Jul2nd
Transition Towns
Transition Towns: Contested Spaces and the Debate between the ‘Local’ and the ‘Global’.
Chris James
The trend towards depoliticised discourses is moving rapidly across the world and is serving to deepen a growing conservatism and/or a return to a more traditional way of life. These discourses usually come with a mandate that advocates change via methods of non-confrontation, sometimes referred to as mediation. Here social advocates seek to avoid all forms of politics and political dissent. Instead, they focus on community based solutions to social change. The new social movement called Transition Towns is one such movement using this framework and it is gaining immense popularity in Australia. There are now roughly twenty Transition Towns across the nation [i].
Transition Towns and the ‘Third Way’.
When the depoliticised discourses first arrived from the West’s new wave of ‘Third Way’ social theorists they were highly criticised for sidestepping important social issues but gradually - and as a result of increased public violence and strong opposition to governments - these discourses have found acceptance within local authorities, bureaucracies and the pro-localisation community movements. At the centre of the current wave in economic localisation are two urgent socio-political problems, Peak Oil and Climate Change. The debate underpins the way we have used the world’s resources creating harmful emissions that cause global warming. This in turn has been blamed for drought, land degradation and unpredictable weather patterns, all of which have had a devastating human, political and financial cost. The situation has lead to a rethink on economic globalisation. It is now being argued that globalisation, the new communications technologies and cheap commodities is based on a ‘spatial fix’ for restoring capitalism’s growth potential by shifting labour from high to low cost locations[ii]. Added to this, the world must now confront the reality that the global system is currently unsustainable.
Undoubtedly, the debate on Climate Change and Peak Oil has put the political forces into disarray and this has been exacerbated by an economic collapse. With this in mind, localisation appears as an easy option to the big problems because it doesn’t tamper with the State’s economic agendas or the expansion of big business, even though some of these businesses are the major polluters contributing to Climate Change. Rob Hopkins, a key advocate of localisation and founder of the UK Transition Towns argues that the demise of cheap oil could have a more catastrophic affect on the climate because people might choose to switch to high emission alternatives like coal. Further, the expansion of biofuels will inevitably lead to a lack of food production and food shortages. Hitherto, the Transition Towns movement gives focus to localised ‘permaculture’ and food security. Hopkins also argues, a financial crisis caused by peak oil might mean that Climate Change is put aside in favour of more economic growth. We have already seen this happening in Australia, Europe and the US where Climate Change priorities have been downgraded. These scenarios can be avoided argues Hopkins by mobilising communities to follow an energy decent plan outlined in The Transition Handbook[iii] . To this end economic localisation is positioned as directly opposed to globalisation and is thus supported by the existing anti-globalisation movement, which I might add is notoriously associated with violent political protests.
The Debate.
Both sides of the debate have convincing arguments. On the one hand, we are facing a catastrophic downturn in fossil fuels and other raw resources, which can only be placated by dismantling all the high energy facilities and reverting to a pre-globalised world. Or, on the other hand, the new technologies, not yet constructed will fix the problems. Neither of these options can offer much comfort. Moreover, while the science is pretty conclusive on Climate Change we do not know exactly when the oil will peak, we could already be experiencing it as prices go up and down. These are political issues that will impact on industry, agriculture, forestry and all forms of trade. Travel will be impacted as well as many of our commodities and services, some of which cannot be relocated and/or community based. Certainly, we can reduce emissions by consuming closer to home where possible but we should not expect this to have more than a minuscule affect on what is a major global political problem.
The Realities.
Many Transition Towns advocates try to convince us that Climate Change and Peak Oil will herald the end of neo-liberalism and global capital. They argue that this is a good thing because it will facilitate the opportunity to re-fashion the world around a simple [and in some cases spiritual] agrarian lifestyle. It is never easy to restore well being out of a crisis and a lot of people can get hurt in the process. To see localisation as both necessary and desirable is a top down approach because while the elites might survive such a crisis the poor will not. Further, to suggest that a post-industrialised world would be superior to globalisation and all that implies is a political statement about what constitutes a good life. We have been here before in the struggles of post-colonialism where the Western definition of a ‘good life’ did not suit all. It certainly did not suit the oppressed.
Transition Towns aims to make communities resilient to Climate Change and Peak Oil but many Transition Towns members understand the meaning of ‘resilience’ to be total self-sufficiency. To this end the Transition Towns movement is open to contest.
If, alternatively we define ‘localisation’ and ‘resilience’ as striking a balance between the local and the global, this is a different proposition. If redirecting our attention on the local can help to educate the masses towards environmental consciousness and creating diverse communities then there is an argument for reconnecting at a local level. There must be checks and balances to ensure that communities do not end up as communal autarkies. Transition Towns must not be a means of separating communities out from other groups within the social. It should not be used to promote depoliticisation as good and direct political activism as bad. Rather, Transition Towns needs to be viewed as an opportunity to create sustainable, equitable spaces where people can interact and responsibly protest both locally and globally.
The Future.
There is a lot of appeal in working at a non-confrontation level but what happens when a gross injustice occurs? What happens when the small community steps fail to make an impact on greedy corporations who continue to pollute and/or harvest every scrap of coal, oil or forest available? Will the Transition Movement find its political voice? Or will it collapse under the weight of its own non-confrontation discourse? Conflict cannot be avoided. Conflict needs to be addressed at the source at which conflict occurs in order to find workable solutions. Conflict need not be violent and it has brought gains as well as pains to politics and social change.
[i] See Transition Towns Org. www.transitiontowns.org. Accessed 2nd July, 2009.
[ii] Harvey, D. [1992]. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford, Blackwell.
Jul2nd
TRANSITION TOWNS.
A reply to ‘Listening to Voices that Touch the Heart. Imagining a different future. The Transition Handbook and new ways forward’ by Nonie Sharp in Arena Issue 100., 06: 2009 pp32-35.
Chris James
I was struck by Nonie Sharp’s article, Listening to Voices that Touch the Heart, which highlighted the way a reading of the Rob Hopkin’s The Transition Handbook and George Turner’s fictional work, The Sea and the Summer had specifically ‘touched’ her. Turner’s book is a fictional record of environmental disaster and the Handbook is presented as a panacea to avert any such real dilemma. What is interesting about this juxtaposition is the way narrative blurs the boundaries between fantasy and the real not just as historicism and politique nouveau but as futurism and prophecy as well. Indeed, both works are uniquely prophetic and ‘novel’, but are they of any real value in the difficult quest for sustainable environmental change?
There are also deeper similarities between these two works, which might have been considered by Sharp had she engaged in a broader exploration of the Transition Movement. What I mean by this is the fictional calamity described in The Sea and the Summer might well arrive in conjunction with the Transition Towns landscape; not because the Transition Movement will deliberately act to cause such a calamity but because it will fail to address the underlying issues that might serve to prevent such a full scale environmental catastrophe. Transition Towns focuses on small steps, or what is perceived as achievable, but it lets the big polluters off the hook. More to the point, Climate Change is no small problem that can be averted by small steps; it will take big decisions and a lot of intervention as well as the political willingness to change things. The problem with Transition Towns is it has a mandate that avoids any political conflict. Hence, Transition Towns is allowed to proliferate and gains the support of governments and local councils. Transition Towns does nothing to upset the politics, the economy or the status quo for whom, generally speaking, global pollution is merely a by-product of economic growth, something that cannot be tampered with.
Notwithstanding, the notion of small steps towards resilience is very appealing; it has worked on occasions to get alcoholics to stop drinking. It has worked with mild forms of depression. It has worked in education to bring children with learning difficulties into the mainstream classroom - albeit with a myriad of other soci-psychological difficulties - but there are no guarantees it will work en mass to create resilience against Climate Change and Peak Oil. Small steps equates with the individual trying to paddle an escape on the waves of a Climate Change Tsunami. However, the ‘steps’ according to Sharp is not a ‘recipe’. She interprets them as ‘groups of like minded souls’ who combine vision with will and tenacity’ and who ‘must choose their own goals and ways of functioning’[i] . I hate to throw dispersions on this idea but if the magnitude of the problems were not so great I would say ‘go for it’, but like tapestry, basket weaving and gardening, small steps might be good occupational therapy alleviating a growing disenchantment but it will not solve the world’s environmental problems. Small ‘steps’ is not the effective mediation that many Transition Towns advocates anticipate.
Roughly twenty Transition groups currently exist in Australia but they do not go uncontested and many have been implicated in their own untenable power relations. In addition, there are no assurances that these community groups will, over time, even remain unified around their stated goals - and we are talking about long term goals here - Climate Change and Peak Oil are not going to be resolved overnight. In a detailed study on Creating and Managing the Collective Life Rosabeth Moss Kanter has noted how intentional and/or issue based communities must consciously develop a kind of integrated social system that arrives within mainstream society organically through evolution and environmental stimulus. A forced integrated social system has its own tensions and contradictions. Kanter tells us how the group must first gather around a cause, which gives impetus to the conscious motivation and commitment that flows from the renunciation of the accepted [outside] norms. It is a dynamic, often conceived in struggle and hard work, which gives rise to intensity and thus, the identity of the community group. The successful collective gathers this momentum, progresses and moves forward. However, as time passes the motivation wanes and many groups cannot move beyond their subsistence level.[ii] Such communities can quickly become autocratic and fraught with damaging constraints. What were once thought of as freedom groups develop tendencies towards rank authoritarianism. Moss Kanter writes:
Under these conditions, communities simply cannot afford to distribute
scarce resources without assurance that the recipients will devote effective
effort to the collective ends. Thus the humanistic principle cannot be
followed since it requires, in effect that the community have available
resources, which it can invest in people for a later return. The only principle
consistent with communal ideology under those circumstances is socialistic[iii]
The problem here is socialism falls under the weight of its own political expectations. It too must continually struggle against the odds, namely with neo-liberal capitalism. When poverty strikes the pressures to abandon the social commitments become compelling and force a move to capitalist principles. If the commune/community then prospers under capitalism the situation can be even more tenuous. Again Moss Kanter comments:
‘It becomes increasingly possible for differences of opinion to arise as to the
relative distribution of resources toward the collective against the individual
ends. As people begin to perceive that the hard work and deferred
gratification consistent with the establishment of the community is no longer
so obviously necessary, there is the temptation to seek the personal reward
as consistent with that early effort’[iv].
What starts out as a genuine communitarian effort to resolve environmental problems ends up being fraught with socio-political class issues. We see the evolution of these events in both the cited texts. In the Handbook class is underscored by British fame and wealth, the celebrities versus the struggling green business or community group. It is clearly a ‘them/us’ situation, it shouldn’t be but it is because these disparities are already embedded into the culture in which the Transition Towns discourse finds its existence.
Conversely, The Sea and the Summer is set in Melbourne, Australia between the years 2041 and 2061. The story is conveyed through the experiences of a family who must contend with a financial system that has collapsed and extraordinarily difficult times brought about by Climate Change. The Sea and the Summer reveals a life-world where there is mass unemployment and extreme poverty. The underprivileged live in crowded high-rise buildings, which appear to stand in contrast to the rising sea levels that are impacting on the city. The use of illusion here is very clever. There has been a total disregard for the environment and everyone is paying the price but the skyscrapers that sit magnanimous in the rising sea waters lend impetus to human ingenuity - as well as to a particular fantasy - not what ‘is’ but what might be. We imagine the renewal of these buildings with solar panels, wind towers, desalination plants - the green technologies that might also reverse the underlying economic difficulties - but will they reverse the inequity that gave rise to many of these difficulties in the first place? Here lies the important question, which is grounded not just in environment issues but issues of economic differentiation and/or social class. It is vivid in the novel where those who are fortunate enough to have employment are called ’sweet’ and the masses who make up the majority of unemployed are called ’swill’.
What is not imagined is that this inherent social divide that is so integral to the survival of neo-liberal capitalism could well be exacerbated by the Transition movement. Climate Change and Peak Oil heralds the diminishing availability of fossil fuels and this will serve to widen the social divide but it will not necessarily impact on the global elite. This raises a number of questions. In the struggle for resources, new or old, what will stop the Transition Towns movement from becoming adjunct to corrupt governments and/or trans-corporate interests? Environment issues are not simple, nor can they be easily extricated from the system in which they exist; neo-liberal capitalism. Undoubtedly, there is a need for communities to be more ecologically sustainable but what will prevent the Transition Towns movement from becoming embedded into a system of the environmentally rich versus the environmentally poor? What will stop the Transition Towns movement from becoming a two tiered system where the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ will be determined, on the one hand by the corporate ‘high-flyers’ in green industries and on the other, by a mass population forced into subsistence living? The gap between rich and poor is gradually widening and this has been intensified by our own 2008 global economic meltdown. In this sense The Sea and the Summer, becomes, in its own right, a critique of the Transition Handbook, albeit unwittingly.
Linking The Sea and the Summer to Climate Change brings home the underlying truths of a social and environmentally damaged world. The loss of family income control is mirrored in the rising flood waters but in Sharp’s account the reader is seduced into believing that when it happens in ‘now’ time the Transition Handbook and its messianic scribes will save us. Or it will have paved the way to some kind of redemption with small steps. Not so! Small steps will simply divert our attention from the real crimes and the horrors of real politics. Small steps acts like a pause in the political language of environmentalism. It ensures that we interpret the discursive power plays in a more conceptual, friendly and unobtrusive way. It encourages participation on the basis that we do not engage in assertions of political blame or accountability. Small steps will not automatically lead to big achievements. On the contrary, small steps acts like a meditation with a mantra buried in subordination and false consciousness.
I have strong empathy for Sharp’s sentimentalities. The whole earth, nature based phenomenon encourages individuals to feel not think. An amazing exhilaration comes with like-mindedness, combine this with the natural elements and the drive towards survival and what you have is a dynamic that it is instinctually very powerful. In addition, I do not take issue with Sharp’s idea that the Transition Handbook is an ‘expression of imagination’ or ‘honesty’ and ‘courage’. It displays all these necessary attributes for a pleasurable, leisure based community movement and its simplicity is conducive to a popular following, but it is not a revolution as many have claimed and if it were to become one it would simply create the circumstances that gave rise to capitalism and modern industrialisation in the first place. The Transition Towns movement may create some small changes for communities but it will not alter the power of the elite.
Further, I do not deny the profound inspiration the Handbook has provided for a number of communities wanting an alternative way of doing things - but this should not belie the question of whether it works to address its claims. In recent years communities have seen a wave of development models from Learning Towns, Community Hubs, Community Renewal, Social Capital and Capacity Building to name just a few – each has left its mark but none have offered an overriding solution to the serious social and global problems - I expect Transition Towns will be much the same. With this in mind, I was disappointed that while the sound of civilian voices was applauded by Sharp the repertoire of this outpouring was not the subject of more serious examination. Where is the discussion of neo-liberalism’s discursive politics and how this is filtering through the community via small groups? Where is the analysis of the depoliticised discourses that serve to deepen a creeping conservatism that is taking hold both in Australia and overseas?
Undoubtedly, different people are touched by different events and I was equally ‘touched’ […] rather taken back by Rob Hopkins The Transition Handbook when I first read it. For me the inspiration gained when hearing about the movement diminished with the reading of the Handbook, which I found to be sloppy and unconvincing when works on Climate Change and Peak Oil should be quite the opposite. Listening to Voices that Touch the Heart is much closer to the real story, which begs a rethink on the question, ‘is truth more powerful than fiction?’ I think we all know the answer to be ‘no’. Fiction is the all-powerful medium. Both works cited have shown themselves to be powerful fictions in different ways.
Change comes when ideas are embedded into the mass culture, a totalising fiction. The question here is who has control of the mass culture? Currently the world’s elites have control of the mass culture. The Transition Movement is not about to change this.
[i] N Sharp 2009‘Listening to Voices that Touch the Heart. Imagining a different future. The Transition Handbook and new ways forward’ in Arena Issue 100., 06: 2009 p35
[ii] Rosabeth Moss Kanter 1973 Creating and Managing the Collective Life NY Harper and Row p272
[iii] ibid
[iv] Ibid p173
Dr Chris James is currently researching Transition Towns at Deakin University.
Contact details:
caja@deakin.edu.au
doctorchrisjames@bigpond.com
Jun25th
TRANSITION TOWNS! What are they? What do we know about them? Will they work?
The world is facing many serious challenges, among them Climate Change and Peak Oil. We hear about Climate Change because there are visible signs that the world’s environment is changing and these changes have been a prominent topic in the media and public debate. The other problem Peak Oil is not talked about so much and there is no definite date indicating when the oil will become scarce but the notion of Peak Oil is acting as a catalyst for a new Transition Towns movement whose vision is to move away from economic globalisation and create a post-industrialised world. The Transition Towns movement aims to free towns and communities from oil dependence and create local resilience and it is gaining immense popularity. While the Transition Towns movement moves towards a more sustainable lifestyle it is also a depoliticised discourse. It focuses on personal consumption and self-help and it fails to challenge the power relations that drive capitalist growth and Empire. This begs the question; will the Transition discourse ultimately serve to deepen the conservatism being propagated by similar transcendental discourses? In this thesis I will explore the positive aspects of the Transition Towns movement for a sustainable future and weigh them against the implications of depoliticised discourses for communities who are forced to struggle with the unsustainable and unethical practices of powerful multinationals. By drawing on utopian and dystopian theory, communal history and case studies I will explore the utopian problematic in the Transition Towns movement, which on the one hand intervenes in the present and signifies what might change it, and on the other fails to address the most fundamental problem needing to be changed, namely, the lack of social equity, which I will argue must inevitably rest ipso facto with regional governments and the state.
******************
What you have just read is the abstract to new research into Transition Towns.
Undoubtly, the world needs to work from a different system to the one that is destroying our environment but by the same token we need to make sure we engage with the right system. There is a lot at stake! My research will look at the strengths and the weaknesses of Transition Towns. Interested? Please leave your comments or contact me via caja@deakin.edu.au
Beautiful gardens are under threat from climate change.May26th
Upcoming event information:
National Climate Emergency Rally State Library, Melbourne
Date: 13 June 2009, Saturday 01:00 PM
National Climate Emergency Rally, 1pm Saturday, June 13, State Library.
Note : GSG and other Geelong groups will be catching the 11.40am train from Geelong Station to the rally. Bring along everyone you know to make this a huge event (and possibly meet someone special on the train!)
If you have thought of taking action on climate change, now is the time. Drought, bush fires, floods and rising seas are already hitting hard. It’s an emergency and we need emergency action.
In December 2009, governments of the world will meet in Copenhagen to create a new global climate agreement. Australia must support, not stop, strong global action.
We can tackle the recession and climate change together. Direct investment in renewable energy will create jobs, stimulate the economy and begin to create the carbon-free economy of the future.
- 100% renewable energy by 2020
Australia must make the shift from fossil fuels to 100% renewable energy from wind, solar and other available technologies.
- Green collar jobs not job cuts
We can renew our economy by creating hundreds of thousands of ‘green jobs’ and supporting workers to make a fair and just transition to sustainable industries.
- strong international action with climate justice
Australia must take the lead in global climate talks, not undermine them with an ineffective 5%-15% target. Globally, we must to listen those who are most affected by climate change and least responsible for it.
- Don’t pass the Carbon Pollution law
We need climate policies that make the big polluters pay and not allow big companies to go on polluting. The CPRS won’t reduce Australia’s greenhouse pollution.
- Protect Australia’s Forests
Logging and clearing vegetation are major contributors to climate change as forests and woodlands are important carbon stores.
1pm Saturday, June 13, State Library
Only a strong and growing movement for change will make a difference. Come with your friends and family to the Rally. Help promote the rally in your community.
www.climaterally.org • 03 9639 3660
May13th
Australia’s budget not green enough.
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Welcome to the eleventh edition of The Australia Institute’s e-bulletin Between the Lines, a selective analysis of the policies and politics affecting the wellbeing of Australians. This edition contains The Australia Institute’s budget reply and looks at:
THE 2009 BUDGET IN CLICHES Budgets are all about clichés—’missed opportunities’, ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’, ’smoke and mirrors’. We have all heard budget clichés dozens of times. What then is the cliché that best captures last night’s Budget? How about ‘all sizzle, no sausage’, or that wonderful phrase from Texas used to describe city farmers, ‘all hat, no cattle’? In this post-modern world, where the headline message is more important than th e thousands of pages of budget detail, it is impossible not to begin an analysis of the Budget in terms of the messages the government has sent. The Treasurer Wayne Swan, having spent weeks preparing us for a ‘horror Budget’, this morning struggled to convince us that there was more pain lurking in the detail than actually met the eye. In an unusual transformation of a budget cliché, the Treasurer was effectively assuring us that the ‘devil is in the detail’. The fact is, while the deficit is as big as expected, the opportunity to tackle middle-class welfare and remove the tax concessions most favoured by high-income earners was mostly missed. The tightening of superannuation contributions was a step in the right direction but, as The Australia Institute pointed out recently, the superannuation system as a whole has become an enormous rort for the very well-off. See The great superannuation tax concession rort at www.tai.org .au. The increase in the age pension and the eventual introduction of paid parental leave are supported by the research done by The Australia Institute. However, the Institute has also recently highlighted the need to abolish the capital gains tax exemptions, introduce a new 50 per cent tax rate on incomes over $1 million per annum and stimulate the economy by increasing the current miserly unemployment benefit payment. See www.tai.org.au for research papers entitled Tax equity: Reforming capital gains in Australia; The case for a new top tax rate; Increasing the Newstart Allowance: A necessary part of equitable fiscal stimulus. Perhaps the government will address these missed opportunities following the Henry Tax Review? Leaving aside the spin, the Budget itself is well suited to the current macroeconomic circumstances. This year, the Treasurer has budgeted for government spending of $337 billion and revenue of $282 billion, the difference being a budget deficit of $55 billion. (The government ignores the earnings of the Future Fund and describes the deficit as $58 billion). There is no doubt that that is a large deficit but there is also no doubt that without such a deficit the economy would be in worse shape. While the government should not be criticised for the size of the deficit, it is fair to say that its aim is off. To end on another cliché, this is a genuine ‘horror Budget’ for those who historically ‘fall through the cracks’ such as the unemployed. THE GHOST OF KEATING PAST The budget papers claim that without the government’s recent stimulus packages there would likely be an additional 200,000 people unemployed. Even so, unemployment is expected to reach 8.5 per cent by June 2011 and it must be remembered that that figure excludes a rising number of hidden unemployed. More needs to be done about this. The unemployment problem is the most urgent social and economic issue in the nation at this time yet the Budget contains virtually nothing for the unemployed. In 2009–10, total spending on vocational and industry training increases from $1,343 million to $1,430 million and spending on labour-market assistance increases from $2,129 million to $2,329 million. These are little more than the increases in the forward estimates that would have happened anyway. The purported aim of this year’s Budget was to s upport jobs—but there is next to nothing for those who find themselves jobless. In the 1990s, Paul Keating quipped that you couldn’t go into a pet store without hearing a parrot talk about microeconomic reform. These days, sustainability has achieved a similar status; the fact that everyone is now for it is virtual proof that it has become meaningless. Consider last night’s Budget for example. We know that climate change is one of the government’s priorities because the Climate Change Minister said so. Unfortunately for ministers who want to talk up their achievements when it comes to budgets, the numbers speak louder than the words and indicate with stark clarity where the real priorities lie. And last night’s Budget makes it pretty clear where the power sits around the Cabinet table. Let’s start with the good news—the $3.5 billion clean energy infrastructure fund. Compare this to the $8.4 billion investment in road, rail and ports, much of which will be spent to expedite the passage of our rapidly expanding coal exports on to boats. If you weren’t expecting exports to increase, why would you invest in fixing the bottlenecks? While the $3.5 billion might look modest compared to the amount the government is spending on expanding the transport system, admittedly it’s no small beer. However, when we look at where most of the $3.5 billion is going, the priorities of the Rudd Government begin to overtake the claims by the Minister for (preventing) Climate Change: $2 billion for research into clean [sic] coal and $1.5 billion (over four years) for a new solar flagship program (see below). And let’s not forget what wasn’t in last night’s Budget. No change to the $1.8 billion a year tax concession given to those who drive company cars and no change to the $710 million exemption the airline industry enjoys because it doesn ‘t have to pay fuel excise. Budgets are all about priorities and this government’s priorities are there for all to see. But only if you ignore the big claims and focus your eye on the big numbers. The good: Paid parental leave *********************** |
May9th
Age May 6, 2009
Prince Charles of Britain on Tuesday took his battle to save rainforests to MySpace, calling for Internet users to rally to protect dwindling natural treasures vital to their survival.
A Prince of Wales Rainforest Project page debuted on MySpace with the prince outlining his mission and an online premier of a video urging support for the cause.
“One of the Internet’s strengths is that it can help diverse communities to come together to insure that everybody’s views and actions can really be made to count,” the prince said in an online video.
“Your collective support is needed now in the urgent fight against climate change and in saving the Earth’s most precious and valuable resources: tropical rainforests.”
Rainforests help cool the climate and absorb carbon dioxide gas that is a culprit in global warming, the prince said.
He explained that he launched Rainforest Project two years ago with a goal of finding ways to make trees “more valuable alive than dead, so there is no incentive to cut them down.”
At MySpace, Prince Charles premiered a video urging people to sign-up to join an online movement to convince political leaders to take meaningful actions to protect rainforests.
The “sign-up video” features celebrities, royalty, and even the Dalai Lama appearing with the broadcast’s main star — a rainforest frog.
“As you may be aware, princes and frogs have had a long association,” the prince quipped.
“However, our frog has come to symbolize something new..a symbol of action … saving the rainforest can help save us all before it really is too late.”
Prince Charles told Italian lawmakers in Rome last week that time is quickly running out in the battle against global warming, and history will judge the world’s response to the crisis.
Speaking in parliament’s elegant Sala della Lupa, the prince said only 98 months remained before experts predict irreversible effects of greenhouse gas emissions, and “the clock is ticking away inexorably.”
While in Italy, the 60-year-old heir to the British throne appealed for “inspired leadership” in the lead-up to United Nations climate change talks to be held in Copenhagen in December.
At MySpace, the prince urged Internet users to help “build an online community to call, from the bottom up, for urgent action to protect the rainforest by the time world leaders gather in Copenhagen.”
People can sign up online at the project’s website at rainforestsos.org.
© 2009 AFP
This story is sourced direct from an overseas news agency as an additional service to readers. Spelling follows North American usage, along with foreign currency and measurement units.
May5th
Kevin Rudd’s Sell-Out on Climate Change.
05 May 2009
Has Kevin Rudd taken “a significant step forward on climate change”?
Kevin Rudd’s announced changes to the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme has again split the climate movement, and this time it’s very serious, with three large, rusted-on-to-Labor groups running cover for an appalling policy that won’t guarantee a reduction in Australian emissions for decades.
The grassroots movement, which gathered in Canberra in January with 500 people and 150 groups for the first national Climate Action Summit and unanimously opposed the CPRS legislation, appears uniformly angry. 66 climate action groups have written to the Prime Minister saying that: “We believe that you have abandoned your duty of care to protect the Australian people as well as our species and habitats from dangerous climate change.”
The re-worked proposals for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme announced on 4 May by Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd were described by The Greens as “making the ‘worse than useless’ scheme even worse and giving another $2.2 billion to big polluters. It also fails on voluntary action” and has an “almost irrelevant green distraction of a hypothetical 25% target to undermine criticism”.
John Hepburn of Greenpeace said: “It’s clear that Rudd has been listening to the big polluters and this is another shift towards the interests of polluters rather than climate action. We’re rapidly running out of time and we’d like this scheme to go back to the drawing board until Kevin Rudd can stand up to the big polluters and take action in the interests of the Australian people.”
Friends of the Earth “criticised the raising of the government’s hypothetical target range as an exercise in “smoke and mirrors”, aimed at hiding the further windfall for polluters.”
But the three climate advocacy groups that have acquiesced or actively supported the government’s “clean coal” policies — ACF, the WWF and Climate Institute — again lined up to support Labor, together with the ACTU and ACOSS. Michelle Grattan in The Age noted that “the biggest concessions are the brown ones” and that “Kevin Rudd has stitched key groups in behind a revised emissions trading deal — both browner and greener than before — to put maximum pressure on Malcolm Turnbull”.
John Conner of the Climate Institute on behalf of the Southern Cross Climate Coalition (ACF, ACTU, ACOSS and Climate Institute) said it was now time for all parties to pass the scheme.
Australian Conservation Foundation CEO Don Henry told staff:
We have achieved a significant step forward on climate change. The Government has just announced that it will take on a target of reducing Australia’s emissions by 25% by 2020 in the context of a Copenhagen agreement that has the effect of stabilising emissions at 450ppm or lower.
[That is wrong in science, of which more later.]
ACF climate campaigner Owen Pascoe added:
This is good step forward and the positives outweigh the negatives. However there’s a lot more to be done and we’ll keep pushing for our ask of 30 to 40% cuts.
For the record, the changes to the proposed scheme also:
- delay its introduction for a year to 1 July 2011 and set a nominal price of $10 a tonne with unlimited number of permits till 1 July 2012, so there will be NO effective action for another three years;
- increase the permits to the biggest polluters in the first year from 90% to 95% and from 60% to 70% (so that in the first year the biggest polluters will be effectively paying 50 cents per tonne to pollute, as Environment Victoria noted);
- keeps the provision for unlimited outsourcing of Australia’s national responsibilities by allowing the purchase of permits from overseas without limit, so that the scheme has no mechanism for ensuring that Australia’s emissions (as opposed to domestic permits) will drop by even one tonnne by 2050;
- fails to deal adequately with the question of additionality / voluntary action. As Environment Victoria notes: “The fix to recognise household and business voluntary action through GreenPower is welcome, but the mechanism is awful. By only recognizing additional GreenPower purchases above 2009 levels the Government is guaranteeing the collapse of existing GreenPower customer purchases and therefore jeopardizing the whole program. Furthermore the Rudd Government has failed to recognise the benefit of all other types of voluntary emissions reductions or additional action, which, like GreenPower, can be accounted for.”
- • will not, contrary to back-slapping comments by the ACTU, produce an avalanche of “green jobs” because it is not designed to close down the brown jobs. Instead of building a clean, renewable-energy economy and technological capacity, Australia will continue to stumble at the back of the pack.
So why are some of the big climate advocacy groups so keen on this disaster? Is their public position supported by the evidence? Here’s a look at the views expressed by ACF and others, and whether it is justifiable.
ISSUE 1. Passing the CPRS is necessary for Australia to be credible at Copenhagen.
No, quite the opposite. If there were no legislation, Australia’s position would not be tied by law to Rudd’s poor target and pressure would be maintained to catch up with the leading bunch. The targets in the proposed CPRS legislation are out of whack with the major players such as the UK, US and EU, who have agreed to unconditional cut emissions of 34-46%, 20% and 20-30% from 1990 levels respectively. Let’s be honest, what happens at Copenhagen depends more than any other factor on what the G2 – the USA and China — strike by way of a climate deal, and what Australia puts in the table has little relevance to that. They are used to Australia behaving badly.
ISSUE 2. If there is a reasonable outcome in Copenhagen, Australia will be committed to a 25% cut by 2020.
As Adam Morton reported in The Age on 5 May: “Kevin Rudd says he now has an ambitious greenhouse target on the table for 2020. And he does: cutting emissions to 25 per cent below 2000 levels will require hard work across the economy. But we know the Government also thinks this almost certainly won’t happen. Why? Because Penny Wong told us so in December. Ignore yesterday’s spin about recent progress in international climate talks. The Government believes that a new deal won’t meet the strict conditions it has put in place for Australia to sign up for a 25 per cent cut. If it is right — and there are plenty familiar with the climate talks who believe it is — Australia’s ultimate target will be in the range it was before yesterday: between 5 and 15 per cent. No change, then.”
ISSUE 3. The CPRS can reduce Australia’s emissions by 25% by 2020.
This is complete bull, regardless of what happens at Copenhagen. By allowing an unlimited number of permits to be bought from overseas, through such dubious schemes as REDD and the CDM, the CPRS cannot guarantee that even one tonne of Australian emissions (as opposed to domestic permits) will be cut. The Treasury modelling assumes no drop in Australian emissions for another 25 years (see Tim Colebatch, “One little word undoes the PM’s claims on greenhouse gases“, The Age, 23 December 2008).
This provision alone should be enough to scuttle the whole scheme. How can this be “a significant step forward on climate change” when it won’t guarantee to cut one tonne of domestic emissions? In fact, what the CPRS is doing is locking in, through legislation, for decades to come, a high-pollution economy dominated by high-pollution industries and brown jobs.
ISSUE 4. If the high-polluting nations such as Australia adopted a policy of reducing emissions to 25% below 1990 by 2020 this would likely lead to an international agreement that would stabilise emissions at 450ppm or lower.
Here is a case of “if you say something often enough, you’ll end up believing it”. Too many climate groups and climate scientists have been saying this so long and so often, yet it is so untrue.
The 2007 IPCC report found that Kyoto Annex 1 countries would need to reduce their emissions by 25-40% by 2020 for a 450ppm target. Note how everybody has dropped the 40% end of this formulation, as if it never existed. Australia, as the highest per capita polluter of the Annex I members, would certainly be at the 40% end of the range, but this is rarely mentioned.
But as I have noted elsewhere the target range of 25-40% by 2020 does NOT include “slow feedbacks” which increase climate sensitivity and require lower targets. Even the IPCC 2007 synthesis report noted that “emissions reductions… might be underestimated due to missing carbon cycle feedbacks” (page 67) and this may require the cumulative emissions budget for the 21st century (the total amount of GHGs than can be emitted for a stabilisation level) to be “about 27% less” than is assumed. But the 25-40/2020 target and other IPCC emission reduction scenarios do not include this consideration!
New research published last week and discussed in more detail here found that to restrict warming to 2C the total carbon budget available to the world is 190 billion tonnes of carbon emissions. Even if the world starting cutting emissions by 2% each year, that budget will run out by 2030 and we need zero emissions from 2030 on to keep to 2 degrees.
ISSUE 5. That 450ppm would reasonably limit global warming to 2 degrees.
No, it won’t. Analysis for the 2006 Stern report (p. 195) shows that a 450ppm CO2e target has:
• A 26–78% probability of exceeding 2c relative to pre-industrial
• A 4–50% probability of exceeding 3C
• A 0–34% probability of exceeding 4C
• A 0–21% probability of exceeding 5C
450ppm has a 4 to 50% probability of exceeding 3 degrees!!!! That is not defensible and I can’t understand how any body who works professionally on climate change could ever think for one second that it is a reasonable target to utter in public. What are they thinking?
After a careful reassessment of climate sensitivity and climate history data, James Hansen and his co-authors in Target atmosphere CO2: Where should humanity aim concluded that the tipping point for the presence, or absence, of any substantial ice-sheets on Earth is around 450 ppm (plus or minus 100 ppm) of CO2. This means that the CO2 levels often associated with a 2C rise – 450ppm – may just be the tipping point for the total loss of all ice sheets on the planet and a huge sea-level rise.
If you are silly enough to want to talk about a 2C target, then to have a 2 in 3 chance of holding to 2C, atmospheric carbon needs to be held to 400ppm CO2e and that requires a global reduction is emissions of 80% by 2050 (over 1990) and negative emissions after 2070. And with high climate sensitivity, a risk-averse target for 2C is around 350ppm CO2e – just to meet a 2C target that is actually dangerous.
The big groups know privately that 350 ppm and lower should be the target. John Connor of the Climate Institute told Crikey recently that the science leads us to 350ppm, and ACF Council has adopted a 350 ppm target, but this has not yet seen the light of day in ACF’s public advocacy.
ISSUE 6. That 2 degrees is a reasonable target to avoid dangerous climate change.
No, it will ensure that climate change is dangerous. A rise of 2C over pre-industrial temperatures will initiate large climate feedbacks in the oceans, on ice-sheets, and on the tundra, taking the Earth well past significant tipping points. Likely impacts include large-scale disintegration of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice-sheet; the extinction of an estimated 15– 40 per cent of plant and animal species; dangerous ocean acidification; increasing methane release; substantial soil and ocean carbon-cycle feedbacks; and widespread drought and desertification in Africa, Australia, Mediterranean Europe, and the western USA. If you don’t believe me, read Mark Lynas’s book, “Six Degrees”.
450ppm is roughly the current greenhouse gas level, and in 2008 two scientists. V. Ramanathan and Y. Feng in On avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system: Formidable challenges ahead found that if greenhouse gases were fixed at their 2005 levels the inferred warming is 2.4˚C (range 1.4˚C to 4.3˚C) and that would be sufficient to result in the loss of Arctic summer sea-ice, the Himalayan–Tibetan glaciers and the Greenland ice-sheet . The loss of Greenland ice sheet produces about a 7-metre global sea-level rise. One conclusion is that advocacy of the 25-40/2020 target, for example by the ACF in its 2008 “Special Places” campaign, will result in the destruction of many of Australia’s “special places” ACF wants to protect; Kakadu, for example, will salinate with a sea-level rise of less than a metre.
NASA climate science chief James Hansen told the US Congress in testimony last year that: “We have reached a point of planetary emergency… climate is nearing dangerous tipping points. Elements of a perfect storm, a global cataclysm, are assembled… the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than +2 degrees Celsius is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation.” But ACF says the government announcement of “a target of reducing Australia’s emissions by 25% by 2020 in the context of a Copenhagen agreement that has the effect of stabilising emissions at 450ppm or lower” is a “significant step forward on climate change”.
Take your pick, but I’d rather go with the climate scientist. As Ken Ward, the former deputy Director of Greenpeace USA and an environmental strategist has so acutely observed, we must “stop seeking and celebrating dinky achievements” because “nothing that we are doing, nor even seriously contemplating, comes anywhere near such a massive transformation [as is necessary], yet every actor on the political stage …downplays the terrible realities and trumpet small-scale solutions wrapped in upbeat rhetoric…. We are racing toward the end of the world and have no plan of escape, but it is considered impolite to acknowledge that fact in public.”
ISSUE 7. That if this legislation is passed, it is reasonable to expect that the government will do more and go further than its own legislation.
Pull the other leg.
It appears the strategy of the groups who have endorsed the CPRS is to pretend that we don’t face a climate crisis that requires emergency action, so they endorse incremental policies and never talk about the elephant in the room. Which is this: we only get one shot at this, and a trial run (read: locking in bad policy for decades) is not an option.
Today at just less than 1C of global warming we are witnessing of the destruction of the Arctic ecosystem. Eight million square kilometres of sea ice is disappearing fast each summer and may be entirely gone within a few years. Already 80% by volume of summer sea-ice has been loss, and regional warming of up to 5 degrees Celsius may have already pushed the Greenland ice-sheet (eventual sea-level rise of 7 metres) past its tipping point.
Do ACF and the Climate Institute and WWF tell the government this?
We know that the present level of greenhouse gases is enough to increase temperatures by more than 2 degrees Celsius over time. We have already gone too far, there is already too much carbon in the air. At less than 1 degrees Celsius we are on the way to triggering a multi-metre sea level rise than will devastate coastal infrastructure, delta peasant–farming communities and some of the world’s biggest cities. Our only choice is to head back to zero degrees Celsius of warming, to halt all emissions and drawdown atmospheric carbon to return the planet to a safe-climate zone.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute and Europe’s leading climate scientist, says that “we are on our way to a destabilisation of the world climate that has advanced much further than most people or their governments realise”, so “our survival would very much depend on how well we were able to draw down carbon dioxide to 280 parts per million”, compared to the present level of close to 390 parts per million.
Do ACF and the Climate Institute and WWF tell the government this?
Put starkly, we either keep warming under the range where carbon feedbacks become sufficiently pervasive as to make further human action futile, or we do not. We have a safe climate or we have a global catastrophe. There are no middle-of-the-road compromises. We must head back towards zero. At 1 degree Celsius the genie is out of the bottle, at 2 degrees Celsius the bottle is broken.
One of the great powers of the climate action movement is our capacity to withhold support from, and actively campaign against, actions of governments that are designed to fail, as the CPRS will. Presently there is political denial, even an arrogance of power that leads governments to believe that they can negotiate with the climate and the laws of physics and chemistry, a land of tradeoffs, where climate is just another issue, the politics partisan, the action slow, all embedded in a culture of compromise and failure. Monday 4 May was a great example.
It is a tragedy that some should glowingly support such failure.
David Spratt
5 May 2009
