Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining in West Virginia

1) The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) or a similar regime of reduced emissions projects from developing countries. The CDM is quite controversial, and exists under the Kyoto Protocol, which the U.S. did not sign onto, so these CDM-like projects would theoretically need to emerge from the new agreement now being negotiated in Copenhagen.

2) And the second source would be carbon credits from international forests. This regime is also being negotiated right now in Copenhagen, and its outcome will influence if not determine the future for forest protection in the coming decade. A strong REDD deal with good safeguards would mean forest protection and the rights of forest dependent people respected. A weak REDD deal without strong safeguards would allow the continued logging of the intact natural rainforests in countries like Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Bukit Tigapuluh, Sumatra. Credit: David Gilbert

America’s future appetite for forest carbon credits is just one reason why the U.S. is so keenly interested in REDD. Another, more urgent reason, comes from the allocation of pollution credits under the climate policy. In Waxman Markey, 5% of the total number of CO2 pollution credits will be auctioned to generate a fund for Supplemental Emissions Reductions from Reduced Deforestation. The hope is that this REDD fund would account for 10% the total emissions reduction goal of the United States.

It’s too early to tell how this legislation will play out in the Senate. The Democratic majority is still pushing for a climate bill, and it will not live up to the science-based standard of 40% or more emissions reduction below 1990 levels, in large part due to the entrenched lobbying by the fossil fuels industry. Ironically this may not be bad for non-U.S. forests which are seen by King Coal and Big Oil as a key ‘cost containment mechanism’. RAN supports the Supplemental Fund mechanism as a key means of protecting rainforests, and welcomes the U.S.’ role in the global effort to halt deforestation. But we cannot move forward without reducing our own emissions, and that’s why we oppose the offset mechanism, which uses forest offsets to let big coal and oil off the hook from making necessary emissions reductions.

Now in Copenhagen, we’re seeing the U.S. position vis a vis the Waxman Markey bill playing out. The U.S. opposes binding legal targets for emissions reductions – which we in essence do not have in the U.S. due to all of those offsets. But meanwhile, the U.S. is ready to go on REDD, due to the Supplemental Fund, the silver lining from an otherwise weak and compromised U.S. climate policy.

REDD is intended to help developing countries protect their remaining rainforests and reduce the 15-20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation, forest degradation and peatland destruction.

Yet without key safeguards, REDD will fail to protect forests. Many countries hoping to benefit from REDD funding suffer from poor legal frameworks, high levels of corruption and illegality, and weak enforcement. Our allies at REDD Monitor summed up the situation with this graphic detailing rates of illegal logging in REDD beneficiary countries.

Key text that will prevent REDD from going the way of logging in terms of feeding corruption remains bracketed in the latest REDD text. [Brackets] means that some countries do not support this text, and from our conversations with negotiators it appears that the very same countries that stand to benefit from REDD funds are also working to undermine forest conservation and human rights in REDD. For example, here is the text that RAN and our allies in the Ecosystems Climate Alliance, working to include in the REDD negotiations in order for this forest deal to be a trustworthy alternative to logging and conversion:

• safeguards for transparent forest governance structures and support mechanisms {4(c)};
• safeguards for the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities {4(e)};
• safeguards on conservation of biological diversity and enhancement of ecosystem services {4(f)}.
• an objective for protecting intact natural forests.
• provisions to monitor compliance with these proposed safeguards should they be incorporated into the agreement;
• safeguards to prevent the conversion of natural forests to forest plantations.

Most worrisome is the likelihood that there is no legally-binding deal as an outcome of the Copenhagen meeting. If the parties still strike a REDD deal without a commitment from rich countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, REDD could end up as an offsetting mechanism rather than a key tool in reducing global emissions.

And without forest protection and enforcement of safeguards as its key priorities, REDD will threaten rather than preserve the world’s remaining natural forests.

So what’s the bottleneck? By all accounts, on all sides of the debate except one, the single largest problem to solving the climate change problem is the United States. Everyone except for Jonathan Pershing, deputy US climate envoy, that is, who fiercely defends the US’s actions, which include proposing to end the Kyoto Protocol altogether in favor of a ‘pledge and review’ system of voluntary commitments from nations.

‘We know that the US needs to act, AND the US needs to be part of the deal,’ said a staffmember of the US congressional delegation attending the conference. Unfortunately that means acting as in the Waxman-Markey bill, with targets too low for most of the world to accept. In response, twice during this week’s meetings the African Union walked out of the Kyoto Protocol process; activists including RAN staged a string of actions, including blockading the exits of the convention center. The EU meanwhile seems committed to get the US into the deal at any cost. The US is in an unprecedented bargaining position – we are literally holding the rest of the world hostage to our inaction on climate change.

In defense of an indefensible position, the US negotiators I spoke to this week threw up their hands and said ‘what would you have us do? 350 ppm is not politically achievable in the US.’ A combative Jonathan Pershing, briefed us on the US position and blasted civil society for criticizing the Waxman-Markey commitment of 4% reduction targets from 1990 levels by 2020. (Climate science calls for a 40% emissions reduction target from 1990 levels by 2020. You’d think we could get at least a little bit closer.) Pershing denigrated the Kyoto Protocol, insisting that compliance for climate commitments will only be successful when done on a national level. This is the ‘fox guarding the henhouse’ proposal from the US which so frustrated the nations of the world.

Pershing claimed that while the climate deal will be negotiated by the executive branch, but without a national law we cannot comply. Not true: the US can deliver a great climate regime without any help from congress at all; after all, the US Supreme Court ruled that CO2 is a pollutant to be regulated by the EPA.

We have our work cut out for us. Political will doesn’t come from thin air, and it doesn’t tolerate hot air either. It’s time to build a true global movement against climate change, building on the great work done throughout this year, and bring some street heat to these decision makers, especially the obstructionists in the US that our preventing our climate bills from being robust and our negotiators in Copenhagen from embracing true global leadership.

Meanwhile, more and more companies and business groups (Apple, Exelon, PG&E) are dropping their membership in the Chamber and public opposition to the Chambers’ climate change denial is growing. The latest opposition is coming from the high tech sector, where the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and Silicon Valley Joint Venture are running an ad campaign against the Chamber for its opposition. And the Chamber is on the run, having been forced to backpedal on its claims to be the voice of the business community; last week the Chamber claimed to ‘represent’ 3 million businesses, but this week it quietly reduced that number to ‘300,000’ members. Investors are calling for companies that they own shares in to drop their membership in the Chamber, and local Chambers are formally distancing themselves from the US Chamber’s opposition to action on climate change.

As well they should. The Chamber of Commerce is behind the times: most companies have caught up with modern public values on climate change. For nearly ten years, the Carbon Disclosure Project has been surveying the leading global companies for their responses on climate change. In the most recent report issued earlier this year, 82% of the world’s largest 500 companies responded to the questionaire on their carbon emissions, 68% are reporting and tracking their emissions, and 51% have disclosed emissions reduction targets, all to report to investors representing over $55 trillion in capital investments. These companies are implementing global action plans for a carbon-constrained world, but the US Chamber of Commerce representing many if not most of these companies is heading in the opposite direction.

Here’s a note to Corporate America: every single company that claims to be taking climate change seriously yet continues to support the climate-change denying Chamber of Commerce, companies like Cargill, Microsoft (MSFT), Toyota (TM), FedEx (FDX) and Ford (F) – it’s time to come clean.

The US Chamber of Commerce is a national embarrassment, and corporations that continue to support this institution are standing in the way of progress in stopping climate change. It’s time for Chamber members to change or leave.

Recently divisions have cropped up in the U.S. Chamber. Three prominent utilities dumped the chamber in the last month, publicly slamming the Chamber’s position on climate change. Nike just left its position on the board of directors. Brad Figel, Nike’s director of government relations, told Greenwire that “We just weren’t clear in how decisions on climate and energy were being made.” And yesterday, computer giant Apple announced it was leaving the Chamber over climate policy.

What gives? What could the trade group be doing that has so offended its major members?

For starters, back in August, the Chamber filed a petition opposing the regulation of CO2 emissions by the EPA. This despite the fact that the EPA is acting under orders of the Supreme Court, which found in 2007 that CO2 is indeed a pollutant within the EPA’s mandate to regulate.

If that wasn’t sufficiently offensive to Chamber members, then the content and messaging surrounding the petition certainly should have been. The Chamber was setting about to equate climate science with evolution and link their denial of climate science with a belief in creationism. This, from the world’s largest business lobby.

Chamber VP Bill Kovacs publicly called to subject climate change to “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century.” Kovacs goes further, believing that federal action on climate change will “virtually destroy the United States.”

Of course now that companies are calling them out, Chamber CEO Thomas Donohue has changed the tune, saying that “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce continues to support strong federal legislation and a binding international agreement to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change.” Just not on these terms. Even though current climate legislation gives away all the rights to pollute to the industries currently polluting, that’s still not enough for the Chamber.

The Chamber’s actions as well as its rhetoric are out of step with modern public values. It’s time for more companies to distance themselves from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The report also finds that if we don’t take action to rein in the rapid global expansion of agrofuels we will in fact be making these problems worse. Particularly when expanding in rainforest regions, the carbon debt accumulated by agrofuels will take decades or sometimes centuries to pay back.

April 2009: Activists protest agrofuels in California

Read the full report at: http://ran.org/fileadmin/materials/comms/mediacontent/reports/Agrofuels_White_Paper.pdf

Too bad it’s such a disappointing day for climate in the US. Today Senators Boxer and Kerry released their first draft of the Senate climate bill, a companion to the House ACES bill passed this past June. It calls for the US to reduce emissions by 20% of 2005 levels by 2020. By comparison, island nations and the world’s least developed countries are calling for 45% emissions reduction from 1990 levels by 2020.

And it gets worse. The Boxer-Kerry draft bill subsidizes carbon capture and storage, a massive, scientifically uncertain boondoggle for coal fired electricity generators. The draft also repeats the most perverse problem in the House ACES bill by authorizing 2 billion tons of CO2 reductions to be achieved through offsets, instead of real emissions reductions.

Part of those offsets will come from a new, dangerous forest carbon market. The sellers of forest offsets will be tenure holders who are not required to operate with the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous peoples. In fact, the forest offsets may not even guarantee the protection of the forest from future logging. The bill would create from scratch a new, risky
commodities market for carbon that could quickly become the largest market in the world, yet offers few specifics on how that market would be regulated.

To be fair, there are some safeguards for forests as well, requiring an increase in carbon stocks for forest offsets. And the ‘Supplemental Emissions Reduction Fund’ is also in the billp; this was the bright spot in the House ACES bill. If executed effectively, the fund could create a marketplace firewall between forest carbon and fossil carbon emissions reductions, and help forest countries to overcome their deep governance problems. The Boxer-Kerry draft bill also offers important incentives to plug in vehicles, renewable energy, and energy efficiency – tackling head on some the US’s lowest hanging fruit in addressing climate change.

But unfortunately, that won’t be enough to stop climate change. While the world is waiting for the US to step up to the plate, the US is still at home wrestling with its coal and oil demons.

Still, the Senate political scene is heavily influenced by coal and agriculture states and even these modest targets face a major uphill battle. Instead of reducing emissions, big oil, king coal and the senators they support are looking to carbon offsets as a solution. ACES offers 2 billion tons of emissions reductions to be achieved through offsets, a significant chunk of these are REDD offsets, also known as reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation from tropical rainforests.

Yes, REDD is promising for protecting forests. But if the Senate bill is as bad as the House ACES bill was, then REDD is poised to do more harm than good. In order to actually protect forests, the Senate bill’s forest provisions should:

1) Ensure that REDD measures are not a substitute for aggressive domestic emissions reductions.
2) Prioritize biodiversity and conservation, instead of logging and plantations. The House bill doesn’t even define the term ‘forest’, meaning that REDD offset credits may be encouraging converting rainforests into monocultural paper or oil palm plantations.
3) Protect and enforce Indigenous Peoples’ rights to free, prior and informed consent, in accordance with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
4) Create an international fund for REDD instead of tradeable forest carbon offsets.
5) Build a firewall to keep REDD carbon emission reductions out of fossil fuel emissions markets. There should be no offsets trading between forest and fossil carbon.
6) Strengthen weak forest governance in tropical countries with high rates of corruption and poor law enforcement.

If the Senate climate bill’s REDD provisions fail to include these safeguards, than the US climate bill will be doing more harm than good for tropical rainforests. You can take action on the Senate climate bill today; go to the RAN action center and tell your Senators to fight for strong REDD provisions in the climate bill today!

“If the government makes these mistakes again the Indigenous communities will rise again,” she warned in Upstreamonline. Meanwhile, Alberto Pizanga, another respected Indigenous leader, remains in Nicaragua where he was granted political asylum at the height of the violent police crackdown that left at least 34 people dead.

Over the weekend, the UN envoy called for an independent, international investigation into the clash between police and Indigenous protestors. President Garcia’s approval rating has dropped to an appallingly low 19 percent, and according to Reuters, tensions are still running high. And as Amazon Watch points out, since 2006, the government has authorized oil and gas concessions covering over 70 percent of the Peruvian Amazon, much of it on Indigenous lands.

You can help by encouraging the US government to take a stand against violence in Peru at RAN’s action center.

UN envoy calls for investigation into Peru clash
06/20/2009 | 12:06 PM

LIMA, Peru — A U.N. envoy on indigenous rights called Friday for an impartial, internationally supported committee to be set up to investigate bloody clashes between Peruvian police and Amazonian Indian protesters that killed at least 33 people.

The comment by James Anaya came a day after a leader of Peru’s main Indian confederation urged members to end road and river blockades in the Amazon region after Congress revoked two land-use decrees that angered indigenous groups. Indians lifted blockades of several jungle highways Friday, but anti-government protests continued in several highland cities.

Anaya, the U.N. special envoy for Indians’ human rights and freedoms, said that during his visit to Peru he had heard what he called “worrisome” testimony from Indian protesters alleging abuses by security forces.

“I am calling for an exhaustive investigation by a special, independent commission so that these allegations can be investigated and taken seriously,” Anaya said.

Peru’s Amazonian Indians have been opposing 11 decrees since last year that they fear would make it easier for private oil, logging and biofuel companies to acquire their traditional lands. The government argued the decrees were needed to bring investment and development to Peru’s impoverished jungle.

Indians started blocking highways, rivers and a state oil pipeline in the Amazon beginning in early April, and violence erupted June 5 when police broke up one road blockade.

The government says 23 police officers and 10 civilians were killed in the clash, and one policeman was missing. Indian leaders say at least 30 civilians died.

Anaya said Indians who participated in protests are still missing, but added that he could not say how many and that he was not in a position to make conclusions about Indian allegations of more dead civilians.

He called for a committee, with participation from local Indian leaders and an international body like the U.N. or the International Labor Organization, to establish how the violence broke out and monitor efforts to locate missing Indians.

Many protesters went into hiding after the violence for fear of arrest. Anaya urged Peru’s government to review the charges levied against the president of the main Amazon Indian confederation, Alberto Pizango, and dozens of others as a measure “to create confidence and advance dialogue” with Indian groups.

Pizango left Peru for political asylum in Nicaragua on Wednesday after being charged with sedition and rebellion. – AP

Today, the Obama administration announced new regulations for fuel efficiency that raise the federal standard to be on a par with the California state standard. And the great news for veterans from the old Ford campaign – now Ford’s CEO is pleased.

STATEMENT ON ONE NATIONAL STANDARD ON FUEL ECONOMY
This following is a statement from Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally regarding President Barack Obama’s announcement of one national standard for fuel economy:

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 19. – “We are pleased President Obama is taking decisive and positive action as we work together toward one national standard for vehicle fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions that will benefit the environment and the economy. Today’s announcement signals the achievement of a crucial milestone – an agreement in principle on a national program for increased fuel economy and reduced greenhouse gases.

This national program will allow us to move forward toward final regulations that all stakeholders can support. We salute the cooperative efforts of the Obama Administration, the state of California, environmental groups and others that played a constructive role in this process.

The framework of the national program will give us greater clarity, certainty and flexibility to achieve the nation’s goals. We will continue to work with the federal agencies to finalize the standards that we are committed to meeting. ”

“I’m more of a party crasher than someone who gets an engraved invitation. Certainly so when the party is the shareholder meeting of a billion-dollar multinational corporation like Bunge, one of the largest argribusiness and food companies in the world and a major force in the devastation of South American rainforests. I’m used to getting chucked out of these meetings for sneaking in and then challenging CEOs in front of their board and shareholders while people try not to make eye contact. Aaaawkward.

But this time was different in some surprising ways. First of all I was actually allowed to be there and participate in Bunge’s annual general meeting at the posh Sofitel Hotel in midtown Manhattan today, and while I was expecting to have to practically grab the mike and race through a statement on their destructive practices, I was able to have a ten or twelve minute open discussion with their CEO Alberto Weisser while shareholders on either side of me smiled or gave me little thumbs up. After the meeting several shareholders wanted to talk about sustainable development, and thanked me and Rainforest Action Network for bringing up these issues in the meeting.

Nobody wants to be Scrooge McDuck funding things that are wrong or bad. And people are becoming especially aware of issues of sustainability and our interconnectedness as the our financial systems tumble and our planet begins to groan under the weight of climate change and prolonged abuse. Every shareholder I met in that room wants to be part of something useful and positive and Bunge’s corporate line certainly feeds into that.

They talk about feeding the world and had a whole packet enumerating their values of integrity, citizenship and environmental stewardship. Mr. Weisser spoke at length about working with local growers in South America and investing in social projects. I’m all for a business culture that values “integrity and citizenship”. The problem lies in the space between Bunge’s rhetoric and Bunge’s actions.

- While Bunge insists it is working to curb greenhouse gas emissions; it has continued to expand its operations in Brazil, which has become the fourth largest greenhouse gas polluter in the world with deforestation accounting for three quarters of its emissions. Soy expansion by companies like Bunge is the leading cause of deforestation.

- While Bunge talks about funding social programs in communities, it is still responsible for the human rights disaster of displacing Indigenous peoples throughout its South American operations

- While Bunge stresses a commitment to farmers and its employees, the expansion of soy forces small farming communities off their lands, providing just one job for every 11 subsistence farmer it displaces.

The CEO was adamant about the necessity for this kind of aggressive expansion based on the statistic that “in order to feed the world’s population we will have to double the amount of food we produce through 2050″. Now that’s a scary thought and the impulse to feed hungry people is certainly a noble one; however, much of the soy grown in these operations goes toward feeding European or Chinese livestock, or out of the food chain entirely into bio-fuels. Under this model I wonder if Mr. Weisser’s expecting we’ll have to mow down every bit of remaining rainforest to utilize its arable land potential. And if we continue to use the land we raze so irresponsibly, will that even be enough? I mean if we’re talking about a global food crisis, shouldn’t we be thinking about sustainable agriculture and low impact crops? Do we really want to test the planet’s carrying capacity over margarine and chicken feed? Really?

Considering the seriousness of the issues at stake it may seem obvious that an immediate turnaround of Bunge’s on the ground practices is the only way to cease activities wholly out of line with the core values of just about every living person, and if the shareholders do what they know is right they’ll push their company in that direction. But it was clear today that people can be so removed from the day to day realities of how a giant company like this works that it takes persistent little wake up calls be they petitions or demonstrations or people standing at microphones to keep the conversation going and the pressure on!”

Motion to reconsider
U.S. groups desert precautionary principle, 53 to 6
Posted by Ken Ward (Guest Contributor) at 11:05 AM on 19 Mar 2009

Grist – http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2009/3/18/23559/2600

After ducking the matter for a decade, U.S. environmental organizations finally pulled together a climate policy, but the National Call to Action on Global Warming issued by 53 organizations on March 5 is a mistake and should be reconsidered.

The National Call contains key elements that have been startlingly absent from our efforts to date — an assessment of climate risk, bright-line definition of solution, and a platform — but in attempting to thread a path between fundamentally irreconcilable political worldviews, the groups have fashioned a pushmepullyou compromise that will not gain us the traction we now require and squanders moral capital won at cost.

The National Call was hurried into place when it became clear that the irredeemably flawed cap-and-trade agenda of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership would otherwise be adopted by default. Yet, instead of coming down emphatically, if belatedly, behind Jim Hansen’s precautionary analysis and focusing on the central questions facing humanity — “how bad is it?” how much time do we have left?” and “what do we have to do to avert cataclysm?” — our major organizations choose to fudge the science and aim for something much smaller then the reordering of civics, economy, and society required to avert cataclysm.

What could and should be an illuminating, spirited civic debate between two sharply defined and fundamentally contradictory worldviews is now muddied by the introduction of a confused and confusing middle road position advanced by respected climate leaders. Split into three camps, we are further than ever from sharpening our story and worse off then before the National Call was issued.

No attempt was made to hide the illogic of the National Call, which claims to stand on “climate science” yet recommends inadequate, lower-end IPCC targets based on essentially antique science which does not fully encompass the risk of abrupt climate change. A bland statement acknowledging this fact (“more recent findings since the publication of the latest IPCC assessment suggest that even more urgent action may be needed”) is included in the Call without clarification or conclusion.

This throwaway statement, however, is the nub of the matter, because all recent evidence on factors affecting the pace and scale of ice shelf break-up in Antarctica and Greenland — the climate change “world killer” — is very, very grim, and all projections of fossil fuel use and GHG emissions continue to rise steeply. It could not be clearer that we are running the last lap and there will be no opportunity for “do-overs.”

What’s going on here? None of our organizations and leaders truly disagree with the precautionary position as a matter of science, so why did 53 sign on to an statement calling for less than we know is now necessary to avert catastrophe?

Six organizations — 350.org, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Friends of the Earth (FOE), International Rivers Network (IRN), GlobalWarmingSolution.org and, contrary to original reports, Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection — did not endorse the National Call and there are indications that the decision does not sit comfortably with every group which did. People should be worried, because the National Call puts the majority of our organizations on the same slippery track that compromised the integrity of EDF and NRDC.

I have a half-formed idea that the critical factor for leadership and organizations is no longer whether one accepts the reality of abrupt climate change, as it was for the last 10 years, but whether one believes in the possibility of abrupt political change and is willing to work for it. If so, then there is no reason at this stage to support inadequate compromises that cannot avert cataclysm and will merely run out the clock. We’re playing winner take all now.

If one cannot imagine a new American revolution, or shudders at the thought, then I suppose there is appeal in cutting the best deal going and hoping that Hansen et al. are wrong, but as a matter of strategy, it’s still the bad move. Whether or not “non-linear” social change is thought likely or desirable, driving toward it improves the outcome either way.

Environmentalist power is proportional to our moral authority, not our facility at brokering, and our moral authority is diminished when we speak less then the truth. The National Call to Action on Global Warming, relying on out of date IPCC science, is knowingly built on a foundation of sand. It reduces our moral authority (and we ought to start thinking about our members, donors, and staff in this regard) and should be reconsidered.

Having won consensus for joint action — a tremendous step forward — we must assert the new power that can and should have flowed from the achievement, and the best way to do so is by endorsing Jim Hansen’s call for a 300-350 ppm bright line. If we do this, then we act as a responsible movement, coalescing behind two opposed visions of political change and measures of appropriate precautionary behavior. If we do not do this, we churn already muddy waters and are worse off then if we had done nothing.

In 2004, the largest logger in Tasmania, Gunns Ltd. surprised the world by suing 20 of its strongest critics, charging them with 9 separate acts of misconduct. Every single action these activists had taken had been nonviolent, ranging from organizing massive street protests to lobbying government to stop Gunns from destroying Tasmania’s old growth forests. Had Gunns been successful, it would have sent a chilling effect across the world for all activists who exercise free speech in defense of the earth. Fortunately, this is one battle that the good guys won.

Now, a quick note on Gunns, which is about as bad as a logging company can get. It clearcuts old growth forests for copy paper, then sets fires in the forest to burn anything that might remain, and sets poison traps to kill any wildlife that has escaped the logging and fires and might feed on newly-established plantations. Naturally, activists across Australia and around the world got involved in protests against Gunns.

Among the Gunns 20 was the Australian Wilderness Society, an ally organization of RAN’s. Through our office in Japan, since 2006 RAN has been working with The Wilderness Society to educate Japanese customers about the beautiful old growth forests of Tasmania, the horrible logging practices of Gunns, and the role of the Japanese paper industry in supporting Gunns’ old growth logging. 80% of Tasmania’s pulp and paper is exported to Japan, where it is manufactured into disposable paper products like tissue and copy paper.

In 2007 RAN’s Global Finance campaign advised ANZ Bank to not finance Gunns’ pulp mill. Eventually ANZ listened, and to this date Gunns is struggling to find financing for the pulp mill. Meanwhile Gunns’ stock price is barely worth the old growth paper it’s printed on, and despite the horrible economic climate the company continues to pursue the idea that it needs to build a new pulp mill. Through our most recent conversations with Japanese customers, they are becoming less interested in buying Gunns’ paper: Ricoh, Canon and Fuji Xerox are all asking suppliers Oji Paper and Nippon Paper to exclude old growth fiber from Gunns.

RAN activists in Tokyo protest at ANZ branch

One surprising measure of how effective forest activists are is the level of repression they face. Cheers to The Wilderness Society for standing up and fighting back!

http://www.marcgunther.com/?p=431

Charging ahead with electric cars

As the electric car is business gets more and more crowded, it feels like we are approaching a breakthrough. It could come from a U.S. automaker like GM with its Volt, from a European company like Renault (and its partner Nissan) which are committed to electric cars through an alliance with Better Place, from a Japanese firm like Toyota which has led the way with hybrid cars like the Prius, from a Chinese or Indian carmaker, or from one of the many startups—Tesla, Think, Fisker, ZENN—that are hurrying to market.

I’m fascinated by electric cars, so I went to a panel on “Bringing Electric Cars to the Mass Market” at the Net Impact conference at Wharton. They had great people—Michael Granoff of Better Place who has the title, “head of oil independence policies;” Charles Gassenheimer who is CEO of Ener1, a startup company that makes lithium-ion batteries for electric cars; Vicki Northrup, an industry veteran who has worked for Think, Zen and is back at Think, and moderator Bill Moore, who runs a terrific website, EV World, and knows the business inside and out.

Of course, it’s not much of a business yet. Sure, Toyota has sold more than 1 million hybrids, but most everyone agrees that today’s hybrids (which recharge their batteries from the braking power of the car) are an interim technology, a bridge to the future. They are likely to give way, first, to plug-in electric hybrids (where the battery can be recharged by plugging in the car) and then to pure electrics. After all, it doesn’t make a lot of sense of build a car with both an internal combustion engine and an electric engine—that’s one reason the Prius and other hybrids are pricey. Besides that, the Prius battery technology will soon be surpassed by lithium-ion batteries, the kind used in laptops and cell phones, most experts think. They are more efficient, lighter weight and more powerful. Gassenheimer said a government energy lab tested a Prius with one of his company’s lithium-ion batteries and found that it delivered 77 miles per gallon, even before the software was optimized for the new battery.

Batteries are the key to the electric car business. The trouble is, lithium ion batteries that are powerful enough to provide a reasonable range—say, 60 to 100 miles on a single charge—and long-lasting enough so that they can be charged and discharged year after year are frightfully expensive. They can easily cost $15,000 to $20,000, the panelists said, accounting for as much as 50% of the cost of a plug-in electric hybrid or an all electric car.

So how do you get costs to come down? Several ways, it turns out.

First, obviously, is by improving the technology. Lots of big and small companies are working on that—Panasonic, Toyota, Sanyo, BYD, startups Ener1 and A123 and a venture-backed firm called eeStor.

Economies of scale will surely help. “Getting the battery into volume production is the best way to drive down costs,” Gassenheimer said. Ener1 has a deal to make batteries for the Think cars, which should ramp down their costs; they are building a production line now in Indianapolis.

Another approach: Radically transform the automobile business model, as Better Place wants to do. Their plan is to own the batteries and charging stations, and recharge and replace them when needed. This should assure wary buyers, if they believe in Better Place. “You subscribe to Better Place for your energy,” Granoff says. “You pay for the miles that you drive.” Better Place has struck deals to build out electric-car infrastructure in Israel, Denmark and Australia, with more to come, I’m told. You can watch this video of Shai Agassi, Better Place’s charismatic CEO, at the EV World website.

Still another approach is to lease the batteries. Think is thinking about this idea, according to Northrup, but is wary of trying to introduce a new technology and a new business model at the same time. “We’re not sure Americans will go for it,” she says.

One thing I learned from the panel: Batteries, when they are no longer powerful enough to drive a car motor, can still hold enough charge so that they could be resold to electric utilities that want to store intermittent renewable energy from the wind or the sun.

Finally, the government can and probably will play a role in driving the adoption of electric cars. The $700-billion financial rescue bill included $7,500 tax credits for the first 250,000 buyers of plug-in electrics, which could help the Chevy Volt and the Prius plug-in if they come to market, as expected, by 2010.

Gassenheimer says: “The only way to encourage penetration at this early stage ,when the prices are higher than consumers are willing to pay, is government intervention.”

I’ve come to believe that plug-in hybrids and then all-electric cars will reach the mass market in the next three to five years, although I can’t tell you how we will get from here to there. The fundamental reason is that electric car engines are more efficient than gasoline engines, although there’s debate about how big the efficiency advantage turns out to be. Besides that, electric cars are cleaner, they will help wean us from imported oil and they are quieter than gas-powered cars.

As Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan and Renault, said last month, when Nissan and France’s biggest utility announced plans to roll out an electric-car network in France:

“We have decided to introduce zero-emission vehicles as quickly as possible in order to ensure individual mobility against the background of high oil prices and better environmental protection.”

Our answer – nothing, not without conditions that reduce our dependence on oil. Our money should be offered on our terms. No automaker deserves federal funds or loan guarantees unless it commits to producing and selling at least 30,000 plug-in electric vehicles by the end of 2011 – and after those three years have passed and they’ve met the terms of the bailout, then let’s talk about more support for more plug-ins. Taxpayers’ dollars should be used to stabilize the industry and the jobs that depend on it by producing vehicles that end the downward spiral of our dependence on oil. Electric vehicles recharged by a green grid means green jobs, less greenhouse gas pollution, a more competitive domestic auto industry, not to mention saying no to tar sands development and good bye to wars for oil.

President-elect Obama has pledged to put one million plug-ins on the road by 2015 and grow five million green jobs. Sounds great – let’s get started with GM.

As you can read in our letter to the FSC Executive Director (ran-to-fsc-101308), the FSC’s Controlled Wood Standard has serious problems with inclusion of wood fiber in violation of the FSC’s rules. Meanwhile, critics have alleged that ‘an estimated sixty percent of FSC timbers come from ancient forests’. As FSC members, RAN is asking the FSC to respond to this claim by providing accurate data regarding the percentage of FSC timbers derived from primary (never industrially managed) and old-growth (older than 200 years) forests.

As RAN undertakes our strategic review of the Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC’s) benefits and costs, how the FSC responds to these controversies will affect whether, and how much, RAN can continue supporting the FSC. In coming months, we will continue to report back our conclusions to our members and supporters. Stay tuned.

Above all, RAN’s Old Growth campaign is committed to end logging in ancient forests worldwide. As part of planning this new phase for the campaign, RAN has begun undertaking a strategic review of the Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC’s) benefits and costs. The credibility of the FSC continues to be threatened by controversies with specific certifications, with contentious policies such as the Controlled Wood Standard which operates much lower standard into than the FSC itself, and with the volume of wood certified from old growth forests. These controversies affect whether, and how much, RAN can continue supporting the FSC. RAN staff will attend the FSC annual meeting in November, we will report back our conclusions to our members and supporters as well as through dialogue with other NGOs.

Thanks to everyone for all of your support for this important work!

Jennifer Krill
Program Director

Fortune/CNN Money blogs
September 22, 2008, 4:39 pm
Behind Sallie Krawcheck’s exit from Citi

Sallie Krawcheck is leaving Citigroup (C). The exit of Krawcheck, chairman and CEO of the bank’s global wealth management unit, stems from disagreements with Citi CEO Vikram Pandit and a decision, made by him last week, to shrink her responsibilities inside the company.

Sources close to Krawcheck and Citi say that the tension revolves mainly around the amount of money that Citi owes clients who invested in hedge funds and auction-rate securities that turned out to be toxic investments. Krawcheck argued in favor of Citi’s responsibility to pay clients back, in effect, for defective investments distributed by her brokers and bankers. Citi’s multi-billion-dollar auction-rate securities settlement, announced in August, caused a rift in her relationship with Pandit, who according to one source preferred to take a tougher line with clients. The settlement requires Citi to return to individual investors, small businesses and charities all $7.5 billion that they invested in auction-rate securities via Citi.

Citigroup declined to comment on the Krawcheck situation. But sources confirm that last week, Pandit moved to take away her CEO title and operating responsibility for the wealth management unit, leaving her as chairman with client responsibility. She didn’t like that. Then, this morning, news swept through Citi that the unit, instead of reporting to Pandit, would be overseen by John Havens, who is CEO of Citi’s institutional clients group. A release this afternoon will announce Krawcheck’s exit and her replacement as CEO of global wealth management: Michael Corbat, who currently heads the corporate and commercial bank within Citi’s investment banking division.

I had breakfast with Krawcheck late last month. Not that she clued me in to her impending departure, but I’m not surprised nonetheless. We talked a lot about Wall Street’s woes and the fact that women are not progressing there. Of the trio of Wall Street’s most powerful women, in fact, she was the last one standing. Lehman Brothers (LEH) CFO Erin Callan lost her job in July and is now at Credit Suisse (CS), while Morgan Stanley (MS) president Zoe Cruz was fired by her boss, John Mack, late last year.

Tagged “the survivor” by some, Krawcheck seemed loyal to a fault. Recruited to Citi from Sanford Bernstein in 2002 by former CEO Sandy Weill, she is one of the few senior execs (besides senior counselor Bob Rubin and chairman Win Bischoff) who stayed through those six years. Just before she arrived, she was heading stock-research outfit Sanford Bernstein and was the subject of a Fortune cover story, “In Search of the Last Honest Analyst.” As chief of Citi’s Smith Barney brokerage unit, she cleaned up problems related to its conflict-of-interest scandals.

Another cover, “Can Sallie Save Citi?,” followed in 2003. Her star dimmed as she took on the dual role of CFO and head of strategy the following year. Last month, she wouldn’t share details about her struggles there, but she was known to clash with then-CEO Chuck Prince on key decisions. The Citi board ousted Prince late last year and replaced him with Pandit.

Going back to running a business unit — Citi’s private bank plus Smith Barney — was a relief for Krawcheck. Her global wealth management division brought in $13 billion last year. Its profits are expected to be down this year, but not dramatically, so it’s a relative safe haven amidst Wall Street’s bigger troubles.

Her latest comedown is quite a turn for the star once seen by some as a possible CEO of Citi someday. She doesn’t have another job lined up, but she has a long runway ahead and broad perspective on the business world, from her Citi assignments and her role on the board of Dell (DELL). Says one high-level Citi exec: “The people who work with her love her. Whoever gets her will be lucky.”

The $1.9-billion expansion will expand the refinery’s capacity from 100,000 barrels of oil per day to 115,000 barrels, all of it to accommodate tar sands oil from Canada. Unlike your average dirty liquid crude oil, tar sands oil is known as ‘heavy crude’ – it’s much more polluting, at least 2.5 times more greenhouse gas emissions per barrel than regular crude oil. Ironically, on the same day, the ‘godfather’ of climate science, Dr. James Hansen called out the development of tar sands, telling a packed audience at the National Press Club that climate change is no less than a planetary emergency.

Hansen went on to say: “If we squeeze oil out of the tar sands then there is no hope for life as we know it.” People from Alberta where the tar sands are mined for oil, all along the pipeline corridor to Detroit, and the neighboring residents in southwest Detroit will pay the immediate price for the Marathon Refinery expansion. Unless we stop more expansions, in the long term, we’ll all suffer.