Friday 19 August 2016

Reshare of Carbon Briefing's weekly update - grim reading with some excellent links



19th August 2016
This week

Record-breaking
As competition heats up in the final few days of the Rio Olympics, a record of a different type fell this week as NASA scientists confirmed July 2016 had been the hottest month in recorded history.
The latest data show July topped the chart with temperatures 0.84C warmer than the 1950-1980 global average. With the last vestiges of a strong El NiƱo now long gone, July 2016 beat the previous record set jointly in 2011 and 2015 by a full 0.18C.
Back in Rio's Olympic parks, pools, courts, arenas and stadiums, temperatures several degrees above normal for this time of year made for some uncomfortable conditions on the ground. The searing heat came as research warned rising temperatures could mean that by 2085, only eight northern hemisphere cities outside of Western Europe will be fit for hosting the Summer Games.
Pushing limits
As the Olympic medal table swells, there's one record that many are keen for the world not to break: global temperature rising 1.5C above preindustrial levels.
With the world already past the 1C mark, avoiding the 1.5C limit altogether looks increasingly unlikely, some scientists are warning. Staying close to 1.5C in the long run now depends on the extent to which various “negative emissions” technologies can be used to suck carbon dioxide out of the air.
The question of how this could be done got a fair bit of attention this week, as scientists gathered in Geneva to flesh out the details of a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on limiting warming to 1.5C, a goal set out in the Paris Agreement last December.
In a perhaps uncharacteristically strongly worded opening gambit from the IPCC chair, Dr Hoesung Leetold the scientist authors that they bore a "great responsibility" in making sure the report clearly spelled out the practical steps needed to meet the 1.5C goal. Carbon Brief looked at how "feasibility" looks set to feature as a priority for the coming report, with Lee telling the conference:
“One notion that runs through all this, is feasibility. How feasible is it to limit warming to 1.5C? How feasible is it to develop the technologies that will get us there?…We must analyse policy measures in terms of feasibility."
The consequences of rising temperatures came into sharp focus this week, as scientists warned that climate change is likely to bring more of the sort of extreme rainfall which has put large parts of Louisiana underwater. The disaster, now the worst to hit the US since Superstorm Sandy in 2012, has displaced thousands of people and, so far, notched up an estimated $30m in damages.

Sunday 26 June 2016

Challenges to and for democracy - Should Parliament reject Article 50?



On the surface , the argument "Remain should shut up and let democracy take it's course" appears plausible, but in truth, this is like looking at the surface of
the sea and deciding water is made of sparkles.

Is it "democratic" to allow 37% of the electorate to dictate life changing constitutional changes to the country as a whole? Factor in the interests of under 18 year olds, who have no vote, but everything to lose, and around 25% of the country voted to leave. It's hardly a majority.

Those who argue that it would be morally wrong to reject the outcome of the referendum; that the voice of the "majority" must be respected and that "general elections are won on these kinds of numbers". miss an important point.

In an election for government we elect representatives to rule on our behalf. They form a parliament to debate and discuss changes to the laws of our land. These discussions are informed, modified and pass through the scrutiny of two houses. Through this process for the most part, evidence is considered, a degree of consensus emerges and flaws in the initial proposals addressed. The referendum was the polar opposite.

It was not called because Cameron genuinely believed EU membership was a real issue. This was a move of breathtaking irresponsibility from a sitting Prime Minister putting the interests of his party before the interests of the country. It was a crude political gambit to counter the electoral threat of UKIP. The result is a monumental clusterfuck: a vote on a hideous act of political misjudgement based on a campaign of monumental untruth.

Is it undemocratic to suggest that a deeply flawed process where the vote was informed by a leave campaign that stands accused of "Lies on an industrial scale"? 

The leave campaign have already backed away from two key claims within a day of winning the referendum, £350 million a week going to the NHS and "leaving will control immigration". Immigration in particular was a decisive issue for millions voting for Brexit. Any contract sold on such misinformation would have legal grounds for challenge.

Is it moral to challenge the vote?


Is it "moral"to allow a little over a quarter of the country to impose changes on the rest of the country that are already having serious impacts on the lives of millions? 

I don't believe it is. A change of this nature needs to garner the support of at least half the population - and any sensible referendum on an issue on this magnitude would have built in that kind of threshold.

There's a further important element to the moral legitimacy of the "leave victory", the "generational divide".

The leave vote was won by the elderly. It could be argued the young didn't turn out to vote and missed their chances, but if we are looking at the morality of revisiting the referendum, is it moral that the vote of the demographic with the least long term interest in the outcome of the vote to dictate the fate of those with the most? It's easy to say - "they had their chance", but the recent changes voter registration left millions of younger voters disenfranchised. 

Are leavers "bad losers"


The leave campaign may screaming "bad losers", Farage is quoted as saying "it's not best out of three", but the leave campaign made it quite clear that had the result been reversed it would have been challenged.

Boris Johnson's support for leave was based on a "no vote" creating leverage for further negotiation and Farage called "a small defeat for the leave camp unfinished business" predicting a second referendum. It even seems the petition for a second referendum was started by a Brexit supporter, who's none too happy about the 3 million plus remain campaigners asking for a re-run on their behalf. It's not being a "bad loser" to challenge a flawed process that is inflicting very direct personal harm - it's asking leave to appeal - and legally it's quite legitimate to do so.

The referendum has no legal power


Cameron didn't say he would honour the will of the majority - or even the winners of the vote on the day - which is nothing like a majority.

He was clever in his choice of words. He said: "in the event of a leave vote "the public could reasonably expect article 50 to be set in motion immediately". 

"They may expect " is subtly different to saying "we will". You may argue "legal nitpicking", but it's not. 

This referendum was effectively a super scale opinion poll. It was never binding on Parliament and parliament needs to sit in judgement on the misselling of the Brexit campaign - just as a court would rule on a missold contract. 

We can't undo a car crash - but we can re-run a simulation. We are already seeing Brexit will be the predicted disaster, but we haven't left the EU yet. It's Parliament that takes the decision to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, the act setting the leave process in motion. MP David Lemmy urges Parliament to reject the referendum result and the to vote down a motion to implement the leave negotiations

Leavers will cry foul, compromising remainers will say " there may be violence on the streets. 

True enough, there may, but brexit will blight the lives of millions, destabilise Europe, and trash our economy, possibly for decades. The disaffected leave campaigners have every reason to be disaffected - but the problems of unemployment, housing, shortfalls in health and education aren't the fault of the EU. Their issues are the end product of a largely unheeded 35 year Thatcherite political revolution which has seen the concessions won through working class struggle marginalised or eliminated. 

My hope is that parliament will reject Article 50 and that we can have a genuine democratic debate about the real reasons for the marginalisation of vast tracts of the country - and that the real culprits can be held accountable. Yes, immigration should be part of that debate, but lets be sure the debate is about the mismanagement of it's impacts, not about xenophobic racist prejudice. If at the end of that process Europe is still seen as the culprit I'll accept the outcome of a second referendum.
For now, Parliament needs to account for the serious democratic deficiencies inherent in the first referendum. It is not democratic to allow the opinion of little more than a quarter of the UK to dictate the fate of the rest of us and it is not democratic to plunge headlong into disaster on the strength of the slenderest of electoral victories. It has to stop this lemming's leap into the unknown and allow a period of reflection. It's the only way out of this disaster.



Saturday 25 June 2016

On behalf of the 6 million...

Like 30 million other people in the UK, I woke up on Friday horrified by the outcome of the Referendum.

But for me, and 6 million Europeans living in the UK and Britons living in Europe, this this goes far beyond the generalised horror. We are already feeling it's impacts. This result could turn our lives on their heads.

This isn't a theoretical problem. Hundreds of thousands of pensioners will find their next euro payment in Spain or France will be worth 15 or 20% less than the one they received last month.

It has already impacted on the emotional security and well being of Europeans working in the UK who feel unwanted and unvalued. The ones I know about here, the midwives, nurses and doctors who were in tears on Friday morning, people who will still save the lives or deliver the babies of "leave" voters - but may well not stick around for much longer.  (Ironic that one of the charges against immigrants is the pressure they put on health services, I wonder how much more pressure and exodus of EU health professionals will create?)

The same applies to the Brits I know living in Europe. There's no guarantee that reciprocal arrangements for health care will continue, or even an automatic right to remain. As for people like me, someone who's never been able to afford a house in the UK but has manged to find a ruin in France and rebuild it with my sons over many years, but hasn't yet legally switched to France, I could well find myself homeless. And there are probably many thousands in a similar situation.

To say I'm sick with worry is an understatement and I'm sure I'm far from alone. The gnawing anxiety is just as strong today as it was yesterday - and I doubt it will go away. The prospect of seeing everything planned for the future disappear before your eyes tends to be stressful. Knowing that it's happening because of an almost unimaginably crass referendum won by the tiniest of margins adds several layers of rage and wild fury to the equation.

Poor sports...?


"Ah!," outers will say,  "you are just a sore loser."

Well I'm certainly sore, but consider this: had the result been the other way round, you would have just lost a referendum - nothing more.

There's a lot to loose


At worse we face losing our homes, our jobs, being forced to move out of the country and the life we've built over many years, and serious direct economic harm. At the very least we face years of stress and anxiety while our fate is negotiated by the likes of Farage and Johnson with a furious Europe. Lets be clear, what I'm sore about is the damage it's doing to all of us and especially the damage to me personally. Knowing most of you had no real understanding of what you were doing just adds extra spice to my rage.

My last sentence could be seen as "typical remainer arrogance" towards leavers, but it's not. Watching a large group of people who've been crapped on for decades being duped into voting for something that almost entirely in the interests of the people doing the crapping is not easy. Knowing the crappers have already backed away from the 3 central promises that drew much of their support, £350 million a week extra for the NHS, stopping immigration and an immediate application to leave the EU, just shows what bare faced lies the remain campaign have told.

The main political players in the leave campaign are "extreme right". I am quite sure their prime motivation for leaving is to pave the way for policies in UK heavily influenced by US style libertarian capitalism - the kind of thing Donald Trump says out loud in the States - he's not quite the isolated nut job freak show we think he is.

Look for the Money...


The US right has long complained that Europe is "too liberal", code for: "we want all cash flows in public services as investment vehicles for the vast amount of capital we've stolen from the world at large". Strip the UK of EU rules that uphold the European liberal democratic consensus and see how much worse things will get for working class outers, and all the rest of us too.

Almost all the ills the working classes are experiencing spring from Thatcher, and Cameron's extreme right wing ideology. It's the agenda of the super rich. I'm not for a second denying the fury and resentment is unjustified but it's been misdirected. It's not the EU's fault there are millions of immigrants from the Indian sub- continent, and lets be honest, it's brown muslim immigrants who inspire working class ire more than anyone else. It's not the EU's fault that we have failed to build sufficient housing for 30 years and deliberately trashed existing social housing stock. It's not the EU's fault that their jobs have been exported to pillage slave labour and third world eco-systems  - that's global capitalism. Deflecting the blame for the consequences of these policies on to the EU is well executed distraction...

...and it is sheer genius to to use the same trick to shoe horn in a far right wing Tory administration led by Johnson. Working class people have been duped - again.

The narrow leave "victory" in the referendum is being portrayed as a "working class revolt against the establishment" but it's no any such thing. This is a right wing coup - the window the working classes had on the issues has been owned by the right for 30 years and the right wing media have successfully used real issues to power brexit, enable an unltra right wing government and possibly precipitate the break up of the EU.

This is a moment when the left need to understand that the referendum was a battle in a war - the war isn't over - Farage himself said that if they lost 48/52 he would fight on.  We have to be prepared to fight Brexit with every fibre of our being until the bitter end. So no talk of healing wounds, rebuilding friendship or "accepting democracy" - democracy is about more than votes cast - there's still plenty to play for









Wednesday 22 June 2016

A vote for Brexit is a vote for Predatory Capitalism



This is a blog asking left wing Brexiters to reconsider voting to leave the EU. I understand why some of us we believe we should, but I fear leaving the EU will prove to be the worst error the UK has made in modern history.

How wrong can we be?

The Independent reported a poll on June 10th which suggested the British  public had "almost everything wrong about the EU".

Here's a little example of just how wrong we get it:

"In a survey of 1,000 people, weighted to represent the nation’s demographic profile in terms of age, gender, ethnicity and other factors, respondents claimed that, on average, 15 per cent of the UK population are EU immigrants. That would be 10.5m people. The correct figure is 3.5m. Those who intend to vote Leave in the referendum put the figure at 20 per cent. ‘Remainers’ put the figure at 10 per cent."

It's worth reading the whole article just to get an idea of the way in which we are going to make one of the most important decisions of out lives on the basis of utter misunderstanding.

In the public eye the Brexit case seems to revolve around two issues, economics and immigration.

The economic case is a non-starter - it's clear that we will be worse off outside Europe than in. Even the Brexit campaign have virtually conceded this, admitting "there will be short term effects". Exactly how short term they might be is unclear, but any path that delivers a deep economic shock to a country that's not fully recovered from the worst recession in history is more than risky - it's profoundly stupid.

The truly dark and fearful aspect of Brexit's campaign, immigration, is another non-starter.

Leaving aside Farage's shocking xenophobic rantings, nauseating even to high profile supporters of the leave campaign, leaving the EU will not stop immigration.

There are more non-EU immigrants arriving each year in Britain than EU citizens, and most arrive to fill genuine skills shortages. One small example, 28 percent of NHS doctors are foreign. In an ageing  country we need the youth and the skills immigrants bring with them.

There's no doubt that in some places rapid growth of immigrant communities create issues, but they are not issued created by the EU membership.

Austerity, long term failure to invest in housing, education and health care, a fear of political incorrectness creating taboo areas of public debate: all have a role to play in both the genuine and perceived problems immigration bring. Quitting the EU to solve these issues is a bit like closing down the entire rail network because of a broken down train. The train will still be stuck on the tracks, passengers trapped in the middle of nowhere, and with no trains the roads will become unusable.

It's not all good

It's always easier to spot what's wrong with big complex organisations than to recognise the good they bring. The NHS doesn't make the headlines for "hundreds of thousands of people safely and efficiently treated every day for free", but one failing hospital will run and run.

Lets be clear, like any big institution, the EU has lots wrong with it - but is it so wrong we should leave? George Monbiot blogs:

"The European Union is a festering cesspool of undue influence and opaque lobbying."

but, he goes on to say:

"By comparison to the British system, however, this noxious sewer is a crystal spring. Every stream of corporate effluent with which the EU poisons political life has a more malodorous counterpart in the United Kingdom...

...Britain has become a powerbase for a legalised financial mafia, which strips the assets of healthy companies, turns the nation’s housing into a roulette table, launders money for drug cartels and terrorists, then stashes its gains beyond the reach of police and tax inspectors."


but there are worse things in....

There's a clue about the true nature of the leave campaign in George's blog. Britain really has become "a powerbase for a legalised financial mafia".

It's the end product of a 35 year old neo-liberal capitalist political revolution which has seen many of the concessions won by 20th century working class struggle marginalised or eliminated. The people behind the leave campaign, Johnson, Gove IDS and their shadowy financial backers want to see this revolution reach it's endgame. "Charged for" health services, education an elite privilege, scrapping employment protection and the "tiresome regulation" that protect our health at work and our environment. 

Make no mistake, these guys don't give a shit about the fate of the people they are seducing into a leave vote. Their motivation is to escape the "post-WW2 European settlement", a social-democratic world view that's been central to the "British way of life" since the 1940's.

In his article "Brexit is a fake revolt – working-class culture is being hijacked to help the elite", Paul Mason writes brilliantly about the way the UK left is being duped.

His opening two paragraphs sum up the essential point - the elite don't lead revolts - they head for the hills in terror.

"I love fake revolts of the underclass: I’m a veteran of them. At secondary school, we had a revolt in favour of the right to smoke. The football violence I witnessed in the 1970s and 80s felt like the social order turned on its head. As for the mass outpouring of solidarity with the late Princess Diana, and by implication against the entire cruel monarchic elite, in the end I chucked my bunch of flowers on the pile with the rest.

The problem is, I also know what a real revolt looks like. The miners strike; the Arab spring; the barricade fighting around Gezi Park in Istanbul in 2013. So, to people getting ready for the mother of all revolts on Thursday, I want to point out the crucial difference between a real revolt and a fake one. The elite does not usually lead the real ones. In a real revolt, the rich and powerful usually head for the hills, terrified. Nor are the Sun and the Daily Mail usually to be found egging on a real insurrection."

He goes on to say:

In the Brexit referendum, we’ve seen what happens when working-class culture gets hijacked – and when the party that is supposed to be defending working people just cannot find the language or the offer to separate a fake revolt from a real one. In many working-class communities, people are getting ready to vote leave not just as a way of telling the neoliberal elite to get stuffed. They also want to discomfort the metropolitan, liberal, university-educated salariat for good measure. For many people involved, it feels like their first ever effective political choice.

I want to have one last go at convincing you that leaving now, under these conditions, would be a disaster...

... a Brexit led by Ukip and the Tory right will not make any of these things better(immigration, low wages etc): it will make them worse. Take a look at the people leading the Brexit movement. Nigel Farage, Neil Hamilton, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove. They have fought all their lives for one objective: to give more power to employers and less to workers. Many leading Brexiters are on record as wanting to privatise the NHS. They revelled in the destruction of the working-class communities and cultures capable of staging real revolt. Sir James Dyson moved his factory to Malaysia, so much did he love the British workforce. They talk about defying the “elite”. But they are the elite.

I'd really urge you to open the link and read the whole piece.

Other Lies

This blog began by saying "the British Public have almost everything wrong about the EU". The Brexit campaign have used immigration and schoolboy claims about "the money we will save by leaving" to inflame anti EU feeling.  Here's a few more big lies/misunderstandings.

Sovereignty - and getting it back. Heres the big news - we haven't  lost it. We are not run from Brussels and they don't make most of our laws. I've seen statements like "we need to leave to get our common law back" - Common law is largely used in criminal matters and the EU has absolutely no say so at all in criminal law - its so wrong its laughable. The EU exists to coordinate a free trade area with common rules for all members. It designs regulations and rules, often for complicated details of products and production methods, and yes, sometimes it can be stupidly officious, but most of the regulation is about dull technical stuff. It certainly has no impact whatsoever on criminal law or most law that affects our lives on a day to day basis.

The EU "isn't democratic". Well, yes and no. Our sovereign parliament agreed to join the EEC, as it was in those days. We held a referendum, and we voted "yes".

What did we vote for?

A treaty with the other members to abide by certain rules to give us Europe wide standards in certain areas and a number of institutions to manage that agreement.

Those institutions include

  • The Council of Ministers, with one minister from each member state having a vote and a right of veto in key areas. So if our minister, who's very definitely part of the democratically elected government, really didn't agree he could stop a proposal just by saying "no" - not very democratic I agree but it does give our national wishes huge protection.
  • The EU Commission - one Commissioner appointed by each member state - usually a high ranking senior politician. They have the power to suggest new measures and run the EU's administration - they have to agree proposals with the council of ministers and the EU Parliament before they become law and the UK has a right of veto on key issues - so not very democratic - but in a way that gives us a lot of control over what the EU does.
  • The European  Parliament - which is actually elected by PR - much more democratic than our parliamentary system where first past the post rules mean that we are being subject to a very right wing government on the vote of 38% of the electorate - It's true that we don't control the European Parliament -but it wouldn't really be democratic if we did!

From misunderstanding and lies to outright weird

One of the most bizarre left wing fears recently seen on social media is the post: "We need to leave because there is a risk that in 50 years time the EU will become a fascist superstate". Have to admit this had me scratching my head.

I traced it's source to a New Statesman article written by John King, the guy who wrote the "Football Factory". King is a fine writer... ...of fiction. The article was a "justification" of working class reasons to leave the EU. At its heart was the notion that it could become a fascist superstate at some point in the future.

Now, this is another argument more full of holes than an an EU regulation Gruyare cheese. Leaving aside the obvious, that no one can accurately predict the state of the world 5 years ahead, let alone 50 years in the future, what difference would it make if it happened?

If we leave, giving up any chance to influence the shape of the EU in the future, we'll have a Fascist superstate on the  other side of the English channel. If we remain, and can't use our diplomatic skill, influence  and power to guide the EU away from this nightmare scenario we'll leave and have a fascist superstate on on our doorsteps.

Its another irrational and flawed bit of thinking that's  got hold of the left  - and I'm seeing more and more "left-wing reasons to leave". It really frightens me. There seem to be a plethora of half arsed arguments for a left "no" vote, much of based on a clever campaign to attribute far more power to the EU than it really has.

These include laying unique responsibility on the EU for the impact of globalisation , the impacts on the developing world of global trade agreements like GATT,  responsibility for all western action in the middle east, failure to deal with Bosnia and responsibility for civil, war in Ukraine. I'm not suggesting for a second that the EU has no responsibility for any of this stuff, but it's  role has never been central, and frequently non-existent - and it's always been driven by the council of ministers and the wishes of it's member states.

and on the plus side?

Leaving aside the fact that the leave campaign is elitist and dishonest in it's intent, seeking to dupe the very people people who will suffer most in the kind of country they want post-brexit, what are the positives of Europe?

The thinking behind the EU's creation was to put an end to war in Europe. The Schuman Declaration  aimed to create more than a treaty - it wanted solid institutions that would provide practical ways of resolving issues - and we've had the longest period of peace in Europe for a thousand years. If we are counting its economic benefits against its costs, the benefits of not turning entire countries into heaps of rubble probably counts for a lot.

The EU has been about far more than trade agreements and regulations about working hours and the wattage of vacuum cleaners. Millions of people have lived and worked in other countries, learned other languages and come to appreciate other cultures. Those friendship networks are perhaps one the best indirect benefits of freedom of movement. We've imported cuisines, music, and culture along with Polish plumbers and Portuguese farm-workers. Two and a half million Brits live in other European countries. These little things mean a lot - they mean that understanding other cultures is no longer a privilege of a tiny elite, there's a broad based understanding of the advantages and the difficulties other countries face, far harder to engineer hatred and propaganda for war when we know the place we are proposing to bomb is the place we worked for a few years.


and the real issues?

Most of all, the EU is an organisation for international cooperation - it isn't just an agreement of principle but a functional administration to allow genuine cooperation across languages and borders.

This really matters. The problem with capitalism is that it's doomed. It's a dinosaur in it's death throes, gasping desperately for air with no concern for the havoc its flailing limbs wreak on "all us ordinary people". While we are distracted by the lies and myths of "in or out", the truely giant issue facing humanity, how we create a world that isn't being led headlong to environmental chaos by out of control capitalism, lies in abeyance.

The recessions, the banking crisis, the refugees, the middle east wars, are all "limbs of the dinosaur". Capitalism is being forced to consume itself, asset stripping it's own people an endless quest to make its money deliver returns. It's search for oil is even more desperate. Capitalism depends on feeding energy in and crapping out ever less durable consumer junk to sustain itself - an economic model that's destroying our climate. Even the outers haven't tried to blame our increasingly bizarre weather on the EU.

The huge unspoken challenge we face is climate change. To deal with it we have to decarbonise our economies, something that will take more international co-operation - not less. Don't underestimate the climate crisis. We've been like the villagers ignoring the rumblings of a volcano for years because evacuation is to big a prospect to contemplate. The lava is flowing down the mountainside now, and it's heading for us. It's already almost too late - do we seriously throw away an organisation for international cooperation because we've been pointed to problems it doesn't even create by a ruthless group of predatory capitalists?

If we vote leave tomorrow, we might think we are poking the establishment in the eye, but we will be shooting ourselves in the foot. It won't just be our own prospects that are damaged.

I've been in France for the last 10 weeks. People there regard the Brexit campaign with mingled bemusement, genuine fear for the future and real anger. Bemusement because they can't see why we would do this to ourselves. Fear for the future because we underestimate how highly regarded the UK is within the EU, and that our leaving could create a cascade of instability. Anger because we appear prepared to put so much at risk with no good reason - and with Cameron, for promising an unnecessary referendum to save his own electoral skin.

So if you are thinking of voting leave for lefty reasons please think again. If this referendum has highlighted issues with the EU let's fight the issues, but don't throw away cooperation, freedom of movement, collective security and friendship it brings - it's not the EU that lies at the heart of all our troubles, its a self centred heartless elite, and they are they guys pressing for Brexit.