If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property of the capitalists. --Joe Ettor (IWW labor organizer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IASdERt3-m0
Tuesday, December 5, 2023
Sabotage of Efforts to Preserve a Habitable Environment
(NB note - this am, we are featuring two related articles that concern the utter failure to address, mitigate or arrest carbon emissions - and the outrageous and growing influence of ruling class lobbyiests - over environmental policy and priorities. As with everything, it is all about the class struggle and about funneling social wealth to benefit the few at the expense of the many. Our social interest in having a habitable planet is being subverted and eclipsed by other ruling class priorities)
It’s official: COP28 has more fossil fuel lobbyists than ever
Too many fossil fuel lobbyists at this COP. Source: Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesToo many fossil fuel lobbyists at this COP. Source: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
The number of fossil fuel lobbyists at this year’s U.N. climate summit is nearly four times higher than it’s ever been, revealing an extraordinary amount of influence from the biggest climate polluters on Earth.
Specifically, there are 2,456 fossil fuel representatives at this year’s United Nations Climate Change conference in the United Arab Emirates, according to an analysis of summit attendees published today by the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition.
There were only 636 fossil fuel lobbyists at last year’s COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, making the fossil fuel presence at this year’s summit “unprecedented,” the coalition said.
“The sheer number of fossil fuel lobbyists at climate talks that could determine our future is beyond justification,” said Joseph Sikulu, the Pacific managing director of environmental group 350.org, in a statement. “We come here to fight for our survival, and what chance do we have if our voices are suffocated by the influence of Big Polluters?”
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The analysis defines a fossil fuel lobbyist as anyone with ties to a fossil fuel company, fossil fuel foundation, or an organization with fossil fuel interests. The researchers also counted attendees from oil and gas industry trade associations, the majority of which came from the Global North.
Several countries also brought oil and gas companies as part of their official country delegations; for example, the European Union brought employees of BP, Exxon, and Italian energy company ENI, while France brought employees from TotalEnergies and British energy group EDF.
For context, the number of disclosed fossil fuel delegates at COP28 is:
More than any single country delegation, with the exception Brazil (which is expected to host COP30) and the UAE
More than all the delegates from the 10 most climate-vulnerable countries combined, including Somalia, Chad, and Liberia
Seven times larger than the number of official Indigenous representatives
Four and a half times the number of lawmakers in the U.S. Congress
Nearly 14 times the number of representatives to the United Nations
The record number of lobbyists this year will undoubtedly add fuel to the fire from lawmakers and environmental groups who are calling for greater restrictions on oil and gas representatives, who they say have too much power at COP.
A plethora of oily influence
One reason there are more fossil fuel lobbyists this year is because there are more total attendees than ever before, more than 100,000 participants. But there’s another reason their number has nearly quadrupled—previous years underestimated the number of lobbyists, many of whom hid their company affiliations.
But even without that transparency, research shows that a staggering number of people from the industry have shown up to the climate talks. Fossil fuel lobbyists have been given at least 7,200 passes to attend COPs over the last 20 years, according to research published last week by Kick Big Polluters Out.
The nonprofit found that employees of the world’s biggest polluters have observed negotiations at least 945 times, while fossil fuel lobby groups have attended at least 6,581 times. Last year, there were more lobbyists than the total number of delegates from the ten countries most impacted by climate change, including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Mozambique.
“Their influence is very, very insidious,” said Patrick Galey, a senior investigator at Global Witness, who led the COP28 analysis. “And they are not pulling in the same direction as people who want to implement the Paris Agreement.”
How fossil fuel lobbyists influence negotiations—and why
Officially, only countries can negotiate the international climate agreements. But some lobbyists attend as party delegates, which means they are at the table when the world’s leaders are negotiating our climate future. Fossil fuel groups can also observe, and influence, the state actors at the table.
Carbon offset credits allow polluters like oil and gas companies to buy credits to “offset” their emissions—instead of simply emitting less. A growing body of scientific research has found that the unregulated carbon credit market has no environmental value and does nothing to curb climate change.
That’s another reason why fossil fuel lobbyists are showing up in record numbers this year: countries at COP28 will negotiate international trading for carbon offset credits. Fossil fuel companies try and influence these negotiations because, in a perfect world, they wouldn’t have to stop extracting and burning fossil fuels—they could use their enormous profits to buy their way out of the climate goals imposed on them.
That’s the same logic that makes oil giants eager to push technology like carbon capture and storage, which in a perfect world would capture all carbon emissions from fossil fuels. But if oil and gas consumption continues as projected, limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius “would require an entirely inconceivable 32 billion tonnes of carbon captured for utilization or storage by 2050,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, in a statement. The amount of electricity needed to power that carbon capture technology—which isn’t yet built—would be greater than the entire world’s electricity demand today.
These solutions skirt the real problem—fossil fuels. And that’s the real reason there are so many fossil fuel lobbyists at this year’s COP, because they’ve never had more to lose. Experts say that fossil fuel use has to fall by a quarter by 2030, and by more than 75 percent by 2050. Any delay will endanger the path toward a liveable future, according to the world’s foremost scientists.
That path, however, significantly threatens the fossil fuel industry’s profits. So at COP28, “They will put forward any solution to the climate crisis apart from the one that we know will work, which is an equitable and rapid phase out of fossil fuels,” said Galey.
The case for change
This year, the fossil fuel industry isn’t just attending the climate conference—it’s hosting it. Not only is COP28 in a petrostate, but it’s being led by Sultan Al Jaber, the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
“Industry groups always say they need to be in the room because they are the technical experts that are going to implement these policy decisions,” said Galey. “We would say that we're here because of what they've done and we don't trust them to clean up the mess they've made.”
And there’s plenty of evidence that the fossil fuel industry isn’t changing. In 2022, the oil and gas industry only invested an estimated $20 billion in clean energy—or about 2.5 percent of its total capital spending, according to a new report from the IEA.
A separate report found that the same countries at COP28—including the U.S. and UAE—are planning to literally double down on fossil fuel production. Emissions from those fossil fuels will push the planet past a 2°C warming limit. That’s the point at which scientists say the climate becomes hostile to humans and other life.
“The uncomfortable truth that the industry needs to come to terms with is that successful clean energy transitions require much lower demand for oil and gas, which means scaling back oil and gas operations,” said Birol, in a statement released by the IEA before COP28. “There is no way around this."
But with trillions of dollars on the table, the oil and gas industry is not willing to get comfortable with the truth. At an event leading up to the conference, COP28 president Al Jaber said that there is “no science” that says that “the phase out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5°C.” Two weeks ago, Exxon CEO Darren Woods—who is at COP28—said that making Big Oil into “villains” would slow the path to net zero. On Monday, OPEC secretary general Haitham Al Ghais—also at COP28—said the IEA’s report “unjustly vilifies the industry as being behind the climate crisis.”
But the fossil fuel industry is objectively, factually, the main cause of the climate crisis—and the real injustice is inflicted upon developing nations on the front lines. As Emily wrote last week, those nations can’t afford to wait for a perfect climate conference.
Some climate advocates, like Al Gore, have proposed limiting attendance to fossil fuel companies that have a real net zero plan, spend their profits on the energy transition, and stop greenwashing and anti-climate lobbying. A letter signed by members of the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament recommends that any attendee with a conflict of interest should not be allowed to present, or participate in any COP activity.
But others, like Galey, say that the U.N. has to ban fossil fuel lobbyists altogether to make any meaningful progress on climate mitigation.
“Whatever equation you make, fossil fuels can't be part of it. And these guys know that,” said Galey. “They're just trying to keep the party going as long as possible.”
Vietnam Relied on Environmentalists to Secure Billions. Then It Jailed Them.
When Vietnam was awarded a multibillion-dollar deal by a group of nine wealthy nations last year to work on reducing its use of coal, it agreed to regularly consult with nongovernmental organizations.
Instead, the government has arrested several prominent environmentalists from those organizations who shaped policies that helped secure the funding, prompting concerns over sending money to countries that have violated human rights.
As the country prepares to announce how it will spend the money at the United Nations climate talks that begin on Thursday, activists are saying that Vietnamese officials need to be held accountable for what they are calling a harsh crackdown against those who speak out about the country’s environmental woes.
Ngo Thi To Nhien, the director of an energy think tank, was the sixth environmental campaigner to be detained in the past two years.
She had met with officials from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in March to discuss a plan for the climate deal, the Just Energy Transition Partnership, an effort among the United States, Japan and other developed countries to persuade developing economies to abandon coal. The nine nations had announced in December that Vietnam would receive $15.5 billion in grants and loans in exchange for a commitment to renewable energy.
Ms. Nhien, 48, never got the chance to see Vietnam present the plan. She was arrested in September and remains in a detention center on a charge of “appropriating documents of agencies and organizations.”
The other five who were detained were charged with tax evasion, which rights groups say are trumped-up accusations in response to their advocacy. Four were tried in closed hearings that lasted less than a day each, and given jail time, punishments more severe than the norm. While two activists have since been released, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights said in September that the “prosecutions and the arbitrary application of restrictive legislation are having a chilling effect” on environmentalists in Vietnam.
Activists and academics say that Vietnam appears to be emboldened by its growing importance to the West and has taken the opportunity to clamp down, knowing there will be few repercussions. The country has presented itself as an increasingly important geopolitical player, and one of the few Southeast Asian nations that has publicly pushed back against China. President Biden visited Vietnam in September, elevating ties to a new strategic relationship that he said would “be a force for prosperity and security in one of the most consequential regions in the world.”
“We’re dealing with a juggernaut,” said Phil Robertson, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division. “They have run the table on the international community, and they’re continuing to do so.”
He pointed to Vietnam’s invitation to the Group of 7 summit this year, its inclusion on the Human Rights Council and now the funding from the Just Energy Transition Partnership, despite the country’s troubling human rights record.
Since 2016, when Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, was re-elected, the space for civil society has shrunk immensely. The country has the second-highest number of political prisoners in Southeast Asia, with more than 160 people currently detained for exercising their basic rights, according to Human Rights Watch.
The authorities in Vietnam have long persecuted people who are viewed as overt threats to one-party rule. But Mr. Trong’s administration has gone much further, targeting people who were previously given some room to operate.
Vietnam rejects any suggestions that the prosecutions are politically motivated. Pham Thu Hang, a spokeswoman for the Vietnamese foreign ministry, said last month that the environmentalists’ cases were “investigated, prosecuted and tried in accordance with the provisions of Vietnam law.”
All six ran organizations that were outspoken about the country’s environmental problems. That advocacy ultimately put them on a collision course with the Communist Party.
Their detentions are a signal that the government wants the energy transition to be carried out on its own terms and not on the advice of groups they have long deemed suspicious, said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a research organization in Singapore.
On the day Ms. Nhien was detained, Nhan Dan, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, criticized foreign donors who had funded policy research, saying they had directed groups to publish reports with “one-sided, negative content, tarnishing the situation of the country and the people of Vietnam.”
Vietnam, a manufacturing powerhouse that is home to nearly 99.5 million people, is the ninth-largest coal consumer globally. In 2021, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh vowed that the country would phase out coal consumption by 2040.
The Just Energy Transition Partnership was first awarded to South Africa in 2021 as part of an effort by wealthy countries to address longstanding inequities in tackling climate change. Activists now see Vietnam as a litmus test for future agreements. Should other repressive governments be given billions of dollars? Should there be specific requirements for countries that receive funding but have poor human rights records?
Several countries behind the climate deal have expressed concern about the detentions in Vietnam, but rights groups say those nations need to predicate their financial support on the release of the environmentalists or a pledge from the government that there will not be additional arrests. So far, the countries have been unwilling to do so, said Ben Swanton, a director at The 88 Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit that focuses on human rights issues in Vietnam.
In one of the harshest penalties in Vietnam for someone convicted of tax evasion, Dang Dinh Bach, 45, was given a five-year sentence in January 2022. He ran a law and sustainable development policy research center that provided legal aid to communities.
Mr. Bach refused to plead guilty. Tran Phuong Thao, his wife, said that she was not allowed to attend his trial and that he has been assaulted in prison by police officers.
“People like my husband have made great efforts to support the government and give suggestions on energy transition policies,” Ms. Thao said.
The arrest of Ms. Nhien, the think tank director, was particularly unusual because she was not a government critic. She led the Vietnam Initiative for Energy Transition Social Enterprise, the first group in the country to specialize in energy transition.
A former civil servant, Ms. Nhien had worked as a consultant at the World Bank and the Southeast Asia Energy Transition Partnership, a program managed by a U.N. infrastructure agency. She championed policymaking based on scientific evidence and was invited in May to speak to the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam. In June 2020, she organized a workshop on integrating renewable energy sources into the country’s grid, presenting information from the state electricity utility.
That was enough to make her a target. On Sept. 15, four daysafter Mr. Biden left Vietnam, she was detained. The Ministry of Public Security pointed to the workshop as evidence of her “appropriating internal documents.”
Two weeks later, a court in Ho Chi Minh City sentenced Hoang Thi Minh Hong, 51, one of Vietnam’s best-known environmentalists, to three years in prison for tax evasion.
Ms. Hong’s husband, Hoang Vinh Nam, called his wife’s trial a sham and said the tax department did not send anyone to testify against her. When her peers started being arrested two years ago, Ms. Hong called the tax bureau to ask whether she owed anything and was assured that she did not, he said.
In December, Ms. Hong decided to shut down her environmental nonprofit, citing government pressures. She was arrested in May.
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