[DEBATE] : Climate

[MFleshman at aol.com]

Looks like the usual anti-globo potentates saying the usual stuff about the  
usual things Patrick.  An awfully unrepresentative and narrowly based group  
to be issuing such a global appeal, don't you think?  No representatives of  
oppressed oil producing communites in Africa, Asia or Latin America appear  to 
have attended this gathering, for example.
 
I'd be curious to know who was promoting the "oil in the soil" position, as  
it doesn't appear in the text per se. Its an old Western enviromentalist  
shibbolith that seems to have no traction at all in the hard-pressed  
oil-producing communties in Nigeria. On the contrary. everybody involved in the  Niger 
Delta struggle that I have spoken with over the years, a good many, say  they 
want the economic and political benefits of oil mining. Their fight is for  
control of the wealth and the methods of oil extraction.
 
In a message dated 11/22/2007 1:56:54 AM Eastern Standard Time,  
pbond at mail.ngo.za writes:

(Is  everyone ready to sign on to a climate change appeal? Next month's 
Bali  conference will be yet another globo-governance mirage, of course, 
not  least because of the SA government's dreadful stance, which I 
witnessed  yesterday in the form of Peter Lukey of DEAT openly admitting 
to a Joburg  conference, 'We are the America of Africa', referring to 
SA's no-cuts  negotiating position and ongoing subsidisation of 
ridiculous projects like  Coega. As part of my CO2 footprint expansion 
before the great contraction  I was in Edmonton for a superb conference - 
reportback below - that  consolidated the 'keep the oil in the soil' 
position, and there's another  one there this weekend that e-debater 
Shannon will go to. Anyhow, do send  a note to Victor at IFG if you want 
your name on this petition to the Big  Powers 'that set the rules of our 
economies' - and this is the last such  call I'll sign to ask the Rulers 
to do anything...)

November  2007
A Call for Climate Talks to
Accelerate Global Economic and Energy  Transition:
What Bali Must Achieve

We, the undersigned, call on  governments, businesses, civil society, and 
the other institutions that  set the rules of our economies to lead a 
systemic shift to stabilize our  global climate by launching a global 
economic and energy  transition.

The December 3-14, 2008 meeting of the United Nations  Framework 
Convention on Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia, aims to agree  on a 
mandate to negotiate a framework that will succeed the first phase of  
the Kyoto Protocol when it ends in 2012. We welcome UN Secretary General  
Mr. Ban Ki Moon’s recently reminding climate negotiators that, during  
the high-level event on climate change that convened in New York on 24  
September 2007, world leaders made a strong call for negotiations to  
begin on a future comprehensive multilateral framework.

Bali must  begin a pathway toward new global agreements that recognize 
and operate  within our planet’s limits and equitably share its 
ecological space. Our  concern is that the scope and scale of the 
proposals being discussed  dangerously underestimate the challenges 
confronting us and remain far  from addressing the underlying causes of 
today’s climate crisis.

We  support the goal of creating deeper binding targets to reduce 
greenhouse  gas emissions by at the very least 80 percent below 1990 
levels by 2050,  on average with solutions that place the greatest burden 
of adjustment on  the richer nations, and the richer segments within all 
nations. Achieving  these targets will involve dynamic actions at every 
level of our  societies, with rich countries leading through commitments 
to cut  emissions by increasing energy efficiency and reducing overall 
energy use  (“powering down”), while at the same time enabling poorer 
nations to  leapfrog over the rich nations’ dirty model of development to 
one that is  equitable and sustainable. Adequate and equitable reductions 
in emissions  require a fundamental reordering of priorities and the 
transformation of  almost every aspect of the way we live. Today’s 
situation is desperate;  for the full dimensions of the multiple crises 
we face, plus an outline of  the necessary corrective steps, see the 
International Forum on  Globalization and the Institute for Policy 
Studies’, “Manifesto on Global  Economic Transitions” (September 2007, 
see www.ifg.org).

To cut  overall consumption while improving standards of living for the 
poor, we  cannot get to where we need to be within 40 years by using 
current  development models, measurements of economic growth, or today’s 
outdated  rules governing trade, technology transfer, investment, and 
finance.  Coherence in policies at both the national and international 
levels is  essential to any meaningful multilateral effort. Immediate 
actions are  urgently needed within the existing institutions, but we 
also have to  rethink and transform global governance. New international 
instruments are  needed.

To create the truly transformational change in the global  economy we 
call on governments to include in the forthcoming Bali Mandate  a work 
program to re-write the much-needed rules, incentives, and  institutions 
in order to transition our villages, cities, countries, and  world toward 
socially just and ecologically sound economies.

This  parallel track of talks must acknowledge that the globe’s 
environmental  challenges are multi-faceted and intertwined. They involve 
at their core  the challenges of climate chaos, the end of cheap energy, 
accelerating  species extinctions, and collapse in fresh water, 
fisheries, forests, and  other vital natural resources and natural 
systems. Solutions to each  should be solutions to all. These changes 
should aim to redefine  development, and abandon economic growth as a 
primary goal. They must also  drastically reduce consumption of energy 
and others resources, materials,  and commodities, especially among 
northern industrialized nations.  Incentives for conservation and 
re-localizing cycles of ownership,  production and consumption are the 
fastest, cheapest most efficient means  toward "powering down." We 
support movements toward subsidiarity that  shift power away from global 
and national governance, and toward local  economies, especially energy 
and food systems, as much as  possible.

In addition to national governmental representatives, this  track of 
negotiations should involve local officials, social movement  leaders, 
indigenous leaders, and thoughtful innovators of new ideas on  renewable 
energy and sustainable forestry and agriculture transitions.  Changing 
international institutions can create policy space to support  bottom-up 
initiatives and help give greater visibility to innovative steps  already 
taken at the local level (such as “transition towns” that are  rapidly 
reducing energy needs and shifting energy supplies; many  innovations of 
“green cities” that are making urban societies sustainable;  the 
Greenbelt Movement of Kenya, which combines women¹s empowerment with  
tree-planting programs; sustainable agriculture practices that are being  
undermined by current international trade rules and regimes; legal  
innovations that give communities control over their natural resources);  
the national level (such as carbon taxes, green border fees, and other  
programs to transform energy use); and the global level (such as the new  
UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the more than  
200 multilateral environmental agreements).

A Bali Mandate on  Global Economic and Energy Transitions can set forth a 
new negotiating  process to solve the inter-related ecological crises 
enumerated above.  Essential elements of a new architecture for global 
economic and energy  governance include the following:[1]

Articulate and implement new  development models which give priority not 
to economic growth per se, but  to satisfying basic human rights and 
basic human needs for all (such as  survival, sufficiency, freedom, 
identity). These basic human needs are  required for genuine human 
happiness and well-being, and are needed by  those in industrialized 
nations as well as developing nations. This  requires a fundamental 
refocusing of policy priorities at all levels of  government.

Replace today’s main measurement of economic well-being,  Gross Domestic 
Product (GDP), with new economic indicators that measure  meaningful 
progress toward economies designed to remain within the earth’s  carrying 
capacity. Climate and other systemic ecological crises compel us  to 
re-set the central guidepost of economic policymaking on a course that  
improves living standards while conserving natural wealth. Governments  
should invigorate the discussions about measures that account for  
natural wealth and peoples’ health, such as the Genuine Progress  
Indicator (GPI).

Create global trade and financial institutions so  that their core 
mission supports these global transitions in an equitable  and democratic 
fashion.[2] With the World Bank still funding over 15 times  more fossil 
fuels than clean energy, and the World Trade Organization  declaring how 
most of the measures governments are enacting to counter  climate change 
could violate its overlapping agreements, a Bali Mandate  must aim to 
develop recommendations for global economic policy coherence  that 
ensures climate and overall ecological security. These adaptations  
should especially address current world trade rules on: 1) intellectual  
property which make it very difficult to transfer clean energy  
technologies to poorer nations in affordable ways; 2) prohibitions that  
restrain governments from enacting climate measures such as  
energy-efficiency standards or support programs for sustainable energy;  
and 3) agriculture that make it difficult for small farmers from  
developing countries to survive in the face of unsustainable, subsidized  
agribusiness in rich countries. International financial institutions  
must shift their own funding away from fossil fuels to clean  energy.

Create a Global Financing Mechanism that enables economically  poor but 
resource rich nations to keep their forests and biodiversity  intact, and 
their fossil fuels under the ground, without sacrificing their  own 
ecologically sustainable development (as Ecuador has recently offered  to 
do with 20 percent of its oil).

Create a Global Clean Energy  Fund that would generate finances from rich 
nations and the rich within  all nations (through debt cancellation, 
green border fees, or fees on arm  trade, or fees on speculative 
financial transactions across borders) to  help poorer nations leapfrog 
over the dirty industrial paths of most rich  nations. It is urgent that 
effective formulas for these transfers be  successfully conceived, 
negotiated, agreed, and implemented at the soonest  possible time, before 
the climate and resource emergencies get truly out  of control. Many 
organizations are already hard at work on this. All  alternative energy 
sources and technologies must be assessed for their  systemic impacts on 
the atmosphere, biodiversity, water, soil, and  universal human rights, 
so as to help the public and governments better  decide between false 
solutions and genuinely sustainable climate stability  alternatives. The 
internalization of social and ecological cost will drive  ecological 
solutions that transform today’s patterns of production and  consumption, 
replacing long-distance trade and absentee-ownership with  decentralized 
economic activity under community control.

Adopt an  Oil Depletion Protocol, which creates a framework for oil 
producing and  consuming nations to reduce production and imports to keep 
ahead of the  global depletion of oil supplies (as Sweden, Iceland, Cuba 
and a few other  nations are already doing). We need to reduce global 
energy demand. As  recent reports of runaway energy demand make clear, 
the world needs a  crash diet to curb its overall energy consumption or 
it faces ecological  catastrophe and violent conflicts over resources. 
The planet’s carrying  capacity must be collectively measured and 
monitored, with an agreed  program that both decreases over-consumption 
and redistributes real  resources and wealth to the poorest, while taking 
meaningful measures to  slow population growth that advance the economic, 
educational, and  reproductive rights of women. Projections of energy 
needs are  unnecessarily high and we can close the gap by powering down 
and  re-localizing production and consumption cycles, led by the 
industrialized  countries.

Adopt a UN Covenant on the Right to Water, which will be in  ever shorter 
supply due to accelerating climate change and entrenched  patterns of 
unsustainable development, to clarify the role of governments  to provide 
clean, affordable water to all citizens. The UN Covenant must  recognize 
water as an ecological trust and oblige governments to take bold  actions 
to ensure water conservation and water quality, as well as water  equity.

Strengthen the United Nations’ overall system of multilateral  
environmental agreements (MEAs) to protect forests, fisheries,  
biodiversity, fragile ecosystems, and endangered species. Adequate  
resources for implementation and enforcement of the Convention on  
Biodiversity, the Convention on the Law of the Seas, the Convention on  
the International Trade in Endangered Species, and many others must be  
secured. Also, the legal relationship between MEAs, which sometimes may  
restrict trade, and the WTO, which generally prohibits restrictions on  
trade, must be clarified to establish a clear hierarchy of public values  
prioritizing people and the planet over profits for private  corporations.

Just as one of the oldest global bodies, the  International Labor 
Organization, includes representatives from  governments, labor, and 
business, these new negotiations must involve all  of the sectors of 
society to be effective.

We call on our  governments in Bali to accelerate a Global Energy and 
Economic  Transition.

Signed:

1.John Cavanagh, Institute for Policy  Studies
2.Jerry Mander, International Forum on Globalization
3.Debi  Barker, International Forum on Globalization
4.Maude Barlow, Council of  Canadians
5.Walden Bello, Focus on the Global South
6.Nicola Bullard,  Focus on the Global South
7.Tony Clarke, Polaris Institute
8.Randy  Hayes, International Forum on Globalization
9.Richard Heinberg, author, The  Oil Depletion Protocol
10.David Korten, author, The Great  Turning
11.Sara Larrain, Chilean Ecological Action Network  (RENACE)
12.Caroline Lucas, UK representative, European  Parliament
13.Nadia Martinez, Institute for Policy Studies
14.Victor  Menotti, International Forum on Globalization
15.Helena Norberg-Hodge,  International Society for Ecology and Culture
16.Simon Retallack, climate  change author and campaigner
17.Wolfgang Sachs, Wuppertal Institute for  Climate, Environment, and Energy
18.Jack Santa Barbara, Sustainable Scale  Project
19.Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Tebtebba Foundation
20.the rest of  you

[1] These proposals are elaborated in the September 9, 2007 paper  by the 
Institute for Policy Studies and the International Forum on  
Globalization entitled: “Steps Towards a Global Grand Bargain.”

[2]  None of the current institutions: the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO 
and  their regional counterparts, were set up to deal with these 
environmental  crises. Indeed, the actions and jurisdiction of the 
current global  economic agencies often undermines environmental  goals.

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