Hello All,
What I want to add to this discussion is a very pertinent point. As an RMT union member and subsequently one of those under the umbrella of the TUC I have to add that it is not just about jobs. The agenda of the corporations is to reduce workforce numbers to maximise profits and minimise conflict and overheads. Unfortunately this is the wrong path to be treading. When I consider that my own employers are hell bent on trashing workforce numbers to save a pittance whilst ensnaring the public into funding their little kingdom building exercise I become seriously disillusioned with any talk of a renaissance of traditional working class values and conditions.
Besides climate change is totally changing the environment from barely sustainable to totally destroyed all down to the corporations greedy tactics.
If we want to really stop climate change there is only one thing we really should be doing. We should abandon entirely this totally stupid con trick called 'Economic Growth'. It cannot work on a planet of finite resources. It is the main driver for climate change through resources extraction without any kind of control over the way in which the environment is treated before, during and after the extraction has been completed. Then we have the next stage of resource processing to consider. Every step of the way contributes to the climate changing process. We have the profitability of such things as oil, gas (Fracked variety) coal (mountain top removal being one of them) and of course the most stupid of all Nuclear to contend with but the profitability is government subsidised especially with tax breaks and sweeteners 'to encourage the right sort of investor you understand.......'
There is one thing that really is being missed by the governments, scientists and the corporations. When there is nothing left to extract then you have nothing left at all. No land worth planting, no ecosystems to sustain anything and no climate to protect it all. You have a planet fast forwarding to a Mars like condition. Unless we go nuclear of course then its Venus.
So by replacing the economic growth pyramid scheme with a steady state economic policy you immediately stop this mad dash for every last scrap of resource from all those 'unconventional sources' simply on the basis of profitability.
I read earlier that if we reduced the carbon burden on the climate we would save so much money it could be reinvested into a green, clean sustainable 'low carbon' future. I hate the word 'sustainable' to be honest because it is so misused by the corporations and in turn by governments touting for them. But the article uses it to describe its vision so that is that.
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/312-16/26336-reducing-carbon-emissions-would-fuel-global-economy
But what we should not be doing is geoengineering. Yes I am a Luddite and a naysayer and a techno-phobe and any other insulting name you can think to call me to deride and degrade my views as worthless. But I am still making that statement because it is a fact. Geoengineering is not the solution. It is merely another of these wacky ideas to generate another 'nice little earner' whilst the planet goes screw ball in any climatic direction but the right one. We don't even understand the mechanisms of climate change so making bold claims about spraying stuff into the atmosphere to cool it off is cloud cuckoo land. Same goes for all those carbon capture mechanisms. Only get off the ground with a big fat subsidy. Oh and a nice little tax break for the investors. More of the same economic growth claptrap.
Bio-char is a too little, too late technology. We should have been doing this sort of thing by farming with natural ecosystems in mind. With resource balancing in mind. Not by reducing the natural resources such as the organic matter (carbon) in the soil until all that is left is rock dust and the only way plants grow is due to the chemical crap and the artificial fertilisers we put onto the degraded land. Ever wonder why we get so many flood events? Apart from the fact we have taken away far too many trees and hedgerows? Take a look at organic soil. It drains steadily and freely and remains moist for plants. Not so the degraded sludge masquerading as soil. It goes sticky and forms a layer impervious to water flowing through it. There is no way water can penetrate the sludge at the same rate it would if it were organic and balanced soil. When we get a dry spell it bakes hard and forms an impervious crust so that when we do get a downpour we get flash
flooding. Not big nor clever.
Importing our goods and services from overseas is substituting for carbon capture in the soil at home to make it more fertile. We instead steal the resources from the land overseas and then dump it down the toilet. So we have not one but several nations with depleted or steadily being depleted soils. When its gone its gone for ever. Phosphorus anyone? WOn't bore you with the details other than to say if climate change doesn't hit before 2030-50 then starvation will. That's when we run out of mineral phosphate to make our artificial fertilisers.
So to finalise we need to stop scrabbling around for costly and untried solutions and take a big step back to more traditional methods of living. Farming is the base point. Replanting habitats is a huge part of it. Permaculture could be a good solution if enough people got off their backsides to do it. Agroecology is the most talked about in recent years and seriously a possibility. Either way trying to invent ourselves out of a crisis is simply going to add more fuel to the crisis we are in and we haven't time to play 'Mad Scientists' any more.
Go to the conference by all means but don't expect to solve the problems overnight. Unions are strangled these days by government anti-union legislation. Pretty obvious really that the governments agenda is in the other direction especially when you consider their support for the TTIP/CETA deal being done entirely behind closed doors. This by the way is an even bigger threat to getting anything done to reverse climate change. Unless its profitable of course.
Best wishes
Kev
________________________________
From: Ronal W. Larson <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Saturday, 11 October 2014, 21:50
Subject: Re: Can we ever build a green economy? Free TUC half day conference
John and ccs:
1. I respond mainly because you have used the word “biochar” in your last sentence. I want to support all views like yours (and this includes other CDR/NET approaches as well).
2. I have spent some time today trying to better understand this meeting.
- Some important panelists will be in attendance (responding?).
- I like that it has a union flavor. Unions can be an important constituency - especially as much anti-geoengineering (both SRM and CDR) is based on an anti-corporation agenda.
- More and good jobs are at stake. I haven’t heard anything on biochar from unions.
3. Besides the panelists (whose views I have not tried to ascertain), there are three presenters- all apparently with recent pertinent reports
a. Ekins might be using ideas such as in:
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/greenweek/docs/presentations/parallel-side-sessions-4/4-3/paul_ekins_4.3.pdf
I didn’t find CDR ideas here. His work looks excellent otherwise.
b. I couldn’t find anything specific recently for Greenpeace’s announced topic, but lots on transition towns. It would be very helpful if Greenpeace could be convinced that CDR/NET is needed urgently. I haven’t found that.
c. The names Stern and Green might be presenting because of a very recent paper which is only related to China - but has general applicability, it would seem. China has done far more than any other country in reforestation, and there are lots of rumors that they are thinking seriously about biochar. The Chinese have everything needed to make biochar a big success (good engineering and manufacturing capabilities, serious soil and atmospheric pollution problems, lots of land and low-income rural folk to place char, etc. Only skimming this, I found nothing to show Stern and Green are aware of this biochar (or any CDR) potential in China (or elsewhere).
http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Green-and-Stern-policy-paper-May-20141.pdfbio
4. None of what I have found even says that CDR will be taken up at this meeting. None of the three presenters is known to have your/my specific CDR interests in mind. So this is to hope that those recipients of this message who live in/near London can attend - and try to get this potentially important meeting more oriented towards your words “HAVE TO” and CDR/NET.
I wish I had found something more positive to report. Although Arctic ice volume has bounced back a bit in the last two years, I sense a negative turnaround is overdue; the lack of much surface air temperature increase since 1998 has been balanced by more than normal ocean temperature increases. Much Arctic ice loss is from the underside of the ice, so a turnaround can still be dramatic soon in both ice volume and extent/area.
Ron
On Oct 11, 2014, at 6:06 AM, John Nissen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi all,
>
>It's a good question, but the answer is that we HAVE TO build a
green economy, GLOBALLY.
>
>The IPCC is hiding the truth that we have already run out of carbon
budget. We are already on course for extremely dangerous warming -
we are already committed to extremely dangerous warming - there is already too much long-life CO2 in the atmosphere and, together with current methane emissions and Arctic albedo loss, we are committed to several degrees warming by mid century and many degrees by end century.
>
>No amount of emissions reduction will prevent catastrophe. There is
nothing we can do about this simply by converting to green energy.
We have to get at the root cause of the problems: an excess of CO2
in the atmosphere, too much methane escaping into the atmosphere,
and an Arctic losing its albedo as it proceeds unchecked towards
total meltdown.
>
>The answers to these three underlying problems all require
interventions of one kind or other. We cannot simply hope and wait
for Mother Nature to redress the balance and take us back to the
comfortable world that we have been brought up to expect to last
indefinitely.
>
>1. We require interventions to remove CO2 from the atmosphere,
faster than we are putting CO2 into the atmosphere, aiming to bring
the level down quickly to a safe level, e.g. below 360 ppm within
two decades.
>
>2. We require interventions to suppress methane: both fugitive
methane from oil and gas production/distribution and natural methane
released from wetlands, land permafrost and, most importantly,
Arctic subsea permafrost.
>
>3. We require interventions to cool the Arctic and restore albedo,
principally by saving the sea ice, which otherwise will disappear
for most of summer within a decade (almost certainly ensuring that
intervention will be too late to prevent catastrophic sea level
rise, climate chaos from disrupted jet stream behaviour, and
possibly runaway global warming from methane feedback).
>
>The good news:
>All these interventions can be successful, if pursued with
sufficient determination and international collaboration.
>
>The bad news:
>Nobody in the scientific community seems to be accepting the nature
and scale of the underlying problems, let alone alerting
governments, industry or environmentalists to the required
interventions.
>
>While all attention is on emissions reductions, we are not tackling
the three underlying problems.
>
>Could the TUC be the first body to acknowledge what's happening, and
what needs to be done?
>
>To tackle the excess of CO2, we don't just need a green economy, we
need a super-green revolution, world-wide, to employ agriculture practices that lock-down carbon into the soil while feeding growing populations. The TUC could concentrate on this aspect. The UK has a wealth of expertise on such practices, e.g. using biochar for soil improvement.
>
>Cheers, John
>
>--
>
>On 10/10/2014 20:35, Patrick Ainley wrote:
>
>>(You/ Chris know about this presumably, Linda. P)
>>
>>From: [log in to unmask]
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>Sent: 06/10/2014 20:25:57 GMT Daylight Time
>>Subj: Can we ever build a green economy? Free TUC half day
conference
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> www.tuc.org.uk | Expert analysis of economic and social policy issues affecting people at work Monday 6th October 2014
>>>
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>>>Event
>>>
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>>>Can we ever build a green economy? Free TUC half day conference
>>>
>>>
>>>Thursday 6 November 2014, 09.30-13.00, Congress House, Great Russell Street, London
>>>This national half day conference will set out the importance of taking international and national action to address climate change.
>>>With the economic recovery finally underway, growing public understanding of the role greener growth could play and all parties committed to strengthening the government's approach to industrial policy, what more needs to be done to shift the UK towards a lower carbon economy? How can we achieve the substantial shifts we need in power generation, business finance and energy efficiency to give our climate change objectives any chance of being met?
>>>Speakers at this important event include:
>>> * Rt Hon Caroline Flint MP, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change
>>> * Sir David King, Special Representative for Climate Change, Foreign and Commonwealth Office
>>> * Frances O'Grady, General Secretary, TUC
>>> * Professor Paul Ekins, Director, Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy, UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources
>>>With new work from Lord Stern (noted LSE economist and author of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change) set to develop the case that immediate action to decarbonise our economy will be far more effective than action delayed, as well as boosting overall growth rates, a strong policy response has never been as important.
>>>We also know that national action alone will not be enough. With next year set to be an unprecedented period of climate change diplomacy internationally what can civil society organisations do to strengthen the case for change? How can we ensure that a strong and comprehensive UN agreement is reached in 2015?
>>>The event will also see the launch of a set of three expert essays setting out the importance of a new climate deal. The authors outline their arguments to the conference and we debate them in our workshops, each of which will include commentaries from an expert panel.
>>>For further information and to register for free please visit our registration page
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