Climate Emergency

The Super-Rich Are Gobbling Up Earth’s Future and Our Leaders Are Letting Them

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This article was originally posted 6/12/24 but was deleted, probably my mistake.

Original article by Sam Pizzigati republished from Common Dreams under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Chinese-born crypto founder Justin Sun eats a banana artwork composed of a fresh banana stuck to a wall with duct tape, in Hong Kong on November 29, 2024, after buying the provocative work of conceptual art by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan at a New York auction for $6.2 million. (Photo: Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images)

Billions upon billions give our world’s wealthiest an overabundance of mind-boggling political power, and right now they’re wielding that power to protect their fortunes at the expense of our planet’s future.

Looking to find something special this holiday season for that mega-millionaire in your life? The Italian retailer Valextra has just what you may need: a cocktail set that offers a “vision of design fluidity and discreet luxury.” Just $13,400 for a leathered and lacquered box that includes “a shaker, cocktail tools made from silvered brass, and two martini glasses.”

Or maybe you’re looking for a nice, new waterfront condo in South Florida. The private-equity movers and shakers at Apollo Global have just advanced the $307 million needed to plop 92 sumptuous residences on Florida’s “Millionaire’s Mile” near Pompano Beach. Each of these seaside palaces will enjoy “direct access to a private beach with food and beverage service.”

Or do you have your heart set on a thrilling new artistic experience? The billionaire crypto king Justin Sun certainly delivered one last Friday. Two days earlier, at a Sotheby’s auction, Sun had outlasted six other bidders and won—for $6.2 million—an artwork from an Italian absurdist artist. Sun proceeded to work up an appetite and then, before a packed news conference at a pricey Hong Kong hotel, ate his historic acquisition: a banana duct-taped to a wall. Only a video of the banana remains.

What wealthy nations do take seriously: the interests of their wealthy. And that seriousness is setting the world up for abject climate failure.

For Justin Sun and his fellow billionaires, no artwork or beachfront palace or luxury gift can make more—at worst—than a modest dent of their grand personal fortunes. Today’s global billionaires, a new report from the world’s top commercial tracker of grand fortunes calculates, more than doubled their combined wealth last year, to a record $12.1 trillion.

These 3,323 billionaires make up, the new data from researchers at Altrata show, less than 1% of our world’s “ultra-high net worth” population, those wealthy worth at least $30 million. But these few thousands of billionaires are sitting upon 25% of global ultra-high net worth.

Billionaires worth over $10 billion, add Altrata’s analysts in their latest annual Billionaire Census, make up only 6% of the billionaires who call our Earth home. These fortunate few hold 41% of billionaire wealth.

Billionaires who call the United States home, meanwhile, once again dominate Altrata’s latest global wealth stats. Americans hold a full third of the world’s billion-dollar fortunes, over three times the share of China, the world’s second-largest billionaire hotspot.

Another sign of America’s billionaire dominance: The world’s four richest individuals—Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Ellison—all just happen to be Americans. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index is now listing their combined net worth at nearly $1 trillion.

Fortunes as massive as these don’t just give our richest plenty of pocket change for the world’s most extravagant luxuries. These billions upon billions give our nation’s—and our world’s—wealthiest an overabundance of mind-boggling political power, and right now they’re wielding that power to protect their fortunes at the expense of our planet’s future.

Some of our world’s most perceptive climate journalists have been tracking that wielding this past month at two pivotal global conferences.

The first of these, in Rio de Janeiro, involved what have become known as the “G20” nations, a grouping that includes some 19 top national economic powers and two regional bodies, the European Union and the African Union. Different countries chair the G20 each year, but none have done their chairing more aggressively than Brazil, this past year’s chair.

Under Brazil’s progressive president, the former union leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, this home to the endangered Amazon rainforest has spent 2024 pushing the G20 to get serious about taxing the world’s super rich—and using the proceeds from those taxes to address the world’s deepening climate calamity.

Earlier this year, Brazil brought before a meeting of the G20’s national finance ministers the famed E.U. Tax Observatory economist Gabriel Zucman, one of the world’s top experts on tax-the-rich options. Zucman proceeded to make a powerful case for an annual global 2% tax on the fortunes of the world’s wealthiest.

On paper, Brazil’s tax advocacy has made a real impact. The final declaration that nations attending last month’s 2024 G20 summit in Rio adopted is overflowing with admirable egalitarian sentiments.

“We live in times of major geopolitical, socioeconomic, and climate and environmental challenges and crises, which require urgent action,” the G20 nations solemnly declared. Added their official statement: “We recognize that inequality within and among countries is at the root of most global challenges that we face and is aggravated by them.”

This noble G20 summit declaration, notes 350.org climate activist Kate Blagojevic, shows that Brazil and other G20 environmentally conscious nations have essentially “gained consensus for one of the most logical solutions to one of the world’s most pressing issues—taxing billionaires to pay for climate action.”

But now, stresses Blagojevic, G20 governments “must build on the growing popular support for taxing extreme wealth by putting words into action.”

Those rich holding that extreme wealth, agrees Emma Seery, Oxfam’s lead on development finance, have plenty of billions they could be sharing.

“Today,” Seery notes, “the world’s 16 richest individuals would still be billionaires even if 99% of their wealth vanished overnight.”

Those super rich a bit below that top-16 status have ample quantities of wealth to share as well. Since 1980, Seery points out, the G20’s richest 1% “have seen their tax rates fall by roughly a third” over the same years their share of global income was jumping by 45%.

Despite stats like these, several key G20 powerhouses—most notably the United States and Germany—have been showing little interest in moving expeditiously in any significant tax-the-rich direction. “Some” G20 leaders, as the Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva has cautiously acknowledged, have objections “to issues linked to the climate agenda, to the financing agenda, above all to the issue of taxing the super rich.”

These objections turned out to be far more upfront at last month’s second pivotal global gathering on climate chaos, the United Nations annual climate “Conference of the Parties,” COP for short, a huge assembly held this year in Baku, the capital of oil-rich Azerbaijan. This year’s COP29 ended a few days after the G20 session and focused on the pivotal questions of how much fighting climate change is going to cost and who ought to be footing the bill.

What makes these two questions so absolutely pivotal?

“Without help,” as Heated World’s Arielle Samuelson puts it, “poorer countries will be unable to transition away from fossil fuels, driving up emissions for the whole planet.”

The poorer of the nearly 200 nations attending COP29 did considerable pushing for at least $1.3 trillion a year in climate aid, an outlay that, Fiji deputy prime minister Biman Prasad observed, “pales in the face of the $7 trillion” wasted annually on subsidies for fossil fuels and the corporations they enrich.

In the end, “after marathon talks and bitter recriminations,” COP29 did produce a consensus of sorts. The gathered nations agreed on the need for $1.3 trillion in help for developing nations, but only $300 billion of that total will come in grants and low-interest loans. All the rest, reportsThe Guardian’s Fiona Harvey, “will have to come from private investors” and unspecified new sources of revenue.

This COP29 outcome, sums up a disgusted Mohamed Adow of the think-tank Power Shift Africa, amounts to a “disaster for the developing world,” a “betrayal of both people and planet by wealthy countries who claim to take climate change seriously.”

What wealthy nations do take seriously: the interests of their wealthy. And that seriousness is setting the world up for abject climate failure.

The governments of wealthy nations, as the British economist Michael Roberts reflects, ought to be bankrolling shifts to renewable energy, a power source that’s continuing to get ever less expensive. But the world’s most powerful governments are insisting instead “that private investment should lead the drive to renewable power,” and that insistence is crippling the move to renewables.

Why? Private investors, Roberts explains, only invest when investing figures to pay—in healthy profits. With prices for renewables falling, these healthy profits aren’t materializing. Investors, consequently, are making no rush to invest in renewables. They might as well, many of these wealthy have come to believe, double down on fossil fuels.

Given all these dynamics, will all the rest of us be able to save our planet? Maybe—if we double down on saving our planet from our plutocrats.

Original article by Sam Pizzigati republished from Common Dreams under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Continue ReadingThe Super-Rich Are Gobbling Up Earth’s Future and Our Leaders Are Letting Them

Analysis: Why the $300bn climate-finance goal is even less ambitious than it seems

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Original article by Josh Gabbatiss republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license.

A man holds up a ‘pay-up’ sign at COP29 in Baku. Credit: Mike Muzurakis | IISD/ENB

At COP29 in Baku, developed-country parties such as the EU, the US and Japan agreed to help raise “at least” $300bn a year by 2035 for climate action in developing countries. 

The goal was welcomed by global-north leaders and presented as a “tripling” of the previous target for international climate finance.

Yet it faced a strong backlash from many developing countries, with some branding it a “joke” and “betrayal”.

Closer analysis of the goal and climate-finance data helps to explain this response.

Analysts have shown that the target is achievable with virtually “no additional budgetary effort” from developed countries, beyond already-committed increases. 

A combination of pre-existing national pledges and multilateral development bank (MDB) plans will bring climate finance up to around $200bn a year by the end of this decade. 

Counting money already being distributed by emerging economies such as China – as “encouraged” under the new goal – could bring the total to $265bn by 2030. This could mean the target is well on its way to being met by that date, with minimal extra effort.

Moreover, as activists and academics have noted, the $300bn target does not account for inflation. When this is factored in, its “real” value could shrink by around a quarter.

The new target has emerged against a backdrop of financial strain and political uncertainty in developed countries.

At the same time, developing countries have stressed that they need climate finance to reach the “trillions of dollars” needed to cut emissions and protect themselves from climate change.

This article looks at three ways in which the $300bn goal could be met with little extra financial effort by developed countries – and provide fewer benefits for developing countries than the figure suggests. 

  1. Much of the goal will be met with ‘no additional effort’
  2. Developing-country contributions could cover part of the goal
  3. Inflation wipes out much of the increase in climate finance

1. Much of the goal will be met with ‘no additional effort’

The $300bn climate-finance target agreed at COP29 in Baku will be met with finance from a “wide variety of sources”, largely coming from developed countries. 

This part of the “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG) for climate finance is likely to be made up of public finance provided directly by governments, as well as money from MDBs, specialised climate funds and private finance “mobilised” by public investments.

article-9-paris-agreement_ragout
Source: UNFCCC.

The wording of the $300bn goal frames it as an extension of the $100bn target. This was the amount that developed countries agreed in 2009 to raise for developing countries annually by 2020 – a goal that was extended through to 2025 by the Paris Agreement.

Beyond the central goal of $300bn, the NCQG also includes a much broader “aspirational” target of $1.3tn a year in climate finance by 2035. 

However, this is harder to assess, as the text of the deal is vague about who will be responsible for raising the funds, which could include various sources that are beyond the jurisdiction of the UN climate process.

climate_finance_ragout
Source: UNFCCC.

Developed countries and MDBs had already committed to raising their climate-finance contributions before a deal was struck at COP29, as noted in a joint analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), ODI, Germanwatch and ECCO.

The collective impact of these pre-existing commitments can be seen below, with climate finance from developed countries set to increase from $115.9bn in 2022 – the most recent year for which data is available – to $197bn in 2030. This can be seen in the chart below, which does not account for inflation. (See: Inflation wipes out much of the increase in climate finance.)

Estimated climate finance in 2030, based on funds that have already been pledged, and target set at COP29 for 2035 (red).
Estimated climate finance in 2030, based on funds that have already been pledged, and target set at COP29 for 2035 (red). Dark blue bars show historical climate finance recorded by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2013-2022 (grey). The light blue bars indicate an estimated trajectory to reach the 2030 and 2035 levels. These figures do not account for inflation. Source: OECD, NRDC, NCQG text.

The expected increase between 2022 and 2030 comes from a few different sources.

The analysts calculated that climate finance distributed “bilaterally” – as grants or loans via overseas aid and other public funding – was already expected to increase $6.6bn annually by 2025, based on existing pledges, bringing the total to $50bn. (The chart above assumes that bilateral finance remains at this level up to 2030.)

They also estimated that existing pledges and reforms at specialised climate funds, such as the Green Climate Fund and Climate Investment Funds, would add another $1.3bn per year by 2030. This would bring their contribution to $5bn. 

The biggest increase that was already locked in before the COP29 deal was a pledge by MDBs – which provide 40% of existing climate finance – to increase their contributions further.

A joint statement by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and others in the first week of COP29 committed to raising $120bn of climate finance per year by 2030 for low- and middle-income countries. Of this, $84bn can be attributed to developed countries, based on their shareholdings in these banks.

On top of this, the climate-finance analysts estimated that $58bn of private finance would be mobilised by these bilateral and multilateral contributions in 2030 – up from $21.9bn in 2022. 

The chart below shows the estimated breakdown, by source, of climate finance in 2030, compared to 2022.

Historical climate finance in 2022 and estimated climate finance in 2020, by source.
Historical climate finance in 2022 and estimated climate finance in 2020, by source. Source: OECD, NRDC, NCQG text.

These expected increases over the course of this decade mean that with “no additional efforts”, beyond what had already been agreed prior to COP29, developed countries would have been on a trajectory to reach around $200bn per year by 2030, and $250bn per year by 2035. (The latter was the first numerical target proposed by developed countries at COP29, which was, ultimately, negotiated upwards to $300bn on the final day.)

NRDC climate-finance expert Joe Thwaites, one of the researchers who undertook the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NDRC) analysis, tells Carbon Brief that bilateral funding directly from governments is the “big constraint” in climate finance. COP29 came just after the re-election in the US of climate-sceptic Donald Trump and many European countries have cut their aid budgets. Thwaites says:

“The MDBs are growing and doing all kinds of reforms and getting bigger and better, but the bilaterals are what are politically very stuck.”

Moreover, the COP29 climate-finance deal contains no pledge by developed countries to provide a set amount of public, bilateral finance, despite strong pressure from developing countries to include such a goal.

Following COP29, Thwaites released updated modelling to calculate different ways of reaching the $300bn target. He wrote:

“What is clear is that $300bn by 2035 is eminently achievable, with little to no additional budgetary effort required from developed countries, let alone other contributors, to meet the goal.”

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2. Developing-country contributions could cover part of the goal

Unlike the earlier $100bn target, contributions from developing countries could count towards the new climate finance goal.

Only developed countries are obliged to provide climate finance to developing countries under the Paris Agreement. But the NCQG outcome says that developing countries can “voluntarily” declare any climate-related funds they contribute, if they choose to do so.

voluntary-contributions_ragout
Source: UNFCCC.

This allowed negotiators at COP29 to skirt the controversial issue of formally expanding the list of official donors that are required to help with financial aid.

Developed countries had previously been pushing to enlist relatively wealthy developing nations, such as China and the Gulf states, to share the financial burden.

Several countries described since the early 1990s as “developing” under the UN’s climate convention are known to already make large, climate-related financial contributions to other developing countries. Examples include China’s Belt and Road initiative supporting clean-energy expansion and South Korea’s contributions to the GCF.

In fact, at COP29 China announced for the first time that it had “provided and mobilised” more than $24.5bn for climate projects in developing countries since 2017 – confirming that its contributions are comparable with those of many developed countries.

This roughly aligns with calculations by research groups that have placed China’s annual climate finance at around $4bn a year. 

Both developed and developing countries pay money into MDBs. As well as “encouraging” developing countries to voluntarily contribute directly to climate finance, the NCQG outcome also specifies that these countries could start counting the share of climate-related money paid out of MDBs that can be traced back to their inputs.

multilateral-development-banks_ragout
Source: UNFCCC.

Roughly, 30% of the banks’ “outflows” can be attributed to developing countries in this way.

Counting the developing-country share of the projected increase in climate finance from MDBs by 2030 would add an extra $36bn to the global total, plus an extra $20bn of private finance mobilised by the funds.

It is not possible to say for sure how much climate finance new contributors such as China will choose to officially declare. 

However, the chart below shows an estimate based on an “illustrative scenario”, by NRDC and others, of bilateral finance and multilateral climate funds, combined with expected MDB outflows and the associated private finance that this would mobilise. This could bring total annual climate finance up to $265bn by 2030.

Voluntary_contributions_from_developing_countries..
Potential voluntary contributions of climate finance by developing countries, including bilateral finance, contributions to multilateral funds, outflows from MDBs allocated to developing countries and private finance mobilised by developing country contributions to MDBs (lighter red), on top of estimated climate finance from developed countries in 2030 (red). The second red bar indicates the NCQG climate-finance target agreed for 2035 at COP29. The light blue bars indicate an estimated trajectory to reach the 2030 and 2035 levels. These figures do not account for inflation. Source: OECD, NRDC, NCQG text.

Some observers at COP29 said they hoped that officially counting developing-country contributions towards UN “climate finance” targets would enable parties, such as the EU, to set more ambitious goals. 

However, Michai Robertson, lead finance negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), dismissed this as an “accounting trick”, because these funds are already being provided.

Li Shuo, head of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), tells Carbon Brief that the NCQG outcome could bring more attention to China’s climate-related aid and lead to “stronger and better climate support from Beijing”. However, he notes that this is in the context of a low-ambition global target that is a “far cry” from what is needed:

“I take this as a classic example of geopolitical competition weakening environmental ambition, namely, the geopolitical desire of including China as a donor without corresponding desire of developed countries to contribute more limited the overall scale of climate finance.”

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3. Inflation wipes out much of the increase in climate finance

One issue that has surfaced in the wake of COP29 is the impact of inflation. Campaigners have noted that the failure to factor this into the 2035 climate-finance target means that, by the time it is met, the true value of the money pledged will be far lower than it is today.

In an article highlighting this issue, the Guardian reported that the $300bn goal was, therefore, “not the tripling of pledges that has been claimed”.

Researchers had flagged this before COP29, pointing out that the previous $100bn annually by 2020goal, which was first set in 2009, had also not accounted for inflation. 

They noted that merely correcting the $100bn for inflation would bring it to between $139bn and around $150bn a year. (Such calculations depend on the rate of inflation applied to the starting figure, as well as the base year for the calculation.)

Civil-society groups at COP29, such as Power Shift Africa, estimated that the impact of inflation would cut the “real” value of the $300bn to $175bn in today’s money by 2035. This is based on an annual inflation rate of 5%.

In its analysis, the Guardian opted for an inflation rate of 2.4% – based on the average rate in the US over the past 15 years. This is taken to reflect the conditions for governments contributing climate finance and the currency much of it would be provided in.

The figure below shows the impact of an inflation rate of 3%. This is based on input from economists and analysis by the Center for Global Development (CGD), which, in turn, is based on the World Bank’s global GDP deflator. 

If inflation over the next decade follows this trend, the $300bn pledged in 2024 would only be worth $217bn in today’s money in 2035 – a 28% reduction in value.

In order to offer climate finance with a real value of $300bn in 2035, countries would have needed to set a goal for that year of around $415bn.

Increase in climate finance between 2022 and 2035 under the NCQG commitment in nominal terms
Increase in climate finance between 2022 and 2035 under the NCQG commitment in nominal terms (red line), and based on the “real” value of the $300bn climate-finance pledge in 2024 value terms (blue dotted line). Source: Carbon Brief calculation based on a 3% inflation rate, as used by CGD.

(The figures in the chart above cannot be directly compared with the existing pledges made by governments and MDBs, as those too would need to be adjusted for inflation.) 

CGD modelling suggests that if developed countries’ climate-finance contributions simply increase in line with expected inflation and gross national income (GNI) growth, they would reach $220bn by 2035.

The CGD analysts write in a blog post that “by the time the new goal is met, beneficiary countries will find that the purchasing power of these resources has eroded significantly”.

Independent experts, as well as climate-vulnerable countries themselves, emphasised both before and during COP29 that more than $1tn dollars will be needed each year to help developing countries deal with climate change. Many developing nations said that around $600bn of this should come directly from developed countries’ public coffers.

With such a relatively small amount of finance pledged for the NCQG, some developing countries have already indicated that they may scale back their future climate ambitions.

Original article by Josh Gabbatiss republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license.

Continue ReadingAnalysis: Why the $300bn climate-finance goal is even less ambitious than it seems

‘Frontlines of a Crisis We Did Not Create’: Low-Lying Nations Make Climate Case to ICJ

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Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Ralph Regenvanu (left), Vanuatu’s special envoy on climate change and the environment; Arnold Kiel Loughman (center), attorney general of Vanuatu; and Ilan Kiloe (right), legal advisor to the Melanesian Spearhead Group attend the advisory opinion sessions at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands on December 2, 2024. (Photo: Selman Aksunger/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“What started in the Pacific is now a historic climate justice campaign, as the world’s most urgent problem of climate change reaches the worlds highest court,” said one campaigner.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) heard arguments Monday in the largest climate case ever brought before it as a coalition of low-lying and developing nations demanded larger polluting nations be held to account under international law for causing “significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment” with runaway fossil fuel emissions over recent decades.

In the first day of hearings in The Hague that could last weeks, multiple representatives from the Pacific island of Vanuatu, which is leading the coalition of over 100 countries and allied organizations, laid the blame for the climate crisis at the feed of a small number of states that are large emitters of greenhouse gases.

“We know what the cause of climate change is: a conduct of specific States … Vanuatu’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is negligible, and yet we are among those most affected by climate change,” said Arnold Kiel Loughman, attorney general of the Republic of Vanuatu.

“We find ourselves on the frontlines of a crisis we did not create,” said Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change and environment, told the court.

Monday’s historic moment at The Hague follows years of work on the part of Pacific Island nations, particularly Vanuatu, to push for the ICJ to take up the issue of global warming and human rights. The stakes of the planetary emergency are particularly high for these countries, which are under threat from rising seas and other climate impacts.

Ilan Kiloe, legal counsel for the Melanesian Spearhead Group, a regional subgroup that includes Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu, issued a stark warning during his remarks to the court: “Climate change is now depriving our peoples, again, of our ability to enjoy our right to self-determination in our lands. The harsh reality is that many of our people will not survive.”

Last year, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution calling on the ICJ to issue an advisory opinion on climate change and human rights. The measure, which was introduced by Vanuatu and co-sponsored by more than 130 governments, requested that the world’s highest court outline countries’ legal responsibilities for combatting fossil fuel-driven climate change and the legal consequences of failing to meet those obligations.

Over the next two weeks, the court will hear statements from nearly 100 nations, including wealthy developed countries such as the United States. Advisory opinions, unlike judgments, are not binding—but Vanuatu and other supporters hope that a forthcoming opinion would accelerate action around the climate emergency.

The country began pushing for the ICJ resolution in 2021, following a campaign launched in 2019 by a group of students from the University of the South Pacific.

“What started in the Pacific is now a historic climate justice campaign, as the world’s most urgent problem of climate change reaches the world’s highest court,” said Shiva Gounden of Greenpeace Australia Pacific.

“The next two weeks of hearings are the culmination of collective campaigning from 2019, powerful advocacy, and mobilizing the world behind this landmark campaign, to ensure the human rights of current and future generations are protected from climate destruction, and the biggest emitters are held accountable.”

Polly Banks, Vanuatu country director for Save the Children, who travelled to The Hague for the proceedings, said that “the hearing before the Court goes to questions about the efficacy, equity and fairness of the current responses to climate change, which are particularly relevant for children, who have contributed the least to climate change but will be most affected by its consequences.”

“Currently, only 2.4% of climate finance from multilateral funding sources is child-responsive. Even without the Court’s opinion, we know that states need to do far more to protect children from the worst impacts of this crisis, by significantly increasing climate finance to uphold children’s basic rights and access to health, education and protection,” Banks added.

The start of hearings at The Hague come on the heels of a COP29 climate summit that was heavily criticized. The summit focused heavily on climate finance, but the resulting deal was panned by critics as rich nations agreed to voluntarily provide just $300 billion to help developing nations decarbonize and deal with the impacts of the climate emergency. Poor nations and climate campaigners had demanded over a trillion dollars in funding in the form of debt-free grants and direct payments.

Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Continue Reading‘Frontlines of a Crisis We Did Not Create’: Low-Lying Nations Make Climate Case to ICJ

Protesters demand government end ‘green’ subsidies for Britain’s largest carbon emitter

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/protesters-demand-government-end-green-subsidies-britains-largest-carbon-emitter

Greenpeace, Axe Drax, Friends of the Earth and Stop Burning Trees Coalition protest outside DESNZ to call for an end to Drax subsidies and for genuine clean power Photo: © Chris J Ratcliffe / Greenpeace

PROTESTERS descended on Westminster today to demand that the government stop using taxpayers’ money to bankroll the destruction of forests.

More than 100 environmental activists from groups including Axe Drax, Fossil Free London and Greenpeace gathered outside the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, calling for an end to the vast subsidies granted to the Drax biomass power plant.

The North Yorkshire plant is Britain’s largest carbon emitter, yet receives almost £1.5 million a day for burning biomass wood chips, a fuel source that Drax claims is “carbon neutral.”

As part of the action, a choir celebrated Christmas trees in song and handed out origami trees to civil servants entering the building.

Four people dressed as tree-like creatures representing the millions of trees burned by Drax presented the department with a Greenpeace petition, bearing the signatures of over 120,000 people, calling for an end to the subsidies.

The power plant burned six million tonnes of wood pellets last year, equivalent to about half a billion Christmas trees.

In February, a BBC Panorama investigation revealed that Drax had continued to burn wood from rare primary forests in Canada, after the programme first made the discovery two years ago.

The plant was then forced to pay £25 million to Ofgem for failing to provide adequate data on the type of wood it sources.

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/protesters-demand-government-end-green-subsidies-britains-largest-carbon-emitter

Continue ReadingProtesters demand government end ‘green’ subsidies for Britain’s largest carbon emitter

Climate activists serving combined 41 years of jail time granted mass appeal hearing

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/climate-activists-serving-combined-41-years-jail-time-granted-mass-appeal-hearing Many articles from the Morning Star today

The Whole Truth Five (from left to right) Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, Cressida Gethin, Louise Lancaster, Daniel Shaw and Roger Hallam Photo: Just Stop Oil

SIXTEEN non-violent Just Stop Oil protesters handed draconian sentences since July have been granted an extraordinary mass hearing before the Court of Appeal next year, it was announced on Saturday.

The hearing on January 29 and 30 at the Royal Courts of Justice in London will examine four separate cases involving activists from the group. Key points of contention will include whether conscientious motivation should be considered a mitigating factor.

The outcome is anticipated to be a defining moment for protest rights in Britain.

The 16 include the “Whole Truth Five,” who organised a protest on the M25 calling for a halt to new oil and gas licences. Roger Hallam, Cressida Gethin, Louise Lancaster, Daniel Shaw, and Lucia Whittaker De Abreu received a combined total of 21 years for their action.

At the time, UN special rapporteur Michel Forst said the verdict marked a dark day for “anyone concerned with the exercise of their fundamental freedoms” in Britain.

…

Spokesman for the Free Political Prisoners campaign Lex Korte said: “A subset of judges have responded all too eagerly to the call from the disgraced Lord Walney, the arms and oil industry lobbyist, to jail peaceful climate campaigners for longer than if they’d committed serious crimes of sexual violence.

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/climate-activists-serving-combined-41-years-jail-time-granted-mass-appeal-hearing Many articles from the Morning Star today

Continue ReadingClimate activists serving combined 41 years of jail time granted mass appeal hearing

‘Greenwashing’ banks raised 1 trillion dollars for fossil fuel giants

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Original article by Josephine Moulds republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

NatWest among several banks in ‘net zero’ alliance continuing to support the fossil fuel industry

At a glance

  • Banks with net zero pledges helped raise $1 trillion for companies expanding fossil fuels
  • Among them is NatWest, which may have broken climate pledge by funding BP
  • BP is developing a ‘carbon bomb’ in Azerbaijan, host of COP climate talks

Less than a hundred miles from where world leaders are discussing how to meet their climate pledges, BP is drilling for gas.

The Shafag-Asiman project, a sprawling gas field off the Azerbaijani coast, could inject more than 1 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. That is more than the UK would emit over three years, striking a major blow to efforts to slow down global warming.

BP has said it intends to invest heavily in new oil and gas fields in the coming years. But it would be unable to pursue these dirty projects without billions in support from big banks. NatWest, for one, helped BP raise almost $500m last year in an apparent breach of its climate commitments.

Banks will be in focus at Cop29, currently underway in Baku, Azerbaijan, as world leaders discuss how to raise trillions of dollars for countries suffering the effects of climate change.

Although talks are unlikely to address their continued support for dirty energy, more than 140 banks worldwide have pledged to cut emissions associated with their lending and investments to almost zero by 2050.

In May 2021, the IEA, the global body coordinating countries’ energy policies, sounded the alarm. Any new oil and gas developments would make it inevitable that temperatures would rise by more than 1.5 degrees. In other words, they would devastate the planet.

https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/20019523/embed

Meanwhile, at BP’s Shafag-Asiman field, engineers were celebrating after finding fossil gas several thousand metres under the seabed – a new discovery that could significantly increase its output from the region. And the bankers were preparing to raise billions more for BP.

That’s not all. Since May 2021, global banks that have committed to net zero have poured almost $1 trillion into companies pursuing expansion of oil and gas projects that would push the world beyond its survivable limits. Taken together these projects would produce almost seven times the annual emissions of the US.

“It’s indefensible,” said John Lang, founder of the Net Zero Tracker, which evaluates big companies’ green plans. “There’s no way we can meet the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement if we continue financing the exploration of oil and gas.”

He said banks with net zero commitments covering direct and indirect emissions could not fund oil and gas expansion. “It’s greenwashing, plain and simple.”

NatWest said it could not comment on specific customers. It said it had conducted a review into its relationships with a number of oil and gas companies “to ensure they had a credible transition plan aligned with the 2015 Paris Agreement”. It refuted the suggestion it had not met its public commitments.

BP said it is aiming to be a net zero company by 2050 or sooner and believes its strategy is consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

‘Net zero’

It was at Cop26 three years ago that a number of major banks first pledged that by 2050 they would cut almost all the emissions from their lending and investments to zero and invest in financial products to offset the remaining emissions – which has come to be known as “net zero”. NatWest, for instance, promised to stop funding companies that do not have a credible plan to shift their business away from fossil fuels. Its support for BP suggests it may have broken that promise.

BP reported record profits in February last year and promptly announced it would scale back its climate commitments and increase investments in oil and gas. It then enlisted the help of NatWest and a host of other ‘net zero’ banks to raise a total of $5.3bn in 2023 – and went on to invest $4.8bn in its oil and gas operations in the first half of this year.

In April, BP announced the first oil to be extracted from a new platform off the coast of Azerbaijan, which is expected to be operating until at least 2049, just a year before the world is supposed to have cut its dependence on fossil fuels.

https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/19957754/embed

The world-leading Grantham Research Institute assessed how credible the largest oil and gas companies’ transition plans were. It said BP’s fell short by a significant margin.

Many of the world’s biggest banks trumpet their net zero pledges to bolster their green credentials. But Nigel Topping, a member of the UK’s Climate Change Committee, explains that even when banks commit to cutting emissions associated with their financing in line with net zero, “it doesn’t stop them from financing companies who are continuing to expand [oil and gas production]”.

More than 180 companies expanding fossil fuel production have raised money from ‘net zero’ banks since May 2021, according to an analysis of data from the environmental campaign group, Rainforest Action Network. Their expansion projects are spread across the globe, from ConocoPhillips in the Arctic circle to Petrobras near the mouth of the Amazon river, and Shell in the UK’s North Sea.

A TBIJ analysis of the Global Oil and Gas Exit list, compiled by environmental campaign group Urgewald, shows these expansionary projects could produce almost 90 billion barrels of oil equivalent, which scientists say should stay in the ground. Around half of that is oil and half is gas, according to Urgewald, and calculations suggest it could generate more than 34 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions when burned.

Topping said: “The fundamental problem is that the transition is not driven by regulation … The only people who can make companies change are regulators, and the regulators are letting us down.”

Lead image: Offshore oil rigs at Baku Bay, near Baku, Azerbaijan. Anatoliy Zhdanov / Sipa US / Alamy Stock Photo

Reporter: Josephine Moulds
Environment editor: Rob Soutar
Deputy editors: Katie Mark & Chrissie Giles
Editor: Franz Wild
Production editor: Alex Hess
Fact checker: Somesh Jha

TBIJ has a number of funders, a full list of which can be found here. None of our funders have any influence over editorial decisions or output.

Original article by Josephine Moulds republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Continue Reading‘Greenwashing’ banks raised 1 trillion dollars for fossil fuel giants

Fossil fuel supply: the elephant in the room at climate change conferences

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Ded pixto/Shutterstock

Jordi Roca Jusmet, Universitat de Barcelona

“Natural resources … are a gift from God. Every natural resource, whether it’s oil, gas, wind, sun, gold, silver, copper, they are all natural resources. Countries should not be blamed for having them, and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them. The people need them.”

These were the words of Ilham Aliyev, president of Azerbaijan, at the opening of the recent United Nations COP29 convention on climate change in Baku. https://www.youtube.com/embed/4pqVwrMAGSc?wmode=transparent&start=0 Ilham Aliyev’s speech at COP29.

It seems completely inappropriate to sing the praises of fossil fuels at an international gathering that aims to radically reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, this goal is absolutely unachievable without drastic cuts to fossil fuel use, but Aliyev’s speech does have a positive, if indirect, impact – it points a spotlight at the elephant in the room, one that has remained virtually invisible throughout the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) long history.

COP agreements have never made commitments to limit fossil fuel extraction, even though this would be the most direct – and the only certain – way to rein in the leading cause of climate change.

Reducing demand but not supply: a pointless endeavour

Fossil fuels are key to climate change, but they are largely absent from COP agreements. The biggest achievement came in 2023, at COP28 in Dubai (United Arab Emirates), when an unspecified proposal was made to “transition away from fossil fuels”. This was not ratified at COP29, mainly due to pressure from Saudi Arabia.

In economic terms, the focus of climate agreements has always been on demand. It is expected that national measures, such as promoting renewable energy and public transport, or penalising the use of fossil fuels by putting a price on carbon emissions will indirectly lead to less fossil fuels being put on the market.

While these measures can be effective, they often end up lacking, or even non-existent, because they depend completely on the policies and reactions of the nations and companies who own, supply, and profit from these resources.

Commitments to supply-side agreements are not on the COP agenda, even though most of the fossil fuel reserves that are considered exploitable – and therefore economically valuable – cannot be burned if we are to even come close to the UNFCCC climate goals. They must be left in the ground.

However, global CO₂ emissions are not falling. On the contrary, the use of coal, petroleum and natural gas have hit record highs in 2024.

Evolution of global CO₂ emissions. Global Carbon Project, CC BY-SA

How can we restrict fossil fuel extraction?

Limits have been put forward in the past. In 2014, for instance, economists Paul Collier and Anthony J. Venables proposed a sequenced plan for phasing out coal, which would involve progressive measures not to start new operations and to close mines, with countries staggered in a fair order. “Fairness” would be determined by ability to pay, per capita emissions and historical responsibility.

We can also take inspiration from nuclear weapons treaties, as Professor of International Relations Peter Newell and political economist Andrew Simms have done. They advocate for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty along the lines of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Many states and cities around the world have already signed up to the initiative.

There have also been local initiatives, such as the commitment to stop extracting oil in an area of the Yasuní National Park in Ecuador due to its exceptional biodiversity and the existence of populations in voluntary isolation. This will also benefit the global climate by reducing emissions.

The proposal was initially taken up in 2007 by the then president Rafael Correa on the condition that the international community would financially compensate part of the sacrificed monetary income. However, scarce contributions to the compensation fund led Correa to renounce the initiative and allow oil exploitation.

Environmentalists, affected communities and academics demanded a referendum and, after years of litigation, the right to consultation was recognised by the courts. In August 2023, a large majority (almost 60 %) voted in favour of keeping the oil reserves “in the ground indefinitely”. Money does not always prevail, even in poor countries, though the Ecuadorian government has postponed its mandate to dismantle drilling sites, meaning many are still operational today.

A blessing for some, a curse for others

The above case and many others – such as the Niger Delta (Nigeria), where Shell has been extracting oil since 1958 – remind us that “God’s gift” of natural resources can also be a curse.

A gift for some – usually multinational companies or small numbers of wealthy people – can be a curse not only for the planet, but also for the local population who suffer the devastating environmental and social consequences of extracting these resources, and who face violent repression when they protest.

It was in places like Nigeria and Ecuador that the activist slogan “leave fossil fuels in the ground” was coined. Even if their motivation is primarily or solely to protect their territory, social movements opposing coal mining or hydrocarbon extraction undeniably contribute – from the supply side – to curbing climate change.

Together with social movements, academic and political work is key to defining the areas where preventing the exploitation of fossil fuels is a priority, and to establishing economic compensation. Martí Orta-Martínez, from the University of Barcelona, is doing just this. He is leading a project to geographically define the fossil fuel deposits that should not be burned, which was presented at a seminar in the framework of COP29.

It may sound utopian to seek supply-side international agreements, but the truth is that it is impossible to reduce global emissions and move towards decarbonisation without a rapid decrease in the extraction of fossil fuels. COPs should heed this evidence.

Given the magnitude of the climate challenge, it is not a question of deciding between demand or supply-side policies, but of using both, promoting them in each country, and reaching robust agreements at an international level.

Jordi Roca Jusmet, Catedrático de Economía, Universitat de Barcelona

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Continue ReadingFossil fuel supply: the elephant in the room at climate change conferences

Business backs government ban on new oil and gas licensing

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/businesses-backs-government-no-new-oil-and-gas-licensing

An oil platform standing amongst other rigs that have been left in the Cromarty Firth near Invergordon in the Highlands of Scotland, February 15, 2016

BUSINESSES across Britain have backed the Labour government’s ban on new oil and gas licensing in the North Sea, according to new research today.

The study, carried out by Public First on behalf of fair transition think tank Uplift, found that 70 per cent of British business leaders and 65 per cent in Scotland backed the policy, 54 per cent believed it would benefit their business, and 77 per cent believed phasing out fossils fuels was in the public interest.

In Scotland, the heart of Britain’s fossil fuel industry, 82 supported wider UK government efforts to end use of fossil fuels for energy.

And despite 47 per cent believing the pace of change to be too slow, a majority believe it will be achieved by the government’s 2050 target.

Fifty-two per cent of business leaders in Scotland expressed confidence that new jobs would be created to replace the tens of thousands lost as North Sea oil and gas production dwindles.

But echoing the views of trade unions, they argue it is governments’ responsibility to support workers through that shift.

…

article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/businesses-backs-government-no-new-oil-and-gas-licensing

Continue ReadingBusiness backs government ban on new oil and gas licensing

COP29 puts world on course for more extreme weather – and more deaths

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Original article by Paul Rogers republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

After a disappointing COP29, we should prepare for more extreme weather events like the floods that hit Valencia last month
 | David Ramos/Getty Images

Summit proves change won’t come until floods and wildfires are killing tens of thousands in rich Global North cities

While COP29 in Baku narrowly avoided collapsing, its results were bitterly disappointing for delegations from across the Global South, who ended up with barely a quarter of the annual $1.3trn of support they were seeking by 2035 to respond to climate breakdown.

Quite apart from other factors, more than 1,500 pro-carbon lobbyists worked hard to limit progress and ensure that burning oil, gas and coal at profit continues for as long as possible whatever the global consequences. After all, the world’s fossil fuel industries rake in around a trillion dollars in profits a year.

Meanwhile, more and more examples are emerging of accelerating climate breakdown. The flooding in Valencia is just one, but scarcely noticed in Europe is the thoroughly weird weather being experienced in the eastern United States.

This autumn there have been over five hundred wildfires in New Jersey alone, a 5,000-acre fire has been burning for a week on the New York-New Jersey border prompting a voluntary evacuation, and New York City’s Fire Department was called out to deal with 271 brush fires in the first two weeks of November alone.

As if timed for that and certainly released with COP29 in mind, Carbon Brief, a website covering the latest developments in climate science, climate policy and energy policy, has mapped every published study on ‘impossible’ weather events – record heatwaves or storms that would not have happened without the overall global climate changes.

The first such study came in 2004, the year after weeks of extreme heat hit Europe and killed 70,000 people across the continent over several months. That early example of an ‘impossible’ weather event kick-started a new field of research known as ‘extreme event attribution’, which looks at how climate change has influenced extreme weather.

There are now 600 studies of 750 such extreme events spanning the past 20 years – a tiny fraction of the total number of these kinds of events. Of these 750, Carbon Brief found that scientists and researchers had concluded that 74% were made more likely or more severe because of climate change.

This has added to the growing sense of urgency right across the climate science community coupled with a highly critical view of the whole COP process. Even before the dismaying summit in the Azerbaijani capital, both last year’s COP in Abu Dhabi and the year before in Egypt were notable for their lack of progress even as the urgency of preventing climate breakdown was becoming more and more obvious.

There are other risks to global security including nuclear weapons, pandemics, cyber warfare, AI misuse and the progressive destruction of biodiversity, but climate breakdown is different from all of these. It is not a future risk, it is a current happening, it is accelerating, and we now have very few years left to get on top of it. If we don’t then a worldwide catastrophe with many hundreds of millions dying and societal collapse will become increasingly likely.

Does it have to be like that?

As things stand, in terms of changing attitudes, developments in renewables, resistance of the fossil carbon industries and, of course, Donald Trump’s looming presidency in the US, a reasonable prognosis for the next decade has three elements.

First, the use of renewable energy resources does continue to increase but not at anything like the rate required, so net carbon emissions will continue to rise, not fall, for most of the next ten years. Second, resistance to decarbonisation will continue from many quarters, no doubt now including the White House. Finally, severe weather events will become both more common and more destructive.

Eventually, and it might take more than a decade, the disasters will be so great, including sudden weather events in rich cities in the Global North killing many tens of thousands of people, that public pressure across the world will force governments to respond. There will be no alternative to engage in truly transformative change.

But what that means is that the task ahead by then will be hugely greater than if the transformation starts much sooner, so timescales become crucial, especially what can speed up the process.

There is, though, one thing to remember at a time of widespread pessimism. If nations had got their act together 25 years ago after the Kyoto Protocols, were signed we would be in a far more favourable position worldwide than we are now. We are acting more than two decades late.

But climate breakdown is not happening as a slow, steady process of change, creeping up almost unawares. If that had been the case then with all the reasons not to act, especially the global fossil carbon lobby, we would have been in an even worse position now. Instead, it is happening at variable rates in two respects, some parts of the world – such as the polar regions – are warming up much faster than others and extreme weather events are happening much more often.

We are therefore getting a foretaste of what will affect everyone a few years before it does, and this gives us just a little more time to act. It means that the next ten years, and perhaps even the five years to 2030, will be the key time for us to come to terms with the transformation in society that is essential for global well-being. That is possible, just.

Original article by Paul Rogers republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingCOP29 puts world on course for more extreme weather – and more deaths