An alert from Rainforest Rescue

European Union renewable energy legislation states that 10% of all road transport fuel in the EU will need to be “renewable” by 2020. Unfortunately this means biofuels, many of which are causing rainforest destruction and making climate change worse.

Biodiesel from palm oil is one of the worst offenders. Palm oil plantations for food and fuel are the primary cause of rainforest destruction in Indonesia and Malaysia. Biodiesel from palm oil is extremely likely to produce higher greenhouse gas emissions than conventional diesel, thereby making climate change worse not better.

The EU claims that only “sustainable” biofuels will meet the grade and be eligible to count towards the 10% target. However, a leaked draft document from the European Commission shows that it wants to call palm oil plantations “forest” so that razing rainforest to plant oil palm would not count as a change in land use.

The Commission says “This means…that a change from forest to oil palm plantation would not per se constitute a breach of the criterion”. The Commission also confirms in this draft document that “Member States may not set additional criteria of their own. They may not exclude biofuels/bioliquids on sustainability grounds where these meet the sustainability criteria laid down in the Directive.” Taken together, these two statements imply that the Commission plans to force biodiesel from palm oil onto member states.

Write to the new Energy Commissioner (Günter Oettinger) and Environment Commissioner (Janez Potocnik) and ask them to amend their policy and this draft document so that palm oil does not form part of the EU’s supposedly sustainable energy mix.

The leaked draft document from the EU Commission is available here

Send a letter of protest from the Rainforest Rescue website.

See related article here.

by Marc Lee
from The Progressive Economics Forum, with the author’s permission

Back in December, during the Copenhagen negotiations, a group of environmentalists provided BC Premier Gordon Campbell with an award for climate leadership. Based primarily on the creation of a BC carbon tax two years ago, the Premier has gotten a lot of brownie points from the greens – in spite of the fact that there are some glaring contradictions between BC’s transportation and industrial policies and climate policies, and that BC does not have a plan to achieve its legislated target of a 33% reduction in emissions by 2020 (relative to 2007 levels).

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Those contradictions were highlighted by the approval the other day of a new EnCana natural gas facility in BC’s Northeast that will add over 2 million tonnes of CO2 per year to BC’s inventory when fully built out. From the Tyee’s coverage:

“The province’s effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions is on course to suffer a 2.17 megatonne-per-year setback, after an environmental assessment (EA) certificate was approved for the $800-million Cabin Gas Plant last Thursday (Jan. 28). The green light to the EnCana-led project signals the onset of a shale gas boom in the million-acre Horn River Basin north of Fort Nelson.

“… The carbon dioxide implications get larger when considering the end uses of the gas. The initial volumes of gas produced daily at the plant would add up to 7.9 million tonnes of emissions each year when combusted. At full production, that downstream emissions rise to nearly 16 million tonnes – nearly 25 per cent of B.C. emissions, based on a 2007 baseline. Much of the gas will be exported to the United States.”

Campbell’s retort is that natural gas is “actually a bridging technology that allows us to move to the new cleaner energies.” There is something to this argument, and it might even be true if we were able to guarantee that coal-fired power would be shut down in place of natural gas generated power. But no such guarantees are evident in this deal. All emissions will be additional to current emissions.

And not only that, the much-lauded carbon tax does not even apply to most of the emissions from oil and gas development, as it does not cover the flaring and venting of gas, or pipeline leaks.

This further goes to show that there is no political will in Canada to say no to the oil and gas industry. At some point we will have to confront the, er, inconvenient truth that the only bona fide sustainable path forward is to not get our energy out of the ground, or if we do to mandate that the emissions must be buried (sequestered) after combustion. That is, we need a moratorium on new oil and gas projects unless they implement carbon capture and storage (CCS).

So the question for my friends in the environmental movement: is now a good time to revoke that award to Premier Campbell, and replace it with one of the more notorious Copenhagen awards, the Fossil of the Day?

By Simon Butler
Climate Change Social Change, Feb 4, 2009

It might seem bizarre that although the science of human-caused climate change is more conclusive and worrying than ever, climate denial could enjoy a resurgence. But it’s happening — at least in Australia and a handful of other developed nations.

The comeback of climate denial is out of step with views on climate change in most of the world.

A BBC poll, released in December, said concern about climate change has risen sharply worldwide. Sixty-four percent said climate change was “very serious” — 20% higher than a similar 1998 poll. In Brazil and Chile, the figure was 86%. Eighty-three percent of Costa Ricans and Filipinos agreed.

But in Australia, Britain and the US, the trend appears to be running the other way.

A recent US poll by the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication found that less than 50% of adults found global warming “worrying” or “somewhat worrying.” This is 13% less than an October 2008 poll.

Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they believed global warming was happening, down from 71% in 2008. Those who felt global warming was caused by human activity dropped from 57% to 47%.

A November poll by the London Times said only 41% of Britons now believed climate change to be an established scientific fact.

An October poll by the Lowy Institute said concern about the threat of climate change was weakening in Australia too. Fifty six percent said climate change was very important, down 19 points from a poll two years earlier.

So if climate denial is finding new supporters here, why is this the case? After all, no climate denier has published a peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal in the past 15 years.

Among climate scientists there is no debate about the reality of global warming any longer. The research of many hundreds of scientists has proved that climate change is real, that greenhouse gases released by human activity cause climate change, and that climate change represents an immense danger to human civilisation as we know it.

But there are reasons why a political space for climate denial remains open. The first of these is that climate deniers have it easy.

Climate scientists are required to deal skeptically with facts and measurable data before drawing firm conclusions. Climate deniers have no such constraints. They don’t have to prove or justify anything, but merely have or throw enough mud in the hope some of it will stick. This gives deniers an advantage in public debates.

NASA climate scientist James Hansen explained something of the problem in his recent book on the science of global warming Storms of my Grandchildren.

He said climate deniers

“tend to act like lawyers defending a client … presenting only arguments that favour their client.

“This is in direct contradiction to my favourite description of the scientific method, by Richard Ferryman: ‘The only way to have real success in science … is to describe the evidence very carefully without regard to the way you feel it should be. If you have a theory, you must try to explain what’s good about it and what’s bad about it equally. In science you learn a kind of standard integrity and honesty’.”

Hansen continued:

“The scientific method, in one sense, is a handicap in a debate before a nonscientific audience. It works great for advancing knowledge, but to the public it can seem wishy-washy and confounding.

“The difference between scientist-style and lawyer-style tends to favour the [denier] in a discussion before an audience that is not expert in the science.

“I long ago realised that the global warming ‘debate’, in the public mind, would be long-running. I also noted that [deniers] kept changing their arguments as the real-world evidence for global warming continued to strengthen, conveniently forgetting prior statements that were proven wrong.”

Australian paleoclimate scientist Andrew Glickson has referred to another typical denier tactic.

Typically, deniers “scan the field for real or imagined, major or minor errors, inferring such errors undermine major databases, theories, or even an entire branch of science,” he wrote on ABC’s Unleashed blog in July.

Glickson compared climate deniers approach to “the eternal search for errors and gaps in Darwin’s evolution theory by creationists, based on their belief in a supernatural creator.”

A recent example of this strategy was the hype about a small error in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) about the predicted timeframe for Himalayan glaciers to melt completely.

A paragraph in the IPCC report said that chances the glaciers would “disappear … by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high”. On January 20, the IPCC announced this particular prediction was wrong after leading glaciologists drew attention to the mistake.

However, it said:

“Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century … This conclusion is robust, appropriate, and entirely consistent with the underlying science and the broader IPCC assessment.”

The loss of meltwater from retreating glaciers could affect the water security of up to one-sixth of the world’s population.

But this hasn’t stopped deniers from seizing on this one small error to allege the whole 938-page IPCC report is fraudulent and the entire science of climate change is bogus.

A second reason climate denial is winning some new support is that it exploits peoples fear of change and the unknown. The science of climate change is frightening. It makes plain that unless radical changes are made in our economy and society, humanity faces an uncertain future.

People are responding differently to such an all-encompassing threat. A growing number are determined to win a safe climate for future generations and want to force governments to deal with the problem. But some have become despondent and assume runaway climate change is inevitable and cannot be stopped.

Others respond with denial — finding it easier to believe nothing is wrong at all, rather than accept modern capitalism is driving humanity to a precipice. For many, climate denial is a soothing psychological balm and reflects a desperate need to escape from a troubling reality.

A third reason for the recent rise in climate denial is that denial is now a well-funded industry in its won right.

PR consultant Jim Hoggan, author of the 2009 book Climate Cover-up, has said he has found it “infuriating … to watch my colleagues use their skills, their training and their considerable intellect to poison the international debate on climate change.”

“Few PR offences have been so obvious, so successful and so despicable as this attack on the science of climate change. It has been a triumph of disinformation — one of the boldest and most extensive PR campaigns in history, primarily financed by the energy industry and executed by some of the best PR talent in the world,” he wrote on the Desmogblog in June.

The mainstream media’s coverage of climate change must also share some of the blame. Despite the scientific consensus, “journalists continued to report updates from the best climate scientists in the world juxtaposed against the unsubstantiated raving of an industry-funded climate change denier — as if both were equally valid,” Hoggan said.

The highly publicised Australian tour of prominent British climate denier, Lord Christopher Monckton, laid bare this problem.

Monckton is not a scientist, but a former journalist, a semi-professional eccentric and a one-time advisor to the conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Yet despite his lack of qualifications his climate denial speaking tour generated a vast amount of media coverage.

Monckton lies at the most kooky end of the climate denier spectrum. Even National Party leader Barnaby Joyce, himself an uncompromising climate denier, has said Monckton’s views are on the “fringe.” Even so, federal opposition leader Tony Abbott met with Monckton to discuss climate policy on February 4.

Among Monckton’s most absurd claims are that the Copenhagen climate conference was “a sort of Nuremburg rally,” that US President Barack Obama wants to use climate change as an excuse to set up a world communist government, and that the young protesters calling for strong climate action outside the Copenhagen summit were akin to the Hitler youth.

While in Australia, he even claimed NASA sabotaged the launch of its own multi-million dollar satellite a year ago because the satellite, designed to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, would have given evidence that climate change is untrue.

Monckton has a history of making wild claims. In 1987, he wrote that AIDS victims should be locked away to stop the spread of the disease. He claims to have found the cure for diseases such as Graves’ disease, multiple sclerosis and influenza. In a letter to US senator John McCain he also falsely said he had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

A final reason for resurgence of open climate denialism in Australia is the federal ALP government’s closet climate denialism.

PM Kevin Rudd is fond of ridiculing climate denial, but his own climate policies do nothing to address the climate crisis. The proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme will cost taxpayers billions and reward the big polluters. Yet it will do nothing to sharply cut greenhouse gas emissions.

By promising to take strong action on climate change, but failing to do so, the Rudd government has opened the door for climate deniers to make ground. In the face of obvious government greenwashing, some are concluding that the threat may not be all that severe after all.

The politics of climate denial and climate greenwash share much in common — both are ways of denying reality. To win against the climate deniers also requires victory against the business-as-usual policies of the major parties, which acknowledge the science in words but betray it in practice.

by Helen Scott
Socialist Worker, February 5, 2010

Asked earlier this week by an Associated Press journalist what the U.S. should do to help Haiti, Haitian author Robert Fatton replied: “The international community must shift its priorities and concentrate on helping Haitians build durable state institutions.”

While the mainstream media focuses on the apparently insurmountable difficulty of providing relief, there are two measures that the U.S. could immediately take that would greatly assist Haitians in Haiti and in the diaspora in this process of sustainable, democratic rebuilding: cancellation of Haiti’s foreign debt, and a permanent overhaul of an immigration system that persistently discriminates against Haitians.

Haiti’s foreign debt is the result of political actions by powerful foreign nations and institutions, in collusion with powerful Haitian elite domestic minorities, that have directly provoked state instability, environmental destruction, decimation of the infrastructure and mass poverty.

These realities, as much as direct political repression under dictatorship or coup regimes, necessarily also have led many Haitians to try to leave their home. And yet the U.S. state has persisted in defining Haitians as “economic” rather than “political” refugees (such as those from Cuba, to cite one notorious example of a blatant double standard), and has for decades consistently violated international law by denying Haitians sanctuary and instead forcibly returning them.

This is part of a long-term and appalling pattern of discrimination against Haitians under U.S. immigration policy. Michael Clemens of the Center for Global Development points out that the U.S. officially absorbs approximately 1 million permanent immigrants annually from around the world.

Despite the xenophobia of chauvinists, there is plenty of evidence that immigration brings economic as well as social and cultural benefits to the U.S. Indeed, the U.S. often portrays itself as a melting pot of immigrants in search of freedom and prosperity. And yet, only about 21,000 Haitian immigrants on average are legally admitted into the U.S. each year, mostly those with a relative here already.

Between 1982 and 2009, the U.S. Coast Guard stopped and returned more than 114,000 Haitians en route to the United States.

During the reign of terror under the coup regime in 1991, 38,000 Haitians fled and sought safety in the U.S.; of those, fewer than 5 percent received asylum, and the rest were repatriated or held in the infamous prison camps at Guantánamo Bay. Even more criminally, U.S. agencies actually gave names and addresses to coup leaders of some of those who had attempted to flee, guaranteeing arrest, torture and execution for thousands.

Since 2001, official policy and practice have actually become even harsher. In 2003, a new comprehensive plan called “Operation Vigilant Sentry” was established. A year ago, Stephen Lendman of the Centre for Research on Globalization wrote an extensive account of current practice. He summarizes official Haitian policy under Bush and Obama:

• Deny asylum seeker status;
• Summarily return arrivals without screening their claims;
• Detain others under harsh conditions prior to deportation;
• Deny Haitians their rights under international law and;
• Expeditiously deport over 30,000 refugees (this was after a temporary halt on deportations by ICE–Immigration and Customs Enforcement–after the hurricane of 2008).

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Even in the wake of what is generally acknowledged to be among the worst catastrophes in human history, the U.S. continues to treat Haitians like criminals. Navy and Coast Guard vessels are circling Haiti, not to rescue survivors, but to capture and return anyone trying to escape.

Hilary Clinton was quick to declare:

“Our ordinary and regular immigration laws will apply going forward, which means that we are not going to be accepting into the United States Haitians who are attempting to make it to our shores. They will be interdicted. They will be repatriated.”

The federal government responded to the earthquake by freeing up space in the Krome detention center outside of Miami. And a tent city has been erected at Guantánamo Bay, the Miami Herald reports, “in case waves of Haitians leave their homeland and are captured at sea, said Navy Rear Adm. Thomas Copeman.”

A U.S. Air Force plane has been transmitting a message from Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s ambassador to the U.S., in Kreyòl across Haiti, the New York Times reported. “Listen, don’t rush on boats to leave the country,” Mr. Joseph says, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon. “If you do that, we’ll all have even worse problems. Because, I’ll be honest with you: If you think you will reach the U.S. and all the doors will be wide open to you, that’s not at all the case. And they will intercept you right on the water and send you back home where you came from.”

The Obama administration has made much of its suspension of deportations and the extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to potentially 125,000 undocumented Haitians in the U.S., which would halt their deportation and allow them to engage in wage labor.

But this is only for 18 months. And the application process for TPS is designed to exclude many, and is absurdly Orwellian–for example, applicants have to prove indigence, and yet the application process is estimated to cost $470.

For anyone who believes that the Haitians who ordinarily end up in the Krome detention center are “illegal” and therefore criminal, I recommend that they read Edwidge Danticat’s moving autobiographical work Brother I’m Dying.

In it, she tells the story of her Uncle Joseph, persecuted under the Duvaliers, but determined to stay in his Haitian home that he loved, though finally driven out by threats to his life. Against all odds, he made it to Miami to appeal for asylum, but this 81 year-old cancer survivor was thrown into detention at Krome, and died shortly after.

The stories of those Haitians who face deportation due to a past criminal record are often just as wrenching. Like that of Jean Montrevil, who came to the U.S. from Haiti as a teenager with a green card, ran into trouble and was convicted of possession of cocaine. He did 11 years in jail, and turned his life around: he started a business, married a U.S. citizen, became a parent of four U.S. citizen children. He became a model tax-paying citizen, in other words.

But due to that past conviction, he was under an immigration supervision program, and at a routine visit–which he voluntarily attended–he was imprisoned and told he would be deported.

These are the human faces of the policy Hilary Clinton publicly announces as if it is something to be proud of.

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The U.S. government is even blocking emergency medical care for severely injured Haitians. The Department of Homeland Security has said that only 34 people have been granted humanitarian parole, which would make them eligible to enter the U.S. and qualify for Medicaid, on medical grounds. And evacuations to American hospitals were halted for several days while the federal and state governments and the hospitals bickered over who would pay.

How can the U.S. government continue to present itself as a generous source of aid and relief, when it continues to bleed the country dry while treating its inhabitants as criminals?

In order to extend genuine solidarity to Haitians as they struggle against all odds, we must support relief efforts run by accountable groups based in Haiti and run by Haitians already on the ground, not to the Red Cross or the Bush/Clinton fund.

We must not forget Haiti when the stories drop off the front pages and prime time news, which is already starting to happen. And most importantly, we have to organize to change the twisted priorities that are doing so much harm, imposed by our government in our name.

We should call on our government to cancel Haiti’s debt: totally, unconditionally and immediately. We should also call for a permanent halt to deportations and the practice of forcibly returning Haitians seeking refuge, and to extend amnesty to Haitians already here but without legal status.

Those who doubt that political activism can have an impact can take heart from the fact that Jean Montrevil was released from prison as a direct result of a protest campaign that grew up around his case.

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now summed it up:

“Grassroots and church groups in New York City demanded freedom for Jean Montrevil, and he was released. It is that kind of solidarity that is now needed by millions of Haitians, here and in Haiti, suffering the greatest catastrophe in their history.”