Red, Green, and Blue

Thursday this week seems to have been a key day for environmental protest.

Chinese pollution protest

In Fujian Province, eastern China, villagers blockaded a road to protest against high levels of lead in the blood of their children. Local residents are convinced that the children’s excessive lead levels are the result of pollution from the  Huaqiang Battery Factory. Authorities have ordered China’s environmental protection bureau to increase oversight of the plant. The protest comes in the wake of several similar protests against industrial plants that have succeeded in getting polluting factories closed down.

Manure message

And in the UK, journalist and television presenter Jeremy Clarkson found his own bit of global warming, on his doorstep! Seven members of group Climate Rush visited his home and left steaming piles of horse manure on his drive, along with a message reading ‘This is what you’re landing us in’. The protestors, all women, chose Clarkson because he has a sceptical attitude to climate change. Clarkson is the presenter of Top Gear, a car programme, and has recently driven to the Arctic. In the past he has made inflammatory remarks about the effects of climate change, describing walkers who demand access to land as ‘urban communists’ and cyclists as ‘Lycra Nazis’.

New Zealand animal foods protest

And finally on the same day, 17 September, a New Zealand protest against palm kernel imports ended inconclusively.  The company, Fonterra, is a dairy supplies specialist and also a cooperative with over 11,000 dairy farming members in New Zealand.  Greenpeace claims there is both local and international concern about the nature of the palm oil industry globally and protestors chained themselves to the cranes of the ship delivering the imports.  Feed imports for livestock are an increasing contentious issue – Greenpeace says that corn and grain farmers in New Zealand have supported their action because their own products have been outpriced by cheap imported livestock foods and that endangered species are being further threatened by land clearance fuelled by the palm oil export industry. 14 protesters, charged with unlawful boarding of a ship, will be appearing in court next week.
New Zealand sheep courtesy of PhillipC at Flickr under a creative commons licence

The Sunday talk shows were full of talk about the health care reform fight: are there 60 votes in the Senate? is the public option off the table? are illegal immigrants covered? And, while consensus on any health care answers has been fleeting, everyone agrees on what is the most important question: how is President Obama going to PAY for health care reform?

The White House still lists climate change legislation as one of its priorities, but with Senate action on a bill getting pushed deeper into September - and closer to oblivion for 2009 - greens cannot help but worry that their cause will not only be eclipsed by health care, but also by the economy generally, unemployment specifically, and even foreign policy issues like the escalation in Afghanistan. Read the rest of this entry »

The leader of one of Australia’s most influential unions has said that green jobs is a ‘dopey term’. Tony Maher went on to suggest that many of the environmental campaigns run in his country are ‘judgemental nonsense’ and that industries like coal and steel will have more impact on both prosperity and the creation of a low carbon future than people realised. As an example, he claimed that carbon capture and storage schemes would require vast amounts of steel and that this steel should be produced in Australia by Australian workers.

Union fights for blue-collar jobs, not green-tinged ones

Maher is President of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, a constellation of workers that might look odd in many other parts of the world where ‘green’ industries like Forestry have separated themselves from extractive industries by putting logging in with extraction and keeping woodland husbandry and tree surgery in with farming.  For over ten years, Tony Maher has spoken on behalf of the union, which states in its publicity material that it is the principal union for both brown and black coal mining. Brown coal is relatively recent in origin and falls between peat, which is still largely vegetable in structure, and bituminous coal. It is often known as lignite.

Many people feel that brown coal should not be extracted because it should be kept as a reserve for the distance future when it may have developed further and become more like bituminous coal or black coal, which is more consolidated, deep black in colour and burns more readily with greater fuel efficiency.

Union leader says more coal, not less, will be burned in 2050

It’s not surprising that a union leader representing coal minders should object to ‘green jobs’ but Maher went much further than simply protesting against the removal of blue-collar industries, he added that he thought that by mid 2050 the planet would be using twice as much coal as at present and that the recent protest at Hazelwood power station was ‘just silly’.

Hazelwood Protestors Get Direct

‘Switch Off Hazelwood’ the campaigning group that organised the protests claims a successful weekend’s protesting, with more than 300 people turning up over 12 and 13 September, to use such direct action tactics as the Bikezilla (a number of bicycles welded together to form a giant bike, which was impounded by police), the Ministry of Energy, Resources and Silly Walks, the wombat warriors and forming a giant windmill with their bodies.  The police say 18 people were arrested, the action group says it was 22 individuals who were arrested and then released on bail.

While protestors said that removing Hazelwood could be the first step to creating an employment-rich, renewable energy manufacturing region, Maher’s comments suggest that the opposition to renewable energy is entrenched in the old blue-collar industrial regions as a threat to well paid jobs, as well as being perceived as a threat to lifestyle. Maher added that Australia produced some of the best-quality coking coal in the world, which was used to make premium quality steel and that it was ‘silly’ to raise objections to industries that created a large amount of Australia’s exports.

Switch off Hazelwood: Starring the Wombat Warriors courtesy of Sean Bedlam at youtube

Cap-and-trade calamity? Au contraire. While the US flounders on regulating carbon, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy is pushing forward with new carbon tax legislation that will only add to France’s edge in the emerging green economy.

With heavy subsidies in place for nuclear power, France already generates 80% of its electricity from non-fossil-fueled sources. The French are also participants in the European cap-and-trade regime. That combination of support for clean technologies and downward pressure on carbon is the same that the Obama White House sees as the critical path to green energy adoption in the US. Progress has been elusive in that regard and things do not look rosy in the Senate this fall. Read the rest of this entry »

Even in the midst of the health care fight, the Sunday talk shows devoted some time to the political fallout from the resignation of Van Jones, and with his resignation over the weekend, the former White House green jobs czar has become a national object lesson in partisan politicking. But, outside of the American political media vacuum, Jones’ green-jobs-for -the-urban-poor programming will be his lasting legacy.

For example, take this morning’s BBC feature on Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, a part of the British news radio network’s recent series of features on the US economic downturn and its ground-level impacts in California. The BBC focused on some of the funding problems that Homeboy faces in these times of both declining philanthropy and state budgets.

Still, the organization - devoted to reintegrating former LA-area gangbangers by providing everything from job training to tattoo removal - is finding a productive niche in the green-collar economy. Operating under the slogan “nothing stops a bullet like a job,” Homeboy recently began training former gang members as solar panel installers.

Class members in the solar program attend a two-month course - with the $131 tuition and an $8 hourly stipend paid by Homeboys - and graduate with skills that are helping them land jobs that pay from $15 to upwards of $30 an hour. If programs like Homeboy’s can catch on the way that Jones has envisioned, the average political observer some years hence may remember Jones more for the green-collar economic policies that the BBC highlighted rather than as the political cautionary tale that defined his 15 minutes of fame over one Labor Day weekend.

Illustration of Van Jones “greening the ghetto” by RADillustrates at Flickr.

Judge Juan Nunez has recused himself in the case which focuses around claims that Chevron has been environmentally irresponsible in Ecuador’s Amazonian rainforest. He is the fifth judge to leave the case. While he refuses to discuss the reasons he has disqualified himself from giving judgment in the case, there has been a flurry of claim and counterclaim around Chevron’s release of video in which he appears to say to members of the ruling Alianza Pais party that he will decide against Chevron, although judgment is not due to be given until October.

Chevron further alleges Nunez was to be given a $15 million ‘commission’ by the party, for deciding against the oil company. Judge Nunez says the video was manipulated – Chevron say it was not and that they will bring a counter-case against him for corruption. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in late spring, critics on the left attacked the Waxman-Markey bill for compromising on carbon credits even as the right slapped on the “energy tax” label, and - at least if early September is any indication - that label has stuck.

It is not clear that President Obama and Majority Leader Harry Reid (pictured left with New Mexico Democrat Jeff Bingaman - another key climate voice) can win a simple majority for carbon-capping climate change legislation this year, with industrial state Dems already defecting, but the lift for Reid and his whips will be even tougher: they cannot overcome a GOP filibuster without a 60 vote super-majority.

If those Senators in favor of climate legislation get the 60 votes they need to block a filibuster and pass a climate bill, they likely can’t do it without a little help from these six. These are the six Senators that lobbyists will be courting, the White House will be pressing, and you should be watching in the coming days and weeks as the Senate addresses climate change. Read the rest of this entry »

September isn’t usually the silly season, but this week’s protests are all weird, wonderful, whacky or … missing!

No protest for polluted Peruvian town

On 31 August the union supporting workers at the currently suspended Doe Run smelter in Peru said they would not be protesting after all. They had planned  roadblocks and other protests the following day, to force the national government to fund the reopening of the struggling plant, but so few people turned up to a planning meeting that they are re-thinking their strategy.

Doe Run Peru’s smelter at La Oroya was closed in June when banks cut off credit and the government is refusing to extend the time-frame for a environmental cleanup, which could allow new loans to be negotiated. The plant must meet a 1 October deadline to clean up local conditions and establish better implement environmental controls but it says it lacks the money to fulfil its environmental contract and wants an extension of the deadline to mid 2010.

Around 3,000 employees and a further 16,000 indirect jobs are linked to the plant, which is why local union leaders want action on reopening the plant, even though the town of La Oroya is considered one of the most polluted on the planet.

Naked protest for PR company

On 1 September the London offices of Edelman’s were invaded by six naked environmentalists. The campaigners were protesting the PR firms involvement with Eon who are planning to rebuild the coal-fired power plant at Kingsnorth with two replacement ‘cleaner coal’ plants.

The protestors, some male and naked, some female and wearing knickers, superglued their wrists together in the lobby of the firm, while other protestors scale the roof of the building. The were removed by police carrying blankets.

Rocky protest in Australia

Latvala of Finland took a 2.2-second lead in the 4 September stage of Rally Australia in New South Wales but the first day’s racing was marked by protests.

Environmental activists had already forced the cancellation of two of the 15 stages when state police found boulders on the road at one rally stage. Later that day, the first car to take that stage was pelted with rocks. The driver, Hirvonen, was unharmed but the stage was stopped as there were concerns for the safety of the drivers and spectators.

Two groups, ‘No Rally’ and Peacebus, had already staged a campaign, trying to get the World Rally stage in Australia stopped because they claimed it would damage environment and frighten wildlife in the remote areas in which it is being held, a local government officer also tried to get a court injunction to prevent the rally but failed.

Rally car courtesy of Repco Rally Australia

Angola has been riven by conflict and it’s more than three decades since the government subsided sugar cane production, but now a 30,000 hectare area of land is to be planted with sugar cane in a dual attempt to establish a biofuel industry and to rebuild the poor agricultural sector which suffered after years of conflict.

Oil rich but food poor

Angola’s economy has been largely dependent on oil and diamonds since the civil war ended in 2002. Now the government aims to recreate some farming sectors. The country used to produce sugar, but for many years the entire sugar consumption of Angola has been imported. Now, in an attempt to decentralise industry away from Luanda, to boost farming and to create new jobs, the sugar cane project is taking shape.

It’s hoped the plantation will produce 280,000 tonnes of sugar from its own processing plant, and that the waste will be used, along with the ethanol harvested from the cane residue, to produce around 217 megawatts a year of electricity.

Foreign investment fears

While this is a multi-layered project, the tendency of African nations to invest in non-food crop is worrying the FAO which says that private and foreign ownership of large tracts of African land could destabilise local communities who will be deprived of access to water, food and other natural resources. The company managing the project, Biocom, is a three way partnership between Brazil’s Odebrecht, Angola’s Damer, and Sonangol, the Angolan state oil company. African governments need support to build the agricultural infrastructure that will allow them to become food secure, but partnership processes like this one are often viewed with suspicion by local people who fear that they will lose their land, or that the crops will be grown or processed in ways that have been outlawed in the developed world.

Sugar cane courtesy of Cristobal Alvarado Minic at Flickr under a creative commons license

Utility withdraws from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, the troubled coal industry group

Duke Energy, the North Carolina-based electric utility announced on Wednesday it would be leaving the clean coal lobbying group, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), over differences with the organization’s opposition to clean energy and climate legislation being considered by Congress.

Officials from Duke Energy said that “While some individual members of ACCCE are working to pass climate change legislation, we believe ACCCE is constrained by influential member companies who will not support passing climate change legislation in 2009 or 2010.”

Duke said that ACCCE’s position is not consistent with Duke Energy’s work to pass economy-wide and cost effective climate change legislation as soon as possible. Read the rest of this entry »