environmental crisis – All Points of View

Category: environmental crisis

Africa/Global: Making Choices on Climate Future

worker | March 9, 2016 | 7:26 pm | Africa, Climate Change, environmental crisis, political struggle | Comments closed

AfricaFocus Bulletin
March 9, 2016 (160309)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

The choices for the future of the planet’s climate are ever more
stark in 2016. While the “incumbency” fossil-fuel system (as analyst
Jeremy Leggett terms it) remains powerful, the trends favoring a
more rapid transition to renewable energy are building much more
rapidly than almost anyone expected. Coal is clearly on the way out,
with the possible exception of South Africa, which continues to
invest in this outdated and deadly technology. And downward cost
trends in solar, wind, battery storage, and other renewable
technologies continue to accelerate both in developed and in
developing countries.

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/clim1603.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
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According to GTM Research, the U.S. solar market is set to grow a
staggering 119 percent this year, while new reports also forecast
rapid growth globally and in Africa for “pico-solar” solutions
reaching those without access to electricity, with major positive
impact on income, health, and the environment. Meanwhile, however,
most countries are also still pursuing an “all-of-the-above” energy
strategy which has not yet abandoned new investment in the most
damaging alternatives such as coal mining and fracking.

[See http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/sa1503.php on South Africa.
And on the United States, in the midst of unresolved policy debates
over energy policy, note the Washington Post editorial passionately
depending fracking against the critique by candidate Bernie Sanders
http://tinyurl.com/zst4oeo).

This AfricaFocus contains (1) excerpts from a report from the
Overseas Development Institute on the rapid advance of off-grid
solar markets in sub-Saharan Africa, (2) a press release from
GroundWork South Africa on the failure of environmental assessment
of a new proposed new coal plant, and (3) an overview by Jeremy
Leggett of global trends moving towards renewable energy and the
looming (if uncertain in timing) death spiral for the economic
viability not only of coal but also of oil and gas.

For an up-to-date global overview of off-grid solar market trends,
see the report by Lighting Global and Bloomberg New Energy Finance,
published March 3, 2016 http://www.lightingglobal.org – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/ja35yng

For the latest GreenTechMedia Research on the U.S. solar market,
released on March 9, see http://tinyurl.com/hhhmstb

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletin’s on climate change and the
environment, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-env.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Accelerating access to electricity in Africa with off-grid solar

Andrew Scott, Johanna Diecker, Kat Harrison, Charlie Miller, Ryan
Hogarth and Susie Wheeldon

January 2016

Overseas Development Institute http://www.odi.org – direct URL
http://tinyurl.com/h2oay8f

The reports from this study include an executive summary, excerpted
below, as well as case studies from 13 different African countries
(Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra
Leone, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.)

Introduction

Today, more than one person in five lives without access to
electricity; 48% are in Africa. Around 80% of those without access
to modern energy live in rural areas. Given the high cost and slow
pace of grid expansion to rural areas, decentralised options are
often the cheapest and fastest way to extend energy access (IEA,
2014). Solar PV systems are the cheapest source of electricity for
over one-third of Africa’s population – a figure that is rapidly
increasing with falling solar prices.

There is now a wide variety of technical options that can provide
off-grid solar electricity to individual households. These solutions
to the challenge of energy access range from pico-solar lanterns
(with a capacity of under 3 watts) to large solar home systems
(above 2kW capacity), which power several lights and electrical
appliances. New models of financing and distribution, as well as the
development of pico-solar lanterns, have been instrumental in
enabling low-income households to gain access to solar energy (SzabÃ³
et al. 2013). This report considers the full range of solar devices,
using terms such as â€˜solar households solutions’ or â€˜solar off-grid
options’, except where it specifically refers to solar lanterns or
larger solar home systems (SHS).

This report was prepared for the Department for International
Development in support of preparations for the Energy Africa access
campaign, which aims to accelerate access to electricity in sub-
Saharan Africa through solar household solutions. It presents
evidence of the impact of solar household systems, reviews the
market in the region and 13 selected countries (listed in Table 1
below), and identifies the key policy measures to enable accelerated
access to electricity through solar household solutions.

The impact of solar household solutions

Impact on household finances

Poor households tend to spend a higher fraction of their income on
energy, often for vastly inferior levels of energy services. Rural
families across Africa spend ~10% of household income for 4 hours of
light at night using kerosene, torches or candles. Families with a
solar light save over $60 a year, spending just 2% of their
household income on lighting (SolarAid, 2012-15). Lighting Africa
(2010) reported that replacing kerosene lamps with solar lights
could offer returns on investment of 15-45 times the cost of the
light. The Africa Progress Panel (2015) reported that halving the
cost of inefficient lighting sources would save $50 billion for
people living below $2.50 per day. It estimated that these monetary
saving would be sufficient to reduce poverty by 16-26 million
people.

Moreover, households with access to a solar product that charges a
mobile phone can save money on charging fees. Off-grid households in
Africa spend on average $0.66 a week charging mobile phones, and
travel 28 minutes one- way to the nearest charging station
(SolarAid, 2012-15).

Impact on quality of lighting

Beyond financial savings, solar users benefit from extra lighting
hours and better quality and more reliable lighting. A SolarAid
(2012-15) survey found after purchasing a pico-solar light,
households increased the amount of time that they light their home
from 3.8 to 5 hours per night.

Impact on income generation

Improved quality and quantity of lighting can create opportunities
for income-generating activities by increasing the time available
for productive work. A number of studies found the availability of
solar lighting after sunset increased the likelihood that
enterprises will generate additional income by extending their
working hours. Solar products that enable energy services beyond
lighting create further income generating opportunities. Mobile
phone charging businesses are particularly common. Solar- powered
pumps also offer an increasingly attractive option for small-scale
irrigation systems, but often with capital costs that are too high
for low-income households.

Impact on health

By replacing kerosene lanterns, solar systems can help reduce
household air pollution. The fine particulates emitted by kerosene-
using devices exceed WHO guidelines. They impair lung function and
increase infectious illness (including tuberculosis), asthma, and
cancer risks. Poor lighting from kerosene lanterns is also
associated with compromised visual health (UNICEF, 2015).
Epidemiological evidence on the morbidity and mortality associated
with kerosene lighting is currently inconclusive.

Solar household systems can also keep families and communities safer
by replacing the use of flame-based lighting, thereby reducing
burns, accidents and fires. Poisoning often occurs as kerosene is
commonly sold in soda bottles and it can be mistaken for soda.
UNICEF (2015) reported that the primary cause of child poisoning in
developing countries is accidental kerosene ingestion, and burns are
identified as one of the leading causes of child injury. One third
of SolarAid (2014-15) customers interviewed in Uganda had
experienced fires, burns and/or poisoning from kerosene.

Beyond improving health through safe household lighting, larger
solar PV systems can improve the functioning of rural health
facilities by enabling better lighting, ICT for administration,
information, and aftercare services; laboratory equipment and
refrigeration for the storage of vaccines, blood and other medical
supplies. Over 30% of all health facilities in sub-Saharan African,
serving approximately 255 million people, lack access to electricity
(Practical Action, 2013).

Impact on education

There is clear evidence that better access to lighting provides
children with opportunities to increase the quality and time of
their study/homework. SolarAid (2012-15) found that school children
in Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia rated limited lighting as
their main barrier to learning and do homework. After obtaining a
solar light, children increased their study time on average from 1.7
to 3.2 hours each night. Other studies found similar improvements,
but to differing degrees. Larger solar PV systems can also provide
rural schools with electricity. Practical Action (2013) estimated
that 65% of primary schools in sub-Saharan Africa, representing 90
million pupils, lack electricity.

Impact on the environment

Worldwide, kerosene lamps emit an estimated 270,000 tonnes of black
carbon per year, causing a climate warming equivalent of close to
240 million tonnes of CO 2 , a magnitude similar to the annual
emissions of Vietnam (Lam et al., 2012; WRI, 2015). Alstone et al.
(2015) estimated doing that, when black carbon is accounted, the
climate forcing from households using kerosene lighting is nearly 10
times as high as that of the typical grid-connected households in
Kenya. Harrison & Lam (2015) found that switching from kerosene to
solar can reduce annual household emissions by as much as 555kg CO 2
e.

An outcome of the growth in sales of solar household systems will be
the associated increase in electronic waste. Recycling and
electronic waste facilities are uncommon in Africa and there is a
low level of awareness of the risks, of battery disposal for
example. Some organisations have started recycling trials.

Impact on quality of life

SHSs can have significant positive impacts on quality of life. In
Bangladesh, 82% of SHS users agreed that their system had increased
their social status, stating that neighbours and relatives from
other villages visited their houses more often to enjoy the clean
lighting. Their SHS increased the amount of time that they engaged
in social activities (Urmee & Harries, 2011). In Africa, 85% of
pico- solar users said their solar light affected the activities
they were able to do at night (SolarAid, 2012-15).

Impact on communications and access to information

Solar household systems that offer more than just lighting can
significantly improve communications and access to information. In
Uganda, 80% of phone owners charged their phones using solar
systems, suggesting that access to SHS enables telecommunication in
non-electrified areas (Harsdorff et al., 2009). Access to reliable
and affordable charging for mobile phones can also facilitate access
to financial services such as mobile money; allowing rural and/or
unbanked populations to be served. In Bangladesh, 95% of SHS users
reported improved access to information through mobile phone, TV or
radio. Many agreed that by watching TV or listening to the radio
they had greater access to information and were more informed about
general news, health-related issues, weather and natural disasters
(Urmee & Harries, 2011).

Impact on livelihoods: through solar supply chain The development of
the solar market creates jobs and income-generation opportunities
throughout the supply chain. In Bangladesh, the Africa Progress
Panel (2015) found 114,000 jobs in solar panel assembly were created
in the last 10 years. Up to 15,000 new jobs have been created in
sub-Saharan Africa through the distribution of off-grid lighting
(UNEP, 2014).

The market for solar household solutions

The market for quality-certified solar products has grown rapidly
over the past five years, reaching almost 3.5 million units in 2014.
This market grew by 165% between 2011 and 2012, and by 204% between
2012 and 2013. The rate of increase fell to 27% between 2013 and
2014, and it may have declined in the first half of 2015.

Good market information about non-certified products is unavailable,
but Lighting Africa estimated that they had a 57% share of the total
market in 2012 (Lighting Africa, 2012). If non-certified products
are taken into account, the growth in the overall market may be
continuing.

Three countries – Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia – accounted for 78%
of the sales in 2014, reaching a market penetration of 15-20% of
off-grid households. These countries have a comparatively supportive
policy environment for solar household solutions. For the region as
a whole, market penetration is estimated to be around 3%.

The development of pay-as-you-go business models, which aim for high
customer density, and the growth trend of existing companies,
suggest that markets are likely to expand outward from their
existing location.

…

The main current trend is the emergence of the pay- as-you-go (PAYG)
model, under which ownership of the solar product is transferred to
the consumer after a limited payment period. The PAYG market is very
dynamic, with new approaches appearing quickly, companies changing
their approach, and others disappearing from the market. A recent
survey found that 60% of PAYG companies use mobile payments to
collect revenue (Lighting Global, 2015).

…

A simple model was therefore developed for the study, to understand
what it would take to achieve universal access to electricity under
three scenarios: Business as Usual, Sustainable Energy for All, and
Power for All. These scenarios assume universal access is achieved
by 2080, 2030 and 2025, respectively. The model under these
scenarios was applied to market in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole and
to the market in 13 selected countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya,
Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia,
Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

**************************************************

GroundWork And SDCEA Appeal Colenso Environmental Authorisation

groundWork (Friends of the South Africa)
South Durban Community Environmental Alliance

Media Advisory

March 3, 2016

http://www.groundwork.org.za – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/jsh7qrh

Durban & Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, 3 March 2016 – groundWork
and the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA),
represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights,Â Â on 1 March
2016 launched an appeal to the Minister of Environmental Affairs
against the environmental authorisation granted to Colenso Power
(Pty) Ltd for its proposed coal-fired power station near the town of
Colenso.

The entire Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process was
conducted within just a few months, in keeping with the severely-
restricted timeframes in the latest EIA Regulations. groundWork and
SDCEA argue that these timeframes fail to provide an adequate
opportunity to assess the significant negative impacts the power
station is set to have on people and their ability to live in a
clean, healthy environment, or for interested and affected parties
to participate meaningfully in the EIA process.

“The DEA has not applied its mind to this environmental
authorisation, but instead pushed through the authorisation without
adequately considering critical impacts that the power station will
have on water, air quality, human health and climate change”, said
Bobby Peek, Director of groundWork, which is based in
Pietermaritzburg.

The appeal states that the Chief Director (as the relevant
Department of Environmental Affairs’ (DEA) decision-maker) failed,
in granting the authorisation, to give adequate consideration to,
for example: The National Environmental Management Act (NEMA)
Principles, the NEMA s24O factors, the need for and desirability of
the station and whether the application for the authorisation
included an assessment of all the impacts, including cumulative
impacts, of the proposed coal-fired power station. This is so
because the environmental impact report (EIR) for the power station:

* neglects to provide information which is crucial for purposes of
adequately assessing the proposed station’s impacts – for example,
the report does not state where and how the power station will
obtain two-thirds of the coal it will need to operate;

* contains incorrect information (for example, estimations of the
power station’s greenhouse gas emissions and total water
requirements which are significantly below the true extent of these
emissions and the actual quantities of water required); and

* fails to assess adequately the impacts that the power station will
have on, for example, climate change, air quality, water, and human
health.

The appeal also emphasises the impact of the current drought in
KwaZulu Natal. The failure to give this any consideration in
assessing the water impacts that the power station will have –
particularly on the Thukela river, and the communities and other
users that already depend on it is another ground on which the
authorisation should be set aside.

The Chief Director cannot be said to have met the NEMA requirements
or considered the impacts of the proposed power station, in
circumstances where the EIR is incorrect and lacks fundamental
information and assessments. In addition, the conditions and
mitigation measures proposed in the authorisation are vague. They
lack the necessary detail and rigour to limit harm to the
environment and human health once the power station starts
operating.

By granting this appeal, the DEA is setting the standard for one of
the first Coal Baseload Independent Power Producers to use 198m3 of
water per day – a conservative amount given by the EIR – in a
country where one million people already do not have access to the
minimum quota of 25 litres of potable water per day. Colenso Power
is looking to the Tugela River Catchment to source its water,
despite the country being in the midst of a severe drought.

If the declaration of the Highveld Air Priority Area has shown us
anything, it is that coal-fired power stations have a severely
detrimental effect on the health and well-being of people living in
their vicinity. Yet, and despite groundWork calling upon it to do
so, Colenso Power neglected to conduct a health study as part of
their EIA.

According to Desmond D’sa, Coordinator of the SDCEA, “The model of
development which has rested on the myth of mining as a source of
wealth for all, is slowly crumbling in the public sphere. Mine
workers across the country are disgruntled with indecent conditions
and low wages for risky work. Those that live next to mines and
power stations, but are without employment, are realising that such
‘development’ has largely been made up of empty promises.”

Contacts

Bobby Peek
groundWork, Director
Tel (w): +27 (0) 33 342 5662
Tel (m): +27 (0) 82 464 1383
Email: bobby@groundwork.org.za

Desmond D’sa
Coordinator, South Durban Community Environmental Alliance
Tel (w): +27 (0) 31 461 1991
Tel (m): +27 (0) 83 982 6939
Email: desmond@sdceango.co.za

***********************************************************

State of The Transition, February: “Most fossil fuel companies face
a future in which they might not have the capital to expand even if
they still want to.”

Jeremy Leggett, March 1, 2016

http://www.jeremyleggett.net – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/zuykvoh

[Excerpts. For full article see link above.]

The top ten stories from the drama of the Paris Climate Summit in
December and its aftermath through to end February are, I think, as
follows, as things stand. Key policymakers are now serious about
climate risk. Civil society has awoken in critical mass. Regulators
are beginning to regulate climate risk. Disruption is moving faster
than most people think. Utilities are racing to escape a death
spiral. The shale boom is going bust. The oil and gas industry faces
the prospect of a death spiral too. Divestment from the energy
incumbency threatens to snowball. Investor engagement with the
incumbency, in concert with unfavourable economics, will soon
threaten most capital expenditure on fossil-fuel expansion. The
legal system is fast becoming a driver for the global energy
transition.

…

3. Regulators are beginning to regulate climate risk

Mark Carney and Michael Bloomberg were key players in Paris. Carney,
the Governor of the Bank of England and the Chairman of the
Financial Stability Board, is the man most responsible for the
stability of the global capital markets. He intends to ensure
investors are provided with the right information so that they can
respond to the risks of climate change, and the threat of stranded
assets, by switching capital from fossil fuels to clean energy.
Bloomberg agreed in Paris to Chair an elite committee of business
leaders, the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures,
that will make that happen. Behind closed doors, their deliberations
are already underway. Investors are waiting, sensitised to the need
for major change in the way the capital markets approach climate
change. This will be a vital drama to follow this year and next.
Expect significant diversion of capital away from fossil fuels as a
consequence.

4. Disruption is moving faster than most people think

Meanwhile, exciting news continues to flow for both renewables and
storage. Renewables accounted for almost two-thirds of new US
generating capacity in 2015, we learned in February: 3,500 times
more than coal. Almost 8 gigawatts of new wind was installed, and
more than 2 gigawatts of solar. Storage is heading for a
breakthrough year globally in 2016, industry analyses suggest.
Batteries lead the way, with an average price reduction of 35% in
2015.

…

6. The shale boom is going bust

We entered February with the low oil price accelerating the
mothballing of active oil and gas drilling rigs in the US shale
regions. The rig count is now down 70% from the peak in October
2014. Four of Americaâ€™s shale gas regions had become void of all
drilling. We left the month with junk-rated debt accumulated by oil
companies in excess of $250bn, and debt issuance to the oil industry
grinding to a halt. One estimate, by Morningstar, suggests that
globally oil has to reach $65 a barrel to cover the average cost of
supply. Brent crude in February averaged little above $30 and on two
days averaged below $30. The IEA warned in February that the global
glut is such that the oil price would stay low for some time.

…

7. The oil and gas industry faces the prospect of a death spiral too

Bankruptcy is not just a concern for shale drillers. The low oil
price has meant that some $400bn of expected investment has been
cancelled or delayed, to date. Morgan Stanley calculates that out of
more than 230 projects ready to go this year, only nine are now
realistic. And if you are not drilling for new oil and gas, and
depleting existing reserves, how do you grow and generate cash in
the future? Especially if, as we have seen, explosive growth of cars
that need no oil is assaulting your market.

…

8. Divestment from the energy incumbency threatens to snowball

Institutions with well over $3 trillion of funds under management
are now divested or pledged to do so, and the movement is growing.
If anyone felt inclined to suggest that this isnâ€™t a significant
threat to the oil industry, it became more difficult for them to do
so on February 25th, when Ali Al-Naimi, Saudi Arabiaâ€™s Minister of
Petroleum & Mineral Resources, exhorted his industry to combat
divestment. â€œWe must not ignore the misguided campaign to â€˜keep it
in the groundâ€™ and hope it will go awayâ€, he said.

…

9. Investor engagement with the incumbency, in concert with
unfavouable economics, will soon threaten most capital expenditure
on fossil-fuel expansion

[Even] Investors who donâ€™t divest give no free pass to oil and gas
companies. The lesson of coal is there for all to see, and many
investors have been badly burned by it. Share prices have collapsed
spectacularly. Banks including Goldman Sachs have concluded that the
coal industry is in structural decline. The bankruptcies to date
include Americaâ€™s second biggest miner, Arch Coal. Pressure is
inevitably extending to the oil and gas industry. ExecutivesÂ are
seeing previously unchallenged assertions and business models
interrogated as never before. Given everything summarised above, how
can this be expected to do anything but worsen in 2016?

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
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or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
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http://www.africafocus.org

Africa/Global: Beyond the Paris Climate Talks

worker | December 10, 2015 | 8:29 pm | Africa, Climate Change, environmental crisis, political struggle | Comments closed

AfricaFocus Bulletin
December 10, 2015 (151210)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

As the climate talks in Paris draw to a close this week, the
countries present are still far from full agreement. Among the
latest surprises was the announcement by the Marshall Islands and
St. Lucia of a “Coalition of High Ambition Countries,” spearheaded
by small island states which are the most at risk of being submerged
due to climate change. The coalitionÂ includes over 100 countries,
including the European Union countries and the United States, but
notable exceptions are the largest developing countries, such as
China, India, Brazil, and South Africa.

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Details of the latest negotiations are complex, the outcome still
highly uncertain, and positions within each of the many negotiation
alliances are themselves subject to change. The remaining stumbling
blocks as of today are summarized in this article in The Guardian,
which has been covering the talks extensively as part of its “Keep
it in the ground” campaign.

“The six key road blocks at the UN climate talks in Paris” The
Guardian, December 10, 2015 http://tinyurl.com/p2nakd8

What is agreed among virtually all observers and participants is
that the results of the conference will fall far short of that
needed to curb climate change short of even more catastrophic
results in the coming decades, added to the documented increase in
“extreme weather events” already making themselves felt.

The outcome will depend in part on the agreed words on paper in the
next few days, but even more on the practical effect of multiple
technical and political trends around the world, both positive and
negative.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains substantial excerpts from
articles on two particularly important issues beyond those in the
Paris text, namely the future of coal, and the threat to climate
action by governments coming from parallel and little noticed
negotiations in Geneva on the “Trade in Services Agreement” (TiSA).

There are also brief snippets from other relevant articles, on
agriculture, on critiques of the new OECD report estimating rich
country contributions to climate finance to date, and on rapid
advances predicted in renewable energy for both Africa and the
United States.

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on climate and the environment,
visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-env.php

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Year-end Break for AfricaFocus; Asking for your Support

With this issue AfricaFocus Bulletin begins a year-end break in
publication. Publication will resume in early to mid-January. As
usual, the AfricaFocus website and social media pages will continue
to be available.

This is also time for a reminder that while AfricaFocus is and will
remain free to you and other readers, it continues to depend on
support from those readers who decide to make a voluntary payment to
help support this work. If you are able to do so, and continue to
find this publication useful, please go to
http://www.africafocus.org/support.php to make a secure contribution
on-line or to download a form to mail in with your check or money
order. Although this contribution is not tax-deductible, it may be
deductible as a business expense.

Best wishes to all for the holiday season and for the coming year.

William Minter, Editor, AfricaFocus Bulletin

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

“Thousands of Planned Coal Plants, if Built, Could Doom Efforts to
Contain Global Warming”

by Maureen Nandini Mitra, managing editor, Earth Island Journal

Alternet, December 4, 2015

http://tinyurl.com/q8gmjzo

I landed in Calcutta (Kolkata, if you are a stickler for official
names) on November 30, the day the world leaders, policy makers, and
environmental activists gathered in Paris to figure out how to curb
climate change. Officially, it’s wintertime in this city of my
birth, but the air on Monday night was anything but chilly. Instead,
it was uncomfortably muggy. The only sign of winter was the hazy air
— a regular year-end feature in this overcrowded, traffic-choked
metropolis in eastern India.

The unusually warm weather might be an anomaly, at least that’s what
the local weathermen say, but in my experience, winters here have
certainly become milder in recent years. (While winter is receding
here, the waters are rising. Calcutta is among coastal cities across
the world most vulnerable to increased flooding due to climate
change.)

Meanwhile farther south by the tip of the Indian peninsula, another
coastal city, Chennai, has been flooded for two months due to
torrential rains that have submerged homes and disrupted normal
life. The Indian Army has been deployed there to rescue people
stranded in their homes. The rains have broken a 100-year-old record
with one day’s rainfall covering an entire month’s average in a city
that’s more used to blazing heat than damp days.

When I spoke with a journalist friend living there last morning
(it’s past 3 a.m. Thursday morning here as I write this), she was
stuck in her second floor apartment with her invalid mother and
little girl with no power. Her cellphone, the only way she can
connect with the outside world, had barely any charge left. The
first floor of her building was completely inundated and she feared
the waters would soon rise further. “Even if the rescue boats come,
I can’t leave because they most likely won’t be able to evacuate my
mother,” she told me, before I hung up, not wanting to waste her
cellphone charge needlessly. I haven’t heard from her since.

This is it: the real, harsh, personal face of climate change. Given
such stark news, it was doubly depressing to read a new reportÂ by
Climate Action Tracker that shows that thousands of new coal plants
being planned in countries across the world, including India, could
doom efforts to contain global warming.

If all the 2,440 coal plants in the pipeline were to be built, by
2030, emissions from coal power would be 400 percent higher than
what is consistent with a 2degC pathway, says the “Coal Gap” report,
which was released in Paris on Tuesday. Using data from Earth Island
Institute’s CoalSwarm project’s updated Global Coal Plant Tracker,
the researchers calculated the effect of coal-fired power on global
emissions and concluded that even with no new construction, in 2030,
emissions from coal-fired power generation would still be more than
150 percent higher than what is consistent with holding warming
below 2degC.

The researchers based their assessment on planned new coal plants
both globally, and in the eight countries that each plan to build
more than 5GW of coal power capacity: China, India, Indonesia,
Japan, South Africa, South Korea, the Philippines, Turkey — plus
the EU28. In emerging economies, like India, the plants are being
planned in hopes of meeting rapidly increasing electricity demand,
while in the EU28, new coal plants will mainly replace existing
capacity.

Of course, the biggest offender here is China, which has 722 planned
plants that would emit 2.2 gigatons of carbon emissions a year. But
India isn’t lagging too far behind. The report notes that the large
amounts of new coal capacity planned in India and Turkey “could have
a relatively significant impact.”

“In India, stopping new coal fired power plants to be built could
mitigate 0.7 GtCO [gigatons of carbon emissions], provided low
carbon technologies are implemented,” it adds.

The researchers say, ideally, plans for these plants should be
canceled, but I sincerely doubt that will happen. At least not here
in India, where coal companies have deep ties with the political
class, and where the environment minister (who’s currently in Paris)
gives that same old line about the floods in Chennai being a
“natural calamity” that “can’t be directly linked to climate
change.”

*******************************************************************

The Coal Gap: planned coal-fired power plants inconsistent with
2degC and threaten achievement of INDCs

Climate Action Tracker, Dec. 1, 2015

http://tinyurl.com/h7b7jfp

Summary

* Holding temperature increase below 2degC, or below 1.5degC by
2100, requires a rapid decarbonisation of the global power sector.
IPCC AR5 scenarios indicate that this sector needs to reach zero
carbon emissions globally around 2050, 35 years hence. This means
phasing out emissions from coal-fired power by 2050.

* Even with no new construction, emissions from coal-fired power
generation in 2030 would still be 150% higher than what is
consistent with scenarios limiting warming to below 2degC above pre-
industrial levels (middle of the range). If the planned new coal
capacity – estimated by the Global Coal Plant Tracker – were to be
built, it would exceed the required levels by 400%.

* The planned new coal plants alone (globally, 2440 plants,
totalling 1428 GW) could emit approximately 6.5 GtCO2 , 16 – 18% of
the total allowed emissions in 2030 (under a 2degC-compatible
scenario). Including existing capacity with a technical lifetime
beyond 2030, total annual emissions from coal-fired power generation
could reach 12 GtCO2 in 2030.

* The CAT has assessed the impact of planned new coal plants both
globally, and in the eight countries that each plan to build more
than 5GW of coal power capacity: China, India, Indonesia, Japan,
South Africa, South Korea, the Philippines, Turkey – plus the EU28.
[The USA only plans to expand coal capacity by 3.5 GW.]

* Of these nine countries (incl. EU28) all have a CAT-rated INDC of
“inadequate” or “medium” (i.e. not sufficient to keep warming below
2degC), and have “current policy pathways” that are even less
ambitious. Their combined planned new coal capacity (2011 new coal
plants, totalling 1210 GW) could put them in an even worse
situation, adding emissions of around 1.5 GtCO2 to the CAT’s
projected currently policy levels.

* In seven of the nine studied countries – China, EU28, India,
Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Turkey – planned coal plants
threatens the achievement of the already only medium or inadequate
INDCs.

* The estimated emissions impact of planned plants that have been
announced and pre- permitted – i.e. not under construction or
permitted – would be 3.5GtCO2. Cancelling these plants could lead to
emissions reductions of 2GtCO 2 below current policy levels,
bringing countries closer to their proposed INDC levels.

[more at http://tinyurl.com/h7b7jfp]

*****************************************

Climate Deception: Non-binding “Targets” for Climate, but Binding
Rules on Trade in Services by Deborah James

Huffington Post, December 4, 2015

http://tinyurl.com/h6femp2

[Also note that the global Our World Is Not for Sale (OWINFS)
network works with PSI against the proposed TiSA. For more
information, visit http://ourworldisnotforsale.org/en/themes/3085]

The whole world is watching as world leaders from nearly every
country across the globe meet in Paris this week to set carbon
emission reductions targets to address global climate change.

Unfortunately representatives of 50 of the same governments are also
meeting this week in Geneva to negotiate binding rules that will
seriously constrain countries’ ability to meet those targets.

The 15th round of talks to create a “Trade in Services Agreement,”
or TiSA, are occurring once again in Geneva. Members of the TiSA
currently include Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica,
Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mauritius, Mexico,
New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, South Korea,
Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, the U.S., and the 28 member states of
the European Union. How come everyone knows about the Paris talks,
but not those in Geneva? Because the Geneva talks are convened in
secret – precisely because the negotiators don’t want the public to
know what they’re up to.

The TiSA is modeled on the General Agreement on Trade in Services
(GATS) of the WTO, which Naomi Klein has documented in her book,
This Changes Everything, has been used extensively against
environmental policies. Yet the point of the TiSA is to go further
than the GATS because corporations see the existing rules as not
“ambitious enough.” The financial services, logistics and
technological corporations, largely in the United States and also
the EU, are attempting to expand the WTO’s GATS to develop a set of
deregulation and privatization rules that constrain public oversight
of how services operate domestically and globally, setting aside
environmental, labor, and development issues in favor of
transnational corporate rights to operate and profit.

Fortunately, Wikileaks has come again to the rescue. Today they are
publishing analysis and secret, leaked proposals that would create
far-reaching rules that give corporations rights to access markets
and limit public oversight of environmental and energy services and
road transportation in TiSA member countries.

The analysis of a proposal for an “Energy Related Services (ERS)”
annex of the TiSA would give “rights” to foreign energy corporations
in domestic markets. Far from mandating reductions in carbon
emissions or promoting access for poor countries to clean
technologies, the proposed TiSA annex would actually limit the
ability of governments (on national, regional, or local levels) to
set policies that differentiate between polluting and carbon-based
energy sources, such as oil and coal, from clean and renewable
energy sources such as wind and solar. This is according to the
“principle of technological neutrality,” revealed in the analysis of
the proposed chapter by Victor Menotti published by the Public
Services International (PSI) global union federation today.

Since reducing the dependence on fossil fuels is the basis of much
of today’s climate policy, it is hard to imagine how governments
could achieve the reductions in fossil fuel usage required by the
targets if they are not able to differentiate among energy sources.

Developing countries have demanded that principles of common but
differentiated responsibility become enshrined in any new climate
deal; the TiSA would instead sidesteps developing country concerns
raised at the WTO, and fails to include the (weak) flexibilities for
developing countries included in the WTO’s GATS.

In fact, a main point of the TiSA seems to be to “shift political
power over energy and climate policies from people using their
governments for shaping fair and sustainable economies to global
corporations using TiSA for restricting governments from regulating
energy markets, companies, and industry infrastructure,” according
to Menotti. This includes ensuring domestic economic benefits from
natural resource extraction, a key strategy for poverty reduction in
many developing countries.

…

Both the TPP and the proposed TiSA would restrict governments’
ability to use public procurement to promote “green purchasing,”
through the chapter disciplining government procurement, which in
the TiSA is cross-referenced to environmental and energy services
chapters. According to the analysis by the Third World Network,
government purchasing “provides a major source of demand for
domestic service suppliers and reserving that for domestic companies
(or otherwise preferring them) can facilitate social and economic
development, provide employment and business opportunities for
marginalized or disadvantaged individuals and communities and act as
a ‘wealth redistribution’ tool.” The leaked chapter on government
procurement in the TiSA would open up government purchases that are
subject to public tender, by all government agencies, in any amount.

Thus like the TPP, the TiSA constrains the ability of governments to
set policies that favor environmental job creation policies
advocated for by Trade Unions for Energy Democracy and the call for
a Just Transition developed by the International Trade Union
Confederation (ITUC) and endorsed by We Mean Business, The B Team
and seven major civil society networks including CIDSE (the
international alliance of Catholic development agencies), Friends of
the Earth International, ActionAid International, Greenpeace
International, Christian Aid, WWF and Oxfam International.

[For more, read full article at more at http://tinyurl.com/h6femp2]

*****************************************************

Other recent articles of interest:

“Fact Sheet: President Obama to Announce Historic Carbon Pollution
Standards for Power Plants,” White House, August 3, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/nzjl5qh

Washington Post, August 2, 2015 – summary preview of Obama Clean
Power Plan, including limits on coal emissions
http://tinyurl.com/nmggmuw

Munyaradzi Makoni, “One Tune, Different Hymns â€“ Tackling Climate
Change in South Africa,” Inter Press Service, August 2, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/o8oxt2a

“Can technology free developing countries from light poverty?,” The
Guardian, July 30, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/oj3ybw7

Kofi Annan on CNN: “Africa does little to pollute our world, but
will pay the highest price,” Augusst 3, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/ng3h8bj

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Announcement

AfricaFocus Bulletin publication break. Publication will resume in
early September. Website, Facebook page (
http://www.facebook.com/AfricaFocus), and other social media will
continue to be updated occasionally during the break.

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

AfricaFocus Bulletin: Climate Change and the Environment

For updated page visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-env.php.

Talking Points

* Global warming and environmental damage from the fossil-fuel
industry already affect all of us, although responsibility lies
primarily with the rich industrialized countries and the newly
industrializing powers. Africa is the most vulnerable continent, but
extreme weather and sea-level rise have hit New Orleans and New
Jersey as well as Lagos.

* When industries make decisions based on short-term profits,
encouraged by government subsidies to established industries, they
systematically discount damages from “externalities.” Visible
results include the devastation of oil-producing areas in the Niger
Delta and of coal-producing areas, whether in South Africa or West
Virginia. The longer-term consequences in rising temperatures and
more extreme weather will be even more devastating.

* Action to combat climate change depends in part on decisions made
in international conferences, where the primary obstacles to action
are the rich countries and the newly industrializing powers. But
efforts at many other levels are also of decisive importance.
Fossil-fuel divestment campaigns, as they grow and multiply, can
affect investment choices. So can technological innovation. Notably,
clean energy can already be more cost-effective than large-scale
fossil fuel plants in supplying distributed energy access to Africa.

Bulletins on climate change and the environment

August 2014 – July 2015

July 6, 2015Â Africa/Global: People’s Test on Climate
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1507.php

With less than six months before this year’s UN Climate Change
conference in Paris, it is clear that commitments by governments to
action on climate change will fall short of that necessary to keep
global warming under the internationally agreed target of 2 degrees
Celsius, despite recent new pledges by the United States, Brazil,
and China (http://tinyurl.com/qhtfdk9; http://tinyurl.com/q8g3srl).
But, beyond national governments, there are signs of growing
momentum for more rapid “transformational” action. Particularly
notable is the recognition that such action must simultaneously
address economic inequality and development as well as the natural
environment.

May 18, 2015Â Africa/Global: Decarbonizing Development?
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/wb1505.php

Decarbonizing Development, a new report from the World Bank, lays
out a target of “zero carbon future” by the end of the century. The
target year goal is the most conservative of the options laid out
for negotiations in the climate summit in Paris in December. Such a
long transition can rightly be criticized by climate activists and
scientists as falling far short, as can the Bank’s own record of
continued support for fossil fuels implicitly faulted in this
report.

May 5, 2015Â Africa/Global: Renewables Gaining Ground
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/ren1505.php

“A key feature of 2014 was the continuing spread of renewable energy
to new markets. Investment in developing countries, at $131.3
billion, was up 36% on the previous year and came the closest ever
to overhauling the total for developed economies, at $138.9 billion,
up just 3% on the year. Indonesia, Chile, Mexico, Kenya, South
Africa and Turkey were all in the billion-dollar-plus club in 2014
in terms of investment in renewables.” – UNEP / Bloomberg New Energy
Finance

March 30, 2015Â South Africa: Energy Futures Contested
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/sa1503.php

The energy crisis in South Africa, with regular “load-shedding” due
to shortages of power from the monopoly utility Eskom, is now at the
top of the political agenda, featuring in President Jacob Zuma’s
State of the Nation Address in February and in ongoing disputes
about who is responsible and when the situation can be fixed. The
long-term strategy to exit the crisis and begin a transition to a
sustainable energy system is also marked by strong disagreements
between utility and government officials and their critics.

March 10, 2015Â Africa/Global: Falling Short on Climate Finance
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1503.php

Africa, the continent with warming deviating most rapidly from
“normal” conditions, could see climate change adaptation costs rise
to US$50 billion per year by 2050, even assuming international
efforts keep global warming below 2 degrees C this century,
according to a new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
report.

March 3, 2015Â East Africa: Water, Wind, and Lake Turkana
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/turk1503.php

Lake Turkana, in the far northwest of Kenya and extending over the
border into Ethiopia, is the world’s largest desert lake, in a
region that is central to archaeological investigation into the
origin of humanity. It is now also central to two different projects
for expanding renewable energy due to come on-line in the next three
years, one based on hydropower and the other on wind. While both
will significantly expand the input to the East African power grid,
critics charge that expansion of hydropower on Ethiopia’s Omo River
also poses serious threats to the livelihood of local people both
around Lake Turkana and upstream along the Omo River.

February 11, 2015Â Africa/Global: Archbishop Tutu on Fossil-Fuel
Divestment http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1502.php

“The destruction of the earth’s environment is the human rights
challenge of our time. … The most devastating effects are visited
on the poor, those with no involvement in creating the problem. A
deep injustice. Just as we argued in the 1980s that those who
conducted business with apartheid South Africa were aiding and
abetting an immoral system, today we say nobody should profit from
the rising temperatures, seas and human suffering caused by the
burning of fossil fuels.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu

December 15, 2014Â Africa/Global: Postponing Climate Decisions
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/clim1412.php

“It was not hard for me to make the connection between the tragedy
in Ferguson, Missouri, and the catalyst for my work to stop the
climate crisis. … In the wake of the climate disaster that was
Hurricane Katrina almost ten years ago, I saw the same images of
police, pointing war-zone weapons at unarmed black people with their
hands in the air. … When crisis hits, the underlying racism in our
society comes to the surface in very clear ways.” – Deirdre Smith,
350.org, August 20, 2014

November 11, 2014Â Africa/Global: Fossil-Fuel Divestment Growing
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/cc1411b.php

The latest international scientific statement on the disastrous and
potentially irreversible damage from climate change is unambiguous,
as is the imperative for drastic action to curb greenhouse gas
emissions. But political obstacles to moving from rhetoric to action
are virtually unchanged, despite massive demonstrations coinciding
with the UN climate summit in late September. The dispersed fossil-
fuel divestment movement, however, although still too small to curb
the industry, is growing rapidly.

November 11, 2014Â Africa/Global: Climate Change Summary Report
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/cc1411a.php

“The world’s top scientists and governments have issued their
bluntest plea yet to the world: Slash carbon pollution now (at a
very low cost) or risk ‘severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts
for people and ecosystems.’ Scientists have ‘high confidence’ these
devastating impacts occur ‘even with adaptation’ — if we keep doing
little or nothing.” – Joe Romm, Editor, Climate Progress

September 22, 2014Â Africa: Climate Action & Economic Growth
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/clim1409.php

It is still conventional wisdom to pit action to curb climate change
against economic growth. But the evidence is rapidly accumulating
that this is a false dilemma, buttressed by vested interests in the
fossil fuel industry and a simplistic concept of economic growth.
According to a report just released by the Global Commission on the
Economy and Climate, falling prices for renewable energy and careful
analysis of both costs and benefits of low-carbon vs. high-carbon
investment strategies point to a clear conclusion: saving the planet
and saving the economy go hand in hand.

August 18, 2014Â Africa: From Kerosene to Solar
http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/sol1408.php

The largest marketer of solar lamps in Africa, which recently passed
the one million mark in lamps sold, has set an ambitious target for
the industry. “Our mission is to eradicate the kerosene lamp from
Africa by the end of this decade,” proclaims Solar Aid. Although
achieving this goal would require the pico-solar market to emulate
mobile phone industry’s exponential growth path, it may not be as
utopian as it sounds. According to market research company Navigant
Research, “Off-grid solar lighting for base of the pyramid (BOP)
markets, the leading solar PV consumer product segment, is
transitioning from a humanitarian aspiration to big business.”

*****************************************************

USA/Africa: Obama Visit Roundup

worker | July 29, 2015 | 8:21 pm | Africa, environmental crisis, Health Care | Comments closed

AfricaFocus Bulletin
July 29, 2015 (150729)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

In analyzing high-profile presidential visits, it is difficult to
sort out symbolism from substance in the sheer volume of news
coverage and commentary. And despite the flurry of announcement of
“deals” at each stop, the main lines of policy are rarely altered
and often reflect continuity not only within one presidential
administration but also from one administration to another. The
content of private conversations of lower-level officials as well as
others involved in the visits may be just as significant as the
formal meetings of presidents. Even more significant may be the
issues not discussed because common assumptions go unquestioned on
both sides.

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/usaf1507.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/usaf1507.php

As regular readers know, AfricaFocus seeks to select and repost
particularly insightful news and commentary that readers might not
have seen elsewhere. With such a visible event, that is difficult.
The “news” is available to anyone who has internet access and is
paying attention. And almost all the commentary is predictable and
repetitive.

So this issue of AfricaFocus is different, and consists primarily of
links for readers to explore as they wish, to supplement what they
have already seen or read.

I have included (1) links to the speeches that seemed to me most
significant, (2) suggestions for custom google searches that might
turn up a wide variety of other sources, (3) links to a few
commentaries, including audio from radio programs in which your
editor was included, and (4) links to previous AfricaFocus Bulletins
covering questions that were “off the radar screen” in the visit as
well as in media commentary.

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

President Obama’s Speeches

Among the speeches and other events made available by the White
House in video form or transcripts, these stand out, particularly
the first. Unfortunately neither the introduction by his sister in
Kenya nor the remarks by African Union Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini
Zuma were kept on-line by the White House, although they were
available in the live webcast.

President Obama’s Speech to Kenyan People, July 26, 2015
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_Kw9YnNXJk
Transcript: http://tinyurl.com/qbh23t9

President Obama’s Speech to African Union, July 28, 2015
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNife3N3X0Q
Transcript: http://allafrica.com/stories/201507281847.html

Custom Google Searches

Note: With the “site:” operator, one can limit a google search to a
single website or to all websites with the same country code, to get
a better idea of how an event or a topic is covered. Some examples
for President Obama’s trip include these, including the two
principal international organizations focusing on human rights
issues:

* Obama visit to Africa 2015
* Obama visit to Africa 2015 site:nytimes.com
* Obama visit to Africa 2015 site:amnesty.org
* Obama visit to Africa 2015 site:hrw.org
* Obama visit to Africa 2015 site:allafrica.com (includes many
articles from African press)
* Obama visit to Africa 2015 site:saharareporters.com
* Obama visit to Africa 2015 site:.keÂ (from websites in Kenya)
* Obama visit to Africa 2015 site:.et (from websites in Ethiopia)
search web not news since .et not well-represented in news)

Additional country codes can be found at
http://www.web-l.com/country-codes/

Several short articles I found worth noting:

Simon Allison, “Barack Obama’s convenient truths,” Daily Maverick,
July 27, 2015
Oped: http://tinyurl.com/o64s46p

Simon Allison, “Obama at the African Union,” Daily Maverick, July
28, 2015
News: http://tinyurl.com/oduwce4

Hassen Hussein, “What exactly is Obama’s Africa legacy?,” Al
Jazeera,
July 28, 2015
Opinion: http://tinyurl.com/ne2f28y

Paul Korin, “A visit of firsts, but Obama’s Africa policy mostly
symbolic,” Globe and Mail, July 28, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/pnj3sp6

Audio of radio interviews in which I participated:

KPFA Sunday Show, July 26, 2015, 1st hour, interview with William
Minter, Editor, AfricaFocus Bulletin
Audio: https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=210725

KPFA Upfront, July 27, 2015
Horace Campbell, Syracuse University and William Minter, Editor,
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Audio: https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=211164 (start at 34 minutes)

WPFW, July 29, 2015 1pm-2pm Eastern US time – Mwiza Munthali with
Nii Akuetteh and William Minter – will be live at
http://www.wpfwfm.org/radio/
and later archived at
http://www.wpfwfm.org/radio/programming/archived-shows

Aspects of Topics Avoided, with some links to previous AfricaFocus
Bulletins

* On Counter-Terrorism

With the exception of President Obama’s diplomatic critique of
Kenyan and Ethiopian use of the threat of terrorism as an excuse
human rights violations, there was little reference to other
critiques of the policies of USA, Kenya and Ethiopia.Â For
alternative views, see in particular the background history and
commentary on the USA, Kenya, and Ethiopian involvement in Somalia
at http://www.africafocus.org/country/somalia.php, particularly
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/gar1504.php,
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/som1502.php,
http://www.africafocus.org/docs11/som1108.php, and
http://www.africafocus.org/docs07/som0701a.php

* On Corruption & “Illicit Financial Flows”

While President Obama spoke eloquently about corruption in Africa,
and briefly mentioned “illicit financial flows” in response to a
remark by African Union Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, there
was clearly no recognition of the critical role played by
multilateral institutions in the United States and the international
financial system more generally in extracting capital from Africa.
For coverage of this, see, in particular, the recent
AfricaFocus Bulletin on “Stop the Bleeding”
(http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/iff1507.php) as well as previous
AfricaFocus Bulletins on related issues
(http://www.africafocus.org/intro-iff.php)

See also the July 27 article by Soren Ambrose of ActionAid
International, “Opinion: Developing Nations Set to Challenge Rich
Ahead of SDG [Sustainable Development Goals] Summit,”
http://tinyurl.com/nr7po7g

* On Economic Policy

Despite brief mentions of the need to address inequality and jobs,
the dominant assumption in President Obama’s speeches was the
“trickle-down” theory that all “trade and investment” will
eventually pay off for all, and that the primary engine of growth is
the private sector. And while there was much mention in the press of
the competition between China and the United States, there was scant
mention, if any, of alternate African and global perspectives on
sustainable development strategies deviating from the dominant U.S.
market fundamentalism.

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins including material on economic
growth and strategies, visit http://www.africafocus.org/econexp.php

* On Climate Change

Although there was much talk of “Power Africa,” the approach
paralleled the Obama administration’s domestic policy in its stance
toward fossil fuels and renewable energy, namely “all of the above.”
Despite brief references to off-the-grid and renewable energy, much
of the private investment to come under the “Power Africa” label is
likely to support traditional fossil fuels, particularly natural gas
power generation. And there were no new commitments to major
increases in global funding to support climate change mitigation.

For a wider discussion of these issues in previous AfricaFocus
Bulletins, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-env.php

* On Health

In spite of token references to AIDS and Ebola, the visit did not
focus major attention on health challenges, including the need for
adequate financing for major investments in public health

See http://www.africafocus.org/intro-health.php for AfricaFocus
talking points and previous Bulletins.

*****************************************************

Africa/Global: People’s Test on Climate

worker | July 6, 2015 | 8:09 pm | Africa, environmental crisis, political struggle | Comments closed

AfricaFocus Bulletin
July 6, 2015 (150706)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1507.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1507.php

This recognition is particularly relevant for Africa, where fossil-
fuel companies and much conventional wisdom have posed a false
dichotomy between development and the transition to renewable
energy, claiming that continued reliance on fossil fuels is
essential to promote economic development and address poverty. In
fact, the needed climate transition is imperative both for the sake
of the planet and for the sake of sustainable economic development
that benefits the majority of Africa’s population rather than only
foreign interests and local elites.

Such a broader perspective was featured in June, both in the widely
publicized encyclical by Pope Francis and in this year’s report from
the Africa Progress Panel headed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan, entitled “Power, Planet, and People” (
http://www.africaprogresspanel.org/). But it is also visible at many
other levels, includingÂ among multilateral agencies, civil society
groups, and many private-sector investors as well. And it is
reflected in practical terms in the rapid advances of renewable
energy on the ground, despite failures of governments and the
immense power of vested interests in fossil fuels and business as
usual.

Thus the Global Status Report on the status of renewable energies,
also released in June (http://www.ren21.net / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/p2uz9mk), noted an 8.5% increase in renewable
energy from 2013 to 2014 and, significantly, a “decoupling” of
positive economic growth (3%) from energy-related CO2 emissions,
which were unchanged in 2014 from 2013 levels.

Another key report released in June is the International Energy
Agency’s “World Energy Outlook Special Report 2015: Energy and
Climate Change” (http://www.iea.org/ – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/qcpm3sd). This report evaluates the country
pledges to date, finding that these will not ensure a peak in
energy-related CO2 emissions by 2030. In contrast, it proposes a
“bridging” strategy that can reach such a peak turning point by
2020.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains the “People’s Test on Climate”
statement by a wide range of international civil society groups,
including the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, as well as two
articles on (1) “off-grid” strategies for energy access and (2) the
rapid growth of windpower for the electric grid in South Africa,
where the existing coal-based strategy continues to demonstrate its
ineffectiveness to prevent energy shortages.

For more on the parallel “decline of coal,” see
https://storify.com/wminter/the-end-of-coal

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on climate change and the
environment, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-env.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

The People’s Test on Climate 2015

http://peoplestestonclimate.org/Â – Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/oq3woz2

Nothing less than a systemic transformation of our societies, our
economies, and our world will suffice to solve the climate crisis
and close the ever-increasing inequality gap.

After over 20 years of stunted and ineffective action to reduce
climate pollution by governments — particularly in wealthy
countries that have failed to meet their legal and moral
responsibilities — only urgent and transformative and systemic
change that can address the root causes of the crisis and deliver
what is needed to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees
Celsius, the limit beyond which climate impacts will become
potentially catastrophic.

The urgency to keep temperatures down is not just about the planet
and the environment. It is about people, and our capacity as
humanity to secure safe and dignified lives for all.

As social movements, environmental non-governmental organizations,
trade unions and other civil society organizations with deep roots
in communities around the world struggling to cope with the climate
crisis, we take hope from the fact that while the scale of the
challenge is enormous, people already have solutions and
alternatives that work at the scale we need. From decentralized
community-owned renewable energy for mitigation, poverty reduction
and sustainable development, to agro-ecological methods for
adaptation, there already exists a wealth of proven ideas and
experience from which to build a global transformation — and it is
booming.

People’s demands and solutions are based in our vision of the world
that recognizes the need to live in harmony with nature, and to
guarantee the fulfillment of human rights for all, including those
of Indigenous Peoples, women, youth and workers.

These people’s solutions upset “business as usual” because they
must, in order to lead us towards a more equitable, just and
sustainable world — but for this very reason, they face serious
barriers. This is why the demands of our Southern people’s
movements, which represent the world’s communities that are most
vulnerable to climate impacts yet have had no role in creating the
problem, are so critical if we want a better, more just, and
sustainable society. These demands include, but are not limited to:

* Sustainable energy transformation — redirecting finance from
dirty energy to clean, affordable, reliable and safe renewable
energy, supporting people’s solutions including decentralized
community renewable energy systems, banning new dirty energy
projects, ensuring that access to clean, affordable, reliable and
safe renewable energy is a public good, reducing energy consumption
particularly by wealthy elites, and ensuring that reducing poverty
and achieving justice is prioritized throughout the transformation;

* The right to food and water — ensuring people’s access to water
and to land for climate resilient food production, stopping land
grabs and the ongoing conversion of land from food to commodities
like biofuels that are falsely presented as solutions to the climate
crisis, and supporting sustainable agro-ecology and climate
resilient food production systems;

* Justice for impacted people — securing and building the
resilience of impacted people including reparations for the world’s
impoverished and marginalized people who have no role in causing
climate change, yet whose lives and livelihoods are endangered by
its effects, supporting a just transition for workers into the new
environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive economy, and
supporting people- and community-driven adaptation and
rehabilitation solutions.

Securing our vision in a just and equitable manner cannot be left to
governments’ voluntary “good will.” Our governments are too heavily
influenced by the entrenched interests whose power, profits and
lifestyles would be impacted by the transformation. The poorest,
most vulnerable and worst impacted are often excluded entirely from
decision-making processes; for any just outcome, space must be
created for inclusive people’s participation in decision-making and
in implementation of those decisions at all levels.

With all that said, history is full of examples of people’s power
overcoming the power of a few narrow interests.

This year will bring governments back to the climate negotiations,
in Paris, to scale up climate action in the immediate short term,
and to agree upon a new global climate agreement to come into place
post-2020. When measured against the people’s demands above, as well
as the imperatives of science, the Paris Summit looks like it will
be very far from what is needed by people or the planet. Instead, it
risks legitimizing the current unjust and unsustainable balance of
power in favor of elites, while only making minor tweaks around the
margins of the status quo.

Yet the balance of power can and will change, because people across
the world are prepared to fight to protect their homes, their right
to energy, their right to food, and their right to a decent job.
That power can be mobilized to come together and make clear demands
of the Paris Summit, to force it to be a signal that the real
transformation we need has arrived.

To meet that test, the Paris Summit must:

* Catalyze immediate, urgent and drastic emission reductions — in
line with what science and equity require, deliver urgent short-term
actions, building towards a long-term goal that is agreed in Paris,
that shift us away from dirty energy, marking the beginning of the
end of fossil fuels globally, and that keep the global temperature
goal in reach;

* Provide adequate support for transformation — ensure that the
resources needed, such as public finance and technology transfer,
are provided to support the transformation, especially in vulnerable
and poor countries;

* Deliver justice for impacted people — enhance the support to
adaptation in a new climate regime, ensure that there will be a
separate mechanism to provide reparations for any loss and damage
that goes beyond our ability to adapt, and make a firm commitment to
secure workers’ livelihoods and jobs through a Just Transition; and

* Focus on transformational action — ensure that renewable and
efficient solutions are emphasized rather than false solutions that
fail to produce the results and protection we need, such as carbon
markets in land and soil, dangerous geoengineering interventions,
and more.

Governments and the Paris Summit outcome will be judged on this
fundamental litmus test. But Paris will not only be about a long
series of negotiations under the UNFCCC. Paris will not only be
about what our governments achieve — or fail to achieve. Paris will
also be the moment that demonstrates that delivering concrete
actions for the global transformation will come from people and not
our politicians.

We see Paris as a beginning rather than an end — an opportunity to
start connecting people’s demands for justice, equality, food, jobs,
and rights, and strengthen the movement in a way that will force
governments to listen and act in the interests of their people and
not in the vested interests of elites. Paris will launch us into
2016 as a year of action — a year when people’s demands and
people’s solutions take center stage.

Climate change needs our urgent commitment and action, in global
solidarity. We are continuing to hold corporate and political elites
accountable for their actions on climate change. And our numbers
will grow as the climate movement of movements becomes more and more
united and linked beyond the COP in Paris. We will encourage more
and more citizens to support people’s solutions. We will continue
our struggles at local, national, regional and global levels to
ensure that it is people that spearhead the just transformation of
our society.

Adriano Campolina, Chief Executive, ActionAid International

Lidy Nacpil, Coordinator, Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and
Development (APMDD)

Maria Teresa Hosse, Facilitator, Bolivian Platform for Climate
Action

Bernd Nilles, Secretary General, CIDSE (network of Catholic
development agencies)

Dr Godwin Uyi Ojo, Executive Director, Environmental Rights Action/
Oil Watch

Jagoda Munic, Chair, Friends of the Earth International

Dr Kumi Naidoo, International Executive Director, Greenpeace
International

Sharan Burrow, General Secretary, International Trade Union
Confederation (ITUC)

Demba Dembele, President, LDC Watch (Least Developed Countries
Watch)

Carolina Amaya Tobar, Executive Director, Mesoamerican Campaign for
Climate Justice

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director, Oxfam International

Mithika Mwenda, Secretary General, Pan African Climate and
Environmental Justice Alliance (PACJA)

May Boeve, Executive Director, 350.org

******************************************************

Why Should Climate Philanthropy Care About Energy Access?

Justin Guay, Program Officer, Climate at Packard Foundation

Huffington Post, July 1, 2015

http://tinyurl.com/of4gm6a

Investing in clean energy access provides a disruptive opportunity
to revolutionize electricity systems and get on the right side of
the politics of development — philanthropy just hasn’t realized it
yet.

To be fair, philanthropy needs to step up its game on climate across
the board. Our investment is woeful — only 2 percent of all
philanthropic funds are devoted to transitioning to a clean energy
economy and staving off the worst impacts of climate. That’s why
some big name foundations are calling on their colleagues to step up
giving, and act on climate.

But it’s not just the sheer dollars that matter — it’s also how we
spend them. While we have a lot of work to do to be more strategic
one of our most glaring blindspots is energy access. To turn that
around someone needs to take the time to make the case that spending
scarce climate dollars on energy access will drive transformational
change. So let me give it a try.

Clean Energy Access Gets the Politics Right

For the more politically oriented amongst us let’s be overt – the
politics of climate at the global level are broken and they
contaminate everything. We need to proactively seek opportunities to
change those politics by aligning development and climate goals in
an explicit way. Supporting the entrepreneurs working to bring poor
rural communities their first energy services from clean energy
sources like solar home systems and mini-grids aligns renewable
energy with development. It means our solutions to climate are also
the solutions to poverty alleviation,not the obstacle it’s
historically been. With exciting new research from the World Bank
suggesting that distributed solar is also driving financial
inclusion we have the opportunity to invest in an intervention that
has cascading development benefits. All of which reframes our issue
in a powerful way: the world’s most advanced technology — clean,
distributed smart grids — are the most appropriate for the world’s
poor. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi understands this, that’s
why he promised solar, not coal, for all by 2019.

Clean Energy Access Is Disruptive

In the 21st century where mobile phones are ubiquituous no rural
villager demands, or expects, land line telephones. What’s more,
those villagers will increasingly demand access to more
sophisticated communications services like the internet via their
mobile devices. But they struggle to keep their phones charged
thanks to a lack of power which is causing Telecom companies and
their counterparts in the tech industry from Silicon Valley, giants
like Facebook and Google, to lead the drive to electrify the poor.
That constituency realizes the only way to quickly and cheaply power
those devices is not to wait for the centralized dumb grid — it’s
to quickly and nimbly deploy smart distributed generation. More
importantly, the companies leading this charge are doing it with a
potent mixture of mobile money financed distributed clean energy
solutions, super efficiency, and innovative pay-as-you-go business
models that deliver energy as a service. Ultimately, that creates a
clean distributed smart grid that serves the poor first, not last.
Meanwhile the rest of us deal with our 19th century dumb grids and
their entrenched dinosaurs who fend off the future by trying to tax
the sun while they fight for the right to continue to pollute our
air and water.

Clean Energy Access is Mitigation

You’ll notice that the direct mitigation piece of this puzzle comes
last. That’s because the politics and disruptive potential of these
interventions are the real selling point. But that’s not to say
there aren’t tons of C02 to be mitigated. Far from it. Take India
where 75 GW of Diesel gen sets are installed which form the
‘distributed reliability backbone’ to the notoriously unreliable
grid. That total is equivalent to half the country’s coal fleet
which is being added to at an incredible clip of 17 GW this year
alone. A consumption whose giant sucking sound evaporates the
country’s foreign reserves and decimates the rupee’s value.

But while diesel replacement is big, the far more interesting
opportunity lies in the super efficient appliances necessary to
wring services out of pico solar and their rebound effect for the
developed world. No, not that rebound effect — I’m talking about a
positive effect that makes super efficient TVs (7 watts in off grid
settings) the norm across the globe thanks to the sheer purchasing
power that 1.2 billion consumers wield. Just imagine the US congress
trying to justify appliance standards that are weaker than those in
Bangladesh and you get the sense of the disruptive impact super
efficiency could have on global appliance markets.

All said and done there is quite a case to be made for clean energy
access. But outside the admirable efforts of the Rockefeller
Foundation or the newly announced super efficient appliances work
supported by Climate Works this issue still largely remains under
the radar. It’s high time we seized this opportunity and asserted a
vision of the future that puts the needs of the poor first – by
building a clean energy future from the bottom up.

*****************************************************************

South Africa: Wind Energy No Longer a Minor Player in SA

By Adam Wakefield

News24Wire, July 3, 2015

http://allafrica.com/stories/201507031961.html

Wind energy is around half of all renewable energy currently
produced in South Africa. As we lurch from one day of load shedding
to the next, the sector is showing no sign of losing speed, rather
the opposite.

Johan van den Berg, CEO of the SA Wind Energy Association, told
News24 in an interview that 2011 was the year government formally
introduced it into the energy sector, with commercial wind farm
construction beginning in 2013.

Today, wind power contributed around 740 megawatts (MW) of
electricity into the grid, “as a proportion of about 45 000 MW of
all power installed in South Africa”.

The average capacity factor for the entire fleet – as wind does not
blow consistently – is currently over 70%.

“In terms of energy delivered, South Africa produces about 2.5% of
what Denmark produces as a proportion of their ultimate electricity
usage. So there’s a lot of space for us to still improve,” said Van
Den Berg.

South Africa is a very large landmass, which is a very positive
starting point. Mapped winds indicated that certain parts of the
republic experienced very good winds by international standards.

“Almost everybody has agreed we can build a wind sector in excess of
20 000 MW and then it depends. You can pick a number somewhat or way
above that,” he says.

“20 000 MW is a big windy industry and from there, anything above
that, we will see where it goes. That equates to maybe 7 000 towers
and turbines ultimately, considering that the towers are getting
stronger and more powerful all the time.”

U shape of wind

The mapped wind of interest to the industry showed a U shape from
the south, starting 350km to 400km north and somewhat west of Cape
Town, running down the South African coastline to almost the edge of
the Transkei.

Winds were also found inland, somewhat surprisingly Van Den Berg
said, in the central Karoo.

“It’s a surprisingly good wind area… Bloemfontein will not be your
best place. Pretoria, I think, has the lowest wind speed in South
Africa.”

The second phase of the South African Wind Energy Programme (Sawep),
an initiative with the UN Development Programme which paid for the
mapping, has recently been approved. The rest of the country would
now be mapped, with Van Den Berg expecting some positive surprises.

An advantage of wind power was its relatively short up-time compared
to fossil or nuclear power generation.

It could take three to four years to be ready to bid, with an
environmental impact assessment taking a year and a half within that
period. This has already taken place with many wind projects at the
execution stage.

Wind measures are also done on site, with wind mast set-ups placed
at the same height as the intended turbine for a period of one to
two years.

“An international expert then comes and guarantees you a specific
output if you use a specific machine with a specific blade, and you
know exactly what you are going to get,” he said.

A giant is built

From bidding, the next phase moved to what is referred to as
financial closure, where construction begins.

“That can maybe be eight to nine months and thereafter, if it’s a
small wind farm, you build it in 12 to 14 months.”

Very large wind farms were being built in South Africa, “extremely
large by international standards”.

“We are generally building 130, 140 MW – 60 large turbines – and
that normally takes about 18 months, which is still the blink of an
eye compared to fossil fuel or nuclear power plants, that take 10 to
15 years.”

The turbines themselves were very big, though only around 5% of land
at a site or farm is used by the end of construction, including
infrastructure and roads. The rest remains available for use as it
was before.

Each turbine is approximately four to six blade lengths apart, with
the rectangular foundation being around 24 square metres in size.
Once covered, the base of the turbine itself is around 2×2 metres.

“There’s an anecdote about a farmer who assured the developer that
he had his workers ready to guard against theft when the blades
came, not appreciating that the blade is 50m long, and the diameter
100m, sometimes 117m,” Van Den Berg said with a smile.

“The tower is normally about double the height of the blade, so the
tower can be from 80m to 120m. It’s a large piece of infrastructure,
with the nacelle weighing around 120 tonnes.”

Boosting local communities

A feature of the local wind energy industry is how wind power
producers plough back a small percentage of their profits into
surrounding local communities, speaking to the National Development
Plan’s developmental state and public/private partnership.

“The relationship between ourselves and Government’s IPP
(independent power producers’) office is an early successful example
of that,” Van Den Berg said.

“That’s actually starting to work. A lot of people in other
industries got this wrong, but I think we are mostly getting it
right.”

The need in deep rural communities was very strong, with the
prerogative being to try and develop those communities.

“I think the way in which the programme was structured, where you
have to invest around 2% of your turnover into those communities,
was a very far sighted move,” Van Den Berg said.

“I probably spend close to half my time on that aspect, to make sure
everybody is coordinated and pulling in the right direction.”

SAWEA and its partners were trying to see which examples were the
good ones to follow, and even internationally, when Van den Berg
went to conferences overseas, this is the aspect people were most
excited about.

“If you are an engineer, you love mechanical stuff, then building a
turbine is very interesting, but then the next one looks pretty much
the same and so on,” he said.

“In South Africa we’re building the same things that other people
are building in other countries, but we’re doing it in a very
different way and in a very different context and that part is
exciting.”

*****************************************************

Capitalism, Environmental Crisis, and Socialism

worker | March 31, 2015 | 7:59 pm | Analysis, Climate Change, environmental crisis, political struggle, socialism | Comments closed

Â – from Zoltan Zigedy is available at:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

A hundred years from now, humans may remember 2014 as the year that we first learned that we may have irreversibly destabilized the great ice sheet of West Antarctica, and thus set in motion more than 10 feet of sea-level rise.

Meanwhile, 2015 could be the year of the double whammy â€” when we learned the same about one gigantic glacier of East Antarctica, which could set in motion roughly the same amount all over again. Northern Hemisphere residents and Americans in particular should take note â€” when the bottom of the world loses vast amounts of ice, those of us living closer to its top get more sea level rise than the rest of the planet, thanks to the law of gravity… (Washington Post, March 16)

The latest findings on climate change reported by the Washington Post mark another step on the path toward environmental catastrophe. Apart from philistines, apocalyptists, and other celebrants of ignorance, people understand that the growing degradation of our planet promises pain in the short run and disaster beyond. When humans first emerged on the planet, the environment, the climate, and other features of the natural world presented seemingly insurmountable obstacles to survival. The pre-history and early history of humankind was a tenuous struggle to construct bulwarks against natural calumny and a desperate effort to exploit nature’s meager offerings.

Nearly two hundred thousand years after the appearance of homo sapiens, circumstances have turned full circle. Humanity has found the means to dominate nature (though far from in a humanitarian way), but with seemingly little regard for the sustainability of the human project. Today, the formerly vulnerable species threatens to render the earth inhospitable to itself, a kind of mindless suicide by the only species that genuinely claims to own a mind.

For those determined to avoid this suicidal path, locating the cause and finding solutions is an urgent task.

Is â€œProgressâ€ or â€œGrowthâ€ the Enemy?

It is fashionable in some quarters to locate the cause of the environmental crisis in the insatiable lust for â€œprogress,â€ a term as elusive as it is imprecise. Harking back to the sixties and the â€œcounter-cultureâ€ era, many envision a world where consumerism and the fetish for the new are banished in favor of a simpler life style and intellectual, spiritual, or artistic values. There is much to admire in a commitment to modest consumption and arrested acquisitiveness.

However admirable this may be as a personal choice, it is extremely short-sighted social policy. Certainly, the upper-middle classes of the developed countries could benefit the environment by exiting the insane competition for larger houses, more luxurious cars, and the latest techno-gizmo. Unquestionably, the mindless quest for more and better is neither admirable nor sustainable. But before we condemn progress or growth, we must recognize that more is at stake in rejecting progress or growth than thwarting rampant consumerism in the US and Europe or the vulgar excesses of the upper classes.

Apart from consumption madness, billions of the world’s population lack even the basics of sustainable life. They barely survive in the midst of poverty, disease, and inadequate shelter, food and water. Until the material means to rectify the sorry, inhuman plight of billions is available, progress and growth must be an imperative. To callously deny them a future out of scorn for hyper-consumerism is petty and, paradoxically, selfish. They cannot be made the scapegoat for Western privileged waste and excess. Those who so easily condemn progress or growth are shamefully blind to the inequities of class, race, and nationality.

Solutions

Prospective solutions come in many forms and many shades. Individual solutions are useful and defensible provided that they do no deny the disadvantaged the opportunity to achieve standards of living reasonably commensurate with the standards of the more privileged. For example, asking people without access to modern appliances to curtail usage of inefficient technologies is both irrational and unjust. Equality of sacrifice in the face of vast economic inequities cannot be the solution to environmental degradation. While recycling, re-use, and other personal conservation projects are necessary and meaningful, they are incapable of sufficiently slowing the global expansion and exhaustion of resources. Nor do individual, personal solutions offset the major sources of environmental destruction: corporations and governments.

Conventional policy solutions cluster around market-based and regulatory approaches to the environmental crisis.

Most environmental activists see the failure of either market-based or regulatory measures as a failure of political will. They believe that politicians and political movements have yet to recognize the dire consequences we face by ignoring the environmental crisis. While this may be true, it fails to recognize the acute limitations of market-based and regulatory solutions and the impossibility of their effectiveness in a global capitalist economy.

The political will is not absent because of ignorance, but because the political system is owned and nourished by the capitalists. Moreover, the global economy– overwhelmingly a capitalist economy– is fueled by profits and profits alone. And profits are sustained and expanded by turning everything material or immaterial into a commodity. As a commodity, nature’s resources hold no value other than what can be attached to the pursuit of profit.

It is the exploitation of human and natural resources– labor and nature’s bounty– that is the grist for profit’s mill. And capitalism puts profits ahead of nature as well as ahead of people. Both history and the logic of capitalist accumulation and expansion demonstrate the inevitability of waste and destruction. Only when environmental degradation impedes the process of accumulation and profit expansion will the capitalist system respond to the crisis; environmental scientists tell us that will be too late.

And that is precisely the point acknowledged by Naomi Klein in her recent book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Klein’s anti-capitalism, like so many versions associated with the social democratic, soft-left, has been somewhat fuzzy, vacillating between rejecting the neo-liberal incarnation of capitalism and something elusive, but more daring. But her current thinking is sharper, though still short of an endorsement of a coherent vision of socialism. She concedes: â€œBut because we have waited as long as we have, and we now need to cut our emissions as deeply as we need to, we now have a conflict not just with neoliberalism, but a conflict with capitalism because it challenges the growth imperative.â€ (quoted in Monthly Review, Notes from the Editors , March, 2015). For this, Klein has been criticized widely by her liberal readers still anchored in fealty to capitalism.

The editors of Monthly Review perceptively point out that â€œKleinâ€™s argument here is irrefutable. To be sure, in criticizing neoliberalism for removing the tools needed to address climate change she deftly avoids the issue of whether capital as a system could ever have seriously mitigated the problem.â€ (op. Cit.)

Capital cannot mitigate the problem.

The MR editors go on to persuasively argue:

Klein is realistic and radical enough to realize that her recognition of this necessity, together with her readiness to act on it, puts her and the entire left climate movement that she represents in conflict with capital as a systemâ€”and not just with its most virulent form of neoliberalism. It is, as she says, a â€œtwo stage argument,â€ and we are now in the second stage. There is no avoiding the fact that the logic of capital accumulation must give way if we are to have a reasonable chance of saving civilization and humanity. (op. Cit.)

For â€œthe entire left climate movementâ€ to move beyond individual solutions, market-based answers, regulation, rejection of neo-liberalism, and even capitalism, the movement must define and embrace another goal. What would it be?

Only a system that will replace the logic of profit-before-all with the broad interests of humanity can answer the question. Only a system that can supplant the anarchy of production and distribution with rational planning could count as an answer. Only a system that can substitute forward-looking public ownership for individual short-term self-interest will cope with the crisis. And only a system that erases the existing extreme inequalities associated with capitalism and imperialism can meet our need to bring social justice to the disadvantaged.

As reluctant as much of the left is to utter the word, the answer is quite simply: socialism.

The Unseen Elephant in the Room
Lost on most of the environmental movement, including the â€œleft climate movement,â€ is the role of imperialism in stoking the environmental crisis. According to Wikipedia:

The United States Department of Defense is one of the largest single consumers of energy in the world, responsible for 93% of all US government fuel consumption in 2007… In FY 2006, the DoD used almost 30,000 gigawatt hours (GWH) of electricity, at a cost of almost $2.2 billion. The DoD’s electricity use would supply enough electricity to power more than 2.6 million average American homes. In electricity consumption, if it were a country, the DoD would rank 58th in the world, using slightly less than Denmark and slightly more than Syria (CIA World Factbook, 2006). The Department of Defense uses 4,600,000,000 US gallons… of fuel annually, an average of 12,600,000 US gallons… of fuel per day.

Add to this total the electricity and fuel usage of the rest of NATO, Japan, Russia, The Peoples Republic of China as well as those belligerents constantly at war with imperialism and you have uncountable and socially unnecessary waste of natural resources as well as ecological destruction.

Count the hundreds of military bases– outposts for imperialism– that devour resources better employed in a war to protect the environment.

Add to this total the unceasing pollution, the destruction of natural and man-made structures, the spoilage of land and water, etc. that accompany the endless use of devastating weapons.

The full effects of militarism and imperial aggression stagger the imagination.

Pentagon estimates of the production and maintenance of one weapons system alone– the F-35– have been reduced to over three-quarters of a trillion dollars– an enormous unmentioned cost to the environment.

Unfortunately, far too many environmentalists are more cognizant of the environmental damage of littering than they are aware of the enormous threat to the environment of imperial design and endless war. Joining the anti-imperialist, anti-war movement, fighting for an end to militarism, is potentially a far more effective way to reverse the ecological wounds that threaten the planet than the entire bundle of liberal and social democratic panaceas that currently dominate the discussion in the environmental movement: Prius, yes, but Predator drones, no.

As the environmental movement matures, it must embrace the socialist option. It must stand resolutely against militarism and its threat to the environment. No other stance will deflect â€œcivilizationâ€ from its determined march toward self destruction. Authentic, militant environmentalism comes with partisanship for socialism and anti-imperialism.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com