissions — which is that ‘keep the door open’ approach,” said Julian NoiseCat, policy director with the climate group 350.org, adding that his organization pressed Ocasio-Cortez to include a statement requiring the phase-out of fossil fuels. [SOURCE]
Noisecat made his comment while he was still employed by 350 dot org. Within a couple of months he would become the Director of Green New Deal Strategy with Data for Progress. While 350 dot org, in theory, still support a fossil fuel phase out, Data for Progress have always used the language as it appeared in the GND resolution. There is nothing that Data for Progress are doing or have done that is strategically supporting a fossil fuel phase out. As reported on January 18, 2019 a few weeks before the GND resolution was published, Greg Carlock, a key author of the Data for Progress – Green New Deal Report published in September 2018, thinks carbon capture utilization and storage is inevitable.
There is no scenario produced by the IPCC or the UN where we hit mid-century decarbonization without some kind of carbon capture.
Carlock also works for the World Resources Institute (WRI) as Manager for Climate Action and Data. WRI have never been committed to phasing out fossil fuels or building 100% renewables.
It is firmly understood that going 100 percent renewable in 10 years is technically impossible—like, physically and engineering-wise, it is impossible, [SOURCE] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/first-fight-about-democrats-climate-green-new-deal/580543/
In testimony to the House Resources Committee on February 6, 2019, at a hearing titled: ‘Climate Change: The Impacts and the Need to Act’, Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of Uprose and steering committee co-chair of Climate Justice Alliance reiterated the need for a just transition.
VIDEO: The House Committee on Natural Resources hosted the hearing “Climate Change: The Impacts and the Need to Act”:
To effectively tackle climate change, we must invest in a Just Transition toward specifically local, living economies of scale.
Just Transition is a vision-led, unifying and place-based set of principles, processes and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy – not just for workers but for whole communities. This means approaching production and consumption cycles holistically and waste-free.
This transition away from fossil fuels itself must be just and equitable, redressing past harms and creating new relationships of power for the future through reparations, living wage jobs and economic and social development that aims to address historical harm and discrimination. If the process of transition is not just, the outcome will never be. [Source]
An FAQ document that was apparently released in error on February 7, 2019 in advance of the introduction of the Green New Deal Resolution shows that the team formulating the resolution were cognisant of the implications of the change in language from “100% Renewables” to “100% clean and renewable” or “clean, renewable and zero-emission energy” which became the specific language in the resolution.
Why 100% clean and renewable and not just 100% renewable? Are you saying we won’t transition off fossil fuels?
Yes, we are calling for a full transition off fossil fuels and zero greenhouse gases. Anyone who has read the resolution sees that we spell this out through a plan that calls for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from every sector of the economy. [SOURCE: Green New Deal FAQ Fact Sheet, February 7, 2019]
On February 7, 2019 Indigenous Environment Network released their ‘talking points’ on the Green New Deal resolution offering an instant rejection of the “net-zero” language.
The primary goal of the AOC-Markey Green New Deal (GND) Resolution is to “achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions”. We reject net-zero emissions language (as well as carbon neutral and zero-carbon) because it implies the use of carbon accounting that includes various types of carbon pricing systems, offsets and/or Payments for Ecological Services (PES).
We can no longer leave any options for the fossil fuel industry to determine the economic and energy future of this country. And until the Green New Deal can be explicit in this demand as well as closing the loop on harmful incentives, we cannot fully endorse the resolution. [SOURCE]
In response to the release of the Green New Deal resolution the Indigenous Environment Network released a statement on February 8, 2019. In it they make very clear their position on nuclear energy and their concerns stemming from the door being left open for nuclear in the resolution language.
The Green New Deal (GND) resolutio[n], as it is written right now, with no exclusion of nuclear energy to be considered clean energy, would open the door for Yucca Mountain to be reconsidered for dumping the nuclear energy waste. It would create the largest nuclear waste transportation campaign in history, possibly endangering residents in 44 states, thousands of towns and cities, and our Indigenous territories. [SOURCE]
It’s clear from Ed Markey’s dismissive statements at a press conference on February 11, 2019 unveiling the Green New Deal Resolution that there was a clear break in language of and the responsibility for the Green New Deal. His responses suppose that moderate Democrats should be kept happy. At the same moment First Nations and frontline advocates were clearly unhappy.
We’ve drafted it in a way that can get the support of progressives and moderates inside our caucus.
— Ed Markey
That’s what you should focus on. Focus on the resolution.
— Ed Markey [SOURCES]
The language of the resolution itself calls for the exercise of the same values enshrined in the Jemez principles.
in transparent and inclusive consultation, collaboration, and partnership with frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, worker cooperatives, civil society groups, academia, and businesses. [SOURCE]
In her February 13, 2019 piece for The Intercept following the introduction of the GND resolution Naomi Klein did not mention the disappearance of a fossil fuel phase out or note the change in language. If 350 had pressed Ocasio-Cortez on a phase out like Noisecat says, you would think it ought to be mentioned by 350’s leading light? Klein instead called for vigilance and ensuring responsiveness to pressure from frontline communities.
The Green New Deal will need to be subject to constant vigilance and pressure from experts who understand exactly what it will take to lower our emissions as rapidly as science demands, and from social movements that have decades of experience bearing the brunt of false climate solutions, whether nuclear power, the chimera of carbon capture and storage, or carbon offsets. [SOURCE]
By mid March 2019 the Climate Justice Alliance were pushed to the point where they felt they had to ask some questions about the values held by New Consensus: Who funds it? and, To whom is it accountable?
To this end, in order for us to continue in this process, we have four clear demands:
Include both the Jemez Principles and the Environmental Justice Principles of Working Together in all work stemming from this gathering and forthcoming;
Disclose and maintain transparency in funding sources, current and emerging, and commit that funding directly to those most impacted, including frontline and base-building organizing groups, alliances and networks for the development of policy priorities and language;
Clearly outline who New Consensus is accountable to and who it works for; and why is there redundancy, going into communities where work is already being done when the country is vast and there are so many other places where there isn’t yet consensus;
Commit to New Consensus’ participation in a strategy meeting with CJA and allied frontline partners in order to move our collective conversation and possible relationship forward, we would ask that a MOA be entered into between New Consensus and CJA frontlines.[SOURCE]
John Washington presented his strident arguments to new Consensus and GND partners on March 18, 2019 following the reading of the CJA statement by Miya Yoshitani. Robinson Meyer reported in The Atlantic in June 2019 that “difficulties came to a head” that day, but he did not specify which 2 activists raised issues.
The meeting was bumpy from the first hour, when two environmental-justice activists interrupted proceedings to protest the absence of the Climate Justice Alliance, a national network of urban, rural, and indigenous groups. The alliance had been asked to endorse the Green New Deal, but it had not been asked to help write it, the activists charged.
But one of the major demands the environmental-justice activists raised at the meeting has gone publicly unanswered. They asked a simple question: Who’s funding New Consensus? [SOURCE]
In Part 2 of this series I will look more closely at the negative impacts of marginalizing First Nations, frontline and grass roots voices, and how the fuzzy “clean” language of the Green New Deal Resolution left room for all the Democratic presidential hopefuls to capitalise on climate and justice issues, even when their real commitments would put them at odds with a fossil fuel phase out or 100% renewables.
In Part 3 I will look in depth at the neglected battlefields in stopping fossil fuel extraction including the bipartisan bills supporting expansion of the already misused 45Q tax credit making their way through congress, and the forces lining up to profit from the absence of any real commitment to eliminating fossil fuel subsidies from the DNC through the Progressive Caucus and onto the Green New Deal proponents.
Angela Adrar observed that the way the grass roots component of the Green New Deal was developed is its “greatest weakness” and that the “grasstops” announcement of the Green New Deal concept was not preceded by consultation with grass roots networks. We should keep this in mind whenever we think about the Green New Deal. We may never discover what happened after the March 2019 New Consensus meeting, but we do know there is an enormous responsibility on the shoulders of any honest brokers to redress the relationships compromised in the process of delivering policies for Democrat presidential hopefuls.
We should take as a warning and a lesson the words of Mark Charles at the Native American Presidential Forum in August 2019 as reported by Julian Brave Noisecat.
Now, if you have a house that’s built on a bad foundation, you’re going to get cracks in your walls. You’re going to get gaps in your windows. And you’re going to get a creaky floor,” he said, his oration reaching its soaring conclusion. “And you can scream and you can fight about what color to paint the walls, what kind of calking to use in your windows, and what kind of carpet to put on your floor, but until you go into the basement and examine your foundation and do something to firm those up and make those strong—you are never going to fix the problems in the house.” The audience cheered. Some women who had been cautious with their lele’s earlier really let loose.” [SOURCE]
[Michael Swifte is an Australian activist and a member of the Wrong Kind of Green critical thinking collective.]
May 20
20200
350.org / 1Sky, Foundations, Sierra Club
"Net Zero" 1Sky/350.org BECCS (bio-energy with carbon capture and storage) Beyond Coal CCS Center For American Progress Children’s Investment Fund Foundation Climateworks Foundation Clinton Global Initiative Data for Progress Design to Win Drax Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Equinor European Climate Foundation Exxon Global Climate and Energy Project Green New Deal Greg Carlock Grist John Podesta Laurence Tubiana Michael Moore Nancy Pelosi Networked Hegemony New Power Networks NextGen Oil and Gas Climate Initiative Phillips 66 Planet of the Humans Rockefeller Brothers Fund Rockefeller Foundation Rolling Stone Sandler Foundation Sierra Club Steyer Taylor Center SumOfUs Sunrise Movement Teesside CCS Tom Steyer UNFCCC World Resources Institute WRI
May 20, 2020
by Michael Swifte, Wrong Kind of Green Collective
“I think that the mainstream climate movement needs to collapse. It needs to end. And that the very comfortable organizers within that mainstream climate movement working in those NGO jobs – they need to fail. I think they need to be brought down. I think they need to have a little bit of hardship and a bit of suffering, and they need to create space for those historically oppressed groups.” [1]
— Tim DeChristopher, Transformation without Apocalypse – Episode #6 [SOURCE]
To understand the “damage” Bill McKibben claims the Planet of the Humans documentary has done to the climate justice movement you have to look at where 350 dot org began.
A fifty million dollar beginning
Bill McKibben has been in a dance with philanthropo-capitalists for more than a decade. He may not have been paid to be the face of 350 dot org but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t ‘corporate’ money around.
There was corporate and philanthropic money from the start. Bill Clinton announced 50 million from a “range of corporate and non-profit partners” for 1Sky at the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative. Bill McKibben was on the board of 1Sky in 2009 before it was merged with 350 dot org.
Watch this video and ask yourself how anyone could claim to be a leader of a ‘grassroots’ organisation or say that 350 dot org was ever a “rag-tag bunch of kids”. Watch the video.
https://youtu.be/_3PVGLseoGE
Cory Morningstar has been tracking, analysing and cataloguing this stuff for 10 years, and by “this stuff” I mean the global capture of climate justice activism through #networkedhegemony at the behest of the non profit industrial complex #NPIC. Cory follows the money, analyses the networks, and interrogates the messaging.
#NewPower networks connect 350 dot org to a vast web of similarly funded campaigns and critically deliver opportunities to shape the Democratic party agenda. 350’s global expansion was built on replicating the organisations, institutions and campaigns that positioned it in the US and Canada.
Here are some links providing deep background on the #NewPower constructs and networks that empower the ‘climate cartel’.
‘Rockefellers’ 1Sky Unveils the New 350.org | More $ – More Delusion’
http://www.theartofannihilation.com/rockefellers-1sky-unveils-the-new-350-org-more-more-delusion/
‘SumOfUs are Corporate Whores | Some Of Us Are Not’
http://www.theartofannihilation.com/sumofus-are-corporate-whores-some-of-us-are-not/
Jessica Bailey at Rockefeller Brothers Fund actually used the word ‘merger’ to describe the union of the 2 campaign organizations incubated by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
“Bill McKibben, who has been a 1Sky board member and will chair the new 350.org board, once referred to 1Sky as the U.S. Embassy for 350.org and 350.org as 1Sky’s foreign legion.[] Matching 350.org’s talent for mass mobilization and online action with 1Sky’s advocacy and field campaign experience is tremendously exciting. Mergers are tough, and I applaud the leaders in both organizations for recognizing they’d be stronger together.“ [SOURCE]
Comments on Planet of the Humans
Planet of the Humans is a worthy documentary for it’s revelations about “green energy” and the failures of the climate justice movement. It is a testament to Jeff Gibbs’ extensive documentation and long commitment to environmental issues. I was pleased that it included the Climate Challenge segment with Karyn Strickler pitching a question from Cory Morningstar to Bill McKibben, and I was glad the film makers told the truth about Ivanpah and Robert F Kennedy Jr’s ties to fossil fuel giants.
Planet of the Humans is mostly about North America, and while it opens up a range of departure points for discussion of planetary issues, it’s a documentary about North American humans and westerners more generally, not the 100s of millions of blameless people who struggle to put food on the table. I found the discussion of the ‘population issue’ concerning given how little time had been given to putting global consumer markets into perspective, but documentary making is about access, and Jeff Gibbs has gained access to the world of “green energy” in North America. Michael Moore brings access of a different but equally vital kind, if you want to make a splash with a documentary.
Departure points are vital if we’re to make the most of what Planet of the Humans has highlighted as key issues. If the climate justice movement has failed and the environmental movement has been captured by billionaires, what else have they messed up? What are the other billionaire philanthropists doing to capture the efforts of environmental campaigners? What new diabolical schemes are planned to keep business as usual going?
People who feel inspired or moved by Planet of the Humans should look into biomass burning in Europe and the future plans for burying CO2 produced from burning biomass under the North Sea. American and European philanthropies have invested staggering amounts of money into organisations like the European Climate Foundation which is part of a global empire of similar organisations. The IPCC mitigation pathways are replete with the term BECCS (bio-energy with carbon capture and storage).
I watched Planet of the Humans after watching the Earth Day livestream discussion with Michael Moore, Jeff Gibbs and Ozzie Zehner. I hope that Michael Moore’s endorsement of Bernie Sanders and his plea that we put environmentalism into the hands of young people like the Sunrise Movement which was incubated by the Sierra Club is not the position of all three film makers. We can’t take Michael Moore’s words as a call to action so we are going to have to make our own calls to action.
Watch the full video of Karyn Strickler interviewing Bill McKibben on Climate Challenge here:
Departure point: John Podesta and a parallel climate campaign
In 2007 a plan was launched by 6 foundations. This plan #DesigntoWin produced the ClimateWorks Foundation, headed by John Podesta, which has spearheaded the incubation and funding of re-granting NGOs globally. ClimateWorks is perhaps the world’s largest recipient of climate philanthropy having received more than 1.3 billion USD since it’s inception in 2008.
John Podesta has a long relationship with the Clintons, both as politicians and philanthropists. In the various roles he has played – always as a Democrat – his focus has been on the future of energy and how to message a position on climate change for the party and for the global philanthropo-capitalist agendas.
Have a read of the Wikileaks ‘Podesta Emails’ that refer to Bill McKibben and/or Tom Steyer. Check out the ‘climate tick tocks’ for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, the updates from philanthropist-billionaires like Tom Steyer and Henry Sandler, or Chris Lehane’s ‘big idea’ briefing that became the ‘Clean Power Plan’ (more business as usual). [SOURCE]
Podesta is always engaged with philanthropists. The Sandler Foundation helped establish the Center for American Progress which Podesta heads up. It helped fund the Australian climate justice regranting NGO the Sunrise Project and the US Beyond Coal campaign. Tom Steyer, a former Wall St banker, hedge fund manager and friend of Nancy Pelosi befriended Podesta who welcomed him into his Center for American Progress. Podesta encouraged Steyer to start his NextGen Climate Action Committee. It is likely that Steyer’s dubious defection from the ranks of billionaire fossil fuel investors and hedge fund managers was orchestrated under the advice of Chris Lehane. Steyer’s defection would see him join with McKibben and 350 at high profile events, and according to the Podesta emails they were in regular contact.
350/McKibben have been a foil for Democrat positioning on climate. The non profit industrial complex needed a global climate justice brand, and it needed to nestle it in a web of networks all connected by funded talking points and touchstone pieces in Rolling Stone and Grist. Granting and regranting NGOs pass over talking points in their transactions with grant recipients. Billionaires on every continent get to play the game.
Important background on the Design to Win plan here:
Background on the largely ignored mitigation plans of big oil & gas here:
https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/10/19/perfect-distractions-and-fantastical-mitigation-plans/
Departure point: The Steyer-Taylor Center and financing for CCS
Tom Steyer and his wife Kat Taylor fund the Steyer Taylor Center at Stanford. The center was headed from it’s founding in 2011 until September 2018 by Dan Reicher who has spoken in favour of financing to support carbon capture and storage on numerous occasions.
Dan Reicher is a Clinton administration energy wonk who spent some of the Obama years at Google. He’s the Founding Executive Director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy & Finance, but is now at the Stanford Woods Institute. Reicher explains how the future is all laid out for enhanced oil recovery with CO2 in this 2016 video. His slides include the prexisting CO2 pipeline maps for enhanced oil recovery.
A quote from the video:
“Carbon capture and sequestration is a key climate change strategy. You ask the IPCC, you ask the International Energy Agency.”
Reicher argues that with the CO2 pipeline infrastructure that is already in place and the right financial instruments “Full scale cost effective CCS” is deliverable.
Here is Reicher discussing private activity bonds and CCS. In the past he has spoken about the usefulness of master limited partnerships. Both of these financial instruments have been included in bipartisan bills currently before congress.
“It’s less about how to make it work technically these days but more about how to make it work financially,” [SOURCE]
Here is a quote from Reicher speaking at the Exxon funded Global Climate and Energy Project – Research Symposium in 2015.
“We really need to be using CCS for coal, natural gas, and a whole host of industrial carbon sources. But the costs are too high,” [SOURCE]
The Steyer-Taylor Center has partnered with the Exxon incubated and funded Global Climate and Energy Project which was ended in August 2019. Exxon are a founding member of the Strategic Energy Alliance along with Bank of America who support the – Sustainable Finance Initiative along with the Steyer-Taylor Center. [SOURCE]
Departure point: The Green New Deal and the failing phase out
Dan Lashof is the director of the World Resources Institute and the current COO of Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate America and Nextgen Policy Center. In January Lashof co-wrote an opinion piece for the Houston Chronicle with Occidental Petroleum – Low Carbon Ventures president Richard Jackson. Oxy’s air capture plans support their enhanced oil recovery efforts and net zero targets through negative emissions from their planned air capture for CO2 enhanced oil recovery project. [SOURCE]
There’s a lot of interest in Oxy’s direct air capture plans which are supported by Carbon Engineering who have a long list of investors including Bill Gates, Murray Edwards, Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, LLC, Chevron Technology Ventures and BHP. [SOURCE]
The World Resources Institute provided 2 of the 3 Data for Progress researchers that developed the #netzero language that made it into the Green New Deal resolution. After the resolution came and went it has become clear that any sort of commitment to a fossil fuel phase out had been abandoned.
Important background on the ties between the World Resources Institute and Data for Progress here:
The Green New Deal has taken some of the pressure from McKibben/350. The Clean Power Plan was business as usual, but a little bit cleaner. The GND allows Democrats to appear to be taking a harder line on climate, but it’s a vehicle that has little legislative substance.
The Green New Deal must be failing to deliver a fossil fuel phase out if the director of the WRI, a so called ‘environmental advocate’, can share a by-line with a big oil executive to spruik a project that is the opposite of phasing out fossil fuels and seemingly nobody cares.
Here’s a quote from Dan Lashof regarding Oxy’s air capture for CO2 enhanced oil recovery project that clearly shows he’s not working for a fossil fuel phase out.
“On the other hand, to the extent that you’re expanding the total energy resources base and extending the fossil-fuel era, obviously that doesn’t solve the climate problem.” [SOURCE]
Data for Progress, New Green Deal Research Director and World Resources Institute US, Manager for Climate Action and Data, Greg Carlock referred to a WRI working paper on direct air capture in a recent blog post for WRI. The paper refers to Oxy’s DAC for CO2 EOR project as an example of where investments are increasing.
“Some companies interested in combining enhanced oil recovery with direct air capture are increasing investments. For example, Occidental Petroleum is partnering with Carbon Engineering to build potentially several direct air capture plants.” [SOURCE]
Departure point: Drax, BECCS and the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative
Departure point: European Climate Foundation and industrial CCS clusters
Laurence Tubiana is a former French ambassador to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and CEO of the European Climate Foundation.
“The phase when abatement of emissions from industry was considered impossible is over. Industry leaders are looking at totally disruptive technologies and visions.” [SOURCE]
I could try and explain how the ECF is positioned to shape the ‘climate solutions’ on offer, but Cory Morningstar has already done it perfectly:
“As “the core of the ClimateWorks system in Europe“, the ECF constitutes an integral part of the regional global network created by the San Francisco-based ClimateWorks. ClimateWorks works to oversee and shape climate-related policy work worldwide. Launched in 2008 – the same year as ClimateWorks) – the ECF is a regranting foundation like its US counterpart.” [Background on the European Climate Foundation]
3 key points about European Climate Foundation
5 studies relating to BECCS and industrial clusters in Europe
2018: Study funded by the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative
‘Policy Mechanisms to support the large-scale deployment of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)’
“Element Energy and Vivid Economics have assessed policy mechanisms that could accelerate the deployment of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) to the scale required to meet climate change targets. The report begins by considering why, despite the central role that CCS plays in many deep decarbonisation trajectories, CCS has failed to build momentum. Having identified the problems, the work lays out policy and market mechanisms that could stimulate investment across the stages of deployment, acknowledges regional circumstances, and suggests principles that could help governments and firms to collaborate. Note that in this report CCS includes CCUS (carbon capture, utilisation and storage) in those cases where storage is permanent.'” [SOURCE]
2018: Study funded by the European Climate Foundation
‘Low-carbon cars in Europe: A socio-economic assessment’
“Hydrogen production for the transport sector is expected to be dominated by water electrolysers, steam methane reforming (SMR) and by-product from industrial processes (for example chloralkali plants). These sources form the basis of the production mix in this study. Other potential sources include waste or biomass gasification, or SMR with carbon capture and storage. These additional routes could potentially provide low cost, low carbon hydrogen, but are not yet technically or economically proven and have not been included in the cost assumptions below.” [SOURCE]
2017: Study funded by the European Climate Foundation and Industrial Innovation for Competitiveness (i24c)
‘Deployment of an industrial Carbon Capture and Storage cluster in Europe: A funding pathway’
“The 2020s will be a make-or-break decade for so many aspects of the low carbon transition. CCS in industrial plants needs to be part of the picture. Getting the financing right is clearly an essential first step. But we also need to establish the right frameworks for shared liability between operators and tackle some of the concerns the public and some policymakers still harbour over industrial CCS. This report shows the way for at least one of the hurdles related to CCS. I hope you enjoy reading it.” [SOURCE]
2011: Study funded by the One North East Regional Development Agency and the North East Process Industries Cluster.
‘Tees Valley CCS Network’
“An Element Energy study has looked at the logistics of implementing a shared CCS pipeline network in the Tees Valley to connect major CO2 emitters in one of the UK’s largest industrial clusters. By Harsh Pershad, Element Energy”[SOURCE]
2019: Study prepared for European Climate Foundation in collaboration with the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, Climate-KIC, the Energy Transitions Commission, RE:Source,and SITRA.
‘Industrial Transformation 2050: Pathways to Net-Zero Emissions from EU Heavy Industry’
“BIOMASS WILL BE REQUIRED PRIMARILY FOR FEEDSTOCK Achieving net zero emissions for the economy as a whole will lead to multiple competing claims on scarce biomass re-sources. The use of biomass for fuel or feedstock can compete with alternative uses for land like food or feed production, conservation for maintained biodiversity, or as a ‘sink’ for CO2 emissions. Furthermore, once the biomass has been extracted, there are multiple competing uses, from simple combustion for heat or electricity generation (the largest use today) to the production of transportation fuels, or use with CCS for ‘negative emissions’ to offset remaining emissions in other sectors.” [SOURCE]
2017: Research paper prepared for Chatham House by independent policy analyst Duncan Brack
‘Woody Biomass for Power and Heat: Impacts on the Global Climate’
“Biomass is classified as a source of renewable energy in national policy frameworks, benefiting from financial and regulatory support on the grounds that, like other renewables, it is a carbon-neutral energy source. It is not carbon-neutral at the point of combustion, however; if biomass is burnt in the presence of oxygen, it produces carbon dioxide. The argument is increasingly made that its use can have negative impacts on the global climate. This classification as carbon-neutral derives from either or both of two assumptions. First, that biomass emissions are part of a natural cycle in which forest growth absorbs the carbon emitted by burning wood for energy. Second, that biomass emissions are accounted for in the land-use sector, and not in the energy sector, under international rules for greenhouse gas emissions.”
“Many of the models used to predict the impacts of biomass use assume that mill and forest residues are the main feedstock used for energy, and biomass pellet and energy companies tend to claim the same, though they often group ‘low-grade wood’ with ‘forest residues’, although their impact on the climate is not the same. Evidence suggests, however, that various types of roundwood are generally the main source of feedstock for large industrial pellet facilities. Forest residues are often unsuitable for use because of their high ash, dirt and alkali salt content.” [SOURCE]
End notes:
[1] Verbatim: “I think that the, the mainstream climate movement, needs to, needs to collapse. It needs to end. Um, and, and that the very comfortable organizers within that mainstream climate movement, ah, working in those NGO jobs, um, they, they need to fail. Um, I think they need to be brought down. I think they, they need to, ah, have a little bit of hardship and a bit of suffering, and they need to create space for, ah, for those historically oppressed groups.” Tim DeChristopher, Transformation without Apocalypse – Episode #6
[Michael Swifte is an Australian activist and a member of the Wrong Kind of Green critical thinking collective.]
Oct 28
20190
Research & Investigative Reports on NGOs, Social Engineering
"Net Zero" Extinction Rebellion Greta Thunberg Holistic Linguistics Language & Framing Market Solutions Marketing Podcast Storytelling XR
September 18, 2019
By Stephen Boni
About 43% of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were lawyers. After the establishment of the United States government, over a near 250-year period, the number of lawyers in Congress has, by-and-large, mirrored that original percentage. In fact, our current Congress is made up of 43% lawyers. This is a powerful voting block of like-minded people.
Additionally, it isn’t much of a secret how important legal expertise is to modern corporations and how many lawyers exist among their executive ranks. And America’s most prominent corporations represent the financial backing of nearly all members of Congress.
The way lawyers have been trained to think, the skills they possess, the way they maneuver, and what they maneuver for casts a massive shadow over what kinds of decisions get made for our society—and what kind of loose consensus (or acquiescence) gets achieved in order for those decisions to stick.
What I’m talking about is how those decisions are sold to us. Because, at this point, there are very few societal decisions that are made from the ground up by regular citizens.
As I sat in front of the Words of Others podcast mic this week to read Act IV of Cory Morningstar’s multi-part series on how the corporate elite are using a string of nonprofits, foundations and advocacy organizations to engineer a specific set of likely ineffectual responses to the climate and pollution crisis, I noticed how she highlighted elite use of nuanced language—language that smacks of lawyerly thinking—as one of the key methods members of the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) industrial complex use to mask the basic assumptions behind the solutions they want the world to adopt.
It’s interesting to me that it was this aspect of Morningstar’s piece that jumped out. The issue of precise but deceptive language is not the focal point of the article. What her piece zeroes in on, actually, is the evidence of a coordinated, psychologically thought through marketing campaign cutting across the entire swath of NGOs currently inserting themselves into the climate crisis movement.
But a marketing campaign is about storytelling—and storytelling is, in large part, about the use of language. And the language used to sell us a movement is consciously connected by its salespeople to the language used to sell the movement’s solutions.
About a quarter of the way through the piece, Morningstar notes the use of a very specific phrase in the proposals of NGO-connected elites to define their specific goal for reducing carbon emissions: “Net Zero Emissions”.
As she explains, this is a very precise modification of carbon goals articulated by NGOs in previous years, and certainly a departure from what grassroots climate activists seek. Because “net zero emissions” doesn’t mean a massive reduction in the amount of carbon we’re pumping into the atmosphere:
“Rather, it is the amount of emissions being put into the atmosphere being equal to the amount being “captured.”
To achieve that carbon capture, the NGO industrial complex is seeking huge investments for carbon capture storage technology, investments they don’t want to make with their own money but want to take from pension funds and our tax dollars. And, as Morningstar laid out in Act III of her series (which you can listen to here), they want to securitize these investments in green technology so they can become a series of financial products that invigorate growth in a now perpetually sluggish capitalist economy.
This tricky use of language as a sales technique is remarkably precise. It’s not just marketing-ese. It’s downright lawyerly. “Net Zero Emissions” sounds good, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t mean genuinely cutting carbon emissions, reducing consumption, or pollution, or anything, honestly, that would hinder corporate profits.
Since the biosphere has not a single care about what our economic system is, and is only reacting to our very physical waste, “net zero emissions” is no solution at all. There is nothing adaptive about it. It places perceived economic needs over the healing needs of the Earth—which we need healthy for our own precarious wellbeing. But you would only know that by digging into the phrase, and most of us don’t parse the world like that or have the time to think about such things too deeply.
These lawyerly manipulations are not only effective at diverting us from genuine adaptive solutions to climate change and pollution, they’re also tailor-made to make sense to the lawyerly sensibilities of Congress, which, as we remember, is made up of people who have a vested interest in pursuing “solutions” (and use of the public purse) that meet the needs of their corporate donors.
In both politics and astro-turfed movements, we see this linguistic move time and again. Barack Obama was one of the most gifted practitioners when he was campaigning to be president. He knew—as the elites who run the world’s NGOs know—that citizens understand instinctively that things are so bad that only some kind of systemic change will make them better. Since that type of change was not his goal, he concocted a rhetorical style so open to interpretation, so precise and conscious in its use of vague language, that he was able to convince most of the voting public that he was their voice for sweeping change.
Even thought he wasn’t.
That particular use of precision; precision as a way to conceal, is built in to marketing to be sure, but even more so, it’s built in to legal language. In our Constitution itself, written by men steeped in legal thinking, we can see the good and evil sides of legal language’s ability to both reveal and hide meaning.
We live in a complex, often faceless society. Inverted totalitarianism, as theorized by famed historian Sheldon Wolin, gets expressed through the anonymity of the corporate state. Large nonprofits, foundations, NGOs and their backers on Wall Street are an embedded part of that corporate state.
In her extensive research and her journalism, Cory Morningstar is not trying to shit on Greta Thunberg or the Extinction Rebellion activists currently shutting down parts of London. She’s trying to tear apart that legalese-influenced language so we can inoculate ourselves against propaganda—and pursue ground-up solutions that actually have a chance of ensuring us a healthier planet, a healthier society and a healthier life.
After all, wouldn’t it be interesting if those taking part in these movements, armed with a little knowledge on who’s running these organizations, turned on their putative masters and spun the movement out of their control?
Now wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants?
Incidentally, here’s how you can listen to the first three parts of Morningstar’s series:
As always, thanks for reading and thanks for listening.
[Stephen Boni is both Ghion Journal’s current editor and a contributing writer. His main interest is in analyzing the workings of empire and exploring ways to dismantle and replace systems of oppression. A conflicted New Englander with an affinity for people, music and avoiding isms, he lives in Oakland, California with his wife and young daughter.]
Apr 29
20190
"Net Zero" Biodiversity Carbon Markets Extinction Rebellion IPBES Natural Capital Natural Capital Coalition Offsets Payments for Ecosystems Services (PES) The Financialization of Nature
April 29, 2019
What is true of trees is true of the natural world as a whole, including the human beings that are part of it. Nature is real; money is an abstraction. If money seems real that is because our institutions and practices are so deeply premised on beliefs in it. There is an important sense in which those institutionalized beliefs – in crediting it with a certain value – make money real; but it is not real in the way the natural world is real. If a bank goes bust, if a whole economy crashes, the social upheaval that follows may be immense, but life goes on – people will pick themselves up and start again (and some people, meanwhile, will likely have found a way to profit from it!). By contrast, if a species goes extinct, if an ecosystem collapses, then there is no prospect – certainly not on human timescales – of a recovery. The threat of extinction to our own species is the ultimate threat.
Extinction Rebellion has given publicity to critically important concerns of our time – the ecological crises as exemplified by dangerous climate change and biodiversity loss.[1] But it also gives rise to some perplexity.
A circumstantial puzzle is how an apparently spontaneous social movement of protest comes to have the energetic backing of big business interests and even to receive notable support from influential sections of the corporate media.
On deeper reflection, what does it even mean to stage a rebellion against extinction? Rebellions usually involve a group of people rising up to protest or overthrow another group that wields unjust or illegitimate power over them. How can you ‘rebel’ against extinction? It is not as if you can choose to disobey the laws of nature.
The website that asserts the copyright © Extinction Rebellion, states certain demands directed at government.[2] The moral clarity of their seemingly simple message, however, could be deceptive.[3]
Two key demands are: “halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.”
These may sound like goals that any ethically rational person could wholeheartedly endorse, and yet, as a recent critical study by Cory Morningstar has demonstrated, what their pursuit entails does not necessarily correspond to what people might imagine.[4]
First, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero does not mean eliminating emissions, or even necessarily reducing them at all. It refers to the possibility of engaging in other activities to offset them. The offsetting may be accomplished by various means of technological fixes and/or accounting innovations, but what these means have in common is that they will be profitable to engage in. As was made explicit some years ago in the influential Stern Review of climate economics, a policy approach allowing emissions offsetting creates great opportunities for businesses and the financial sector.
‘Capital markets, banks and other financial institutions will have a vital role in raising and allocating the trillions of dollars needed to finance investment in low-carbon technology and the companies producing the new technologies.’ (Stern 2006: 270)
‘The development of carbon trading markets also presents an important opportunity to the financial sector. Trading on global carbon markets is now worth over $10bn annually’. (Stern 2006: 270)
By attaching a price to carbon, a whole new commodity is created over which the distribution of rights represents a new income stream. So it’s good for shareholder profits, but what about nature? How confident can we be when its protection relies on a new multi-billion dollar market involving the same people responsible for the global financial crisis?
The other key goal, to halt biodiversity loss, sounds like one that should not allow wriggle room for profiteers to game it. And yet, consider for a moment how one might propose – even with the best and purest of intentions – to bring biodiversity loss to a halt. The sheer extent of activities around the world that are undermining habitats and ecological systems is so great and complex, it is hard to conceive what exactly could and should be done, even given determined political will to do it. The proposed policy in reality, therefore, is not literally to stop doing everything we are currently doing that compromises biodiversity. Instead, it once again centres on putting a price on the aspects of nature that market actors attach value to. The premise is that if we accept it is not possible to halt the destruction of biodiversity in some places, it is still possible to protect and even re-create biodiversity in others. Thus, just as with carbon emissions, the ideas of substitution and compensation play a pivotal role: biodiversity loss may not be literally halted, but it can be offset.
And how is biodiversity loss to be offset?[5] Here comes the familiar move: in order to weigh the loss in one place against a putative gain in another they must be subjected to a common scheme of measurement. Biodiversity being something of value, the way to record how much value any instance of it has is taken to be by reference to monetary price. Hence we learn that ‘biodiversity conservation and the related concept of “natural capital” are becoming mainstream. For instance, the Natural Capital Coalition is developing the economic case for valuing natural ecosystems and includes buy-in from some of the biggest players in business, accountancy and consulting. And the financial industry is moving toward more responsible investing.’[6]
Yet this unidimensional quantification of value completely disregards the point that biodiversity is a complex and quintessentially qualitative phenomenon. It is of the essence of biodiversity that its biotic components and their environments are diverse. Being diverse means being different in ways that cannot be reduced to the measure of a single common denominator. Hence the essence of biodiversity is an irreducible plurality of incommensurables. The idea of ‘compensating’ for loss of biodiversity of one kind by the protection or enhancement of biodiversity of another kind elsewhere means disregarding the very meaning of biodiversity.[7]
The idea of biodiversity offsets, then, does not have its rational basis in ecological concern but in the expansionary logic of capitalist profit seeking.
A rebellion that really has any prospect of fending off disaster for our biosphere and ourselves needs to be based on a proper understanding of who and what needs to be rebelled against.
Extinction Rebellion publicity material says that it is apolitical. Yet there is nothing apolitical about the real struggle that is required for people to seize the power currently concentrated in the hands of plutocrats. And to those who say – rightly – that ecological issues are greater than mere politics, it may be responded that this is why we cannot let it be “dealt with” by those who currently so misuse their political power.
Asking governments to enact policies that corporate and financial backers are lining up to draw massive profits from is not what the people protesting against impending ecological disaster have in mind. It needs therefore to be clear that you can’t actually protest against disaster. You need to take on those who are driving us towards it. So you need to know who they are and how they are doing it. It’s a good idea to look carefully at who is shaping the demands you are being enlisted to make, and what exactly they entail.
[1] For other, less discussed but no less significant problems, see Rockström et al. (2009).
[2] Why they are directed at government without reference to the central role of powerful corporations is not completely obvious, and nor is the reason why the site also says the protest is ‘apolitical’, a question to be returned to.
[3] We humans, especially the worst off – and not even to mention members of other species we share the planet with – certainly have powerful reasons for concern at the ecological crises being provoked by our collective global exploitation of the biosphere. But what “we” can do about that is nothing like as clear.
In fact, there is no “we” that can act as a collective. There are multifarious different people, groups, tribes, classes, and nations that have competing interests. “We” are not organized to respond in a concerted, ethical and rational manner.
On the other hand, a very small group of people – who alone command as much of the world’s aggregate resources as half the rest of the world’s population put together – is very well coordinated. At the highest levels of corporations and financial institutions they hold great power. With their immense wealth comes control over those – including politicians, journalists and various “thought leaders” – who exercise greatest influence over publics. Their power to manipulate public perceptions vastly exceeds most people’s awareness of it.
So we – ordinary members of the public, whether old or young – can protest and engage in symbolic actions and go green in aspects of our lifestyle, yet to real little effect. In our heart of hearts we may know this, and yet we may still believe it important to try and to act as we think all should. So when the makings of a real social movement appear, we energetically embrace the opportunity it appears to present for making some more noticeable impact. Hence the enthusiastic welcome of Extinction Rebellion, in which school kids and pensioners have united around the moral and existential cause.
But what sort of ‘rebellion’ is it that is conjured into action by a consortium of corporate-backed organizations and given extensive positive coverage in the corporate media? The commitments and beliefs of the multifarious individuals and groups on the ground are various and sincerely held, and they do tend to converge around something like the headline goals stated in the publicity material ©Extinction Rebellion. But the exact goals being endorsed focus on two very specific demands: “halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.” And in this post I am arguing that it is very easy to be misled into thinking these capture what we really want to achieve, whereas in reality they may in fact capture our acquiescence in the further extension of corporate power over the natural world and our own lives.
[4] Morningstar’s set of six articles makes for somewhat demanding reading, and her purposes have sometimes been misunderstood or misrepresented on the basis of apparently rather casual perusal. Certainly, this has been noticeable in comments on Twitter, so I tried to distil some of her key points, without her detail or her critics’ distractions, in a Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/Tim_Hayward_/status/1120748645069021185
[5] Some useful introductory sources are World Rainforest Movement: https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/tag/green-economy/; Clive Spash 25 minute talk: https://vimeo.com/33921592; and the collection of material here: http://naturenotforsale.org/author/berberv/
[6] Richard Pearson, ‘We have 15 years to halt biodiversity loss, can it be done?’, The Conversation, 26 Oct 2015 https://theconversation.com/we-have-15-years-to-halt-biodiversity-loss-can-it-be-done-49330.
[7] For a pithy presentation of the basic ideas here see the short video ‘Biodiversity offsetting, making dreams come true‘ https://vimeo.com/99079535.
Rockström, Johan et al. (2009), ‘A Safe Operating Space for Humanity’, Nature 461: 472–75.
Stern, Nicholas et al. (2006), Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, London: HM Treasury.
