From March 23, NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION (THEREFORE PART OF THE PROBLEM)

Update: Rising Tide North America, a proudly unruly bunch of radical climate activists, issued a pamphlet last spring condemning a list of favorite solutions that from their admirably idealistic point of view are not solutions.

Prominent on the list of non-solutions is “clean” coal, yet it seems nothing will stop national policy makers from trying to make it happen. Current pending proposals in the U.S., Western Europe, Australia and Asia would spend tens of billions on pilot projects for a technology that is prohibitively costly, probably unworkable and, at best, decades from implementation.

But maybe that’s smart politics, a practical art of little interest to idealists and radicals: Talk up “clean” coal and throw money at R&D for it. The money becomes something like a payoff to the coal industry for the right to move ahead with the building of New Energy infrastructure and emissions reduction policies. Meanwhile, the cost of adding carbon capture capability to power plants makes it impractical, environmental impact studies make the approval of sequestration sites unlikely and new policies (also compromise measures in a compromised world) slowly force back greenhouse gas emissions.

At the same time, the slow but inevitable and steady development of emissions-free New Energy infrastructure and Energy Efficiency practices will sooner or later make any kind of coal, clean or otherwise, irrelevant.

Hoodwinked in the Hothouse; False Solutions to Climate Change
March 17, 2009 (Rising Tide North America)

SUMMARY
Hoodwinked in the Hothouse; False Solutions to Climate Change is a new pamphlet issued by Rising Tide North America, among the most active of the activists fighting the coal industry.

The false solutions described in the pamphlet: (1) “Clean” Coal and Carbon Capture and Storage; (2) Natural Gas and Liquefied Natural Gas; (3) “2nd-Generation” Agrofuels; (4) Nuclear Energy; (5) Carbon Trading and Carbon Offsets; (6) The World Bank’s Anti-Solutions, especially REDD; (7) Megadams; and (8) Geoengineering.

The false solutions of the pamphlet’s title demonstrate Rising Tide’s uncompromising commitment to New Energy, climate justice and sustainability.

The basic premise of “false solutions” is that they come from the same corporate institutions which only a few years ago were in complete denial of climate change. Now, scrambling to regain control and take advantage of the worldwide movement demanding climate change action, they are selling “a dizzying array of false solutions” …designed not to fight climate change but to “cash in” on it. Worse still, they extend the potentially disastrous impact of their previous state of denial by distracting focus “from the root causes of the crisis” and efforts to build the urgently needed New Energy economy based on sun, wind, water and principles of sustainability.

A demand for “climate justice” permeates the pamphlet’s judgments. The impacts of climate change, already ongoing, hit the poorest hardest. Half the world’s greenhouse gas emissions (GhGs) come from the 15% of the world’s population living in the Global North. Short cuts to a zero carbon future are insufficient to completely readjust the relationship of humanity to its habitat.

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The pamphlet has entries from the World Development Movement, Corporate Watch, the World Rainforest Movement, Rachel Smolker, Rory Cox, the Transnational Institute, Oscar Reyes, and Alter Eco. It has photography and artwork from Ben Powless, Tamra Gilbertson, Mike Wells, Appalachian Voices, Jorge Alcoreza, Andy Singer and the Beehive Design Collective.

Rising Tide is seeking funding for an expanded edition they plan to distribute at the December Copenhagen climate change summit at which the world will finalize plans for the successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocols on global climate change. Anyone interested in supporting the project can obtain information from False Solutions at Rising Tide North America.

COMMENTARY
- Why the false solutions are false:
(1) “Clean” Coal and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS);
- CCS technology is unlikely to be workable at commercial scale before 2030.
- Storage of CO2 is not likely to be entirely safe.
- CCS would be prohibitively expensive.
- CCS is an excuse to build dirty coal plants.
- Coal plants cause 24,000+ premature U.S. deaths/year.
- More toxic mercury emissions come from “clean” coal plants than conventional ones.
- Emissions from transport and mining completely disqualify coal from the label “clean.”

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(2) Natural Gas and Liquefied Natural Gas;
- Burning natural gas is not clean, it just emits fewer GhGs than coal or oil.
- LNG is volatile and expensive.
(3) “2nd-Generation” Agrofuels;
- Agrofuels lead to deforestation.
- Agrofuels drive staple food prices up, unduly harming poor peoples whose diets depend on staples.
- Agrofuels also drive other food prices up, leading inflation and economic problems.
- Agrofuels increase plantation expansion in the developing world, displacing families and communities.
- Agrofuels use up ever-scarcer water resources.

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(4) Nuclear Energy;
- Mining, milling and transporting uranium disqualifies nuclear energy as “clean” or emissions-free.
- Nuclear power plants are prohibitively expensive.
- There is no solution for safe radioactive waste storage.

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(5) Carbon Trading and Carbon Offsets;
- The pamphlet calls Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) “an unmitigated failure.”
- It describes the earliest period of the ETS when power companies took advantage of flaws in the system to profit.
- It reports that EU emissions continue to rise.
- It claims the EU cap&trade system unduly impacts the poor and developing world communities.
- It suggests a U.S. cap&trade would be as vulnerable to economic disaster as financial system proved last year to be.
- The report describes carbon offsets as little short of a “scam” and a way the Global North takes advantage of the Global South and the developing economies.
Offsetting leads to tree plantations, which can be devastating to undeveloped lands and indigenous peoples as agrofuels.

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(6) The World Bank’s Anti-Solutions, especially REDD;
- Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) is a World Bank plan to reverse the harmful impacts of deforestation.
- The World Bank’s plan for $10 billion annual investment in REDD may create unforeseen long-term harm worse than the short-term benefits it offers.
(7) Megadams;
- Megadams have serious ecological and social impacts.
- They force peoples living in the vicinity out of their homes.
- Dams in the Pacific Northwest have led to the near extinction of salmon.
- The widespread practice of allowing carbon offsets for megadam investment is a way of increasing returns for projects without actually creating new emissions reductions.
(8) Geoengineering (including (a) sulphates in the stratosphere, (b) sunshades in space, (c) genetically engineered trees, (d) ocean fertilization, (e) plastic coated deserts, and (f) burning trees to cool the planet) is likely to have disastrous and devastating unintended and unforeseen consequences as a result of tampering with the environment on a global scale. If it has any impact at all except wasting money.

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- The questions to ask about proffered solutions:
(1) Who owns, controls, and profits from each technology?
(2) Who loses?
(3) Beyond measuring carbon impact, how does each proposal affect communities and other aspects of ecosystem health?
- Examples of technologies that could be solutions:
(1) micro-hydro
(2) organic agriculture
(3) public transit
(4) passive solar home heating

QUOTES
- From the pamphlet: “Our fear of change and the unknown, and the widely held belief that technological progress can solve all problems make these techno-fixes and market-based solutions extremely seductive…An entire generation has grown up in a world in where little has been possible without corporate assent…Yet upon closer examination, the choices they have presented are false ones, dangerous detours on the road to a just, livable planet, distracting us from the root causes of the crisis.”
- From the pamphlet, on “Clean” Coal and Carbon Capture and Storage: “Even if coal could somehow be prepared and burned safely, there is no way to repair the damage of coal extraction, which has devastated communities and ecosystems from Bangladesh to Black Mesa, Arizona.”

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- From the pamphlet, on Natural Gas and Liquefied Natural Gas: “…for decades natural gas from North American fields has been touted as a “bridge fuel” to a renewable future. Decades later, we are no closer to the other side of that bridge. Instead, oil and gas multinationals are trying to sell us another bridge: Imported Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)…”
- From the pamphlet, on “2nd-Generation” Agrofuels: “Agrofuel targets in climate and energy policies have one source: lobbying by companies with investments in agrofuels. The beneficiaries of the rush to agrofuels are neither the climate nor farmers, but multinational agricultural corporations.”
- From the pamphlet, on Nuclear Energy: “The nuclear industry has latched onto the climate crisis in a last ditch attempt to survive in the face of long-term public opposition. Nuclear power is presented as clean energy because no carbon dioxide is emitted during the electricity generation process. Yet huge amounts of energy are required for every other stage in the process, including the mining, milling and transportation of the uranium; the construction and decommissioning of the power plants; and the reprocessing, storage and disposal of nuclear waste. At present, most of this energy comes from fossil fuels.”

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- From the pamphlet, on Carbon Trading: “Perhaps the most troubling aspect of cap-and-trade is that it creates an experimental new system of private property rights. Permits are accounted for in corporate balance sheets and recorded in legal statutes the same way as patents or land grants from the government. When property rights are created and given to the most powerful actors in society, their ability to shape future privileges is only further entrenched…At a time when poorly understood, experimental markets dominated by powerful interests have thrust millions of households into foreclosure and the world into the worst global recession in decades, do we really want another opaque commodity trading market?”
- From the pamphlet, on Carbon Offsets: “Tragically, environmentally conscious individuals have been hoodwinked by the “carbon neutral” mentality, priming the pump for the global offset industry. We are told that we can “offset” our emissions from a particularly polluting activity for a small fee…”
- From the pamphlet, on The World Bank’s Anti-Solutions: “Tragically, the World Bank is a central agent for delivering “green” development within the UN’s climate treaties. The Bank, a powerful and deeply undemocratic international institution, has a long and controversial history of assisting large corporations in “developing” poor countries.”
- From the pamphlet, on REDD: “The Bank’s latest scheme, called “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation” (REDD) is part of the “Bali Roadmap” established by the UN in 2007, and is slated to be a key component of any post-Kyoto climate treaty. This new plan offers a means for rich countries to avoid responsibility for over-consumption and evade emissions cuts by buying offsets.”
- From the pamphlet, on Megadams: “While hydroelectric dams do not require combustion to generate electricity, they have deep ecological and social footprints and they still produce greenhouse gases…One study found that the net release of CO2 from hydroelectric dams in tropical regions are as high as the greenhouse gas emissions of a coal plant producing an equal amount of electricity.”

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- From the pamphlet, on Geoengineering: “Geoengineering rests on the assumption that humans are masters of the universe and the natural world, and have the ability to control and engineer its systems. Climate change has shown that humans do not and probably never will understand the planet’s systems well enough to try to artificially engineer a rebalancing of the scales that over-consumption has tipped.”
- From the pamphlet, on True Solutions: “Effective and just solutions to climate change require decision-making that incorporates all who are affected by the results of the decisions—not just deals between those who stand to profit. The hold that corporate interests and centuries-old colonial mindsets have over political decision-making must be broken. Only then can we begin creating a new, more just society in the shell of the old.”