Work for Greenpeace? Want to share your story? Contact us at
info@savegreenpeace.org. Your anonymity is guaranteed. (the quotations
below are from the front page of the SaveGreenpeace.org website, and
references to other posts are from that same site)
As of March 15th, 2010, we have received no response.
From: Canadians for Action on Climate Change [mailto:canadiansforactiononclimatechange@bell.net]
Sent: February-21-10 1:53 PM
To: ‘brian.fitzgerald@greenpeace.org’; ‘supporter.services@int.greenpeace.org’
Cc: ‘infoservice@ch.greenpeace.org’; ‘GlobalComplianceResearch@gmail.com’
Subject: TckTckTck Concerns | Time Sensitive – Your Response is Requested
Dear Greenpeace International,
We are writing to you because we are concerned about the corporate connections, and about the weak demands in the TckTckTck campaign. We are conducting a survey related to these aspects of the campaign. We will be posting the results of our survey to the web, as well as issuing a media release. We will be issuing the press release on March 15th, 2010. For this reason could your organization please respond no later than February 28th, 2010? If we do not receive a response by this time we will state that your organization did not comment.
Corporate connections of TckTckTck
We note your organization is listed in as a partner or ally of the TckTckTck campaign initiative. We are very alarmed to learn various details about the campaign. The trademark TckTckTck was registered, on November 30, 2009, by the EURO RSCG firm, a subsidiary of Havas Worldwide, a public relations firm. Partners of this campaign include multinational corporations. Two of these are Electricity of France (EDF) which now uses the TckTckTck logo, in TV commercials. EDF, the world’s leading nuclear power utility, operates a French nuclear fleet consisting of 58 reactors spread over 19 different sites. Havas also lists GDF Suez which affirms that there is a nuclear revival. With 45 years of involvement in the nuclear industry, GDF SUEZ confirms its intention to take an active part in developing a new generation of nuclear power worldwide.
In the Havas press release (attached) it also states “Havas Worldwide incorporates the EURO RSCG” whose clients include Novartis and Adventis – both biotech industries in genetic engineering and biofuel. Both Nuclear and Biofuel are deemed to be ‘solutions’ that are equally bad, if not worse than the problem they are intended to solve. Through your association with the TckTckTck campaign, your organization has created intentionally or unintentionally the perception that your organization is supportive of false solutions such as nuclear and biofuel.
When challenged over the inappropriateness of associating NGO partners with the corporate sector, (see EYES WIDE SHUT | TckTckTck exposé) the TckTckTck.org campaign organizer Jason Mogus claimed the two campaigns are different. His argument is not convincing when one sees the press release issued in September of 2009 (screenshot attached). It clearly states that the North American TckTckTck.org is Havas Worldwide. In the September 2009 press release the last paragraph states: “Havas Worldwide Web Site: http://tcktcktck.org”. There is further information about this in an article by ‘Peace, Earth & Justice News’. See the news article here.
One of your partners listed is at tcktcktck.org is the ‘Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change’. Signatories: can be found here. Of interest is the fact that on this page the multinational corporations ‘business verdict’ share your tcktcktck postCOP15 catch phrase ‘not done yet’. This is perhaps one of the most truthful statements coming out of the entire tcktcktck campaign. Partners in this group include Shell, Coca-Cola and RBC. RBC is the number one financier of the most destructive project on the planet – the tar sands. Over 1,000 corporate entities make up this TckTckTck partner group.
Furthermore, two of the same creators & partners (Havas & Euro RSCG) of TckTckTck were also initial partners of the infamous Hopenhagen campaign which was labeled a massive greenwash by the likes of Naomi Klein and others during COP15. (Farbman is reluctant to discuss what led to Ogilvy’s predicament or why previously enthusiastic partners were no longer involved. See article here)
Many of us oppose, at least in principle if not vocally, the consumption of small community business into behemoth sized mega-corps. We fear this is a growing trend with our NGOs. We feel that we must work together to demand an end to this new strain of globalization which undermines and threatens our entire movement.
The entire TckTckTck campaign has been created in partnership with major multinational corporations. These are the same multinational corporations that activists and legitimate grassroots organizations all over the world challenge on a daily basis. People are devoting and risking their very lives defending themselves, their children and their environment from exploitation by these corporations in the name of corporate profit. To have the largest climate change campaign on the planet formed, funded and shaped by the same corporate interests destroying our planet is a grave injustice to those already suffering. It destroys all of our credibility, undermines true climate justice and erodes public trust.
Weak Targets advanced by TckTckTck
SIGNIFICANT OMISSIONS IN TCKTCKTCK http://tcktcktck.org DEMANDS
In the TckTckTck (http://tcktcktck.org) campaign for COP15, the organizers, allies and partners were calling for developed states to reduce developed country emissions by at least 40% by 2020. While most developed and developing states were calling for developed states to use 1990 as a baseline, the TckTckTck campaign did not have a baseline. Consequently what they were calling for was way below what developing states were demanding. How could an NGO campaign have a percentage reduction without a base-line date? In the TckTckTck campaign demands it was stated: “Reduce developed country emissions by at least 40% by 2020”. Is that from 2009 levels? or Canadian 2006 levels, or US 2005 levels? It is far from what most of the developing states wanted, at least 45% from 1990 levels. Apart for calling for stabilization by 2015, the tcktcktck campaign had no commitment for subsequent years, such as calling the reduction of global emissions by at least 95% from 1990 levels by 2050. The TckTckTck campaign was silent on a 2050 commitment. The Key issues at COP15 were i) the need for a common baseline such as 1990, and the need for developed states to commit to high percentage reduction of greenhouse gases from the 1990 baseline, and ii) the urgent demand to not have the temperature rise exceed 1degree above preindustrialized levels and to return to no more than 300ppm. The tcktcktck campaign seriously undermined the necessary, bold targets as advanced by many of the developing states. The TckTckTck (http://tcktcktck.org) list over 220 NGOs. We ask for your response on the following questions:
1) Was your NGO aware that the brand “TckTckTck” has deep corporate ties?
2) If so, how do you understand this relationship?
3) Do you see yourselves as part of a campaign alongside “corporate partners” such as nuclear energy, genetic engineering, biofuels, aviation, automotive and other problematic sectors?
4) If so, do you see how this creates confusion?
5) In a release from Havas Worldwide it states “the idea behind TckTckTck was to create a movement…rather than a campaign, but a movement with a deadline. …the objective of the campaign was to make it become a movement that consumers, advertisers and the media would use and exploit.”
Were you aware that your NGO’s name and credibility would be used as a commodity in this way? (and continues to be used)
6) Do you intend to remain a partner of TckTckTck even though there are corporate ties?
7) Would you like to be removed from the list of partners of TckTckTck?
If yes to number 7;
To be removed from the list, contact laura.comer@tcktcktck.org.
8) Would your organization endorse the proposed ‘Post Cop15 Declaration’ that unequivocally supports the needs of the developing states. It can be read here.
There are further questions related to privacy of the fifteen million people who signed on to it. There is an absolute breach of trust. Who has collected such vital information on citizens with concern for environmental issues is anyone’s guess. Trusting individuals disclosed personal information with no idea the campaign was aligned with corporate interests. This is a separate and distinct issue altogether. It is most likely that of privacy violations which warrant further investigation.
We wish that it be clear that we send this message in solidarity – that we have grave concerns with this “coalition”. We do not wish to be patronizing but only elaborate on the concerns we share in the hope that you will share our concerns and come to the conclusion others have reached – that such a campaign is no longer the right place for any organization who believes in real climate justice to invest energies. If we say nothing – then our silence lends us as being complicit. Therefore, we feel that must ask of all our allies to be accountable for their actions. If we remain silent – we effectively breach the trust of those we claim to represent – the billions suffering at the hands of exploitation in the name of profits. Let us be clear – we do not condone such a campaign and will speak out against it.
We hope that this communiqué will bring about debate that can strengthen our common understanding of the threats and opportunities for true climate justice. Our first priority is the planet, and this can only be worthwhile if it is another strand in unmasking the lies surrounding “climate politics” that threaten us with climate injustice.
Sincerely,
Canadians for Action on Climate Change | Cory Morningstar
Joan Russow | Global Compliance Research Project | www.climatechangecopenhage.org | For further information: see Joan Russow , TckTckTck Hoodwinked NGOs, www.Pej.org)
Pacific Indigenous Peoples Environment Coalition | Aotearoa [New Zealand] | Sandy Gauntlett
Please send response to canadiansforactiononclimatechange@bell.net
The responses will be posted on the websites.
Greenpeace is one of the world’s largest environmental organizations. The headquarters of Greenpeace International are in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Contents[hide] |
The directors of Greenpeace International, as of October 2009, are:[1]
Greenpeace was founded in 1971 following a group of activists sailing an old fishing boat, the Phyllis Cormack, from Vancouver towards the island of Amchitka, Alaska in protest against proposed US underground nuclear testing. [1]
Greenpeace focuses its activities on:
“… Greenpeace does not seek or accept funding from governments, corporations or political parties or any other source that could compromise its aims and objectives, its independence or its integrity. Greenpeace relies wholly upon the voluntary donations of individual supporters and on grant support from foundations.” [3]
They also provide a breakdown of their expenditure and income (about $350m in 2003 for Greenpeace international and all regional subsidiaries) [4]
Though there does not seem to be any information about the foundations that give them money on their website, the financial breakdown from 2001 for Greenpeace international alone indicates that 118m of 143m came from individuals with 3.9m from foundations, 4.2m from major donors and 4.4m other income. 12.5m was left in legacies and bequests, so foundations constitute a relatively small proportion of income, assuming that the same is roughly true of the subsidiaries.
Greenpeace has referred to “independent foundations” [5], but it’s unclear what makes them independent.
Greenpeace International
Ottho Heldringstraat 5
1066 AZ Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Tel:
Fax: +31 20 5148151
Email: supporter.services AT int.greenpeace.org
Web: http://www.greenpeace.org/international
Web: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/about/worldwide Websites of national/regional offices
Feb 24
20100
David Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace, TckTckTck
Berman Disaster Capitalism GE General Electric Greenpeace Kumi Naidoo TckTckTck USCAP
Greenpeace International or Greenpeace Electric???
First the tcktcktck scandal and now this. AT COP 15, the spokesperson for TckTckTck was Kumi Naidoo. Kumi Naidoo is the Chair of TckTckTck, as well as the executive director of Greenpeace International.
The recent decision by Greenpeace International to hire Tzeporah Berman to direct its global climate and energy campaign could be the most disastrous decision that Greenpeace has ever made. It is quite possible that this move may destroy the organizations reputation in such a damaging way it may never recover. The current economic system has caused us to have entered into what Dr. E.O. Wilson describes as ‘the sixth extinction’ – a phrase that many scientists are now using. We now face climate catastrophe on a dying planet already well on the pathway to a 6C temperature rise which will kill off most life. This recent appointment of Tzeporah Berman could be the greatest threat climate change justice has yet to face. Who is Tzeporah Berman anyway? Tzeporah Berman could be described as a Trojan horse for the biggest corporations on the planet. She has successfully entrenched her way into the position of bargaining away nature to the corporations, under the guise of an environmentalist. Perhaps this is a seemingly much better strategy than just having Pat Moore “ex-Greenpeace” running around supporting the corporations. The corporations have finally succeeded in placing a compromised ‘environmentalist’ into the very heart of Greenpeace – the most recognized environmental organization on the planet. The day after Tzeporah Berman announced her new Greenpeace role, she walked into an exclusive General Electric (GE) banquet (past the real environmental protesters) and delivered a speech supporting the privatization of some 600 rivers in British Columbia, Canada, for the benefit of GE and their subsidiaries and partners. So there was Greenpeace (not officially, of course, but in the public mind) endorsing the wholesale surrender of our environment to one of the most predatory corporations on the planet – GE has paid fines for illegal weapons trade fraud, money laundering, etc.
On a positive note – such a scandal may be the one that will finally expose the corporatization of compromised NGOs and the deafening silence on the reality of climate change which has been going on behind the scenes for quite some time – to which the public are mostly unaware.
Also amazing; right now, in the climate justice movement something extraordinarily important is happening. After Copenhagen – a line is finally being drawn in the sand. True climate justice groups are now refusing to sign onto to any statement that endorses a temperature which exceeds a 1C temperature rise. As compromised NGOs are still clinging to the suicidal 1.5C – 2C temperatures, we will now finally see a clear divide. True climate justice groups verses the compromised NGOs. As well, true climate justice groups are now mobilizing to endorse a global emergency declaration on climate change. Again, those who do not sign on will be easily identified as those with vested interests.
The Tzeporah Berman specialty: Disaster Capitalism
The message behind disaster capitalism campaigning is this; climate change is “so urgent” that we have to turn the planet over to GE and other corporations to “save us.” This is all bullshit. This messaging is designed with the purpose of gaining corporate control of Earths natural assets. The question is, what has gone wrong at Greenpeace International? Is it i) lack of due-diligence, ii) lack of research ii) lack of knowledge or iv) is this the new direction of Greenpeace? Did they not speak to anyone in Canada who has dealt with Tzeporah Berman? (See extensive list of comments below including comments from Greenpeace co-founder Rex Weyler). With the Earth now passing several planetary boundaries and ecosystems now failing, with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world – disaster capitalism is now set to explode.
General Electric
To help sell their corporate privatization of British Columbia (B.C.), Canada, GE placed Tzeporah on the cover of their magazine, Reader’s Digest. General Electric, which owns one of the world’s largest media conglomerates – as well as weapons production, weapons trade, and military contracts – owns Reader’s Digest through GE Capital with partners Bank of America and JPMorgan. GE has a history of using Reader’s Digest to hype its offspring, including a health Insurance company, its astroturf organizations, and now, their well trained “environmentalist,” Tzeporah Berman. Keep in mind that General Electric plays both sides of the climate “debate”. While they support astroturf organizations – such as Tzeporah’s “Power UP Canada” to sell their private acquisition of Canadian public assets; allegedly to build “alternative power” and “reduce global warming”, they simultaneously fund the organizations that deny global warming. GE funds the American Petroleum Institute, for example, and it’s astroturf affiliates such as “Energy Citizens,” who stage “grassroots” rallies to deny climate change and defeat climate legislation in the U.S. General Electric is a member of American Petroleum Institute (API), along with Dow, Bechtel, Halliburton, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP America, ConocoPhillips, General Siemens, Enbridge, and so forth.
GE is also a member of United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) – an organization which supports a target of 450-550 parts per million of CO2 – which is suicidal. USCA consists of corporately funded NGOs such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute, Pew Center on Global Climate Change and these corporatized NGOs partner with the likes of Shell, The Dow Chemical Company and many more multinational corporations who continue to exploit both people and planet in the name of insatiable corporate profits. Will Greenpeace International be the next to get in bed with USCAP?
GE is a member through GE Oil & Gas Conmec and General Electric Inspection Services (both link directly to GE Energy) GE Energy is one of the world’s leading suppliers of power generation and delivery from coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear energy. GE is now moving into renewable resources such as water, wind, and solar by acquiring rights to those energy resources worldwide. In B.C. their plan is to privatize some 600 watersheds, acquire the water and energy resources, and then sell it back to the public at exorbitant prices they set with the corrupted government that they support. GE takes B.C. public and ecological assets and not even pays trinkets, but rather makes citizens pay with a liability to buy their power at a rate they’ve wrangled from Gordon Campbell and his accenture (former Arthur Anderson of the Enron cookie jar crowd) advisors. General Electric helped fund these climate change denial campaigns, while simultaneously using the urgency of global warming to make a grab for hundreds of rivers, tributaries, and watersheds in British Columbia, Canada. They’ve attached Tzeporah Berman to the deal to give it a green patina. One could argue that, Tzeporah, in essence, represents General Electric. She is now their allegedly friendly face of privatization. She stands in opposition to the people of British Columbia, the grass roots environmental organizations, the long-standing Canadian ecology groups – Greenpeace, Western Canada Wilderness Committee, BC Citizens for Public Power, Indigenous Environmental Network and others. General Electric: one of the most destructive corporations on the planet. Involved in global weapons manufacture and trade, with international criminal convictions for weapons trading fraud and money laundering, deeply institutionalized in the U.S. Defense Contract community, controlling massive media ownership – including Reader’s Digest.
Copenhagen – For some, a tiny tax outweighs massive environmental destruction
On December 29than article by Roger Annis appeared on Climate & Capitalism; Here is an excerpt;
At first glance, it seemed that the “Yes Men” had scored another comedic coup for Mother Earth. CBC Radio news reported on December 16 that on the previous day, British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell was feted and presented an environmental award by many of Canada’s well-heeled “environmental groups” during the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen. Hah! Great gag, guys! And very timely. An embarrassingly large number of people and agencies in Canada and abroad have been hoodwinked by the BC government’s claims to environmental stewardship and its greenwashing propaganda. But wait, the story proves to be true and not a gag at all! Campbell actually did receive an ‘Economy Wide Carbon Pricing’ award from Tzeporah Berman of PowerUp Canada, one of ten of Canada’s best funded “environmental groups” that endorsed the award, presented at a gala recognizing “acts of climate leadership” by municipal and provincial governments across Canada. Other award endorsers are the David Suzuki Foundation, the Ecology Action Centre, Environmental Defence, Équiterre, ForestEthics, the Green Energy Act Alliance, the Pembina Institute, TckTckTck, and WWF Canada.
Voices of dissent
The Sierra Club did not participate in the Copenhagen award gala. Executive Director George Heyman, a former long-time president of the BC Government Employees Union, said the BC Liberals have taken a lot of actions that are “deeply contradictory” to its greenwashing propaganda. Heyman pointed out that fuel is exempt from the soon-to-be-imposed Harmonized Sales Tax, but the labour for energy efficient home retrofits is not. “They’re also providing massive subsidies to the oil and gas industry. . . and supporting a massive pipeline to move dirty tar sands oil across B.C.,” he said. Voices of concern are on the rise from the Indigenous peoples living in the coal and gas rich regions. Writing in the Vancouver Sun on December 22, Kathie Dickie, Chief of the 800-member Fort Nelson First Nation, expressed grave concern over two giant gas processing facilities being built near Fort Nelson, in northeast B.C. Chief Dickie wrote there has been no meaningful consultation with her people concerning the environmental impacts of En Cana Corporation’s Cabin Gas Plant nor a Spectra Gas plant to be located 15 kilometers away. Cabin Gas, once constructed, will be the largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the province. One BC government official told the Fort Nelson First Nation that its 100-year old treaty with Canada does not guarantee clean air. “Imagine being told by a government official in 2009 that you have no say on the quality of air you or your children breathe! What parent would stand for it?” Dickie asked. The pale green groups that honored Gordon Campbell should be ashamed. His government should be condemned, not praised.
This must be stopped
There must be an international response. Please circulate this to all of your contacts concerned for the environment and climate justice. See the email addresses for Greenpeace staff below. We now stand on the cusp of the bleakest periods where we are confronted with the zero point of systemic collapse. Now is the time to be bold. No more compromise. We can no longer turn a blind eye to the corporatized NGOs who have hijacked the environmental movement. Such compromised NGO behaviour has been nothing less than an absolute detriment to the real environmental movement. The same compromised NGOs have and continue to obstruct real climate justice by keeping the public in the dark on the necessary targets we must demand to avert the climate crisis we now face. Below is one of the most truthful videos on climate change that exists today.
The Vancouver Media Coop in Canada are promoting an excellent idea of having Greenpeace members and donors contact Greenpeace expressing their disapproval. This must happen on the largest possible scale.
The Pale Green Patina; How General Electric promotes their trained “Environmentalist”
General Electric is hyping Tzeporah Berman, BC’s pale green media princess, as “The New Face of Environmentalism” while she helps them sell their private power deals in Canada. Their goal: to privatize Canadian rivers for corporate profit. Stumping for GE: Sunday, February 15, 2010: The day after announcing her new “greenpeace” role, Tzeporah marched into the private General Electric banquet with the GE executives and security guards, past the Wilderness Committee and other protesters. Inside, she delivered a stump speech supporting the corporate privatization of B.C. wilderness rivers. She is also in favour of the Canadian Tar Sands … with similar phoney-green promises.
Here is the result of Tzeporah’s brand of industrial corporate faux environmentalism;
The once pristine Toba Inlet watershed
This individual who Greenpeace International has hired has successfully betrayed her homeland and alienated the real environmental movement. She crossed an environmental picket to promote the global privatization plans of General Electric.
Pale Green Goes Hollywood
Tzeporah & Paris: savouring the taste of fame
Ego knows no bounds. A taste for power
while cutting deals with corporations and selling of the natural world.
Ms. Berman presenting a “Green” Award to the man who privatized British Columbia, sold it to General Electric and other international corporations, who built highways across farmland and called it “green;” who reversed dioxin effluent safeguards that we fought for and instituted in B.C. to protect our water; who sold off the public and natural heritage of British Columbia and opened the doors to General Electric to occupy hundreds of watersheds, devastate riparian ecosystems, and destroy forests for transmission lines to carry expensive power to mines in the north and to sprawling cities in the U.S.
It’s not easy being the pale green patina over the corporate industrialization of Canada.
Comments from BC environmentalists
Barbara Stowe:
Barbara was a teenager at the first Greenpeace meetings in 1970. Her parents, Dorothy and Irving, are founders of Greenpeace.
“Tzeporah’s support of our anti-environmental, union-busting, social-program-slashing government during an election campaign last year appalled me. She certainly knew her remarks would be used to help the powers that be get re-elected (as did occur). At the best, her actions showed a disturbing lack of judgement. Her stance on the Run of River projects deeply concerns me, and as for applauding our premier because he was sly enough to know that instituting a carbon tax would pull votes from the Greens and other left leaning parties…well, I’m very concerned that GPI would consider working with someone with her views. Given the response of environmentalists in BC to her actions last year, there is no doubt that this hire would cause serious rifts between Greenpeace and the environmental community.”
Clayoquot Sound original activists:
The founders of Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS) consider Tzeporah an opportunist who used them and Clayoquot to climb the publicity ladder into cozy deals with the logging companies. Tzeporah used other people’s jail time for her own advancement. She stepped on a lot of people to get inside the corporate boardrooms that she is now so comfortable in. Here are comments from early Clayoquot activists in Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS):
Andrew Struthers in his history, The Green Shadow:
“Summer faded. The face of Mother Winter appeared in the sky over the Black Hole. Things got tense. Tzapata got into a giant queen bee struggle with Artemis, a woman who had been with the Friends since the Sulpher Pass days. Artemis got fired. When The Boss can tell you to clean out your desk, it’s just not anarchy anymore.”
Janie Jones:
Berman continued to queen bee her way through the FOCS, Greenpeace and then into her own organization ForestEthics and now, PowerUp Canada. Berman did not “lead” the blocades at Clayoquot Sound as she claims. They were organized, led and financed (one American heiress pretty well underwrote the whole thing) by the Friends of Clayoquot Sound of whom Berman became a member. Most of the original Friends, all residents of the area, had already been convicted of protesting the clearcut logging the summer before and, as part of their conditions, could not attend the daily blockades at Kennedy Lake, which is why they invited the world come there and protest for them. Ms. Berman, a former fashion student from Toronto with no direct experience or knowledge of the forest industry or the BC culture it supported, was one of over ten thousand who showed up. Because of the void at the site combined with her natural leadership qualities, the charismatic and photogenicyoung Berman rose to prominence as model/spokesperson for the daily ritual of blockading, readings of injunction and arrests.”
Betty Krawczyk: The real Clayoquot forest activist – Author of Clayoquot: The Sound Of My Heart (January 1997) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Krawczyk
Krawczyk is the woman who stood up to police, logging companies, and the courts, arrested many times at Clayoquot, Eagle Ridge Bluff, and other forest destruction sites. She did her first jail stint in 1993 at the age of 65, blockading logging trucks, and she’s still at it, today, at age 82. Here are some of her thoughts on Tzeporah’s betrayal of the B.C. environmental movement:
“Tzeporah Berman has evidently gone over to Gordon Campbell’s camp. Perhaps she is seeking a Liberal political appointment. Too bad. I can remember when she was an agent for change. But change will happen without her. It’s happening right now. She can allow herself to be used by the Campbell government as she likes, but the likes of the Campbell government have already been condemned to the dustbins of history. The private business model she advocates is no longer workable. It is killing the earth. And the economy. Good-bye, Tzeporah.”
After leaving her Shell International sustainable development and energy portfolio Anita founded Catalyst Institute to do the work she was not allowed to do for the oil company, actually create a genuine sustainable future. She advises governments and businesses on operationalizing real sustainable development and socioeconomic change. Her comments, regarding the “green rift” created in Canada by Tzeporah and General Electric:
“The division was no accidental by-product of their actions. It was the purpose, at least for General Electric. Shell Oil purposefully planned and executed these types of rifts within the environmental movement when I was at Shell. Get em so busy arguing amoungst themselves that it will use up their resources and redirect them from the issues. Tzeporah is just a pawn in their game, and her ego is what they feed on, ego and fear. Sad day for BC. Sorrowful future for Tzeporah’s manipulated and misguided soul.”
Rex Weyler: 40 years in the Canadian environmental movement, Author of “Greenpeace: The Inside Story,” a co-founder of Greenpeace International:
Tzeporah Berman may be well intentioned, but she has embraced Disaster Capitalism, as described by Naomi Klein. She claims that climate change is so urgent, we must turn our natural assets over to General Electric, Plutonic Power, and other global corporations. She talks of “solving global warming,” and “new energy” but she possesses very little knowledge of ecology, energy, or biophysical economics. Perhaps she’s been duped into thinking that since climate warming is urgent, we should turn over our watersheds to General Electric to “solve global warming.” This is a new “green” phase of Disaster Capitalism. At best, this is a sad case of Garrett Harding’s “shallow thinking compassionate person.” At worst, this is an all-out betrayal of environmentalism, of the groups and activists who built the environmental movement in Canada and in the world, and a betrayal of the Earth itself. In any case, Tzeporah now speaks for General Electric, not for the Earth, not for wilderness, and not for our children’s future. And General Electric – one of the largest corporations in the world, involved in illegal weapons trading (for which they’ve paid fines), money laundering, and nuclear power – has one single agenda: acquire assets, increase company value, make profits, take the cash. And for this goal, they have one simple strategy regarding nature: Privatize everything. Turn the world into the private property of corporations, and sell it back to the public. On Sunday, February 14, 2010, at an exclusive General Electric banquet in Vancouver, Tzeporah supported GE’s privatization of Canadian rivers. She now represents corporate power, not ecology. Those of us in the ecology and environmental movement have to move on and do the real work.”
Donna Passmore: Campaigner with the Fraser Valley Conservation Coalition, battling the proposed Gateway project that Tzeporah’s “green” political friends in the B.C. Liberal government are building.
“I am disgusted by her stand on run-of-river private power projects.”
Notes from David Shipway:
35 year resident of Cortes Island near Toba Inlet | shipway@island.net | February 3, 2010
Run of river site plan details; Bute Inlet example; This is what the Tzeporah / General Electric “climate policy” is doing to Canadian Watersheds. GE is the big money behind this … with JPMorgan, & the usual crowd ..
“Plutonic Power” is a local GE partner ..
The hydrocarbon cost of Tzeporah Berman’s scheme with General Electric to occupy 300 rivers and watersheds in British Columbia, including 17 rivers in the Toba watershed. First you do the feasibility studies: fly all kinds of engineers, hydrologists, biologists and potential investors around in helicopters a few dozen times, have them work up a detailed plan in well-lit gas-heated offices somewhere, and deliver your plan to govt/public so they can spend lots of time and energy deliberating and dismantling it. Once it’s all a GO, Phase 1 is to build new access or fix any existing roads/bridges, clear various sites and bring in a huge temporary camp facility on several barges. This is the one Pluto set up in Toba, which houses 300 in luxury, was purpose built and shipped from Kamloops… Add a 100KW diesel generator running 24/7 for a year too. Phase 2 is to log and clear turbine and penstock sites with conventional diesel equip. This next pic is the steep trench for Montrose penstock beside the McGyver-Kennedy waterfall, soon barely a trickle. It has a total 2000 m. vertical head. This is approx. 6′ diam steel pipe is laid in a trench that often has to be dynamited through rock, then buried, presumably revegetated later:
A later photo shows they had a slide/blowout near the base, so assume some work has to be repeated. I don’t know how to quantify energy/carbon expense, but it looks like some of this route is heli-access only, so that means some earth-moving machinery and penstock pipe is flown in by chopper, after it has all been barged up the inlet, along with oodles of diesel and such. Not sure where the 2m. diam D penstock pipe comes from (China?), but it’s about 12mm wall thickness, and is epoxy or poly-coated, and the 10m. pieces are double-welded together on-site with portable diesel-powered welders. About 3Km of pipe for each powerhouse. Bute will have 17 of these. Phase 3 is “adjustable dam” and intake- lots of diesel-powed terraforming and concrete:
Phase 4 is turbine/powerhouse construction – first lots of site work with heavy equip.
then Build reinforced concrete powerhouse with steel roof, untold amounts of specialty materials and copper, Pluto’s turbines are imported from Austria, electrical stuff from US.
This is East Toba Powerhouse – 2 turbines with total of 123MW capacity, annual output estimated at 465 GWh. The output of those turbines require stepping up in voltage- so add power substations/transformers. Are they still using PCB’s ?
Phase 5 is transmission corridor – or as Tzeppie says, using General Electric language, “the transmission backbone” – built with road-based equipment and helicopter, for each plant, some 150 Kms x 50m wide transmission corridor logged (a permanent clearcut):
Most of the timber is just left to rot because helicopter time is too expensive to retrieve it. Finally, General Electric and their partners will plant 30m-tall steel towers by helicopter every few hundred metres, with big ceramic insulators and 3 runs of transmission wire. The Bute transmission line will run all the way down to Saltery Bay /Jervis Inlet, where it plugs into the Cheekeye-Dunsmuir line.
Vancouver Media Co-op | http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/blog/macdonald/2824
Tzep calls for gentle tar sands, promotes GE
Tzeporah Berman is readying the ground to sell-out both Greenpeace and the anti-tar sands struggle… Berman is a master of publicity and is already setting the groundwork for future campaigns and betrayals, backroom deals and greenwashing the un-greenable. Since there is no such technology as “clean tar sands” anymore than clean coal, one must assume that this is right in line with why she is promoting the destruction of rivers in BC: to use them as “clean energy.” All members and donors to Greenpeace should IMMEDIATELY alert the organization that if she takes office they will pull all contributions to the organization that once had actual opposition to these kinds of massive destructive developments. Txeporah Berman will make deals with Suncor, in private backrooms. SHUT DOWN THE TAR SANDS, DO NOT MAKE THEM “FRIENDLY”.
Delores Broton: 30 years in the B.C. environmental movement, editor of the Watershed Sentinel for 15 years. One the most highly respected environmental voices in British Columbia. On the idea of Greenpeace hiring the person who betrayed the Canadian environmental movement:
“What were they thinking? Did they talk to anyone? Does Greenpeace do any due diligence?”
Bob Hunter (October 13, 1941–May 2, 2005) was a co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972. Hunter, the first President of Greenpeace, was a long-time campaigner for environmental causes. In 1971, the word “Greenpeace” hadn’t yet been coined. Bob was a hippy journalist in Vancouver, a town which he described as having “the biggest concentration of tree-huggers, radicalized students, garbage-dump stoppers, shit-disturbing unionists, freeway fighters, pot smokers and growers, aging Trotskyites, condo killers, farmland savers, fish preservationists, animal rights activists, back-to-the-landers, vegetarians, nudists, Buddhists, and anti-spraying, anti-pollution marchers and picketers in the country, per capita, in the world.”
This is the Greenpeace the world fell in love with. This is the Greenpeace that changed the world with a real movement. Give us back our old Greenpeace!
Forward this email or write your own concerns and comments to the following people:
“We are so presumptuous that we think we can separate our personal interest from that of humanity, and slander mankind without compromising ourselves” | Marquis De Vauvenargues, 1715-1747)Greenpeace International or Greenpeace Electric???
First the tcktcktck scandal and now this. AT COP 15, the spokesperson for TckTckTck was Kumi Naidoo. Kumi Naidoo is the Chair of TckTckTck, as well as the executive director of Greenpeace International.
The recent decision by Greenpeace International to hire Tzeporah Berman to direct its global climate and energy campaign could be the most disastrous decision that Greenpeace has ever made. It is quite possible that this move may destroy the organizations reputation in such a damaging way it may never recover. The current economic system has caused us to have entered into what Dr. E.O. Wilson describes as ‘the sixth extinction’ – a phrase that many scientists are now using. We now face climate catastrophe on a dying planet already well on the pathway to a 6C temperature rise which will kill off most life. This recent appointment of Tzeporah Berman could be the greatest threat climate change justice has yet to face. Who is Tzeporah Berman anyway? Tzeporah Berman could be described as a Trojan horse for the biggest corporations on the planet. She has successfully entrenched her way into the position of bargaining away nature to the corporations, under the guise of an environmentalist. Perhaps this is a seemingly much better strategy than just having Pat Moore “ex-Greenpeace” running around supporting the corporations. The corporations have finally succeeded in placing a compromised ‘environmentalist’ into the very heart of Greenpeace – the most recognized environmental organization on the planet. The day after Tzeporah Berman announced her new Greenpeace role, she walked into an exclusive General Electric (GE) banquet (past the real environmental protesters) and delivered a speech supporting the privatization of some 600 rivers in British Columbia, Canada, for the benefit of GE and their subsidiaries and partners. So there was Greenpeace (not officially, of course, but in the public mind) endorsing the wholesale surrender of our environment to one of the most predatory corporations on the planet – GE has paid fines for illegal weapons trade fraud, money laundering, etc.
On a positive note – such a scandal may be the one that will finally expose the corporatization of compromised NGOs and the deafening silence on the reality of climate change which has been going on behind the scenes for quite some time – to which the public are mostly unaware.
Also amazing; right now, in the climate justice movement something extraordinarily important is happening. After Copenhagen – a line is finally being drawn in the sand. True climate justice groups are now refusing to sign onto to any statement that endorses a temperature which exceeds a 1C temperature rise. As compromised NGOs are still clinging to the suicidal 1.5C – 2C temperatures, we will now finally see a clear divide. True climate justice groups versus the compromised NGOs. As well, true climate justice groups are now mobilizing to endorse a global emergency declaration on climate change. Again, those who do not sign on will be easily identified as those with vested interests.
The Tzeporah Berman specialty: Disaster Capitalism
The message behind disaster capitalism campaigning is this; climate change is “so urgent” that we have to turn the planet over to GE and other corporations to “save us.” This is all bullshit. This messaging is designed with the purpose of gaining corporate control of Earths natural assets. The question is, what has gone wrong at Greenpeace International? Is it i) lack of due-diligence, ii) lack of research ii) lack of knowledge or iv) is this the new direction of Greenpeace? Did they not speak to anyone in Canada who has dealt with Tzeporah Berman? (See extensive list of comments below including comments from Greenpeace co-founder Rex Weyler). With the Earth now passing several planetary boundaries and ecosystems now failing, with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world – disaster capitalism is now set to explode.
General Electric
To help sell their corporate privatization of British Columbia (B.C.), Canada, GE placed Tzeporah on the cover of their magazine, Reader’s Digest. General Electric, which owns one of the world’s largest media conglomerates – as well as weapons production, weapons trade, and military contracts – owns Reader’s Digest through GE Capital with partners Bank of America and JPMorgan. GE has a history of using Reader’s Digest to hype its offspring, including a health Insurance company, its astroturf organizations, and now, their well trained “environmentalist,” Tzeporah Berman. Keep in mind that General Electric plays both sides of the climate “debate”. While they support astroturf organizations – such as Tzeporah’s “Power UP Canada” to sell their private acquisition of Canadian public assets; allegedly to build “alternative power” and “reduce global warming”, they simultaneously fund the organizations that deny global warming. GE funds the American Petroleum Institute, for example, and it’s astroturf affiliates such as “Energy Citizens,” who stage “grassroots” rallies to deny climate change and defeat climate legislation in the U.S. General Electric is a member of American Petroleum Institute (API), along with Dow, Bechtel, Halliburton, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP America, ConocoPhillips, General Siemens, Enbridge, and so forth.
GE is also a member of United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) – an organization which supports a target of 450-550 parts per million of CO2 – which is suicidal. USCA consists of corporately funded NGOs such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute, Pew Center on Global Climate Change and these corporatized NGOs partner with the likes of Shell, The Dow Chemical Company and many more multinational corporations who continue to exploit both people and planet in the name of insatiable corporate profits. Will Greenpeace International be the next to get in bed with USCAP?
GE is a member through GE Oil & Gas Conmec and General Electric Inspection Services (both link directly to GE Energy) GE Energy is one of the world’s leading suppliers of power generation and delivery from coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear energy. GE is now moving into renewable resources such as water, wind, and solar by acquiring rights to those energy resources worldwide. In B.C. their plan is to privatize some 600 watersheds, acquire the water and energy resources, and then sell it back to the public at exorbitant prices they set with the corrupted government that they support. GE takes B.C. public and ecological assets and not even pays trinkets, but rather makes citizens pay with a liability to buy their power at a rate they’ve wrangled from Gordon Campbell and his accenture (former Arthur Anderson of the Enron cookie jar crowd) advisors. General Electric helped fund these climate change denial campaigns, while simultaneously using the urgency of global warming to make a grab for hundreds of rivers, tributaries, and watersheds in British Columbia, Canada. They’ve attached Tzeporah Berman to the deal to give it a green patina. One could argue that, Tzeporah, in essence, represents General Electric. She is now their allegedly friendly face of privatization. She stands in opposition to the people of British Columbia, the grass roots environmental organizations, the long-standing Canadian ecology groups – Greenpeace, Western Canada Wilderness Committee, BC Citizens for Public Power, Indigenous Environmental Network and others. General Electric: one of the most destructive corporations on the planet. Involved in global weapons manufacture and trade, with international criminal convictions for weapons trading fraud and money laundering, deeply institutionalized in the U.S. Defense Contract community, controlling massive media ownership – including Reader’s Digest.
Copenhagen – For some, a tiny tax outweighs massive environmental destruction
On December 29than article by Roger Annis appeared on Climate & Capitalism; Here is an excerpt;
At first glance, it seemed that the “Yes Men” had scored another comedic coup for Mother Earth. CBC Radio news reported on December 16 that on the previous day, British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell was feted and presented an environmental award by many of Canada’s well-heeled “environmental groups” during the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen. Hah! Great gag, guys! And very timely. An embarrassingly large number of people and agencies in Canada and abroad have been hoodwinked by the BC government’s claims to environmental stewardship and its greenwashing propaganda. But wait, the story proves to be true and not a gag at all! Campbell actually did receive an ‘Economy Wide Carbon Pricing’ award from Tzeporah Berman of PowerUp Canada, one of ten of Canada’s best funded “environmental groups” that endorsed the award, presented at a gala recognizing “acts of climate leadership” by municipal and provincial governments across Canada. Other award endorsers are the David Suzuki Foundation, the Ecology Action Centre, Environmental Defence, Équiterre, ForestEthics, the Green Energy Act Alliance, the Pembina Institute, TckTckTck, and WWF Canada.
Voices of dissent
The Sierra Club did not participate in the Copenhagen award gala. Executive Director George Heyman, a former long-time president of the BC Government Employees Union, said the BC Liberals have taken a lot of actions that are “deeply contradictory” to its greenwashing propaganda. Heyman pointed out that fuel is exempt from the soon-to-be-imposed Harmonized Sales Tax, but the labour for energy efficient home retrofits is not. “They’re also providing massive subsidies to the oil and gas industry. . . and supporting a massive pipeline to move dirty tar sands oil across B.C.,” he said. Voices of concern are on the rise from the Indigenous peoples living in the coal and gas rich regions. Writing in the Vancouver Sun on December 22, Kathie Dickie, Chief of the 800-member Fort Nelson First Nation, expressed grave concern over two giant gas processing facilities being built near Fort Nelson, in northeast B.C. Chief Dickie wrote there has been no meaningful consultation with her people concerning the environmental impacts of En Cana Corporation’s Cabin Gas Plant nor a Spectra Gas plant to be located 15 kilometers away. Cabin Gas, once constructed, will be the largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the province. One BC government official told the Fort Nelson First Nation that its 100-year old treaty with Canada does not guarantee clean air. “Imagine being told by a government official in 2009 that you have no say on the quality of air you or your children breathe! What parent would stand for it?” Dickie asked. The pale green groups that honored Gordon Campbell should be ashamed. His government should be condemned, not praised.
This must be stopped
There must be an international response. Please circulate this to all of your contacts concerned for the environment and climate justice. See the email addresses for Greenpeace staff below. We now stand on the cusp of the bleakest periods where we are confronted with the zero point of systemic collapse. Now is the time to be bold. No more compromise. We can no longer turn a blind eye to the corporatized NGOs who have hijacked the environmental movement. Such compromised NGO behaviour has been nothing less than an absolute detriment to the real environmental movement. The same compromised NGOs have and continue to obstruct real climate justice by keeping the public in the dark on the necessary targets we must demand to avert the climate crisis we now face. Below is one of the most truthful videos on climate change that exists today.
The Vancouver Media Coop in Canada are promoting an excellent idea of having Greenpeace members and donors contact Greenpeace expressing their disapproval. This must happen on the largest possible scale.
The Pale Green Patina; How General Electric promotes their trained “Environmentalist”
General Electric is hyping Tzeporah Berman, BC’s pale green media princess, as “The New Face of Environmentalism” while she helps them sell their private power deals in Canada. Their goal: to privatize Canadian rivers for corporate profit. Stumping for GE: Sunday, February 15, 2010: The day after announcing her new “greenpeace” role, Tzeporah marched into the private General Electric banquet with the GE executives and security guards, past the Wilderness Committee and other protesters. Inside, she delivered a stump speech supporting the corporate privatization of B.C. wilderness rivers. She is also in favour of the Canadian Tar Sands … with similar phoney-green promises.
Here is the result of Tzeporah’s brand of industrial corporate faux environmentalism;
The once pristine Toba Inlet watershed
This individual who Greenpeace International has hired has successfully betrayed her homeland and alienated the real environmental movement. She crossed an environmental picket to promote the global privatization plans of General Electric.
Pale Green Goes Hollywood
Tzeporah & Paris: savouring the taste of fame
Ego knows no bounds. A taste for power
while cutting deals with corporations and selling of the natural world.
Ms. Berman presenting a “Green” Award to the man who privatized British Columbia, sold it to General Electric and other international corporations, who built highways across farmland and called it “green;” who reversed dioxin effluent safeguards that we fought for and instituted in B.C. to protect our water; who sold off the public and natural heritage of British Columbia and opened the doors to General Electric to occupy hundreds of watersheds, devastate riparian ecosystems, and destroy forests for transmission lines to carry expensive power to mines in the north and to sprawling cities in the U.S.
It’s not easy being the pale green patina over the corporate industrialization of Canada.
Comments from BC environmentalists
Barbara Stowe:
Barbara was a teenager at the first Greenpeace meetings in 1970. Her parents, Dorothy and Irving, are founders of Greenpeace.
“Tzeporah’s support of our anti-environmental, union-busting, social-program-slashing government during an election campaign last year appalled me. She certainly knew her remarks would be used to help the powers that be get re-elected (as did occur). At the best, her actions showed a disturbing lack of judgement. Her stance on the Run of River projects deeply concerns me, and as for applauding our premier because he was sly enough to know that instituting a carbon tax would pull votes from the Greens and other left leaning parties…well, I’m very concerned that GPI would consider working with someone with her views. Given the response of environmentalists in BC to her actions last year, there is no doubt that this hire would cause serious rifts between Greenpeace and the environmental community.”
Clayoquot Sound original activists:
The founders of Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS) consider Tzeporah an opportunist who used them and Clayoquot to climb the publicity ladder into cozy deals with the logging companies. Tzeporah used other people’s jail time for her own advancement. She stepped on a lot of people to get inside the corporate boardrooms that she is now so comfortable in. Here are comments from early Clayoquot activists in Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS):
Andrew Struthers in his history, The Green Shadow:
“Summer faded. The face of Mother Winter appeared in the sky over the Black Hole. Things got tense. Tzapata got into a giant queen bee struggle with Artemis, a woman who had been with the Friends since the Sulpher Pass days. Artemis got fired. When The Boss can tell you to clean out your desk, it’s just not anarchy anymore.”
Janie Jones:
Berman continued to queen bee her way through the FOCS, Greenpeace and then into her own organization ForestEthics and now, PowerUp Canada. Berman did not “lead” the blocades at Clayoquot Sound as she claims. They were organized, led and financed (one American heiress pretty well underwrote the whole thing) by the Friends of Clayoquot Sound of whom Berman became a member. Most of the original Friends, all residents of the area, had already been convicted of protesting the clearcut logging the summer before and, as part of their conditions, could not attend the daily blockades at Kennedy Lake, which is why they invited the world come there and protest for them. Ms. Berman, a former fashion student from Toronto with no direct experience or knowledge of the forest industry or the BC culture it supported, was one of over ten thousand who showed up. Because of the void at the site combined with her natural leadership qualities, the charismatic and photogenicyoung Berman rose to prominence as model/spokesperson for the daily ritual of blockading, readings of injunction and arrests.”
Betty Krawczyk: The real Clayoquot forest activist – Author of Clayoquot: The Sound Of My Heart (January 1997) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Krawczyk
Krawczyk is the woman who stood up to police, logging companies, and the courts, arrested many times at Clayoquot, Eagle Ridge Bluff, and other forest destruction sites. She did her first jail stint in 1993 at the age of 65, blockading logging trucks, and she’s still at it, today, at age 82. Here are some of her thoughts on Tzeporah’s betrayal of the B.C. environmental movement:
“Tzeporah Berman has evidently gone over to Gordon Campbell’s camp. Perhaps she is seeking a Liberal political appointment. Too bad. I can remember when she was an agent for change. But change will happen without her. It’s happening right now. She can allow herself to be used by the Campbell government as she likes, but the likes of the Campbell government have already been condemned to the dustbins of history. The private business model she advocates is no longer workable. It is killing the earth. And the economy. Good-bye, Tzeporah.”
After leaving her Shell International sustainable development and energy portfolio Anita founded Catalyst Institute to do the work she was not allowed to do for the oil company, actually create a genuine sustainable future. She advises governments and businesses on operationalizing real sustainable development and socioeconomic change. Her comments, regarding the “green rift” created in Canada by Tzeporah and General Electric:
“The division was no accidental by-product of their actions. It was the purpose, at least for General Electric. Shell Oil purposefully planned and executed these types of rifts within the environmental movement when I was at Shell. Get em so busy arguing amoungst themselves that it will use up their resources and redirect them from the issues. Tzeporah is just a pawn in their game, and her ego is what they feed on, ego and fear. Sad day for BC. Sorrowful future for Tzeporah’s manipulated and misguided soul.”
Rex Weyler: 40 years in the Canadian environmental movement, Author of “Greenpeace: The Inside Story,” a co-founder of Greenpeace International:
Tzeporah Berman may be well intentioned, but she has embraced Disaster Capitalism, as described by Naomi Klein. She claims that climate change is so urgent, we must turn our natural assets over to General Electric, Plutonic Power, and other global corporations. She talks of “solving global warming,” and “new energy” but she possesses very little knowledge of ecology, energy, or biophysical economics. Perhaps she’s been duped into thinking that since climate warming is urgent, we should turn over our watersheds to General Electric to “solve global warming.” This is a new “green” phase of Disaster Capitalism. At best, this is a sad case of Garrett Harding’s “shallow thinking compassionate person.” At worst, this is an all-out betrayal of environmentalism, of the groups and activists who built the environmental movement in Canada and in the world, and a betrayal of the Earth itself. In any case, Tzeporah now speaks for General Electric, not for the Earth, not for wilderness, and not for our children’s future. And General Electric – one of the largest corporations in the world, involved in illegal weapons trading (for which they’ve paid fines), money laundering, and nuclear power – has one single agenda: acquire assets, increase company value, make profits, take the cash. And for this goal, they have one simple strategy regarding nature: Privatize everything. Turn the world into the private property of corporations, and sell it back to the public. On Sunday, February 14, 2010, at an exclusive General Electric banquet in Vancouver, Tzeporah supported GE’s privatization of Canadian rivers. She now represents corporate power, not ecology. Those of us in the ecology and environmental movement have to move on and do the real work.”
Donna Passmore: Campaigner with the Fraser Valley Conservation Coalition, battling the proposed Gateway project that Tzeporah’s “green” political friends in the B.C. Liberal government are building.
“I am disgusted by her stand on run-of-river private power projects.”
Notes from David Shipway:
35 year resident of Cortes Island near Toba Inlet | shipway@island.net | February 3, 2010
Run of river site plan details; Bute Inlet example; This is what the Tzeporah / General Electric “climate policy” is doing to Canadian Watersheds. GE is the big money behind this … with JPMorgan, & the usual crowd ..
“Plutonic Power” is a local GE partner ..
The hydrocarbon cost of Tzeporah Berman’s scheme with General Electric to occupy 300 rivers and watersheds in British Columbia, including 17 rivers in the Toba watershed. First you do the feasibility studies: fly all kinds of engineers, hydrologists, biologists and potential investors around in helicopters a few dozen times, have them work up a detailed plan in well-lit gas-heated offices somewhere, and deliver your plan to govt/public so they can spend lots of time and energy deliberating and dismantling it. Once it’s all a GO, Phase 1 is to build new access or fix any existing roads/bridges, clear various sites and bring in a huge temporary camp facility on several barges. This is the one Pluto set up in Toba, which houses 300 in luxury, was purpose built and shipped from Kamloops… Add a 100KW diesel generator running 24/7 for a year too. Phase 2 is to log and clear turbine and penstock sites with conventional diesel equip. This next pic is the steep trench for Montrose penstock beside the McGyver-Kennedy waterfall, soon barely a trickle. It has a total 2000 m. vertical head. This is approx. 6′ diam steel pipe is laid in a trench that often has to be dynamited through rock, then buried, presumably revegetated later:
A later photo shows they had a slide/blowout near the base, so assume some work has to be repeated. I don’t know how to quantify energy/carbon expense, but it looks like some of this route is heli-access only, so that means some earth-moving machinery and penstock pipe is flown in by chopper, after it has all been barged up the inlet, along with oodles of diesel and such. Not sure where the 2m. diam D penstock pipe comes from (China?), but it’s about 12mm wall thickness, and is epoxy or poly-coated, and the 10m. pieces are double-welded together on-site with portable diesel-powered welders. About 3Km of pipe for each powerhouse. Bute will have 17 of these. Phase 3 is “adjustable dam” and intake- lots of diesel-powed terraforming and concrete:
Phase 4 is turbine/powerhouse construction – first lots of site work with heavy equip.
then Build reinforced concrete powerhouse with steel roof, untold amounts of specialty materials and copper, Pluto’s turbines are imported from Austria, electrical stuff from US.
This is East Toba Powerhouse – 2 turbines with total of 123MW capacity, annual output estimated at 465 GWh. The output of those turbines require stepping up in voltage- so add power substations/transformers. Are they still using PCB’s ?
Phase 5 is transmission corridor – or as Tzeppie says, using General Electric language, “the transmission backbone” – built with road-based equipment and helicopter, for each plant, some 150 Kms x 50m wide transmission corridor logged (a permanent clearcut):
Most of the timber is just left to rot because helicopter time is too expensive to retrieve it. Finally, General Electric and their partners will plant 30m-tall steel towers by helicopter every few hundred metres, with big ceramic insulators and 3 runs of transmission wire. The Bute transmission line will run all the way down to Saltery Bay /Jervis Inlet, where it plugs into the Cheekeye-Dunsmuir line.
Vancouver Media Co-op | http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/blog/macdonald/2824
Tzep calls for gentle tar sands, promotes GE
Tzeporah Berman is readying the ground to sell-out both Greenpeace and the anti-tar sands struggle… Berman is a master of publicity and is already setting the groundwork for future campaigns and betrayals, backroom deals and greenwashing the un-greenable. Since there is no such technology as “clean tar sands” anymore than clean coal, one must assume that this is right in line with why she is promoting the destruction of rivers in BC: to use them as “clean energy.” All members and donors to Greenpeace should IMMEDIATELY alert the organization that if she takes office they will pull all contributions to the organization that once had actual opposition to these kinds of massive destructive developments. Txeporah Berman will make deals with Suncor, in private backrooms. SHUT DOWN THE TAR SANDS, DO NOT MAKE THEM “FRIENDLY”.
Delores Broton: 30 years in the B.C. environmental movement, editor of the Watershed Sentinel for 15 years. One the most highly respected environmental voices in British Columbia. On the idea of Greenpeace hiring the person who betrayed the Canadian environmental movement:
“What were they thinking? Did they talk to anyone? Does Greenpeace do any due diligence?”
Bob Hunter (October 13, 1941–May 2, 2005) was a co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972. Hunter, the first President of Greenpeace, was a long-time campaigner for environmental causes. In 1971, the word “Greenpeace” hadn’t yet been coined. Bob was a hippy journalist in Vancouver, a town which he described as having “the biggest concentration of tree-huggers, radicalized students, garbage-dump stoppers, shit-disturbing unionists, freeway fighters, pot smokers and growers, aging Trotskyites, condo killers, farmland savers, fish preservationists, animal rights activists, back-to-the-landers, vegetarians, nudists, Buddhists, and anti-spraying, anti-pollution marchers and picketers in the country, per capita, in the world.”
This is the Greenpeace the world fell in love with. This is the Greenpeace that changed the world with a real movement. Give us back our old Greenpeace!
Forward this email or write your own concerns and comments to the following people:
“We are so presumptuous that we think we can separate our personal interest from that of humanity, and slander mankind without compromising ourselves” | Marquis De Vauvenargues, 1715-1747)Greenpeace International or Greenpeace Electric???
First the tcktcktck scandal and now this. AT COP 15, the spokesperson for TckTckTck was Kumi Naidoo. Kumi Naidoo is the Chair of TckTckTck, as well as the executive director of Greenpeace International.
The recent decision by Greenpeace International to hire Tzeporah Berman to direct its global climate and energy campaign could be the most disastrous decision that Greenpeace has ever made. It is quite possible that this move may destroy the organizations reputation in such a damaging way it may never recover. The current economic system has caused us to have entered into what Dr. E.O. Wilson describes as ‘the sixth extinction’ – a phrase that many scientists are now using. We now face climate catastrophe on a dying planet already well on the pathway to a 6C temperature rise which will kill off most life. This recent appointment of Tzeporah Berman could be the greatest threat climate change justice has yet to face. Who is Tzeporah Berman anyway? Tzeporah Berman could be described as a Trojan horse for the biggest corporations on the planet. She has successfully entrenched her way into the position of bargaining away nature to the corporations, under the guise of an environmentalist. Perhaps this is a seemingly much better strategy than just having Pat Moore “ex-Greenpeace” running around supporting the corporations. The corporations have finally succeeded in placing a compromised ‘environmentalist’ into the very heart of Greenpeace – the most recognized environmental organization on the planet. The day after Tzeporah Berman announced her new Greenpeace role, she walked into an exclusive General Electric (GE) banquet (past the real environmental protesters) and delivered a speech supporting the privatization of some 600 rivers in British Columbia, Canada, for the benefit of GE and their subsidiaries and partners. So there was Greenpeace (not officially, of course, but in the public mind) endorsing the wholesale surrender of our environment to one of the most predatory corporations on the planet – GE has paid fines for illegal weapons trade fraud, money laundering, etc.
On a positive note – such a scandal may be the one that will finally expose the corporatization of compromised NGOs and the deafening silence on the reality of climate change which has been going on behind the scenes for quite some time – to which the public are mostly unaware.
Also amazing; right now, in the climate justice movement something extraordinarily important is happening. After Copenhagen – a line is finally being drawn in the sand. True climate justice groups are now refusing to sign onto to any statement that endorses a temperature which exceeds a 1C temperature rise. As compromised NGOs are still clinging to the suicidal 1.5C – 2C temperatures, we will now finally see a clear divide. True climate justice groups verses the compromised NGOs. As well, true climate justice groups are now mobilizing to endorse a global emergency declaration on climate change. Again, those who do not sign on will be easily identified as those with vested interests.
The Tzeporah Berman specialty: Disaster Capitalism
The message behind disaster capitalism campaigning is this; climate change is “so urgent” that we have to turn the planet over to GE and other corporations to “save us.” This is all bullshit. This messaging is designed with the purpose of gaining corporate control of Earths natural assets. The question is, what has gone wrong at Greenpeace International? Is it i) lack of due-diligence, ii) lack of research ii) lack of knowledge or iv) is this the new direction of Greenpeace? Did they not speak to anyone in Canada who has dealt with Tzeporah Berman? (See extensive list of comments below including comments from Greenpeace co-founder Rex Weyler). With the Earth now passing several planetary boundaries and ecosystems now failing, with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world – disaster capitalism is now set to explode.
General Electric
To help sell their corporate privatization of British Columbia (B.C.), Canada, GE placed Tzeporah on the cover of their magazine, Reader’s Digest. General Electric, which owns one of the world’s largest media conglomerates – as well as weapons production, weapons trade, and military contracts – owns Reader’s Digest through GE Capital with partners Bank of America and JPMorgan. GE has a history of using Reader’s Digest to hype its offspring, including a health Insurance company, its astroturf organizations, and now, their well trained “environmentalist,” Tzeporah Berman. Keep in mind that General Electric plays both sides of the climate “debate”. While they support astroturf organizations – such as Tzeporah’s “Power UP Canada” to sell their private acquisition of Canadian public assets; allegedly to build “alternative power” and “reduce global warming”, they simultaneously fund the organizations that deny global warming. GE funds the American Petroleum Institute, for example, and it’s astroturf affiliates such as “Energy Citizens,” who stage “grassroots” rallies to deny climate change and defeat climate legislation in the U.S. General Electric is a member of American Petroleum Institute (API), along with Dow, Bechtel, Halliburton, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP America, ConocoPhillips, General Siemens, Enbridge, and so forth.
GE is also a member of United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) – an organization which supports a target of 450-550 parts per million of CO2 – which is suicidal. USCA consists of corporately funded NGOs such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute, Pew Center on Global Climate Change and these corporatized NGOs partner with the likes of Shell, The Dow Chemical Company and many more multinational corporations who continue to exploit both people and planet in the name of insatiable corporate profits. Will Greenpeace International be the next to get in bed with USCAP?
GE is a member through GE Oil & Gas Conmec and General Electric Inspection Services (both link directly to GE Energy) GE Energy is one of the world’s leading suppliers of power generation and delivery from coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear energy. GE is now moving into renewable resources such as water, wind, and solar by acquiring rights to those energy resources worldwide. In B.C. their plan is to privatize some 600 watersheds, acquire the water and energy resources, and then sell it back to the public at exorbitant prices they set with the corrupted government that they support. GE takes B.C. public and ecological assets and not even pays trinkets, but rather makes citizens pay with a liability to buy their power at a rate they’ve wrangled from Gordon Campbell and his accenture (former Arthur Anderson of the Enron cookie jar crowd) advisors. General Electric helped fund these climate change denial campaigns, while simultaneously using the urgency of global warming to make a grab for hundreds of rivers, tributaries, and watersheds in British Columbia, Canada. They’ve attached Tzeporah Berman to the deal to give it a green patina. One could argue that, Tzeporah, in essence, represents General Electric. She is now their allegedly friendly face of privatization. She stands in opposition to the people of British Columbia, the grass roots environmental organizations, the long-standing Canadian ecology groups – Greenpeace, Western Canada Wilderness Committee, BC Citizens for Public Power, Indigenous Environmental Network and others. General Electric: one of the most destructive corporations on the planet. Involved in global weapons manufacture and trade, with international criminal convictions for weapons trading fraud and money laundering, deeply institutionalized in the U.S. Defense Contract community, controlling massive media ownership – including Reader’s Digest.
Copenhagen – For some, a tiny tax outweighs massive environmental destruction
On December 29than article by Roger Annis appeared on Climate & Capitalism; Here is an excerpt;
At first glance, it seemed that the “Yes Men” had scored another comedic coup for Mother Earth. CBC Radio news reported on December 16 that on the previous day, British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell was feted and presented an environmental award by many of Canada’s well-heeled “environmental groups” during the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen. Hah! Great gag, guys! And very timely. An embarrassingly large number of people and agencies in Canada and abroad have been hoodwinked by the BC government’s claims to environmental stewardship and its greenwashing propaganda. But wait, the story proves to be true and not a gag at all! Campbell actually did receive an ‘Economy Wide Carbon Pricing’ award from Tzeporah Berman of PowerUp Canada, one of ten of Canada’s best funded “environmental groups” that endorsed the award, presented at a gala recognizing “acts of climate leadership” by municipal and provincial governments across Canada. Other award endorsers are the David Suzuki Foundation, the Ecology Action Centre, Environmental Defence, Équiterre, ForestEthics, the Green Energy Act Alliance, the Pembina Institute, TckTckTck, and WWF Canada.
Voices of dissent
The Sierra Club did not participate in the Copenhagen award gala. Executive Director George Heyman, a former long-time president of the BC Government Employees Union, said the BC Liberals have taken a lot of actions that are “deeply contradictory” to its greenwashing propaganda. Heyman pointed out that fuel is exempt from the soon-to-be-imposed Harmonized Sales Tax, but the labour for energy efficient home retrofits is not. “They’re also providing massive subsidies to the oil and gas industry. . . and supporting a massive pipeline to move dirty tar sands oil across B.C.,” he said. Voices of concern are on the rise from the Indigenous peoples living in the coal and gas rich regions. Writing in the Vancouver Sun on December 22, Kathie Dickie, Chief of the 800-member Fort Nelson First Nation, expressed grave concern over two giant gas processing facilities being built near Fort Nelson, in northeast B.C. Chief Dickie wrote there has been no meaningful consultation with her people concerning the environmental impacts of En Cana Corporation’s Cabin Gas Plant nor a Spectra Gas plant to be located 15 kilometers away. Cabin Gas, once constructed, will be the largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the province. One BC government official told the Fort Nelson First Nation that its 100-year old treaty with Canada does not guarantee clean air. “Imagine being told by a government official in 2009 that you have no say on the quality of air you or your children breathe! What parent would stand for it?” Dickie asked. The pale green groups that honored Gordon Campbell should be ashamed. His government should be condemned, not praised.
This must be stopped
There must be an international response. Please circulate this to all of your contacts concerned for the environment and climate justice. See the email addresses for Greenpeace staff below. We now stand on the cusp of the bleakest periods where we are confronted with the zero point of systemic collapse. Now is the time to be bold. No more compromise. We can no longer turn a blind eye to the corporatized NGOs who have hijacked the environmental movement. Such compromised NGO behaviour has been nothing less than an absolute detriment to the real environmental movement. The same compromised NGOs have and continue to obstruct real climate justice by keeping the public in the dark on the necessary targets we must demand to avert the climate crisis we now face. Below is one of the most truthful videos on climate change that exists today.
The Vancouver Media Coop in Canada are promoting an excellent idea of having Greenpeace members and donors contact Greenpeace expressing their disapproval. This must happen on the largest possible scale.
The Pale Green Patina; How General Electric promotes their trained “Environmentalist”
General Electric is hyping Tzeporah Berman, BC’s pale green media princess, as “The New Face of Environmentalism” while she helps them sell their private power deals in Canada. Their goal: to privatize Canadian rivers for corporate profit. Stumping for GE: Sunday, February 15, 2010: The day after announcing her new “greenpeace” role, Tzeporah marched into the private General Electric banquet with the GE executives and security guards, past the Wilderness Committee and other protesters. Inside, she delivered a stump speech supporting the corporate privatization of B.C. wilderness rivers. She is also in favour of the Canadian Tar Sands … with similar phoney-green promises.
Here is the result of Tzeporah’s brand of industrial corporate faux environmentalism;
The once pristine Toba Inlet watershed
This individual who Greenpeace International has hired has successfully betrayed her homeland and alienated the real environmental movement. She crossed an environmental picket to promote the global privatization plans of General Electric.
Pale Green Goes Hollywood
Tzeporah & Paris: savouring the taste of fame
Ego knows no bounds. A taste for power
while cutting deals with corporations and selling of the natural world.
Ms. Berman presenting a “Green” Award to the man who privatized British Columbia, sold it to General Electric and other international corporations, who built highways across farmland and called it “green;” who reversed dioxin effluent safeguards that we fought for and instituted in B.C. to protect our water; who sold off the public and natural heritage of British Columbia and opened the doors to General Electric to occupy hundreds of watersheds, devastate riparian ecosystems, and destroy forests for transmission lines to carry expensive power to mines in the north and to sprawling cities in the U.S.
It’s not easy being the pale green patina over the corporate industrialization of Canada.
Comments from BC environmentalists
Barbara Stowe:
Barbara was a teenager at the first Greenpeace meetings in 1970. Her parents, Dorothy and Irving, are founders of Greenpeace.
“Tzeporah’s support of our anti-environmental, union-busting, social-program-slashing government during an election campaign last year appalled me. She certainly knew her remarks would be used to help the powers that be get re-elected (as did occur). At the best, her actions showed a disturbing lack of judgement. Her stance on the Run of River projects deeply concerns me, and as for applauding our premier because he was sly enough to know that instituting a carbon tax would pull votes from the Greens and other left leaning parties…well, I’m very concerned that GPI would consider working with someone with her views. Given the response of environmentalists in BC to her actions last year, there is no doubt that this hire would cause serious rifts between Greenpeace and the environmental community.”
Clayoquot Sound original activists:
The founders of Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS) consider Tzeporah an opportunist who used them and Clayoquot to climb the publicity ladder into cozy deals with the logging companies. Tzeporah used other people’s jail time for her own advancement. She stepped on a lot of people to get inside the corporate boardrooms that she is now so comfortable in. Here are comments from early Clayoquot activists in Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS):
Andrew Struthers in his history, The Green Shadow:
“Summer faded. The face of Mother Winter appeared in the sky over the Black Hole. Things got tense. Tzapata got into a giant queen bee struggle with Artemis, a woman who had been with the Friends since the Sulpher Pass days. Artemis got fired. When The Boss can tell you to clean out your desk, it’s just not anarchy anymore.”
Janie Jones:
Berman continued to queen bee her way through the FOCS, Greenpeace and then into her own organization ForestEthics and now, PowerUp Canada. Berman did not “lead” the blocades at Clayoquot Sound as she claims. They were organized, led and financed (one American heiress pretty well underwrote the whole thing) by the Friends of Clayoquot Sound of whom Berman became a member. Most of the original Friends, all residents of the area, had already been convicted of protesting the clearcut logging the summer before and, as part of their conditions, could not attend the daily blockades at Kennedy Lake, which is why they invited the world come there and protest for them. Ms. Berman, a former fashion student from Toronto with no direct experience or knowledge of the forest industry or the BC culture it supported, was one of over ten thousand who showed up. Because of the void at the site combined with her natural leadership qualities, the charismatic and photogenicyoung Berman rose to prominence as model/spokesperson for the daily ritual of blockading, readings of injunction and arrests.”
Betty Krawczyk: The real Clayoquot forest activist – Author of Clayoquot: The Sound Of My Heart (January 1997) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Krawczyk
Krawczyk is the woman who stood up to police, logging companies, and the courts, arrested many times at Clayoquot, Eagle Ridge Bluff, and other forest destruction sites. She did her first jail stint in 1993 at the age of 65, blockading logging trucks, and she’s still at it, today, at age 82. Here are some of her thoughts on Tzeporah’s betrayal of the B.C. environmental movement:
“Tzeporah Berman has evidently gone over to Gordon Campbell’s camp. Perhaps she is seeking a Liberal political appointment. Too bad. I can remember when she was an agent for change. But change will happen without her. It’s happening right now. She can allow herself to be used by the Campbell government as she likes, but the likes of the Campbell government have already been condemned to the dustbins of history. The private business model she advocates is no longer workable. It is killing the earth. And the economy. Good-bye, Tzeporah.”
After leaving her Shell International sustainable development and energy portfolio Anita founded Catalyst Institute to do the work she was not allowed to do for the oil company, actually create a genuine sustainable future. She advises governments and businesses on operationalizing real sustainable development and socioeconomic change. Her comments, regarding the “green rift” created in Canada by Tzeporah and General Electric:
“The division was no accidental by-product of their actions. It was the purpose, at least for General Electric. Shell Oil purposefully planned and executed these types of rifts within the environmental movement when I was at Shell. Get em so busy arguing amoungst themselves that it will use up their resources and redirect them from the issues. Tzeporah is just a pawn in their game, and her ego is what they feed on, ego and fear. Sad day for BC. Sorrowful future for Tzeporah’s manipulated and misguided soul.”
Rex Weyler: 40 years in the Canadian environmental movement, Author of “Greenpeace: The Inside Story,” a co-founder of Greenpeace International:
Tzeporah Berman may be well intentioned, but she has embraced Disaster Capitalism, as described by Naomi Klein. She claims that climate change is so urgent, we must turn our natural assets over to General Electric, Plutonic Power, and other global corporations. She talks of “solving global warming,” and “new energy” but she possesses very little knowledge of ecology, energy, or biophysical economics. Perhaps she’s been duped into thinking that since climate warming is urgent, we should turn over our watersheds to General Electric to “solve global warming.” This is a new “green” phase of Disaster Capitalism. At best, this is a sad case of Garrett Harding’s “shallow thinking compassionate person.” At worst, this is an all-out betrayal of environmentalism, of the groups and activists who built the environmental movement in Canada and in the world, and a betrayal of the Earth itself. In any case, Tzeporah now speaks for General Electric, not for the Earth, not for wilderness, and not for our children’s future. And General Electric – one of the largest corporations in the world, involved in illegal weapons trading (for which they’ve paid fines), money laundering, and nuclear power – has one single agenda: acquire assets, increase company value, make profits, take the cash. And for this goal, they have one simple strategy regarding nature: Privatize everything. Turn the world into the private property of corporations, and sell it back to the public. On Sunday, February 14, 2010, at an exclusive General Electric banquet in Vancouver, Tzeporah supported GE’s privatization of Canadian rivers. She now represents corporate power, not ecology. Those of us in the ecology and environmental movement have to move on and do the real work.”
Donna Passmore: Campaigner with the Fraser Valley Conservation Coalition, battling the proposed Gateway project that Tzeporah’s “green” political friends in the B.C. Liberal government are building.
“I am disgusted by her stand on run-of-river private power projects.”
Notes from David Shipway:
35 year resident of Cortes Island near Toba Inlet | shipway@island.net | February 3, 2010
Run of river site plan details; Bute Inlet example; This is what the Tzeporah / General Electric “climate policy” is doing to Canadian Watersheds. GE is the big money behind this … with JPMorgan, & the usual crowd ..
“Plutonic Power” is a local GE partner ..
The hydrocarbon cost of Tzeporah Berman’s scheme with General Electric to occupy 300 rivers and watersheds in British Columbia, including 17 rivers in the Toba watershed. First you do the feasibility studies: fly all kinds of engineers, hydrologists, biologists and potential investors around in helicopters a few dozen times, have them work up a detailed plan in well-lit gas-heated offices somewhere, and deliver your plan to govt/public so they can spend lots of time and energy deliberating and dismantling it. Once it’s all a GO, Phase 1 is to build new access or fix any existing roads/bridges, clear various sites and bring in a huge temporary camp facility on several barges. This is the one Pluto set up in Toba, which houses 300 in luxury, was purpose built and shipped from Kamloops… Add a 100KW diesel generator running 24/7 for a year too. Phase 2 is to log and clear turbine and penstock sites with conventional diesel equip. This next pic is the steep trench for Montrose penstock beside the McGyver-Kennedy waterfall, soon barely a trickle. It has a total 2000 m. vertical head. This is approx. 6′ diam steel pipe is laid in a trench that often has to be dynamited through rock, then buried, presumably revegetated later:
A later photo shows they had a slide/blowout near the base, so assume some work has to be repeated. I don’t know how to quantify energy/carbon expense, but it looks like some of this route is heli-access only, so that means some earth-moving machinery and penstock pipe is flown in by chopper, after it has all been barged up the inlet, along with oodles of diesel and such. Not sure where the 2m. diam D penstock pipe comes from (China?), but it’s about 12mm wall thickness, and is epoxy or poly-coated, and the 10m. pieces are double-welded together on-site with portable diesel-powered welders. About 3Km of pipe for each powerhouse. Bute will have 17 of these. Phase 3 is “adjustable dam” and intake- lots of diesel-powed terraforming and concrete:
Phase 4 is turbine/powerhouse construction – first lots of site work with heavy equip.
then Build reinforced concrete powerhouse with steel roof, untold amounts of specialty materials and copper, Pluto’s turbines are imported from Austria, electrical stuff from US.
This is East Toba Powerhouse – 2 turbines with total of 123MW capacity, annual output estimated at 465 GWh. The output of those turbines require stepping up in voltage- so add power substations/transformers. Are they still using PCB’s ?
Phase 5 is transmission corridor – or as Tzeppie says, using General Electric language, “the transmission backbone” – built with road-based equipment and helicopter, for each plant, some 150 Kms x 50m wide transmission corridor logged (a permanent clearcut):
Most of the timber is just left to rot because helicopter time is too expensive to retrieve it. Finally, General Electric and their partners will plant 30m-tall steel towers by helicopter every few hundred metres, with big ceramic insulators and 3 runs of transmission wire. The Bute transmission line will run all the way down to Saltery Bay /Jervis Inlet, where it plugs into the Cheekeye-Dunsmuir line.
Vancouver Media Co-op | http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/blog/macdonald/2824
Tzep calls for gentle tar sands, promotes GE
Tzeporah Berman is readying the ground to sell-out both Greenpeace and the anti-tar sands struggle… Berman is a master of publicity and is already setting the groundwork for future campaigns and betrayals, backroom deals and greenwashing the un-greenable. Since there is no such technology as “clean tar sands” anymore than clean coal, one must assume that this is right in line with why she is promoting the destruction of rivers in BC: to use them as “clean energy.” All members and donors to Greenpeace should IMMEDIATELY alert the organization that if she takes office they will pull all contributions to the organization that once had actual opposition to these kinds of massive destructive developments. Txeporah Berman will make deals with Suncor, in private backrooms. SHUT DOWN THE TAR SANDS, DO NOT MAKE THEM “FRIENDLY”.
Delores Broton: 30 years in the B.C. environmental movement, editor of the Watershed Sentinel for 15 years. One the most highly respected environmental voices in British Columbia. On the idea of Greenpeace hiring the person who betrayed the Canadian environmental movement:
“What were they thinking? Did they talk to anyone? Does Greenpeace do any due diligence?”
Bob Hunter (October 13, 1941–May 2, 2005) was a co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972. Hunter, the first President of Greenpeace, was a long-time campaigner for environmental causes. In 1971, the word “Greenpeace” hadn’t yet been coined. Bob was a hippy journalist in Vancouver, a town which he described as having “the biggest concentration of tree-huggers, radicalized students, garbage-dump stoppers, shit-disturbing unionists, freeway fighters, pot smokers and growers, aging Trotskyites, condo killers, farmland savers, fish preservationists, animal rights activists, back-to-the-landers, vegetarians, nudists, Buddhists, and anti-spraying, anti-pollution marchers and picketers in the country, per capita, in the world.”
This is the Greenpeace the world fell in love with. This is the Greenpeace that changed the world with a real movement. Give us back our old Greenpeace!
Forward this email or write your own concerns and comments to the following people:
“We are so presumptuous that we think we can separate our personal interest from that of humanity, and slander mankind without compromising ourselves” | Marquis De Vauvenargues, 1715-1747)
Feb 08
20100
Greenpeace, Whiteness & Aversive Racism
Colonialism Diego Garcia Greenpeace [UK] Mauritian Socialists
By Ram Seegobin, Lalit de Klas
February 8, 2010
Dear leaders of Greenpeace [UK],
We understand that your organisation has taken a position in favour of the British government’s outrageous plan to create a “marine park” on territory which is not its own, thus tricking ill-informed people into supporting the British state on rather vague grounds of “the environment”, while they are in fact banishing the people who lived there and flaunting the Charter of the United Nations.
We write in order to request you to re-think your position on what would in fact be the British government’s perfidious imposition of a planned Marine Protected Area on part of Mauritius in order to mask the fact that it colonises the land illegally. Britain colonises the Chagos under the name of “British Indian Ocean Territory” (BIOT). This colony is, as far as we know, recognised by no government in the world, except the USA, which has a huge military base on it [at Diego Garcia]. The Seychelles government took the British to task, and took those of its islands in BIOT back, so blatant was the theft. The Mauritian government has so far unfortunately been much more servile to its ex-coloniser.
The British government’s plan for a Marine Protected Area is a very weak, grotesquely transparent ruse designed to perpetuate the banning of the people of Mauritius and Chagos from part of their own country. And the UK has the cheek to do this, while at one and the same time, perpetuating a polluting nuclear base on Diego Garcia, part of this same stolen territory. The timing of their plan is also very humiliating for all those who have fallen into the trap: there is a European Human Rights Court which may soon hand down a judgement in favour of the right to return for Chagossians. Clearly, the British government is preparing a fall-back plan; if they lose the case, then there will be another “reason” for denying the banished people their right of return; another reason for keeping Mauritius from staking its claim under international law.
Surely the point is for environmentalists to get this nuclear base on Diego Garcia, at the very heart of the Chagos, closed down? Not to ignore its existence. Surely the point is for all concerned people to help complete the decolonisation of Mauritius and the Chagos? Not to help in a British cover-up its crimes? After decolonisation, the people whose land and sea it is can decide on how to protect and nurture it best, how to affect a clean-up of the base once it was closed down, and how to re-generate it into the beautiful atoll it once was. And we would hope for ideas and support from Greenpeace, amongst other environmentalists, as to how best to do this.
Illegal acts
The British state and the USA not only collaborated in the forcible removal of all the people of the entire Chagos, tricking them first, denying them passage back after medical visits to Mauritius main island, gassing their dogs as a warning, then finally starving them off the islands; the British state and the USA not only illegally plotted so as to dismember a country and hide this from the United Nations Decolonisation Committee, as has been amply made public in the judgements in the court case brought by the Chagossians, but have also set up a huge immensely polluting military base, one of the biggest in the world, a nuclearised base, right there in the same place that the UK now pretends to want to turn into a Marine Protected Area. The USA has even carried out illegal renditions for torture on and around Diego Garcia; after denying this for years, Jack Straw finally admitted it in the British parliament. So, Greenpeace should perhaps bear in mind that these illegal acts do, in time, get exposed and condemned by people.
Greenpeace should dissociate itself from this entire international plot. It is an old plot whose first shady days have gradually been exposed to the public by years and years of active struggle on the part of Mauritian political parties, associations, trade unions and the people displaced from Chagos, with their women at the helm of the demonstrations. Our women members were among those arrested by the police in 1981 at peaceful demonstration in Port Louis. And though the illegal colonisation and the nuclear base have both continued, the conspiracy to remove all the people, and for the UK to steal the islands, and for the US to become receiver of stolen goods, have been exposed in public in the British courts and in international meetings against US military bases. So, being part of the tail end of this long-term conspiracy will bring shame on organisations like Greenpeace. That individuals fall into this trap is understandable. But for organisations, we are afraid it will be very damaging to your reputation.
Previous support for Diego Garcia campaign
In the past, Greenpeace has known about Diego Garcia. We would very much like to remind you that in October, 1998, Lalit de Klas [Mauritius’ revolutionary socialist party] sent one of our members to have a formal meeting with your organisation at your headquarters in Amsterdam. The Rann nu Diego Committee, a common front of some 10 organisations in Mauritius, including one of the two main Chagossian groups, the Chagos Refugees Group, endorsed Lalit’s request for a Greenpeace action on Diego Garcia to oppose the nuclear base there. One of our members, Ms. Lindsey Collen, thus had a formal meeting at your headquarters with Ms. Stephanie Mills, who she found to be a very capable, dedicated Australian campaign worker for your organisation.
Following this meeting, and following the dossier that we submitted formally at the same time, Greenpeace informed us by email that you had organised for one of your vessels (in a window of opportunity) to take a group of people for an action on Diego Garcia in or around March 1999, in protest against the military base, its nuclearisation, the forcible removals and the continued colonisation of part of Mauritius. We were already discussing how many people, preparing for a campaign to get support from peace and environment organisations worldwide, and thinking up the kind of media plan necessary.
Lalit immediately set in motion a very broad campaign for “background support”, which we got from a series of organisations literally all over the world in order to back up the planned action as soon as it would be able to become public. Response from all over the world was very good. The issue was coming up at the right moment. The only thing that prevented the vessel from actually doing this visit, which would have been truly historic, and which would have been one of Greenpeace’s greatest sources of pride as you looked back on your history, was thwarted, we were informed, when the vessel to be used got “iced in” during a trip to the Antarctica in early 1999, and would, by the time it got out of the ice, be too late, as it was already booked for another action afterwards.
Later, in January, 2004, in the outskirts of the World Social Forum meeting in Mumbai, there was a second attempt, this time to ask Greenpeace if you could lead a planned Flotilla to Chagos and Diego Garcia, given that the Chagossians had won a court case for the right to return (since overturned — in part by decree in the UK, and in part by a Privy Council appeal judgement last year). This time it was a joint request from the Chagos Refugees Group and Lalit. Greenpeace were unable to do this, but your leaders at the time were aware of the issues involved.
Campaign continues
We mention your past links with the Diego Garcia issue because we believe that your position on the Marine Protected Area which the UK is planning is erroneous. The UK is clearly trying to use the “environment issue” as a desperate attempt to continue its continued colonisation of part of Mauritius. Greenpeace should not allow itself to be used this way.
At present our organisation is spearheading a campaign to call on the Mauritian government to do two things:
We would very much appreciate it if Greenpeace could consider supporting these two demands. Both would certainly help the environment of the Chagos, as they both involve exposing then closing the nuclear military base. Just as the UK government is now being exposed for entering illegally into the Iraq War, and Bush and Blair risk charges as war criminals, so in the future the UK and USA may be publicly exposed as illegal occupiers, as war mongers on Chagos, and as polluters of the Indian Ocean with truly filthy military base.
Because that is what they are.
Yours sincerely,
Ram Seegobin, for LALIT, Mauritius, February 8, 2010.
lalitmail [at] intnet.mu
153 Main Road, GRNW, Port Louis, Republic of Mauritius.
Tel/fax: ; Tel: 230 208 2555.
Faxed (as well as this email) to Greenpeace headquarters in Amsterdam on +31 207182002.
“It does not matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
— Dr. Patrick Moore, President of Greenpeace Canada 1981
As the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society struggles to borrow and raise enough funds to return to the Southern Ocean, we feel incredibly frustrated by the fact that tens of millions of dollars have already been raised to defend the whales yet this money is not being spent for that purpose and it will not help put fuel in our tanks to resume our defense of the whales.
Enough is enough. The Greenpeace fraud about saving the whales must be exposed. For years, I have been tolerating their pretense of action and watching them turn their ocean posing photo ops into tremendous profits from whaling. And now they say they can’t return to the Southern Oceans with their ship the Esperanza because they don’t have the budget for it and because they are going to direct their energies into lobbying for change inside Japan.
Yet they still continue to collect money to save the whales. Greenpeace has booked all online advertising in the major Australian and New Zealand newspapers. Their ads are splashed across the internet from Google to MySpace. Send money, send more money. Television ads, millions of pieces of direct mail.
Greenpeace International raised 127 Million Euros last year. Greenpeace Australia has about 18 million dollars in the bank. Greenpeace USA sits on tens of millions of dollars. Yet they claim they do not have the budget to return to the Southern Oceans yet they also claim they stopped the whalers for two weeks in January, and if such a claim is true then they should go back and stop them again.
But they will not. They have surrendered the Whale Sanctuary to the whalers yet the ads keep popping up and the contributions keep flowing into the Greenpeace coffers. It is incredibly frustrating to see stories about Sea Shepherd’s successful interventions against illegal Japanese whaling usually sprinkled with criticisms by Greenpeace about our methods. And right beside these articles pops up an ad asking the public to send money to support Greenpeace. Even if Sea Shepherd wanted to invest in these ads, we cannot because Greenpeace has booked all the ad space for three months.
Greenpeace makes more money from anti-whaling than Norway and Iceland combined make from whaling. In both cases, the whales die and someone profits. We continue to receive reports from people who have received highly emotional appeals from Greenpeace for money to save the whales including appeals to help refuel their ship.
This is simply out and out fraud.
Greenpeace ocean campaigners, are begging for money saying they will be fighting to help the whales escape and they claim that for every dollar donated they will be able to stay out another hour, another day, or another week “saving” whales. Their success will depend on YOU sending a donation NOW. Of course the word success means something different to Greenpeace. The Greenpeace campaign is not stopping whaling ships. Success to Greenpeace is about recruiting memberships and raising money.
What the fund-raising appeals do not say is that Greenpeace has already raised tens of millions of dollars this year to “save” the whales, and tens of millions of dollars the year before, and the year before that. In fact, Greenpeace has raised a mind-boggling hundreds of millions of dollars pretending to save whales over the years and yet they have not stopped the Japanese from killing whales.
Last year Nathan Santray described himself as the Action Director for Greenpeace. He reported that he was instrumental in saving the whales and that he would be heading back to the Southern Oceans to defend the whales again. BUT he can’t do it without your support so please send him a donation right away. They absolutely must raise $50,000 by the end of the year.
What he did not say was that Greenpeace raises more than $50,000 in donations every day. But Nathan assured us that he would be there “fighting to save every whale we can and we urgently need your help.”
Nathan and his crewmates maneuvered their little rubber Greenpeace boats into the path of the fire hoses where they were filmed being “attacked” with high power hoses. They did that for hours and it looked very dramatic. But it was all just ocean posing. My crew quite easily avoided the fire hoses. In fact, the only way they could have been hit would have been to steer directly into the path of the water. The Japanese whalers stupidly participated in the charade not realizing that they were playing right into Greenpeace’s hands. They haven’t realized yet that the best tactic to deploy against Greenpeace is to simply ignore them because they are harmless.
The Greenpeace pleas state that, “only Greenpeace stands between the harpoons and the whales.” And “Greenpeace is the only hope for the whales.” This, of course, is a direct slap in the face to my international volunteers who have been actually physically intervening against illegal Japanese whaling. Unlike the paid Greenpeace crew, the Sea Shepherd volunteers did not go down to the Southern Oceans to take pictures of whales dying, they went down to there to stop illegal whaling activities.
Greenpeace simply ignores the efforts of other groups opposing whaling including Sea Shepherd, the only organization to have actually shut down whaling operations. The fact that Sea Shepherd chased the Japanese whalers away last year while Greenpeace was filming the whales dying seems to have been forgotten. That was where Greenpeace turned off their cameras.
This year’s annual appeal to save whales by Greenpeace is just the latest public relations strategy in a global campaign to fleece money from people of good conscience. The Greenpeace Foundation, of which I was a co-founder back in 1972, is today simply a multi-million dollar feel-good organization. They are selling the illusion of making a difference to a gullible public.
Greenpeace is a major international corporation. Over the years, those of us who envisioned and founded Greenpeace way back when, have watched in frustration and anger as faceless bureaucrats turned ideals into profits, secure in their understanding that the media myth of Greenpeace cannot be tarnished irreparably within the mass media culture. For every person who gets wise to their scam, two more are recruited. Greenpeace is a massive direct mail publicity machine utilizing media and psychology to part people from their money.
Together many of us from the early days feel like modern-day Dr. Frankensteins. We created a large green corporate monster that has forgotten where it came from and is now busy feeding frantically at the trough of public guilt. Greenpeace has become the world’s largest multinational “feel-good” corporation. People join to feel that they are a part of the solution and not part of the problem. So Greenpeace hangs banners, calls boycotts, knocks on doors, and sends out direct mail solicitations. Consequently, they haul in tons of cash, supporting an army of eco-bureaucrats and fueling a global public relations campaign which postures on the myth that Greenpeace is saving the world.
Greenpeace is posing and marketing the illusion of saving the planet and they have an army of gullible volunteers and paid canvassers who have been talked into believing that Greenpeace is really, really saving the environment and saving whales in particular. When I left Greenpeace in 1977, I could have set up another knock-on-the-door-direct-mail- telephone-soliciting group to chase the green dollars. The problem is that I left Greenpeace to actually do something and that meant taking to the high seas to directly intervene against the slaughter of whales and the destruction of the ocean. The last time I saw a whale die in agony before my eyes was on my last Greenpeace whale campaign in 1976. When Sea Shepherd shows up, the killing stops and the whalers run. We don’t look for photo opportunities; we look for opportunities to shut down illegal whaling operations. We have shut down whaling ships permanently in Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Iceland, and Norway. We’ve sunk nine! of them without injuring anyone and without being convicted of a single felony. The reason is that our targets are criminal operations.
Greenpeace does not even oppose whaling. These are actual quotes from Greenpeace spokespersons: “Greenpeace is not opposed to whaling in principle.”
– John Frizell, Director of Greenpeace International. From the Greenpeace Policy Paper 1994. “As a natural scientist I cannot accept that Greenpeace is opposed to whaling. One must be allowed to harvest a renewable resource. To me, this is an important principle.”
– Leif Ryvarden, former Chairman of Greenpeace Norway. From an interview with Dagbladet, August 2, 1991 “The 1993 Minke whale harvest did not constitute a threat to the stock.”
– Ingrid Bertinussen, Greenpeace Norway Director. From an interview on Norwegian radio (NRK), October 22, 1993 “The Norwegian catch is not a threat to the Minke whale stock,”
– Kalle Hesstvedt of Greenpeace Norway in a remarkable interview with the Norwegian newspaper, “Nordlys” on May 21. Hesstvedt does not rule out the possibility that Greenpeace might accept commercial whaling when catch quotas are allocated by the International Whaling Commission (IWC). He repeated the statement on Norwegian radio (NRK) on the same day.
In 1997, I had Greenpeace investigated by the National Marine Fisheries Service of the United States for participating in a whale hunt. Greenpeace crew on the Arctic Sunrise actually towed a slaughtered bowhead whale to shore as a favour for the Inupiat whalers in the Bering Sea. In doing so, they violated both U.S. and international law. The incident was reported widely in the Alaskan media and the whalers used the incident to ridicule Greenpeace at the 1997 International Whaling Commission meeting in Monaco.
And it is not just whales that Greenpeace is betraying. Melanie Duchin of Greenpeace Alaska who also sent out a personal appeal to raise money to “save” the whales said last year that Greenpeace is not opposed to the hunting of polar bears. She was quoted in the Alaskan media as saying, “If the species of certain populations against the backdrop of global warming can sustain a commercial hunt, than we’re not going to oppose it.”
And Greenpeace raises millions of dollars from people concerned about the cruel slaughter of seals in Canada, yet Greenpeace has not opposed the Canadian seal hunt in more than two decades. The official Greenpeace position on the harp seal slaughter, the largest massacre of marine mammals on the planet is that the hunt is “sustainable.”
There are many who lament that it is a sad thing that different groups cannot work together. Sad though it might be, it is a fact. The objectives of an organization with highly paid executives is far different from an organization of volunteers. We have different objectives. While we look for whaling ships, Greenpeace looks for memberships.
Nonetheless, I have approached Greenpeace for years with offers to work in cooperation with them. They responded with insults or simply ignored us. They even tried to deny that I was a co-founder of their own organization.
A volunteer organization like Sea Shepherd is in business to put ourselves out of business. A large eco-corporation like Greenpeace is in business to keep itself in business, and whaling, sealing, over-fishing, global warming, and other assorted issues are simply the raw material that Greenpeace uses to turn people’s concerns into profits.
I know that I am taking a risk in publicly exposing Greenpeace as a fraud. I know it shatters people’s illusions, but some illusions need shattering. The real strength of the environmental and conservation movements lies in the diversity of individual activists and small grassroots organizations that large corporate organizations like Greenpeace parasitically rob energy and support from.
In my opinion, it is completely immoral for organizations to be paying six-figure salaries to desk-bound bureaucrats sitting in multi-million dollar office buildings as real, dedicated activists struggle in the field to rescue injured animals or to try and stop the horrific slaughter of seals, dolphins and whales. This entire movement is held up on the blood, sweat, and tears of tens of thousands of individuals struggling for ecological justice with minimal resources while a small, elite group skims the vast amounts of money from the public purse to be spent on large salaries, public relations posturing, and fund-raising.
It’s obscene, and it is high time that people woke up and saw Greenpeace for what it really is – a high-powered public relation machines designed to fleece the public. Greenpeace has secured their story and photos for this year. No need for them to return. It would not be a cost effective strategy for them to do so. They will accuse us of being eco-terrorists for intervening to defend the whales as they continue to spend mega-bucks on TV ads, direct mail appeals, and internet banner advertising. All this as the whales continued to die in horrific agony, choking on their own blood as Greenpeace cameramen record every emotional tear-jerking moment to beam back to the head office to aid in the never-ending quest for money, money, and more money.
And to add insult to injury – when Sea Shepherd returns, every news story that gets posted online will be accompanied by Greenpeace ads asking for money. Why return to the Southern Oceans when Sea Shepherd will be available to generate stories to keep the online ads popping up.
As the Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin prepares to return to the Southern Ocean alone to resume the pursuit of the Japanese whaling fleet, Greenpeace will be making trips to the bank to deposit millions of dollars raised under the false pretense of saving whales. It is obscene, fraudulent and scandalous. Yet as long as whaling continues Greenpeace will continue to milk the issue as a cash cow.
All the more reason for Sea Shepherd to shut down the Antarctic whaling operation. We need to put the whalers out of business and we need to put the people profiting from whaling out of business also.
Captain Paul Watson is founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society www.seashepherd.org
Aug 31
20220
"Net Zero" Activism BigGreen discourse carbon capture and storage carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) climate activism energy sector frontline action psywar reforms
July 4, 2022
By Michael Swifte
[*This textual analysis is a follow up to my op-ed for Off-Guardian in November 2021. It’s a long read, but you will see how the realities I pointed out in during COP 26 were papered over through management of language in the intervening months.]
Qualifying language makes a statement less certain. Any leader who says that they want to “phase out fossil fuels” will receive applause from climate warriors and have their message amplified in the media. For media organs like The Guardian and the various climate activist NGOs and think tanks, applause is all that matters. When conforming to particular attention-metrics yielding narratives, climate warriors and their stenographer friends in the media will ignore crucial qualifying language.
The word ‘unabated’ is the preeminent qualifier applied to language relating to phasing out fossil fuels under net zero modelling and commitments. Its application makes statements and commitments less certain by assigning them to one category of fossil fuels – those with CO2 abatement applied. When stenographers and narrative slaves choose not to attend to the uncertainty caused by the qualifier ‘unabated’, they are choosing to misinform the people.
The think tank E3G put out a good explainer on the meaning of ‘unabated’ ahead of COP26 in June 2021. In essence ‘unabated’ means: without some form of carbon capture and storage applied.
In May and June 2021, the term featured prominently in the IEA’s Net Zero Energy report and the official communiques from meetings of G7 Ministers and Leaders.
The term appears 52 times in the IEA Net Zero by 2050 report. In the Summary for Policy Makers – ‘Priority Action’ section, a call is made for a “massive clean energy expansion”.
Policies should limit or provide disincentives for the use of certain fuels and technologies, such as unabated coal?fired power stations, gas boilers and conventional internal combustion engine vehicles.
There are any number of examples of stenographers and pundits ignoring the qualifying term in question. Fiona Harvey ignored the ‘unabated’ qualifier when the IEA Net Zero by 2050 report was released in May 2021.
No new oil, gas or coal development if world is to reach net zero by 2050, says world energy body: Governments must close gap between net zero rhetoric and reality, says International Energy Agency head
When discussing Fatih Birol’s position on new technology, Harvey underplays the scope of CCS technology in development. The role projected for biomass as a feed stock and fossil hydrogen production at new decarbonisation hubs in Europe should be explored. The decarbonisation hubs planned around the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line should be considered when claims that CCS has not been proven ‘at scale’ are made. Blue ammonia import deals being hammered out in Asia should be analysed and the oil and gas giants like Saudi Aramco and Woodside making those deals should be investigated. The new CO2 pipelines proposed for Iowa, North Dakota, Illinois, Nebraska and Wyoming should be explained in terms of the political will and long term legislative efforts behind their development.
The crucial new technologies in development are: advanced batteries, particularly for use in electric vehicles; hydrogen; and carbon capture.
Damian Carrington provided a classic example of misrepresentation through silence in September 2021.
In May, an IEA report concluded that there could be no new oil, gas or coal development if the world was to reach net zero by 2050.
The Executive Director of the IEA, Fatih Birol used the ‘unabated’ qualifier in a session on ‘Navigating the Energy Transition’ at Davos Agenda in January 2022. He wasn’t ignoring the qualifier, but rather he was forefronting energy efficiency. His comments were largely ignored.
Either we continue to use unabated fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – and live with climate change, much more frequent extreme weather events, or we change the way we produce and consume energy.
The recent ‘carbon bombs’ series at The Guardian entirely avoided the crucial qualifier and reasserted the unqualified claim made a year earlier.
The IEA advised almost exactly a year ago that no new gas, oil or coal development could take place from this year onwards if the world was to limit global heating to 1.5C.
The Guardian seem to be keen to avoid mention of the over-reliance on CCS in modelling and phase out-out commitments. In order to make the ‘carbon bombs’ argument they need to frame out the political will for CCS and the state of its development. In their 13 May 2022 article they included a picture of the Saudi Aramco, Hawiyah NGL gas plant which deploys CCS and pipes the produced CO2 to an enhanced oil recovery project. They did not mention that the Hawiyah NGL plant was a CCS facility. Surely a gas CCS plant is not a prime example of a carbon bomb?
The 195 projects listed in The Guardian ‘carbon bombs’ series were identified in the study titled ‘“Carbon Bombs” – Mapping key fossil fuel projects’. The study which was revised in February 2022 makes no specific mention of “unabated” fossil fuels, biomass or CCS, but it does contain an assertion that completely negates the existence of the ‘unabated’ qualifier and the stated strategies for deploying large scale CCS outlined in the IEA Net Zero by 2050 report.
The recent IEA roadmap for net zero by 2050 which arrived at the conclusion that no new oil and gas fields nor coal mines are needed (Bouckaert et al., 2021) aligns well with the argument
The IEA Net Zero by 2050 report uses the ‘unabated’ qualifier liberally, but it also spells out clearly the infrastructure needed for large scale CCS.
And the required roll?out of hydrogen and CCUS after 2030 means laying the groundwork now: annual investment in CO2 pipelines and hydrogen-enabling infrastructure increases from USD 1 billion today to around USD 40 billion in 2030.
Fossil Fuel Treaty, an organisation spearheaded by Tzeporah Berman made a subtle acknowledgment that the IEA modelling allows future opportunities for CCS in their May 2021 media release. In doing so they contradicted their headline. They also made no mention of the crucial qualifier.
Headline:
New IEA scenario finds fossil fuel expansion is needless and incompatible with 1.5°C
Subtle acknowledgement:
At the same time, the IEA net zero report ignores the imperative of winding down oil, gas and coal production.
In an April 2022 media release Fossil Fuel Treaty selectively quoted the IPCC Working Group 3 on mitigation AR6 contribution, and provided a misleading headline. The term ‘unabated’ appears 21 times in the report. Section C on ‘system transformation’ contains the quote provided by Fossil Fuel Treaty in their media release. For contrast: the text immediately following the quote that was selected by Fossil Fuel Treaty contains an explanation of how “modelled mitigation strategies” support “transitioning from fossil fuels without CCS”.
Headline:
IPCC report reaffirms urgency to phase out fossil fuels to stave off climate crisis
Carefully selected IPCC quote:
all global modelled pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot
Here’s the full quote from the ‘Working Group III Contribution
to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6)’.
C.3 All global modelled pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C (>50%) with no or limited overshoot, and those that limit warming to 2°C (>67%) involve rapid and deep and in most cases immediate GHG emission reductions in all sectors. Modelled mitigation strategies to achieve these reductions include transitioning from fossil fuels without CCS to very low- or zero-carbon energy sources, such as renewables or fossil fuels with CCS, demand side measures and improving efficiency, reducing non-CO 2 emissions, and deploying carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods to counterbalance residual GHG emissions.
Oil Change International (OCI) need to be called out for their vigorous efforts at ignoring the crucial qualifier. The headline on their press release following the publication of the IEA Net Zero by 2050 report fails to reflect the space held for CCS in the future. They selectively quote the report which contains the contradictory phrase that helped facilitate misrepresentation. This can be seen in the quote provided in David Turnbull’s comment. The authors celebrated the IEA report as a “tremendous win” while simultaneously acknowledging the projected “4,000 percent increase in carbon capture and storage by 2030”. One of the authors went on to argue that the IEA is not “accelerating the phase-out of fossil gas and coal” by “banking” on CCS. This is, in effect, an admission that the IEA are promoting a phase out of ‘unabated’ fossil fuels rather than all fossil fuels as their headline and selective quoting suggests.
Headline:
IEA’s first 1.5°C-aligned scenario bolsters call for no new fossil fuel extraction
David Turbull:
Critically, the 1.5°C-aligned scenario finds “no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply.” This represents a break from past IEA reports that boosted new oil and gas development by focusing on scenarios that steered the world towards catastrophic levels of warming. As next steps towards reform, energy analysts are calling on the IEA to transform the WEO to focus on 1.5°C-aligned policies and investments and fix persistent modelling flaws. The new scenario continues to underestimate wind and solar while overselling riskier, more polluting alternatives.
Kelly Trout:
It’s huge to have the world’s most influential energy modellers bolstering the global call to stop licensing and financing new fossil fuel extraction. Governments, banks, and Big Oil and Gas companies can no longer use the IEA as a shield to claim that their support for fossil fuel expansion is consistent with the Paris Agreement. The IEA’s own modelling now shows new oil and gas fields are not compatible with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees.
David Tong:
Today’s report is a tremendous win for climate advocates who have been demanding that the IEA align its analysis and communications with the critical 1.5?C limit. While we applaud the IEA for taking this step, they can rest assured that advocates will continue pushing for the institution to complete the job. Gambling the climate on a 4,000 percent increase in carbon capture and storage by 2030 is extraordinarily risky and, the IEA’s own analysis shows, not necessary. Instead of banking on a consistently underperforming and still polluting technology, the IEA should be accelerating the phase-out of fossil gas and coal by relying on proven wind and solar solutions.
At the same moment that the OCI authors were ignoring the crucial qualifier, Kelly Trout was unironically pointing out the difference between the IEA headlines and their CCS gamble without ever mentioning the word ‘unabated’ or quoting one of the 52 instances in which the word appears in the IEA report. Again, the headline didn’t match the details revealled in the body.
Headline:
IEA’s First 1.5°C Climate Model Rejects New Fossil Fuel Extraction
Body:
Clinging to fossil gas. By gambling on a massive scale-up of CCS taking away some of its emissions, the IEA’s 1.5°C scenario also makes room for dangerous levels of fossil gas reliance this decade.
A year after the IEA Net Zero by 2050 report was released and 6 months on from COP 26, David Tong and Kelly Trout, along with an extensive list of NGO supporters, produced ‘Big Oil Reality Check 2022’. This time the introduction continued the misrepresentation of the IEA Net Zero by 2050 report and the World Energy Outlook 2021.
Also in 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) concluded that there is no room for new fossil fuel expansion beyond fields and mines already under development in its first-ever full 1.5°C-aligned scenario
Here are some quotes directly from the OCI report that reveal the real agenda.
To achieve its targets while continuing to produce fossil fuels, Shell plans to use large volumes of carbon sequestration and offsets
Equinor plans to rely heavily on CCS
ExxonMobil expressly aims to rely heavily on CCS
BP’s targets explicitly depend on CCS
Though Eni has set a 2050 “net zero” target…the company’s climate goals depend on extensive uses of CCS
TotalEnergies plans to rely significantly on technological CCS, alongside afforestation and other “nature based solutions”
The IEA’s 1.5°C scenario depends on less carbon dioxide removal than some other scenarios, but still includes a 4,000 percent increase in energy sector CCS by 2030
On 4 November 2022, a week before the first draft text came out, The Guardian reported on the commitments lauded by the UK establishment. On that day COP 26 produced multiple statements with the word ‘unabated’ used frequently as a qualifier when discussing coal phase-outs and fossil fuel phase-outs. Again the headline misrepresented statements being cited.
Headline:
More than 40 countries agree to phase out coal-fired power
Reasserting an untruth:
The IEA has said all new development of fossil fuels must cease from this year, if the world is to stay within the 1.5C limit.
39 countries signed the ‘Statement on International Public Support for the Clean Energy Transition’.
the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and IEA net-zero analysis show that in the pathways consistent with a 1.5°C warming limit and the goals of the Paris Agreement, the global production and use of unabated fossil fuels must decrease significantly by 2030;
45 countries signed the ‘Global Coal to Clean Power Transition Statement’.
Unabated’ coal power generation is described by the G7 and the IEA as referring to the use of coal power that is not mitigated with technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, such as Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS).
On the same day that the transition statements were released the UNFCCC put out a misleading headline that was not supported by the body of the text.
Headline:
End of Coal in Sight at COP26
Body:
At least 25 countries and public finance institutions commit to ending international public support for the unabated fossil fuel energy sector by the end of 2022
On 10 November 2021 the first draft agreement was released. The word ‘unabated’ does not appear and the phase out commitment is specific to coal and subsidies.19.
Calls upon Parties to accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels;
On 11 November 2021 it was reported that climate advocates found the first draft to be “vague” and lacking in ambition. A new draft would need to be hammered out.
A new version of the draft agreement text is expected to be published at some point Thursday night, but COP26 President Alok Sharma made it clear the negotiations are far from over — so don’t be surprised if they continue past the deadline.
When The Guardian reported on the second and final draft on 12 November 2021 they quoted both key phase-out texts, but focused on the word “inefficient” with regard to subsidies rather than “unabated” with regard to mitigation. The headline asserts that the language has “softened”, but there’s nothing in the article to suggest that the inclusion of the word ‘unabated’ was part of that softening.
Headline:
Second Cop26 draft text: Coal phaseout remains in but some language softened
Body:
The latest draft proposal from the Cop26 chair, released soon after 7am on Friday in Glasgow, calls on countries to accelerate “the phaseout of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels.The addition of “inefficient” could help countries that want to retain some fuel subsidies for the poor, while removing subsidies for major fossil fuel interests. This change to the language could also provide cover for countries that want to retain subsidies, however.
The word ‘unabated’ appears 3 times in the article. 2 of those instances can be found in a quote by Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change. In the quote he sums up the concession position on CCS held by the members of the Design to Win group of philanthropies and many of the recipients of funding spearheaded by John Podesta.
The call for countries to phase-out unabated coal power and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies is very important and historic. Unabated coal power releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and all subsidies for fossil fuels are inefficient.
Item 19 in the first draft agreement became item 20 in the second and final draft. Unlike the transition commitments made a week before, the qualifier ‘unabated’ is only applied to coal power rather than to fossil fuels in general.
20. Calls upon Parties to accelerate the development, deployment and dissemination of technologies, and the adoption of policies, to transition towards low-emission energy systems, including by rapidly scaling up clean power generation and accelerating the phaseout of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels;
In a 12 November 2021 article titled ‘COP26 cop-out on coal as fossil fuel phaseout diluted’, Helen Mountford, World Resources Institute vice-president for climate and economics identified the inclusion of the word ‘inefficient’ as a weakening point.
but the reference to “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies “does weaken that a little”.
On 13 November 2021 statements from Greenpeace International Executive Director Jennifer Morgan were published. Morgan described the outcomes from COP 26 as weak, but stated they send a “signal”. The inclusion of the word ‘unabated’ in relation to phasing out coal power suggests to me that coal extraction will only end when we have dug it all up. Does Morgan not see this?
It’s meek, it’s weak and the 1.5C goal is only just alive, but a signal has been sent that the era of coal is ending. And that matters.
Morgan, who is now Germany’s special climate envoy described the phase-out item as a “breakthrough” despite its weakness. It’s hard to tell if the inclusion of the word ‘unabated’ is the reason Morgan perceives the phase-out item as weak. Greenpeace International have provided weak resistance to CCS development, but are on record as critical of an over-reliance on CCS and offsets.
The line on phasing out unabated coal and fossil fuel subsidies is weak and compromised but its very existence is nevertheless a breakthrough, and the focus on a just transition is essential.
On the night before Greta Thunberg’s big speech in New York in September 2019 the UN Secretary General’s special adviser gave an address to the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI). I don’t believe the remarks were ever meant to be made public, but a group of activists made it into the swanky event. It’s unlikely they knew the significance of the transcript they provided to the journalist Emily Atkin who was a favourite of Bill McKibben at the time. It’s unlikely that any of the activists were aware of the embargoed media release which contained an announcement of the OGCI’s massive global ‘Kickstarter’ plan to fund CCS decarbonisation hubs.
Your industry has the assets and the expertise to demonstrate the ambition we need and to lead the way. The world needs, and is demanding, an ambitious road map to reduce the carbon intensity of your industry, and to demonstrate your commitment to align with the goals of the Paris agreement.
Robert Orr, Special Adviser to Antonio Guterres, September 22, 2019
At the completion of COP 26 Guterres gave a pre-recorded address in which he neglected to acknowledge the ‘unabated’ qualifier.
I reaffirm my conviction that we must end fossil fuels subsidies. Phase out coal.
Guterres continues to ignore the qualifier. In recent tweets Guterres has echoed the sentiments he expressed at COP 26, but not the sentiments he expressed via his assistant in that luxury New York hotel with the world’s wealthiest oil and gas executives.
17 June 2022:
For decades, the fossil fuel industry has invested in pseudo-science & public relations, with a false narrative to minimize their responsibility for climate change & undermine ambitious climate policies. They exploited the same scandalous tactics as Big Tobacco decades before.
19 June 2022:
The only true path to energy security, stable power prices, prosperity & a livable planet lies in abandoning polluting fossil fuels – especially coal – and accelerating the renewables-based energy transition. Renewables are the peace plan of the 21st century.
Why has Guterres neglected to attend to the significance of the ‘unabated’ qualifier? Is he too a narrative slave like most of the climate justice movement? It’s clear that in not attending to the qualifier he poses no threat to the OGCI.
In the muddied waters of time, most of the disingenuousness, douchebaggery and outright deception will be disappeared or be forgotten. Is this what the stenographers, pundits, NGO spokespersons and leaders are hoping for? How will the narrative framers respond as many of the projects they currently ignore come to fruition? Perhaps John Podesta and the billionaire philanthropists he represents have already got a plan?
We should remember that the captains of industry always like to turn a waste product into a feed stock for value adding. There are numerous examples of waste products being used as fillers, and there are celebrated examples of companies transforming their waste products into cost lowering and even profitable revenue streams. CO2 has, for decades, been viewed by the fossil fuel industry as a waste product that could be transformed into a valuable feed stock. This is precisely what is being deployed by virtually every major fossil fuel company on the planet. Is it conceivable that the oldest and wealthiest pillar of industrial globalist power could contrive to use philanthropy and every other covert means available to shape and compromise the resistance to their efforts? It certainly is!
[Michael Swifte is an Australian activist and a member of the Wrong Kind of Green critical thinking collective.]
Nov 28
20204
Foundations, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Social Engineering, United Nations, Whiteness & Aversive Racism
Amazon Amazon Web Services (AWS) AWS B Lab Behavioural Change Behavioural Economics Capitalism Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose (CECP) Conscious Capitalism deep-sea mining Facebook Global Inclusive Growth Summit Hyperscale Data Centers ICT Inclusive Capitalism Internet Society IT Industry JUST Capital New Power Oceans Social Engineering SpaceX The "Great Reset" The B Team The Business Roundtable The Social Dilemma World Economic Forum
November 28, 2020
By Cory Morningstar
Part three. This is the final segment of a three-part investigative series. [Part 1] [Part 2]
Announced at the Global Inclusive Growth Summit on October 21, 2019, the Imperative 21 RESET campaign was launched to the public on September 13, 2020. A front campaign of The Business Roundtable, the six founding coalition partners are The B Team, JUST Capital, B Lab, Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose (CECP), Inclusive Capitalism and Conscious Capitalism. [Further reading: The Business Roundtable/CURT a Systematic Destruction of Labor]
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is described as, “systems that combine sophisticated hardware and software with elaborate databases and knowledge-based processing models to demonstrate characteristics of effective human decision making.” [Source] The World Economic Forum recognizes AI as “the engine of the Fourth Industrial Revolution”. [Source] AI as applied/ utilized by social media platforms is trained with an objective and exploitative function: target users with ads for maximum ad revenue, by highlighting the newsfeed ensuring users remain on the platform for as many hours, minutes and seconds as possible. This function is highlighted by The Social Dilemma, while, ultimately, the sole function of every corporation, that of increasing revenues and maximizing profits – ad infinitum, is kept opaque.“It’s an unprecedented coalition of business networks that have come together to raise our ambition. Not just to help our individual CEOs succeed, we’ll do that for sure. But to actually bring their voices together to help shift culture. So that the pushback on the BRT [Business Roundtable] from different business publications or other people within the business community lessens. So there’s less of a headwind culturally for this type of leadership.”
— Jay Coen Gilbert, co-founder of B Lab and B Corporations [Source]
Any technology that has power can be corrupted. In this respect, AI is perhaps the most dangerous. Hacking (PC, mobiles, viruses) is accomplished by injecting code – code that can be then detected. Deep learning, referred to as artificial intelligence, is a giant array of numbers. The AI models are self-modifying on a continuous basis, thus, it is unknown how hacking AI can – or will – be aptly detected. [Source: October 5, 2018, The Artificial Intelligence Race and the New World, Order, Council on Foreign Relations – The Malcolm and Carolyn Wiener Lecture on Science and Technology]. “Imagine tens of millions of numbers in the deep learning algorithm that’s updating itself anyway, because it’s getting more data, retraining itself. Some bad people just tweak a few numbers and all of a sudden, it might be out of control.” [Source] Meaning, for example, a hacker may succeed in turning autonomous vehicles into autonomous weapons that kill people en masse. Imagine fully autonomous nuclear weapons or autonomous nuclear power plants, the hacking of which – or malfunction of – could result in the annihilation of an entire nation, or the entire planet.
Here again, it is more important what both The Social Dilemma and the Center for Humane Technology do not divulge, rather than what they do. The Fourth Industrial Revolution cannot come into fruition without the 5G infrastructure that will run the Internet of Things. “Smart” cities must be understood within the context of global policing and the military industrial complex. Cybersecurity will be the battle space of the 21st century.
“The potential for nuclear escalation in a conventional conflict with autonomous systems is compounded by the way that autonomous systems could enable adopters to fight faster than those operating non-autonomous systems do at present… A military force that is heavily invested in AI could essentially enable faster operations by autonomous systems relative to remotely-piloted or inhabited systems. Some Chinese scholars have hypothesized that this trend could result in a “battlefield singularity,” in which the pace of action on the battlefield eclipses the speed of human decision-making.” [Source]
Remarks to the Association of the U.S. Army Annual Convention, October 4, 2016, as Delivered by Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work, Washington, D.C.:
Q: “You didn’t mention about autonomous systems. In light of the third off-set strategy, what is your thinking about letting in the future autonomous systems make lethality decisions without a human in the loop?”
A: “I purposely didn’t talk a lot about the technology behind the third off-set because in a audience like this, you get that the most important thing is the operational concepts and the organizational constructs that employ that technology. But let me state this, state it this way. There will be some instances where operations are happening at machine speeds and we will have to rely upon A.I. and autonomy to actually fight.” [Source]
Automation bias is when humans effectively surrender their judgment to machines:
“Of particular concern in the design of intelligent decision support systems is the human tendency toward automation bias, which occurs when a human decision maker disregards or does not search for contradictory information in light of a computer-generated solution which is accepted as correct. Operators are likely to turn over decision processes to automation as much as possible due to a cognitive conservation phenomenon and teams of people, as well as individuals, are susceptible to automation bias.” [Further reading: Automation Bias in Intelligent Time Critical Decision Support System, AIAA 1st Intelligent Systems Technical Conference, 20-22 September, 2004]
To fully comprehend this risk, a cognitive conservation phenomenon, one must contemplate the Stanislav Petrov incident. In 1983, the satellite-based Soviet Oko nuclear early warning system detected that an intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile had been launched by the United States. The automated system reported, with the “highest” confidence, that a U.S. missile strike was underway. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, on duty, was responsible for alerting his Soviet superiors of the attack. The siren sounded while a large screen instructed “launch” in bold red letters. The siren continued to sound as the computer identified a secondary, third, fourth and fifth missile launch, changing its instruction from “launch” to “missile strike.” Doubting the accuracy of the computer system, Petrov did not react with counter missiles, later explaining “I had a funny feeling in my gut”. He resisted falling victim to automation bias and reported a system malfunction to his superiors, rather than responding with a counter strike. Rather than launching a nuclear war. Rather than ceding his own judgment to a machine. If this had of been a fully autonomous system, as desired by global technocrats, the counter strike would have been automatic, likely unimpeded by human intervention.
[In his own words: Ex-Soviet officer Stanislav Petrov reported a possible 1983 US missile launch as a false alarm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7EmLf4Xlq0]In 2003, U.S. army investigators found that automation bias was pervasive within the “Patriot community”, which espoused a culture of “trusting the system without question”. “Patriot operators” exhibited an “unwarranted and uncritical trust in automation. In essence, control responsibility [was] ceded to the machine.” [Source]
“The more a country fears that, in a world without using autonomous systems, its ability to retaliate to a nuclear strike would be at risk, the more attractive autonomous systems may appear.”
— A Stable Nuclear Future? The Impact of Autonomous Systems and Artificial Intelligence, December 2019
6G promises increased bio-cybernetic identity (identity critical service architecture, sensing based machine learning, distribution of trust) and cyber security. Now consider activity that is deemed criminal by larger society. Rather than obtaining physical keys and/or passwords to acquire access, one will require biometric access. That is, heads (face recognition), eyes (retina scanning), and/or hands.
The AI arms race between China and the US is already well underway (with China having launched its blockchain in April 2020, for global commercial use). The idea that regulation and safeguards cab be applied to AI, ensuring both privacy and data are protected, borders on the edge of a collective psychosis. Such are the lies we tell ourselves in order to sleep at night.
“The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Its Impact on Occupational Health and Safety, Worker’s Compensation and Labor Conditions”, September, 2019:
“In FIR [fourth industrial revolution], nonstandard employment will be common. As a result, it is difficult to receive OHS services and compensation. Excessive trust in new technologies can lead to large-scale or new forms of accidents. Global business networks will cause destruction of workers’ biorhythms, some cancers, overwork, and task complexity. The social disconnection because of an independent work will be a risk for worker’s mental health. The union bonds will weaken, and it will be difficult to apply standardized OHS regulations to multinational enterprises.”
The Unfinished Network includes Ashoka, Aspen Institute, Ford Foundation, For Freedoms, Georgetown University, Imperative 21, the Max Steinbeck Charitable Trust, McCourt, Mil M2, PolicyLink, and The Shed.
Tristan Harris, co-founder, The Center for Humane Technology. ” By tapping into the power of communities, creative media and new technology, Unfinished connects thought leaders, culture shapers, policy makers and innovators to provoke ideas, elevate unheard voices and pursue collaborations for greater impact. Unfinished is headquartered in New York City and its network partners span the world.” [Source]
Rather than a collective demand from the citizenry to terminate the foray into unchartered territory, fully recognized as extremely dangerous and high-risk by those pushing the technologies forward, a discourse is manufactured. Fearing global opposition, the public is safely re-routed and encouraged to, “demand” a future that respects “humane technology”, with adherence to the precautionary principle, kept both out of sight and out of mind. In public relations, this is referred to as “crisis management”. That is, getting ahead of a crisis – monitoring, controlling and shaping public perception at all times. The wish for a “humane technology” is one that will not come true.
As of July 2020, there were over 290 million Facebook users in India. With 2.6 billion monthly active users, 98% of active Facebook users access the platform via mobile, with over 90% of Facebook’s ad revenues coming in via the device. [Source] Mobile advertising has become the lion’s share of Facebook’s total advertising revenue in recent years, growing from a mere 11% in 2012 to a whopping 92 percent in 2018. This translates to over 50 billion U.S. dollars in annual mobile ad revenues.” [Source]
Graph: Share of Facebook’s mobile advertising revenue from 2012 to 2018, Source: Statista
In the fiscal quarter ending March 31, 2020, 98% of Facebook’s revenue was generated through advertising. The social network’s global mobile sponsored stories account for approximately half of this advertising revenue – while approximately 50% of Apple’s revenue came from a single device, the iPhone. [Source] [Source]
Facebook revenues at a glance:
-Approximately 2.7 billion monthly active users
-98% of Facebook users access the platform via mobile
-Over 90% of ad revenues are earned via mobile
-98% of revenue was generated through advertising in 2020
-The network’s global mobile sponsored stories account for approximately half of the advertising revenue
Harris is quick to point out that, “The solution isn’t abstinence, the solution is connection.” [Thrive Global interview with Tristan Harris, April 9, 2017] Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. The solution isn’t connection – via the mobile, the solution is abstinence.
More than just abstaining, the solution has to be for everyone who owns a smartphone to trash it – never looking back. It is fact that “the fourth industrial revolution [“Great Reset”] flows through a mobile”. [Source] The smartphone is the conduit. Although the smartphone is the key to unlocking future nightmares, it’s also very much a double-edged sword. In the same way it serves to uphold the Fourth Industrial Revolution architecture, unveiled to the public as the “Great Reset”, without the smartphone, this very foundation would collapse like a house of cards. The truth is, if no one purchased smartphones, they would give them away in cereal boxes.
But this window is closing.
In the 2030 6G era, “smart phones are likely to be replaced by pervasive XR experiences through lightweight glasses”. [“Virtual (VR)11, 12 augmented (AR)13, and mixed reality (MR) technologies are merging into XR, which encompasses wearable displays and interaction mechanisms that create and maintain perceptual illusions.”] [Source: 6G Research Visions 1, September 2019]
“In the most advanced countries, today’s digital consumers (using PCs and smartphones) will likely become tomorrow’s augmented customers, adopting emerging technologies such as AI (via smart speakers) and immersive reality.”
— The Mobile Economy 2019, GSMA Intelligence, [Source]
It is critical to note that a vast majority of internet users (91%) now use mobile devices exclusively to go online. [Source] This is significant for a couple of reasons. First of all, this sheds much light on the ever devolving critical thinking skills by those in the West most impacted and captured by the mobile phone. Detailed information, required for in-depth critical thinking, is largely impossible to decipher and analyze using a tiny mobile device.
One should know full well by now that the success of corporate products with names preceded by the word smart – are hinged on the hope that the “consumer”, or targeted demographic, is vacuous. Anything “smart” serves capital first and foremost. Humans have survived successfully for millennia without mobiles. All we require for our survival is healthy food, clean water, clean sanitation, and shelter. And as social animals, we seek physical community, companionship, joy, and love.
On September 25, 2018, the Internet Society (ISOC), situated in the US and Switzerland, partnered with Facebook to expand internet connectivity in Africa. [Source] Since then, IXP [internet exchange points] workshops have been held in Morocco, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Togo, Lesotho, Burundi, Mauritius, Guinea, Benin and Chad. [Source] Internet Society partners include Access Now (a tentacle of Avaaz) [1] and Center for Democracy & Technology. The Board of Directors, serving as the Center for Democracy & Technology’s governing body, includes Julie Brill,Corporate Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, Microsoft and Philippa Scarlett, Former Deputy Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, The White House. Advisory council members include affiliates of the Charles Koch Institute, RAND Corporation, Walmart, Facebook, Twentieth Century Fox, Amazon, MasterCard and Verizon. [Full list]
The Center was founded in 1992 by internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn. Widely referred to the “Fathers of the Internet,” Cerf and Kahn co-designed the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet”, with both having held executive positions at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). Cerf serves as Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google since October 2005 with a focus on the future of tech in areas such as artificial intelligence. Since 2010, Cerf has served as a Commissioner for the UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development while Kahn serves as chairman, CEO and president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives. Cerf also serves as member of the UN High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, and was present at the launch of the Panel’s first report, “The Age of Digital Interdependence” released on June 10, 2019. [Source]
The Internet Society “is leading and facilitating the multi-round meetings for the Stakeholders Dialogue to collect, compile, and submit the inputs of the worldwide professionals and experts for future governance of the Internet.”
“I used to think it was a funny joke to say [that] the thing I worry about is 100,000 refrigerators attacking [the] Bank of America. That’s not a joke anymore.”
— Vint Cerf, 2020
In January 2019, the UN High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation convened. Created at the behest of the UN Secretary-General the year prior, such a high-level panel is rare, with only around 20 having been convened in the UN’s 70-year history. The 20-strong panel is co-chaired by Jack Ma, founder of Aliba, member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, Foundation Board of World Economic Forum Global Shapers Community, Member of the Board of Trustees, World Economic Forum, Global Board of Directors, The Nature Conservancy, co-founder and board of the Breakthrough Energy Ventures (with a focus on nuclear), and Melinda Gates:
“In his appeal to a UN panel of experts led by philanthropist Melinda Gates and Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Secretary-General António Guterres called on its members to reflect on the risks and benefits of our digital age – the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution. ‘We need new thinking and innovative ideas to harness the benefits and manage the risks of this digital age,’ he said via video-link, while urging the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation to reflect on how technology could accelerate the 2030 Agenda on sustainable development.”
Handover of the Report of the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation to Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
Serving the 20-throng panel is “His Excellency” Mohammad Al Gergawi, the United Arab Emirates’ Minister of Cabinet Affairs and The Future, Chairman of the UAE Council for the Fourth Industrial Revolution; Fadi Chehadé, partner at ABRY in Boston, a private equity firm, and advisory board member with the World Economic Forum’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution; Dr. Cathy Mulligan is a Visiting Research Fellow at Imperial College Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering, a Senior Research Associate at University College London in Blockchain and a Fellow and Expert Member of the World Economic Forum’s Blockchain Council; Marina Kolesnik, co-founder of internet ventures and Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum. [Full list]
“Growing opportunities created by the application of digital technologies are paralleled by stark abuses and unintended consequences. Digital dividends co-exist with digital divides. And, as technological change has accelerated, the mechanisms for cooperation and governance of this landscape have failed to keep pace.”
— June 10, 2019, “The Age of Digital Interdependence” — Report of the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation
At this same time, the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace meeting took place where a more candid, somber and cautionary tone presided, with the UN’s Fabrizio Hochschild, Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Coordination, remarking:
“After years of unbridled optimism – justified optimism – surrounding the development of digital technologies of cyberspace, we now have come to the sober realization that those positive developments carry downsides.
We’re at the point of asking ourselves, will emerging technologies contribute to peace overall or will they undermine it? Will they generally further access to sustainable development or will they further inequality? Will they facilitate respect for human rights or will they provide new tools to those who wish to contain or violate the realization of human rights?
Some 30 States have the capacity to defend themselves and those capacities are daily being built up. But where does that leave the other 163 countries that don’t have such a capacity, or the financial means, or political means to defend themselves?” [Source]
The high-level panel chaired by Gates and Ma has proposed three models: a Digital Commons Architecture (DCA), a Distributed Co-Governance Architecture (CoGov) (voluntary solutions rather than legal instruments), and a reformed Internet Governance Forum (IGF+) (enhances and extends the IGF established in 2005). The proposed “Digital Commons Architecture” would aim to synergise efforts by governments, civil society and businesses to ensure digital technologies promote the SDGs under the pretext of addressing risks of social harm, in addition to developing certification schemes for high-risk technologies such as “autonomous intelligent systems” operated by artificial intelligence (AI). [Source: The Age of Digital Interdependence Report of the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation, June 10, 2019] AI and cybersecurity certification schemes represent another lucrative emerging market, with billion dollar certification schemes having served to greenwash, thus secure, the continued plunder of the planet since the early 1990s. Such schemes can serve as a key apparatus in providing and/or maintaining the required social license to operate. [The EU cybersecurity certification framework]
“Think of personal data as the digital record of “everything a person makes and does online and in the world.”
– Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class, World Economic Forum, January 2011
The panel also placed an emphasis on Blockchain. In 2017, the United Nation’s World Food Programme (WFP) piloted the “Building Blocks” project in Sindh, Pakistan, employing the Ethereum Blockchain to distribute aid and test biometrics. This program falls under SDG #2, “zero hunger” (an emerging market in the poverty economy), and #17, partnerships. Following the test-run with 100 citizens, the second phase was then rolled out in Jordan at two refugee camps. This phase commenced with 10,000 refugees, then scaled to 100,000. The next phase is to increase the refugee participants to 500,000. Whereas in the Pakistan pilot, smartphones were used for the transactions, the Jordan project switched over to a private blockchain – with eye-scanning hardware to confirm the identity of those receiving aid. Refugees received a debit in the form of a “virtual wallet” – to be spent exclusively within the giant WFP-contracted supermarkets (“hypermarkets”). Checkout would be authorized via the IrisGuard “EyePay”.
“Syrian refugees receive foodstuff through the iris scan service launched by the World Food Program at Tazweed centre in the Al-Zaatari refugee camp, in Mafraq, Jordan, near the border with Syria, November 23, 2016.” Reuters/Muhammad Hamed [Source]
The first major testing ground, the Zaatari Refugee Camp, encloses 80,000 displaced citizens (150,000 in 2013) – with nearly 60% of the displaced (55.8%, January 2020) under 17 years of age. Overseen by 44-45 organizations such as USAID, UKAID and NGOs including Oxfam, ACTED and IRD, Zaatari [2] is now referred to as one of the many growing permanent settlements: thousands of acres of land, holding tens of thousands of displaced people, enclosed within barbed wire fence perimeters, contained by police and military. Today, these open prisons, created by imperialist aggression against targeted sovereign states, are being redesigned and redefined as “liveable cities” and “smart cities. In 2014, it was reported that Zaatari costs approx. a half million dollars per day to run (with half a million pieces of bread and 4.2m litres of water distributed daily.) The second testing ground, the Azraq Camp (holds roughly 40,000 displaced peoples in 2020) would result in 100,000 blockchain transactions (totaling 1 million dollars) and retina scans. The WFP has a record of every transaction – with data as a new asset class. These transactions and iris scans will remain on the blockchains utilized (both public and private) – for eternity. In this video overview, the imperial destabilization and attempted annihilation of Syria is framed as a “civil war”, while the data harvesting itself is framed as privilege. Building Blocks is growing and set to expand.[Source][Source] [Source][Source] Jordan remains the second largest refugee host per capita worldwide with 650,000 – 750,000 displaced peoples. [Source]
The World Food Programme has three foundation partnerships: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Corporate supporters include PepsiCo, MasterCard, and Unilever. [Corporate Partners]
“Personal data is the new oil of the Internet and the new currency of the digital world.”
— Meglena Kuneva, European Consumer Commissioner, March 2009, Personal Data
On June 11, 2020, UN Secretary-General Guterres announced the issuance of his report, Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, “on the impact of rapid technological change on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and targets”. High Level Speakers included: Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum, Ajay Banga, Chief Executive Officer, MasterCard, Nick Read, Chief Executive Officer, Vodafone Group, Fekitamoeloa Katoa ‘Utolkamanu, High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS), “Baroness” Joanna Shields OBE, Chief Executive Officer, BenevolentAI, and Andrew Sullivan, President and Chief Executive Officer, Internet Society. [Source]
June 11, 2020, The State of the Digital World Today / Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, Klaus Schwab:
“Since the onset of Corona Virus, internet usage has increased by 70%, the use of communication apps has increased by 300%, and virtual collaboration tools by 600 percent. And some video streaming services have grown twenty fold.”
Schwab goes on to point out that this increase is only true for those connected to the internet. And that 30 years after the invention of the world wide web (1989) by Timothy John Berners-Lee, global internet users comprise just 53% of the world population. To accelerate the goal of internet access and consumption by every human being on Earth, the World Economic Forum has developed a joint action plan with the ITU, the World Bank, GSMA and industry partners. The plan seeks immediate acceleration of private public partnerships in 170 countries with a focus on digital infrastructure, user expansion, digital identity and digital payment systems and currencies. Schwab: “This fast-track partnership is deeply encouraging. A number of our partners have highlighted that we have made more progress in the last four months than in the last ten years.” [June 10, 2020]
“It is clear so the COVID-19 crisis is a watershed moment for digital infrastructure and services. Digital is the fabric of our post-covid lives. We will continue to rely on technology more and more. Unless we rapidly tackle the challenge to bring high quality universal internet access to all we will not be able to build inclusive economies or achieve our system.”
— World Economic Forum founder and CEO Klaus Schwab, June 10, 2020
ANSHUN, CHINA – MARCH 13: Aerial view of Tencent’s biggest data center under construction in the mountainous area of the hinterland on March 13, 2018 in Anshun, Guizhou Province of China. As Tencent’s chairman Pony Ma Huateng referred in a media briefing in Beijing, his firm will continue to mine vast amounts of data to bolster a number of businesses including its own. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)
“It has recently been discovered that data-intensive algorithms, such as at-scale machine learning training algorithms, are much more energy-intensive than was previously assumed.”
— The Hyperconnected World of 2030–2040, 2019 [Source]
“The international data corporation estimates that 152,000 new devices will be connecting to the internet every minute by 2025.”
“This will become completely unsustainable by 2040.”
— Anders Andrae, Senior Expert of Energy Efficiency, Emission Reduction, Sustainability and Life Cycle Assessment, Huawei Technologies, Sweden
Disconnected from the natural world, Western academia, sciences et al., continue to assign names to technology belonging to the very things being lost or systematically destroyed: “walled garden” (“a closed ecosystem in which all the operations are controlled by the ecosystem operator” i.e. Facebook and Google), “walled gardens of things” (constraint), “spiderweb of things” (transformation), “asteroid belt of things” (collapse), islands of things (growth), data center server “farms”, the internet and digital “ecosystems”, “apple”, Amazon, the “cloud”, “pollinators”. The list is endless.
“Behind the peaceful image of a white cumulus is a less poetic reality, that of data centres composed of thousands of servers that not only need plenty of energy to run, back up and store your files, but also air conditioning, 24 hours a day.”
— What Colour is the Cloud, June 21, 2019
The Social Dilemma, the Center for Humane Technology, and society at large, may speak of climate change, yet what is not addressed, in addition to militarism being a key driver of climate change, is the growing energy demand of information communications technology (ICT) which includes traditional data centers (server farms), network services, and hyperscale data centers. There is growing alarm over the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions belonging to the exponential growth of the ICT industry. Of particular concern are the hyperscale data centers which are owned and operated by corporations Microsoft, Google, and Apple, etc. [“Hyperscale refers to the capability of an IT [information technology] system or architecture to scale exponentially and rapidly to respond to demand that is increasingly heavily.”][Source] There are now over 8 million data centers littering the planet, with 541 hyper scale data centers worldwide. At present, there are currently 176 more hyper scale data centers in development.
In 2017, data superseded oil, becoming the world’s most valuable commodity.
Often described as the “cloud” – successfully conjuring up a comforting perception that nothing exists beyond your device or laptop) – servers exist in real-world data centres. Information technology spending on data center systems worldwide in 2020 alone is estimated at USD 208 billion. [Source] On January, 15, 2020, Technavio released a report stating “hyperscalers” have invested approximately USD 200 billion in capacity expansion and opening of new data centers. For just a moment, contemplate the fact that those who promise an illusory “stakeholder capitalism” will spend billions to house data, while the subjugated and vulnerable remain homeless.
“We are using an immense amount of energy to drive this data revolution. It has real implications for our climate.”
— Jane Kearns, environment and technology expert, MaRS Discovery District, Toronto
The sheer magnitude and size of hyperscale data centers place enormous power demands upon global energy resources. Cisco estimates that by 2021, traffic within hyperscale data centers will have quadrupled, with hyperscale data centers accounting for approx. 55% of all data center traffic. [Source] At the local level, hyperscale data centres embody colossal electricity demand loads, adding pressure to electricity grids which are often already operating under duress. This is especially true for smaller or impoverished countries. Ireland is forecasting that 30% of their entire national grid will be earmarked for data center power consumption by 2028. One only needs to reflect upon the sheer enormity of these facilities proliferating the globe, to recognize the dire ecological impacts and consequences that lie ahead – upon an already plundered and decimated landscape and biosphere.
To ignore the ecological impact behind the exponential growth of ICT (information and communications technology), infrastructure, paramount for the Fourth Industrial Revolution to materialize, is in itself, a deliberate sleight of hand. A hypocritical genre of climate denialism practised and perfected by self-identifying liberals and progressives. At a moment’s notice, this faux left can be assembled on cue by those that preside over the non-profit industrial complex.
2017: Construction on the USD 1 billion 970,000-square-foot hyperscale Facebook data center. The 328-acre site became operational in 2019. At present, Facebook has 12 hyperscale data centers, nine in the U.S. and three in international markets amounting to nearly 15 million square feet of data center space completed or under construction, with several million more feet in the planning stages. [Source]
Today the ICT industry represents the largest growing consumer of energy on the planet, with greenhouse gas emissions on par, or, more likely, far in excess of aviation. Depending on scope, in 2020 ICT accounts for up to 8% of the total global electricity. [Source] At the current rate of growth, approximately 9% each year (2018), the total electricity consumption of ICTs is projected to require 20% of the world’s electricity by 2025, and 30% all energy produced by 2030. [Source]
As concerns over data center energy consumption mount, obtaining the required data in order to ascertain the level of ecological damage resulting from the data centers becomes even more difficult. As criticisms of the industry grow, the global energy demands by data centers are being deliberately skewed downwards. Downward estimates are able to withstand scrutiny, due to the simple fact that there are no nationally reported statistics for data centers – and no global records. In a global corporatocracy, where hyper centers are privately owned by Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, et al., it is of little surprise that the tremendous energy consumed within these vast infrastructures is kept deliberately obscure. [3]
In 2010 there was a broad consensus that worldwide, data centers consumed approximately 194 TWh (terawatt-hours of electricity) of energy, representing about 1% of total demand. This is on par with the entire energy consumption of Iran that same year. [Source] In 2017, the EIA repeated this number for the year 2014: “Data centres worldwide consumed around 194 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity in 2014, or about 1% of total demand. Although data centre workload is forecast to triple by 2020, related energy demand is expected to grow by only 3% thanks to continued efficiency gains.” In 2018, the figure for global energy consumption by data centers was said to have increased to 205 TWh. [“A 6% rise in power use with data-center computing growing by 550%”] [Source]
Today we can reflect on the past decade. Data centers have undergone “a ten-fold increase in traffic with a 25-fold jump in worldwide storage.” [Source] Yet, in 2020, data center consumption continues to be largely cited as approximately 200 TWh per year – (1% of global electricity consumption).
In 2011 Emerson Network Power stated that there were 509,147 data centers worldwide, taking up 285.8 million square feet of space – the equivalent of 5,955 football fields.
Again, reflect upon the annual cited consumption of data centers over the ten year time frame: 194 TWh in 2010, and ten years later, in 2020, 200 TWh. The estimate of 1% global energy consumption is referred to for both 2010 and 2020 – despite adding, roughly, 7.5 million data centres.
The 200 TWh of energy consumption per year claim (that remains flat) claim is further challenged by the European Union’s own research that concluded European data centers consumed 130 TWh in 2017, a 25% increase from 2014 (104 TWh), while Greenpeace reported China’s data industry to amount to 160 TWh in 2018. Together, these two figures alone suggest an annual total of 290 TWh. [Source] Further, consider that the consumption does not remain flat in the EU, despite having the newest, therefore most efficient, data centers.
In 2015, Siemens reported the global power demand for data centers as 416.2 TWh (far exceeding the UK’s total consumption, approximately 300 TWh).
Adding an additional 100 TWh to the 290 TWh cited above (the EU and China), in 2016, a Berkeley laboratory report for the US government estimated that the country’s data centres could require over 100 TWh of electricity a year by 2020, the rough equivalent of 10 large nuclear power stations. [Source] In 2017, data centers in the US alone used more than 90 TWh, the rough equivalent of 34 coal-powered plants generating 500 megawatts of power each. [Source]
2015 graphic, Siemens
In 2017, Hewlett Packard cites the energy consumption by data centers worldwide at 400 TWh:
2017 Hewlett Packard Presentation [Source]
While in 2018, “Nature”, Bloomberg, IEA, etc., continued to promote 200 TWh.
2018 Nature graphic
On January 6, 2020, the Uptime Institute assessed the global consumption of data centers as high as 500 TWh per annum. [Bashroush & Lawrence, 2020]. For some added perspective, 500 TWh is the equivalent of 50 large nuclear power stations:
“It seems likely that the annual consumption of energy by data centers is somewhere between 400 terawatt-hours (TWh) and 500 TWh, depending on what is counted as a data center. To put things in perspective in terms of demand, research by Uptime Institute Intelligence shows that every time an image is posted on Instagram by the Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo (who at the time of writing has the highest number of followers on the platform), his more than 195 million followers consume nearly 30 megawatt-hours (MWh) of energy to view it.”
— Beyond PUE: Tackling IT’s wasted terawatts, Uptime Institute Intelligence report, Jan 6, 2020
The most dire assessments on the growing magnitude of energy consumed by communications technology and data centers comes from Anders Andrae, senior researcher at Huawei Technologies in Sweden. At the October 2017 Nordic Digital Business Summit Andrae forecast that communications technology may account for more than 20 percent of global energy consumption (20.7%) by 2025, accounting for 5.5% of the world’s total carbon emissions. These numbers represented the expected case scenario taking into account future energy efficiencies.
In respect to growing the exponential growth of data centers, Andrae cautions that data center energy consumption could increase a staggering 15-fold by 2030, amounting to roughly 11% of the global demand.
!["The share of ICT of global electricity usage: 2015 to 2025 with and without high global energy efficiency gains" [p. 18, Andrae, Anders, 2017/10/05, Total Consumer Power Consumption Forecast]](https://i0.wp.com/www.wrongkindofgreen.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/2017-Andrae-CT-of-Global-Share.png?ssl=1)
“The share of ICT of global electricity usage: 2015 to 2025 with and without high global energy efficiency gains” [p. 18, Andrae, Anders, 2017/10/05, Total Consumer Power Consumption Forecast]
In Andrae’s worst-case scenario, it is suggested that communication technologies could use as much as 51% of global electricity in 2030. In this scenario, “CT [communication technologies] electricity usage could contribute up to 23% of the globally released greenhouse gas emissions in 2030”.
[Annual electricity efficiency (EE) improvements were calculated at 15% (best), 10% (expected), and 5% (worst). From 2022, for EE only, 5% is assumed possible for all scenarios as the authors expect it will become more difficult to improve the electricity efficiency via Moore’s Law.] [p. 28, Andrae, A.S.G.; Edler, T. On Global Electricity Usage of Communication Technology: Trends to 2030. Challenges 2015, 6, 117-157.]“The results shown in Figure 9c imply that the data centers and FAN [Fixed Access Networks] could drive a staggering 66% of the global CT electricity use in 2030, with fixed access Wi-Fi 15% and data centers 26%.” [p. 24, Andrae, A.S.G.; Edler, T. On Global Electricity Usage of Communication Technology: Trends to 2030. Challenges 2015, 6, 117-157.]
![Figure 8. "Share of communication technology of global electricity usage 2010–2030 As shown in Figure 8 [], the share of CT Sectors, depending on scenario, in 2010 is 8%–14%, in 2020 6%–21% and in 2030 8%–51%, respectively.' [p. 22, Andrae, A.S.G.; Edler, T. On Global Electricity Usage of Communication Technology: Trends to 2030. Challenges 2015, 6, 117-157.]](https://i0.wp.com/www.wrongkindofgreen.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Andrae-Global-Share-51-Percent.png?ssl=1)
Figure 8. “Share of communication technology of global electricity usage 2010–2030 As shown in Figure 8 [], the share of CT Sectors, depending on scenario, in 2010 is 8%–14%, in 2020 6%–21% and in 2030 8%–51%, respectively.’ [p. 22, Andrae, A.S.G.; Edler, T. On Global Electricity Usage of Communication Technology: Trends to 2030. Challenges 2015, 6, 117-157.]
![[p. 21, The share of different sections of ICT of global electricity use in 2015 and 2025, Andrae, Anders, 2017/10/05, Total Consumer Power Consumption Forecast]](https://i0.wp.com/www.wrongkindofgreen.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Andrae-ICT-Global-Electricity-Best-Case-2025.png?ssl=1)
[p. 21, The share of different sections of ICT of global electricity use in 2015 and 2025, Andrae, Anders, 2017/10/05, Total Consumer Power Consumption Forecast]
In regard to the Internet of Things, Andrae suggests that billions of internet-connected devices alone could produce 3.5% of global emissions within a ten year timeline, growing to 14% of global emissions by 2040. [Source]
And as bleak as these scenarios are (with even the best case scenarios projecting substantial increases in emissions) – the overall situation is much worse for one simple reason: the authors’ reliance on renewable energies as a means of mitigating overall impact (damage):
“However, until 2030, globally-generated renewable electricity is likely to exceed the electricity demand of all networks and data centers.” [Abstract, On Global Electricity Usage of Communication Technology: Trends to 2030]
“We believe that CT driven optimization of the electricity systems is a strong trend and a prerequisite for renewable power sources.” [p. 17, On Global Electricity Usage of Communication Technology: Trends to 2030]
“However, the trend of using renewable power is strong [157,158] and likely many data centers can be run GHG efficient, even if they do not find ways to reduce the absolute electricity usage.” [p. 17, On Global Electricity Usage of Communication Technology: Trends to 2030]
“To mitigate the worst-case scenario for climate change related to CT, the challenges related to introducing renewable electricity need to be overcome.” [p. 27, On Global Electricity Usage of Communication Technology: Trends to 2030]
“It seems though that planned power saving measures and innovation will be able to keep the electricity consumption of ICT and the World under control.” [p. 25, 2017, Total Consumer Power Consumption Forecast]
“Despite evident risks, it seems though that planned power saving measures and innovation will be able to keep the electricity consumption of ICT and the World under some kind of control.” [p. 2, 2019, Projecting the chiaroscuro of the electricity use of communication and computing from 2018 to 2030]
Yet, when one acknowledges the reality that industrial scale renewable energy is not sustainable – a key premise in modelling the ecological impacts of data centers (minimizing impact) – all such assumptions go straight out the window.
Here we can add that Andrae predicted that data centers on their own could produce 1.9Gt (or 3.2% of the global total) of carbon emissions by 2025. [Source] The DXC Technology white paper published in November, 2016 [Data centers play key role in Reducing GHG emissions] estimated that while consuming approx. 3 percent of global electricity, data centers worldwide already accounted for approximately 2% of total GHG emissions:
“Worldwide, it is estimated that data centers consume about 3 percent of the global electric supply and account for about 2 percent of total GHG emissions. That’s about the same as the entire airline industry. Producing electricity consumed by data centers will result in the release of 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2020, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.” [Source]
What becomes lost in discussion, amidst a declared planetary emergency, is the fact that we are adding exponentially to our energy consumption, cancelling out any real emission reductions. The massive growth of data centers that began in the US is now standard in Europe, with hyperscale data centers now expanding into South Asia where average year round temperatures for the humid region hover around 27 degrees Celsius. All while according to studies, approx. 40 percent of the total energy that data centers consume is due to the sensitive cooling [4] requirements of IT technologies. July 9, 2019: “With a projected compound annual growth rate of 13 percent, APAC [Asia Pacific] could eventually surpass the United States and European market.” [Source] In South Asia, a region of deep poverty where 20% of the world’s population reside, 2017 research suggests “that by the end of this century climate change could lead to summer heat waves with levels of heat and humidity that exceed what humans can survive without protection.” [Source]
At the May 2018 Around the World Conference in Canada, Andrae reiterated that ICT infrastructure cannot slow its overall electricity use by 2025, even with most optimistic improvements in data center and network technology. In 2019, Andrae increased his projection: “ICT infrastructure cannot slow its overall electricity use until 2030 and it will use several times more TWh than today. [p. 3, Projecting the chiaroscuro of the electricity use of communication and computing from 2018 to 2030, February, 2019]
Based on the aforementioned information (in addition to that which follows), it is safe to suggest that the energy consumed by data centers worldwide today is an extremely conservative 400-600 TWh – in line with 3-4% of all electricity produced on the planet – and far exceeding the greenhouse gas emissions produced by aviation.
In February 2019, Andrae published an update of his calculations and forecasts presented in 2015. In this study Andrae suggests we may see an increase in the energy demand of data centers worldwide to 1,929 TWh by 2030. For this calculation, Andrae calculated the global energy consumption of data centres in 2018 at 211 TWh. [Andrae, Anders, 2019/02/28, Predictions on the way to 2030 of internet’s electricity use]
On January 2020, CBC News reported that Andrae now expects that the world’s data centers alone will account for a colossal 651 TWh of electricity in the next year:
“Anders Andrae, a researcher at Huawei Technologies Sweden whose estimates are often cited, told CBC News in an email he expects the world’s data centres alone will devour up to 651 terawatt-hours of electricity in the next year. That’s nearly as much electricity as Canada’s entire energy sector produces. And it’s just the beginning.”
[Jan 2, 2020, ‘Completely unsustainable’: How streaming and other data demands take a toll on the environment] [International Journal of Green Technology, 2019, Comparison of Several Simplistic High-Level Approaches for Estimating the Global Energy and Electricity Use of ICT Networks and Data Centers, Anders S.G. Andrae]
In 2018, the total amount of electricity generated from the wind industry was 1 263 TWh, with the total from solar industry constituting 562 TWh. [5]
“We’ll also need vigorous development and deployment of emerging technologies — such as energy storage, advanced nuclear, and carbon capture and storage — that boost the availability of carbonfree energy around the clock.”
— Google: Moving toward 24×7 Carbon-Free Energy at Google Data Centers: Progress and Insights, Oct 2018
“Hyperscalers” such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft gloss over the growing concerns over their massive energy consumption by securing renewable-power purchase agreements. With unlimited budgets for public relations campaigns communication strategies, branding, and marketing, the corporate entities heavily publicize commitments to large-scale renewable energy initiatives. “net zero”, and “carbon negative” storytelling. Corporate press releases boast of commitments toward 100 percent renewable energy, as well as the promotion of investments in “*carbon free” energy sources. On September 19 2019, Google, which identifies itself as the “largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in the world”, announced they had made “the biggest corporate purchase of renewable energy in history”. These investments enable Google to declare it matches 100% of its global annual electricity consumption (for all global operations including data centers), through direct purchases of renewable energy. In layman’s terms – this is called offsetting – without mention of the word itself. It is nothing new and not nearly as exciting as Google would have you believe. Referred to as “CO2 colonialism” by indigenous peoples, offsetting is the means to privatize the skies and Earth’s forests while continuing to expand emissions.
[“Each Google facility is connected to its regional power grid just like any other electricity consumer; the power mix in each region usually includes some carbon-free resources (e.g. wind, solar, hydro, nuclear), but also carbon-based resources like coal, natural gas, and oil. * We define carbon-free energy as any type of electricity generation that does not directly emit carbon dioxide. This includes renewable like solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, and biomass. Nuclear power is also carbon free. In the future, our framework can be extended to other technologies, such as carbon capture and storage, that are yet to be deployed at scale but could enable carbon-free power generation from additional sources.] [Source: Google: Moving toward 24×7 Carbon-Free Energy at Google Data Centers: Progress and Insights, October 2018]Apple announced in 2018 that all of its facilities worldwide including its data centers are now powered by renewable energy. By saturating the public relations spin with never-ending references to wind and solar, this greenwash is made palatable to the liberal class – the non-profit industrial complex having successfully framed these two technologies as “clean”. The “carbon free” energy sources that do not make the headlines are those most sought by the corporate sector: biomass, nuclear, and capture carbon and storage (CCS).
“Amazon committed to achieve “net zero” emissions by 2040, which means it would need to offset any remaining emissions from its operations through investments in carbon removal projects… Amazon is following in the footsteps of another Seattle-area tech behemoth. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced it would spend $1 billion on “carbon reduction, capture, and removal technologies,” as part of an effort to offset the software company’s emissions across its entire history.”
— June 23, 2020, Amazon creates a $2 billion climate fund, as it struggles to cut its own emissions
And despite the fact that “renewable energy” is neither “clean”, nor “green”, nor “emissions free”, as marketed, on September 18 2019, Fortune reported “only 12 percent of Amazon’s Loudoun County data centers and 4.0 percent of Google’s are powered by renewable energy, despite their promise to shift to 100 percent renewable energy”.
Amazon owns nearly half of the cloud market. In July, 2019, it was reported that the annual revenues of Amazon Web Services, had grown to $15.5 billion in the global cloud infrastructure market with revenues of $32.4 billion. Data center industry leaders recognize Amazon Web Services (AWS) as “the invisible foundation of much of the internet.” Microsoft sits at second place, with 15% of the market share. [Source] This same week, Amazon launched a network of new data centers situated in Bahrain, increasing what Amazon cites as “availability zones” to 69 zones across 22 geographic regions, with plans to build nine new zones in Indonesia, Italy and South Africa. Today, Amazon Web Services spans “77 availability zones within 24 geographic regions around the world, and has announced plans for 15 more Availability Zones and 5 more AWS Regions in India, Indonesia, Japan, Spain, and Switzerland.” [Source] Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, is a co-founder of Breakthrough Energy, launched in 2015 (alongside Mission Innovation at COP21 in Paris), with a keen focus on both nuclear and carbon capture and storage technology now being marketed to the public (a key aspect of expanding data center energy consumption). Between March and October, 2020, during the said pandemic, US billionaires saw their “net worth” rise by almost $1 trillion with Bezos on top with a net worth of approx. 200 billion USD. Here we can infer, that the person whose corporation now leads in mass global land degradation, resource use, energy consumption and subsequent greenhouse gas emissions, is also the wealthiest. All while Amazon continues to exploit its workers. All while those in the Global South face literal starvation. This is your new “stakeholder capitalism” as touted by World Economic Forum et al.
On September 14, 2020, Google released its most asinine statement to date: “As of today, we have eliminated Google’s entire carbon legacy (covering all our operational emissions before we became carbon neutral in 2007) through the purchase of high-quality carbon offsets. This means that Google’s lifetime net carbon footprint is now zero. We’re pleased to be the first major company to get this done, today.”
Here we must note that “net zero” has nothing to do with zero emissions, that carbon offsets, an instrument of imperialism and colonialism, do nothing to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions – and that Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, are all co-founders of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition (launched in 2015), which houses a $1 billion energy venture fund. Other co-founders of the coalition include aforementioned Jack Ma, and Marc Benioff. Breakthrough’s Mission Innovation, with its focus on nuclear, has partnered with 24 member states in addition to the EU.
“The [Google] white paper also highlights other technologies that could help bridge the gap between renewable power’s inherent intermittency and the consistent needs of its facilities, including “advanced nuclear, enhanced geothermal, low-impact hydro, long-duration storage, green hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage.” These are the same list of technologies that utilities, states and countries with zero-carbon commitments are planning to rely on to reach their goals.”
— Sept 14, 2020, Google Pledges 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy by 2030 [Emphasis added]
More to the point – even if renewable energies at scale were in fact a solution (which they are not), effectively replacing fossil fuel energies and lowering greenhouse gas emissions – this newly produced energy is effectively being devoured by the ICT sector. Here we witness the Jevons paradox; the easier it is to consume the product, the greater the increase in consumption. In 2019, coal was the world’s largest source of electricity, representing 35.18% of the total (despite a 3% year-on-year fall), followed by natural gas (23.52%), hydro (16.54%), nuclear (10.52%), wind (5.44%), other fossil fuels (3.47%). Solar accounted for 2.71%, biomass and waste accounted for 2.24%, with “other renewable” coming in at 0.4%. [Source]
Academia, propped up by media – financed and owned by the ruling class – reacts swiftly in such instances. They are aided by those that worship at the altar of capital. [6] A broad consensus is formed that the growing trepidation surrounding exponential energy use and greenhouse gas emissions – corresponding with an exponential growth of data centers – is unfounded. To counter the concerns they cite rapid efficiency gains, and growth in renewable energies at scale (being built into the assumptions). The more the information generates concern, the greater the response by the gatekeepers. In this particular instance the issue is quickly reframed, utilizing the argument that the massive uptake in energy consumption will result in future efficiencies, or, that the growth is countered by rapid increased efficiencies, adding that cloud providers (such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Salesforce, etc.) are rapidly moving to zero emissions sources. A 2008 report produced by the World Wildlife Fund is an example of one such paper cited as a response to Andrae’s bleak assessment: ” A report [May 2008] from the World Wildlife Fund estimated that by 2030 efficiencies from smart devices and systems can potentially reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 8 gigatons, a figure approaching one quarter of total global emissions in 2018.” Here it can be noted that the World Wildlife Fund, which bears responsibility for the displacement and torture of Indigenous and tribal peoples (see the work of Survival International), is leading the charge to financialize nature in partnership with the World Economic Forum and other conservation NGOs.
“One has to search very hard to find a truthful statement from WWF. Lies have become their stock in trade.”
—conservation ecologist Dr. Mordecai Ogada
“The drivers for more energy use are simply too great to be offset by efficiency gains.”
— Jan 2020, Data center energy use goes up and up and up
The “decoupling” of growth and greenhouse gas emissions has become the preferred method of storytelling by global institutions such as UN-WEF et al., reverberated by those serving capital.
Another prime example is the public relations effort at Ericson: “Ericson, ICT and the climate – Have you ever worried how your online activities impact the climate? According to this report, the true impact may be a lot smaller than you think. [Source] The ICT sector’s carbon footprint could be reduced by over 80 percent if all electricity consumed came from renewable energy sources. [p. 3] 50 years – For the carbon emissions of a person making a transatlantic return flight, a smartphone could be used for over 50 years.” [p. 5] [A quick guide to your digital carbon footprint Deconstructing Information and Communication Technology’s carbon emissions, February 2020] In theory, that a smartphone (of obsolete design) could be used for over 50 years, is perhaps true – yet in reality, Westerners with money (and more importantly, access to debt), replace their smartphones with a new one every two years on average.
In addition to the magic trick of 7.5 million data centers coming online – with little to no added impact to global energy consumption or greenhouse gas emissions, is the complete omission of embodied energies and vast “natural resources” (biological communities) extracted (plundered) for the infrastructure. The stunning growth of the data center industry and its increasing demand for energy presents a stark ecological cost to our natural world – with ecosystems already collapsing due to the effects of industrial civilization, driven by the capitalist economic system. It is a tragic irony that this acceleration commences alongside alarm over climate change and protection of biodiversity feigned by the ruling class and industry.
[Source of graphic: Estimating a Data Center’s Electrical Carbon Footprint, White Paper 66, 2010. Note the 10-year life cycle of the data center itself.]
If one considers that the production phase of a smartphone represents 90% of the direct energy consumption – we can safely assume the production required for hyperscale data center technologies, and subsequent impacts of such, are gargantuan.
The “green economy” can only flourish on the foundation of imperialism. Electronic devices are made from rare metals and rare earth elements which can only be extracted and refined using vast amounts of energy. More often than not, these are water-intensive processes. In the process of resource theft, it is those most vulnerable and impoverished who mine the required metals – in countries kept deliberately, and permanently, destabilized by foreign corporate interests and colonial states. Such destabilization and foreign interference will persist until the targeted state becomes depleted of the resource. In addition, land, forests and water become barren toxic wastelands, poisoning all life and the biosphere itself. The “great reset” of the global economy is the rebooting of imperialism and colonization of the Global South.
Add to this the fact that the Fourth Industrial Revolution architecture, built upon, dependent upon, 5G and 6G communication internet technologies, may very well require more metals than the Earth can provide. As a result, industry has already begun its pursuit of yet another emerging market – seabed mining, at scale.
And as oligarchs forge ahead with their plans to mine the planet’s oceans as the next terrain for industrial plunder, global tech giants have yet another vision of what the full colonization of oceans may entail. On September 14, 2020 Microsoft announced “underwater data centers are a go” after its researchers retrieved the prototype sealed capsule of a data center, off the shores of Orkney Islands, Scotland, where it had been submerged in the spring of 2018. [Source] The experiment, Project Natick was the second carried out by Microsoft. The first capsule was submerged off the California coast in 2014.
Energy intensive recycling, on almost every level, has proven to be a spectacular failure – and yet it has morphed into another trillion dollar industry. For this reason, storytelling, to convince the citizenry to believe that recycling will be a key component of mitigating environmental impacts and destruction going forward, will persist.
Added to the aforementioned issues, to which we are collectively blind, or perhaps oblivious to, is the obsolescence by design. In most cases, the life span of a data center is typically 10 years at best. Hyperscale data centers are expected to last between 15 and 20 years. These short life spans are still out of sync with the far faster pace of the internet technologies (IT) that comprise the centers with a vast amount of the components being replaced at a 2-5 year refresh cycle: “Hyperscalers use IT equipment for only a few initial years of its much longer useful life, and for them that’s it. It’s onto the next best CPU, or the next best storage technology.”[Source]
In addition to this accelerating nightmare, coolants for data centers require toxic/hazardous chemicals, while large diesel generators are required for power shortages and outages. Consider that the Apple data center which was planned for Athenry, Co. Galway, Ireland, but scrapped in 2018 would have required 144 large diesel generators as back-up for when there was no wind, or insufficient renewable energy production, to support the power demands. [Source] In addition to diesel generators, battery (lead acid) back-ups are required for power shortages. This leads to another nightmare, now unfolding.
Lithium.
Here we must take into account, the escalating global tensions as power shifts to China. Rare earth metals and minerals are coveted by the world’s most powerful states. Access to these geographical regions, where the metals and minerals are found in abundance, is today a non-negotiable imperative for imperial governments and the transnational corporations they serve.
“A 2018 Bloomberg New Energy Finance report forecasted that Li-ion technology will comprise 40 percent of all data centre backup batteries by 2025, and that in the hyperscale sector, Li-ion will become the predominant battery technology, accounting for 55 percent of UPS [Uninterruptible Power Supply] batteries.” [October 23, 2019]
January 11. 2020: “The uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is the cornerstone of the modern data centre, and is one of the primary culprits of inefficient usage of hardware. Traditional lead-based batteries are becoming increasingly redundant… Huawei’s SmartLi UPS solution answers the call by leveraging the company’s cutting-edge Li-ion battery technology and delivering a ‘reinvention’ of the power supply system for the next generation of data centres… Reliability is further enshrined within the product with its 10-year, 5,000 cycle lifetime.” [Source: The importance of the lithium-ion battery for future data centers]
No further do we need to look, to see the “green energy transition”, as imperialism, quantified, than the November 11, 2019 coup in Bolivia, a country holding vast reserves of Earth’s lithium. (The single largest lithium deposit in the Salar de Uyuni, a salt pan, is so massive, it can be seen from space.)
Musk on Twitter, July 25, 2020: “”We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”
On July, 25, 2020, billionaire and SpaceX founder Elon Musk responded to a comment directed toward him on Twitter. The comment read: “You know what wasn’t in the best interest of people? The U.S. government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there.” Musk responded with “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” Evo Morales, the first Indigenous president of Bolivia, overthrown in a coup, responded to Musk, drawing attention to the massacres that resulted from the coup, with a reminder of the Bolivian peoples’ sovereignty and self-determination: “We will always defend our resources!” That Musk is a grotesque human being, yet celebrated in our rapidly devolving Western culture, as a person to be both worshipped and emulated, speaks to our declining ability to even recognize the world’s problems, much less solve them. The Western worldview, which Musk et al. espouse, is founded on white supremacist ideology, an ideology shared by a large component of those that identify as liberal or progressive. Subjected to centuries of conditioning, generation after generation, this racist ideology hums beneath the global, capitalist economic system. A conditioned populace no longer recognizes it.
Further, the global race toward blockchain technology, dependent on the colossal expansion of militarized 5G networks, has already begun. On April 25, 2020, China launched the world’s largest Blockchain network (BSN) as the country rapidly transitions to digital central bank currency, digital wallets, digital identifications, automation, IoT, AI and biometrics at scale. On August 10, 2020, China rolled out its international website with Google and Amazon Web Services listed as cloud service providers. This vast lead in central bank digital currency (CBDC), digitalization and 4IR technologies, is recognized as a major security threat to the US. [Source]
Data centers are the heat engines of the internet. Eight million running 24/7 in order to meet the global demand. A demand now set to expand exponentially under Fourth Industrial Revolution digitalization. The more data produced – the more the storage infrastructures must expand. This growth will be unprecedented.
Here we can momentarily contemplate the World Economic Forum’s stakeholder capitalism storytelling, best described as a public relations rebranding exercise. Data centers are proliferating, while approximately 1 billion people, after 270 years of industrial revolutions, still have no access to electricity.
The IEA forecasts that data and digital services will result in global internet traffic doubling by 2022. Internet of Things (IoT) connections (“a prevalent system in which people, processes, data, and things connect to the Internet and each other”, Cisco), will triple from 9.1 billion in 2018 to 25 billion in 2025, while global IoT revenue will quadruple to $1.1 trillion (a fourfold increase from 2018). The exponential growth of these devices is driven by “intentional obsolescence”. Mobile subscribers are projected to approach 6 billion by 2025. A projected 79% of all internet users will use smartphones exclusively to access content (up from 60% in 2018). [“In the most advanced countries, today’s digital consumers (using PCs and smartphones) will likely become tomorrow’s augmented customers, adopting emerging technologies such as AI (via smart speakers) and immersive reality.”] [Source: The Mobile Economy 2019, GSMA Intelligence] The exponential growth of digitalization [7], coupled with rapid growth of smartphone and social media users in Asia Pacific, followed by Africa, will drive unprecedented exponential growth in data center and network services.
According to Cisco, 60% of the world’s population will be online by 2022. But that was predicted in 2018 – prior to the COVID-19 “great reset”. By June 11, 2020, online access had reached 53% (Klaus Schwab), and in July 2020 the number of global internet users worldwide was reported as having reached 59% (Statista). That’s a full two years ahead of schedule.
“ICT systems give a non-negligible contribution to world electricity consumption and carbon dioxide (CO 2) footprint. This contribution will sustain since the increased demand for user’ s connectivity and an explosion of traffic volumes necessitate continuous expansion of current ICTs services and deployment of new infrastructures and technologies.”
— November 8, 2019, Greener, Energy-Efficient and Sustainable Networks: State-Of-The-Art and New Trends
Of particular concern is the rapid growth of streaming video and gaming. By 2022 traffic from internet video is projected to have doubled from 2019, with online gaming projected to quadruple – amounting to 87% of consumer internet traffic by 2022. [Source] In addition to this dismal reality, emerging fourth industrial revolution technologies (5G, blockchain, virtual reality) will place further demands on our energy consumption, our natural world, and our collective well-being. While reading and contemplating these analyses and resulting data, it is important to bear in mind that these were compiled prior to “COVID-19, The Great Reset“. Recall Schwab, on June 11, 2020, proudly sharing the fact that some video streaming services have already grown twenty fold during this “watershed moment”.
“As blockchain applications become more widespread, understanding and managing their energy-use implications may become increasingly important for energy analysts and policy makers.”
— Data Centres and Data Transmission Networks, On track, International Energy Agency, June 1, 2020
Graph: “A recent IDC study claims that by 2025, worldwide data traffic will have grown by 61 percent to 175 zettabytes, with roughly 75 percent of the population having at least one data interaction every 18 seconds.” [Source]
The energy intensive 5G cellular networks serve as the very foundation of the new global architecture, as designed and sought by the ruling class. ICT experts suggest that “thanks to a combination of massive MIMO antennas, legacy networks in multiple bands and the massive proliferation of small cells”, 5G networks will consume three and half times more electricity as present 4G networks. [Source, October 30, 2019] A more recent report by ABI Research forecasts 5G energy consumption to increase by a magnitude of 61 times by the end of this decade:
“By 2028, 5G is expected to overtake LTE [Long-Term Evolution]. By this stage, both 5G NR Radio Access Network (RAN) and SA core network will be fully commercialized. As such, 5G energy consumption is expected to increase by 61x from 2020 to 2030.”
— September, 2020, ABI Research, Environmentally Sustainable 5G Deployment: Energy Consumption Analysis and Best Practices
As a tool for deployment of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the World Economic Forum seeks social license by leveraging the biodiversity crisis (caused by these very people, entities and institutions) as a means to obtaining social licence. That feigned concern for the ecology of the planet, and health of all life, quickly reveals itself when one becomes aware of the environmental threats that come with 5G, as well as the associated health risks, to all life forms. Although 403 scientists and doctors (as of September 23, 2020) across the European Union have signed a declaration calling for all 5G roll-out plans to be stopped, such appeals to the EU, and the World Health Organization, have been met with silence. “Listen to the science” and “unite behind the science”, but only when the science serves capital. The 2018 emerging risks report, from the European Commission’s SCHEER (Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks) committee calls attention to the potential effects on wildlife due to increases of electromagnetic radiation.
Worse, but par for the course, those tasked with protecting capital, in servitude to the hand that feeds, have deliberately framed very real 5G concerns as “conspiracy theory“, in a calculated effort to roll out 5G with as little dissent as possible.
“The overall energy and emission impacts of 5G are still uncertain.”
— Data Centres and Data Transmission Networks, On track, International Energy Agency, June 1, 2020
“The data streamed by an autonomous car would completely fill an average laptop’s 240GB hard drive in less than a minute.” [Source]
“5G will prompt Energy Consumption to Grow by staggering 160% in 10 years” [Source]
Automation at scale, artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning, 3D printing, blockchain, crypto currencies, autonomous vehicles, virtual and augmented reality, Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), precision agriculture, gene editing, robotics, “smart” cities: the list is endless and ever expanding as the world’s most powerful technocrats lead the transition from bricks to mortar, to an online, digitalized fourth industrial revolution education for our children, fourth industrial revolution healthcare (ehealth, digital medicine) and an automated global workforce. With this digitalization, comes the merger of human with machine: augmentation and neuro-technological brain enhancements. Cybersecurity will be the battle space of the 21st century. Emerging technologies that drive militarism, including Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), drone targeting, and hypersonic weapons are predicted to become the norm, further dividing and destroying.
“Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Tuesday that electricity consumption will double if the world’s car fleets are electrified, increasing the need to expand nuclear, solar, geothermal and wind energy generating sources.” — Reuters [8]
A permissioned blockchain ‘ecosystem’ “is the key infrastructure-of-infrastructures that allows the vertical integration of cloud computing, 5G communications, industrial IOT, AI and big data, with fintech and other application-level services overlayed on the stack”. [Source] 5G broadband is the instrumental network that transports the data – with data centers as the heat engines. Together, they create a digital technosphere, purposely eroding our physical biosphere, coupled with a coming ecological nightmare which will be unprecedented in scale. All under the guise of climate mitigation and the protection of biodiversity.
The following is an excerpt from the article “The World in 2030. Hyper-connected and Hyper-fragmented”, authored by Mark Leonard, Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and past Chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Geo-economics:
“Connectivity can cause conflict… Rather than creating a harmonious global village, we increasingly recognise that the very same forces that have brought people together and broken down boundaries between peoples and nations are leading to nationalism, protectionism, and a desire for control. The world of 2030 will therefore likely be more closely bound together than at any time in history, but also one where political fragmentation is at an all-time high. It will be a world in which connections between people and countries become instrumentalised and weaponised… The Digital Revolution has brought people together in a single connected web and is going to lead to further fragmentation of societies…
Migration and the movement of people will be weaponised and will also be the defining topic for politics, even more so than already now and both in countries which are scared for their existence due to demographic changes and countries that are experiencing migration influxes. Moreover, international law and institutions will grow increasingly weaponised: the idea of lawfare, using the norms and processes of these institutions to damage the opponent, is going to be a very well-known concept. We thought of law and institutions as a constraint on competition and a way of regulating our relations in the past. They will now become a core means and field for competition at the same time.” [Source]
To further demonstrate the illusory concern over the biodiversity crisis, being leveraged with COVID-19, by the World Economic Forum et al., as a means of ushering in the “great reset” as rapidly as possible, satellites are already being launched into space that will support the 5G and 6G networks, connecting trillions of devices. On November 11, 2019 SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network, owned by Elon Musk, rocketed 60 satellites into orbit. This followed a launch of 60 SpaceX satellites launched in May 2019. By February 2020, SpaceX had launched five batches of 60 Starlink satellites into orbit – with a long-term goal of 30,000.
But Musk is far from alone in his quest to dominate the sky. There are 57,000 satellites planned through 2029. “When there are 50,000 satellites in the sky, ‘you’ll see the sky crawling,’ says Tony Tyson, a University of California Davis astronomer and physicist. ‘Every square degree will have something crawling in it.'” In addition, unregulated rocket launch emissions will further impact the global atmosphere while adding enormous quantities of space debris. [Source] While “corona” serves to distract a global populace, a virus Klaus Schwab describes as “mild” in his book COVID-19 The Great Reset, one thing is clear – billionaires are the most dangerous virus of all.
“Soon, Earth may be blanketed by tens of thousands of satellites, and they’ll greatly outnumber the approximately 9,000 stars that are visible to an unaided human eye.”
— January 29, 2020, The night sky is increasingly dystopian
The absolute lack of regard for the subsequent harm that this will inflict upon nocturnal sentient animals and fauna is beyond pathological. The arrogance is blatant, astounding, and unequivocal. In addition to physiological harm, this new and unprecedented form of light pollution will disrupt navigation and migration patterns that have evolved within animals, birds, and insects, over millennia.”The rhythm of life is orchestrated by the natural diurnal patterns of light and dark, so disruption to these patterns impacts the ecological dynamics.” [The Hague]
Here it is imperative to note the consolidation of power happening in real time. World Economic Forum founder and CEO Klaus Schwab refers to this consolidation as a new global architecture; the new global governance. The following dates of are of paramount significance. On May 18, 2018, the World Bank partners with the United Nations. On June 13, 2019, the World Economic Forum partners with the United Nations. On March 11, 2020, the World Economic Forum partners with the World Health Organization (a UN body) launching the COVID Action Platform, a coalition of 200 of the world’s most powerful corporations. This number would quickly swell to over 700. On this same day, March 11, 2020, the WHO declares COVID-19 a pandemic. The UN-WEF partnership firmly positions Word Economic Forum at the helm of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, also referred to as the Global Goals), which they are frothing at the mouth to implement. This is not because they care about poverty, biodiversity, the climate, or world hunger. Marketed with holistic language, dressed with beautiful images of brown smiling children, SDGs represent the new poverty economy (impact investing/social impact bonds) and emerging markets. Children as human capital data to be commodified on blockchain linking behaviour to benefits. Coercion has been repackaged as empowerment. The human population to be controlled via digital identity systems tied to cashless benefit payments within the context of a militarized 5G, IoT, and an augmented reality environment. A world where every function of nature is monetized, to be bought, sold and traded on Wall Street.
“Around $6 trillion a year will need to be invested to deliver the SDGs, most of it in emerging markets.”
Fourth revolution technologies, in particular 5G and the ICT, fall under the SDG #9: “Build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization and foster innovation”; 9c: “significantly increase access to ICT and strive to provide universal and affordable access to Internet in the LDCs (least-developed countries) by 2020”. These are central to the goals of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). A critical component toward the full implementation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (“Industry 4.0”) is digitalization. In the EU, 4.0 digitalization is being rolled out under the EU Green Deal in service to Klaus Schwab.
“Around $6 trillion a year will need to be invested to deliver the SDGs, most of it in emerging markets.”
— At Last… Climate Consensus on the Magic Mountain, February 3, 2020, SYSTEMIQ
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is a term largely accredited to Schwab. He describes it as being “characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres.” The World Economic Forum website adds that it will impact “all disciplines, economies and industries, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human.” [Source] One may question why collectively, we would accept an architecture that will further destroy the natural world – to become only further disconnected from our natural world. A world that will be further devastated by the very global architecture purported to save it.
“Once we can access people’s thoughts and people’s emotions, we have to create a space that enables people to think freely, to think divergent and creative thoughts. And in a society where people fear having those thoughts, the likihood of being able to enjoy progress is significantly diminished.” [The Fourth Industrial Revolution | Full Version, World Economic Forum, April 13, 2016]
“The very idea of humans being some sort of natural concept is really going to change. Our bodies will be so high–tech, we won’t be able to really distinguish between what is natural and what is artificial”
— The Fourth Industrial Revolution | Full Version, World Economic Forum, April 13, 2016
In closing this segment, we can juxtapose Andrae’s suggestion that communications technology may account for more than 20% of global energy consumption by 2025, with this observation articulated by The Guardian’s John Vidal back in 2017: “The industry has encouraged the idea that the digital transformation of economies and large scale energy efficiencies will slash global emissions by 20% or more.”
Thus, the power elite intend to crush the informal sectors and whole societies in the Global South – and across the world, in order to usher fourth industrial revolution digitalization, utilizing COVID-19 as the catalyst. Under the guise of protecting the biosphere and mitigating climate change, the “Great Reset”, decades in the making, has been foisted upon us by the ruling class. The new global architecture masks its intentions with illusory concern over ecological crises that they created. That they accelerate. To “slash global emissions by 20% or more” by rolling out an infrastructure that may well translate to 23% of all global emissions by 2030. At the cost of further plundering the Earth. At the cost of a growing, collective mental duress.
Imperative 21: Allies for System Change, a Virtual Convening of the Skoll World Forum – April 1, 2020
This depraved psychosis only makes sense when one understands that “action on climate” is not about mitigating climate change. Rather, it serves as an opportunity to “reset” capitalism as it teetered on the verge of collapse with global debt having reached a staggering 253 trillion dollars. [The global debt has since ballooned to a whopping 272 trillion dollars.] We are embarking on an inescapable and irreversible technological enslavement.
“Who survives? Amazon, Netflix, Google, Comcast, Facebook, et al. Those who control the screens control the world. It is a new morning in hell.”
— John Steppling, Morning in Hell, October 7, 2020
The more that states, industries, institutions, platforms and devices rely on data and internet interconnectivity to function, the more our global energy consumption will soar.
Assessing “the silicon footprint, [and the] environmental impact of hyperconnected technologies”, the Institute for the Future concludes, “These facts considered together increase the probability that the net environmental impact of a hyperconnected world will be negative.” [The Hyperconnected World of 2030–2040; made possible by the support of the Office of Director of National Intelligence; IFTF convened a team of technology experts and researchers to look at the future of the hyperconnected world in a day-long workshop in 2019.]
The ruling classes intend to assign monetary value to nature, global in scale. The monetization of “social and human capital” will follow. This would entail the greatest transformation to the economic system in modern history. “Natural capital” valuation is expected to replace GDP (Gross Domestic Product) with nature to be bought, sold and traded on Wall Street. This, coupled with “protected areas” that would further displace Indigenous peoples. In addition to data as the new oil, classifying nature as an asset class represents a global corporate coup of the commons. With capitalism having reached its limits, and physical labour now disposable, to be replaced by automation/robotics, data and nature represent new and untapped emerging markets. Utilizing the very real fact that nature is vital to all life, we are told to believe that it can only be valued properly by humans if monetized (i.e. “natural capital” and “payments for ecosystem services”). Yet consider this: In just a few months the World Health Organization (partnering with the World Economic Forum on March 13, 2020), and the United Nations (partnering with the World Economic Forum on June 11, 2019) – in unison with the sycophant institutions, academia, sciences, media and NGOs that serve them. et al. – effectively utilized cognitive sciences, psychology, conformity and fear, to convince an entire global population that masks must be worn in order to save lives. In this same way, if they truly desired to convince a population that it is critical to protect nature against development, industry, privatization, corporate capture and monetization – as nature is vital to all life, and should be respected as such, they could easily do so. They do not – because it is they, primarily, who are wholly responsible for the bulk of the plunder they wish to continue. The global decimation of nature, from which they build and retain their fortunes and status.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution has caused and will continue to cause mass upheaval, displacement, severe impacts, and untold suffering to the peasantry, Indigenous, working class and those belonging to the informal economy. The middle class will not be spared. Yet this depraved new global architecture, dangerous to life, human, sentient and biological, is pushed forward despite advanced knowledge of foretold tragedy – solely for the pursuit of money, profits and power. It is this very fact that shows us unequivocally and irrevocably that promises for a just transition, green deals, new deals, build back better schemes, are nothing but empty, hollow assurances, void of intent. These are the lies they tell. Promises and assertions that are nothing more than alibis.
Western and ruling class ideologies have played a crucial and cruel role in the violent transformation of the peoples, ecosystems and biosphere. The Fourth Industrial Revolution represents the most violent transformation of all. For as long as the ruling class is allowed to exist, social and environmental justice remain pipe dreams.
The ruling class has weaponized the power of both fear and conformity against us. That Covid-19 is the catalyst to usher in a new global architecture, that is the 4IR, is not conjecture, not “conspiracy theory“, but a fact. Full compliance is the goal. A physical transformation away from our physical world, towards a full embracing of an artificial, digital, virtual world, is being engineered, right before our very eyes. The social engineering of a collective consciousness. Social license is being harvested to reset the capitalist system – under the guise of a climate emergency and saving the planet. This we know: the planet will not be saved by those that have destroyed it.
End Notes:
[1] The September 11, 2020 article “The Social Dilemma Wants You to Delete Facebook”, is somewhat disingenuous, with the film’s emphasis on deleting notifications, rather than the social media platform. Yet what is of interest, and on the mark, is the reference to a TED Talk by Eli Pariser explaining “filter bubbles are the result of internet platforms’ race to feed users the information that will keep them coming back.” Pariser should know – as a co-founder of both Avaaz and Upworthy – with cofounder Chris Hughes of Facebook. [2] “The sprawling camp, which is divided into 12 districts across 13 square kilometres, is surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by police and military. Refugees cannot leave without permission. If they want to move to a city elsewhere in the country, they need a Jordanian sponsor guaranteeing financial support – a condition that leaves many stuck in the camp.” [Source] [3] Gov.UK: “We asked our hosting providers, Amazon Web Services, UKCloud and Carrenza, to tell us how much electricity we use, and how much CO2 we produce. Only one of our providers, UKCloud, agreed to give us data about our electricity usage. For Amazon and Carrenza, we made a guess about the amount of electricity we use, assuming a percentage of our monthly bill. In addition, neither Amazon nor Google currently shares information about how much CO2 their data centres produce.” [Source] [4] “Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the International Energy Agency (IEA), and Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) have concluded that room air conditioners alone — the typical window and split units used in most homes — are set to account for over 130 gigatons (GT) of CO2 emissions between now and 2050. That would account for 20–40% of the world’s remaining “carbon budget” (the most we can emit while still keeping global warming to less than 2?C above pre-industrial levels — the goal set at the Paris Climate Conference in 2015).” [Source] “If room air conditioners have a massive emission, then it is hard to imagine the immense emissions that is occurring on the industrial scale.” [5] In 2018, the total amount of electricity generated from renewables was 6 586 TWh. Renewable hydro accounted for about 63% of this (4 149 TWh), followed by wind energy (1 263 TWh), solar energy (562 TWh), bioenergy (523 TWh), geothermal energy (88 TWh) and marine energy (1 TWh). [Source: IRENA – Renewable energy highlights, July 1, 2020] [6] “But data centers are rapidly becoming more energy efficient, and new research suggests there’s no longer a close link between more cloud computing and more energy use. A report published Thursday in Science credits the progress to better management, more efficient hardware and the rise of “hyperscale” data centers created by tech giants…The data-center industry’s 20% annual improvement in energy intensity dwarfs all other major parts of the economy. The power used today by data centers, 1% of the global total, is roughly the same as it was in 2010… This new research is the first major attempt to compile a bottom-up view of data-center energy use in a decade. Researchers based their work on reports published by Cisco Systems, Inc., Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the International Energy Agency, among other sources.” [Source] [7] The Cisco Annual Internet Report, 2018-2023 predicts that by 2023, there will be 299.1 billion global mobile application downloads, up from 194 billion global mobile application downloads in 2018. By 2023, there will be 29.3 billion global devices and connections (3.6 devices and connections per capita), up from 18.4 billion devices and connections in 2018 (2.4 devices and connections per capita). Similarly, Gartner forecasts that 14.2 billion connected things will be in use in 2019, and that the total will reach 25 billion by 2021, producing immense volume of data. [Source] [8] Quote added on December 4, 2020 after initial publication. [Source] Full quote as follows: “Total electricity power consumption obviously will increase. I mean when everything, when all transport goes electric, or road transport going electric, it will approximately double the electricity usage, um total electricity usage. Like I said, because most of its at night, [charging batteries], that doesn’t mean a doubling of the power plant. But we will need to increase the amount of solar and wind, geothermal, hydro, [and] nuclear, I think is fine. Like I said, in order to solve the needs of electric vehicles.” — AxelSpringer Award Talk with Questions from other CEOs, December 1, 2020 [Source]
[Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist, focusing on global ecological collapse and political analysis of the non-profit industrial complex. She resides in Canada. Her recent writings can be found on Wrong Kind of Green, The Art of Annihilation, Internationalist 360, Tortilla con Sal, and Counterpunch. Her writing has also been published by Bolivia Rising and Cambio, the official newspaper of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. You can follow her on twitter @elleprovocateur]
Nov 05
20200
Natural Resources Defense Council, Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, World Resources Institute
45Q tax credits Biomass CCS CCUS Center For American Progress Climate Justice Alliance Data for Progress Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) FUTURE Act Green New Deal Grist Justice Democrats New Consensus New Republic Nuclear People’s Climate Movement (PCM) Sierra Club Sunrise Movement The Intercept Vox World Resources Institute
November 5, 2020
By Michael Swifte
[Part 1: The Unannounced Death of the Green New Deal: What Happened to the People’s Plan?]
You don’t need an impeccable record — if you champion the Green New Deal, the movement will have your back.
—Michelle Goldberg, New York Times [SOURCE]
The Green New Deal is as much a narrative device as a set of policy levers.
—Julian Brave Noisecat, Vice president of Policy and Strategy, Data for Progress [SOURCE]
In Part 1 of this series I described the shift in messaging and language that accompanied the apparent silencing of demands for well principled engagement with advocates of First Nations and frontline communities. I posed questions about the integrity of the Green New Deal process in light of the unanswered demands placed before New Consensus by members of Climate Justice Alliance.
In Part 2 I will explore how the elements of the Green New Deal came together with the transfer of momentum from the People’s Climate Movement to the Sunrise Movement, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and the Green New Deal brigade of progressive vehicles and Democrat aligned NGOs in the wake of the 2018 midterms. I will show how the momentum, built on the endorsement of the Green New Deal by grass roots advocates, was exploited to give Democratic presidential hopefuls a set of talking points and commitments.
The fuzziness of the “100% clean” language allowed candidates like Jay Inslee and Joe Biden to retain certain concessions for carbon capture utilization and storage. They were aided by progressive media outfits like Vox, Grist, New Republic and The Intercept chipping away at the scope of allowable “clean energy” sources. Mouthpieces for climate NGOs were careful not to acknowledge the concessions built into the climate plans of Democratic presidential hopefuls. Few if any took the time to point out that “clean energy” and “renewable energy” are 2 very different things. In fact one prominent writer/wonk suggested we leave the language “fuzzy”.
The interlocking directorates (Sunrise Movement, New Consensus, Justice Democrats and Data for Progress) that all connect back to Democrat aligned NGOs (World Resources Institute, Demos, the Center for American Progress and the Sierra Club), fashioned an object of projection for all who may benefit from what it represented. They fashioned a deal that promised a fossil fuel phase out, but it was not backed up by any scrutiny of bipartisan legislation designed to bring on a new oil boom. Environmental NGOs promised to “vigorously” fight against fossil fuel friendly legislation, but they only offered under-resourced efforts. The Green New Deal proponents fashioned a set of policies and plans that offer to bring justice, but they cannot name the principles under which they engage with grass roots organisations.
21 April 2017 to 2 November 2018
In April of 2017 the Climate Justice Alliance put out a short paper articulating the principles of a Just Transition. In it they pointed to the “false solutions” of carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS), fracking and “clean coal” making sure to direct the reader to the elements of extractivism that will not disappear if we allow any false solutions to continue to expand.
The path of extracting, transporting, processing, and consuming these technologies is paved with communities riddled with cancer, reproductive and respiratory disease, among other devastating health impacts. [SOURCE]
On the eve of the 2017 People’s Climate March in Washington Bernie Sanders and Mark Z Jacobson co-authored a piece for The Guardian calling for an “aggressive transition” to “clean, renewable solutions”. The authors confidently asserted that renewables can be at the center of plans for breaking our dependence on fossil fuels. Note the inclusion of the word “clean” in relation to the concept of ‘100%’.
University researchers and the not-for-profit Solutions Project have mapped out how we can achieve a 100% clean, renewable energy future for all 50 states and 139 countries by 2050. With their research, governments in the US and around the world can learn exactly how to break dependence on fossil fuel, why we don’t need fracking and how we can move aggressively in terms of sustainable energy and energy efficiency. [SOURCE]
Any confidence in the assertions that achieving 100% renewables is possible in the near term or the long term are founded in the work of Mark Z Jacobson et al. In August 2017 research was published that clearly frames real renewables as the core of a systemic response. While in many places biomass burning is erroneously regarded as ‘renewable’, Jacobson et al stick to wind, water and solar (WWS).
While some suggest that energy options aside from WWS [water, wind & solar], such as nuclear power, coal with carbon capture and sequestration (coal-CCS), biofuels, and bioenergy, can play major roles in solving these problems, all four of those technologies may represent opportunity costs in terms of carbon and health-affecting air-pollution emissions. [SOURCE]
In November 2017 John Noel from Clean Water Action identified a problem with the bipartisan political will for tax subsidies for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Noel appears to be perennially under-resourced when it comes to resistance against legislation. His work ought to have been mentioned in Naomi Klein’s book ‘On Fire’. Both Klein and Noel have argued that EOR with tax credits for sequestered CO2 could massively expand US proven reserves.
Strange days in Washington, D.C. right now. New legislation dubbed the FUTURE Act is supposedly a climate solution. But in reality the FUTURE Act would put drinking water at risk, encourage more oil drilling without putting adequate protections in place, and add to the more than $20 billion in taxpayer subsidies the oil and gas industry enjoys every year. Yet some elected officials who fight tirelessly for more action on climate have been hooked and are supporting the bill. Why? [SOURCE]
Despite my active efforts on Twitter and elsewhere to monitor the political will for, and active resistance against tax credits for CCUS and EOR, I did not notice Noel’s work until recently. There appears to be a pattern of limp-wristed support for efforts to fight the tax credit/subsidy that was expanded in passing the provision of the FUTURE Act. In February of 2018 Noel was able to summon up a decent list of ENGO supporters to resist the FUTURE Act, but barely anyone noticed, and nobody took the time to highlight the bipartisan support it received in a way that enlightened the public.
Section 45Q is a handout to oil companies. If 45Q expands as proposed, the CO2-EOR subsidy benefiting oil producers alone could cost taxpayers as much $2.8 billion each year. That would make it the single biggest subsidy to the fossil fuel industry in the United States…
Expanding the tax credit for CO2-EOR disproportionately affects people of color and environmental justice communities, as low income and people of color are more likely to live near oil fields and be subjected to the associated pollution and health impacts. [SOURCE]
On February 9, 2018 the FUTURE Act provisions were passed with very little attention paid by climate justice NGOs. In April 2018 Data for Progress published a report commissioned by Justice Democrats called ‘The Future of the Party’. In it they argue that “The Democratic base is ready for multi-racial populism”, and that non-voters and young people should be targeted. The enduring theme of Data for Progress is that progressive candidates are the future of the party.
THERE IS NO QUESTION:
Democratic primary voters support a populist progressive agenda that ties racial justice to progressive economic populism. The days are long gone when a message proclaiming “the end of big government as we know it,” could win a Democratic primary. [SOURCE]
In May of 2018 the climate justice movement momentum was managed through the People’s Climate Movement (PCM), an organisation created after the success of the 2014 People’s Climate March. Its purpose is to engage a broad swathe of NGOs and advocacy groups around climate justice activism. As such the collective will of climate justice activists was reflected in their messaging which was in support of a “100% renewable economy” and a “just transition”. In an article for MintPress Jessica Corbett quotes both the PCM director Paul Getsos, and the executive director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Miya Yoshitani who went on to make the demand for a memorandum of agreement from New Consensus on behalf of the Climate Justice Alliance.
With the upcoming mobilization, PCM said it “aims to transform the energy of resistance into action by calling on leaders and elected officials to invest in real solutions to the climate crisis that prioritize the most impacted and vulnerable of our communities, like a massive, just transition to a 100 percent renewable economy that ensures safe and healthy communities, the right to organize for all workers, and millions of family-sustaining jobs. [SOURCE]
The essential elements of what was sold as the Green New Deal up until the resolution was introduced were repeatedly articulated by climate justice leaders like May Boeve. In a July 2018 media release in preparation for ‘Rise for Climate, Jobs, and Justice’ an event connected with the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit, Boeve articulated the need for speed in delivering climate justice while covering all the elements of the Green New Deal concept which was only a few months away from being introduced by AOC.
We need a fast, fair, and just transition away from fossil fuels to a 100% renewable energy economy, that protects vulnerable people already impacted by climate change and creates good paying jobs and opportunities for all. [SOURCE]
New Consensus was founded in early 2018, reportedly as a policy vehicle to develop the Green New Deal. Rhiana Gunn-Wright described to David Wallace-Wells how New Consensus engaged with the other Green New Deal vehicles with the exception of Data for Progress.
And the origin story of how it literally happened is pretty short and normal. At New Consensus, the founders have been thinking for a while about a Green New Deal and what does it mean — what will it take to have an economic approach outside of neoliberalism? They made contact with the Sunrise Movement, who had already been working on their own idea of a Green New Deal. And then I came on board. New Consensus was already connected to Justice Dems. This is before, you know, the squad had won their primaries, but they had all been endorsed by Justice Dems. By September, most had been through their primaries, if not all, and so that meant that new consensus was connected to this group of likely incoming freshmen. [SOURCE]
In August 2018 the Democratic National Committee (DNC) reversed an amendment that was designed to ban fossil fuel corporation donations. In Tom Perez’s resolution CCS and advanced nuclear were mentioned along with reaffirmation of support for the “fossil fuel workers in an evolving energy economy”.
WHEREAS, these workers, their unions and forward-looking employers are powering America’s all-of-the-above energy economy and moving us towards a future fueled by clean and low emissions energy technology, from renewables to carbon capture and storage to advanced nuclear technology; and
WHEREAS, to support fossil fuel workers in an evolving energy economy, we must commit to securing their right to a strong, viable economic future, which includes maintaining employment and their health care and pension benefits; [SOURCE]
Alex C. Kaufman in an August 2018 article quotes a Twitter thread featuring Kate Aronoff wherein she argues that the Perez amendment was not about unionised workers, but rather the bosses who profit from them. This interpretation is sound, bosses have more money than individual union members. Aronoff’s point would be fine if she ever took the time to tell us which ‘forward-looking’ employers the unions work with to advance business as usual.
To put a fine point on it: This proposal isn’t to let union members keep donating to the DNC. It’s to let fossil fuel executives keep donating and selling influence among Democrats. Certain unions (incl some building trades) see their interests as aligned with those of executives [SOURCE]
In early September 2018 organisers of the ‘Rise for Climate’ event in San Fransisco clearly indicated that the demand at the ‘Rise for Climate, Jobs, and Justice’ march was “100% renewable” energy. If you look at the statements from various key figures in the broader People’s Climate Movement you will see that word “renewable” is often replaced with the word “clean”. This tends to happen more depending on how closely an organisation is connected with the Democrats.
San Francisco, CA — Today, 30,000 people took to the streets of San Francisco as part of the “Rise for Climate, Jobs, and Justice” march. A massive crowd marched from the Embarcadero Plaza to Civic Center, demanding racial and economic justice, an end to fossil fuel production, and a just transition to 100% renewable energy that supports workers and communities.
In late September, just in time for AOC’s midterm campaign, Data for Progress released their Green New Deal Report. In it you can see the insertion of the word ‘clean’ and a reframing of what is regarded as ‘clean energy’. Included are advanced nuclear, biomass burning, and fossil fuel with carbon capture.
All electricity consumed in America must be generated by renewable sources, including solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, sustainable biomass, and renewable natural gas, as well as clean sources such as nuclear and remaining fossil fuel with carbon capture. [SOURCE]
In early November 2018 shortly before the midterms Vogue magazine published a heavy styled video wherein Instragram personality turned actor Bria Vinate explains the Green New Deal highlighting AOC’s stated commitment to “100% renewable” energy.
Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York, who wants the U.S. to transition to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035 [SOURCE]
10 April 2018 to Present
On April 10, 2018 Data for Progress released ‘The Future of the Party’, a document commissioned by Justice Democrats, the people who recruited AOC. By September 2018 they had released their Green New Deal Report
THERE IS NO QUESTION: Democratic primary voters support a populist progressive agenda that ties racial justice to progressive economic populism. The days are long gone when a message proclaiming “the end of big government as we know it,” could win a Democratic primary. [SOURCE]
In late December 2018 Sunrise co-founder Evan Weber was quoted in Vox by Bill McKibben’s colleague at Grist dot com David Roberts. Weber was talking about the failed efforts by AOC and Sunrise Movement to launch a Green New Deal select committee on the promise of “100% Renewable” electricity by 2030.
For us [] the more important thing for the draft legislation was always to have a platform for candidates to run on in 2020. [SOURCE]
Roberts made a comment that reads to me like a briefing for climate justice activists and Green New Deal promoters.
The delicate dance is to keep the GND fuzzy enough to allow a broad coalition of people and interests to see themselves in it — which is, somewhat miraculously, what seems to have happened so far — while specifying it enough to avoid having it watered down into a feel-good buzzword. [SOURCE]
I think comments like these from journalist/stenographers like David Roberts who’re half inside-the-tent are important to consider as we unpack what exactly the Green New Deal was constructed to do. Our considerations should focus on questions of: What was made specific? What was left undefined?, and for the honest broker, What was at risk of being quietly rejected?
Sean McElwee co-founded Data for Progress after spending time at Demos: A Network for Idea and Action which was founded by Rockefeller Brothers Fund president Stephen B. Heintz. In early January 2019 McElwee made it clear the end goal was always to influence the Democrat agenda.
Policy details are going to matter and be very important, [] But the actual meta politics question is how do we make sure, in a roughly two-year period, … Democrats create an agenda? [SOURCE]
McElwee deals in demographics, focus groups, polling and crunching data to produce the kind of intelligence that helped Justice Democrats select and recruit AOC. If grass roots groups were engaged in developing the Green New Deal under their own terms then the work of Data for Progress would be beneficial, but without the specific demands of First Nations leaders and advocates for frontline communities, it’s work becomes resoundingly hollow and easily captured by the Democrat-neoliberal agenda.
David Roberts always seems to be at least a few weeks ahead of events. In mid January 2019 he made a series of pronouncements in a piece on the question of what is and is not “clean energy”. His writing did not make it clear what we ought to understand when a public figure says “clean energy” saying we should leave the question “as open as possible”.
If the GND insists from the outset on 100 percent renewables, it will immediately lead to infighting. Policy wonks will attack it as unnecessarily expensive; anyone who believes in a role for other carbon-free resources (which includes more than a few on the center left and right) will be shut out.
Roberts presents an aggressive argument in favour of leaving the door open for any and all forms of extractivism as long a some abatement is involved that can contribute to net-zero.
But it doesn’t need to be resolved now. We don’t need to have this fight. The language of the GND can, and should, focus on what matters: carbon.
Contrary to Roberts’ argument that environmentalists need not insist on firmly supporting 100% renewables, I would argue that if we don’t heed First Nations and frontline community advocates demands for a fossil fuel phase out, no nuclear and 100% renewable energy, then we will have no chance to stop the efforts of bipartisan Democrats to expand 45Q tax credits which are crucial to financing CCUS, DAC and EOR projects.
Even if the GND targets carbon-free energy at the headline level, there’s no reason environmentalists can’t go right on fighting for policies that support renewables. Everyone can continue to fight for the carbon-free sources they most support or believe in, including nuclear fans, CCS fans, whoever. [SOURCE]
In mid January 2019 Sunrise Movement spokesperson Stephen O’Hanlon distanced his organisation from the letter of 626 groups released earlier that month.
…not the full vision of the Green New Deal. It is a set of climate priorities for the new Congress. [SOURCE]
In an article that appeared on March 12, 2019, a week before the statement made to New Consensus by Climate Justice Alliance members, Rihana Gunn-Wright and New Consensus founder Demond Drummer made statements strongly suggesting that they were proactively reaching out to the grass roots.
All too often, said Gunn-Wright (a 2019 Grist 50 honoree), policies are divorced from people’s lived realities. “Then the onus ends up on the communities that are hurt, that usually have less social capital, less political capital, less time to take to the streets, to organize to get that policy reconsidered,” she explained. As policy lead for New Consensus, she wants to flip that script on its head, and consult with marginalized communities first.
At its core, New Consensus shares some priorities with the environmental justice movement, which emphasizes equity in climate and environmental solutions. “The EJ movement clarifies how issues of climate change actually are directly related to issues of social justice, racial justice, economic justice,” Drummer said.
In the same article Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats who were the first Democrat entity to commission a report from Data for Progress articulates how “crucial” New Consensus are to furthering a Green New Deal.
Their role is crucial in seeing a Green New Deal that is going to not just address climate change but also rising inequality, [SOURCE]
The vagueness of the Green New Deal resolution is embodied by the fuzzily understood term “clean energy”. The vague language of “zero emissions” energy and an almost universal unwillingness to clarify meanings of key terms left room for Carbon Capture Coalition member The Nature Conservancy to voice it’s support for a Green New Deal approach to emissions reductions in late March 2019.
We welcome serious discussions about climate solutions,[ ]We are prepared to support legislative proposals that immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We are especially optimistic about market-based proposals for a price on carbon. [SOURCE]
In early April 2019 on a Next System project podcast Kate Aronoff who writes for new Republic and is a fellow at Data for Progress argued that the very issues around which the Climate Justice Alliance reasserted the principles of engagement with First Nations and frontline communities are yet to be resolved. Arnoff found a skillful way of acknowledging there are problems without attending to the nature of those problems and eliding to the insinuation that the ongoing process of creating a Green New Deal will crack that “nut”. This approach relies on blind faith in the Green New Deal proponents, whoever they may be.
But several people have rightfully pointed out that the resolution, which is currently the most arrived-at form we have for the Green New Deal, does not include language about fossil fuels, which neither does the Paris Agreement, notably. I think that is a nut to be cracked, and I think something that’s certainly essential to figuring out what that looks like. [SOURCE]
In a mid April 2019 interview presidential hopeful Jay Inslee made the case for why the green new Deal had been so successful to date. He was free to argue that Green New Deal proponents were “paying attention” to frontline communities because New Consensus had not publish a memorandum of agreement requested by Climate Justice Alliance.
And it’s been successful, because (a) people are talking about climate change, (b) it has raised aspirational levels. You can’t do this with a nip and tuck, building a fossil-free economy over the next several decades is a Herculean proposition. Third, it has helped bring in frontline communities, marginalized communities, communities of color. It brought them to the table to understand why, as you’re doing a just transition, it can help you reduce income inequality because you’re building jobs, you’re paying attention to these communities.
So I think, given the urgency and the scale of the challenge, we have to keep all low- and zero-carbon technologies on the table. [SOURCE]
Ben Geman writing in Axios made an excellent observation about Jay Inslee’s climate platform in early May 2019. Geman appears to recognise why the Green New Deal resolution and it’s fuzzy language was so useful to presidential candidates.
The plan steers clear of mandating technology-specific generation sources, which leaves room for nuclear and carbon-capture alongside renewables.[SOURCE]
Writing about Jay Inslee’s climate plans in early May 2019, David Roberts slipped into a world of delusion. The policy discussion he predicted never really happened. Instead the public was subjected to discussion of the electoral platforms of a bunch of Democratic candidates and Bernie Sanders. Each candidate having variations on the language and framing in the Green New Deal resolution and the Data for Progress report.
The Green New Deal and the grassroots energy behind it have ensured that every one of the Democrats running for president will be forced to prioritize climate change. There’s finally going to be a policy discussion. [SOURCE]
In early May 2019 AOC flagged her technology agnosticism. The First Nations and frontline activists who had endorsed the Green New Deal when it’s language suggested no new nuclear must have felt betrayed at this point.
I don’t take a strong anti- or pro-position on it,” the New York Democrat said about nuclear energy in an interview late last week. Her Green New Deal resolution, which calls for “clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy” to meet 100 percent of U.S. power needs in the next 10 years, “leaves the door open on nuclear so that we can have that conversation,” she said. [SOURCE]
The co-founder of Data for Progress gave an interview in June 2019 that lays bare the marketed nature of the Green New Deal. Have a look at the following 4 quotes and ask yourself if people from ‘diverse’ communities are being hired for the right reasons.
The path to leftist electoral power is through racial justice and economic justice,
Our gains on the left have exclusively come from more diverse candidates.
I can get in the room, I am taken seriously,
We wrote a Green New Deal report, polled it, and we will fuck you up if you don’t support it, [SOURCE]
In mid June 2019 the Service Employees Union International (SEIU) (a founding partner of Avaaz) president endorsed the Green New Deal giving its promoters opportunity to suggest that the unions were on board. If the Green New Deal was really about getting out of fossil fuels and putting unions at the center then the SEIU president ought to have raised the issue of the support among big industrial labor organizations for carbon capture utilization and storage as a ‘climate solution’.
But the Green New Deal is more than a plan for transitioning the U.S. economy out of fossil fuels. It’s also a model for how lawmakers should design any proposal to restructure the economy—by putting worker power and unions at the center. [SOURCE]
In mid July 2019 Jeff Merkley introduced a bill that would amend the US Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to include a new section that would expand 45Q tax credits for carbon capture and storage projects. The bill is ostensibly about labor standards for energy jobs, but the 48D amendment would enshrine a subsidy that will financially enable an enhanced oil recovery boom and the continuation of coal fired power while providing opportunities for the development of a fossil hydrogen or ‘blue hydrogen’ industry facilitated by carbon capture.
“(3) QUALIFIED CARBON DIOXIDE.—The term ‘qualified carbon dioxide’ means carbon dioxide captured from an industrial source which—
“(A) would otherwise be released into the atmosphere as industrial emission of greenhouse gas,
“(B) is measured at the source of capture and verified at the point of disposal or utilization,
“(C) (i) is disposed of by the taxpayer in secure geological storage (as such term is defined under section 45Q(f)(2)), or
“(ii) utilized by the taxpayer in a manner described in section 45Q(f)(5), and
“(D) is captured and disposed or utilized within the United States (within the meaning of section 638(1)) or a possession of the United States (within the meaning of section 638(2)). [SOURCE]
In mid July 2019 Jeff Merkley joined with AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka to announce a new bill to create good jobs and support “clean energy”. Trumka is a long time critic of the Green New Deal whose organization is a member of the Carbon Capture Coalition.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – At a press conference at the U.S. Capitol, Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley and AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka today unveiled the Good Jobs for 21st Century Energy Act, major new legislation to create good-paying jobs in the transition to clean energy.
Among the cosponsors and endorsers of Jeff Merkley’s ‘S.2185 – Good Jobs for 21st Century Energy Act’ are some of the key players in advancing expanded tax credits for CCUS like the labor organisations who are members of the Carbon Capture Coalition and the Natural Resource Defense Council who were members of the National Enhanced Oil Recovery Initiative until it became the Carbon Capture Coalition at which time it was replaced by The Nature Conservancy. Also among the endorsers is Data for Progress which works closely with the progressive Democrats who introduced and sponsored the End Polluter Welfare Act 2020. Among the cosponsors are at least 5 Green New Deal Resolution cosponsors including Jeff Merkley and Kamala Harris who, as Joe Biden’s running mate, has clearly stated that she is against fossil fuel subsidies.
Merkley’s legislation is co-sponsored by ten of his Senate Democratic colleagues, including Senators Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Tina Smith (D-MN), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Kamala Harris (D-CA), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Brian Schatz (D-HI), and Michael Bennet (D-CO). The Good Jobs for 21st Century Clean Energy Act is endorsed by AFL-CIO, the Blue Green Alliance, the United Steelworkers, Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA), the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA), the Union of Concerned Scientists, Data for Progress, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), and the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters of the United States and Canada. [SOURCE]
In late Auguest 2019 Data for Progress published their ‘scorecard’ of Jay Inslee’s climate plans. In it they further redefine “clean energy” as renewable or non-renewable. In the public conception “clean energy” is interchangeable with “renewable energy”. The creation of the term “non-renewable clean energy” demonstrates that the word “clean”, as it appears in the Green New Deal Report includes, nuclear, biomass burning, fossil hydrogen and carbon capture.
NON-RENEWABLE CLEAN ENERGY SOURCES
The development and use of nuclear, hydrogen, and carbon capture energy technologies [SOURCE]
One of the energy wonks chipping away at the acceptable boundaries of ‘clean energy’ is Leah Stokes. In late August 2019 she began to reveal her leanings toward advanced nuclear which she would later suggest was a form of “clean energy”.
It’s very hard to target a net-zero emission economy by 2050 if we are shutting down nuclear,” Leah Stokes, an assistant professor of environmental politics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, told me. “A lot of people on the left believe that, but very few are willing to say it. [SOURCE]
In mid September 2019 Julian Brave Noisecat quoted Tom Goldtooth regarding the March 2019 New Consensus meeting after outlining the importance of the process to develop the Jemez Priciples. Noisecat ought to have been highly aware of the significance of the failure of New Consensus to respond to the demands of Climate Justice Alliance representatives, but chose not to write up his position.
At a March convening to begin drafting a Green New Deal, leaders of the Climate Justice Alliance voiced concerns that the progressive climate platform was not being developed according to the Jemez Principles and the Principles of Environmental Justice. “I’m not saying there hasn’t been some positive movement and some incorporation of environmental justice with white organizations,” said Goldtooth, whose organization, IEN, is part of the Climate Justice Alliance. “But the challenges are still there with the Green New Deal.” [SOURCE]
In late September 2019 a colleague of Naomi Klein at The Intercept, Rachel M. Cohen supplied a quote from Brad Crabtree the co-director of the Carbon Capture Coalition discussing a conversation he had with Ed Markey. If true, and if there was any real interest in uncovering the Democrats plans for business as usual, then Markey’s remarks would have rocked the very foundations of the Green New Deal.
“I have personally spoken to Senator Markey after the Green New Deal was introduced, and he said carbon capture is in,” said Brad Crabtree, co-director of the Carbon Capture Coalition, a group of roughly 60 companies, unions, research institutes, and energy groups that support carbon-capture technology. “I asked him directly, and he was pretty categorical, and immediately then talked about what he tried to do for carbon capture in Waxman-Markey. [SOURCE]
The ‘A 100 Percent Clean Future’ report which was published in early October 2019 was authored by John Podesta et al for the Center for American Progress (CAP). It is a document very much aligned with ‘clean energy’ rather than renewable energy. Rather than taking a position against nuclear energy and CCUS, Podesta et al acknowledge there are “concerns” and call for “stronger dialogue”. This stance poses no threat to the objectives of the CAP, ClimateWorks or the Design to Win plan it was created to deliver – carbon capture for ‘unavoidable’ fossil fuel use.
Economically disadvantaged communities, tribal communities, and communities of color have historically been marginalized in the development of national climate policies. Confronting the legacies of systemic racism and injustice will require a much closer collaboration with environmental justice advocates to incorporate their perspective and expertise. While there are broad areas of agreement, these communities have well-founded concerns about market-based policy mechanisms, nuclear waste, and carbon capture and sequestration. These and other questions of policy design require stronger dialogue and collaboration to ensure the agenda for climate action achieves pollution-free communities to protect and advance the right of all people “to breathe clean air, live free of dangerous levels of toxic pollution, access healthy food, and share the benefits of a prosperous and vibrant clean economy.” [SOURCE]
In mid October 2019 Leah Stokes gave a talk at UC Santa Barbara called ‘The case for a Green New Deal’. Stokes is an expert and an energy wonk who specializes in pragmatic analysis. She has been welcomed on panels and in discussions with the likes of Kate Aronoff, Julian Brave Noisecat, Naomi Klein, and many others.
We need to phase out the oil and gas industry, really important. And that’s not gonna be easy, but that is a really important fight. [SOURCE]
In a December 2019 feature by Eric Holthaus, Julian Brave Noisecat provided the perfect description of the Green New Deal in the hands of the brigade of progressive Democrat aligned entities.
What the progressive movement has been doing is really changing the narrative. The Green New Deal is as much a narrative device as a set of policy levers.
Noisecat transitioned from 350 dot org to Data for Progress shortly after the March New Consensus meeting. The consent of grassroots advocates had already been acquired in terms of the impressions created among the public who are polled by Data for Progress. Noisecat arrived after the damage had already been done. His job was to hold the line.
Sean McElwee, founder of Data for Progress, says he gave NoiseCat “executive authority” in crafting a Green New Deal focused on racial equity and environmental justice. He wanted to figure out how to create transformational change – not in the next 10 years, but in the next two years…
Sean McElwee acknowledges that Noisecat has been highly effective and characterizes the effectiveness of his efforts in terms of the impact on Democratic electoral platforms.
Looking at the Green New Deal a year later, the central victory is an increase in ambition and equity in the presidential candidate platforms. [SOURCE]
In early December 2019 David Roberts quoted John Noel and took a close look at enhanced oil recovery without looking at the raft of bipartisan bills before congress at the time.
“If the industry can perfect CO2 injection into shale formations and tight oil,” John Noël, a researcher at Greenpeace, told me, “it could unlock an almost endless amount of oil under the right conditions.”
In his conclusion Roberts, as usual, frames the pragmatic position for those who privately are not committed to phasing out fossil fuels as rapidly as possible in line with the demands of First Nations and frontline community advocates. His conclusion begs the question, How much fossil fuel extraction should be allowed to be ‘unavoidable’?
It may be that EOR can play a constructive role in a comprehensive decarbonization plan, helping to reduce the carbon content of the oil we can’t avoid using. But its use and limitations should be shaped by the public interest, not by the interests of oil and gas investors. [SOURCE]
In mid December 2019 Mark Z. Jacobson et al reasserted their claims about the achievability of 100% renewables (water, wind, solar). In the process Jacobson specified that CCUS, nuclear and biomass are not needed.
Thus, its conclusion that “including nuclear power and natural gas plants that capture CO2 consistently lower[s] the cost of decarbonizing electricity generation” was not shown. As calculated here, a transition to 100% WWS energy should reduce private and social costs substantially over those incurred by BAU energy without the need for nuclear power, fossil fuels with carbon capture, or bioenergy. [SOURCE]
In early February 2020 Jason Albritton from The Nature Conservancy provided testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee: Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change. In that testimony he confirmed TNC’s commitment to supporting 45Q tax credits and legislation like the USEIT Act.
The Nature Conservancy believes that carbon capture, utilization and storage is a valuable part of that climate solution set. We support efforts to ensure carbon capture is available as an effective tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining environmental safeguards. [SOURCE]
In early February 2020 Jason Albritton from The Nature Conservancy provided testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee: Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change. In that testimony he confirmed TNC’s commitment to supporting 45Q tax credits and legislation like the USEIT Act.
Testimony was also provided to the House Energy and Commerce Committee: Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change by Lee Anderson, government affairs director with the Utility Workers Union of America. It is clear from his statements that the most important battle ground in fighting for a fossil fuel phase out will be in the senate and congressional committees where the concerns of the people should get a fair hearing.
Building on recent landmark reform of the federal 45Q tax credit to incentivize deployment of carbon capture technology, the USE IT Act will foster continued development and deployment of carbon capture by authorizing the EPA Administrator to coordinate with the Secretary of Energy on furthering research, development and demonstration of carbon utilization and direct air capture technologies. [SOURCE]
John Noel has consistently sounded the alarm about enhanced oil recovery with CO2 from CCUS or direct air capture. He operates where he needs to be, but sadly his work is not adequately amplified among his high reach networks. The testamony presented to the hearing ‘Consideration of H.R. 1166, the Utilizing Significant Emissions with Innovative Technologies Act’ should have been major news in the fight to phase out fossil fuels.
The industry’s campaign to undermine true climate solutions in order to maintain demand is real and well documented. CO2 EOR cannot be siloed off from the rest of a company’s portfolio or business strategy. Any policy that subsidizes increased oil production, which improves the borrowing position of the oil company, not only bolsters its ability to plow revenues back into expansion efforts, but also strengthens its social license and ability to run political interference against real climate action. Climate science and carbon math are not complete without an honest analysis of political power. [SOURCE]
In mid March 2020 the DNC Platform Committee published their ‘Guidelines for the Platform Committee’s policy recommendations’. It’s a testament to the effective marketing of the Green New Deal concept and the fuzzy definitions that support it that an entity with an horrendous and ongoing track record of accepting fossil fuel money could make any claim to be inspired. I would note that Steve Kretzmann from Oil Change International is on the DNC Platform Committee.
Use the Green New Deal’s vision and aspirations as a framework [SOURCE]
In late March 2020 Politico reported on the negotiations in preparation for the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force and the supposed integration of the Green New Deal priorities into the Biden platform. Sean McElwee, like many others says that the fight to keep the core values of the Green New Deal, (real or based on pretence), was yet come.
“The dirty little secret is everyone’s talking to Biden’s campaign,” said Sean McElwee, co-founder of the liberal think tank Data for Progress. “There will be fights, but at the end of the day, progressives still hold votes in the Senate and increasingly Democratic voters stand behind our views. I expect we’ll see Biden embracing key planks of the ambitious agenda progressives have outlined on issues like climate and pharmaceutical policy.”
The Sunrise Movement will work to defeat Trump “no matter what,” said Evan Weber, national political director of the organization, by registering and turning out voters in key battleground states. But whether Sunrise does “broad anti-Trump campaigning” or “explicitly back[s] Vice President Joe Biden” if he becomes the nominee, Weber added, depends on what Biden’s campaign does to “demonstrate that they are taking the climate crisis seriously. [SOURCE]
In what seems like a distraction from the private interests who’ve lined up opportunities for the enhanced oil recovery revolution while strengthening a tax credit that will be a game changing fossil fuel subsidy, Oil Change International and the Next System project collaborated on a report into the potential nationalization of fossil fuel companies. The mid April 2020 report is effectively a thought exercise sold as a possible response to the ‘COVID crisis’ integrated as part of the Green New Deal. The Next System project is uniquely positioned to propagandize this moment. As a hub connecting climate activism with regenerative or ‘natural capitalism’, and a broad selection of movement builders and philanthropically funded social justice orientated NGOs, it is well placed to affirm the apparent potential of a dramatic progressive shift in Democrat policy.
A Federal Just Transition Agency would receive and manage fossil fuel assets with the express goal of a phase-out grounded in just transition principles, and coordinate and finance investment in public and community infrastructure for a new, resilient economy. Processes like those in the Climate Equity Act of 2019 should be used to ensure accountability to frontline communities and labor unions through policy development and implementation. The transition should also build on such grassroots efforts as Gulf South for a Green New Deal’s Policy Platform and the Climate Justice Alliance’s Just Transition Principles. [SOURCE]
A week after the release of the OCI/NextSystem report, Data for Progress shared results of it’s polling on nationalization measures sewn into bail out deals attached to COVID recovery plans. Data for Progress highlighted the positives as they see them saying “large swaths of voters of color support the policy”.
This support is promising given that some prominent left-leaning climate advocates have argued that public ownership of fossil fuel companies could be an effective way to phase out fossil fuels, promote energy democracy and protect vulnerable workers. Indeed, public ownership would give the government and taxpayers, not fossil fuel CEOs and billionaires, authority to decide what kind of energy future we want. [SOURCE]
In late April 2020, Grist dot com published a video called ‘The Narwhal Curve’ made in collaboration with Leah Stokes wherein she asserts that nuclear energy is “clean energy”.
In 2018, about one third of our energy systems came from clean energy sources like wind solar nuclear and hydropower. [SOURCE]
Demos is a Democrat aligned NGO cofounded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund president Stephen Heintz. It helped develop the career of Sean McElwee from Data for Progress. In late May 2020 it released it’s Frontlines Climate Justice Executive Action Platform. The initial signatories to the platform included the Climate Justice Alliance who have never acknowledged publicly that they recieved the memorandum of agreement they demanded from New Consensus. There are dozen’s of follow up signatories including 350 dot org. New Consensus are not listed as a signatory, and I would note that the document pushes for a “renewable energy transition” without mentioning the term “100% renewable”.
In tackling the urgency of the climate crisis, prioritizing the most
impacted communities for the protections and benefits of an economy-
wide renewable energy transition is a moral imperative. [SOURCE]
In early July 2020 when the Biden Sanders Unity Taskforce recommendations came through David Roberts merely wrote an update fixed to the top of an article he wrote in May 2020. That Roberts felt no need to formally digest the Unity Task Force recommendations suggests that he had significant access to briefings from key progressives engaged in the Biden team’s wide ranging consultations.
In short, the broad US left-of-center coalition appears to be aligning around a common climate policy vision. That vision is described in the following piece, first published on May 27.
Roberts indicates that he has full knowledge of the areas where conflicts that amount to the difference between keeping it in-the-ground and accepting a net zero emissions ledgered outcome will occur, but rather than acknowledge the almost complete absence of controversy, he preferred to update a six weeks old article.
If there’s any chance for bipartisan climate policy, it probably starts with carbon capture, use, and sequestration.
It creates another tension with industrial unions, which stand to benefit from the jobs building carbon capture projects and CO2 pipelines, and with Democratic moderates who are beholden to those unions. And it’s going to create a long-term tension with carbon wonks, who increasingly agree that, like it or not, gigatons of carbon need to be pulled from the atmosphere.
Climate unity is at hand, if Democrats can grasp it [SOURCE]
In mid July 2020 the Biden/Sanders team released their climate plans which demonstrate that leaving the door open to CCUS and making gross compromises in the Unity Task Force allowed for the continuation of long term plans for CO2 enhanced oil recovery. The near silence on 45Q tax credits from the climate justice NGOs prevents general awareness of the fossil fuel subsidies which would support the extractivist plans embedded in the Biden/Harris climate platform.
Biden will double down on research investments and tax incentives for technology that captures carbon and then permanently sequesters or utilizes that captured carbon, which includes lowering the cost of carbon capture retrofits for existing power plants — all while ensuring that overburdened communities are protected from increases in cumulative pollution. [SOURCE]
In mid July 2020, shortly after the release of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force recommendations and the release of the Biden/Harris “clean energy” plans Julian Brave Noisecat penned a piece for The Guardian that was headlined by the absurd assertion that there isn’t much difference between the Green New Deal and the Biden/Harris team’s climate plans.
Part of Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, these plans are a Green New Deal in all but name. If you set aside the most attention-grabbing left-wing programs included in New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2019 Green New Deal resolution, like Medicare for All and a federal job guarantee, Biden’s plans broadly align with an approach advocated by the left-wing of the Democratic party.
This is, in the broadest strokes, the climate policy gospel according to many progressives. Biden’s plans draw upon the Green New Deal-inflected recommendations issued by the joint taskforce convened by surrogates of the Biden and Bernie Sanders campaigns, including Ocasio-Cortez. They also crib heavily from plans devised by Washington governor Jay Inslee’s climate-focused presidential campaign and are delightfully similar to policies drafted by Data for Progress, an upstart leftwing thinktank where I work. (Full disclosure: we provided research and recommendations to the joint taskforce and campaign.) [SOURCE]
In a mid July 2020 statement Varshini Prakash who sat on the Unity Task Force pushed the argument that the Sunrise Movement and their allies moved Democrat electoral climate policies in a good direction. Prakash is perhaps the leading proponent of the absurd idea that an abundance of pro-climate rhetoric is somehow a good thing even in the face clear statements in support of the very mitigation stratgeies that will deliver an enhanced oil recovery boom and more business as usual, albeit with some carbon abatement.
Our movement made this possible, but there’s more work to do, and the urgency of the crisis demands that we keep pushing. Vice President Biden must build on these commitments and make these actions an immediate and urgent priority on day 1. Our movement, alongside environmental justice communities and frontline workers, has taught Joe Biden to talk the talk. Now, let’s defeat Trump and mobilize in mass after the election to get Biden to walk the walk. [SOURCE]
Leah Stokes called nuclear energy “clean energy” in her video collaboration with Grist dot com called ‘The Narwhal Curve’. In mid July 2020, shortly after it was revealled that advanced nuclear had made it through the Unity Task Force deliberations she joined with the Sunrise Movement’s San Diego leading light Nikayla Jefferson to write about energy transformation and racial justice. Stokes inciated last year that she would support direct air capture, but does not appear to have offered an opinion specifically for or against CCUS which is the preeminent signifier of a self serving pragmatist.
Make no mistake: Fossil fuel companies need to tell lies about the costs that their dirty infrastructure imposes on Black communities. Because if we understood the truth, and if we valued Black lives, there will be nowhere for the fossil fuel plants to go. [SOURCE]
In late July 2020 Ilhan Omar introduced the latest version of the End Polluter Welfare Act. The bill contains specific provisions against the expansion and improper use of 45Q tax credits for fossil fuel projects. The introduction of the bill did not lead to an ongoing campaign to highlight the 45Q tax credit as a crucial fossil fuel subsidy, indeed the EPW Act was introduced and then promptly ignored. No effort was made to highlight provisions against 45Q that were also included in previous versions of the bill introduced by Bernie Sanders.
The End Polluter Welfare Act is a vital part of the move off fossil fuels. It’s fundamentally absurd that we continue to subsidize the fossil fuel industry at the exact moment we need to ramp down the extraction and burning of coal, oil, and gas, [SOURCE]
Ilhan’s statements when she introduced the EPW Act suggest that there is an apetite for an agressive engagement with leglislative process to fight fossil fuel subsidies. The reality is that Ilhan’s statements were all there was.
It’s past time we end the billions of taxpayer subsidies to fossil-fuel companies,” Omar said in a statement. “Our focus right now needs to be on getting the American people through this difficult, unprecedented time, not providing giveaways to polluters. [SOURCE]
Few journalists have bothered to call the action as it is. There are plenty of pragmatists selling particular narratives for their editors, but there are few who see the donkey-elephant show for what it is, a neoliberal carnival of greenwashing. In late July 2020 Steve Horn showed that he was one of the few who were prepared to tell the whole truth about Biden’s climate plans.
The plan doesn’t call for any type of oil fossil fuel industry phaseout. The words “fracking” and “natural gas” are missing from the text altogether. The terms “coal” and “fossil fuel” only show up once, and not in the context of an industry phaseout… [SOURCE]
Ensuring Ed Markey, flag bearer for the Green New Deal remained a Democrat senator became a rallying point for the Sunrise Project in late July 2020. Sunrise threw heavy support behind Markey’s senate primary campaign. It should be noted that Ed Markey promoted gas as a “bridge fuel” while the fracking boom was in full swing.
Markey is poised — and arguably more prepared than any other politician in the US government — to fill in the conceptual aspirations of the Green New Deal resolution that he cosponsored with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with practical policies and to get them passed in Congress. [SOURCE]
Emily Holden from The Guardian US reported in late July 2020 that many leading figures in the Democrats, Democrat aligned NGOs and climate justice aligned NGOs acknowledged the Biden campaign’s lack of commitment to phasing out fossil fuel production and extraction. Holden would know well that the Biden team’s plans have barely changed since the primaries.
The measures that draw electrical workers to Biden’s plan are the same ones that push more vocal climate activists away. Biden doesn’t set a date to phase out drilling for oil and gas – although he would prohibit new drilling on public lands. He doesn’t lay out a timeline for shifting away from gasoline-reliant cars. And he is mum on limiting fossil fuel exports, which would still cause climate damage, even if they are being burned outside the US. [SOURCE]
In late July 2020 Data for Progress released a memo titled ‘Biden’s updated climate agenda has the markings of a Green New Deal’. In it you will find the phrase used by Julian Brave Noisecat and Varshini Prakash to describe Biden’s climate plans.
In September 2018, Data For Progress released a report entitled A Green New Deal: A Progressive Vision for Environmental Sustainability and Economic Stability, designed to fill in the details of the progressive climate agenda. The report translates the emerging consensus on the Left — that the climate, jobs, and justice crises are inextricably intertwined — into concrete targets informed by what science and technology said were necessary and possible. Joe Biden’s evolving presidential climate plan has come to embrace and echo that consensus and converge with many of the targets we laid out two years ago. In other words, it is a Green New Deal in all but name.
It is clear from the memo that 100% renewables, or even substantial support for renewables is not on the table.
At this moment of profound crisis, we have the opportunity to build a more resilient, sustainable economy – one that will put the United States on an irreversible path to achieve net-zero emissions, economy-wide, by no later than 2050. [SOURCE]
In early August 2020 a large group of economists issued a letter in support of a fossil fuel phase out. The economists did not offer a critique of the Biden campaign’s policy positions and how they fall well short of the necessary actions/commitments needed to deliver a real fossil fuel phase out.
Governments must actively phase out the fossil fuel industry. Bailouts and subsidies to big oil, gas and coal companies only further delay the essential energy transition, distorting markets while locking us into a future we cannot afford. Instead, a coordinated phaseout of exploration for and extraction of carbon resources allows governments to redeploy funds towards green technology, infrastructure, social programs and good jobs, spurring an economic transition that benefits people and the planet. [SOURCE]
In early August 2020 John Laesch, a DNC platform committee member attempted to push through an ammendment that specifically challenged the 45Q tax credit for enhanced oil recovery and CCUS that is opposed in the End Polluter Welfare Act 2020. Laesch alleges in his own blog that “sander staffers” pressured himself and others to drop their ammendments. Laesch’s ammendment was controversially removed, but in the ensuing media frenzy, few if any public figures among the progressive Democrats, Democrat aligned NGOs, or climate justice aligned NGOs saw fit to mention 45Q tax credits. They railed against fossil fuel subsidies with the hashtag #EndFossilFuelSubsidies, but 45Q tax credits/subsidies were not put in the frame.
I move to amend page 46, line 20 to bring back and improve upon a sentence from the 2016 Democratic Platform, “Democrats believe the tax code must reflect our commitment to a clean energy future by eliminating special tax breaks and subsidies for fossil fuel companies, including any tax subsidies for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), carbon capture and storage (CCS) or direct air capture (DAC). [SOURCE]
In early August 2020 Kamala harris introduced S.4513 – Climate Equity Act of 2020 which aims to define frontline communities and how they are represented. I suspect this bill was introduced with the help of AOC to polish up Harris’ poor reputation on racial justice.
(A) IN GENERAL.—Subject to subparagraph (B), the Board of Advisors shall be composed of not less than 10 members that provide diverse and fair representation of frontline communities and allies of frontline communities, 1 of whom shall be designated chairperson. [SOURCE]
Mindy Isser, writing about the endorsement of the Green New Deal by the American Federation of Teachers took a look at the state of labor movement support for the Green New Deal in the sort of depth that has rarely taken place since the Green New Deal was introduced. Her ivestigation highlights the underexplored division in the labor movement and raises serious questions about how a just transition might begin to be negotiated.
Yet the AFL-CIO has remained resistant. When Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) introduced the Green New Deal legislation in February 2019, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told reporters, “We need to address the environment. We need to do it quickly.” But he also noted that, “We need to do it in a way that doesn’t put these communities behind, and leave segments of the economy behind. So we’ll be working to make sure that we do two things: That by fixing one thing we don’t create a problem somewhere else. [SOURCE]
David Roberts knows perfectly well that the fossil fuel industry, big industrial unions and the bipartisan Democrats have no interest in phasing out fossil fuel extraction. He knows that extractivism causes harm to frontline communities whether or not carbon capture is applied. He knows that the door has been left open for CCUS because direct air capture is the flagship allowable carbon capture technology for climate justice activists. And yet he continues to remain pragmatic about CCUS plans. In early August 2020 he made a statement that clearly shows that he is fully aware of the destruction that extractivism always causes.
The evidence is now clear enough that it can be stated unequivocally: It would be worth freeing ourselves from fossil fuels even if global warming didn’t exist. Especially now that clean energy has gotten so cheap, the air quality benefits alone are enough to pay for the energy transition. [SOURCE]
In mid August 2020 Elaine Godfrey quoted Julian Brave Noisecat in reference to the perception problems with Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s running mate. Again the ‘we can shift the bad actor’ mentality is on show.
The same guy who was willing to sit down with Strom Thurmond is now talking like he wants to be the 21st-century FDR,” Julian Brave NoiseCat, the vice president of policy and strategy at the progressive polling firm Data for Progress, told me. “A savvy politician like Harris is going to see where the winds are blowing and move in that direction.
Noisecat cites Harris’ work on the Climate Equity Act as a positive despite the fact that the bill will go nowhere before the upcoming election.
Her collaboration with AOC on the Climate Equity Act shows that she can take some fairly left-wing and justice-oriented conversations to the highest office in the land, and that’s a good thing, [SOURCE]
The climate justice aligned NGOs appear to put more faith in letters and petititions than exposing the truth of neoliberal bipartisanship. In mid August 2020 a group of the usual suspects prepared a petition that called for commitment to a fossil fuel phase out, but they did not mention tax breaks or 45Q tax credits.
Dear DNC Coalition
The Democrats need to hear from you: The Democratic platform must include a strong and unambiguous plan to phase out fossil fuels while protecting workers and communities. [SOURCE]
In mid August 2020 Dylan Matthews wrote a piece for Vox that I suspect would have otherwise been written by his stable mate David Roberts. Matthews is right to point out that bringing the Sunrise Movement “inside the tent” limited the chances of public conflict.
Biden has deeply consolidated support from just about every part of the progressive institutional infrastructure, not least through the unity task forces, which offered party activists and experts aligned with Bernie Sanders a chance to build the party platform in collaboration with Biden loyalists. Groups like Sunrise that were formerly thorns in Biden’s side have been brought inside the tent, where they can influence Biden internally without creating messy public drama. [SOURCE]
Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden in mid August. His arguments were similar to many others and focused on getting rid of Trump. Rather than standing on principle and not letting the Green New Deal become watered down or gutted and used as a greenwash for Biden, Sanders chose to abandon his “political revolution” once again.
Sanders acknowledged on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he and his supporters “surely did not” get everything they wanted. But if Biden’s proposals become policy, “Joe Biden will become the most progressive president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And that, in this moment, is what we need. [SOURCE]
In a New York Times article in mid August 2020 Lisa Friedman explains that the donor community are happy and that some donors were influenced by Biden’s work with “youth leaders”.
Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris already are where the donor community wants them to be on the issue…
Several donors said they were not early supporters of Mr. Biden, having preferred candidates that were more outspoken on climate change, but they praised the former vice president for working with youth leaders in groups like the Sunrise movement and issuing an aggressive plan [SOURCE]
In mid August 2020 Vox published Bernie Sanders’ remarks from a policy pitch he gave to the Democratic National Convention. The pitch made no mention of renewable energy or phasing out fossil fuels. Despite Biden’s climate and infrastructure plans specifically referring retrofits of coal fired power stations, Sanders still thinks Biden is the man to “heal the soul of our nation”.
Joe will rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and fight the threat of climate change by transitioning us to 100 percent clean electricity over 15 years. [SOURCE]
In mid August 2020 Colin Rees from Oil Change International was quoted by Alexander C. Kaufman at The Huffington Post asserting that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were against fossil fuel subsidies like the ones John Laesch tried to challenge at DNC2020. This is despite the fact Kamala Harris cosponsored a bill introduced by Jeff Merkley in July 2019 that would, if passed, strengthen the 45Q tax credit/subsidy for carbon capture projects.
This is a commonsense position held by both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. … The DNC should immediately include it in the platform. [SOURCE]
In mid August Brian Kahn from Gizmodo-Earther quoted the “manager’s mark” document provided by the DNC after the cotnroversial removal of John Laesch’s enhnced oil recovery amendment . The quote contradicts itself, but most people would not percieve the contradiction because the reality of “clean energy” plans is not generally understood. The Democrats cannot support eliminating tax breaks for fossil fuels and extend tax incentives for “clean energy” because clean energy includes fossil fuels and therefore will result in the destruction and negative impacts on nature and frontline communities that extractivism always causes.
Democrats support eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for fossil fuels, and will fight to defend and extend tax incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy. [SOURCE]
The day after Brian Kahn’s piece was published Biden’s policy director doubled down on the no fossil fuel subsidies lie. Biden’s climate plans released during the primaries in 2019 are identical in all the most important respects. The Unity Task Force process did nothing to close the door on CCUS, advanced nuclear or fracking.
Vice President Biden’s commitment to ending fossil fuel subsidies remains as steadfast as it was when he outlined this position in the bold climate plan he laid out last year,” Stef Feldman, policy director for the Biden campaign said in a statement to The Verge. “He will demand a worldwide ban on fossil fuel subsidies and lead the world by example, eliminating fossil fuel subsidies in the United States during the first year of his presidency, [SOURCE]
Varshini Prakash who represented the Sunrise Movement at the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force was interviewed on Democracy Now by Juan Gonzalez in mid August 2020. Prakash says that they were able to move the timeline for getting to clean electricity by 15 years, but she does not outline the rationale behind remaining silent on the reasons for her concessions to CCUS, advanced nuclear and fracking.
Getting to 100% renewable energy by 2050 is absolutely impermissible for island nations, for young people who are growing up at a true crossroads between chaos and destruction and a livable planet right now. And so, we pushed, and we won some pretty significant victories. We were able to move up the timeline on decarbonizing the electricity sector by 15 years, so now the Biden administration is committing to 100% clean electricity by 2035. [SOURCE]
In a mid August 2020 article The Real News Network quoted a Sanders staffer offering a contradictory version of the events that lead to John Laesch’s amendment being removed. This version of events makes no sense in the light of Laesch’s own writing from 2 weeks earlier before his amendment disappeared. The outcome from the episode is that all and sundry Democrats and NGO mouthpieces were given an opportunity to speak up against fossil fuel subsidies without having to acknowledge the existence of, or attempts to expand 45Q tax credits. The truly sad thing is that Laesch’s own words were ignored by those with the power to amplify his concerns about the coming enhanced oil recovery boom.
Jeff Weaver, a long-time aide to Bernie Sanders, told The Real News he had spoken to Laesch who had agreed to the amendment being removed. “He agreed to the language being taken out in exchange for certain other amendments that he supported,” Weaver said, adding that it was indeed a “clerical error” which was rectified after the statement was scrubbed. [SOURCE]
The North America director for 350 Action penned a piece for The Nation in mid August 2020 which did not mention the full version of John Laesch’s experience of having his amendment dropped. This was consistent with all the statements made by all the Democrats – progressive or otherwise – who spoke about the incident. The same was the case for all NGO mouthpieces and the vast majority of journalists. Through their failure to fully recount the incident they assisted in masking off the specific tax credits that have been expanded through bipartisan efforts during the first Trump presidential term.
By evading the need to stop fossil fuel subsidies and phase out fossil fuel extraction, the DNC leadership is avoiding the root causes of climate change and environmental injustice. [SOURCE]
In mid August Peter White at The Tenessee Tribune outlined the shannanegans that went on during the DNC platform development process. It wasn’t only John Laesch who was under pressure to drop amendments. Members representing progressive positions were manipulated in multiple ways. You can see from the below quote how much John Laesch’s recollections differ from the version of events provided by senior Sanders staffer Jeff Weaver.
I submitted nine amendments on climate and some of them were dropped without my consent. This is both against the rules and undemocratic,” said John Laesch, a Sanders member of the Platform Committee. “I would have understood if they wanted to change a few words, but they wanted to eliminate any reference to eliminating fossil fuel subsidies for enhanced oil recovery, the fossil fuel industry’s plan to address the climate crisis.” [SOURCE]
In late August 2020 the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis through it’s chair Brian Shatz released ‘The Case for Climate action: Building a Clean economy for the American People’. Among the members are Sheldon Whitehouse, a proponent of the FUTURE Act and the USEIT Act, Jeff Merkley whose Good Jobs for 21st Century Energy Act aims to strengthen tax credits for sequestered CO2, and Ed Markey who in 2019 reportedly told the brightest fossil fuel industry lobbyist in the US, Brad Crabtree, that carbon capture “is in”. The pipelines advocated here are the absolute opposite of phasing out fossil fuels or keeping them in the ground. Ed Markey, the top Democrat proponent of the Green New Deal, the man who expressly stated that he wanted to appeal to “progressives and moderates”, is putting his support behind CO2 pipeline expansions that could only be possible with tax breaks like those contained in bipartisan efforts to strengthen 45Q tax credits and support the development stream for the CCUS supplied CO2 enhanced oil recovery boom.
Decarbonizing the electricity sector (and industrial sector) will also require new types of interstate pipelines. The United States already has nearly 5,000 miles of pipeline to carry carbon dioxide,117but we will need thousands more miles if we commit to a carbon capture and storage network that scales to the likely need. All scenarios examined in the 2018 IPCC report on holding global warming to 1.5 degrees required the use of carbon capture and storage.118 We may also need new pipelines to carry hydrogen or other chemicals created to store electricity produced by wind and solar generators. Like new transmission, new pipelines are challenging to permit. To achieve emission reduction goals, we will need well-crafted federal policy changes to aid the buildout of this pipeline network without sacrificing environmental review processes. [SOURCE]
Upon the release of the Senate Democrats ‘case’ policy director Food & Water Action, Mitch Jones released a statement. If his disparagements of the Senate Democrats report seem particularly forceful, it may be because on August 24, the day before the report was released, Food and Water Action published an endorsement of Ed Markey for the senate.
This climate report from the Senate Democrats completes a trifecta of underwhelming and inadequate proposals from Democratic leadership. Like the June report from the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and the recently-released Democratic Party platform, this report relies on false solutions designed to placate the oil and gas lobby. Further, it fails to address the vital need to end the extraction, processing, and burning of fossil fuels, and instead sees a future for fossil fuels tied to the false promise of carbon capture. It even fails to include a call to ban new fossil fuel extraction on public lands, a position that was endorsed by virtually all candidates in the Democratic presidential primary. [SOURCE]
‘Food & Water Action Endorses Ed Markey for U.S. Senate’ [SOURCE]
In late August 2020 M.V. Ramana and Schyler Edmunston from Beyond Nuclear International made the case against nuclear with perspective rightly informed by the First Nations people who’ve warned against the extractivist impacts of uranium mining of First Nations land. The authors discuss 2 variants on the Green New Deal, one in Canada and the other championed by Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins.
Last but not least, Green New Deal proposals emphasize ethics and equity. The Pact for a Green New Deal, for example, wants to ensure that the necessary energy transition “is socially just and doesn’t hurt those at the bottom of the economic ladder; and that it respects Indigenous rights.” It is precisely those groups that have been hurt most by the nuclear fuel chain.
Around the world, the uranium that fuels nuclear plants has predominantly been mined from traditional lands of Indigenous peoples, whether we are talking about Canada, India, the United States, or Australia. There is ample evidence of devastating health consequences from the production of uranium, for example, on the Navajo and the Lakota nations. [SOURCE]
In early September 2020, a little over a month before Oil Change International endorsed Joe Biden, OIC senior campaigner Collin Rees, as part of a joint letter to Joe Biden, made a statement that shows he’s fully aware of the role played by Obama’s energy tsar in wrangling the industrial labor organizations in the Carbon Capture Coalition for the net zero agenda.
Joe Biden can’t address the climate crisis while listening to people taking checks from the fossil fuel industry like Ernest Moniz, Jason Bordoff, Ken Salazar, and Heather Zichal. Biden must act boldly in collaboration with grassroots leaders fighting for environmental and climate justice—which means ruling out positions for dangerous ‘all-of-the-above’ boosters whose time has passed,” said Collin Rees, Senior Campaigner at Oil Change U.S. [SOURCE]
In early September 2020 Varshini Prakash was quoted a New York Times article by Michelle Goldberg regarding the impact of the Green New Deal on Ed Markey’s career. The quote shows how necessary it has been to have someone who can engage with moderates. Pleasant things can always be said about Ed Markey as long as you don’t acknowledge his compromise positions or his senate committee attendence record.
Markey was the most prominent figure on the Green New Deal aside from A.O.C.,” said Varshini Prakash, the Sunrise Movement’s executive director. “If he goes down in a Democratic primary, immediately the story that gets spun out of that is, ‘The Green New Deal is a losing political proposition.’ [SOURCE]
In early September 2020, just as I was submitting Part 1 of this series, the Thrive Agenda was announced. It was supported by a significant representation of climate justice NGOs including some that were marginalized by progressive Democrats and the Democrat aligned NGOs that serve their electoral interests. #TimetoThrive achieved very little other than boost the numbers for a Sierra Club petition. It seems that it was a product of the constant polling done by Data for Progress.
This polling shows that economic recovery plans that center racial, economic, and climate justice are popular with broad swaths of the electorate, including in battleground states and districts. [SOURCE]
The Green New Deal redeems the moderate with compromise positions, as long as you champion it. I would contend that making Ed Markey’s electoral success essential incentives turning a blind eye to his compromise positions.
In an article in The Atlantic in mid September 2020 Elain Godfrey outlines how Sean McElwee and a colleague – most likely Julain Brave Noisecat – were invited to discuss climate policy with the Biden team in March 2020 despite Bernie Sanders not having yet suspended his campaign.
In their March meeting, McElwee and a colleague attempted to persuade the Biden team to endorse a kind of quasi–Green New Deal. Their hope: If the presumptive Democratic nominee took a stronger stance on climate change in particular, he could get more young people and progressives excited about his campaign. They urged the campaign to endorse a commitment to reaching net-zero emissions by mid-century, and to invest in low-income communities that are disproportionately affected by pollution. The Biden team was worried that moving left on climate would be all risk and no reward. But McElwee assured them that it would be both popular and good policy. They didn’t extract much in the way of immediate commitments, McElwee told me after the meeting. But he had—he has—a longer-term plan.
Godfrey observes the shift in McElwee’s progressive messaging over time, now tailored to the mainstream which means more suitable for moderate Democrats.
The second stage of Sean seems to have begun about a year ago. McElwee started talking much less about moonshot progressive goals and much more about tailoring the progressive message to mainstream Democratic voters.”
Godfrey also quotes Julian Brave Noisecat who seems to have a knack for spinning the ugly into the acceptable. Did the compromise positions presented by Data for Progress to the Biden team help prime the Unity Task Force process to deliver more business as usual?
“Biden really could be a crypto-progressive president,” Julian Noisecat [SOURCE]
In late September 2020 Varshini Prakash was intrviewed by KK Oetesen at the Washington Post. The interview spotlights Prakash and the Sunrise Movement as if they were not part of a collective effort supported by a brigade of NGOs, think tanks, and progressive Democrat entities.
If Sunrise hadn’t been a disruptive, local movement, there’s no way that we would have actually ended up on that task force. And if we hadn’t [brought] the movement’s agenda into the task force, I don’t think that Joe Biden would have embraced a plan to get 100 percent clean electricity by 2035. I don’t think he would have embraced the demand that came up through movement organizers in New York of embracing investment into communities of color and low-income communities who have been affected by the climate crisis or environmental degradation. [SOURCE]
In late September 2020 Steve Horn explained the reality of Biden’s climate plans to “double down” on CCUS. Horn outlines the extensive efforts of Ernest Moniz to shape net zero ‘climate soltuions’ that will please fossil fuel companies, the big indutrial labor organizations and bipartisan Democrats.
While the Biden campaign has promised to slash “fossil fuel subsidies at home in his first year” in office, both his supporters and those of progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), his chief challenger for the nomination, backed CCUS in the climate platform forged by their post-primaries “unity” task force in July. In August, the Biden campaign emerged from Democratic National Committee platform negotiations with a pledge to support the “development and deployment of carbon capture sequestration technology,” as well as to “double down on federal investments and enhance tax incentives for CCUS. [SOURCE]
In late September 2020, just after the first presidential debate, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez interviewed Kate Aronoff who, as usual, was frank about the fact that Biden is not fully committed to the Green New Deal, but, as usual, Aronoff didn’t speak to the specifics that would put her comments in a different light. Aronoff pushes the same line that all Green New Deal promoters push which is that the work will need to be done after Joe Biden is voted in. Aronoff, by not speaking to the existence of CCUS and advanced nuclear in Biden’s plans, can quite easily perpetuate the false impression created by those who’ve said the Green New Deal and Biden’s climate plans bare some resemblance.
Yeah, it’s the most progressive climate policy that a Democratic presidential candidate has ever run on, and it’s not nearly enough. Activists pushed this to be the best plan that we’ve seen from a Democratic nominee, and we know that, in January, when he is hopefully elected, that he’ll need to be pushed really aggressively in order to make any of that a reality. So, it’s a good starting place, and it’s just that. [SOURCE]
In early October 2020 Jean Chemnick wrote about how the executive level decision making for implementing climate plans may take shape. John Podesta has championed, as a long time “climate consiglieri to Democrat presidents, a National Climate Council that would support coordination between federal, state and local levels of government. It would be modelled on the National Security Council.
Podesta wrote a memo in 2008 that called for a National Climate Council when he headed the Obama-Biden transition team. The idea was never adopted, though Podesta went on to helm Obama’s second-term climate effort in a role that served roughly the same purpose of providing White House oversight to domestic and international climate efforts.
A National Climate Council would support a “Podesta-like” position in the White House. A top climate official with significant authority. Jason Bordoff, who is thought to be highly influential in the Biden campaign team advocates for the creation of a “deputy national security advisor for climate and energy” working under the National Security Council.
“You need a really single, forceful, powerful actor within the White House with the mandate to lead the president’s climate agenda across the White House and the rest of the government,” said Jason Bordoff, who served as senior director for energy and climate change at the NSC under Obama.[SOURCE]
In early October 2020 Oil Change International endorsed Joe Biden. They could have chosen not to endorse any presidential candidate and made some clear responses to the substance of Biden’s climate plans. There is everything to be gained in terms of better informing the public about the influence of the oil, gas and coal industry on the Democratic party from unpacking precisely what is in Biden’s climate plans and asking how they got there.
Oil Change U.S. was not shy to critique Joe Biden throughout the primary campaign. We pointed out where his plans fell short, and when he took advice from the wrong advisors. But we also know he’s listening — both Biden and Harris are signatories of the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge, and even in the last week they’ve announced fossil fuel executives will have no place in their transition team. With Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the White House, we know there will be room to shape a more just and equitable future. [SOURCE]
The Sunrise Movement ‘Victory Squad’ kept the message very simple in early October 2020. The message is that getting a Green New Deal is all about defeating Trump. Sadly, maintaining the integrity of the Green New Deal is not an issue.
We have the chance to win big – electing Green New Deal champions to Congress, turning out our peers in states where the youth vote can defeat Trump, and all the while building our movement to be ready to bring in the decade of the Green New Deal. But it’s gonna take all of us, giving the time that we can, to get us there. [SOURCE]
Leslie Kaufman wrote a piece for Bloomberg Green in early October 2020 regarding the “energy clash” on the Biden team. Kaufman recognizes the significance of the Unity Task Force as a translational process that takes the inputs from key stakeholders to produce policy platforms for the Biden team. As you can see from the quote, the favored approach to the lack of ‘unity’ flowing from the task force process is to accentuate the positive (we moved Biden further left) and eliminate any mention of the patently negative (fracking, nuclear and CCUS still on the table) thereby avoiding discussing the true nature of the concessions that were made.
After Biden refused to support the Green New Deal during last week’s debate with Trump, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “Our differences are exactly why I joined Biden’s Climate Unity Task Force — so we could set aside our differences & figure out an aggressive climate plan to address the planetary crisis at our feet.” Another task force member, Sunrise Movement co-founder Varshini Prakash, told Bloomberg Green in September that left-wing environmentalists “will have a lot of work to do even if he’s elected. [SOURCE]
In early October 2020 Nikayla Jefferson, a Sunrise Movement organiser, repeated an assertion Julian Brave Noisecat made after the Unity Task Force recommendations came out and Biden’s ‘Buld Back Better’ climate plans were released. The assertion is demonstrably untrue and entirely reliant on not unpacking what is actually in Biden’s plans and who continues to advise the Biden team on energy policy, eg Ernest Moniz.
It is a testament to the power of the youth movement that, since the end of the primary season, Biden has released his climate plan as a Green New Deal in all but name. [SOURCE]
In mid October 2020 Jean Chemnick wrote about the closed nature of the Biden campaign team’s engagement as it prepares transition plans. Chemnick quotes a person characterising the campaign process as “a black box”.
Everyone who’s producing policy ideas is hoping they can get it into that bloodstream,” said Andrew Light, a State Department climate official under President Obama who is now a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute. “If you’re working on something now, you’re probably not aiming to just produce an academic article if you really want to make a difference.
Chemnick indicates the likely influential role of Jason Bordoff who advocates for a position to be created within the National Security Council.
It’s unclear which proposals are gaining traction — though several sources mentioned that Obama energy and climate adviser Jason Bordoff seemed to have the campaign’s attention. The National Security Council alum has proposed that Biden create a deputy national security adviser on climate to better integrate those concerns into national security planning [SOURCE]
In late October 2020 Jeff Merkley introduced the ‘Protecting America’s Economy from the Carbon Bubble Act of 2020’. The stated purpose of the bill is to prohibit finace for “new sources” of fossil fuels. Merkley is a Green New Deal cosponsor, member of the Senate Democrats SCCC that recently recommended support for CCUS pipeline infrastructure, and in 2019 he introduced a bill that would expand tax credits/subsidies for CO2 enhanced oil recovery, fossil hydrogen and all forms of carbon capture utilization and storage.
The Protecting America’s Economy from the Carbon Bubble Act of 2020 would help safeguard the economy by prohibiting financial companies from making new investments in fossil fuels—investments that are not only accelerating climate chaos, but also risk destabilizing the global economy. [SOURCE]
If we look at how the term “new sources” is defined we can see that the operative word is “proven”. In the case of CO2 enhanced oil recovery reserves become proven when recovery techniques improve and market conditions are suitable. It is quite posible that CO2 enahanced oil recovery projects may not be regarded as “new sources” under this bill. Given that Jeff Merkley has supported legislative efforts to fund the infrastructure that would expand the enhanced oil recovery industry, it stands to reason that he would not introduce 2 bills that are counterposed in their objectives.
(4) the term ‘new sources’ means— 2 ‘‘(A) any production in excess of proven developed producing reserves of fossil fuels as of the date of enactment of this section; or ‘‘(B) new or expanded fossil infrastructure that would facilitate the production described in subparagraph (A); and [SOURCE]
In late October 2020 following the third presidential debate the LA Times reported a rhetorical statement that is clearly contradicted by Biden’s own plans. In terms of subsidies like the 45Q tax credit, there is nothing to signifiy that Biden is comitted to hodling up the bipartisan political will. I suspect there has been overwhelming silence from progressives and Democrat aligned NGOs because, in the end they serve net zero rather than a fossil fuel hase out, and direct air capture which will be necessary to achieve negative emissions falls under the umbrella of technologies that could get a boost from tax credits for capture ans sequestration of CO2.
“I would transition from the oil industry,” Biden said. “It has to be replaced by renewable energy over time — over time,” he added after Trump interrupted him. “And I’d stop giving to the oil industry — I’d stop giving them federal subsidies.” [SOURCE]
7 February 2019 to Present
Before Trump, the Democrats had their Clean Power Plan, an all-of-the-above suite of solutions where the groundwork was being laid for the coming enhanced oil recovery boom. They were happy to have the climate justice movement with it’s 2 leading lights determining the acceptable boundaries of discussion. Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein were an effective foil, a reference point for climate messaging.
After Trump was voted in the climate justice movement and it’s associated ENGOs had a choice. Focus on bipartisan Democrats who would continue to help advance efforts made during the Obama presidency, or join with the generalised anti-Tumpism while ignoring the political will they had largely ignored during the Obama years.
The Biden campaign team is now replete with Obama era advisers like Ernest Moniz the Obama era energy secretary, Gina McCarthy Obama’s EPA director, and Jason Bordoff, former special assistant on energy and climate change to President Obama.
The Green New Deal campaign was never more than an electoral greenwash to facilitate the ambitions of moderate Democrats in advancing energy policy and managing resistance against long term plans to deliver favorable finance for new fossil fuel frontiers.
Klein and McKibben are nearing the end of their usefulness. When the Green New Deal Resolution came along they didn’t say “Hey! What is this “net zero”?”, “What happened to keep-it-in-the-ground?”, or “How is ‘clean’ different from renewable?”. They chose instead to cheer on as climate justice activism was captured to facilitate the electoral agenda of of the Democrats. Everyone got played, or silenced, or played along and stayed quite on anything that might rattle the momentum.
On 7 February 2019 Dharna Noor published an interview with the climate policy director at Greenpeace USA, Janet Redman who explained how we ought to understand “clean energy” as distinct from renewable energy. This is a critical understanding of the language that crucially shifted when the Green New Deal Resolution became the central object of Democrat endeavours. If critically applied, an honest understanding of what is and is not “clean energy”, will result in unpacking the political will for business as usual, and exposing the absence of a desire to phase out fossil fuels and drive back extractivism.
Yeah, renewable and clean are slightly different. Renewable energy means wind, water, and sunlight. Things that are coming from the environment around us that never run out. Clean energy can mean a lot of different things to different people. It can mean nuclear power to some people. It’s clean because it doesn’t emit carbon. It’s not clean because we need to do uranium mining to make that energy, and we need to do something with that waste that’s now toxic. Sometimes lawmakers and environmentalists have tried to sneak in gas as a way of talking about clean energy, because it, in some forms, is less dirty than burning coal. Studies have recently shown that that’s not true at all; unfortunately, it’s just as bad, as climate-harming, as other forms of fossil fuel. It is, in fact, a fossil fuel. [SOURCE]
On the same day that the Green New Deal Resolution was introduced, 7 February 2019 The Chronicle of Philanthropy published an opinion piece by Angela Adrar from Climate Justice Alliance and banker Tyler Nickerson, a regular writer for TCP. I am left with the question, Did that package of bills arrive? I am also concerned that philanthropy stepped in at this juncture given that CJA have gone silent in regard to their demands for accountability from New Consensus.
Now grant makers can put their money and influence behind a package of bills that incorporate many issues such as economic development, social justice, and the environment. [SOURCE]
The technology neutrality or willingness to consider new nuclear energy or willingness to leave existing nuclear energy undisturbed was made plain in early February 2019 immediately following the introduction of Green new Deal resolution. Advocates for First Nations and frontline groups were clearly concerned, but where were the admonishments and warnings from climate justice movement leaders?
“The resolution is silent on any individual technology which can move us toward a solution to this [climate change] problem,” Markey said at a press conference on Capitol Hill. “There [are] no individual prescriptions in the resolution which is why we think we’re going to be able to get a broad base of support, and then we’ll let the debates begin on the individual solutions.”
“[T]he text of the actual resolution makes it abundantly clear — we must embrace every zero-carbon resource available to eliminate climate pollution and dramatically increase our investment in clean energy innovation,”Josh Freed, vice president for clean energy at Third Way, said in a statement. [SOURCE]
In early February 2019 Kate Aronoff who went on to become a fellow at Data for Progress described the situation as it is and acknowledged that, yes, 100% renewables was the basis of the green new Deal concept before the resolution was introduced. Amazingly, Aronoff makes to prescription for what climate justice activist and frontline advocates might do to address the issue. The claim that the issue of 100% renewables versus 100% clean energy was “hotly debated” is contestable. I can’t say that a fulsome discourse took place. If it did then John Noel’s efforts would have received more attention and support.
Unlike the original resolution calling for a Select Committee on a Green New Deal — which called for 100 percent renewable energy by 2030 — this one calls for the U.S. to reach net-zero emissions by 2030. The difference is more than semantic, and energy wonks have hotly debated it since Ocasio-Cortez, Sunrise, and other groups began pushing the call for the latter in November. While full reliance on renewables would have all energy come from sources such as wind and solar, net-zero entails an openness to so-called negative emissions technologies, a suite of measures ranging from the experimental — like carbon capture and storage, machines to extract carbon from industrial processes and put it underground — to the conventional, like afforestation, or planting trees that suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. [SOURCE]
In late February 2019 Naomi Klein’s colleague at The Intercept , Rachel Cohen made the same acknowledgemnt as many others including Kate Aronoff, that the Green New Deal does not expressly rule out forms of supposedly ‘clean energy’. Naomi Klein had written about the Green New Deal resolution the week before without mentioning CCUS or nuclear. Indeed, Klein managed to discuss the unions without ever acknowledging how many are with Carbon Capture Coalition.
The Green New Deal resolution doesn’t explicitly rule out carbon capture technology, but in a section that deals with removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, the authors endorse “proven low-tech solutions that increase soil carbon storage,” like protecting land and planting new trees. Other vaguely written sections of the resolution, however, could open the door for carbon-capture technology. The resolution endorses “creating solutions to remove” emissions, and endorses the international exchange of technology, products, and services to address climate change.
The Sunrise Movement does not see “a heavy role for carbon capture and storage,” said Weber, the group’s political director, though he said it could be worth investing in some research and development for so-called heavy industry like steelmaking and shipbuilding. He noted that carbon capture technology is “pretty expensive compared to just reducing emissions by moving toward alternative forms of energy.” Ocasio-Cortez’s and Markey’s offices did not return requests for comment. [SOURCE]
In early March 2019, a month after Julian Brave Noisecat who was still working with 350 dot org acknowledged that the Green New Deal resolution had a “keep the door open approach” in regard to it’s specific language, Mark Z. Jacobson and a colleague reasserted that a 100% renewable Green New Deal was possible without nuclear or CCUS. This position is in line with the position articulated by Janet Redman from Greenpeace USA in February 2019.
Critics claim, though, that the Green New Deal is unaffordable and uneconomical and will sink the US into more debt. Having led the research team that developed science-based plans to transition each of the 50 states to 100% wind, water, and solar (WWS) in all energy sectors (electricity, transportation, heating and cooling, and industry), we conclude the opposite is true: the benefits of clean energy systems greatly exceed the costs. 10 other independent research groups similarly find that 100% renewable energy systems are low cost without fossil fuels with carbon capture or nuclear power. [SOURCE]
In mid April 2019 AOC in partnership with The Intercept, Naomi Klein, Avi Lewis and Molly Crabapple produced a fanciful video that did not attend to the spectre of the coming enhanced oil recovery and fossil hydrogen booms, but rather, they focused on aspirational outcomes.
‘A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ [SOURCE]
Sunrise Movement co-founder Stephen O’Hanlon spoke at a rally in Washington in early May 2019, in it he reasserted the commitment to “100% renewables” despite the change of language with the introduction of the Green New Deal Resolution. But in order to prioritize 100% renewables you have to be 100% committed to a fossil fuel phase out.
We have proven solutions to 100% renewable energy like wind and solar — we want to be prioritizing development of them. That said, we don’t want to shut down nuclear power plants and replace them with coal-fired power plants. [SOURCE]
In early July 2019 the NDN Collective published a position paper titled ‘Mobilizing and Indigenous Green New Deal’. One of the authors was Julian Brave Noisecat. By this point Noisecat had become a crucial member of Data for Progress team that defined the language that he argues is “not specific” enough. Indeed Noisecat was on staff when D4P invented the phrase “non-renewable clean energy”.
NDN Collective shares the concern stated by IEN that the language around “green infrastructure” and “renewable clean energy” is not specific enough to prevent future co-optation and abuse. The term ‘green infrastructure’ has been utilized to describe various carbon capture mechanisms which, like carbon trading, allow extractive industries to continue the dirty and unjust extraction of fossil fuels. Nuclear energy production and energy generated by large hydroelectric dams are both zero-emission energy production practices that carry deep toxic and damaging legacies within Indigenous communities and homelands.
NDN is the most ambitious, systemic effort to empower Indigenous communities in the history of philanthropy. (slogan on website)[SOURCE]
In mid September 2019 Naomi Klein sat on a panel with Julian Brave Noisecat and organizer Jane McAlevey. Klein stumbles into a criticism of Green New Deal proponents. With the Green new Deal in the hands of various Democrat aligned groups including the Sunrise Movement, it should be no surprise that the level of engagement from the public is merely a matter of metrics and polling.
“I come across people all the time who are like, “I love the Green New Deal , I have no idea how to get involved”, like, they’re in the women’s movement you know, they’re teachers or nurses, and it’s not…The path of entry isn’t clear yet to enough people who actually are the people who have the most to gain.” Naomi Klein [SOURCE]
In late September 2019 Naomi Klein sat down with former The Atlantic and Boston Globe editor, and strong supporter of 350 dot org Wen Stephenson to discuss her new book ‘On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal’. Klein, rather than point out the greatest threats to phasing out fossil fuels, threats she articulated in ‘This Changes Everything’, Klein explains how she helped promulgate “hope” in the Green New Deal. If her “fairy tale” had attended to the real risks to a Green New Deal, like the coming enhanced oil recovery and fossil hydrogen booms, then it would have been a different, but much much more honest film.
“Our experience when we did the Message From the Future film — which is a fairy tale, I admit that — but people wept, because they were like, I had not allowed myself to imagine a future that was not terrible. I think there’s a space for that, for giving ourselves those little exercises, because most of us have never let ourselves do it.”
“I think one reason for hope is that we are having more debates about the structural crisis within democracy, that this is happening in parallel. When I look at history, and these moments when progressive change happened, it does tend to be like a dam breaking, and we do tend to see a lot of change very quickly, after long periods of no change.” [SOURCE]
In late October 2019 Naomi Klein spoke about her new book at a Berkeley Journalism event. In her talk she reinforced the need to observe climate justice principles while at the same time suggesting that the Green new Deal is building on the work of the climate justice movement rather than eroding its substance to further the agenda of the Democrats. Yet another moment where Klein failed to disturb the agreed narrative.
The Green New Deal…this is a political framework that builds on the work of the climate justice movement over many decades…the principles that the frontline communities need to design the response, [SOURCE]
In late February 2020 Janet Redman reasserted the need the to work directly against the fossil fuel industry’s plans for continued extractivism under 45Q tax credits.
We need to think about what’s the most important way to spend our money and our political will,” which means shifting to renewables, not working on things that allow the fossil fuel industry to continue producing, said Janet Redman, the environmental group’s climate director. [SOURCE]
Like the many letters sent by collections of climate and social justice NGOs, the US Climate Action Network ‘Vision for Equitable Climate’ document contains firmly stated positions against technologies like CCUS, but leaves key operators out of the spotlight. This is standard for any NGO or collective that wants to support a Green New Deal, but does not want to marginalize itself. While they take a position against CCUS and direct air capture for CO2 enhanced oil recovery, they do respond to the specific ‘clean’ language in the Green New Deal Report and the resolution that followed it.
Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground and Stop Expansion.
Target a Just Transition to 100% Renewable Energy.
Ensure That Polluters Pay the Full Costs of Their License to Operate.
Ensure That Polluters Pay for the Cost of a Just Transition. [SOURCE]
Silence leaves no paper trail. This is where making arguments gets more difficult because pointing out what someone or a group ought to have done this or that places a critic in a field of conjecture. As someone who has been pointing out the truth of the term “clean energy” for the past 4 years and who has written extensively about the engagement of industrial labor organizations with the efforts of big oil, gas and coal to deliver tax credits as an effective subsidy, I think I have an excellent vantage point to argue for what ought to be said by anyone claiming to be committed to phasing out fossil fuels.
As I have argued in multiple forums, avoidance of unpacking certain inconvenient truths is the key mechanism in the thinking of self censoring, high reach individuals. I would argue that this is why Naomi Klein went dark before the Unity Task Force recommendations were released followed quickly by Biden’s Build Back Better plans, and why Greenpeace did not fill the gap created when John Noel went on paternity leave shortly before the presidential climate policy season.
In the final part of this series I will review my investigations into bipartisan efforts to expand tax credits as a subsidy for CO2 enhanced oil recovery, and examine the pragmatic choices made by high reach individuals out of fear of losing influence and career position. I will show how the largely ignored bipartisan political will supports a relentless fossil fuel industry hell bent on further entrenching fossil fuel extraction through massive expansions in pipeline and refining infrastructure. I will show that no matter who is the next president, all who support a Green New Deal will need to train their eyes very closely on legislative process, especially senate committees.
The substance of Biden’s climate plans compared against the original basis of the Green New Deal that was sold to First Nations and frontline advocates reveals a stark contrast. For the Green new Deal to function in the political space, it has to belong to the Democrats. The Democrats will never settle for policies that actually threaten the power and profits of fossil fools. The Green New Deal had to satisfy the progressives and their friends the Democrat aligned NGOs, but it also had to function as a messaging vehicle for moderate Democrats, hence its language is so vague that it does not raise difficult questions.
Prevarication is the process whereby lies are told and truths are omitted. The vast majority of voices speaking for or about the Green New Deal have either a narrative or a funding stream to protect, sometimes it’s both. Between the abrogations of all the various players sits the unattended truth, that First Nations and frontline communities are not safe enough for NGOs to leave in charge of exercising the principles of a Just Transition.
+++
*Since you made it to the end, and if you have any energy to read on. Please enjoy these ponderings on the metaphor I have chosen to represent this series.
’15 Things About Weekend At Bernie’s That Don’t Make Sense (But We Don’t Care)’
[Michael Swifte is an Australian activist and a member of the Wrong Kind of Green critical thinking collective.]
Sep 11
20201
Celebrity [Capitalism | Humanitarianism | Neoliberalism], Social Engineering, Whiteness & Aversive Racism
350.org Al Gore Avaaz Bill McKibben Callum Grieve Faux Left Greta Thunberg Naomi Klein New Deal for Nature Planet of the Humans Rockefeller Brothers Fund We Mean Business
Wrong Kind of Green
September 9, 2020
An informal response written by Cory Morningstar (Wrong Kind of Green Collective) to the recent Max Blumenthal piece “‘Green’ billionaires behind professional activist network that led suppression of ‘Planet of the Humans’ documentary”.
Let’s begin.
Adding: Video, Gloria Steinem Discussing Her Time in the Central Intelligence Agency, [running time 3m:16s]:
Adding: The Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act heralded as “moonshot”, “historic” and “one of the World’s Most Ambitious Climate Plans” promises more than a tripling of solar by 2025.
Percentage of NYC electricity from solar, 2019: 1.40%.
Adding that “renewable energy” is old news, as data, as a new class asset, has emerged as the new oil – with carbon capture and storage, nuclear, and geoengineering to be at the forefront of climate “solutions” (with little resistance).
Adding: This language can serve to situate industrial sites (infrastructure which will include the physical waste and ecological devastation) on First Nations lands (recognizing that all land has been stolen from First Nations) and marginalized/impoverished communities.
4. MB: “Jacobson’s study, according to National Geographic, was “a foundation stone” of the Green New Deal proposal put forward by Democratic Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”Adding: The National Geographic is a leading partner in the plan to financialize nature led by the World Economic Forum, the World Wildlife Fund, Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project and the United Nations, which partnered with the WEF on June 13, 2019. This is the single most important threat to the natural world, now underway – with the non-profit industrial complex in its entirety, in tandem with media, supporting it (or remaining silent on it). This is the corporate capture of the commons, global in scale. Nature is to be bought, sold and traded on Wall Street. Assigning monetary value to social capital will follow. Nicole Schwab, daughter of Klaus Schwab, founder and CEO of the World Economic Forum, serves as National Geographic Society Director International Relations, in addition to overseeing the World Economic Forum initiatives: Platform to Accelerate Nature Based Solutions – and 1tDOTorg (the Trillion Trees initiative).
[More: https://twitter.com/search?q=%40elleprovocateur%20%3A%20nicole&src=typed_query]Adding: The 2014 People’s Climate March was a project of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and V.K. Rasmussen Foundation from the onset. Avaaz and 350-org were the leading NGOs tasked with “herding” the “cats”. Tom Kruse, Program Director at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, serves/served on the 350-org U.S. advisory council.
Sept 23, 2015: Under One Bad Sky | TckTckTck’s 2014 People’s Climate March: This Changed Nothing:
https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2015/09/23/under-one-bad-sky/
Book review of This changes everything: Capitalism vs the Climate – by Tom Kruse, program director of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Featured in the 2016 issue of Alliance magazine (“for philanthropy and social investment worldwide”). Sept 27, 2014, Klein: “”But I have never said that we need to “slay,” “ditch” or “dismantle” capitalism in order to fight climate change.” Today, under the guise of “stakeholder capitalism” the ruling class is determined to maintain the social license required to continue in their plunder and exploitation while securing their position and status. See work of activist and author Stephanie McMillan.
Klein’s alliance with the Rockefeller Foundation goes way back. Nov 28, 2011: “Mission Related Investing, Making Sense of Philanthropy’s Role in the Occupy Wall Street Movement.” Featured on the five person panel was both Naomi Klein and Rockefeller’s Tom Kruse. In 2016 Kruse wrote a glowing book review on This Changes Everything (the project the Rockefeller’s helped finance). Klein’s book, launched on September 16, 2014, just prior to “The People’s Climate March” and Climate Week NYC (Sept 22-28)(an annual event hosted in association with the United Nations; organized by The Climate Group, and the World Economic Forum), served a foundation for a ten-year global social engineering project. “Changing Together” and “Together” would be branded terms that would slowly erode all critical class analysis. On September 17, 2019, again just prior to the UN activities, Klein would release “On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal”. This book would serve to build demand for a Global Green New Deal as sought by the United Nations.
Sept 18, 2019: The Behavioural Change Project “To Change Everything” [Volume II, Act V]:
Sept 24, 2015: McKibben’s Divestment Tour – Brought to You by Wall Street [Part XIII of an Investigative Report] The Increasing Vogue for Capitalist-Friendly Climate Discourse:
June 7, 2016: Book review by Rockefeller’s Tom Kruse featured in Alliance Magazine (“for philanthropy and social investment worldwide”):
All roads lead to emerging markets. The roads are paved with the sustainable development goals.
6. MB: “It began when the foundation incubated a group called 1Sky with a $1 million grant. McKibben immediately joined as board member.”Adding: 1Sky was injected with massive funding as this juncture, but it actually began with Step It Up (2007) – the same year Avaaz was launched. Here I will add that Avaaz and 350 are closely intertwined and have been since inception. May Boeve, 350 co-founder and current executive director, (base salary of $130,431 in 2017) has been listed as director in Avaaz 990 forms on more than one occasion.
Avaaz plays a leading role in destruction of targeted sovereign states. (A fact Klein blocked me for when asking why she did not expose this on Twitter.) Klein’s father-in-law, often affiliated with her Leap NGO, is one of Canada’s most egregious imperialists. A ideology that Klein has supported on many occasions. (Bolivia, Syria, Libya).
Avaaz is also behind the scheme to financialize nature. This ties into the global climate strikes (to strengthen the Voice for the Planet and New Deal for Nature campaigns led by World Economic Forum/UN, and the World Wildlife Fund) where again, Avaaz has played a leading role. 350 and Avaaz are both co-founders of GCCA which has largely navigated the climate “movement” since 2009. In 2015 Kumi Naidoo, former executive director of both Greenpeace International and GCCA, serving as executive director of Amnesty International, until resigning Dec 2019, was cited as a 350 director in the 2015 990 filing.
Adding: $1 million is pocket change for these groups. Look at ClimateWorks and other sources of funding (corporate profits laundered through tax exempt foundations) that protect and expand capital. 350 is international in scope – financed to provide “climate change awareness services training and events” – prior to the November 2019 coup in Bolivia. This foreign influence training model (imperial tentacles) extends to countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Sept 11, 2019: A Design to Win — A Multi-Billion Dollar Investment [VOLUME II, ACT I]:
Article posted October 1, 2015. The UN Global Goals, also know as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), are the vehicle for emerging markets. The Word Economic Forum oversees the implementation of the SDGs.
8. MB: “Today, the Solutions Project is ‘100% co opted and sold out,’ Fox acknowledged.”
Adding further background research on the Solutions Project:
Dec 17, 2016: Standing Rock: Profusion, Collusion & Big Money Profits [Part 5]:
Adding this as a side note: Media has recently covered the WE –Trudeau “scandal” in Canada. Conveniently media has omitted key facts – such as Jeff Skoll having been involved in the financing/creation of WE from inception. WE is partnered with the United Nations with deep ties to the ruling class in the UK.
Thread: https://twitter.com/elleprovocateur/status/1286672712690262016
Adding: To see what Gore’s dream of solar in remote and/or impoverished areas of Africa look like in real life, please read:
Jan 30, 2019: The Most Inconvenient Truth: “Capitalism is in Danger of Falling Apart” [ACT III]:
Adding: The term net-zero has nothing to do with zero emissions.
![Source: Indigenous Environmental Network [IEN]](https://i0.wp.com/www.wrongkindofgreen.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IEN-Statement-on-GND-Net-Zero.png?ssl=1)
Source: Indigenous Environmental Network [IEN]
Adding: Co-signer Dinwoodie serves as Sierra Club’s Climate Cabinet and Scientific Advisory Panel, MIT Mechanical Engineering Visiting Committee, Advisory Board to The Solutions Project, Advisor to the MIT Energy Club (MIT is a World Economic Forum co-curator), and executive producer of film “Time To Choose”.
Adding the background to photo of Naomi Klein and Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD.)Jan 25, 2016, The De-Klein of a Revolutionary Writer: From Subcomandante Marcos to Angel Gurria:
Adding that the perception that “Klein, a longtime critic of elite family foundations and the billionaire class” is largely a false premise manufactured by media. Consider “Honourable” Hilary M. Weston presenting the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction to Naomi Klein, on October 15, 2014. The Westons, one of the most wealthy families in Canada, were architects of a 14-year-long bread price-fixing scheme, fleecing working class Canadians of grocery money. In 2018, the Westons were named Ireland’s richest family for the tenth year running, with a wealth of €11.42 billion. In 2020 the Westons were included in the Sunday Times Rich List ranking of the wealthiest people in the UK. The Westons are the third richest family in Canada (made possible by the exploitation and theft of labour).
More recently Klein shares equal billing for the endorsement of The Future We Choose book (authored by Christiana Figueres; UN, We Mean Business, etc.) with World Economic Forum founder and CEO, Klaus Schwab.
The World Economic Forum’s Book Club pick for March 2020: The Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac.
There is no institution more important than the World Economic Forum at this moment in time, in regard to what is to happen under the guise of climate mitigation and protection of biodiversity. This, the most critical component, is missing.
Also recent, is the 2019 Confluence Philanthropy webinar with Klein, and Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund under the subheading of “mission-aligned investing” (often referred to as “impact investing”):
12. MB: “Klein has celebrated the Danish government where KR Foundation leaders have served for advancing “some of the most visionary environmental policies in the world.”
Adding: The Nordic countries are also at the helm in the plan to assign monetary value to all of nature’s “services”, global in scale.
Link: https://twitter.com/elleprovocateur/status/1301966944321572865
September 20, 2019: “It was the Nordic Council Sustainability Committee who initially came up with the idea of an initiative targeting the youth, and the idea was immediately supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers for the Environment.”
Nordic Council of Ministers: “This analysis examines the attitudes of Nordic youth aged 13-30 in relation to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 12 (SDG 12) on Sustainable Consumption and Production.”
13. MB: “For its part, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund has supported The Syria Campaign, a public relations outfit that clamored for US military intervention to remove the UN-recognized government of Syria.”
Here it is critical to add that The Syria Campaign is a project incubated by Purpose – the for profit public relations arm of Avaaz. Specializing behavioural change, it’s clients include some of the biggest corporations on the planet. It’s most recent partnership with the UN is ShareVerified. (Promoting vaccines and data mining while attempting to control control pandemic narrative being leveraged by World Economic Forum to usher in the fourth industrial revolution architecture.) Both Purpose and Greenpeace contributed to the creation of We Mean Business coalition representing 1340 corporations with an approx. 24.8 trillion market cap.
https://twitter.com/elleprovocateur/status/1193691372290793472
https://twitter.com/elleprovocateur/status/1224698188818456576
https://twitter.com/elleprovocateur/status/1190643776139739136
15. “Klein’s 2015 book and documentary film on climate change, “This Changes Everything,” was initially launched as a project called “The Message.” It was supported with hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants from a who’s who of major family foundations that help sustain McKibben’s political apparatus.”Adding source: July 30, 2014, Financing “The Message” Behind Naomi Klein’s ‘This Changes Everything’ Project:
Susan Rockefeller at her home on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, New York, on Sept. 8, 2015. Samira Bouaou/Epoch Times)
16. MB: “In a recent The Intercept column, Klein took aim at Schmidt, describing him as one of the billionaires exploiting “a coherent Pandemic Shock Doctrine” to begin “building a high tech dystopia.” She noted that Schmidt is closely aligned with the national security state as chair of the Defense Innovation Board, which consults for the Pentagon on the military’s application of artificial intelligence.”
Adding that Klein neglects to use the World Economic Forum’s terminology – “fourth industrial revolution”. (Max also neglects to mention this critical terminology.) See Alison McDowell’s work on Artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G in respect to the nightmarish future of militarism. Independent journalist Alison McDowell also challenges Klein on specifics and framing (via Twitter) which Klein ignores.
17. MB: The Senate version of the Green New Deal calls for the construction of “smart” power grids almost exactly like those Schmidt imagined. Klein and other high-profile Green New Deal proponents have neglected to mention that this seeming benign component of the well-intentioned plan could represent a giant step on the way to the “high tech dystopia” of Silicon Valley barons and their national security state partners.Adding (again) that the Green New Deal (resurrected from 2009, led by the United Nations, Avaaz, etc.) is a Trojan horse for fourth industrial revolution technologies and the financialization of nature.
Adding – that Klein, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Al Gore, Jamie Margolin of Zero Hour (groomed by Gore, tagged by “We Don’t Have Time” in the screenshot below), are the chosen/leading influencers – for a Global Green New Deal as sought by UN (now partnered with both World Economic Forum and the World Bank).
https://twitter.com/elleprovocateur/status/1187552973611814913
https://twitter.com/elleprovocateur/status/1263966577139089410
Communication specialist Callum Grieve: Co-founder of We Mean Business, creator of Climate Week NYC for The Climate Group – and Greta Thunberg handler. Grieve has coordinated high-level climate change communications campaigns and interventions for the United Nations, World Bank Group, C40, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and several Fortune 500 companies. Further reading: “A 100 Trillion Dollar Storytelling Campaign [A Short Story], Oct 6, 2019]
18. MB: Flush with dark money from Democratic Party-aligned billionaires, Sunrise Movement co-founder Varshini Prakash stated on July 14 – the day Biden released his clean energy plan: “It’s no secret that we’ve been critical of Vice President’s Biden’s plans and commitments in the past. Today, he’s responded to many of those criticisms: dramatically increasing the scale and urgency of investments… Our movement, alongside environmental justice communities and frontline workers, has taught Joe Biden to talk the talk.”“The liquidation of fascism must be the liquidation of the bourgeoisie that created it.” – Gramsci [Tagging this with #WeDontHaveTime]
Adding: “Our movement”: To speak of “environmental justice communities” and “frontline workers” – as having taught Joe Biden to “talk the talk” is hard to swallow, when Biden is an imperialist. Has Sunrise transformed Biden into an anti-imperialist who now respects self-determination? (rhetorical question).
Video: Biden and Elliott Abrams on Nicaragua,1987:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4731064/user-clip-1987-bidennicaragua
January 18, 2017, Davos: Joe Biden (R) with Klaus Schwab, founder and CEO of the World Economic Forum, Image: Manuel Lopez
19. “While it brands itself as a grassroots movement that has organized anti-establishment stunts putting centrist figures like Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein on the spot, the Sunrise Movement was incubated with a grant from the Sierra Club, the Mike Bloomberg-backed juggernaut of Big Green organizing. Today, offices of the two organizations are located a floor apart in the same building in downtown Washington DC.”Adding: Background on Sunrise and the Green New Deal:
Feb 13, 2019: The Green New Deal is the Trojan Horse for the Financialization of Nature [ACT V]:
20. Finally, Michael Moore’s commentary in the Q&A session that followed the release of “Planet of the Humans, was worse than disappointing – yet more than revealing. Highlighting Greta Thunberg, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Extinction Rebellion, Green New Deal – all in the design/pocket of the ruling classes. In just one hour Moore undermines the said intent of the film. “That’s what’s great about Bernie and AOC… each of their Green New Deals acknowledge this income inequality…” Any/all Green New Deals will serve the ruling class. The World Economic Forum-United Nations is at the helm. Not Sanders. Not AOC. Not the Democrats. This matters as over 105,000 very interested people listened – wishing to learn. Moore: “we need to have a whole new environmental movement, maybe what Greta has started… Sun Rise Movement, Extinction Rebellion, Greta and her Friday School Strike.” Moore re-directs youth right back to foundation financed, billionaire/corporate backed “movements”. [Thread]
Adding that Max B missed the important article by WKOG collective member Michael on the Planet of the Humans documentary:
In respect to the pandemic referenced by MB in his article. The ruling class has weaponized the power of both fear and conformity against us. That Covid-19 is the catalyst to usher in a new global architecture, that is, the “fourth industrial revolution”, is not conjecture, not “conspiracy theory“, but a fact. Full compliance and social license of the global citizenry is required.
The ruling class has conspired to usher in a new global governance with Covid-19 as the pretext. With the World Economic-United Nations-World Bank partnership; a global consolidation of power, well underway. It is understood that the transition will cause unprecedented suffering. The only thing they fear is revolt.
The fourth industrial revolution architecture catalogues children as human capital data to be commodified on blockchain, linking behaviour to benefits. The human population to be controlled “via digital identity systems tied to cashless benefit payments within the context of a militarized 5G, “internet of things” and an “augmented reality” environment.” [See the work of Alison McDowell.]
The fourth industrial revolution cannot come into fruition without the 5G infrastructure that will run the Internet of Things. “Smart” cities (via Global Covenant of Mayors) must be understood within the context of global policing and the military industrial complex. Cybersecurity will be the battle space of the 21st century.
As part of “the great reset”, in 2021, the ruling class intends to implement the financialization of nature. Those with money will own nature. The very corporations that have brought us to the precipice of ecological collapse – will now be appointed as the new stewards of nature. This has been dubbed by John Elkington (Extinction Rebellion Business signatory, Volans) as the “biosphere economy”. This represents the largest transformation of the global economic system in modern history. Assigning monetary value to nature (“natural capital”) will replace GDP, with nature “valued” at 125 trillion vs. GDP at 85.9 trillion (2018).
Voting in a capitalist system is not going to cut it. Petitions are not going to stop it.
An environmental movement not built on a foundation of anti-imperialism, anti-militarism and anti-capitalism is meaningless. Worthless.
I have tried to keep this concise and brief – which is impossible. Upon that note, I caution that the most important elements now underway, in respect to further destruction of our natural world, are still be ignored by groups and writers with far more resources, and far larger audiences than we have at Wrong Kind of Green. Silence is complicity. Discourse is a strategy utilized by those in service to the ruling class. I hope this inspires more people to investigate, write and organize.
“And that’s the real question facing the white activists today. Can they tear down the institutions that have put us all in the trick bag we’ve been into for the last hundreds of years?” So to me the question is “are we tearing down the institutions or keeping them propped up?”
— Stokely Carmichael, 1966
[Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist, focusing on global ecological collapse and political analysis of the non-profit industrial complex. She resides in Canada. Her recent writings can be found on Wrong Kind of Green, The Art of Annihilation, Internationalist 360, Tortilla con Sal, and Counterpunch. Her writing has also been published by Bolivia Rising and Cambio, the official newspaper of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. You can follow her on twitter @elleprovocateur]
