The International Energy Agency will next week (29 May) launch an important report on the "golden rules" for governments and industry if they are to overcome serious risks and concerns (social and environmental) about the Golden Age of Gas.
There will be a special presentation of this report by Fatih Birol, IEA's chief economist, in the European Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday, May 30, at 09h30. 
At the talks, countries were supposed to set out a workplan on negotiations that should result in a new global climate treaty, to be drafted by the end of 2015 and to come into force in 2020. But participants told the Guardian they were downbeat, disappointed and frustrated that the decision to work on a new treaty – reached after marathon late-running talks last December in Durban – was being questioned.
No surprise there - global climate policy has been buried long time ago. Why are green NGOs still trying to revive it when they should be concentrating on alternative approaches? 
Global carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil-fuel combustion reached a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2011, according to preliminary estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA). This represents an increase of 1.0 Gt on 2010, or 3.2%. Coal accounted for 45% of total energy-related CO2 emissions in 2011, followed by oil (35%) and natural gas (20%).
Are there any more words to attack this stupidity of our so-called world leaders? Start preparing for the final reckoning. 
Conservatives say the American way is to use more and pay less, Walmart-style. No wonder they're scared about the shift to clean energy and sustainability.
Good article by David Roberts on the Grist about how clean energy is quickly replacing climate change as enemy number one of the American way of life. 
A new report from the WBCSD sets out the steps needed to accelerate the pace of change in addressing social, ecological and economic challenges...
Interesting new report from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development building on its 2010 Vision 2050 report. Vision is one element, changing pace of the transformation another but both will need courage of the leading businesses to name and shame the business laggards and saboteurs (the fossil fuel sector and the financial sector being a few of the worst). "... environmental sustainability will not be served by introducing or extending market instruments and norms to various areas of society, but quite the reverse. It would be better served by expanding and supporting the public sphere – both procedurally and substantively."
Another must-read article from the OpenDemocracy web site explaining why sustainability cannot be attained by putting a market value on natural capital and the economic "commons".
A small number of analysts forecast that oil production will start to fall by 2020 – not because we are running out, but because we just won’t need it. They argue that the world will wean itself off oil voluntarily, through major advances in vehicle technology. Peak oil will not be a supply-side phenomenon brought about by shrinking reserves, but by motorists buying electric cars and conventional cars with highly efficient engines.
Excellent analysis of the state of play of electric cars and their potential to wean the world off oil by top energy journalist David Strahan. 
100% renewable energy sounds great. But when you start to do the research the picture is much less clear.
Interesting article questioning all the greenwashing concerning green datacenters. "It is our premise that human societies will not succeed in overcoming our myriad eco-crises through better ‘green’ technology or economic reforms alone; we must pioneer new types of governance that allow and encourage people to move from anthropocentrism to biocentrism, and to develop qualitatively different types of relationships with nature itself and, indeed, with each other. An economics and supporting civic polity that valorizes growth and material development as the precondition for virtually everything else is ultimately a dead end—literally."
Interesting introduction to a new approach to solve the world's sustainability crisis by developing new laws of the commons. 
Green taxes should play a crucial role in tackling Europe's spiralling deficits, according to a major new report backed by some of the continent's political heavyweights. The 160-page report from NGOs the European Climate Foundation and Green Budget Europe and consultancy Vivid Economics argues that carbon and energy taxes present an effective means of tackling greenhouse gas emissions and raising much-needed revenue, while having less of a negative impact on growth than conventional fiscal measure such as income taxes and VAT.
Interesting report sponsored by the European Climate Foundation. But what will the new revenues be spent on? The report also seems to skip to easily over the challenge of the regressive nature of such taxes (impact on poor households). 
"Mr. Krugman’s failure to see today’s economic problem as one of debt deflation reflects his failure (suffered by most economists, to be sure) to recognize the need for debt writedowns, for restructuring the banking and financial system, and for shifting taxes off labor back onto property, economic rent and asset-price (“capital”) gains. The effect of his narrow set of recommendations is to defend the status quo – and for my money, despite his reputation as a liberal, that makes Mr. Krugman a conservative. I see little in his logic that would oppose Rubinomics, which has remained the Democratic Party’s program under the Obama administration."
This interesting review by US economist Michael Hudson of Pauk Krugman's latest book "End this depression now" should be mandatory reading for all Krugman's neo-Keynesian followers in Europe. 
The jury is still out on whether Greece will leave the euro and what that would mean. But even if it's not 2008 again, investors may be underestimating the potential pain ahead.
Will "Grexit" be "the second coming of 2008"? 
"Dans le cadre de la préparation de Rio+20, la Banque mondiale et l’OCDE notamment rivalisent d’imagination pour donner un prix à la nature, non pas tant pour mieux la préserver que pour la réduire à un capital comme un autre qu’il s’agira de rentabiliser. Valeur économique des écosystèmes et valeur économique des services que rendent ceux-ci sont devenues les leitmotivs de la recherche dans les cercles néolibéraux. Des valeurs que seul l’établissement de droits de propriété sur ce qui devrait être des biens communs, collectifs et publics[13] peut révéler. Allô, la Banque mondiale, vous êtes toujours là ? Non, ils ont raccroché."
Excellent critical analysis of the latest World Bank Report "Inclusive Green Growth" |
The former CIBC chief economist's lively new book also suggests that a slow economy might save the planet from Climate Armageddon.
Good review of economist Jeff Rubin's latest book "The End of Growth". It is interesting to look at the European austerity versus growth debate from this perspective of the future of growth. 
The Eurobond scheme only works effectively if taxation and spending powers are transferred to a central authority – “fiscal union”. But bar a series of truly extraordinary backflips by Europe’s divided rulers, spontaneously agreeing to settle their deep differences, this will not happen. Should anything resembling a “Eurobond” eventually be summoned up, it is liable only to be a feeble stop-gap measure. The underlying causes of Europe’s financial crisis will not have been addressed.
Very good analysis by senior economist James Meadway on the New Economics Foundation blog. 
Many of the growth strategies tried around the world have turned out to have built-in limitations or decelerators – what one might call elements of unsustainability.
Absolute must-read article in Project Syndicate by 2001 Economics Nobel laureate Michael Spence. He seems to be one of the few economists able to think beyond the unfruitful austerity versus growth debate and link the crisis of the economy and economics with the sustainability crisis. 
A marine expedition of environmentalists has confirmed the bad news it feared -- the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" extends even further than previously known. (Source: CNN)
Despite a lot of greenwashing from the industry and some "nice" campaigns, the plastic pollution of the seas continues. Changing pace or changing course, WBCSD? 
Jonathan Glennie: Development co-operation needs to shift focus from poverty eradication to a broader, more inclusive framework...
Good reframing of the development policy debate looking at the bigger picture on the Guardian's PovertyMatters blog. I’m not convinced that either side – green growthers or steady-statists – has yet won the argument, even after forty years of doing battle. The historical evidence for green growth is threadbare, even nonexistent – though this should give no-one, not even the steady-statists, any cause for pleasure. What’s more, we can’t assume the past will determine the future (in this debate, if it does, we’re stuffed either way). Rather, the two sides ought to take one another far more seriously, and see the merits of a combined programme for transition.
Excellent article in openDemocracy with an honest appraisal of the inadequacies of both theories. 
A big pile of green-growth reports demonstrates the plausibility of this path to recovery from an historic economic crisis. It is now up to us to realize its potential. Green growth offers a realistic alternative to the faltering austerity approach to overcoming the current economic crisis. Policymakers should incorporate this thinking into the “beyond austerity” narrative that is taking shape in a growing number of key EU member states.
Good Project Syndicate article by Dutch sustainability expert Roland Kupers on the value of several recent green growth reports and their link to the austerity versus growth debate in Europe. Despite progress in some areas, Europe must do more to create the 'green economy' needed for the continent to become sustainable, according to a new report from the European Environment Agency (EEA). 
The paper, Reconsidering the Economics of Photovoltaic Power, looks at the implications of the sharpest falls in the prices of PV technology in recent memory.
Interesting results from a new report "Reconsidering the Economics of Photovoltaic Power" by Bloomberg's New Energy Finance. 
A group of United Nations independent experts today called on the European Union (EU) to take the lead in promoting the adoption of a global financial transaction tax that would offset the costs of the current economic crisis and protect basic human rights. "... the people who will have the most to offer their communities, their societies, and the biosphere that supports all our lives will be those who have the courage, now, to walk away from the consumer economy and its smorgasbord of dubious pleasures, and learn, now, how to get by with less, use their own capacities of body and mind, and work with the patterns and processes of nature. For the time being ... protest can still accomplish goals worth pursuing, especially if activists wake up once again to the power of personal example; over the longer run, though, it’s the change on the individual, family, and community level that so many of today’s activists reject as pointless that have the most to offer the world."
Inconvenient musings by John Michael Greer on the demise of organised protest, the need for individual behavioural change, bobos and how the Republicans are preparing the revival of Marxism in the US. An absolute must-read. 
It's bad enough that the banks strangled the Dodd-Frank law. Even worse is the way they did it - with a big assist from Congress and the White House.
Brilliant article in Rolling Stone on the financial terrorism of Big Business. Compared to these fundamentalists, Bin Laden was peanuts. |
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