Tom Youngman

UKYCC Blog: What the FCCC!? Annex-tra thing to remember

Rather less exciting than my last publication, this time it’s a little piece explaining what the phrases ‘Annex 1’, ‘Annex 2’ and ‘Non-Annex 1’ mean when mentioned (as they often are) at UN climate change negotiations. Covers more interesting issue than it sounds like from that - historic emissions and responsibility for climate change, trade-offs between carbon cuts and development and the changing role of ‘BRIC’ nations such as India and China.

Extract:

One of the trickiest areas of climate change negotiation in the United Nations is differentiating between ‘developed’ and ‘less developed’ countries. The ‘historic emissions‘ of greenhouse gases by countries such as the UK, USA and Germany allowed them to reach the high level of development and wealth that they now enjoy. Less developed countries are unsurprisingly reluctant to pass up opportunities for development and improvements in well-being in the name of carbon emission reduction, especially when the historic emitters are still the largest per person polluters.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) made sure this was accounted for when it came into force in 1994, dividing countries into two sections: Annex I and Annex II. The Annexes divide countries into groups based on how responsible they are for climate change and how able they are to reduce global emissions. The forty Annex I countries are ‘developed’ economies and economies ‘in transition’; Annex II is a subgroup made up of twenty-three developed economies.

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Click here to read the full article.

My article in The Ecologist

I wrote an article a couple of months ago for The Ecologist on environmental activism, when it’s most effective and the direction I think it should take. The strapline given to it is pretty apt: “constructive engagement, optimism and campaigns that benefit local residents are the best tactics to move eco-activism forward”.

After Copenhagen, I sat down with the twenty or so pupils in the ‘Environmental Action Group’ at my school. I thought I’d get the Copenhagen Accord up on the projector and try to make sense of what comes out of two weeks of negotiations by the leaders of the free world. The only thing worse than a bad response is no response at all. There was nothing to make sense of, nothing to comment on. Twenty teenagers waited for me to tell them that something good had resulted from the conference. As I struggled to find anything worth pointing out in the document, twenty teenagers sat in silence. Some of them never came to our weekly meetings again.

What COP15 proved is that we cannot wait for our elected representatives (and for those my age and younger, representatives who we have no chance to elect) to take the first step.

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It continues a lot more positively than that particular introduction, I encourage you to read on here!

Idea of the day: Green Investment Bank bonds for the public

Many people have compared decarbonisation to the world wars. An international crisis, requiring all of society to unite in action and, to an extent, in frugality. This is a natural comparison to make - the first major recycling took place in the wars, people are once again growing their own food at home or in public spaces, the ‘make do and mend’ mentality is returning - but this has only really been matched on a domestic scale.

The real war effort took place in industry. In a matter of weeks, typewriter factories transformed to make machine guns and ribbon factories produced parachutes. The removal of iron railings for smelting, in reality, largely produced useless pig iron - but the psychological impact made it worthwhile regardless.

So maybe we need to look to other areas of the world wars for inspiration - in their positive action and not just their frugality. After all, frugality is only a way to expend more energy in other areas. We need an industrial revolution to match that of the internet, one which will transform our society completely, and that needs funding.

Current government plans to fund ‘green’ investment revolve around proposals for a Green Investment Bank. DECC and the Treasury have said to have been disagreeing over the details for some time, and it has been dramatically restricted (some say to a level which will prohibit its success), but the concept is sound. Now it needs investment. These are projects that will pay back over time, but do require a large capital investment - hard to achieve through taxation.

How was large capital investment achieved through the world wars? Bonds.

Government savings bonds still exist and are a vital way of raising revenue. Many people would like to invest in transition technologies that will lead us to a sustainable economy, but don’t have the right medium in which to do so. The accountability of democratic government will inspire trust to invest much more than the ethically ineffective shareholder-owned banking system. Government backed bonds would be safe, suitable for pension funds and resources would be available to ensure money went to the right places. Combined with investment through taxation, the pot available would be huge.

The public recognise the benefits of a low-carbon economy, on the whole, and are awaiting opportunities to invest intelligently, with proper information on how their money is spent. This is a luxury denied us by the current banking system and one which a system of bonds alongside the Green Investment Bank could deliver.

In the USA during the second world war, American Boy & Girl Scouts sold $8 billion worth of ‘war bonds’. That tactic could even be repeated again - changing the face of British banking. Now those would be some bankers deserving of bonuses.

Corporate Carbon Reporting: boring but important.

Today BusinessGreen report about Sainsbury’s boss, Justin King’s, fierce opposition to proposals by DECC for mandatory carbon reporting.

I’m going to be honest, on the face of it this is a horrifically boring area. However, in reality it’s quite important. For a company to act effectively on it’s environmental and social impact, it has to know what it is, and forcing companies to find out is a good place to start inspiring action. Puma’s in-depth, full supply chain carbon reporting is evidence to this.

Justin King compared the proposals to food hygiene rules, which he said created “a lot of work for a lot of people without adding to the sum total of human knowledge or equipping consumers to really make choices”.

Here he’s hit the nail on the head. Consumers need to be equipped to make educated choices, and carbon reporting, if done in the right way, could be perfect for this. I imagine being in a supermarket with 5 different brands of baked beans, for example, available, each with a label indicating its carbon cost. If the price difference was marginal, would you opt for the one that had the lowest carbon? Soon it could be easily made into a selling point. 

Carbon reporting, if done in the right way, could revolutionise consumer choice. The proposals need to ensure that the carbon footprint is reported not the administrative staff in the company HQ but to the customers and shareholders that make the decisions.