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May 15, 2007 - Vancouver

Four days in Vancouver, courtesy of Alcan and Simon Fraser University. Such a good city. 750,000 people (so not exactly a big city), lots of water and mountains all around. Made one feel pretty good about urban living.

Came in on the back end of a bit of a shock, in that the Premier of British Columbia (deeply conservative, apparently, bordering on neo-con even) has suddenly “got” climate change. Very ambitious new targets on energy efficiency and climate change, “inclusive approach”, long term vision and so on.

It made me wonder how we might mass-produce these epiphanies. They seem to arrive so arbitrarily at the moment. Decades in denial, then a chance encounter with reality. And guess who provided the reality on this occasion? No less an Evangelist than Arnie Schwarzenegger himself – he of Hummer fame again. With his own unique brand of muscular environmentalism, full of scorn for boring environmentalists (“like prohibitionists at a fraternity party”), seeking to redefine sustainability in terms of passion for life rather than guilt. He has got a good point there, I have to admit. Sadly, Arnie is said to have given up on converting George Bush. Even the Governator has his limits.

Posted on May 15, 2007 4:50 PM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

June 26, 2007 - The Ashden Awards

For me, last week’s absolute highlight was the Ashden Awards event for Sustainable Energy – now in its sixth year. I may be biased (well, I am biased, as I’m a Trustee of the Awards!), but it’s hard to beat an evening where all one has to cope with is a succession of inspiring stories from “energy entrepreneurs” of every description from China, Peru, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Ghana, Tanzania, Laos, the Philippines and, of course, the UK.

To take one of these stories - Sunlabob Royal Energies Ltd in Laos. Most of the rural poor are not connected to the grid, and are not likely to be in the foreseeable future either. Firewood and kerosene are the fuels of choice – or of necessity at least. Sunlabob have come up with this amazing scheme to rent out home-voltaic systems to Village Energy Committees (as well as portable solar lamps for individuals) - at less than the equivalent price for kerosene. The scheme involves just 73 villages at the moment. But every village could and should be benefiting from this, and it’s hoped that Sunlabob may well be able to provide answers to much of that need.

gore_ceremony1.jpg

Imagine eighteen stories similar to that one, and you get a feel for the evening. Al Gore graciously did the honours – including a miraculously short speech – and for the sixth year in a row every single person went off home asking themselves why all these wondrous renewable technologies aren’t serving the needs of billions of people rather than just tiny minorities.

Posted on June 26, 2007 3:18 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

July 12, 2007 - The Great Global Warming Swindle

So that’s it: any residual idea that Channel 4’s notorious documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” has the remotest vestige of good science about it is now permanently scotched. A new analysis of data on the energy radiated from the sun over the last 25 years shows that solar activity has been decreasing, not increasing, during that time – which is exactly the same time as the Earth has been getting hotter, with ten of the last twelve years the hottest on record.

The idea that rising emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are being caused by rising temperatures from increased solar radiation – rather than the other way round – is now as dead in the water as Alistair Campbell’s literary pretensions. Professor Lockwood’s data (published on Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society) must also be the final blow to the professional reputation of the lying, bullying, over-rated little git that is Martin Durkin – the producer of “The Great Global Warming Swindle”.

If I sound a touch bitter, it’s because I am. It’s down to dorks like Durkin (including, I’m sorry to say, my old friend David Bellamy, who has turned into another of those flat-earth denial merchants) that an almost unbelievable 56% of people in the UK still believe that there’s a major scientific controversy about what’s causing climate change – according to the latest Ipsos MORI opinion poll. These people have a lot to answer for.

Posted on July 12, 2007 11:05 AM | | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

July 27, 2007 - The Floods

I live in Cheltenham, just down the road from Tewkesbury and Gloucester, both of which have been affected much more seriously than Cheltenham itself. It’s still bloody miserable for tens of thousands of people in the region, exacerbated by the fact that water supplies are likely to be off for another week or so.

It’s amazing how quickly the “lots of energy” of “all being in it together”, solidarity in adversity and all that, wears off, as does the novelty factor of having no water. It’s just a pain in the neck, especially as our water butt is about to run empty. But the question that’s preoccupying me is how long-lived will the impact of this trauma be? Will it sway the waverers, bring them out of their bunkers of denial on climate change (no, it’s not going to be fun, and who cares if we are able to grow wine in Wigan), and stop them heading off to B&Q to buy their wretched patio heaters?

It’s been encouraging to hear Ministers (including the Prime Minister) linking the floods directly to climate change, which will help, but amongst my many nightmarish visual memories of the much-missed John Prescott is one of him in his green wellies in flood waters in Chichester (or somewhere in Sussex) at least five years ago, categorically asserting that those particular floods were the direct, indisputable, cast-iron consequence of climate change. So why didn’t everybody believe him then? (I don’t really need an answer to that one, by the way!)

BBC - Floods at a glance
Guardian Flood Pictures

Posted on July 27, 2007 9:34 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

September 19, 2007 - BBC axe falls on Planet Relief

Hallelujah! The great Professor John Marburger (George Bush’s leading scientific advisor) has robustly confirmed the principal findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – including the “more than 90% likely that climate change caused by mankind” bit.

In his recent interview with the BBC, he went a lot further than that, revealing his worst Lovelockian fears: “The CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere. There’s no end point – it just gets hotter and hotter, so at some point it becomes unliveable”. That’s irreversibility for you, John.

I wonder how the BBC billed Professor Marburger, internally, in their forward planning: climate mainstreamer or climate contrarian? (He’s often been in the latter category before now, so the BBC is going to be really cross that he’s gone over to the other side at this stage).

Over the years, the pool of potential contrarian contributors has dwindled year by year – there’s only so much incontrovertible science one can go on denying in order to suit the media. This is going to get increasingly problematic for the BBC, given the apparent editorial decision to maintain some kind of Reithian balance in its reporting on climate change.

All this surfaced when the BBC decided to axe its plans for Climate Relief – a day of programming focusing on climate change, including quite a lot of advocacy and even “campaigning”.

Great stuff, but the BBC lost its nerve: “it is absolutely not the BBC’s job to save the planet”, said Peter Barron, Editor of Newsnight.

Rather than axe Planet Relief, I’ve got a much better idea for the BBC that seems to be terminally muddled about all this stuff. Why not carry on with Planet Relief, and at the same time commission an alternative “Screw the Planet” day, providing a truly balanced love-in for all climate deniers, chaired by Bjorn Lomborg, duped by Martin Durkin, whimsically entertained by Richard D North, bored rigid by the Institute of Economic Affairs, lectured by Philip Stott, reduced to uncontrollable hysterics by David Bellamy – and regaled by wise and far-seeing US politicians like James Connaughton, Bush’s leading adviser on climate change, who believes that adopting mandatory targets for reducing emissions of CO2 would “mean shutting down the US economy”.

There you are, Mr Barron. What better way of protecting your precious reputation for balance than by lining up the galacticos of today’s ever-so-balanced contrarian movement? And what a fantastic contribution you’ll be making to climate change awareness in the process.

Posted on September 19, 2007 1:06 PM | | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

October 18, 2007 - Carbon Free Homes

Readers may be interested in an article I wrote for Building Design:

“Compare Germany’s retrofit of its existing stock with our own seriously clunky energy commitment”

Why put a price on the priceless importance of carbon free homes?

Posted on October 18, 2007 11:51 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

October 19, 2007 - Climate change and peace

Al Gore has finally (finally?!) declared that he’s absolutely not going to put himself forward as the Democratic presidential candidate. Thank God for that. The thought of Al reverting to his rather wooden, very risk-averse, not particularly friendly pre-2000 persona was an absolute nightmare. If he had failed (either at the first or the second hurdle), his stature would have been substantially diminished – as in “Nobel Peace Prize Winner and failed Presidential candidate twice over”. If he’d won, he’d have had a few other things on his plate other than climate change – and I suspect we would have lost him as the undisputed world leader in this area at the moment.

But hats off to the Nobel Prize Committee. By explicitly linking the worsening impacts of climate change with threats to peace and security (particularly through displaced people and growing numbers of environmental refugees), it reinforces the message that climate change is not an environmental issue, but much more to do with security and economics.

There’s been a predictable spate of hostile comments from Gore-haters and climate contrarians, questioning the sanity/ideology of the Nobel Prize Committee, just as there was a couple of years ago when Wangari Maathai, Founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya and redoubtable environmental campaigner, also won the prize. “What has planting trees got to do with promoting a more peaceful world?” This was a common-place response from these lame-brains.

But the Committee didn’t just honour Gore. The joint winner was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an unprecedented honouring of one little cog in the monolithic machinery of the United Nations. And such a good decision. Even if you believe (like me) that the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report significantly underestimates both the speed of climate change and its severity, the sheer grinding slog of establishing a scientific consensus across all UN countries, and then getting countries like Saudi Arabia and the United States to buy into that consensus (even when that’s absolutely the last thing they want to do in the world) beggars belief.

The IPCC is a unique scientific body which has had a quite unique impact on the global debate.

And what a powerful way of telling critics of the IPCC like Bjørn Lomborg to bog off.

Posted on October 19, 2007 1:43 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 30, 2007 - Another inconvenient truth

Hilary Benn will be mightily upset by the United Nations official report prepared for next weekís Bali Conference. Apart from the fact that it's a very grim read indeed (particularly in the focus it brings to bear on just how disproportionately grim things are going to be for the world's poorest people), it also has some extremely harsh words for the UK Government.

With a startling lack of tact, it kicks off by reminding people of the inconvenient truth that the UK's success in meeting our Kyoto targets is almost entirely due to Mrs Thatcher's passion for decarbonising the UK economy by closing down all our coal mines. Not that much of substance has happened since then.

Even less tactfully, it then wades into the Climate Change Bill, the constantly buffed-up jewel in the Government climate change crown. Whilst acknowledging that it is indeed a “bold and innovative step”, in terms of putting CO2 abatement targets in statute, it points out that it won’t be worth a hill of organic beans without much more radical policies than the Government has currently put in place – particularly on renewables, where the UK is miles behind many other EU countries.

Unfairly, it doesnít seem to have taken proper account of the Carbon Reduction Commitment, a mandatory trading scheme for all organisations whose energy spending amounts to more than £500,000 a year, a measure which should come into force by 2009/2010.

Finally, it powerfully reinforces NGO efforts to persuade the Government to include aviation and shipping in the UK targets, working on the assumption that emissions from these two sectors would increase the UK's budget by around 27% by 2050 - more or less cancelling out half the planned 60% reduction. So it was encouraging that the Prime Minister recently accepted the importance of thinking through the implications of including these aviation and shipping emissions in the budget.

It sums it all up as follows: “If the rest of the developed world followed the pathway envisaged in the UK’s Climate Change Bill, dangerous climate change would be inevitable”.

Ouch!

Posted by JP on November 30, 2007 7:16 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

December 10, 2007 - Bali

Bali discussions duly chuntering on. And my heart goes out to all those poor NGO stalwarts who have to sit there day after day listening to the mind-crushing mediocrity of most government delegations.

By way of inspiring contrast, I have just discovered WWF's excellent publication, 'Climate Solutions: a Vision for 2050'. It does a lot of the usual stuff, tracking out different scenarios in a very low-carbon future through to 2050, elaborating on the so-called 'Princeton wedges' (devised by Pacala and Sokolov) and highlighting in the process just how urgent it is to turn Bali-esque hot air into instant greenhouse gas abatement schemes.

Without a huge amount of enthusiasm, 'Climate Solutions' also emphasises just how crucial it is going to be to sort out two aspects of the journey to a low-carbon economy which environmentalists are understandably somewhat uncomfortable about: carbon capture and storage, and the extensive use of gas as a 'transition fuel'.

Oddly enough, both of these are really all about coal. How many times have you heard eminent energy experts pontificating about the 'inevitability' of massive increases in the use of coal over the next two or three decades? The International Energy Agency, for instance, estimates no less than a doubling of the use of coal by 2030, basing their predictions on the fact that coal use has gone up by 23% over the last five years! If that 'inevitability' happens for real, then we're all as good as stuffed.

So, according to WWF, two things have to happen. First, gas has to be substituted for coal wherever and whenever possible. A combined-cycle gas turbine plant emits no more than 40% of the emissions of a standard coal-fired station. With the biggest reserves of gas in just three countries (Russia, Iran, and Qatar) that inevitably means a massive increase in LNG (liquefied natural gas) facilities all around the world. And thatís quite challenging from an environmental point of view.

Secondly, we have to get stuck into capturing the CO2 which would otherwise be emitted from coal and gas-fired power stations, and sticking it back underground in old oil and gas reservoirs or saline aquifers. Substantial additional costs (at least $50 a tonne), huge logistical and legal issues all now loom - but as WWF uncomfortably reminds us, there's absolutely no way of getting through to a low-carbon world by 2050 without billions of tonnes of C02 being kept out of the atmosphere in that way.

And that's quite a challenge from an environmental point of view! But WWF never said it was going to be easy.

Posted by JP on December 10, 2007 9:28 AM | | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

December 19, 2007 - Bali - the final analysis

So that’s Bali done: a binding timetable agreed – for more talks through to the end of 2009. And an agreement for something more substantial to slow deforestation - by 2013.

Against such meagre pickings, I wonder how Bali will be remembered in the annals of climate change diplomacy? A "good beginning" as Ban Ki-Moon put it, conveniently forgetting that this was exactly how the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was described, and exactly how the Kyoto Protocol was subsequently described as well.

A “tawdry, ineffective compromise”, as I heard one NGO representative describe it, bitterly aware of the fact that what was being compromised, yet again, was the integrity of the life support systems on which we all depend.

Or maybe as “a crazy game of global chicken”, with the EU and the US eye-balling each other through deadlocked negotiations, determined not to be the one to flinch first.

My favourite, at this stage, is “the final shaming of America”. Al Gore’s words, not mine, uttered in despair at the implacable intransigence of the Bush administration’s negotiators, offered with his right arm stretched over his chest as if he was standing in front of the American flag, as if seeking some inner strength in order to say such ‘unpatriotic’ things.

But the thank God a few Americans are actually saying them. I spent quite a bit of this year reading books about the role of America in a post-9/11 world – John Gray’s Black Mass:Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, and most recently, Naomi Kline’s astonishing Shock Doctrine. It numbs the mind to have to come to terms with the utterly hateful force and reach of today’s US imperium, a truly ‘evil empire’ if ever there was one.

To have so comprehensively lost America as an international ‘force for good’, at a time when the world needs more than ever that kind of energy and generosity of spirit that America brought to bear on post-war Europe in the 20th century, has to be just about the most depressing aspect of today’s disintegrating world.

Anyway, I have got cheerier books set aside for the holiday season, lots of novels (for which there is normally never enough time), lots of diversions and distractions – as well as a few upbeat eco-tracts as well!

All of which means that I am temporarily taking leave of absence from the Blog for the next three weeks, by which time I can only hope the debacle that was Bali will have already faded fittingly away.

Posted on December 19, 2007 9:27 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

June 20, 2008 - Greenpeace versus Unilever (Round Two)

“Gratuitously stirring a pot that absolutely didn’t need to be stirred just to make a phoney effect” – I guess that was one of the more polite comments I received from colleagues about my piece (posted 1st May) regarding Greenpeace’s direct action against Unilever as part of its palm oil campaign. I certainly plead guilty to the pot-stirring, but there was nothing phoney about it: the interface between business and NGOs is one that I spend a lot of time reflecting on, and this provides a particularly interesting case study.

To say that these things “all come out in the wash” would not just be a cliché, but a rather insulting cliché. However, there is something of a coming-out-in-the-wash effect going on in terms of the ‘working relationship’ between Greenpeace and Unilever.

The prize for Greenpeace in taking on Unilever was not just to be sure that the company was doubling and re-doubling its efforts on securing “sustainable palm oil”, but that Unilever would undertake to spearhead a business-led call for an immediate moratorium on further deforestation in Indonesia linked to palm oil cultivation.

That’s exactly what Unilever is now doing – with the only bone of contention between them the question as to whether Unilever would have done that without its headquarters being invaded by troops of orang-utan lookalikes. Unilever said it would; Greenpeace says is wouldn’t. Whatever, as some would say.

But things move fast these days. A couple of days after Unilever made its announcement (at The Prince of Wales’s May Day Summit on Climate Change) Greenpeace issued its latest report, The Hidden Carbon Liability of Indonesian Palm Oil – the front cover of which has a big tick against Unilever on “support a halt to deforestation”, and a big cross against Nestle, P&G and Kraft.

It’s an excellent report (adding a lot more context and specific detail to the earlier report, Burning up Borneo), and key reading for anyone interested in this debate. I’m sure it won’t make Unilever colleagues feel any less uncomfortable about the pressure they’re now under, but they will at least see it as a more ‘level playing field’ in terms of the share of the clod of earth that Greenpeace is now hurling at all the big palm oil players.

One really interesting divide emerges. Some time ago, Unilever decided to direct (almost) all its efforts through the RSPO – the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil. “It is essential that all those involved sign up to agreed criteria to make sustainability work on the ground – but this is not an easy process, and is taking longer than we would all like. That is why we chair the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil”.

Greenpeace thinks the RSPO is a total waste of space: “the organisation’s impact on the ground in terms of halting industry expansion into rainforests and peatlands has been negligible. At present, the RSPO scheme does not prohibit palm oil producers from being involved in forest conversion, and has no assessment of, or limits on, GHG emissions from the development of palm oil plantations.

Again, you’ll have to judge for yourself on this one. At the risk of being accused yet again of grotesque bias, I have to say that Unilever really didn’t have much choice here. Unilateral action on its part would have counted for very little – even if it is the world’s biggest consumer of palm oil .

And it’s simply not true to say that nothing has happened, In just three years, producers responsible for 40% of total palm oil production have joined the RSPO, have agreed on a Certification Programme for sustainable palm oil (which is more than can be said for most other agricultural commodities in the world today), which includes sanctions against companies that flout the certification standards – and those companies do include expansion onto land of high conservation value.

Here’s the fit between Greenpeace’s demands and the RSPO:
(1) No new plantings within mapped forest areas
(2) No plantations resulting in the degradation of peatlands
(3) No plantations post-November 2005 resulting in degradations of High Conservation Value forests
(4) No plantations established on indigenous people’s land without Free, Prior and Informed Consent
(5) Establish full supply chain traceability.

Unilever has pointed out that the first four of these are included in the new standards, and Unilever itself (though not other RSPO members) has committed to (5). As it has to be if it is to achieve its goal of ensuing that all the palm oil it uses is sourced from sustainable producers by 2015.

Too slow? Probably. RSPO still pretty dodgy in terms of its membership? Couldn’t agree more. Best way to go in an imperfect world? I think so.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on June 20, 2008 2:12 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 17, 2008 - One Billion Trees

As I mentioned in my blog on June 11th (Protecting the Rainforests), there is a great buzz at the moment about REDD – Reducing Emissions (of CO2 ) from Deforestation and Degradation. This is great, and getting something sorted on this before the Copenhagen Conference at the end of 2009 is going to be crucial.

But people are weird. Just because policy-makers are focused for the first time on reducing emissions from cutting down existing trees doesn’t mean that taking up emissions from planting new trees has suddenly become completely irrelevant! Or boring even.

OK, so there are indeed a number of dodgy tree-planting schemes being done as carbon offsets, and it is now widely accepted that forestry-based offsets need to be treated with a great deal of caution. But that absolutely doesn’t mean that all tree-planting has ceased to be important.

I was powerfully reminded of this last week when the official report of the Billion Tree Campaign dropped through my letterbox. If anyone reading this piece RIGHT NOW is feeling a little bit depressed, then RIGHT NOW you should check this out http://www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign.

It’s an astonishing story. Back in 2005, the wonderful Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize (the first environmentalist ever to win) started campaigning around the idea of planting a billion trees. This was taken up by UNEP and a constellation of organisations all around the world, and duly launched in November 2006. I must say, I did wonder at the ambition level – that’s one hell of a lot of people out there planting one hell of a lot of trees.

I needn’t have worried. Since the launch, not just one billion, not just one and half billion, but more than two billion trees have been planted!

The overall impact of this must be extraordinary – in terms of biodiversity, soil protection, watershed management, sustainable livelihoods and so on. And that doesn’t even include the CO2 benefits: depending on the location and size of its trees, one hectare of forest can absorb approximately six tonnes of CO2 a year.

The Report is stuffed full of brilliant case studies, drawn from all over the world, involving every sector and every conceivable kind of organisation – particularly young people.

You can just feel the spirit of Wangari Maathai behind all of this. She was over in the UK a month ago to present the Awards of the annual Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy – itself an amazing organisation (of which – to declare an interest – I’m a Trustee) with its own amazing portfolio of inspirational award winners – this year from Ethiopia, Tanzania, India, Uganda, Brazil and China, as well as Mid Wales, Cornwall, Sussex, Yorkshire, Ayrshire and Oxford!

So if the Billion Trees haven’t done it for you, then check them out too at www.ashdenawards.org

“No one can attend an event like the Ashden Awards and fail to be inspired……these Awards have told us how to illuminate the path to a sustainable future together”

(Al Gore)


Posted by Jonathon Porritt on July 17, 2008 10:45 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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