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30 January 2017
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Monthly Archives: January 2017
Recent Events and how they affect climate change
I finished writing the book that is featured on this website in May 2016 and the EU referendum had not yet occurred. Since then, there have been some momentous political events, many of which will have an effect on climate change. Quite clearly, at the time of writing the last pages of the book, there was huge media attention on the referendum, most of which was attempting to influence people on the way they voted. Much of what was written in the papers was lies. At the time, I felt that all of this media attention was a distraction from the big issues facing the world and society as a whole. In the book, I wrote that, in the light of the major issue of climate change, whether we stayed in or went out of Europe was neither here nor there. It was not the biggest issue that required media attention. Climate change was.
And yet, the media clamour over the whole issue has continued, distracting attention more and more away from the urgent issue of doing something about climate change. It took a few months to get the book published and into print and I was able to write an addendum, which started to address these issues. I now wish to build on them.
Firstly, there has been something of a panic in certain quarters about how leaving the EU will affect Britain’s economy. This is mainly because favourable trading arrangements with EU countries may well be lost, leading to a reduction in the sales of British goods overseas and subsequent effects on the balance of payments. As a result, the new Prime Minister has been dashing hither and thither across the world, trying to establish new trading links with non-EU countries. Establishing trading links further afield will have an adverse effect on climate change because of the longer journeys that will need to be made to take British goods to these far-flung countries, leading to the burning of more fossil fuels on the way. What is now needed is a new radical approach, in which our thinking about the economy is completely rethought and overhauled. I started to write about this in chapters 4 and 7 of my book but there are others, with much greater knowledge of economics than me, who have taken this further and who are writing about a new way forward. One of these writers in Colin Hines in his book “Progressive Protectionism”.
Secondly, there has been a new president in the United States of America, Donald Trump. A man who is both ultra-racist and a misogynist. A man with a big business background who has been a climate change denier for years. He is placing in his team, other men from the big corporations, who also deny the existence of climate change, one of them being the former CEO of ExxonMobil, the largest corporation in the world, whose anti-climate actions are described in chapter 4 of my book. ExxonMobil leaders knew about fossil fuels and global warming as long ago as the 70’s yet, instead of spearheading research into finding new sources of renewable energy, they put their money into setting up a body which would publish false information about the effects of fossil fuels on global warming and climate change. They are the ones who are responsible for the danger that our planet is in at the moment – all of them climate-change-deniers. It is also likely that Trump will revoke all of the progressive pro-climate measures that were introduced by the former President, Barack Obama. Donald Trump also supports the concept of protectionism but in a regressive way, rather than a progressive way. In chapter 4 of my book, I indicate some of the ways in which each country can trade in order to protect both the environment and local economies.
Thirdly, there seems to be a global swing towards supporting populist extreme-right politicians and in discrediting “experts” opinions on a number of issues, including climate change. I have posted a Media Lens article on this website, which gives more details on this. As a scientist myself, it is important to me to have well-researched evidence to look at, when taking decisions about the stance I will take on particular decisions. It would appear that the populist hoards have no such respect for expert opinion, especially if it does not support their own emotion-led and biased opinions on a number of issues, including climate change.
Fourthly, in chapter 6 of my book, I discuss the carbon footprint of war, including nuclear war. In recent weeks there has been media reporting on a “failed” practice test of a British Trident warhead, which veered off course and had to be destroyed. Fortunately, it contained no nuclear material but the incident has stimulated a discussion among scientists, who are part of the body, Scientists for Global Responsibility. It would appear that this was not the first time a firing had gone wrong – there have been several before it – and it would appear that the whole system is outdated and dangerous. And yet, Theresa May’s government have just approved a further renewal of the Trident missile, at a cost of billions of pounds. And only this week, there has been a report from Japan, that the Fukushima nuclear power station, which was destroyed in 2011 by a tsunami, is still emitting radioactivity that is way above the safe level for humans. All of the evidence of the danger of nuclear weapons and the use of nuclear power is being ignored by politicians.
These are worrying times.
How to order copies of the book
“Three generations Left” can be ordered direct from the publishers, using the following link:
http://www.newgeneration-publishing.com/bookstore/reference/bookdetails/1778
or can be ordered from the Amazon website, print on demand, as follows:
It is priced at £11.99 per copy.
References by number from each blog
This is a listing by number of all the reference material cited in the chapter blogs of “Three Generations Left?” Some of the references below, you will find are no longer available and I apologise for this. The reason is that some are website references, which are constantly being changed by their originators. If you do a further search, using the keywords in the title, you may find the updated reference.
INTRODUCTION
- Christine Parkinson, “I will lift up my eyes” (2002) New Generation Publishing, UK. p.301-302.
- Jeremy Seabrook, Mark Tully and Molly Scott Cato, “Counting the Costs-1: an overview” (2005). https://notthembutus.wordpress.com/counting-the-costs-reports/
- James Lovelock, “Gaia” (2009) Oxford University Press.
- Winin Pereira and Jeremy Seabrook, Asking the Earth: the spread of unsustainable development (1996); The Other India Press, Goa, India.
- Richard Douthwaite, The Growth Illusion: How economic growth has enriched the few, impoverished the many and endangered the planet. (1999) Green Books, Totnes, Devon.
- Paul Rogers, Chances for Peace in the Second Decade – what was wrong and what we must do (2012) ORG Special Briefing, Oxford.
- George Monbiot. monbiot.com and numerous articles in the Guardian.
- Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything (2015), Penguin.
Chapter 1
- Secrets of our Living Planet (2012), presented by Chris Packham, BBC, London DVD.
- James Lovelock, Gaia – A new look at life on earth (1979), Oxford University Press.
- Gerardo Ceballos, Paul Ehrlich, Anthony D. Barnosky, Andres Garcia, Robert M. Pringle and Todd M. Palmer. Stanford Report (June 19th 2015) Science Advances, California, USA.
- Anthony Costello, Richard Horton. Health and Climate Change (June 23rd 2015) Lancet
- NIEHA Interagency Working Group (April 2010) A Human Health Perspective on Climate Change.
- Matt McGrath (2015, 9th November) Warming set to breach 1˚C BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34763036.
- Damian Carrington, Guardian, 15th April 2016. March temperature smashed 100-year global record. theguardian.com/environment/2016/April/15/march-temperature-smashes-100-year-global-record
Chapter 2
- Vehicle Data, Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) (2016) smmt.co.uk. Registrations – Cars.
- Jeff Cobb (2014 and 2016) Top 6 Plug-in vehicle Adopting Countries. In: HybridCars.com
- Peter Dockrill (13th April 2016) In: ScienceAlert. http://www.sciencealert.com/the-netherlands-is-making-moves-to-ban-all-non-electric-vehicles-by-2025
- Pereira and J. Seabrook (1996), Asking the Earth; the Spread of Unsustainable Development. The Other India Press.
- followgreenliving.com/deforestation-uttarakhand-disaster-rtr/
- Adam Smith (1776), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; Strahan and T.Cadell, London.
- Data and charts on electricity generation from carbonbrief.org
- Damian Carrington, Guardian (24th September 2015): Renewable energy outstrips coal for first time in UK electricity mix.
- Jonathan Watts, Guardian (3rd December 2015): Uruguay makes dramatic shift to nearly 95% electricity from clean energy.
- Dutch student’s cheap solution for clearing plastic rubbish from oceans: https://www.facebook.com/sydneymorningherald/videos/10154036592931264/
- Molly Scott Cato (2005) Counting the Costs Report- 1. https://notthembutus.wordpress.com/counting-the-costs-reports/
- Damon Matthews, Quantifying historical carbon and climate debts among nations. April, (2015) Nature Climate Change: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/nclimate2774_F1.html
Chapter 3
- Paul Rogers (2012) ORG Special Briefing, Oxford Research Group. Chances for Peace in the Second Decade – What is going wrong and what we must do.
And: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDg4F769ciw
- Financial Times (2016) London Breaks 2016 air quality rules, 175 hours into new year. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f7dbaa86-b617-11e5-b147-e5e5bba42e51.html#axzz43iwVXNYa
Chapter 4
- Shannon Hall, Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago. (October 25th 2015), Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/
- Rupert Neate (23rd March 2016) Guardian: “Rockefeller Family Charity to withdraw all investments in fossil-fuel companies.”
- Guardian (20th November 2013) Just 90 Companies caused two-thirds of man-made global warming emissions. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/20/90-companies-man-made-global-warming-emissions-climate-change Study by Richard Heede.
- Greenpeace, 20th November 2013: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/briefings/climate/2013/Carbon-Major-factsheet.pdf
- Greenpeace Philippines: http://globalnation.inquirer.net/128747/carbon-majors-primary-drivers-of-climate-change-identified.
- Car makers accused of ‘obstructive’ lobbying over emissions (November 2015) Exaro News. http://www.exaronews.com/search/node/InfluenceMap
- Carbon Brief, The Global Oil Trade (2015) http://www.carbonbrief.org/interactive-how-the-global-oil-trade-is-changing
- Ian Fletcher (2010) Free Trade Doesn’t Work, US Business and Industry Council, Washington, D.C., USA.
- Caroline Lucas (2002) Stopping the Great Food Swap: Relocalising Europe’s Food Supply.
- Colin Hines, Localisation: a Global Manifesto, Earthscan (2000).
- Rianne ten Veen (2011), Global Food Swap, Counting the Costs -4; https://notthembutus.wordpress.com/counting-the-costs-reports/
- Local Futures Action Paper, Climate Change or System Change? (2015) http://www.localfutures.org/wp-content/uploads/Climate-Change-or-System-Change-1.pdf
- Colin Tudge (2016) Six Steps back to the Land: why we need small mixed farms and millions more farmers. Green Books, Cambridge.
- Richard Douthwaite, The Growth Illusion: How economic growth has enriched the few, impoverished the many and endangered the planet (1999) Green Books, Totnes, Devon.
- Muhammud Yunus, Creating a World without Poverty (2007) PublicAffairs, Perseus Group, USA.
- Declaration on Green Growth (2009 and 2011) OECD. https://www.oecd.org/env/44077822.pdf and http://www.oecd.org/greengrowth/48012345.pdf
- Paul Tudor Jones II, Why we need to rethink Capitalism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvJSK4viVMs
- Lee Williams, Independent (6th October 2015) What is TTIP? And six reasons why the answer should scare you. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/what-is-ttip-and-six-reasons-why-the-answer-should-scare-you-9779688.html
- Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies: The Global Trade Slowdown: A New Normal? Edited by Bernard Hoekman.http://voxeu.org/sites/default/files/file/Global%20Trade%20Slowdown_nocover.pdf
- https://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/GEP/GEP2015a/pdfs/GEP2015a_chapter4_report_trade.pdf
Chapter 5
- Thomas Malthus: An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), pamphlet published in London under the name of Joseph Johnson – see details in Wikipedia.
- Guardian (29th October 2015): China ends one-child policy after 35 years.
- Hans Rosling (2015), Don’t Panic – the facts about population:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo
- Humanity’s Last Stand (2015). In: Open Minds, a magazine of the Open University.
- Paul Ehrlich and Ann Ehrlich (2008). The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment. Island Press/Shearwater Books, Washington, USA.
- Paul Rogers (Sept.2012) Chances for Peace in the Second Decade – What is going wrong and what we must do. ORG Special briefing Series for the Oxford Research Group.
- Andrew Sayer (2014) Why we can’t afford the rich. Policy Press. And:
- Oxfam figures of richest 1%: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/blogs/2015/01/richest-1-per-cent-will-own-more-than-all-the-rest-by-2016
- Helena Norberg Hodge, The Economics of Happiness, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r06_F2FIKM
- The industrialisation for farming:
http://www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/ag_in_the_eu.pdf
Legislation about this:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/countryside-hedgerows-regulation-and-management).
- George Monbiot (27th May 2015) A Pre-History of Violence. Guardian and also on monbiot.com
- Carla Garnett (2008) NIH Record, Volume LX No. 15. A Review of Calhoun’s experiments on over-crowding with rats (Scientific American,1962).
- Richard Douthwaite (1999) The Growth Illusion, Green Books.
- Karen Jeffrey & Juliet Michaelson, New Economics Foundation (2015) Five Headline Indicators of National Success. http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/five-headline-indicators-of-national-success
Chapter 6
- The Independent (Sunday 20th 2015) Ministry of Defence condemn army general behind Jeremy Corbyn ‘mutiny’ threat.
- Global Warming and the Iraq War (2008) Climate & Capitalism, March 19th.
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2008/03/19/global-warming-and-the-iraq-war/
- Paul Rogers (Sept.2012) Chances for Peace in the Second Decade – What is going wrong and what we must do. ORG Special briefing Series for the Oxford Research Group.
- John Greenberg (24th June 2014) Iraq war dollars could have ended world hunger for 30 years.
Chapter 7
- Pat Conaty (November 2015) A Collaborative Economy for the Common Good. http://wales.coop/publications/
- Jonathon Porritt (2015) The Coalition Government 2010-2015; The Greenest Government Ever: By no stretch of the Imagination.
- Michael Le Page (2015) “Ungreen and not-so-pleasant land”. New Scientist 3042.
- Ben Warren (Ed.) (2015) Renewable energy country attractiveness index (RECAI) Issue 43. http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Renewable_Energy_Country_Attractiveness_Index_43/$FILE/RECAI%2043_March%202015.pdf
- Donald Braben (12 Sept. 2015) New Scientist 3038, p24-25.
- James Bloodworth (10th June 2014) Independent. “It’s time to bust some myths about benefit fraud and tax evasion.”
- Heather Stewart, Guardian (21st July 2012), Wealth doesn’t trickle down, it just floods offshore, research reveals.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jul/21/offshore-wealth-global-economy-tax-havens
- Mark Carney (2015) Breaking the tragedy of the horizon – climate change and financial stability. Speech given at Lloyds of London 29th September 2015.
- QUNO Climate Change Science Report (2014)
http://www.quno.org/timeline/Human-Impacts-of-Climate-Change
- Justin Lewis (2014) How the BBC leans to the right. The Independent, 14th February 2014. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bbc-accused-of-political-bias-on-the-right-not-the-left-9129639.html
- Richard Douthwaite (1999) The Growth Illusion, Green Books, Totnes, Devon.
- Ian Fletcher (2010) Free Trade Doesn’t Work, US Business and Industry Council, Washington, D.C., USA.
- Paul Krugman (2009) How did economists get it so wrong? New York Times, 2nd 2009.
- George Monbiot (2015) Guardian, 24th November 2015. Consume More, conserve more: Sorry but we just can’t do both.
- New Economics Foundation: http://www.neweconomics.org/issues/entry/banking-finance1
- Jeremy Corbyn (2015) The Times, 9th December 2015.
- Colin Tudge (2007) Economic Renaissance: Holistic Economics for the 21st Schumacher College think tank, published by Green Books.
- Richard Murphy and Colin Hines (2015) Finance for the Future: Climate QE for Paree. financeforthefuture.com
- Quantitative Easing: https://thomasattwood.wordpress.com/
- Carbon tax: http://www.carbontax.org/where-carbon-is-taxed/
- OECD Environmental Performance Review: Sweden 2014.
https://issuu.com/oecd.publishing/docs/sweden_ar_brochure_web
- Carbon tax in Australia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Australia
http://www.carbontax.org/where-carbon-is-taxed/
- Jan Rocha, Climate News Network (May 12th 2016), Brazil Prepares to Roll back Green Laws. http://climatenewsnetwork.net/18257-2/?utm_source=Climate+News+Network&utm_campaign=cf92aa3172-Brazil_impeachment5_12_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1198ea8936-cf92aa3172-38687953&ct=t(Brazil_impeachment5_12_2016)&mc_cid=cf92aa3172&mc_eid=3f6f7682e0
- Fergus Green (2015) Nationally self-interested climate change mitigation: a unified conceptual framework. Working Paper 224, Centre for Climate change Economics and Policy and Working Paper 199, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
- Nicholas Stern (2016) Economics: Current Climate Models are grossly misleading. Nature News 530, 407-409.
- Global Taxation System: capglobalcarbon.org
- Definition of a Green Economy: http://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/economy/intro
- The Green Economy Coalition: http://www.greeneconomycoalition.org/know-how/informal-economy-threat-or-driver-green-economy
- International Agency for Solar Policy and Application. New Scientist, 3030.
- Narendra Modi (2016) The Economist; “Gathering Steam: the World in 2016”, p.70.
Chapter 8
- From Rio to Paris: UN Milestones in the history of climate change discussions. Taken from Wikipedia and summarised for this book in Table 7.
- Ed King, Climate Home (29th March 2016) Developing nations urged to boycott Paris Agreement signing. http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/03/29/developing-nations-urged-to-boycott-paris-agreement-signing/
- Signatories to the Paris agreement: http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2016/04/parisagreementsingatures/
- Michael Le Page (2015) New Scientist, No. 3052, p8-9. Will Paris deal save our future? And: New Scientist, 3060, (2016) Signed, sealed……..Undeliverable?
- Reuters (22nd April 2016) Daily Telegraph: Record signatures in historic Paris climate deal. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/22/record-signatures-in-historic-paris-climate-deal/
- Kimberley Nicholas (2015) Scientific American, 19th December 2015. Limiting Global Warming will be hard but hardly impossible.
- Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs) Newsletter, December 2015. https://neweranetwork.info/category/david-fleming/
- Nicholas Stern (2015) Why are we waiting: the Logic, Urgency and Promise of tackling climate change, MIT Press.
- Damian Carrington (2016) Guardian 9th June 2016: CO2 turned into stone in Iceland in climate change breakthrough, quoting from research report by Matter et al in Science, 352, issue 6291, pp 1312-1314: Rapid carbon mineralization for permanent disposal of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.
- Pope’s encyclical on Climate Change (2015) http://cafod.org.uk/content/download/25373/182331/file/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_en.pdf and http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2068632/climate-change-and-the-common-good.pdf
- Desmond Tutu’s climate petition tops 300,000 signatures
- Baptist Union statement on climate change
http://www.baptist.org.uk/Articles/422769/Climate_Change_and.aspx
- The Anglican Synod statement on climate change
- The Methodist Church statement on climate change
http://www.methodist.org.uk/mission/climate-change
- The Quakers’ statement on climate change
http://www.quakerearthcare.org/article/shared-quaker-statement-facing-challenge-climate-change/
- Eco-Church: http://ecochurch.arocha.org.uk/
- Big Church Switch: https://www.bigchurchswitch.org.uk/
- Institutional Investors group on Climate Change: http://www.top1000funds.com/tag/institutional-investors-group-on-climate-change/
- The Green Bible – Harper Bibles, published by Harper Collins Publishers: harpercollins.com/9780061627996/the-green–bible
- The statements of other faiths on climate change:
http://www.preachin.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/cop_statement_formatted_-_website_version.pdf
http://fore.yale.edu/files/Buddhist_Climate_Change_Statement_5-14-15.pdf
http://safcei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/A-Hindu-Declaration-on-Climate-Change-.pdf
http://islamicclimatedeclaration.org/islamic-declaration-on-global-climate-change/
http://www.uua.org/statements/threat-global-warmingclimate-change
- Ohito Declaration on Religions, Land and Conservation (1995):
http://www.xiao-en.org/cultural/life.asp?cat=54&loc=zh-cn&id=1021
- Forum for the Future, Annual Report 2014, System innovation in action: our progress and achievements. forumforthefuture.org
- Kyung-Ah Park, Goldman Sachs
https://www.acast.com/exchangesatgoldmansachs/the-business-case-for-climate-action
Chapter 9
- Naomi Klein (2014) This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate; Allen Lane.
- James Lovelock (2010) A Final Warning: the Vanishing Face of Gaia; Penguin.
- Robert Gifford (2015) “The Road to Climate Hell”. New Scientist, 11th July 2015.
- Re-branded DECC, the Department for Extreme Climate Change. Quoted in its entirety from: https://antidotecounteragent.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/re-branded-decc-the-department-for-extreme-climate-change/