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JANUARY/FEBRUARY ISSUE 419 8DCI:CIH
8bcWTTR^]^\XRRaXbXbV^X]Vc^QTcWTT]S^UVaTT]. With this in mind, the NI held a 'Clean Start' event on 15
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has asked, December. Speakers included NI contributors Walden Bello and
provoking a furious debate online. I've been hearing such Susan George, and the lively discussion ranged from how we got
rumblings a lot lately. The financial meltdown has certainly into this global mess, through specific policies that would put us
eclipsed climate change as the crisis du jour: and if last month's on a fairer greener path, to how we build a movement to make it
UN climate talks in Poznan were anything to go by, it's making happen. Don't worry if you missed it – you can watch clips of all
it even harder to get progress from governments that is anything the speakers on our website.
8E0C8E 4B The stakes couldn't be higher. I urge you to get involved, at:
other than cheap and half-hearted.
This is a most dangerous state of affairs. It's like finding out www.newint.org/cleanstart
that you've got cancer, but then delaying goingB4; to
B7>
6 the doctor's for
treatment for a few months because you want to repaint your
house. No doubt your house needs a lot of work, but ultimately
there's little point if you won't be around to enjoy it.
Stopping climate change must be our number one priority –
and this is the main theme of this month's magazine. But how we
go about it goes hand in hand with the task of rebuilding a fairer
economy, as we highlight in the 'Clean Start' special feature. The
same crushing injustices that triggered the financial collapse
have been driving global warming. Now, suddenly, we have an Jess Worth for the
opportunity to change the system. Can we seize it? New Internationalist Co-operative

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CLIMATE JUSTICE THE FACTS
It's the poorest of the poor in the world, and this
includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who
are going to be the worst hit.1 CLIMATE CHANGE IS
Rajendra Pachauri, Chair, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change HAPPENING NOW
● The decade of 1998-2007 was the warmest on record. The
top 11 warmest years all occurred in the past 13 years.2
● This warming is being caused by human activity, primarily

the burning of fossil fuels.

● In order to avoid a catastrophic rise of 6oC by the end of the

century, global emissions need to have peaked by 2015 and

reduce by at least 80% by 2050.
Waste and
GLOBAL GREENHOUSE wastewater
GAS EMISSIONS BY SECTOR3 2.8%
Forestry
17.4% Energy
supply
25.9%
Agriculture
13.5%
Industry Transport
19.4% 13.1%

Residential and
G M B AKASH
commercial buildings 7.9%

WHO IS BEING AFFECTED? almost doubled.6

Climate change is causing human suffering all over the world,
due to rising sea-levels, extreme weather events, water and
food shortages, and disease.
● An estimated 90% of all those killed – and 98% of those
affected – by natural disasters live in Asia and Africa. Developing
countries are most at risk because they lack the resources and
capacity to prevent or mitigate the worst effects.5

S ATA P O R N T H O N G M A / G R E E N P E A C E
● The World Health Organization estimated that in 2000 climate ● Between 1996 and 2005, disasters caused $667 billion in direct

change was causing 150,000 deaths worldwide4 – from malaria, losses to people worldwide. Losses were 20 times greater in
malnutrition, diarrhoea and flooding. This conservative estimate is developing countries.5
equivalent to a 9/11 attack every week. ● Rising world food prices caused in part by climate change and

● 'Natural' disasters are increasing in frequency and severity.5 Since expanded biofuel production led to food riots and protests in
the mid-1970s, storms of the force of Hurricane Katrina have more than 50 countries between January 2007 and July 2008.7

ARCTIC
● The thawing of the Arctic permafrost is affecting the
traditional way of life of its indigenous people, making
hunting and travelling difficult and dangerous.

EUROPE
● The 2003 heatwave killed approximately 35,000 people
from nine countries.
● In summer 2007, Britain suffered widespread flooding
following one of the wettest months on record. It caused
$4 billion worth of damage and prompted the biggest
NORTH AMERICA rescue effort in peacetime Britain.
● In 2005 Hurricane Katrina
hit the US Gulf Coast causing
1,836 deaths. CARIBBEAN
● In April 2008, a week of PACIFIC ISLANDS
protests and riots in Haiti over ● The low-lying island
rising food prices left at least five of Tuvalu has already
people dead and 200 injured. evacuated 3,000 of its
inhabitants to New
Zealand.
ASIA ● The 2,500 residents of

LATIN AMERICA ● In India a record 944 mm of the Carteret Islands are

In October 2005 Hurricane Stan
● AFRICA
hit Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, ● Floods in Mozambique
Nicaragua and Costa Rica, causing
in February/March 2000
more than 1,500 deaths. killed several thousands.
● In September 2007
torrential rain triggered
flash floods across Africa,
affecting over a million
people in 22 countries.
The heavy rains destroyed
thousands of acres of
land and prompted an
outbreak of cholera, which
killed at least 68 people.
rainfall in Mumbai in July 2005 being forced to relocate
claimed over 1,000 lives. to nearby Bougainville as
● Cyclone Nargis ripped across their island disappears
Burma in May 2008 killing an under the waves.
estimated 150,000 and severely
affecting 2.4 million.
AUSTRALASIA
● In Canberra wildfires killed 4 in January 2003.
● Since 2003, Australia has been undergoing
its worst drought on record, with many cities
facing severe water shortages and crops and
farms affected.

! N E W I N T E R N AT I O N A L I S T J A N UA RY / F E B RUA RY 2 0 0 9 fff]TfX]c^aV
 WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? ● In 2007 China overtook the US as the world's biggest emitter.
● Around 23% of Chinese carbon dioxide emissions in 2004 were due to
Just 23 rich countries, home to only 14% of the world's
products produced for export to richer countries. This is comparable to Japan's
population, have produced 60% of the world's carbon
total CO2 emissions, and is more than double Britain’s emissions in the same year.10
emissions since 1850. Today they produce 40% of the world's ● A US citizen emits seven times as much in a year as an Ethiopian does in
total. Despite committing to reduce annual emissions to
a lifetime.11
below 1990 levels by 2012, their collective emissions are
continuing to rise.9 Carbon emissions
1900-20048
2007 carbon emissions
per person8
6
Tonnes of carbon

0
China Russia Japan Canada
US India Germany UK

FUTURE SCENARIOS
Unless urgent action is taken now, the world RISING SEA-LEVELS
faces terrifying consequences. Sea-levels are set to rise dramatically. If we
continue 'business as usual' we are likely to
MIGRATION
● At least 250 million people will be forced to
see a rise of at least 1-2 metres this century,
possibly much more.13
leave their homes between now and 2050.12 ● A 1 metre rise would displace 10 million

people in Vietnam and 8-10 million in

HUNGER AND THIRST3 Egypt.
● The number of Africans at risk of coastal
● By 2020, up to 250 million

people in Africa and 77 flooding will rise from 1 million in 1990 to

million in South America
will be under increased water
stress – where supplies no
longer meet demand.
70 million by 2080.14
● In Bangladesh, flood damage has become
more extreme in the past 20 years. By 2100,
predicted ocean rises threaten to submerge

● By 2025 tens of millions
more will go hungry due to
low crop yields and rising
global food prices. 49 million
people are at risk of hunger
by 2020 in Asia alone. Food
crop yields in some African
countries could decline by
as much as 50% by 2020.
R U PA K D E C H O W D H U R I / R EU T E R S
18% of the country, creating 35 million
environmental refugees.15
● During the Pliocene period, when the world
was 2oC to 3oC warmer, sea-levels were 25
metres higher. About 1 billion people live
within a 25-metre rise in today’s sea-level,
including many US East Coast cities and areas
occupied by more than 250 million people
in China.16
DEATH FROM DISEASE
● By 2085 an estimated 220-400

million more people will be at risk

from malaria, and 3.5 billion from
SPECIES LOSS3 dengue fever.3
● Some 182 million people in
● Approximately a third of all
species will be committed to sub-Saharan Africa alone could
extinction by 2050. die of disease directly attributable
to climate change by the end of the
D A N I E L B E LT R A / G R E E N P E A C E
century.13

SOLUTIONS17 1 BBC News, 'Billions face climate change risk', 6 April 2007, tinyurl.com/5fzkur 2 World Meteorological Organization,
'Top 11 Warmest Years On Record Have All Been In Last 13 Years', 13 December 2007. 3 Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), Fourth Assessment Report, 2007, www.ipcc.ch 4 World Health Organization, 'Climate and
Today, renewable energy sources account for only 13% of health fact sheet', July 2005, tinyurl.com/5fnu4m 5 Ronald Parker, 'Development Actions and the Rising Incidence
the world’s energy use. As much as 80% of energy still comes of Disasters', World Bank Independent Evaluation Group, June 2007. 6 K. Emanuel, 'Increasing destructiveness of
tropical cyclones over the past 30 years', Nature 436, 2005. 7 Joachim von Braun, 'Responding to the world food crisis',
from fossil fuels, and the remaining 7% from nuclear power. International Food Policy Research Institute, 2008. 8 Carbon Dioxide Information Analyisis Center, cdiac.oml.gov
9 World Resources Institute, 'Climate Analysis Indicators Tool 5.0', 2008, www.cait.wri.org 10 Tao Wang and Jim Watson,
● In one day, the sunlight that reaches the earth provides 'Who Owns China’s Carbon Emissions?', Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, October 2007. 11 Based on
enough energy to satisfy the world's current power figures from CIA World Factbook, tinyurl.com/3d6bhw and Energy Information Administration, tinyurl.com/yoxmh8
12 Dr Norman Myers, quoted in 'Human Tide: The real migration crisis,' Christian Aid, May 2007 13 Christian Aid, 'The
requirements for 8 years – although only a percentage of that Climate of Poverty: Facts, fears and hope', May 2006. 14 DFID, submission to the Stern Enquiry into Climate Change
potential is technically accessible. and Developing Countries, Nov 2005. 15 Anwar Ali, ‘Vulnerability of Bangladesh Coastal Region to Climate Change
with Adaptation Options’, 1999. 16 James Hansen, Testimony to the Select Committee on Energy Independence and
● Current wind, wave, solar and
Global Warming, US House of Representatives, 26 April 2007. 17 All figures taken from Greenpeace, 'Energy
geothermal technologies could [r]evolution: a sustainable global energy outlook', 2008, tinyurl.com/6fdqgy
provide six times more power than
the world currently uses.
N E W I N T E R N AT I O N A L I S T J A N UA RY / F E B RUA RY 2 0 0 9 "
5 2>D=C3>F=
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Just or bust 2P]cWT2^_T]WPVT]cP[ZbST[XeTa2[X\PcT9dbcXRT.
3P]]h2WXeTabRPbcbP]ThT^eTacWT^_cX^]b
The Same Boat
Imagine 10 rabbits lost at sea, in a boat carved out of a
giant carrot.
The carrot is their only source of food, so they all keep
nibbling at it. The boat is shrinking rapidly – but none of them
wants to be the first to stop, because then they’ll be the first to
starve. There’s no point in any of them stopping unless everyone
stops – if even one rabbit carries on eating, the boat will sink.
This is the international climate crisis in a (Beatrix Potter-
flavoured) nutshell: action by individual nations achieves little
unless we all act together. Of course, reality is a little more complex.
While it’s easy to imagine the rabbits reaching a simple agreement
where they all learn to dredge for seaweed instead, our situation
involves massive global inequalities, differing levels of responsibility,
and a history of exploitation and broken international promises.
Perhaps, then, we shouldn’t be too surprised that the
international climate negotiations – which began in earnest in
1990 with the talks that created the UN Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – have not yet got us a workable
global solution. The best we’ve managed so far has been the 1997
Kyoto Protocol, under which industrialized nations (known
as ‘Annex 1’ countries) pledged to cut their CO2 emissions by a
completely inadequate 5.2 per cent by 2012. The US famously
pulled out of the deal, and most of those who remained in are
unlikely to achieve even these small cuts.
AMeanwhile,
Fair Point
no definite plan has been agreed for ensuring that
the poorer nations switch to a climate-friendly development path.
The US says it won’t play unless, in the name of ‘fairness’, all
non-Annex 1 countries also take on emissions reduction targets.
Southern governments, however, point out that they’ve arrived
late to the fossil fuel party: the industrialized nations got us into
this mess by emitting, over the past 200 years, the vast majority
of the greenhouse gases currently warming up the atmosphere.
How can the Annex 1 countries demand that the South restrict
its development with tough carbon targets when the North has
mostly missed its own Kyoto goals?
At the same time, despite promised funds to support low-
carbon development, to adapt to the impacts of climate change,
and to transfer to low-carbon technology, the only real money
flowing from North to South through the UNFCCC process
has been via the highly flawed Clean Development Mechanism
(CDM). This has allowed wealthy nations to offset their
domestic emissions with such ‘clean development’ projects as
urban landfill sites, giant dams that were being built anyway,
and slightly more efficient steel refineries. There are now
near-universal calls for the CDM to be reformed, or scrapped
altogether and replaced with something fairer.
fff]TfX]c^aV

COP a Load of This
With Kyoto limping to the end of its life, governments are
feverishly trying to strike a new deal on global emissions cuts
between 2012 and 2020. They’ll be thrashing it out in meetings
in Bonn in April and June, with the aim of signing an agreement
at the next big Conference Of Parties (COP) – Copenhagen,
1-12 December 2009.
Efforts have been focused on getting the US – responsible
for 30 per cent of current emissions – to sign up. But a deal
that favours the interests of wealthy nations over the real
needs of the world’s people would fail on two crucial counts.
The expanded carbon market demanded by the US and the
EU would enrich private traders at the expense of lives and
livelihoods in the South; meanwhile, any deal without a strong
justice element would almost certainly be rejected by many
Southern governments.
Poorer nations have fought bitterly to enshrine a ‘right to
development’ and an acknowledgement of countries’ ‘common
but differentiated responsibilities’ within Kyoto, which means
that richer countries are expected to act first. Unless the
Annex 1 countries start showing real commitment to these
principles – through deep domestic emissions cuts, strings-
free funding, technology transfer and development allowances
– the chances of the South staying on board with a post-2012
deal are slim.1
Talking It Up
Unfortunately, the trend has so far been in the opposite
direction. As the climate talks have progressed from Toronto
(1988) to Kyoto (1997) to Bali (2007), the rich countries’ targets
have been weakened by around 1,900 million tonnes of CO2 , and
the role of carbon trading has grown steadily.2
For example, a major subject at the recent Poznan talks was
the REDD initiative (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation
and Degradation), which proposes that the carbon stored in the
world’s forests be added to the carbon market.3 In one fell swoop,
forest lands where people have lived for thousands of years would
be commodified and sold from beneath them, generating credits
to allow wealthy Northerners to carry on driving and shopping
– despite the fact that new research has revealed that recognizing
indigenous forest people’s land rights would cost less and be more
effective than using the carbon markets.4 t
The next three pages look at how some of the main proposals
on the table measure up when it comes to climate justice.
N E W I N T E R N AT I O N A L I S T J A N UA RY / F E B RUA RY 2 0 0 9 (
 5 2>D=C3>F=
c^2^_T]WPVT]
What’s on
1. For Copenhagen
‘Grandfathering’
of Kyoto Targets
WHAT IS IT? A delightfully twee name for the way industrialized
countries’ emissions targets have been allocated through the UNFCCC
– everyone has to reduce their emissions a certain percentage below
the amount they were emitting in 1990.

FAIRNESS: 2/10 Countries that were big polluters in 1990

get to stay as big polluters, with a slight percentage cut. A fairer
system would instead be based upon per capita emissions
(such as the ‘Contraction and Convergence’ model championed
by the Global Commons Institute), historical responsibility for
emissions, and/or ability to pay.

✓ EFFECTIVENESS: 2/10 The 1990 baseline is completely

arbitrary, with no relation to climate science.

Z
ORIN L ANGELLE / GLO BAL JUSTICE ECO LO GY PRO JECT – GLO BAL FOREST COALITIO N

CURRENT SUPPORT: 10/10 The EU is proposing a new

target of a 30% emissions cut by 2020 for Annex 1 countries.
The coalition of Least Developed

Greenhouse
Countries (LDCs) has said it would
prefer that to be a 45-50% cut. Both
of these targets are against the 1990

Development Rights (GDRs)

baseline – it’s just being taken for
granted. Alternative ideas such as
‘Contraction and Convergence’ are
sometimes discussed, but not
acted upon.
IT’S A BIT LIKE… A group of wealthy
tourists and destitute refugees have
survived a plane crash and are stranded on a
mountain. They decide to ration out the food
based on how much each person ate in the
week before the crash – the more you ate per
day back then, the more food you get now.
Global Commons Institute:
www.gci.org.uk
WHAT IS IT? An alternative method for setting carbon targets. It assumes that everyone
on the planet below a certain income threshold should first have the right to get themselves
out of poverty and are therefore exempt from any emissions targets. Responsibility for
climate action is then allocated to countries based on how many of their citizens are above
the income threshold, how far above it they are, and how much greenhouse gas that country
produces.
FAIRNESS: 8/10 Includes an explicit ‘right to develop’ for the world’s poor
(North and South), while ensuring that wealthy Southern élites are not excluded
from responsibility. However, it doesn’t acknowledge historical responsibility or the
‘offshoring’ of emissions by wealthier countries, and there are many potential devils
lurking in the details – such as how to set the income threshold.

✓ EFFECTIVENESS: 9/10 The targets within the framework are based on up-to-date
climate science, and if they were met it would give us a decent shot at avoiding the

Z
worst stuff.

CURRENT SUPPORT: 4/10 Some G77 governments have talked about it, and
it’s gained the backing of Christian Aid and Oxfam, but as yet has no official position
within the UNFCCC process.

IT’S A BIT LIKE… A city is razed to the ground by alien invaders. The people who escaped
unscathed because they lived in solid houses built from money they stole from the aliens
(thus provoking the attack) are expected to take on most of the rebuilding work. The people
who had left the aliens alone, stayed poor, and lived in rickety houses that collapsed on them
during the attack are allowed to recover in hospital before joining in the work.

www.ecoequity.org

! N E W I N T E R N AT I O N A L I S T J A N UA RY / F E B RUA RY 2 0 0 9 fff]TfX]c^aV
the table?
Emissions
Trading
WHAT IS IT? It’s the main way in which
wealthy industrialized countries are
planning to meet their reduction targets
– by trading ‘carbon credits’ (permits to
pollute) with other countries. Forests are due
to be added to the scheme at Copenhagen.
FAIRNESS: 1/10 The system
allows polluting industries and
governments to buy their way out
of their carbon commitments, using
complex trading rules written by
Northern economists. Private trading
firms get rich by buying and selling
the rights to the carbon in other
people’s forests and fields, investing
in dodgy quick-fixes and propping
up polluting industries.
✓ EFFECTIVENESS: 2/10 The EU
Emissions Trading Scheme has yet
to produce any proven emissions
reductions. Wealthy governments
and companies can avoid difficult-
but-vital domestic emissions cuts
by buying (both real and imaginary)
carbon reductions from elsewhere.
Politicians get an excuse not to
stump up desperately needed
cash for more effective low-carbon
development in the Global South.
MAD, BAD, AND
DANGEROUS EFFECTS:
8/10 Want to unleash a genetically
modified carbon-munching microbe,
create a famine-inducing agro-fuel
plantation, privatize a forest or build
a few nuclear power stations? The
Z
carbon market is the place for you!
CURRENT SUPPORT: 9.5/10
Unless we decide to stop it.
IT’S A BIT LIKE… Handing control of the
Earth’s vital natural systems over to a bunch
of grinning Wall Street traders. Oh no, wait:
it’s exactly like that.
www.carbontradewatch.org
www.thecornerhouse.org.uk
fff]TfX]c^aV
Mitigation and
Adaptation Funds
WHAT IS IT? The G77 (a coalition of, confusingly, about 130 developing
countries) and China are proposing that the wealthiest countries put the climate
change support money they’ve been promising (for years) into a central fund for
spending on low-carbon technology, emission reductions and climate change
adaptation in the Global South.5
FAIRNESS: 7/10 Putting it into a central fund has pros and cons:
paying it straight to governments instead could lead to corruption and
squandering on unhelpful projects, but the central fund takes the decision
even further away from those affected by it.
✓ EFFECTIVENESS: 5/10 Will the funds be spent on effective projects
such as protecting the land rights of indigenous forest people, or on
Z
expensive distractions like nuclear power?
CURRENT SUPPORT: 7/10 The wealthy nations are going to have
to hand something over if they don’t want the talks to collapse completely.
IT’S A BIT LIKE… The guy who drove a bulldozer through your house and
sold off the rubble has promised to buy you a tent in compensation. As a huge
storm gathers on the horizon, you post him another stiff reminder letter.
Kyoto2
WHAT IS IT? A new proposal, where companies wishing to drill for oil or gas
or dig up coal would have to purchase permits. These permits would be tightly
restricted, and fall each year in line with the demands of climate science. The
money from the permit sale would go into a global fund to protect forests, pay
for adaptation measures, create a ‘revolution’ in sustainable technology and help
poorer communities make the transition to a low-carbon world.
FAIRNESS: 7/10 The polluters pay, and the money goes to the people
and places that need it. All pretty good – so long as the poor are protected
from sudden fuel price rises, and the institutions charged with distributing
the funds (Oliver Tickell, who developed the proposal, suggests UN
agencies and NGOs) do so in a transparent and accountable way that
actively includes the affected communities.
✓ EFFECTIVENESS: 8/10 It looks good on paper, and is based on solid
climate science. However, we all know how adept fossil fuel companies are
at finding loopholes…
Z
CURRENT SUPPORT: 1/10 This new proposal would involve
totally changing the terms of the international negotiations, shifting the
responsibility from countries to corporations (including a lot of state-
owned companies). Will it be seen as a distraction from the main debate,
a Northern-biased proposal that doesn’t explicitly recognize historical
responsibility, or a neat way out of the current deadlock?
IT’S A BIT LIKE… That moment near the end of a meeting where someone
suggests an interesting new idea that might make the previous four hours of
discussion completely irrelevant, and you don’t know whether to shake their
hand or throw the water jug at them.
www.kyoto2.org
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Carbon Taxes
2. In various countries WHAT IS IT? A government tax on sources of
carbon pollution.
Underpinning the climate talks are a raft of ideas for how
FAIRNESS: 5/10 Could hit the poorest
emissions reductions can be achieved. Here are some of in society hardest through higher fuel
the forerunners. prices, unless it were carefully designed.
Taxes on companies producing or
burning fossil fuels could be fairer, if those

Government-Funded
companies were prevented from passing
those costs on to others. British Columbia’s
new carbon tax includes a rebate for the

Climate Programmes poorest families.

✓ EFFECTIVENESS: 6/10 Sweden,

Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark,
WHAT IS IT? Publicly funded schemes to tackle climate change – from revamped Germany, Norway, Italy, and a few US
public transport networks to mass home insulation to giant offshore wind farms. towns and counties have experimented
with carbon taxes, with mixed results. The
FAIRNESS: 5/10 Depends on how much you trust your government. taxes do seem to reduce carbon emissions,
Publicly owned climate solutions are more accountable to the people they but usually on a smaller scale than was
affect than corporate or consumer-driven solutions (in democratic states, at hoped for – often due to loopholes and
least). However, there’s also plenty of scope for corruption and the siphoning concessions demanded by industry or
of public funds into expensive ‘solutions’ that benefit wealthy élites rather angry consumer groups.

Z
than the climate.
CURRENT SUPPORT: 5/10 Carbon
EFFECTIVENESS: 5/10 Utterly dependent on the details. However,
✓ there are some things, such as legislating against corporate polluters,
and reforming national transport and energy networks, that people and
taxes are talked about within the UNFCCC
process as a potential tool, but they’re not
generally very popular back home.
community groups cannot do alone, and governments will need to play an
active role.

Z
IT’S A BIT LIKE… Asking a big kid you don’t
really like or trust to charge the bullies £1 for
CURRENT SUPPORT: 6/10 There are positive examples out there every time they thump you.
(such as Germany’s big renewables roll-out), but they are often cancelled
out by the simultaneous development of roads, runways and fossil fuel Nicola Liebert, ‘Why Ecotaxes May Not Be The Answer’,
power stations. NI 416, October 2008

IT’S A BIT LIKE… Asking a big kid you don’t really like or trust to chase away
some bullies for you.

Techno-fixes and Geo-engineering

WHAT IS IT? Examples include genetically modified algal fuel, capturing CO2 for underground storage,
launching mirrors into space, discovering reliable nuclear fusion, turning food crops into agro-fuels, dumping iron
in the oceans and spraying sulphates in the sky.

FAIRNESS: 1/10 Most of these schemes would place disproportionate control of the global climate
in the hands of a small number of companies or governments. Imagine if the US or China had control of a
giant space mirror that was the only thing preventing the world from being fried, or if Monsanto held the
patent for an algal fuel that the whole world relied upon for power. What a beautiful future we’d be building.

✓ EFFECTIVENESS: 2/10 Most are more than a decade away from large-scale implementation, and
would drain resources away from proven and sustainable solutions.

MAD, BAD, AND DANGEROUS EFFECTS: 10/10 Poisonous algal blooms, disruption of little-
understood oceanic food webs, mass appropriation of lands, seas and forests, acid rain, sudden future CO2
eruptions, and corporate control of the climate system… will that do?

Z CURRENT SUPPORT: 7/10 European governments are desperate for carbon capture to materialize.
There have been pro-sulphate-spraying demonstrations in Australia. An open market in carbon emissions
would be a big boost to a lot of these wacky schemes.

IT’S A BIT LIKE… Your house is on fire, so you sit down in the living room and start drawing up designs for a giant
wall-smashing robot.

‘Techno-Fixes’ report, Corporate Watch, www.corporatewatch.org

Continued on page 23
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The road ahead
8UcWTcP[ZbR^]cX]dTX]cWTXaRdaaT]ceTX]cWT]2^_T]WPVT] is
likely to produce a similar deal to Kyoto – arbitrary (though larger)
targets against a 1990 baseline, perhaps giving targets to some
of the larger developing countries in return for extra mitigation
funds, and with carbon trading as the main ‘delivery mechanism’.
It would probably end up about as successful as Kyoto, too.
Fortunately, global dissent is growing. Large NGOs such as
Friends of the Earth International, Oxfam and Christian Aid
are becoming increasingly vocal on the issue of climate justice.
New networks are forming amongst Northern and Southern
social movements to demand community-led solutions to the
climate crisis, and an end to the privatization of lands and forests
through carbon trading schemes.
Down with Kyoto
We shouldn’t get too hung up on Copenhagen – we’re far more
likely to create lasting change by building powerful national and
international movements than by pouring all our energy into
specific summit meetings. But it’s hard to deny that we need
some sort of international framework for tackling this global
issue. Despite its flaws, the UNFCCC is the only one we’ve got,
and the urgency of the climate issue requires us to work with it.
However, the Kyoto Protocol has been a dismal failure.
Should we demand that governments scrap it completely and
start again from scratch? It’s tempting, but would be unlikely
SUPRI SUPRI / REUTERS
to gain the crucial support of Southern negotiators, who fear
that a brand new deal would see them lose their hard-won
‘differentiated responsibility’.
A better approach might be to create space within the existing
talks for alternative, fairer systems and ideas – such as GDRs,
Kyoto2, community-led solutions, indigenous rights, strings-free
clean development assistance, patent-free technology transfer – to
get a hearing. Currently emissions trading, private financing and
market-based mechanisms are seen as the only route to greenhouse
gas reductions, and are crowding everything else out of the debate.
This suggests a simple, effective starting point for developing
a successful – and just – global agreement: we need to get rid of
carbon trading.
Just: do it
Many groups and movements could happily unite around a major
campaign to discredit the carbon markets. However, this needs
to start now. The massive protests planned for Copenhagen will
be too late to have much effect on the talks (unless things have
gone so badly that they need to be shut down!)
Let’s face it – whatever gets agreed at Copenhagen, governments
are unlikely to stick to it unless there is an international movement
powerful enough to make it happen. A global climate treaty will
never be a panacea, but we can at least make sure it’s a step towards
– rather than away from – climate justice. t
Danny Chivers is a writer, researcher, activist and poet on all things climate-change related.
A longer version of this article, with more details about the different proposals on the
table at Copenhagen is available at http://adaisythroughconcrete.blogspot.com
1 T Roberts & B Parks, A Climate Of Injustice, MIT Press 2007 2 Diana Liverman, ‘Survival
into the Future in the Face of Climate Change’ in E Shuckburgh (ed.), Survival: The Survival
of the Human Race (2006 Darwin Lectures), Cambridge University Press, 2007 3 See:
thereddsite.wordpress.com 4 The Guardian, ‘Pay indigenous people to protect rainforests,
conservation groups urge’, 17 October 2008, www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/
oct/17/forests-endangeredhabitats 5 Financial Mechanism for Meeting Financial Commitments
under the Convention. Proposal by the G77 and China to the Poznan meeting.