by John Goetz
Kate Raworth of Oxfam International recently authored a 34-page report that began: “In failing to tackle climate change with urgency, rich countries are effectively violating the human rights of millions of the world’s poorest people.”
Kate goes on to claim that we now have determined with “scientific certainty” that climate change (not global warming?) is
creating floods, droughts, hurricanes, sea-level rise, and seasonal unpredictability. The result is failed harvests, disappearing islands, destroyed homes, water scarcity, and deepening health crises, which are undermining millions of peoples’ rights to life, security, food, water, health, shelter, and culture.
In other words, countries like the US, France, Britain, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada (I listed members of the G8) are essentially using global warming to violate the human rights of, well, basically the rest of the world.
It certainly is an interesting tack for a climate change activist to take. Most people don’t like being accused of violating another’s human rights. Obviously, if Oxfam can convince people that by driving their kids to soccer practice that they are in fact depriving someone of their food, health, or even life, they will be motivated by guilt to change their habits. Images of polar bears floating on ice floes must not have been enough.
Oxfam calls for urgent action, as outlined and excerpted here:
Rich countries must lead now in cutting global emissions
The science is clear: global warming must stay well below 2C to avoid creating irreversible climate impacts that would undermine millions of people’s rights. To keep the risk of exceeding 2C low, global emissions must peak by 2015 and then fall by at least 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.
[How far below 2C “well below” means is unclear]
Rich countries must provide the finance needed for low-carbon technologies in developing countries
Since rich countries’ excessive emissions have left the rest of the world with so little atmospheric space, the global reductions required now threaten the right to development in poor countries. Rich countries must therefore deliver the finance and technology needed for poor countries to develop on low-carbon pathways and realise rights at the same time.
[Now global warming is reducing the size of the atmosphere!]
Rich countries must halt their biofuel policies which are undermining poor people’s right to food
…the current rush into biofuels is both failing to deliver emissions cuts, and undermining the rights of people in developing countries…Food prices have risen over 80 per cent in the last three years, with grain-price rises costing developing economies $324bn last year alone – more than three times what they received in aid. Rich-country biofuel programmes have been identified by the International Monetary Fund, among others, as a principal driver of this crisis, and may already be responsible for having pushed 30 million people into poverty.
[Does this mean Brazil can continue producing ethanol? And should we stop research into algal fuels?]
Rich countries must provide the finance needed for international adaptation
Since rich countries’ excessive emissions have put poor people’s rights at risk in developing countries, human-rights norms create a strong obligation for them to provide a remedy by financing adaptation…Adaptation finance must be provided as grants, since people in poor countries should not be expected to repay the funds needed to remedy violations of their rights.
[I think we need a list of “rich” and “poor” countries. Where do China, India, Brazil, and the UAE fall?]
Developing countries must focus their adaptation strategies on the most vulnerable people
National adaptation strategies must put communities at the centre of planning, focus particularly on women’s needs and interests, and guarantee essentials through social protection. Good practice is emerging – and it is working – but needs to spread much faster.
[I found this surprising. Does it mean global warming affects women more than men?]
Developing countries must have ownership in managing international adaptation funds
Since adaptation finance is owed to safeguard the rights of communities facing climate impacts, their governments must have ownership in managing international adaptation funds and, in turn, must be accountable to those communities when spending the finance.
[I am sure there is no threat of corruption, because this is climate change aid.]
Companies must call on governments to act with far greater urgency in cutting global emissions
In the run up to the UN’s 2007 Climate Conference in Bali, the business leaders of 150 leading global companies – from the USA to Europe, Australia, and China – called for a ‘sufficiently ambitious, international and comprehensive legally-binding United Nations agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions’, in order to give business long, legal, and loud signals to scale up investment in low-carbon technologies.
[Isn’t investment made when a return is to be had?]
Companies must take significant steps to cut their global emissions
Too few companies have started exploring how their own operations can be made climate resilient, let alone how their strategies for achieving supply-chain resilience could help or harm the communities – farmers, workers, neighbours, and consumers – they interact with in developing countries.
[That gives me an idea for a new executive position at my company: Chief Climate Resilience Officer]
So there you have it. Joe Smith, an apple farmer in Baroda, MI – if you want to clear your conscience of the human rights violations you are committing against Ho Si Thuan, a rice farmer in Quang Tri province, Viet Nam – you better start lobbying the US government and US companies to implement the steps outlined above. Otherwise, Mr. Thuan’s misfortunes will fall squarely in your lap.
Oxfam ceased to be a true charity more than 20 years ago, since then it has been an overt campaigning organisation for global-government socialist idealogues who cannot gain power through the ballot box. The whole argument is, of course, built on a bed of sand and I don’t just mean the AGW Armageddon theory. Obviously the argument disappears if the AGW theory is incorrect; but even if it is correct, no amount of de-industrialisation in the west will make a difference because China and India are going to continue their thrust for development so that CO2 emissions cannot possibly fall as Oxfam requires.
What a quaint world it was when Oxfam (an Oxford based charity concerned with alleviating famine, hence the name) concentrated on doing good rather than on political grandstanding. Back then they had the sense to realise that the most effective action is not gesture politics but actual physical assistance by way of developing agricultural techniques to maximise crops and bringing modern medicine into the poorest countries.
If they want to preach, let them preach about corruption – the biggest hurdle to alleviating poverty, especially in Africa. Grandiose political schemes inevitably allow governments control over how the scheme operates in their country. All too often the result is billions syphoned-off to Swiss bank accounts by the venal politicians, billions spent on bureaucracy to reward party loyalists with high paying non-jobs, billions spent on armed forces to defend the rulers and their new wealth and that which is actually spent on the citizens being allocated along party or tribal lines.
Where was the condemnation of human rights breaches by corrupt governments, politically controlled police forces and partisan courts? Where was the call to make all aid conditional on the release of political prisoners? Where was the call to make all aid conditional on fair allocation on the ground? In short where was the call for the recipient countries themselves to cease to violate their citizens’ human rights?
The idea that I should pay extra taxes to drive my car because (like the wings of the proverbial butterfly) it has consequences to the human rights of people overseas is a complete nonsense when those people are deprived of anything vaguely resembling human rights by their own governments.
With any luck this naive and impractical report is printed on soft paper so it can be hung up in the lavatory and put to a fitting use.
*** “Eco-reparations”***
Let us not forget that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and their allied loonies in Congress are doing their utmost best to paddle the US up the same creek. At the risk of politicizing, might I suggest these folks need to have their fangs pulled as well!
@RAYQ MCMULLEN
Dee Norris, in one simple answer: If you can’t prevent it, control it!
‘BigOil’… Ahhhh… How about we avoid yet another pejorative like ‘climate denier’, OK?
Anyhow, the major petroleum companies are in the energy business and they all know that eventually petroleum will run out under the generally accepted biotic-origin theory.
They would be mighty foolish not to diversify into other energy sources which also have a good alignment with their current markets. It is not about controlling it at all. It is just capitalism in action. If hydrogen technology eventually reaches a point of marketability, expect them to move into supplying those markets as well.
Where I see butterflies, others see two bats tugging at each other. The inkblot remains the same.
Freedom isn’t popular with the media or academia. One relies on “insider information” from politicians and the other on government grants in order to exist, and stepping on toes isn’t appreciated.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H. L. Mencken
Snip if you will, moderator, but I’d like to add that along with this fine website I visit http://www.lewrockwell.com daily to check on the political climate, from a refreshingly free point of view.
Dee, did you know that they produce the majority of hydrogen from fossil fuel? They break it down to produce hydrogen and… CO2! Of course they will move in any direction where they can provide the “fuel” in order to make money. You can bet that if we eventually fill our cars with water, they will sell water!
So we either bankrupt ourselves giving money to the third world
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/applications/blogs/pressoffice/?p=1610
or we destroy our economies by attempting to cut our CO2 footprints to ridiculous levels?
Who will Oxfam turn to for funding then?
Old man, you have to know that most of the corn grown in the usa is not for human consumption anyway. It is mainly for process and cattle. The rise in food cost was clearly the result of increased fuel price (from many causes) and this had an impact over the whole chain of food production.
Of course the system is not perfect. But on the long run, we need to find alternative solutions to reduce the price to produce and move things around. We can look at better efficiency for the transports, but we certainly need also alternative fuels.
Stopping wars and protectionism would also be a good start.
Carbon Dioxide Is A Great Gas, Not A Pollutant
http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?RsrcID=32223
@RAYQ MCMULLEN:
Yes, steam reforming of natural gas is the only cost effective way to generate hydrogen (it is about 80% efficient) on a large scale but is foolish to power our cars this way since using the natural gas directly is more efficient and only requires a minor conversion of existing engine technology. As I said, hydrogen technology is not ready for market yet.
Hydrogen is not a primary energy source, but is an efficient way to store energy produced by other means, be it solar, wind, nuclear, etc…
Once nuclear power generation is under full swing again, look for cheap hydrogen generated at the plant by the electrolysis of the waste water from the final cooling cycle prior to discharge. Once hydrogen technology is common, it also might be a wiser use of wind turbines to generate hydrogen in-situ which will store the ‘wind energy’ for later consumption.
I am not a fan of large industrial wind turbines as their profitability is a product of tax breaks. However, that being said, if highway-rated all electric cars become cost effective (or a hydrogen transportation system materializes within my life time), having a 10 kw residential turbine on the mountain ridge at the back of my property starts to become attractive with a reasonable ROI that is within the expected lifespan of the turbine itself. If I could get my hands on one of those Ford Explorer electrics, I consider installing a turbine immediately.
My actions would solely be guided by economics and not by any misguided notion of reducing my ‘carbon footprint’. IMHO, CO2 is plant food, not a threat to the planet.
Ray,
Never said it did, nor has anyone else here that I can see. Last estimate I saw was it takes about a litre of petroleum based fuel to produce 1.25 litres of ethanol from corn. Of course you have to consider that ethanol contains less ‘energy’ than gasoline so a direct comparison is not appropriate.
If anything we should be using switchgrass rather than corn, but that is turning out to be a political morass similar to the cotton vs hemp issue in the 30s.
But that does not deal with the issue of the relative unhealthiness of ethanol.
We should lobby for a “Carbon Cycle” Day.
Fine. So the developed world blows half its economic growth, based on a scientific theory (feedback loops) recently called into extemely serious question.
What effect does one suppose that will have on the poorest nations of the world? These holier-than-thou honkers make me tired. If one is going to be that sanctimonious, it well behooves one to make damnsure one is right, and that possible (and actual) unintended consequences are carefully examined. (c.f., the joys of ethanol, crossref. food riots)
My high horse can beat up their high horse.
Ray,
As an Engineer who has worked in the energy business for over 40 years, I can tell you that I would not stake my personal investments or the energy future/economic prosprity of our country on some dude in U-tube touting ethanol.
I have had the opportunity to talk with high level management in a major oil company who informed me that they performed studies on ethanol since some president in their company thought that making ethanol would be a good business. I can tell you that using ethanol for a moror fuel was thoroughly examined by many of the brightest engineers and scientiests who graduated from the best universities in the country. It was clear that ethanol does not make sense from the thermodynamic or economic viewpoint. Notice how the “dude” claims that scientist like the one from Cornell University are paid for by “big oil” and therefore they are lying. Of course we know that this is the same tactic used by the global warmist crowd when they cannot debate the subject on the merits. One needs to keep in mind that the corn lobby is the most effective and corrupt of any in Washington. If you don’t believe it loook at all the subsidies that go to the farmers, the ethanol plants, etc. Each gallon of ethanol that goes into my gas tank gets a 53 cent subsidy and no road tax is paid. Why is there a huge import duty on imported ethanol that can be made more efficiently with sugar cane? Brazil is now testing this in the world courts. Because of the corn state interest there is (corrrupt?) support from both Republicans and Democrats. Surprising, the Republican platform wants to end ethanol mandates.
Over the past 8 years I have personally studied from an engineering viewpoint both sides of the ethanol claims ethanol (especially from corn). You will find that there are a lot of papers written on both sides each with its claims regarding the energy required to produce ethanol from corn and other cellulosic materials. When one studies the production of ethanol from corn as an engineer one finds that a large amout of energy is required including 1) oil products (farmers use diesel for ther tractors and diesel is required to truck the ethanol to market), 2) natural gas (fertilizer is made from natural gas and some processing requires natural gas), and electricity (incremental electricity is now provided via Natural gas). The Cornell professor provides a more complete list. When one reads the Department of Agriculture studies, which claim a net energy plus by manufacturing ethanol, one finds that all the energy input is not assigned to the product ethanol but rather the input energy is distributed also to the waste products according to the relative mass. The assumption is that someday a technology will evolve that will allow energy to be derived from the waste products. I have trouble accepting such an economic assumption. Also the water required to grow corn has a serious impact on the water tables-another subject!
If Ethanol made sense, the Oil companies would be already doing it big time. They have been investing billions over many years to find a replacement for crude oil, knowing that someday it may be in short supply. Fortunately for them and us, new oil and gas finds around the world have postponed the day of judgment when we run out of oil. Believe it, their primary interest is in making money for the stockholders, they don’t care where the energy comes from. Being close to the industry I know that, over many years, the oil companies have invested in and researched, Nuclear, fuel cells, batteries, fuel cells, coal liquifaction,coal gasifiation, shale, tar sands, LNG, Gas to Liquids, CO2 capture, ethanol, and probably other potential sources I don’t know about. I have personally earned income working on many of these studies/projects.
Finally keep in mind that energy supply is a world wide problem and if you believe that Europe, China, India, etc would let US oil companies impact their economies, I can’t debate the subject intelligently.
Bottom line let the free market decide, not mandates or subsidies determine the relative benefits of ethanol. So far the free market tells us that Ethanol is a bust.
Dee Norris
Nice post. I have had several years of experience, both overseas and here in the US, operating LPG powered cars. I’m not a fan. Why complicate a simple non-presurized liquid system by replacing it with a pressurized gas? I know the tech is now better and safer than what I am used to…but I have still seen the remains of a number of LPG cars that suffered a “gas leak”.
So, how do you feel about using coal to make our own liquid fuels? The tech is proven and the price seems right….and we have on the order of 800 years worth of coal…lots of time to invent something better. I know it drives the AGW beleivers batty…but for the rest of us, it seems sencible. Your feedback would be appreciated.
cdl
Raworth is full of bovine excrement. It’s the enviro-nuts who have prevented the use of DDT in Africa and other tropical countries which has caused the death of millions of humans. And it is the enviro-nuts who want to keep the undeveloped countries from developing an industrial economy. Pox on their offspring.
I love my ethanol in by beer, wine and whiskey!
The issue about emission of VOC and NOx from the IC engines has been solved for gasoline/diesel, it cans also be solved for ethanol based motors. Regular fuel motors still emit formaldehyde and it was found that the addition of ethanol in the gasoline increase the amount generated. Usually the 3-way catalytic converter takes care of that. But of course, if you want to burn ethanol in your motor, the oxygen ration needs to be changed in order for the catalyst to be effective. I am sure other catalysts are being formulated for that purpose.
So, after taxing us on our carbon emission, they will tax us on our formaldehyde emission. However, if we could have a perfect fuel that would be 100% renewable, they would not have any reason to tax us then.
Ray I guess you haven’t heard of the 100% renewable fuel tax proposal before congress yet.
Mike
@Craig:
I doubt we will be seeing LPG transportation anytime soon other than fleet vehicles. It problem is not the conversion, but the deliver to the consumer.
Coal is a different story. The USA has a LOT of coal and so do a lot of energy dependent countries. The potential energy in coal can be transformed into a LOT of storage products including SynGas and SynFuel as well released as electricity. Best of all, we can still use the existing infrastructure for delivery (that is the major cost of switching fuel sources) and consumption.
You forgot to mention Shale Oils!
I don’t worry about running out of carbon fuels during my lifetime or my child’s, but I do worry about the cost of obtaining the fuel due to short-sighted, politically motivated actions that artificially curtail our access to supplies of fossil fuel and analog products.
Don,
I know that the Oil companies are on the bandwagon to find alternatives. And we all know that politics has a very strong impact on the direction and decisions. It is well known that corn is the worse choice of crop to produce ethanol, but some guys in Washington seem to have invested in the wrong crop and thus are forcing hard to keep it that way. This is of course not good for the technology development. There are way better sources to produce ethanol and technologies to come that will use it efficiently, ethanol fuel cell are just around the corner.
But rest assure that if ethanol did not make sense for the petroleum industry, they would not blend it in normal gasoline.
And now for a bit of levity…
If my car runs on 100% ethanol and I forget to replace the cap on the fuel tank, can I get a ticket for driving with an open container?
When I am King, carbon emissions will be valuable. Right now the low carbon nations are depending on the United States, and other forward thinking countries, for their CO2. Without the additional CO2 produced by all right thinking people, crops would not have the current high yields!
Every time I start my SUV, someone needs to be writing me a check.
Thank you,
Mike
Dee… only if you exceed 0.08 mg/L-km.
@Dee
I tried to stay away from shale and sand oil deposites as being a different subject…but developing them just helps us stretch things out even more. We don’t have a shortage of raw material…we have a seriuously misguided inability to use it.
And yes, anything that lets us use the existing support structure should be the direction we go…the AGW folks have no idea how truly difficult it would actully be to build a whole new infastructure and demand that everyone junk their existing car and go buy a new one…no, wait…they want all of us on bicycles, don’t they….
BTW I know LPG cars are perfectly safe, right off the showroom floor. The problems show up 10 years later and with the 3rd owner….
Observation: My ability to mispell is exceeded only by my tendency to mistipe!
cdl
A little off topic but has anyone ever read about greenpeace and their crusade on
chlorine.
In Peru, the suspension of water chlorination as an experiment in 1991 resulted in a massive and unnecessary epidemic–causing more than one million cases of cholera and 19,000 deaths to date–that has spread to fourteen other South and Central American countries.