However, much of the environmental discourse in the public domain falls trap to the industry’s spin. A recent post on the Guardian Environment blog by Duncan Clark offered a plea for caution within the environmental movement around calls for cheaper energy. As one of the groups criticised in this blog – the Climate Justice Collective – (‘a new climate change direct action group’) we felt the need to respond.

Our bills are not being driven up by the cost of renewables but, rather, by the rising cost of fossil fuels. According to a recent report by the government’s Committee on Climate change, the investment in low-carbon energy accounted for just 7 per cent of the rise in the cost of energy between 2004 and 2010 (pg 6). 64 per cent of this price hike was caused by the rise in the wholesale price of gas (pg 4).

In his blog post, though, Clark attempts to use this same report to support his insistence that renewable energy is more expensive than polluting alternatives. According to Clark, the report tells us that renewable subsidies and carbon taxes will add more to bills than rising gas prices in the coming decade. But this is simply false: the report says that low-carbon measures will add £110 to bills by 2020, in comparison to £175 from rising gas prices (pg 5).

The report in question does, as Clark points out, predict that low-carbon investment will account for 20 per cent of domestic electricity bills by 2020 (pg 17). But the report was written prior to the release of recent research from the LSE, which forecasts that the cost of wind power is set to dramatically fall in the next few years. Secondly, even if the report’s prediction is accurate, this does not support Clark’s conclusion that renewables are more expensive than fossil fuels. The rising price of fossil fuels has been the main driver of bill rises in the past decade and is set to continue escalating. Even if the cost of renewables was to make up a fifth of electricity bills by the end of the decade, this does not mean that bills would not have been higher should we have replaced this new low-carbon energy with more fossil fuels. Clark seems to ignore the introduction to the report, which explicitly states that the evidence ‘disproves’ the claim ‘that future huge investments in low-carbon capacity will drive very dramatic increases in energy bills by 2020′ (pg 6).

In all, Clark’s blog fails to give us any reason to think that avoiding climate change must inevitably lead to higher energy bills. But the problems don’t end there. The view pressed throughout seems to be that people are in a position that would allow them to choose to pay more for their energy, should they be persuaded of the benefits of renewables. Our mission, says Clark, has to be to ‘make people care sufficiently about climate change that they’re prepared to pay more for energy ‘. Is the suggestion here really that the millionsof people that have to choose between heating and eating in the winter should, in fact, be choosing between heating, eating and investing in clean energy? When rocketing energy costs threaten your life and livelihood how could anything – even the threat of global climate catastrophe – persuade you that you should be paying even more for your energy?

The problem is that the rule of the market makes energy access dependent upon ability to pay. This means that the people who are in a position to pay more for their energy – wealthy individuals and powerful corporations – have their excessive and intensely polluting consumption habits subsidised by the poor who are left to freeze. No-one is saying that the solution here is cheaper bills for all. The point is that we need to fundamentally change the way that our energy system – and the economy and society at large – are organised so that energy decisions are made not on the basis of profit but, rather, on the basis of securing people’s rights to heating, eating and other essentials.

What many environmentalists are starting to realise, particularly in light of the latest global failure at Rio+20, is that addressing climate change will require systemic overhaul in this same direction. It is now the energy companies, not politicians, that call the shots, as is evidenced by recent exposés of the Big Six exercising influence over the government through lending staff, informal consultations and buying access to secret lobbying meetings. The energy companies’ business-models are built on fossil fuel extraction as this is most profitable for them. So, as long as the energy companies retain their monopoly power and influence, politicians will keep on the fossil fuel bandwagon. And, as ‘conventional’ modes of extraction become more difficult, fossil fuels will keep on getting more polluting and more expensive.

The profit-driven fossil fuel economy is the root cause of both climate change and fuel poverty. As long as our energy is a commodity designed, first and foremost, to generate private profit, our needs for warm homes and a safe environment will be sidelined. But what if communities reclaimed control, begun to generate their own renewable energy and distributed it according to need, not ability to pay? In fact, this is already happening across the country in the form of energy co-ops springing up everywhere from Brixton to Brighton, Bristol to Manchester. By building our own alternatives like these in the context of a growing broader movement for the radical reorganisation of society along democratic, fair and sustainable lines, we can make a start on tackling both poverty and climate change together.

Building a movement with the numbers and relevance necessary to take on this task, however, means rejecting an environmentalism that refuses to call for cheaper energy for those being deprived of their basic needs by rising bills. As well as swallowing the lies of the fossil fuel industry, this type of environmentalism can only alienate the very people we need on board, ensuring that the twin crises of rising bills and rising sea levels will just keep getting ever-deeper. Instead, we need a climate justice approach which acknowledges the shared systemic causes of environmental destruction and poverty and sees the pursuit of ecological goals and social justice as inseparable.

When Clayton Thomas-Muller, a Cree organiser from Canada, sat on a panel at Rio+20 to announce a campaign to prevent Shell Oil from drilling in the Arctic, he was accompanied by billionaire Sir Richard Branson, Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace International, and actress Lucy Lawless, (perhaps better known as Xena, Warrior Princess).

‘Resisting environmental destruction on indigenous lands is a movement of the Inupiak, Iliut, Gwich’in, Dene, Inuit, Tlingit, Yupik and Athabascan tribes, who have risen up to challenge the fossil fuel industry and demand our rights to an environment that is conducive to subsistence,’ he began.

Of the people on the panel, Thomas-Muller was the only one directly impacted by the issue. Yet, amidst the Hollywood glare, he was not the one to whom the media flocked.

After the media scrum followed the stars away, Thomas-Muller, in long black ponytail and t-shirt bearing the logo of his organisation, the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), told me, ‘The Greenpeace campaign is good, but it’s a symbolic campaign. What’s really going to make a difference is Alaska natives, Inuit living in Canada, strong social movement organising, civil disobedience, and the assertion of sovereignty by the people of the circumpolar regions who have taken care of the Arctic for the last 12,000 years.’

His point reflects one of the principles ceaselessly voiced by IEN and other groups that adhere to the tenets of environmental justice: ‘We speak for ourselves.’

Even in his opening statement, one imagines that Thomas-Muller felt compelled to list the Peoples of the Canadian Arctic to at least invoke their presence at a summit at which they were nowhere present. Unfortunately, Rio+20, like other global summits of this nature, is largely inaccessible to the people, and the Peoples, who are at once most impacted by socio-environmental destruction and most central to the struggle against it.

At Rio Centro, the vast conference center where Rio+20 took place last week, the food court was adorned with artful photos of Amazonian natives with bare chests and ceremonial paint and feathers scenically situated in their natural habitats. But nowhere in the conference were such people visible in flesh and blood.

Indeed, when 400 Indigenous representatives arrived en masse from the nearby Kari-Oca encampment to deliver a declaration to UN officials, they were rebuffed by Brazilian military police and prevented entrance by UN officials.

Only a handful of the Indigenous delegates were allowed to enter the summit grounds. When they did, it was far and away the most powerful statement in a week dominated by vague calls for “protecting our future,” a concerted push by governments and corporations for an ill-defined “green economy”, and widespread celebration of “public-private partnerships” that will bring ‘sustained and sustainable economic growth’.

At that ceremonial entrance, Lakota Chief Orville Looking-Horse in full war-bonnet, Windel Bolinget of the Igorot people in the Philippines, Mexican Nahua-Otomi native Berenice Sanchez of the Global Alliance Against REDD, Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network, and Marcos Terrena, an indigenous leader from Brazil, came shaking rattles and ululating cries of war. The band of native warriors from many tribes was quickly and constantly swarmed by media and delegates alike. Everyone wanted a photograph of the procession, for their mother if not for their editor.

At a pre-arranged place in one of the outdoor areas of the summit, the Indigenous leaders presented the newly minted Declaration of Kari-Oca II to UN Director for Sustainable Development Nikhil Seth, and Gilberto Carvalho, the Chief Minister to the Presidency of Brazil. The two officials acted with grace and diplomacy. What else could they do?

After the hand-off of the document, Alberto Saldamando, Zapotec-Chicano, and the legal counsel for IEN, noted that, ‘The significance of this event was underscored by the flight of a condor overhead as the declaration was handed off.’

The Declaration of Kari-Oca, agreed to by over 500 grassroots Indigenous Peoples from many nations, is by far the strongest, clearest, and most purposeful statement made at Rio+20, and is worth quoting at length:

‘We see the goals of UNCSD Rio+20, the “Green Economy” and its premise that the world can only ‘save’ nature by commodifying its life-giving capacities as a continuation of the colonialism that Indigenous Peoples and our Mother Earth have faced and resisted for 520 years.’

‘Since Rio 1992,’ the Declaration states, ‘we as Indigenous Peoples see that colonisation has become the very basis of the globalisation of trade and the dominant capitalist global economy. The exploitation and plunder of the world’s ecosystems and biodiversity, as well as the violations of the inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples that depend on them, have intensified. Our rights to self-determination, to our own governance and own self-determined development, our inherent rights to our lands, territories and resources are increasingly and alarmingly under attack by the collaboration of governments and transnational corporations. Indigenous activists and leaders defending their territories continue to suffer repression, militarisation, including assassination, imprisonment, harassment and vilification as “terrorists.” The violation of our collective rights faces the same impunity. Forced relocation or assimilation assault our future generations, cultures, languages, spiritual ways and relationship to the earth, economically and politically.’

While the declaration will bear no political significance within the United Nations, this is beside the point. As Alberto Saldamando told me, ‘What they are doing here in the UN is to create more markets, and the fact is, the only resources that remain on this planet are on Indigenous Peoples’ lands. This is not a matter of words, it’s a matter of survival. What you see before you is a gathering of people who are under attack.’

Of course, the exclusion of native Peoples from the UN process comes as no surprise; this is, after all, the United Nations, not the United Peoples, and it is the nation-state itself that bears responsibility for five centuries of genocide.

So, amidst our common rubber-necking at the “failure of Rio,” the weak and bland final text, and the so-called crisis of multilateralism, (not to mention the crisis of capitalism and the crisis of global governance), it is worth remembering the Peoples whose very existence is erased, de facto, by the United Nations process – and upon whom the stewardship of the earth’s remaining resources largely depends.

Given how backwards the Rio Summit’s priorities were, it’s hardly surprising that negotiations ended before they began. But a slow swarm of black ministerial limousines have crawled across Rio regardless, with Ministers, Presidents and Prime Ministers queuing up to talk the language of sustainability, while mostly advancing corporate interests. It came to a close yesterday with the adoption of a final  declaration called, without a hint of irony, ‘The Future We Want.’

The Rio declaration contains 283 paragraphs of blank prose that ‘reaffirms,’ ‘notes,’ and ‘acknowledges’ a long shopping list of activities, but ‘commits’ to virtually nothing. There is no program of action, figures, dates, targets, nothing at all that locks countries into taking action. It is a political non-event that turgidly regurgitates some of the sustainability-speak of the original Rio conference 20 years ago, with none of its ambition.

Despite that, there are a few straws for optimists to clutch at. The most significant-sounding, from an environmental perspective, is that the text ‘reaffirms’ a commitment to ‘phase out harmful and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.’ This references previous statements released by the G20, the group of 20 countries accounting for over 80 per cent of the global economy, but it is the first time fossil fuel subsidies get such a mention in a document with multilateral sign-ons. However, no practical, legal or financial provisions are envisaged to support this goal, and the proposal lacks any nuance.

Fossil fuel subsidy removal is likely to fail unless it is phased in while subsidies are shifted towards support for public transport and renewable energy development, as popular backlash against recent attempts to remove fossil fuel consumer subsidies in Bolivia and Nigeria make clear. Meanwhile, significant subsidies for fossil fuel producers in industrialised countries, which should be the first target for action, remain in place, while the Rio declaration simultaneously supports ‘cleaner fossil fuels technologies’ (a point lobbied for by Canada, Russia and the coal lobby)—which, translated for the non-sustainability-speakers means things such as unproven and expensive carbon capture and storage technology.

Elsewhere in the Rio declaration, there is a welcome restatement of the original Rio principles, notably the ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ between countries that climate justice advocates have been so keen to defend within global climate negotiations. The ‘right to water’ is reaffirmed too, although without any new measures to enact this principle.

One of the most significant aspects of the final declaration, meanwhile, is what it does not say. It is entirely silent about the ‘nature, origins and evolution of the global economic and financial
crisis that is wreaking havoc in the world today’ and undermining sustainability, as Professor Alejandro Nadal of the Centre for Economic Studies in Mexico points out. Yet finance quietly dominated from the sidelines, and to historians looking back on Rio in 20 years time, it may well be that the most significant agreement was not the summit’s final statement itself, but a $30 billion currency swap deal between Brazil and China that was announced at a G20 side-event.

Thankfully, the declaration also does not say as much as it had threatened to in terms of advancing corporate-driven ‘green economy’ proposals, which would have put a price on nature as a prelude to creating new markets in ‘ecosystem’ commodities. The G77 (a grouping of 133 developing countries, including China) blocked this language, under pressure from civil society, and the resulting agreement speaks merely of ‘green economy policies.’ That has been interpreted here as a victory for pluralism, with different countries free to define their own vision of what a sustainable economy might look like.

Some residues from this corporate-driven approach can still be found in the Rio declaration, however. Although the green economy was billed as the conceptual replacement for ‘sustainable development,’ it is actually the phrase ‘sustained growth’ that has moved to the top of the rhetorical hit-parade, with 16 mentions in the text. This echoes the emphasis on ‘green growth’ in the G20 declaration, which pre-empted the Rio summit.

One of the few substantial decisions, a proposal to upgrade the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in the pecking order of global institutions, is also a cause for concern. In theory, a beefed-up UNEP should be a welcome development, re-balancing the multilateral system to put a greater emphasis on environmental protection. But UNEP is one of the principle targets of a new global campaign, launched here in Rio, to endthecorporatecaptureoftheUN. Through its ‘The Economics of Ecosystem Services and Green Economy reports’, in particular, UNEP has positioned itself over the last few years as the main cheerleader for a corporate-driven ‘green economy’ agenda that would leave key decisions over the future of the planet to the financial sector.

Moving beyond the declaration itself, the inadequacies of the Rio+20 declaration are a symptom of a broader crisis of multilateralism. Although the conference was marshaled to a conclusion without the all-night, beyond-deadline chaos of climate negotiations, it did so by agreeing only on lowest-common-denominator platitudes, and reaffirming other initiatives. The final declaration here is no less of a stalemate than those in the WTO or UN climate negotiations, and we know from those processes that multilateral stasis is a breeding ground for bilateral and regional agreements that stack the cards against poor countries. The outcomes turned the tables on Durban, with the EU expressing disappointment while the G77 was cautiously positive, but the overall results were the same: a victory for the dirty energy agenda of industrialised countries and corporations, while people and the planet continue to lose ground.

Tom  To introduce the report to someone who is unaware of what this stimulus would provide, what effectively is this report saying?

John  We focus on climate jobs not green jobs as a whole. The report explains how and why we urgently need climate jobs that will directly reduce CO₂ emissions and help solve the environmental and economic crisis. If there is investment in public transport (buses and trains), walking and cycling; that will create jobs. It will create jobs in the building of infrastructure; it will create jobs in the running of the public transport services. We estimate that if this was done in a serious way, it will double the amount of people working in public transport, in other words add another 300,000 public transport jobs. Public transport is a really good example of how investment will bring real social and environmental benefits as well put a lot of people back to work.

This can be repeated in insulating homes, and investment in renewables like offshore wind and wave power. The government initiative needs to be there, particularly for the high level of investment that will be required for something like wave power.

Tom  We hear that there is no alternative to cuts and the need for austerity. Your report, One Million Climate Jobs, helps to debunk some of these myths. Give us an introduction to the politics of austerity and the demands of your report for a fiscal stimulus to get the economy going again, but crucially, for a new kind of economy.

John  We think that the current austerity programmes that the government is trying to put through are self defeating. There is another way forward which helps solve the economic crisis we are in, and the environmental crisis we are in.  That is investment. Our report details with some very specific figures, the costings of a million jobs in climate friendly industries and the cutting of overall emissions for the UK by 80 per cent. This is a message of hope. If the current government claim to be the greenest government ever, (for which unfortunately there is not much competition) they have not been very strong. We need much more direct government action in order to create these one million climate jobs that will help both crises.

Tom  Your report is original in comparing the initiative to the National Health Service (NHS). Could you explain the difference between having the climate jobs as public sector employees instead of going down the more traditional route of tax breaks and subsides for market led growth?

John  I don’t think we would be saying there would be no room at all for subsidises and quantitative easing (QE), but we are not convinced that it in itself will work. We are not convinced because it is still relying very heavily on the private sector to come up with radical and significant change. The scale of the economic and climate crisis calls for government action.

Tom  This report is very much a top down initiative. What would you say to critics who might suggest that instead of local authorities and national governments; encourage local communities to organise and lead the way?

John  It certainly argues that governments need to take the initiative and lead the investment. But, what it is being careful not to say is that government needs to micro-manage. I think we saw during the last Labour government, there was a lot of micro management of the economy and I don’t think that works. There is a big difference between the government supplying the overall investment, but then trusting local authorities, local people to manage their own projects in as imaginative and creative way as possible, because what might be right for Cardiff in South Wales may be a different approach for a town like Bournemouth in the South Coast.

Tom  How could we encourage local communities the need for, say wind farms, whom may resist the implementation of such wind farms or renewable energy initiatives in their neighbourhood if they are not the most attractive things?

John  As we know there is strong local opposition to wind turbines. We have to work with the local community. I don’t think you can just railroad communities, forcing them to adopt them. This sort of approach is unacceptable and would be self defeating. Local authorities and national governments need to make the national, economic and environmental case for wind turbines, but when it comes to the sighting of wind turbines, it has to be done sensitively. While in principle they are a good thing; there are some genuine concerns amongst some local communities, particularly the noise, and we need to be very sensitive to that.

Tom  How do we popularise these arguments and go on to establish lasting communication and co-operation between environmentalists and trade unionists?

John  We communicate to the people, and in particular, people who are feeling in despair that they can’t get a job (particularly the younger generation). This is one of the reasons behind the Climate Jobs Caravan.

In a sense this is almost dramatising it. It can be street theatre. We will be going out to the main public squares, in towns and cities across the country with a van, with a message, with videos, with people, saying, actually there is another way! No need to be in despair; there is some hope.

But we are also hoping that campaigns and coalitions will emerge in the various towns and cities, and work together to put real concrete pressure on their local authorities to move in a direction of investing in climate jobs.

Tom  Could you explain what is happening and how people can get involved with the Climate Jobs Caravan?

John  We are covering over 25 towns and cities up and down the country in two parallel tours. It begins on the 12^th May and ends on the 25^th May. One is covering Scotland and the north of England, and one is covering the midlands, south of England and Wales. It depends on the town and city, as local people are heavily involved, as they should be, at the local events. The whole message will be is things can be different and don’t have to be as they are now.

One of the key things is the caravan has been jointly organised by environmental campaigners and trade unionists working together. We hope an alliance will come out of this to put joint pressure on local government and authorities.

We would be disappointed if the caravan was just a one off piece of street theatre. We want more than that. We want to have these lasting alliances working fairly effectively and practical ways together to influence local authorities, regional authorities and influence the climate opinion generally in people’s areas.

Tom  Now to talk about the transition period that would need to take place to move towards a low carbon economy. How would we guarantee that those who lose high carbon jobs, would be moved to sustainable, secure jobs in the low carbon economy? How do we protect these people?

John  This is where a government led initiative is critical. If too much of this is left to incentivising the private sector then we can’t get this sort of just transition. Government would be heavily involved in reskilling, retraining and educating the workers in the unsustainable industries; to ensure they are properly equipped to move into the more sustainable and climate friendly jobs. Now, that may happen with fiscal incentives, but the argument is that it will not guarantee them that switch.

Tom  Imagine we have moved into a low carbon economy. How do we prevent retailers and/or consumers/local communities from simply using those energy efficiencies to produce and consume more energy as opposed to reduce our demand for finite resources?

John  Once we are at this nirvana of having created a million climate jobs, how do we ensure that people don’t just use more energy? This is where fiscal measure have a role to play. We have got to look at the price of carbon. It has to be done fairly so poorer communities don’t lose out. We need a carbon tax, or some sort of equivalent fiscal measure, where the people who consume the most are paying the price of that consumption.

Tom  There is growing research highlighting the dangers of emerging bubbles in carbon offsetting and cutting. Are there any calls for more rigorous regulation in finance that complement the transition to a low carbon economy?

John  To forestall that happening, my own view, is that there needs to be much greater control and regulation of international finance.

The National Climate Service (NCS) is one initiative amongst many others. We are not isolating this as the world’s total answer to unemployment and climate change but it’s an answer amongst many others. To tackle the crises of our time, we will need several approaches.

There are many other great ideas put forward by the likes of the Green Party, which I think will sit very nicely alongside this initiative.

The task is to find a positive answer to the problems we face; and the creation of a million climate jobs is a great first step as part of that approach.

John Stewart is Chair of Campaign Against Climate Change, was a leading activist in the campaign to prevent the expansion of Third Runway at Heathrow and Chair of Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise (HACAN). He is currently on the organising committee for the Climate Caravan.

http://www.campaigncc.org/

http://www.hacan.org.uk/

Scientists have forewarned for a long time that global warming would be accompanied by a breakdown of normal weather and that we would see more and more extreme fluctuations. Many of us in the UK are cocooned from what is happening by our central heating and may find it difficult to attribute exceptional and unpredictable weather changes to climate change. We soon forget the freezing weather we had this time last year, or the rather warm autumn, and the flooding in summer 2008. We brush off the fact that this year was the deadliest ever in the tornado belt in the USA – 753 twisters in April alone. The flooding in Pakistan and Australia was also unprecedented, that in Australia covering land three times the size of the UK.

I recently went to Durban, South Africa to attend and demonstrate outside the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP17 for short). I spoke to many people and although there are no words for climate change in Xhosa or Zulu, what they had to say was disturbing. People told me “We used to be able to read the skies”; “the seasons have changed”; “our ancestors have always lived here but the rain now falls on the other side of the mountain”.

One of my contacts in South Africa was Bandile Mdlalose. She is general secretary of Abahlali baseMjondolo, a shack-town dwellers organisation, representing 64 ‘informal settlements’, mainly in and around Durban. Bandile took us around the Kennedy Road shanty town, just a few kilometres away from the talks where the delegates were meeting in rather more salubrious conditions.

The morning the COP17 conference started there were exceptional sub-tropical storms. At 5am a couple of the shack homes were swept away in the Kennedy Road settlement. I met one former owner and she told me that when the emergency services did eventually arrive they gave her a blanket and a tin of baked beans. That was it. I don’t know if this victim linked the storms to climate change, but others from her settlement were amongst those demonstrating outside the climate talks. In all 11 people in the region died that weekend from the rains.

These people who live off the land and in the shanty towns are our climate antennae.

Those of us who went over to the talks in Durban feared the worst. The pundits said nothing much would emerge.

Presidents and prime ministers from the major nations stayed away, with the exception of South African president Jacob Zuma, who had little choice. He opened the conference with fine words: “For most people in the developing world and Africa, climate change is a matter of life and death… In these talks, states, parties will need to look beyond their national interests to find a global solution for the common good and benefit of all humanity.” But how much progress could we expect from the person who had the year before sanctioned the world’s biggest ‘dry cooled’ coal fired power station at Medupi, on South Africa’s northern borders.  For the record, South Africa’s CO2 emissions are higher than those of the UK, while its GDP per head is only a sixth as much, and it is responsible for two fifths of Africa’s CO2 emissions from fuel burning.

Given the backcloth of hypocrisy and our low expectations it was perhaps a surprise that the COP17 was not a complete debacle. After the Copenhagen and Cancun UN climate talks, when voluntary deals were struck that were not legally binding, it seemed implausible that rich and poor nations would one day strike a deal. After much wrangling, and the talks were extended by two days, the world governments collectively committed themselves to writing – over four years – a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The outcome only arose because of massive concessions by China and India in particular. In essence this reverses the Chinese opposition from Copenhagen.

Yet while ministers were fiddling at the talks the planet continues to burn. Remember that last year some 200,000 people died (and that is a conservative estimate) because of climate change, more than all of those killed by wars. This number is going to increase every year, sometimes exponentially, and will lead to massive migration accompanied by xenophobia and more war. Very few people now say that it was possible to restrict global warming to two degrees over pre-industrial levels, thereby leading to climate catastrophe.

Another reason that some people may find it hard to focus upon climate-related issues is because of the current highly insecure economic situation. The over-riding argument put out by the industrial nations, that there is no money to combat climate change, is both not true and does not make sense economically.

George Monbiot points out that by March 2009, the US Federal Reserve had committed $7.77 trillion to the banks. That is just one government’s contribution, yet it amounts to 12 times the annual global climate change bill.

On just one day the Federal Reserve made $1.2 trillion available – more than the world has committed to tackling climate change in 20 years. To quote the Conservative MP Tim Yeo, it is as if government has decided to cut investment in building spitfires at the outbreak of the Second World War.

To me, the richest nations who called the shots at the Durban conference have cynically delayed putting off any actions so that they can protect their own interests. The political will is not there, as yet. But things can be changed.

Durban was inspiring, not just because of the meagre progress that was made in the talks, but because I saw people making the connections between their own and the struggles of others, and making the connection with climate change. An alternative People’s Space was set up at the university where every day hundreds and even thousands of people were involved in meetings and workshops and other events. In addition there was a symbolic ‘occupation’ outside the conference. These events became the organising hubs for a number of demonstrations, protests and other activities.

Mid-way through the conference, on December 3, an estimated 12,000 people from all Africa, indeed the world, marched outside it. Among those demonstrating, indeed singing and dancing, outside the conference was Zandile, who lived in a slum outside Johannesburg.

She was among a group of women who had travelled for 17 hours by bus to be there. Members of her community were fighting for a decent a regular electricity supply, trying to stop Eskom, the state-owned electricity provider, from forcing residents to buy electricity in advance and at exorbitant rates. Zandile told me she was both a communist and a lesbian, and the group she came with were actively organising against rapists. Zandile told me about the flooding, and how it was impossible to do anything when the mud came up to her knees.

One of the features of the march on December 3 was the number of trade unionists and others wearing either the SA campaign T-shirt (‘Cool it with Climate Jobs’) or the National Union of Mineworkers T-shirt (‘Create and Retain Climate Jobs’). The following day the South African million climate jobs campaign held a one-day conference. The South African campaign has very wide, and active, backing from unions and environmental organisations. They produced a report setting out the possibilities for one million climate jobs now. The conference room held 400 people, and at times was almost full. Probably 500 attended over the course of the day. A bit under 100 were foreigners. Of the South Africans, the majority were workers, unemployed, or poor rural women. The conference was covered on the national TV news, with Philip Pearson of the TUC one of the main people explaining climate jobs to camera.

On December 6, climate activists went on a ‘toxic tour’ to an industrial zone in South Durban and demonstrated outside the Engen refinery, responsible for enormous amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, accompanied by all sorts of poisonous fumes. There is a suspiciously high incidence of blood and lung cancers. So bad is the place, and so worried were the authorities, that the refining was stopped for the whole of COP17. When a fire broke out on October 10 at the Engen refinery, a hundred children from the nearby primary school were taken to hospital. Children at this school have the highest recorded rate of asthma in the world, some 52 percent. One child was admitted to hospital for 5 days, and is now diagnosed as an asthmatic, possibly for life. The mother was given 30 rand (just over £3) compensation and a carton of orange juice.

Durban brought together sections of civil society, such as the waste pickers, people from the shanty towns, from the ‘food sovereignty’ movement, trade unionists, people from the churches, environmentalists, and even businesses, linking the dots to climate change.

I was born in South Africa, and left for the UK, in 1961, in my teens after my parents were imprisoned during the 1960 emergency for opposing apartheid.

At the time very few people thought it was possible to overthrow apartheid. It took many years for the world to realise how unjust apartheid was. At some stage it was necessary for the United Nations to pass resolutions condemning apartheid. In the end the apartheid regime was overthrown by a mass movement, bringing together different sectors and employing an enormous range of tactics.

Durban showed me that a political and social movement is emerging with regards to climate change, and not just in South Africa, like that which led to the overthrow of apartheid.

Peter Robinson is secretary of the Climate Alliance, an organisation which is trying to build bridges between environmentalists, trade unions, faith groups and community organisations. For more information email info@climatealliance.co.uk or look at www.climatealliance.co.uk

So what’s new?
Fracking. Hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking’, is the practice of injecting fluid and sand under pressure into a shale rock formation to open fractures and release gas trapped in the rock. Pollution had been reported near US gas wells as a result of spills, accidents or well development practices. It had been so severe that in Colorado a health impact assessment was called for.

Singleton won’t like this.
The local Green Party agreed to campaign against the practice and I agreed to lead the campaign. The planning application had been passed with ‘no objection’ from the parish or borough councils.

Are they crazy?
The county council minutes accepting the planning application noted: ‘The site is located on land designated as open countryside under policy SP2 of the Fylde Borough Local Plan. Policy SP2 states that development within the countryside will not be permitted except where it is required for the purposes of agriculture, horticulture, forestry or other uses appropriate to a rural area.’

Except for shale gas?
The minutes also said: ‘The proposed borehole would pass through the Sherwood sandstone, which is an important aquifer. The borehole would need to be constructed so as to avoid affecting the water resources in the aquifer.’

Is that possible? What about those ‘spills, accidents or well development practices’?
Just at that time the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) had started a consultation on the ‘strategic environmental assessment of the 14th onshore oil and gas licensing round’. Then came the House of Commons energy and climate change select committee investigation into shale gas.
I responded to both. I told the ministers and MPs about the ‘spills, accidents or well development practices’, about the risk of pollution to drinking water sources, river depletion, air pollution and health, the impact on locally produced food, on wildlife, on the farming and tourism economies of the region, and on house prices. And that’s before we got to explosions and earthquakes!
The first problem that became apparent was that hardly anyone in Singleton knew what was going on. The rig went up, but nobody I asked knew what it was. They didn’t like the look of it though – it was lit up at night ‘like Cape Canaveral’. And they certainly didn’t know about fracking.
We showed a video of the documentary Gasland, revealing toxic pollution of drinking water supplies and health problems occurring near the rigs. The response was sceptical but people were angry they hadn’t been told about it.
The company concerned, Cuadrilla Resources, sent out a community newsletter, three months after setting up a rig about 100 feet high.
Then came the local elections. In our leaflets, we questioned a number of claims the company had made in the newsletter. It claimed that ‘all our operations are regulated by the Environment Agency and Health and Safety Executive (HSE)’.

But there are no regulations that mention fracking!
The Environment Agency said: ‘We’ve made a site-specific decision not to issue a permit during the exploration phase.’ The HSE hadn’t been asked to look into the safety of the nearby primary school either.

The company newsletter insisted: ‘It’s safe for people and the environment.’
But in the US, Congress had ordered a scientific study to ‘help evaluate potential risks associated with hydraulic fracturing in an effort to protect communities’. Then Singleton was struck by an earthquake. And it was followed eight weeks later by a second earth tremor. Each occurred at the time fracking was taking place. The tremors were recorded as 2.3 and 1.5 magnitude – residents were shaken in their beds following a loud ‘cracking’ noise.
People blamed Cuadrilla; the British Geological Society agreed there may be a link. Cuadrilla announced that fracking had been suspended. A study into the potential link was ordered.

So who is writing the report?
Cuadrilla Resources. Its website states that ‘hydraulic fracturing will not recommence until discussions are satisfactorily concluded with the regulatory authorities’.

But fracking is not mentioned in UK regulations.
Cuadrilla has stated that the study ‘may result in new guidelines from the DECC before any further testing [ie fracking] is carried out’. Its news release states that ‘the intensity of the tremors is well below anything that could be realistically considered as an earthquake with any meaningful or tangible local impact.’

What do Singleton residents think?
Prior to the Cuadrilla statements, local members of the public had harangued its executives following a presentation at a council meeting, demanding to know whether their funds were able to pay legal compensation.

So this could mean the end of fracking in the Fylde?
Cuadrilla has acted with supreme self-confidence. Long before the expected report, in a statement dated three weeks after the second earth tremor, the company announced that it was still drilling the Singleton borehole through which the chemicals would be pumped, spending what has been described to residents as £50,000 a day.

Have any other problems occurred?
Breathlessness. A number of residents have reported being struck ill during the period that fracking took place. They reported feeling like ‘someone was standing on their chest’. The symptoms passed months later after the fracking had been stopped. Similar problems have been noted in the US.

So let’s get this clear. A company whose sole business is to unlock unconventional resources such as shale gas, an industry that has caused controversy in the US and may have been the cause of two earthquakes and serious local health problems, and this company is at the centre of government decision-making on the issue?
It was described by one commentator at the council meeting as ‘the tail wagging the dog’.

Does this only affect the Blackpool area?
No. At least one third of the country could be suitable for shale gas extraction. Cuadrilla claims that an ‘explosive expansion’ of thousands of wells a year is a practical proposition for the UK.

Fracking facts
Harmful chemicals: Drilling and fracking fluids contain harmful chemicals. Cuadrilla has said it uses a friction reducer (FR-40) ‘commonly found in contact lenses and face creams’. However, the safety data information provided to the Environment Agency suggests that caution is needed in handling them since they can cause ‘acute irritation’ to the eyes and skin. Many frack fluids are harmful to aquatic life, and streams and rivers have been left polluted with dozens of different species killed due to spillages, waste disposal and illicit dumping. The Endocrine Disruption Exchange lists the known health effects of hundreds of chemicals and products used by the industry. 
Air pollution: Common air emissions related to gas rigs include methane, nitrous oxides, volatile organic compounds (VOCs, such as benzene), particulate matter and sulphur dioxide. These can combine to form ozone, which can cause asthma and respiratory problems. Hydrogen sulphide (‘sour gas’) affects the lungs and can cause headaches and dizziness.
Sign a petition to ban fracking: www.ipetitions.com/petition/ukgas
See Campaign against Climate Change www.campaigncc.org and www.frack-off.org.uk for ‘Camp Frack’ and ‘Fracking Hell’ resources

This sponsorship support is not provided as a form of philanthropy, but as an integral part of engineering the social and political circumstances that will best ensure the long-term security of their investments in oil and gas projects. Approached as an engineering challenge, the corporation tends to see all opposition to its activities as solvable with the appropriate time, capital and techniques.
The construction of an offshore platform is one of the most expensive projects on earth in the 21st century.  It can only offer a high return on capital if oil production if maintained over two or three decades. The maintainence of this production is usually threatened by social and political shifts in the countries of extraction. Any such threat to production – or the perception that that threat might exist – can immediately undermine the profitability of a corporation. BP’s share value was almost halved by the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, not because of the potential costs of the oil spill clean up, but because investors were concerned that the company’s future prospects in the US were being undermined by the collapse of support in Washington DC and in the US media.
To guard against any such threat to the company’s value, BP works constantly to engineer its ‘social license to operate’. This is a term widely used in business and government circles and usually applies to the process of engendering support for a company’s activities in the communities who live close to their factories, oil wells and pipelines. However it can shed light on how corporations construct public support far from the places of extraction or manufacture – for example how BP builds support in London and the UK.
In the summer of 2010, a large swathe of the British political establishment called on the White House to ‘stop bashing BP’ – support that assisted the company in persuading President Obama to say on TV: “BP is a strong and viable company and it is in all our interests that it stays that way”. To construct and maintain this support, BP focuses on building a positive image in the eyes of politicians, diplomats, civil servants, journalists, academics, NGO’s and cultural commentators. These groups are known as the ‘special publics’ or ‘clients’ in the public relations industry. Building a supportive attitude within the ‘special publics’ can be done through direct engagement and dialogue, through advertising, and through financial support – funding academic posts at universities, creating programmes in schools, sponsoring culture such as Tate or the British Museum, and financing sports such as the 2012 Olympics.
The BP Olympics advertising includes images of a runner on a pristine beach, calling to mind the Louisiana coastline which remains oil-soaked to this day. The choice of imagery here seems a bit of an oversight by the PR agencies Ogilvy and Landor. The campaign seeks to dress BP in green, making references to BP’s use of biofuels for the Games. Yet only 40 out of 5000 vehicles will use this source that campaign groups argue is unsustainable because it necessitates large scale planting of monoculture crops that wipe out biodiversity, deplete soil and exacerbate world hunger.
The success of the campaign rests not on these details however. Via global media attention the BP brand is associated with the hype, passion and fervent feel-good factors of the biggest international athletics event. This lends the company a guise of social acceptability that enables harmful oil and gas projects the world over. As such, BP extracts what it needs to continue profiting on its investments – a social licence to operate.

For more on BP sponsorship, follow @PlatformLondon on Twitter for their upcoming arts publication ‘Not if but when: Culture Beyond Oil’ and the ‘Tate a Tate’ audio tour.