Author: Bryan Walker

Climate Capitalism

Climate Capitalism: Global Warming and the Transformation of the Global Economy

Climate change science is clear and undeniable in its general thrust.  Climate change politics by contrast are murky and uncertain.  Peter Newell and Matthew Paterson have spent nearly two decades researching and writing about the politics, and their new book Climate Capitalism: Global Warming and the Transformation of the Global Economy reflects all the uncertainties and ambiguities.

They well understand the suspicions and anxieties felt in relation to the capitalist economy by many who take seriously the threat of climate change. The economy’s growth has been fed by increasing CO2 emissions and many of its actors seem heedless of the need to change that dependence. The early business response to climate change was automatic denial. More than that, positive attempts were made to discredit the scientific base on which the case for action was made and to give the impression of widespread public opposition to action. Some companies are still stuck in those responses and in some sectors of the economy they seem likely to remain vociferously opposed to the economic transformation required.

However the authors see no likelihood of the abandonment of capitalism or its dependence on growth. For them the question has to be how capitalism can be configured to grow while gradually replacing coal, gas and oil. It’s a very difficult task but not a hopeless one. They point to those within the world of business and finance who have come to realise that the science will not be gainsaid and that the costs of action would not be disastrous.  In a variety of ways those firms have begun to discern economic opportunities in a low-carbon economy. For sunrise industries, the nuclear industry and biotechnology companies the advantages are clear. For others reputation management and corporate social responsibility are to be considered. Overall there is a tendency to see failure to anticipate likely possibilities as a business risk — risk to reputation, risks of legal liabilities, risks of losing out on new market opportunities. It remains a mixed picture, but there is a policy momentum likely to keep the issue relatively high on the executive agenda.

Whether we like it or not, neoliberal capitalism has already shaped the character of our response to climate change. That is why emissions trading has become the preferred policy approach, ahead of environmental taxation measures. The authors comment that emissions trading became almost unstoppable once the dominant financial actors realised its potential as a new market, with its derivatives, options, swaps, insurance, and so on, and thus as a profitable enterprise.

The power of investors is to some extent being felt in driving an orientation to face climate change issues.  One example is the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), effectively a consortium of investors who write annually to corporations listed on stock exchanges asking them to report on matters relating to CO2 emissions and their perception of risks from climate change. The uptake has been impressive and by 2008 the CDP was backed by $57 trillion worth of assets from over 3000 financial institutions. Investment growth in renewable energy has been considerable in recent years. The book recognises that, given the neoliberal context we live in, mobilising the money of large institutional investors like insurance companies and investment funds will be crucial to the transformation to a low-carbon economy.

The authors lead the reader patiently through the apparently bewildering variety of mechanisms by which the demands for a flexible carbon market are addressed. Of particular interest is their examination of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism and its emission credits whereby purchasers in the North can enable projects in the South. It has proved far more popular than expected, though in practice the book acknowledges that it has not yet delivered the benefits that many hoped for and expected, and critics continue to see it as a fraudulent mechanism that lets rich countries off the hook.

As the explanations proceed it becomes very clear that market governance is the key to whether a market-based approach to climate change will succeed in reducing emissions. The book tackles this squarely. A market requires more than a minimum of creating property rights and enforcing contracts. It needs rules by which trading can occur, elaborate accounting systems to measure emissions and make companies report on them, and complex methodologies to estimate whether a project has reduced emissions. The authors distinguish three basic sorts of governance. First, by quantity. Here rules are set which establish overall limits for carbon emissions, allocate them among different players, and enforce those limits. Second, by price. In emissions trading schemes so long as the targets produce scarcity a price is created for carbon emissions permits which exerts a governing effect on behaviour. Price can also be affected directly, through carbon taxes. Some governments have instituted such taxes and the authors consider they should remain a possibility if necessary. The third type of governance is by disclosure, where business and other actors are required to report on their emissions profile.

How good is all this governance at present?  Not very, is the impression given. Targets set are often too weak. The flexibility allowed in meeting commitments means that carbon offsets are not sufficiently rigorous. The voluntary market is particularly prone to such problems. Can we learn and improve?  The authors think the EU has made considerable improvements to its emissions trading scheme as time has progressed, tightening its allocations and data collection methods. The voluntary carbon market has also considerably strengthened its certification schemes.

In the very uncertain future for climate capitalism the authors have a preference for what they call climate Keynesianism, where strong governance directs the markets more closely towards the goal of decarbonisation and integrates them globally, including a green Marshall Plan-type global scheme. Their filling out of this vision is central to the positive view they have tried to achieve of the potential of a capitalist economy to successfully meet the climate challenge.

The book is sympathetic to those whose interest in climate change is driven not by the potential to make money but by the gravity the issue poses.  But, say the authors, we have to understand how capitalism works if we’re going to have any chance of success in dealing with the threat in a humane way. It’s not easy, and it’s urgent. However there have been significant transformations of capitalist economies in the past. They instance the Bretton Woods system after the second world war which in a short space of time created a new global deal that produced an unprecedented period of smooth, rapid economic growth. On the technology side their analogy is the development of the railways in the mid-nineteenth century, a messy affair involving a number of entrepreneurial engineers acting competitively, and one which had far-reaching effects on daily life.  They urge novel and probably uneasy alliances – environmentalists and venture capitalists for example – as we assemble the necessary coalitions to rewrite the rules of the global economy.

In the course of developing its major themes the book is valuably informative on many of the details of carbon markets and trading. The reader who wants a better picture of complicated systems within reasonably brief compass will be rewarded.

[Buy at Fishpond (NZ), Amazon.com, Book Depository (UK)]

Agrofuels

Agrofuels: Big Profits, Ruined Lives and Ecological Destruction (Transnational Institute)

François Houtart, born in 1925, is a Belgian sociologist. He’s also been a catholic priest for sixty years. His orientation can be seen in the NGO he founded in 1976, CETRI, which aims to promote dialogue with third world social movements and to encourage resistance and action. He’s one of the most active members of the World Social Forum. The concerns these organisations represent are reflected in his book first published in French last year, now translated into English: Agrofuels: Big Profits, Ruined Lives and Ecological Destruction.

Houtart is far from unaware of the climate crisis, which he describes in fully adequate terms. He is also aware that the question of energy is not only central to the climate crisis but also faces the exhaustion of its nonrenewable sources within the century. But he argues clearly and strongly that agrofuels (biofuels) as at present produced are no solution to either the climate crisis or the energy crisis and are taking a terrible toll on the lives of those dispossessed by their advance in countries of the South.

Before examining the realities of rapid agrofuel development Houtart places it in the context of the neoliberal discourse on climate change.  Neoliberals began by denying or playing down climate change. Scepticism and political manoeuvring marked this stage, with attempts to delegitimize the scientific approach. However a second phase began to develop as the extent of the climate crisis became evident. Market-oriented solutions can be found. Optimism pervades this approach. The appropriate technological solutions can be employed and capital accumulation can continue. But in relation to agrofuels Houtart says hold on: new externalities have emerged and not been accounted for in the reckoning of profit from agrofuels.

His attention is largely on the so-called first generation agrofuels — ethanol from alcohol-producing plants and bio-diesel from plants yielding oil. He acknowledges the potential advantages of second generation agrofuels in that they don’t use food crops, require fewer fossil inputs, and aim at using the whole plant.

His survey of Brazil’s production of ethanol from sugar cane considers the ecological and social effects of its production and the type of economic model by which it is developed. Although sugar cane does not directly encroach on forest land, which doesn’t suit its growth, it displaces pastureland and soya cultivation, pushing them towards forested regions. Another displacement, that of population, is a consequence of the massive monoculture which requires land concentration. Big companies and foreign investment are required for the scale of the operation, which is clearly orientated towards exportation. The social consequences include a considerable elimination of labour, particularly that of peasants. For those who take employment in the sugar cane plantations the work is so hard and the pay so low as to be akin to a new form of slavery.

Palm oil plantations in Asia, mainly Malaysia and Indonesia, displace vast forests of trees containing carbon.  The driest areas are used first, but when plantations move to the marshy land of forests growing on peat bog the soil must be dried after the forests are cut, in the process releasing more carbon than that contained in the trees. Local populations suffer illegal misappropriations, unjustified debt, and harsh employment conditions.  In Latin America Colombia has a massive lead in the palm oil sector. The author includes at this point in his book a wrenching personal narrative of his own visit to Colombia, recounting brutal displacements of local peasants and massacres by the paramilitary. “It is difficult not to feel rage when you see such things.” He briefly participates in a protest operation to destroy palm trees, “the work of death” as one of the peasants describes them.

The author has kinder words for jatropha, though not when farmed as a large-scale monoculture. In many of its present forms of production it is aimed at satisfying local needs and has the merit of respecting biodiversity.

Ecological and social externalities are being ignored in the development of agrofuel monocultures. The model under which large-scale agrofuel production is presently pursued focuses on economic efficiency which means concentration of land ownership, heavy use of fertilisers and pesticides, exploitation of cheap labour, large companies capable of transcending national frontiers, and quick return of profit. The results include forced peasant migration (with 60 million estimated to be at risk of expulsion from their land to make way for agrofuel crops), the destruction of biodiversity and carbon sinks, water pollution, soil contamination, and other disastrous consequences which arise because the productive operations have excluded them as costs. “But one day, we are all going to suffer from the effects, including financiers.”

It’s not as if agrofuels produced in this way are a solution to the climate problem.  Nor can they be more than a marginal alleviation of the need for new forms of energy. They use a development model which owes its legitimacy to its own success.  Houtart sees this as the logic of capitalism which continues to consider as externalities everything that does not enter directly into the calculation of exchange value.

He proposes five conditions for accepting the production of agrofuels: respecting biodiversity; avoiding encroachment on forests, especially primary forests; respecting soils and underground water; promoting peasant agriculture; combating the monopoly of the multinationals. If these conditions were met, he considers the production of agrofuels would be automatically towards the needs of the local populations, which is a rejection of the capital logic of exchange value in favour of use value.

His final chapter takes a brief look at the various alternative ways of solving the climate and energy crises and proposes four principles for an alternative development model to that offered by the engagement of big business in agrofuel production: sustainable use of natural resources; priority given to use value rather than exchange value; a generalized democracy; multiculturalism and interculturalism. A society which respects those principles can readily engage with energy economy and new sources of energy that respect nature and social relations.

Houtart is obviously no friend to global capitalism in at least some of its modes.  But his case against the agrofuel developments, laid out with painstaking detail, is hardly ideological. The ecological consequences in the various locations are carefully described.  The human consequences in the places where the crops are grown are for the most part dispassionately explained, save for the one brief first-hand Colombian account he allows himself. One doesn’t need to have a particular view of neoliberal capitalism to see that these consequences are bad. The extensive agrofuel industry Houtart focuses on looks like a blind alley so far as climate change mitigation is concerned, looks positively inhumane in the exploitation of labour and the dispossession of peasants, and fails badly in its ecological effects.  Capital may be an important ingredient in the fight against climate change, but not along this path.

[Buy from Fishpond (NZ), Amazon.com, Book Depository (UK)]

Electric cars take over

I recently watched the video of a TED talk by Shai Agassi. It dates from a year ago. I’m late catching up. But there may well be other readers who haven’t caught up with him either, so I’ll report my experience. He jumps straight to the point in his opening sentence: “So how would you run a whole country without oil?”

Agassi doesn’t intend his question to be hypothetical or far off. He’s talking about the near future.  And he considers the answer lies in electricity, preferably renewable, as a fuel for vehicles. Not a few vehicles, but 99% of them.  And cars as good as any that we have today, preferably more convenient and affordable. There’s no need to wait for further technological development. We have all we need already.

You can listen to his talk below. He sets out a compelling case, and an optimistic one. He is founder and CEO of Better Place, a company that works with governments, businesses and utility companies to accelerate the transition to sustainable transportation. Their website repays attention.  I’ll extract a few items from it here.

Electricity-powered transportation fits very well with the development of renewable energy sources.  Better Place accepts fully the imperative to stop the burning of fossil fuels.:

The economics of renewables create an extraordinary opportunity for transportation.  But the economics of transportation also create an extraordinary opportunity for renewables.

First, an electric vehicle (EV) system can take advantage of underutilized electricity, reducing oil consumption and providing resources for renewable development provided the EV system is complemented with a “smart grid” that optimally manages the flow of available electricity. Second, EVs can alleviate the problems of intermittency, unpredictability and off-peak generation that have hindered the progress of renewable energy in the past. Third, because EVs offer energy efficiency up to three times greater than that of gasoline-powered vehicles, EVs reduce the overall burden on energy resources.

The transition is already under way:

The electric car is becoming inevitable.  Nearly every major automaker has an active program to develop and introduce EVs, ultimately providing the consumer a broad range of options.  Better Place is currently working with the Renault-Nissan Alliance, which will be among the first to introduce EVs, and is also in discussion with major auto manufacturers around the world.

These electric vehicles will be distinctive in more respects than their zero tailpipe emissions.  EVs inherently provide instant torque, delivering smooth, seamless acceleration.  EVs also offer ultra-quiet operation.  And since these cars typically have half the moving parts of their gas combustion engine counterparts,  lower maintenance costs are expected.  All this means that in the coming decade, EVs will be at the center of mainstream personal transportation. (my italics)

The lithium-ion batteries are adequate to the task, and some of the details are discussed here on the website.  On performance:

Now, a 24 kWh lithium-ion battery (about 200 kg) in a competitively priced medium-sized sedan provides a range of about 160 kilometers on a single charge.

But EVs will need the same freedom to go anywhere that drivers of combustion engine cars enjoy today. That means battery switch stations:

At Better Place battery switch stations, drivers enter a lane and the station takes over from there. The car proceeds along a conveyor while the automated switch platform below the vehicle aligns under the battery, washes the underbody, initiates the battery release process and lowers the battery from the vehicle. The depleted battery is placed onto a storage rack for charging, monitoring and preparation for the another vehicle. A fully-charged battery is then lifted into the waiting car. The switch process takes less time than a stop at the gas station and the driver and passengers may remain in the car throughout.

Battery charging provision at places such as homes, offices and public areas is important to broad adoption of EVs. Better Place develops, installs and manages large networks of charge spots that will aim to give consumers the convenience and services they need to confidently make the transition to EVs.

I’m in no position to comment on the feasibility of what Agassi proposes. But I see he was considered worthy of inclusion in Time’s 100 most influential people list in2009. And I certainly enjoyed the buoyancy of his talk and of the website.  I took pleasure from some of the comments of a featured guest blog on the site from Gary Kendall of Sustainability:

A great indicator that disruptive innovations are nearing the all-important tipping point is when powerful incumbents start peddling nonsense masquerading as facts, to sow doubt about the viability of the emerging technology or business model… By scrambling to erect roadblocks to new market entrants that threaten their hegemony, oligopolies are only doing what comes naturally to an organism under attack by an existential threat. And if your job is to find, extract, refine, distribute and sell liquid fuels, then electric cars certainly qualify…

“You EV guys are very well meaning – and we wish you well – but until the world stops burning coal, allow motor manufacturers to continue tinkering with incremental efficiency gains while we drill, baby, spill!”.

Back in New Zealand I ponder a vehicle fleet powered by electricity from wind farms or wave power. Bad news for petrol stations and perhaps for oil companies undertaking the expense of deep sea drilling operations. Perhaps food for thought for the Minister of Energy?  Or is that expecting a bit much?

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Straight Up

“I joined the new media because the old media have failed us. They have utterly failed to face unpleasant facts.” So writes Joseph Romm of blogging, in his new book Straight Up, a themed selection from the thousands of posts on his widely respected blog ClimateProgress.org. It’s as direct, lively and unequivocal as its title suggests. Romm, an admirer of George Orwell, knows how to express himself with admirable clarity and to satisfy what he describes as “a great hunger out there for the bluntest possible talk”.

The “status quo media” receive a drubbing. Romm is critical of their giving the same credence to a handful of US scientists, most receiving funds from the fossil fuel industry, as they give to hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists. Senior political reporters are writing more and more pieces as the issue becomes political; most know little about global warming and haven’t bothered to educate themselves. They stick with the “horse-race perspective”, measuring only who is up and who is down. In one post he criticises even Andy Revkin of the New York Times for suggesting that catastrophe is a marginal possibility and that campaigners for carbon dioxide curbs are suppressing the uncertainty in their picture. Revkin, says Romm, should know that catastrophe is not at the edge of the debate. The Washington Post he accuses of publishing unmitigated tabloid nonsense on climate change.

On the science Romm considers that the IPCC 2007 summary report underestimated likely climate impacts by not giving sufficient weight to positive feedbacks that accelerate warming and by assuming there would be aggressive action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The book includes a stunning post written in March 2009, where he reports on more recent scientific literature. Under five headings he relentlessly lists the evidence that points to catastrophic impacts this century under business-as-usual conditions — temperature rise of 5-7 degrees, sea level rise of 5 feet or more, dust-bowlification in the Southwest US, high loss of species on land and sea, and likely further unexpected impacts difficult to foresee. So we must stabilise at 450 ppm or below, or risk humanity’s self-destruction. The cost of action is maybe 0.12 percent of GDP per year or a little higher if we aim for 350 ppm. This is the reality that the scientific community and environmentalists and progressives need to start articulating cogently.

The solution is clean energy, a strong focus of Romm’s blogging. For a number of years in the mid-1990s he worked in the Department of Energy on energy efficiency and renewable energy. He considers that the US has all the clean energy technology it needs to start reducing emissions aggressively and cost effectively now. Deployment is the key. Electricity efficiency is high on his list. He points to McKinsey’s estimate that one third of the US greenhouse gas reductions by 2030 could come from electricity efficiency and be achieved at negative marginal costs. California is a model: if all America adopted their energy efficiency policies the country would never have to build another polluting power plant. Concentrated solar power is the technology on which Romm places most hope, because it generates primary energy in the form of heat which can be stored 20 to 100 times more cheaply than electricity –and with far greater efficiency. If all the renewable technologies that are commercial or nearly commercial today are deployed they will be enough to see the US through to 2050. He emphasises the steadily declining cost curve, due to economies of scale and the manufacturing learning curve.

As peak oil approaches it’s crucial that we avoid the strategy preferred by most in the oil industry of ramping up unconventional oil. Oil from tar sands and shale will make global warming worse. Coal to diesel will be catastrophic. The way forward for vehicle transport is better fuel economy standards and a move to plug-in hybrids which he discusses in some detail.

Romm has two key questions for the US. Will they voluntarily give up fossil fuels before they are forced to do so after it is too late to stop the catastrophe? When they do give them up will they be a global leader in the new technologies, or will they have been overtaken by other countries, especially China?

Romm was an advocate of the “flawed” Waxman-Markey climate bill which finally made it through the House of Representatives in June 2009. How can his climate politics realism be reconciled with his climate science realism? He replies that the bill was the only game in town and its passing a staggering achievement. It didn’t do enough, but it began a process and established a framework that can be strengthened over time as the science warrants. His political realism is also on view in his optimistic take on the result of Copenhagen. High level negotiations by the senior leaders of the big emitters seems to him a more likely way forward than the consensus process of the UN.

In right-wing US circles politics and climate disinformation have become entangled. Romm sees the conservative think tanks, media pundits and politicians as driving the disinformation campaign. He observes that while they can stop the country from taking the necessary action to avert catastrophe, they can’t actually stop the climate from changing. And some of the congressional conservatives are pushing policies that will lead to unimaginable planetary horror. Why? A post on a Krauthammer article in the Washington Post finds the heart of US conservatives’ hatred of climate science in the fact that it requires action by government, which is the same as socialism (except when it comes to government action on behalf of the nuclear and fossil fuel industries).

Misinformation has had a field day in the US. In part this is due to the organised campaign and the repeated broadcast of its messages by conservative pundits and politicians like George Will and Rush Limbaugh and Sen. James Inhofe. The “balanced” presentation favoured by the media hasn’t helped. But there are messaging failures from progressives in general and scientists in particular. Romm strongly opposes the notion that the impacts of global warming should be downplayed in communication to the public. Doing that would amount to unilateral disarmament in the battle to have the public understand what will happen if we continue on the path of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions. People need to know the truth.  However he considers that some of the simple rules of rhetoric need to be better used in getting the message across. He identifies three of them as simple language, frequent repetition, and skilful use of figures of speech, especially metaphor and irony. The posts discussing better techniques of communicating the science are well worth attention and clearly underly his own practice.

Romm’s industry as a blogger is phenomenal, as anyone who follows Climate Progress will know. The selection of posts that he has chosen for this book testify that quantity doesn’t rule out quality. They have translated well to the printed page. Many of them repay close reader attention and together they serve to highlight the major themes which guide his work. The urgency displayed in his 2007 book Hell and High Water is undiminished.

[Available from Fishpond (NZ), Amazon.com, Book Depository (UK)]

Which is the greater crime?

Alice Bows’ testimony evidently wasn’t enough to persuade the Aberdeen jury to acquit the nine Plane Stupid protestors accused of breaching the peace by their brief occupation of Aberdeen airport last year. A majority verdict yesterday declared them guilty, and the Guardian reports that they are likely to face heavy fines or jail terms.

Those undertaking acts of civil disobedience do not normally expect to escape legal consequences. One of the defendants, Don Glass, 25, of Glasgow, said afterwards he was not surprised to be found guilty. However he pointed out that the trial had served a useful purpose:

“ We were in the self-titled oil capital of Europe and to get climate change in front of a jury is an achievement in itself. To get one of the top sheriffs in Aberdeen to say let’s not dispute that climate change is man-made is an achievement.

“Two weeks talking about the important civil disobedience and protest and freedom of expression in the face of runaway climate change is an achievement. We now know the importance of non-violent direct action in the fact of inaction from the courts.”

What he meant by inaction from the courts is probably indicated by the comments of another protestor, Tilly Gifford, 24, from Glasgow:

“We set out to show in court that policies such as the aviation white paper contradict what the science demands. Now that the court has heard expert witnesses testify to the imperative need to cut emissions, they are mandated to prosecute the real criminals, the corporations who are profiting from polluting.”

There appears to be no legal structure to enable charges against corporations and feet-dragging governments with crimes against future generations and probably against existing populations in some parts of the world.  But the claim that acts of non-violent civil disobedience have legal excuse  because they aim to prevent a higher crime against humanity through carbon emissions is an entirely reasonable defence to offer. If Don Glass’s declaration post-trial that climate protesters now have to step up their campaigns of civil disobedience proves to have substance, we will see more such trials and hear more such defences. Even when they fail they will surely keep the question alive in the public mind. I salute those who are prepared to do that. And lament that it should be necessary. In a rational world it would by now be the chief focus of government and business to work furiously to decarbonise our economies.