Climate Camp - again :)

[juliet]

Response from the Climate Camp media team to the Met's request that they be told where the camp will be, with lots of nice photos. (Text version here, but the video is worth watching for all the shiny photos!)

(Executive summary: "Thank you for worrying about our wellbeing. Previous evidence indicates that we can manage our own wellbeing just fine, and the hitting, theft, and illegal searches only happen when the police show up. So if you could stay away that would be lovely. kthxbye.")

Report from last week's meeting with the police. The current information is that the Met don't intend to stop the camp from forming, or to brief against us to the landowner (they accept that we leave sites in better nick than when we arrived!). Which is nice.

Sign up for the Swoop on Wednesday!

Meanwhile I am trying to get lots of work done today, so I can go to the British Museum with Mum & Wendy tomorrow, & then head off to camp for the week on Wednesday.

Comments

[half_of_monty]

Huh, climate camp is never a time I can go.

Mind you, they're very anti-carbon-trading, aren't they? (judging soley from the last one) whereas I'm very pro. But then, that shouldn't be a problem for me unless the demo is *explicitly* anti carbon trading (like the last one). Should learn a bit more about the movement, anyway (if I can make time in my busy schedule of reading climate stuff on the internets).

[juliet]

It's a fairly broad movement, so I suspect not everyone is very anti! But as I understand it: yes, on the grounds that carbon trading is basically a way of allowing rich countries to carry on overconsuming at the expense of poorer countries.

(I don't know enough about it to have a firm opinion; I am suspicious on precisely those grounds, b/c I fundamentally think that we-as-a-world, and in particular we-as-richer-nations, need to just *consume a whole lot less*, and anything that encourages thinking that we can just carry on as we are and fiddle it somehow is not something I can get behind. Which isn't necessarily to say that carbon trading might not be a part of the solution, of course.)

[half_of_monty]

yes, on the grounds that carbon trading is basically a way of allowing rich countries to carry on overconsuming at the expense of poorer countries.

Yes, I rather thought that was the position, it's the impression I got from what I read about the G20 protests. The big problem with that position, is that it's actually an anti Clean Development Mechanism position. The majority of carbon trading is carbon trading *within* Europe. [Eg if we look at the European Climate Exchange - where Climate Camp was protesting - 85% of the current "market snapshot" represents trades within Europe.] This means emissions cuts in sectors covered by the EU emissions trading scheme occur efficiently, at least cost - which is why carbon trading is gorgeous and wonderful and lovely and marvellous.

Why should environmentalists be concerned about cuts taking place at least cost to industry? Because we'll only mitigate to the extent that 'we' (public, politicians, industry lobyists) feel the economy can take the pain. Climate camp etc are all about increasing this pain threshold - which is gorgeous and wonderful and lovely too - but don't underestimate the importance of making the same cuts at lower economic cost, or, if you prefer, deeper cuts at the same economic cost.

[Wouldn't it be great if I could offer some figures or ratios on this? I know the idealised version of the formula but not actually the numbers one would put in. I should.]

CDM on the other hand: there is a lot institutionally wrong with it. But looking more broadly at the idea of emissions trading with the developing world (assuming a sensible system, for example where they are nationally allocated permits beyond their current emissions and can sell the excess, rather than trading against the counterfactual, as the CDM does): your point is entirely valid (and incorporated in most sensible suggestions of future emissions paths). But there is also the point that we don't want to / have no right to stop developing countries from developing, but we DO want them to develop in cleaner greener ways - and this is generally something they want too. But this is more expensive than following the conventional trajectory, and so pragmatism / justice dictates that we should pay a fair amount of the difference. Emissions trading provides a framework for massive flows of cash from private enterprise in the rich world into the poor world, to pay for good stuff. This is why I support it.

Sorry; I seem to have gone off on one. Basically climate camp is surely great and I would love to actually be able to go one of these days - but protesting outside the European Climate Exchange was imho bonkers, and I seem to have been itching for a row about it.

[juliet]

Hee, sorry, I fail at generating a row: I freely admit that my knowledge of this is minimal. (And that is something that I'm seeking to improve.)

Re the efficiency argument. Doesn't carbon trading within Europe mean that CompanyA do Hard Work and reduce their carbon output, then turn round & sell that reduction to CompanyB, thus allowing CompanyB to carry on producing more carbon than their allowance? I can see an argument for subsidising companies who reduce below their allowance (b/c otherwise everyone will just stop at the allowance level, assuming that reducing further doesn't help their bottom line by itself), but subsidising them via other more-polluting companies seems from here to fail at reducing *below* allowance, which surely is what we want?

Looking at the workshop list:
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/actions/london-2009/programme#blurb_49 (Carbon Trading, Heathrow...)
no blurb yet! that is not helpful. The mention of Kingsnorth makes me wonder about the role of "clean coal" (about which I am, well. Deeply, deeply sceptical, at best) in this argument.

http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/actions/london-2009/programme#blurb_150 (the Larry Lohmann one) might be interesting.

http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/actions/london-2009/programme#blurb_90 "if not carbon trading, then what" - also lacking a blurb, dammit!

Of course, from my POV the fundamental problem *is* the current instantiation of a capitalist economy & the fetishation of economic growth.

[half_of_monty]

fail at reducing *below* allowance, which surely is what we want?

Nope. Cutting emissions is basically costly, so cutting below the mandated cap isn't going to happen. But your example seems to suggest you think that the total number of permits each year stays constant; that isn't the case. What we want to do (and are doing in Europe), is set a sequence of decreasing caps, and make industry stick to them.

How industry, as a whole, goes about meeting the cap, is then left up to the market, which should find the efficient solution. CompanyA maybe did "hard work" - or maybe they were dreadfully inefficient in the first place, or maybe they're in a sector that can easily make reductions now. CompanyB may just be a bit rubbish - or there may be no (cheap) alternatives to emissions available right now in their sector. But note for CompanyB - the fact that they're currently having to *spend money* on extra permits means that they suddenly, for the first time, have a proper economic incentive to invest a lot in R&D to start finding ways to cut emissions themselves.

Mandating CompanyB to make deep cuts, now, anyway, will either be very costly (to CompanyB, who will then lay workers off and whose business will move overseas to places without emissions restrictions), or completely impossible - in which case CompanyB will point this out in detail to the regulators, and then get away without regulation scot free. Making CompanyB pay until it works out how to make the cuts itself, means that it bothers working it out.

(Though actually, your suggestion about subsidising cuts "below allowance" is a good principle once you work at aggregate level: if the carbon price falls below a certain threshold, the regulator could buy back permits from the market, which would have this effect. They should have done that in phase 1 of the ETS, frankly, when then allocated far too many permits and the price crashed to 0. They are effectively doing that in the current US plan, as the auctions for permits have a price floor.)

If you want to read more, here's a couple of short pieces from the EDF (my lovely lovely current employer).

Of course, from my POV the fundamental problem *is* the current instantiation of a capitalist economy & the fetishation of economic growth.

Am entirely up for big public and intellectual debate about the role and necessity and indeed interpretation of growth (though I seem to be going in the microeconomics direction, which is a pity, cause this is a macro issue and I'd like to play).

But we spent a lot of the last century playing with forms of, and alternatives to, capitalism, without generating a clearly functioning alternative; capitalism is what we happen to have now; we need to make massive emissions cuts NOW NOW NOW; making these cuts within our current system is perfectly possible; making these cuts while rebuilding our economic structures sounds unlikely to me... so can we worry about that later?

Will not get on to clean coal (but sticking it together with carbon trading AND Heathrow sounds a bit, um, broad) but do go to the Paul Ekins one, he's great.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Sorry I can't be there! Will you be blogging it?

Very best of luck with the police side of things ...

[juliet]

I will definitely be twittering it (am julietk on twitter). Will be blogging if practical - I'm not sure what the internet setup will be this year and/or how much time I'll have spare! (I'll have the netbook with me, though - if only because I have an extremely inconvenient deadline this week :-/ )

[e-dan.livejournal.com]

Ooh, sounds excellent. I was at the 'Students of Sustainability' gatherings a few years, similar stuff, great final day protests. I donated my van to one to become an artwork one year!

[juliet]

It was bloody awesome last year - http://julietk.livejournal.com/tag/climate+camp (further down the page has stuff from last year's camp).

I am hugely looking forward to it, but a bit nervous atm about the whole swoop-on-the-site/setting-up/etc etc process. IT WILL ALL BE FINE.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

Boo hoo, I wish I wasn't ill!!

[juliet]

If you feel a bit better by the weekend then you could pop along for a bit? It is going to be in London & near to public transport links (or so we are assured - obv I still don't know where it'll be :) ).

(It is a bit peculiar to have no idea where you're going to be sleeping tonight... )

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

I will definitely keep an eye out, yes, thank you. Am having to try to be health-careful atm because of work pressure, which is BORING (wanted to take today off ill but had too much to do), but urgh, I'm sure it's sensible.