Simon

This week the International Energy Agency (IEA) released their yearly World Energy Outlook report. The energy report contained a very urgent call for action on climate. The IEA report warned that if our energy infrastructure is not rapidly changed the world will head towards irreversible climate change in five years. At the same time the US department of energy released new figures showing a “monster increase” in greenhouse gas emissions. IEA predicts that over the next five years the world will build so many dirty factories, fossil-fuelled power stations and energy inefficient buildings that it will become impossible for us to stop global warming from rushing past safe climate levels. And so they warn that our last chance against dangerous climate change will be lost forever. Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said that "the door is closing." "I am very worried – if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum for safety. The door will be closed forever." Everything that produces greenhouse gas emissions, such as dirty coal plants and other fossil-fueled power stations, which are being constructed from now on, will continue to spew out carbon for decades to come. And this will lock the world on a path towards irreversible climate change with disastrous effects. The Guardian reports: “If the world is to stay below 2C of warming, which scientists regard as the limit of safety, then emissions must be held to no more than 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; the level is currently around 390ppm. But the world's existing infrastructure is already producing 80% of that "carbon budget", according to the IEA's analysis, published on Wednesday. This gives an ever-narrowing gap in which to reform the global economy on to a low-carbon footing. If current trends continue, and we go on building high-carbon energy generation, then by 2015 at least 90% of the available "carbon budget" will be swallowed up by our energy and industrial infrastructure. By 2017, there will be no room for manoeuvre at all – the whole of the carbon budget will be spoken for, according to the IEA's calculations.” A couple of days before the IEA “bombshell” the US department of energy released another gloomy report which showed that global carbon dioxide emissions rose with 6% in 2010, greatly exceeding the worst case scenario outlined by the IPCC. Al Jazeera English reports: “In 2007, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its last large report on global warming, it used different scenarios for carbon dioxide pollution, and said the rate of warming would be based on the rate of pollution. Tom Boden (director of the Energy Department's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee) said the latest figures put global emissions higher than the worst case projections from the climate panel. Those forecast global temperatures rising between 2.4 and 6.4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century with the best estimate at four degrees Celsius.” According to the report the world released around 564 million more tonnes of carbon emissions into the air during the last year compared to previous levels in 2009. The increase in emissions mainly comes from China and the USA which alone stood for more than half of the emissions in 2010. But more and more emissions come from developing countries. "We really need to get the developing world because if we don't, the problem is going to be running away from us," climate scientist Andrew Weaver from the University of Victoria said. "And the problem is pretty close from running away from us." But "the more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing," John Reilly, co-director of MIT's Joint Programme on the Science and Policy of Global Change, said. It’s now clearer than ever. We must start to aggressively change our high-carbon energy systems to more clean and renewable energy sources, scrap our massive fossil fuel subsidies and deploy a myriad of climate policies such as a carbon tax. We only have a few remaining years to make a difference until we must face certain and worldwide climate catastrophe. It looks grim, really grim to be honest. But we can’t give up just yet. Let’s put up a good fight.

Today a French court fined the largely state-owned energy giant EDF for €1,5 million for spying on Greenpeace campaigners. The French court found that EDF, which is hoping to build four nuclear reactors in the UK, had hired the security firm Kargus to spy on Greenpeace when they campaigned against new reactors in France in 2006. Besides the 1.5 million fine the court also sent two Kargus employees to jail and ordered EDF to pay €500,000 in damages to Greenpeace. Greenpeace UK's executive director, John Sauven, said in a statement that the energy giant should now come clean about other suspected spying cases across Europe. “The company should now give a full account of the spying operation it mounted against its critics. As one of the six companies with a monopoly over electricity supply in this country and a major sponsor of the Olympics, EDF has a duty to come clean”, Sauven said. The Guardian writes: “EDF and Greenpeace have fought for years over France's power production, more than three-quarters of it nuclear. According to confidential court testimony released by a French website, Mediapart, two years ago, EDF had organised surveillance not only of Greenpeace in France, but broadly across Europe since 2004. In 2006, EDF hired a detective agency, Kargus Consultants, run by a former member of France's secret services, to find out about Greenpeace France's intentions and its plan to block new nuclear plants in the UK. The agency hacked the computer of Yannick Jadot, Greenpeace's then campaigns director, taking 1,400 documents.” Justin McKeating writes that this verdict shows that the nuclear industry cannot be trusted. “The history of nuclear power is littered with tales of dirty tricks, propaganda and deceit. EDF’s espionage is merely the latest example in a long line”.

In this opinion piece, published on Al Jazeera English, Chip Ward connects the Occupy movement which protests against social and economic inequality with today’s ecological crisis. Ward argues that the assault on the middle class and the assault on the environment are two sides of the same coin. “Mother Nature is among the disenfranchised, exploited and struggling”, Ward writes. The whole text is definitely worth a read, so be sure to read it. Here are some key quotes: "The 99 per cent pay for wealth disparity with lost jobs, foreclosed homes, weakening pensions and slashed services, but Nature pays, too. In the world the one-percenters have created, the needs of whole ecosystems are as easy to disregard as, say, the need the young have for debt-free educations and meaningful jobs. […] Extreme disparity and deep inequality generate a double standard with profound consequences. If you are a CEO who skims millions of dollars off other people's labour, it's called a "bonus". If you are a flood victim who breaks into a sporting goods store to grab a lifejacket, it's called looting. If you lose your job and fall behind on your mortgage, you get evicted. If you are a banker-broker who designed flawed mortgages that caused a million people to lose their homes, you get a second-home vacation-mansion near a golf course. If you drag heavy fishnets across the ocean floor and pulverise an entire ecosystem, ending thousands of years of dynamic evolution and depriving future generations of a healthy ocean, it's called free enterprise. But if, like Tim DeChristopher, you disrupt an auction of public land to oil and gas companies, it's called a crime and you get two years in jail. […] The same bottom-line quarterly-report fixation on profitability that accepts oil spills as inevitable also accepts unemployment as inevitable. Tearing apart wildlife habitat to make a profit and doing the same at a workplace are just considered the price of doing business. Clearcutting a forest and clearcutting a labor force are two sides of the same coin. […] The fundamental contradiction of our time is this: We have built an all-encompassing economic engine that requires unending growth. A contraction of even a per cent or two is a crisis, and yet we are embedded in ecosystems that are reaching or have reached their limits. […] Like so much else these days, the crash, as it happens, will not be suffered in equal measure by all of us. The one percenters will be atop the hill, while the 99 per cent will be in the flood lands below swimming for their lives, clinging to debris or drowning. The Great Recession has previewed just how that will work. An unsustainable economy is inherently unfair and worse is to come. After all, the car is heading for the cliff's edge, the grandkids are in the backseat, and all we're arguing about is who can best put the pedal to the metal. Another good read on the Occupy movement and the ecological crisis is this piece by Ian Angus and Simon Butler on Grist. They have a little different angle where they focus on our capitalistic system and overpopulation. “The capitalist system and the power of the 1%, not population size, are the root causes of today's ecological crisis,” they write.