Top Climate Scientist: Copenhagen Must Fail, Slams CapnTrade

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Top Climate Scientist: Copenhagen Must Fail, Slams CapnTrade

Postby Gouda » Fri Dec 04, 2009 12:51 pm

Copenhagen climate change talks must fail, says top scientist

Exclusive: World's leading climate change expert says summit talks so flawed that deal would be a disaster

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... mes-hansen

The scientist who convinced the world to take notice of the looming danger of global warming says it would be better for the planet and for future generations if next week's Copenhagen climate change summit ended in collapse.

In an interview with the Guardian, James Hansen, the world's pre-eminent climate scientist, said any agreement likely to emerge from the negotiations would be so deeply flawed that it would be better to start again from scratch.

"I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it's a disaster track," said Hansen, who heads the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

"The whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation. If it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing then [people] will spend years trying to determine exactly what that means." He was speaking as progress towards a deal in Copenhagen received a boost today, with India revealing a target to curb its carbon emissions. All four of the major emitters – the US, China, EU and India – have now tabled offers on emissions, although the equally vexed issue of funding for developing nations to deal with global warming remains deadlocked.

Hansen, in repeated appearances before Congress beginning in 1989, has done more than any other scientist to educate politicians about the causes of global warming and to prod them into action to avoid its most catastrophic consequences. But he is vehemently opposed to the carbon market schemes – in which permits to pollute are bought and sold – which are seen by the EU and other governments as the most efficient way to cut emissions and move to a new clean energy economy.

Hansen is also fiercely critical of Barack Obama – and even Al Gore, who won a Nobel peace prize for his efforts to get the world to act on climate change – saying politicians have failed to meet what he regards as the moral challenge of our age.

In Hansen's view, dealing with climate change allows no room for the compromises that rule the world of elected politics. "This is analagous to the issue of slavery faced by Abraham Lincoln or the issue of Nazism faced by Winston Churchill," he said.

"On those kind of issues you cannot compromise. You can't say let's reduce slavery, let's find a compromise and reduce it 50% or reduce it 40%."

He added: "We don't have a leader who is able to grasp it and say what is really needed. Instead we are trying to continue business as usual."


The understated Iowan's journey from climate scientist to activist accelerated in the last years of the Bush administration. Hansen, a reluctant public speaker, says he was forced into the public realm by the increasingly clear looming spectre of droughts, floods, famines and drowned cities indicated by the science.

That enormous body of scientific evidence has been put under a microscope by climate sceptics after last month's release online of hacked emails sent by respected researchers at the climate research unit of the University of East Anglia. Hansen admitted the controversy could shake public's trust, and called for an investigation. "All that stuff they are arguing about the data doesn't really change the analysis at all, but it does leave a very bad impression," he said.

The row reached Congress today, with Republicans accusing the researchers of engaging in "scientific fascism" and pressing the Obama administration's top science adviser, John Holdren, to condemn the email. Holdren, a climate scientist who wrote one of the emails in the UEA trove, said he was prepared to denounce any misuse of data by the scientists – if one is proved.

Hansen has emerged as a leading campaigner against the coal industry, which produces more greenhouse gas emissions than any other fuel source.

He has become a fixture at campus demonstrations and last summer was arrested at a protest against mountaintop mining in West Virginia, where he called the Obama government's policies "half-assed".

He has irked some environmentalists by espousing a direct carbon tax on fuel use. Some see that as a distraction from rallying support in Congress for cap-and-trade legislation that is on the table.

He is scathing of that approach. "This is analagous to the indulgences that the Catholic church sold in the middle ages. The bishops collected lots of money and the sinners got redemption. Both parties liked that arrangement despite its absurdity.

That is exactly what's happening," he said. "We've got the developed countries who want to continue more or less business as usual and then these developing countries who want money and that is what they can get through offsets [sold through the carbon markets]."

For all Hansen's pessimism, he insists there is still hope. "It may be that we have already committed to a future sea level rise of a metre or even more but that doesn't mean that you give up.

"Because if you give up you could be talking about tens of metres. So I find it screwy that people say you passed a tipping point so it's too late. In that case what are you thinking: that we are going to abandon the planet? You want to minimise the damage."
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Postby American Dream » Sun Dec 06, 2009 12:23 pm

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6609

Climate and Capitalism in Copenhagen

Walden Bello | December 1, 2009



Beginning in the second week of December, representatives to the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen will wrestle with the challenge of climate change. This week, influential actors in the World Trade Organization Seventh Ministerial Conference taking place in Geneva are trying to push for a conclusion to the nine-year-old Doha Round of trade negotiations.

The two meetings are at cross-purposes and their juxtaposition highlights a profound reality: The world has to choose between free trade and effective climate management.

The Global Downturn: Relief for the Climate

The last 12 months have seen the unraveling of a particular type of international economy: export-oriented and marked by the accelerated integration of production and markets. This globalized economy has been transportation-intensive, greatly dependent on ever-increasing long-distance transportation of goods. For instance, a plate of food consumed in the United States travels an average of 1,500 miles from source to table. Transportation, in turn, is fossil-fuel intensive, accounting in 2006 for 13% of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and 23% of global carbon dioxide emissions.

A downturn in the export-dependent global economy thus brings about a significant downturn in carbon emissions as well. It spells relief for the climate. In 2009, the drop in the level of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) has been the largest in the last 40 years. The thousands of ships marooned by lack of global demand in ports such as New York, Singapore, Rio de Janeiro, and Seoul means a significant reduction in the use of high-carbon Bunker C oil, which is used in 80% of ocean shipping. The cutback in air freight has meant a significant reduction in the use of aviation fuel, which has been the fastest growing source of GHG emissions in recent years.

Deglobalization as Opportunity

In response to the collapse of the export-oriented global economy, many governments have fallen back on their domestic markets, revving them up via stimulus programs that put spending money in the hands of consumers. This move has been accompanied by a retreat from globalized production structures or "deglobalization." "The integration of the world economy is in retreat on almost every front," writes the Economist. While the magazine says that corporations continue to believe in the efficiency of global supply chains, "like any chain, these are only as strong as their weakest link. A danger point will come if firms decide that this way of organizing production has had its day."

For many environmentalists and ecological economists in the South and the North, the unraveling of the export-oriented global economy spells opportunity. It opens up the transition to more climate-friendly and ecologically sensitive ways of organizing economic life. But the fossil fuel-intensiveness of global transport and freight is merely one dimension of the problem. Environmentalists insist there must be a change in the reigning economic model itself. The global economy must make a transition from being driven fundamentally by overproduction and overconsumption to being geared to real needs, marked by moderate or low consumption, and based on sustainable and decentralized production processes.

Accordingly, the assumption of most policymakers in the North that consumption trends can continue — and that the only challenge is the transformation of the energy mix and the adoption of technofixes such as biofuels, "clean coal," nuclear power, carbon sequestration and storage, and carbon trading — is not only based on illusions but positively dangerous. Indeed, the climate problem cannot be addressed strategically without addressing the inherently environmentally destabilizing dynamics of capitalism — its incessant drive, motivated by the search for profit, to transform living nature into dead commodities.

Instead of heralding this transition to a much less fossil-fuel-intensive and ecologically sustainable production, most technocrats and economists see only a temporary retreat from export-led growth until global demand makes the latter viable again. The policy debate in establishment circles focuses on who will replace the bankrupt American consumer as the engine of global demand. With Europe stagnant and Japan in almost permanent recession, the hope is that China's growth will be the basis of global reflation. This is a mirage. China's 8.9% annualized growth in the last quarter is due to their current stimulus, a $585 billion program that has been funneled mainly to the countryside. Domestic demand will likely cease to grow once the money is spent. A limited spurt of cash will not transform Chinese peasants into the saviors of the global economy. After all, because they bore the costs of the country's export-oriented economy, these peasants have seen their incomes and welfare severely erode over the last quarter of a century.

The Doha Dead End

But however this debate over the global consumer of last resort is resolved, the World Trade Organization and its most influential members, both from the North and the South, hope that completing the Doha Round at the Seventh Ministerial Meeting in Geneva will bring about a resumption of the carbon-intensive march toward globally integrated production and markets.

The preoccupation of economists and policymakers with the export engine to revive the global economy, which often excludes concerns about the negative impact of export-led globalization on the climate, is a dangerous divide leading up to Copenhagen. Says John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies: "We have economic policymakers concerned with reversing recession and ecological economists concerned with strategic ways of reversing climate change talking past one another."

The climate negotiations have their own share of problems, even without the WTO threat. In the lead-up to Copenhagen, the focus of the climate discussions has been on two issues: mitigation and adaptation. Both are stymied, largely owing to the positions of the industrialized (Annex 1) countries. On mitigation, pivotal developed countries have so far resisted offering legally binding cuts. And what voluntary cuts they have offered are slight. In the case of the United States, President Obama's nonbinding commitment is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 17% from 2005 levels. This translates into an insignificant 4% reduction from 1990 levels, which serve as the benchmark for serious cuts. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has asserted that a 25-40% cut in GHG by 2020 is the minimum figure that would keep global mean temperature from rising above two degrees centigrade during this century. And, already, the latter is said to be an underestimate.

In the area of adaptation — assisting the poorer countries to prepare themselves for the consequences of climate change — the negotiations have been held up by the rich countries' reluctance to come up with the minimum amounts of aid necessary, to transfer technology unconditionally, and to channel the sums to the developing world through institutions apart from the World Bank, which they control.

The challenges in these two areas are daunting enough. And yet, unless the question of which economic model or strategy the countries of the world should move toward is front and center in Copenhagen, even the most ambitious agreements arrived at on mitigation and adaptation will be simply a Band-Aid. Unless the negotiators in Copenhagen dethrone the Doha model, the fundamental driver of climate change — an export-oriented globalized capitalist economy based on perpetually rising consumption — will continue to reign.



Walden Bello is a member of the House of Representatives of the Republic of the Philippines, president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition, a senior analyst of Focus on the Global South, and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus.
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Postby 23 » Mon Dec 07, 2009 11:20 am

So let's apply the same logic that some folks like to use here too.

The folks who like to conclude that you must be against universal health care if you are opposed to Obama's health care plan, that is.

Using the same logic, this guy must be against human-influenced global warming if he opposes the upcoming Copenhagen effort.

There. Nice and tidy.
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Postby JackRiddler » Mon Dec 07, 2009 1:46 pm

.

The scientific community's leading theorist of climate change has denounced cap-and-trade and offsets as a sham policy likely to have no effect on emissions or energy consumption. And everyone (not just at RI!) is instead mostly talking about the e-mail hack distraction. If the latter is an energy lobby ploy, it's a master-stroke in the sick arts of psychological warfare.
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Postby bks » Mon Dec 07, 2009 2:11 pm

"I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it's a disaster track," said Hansen, who heads the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

"The whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation.


I thought we were talking about climate control, not health care.
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Postby tazmic » Mon Dec 07, 2009 2:24 pm

JackRiddler wrote:The scientific community's leading theorist of climate change has denounced cap-and-trade and offsets as a sham policy likely to have no effect on emissions or energy consumption. And everyone (not just at RI!) is instead mostly talking about the e-mail hack distraction. If the latter is an energy lobby ploy, it's a master-stroke in the sick arts of psychological warfare.


So...The energy lobby, who secretly want Copenhagen ('no effect on emissions or energy consumption' how lucky for them!), decide to distract people by sowing climate science scepticism in the run up? Is that it?!
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Postby JackRiddler » Mon Dec 07, 2009 8:41 pm

I didn't say the oil companies did it, I said if they did it, it was a coup in the PR war. You're an idiot if you think any "climate change skepticism" was sown by this sorry episode. It was red meat to your crowd, stirring up a bullshit distraction that will make no difference to Copenhagen. The leaders there already know what causes climate change, and this will hardly change their minds.

De facto, the e-mail flap has the same effect on your crowd as Sarah Palin's book tour does on the teabaggers. She makes it seem like the central conflict facing "America" is of the teabaggers' "freedom" vs. Obama's "socialism."

On climate change (and on the environmental question as a whole) the real debate is about meaty measures for reducing energy consumption vs. the cap and trade scam. Instead we have your little side-circus with the stolen e-mails, and cap-and-trade is likelier to go through and be seen as a "victory" of ecological reason against the flat-earth set. Get a clue.
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Postby American Dream » Tue Dec 08, 2009 9:35 am

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Postby 8bitagent » Tue Dec 08, 2009 10:10 am

23 wrote:
Using the same logic, this guy must be against human-influenced global warming if he opposes the upcoming Copenhagen effort.

There. Nice and tidy.


Yep. Everywhere I'm seeing so many people who before absolutely hated the right wing global warming denial stuff whom are now fully and militantly embracing it. People like Alex Jones are now scrambling to try and lead the charge on this idiocy.

Of course, it doesn't help the elite are trying to slip in global governance and crazy taxes under the cloak of climate change awareness; given they are the same ones who created global warming with all their corporations and big oil infrastructure.

It's *very* suspicious how all this has been coming to a head.
"Leaked emails by hackers"(yeah right...probably intelligence agencies or something to help fuel climate denial), Coppenhagen, etc

Everyone's bout damn lost their minds, and I can JUST imagine what the 9/11 like crazy issues that will greatly polarize people will be next year and the years to come. I expect poison pills on ALL sides.
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Postby American Dream » Tue Dec 08, 2009 12:01 pm

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebo ... on-copenha

*North American Indigenous Peoples Call for Strong Climate Action in Copenhagen*

Copenhagen, Denmark - A multi-generational delegation of 21 Indigenous Peoples from North America have arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark this week to advocate for the incorporation of Indigenous Peoples rights in the language of a fair, binding, and science-based global climate treaty at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The delegation is comprised of Native American, Alaskan Native, and First Nation activists and leaders from the communities most affected by climate change and fossil fuel development in North America. They represent many Nations including Cree, Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Blackfoot, Ojibwe, Kachiquel Mayan, Pasqua, Gwich'in, Navajo, Mikisew Cree, Inupiaq, Mohawk, Oneida, Zuni, and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.

The delegation, coordinated by the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), are attending the international climate negotiations to speak on behalf of their Nations, communities, and future generations in support of strong climate action and also to network with other Indigenous Peoples from across the world.

Nikke Alex, 24, an IEN youth delegate from the Navajo Nation, AZ, said, "My community has been greatly affected my climate change. In my community, many do not have basic utilities like running water and electricity, and over the summer, the wells and springs dried up forcing my family and many others to drive over 30 miles for water. I'm happy to see other Indigenous youth here to voice their concerns about decisions being made that will impact their future."

In order to protect their homelands from climate chaos, the IEN delegation is pushing for not only strong targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but also demanding effective, fair and equitable methods to address the climate issue. Global expectations for Copenhagen outcomes have dimmed in recent weeks, most prominently due to inaction by the world's biggest emitters, such as the United States and Canada. IEN delegates will work to pressure their home governments to step up their efforts to combat climate change.

We are here to tell the world, as the Indigenous Peoples of North America we will not sit on the side lines as the American and Canadian governments systematically kill international climate negotiations in the interest of promoting dirty fossil fuel development such as the Tar sands in NorthernAlberta, Canada," says Clayton Thomas-Muller, Tar Sands Campaigner for IEN.

The delegation will also be working in solidarity with Indigenous Peoples from around the globe to advocate the inclusion of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples' (UNDRIP) in any climate agreement. In addition to lobbying, the delegation will be educating other UNFCCC and Klimaforum 09 attendees through workshops, non-violent direct actions, and most importantly, informing their own communities about progress in Copenhagen.

###

The Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) is a United States-basednon-governmental (Indigenous) organization formed in 1990 addressing environmental and economic justice challenges. IEN is a network of Indigenous Peoples empowering Indigenous communities and Nations towardssustainable livelihoods, demanding environmental justice, and maintaining the Sacred Fire of our traditions. Since 1998, IEN has been working on issues of climate change and global warming. IEN is one of the leading organizations/networks within the U.S. environmental justice movement involved in climate change policy - locally, nationally and globally. Visit http://www.ienearth.org for more information.


E-mail: indigenous.environmental.network@gmail.com
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Postby American Dream » Tue Dec 08, 2009 12:19 pm

http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/12/rampa ... ng-battle/

Rampaging Climate Deniers’ Losing Battle
by Lorna Salzman / December 8th, 2009


The recent tempest in a teapot over leaked emails in the UK that purportedly proposed silencing climate deniers has succeeded admirably in advancing the agenda of the deniers, who, absent any substantial credible evidence for their viewpoint, have moved into the realm of personal slander.

On the face of it, their argument appears to rely on their claims that research with findings that dismiss climate change has been suppressed by the wicked science establishment. The reality is quite different, but people and media, being naturally paranoid and quick to indict the “elitist” scientific experts, have apparently bought into the deniers’ claims.

What most of the public and mass media do not understand, or choose to ignore in the interest of producing a “shock” story that will get attention regardless of its reliability or content, is what they also have not understood regarding the debate between evolutionists and creationists. Because of the flimsy comprehension of science and evolution of most writers in the mass media, those who venture to write about evolution feel constrained to present “alternative” views.

But “alternative” views are not necessarily credible or true. In the case of evolution, creationist belief in a deity is an article of faith reached by individuals outside the scientific process that involves peer review and rigorous independent impartial testing before any claim of “truth” or verification can be reached.

Anti-evolution forces refuse — because they are unable — to allow their views to be tested, because no such tests are available, or at least tests that do not threaten their belief system. Evolutionists have always asked creationists to submit criteria and protocols for their belief that a higher deity exists, but of course these do not exist. Yet this in no way stops creationists from continuing to assert that such a deity exists.

We now are seeing a similar backlash by climate change deniers. But the deniers’ arguments are no less articles of faith than those of the creationists. In the case of the former, the faith is not in a god but in the free market and capitalism. Almost without exception, those who are in staunch denial are those connected to, involved in or supportive of the traditional capitalist model of economic growth, and by implication opposed to anything that might constrain this model.

While we expect corporate flaks and biostitutes who are often hired consultants to corporations and industry to hew to the corporate party line (after all their livelihood and status depend on it), in the case of climate change deniers we have devotees of the economic growth model and fiery opponents of environmental laws and regulation. If they work at universities, it is likely that some if not most of their research funding comes from the private sector, usually corporations connected to energy, chemicals, and agriculture. They know on which side their bread is buttered. It was ever thus.

The climate science on which the vast majority of credible scientists rely for their uniform agreement that we are approaching the point of no return with climate change is impeccable and clear. Despite a few cranks and contrarians here and there — and let’s be clear that the science establishment needs and tolerates these because they are vital to the honesty of scientific process — the data are quite clear and unmistakable. They are not fuzzy or contradictory or fudged.

There are always disagreements among scientists as to the significance, extent and time line for the consequences of actions, in this case the act of continuing to release greenhouse gases. For example, some scientists believe the tipping point for irreversible climate change and widespread ecological damage is four or five years off. Others believe that we might have 20 years or more to cut back to the 350 ppm CO2 level that most scientists says is imperative to save civilization and prevent global chaos. The first IPCC report, and even other studies today, say that the 75 foot sea level rise that will accompany a loss of the west Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets won’t occur (or be finalized) by the year 2100.

But all of these rely on the same data; in fact every day new studies appear confirming the certainty and speed of climate change. What remains uncertain, as all scientists will admit, is how fast and where ocean- and land-based systems and species will react (and thus contribute additionally to climate change) to the already occurring impacts : worldwide melting of glaciers, release of permafrost from boreal bogs and underwater founts, severe weather events, droughts, floods, and wildfires, as well as the migration of tropical species northward, including insect disease vectors.

Despite uninformed gossip on the internet about how some parts of the world have experienced cold spells (revealing the public’s mistaken belief that weather and climate are the same), the increased average global temperature studies lead to no conclusion but that global warming began decades ago, continues unabated, and shows a steepening upward curve on all charts, in particular since the mid-20th century. No data exist whatsoever that change this upward curve. NONE WHATSOEVER.

The whining of climate deniers and free marketeers about whether the scientific community has excluded them from publishing is nothing but noise. Serious scientific researchers with transparent protocol and clear data that can be analyzed and verified have never been excluded or suppressed. However, as with all scientific peer review processes, nothing requires a science journal to print everything about climate change that arrives on its desk any more than a biology journal is required to print something that purports to prove the existence of a god as the alternative explanation to evolution of life on earth.

But climate change deniers are counting on public and media ignorance and demand for “objectivity” to get a sympathetic ear for their case. In effect they are demanding that any and all studies they submit for peer review and publication in professional journals be published regardless of the accuracy or integrity of their data. In effect they are demanding that their POLITICAL VIEWS be allowed free rein, whether or not their science supports them.

So the next time you see some apparently legitimate scientist griping that his work has been rejected by scientific journals, it behooves you to look behind the scenes at who he is, who funds him, and towards what ends, especially when the debate turns into ad hominem attacks on the scientists who, fed up with the mendacity and distortions of the climate change deniers, don’t want serious work and debate polluted by the propaganda of corporations and their paid lackies.
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Postby tazmic » Tue Dec 08, 2009 2:50 pm

"The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all future climate change negotiations."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-summit-disarray-danish-text

"The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions."

That's quite a coup.
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Postby Code Unknown » Tue Dec 08, 2009 3:02 pm

JackRiddler wrote:I didn't say the oil companies did it, I said if they did it, it was a coup in the PR war. You're an idiot if you think any "climate change skepticism" was sown by this sorry episode. It was red meat to your crowd, stirring up a bullshit distraction that will make no difference to Copenhagen. The leaders there already know what causes climate change, and this will hardly change their minds.

De facto, the e-mail flap has the same effect on your crowd as Sarah Palin's book tour does on the teabaggers. She makes it seem like the central conflict facing "America" is of the teabaggers' "freedom" vs. Obama's "socialism."

On climate change (and on the environmental question as a whole) the real debate is about meaty measures for reducing energy consumption vs. the cap and trade scam. Instead we have your little side-circus with the stolen e-mails, and cap-and-trade is likelier to go through and be seen as a "victory" of ecological reason against the flat-earth set. Get a clue.


That's about the sum of it.
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Postby Sounder » Tue Dec 08, 2009 3:29 pm

"The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions."


Well Zoellnick and the World Bank have done such fine work stripping nations of their food sovereignty, yet their cash stream is getting tight because people are tired or tapped out on taking their loans, so let’s award them a new slush fund so they can continue to do their fine works. They are the new Jesuits I'm telling ya.
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Postby Gouda » Tue Dec 08, 2009 4:39 pm

I think Sounder is referencing this article "A man-made famine" which was posted in another thread.

[The World Bank's] mission was to accelerate two decades of trade liberalisation in key strategic commodities for the United States, among them agriculture. Practically, this meant the removal of developing countries' ability to stockpile grain (food mountains interfere with the market), to create tariff barriers (ditto), and to support farmers (they ought to be able to compete on their own). This Zoellick did often, and enthusiastically.

Without agricultural support policies, though, there's no buffer between the price shocks and the bellies of the poorest people on earth. No option to support sustainable smaller-scale farmers, because they've been driven off their land by cheap EU and US imports. No option to dip into grain reserves because they've been sold off to service debt. No way of increasing the income of the poorest, because social programmes have been cut to the bone.

But governments weren't allowed to return to the business of supporting agriculture. Trade liberalisation agreements and World Bank loan conditions, such as those promoted by Zoellick, have made food sovereignty impossible.
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