This Changes Everything (80 page)

14
. “Facts About Wind Power: Facts and Numbers,” Danish Energy Agency,
http://www.ens.dk
; “Renewables Now Cover More than 40% of Electricity Consumption,” Danish Energy Agency, press release, September 24,
2012; Greg Pahl,
The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook: Community Solutions to a Global Crisis
(White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2007), 69; Shruti Shukla and Steve Sawyer (Global Wind Energy Council),
30 Years of Policies for Wind Energy: Lessons from 12 Wind Energy Markets
(Abu Dhabi, UAE: International Renewable Energy Agency, 2012), 55.

15
. Scott Sinclair, “Negotiating from Weakness,”
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, April 2010, p. 11.

16
. Aaron Cosbey, “Renewable Energy Subsidies and the WTO: The Wrong Law and the Wrong Venue,”
Subsidy Watch
44 (2011): 1.

17
. “Multi-Association Letter Regarding EU Fuel Quality Directive,” Institute for 21st Century Energy, May 20, 2013,
http://www.energyxxi.org
; “Froman Pledges to Preserve Jones Act, Criticizes EU Clean Fuel Directive,”
Inside US Trade
, September 20, 2013; “Non-paper on a Chapter on Energy and Raw Materials in TTIP,” Council of the European Union, May 27, 2014,
http://www.scribd.com
; Lydia DePillis, “A Leaked Document Shows Just How Much the EU Wants a Piece of America’s Fracking Boom,”
Washington Post
, July 8, 2014.

18
. The quote is from an interview conducted by Victor Menotti, executive director of the International
Forum on Globalization, in 2005. Victor Menotti, “G8 ‘Climate Deal’ Ducks Looming Clash with WTO,” International Forum on Globalization, July 2007,
http://www.ifg.org
.

19
. “Notice of Arbitration Under the Arbitration Rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law and Chapter Eleven of the North American Free Trade Agreement,” Lone Pine Resources, September 6, 2013.

20
. “U.S.
Solar Market Insight Report: 2013 Year-in-Review,” Executive Summary, GTM Research, Solar Energy Industries Association, p. 4; Bhushan, “Who Is the One Not Playing by the Rules—India or the US?”; Bhushan interview, May 10, 2013; Maccario interview, January 9, 2014; “Climate Change, China, and the WTO,” March 30, 2011 (video), panel discussion, Columbia Law School.

21
. Personal interview with
Steven Shrybman, October 4, 2011.

22
. Oceanographer Roger Revelle, who led the team that wrote on atmospheric CO2 in the report for President Johnson, had used similar language describing carbon emissions as a “geophysical experiment” as early as 1957, in a landmark climate science paper co-authored with chemist Hans Suess: Roger Revelle and Hans E. Suess, “Carbon Dioxide Exchange Between Atmosphere
and Ocean and the Question of an Increase of Atmospheric CO
₂
during the Past Decades,”
Tellus
9 (1957): 19–20. For in-depth histories of climate science and politics, see: Spencer Weart,
The Discovery of Global Warming
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); Joshua P. Howe,
Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014). HISTORY:
Weart,
The Discovery of Global Warming
, 1–37; JOHNSON REPORT: Roger Revelle et al., “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide,” in
Restoring the Quality of Our Environment,
Report of the Environmental Pollution Panel, President’s Science Advisory Committee, The White House, November 1965, Appendix Y4, pp. 126–27.

23
. “Statement of Dr. James Hansen, Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies,” presented
to United States Senate, June 23, 1988; Philip Shabecoff, “Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate,”
New York Times
, June 24, 1988; Weart,
The Discovery of Global Warming
, 150–51.

24
. Thomas Sancton, “Planet of the Year: What on EARTH Are We Doing?,”
Time
, January 2, 1989.

25
. 
Ibid.

26
. President R. Venkataraman, “Towards a Greener World,” speech at WWF-India, New Delhi, November 3, 1989,
in
Selected Speeches, Volume I: July 1987–December 1989
(New Delhi: Government of India, 1991), 612.

27
. Daniel Indiviglio, “How Americans’ Love Affair with Debt Has Grown,”
The Atlantic
, September 26, 2010.

28
. One bold proposal imagines future restrictions on trade in all goods produced with fossil fuels, arguing that once the green transition is underway and industries have begun to decarbonize,
such measures could be introduced and ramped up gradually: Tilman Santarius, “Climate and Trade: Why Climate Change Calls for Fundamental Reforms in World Trade Policies,” German NGO Forum on Environment and Development, Heinrich Böll Foundation, pp. 21–23. U.N. CLIMATE AGREEMENT: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, United Nations, 1992, Article 3, Principle 5; “PIVOTAL
MOMENT”: Robyn Eckersley, “Understanding the Interplay Between the Climate and Trade Regimes,” in
Climate and Trade Policies in a Post-2012 World
, United Nations Environment Programme, p. 17.

29
. Martin Khor, “Disappointment and Hope as Rio Summit Ends,” in
Earth Summit Briefings
(Penang: Third World Network, 1992), p. 83.

30
. Steven Shrybman, “Trade, Agriculture, and Climate Change: How Agricultural
Trade Policies Fuel Climate Change,” Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, November 2000, p. 1.

31
. Sonja J. Vermeulen, Bruce M. Campbell, and John S.I. Ingram, “Climate Change and Food Systems,”
Annual Review of Environment
37 (2012): 195; personal email communication with Steven Shrybman, April 23, 2014.

32
. “Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP)—Environment Consolidated Text,”
WikiLeaks, January 15, 2014,
https://wikileaks.org
; “Summary of U.S. Counterproposal to Consolidated Text of the Environment Chapter,” released by RedGE, February 17, 2014,
http://www .redge.org.pe
.

33
. Traffic refers to containerized port traffic, measured by twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs). From 1994 to 2013 global containerized port traffic increased from 128,320,326 to an estimated 627,930,960
TEUs, an increase of 389.4 percent: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, “Review of Maritime Transport,” various years, available at
http://unctad.org
. For years 2012 and 2013, port traffic was projected based on industry estimates from Drewry: “Container Market Annual Review and Forecast 2013/14,” Drewry, October 2013. NOT ATTRIBUTED: “Emissions from Fuel Used for International
Aviation and Maritime Transport (International Bunker Fuels),” United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,
http://unfccc.int
; SHIPPING EMMISSIONS: Øyvind Buhaug et al., “Second IMO GHG Study 2009,” International Maritime Organization, 2009, p. 1.

34
. “European Union CO
₂
Emissions: Different Accounting Perspectives,” European Environmental Agency Technical Report No. 20/2013, 2013,
pp. 7–8.

35
. Glen P. Peters et al., “Growth in Emission Transfers via International Trade from 1990 to 2008,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
108 (2011): 8903-4.

36
. Corrine Le Quéré et al., “Global Budget 2013,”
Earth System Science Data
6 (2014): 252; Corrine Le Quéré et al., “Trends in the Sources and Sinks of Carbon Dioxide,”
Nature Geoscience
2 (2009): 831; Ross Garnaut
et al., “Emissions in the Platinum Age: The Implications of Rapid Development for Climate-Change Mitigation,”
Oxford Review of Economic Policy
24 (2008): 392; Glen P. Peters et al., “Rapid Growth in CO
₂
Emissions After the 2008–2009 Global Financial Crisis,”
Nature Climate Change
2 (2012): 2; “Technical Summary,” in O. Edenhofer et al., ed.,
Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change, Contribution
of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 15.

37
. Andreas Malm, “China as Chimney of the World: The Fossil Capital Hypothesis,”
Organization & Environment
25 (2012): 146, 165; Yan Yunfeng and Yang Laike, “China’s Foreign Trade and Climate Change: A Case Study of CO
₂
Emissions,”
Energy Policy
38
(2010): 351; Ming Xu et al., “CO
₂
Emissions Embodied in China’s Exports from 2002 to 2008: A Structural Decomposition Analysis,”
Energy Policy
39 (2011): 7383.

38
. Personal interview with Margrete Strand Rangnes, March 18, 2013.

39
. Malm, “China as Chimney of the World,” 147, 162.

40
. Elisabeth Rosenthal, “Europe Turns Back to Coal, Raising Climate Fears,”
New York Times
, April 23, 2008; Personal
email communication with IEA Clean Coal Centre, March 19, 2014.

41
. Jonathan Watts, “Foxconn offers pay rises and suicide nets as fears grow over wave of deaths,”
Guardian
, May 28, 2010; Shahnaz Parveen, “Rana Plaza factory collapse survivors struggle one year on,” BBC News, April 23, 2014.

42
. Mark Dowie,
Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century
(Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1996), 185-86; Keith Schneider, “Environment Groups Are Split on Support for Free-Trade Pact,”
New York Times
, September 16, 1993.

43
. Dowie,
Losing Ground
, 186–87; Gilbert A. Lewthwaite, “Gephardt Declares Against NAFTA; Democrat Cites Threat to U.S. Jobs,”
Baltimore Sun
, September 22, 1993; John Dillin, “NAFTA Opponents Dig In Despite Lobbying Effort,”
Christian Science Monitor
, October 12, 1993;
Mark Dowie, “The Selling (Out) of the Greens; Friends of Earth–or Bill?”
The Nation
, April 18, 1994.

44
. Bill Clinton, “Remarks on the Signing of NAFTA (December 8, 1993),” Miller Center, University of Virginia.

45
. Stan Cox, “Does It Really Matter Whether Your Food Was Produced Locally?”
Alternet
, February 19, 2010.

46
. Solomon interview, August 27, 2013.

47
. Kevin Anderson,
“Climate Change Going Beyond Dangerous—Brutal Numbers and Tenuous Hope,”
Development Dialogue
no. 61, September 2012, pp. 16-40.

48
. The “8 to 10 percent” range relies on interviews with Anderson and Bows-Larkin as well as their published work. For the underlying emissions scenarios, refer to pathways C+1, C+3, C+5, and B6 3 in: Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows, “Beyond ‘Dangerous’ Climate Change:
Emission Scenarios for a New World,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A
369 (2011): 35. See also: Kevin Anderson, “EU 2030 Decarbonisation Targets and UK Carbon Budgets: Why So Little Science?” KevinAnderson.info, June 14, 2013,
http://kevinanderson.info
. HUGELY DAMAGING: Anderson, “Climate Change Going Beyond Dangerous,” pp. 18–21; DE BOER: Alex Morales, “Kyoto Veterans Say Global
Warming Goal Slipping Away,” Bloomberg, November 4, 2013.

49
. Stern,
The Economics of Climate Change
, 231–32.

50
. 
Ibid
., 231; Global Carbon Project emissions data, 2013 Budget v2.4 (July 2014), available at
http://cdiac.ornl.gov
; Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center emissions data, available at
http://cdiac.ornl.gov
.

51
. Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows, “A 2°C Target? Get Real, Because
4°C Is on Its Way,”
Parliamentary Brief
13 (2010): 19; FOOTNOTE: Anderson and Bows, “Beyond ‘Dangerous’ Climate Change,” 35; Kevin Anderson, “Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change Demands De-growth Strategies from Wealthier Nations,” KevinAnderson.info, November 25, 2013,
http://kevinanderson.info
.

52
. Anderson and Bows-Larkin have based their analysis on the commitment made by governments at the
2009 U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen that emission cuts should be done on the basis “of equity” (meaning rich countries must lead so that poor countries have room to develop). Some argue that rich countries don’t have to cut quite so much. Even if that were true, however, the basic global picture still suggests that the necessary reductions are incompatible with economic growth as we have known
it. As Tim Jackson shows in
Prosperity Without Growth
, global annual emission cuts of as little as 4.9 percent cannot be achieved simply with green tech and greater efficiencies. Indeed he writes that to meet that target, with the world population and income per capita continuing to grow at current rates, the carbon intensity of economic activity would need to go down “almost ten times faster
than it is doing right now.” And by 2050, we would need to be twenty-one times more efficient than we are today. So, even if Anderson and Bows-Larkin have vastly overshot, they are still right on their fundamental point: we need to change our current model of growth. See: Tim Jackson,
Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet
(London: Earthscan, 2009): 80, 86.

53
. Anderson and
Bows, “A New Paradigm for Climate Change,” 640.

54
. Kevin Anderson, “Romm Misunderstands Klein’s and My View of Climate Change and Economic Growth,” KevinAnderson.info, September 24, 2013.

55
. Clive Hamilton, “What History Can Teach Us About Climate Change Denial,” in
Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives
, ed. Sally Weintrobe (East Sussex: Routledge,
2013), 18.

56
. For the foundational scenario modeling work on a “Great Transition” to global sustainability, led by researchers at the Tellus Institute and the Stockholm Environment Institute, see: Paul Raskin et al., “Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead,” Report of the
Global Scenario Group
, Stockholm Environment Institute and Tellus Institute, 2002. This research has continued
as part of Tellus’ Great Transition Initiative, available at: “Great Transition Initiative:
Toward a Transformative Vision and Praxis,” Tellus Institute,
http://www.greattransition.org
. For parallel work at the U.K.’s New Economics Foundation, see: Stephen Spratt, Andrew Simms, Eva Neitzert, and Josh Ryan-Collins, “The Great Transition,” The New Economics Foundation, June 2010.