Snapler

March 5, 2010

Weekly Mulch: New bills and old money

Filed under: News, Original Content — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — The Media Consortium @ 5:21 pm

By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger

Climate legislation is returning to the Senate's docket, and leaders on Capitol Hill are hoping that this version, a compromise bill spearheaded by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), can pass without getting caught in the morass of money and politics that has delayed action so far.

A long, long time ago...

Remember, there was a time when Congress was going to pass climate legislation before the international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. President Barack Obama was going to show up with a bill in hand and lead the world towards a better climate future. After the House passed its climate bill in June 2009, the Senate began discussing climate change, and a first stab by Sen. Kerry and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) went nowhere. Now, Kerry has turned to less liberal colleagues to draft an alternative that would appeal to moderates and even Republicans.

Now the Massachusetts senator is promising that climate change isn't dead. A new bill is coming--more information may be in the offing as early as today, as Kate Sheppard reports at Mother Jones.

Third time's the charm

Sen. Kerry is trying a new tactic to pass climate legislation. He's waiting to release his plan until he knows the bill has the 60 supporters it needs to circumvent a filibuster. The details have not been hammered out yet, and even the Senators who've been in talks with Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman don't seem to have a clear sense of what will be in the version that will emerge.

In the House, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, released an ambitious draft of the legislation, let lobbyists and members of Congress fight over it, and passed a much-changed edition months later. Sen. Kerry tried a similar plan on his side of Capitol Hill (that was the Kerry-Boxer bill), but it did not work.

With this piece of legislature, Sens. Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman are working out the compromises before they release the legislation. Both reporting and speculation about their bill say that it will abandon the cap-and-trade system passed in the House. Cap-and-trade restricts carbon emissions across the economy; a variation on that policy that the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill may favor will limit the system to a few sectors.

Will it work?

Kerry's expected bill may be a much weaker plan than any proposed so far, yet it is still not certain that the Senate will support it. The lead authors of the bill have been meeting with conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans, as Sheppard reports, but those targets have not promised support yet. Coming out of a meeting, Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) told reporters: "There were some interesting things that were discussed in there and like everything else in the United States Senate, the devil is in the details."

From a distance, banner-day climate legislation still seems possible. Environmental groups like the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Foundation, and the National Resources Defense Council believe that they will see a bill this year that caps carbon. These green groups would be able to live with the incentives handed to industry groups so far, according to Campus Progress' Tristan Fowler.

"There are compromises [that can go] too far. Fortunately, I don't think we're getting near that territory at the moment," Josh Dorner, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, told Fowler.

Sickly green

Before getting too excited about stamping a green seal of approval on Congress' legislation, consider Johann Hari's testimony in The Nation about the relationships between environmental groups and the industries that they oppose.

Hari has reported on climate change issues for years, and at first, he "imagined that American green groups were on these people's side in the corridors of Capitol Hill, trying to stop the Weather of Mass Destruction. But it is now clear that many were on a different path--one that began in the 1980s, with a financial donation."

Hari argues that as environmental groups began to reach out to polluters, handing them awards for green behavior and accepting support from their deep pockets, they learned to compromise too readily and accept political excuses for delaying action on climate change. While in other realms these compromises might fly, when the stakes are as high as they are on environmental issues, that behavior turns the stomach.

"You can't stand at the edge of a rising sea and say, 'Sorry, the swing states don't want you to happen today. Come back in fifty years,'" Hari writes.

The green future

When Kerry, Lieberman and Graham do release the compromised bill, watch for a tsunami of money and influence that could pack the bill with prizes for specific industries--or derail it altogether. Just this week, the natural gas industry's lobbyists told The Hill, a D.C.-based newspaper, that they were ready to fight with the coal industry over incentives in the Senate bill. At AlterNet, Harvey Wasserman writes that the nuclear industry spent $645 million in the past decade to get back into the energy game, according to a new report from American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop. (Hint: that $645 million is working in their favor.)

In the Senate, the influence of oil companies will play an important role, according to David Roberts at Grist.

"While coal has a lot of power in the House, oil has enormous power in the Senate, particularly over the conservadems and Republicans needed to put the bill over the top," Roberts explains.

No matter what legislation passes and what incentives it contains, environmentalists need to continue putting pressure on their representatives in Congress and on national environmental groups to push back against polluting industries and work to fix the world's climate.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.



More...

December 16, 2009

Protests In Copenhagen: Demonstrations, Arrests And Exclusion From The Conference (VIDEO)

Filed under: News, Original Content — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Katherine Goldstein @ 11:19 am
UPDATE 17:54 CET:

We've just received more video that clearly displays the use of force on unarmed protesters at today's "Reclaim Power" climate justice march earlier today.



UPDATE 17:30 EST CET:

A group that is part of youth delegations have begun a sit-in at the UN conference Bella Center. The statement about the sit-in posted on The Canadian Youth Delegation's Facebook page:
Copenhagen, Denmark - At 5:00pm today, during the opening of the high level segment of this year's international climate change negotiations, a group of approximately 30 international youth staged a sit-in, refusing to leave the talks until a fair, ambitious, and legally binding treaty was reached. The group included young people from both developed and developing nations, including 10 Canadians.


The young people gathered and initiated the sit-in at the main hall of the conference centre where more than 110 heads of government are expected in coming days. They immediately began to read the names of the more than 11 million people who signed a petition demanding the same fair, ambitious, and legally binding agreement that is needed to avoid dangerous climate change and usher in a global clean energy economy.

The picture below was posted by Karl Burkhart on twitter:




UPDATE 14:53 CET:

Matthew McDermott, Senior Writer for Treehugger and Planet Green reports seeing that the police have greatly de-escalated tensions with demonstrators. After containing them in blocked off area, they deliberately took off their riot helmets and began to let the protesters come and go as they pleased, and allowed people to begin talking for "The People's Assembly" where protesters and NGO representatives could talk about climate justice. This appears to be a deliberate change in tactic after police had been using aggressive methods earlier in the morning where they beat and arrested protesters and in the days leading up to this march. However, the protesters have not been let into the Bella Center.

UPDATE 13:50 CET
Here is video of NGOs, and some delegates walking out of the center to join protesters on the outside, including a short interview with Naomi Klein, shot by Karl Burkhart of Greendig.com.


UPDATE 12:54 CET Danish TV station TV2 is showing footage and reporting that police are in full riot gear and have contained 2,500 demonstrators in an enclosed area preventing them for participating in the planned march and demonstrations.

300 people who were inside the UN Bella Center have walked out in solidarity with the protesters.

UPDATE: 12:00 PM CET
Connie Hedegaard, the chief negotiator and the President of the COP15 Conference has just resigned, as reported by Reuters. She will be replaced by Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen.

Speculation in Copenhagen and on twitter about the resignation seemed to indicate confusion about if this was unexpected or merely procedural. Brad Johnson, climate researcher and blogger for the Center for American Progress says of the move, "As negotiators furiously attempt to craft a deal in time for the arrival of over 110 heads of state, this move allows Hedegaard to run closed-door negotiations while Prime Minister Rasmussen presides over the formal talks."

11:14 AM CET: Tensions are a running high at the Copenhagen climate talks this morning. Friends Of The Earth and Avaaz, leading voices in calling for "a strong and fair" climate deal, have been told their entire delegations would not be allowed into the conference. No further explanation as to why has been given. This week, UN officials have greatly limited the number of NGO representatives allowed inside the conference, but this appears to be the first time entire delegations have been banned --these groups are particularly high profile. Members of the delegation then staged a sit-in at the entrance, including French member of parliament Jose Bove, as filmed by TheUptake. This comes at the same time that Danish police are bracing for a mass protest, organized by Climate Justice Action, that will march onto the Bella Center where the UN conference is being held, attempting to shut down the talks out of protest that real solutions to the climate crisis are not being discussed. Oneclimate.net reports that protesters have already been pre-emptively arrested en mass and taken away in police paddy wagons.

Danish police have been using aggressive tactics in the lead-up to today's events, including the arrest of a high-profile organizer of today's protest on the eve of the event, and up to 1,000 marchers at a demonstration on Saturday, most of whom were marching peacefully.

Danish TV station Ekstra Bladet has a livestream of the protest on their site, which has been showing footage of police beating protesters.

Check back here for more breaking updates.


Get HuffPost Green On Facebook and Twitter!

December 14, 2009

Canada Gets Punk’d In Copenhagen: Work Of The Yes Men, Mayhap? [UPDATED]

Filed under: News, Original Content — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Jason Linkins @ 4:26 pm
So, did you hear the one about Canada making a huge splash at the COP15 Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen by completely reversing its climate change policy and setting aggressive new carbon reduction targets?

Well, then you've heard about a high-concept prank, which seems to have been perpetrated by someone willing and capable of going to dizzying lengths to show policymakers what they should be doing to combat climate change.

We're guessing this is probably the work of the Yes Men, obviously!

This time, the world was fooled by a well-timed press release and a well-constructed facsimile of a Wall Street Journal online article.

The fun began this morning when the Yes Men put out the following release, purporting to come from the Assistant Press Secretary, of the Canadian Office of the Minister of the Environment. Here it is in full:

CANADA ANNOUNCES NEW AGENDA FOR CLIMATE AND WORLD DEVELOPMENT
Plan includes stricter emissions reductions and immediate "climate debt" bailouts for most affected countries


COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- In a major development coming three days before the final round of UN climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, and responding to the recent concerns expressed by the G77 bloc of countries, Canada's Attache for Environment and Planning announced today an ambitious plan for a new climate change framework that answers vital concerns voiced by developing nations.

Dubbed "Agenda 2020," the plan sets strict new emissions-reductions guidelines for Canada and fast-tracks financing for vulnerable countries beginning in 2010.

"Today the G77 has again made their voice very clear," said Jim Prentice, Canada's Minister for the Environment. "This policy is our answer. Long in discussion, and slated for release later this week, Agenda 2020 is Canada's commitment to a science-based approach to climate change, and our way to assert our partnership with the developing world."

Agenda 2020 sets binding emissions reductions targets of 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 and at least 80% by 2050, in line with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and approaching the levels demanded by the African Group (link). The plan also introduces a new instrument, known as the "Climate Debt Mechanism" (CDM), committing Canada to much-needed funding to those developing countries facing the most dire consequences of climate change. CDM payments will begin with 1% and rise to the equivalent of 5% of Canada's GDP annually by 2030.

"We believe all people will benefit from an equitable climate deal that truly energizes the world economy," said Prentice.

The initial 2010 CDM outlay (representing 1% of Canada's GDP, or $13 billion) will be allocated to the African countries for emissions-reduction strategies and alternative-energy development programs. Payments will also finance resilience-building projects in specific communities already facing the results of climate change or threatened with its most dire consequences.

The CDM is the world's first financial mechanism that truly addresses the rising costs of climate change in developing countries. It follows a November announcement from Canada and its Commonwealth partners committing $10 billion to climate change adaptation for vulnerable countries (link). By providing quick access to adaptation finance, the CDM builds on this commitment and takes the global lead in supporting vulnerable countries. CDM payments will be completely separate from pre-existing development assistance and will be considered to be payments in a balance of trade.

"Canada is taking the long view on the world economy," said Prentice. "Nobody benefits from a world in peril. Contributing to the development of other nations and taking full responsibilities for our emissions is simple Canadian good sense. We want to show the world that Canada is a leader on climate change."

The full details of the CDM framework will be released when Prime Minister Stephen Harper attends the high-level session of the Copenhagen climate talks this Wednesday.

All of that: totally fake! But it was backed up online by a story by "Gustav Rainer" at the "Wall Street Journal," which reads in part:

Canadian delegates to the United Nation Climate Summit in Copenhagen announced a significant shift in the country's climate stance today.


The announcement, in part seemingly prompted by today's walkout of the G77 bloc of nations, represents a major change in tone and substance for the large energy-producing nation. The new plan, dubbed "Agenda 2020," details an aggressive new commitment to curtailing carbon emissions, and lays out the guidelines for a new climate adaptation fund for developing nations.

"This agreement tackles the core drivers of social and ecological vulnerability," said Matthew Delane, Canada's Attache for Environment and Planning in Copenhagen. "It's nothing less than a new vision of international responsibility."

Since then, Canadian officials have been forced to walk this all back. In a press release from Frederic Baril, the actual press secretary of the Office of the Minister of the Environment, he combats the "spoof press release":

UPDATE: And now, we've been punked! This press release, which appears to walk back the original fake press release is ALSO A FAKE. This is a tangled web being woven!

Canadian Government Deplores Spoof Releases, False Hopes


OTTAWA, Ont. -- December 14, 2009 -- One hour ago, a spoof press release targeted Canada in order to generate hurtful rumors and mislead the Conference of Parties on Canada's positions on climate change, and to damage Canada's standing with the international business community.

The release, from "press@enviro-canada.ca," alleges Canada's acceptance of unrealistic emissions-reduction targets, as well as a so-called "Climate Debt Mechanism," a bilateral agreement between Canada and Africa to furnish that continent with enormous sums in "reparation" for climate damage and to "offset" adaptation.

Unfortunately, the spoof release was reported in major international outlets.

UPDATE #2: Yet another spoof press release, this one apologizing for all the confusion:

Tragic Ugandan Reaction to False "Canada" Announcement. Passionate response highlights cruelty of thoughtless pranksters


OTTAWA, Ont. -- December 14, 2009 -- We at Environment Canada wish to thank the international press community for their measured and understanding response to the hoax that struck our agency earlier this afternoon, while expressing our condolences to the Ugandan delegation who were swept up in the excitement of this false future "vision."

This sophisticated operation was reported in the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, and a number of other outlets as the irresponsible spoof that it was.

Environment Canada wishes to stress that the Ugandan delegation's impassioned response to the announcement is a dramatic tragedy for those who stand to suffer the most.

"It is the height of cruelty, hypocrisy, and immorality to infuse with false hopes the spirit of people who are already, and will additionally, bear the brunt of climate change's terrible human effects," said Jim Prentice, Canada's Minister for the Environment.


Signs point to the Yes Men, whose primary way of pranking-the-world-in-order-to-save-it is to pass themselves off as representatives of an organization and make big splashy announcements about major policy changes. Recently, the Yes Men posed as representatives of the United States Chamber of Commerce, and staged a press conference at which they announced that the Chamber was adopting a more progressive stance on climate change policy. The Yes Men have also previously pulled off remarkably well-built newspaper facsimiles.

Last week, the Yes Men attempted to use projectors to turn the Hopenhagen Globe that sits in the middle of Copenhagen's City Hall Square, into a massive anti-Coca Cola billboard. Their attempt was quickly ferreted out by Danish police.

The Huffington Post's Green Editor, Katherine Goldstein, who is on the ground in Copenhagen, reports that sources close to The Yes Men were acting very coy, "smiling," while saying, "Who said it was the Yes Men?"

We hope to be able to say so soon!

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

November 25, 2009

Sorting Blinks From Winks In The Copenhagen End Game

Filed under: News, Original Content — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Nick Mabey @ 9:39 pm
In the world of military intelligence, much time is spent trying to distinguish "blinks" -- unpremeditated random actions -- from "winks" -- deliberate moves designed to communicate intent and draw out a response. The climate change negotiations have now entered a phase where a team of tame "spooks" is needed by anybody trying to make sense of the myriad messages emerging from the hectic schedule of pre-Copenhagen meetings.

The APEC Summit saw confident headlines that the US and China had agreed to a Danish proposal to make the Copenhagen outcome non-legally binding. On closer examination these reports came from a US press conference following an informal Heads breakfast. Meanwhile the real US-China Summit two days later agreed that both countries are "striving for final legal agreement" at Copenhagen, and the Chinese confirmed they are still "studying" the Danish proposal. A "Pre-COP" Ministerial meeting held in parallel in Copenhagen showed a range of conflicting messages from countries; with Saudi Arabia defending the Kyoto Protocol, some developing countries backing a new single negotiating process but a strong push from Brazil and others to maintain a legally binding Copenhagen outcome.

Even the US seems unclear what it wants: on the one hand, Obama is promoting an agreement at Copenhagen which has "immediate operational effect", but his lead negotiator is discussing a mid-year deadline for completing a treaty. Of course, these outcomes need not be mutually exclusive, but in the fevered atmosphere of the end game confusion is predictably interpreted as conspiracy.

This is damaging to the negotiations. The APEC story drowned out the positive announcements of new mitigation commitments by Brazil and South Korea. It also markedly increased the already high level of distrust between countries. Conversations in the negotiating corridors increasingly circle round what these events imply about the motivations of the main players. Is the US Administration acting in good faith but hamstrung by a hostile Congress? Or is there a subtle strategy to neuter the international regime and avoid pressure to increase US commitments? Will China align with its traditional allies in the G77? And if so, can it support the proposals from the industrialized countries? Will India stick with its oft-quoted red lines, or are these merely negotiating chips to be relinquished in return for new finance? The inability to sort blinks from winks - and conspiracy from confusion - makes countries fearful of making the bold diplomatic moves needed to make Copenhagen a success. It also fuels an increasingly pessimistic media cycle and undermines public faith in the effectiveness of the international negotiations.

This is the wrong way to approach the climate change process. We are not back in the Cold War trying to determine the aggressive intent of a declared and secretive enemy. Copenhagen is a multi-polar negotiation between highly interdependent countries who are aiming to preserve their mutual climate security. It is not a game any one nation can win, but it is one we can all lose.

Stripping away the confusion the underlying dynamics of the Copenhagen end-game are rather more straightforward:

There is no credible alternative to a legally binding international agreement to limit global climate change below 2°C; any "bottom-up" system of country pledges will always fail to drive the necessary scale and pace of reductions as it does not help countries take on domestic interest lobbies.

The US will not accept a binding target unless China and India also agree to be bound to commitments that are internationally verifiable.

But China will not commit to decarbonise its economy unless the US accepts a binding and ambitious emissions reduction target.

The majority of developing countries will not agree to any new framework unless it binds developed nations and contains significant new medium term public finance for adaptation, forestry and clean energy.

Europe and Japan - who have met their reduction commitments under the binding Kyoto Protocol - can only accept the weak US commitments which are on the table if a new agreement is at least as binding as Kyoto, and the US commits to comparable emission reductions by 2030 at the latest.


This is the inexorable logic of the multilateral negotiations and leaves a clear set of decisions for the US. The Obama administration will struggle to convince the US Senate to pass a domestic Climate Bill if it cannot show that this is part of a wider international effort that delivers climate security for America. A binding international agreement that commits China and India to real emission reductions would show the value of US leadership. To achieve this, the US will have to agree to be bound itself and to put its 2030 mitigation target and some commitment to medium term finance on the table.

None of this need breach the wise position of the US negotiators that they are not prepared to sign up to an international agreement unless they are confident they can pass the domestic legislation needed to implement it. The administration has a good story to tell of how committing to US legislation has catalysed serious emission reduction commitments from all major economies.

The US has more room for manoeuvre than it currently thinks. If President Obama wants to make real the leadership he has proclaimed so eloquently in his speeches, now is the time to send a clear, unified and unambiguous message to the other Parties. We want a 2°C agreement; we will put forward what is needed to secure this; we expect others to agree to be bound by their promises - as we agree to be bound by ours; this will require a legally binding treaty. We may need more time to agree final details, but we are ready to make substantial and lasting commitments in Copenhagen.

All of this leads to a simple conclusion: if political leaders are unable to reach a binding international agreement in Copenhagen in December they must come up with a credible plan for concluding that agreement no later than June 2010, before US Congressional mid-term elections. Allowing the process to drag on beyond June 2010 risks a repeat of the Doha WTO negotiations, which have limped along without resolution for over a decade. Reaching agreement by June 2010 is challenging but achievable if Copenhagen provides the necessary political impetus.

Specifically, Copenhagen needs to do three things:

Give a clear political mandate to negotiators to reach agreement on all key issues by at the latest June 2010 and to enshrine this agreement in a legal instrument or instruments.

Set out in as much detail as possible the content of the eventual legal instrument(s), including emissions reduction targets for developed countries, nationally appropriate mitigation actions for developing countries, the long-term financing architecture, and the international framework for measurement, reporting and verification of commitments.

Maintain momentum through commitments to immediate action before 2012, including quick-start funding for adaptation, tackling deforestation and low carbon growth plans.

There are no fundamental obstacles of interest to such an agreement, but it will require great diplomatic skill and significant trust between countries to deliver; neither of which is yet apparent in the current negotiations. There are still some countries trying to block any substantive deal, but they are now a vanishing minority. In contrast, the impetus to agreement is supported by an unprecedented range of global business, finance, labour, faith and civil society coalitions who are aligned around the common elements of a Copenhagen deal.

In the final weeks towards Copenhagen it will be easy to be caught up in the day-to-day turmoil of events, but while fascinating as a spectator sport, this chatter is not what will determine the final outcome. The world is close to an ambitious deal; what is missing is the trust needed to cement the process through to a legal conclusion. Trust will be built through plain speaking not hints, spin and clever tactics. That is why Obama must go to Copenhagen along with other leaders. Only a personal face-to-face commitment will generate the trust needed to seal the deal.