Courage and climate change (part 2)

Continues from here

Oil addiction and Iraq
Now while the WTO may be one of the great institutions of the world economy in need of reform, there is another great economic institution whose major role is to make sure that the fossil fuel resources of the world are kept safe and sound, and that economic institution is called the US Military. The job of the US Military is to secure the world's oil reserves for the United States so that the US, that great oil junkie, never misses its daily fix of 20 million barrels of it.

They told us that the US Military was paying a visit to Iraq to help out with some human rights violations that had been detected there. Or was it to find some of the weapons of mass destruction that the West had sold Saddam Hussein whose payments were overdue? Or was it because Saddam did 911? Never mind, it's hard to keep track. Of course we were told it was nothing to do with the third largest reserves of oil in the world, which just happen to be found in Iraq. Tony Blair said so in 2003: "Oil revenues, which people falsely claim that we want to seize, should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people." And George W Bush stated so in June 2006: "Oil belongs to the Iraqi people; the Government has ... to be good stewards of that valuable asset." And former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, that great "liberal", said so in July 2003: "The oil of the Iraqi people ... is their wealth. We did not [invade Iraq] for oil."

But now it seems that the US puppet regime in Iraq is about to pass a new law that will give foreign oil companies the right to exploit the Iraqi oil reserves. This new law will give foreign oil companies 30 year contracts to extract crude oil in Iraq, for the first time since the Iraqi oil industry was nationalised in 1972. It would also allow Shell, BP and Exxon and the rest to pocket up to three quarters of the profits from the oil. Unsurprisingly major oil companies have had lobbying teams in Iraq over the last few months while the new law has been negotiated. It seems that Blair and Bush may have been wide of the mark and US Vice President Dick Cheney was more on the money when he said in 1999, "By 2010, we will need [a further] 50 million barrels a day. The Middle East, with two-thirds of the oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize lies."

And what a cost for those that stand in the way of that prize. At least 218,000 Iraqis and probably more like 650,000 Iraqis have died or been killed since the second invasion of Iraq.

We live in an age in which the greatest superpower the world has ever seen seems to exist in a moral vacuum. The Bush administration has no moral compass to orient itself in the world. It has embarked on a crusade against the Middle East driven by no moral code but by a search for oil. The neoconservatives in Washington said that they did it to impose US style democracy, but only so long as the Iraqis agreed with what the US wanted, which is of course no democracy at all.

For the first time in the history of the United States, in 2003 they found themselves in control of an Arab capital city. And what did it do. They let mobs loot all of the major institutions of Baghdad. The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Agriculture were destroyed. The museum holding some of the oldest antiquities of human civilisation dating back to the ancient Mesopotamian world, were destroyed and looted while the greatest army in the world stood by and did nothing. The one government department that the US protected was the oil ministry and of course the US protected and controlled the oil fields.

And they want the oil in order to maintain the last remaining sense of purpose of the American empire — consumption. Just like the Roman Empire before it the moral emptiness of this Bush regime is papered over by endless growth in consumption. There may be no democracy in the Middle East, there may be thousands locked up in the US gulags in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Graib, but you can at least afford to drive a hummer, an SUV the size of a small tank, down the streets of Los Angeles.

I would ask you to pause just for a moment to consider the moral compass of a an Administration that goes to war in the Middle East time after time, that kills literally hundreds of thousands of people, in order that Americans can afford to drive a massive military vehicle, the Hummer, around the suburbs of their cities and towns. Where is the moral compass that drops cluster bombs into the suburbs of Baghdad that literally blows children's brains out, just to keep hold of the oil? A government that twice bombs the offices of the Arab television station Al Jazzera — once in Kabul and once in Baghdad — presumably because Al Jazzera is not "on message" like the rest of the embedded media.

This US Administration has lost its way, it has lost its moral compass and has become an empire in search of the resources to maintain its reckless consumption in a world running out of resources and a world desperately in need of moral leadership to confront the greatest global challenge we have ever known in the form of human induced climate change.

And the Australian and British Prime Ministers, John Howard and Tony Blair, who follow the lead of the American empire, who have swallowed each of George Bush's lies and replicated them around the world — remember the weapons of mass destruction that did not exist, remember the role of Saddam in 911 that never was. How much moral courage did it take to enforce a decade of sanctions against Iraq that led to the death of over half a million children while the vile Iraqi leadership continued to enjoy the high life funded in part with bribes from Howard's own Australian Wheat Board. Howard and Blair who followed the lead of former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who when asked whether the loss of half a million children's lives under the sanctions was worth it, said, yes it was worth it. Sanctions that were so diabolical that two UN humanitarian coordinators quit over them and one of them Denis Halliday said when he left, "I've been using the word 'genocide' because this is a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq. I'm afraid I have no other view." Howard and Blair who set their moral compass by pointing it at George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.

Oil independence
But we in New Zealand are not immune from what Borat rightly called this war of terror. While we did not join the coalition of the killing in the illegal invasion of Iraq we have had our troops in there since and, more importantly, the US spy base at Waihopai, shrouded in secrecy but involved in spying for the US military, plays a key role in the global war of terror. And on top of that we are dependent on the cheap oil flowing out of the Middle East like everyone else. We didn't go to war but we are addicted to oil just like the rest.

The Swedish government made a decision that it didn't want to be addicted to oil and has made a commitment to reduce its oil dependence. The Swedish Commission for Oil Independence, a government commission headed by the former Prime Minister, released its report on "Making Sweden an Oil Free Society" in June 2006. Their reasons for seeking oil independence were instructive. Firstly, they wanted to reduce their economic exposure to the inevitably long term increases in oil prices, secondly they wanted to reduce their dependence on a resource that caused so much war and suffering, thirdly they wanted to utilise their own natural energy sources, and finally they wanted to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

We cannot separate ourselves from the US war for oil in the Middle East until we reduce our oil addiction. We cannot cut our greenhouse gas emissions until we reduce our oil dependence. And we cannot reduce our out-of-control trade deficit until we cut our oil imports, the cost of which will only increase in time as the world runs out of cheap oil.

Our major use of oil is for transport but we can cut our oil use dramatically by using a combination of renewable biofuels, the introduction of plug-in hybrid cars that can be charged from the electricity grid overnight, increasing vehicle fuel efficiency, greater use of rail and shipping for freight, and greater use of public transport for passengers. We can introduce vehicle registration fees linked to fuel efficiency to reward those with fuel efficient cars. With our massive wood resources, we are in an ideal position to lead the way in the research of converting woody biomass into ethanol and according to a recent Royal Society research paper replacing all our petrol needs with ethanol derived from wood.

The Labour Government is proposing to give out one billion dollars in company tax cuts without any consideration to linking these to green tax changes. We could use the tax system to provide incentives for increased fuel efficiency in car fleets or the conversion of engines to the use of biofuel and other measures to reduce greenhouse emissions. This is a great opportunity missed, the trouble is that it's a Dunne deal.

We can increase public transport use by investing heavily in the public transport system. This combines fairness and sustainability because an affordable efficient public transport system enables everyone to get around when the price of petrol goes up again, as it inevitably will. I need hardly remind you that the Labour Government, like almost every other party except the Greens, is obsessed with roads and is making little investment in public transport systems compared to roads. And we need an investment in the IT infrastructure so that people can meet virtually and work from a distance rather than having to travel.

All of these things are possible in New Zealand if we had the political will to do it. Labour are possibly proposing to do some of them in a half hearted kind of way, but hardly enough to result in a plateau of our use of oil let alone decreasing our oil use.

Climate change scorecard
This is not an evil government but it is a timid government, frightened of doing what needs to be done on climate change. At a time when we need the courage and vision of a Michael Joseph Savage we have a government of the meek. We have thousands of pages of drafts and consultation documents but after seven years of Labour led government we have precious little action on climate change. This is a government that is still too scared to tell Mighty River Power, a state owned enterprise, that they cannot build their new coal fired power station near Whangarei. And Labour is the best of the rest of the bunch.

So, in order to help give the other parties a bit of a friendly push along, today we are launching our climate change scorecard on the performance of the Parliamentary parties on facing up to the challenge of climate change. This is a snapshot of other parties' climate change policies and we will update it regularly. It is not a pretty record but there has been progress - most of the other parties in Parliament have finally admitted that human induced climate change is real.

Labour, after much dithering and changing of its mind, finally seems to be using the resources of government to develop some draft policy. But it still lacks urgency and it will mean that we will not meet our Kyoto commitments to cut our emissions to 1990 levels by 2012 without purchasing carbon credits on the international market at considerable cost.

The Maori Party recognises that the solution to climate change is not just about changing energy sources but also about changing our consumption behaviour. They have a big picture understanding but little explicit policy at this stage.

The National Party has only recently emerged from the climate change denial swamp, but at least it has emerged. National still has a tendency to be destructive rather than constructive in its approach. It doesn't have a lot of its own ideas beyond its yet-to-be-defined emissions trading scheme and giving carbon credits to foresters.

New Zealand First recognises the reality of human induced climate change but thinks that planting trees will be sufficient to deal with it and has consistently opposed the carbon pollution charge.

Late last year United Future finally pulled together a policy on climate change with some ideas picked up from elsewhere which is a start. Unfortunately they still oppose a carbon pollution charge and are not fully committed to the Kyoto climate protection treaty.

Act hardly warrants a mention.

You will see that Labour does the best out of Labour and National but we are hoping that National will clean up their act and provide a bit of competition. It would give us a lot of pleasure to see National and Labour compete on climate change policy, with each other and indeed with the Greens.

The Greens don't get 100% on this scorecard either. We have been leading the debate but we don't have all the answers. We put forward a pretty comprehensive plan in our "Turn Down the Heat" document released in March, some of which was picked up by the other parties which was great. We put forward a series of six private members bills that addressed six different dimensions of reducing our greenhouse emissions and futureproofing our economy in November, but we have yet to have these pulled from the ballot in Parliament. We want to engage further with the other parties, with civil society and with developments overseas and, in particular, we need more answers to deal with emissions from agriculture, though organics can play some role.

One of the criteria we used in assessing other parties' climate policies was whether the policy was fair. If we are to get community buy-in to the changes needed to save the planet then the policies must be fair. For example, it is unfair simply to hand out permits to pollute to the existing electricity generators who produce carbon dioxide. They should be made to pay for at least part of their pollution to create an economic incentive to cut their emissions and to reward those generators that do not pollute. And the income stream gathered by the Government in selling off carbon permits should be used to fund schemes that cut the cost to those who can least afford it. We need massive investment in home insulation so that houses don't need lots if external heating and cooling, insulation reduces energy use and makes houses warmer and healthier. We need massive investment in our public transport system so that people have real alternatives to taking the car. Otherwise climate charges just become another charge on those who can least afford it without giving them any new choices.

Overall what comes through on this scorecard is the lack of urgency. Most of the other parties share the Government's mania for road building, a fetish about GDP growth, and a fear of reducing the greenhouse emissions from the sacred dairy cow. And these fears, fetishes and manias get in the way of dealing with the most important issue facing the human race, human induced climate change.

Conclusion
Martin Luther King said "Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expedience asks the question, "is it politic?" And vanity asks the question, "Is it popular?" But conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right."

We stand at a moment in the history of our species and our planet when we must act on climate change because it is right to do so. It would be immoral for us to steal from our children by polluting their atmosphere. It would be immoral of us to keep wiping out the species of the world so that our children inherit the sixth great extinction event.

People everywhere are waking up to the urgency of climate change. People care about their children and want them to inherit a world of abundance. And people are becoming more and more interconnected in this increasingly small planet of ours and demanding action.

There is a great wave of an alternative globalisation, a people's globalisation. This wave will sweep over the political system and break over the heads of the tired old political parties and the old ways of doing things.

Some say that there is only one superpower left in the world. But I say there is another great superpower on the rise, and it is people, it is people, it is people.