Climate Politics Occupation and privatization Budapest, 16 April 2007

1. Climate Politics Occupation and privatization Budapest, 16 April 2007

2. 3 stories

21. “In India, people see their land taken away and destroyed both for big and ‘sustainable’ developments, for large dams and small hydros (Uttaranchal), new carbon sinks (ITC, Andhra Pradesh), environment-friendly wind mills (Maharashra, Satara), and liquid and gaseous filth from the ‘clean and green’ companies poison their soils, rivers and air. Beyond boundaries of their everyday lives and knowledge, climate games go on with baselines, BAUs, additionality and CER vintages. The Himalayan glaciers meanwhile continue to melt, cloudbursts and flash floods wipe away whole villages, prolonged droughts and extremes of temperature create havoc with agriculture, and cyclones devastate fisherfolk villages. The real and perceptible danger of climate change is offset by the illusion of the most absurd and impossible market human civilization has ever seen.” Soumitra Ghosh, National Forum of Forest Peoples and Forest Workers [“articulation”]

22. We do not “consider [Tzankov Kamak] as suitable for the implementation of the Kyoto protocol, ever more since it might be a pilot project in that direction . . . . the Bulgarian energy situation offers a significant potential for profitable investment in energy efficiency which should become a priority for national and foreign investors, including Export Credit Agencies supporting them. One of the most important places for the protection of the priority protected riparian habitat types will be destroyed” Balkani Wildlife Society, CEIE, Za Zemiata

23. CEE Bankwatch: Only six of the 16 installations involved in a World Bank Prototype Carbon Fund Joint Implementation project to use small hydropower plants in the Czech Republic to produce carbon credits represented anything other than business as usual.

25. Quasi-Privatization of Existing Global Carbon Dump by the UK Proposed National Allocation under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, 2005

26. Windfall profits for European fossil fuel-intensive corporations ____________________ BP, Esso, Shell US$ millions/year RWE (Germany) $1 billion/year Big six UK generators $1.2 billion/year CEZ(Czech Rep.)$150 million/3 years ____________________

27. Czech Republic: In 2005, the electricity giant CEZ received one-third of the 97.6 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emission allowances issued to the country. (Only around 90 million tonnes of carbon dioxide were produced yearly in the country before 2005.)This will enable the company to make as much as US$187 million from trading in carbon credits between 2005 and 2007. After having made profits off carbon allowance sales in 2005 when prices were high, the company is looking to buy them back now that prices have dropped. As a result, ‘we’ve also launched more coal production,’ said Chief Executive Officer Martin Roman.

28. “ETS has done nothing to curb emissions . . . is a highly regressive tax falling mostly on poor people . . . Enhances the market power of generators. Have policy goals been achieved? Prices up, emissions up, profits up . . . so, not really.” Peter Atherton, Citigroup Global Markets, January 2007 “All generation-based utilities – winners. Coal and nuclear-based generators – biggest winners. Hedge funds and energy traders – even bigger winners. Losers . . . herm . . . Consumers!” Ibid.

29. Emissions trading “would make money for some very large corporations, but don’t believe for a minute that this charade would do much about global warming . . . old-fashioned rent-seeking . . . making money by gaming the regulatory process.” Wall Street Journal, 3 March “European Commissioner for Energy gives damning verdict . . . ‘A failure’ . . .” TVChannel 4 Evening News, London, lead story, 7 March The EU ETS “has not encouraged meaningful investment in carbon-reducing technologies.” Tony Ward, Ernst & Young, May 2006 “There is no reason to expect that countries will reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to comply with quotas that cannot be effectively monitored and enforced.” Daniel Cole, Indiana University

31. Carbon trading is typical of issues of globalization: neoliberal fixes, technofixes, privatization, etc. • Climate change and carbon trading will have concrete effects on everyone’s lives. • Yet both can be addressed only structurally. Because of its gravity and urgency, both climate change and the privatization connected with carbon trading demand a democratizing political movement.

32. Karl Polanyi, 1944: “The complete relinquishment of land and labor to the market mechanism would result in the demolition of society.”

41. ”Economic super­powers have been as successful today in their disproportionate occupation of the atmosphere with carbon emissions as they were in their military occupation of the terrestrial world in colonial times.” Andrew Simms, New Economics Foundation

42. This overuse and unequal use: • Has provided immense benefits to a few. • Threatens survival of all, but promises particular immediate suffering to the poor.

44. Two responses: Delay implementing alternatives to extraction; try to find new CO2 dumps instead. Overuse? Cut extraction. Entrench inequalities through Unequal use? privatization so big users can keep using most dump space. Find ways of using dump more equitably.

46. The first, commonsense type of climate action . . .

48. Organize around equal rights to carbon-cycling capacity • Acknowledge and discuss overuse/unequal use as a political problem that can’t be steered around • Start by asking what will work climatically rather than what corporations want • Organize means that directly address the problem: e.g., subsidy shifting, immediate public investment in structural change, antiwar, land rights, legal action, support for existing initiatives at community and other levels, fees and taxation, etc.

50. The other kind of climate action . . . . . . carbon trading