Thursday, 24 December 2009
Sights & sounds of climate justice protest in Wellington
The collapse of the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, aimed at reaching a binding deal on greenhouse gas emissions, has dismayed people around the world. But it has also made it clearer that we can't rely on business leaders and politicians to solve the problem. The finger pointing has already begun, as political leaders from different countries blame each other for the failure to reach a deal.
Conflict, rather than cooperation, was built into the talks from the start. The framework for negotiations was all about market mechanisms like emissions trading schemes, where businesses, nations and trading blocs try to secure competitive advantages over their rivals. Even if a deal had been reached at Copenhagen, it would not have been enough to prevent catastrophic climate change.
Emissions trading schemes – proposed by the National-led government and supported in principle by all the other parties in parliament except ACT, and by "Big Green" organisations like Greenpeace – simply allow corporations to pay for the right to cook the planet to death. Emissions trading schemes won't stop climate change and are unjust, shifting costs away from business and onto grassroots people and developing nations.
This was the message of 150 people who took to the streets in Wellington on the morning of Monday, December 21. The protesters included a group of "Radical Cheerleaders" and a samba band. They took aim at the root causes of climate change, disrupting business at the NZX stock exchange and scaling the Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade building to unveil a banner, and were met by a group of counter-demonstrators claiming to belong to "Capitalism Represents Acceptable Policy" (C.R.A.P.).
The protest came at the culmination of the first Camp for Climate Action Aotearoa in Upper Hutt, where 200 people came together for five days of sustainable living, education, direct action and movement building. Climate Camps (there have been at least 19 worldwide this year) seek to address the real causes of climate change and build a people's movement that can stop it. "
After the inevitable failure of yet another UN climate summit, it should now be clearer than ever that the only people we can count on to stop runanaway climate change are ourselves", said Climate Camp participant Claire Dann.
"Just like the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme, the UN climate talks are part of the problem, not the solution", added Gary Cranston. "Both put profit before people, both are infested with polluter friendly loopholes and as a result, neither are capable of achieving climate justice.
"Trading carbon credits is used to give people the impression that something is being done about climate change, when it actually isn't.
"Ordinary people have the power to stop the government and big business from throwing away our future for continued profit. We invite everybody in Aotearoa to come and join the global movement for climate justice that will address the climate crisis".
Turn up the sound and click on the slideshow below. This is what the movement looks like, and sounds like.
For more info, visit http://withoutyourwalls.wordpress.com/
Friday, 23 October 2009
BAD BANKS leaflet #3: 'Their Pollution Market Stinks!'
Bad Banks leaflet #3 is available now. It addresses the link between global banking power and the ecological crisis, specifically focusing on the banking class's prosposed "solution" to climate change, pollution markets (or as they're calling them, emission trading schemes).
This leaflet has contributions on the back page from David Parker (writer for www.wellsharp.wordpress.com/), Mike Treen (Unite Union National Director), Omar Hamed (Unite Union organiser & Rainforest Action co-ordinator), and Roger Fowler (editor of www.farefreenz.blogspot.com/).
Thursday, 1 October 2009
Copenhagen summit: ‘Seattle’-style protests needed
Friday, 18 September 2009
All-party support for pollution market is the real ETS outrage
Outrage has greeted the deal reached between the National and Maori Parties over the pollution market policy (emissions trading scheme or ETS). But the really terrible thing is not the Maori Party’s sell out, or the details of the deal -- and both these are horrible -- it’s the fact that a pollution market is only response to climate change any party in parliament can come up with. Just as bad (or even worse) is that the major environmental groups campaigning for action on climate change -- Greenpeace and 350 -- are also putting their faith in the pollution market approach. They should be blowing the lid on the world-wide pollution market con-job. Because, although the details of the National-Maori Party version may be worse than the Labour-Green version, which ever way you look at it, emissions trading stinks. It won’t do a thing to reduce pollution or prevent climate change. All pollution markets are based around giving corporate polluters the right to pollute, the right to profit from buying and selling pollution credits and the right to pass any costs they do incur on to their customers. All assume that rather than actually cutting emissions, or fundamentally changing they way they do things (this would hurt profits too much) polluting industries will be able to buy “off set” credits from somewhere else (who knows where?). All these schemes ignore the fact that to transition to a low carbon economy will require a massive transformation of how we do just about everything. And this will require planning and co-ordination and should require democratic participation, not rising prices and blind faith in the market. Recognising the reality of pollution market politics, begs the question: is the Maori Party’s support for National’s ETS any worse than the Green’s support for Labour’s ETS? After all, climate change is the issue the Greens should be making a stand and giving leadership. In my view, neither Labour nor the Greens have any right to criticise the Maori Party until they themselves oppose pollution market madness.
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20180310114347im_/http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_foJGynhzCLA/SrLY4nBtF8I/AAAAAAAAAD4/4uhOobHuUyw/s400/Respect+earth.jpg)
John Minto: Politicians fiddle while climate collapses
Friday, 19 September 2008
Britain's worst polluters set for windfall of millions
RAM asks CTU for democratic debate & vote on 'pollution market'
- It would not be effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
- It is "not transparent".
- "Polluters do not pay", but instead receive massive subsidies that amount to "corporate welfare".
- Therefore the stated aim of economic incentives to cut emissions is "defeated".
Sunday, 31 August 2008
Will history repeat for the Greens?
Friday, 29 August 2008
Call 'pollution market' by its real name, says RAM
RAM - Residents Action Movement Media release 26 August 2008 Green co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons today claimed that her party had won "substantial changes" to the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) following talks with Labour cabinet ministers. How accurate is this claim by Ms Fitzsimons? Going into the talks with Labour, the most loudly voiced concerns of the Green Party caucus were that the agriculture and transport sectors were not coming into the ETS early enough. Ms Fitzsimons today said that now "a target for agricultural emissions reduction before 2015 will be gazetted". But is this really a "substantial change" to the ETS? Not according to Grant Morgan, chair of the Residents Action Movement, better known as RAM, a broad left people's movement. "One very important word has been left out of the new agreement on the ETS," Mr Morgan observed. "That word is 'mandatory'. So long as a closer target for agricultural emissions reduction is not made mandatory, it's just a lot of hot air. It's government spin because agriculture does not have to meet the voluntary target. Sadly, the Greens are recycling Labour's spin and thus misleading public opinion." Nor will there be any hastening of the transport sector's entry into the ETS under the new deal struck between Labour and the Greens. "The transport sector will remain able to pollute with impunity until 2015," noted Roger Fowler, RAM's transport spokesperson. "As well, the Green caucus has consistently refused to support RAM's campaign over the last four years for free and frequent public transport as a boldly realistic way of slashing carbon emissions. We need to shift motorway funds into fare-free trains and buses, but the Greens won't agree because they know Labour strongly disapproves. They are putting their political pact with Labour ahead of our environment." Going on the evidence, neither of the two most loudly voiced Green concerns have been met by Labour's recent tweakings of the ETS. This is at variance with Green claims of "substantial changes", which appear to be mostly aimed at winning votes. "RAM calls on the Green Party leadership to reject the Emissions Trading Scheme as a whole," said Michelle Ducat, RAM's ecology co-spokesperson. "The solution to climate change does not lie in creating a market for pollution, where corporations trade their greenhouse gas credits and debits on a new stock exchange. This is merely placing the market in charge of the problem that they created in the first place." Ms Ducat's comments seem to be vindicated by the experiences of Europe. In many Western European countries, emissions trading schemes have been in place for years, yet official statistics reveal that greenhouse gas pollution has been increasing, not decreasing. Late last week, Green leaders called for responses on whether their party should support or reject the ETS. Yesterday a Green Party spokesperson revealed that the 2,000 email responses were split 50:50. Since most of these responses were likely to be from Green members, it seems their rank-and-file are split down the middle over the issue. "It is very worrying that the Green Party caucus refuse to call the Emissions Trading Scheme by its real name - a pollution market," said RAM chair Grant Morgan. "Big corporations around the world are raking in grotesque profits from trading in greenhouse gases which could kill off all life on our planet. Their pollution market is both immoral and scary." "RAM has put up a positive, robust alternative to the Green Party MP's who are giving away ecology as they cuddle up to Labour," said Mr Morgan. "In our RAM Plan, we put humans and our habitat before the profits and power of the big corporations who think they can dictate to everyone else on the planet." Backgrounders:
For more information, contact:
Grant Morgan
021 2544 515
grantmorgan@paradise.net.nz
Roger Fowler
021 2999 491
mangere.east.access@paradise.net.nz
Michelle Ducat
027 308 2521
michelle@ducat.co.nz
Saturday, 23 August 2008
Green Party dilemma - are we for emissions trading, or not?
Friday, 11 July 2008
Poll finds low public support for Labour’s emissions trading scheme
Friday, 20 June 2008
Essential information on carbon trading
Monday, 9 June 2008
Europe's ETS delivers windfall profits to polluters
Monday, 19 May 2008
A response to Chris Trotter: There's a place for rhetoric but we need to make things happen
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Rio Tinto is a transnational corporate energy giant that virtually monopolises the global aluminium industry - and it gets super cheap electricity in this country. The aluminium smelter at Bluff takes an incredible 15% of NZ's total electricity production.
As Chris makes clear, Rio Tinto's opposition to the mildest and inadequate measures to address greenhouse gas emissions is a chilling example of corporate power ranged against the interests of humanity and the environment. The corporation is indeed a psychopath.
Chris quotes Murray Horton from CAFCA (Campaign Against Foreign Control in Aotearoa), who says: "Go ahead and close the smelter and bugger off." Something that, Chris admits, this Labour government is not going to let happen. Not because thousands of workers might lose their jobs, but because Labour's partnership with international and local capital is locked in tight.
Labour couldn't govern without the support of powerful corporate interests, who are only too ready to let Labour know what the price of that support is. Rio Tinto's threat is just a more open and direct example of what goes on all the time.
And with no real support base in the working class the 21st century Labour Party cannot lead any opposition to these powerful forces. That's of course if Clark, Cullen and Co actually wanted to do - which of course they don't.
What the debacle of Labour's emission trading scheme shows is that fighting to save the environment is also a fight against corporate power. And that requires a mass grassroots political movement, it requires leadership from political organisations which have earned the respect and trust of ordinary people. Something which the Labour Party has long since lost.
In these times of mass cynicism towards politicians (which the Greens have clumsily tried to reflect in their "some things are bigger than politics" slogan) we can perhaps understandably forget that it's possible to achieve a positive and powerful dynamic between political leaders and the people. Think of the leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States. Or Maori leaders of the tino rangatiratanga struggle in this country. And look at the example of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, or Evo Morales in Bolivia.
And that leadership does not have to be embodied in just one or a few people, but in political organisations that have the mass support of working class people. A political leadership totally committed to people and environment could then call Rio Tinto's bluff and act to push for the nationalisation of the companies' ownings. It's possible.
In Venezuela recently the Chavez government, which enjoys massive support from grassroots Venezuelan's, acted to nationalise the Argentinian owned SIDOR steelworks in Guayana (See Venezuela: Steel nationalisation marks 'new revolution within revolution') This follows other nationalisations of telecommunications and electricity companies, and Venezuela's dominant oil industry. These nationalisations, which confront neo-liberalism in the backyard of the United States, have been possible because a position of power has been achieved by a mass movement.
The challenge for leftists in Aotearoa is to seriously move towards creating the kind of dynamic that exists today in Venezuela between a respected leadership and grassroots people. If achieved then everything becomes possible.
A mass broad left party, such as RAM is on the road to becoming in New Zealand, will help the left to go beyond rhetoric, to leading struggles with every chance of achieving their goal.
We know what needs to happen - the alternative of the status quo perpetuating itself is just too depressing - but it's working our side into a position where it can happen. That's the ambitious goal that RAM can and should be aiming for.
The more people who join RAM today the more chance there is of making things happen tomorrow.
Time to call Rio Tinto's bluff
by CHRIS TROTTER
The Dominion Post
Friday, 16 May 2008
Once again the masks have slipped. Once again we have caught a glimpse of the true faces of our masters. Once again, New Zealand's acute vulnerability to the power of vast transnational corporations has been brutally revealed.
As an exercise in raw economic coercion, Rio Tinto's submission to the parliamentary select committee scrutinising our Government's proposed emissions trading scheme (ETS) was chilling.Ranged before the elected representatives of the New Zealand people were the appointed representatives of one of the world's largest and most profitable corporations.
Including its joint ventures, Rio Tinto employs 73,000 people in 61 countries. It is the global leader in smelting aluminium, with annual revenues of US$49 billion (NZ$65 billion), a sum roughly equivalent to 30 per cent of New Zealand's entire gross domestic product.
As living proof that neither race nor gender counts for very much in this new age of equal- opportunity capitalism, Rio Tinto's Asia/Pacific president is a woman of Chinese descent, Ms Xiaoling Liu. It was from her that the select committee received the bad news.
In its current form, she explained, the ETS posed a threat to the economic competitiveness of the Bluff aluminium smelter's production. Rio Tinto could not, therefore, guarantee the smelter's long-term future if the Government's scheme (in its current form) was permitted to proceed.
And that was that.
Her judgment, as cold and bleak as a Southland winter, was left to slowly defrost on the committee-room table. And now, while Invercargill shivers, and its voluble mayor, Tim Shadbolt, shakes his fist, our government must determine its response.
Thirty years ago, faced with such a flagrant challenge to its sovereignty, a Labour government might have countered Rio Tinto's presentation by threatening to nationalise its New Zealand operation. Today, quite apart from exposing the nation to all manner of WTO penalties, such a threat would be laughed out of court.
Rio Tinto, "whose business is finding, mining and processing the Earth's mineral resources", not only dominates the world's aluminium smelting industry, but also controls the lion's share of the planet's bauxite deposits. Without bauxite, of course, an aluminium smelter is useless.
So, should the Government call her and Rio Tinto's bluff?
By forcing Rio Tinto's departure, and the shutting down of the Tiwai Pt smelter, Labour would be free to divert 15 per cent of New Zealand's total electrical energy production (the amount consumed by the smelter) to other uses.
The period in which new generation facilities need to be commissioned could be dramatically extended, and electricity price rises smoothed considerably, by such a massive energy windfall.
Unfortunately, calling Rio Tinto's bluff would also entail ripping the heart (and, according to Mayor Shadbolt, the soul) out of Southland's economy. By local estimates, at least 3000 jobs many of them extremely well- paid would be lost, with devastating social and economic consequences for the entire Southland region.
While the fourth Labour government was only too willing to consign thousands of workers to the human scrap-heap in the name of economic rationalisation, I'm not so sure that this Government is ready to follow suit, at least, not in an election year.
Murray Horton, from the Campaign Against Foreign Control in Aotearoa, thinks they should: "Go ahead and close the smelter and bugger off", he thunders. "See if we care, the country will be much better off without you.
The smelter is the single biggest user of electricity, consuming one-sixth of the total. It pays a top-secret, super-cheap price that is not available to any other user and all it does is export electricity from New Zealand in the form of alumina, while being subsidised by all other electricity users."
Way back at the beginning of this latest period of globalisation, Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric, notoriously remarked: "Ideally you'd have every plant you own on a barge." The theory was, big business could hold unions and governments to ransom by threatening to go offshore if the cost of labour, or environmental regulation, became too expensive.
What Mr Welch and his ilk failed to foresee was that a time would come when the greenhouse gas emissions from every plant they owned represented so great a threat to the planet that the location of their barges no longer really mattered.
I'd invite Rio Tinto to do their worst but I suspect they already are.