21st Century Vision

McDonald's And The Rainforests

After a year-long, global investigation that used satellite imagery, aerial surveillance and on-the-ground undercover monitoring, Greenpeace recently revealed how soya from the Amazon rainforest is fed to the chickens that end up on sale as European Chicken McNuggets.

The Amazon is home to millions of plants, animals and people including indigenous tribes, and it plays a vital role in keeping the world's climate stable. Each year thousands of square miles of rainforest are illegally cleared to make way for soya plantations. The soya industry in Brazil is also involved in slavery and the illegal invasion of indigenous peoples' lands. Much of the soya produced in the Amazon is used to feed animals in Europe which, in turn, end up in fast food chains like McDonald's.

"McDonald’s is fuelling a trade that's trashing the Amazon," said Greenpeace forest campaigner Pat Venditti. "Rainforest is being illegally cleared to make way for soya farms to feed animals in Europe. Our investigation clearly links that deforestation to McDonald's. Every time you buy a Chicken McNugget you could be taking a bite out of the Amazon."

Climate and Collapse

Can people power beat climate change … Or will our greed overcome us?

Who cut down the last tree in Easter Island?  Who will take the last cheap flight to Fun Valley?

The first few years of this government saw definite progress in reducing carbon emissions. There was a new political and scientific consensus that climate change was a major yet avoidable threat.  However the last two years have seen a faltering in good practice and carbon emissions have been on the rise again.   

Yesterday the government announced a review of progress on climate change.  This drew a range of comments reported by the BBC.

“The review does not offer an effective solution for controlling total UK emissions. The government needs to address this now by setting a Carbon Budget, a comprehensive framework covering emissions across the whole economy.” Ashok Sinha, Stop Climate Chaos Coalition. 

Most notably the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said the public had a moral responsibility to change lifestyles. The consequences if they did not, the Archbishop warned, would be the deaths of billions of people worldwide from the effects of extreme climate change, suggesting that simple things like enforcing to the 70mph speed limit on motorways radically reduces the release of carbon dioxide.

Chelsea Tractors and cheap flights are some of the villains, but all of us want more travel, more goods from distant parts, cheaper clothes, cheaper holidays.  These all have a carbon cost and are damaging the climate.  Are we prepared to give some of this up?

In his visit to Australia and New Zealand Tony Blair has been sitting on a fence, speaking out for nations to take responsibility for their actions but not criticising those who fail to sign international agreement. His Australian counterpart John Howard, non signer of the Kyoto agreement, has the same view as the US administration, that whilst China and India are forging ahead it is not in their interests to curb their own carbon emissions. 

As one US official put it, “We’re not going to close down our factories just so the Chinese can open one to produce the same amount of carbon”… This is plainly the road to disaster … A race to the end …

“Who cut down the last tree on Easter Island?”  This question is posed by Jared Diamond in his book “Collapse” which looks at why societies have failed to manage environmental change.  On Easter Island the whole population died because it was unable to stop its pattern of consumption. He traces the collapse and final struggles of many social groups that continued to consume and pollute long after it had become common knowledge that to do so meant the end. 

He concludes that enlightened strong government or collective consensual government are best to manage environmental crisis.  The worst is bickering power groups bent on self interest.  Remind you of anything?

Who took the last cheap flight to Fun Valley?  Will that be our epitaph?  Or will we start telling our politicians it really is time to think of tomorrow.

For useful climate info see:  Stop Climate Chaos

Hurricanes, global warming, and global politics

A new research paper providing scientific underpinning for links between global warming and the increasing regularity of hurricanes is a challenge to policy-makers to think afresh, report Dave Frame & Dáithí Stone in Open Democracy

The devastation wrought by hurricane Katrina and the subsequent development of hurricane Rita have invited speculation about the role of greenhouse warming in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. Over the last decade many scientific studies have attempted to examine the links between the two. The evidence has generally been mixed: many studies have asserted increases in intensity or frequency of hurricanes, but none have convinced the research community of a definite link.

However, a recent, eerily timed paper by Kerry Emanuel from MIT shows compelling evidence that there has been an increase in the destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the last thirty years. While the paper has its critics, it has also captured the research community’s attention as a potentially important line of inquiry.

In the paper, Emanuel develops an index of hurricane destructiveness based on the dissipation of energy (over the lifetime of the hurricane). This index is plausibly linked with observed climate signals, including multi-decadal cycles in the north Atlantic and north Pacific, and global warming. The results suggest that continued warming may lead to an increase in hurricane destructiveness, which, combined with the accumulation of coastal risk that has resulted from urbanisation along vulnerable coasts, may lead to a substantial increase in socio-economic damage over the coming century.

See full article …

Global warming 'past the point of no return'

A record loss of sea ice in the Arctic this summer has convinced scientists that the northern hemisphere may have crossed a critical threshold beyond which the climate may never recover. Scientists fear that the Arctic has now entered an irreversible phase of warming which will accelerate the loss of the polar sea ice that has helped to keep the climate stable for thousands of years.

They believe global warming is melting Arctic ice so rapidly that the region is beginning to absorb more heat from the sun, causing the ice to melt still further and so reinforcing a vicious cycle of melting and heating.

The greatest fear is that the Arctic has reached a "tipping point" beyond which nothing can reverse the continual loss of sea ice and with it the massive land glaciers of Greenland, which will raise sea levels dramatically.

Satellites monitoring the Arctic have found that the extent of the sea ice this August has reached its lowest monthly point on record, dipping an unprecedented 18.2 per cent below the long-term average.

Experts believe that such a loss of Arctic sea ice in summer has not occurred in hundreds and possibly thousands of years. It is the fourth year in a row that the sea ice in August has fallen below the monthly downward trend - a clear sign that melting has accelerated.

Scientists are now preparing to report a record loss of Arctic sea ice for September, when the surface area covered by the ice traditionally reaches its minimum extent at the end of the summer melting period.

Sea ice naturally melts in summer and reforms in winter but for the first time on record this annual rebound did not occur last winter when the ice of the Arctic failed to recover significantly.

Arctic specialists at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre at Colorado University, who have documented the gradual loss of polar sea ice since 1978, believe that a more dramatic melt began about four years ago.

In September 2002 the sea ice coverage of the Arctic reached its lowest level in recorded history. Such lows have normally been followed the next year by a rebound to more normal levels, but this did not occur in the summers of either 2003 or 2004. This summer has been even worse. The surface area covered by sea ice was at a record monthly minimum for each of the summer months - June, July and now August.

Scientists analysing the latest satellite data for September - the traditional minimum extent for each summer - are preparing to announce a significant shift in the stability of the Arctic sea ice, the northern hemisphere's major "heat sink" that moderates climatic extremes.

"The changes we've seen in the Arctic over the past few decades are nothing short of remarkable," said Mark Serreze, one of the scientists at the Snow and Ice Data Centre who monitor Arctic sea ice.

Scientists at the data centre are bracing themselves for the 2005 annual minimum, which is expected to be reached in mid-September, when another record loss is forecast. A major announcement is scheduled for 20 September. "It looks like we're going to exceed it or be real close one way or the other. It is probably going to be at least as comparable to September 2002," Dr Serreze said.

"This will be four Septembers in a row that we've seen a downward trend. The feeling is we are reaching a tipping point or threshold beyond which sea ice will not recover."

The extent of the sea ice in September is the most valuable indicator of its health. This year's record melt means that more of the long-term ice formed over many winters - so called multi-year ice - has disappeared than at any time in recorded history.

Sea ice floats on the surface of the Arctic Ocean and its neighbouring seas and normally covers an area of some 7 million square kilometres (2.4 million square miles) during September - about the size of Australia. However, in September 2002, this dwindled to about 2 million square miles - 16 per cent below average.

Sea ice data for August closely mirrors that for September and last month's record low - 18.2 per cent below the monthly average - strongly suggests that this September will see the smallest coverage of Arctic sea ice ever recorded.

As more and more sea ice is lost during the summer, greater expanses of open ocean are exposed to the sun which increases the rate at which heat is absorbed in the Arctic region, Dr Serreze said.

Sea ice reflects up to 80 per cent of sunlight hitting it but this "albedo effect" is mostly lost when the sea is uncovered. "We've exposed all this dark ocean to the sun's heat so that the overall heat content increases," he explained.

Current computer models suggest that the Arctic will be entirely ice-free during summer by the year 2070 but some scientists now believe that even this dire prediction may be over-optimistic, said Professor Peter Wadhams, an Arctic ice specialist at Cambridge University.

"When the ice becomes so thin it breaks up mechanically rather than thermodynamically. So these predictions may well be on the over-optimistic side," he said.

As the sea ice melts, and more of the sun's energy is absorbed by the exposed ocean, a positive feedback is created leading to the loss of yet more ice, Professor Wadhams said.

"If anything we may be underestimating the dangers. The computer models may not take into account collaborative positive feedback," he said.

Sea ice keeps a cap on frigid water, keeping it cold and protecting it from heating up. Losing the sea ice of the Arctic is likely to have major repercussions for the climate, he said. "There could be dramatic changes to the climate of the northern region due to the creation of a vast expanse of open water where there was once effectively land," Professor Wadhams said. "You're essentially changing land into ocean and the creation of a huge area of open ocean where there was once land will have a very big impact on other climate parameters," he said.

Will Katrina Change America

The tragedy in New Orleans shows a number of important factors that the world community in general and the US in particular must learn as we enter the 21^st century with the new world that it has brought sweeping in with it.

First the tragedy of the last few days in the Southern states has visibly destroyed the image of the US as the type of society that the world should aim towards. We have seen the soft under belly of American society – the disenfranchised poor often black and almost always powerless. Before the eyes of the world parts of America have appeared looked the Third World. This is no model to export to the rest of the world and not one that the UK should ever embrace.

Secondly this is one of many disasters that might hit the US in coming years as climate change reaps its effect on the world’s weather patterns. And this is happening in a country whose Federal Government denies that global warming is caused by human activity – and in terms of percentages, particularly American activity. More people will have died as a result of hurricane Katrina than did on September 11^th demonstrating the awesome effect of climate change. More money, more effort and more concern must be placed on this matter now than ever before.

Thirdly the response to the hurricane was partly curtailed by American involvement in Iraq and lessons now have to be learnt about tackling global problems in the 21^st century that do not involve force the misdirection of resources and the creation of false and misleading priorities.

Finally we saw that America tried to tackle this problem alone and refused international help because of a mistaken pride. Somehow we have to bring the US back into the International community – a community it left sometime ago – and this means it acting with humility rather than pride and wisdom rather than vanity. Cultural changes are needed within the US and the world has a responsibility to help.

American States Bypass Bush On Climate Change

The Guardian today reports that the America's north-eastern states are on the brink of a declaration of environmental independence with the introduction of mandatory controls on greenhouse gas emissions of the kind rejected by the Bush administration.

In the first regional agreement of its kind in the US, nine states are expected to announce a plan next month to freeze carbon dioxide emissions from big power stations by 2009 and then reduce them by 10% by 2020.

The region stretches from New Jersey to Maine and generates roughly the same volume of emissions as Germany.

Pennsylvania and Maryland have signed on as observers to the regional initiative and are considering joining it at a later date.

On the other side of the continent, California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico and Arizona are exploring similar agreements, representing a clear break between state governments and Washington over global warming.

The north-eastern pact is less ambitious than the Kyoto accord, which freezes emissions at the 1990 level and imposes a 7% reduction by 2012. The plan will initially only apply to power stations with an output of more than 25 megawatts, of which there are about 600 across the region, but it could later be extended to large manufacturing plants. The states are New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island and Delaware. Some states will need to ratify the agreement in their state legislatures, but that is not expected to be a significant obstacle.

The Bush administration withdrew from the Kyoto protocol on climate change in 2001, and restated its opposition at the G8 summit at Gleneagles in July, arguing that its mandatory emissions targets would devastate the US economy.

In July, Washington signed a separate pact with Australia, Japan, China, India and South Korea, which did not fix emissions targets but instead set out to encourage the private sector of green technologies and their transfer to industrialising countries.

Perhaps one of our tasks now is to stop attacking the Bush administration for not taking the measures they should but rather to work with the American states and people who are taking their own measures. They need encouragement and we should work with them and particularly through the American United Nations Association.

US Challenges Kyoto

The Guardian has reported that The United States and Australia have been working in secret for 12 months on an alternative to the Kyoto protocol and will reveal today a joint pact with China, India and South Korea to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The deal, which will be formally announced by the US deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick in Laos today when the five "partners" hold a press conference, comes a month after Tony Blair struggled at the G8 summit to get George Bush to commit to any action on climate change.

Details of the agreement are not yet public but it is clear it is designed to give US and Australian companies selling renewable energy and carbon dioxide-cutting technologies access to markets in Asia.

It is thought the pact does not include any targets and timetables for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which the rest of the developed world has signed up to under Kyoto.

The existence of the pact appeared to come as a surprise to Downing Street yesterday.

The government eventually issued a statement through the Department for Environment welcoming the agreement but warning that it could not replace Kyoto. It also made clear that Mr Blair would continue to discuss climate change with America, China and India, as part of his G8 presidency.

If this is true then it is clear that the US is seeking to divide the world community over perhaps the most important issue of your time. And it is doing it so that it can protect its own profligate consumption of fuels that on a per capita basis does more harm to the environment that that of any other country in the globe.

Environment groups across the world yesterday expressed doubts that the US was doing any more than safeguarding its own trade in technology.

Tony Juniper, Director of Friends Of The Earth, said that only a legally binding treaty, which set targets and timetables to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, would achieve the 60% reductions, which scientists said were required to save the planet from climate change.

"I fear this is another attempt to undermine Kyoto and a message to the developing world to buy US technology and not to worry about targets and timetables."

Was The G8 A Success?

Detailed Statement In Response To G8 Communique From The Trade Justice Movement

Make Poverty History has become an unprecedented movement of passion, energy and solidarity. Never before have so many people in the world come together, fully united in demanding action to end poverty, with a roar for justice that they felt was impossible to ignore. Today the G8 have chosen not to do all that campaigners insist is necessary to free people trapped in the prison of poverty. Important steps have been taken; steps that will bring hope to millions.

But more action is urgently needed if they are to play their role in bringing about real change for the world's poorest people and consigning extreme poverty to the history books.

To secure a deserved place in history, the G8 must go a lot further and secure real change by working with other world leaders at the UN summit on the Millennium Development Goals and talks around the World Trade Organisation. The people of the world are already on the road to justice. They expect their leaders to be with them. Today's announcement has shown that the G8 need to run much faster to catch up.

TRADE

The G8 have not met the challenge of trade justice as clearly set out by Make Poverty History. There is language in the communiqué on letting African countries set their own trade policies. Yet at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) they continue to force open developing country markets. What we have asked for is action not words.

G8 leaders decided not to set a date for ending the export subsidies that destroy livelihoods of poor countries around the world. By forcing free trade on poor countries, dumping agricultural products and not regulating multinational companies they have chosen not to take the necessary decisions to make poverty history.

The challenge of trade justice remains. The governments of the G8 must now urgently take these steps at the WTO and in other trade negotiations as well as through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Rich countries are the obstacles to trade justice. This must stop if trade is to benefit the poor rather than keep them in poverty.

DEBT

The G8 has done no more than confirm the proposed deal by the G8 Finance Ministers, cancelling some of the debt owed by some countries. The principle of cancelling 100 per cent of the debt owed to multilateral institutions is a positive step, and a tribute to the unceasing efforts of Make Poverty History campaigners and campaigners worldwide; but this debt deal is a small step compared to the giant leap that was called for.

While an important contribution, the G8 debt deal will provide less than $1 billion this year - the equivalent of no more than one dollar per person in the countries that are due to benefit. It is an inadequate response to the global debt crisis, which needs an estimated $10 billion a year of debt cancellation to eradicate extreme poverty.

Major issues on debt remain unresolved - the damaging economic policy conditions attached to debt relief, the many indebted countries not on the list, debts not covered by the deal.

So there is much more work to be done - the deal is yet to be ratified and then it needs to be delivered. Our campaigners expect more and will be continuing to seek significant improvements and advances during the rest of the year.

AID

While this aid increase is a step forward, it is far from the historic deal that millions around the world have been demanding.

There is no doubt that this aid increase will save lives and Make Poverty History campaigners can be really proud of the role they have played in securing it. But this aid will still arrive five years too late and falls far short of the scale of aid that is needed to end poverty in the world's poorest countries. In real terms, much of the pledged funds are a restatement of recent aid announcements.

For most of the 50 million children who will die of poverty over the next five years, the G8 leaders have offered too little, too late. By 2010, we will still see the awful inequity whereby a child dies every 3.5 seconds, just because they are poor.

The G8's promise of US$48 billion boost to aid in five years is mostly made up of money already pledged. MPH calculates that only around US$20 billion is new money. Some of this money is also likely to be raised through borrowing from future aid budgets, rather than new contributions.

Make Poverty History welcomes the G8's recognition that poor countries should be free to decide their own economic policies. These words must now be turned into actions by putting an end to the damaging conditions that the World Bank and IMF push on impoverished countries.

If the G8 are really serious about reducing poverty, they should be doing much more to improve the quality of their aid, including untying aid from donors' goods and services and ensuring that aid is focused on the poorest. On both areas, they have offered warm words, but little in terms of concrete commitments.

HIV/AIDS

G8 leaders have produced one of the summit's successes by responding courageously to the scale of the AIDS emergency. In pledging AIDS treatment to everyone who requires it by 2010, the G8 have started to restore hope to the 40 million people currently living- and dying- with HIV.

However, insufficient new aid will undermine the target's delivery. The additional aid announced today is not sufficient or fast enough to truly make AIDS history.

Positive people will now be looking to donors to deliver full AIDS funding at the Global Fund Replenishment conference this September. Without adequate financing, this bold and visionary target could become another of the broken promises that litter the history of the pandemic.

UK GOVERNMENT

In the last 20 years the G8 has repeatedly failed to take the action it could to eradicate poverty. This has been an unprecedented year in which millions of people have campaigned to make poverty history and the UK government have responded by placing Africa on the agenda as a priority for the G8.

They have worked hard with European Union and G8 colleagues to deliver significant steps towards debt cancellation and more and better aid. Throughout this summit, the UK government have demonstrated leadership on these vital issues.

The G8 choosing not to deliver all that campaigners feel is necessary will disappoint the millions of campaigners in the UK but we will judge the UK government by its contribution to the delivery of all our campaign demands for trade justice not free trade, more and better aid and debt cancellation for all developing countries.

CLIMATE CHANGE

The G8 has missed the opportunity to make progress on climate change, the impacts of which are already affecting poor countries and will seriously undermine efforts to eliminate poverty in the long term. We now look to the UK's Presidency of the EU for effective action to rectify this lack of progress.

Visit the Trade Justice Movement website ……

Bush Will Bloc Agreement On Climate Change

In an interview for ITV1's Tonight With Trevor McDonald, recorded last week and to be screened this evening, Mr Bush accepted that climate change is "a significant, long-term issue that we've got to deal with" and is man-made "to a certain extent".

But asked if other countries can expect US support for a binding commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions, he replied: "If this looks like Kyoto, the answer is no. [Kyoto] would have destroyed our economy." Mr Bush said he would instead be talking to fellow leaders about new technologies as a way of tackling global warming.

But he conceded that the issue was one "we've got to deal with" and said human activity was "to some extent" to blame. Mr Bush said he would resist any packet of measures that are similar to the 1997 UN Kyoto protocol, involving legally binding reduction on carbon emissions that Washington never ratified. "If this looks like Kyoto, the answer is no," he said

Tony Blair is hoping for agreements on climate change and Africa when he hosts the summit in Scotland this week.

Guy Thompson of the Green Alliance described it as a rebuff to meaningful action on climate change, while Catherine Pearce of Friends of the Earth International said: "As much as we want to see [a deal] happening, it is clear that the US just isn't moving."

G8 Priorities

Yesterday, the world's biggest music stars have united in concerts around the globe to put pressure on political leaders to tackle poverty in Africa and an estimated 225,000 protesters marched in Edinburgh as musicians performed in Live 8 concerts around the globe.

Anti-poverty protests are continuing ahead of the G8 leaders' meeting, with the Sail 8 flotilla to be welcomed back into the UK by Bob Geldof. More than 80 yachts are due to sail into Portsmouth after Geldof's call for boats to bring people over from France to join protests around the summit.

Meanwhile, Live 8 organisers Geldof, Richard Curtis and Bono have written an open letter to G8 delegates urging them to "be great".

"For God's sake, take this seriously - don't behave normally," they write. "Don't look for compromises."

But how successful will it be. A YouGov opinion poll showed that although 19% of Britons wanted African Poverty to be the main focus of the G8 Summit and 47% wanted climate change, in the United States, the story was very different. Only 9% rated African Poverty as the most important item and only 27% climate change. Nearly half of Americans cited economic growth as their main concern. The US is a very insular country with less than 30% holding passports. Live 8 was important in that it was an event to help change consciousness but in the US there is still a long way to go.

It is also vital that politicians do not hijack the Live8 movement. In the 1960’s the film “Privilege” starring Paul Jones from Manfred Man was about the pop movement being taken over by nationalist politicians and movements to ensure a right wing agenda. With Live8 the closeness of Blair and Brown to the movement could be worrying and it is vital that there is distance between them so that independent critical judgement is maintained.