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The Generator news service publishes articles on sustainable development, agriculture and energy as well as observations on current affairs. The news service is used on the weekly radio show, The Generator, as well as by a number of monthly and quarterly magazines. A podcast of the Generator news is also available.
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  • Our voice needs to be heard at Copenhagen

     

    If Copenhagen achieves nothing, the resulting delay to securing these vital agreements will be a terrible sentence for all human beings and the planet. The earth is a unique global ecosystem in which everything is interrelated. Today, misery afflicts many peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Tomorrow other countries will face extinction too.

    Innocent Hodzongi Programmes director, Environment Africa, Zimbabwe

    Lloyd Simwaka Progressio country director, Malawi

    José Ramon Avila Director of the National Association of NGOs, Honduras

     

    António Pacheco Director, Social and Economic Development Association of Santa Marta, El Salvador

    María Elena Salas Dias Director, Cajamarca Ideas Centre, Peru

    Dinorah Granadeiro Executive director, NGO Forum, Timor-Leste

    Victor Ochoa President, Campamento Environmental Movement, Honduras

    Dr Angel Ibarra Director, Salvadorian Ecological Union, El Salvador

    Ego Lemos Founding director, Permaculture Timor-Leste, East Timor

    María Elena Mendez Director, Centre for Women’s Studies, Honduras

    Anna Zucchetti Director, GEA Group, Peru

    Kevin Ndemera Progressio Country Director, Zimbabwe

    Antonio Gaybor Executive secretary, National Water Resources Forum, Ecuador

    Manuel Ernesto Cruz Director, Youth Development Foundation, El Salvador

    Deometrio do Amaral Executive director, Haburas Foundation, Timor-Leste

    Carmen Medina Progressio country ­ director, El Salvador

    Larry José Madrigal Rajo General co-ordinator, Bartolomé de las Casas Centre, El Salvador

    Dulce Marlen Contreras Co-ordinator of Rural Women’s Association of La Paz, Honduras

    Luís Camacho Progressio country director, Ecuador

    Lidia Castillo Director, Centre for the Investigation and Promotion of Human Rights, El Salvador

    Roque Rivera Executive director, Popol Nah Tun, Honduras

    Jesús Garza Co-ordinator of the Honduran Coalition for People’s Action, Honduras

    Marianela Gibaja Progressio country director, Peru

    Dr Juan Almendares Bonilla Founding director, Mother Earth Movement, Honduras

    Xiomara Ventura Progressio Country Director, Honduras

    Maximus Tahu Researcher, La’o Hamutuk, Timor-Leste

    Juvinal Dias Researcher, La’o Hamutuk, Timor-Leste

    Jesus Garza Coordinator, The Honduran Coalition for People’s Action, Honduras

    Tibor van Staveren Progressio country director, Timor-Leste

    Dr Jeannette Alvarado Director, Maquilishuat Foundation, El Salvador

    • As one who was at Seattle to see the WTO‘s open-market blitzkrieg temporarily halted, I wholeheartedly agree with Madeleine Bunting’s perceptive bookending of the noughties with Seattle and Copenhagen (Protesters in Seattle warned us what was coming, but we didn’t listen, 14 December). However, she is not correct to imply that the movement “differed dramatically” over alternatives to economic globalisation. There was a general consensus that to control finance and global corporations there needed to be a return to countries having the will and the ability to protect, nurture and rebuild their local economies. This would also entail the political control of such damaging corporate forces and a change in the end goal of trade and financial rules that have allowed big business and banks to prosper, while trashing local economies and the environment.

    The twin towers and the wars on terror diverted attention from these priorities. Tackling the global economic crisis presents new opportunities for this “protect the local, globally” approach to solve the triple credit, climate and oil-supply crunches. An example of this is the Green New Deal proposal. This emphasises a massive £50bn-a-year local jobs and business programme to decarbonise the UK economy. It involves comprehensive measures to gut the power of finance and details a fairer global taxation system to fund such programmes in poorer countries. It is the latest step along the path that first received global coverage in Seattle. Indeed to compensate for the disaster of the last 10 years, the Green New Deal needs to become a key blueprint for campaigns and government policies in the 2010s.

    Colin Hines

    Convener, Green New Deal Group

    • Reading George Monbiot’s article (This is bigger than climate change. It is a battle to redefine humanity, 15 December), I felt a Freudian subconscious must have been at work. He managed to refer to “our crowded planet”, the human race being “hedged in” by the consequences of its own actions, that we are acting in “defiance of natural constraints”, that we are no longer able to “swing our fists regardless of whose nose might be in the way”, and that “perpetual growth cannot be accommodated on a finite planet”. As if to ram home the point, he even concludes with a reference to “another great unmentionable”. Was he, I thought, going to join other leading environmentalists like Jonathan Porritt and David Attenborough, and agree that we should all be treating population growth as a serious issue? Alas, no. The particular “unmentionable” turned out to be the folly of searching for more oil at a time when we should be phasing out its use. The real unmentionable remains, in his world, just that.

    Chris Padley

    Market Rasen, Lincolnshire

     

    • George Monbiot again attempts to make the subliminal link between those who disagree with the consensus view on climate change and Holocaust deniers (Comment, 8 December). However, he fails to admit the real scandal of the leaked emails. As Karl Popper taught us, scepticism is a cardinal virtue, and this is particularly true in sciences that rely upon the interpretation of historical data and the output of theoretical models. In this respect climate science is similar to my own subject, financial economics, and there are important lessons to learn from the way that discipline has developed. In the 1970s the Chicago School dominated finance, and leading journals would not accept articles contradicting the rational expectations/market efficiency paradigm. Over the subsequent decades, counter-evidence and alternative theoretical explanations of market behaviour began the emerge at the margins of the discipline. Now, the contrary view has become so persuasive that the certainties of 40 years ago appear naive. However, the academic lockout put back the development of the subject for a generation.

    My reading of this affair is that climate science, like finance in the 1970s, is at an immature stage of development. There are heavy consequences when scientists forget Popper’s dictum that good science seeks to refute, not confirm. With climate science the stakes are high, and so we need the very best of science. That is why I am on the side of the sceptics.

    Emeritus Professor Bob Ryan

    Nettleton Shrub, Wiltshire

  • Copenhagen: Only the numbers count- and they add up to hell on earth

     

     

    First number to know: 350. It’s what scientists have been saying for two years is the maximum amount of carbon dioxide we can safely have in the atmosphere, measured in parts per million. Those scientists have been joined by an unprecedented outpouring from civil society: in late October, activists put on what CNN called “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history,” with 5,200 demonstrations in 181 countries, all rallying around that number. Three thousand vigils last weekend across the planet spelled out the number in candles. Thousands of churches rang their bells 350 times on Sunday, and yesterday the World Parliament of Religions, meeting in Melbourne and representing the “largest interreligious gathering on earth” sent an emergency 350 declaration here to Copenhagen.

     

    The second number: 100. That’s (roughly) how many countries are backing a 350 target here at Copenhagen. That’s more than half the nations in attendance – unfortunately, they’re the small, poor ones. But it’s amazing to see them, in the face of enormous pressure, keeping the idea of real action alive. Yesterday Mohamed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, spoke to a roaring crowd of thousands: “We know what the laws of physics say: the most important number in the world is 350.”

     

    The third number: 4%. That’s how much the US is offering to cut its emissions from their 1990 levels by 2020. Scientists tell us that the developed world would need to reduce by at least 40% to get us back on a 350 track, so the American offer is exactly an order or magnitude off. And they’re not alone. All the rich countries, not to mention China, are looking to do as little as possible and still escape here with some kind of agreement they can hide behind.

     

    The fourth number – and the most important one. When the folks at Climate Interactive plug in every promise made at these talks (the American offer on the table, the Chinese promise to reduce “energy intensity”, the EU pledges, and so on) their software tells them almost instantly how much carbon they would eventually produce. When they hit the button last night, the program showed that by 2100 the world’s CO2 concentrations (currently 390) would be – drumroll please – 770. That is, we would live in hell, or at least a place with a similar temperature.

     

    So that’s the scorecard. You may hear a lot of happy talk from world leaders over the next few days as they “reach a historic agreement”. But that’s how it all adds up.

     

    • Bill McKibben is the coordinator of 350.org

  • India lashes out at climate stance

     

    The Indian Environment Minister had just pulled out of a crucial meeting with Australia’s Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, aimed at breaking the deadlock in the climate talks.

    Senator Wong said she did not know why Mr Ramesh pulled out of the crucial meeting. “You will have to ask him,” she said.

    Mr Ramesh told the Herald he had not “pulled out” but said he was unfortunately “too busy” to hold the meeting with Senator Wong and spend three hours co-chairing a meeting with her.

    “Penny Wong remains a good friend of mine, a very valued colleague,” he said, but he made it clear he would not be co-operating in a session with her to try to break the deadlock even after a request from the Danish head of the United Nations conference, Connie Hedegaard.

    Australia is heavily backing efforts by its allies, the United States, Japan and Europe, to force China, India and the developing nations to sign an agreement to curb their emissions that will lead to a legal treaty on climate change.

    At the same time, the wealthy nations have stalled talks on ambitious cuts in emissions by them under the Kyoto Protocol until there is progress from China and India on the new agreement.

    In an effort to bring both sides together Ms Hedegaard asked Senator Wong and Mr Ramesh to find a way for the big developing countries – China, India and Brazil – to reduce their emissions and lock those efforts into a new treaty.

    With that effort under question, it is unclear how the fraught negotiations will proceed.

    As 120 world leaders arrive in Copenhagen to sign a deal on climate change, concerns are growing that only a weak outcome is likely.

    On Monday the G77 group of developing nations backed by China, India and Brazil walked out of a side set of talks to show their anger at a decision by rich countries to stall discussion of their emissions cuts under the Kyoto Protocol, the legal treaty that binds them at present.

    In what Oxfam labelled a tit-for-tat exercise, Australia’s negotiators then shut down the talks on emission cuts for rich countries.

    In the rancour that followed, Ms Hedegaard worked out a compromise, allotting a pairing of developed and developing nations to discuss the key issues.

    But after Senator Wong and Mr Ramesh were slotted to discuss the most thorny issue of the developing country emissions reductions, the pairing broke down. Senator Wong said it was “regrettable that there are some who are willing to fight about process rather than negotiate about substance when what is asked of us requires so much more”.

    With Australia and its allies coming under intense attack over claims they want to “kill” the Kyoto Protocol, Senator Wong attempted to offer lukewarm support for it.

    “I wanted to make very clear there is a lot in the Kyoto Protocol which is good; there is a lot that we need to build on.

    “But if we are going to tackle climate change we need to do much more. We need to do what is in the Kyoto Protocol and we need to go further.”

    The UN’s senior climate official, Yvo de Boer, and Ms Hedegaard repeated that the Kyoto Protocol and the new agreement had to be discussed and included in any agreement from Copenhagen on Friday.

    The chief negotiator of the G77, Lumumba Di-Aping, from Sudan, said the developing countries had “won” the debate on keeping the Kyoto Protocol alive.

    But members of environment groups now believe the prospects are shrinking that rich nations will come up with an ambitious set of targets to cut their emissions by between 25 per cent and 40 per cent by 2020, leaving political leaders to pull off a compromise by signing a weak agreement at the end of this week.

    Marcelo Furtado of Greenpeace said: “What we have here is a crime scene set up for leaders to solve.”

  • Poor nations threaten climate showdown at Copenhagen summit

     

     

     

    The Copenhagen climate talks hit trouble tonight as a number of African countries indicated their leaders would refuse to take part in the final summit unless significant progress was made in the next three days.

    The showdown between rich and poor countries came as ministers began arriving in Copenhagen to take over negotiations. However, negotiators failed to reach agreement in key areas such as emission cuts, long-term finance and when poor countries should start to reduce emissions.

    More than 110 heads of state, mainly from developing countries, are due to begin arriving on Thursday for an intense 24 hours of final negotiations. Delegates hope for a deal on Friday that will ensure temperatures do not rise by more than 2C, and that hundreds of billions of pounds is pledged to help poor countries adapt to climate change. But tonight it appeared that many did not want to risk being pressured into signing an agreement they believe would be against their national interests.

    “The industrialised countries want to hammer out a large part of the deal on the last day, when the heads of state arrive,” one senior African negotiator told the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. “It’s a ploy to slip through provisions that are not amenable to developing country efforts. It’s playing dirty.”

    One added: “It is as serious a situation as it ever has been. It is more than probable many heads of state will not come if the negotiations are not complete. Why should a head of state come to sign an agreement that is basically a non-agreement?”

    High level Chinese and Indian representatives indicated they would be in Copenhagen, but they made clear they wanted key points agreed before they arrive. They also appear desperate to avoid a situation where western leaders jet in and steamroller the main points on the last day of the conference.

    Su Wei, China‘s top climate negotiator, said he hoped there would be no outstanding issues by the time his country’s premier, Wen Jiabao, arrived. “I hope the only question we will leave for leaders is how to pronounce Copenhagen.”

    Indian representatives also said their prime minister, Manmohan Singh, would come to the summit, but emphasised the urgency of having negotiators produce a text in advance.

    Jairam Ramesh, India‘s environment minister, said: “We are saying that heads of state should not be negotiating a draft text. We must have a draft text already finalised. The heads of state should come to leave their imprint on the deal.”

    The UK’s climate secretary, Ed Miliband, conceded there was some way to go before a workable deal was reached. “We’re now getting close to midnight in this negotiation and we need to act like it. That means more urgency to solve problems, not just identify them.”

    One key point of contention is the US and EU insistence that emerging economies such as India, China and Brazil agree to peak their emissions by 2020. Developing countries argue that this would lock them into poverty.

    Analysts say such hard driving tactics are typical of negotiations, but they resonate even more at the climate change talks, which are based on the idea that all 192 countries sign off on any agreement.

    “This is a consensus process,” said Janos Pastor, who heads Ban Ki-Moon’s climate change team. “If they are really meaning that they are going to boycott, and if they are going to do that, it’s serious. It would be a pity if a conflict meant that we don’t reach an agreement.”

    Rob Bradley from the World Resource Institute, said: “Nobody wants to have their prime minister arrive and then inform them they did not strike a deal to talk about. I can certainly imagine that some of those thinking that a deal is going to look bad for them are going to try to persuade their prime ministers from coming.”

  • Copenhagen negotiator accuses Rudd of lying

    Copenhagen negotiator accuses Rudd of lying

    Emma Alberici in Copenhagen and reporters, ABC December 16, 2009, 7:56

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    The chief negotiator for China and the small African nations at Copenhagen has accused Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of lying to the Australian people about his position on climate change.

    Lumumba Di-Aping represents China and the G77 group of small countries in the Copenhagen talks.

    He had high expectations of Mr Rudd, who flew in to the Danish capital this morning, but claims that throughout the negotiations the Australian Government has not matched its actions with its rhetoric.

    “The message Kevin Rudd is giving to his people, his citizens, is a fabrication, it’s fiction,” he said.

    “It does not relate to the facts because his actions are climate change scepticism in action.

    “All that Australia has done so far is simply not good enough.

    “It’s puzzling in the sense that here is a Prime Minister who actually won the elections because of his commitment to climate change,” he added.

    “He was the only Prime Minister who came and clearly said we have to do something, we have to join Kyoto protocol and all the rest.

    “And within a very short period of time he changes his mind, changes his position, he starts acting as if he has been converted into climate change scepticism. All what Australia has done so far is simply not good enough.

    The G77 and China claim that the talks have broken down, degenerating into a fight between the developed and the developing world.

    Mr Di-Aping accused Mr Rudd of trying to gain a strategic economic advantage by siding with the United States and the European Union at Copenhagen.

    “Australia is committed to killing Kyoto,” he said.

    “All the actions of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is basically a move away and a killing of Kyoto Protocol.”

    He says the talks have reached a deadlock because the developed world is not committed to helping poor countries in their efforts to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change.

    Meanwhile, world leaders have begun arriving at the Copenhagen summit as efforts continue to salvage the talks.

    Full ministerial sessions have begun, amid fears too little progress has been made so far.

    ‘Come a long way’</h3>;

     

    UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon says rich and poor nations should stop blaming each other for their differences and bring new and more ambitious proposals to the table.

    Speaking at the opening of the plenary session, Mr Ban urged the delegates to compromise to overcome problems encountered so far.

    “We have come a long way. Let us not falter in the home stretch,” he said.

    “Our goal is to lay the foundation for a legally binding climate treaty as early as possible in 2010.

    “We do not have another year to deliberate – nature does not negotiate with us.”

    Earlier, a senior UN official warned that negotiations were progressing too slowly and that there was still an enormous amount of work to be done.

    Observers say there are still deep divisions between rich and poor nations, which highlighted by the Americans saying they do not expect to offer any further cuts in their carbon emissions.

    Developing countries have meanwhile accused industrialised nations of going back on their commitment to fight climate change.

    French President Nicolas Sarkozy, US President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have held a 50-minute joint telephone call to discuss progress at UN climate talks in Denmark.

    A French statement says the four leaders covered the main areas that are currently being negotiated at the conference in Copenhagen, but provided no details on their discussions.

    In Copenhagen, Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger told delegates that leaders and ministers will not be able to find a solution on their own.

    “They need to co-operation (sic) the activists, the scientists, the universities,” he said.

    “They need the individuals whose vision and determination create movements. So ladies and gentlemen, let us regain our momentum, let us regain our purpose, let us regain our hope.”

     

  • Archbishop of Canterbury says fear hinders climate change battle

     

    “We are afraid because we don’t know how we can survive without the comforts of our existing lifestyle. We are afraid that new policies will be unpopular with a national electorate. We are afraid that younger and more vigorous economies will take advantage of us – or we are afraid that older, historically dominant economies will use the excuse of ecological responsibility to deny us our proper and just development.”

    Yesterday church bells in Denmark and other countries rang 350 times to represent the figure many scientists believe is a safe level of carbon dioxide in the air: 350 parts per million.

    Joining Williams at Copenhagen’s Lutheran cathedral was Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and religious leaders from Tuvalu, Zambia, Mexico and Greenland. Williams, who led the ecumenical service, said a paralysing sense of fear and selfishness would deny future generations a “stable, productive and balanced world to live in” and instead give them a world of “utterly chaotic and disruptive change, of devastation and desertification, of biological impoverishment and degradation.”

    There was even a sense that people were not frightened enough by this apocalyptic vision and cautioned against this approach, saying it would “drive out one sickness with another.”

    “It can make us feel that the problem is too great and we may as well pull up the bedclothes and wait for disaster. It can tempt us to blaming one another or waiting for someone else to make the first move,” he added.

    But humans were not “doomed to carry on in a downward spiral of the greedy, addictive, loveless behaviour” that had brought mankind to this crisis and he urged people to scrutinise their lifestyles and policies and how these demonstrated care for creation. Hecalled on people to consider what a sustainable and healthy relationship with the world would look like.

    His message for conference delegates centred on trusting each other in a world of limited resources. “How shall we build international institutions that make sure that resources get where they are needed – that ‘green taxes’ will deliver more security for the disadvantaged, that transitions in economic patterns will not weigh most heavily on those least equipped to cope?”

    Williams has had a busy few week: railing against the UK government for its religious illiteracy, condemning proposed anti-homosexuality legislation in Uganda, grappling with fresh dissent in the Anglican Communion and travelling to the landmark environment summit.In an interview with Channel 4 News last Saturday Williams warned that there were no “quick solutions” to global warming and said that there was a finite amount that individuals could do to make a difference.

    He said: “I don’t think there are any quick solutions, any absolutes here, but I think these are the sorts of issues about energy use particularly, whether it’s travel or domestically, that have to be really up in front of our minds.”

    Foreign holidays were not an “easy call, frankly” while he decreed that everyone should use public transport as much as possible while at the very least enquire about ecologically sustainable travel.

    He said that high-energy consuming vehicles in a city where there were alternatives were an irresponsible way of dealing with the crisis.

    “We use a hybrid car for that reason as my official car in London. I’m also coming back from Copenhagen by train on this occasion rather than flying,” he added.