COP 17 Youth Plea for Action on Global Warming - "Get It Done!" (from The Ecosocialist Blog)

COP 17. The Message for humanity is simple - Rise up or Die (Youth delegate inspires with a touch of 'occupy')10/12/2011 s  In response to the failure of COP 17 the Bolivian Ambassador has said that "only a  movement from below can save us now" and this speech brings that movement from  below  (in the form of Occupy) into Durban and toward action on climate change.  I've been struggling to find anything I wanted to post about COP 17 - The expectations  were low, the outcome was in line with those expectations - But this speech 'got me',  reminiscent perhaps of the young Canadian Severn Cullis-Suzuki speaking at the  earth summit in Rio in 1992 -  Anjali Appadurai ends by mic-checking occupy style ' Get it Done,  Get it Done ' and this is the moment that for me lifts the gloom. ...Rest of article and video HERE

It's a Wonderful World

Sister Earth? We may need Keppler 22b - if only we can develop warp travel (solar powered!)

Just broadcast this evening by the BBC, the final episode of the Frozen Planet looked at climate change in the Arctic and Antarctic. Cataloguing the break up of ice shelves the size of Greater London, a 3C increase in local temperatures over the last fifty years and the ever southwards migration of penguins in search of colder climes, the crime and danger of global warming is never more evident. And yet this very week, as oil rich Arctic state Canada has been rumoured to be on the verge of withdrawing its already lukewarm support for the Kyoto Protocol, the massively under-reported Durban conference on climate change has struggled to make any progress at all. Yet again, humanity seems as far as ever from taking any real action on carbon emissions - which have risen faster than ever over the last twelve months, with Britain as culpable as anyone else.

This advert for BBC Natural History programmes played at the end - a touchingly melancholic celebration of our home. In the week that NASA revealed it has discovered what may turn out to be our sister planet - 600 light years away - and a sci fi film is released about Another Earth, it is a tribute to the power of public broadcasting that a series as powerfully thought-provoking yet visually stunning as this can still be made to highlight the reality that we have only one planet, and we need to start looking after it a lot better, very, very quickly.

Antarctica

Mother Naure weeps as the ice melts.

There is a myth among the climate change denial industry that the climate of Antarctica is actually cooling rather than warming, and that this disproves the case for global warming. One theory is that the (man made) ozone hole has temporarily cooled the stratosphere and this makes for local cooling in spite of global warming; but needless to say, even this week, outright deniers claim that the thinning and breaking of huge swathes of glaciers is meaningless.

This surprising claim is in the face of the 1.2C average increase in Antarctic temperatures between 1959 and 1996. And it also ignores the plain fact that on a more front line level, there is clear warming taking place - for example, the Antarctic tourist industry (yes, there is such a thing, now) is rubbing its hands with glee at the profitable prospect of being able to take tourists deeper into Antarctica - one tour has been extended from 11 to 14 days because there are far more opportunities to disembark and sight see compared to a few years ago.

And study after study, including this year, has shown increasing thinning and melt of ice shelves, with massive icebergs resulting. while a plague of parasitic crabs moving south with warmer water is currently causing concern for local flora and fauna. By contrast, the supposed cooling evidence comes from data collected at just one location on the Continent - the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long-Term Ecological Research Station, along with rather a lot of extrapolation.

Antarctica has been described as the canary of the world - perhaps we should be listening harder to its faltering song.


The music and beauty of Antarctica - with film from the threatened south and north poles:

More Funny Weather

Today, with supremely smug irony, the British Parliament has been discussing slashing the feed-in tariff (originally designed to encourage the adoption of solar power by domestic consumers) as part of the Government's so-called "green deal". It is being cut by over a half on the spurious argument that it increases the cost of electricity to consumers and consequently pushes people into fuel poverty - I say spurious because the highest estimated increase caused by FITs is £6 per annum onto the average household bill, with some estimates as low as just 30p. This is zilch by most standards and even more so when set against the rise of several hundred pounds per annum that the Government has contentedly allowed profiteering energy companies to add to fuel costs in the last year or two.

This comes in the same week as a World Meteorological Organisation report has revealed that in 2010, in spite of all the talk and more talk by the IPCC and Governments, the rate of increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached its highest yet - an additional 2.3 parts per million, putting us firmly on course to exceed even the worst scenarios previously anticipated by climatologists. These figures endorse an earlier report by the International Energy Agency in May, which produced similarly stark findings. Even if magically all further increase was to stop, temperatures would rise by around 3C by 2050 - it may not sound much, but its impact would be on a level that would spell disaster for human societies in many parts of the world through the collapse of their agriculture and social systems. Less directly affected countries would find the cost of basic needs such as food and water rocketing well beyond the point of social crisis, and mass migrations would almost certainly trigger conflict on an unprecedented scale.

Don't believe it? It would be nice if it wasn't true and tempting to want to think that; and this week, the BBC announced that the global warming episode of its "Frozen Planet" series won't be shown in the USA so as not to disturb the willful ignorance of the US public, who are among the worst polluters on the planet. 

However, aside from the evidence of increasingly extreme weather events, like the fact that British temperatures this past week have been around double the seasonal average - a whopping 18C on Sunday compared to the 9.5C norm for mid-November - the plain science is this:

- the more carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere, the more heat from the Sun is trapped in our atmosphere. Too little and we would freeze; too much, and we'd fry. The margins either way are surprisingly (and terrifyingly) small - humanity's hold on the planet is tenuous to say the least.

- through our massively increasing use of fossil fuels, such as gas, coal and wood due to the processes of the industrial age from the 1750s onwards, humans have pumped unprecedented amounts of carbon dioxide and other gasses with even greater "greenhouse" effects, like methane and nitrous oxide (currently the fastest increasing gas), into the atmosphere. Indeed, in the last fifty years, we have used more carbon fuel than in the rest of history combined.

- Consequently, since 1750, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from 280 parts per million to 389 parts per million. At the same time, temperatures have climbed, sometimes exaggerated or cooled by natural variations like El Nino and El Nina, and even occasionally by sunspots, but overall, the ongoing, underlying trend is up, and has nothing to do with any natural phenomena. Rather, it is created and fanned by human activity for precisely the scientific reasons set out above: burning fossil fuels creates greenhouse gas emissions which trap more and more heat in our atmosphere.

The current rate of emissions is in spite of the downturn in economic activity through the global recession - and Britain is as much to blame as anywhere, with a 2.8% increase in emissions in 2010. And as the planet warms, we are already past the "feedback" thresholds for a number of phenomena which will start to cause an exponential increase in greenhouse gas levels. These include the diminishing of the albedo effect as Arctic ice melts and the "whiteout" of the northern hemisphere declines, reflecting less light and heat back into outer space. Similarly in the north, the melting of the Siberian tundra after millennia of permafrosting is releasing dangerous quantities of methane, which is around twenty times more powerful at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Eventually, what has been triggered by human activity and could still be at least mitigated by human action, will take on a life and dynamic entirely of its own.

So, just as every long march begins with a single step, every piece of action taken now to reduce greenhouse gas is utterly vital, not to saving the planet - it will endure - but to saving our civilisation and even our species. To this end, the delay and trimming by the Con Dem Government is more than lamentable - it is a betrayal of our futures and a crass denial of reality.

Funny weather indeed. But no laughing matter.

INTERMISSION

I started this blog rather casually about 2 years ago as any quick glance at my first few posts will show. I began to write more regularly almost twelve months back, when the controversy about the Islamic cultural centre in New York was raging. Since then, I've posted most weeks and I hope anyone who has been kind enough to follow the blog has enjoyed reading it.

I had for some time wanted to develop my own thinking about green politics and values and hopefully some of my postings reflect that, if at times a bit self-indulgently (although I guess that's what blogs are partly for!). A few of my friends who follow this blog know that in the past I was active (along with some of them) in the Liberal Democrats, including as a parliamentary and European candidate many moons ago. Although I've always been left of centre, my philosophy and politics have only shifted to full socialism (of the ecological variety) over the last 10 to 15 years, travelling in the opposite direction to the rightwards journey taken so eagerly by the Labour Party in its quest for power, followed quickly in train by the Lib Dems.

Before the 1992 General Election, in my capacity as Chair of One World Democrats, I was part of a working group that produced  the Lib Dems' aid and international development policy. It sought a radical remission of debt in line with the Jubilee 2000 programme initiated by a friend, Dr Martin Dent of Keele University, and looked to committing the UK to a range of environmental and social justice measures.

By contrast, the equivalent body in the run up to the 1997 election was a very different beast. It started its work with an injunction that we must not say anything that could be portrayed as to the left of (New) Labour. Given that Tony Blair was by then on a full march to the right, it was quite a gallop to ensure our policy was sufficiently anodyne and meaningless to avoid any trouble. When One World Democrats proposed a pretty modest amendment in support of small scale co-operatives, it was hysterically shouted down from the platform at the party conference. In a tour de force that could only be described as a rant, Alan Beith MP, then Deputy Leader, denounced it as "communistic" because we had committed the cardinal sin of referring to "workers and peasants" in the text. Taking the issue to ludicrous levels, a week later in the Guardian, then-leader Paddy Ashdown  described how the "green fascist" element in the party had been seen off.

As with that, so with so very many other policies. The two supposedly progressive parties in mainstream UK politics laid themselves down on the altar of power and slaughtered their beliefs, gutting themselves of any challenge to the corrupt consensus on free market politics that dominates Britain to this day. The main parties are now pretty interchangeable and the Con Dem Coalition is the final, dreadful destination of this long, sad and damaging process. It is the apotheosis of neoliberal democracy as described by Robert McChesney in his foreword to Noam Chomsky's "Profit Over People" - "...neoliberal democracy in a nutshell: trivial debate over minor issues by parties that basically pursue the same pro-business policies regardless of formal differences and campaign debate." And the consequence? "A depoliticized citizenry marked by apathy and cynicism."

My personal disillusion crystallised while doing a Masters degree on employment relations and law at Keele University. Taught from a Marxist perspective, its analysis of workplace and societal relations helped me towards an understanding of the inherent conflict between the interests of the majority of people (employees) and the few (owners/shareholders), and how these are reinforced again and again by the impersonal mechanics of capitalism. With the corporate personality so devastatingly critiqued in Joel Bakan's "The Corporation" as deeply psychopathic, global capitalism stood evident to me as the fundamental cause of our growing worldwide problems. A system that functions by producing goods at the lowest possible cost (including the lowest possible pay for workers' labour) and then selling at the highest conceivable price will by its nature never provide the fair distribution and careful use of resources we so urgently need to avoid worldwide catastrophe. Practically as well as ethically, capitalism has failed.

So in this blog, I have written more recently about ecosocialism, which puts social justice at the heart of the environmental sustainability agenda. It is a still forming philosophy, though with long antecedents. But in particular, I am grateful to people like Martin O'Beirne and Derek Wall for their own blog posts, links and longer articles on ecosocialism and how we can challenge the major problems facing us. Ecosocialism, would mean radical changes, but ones that would unleash once more our true, human nature. Contrary to the myths we are taught, history shows the human story at its core to be one of co-operation and mutual aid for the many aeons before the first market was open or the first coin minted. It can be that way again, and without any need to revert to cave dwelling!

My thanks for your time and attention and comments, here and on Facebook and Twitter over the last year. I am taking a short break for the next few weeks - although I will hopefully take in some of the Green Party conference in Sheffield (link here for any who would like to know more).

Though I am certainly not disappearing, thanks and, for September, so long - the posts will all still be here, but Viridis Lumen will be dimming the candle and shielding the lantern, until we meet again on the climate change frontline...

FILM: A Shared Earth?

The Earth is our home, the only place we have. But, as the film "Home", which is presented in full below (93 minutes approx - please click through to Youtube), powerfully demonstrates, it is in deep peril because of our activities. As a result of our desperately wasteful use and destruction of our resources, our unfair distribution of the planet's wealth, and the global warming that is driven by our ludicrous release of massive quantities of carbon into the atmosphere, our only living environment is at serious risk of becoming uninhabitable.

"Home", directed by French photographer and environmentalist, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, is beautifully filmed. It is as fine an exposition as could be made of how our planet works, how life evolved and how human activities have severely damaged the delicate balance between air, water and life, to the point that our ability to survive socially and even biologically is now in imminent jeopardy.

Arthus-Bertrand's profession as an aerial photographer is evident throughout and the rich colours and sweeping visual panoramas give "Home" a stunning impact, reinforcing both the beauty of our Earth and the dangers it faces. Yet it merely hints at some of the real issues driving the problems - it notes that 20% of the population of the world use 80% of its resources; 2% of the population own over 50% of the wealth; and half of the world's poorest people live in resource rich countries - but it avoids any consideration of how or why these iniquities have come about. There is some sacrifice of accuracy for image too - for example, one scene on over-fishing shows African fishermen standing round a pile of fish, almost implying it is their fault - there is no mention of huge factory ships from industrialised nations that can take more fish in a single catch than some Pacific nations manage in an entire year (for more click here). "Home" touches on the need for greater sharing of resources, but it fails to explain how, nor does it examine or expose the system - capitalist free markets - that has driven us to where we are, the edge of our own extinction.

This is perhaps not entirely unsurprising - because in the very first frame, a range of corporate logos drift into view - Gucci, YSL, Puma and others - the subsidiaries of the conglomerate PPR, which financed the film. The logos twist and turn to form the film's title, a highly counter-productive intro which belies the powerful content of the production. Yet whatever their motive, it is to PPR's credit that they funded this movie, which goes far beyond the flaccid muddle that was Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth". But by ducking the key issue of how to transition to a sustainable society, it represents only the first steps on a much longer journey.

There is not the space to continue that journey in full here, but within the Green movement, more and more are arguing that environmental sustainability and social justice are inextricably linked - if the planet's limited resources are to be stewarded sustainably, they need to be shared fairly, and capitalism simply cannot deliver this. Please see the review of Derek Wall's "Rise of the Green Left" (here) for one treatise on potential ways forward. Both he and others increasingly coalesce around the ideals of ecosocialism.

This term remains very broadly defined, but essentially values the sharing of resources, emphasises greater economic equality, and shifts resource ownership towards co-operatives and mutuals. It prizes long-term planning so we think about the next several generations of people as opposed to the next few years of shares dividends. By advocating legislative and social action to change our economics, ecosocialism begins to move towards a situation where, rather than being forever pushed to strive for, buy and consume "more", people can be genuinely and happily content with "enough".

Here are some links to ecosocialist blogs, websites and videos.

Blog - The Ecosocialist

Blog - Another Green World

Video - Ian Angus on Ecosocialism and Climate Change

Video - Bill McKibben on economic and climate justice
Web - Green Left (Britain)
Web - Green Left Weekly (Australia)
Web - Nordic Green Left (English language site)
Web - Climate and Capitalism

Web - Ecosocialist International Network

Web - Ecosocialism Canada

And here is "Home", our planet Earth.

                     

Book Review: "The Rise of the Green Left" by Derek Wall

Derek Wall is a former Speaker of the Green Party of England & Wales and a key proponent of the growing ecosocialist movement which is the subject of his book, "The Rise of the Green Left". He teaches political economy, but this is no dry academic text riddled with political theory. Rather, it is a cri de coeur, with a vital analysis of the problems confronting the planet as untrammelled capitalism hungrily gobbles up our biosphere, spreading the poisonous profits it generates so unequally that billions either go hungry or compliantly join in the rape and destruction of our living space, buying into the lie that their hard work will eventually be rewarded.

Derek Wall contrasts the long term sustainability of the shared Commons, written about extensively by Elinor Ostrom, with the inherent need for capitalism to create goods which become obsolete sooner and sooner, either via technical breakdown or aspirational shifts in fashion. The corollary is the burgeoning waste of resources even at a time of rapidly increasing resource scarcity - something which does not alarm capitalism given that it thrives on scarcity.  Capitalism is driven by a mechanism that ignores morality - even superficially "green" initiatives such as growing biofuels for American and European cars in Colombia are shown to have involved armed gangs torturing and murdering local farmers into selling their lands so that traditional, sustainable pastures could be destroyed and replaced with alien, but profitable, biofuel crops. There are echoes here of Joel Bakan's psychological diagnosis of corporate capitalism as essentially psychopathic.

The Commons approach of sharing, in sharp comparison, reduces waste massively and conserves resources, encouraging a socio-economic system based on co-operation and sufficiency as opposed to competition and endless growth. Viewing people as part of Nature rather than either somehow apart from or in dominion over it, ecosocialism seeks to synthesise the most vital aspects of both ecology and socialism, with the inextricable symbiosis between social justice and environmental sustainability emphasised and illustrated again and again.

This is an important document for anyone interested in how green politics can deliver a truly different society and provide an answer to the claim that there is no alternative to capitalism. It challenges socialists to consider the need for sustainability in their thinking about social change. And it challenges the green movement, positing the need for a more coherent ideological narrative to underpin the authentic concerns of many of those involved. Greens who argue for individual or local action alone miss the point that, for example, even if every American citizen took every step argued for by Al Gore in his Inconvenient Truth film, this would achieve barely a third of the required reduction in US carbon emissions. "Lifestyle change is not enough; deeper structural change is needed."

Collective, worldwide action is vital - this timely, highly readable and usefully engaging tome sets out some of the paths we can take towards a far happier world. Tracing the thinking behind a sustainable and just human society back as far as Marx and Engels, the book charts the progress of ecosocialism to date. Latin America is a particular example to the world; but the book also looks at developments elsewhere, including the rise of ecosocialism within green and left political parties like Die Linke in Germany, and the establishment of the global Ecosocialist International Network. It highlights practical soldairty between movements in different parts of the world, such as combined action between Peruvian trade unions and British climate change activists following the Bagua massacre in 2009.

Derek Wall argues for an inclusive approach, embracing a diverse range of strategies and tactics and a wide range of thinking. The leap from where we are now to where we need to be is substantial, and so a welcome segment of the book covers possible transitional steps, such as progressive mutualisation of the economy, land reform and conversion of military production to peaceful and renewable purposes. He explicitly rejects the narrow dogmatic purity that so often stymies the Left, though equally cautions that political parties and individuals within them risk being seduced by power and so absorbed into the mainstream, neutralising their capacity to effect real change. Constant self-challenge and renewal within radical movements are important in order to effectively tackle wider societal issues.

With a global reach, it is an urgent but optimistic manifesto for positive ecosocialist change. The final chapter sets out a range of resources and channels, worldwide, providing a practical basis for ecosocialist action that can really work for planet and people. Essential reading for anyone who wants to work for a new world.

The Rise of the Green Left - Inside the Worldwide Ecosocialist Movement

Derek Wall ISBN: 9780745330365    Published by Pluto Press (link)

The New Dark Age

As British Conservative Members of the European Parliament threaten to vote tomorrow against a resolution demanding substantial cuts in carbon emissions across the European Union, news emerged this week of a growing scientific consensus that finally links disasters such as the recent American tornadoes and the record-breaking drought in the Horn of Africa to the process of climate change.

In the sceptical Daily Mail this week an article reported that scientists are now prepared to link extreme weather events to global warming for the first time.
But its readers were having none of it. Their comments included:

"I guess when they examined rocks over many Millions of year, before man, these extremes must be only down to the weather. When humans appeared it seems there are people, who want us all to carry a whip, when something strange happens we should beat ourselves, for causing it."

- Alec, England, 04/7/2011 15:36

"It would appear the doom mongers are struggling to hold the lie about how the climate changes, We all know the governments only jumped on this bandwagon because of the tax raising opportunities..."

- John, Mountsorrel, 4/7/2011 12:17

"Well of course it is, a brilliant excuse for yet more green taxes"

- Kymi, Lincolnshire, 2/7/2011 23:21

"They have to blame global warming else they'll lose their funding. "
- Roy, Southend, UK, 1/7/2011 17:49

"These "scientists" are giving the decent ones a bad name. Paid-for-science is an advertisement for a product. Products are advertised when they aren't selling so well."

- mac, Melbourne, 2/7/2011 0:03

And their scepticism is echoed and enhanced by the words of some politicians:

"A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made."

Sarah Palin, Newsmax, Sep. 2008

"Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful, but there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas… It is a harmless gas"
Rep Michelle Bachmann, 2009 (Candidate for 2012 Republican Presidential nomination)

"They’re saying to us [that climate change is] going to be a big problem because it’s going to be warmer than it usually is; my farmers are going to say that’s a good thing since they’ll be able to grow more corn."
Rep Collin Peterson 2009

"Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human-induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus."
Rep Paul Broun, 2011

These are the words of senior American politicians, Republicans and Democrats. They argue that Governments should do nothing about global warming because there is no evidence for it and scientists are not agreed. If change is needed, somehow, humanity will find an answer in time because we always do, allegedly.

But the problem for everyone else is - they are wrong.

For the science refuting all of the claims above, click here

But denial is a powerful thing; an emotional desire that touches every human when faced with danger. How much more easy it would be to think it away, to wish it gone, to put faith before reason, and carry on.

We have been here before, when faith plunged Europe into a thousand year dark age.

 

"As this matter of faith is so much talked of, I have to reply that we accept it as useful for the multitude, and we admittedly teach those...to believe without thinking out their reasons." (Origen, one of the "Fathers of the Church", 2nd century.

 (from "The Closing of the Western Mind" by Charles Freeman)

Fighting global warming will demand huge changes of our world, our societies and ourselves. It would be great if it was a myth, or even a huge global conspiracy to get research grants for supposedly left wing scientists. But it's not. It's real, And it's now. And we have choices to make - from faith or from reason. It's up to us. Will we act, or close our minds again?



So welcome, my friends, to the end.
The final page...., of the new dark age.

Joplin, Our Future: the terrifying reality of global warming

It is filmed almost entirely in the dark, with little more than the occasional glimpse of light or shadowy figures, but this is possibly the most terrifying video you will ever see. A group of people taking refuge in a garage in Joplin, Missouri, weeping and screaming as a tornado hits - one of a record breaking 600 to strike the USA this year so far. And it is all totally real, authentic and frightening - there is no CGI; only Nature unleashed.

As wilder and ever more dangerous weather events become the norm, this could be just a foretaste of the world of tomorrow, where climate change produces more and more extreme weather - like Britain's coldest winter in living memory last December followed by its driest and warmest Spring in history; or the once-in-a-century drought in China and the massive floods in Australia.

This is the reality of what our species faces in its fight to survive on Planet Earth. We may party on and pretend it isn't happening, but outside the winds will blow and the rivers roar - and sooner or later, we may join the people of Joplin, cowering in the dark with prayer our only comfort.

The day after:

"War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength."

"The current level of atmospheric CO2 is higher than at any time in the past 15 million years.

tiny. cc/Tripati

When CO2 was last that high, "global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic, and [there was] very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland."

We are doing this. Not the Sun. Not God. People.

with credits to CommonDrems.org

"The World" is Sinking! Time to Ski on the Sand...

The World is sinking.

No, not another report by the IPCC or Greenpeace. And not the world that might come to mind.

This World is the collection of man-made islands off the coast of Dubai, constructed out of the sea at huge financial and environmental cost. Each one supposedly represents a country and, separated only by narrow channels of water, together they look like a patchwork map of the planet. They have been marketed to a range of wealthy individuals, including footballers, film stars and businessmen, one a former boss of mine.

It is more than faintly ironic that this hubristic enterprise is now reportedly sinking beneath the weight of its own pomposity. The "Daily Mail", not exactly the greenest newspaper in the UK, has run a series of articles on how the Gulf is gradually washing the artifice away and reclaiming the sand for the seabed. Other more reputable news media have reported similarly, so much that the consortium that runs the islands has published a denial this week. 

World of Water - the sinking planet?

I am no civil engineer, but the photographic evidence doesn't look that good to me; though perhaps I may be wrong.

Either way, this project represents the very worst of our species' excess: that we run our world via an economic system that leaves literally hundreds of millions of people homeless, while a tiny group of rich people are able to accumulate hundreds of millions to spend on creating a fictional planet on the sea, causing massive damage to the environment as they go.

The Gulf states of course are the playgrounds of the western rich - one reason why our leaders are so silent on the violent repression of dissent in the likes of Bahrain. These princedoms were created by the British, sustained by the USA and are now in effect owned by the international financial elite. Boasting superstructures like the Emirate Towers, the highest hotel in the world (the highest six are all in Dubai), an indoor ski resort in the middle of the Arabian desert and a host of imported, penniless labourers and servants from southern Asia to make it all possible, the strip of land along the southern shores of the Gulf truly is the Babylon of today.

Ski Dubai - snow in the desert, courtesy of man and carbon

It is little wonder that the United Arab Emirates, which Dubai is part of, boast the third highest carbon emissions per person on the planet - at over 31 tonnes, a massive 16 times the safe limit for the planet. Only the Antilles and nearby Qatar, both similar playgrounds of the wealthy, are higher. And this fest of excess shows no signs at all of slowing let alone stopping. For many people of even relatively modest means, a holiday to Dubai is now an aspiration, a sign of having made it. With many of the grasping corporations and greedy individuals who enjoy this life of extreme consumption merely encouraged to ever greater heights of auspicious display by both governments and our runaway economic system, there is little hope indeed that this will come to an end anytime soon. The recent Arab Spring briefly raised the possibility, but of course, where it might have made a real difference - in the Gulf states- the Emirs and their western allies rapidly crushed any chances of real change.

What we do know for sure is that, whatever the prospects for the artificial islands, the World is sinking. Literally, the excess of the wealthy in Dubai and around the planet is threatening the existence of entire countries with sinking under the water - Lochahara island in the Bay of Bengal, once home to 10,000 distinctly un-wealthy people, disappeared forever in December 2006; and now whole nations such as the Maldives, Kiribati and Vanuatu face similar fates within just a few years.  

Our system is out of balance. Socially this is not news, but for the first time we are reaching a point of significant resource depletion and growing environmental exhaustion, neither of which can be resolved by clinging to a capitalist system that is founded on the concepts of inequality of outcomes and limitless resources. In such circumstances, the potential for violent conflict and disorder is legion, and a warning from the past resonates loudly around the tall towers of Dubai. Two and a half thousand years ago, Plato wrote: "Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two; one the city of the poor, the other of the rich. And these are at war with one another."

Carbon Spike - time is running out to stop the human greenhouse

There is still time to act on climate change; but it is running out fast.

Figures released this week have shown carbon dioxide emissions have reached their highest level in human history, with a sharp rise last year in spite of the worldwide recession. Climate scientists now doubt that we will be able to keep warming to below the 2C increase which is seen as the tipping point towards runaway climate change, and other research this week has warned that the complete melting of the thinning Arctic ice shelf will lead to a new tipping point within two decades as the heat previously reflected back into space by the white ice instead gets absorbed into the seas.

Urgent action is required - Germany's target of 50% renewable energy by 2030 and Scotland's 100% renewable electricity by 2020 targets show that it is technologically possible. All that is needed is the political will to act - and we all have a part to play in making that happen, whoever we are and wherever we are.

We won't save the Earth - but it is not at risk. We are.

Staring at The Sun

The beleaguered Environment Secretary, fast-driver Chris Huhne revealed the Government's much debated Carbon Budget today, ostentatiously declaring that it will become a legally binding requirement for the Government to achieve a 50% reduction in carbon emissions on their 1990 level by the UK by 2025 to tackle global warming. He has done so in spite of bitter opposition from his fellow Lib Dem, the Business Secretary Vince Cable, as well as from the climate sceptics who inhabit the Tory benches like a horde of neanderthals.

On the face of it, it is a significant achievement and it has been welcomed by some environmental campaigners. But, on closer inspection, the announcement raises more questions than it answers.

1. How will the 50% by 2025 impact on the current plans by the Government to abolish the Climate Change Act on the grounds of it creating too much "red tape" for business and the legally binding target of an 80% reduction by 2050 (which general scientific consensus says is necessary to prevent run-away global warming)?

2. Although the plan includes scope for renewables, recent Government decisions will make it much harder to obtain funding to install community and large scale solar farms. So will the focus move to building new nuclear power stations on the dubious grounds that  nuclear energy is carbon-friendly?

3. The plan allows Britain to trade emissions credits with other countries that have lower carbon emissions - mostly poorer ones. This will at least involve some transfer of money to these countries, but given that their emissions are always among the lowest, will it genuinely achieve any reduction in carbon emissions?

4. Why have we kept that wonderful opt-out card that, if other countries don't do enough, we can stop doing anything? Who on earth came up with that idea?

Of course, in the Tory press and blogosphere the announcement has brought forth a chorus of criticism of how this will damage British manufacturing. And of course the sceptics have been out in force - the Daily Telegraph readers were particularly perplexed by it all:

For the 12 months of last year, I had a subscription to Scientific American. Month after month, there were articles about global warming. In every article, it was taken as read that Global Warming is A FACT. It seemed to me, as I read the articles, that anyone who wanted an article published had to adhere to that basic tenant. 

and this:
The whole climate change debate shoukd be quietly slinking away into oblivion. Don't you get it... We were all conned! The politicos won't admit it as they might be lynched.

and very bizarrely:

None of us KNOWS whether the CO2 science is categorically right or wrong.
But we do know that £13M to reopen the McCann kidnap case is an utter waste of money....

And, assuming he is still in office, it is this sort of pseudo-scientific garbage, propounded by Tory MP after Tory MP, that will probably do for Huhne's attempts to put these proposals into legislation. As was evident in a variety of surveys and stories up to the 2010 General Election, Conservative Party candidates were the least concerned of all parties about global warming by a very wide margin indeed - some described it as a "scam" with ludicrous claims of a vast leftwing conspiracy to use climate change as a means of destroying industry. In addition, the Telegraph itself reported in January last year, a meagre 6% of the top 250 Conservative candidates expressed any desire at all to reduce the UK's carbon footprint in a Conservative Home survey.

All this stands in the face of all the evidence: that the Earth is losing 25 billion tonnes of oxygen each year; that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have risen by 50% since the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago, and that month after month, year after year, new records are being broken in the extremity of our weather patterns. Last month was the warmest UK April on record and this month is likely to be the warmest May. The USA has just had the largest set of cyclones recorded in decades, while British nature goes to pot - hibernating animals emerge early with the risk of dying again if there is a sudden change, while the strawberry crop has ripened so early that there will be none left for consumption during the Wimbledon tennis competition.

The objectives announced today require a lot of detailed explanation about what they will actually mean and to prove they are more than just a stunt. But as important to its success or failure will be what support will be salvaged from among Tory MPs.

Meantime, the forecast is for another heatwave.

Global Warming - There is Still Time for an Answer

Buried among the headlines about Obama and Osama today was a report from the International Panel on Climate Change which, for once, was positively optimistic about humanity's prospects in the age of climate change - as long as we make the right choices.

For some time, international capital, big business and governments wedded to "business as usual" give or take the odd recycling bin and catalytic converter have alternately argued that either climate change is a myth or the alternatives to our carbon based economy are not practicable. At the very least, they have argued, any move from carbon fuels must have a large nuclear energy component - renewables alone just wouldn't cut the mustard in terms of meeting the energy demands of humanity.

The IPCC report, however, fundamentally disagrees with these assertions - wind, water, solar and bioenergy could make up 77 percent of the world's energy use by 2050, if given sufficient public support.On its own, this would reduce carbon emissions by 33%, still far short of the 80% reduction scientists argue is needed by then to stop runaway global warming, but a massive contribution nevertheless. Coupled with genuine energy efficiency measures (we waste up to 50% of our energy in the UK alone), the IPCC argues that a decisions to invest massively in renewables would be a huge step towards limiting the rise in global temperatures and the massive disruption to weather patterns this is increasingly causing.

The report is theoretical, looking at the potential in projects that have not started in many cases, but some large scale undertakings are already underway - like Desertec in the Algerian Sahara. With the intention of covering 0.3% of the desert with a huge solar array, the intention is to generate 100 gigawatts of energy, enough to supply clean energy to all of Europe by as early as 2015. Complementary projects, such as large wind farms in the North Sea, have been reduced or put on hold by Governments like the British one, but Desertec shows the possibilities.

Solar arrays can power the earth safely and cleanly.

Coupled with energy saving schemes - some as simple as removing the standby facility in new electrical gadgets, which generally continues to use about half the energy the equipment burns in actual use; while others could be along the lines of the "Green New Deal" promoted by various Green Parties and pioneered in Kirklees in England, where free home insulation was provided to both private and rented homes to cut costs, cut carbon emissions and create jobs.

So there is cause for optimism, given the poltical and public will to make the right choices. But a battery of vested interests - the oil and gas industry, politicians and media magnates - will be ranged against the necessary progress, dissembling about the extent of climate change, exaggerating the costs of renewables, and portraying the advocates of clean energy as green fascists. With a tight grip on information and the levers of power, these are no small obstacle. But as we have just passed the warmest April in history and Britain begins to face the prospect of drought (relatively speaking), the need for action has never been more urgent.

O Fortuna, I think I am becoming a god: the hubris of Humanity

The head of the allegedly "greenest government in (British) history", David Cameron, announced yesterday his intention to repeal a raft of environmental legislation, including laws protecting wild bird's nests and eggs, as well as, crucially, the Climate Change Act. This latter law currently requires the Government to take steps to ensure that the carbon emissions of the UK are 80% below their 1990 level by 2050 - this is the minimum reduction many climate change scientists argue will be necessary across the world to prevent runaway climate change and the destruction of human civilisation.

Why has Cameron, aided and abetted by his supine Liberal Democrat Orcs, decided on this?

Well, apparently such rules are "red tape" which hinder the onward march of British industry. They crush creativity and damage our competitiveness with overseas trade rivals. Much better to set our resource-gobbling entrepreneurs free to sate their lust for profit on the altar of profligacy and excess.

Cameron and his free marketeer allies like David Laws and Nick Clegg claim of course that this is the genus of capitalism unbound - free to develop, to cater for every human demand and whim, somehow, by magic, it will find the answers to our environmental problems, invent amazing new technologies that will defy the laws of physics and breach resource limits. Hence the move towards freeing up GM food and the view of Climate Change regulations as a hindrance to the mystical Invisible Hand of the Mighty Market that will mysteriously provide for us all. In doing so, it might ravage the planet of its natural beauty, destroy its ecosystems and rape it of its resources, but that won't matter - somehow, as long as we work hard enough and don't think of some free ride on the state benefits express, Capitalism will provide.

And so we have a government informed by neo-liberal economics and the freak theories of people like the Campaign to Repeal the Climate Change Act. See a video interview with one of their leaders here (click here to link)...a man so breathtakingly arrogant in his ignorance that he defies belief outside of the realms of bad science fiction movies. This man feels that any suggestion that we might limit our use of resources or seek to limit or even just slow the exponential growth rate of humanity is a slight to his warped version of reality. By his arguments, the more the merrier - more humans will not bust the planet, but rather somehow create the ingenuity that will allow us somehow to cram more and more people onto our tired piece of space rock, forever gobbling resources, flying everywhere, driving everywhere, living like Americans everywhere...

Of course, he is in a fantasy world: one where anything that might rain on his parade is in fact a socialist plot. Peak Oil? Nonsense, he scoffs, if we begin to run out of oil, having another three billion people on the Earth will not massively increase demand for the dwindling black stuff and make its price rocket, but rather provide the creative brainpower required to invent new ways of miraculously creating and consuming more and more outputs for fewer and fewer inputs. Anyone who disagrees is just a havering hippie.

But then this denial of reality also invents any kind of excuses or explanations for our current realities - of rising energy prices, of rising global temperatures, of billions living on the edge of existence shorn of the ownership of anything of value. Doubtless, all these will be down to the failure of a state somewhere to implement full-on market capitalism. All they need is to let business and industry find a way.

This is the hubris of humanity, exemplified as never before by our strange advocate and the men he stands proxy for. Somehow, we will always find a way out, create something that will make it right, even if it is just on time and millions may suffer in the meantime. Somehow, we have reached a stage in our history where government policy and the cultural zeigeist do truly hold that creativity is spawned far more effectively by seeding it with the prospect of dollars cash rather than by the prospect of public service or even simple satisfaction.

The transient Triumph of Vespasian

In ancient Rome, Emperors were declared gods when they died. When Vespasian heard the Shades whispering to him in AD79, he wryly observed, "O Fortune, I think I am becoming a god" before passing away.

Our modern Masters may sadly no longer worship Zeus and give thanks for the planet the gods bequeathed them, but they clearly see themselves and their favoured sons and daughters as capable of godly deeds as the Earth spins towards catastrophe. To rein them in as they wipe out our rainforests, jet the world over day after day and continue with conspicuous consumption, would by their argument amount to heresy. To suggest that industry might serve people and planet rather than the other way round can be to invite the full Inquisition, castigation as a utopian dreamer or schemer. Rather, it is time to unite around the consensus that somehow Capital will find a way, no matter how pyrrhic its inevitable Triumph.

But Rome is long gone, and the halls of Olympus lie empty. And our modern would-be gods, just as they claim to hold the very key to knowledge, in truth stand empty, nothing more than false gods and hollow men.

We make our obeisances and sacrifices to them at our peril.

Johnny's Balls

Johnny Ball, children's entertainer, enjoyed a brief burst of rekindled minor list celebrity last week when he claimed that in the last couple of years, since he attacked global warming as false, his speech making invites have declined by 90%, allegedly because he had been targeted by environmental activists. His evidence of Green abuse? Someone (who MUST have been a green) tried to cancel one of his appearances. And, worse still, if you search his name on Google, apparently some of the results you get back contain pornography - yet more conclusive proof of ecologists up to their underhand tricks.

It is surprising that he might be surprised that a Google search on "Johnny Ball" might sometimes return something a bit salacious, especially if he has been searching under the "Images" option with "safe search" turned off. Rather than indulging him though, the Media might have just quietly filed his press release and determinedly NOT returned his calls - for his own sake.

His website boasts a recommendation from none other than the Sunday Times: "Johnny Ball's ability to make the obscure understandable has already been well proven"

CANCELLED

And yet,  if you read Johnny's pronouncements on climate change, you might see why if he was invited along to speak on the subject, he might not be asked back or recommended to other people, regardless of your views on man-made global warming. If someone did try to cancel one of his engagements, it was probably just a well-intentioned attempt to carry out an act of kindness for audience and presenter alike.

Because here, from The Guardian newspaper, is Johnny's clarification of his claim that every school in the country is indoctrinating schoolchildren to believe in false global warming. In an astounding rebuttal of climate change science, he presents precise, tightly argued and logical facts to back his case that it is all a lie used to brainwash kids:

"As I understand it, the Al Gore film (all schools plus the book) was found in an English court to be in serious error on eight or nine separate counts....Al Gore's statement that climate change might "Cause the Gulf Stream (discovered and named by Ben Franklin, don't you know) to switch off drastically effecting Britain and Europe.

Atmospheric Temperature changes cannot on a volume to volume comparison, effect the temperature of the Oceans by anything other than a minuscule degree. Transference of influence is far more likely the other way. However, although the temperature might change over time under fluctuating conditions, the only possible way to stop the gulf stream happening, is to stop the Earth Spinning - remember your school science? Bath water in the Northern Hemisphere goes clockwise, in the south, anti clock. This is clearly evident by the way the Earth was discovered by the early sailors, who could only go, down the coast of Europe, across and then down the east coast of S America, (on the anti clockwise tack) and so on.

I must confess that I have not seen Planet Stupid [sic]. But as far as I can gather, it is set around 2050, when the very sadly lamented Pete Postlethwaite appears to be the only man alive. That scenario is of dramatic effect, but is ludicrous in terms of the fluctuations in climate and conditions on Earth today.

So, on that basis, and much more evidence for which time and tiredness prevent me from going into here and now, the concept of, as Lord Stern keeps trying to sell us, that "the North Pole will be in fifty years, possibly the only place on earth capable of supporting human life."

The concept, if stated anywhere near close to what I have presented to you here, is absolutely preposterous."

So that's much clearer now. Thanks Johnny.

Denial - a necessary delusion or betraying the future?

I listened to a speech by the leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, MP, in nearby Huddersfield this evening. Talking to a public meeting organised by Kirklees Green Party ahead of the local elections in May, she covered a wide agenda, but it was, maybe unsurprisingly, on the environment and the prospect of runaway global warming that she was at her most passionate.

The Greens' Caroline Lucas (left) - no denying

She talked about how many scientists are warning that the "best estimates" used by Government planners and by negotiators in international climate change conferences are exceedingly conservative, several years out of date and fail to take account of "feedback", where the release of greenhouse gasses increases at an exponential rate.

She warned that the next ten years are utterly critical - there is no time to wait. The failure to act keeps her awake at night, she explained, citing the film "The Age of Stupid" and the question posed by the Custodian, played by the late, great Pete Postlethwaite. "Why," he asks in the film, where he plays the last man on Earth looking back at current times, "why when we knew what was wrong, did we not do anything to save ourselves?"

Perhaps one of the crassest statements I have ever heard was from the otherwise normally excellent broadcaster Eddie Mair a few years ago on BBC Radio 4. Climate change negotiators at the Cancun conference were, he said, struggling to reach agreement because the USA continued to refuse to take part in a formal agreement: if they could not reach agreement, they might as well give up and go home and forget about it. 

I don't think it was what he intended, but his comment somehow captured the lack of urgency on climate change, the way that, even now, many senior policymakers and politicians continue to see it as optional - a sort of good thing to do when their is money in the kitty and nothing better to do. A charitable option to "help the planet", as if somehow the planet is something apart from us.

Except of course that it isn't. We can't go home and forget about it, because the planet is home and home is the planet. We might try to ignore it, we may not want to think about it. But in the end we can't escape from it. If we poison the planet, we poison ourselves.

Yet, oddly, we don't look at it this way - we talk piously of "saving the planet" alongside efforts to raise money for charity causes and sick puppies. It's a Sunday sort of thing - something to get round to when there is time. And if we do a little bit, our bit, we can stand aside from the disaster when it comes - it won't affect us, will it?

Denial is perhaps one of the most human of things. We deny that which is too difficult, too awful or overwhelming to contemplate.

So it is with the crisis we face. Who wants to think that, in the next few years, in our lifetimes, we may fail to act and as a result condemn not just "the planet" but possibly ourselves and certainly the next generation to degradation and destruction? Isn't carrying on the party, closing our eyes to tomorrow, so much more appealing?

It is nothing new. History is littered with whole societies that denied the obvious, and in some cases perished as a result.

In 1453, with Constantinople surrounded by 80,000 Turkish troops and their allies, many of the Byzantines inside the great walls of the City refused to believe there was a real threat, convincing themselves of Divine Protection which absolved them of any need to act.  When the Turkish Sultan demanded substantial tribute to call off the siege, the destitute Byzantine Emperor pleaded for assistance from his nobles, but they denied their huge wealth, insisting they could afford nothing. Yet when the city finally fell, they were found to be hiding huge hordes of riches they would now no longer have the chance to use.The victorious Sultan was so moved to anger by this selfishness that he had a large number of the captive Byzantine elite executed on the spot.

History is littered with such examples - where the awful reality can be so troubling to normality that somehow the need and opportunities to challenge and change it are set aside. And yet, were we to acknowledge the potential disasters facing us, isn't denial a wholly understandable response?

Perhaps. But it is not to excuse this; it may be very human but it is not acceptable. The threats facing us are too great, too total and long lasting to permit avoidance. Greens need to show an alternative that is positive and progressive, but equally which does not soft-pedal what has to be done - a new, more equal society; massive changes to personal habits; different, less personal forms of transport; different energy sources; a very different attitude towards  consumption; a vision for a very different world to now.

But one where Pete does not need to remember us.

BP: "Beyond Petroleum" and its Broken Promises

 Design by: Ross Robinson

Oil men are hardly known for their humility. Ever since the black stuff began to be exploited on a mass-industrial scale at the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, gradually usurping coal as the carbon fuel of choice, they have blustered and battered their way to economic and political supremacy across the globe. They have happily undermined democratic governments and movements, sponsored corrupt governments of the most odious kind, such as the House of Ibn Saud in the Arabian peninsula, and happily drilled the environment into oblivion. They have worked without regard to the consequences for both people and planet - witness the Ogoni's travails with the Shell oil company and the judicial murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa in Nigeria. In addition, by frustrating anything that threatened this supremacy, such as fuel efficient cars using (potentially) clean energy, the oil industry has shown its moral bankruptcy, just as its profits have soared to record levels.

Of course, with massive funds ploughed into public relations and political lobbying, they have been adept at ensuring that they appear to be on the side of "ordinary people". In the UK, both in 2002 and again now, consumer anger resulting from price rises driven mainly by the oil companies themselves is being deflected onto the Government's fuel duties, rather than on oil companies' soaring profit margins. And likewise, in the USA, any attempts by progressive politicians to restrain the carbon economy, including preventing dangerous exploration such as the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf, have been met with the most outrageous responses likening them to national enemies and traitors. It is little surprise to find that, just weeks after the Gulf disaster, Sarah Palin and her Tea Party allies like Rand Paul were happily dissimulating their way to electoral victory on the back of substantial funding from, among other oil conglomerates, BP, owners of the stricken oil rig.

And there could be no finer example of politics firmly in the pockets of Big Oil than this chillingly bizarre tirade from the 2008 Republican Party Convention.

BP, previously known as British Petroleum, but now in effect a large multinational well above the scope of control of any national government, has a dreadful record on so many counts. For example, in its original guise as the (entirely British owned) Anglo-Persian Oil Company, in 1953, it persuaded then British Premier Winston Churchill and the American Government to sponsor a coup d'etat to overthrow the democratic government of Iran and impose the brutal dictatorship of the Shah. Why? Simply because the elected Premier planned to nationalise the oil industry after nearly fifty years during which Anglo-Persian had been despoiling his country of its biggest asset with barely any payment made to Iran itself.

Later, in the early 2000s, as fears of global warming increased and demands for curbs on the runaway carbon economy grew, BP came up with a new wheeze. Oil would not last forever, they admitted. And so "BP" no longer stood for British Petroleum, but rather "Beyond Petroleum". They were not an oil company at all: no, rather, they were an energy company. And so they announced investment in alternative energy technology development, from carbon capture to solar power and biomass. Why, had we not noticed that even their company logo had always been green coloured - how could we possibly doubt them?

http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2010/06/bp-beyond-petroleum-or-broken-promise.html

Except that the proportion of investment into new technologies was and remains utterly tiny compared to that for oil and gas, as evidenced in 2008 when new CEO Tony Hayward effectively restated the fundamental commitment to oil. Unsurprisingly, if anything, this commitment has increased. In the face of the growing evidence that we are now around the moment of "Peak Oil", BP and others have sought more and more ways of extracting oil from terrain which previously would have been uneconomic for them to do so. Deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has been joined by similar projects all over the world - among many other places, off the west coast of Africa, off Indonesia, and off the north-west coast of Scotland. Now, just a few days ago, BP have sold a 5% stake in their ownership to Russian oil company, Rosneft, in order to begin drilling in the previously unspoiled Arctic.

Deepwater drilling anywhere is exceedingly dangerous - the weather can overwhelm the most sophisticated of human technology; or, as with the Deepwater Horizon, human error, driven by cost-cutting and profit-seeking, can lead to accidents with devastating consequences. Although technology has improved in recent years, as the Gulf disaster has shown, remedying faults at phenomenal depths is difficult in the extreme. In the Arctic, it may well be impossible.

Yet, clapping their hands in delight at the retreat of the northern iceshelf as global warming grips, the oil companies are relentlessly pursuing projects to extract oil and gas in more difficult and more sensitive environments. Product demand is surging with the rise of the emergent BRIC* economies, and as supplies from our normal sources get tighter (we use around 30 times more oil than we discover each year now), the consequent rise in price makes drilling in such difficult conditions more affordable for profit-maximising companies.

Drilling gets into deeper and deeper water

However, it is no less dangerous to their workers, to local communities or the ecology of the surrounding regions. And of course the ultimate irony is that as ice-melt caused by man-made global warming makes drilling in the Arctic feasible, the response of the so called Beyond Petroleum BP is not to anxiously see this seminal environmental disaster as a spur to urgent investment in alternative, clean technologies. Rather, it is viewed as a golden opportunity to grab a bigger share of the oil market.

We cannot prevent runaway global warming and preserve our human civilisation by depending on the goodwill and foresight of the oil industry. Time and again, they have shown their interest is solely in shareholder profit and managerial bonuses. After some desultory handwringing over disasters like Deepwater Horizon, the Prudhoe Bay spill, the Exxon Valdez disaster  and Amoco Cadiz, they have carried on as before. They have colluded in suppressing protest and human rights, involved us in wars like Iraq, employed mercenaries to attack trade unions and local communities, and used sophisticated political lobbying to ensure they remain unconstrained in their activities. Governments may talk of regulation, but any they enact are normally little more than window dressing - the magnates remain untamed.

Multinationals and the market will not deliver the change we need - as oil becomes scarcer, it will become more and more profitable to sell. Developing renewable energy will not be in the interests of these companies because their sole raison d'etre is to maximise their short to medium term profits. The dictates of capitalism incredibly mean that their objective is not even to ensure their own long term success - few of them have strategic plans stretching beyond the next five or ten years. So for the action we need to curtail the carbon economy and invest seriously in cleaner, renewable energy, we need to turn to governments and politics - new, green politics. Only then, will we ever rid ourselves of our carbon addiction and really get beyond petroleum. 

* BRIC = Brazil, Russia, India and China
"My Well came in big and there ain't a dang thing you gonna do about it!"

Thanks to Ross Robinson for permission to use his imaginative logo at the start of the blog. You can get the tee-shirt (or stickers) here:  http://www.redbubble.com/people/rossman72/t-shirts/5196179-2-beyond-petroleum