"No-one, whether within this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice. It is the failure of Government and the defendant [the Director of the Serious Fraud Office] to bear that essential principle in
mind that justifies the intervention of this court."
"It is obvious . . . that the decision to halt the investigation suited the objectives of the executive. Stopping the investigation avoided uncomfortable consequences, both commercial and diplomatic."
A pretty emphatic verdict from the High Court in the battle over the Saudi-BAE corruption case, then. Stopping a Serious Fraud Office inquiry on the grounds of 'national security' was one of the most reprehensible acts of the Blair premiership.
Well done to CAAT and The Corner House who brought the case (and see the Control BAE website for more details).
The stock market reacted with its usual ethical indifference - BAE shares were down 1.3 %, only marginally below the FTSE average for the day's trading. Business-as-usual, in other words. How about, just for once, instead of the government interfering in the legal process to prevent investigations into fraud, it regulates the arms trade instead?
10 April 2008
22 March 2008
Clinton's right-hand man: who exactly is Mark Penn?
If you read enough reports on the race for the Democratic nomination for US president, there's one name that comes back at you again in quote after snide quote: Mark Penn, chief political strategist for Hilary Clinton. Penn's usual stock in trade is to dismiss as irrelevant any Obama gains. Most notably, he has claimed that the smaller states that Obama has won don't count and that caucuses don't count; most recently, he added that the endorsement of Obama by Bill Richardson, the Latino New Mexico governor who's endorsement both Democrat candidates had courted, doesn't count. And the less said about his early campaign memos talking up the 'inevitability' of Hilary's candidature, the better - let's just say they seem a bit premature now.
If there's a consistent analysis underlying these spin attempts, it is the idea that elections are won and lost by small 'c' conservative swing voters... and that any attempt at redrawing the map of US political politics should be shunned. So while Republicans were busily moving the 'centre' of US politics far to the right, the Clintonite Democrats were chasing to keep up with them. Whatever the flaws of Obama's campaign, it is at least an attempt to break with this strategy.
Penn's role goes beyond that of 'chief strategist', however. As CEO of public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, Penn is at the centre of the corporate web that surrounds Clinton's candidature. Burson-Marsteller is the PR agency of choice for governments engaged in human rights violations, and corporations seeking to scupper environmental legislation and action on climate change (see here for some background, albeit a bit dated). The firm is also well versed in anti-labour propaganda, which landed Hilary in some hot water with US unions last year.
If there's a consistent analysis underlying these spin attempts, it is the idea that elections are won and lost by small 'c' conservative swing voters... and that any attempt at redrawing the map of US political politics should be shunned. So while Republicans were busily moving the 'centre' of US politics far to the right, the Clintonite Democrats were chasing to keep up with them. Whatever the flaws of Obama's campaign, it is at least an attempt to break with this strategy.
Penn's role goes beyond that of 'chief strategist', however. As CEO of public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, Penn is at the centre of the corporate web that surrounds Clinton's candidature. Burson-Marsteller is the PR agency of choice for governments engaged in human rights violations, and corporations seeking to scupper environmental legislation and action on climate change (see here for some background, albeit a bit dated). The firm is also well versed in anti-labour propaganda, which landed Hilary in some hot water with US unions last year.
13 March 2008
Unspinning Darling’s climate claims
Alistair Darling claims that auctioning EU pollution permits will encourage investment in renewable energy. But the Treasury backs the opposite view in Europe, while continuing to push nuclear power.
It’s becoming an iron law of budgets that the initial spin gives way to a far less attractive reality. The first Budget since Brown was supposed to have a green streak running right through it. But several of Alistair Darling’s environmental claims fail to stack up.
Carrier bags grabbed the headlines – and there are, indeed, may good reasons to charge for their use or, better still, ban them altogether. But to mention these in the context of climate change strategies looks suspiciously like ‘greenwash’. As the environmentalist George Marshall points out, ‘An average plastic bag produces 31 grammes of Carbon Dioxide, about the same as comes from driving my car 90 metres. That doesn’t get me very far towards the supermarket. If I was in a jetplane it wouldn’t get me to the end of my garden.’
A more serious, though less headline-grabbing, flaw lies in Alistair Darling's claim that the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) can be used to 'encourage investment in low-carbon technology and in energy renewables', aided by the auctioning of allowances for energy generators. This is misleading for several reasons.
Darling claimed that ‘we have helped build the Emissions Trading Scheme to curb the amount of carbon produced by generators and large industrial users.’ What he failed to add is that it didn’t work. In its first phase, the ETS awarded windfall profits to these large-scale polluters, but there is no evidence that carbon trading actually reduced any emissions. In fact, the corporate lobbying around the scheme was so fierce that, in 90 per cent of cases, the ‘caps’ on emissions failed to cap anything, proving far less effective than conventional regulation.
He also claimed that 100 per cent of the permits awarded to energy generators should be auctioned. This reflects the European Commission’s position, but distorts the bigger picture. In other sectors, the EU has proposed that many of these permits to pollute need not be auctioned until 2020, and it provides a huge get-out clause that would potentially allow all of them to be given away free even then.
The idea that this scheme would generate investment in low-carbon technology and renewables is also highly questionable. Indeed, the European Commission has suggested that only 20 per cent of these auction revenues need be directed towards alternative energy investment. An Ecofin meeting of European finance ministers on 12 February (at which Angela Eagle represented the Treasury) balked at even this modest proposal, rejecting any EU-wide target for 'mandatory earmarking' whatsoever.
Where Darling is more accurate is in his assessment that such measures will encourage investment in nuclear energy. In fact, as the World Information Service on Energy (WISE) has shown, the government’s promise of unilateral action to underpin the price of carbon can best be read in relation to its nuclear policy – providing a means to provide indirect subsidies to this industry in a situation where direct subsidies look politically unacceptable.
The larger point is this. If the incentives to act on climate change are focused mainly on price, what happens is that the richest actors in the market are allowed to buy their way out of responsibility, while perverse incentives are created for the nuclear industry or the dirtiest forms of oil exploration (as BP’s recently stated intention to extract oil from Canadian ‘tar sands’ has shown).
Such proposals are far from green.
It’s becoming an iron law of budgets that the initial spin gives way to a far less attractive reality. The first Budget since Brown was supposed to have a green streak running right through it. But several of Alistair Darling’s environmental claims fail to stack up.
Carrier bags grabbed the headlines – and there are, indeed, may good reasons to charge for their use or, better still, ban them altogether. But to mention these in the context of climate change strategies looks suspiciously like ‘greenwash’. As the environmentalist George Marshall points out, ‘An average plastic bag produces 31 grammes of Carbon Dioxide, about the same as comes from driving my car 90 metres. That doesn’t get me very far towards the supermarket. If I was in a jetplane it wouldn’t get me to the end of my garden.’
A more serious, though less headline-grabbing, flaw lies in Alistair Darling's claim that the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) can be used to 'encourage investment in low-carbon technology and in energy renewables', aided by the auctioning of allowances for energy generators. This is misleading for several reasons.
Darling claimed that ‘we have helped build the Emissions Trading Scheme to curb the amount of carbon produced by generators and large industrial users.’ What he failed to add is that it didn’t work. In its first phase, the ETS awarded windfall profits to these large-scale polluters, but there is no evidence that carbon trading actually reduced any emissions. In fact, the corporate lobbying around the scheme was so fierce that, in 90 per cent of cases, the ‘caps’ on emissions failed to cap anything, proving far less effective than conventional regulation.
He also claimed that 100 per cent of the permits awarded to energy generators should be auctioned. This reflects the European Commission’s position, but distorts the bigger picture. In other sectors, the EU has proposed that many of these permits to pollute need not be auctioned until 2020, and it provides a huge get-out clause that would potentially allow all of them to be given away free even then.
The idea that this scheme would generate investment in low-carbon technology and renewables is also highly questionable. Indeed, the European Commission has suggested that only 20 per cent of these auction revenues need be directed towards alternative energy investment. An Ecofin meeting of European finance ministers on 12 February (at which Angela Eagle represented the Treasury) balked at even this modest proposal, rejecting any EU-wide target for 'mandatory earmarking' whatsoever.
Where Darling is more accurate is in his assessment that such measures will encourage investment in nuclear energy. In fact, as the World Information Service on Energy (WISE) has shown, the government’s promise of unilateral action to underpin the price of carbon can best be read in relation to its nuclear policy – providing a means to provide indirect subsidies to this industry in a situation where direct subsidies look politically unacceptable.
The larger point is this. If the incentives to act on climate change are focused mainly on price, what happens is that the richest actors in the market are allowed to buy their way out of responsibility, while perverse incentives are created for the nuclear industry or the dirtiest forms of oil exploration (as BP’s recently stated intention to extract oil from Canadian ‘tar sands’ has shown).
Such proposals are far from green.
14 February 2008
Be My Anti-Valentine
"Happy unimaginative, consumerist-oriented and entirely arbitrary, manipulative and shallow intepretation of romance day."
That warm sentiment, and other great cards like it, can be found here
Of course, if anyone wants to just ignore this and send chocolate, then the Red Pepper office address is on the bottom of the page on our website ;-)
That warm sentiment, and other great cards like it, can be found here
Of course, if anyone wants to just ignore this and send chocolate, then the Red Pepper office address is on the bottom of the page on our website ;-)
11 February 2008
Climate change and dead canaries
Last December, as the UN climate conference was basking in hot sunshine (with frequent gusts of hot air blown from the mouths of government and industry delegates), NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally reviewed data that Arctic sea ice could melt entirely by the summer of 2040 and found that, in fact, this process could happen by the summer of 2012.
"The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming. Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines" said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal.
The reason such predictions can be so wrong is that climate change is not a linear process, but is subject to a whole series of feedback loops and tipping points. A lot of scary evidence for this is presented in a new report from Friends of the Earth Australia, entitled Climate Code Red
"The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming. Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines" said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal.
The reason such predictions can be so wrong is that climate change is not a linear process, but is subject to a whole series of feedback loops and tipping points. A lot of scary evidence for this is presented in a new report from Friends of the Earth Australia, entitled Climate Code Red
Imported goods, exported pollution
Imagine the following scenario: UK business outsources to China or is outflanked by cheap imports. China ships stuff back to the UK. The UK then claims an 'emissions reduction' because the domestic emissions are 'off the books'. Repeat the same effect across the globe and what does this global free trade model amount to, in terms of its impact on climate change? Well, look here: "A new study shows that 20% of the earth's carbon is emitted from production activities in developing nations that are aimed at meeting the consumption needs of developed countries."
EU ETS: the emissions trading handouts continue
Those of you interested in the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (and frankly, with a title like that, how could you not be?) might be interested to learn that the EU's claims that it will start auctioning its 'permits to pollute' are dubious, at best. Ok, if you haven't got the faintest what I'm on about, click here .
Despite the EU's claim that auctioning will become ‘the basic principle for allocation’ under the new ETS after 2012, the European Commission's draft directive sets up so many exceptions to this rule that it is hard to see what happened to the rule at all:
* First, it names the risk of ‘carbon leakage’ – 'ie. relocation of greenhouse gas emitting activities from the EU to third countries and thereby increasing global emissions.' as a result of its climate policy. This is used to justify the fact that most polluting sectors of the economy will continue to receive free permits to pollute; and that in others the ‘transition’ from free permits to auctioned ones is delayed for several years - despite the acknowledged urgency of the climate crisis.
* Second, the terms of this transition from a system of 'free' to 'auctioned' permits are lax. There will still be free allocation of 80% of allowances in 2013, decreasing year on year ‘by equal amounts’ until ‘no free allocation in 2020’. In other words, the majority of permits to pollute will still be given away until the middle of the next decade.
* Third, it is also proposed that a Commission study will identify by 30 June 2010 which sectors are affected by carbon leakage, and potentially allow these energy-intensive industries to receive ‘up to 100% of allowances free of charge’. This will be re-assessed every three years, so polluters who fail in their lobbying first time out can have several more bites.
To summarise what's happening here (in case you've not read the whole EU Draft Directive): the shift from a system of free permits to allowances is delayed, with the potential that it won’t happen at all. Where allocations are given away, windfall profits for the EU’s most polluting companies will continue. Where they are auctioned, windfall profits for the EU can be expected. Only 20% of that money will be ring-fenced for reinvestment in renewables or for contributing to funding for the poorer electricity users and countries… from whom the property rights to this ‘carbon’ were stolen in the first place!
It strikes me that there is a genuine problem that is being addressed here – ie. the EU can set rules on pollution domestically, but if these are not matched elsewhere in the world then factories could fly to those places where there are fewer environmental restrictions. However, (1) threats of this nature tend to be overstated as a lobbying ploy by industry to extract favourable terms from the EU: the real costs of relocation and the infrastructure needed to maintain certain industrial locations are high and may outweigh what could, in practice, only be a short-term economic benefit of relocating to avoid EU caps. A far more important point is (2) that this is a problem of the EU’s own making, since it is aggressively pursuing free trade policies (now rebranded as ‘global Europe’) that encourage a race to the bottom to undermine standards; (3) the EU's caveat to all this - namely, that it must also abide by WTO rules - disavows the EU’s role in making those rules in the first place. If you don’t worship at the alter of free trade, by contrast, this is a non-issue: there are various was of regulating to ensure emissions reductions without having to make concessions to insure against flighty capital.
And finally, in case you were ever stuck on how to rebrand failure as success, try taking some lessons from the EU:
The failed 2005 to 2007 ETS is now referred to as the “first ‘learning-by-doing’” phase. This phase ‘successfully established free trade of emission allowances across the EU, set up the necessary infrastructure… developed into the world’s largest single carbon market…’ etc….. hang on, there’s something missing from this list… successfully established a market, right, but what about actually achieving any emissions reductions? … “However, the environmental outcome of the 1st phase of the EU ETS could have been more significant [you don’t say…] but was limited due to excessive allocation of allowances in some Member States and some sectors, which must mainly be attributed to reliance on projections and a lack of verified emission data.” Ah, I see, nothing to do with excessive corporate lobbying meaning that the caps on this ‘cap and trade’ scheme were set so high that they didn’t actually cap anything…
Despite the EU's claim that auctioning will become ‘the basic principle for allocation’ under the new ETS after 2012, the European Commission's draft directive sets up so many exceptions to this rule that it is hard to see what happened to the rule at all:
* First, it names the risk of ‘carbon leakage’ – 'ie. relocation of greenhouse gas emitting activities from the EU to third countries and thereby increasing global emissions.' as a result of its climate policy. This is used to justify the fact that most polluting sectors of the economy will continue to receive free permits to pollute; and that in others the ‘transition’ from free permits to auctioned ones is delayed for several years - despite the acknowledged urgency of the climate crisis.
* Second, the terms of this transition from a system of 'free' to 'auctioned' permits are lax. There will still be free allocation of 80% of allowances in 2013, decreasing year on year ‘by equal amounts’ until ‘no free allocation in 2020’. In other words, the majority of permits to pollute will still be given away until the middle of the next decade.
* Third, it is also proposed that a Commission study will identify by 30 June 2010 which sectors are affected by carbon leakage, and potentially allow these energy-intensive industries to receive ‘up to 100% of allowances free of charge’. This will be re-assessed every three years, so polluters who fail in their lobbying first time out can have several more bites.
To summarise what's happening here (in case you've not read the whole EU Draft Directive): the shift from a system of free permits to allowances is delayed, with the potential that it won’t happen at all. Where allocations are given away, windfall profits for the EU’s most polluting companies will continue. Where they are auctioned, windfall profits for the EU can be expected. Only 20% of that money will be ring-fenced for reinvestment in renewables or for contributing to funding for the poorer electricity users and countries… from whom the property rights to this ‘carbon’ were stolen in the first place!
It strikes me that there is a genuine problem that is being addressed here – ie. the EU can set rules on pollution domestically, but if these are not matched elsewhere in the world then factories could fly to those places where there are fewer environmental restrictions. However, (1) threats of this nature tend to be overstated as a lobbying ploy by industry to extract favourable terms from the EU: the real costs of relocation and the infrastructure needed to maintain certain industrial locations are high and may outweigh what could, in practice, only be a short-term economic benefit of relocating to avoid EU caps. A far more important point is (2) that this is a problem of the EU’s own making, since it is aggressively pursuing free trade policies (now rebranded as ‘global Europe’) that encourage a race to the bottom to undermine standards; (3) the EU's caveat to all this - namely, that it must also abide by WTO rules - disavows the EU’s role in making those rules in the first place. If you don’t worship at the alter of free trade, by contrast, this is a non-issue: there are various was of regulating to ensure emissions reductions without having to make concessions to insure against flighty capital.
And finally, in case you were ever stuck on how to rebrand failure as success, try taking some lessons from the EU:
The failed 2005 to 2007 ETS is now referred to as the “first ‘learning-by-doing’” phase. This phase ‘successfully established free trade of emission allowances across the EU, set up the necessary infrastructure… developed into the world’s largest single carbon market…’ etc….. hang on, there’s something missing from this list… successfully established a market, right, but what about actually achieving any emissions reductions? … “However, the environmental outcome of the 1st phase of the EU ETS could have been more significant [you don’t say…] but was limited due to excessive allocation of allowances in some Member States and some sectors, which must mainly be attributed to reliance on projections and a lack of verified emission data.” Ah, I see, nothing to do with excessive corporate lobbying meaning that the caps on this ‘cap and trade’ scheme were set so high that they didn’t actually cap anything…
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