Lethal Heating: 01/22/20

22/01/2020

The War On Global Carbon

Surviving C21 - Julian Cribb

Photo: Julian Cribb

Citizens of the USA, Australia, Brazil, Canada and elsewhere are slowly waking to the sickening awareness that they are no longer up against local political forces – but, rather, a metastasizing international power against which they are largely impotent.
Common attributes now unify the regimes of Trump, Morrison, Bolsonaro, Trudeau, Salman, and maybe also those of Johnson and Putin:

Blind support for fossil fuels, overt denialism or a reluctance to act on climate
Prejudice and cruelty towards immigrants, many of whom are fleeing climate disruption
A tendency to favour ecological rapine and increased pollution
A taste for repression and the curtailment of civic freedoms
Spreading right-wing ideology; use of the same political strategists; rising support from religious extremists
Heavy defence spending; a habit of engaging in needless ‘carbon wars’
Tax breaks for the already-rich; a disinclination to tax mega-corporates
The support of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and its ‘shock jocks’
Digital manipulation of public opinion by the automated spreading of falsehoods on social media via bots, trolls and data pirates.
A tendency to lie about anything and everything – then divert public attention using emotive issues like abortion, gun control, religious freedom, terrorism, assassination.
Use of identical ‘talking points’ and disinformation, much of it scripted by carbon-funded ‘think tanks’.
The labelling of concerned, protesting citizens as ‘anarchists’ and ‘terrorists’ to justify use of military force against them
The tactic of accusing their political opponents of the very offences of which they themselves are guilty.

The accumulating evidence indicates that western democracy is no longer dealing with independent national governments – but, rather, with an orchestrated transnational movement manipulating a troup of local political puppets.
Many of these leaders and their governments enjoy the funding and political support of the most powerful companies on Earth – the oil and coal majors, here termed ‘Global Carbon’, supported by a host of shady think-tanks, institutes, media corporations and digital manipulators who manufacture and disseminate their propaganda to create a global ‘echo chamber’.
The Global Carbon regime is unlike any previous political movement. It has no interest in social wellbeing, health, education, equality, justice, the environment or any of the issues that traditionally occupy the political discourse in democracies. It is motivated solely by money – and the power it confers. It is responsible for 9 million deaths annually – a fresh Holocaust every 8 months.
If it were a country, Global Carbon would be the largest economy on Earth, with annual retail energy use worth around US$24 trillion. This compares with, say, the US GDP of US$21tr or China’s $14tr. To this is added the value of its byproducts like petrochemicals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, dyes, textiles and plastics. This cyclopaean financial clout is increasingly being deployed to influence the result in any country on Earth where they still have elections.
Why, then, is Global Carbon a thing? Previously, these fossil fuel corporates operated independently, competed vigorously with one another and dealt individually with national governments – as Shell did in Nigeria or Exxon in the US.
The answer is fear.
Global Carbon – a loose alliance of 100+ oil, coal and gas mega-corporates and their ancillaries – are collectively terrified that the worldwide movement by citizens and governments to prevent catastrophic climate change is going to put them out of business (exemplified by the case of coal) or at least severely impair their licence to print money and pillage the planet ad libitum. It is a fear not without foundation: calls to lock up carbon and ‘leave it in the ground’ are multiplying from science as well as civil society.
Furthermore, the rise of green-tinged governments – especially in Europe – citizen movements like Extinction Rebellion and outspoken youth like Greta Thunberg – has shaken them. This has resulting in calls to crack down on these ‘anarchists’, in susceptible democracies like Australia, the US, Canada and Brazil.
Global Carbon believes it is in a fight for its life.
The principle that “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” has impelled onetime competitors to make common cause, to undermine and – if possible – defeat the worldwide movement to save humanity from an uninhabitable, hothouse Earth.
The stark similarities between the affected governments is powerful proof they are no longer independent nations ruled by their own elected governments. They are separate countries increasingly animated by an identical purpose – a regime motivated solely by carbon profit, disinterested in all other aspects of civic governance.
Recent false bushfire arson claims in Australia highlight how these forces now co-ordinate globally. Allegedly the claims were started by Australian resources interests, then multiplied by social media bots and trolls, amplified by right-wing politicians and media corporations, taken up globally by Donald Trump Jr, Fox News and members of the US Republican party to create a global ‘echo chamber’.
The implications of this for the future of democracy are grim. As Global Carbon grows and flexes its muscle, it becomes harder and harder for an opposition party in any individual country to win an election, because it is not just up against its national opponents – but is also engaging the most potent international cartel on the Planet.
There is only one way to defeat such a monster. If it is truly a regime, then there must be global regime change. The citizens of Earth must rise up and impose their collective will on the rich and malevolent few. They must shun their products, prosecute to the full extent of the law, exact just taxes and outlaw the corrupt alliances that bind carbon to politics.
Like any global conflict, the road to victory will be long, and will be accompanied by much blood, toil, sweat and tears, as Churchill might have forewarned.
First, however, it is necessary, for each citizen to grasp how great and grave is our peril – and for that the dwindling voice of the free press daily plays a critical and valiant role.

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European Parliament Endorses $1.6 Trillion Investment Plan For Green New Deal

RenewEconomy - Michael Mazengarb

The European Union is set to allocate up to a quarter of its annual budget towards tackling climate change, as part of a plan to attract as much as €1 trillion (A$1.61 trillion) in new investment to drive the transition towards clean technologies.
The world’s first major ‘green new deal’ will see theEU accelerate its push towards decarbonisation. The European Commission estimates that the bloc has already reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 23 per cent between 1990 and 2018, while the value of its economy grew by 61% over the same period.
“People are at the core of the European Green Deal, our vision to make Europe climate-neutral by 2050. The transformation ahead of us is unprecedented. And it will only work if it is just – and if it works for all,” President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said.
“We will support our people and our regions that need to make bigger efforts in this transformation, to make sure that we leave no one behind. The Green Deal comes with important investment needs, which we will turn into investment opportunities. The plan that we present today, to mobilise at least €1 trillion, will show the direction and unleash a green investment wave.”
The plan has been developed by the European Commission and won the support of the EU parliament this week, with MEPs voting to endorse the plan. Implementation of the European Green Deal will require further amendments to EU legislation, including the setting of interim emissions reduction targets.
“Parliament overwhelmingly supported the Commission’s proposal on the Green Deal and welcomes the fact that there will be consistency between all European Union policies and the objectives of the Green Deal. Agriculture, trade and economic governance and other policy areas must now be seen and analysed in the context of the Green Deal”, the EU parliament’s environment committee chair Pascal Canfin said.
The plan will see more €500 billion allocated from the budget of the European Union Commission, which it hopes will leverage further private sector investment to reach the €1 trillion investment goal over the next 10-years.
In May 2018, the European Union established a 25% climate mainstreaming target, which sees 25% of EU expenditure contributing to its climate change objectives.
The European Green Deal’s Investment Plan will include a Just Transition Mechanism to provide investment support to communities disproportionately impacted by the transition away from emissions intensive industries, and help them transition to a zero carbon economy.
To access the funds, EU member countries will need to develop just transition plans, which identify regions that require investment support to undertake measures like the closure and rehabilitation of coal mines and coal fired power stations, and to build new industries and reskill workers in low emissions industries.
“The Just Transition Mechanism will help support those most affected by making investments more attractive and proposing a package of financial and practical support worth at least €100 billion. This is our pledge of solidarity and fairness,” executive vice-president for the European Green Deal Frans Timmermans said
While the plan has received in-principle support from most of the European Union parliamentarians, European Greens members were keen to ensure the allocation of funding was directly tied to a transition away from coal.
In particular, Poland, which has large reserves of brown coal which is used to generate around a third of its total electricity production, in addition to producing around half its electricity using black coal, is a key target for coal-phase out demands.
“No money should be distributed from this fund before there are clear commitments and concrete dates for the coal phase-out from member states,” European Green MEP Niklas Nienass said.
“Poland should sign up to EU climate targets before being eligible to money under the Just Transition Fund.”
Environmental groups, including Greenpeace EU’s Sebastian Mang, echoed the concern about funds being allocated to countries that have softer commitments to transition away from fossil fuels.
“If this funding is really meant to promote a green transition, it must only be available to governments that are committed to that transition and have a clear plan to ditch coal. If they want the cash, the likes of Poland and the Czech Republic will have to prove they are serious about tackling the climate emergency,” Mang said.
“For the European Green Deal to be successful, all funding, including from the EU budget, needs to stop supporting fossil fuels, nuclear energy and other destructive industries.”
The European Union has a target to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent by 2030 and is recently endorsed the formal adoption of a target to achieve zero net emissions by 2050, each based on 1990 levels.
The EU Green Deal resolution was endorsed with 482 votes for, 136 against and 95 abstentions. Further legislative amendments will be required to implement the plan.

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Opinion: Bring On The Royal Commission Into Australia's Climate Change Policy

Canberra Times - Crispin Hull

Bring on the royal commission into the fires. Bring on a broad-ranging inquiry and a commissioner who is someone of independence, competence and integrity. This week's essay by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull makes this more imperative that ever.

Malcolm Turnbull this week decried climate change denialism in opinion pieces in The Guardian and TIME Magazine. Picture: Shutterstock

Mr Turnbull drew some sensible conclusions about what Australia must do about climate change, but what he did not say is of more import.
In an essay commissioned by The Guardian Australia for its 2020 Vision series, Turnbull wrote, quite reasonably: "The lies of the deniers have to be rejected ... Climate change is real ... Our response must be real too - a resilient, competitive, net zero-emission economy - as we work to make our nation, and our planet, safe for our children and grandchildren."
This is the view of the man who was prime minister for three years and in cabinet for five years, including a stint as Environment Minister. So the big question is: why didn't his view become Australian law and policy?
More broadly, the Australian people are entitled to an answer to the critical question: how did the three major political parties so comprehensively fail to deliver the climate policy the nation has needed for more than a decade?
A big part of the answer to that question must be within the power and knowledge of Turnbull to answer. He was at the helm when it should have happened. He was at the helm when he wanted it to happen, and he was at the helm when it didn't happen. Why was that? How did that happen?
Why weren't the lies of the deniers rejected?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison should be questioned about why he gave coal such symbolic power, and continues to give it such actual power in Australia's parliament.
We know that Australian policy alone would not have affected the fires, but effective Australian policy would have given us the moral high ground to urge other nations to do a lot more so future effects would be lessened. This is important, because Australia is among the countries likely to be most affected by climate change, as we have seen this summer.
Let's go back to the beginning with this royal commission (and by the way, why can't we give these inquiries a different name - an Australian Commission of Inquiry, for example?).
The starting point is December 2, 2009. A day after Tony Abbott replaced Turnbull as Liberal leader, the Greens voted with the Liberal and National Parties in the Senate to reject Labor's carbon-pricing scheme.
Those Green senators, especially then-leader Bob Brown, should be put in the box at the inquiry and asked what possessed them to side with conservatives to defeat a pretty good start to addressing, in the words of then-prime minister Kevin Rudd, "the great moral challenge of our generation".
Then when the bill got knocked back in the Senate, Labor did nothing. Rudd and the senior Labor leaders in 2009 should be asked why they allowed short-term political considerations to take priority, and why they did not then and there put the bill up a second time and go to a double dissolution to address this "great moral challenge".
Why didn't Rudd stare down the Greens and give them a last chance to support his carbon-pricing scheme or face a double dissolution with Labor putting the Greens last on their how-to-vote-cards?

Tony Abbott rode a campaign against Julia Gillard's carbon-pricing mechanism into the prime ministership. Picture: Shutterstock

Rudd should then be asked why, in April, 2010, he chose to defer further action on the "moral challenge" to 2013.
The Australian people are also entitled to answers when it comes to what happened to the Liberal Party when Abbott took the helm.
How is it that a Rhodes Scholar like Tony Abbott can pretend not to understand basic climate science and say it is "crap" and order his party to reverse Turnbull's support for carbon pricing? Why did the leader of a so-called free-enterprise party reject the market approach?
He should be asked whether the financial support of the fossil industry affected that decision. Or whether it was just political expediency to run an anti-carbon-tax scare campaign.
The inquiry should dig deep and hard into the finances of the Liberal and National parties to find out the level of donations and ask the donors in the witness box why they gave the money and what policy positions they expected in return.
Abbott should be grilled about his habit of announcing emissions targets but doing little or nothing to achieve them.
Julia Gillard should be questioned, too, about walking away from carbon pricing after her factional supporter Bill Shorten specifically cited Rudd's walking away from that very carbon pricing as a reason for her challenging his leadership.
To her credit, though, she returned to it - because it was good policy. Tragically for her, the way she took the prime ministership tainted what she did as prime minister. Like Malcolm Fraser, she should have waited for it to fall into her lap, but didn't.
Abbott should be grilled about why he repealed the Gillard carbon price when it was working so well to reduce emissions.
The Australian people are entitled to know what promises Turnbull made as a condition of getting the prime ministership - promises that hamstrung him into weak policies that favoured fossil-fuel industries.
How could he sweep away the knights and dames with such ease, but not redo climate policy? Why did he get done over at every turn like no other prime minister? How and why were all his climate policies stymied? Why did he do nothing about it?
Why didn't he come out early on when he was popular, reveal to the Australian people what the troglodytes were doing, and reverse it?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison should be questioned about why he gave coal such symbolic power, and continues to give it such actual power in Australia's parliament.
Every Coalition MP since 2009 should be grilled about how and why they voted for pro-fossil-fuel policies, their diaries examined for meetings and their accounts audited for fossil-fuel donations. Because even after these fires, they are still at it.
As to the fires themselves, the Victorian royal commission into the 2009 Black Saturday fires did the hard work on the technicalities of fighting fire and reducing the risk to lives and property. And it was very successful. In those fires, 179 people died. This time, with a greater area burned, 27 people have died. Lessons have obviously been learned.
And the greater lesson is that hard policy and technical work in all fields of endeavour does more than any glib slogan.
The commission should also put the lie to the greenies preventing hazard-reduction burning, because it was the heating climate that reduced the window for safe burning. It should reveal all the public service advice about not only combatting the foreseen huge fire risk, but also combatting the global heating that causes it. And it should ask the politicians why they rejected so much of it.

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