Sea ice melt puts ecosystem in jeopardy

Normally by this time of year the Arctic sea ice summer melt would be over. But it’s still melting at a rate of 100,000 metres per day and by the weekend, middle of next week latest, a larger area than ever before will have thawed. A halt to the melting process is now not expected for several weeks.

Climate change has kicked in with a vengeance, producing dramatic changes that are take only a few days to manifest. Pictures from the NASA earth observatory show “an extreme melt event” on the Greenland ice sheet with some degree of melting across its entire surface.

On average in the summer, about half of the surface melts, but this year has seen a dramatic jump. Satellite data shows an estimated 97% of the ice sheet surface thawed at some point in mid-July.

Researcher Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory first noticed that most of Greenland appeared to have undergone surface melting on July 12. He says: "This was so extraordinary that at first I questioned the result: was this real or was it due to a data error?"

Then other researchers confirmed the findings. It all happened really quickly, with satellite pictures on July 8 showing about 40% of the surface had melted – by July 12, it was 97%. There has been a strong ridge of warm air, a “heat dome”, over Greenland, one of a series since the end of May, each stronger than the one before.

As the ice sheet and sea ice melt, the planet’s air conditioning system is undermined. Ice reflects the sun’s heat back into atmosphere. Life on earth is not possible without this effect. The functioning of the present ecosystem is thereby put in jeopardy.

This summer has seen extreme weather across the globe. America’s eastern seaboard has suffered ferocious heat and storms, and there is a new dustbowl developing in Texas. In the UK, heavy rains and lack of sunshine have brought flooding and damaged crops. The picture is the same everywhere. Another global food crisis looms, with spiralling prices leaving the poorest to starve.

But not one political leader has commented on what’s happening in the Arctic – not Obama, not Cameron, not Hu Jintao, not Putin. They are variously indifferent, in a rush to exploit the changing conditions or simply tied closely to the fortunes of energy corporations.

Obama is locked in a race to the bottom with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, to see who can offer the coal industry the easiest ride. New mining permits are being handed out to Koch Industries and other coal barons, and approvals made for coal-fired power stations with no commitment to carbon capture and storage.

Russia’s Gazprom is cashing in on the Arctic melt, stepping up oil drilling as is Norway. A Chinese icebreaker just sailed from the Bering Straits to northern Europe opening a new, cheap trade route. China, the biggest coal burner, has just one experimental carbon capture project, proceeding at a snail’s pace and with no evidence that storing CO2 in spent oil or coal seams will work.

There is some progress with carbon capture. A project in Canada is extracting food grade CO2 from flue gas using an organic solvent and feeding it to greenhouse grown plants. All that is left is a carbon free vapour which is safely released into the atmosphere. 

The problem is the same as with all new technologies, including new types of tidal energy generation – it is small scale, experimental and not immediately profitable. So governments and corporations won’t invest to speed up progress. And that exposes the main stumbling block in tackling climate change.

Production for profit, regardless of the consequences, is the main driver of climate change. Only production on a not-for-profit, sustainable basis can unleash the potential that exists both to mitigate the now unavoidable impacts of climate change and reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

That requires a democratic revolution to establish a social system where the majority, organised in local national and global assemblies, plan to meet the needs of everyone on the planet whilst conserving and improving our ecosystem.  

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Carbon capture rip-off

The government’s commitment to provide £90 million of public money for experiments in unproven, risky carbon capture technology is just the first instalment on a bill to the taxpayer and energy consumers that could run into billions.

Agreement to build a new generation of coal-fired power stations at Kingsnorth and elsewhere is imminent. They will be up and running probably two or more years before any carbon capture technology is ready, pumping out vast quantities of CO2.

Retro-fitting power stations with carbon capture and storage technology, or constructing them with it from the outset, will increase construction costs by between £1-2 billion per plant – a cost that will be passed on to energy consumers.

Generating power in this way will also use far more coal. A report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that power stations would need to burn 27% more coal to power the carbon capture technology itself. In the meantime, investment in alternative energy has collapsed.

There is no evidence whatsoever that carbon capture actually works. But there are already some test projects out there – in Germany, the US and Saudi Arabia. If the government was really serious about reducing emissions they would wait to see how these experiments worked out – and take decisions based on the science.

In the meantime, they could spend public cash on super-insulating every home in the country to the best possible standard that could be achieved. At least then citizens would get the benefit of lower fuel bills in easier-to-heat homes, in return for the investment of their taxes.

The reality is that the funding for carbon capture has nothing to do with climate change. It is simply being used to justify the decision the government has in reality already taken to go ahead with new coal-fired power stations. And it will also give UK companies a foothold in the growing carbon capture and storage market that is developing across the world.

It is potentially lucrative business for the energy corporations – and as a bonus, they can get public money to enter the market AND increase the price of energy to consumers to cover the higher running costs.

What this underlines is that solutions to climate change cannot be delivered by the profit-driven energy market. They and the government are trying to pull the wool over our eyes and pick our pockets at the same time – excuse the mixed metaphors.

However, transferring public money to fraudulent (remember ENRON?,reckless, profit-driven energy corporations is the only response the government is capable of making to the combined financial/economic/climate crisis.

The vast indebtedness that the government is adding to with this latest corporate scam is going to blow up the public finances – a process that is underway already. The result will be a collapse of public services, a fall in the value of pensions and wages and mass unemployment.

And in the meantime – runaway climate change will continue unabated in any way by these market-based measures.

Who will come to our aid? We have to come to our own aid! If we act quickly to wrest power from the state and the corporations to make these reckless decisions then there is still time to start to mitigate the now unavoidable effects of climate change.


Penny Cole
Environment editor

Energy short-cuts spell danger

Two reports published today highlight the growing and acute dangers of leaving New Labour in charge of Britain’s energy future.

Firstly, a damning report from Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee says the government risks locking Britain into high levels of carbon emissions for decades to come, if it permits new coal-fired power stations to be built before technology to capture and store carbon (CCS) is available.

The committee says there is no guarantee that a plant approved on this basis would actually be willing or able to retrofit CCS even once the technology had been demonstrated on a commercial scale. This would depend on the price of carbon at the time. “Without a deadline for the retrofitting of CCS, the Committee believes that planning permission granted on the condition of CCS readiness is meaningless,” the report says.

It calls on the government to set a date by which emissions from all power stations will have to reach a particular standard or face closure. “By setting such a deadline and making its intentions clear the Government will send a vital signal to the power generation industry about the future of coal and the importance of developing and retrofitting carbon capture and storage.” And they continue: “Coal must be seen as a last resort, and the possibility of CCS technology must not be used as a fig leaf to give unabated coal-fired power stations an appearance of acceptability.”

And in a second report, the government has effectively admitted that the main purpose of its new Planning Bill is to short-circuit and circumvent local opposition to new nuclear power stations. It has set out draft criteria for siting proposed nuclear plants, which will be finalised by the beginning of next year. At that point, developers will be invited to nominate sites that meet the criteria, and “in 2010, a National Policy Statement will be published which would include a list of the sites assessed as strategically suitable for building new power stations”.

The criteria state: “Subject to Parliamentary approval of the Planning Bill, this would in turn guide the work of the Infrastructure Planning Commission in dealing with specific planning applications on those sites. It will be the Infrastructure Planning Commission that would decide on applications from developers. If approval is given, it is expected that construction of new nuclear power stations could begin in 2013-2014, in time for producing energy from 2017-2020.”

For anyone not clear about what this means (including the majority of Labour MPs who caved in at the last minute to enable the Planning Bill to be passed) the legislation will speed up the process of granting permission for new nuclear power stations dramatically. It will prevent the public from effectively opposing them, and by setting up the “independent” Infrastructure Planning Commission, prevent the public from putting pressure on local and national politicians.

All of this makes clear that Britain’s alternative energy future is looking very like its energy past – which has led to a situation where the UK has never once met any target for emissions reductions – and ensuring that it will not do so in the future.

Even though the Stern Report clearly stated that global warming was a result of “market failure”, the government’s only policy for energy is to sustain the profitability of the existing energy market. It has no plans to deal with climate change by investing in energy efficiency, improved public transport, or alternative energy sources. Another case of New Labour isn’t working.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

E.ON calls the tune

Alistair Darling’s failure to keep his pledge to put “sustainability at the heart of his budget” may have disappointed campaign groups like Friends of the Earth, but they shouldn’t really be surprised. Earlier this week, the government’s new Committee on Climate Change met for the first time – and got an object lesson in just how effective they are likely to be.

Trade and energy Minister John Hutton chose that very day to make it clear that the government will approve a coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent without specifying “carbon capture” technology as a condition. The extent to which the government’s whole agenda on climate change is dictated solely by business interests, was highlighted when the trade and energy department caved in to pressure from the global energy giant E.ON over the new power station on the Medway Estuary.

In an exchange of emails (obtained by Greenpeace under Freedom of Information), an official in Hutton’s department suggested that permission might be dependent on a commitment to retro-fit carbon capture technology. E.ON’s Martin Land replied: “E.ON is reluctant to specifically reference carbon capture and storage as a consideration without legislation. The Secretary of State has no right to withhold approval for a conventional plant." Just six minutes later, the official emailed back, saying: “I won’t include it.”

So the energy corporation denied the government even the slightest fig leaf to hide their shame. The reality is that carbon capture is currently a pipedream, but the government hoped that writing it in would make the Kingsnorth decision seem less odious. The plant will be one of the country’s largest emitters of greenhouse gas – around 8m tonnes a year. Seven other similar sized or bigger coal-powered stations are planned, driving the UK target of cutting emissions by 60% by 2050 further and further away.

Which brings us back to Lord Adair Turner (former McKinsey consultant and Director General of the CBI, the employers’ organisation) and the Climate Change committee that he chairs. Their role is to monitor how effective the government is in progressing towards the targets in the Climate Change Bill. Interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, he refused to comment on Hutton’s announcement. “I’m not going to get into giving week-by-week comment on specific decisions. We are there to map the path from 2012 to 2050.”

But that path is pretty clear already, if every single “specific decision” is made on the basis that what’s good for business is the only criteria that counts. Turner can learn more about the likely future influence of his committee from Jonathon Porritt, chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, another body advising the government. He told the Today programme: “The government takes our advice seriously on issues where it is convenient for them to do so. On energy efficiency they say it can’t be made to work because our economy cannot tolerate it.”

John Hutton is the minister who this week told the TUC and Labour Party to stop attacking fat cat City bonuses and millionaire salaries. We need more millionaires, he explained, and Labour must "renew our commitment to wealth creation and enterprise in Britain…." So that would be starting with E.ON then?

Penny Cole

Environment editor