OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #174, APRIL 15, 2024.

 

OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #174, APRIL 15, 2024.  Compiled by Dick Bennett.

 

Colin Beavan.  No Impact Man.  2009.
Nick Dearden.  Climate-Wrecking Energy Charter Treaty.
For The Nation magazine’s climate coverage, see The Nation.com/climate-update-signup.

 

Colin Beavan.  No Impact Man.  2009.
     I’m still unpacking boxes of books and found and reread a unique and inspiring recounting of one person’s attempt with wife and daughter during one year in NYC to do no harm to the environment and climate: no trash, no carbon dioxide emissions, no toxins!  That’s remarkable enough for recommending the book to you:  No Impact Man by Colin Beavan.  But two inseparable aspects of the book make it an extraordinary forerunner in the struggle to end use of fossil fuels: its early date of publication—2009--based upon his forerunner experiment in 2006, and his awareness of climate change leading up to then that motivated his decision to buy no produce from distant lands, buy nothing new, no products in packaging, use no elevators, no subway, no air conditioning. 

     Sounds impossible, but he was prepared.  He was not a scientist, but he was reading scientific reports.  He summarizes the news about global warming in the 1980s:  “We can’t maintain this way of life, the scientists said, the world can’t sustain it.  The ice caps will melt, the sea levels will rise, there will be droughts—or, in short, the planet will be done for and millions of people will suffer.”  He knew about the Kyoto Treaty. The Kyoto Protocol (December 11, 1997) was an international treaty committing states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.   Beavan writes:  “The countries of the world had negotiated the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change, assigning mandatory targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases to signatory nations.”  He also knew that “the United States, a signatory to the protocol, as well as the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases, refused to ratify it.”  And he knew the rapid population increase (6.5 billion people then) and the ravenous market capitalism of the wealthy countries were major causes.

    Finally, 18 years ago, at the age of 42, while ascending in an elevator and thinking about his “way of life…killing the planet,” and about “companies like Exxon” using “stealth PR tactics to discredit the organizations that try to warn us,” Colin Beavan pulled his personal emergency alarm and decided to “go zero carbon.”

   In 2009 he was still trying.  Borrow my copy or go to UAF Mullins Main Library main stacks, or buy a copy and pass it on.

 

Nick Dearden .  “Corporate power is killing the planet.”  Tribune  (March 25, 2024).  Editor.  mronline.org (3-27-24). 

In the 1950s, a system of corporate courts was created to allow Western businesses to sue the Global South for threatening their profits—and now fossil fuel giants are using it to stop any country from fighting the climate crisis. 
Capitalism, Climate Change, Imperialism, InequalityAmericas, Britain, Europe, Global, Iran, Middle East, United StatesNewswireEnergy Charter Treaty (ECT), Fossil Fuels, Global South, investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS)
However much the British government plays fast and loose with our future by treating climate change as a political football, there is a reality it can’t deny: climate action is necessary. That’s why, against all its better instincts, it announced last month that Britain would exit the most climate-wrecking treaty of all–the Energy Charter Treaty.

The Energy Charter Treaty is the product of a previous era. It was invented in the 1990s to protect Western energy interests in the countries of the former Soviet Union. At its heart is a mechanism called investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS–a kind of corporate court system which allows transnational businesses and investors to sue governments for regulatory changes which damage their bottom line.

Countries have been inserting these ISDS clauses into trade and investment deals for decades now. They were dreamt up by oil barons and financiers back in the 1950s. As countries across the world broke free of imperial ties, these corporate executives worried about how their economic interests could be protected from national liberation governments which were coming to power in the Global South. . . .

More than anything, it’s now clear that the debate on climate change has shifted decisively, to a point where there is at least space to argue for radical economic transformation. Last week’s victory is a definite step forward.

[This complicated but clear essay explains the high-level machinations by corporations to rig the legal system, specifically regarding treaties, in their favor.  It’s upbeat because the corporate grip on the Energy Charter Treaty is now being challenged.  –D]

Nick Dearden is the director of Global Justice Now.   Energy Charter Treaty (ECT)Fossil FuelsGlobal Southinvestor-state dispute settlement (ISDS)

 Summary of preceding two items:  We as individuals can and should change our behavior asap: look at yourself as a leader;  and our neo-liberal corporate economic system of growth and extraction must be changed also quickly: get better leaders.

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