Open letter to Chris Huhne on the eve of the Durban Climate change talks

Dear Chris,

In common with your predecessors and opposites in other countries you offer false hope in your Telegraph article that we can make progress towards tackling climate change in the next round of climate change talks due to start next week.

To properly tackle climate change, we must accept it is the culmination of all the problems that humanity has inflicted on this planet.  The corollary of this is that to tackle climate change we must challenge all the fundamental concepts that underpin our economic development. To challenge these problems, we must first understand them.

The trajectory of the CO2 increase is so rapid the planet will exceed 450 ppm by 2030. At this point we will be committed to runway climate change with catastrophic temperature increases that will potentially wipe out all life on the planet. To avoid this fate and because of the cumulative damage that we have already done to the planet, we must immediately move towards a zero carbon economy.

It is impossible to move to a zero carbon economy whilst maintaining the same growth based economic system we have today. Renewable energy sources will not be able to do anything more than scratch the surface of our growing energy demands.  Even a mass expansion of nuclear will be unable to meet our requirements in the time frame we have.

We therefore have no option but to implement an economic system based on contraction, not growth. To do this in a way that avoids war and mass civil unrest requires the courage to co-operate in ways that are completely counter to the competition based society we have inherited and with which we have been indoctrinated on since birth to believe is unassailable.  If we fail to rise to the challenge, war and mass civil unrest are inevitable.

The ultimate statement of our competition-based economy is the structure of the nation state. It is this that forms the basis of the forthcoming climate change negotiations. However, the nation state structure simultaneously forces all nations to compete with each other for resources and markets. Interstate competition is either economic or military and there is a symbiotic relationship between these two approaches. This competitive framework is incompatible with the objectives of the climate change agreements, which is to co-operate fully.

To make maters worse, the nation state has become subservient to the “market-state.” One example is the worldwide aviation industry. Though comprised of competing corporations, it musters a collective international voice and acts as a borderless state to protect its own interests above all others. This is evidenced by its successful efforts to stop nation states from limiting environmentally destructive growth.  In recent weeks the competing governments of the USA, Russia, China and India all collaborated together to ignore climate change following concerted lobbying by the aviation industry to support its collective demand that international aviation should not be included in the EU-ETS.

The ultimate manifestation of this combined market state and nation state competition is the possession of nuclear arms. In the UK we are sliding towards the replacement of Trident at a cost of £100billion. This decision will also require us to generate another  £300bn in economic activity to raise the necessary taxation.

This is the antithesis of what we need to do, which is to reduce economic activity in the face of climate change, peak oil and other resource shortages. These factors are already destabilizing the planet and resource wars have started. The replacement of Trident accentuates these problems.

There is no military requirement to replace Trident as it is impossible to use in anyway that can defend our nation-state without simultaneously destroying it, so we need to consider the rationales that are leading us to its replacement.  There are two.

The first rational is to jointly keep alive the submarine building capabilities of the military industrial complex in this country and in our competitors. Thus, the nation state is subservient to market state of the arms industry, in the same way as it is subservient to the aviation industry.

The second rational is to preserve our ego as a pre-eminent nation-state and a Permanent Five member of the UN.  Preservation of ego is an inevitable consequence of a competitive system of engagement. It is completely counter to the requirement to make mutual sacrifices to tackle climate change and avoid total war.

Progress can only be achieved with radically different approaches to negotiations. That radically different approach must start by nuclear weapons being placed on the climate change negotiation table.

By eliminating the threat of nuclear weapons we simultaneously allow nation states to co-operate on saving what is left our planet while making the nation state subservient to the people rather than destructive market states. Elimination of nuclear weapons also makes the clear statement that we are more concerned about collectively tackling global threats rather than the destructive preservation of national borders.

We must recognize our failure to agree to nuclear disarmament is intimately linked to our failure to achieve climate change agreements. If we do not link these crises, we will not address climate change and so we must accept that we will continue our actions until we extinguish life on the planet.

The nightmare scenario is that by 2050 when our planet is no longer habitable through climate change, and our Trident replacements submarines are only half way through their operating life, that the only survivors on the planet will be the crews of the various nuclear ballistic submarines silently cruising the depths of the polluted and lifeless oceans.  Trident is set to be the ultimate modern day Easter Island statue.

Why Trident is the biggest cause of Climate Change

I will be giving talks on why replacing Trident will be the single most effective way of ensuring we never achieve international agreements on climate change and how it will set us on an unstoppable path to war.


Northcourt Centre, Northcourt Road, Abingdon at 8.00 pm, 15th November 
http://www.abingdonquakers.org.uk/peace.html


Friends Meeting House, Lechlade Rd, Faringdon (Opposite the Duke of Wellington) at 8.00pm 7th December
http://www.faringdonpeacegroup.org.uk/

See previous blog on Trident here.

More correspondence with Jonathon Porritt on selling out

Dear Jonathon

Thank you for your reply, (at the end of this post).

To ensure that there are no misunderstandings, I do not hold your work on population in disdain. Quite the reverse. My concern is that you do not state the seriousness of the issue. A colleague of mine asked at the end of your presentation what you considered the sustainable population to be. You said 5 billion. However, we know atmospheric CO₂ was increasing in 1957 when first measured with less than 1 billion people living in industrialised communities and with lower per capita CO₂ emissions than today. We know huge damage has been done to the ecosystem since then.  This simple comparison suggests that you have overestimated the sustainable population by a factor of at least five.

You finish your email with reference to my absolutist moral framework. My moral framework is irrelevant. All that is relevant is the message from the science and the underlying mathematics. It is that message that is absolutist.

As we cannot get the population down to anything like sustainable levels within the time frames available to us, then we must drastically reduce consumption and liberties. We have a very short time to do this. If we fail the consequences will be catastrophic.

I can assure you that it gives me no great pleasure to campaign on these dark and difficult issues. I do not pretend the transformation needed in our society will be easily achieved or pleasant and I fear for what I wish for.

However, to pretend the dangers we face can be ignored is more dangerous. It provides false hope to those people who have genuine concerns. It prevents debate on the necessary transformation.  It allows those people and organisations committed to the destruction of our planet a free pass. Worst of all, it guarantees an explosive increase in CO2 emissions in next 20 years that our planet will not sustain.  This is addressed in the Plane Stupid submission to the government’s sustainable aviation strategy.

The evidence suggests your strategy of partnering with companies inherently committed to the destruction of our environment in the hope that you can persuade them to act in less unsustainable ways is misguided. By definition, they will remain unsustainable and your strategy is defeatist.

At talks of yours I have heard you speak eloquently of the need to cooperate rather than compete.  It is one thing to talk about these ideas in the company of soft and receptive audiences. It is quite another thing to put these into practise against the destructive centres of power that govern our economic system through competitive advantage.

I contacted you in the past to solicit your support to help us move towards a cooperative society with a request to support us in the campaign against the Fairford Air Tattoo. This event glorifies the very worst of destructive competition, which is the ability to wage war. It rolls out the red carpet to Saudi Arabia that systematically abuses human rights and actively lobbies to stop climate change agreements. You did not reply to our request for help. Maybe you were busy on more important things.

As a statement of inadvertently supporting destructive competition, we now see the prospect of you working with TUI to validate their attempt to lead the aviation industry into exploiting the biofuels disaster.  To understand the scope of this disaster, you may want to discuss the issue with your partners in Shell. Shell is investing $12billion in sugar cane production in Brazil. Even for Shell, this is a huge investment. It involves illegal land grabs, murder, deforestation and environmental pollution. Survival Intenational reports of the impact on the local communities as being so severe that it could reasonably be considered an act of war on the indigenous people. To assist you in helping TUI become “less unsustainable” you could discuss the biofuel disaster with organisations such as ActionAid and Biofuel Watch. My colleagues in these organisations would be delighted to talk to you.

If you get involved with these debates, you will realise that the number of people on the “front line” on climate change has increased enormously in the 15 years since you vacated it. Some people like me are compelled to go there from the comfort of middle class backgrounds. Events have forced many other people there before they even realise that they are there.  These new people are of the lower income sector having being marginalized from society by increasing food and energy prices driven by climate change and resource shortages. They are rising-up in the millions in all countries of the world. Simultaneously, starvation is displacing millions in countries such as Somalia.  Contrary to your assertion, that you  “couldn’t help but notice that the number of people who shared your front line hadn’t increased much,” there have never been so many people on the climate change front line.

We therefore offer you our challenge again and we will allow you to judge yourself by your action. If you want to partner with TUI to help them become less unsustainable, then challenge them to reduce flying rather than engage in destructive greenwashing.

This email will appear on my blog http://kevsclimatecolumn.blogspot.com/.

Kevin

--- On Wed, 2/11/11, JP Office  wrote:

From: JP Office
Subject: RE: Selling out?
To: "Kevin Lister"
Date: Wednesday, 2 November, 2011, 14:17

Dear Kevin

Selling Out?

Thank you very much for your email.  As you can imagine, it’s a familiar critique for all of us in Forum for the Future, and one that we’ve had to deal with on a regular basis since the Forum was established in 1996.  But let me try and answer it a bit more personally than might usually be the case – especially since you do seem to hold very strong views on this, with which you are only too ready to accost me every time we bump into each other!

You may or may not be right in your assertions about the urgency in all of this, about the inherent unsustainability of biofuels, about the moral wickedness of anybody flying, about the need for sacrifice and so on.  You embrace very absolutist positions on all of these things, and have understandably come to the conclusion that our collective ability to change people’s minds and their behaviour depends on not deviating from those absolutist viewpoints.

Having spent quite a chunk of my life (15 years) “on the front line”, as you put it, I couldn’t help but notice that the number of people who shared my “front line” views in those days hadn’t increased that much over the 15 years of the duration.  I discovered for myself that people didn’t respond particularly well to a set of arguments driven by primarily guilt, fear, anger and the promise of permanent sackcloth and ashes.

So when I left Friends of the Earth in 1991, I decided to try something a bit different, and to work with (rather than against) people in positions of influence in business and government.  Hence the Forum, The Prince of Wales’ Business and Sustainability Programme, the Sustainable Development Commission and a number of other initiatives that I’ve helped establish along the way.

15 years into that journey, do I feel that I’ve made more progress by adopting that “inside track” than by continuing to campaign against those same people of influence?  I do – but not with any great elation, simply because progress has been (and still is) gut-wrenchingly slow – and wholly inadequate given the scale of the challenge.  And we are at one on that score.

But do I feel personally compromised – from an ethical position – working with the likes of Jaguar Landrover, Shell, TUI (thanks, by the way, for keeping the list so short!) and many others seen by campaigners such as yourself as being in the front line of destroying the Earth’s life-support systems?  I do not.  In a modest way, all of us in the Forum think that what we’re doing is important work, which we know results in a lot of organisations acting in less unsustainable ways in the short term even as they work out what it means to be genuinely sustainable in the long term.

But do I then feel personal discomfort in doing that work?  Yes, I do, from time to time.

And I guess the question that I keep asking myself is whether or not that discomfort might reach the point where I could no longer continue to work in this way.  It’s possible.  I’ve never ruled out returning to that “front line” at some point in the future, and since the demise of the Sustainable Development Commission, I’ve ended up doing a lot more campaigning work anyway – including my work on population about which you are so disdainful.

In short, I admire the uncompromising spirit in which you address these issues, though I do not share the non-negotiable black and white absolutism with which you present your moral universe.

Very best wishes

JONATHON

BA Advert 2011, To Fly. To Serve

Is it a mere coincidence that BA launches the "To Fly,  To Serve" advert slap bang in the middle of the government's sustainable aviation consultation process?

We offer an alternative take:

Southend Airport protest

Press Release

12.20pm Saturday 29^th October  for immediate use

Note:  new number for press information 07584955708

16 Protestors Arrested at Southend Airport

16 protestors, who occupied the runway at Southend Airport , have been arrested by Essex Police.  It is believed they are being held at Southend Police Station. Campaigners from Plane Stupid and Climate Rush entered the airport shortly after 9am this morning.  The protest is against the planned expansion of Southend Airport .

Plane Stupid installed solar panels on the runway.  Campaigners from Climate Rush, dressed as pilots and cabin crew, were on a nearby footpath performing a dance routine (1).

A spokeswoman for the protestors said: “Southend Council say the expansion will bring jobs.  But investment in renewable energy would create many more jobs without damaging the climate.  What we need is solar power not plane power.  The bigger runway is bad for climate change, bad for local residents under the flight path and is not needed to help the local economy.” 

Southend Airport has been bought by Stobarts, the logistics firm.  Easyjet has announced that it plans to start operating commercial flights from the airport in spring 2012.

There has been a major local campaign.  It has focused on the impact the airport would have on the thousands of people who will live under the flight paths.

ENDS

Notes for Editors:

(1). Climate Rush are dressed as pilots and cabin crew with a Britney dance routine and doctored words to TOXIC:

SOUTHEND CAN’T YOU SEE

THEY’RE ROARING

AIRPORT EXPANSION SHOULD COME WITH A WARNING

IT’S DANGEROUS

GLOBAL WARMING

AND THE LIES OF THE AIRPORT WE CAN’T ABIDE

THEIR TOXIC FUMES CHOKING OVER

WITH THE NOISE FROM THIS POISONED PARADISE

IT’S OUR WARNING TO YOU: DON’T YOU KNOW THAT THEY’RE TOXIC

AND YOU’LL HATE WHAT THEY DO: DON’T YOU KNOW THAT THEY’RE TOXIC.

For further information call:

07584955708

Forum for the Future, Greenwash and the sell out of Jonathon Porritt??

Dear Jonathon

You may remember our conversation after your presentation on sustainable population on Thursday at Cirencester.

You will probably remember I took exception to you  focusing your anger on the environmental and social justice movements for not raising the issue of population.  By contrast, you said at the beginning of your presentation that you would not focus on the Catholic church. This is despite them pursuing a dangerous expansionist policy of population growth by preaching against contraception, which is line with the most odious regimes of the past.

I commend you for starting this difficult debate on how to get to a sustainable population.

However, we have  pressing issues that must be addressed immediately. Failure to address these within the very short timescale that we have left will result in our society collapsing through war and climate collapse. This is were the focus of the environmental movement is. Those of us on the front line do not have either the time, resources or emotional energy to tackle the vexing problem of our population growth. We also realize that tackling population growth is a long term issue and unless we urgently eliminate excess consumption we will not be around long enough to debate issues of optimum population.

It is therefore extremely dispiriting to see the companies Forum for the Future lists  as partners to work with to create a sustainable future. 

To name a few:

Jaguar and Land Rover - manufacturers of the most environmentally destructive brands of cars. 

Cargill - One of the biggest players in the biofuel disaster leading to widescale deforestation, compromise of food supplies and disruption of our climate. 

Shell - who led the way into the Niger Delta destroying the environment and settled out of court for collaborating in the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Then there is also the ongoing relationship that you have with Richard Branson. A man that has the unique ability to simultaneously support action on climate change and aviation expansion without the slightest hint of shame. 

All these organisations that you are working with are actively contributing to the explosive growth in atmospheric CO2 which I address in my submission to the government's sustainable aviation strategy. 

However, the greenwashing that most angers those of us on the front line of campaigning on climate change is your relationship with TUI, who prominently feature on your web site. 

TUI's subsidiary company, Thomson Airways, have recently launched a service using biofuels. This is the start of dangerous development where the aviation industry wishes to cynically exploit loopholes in the EU ETS giving free carbon allowances for biofuels. This is despite no evidence that biofuel reduces greenhouse gas emissions and overwhelming evidence that it forces food prices up, it leads to deforestation and displacement of millions of people. 

A recent statement from TUI is attached below. They state that they will be "working in partnership with Forum for the Future to facilitate discussions." We can only presume you will attempt to prove that their use of biofuels will make their environment destruction sustainable. 

The evidence is that the aviation industry can only be made sustainable by quickly reducing flying. This is the unanimous statement from all credible environmental groups. You have spoken on many occasions on the need for cooperation rather than competition, but have been silent on the point that cooperation requires self sacrifice and discipline. 

We therefore challenge you to practice what is preached. We ask that you demand TUI reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by cutting flights rather than attempting to pursue unfounded and dangerous ideas such as biofuels and that they work with other airlines to achieve this.  We also challenge you to support other environmental groups who take this position such as Friends of Earth (Brimingham), Airport Watch, Plane Stupid, Biofuel Watch, Action Aid and the Tyndall center. 

Kindest Regards,

Kevin Lister

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Response from Christian Cull, communications director at TUI UK & Ireland...

At Thomson Airways, we realise that there is no perfect solution out there, and we certainly don’t have all the answers. So we welcome the challenge by the WWF-UK to demonstrate our sustainability plans, and we are working in partnership with Forum for the Future to facilitate discussions. We simply want to do the best we can.

We are fully committed to the use of sustainable second generation aviation biofuel – and there’s a big difference between first and second generation biofuel. Thomson Airways belongs to the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group. That means we have pledged to use only feedstocks that do not compete with food or natural resources; and which have significantly fewer total lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than fossil jet fuel.

Once the supply chain develops, feedstocks grown in developing areas must have a positive socio-economic benefit to local communities and areas of high conservation value. Also, local eco-systems must not be cleared. That has always been our view.

We are certainly aware of the potential negative impact of using biofuels irresponsibly. Indeed, we want the whole industry to work together with initiatives such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels [http://rsb.epfl.ch/] to find more sustainable alternatives to fossil fuel. This is a journey, and we need to find the best long term route forward and we know that there are challenges ahead, particularly in terms of supply limitations: the current biofuels supply chain is in its infancy. But we – and the aviation industry as a whole - cannot stand still and do nothing.

We need flexibility to find the best solution. So yes, our current operations are being conducted with biofuels made out of used cooking oil, and we are comfortable with that. But Thomson Airways has partnered with a fuel supplier that is not feedstock or technology specific. The sustainability of alternative aviation fuels depends on many factors and has to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. To make the right decisions now and in the future, SkyNRG is advised by an independent Sustainability Board, consisting of the Dutch wing of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-NL), Solidaridad, and the Copernicus Institute of the University of Utrecht.

We also fully support the move for all modes of transport to move towards more sustainable energy sources. Whilst in a transition phase, at Thomson Airways we believe that sustainable liquid fuel should be prioritised for aviation because there is no near term alternative (such as electric or hydrogen for ground based vehicles).

This view is supported by the WWF Energy Report 2011: ‘Although the Ecofys scenario favours other renewable resources wherever possible, there are some applications where bioenergy is currently the only suitable replacement for fossil fuels. Aviation, shipping and long-haul trucking require liquid fuels with a high energy density; they cannot, with current technology and fuelling infrastructure, be electrified or powered by hydrogen.’   (page 40 of  link )

which then also says:   "Some industrial processes, such as steel manufacturing, require fuels not only for their energy content, but as feedstocks with specific material properties.By 2050, 60 per cent of industrial fuels and heat will come from biomass. 13 per cent of building heat will come from biomass and some biomass will still be needed in the electricity mix (about 13 per cent), for balancing purposes with other renewable energy technologies.")

In response to comments from the WWF-UK, we appreciate the need to clarify the statement regarding the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB). The RSB announced that their methodology can hold for used cooking oil, but that doesn't mean it is RSB certified. To be more precise: even though the RSB criteria exists, no used cooking oil has been RSB certified to date.

For more information on sustainable options for aviation biofuel, please read http://www.enviro.aero/Content/Upload/File/BeginnersGuide_Biofuels_WebRes.pdf