Investment deals emerging from China’s belt and road summit 25-27 April show continued support for controversial coal projects, despite leaders’ green rhetoric.
The official round-up of conference outcomes highlighted Chinese involvement in a recently opened coal mine and 660MW power plant in Thar desert, Pakistan; and Vietnam’s 1,200MW Nam Dinh coal power station.
Media reports and company announcements also flagged coal projects in Turkey, Cambodia and Indonesia, as compiled by Greenpeace campaigner Yan Wang. Most announcements signalled advancement on existing projects, rather than new deals.
Carbon footprint
President Xi Jinping told dignitaries, including more than 30 heads of state, on Friday that his flagship foreign policy “aims to promote green development”.
The remarks respond to rising concern about the carbon footprint of China’s coal power spree abroad, which risks blowing international climate goals.
Some 25 countries signed up to a “green development coalition” in Beijing, while 28 joined the “belt and road energy partnership”. There was little overlap between the two groups.
Pakistan was one of the few nations with a foot in both camps. Prime minister Imran Khan welcomed “substantial progress” on developing the country’s energy supplies and called for partnership to scale up his mass tree-planting policy.
Khan said: “I suggest we launch a joint project to plant 100 billion trees in the next two years, so that we can mitigate the effects of climate change for our coming generations.”
Investment principles
On coming to power in 2018, Khan’s climate chief Malik Amin Aslam warned that Chinese-backed coal projects spelled “potential disaster” for the environment, but said it was too late to pull out. He said that the government could only make the “best out of a bad situation” and enforce green standards.
The vast majority of Chinese investment in Pakistan continues to flow into energy: mostly coal, followed by hydroelectric, grid, solar and wind power installations.
Turkey’s leadership shunned this year’s summit, citing China’s treatment of its Uighur Muslim minority and “debt trap diplomacy” – accusing it of predatory lending to secure strategic advantage.
That did not stop Shanghai Electric Power signing a deal with Chinese banks earlier in April to build Hunutlu coal power station in southern Turkey. Financial partners include China Development Bank and Bank of China, who on Thursday signed up to voluntary green investment principles.
Health concerns
Environmentalists are fighting the proposal, which is among 13 plants planned for Iskenderun Bay. They warn it threatens two protected species of turtle and human health.
Funda Gacal of the Health and Environment Alliance said in a statement: “We are worried about the aggravation of disease and ill-health of the population with new coal, given that there was already a 50 percent increase in the number of deaths from respiratory diseases from 2009 to 2017 in Adana city.”
It was not all fossil fuel energy dealing at the summit. The Silk Road Fund invested in the DEWA 950MW concentrated solar power park in Dubai, while the Export-Import Bank of China signed a loan agreement for solar PV and hydroelectric projects with Argentina’s finance ministry.
Over 2013-18, Chinese power project loans were heavily weighted towards coal, according to analysis from NRDC. Lending to renewables increased sharply in 2018, but it is too early to say whether – and how fast – the switch towards wind, solar and hydro will continue.
This Author
Megan Darby is Climate Home News’ deputy editor. She previously wrote about UK energy and water industries for leading sector publication Utility Week. This story was first published on Climate Home.
The impacts of climate change caused by global warming have become graphically evident in the last 20 years.
Record high temperatures have been twice as frequent as record low temperatures, and 17 of the 18 warmest years in recorded history occurred in the last 19 years. The consequences are death, injuries, and catastrophic economic losses to tens of millions of people around the world.
News reports on the latest disasters show massive forest fires in California and unprecedented flooding in the Midwest. They don’t show less photogenic effects, like inevitably melting glaciers and declining marine fisheries, nor completely invisible consequential effects, like diverting public funds from building better schools and hospitals to replacing storm-damaged housing, roads and bridges.
Predicting danger
Worse, the destructive events we’ve seen are not a “new normal” – the damage will intensify as the years pass. The carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted during the twentieth century, combined with our much larger current emissions, will cumulate to increase the average global temperature year after year.
Why are we only now recognizing the predicted dangers?
Scientists theorized that increases in atmospheric CO2 could cause an unprecedented increase in the earth’s temperature as early as the 1850s. But the timing and practical impacts were an enigma.
By the 1970s, satellites and other scientific tools began providing real-world data that made some rough predictions possible.
In 1988, the United Nations created an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to build an international consensus on the threat.
Uncertain language
The record shows that the IPCC climate scientists insisted on too much certainty, understated the human and social consequences of climate change, and engaged in optimistic, perhaps magical thinking about the risks of irreversible disaster for civilization.
The First IPCC Report in 1990 was hardly an urgent call for action. It estimated the most likely global average temperature increase, compared to 1990, would be about 1o Celsius [1.8o Fahrenheit] by 2025 and about 3o C [5.4o F] by 2100.
Moreover, its summary stressed uncertainty about its conclusions: the warming “could be largely due to natural variability”, and “the unequivocal detection of the . . . effect from observations is not likely for a decade or more.”
“Great uncertainties remain with regard to the timing, magnitude and regional impacts…”
This language could easily be read as only suggesting more research.
Treading cautiously
The Fifth IPCC Report in 2014 contained much more concrete projected temperature increases. It anticipated a most likely average temperature increase of 4.0o C [7.2o F] by 2100.
But this report presented the likely effects in non-emotive terms: for example, it said “sea-level rise and storms could lead to significant movements of people”, instead of a more graphic, and accurate, statement like “millions of poor, uneducated farmers and fishermen will become refugees seeking new homes in more developed countries.”
The scientists involved still stressed the hopeful side of the probabilities. They didn’t point out that there is a 35 percent or 40 percent chance of much higher temperatures that could destroy civilization – less probable than the median temperature rise projection, but a risk of unacceptable catastrophe.
So why were the IPCC scientists still so cautious in 2014?
The scientists’ statistical concept of “confidence” is far more demanding than what most non-scientists consider sufficient. They were reluctant to recommend drastic, disruptive economic restructuring to end fossil-fuel emissions without being absolutely positive their predictions were correct. Only in 2019 did the three best climate models all confirm a greater than 99.9 percent likelihood that global warming is human-induced.
Reputation for objectivity
Added to this, the dominant scientific disciplines of IPCC members were climate science and meteorology –– not biology, ecology, economics, or social science.
These climate scientists focused on the most certain danger: rising sea levels over time. Possible societal effects were glossed over.
IPCC Report conclusions are inevitably watered down to obtain consensus (virtual unanimity) among all participating scientists. Some participants from oil-dependent countries seemed to lean toward protecting their economic interests.
Finally, scientists try to avoid “alarmist” talk about global warming consequences that would sound “unscientific” or “political” and taint their reputation for objectivity.
This reluctance, combined with the human tendency toward optimism, discourages them from saying “the end of civilization is coming.”
Destructive force
The Fifth IPCC Report also confirmed that the use of fossil fuels was dramatically expanding, not declining.
Meanwhile, biologists and social scientists had begun ringing alarm bells. They saw the impacts everywhere: falling agricultural yields, disappearing fisheries, coastal flooding, extreme storms, species extinctions, melting glaciers, and collapsing water supplies.
Most prominently, they identified the multi-year droughts in Somalia and Syria as the underlying cause of famines, civil and international violence, and massive migrations toward Europe.
Hurricane Sandy brought home the destructive force of storm surge for New York, and the enormous cost of either protecting the city or rebuilding it afterward.
The 2015 Paris Accords thus committed parties to limit global average temperature increase to a stable 2.0o C [3.6o F] by 2100, with an aspirational goal of 1.5o C [2.7o F].
Negative emissions
An IPCC Special Report this January explored pathways to the goal. It concluded that the 1.5o C target can probably be met if the world reduces net carbon emissions to zero by 2055 and there after achieves net negative emissions (that is, removes more atmospheric CO2than is emitted.)
What would that mean in practical terms?
Zero net emissions by 2055 means eliminating nearly all carbon emissions from energy production and transportation, and seriously reducing emissions from food production and buildings.
Over the next 36 years, most of the mines, oil wells, pipelines, and fossil-fueled electric plants would close. Transportation, including autos, railroads, trucks, ships, and airplanes, would be powered by electricity.
Yet utilities, oil companies, and airlines are still investing billions, with government subsidies, in fossil-fuel based infrastructure with over-50-year lifespans. Auto companies are resisting the switch to electric cars, which will force the end of their engine and transmission factories. Electrification of railroads, ships, and airplanes is rarely discussed because it currently seems so impractical.
Removing CO2
Achieving net negative emissions thereafter means physically removing enough CO2 from the atmosphere to offset both the remaining annual fossil fuel emissions and CO2 from all other sources – cows, rice fields, slash-and-burn agriculture, and melting permafrost. The technology to remove CO2 directly from the atmosphere cost-effectively only exists in the lab.
The IPCC Special Report crucially assumes immediate, substantial reductions in methane (natural gas) emissions.
Methane lasts only about 12 years in the atmosphere, yet its effect during that period is 80-100 times more potent than an equivalent amount of CO2. Its effects are thus far more immediate. Ominously, recent data show methane emissions increasing rapidly since 2007.
Finally, the IPCC Special Report still shows earth’s temperature probably exceeding 1.5°C for most of the period between 2030 and 2060, even if the world pursues the program and meets the 2100 target.
The focus on the 2100 goal downplays the irreversible damage to glaciers, fisheries, and other resources from these higher interim temperatures, strengthening immediate climate change effects.
Inhibiting action
Why are we still arguing about whether to take immediate action when we should have begun acting over a decade ago?
Several factors inhibit prompt action. Firstly, in the abstract, the media and the public have a hard time imagining that a few degrees of average temperature increase during their entire lives could be a significant threat to themselves or civilization. Only recently have the impacts become evident.
By extension, human instincts are not attuned to the long term, complex realities of compounding effects, ecosystem interdependence, finite natural resources, and population growth. We tend to rely on “muddling through” and remain optimistic that “things will be okay.”
Global warming is the ultimate “tragedy of the commons” – no individual or even national action is decisive alone. The current US Administration argument against strict auto emission standards is that emitting a little more won’t hurt and emitting even a lot less won’t help.
In addition, carbon emissions are essentially permanent, so each year’s emissions cumulate. Reversing that impact becomes more difficult and urgent with each passing decade. Even small carbon emissions will still contribute to the total warming potential of the atmosphere.
Time horizon
Most people’s time horizon is a lifespan. In 1990, the year 2100 was 110 years away – as far in the future as 1880 was in the past.
Now 2100 is only 80 years away – only as far in the future as 1940 is in the past. Living adults remember WW II; young children expect to see 2100.
The damage from global warming is becoming visible, but the world is still delaying the necessary transformations. Governments aren’t forcing change, and citizens aren’t demanding it.
The coming decade appears to be the last chance to avoid severe, irreversible climate change that will undermine society. The challenge is to shoulder the cost of transforming our economic systems now, in order to save civilization over the years and centuries ahead.
This Author
Sam Bleicher is an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He was a member and vice chair of the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board from 2014 to 2018. His novel on climate change, The Plot to Cool the Planet, draws on his experience as a senior official in the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Department of State.
As the son of an agricultural worker in NE Scotland in the 1970s and 80s I recall the amazing abundance and diversity of insects and other types of nature in agricultural areas.
We saw gigantic fish jumping for flies from clean, clear rivers; birds feeding mid-flight from mass migrations of flying insects; a hundred beautiful lacewings drawn to the glass of a well-lit bedroom window.
When I see the barren industrial zones that agricultural areas in the UK and other economically developed nations have now become, I am filled with sadness and anger. This decimation is treated with a shrug of the shoulders by farmers, politicians, the agri-industrialists that supply the weapons of destruction, and the general public alike.
Species richness
Intensive farming is destroying not useful insects such as the pollinators, as well as larger animals such as birds and mammals.
Insects are characterised by their huge abundance and diversity. In 1980s North America, insects occurred at around 100 kg per hectare: 15 times greater than the mass of humans, birds and non-human mammals in the same area combined.
Figures for species richness are equally impressive. Just over half the species on earth are insects and half of those are plant-eating insects. Vertebrates only make up a paltry 4 percent of species.
In their role as pollinators, decomposers, and natural regulators of pests, insects support our food chain and a healthy environment.
Insects feature at the bottom of almost all food webs. The larger feathered and furry animals cannot survive without them. Messing with insect abundance is the last thing humans should be doing, yet insect abundance right across the globe is dropping and it is dropping fast.
Global decline
Recent interest in insect decline followed a 2017 study showing that numbers of flying insects in Germany had dropped by an incredible 75 percent in the 27 years since 1990. An influential review on global insect decline and a flurry of mediainterest followed.
To my mind, what is interesting about these recent articles is the way they point the finger at intensive agriculture and pesticide use.
Entomologists (insect scientists) have a well-concealed but cosy relationship with agriculture and the agrochemical industry. If entomologists are speaking out you can bet they are really worried.
Agriculture impacts nature so profoundly by virtue of its scale. England, for example, is around 70 percent agricultural land with half planted in crops (arable) and the remainder pasture for feeding animals.
England is more or less all agricultural land. Natural habitat is restricted to patches here and there, so if nature declines across agricultural land it declines everywhere.
Increase in pesticides
Agriculture leads a three pronged attack on insects. The first line of attack is through crop spraying with ever more potent insecticides.
In the UK the crop area treated with pesticides and the number of applications per area has doubled since 1990. The potency of pesticides has also increased dramatically with the introduction of the neonicotinoids in the 1990s.
The number of honeybee lethal doses applied to the 4.6 million hectares of arable land in the UK has increased sixfold since 1990. These pesticides don’t just wipe out the pest insects; they kill almost all insects that happen to be living or resting in the crop.
Every year farmers kill pretty much every insect across just under half the land area of their nation.
Can we reasonably expect to have a healthy insect fauna in nations where this intensity of spraying is common place?
Herbicide spraying
The second line of attack is herbicide spraying. Again using the UK as an example, the area of arable land treated with the herbicide glyphosate (Roundup) has increased 9-fold since 1990 to a staggering 2.6 million hectares.
The surface of cereal fields and field margins used to be awash with a diversity of wild plants. Now there is nothing but sandy soil and crop and most field margins contain pretty much nothing but grass.
Recalling that almost half of all insects depend on wild plants for food, there is no way we can expect to have a healthy population of insects and the animals that eat them when almost half the land of the nation is treated in this way.
The last line of attack on insects by intensive agriculture is intensification of pasture. Traditionally grass pastures were managed with little chemical fertilisation, a low density of grazing animals, and long periods of rest between grazing.
They used to be an important habitat for plant and insect biodiversity. Now grass pasture is a high-throughput system for the production of meat and milk: they support nothing but grass and the large animals that graze on it.
Bearing in mind that grass pasture covers just under half of economically developed nations like England, this is a terrible blow to insects and nature in general.
Food security
All we, the public, have gotten in return for agriculture’s destruction of insects and nature is an increase in crop and meat yieldper area of land.
This was supposed to mean cheap food and food security but commonly it has led to a move away from healthy traditional diets to those higher in fattening animal products and sugar, with a increase in obesity an ill health.
In the UK candy and junk food are everywhere but the fruit and vegetables that we should be eating remain out of reach for as many as 4 million of the UK’s least well off. As for food security, the UK is a long way from self-sufficiency and only produces 60 percent of its own food with the rest imported.
International trade is considered to be more important than food security so any threat of altered trade relations like Brexit leads to food insecurity and panic buying.
And with the worldwide rise of powerful right wing zealots, who knows what disturbances to international trade and food security lie ahead?
Mobilising citizens
In the UK, the response of the ruling Conservative Party to the issues discussed in this article is a new Agriculture Bill. However, the bill barely mentions pesticide and herbicide spraying, suggesting that they will continue unabated, which makes a mockery of the whole thing.
The solution to overuse of pesticides and herbicides is simple. All crops have a threshold beyond which insect pest and weed damage results in significant economic losses. A small team of government scientists could easily produce such thresholds for UK crops and all the farmer would then need to do is check his/her crops regularly to see if the threshold has been crossed, when spraying would be allowed.
But as the current UK Government won’t even mention pesticides and herbicides in their Agriculture Bill, these solutions seems a distant prospect.
We need a mass mobilisation of citizens in defence of nature and against intensive farming in a way we are beginning to see in response to the problem ofglobal warming. But it is increasingly clear that most governments simply ignore mass peaceful protest.
Politicians only understand money and economics and only when activists begin to impact ‘the bottom line’ of nations will politicians sit up and take notice.
This Author
Colin Tosh is a lecturer in ecology, evolution and computational biology at Newcastle University. A longer version of this article is available on his blog.
Members of campaign group Extinction Rebellion said “the rebellion has to continue” after a “disappointing” meeting with Environment Secretary Michael Gove.
Five members of the group met with Mr Gove and ministers from other departments, including the Treasury, in Westminster to discuss demands for change.
They include declaring a national emergency on climate change, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025 and establishing a Citizens Assembly for people to make decisions and suggest policies. However, they said they were left frustrated with Mr Gove.
Demands
Member of the youth branch Felix Ottaway O’Mahony, 14, from Lambeth, south London, said: “This meeting has been very disappointing, we’ve set no concrete demands, he hasn’t accepted any of our demands, he’s avoided our demands as a whole, he isn’t going to declare a national emergency.
“However, something has to be said for the fact he has recognised there is an issue.”
He added: “He is going to meet us again in a month’s time, which is a step forward that we will now be regularly meeting with political members.
“However, the rebellion has to continue because our demands have not been met.”
Farhana Yamin, 54, a prominent climate change lawyer who glued herself to Shell’s London headquarters during a week of protests, said: “I definitely think he could have taken the initiative to say Defra will show leadership that was necessary for the nation to come together, I was expecting a little bit more.”
Biodiversity
Earlier in the day, another meeting took place, with Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell at Portcullis House, which resulted in Extinction Rebellion being asked to address the shadow cabinet.
The meeting, which lasted more than an hour, concluded with claims some progress had been made.
Former Green Party county councillor for Stroud Sarah Lunnon, 54, who attended the meeting, said: “They gave us a concrete commitment to actually go and talk, McDonnell will ask for Extinction Rebellion to address the shadow cabinet, the shadow environment committee and also the Treasury Committee.
“I think it’s really fair to say the Labour Party are listening to Extinction Rebellion, I think they’ve heard the voices of all those people who got arrested on the streets.”
However, the MP for Hayes and Harlington did not agree to change the date in the Labour Party manifesto, which plans to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, but would consider a new target of 2030.
This came after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announced that the party will force a House of Commons vote on whether to declare an environmental and climate emergency following mass protests in London.
This Author
Ted Hennessey is a reporter for the Press Association.
Members of campaign group Extinction Rebellion said “the rebellion has to continue” after a “disappointing” meeting with Environment Secretary Michael Gove.
Five members of the group met with Mr Gove and ministers from other departments, including the Treasury, in Westminster to discuss demands for change.
They include declaring a national emergency on climate change, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025 and establishing a Citizens Assembly for people to make decisions and suggest policies. However, they said they were left frustrated with Mr Gove.
Demands
Member of the youth branch Felix Ottaway O’Mahony, 14, from Lambeth, south London, said: “This meeting has been very disappointing, we’ve set no concrete demands, he hasn’t accepted any of our demands, he’s avoided our demands as a whole, he isn’t going to declare a national emergency.
“However, something has to be said for the fact he has recognised there is an issue.”
He added: “He is going to meet us again in a month’s time, which is a step forward that we will now be regularly meeting with political members.
“However, the rebellion has to continue because our demands have not been met.”
Farhana Yamin, 54, a prominent climate change lawyer who glued herself to Shell’s London headquarters during a week of protests, said: “I definitely think he could have taken the initiative to say Defra will show leadership that was necessary for the nation to come together, I was expecting a little bit more.”
Biodiversity
Earlier in the day, another meeting took place, with Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell at Portcullis House, which resulted in Extinction Rebellion being asked to address the shadow cabinet.
The meeting, which lasted more than an hour, concluded with claims some progress had been made.
Former Green Party county councillor for Stroud Sarah Lunnon, 54, who attended the meeting, said: “They gave us a concrete commitment to actually go and talk, McDonnell will ask for Extinction Rebellion to address the shadow cabinet, the shadow environment committee and also the Treasury Committee.
“I think it’s really fair to say the Labour Party are listening to Extinction Rebellion, I think they’ve heard the voices of all those people who got arrested on the streets.”
However, the MP for Hayes and Harlington did not agree to change the date in the Labour Party manifesto, which plans to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, but would consider a new target of 2030.
This came after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announced that the party will force a House of Commons vote on whether to declare an environmental and climate emergency following mass protests in London.
This Author
Ted Hennessey is a reporter for the Press Association.
Members of campaign group Extinction Rebellion said “the rebellion has to continue” after a “disappointing” meeting with Environment Secretary Michael Gove.
Five members of the group met with Mr Gove and ministers from other departments, including the Treasury, in Westminster to discuss demands for change.
They include declaring a national emergency on climate change, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025 and establishing a Citizens Assembly for people to make decisions and suggest policies. However, they said they were left frustrated with Mr Gove.
Demands
Member of the youth branch Felix Ottaway O’Mahony, 14, from Lambeth, south London, said: “This meeting has been very disappointing, we’ve set no concrete demands, he hasn’t accepted any of our demands, he’s avoided our demands as a whole, he isn’t going to declare a national emergency.
“However, something has to be said for the fact he has recognised there is an issue.”
He added: “He is going to meet us again in a month’s time, which is a step forward that we will now be regularly meeting with political members.
“However, the rebellion has to continue because our demands have not been met.”
Farhana Yamin, 54, a prominent climate change lawyer who glued herself to Shell’s London headquarters during a week of protests, said: “I definitely think he could have taken the initiative to say Defra will show leadership that was necessary for the nation to come together, I was expecting a little bit more.”
Biodiversity
Earlier in the day, another meeting took place, with Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell at Portcullis House, which resulted in Extinction Rebellion being asked to address the shadow cabinet.
The meeting, which lasted more than an hour, concluded with claims some progress had been made.
Former Green Party county councillor for Stroud Sarah Lunnon, 54, who attended the meeting, said: “They gave us a concrete commitment to actually go and talk, McDonnell will ask for Extinction Rebellion to address the shadow cabinet, the shadow environment committee and also the Treasury Committee.
“I think it’s really fair to say the Labour Party are listening to Extinction Rebellion, I think they’ve heard the voices of all those people who got arrested on the streets.”
However, the MP for Hayes and Harlington did not agree to change the date in the Labour Party manifesto, which plans to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, but would consider a new target of 2030.
This came after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announced that the party will force a House of Commons vote on whether to declare an environmental and climate emergency following mass protests in London.
This Author
Ted Hennessey is a reporter for the Press Association.
Members of campaign group Extinction Rebellion said “the rebellion has to continue” after a “disappointing” meeting with Environment Secretary Michael Gove.
Five members of the group met with Mr Gove and ministers from other departments, including the Treasury, in Westminster to discuss demands for change.
They include declaring a national emergency on climate change, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025 and establishing a Citizens Assembly for people to make decisions and suggest policies. However, they said they were left frustrated with Mr Gove.
Demands
Member of the youth branch Felix Ottaway O’Mahony, 14, from Lambeth, south London, said: “This meeting has been very disappointing, we’ve set no concrete demands, he hasn’t accepted any of our demands, he’s avoided our demands as a whole, he isn’t going to declare a national emergency.
“However, something has to be said for the fact he has recognised there is an issue.”
He added: “He is going to meet us again in a month’s time, which is a step forward that we will now be regularly meeting with political members.
“However, the rebellion has to continue because our demands have not been met.”
Farhana Yamin, 54, a prominent climate change lawyer who glued herself to Shell’s London headquarters during a week of protests, said: “I definitely think he could have taken the initiative to say Defra will show leadership that was necessary for the nation to come together, I was expecting a little bit more.”
Biodiversity
Earlier in the day, another meeting took place, with Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell at Portcullis House, which resulted in Extinction Rebellion being asked to address the shadow cabinet.
The meeting, which lasted more than an hour, concluded with claims some progress had been made.
Former Green Party county councillor for Stroud Sarah Lunnon, 54, who attended the meeting, said: “They gave us a concrete commitment to actually go and talk, McDonnell will ask for Extinction Rebellion to address the shadow cabinet, the shadow environment committee and also the Treasury Committee.
“I think it’s really fair to say the Labour Party are listening to Extinction Rebellion, I think they’ve heard the voices of all those people who got arrested on the streets.”
However, the MP for Hayes and Harlington did not agree to change the date in the Labour Party manifesto, which plans to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, but would consider a new target of 2030.
This came after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announced that the party will force a House of Commons vote on whether to declare an environmental and climate emergency following mass protests in London.
This Author
Ted Hennessey is a reporter for the Press Association.
Polly Higgins, barrister turned environmental campaigner, was a woman with a mission. And one thing she can’t be accused of is not thinking big enough.
Her aim was simple: to create a new international crime of ecocide – the mass destruction of ecosystems – mirroring the existing international law against genocide – the mass destruction of peoples.
If you’re sceptical about her chances of success, or the impact such a law might have, there’s one person who is taking it all too seriously: John Bolton, US President Trump’s hawkish National Security Advisor, already known in the UK as President George W Bush’s front man, justifying the Iraq war on British TV and radio.
Last September Bolton denounced the prospective ecocide law in a keynote Washington speech, declaring: “In the years ahead, the court is likely only to further expand its jurisdiction to prosecute ambiguously defined crimes.
“In fact, a side event at the Assembly of States Parties recently included a panel discussion on the possibility of adding ‘ecocide’, environmental and climate-related crimes, to the list of offenses within the court’s jurisdiction.
“And here we come directly to the unspoken but powerful agenda of the ICC’s supporters: the hope that its essentially political nature, in defining crimes such as ‘aggression’, will intimidate US decision-makers and others in democratic societies.”
Polly acknowledged the pushback: “But it’s just part of the story about how we move forward. Bolton’s main thrust is anti-ICC. But the US has no standing at the ICC as they are not members. So it’s all just noise and threats. I’m flummoxed about why Bolton even mentioned it. It’s a distraction.”
Not that efforts to frustrate ecocide legislation at the UN have been limited to hostile speeches. There were also mysterious last minute room cancellations at the ICC’s December Assembly in New York, sending bewildered delegates and journalists running along UN corridors to hastily rearranged venues.
Gathering pace
Out now!
The most likely explanation of Bolton’s speech and the UN shenanigans is a simple one: that moves to create an ecocide law are gathering pace, presenting a growing threat to a world economic order founded on the wholesale destruction of nature.
Under the Rome Statute, a new international law is introduced once notified as an amendment to the UN Secretary General by a single state. Once supported by seven eighths of ICC member states, it becomes law. And support among UN states, Polly said, is strong if – so far at least – under wraps.
Not that there is anything easy about the task Polly set herself. Even getting a single state to file the required amendment is a long, hard slog, and specially when you are opposed by the full force of US diplomacy (and dirty tricks).
But she was confident that an ecocide law will be tabled soon. When we met in her home town of Stroud in Gloucestershire, she was about to head off to The Hague to meet ministers from several small island developing states who need an ecocide law as part of their own national self-defence against climate change and sea level rise.
Polly said: “There is a mountain of stuff happening internationally behind the scenes that I cannot go into.” She added that 2019 may prove to be a “watershed year”.
Ecocide law
But why exactly do we need an ecocide law? After all we already have a host of international environmental laws and treaties, for example the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), and the Biodiversity Convention.
“You need to understand the distinction between civil law and criminal law. All these treaties are effectively civil law among states. If one state has a dispute with another over a breach of treaty obligations, it’s a bit like a boundary dispute between neighbours.
“You have to go to court and seek your remedies at your own expense. Your neighbour won’t be prosecuted because there is no crime. That is, unless he takes a swing at you one day and gives you a black eye – then you can call the police because that is the crime of assault. They can be arrested and prosecuted by the state and if they are convicted they can be fined or sent to prison.
“When a crime is committed it ceases to be a purely personal matter. It becomes a responsibility of the state to enforce the law for the protection of society.
Fracking
“So take an activity like fracking. In 2017 I took a road trip through North Dakota and Northern Montana to see the fracked fields and communities. It was like driving into hell.
Huge tracts of land that were once in a natural state are now broken up with nodding donkeys, flares, pipelines, roads, trailer parks … The atmosphere is acrid with the toxic chemicals and combustion products. You can taste it in your mouth.
There was all this infrastructure to allow huge trucks to bring in hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals and water, but the roads were built to collapse the moment they had done their job with ruts and potholes almost big enough to swallow up our car.
It was so shocking it convinced me we must never do it here in Britain. People had to drink bottled water, almost everyone was ill, the doctors were overloaded, and most of them were unpaid volunteers as no one had the money to pay them.
“Indigenous communities have been displaced, forcibly removed from their land, unable to drink the water, with methane coming out of their taps. Signs by the roadside read ‘Help our children not to commit suicide’.
New wells
“Crime had escalated with countless rapes, robberies and burglaries. There were few jobs. Communities were ripped apart – anyone taking a job would be ostracised. Housing prices had collapsed. Flaring was going on day and night. It was truly horrific.
“And yet UK ministers have signed off on it. In the US there are 35,000 fracking wells. And our government announced four years ago that it has an ‘aggressive expansion policy’ to build 45,000 to 60,000 fracking wells in England alone!
“We just don’t have the land! We may not have the geological resource either – but the less oil and gas you find, the faster you have to sink new wells.
“Now those fractured communities may have some scope for civil litigation against the fracking companies. But they cannot stop the activity itself. Going to law is very expensive, if there’s a payout it always too little, too late, and the companies may have gone bust before they ever pay.
“And all the time the business carries on as usual. Civil litigation is not fit for purpose for environmental destruction.
‘Missing law’
Look at the case of Texaco / Chevron in Ecuador. The 30,000 indigenous people in the Amazon that had been poisoned by oil spills and illicit waste dumping actually won their case in Ecuador’s highest courts in 2011, with a $9.5 billion restitution order.
But Chevron never paid up and it looks like they never will. So what we have to do is to go one step above civil law and make fracking, or the impacts we know fracking imposes on communities and the environment, a crime! In a nutshell that is the rationale for an ecocide law.
“With ecocide recognised as a crime it is no longer down to individuals to try and enforce the law in civil courts. That becomes a responsibility of the state and the victims no longer have to pay.
This is what is known as ‘missing law’ – law that is obviously needed but is not there. And where you have missing law you get injustice.
With an ecocide law in effect, corporate offences could be prosecuted, with directors and officers held personally liable; governments would not be able to give out licences or ministers could be prosecuted; finance would not be forthcoming – no one will want to support criminal companies and the banks and financiers would also be liable to prosecution.
Superior responsibility
“In the first RBS meeting after the UK government bailed the bank out and took its 85 percent stake, there was a press conference and the CEO was asked, ‘why are you financing the exploitation of the Athabasca tar sands?’ And he just laughed and said, ‘it’s not a crime!’ That’s what we have to change.
“And we have to go for ‘superior responsibility’ – holding the senior officials, CEOs, heads of state, ministers, directors, to account where there has been a reckless disregard on climate and nature, or even deliberate misinformation.”
The idea for ecocide law first came to Polly at a side-event at the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen. After she had given her speech someone stood up and spoke of the need for something to stop the mass destruction of ecosystems.
“And I found myself thinking, ‘yes, it’s there for genocide, to stop the mass destruction of people, but not for ecocide.’ And that was the starting point. I spent three months going back to first legal principles, then I submitted a fully written up legal proposal to the UN law committee.
“I naively though they would do something with it. But they did nothing. And then the Guardian somehow heard of my work and asked me to write about it. They delayed publication for a week so I could put up a website, and then it got 28,000 hits that first weekend alone! Sometimes an idea whose time has come can land in a big way!”
Media coverage
On the back of the media coverage triggered by Polly’s Guardian article a journalist dug out a 1996 UN document that called for an ecocide law, that had been supported by over fifty countries.
“But it turned out that just four countries working behind the scenes had caused it to be removed: the US, the UK, France and Holland. The matter was taken up by Dr Damian Shaw and his students at the UCL School of Advanced Studies, who flew out to the UN in New York and found two huge files in the basement that told the full back story.
“We found that serious drafting of an ecocide law had been in progress for over ten years from 1985 to 1996 when it was scuppered. And the fascinating thing was that that my own drafting of an ecocide law actually covered all the same issues that had been identified in those documents, with the addition of ‘climate ecocide’.
“All it needed was a lawyer to put their mind to it, to reach the same conclusions.
“We also found that Russia had protested in powerful terms when the initiative was discarded – and it’s only because they insisted the documents all went on the record that we even know about it today. Also UN staffers wrote up their own accounts of it all in documents that they logged into the basement.
Long game
“Putting together all the pieces the UCL team found that the proposal was the victim of corporate lobbying from four sectors: fossil fuels, agro-industry, nuclear and big pharma, who were being represented by those four countries.”
As well as playing the ‘long game’ at the UN, Polly and her team are working to support environmental campaigners in the here and now.
“We have created our Mission Lifeforce website to build a network of Conscientious Protectors – thousands of people who are prepared to be arrested in defence of our planet against ecocidal activities like fracking.
“Most charges, like obstruction and trespass, attract minimal fines, but we have also seen more serious charges brought against activists – like Public Nuisance which can actually attract a life sentence!
“That makes it essential for protestors to have a strong support network, and to be in a position to defend themselves within the framework of human rights law.
Conscientious Protectors
“The way we see Conscientious Protectors is like Conscientious Objectors in war. They are attempting to protect society at large where the government is not giving that protection. People are becoming CPs as a matter of conscience, because they can’t just stand back and allow the mindless destruction of our air and water.
“Many COs went to prison to establish that principle which is now enshrined in European Convention on Human Rights Article 9, and UN Declaration on Human Rights Article 18. This is a universal right, that you can seek reliance on in a criminal court, to break the law to prevent a more serious crime.
“And there’s an additional purpose in setting up Mission Lifeforce, to raise funds so ministers from Small Island Developing States can make it to these UN and ICC meetings. The small fee people pay to register as CPs creates an international funding pot we can use towards the £50,000 a year cost of delegates’ travel.”
The whole operation still runs on a shoestring, but Polly never let that get her down. “Of course it would be nice to have more money, but then look what we have achieved with next to no money at all!
“We have largely (if not entirely) decoupled ourselves from the idea that money is necessary to make things happen. All our work is carried out pro-bono and these contributions have a cumulative value of millions of pounds!
Political mission
“But yes, there are difficulties. Our mission is a political one so we cannot be a registered charity under UK law, and this means many trusts and foundations won’t contribute.
“WWF have had me in their international HQ talking to their big funders, and they say what I’m doing is great. But no money was forthcoming.
“I have addressed the Greepeace International board of directors and I thought they loved what we were doing. But then it turned out that the grant we were hoping for was blocked by a single board member.”
So will this [2019] be the year when everything changes? “Watch this space. Every year there is an ICC Assembly, one year in New York, the other at The Hague, where the next takes place in 2019.
“If we manage to make a big splash at that meeting then we are on track!” Meanwhile Polly is looking forward to taking a break from it all: “I have my timeline. In a few years I want to be on a Harley Davidson travelling the world!”
Severe illness
This interview was conducted for Resurgence & Ecologist’s current May/June issue. News of Polly’s severe illness, a highly aggressive, fast moving form of lung cancer, reached me as a complete surprise barely a month ago.
When Polly and I had met at her campaign offices in Stroud in late 2018, she was full of life and positive energy, and had so much to look forward to with the growing international success of her campaign for an Ecocide Law.
Even at the time of her diagnosis she continued to feel generally well, troubled only by what seemed to be minor health difficulties. But by that time the cancer had already spread widely through her body and was beyond the reach of modern medical treatment.
That Polly should be struck down in this way at the age of just 50 seemed both inexplicable and profoundly wrong, almost itself a crime against nature.
It was incredibly sad for all who knew and loved Polly, and supported her in work, especially her family and close friends. The ‘good’ news is that she died smiling, on Easter Sunday, taking deep pleasure from news of the highly successful Extinction Rebellion protests in London.
Funeral arrangements
As one friend told me: “She was pragmatic to the end … as attention on her imminent demise made the campaign suddenly take off: ‘If this is what it takes’, she said, ‘let’s go for it!’
“She was tickled pink to see the Extinction Rebellion graffiti on the Shell Centre building last week saying ‘FOR POLLY 💚’… and she went with a mischievous smile on her lips (quite remarkable).”
Within an hour of her passing thousands of ER protestors were celebrating her life and achievements, determined to carry forward her campaign for an Ecocide Law – perhaps it will be known as ‘Polly’s Law’ – to completion.
Polly’s funeral will take place at 10 am on Friday 3rd May at St Laurence’s Church, Stroud GL5 1JL. It will be followed by a procession to the Slad village churchyard where Polly will rest on a beautiful hillside overlooking her favourite local pub, the Woolpack.
Funeral guests are welcome to adjourn there for lunch afterwards. Special instructions from Polly are: NO BLACK to be worn, and organic whisky to be served (her favourite will be available at the pub). Wear comfortable shoes – it’s an easy walk but a good half-hour to forty minutes from the church to the burial. All are welcome.
The government must be put on a “war footing” to tackle climate change, according to a cross-party group of politicians led by former Labour leader Ed Miliband.
Mr Miliband said the UK faced a “climate emergency” and called for a “revolution in political leadership” to tackle what he dubbed “climate appeasement”.
He is helping launch the new Environmental Justice Commission by the IPPR think tank, along with Green Party MP Caroline Lucas and former Conservative MP Laura Sandys.
Biggest threat
The commission proposes to set out “an ambitious and rigorous programme of reform capable of tackling the dual problems of climate change and wider economic and social injustice”.
It aims to focus on how the UK can deliver on pledges to limit global warming and cutting carbon emissions to net zero and is seeking the views of people around the country on the way forward.
This includes looking at a Green New Deal to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs by focusing the entire economy on environmental change, the social injustices involved in climate change, and the UK’s international responsibilities in tackling the crisis.
Mr Miliband said: “We face a climate emergency. Climate change is the biggest threat to our economic and social well-being, and to our national security.
“Politics needs to be on a war footing to deal with this enemy but too often it sends the message that business as usual will do.
Mobilisation
“We need a revolution in political leadership; the problem we face is not just climate denial but climate appeasement.
“This commission brings together people from all walks of life, generations and political parties to bring about the solutions we need.”
Ms Lucas added: “The climate movement has broken into the mainstream, and it’s here to stay. We must now focus on what is scientifically necessary, not what is seen as politically possible.
“Maintaining the status quo is to gamble with the fate of humanity and the prosperity of all who live in this country.
“The environmental crises can only be tackled through a transformation of our whole economy.
“A Green New Deal would mean a mobilisation of resources unprecedented in peacetime to create a fairer, more equal country.”
This Author
Alain Tolhurst is a parliamentary reporter for the Press Association.
The PSOE clinched 29 percent of the vote and 123 seats in the 350-seat congress after campaigning on a sweeping platform of ecological transition
It will need to form a coalition with populist left-wing party Unidos Podemos (UP), which has also called for a decarbonization of the economy. Even then, it will also require the help of regional parties, or the centre-right Ciudadanos, in order to govern.
Commenting on the results, political analyst Pepe Fernández-Albertos pointed to PSOE’s gain of 6.1 percent as “something quite exceptional for a party in government.” At 75.8 percent, attendance was also 9 percent higher than the previous election in 2016.
In October, the government agreed with unions and the industry that €220m will be injected into mining regions over the next decade, boosting retirement schemes and retraining.
Local media described the results as a “triumph” with Socialist vote share nearing 50% in many mining towns.
The pledge to spearhead “a just and sustainable economy” was the first of seven pledges in the PSOE’s manifesto.
The manifesto called for a “Green New Deal”, which it describes as “a new social contract, a new pact between capital, work and the planet”. That means a “maximum efficiency in the use of natural resources” and the development of “technologies that are less polluting and with less impact on biodiversity, especially renewables and the creation of ‘green jobs’ in every sector”
PSOE proposed to overhaul the Spanish constitution to include the “consideration of planetary limits as conditions for economic progress,” along with the precautionary principles and the principle of no-return – in legal jargon, a guarantee not to amend environmental law if this lowers standards.
Renewable energy
Prior to the election, the PSOE had proposed one of the world’s most aggressive climate laws. The legislation committed the government to slash greenhouse emissions to 90 percent of 1990 levels by 2050, ban fracking and end subsidies for fossil fuels.
Since winning a razor-thin majority in June, the PSOE has buoyed a previously embattled renewables sector by scrapping an emblematic levy on solar energy and committing to install 6,000-7,000MW of renewable power every year until 2030.
The conservative People’s Party, which shredded the country’s renewable energy industry during eight years in power, suffered a huge defeat. It’s seat count fell from 137 to 66.
This Author
Natalie Sauer reports for Climate Home News. She has contributed to a variety of international outlets, including Politico Europe, AFP and The Ecologist. This article was first published on Climate Home.
Image: Spain’s finance minister Maria Jesus Montero, industry, commerce and tourism minister Reyes Maroto, justice minister Dolores Delgado García and minister for the ecological transition Teresa Ribera, celebrating Sunday’s election win. Teresa Ribera, Twitter (via Climate Home).
