THE CARBON WAR

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The Winning of The Carbon War
the day is that the expert group of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund
has delivered its recommendations on how to treat fossil fuels in the fund. We
have to respond with a press statement.
The news is mixed. On the one hand, advisors to the world’s biggest
sovereign wealth fund advise engagement with investee companies on climate,
and divestment from the “worst” offenders, in terms of carbon pollution. In
this they advocate the approach favoured by Carbon Tracker. On the other
hand, they seem to envisage substantial amounts of fossil fuels being burned
for decades to come, an assumption which allows them to assume limited
scope for stranding of assets.
Meanwhile, in the early action in Lima, the Alliance of Small Island States
leads the first group of governments at the climate talks to directly support a
complete phase out of carbon pollution by 2050, or zero net carbon is it is also
called. The Alliance of Independent Latin American and Caribbean Countries
supports them. So does Norway.
The environmental organisations are quick to remind negotiators that
zero net carbon has to mean 100% renewable energy by 2050. Carbon capture-and-storage
and nuclear lead the non-renewable technologies that put
themselves forward as contributors to zero net carbon. They cannot be realistically
considered because they are both proving themselves to be costly illusions:
the very antithesis of renewables.
It surprises me that the Norwegian government supports this zero net
carbon target. It will be interesting to see how they deal with the report from
their Pension Fund’s advisors then.
Many Alliance of Small Island States delegates are tabling their arguments
at the climate negotiations now for the sake of the planet, not their homelands.
In the Republic of Kiribati, far away in the South Pacific, the president, Anote
Tong, gives a heart-rending interview in which he describes how the rising
sea floods his Pacific atoll nation increasingly frequently, shrinking drinking
water supplies. Even strong action isn’t going to save his people, he says. They
will have to migrate at some point.
4 th December: A ride through Lima’s suburbs to a city of temporary tent-like
buildings in the grounds of the Peruvian Army’s headquarters. I walk through
the throngs. More than 12,000 people from nearly 200 countries are here in this
small city of giant tents. I used to know so many people at these negotiations.
Now, it is an hour before I see anyone I recognise.