COP21 opened today in Paris with a focus on one of the international community’s most serious oversights: the annual allocation of public subsidies worth hundreds of billions of dollars to artificially lower the price of oil, coal and gas.

While there is much talk in Paris about ‘putting a price on carbon’, many here believe that undoing the opposite signals that cut the price of carbon is the obvious place to begin.

The first figure to raise this subject in Paris was His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales. He pointed out in his speech to the opening ceremony how “Governments collectively spend more than a trillion dollars every year on subsidies to energy, agriculture and fisheries.”

He went on to ask “what could be done if those vast sums supported sustainable energy, farming and fishing, rather than fossil fuels, deforestation and over-exploitation of the seas?” A good question, for when it comes to fossil fuels alone, direct subsidies for the extraction and consumption of these resources total about $500 billion per year.

That’s almost four times the level of development assistance provided in 2013, four times the total global financial support for renewable energy, more than four times the sum invested in energy efficiency and five times the $100 billion that has been pledged to be spent every year by 2020 in support low carbon and climate resilient development in developing countries.

The pattern was confirmed in a new report by the Overseas Development Institute and Oil Change International on G20 government subsidies for oil, gas and coal production, which identified the UK as the only G7 nation significantly ramping up its support for the fossil fuel industry – with even more tax breaks and industry support to be handed out to companies operating in the North Sea in 2015.

These fossil fuel subsidies also cause regressive outcomes, including in the developed countries, where they mainly benefit middle class consumers, and encourage energy wastage.

UK’s fossil fuel subsidies – £26 billion a year – dwarf renewables support.

The UK’s Department for Energy and Climate Change might wish to reflect upon these figures, not least because British energy policy since the General Election has been largely geared to protecting ‘hard working families’ from the cost of energy subsidies.

Unfortunately, however, action to protect consumers has only been in relation to incentives for the expansion of renewable energy. When it comes to fossil fuels, a very different analysis prevails. Just how different was recently revealed in a survey published by the International Monetary Fund entitled ‘How Large Are Global Energy Subsidies?‘

The IMF’s numbers included all forms of official support and the wider costs of fossil fuels, including air pollution (that kills about 29,000 UK citizens each year) to conclude that the fossil fuel sector is in the UK benefiting from subsidies worth more than £26 billion per year – about 1.4% of GDP.

According to the Department for Energy and Climate Change the cost of supporting all renewable energy technologies in 2014 to 2015 will total £3.5 billion.

As if this disparity were not damaging enough to the economic viability of clean energy, the Chancellor added insult to injury in July when he extended the scope of the Climate Change Levy (that was introduced to charge companies for the carbon pollution they cause) to include the renewable energy sector.

This bizarre decision will, it has been estimated, cost green energy producers around £450 million in the current financial year, and up to £1 billion by 2020-2021. In the same announcement further tax breaks were offered to the producers of North Sea oil and gas.

Incoherent and inconsistent policies send a bleak signal

These incoherent economic signals are helping delay the transition to a low carbon future. The International Energy Agency estimates that ending the $500 billion in direct support for fossil energy would on its own reduce emissions by 10% by 2050. If these vast sums were redirected to incentivize renewables and energy efficiency instead, then the impact would be greater still.

It is welcome that the UK has made such firm public statements backing a strong deal from Paris, has recently signaled the end of British coal-fired power generation, has put substantial financial commitments on the table and is mobilizing its diplomatic resources to smooth a pathway to success in Paris. But how much stronger would these acts of leadership be were it not for it’s inchoate national energy policy?

Having undermined renewables, the British Government’s forward plan now rests in large part on a substantial increase in gas. While cleaner than coal, gas is not clean enough to meet the contracting carbon budgets that must be achieved to implement the low carbon plans needed during the decades ahead.

And in prioritizing gas another double standard has been exposed. For while the Prime Minister himself championed policies to enable local veto over on-shore wind projects, Ministers have recently signaled their intention to overrule decisions taken locally that block the exploration and production of shale gas.

Wrecking our future ‘green growth’

These breathtaking economic and political slants against renewable energy are irrational and will ultimately be self-defeating.

Propping up fossil fuels with tax breaks, planning policies and exemption from the environmental damage they cause at a time when the world is heading toward modern renewable generation and storage technologies will only leave Britain behind in the global race that our current government has repeatedly said we need to compete in.

Leader after leader in their opening speech in Paris highlighted the economic and development opportunities that come with a clean and renewable future. Against this backdrop of change in the political wind a Communique from The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group and the Friends of Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform, backed by more than 30 countries and hundreds of businesses and other organisations, called for the phase out of fossil fuel subsidies.

If Paris is to be successful in sending the signal the world so desperately needs, then this subject will surely need to be part of the package. Either way, the contradictions in British energy policy will only become more apparent as the clean tech revolution gathers momentum in the wake of these talks.

That will leave the UK not only in danger of blowing its carbon budgets, but also driving out investment and wrecking the ‘green growth’ industries of the future.

Tony Juniper is a campaigner, writer, sustainability advisor and leading British environmentalist who is attending COP21 on behalf of The Ecologist. For more than 25 years he has worked for change toward a more sustainable society at local, national and international levels. His website is at tonyjuniper.com.

One of the founding principles of the democratic process is the concept of ‘natural justice‘ – that all should be equal before the law, and that biased or questionable decisions by public authorities should be open to review by independent courts.

A key enabler of natural justice that the costs of accessing judicial procedures should be affordable to all – otherwise, on economic grounds, those basic democratic guarantees fail to exist for the poorest in society, and may be abused by the most wealthy.

In a variety of ways, over the last few years the Government has deliberately set out to undermine the public’s expectations for ‘natural justice’. They have sought to apply policy in a more dictatorial manner – reducing consultation, while at the same time making it much harder to challenge bad decisions via the courts, and have removed legal aid to support many people’s access to justice.

Today, from employment tribunals to the highest court in the land, it is now much harder, and much more expensive, to challenge unjust decisions. And now another attempt to weaken the public’s rights to obtain justice is under way.

Since September the Government have been running a little-publicised consultation on ‘reforming’ court costs, entitled ‘Costs protection in environmental claims‘. The proposals would diminish the financial protection for members of the public bringing environmental law cases before the courts in England and Wales (Scotland and Northern Ireland are also likely to review their procedures if they change in England).

The consultation closes on 10th December. If carried through it could have a chilling effect on environmental law and regulation in Britain – just as the budgets of our environmental regulators are set to be slashed.

David Cameron’s ‘dictatorship project’

In November 2012, in his speech to the Confederation of British Industry, David Cameron summarised his strategy to make Britain a great industrial power once more:

“Consultations, impact assessments, audits, reviews, stakeholder management, securing professional buy-in, complying with EU procurement rules, assessing sector feedback – this is not how we became one of the most powerful, prosperous nations on earth … So I am determined to change this. Here’s how:

• “Cutting back on judicial reviews.
• “Reducing government consultations.
• “Streamlining European legislation.
• “Stopping the gold-plating of legislation at home.”

Citing the struggle against Hitler in the Second World War, he continued this theme by stating: ” … this country is in the economic equivalent of war today and we need the same spirit. We need to forget about crossing every ‘t’ and dotting every ‘i’ and we need to throw everything we’ve got at winning in this global race.”

In what can best be described as his ‘dictatorship project’, those reforms are pretty much complete. The Government does now consult less; it has worked to restrict the application of EU law, in areas such as environmental assessment; and more significantly, through procedural and legal reforms – most notably the much criticised reforms of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 – our ability to seek redress for bad decisions through the courts has been obstructed.

In terms of the public’s ability to access justice, it is now harder and more expensive to secure a judicial review. And no longer can unions or campaign groups sponsor individuals to bring cases – anyone sponsoring a person is now equally liable for any costs which might result from the case.

Arguably the Conservative’s current ‘austerity agenda’ would have run into many more legal challenges, which would have slowed its progress, had the Government not made these changes first.

Now that steam-rollering of austerity is being applied specifically to environmental law.

There are, however, a few remaining stumbling blocks to the Government being able to impose its will without legal challenge from the public – though most of these could be removed if Britain left the European Union … which perhaps throws a new light on that debate too.

The Aarhus Convention

The United Nations Economic Committee for Europe’s (UNECE) Aarhus Convention creates common rights to environmental justice and access to environmental information right across Europe. The UNECE is not part of the European Union. It is bigger, covering non-EU states and Russia.

Britain signed up to the UNECE’s Aarhus Convention in 1998 (full text), and ratified it in 2005. Since then the Government has been expected to implement minimum standards for public participation in environmental decision-making, access to environmental information, and access to judicial review on environmental matters.

If you’ve ever tried to get information from the Government or a local authority, and wondered why ‘environmental information’ gets treated differently to everything else, this is why.

Reviewing a decision by the Government or a public agency can be very expensive – often requiring those bringing the case must demonstrate that they have £100,000 to £150,000 of assets in order to pay costs should they lose the case.

This has always been a significant barrier to challenging bad decisions, even for the larger national campaign groups. Of course for medium and large businesses those sorts of costs are not a barrier when often there are millions of pounds at stake. It was this economic inequality of access to justice which the ‘affordability’ clauses of the Aarhus Convention were designed to address.

As a result of a case brought in relation to the cement works in Rugby in 2003, in 2013 the Government decided that costs in ‘environment cases’ should be capped for members of the public at £5,000 – or £10,000 in the case of local or national groups. This was enacted in the Civil Procedure Rules which govern the conduct of cases (although those same rules have been tightened to enact David Cameron’s efforts to reduce challenges to official decision-making).

Restricting to right to affordable environmental justice

Of course, if Britain has ratified this Convention, the Government can’t just ignore these requirements … can they?

What the Government are seeking to do with their current consultation is very subtle – and will be difficult for many without legal experience to understand fully.

They are making very carefully worded changes to the definitions which British courts use in their interpretation of the public’s rights under the Convention. And of course, being a process based upon rules and procedure, how certain terms are defined has a significant impact upon how our Convention rights can be exercised.

Firstly, what is ‘environmental law’? The Department of Justice state that not all legal challenges are covered by the Convention’s costs protection requirements. That is because they narrowly interpret Aarhus protection as applying only to European Directives on environmental matters – not to UK-specific planning or heritage / conservation law even where it involves ‘the environment’.

This means that many decisions which the public might want to challenge, especially those on planning, would not have their costs capped.

The next significant change is the definition of what constitutes a ‘member of the public’. The Department of Justice claim that ” … wording of the current rules does not expressly specify the types of claimant which are eligible for costs protection.”

In other words, when the Convention definition states ‘member of the public’, they take that to mean a single person – not a collection of people.

That could exclude local and national groups from launching actions on behalf of their members. And while currently the costs cap of £5,000 or £10,000 applies irrespective of how many people bring a case, in future it would be £5,000 or £10,000 per person involved – significantly raising the costs to a community bringing a joint case.

Perhaps the most chilling part of these proposals relates to the timing for when costs protection is granted to those bringing a case. Currently those applying for judicial review are told immediately if they can get costs protection for their case – and if their case fails at this first hurdle, they still only have to pay £5,000 or £10,000 at most in costs.

What the Department of Justice propose is that the public must succeed with getting leave to appeal before they are told if they can have costs protection. That would mean that those bringing the action, if they fail to get leave, might be sued by the opposing party for their full costs in defending the application – effectively preventing anyone without the means from the risk of bringing even a well-founded case before the court.

In fact the Aarhus Convention sets out, in Article 9, that states’ legal procedures “shall provide adequate and effective remedies, including injunctive relief as appropriate, and be fair, equitable, timely and not prohibitively expensive.” But making the government comply with its obligations is another matter.

What does this mean in practice?

To bring environmental costs into line with recent reforms to court procedure, it is also proposed that the level of costs for those bringing the case should reflect their means. The effects of these changes are complex:

Firstly, the Department of Justice proposed to raise the minimum cost from £5,000 (individuals) and £10,000 (groups) to £10,000 and £20,000 – or more. They are also proposing that the defendant in the case should be able to apply to have those figures raised if they believe those bringing the case have the means to pay.

Where will those defending the case get that financial information to argue for more? Those who bring the case – irrespective of the defendant being a government department or a commercial company – will have to divulged their entire personal financial circumstances to all parties involved in the action.

Secondly, when bringing a case, those involved can claim that it qualifies for a costs cap under the Aarhus Convention, and the court will rule on that. Currently those defending the case have to bring an expensive, separate legal action against the court’s decision in order to challenge eligibility for the cap.

What the Department of Justice propose is that the defendant should be able to cheaply challenge the right of the parties to cap their costs under the Aarhus Convention. This would create further delay and costs.

Taken together, what these proposals would create is a system:

• where the public would have to pay much more to get access to justice on environmental issues – assuming that their particular issue actually qualifies for a costs cap;

• more significantly, they would have to gamble that they can get leave to appeal, or face the prospect of getting the defendant’s full costs awarded against them without any cap;

• the defendant will be able to easily / cheaply challenge the decision of the court to grant a cap on the costs of the case; and

• even where they get a cap on costs, the level of that cap may be challenged, and they will be required to divulge personal financial information to all parties involved in the case in order to substantiate their claim for the costs cap.

The stated aim is to deter challenges from the public

With a nod to the objectives stated in David Cameron’s speech to the CBI in 2012, the consultation paper states that these measures are intended to ” … minimise the grant of costs protection in unmeritorious cases and act as a disincentive against bringing unmeritorious challenges to cause delay.”

As outlined by groups who have challenged these proposals, such as Wildlife and Countryside Link, no evidence has been produced by the Department of Justice to demonstrate that such ‘vexatious’ claims are being brought today.

For example, of all the requests for judicial review in the courts which the Department provided data for, only 2% are granted. However, for the ‘environmental’ cases, which represent less than 1% of all the cases brought to the courts, around 24% are given leave to appeal.

What the Government’s own statistics show is that environmental cases are far less ‘vexatious’ than the other cases routinely brought before the court.

The fact that the Department of Justice still believe that environmental cases are vexatious demonstrates – in line with David Cameron’s comments in 2012 – that the Government holds an unreasonable ideological objection to environmental cases being brought by the public.

These reforms will enforce ‘environmental austerity’

What is more significant about these proposals, if enacted, is that their full effect will not be understood for another two or three years.

The major impact upon environmental regulation in Britain today was the ‘bonfire of the Quangos‘ back in 2010/11. Though budgets have been cut recently, environmental regulators – both nationally and locally – have been able to provide at least a notional protection of the environment (although practically that level of protection varies widely across the UK).

What is proposed at present are even greater levels of budget cuts than were enacted under the previous coalition government.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (DEFRA) budget, which funds the Environment Agency and other national environmental regulators, is being cut by half. The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), which funds planning, environmental and public health within local authorities, is being cut by almost a third.

Arguably the result of ‘deregulatory’ measures such as this, the last time they were enacted in the 1980s, was the creation of problems such as BSE.

The level of these cuts will necessitate less staff, less monitoring and less detailed investigations – and thus result in far poorer decision-making and protection of the natural world and public health. Arguably they will no longer be able to meet their obligations to the public under the law.

If the public are unable to challenge their regulators because they cannot muster the resources to do so, then any such failures are financially unactionable – and thus will pass unchallenged. The Government’s policies of ‘environmental austerity’ will be able to proceed unhindered by adverse legal rulings from the courts.

Of course developers and polluters, who have the wherewith-all to challenge the decisions of environmental and planning agencies, will be able to get away with more. Regulators will not have the budget to defend against any potential challenge to their decisions by well-funded corporations and large landowners – and will have to back down in the face of concerted resistance to regulatory measures.

Without accountability, direct action will be the result

If regulators are unable or unwilling to act, and the courts are beyond the reach of the average person, what the Government’s policy is likely to produce is more direct action to prevent damage to the natural environment and local communities.

That’s not a wish, or a prediction, it’s experience. That’s exactly what happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s with issues such as the roads programme.

Where any state deliberately seeks to impose its will irrespective of the wishes of its citizens, protest, to varying degrees, is usually the result. As shown recently in the case of ‘fracking’, official indifference begets local resistance.

I believe it is essential that as many people as possible reply, in whatever manner they are able, to the Department of Justice’s consultation on costs – before the 10th December deadline.

More significantly, looking two or three years ahead, when current cuts to environmental regulators have fully taken their toll, I believe it will become essential for the public to put themselves in the way of any actions which damage the environment. If current cuts go through, regulators will be unable to do the job on their behalf.

The European Court of Justice may yet over-rule the Government’s reforms of the costs system for environmental cases. But remember that cement works case which began in 2003? – it wasn’t resolved until ten years later.

Even if the Government eventually lost a challenge via the UNECE, it could be at least six or eight years before that resulted in change. The business community – whom Cameron addressed his agenda to in 2012 – can do a lot of irreversible damage to our environment in that time.

It’s an unwelcome reality, but without action by the public David Cameron’s ideological pursuit of ‘growth at any cost’ will proceed unopposed.

The consultation: ‘Costs protection in environmental claims‘ runs from 17th September 2015 to 10th December 2015.

Paul Mobbs is an environmental and peace campaigner. He runs the Free Range Activism Website (FRAW) and is the author of Energy Beyond Oil and A Practical Guide to Sustainable ICT (which is available free on-line).

For a fully referenced version of this article go to the FRAW site.

Starting today, the world’s nations convene in traumatized Paris to hammer out commitments to slow down global climate change.

Any long-term solution will require ‘decarbonizing’ the world energy economy – that is, shifting to power sources that use little or no fossil fuel.

How fast can this happen, and what could we do to accelerate this shift? A look at the history of other infrastructures offers some clues.

Decarbonization is an infrastructure problem, the largest one humanity has ever faced. It involves not only energy production, but also transportation, lighting, heating, cooling, cooking and other basic systems and services.

The global fossil fuel infrastructure includes not only oil and gas wells, coal mines, giant oil tankers, pipelines and refineries, but also millions of automobiles, gas stations, tank trucks, storage depots, electric power plants, coal trains, heating systems, stoves and ovens.

The total value of all this infrastructure is on the order of US$10 trillion, or nearly two-thirds of US gross domestic product. Nothing that huge and expensive will be replaced in a year, or even a few years. It will take decades.

Yet there is good news, of a sort, in the fact that all infrastructure eventually wears out. A 2010 study asked: what if the current energy infrastructure were simply allowed to live out its useful life, without being replaced?

The surprising answer: if every worn-out coal-fired power plant were exchanged for solar, wind or hydro, and every dead gas-powered car replaced with an electric one, and so on, we might just stay within our planetary boundaries.

According to the study, using the existing infrastructure until it falls apart would not push us past the 2 degrees Celsius global warming that many scientists see as the upper limit of acceptable climate change.

The problem, of course, is that we aren’t doing this yet. Instead, we’re replacing worn-out systems with more of the same, while drilling, mining and building even more. But that could change.

Take-off to build-out: a 30-100 year timeline

Historians of infrastructure like myself observe a typical pattern. A slower innovation phase is followed by a ‘take-off’ phase, during which new technical systems are rapidly built and adopted across an entire region, until the infrastructure stabilizes at ‘build-out’.

This temporal pattern is surprisingly similar across all kinds of infrastructure. In the United States, the take-off phase of canals, railroads, telegraph, oil pipelines and paved roadways lasted 30-100 years. The take-off phases of radio, telephone, television and the internet each lasted 30-50 years.

The history of infrastructure suggests that ‘take-off’ in renewable electricity production has already begun and will move very quickly now, especially when and where governments support that goal.

Solar and wind power installations are currently emerging faster than any other electric power source, growing at worldwide annual rates of 50% and 18% respectively from 2009-2014. These sources can piggyback on existing infrastructure, pumping electricity into power grids (though their intermittent power production requires managers to adjust their load-balancing techniques).

But wind and solar can also provide power ‘off-grid’ to individual homes, farms and remote locations, giving these sources a unique flexibility.

Some countries, notably Germany and China, have made major commitments to renewables.

Germany now gets over 25% of its electric power from renewables, helping to reduce its total carbon output by over 25% relative to 1990. China already produces more solar electricity than any other country, with an installed base of over 30 gigawatts and plans to reach 43 gigawatts by the end of this year. In Australia between 2010 and 2015, solar photovoltaic capacity grew from 130 megawatts to 4.7 gigawatts – an annual growth rate of 96%.

Combined with complementary technologies such as electric cars, efficient LED lighting, and geothermal heating and cooling, this transition could move us closer to carbon neutrality.

Could the 30-100-year timeline for infrastructure development be accelerated? Some indicators suggest that the answer may be ‘yes!’

Re-harnessing, not discarding, existing infrastructure

First, in the case of electricity, only the power sources need replacement; power grids – the poles, wires and other gear that transport electricity – must be managed differently, but not rebuilt from scratch. Second, less developed countries may take advantage of renewable technologies to ‘leapfrog’ almost entirely over older infrastructures.

Similar things have happened in the recent past. Since 2000, for example, cellular telephone networks have reached most of the developing world – and simultaneously avoided the slow, costly laying of vulnerable landlines, which many such places will now never build outside major cities.

The parallel in energy is powering buildings, farms, informal settlements and other points of need with portable solar panels and small windmills, which can be installed almost anywhere with no need for long-distance power lines. This, too, is already happening all over the developing world.

In the developed world, however, the transition to renewables will likely take considerably longer.

In those regions, not only equipment, but also expertise, education, finance, law, lifestyles and other sociocultural systems both support and rely on fossil-fuel-based energy infrastructure. These, too, must adapt to change.

Some – especially the huge coal, oil, and natural gas industries – stand to lose a lot in such a transition. These historical commitments produce determined political resistance, as we see in the United States today.

Tough problems, including competition from fossil fuels

Energy infrastructure, of course, isn’t the only challenge. Indeed, decarbonization is fraught with enormous technical difficulties.

Insulating older buildings, improving fuel economy, and installing more efficient electrical gear are by far the most cost-effective ways to reduce carbon footprints, but these fail to excite people and can’t be easily flaunted.

Currently and for the foreseeable future, no energy source can be truly ‘zero carbon’, since fossil-fuel-powered devices are used to mine raw materials and to transport finished products, including renewable power systems such as solar panels or wind turbines.

Electricity is a wonderfully flexible form of energy, but storing it remains a conundrum; today’s best battery technologies require lithium, a relatively rare element. And despite intensive research, batteries remain expensive, heavy, and slow to recharge.

Rare earths – extremely rare elements found in only a few places – are currently critical to wind turbines and other renewable technologies, creating legitimate worries about future supplies.

Finally, in many circumstances, burning oil, coal and natural gas will remain the easiest and least expensive means of providing power.

For example, major transport modes such as transcontinental shipping, air travel and long-distance trucking remain very difficult to convert to renewable power sources. Biofuels offer one possibility for reducing the carbon footprint of these transport systems, but many plants grown as biofuel feedstocks compete with food crops and/or wild lands.

Still, the ultimate goal of providing all the world’s energy needs from renewable sources does appear to be feasible in principle. A major recent study found that those needs could readily be met with only wind, water and solar power, at consumer prices no higher than current energy systems.

Infrastructures as social commitments

Where does all this leave us as COP21 in Paris begins?

Accelerated decarbonization can’t be achieved by technical innovation alone, because infrastructures aren’t just technological systems. They represent complex webs of mutually reinforcing financial, social and political commitments, each with long histories and entrenched defenders. For this reason, major change will require substantial cultural shifts and political struggle.

On the cultural side, one slogan that could inspire accelerated change may be ‘energy democracy‘: the notion that people can and should produce their own energy, on small scales, at home and elsewhere too.

New construction techniques and the low cost of solar panels have brought ‘net-zero’ homes (which produce as much energy as their inhabitants consume) within the financial reach of ordinary people. These are one component of Germany’s ambitious Energiewende, or the country’s energy transition away from fossil fuels.

In infrastructure history, the take-off phase has often accelerated when new technologies moved out of large corporate and government settings for adoption by individuals and smaller businesses. Electric power in the early 20th century and internet use in the 1990s are cases in point.

In Queensland, Australia, over 20% of homes now generate their own electricity. This example suggests the possibility that a ‘tipping point’ toward a new social norm of rooftop solar has already been reached in some places. In fact, a recent study found that the best indicator of whether a given homeowner adds solar panels to a house is whether a neighbor already had them.

Putting together the pieces

Many different policy approaches could help, both to reduce consumption and to increase the share of renewables in the energy mix.

Building codes could be gradually adjusted to require that every rooftop generate energy, and/or ratcheted up to LEED ‘green building’ standards. A gradually increasing carbon tax or cap-and-trade system (already in place in some nations) would spur innovation while reducing fossil fuel consumption and promoting the use of renewables.

In the United States, at least, eliminating the many subsidies that currently flow to fossil fuels may prove politically easier than taxing carbon, yet send a similar price signal.

The Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon output from coal-fired power plants represents the right kind of policy change. It kicks in gradually to give utility companies time to adjust and still-nascent carbon capture and storage systems time to develop. The EPA estimates that the plan will generate $20 billion in climate change benefits, as well as health benefits of $14-$34 billion, while costing much less.

Because greenhouse gases come from many sources, including agriculture, animal husbandry, refrigerants and deforestation (to name just a few), there’s a lot more to decarbonizing the global economy than converting to renewable energy sources.

This article has addressed only one piece of that very large puzzle, but an infrastructure perspective may help us think about those problems as well.

Infrastructure history tells us that decarbonization won’t happen nearly as fast as we might like it to. But it also shows that there are ways to accelerate the change, and that there are tipping-point moments when a lot can happen very fast.

We may be on the brink of such a moment. As the Paris climate negotiations develop, look for inspiration in the many national commitments to push this process forward.

Paul N Edwards is Professor of Information and History, University of Michigan.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has said it is time for Britain to join air strikes against Islamic State in Syria (ISIS).

After the killing of 130 people in Paris, he feels the tide has now turned in favour of military action against ISIS. Cameron has told the British public that such action is vital to protect Britain from similar attacks.

Although in 2013 Cameron lost a vote in Parliament on air strikes against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces (based on the lie that government forces had used chemical weapons), he is now arguing that Britain does not have the luxury of being able to wait any longer to launch attacks on Syrian territory, this time supposedly on ISIS.

Some anticipate that Cameron might push for a vote on the matter in parliament within the coming week – but only if he feels certain of winning. However, any talk about attacking Syria to make Britain ‘safer’ is based on hollow rhetoric, as Graham Vanbergen writes:

“In the 12 years preceding the Invasion of Iraq, 65 people in Europe were killed by various ‘terrorist’ attacks, mainly in France, Italy and Greece. In the 12 years since that fateful invasion, the terrorists kill rate has increased by nearly 600%. Far from making its citizens safer, politicians have achieved the opposite.”

Cameron’s war in Syria would be illegal

For all Cameron’s seemingly high-minded utterances about protecting Britain by attacking the territory of a sovereign state thousands of miles away, it is worth reflecting on Felicity Arbuthnot’s observation that what he is advocating is wholly illegal:

“David Cameron is morphing in to his pal, alleged war criminal Tony Blair and is attempting to persuade Parliament that Britain must join those illegally in Syrian air space and equally illegally drop its own bombs with no UN mandate for such action. The Cameron backing media is beating the war drums along with America’s partisan hacks.”

Yes, there is a UN Security Council Resolution 2249 which urges member states to “take all necessary measures, in compliance with international law” to defeat ISIS in Syria. But as the Telegraph newspaper points out, “It does not invoke Chapter VII of the UN charter which can be used to authorise military action in order to restore peace and security. But Mr Cameron has always said he already has authority to act in self-defence.”

Like Blair before him, Cameron is using a good old dose of fear mongering and a grab for the moral high ground in an attempt to disguise the illegal nature of what he is advocating – and is relying on a ‘self-defence’ doctrine that stretches credulity. The hypocrisy is palpable.

Earlier this year, in response to Syrian refugees arriving in Europe, Cameron said that he felt deeply moved by the image of a Syrian boy dead on a Turkish beach. As pressure mounted on Britain to take in more of those fleeing to Europe, he added that the country would fulfil its moral responsibilities.

Anyone who had been following the Syrian conflict at that point could not have failed to detect the hypocrisy. Former French foreign minister Roland Dumas has stated that Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009. He told French TV:

“I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business… I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria.”

Writing in the Guardian in 2013, Nafeez Ahmed discussed leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor, including notes from a meeting with Pentagon officials, that confirmed US-UK training of Syrian opposition forces since 2011 aimed at eliciting “collapse” of Assad’s regime “from within.”

Seizing control of the region’s vast oil and gas resources

According to retired NATO Secretary General Wesley Clark, a memo from the Office of the US Secretary of Defense just a few weeks after 9/11 revealed plans to “attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years”, starting with Iraq and moving on to “Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.” Clark argues that this strategy is fundamentally about control of the region’s vast oil and gas resources.

In 2009, Syrian President Assad refused to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar that would run a pipeline from the latter’s North field through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a view to supply European markets in direct competition with Russia and in the hope of further undermining and helping to break the energy-dependent Russian economy.

Russian ally Assad refused to sign and instead pursued negotiations for an alternative $10 billion pipeline plan with Iran crossing Iraq and into Syria that would also potentially allow Iran to supply gas to Europe. Thus Assad had to go.

Last year, Cameron told the United Nations that Britain was ready to play its part in confronting “an evil against which the whole world must unite.” He also said that that “we” must not be so “frozen with fear” of repeating the mistakes of the 2003 Iraq invasion. He was attempting to drum up support for wider Anglo-US direct military action against the Syria under the pretext of attacking ISIS.

A year on, it’s the same story with added impetus due to the attacks in Paris. Cameron is again trying his hand again at pushing Britain into war: one that it is already covertly involved up to its neck in and one that Britain has already ‘subcontracted’ out to a bunch of anti-Assad terror groups, the foot soldiers of US-led imperialism in the region.

The ‘war on terror’ is, of course, no such thing

Cameron’s call for an urgent military response by Britain comes on the back of the events in Paris, which occurred at a highly convenient time as Russia’s (wholly legal and UN-backed) actions in Syria were severely undermining the anti-Assad militias – trained, armed, funded and supported by the West, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others (see the forthcoming book ‘The Dirty War on Syria‘ by Tim Anderson). Russian intervention has turned the tide against the West’s proxy forces in the region, including ISIS.

David Cameron is manipulating a war-fatigued public into getting behind yet another military intervention disguised as yet another component of the bogus ‘war on terror’.

Whether it involves rhetoric about ‘Russian aggression’ or it involves a US-backed coup in Ukraine, the destruction of Libya or NATO-Saudi-backed terror in Syria, these components are not for one minute to be regarded by the public as the planned machinations of empire with the aim of destroying or at least severely weakening Russia. The public must be kept confused and most of all fearful of the designated bogeyman of Washington’s choice.

If Cameron is serious about defeating ISIS, he would do better to join with Russia and help sever the logistics that enable ISIS to function as a fighting force in Syria. All roads lead to Turkey (quite literally) and Saudi Arabia.

But Cameron’s role is to dance to the neocon’s tune in Washington, to deceive the public, to lie to it and to push the world ever closer to a major conflict with Russia.

His sidekick, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon is also on cue. Speaking on Britain’s Radio 5, he stated the need “to spend less on some things like the welfare system and to spend more on things that really matter to keep our country safe.”

The real target of this war … us

With a £12 billion saving on cuts to the welfare budget, Fallon was attempting to justify a £12 billion increase to the military budget to help pay for eight BAE warships, nine Boeing maritime patrol crafts, surveillance drones and Lockheed Martin jets.

Add on the cost replacing the Trident nuclear programme put at around £31 billion, with another £10 billion being set aside for contingencies, and it is clear where Britain’s priorities lie: not with ordinary people whose jobs have been sold to the lowest bidder abroad and who now see their liberties and welfare state being dismantled under the lies of ‘austerity’ (a manifestation of ‘class war’, as Noam Chomsky correctly states) and tackling terrorism but with arms companies and militarism.

Cuts to welfare, increases in military spending and events in Syria form part of an ongoing war on working people. That’s because militarism is but one arm of a neoliberal agenda that seeks to bend all working people and regional elites – whether Assad, Putin, Saddam or Gaddafi – to the will of Western capital.

It is ordinary working people who ultimately pay the price, whether refugees fleeing from conflict, civilian deaths in war zones or those subject to the types of structural violence that ‘austerity’ or other forms of economic warfare brings courtesy of the IMF, World Bank, WTO or trade agreements like NAFTA, TPA and TTIP.

And, ultimately, it is the Lockhead Martins, the Blackwaters (XE Services) and the BAEs, the Chevrons and Occidental Petroleums, the Halliburtons and Monsantos and the financial interests on Wall Street and in the City of London that benefit.

As the media get ready to cheer lead Cameron into war with the unstated aim of removing Assad from power, this fact should not be lost on anyone, not least the British public.

Action: Contact your MP to tell them how you feel about the prospect of the UK going to war in Syria, and how you want them to vote on the question in Parliament.

Colin Todhunter is an independent writer. Support his work here.

This article was originally published on Colin Todhunter’s website.

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has warned that the gathering pace of climate change means that 2015 is likely to prove the warmest year on record.

Global average surface temperature, it says, is likely to be the warmest yet, and to reach “the symbolic and significant milestone of 1C above the pre-industrial era”.

That’s half way to the 2C threshold that governments have agreed as the maximum warming tolerable if the Earth is to avert dangerously unpredictable climate change.

The WMO issued its provisional statement on the status of the climate in 2015, and the additional five-year analysis for 2011-2015, to inform negotiations at theCOP21 UN climate change conference due to start in Paris on 30th November.

“Greenhouse gas emissions, which are causing climate change, can be controlled“, said Michel Jarraud, secretary-general. “We have the knowledge and the tools to act. We have a choice. Future generations will not.

“Added to that, we are witnessing a powerful El Niño event, which is still gaining in strength. This is influencing weather patterns in many parts of the world, and fuelled an exceptionally warm October. The overall warming impact of this El Niño is expected to continue into 2016.”

The negotiators’ main task at COP21 in will be to reach an agreement that will take the world closer to reaching the 2C target. There is no prospect that they will reach the target itself, but they may make significant progress towards it.

Many experts argue that 2C is a ‘political’ threshold, with little scientific justification, and some influential voices say the target should be as low as 1.5C. These include some of the states most threatened by climate change.

2015 is breaking climate records – and not in a good way

The WMO says the combined causes of this historically unprecedented heat are both natural and human-induced: a strong El Niño – the periodic climate phenomenon in the Pacific – and anthropogenic warming resulting from the rising emissions of greenhouse gases, largely through the burning of fossil fuels, agriculture and deforestation.

Not only does this year look likely to be a record-breaker, but a five-year analysis by the WMO shows the years 2011-2015 to have been the warmest five-year period on record, with many extreme weather events – especially heatwaves – influenced by climate change.

“The state of the global climate in 2015 will make history for a number of reasons”, said Jarraud. “Levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached new highs, and in the northern hemisphere spring 2015 the three-month global average concentration of CO₂ crossed the 400 parts per million barrier for the first time.

“2015 is likely to be the hottest year on record, with ocean surface temperatures at the highest level since measurements began. It is probable that the 1C threshold will be crossed. This is all bad news for the planet.

The WMO’s preliminary estimate, based on data from January to October, shows that the global average surface temperature for 2015 so far is around 0.73C above the 1961-1990 average of 14C, and approximately 1C above the pre-industrial 1880-1899 period. The global average sea-surface temperature, which set a record last year, is likely to equal or surpass that record in 2015.

By the end of September this year, 2011-15 was the world’s warmest five-year period on record, at about 0.57C above the 1961-90 average. It was the warmest five years recorded for Asia, Europe, South America and Oceania, and for North America.

And worryingly, most of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases is going into the oceans, not the atmosphere: “The oceans have been absorbing more than 90% of the energy that has accumulated in the climate system from human emissions of greenhouse gases, resulting in higher temperatures and sea levels.

“In the first nine months of 2015, global ocean heat content through both the upper 700 meters and 2000 meters of the oceans reached record high levels. The latest estimates of global sea level indicate that the global average sea level in the first half of 2015 was the highest since satellite observations became available in 1993.”

But for many countries, it’s fossil-fuelled ‘development’ first

Although the WMO’s announcement will remind delegates of the urgency of reaching an agreement, there are many countries that insist that ‘development’ must take priority over a low-carbon economy.

Among countries that are committing to new large scale coal power generation are Turkey, the Phillippines, Burma and India – the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, which plans to open one large new coal mine a month until 2020, and expects to triple its emissions by 2030.

In fact, renewables like wind and solar are becoming ever cheaper, and in good locations cost less than new coal fired power. They are also best placed to bring electricity to rural communities that are distant from power grids, with technologies like wind, solar, biogas and small hydro creating village-scale microgrids

India’s former environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, recently explained his country’s position to the BBC: “The people who have put carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the last hundred years must take the greater responsibility for cutting the emissions. We are making a huge investment in renewables … but even with the most aggressive solar, aggressive nuclear, aggressive hydro, we’ll still need to double our coal consumption over the next 15 years.”

But in fact, with solar fast gaining ground in India for economic reasons alone, there is little reason to believe that the ‘aggressive’ solar programme trumpeted by Ramesh would deliver any more than business as usual.

Meanwhile coal is imposing enormous health and environmental costs on communities impacted by coal mines and power stations – and that’s before counting the costs of climate change: India’s May 2015 heat wave killed thousands of people.

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network. Some additional reporting by The Ecologist.

As a couple years of planning draw to a close, the protests in Paris around the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference, or COP21, are shaping up to be an edgy and diverse treasure chest of mass spectacles and organizing hubs.

They will serve as a poetic contrast to what is widely considered government inaction on the pressing issue of runaway global temperature and the violence embedded in the terrorism of climate chaos.

Now, after the French government outlawed mass protest following the 13th November attacks in Paris, the dedication of activists embracing this new reality as a way to encourage ever more decentralized, creative and committed action is nothing short of inspirational.

An unwavering understanding that the “biggest threat to security, to life in all its forms, is the system that drives climate disaster” is fueling the actions being planned in Paris to shine a light on the state of emergency on the climate front.

Ongoing conversations continue about the shape and tenor of actions during COP21, which will take place from 30th November through 11th December. Many are brainstorming ways around the mass demonstration ban, which forbids political gatherings of more than two people in Paris.

Also numerous activists have been placed under house arrest, and accommodation for activists has been subject to heavy handed police raids and searches, raising concerns over a broader crackdown on civil liberties.

Ghost March and Human Chain to evade protest ban

The Climate Coalition is proposing a ‘Ghost March’ in which all the art and placards and props are placed in the street without the people; Avaaz is collecting shoes to stand in where people have been outlawed; and following the ban of the 29th November march a ‘Human Chain’ protest is to take its place.

Ortganised by 350.org, Attac, Alternatiba, Friends of the Earth France, the International Trade-union Confederation and its members (CGT, CFDT), the FSU and Solidaires, activists will join hands to form a human chain along Avenue Voltaire, past the Bataclan theater where the tragic attacks took place, and down to Place de la Nation.

People will hold signs, placards, and banners that they would have been carried in the banned climate march. The main message of the Human Chain is: “we are in a state of climate emergency and we demand a climate of peace and peace for climate.” The action has not been prohibited by police.

Some organizers who are committed to having the ‘last word‘ on 12th December are moving ahead with a call for a mass civil disobedience action, which is being referred to as ‘D12’. Meanwhile, banner painting and stenciling continue across Paris as the situation develops.

Five of the most innovative and captivating schemes of resistance to COP21 that were put in motion are still moving ahead in some form. Telling their stories and plans is salve for the soul, and an antidote to the calls for violent retribution against ISIS. Overwhelmingly, as they move forward they also underline the importance of taking care of each other and ourselves – of an accurate assessment of risk and of avoiding harm.

This won’t be easy in a shifting situation, but it’s essential. This moment also offers opportunities to do more outside of Paris in solidarity with the victims and survivors of all forms of terrorism – to draw the lines between the root causes of climate chaos and injustice everywhere.

Climate Games

The Climate Games have taken a page from the pop culture hit the ‘Hunger Games’, capitalizing on the attractiveness of games and play, but without taking it too seriously. Isa Fremeaux, an organizer with the Climate Games, speaks about the games as a way to take “the creative activist framework to bring forward the joy of the world that we want to propose.”

The first version of the Climate Games were played in 2009 versus a coal plant in Amsterdam. The games involve a mobile-friendly website with an interactive map that allows teams to form anonymously. Teams can add information onto the game field (the map) or retrieve information that would inform their actions.

Then, action reports can be submitted, and teams can nominate themselves for awards. Some awards are just for laughs, but most serve as a genius way to encourage effective actions and reward helpful behavior.

Awards will go to the most innovative tactic, the best supporter of other teams; the best model of courageous behavior, or use of the best Plan B; the best reporting on ‘Team Blue’ (the authorities) or best modeling of solutions. Over 100 teams signed up prior to 13th November.

The very premise of the Climate Games that “we are not defending nature – we are nature defending itself” is a masterful re-framing. And publicly claiming the world as a giant direct action playing field for climate justice opens up opportunities for everyone to take part, wherever they are, and to identify the many aspects of ‘the Mesh’ – or the real and pervasive system as represented by fossil fuel corporations, industry lobbyists and shill politicians – as it intersects with their own lives.

As part of the Climate Games, a specific call was put out for participants to join actions surrounding the location of the COP21 on 12th December, focusing on the theme of ‘red lines’. A red line is defined as a minimal necessity for a just and livable planet, and, for this day, specifically a call for sustainable energy transformation, justice for impacted people and the right to food and water.

Blockades are planned that would use the red line theme to highlight solutions, and to shift the focus away from the talking heads in the negotiations to the resisters as part of the sustainable and just future beyond COP21.

D12 is scheduled as the meeting closes and the officials head home to hold the governments participating in COP21 accountable, to speak the truth about any outcome that is less than what is needed, and to capture the last word.

It takes roots to weather the storm

An indigenous contingent will be in Paris as part of the It Takes Roots To Weather the Storm delegation of over 100 frontline leaders from climate-impacted communities across the United States and Canada, including the Arctic. They come united under the slogan: ‘No War, No Warming – Build an Economy for People and Planet’. Indigenous people have a long history of participating in actions on the inside of the COP meetings, as well as engaging civil society on the outside.

Sharon Lungo, who works with Ruckus and the Climate Justice Alliance noted that the delegation was inspired by the D12 call for actions on red line issues. “We realized, that we, the indigenous people are that red line – the most impacted, and last line of defense, for the rest of the world”, she said.

As key stakeholders and frontline communities, they are uniquely situated to represent all aspects of resistance and solution-oriented work as warriors, protectors and keepers, upholding traditional wisdom.

Grounded in this traditional perspective, the delegation identified several visual images to work with along the red line theme. Building on the image of frontline warriors, shields were identified as signifiers of their role as defenders of the earth and its communities.

The indigenous women of Saryakyu, Ecuador, have built canoes that have been shipped to Paris, carrying their dedication to defending water, a sacred element of life, and the message that women are disproportionately impacted by climate change.

It is their plan that the canoes will help to navigate not only the Seine river, but also a climate treaty that will protect and heal the earth for future generations. “I ask that as temperature rises, that we rise”, said Orielle Lake, who signed the Indigenous Women’s Climate Declaration.

Within some tribes, red lines are used in traditional and ceremonial face paint. While honoring tribal protocol, medicinal uses and ceremonies, some will use red face paint, sashes and belts to embody the red lines themselves.

In solidarity with refugees and undocumented indigenous people who are taking the brunt of climate impacts and violence worldwide, this contingent of directly-impacted people will speak out both inside and outside of the COP21 meetings to support other impacted peoples, recognizing that taking action on climate is essential to global stability and peace.

l’Annexe and the Eroles Project

One of the spaces that have blossomed in Paris is the Community Art Hub, which was started by The Eroles Project in conjunction with Jungle House collective and TierrActiva. Coming out of a 9-week Europe-wide artist-activist residency this summer in the Catalan Pyrennes, l’Annexe is serving as both a physical hub for people creating, organizing or performing creative climate interventions throughout the city, as well as a virtual home away from home for activists.

The space will also host a kitchen crew to supply hundreds of meals for activists around the city; and space for workshops, immersive small scale theater pieces and political education – from legal briefings to de-stressing yoga, carbon colonialism to giant puppet workshops.

Mona Rathsman, co-founder of The Eroles Project, emphasized their desire to host and hold space for “a culture of care and reflection, a space for activists to come back to and get nurtured and nourished.”

Along with their daily programs, there will be opportunity for feedback forums, building on the culture of harnessing art critiques to make more effective art works. Physical and emotional support like this is always a welcome and needed piece of mass mobilization platforms; in the current context after the Paris attacks, increased global xenophobia and Islamophobia, it will play a critical role in providing the emotional support and healing that is needed.

l’Annexe artists and activists have scheduled a number of out-of-the box provocative events in response to COP21, with the intention to stimulate more actions. ‘La Cantine des Nations Unies’ is one of their political performance pieces in the first week of December, with specific instructions to participants: Bring a vegetable.

It is billed as an evening to investigate how power and decision-making would play out if global political leaders were asked to cook together. With an ominous warning of potential natural disasters and political mayhem, it is not clear if anyone will get to eat.

Another event, Run for Your Life, focuses on re-imaging activism, exploring the origins of our activism and preparing for post-COP21 resistance. As an initiative of Riksteatern, Sweden’s National Touring Theater, Run for Your Life is a relay run that serves as a manifestation of the race we are in to reverse climate change.

Covering more than 2,500 miles – from the Arctic region across northern Europe to Paris for COP21 – over about 21 days, the run is happening 24/7 and broadcast live as living theater. The website and final video will showcase the collected stories of motivation and action from the thousand participants to encourage other European organizations, institutions and individuals to do their part in stopping climate change.

As Holger Rodiek, one of the runners wrote, “I run for those who cannot outrun a climate catastrophe.”

Art Not Oil

During COP21, a new constellation of groups challenging oil sponsorship of cultural institutions in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, France, Norway, the U.K. and the United States are collaborating to call on the Louvre to dump Total and Eni. These two oil giants sponsor France’s most prestigious art gallery as a way to divert attention from their ongoing and devastating fossil fuel extraction and human rights abuses around the world.

This is the leading edge of a rapidly growing international movement of cultural practitioners that are demanding cultural institutions preserve public interests, and lift the veil on sponsorships from corporations, specifically oil and gas industries, that are acting against public well being.

Beka Economopoulos from the new Natural History Museum talks about recognizing that “politics are downstream of culture, and in order to shift the political climate, we have to enlist those institutions who control culture in our society.”

Museums see more visitors in the United States than the number of people who attend all sporting events combined – a huge audience that is exposed to, or limited by, the information on display in the gallery exhibits. Koch Brothers sponsorship of exhibits on climate insure that their role in the devastation is never mentioned, of course.

This new Natural History Museum works to create space for champions on the inside of these institutions to create change from within, and so expand whose – and what – stories are included and inscribed within mainstream galleries. For instance, if a display is about climate change, it would not just explain carbon molecules, but also the corporate sponsors.

Creatives have long wielded topical culture and art in the struggle to limit the power of the fossil fuel industry, and are now refining ways to fight war in the landscape of cultural vocabulary.

This conversation about public and private interests and ownership of cultural institutions is happening using the very same cultural methods of theater, visual arts, song and dance that are being sponsored. A tongue-in-cheek example is the UK collective of theater professionals known as ‘BP or not BP?‘

This strategy is meeting with success on several fronts, with several museums and cultural institutions coming out in support of divestment and cutting ties to fossil fuel companies in just the last few months. In Paris, a number of events designed to build the cultural divestment community are planned leading up to the Louvre event – and if you go, bring a black umbrella.

The Climate Ribbon

As part of the closing events at the People’s Climate March in September 2014, the Climate Ribbon Tree was set up as a massive art ritual on the streets of New York City. The Climate Ribbon Tree’s leaves consist of ribbons inscribed with messages of climate love and loss from around the world, tapping into deep emotions that climate chaos can conjure for those internalizing its vast implications.

Development of this creative ritualized action came from the strategic awareness that the enormity of the climate crisis often overwhelms people, acting as an obstacle to constructive action, leaving many immobilized in their fear.

This ritual has continued to grow around the world, and a new forest of climate ribbon trees will be installed in several locations in Paris during the COP21. Unfortunately this kind of ritualized grieving and mourning space is even more appropriate in the wake of the recent tragedy in Paris and beyond.

It also holds space for a way to make the connections between the violence of terrorism and climate chaos and to commit to courageous action, together. As Rae Abileah, one of the co-creators of the Ribbon project, wrote,

“We know that unchecked climate catastrophe makes a fertile breeding ground for greater displacement and violence. As agricultural land disappears, more people will be without food. This desperation fuels wars, as it has done in Syria. We stand to lose more than our coastlines and fields.”

This interconnectedness shows up on climate ribbons that have been written by participants. Responding to the question, “What do you love, and hope never to lose, to climate change?” some answered, “The kindness among strangers”, “Safety for my grandchildren”, and “My country, Syria.” The Climate Ribbon Tree will welcome and embrace everyone in Paris to weave a fabric that connects us as we work for a healthy, sustainable planet.

As the opening of the COP21 approaches later this week, artists, activists and cultural workers of all stripes are wrestling with sounding the right tone of response and resistance to the immediate violence experienced in Paris, Beirut, Baghdad, Ankara, and Yola.

As protests and events are banned, continued acts of daily life can become acts of resistance and hope. Creativity, dispersed or distributed events, and drawing on traditional spiritual or community rituals offer a path forward for effective actions and powerful movement-building in Paris and beyond.

Nadine Bloch is an innovative artist, nonviolent practitioner, political organizer, direct-action trainer, and puppetista, who combines the principles and strategies of nonviolent civil disobedience with creative use of the arts in cultural resistance and public protest. She is a contributor to the books ‘Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution’ (2012, O/R Press) and ‘We Are Many, Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation’ (2012, AK Press).

This article was originally published by Waging NonViolence under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This version includes some updates by The Ecologist.

As a couple years of planning draw to a close, the protests in Paris around the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference, or COP21, are shaping up to be an edgy and diverse treasure chest of mass spectacles and organizing hubs.

They will serve as a poetic contrast to what is widely considered government inaction on the pressing issue of runaway global temperature and the violence embedded in the terrorism of climate chaos.

Now, after the French government outlawed mass protest following the November 13 attacks in Paris, the dedication of activists embracing this new reality as a way to encourage ever more decentralized, creative and committed action is nothing short of inspirational.

An unwavering understanding that the “biggest threat to security, to life in all its forms, is the system that drives climate disaster” is fueling the actions being planned in Paris to shine a light on the state of emergency on the climate front.

Ongoing conversations continue about the shape and tenor of actions during COP21, which will take place from 30th November through 11th December. Many are brainstorming ways around the mass demonstration ban, which forbids political gatherings of more than two people in Paris.

Also numerous activists have been placed under house arrest, and accommodation for activists has been subject to heavy handed police raids and searches, raising concerns over a broader crackdown on civil liberties.

Ghost March and Human Chain to evade protest ban

The Climate Coalition is proposing a ‘Ghost March’ in which all the art and placards and props are placed in the street without the people; Avaaz is collecting shoes to stand in where people have been outlawed; and following the ban of the 29th November march a ‘Human Chain’ protest is to take its place.

Ortganised by 350.org, Attac, Alternatiba, Friends of the Earth France, the International Trade-union Confederation and its members (CGT, CFDT), the FSU and Solidaires, activists will join hands to form a human chain along Avenue Voltaire, past the Bataclan theater where the tragic attacks took place, and down to Place de la Nation.

People will hold signs, placards, and banners that they would have been carried in the banned climate march. The main message of the Human Chain is: we are in a state of climate emergency and we demand a climate of peace and peace for climate. The action is taking place on the sidewalks and will not obstruct traffic. It has not been prohibited by police.

Some organizers who are committed to having the ‘last word‘ on December 12 are moving ahead with a call for a mass civil disobedience action, which is being referred to as D12. Meanwhile, banner painting and stenciling continue across Paris as the situation develops.

Five of the most innovative and captivating schemes of resistance to COP21 that were put in motion are still moving ahead in some form. Telling their stories and plans is salve for the soul, and an antidote to the calls for violent retribution against ISIS. Overwhelmingly, as they move forward they also underline the importance of taking care of each other and ourselves – of an accurate assessment of risk and of avoiding harm.

This won’t be easy in a shifting situation, but it’s essential. This moment also offers opportunities to do more outside of Paris in solidarity with the victims and survivors of all forms of terrorism – to draw the lines between the root causes of climate chaos and injustice everywhere.

Climate Games

The Climate Games have taken a page from the pop culture hit the ‘Hunger Games’, capitalizing on the attractiveness of games and play, but without taking it too seriously. Isa Fremeaux, an organizer with the Climate Games, speaks about the games as a way to take “the creative activist framework to bring forward the joy of the world that we want to propose.”

The first version of the Climate Games were played in 2009 versus a coal plant in Amsterdam. The games involve a mobile-friendly website with an interactive map that allows teams to form anonymously. Teams can add information onto the game field (the map) or retrieve information that would inform their actions.

Then, action reports can be submitted, and teams can nominate themselves for awards. Some awards are just for laughs, but most serve as a genius way to encourage effective actions and reward helpful behavior.

Awards will go to the most innovative tactic, the best supporter of other teams; the best model of courageous behavior, or use of the best Plan B; the best reporting on ‘Team Blue’ (the authorities) or best modeling of solutions. Over 100 teams signed up prior to November 13.

The very premise of the Climate Games that “we are not defending nature – we are nature defending itself” is a masterful re-framing. And publicly claiming the world as a giant direct action playing field for climate justice opens up opportunities for everyone to take part, wherever they are, and to identify the many aspects of ‘the Mesh’ – or the real and pervasive system as represented by fossil fuel corporations, industry lobbyists and shill politicians – as it intersects with their own lives.

As part of the Climate Games, a specific call was put out for participants to join actions surrounding the location of the COP21 on 12th December, focusing on the theme of ‘red lines’. A red line is defined as a minimal necessity for a just and livable planet, and, for this day, specifically a call for sustainable energy transformation, justice for impacted people and the right to food and water.

Blockades are planned that would use the red line theme to highlight solutions, and to shift the focus away from the talking heads in the negotiations to the resisters as part of the sustainable and just future beyond COP21.

D12 is scheduled as the meeting closes and the officials head home to hold the governments participating in COP21 accountable, to speak the truth about any outcome that is less than what is needed, and to capture the last word.

It takes roots to weather the storm

An indigenous contingent will be in Paris as part of the It Takes Roots To Weather the Storm delegation of over 100 frontline leaders from climate-impacted communities across the United States and Canada, including the Arctic. They come united under the slogan: ‘No War, No Warming – Build an Economy for People and Planet’. Indigenous people have a long history of participating in actions on the inside of the COP meetings, as well as engaging civil society on the outside.

Sharon Lungo, who works with Ruckus and the Climate Justice Alliance noted that the delegation was inspired by the D12 call for actions on red line issues. “We realized, that we, the indigenous people are that red line – the most impacted, and last line of defense, for the rest of the world”, she said.

As key stakeholders and frontline communities, they are uniquely situated to represent all aspects of resistance and solution-oriented work as warriors, protectors and keepers, upholding traditional wisdom.

Grounded in this traditional perspective, the delegation identified several visual images to work with along the red line theme. Building on the image of frontline warriors, shields were identified as signifiers of their role as defenders of the earth and its communities.

The indigenous women of Saryakyu, Ecuador, have built canoes that have been shipped to Paris, carrying their dedication to defending water, a sacred element of life, and the message that women are disproportionately impacted by climate change.

It is their plan that the canoes will help to navigate not only the Seine river, but also a climate treaty that will protect and heal the earth for future generations. “I ask that as temperature rises, that we rise”, said Orielle Lake, who signed the Indigenous Women’s Climate Declaration.

Within some tribes, red lines are used in traditional and ceremonial face paint. While honoring tribal protocol, medicinal uses and ceremonies, some will use red face paint, sashes and belts to embody the red lines themselves.

In solidarity with refugees and undocumented indigenous people who are taking the brunt of climate impacts and violence worldwide, this contingent of directly-impacted people will speak out both inside and outside of the COP21 meetings to support other impacted peoples, recognizing that taking action on climate is essential to global stability and peace.

l’Annexe and the Eroles Project

One of the spaces that have blossomed in Paris is the Community Art Hub, which was started by The Eroles Project in conjunction with Jungle House collective and TierrActiva. Coming out of a 9-week Europe-wide artist-activist residency this summer in the Catalan Pyrennes, l’Annexe is serving as both a physical hub for people creating, organizing or performing creative climate interventions throughout the city, as well as a virtual home away from home for activists.

The space will also host a kitchen crew to supply hundreds of meals for activists around the city; and space for workshops, immersive small scale theater pieces and political education – from legal briefings to de-stressing yoga, carbon colonialism to giant puppet workshops.

Mona Rathsman, co-founder of The Eroles Project, emphasized their desire to host and hold space for “a culture of care and reflection, a space for activists to come back to and get nurtured and nourished.”

Along with their daily programs, there will be opportunity for feedback forums, building on the culture of harnessing art critiques to make more effective art works. Physical and emotional support like this is always a welcome and needed piece of mass mobilization platforms; in the current context after the Paris attacks, increased global xenophobia and Islamophobia, it will play a critical role in providing the emotional support and healing that is needed.

l’Annexe artists and activists have scheduled a number of out-of-the box provocative events in response to COP21, with the intention to stimulate more actions. ‘La Cantine des Nations Unies’ is one of their political performance pieces in the first week of December, with specific instructions to participants: Bring a vegetable.

It is billed as an evening to investigate how power and decision-making would play out if global political leaders were asked to cook together. With an ominous warning of potential natural disasters and political mayhem, it is not clear if anyone will get to eat.

Another event, Run for Your Life, focuses on re-imaging activism, exploring the origins of our activism and preparing for post-COP21 resistance. As an initiative of Riksteatern, Sweden’s National Touring Theater, Run for Your Life is a relay run that serves as a manifestation of the race we are in to reverse climate change.

Covering more than 2,500 miles – from the Arctic region across northern Europe to Paris for COP21 – over about 21 days, the run is happening 24/7 and broadcast live as living theater. The website and final video will showcase the collected stories of motivation and action from the thousand participants to encourage other European organizations, institutions and individuals to do their part in stopping climate change.

As Holger Rodiek, one of the runners wrote, “I run for those who cannot outrun a climate catastrophe.”

Art Not Oil

During COP21, a new constellation of groups challenging oil sponsorship of cultural institutions in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, France, Norway, the U.K. and the United States are collaborating to call on the Louvre to dump Total and Eni. These two oil giants sponsor France’s most prestigious art gallery as a way to divert attention from their ongoing and devastating fossil fuel extraction and human rights abuses around the world.

This is the leading edge of a rapidly growing international movement of cultural practitioners that are demanding cultural institutions preserve public interests, and lift the veil on sponsorships from corporations, specifically oil and gas industries, that are acting against public well being.

Beka Economopoulos from the new Natural History Museum talks about recognizing that “politics are downstream of culture, and in order to shift the political climate, we have to enlist those institutions who control culture in our society.”

Museums see more visitors in the United States than the number of people who attend all sporting events combined – a huge audience that is exposed to, or limited by, the information on display in the gallery exhibits. Koch Brothers sponsorship of exhibits on climate insure that their role in the devastation is never mentioned, of course.

This new Natural History Museum works to create space for champions on the inside of these institutions to create change from within, and so expand whose – and what – stories are included and inscribed within mainstream galleries. For instance, if a display is about climate change, it would not just explain carbon molecules, but also the corporate sponsors.

Creatives have long wielded topical culture and art in the struggle to limit the power of the fossil fuel industry, and are now refining ways to fight war in the landscape of cultural vocabulary.

This conversation about public and private interests and ownership of cultural institutions is happening using the very same cultural methods of theater, visual arts, song and dance that are being sponsored. A tongue-in-cheek example is the UK collective of theater professionals known as ‘BP or not BP?‘

This strategy is meeting with success on several fronts, with several museums and cultural institutions coming out in support of divestment and cutting ties to fossil fuel companies in just the last few months. In Paris, a number of events designed to build the cultural divestment community are planned leading up to the Louvre event – and if you go, bring a black umbrella.

The Climate Ribbon

As part of the closing events at the People’s Climate March in September 2014, the Climate Ribbon Tree was set up as a massive art ritual on the streets of New York City. The Climate Ribbon Tree’s leaves consist of ribbons inscribed with messages of climate love and loss from around the world, tapping into deep emotions that climate chaos can conjure for those internalizing its vast implications.

Development of this creative ritualized action came from the strategic awareness that the enormity of the climate crisis often overwhelms people, acting as an obstacle to constructive action, leaving many immobilized in their fear.

This ritual has continued to grow around the world, and a new forest of climate ribbon trees will be installed in several locations in Paris during the COP21. Unfortunately this kind of ritualized grieving and mourning space is even more appropriate in the wake of the recent tragedy in Paris and beyond.

It also holds space for a way to make the connections between the violence of terrorism and climate chaos and to commit to courageous action, together. As Rae Abileah, one of the co-creators of the Ribbon project, wrote,

“We know that unchecked climate catastrophe makes a fertile breeding ground for greater displacement and violence. As agricultural land disappears, more people will be without food. This desperation fuels wars, as it has done in Syria. We stand to lose more than our coastlines and fields.”

This interconnectedness shows up on climate ribbons that have been written by participants. Responding to the question, “What do you love, and hope never to lose, to climate change?” some answered, “The kindness among strangers”, “Safety for my grandchildren”, and “My country, Syria.” The Climate Ribbon Tree will welcome and embrace everyone in Paris to weave a fabric that connects us as we work for a healthy, sustainable planet.

As the opening of the COP21 approaches later this week, artists, activists and cultural workers of all stripes are wrestling with sounding the right tone of response and resistance to the immediate violence experienced in Paris, Beirut, Baghdad, Ankara, and Yola.

As protests and events are banned, continued acts of daily life can become acts of resistance and hope. Creativity, dispersed or distributed events, and drawing on traditional spiritual or community rituals offer a path forward for effective actions and powerful movement-building in Paris and beyond.

Nadine Bloch is an innovative artist, nonviolent practitioner, political organizer, direct-action trainer, and puppetista, who combines the principles and strategies of nonviolent civil disobedience with creative use of the arts in cultural resistance and public protest. She is a contributor to the books ‘Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution’ (2012, O/R Press) and ‘We Are Many, Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation’ (2012, AK Press).

This article was originally published by Waging NonViolence under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This version includes some updates by The Ecologist.

Very few people command as much respect in the highly disputatious world of climate change as Nick Stern – Lord Stern to me and you. His blockbuster Review in 2006 not only established the baseline for all subsequent economic analysis in this field, but also set him off on a decade’s worth of climate diplomacy all around the world.

So a new book from Nick Stern is a bit of a special moment for those of us keen to keep abreast of the key climate debates today – especially in the run-up to the international climate conference in Paris at the end of this year.

And Why Are We Waiting? does not disappoint. It’s an extraordinary book in so many ways – even though I have to own up to not being able to follow much of the more technical economic stuff, and was even a bit bowled over by his mind-bending excursion into the field of moral philosophy!

Still time to avert catastrophe?
But that’s Nick Stern for you. He’s always argued that most economists engaged in the climate debate just don’t get far enough outside their own (often rather narrow) comfort zones; they’re only too happy “dodging the ethics”, as he puts it. He also covers the science (brilliantly), and explains in uncompromising terms why he now sees the risks of accelerating climate change as being so much worse than when he first laid them out back in 2006.

Though this is a very positive book (in that he remains convinced that there is still time to get things sorted, and is hugely positive about the power of “technology plus good economics” to get us through to a world that has averted the threat of catastrophic climate meltdown), he is still prepared to present the risks of “business as usual” with chilling statistical rigour.

The simple truth is that Nick Stern is a wise, enlightened and progressive pragmatist. He knows how the world works. He has deep knowledge about China and India as well as about the European Union and the United States. He spells out the obvious (for instance, that solutions have to be both top-down and bottom-up; that markets alone cannot do the job; that the heavy political lifting has to be both national and international) in ways that may trouble the absolutists who fill so much of this political space. He has an inspiring commitment to social justice and more equitable solutions, but has no illusions about the gap between the kind of political leadership we need and the kind of political leadership we get.

Why Are We Waiting? is not an easy read – in all sorts of ways – so I rather doubt it will get to the top of David Cameron’s or George Osborne’s reading list. But that’s the tragedy of our times. Those who most urgently need (and would most benefit from) this kind of authoritative, impeccably rational thinking are the ones who are least likely to seek it out. But no one’s done more to try and overcome those barriers than Nick Stern.

This article is reprinted from Resurgence & Ecologist magazine, November/December 2015.

Why Are We Waiting? The Logic, Urgency, and Promise of Tackling Climate Change is published by The MIT Press, 2015. ISBN: 9780262029186

Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future. His most recent book, The World We Made: Alex McKay’s Story from 2050, is published by Phaidon. www.forumforthefuture.org

The 2016 Oxford Real Farming Conference will be the best yet. Held in the Oxford Town Hall on 6th & 7th January, this unique gathering of the UK sustainable food and farming movements will offer a practical mix of on-farm advice, showcase new techniques for best practice in agroecological farming, and discuss the global food system, including the economic and trade policies that affect British farming.

Get a flavour of the event from previous years by watching the film, or exploring past conferences.

Venue: Oxford Town Hall, St Aldate’s, Oxford OX1 1BX

Book your tickets for either of both days here. 

The ‘shop till you drop’ event that is Black Friday first hit my consciousness in 2014 in Paraguay’s capital city. I was there to meet some farmers and was baffled by these odd Black Friday posters in shop windows.

So I caught up on what Black Friday stands for. It means buying lots more stuff on one day when the goods look cheaper.

Despite rumours that the name originated in the slave trade it seems that Black Friday as a term, was coined by police despairing at levels of traffic and smog resulting from shopper traffic after thanksgiving. That seems familiar. Thanks Volkswagen!

Now it may make some kend of sense in the US where Black Friday comes straight after Thanksgiving Thursday, a family event rather bigger than Christmas. The way it works is that the Thursday is ‘men’s day’ when red-blooded males kick back, drink beer, eat meat, and watch interminable football (American, not soccer) on TV.

Then Black Friday is all for the women, doing what women do best and enjoy most: shopping! OK, it’s not exactly advanced thinking in terms of gender roles. But at least it reflects some kind of balance.

‘No purchase necessary!’

But finally, times are changing – and not just in terms of gender stereotypes. Many people are uncomfortable with Black Friday: too much, too cheap, too ravaging of the world’s resources and workers’ lives. People buy tat on impulse when on a calmer day they may have been more sensible.

Such concerns are justified. War on Want’s partners in the global south all too often feel the sharp end of ‘cheap’ fast fashion; Producing clothes at such rock bottom prices that make basic factory health and safety – let alone wages you can live on – impossible. Hear their stories here. Workers producing electronic gadgets are exposed to toxic chemicals and inhumane conditions.

One cheering note is that US Black Friday sales were down in 2014 compared to 2013 and public opinion is shifting. Yet this US tradition has spread its ugly limbs far and wide. Seeing it in Paraguay, when I was about to visit rural communities devastated by the expansion of export led agriculture, was a bit of a shocker.

And it’s hardly welcome here in the UK either, where it arrived on the scene just a few years ago. So let’s give a big hand to Buy Nothing Day – which proposes wonderful ways in which not shopping can be fun and creative – as well as frugal. What’s more, you can join in for free: “no purchase necessary!” Here’s a few helpful suggestions from the website for events in your area:

ZOMBI£ $HOPP£R$! – Here come the cheerful dead! Dress up as zoned out zombies, shuffling from shop-to-shop chanting BUY, BUY, BUY – BRANDS, BRANDS, BRANDS! Stalk the high street and those who have been infected with Black Friday!

SHOPPING FREE ZONE – Mark out a public area and fill it with people playing games, listening to music and chilling out on sofas or chairs (inflatable furniture is good). Hand out balloons with Buy Nothing Day written on them to the bemused onlookers.

WHIRL-MART – Organise a group of friends to push empty shopping trolleys around a store in a long and silent conga line without ever actually buying anything.

And it’s catching on – where you might least expect it

Now here’s something pretty amazing. Some UK retails giants are resisting the Black Friday madness. Bicester Village and ASDA have declared their non-participation, for example.

Will this herald the start of a new circular economy and fair economy drive which delivers fair wages, good labour conditions, and quality products which last and which don’t cost the planet? Well, it’s a bit of a dream – but we have to start somewhere! Everyone knows deep down that this ‘retail therapy’ based way of life – shopping as fulfilment – is on the way out. We need something better.

In honour of those people willing to forgo the pleasures of Black Friday in 2015 – the cheap rubbish, the misleading bargains, the huge planetary harm that goes with all that consumption – can I suggest a few alternatives?

‘Mend it Monday’ could be the day you pick one thing to mend instead of replace. If you need help with stuff like this then try Restart. Or how about ‘Work It Off Wednesday’ which could involve more walking upstairs, walking to work or school, or going to the park instead of shops. And on Friday you could do the Buy Nothing option or, for a more flavoursome approach, how about a Flexitarian Friday where you ‘eat food, eat less and mostly plants’?

We could even bring back an ancient British tradition – deeply rooted in Christian culture – of not easting meat on Fridays: not so much as a form of penance but to reduce the enormous environmental impact of industrial meat production, not to mention the cruelty it inflicts on farm animals.

Joyful frugality

We don’t have to be slaves to sales pitches and corporate marketing drives. Take some of the time you saved shopping joining in campaigns for a fair and decent living for all, including better wages and conditions for fashion workers.

Support the fight against so-called free trade deals such as TTIP, TPP and CETA that will just boost corporate control over what we buy and force countries to dismantle regulations that protect the environment, workers rights and food safety. And at this seasonal time when purchases are the norm, using charity catalogues and shops can also mean your thoughtful purchase puts something back.

But above all, we need to imbue our lives with meaning beyond consumerism, and learn to distinguish the things that really do matter, from those that do not. We must stand against the destructive interplay of economic ‘austerity’ and debt-fulled ‘shop till your drop’ consumer-led growthism.

So as well as making Black Friday into Buy Nothing Day, let’s adopt a new life-enhancing ethic of ‘joyful frugality’ – living lightly on the Earth, while taking pleasure in life’s good, simple pleasures, and enjoying the companionship of friends, family and community.

Vicki Hurd is Director of Policy and Campaigns at War on Want.