A Mechanism Rotten at the Core
World Rainforest Movement
Since it was introduced in 2007, the scheme known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) has become a prominent part of forest policy around the world, affecting forest-dependent communities especially in countries possessing tropical forests.
Supply Chains, Logistics and Labour
Nicholas Hildyard
Logistics -- now a $4.7 trillion industry and said to be the world's largest employer -- is reshaping global production, distribution and consumption.
The implications for labour are profound. Automation in combination with just-in-time logistics regimes are subjecting workers to degrading just-in-time labour practices. More work is now contingent piece work; workers are increasingly subjected to electronic monitoring; work is increasingly degraded; and new forms of unpaid labour are proliferating, particularly online.
A Critical Perspective for Community Resistance
Tamra Gilbertson
Twenty years' experience has proved that carbon trading is making climate change worse. Rather than combating the continued use of fossil fuels, it is designed in a way that keeps them coming out of the ground. Faced with this reality, some environmentalists, states and corporations are advocating carbon taxes as an "alternative". But carbon taxes are no better equipped to address the roots of global warming than carbon trading.
Sondeando el territorio
Larry Lohmann con Nicholas Hildyard y Sarah Sexton (traducido por Fernanda Olmedo y Martin Carbonell)
Una creciente crisis climática y el aumento de la incertidumbre sobre el futuro de los combustibles fósiles hace que la pregunta, planteada con frecuencia,¿cuál es la alternativa a los sistemas actuales de la energía? no sea una sorpresa . Y no ha habido escasez de respuestas que compiten por espacio y atención. En la política energética actual, el principal conflicto no es entre los negocios habituales y "La Alternativa", sino entre las diferentes alternativas propuestas. ¿Cómo se deben evaluar estas alternativas, unas frente a las otras? (Spanish translation of The Corner House report Energy Alternatives: Surveying the Territory)
¿Para Quién y Para Qué?
The Corner House
La expresión "seguridad energética" está llena de problemas, tanto como en lo político y en la retórica. Otros conceptos deben encontrarse para discutir sobre la energía y para buscar un futuro que sea democrático y libre de combustibles fósiles. (Spanish translation of The Corner House report Energy Security: For Whom? For What?)
Larry Lohmann and Nicholas Hildyard
This 124-page report aims to understand how energy and finance have been constructed and contested during stormy transformations in industry, livelihood and exploitation over the past two centuries. Its goal is to help effective movements seeking finance for a greener, more democratic, liveable energy future regard both energy and finance as political processes in motion and as continuing social struggles.
Surveying the Territory
Larry Lohmann with Nicholas Hildyard and Sarah Sexton
What with a growing climate crisis and increasing uncertainty over the future of fossil fuels, it can be no surprise that the question “what's the alternative to current energy systems?” is in the air. And there has been no shortage of answers competing for space and attention. In energy policy today, the main conflict is not between business as usual and “The Alternative”, but among the different proposed alternatives themselves. How are these alternatives to be evaluated against each other?
The EU ETS Failure as a Model for the “Green Economy”
Ricardo Coelho
At a time when the "green economy" is being widely trumpted, it is prudent to review the comprehensive failure of one of its first avatars, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, to achieve its own objectives. The EU ETS has not reduced greenhouse gas emissions while consistently giving generous allocations of free permits to industrial polluters. It has allowed offset credits to be used and has created a broad range of questionable financial products.
The Spanish State, Public Funds and the EU ETS
Beatriz Martínez and Tamra Gilbertson
This report from Carbon Trade Watch demonstrates how, in Spain, public funds supporting increased fossil fuel use are interacting synergistically with the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme to worsen global warming. (Also available in Spanish.)
Large-Scale Biomass Subsidies in the UK and the Role of the EU ETS
Joseph Zacune
UK-based power companies are using the myth that biomass is 'carbon neutral' to continue their climate-damaging activities unabated. A British biomass boom is set to benefit polluters and cause widespread environmental destruction through land grabs and deforestation.
A Critical Look at Desertec
Oscar Reyes
Challenges have been repeatedly raised about the economic viability and development benefits of Desertec, a plan to build concentrated solar power plants in the Middle East and North Africa and export the electricity generated to the EU. Promoting exaggerated claims of solar mega-projects and embedding them within a neo-liberal model of energy market liberalisation undermines and discredits efforts to move rapidly away from fossil fuels.
Nicholas Hildyard, Larry Lohmann and Sarah Sexton
"Energy security" is full of pitfalls, both as policy and as rhetoric. Other ways are urgently needed of discussing and organising for a democratic, fossil-free future.
Failing at the Third Attempt
Carbon Trade Watch and Corporate Europe Observatory
Carbon emissions in the European Union are rising, despite the Emissions Trading System, the EU's flagship measure for tackling climate change. The third phase of the scheme, beginning in 2013, is supposed to rectify the “teething problems” that have rewarded major polluters with windfall profits and undermined efforts to reduce pollution and achieve a more equitable and sustainable economy. In practice, it will continue to subsidise polluters and help them avoid taking meaningful action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Costly, Dirty, Money-making Schemes
Herbert Docena, Focus on the Global South
An evaluation of Clean Development Mechanism projects in the Philippines suggests that most projects will further exacerbate climate change, compromise sustainable development, and enrich large conglomerates expanding their extractive and fossil fuel-intensive activities.
