Will capitalism survive climate change?

by Walden Bello

There is now a solid consensus in the scientific community that if the change in global mean temperature in the twenty-first century exceeds 2.4 degrees Celsius, changes in the planet's climate will be large-scale, irreversible, and disastrous. Moreover, the window of opportunity for action that will make a difference is narrow – that is, the next 10 to 15 years.

Throughout the North, however, there is strong resistance to changing the systems of consumption and production that have created the problem in the first place and a preference for "techno-fixes," such as "clean" coal, carbon sequestration and storage, industrial-scale biofuels, and nuclear energy.

Globally, transnational corporations and other private actors resist government-imposed measures such as mandatory caps, preferring to use market mechanisms like the buying and selling of "carbon credits," which critics says simply amounts to a license for corporate polluters to keep on polluting.

In the South, there is little willingness on the part of Southern elites to depart from the high-growth, high-consumption model inherited from the North, and a self-interested conviction that the North must first adjust and bear the brunt of adjustment before the South takes any serious step towards limiting its greenhouse gas emissions. MORE

Dangerous Assumptions

Emission reduction assumptions for carbon dioxide overly optimistic, study says

Reducing global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) over the coming century will be more challenging than society has been led to believe, according to a research commentary appearing this week in the journal Nature.

The authors, from the University of Colorado at Boulder, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, and McGill University in Montreal, said the technological challenges of reducing CO2 emissions have been significantly underestimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The study concludes the IPCC is overly optimistic in assuming that, even without action by policymakers, new technologies that will result in dramatic reductions in the growth of future emissions will be developed and implemented.

Titled "Dangerous Assumptions," the Nature commentary is co-authored by scientists Roger Pielke, Jr., of CU-Boulder, Tom Wigley of NCAR and economist Christopher Green of McGill University. "This welcome commentary is an indication that the science policy discussions have shifted from 'is there global warming"' to 'how does society respond"'" said Cliff Jacobs of the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Atmospheric Sciences, which funds NCAR.

"In the end, there is no question whether technological innovation is necessary--it is," write the authors. "The question is, to what degree should policy focus explicitly on motivating such innovation"" MORE

The NDP stakes out a difference

‘Corporate tax giveaways strip ability to invest, place rising burden on taxpayers’

OTTAWA – NDP Finance Critic and Deputy Leader Thomas Mulcair (Outremont) today released the motion to be debated tomorrow in the House of Commons for the NDP’s Opposition Day.

The motion reads:

That, in the opinion of the House, the Conservative government's massive corporate tax cuts are destroying any balance between taxes for large profitable corporations and ordinary Canadians; they are stripping the fiscal capacity of the federal government; they are disproportionately benefiting the financial, oil and gas sectors, while leaving others behind, including manufacturing and forestry; and in so doing have failed to invest in those hard-hit sectors and the needs of everyday working Canadians; therefore, this House has lost confidence in the government.

"New Democrats have no confidence in this Conservative government's fiscal agenda that sees billions of dollars going into corporate tax giveaways, while working families and the middle class are forced to pay an increasing share of the cost of government services," said Mulcair. "It's not fair." MORE

The ugly truth about cosmetic pesticides

There’s been a tremendous amount of interest in green spaces recently. And with good reason. Many of the private yards and public parks that we enjoy are coated with toxic chemical pesticides to kill weeds. The problem is that they work too well, and exposure to them can damage our health.

In 2003, the Ontario College of Family Physicians published a scientific literature review that showed "consistent links to serious illnesses, such as cancer, reproductive problems and neurological diseases" associated with chronic pesticide exposure.

It stands to reason that children and pets are often more exposed since they’re the ones most likely to be found rolling playing on the grass during the summer months. Children are also more vulnerable to the health effects of pesticide exposure because their young bodies are still developing. MORE

The Democratization of Democracy

Mutation or Demise: by Henry Beissel

Democratic practices reach back to the millennia of our nomadic ancestors, but in our Western civilization, democracy first became a form of political governance in Athens and other city-states of fifth-century Greece. Though its practice lasted barely two centuries before it was crushed under the boots of a Macedonian army, the dream of democracy lived on. Its struggle against the reality of oppression and tyranny finally triumphed in eighteenth-century enlightenment when the American Declaration of Independence (1776) affirmed it

to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed… with inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed…

These principles, along with their succinct summation in the rallying call of the French Revolution — Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité! — have become the universal standard of liberal democracy in our time. What they demand is that a nation shall be ruled by, in Daniel Webster’s phrase, “the people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.”

In the 21st century, most countries in the world consider themselves democracies, but few, if any, satisfy Webster’s lofty definition. MORE

The Last of the Easy Budgets

Ontario Budget 2008

Hugh Mackenzie

Analysis 2008 Ontario Budget.

We had to wait a year for it, but the Ontario government has finally finished allocating the leftover surplus from its 2007–08 budget.

It says as much about Ontario’s past as it does its future:

Very little of what was announced in Budget 2008 is funded from 2008–09 revenue. As a result of dramatically reduced revenue estimates based on much lower forecasts of economic growth, increased costs will end up being financed largely through a reduction in one-time-only expenditures.

Furthermore, the size of this end-of-year cash flow means that virtually none of the investment initiatives announced in the budget has a secure funding base for the future.

Welcome to the last of the easy budgets. MORE

Coal to Liquids Option:

The Implications of the Hirsch Report become clearer

The Hirsch Report and the Bezdek follow-up report detailed the U.S. coal-to-liquids option. (CTL) The following article outlines some of the implications of the U.S. CTL option presented in these reports. To my mind the most important points are as follows:

1. Such a move has the overwhelming support of Congress.
2. Any move in this direction will depress prices in direct correlation to the output from this technology.
3. Not mentioned in the article, but something that you can bet the house on, is that coal sequestration will not be implemented in any meaningful way for decades if ever for this or any other of our energy producting industries.

The ultimate result of a major push towards CTL will be to hamper the rate at which we will develop our already too long delayed move towards genuine sustainability and long-term energy security. MORE