Sights & sounds of climate justice protest in Wellington

by Grant Brookes  

The collapse of the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, aimed at reaching a binding deal on greenhouse gas emissions, has dismayed people around the world. But it has also made it clearer that we can't rely on business leaders and politicians to solve the problem. The finger pointing has already begun, as political leaders from different countries blame each other for the failure to reach a deal.  

Conflict, rather than cooperation, was built into the talks from the start. The framework for negotiations was all about market mechanisms like emissions trading schemes, where businesses, nations and trading blocs try to secure competitive advantages over their rivals. Even if a deal had been reached at Copenhagen, it would not have been enough to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Emissions trading schemes – proposed by the National-led government and supported in principle by all the other parties in parliament except ACT, and by "Big Green" organisations like Greenpeace – simply allow corporations to pay for the right to cook the planet to death. Emissions trading schemes won't stop climate change and are unjust, shifting costs away from business and onto grassroots people and developing nations.  

This was the message of 150 people who took to the streets in Wellington on the morning of Monday, December 21. The protesters included a group of "Radical Cheerleaders" and a samba band. They took aim at the root causes of climate change, disrupting business at the NZX stock exchange and scaling the Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade building to unveil a banner, and were met by a group of counter-demonstrators claiming to belong to "Capitalism Represents Acceptable Policy" (C.R.A.P.). 

The protest came at the culmination of the first Camp for Climate Action Aotearoa in Upper Hutt, where 200 people came together for five days of sustainable living, education, direct action and movement building. Climate Camps (there have been at least 19 worldwide this year) seek to address the real causes of climate change and build a people's movement that can stop it. "

After the inevitable failure of yet another UN climate summit, it should now be clearer than ever that the only people we can count on to stop runanaway climate change are ourselves", said Climate Camp participant Claire Dann. 

  "Just like the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme, the UN climate talks are part of the problem, not the solution", added Gary Cranston. "Both put profit before people, both are infested with polluter friendly loopholes and as a result, neither are capable of achieving climate justice.  

"Trading carbon credits is used to give people the impression that something is being done about climate change, when it actually isn't.

"Ordinary people have the power to stop the government and big business from throwing away our future for continued profit. We invite everybody in Aotearoa to come and join the global movement for climate justice that will address the climate crisis".

Turn up the sound and click on the slideshow below. This is what the movement looks like, and sounds like.

 

For more info, visit http://withoutyourwalls.wordpress.com/

BAD BANKS leaflet #3: 'Their Pollution Market Stinks!'

Bad Banks leaflet #3 is available now. It addresses the link between global banking power and the ecological crisis, specifically focusing on the banking class's prosposed "solution" to climate change, pollution markets (or as they're calling them, emission trading schemes).

This leaflet has contributions on the back page from David Parker (writer for www.wellsharp.wordpress.com/), Mike Treen (Unite Union National Director), Omar Hamed (Unite Union organiser & Rainforest Action co-ordinator), and Roger Fowler (editor of www.farefreenz.blogspot.com/).

Copenhagen summit: ‘Seattle’-style protests needed

Ten years ago the ‘Battle of Seattle’ protests against the World Trade Organisation sparked a global anti-capitalist movement. In the US the protests raised hopes of a ‘Teamster-turtle alliance’ against neo-liberal economics. The Teamsters being traditional trade unionists such as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the ‘turtles’ being environmental and social justice activists, such as costumed protesters above.

by Patrick Bond, Durban

From Green Left Weekly Here’s a fairly simple choice: the global North would pay the hard-hit global South to deal with the climate crisis, either through the complicated and corrupt “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM), whose projects have plenty of damaging side-effects to communities, or instead pay through other mechanisms that provide financing quickly, transparently and decisively to achieve genuine income compensation plus renewable energy to the masses. The Copenhagen climate summit in December is all about the first choice. Europe and the US have put carbon trading at the core of their emissions reduction strategy, while the two largest emitters of carbon in the Third World, China and India, are the main beneficiaries of CDM financing. Problems caused when then-vice president Al Gore’s US delegation brought pro-corporate compromises to Kyoto in 1997 — promising a US sign-on to Kyoto in exchange for carbon trading — are going to now amplify, and haunt us for a very long time, unless serious reforms are achieved in Copenhagen. They won’t be. Nor will any substantive agreement emerge, hinted the new UN Development Programme director and New Zealand’s neoliberal former prime minister Helen Clark this week: “The success of the Copenhagen summit on climate change in December will not depend on a final international deal being sealed there.” In other words, prepare for a stalemate by a coalition of selfish, fossil-fuel addicted powers.

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All-party support for pollution market is the real ETS outrage

by David UNITYblog editor
Outrage has greeted the deal reached between the National and Maori Parties over the pollution market policy (emissions trading scheme or ETS). But the really terrible thing is not the Maori Party’s sell out, or the details of the deal -- and both these are horrible -- it’s the fact that a pollution market is only response to climate change any party in parliament can come up with. Just as bad (or even worse) is that the major environmental groups campaigning for action on climate change -- Greenpeace and 350 -- are also putting their faith in the pollution market approach. They should be blowing the lid on the world-wide pollution market con-job. Because, although the details of the National-Maori Party version may be worse than the Labour-Green version, which ever way you look at it, emissions trading stinks. It won’t do a thing to reduce pollution or prevent climate change. All pollution markets are based around giving corporate polluters the right to pollute, the right to profit from buying and selling pollution credits and the right to pass any costs they do incur on to their customers. All assume that rather than actually cutting emissions, or fundamentally changing they way they do things (this would hurt profits too much) polluting industries will be able to buy “off set” credits from somewhere else (who knows where?). All these schemes ignore the fact that to transition to a low carbon economy will require a massive transformation of how we do just about everything. And this will require planning and co-ordination and should require democratic participation, not rising prices and blind faith in the market. Recognising the reality of pollution market politics, begs the question: is the Maori Party’s support for National’s ETS any worse than the Green’s support for Labour’s ETS? After all, climate change is the issue the Greens should be making a stand and giving leadership. In my view, neither Labour nor the Greens have any right to criticise the Maori Party until they themselves oppose pollution market madness.

John Minto: Politicians fiddle while climate collapses

From Stuff 15/09/2009 National and the the Maori Party traded their way closer to environmental catastrophe yesterday with a deal agreed to amend the Emissions Trading Scheme passed in the last term of the Labour government. It’s a deal with no winners and the environment, which in the end means all of us, the big loser. The previous Labour proposals had too little regard for the environment but this one has even less. Politicians are by the nature of their employment short-term thinkers. The three-year electoral cycle dominates decision-making. For National it’s simply delivering the review of the ETS which Act demanded as part of its election agreement, while future generations will regard the Maori Party role as simply trading opportunities for future generations for temporary baubles as in some of the land transactions of the past. There is simply no mechanism for climate change to be prevented under capitalism. For its very survival capitalism depends on growth. It’s like a pyramid selling scheme where confidence in the system relies on the belief we can always move forward with more and more consumers into an infinite future. Each individual is encouraged to believe we need a bigger cake rather than sharing the cake more evenly. Growth is the mantra of the marketeers while the environment is crying out -- enough! Many would say, and I include myself here, that capitalism has been going head to head with humanity for the past 300 years. Now climate change is where capitalism goes head to head with the life-support systems of the planet itself. I read recently a quote to the effect that asking capitalism to voluntarily stop growing is like asking a person to voluntarily stop breathing. The capitalist response to climate change has predictably been to create a market for carbon -- a so-called “cap and trade” arrangement whereby the levels of carbon would be capped and permits to pollute traded in a market. It’s one of those schemes which sounds plausible on paper but which will be quite impossible to work globally. It would set in concrete the injustices faced by developing countries that have seen their resources exploited to drive up living standards elsewhere in the world while delivering so little local benefit. It allows the worst polluters to purchase the right to keep polluting. There's an old proverb among the indigenous Indian population of North America which says a tribe would look seven generations into the past and seven into the future before major decisions related to the environment were made. Those people were in tune with their world. Maori in New Zealand were not here long enough to reach such a profoundly sustainable view of this land and its resources and Pakeha arriving here saw only resources to exploit. The combined efforts of National and the Maori Party have created an agreement with less than a generation in foresight. New Zealand is taking to Copenhagen the equivalent of a damp piece of paper to fight a bushfire.

Britain's worst polluters set for windfall of millions

by David Adam from guardian.co.uk 12 September 2008 A flagship European scheme designed to fight global warming is set to hand hundreds of millions of pounds to some of Britain's most polluting companies, with little or no benefit to the environment, an investigation by the Guardian has revealed. Dozens of multinational firms stand to benefit from the windfall, which comes from the over-allocation of carbon permits under the European emissions trading scheme.

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RAM asks CTU for democratic debate & vote on 'pollution market'

Residents Action Movement Media release 5 September 2008 Over the last four years, RAM (Residents Action Movement) has been campaigning for free and frequent public transport in main centres. "Free and frequent trains and buses, funded by a switch of government money from highways and car tunnels, is a boldly realistic policy in an era of global warming, peak oil and traffic jams," said Roger Fowler, RAM's transport speaker. "This one policy change would do far more to tackle carbon emissions than the entire Emissions Trading Scheme being driven by the Labour, Green and NZ First parties. And it would keep more money in the pockets of workers." "It is very disappointing to see the Green politicians supporting Labour's drive to pass the ETS legislation," says Elliott Blade, RAM's environmental co-speaker and parliamentary candidate for Maungakiekie. "This law will establish a pollution market in New Zealand where corporations make money out of global warming while life-threatening emissions keep on rising." Like RAM, the Maori Party has come out strongly against the ETS. Maori Party MP Te Ururoa Flavell told Parliament on 2 September that, in addition to Treaty of Waitangi concerns over the ETS, the Maori Party opposes the scheme because:

• It would not be effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
• It is "not transparent".
• "Polluters do not pay", but instead receive massive subsidies that amount to "corporate welfare".
• Therefore the stated aim of economic incentives to cut emissions is "defeated".

"The Maori Party's exposure of the ETS makes them the foremost ecological party in the current Parliament," says Michelle Ducat, environmental co-speaker for RAM. "The mantle of ecological guardian has slipped from the shoulders of the Green Party onto the Maori Party." Meanwhile the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) has come out with qualified support for the ETS. On 2 September, CTU economist Peter Conway said that climate change policy should "not rely too substantially on market-based mechanisms such as emissions trading". However, Mr Conway flagged CTU support for the ETS "compromise" reached between Labour, NZ First and the Greens, including the one-off electricity rebate to all households in 2010 and the one-off cash payment to beneficiaries, seniors and low-wage workers. While admitting that "this bill is not perfect", Mr Conway claimed "the risks of not taking concrete steps outweigh any disadvantages". RAM has serious concerns about the CTU's stance on the politics of global warming and how the ETS will impact on workers. "The CTU is giving shame-faced support to a pollution market which will reward polluters for trading in greenhouse gas emissions. This is not an effective challenge to global warming. The government needs to urgently legislate mandatory targets directing corporate polluters to clean up their act," said Oliver Woods, co-leader of RAM's candidates group and parliamentary candidate for Auckland Central. "The one-off payments under the new-look ETS will go nowhere near to compensating workers for unfair cost increases heaped on them so that corporations can profit from trading in pollution," noted Grant Brookes, co-leader of RAM's candidates group and parliamentary candidate for Wellington Central. "By backing the ETS, the CTU seems to be acting against the best interests of its own members." "Already some unionists are questioning whether the CTU's stance has more to do with backing Labour in an election year rather than protecting workers and the environment. The best way for the CTU to answer these questions would be to allow all sides of the debate to be presented to their 350,000 members and ask them to reach a collective decision," said Mr Brookes. RAM is calling on the CTU to widely circulate the Maori Party's views on the ETS. "The Maori Party is the only party in Parliament criticising the concept of a pollution market," says Grant Morgan, chair of RAM. "National and Act support a pollution market, merely wanting it to deliver even more corporate welfare to the polluters than the current ETS." "On behalf of RAM, I have requested the CTU leadership to publicise the Maori Party and RAM's criticisms of the ETS within their affiliate unions so more than one side of the story is heard by workers," said Mr Morgan. "I have also requested the CTU to promote a broad debate inside its affiliated unions in a lead-up to a democratic vote by workers about whether or not they should support a pollution market."

Will history repeat for the Greens?

by Auckland union activist "History never repeats, I tell myself before I go to sleep." This line of wishful thinking from a Split Enz hit song sums it up for the Greens leadership. Just as the Alliance leadership were dragged by their Labour government allies into supporting the vengeful invasion of Afghanistan against wide opposition in their membership ranks. The Greens leadership has been dragged into Labour's "pollution trading" scheme, against wide opposition in their membership ranks. The Greens leadership will be optimistically humming the Split Enz tune before they go to bed each night until the election. They'll be hoping like hell the voting public won't abandon them, as happened to the Alliance.

Call 'pollution market' by its real name, says RAM

RAM - Residents Action Movement Media release 26 August 2008 Green co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons today claimed that her party had won "substantial changes" to the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) following talks with Labour cabinet ministers. How accurate is this claim by Ms Fitzsimons? Going into the talks with Labour, the most loudly voiced concerns of the Green Party caucus were that the agriculture and transport sectors were not coming into the ETS early enough. Ms Fitzsimons today said that now "a target for agricultural emissions reduction before 2015 will be gazetted". But is this really a "substantial change" to the ETS? Not according to Grant Morgan, chair of the Residents Action Movement, better known as RAM, a broad left people's movement. "One very important word has been left out of the new agreement on the ETS," Mr Morgan observed. "That word is 'mandatory'. So long as a closer target for agricultural emissions reduction is not made mandatory, it's just a lot of hot air. It's government spin because agriculture does not have to meet the voluntary target. Sadly, the Greens are recycling Labour's spin and thus misleading public opinion." Nor will there be any hastening of the transport sector's entry into the ETS under the new deal struck between Labour and the Greens. "The transport sector will remain able to pollute with impunity until 2015," noted Roger Fowler, RAM's transport spokesperson. "As well, the Green caucus has consistently refused to support RAM's campaign over the last four years for free and frequent public transport as a boldly realistic way of slashing carbon emissions. We need to shift motorway funds into fare-free trains and buses, but the Greens won't agree because they know Labour strongly disapproves. They are putting their political pact with Labour ahead of our environment." Going on the evidence, neither of the two most loudly voiced Green concerns have been met by Labour's recent tweakings of the ETS. This is at variance with Green claims of "substantial changes", which appear to be mostly aimed at winning votes. "RAM calls on the Green Party leadership to reject the Emissions Trading Scheme as a whole," said Michelle Ducat, RAM's ecology co-spokesperson. "The solution to climate change does not lie in creating a market for pollution, where corporations trade their greenhouse gas credits and debits on a new stock exchange. This is merely placing the market in charge of the problem that they created in the first place." Ms Ducat's comments seem to be vindicated by the experiences of Europe. In many Western European countries, emissions trading schemes have been in place for years, yet official statistics reveal that greenhouse gas pollution has been increasing, not decreasing. Late last week, Green leaders called for responses on whether their party should support or reject the ETS. Yesterday a Green Party spokesperson revealed that the 2,000 email responses were split 50:50. Since most of these responses were likely to be from Green members, it seems their rank-and-file are split down the middle over the issue. "It is very worrying that the Green Party caucus refuse to call the Emissions Trading Scheme by its real name - a pollution market," said RAM chair Grant Morgan. "Big corporations around the world are raking in grotesque profits from trading in greenhouse gases which could kill off all life on our planet. Their pollution market is both immoral and scary." "RAM has put up a positive, robust alternative to the Green Party MP's who are giving away ecology as they cuddle up to Labour," said Mr Morgan. "In our RAM Plan, we put humans and our habitat before the profits and power of the big corporations who think they can dictate to everyone else on the planet." Backgrounders:

• Two extracts from The RAM Plan (on climate change).
• Green Party media release 26 August 2008.

For more information, contact: Grant Morgan 021 2544 515 grantmorgan@paradise.net.nz Roger Fowler 021 2999 491 mangere.east.access@paradise.net.nz Michelle Ducat 027 308 2521 michelle@ducat.co.nz

Green Party dilemma - are we for emissions trading, or not?

On Tuesday 26 August the Green Party caucus is going to decide whether it will vote for Labour's emissions trading scheme, or not. But it seems the Green Party MPs aren't sure, so they want to hear from the public as to which way they should vote. See the NZ Herald articles, Greens leave decision with the public (22 August) and Greens get mixed views on emissions trading scheme (23 August). You can tell the party what you think by emailing ets@greens.org.nz RAM activists Peter de Waal and Roger Fowler have already emailed their thoughts to the Green Party. See Peter de Waal Carbon trading is a stupid idea and Roger Fowler Let's introduce free public transport - an example to the world More UNITYblog readers should email the Green Party. And if you want your contribution to be posted on UNITYblog as well, email to editor@unityblognz.com

Poll finds low public support for Labour’s emissions trading scheme

by Health Unionist 11 July 2008 A poll published this week has found very low public support for Labour's emissions trading scheme. Some caveats need to be borne in mind. The poll was commissioned by NZIER, who are lobbying against the scheme. And the main finding was that most people know very little about it. However, it highlights that people don't like emissions trading – quite justifiably –because it will raise prices and erode living standards. It will also fail to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by anything like the required amount. We must clearly side with people and planet and reject emissions trading. NZIER media release here: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0807/S00110.htm

Essential information on carbon trading

The Climate and Capitalism website has brought together a range of information on carbon trading from The Corner House, which they say is the best source of analysis and comment on global carbon trading. There's some good stuff here to help us understand emissions trading, just as the Labour government is trying to push through its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The arguments against emissions trading need to be made loudly and by mass organisations like unions and political parties, otherwise the corporates will succeed in framing the debate around market mechanisms rather than real public solutions like free and frequent public transport. See also Europe's ETS delivers windfall profits to polluters and The fine art of greenwashing From Climate and Capitalism (17 June 2008): (1) Carbon Trading: Solution or Obstacle? More and more commentators now recognize that carbon markets are not helping to address the climate crisis. But more discussion is needed of: how carbon markets damage more effective approaches; whether carbon markets could ever work at all; and why carbon trading has been successful in political terms despite failing in climatic terms.

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Europe's ETS delivers windfall profits to polluters

As NZ's Labour government tries to push through its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) it's timely to consider the European Union's emissions market. Because of the high caps put in place when the scheme was set up in 2005 many polluting companies in Europe have been handed windfall profits. Perversely, this even includes oil companies, with BP profiting by an extra 17 million pounds in 2005. It's predicted that Europe's electricity companies (including some that burn fossil fuel) will make up to 71 billion euros in windfall profits from now until 2012. The scheme, unsurprisingly, is having little impact on emissions levels, with carbon emissions rising 0.68% across all participating companies - a long way from the 90% reductions urgently needed.

A response to Chris Trotter: There's a place for rhetoric but we need to make things happen

Chris Trotter has written a good opinion piece on Rio Tinto's threat to leave New Zealand if the government goes ahead with its planned emissions trading scheme (see below).

Rio Tinto is a transnational corporate energy giant that virtually monopolises the global aluminium industry - and it gets super cheap electricity in this country. The aluminium smelter at Bluff takes an incredible 15% of NZ's total electricity production.

As Chris makes clear, Rio Tinto's opposition to the mildest and inadequate measures to address greenhouse gas emissions is a chilling example of corporate power ranged against the interests of humanity and the environment. The corporation is indeed a psychopath.

Chris quotes Murray Horton from CAFCA (Campaign Against Foreign Control in Aotearoa), who says: "Go ahead and close the smelter and bugger off." Something that, Chris admits, this Labour government is not going to let happen. Not because thousands of workers might lose their jobs, but because Labour's partnership with international and local capital is locked in tight.

Labour couldn't govern without the support of powerful corporate interests, who are only too ready to let Labour know what the price of that support is. Rio Tinto's threat is just a more open and direct example of what goes on all the time.

And with no real support base in the working class the 21st century Labour Party cannot lead any opposition to these powerful forces. That's of course if Clark, Cullen and Co actually wanted to do - which of course they don't.

What the debacle of Labour's emission trading scheme shows is that fighting to save the environment is also a fight against corporate power. And that requires a mass grassroots political movement, it requires leadership from political organisations which have earned the respect and trust of ordinary people. Something which the Labour Party has long since lost.

In these times of mass cynicism towards politicians (which the Greens have clumsily tried to reflect in their "some things are bigger than politics" slogan) we can perhaps understandably forget that it's possible to achieve a positive and powerful dynamic between political leaders and the people. Think of the leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States. Or Maori leaders of the tino rangatiratanga struggle in this country. And look at the example of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, or Evo Morales in Bolivia.

And that leadership does not have to be embodied in just one or a few people, but in political organisations that have the mass support of working class people. A political leadership totally committed to people and environment could then call Rio Tinto's bluff and act to push for the nationalisation of the companies' ownings. It's possible.

In Venezuela recently the Chavez government, which enjoys massive support from grassroots Venezuelan's, acted to nationalise the Argentinian owned SIDOR steelworks in Guayana (See Venezuela: Steel nationalisation marks 'new revolution within revolution') This follows other nationalisations of telecommunications and electricity companies, and Venezuela's dominant oil industry. These nationalisations, which confront neo-liberalism in the backyard of the United States, have been possible because a position of power has been achieved by a mass movement.

The challenge for leftists in Aotearoa is to seriously move towards creating the kind of dynamic that exists today in Venezuela between a respected leadership and grassroots people. If achieved then everything becomes possible.

A mass broad left party, such as RAM is on the road to becoming in New Zealand, will help the left to go beyond rhetoric, to leading struggles with every chance of achieving their goal.

We know what needs to happen - the alternative of the status quo perpetuating itself is just too depressing - but it's working our side into a position where it can happen. That's the ambitious goal that RAM can and should be aiming for.

The more people who join RAM today the more chance there is of making things happen tomorrow.

Time to call Rio Tinto's bluff

by CHRIS TROTTER
The Dominion Post
Friday, 16 May 2008

Once again the masks have slipped. Once again we have caught a glimpse of the true faces of our masters. Once again, New Zealand's acute vulnerability to the power of vast transnational corporations has been brutally revealed.

As an exercise in raw economic coercion, Rio Tinto's submission to the parliamentary select committee scrutinising our Government's proposed emissions trading scheme (ETS) was chilling.

Ranged before the elected representatives of the New Zealand people were the appointed representatives of one of the world's largest and most profitable corporations.

Including its joint ventures, Rio Tinto employs 73,000 people in 61 countries. It is the global leader in smelting aluminium, with annual revenues of US$49 billion (NZ$65 billion), a sum roughly equivalent to 30 per cent of New Zealand's entire gross domestic product.

As living proof that neither race nor gender counts for very much in this new age of equal- opportunity capitalism, Rio Tinto's Asia/Pacific president is a woman of Chinese descent, Ms Xiaoling Liu. It was from her that the select committee received the bad news.

In its current form, she explained, the ETS posed a threat to the economic competitiveness of the Bluff aluminium smelter's production. Rio Tinto could not, therefore, guarantee the smelter's long-term future if the Government's scheme (in its current form) was permitted to proceed.

And that was that.

Her judgment, as cold and bleak as a Southland winter, was left to slowly defrost on the committee-room table. And now, while Invercargill shivers, and its voluble mayor, Tim Shadbolt, shakes his fist, our government must determine its response.

Thirty years ago, faced with such a flagrant challenge to its sovereignty, a Labour government might have countered Rio Tinto's presentation by threatening to nationalise its New Zealand operation. Today, quite apart from exposing the nation to all manner of WTO penalties, such a threat would be laughed out of court.

Rio Tinto, "whose business is finding, mining and processing the Earth's mineral resources", not only dominates the world's aluminium smelting industry, but also controls the lion's share of the planet's bauxite deposits. Without bauxite, of course, an aluminium smelter is useless.

So, should the Government call her and Rio Tinto's bluff?

By forcing Rio Tinto's departure, and the shutting down of the Tiwai Pt smelter, Labour would be free to divert 15 per cent of New Zealand's total electrical energy production (the amount consumed by the smelter) to other uses.

The period in which new generation facilities need to be commissioned could be dramatically extended, and electricity price rises smoothed considerably, by such a massive energy windfall.

Unfortunately, calling Rio Tinto's bluff would also entail ripping the heart (and, according to Mayor Shadbolt, the soul) out of Southland's economy. By local estimates, at least 3000 jobs ­ many of them extremely well- paid ­ would be lost, with devastating social and economic consequences for the entire Southland region.

While the fourth Labour government was only too willing to consign thousands of workers to the human scrap-heap in the name of economic rationalisation, I'm not so sure that this Government is ready to follow suit, at least, not in an election year.

Murray Horton, from the Campaign Against Foreign Control in Aotearoa, thinks they should: "Go ahead and close the smelter and bugger off", he thunders. "See if we care, the country will be much better off without you.

The smelter is the single biggest user of electricity, consuming one-sixth of the total. It pays a top-secret, super-cheap price that is not available to any other user and all it does is export electricity from New Zealand in the form of alumina, while being subsidised by all other electricity users."

Way back at the beginning of this latest period of globalisation, Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric, notoriously remarked: "Ideally you'd have every plant you own on a barge." The theory was, big business could hold unions and governments to ransom by threatening to go offshore if the cost of labour, or environmental regulation, became too expensive.

What Mr Welch and his ilk failed to foresee was that a time would come when the greenhouse gas emissions from every plant they owned represented so great a threat to the planet that the location of their barges no longer really mattered.

I'd invite Rio Tinto to do their worst but I suspect they already are.

Britain's worst polluters set for windfall of millions

by David Adam from guardian.co.uk 12 September 2008 A flagship European scheme designed to fight global warming is set to hand hundreds of millions of pounds to some of Britain's most polluting companies, with little or no benefit to the environment, an investigation by the Guardian has revealed. Dozens of multinational firms stand to benefit from the windfall, which comes from the over-allocation of carbon permits under the European emissions trading scheme. The permits are given to companies by the government, and are supposed to account for their carbon pollution over the next five years. But figures published by the European Commission show that many companies have been allocated far too many permits, which they can sell for cash. The scheme is supposed to only distribute as many permits as companies require, with one permit allocated for each tonne of CO2 produced. The figures, compiled by the Guardian and the campaign group Sandbag, suggest that up to 9m extra annual permits have been allocated to 200 companies across almost all sectors of the British economy, from steel and cement making, to car manufacturing and the food and drink industry. Dozens of household names such as Ford, Thames Water, Astra Zeneca and Vauxhall are among the companies that could benefit. One of the largest over-allocation of permits is to Castle Cement, which makes a quarter of all British cement at three works in Lancashire, north Wales and Rutland. The figures show carbon dioxide emissions from the three plants have fallen from 2.3m tonnes in 2005 to 2.1m tonnes in 2007. Yet, under the ETS, the firm has been handed enough permits to produce 2.9m tonnes CO2 for each of the next five years - an annual surplus of 829,000 permits. A spokesman for Castle Cement said: "Castle Cement will not require all its allocated permits to cover CO2 emissions in 2008 as we continue to reduce our impact on the environment in line with our sustainability strategy. "Total CO2 emissions from our three works are likely to be less than in 2007 due to further improvements in efficiency, increased use of low-carbon fuels and a weakening demand for cement caused by the general economic downturn. Surplus credits will be traded." At the current price of £21, the company could sell its surplus permits for £83.5m over the five years. Ford said it expected an annual surplus of almost 80,000 permits, which it would consider selling. Astra Zeneca said it would sell permits from its expected annual surplus of 37,000, but that the resulting money would be used to improve environmental performance. Thames Water, Heathrow Airport and Toyota were among companies who said they had not decided what to do with surplus credits. Each company's surplus was calculated using figures published by the European Commission on corporate CO2 emissions for 2007, and annual permit allocations for 2008-12, under the ETS second phase. The over-allocation comes from the way the government calculated the likely emissions of each site owned by the companies in the scheme. Each site's permit allocation was based on average emissions from 2000-2003, but also took into account projected growth and improvements in energy efficiency. Campaigners say the allocations were also influenced by industry group lobbying. A source at a major UK car manufacturing firm, which has been allocated more than double the number of permits it needs, told the Guardian they were given out based on "magical logic". Karsten Neuhoff, an expert in emissions trading at Cambridge University, said the over-allocation to so many companies was "an indication of the bargaining power of industry". He said: "We may agree as a society that we need to cut emissions, but when it comes down to individual companies and then individual installations and individual behaviours, we say 'oh no, we can't cut them here'. Everyone is a special case." Not all apparent surpluses are over-allocation of permits. Some companies, including those in the cement and offshore industries, have been given extra permits to account for changes in the way their emissions are measured. Steel maker Corus, which has the largest apparent annual surplus of 2.8m, says the extra credits for 2008 must cover 10% more of its operations than were counted in 2007. A few companies have been allocated fewer permits than they require. The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, with an apparent annual deficit of 5,800 said it would need to buy permits this year. The only sector to be given fewer permits than it needs is the electricity supply industry, which is more than 70m short. The government says this is because they are not subject to international competition, and they can pass on the cost of buying permits to customers. The under allocation to the UK electricity sector means emissions overall will reduce by some 60m tonnes a year. Bryony Worthington, founder of Sandbag, said: "The way this is set up the environment takes all the risk and business doesn't take any. Hundreds of companies have been given a free ride while those that do have to buy permits can simply pass on the costs. "That means electricity customers are effectively subsidising heavy industry's right to pollute, while being urged to make environmental sacrifices in their own lives." Sandbag will launch a campaign this week to pressure companies to surrender surplus credits. It aims to take a million permits out of circulation, which it hopes will raise the price and make companies more likely to invest in clean technology. The environment department Defra said it would not discuss allocations for individual companies. A spokesperson said: "It is of course impossible to predict what any company or installation's exact emissions for the next five years by looking at their emissions in 2007. "Decisions on allocations were made on a sound historical basis. It is natural that economic, sectoral, production and technical factors will see emissions at individual installations differ from the predictions. "What matters is that regardless of individual fluctuations, all emissions in the scheme are constrained by the overall cap, if one installation increases its emissions, the same amount of emissions have to be cut elsewhere."

Green Party wins major improvements to ETS

Green Party media release 26 August 2008 The Green Party Caucus has decided that the substantial changes we have won to the ETS justify voting for it. "We have always said the scheme needed to share the effort much more fairly. Along with the one-off financial payment, this goes a long way to compensating households for their higher prices, and reducing energy waste and carbon emissions. "Revenue from the ETS will be recycled into a Billion dollar fund to make New Zealand homes warm, dry and cost-effective to heat," Green Party Co-Leader Jeanette Fitzsimons says. "To avoid locking New Zealand into old technology, there will be a contestable pool of credits for firms with new technologies that help set our economy on a low carbon path. Rules around allocation of free credits will be tightened so that not all firms will get 90 percent if they don't need them. "We reported on Thursday that we had achieved virtually nothing in two areas - agriculture, and protection of important biodiversity from pine plantings. We have now made some progress on both, though it is not all we would like. "A target for agricultural emissions reduction before 2013 will be gazetted along with other targets for emission reductions. Government has also agreed that there will be investment in a range of technologies and practices which can reduce agricultural emissions, particularly nitrous oxide. These will include not just nitrification inhibitors but also low input farming which can be just as profitable; biogas plants to convert manure to energy; and methods to control soil damage in wet conditions such as herd homes and stand off pads. "We received a lot of feedback that many people are concerned the legislation provides no protection for areas of significant biodiversity, such as tussock and regenerating native forest, which might be converted to pines in order to earn credits. The Government has now agreed to a gazetted timetable to develop and implement a National Policy Statement on Biodiversity under the RMA. "The biggest danger of this legislation is that it will reassure people that climate change has been addressed and we can get on with business as usual. Nothing could be further from the truth. "We did not achieve an independent carbon authority, but instead allocation plans will be scrutinised by Parliament. "The Minister has admitted that this trading scheme will reduce projected emissions by only 2 percent. Far more than that is needed, and quickly, if the world is to avoid the huge financial, social and environmental costs of a rapidly changing climate. "It was a difficult decision because we do not believe that emissions trading, in itself, will do enough to reduce emissions. "The Greens will continue to fight for greater energy efficiency standards, better and more public transport, accelerated technology change, and a host of practical emissions reduction technologies which will save far more carbon than trading will. "A price on carbon will help to encourage sustainable alternatives to our energy wasting, unsustainable, fossil fuel-based way of life. It is a start, but it is not nearly enough."

Essential information on carbon trading

The Climate and Capitalism website has brought together a range of information on carbon trading from The Corner House, which they say is the best source of analysis and comment on global carbon trading. There are some excellent sources of information here to help us understand emissions trading, at the time when the Labour government is trying to push through its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The arguments against emissions trading need to be made loudly and by mass organisations like unions and political parties, otherwise the corporates will succeed in framing the debate around market mechanisms rather than real public solutions like free and frequent public transport. See also Europe's ETS delivers windfall profits to polluters and The fine art of greenwashing From Climate and Capitalism (17 June 2008): (1) Carbon Trading: Solution or Obstacle? More and more commentators now recognize that carbon markets are not helping to address the climate crisis. But more discussion is needed of: how carbon markets damage more effective approaches; whether carbon markets could ever work at all; and why carbon trading has been successful in political terms despite failing in climatic terms. (2) Carbon Trading, Climate Justice and the Production of Ignorance: Ten Examples Carbon trading schemes have helped mobilise neoclassical economics and development planning in new projects of dispossession, speculation, rent-seeking and the redistribution of wealth from poor to rich and from the future to the present. A central part of this process has been creating new domains of ignorance. What does the quest for climate justice become when it is incorporated into a development or carbon market framework? (3) Toward a Different Debate in Environmental Accounting: The Cases of Carbon and Cost-Benefit Many mainstream environmentalists suggest that calculating and internalising ‘externalities’ is the way to solve environmental problems. Some critics counter that the spread of market-like calculations into ‘non-market’ spheres is itself causing environmental problems. This article sets aside this debate to examine closely actual conflicts, contradictions and resistances engendered by environmental accounting techniques and suggest what the long-term political and environmental consequences are likely to be. (4) Gas, Waqf and Barclays Capital: A Decade of Struggle in Southern Thailand Slowing and halting new fossil fuel developments must eventually move to the top of the global climate change agenda. But what are the obstacles to, and resources for, such a project? The 10-year struggle against a large natural gas development project in one corner of Southeast Asia offers lessons in some of the relevant themes of global politics: the use of military force to secure and transport fossil fuel resources; the regulation of international finance; sectarian violence; corporate social responsibility; intensely locally-specific yet internationally-reinforced, forms of class conflict and racism; and the question of how a more tenacious solidarity for the defence of community and commons might be built among diverse and all-too-often isolated movements in different geographical and cultural locations. (5) Pictures from the Carbon Market, Part 2 This slide show of photographs continues a series portraying the practical, on-the-ground effects of the trade in carbon credits through the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism and the voluntary ‘offset’ market. (6) How Carbon Trading Undermines Positive Approaches to the Climate Crisis Carbon trading proponents often assert that trading is merely a way of finding the most cost-effective means of reaching an emissions goal. In fact, carbon trading undermines a number of existing and proposed positive measures for tackling climate change. These include the survival and spread of existing low-carbon technologies, movements against expanded fossil fuel use, and well-tested green policy measures. Carbon trading also undermines public awareness and political participation, as well as creating ignorance. (7) Video: A Chicago Conversation on Carbon Trading A discussion hosted by the Climate Justice Chicago Coalition at De Paul University examines how carbon trading creates transferable rights to dump carbon, slows social and technological change, promotes socially and ecologically destructive practices and is ineffective and unjust. (8) Video: Carbon Trading: A Lecture at Brigham Young University (9) The Limits of Free Market Logic Carbon trading, its backers claim, reduces emissions and brings sustainable development in the global South. But in fact it may do neither, and is harming efforts to create a low-carbon economy. A Chinese version is appended. (10) Pollute and Profit When will it be publicly admitted that the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme is not working? Industries are not switching to clean energy technology. The Scheme’s guiding principle seems to be ‘polluter profits’ rather than ‘polluter pays’. (11) The Carbon Neutral Myth: Offset Indulgences for Your Climate Sins (published by the TransNational Institute) Buying ‘carbon offsets’ to ‘neutralize’ your carbon emissions is all the rage in middle-class society in Europe and North America. This book explains why offsets are not a constructive approach to climate change.

Copenhagen summit: ‘Seattle’-style protests needed

Ten years ago the ‘Battle of Seattle’ protests against the World Trade Organisation sparked a global anti-capitalist movement. In the US the protests raised hopes of a ‘Teamster-turtle alliance’ against neo-liberal economics. The Teamsters being traditional trade unionists such as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the ‘turtles’ being environmental and social justice activists, such as costumed protesters above.

Patrick Bond Durban Here’s a fairly simple choice: the global North would pay the hard-hit global South to deal with the climate crisis, either through the complicated and corrupt “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM), whose projects have plenty of damaging side-effects to communities, or instead pay through other mechanisms that provide financing quickly, transparently and decisively to achieve genuine income compensation plus renewable energy to the masses. The Copenhagen climate summit in December is all about the first choice. Europe and the US have put carbon trading at the core of their emissions reduction strategy, while the two largest emitters of carbon in the Third World, China and India, are the main beneficiaries of CDM financing. Problems caused when then-vice president Al Gore’s US delegation brought pro-corporate compromises to Kyoto in 1997 — promising a US sign-on to Kyoto in exchange for carbon trading — are going to now amplify, and haunt us for a very long time, unless serious reforms are achieved in Copenhagen. They won’t be. Nor will any substantive agreement emerge, hinted the new UN Development Programme director and New Zealand’s neoliberal former prime minister Helen Clark this week: “The success of the Copenhagen summit on climate change in December will not depend on a final international deal being sealed there.” In other words, prepare for a stalemate by a coalition of selfish, fossil-fuel addicted powers. Terribly weak targets may get a mention (or even no mention, as last time at Bali), but market mechanisms will be invoked as the “solution” so as to appease polluting capitalists and the governments under their thumb, especially US President Barack Obama’s. There are attractive, simple mechanisms for financing Africa’s survival, including the “ecological debt” (or “climate reparations”) demands being made by environmental leaders of the African Union (AU). There is also Jubilee Africa’s request to just remove the damn boot from Africa’s financial neck by cancelling ongoing debt repayments. The International Monetary Fund said in 2009,the lowest-income African countries are suffering a 50% increase in debt repayments as a percentage of export earnings. This means the 2005 Make Poverty History NGO-rockstar campaign was a farce. The only debt written-off was impossible to repay anyway, so for low-income Africa, “debt relief” was just an accounting gimmick, as IMF data now shows. The most shocking probable outcome of climate change is that UN experts predict 90% of the African peasantry will be out of business by 2100 due to drought, floods, extreme weather events, disease and political instability. The Climate Change Vulnerability Index, calculated in 2009 “from dozens of variables measuring the capacity of a country to cope with the consequences of global warming”, listed 22 African countries out of 28 across the world at “extreme risk”, whereas the United States is near the bottom of the world rankings of countries at risk, even though it is the leading per capita contributor to climate change. There is no question that those most responsible should pay reparations. The world is awakening. After several years of hard work by World Council of Churches (WCC) members and staff, on September 2 the WCC’s central committee adopted a formal statement on the North’s “deep moral obligation to promote ecological justice by addressing our debts to peoples most affected by ecological destruction and to the earth itself”. The WCC slams “the agro-industrial-economic complex and the culture of the North, characterised by the consumerist lifestyle and the view of development as commensurate with exploitation of the earth's so-called natural resources”. It cites the eco-debt definition pioneered by Accion Ecologica of Ecuador: “Historical and current resource-plundering, environmental degradation and the dumping of greenhouse gases and toxic wastes.” Like any other damages paid by corporations for messes made — such as Thor Chemicals’ notorious mercury spillage a few dozen kilometres from my Durban home now leaking into Durban’s bulk water supply at the Inanda Dam — the point is to get a general estimate of clean-up costs and a rough estimate of damages done. As compensation, flows of grant funding are required — hopefully via an accountable, fair, transparent system such as a basic income grant for all residents of Africa (a Namibian pilot is showing excellent results) — instead of the kinds of corrupting carbon trade financing that dictators or big corporations now grab hold of and redirect to adverse ends. Carbon trading allows corporations and governments generating greenhouse gases to seemingly reduce net emissions. They can do this, thanks to the Kyoto Protocol, by trading for others’ reductions (e.g. CDM projects in the Third World) or emissions rights (e.g. Eastern Europe’s “hot air” that followed the 1990s economic collapse). The pro-trading rationale is that once property rights are granted to polluters for their emissions, a “cap” can be put on a country’s or the world’s total emissions (and then progressively lowered if there is political will). So as to minimise adverse economic impact, corporations can stay within the cap even by emitting way above it, by buying others’ rights to pollute. But the carbon market isn’t working, for several reasons: • the idea of inventing a property right to pollute is in effect the privatisation of the air; • the corporations most responsible for pollution and the World Bank — which is most responsible for fossil-fuel financing — are behind the market, and can be expected to engage in systemic corruption to attract money into the market even if this prevents genuine emissions reductions; • many of the offsetting projects — such as monocultural timber plantations, forest “protection” and landfill methane-electricity projects — have devastating impacts on local communities and ecologies; • the price is haywire, having crashed by half in a short period in April 2006 and by two-thirds in 2008; • there is a serious potential for carbon markets to become an out-of-control, multitrillion-dollar speculative bubble, similar to exotic financial instruments associated with Enron’s 2002 collapse (indeed, many Enron employees populate the carbon markets); • as a “false solution” to climate change, carbon trading encourages merely small, incremental shifts, and thus distracts us from a wide range of radical changes we need to make in materials extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal; and • the idea of market solutions to market failure is an ideology that rarely makes sense, and especially not following the world’s worst-ever financial market failure. Recall that scientists insist an 80% cut in emissions will be necessary within four decades at most, and the big cuts before 2020. To achieve this, carbon markets won’t work, as the leading US climate scientist, James Hansen, said in opposition to Obama’s cap and trade scheme. Obama’s legislation, which passed the US House of Representatives in June, is so profoundly flawed it should be scrapped. Some excellent movements have sprung up to try to prevent US carbon trading and the destruction of Environmental Protection Agency powers to regulate carbon pollution. The emissions trade is a bogus “false solution”. Very different forms of climate finance are required at the Copenhagen summit in December, including the North’s payment of ecological debt. While carbon trading is at the heart of Copenhagen negotiations, any deal done will be a step backwards. University of KwaZulu-Natal honorary professor Dennis Brutus, puts the challenge ahead frankly: “My own view is that a corrupt deal is being concocted in Copenhagen with the active collaboration of NGOs who have been bought off by the corporations, especially oil and transport. “They may even be well-intentioned but they are barking up the wrong tree.” Instead of a bad deal, Brutus recommends that we all “Seattle” Copenhagen. In other words, the AU insiders work with massed protesters outside to prevent the North from doing a deal in its interests, against Africa’s and the planet’s. A decade ago, that formula stopped the 1999 World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Millennial Round from succeeding in Seattle through an alliance on the streets by environmentalists, unionists and many other campaigners combining with poor nation representatives inside the meeting opposing further adverse trade policies being forced on them. In 2003, the feat was repeated at the WTO Cancun meeting. To “Seattle” Copenhagen would entail civil society protesting outside and African governments working for Africans’ interests inside, to halt a dirty deal that makes matters worse. Even with less than 100 days to go, Brutus insists it’s feasible. This would then allow us to move on to the real emissions reduction and alternative energy and production systems the world desperately needs. From Green Left Weekly Patrick Bond is the director of the Centre for Civil Society in Durban. He is co-editor of the UKZN Press book Climate Change, Carbon Trading and Civil Society: Negative Returns on South African Investments.