‘Peak Oil’ only makes the Green Party message more
urgent
Rupert Read looks at ‘Peak Oil’ and addresses a potential problem with the ‘Transition Towns’ covered in the last issue of Green World.
We in the Green Party have greatly upped our emphasis on the challenge posed by Peak Oil. More and more people are talking about how ‘Transition Towns’ might change the world and save us from oil depletion and climate catastrophe. But there is, I’m afraid, one critically important respect in which this bold hope could not possibly come true:
The Transition Towns movement alone cannot save us, because, within the existing economic system, some people reducing their use of fossil fuels is received by everyone else as a price signal that it is OK to use even more fossil fuels. I.e. For every litre of petrol that (say) Totnes does not use, everyone else in Britain is very slightly incentivised to use more petrol, by the price not going up as much as it otherwise would. Thus others’ even more unsustainable commuting patterns will cancel out the positive effect of Totnes.
Transition Towns alone can only function as demonstration projects. They show what is possible. But in order for them to be part of a movement that actually reduces overall use of fossil fuels, legislation is needed. Legislation that enforces lower overall use of fossil fuels, and/or that forces everyone to try to become a transition town.
And that is where we come in. Unless we force political change through the electoral mechanism, then the ‘Transition Towns’ vision of how why might make a transition to a saner future will remain a fantasy, rather than the reality we absolutely desperately need it to become.
So: every time you hear a Transition Town afficionado speaking about how Peak Oil renders ordinary politics irrelevant, please beg to differ. Without policies such as carbon rationing being put into place, the Transition Towns movement will do virtually nothing to prevent the onset of climate catastrophe though excessive burning of fossil fuels.
Because, as fast as oil runs out, so - unless we change the political economy of the world radically, and fast - the existing system will look to exploit other more carbon-intensive fossil fuel sources (as I explained in my column, http://oneworldcolumn.org/132.html), such as tar sands and of course coal.
The prognosis is extremely challenging. Peak Oil will hasten climate catastrophe - unless the Green Party manages to change the rules of the game, for everyone, and not just for the converted few.
Cllr. Rupert Read is lead Euro-candidate for Eastern Region.
His regular column in the Eastern Daily Press is at: www.oneworldcolumn.org
His Guardian online articles are at: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/rupert_read/index.html
His regular contributions to ‘Open Democracy’ are at: http://ourkingdom.opendemocracy.net/?s=%22rupert+read%22
His blog, ‘Rupert’s read’, is at www.rupertsread.blogspot.com
Rupert Read looks at ‘Peak Oil’ and addresses a potential problem with the ‘Transition Towns’ covered in the last issue of Green World.
We in the Green Party have greatly upped our emphasis on the challenge posed by Peak Oil. More and more people are talking about how ‘Transition Towns’ might change the world and save us from oil depletion and climate catastrophe. But there is, I’m afraid, one critically important respect in which this bold hope could not possibly come true:
The Transition Towns movement alone cannot save us, because, within the existing economic system, some people reducing their use of fossil fuels is received by everyone else as a price signal that it is OK to use even more fossil fuels. I.e. For every litre of petrol that (say) Totnes does not use, everyone else in Britain is very slightly incentivised to use more petrol, by the price not going up as much as it otherwise would. Thus others’ even more unsustainable commuting patterns will cancel out the positive effect of Totnes.
Transition Towns alone can only function as demonstration projects. They show what is possible. But in order for them to be part of a movement that actually reduces overall use of fossil fuels, legislation is needed. Legislation that enforces lower overall use of fossil fuels, and/or that forces everyone to try to become a transition town.
And that is where we come in. Unless we force political change through the electoral mechanism, then the ‘Transition Towns’ vision of how why might make a transition to a saner future will remain a fantasy, rather than the reality we absolutely desperately need it to become.
So: every time you hear a Transition Town afficionado speaking about how Peak Oil renders ordinary politics irrelevant, please beg to differ. Without policies such as carbon rationing being put into place, the Transition Towns movement will do virtually nothing to prevent the onset of climate catastrophe though excessive burning of fossil fuels.
Because, as fast as oil runs out, so - unless we change the political economy of the world radically, and fast - the existing system will look to exploit other more carbon-intensive fossil fuel sources (as I explained in my column, http://oneworldcolumn.org/132.html), such as tar sands and of course coal.
The prognosis is extremely challenging. Peak Oil will hasten climate catastrophe - unless the Green Party manages to change the rules of the game, for everyone, and not just for the converted few.
Cllr. Rupert Read is lead Euro-candidate for Eastern Region.
His regular column in the Eastern Daily Press is at: www.oneworldcolumn.org
His Guardian online articles are at: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/rupert_read/index.html
His regular contributions to ‘Open Democracy’ are at: http://ourkingdom.opendemocracy.net/?s=%22rupert+read%22
His blog, ‘Rupert’s read’, is at www.rupertsread.blogspot.com
BALI: The truth is sobering
Green activist, Deepak Rughani, went to Bali to co-lead a side event and to encourage a broader coalition of organisations from the North and South to stand against approaches that will fail to deal with climate change.
COP 13 - the official name for the Bali talks - finally closed after a period of high drama with the conference focused on US intransigence. The impasse broke abruptly with those now-famous words ‘If you’re not prepared to lead, get out of the way’ by the Papua New Guinea Head of Delegation.
However this forms a smoke screen for the real but more silent drama playing out. The most stringent emissions target explored by the IPCC AR4 document is for 450ppm CO2, for which the much publicised 25-40% emission cuts by 2020 apply. This gives, according to the UK Met Office, only a 20% chance of keeping temperatures below 2C and a much greater likelihood of exceeding 4C. We are, therefore, fighting for targets which are highly likely to trigger catastrophic climate change.
Germany committed to meeting the 40% cut in CO2 below 1990 levels by 2020. Costa Rica and Norway committed to bringing emissions to zero. And New Zealand committed to zero carbon emissions by 2021. Yet even this ‘silver lining’ is not as it seems; it is simply an exercise in more extensive emissions trading and offsetting. Carbon trading, since the inception of the World Bank Carbon Prototype Fund in 1999, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Joint Implementation (JI) and the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) since 2005, has proved to be so inherently dysfunctional that in many, if not most, cases carbon trading has been closely correlated with increased emissions and extensive ecosystem destruction.
COP 13 also saw plans unveiled for an extension of carbon trading into forests in the form of REDD or Reduced Emissions from Deforestation in Developing countries. This raises a number of issues which include the disregard for land rights of forest peoples, the acquisition of forests by corporations, the legitimisation of logging wherever funds are not forthcoming and a virtual sidestepping of the core need for developed nations to reduce their own carbon footprint.
A ray of hope did emerge however: Friends of the Earth International along with several other NGOs, concerned by the new risks posed by REDD, launched a Forest Declaration calling for a systemic approach. The Declaration attracted over 60 NGO signatures at its inception
This was also the first COP when corporations chimed to calls for steeper targets. Convincing? Only when you realise that steeper targets means more carbon trading, more agro-biofuels, more monoculture tree plantations and the relocation of heavily polluting industries to nations with no emission targets. Unless campaigners now qualify their calls for steeper targets with the exposing of ‘false solutions’, we will have become unwitting accomplices in a mass extinction event which may already have begun to play out.
The Forest Declaration is available at:
http://www.foei.org/en/campaigns/climate/bali/forests-declaration/?searchterm=forest%20declaration
Green activist, Deepak Rughani, went to Bali to co-lead a side event and to encourage a broader coalition of organisations from the North and South to stand against approaches that will fail to deal with climate change.
COP 13 - the official name for the Bali talks - finally closed after a period of high drama with the conference focused on US intransigence. The impasse broke abruptly with those now-famous words ‘If you’re not prepared to lead, get out of the way’ by the Papua New Guinea Head of Delegation.
However this forms a smoke screen for the real but more silent drama playing out. The most stringent emissions target explored by the IPCC AR4 document is for 450ppm CO2, for which the much publicised 25-40% emission cuts by 2020 apply. This gives, according to the UK Met Office, only a 20% chance of keeping temperatures below 2C and a much greater likelihood of exceeding 4C. We are, therefore, fighting for targets which are highly likely to trigger catastrophic climate change.
Germany committed to meeting the 40% cut in CO2 below 1990 levels by 2020. Costa Rica and Norway committed to bringing emissions to zero. And New Zealand committed to zero carbon emissions by 2021. Yet even this ‘silver lining’ is not as it seems; it is simply an exercise in more extensive emissions trading and offsetting. Carbon trading, since the inception of the World Bank Carbon Prototype Fund in 1999, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Joint Implementation (JI) and the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) since 2005, has proved to be so inherently dysfunctional that in many, if not most, cases carbon trading has been closely correlated with increased emissions and extensive ecosystem destruction.
COP 13 also saw plans unveiled for an extension of carbon trading into forests in the form of REDD or Reduced Emissions from Deforestation in Developing countries. This raises a number of issues which include the disregard for land rights of forest peoples, the acquisition of forests by corporations, the legitimisation of logging wherever funds are not forthcoming and a virtual sidestepping of the core need for developed nations to reduce their own carbon footprint.
A ray of hope did emerge however: Friends of the Earth International along with several other NGOs, concerned by the new risks posed by REDD, launched a Forest Declaration calling for a systemic approach. The Declaration attracted over 60 NGO signatures at its inception
This was also the first COP when corporations chimed to calls for steeper targets. Convincing? Only when you realise that steeper targets means more carbon trading, more agro-biofuels, more monoculture tree plantations and the relocation of heavily polluting industries to nations with no emission targets. Unless campaigners now qualify their calls for steeper targets with the exposing of ‘false solutions’, we will have become unwitting accomplices in a mass extinction event which may already have begun to play out.
The Forest Declaration is available at:
http://www.foei.org/en/campaigns/climate/bali/forests-declaration/?searchterm=forest%20declaration
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