Went to see Avatar in 3D last night. Visually stunning, and engaging to the extent that I went along with the decision to resort to violence against the Corporation. The mawkish bits were just a bit mawkish, and there was next to no solemn cod philosophy.
However, there is a lot of criticism of a thin plot on Twitter. What do people expect from Hollywood? Complexity? Come on, Hollywood only has 2 plots, #1 boy meets girl, and#2 hero saves world from calamity. Avatar was #2. The similarity to Dances with Wolves has been noticed. It has Matrix like themes. And Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings and, and...
The plot criticism is as meaningless as saying that James Bond is predictable.
What amazes me is that Corporate interests did not strangle Avatar at birth. It is a clear allegory of what Shell did to the Ogoni, what Union Carbide/Dow Chemical Co. did to the people of Bhopal and what Trafigura did to the people of Abidjan.
Human history in a nutshell: tribes, clans, kingdoms, empires, corporations. All politics is in one way completely beside the point. We struggle to develop and defend democracy, trying to make our political leaders accountable for their actions (with notable lack of success; think Tony Blair), but the real power has passed on beyond Presidents and Prime Ministers into the fat hands of the corporate overlords.
Avatar is a call to revolution. It contains the line that says something like "There is one thing that shareholders like less than bad press, and that is a bad quarterly return". Simple as that.
The sole legal responsibility of company directors is to stuff their shareholders' pockets with gold.
Corporations are all about Profit before People.
Maybe the Twitter thread about Avatar's thin plot is a bit of corporate astroturfing.
In spite of hugely successful films like Avatar, and the common cynical view of the machinations of "Big Business", corporations continue to dominate our world, with very little criticism apart from campaigning organisations like Corporate Watch. There is no journalistic criticism of corporations for the obvious reason that journalists work for corporations. Duh!
Do these films help or hinder public perception of what is going on? Probably neither. They just get filed away under "Entertainment". Although they must affect our cognitive constructs of the world.
Where the plot does come unstuck is in the violent rebellion bit. The violence was provoked, and the threat of cultural and religious annihilation produces a union of Na'avi tribes, who come and do battle. Any Marxists out there who think that they might like to try this at home, please think again. Humanity is no way ready for this kind of thing. Violence is the problem, not the solution, and in any confrontation, the Right, backed by the police and the army are going to win hands down. Sure, the people, united, will never be defeated, but the people are not united. They may or may not follow United, but mainly they are controlled by a daily dose of corporate journalism and telly.
In the absence of any possibility of a James Bond resolution of the problem by blowing it up, what can we do about the corporate dominance of our world?
That is a long journey, but the first step is to sketch out the kind of laws that we need our political representatives to bring in to constrain the corporations.
We have made a start on this project here. Please read, bookmark and forward.
At this stage in the journey, we just have to spread the meme that corporations need to be brought within a framework of law. That's the easy bit. Once your lollipop lady agrees that this is a Good Idea, the next stage is to start lobbying your government.
Meanwhile, enjoy the film.
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Daily Express: Climate quibbles; rebuttals 51-100
On December 15th 2009 The Daily Express published a piece called "Climate Change is natural: 100 reasons why" (sic)
That night, the New Scientist published rebuttals to the first 50, then got bored, and stopped.
I have finally got around to answering the second 50 points.
As you will see, many of the points have no bearing at all on whether or not climate change has an anthropogenic component.
51) Wind farms are not an efficient way to produce energy. The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) accepts a figure of 75 per cent back-up power is required.
The HVDC grid and storage systems will overcome this problem.
52) Global temperatures are below the low end of IPCC predictions not at “at the top end of IPCC estimates”
The predictions are pretty good.
53) Climate alarmists have raised the concern over acidification of the oceans but Tom Segalstad from Oslo University in Norway , and others, have noted that the composition of ocean water – including CO2, calcium, and water – can act as a buffering agent in the acidification of the oceans.
Buffering slows, but cannot negate, acidification
54) The UN’s IPCC computer models of human-caused global warming predict the emergence of a “hotspot” in the upper troposphere over the tropics. Former researcher in the Australian Department of Climate Change, David Evans, said there is no evidence of such a hotspot
David Evans is confused
55) The argument that climate change is a of result of global warming caused by human activity is the argument of flat Earthers.
Empty abuse.
56) The manner in which US President Barack Obama sidestepped Congress to order emission cuts shows how undemocratic and irrational the entire international decision-making process has become with regards to emission-target setting.
Extrapolation from one instance to the whole.
57) William Kininmonth, a former head of the National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation, wrote “the likely extent of global temperature rise from a doubling of CO2 is less than 1C. Such warming is well within the envelope of variation experienced during the past 10,000 years and insignificant in the context of glacial cycles during the past million years, when Earth has been predominantly very cold and covered by extensive ice sheets.”
Kininmonth argues that H2O evaporation will cool, but forgets that condensation will cancel that effect.
58) Canada has shown the world targets derived from the existing Kyoto commitments were always unrealistic and did not work for the country.
Decarbonisation is going to be challenging for every country, not just Canada. Even cold countries are going to have to rely on renewables in the long term, when fossil and uranium resources are finished.
59) In the lead up to the Copenhagen summit, David Davis MP said of previous climate summits, at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and Kyoto in 1997 that many had promised greater cuts, but “neither happened”, but we are continuing along the same lines.
Rome was not built in a day.
60) The UK ’s environmental policy has a long-term price tag of about £55 billion, before taking into account the impact on its economic growth. The UK put £200 billion in bailing out the bankers. Energy conservation and clean production is real investment, not covering mistakes made by incompetent fools.
61) The UN’s panel on climate change warned that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035. J. Graham Cogley a professor at Ontario Trent University, claims this inaccurate stating the UN authors got the date from an earlier report wrong by more than 300 years.
This was from a typo copied by incompetent bureaucrats.
62) Under existing Kyoto obligations the EU has attempted to claim success, while actually increasing emissions by 13 per cent, according to Lord Lawson. In addition the EU has pursued this scheme by purchasing “offsets” from countries such as China paying them billions of dollars to destroy atmospheric pollutants, such as CFC-23, which were manufactured purely in order to be destroyed.
The infant carbon offset scheme has been exploited by scammers. The system will become tighter in future.
63) It is claimed that the average global temperature was relatively unchanging in pre-industrial times but sky-rocketed since 1900, and will increase by several degrees more over the next 100 years according to Penn State University researcher Michael Mann. There is no convincing empirical evidence that past climate was unchanging, nor that 20th century changes in average global temperature were unusual or unnatural.
The facts are otherwise.
64) Michael Mann of Penn State University has actually shown that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age did in fact exist, which contrasts with his earlier work which produced the “hockey stick graph” which showed a constant temperature over the past thousand years or so followed by a recent dramatic upturn.
Good science works by constantly taking on new data.
65) The globe’s current approach to climate change in which major industrialised countries agree to nonsensical targets for their CO2 emissions by a given date, as it has been under the Kyoto system, is very expensive.
Doing nothing is more expensive.
66) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had emailed one another about using a “trick” for the sake of concealing a “decline” in temperatures when looking at the history of the Earth’s temperature.
This refers to a standard adjustment to eliminate a known quirk of one kind of source data. The East Anglia data is reliable and reproducible.
67) Global temperatures have not risen in any statistically-significant sense for 15 years and have actually been falling for nine years. The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed a scientific team had expressed dismay at the fact global warming was contrary to their predictions and admitted their inability to explain it was “a travesty”.
2009 was the second warmest year on record, and five of the warmest years have been in last ten years. The "travesty" referred to a lack of floating temperature recorders. The lack of rise since 2000 relates to a quiet sun.
68) The IPCC predicts that a warmer planet will lead to more extreme weather, including drought, flooding, storms, snow, and wildfires. But over the last century, during which the IPCC claims the world experienced more rapid warming than any time in the past two millennia, the world did not experience significantly greater trends in any of these extreme weather events. Weather - related damage is increasing over the past 40 years.
69) In explaining the average temperature standstill we are currently experiencing, the Met Office Hadley Centre ran a series of computer climate predictions and found in many of the computer runs there were decade-long standstills but none for 15 years – so it expects global warming to resume swiftly. As it probably will over the next five years, as sunspot activity picks up again.
70) Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote: “The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the Earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. Such hysteria (over global warming) simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth.” Climate scientists do not have a notion of a static, unchanging climate. Popular climate change denial is driven by shock jocks and tabloid journalism.
71) Despite the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s status as the flagship of the fight against climate change it has been a failure. Decarbonisation is going to take time. The momentum will build.
72) The first phase of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which ran from 2005 to 2007 was a failure. Huge over-allocation of permits to pollute led to a collapse in the price of carbon from €33 to just €0.20 per tonne meaning the system did not reduce emissions at all.
The over-allocation was due to the undue demands of the corporations.
73) The EU trading scheme, to manage carbon emissions has completely failed and actually allows European businesses to duck out of making their emissions reductions at home by offsetting, which means paying for cuts to be made overseas instead.
The trading scheme is flawed and must be reformed.
74) To date “cap and trade” carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions.
The journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step.
75) In the United States , the cap-and-trade is an approach designed to control carbon emissions and will impose huge costs upon American citizens via a carbon tax on all goods and services produced in the United States. The average family of four can expect to pay an additional $1700, or £1,043, more each year. It is predicted that the United States will lose more than 2 million jobs as the result of cap-and-trade schemes.
Carbon prices will go up in the end with Peak Oil. Hundreds of thousands of jobs can result from energy conservation and low-carbon technology.
76) Dr Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has indicated that out of the 21 climate models tracked by the IPCC the differences in warming exhibited by those models is mostly the result of different strengths of positive cloud feedback – and that increasing CO2 is insufficient to explain global-average warming in the last 50 to 100 years.
Spencer is using a very simple model that does not reflect the complex reality of the atmosphere.
77) Why should politicians devote our scarce resources in a globally competitive world to a false and ill-defined problem, while ignoring the real problems the entire planet faces, such as: poverty, hunger, disease or terrorism.
This assumes what the Express is trying to prove. Unchecked GW will make the problems worse.
78) A proper analysis of ice core records from the past 650,000 years demonstrates that temperature increases have come before, and not resulted from, increases in CO2 by hundreds of years.
The Ice Age variations are started by solar change, but prolonged by the CO2 increases.
79) Since the cause of global warming is mostly natural, then there is in actual fact very little we can do about it. (We are still not able to control the sun).
There are six factors causing climate change, CO2 is a powerful component, and is the one we can change.
80) A substantial number of the panel of 2,500 climate scientists on the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change, which created a statement on scientific unanimity on climate change and man-made global warming, were found to have serious concerns.
Scientists will always have questions. There is neverthless a consensus.
81) The UK’s Met Office has been forced this year to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by revelations about the data. This is a reasonable response to the stolen emails.
82) Politicians and activists push for renewable energy sources such as wind turbines under the rhetoric of climate change, but it is essentially about money – under the system of Renewable Obligations. Much of the money is paid for by consumers in electricity bills. It amounts to £1 billion a year. Nuclear and coal have received vastly greater subsidies.
83) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had tampered with their own data so as to conceal inconsistencies and errors.
Untrue.
84) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had campaigned for the removal of a learned journal’s editor, solely because he did not share their willingness to debase science for political purposes. They thought the journal was publishing poor science.
85) Ice-core data clearly show that temperatures change centuries before concentrations of atmospheric CO2 change. Thus, there appears to be little evidence for insisting that changes in concentrations of CO2 are the cause of past temperature and climate change.
Repeat of 78. The only way to explain what is happening now is by man-made gases.
86) There are no experimentally verified processes explaining how CO2 concentrations can fall in a few centuries without falling temperatures – in fact it is changing temperatures which cause changes in CO2 concentrations, which is consistent with experiments that show CO2 is the atmospheric gas most readily absorbed by water.
CO2 varies both naturally and by man-made activities. We have increased concentrations by 37%
87) The Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy contains a massive increase in electricity generation by wind power costing around £4 billion a year over the next twenty years. The benefits will be only £4 to £5 billion overall (not per annum). So costs will outnumber benefits by a range of between eleven and seventeen times.
Wind energy myths are treated here. Costs are falling all the time.
88) Whilst CO2 levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout history, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and the growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years.
Good, if true.
89) It is a myth that CO2 is a pollutant, because nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere and human beings could not live in 100% nitrogen either: CO2 is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is and CO2 is essential to life.
This claim is based on confusion.
90) Politicians and climate activists make claims to rising sea levels but certain members in the IPCC chose an area to measure in Hong Kong that is subsiding. They used the record reading of 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level.
That would be a good reason to change the location of the measurement location.
The sea levels are certainly rising.
91) The accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998.
Global warming increase, thankfully, has reduced since 1988, due to strong La Nina event, and possibly a solar minimum. But it is still happening.
92) If one factors in non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements show little, if any, global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).
93) US President Barack Obama pledged to cut emissions by 2050 to equal those of 1910 when there were 92 million Americans. In 2050, there will be 420 million Americans, so Obama’s promise means that emissions per head will be approximately what they were in 1875. It simply will not happen.
A lot of technological improvement can happen over four decades, if the political will is there.
94) The European Union has already agreed to cut emissions by 20 percent to 2020, compared with 1990 levels, and is willing to increase the target to 30 percent. However, these are unachievable and the EU has already massively failed with its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), as EU emissions actually rose by 0.8 percent from 2005 to 2006 and are known to be well above the Kyoto goal.
See 93.
95) Australia has stated it wants to slash greenhouse emissions by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, but the pledges were so unpopular that the country’s Senate has voted against the carbon trading Bill, and the Opposition’s Party leader has now been ousted by a climate change sceptic.
Australia does politics.
96) Canada plans to reduce emissions by 20 percent compared with 2006 levels by 2020, representing approximately a 3 percent cut from 1990 levels but it simultaneously defends its Alberta tar sands emissions and its record as one of the world’s highest per-capita emissions setters.
Canada does politics too.
97) India plans to reduce the ratio of emissions to production by 20-25 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2020, but all Government officials insist that since India has to grow for its development and poverty alleviation, it has to emit, because the economy is driven by carbon.
India is in a good position to exploit solar technology
98) The Leipzig Declaration in 1996, was signed by 110 scientists who said: “We – along with many of our fellow citizens – are apprehensive about the climate treaty conference scheduled for Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997” and “based on all the evidence available to us, we cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes and calls for hasty actions.”
Oregon petition
100) A report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change concluded “We find no support for the IPCC’s claim that climate observations during the twentieth century are either unprecedented or provide evidence of an anthropogenic effect on climate.”
This NIPCC report was by Fred Singer, who has little or no credibility.
That night, the New Scientist published rebuttals to the first 50, then got bored, and stopped.
I have finally got around to answering the second 50 points.
As you will see, many of the points have no bearing at all on whether or not climate change has an anthropogenic component.
51) Wind farms are not an efficient way to produce energy. The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) accepts a figure of 75 per cent back-up power is required.
The HVDC grid and storage systems will overcome this problem.
52) Global temperatures are below the low end of IPCC predictions not at “at the top end of IPCC estimates”
The predictions are pretty good.
53) Climate alarmists have raised the concern over acidification of the oceans but Tom Segalstad from Oslo University in Norway , and others, have noted that the composition of ocean water – including CO2, calcium, and water – can act as a buffering agent in the acidification of the oceans.
Buffering slows, but cannot negate, acidification
54) The UN’s IPCC computer models of human-caused global warming predict the emergence of a “hotspot” in the upper troposphere over the tropics. Former researcher in the Australian Department of Climate Change, David Evans, said there is no evidence of such a hotspot
David Evans is confused
55) The argument that climate change is a of result of global warming caused by human activity is the argument of flat Earthers.
Empty abuse.
56) The manner in which US President Barack Obama sidestepped Congress to order emission cuts shows how undemocratic and irrational the entire international decision-making process has become with regards to emission-target setting.
Extrapolation from one instance to the whole.
57) William Kininmonth, a former head of the National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation, wrote “the likely extent of global temperature rise from a doubling of CO2 is less than 1C. Such warming is well within the envelope of variation experienced during the past 10,000 years and insignificant in the context of glacial cycles during the past million years, when Earth has been predominantly very cold and covered by extensive ice sheets.”
Kininmonth argues that H2O evaporation will cool, but forgets that condensation will cancel that effect.
58) Canada has shown the world targets derived from the existing Kyoto commitments were always unrealistic and did not work for the country.
Decarbonisation is going to be challenging for every country, not just Canada. Even cold countries are going to have to rely on renewables in the long term, when fossil and uranium resources are finished.
59) In the lead up to the Copenhagen summit, David Davis MP said of previous climate summits, at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and Kyoto in 1997 that many had promised greater cuts, but “neither happened”, but we are continuing along the same lines.
Rome was not built in a day.
60) The UK ’s environmental policy has a long-term price tag of about £55 billion, before taking into account the impact on its economic growth. The UK put £200 billion in bailing out the bankers. Energy conservation and clean production is real investment, not covering mistakes made by incompetent fools.
61) The UN’s panel on climate change warned that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035. J. Graham Cogley a professor at Ontario Trent University, claims this inaccurate stating the UN authors got the date from an earlier report wrong by more than 300 years.
This was from a typo copied by incompetent bureaucrats.
62) Under existing Kyoto obligations the EU has attempted to claim success, while actually increasing emissions by 13 per cent, according to Lord Lawson. In addition the EU has pursued this scheme by purchasing “offsets” from countries such as China paying them billions of dollars to destroy atmospheric pollutants, such as CFC-23, which were manufactured purely in order to be destroyed.
The infant carbon offset scheme has been exploited by scammers. The system will become tighter in future.
63) It is claimed that the average global temperature was relatively unchanging in pre-industrial times but sky-rocketed since 1900, and will increase by several degrees more over the next 100 years according to Penn State University researcher Michael Mann. There is no convincing empirical evidence that past climate was unchanging, nor that 20th century changes in average global temperature were unusual or unnatural.
The facts are otherwise.
64) Michael Mann of Penn State University has actually shown that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age did in fact exist, which contrasts with his earlier work which produced the “hockey stick graph” which showed a constant temperature over the past thousand years or so followed by a recent dramatic upturn.
Good science works by constantly taking on new data.
65) The globe’s current approach to climate change in which major industrialised countries agree to nonsensical targets for their CO2 emissions by a given date, as it has been under the Kyoto system, is very expensive.
Doing nothing is more expensive.
66) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had emailed one another about using a “trick” for the sake of concealing a “decline” in temperatures when looking at the history of the Earth’s temperature.
This refers to a standard adjustment to eliminate a known quirk of one kind of source data. The East Anglia data is reliable and reproducible.
67) Global temperatures have not risen in any statistically-significant sense for 15 years and have actually been falling for nine years. The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed a scientific team had expressed dismay at the fact global warming was contrary to their predictions and admitted their inability to explain it was “a travesty”.
2009 was the second warmest year on record, and five of the warmest years have been in last ten years. The "travesty" referred to a lack of floating temperature recorders. The lack of rise since 2000 relates to a quiet sun.
68) The IPCC predicts that a warmer planet will lead to more extreme weather, including drought, flooding, storms, snow, and wildfires. But over the last century, during which the IPCC claims the world experienced more rapid warming than any time in the past two millennia, the world did not experience significantly greater trends in any of these extreme weather events. Weather - related damage is increasing over the past 40 years.
69) In explaining the average temperature standstill we are currently experiencing, the Met Office Hadley Centre ran a series of computer climate predictions and found in many of the computer runs there were decade-long standstills but none for 15 years – so it expects global warming to resume swiftly. As it probably will over the next five years, as sunspot activity picks up again.
70) Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote: “The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the Earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. Such hysteria (over global warming) simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth.” Climate scientists do not have a notion of a static, unchanging climate. Popular climate change denial is driven by shock jocks and tabloid journalism.
71) Despite the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s status as the flagship of the fight against climate change it has been a failure. Decarbonisation is going to take time. The momentum will build.
72) The first phase of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which ran from 2005 to 2007 was a failure. Huge over-allocation of permits to pollute led to a collapse in the price of carbon from €33 to just €0.20 per tonne meaning the system did not reduce emissions at all.
The over-allocation was due to the undue demands of the corporations.
73) The EU trading scheme, to manage carbon emissions has completely failed and actually allows European businesses to duck out of making their emissions reductions at home by offsetting, which means paying for cuts to be made overseas instead.
The trading scheme is flawed and must be reformed.
74) To date “cap and trade” carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions.
The journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step.
75) In the United States , the cap-and-trade is an approach designed to control carbon emissions and will impose huge costs upon American citizens via a carbon tax on all goods and services produced in the United States. The average family of four can expect to pay an additional $1700, or £1,043, more each year. It is predicted that the United States will lose more than 2 million jobs as the result of cap-and-trade schemes.
Carbon prices will go up in the end with Peak Oil. Hundreds of thousands of jobs can result from energy conservation and low-carbon technology.
76) Dr Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has indicated that out of the 21 climate models tracked by the IPCC the differences in warming exhibited by those models is mostly the result of different strengths of positive cloud feedback – and that increasing CO2 is insufficient to explain global-average warming in the last 50 to 100 years.
Spencer is using a very simple model that does not reflect the complex reality of the atmosphere.
77) Why should politicians devote our scarce resources in a globally competitive world to a false and ill-defined problem, while ignoring the real problems the entire planet faces, such as: poverty, hunger, disease or terrorism.
This assumes what the Express is trying to prove. Unchecked GW will make the problems worse.
78) A proper analysis of ice core records from the past 650,000 years demonstrates that temperature increases have come before, and not resulted from, increases in CO2 by hundreds of years.
The Ice Age variations are started by solar change, but prolonged by the CO2 increases.
79) Since the cause of global warming is mostly natural, then there is in actual fact very little we can do about it. (We are still not able to control the sun).
There are six factors causing climate change, CO2 is a powerful component, and is the one we can change.
80) A substantial number of the panel of 2,500 climate scientists on the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change, which created a statement on scientific unanimity on climate change and man-made global warming, were found to have serious concerns.
Scientists will always have questions. There is neverthless a consensus.
81) The UK’s Met Office has been forced this year to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by revelations about the data. This is a reasonable response to the stolen emails.
82) Politicians and activists push for renewable energy sources such as wind turbines under the rhetoric of climate change, but it is essentially about money – under the system of Renewable Obligations. Much of the money is paid for by consumers in electricity bills. It amounts to £1 billion a year. Nuclear and coal have received vastly greater subsidies.
83) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had tampered with their own data so as to conceal inconsistencies and errors.
Untrue.
84) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had campaigned for the removal of a learned journal’s editor, solely because he did not share their willingness to debase science for political purposes. They thought the journal was publishing poor science.
85) Ice-core data clearly show that temperatures change centuries before concentrations of atmospheric CO2 change. Thus, there appears to be little evidence for insisting that changes in concentrations of CO2 are the cause of past temperature and climate change.
Repeat of 78. The only way to explain what is happening now is by man-made gases.
86) There are no experimentally verified processes explaining how CO2 concentrations can fall in a few centuries without falling temperatures – in fact it is changing temperatures which cause changes in CO2 concentrations, which is consistent with experiments that show CO2 is the atmospheric gas most readily absorbed by water.
CO2 varies both naturally and by man-made activities. We have increased concentrations by 37%
87) The Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy contains a massive increase in electricity generation by wind power costing around £4 billion a year over the next twenty years. The benefits will be only £4 to £5 billion overall (not per annum). So costs will outnumber benefits by a range of between eleven and seventeen times.
Wind energy myths are treated here. Costs are falling all the time.
88) Whilst CO2 levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout history, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and the growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years.
Good, if true.
89) It is a myth that CO2 is a pollutant, because nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere and human beings could not live in 100% nitrogen either: CO2 is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is and CO2 is essential to life.
This claim is based on confusion.
90) Politicians and climate activists make claims to rising sea levels but certain members in the IPCC chose an area to measure in Hong Kong that is subsiding. They used the record reading of 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level.
That would be a good reason to change the location of the measurement location.
The sea levels are certainly rising.
91) The accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998.
Global warming increase, thankfully, has reduced since 1988, due to strong La Nina event, and possibly a solar minimum. But it is still happening.
92) If one factors in non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements show little, if any, global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).
93) US President Barack Obama pledged to cut emissions by 2050 to equal those of 1910 when there were 92 million Americans. In 2050, there will be 420 million Americans, so Obama’s promise means that emissions per head will be approximately what they were in 1875. It simply will not happen.
A lot of technological improvement can happen over four decades, if the political will is there.
94) The European Union has already agreed to cut emissions by 20 percent to 2020, compared with 1990 levels, and is willing to increase the target to 30 percent. However, these are unachievable and the EU has already massively failed with its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), as EU emissions actually rose by 0.8 percent from 2005 to 2006 and are known to be well above the Kyoto goal.
See 93.
95) Australia has stated it wants to slash greenhouse emissions by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, but the pledges were so unpopular that the country’s Senate has voted against the carbon trading Bill, and the Opposition’s Party leader has now been ousted by a climate change sceptic.
Australia does politics.
96) Canada plans to reduce emissions by 20 percent compared with 2006 levels by 2020, representing approximately a 3 percent cut from 1990 levels but it simultaneously defends its Alberta tar sands emissions and its record as one of the world’s highest per-capita emissions setters.
Canada does politics too.
97) India plans to reduce the ratio of emissions to production by 20-25 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2020, but all Government officials insist that since India has to grow for its development and poverty alleviation, it has to emit, because the economy is driven by carbon.
India is in a good position to exploit solar technology
98) The Leipzig Declaration in 1996, was signed by 110 scientists who said: “We – along with many of our fellow citizens – are apprehensive about the climate treaty conference scheduled for Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997” and “based on all the evidence available to us, we cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes and calls for hasty actions.”
According to Sourcewatch, when a Danish journalist attempted to contact the 33 European scientists listed on the petition, 12 denied signing the petition and some had not even heard of the Leipzig Declaration. Of those that did admit to signing the letter, one was a doctor and another was an expert on flying insects. The declaration was then revised and many names were removed.
99) A US Oregon Petition Project stated “We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of CO2, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”Oregon petition
100) A report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change concluded “We find no support for the IPCC’s claim that climate observations during the twentieth century are either unprecedented or provide evidence of an anthropogenic effect on climate.”
This NIPCC report was by Fred Singer, who has little or no credibility.
Getting ready for the Pope's visit
Lines on the Death of John Paul II
"No Popery" Ian Paisley cried,
and now that John Paul II has died,
there is no Pope,
so can we hope
for Orangemen with peace inside?
Nope.
They just can't cope
without a Pope.
The Papists want a Papacy
and Paisley needs an enemy.
Without a Pope
they'd all just . . . mope.
It really makes you think:
what if it pushed them off the brink ?
what if it made them turn to drink
or even . . . turn to dope?
Might be a blessing in disguise.
Imagine if the smokes that rise
above the Convocation
(as they all grope
for a new pope)
should symbolise a wider scope
for toleration?
What if the newly chosen Pope,
red-eyed, and reading Rattigan
loped lazily around the Vatican
flashing the peace sign,
Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Fine.
But that could be a slippery slope
No-one would want a hippy Pope.
We should not hope
for a doped pope;
But could we simply go for one
that has a well developed sense of fun?
(Maybe when Ratzinger’s gone?)
(c) Richard Lawson
M4
7.4.05
Thursday, February 04, 2010
NuLabour's cunning plan; kill free speech, wrong-foot Bin Laden
Iain Dale runs the remarkable story that an independent-minded Labour MP who was due to debate Afghanistan has been banned from the venue by a Minister at the MoD, thought to be one Kevan Jones.
I think I detect a pattern in this.
NuLabour sends our boys out to Afghanistan to die, at a rate of one a day, because if they didn't the Osama Bin Bogeyman would come over here and take away our freedom of speech.
Things are not looking good. Victory in Afghanistan is still a long way off.
So maybe Kevan Jones has a cunning plan: if he takes away our freedom of speech, he will have shot the Al-Quaeda's fox. Kevan has made a start with Eric Joyce MP. Other initiatives include curtaining our right to demonstrate, &c &c.
It all makes sense to me now.
I think I detect a pattern in this.
NuLabour sends our boys out to Afghanistan to die, at a rate of one a day, because if they didn't the Osama Bin Bogeyman would come over here and take away our freedom of speech.
Things are not looking good. Victory in Afghanistan is still a long way off.
So maybe Kevan Jones has a cunning plan: if he takes away our freedom of speech, he will have shot the Al-Quaeda's fox. Kevan has made a start with Eric Joyce MP. Other initiatives include curtaining our right to demonstrate, &c &c.
It all makes sense to me now.
Should we keep FPTP to exclude the BNP?
Someone on the Weston Mercury discussion board argues that one advantage of the First Past the Post electoral system is that it closes the door on dangerous minority parties like the BNP.
The answer is that the BNP are a dangerous, anti-peace, anti-democracy party with views and policies that are repugnant and alien to the British tradition.
Many of them are criminals, and the law is forcing them to bring their membership policies into line.
BUT, despite the increase in hate-crimes in some areas where they have been successful, and despite the fact that the German Nazis were initially voted in, it is better on balance for them to be brought into the democratic discussion, where their views can be tested and argued against, rather than using a dysfunctional electoral system to exclude them artificially.
The Greens have been patient during our 30-year exclusion from the political process. The BNP cannot be trusted to be so patient. Exclusion is likely to make them more violent.
Homelessness and joblessness are the twin burners that lift the BNP hot air balloon. Both of these are unnnecessary, and maybe grey politicians will be stimulated to address these problems if the BNP makes progress.
The answer is that the BNP are a dangerous, anti-peace, anti-democracy party with views and policies that are repugnant and alien to the British tradition.
Many of them are criminals, and the law is forcing them to bring their membership policies into line.
BUT, despite the increase in hate-crimes in some areas where they have been successful, and despite the fact that the German Nazis were initially voted in, it is better on balance for them to be brought into the democratic discussion, where their views can be tested and argued against, rather than using a dysfunctional electoral system to exclude them artificially.
The Greens have been patient during our 30-year exclusion from the political process. The BNP cannot be trusted to be so patient. Exclusion is likely to make them more violent.
Homelessness and joblessness are the twin burners that lift the BNP hot air balloon. Both of these are unnnecessary, and maybe grey politicians will be stimulated to address these problems if the BNP makes progress.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide should return to Haiti
There are calls in Haiti for John-Bertrand Aristide to be recalled from exile in South Africa to help with reconstruction. He is popular with the poor, and they arguably need a ...er...leader. (Pause to reflect on the Green Party's doubts about leaders. But who are we to impose our culture on others?)
There is a confusing slew of accusations and counter accusations.
What are we to make of all this?
It seems that Aristide offended US free-marketeers with his opposition to privatisation and globalisation. The allegations of corruption may or may not have some factual basis - the US Republican Swift Boat narrative against John Kerry shows that right-wing allegations should be taken with a grain of salt.
On balance, I believe that the Global Greens should call for the return of Aristide to Haiti to help and inspire the people to rebuild their economy and society from the grassroots up.
There is a confusing slew of accusations and counter accusations.
- J-BA was President of Haiti for a short while in 1991, then ousted by a military coup, then President again 1994-96, and again 2001-4.
- He resisted demands in 1994 to privatise his state-owned phones and electricity.
- There are allegations of voting irregularities by his party in 2000.
- He justifiably demanded reparations from France.
- International financial assistance was denied to Haiti.
- The Ottawa Initiative was a 2-day conference in Montreal in 2003, to decide the future of Haiti's government, though no Haitian government officials were invited.
- A rebellion led by a death squad leader in 2003 was backed by the USA.
- J-BA says he was kidnapped by US forces in 2004 and flown out of Haiti.
- USA Today alleges that he supported necklacing.
- The UN Mission in Haiti (MICIVIH) found that Human Rights improved after he came back in 2004.
- Amnesty International found that HR became worse after his removal in 2004.
- He denies allegations of involvement in drug trafficking, and has not been prosecuted for it.
- He denies allegations of involvement in corruption, and a prosecution for this was suspended.
What are we to make of all this?
It seems that Aristide offended US free-marketeers with his opposition to privatisation and globalisation. The allegations of corruption may or may not have some factual basis - the US Republican Swift Boat narrative against John Kerry shows that right-wing allegations should be taken with a grain of salt.
On balance, I believe that the Global Greens should call for the return of Aristide to Haiti to help and inspire the people to rebuild their economy and society from the grassroots up.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Is the Green Movement a Religion?
One of the Ethical Man's points in his provocative piece entitled "Are environmentalists bad for the planet" is the assertion that the green movement is a religion.
Now I know all about this. Well, no that's stupid, because nobody knows all about anything. I have knowledge of it. I had a traumatic childhood in the Darbyite-Taylorite branch of the Exclusive (Plymouth) Brethren, from whence I migrated in adolescence to the relative liberty of evangelicalism, from there to the more intellectually interesting realms of Dooyeweerdian Christian philosophy, which is still an integrative influence on my thinking.
Before the sceptics start throwing brickbats, I must say that I am now happy to be a dogma-free zone, a Quaker, though not a very good attender.
It was a tenet of Dooyeweerdian philosophy that faith underpins any intellectual position, whether religious or secular. Maybe D. did not invent the idea himself, but it was certainly implicit in his work, and it seems to have gained currency at least in the USA. In fact my good friend Dr Glenn Friesen traces Gooyeweerd's influences back to a mystic by the name of Franz Xavier von Baader (1765-1841) . Unsurprisingly, this has not made Glenn popular among the tightly buttoned up Calvinistic Christians who cluster around Dooyeweerd's philosophy of the Cosmonomic Law Idea.
But I digress. The point is that there is a view of man that says that everyone has a religion, even if it's not a religion. Communism is a religion, Capitalism (worship of money) is a religion, consumerism is a religion. Green is a religion.
Bob Dylan, in his brief evangelical Slow Train Comin phase, put it like this:
So Rowlatt's point about green being a religion is just a truism. Greens are humans, humans are religious, therefore greens are religious, just as free market fundamentalists have a religion, and shoppers have a religion and football fans have a religion. Religion in these terms is what you hold most dear.
Big deal. It means nothing to anyone outside of the American Right Wing Aggressive Christian tradition, where is means that all greens are going to spend eternity roasting screaming in hell because we believe that it is important to protect our life-giving planetary environment, rather than believing in the Bible.
That, is of course, a matter for them. It has no bearing on whether the ecological ideology is true or not.
As far as I am concerned, the green political ideology is soundly based on the knowledge of where our bread comes from, as opposed to alternative abstract political philosophies which are based on the idea of mankind as a self-existent individual or social being.
OK.
Now to look at the valid part of Rowlatt's criticism. There is a cultic tendency in the Green movement, as there is in free marketism, or footballism, or consumerism. I find it within the Green Party, because that is where my life experience takes place, but it probably happens within all other strands of the green movement, and indeed any other political movement.
There is a regrettable exclusivity to some Greens' thinking. To be really Green, you have to be in the Green Party. Zac Goldsmith is not really a Green, because he is in the Tory Party. &c.
This is wrong.
The Quaker-style view of it is more accurate. There is a green light within everyone, a spark of attachment to Nature, that is experienced most intensely as a child.
Thomas Traherne said it best:
"The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things" It is well worth reading the whole passage.
He concludes
"So that with much ado I was corrupted, and made to learn the dirty devices of this world".
Everyone has the impulse to love Nature, but that the impulse is covered over with "education" and with learned behaviour, for instance the patently absurd notion that perpetual economic growth is necessary and sustainable. Of course there are real greens in other political parties, no question. The difference is that the green party is seeking political ways to make implement sustainability at the outset, not as a bolt-on added extra. Note "is seeking". We are in process, not at our destination. The written record of this endeavor to develop policies that can produce a sustainable society and economy, one that works with, and not against the grain of nature, is called the Manifesto for a Sustainable Society. (MfSS).
Which gives rise to another cultic manifestation within the beloved Green Party - MfSS fundamentalism. In this view, no green party person is supposed to say anything that is not contained within the MfSS. No going beyond what is written therein.
I think that the underlying cognitive psychology for some members is this : "The world is in a horrible mess. The Green Party is a little sub-creation where we will perfect an idea of how the world should be, and that perfection, the Manifesto, will save us".
It is a strange paradox, a quirk of psychology, that the very people who has the most strict and particular emphasis on this doctrine, may also be the most vehement in attacking MfSS policies that they disagree with.
Having written this, I am a bit worried that it will cause a storm for displaying some of the inner workings of our party just before a general election. However, the subject has been brought up, by Rowlatt. Spin doctors would meet his accusations with simple denial. Since transparency is one of our core values, we should show his argument for the truism that it is, but also examine our internal religious tendencies in order to get beyond them.
So, in summary, Justin "Ethical Man" Rowlatt's provocative claim that environmentalists are bad for the planet was a typical piece of light weight angled journalism. The oft-quoted claim that green is a religion is a trivial bit of truism. But we in the Green Party do have to look to the danger of exclusivism and fundamentalism, because they will only hold us back. Our ecological political ideology is the soundest political ideology around; it is a rock on which the wave of free-market fundamentalism will break itself.
Now I know all about this. Well, no that's stupid, because nobody knows all about anything. I have knowledge of it. I had a traumatic childhood in the Darbyite-Taylorite branch of the Exclusive (Plymouth) Brethren, from whence I migrated in adolescence to the relative liberty of evangelicalism, from there to the more intellectually interesting realms of Dooyeweerdian Christian philosophy, which is still an integrative influence on my thinking.
Before the sceptics start throwing brickbats, I must say that I am now happy to be a dogma-free zone, a Quaker, though not a very good attender.
It was a tenet of Dooyeweerdian philosophy that faith underpins any intellectual position, whether religious or secular. Maybe D. did not invent the idea himself, but it was certainly implicit in his work, and it seems to have gained currency at least in the USA. In fact my good friend Dr Glenn Friesen traces Gooyeweerd's influences back to a mystic by the name of Franz Xavier von Baader (1765-1841) . Unsurprisingly, this has not made Glenn popular among the tightly buttoned up Calvinistic Christians who cluster around Dooyeweerd's philosophy of the Cosmonomic Law Idea.
But I digress. The point is that there is a view of man that says that everyone has a religion, even if it's not a religion. Communism is a religion, Capitalism (worship of money) is a religion, consumerism is a religion. Green is a religion.
Bob Dylan, in his brief evangelical Slow Train Comin phase, put it like this:
"But you're gonna have to serve somebody
Yes you're gonna have to serve somebody
Well it may be the Devil, it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody"
Yes you're gonna have to serve somebody
Well it may be the Devil, it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody"
So Rowlatt's point about green being a religion is just a truism. Greens are humans, humans are religious, therefore greens are religious, just as free market fundamentalists have a religion, and shoppers have a religion and football fans have a religion. Religion in these terms is what you hold most dear.
Big deal. It means nothing to anyone outside of the American Right Wing Aggressive Christian tradition, where is means that all greens are going to spend eternity roasting screaming in hell because we believe that it is important to protect our life-giving planetary environment, rather than believing in the Bible.
That, is of course, a matter for them. It has no bearing on whether the ecological ideology is true or not.
As far as I am concerned, the green political ideology is soundly based on the knowledge of where our bread comes from, as opposed to alternative abstract political philosophies which are based on the idea of mankind as a self-existent individual or social being.
OK.
Now to look at the valid part of Rowlatt's criticism. There is a cultic tendency in the Green movement, as there is in free marketism, or footballism, or consumerism. I find it within the Green Party, because that is where my life experience takes place, but it probably happens within all other strands of the green movement, and indeed any other political movement.
There is a regrettable exclusivity to some Greens' thinking. To be really Green, you have to be in the Green Party. Zac Goldsmith is not really a Green, because he is in the Tory Party. &c.
This is wrong.
The Quaker-style view of it is more accurate. There is a green light within everyone, a spark of attachment to Nature, that is experienced most intensely as a child.
Thomas Traherne said it best:
"The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things" It is well worth reading the whole passage.
He concludes
"So that with much ado I was corrupted, and made to learn the dirty devices of this world".
Everyone has the impulse to love Nature, but that the impulse is covered over with "education" and with learned behaviour, for instance the patently absurd notion that perpetual economic growth is necessary and sustainable. Of course there are real greens in other political parties, no question. The difference is that the green party is seeking political ways to make implement sustainability at the outset, not as a bolt-on added extra. Note "is seeking". We are in process, not at our destination. The written record of this endeavor to develop policies that can produce a sustainable society and economy, one that works with, and not against the grain of nature, is called the Manifesto for a Sustainable Society. (MfSS).
Which gives rise to another cultic manifestation within the beloved Green Party - MfSS fundamentalism. In this view, no green party person is supposed to say anything that is not contained within the MfSS. No going beyond what is written therein.
I think that the underlying cognitive psychology for some members is this : "The world is in a horrible mess. The Green Party is a little sub-creation where we will perfect an idea of how the world should be, and that perfection, the Manifesto, will save us".
It is a strange paradox, a quirk of psychology, that the very people who has the most strict and particular emphasis on this doctrine, may also be the most vehement in attacking MfSS policies that they disagree with.
Having written this, I am a bit worried that it will cause a storm for displaying some of the inner workings of our party just before a general election. However, the subject has been brought up, by Rowlatt. Spin doctors would meet his accusations with simple denial. Since transparency is one of our core values, we should show his argument for the truism that it is, but also examine our internal religious tendencies in order to get beyond them.
So, in summary, Justin "Ethical Man" Rowlatt's provocative claim that environmentalists are bad for the planet was a typical piece of light weight angled journalism. The oft-quoted claim that green is a religion is a trivial bit of truism. But we in the Green Party do have to look to the danger of exclusivism and fundamentalism, because they will only hold us back. Our ecological political ideology is the soundest political ideology around; it is a rock on which the wave of free-market fundamentalism will break itself.
Banker in accident shock
| A banker parks his brand new Porsche in front of the office to show it off to his colleagues. |
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Is Justin Rowlatt an Ethical Man?
The BBC's 'Ethical Man' Justin Rowlatt asks on Radio 4 if the environmental movement is bad for the planet. Listen here. Transcript here.
His theme is that green campaigners have political objectives that go above and beyond decarbonising the atmosphere.
He starts with Solitaire Townsend who runs a city PR firm, which specialises in communicating
sustainability.
She comes up with a thought experiment: A Carbon Fairy comes along with a magic wand that can abolish the laws of physics, so that humans could burn CO2 without damaging the atmosphere's greenhouse properties, and then would environmentalists be happy? They vote no, presumably because they have difficulty with the magic, and because of all the other green issues such as resource depletion, species extinction, overpopulation, traffic congestion and 1001 other concerns. Townsend is angered because of their vote, and Rowlatt carries on to substantiate that anger.
He challenges the precautionary principle, because it is against GMOs and nuclear power. Nuclear power is good in Rowlatt's view, because it is low carbon energy. He passes over the other nine drawbacks to nuclear power, namely
The "ethical man" suspects that greens' lack of willingness to embrace nuclear power is based on a prejudice against the high technology. Jonathon Porrit gives the lie direct to this idea, and blames the growth economy, and rightly points to the fact that consumer economy does not make people happy. To which Rowlatt asks why than does the whole world want to migrate to Western lifestyles, cognitively and geographically. "They think it will make them happier".
But is it really fair to say that less individualistic societies care more about the planet? He wheels in John Gummer whos sets up and knocks down the straw man of communism as the only alternative to individualistic capitalism, which is the only economy that can provide the solution to global warming. Only not free market capitalism, because the true cost of carbon has to be created by legislation. Which we can agree with, so it's not all bad. Jonathon agrees too; it is necessary but not sufficient.
JP "I want ...to go further than that and look to a different kind of economy, a different kind of society - one which I believe would be better for far more people than is the case today"
But at root, what you’re trying to do is change individuals which is a very radical project
isn’t it? Changing who we are...the identity campaign that Tom Crompton, a strategist for
the conservation charity WWF UK champions carries a whiff of social engineering about
it – it seems to imply an almost evangelical approach with green missionaries like Tom ...
Here we go. Evangelical and missionaries. A challenge to the sanity or otherwise of the growth economy has stimulated discussion of social engineering, (nasty word that, involving welding and rivets being driven into people), which rapidly morphs into Changing Human Nature.
Time to wheel in a theologian, Martin Palmer, who is a UN advisor on climate change and world religions.
PALMER: In the 70s and 80s the environmental movement believed that if it put the scientific facts –the data – in front of us, we would all wake up and we would reform ourselves and create a utopian, happy world. What then happened is the classic collapse of that utopian hope and you move into stage two and stage two is the apocalyptic. So for example, the world is going to be swamped by floods, struck by fire, destroyed by plague, everything will collapse,
society will fall apart. it’s that use of fear that is the main indicator of this.
In short, because the man in Oxford Street with the End of the World is Nigh sandwich board was mad, humans are incapable of having any serious deleterious effect on the global environment. At least, I think that's what he is trying to say.
PALMER: I hate to say this – but there is a very strong –it’s very small – but there is a very strong green fascism in much of the environmental world. I’ve heard it said at meetings I’ve been at – that climate change is so important - democracy has to be sacrificed.
Why, yes, I've heard this too. From one person, out of all the hundreds of people that I correspond with over these matters. I responded that fascism or dictatorship always ends in conflict and war, and war is not good for the environment.
HULME: Some of the deep green movement would buy into this - that actually climate change is the best opportunity that we have got in order to get our political goal of a more egalitarian, localist, less consumer driven society onto the table. And we’ve seen over 40 or 50 years different tactics I suppose from some of these deep greens, eco-socialists if you like, to drive forward this idea and climate change is the latest and is an opportunity.
So there we have it. Greens are "quite cynical" - using climate change as a tactical device. It’s almost as if climate change is a sort of convenient truth to put through their "hidden agenda".
And the hidden agenda seems to be - wait for it - eco-socialism.
Some, like my beloved interlocutors on the Daily Mail discussion board, would go further than Rowlatt. The hidden agenda is not just eco-socialism, but World Government and 100% taxation. And population reduction, probably through forcible sterilisation without an anaesthetic and death camps, and being forced to eat raw uncooked babies, ripping them apart with their bare teeth. OK, I made that last bit up, and they are never said 100% taxation, just high taxation.
More, they believe also that there is a Great Green Conspiracy that has actually somehow persuaded the world community of climate scientists to falsify all their data, frightening the world into believing that there is a problem with global warming when there isn't.
But that's the Daily Mail readers for you.
Back now to the Ethical Man. He has his angle on the situation, has been given the opportunity to bend the ear of the Radio 4 listening public for 30 minutes, and there is no right of reply. He can interview deep thinkers like Porrit and Simms, who have given their lives to the study of these matters, and can take one paragraph of what they say and suggest to us that they have a hidden eco-socialist agenda.
There's only one word for it :
SNAFU.
Rowlatt poses the question "Are Environmentalists bad for the Planet?"
The answer he suggests is "Yes"
This blog poses the question "Is Justin Rowlatt really deserve to call himself the Ethical Man?"
The answer I suggest is, "Whatever. Do we, like, care?"
Another question: "Does Justin Rowlatt have a hidden agenda?"
Answer: "Maybe. Maybe not".
Another question: "Is there a grain of truth in what he is saying?"
Answer: "Yes. But this blog is long enough already, so I will come back to the question of whether Green is a religion in a later blog".
His theme is that green campaigners have political objectives that go above and beyond decarbonising the atmosphere.
He starts with Solitaire Townsend who runs a city PR firm, which specialises in communicating
sustainability.
She comes up with a thought experiment: A Carbon Fairy comes along with a magic wand that can abolish the laws of physics, so that humans could burn CO2 without damaging the atmosphere's greenhouse properties, and then would environmentalists be happy? They vote no, presumably because they have difficulty with the magic, and because of all the other green issues such as resource depletion, species extinction, overpopulation, traffic congestion and 1001 other concerns. Townsend is angered because of their vote, and Rowlatt carries on to substantiate that anger.
He challenges the precautionary principle, because it is against GMOs and nuclear power. Nuclear power is good in Rowlatt's view, because it is low carbon energy. He passes over the other nine drawbacks to nuclear power, namely
- Electricity Produced by NP is not CO2 free
- Conventional NP offers an insignificant contribution to world energy needs
- Fast Breeder technology means uncontrollable nuclear weapons proliferation
- NP possession now implies Nuclear War later
- NP is not economic - and is not insured
- Routine discharges cause cancer
- Nuclear Power Stations are vulnerable to terrorist attack
- The waste problem is not solved
- Nuclear power stations are vulnerable to flooding as sea levels rise
- NP would suck funding away from the real longterm solutions which are energy efficiency and renewable energy.
The "ethical man" suspects that greens' lack of willingness to embrace nuclear power is based on a prejudice against the high technology. Jonathon Porrit gives the lie direct to this idea, and blames the growth economy, and rightly points to the fact that consumer economy does not make people happy. To which Rowlatt asks why than does the whole world want to migrate to Western lifestyles, cognitively and geographically. "They think it will make them happier".
But is it really fair to say that less individualistic societies care more about the planet? He wheels in John Gummer whos sets up and knocks down the straw man of communism as the only alternative to individualistic capitalism, which is the only economy that can provide the solution to global warming. Only not free market capitalism, because the true cost of carbon has to be created by legislation. Which we can agree with, so it's not all bad. Jonathon agrees too; it is necessary but not sufficient.
JP "I want ...to go further than that and look to a different kind of economy, a different kind of society - one which I believe would be better for far more people than is the case today"
[I have just copied an pasted this in, despite the fact that it says at the beginning of the BBC transcript "Please note that this is BBC copyright and may not be reproduced or copied for any other purpose". I just have to hope no-one reads this]
At this point the "Ethical Man" clambers aboard his hobby horse, getting in on with his "angle".
Journalists always have to have an "angle" on a topic, a point of view, a bias, in the strict sense, and his angle is this: Greens don't really want to save the planet, they just want to force their lifestyle onto us. Knitted muesli sandals &c.
Sounds familiar? I have been meeting that deep thought being put to me by journalists for three decades. Previously it was just to mock us. Now it is our evil intent to force everyone to wear beards.
At this point the "Ethical Man" clambers aboard his hobby horse, getting in on with his "angle".
Journalists always have to have an "angle" on a topic, a point of view, a bias, in the strict sense, and his angle is this: Greens don't really want to save the planet, they just want to force their lifestyle onto us. Knitted muesli sandals &c.
Sounds familiar? I have been meeting that deep thought being put to me by journalists for three decades. Previously it was just to mock us. Now it is our evil intent to force everyone to wear beards.
ROWLATT: A different kind of society? This seems to be getting into a debate about who we are, about the nature of humanity. More like a theological discussion than a practical plan for cutting emissions because moving to a different kind of society implies changing people’s values....
But at root, what you’re trying to do is change individuals which is a very radical project
isn’t it? Changing who we are...the identity campaign that Tom Crompton, a strategist for
the conservation charity WWF UK champions carries a whiff of social engineering about
it – it seems to imply an almost evangelical approach with green missionaries like Tom ...
Here we go. Evangelical and missionaries. A challenge to the sanity or otherwise of the growth economy has stimulated discussion of social engineering, (nasty word that, involving welding and rivets being driven into people), which rapidly morphs into Changing Human Nature.
Time to wheel in a theologian, Martin Palmer, who is a UN advisor on climate change and world religions.
PALMER: In the 70s and 80s the environmental movement believed that if it put the scientific facts –the data – in front of us, we would all wake up and we would reform ourselves and create a utopian, happy world. What then happened is the classic collapse of that utopian hope and you move into stage two and stage two is the apocalyptic. So for example, the world is going to be swamped by floods, struck by fire, destroyed by plague, everything will collapse,
society will fall apart. it’s that use of fear that is the main indicator of this.
In short, because the man in Oxford Street with the End of the World is Nigh sandwich board was mad, humans are incapable of having any serious deleterious effect on the global environment. At least, I think that's what he is trying to say.
PALMER: I hate to say this – but there is a very strong –it’s very small – but there is a very strong green fascism in much of the environmental world. I’ve heard it said at meetings I’ve been at – that climate change is so important - democracy has to be sacrificed.
Why, yes, I've heard this too. From one person, out of all the hundreds of people that I correspond with over these matters. I responded that fascism or dictatorship always ends in conflict and war, and war is not good for the environment.
HULME: Some of the deep green movement would buy into this - that actually climate change is the best opportunity that we have got in order to get our political goal of a more egalitarian, localist, less consumer driven society onto the table. And we’ve seen over 40 or 50 years different tactics I suppose from some of these deep greens, eco-socialists if you like, to drive forward this idea and climate change is the latest and is an opportunity.
So there we have it. Greens are "quite cynical" - using climate change as a tactical device. It’s almost as if climate change is a sort of convenient truth to put through their "hidden agenda".
And the hidden agenda seems to be - wait for it - eco-socialism.
Some, like my beloved interlocutors on the Daily Mail discussion board, would go further than Rowlatt. The hidden agenda is not just eco-socialism, but World Government and 100% taxation. And population reduction, probably through forcible sterilisation without an anaesthetic and death camps, and being forced to eat raw uncooked babies, ripping them apart with their bare teeth. OK, I made that last bit up, and they are never said 100% taxation, just high taxation.
More, they believe also that there is a Great Green Conspiracy that has actually somehow persuaded the world community of climate scientists to falsify all their data, frightening the world into believing that there is a problem with global warming when there isn't.
But that's the Daily Mail readers for you.
Back now to the Ethical Man. He has his angle on the situation, has been given the opportunity to bend the ear of the Radio 4 listening public for 30 minutes, and there is no right of reply. He can interview deep thinkers like Porrit and Simms, who have given their lives to the study of these matters, and can take one paragraph of what they say and suggest to us that they have a hidden eco-socialist agenda.
There's only one word for it :
SNAFU.
Rowlatt poses the question "Are Environmentalists bad for the Planet?"
The answer he suggests is "Yes"
This blog poses the question "Is Justin Rowlatt really deserve to call himself the Ethical Man?"
The answer I suggest is, "Whatever. Do we, like, care?"
Another question: "Does Justin Rowlatt have a hidden agenda?"
Answer: "Maybe. Maybe not".
Another question: "Is there a grain of truth in what he is saying?"
Answer: "Yes. But this blog is long enough already, so I will come back to the question of whether Green is a religion in a later blog".
Pope, Mote, Plank, Pedophilia, Jesus
A word to Pope Benedict, straight from the Jesus, who was a good and wise man:
...why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. (Matthew ch 7 v 3; also in Luke)
Here it is in English:
Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
Dear Pope,
The "mote" or speck is your worry about gays and transvestites being allowed to work in the church. (I will not mention the feminine themes of much of your ceremonial attire).
The "plank" or "log" is the unresolved issue of paedophile priests.
"Hypocrite" means an actor, someone who is not what he seems.
...why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. (Matthew ch 7 v 3; also in Luke)
Here it is in English:
Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
Dear Pope,
The "mote" or speck is your worry about gays and transvestites being allowed to work in the church. (I will not mention the feminine themes of much of your ceremonial attire).
The "plank" or "log" is the unresolved issue of paedophile priests.
"Hypocrite" means an actor, someone who is not what he seems.
Climate science is a proxy for ideological clash
The interminable debate about the minutiae of the science - today's news is about regrettable flaws in the methods of Jones and Wang - is really a proxy for a titanic ideological struggle between free market fundamentalism and ecological economics. The free market cannot deliver sustainability any more than Communism could. If anthropogenic climate change is happening, then we must found our economics on ecology, guiding the market, not letting it run free. This is anathema to the free marketeers, therefore climate science must be proven wrong.
Debating the Tobin Tax
I have discovered a market trader blog, (Long&Wrong) who is, amazingly, a Green Party member, and we are debating the Transaction (Tobin) Tax.
Politely.
Just in case anyone is interested.
He claims that the miniscule tax on each transaction would increase his trading cost by 300%, and his costs are 10-15% of his profits.
Hence the squeals of pain from the traders over what seems a miniscule tax. The do a lot of transactions.
I'm not defending the traders, I am signed up to the Robin Hood, but just filling in a bit more of the picture.
Politely.
Just in case anyone is interested.
He claims that the miniscule tax on each transaction would increase his trading cost by 300%, and his costs are 10-15% of his profits.
Hence the squeals of pain from the traders over what seems a miniscule tax. The do a lot of transactions.
I'm not defending the traders, I am signed up to the Robin Hood, but just filling in a bit more of the picture.
Monday, February 01, 2010
TransNational Corporation Law Reform
This document is evolved, and is still evolving, with the collaboration of a number of NGOs in the UK whose work is affected by the activities transnational corporations. These gargantuan economic actors are at present substantially unregulated, and can and do use their economic power to circumvent such regulations as to apply to them.
The document is a brief overview of some of the regulations that might be applied to bring them within the rule of law.
Taming the Tiger: TransNational Corporation Legislation
Introduction
Corporations, whether Trans-National, (a.k.a. Multinational) or large national corporations have as much if not more economic power than half of the nations on earth. They frequently use their economic power either directly or indirectly to influence decisions made by politicians.
Democracy means that the bedrock of political power lies with the people, who commonly delegate their power to Governments to act on their behalf. The de facto existence of commercial organisations with power to influence politicians for their own benefit runs counter to the core principle of democracy.
Corporations have acquired for themselves in law the status of “corporate personhood”, which has given them powerful leverage.
This has resulted in many instances where the activities of Corporations have caused damage, sometimes severe, to human rights, human health, and the environment where they operate. In some instances they have used their political, financial and legal power to escape the consequences of such activities, and it is generally difficult to obtain information about their workings, especially in relation to their subsidiary companies and sub-contractors.
Voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives have had very little real effect on corporate behaviour.
There is a need for governmental bodies at national and international level to create a legislative framework designed to prevent TNCs from causing harm to the society and the natural environment in which they operate. The problem is that governments are often financially beholden to corporations, and are reluctant to offend them. This means that the initiative for constraining corporations must come from civil society.
Many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and individuals are campaigning against various aspects of corporate abuse.
The aim of this document aims to provide an overview of the legal changes required to bring TNCs under the rule of law, as a guide to legislators, politicians, political parties and NGOs.
Legal Status of TNCs
TNCs have obtained for themselves the status of corporate personhood or legal personality, which allows them to act as persons for certain limited purposes—most commonly lawsuits, property ownership, and contracts. This has given them certain legal rights which are not balanced with legal responsibilities, since their central legal responsibility is to maximise the profit of their shareholders.
The aim is to establish in law the principle that Human Rights (HR) are superior to rights and interests of Private Corporations.
Reforms to Legal Status of TNCs
1. The Council of Europe should revise the European Convention on Human Rights in order to make it clear that the Convention only applies to human beings. An exception would be made in respect of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which relates to the right to a fair trial.
2. English law should rule invalid future reliance on any precedent set by assuming that Corporations are persons, changing their status to that of “artificial persons in law”.
3. Amend UK law to prevent courts in the UK from enforcing judgments in US courts which rely on corporations being granted 'Human Rights'.
Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a voluntary undertaking has proved ineffective in the majority of cases. There is a clear need to for legally enforceable obligations and standards.
In particular, there is a need to hold Corporations responsible for subsidiary companies and sub-contractors, since at present they can shed responsibility for harm onto subsidiary companies.
There is also a need to ensure that States will guarantee that TNCs will work to the same standards in third countries as in their base country, or in the country of origin of materials with which they are dealing.
Reforms to create effective CSR
1. Establish a Commission for Business, Human Rights and the Environment (CBHRE)
This new agency would incorporate some of the powers of the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which is charged with overseeing, regulating, inspecting and disciplining accounting firms in their roles as auditors of public companies. It would also help guide UK companies towards best practice when operating at home and overseas and prevent harmful impacts to people and the environment.
The Commission should help resolve disputes between companies and those affected by the companies’ activities, promoting solutions when harm had been done. This body would have the remit of reducing violations of environmental and human rights standards related to UK companies’ operations abroad, and help those companies improve their corporate conduct globally.
Key objectives of a UK CBHRE would be to:
Provide redress for overseas victims of human rights abuses involving UK companies when local redress channels had been exhausted
promote appropriate environmental and human rights standards for UK companies operating overseas and promulgate best practice
work with other human rights commissions and relevant bodies to share learning and build their collective capacity to strengthen the effectiveness of redress in developing countries.
2. Establish Responsibility for subsidiaries and sub-contractors
To establish in law a principle that Corporations must publish details of “Beneficial Ownership”, and to enshrine in law the principle that that responsibilities follow the flow of profit.
3. Protect third party states
To establish in law the principle that a corporation must apply the same environmental and social standards in a third party state as apply in the state where the company is based, registered, or from whence it acquired materials which it wishes to dispose of.
Limited Liability
At present, shareholders in limited liability companies are protected from losses cannot lose value of their shares if the company is successfully sued. The externalisation of risk through Corporate Limited Liability is a privilege providing wealth to shareholders without liability for the impact of the way that wealth is obtained. If shareholders stood to lose financially from any harmful actions of the company, there would be a powerful internal motivation to inhibit any such actions.
Reforms to Liability Law
Company Law is to be amended so as to remove shareholders’ immunity to losses incurred as a result of human rights abuses or environmental pollution caused by the company.
Libel Law
Corporations have used Libel Law, particularly the draconian English libel law, to silence any criticism of their actions. The principle of Free Speech should be enshrined in law, as it is in the First amendment of the Constitution of the USA.
Reforms to Libel Law
The following changes to English Libel Law are required:
1. Capping libel damages at, say, £10,000 and making an apology the chief remedy
2. Shifting the burden of proof so claimants have to demonstrate damage
3. Preventing cases from being heard in London unless, say, 10% of copies of the offending publication are circulated in England
4. Stopping large and medium-sized companies from being able to launch libel actions unless they can prove malicious falsehood
5. Making some internet comments exempt as part of efforts to reflect the arrival of the world wide web
6. Establishing a libel tribunal, along the lines of employment tribunals, as an alternative to expensive full court trials
7. Reducing the prohibitive cost of defending libel actions by capping base costs and making success fees non-recoverable
8. Strengthening the public interest defence and expanding the definition of fair comment.
9. Parliament shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech
In the EU, the Council of Europe should secure an amendment to Article 6, to ensure that any party in a civil dispute is able to mount a defence or response, and that effective sanctions are applied to any vexatious or intimidating litigant. This amendment would be brought into English law whether or not the convention was so amended.
Political Influence of Corporations
At present, politicians and political parties can benefit greatly from corporate donations, which militates against their core responsibility to act on behalf of the welfare of the people who have entrusted them with their power. Politicians are also unduly affected by corporate lobbying.
Reforms to political donations
A cap is to be set on donations to political parties, both direct donations and loans and other indirect forms of aid.
Donations of over, say, £5000 to main political party offices must be reported to and published by the Electoral Commission, and donations of over, say, £200 must be recorded by the party, though not reported.
Political parties must be funded by tax-raised subsidies in proportion to their share of the vote in elections.
Tax Haven Reform
At present, corporations can avoid paying tax by sophisticated avoidance devices involving locating aspects of their operations in different countries, particularly in tax havens. This represents a leaching of wealth away from the societies in which they operate, and results in a heavier burden on ordinary taxpayers.
International agreements will reform Tax Law so as to close down tax havens, and ensure that corporations pay tax to any country in which they are operating.
(Tax havens are pretty unpleasant places for their citizens as well as being bad for nations).
Tax transparency
Require all corporations to publish complete accounts in order to avoid hiding their profit flows and tax liabilities.
Additions
This document is not complete. Suggestions for further additions (for example, on land acquisition rights of corporations, and on ownership of news corporations) and amendments are welcome.
Conclusion
Mega-corporations have arrogated to themselves legal, and economic power that has often been exercised against the interests of people and environment. Voluntary measures have proved ineffective. A legal framework to constrain the activities of corporations is necessary, but politicians are often pliable to the wishes of powerful corporations. It is therefore necessary for civil society organisations to initiate action, and to exert pressure on politicians to legislate.
Remit
This document was commissioned by the Campaigns committee of the Green Party of England and Wales, prepared by Dr Richard Lawson with the assistance of a group of NGO representatives who convened in London on 27.1.2010. Any errors in the document are entirely the responsibility of Richard Lawson.
rlawson@gn.apc.org
30 January 2010
The document is a brief overview of some of the regulations that might be applied to bring them within the rule of law.
Taming the Tiger: TransNational Corporation Legislation
Introduction
Corporations, whether Trans-National, (a.k.a. Multinational) or large national corporations have as much if not more economic power than half of the nations on earth. They frequently use their economic power either directly or indirectly to influence decisions made by politicians.
Democracy means that the bedrock of political power lies with the people, who commonly delegate their power to Governments to act on their behalf. The de facto existence of commercial organisations with power to influence politicians for their own benefit runs counter to the core principle of democracy.
Corporations have acquired for themselves in law the status of “corporate personhood”, which has given them powerful leverage.
This has resulted in many instances where the activities of Corporations have caused damage, sometimes severe, to human rights, human health, and the environment where they operate. In some instances they have used their political, financial and legal power to escape the consequences of such activities, and it is generally difficult to obtain information about their workings, especially in relation to their subsidiary companies and sub-contractors.
Voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives have had very little real effect on corporate behaviour.
There is a need for governmental bodies at national and international level to create a legislative framework designed to prevent TNCs from causing harm to the society and the natural environment in which they operate. The problem is that governments are often financially beholden to corporations, and are reluctant to offend them. This means that the initiative for constraining corporations must come from civil society.
Many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and individuals are campaigning against various aspects of corporate abuse.
The aim of this document aims to provide an overview of the legal changes required to bring TNCs under the rule of law, as a guide to legislators, politicians, political parties and NGOs.
Legal Status of TNCs
TNCs have obtained for themselves the status of corporate personhood or legal personality, which allows them to act as persons for certain limited purposes—most commonly lawsuits, property ownership, and contracts. This has given them certain legal rights which are not balanced with legal responsibilities, since their central legal responsibility is to maximise the profit of their shareholders.
The aim is to establish in law the principle that Human Rights (HR) are superior to rights and interests of Private Corporations.
Reforms to Legal Status of TNCs
1. The Council of Europe should revise the European Convention on Human Rights in order to make it clear that the Convention only applies to human beings. An exception would be made in respect of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which relates to the right to a fair trial.
2. English law should rule invalid future reliance on any precedent set by assuming that Corporations are persons, changing their status to that of “artificial persons in law”.
3. Amend UK law to prevent courts in the UK from enforcing judgments in US courts which rely on corporations being granted 'Human Rights'.
Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a voluntary undertaking has proved ineffective in the majority of cases. There is a clear need to for legally enforceable obligations and standards.
In particular, there is a need to hold Corporations responsible for subsidiary companies and sub-contractors, since at present they can shed responsibility for harm onto subsidiary companies.
There is also a need to ensure that States will guarantee that TNCs will work to the same standards in third countries as in their base country, or in the country of origin of materials with which they are dealing.
Reforms to create effective CSR
1. Establish a Commission for Business, Human Rights and the Environment (CBHRE)
This new agency would incorporate some of the powers of the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which is charged with overseeing, regulating, inspecting and disciplining accounting firms in their roles as auditors of public companies. It would also help guide UK companies towards best practice when operating at home and overseas and prevent harmful impacts to people and the environment.
The Commission should help resolve disputes between companies and those affected by the companies’ activities, promoting solutions when harm had been done. This body would have the remit of reducing violations of environmental and human rights standards related to UK companies’ operations abroad, and help those companies improve their corporate conduct globally.
Key objectives of a UK CBHRE would be to:
Provide redress for overseas victims of human rights abuses involving UK companies when local redress channels had been exhausted
promote appropriate environmental and human rights standards for UK companies operating overseas and promulgate best practice
work with other human rights commissions and relevant bodies to share learning and build their collective capacity to strengthen the effectiveness of redress in developing countries.
2. Establish Responsibility for subsidiaries and sub-contractors
To establish in law a principle that Corporations must publish details of “Beneficial Ownership”, and to enshrine in law the principle that that responsibilities follow the flow of profit.
3. Protect third party states
To establish in law the principle that a corporation must apply the same environmental and social standards in a third party state as apply in the state where the company is based, registered, or from whence it acquired materials which it wishes to dispose of.
Limited Liability
At present, shareholders in limited liability companies are protected from losses cannot lose value of their shares if the company is successfully sued. The externalisation of risk through Corporate Limited Liability is a privilege providing wealth to shareholders without liability for the impact of the way that wealth is obtained. If shareholders stood to lose financially from any harmful actions of the company, there would be a powerful internal motivation to inhibit any such actions.
Reforms to Liability Law
Company Law is to be amended so as to remove shareholders’ immunity to losses incurred as a result of human rights abuses or environmental pollution caused by the company.
Libel Law
Corporations have used Libel Law, particularly the draconian English libel law, to silence any criticism of their actions. The principle of Free Speech should be enshrined in law, as it is in the First amendment of the Constitution of the USA.
Reforms to Libel Law
The following changes to English Libel Law are required:
1. Capping libel damages at, say, £10,000 and making an apology the chief remedy
2. Shifting the burden of proof so claimants have to demonstrate damage
3. Preventing cases from being heard in London unless, say, 10% of copies of the offending publication are circulated in England
4. Stopping large and medium-sized companies from being able to launch libel actions unless they can prove malicious falsehood
5. Making some internet comments exempt as part of efforts to reflect the arrival of the world wide web
6. Establishing a libel tribunal, along the lines of employment tribunals, as an alternative to expensive full court trials
7. Reducing the prohibitive cost of defending libel actions by capping base costs and making success fees non-recoverable
8. Strengthening the public interest defence and expanding the definition of fair comment.
9. Parliament shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech
In the EU, the Council of Europe should secure an amendment to Article 6, to ensure that any party in a civil dispute is able to mount a defence or response, and that effective sanctions are applied to any vexatious or intimidating litigant. This amendment would be brought into English law whether or not the convention was so amended.
Political Influence of Corporations
At present, politicians and political parties can benefit greatly from corporate donations, which militates against their core responsibility to act on behalf of the welfare of the people who have entrusted them with their power. Politicians are also unduly affected by corporate lobbying.
Reforms to political donations
A cap is to be set on donations to political parties, both direct donations and loans and other indirect forms of aid.
Donations of over, say, £5000 to main political party offices must be reported to and published by the Electoral Commission, and donations of over, say, £200 must be recorded by the party, though not reported.
Political parties must be funded by tax-raised subsidies in proportion to their share of the vote in elections.
Tax Haven Reform
At present, corporations can avoid paying tax by sophisticated avoidance devices involving locating aspects of their operations in different countries, particularly in tax havens. This represents a leaching of wealth away from the societies in which they operate, and results in a heavier burden on ordinary taxpayers.
International agreements will reform Tax Law so as to close down tax havens, and ensure that corporations pay tax to any country in which they are operating.
(Tax havens are pretty unpleasant places for their citizens as well as being bad for nations).
Tax transparency
Require all corporations to publish complete accounts in order to avoid hiding their profit flows and tax liabilities.
Additions
This document is not complete. Suggestions for further additions (for example, on land acquisition rights of corporations, and on ownership of news corporations) and amendments are welcome.
Conclusion
Mega-corporations have arrogated to themselves legal, and economic power that has often been exercised against the interests of people and environment. Voluntary measures have proved ineffective. A legal framework to constrain the activities of corporations is necessary, but politicians are often pliable to the wishes of powerful corporations. It is therefore necessary for civil society organisations to initiate action, and to exert pressure on politicians to legislate.
Remit
This document was commissioned by the Campaigns committee of the Green Party of England and Wales, prepared by Dr Richard Lawson with the assistance of a group of NGO representatives who convened in London on 27.1.2010. Any errors in the document are entirely the responsibility of Richard Lawson.
rlawson@gn.apc.org
30 January 2010
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