Its green they say

Green green
Its green they say
On the far side of the hill
     - New Christie Minstrels

When the light turns green
Put your foot on the gasoline
      - Lead belly

Greetings

       So many people seem unhappy with the candidates suggested by the two main parties.  Perhaps it's worth taking a look at an alternative.     I did take a look and I was quite surprised by what I found.   It turns out there are 2 Green Parties!    There is the Green Party of the US, which is the- one you hear about - Jill Steins party,  But there is another , called the Green Party USA. 

      Stein's party proposes a "Green New Deal"  ,  which looks to me like  the "progressive" wing of the Democratic party.   It's kind of warmed over Sanders.  In fact the Green Party of the Us has invited Sanders to run on their ticket.  To oversimplify, their platform is :   Green growth - fairer distribution.    

       There is also another Green Party.  (Green Party USA)  They promote "degrowth".   Here is what they say about the Green New Deal (GND)

"The GND cannot protect the environment because it is based on protecting corporate power just like the Green Revolution, Green 
Capitalism and Green Economy. It relies on two clearly false corporate myths: that infinite growth is possible on a finite planet, and that growth is necessary for everyone to have good lives.

The GND ignores the impossibility of endless growth and the 
horrible consequences of trying to achieve it. At a 2% growth rate, the economy would double at least every 36 years. At a 3% growth rate, a doubling would occur at least every 24 years. In a hundred years, 
production would be 16 times what it is now. In 200 years the economy would be 256 times what it is now. This would flood the world with 
toxins, collapse biodiversity, and cause uncontrolled climate change.

Suggesting that solar and wind power can meet not only all 
household energy needs but 100% of current industrial needs is a fantasy. Suggesting they could do so for an economy that is 256 times as large is silly"

     I heard a good interview with Kevin Anderson on KBOO  .(H/t Ruben)  .   He got asked point blank about whether we could rely on "green growth" to keep us from hitting 2 degrees.   He was pretty direct, essentially saying that the only way to avoid dangerous climate change, was for the rich people to take a pay cut - to stop growing, to de- grow.

       One might wonder -what is the purpose of a Green Party, if it is going to be one more flavor of the infinite growth paradigm.?   Paul Kingsnorth argues that the whole idea of green politics was to step away from that paradigm altogether .

"It was not part of the conventional argument about how to divide up the spoils of industrial progress. Its purpose was to argue that the definition of progress itself was the problem to be solved: that industrial society, as currently constituted, was a threat not only to the individual freedom cherished by parts of the right and the social justice cherished by parts of the left, but also to the global ecosystem - what both sides referred to as the 'natural world', as if somehow humans were 'unnatural' and apart from it -which both were frantically destroying in the name of that progress. In this sense, I said, green politics was more radical - and much older - than the teachings of either Marx or Hayek."

"One of the original aims of green politics was to go beyond the left/right dichotomy - to speak up for the wider world, for the non-human world, for its own sake, because no other ideology would. An accommodation with the left undermines the founding ethos of radical green politics: ecocentrism. The left, though it likes to lay claim to the green mantle, has no interest in ecocentrism. By definition it cannot have, for the point of the left is to struggle for social justice for human beings. The environment will always come a poor second to the achievement of this historical mission."

Both the mainstream parties as well as the "Green" party are caught up in the same perspective.    A truly "green" political movement would have a different philosophy.   

"It is a philosophy which sees humanity as part of the mesh of life, not as a separate entity which can control and direct something called 'nature' with no consequences for itself. It stresses that what is often regarded as political 'radicalism' is in fact a reordering of the same anthropocentric development paradigm, in which the fruits of the destruction of global ecosystems are simply distributed more fairly than before."

       At base, the problem is the anthropocentric view, that "we can have it all",  and deserve to do so, and any problem that creates for the biosphere can be dealt with by more technology.    

      But perhaps we don't need to "have it all"  .  Perhaps we might have more fulfilling lives if we had a bit less.   Perhaps if we paid attention to what we already had, rather than dreaming of the next thing to get or experience.    I recently read an interesting piece on Buddhism and ecology  (h/t   Susan    ), , pointing out that not only does "having it all" cause tremendous harm , it also is fruitless way to have real satisfaction 

"..... 

because of our constant desires, our mind and body cannot find peace. “At some point, we have to say enough is enough,” His Holiness advised, because desires can be limitless, and if we have strong desires, we will be unable to find contentment. Ultimately, we have to take a further step and turn our back on our desires and let go of attachment. This is renunciation"

Which political party reflects this view, I wonder.  It seems that in terms of political options,  our menu is pretty limited.   What we need, in the words of Barry Goldwater,  "A choice , no an echo."

Greetings

 Dave Roberts has good article reviewing the latest Anderson Bowls paper.  The paper takes a look at the real world implementation of climate policies. There representative case is shipping.  Both the shippers and the regulatory agency have high goals fir reducing carbon, but when it comes to actions they fall very short.  Their reduction effort turns out to increase emissions.   Increase by 2200% by 2050.    How can this be?    

  Double speak.     They are "reducing" emissions from where they would have been if they were doing nothing.   Sounds good, but accomplishes nothing.

It's a pretty good indicator of how things will go, if we continue with "voluntary" standards.   Without oversight, and sanctions, greenwash will rule.

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http://grist.org/climate-energy/the-brutal-logic-of-climate-change-international-shipping-edition/

The brutal logic of climate change, international shipping edition

By David Roberts

There is a titanic gulf between what we say ought to be done about climate change and what we are doing. This ineluctable fact has loomed behind national and international policymaking for decades, but it is getting harder and harder to ignore.

Here’s what we say ought to be done: Article 2 of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to which 194 countries are party (including the United States), commits to “stabilization of [greenhouse gas] concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” In 2009, the international community got more specific. The Copenhagen Accord, with whichover 140 countries have engaged (including the United States), representing more than 87 percent of global emissions, says that the countries of the world should “hold the increase in global temperature below 2°C, and take action to meet this objective consistent with science and on the basis of equity.”

What would it mean to hold the increase in global temperature below 2°C? Unfortunately, models do not offer definitive answers to such questions. All they produce are likelihoods. An emissions pathway that yields a high (90 percent-plus) probability of holding temperatures to 2°C is almost certainly beyond our grasp at this point. Achieving even a 50/50 chance at holding to 2°C would require heroic measures — peaking global emissions before 2020 and reducing them rapidly every year thereafter.

To do so “on the basis of equity” means allowing developing nations (Non-Annex 1 countries, in U.N. lingo) a somewhat longer window in which to peak and begin reducing emissions. After all, developed (Annex 1) nations had the luxury of cheap fossil fuels as they developed and are responsible for the bulk of historical emissions.

So let’s take a look at those emission pathways. In the graphic below, the graph on the left shows the pathway that would offer a 60 percent chance of holding temps to 2°C. The one in the middle shows at 50 percent chance. The one on the right shows a 50 percent chance, but with “more equity,” i.e., more time for non-Annex 1 nations to hit the peak. Observe:

Anderson & Bows

Click to embiggen.

This is from the work of climate scientists Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows, which was introduced in a paper called “Beyond ‘dangerous’ climate change: emission scenarios for a new world” [PDF]. I wrote a post about this in late 2011 called “the brutal logic of climate change.”

Needless to say, we are not acting in a fashion that would put us on any of those emission curves. According to International Energy Agency chief economist Fatih Birol, our current trajectory is “perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6°C, which would have devastating consequences for the planet.”

In a more recent paper, Anderson and Bows try to make this gulf between stated intentions and actions more obvious by focusing on a single economic sector: the international shipping industry.

The industry is an interesting test case. Most global industries face a patchwork of national laws and regulations, but the agency that governs international shipping, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), has argued strongly that the industry should be governed by a single regulatory regime, as though it were a sovereign nation of its own. So this is a case where the international community’s intentions could theoretically be translated directly to action, without national governments as intermediaries. The IMO has said that the industry “will make its fair and proportionate contribution” to international mitigation efforts. (Shipping is responsible for about 3 percent of global emissions.)

The trade association for merchant ship operators, the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), has said that the industry’s efforts will “be at least as ambitious” as UNFCCC targets.

So here we have an industry that has pledged in strong terms to do what is necessary to hold global temperature rise to 2°C, and a governing regulatory body that has pledged the same. So what’s actually happening?

The IMO’s two big mitigation efforts are Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) and the Ship Energy Efficiency Management Plan (SEEMP). I won’t bore you with the details of those programs; we’ll skip to the part where Anderson and Bows show us how they stack up against the the reductions the industry would need to make if it were serious about 2°C.

In the graphic below, the graph on the left is three scenarios that represent international shipping doing its “fair and proportionate” share to reduce emissions. The graph on the right shows those scenarios compared to the emissions curves charted by the IMO’s policies:

Anderson & Bows

Click to embiggen.

You don’t have to be a scientist to note that the scenario lines go down and the industry’s lines go up. In fact, note Anderson and Bows, “the shipping industry’s EEDI and SEEMP leave the sector on a trajectory for emissions to be approximately 2200% higher by 2050 than is their fair and proportionate contribution.”

Let that sink in for a moment: 2,200 percent. That’s the size of the gulf between the industry’s stated intentions and the industry’s real-world policies, between what it says it intends to do and what it’s doing. Anderson and Bows call this a “Machiavellian duality,” and it is by no means unique to shipping. It is true of most industries and most countries. We talk a good game about 2°C, but nobody, anywhere, is doing close to what would be necessary to make it real.

To add a kind of surreal twist to all this, the industry talks constantly about the emission “reductions” it plans. How can it do this when, as the graph makes clear, it plans enormous emission increases? What enables this kind of Orwellian doublespeak?

The answer is that the reductions are relative to a baseline projection of growth. They’re lower than they would be otherwise, without policy to reduce emissions. You hear this all the time, from companies, industries, agencies, and countries, about emission “reductions” that are, in fact, merely slightly-less-enormous emission increases. And so we lull ourselves with the thought that we’re doing something, making progress.

To point this out is not to counsel despair. It is merely to state the truth. Incremental policies will not do the job — what’s needed is fundamental changes, policies that halve emissions and then halve them again, over and over, until 2050. (If you’re interested in shipping particularly, Anderson and Bows list some of those step-wise policies at the end of their paper.) What is true for shipping is true for virtually all the world’s industries and countries. They say they want to avoid dangerous climate change. But they are barreling toward it, tweaking their emissions at the margins, hoping that at the end of the day there might be an A for effort. There won’t be.