Monthly Archives: November 2015

Obama rejects KXL pipeline – it’s the climate!

President Obama today denied Canadian oil company TransCanada a presidential permit to construct the Keystone XL, a pipeline that would have carried Canadian tarsands oil into the USA.

Obama announced his refusal in his Rose Garden address today, citing the pipeline’s projected contribution to climate change – and deeming it not in the national interest.

“After extensive public outrage and consultation with other cabinet departments, the State Department has decided that the KXL pipeline would not serve the national intersts of this country”, said Obama. “I agree with that decision.”

He explained that the pipeline – which would have run 1,200 miles from the Alberta tarsands vis Texas to Nebraska – “would not make a meaningful long term contribution to our economy.” Instead he urged bipartisan support for a full-scale renewal of the US’s crumbling national infrastructure.

Nor, added Obama, would KXL serve to reduce fuel costs: “The pipeline would not lower gas prices for American consumers. In fact, gas prices have already been falling, steadily.

“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change, and frankly approving this project would have undercut that leadership”, Obama continued.

“Today, we’re continuing to lead by example. Because ultimately, if we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky.”

The move may also be motivated by the forthcoming Presidential election. Both leading Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, have taken strong anti-KXL positions. And both have seized on climate and energy as a key point of differentiation between their Republican adversaries who are overwhelmingly pro-fossil fuel and ‘climate skeptic’.

Joy as seven-year campaign culminates in victory

The Presidential announcement follows seven years of intense public campaigning that has included grassroots opposition in the states to be crossed by pipeline.

“This is an extraordinary moment for grassroots activism and the fight against fossil fuels”, said Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica. “For seven years, people from around the United States campaigned together to transform a previously routine decision to approve a pipeline into a leadership test on climate change.

“With this decision, President Obama has taken leadership in significantly slowing the expansion of the tar sands industry. We have not only succeeded in stopping the Keystone XL pipeline, we’ve awakened a grassroots climate movement.

Ben Schreiber, head of climate & energy at FoE US, said he believed the decision to be inevitable based on climate change alone. “The President set up a climate  test and it was clear the KXL pipeline could not pass it. As soon as he set that test the project was heading for a refusal.”

“It’s no accident that this decision has come just weeks before the Paris climate conference”, he added. “Clearly Obama wants to use this decision to send a message that the US is serious on climate change.”

Only last week, he said, TransCanada had smelled defeat and tried to withdraw its application so it could resubmit it under the next President in the hope of an approval. “But they failed. And now this refusal is final. There is no appeal and no second chance.”

We must keep fossil fuels in the ground!

“Today marks the beginning of a new paradigm”, said Lindsey Allen, Executive Director of the Rainforest Action Network. “The president of the United States affirmed that the only way to stop the worst impacts of climate change is to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

“If Keystone XL had been fully built, it would have carried 800,000 barrels a day of toxic tar sands bitumen from the oil sands fields of Alberta, Canada, across our entire country. President Obama vowed that the pipeline wouldn’t be built if it it added significantly to the problem of climate change.

“The evidence clearly showed that the pipeline would be ‘game over’ for the climate. But for years, insiders predicted that Keystone’s approval was a done deal. But you took action, and proved them wrong.”

350.org Executive Director May Boeve added: “President Obama’s decision to reject Keystone XL because of its impact on the climate is nothing short of historic – and sets an important precedent that should send shockwaves through the fossil fuel industry.

“Just a few years ago, insiders and experts wrote us off and assured the world Keystone XL would be built by the end of 2011. Together, ranchers, tribal nations, and everyday people beat this project back, reminding the world that Big Oil isn’t invincible.

“Everywhere you look, people are shutting down fracking wells, stopping coal export facilities, and challenging new pipelines. If Big Oil thinks that after Keystone XL the protesters are going home, they’re going to be sorely surprised.

“If it’s wrong to build Keystone XL because of its impact on our climate, it’s wrong to build any new fossil fuel infrastructure, period. Our movement simply will not rest until our economy shifts away from the dirty fossil fuels of yesterday to the clean renewables of tomorrow.”

 


 

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

See the full Presidential statement on KXL.

 

UK’s nuclear deal with China is a boon for bankers – and no one else

At first glance, it seems an almost inexplicable paradox.

A right-wing British government has invited companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party – and in one case, the Chinese military – into the heart of the UK’s strategically vital energy infrastructure.

The nuclear deal between Britain and China goes against the advice of the security services, the military and the US government.

So to explain this paradox, we must look carefully at another major deal in the British government’s flirtation with President Xi Jinping: the inter-penetration of the two countries’ financial services.

There would seem to be no possible connection between Chinese companies building and operating nuclear power stations in 2020s Britain and a curious political role created in 1571.

But the fact that the Remembrancer, a representative of the City of London Corporation, is allowed to attend and monitor debates in the House of Commons, says much about Britain’s priorities.

When considering economic and budgetary policy, the Remembrancer is at hand to ensure that our elected representatives remember that, whatever other interests they might serve, the needs of financial services must be paramount.

And the near-invisible hand of the Remembrancer seems recently to have been at work ensuring that Britain’s infrastructure is made accessible to Chinese state-owned companies.

London capital

London is at the heart of the matter. It is the focus for the country’s economic, cultural and political power. Its primacy has been sharpened as Britain’s elites are reproduced through the same private schools and universities, and operate within the same social networks.

The state has emerged with a structural propensity to privilege the interests of London elites over all others.

The problem emerged at the end of the 17th century and continued for the next 260 years via the opportunities for financial and commercial speculation enabled by what was the British Empire. Gradually, the interests of financial services came to dominate economic policy formation.

That would be problematic in any economy, but in Britain it has been doubly so because of the City’s strong preference for global speculation, or ‘casino capitalism’. This has come to supersede investment which supports the renewal of the productive, manufacturing basis of the economy.

Against the common good

Consequently, in the late 19th century, when British manufacturers were first confronted by German and US competitors, they were effectively abandoned.

With their obsessively short-termist orientation, banks and the stock exchanges fought shy of investing in innovation, product renewal and advanced production processes. And no government since has intervened to reconfigure the interests of City of London institutions to match more closely our common good.

Fast forward to November 2015 and we are still living with this legacy. In 2012, estimates of the wealth of Cabinet members suggested that 62% were very wealthy individuals whose family fortunes were largely wrapped up in financial and real estate speculation.

In the current Cabinet, that is likely to be even more the case. And they belong to a Conservative Party that obtains a significant part of its funding from hedge funds and other City institutions.

Whatever one’s political persuasion, it is hard not to conclude that there are material interests in place that encourage government policy towards the expansion of opportunities for financial speculation. This is now so much the case, it seems, that it is allowed to override some of the Conservative Party’s most deeply held ideological positions.

The City wins – Britain loses

Let’s assume that new investment in nuclear power is essential – and that’s a very big assumption indeed. The government must explain why less risky (strategically and geo-politically) alternatives to Chinese involvement, such as investment by Japanese or US companies, were not seriously pursued.

Difficulties in obtaining the investment from British banks and the stock market might have had something to do with it. But ultimately the decision to involve Chinese companies – initially with EDF at Hinkley Point and then on their own at Bradwell and Sizewell – only makes sense if it is seen as part of a quid pro quo for the previously announced financial services deal.

Britain and China’s agreement to explore real-time linkages between the Shanghai and London stock exchanges offers an enticing glimpse of the future for City institutions as they hope that China’s economy will become an historically unprecedented financial services bonanza.

They will get easier access to the Chinese market, while Chinese state-owned banks, such as the China Construction Bank, will join the Bank of China in being able to deal on the London stock exchange.

Should the bonanza materialise, it will offer the potential to seriously boost City profits. For the rest of the country, these deals point to a rather different future.

They put the Chinese Communist Party and military at the heart of strategic infrastructure. They interlink the British and Chinese financial systems at a time when the latter is structurally weak, poorly regulated, and struggling with corruption.

Worryingly, the Chinese financial system is also subject to very high levels of non-performing loans. With the onset of recession in the Chinese economy, that toxic debt risks becoming an ever greater problem. So, roll on the next – China-inspired and British-endorsed – economic collapse?

Another country

Most depressingly, this confirmation of the City’s gilded position provides further endorsement for speculation and detracts from pressure on the City to help tackle economic rejuvenation and wealth inequality.

With this kind of support, the City can safely ignore the continued wasting of the country’s real economy, with its desperate need for investment in its productive base and regional economies.

To understand the reasons for all political-economic decisions, we have to strip away the mystery and ask: “Who wins and who loses?” With the China deal, it seems clear that whoever else loses, the Remembrancer – and the financial interests he represents – look set to be the only real winners.

 


 

Jeffrey Henderson is Professor of International Development, University of Bristol.The Conversation

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

 

Obama rejects KXL pipeline – it’s the climate!

President Obama today denied Canadian oil company TransCanada a presidential permit to construct the Keystone XL, a pipeline that would have carried Canadian tarsands oil into the USA.

Obama announced his refusal in his Rose Garden address today, citing the pipeline’s projected contribution to climate change – and deeming it not in the national interest.

“After extensive public outrage and consultation with other cabinet departments, the State Department has decided that the KXL pipeline would not serve the national intersts of this country”, said Obama. “I agree with that decision.”

He explained that the pipeline – which would have run 1,200 miles from the Alberta tarsands vis Texas to Nebraska – “would not make a meaningful long term contribution to our economy.” Instead he urged bipartisan support for a full-scale renewal of the US’s crumbling national infrastructure.

Nor, added Obama, would KXL serve to reduce fuel costs: “The pipeline would not lower gas prices for American consumers. In fact, gas prices have already been falling, steadily.

“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change, and frankly approving this project would have undercut that leadership”, Obama continued.

“Today, we’re continuing to lead by example. Because ultimately, if we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky.”

The move may also be motivated by the forthcoming Presidential election. Both leading Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, have taken strong anti-KXL positions. And both have seized on climate and energy as a key point of differentiation between their Republican adversaries who are overwhelmingly pro-fossil fuel and ‘climate skeptic’.

Joy as seven-year campaign culminates in victory

The Presidential announcement follows seven years of intense public campaigning that has included grassroots opposition in the states to be crossed by pipeline.

“This is an extraordinary moment for grassroots activism and the fight against fossil fuels”, said Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica. “For seven years, people from around the United States campaigned together to transform a previously routine decision to approve a pipeline into a leadership test on climate change.

“With this decision, President Obama has taken leadership in significantly slowing the expansion of the tar sands industry. We have not only succeeded in stopping the Keystone XL pipeline, we’ve awakened a grassroots climate movement.

Ben Schreiber, head of climate & energy at FoE US, said he believed the decision to be inevitable based on climate change alone. “The President set up a climate  test and it was clear the KXL pipeline could not pass it. As soon as he set that test the project was heading for a refusal.”

“It’s no accident that this decision has come just weeks before the Paris climate conference”, he added. “Clearly Obama wants to use this decision to send a message that the US is serious on climate change.”

Only last week, he said, TransCanada had smelled defeat and tried to withdraw its application so it could resubmit it under the next President in the hope of an approval. “But they failed. And now this refusal is final. There is no appeal and no second chance.”

We must keep fossil fuels in the ground!

“Today marks the beginning of a new paradigm”, said Lindsey Allen, Executive Director of the Rainforest Action Network. “The president of the United States affirmed that the only way to stop the worst impacts of climate change is to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

“If Keystone XL had been fully built, it would have carried 800,000 barrels a day of toxic tar sands bitumen from the oil sands fields of Alberta, Canada, across our entire country. President Obama vowed that the pipeline wouldn’t be built if it it added significantly to the problem of climate change.

“The evidence clearly showed that the pipeline would be ‘game over’ for the climate. But for years, insiders predicted that Keystone’s approval was a done deal. But you took action, and proved them wrong.”

350.org Executive Director May Boeve added: “President Obama’s decision to reject Keystone XL because of its impact on the climate is nothing short of historic – and sets an important precedent that should send shockwaves through the fossil fuel industry.

“Just a few years ago, insiders and experts wrote us off and assured the world Keystone XL would be built by the end of 2011. Together, ranchers, tribal nations, and everyday people beat this project back, reminding the world that Big Oil isn’t invincible.

“Everywhere you look, people are shutting down fracking wells, stopping coal export facilities, and challenging new pipelines. If Big Oil thinks that after Keystone XL the protesters are going home, they’re going to be sorely surprised.

“If it’s wrong to build Keystone XL because of its impact on our climate, it’s wrong to build any new fossil fuel infrastructure, period. Our movement simply will not rest until our economy shifts away from the dirty fossil fuels of yesterday to the clean renewables of tomorrow.”

 


 

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

See the full Presidential statement on KXL.

 

UK’s nuclear deal with China is a boon for bankers – and no one else

At first glance, it seems an almost inexplicable paradox.

A right-wing British government has invited companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party – and in one case, the Chinese military – into the heart of the UK’s strategically vital energy infrastructure.

The nuclear deal between Britain and China goes against the advice of the security services, the military and the US government.

So to explain this paradox, we must look carefully at another major deal in the British government’s flirtation with President Xi Jinping: the inter-penetration of the two countries’ financial services.

There would seem to be no possible connection between Chinese companies building and operating nuclear power stations in 2020s Britain and a curious political role created in 1571.

But the fact that the Remembrancer, a representative of the City of London Corporation, is allowed to attend and monitor debates in the House of Commons, says much about Britain’s priorities.

When considering economic and budgetary policy, the Remembrancer is at hand to ensure that our elected representatives remember that, whatever other interests they might serve, the needs of financial services must be paramount.

And the near-invisible hand of the Remembrancer seems recently to have been at work ensuring that Britain’s infrastructure is made accessible to Chinese state-owned companies.

London capital

London is at the heart of the matter. It is the focus for the country’s economic, cultural and political power. Its primacy has been sharpened as Britain’s elites are reproduced through the same private schools and universities, and operate within the same social networks.

The state has emerged with a structural propensity to privilege the interests of London elites over all others.

The problem emerged at the end of the 17th century and continued for the next 260 years via the opportunities for financial and commercial speculation enabled by what was the British Empire. Gradually, the interests of financial services came to dominate economic policy formation.

That would be problematic in any economy, but in Britain it has been doubly so because of the City’s strong preference for global speculation, or ‘casino capitalism’. This has come to supersede investment which supports the renewal of the productive, manufacturing basis of the economy.

Against the common good

Consequently, in the late 19th century, when British manufacturers were first confronted by German and US competitors, they were effectively abandoned.

With their obsessively short-termist orientation, banks and the stock exchanges fought shy of investing in innovation, product renewal and advanced production processes. And no government since has intervened to reconfigure the interests of City of London institutions to match more closely our common good.

Fast forward to November 2015 and we are still living with this legacy. In 2012, estimates of the wealth of Cabinet members suggested that 62% were very wealthy individuals whose family fortunes were largely wrapped up in financial and real estate speculation.

In the current Cabinet, that is likely to be even more the case. And they belong to a Conservative Party that obtains a significant part of its funding from hedge funds and other City institutions.

Whatever one’s political persuasion, it is hard not to conclude that there are material interests in place that encourage government policy towards the expansion of opportunities for financial speculation. This is now so much the case, it seems, that it is allowed to override some of the Conservative Party’s most deeply held ideological positions.

The City wins – Britain loses

Let’s assume that new investment in nuclear power is essential – and that’s a very big assumption indeed. The government must explain why less risky (strategically and geo-politically) alternatives to Chinese involvement, such as investment by Japanese or US companies, were not seriously pursued.

Difficulties in obtaining the investment from British banks and the stock market might have had something to do with it. But ultimately the decision to involve Chinese companies – initially with EDF at Hinkley Point and then on their own at Bradwell and Sizewell – only makes sense if it is seen as part of a quid pro quo for the previously announced financial services deal.

Britain and China’s agreement to explore real-time linkages between the Shanghai and London stock exchanges offers an enticing glimpse of the future for City institutions as they hope that China’s economy will become an historically unprecedented financial services bonanza.

They will get easier access to the Chinese market, while Chinese state-owned banks, such as the China Construction Bank, will join the Bank of China in being able to deal on the London stock exchange.

Should the bonanza materialise, it will offer the potential to seriously boost City profits. For the rest of the country, these deals point to a rather different future.

They put the Chinese Communist Party and military at the heart of strategic infrastructure. They interlink the British and Chinese financial systems at a time when the latter is structurally weak, poorly regulated, and struggling with corruption.

Worryingly, the Chinese financial system is also subject to very high levels of non-performing loans. With the onset of recession in the Chinese economy, that toxic debt risks becoming an ever greater problem. So, roll on the next – China-inspired and British-endorsed – economic collapse?

Another country

Most depressingly, this confirmation of the City’s gilded position provides further endorsement for speculation and detracts from pressure on the City to help tackle economic rejuvenation and wealth inequality.

With this kind of support, the City can safely ignore the continued wasting of the country’s real economy, with its desperate need for investment in its productive base and regional economies.

To understand the reasons for all political-economic decisions, we have to strip away the mystery and ask: “Who wins and who loses?” With the China deal, it seems clear that whoever else loses, the Remembrancer – and the financial interests he represents – look set to be the only real winners.

 


 

Jeffrey Henderson is Professor of International Development, University of Bristol.The Conversation

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

 

Obama rejects KXL pipeline – it’s the climate!

President Obama today denied Canadian oil company TransCanada a presidential permit to construct the Keystone XL, a pipeline that would have carried Canadian tarsands oil into the USA.

Obama announced his refusal in his Rose Garden address today, citing the pipeline’s projected contribution to climate change – and deeming it not in the national interest.

“After extensive public outrage and consultation with other cabinet departments, the State Department has decided that the KXL pipeline would not serve the national intersts of this country”, said Obama. “I agree with that decision.”

He explained that the pipeline – which would have run 1,200 miles from the Alberta tarsands vis Texas to Nebraska – “would not make a meaningful long term contribution to our economy.” Instead he urged bipartisan support for a full-scale renewal of the US’s crumbling national infrastructure.

Nor, added Obama, would KXL serve to reduce fuel costs: “The pipeline would not lower gas prices for American consumers. In fact, gas prices have already been falling, steadily.

“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change, and frankly approving this project would have undercut that leadership”, Obama continued.

“Today, we’re continuing to lead by example. Because ultimately, if we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky.”

The move may also be motivated by the forthcoming Presidential election. Both leading Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, have taken strong anti-KXL positions. And both have seized on climate and energy as a key point of differentiation between their Republican adversaries who are overwhelmingly pro-fossil fuel and ‘climate skeptic’.

Joy as seven-year campaign culminates in victory

The Presidential announcement follows seven years of intense public campaigning that has included grassroots opposition in the states to be crossed by pipeline.

“This is an extraordinary moment for grassroots activism and the fight against fossil fuels”, said Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica. “For seven years, people from around the United States campaigned together to transform a previously routine decision to approve a pipeline into a leadership test on climate change.

“With this decision, President Obama has taken leadership in significantly slowing the expansion of the tar sands industry. We have not only succeeded in stopping the Keystone XL pipeline, we’ve awakened a grassroots climate movement.

Ben Schreiber, head of climate & energy at FoE US, said he believed the decision to be inevitable based on climate change alone. “The President set up a climate  test and it was clear the KXL pipeline could not pass it. As soon as he set that test the project was heading for a refusal.”

“It’s no accident that this decision has come just weeks before the Paris climate conference”, he added. “Clearly Obama wants to use this decision to send a message that the US is serious on climate change.”

Only last week, he said, TransCanada had smelled defeat and tried to withdraw its application so it could resubmit it under the next President in the hope of an approval. “But they failed. And now this refusal is final. There is no appeal and no second chance.”

We must keep fossil fuels in the ground!

“Today marks the beginning of a new paradigm”, said Lindsey Allen, Executive Director of the Rainforest Action Network. “The president of the United States affirmed that the only way to stop the worst impacts of climate change is to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

“If Keystone XL had been fully built, it would have carried 800,000 barrels a day of toxic tar sands bitumen from the oil sands fields of Alberta, Canada, across our entire country. President Obama vowed that the pipeline wouldn’t be built if it it added significantly to the problem of climate change.

“The evidence clearly showed that the pipeline would be ‘game over’ for the climate. But for years, insiders predicted that Keystone’s approval was a done deal. But you took action, and proved them wrong.”

350.org Executive Director May Boeve added: “President Obama’s decision to reject Keystone XL because of its impact on the climate is nothing short of historic – and sets an important precedent that should send shockwaves through the fossil fuel industry.

“Just a few years ago, insiders and experts wrote us off and assured the world Keystone XL would be built by the end of 2011. Together, ranchers, tribal nations, and everyday people beat this project back, reminding the world that Big Oil isn’t invincible.

“Everywhere you look, people are shutting down fracking wells, stopping coal export facilities, and challenging new pipelines. If Big Oil thinks that after Keystone XL the protesters are going home, they’re going to be sorely surprised.

“If it’s wrong to build Keystone XL because of its impact on our climate, it’s wrong to build any new fossil fuel infrastructure, period. Our movement simply will not rest until our economy shifts away from the dirty fossil fuels of yesterday to the clean renewables of tomorrow.”

 


 

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

See the full Presidential statement on KXL.

 

UK’s nuclear deal with China is a boon for bankers – and no one else

At first glance, it seems an almost inexplicable paradox.

A right-wing British government has invited companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party – and in one case, the Chinese military – into the heart of the UK’s strategically vital energy infrastructure.

The nuclear deal between Britain and China goes against the advice of the security services, the military and the US government.

So to explain this paradox, we must look carefully at another major deal in the British government’s flirtation with President Xi Jinping: the inter-penetration of the two countries’ financial services.

There would seem to be no possible connection between Chinese companies building and operating nuclear power stations in 2020s Britain and a curious political role created in 1571.

But the fact that the Remembrancer, a representative of the City of London Corporation, is allowed to attend and monitor debates in the House of Commons, says much about Britain’s priorities.

When considering economic and budgetary policy, the Remembrancer is at hand to ensure that our elected representatives remember that, whatever other interests they might serve, the needs of financial services must be paramount.

And the near-invisible hand of the Remembrancer seems recently to have been at work ensuring that Britain’s infrastructure is made accessible to Chinese state-owned companies.

London capital

London is at the heart of the matter. It is the focus for the country’s economic, cultural and political power. Its primacy has been sharpened as Britain’s elites are reproduced through the same private schools and universities, and operate within the same social networks.

The state has emerged with a structural propensity to privilege the interests of London elites over all others.

The problem emerged at the end of the 17th century and continued for the next 260 years via the opportunities for financial and commercial speculation enabled by what was the British Empire. Gradually, the interests of financial services came to dominate economic policy formation.

That would be problematic in any economy, but in Britain it has been doubly so because of the City’s strong preference for global speculation, or ‘casino capitalism’. This has come to supersede investment which supports the renewal of the productive, manufacturing basis of the economy.

Against the common good

Consequently, in the late 19th century, when British manufacturers were first confronted by German and US competitors, they were effectively abandoned.

With their obsessively short-termist orientation, banks and the stock exchanges fought shy of investing in innovation, product renewal and advanced production processes. And no government since has intervened to reconfigure the interests of City of London institutions to match more closely our common good.

Fast forward to November 2015 and we are still living with this legacy. In 2012, estimates of the wealth of Cabinet members suggested that 62% were very wealthy individuals whose family fortunes were largely wrapped up in financial and real estate speculation.

In the current Cabinet, that is likely to be even more the case. And they belong to a Conservative Party that obtains a significant part of its funding from hedge funds and other City institutions.

Whatever one’s political persuasion, it is hard not to conclude that there are material interests in place that encourage government policy towards the expansion of opportunities for financial speculation. This is now so much the case, it seems, that it is allowed to override some of the Conservative Party’s most deeply held ideological positions.

The City wins – Britain loses

Let’s assume that new investment in nuclear power is essential – and that’s a very big assumption indeed. The government must explain why less risky (strategically and geo-politically) alternatives to Chinese involvement, such as investment by Japanese or US companies, were not seriously pursued.

Difficulties in obtaining the investment from British banks and the stock market might have had something to do with it. But ultimately the decision to involve Chinese companies – initially with EDF at Hinkley Point and then on their own at Bradwell and Sizewell – only makes sense if it is seen as part of a quid pro quo for the previously announced financial services deal.

Britain and China’s agreement to explore real-time linkages between the Shanghai and London stock exchanges offers an enticing glimpse of the future for City institutions as they hope that China’s economy will become an historically unprecedented financial services bonanza.

They will get easier access to the Chinese market, while Chinese state-owned banks, such as the China Construction Bank, will join the Bank of China in being able to deal on the London stock exchange.

Should the bonanza materialise, it will offer the potential to seriously boost City profits. For the rest of the country, these deals point to a rather different future.

They put the Chinese Communist Party and military at the heart of strategic infrastructure. They interlink the British and Chinese financial systems at a time when the latter is structurally weak, poorly regulated, and struggling with corruption.

Worryingly, the Chinese financial system is also subject to very high levels of non-performing loans. With the onset of recession in the Chinese economy, that toxic debt risks becoming an ever greater problem. So, roll on the next – China-inspired and British-endorsed – economic collapse?

Another country

Most depressingly, this confirmation of the City’s gilded position provides further endorsement for speculation and detracts from pressure on the City to help tackle economic rejuvenation and wealth inequality.

With this kind of support, the City can safely ignore the continued wasting of the country’s real economy, with its desperate need for investment in its productive base and regional economies.

To understand the reasons for all political-economic decisions, we have to strip away the mystery and ask: “Who wins and who loses?” With the China deal, it seems clear that whoever else loses, the Remembrancer – and the financial interests he represents – look set to be the only real winners.

 


 

Jeffrey Henderson is Professor of International Development, University of Bristol.The Conversation

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

 

Obama rejects KXL pipeline – it’s the climate!

President Obama today denied Canadian oil company TransCanada a presidential permit to construct the Keystone XL, a pipeline that would have carried Canadian tarsands oil into the USA.

Obama announced his refusal in his Rose Garden address today, citing the pipeline’s projected contribution to climate change – and deeming it not in the national interest.

“After extensive public outrage and consultation with other cabinet departments, the State Department has decided that the KXL pipeline would not serve the national intersts of this country”, said Obama. “I agree with that decision.”

He explained that the pipeline – which would have run 1,200 miles from the Alberta tarsands vis Texas to Nebraska – “would not make a meaningful long term contribution to our economy.” Instead he urged bipartisan support for a full-scale renewal of the US’s crumbling national infrastructure.

Nor, added Obama, would KXL serve to reduce fuel costs: “The pipeline would not lower gas prices for American consumers. In fact, gas prices have already been falling, steadily.

“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change, and frankly approving this project would have undercut that leadership”, Obama continued.

“Today, we’re continuing to lead by example. Because ultimately, if we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky.”

The move may also be motivated by the forthcoming Presidential election. Both leading Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, have taken strong anti-KXL positions. And both have seized on climate and energy as a key point of differentiation between their Republican adversaries who are overwhelmingly pro-fossil fuel and ‘climate skeptic’.

Joy as seven-year campaign culminates in victory

The Presidential announcement follows seven years of intense public campaigning that has included grassroots opposition in the states to be crossed by pipeline.

“This is an extraordinary moment for grassroots activism and the fight against fossil fuels”, said Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica. “For seven years, people from around the United States campaigned together to transform a previously routine decision to approve a pipeline into a leadership test on climate change.

“With this decision, President Obama has taken leadership in significantly slowing the expansion of the tar sands industry. We have not only succeeded in stopping the Keystone XL pipeline, we’ve awakened a grassroots climate movement.

Ben Schreiber, head of climate & energy at FoE US, said he believed the decision to be inevitable based on climate change alone. “The President set up a climate  test and it was clear the KXL pipeline could not pass it. As soon as he set that test the project was heading for a refusal.”

“It’s no accident that this decision has come just weeks before the Paris climate conference”, he added. “Clearly Obama wants to use this decision to send a message that the US is serious on climate change.”

Only last week, he said, TransCanada had smelled defeat and tried to withdraw its application so it could resubmit it under the next President in the hope of an approval. “But they failed. And now this refusal is final. There is no appeal and no second chance.”

We must keep fossil fuels in the ground!

“Today marks the beginning of a new paradigm”, said Lindsey Allen, Executive Director of the Rainforest Action Network. “The president of the United States affirmed that the only way to stop the worst impacts of climate change is to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

“If Keystone XL had been fully built, it would have carried 800,000 barrels a day of toxic tar sands bitumen from the oil sands fields of Alberta, Canada, across our entire country. President Obama vowed that the pipeline wouldn’t be built if it it added significantly to the problem of climate change.

“The evidence clearly showed that the pipeline would be ‘game over’ for the climate. But for years, insiders predicted that Keystone’s approval was a done deal. But you took action, and proved them wrong.”

350.org Executive Director May Boeve added: “President Obama’s decision to reject Keystone XL because of its impact on the climate is nothing short of historic – and sets an important precedent that should send shockwaves through the fossil fuel industry.

“Just a few years ago, insiders and experts wrote us off and assured the world Keystone XL would be built by the end of 2011. Together, ranchers, tribal nations, and everyday people beat this project back, reminding the world that Big Oil isn’t invincible.

“Everywhere you look, people are shutting down fracking wells, stopping coal export facilities, and challenging new pipelines. If Big Oil thinks that after Keystone XL the protesters are going home, they’re going to be sorely surprised.

“If it’s wrong to build Keystone XL because of its impact on our climate, it’s wrong to build any new fossil fuel infrastructure, period. Our movement simply will not rest until our economy shifts away from the dirty fossil fuels of yesterday to the clean renewables of tomorrow.”

 


 

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

See the full Presidential statement on KXL.

 

UK’s nuclear deal with China is a boon for bankers – and no one else

At first glance, it seems an almost inexplicable paradox.

A right-wing British government has invited companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party – and in one case, the Chinese military – into the heart of the UK’s strategically vital energy infrastructure.

The nuclear deal between Britain and China goes against the advice of the security services, the military and the US government.

So to explain this paradox, we must look carefully at another major deal in the British government’s flirtation with President Xi Jinping: the inter-penetration of the two countries’ financial services.

There would seem to be no possible connection between Chinese companies building and operating nuclear power stations in 2020s Britain and a curious political role created in 1571.

But the fact that the Remembrancer, a representative of the City of London Corporation, is allowed to attend and monitor debates in the House of Commons, says much about Britain’s priorities.

When considering economic and budgetary policy, the Remembrancer is at hand to ensure that our elected representatives remember that, whatever other interests they might serve, the needs of financial services must be paramount.

And the near-invisible hand of the Remembrancer seems recently to have been at work ensuring that Britain’s infrastructure is made accessible to Chinese state-owned companies.

London capital

London is at the heart of the matter. It is the focus for the country’s economic, cultural and political power. Its primacy has been sharpened as Britain’s elites are reproduced through the same private schools and universities, and operate within the same social networks.

The state has emerged with a structural propensity to privilege the interests of London elites over all others.

The problem emerged at the end of the 17th century and continued for the next 260 years via the opportunities for financial and commercial speculation enabled by what was the British Empire. Gradually, the interests of financial services came to dominate economic policy formation.

That would be problematic in any economy, but in Britain it has been doubly so because of the City’s strong preference for global speculation, or ‘casino capitalism’. This has come to supersede investment which supports the renewal of the productive, manufacturing basis of the economy.

Against the common good

Consequently, in the late 19th century, when British manufacturers were first confronted by German and US competitors, they were effectively abandoned.

With their obsessively short-termist orientation, banks and the stock exchanges fought shy of investing in innovation, product renewal and advanced production processes. And no government since has intervened to reconfigure the interests of City of London institutions to match more closely our common good.

Fast forward to November 2015 and we are still living with this legacy. In 2012, estimates of the wealth of Cabinet members suggested that 62% were very wealthy individuals whose family fortunes were largely wrapped up in financial and real estate speculation.

In the current Cabinet, that is likely to be even more the case. And they belong to a Conservative Party that obtains a significant part of its funding from hedge funds and other City institutions.

Whatever one’s political persuasion, it is hard not to conclude that there are material interests in place that encourage government policy towards the expansion of opportunities for financial speculation. This is now so much the case, it seems, that it is allowed to override some of the Conservative Party’s most deeply held ideological positions.

The City wins – Britain loses

Let’s assume that new investment in nuclear power is essential – and that’s a very big assumption indeed. The government must explain why less risky (strategically and geo-politically) alternatives to Chinese involvement, such as investment by Japanese or US companies, were not seriously pursued.

Difficulties in obtaining the investment from British banks and the stock market might have had something to do with it. But ultimately the decision to involve Chinese companies – initially with EDF at Hinkley Point and then on their own at Bradwell and Sizewell – only makes sense if it is seen as part of a quid pro quo for the previously announced financial services deal.

Britain and China’s agreement to explore real-time linkages between the Shanghai and London stock exchanges offers an enticing glimpse of the future for City institutions as they hope that China’s economy will become an historically unprecedented financial services bonanza.

They will get easier access to the Chinese market, while Chinese state-owned banks, such as the China Construction Bank, will join the Bank of China in being able to deal on the London stock exchange.

Should the bonanza materialise, it will offer the potential to seriously boost City profits. For the rest of the country, these deals point to a rather different future.

They put the Chinese Communist Party and military at the heart of strategic infrastructure. They interlink the British and Chinese financial systems at a time when the latter is structurally weak, poorly regulated, and struggling with corruption.

Worryingly, the Chinese financial system is also subject to very high levels of non-performing loans. With the onset of recession in the Chinese economy, that toxic debt risks becoming an ever greater problem. So, roll on the next – China-inspired and British-endorsed – economic collapse?

Another country

Most depressingly, this confirmation of the City’s gilded position provides further endorsement for speculation and detracts from pressure on the City to help tackle economic rejuvenation and wealth inequality.

With this kind of support, the City can safely ignore the continued wasting of the country’s real economy, with its desperate need for investment in its productive base and regional economies.

To understand the reasons for all political-economic decisions, we have to strip away the mystery and ask: “Who wins and who loses?” With the China deal, it seems clear that whoever else loses, the Remembrancer – and the financial interests he represents – look set to be the only real winners.

 


 

Jeffrey Henderson is Professor of International Development, University of Bristol.The Conversation

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

 

Obama rejects KXL pipeline – it’s the climate!

President Obama today denied Canadian oil company TransCanada a presidential permit to construct the Keystone XL, a pipeline that would have carried Canadian tarsands oil into the USA.

Obama announced his refusal in his Rose Garden address today, citing the pipeline’s projected contribution to climate change – and deeming it not in the national interest.

“After extensive public outrage and consultation with other cabinet departments, the State Department has decided that the KXL pipeline would not serve the national intersts of this country”, said Obama. “I agree with that decision.”

He explained that the pipeline – which would have run 1,200 miles from the Alberta tarsands vis Texas to Nebraska – “would not make a meaningful long term contribution to our economy.” Instead he urged bipartisan support for a full-scale renewal of the US’s crumbling national infrastructure.

Nor, added Obama, would KXL serve to reduce fuel costs: “The pipeline would not lower gas prices for American consumers. In fact, gas prices have already been falling, steadily.

“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change, and frankly approving this project would have undercut that leadership”, Obama continued.

“Today, we’re continuing to lead by example. Because ultimately, if we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky.”

The move may also be motivated by the forthcoming Presidential election. Both leading Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, have taken strong anti-KXL positions. And both have seized on climate and energy as a key point of differentiation between their Republican adversaries who are overwhelmingly pro-fossil fuel and ‘climate skeptic’.

Joy as seven-year campaign culminates in victory

The Presidential announcement follows seven years of intense public campaigning that has included grassroots opposition in the states to be crossed by pipeline.

“This is an extraordinary moment for grassroots activism and the fight against fossil fuels”, said Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica. “For seven years, people from around the United States campaigned together to transform a previously routine decision to approve a pipeline into a leadership test on climate change.

“With this decision, President Obama has taken leadership in significantly slowing the expansion of the tar sands industry. We have not only succeeded in stopping the Keystone XL pipeline, we’ve awakened a grassroots climate movement.

Ben Schreiber, head of climate & energy at FoE US, said he believed the decision to be inevitable based on climate change alone. “The President set up a climate  test and it was clear the KXL pipeline could not pass it. As soon as he set that test the project was heading for a refusal.”

“It’s no accident that this decision has come just weeks before the Paris climate conference”, he added. “Clearly Obama wants to use this decision to send a message that the US is serious on climate change.”

Only last week, he said, TransCanada had smelled defeat and tried to withdraw its application so it could resubmit it under the next President in the hope of an approval. “But they failed. And now this refusal is final. There is no appeal and no second chance.”

We must keep fossil fuels in the ground!

“Today marks the beginning of a new paradigm”, said Lindsey Allen, Executive Director of the Rainforest Action Network. “The president of the United States affirmed that the only way to stop the worst impacts of climate change is to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

“If Keystone XL had been fully built, it would have carried 800,000 barrels a day of toxic tar sands bitumen from the oil sands fields of Alberta, Canada, across our entire country. President Obama vowed that the pipeline wouldn’t be built if it it added significantly to the problem of climate change.

“The evidence clearly showed that the pipeline would be ‘game over’ for the climate. But for years, insiders predicted that Keystone’s approval was a done deal. But you took action, and proved them wrong.”

350.org Executive Director May Boeve added: “President Obama’s decision to reject Keystone XL because of its impact on the climate is nothing short of historic – and sets an important precedent that should send shockwaves through the fossil fuel industry.

“Just a few years ago, insiders and experts wrote us off and assured the world Keystone XL would be built by the end of 2011. Together, ranchers, tribal nations, and everyday people beat this project back, reminding the world that Big Oil isn’t invincible.

“Everywhere you look, people are shutting down fracking wells, stopping coal export facilities, and challenging new pipelines. If Big Oil thinks that after Keystone XL the protesters are going home, they’re going to be sorely surprised.

“If it’s wrong to build Keystone XL because of its impact on our climate, it’s wrong to build any new fossil fuel infrastructure, period. Our movement simply will not rest until our economy shifts away from the dirty fossil fuels of yesterday to the clean renewables of tomorrow.”

 


 

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

See the full Presidential statement on KXL.

 

UK’s nuclear deal with China is a boon for bankers – and no one else

At first glance, it seems an almost inexplicable paradox.

A right-wing British government has invited companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party – and in one case, the Chinese military – into the heart of the UK’s strategically vital energy infrastructure.

The nuclear deal between Britain and China goes against the advice of the security services, the military and the US government.

So to explain this paradox, we must look carefully at another major deal in the British government’s flirtation with President Xi Jinping: the inter-penetration of the two countries’ financial services.

There would seem to be no possible connection between Chinese companies building and operating nuclear power stations in 2020s Britain and a curious political role created in 1571.

But the fact that the Remembrancer, a representative of the City of London Corporation, is allowed to attend and monitor debates in the House of Commons, says much about Britain’s priorities.

When considering economic and budgetary policy, the Remembrancer is at hand to ensure that our elected representatives remember that, whatever other interests they might serve, the needs of financial services must be paramount.

And the near-invisible hand of the Remembrancer seems recently to have been at work ensuring that Britain’s infrastructure is made accessible to Chinese state-owned companies.

London capital

London is at the heart of the matter. It is the focus for the country’s economic, cultural and political power. Its primacy has been sharpened as Britain’s elites are reproduced through the same private schools and universities, and operate within the same social networks.

The state has emerged with a structural propensity to privilege the interests of London elites over all others.

The problem emerged at the end of the 17th century and continued for the next 260 years via the opportunities for financial and commercial speculation enabled by what was the British Empire. Gradually, the interests of financial services came to dominate economic policy formation.

That would be problematic in any economy, but in Britain it has been doubly so because of the City’s strong preference for global speculation, or ‘casino capitalism’. This has come to supersede investment which supports the renewal of the productive, manufacturing basis of the economy.

Against the common good

Consequently, in the late 19th century, when British manufacturers were first confronted by German and US competitors, they were effectively abandoned.

With their obsessively short-termist orientation, banks and the stock exchanges fought shy of investing in innovation, product renewal and advanced production processes. And no government since has intervened to reconfigure the interests of City of London institutions to match more closely our common good.

Fast forward to November 2015 and we are still living with this legacy. In 2012, estimates of the wealth of Cabinet members suggested that 62% were very wealthy individuals whose family fortunes were largely wrapped up in financial and real estate speculation.

In the current Cabinet, that is likely to be even more the case. And they belong to a Conservative Party that obtains a significant part of its funding from hedge funds and other City institutions.

Whatever one’s political persuasion, it is hard not to conclude that there are material interests in place that encourage government policy towards the expansion of opportunities for financial speculation. This is now so much the case, it seems, that it is allowed to override some of the Conservative Party’s most deeply held ideological positions.

The City wins – Britain loses

Let’s assume that new investment in nuclear power is essential – and that’s a very big assumption indeed. The government must explain why less risky (strategically and geo-politically) alternatives to Chinese involvement, such as investment by Japanese or US companies, were not seriously pursued.

Difficulties in obtaining the investment from British banks and the stock market might have had something to do with it. But ultimately the decision to involve Chinese companies – initially with EDF at Hinkley Point and then on their own at Bradwell and Sizewell – only makes sense if it is seen as part of a quid pro quo for the previously announced financial services deal.

Britain and China’s agreement to explore real-time linkages between the Shanghai and London stock exchanges offers an enticing glimpse of the future for City institutions as they hope that China’s economy will become an historically unprecedented financial services bonanza.

They will get easier access to the Chinese market, while Chinese state-owned banks, such as the China Construction Bank, will join the Bank of China in being able to deal on the London stock exchange.

Should the bonanza materialise, it will offer the potential to seriously boost City profits. For the rest of the country, these deals point to a rather different future.

They put the Chinese Communist Party and military at the heart of strategic infrastructure. They interlink the British and Chinese financial systems at a time when the latter is structurally weak, poorly regulated, and struggling with corruption.

Worryingly, the Chinese financial system is also subject to very high levels of non-performing loans. With the onset of recession in the Chinese economy, that toxic debt risks becoming an ever greater problem. So, roll on the next – China-inspired and British-endorsed – economic collapse?

Another country

Most depressingly, this confirmation of the City’s gilded position provides further endorsement for speculation and detracts from pressure on the City to help tackle economic rejuvenation and wealth inequality.

With this kind of support, the City can safely ignore the continued wasting of the country’s real economy, with its desperate need for investment in its productive base and regional economies.

To understand the reasons for all political-economic decisions, we have to strip away the mystery and ask: “Who wins and who loses?” With the China deal, it seems clear that whoever else loses, the Remembrancer – and the financial interests he represents – look set to be the only real winners.

 


 

Jeffrey Henderson is Professor of International Development, University of Bristol.The Conversation

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