The 24th Conference of the Parties (COP24) has failed to adopt its own report, commissioned from the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, on the impacts of a global temperature rise of 1.5oC.

The move at the Katowice event – convened by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – bewildered many participants and observers. It was at the insistence of a power-block comprising Saudi Arabia, the USA and Russia. 

It so happens these are the world’s top three oil producing states, with around 40 percent of global production. They could be viewed as having a very direct self-interest in derailing any move towards reducing, or eliminating, fossil fuels and thereby addressing dangerous climate change.

Supply and demand

It is well understood that cheap oil prices crush the development and production of biofuels as a fossil fuel substitute.  Cheap oil prices also undermine the development of renewable energy sources and also the introduction of electrified transport.

At the time of COP21, in Paris in 2015, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stated that low fossil fuel prices were hindering the fight against climate change.

Traditional economic models would have us believe that global oil price is dictated by supply and demand.  Demand is influenced by factors such as economic growth, also by weather of course. 

However, demand is heavily manipulated by speculators, or futures traders.  It is estimated that only 3 percent of transactions result in the purchaser eventually taking possession of the product; every barrel of crude oil is traded multiple times before actually being used. 

These intermediaries are very aware of the market psychology that can have a very big influence on manipulating the buy and sell prices at various points in a cycle.  

Manipulating the market

Legal cases have been successfully brought in the USA against companies which manipulated oil prices by artificially creating shortages and then using futures and options to push up prices.  Overall market sentiment seems volatile and readily distorted.

Supply is in the hands of relatively few very large businesses.  There are seven multinational corporations that dominate all stages from exploration, through production, refining and distribution.  Russian oil companies are very close to Government and Saudi Aramco is state-owned.

There is also the global cartel, known as OPEC, which controls around 40 percent of market supply. Recently Russia has been joining the regular OPEC meetings as a non-member.  These suppliers can turn the taps up or down relatively easily. 

Within the past few months, the Saudi energy minister Khalil Al-Falih said that he was optimistic OPEC could reach a consensus on production policy which, in collaboration with Russia, would release more oil onto the market and depress prices.

Supply is also influenced by storage, about which operators are very secretive.  Total global oil supply is round about 33 Bn barrels per year, while it is estimated that there is storage capacity of around 6 Bn barrels. Filling or draining of this storage can have significant and rapid impacts on the market price.

Lobbying power

Recent reports have revealed that the top seven global corporations that can be shown to be strongly antagonistic to climate and energy policies addressing climate change are respectively ExxonMobil, Phillips 66, Chevron, Valero Energy, Koch Industries, Southern Company, and Berkshire Hathaway.  

Six of these are either totally, or very substantially, involved in the fossil fuel industry.  More specifically, it has been revealed that, even in the past year, ExxonMobil – the world’s largest publicly traded oil company – donated $1.5M to eleven think-tanks and lobby groups that reject climate science. 

So, it appears there are mechanisms available and also motivations to distort the market place for the benefit of fossil-fuel vested interests.  

It might, perhaps, be expected that such influence would be brought to bear to undermine and deviate the one global mechanism in place to reduce the world’s fossil fuel dependency and mitigate the growing risks of climate change – that is the annual COP meetings.

Plotting interest

The graph below shows two plots (see below for detail of the methodology):  one is an indicator of global public interest, and hence of political interest, in each of the 24 COPs since the first in 1995.  

This level of interest has, of course, waxed and waned. As expected, a few COPs stand out: Kyoto (COP3), Copenhagen (COP15) and Paris (COP21) particularly.  Others have had little public impact, such as Nairobi (COP12), Poznan (COP14) and Lima (COP20).  The other plot is of global oil price fluctuation.

It is immediately apparent that the two parameters seem to vary inversely.  An increase in public interest in the climate change conference in any year generally results in a decrease in the oil price, while a reduced level of interest appears to result in a higher oil price.  

Statistically, this inverse relationship has a correlation coefficient of 0.41, which means it is 98 percent certain that such a relationship is real and not just due to random chance.

This analysis would seem to suggest that various vested interests, either nation-state or global corporation, or a synergistic alliance – working either independently or in collaboration around the world – manipulate the oil price downwards in advance of particularly important global climate change conferences in order to influence the debate. 

Such action would serve to undermine the potential commitment of global politicians to fiscal, regulatory or policy interventions to reduce fossil fuel usage and to promote sustainable alternatives.

This would potentially damage climate change action and further escalate the serious risks to every one of us who intends to continue living on Planet Earth.

A fair COP?  No, it looks like it certainly isn’t. 

This Author 

Professor James Curran was previously chief executive of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.  He researches, writes and talks on climate change and sustainability. 

Methodology 

There have been 25 COP meetings since the first in Berlin in 1995.  The latest is happening in Katowice, Poland, and is known as COP24.  The numbering anomaly is caused by there being two named COP6, held in November 2000 in The Hague with a follow-on meeting in Bonn in July 2001.  Otherwise meetings occur annually and nearly always in November or December.

Google was used to search for on-line interest in each of the COP meetings by undertaking a standardised search – for example: climate change “COP15 ” OR “COP 15 “, followed by using the Google tool to set a date filter comprising the period from one day after the opening, in this case, of COP14 to  the opening date of the COP15, which in this case is 2 December 2008 to 7 December 2009.  The results returned ranged from only 9 entries for COP1, 117 for COP3 (Kyoto), 6900 for COP15 (Copenhagen), 55100 for COP21 (Paris) and 552000 for the latest COP24 (Katowice).  Clearly this is reflective of the exponential growth of information upload and download from the internet.  The number of internet users has grown from 16 million in 1995 to over 4 billion in 2017, a factor of 260 times.  A log(e) transformation is applied to the number of Google entries to account for this growth factor.  Subsequently a linear detrend is applied to remove an underlying upward trend.  This allows for a correlation to be undertaken with similarly detrended oil prices taken from: https://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=crude-oil-brent&months=300

The oil price is taken from 2 months in advance of the opening date of the relevant COP.  So, for COP15, which was held in December 2009, the oil price is taken for the month of October 2009.

The two plots of internet interest in COPs (multiplied by factor 10 simply to ensure the scales are comparable) and 2-month advance oil price are shown in Figure 1.

The correlation coefficient between the two plots is -0.41 which, with n= 25, suggests a p-value of 0.02.  This indicates that it is 98% probable that there is an inverse relationship underlying the data.  It is therefore very likely that global oil price changes in advance of a particular COP, in relation to how much global publicity there is in the run-up to the COP.  Notable COPs, such as Kyoto, Copenhagen and Paris have experienced a significant advance drop in oil price, whereas low-key COPs such as Bali, Poznan and Lima have exhibited maintenance of relatively high advance oil prices.

Migration in the context of climate change is a justice issue. Those countries that have contributed most to climate change have a responsible the vulnerable communities forced to migrate due to climate change. 

Climate justice is a matter of determining the rights of those communities and the responsibilities of high polluters toward them. 

However, public discourses on climate change induced migration are moving backwards in terms of posing the question of justice, when they should be asking: how come certain people and communities are more vulnerable to climate change impacts; don’t high polluters owe redress to these groups? 

Climate injustice 

Wildfires in California have been exacerbated by climate change, and have destroyed hundreds of homes and displaced thousands of people. Huge numbers of homeless are sleeping on the streets.

At the other end of the scale, a recent report rom the UK Committee on Climate Change found that accelerating rising sea levels would claim coastal areas in the country and local communities would have to move inland. 

These two cases are indicative of human mobility in the context of climate change, an issue that has for long been troubling people and communities in the global South.

Cross-border mobility is an immediate effect of rising seas in the Pacific island nations. The fact is that those most vulnerable in terms of socio-economic status will be most affected no matter which country they live in.

A distinction is usually made between internally climate-displaced people and those crossing borders, but the lines between them may be blurred in practice: although most displaced people remain within their own country, some of them cross borders to reach safety in another country.

Just recently, the former US Secretary of State John Kerry spoke at a Guardian event and warned Europe of migration chaos if immediate actions are not taken to effectively address climate change. Muslim and African migrant populations are racialized within these climate security discourses as prone to terrorism or radicalization. This may contribute to policy developments that are detrimental to people’s ability to relocate.

Failure to act

International policy tools also come up short with regards to climate change induced migration.

The UN’s Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts was established in 2013 to address – amongst others – migration in the context of a changing climate.

However, it lacks a coordinated framework for addressing the multiple challenges of mobility due to climate change, including the implications for the human rights of the residents and different types of movements, as impact scenarios vary substantially by geographic location.

The UN’s recent, non-binding Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration refers to climate change induced migration but does not provide specific protection to climate displaced people. Moreover, traditionally migrants’ host countries like the US and Australia have withdrawn from the adoption process.

In the absence of government action to address climate change induced human mobility, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can play important roles, both raising awareness of climate change induced migration and advocating for policy reforms on this issue.

Security threats

With a few notable exceptions, most environmental and humanitarian NGOs have encouraged actions to address displacement in the context of climate change through an ethos of individual responsibility or political action, but have promoted those changes in minor ways rather than establishing dedicated campaigns on the issue.

The media holds a central position in framing issues surrounding the integration of migrating people into local communities. However, the media is using strategies of dehumanization.

People migrating in the context of climate change are understood and communicated by news media as victims or security threats, highlighting their otherness and distance from mainstream audiences.

Moreover, displaced people are being spoken about and for but not with, they are not part of the conversation. The voices of people most impacted by climate change are rarely heard in mass media. This means that potentially little of the real situation of climate change effects on local populations is reported. 

We need to pay attention not only to what a news story is about but also how this story is told. How can we create a frame that both supports the story and defines climate change induced migration in a fair and balanced way.

Tailored messages

A climate justice narrative is needed to communicate and enhance public understanding of climate change induced migration. Key components of this narrative must be human rights protection, greater equity in burdens sharing, and participation in decision-making processes. This will also help to break anti-migrant sentiments and xenophobia. 

A recent study  in the UK suggests that the ‘climate justice’ narrative polarises audiences along political lines. In particular, the researchers asserted that a climate justice frame does not resonate well with the center-right.

However, climate injustice was introduced in the research in an abstract way, as a distant issue with no actual impact on the lives of the UK audience (for example, that could have been a storyline about poor people in coastal areas in the UK suffering most by climate change), contrary to the proximity that characterised other narratives tested in the research e.g. the advantages of ‘Great British Energy’ and ‘avoiding waste’. 

Tailored climate justice messages that provide a direct connection of the social aspects of climate change with people’s interests may have the power to reduce skepticism amongst them.

Intergenerational duty

There is evidence that people are significantly concerned about the ethical implications of leaving future generations with the burdens of climate change impacts. Intergenerational duty, expressed by preserving the environment for future generations, is a climate justice demand.

Activists such as the Pacific Climate Warriors  are defending rights to homeland and culture for future generations.

In particular, Pacific islanders would prefer the media to represent them as active ‘change agents’ developing climate change response strategies including ‘migration with dignity.’

Such an approach is essential at a time when hostile attitudes towards migrants and refugees, in general, are prevalent within policy and media circuits.

This Author

Maria Sakellari is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Brighton. Her project IKETIS has received funding under the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No 74829).

More than a thousand people marched amidst heavy police presence to demand negotiators and ministers attending the UN climate talks in the southern Polish city of Katowice take more ambitious action on climate change.

Campaigners and activists from around the world took part in the March for Climate, which marked the end of the first of two weeks of global climate negotiations in Katowice.

Protesters chanted “keep the coal in the hole”, urged negotiators to “wake-up”, and demanded “climate justice now” while waving colourful banners and flags. Some were also wearing pollution masks to highlight Katowice’s heavily polluted air due to local coal mining.

Climate campaigners

Katowice is located in the region of Silesia, Poland’s coal heartland. About 80 percent of Poland’s electricity currently comes from coal.

Although the march was overwhelmingly peaceful, it was dominated by the presence of hundreds of riot police holding shields, batons, guns and tear gas canisters.

Police surrounded the march as protesters worked through the city with large groups of officers waiting at each junction and road crossing along the way.

The march was stopped in front of the conference centre where negotiations were taking place after a Polish group of anarchists and anti-fascists walking at the back of the demonstration were kettled by police. No further details as to the reason for this were available at the time of writing.

The heavy police presence did not deter climate campaigners.

Doing nothing

Two huge puppets representing Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, who threatened to quit the Paris Agreement and roll back environmental protection in the Amazon, and the figure of an indigenous woman rose above the crowd.

Angeline Pittenger, the American artist who made the puppets, said her work stood in solidarity with women’s groups of colour, who will be affected by Bolsonaro’s policies. “I wanted to create a female hero,” she said.

Several anti-coal groups from Poland and Germany were among those to march through the city.

A spokesman from Polish group Oboz Dla Klimatu, who preferred not to be named, said the group wanted to bring the issue of climate justice to Poland, adding that “more and more people are aware of climate change in Poland and are demanding a coal phase-out”.

Sandra Koch, from the “citizens’ initiative for clean air” in the north-western coal region of East Frisia, said: “Germany has signed the Paris Agreement but it doing nothing to reduce emissions and achieve its climate targets.  

Catholic group

Dressed as a plague doctor with a long beak-shaped mask, she added: “Politicians are like plague doctors, they are not helping at all.”

“I understand that coal workers are afraid to lose their jobs. But it is the job of politicians to ensure that the change happens bit by bit. We need a system change, not climate change,” she said.

Wolfgang Eber and Wolfgang Loebnitz, two retired Germans, walked from Bonn to Berlin to demand their government phase-out coal before continuing their journey to Katowice. Along the way, more than 10,000 people and 17 organisations joined them for a part of their journey.

“Walking to the climate talks is symbolic,” said Eber. “And along the way, we were able to talk to people about climate change and give them suggestions and ideas about how to change their lifestyle and take action to try and save our planet.”

Others had come from much further away. Ezekiel Adigbe, from Benin, in West Africa, came to Katowice with a youth catholic group.

Climate activists

“We have come all this way because it is paramount that we work together to protect our environment and preserve it for the future,” he said.

The heavy police presence in Katowice comes after the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki signed an order declaring an ALFA alert — the first of four increasing terrorism security levels — across the entire southern province of Silesia and the city of Krakow for the duration of the climate talks.

The March for Climate had been given permission by the authorities, but a ban on all spontaneous protests continues to apply in Katowice until December 15.  

Earlier this year, DeSmog UK revealed that the Polish Parliament approved a bill that provides a raft of initiatives to “ensure safety and public order” during talks and allows police to “collect, obtain, process and use information, including personal data about people registered as participants”.

Police checks have also been carried out at Poland’s borders and members of the Climate Action Network (CAN) claimed that least 12 climate activists who were due to attend the climate talks have been denied entry at the Polish border or deported.

Border police

In a statement, Human Rights Watch said it was aware of the issue and that all NGO representatives that were prevented to enter Poland had valid visas and UN accreditation.

Stephan Singer, from CAN, said this was “not isolated instances” and described the situation as “extremely worrying”.

“The full and effective participation by civil society [to the climate talks] is entrenched in the UN convention and in fact is imperative in our efforts to urgently transition to a new climate regime,” he said.

This years climate summit, known as COP24, is widely considered to be the most important climate meeting since 2015 as countries aim to finalise the rulebook to implement the Paris Agreement.

At least 20 NGOS, including 350.org, Greenpeace, SustainUS, Oil Change International, Climate Justice Alliance and the Union of Concerned Scientists have supported a statement strongly condemning border police denying entry to climate talks participants.

In a statement, they warned that “ongoing restrictions on civil society will not stop a resilient climate movement.”

This Article

This article – replete with pictures – first appeared at Desmog.uk.

Fires on peatlands in distant Indonesia and Malaysia turned the already noxious Bangkok air into a filthy brown soup each year. I lived in Bangkok two decades ago when these fires were an annual feature. Now this looks like one of the early signs that we have trashed this planet. 

I remember heading one day down Surawong Road into a viciously crimson sun in a sea of faeces-brown air, thinking that this was what the apocalypse looks like.

So I was particularly pleased last week to hear a German expert commenting on Indonesia’s policies today, at a wide-ranging session on peatlands at the climate talks in Katowice.

Extraordinary efforts

Professor Hans Joosten from the Greifswald Mire Centre said that Indonesia’s plans to “rewet” two million hectares of peatland were a beacon of good practice: “Germany and the rest of the EU could learn from them.” 

Diana Kopansky from UN Environment added that Indonesia had not only passed strong legislation defending peatlands that remained in pristine condition, but that it’s environment minister (Siti Nurbaya Bakar) was vigorously using that legislation to defend them.

Also on the panel, Ruandha Agung Sugardiman, director general of Climate Change Control in Indonesia, looked rightly pleased.

It was a rare piece of good news in a session that set out the climate change impacts of human destruction of organic soils, and also the extreme depletion of nature on fragile lands that were once so rich in animals and plants.

We heard from Professor Mark Reed from Newcastle University of how the UK has lost 94 percent of its lowland raised bogs, while Dr Wiktor Kotowski from Warsaw University outlined how Poland had seen 84 percent of its mires drained, a vast area of 1.5 million hectares once similarly rich.

Even the richest of what’s left in Poland – such as the Rospuda Fen – has had to be defended by extraordinary efforts from environmentalists, while frantic efforts are being made to save threatened species like the beautiful aquatic warbler, whose stronghold is the Biebrza marshes in Poland’s east.

Peatland emissions

These lands emit more than 20 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year, as the soils dry out and degrade. Across the EU, 30 percent of agricultural emissions come from peatland, with the Union the second-largest source of peatland emissions after Indonesia.

Yet these are soils that are often productive for a few years, before turning sour fast. Often then they are abandoned as wasteland, continuing to emit carbon even when no longer used for farming.

Professor Joosten said: “As the soil dries out nutrients are released from the organic matter, but then you lose the potassium, then the phosphorus, you get drought problems. For the long term it doesn’t make sense to drain peatlands”.

He added that not all of that land can be returned to pristine natural mire. What’s needed is a transformation of agriculture: “We only have dry farming because the technologies we still rely on were developed in the Middle East millennia ago. We have to learn to farm wet land.”

Despite the damage this is causing, only half of national offers of National Determined Contributions (NDCs – what each country proposed at Paris for cutting its carbon emissions) include measures to save and restore peatlands, the session heard. Important contributors to that include Indonesia, Iceland and the EU, but the list also includes Afghanistan, not, as one speaker noted drily, particularly known for its peatlands.

Disastrous management 

Then there’s the nightmare that made everyone in the room turn pale when it was mentioned: the recently discovered massive peatlands in Congo, which lock in 30 billion tonnes of carbon. Lose a significant slice of them, and it is game over for the climate.

On that kind of scale, the UK’s issues look small, but they’re certainly not in terms of our share of carbon emissions.

Dr Reed pointed out that the Saddleworth Moor Fire near Manchester this year had been calculated to have released 273,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, the equivalent of 1.2 million flights from London to Katowice.

That was a reminder that arable farming isn’t the only land use that is deeply problematic, indeed I’d say utterly indefensible. None of our few remaining pristine upland bogs in the UK should be managed for the so-called “sport” of driven grouse shooting (not to mention the downstream flooding impacts, and the mass animal slaughter also associated with it). The Saddleworth Fire corresponded very closely with such management.

Indeed, when you look at what damage has been done around the world, and how little is left of these wonderful environments, it’s hard not to draw the conclusion that what we need is a global ban on any further destruction of peatlands that remain in anything like a natural condition.

As Professor Joosten pointed out, drying out these lands is incredibly wasteful of our planet’s resources. It also risks so many species already struggling to survive on this human-wracked planet, and adds significantly to carbon emissions just as the IPCC tells us we have absolutely no alternative but to slash them.

This Author

Natalie Bennett is a member of Sheffield Green Party and former Green Party leader. She is at COP with the Global Economics Institute. If you are interested in following these issues, panellists recommended the Global Peatlands Initiative.

A Polish trade union has issued a joint statement with a notorious American climate science denial and trade union bashing corporate funded think tank, rejecting the scientific consensus on climate change.

The statement, signed by the Chicago-based Heartland Institute and the trade union Solidarity was released as UN climate talks took place in Katowice, the centre of Poland’s coal heartland region of Silesia.

The talks, known as Cop24, are widely considered to be the most important climate meeting since the 2015 summit in Paris and will aim to finalise the rulebook to implement the Paris Agreement.

Educating the public

In the statement, the trade union Solidarity and the Heartland Institute express “skepticism of the assertions of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the world stands at the edge of a climate catastrophe”.

In October, the IPCC released a report saying the world had 12 years to reduce its emissions by 45% and take “transformative and unprecedented” measures to hold global warming to 1.5C. Beyond that threshold, it warned of serious impacts including a virtual wipe-out of coral reefs.

The Solidarity-Heartland statement adds that “neither organisation opposes the goal of clean air nor supports the elimination of coal from the world’s energy portfolio” and calls on “an end to the war on science and scientists by powerful state-backed forces”.

It is signed by James Taylor, senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, Jaroslaw Grzesik, the chairman of Solidarity’s energy and mining secretariat and Dominik Kolorz, the president of the Solidarity in the Silesian region.

The statement was issued after Solidarity representatives met members from the Heartland Institute on the fringe of Cop24 in Katowice.

Both parties agreed to “begin working together more closely to advance sound, science-based public policy” as well as “educating the public and policymakers on climate policy” with a focus on educating young people.

Energy mix

Solidarity said it had translated the Heartland Institute’s latest report into Polish and was “very satisfied by the new science and policy presentations”.

On Tuesday, the Heartland Institute held an event in Katowice city centre claiming that the fact global warming is caused by increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was “climate totalitarianism” propaganda invented by “the socialist internationalist green movement”.

DeSmog UK attempted to report on the event but was denied accreditation by the Heartland Institute. Only 10 people are reported to have attended the event, which was live-streamed on Youtube and had been watched by about 50 people at the time of writing, according to the video platform.

The alliance between Solidarity and the Heartland Institute will come as a blow to the Polish government, which has so far balanced urging progress on finalising the Paris rulebook with reluctance to significantly reduce the share of coal in its energy mix.

Poland relies on coal for 80% of its electricity and a significant share of household heating. A draft government proposal could see coal’s share of power generation reduced to 60% by 2030.

At the start of the conference, Polish president Andrzej Duda said climate change needs to be tackled, but not at the expense of the coal workers who made the Silesia region thrive as an industrial centre.

This Article

This Article first appeared at Desmog UK.

Nick Breeze (NB) for The Ecologist: When we are talking about the increased frequency of extreme weather events in the last few years, do you feel concerned about where we are heading?

Saleemul Huq (SH): Absolutely concerned. We have a 1℃ temperature rise already and we see these extreme events getting worse and worse. Even if we go up to 1.5ºC, they are still going to get more extreme and frequent. If we go up to 2 degrees, they go off the charts, and higher, they are off the charts, and we are still going to have to deal with and adapt to that.

That is where I come in. The work that I do is in adapting to climate change in Bangladesh, which is, I argue, the country that is furthest ahead in tackling climate change.

NB: Last year at COP23 you had the message that fossil fuel polluters had to pay their share of the climate bill. Is that still a focus for you this year?

SH: In the negotiations, there are 4 groups: the vulnerable countries group which I speak for, the Small Island States, the Africa group and the Latin America group. These 4 groups have agreed that loss and damage is happening already. It is not something that is going to happen. It is not something we need to start worrying about in the future, it is something we have to worry about right now.

Although there is no decision to be made here at COP24 on Loss and Damage, there will be one next year at COP25, when the Warsaw International Mechanism comes up for review. We feel that compensation of financing loss and damage is something we need to talk about. 

So we are talking about it, raising the issue, talking informally with everybody, and hoping that by next year at COP25 we can actually get a consensus around a decision to start compensation for loss and damage, under the UN Framework on Climate Change.

NB: So you think that will happen within the UN Framework?

SH: We are lobbying for that. We are asking for that. We are looking at opportunities to find ways of putting polluter-pay levies on polluters to raise the money. So there are two aspects: one is agreeing that there should be a fund for loss and damage, that is what the UNFCCC does, and the other aspect is where does the money come from?

We are saying then, on the one hand, let’s agree to have the fund and on the other hand let’s get the money from the polluters!

NB: Do you think litigation as a tool is going to become more prominent?

SH: I think so. I think litigation’s time has come. Especially as we are now in a position to very scientifically and validly attribute harm caused due to human-induced climate change. The recent events we saw like the wildfires in California, hurricane Florence in the Atlantic, typhoon Mangkhut in the Pacific; in each of these events, the scientists were able to attribute impacts because of human-induced climate change. 

This is due to the large temperature increase of about 1 degree, that we have already caused! These are human-caused events. They are not happening because of climate change but they are worse because of climate change. It is the fact that they are more severe that causes loss and damage.

NB: If we do go into a litigation process, it is a big change to how we tackle this problem of climate justice, isn’t it?

SH: Going into litigation is an admission of failure. The framework convention was set up to help us avoid us going into litigation, by agreeing on actions before they happen. In essence, the Annex 1 countries accepted, by being named in Annex 1, that they are the ones who caused the pollution. They were the ones who needed to rectify the situation and help other countries. They failed to do that and if they fail to do that then the courts are the only other avenue we can take.

NB: Do you think it is fair to say that litigation is the teeth that the framework doesn’t have?

SH: Precisely! The framework is based on consensus agreements between polluters and victims of pollution, but the polluters have really failed on two counts. Firstly, reducing their pollution; they have not done enough. Secondly, compensating the victims of pollution; they haven’t done enough. The only thing left for us to do is to take them to court.

NB: Where do you see the progress on staying below 1.5ºC, is it still achievable?

SH: The 1.5ºC target that we, the vulnerable developing countries, have argued for in the Paris Agreement, and managed to have included as a target, has now, because of the IPCC special report on 1.5ºC, got huge momentum in this process. 

What they have shown scientifically is that there is a huge difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees. It is not just poor vulnerable countries that need to worry. It is the whole world that needs to worry, and not want to get to 2ºC. 2ºC is bad for everyone! 

So trying to get 1.5ºC now is much much more required, and the other part of the IPCC report is that it can be done. It is difficult but it can still be done. It means that all countries are committing to go to zero emissions by 2050, and you are seeing country after country do that. Specifically many of the vulnerable countries have already committed to do it and we hope others will.

NB: Do you think the timeline will become more pressured as we get closer?

SH: We have to be more and more ambitious, and we need some countries to lead. California, for example, has committed to 2045 to go to zero emissions. So we want more countries to start emulating and leading on this. If we can build momentum then it is possible to stay below 1.5!

NB: What do you think of the growth of the youth movement?

SH: I am an absolute great fan of the youth. I think we are on the cusp of changing the dynamic on tackling climate change from what used to be a rich versus poor, or even left versus right. It is now a young versus old issue and I am on the side of the young… even though I am an old man and one that caused the problem, I have faith in the young and I think we have to support them. And listen to them

This Author

Nick Breeze is a climate change journalist, blogs at envisionation.co.uk and is a co-founder of the Cambridge Climate Lecture Series. He can be followed on Twitter at @NickGBreeze.

Dr. Saleemul Huq is a Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) at the Independent University of Bangladesh, a Senior Fellow of the International Institute for Environment and Development, and an advisor in the UNFCCC negotiations.

Lasagne first came to the UK back in the 14th century, but growing up in the 1980s I remember well when it first arrived in our house.

No one even knew how to pronounce it, but we quickly realised it was a delicious dinner option and it became a staple, meaning that the dreaded liver and bacon dropped a place down my Mother’s menu repertoire.

It’s interesting to see how our diets have changed even over the last forty years, and how our ideas of what “a meal” means can be challenged. And it’s also worth looking at how some of these ideas are formed at an early age.

Plant-based in the public sector

The Vegan Society has recently been campaigning for public institutions to provide a plant based option on every public sector menu. Vegans reliant on the state to feed them would be then be guaranteed a decent meal.

But there are also a host of benefits for wider society. It’s easy to produce tasty options that are rich in fibre and low in saturated fat, provide multiple servings of fruit and vegetables, and exclude processed meat, which the World Health Organisation has classified as a cause of cancer.

In addition, some research has linked vegan diets with lower blood pressure and cholesterol, as well as lower rates of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some types of cancer.

Plant-based diets can reduce food related carbon emissions by up half. Consider the number of meals served in our hospitals, schools, prisons and other state institutions every day. If an average of just 10 percent of people opted for plant-based each day, the carbon savings could be immense.

Bedding in behaviour change

And it’s not just about the health and environmental savings made during those individual meal times. It’s about getting people to understand what plant-based food is, and for this understanding to lead to gradual behaviour change throughout their consumption patterns.

So a child exposed to plant-based options on a daily basis, might choose to prepare and eat these foods regularly by the time they are cooking for themselves. Building familiarity with plant-based options, and challenging traditional perceptions of the meat and two veg option could have huge benefits for our future society – for our health, environment, and of course animals.

Forty years ago, the concept of combining two different sauces between layers of pasta and baking it in the oven must have seemed exotic in the extreme.

Nowadays, we have a more global approach to food and accept that just because we haven’t heard of something previously, doesn’t mean it’s automatically to be avoided. If we can convert a growing number of public sector customers to the taste, variety and nutrition of a plant based diet, we can create a new generation of diners who have broader horizons than the traditional definition of a hot meal.

Brighter future

This week, I visited my parents again, and in an effort to introduce them to something new we had falafels – a staple for a vegan like me, but a completely new experience for my mum and dad.

They were pleasantly surprised, and if a couple who are generally more happy with steak and chips can embrace some delicious middle eastern cuisine, it underlines just how adaptable we can be.

There’s no need to be nostalgic for the bad old days of liver and bacon. Let’s look forward to a tasty, plant based future.

This Author

Louise Davies is head of campaigns, policy and research at The Vegan Society. Find out more about their campaign to get a vegan option on every public sector menu here.

Jack Whitehall and Alek Wek will host the 2018 Fashion Awards, taking place today.  The British Fashion Council’s annual gala and ‘gathering for a good cause’ is the main event to raise much needed funds for their business support initiatives assisting UK creativity.

Tickets are available to the purchasing public, enabling – to an extent – access to a world often about exclusivity. But what’s the connection between these high-end fashion events and the environment?

Katherine Hammett is the keynote industry insider on sustainability. For her, fashion was a political forum from the get-go.

Ethical label

After studying at the renowned Central St. Martins School of Art in London and aware of the ‘art of the blah’ in fashion, she utilised the tenet of ‘treat them mean, keep them keen’, when first starting out in Paris as a designer.

Knowing the language helped. The ploy to establish exclusivity from buyers, whilst trying to promote and sell her designs, paid off. When she could barely able to afford the fare home, this daring and defiant move could have backfired.

But like most of Hamnett’s endeavours, taking a foolhardy approach – or as she would jokingly acknowledge, potential foolishness in an industry where ethics before profit – meant battling for decades.

Fast-forward and Hamnett’s sustainable ethical label has never been more relevant. It re-launched in 2017 with classic archival unisex pieces coupled with new designs, all ethically and sustained from Italy.

Successful radical 

Launching in 1979 and almost always an activist, it was in ’81 that Hamnett’s slogan T-shirts were seen as the medium of the emblazoned statement of choice. From ‘CHOOSE LIFE’, ‘SAVE the SEAS’, and ‘YOU-ME’ amongst the several provocative statements to cement Hamnett as a magnet of and for, rebellion.

Her provocative, innovative shows and collections were a global success, helped in 1984 by the now infamous “58% Don’t want Pershing” T-shirt, an anti-nuclear message directed at then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and televised on multi media platforms globally.

Hamnett is a successful radical who launched the careers of folk now part of the fashion ‘fraternity’, including Juergen Teller, Claudia Schiffer, Kate Moss and Terry Richardson. Her pioneering advertising, campaigns and collections – such as stone washed denim – revolutionised fashion.

By the 1990s the Hamnett brand was a major UK exporter with a multi-million pound turnover.

Today, Hamnett is is the go-to sustainable designer for many in fashion and remains refreshingly outspoken. As a long-term forerunner of accountability in an industry previously oblivious to putting the planet first, it was a far from easy journey for this ‘enfant terrible’.

Punk sensibility 

With a punk sensibility well before punk was a movement, and a driven and ‘2 fingers up’ attitude,  Hamnett was the thorn in the side of the business for years.

In 1989 she fully discovered the impact of pesticides, environmental pollution and waste, and the enslavement of production workers. She began lobbying the industry accordingly.

This was a time when human health and issues of environmental concern barely existed in the field of fashion. Taking an almost lone stance meant moving out of the mainstream fashion industry. Choosing other routes became an enforced choice and personally a case of ensuring her designs where in line with her ethics and politics.

Once more celebrated, she is no sell-out. “Slogans are fine but we need action now. And it needs to be dramatic”.

Given the current command for more choice and accountability, perhaps changes will be consumer driven. There has been an explosion of brands that position themselves as eco friendly via informed and financially supported public relations departments – but what’s really motivating them? And will it meaningfully address the environmental crisis?

Influence and innovation 

Some businesses are confronting the real challenges. The organisation Fashion Revolution points to the Ellen MacArthur Report – ‘Re-designing Fashion Future 2017’ – which reveals ways forward in creating a new textiles economy and implementable alternatives, while also considering future sustainability and management.

Findings show the negative impacts of the textile industry are set to drastically increase by 2050. It  also predicts that between 2015 to 2050 microfibres in the ocean will reach 22 billion. The industry also faces its own challenges, as digital sales have negatively affected the high street.

But the London Fashion Week festival helps promote British fashion influence and innovation which stretches far beyond our own high streets, even beyond our island, positively impacting the UK in terms of education and tourism and ensuring its position as a ‘destination for creation and cultural innovation’. 

According to BFC current research from 2009, the UK fashion industry is estimated to have directly contributed £20.9 billion to the UK economy. Significant contributions to this total were made by marketing (£241 million), the fashion media (£205 million) and fashion education (£16 million).

Therefore, the UK fashion industrys direct contribution to UK GDP is around twice the size of the publishing (£9.9 billion), car manufacturing (£10.1 billion) and chemical manufacturing industries (£10.6 billion), and only slightly smaller than both telecommunications (£28.7 billion) and real estate (£26.4 billion).

Fashion and nutrition

Health and wellness is a fashionable concern for consumers, continues to evolve annually. Fashion and nutrition go hand in hand at events such as the Balance Festival, Design Week and The OM Yoga Show. 

The great success of the ‘London Fashion Week Festival’ is notable. While London Fashion Week (LFW) remains a trade only event, the festival posits itself as, “an opportunity for visitors to experience the atmosphere of London Fashion Week in its official venue and gain an insight into the industry. It also gives designer brands the opportunity to meet and build direct relationships with new customers.”  

Sponsors of LFW festival include Emily’s Crisps and Bounce balls – both vegan snacks, bringing awareness to new audiences. The latter in particular, had an eye catching creative garment sculpture made from recycling their wrappers (pictured above). A dress surely the fashion forward ethics and diversity pioneer Lady Gaga would wear.

Whilst it’s an oxymoron to expect fashion and consumerism to be best buddies in sustainability, it is often through these experimental offshoots that progressive exchanges impact indirectly. London – as a fashion centre and innovator – could lead the way in embracing the environmental movement in new modes.

The festival is an assured way to hear directly from those established in the industry. The variety of topics was well represented, talks were frank and offered alternatives to fast fashion as well as addressing current trends in society calling for compassion. But there is need for more and greater change.

Critical Juncture

The organisation Women in Fashions talk – Represent – discussed the importance of visual diversity and its effects on societal pressures, as well as ‘behind the scenes’ and its impact on culture. The consensus was that fashion remains far from diverse and tokenism pervades.

The reticence to provide further commentary post-presentation spoke volumes. This is not new. Appearing to ‘bite the hand that feeds you’ means being brave and bold but potentially viewed as a whistle-blower and agitator.

The 2018 ‘Year of the Woman’ undoubtedly embedded itself globally in the psyche of a society that is moving toward a tipping point. Polarisation, people power and social media create a force demanding acknowledgement and the necessity for change.

There is evidence of wider inclusion in the fashion industry, but with the planet at a critical juncture, tackling environmental and ethical issues in a business whose production and practice often mean ignoring them is often a contradiction in terms.

However there are hopeful signs. The future is full of fascinating potential, though dependent upon far faster and wider discussion alongside implementation.

This Author

Wendyrosie Scott is an anthropologist and journalist focusing on fashion, festivals and creative communities – she considers lifestyle trends and the natural world as positive partnerships.

MPs are due to vote tomorrow on whether to ratify the UK-EU Draft Withdrawal Agreement. If they choose to ratify, the environmental implications will be huge. Yet the topic has been almost entirely absent from public political and media discussion.

This matters because it is the UK’s membership of the Common Market – and its successor organisations – since 1972 that has driven an ever-reluctant Britain out of its former role as the ‘dirty man of Europe’ into the its current state – not as good as we should be, but with some claim at least to environmental respectability.

Performance on nature conservation, air pollution, water quality, toxic chemicals, renewable energy and climate change has changed immeasurably for the better, and it’s vital to make sure that Brexit does not reverse that trend.

Detrimental divergence

Okay, Michael Gove, the environment secretary,  has made some very promising speeches on his commitment to a “green Brexit”. But who knows how long he will stay in his job?

We also face the threat of a future trade deal with the USA which would force UK farmers into competition with US producers subject to a regulatory regime much weaker on environmental and animal welfare issues than applies in the EU. This would lead to overwhelming pressure to lower standards in the UK.

One of the few ways in which the UK’s environmental performance can be assured long into the future is by incorporating binding links to EU laws and standards into a binding international treaty, complete with strong and effective enforcement mechanisms. While the Draft Agreement that will come before MPs tomorrow would be a lot better than a ‘no-deal Brexit’, it fails to provide the long term reassurance on the environment that we desperately need.

As you read the Agreement text, it appears reassuring. It says at Annex IV, Article 2 that UK environmental law must continue to comply with most EU environmental law after Brexit, based on a snapshot of the law at the end of the transition period. OK, that’s better than nothing, but it’s not as good as it looks. For a start UK and EU environmental law can diverge after that, and experience suggests that any such divergence will be detrimental.

And while the list of matters covered by Article 2 looks exhaustive, it isn’t.

Genome editing

Here’s what it does include: “access to environmental information, public participation and access to justice in environmental matters; environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessment; industrial emissions; air emissions and air quality targets and ceilings; nature and biodiversity conservation; waste management; the protection and preservation of the aquatic environment; the protection and preservation of the marine environment; the prevention, reduction and elimination of risks to human health or the environment arising from the production, use, release and disposal of chemical substances; and climate change.”

So what’s missing? While climate change is in there, there is nothing explicitly about energy. So goodbye renewable energy targets! The Government must be loving this, as it leaves them free to continue their disastrous ‘nuclear and fracking at all costs’ policies while rejecting the cleanest, lowest cost technologies like onshore wind and solar, and failing to deliver on energy efficiency in homes, business and industry, much of which can be achieved at negative cost.

As pointed out by Greenpeace’s Unearthed, another glaring omission is “any reference to food standards, sanitary or phytosanitary rules, beyond a general commitment to retain the precautionary principle”. And as far as Gove is concerned, he clearly thinks he has a green light to push forward with the widespread use of GMOs produced by gene-editing techniques like CRISPR.

Gove, according to The Times, told the Country Land and Business Association: “Even if there are individual lobby groups that express their legitimate concerns we will ensure those scientific tools are there for those who can improve productivity in a genuinely sustainable way. Gene editing allows us to give mother nature a helping hand, to accelerate the process of evolution in a way which can significantly increase yield and also reduce our reliance on chemicals and other input.”

The report in The Times continues: “Over the summer the European Court of Justice ruled that food resulting from genome editing would be regarded as genetically modified, which is outlawed in Europe. Mr Gove said that the agreement for leaving the European Union would allow the UK to make its own decision on the risks of gene editing.”

Independent arbitration

For the majority of the UK public who do not want to eat GMO foods, or the rising levels of herbicide residues that most of them contain, and who fear the further narrowing of the gene pool of the crops that sustain human existence, Gove’s vision of UK agriculture offers a truly terrifying prospect.

The Unearthed article adds further omissions from Article 2, which “mentions air quality targets but not limit values on the amount of pollution in a given period, which are more legally enforceable. It talks about pesticides, but not soil … “

Under the Draft Agreement the UK will no longer be subject to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) as the ultimate court of appeal. And the ECJ has been a vital protector of the UK environment over the years, most recently over the UK’s continuing failure to comply with the EU Air Quality Directive.

The ECJ’s rulings in favour of the environmental law charity ClientEarth over UK non-compliance have been essential in holding the government to account on this issue. Without the ECJ we would all be breathing much dirtier air in years to come.

Most disputes arising under the agreement are to be ruled on not by the ECJ – other than in interpreting EU law – but an independent arbitration panel (AP). In fact the AP appears to be an adequate substitute for the ECJ. But there’s a problem: most environmental disputes are specifically excluded from the AP’s jurisdiction!

Reassurance

As Article 2 states: “Articles 170 to 181 of the Withdrawal Agreement shall not apply in respect of disputes regarding the interpretation and application of this Article.”

Instead disputes over UK non-compliance on Article 2 matters are to be decided in UK courts, as set out in Article 3.1, which requires the UK to “ensure that administrative and judicial proceedings are available in order to permit effective and timely action by public authorities and members of the public against violations of its laws, regulations and practices, and provide for effective remedies, including interim measures, ensuring that any sanctions are effective, proportionate and dissuasive and have a real and deterrent effect.”

Superficially, this looks fine. But the obligations set out fall short of existing UK obligations under the Aarhus Convention, for example that environmental justice must be accessible at reasonable cost. After all, if the government raises the costs bar to an unaffordable level, that is very effective block to public access to the courts. How many of us are prepared to risk our homes to stand up for a point of environmental principle, however just?

We also know from bitter experience that UK judges cannot be relied up to uphold the law against government due to a bias in favour of the executive in some – thankfully not all – portions of the judiciary. For a recent example, see this article on Sir Ross Cranston’s counterfactual rejection of a recent High Court challenge to the legality of England’s badger cull.

And while the EU can take serious punitive actions – like fines and trade sanctions, as set out in Article 178 – following an AP judgment which has not been complied with, no such provision applies following a UK court judgment. Enforcement of Article 2 matters is therefore weak, and any reassurance the Article appears to offer is ill-founded.

Less powerful

The UK’s environment will also no longer enjoy the protection of the European Commission as ‘policeman’ and prosecutor for breaches of EU law. Instead Article 3.2 says the UK has to create its own environmental watchdog, which must be independent and adequately resourced, and to which the public can make complaints. But again, the language is weaker than it appears.

For example, the watchdog may only have the power to “request” information, not to demand it. Other requirements are vague, weak and hard to enforce: the body should have “all powers necessary to carry out its functions” and “shall have the right to bring a legal action before a competent court or tribunal in the United Kingdom in an appropriate judicial procedure, with a view to seeking an adequate remedy”. Which adds up, as Boris Johnson might put it, to “two thirds of diddly-squat”.

But most worrying is the brevity of the text and its lack of detail. Compare this to the July 2018 report by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) critiquing the Government’s ‘25 Year Plan for the Environment’, with its exhaustive list of the qualities that would make the new environmental watchdog powerful, independent and effective, importantly including the requirement that if should be accountable to Parliament, not government.

Among the absences are the clear EAC requirements that the UK should:

• replace the one third of EU environmental legislation (air, waste, water, chemicals) that cannot be copied and pasted into UK law through the EU (Withdrawal) Act;
• Put into UK law the environmental principles that the UK has signed up to in international law and which are embodied in the European Treaties and include provisions for all public bodies to act in accordance with the principles;
• Put into UK law the commitments the UK signed up to at the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference;

Future generations

This leaves the government free, at least as far as the Draft Agreement is concerned, to create an environmental regulator which is much less powerful, independent and well-resourced than we need for the vital job of holding government to account.

The fact that the government’s promised Environment Bill, which is intended to create the regulator, is already running seriously late, does little to engender confidence. In May we were promised that the Bill “will be published in the autumn”. Well it’s already mid-December, and there’s no sign of it yet.

It looks like the biggest block to Parliament’s ratification of the Draft Agreement tomorrow is the ‘Northern Ireland backstop’ which would see a long list of EU environmental and other laws (listed in Annex 5 of the Protocol on Ireland) remain in force in the Province, that would no longer apply elsewhere in the UK.

To the Brexiteers this is unfair on Northern Ireland. But from an environmental perspective, it’s unfair on the rest of us to be stripped of key protections that Northern Ireland will continue to enjoy.

One thing is for sure – the Draft Withdrawal Agreement is disappointingly weak on the environment and if it goes through we, future generations and the precious environment we inhabit will suffer as a result.

This Author

Oliver Tickell is an environmental journalist and campaigner, and a former editor of The Ecologist.

There has been much analysis of what Theresa May’s deal will mean for the economy – but virtually none on what it means for tackling our climate emergency.

With delegates meeting in Katowice for the COP24 climate conference, now seems like a good time to put this under the spotlight.

There is well documented evidence of the close links between climate denial and the Brexit campaign. Many of the individuals and organisations pushing climate scepticism are based at or around 55 Tufton Street in London – which has become synonymous with bogus charities and so-called think tanks pushing an extreme free market agenda.

Inconvenient regulations

Part of this agenda includes tearing up inconvenient regulations that protect the environment and workers’ rights and that tax the polluter. Key amongst these dodgy outfits is the Global Warming Policy Foundation, fronted by leading Brexiter Nigel Lawson.

But with the Brexit headbangers apparently losing out to a softer form of Brexit offered by Theresa May’s deal, do we need to worry about how the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration will impact on climate policy?

Well, to the delight of hard Brexit climate sceptics, May’s deal presents an open goal for climate deregulation.

While the UK would have to comply with EU climate regulations during the transition period, the Political Declaration, which is supposed to guide our relationship with the EU beyond 2020, is effectively a blank canvass with no legal authority.

Clause 78 of the declaration states: “The future relationship should reaffirm the Parties’ commitments to international agreements to tackle climate change, including those which implement the UNFCCs on Climate Change, such as the Paris Agreement.”

Climate commitments

However, it seems perfectly feasible that the UK could backslide on other climate commitments made whilst we have been a member of the EU. This means, to the undoubted delight of regulation burning Brexiteers, that many climate and environmental rules could be revoked after Brexit.

Climate and environmental policies would be enforced by the UK’s own ‘green watchdog’. Under current government plans, this body would have no powers relating to climate change. Without any legal authority to impose its own sanctions it would merely be able to issue “advisory notices”.

The government has argued that climate change is already covered by the Climate Change Act 2008. But the UK is on track to miss its own targets under this Act, which is in any case outdated, as 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050 will fail to meet the Paris Agreement ambition of 1.5C maximum warming.

The UK is also one of the worst offenders in the EU for flouting environmental rules. The European Court of Justice has ruled against the UK government 30 times. If the government are no longer accountable to the EU, and the new watchdog has no legal powers, who exactly will hold them to account?

But perhaps we need not fear; our knight in green armour, Michael Gove, will rush in to rescue climate policy as part of his green Brexit. As a leading Brexiter, Gove is compromised from the outset. He is part of the Tory Global Britain brigade; siding with those in 55 Tufton Street who believe in unfettered free trade.

Roulette wheel

The idea that deregulated turbo capitalism is in any way compatible with high environmental standards is a lie.

It seems clear that climate action for Gove amounts to vague talk of mitigation measures including flood defences, plans for agriculture, planting more trees and restoring peatlands. All worthy, but meanwhile the frackers and road and runway builders can continue with fossil fuel business as usual. 

But what else can we expect anyway from the Conservatives who received £2.5m in donations from the energy sector between 2010 and 2015, and who continue to throw money at the fossil fuel industry in the form of tax breaks for oil and gas exploration?

For the UK to leave the EU’s strong climate regulations with such limited knowledge of what the future regime might look like represents a huge risk.

The stakes are too high. The IPCC has made clear we have a small window of opportunity to tackle the biggest threat facing the future of life on earth. We cannot afford to gamble our climate on the Brexit roulette wheel. Which is exactly why a People’s Vote is not just a vote to save the country from a damaging Brexit, but also the planet from climate chaos. 

This Author 

Molly Scott Cato is a Green MEP for the South West of England.