Author: Neville

Live export row dogs Gillard

DateMay 5, 2013 40 reading now

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Chris Johnson

Chris Johnson

National Political Correspondent

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Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig
Not made public: Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig said the footage was “sickening”. Photo: Glenn Hunt

The latest live export scandal, and a resulting ban on cattle exports to Egpyt, has embarrassed the Gillard government and fuelled claims it has failed to prevent animal cruelty.

Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig was looking to tighten live export regulations following revelations of the animal abuse in Egypt. But the Greens and animal rights groups called on Labor to admit defeat and acknowledge the system had failed.

New footage shows extreme cruelty to cattle in Egyptian slaughterhouses the Australian industry has previously described as ”state of the art”.

Exports of livestock to Egypt were suspended after animal welfare group Animals Australia handed the graphic evidence to the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry last week. The footage has not been made public, but Mr Ludwig has described it as ”sickening”.

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Prime Minister Julia Gillard said all animal abuse was repulsive to Australians and the export industry.

Greens senator Lee Rhiannon said this was more evidence is the government was failing to prevent cruelty.

”The Government should admit that they cannot stop cruel practices in overseas countries and give certainty to the industry by expanding the trade in processed meat from Australia,” she said.

The Livestock Exporters’ Council has suspended exports to Egypt, saying the cattle in the footage are Egyptian owned and the abuse took place at two abattoirs. But it is struggling to explain how the cruelty took place in abattoirs it has repeatedly said met Australian standards.

The council’s chief executive Alison Penfold said she had visited one of the two abattoirs, Ain Sokhna, near Cairo, in October last year and had not witnessed any cruelty or inhumane practices.

But Ms Penfold said she was ”distraught and disgusted” by the footage presented to her on Friday.

In one piece of footage, an abattoir worker, who Ms Penfold said has since been sacked, tries to kill an injured animal by cutting leg tendons.

The same practice was documented in a different abattoir in Egypt in 2006, which led to the cessation of live trade with the country.

Trade resumed in 2010.

Animals Australia travelled to Egypt last October to obtain the vision after being contacted by an Egyptian veterinarian concerned about the treatment of cattle in the abattoirs.

The group’s communications director Lisa Chalk said there had been a failure to monitor the activities of the abattoirs. ”The footage shows some horrific instances of cruelty, but disturbingly it also reveals the systematic abuse inflicted on hundreds of Australian cattle each day in these slaughterhouses,” she said,

Mr Ludwig said the system the Government put in place following evidence of animal abuse in Indonesia in 2011 was a vast improvement on the previous self-regulation.

He said the new system worked because a complaint had led to an investigation, but tighter regulations should be implemented.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/live-export-row-dogs-gillard-20130504-2izz1.html#ixzz2SN1Uop59

‘Dark Oxidants’ Form Away from Sunlight in Lake and Ocean Depths, Underground Soils

May 3, 2013 — Breathing oxygen … can be hazardous to your health?

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Indeed, our bodies aren’t perfect. They make mistakes, among them producing toxic chemicals, called oxidants, in cells. We fight these oxidants naturally, and by eating foods rich in antioxidants such as blueberries and dark chocolate.

All forms of life that breathe oxygen — even ones that can’t be seen with the naked eye, such as bacteria — must fight oxidants to live.

“If they don’t,” says scientist Colleen Hansel of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, “there are consequences: cancer and premature aging in humans, death in microorganisms.”

These same oxidants also exist in the environment. But neutralizing environmental oxidants such as superoxide was a worry only for organisms that dwell in sunlight — in habitats that cover a mere 5 percent of the planet.

That was the only place where such environmental oxidants were thought to exist.

Now researchers have discovered the first light-independent source of superoxide. The key is bacteria common in the depths of the oceans and other dark places.

The bacteria breathe oxygen, just like humans. “And they’re everywhere — literally,” says Hansel, co-author of a paper reporting the results and published in this week’s issue of the journal Science Express.

The result expands the known sources of superoxide to the 95 percent of Earth’s habitats that are “dark.” In fact, 90 percent of the bacteria tested in the study produced superoxide in the dark.

“Superoxide has been linked with light, such that its production in darkness was a real mystery,” says Deborah Bronk of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences, which co-funded the research with NSF’s Division of Earth Sciences.

“This finding shows that bacteria can produce superoxide in the absence of light.”

The bacteria are found “miles beneath the seafloor, in hot fluids coming from underwater volcanoes, in every type of underground soil and throughout deep lake and ocean waters,” Hansel says.

The number of these bacteria in a thimble of seawater or soil is greater than the human population of San Francisco. And they’re all releasing large amounts of superoxide.

On Earth’s surface, “superoxide can kill corals, turning them white,” says Hansel. “It can also produce huge fish kills during red tides. But it’s not always bad.”

It also helps ocean microorganisms acquire the nutrients they need to survive. And superoxide may remove the neurotoxin mercury from the sea, keeping it out of fish and off dinner plates.

The bacteria that produce superoxide could account for the total amount of the chemical in the oceans, Hansel and colleagues say, and are likely the main source in dark environments.

“That’s a paradigm shift that will transform our understanding of the chemistry of the oceans, as well as of lakes and underground soils,” says Hansel, “and of the life forms that live in and depend on them.”

Co-authors of the paper are Julia Diaz and Chantal Mendes of Harvard University, Peter Andeer and Tong Zhang of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Bettina Voelker of the Colorado School of Mines.

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Vizag mandal records 648% population growth
TNN | May 4, 2013, 03.19 AM IST

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HYDERABAD: Pedagantyada mandal in Visakhapatnam district topped the state in decadal population growth while the peripheral Greater Hyderabad areas in Ranga Reddy district figured in the top ten.

Pedagantyada registered a whopping 647.91 per cent growth of population between 2001 and 2011. This mandal was followed by Visakhapatnam Rural which registered 268.42 per cent growth in population.

Seven mandals in Ranga Reddy district, which are part of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation – Uppal, Hayatnagar, Ghatkesar, Serilingampally, Balanagar, Qutbullapur and Rajendranagar – saw high decadal population growth boosted by massive migration. Of these, Uppal recorded a 225.9 per cent growth in population followed by Hayatnagar (180%), Ghatkesar (112%), Serilingampally (102%), Balanagar (79 %), Qutbullapur (76 %) and Rajendranagar (63%). Balanagar mandal was also found to be among the five most populous mandals in the state with a population of 5,67,996.

In 2011, Ranga Reddy district had a population of 52,96,741, of which 27,01,008 were males and 25,95,733 females. Ten years earlier in 2001, Ranga Reddy had a population of 35,75,064 of which 18,39,227 were males and 17,35,837 females. Thus the district recorded a growth of 48.15 per cent during the last decade. In the 2001 census, the district had recorded an increase of 40.09 per cent from 1991.

The latest census also saw Vijayawada Rural mandal joining the big league by recording a 61 per cent decadal population growth. Vijayawada Urban topped the list with a population of 10,21,806 followed by Visakhapatnam Urban with 9,77,771 people. Guntur and Nellore also secured a place in the top five.

Interestingly, there were 1,514 villages in the state which reported zero population! The reasons, according to the census enumerators, were lack of water resources, heavy chemical and dust pollution, change of land use from agriculture to industrial, setting up of new SEZs which displaced people from the villages.

In some places like Srisailam and Srikakulam, anti-Maoist operations have also forced small habitats to relocate to other places.

RELEASE : 13-119

NASA Study Projects Warming-Driven Changes in Global Rainfall

WASHINGTON — A NASA-led modeling study provides new evidence that global warming may increase the risk for extreme rainfall and drought.

The study shows for the first time how rising carbon dioxide concentrations could affect the entire range of rainfall types on Earth.

Analysis of computer simulations from 14 climate models indicates wet regions of the world, such as the equatorial Pacific Ocean and Asian monsoon regions, will see increases in heavy precipitation because of warming resulting from projected increases in carbon dioxide levels. Arid land areas outside the tropics and many regions with moderate rainfall could become drier.

The analysis provides a new assessment of global warming’s impacts on precipitation patterns around the world. The study was accepted for publication in the American Geophysical Union journal Geophysical Research Letters.

“In response to carbon dioxide-induced warming, the global water cycle undergoes a gigantic competition for moisture resulting in a global pattern of increased heavy rain, decreased moderate rain, and prolonged droughts in certain regions,” said William Lau of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and lead author of the study.

The models project for every 1 degree Fahrenheit of carbon dioxide-induced warming, heavy rainfall will increase globally by 3.9 percent and light rain will increase globally by 1 percent. However, total global rainfall is not projected to change much because moderate rainfall will decrease globally by 1.4 percent.

Heavy rainfall is defined as months that receive an average of more than about 0.35 of an inch per day. Light rain is defined as months that receive an average of less than 0.01 of an inch per day. Moderate rainfall is defined as months that receive an average of between about 0.04 to 0.09 of an inch per day.

Areas projected to see the most significant increase in heavy rainfall are in the tropical zones around the equator, particularly in the Pacific Ocean and Asian monsoon regions.

Some regions outside the tropics may have no rainfall at all. The models also projected for every degree Fahrenheit of warming, the length of periods with no rain will increase globally by 2.6 percent. In the Northern Hemisphere, areas most likely to be affected include the deserts and arid regions of the southwest United States, Mexico, North Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan, and northwestern China. In the Southern Hemisphere, drought becomes more likely in South Africa, northwestern Australia, coastal Central America and northeastern Brazil.

“Large changes in moderate rainfall, as well as prolonged no-rain events, can have the most impact on society because they occur in regions where most people live,” Lau said. “Ironically, the regions of heavier rainfall, except for the Asian monsoon, may have the smallest societal impact because they usually occur over the ocean.”

Lau and colleagues based their analysis on the outputs of 14 climate models in simulations of 140-year periods. The simulations began with carbon dioxide concentrations at about 280 parts per million — similar to pre-industrial levels and well below the current level of almost 400 parts per million — and then increased by 1 percent per year. The rate of increase is consistent with a “business as usual” trajectory of the greenhouse gas as described by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Analyzing the model results, Lau and his co-authors calculated statistics on the rainfall responses for a 27-year control period at the beginning of the simulation, and also for 27-year periods around the time of doubling and tripling of carbon dioxide concentrations.
They conclude the model predictions of how much rain will fall at any one location as the climate warms are not very reliable.

“But if we look at the entire spectrum of rainfall types we see all the models agree in a very fundamental way — projecting more heavy rain, less moderate rain events, and prolonged droughts,” Lau said.

For images related to this release, please visit:

http://go.usa.gov/TQM3

Beware the rise of the government scientists turned lobbyists

From badgers to bees, government science advisers are routinely misleading us to support the politicians’ agendas
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George Monbiot

George Monbiot

The Guardian, Monday 29 April 2013 20.30 BST

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Spring lures out the bees
Sir Mark Walport, the British government’s chief scientist, has denounced the proposal for a temporary European ban on the pesticides blamed for killing bees. Photograph: Julian Stratenschulte/EPA

What happens to people when they become government science advisers? Are their children taken hostage? Is a dossier of compromising photographs kept, ready to send to the Sun if they step out of line?

I ask because, in too many cases, they soon begin to sound less like scientists than industrial lobbyists. The mad cow crisis 20 years ago was exacerbated by the failure of government scientists to present the evidence accurately. The chief medical officer wrongly claimed that there was “no risk associated with eating British beef”. The chief veterinary officer wrongly dismissed the research suggesting that BSE could jump from one species to another.

The current chief scientist at the UK’s environment department, Ian Boyd, is so desperate to justify the impending badger cull – which defies the recommendations of the £49m study the department funded – that he now claims that eliminating badgers “may actually be positive to biodiversity”, on the grounds that badgers sometimes eat baby birds. That badgers are a component of our biodiversity, and play an important role in regulating the populations of other species, appears to have eluded him.

But the worst example in the past 10 years was the concatenation of gibberish published by the British government’s new chief scientist on Friday. In the Financial Times, Sir Mark Walport denounced the proposal for a temporary European ban on the pesticides blamed for killing bees and other pollinators. He claimed that “the consequences of such a moratorium could be harmful to the continent’s crop production, farming communities and consumers”. This also happens to be the position of the UK government, to which he is supposed to provide disinterested advice.

Walport’s article was timed to influence Monday’s vote by European member states, to suspend the use of three neonicotinoid pesticides. The UK, fighting valiantly on behalf of the manufacturers Syngenta and Bayer, did all it could to thwart the nations supporting this partial ban, but failed.

Here’s how he justified his position. First he maintained that “there is no measurable harm to bee colonies … when these pesticides have been applied on farms following official guidelines”. This statement is misleading and unscientific. The research required to support it does not exist.

The government carried out field trials which, it claimed, showed that “effects on bees do not occur under normal circumstances”. They showed nothing of the kind. As Professor Dave Goulson, one of the UK’s leading experts, explained to me, the experiment was hopelessly contaminated. The nests of bumblebees which were meant to function as a pesticide-free control group were exposed to similar levels of neonicotinoids as those in the experimental group. The government “might have been wise to abandon the trial. However, instead they chose to ‘publish’ it by putting it on the internet – not by sending it to a peer-reviewed journal. This is not how science proceeds.”

What this illustrates is that these trials have taken place far too late: after the toxins have already been widely deployed. The use of neonicotinoids across Europe was approved before we knew what their impacts might be.

Experiments in laboratory or “semi-field” conditions, free from contamination, suggest that these toxins could be a reason for the rapid reduction in bee populations. We still know almost nothing about their impacts on other insect pollinators, such as hoverflies, butterflies, moths, beetles and midges, many of which are also declining swiftly.

Walport went on to suggest that the proposed ban would cause “severe reductions in yields to struggling European farmers and economies”. Again, this is simply incorrect: in its exhaustive investigation, published last month, the House of Commons environmental audit committee concluded that “neonicotinoid pesticides are not fundamental to the general economic or agricultural viability of UK farming”. In fact they can prevent a more precise and rational use of pesticides, known as integrated pest management. The committee reports that all the rape seed on sale in this country, for example, is pre-treated with neonicotinoids, so farmers have no choice but to use them, whether or not they are required.

He then deployed the kind of groundless moral blackmail frequently used by industry-funded astroturf campaigns. “The control of malaria, dengue and other important diseases also depends on the control of insect vectors.” Yes, it does in many cases, but this has nothing to do with the issue he was discussing: a partial ban on neonicotinoids in European crops. This old canard (if you don’t approve this pesticide for growing oilseed rape in Europe, children in Mozambique will die of malaria) reminds us that those opposed to measures which protect the natural world are often far worse scaremongers than environmentalists can be. How often have you heard people claim that “if the greens get their way, we’ll go back to living in caves” or “if carbon taxes are approved, the economy will collapse”?

But perhaps most revealing is Walport’s misunderstanding of the precautionary principle. This, he says, “just means working out and balancing in advance all the risks and benefits of action or inaction, and to make a proportionate response”. No it doesn’t. The Rio declaration, signed by the UK and 171 other states, defines it as follows: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” This, as it happens, is the opposite of what his article sought to do. Yet an understanding of the precautionary principle is fundamental to Walport’s role.

Among the official duties of the chief scientist is “to ensure that the scientific method, risk and uncertainty are understood by the public”. Less than a month into the job, Sir Mark Walport has misinformed the public about the scientific method, risk and uncertainty. He has made groundless, unscientific and emotionally manipulative claims. He has indulged in scaremongering and wild exaggeration in support of the government’s position.

In defending science against political pressure, he is, in other words, as much use as a suit of paper armour. For this reason, he’ll doubtless remain in post, and end his career with a peerage. The rest of us will carry the cost of his preferment.

Twitter: @georgemonbiot. A fully referenced version of this article can be found at Monbiot.com

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Governement chief scientist advisor Mark Walport

Why Monbiot’s attack on Walport misses the mark

Roger Pielke Jr and James Wilsdon: Sir Mark Walport is no corporate stooge but he should leave the advocacy to advocates

A very Wellcome appointment

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The giants of the green world that profit from the planet’s destruction

A new movement has erupted demanding divestment from fossil fuel polluters – and Big Green is in their sights
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Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein

The Guardian, Friday 3 May 2013

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Belle Mellor pic for Naomi Klein
‘Purists will point out no big green group is clean, since virtually every one takes money from foundations built on fossil fuel empires.’ Illustration by Belle Mellor

The movement demanding that public interest institutions divest their holdings from fossil fuels is on a serious roll. Chapters have opened up in more than 100 US cities and states as well as on more than 300 campuses, where students are holding protests, debates and sit-ins to pressure their to rid their endowments of oil, gas and coal holdings. And under the “Fossil Free UK” banner, the movement is now crossing the Atlantic, with a major push planned by People & Planet for this summer. Some schools, including University College London, have decided not to wait and already have active divestment campaigns.

Though officially launched just six months ago, the movement can already claim some provisional victories: four US colleges have announced their intention to divest their endowments from fossil fuel stocks and bonds and, in late April, 10 US cities made similar commitments, including San Francisco (Seattle came on board months ago).

There are still all kinds of details to work out to toughen up these pledges, but the speed with which this idea has spread makes it clear that there was some serious pent-up demand. To quote the mission statement of the Fossil Free movement: “If it is wrong to wreck the climate, then it is wrong to profit from that wreckage. We believe that educational and religious institutions, city and state governments, and other institutions that serve the public good should divest from fossil fuels.” I am proud to have been part of the group at 350.org that worked with students and other partners to develop the Fossil Free campaign. But I now realise that an important target is missing from the list: the environmental organisations themselves.

You can understand the oversight. Green groups raise mountains of cash every year on the promise that the funds will be spent on work that is attempting to prevent catastrophic global warming. Fossil fuel companies, on the other hand, are doing everything in their power to make the catastrophic inevitable. According to the UK’s Carbon Tracker Initiative (on whose impeccable research the divestment movement is based), the fossil fuel sector holds five times more carbon in its reserves than can be burned while still leaving us a good shot of limiting warming to 2C. One would assume that green groups would want to make absolutely sure that the money they have raised in the name of saving the planet is not being invested in the companies whose business model requires cooking said planet, and which have been sabotaging all attempts at serious climate action for more than two decades. But in some cases at least, that was a false assumption.

Maybe that shouldn’t come as a complete surprise, since some of the most powerful and wealthiest environmental organisations have long behaved as if they had a stake in the oil and gas industry. They led the climate movement down various dead ends: carbon trading, carbon offsets, natural gas as a “bridge fuel” – what these policies all held in common is that they created the illusion of progress while allowing the fossil fuel companies to keep mining, drilling and fracking with abandon. We always knew that the groups pushing hardest for these false solutions took donations from, and formed corporate partnerships with, the big emitters. But this was explained away as an attempt at constructive engagement – using the power of the market to fix market failures.

Now it turns out that some of these groups are literally part-owners of the industry causing the crisis they are purportedly trying to solve. And the money the green groups have to play with is serious. The Nature Conservancy, for instance, has $1.4bn (£900m) in publicly traded securities, and boasts that its piggybank is “among the 100 largest endowments in the country”. The Wildlife Conservation Society has a $377m endowment, while the endowment of the World Wildlife Fund–US is worth $195m.

Let me be absolutely clear: plenty of green groups have managed to avoid this mess. Greenpeace, 350.org, Friends of the Earth, Rainforest Action Network, and a host of smaller organisations such as Oil Change International and the Climate Reality Project don’t have endowments and don’t invest in the stock market. They also either don’t take corporate donations or place such onerous restrictions on them that extractive industries are easily ruled out. Some of these groups own a few fossil fuel stocks, but only so that they can make trouble at shareholder meetings.

The Natural Resources Defense Council is halfway there. It has a $118m endowment and, according to its accounting team, for direct investments “we specifically screen out extractive industries, fossil fuels, and other areas of the energy sector”. However, the NRDC continues to hold stocks in mutual funds and other mixed assets that do not screen for fossil fuels. (The Fossil Free campaign is calling on institutions to “divest from direct ownership and any commingled funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds within 5 years”.)

Purists will point out that no big green group is clean, since virtually every one takes money from foundations built on fossil fuel empires – foundations that continue to invest their endowments in fossil fuels today. It’s a fair point. Consider the largest foundation of them all: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As of December 2012, it had at least $958.6m – nearly a billion dollars – invested in just two oil giants: ExxonMobil and BP. The hypocrisy is staggering: a top priority of the Gates Foundation has been supporting malaria research, a disease intimately linked to climate. Mosquitoes and malaria parasites both thrive in warmer weather, and they are getting more and more of it. Does it really make sense to fight malaria while fuelling one of the reasons it may be spreading more ferociously in some areas?

Clearly not. And it makes even less sense to raise money in the name of fighting climate change, only to invest that money in, say, ExxonMobil stocks. Yet that is precisely what some groups appear to be doing. Conservation International, notorious for its partnerships with oil companies and other bad actors (the CEO of Northrop Grumman is on its board, for God’s sake), has close to $22m invested in publicly traded securities and, according to a spokesperson, “we do not have any explicit policy prohibiting investment in energy companies”.

The same goes for Ocean Conservancy, which has $14.4m invested in publicly traded securities, including hundreds of thousands in “energy”, “materials” and “utilities” holdings. A spokesperson confirmed in writing that the organisation does “not have an environmental or social screen investment policy”. Neither organisation would divulge how much of its holdings were in fossil fuel companies or release a list of its investments. But according to Dan Apfel, executive director of the Responsible Endowments Coalition, unless an institution specifically directs its investment managers not to invest in fossil fuels, it will almost certainly hold some stock, simply because those stocks (including coal-burning utilities) make up about 13% of the US market, according to one standard index. “All investors are basically invested in fossil fuels,” says Apfel. “You can’t be an investor that is not invested in fossil fuels, unless you’ve actually worked very hard to ensure that you’re not.”

Another group that appears very far from divesting is the Wildlife Conservation Society. Its financial statement for fiscal year 2012 describes a subcategory of investments that includes “energy, mining, oil drilling, and agricultural businesses”. How much of WCS’s $377m endowment is being held in energy and drilling companies? It failed to provide that information despite repeated requests.

The WWF-US told me that it doesn’t invest directly in corporations – but it refused to answer questions about whether it applies environmental screens to its very sizable mixed-asset funds. The National Wildlife Federation Endowment used to apply environmental screens for its $25.7m of investments in publicly traded securities, but now, according to a spokesperson, it tells its investment managers to “look for best-in-class companies who were implementing conservation, environmental and sustainable practices”. In other words, not a fossil fuel divestment policy. Meanwhile, the Nature Conservancy – the richest of all the green groups – has at least $22.8m invested in the energy sector, according to its 2012 financial statements. Along with WCS, TNC completely refused to answer any of my questions or provide any further details about its holdings or policies.

It would be a little surprising if TNC didn’t invest in fossil fuels, given its various other entanglements with the sector. A small sample: in 2010, the Washington Post reported that TNC “has accepted nearly $10m in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations”; it counts BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell among the members of its Business Council; Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, one of the largest US coal-burning utilities, sits on its board of directors; and it runs various conservation projects claiming to “offset” the carbon emissions of oil, gas and coal companies.

The divestment question is taking these groups off guard because for decades they were able to make these kinds of deals with polluters and barely raise an eyebrow. But now, it appears, people are fed up with being told that the best way to fight climate change is to change their light bulbs and buy carbon offsets while leaving the big polluters undisturbed. And they are raring to take the fight directly to the industry most responsible for the climate crisis.

Hannah Jones, one of the student divestment movement organisers, told me: “Just as our college and university boards are failing us by not actively confronting the forces responsible for climate change, so are the big corporate green groups. They have failed us by trying to preserve pristine pockets of the world while refusing to take on the powerful interests that are making the entire world unliveable for everyone.” But, she added, “students now know what communities facing extraction have known for decades: that this is a fight about power and money, and everyone – even the big green groups – is going to have to decide whether they are with us, or with the forces wrecking the planet.”

It doesn’t seem like too much to ask. I mean, if the city of Seattle is divesting, shouldn’t WWF do the same? Shouldn’t environmental organisations be more concerned about the human and ecological risks posed by fossil fuel companies than they are by some imagined risks to their stock portfolios? Which raises another question: what are these groups doing hoarding so much money in the first place? If they believe their own scientists, this is the crucial decade to turn things around on climate. Is TNC planning to build a billion-dollar ark?

Some groups, thankfully, are rising to the challenge. A small but growing movement inside the funder world is pushing the big liberal foundations to get their investments in line with their stated missions – which means no more fossil fuels. It’s time for foundations to “own what you own”, says Ellen Dorsey, executive director of the Wallace Global Fund. According to Dorsey, her foundation, which has been a major funder of the coal divestment campaign, is now “99% fossil free and will be completely divested by 2014”.

But convincing the biggest foundations to divest will be slow, and the green groups – which are at least theoretically accountable to their members – should surely lead the way. Some are starting to do just that. The Sierra Club, for instance, now has a clear policy against investing in, or taking money from, fossil fuel companies (it once didn’t, which caused major controversy in the past). This is good news for the Sierra Club’s $15m in investments in publicly traded securities. However, its affiliated organisation, the Sierra Club Foundation, has a much bigger portfolio – with $61.7m invested – and it is still in the process of drafting a full divestment policy, according to Sierra Club’s executive director, Michael Brune. He stressed that “we are fully confident that we can get as good if not better returns from the emerging clean energy economy than we can from investing in the dirty fuels from the past”.

For a long time, forming partnerships with polluters was how the green groups proved they were serious. But the young people demanding divestment – as well as the grassroots groups fighting fossil fuels wherever they are mined, drilled, fracked, burned, piped or shipped – have a different definition of seriousness. They are serious about winning. And the message to Big Green is clear: cut your ties with the fossils, or become one yourself.

• First published in The Nation; www.naomiklein.org