Historic event or a fraud? Critical thoughts on the Paris Climate Accord

The following article appeared in On Line Opinion on January 11, 2016. The author Saral Sarkar provides many perceptive insights into the recent Paris climate talks which show that we still have a long way to go to solve our global climate change problems. His article concluded with several paragraphs on his belief in eco-socialism which I found not to be based in real-world reality so I've excluded them from this blog article. Please go to http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=17946 if you want to read his full article.

Historic event or a fraud? Critical thoughts on the Paris Climate Accord

By Saral Sarkar
Posted Monday, 11 January 2016

Considering that so much depends on whether global warming can be arrested soon, it was no wonder that all thinking people had turned their attention to Paris, where on 13^th December the COP21 "successfully" ended, with great jubilation. I too followed the process through the media.

Positive and Negative Reactions

A day after, I read the following comments: "Today is a historic day: as tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Paris, politicians finalized a major new global climate agreement". And "It's a fraud really, a fake,"… "It's just bullshit…"¹ The first was made by May Boeve, the US national organizer of 350.org, a big NGO, that is playing a leading role in the climate justice movement, the second by James Hansen, a former NASA scientist, considered the father of climate change awareness. Which one can we regard as the correct assessment?

Given that nobody in my position has the time and energy to read all the reports and comments on the COP21, I hope that my readers would forgive me if I have overlooked some important point in the agreement or an important comment on it. But fairness demands that I also mention a middle position, for example that of Thomas Friedman, a liberal columnist of the New York Times. He wrote:"I had low expectations for the U.N. climate meeting, and it met all of them – beautifully. I say that without cynicism. Any global conference that includes so many countries can't be expected to agree on much more than the lowest common denominator."

That is understandable. As far as I could follow, nobody had big expectations. But then I do not understand how May and other prominent people of big NGOs can be so enthusiastic about it. Bill McKibben wrote: "With the climate talks in Paris now over, the world has set itself a serious goal."  I have doubts. Was the goal really set seriously? Friedman wrote: "But the fact that the lowest common denominator is now so high [he means the target 1.5⁰ Celcius] – a willingness by 188 countries to offer plans to steadily and verifiably reduce their carbon emissions – means we still have a chance."  Again I have doubts. I would very much like to agree with Boeve, McKibben, and Friedman. But at present at least, I cannot, for reasons I shall present below.

Why Call it a Fraud?

I too think, like Hansen, the accord was a fraud, but for reasons very different from those of his. I think it was only because they were afraid of being branded as the guilty in case the COP21 failed to reach an agreement that the major CO₂ emitter countries reluctantly decided to sign this very weak paper. But paper, as the Germans say, is patient. If you want evidence, then look at the position with which the government of India went to Paris. Only a few months before the COP21 began, the government of India had announced the policy decision to double India's coal production in the next 5 years. Just a few days before he left for Paris, Mr. Javadekar, India's environment minister, had said in an interview: "I'm asking the developed world to vacate the carbon space so that we can park our development."

Retorting to US Secretary of State John Kerry's criticism of India's decision to double its coal production, Javadekar had remarked it was "absolutely unfair and unacceptable," especially since the CO₂ reduction targets announced by the developed countries would fail to arrest the climate change crisis, which they had a historical responsibility of fixing after a century of pumping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.He also warned the Americans against "bullying" India.

Or take the case of Norway, very rich in oil and gas. Just twelve days after they signed the Paris accord, the prime minister of the country said:"We believe that in a situation in which we shall have attained the goal of Paris, there will be demand for Norwegian oil and gas."

So they are continuing with all the plans and projects for extracting oil and gas from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. While claiming that they want to protect the Arctic from the effects of global warming, they are speculating on the melting of the arctic ice that will make more access to oil and gas possible. It seems they are saying (in German): Wasch mir den Pelz aber mach mich nicht nass, or (in English): We want to eat the cake and have it too.

These are actually irreconcilable positions. We can formulate them as two most fundamental controversial questions:

(1) Should the underdeveloped countries be allowed to develop their economies to the level reached by the USA or Germany?

(2) And must the economies of the developed countriesbe scaled down, in order to vacate the carbon space in favor of the former?

In Paris, these questions were probably not put on the table in these stark terms. In the interview referred to above, Mr. Javedkar, while asserting India's right – implicitly the right of all underdeveloped countries – to development, did not raise the second question. The Paris accord too recognizes all underdeveloped countries' "right to development". It "… aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, in the context of sustainable development and effortsto eradicate poverty, … " (Article 2). But it does not mention the second question.

It appears that all participants in COP21, the big and small environment NGOs, publicists, and activists take it as a matter of course that the answer to the first question is Yes, and that to the second is No. The controversy was just papered over. It is simply taken for granted that a deus ex machina, namely technological development, would enable humankind to solve the problem of global warming without causing any pain to anybody, and that it only needs some more time and large investments in renewable energies and efficiency-raising technologies.

In the rich, developed countries, a large part of the hope of technology optimists is placed on the carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, although not even its feasibility has yet been established. Bill Mckibben, founder and leader of 350.org, charts the strategy for the coming years. The state(s) must do the following:

You've got to stop fracking right away … . You have to start installing solar panels and windmills at a breakneck pace – and all over the world. The huge subsidies doled out to fossil fuel have to end yesterday, and the huge subsidies to renewable energy had better begin tomorrow. You have to raise the price of carbon steeply and quickly, so everyone gets a clear signal to get off of it.

And he lays down the task of the movement as follows:

There can be no complacency after the Paris talks. Hitting even the 1.5C target will need drastic, rapid action. Think of the climate movement as personal trainers – for the next few years our job is to yell and scream at governments everywhere to get up off the couch.

The most popular article of faith of environmental NGOs and activists (not of governments) is that – given the right policy decisions such as those laid down by McKibben in the above quote, and correspondingly large amounts of state subsidies – it would be possible in two to three decades to meet 100 percent of humanity's energy needs by means of renewable energy technologies, so that burning fossil fuels would not be necessary at all; there would also be no need for the CCS technology.

Hansen calls the accord a fraud, mainly because he sees no concrete action plan in it, only promises that, moreover, the signatory states are required to implement gradually, beginning only in 2020. His idea was a tax or price or fee of $15 a tonne of CO₂ to be paid by major emitters. He argued that only this measure could force down CO₂ emissions quickly enough. But he found no support, not even among big environment groups, because, as he said, nobody wants to scare people off by talking off new taxes.

I could have supported the tax proposal of Hansen if he had stopped there. But, like the others mentioned above, he too believes that ultimately it is only by replacing fossil fuel energies with clean energies that we can avert climate catastrophes. For he says in the same interview: "We need to have a rising fee on carbon in order to move to clean energy."

Unlike Hansen, I see the fraud taking place since long, and it is contained in the very conceptions of the proposed solutions – in all parts thereof and both in their short as well as long-term versions. Firstly, the whole COP process from the very beginning, i.e. since 1992 onwards, is swearing to promote sustainable development and eradicate poverty while at the same time protecting the environment and averting global warming. The COP21 did the same. Otherwise the developing countries would not have taken part in the process. But how do you, in the short term, eradicate poverty in developing countries, e.g. in India, South Africa or Colombia, if you make power much dearer by (a) imposing a tax of $15 a tonne of CO₂ payable by major emitters (that includes India), (b) by ending all subsidies to fossil fuels, and (c) paying huge subsidies to renewable energies (where will the huge sums come from)?

Most persons, groups, parties etc. mentioned above simply assume that economic growth i.e. growth in prosperity can and will continue without any problem when the fossil fuel energies have been replaced with "clean" energies. As against that, I (and my political friends, e.g. Ted Trainer) believe since long that it is absolutely necessary that the major industrial countries, including China, India, Brazil etc. purposely bring about a contraction of their economies – in order not only to stop burning more and more fossil fuels but also to reduce the general level of environmental pollution. We do not think that economic growth would be possible if we really want to save the biosphere. I can also cite evidence supporting this belief: In recent history, the only time CO₂ emission and general environmental pollution went down in a large region were the 1990s, i.e. after the Eastern European economies, especially the then second biggest economy of the world, that of the Soviet Union, collapsed. But in the Paris accord there is no mention of this necessity. The whole de-growth movement has been totally ignored, also by the big environmental NGOs. They simply believe in miracles.

One may ask why I doubt that it would be possible, if not soon, then at least in the near future or in the long term to fully or at least largely replace fossil fuel energies (and other nonrenewable resources) with renewable ones. After all, technological progress is taking place all the time! Basing myself on Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's differentiation between feasible and viable, I have been expressing this doubt for the last 25 years. It is not possible to repeat all my arguments here; interested people may read some of my writings. Here I only want to refer to two sets of facts that serve as indications that my doubt may be justified.

Already in 1994, Eurosolar and its friends and associate organizations claimed in a full-page advertisement in the German print media that solar energy based on the technology developed till then could compete with fossil fuel energies. But today, after twenty more years of research and development, we see that solar energy is still neither competitive nor viable without large subsidies. That is why even today new coal-fired power plants are being built? India is very rich in sunshine and wind. Still its government wants to double coal production in order to supply energy to the masses. Why? And why do its politicians say, it is only coal that India has for energy? Are the Indian engineers stupid or ignorant? Or have they all sold away their conscience to the coal lobby?

Protagonists of green growth, i.e. growth based on 100% transition to renewables are all very intelligent people. Yet they are ignoring these facts and questions. If they are not intentionally bluffing, then they are, I believe, suffering from an illusion.

There are some more reasons why I criticize the big environmental NGOs.

(1) They – unlike Hansen, who has called the whole agreement a fraud – have exonerated the political class (the authors of the Paris Deal) from all guilt, as if they are not always ready to fulfill the wishes of big corporations, as if they are actually good people who, like the NGOs, care for the interests of the masses, the only "villains" being the fossil fuel industries. Opposing these villains are, in their view, the good "ordinary people", the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, as if they do not want to consume more and more energy and other products of fossil fuels. This is too naïve, if it is not a fraud too.

(2) They have isolated the climate crisis from all other crises involved in mankind's present predicament, as if they are not interconnected. They simply ignore the totality of the crisis.

(3) They do not seem to know that the $100 billion that the politicians of the rich countries have promised to pay to the victims of global warming will first have to be generated by producing more green house gases.

(4) It appears, moreover, that they have not noticed that these are all only promises. Don't they know that governments, especially in times of economic crisis, never deliver what they promise? The UNHCR, for example, recently reduced the food ration to the Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan etc. because they haven't received all the money that was promised to them.

But the more basic problem I have with those who are euphoric about the Paris accord is that the signatory governments as well as the NGOs, green and left parties etc. do not even mention the real and deeper causes of the ecological, economic, political and social miseries of humankind, of which climate change and large-scale migration are just currently the most glaring manifestations. These real and deeper causes are thecontinuously growing demands, aspirations and ambitions of a continuously growing world population, while our resource base is continuously dwindling and the ability of nature to absorb man-made pollution is continuously diminishing – in short, the lunatic idea that in a finite world infinite growth is possible.

Is the System Question Irrelevant?

What I, moreover,found very strange is that, all along, all people involved in the COP process assumed that the envisioned drastic changes in such a vital factor as the energy supply base of the modern industrial economies could be undertaken without requiring any changes in the current political-economic system.

Of course, one could not expect from the politicians who signed the deal that they would include in it a clause stating that the system they have built up and which has made them rich and powerful also needs to be changed. But how come also the rest of the involved people did not have the slightest doubt that the huge problem can be solved within the framework of capitalism and free market economy? Outside this circle, however, in the context of the problems at hand, the system question had already been posed several hundred times, in speeches and writings, before the COP21 began. In TV news broadcasts, I have even a few times seen pictures of radical leftist protesters carrying banners and placards with the slogan "System change, not climate change".

Can't one expect of honest and thinking NGO and media people that they also at least consider the possibility that the technological breakthroughs – 100% renewable energy, CCS etc., on which they are placing all their hopes – do not occur or do not occur in time? If they do not occur, shouldn't one have a plan B for averting the catastrophes? In plain English, if humanity can no longer indulge in the growth compulsions inherent in capitalism with its principle of competition in a free market economy, shouldn't the state(s) step in and order a stop in further economic growth? Shouldn't the state(s) then tell the people that they have to accept a contracting economy and all the consequences thereof? Shouldn't the state(s), from then on, plan an orderly withdrawal from the present mad economic system?

Unfortunately, many people who do raise the system question – there are even some prominent people among them – often do that half-heartedly. They often question "capitalism as we know it or as it is today" or "globalized neo-liberal capitalism", as if a better form of capitalism is conceivable, as if it could be made ecological, social or humane, and compatible with economic contraction. I do not think such half-hearted critiques are of any use. Such people do not realize that as long as the motive of profit maximization and the principles of private ownership of means of production, selfishness, and competition remain – and these are the most essential elements of capitalism –, there would always be a compulsion to grow, whatever that may cost human society and nature. That will bring to nought all efforts to overcome the climate crisis and many other crises.

Saral Sarkar is an Indian academic resident in Germany who writes about Eco-Socialism.

GM crops can benefit organic farmers too

Have you eaten organic food today? If you have eaten anything, then technically you’ve eaten organic. By definition, all food is organic, it just may not have been grown under industry standards, such as Australian Certified Organic (ACO).
Most people who choose to eat certified organic do so because they believe it is cleaner and greener, or chemical free. But the most modern cultivated plants are genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and so are precluded from being certified organic.
The Australian Organic organisation says that’s because there are no long-term studies on human health.
Prince Charles has warned that the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops is the biggest environmental disaster of all time.
The Australian Greens argue that:

[…] genetically modified foods have still not been proven safe […] Crop yields have not increased, but the use of pesticides on our food has. The only ones profiting from GM are the large GM companies.

But the research says different

Perhaps the Greens need to brush up on the science behind their claims. In the most comprehensive meta-analysis (of 147 publications) to date, researchers from Goettingen University have concluded that the adoption of GM technology has:

• Reduced pesticide use by 37%
• Increased crop yield by 22%
• Increased farmer profits by 68%.

The yield and profit gains are considerably higher in developing countries than in developed countries, and 53% of GM crops are grown in developing countries.
A survey in the United States uncovered great difference in motivation among farmers who adopted GM herbicide-resistant soybean. Farmers like the no-till and low chemical use attributes. Even when it did not increase profitability, they enjoyed the increase in farm safety and particularly the safety of their families when using less herbicide with very low toxicity.
A similar study of the same soybeans in Argentina showed that total productivity increased by 10%, and more than half of the benefit had gone to the consumer.
In 2012, a joint Chinese-French study on GM cotton showed that insecticide usage more than halved, and the survival of beneficial insects had a positive impact on pest control. Since they adopted genetically modified Bt cotton, India has been producing twice as much cotton from the same land area with 65% less insecticide.

What do organic farmers really want?

Organic farmers really do care for their land and want to balance their impact on the land with producing healthier foods and improving the health of the soil.
But organic farms use more land and labour to produce the same amount of produce as conventional agriculture. That’s the major reason you pay more for organic products.
Organic farmers will maintain that if you can improve soil health, you can reduce the impact of pests and diseases. In fact, most farmers in Australia will say that, organic or not.
It works for some of the soil-borne problems but, not surprisingly, weeds really like healthy soils too. And fungal spores, plant-eating insects and aphids harbouring pathogenic viruses can and will travel a long way to get a piece of those healthy plants.
With all crop production, there is an element of biological warfare. No matter how hard any farmer tries, her crop will often need a little help to fight back.

All farmers use some ‘inputs’

So reluctantly, there will come a time when a farmer will have to use chemicals, or allowed “inputs” (remember that organic agriculture is chemical-free). They include things such as copper, rotenone, acetic acid, light petroleum derivatives, sodium chloride, boric acid and sulfur.
Different organic certifiers allow different “inputs”. Let’s use the case of the potato, which infamously succumbed to potato blight and precipitated the great Irish diaspora of the 19th century.
Potato blight is still around and organic potatoes succumb just like others, so farmers are allowed to apply copper sprays to control the fungus. After repeated applications, some soils accumulated toxic levels of copper, hence in 2001 the European Union (EU) and Australian organic certifiers limited application to 8kg/ha annually.
In 2006, the EU dropped this to 6kg/ha, and subsequently Germany and Switzerland cut further to 3-4kg/ha while Scandinavian countries banned the use of copper in agriculture, organic or conventional. Organic potato yields remain at 50% that of conventional yields.
In 2011, BASF launched a potato (Fortuna) that was totally resistant to potato late blight, and it could be cultivated without the need for fungicidal sprays, including copper. The potato contained two genes from a wild Mexican potato relative, and except for the fact that it was a GMO, it would be perfect as a clean and green organic potato crop.
Sadly, European agriculture rejected Fortuna potatoes.

Reduced emissions

There can be other benefits in GM crops, beyond yield and resistance. Rice produces 10% of the world’s methane emissions so imagine if somebody could reduce emissions by 90%, and make plants with larger seeds containing more energy.
Chuangxin Sun’s group at Swedish Agricultural University has done precisely that by transferring a single gene from barley to rice.
If all the world’s rice used this technology, it would be the equivalent of closing down 150 coal-fired power stations or removing 120 million cars from the road annually.
With many other plant scientists, I propose that the case-by-case scrutiny of GM crops would allow the organic industry to show it is willing to use the smartest technologies for improving the sustainable productivity of food and fibre production.
Many labs around the world, including those in my building, are full of bright young innovative scientists who want to make the world cleaner and greener.
We have GM crop plants with enhanced nutritional qualities, pest and disease resistance, larger grain sizes and the ability to produce more food with lower fertiliser inputs. Many of these plants have been modified with only a few DNA letters altered from the “wild” genes.
Adoption would massively improve the productivity of organic agriculture, and the productivity boost would help make organic food price competitive. So let’s talk about GM organics.

Ian Godwin

Professor in Plant Molecular Genetics, The University of Queensland 

See comments on this article at:

https://theconversation.com/gm-crops-can-benefit-organic-farmers-too-51318?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20December%209%202015%20-%203952&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20December%209%202015%20-%203952+CID_71018fbde78477e6ae03817a4263bad6&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=GM%20crops%20can%20benefit%20organic%20farmers%20too 

Sea-level rise from Antarctic collapse may be slower than suggested.

A new study by scientists in the UK and France has found that Antarctic ice sheet collapse will have serious consequences for sea level rise over the next two hundred years, though not as much as some have suggested.This study, published this week in the journal Nature, uses an ice-sheet model to predict the consequences of unstable retreat of the ice, which recent studies suggest has begun in West Antarctica.

An international team of researchers, including a scientist from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), predict that the contribution is most likely to be 10 cm of sea-level rise this century under a mid to high climate scenario, but is extremely unlikely to be higher than 30 cm. When combined with other contributions, that’s a significant challenge for adapting to future sea level rise. But it’s also far lower than some previous estimates, which were as high as one metre from Antarctica alone.

The study’s central estimate raises the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) central prediction of 60 cm global sea-level rise by just a few centimetres under the mid to high scenario they used. But the team’s method allowed them to assess the likelihood of sea-level rise from substantial parts of the ice sheet collapsing, which the IPCC could not due to a lack of evidence. They predict there is a one in twenty chance that Antarctic collapse could contribute more than 30 cm sea-level rise by the end of the century and more than 72 cm by 2200. This does not rule out larger contributions on longer time scales.

Dr Tamsin Edwards, Lecturer in Environmental Sciences at the OU, says: “Our method is more comprehensive than previous estimates, because it has more exploration of uncertainty than previous model predictions and more physics than those based on extrapolation or expert judgment.”

Dr Dominic Hodgson, a glaciologist at British Antarctic Survey, says: “This study is significant. Advances in modelling are needed to reduce the error in global sea level predictions so that mitigation strategies (and Government expenditure) are focussed on the most likely sea level scenarios. This study takes us one step closer to understanding Antarctica’s likely contribution to future sea level rise.”

The paper ‘Potential sea-level rise from Antarctic ice sheet instability constrained by observations’ is authored by Catherine Ritz (Centre national de la recherche scientifique and Université Grenoble Alpes, France), Tamsin L. Edwards (The Open University, University of Bristol), Gaël Durand (Centre national de la recherche scientifique and Université Grenoble Alpes, France), Antony J. Payne (The University of Bristol), Vincent Peyaud (Centre national de la recherche scientifique and Université Grenoble Alpes, France) and Richard C.A. Hindmarsh (British Antarctic Survey). It was published on Wednesday 18 November 2015 in the academic journal Nature:

Potential sea-level rise from Antarctic ice-sheet instability constrained by observations

Catherine Ritz, Tamsin L. Edwards, Gaël Durand, Antony J. Payne, Vincent Peyaud

 

Nature (2015) doi:10.1038/nature16147 - Published online 18 November 2015 

Large parts of the Antarctic ice sheet lying on bedrock below sea level may be vulnerable to marine-ice-sheet instability (MISI)¹, a self-sustaining retreat of the grounding line triggered by oceanic or atmospheric changes. There is growing evidence^{2, 3, 4} that MISI may be underway throughout the Amundsen Sea embayment (ASE), which contains ice equivalent to more than a metre of global sea-level rise. If triggered in other regions^{5, 6, 7, 8}, the centennial to millennial contribution could be several metres. Physically plausible projections are challenging⁹: numerical models with sufficient spatial resolution to simulate grounding-line processes have been too computationally expensive^{2, 3, 10} to generate large ensembles for uncertainty assessment, and lower-resolution model projections¹¹ rely on parameterizations that are only loosely constrained by present day changes. Here we project that the Antarctic ice sheet will contribute up to 30 cm sea-level equivalent by 2100 and 72 cm by 2200 (95% quantiles) where the ASE dominates. Our process-based, statistical approach gives skewed and complex probability distributions (single mode, 10 cm, at 2100; two modes, 49 cm and 6 cm, at 2200). The dependence of sliding on basal friction is a key unknown: nonlinear relationships favour higher contributions. Results are conditional on assessments of MISI risk on the basis of projected triggers under the climate scenario A1B (ref. 9), although sensitivity to these is limited by theoretical and topographical constraints on the rate and extent of ice loss. We find that contributions are restricted by a combination of these constraints, calibration with success in simulating observed ASE losses, and low assessed risk in some basins. Our assessment suggests that upper-bound estimates from low-resolution models and physical arguments⁹ (up to a metre by 2100 and around one and a half by 2200) are implausible under current understanding of physical mechanisms and potential triggers.