Sunday, April 21, 2013

Cap and Trade fails in Europe

Europe’s Carbon Market Crisis: Why Does it Matter?: ""Now, the market is dead, as far as I can see," said Steffen Böhm, director of the Essex Sustainability Institute at Britain's Essex Business School."

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Cap and trade: corporate welfare, and buying "greenness" on the cheap.

International cap-and-trade markets expanding – but still contentious | Environment | guardian.co.uk: ""The state gave away 90 percent of its allowances in the first year, and over half of mandated emissions reductions will be produced by offsets, which are notoriously prone to gaming and displace rather than actually reducing emissions," he notes.

"After you take these factors into account, they could make up more than 100 percent of the reductions in California – meaning that the cap and trade will result in zero emissions reductions in the state. The law is supposed to be creating incentives for innovations, whereas cap and trade merely allows the fossil fuel industry to keep polluting at historical levels.""

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Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Alternative energy technologies are a false solution for #climate

Power Shift Away From Green Illusions: "There is an impression that we have a choice between fossil fuels and clean energy technologies such as solar cells and wind turbines. That choice is an illusion. Alternative energy technologies rely on fossil fuels through every stage of their life. Alternative energy technologies rely on fossil fuels for mining operations, fabrication plants, installation, ongoing maintenance and decommissioning. Also, due to the irregular output of wind and solar, these technologies require fossil fuel plants to be running alongside them at all times. Most significantly, alternative energy financing relies on the kind of growth that fossil fuels drive."

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Cheap oil has made humans think we can control nature

A contribution to the Climate Space 2013: How to overcome the Climate Crisis? | Hoy es Todavía: "We also need to end the hubris of man. We need to end the arrogance of man that he can control nature and solve the climate crisis with techno-fixes. Carbon markets, the monetary valuing of nature, “REDD[1]”,  “Green economy”, GMOs, agro-fuels, synthetic biology, nuclear projects, geo-engineering are all false solutions because they reinforce the misguided belief that humans can control nature through technology. It is also based on the false premise that the capitalist system and free market can solve the climate crisis that it has created by putting a price and commodifying the functions of nature. Instead of recognizing the limits of man and markets, they encourage suicidal technologies and promote new speculative derivative markets on nature."

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Sunday, April 7, 2013

Indigenous people exploited for "green-fueled" cars in Brazil

CACC: "Expelled from their lands because of the continuous process of colonization, more than 40,000 Guarani Kaiowá now live on less than 1% of their original territory. On their lands today, there are thousands of hectares of sugarcane put in place by multinational enterprises that portray ethanol to the world as an “environment friendly” and “clean” fuel.

Without their lands and forests, the Guarani Kaiowá have for years coexisted with a malnutrition epidemic. And with no alternative means of subsistence, adults and children are exploited in the cane fields, exhaustively working day-in, day-out. In the production line of the so-called “clean” fuel, the Federal Public Prosecutor constantly sues the owners of the plantations because of their child labor and slave labor practices.

Amid the delirium of the “green gold fever” (the way people refer to sugarcane), indigenous leadership finds death as their fate–death ordered by the big farmers."

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Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Carbon Tax | Coal Profits From Carbon Tax

Carbon Tax | Coal Profits From Carbon Tax: "Australia's highly emitting brown coal power generators will reap $2.3 billion to $5.4 billion in windfall profits from carbon price compensation, an analysis by a leading energy market expert has found."

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