Hansen, Clock running out on irreversible climate change

Dr James Hansen, April 28, Online Opinion

New York: fifty years ago, Yankee Stadium had about 70,000 seats. It seldom sold out, and almost any kid could afford the cheapest seats. Capacity was reduced to about 57,000 when the stadium was remodeled in the 1970s. Most games sell out now, and prices have gone up.

The new stadium, opening next year, will reduce seating to about 51,800. This intentional contraction is aimed at guaranteeing sellouts, increasing demand, allowing the owners, in short order, to triple prices or more. The owners have learned that scarcity will fatten their wallets. The plan may discriminate against the lower middle class, but as long as the owner is footing the bill without public subsidies, there may be little grounds for complaint.

Now fossil-fuel moguls are intent on hoodwinking the entire planet with an analogous scheme.

The basic trick is oil producers overstating fossil-fuel reserves. Government "energy information" departments parrot industry. Partly because of disinformation, the major efforts needed to develop alternative energies have not been made.

The reality of limited supply forces prices higher. Eventually, sales volume will begin to decline, but fossil-fuel moguls will make more money than ever. They'll continue to assert that there's plenty more oil, gas or coal to be found, aiming to keep the suckers on the hook. Indeed, they may find somewhat more in the deep ocean, under national parks, in polar regions, offshore, and in other environmentally sensitive areas. They don't need much to keep the suckers paying higher and higher prices.

Oil "reserves" suddenly doubled when Organization for the Petroleum Exporting Countries decided that production quotas would be proportional to official reserves. These higher reserves are, at least in part, phantom. Coal "reserves" are based on estimates made many decades ago. Closer study shows that extractable coal reserves are vastly overstated, consistent with present production difficulties and rising prices. The presumed 200-year supply of coal in the United States is a myth, but it serves industry moguls well.

Conventional fossil-fuel supplies are limited, even if we tear up the Earth to extract every last drop of oil and shard of coal. Tearing up the Earth to get at those last drops - Exxon/Mobil proudly advertises that they're drilling the depths of the ocean and searching the most extreme pristine environments - is as insane as the smoker who trudged four miles through a raging storm to buy a pack of Camel cigarettes to feed his nicotine addiction.

It would be possible to find more fossil fuels, and extend our addiction and pollution of the environment, should we be so foolish as to take the path of extracting unconventional fossil fuels such as tar shale and tar sands on a large scale. That choice cannot be left to the discretion of industry moguls. The planet does not belong to them.

Basic facts on reserves must be combined with basic climate facts described in the paper Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?

Our conclusion is that, if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to the one on which civilisation developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, CO2 must be reduced from its present 385ppm (parts per million) to, at most, 350ppm. We find that peak CO2 can be kept to about 425ppm, with large estimates for oil and gas reserves, if coal use is phased out by 2030 (except where CO2 is captured and sequestered) and unconventional fossil fuels are not tapped substantially. Peak CO2 can be kept close to 400ppm, if actual reserves are closer to those estimated by "peakists", who believe that the globe is already at peak global oil production, having extracted about half of readily extractable oil resources.

This lower 400ppm peak can be ensured, assuming phase-out of coal emissions by 2030, if a practical limit on reserves is achieved by means of actions that prevent fossil-fuel extraction from public lands, off-shore regions under government control, environmentally pristine regions and extreme environments. The concerned public can influence this matter, but time is short, the industry voice is strong and climate effects have not yet become so obvious to the public as to overwhelm the disinformation from industry moguls.

A near-term moratorium on coal-fired power plants and constraints on oil extraction in extreme environments are essential, because once CO2 is emitted to the air much of it will remain there for centuries. Improved agricultural and forestry practices, mostly reforestation, could draw down atmospheric CO2 by about 50ppm by the end of the century. But a greater drawdown by such more-or-less natural methods seems impractical, making a long-term overshoot of the 350ppm target level, with potentially disastrous consequences, a near certainty if the world stays on its business-as-usual course.

If we choose a different path, which permits the possibility of achieving 350ppm CO2 or lower this century, we can minimise the chance of passing tipping points that spiral out of control, such as disintegration of ice sheets, rapid sea level rise and extermination of countless species. At the same time, we could solve problems that seem intractable, such as acidification of the ocean with consequent loss of coral reefs.

In any event, we must move beyond fossil fuels soon, because a large fraction of CO2 emissions will linger in the atmosphere for many centuries.

The world must move to zero fossil-fuel emissions. This is a fact, a certainty. So why not do it sooner, in time to avert climate crises? At the same time, we halt other pollution that comes from fossil fuels, including mercury pollution, conventional air pollution, problems stemming from mountain-top removal and more.

Breaking an addiction is not easy. But we may be like the smoker who trudged four miles through rain to get a pack of Camels - when he got back to his motel he threw the pack away and never smoked again.

Fossil-fuel addiction is more difficult - one person's epiphany cannot solve the problem. This problem requires global co-operation. We must be on a new path within the next several years, or reducing CO2 levels this century becomes implausible. Developed countries, the source of most excess CO2 in the air today, must lead in developing clean energy and halting emissions. Yet it is hardly a sacrifice: "Green" jobs will be an economic stimulus and a boon to worker well-being.

A major fight is brewing - it might be called war. On the one side, we find the short-term financial interests of the fossil-fuel industry. On the other side: young people and other beings who will inherit the planet. The fight seems uneven. The fossil-fuel industry is launching a disinformation campaign, and they have powerful influence in capitals around the world.

Young people seem pretty puny in comparison to industry moguls, and animals don't talk or vote. The battle may start with local and regional skirmishes, one coal plant at a time. But it could build rapidly - we're running out of time.

Meanwhile, the moguls' dirtiest trick is spewing "green" messages to the public - propaganda, intended to leave the impression they're moving in the right direction. Meanwhile they hire scientific has-beens to dispute evidence and confuse the public.

When will we know that the long-term public interest has overcome the greed? When investors, companies and governments begin to invest en masse in renewable energies, when all aim for zero-carbon emissions.

Corporate vs. Popular Solutions to the Climate Crisis

GJEP Presentation on Global Warming at Left Forum
Climate Change: Crisis and Opportunity

Anne Petermann, GJEP Co-Director, March 15, Global Justice Equality Project

Global warming is humanity's greatest challenge. As such, we must tackle this issue on several fronts. We must build opposition to the corporate-controlled false solutions to climate change that dominates the media, in order to open space for discussion of real solutions. We must make climate justice a core part of our work. We must make broad and visionary alliances with allied movements around the world, and we must begin the fundamental transformation of society that will be required to truly and effectively address the climate crisis.

Global Warming = Global War
Growing human population coupled with gross overconsumption in Developed Countries has culminated in a severely shrinking resource base, as evidenced by pandemic ecological crises and by global warming itself. The intensification of the impacts from climate change is further depleting resources such as water and soils, and threatens widespread destruction of forests and their biodiversity. Wars for resources have already begun. In February 2004, a Pentagon report on global warming was leaked. It predicted that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. They went on to say that the threat to global security vastly eclipses that of terrorism, concluding, "disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life. Once again warfare would define human life." In 1980 Jimmy Carter pronounced the Carter Doctrine that enables the US to go to whatever lengths are necessary to ensure an uninterrupted supply of oil from the Middle East.

Then there is the role of the World Bank, which is currently headed up by former US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick. Zoellick was one of the main architects of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) and is one of the people behind the Project for a New American Century, the neoconservative blueprint for American Empire. The World Bank is one of the primary engines of global warming. According to the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network, since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, when the World Bank was entrusted with promoting and developing renewable energies, they have spent well over $30 billion on fossil fuel exploitation (over 7 times what they spent on renewables). And where are these fossil fuels going? Over 80% of them are being exported to G8 countries. The World Bank has now insinuated itself into the global effort to stave off climate change by assuming the role of the world's carbon trading broker (and netting a tidy sum for itself in the form of a 13% trading commission). Hence the World Bank is a global funder of climate change at the same time that it is a central player in the promotion and implementation of massive-scale, market-based false solutions including carbon trading, carbon offsets like monoculture tree plantations, incinerators, large-scale hydropower and biofuels (more appropriately named agrofuels).

Some of the most extreme examples of the capitalist climate denial: With the spectre of climate catastrophe looming, fossil fuels companies are developing the tar sands in Alberta, Canada where they plan to destroy a tract of boreal forest the size of Florida to access the tar sands beneath. Extracting the fuel from the tarsands is very energy intensive and it takes about 2 gallons of fossil fuels to access 3 gallons of fuel from the tar sands.

As a second absurd example, at the same time that scientists and arctic peoples are raising increasingly urgent alarms about the melting of the arctic regions due to global warming and excessive carbon emissions, oil companies are competing to claim the vast oil reserves that lie beneath the melting arctic, while at the same time celebrating the opening of the Northwest Passage and new trade routes. The logical disconnect displayed here is frightening and exemplifies the disaster capitalism approach to climate change.

Disaster Capitalism and Climate Change

The disaster capitalists are seizing on global warming as the newest means to:
• expand and consolidate corporate power (biofuels, for example are being promoted through an unprecedented cooperation between oil, biotechnology, agro-industrial and timber corporations);
• take further control of the commons (through schemes like the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, the UN's REDD [Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries] and through what we have seen since Hurricane Katrina, with land being taken away from people and handed over to developers).
• further the commodification of life (the most extreme example of this being the work by scientific extremists to manufacture entirely new organisms for the production of agrofuels)
• enhance personal wealth
• prolong the continuation of business as usual.

Among the various profit-making false solutions to climate change being promoted by the disaster capitalists, agrofuels are one of the more egregious examples. First came agrofuels manufactured out of food crops like corn. These food-based fuels were quickly and loudly denounced for their obvious impacts on the world food supply. But besides making food scarcer and more expensive, thereby driving up rates of starvation, agrofuels made from feedstocks like corn were also shown in studies to use more fossil fuels to create than the agrofuels that were produced, causing a negative impact on the climate. They also had nasty side effects. The diversion of corn in the U.S. into agrofuels led to record prices for the crop. This in turn caused many soy farmers in the U.S. to change over to corn. This was followed by a dip in the soybean market which drove up the price of soy, leading to a rapid acceleration of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest for the expansion of soy monocultures in Brazil.

The solution, we are now told, is second generation biofuel technologies that do not use food feedstocks, but rather cellulose-based feedstocks, such as trees and switchgrass. These, too, however are solely about corporate profit, not about truly sustainable fuels. First of all, cellulosic agrofuels do nothing to address the question of land being redirected out of producing food and into producing fuel crops. Second, agrofuels are being used to promote new and unproven technologies such as the highly controversial and dangerous genetic engineering of trees. GE trees are one of the main feedstocks being promoted for the manufacture of cellulosic ethanol. GE trees, (which, incidentally, are also being proposed for carbon offset forestry plantations), threaten to contaminate native forests and indigenous lands with engineered pollen and seeds, leading to devastating and irreversible impacts on forests, wildlife and nearby human communities. Corporations such as International Paper, MeadWestvaco, ArborGen and others stand to profit handsomely from the commercialization of GE trees.

Eliminating these corporate-controlled false solutions to global warming is critical to make room for the real, community-controlled solutions to global warming.

In addition to working against false solutions, we must also work for climate justice.
Indigenous and rural peoples, women and the poor are already on the front lines of the climate struggle, being impacted most severely by climate change. The UN estimates that between 1995-2005 over 500,000 people in so-called developing countries were killed as a result of climate change while another 2.5 million were directly impacted by it. Because in many regions indigenous peoples have been careful stewards of their ancestral lands, these lands are now being coveted by the World Bank, corporations, governments and others that seek to take control of these lands: for the rich resources they contain; for the development of agrofuel feedstocks or monoculture tree plantation carbon sinks; and now also for the important role they can play in carbon offsetting schemes under the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, or under the UN's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation scheme. Both of these schemes seek to take control of regions with intact forests and protect them as human exclusion zones by relocating resident communities so that the carbon absorbed by these forests can be used to offset the emissions of polluters in the North. This environmental protection = human exclusion model has been perfected over the years by the likes of Conservation International, the World Wildlife Fund and the Nature Conservancy. In fact, at the World Bank's press conference during the UN Climate Convention in Bali where Zoellick first announced the Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, The Nature Conservancy pledged $5 million to the effort.

However, as one of the steps toward truly addressing climate change, Indigenous peoples must be given autonomy and the right to control their ancestral lands.

Because of the inherent injustice of REDD and the FCPF, indigenous peoples were joined by people from around the world to stage a loud and angry protest outside of Zoellick's press conference in Bali. This was, in fact, the most hopeful thing that emerged from the Bali talks where once again the US bullied the rest of the world into accepting "The Bali Roadmap"--a deal with no hard targets for emissions reductions, but rather a vague agreement to talk about potential action on climate change at future meetings.

Social movements, indigenous peoples organizations and NGOs came together numerous times throughout the UN Climate Convention in Bali to demand real action on climate change, oppose false solutions and to stand up for climate justice. Out of these actions emerged a new international alliance called Climate Justice Now!

balippt.pdf

One challenge for the international climate change movement is upping the ante sufficiently over the next two years to force the international climate negotiations to take real, effective action to address global warming. In the UN arena, all eyes are focused toward a new post-Kyoto Protocol agreement to take effect in 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires. The negotiations for this post-2012 framework are happening now. They hope to finalize the terms for this agreement in Copenhagen during the UN Climate Convention there in December 2009. This means that the international climate movement needs to ramp up its militancy to force the negotiators to include action steps that are truly meaningful and not controlled by corporate interests.

As the London Guardian pointed out after the UN climate negotiations in 2000, "what has been singularly lacking [in the climate change debate] has been any widesprad popular campaign. There have been no Seattle-style protests... Politicians respond to pressure. When they have big, angry demonstrations outside their conference centers, it focuses their minds..."

Key role of the US movement against climate change
The movement against global warming in the United States plays a pivotal role in the global effort to stop climate change. This is for a few reasons:
• With 6% of the world's population, the US emits 25% of the world's GHG.
• The US and the US-controlled World Bank dominate the discussion of what to do about global warming with market-based false solutions.
• The historic role of the US in the international climate negotiations has been to obstruct any forward progress.

In much the same way that the Seattle protests bolstered the position of the underdog countries in the WTO negotiations, ultimately derailing them, a US mobilization in support of countries fighting for real action on climate change at the international level could help neutralize the obstructive role of the US by demonstrating that even the country's own citizens do not support the government's intransigence on this issue.

The global warming crisis opens the door to the fundamental transformation of society toward which the left has been working for countless years.

While raising the militancy of the movement toward international climate negotiations is a crucial component of forward motion on climate change, we must also take lessons from the social movements around the world that are already taking direct action on issues related to climate change. Indigenous peoples in Brazil are taking back their ancestral lands, cutting the eucalyptus plantations and re-establishing villages. A few days ago 900 women from Via Campesina occupied a eucalyptus plantation and cut down the trees. 800 women and children were violently arrested. Social movements based on small island nations in the Pacific are struggling for the very survival of their peoples. The US climate movement must project these voices and stand in solidarity with them. The model of community action at the local level is a key part of the solution to climate change.

Let's be clear, we cannot buy our way out of this crisis. Consuming more stuff, even energy efficient stuff, is not the answer. This still requires fossil fuels to mine the resources for the stuff, to manufacture the stuff and to transport the stuff.

An issue as comprehensive and wide-reaching as global warming, however, does offer us the critically important opportunity to identify and address its root causes, which are the same root causes of social injustice, economic domination and environmental destruction.

The myriad solutions to global warming will come, not from the top down, but from communities identifying locally appropriate sustainable solutions that are both decentralized and recognize the importance of local control and bioregional distinctions.

This is the future toward which we are working. We urge you to join us.

GJEP Co-Director Orin Langelle contributed to this presentation.

Popular 'green' products test positive for toxicant

Marla Cone, March 14, LA Times

New tests of 100 "natural" and "organic" soaps, shampoos and other consumer products show that nearly half of them contained a cancer-causing chemical that is a byproduct of petrochemicals used in manufacturing.

Many items that tested positive for the carcinogen are well-known brands, including Kiss My Face, Alba, Seventh Generation and Nature's Gate products, sold in retail stores across the nation.

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FOR THE RECORD:
Consumer advocate: This article gives the wrong last name for a consumer advocate who directed a study of "natural" soaps and other products. He is David Steinman, not Steinberg.

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The findings of the Organic Consumers Assn., a consumer advocacy group, are sending a jolt through the natural products industry. Gathering today in Anaheim for a national trade show, many leaders worry that the test results will taint the industry in the eyes of the public.

Of the 100 products tested, 47 had detectable levels of 1,4-dioxane, which the Environmental Protection Agency has declared a probable human carcinogen because it causes cancer in lab animals.

Most traditional soaps and shampoos contain 1,4-dioxane. But the discovery that the chemical is present in many housecleaning and personal care products, including some for babies, that are advertised as being natural, organic or "green" comes as somewhat of a surprise.

"For companies to knowingly or even carelessly put a carcinogen into commerce in this day and age is barbaric, I think, particularly products that have the moniker of natural or self-proclaimed 'organic,' " said consumer advocate and author David Steinberg, who directed the study.

"We need standards," he said. "Consumers walk into a health-food store or natural-product supermarket with the expectation that the product they purchase will be natural or safer than what they could purchase at the drugstore or supermarket."

The compound is not intentionally added to products; it is a byproduct of a process used to soften harsh detergents. It is formed when foaming agents, or surfactants, are processed with ethylene oxide or similar petrochemicals.

Said Martin Wolf, Seventh Generation Inc.'s director of product and environmental technology, "The natural world is filled with things that can harm. . . . All we can do is work as hard as we can to keep the levels as low as possible and keep our products as safe as possible."

Hain Celestial Group, the Boulder, Colo.-based owner of four of the tested companies -- Alba, Jason, Avalon Organics and Zia Natural Skincare-- said Thursday that it would reevaluate all of its products. Two Alba and three Jason products contained 1,4-dioxane, but the chemical was not detected in tested Avalon and Zia products.

"We are committed to selling products without detectable levels of 1,4-dioxane . . . and will review all formulations accordingly," said Lisa Lehndorff, Hain Celestial's director of corporate consumer relations.

No one knows exactly what amount of the compound may be unsafe. In scientific studies, lab animals that had been fed 1,4-dioxane for many weeks developed nasal, liver and gall bladder cancers. But scientists do not now know what, if any, cancer risk humans face from years-long use of products containing the chemical.

The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates cosmetics, has set no standards for 1,4-dioxane. The agency has occasionally tested products for the compound since the late 1970s and says levels of it have substantially declined since then. The FDA says the current levels "do not present a hazard to consumers," although it has advised the industry to reduce amounts in cosmetics as much as possible.

Many companies in the "natural" business have been striving for years to eliminate 1,4-dioxane. They use coconut or other plant oils as surfactants, and they have reformulated products and added a process called vacuum-stripping. But traces still remain, in the parts-per-million range.

Josef Koester of Cognis Corp., a Cincinnati-based chemical company that caters to manufacturers seeking "green" compounds, said most companies can avoid 1,4-dioxane but that it "typically requires a higher price point and sometimes performance restrictions for the product. How green the formulators want to go -- it is their choice."

Some organic company owners said it is deceptive for many products to be called natural when the carcinogenic compound indicates that petrochemicals are used in their manufacture.

No standards govern the words natural or organic for personal care products. But a few companies, including TerrEssentials, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps and Sensibility Soaps Inc., which makes the Nourish brand, have certified their products as organic under the U.S. Department of Agriculture's food standards.

"It makes it really difficult for us to communicate real organic when our little voice gets lost in this sea of products that are all claiming to meet the [USDA organic] standard when, in fact, they don't," said Diana Kaye, co-founder of TerrEssentials, a small Maryland company. All six TerrEssentials soaps and other products tested were free of 1,4-dioxane.

Other brands, including Burt's Bees, Desert Essence and EO, are not certified to meet organic food standards but still contained no 1,4-dioxane in the tests.

But because the vast majority of shampoos, soaps and other consumer goods do not carry the USDA organic seal, it's nearly impossible for buyers to know whether the ones they use contain 1,4-dioxane because the chemical is not listed on ingredient labels. Products most likely to contain the compound usually list polyethylene glycol or compounds with the syllables PEG, short for polyethylene glycol, -eth or -oxynol-,according to the FDA.

Method, a San Francisco-based company whose products are sold at Target, intentionally does not call its products "natural," said co-founder Adam Lowry. Instead, the labels say "naturally derived" because the plant oils have been processed with ethylene oxide to make them better cleansers.

Three of its products were tested, and two -- its ultra-concentrated dish soap and a hand soap -- contained 1,4-dioxane.

"For us there are no alternatives that are still effective," Lowry said. "Unless you can have a high-performance product, if you have a green product or a natural product, then what's the point of having one that doesn't work?"

Method's creamy hand soap, which had 7 parts per million of 1,4-dioxane in the tests, has been reformulated and now contains none, Lowry said.

"We 100% believe that our products are completely safe and there's zero risk," he said.

Whole Foods on Thursday declined to say whether the test results would prompt any changes in products sold at its stores. Three of four products tested in Whole Foods' own product line, 365 Everyday Value, contained 1,4-dioxane.

Dishwashing liquids are particularly hard to keep free of 1,4-dioxane because they require surfactants that are powerful grease cutters.

Seventh Generation uses coconut oil in its dish soaps, which although it is processed with a petrochemical and vacuum-stripped, still contains almost 2 parts per million of 1,4-dioxane. Wolf said the only way to remove all traces would be to use another surfactant that irritates skin, which the Burlington, Vt.-based company considers unacceptable.

Seventh Generation is "working with several surfactant manufacturers to look for alternatives to this process to modify coconut oil," Wolf said. "We're not there yet. We have more work to do."

Climate Change Debate Fuels Greenwash Boom

Pratap Chatterjee, December 11, CorpWatch

On the Indonesian island of Bali, thousands of senior government officials are negotiating a plan to slow global warming. The meeting, which will focus on how to limit the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, will run for the first two weeks of December and include 192 countries. This year’s conclave is the 13th in a series launched by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that came into force in 1994.

The coal, gas and oil companies that are major producers of greenhouse gases are finally taking notice of these high-level political discussions, and many have mounted spirited public relations exercises to defend themselves, and even win endorsements of their products.

For example, the weekend before negotiations began, Neste Oil announced plans to build the world's largest bio-diesel facility a few hundred miles northeast of Bali, in the Tuas industrial zone on the island of Singapore. The Finnish company is betting that widespread concern, as well as mandatory limits on greenhouse gases generated by fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum, will increase demand for vegetable-based fuels.

Neste’s proposed $800 million plant will use palm oil, which is readily available throughout the region. The company has pledged to buy palm oil certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and to use proprietary NExBTL technology that produces fuel with lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions 40 to 60 percent less than those of conventional diesel fuel.

"We have a very clear principle that we are aware of the source of all raw materials used in our biodiesel, including palm oil ... and that it is produced by sustainable methods," Neste CEO Resto Rinne told reporters, explaining that he expected this market to expand substantially. "In Europe alone, [annual] production will be well over 10 million tons by the end of the decade, and our share of this production will be some 800,000 tons."

Some environmental groups charge that Neste's claims are "greenwash": misleading public relations masking unsustainable practices. Greenpeace, for example, explains that the new plant in Singapore is likely to cause more environmental problems, not fewer, by increasing demand for new palm oil plantations that displace environmentally sensitive forests or wetland areas. In addition to destroying endangered habitats, the scheme could exacerbate global warming.

"Certification does not stop the rainforests from disappearing, for there is no doubt that the increase in demand for palm oil will lead to further destruction of rainforest. There is absolutely no way to grow enough sustainable palm oil for all the producers," said Harri Lammi, the program director for Greenpeace Finland. The week before the climate meeting got underway in Bali, his group attempted to highlight Neste's environmental record by blockading its ships in waters off of Finland.

The clash between Neste and Greenpeace highlights one of the key ideological debates over climate change: Business and politicians believe that a "technological" fix such as alternative fuels can solve the problem and also generate profits; many environmental groups believe the real solution to global warming lies in reducing consumption.

Guaranteed Markets, But Are They Guaranteed Green?

The arguments of the alternative fuel lobby are finding significant political backing. Earlier this year the European Union agreed to binding targets: By 2020, ten percent of its transportation industry’s annual 300 million ton fuel consumption must come from alternatives such as biodiesel. China has predicted that it can switch 15 percent of its transport fuel consumption to biofuels, and India has set an ambitious target of 20 percent by 2020.

Even U.S. President George Bush in his January 2007 State of the Union address pledged to “increase the supply of alternative fuels by setting a mandatory fuels standard to require 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels in 2017 -- and that is nearly five times the current target."

Palm oil is one of the three key biofuels that governments and corporations are promoting as alternatives to fossil fuels. (The others are soy and rapeseed.) An edible vegetable oil obtained from the fruit of the oil palm tree, palm oil has been used as a popular cooking oil in West Africa for centuries. In recent years, it has become a key component of processed foods ranging from KitKat candy bars to Pringles potato chips to Oreo cookies.

The biggest producers of palm oil are Indonesia and Malaysia, where the crop has been grown on plantations established by British colonists in 1917. It was first exported for use as an industrial lubricant and as a base for Sunlight and Palmolive soaps.

The new green boom in biofuels has accelerated the demand for plantations, which in turn has led to widespread forest and peatland clearing. Indeed, a 2007 United Nations Environment Program report earlier this year, found that oil palm plantations are now the leading cause of forest destruction in Indonesia and Malaysia. And more is to come: The Indonesian government wants to put 10 million hectares of land into oil palm cultivation by 2015, up from the current total of 6 million hectares. In Malaysia, palm oil producers are targeting the island province of Sarawak for major expansion.

Local groups have spoken out strongly against this new trend. Meena Raman, head of Friends of the Earth Malaysia, said "Agrofuels is a disaster in the making. Their production, development and trade largely stem from unsustainable energy demand in industrialized countries. We are strongly urging our government to reconsider its decision of turning Malaysia into a major agrofuel producing country, as it is leading to further destruction of our forests and violations of the customary rights of indigenous peoples."

A new Greenpeace report, "Cooking the Climate," points out that razing of forests to create the oil palm plantations is, in itself, a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental organization calculates that the burning and drying of carbon-rich peatlands on the Indonesian island of Riau releases about 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gases a year. The removal of the forests also eliminates one of the planet's crucial air-filtration systems.

A British government report estimated that clearing land for agro-fuel cultivation creates two to nine times more greenhouse gases than the cleaner-burning fuel saves.

Fossil Fuels in Green Packaging

Another company ratcheting up the green rhetoric on climate change is General Electric (GE). Its television advertisement for "clean coal" technologies portrays scantily-clad models working in a coal mine, while an announcer sums up the message: "Thanks to emissions reducing technology from GE Energy, harnessing the power of coal is looking more beautiful every day."

The ad is part of GE's "ecomagination" campaign to promote "green" products such as lower-energy houses, wind turbines, solar power and water-purification systems, as well as a range of new coal technologies.

The company has joined the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of industry and environmental groups that claim to be concerned about global warming. "The time has come for constructive action that draws strength equally from business, government, and non-governmental stakeholders," said Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of Connecticut-based GE, in a statement timed for the day before George Bush's backing of alternative technologies.

While some of the technologies GE sells -- such as wind and solar power -- are indeed carbon neutral, others -- such as its "clean coal" integrated gasification combined-cycle coal power plants -- are questionable.

The term "clean coal" refers to a variety of new technologies under development: chemically washing the fossil fuel of minerals and impurities, burning it at higher pressure and temperature, and increasing efficiency by trapping and burning waste gases that would otherwise have escaped out the smokestack. Another "clean coal" technology is "carbon capture and sequestration," or CCS, which captures coal plant emissions before they enter the atmosphere, and stores them underground.

Many environmental activists note that these "clean coal" technologies are only marginally more efficient and far more expensive. Others, such as CCS, are still on the drawing board and may never work. (In fact, GE has yet to convince any of its clients to buy these new "clean coal" plants, according to California-based Rainforest Action Network, or RAN.)

"Why waste billions of dollars to research an uncertain technology when safer, cleaner energy solutions already exist?” asks Matt Leonard of RAN. “Even if we could capture coal's dangerous emissions, why create such massive waste streams in the first place? All fossil fuels, including coal, are running out. The longer we keep relying on them, the worse off our environment, climate, and society will be."

Immelt has admitted that the new promotion campaign was based on tapping public opinion and profits. "I can't lay claim to be a big environmentalist or nature lover here,” the GE head told NBC television this May. “I know that when society changes its mind, you'd better be in front of it, and not behind it. And this is an issue on which society has changed its mind. I came to the conclusion that technology that my company makes can help make it [the climate situation] better, and I can make money doing it, and I can do something good."
Do Nothing, Collect Praise

Other companies have managed to win environmental praise for effectively doing nothing. A case in point is the much heralded $45 billion purchase of Texas state utility TXU by private equity firm Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts and Texas Pacific Corporation. The buyers won backing from Washington DC-based environmental groups Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council in exchange for scrapping plans to build eight of 11 proposed coal plants.

Not everybody is convinced. RAN executive director Michael Brune is skeptical of the scheme, pointing out that TXU could easily shelve its concessions in the future. "The commitments by TXU's new owners should be binding, not voluntary, and the three Texas coal plants TXU still intends to build are three plants too many," he said.

Warning: Greenwash Ahead

The cases of TXU’s non-binding concessions in Texas, GE’s amorphous “clean coal” promises, and Neste’s palm oil strategy in South Asia illustrate a widening trend: As the climate change issue becomes mainstream, more and more companies are jumping on the public relations bandwagon. If these examples serve as models, they will try to win endorsements for agreeing to do nothing, promise things that they cannot guarantee, and take advantage of the debate to profit from environmentally unfriendly technologies.

Activists attending the Bali gathering say that the real answer to climate change will not be generated by profit-motivated corporations, but by the concrete commitments of political leaders backed by the force of law. Raman of Friends of the Earth International, puts it simply: "We need Northern countries to develop stringent policies to reduce their energy consumption and attempt to find solutions to their energy needs locally."