Nuclear, ethanol on Bush-Howard agenda

Anne Davies and Sarah Smiles, August 27, The Age

US PRESIDENT George Bush will invite Australia to be part of two initiatives aimed at guaranteeing future energy supplies: his global nuclear partnership and an initiative to produce ethanol from wild grasses.

Both issues will be raised by Mr Bush at bilateral talks ahead of the APEC meeting next week, senior officials said.

Prime Minister John Howard will today outline his objectives for APEC in an address to the Lowy Institute. The timing of the September 8-9 meeting is politically important — the election could be announced as early as a week or fortnight later.

The US, through the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, is already driving a major research effort to develop a new generation of fast-cycle reactors that would produce far less hazardous waste than conventional nuclear reactors. The group includes many countries involved in the nuclear fuel cycle, including Russia, China and France.

Its broader aim is to eventually secure the entire fuel cycle and confine production and reprocessing to members of the group, thus reducing the threat of nuclear proliferation.

Australia and Canada, the world's largest uranium producers, have so far stalled on joining because of domestic concerns about obligations to take back nuclear waste and store it.

They have also been concerned about being locked out of a core group inside the partnership that is allowed to process uranium, say diplomatic sources.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mr Howard are likely to compare notes in a bilateral meeting around APEC.

A senior official said last week that the US would not pressure Australia to take back nuclear waste if it joined the group.

"We want Australia to be part of the research effort. It doesn't mean Australia would have to take back nuclear waste," the official said. Documents reveal that the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Energy have worked on a bilateral nuclear partnership with the US, which would see closer research ties and more involvement by Australia.

Hans Blix, the head of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission who is visiting Melbourne, said there were "attractive features" in the partnership initiative, which aims to reduce proliferation by confining uranium production to a small group of countries.

Yet he said it remains a "hypothetical" plan and noted that the US has been averse to taking back fuel.

"GNEP is pretty much far in the future, there are many things that need to be clarified and worked out before they can get to such a scheme. It presupposes new types of reactors … the type of reactors we don't have yet," Dr Blix told The Age.

Ethanol will also be a major area of discussion. The US has announced a program to boost ethanol production to 35 billion gallons by 2017, in a bid to reduce its dependence on foreign oil by 20 per cent.

Also see related article in Sydney Morning Herald.

Buy Feed Corn, They're About to Stop Making It

The Hidden Agenda Behind Bush's Biofuel Plan

F. WILLIAM ENGDAHL, August 31, Counterpunch

That bowl of Kellogg's Cornflakes on the breakfast table, or the portion of pasta or corn tortillas, cheese or meat on the table is going to rise in price over the coming months as sure as the sun rises in the East. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the new world food price shock, conveniently timed to accompany our current world oil price shock.

Curiously it's ominously similar in many respects to the early 1970's when prices for oil and food both exploded by several hundred percent in a matter of months. That mid-1970's price explosion led President Nixon to ask his old pal, Arthur Burns, then Chairman of the Fed, to find a way to alter the CPI inflation data to take attention away from the rising prices. The result then was the now-commonplace publication of the absurd "core inflation" CPI numbers--sans oil and food. Stephen Roche was the young Fed economist who was assigned the statistical manipulation job by Burns.

The late American satirist, Mark Twain once quipped, "Buy land: They've stopped making it" Today we can say almost the same about corn or all grains worldwide. The world is in the early months of the greatest sustained rise in grain prices, for all major grains including maize, wheat, rice that we have seen in three decades. Those three crops constitute almost 90 per cent of all grains cultivated in the world.

What's driving this extraordinary change? Here things get pretty interesting. The Bush Administration is making a major public relations push to convince the world it has turned into a "better steward of the environment." The problem is that many have fallen for the hype.

The center of his program, announced in his January State of the Union Address is called '20 in 10', cutting US gasoline use 20 per cent by 2010. The official reason is to "reduce dependency on imported oil," as well as cutting unwanted "greenhouse gas" emissions. That isn't the case, but it makes good PR. Repeat it often enough and maybe most people will believe it. Maybe they won't realize their taxpayer subsidies to grow ethanol corn instead of feed corn are also driving the price of their daily bread through the roof.

The heart of the plan is a huge, taxpayer subsidized expansion of use of bio-ethanol for transport fuel. The President's plan requires production of 35 billion gallons (about 133 billion liters) of ethanol a year by 2017. Congress already mandated with the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that corn ethanol for fuel must rise from 4 billion gallons in 2006 to 7.5 billion in 2012. To make certain it will happen, farmers and big agribusiness giants like ADM or David Rockefeller get generous taxpayer subsidies to grow corn for fuel instead of food. Currently ethanol producers get a subsidy in the US of 51 cents per gallon ethanol paid to the blender, usually an oil company that blends it with gasoline for sale.

As a result of the beautiful US Government subsidies to produce bio- ethanol fuels, and the new legislative mandate, the US refinery industry is investing big time in building new special ethanol distilleries, similar to oil refineries, except they produce ethanol fuel. The number currently under construction exceeds the total number of oil refineries built in the US over the past 25 years. When finished in the next 2-3 years the demand for corn and other grain to make ethanol for car fuel will double from present levels.

Not just USA bio-ethanol. In March Bush met with Brazil's President to sign a bilateral "Ethanol Pact" to cooperate in R&D of "next generation" bio-fuel technologies like cellulosic ethanol from wood, and joint cooperation in "stimulating" expansion of bio-fuels' use in developing countries, especially in Central America, and creating a "bio-fuels OPEC-like" cartel market with rules that allows formation of a Western Hemisphere ethanol market.

In short, the use of farmland worldwide for bio-ethanol and other bio- fuels_burning the food product rather than using it for human or animal food_is being treated in Washington, Brazil and other major centers, including the EU, as a major new growth industry.

Phony green arguments

Bio-fuel -- gasoline or fuel produced from refining food products -- is being hyped as a solution to the controversial Global Warming problem. Leaving aside the faked science and the political interests behind the sudden hype about dangers of global warming, bio-fuels offer no net positive benefits over oil even under best conditions. Its advocates claim that present first generation bio-fuels "save up to 60per cent of carbon emission." As well, amid rising oil prices at $75 per barrel for Brent marker grades, governments such as Brazil's are frantic to substitute homegrown bio-fuels for imported gasoline. In Brazil today 70 per cent of all cars have "flexi-fuel" engines able to switch from conventional gasoline to 100per cent bio-fuel or any mix. Bio-fuel production has become one of Brazil's major export industries as well.

The green claims for bio-fuel as a friendly and better fuel than gasoline are at best dubious, if not outright fraudulent. Depending on who runs the tests, ethanol has little if any effect on exhaust- pipe emissions in current car models. It has significant emission, however, of some toxins including formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, a suspected neurotoxin which has been banned as carcinogenic in California.

Ethanol is not some benign substance as we are led to think from the industry propaganda. It is highly corrosive to pipelines as well as to seals and fuel systems of existing car or other gasoline engines. It requires special new gas pumps. All that conversion costs money.

But the killer-diller about ethanol is that it holds at least 30 per cent less energy per gallon than normal gasoline, translating into a loss in fuel economy per gallon of at least 25 per cent over gasoline for an Ethanol E-85per cent blend. No advocate of the ethanol boondoggle addresses the huge social cost which is beginning to hit the dining room tables across the US, Europe and the rest of the world. Food prices are exploding as corn, soybeans and all cereal grain prices are going through the roof because of the astronomical -- Congress-driven -- demand for corn to burn for bio-fuel.

This year the Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a report concluding that using corn-based ethanol instead of gasoline will have no impact on greenhouse gas emissions, and would even expand fossil fuel use due to increased demand for fertilizer and irrigation to expand acreage of ethanol crops. And according to MIT "natural gas consumption is 66per cent of total corn ethanol production energy," meaning huge new strains on natural gas supply, pushing prices there higher.

The idea that the world can "grow" out of oil dependency with bio- fuels is the PR hype being used to sell what is shaping up to be the mist dangerous threat to the planet's food supply since creation of patented genetically manipulated corn and crops.

US farms become bio-fuel factories

The main reason US and world grain prices are soaring in the past two years and now pre-programmed to continue rising at a major pace, is the conversion of US farmland to become de facto bio-fuel factories. In 2006 US farmland devoted to bio-fuel crops increased by 48 per cent. None of that land was replaced for food crop cultivation. The tax subsidies make it far too profitable to produce ethanol fuel.

Since 2001 the amount of maize used to produce bio-ethanol in the USA has risen 300 per cent, with the trend increasingly going forward. In fact, in 2006 US maize or corn crops for bio-fuel equaled the tonnage of corn used for export. In 2007 it is estimated it will exceed the corn for export by a hefty amount. The US is the world's leading corn exporter, most going for animal feed to EU and other countries. The traditional USDA statistics on acreage planted to corn is no longer a useful metric of food prices as all marginal acreage is going for bio-fuel growing. The amount available for animal and human feed is actually declining.

Brazil and China are similarly switching from food to bio-fuels with large swatches of land.

A result of the bio-fuel revolution in agriculture is that world carryover or reserve stocks of grains have been plunging for six of the past seven years. Carryover reserve stocks of all grains fell at the end of 2006 to 57 days of consumption, the lowest level since 1972. Little wonder that world grain prices rose 100 per cent over the past 12 months. This is just the start.

That decline in grain reserves, the measure of food security in event of drought or harvest failure -- an increasingly common event in recent years -- is pre-programmed to continue going as far ahead as the eye can see. Assuming modest world population increase annually of some 70 million people over the coming decade, especially in the Indian subcontinent and Africa, the stagnation or even decline in the tonnages of feed corn or other feed grains including rice that is harvested annually as growing amounts of bio-ethanol and other bio-fuels displaces food grain, in fact means we are just getting started on the greatest transformation of global agriculture since the introduction of the agribusiness revolution with fertilizers and mechanized farming after World War II. The difference is that this revolution is at the expense of food production. That preprograms exploding global grain prices, increased poverty and malnutrition. And the effect on gasoline import demand will be minimal.

Prof. M.A. Altieri of Berkeley University estimates that dedicating all USA corn and soybean production acreage to bio-fuels would only meet 12 per cent of gasoline and 6 per cent of diesel needs. He notes that though one-fifth of last year's corn harvest went to bio-ethanol, it met a mere 3 per cent of energy needs. But the farmland is converting at a record pace. In 2006 more than 50 per cent of Iowa and South Dakota corn went to ethanol refineries. Farmers across the Midwest, desperate for more income after years of depressed corn prices, are abandoning traditional crop rotation to grow exclusively soybeans or corn with dramatic added impact on soil erosion and needs for added chemical pesticides. In the US some 41 per cent of all herbicides used are already applied to corn. Monsanto and other makers of glyphosate herbicides like Roundup are smiling on the way to the bank.

Going global with bio-fuels

The Bush-Lula pact is just the start of a growing global rush to plant crops for bio-fuel. Huge sugarcane, palm oil and soy plantations for bio-fuel refining are taking over forests and grasslands in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador and Paraguay. Soy cultivation has already caused the deforestation of 21 million hectares in Brazil and 14 million hectares in Argentina, with no end in sight, as world grain prices continue to rise. Soya is used for bio- diesel fuel.

China, desperate for energy sources, is a major player in bio-fuel cultivation, reducing food crop acreage there as well. In the EU most bio-diesel fuel is produced using rapeseed plants, a popular animal feed. The result? Meat prices around the globe are rising and set to continue rising as far ahead as the eye can see. The EU has a target requiring minimum bio-fuel content of 10 per cent, a foolish demand that will set aside 18 per cent of EU farmland to cultivate crops to be burned as bio-fuel.

Big oil is also driving the bio-fuels bandwagon. Prof. David Pimentel of Cornell University and other scientists claim that net energy output from bio-ethanol fuel is less than the fossil fuel energy used to produce the ethanol. Measuring all energy inputs to produce ethanol from production of nitrogen fertilizer to energy needed to clean the considerable waste from bio-fuel refineries, Pimintel's research showed a net energy loss of 22 per cent for bio-fuel -- they use more energy than they produce. That translates into little threat to oil demand and huge profit for clever oil giants that re-profile themselves as "green energy" producers.

So it's little wonder that ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP are all into bio-fuels. This past May, BP announced the largest ever R&D grant to a university, $500 million to the University of California-Berkeley to fund BP-dictated R&D into alternative energy including bio-fuels. Stanford's Global Climate and Energy Program got $100 million from ExxonMobil; University of California-Davis got $25 million from Chevron for its Bio-energy Research Group. Princeton University's Carbon Mitigation Initiative takes $15 million from BP.

Lord Browne, the disgraced former CEO of BP declared in 2006, "The world needs new technologies to maintain adequate supplies of energy for the future. We believe bioscience can bring immense benefits to the energy sector." The bio-fuel market is booming like few others today. This all is a paradise for global agribusiness industrial companies like Cargill, ADM and Monsanto, Syngenta.

All this, combined with severe weather problems in China, Australia, Ukraine and large parts of the EU growing areas this harvest season, guarantee that grain prices are set to explode further in coming months and years. Some are gleefully reporting the end of the era of "cheap food." With disappearing food security reserves and disappearing acreage going to plant corn and grains for food, the bio- fuel transformation will impact global food prices massively in coming years.

Another agenda behind Ethanol?

Uh Huh. The dramatic embrace of bio-fuels by the Bush Administration since 2005 has clearly been the global driver for soaring grain and food prices in the past 18 months. The evidence suggests this is no accident of sloppy legislative preparation. The US Government has been researching and developing bio-fuels since the 1970's. The bio-ethanol architects did their homework we can be assured. It's increasingly clear that the same people who brought us oil price inflation are now deliberately creating parallel food price inflation. We have had a rise in average oil prices of some 300 per cent since the end of 2000 when George W. Bush and Dick Halliburton Cheney made oil the central preoccupation of US foreign policy.

Last year, as bio-ethanol production first became a major market factor, corn prices rose by some 130 per cent on the Chicago commodities in 14 months. It was more than known when Congress and the Bush Administration made their heavy push for bio-ethanol in 2005 that world grain reserves had been declining at alarming levels for several years at a time when global demand, driven especially by growing wealth And increasing meat consumption in China, was rising.

As a result of the diversion of record acreages of US and Brazilian corn and soybeans to bio-fuel production, food reserves are disappearing. Global food security, according to FAO data, is at its lowest since 1972. Curiously that was just the time that Henry Kissinger and the Nixon Administration engineered, in cahoots with Cargill and ADM_the major backers of the ethanol scam today_what was called The Great Grain Robbery, sale of huge volumes of US grain to the Soviet Union in exchange for sales of record volumes of Russian oil to the West. Both oil and corn prices rose by 1975 some 300-400per cent as a result. Just how that worked, I treated in detail in: A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics.

Today a new element has replaced USSR grain demand and harvest shortfalls. Bio-fuel demand, fed by US government subsidies is literally linking food prices to oil prices. The scale of the subsidized bio-fuel consumption has exploded so dramatically since the beginning of 2006 when the US Energy Policy Act of 2005 first began to impact crop planting decisions, not only in the USA, that there is emerging a de facto competition between people and cars for the same grains. Lester Brown recently noted, "We're looking at competition in the global market between 800 million automobiles and the world's two billion poorest people for the same commodity, the same grains. We are now in a new economic era where oil and food are interchangeable commodities because we can convert grain, sugar cane, soybeans_anything_into fuel for cars. In effect the price of oil is beginning to set the price of food."

In the mid-1970's Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a protégé of the Rockefeller family and of its institutions stated, "Control the oil and you control entire nations; control the food and you control the people." The same cast of characters who brought the world the Iraq war, the global scramble to control oil, who brought us patented genetically manipulated seeds and now Terminator suicide seeds, and who cry about the "problem of world over-population," are now backing conversion of global grain production to burn as fuel at a time of declining global grain reserves. That alone should give pause for thought. As the popular saying goes, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you."

F. William Engdahl is author of the forthcoming book, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, Global Research Publishing, and author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press. He may be reached via his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

Chavez Warns of Biofuel Disaster

CARMEN GENTILE, August 9, United Press International

MIAMI, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has warned that the use of agricultural products for biofuels could lead to “disaster,” the latest salvo in an ongoing dispute over increased production of the fossil fuel alternative.

Chavez said in a national address this week that increased biofuel production in Latin America -- as was proposed by the United States earlier this summer -- would not help the region’s poor or bring electricity to rural communities. Instead, crops like corn meant for food production will be diverted to create more biofuels so that “illogical, absurd and stupid capitalism can continue its voracious growth," the Venezuelan leader said.

“That would be a disaster," he said.

Petroleum-rich Venezuela has increased its criticism of alternative fuel projects ever since U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced in June a plan to increase biofuel production in the region.

During the Organization of American States General Assembly in Panama, Rice provided an outline of four pilot projects for increasing alternative energy use and production in the region. Four nations, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti and St. Kitts, will be the first beneficiaries of the recently signed U.S.-Brazil alternative-energy agreement that aims to increase ethanol production in the region and promote other forms of biofuels.

“This declaration realizes that biofuels will be critical to diversifying the use of our energy in our hemisphere,” Rice said. “We seek to promote the democratization of energy in the Americas, increasing the number of energy suppliers, expanding the market and reducing supply disruption.”

The new biofuel agenda could put “unwarranted strains” on other industries, a leading fossil fuel proponent testified during a congressional hearing last week.

“Creating artificial demand for biofuels also places unwarranted strain on other industries that compete for the same feedstocks, thus impacting food and other commodity prices,” said the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association Executive Vice President Charles Drevna before the Senate Subcommittee on Energy.

Drevna’s concerns about the newfound obsession with expanding the production of alternative fuels like ethanol has also found footing in countries like Mexico, where corn producers complain that corn-based ethanol production has help drive up the prices of tortillas, a staple food of the country.

Leaders in Cuba have also criticized the expansion of ethanol production in Latin America and the Caribbean, claiming it would deplete food supplies in the region, where a scarcity of sustenance is not uncommon.

Hoping to counter the growing tide of anti-biofuel sentiment, Brazil -- the No. 1 producer of sugar-based ethanol -- has joined the United States in its advocacy of increasing ethanol use and production in Latin America. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took umbrage with recent remarks that increasing the country’s ethanol production would further harm the Amazon rainforest.

"We have adversaries that will make up any kind of slander against the quality of ethanol and biodiesel," he said during a visit to Brussels for a biodiesel conference.

He noted that as far back as the early Portuguese settlers, Brazilians knew the Amazon was not a suitable environment for growing sugarcane, and increasing production to meet regional and worldwide demand for ethanol would not hasten the deforestation of the Amazon.

Brazil can triple its production in the coming years "without knocking down a single tree," Brazilian Agriculture Minister Luis Carlos Guedes Pinto said in December.

Of course Venezuela, with its bountiful oil reserves and cast of regional and global customers, would have the most to lose by increasing biofuel production close to home.

Last week Chavez announced that Venezuela’s oil and gas sector increased government revenue by $5.8 billion a year since 2004. But those figures, according to some Venezuelan oil officials, are inflated by the wide-sweeping nationalization of the sector ordered by Chavez.

Luis Vierma, exploration and production vice president of Venezuelan state-run oil firm PDVSA, said his country’s oil industry faces a "significant operational emergency" if it does not increase the number of rigs operating in the country. PDVSA fell short of its 2007 goal of getting 191 rigs online in 2007 and producing some 3.3 million barrels per day, he added. So far, he said, 112 rigs were online as of July, and by the end of the year their numbers would only likely increase to 120.

At the same time, Venezuela's oil output is believed to have slipped by more than 250,000 barrels per day from a year ago, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Production has reportedly decreased from 2.6 million bpd to 2.37 million bpd.

Another competitor on the fuel market could spell trouble for years to come for the Venezuelan petroleum sector.

Technology the Focus of Bush Global Warming Conference

Environment News Service, August 6

WASHINGTON, DC, August 6, 2007 (ENS) - President George W. Bush has invited leaders of the world's "major economies" to a conference on climate change September 27 and 28 in Washington. In his letter of invitation to 15 national governments plus the European Union and the United Nations, the president said the conference will place "special emphasis" on technology.

President Bush said he will address the conference, which will consider how to deal with global climate change after the Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012.

"At this meeting, we would seek agreement on the process by which the major economies would, by the end of 2008, agree upon a post-2012 framework that could include a long-term global goal, nationally defined mid-term goals and strategies, and sector-based approaches for improving energy security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions," Bush wrote.

"We expect to place special emphasis on how major economies can, in close cooperation with the private sector, accelerate the development and deployment of clean technologies, a critical component of an effective global approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions," he wrote.

The President Bush has long favored the technology rather than binding emissions limits as the best way to address climate change.

The president's preferences run to nuclear power, clean coal, ethanol and other biofuels. The White House said in February that including the 2008 budget request the Bush administration "will have spent $15 billion since 2001 to develop cleaner, cheaper, more efficient, and more reliable energy sources." By contrast, the war in Iraq has cost more than $500 billion to date.

The Bush conference, where the United States will set the agenda, comes three days after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hosts an international high-level climate conference just prior to the general debate of the incoming General Assembly.

Ban will seek to advance progress towards negotiations on a new global agreement limiting greenhouse gas emissions to follow the Kyoto Protocol, but Ban says he will not seek to engage governments in negotiations.

Formal negotiations will begin at the annual UN climate conference that will be held this year in Bali, Indonesia in December.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Scott Stanzel said that the Bush administration's conference is intended to support, not conflict with, the United Nations' work on climate change.

"We feel that this effort is intended to aid the UN process that is ongoing," Stanzel said Friday, "We're pleased to have the support of the secretary-general and the head of the UNFCCC. We expect the results in 2008 from these major economies to contribute to the global agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change by 2009. So we think it can enhance that process."

Bush has designated Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to host the conference, which he told invitees is the first of a series of meetings throughout 2008 "to further refine our plans and accelerate our progress on this important challenge."

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, will serve as the president's personal representative, and the U.S. delegation will consist of senior officials responsible for economic, energy, and climate policy, Bush said.

Invited governments include - Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, and the United Kingdom, plus the European Union and the United Nations.

Some environmentalists say that the Bush climate conference is an effort to deflect international pressure for the United States to accept mandatory greenhouse emissions gas limits, something the president still refuses to do.

In response, Stanzel said, "We have always said that we think that this issue should be addressed with developing nations, with the countries that are involved today, that the President invited to this conference."
Dadri (NCTPP) coal-fired power plant in Delhi, India (Photo courtesy Ministry of Power)

"We think it's an opportunity for those nations and those countries to come together to talk about what we can do in the post-2012 environment to address greenhouse gas emissions; what we can do to advance new technologies to help those developing nations reduce their emissions and help us all have a cleaner environment with a healthy economy."

On May 31, 2007 when Bush first announced his intention to host a climate change conference, UNFCCC chief Yvo de Boer said Connaughton had personally promised him that the president's climate meeting would feed into the United Nations process.

At the G8 meeting in Germany in June, Bush agreed with the other G8 leaders for the first time to establish common goals for the reduction of greenhouse gases as part of the United Nations process.

Now the world's number two emitter of greenhouse gases, after China, the United States has refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which mandates cuts in the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

President Bush has cited the fact that the protocol does not apply to developing nations such as China and India as a major reason for not backing the protocol, which the United States signed during the Clinton administration.

Climate action now! Socialist Climate Change Charter

It happens to be an emergency...

Climate action now!

Warnings that can’t be ignored

Climate scientists have been warning us about global warming for decades. But in the last few years, alarm bells have been ringing more loudly.

Previously it was assumed that gradual increases in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere would produce gradual increases in global temperatures. But now scientists predict that an increase of as little as 2˚C above pre-industrial levels could trigger environmental effects that would make further warming—as much as 8˚C—inevitable.

Worse still, a 2˚C increase is highly likely if greenhouse gas concentrations reach 450 parts per million (ppm). They presently stand at 430ppm and are increasing by 2-2.5 ppm per year.

Such accelerated warming would create the hottest Earth since the human race evolved. In the earlier stages, an additional 2 billion people would be at risk of insufficient water, 95% of coral reefs would be lost, the Amazon rainforest and other important ecosystems would be destroyed forever, and a super-drought would spread to the world’s largest food producers, causing widespread famine and an unprecedented refugee crisis.

The collapse of the polar ice caps would result in a sea level rise of up to 25 metres, and massive devastation to coastal and island communities and major cities. The rate of species loss could match those of previous mass extinctions. Needless to say, not only civilisation, but the very survival of humanity would be threatened.

Australia—greenhouse gas emissions junkie

Each year human activity is pumping out twice as many greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions —8 billion tonnes as against 4 billion—as the world’s forests, land and oceans can absorb.

Moreover, there is a time lag between greenhouse gas release into the atmosphere and the final impact on global average temperature. Since the late 1880s, this has risen 0.8˚C and the GHGs now in the air will cause a further 0.5-0.6˚ rise over coming decades. This puts us dangerously close to the temperatures at which runaway warming will occur. The harmful effects are already being seen in droughts, floods, cyclones, heat waves and rising sea levels.

While Australia's share of world GHG emissions is small, around 1.4%, our highly industrialised economy has the highest GHG emission rate per person in the world: 5.63 tonnes of carbon each year (see Graph 1).

The global average is 1.27 tonnes and the world environment can absorb only 0.62 tonnes per person. Just to get Australia’s emissions down to a level the Earth can absorb would mean cutting emissions by 90%.

Yet, despite knowing the serious risks since the 1980s, the Australian government and resource industry lobbyists (the “greenhouse mafia”) have sabotaged international negotiations in order to protect the profits of a small number of big polluters like BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto.

We have no choice but to make every possible effort

The urgency of the situation cannot be overstated: global warming and climate change are already upon us. Bringing greenhouse gas emissions under control will require deep changes and immense effort at the global level: a revolution in the economy and industry as big as mobilising for world war.

Climate change scientists say we have a window of around 10 years to make the necessary infrastructure and investment changes that can produce these emissions cuts. In the words of the May 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “It is technically and economically feasible to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere”.

But getting there in time is the greatest challenge. It means adopting policies adequate to the climate crisis, and creating the social and political movement capable of making sure they are actually introduced. This charter outlines the Socialist Alliance's view of those policies and the strategy we need to implement them.

For the full charter, please click here

No change on climate at APEC: envoy

Katharine Murphy, August 8, The Age

PRIME Minister John Howard's hand-picked climate change envoy says APEC is unlikely to deliver big breakthroughs on global warming.

And he says the United States will not accept emissions trading until there is a new president.

Former Macquarie Bank deputy chairman Mark Johnson says APEC economies were "not at a level yet where there is a common aspiration" about how to reduce the risks of global warming.

"There will certainly be no targets (agreed in September). There's not that degree of commonality," Mr Johnson said in an interview in Canberra on Tuesday.

He said national environmental reforms now being considered by the US Congress were unlikely to yield change "until the next president".

"I think it will take a long time to get to emissions trading in the United States," he said.

But Mr Johnson said next month's meeting of APEC leaders in Sydney could deliver business some much-needed priorities in areas such as improving energy efficiency and support for new emissions reduction technology.

Mr Johnson met Mr Howard privately in Canberra late yesterday to outline business priorities for the APEC meeting.

Achieving progress on climate change and energy security is number one on the business wish list.

Mr Johnson was appointed by Mr Howard in June in a special outreach role to encourage regional economies to come up with a co-operative approach to climate change.

He is also chairman of APEC's high-powered business advisory council. In a new report to APEC leaders handed to Mr Howard yesterday, the business delegation calls for September to deliver transparent rules and incentives to deal with the challenges of global warming and energy security, and a bolder approach to free trade and investment liberalisation.

The wish list also flags business support for significant changes to allow the free movements of labour across APEC members.

Business is preparing a push to allow skilled labour and guest workers from countries such as Mexico and the Philippines freer movement into developed economies within APEC, to tackle looming changes in the labour market, including the retirement of the baby boomers.

Mr Howard has previously played up the importance of the APEC meeting for breakthroughs on climate change, but the focus of key international players, particularly the US, has shifted to a United Nations gathering in December, and a separate meeting of polluters being spearheaded by US President George Bush.

Mr Johnson said business did not expect APEC to "change its nature", but corporations in the member economies were looking for action from their political leaders across a range of fronts.

He said business would view the September gathering as a success if issues such as climate change were "elevated as a discussion item" and if economies could deliver principles on issues such as transparency of rules and regulations, and government incentives.

Trade is also a significant agenda item. Yesterday's brief to Mr Howard calls for APEC leaders to consider a free trade area for the Asia-Pacific region.

House Apporves New Oil Company Taxes

H. JOSEF HEBERT, August 5, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - Declaring a new direction in energy policy, the House on Saturday approved $16 billion in taxes on oil companies, while providing billions of dollars in tax breaks and incentives for renewable energy and conservation efforts.

Republican opponents said the legislation ignored the need to produce more domestic oil, natural gas and coal. One GOP lawmaker bemoaned ``the pure venom ... against the oil and gas industry.''

The House passed the tax provisions by a vote of 221-189. Earlier it had approved, 241-172, a companion energy package aimed at boosting energy efficiency and expanding use of biofuels, wind power and other renewable energy sources.

``We are turning to the future,'' said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The two bills, passed at an unusual Saturday session as lawmakers prepared to leave town for their monthlong summer recess, will be merged with legislation passed by the Senate in June.

On one of the most contentious and heavily lobbied issues, the House voted to require investor-owned electric utilities nationwide to generate at least 15 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind or biofuels.

The utilities and business interests had argued aggressively against the federal renewables mandate, saying it would raise electricity prices in regions of the country that do not have abundant wind energy. But environmentalists said the requirement will spur investments in renewable fuels and help address global warming as utilities use less coal.

``This will save consumers money,'' said Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., the provision's co-sponsor, maintaining utilities will have to use less high-priced natural gas. He noted that nearly half the states already have a renewable energy mandate for utilities, and if utilities can't find enough renewable they can meet part of the requirement through power conservation measures.

The bill also calls for more stringent energy efficiency standards for appliances and lighting and incentives for building more energy-efficient ``green'' buildings. It would authorize special bonds for cities and counties to reduce energy demand.

Pelosi, D-Calif., said it was essential to commit to renewable energy while reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Doing so, she said, will help address global warming and make the country more energy-independent.

``It's about our children, about our future, the world in which they live,'' Pelosi said.

Democrats avoided a nasty fight by ignoring - at least for the time being - calls for automakers to make vehicles more fuel-efficient. Cars, sport utility vehicles and small trucks use most of the country's oil and produce almost one-third of the carbon dioxide emissions linked to global warming.

That issue, as well as whether to require huge increases in the use of corn-based ethanol as a substitute for gasoline, were left to be thrashed out when the House bill is merged with energy legislation the Senate passed in June.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland said he was confident the final bill that will go to President Bush will contain a significant increase in automobile fuel economy requirements.

``This is a historic turn away from a fossil fuel agenda toward renewable energy. It's been a long time in coming,'' said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., in an interview. Markey abandoned efforts to get an auto mileage provision into the bill, but also expressed confidence one will be added during negotiations with the Senate. The Senate in passing energy legislation in June called for a 40 percent increase auto mileage to 35 mpg by 2020.

Republicans said the House bill did nothing to increase domestic oil and natural gas production or take further advantage of coal, the country's most abundant domestic energy resource.

``There's a war going on against energy from fossil fuels,'' said Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas. ``I can't understand the pure venom felt against the oil and gas industry.''

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said the bill was ``a political exercise'' to promote ``pet projects, ... pet ideas.'' He predicted it ``isn't going anywhere'' because President Bush will veto it if it gets to his desk.

The White House indicated President Bush might veto the bill if he gets it saying it makes ``no serious attempts to increase our energy security or address high energy costs'' and would harm domestic oil and gas production.

The bill would repeal for oil companies a tax breaks given in 2004 to help domestic manufacturers compete against foreign companies, and another tax break pertaining to income from foreign oil production. Critics of the two tax provisions called them loopholes that the industry had taken advantage of.

The House-passed bill also includes an array of loan guarantees, federal grants and tax breaks for alternative energy programs. They include building biomass factories, research into making ethanol from wood chips and prairie grasses and producing better batteries for hybrid gas-electric automobiles.

The legislation would end a tax break for buying large SUVs, known as the ``Hummer tax loophole'' because it allows people who buy some of the most expensive SUVs to write off much of the cost.