The future of coal has come under scrutiny from a perhaps unlikely source – the head of the organisation representing wealthy nations that relied on coal for 32% of electricity generation last year.

Angel Gurría, secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), said the scale of new investments in “unabated” coal-fired electricity generation – where greenhouse gases are emitted directly to the atmosphere – posed the most urgent threat to the Earth’s climate.

Speaking in London on Friday, he said governments should be sceptical about the benefits of coal for their citizens. They should rethink the role of coal in energy supply, and conduct a more rigorous evaluation of its true costs:

“Governments need to be seriously sceptical about whether new coal provides a good deal for their citizens. If we muster the political will to set ourselves on a 2°C trajectory today, not all coal assets will be able to run for their full economic lifetime. Unsurprisingly, if we delay action, we will have to strand much more capacity overall, as steeper reductions will be required.”

Environmental costs

With prices failing to fully account for the environmental, health and financial costs of coal, many of the coal plants being built today might have to be shut down before the end of their economic lifetimes – representing a huge write-down of invested capital that poor countries can ill-afford.

The OECD, founded to stimulate economic progress and world trade, has 34 members drawn from the richest and most powerful industrialised countries.

But Gurría, in a passage that will hearten many developing countries in the approach to the UN climate change negotiations in Paris in November / December this year, said that if poorer nations could not afford low-carbon alternatives, then richer countries should find the money to close the cost gap:

“Coal is the most carbon-intensive fuel available for electricity generation. The most urgent threat to climate policy is the scale of new investments in unabated coal-fired electricity generation still being planned. Between now and 2050, if no further mitigation measures are undertaken, coal generation is projected to emit more than 500 GtCO₂.

“That is around half the remaining carbon budget consistent with staying under 2°C. Even the most advanced (and costly) coal-fired power plants are not going to be consistent with a 2 degree goal unless they can capture and store the CO₂ they produce. Yet the IEA expects global demand for coal to continue to grow in the near term, which would result in a disastrous 4°C plus trajectory.”

In any case, Dr Gurría said, countries’ contributions to emissions reductions after 2020 are not consistent with a 2°C pathway. He said the carbon clock was ticking and the Paris COP21 climate conference must give a clear and credible signal that governments are determined to go for a higher level of ambition.

“Calling something a process doesn’t guarantee an outcome”, he said. “We have been in a process for over 20 years and, so far, the commitments simply don’t add up.” Continued investment in coal is one of many “misalignments” between climate goals and countries’ policies in other domains, Dr Gurría said.

‘Policy misalignments’ undermine climate action

A report by the OECD, its specialised Nuclear Energy Agency, the International Energy Agency and the International Transport Forum says policy misalignments undermine climate action in areas from tax to trade, electricity market regulation and land use.

The report says two-thirds of global energy investments still go into fossil fuels, 50% of agricultural subsidies in OECD countries harm the climate, and various tax provisions encourage fossil fuel production and use. This “policy incoherence”, as the report describes it, limits the effectiveness of countries’ climate change efforts, and increases the cost of the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Dr Gurría urged governments to consider what needed to be done to resolve such misalignments, starting with a demand that each ministry should regularly report on which of its policies run counter to desirable climate results.

And he urged all countries to take the problem seriously: “The size of the carbon budget that we can emit consistent with 2 degrees depends on how big a risk you are prepared to take to meet that goal or to wind up on a higher temperature pathway.

“But one fact is clear – we are currently emitting some 38 billion tonnes of CO₂ p.a. and this will exhaust that budget at an alarming rate. Furthermore, the 2 degrees goal relies on a carbon budget which only provides for a 66% chance of meeting the target.

“If we want a lower level of risk, we should be even more ambitious. After all, we’re betting the planet. This is the ‘cheerful recklessness’ towards our common home lamented by the Pope in his recent climate change encyclical.

“Two degrees already implies costly change. But we’re currently on course for around 3-5 degrees.  We continue to be on a collision course with nature. As we continue to emit, the risks are becoming increasingly unpredictable and uninsurable.”

Green energy must take its place

And one clear solution is renewable energy, Dr Gurría continued: “we already have commercial alternatives to coal-fired power generation, in contrast to heavy industries like cement and steel which don’t and which pose a major technical challenge.

“The fact that 60% of total power plant investments since 2000 have been in low-carbon technologies illustrates the point. Depending on the region, cost-competitive renewables include onshore wind, biomass and hydro-based generation, solar and geothermal power.

“Some challenges remain, but the bottom line is that low-carbon options can and should play a much greater role in energy supply. Their costs are still decreasing, some much faster than others, and the challenges of integrating new renewable energy are being overcome.”

The speech: ‘Climate: What’s changed, what hasn’t and what we can do about it – Six Months to COP21‘ by Angel Gurría, Secretary-General, OECD, was delivered on 3rd July 2015 in London, United Kingdom.

The report: ‘Aligning Policies for a Low-carbon Economy‘ was produced by OECD in co-operation with the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Transport Forum (ITF) and the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA).

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

Additional reporting by The Ecologist.

Greece stands on the precipice of a great unknown, and what is decided in Sunday’s referendum and in the weeks to come will have wide-reaching ramifications – not least on the country’s fragile energy economy.

In the years since the global financial crisis, Greek energy – like most of Greek society – has been in a state of flux. A series of missed opportunities and poor decisions have left it in deep trouble.

So here’s the story of Greece’s post-crisis energy crisis; the rise and fall of solar PV; the rise and fall of energy efficiency; the rise and fall of lignite.

Where it all began – free water and coal for state power generator

For decades Greece has relied on local lignite to power the mainland and on imported oil to power its islands. The state-owned Public Power Corporation (PPC) dominates domestic energy, controlling 96% of the market.

In addition to letting PPC use lignite and water reserves for free, the Greek state set up a complicated system that subsidises fossil fuel production to the tune of €1.9 billion a year.

To make matters worse, the Greek building sector is among the least efficient in Europe, with almost two-thirds of all Greek buildings lacking even basic insulation and using oil for heating. It’s little wonder that, according to official European Environment Agency (EEA) data, the average Greek household uses almost 3 times more energy for heating than the average Finnish one.

At the dawn of the economic crisis, the Greek economy was in no shape to make it through. The lignite sector, for instance, owned and run by PPC is amongst the oldest, most inefficient and polluting in Europe.

According to a 2013 report, air pollution from PPC’s lignite units cause more than 1,000 premature deaths each year. EEA estimates the damage done to the Greek GDP during the first years of the crisis (2008-2012) was €6-19 billion. And PPC opted to close down many these units rather than undergo expensive retrofitting to comply with EU regulations.

Part of the problem was that PPC was never allowed to adjust electricity bills to reflect its production cost – the price consumers pay is set by the Greek government. This compromised the company’s ability to increase profits and reinvest in newer technologies.

Stuck with old and inefficient units and a diminishing workforce, PPC had to rely on government decisions – often political rather than economic – to determine its course of development and protect its assets. Soon the government intervened, intent on on doing just that.

The solar energy revolution

The European Commission had for years been after Greece to allow private investors access to lignite production. Successive Greek governments did a fine job stalling the process, aiming to protect a public industry controlled by powerful trade unions.

Then, in 2010, the Commission seized its opportunity. When the Greek government officially asked for a bailout from the troika (IMF, EU and European Central Bank) liberalisation of the energy market was made conditional.

However, at the same time, a small revolution was happening in the Greek energy sector. The Feed-in-Tariff law led to an massive increase of solar PV, sparking hope for a new, decentralised energy system.

In five years, Greek solar capacity went from less than 50MW to more than 2,500MW, directly benefiting 100,000 homes and creating 50,000 jobs. During this surge in renewable energy, the Papandreou government announced plans for the most ambitious energy efficiency program in Europe.

Building the Future aimed to retrofit around 1 million buildings over 10 years, and save consumers some €9 billion in – not to mention the prospective 140,000 jobs.

Swapping solar for brown coal

Greece, however, lost a historic opportunity to transform the energy sector (and the economy) by making two crucial mistakes.

First, instead of allowing the liberalisation of the market by actually agreeing to phase out lignite and increase the share of renewables in the mix, Greece did the opposite. It opted to engage in a long battle to preserve the ailing industry while putting an abrupt end to solar energy development by blocking new applications.

Talks with the troika ended up with the Greek government agreeing in 2012 to have several PPC units sold to private enterprise. To appease furious unions, it promised to use the money from the sale to fund the long-sought construction of Ptolemaida 5.

This new and supposedly modern generation 660MW unit, costed at €1.4 billion, received construction approval on 1st July. It would create 250 new jobs and save a couple of thousand more, but it is fiercely opposed by WWF Greece as a “dirty giant” that sets Greece’s energy policy firmly on the wrong course.

At the same time, more than 45,000 jobs were wiped from the economy due to the collapse of the PV market.

Second, the government did a U-turn on energy efficiency, abandoning Building the Future – that was never supported with smart and effective financing policies – in favour of a subsidies program based on European structural funds that could hardly retrofit 35,000 homes.

The energy poverty humanitarian crisis

Energy poverty in Greece has since developed into a humanitarian crisis, with an estimated 6 out of 10 households falling below the energy poverty line.

According to official statistics, 3 million people – nearly a quarter of the population – cannot afford proper heating during winter, with many not actually using heating at all. Meanwhile Syriza’s energy minister clearly doesn’t believe energy efficiency can tackle energy poverty.

He is also committed to completing the construction of new lignite and oil power plants, including Ptolemaida 5. However the project is turning out to be a disaster. No private stakeholder is interested in buying old PPC units, and so the government is short €1.4 billion needed for its construction.

In fact, when the European Investment Bank pulled out, the only money the government had secured was the €700 million through the German Development Bank (KfW), the product of a bilateral deal between the Greek and German governments. The Greek government still has to come up with the other half of the money.

A new study by WWF-Greece questions also the project’s economic viability, arguing it would make more economic sense to invest this money into tapping the country’s tremendous renewable energy potential. In addition, as Greenpeace-Greece has revealed, the environmental credentials of the plant are deeply flawed, with ELVs (Emission Limit Values) often falling short of proposed EU regulations for lignite plants.

So here we are, back to that political precipice called ‘Grexit’. Come Monday morning, what happens to Greece’s energy economy, including that €1.4 billion hole in lignite investment, is anyone’s guess.

At least the sun – all that it represents and all that can be harnessed – isn’t going anywhere.

Takis Grigoriou is an energy campaigner with Greenpeace-Greece.

Petition: ‘Say NO to coal! Stop the new lignite plant in Ptolemaida, Greece!‘

This article was originally published by Greenpeace EnergyDesk.

When I’m talking about the NHS I’m mostly addressing the dire impacts of the rush to privatisation that we’ve seen since the 2012 Health and Social Care Act.

Like the near-collapse of a renowned dermatological centre in Nottingham since its takeover by Circle, a company whose failure at Hinchingbrooke hospital and abandonment of the contract there doesn’t seem to have stopped it getting further NHS contracts.

Or the impact of the same company taking over musculoskeletal services in Bedfordshire, destabilising the income of the local hospital, and threatening its A&E department.

Or often I’m talking about the dreadful failures of our mental health services, the fact that if you have a mental health condition there’s only a 28% chance of getting treatment.

And the figures showing that the rate of privatisation of the NHS is 40% higher than the three previous years combined.

Or more positively, I’m talking about Green MP Caroline Lucas taking the lead in a cross-party effort to introduce an NHS Reinstatement Bill, a bill backed by the British Medical Association.

It would strip away the costly, destructive market mechanisms that have sent administrative costs soaring, and restore the founding principle of the NHS, that the profit motive has no place within it – public money should be spent on health care, not be shovelled into private pockets (or all too often straight into the nearest tax haven).

What can we do for the NHS?

But today I want to put that to one side and ask a different question about health. To adapt from John F Kennedy, I want to ask today, not what the NHS can do for us, but what we, as a society, as policymakers, as politicians, can do for the NHS?

For it’s clear that even if we succeed in removing the blocking and reversing the takeover of our broadly efficient and fair, publicly owned and run NHS by the disastrous American privatised model, the NHS will come under increasing pressure, from an ageing population, from the rise of expensive medical technology, from our increasing levels of middle-aged and even younger disability and illness.

In short, I want to ask what we can do to create a healthy society. Of course there are reasons for doing that beyond saving money for the NHS. A healthier society is, sticking to the money side, going to be a more productive and prosperous society.

And turning to issues of humanity and decency, a society that doesn’t make its members ill through its structures and practices, is surely preferable to one that does.

And yet we have here in Britain, in the world’s sixth-richest economy, a society that’s making many of its members ill. A society that’s failing to provide clean air, failing to provide adequate housing, failing to provide a healthy diet, failing to provide safe jobs and decent benefits, failing to provide opportunities for exercise, failing to provide an education that prepares pupils for life.

The UK is failing its people – especially the most vulnerable

A society in short that’s failing its people. And the majority of people it’s failing fall into one group, the poorer and more disadvantaged people in society.

It’s the children growing up in poverty who are likely to live in areas with the worst air quality, in overcrowded homes with the fewest opportunities to enjoy green spaces; the adults struggling to balance zero-hours, minimum wage jobs, with no guarantee of a steady income and facing the threat of loss of the family tax credit that now makes it all, just, hang together.

It’s the pensioners in cold and damp, impossible-to-heat homes without viable public transport options that allow them to get out and about and shop for healthy, affordable food.

And we’re seeing inequality growing, more people falling into this group, or fearing falling into it – and that’s despite the fact that the brilliant book The Spirit Level – I note in this company, written by two health economists – demonstrated clearly that everyone, even the rich, is worse off in more unequal societies.

We must end the ‘unhealthy society’

The unhealthy society is affecting everyone to some degree. The poor are bearing the worst of it but all of us in this room, everyone in the country, is affected to some degree. Two days ago I was in London at an event organised by the Evening Standard talking about London’s air pollution crisis. An attendee tweeted me afterwards “I had no idea it was so bad!”

She was not alone. In the worst areas of London 8% of deaths are linked to air pollution. Around the country, that’s 29,000 premature deaths each year. And children whose schools are near busy roads are seeing the development of their lungs affected – an impact that will last for life.

In the workplace: we need to acknowledge that some of the longest working hours in Europe (what are being increasingly acknowledged as long, low-productivity hours) are deeply unhealthy and destructive.

Whether it’s the impact on diet – there’s the fact exposed by the horsemeat scandal that we eat on average twice as many ready meals as the rest of Europe, or the impact on the structure of our cities – a recent study on the concreting-over of front gardens that’s greying our cities and towns, making them more prone to heatwaves and simply less pleasant, said that “lack of time for maintenance” was an important factor in household decision-making.

Or simply exercise: 45% of men and 34% of women say they are restricted in getting active by work commitments. And add in the human and health cost of commuting long distances – whether in fume-soaked cars or crowded trains and buses, in part as a result of house prices and rents – and there’s no doubt our employment arrangements are severely detrimental to our health.

Unhealthy Britain is costing us all dear

And our homes are deeply unhealthy. 19% of households are in fuel poverty – primarily because of poor structure and insulation – which is linked to one in five of our horrific excess winter deaths, and contributes to the development of the lifelong condition of asthma in children. A study by the Chief Medical Officer showed that investing £1 in keeping homes warm saved the NHS 42p in health costs.

And on our streets we’ve seen walking and cycling all too often actively discouraged. Cuts to public transport (particularly rural and local buses) and inactivity causes nearly 20% of cases of breast and colon cancer, and more than 10% of cases of coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes. It costs the NHS almost £1 billion a year.

Except around the edges – anti-smoking programmes, gym memberships and healthy food vouchers on the NHS – there’s little that the health service can do to influence any of these issues.

Indeed doctors and other health professionals often express their frustration at the fact they’re being asked to provide medical solutions for social problems, because their local GP is often the only person people feel they can turn to for help.

So it’s not just the NHS – to turn things around we also need the  right policies on the economy, transport, housing, energy, education, food security, clean air, green cities, the living wage, to create the healthy society we all want and deserve.

Some measures will be expensive – others not

Not all of the changes towards a healthy society are big-ticket spending items. Here’s a few suggestions:

• Introducing a 20mph speed limit everywhere people live, work and shop could make our streets far more pedestrian and community friendly, a place to stroll, to chat, to play.
• Strengthening the power of unions and giving workers proper access to redress for unreasonable treatment would help to cut unpaid overtime, reduce stress and improve safety in the workplace.
• Make the minimum wage a living wage (which would save the Treasury more than £2 billion a year), and ban zero-hours contracts.
• Introduce a law in England and Wales (it’s already in place in Scotland) to make it an offence to try to stop a mother breastfeeding in public spaces – and provide more education and support for mothers and assistance for working mothers to continue breastfeeding. (Again this is an issue of equality, 32% of low-income mothers breastfeed as against 65% of middle-income mothers).

Some moves towards a healthy society of course do require spending. The simplest way overall to improve health would be to tackle poverty – ensure everyone can put healthy food on the table, keep an appropriately-sized, energy-efficient roof over their head, be free from the fear of penury.

That of course would mean reversing the disastrous policy of austerity that’s seeking to make the poor, the disadvantaged and the young pay for the errors and fraud of the bankers.

But coming down to a more modular level, looking at measures that would improve the health of everyone, here’s a few suggestions:

• Invest in walking and cycling infrastructure – and public transport that enables and encourages people to let the train or bus ‘take the strain’ (and probably involves at least some walking at each end).
• Implement statutory PSHE education in all schools – evidence shows this reduces childhood obesity, improves diets, reduces sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, and hospital admissions for self-harm.
• Implement an intensive programme of home insulation and energy efficiency to cut excess winter deaths particularly among the elderly, reduce asthma rates in the young – and create jobs and cut carbon emissions.

Joined up policies for health and wellbeing

These are – in one of the favourite terms of government these days – joined up policies. They fit together into the whole of a healthy society – a humane, decent society in which people can fulfil their potential and live the long healthy lives that public health measures and modern medicine have helped to make possible.

They’re possible, but not yet being made as highly probable as they should be. Every government decision, every funding cut or decision should be weighed for its impact on the health of the nation – both its physical health and its mental health.

That means something the Green Party has long been talking about – moving away from GDP as a measure of national progress. We need to ensure that we work towards national wellbeing, not the coarse and often damaging measure of economic output.

To put that into practical, and topical terms, consider yesterday’s Airport Commission report. It came down on the side of Heathrow, acknowledging the massive air pollution and noise pollution issues, but brushing them aside with a mixture of ‘live with it’ amelioration measures like insulation for homes and schools (because you don’t want to walk outside or be able to play in the playground) and airy promises that ‘something will come up’ in technological terms.

Government policy that put a healthy society at its heart would never have come to the conclusion that Sir Davies did.

And that’s without even referring to the conclusions last month of the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change, which said failure to tackle climate change – and expansion of Heathrow (and full use of the new facilities) would mean Britain exceeding its legally binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions – would be (in the words of the learned authors) “catastrophic” for human health.

But it turns out the opportunity is enormous – do many of the things that we need to do to create a healthier society, encourage active transport, clean up the air, insulate our homes, and also tackle climate change.

What are we waiting for?

Natalie Bennett is the leader of the Green Party of England & Wales.

This article is based on Natali’s keynote speech at the Manchester Medical Society and University of Manchester’s International Festival of Public Health UK yesterday, 2nd June 2015.

Fracking operations to extract shale gas in Britain could cause nearby house prices to fall by up to 7% and create a risk of environmental damage, according to a government report that has been published in full for the first time.

Entitled Shale Gas Rural Economy Impacts, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) document was released on Wednesday after a freedom of information battle.

An official assessment of the impact of fracking, it warned that leakage of waste fluids could affect human health through polluted water or the consumption of contaminated agricultural products.

The report was first published last year in a heavily redacted form under freedom of information rules, prompting the Green MP, Caroline Lucas, to accuse the government of censorship and of trying to hide the negative impacts of fracking.

Two weeks ago the information commissioner’s office ruled that the environment department must release the report unredacted.

A crucial time for the UK’s fracking industry

The findings of the study come at a crucial time for the government and shale industry, just two days after the surprise rejection by Lancashire county council of what would have been the biggest round of fracking so far.

Previously omitted sections reveal that:

• House prices near fracking wells were likely to fall, and there was a potential reduction of up to 7% in property values within a mile of wells.
• Properties within a one- to five-mile radius of fracking sites may incur additional insurance costs.
• Leakage of waste fluids from fracking processes has resulted in environmental damage in the US.
• Even if contaminated surface water did not directly impact on drinking-water supplies, fracking could affect human health indirectly through consumption of contaminated wildlife, livestock or agricultural products. It concluded that the UK regulatory regime was “likely to be more robust” but the impact on water-resource availability, aquatic habitats and ecosystems, and water quality was “uncertain”.

The report also spelled out possible benefits of fracking, such as generating jobs and economic growth, as well as providing greater energy security for the UK. Rents may also increase due to additional demand from fracking-site workers, it suggested.

It added that communities could benefit from investment in local services and infrastructure due to community payments that shale companies will have to pay to people nearby their operations.

Truss: ‘misleading’. Defra: ‘unsubstantiated conjecture’

Liz Truss, the environment secretary, has distanced herself from the report, calling it misleading and emphasising its draft nature. Ministers were split over the publication of the report in full, with Truss saying it should not be released, and the energy minister Andrea Leadsom saying the paper was “going to be published”.

Tony Bosworth, an energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said the timing of the report’s release was significant: “No wonder Defra sat on this explosive report until after the Lancashire decisions!”

Lancashire councillors had debated whether to hold off making their planning decision until the report was published in full, but eventually decided to reject bids by Cuadrilla to frack at two sites on the Fylde plain.

The main industry body, UK Onshore Oil and Gas, dismissed the report as being “in danger of extrapolating the experiences of other jurisdictions that have different regulation, planning regimes and geologies”.

Ken Cronin, chief executive of UKOOG, said: “It is a shame that this report has become such a cause célėbre as it is merely a review of literature and brings nothing new to the debate or any new information in a UK context.”

A Defra spokesman said: “This document was drawn up as a draft internal discussion paper – it is not analytically robust, has not been peer-reviewed and remains incomplete.

“It does not contain any new data or evidence, and many of the conclusions amount to unsubstantiated conjecture, which do not represent the views of officials or ministers.”

Adam Vaughan is editor of the Guardian’s environment site and tweets at @adamvaughan_uk.

Rowena Mason is a political correspondent for the Guardian.

This article was originally published by The Guardian / Environment and is reproduced by kind permission via the Guardian Environment Network.

Last week marked the six year anniversary of the military coup in Honduras – 28th June was the day that a democratically elected left wing government was ousted by a US-backed, US-trained cabal of generals and right wing politicians and landowners.

It could correctly be called a ‘quiet coup’ primarily because it took place with very little fanfare from the corporate media which, to the extent that it covered it at all, did so mostly from a distorted perspective which spread more misinformation than truth.

Today, six years (and many innocent lives, and billions of dollars) later, this shameful moment in recent history still remains largely forgotten.

Perhaps it was the lingering euphoria felt by liberals and so-called progressives in the months after Obama’s election and inauguration. Perhaps it was the still new economic crisis and subsequent bailout and financial turmoil. Perhaps it was plain old imperialistic, neocolonial disregard for Latin America and the rights of the people unfortunate enough to be living in ‘America’s backyard’.

Whatever the reason, the fact remains that the Obama administration and those who supported it, then and now, are complicit in an ongoing political, economic, and social tragedy in Honduras.

But why bring it up now, other than to mark the anniversary of the coup? For starters, because one of the primary participants and benefactors happens to be the likely Democratic Party presidential candidate: Hillary Clinton.

Also, far from being a discrete episode of US imperialism’s sordid past, the coup and its legacy remain a driving force in Honduran politics and society today. The beneficiaries and participants are all still either in government or have shifted to the private sector, and continue to enrich themselves at the cost of the poor and working people of the country.

A brutal war of US-supported ethnic cleansing

The coup government of Honduras continues to wage a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against minority communities to benefit itself and its patrons from the US and elsewhere.

Perhaps most importantly, the coup of 2009 reveals the extent to which the United States remains a neocolonial, imperial power in Latin America, and reminds us of just what countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador have been struggling against.

It illustrates in the starkest terms the human cost of Washington’s policies, not in books about a historical period, but in images and videos of a country under its thumb today. It reminds us just how real the struggle still is.

The 2006 election of José Manuel Zelaya, known as ‘Mel’ to his friends and supporters, was a watershed moment in the history of Honduras. A country that, like its neighbors, suffered under a succession of US-backed right wing governments, had finally elected a man whose politics were of the people, rather than of the military and business interests.

Despite coming from a wealthy family, and having been elected under the Partido Liberal (Liberal Party) banner, Zelaya’s politics shifted significantly to the left once he assumed office.

Not only did Zelaya commit the great sin of forging ties with the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) and PetroCaribe blocs, but Zelaya challenged the political status quo in the country, promising to represent the poor and working class in a country traditionally dominated by wealthy landowners and the military.

As journalist, author, and former adviser to the Permanent Mission of Honduras at the United Nations, Roberto Quesada, told Counterpunch in an exclusive interview: