THE CARBON WAR

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The Winning of The Carbon War
Meanwhile, there is no respite in pressure on negotiators from the business
world. Big initiatives are seemingly being announced every day, and today is
no exception. A coalition of twenty investors worth £352 billion launch a new
push for clean energy. They include the investment arm of one of the UK’s
biggest insurers, Aviva Investors, the French public sector fund ERAPF, and
Norway’s largest private pension fund KLP. They will be calling on the biggest
companies on the London Stock Exchange to switch to 100% renewable electricity
use, and to make public pledges to that effect by joining the existing
fifty-plus companies committed to 100%.
Here, then, negotiators will be able to sense a sizeable microcosm of what
can be expected if they succeed in sending a big signal in the Paris agreement:
capital abandoning fossil fuels actively to favour renewables.
The denier organisations continue to suffer setbacks. Today the Global
Warming Policy Foundation has fallen for a Greenpeace sting operation that
lays bare its true colours. One of its leading advisors has agreed to accept cash
for writing a paper for a sham oil company spinning climate change as scientifically
doubtful. The Charity Commission is now investigating whether the
Foundation, founded by former Conservative Chancellor Lord Lawson, should
have its charitable status revoked.
Exhausted negotiators return to Le Bourget for another long session,
seeking the multilateral magic that will close all the brackets.
Fatigue must increasingly be a risk factor as it begins to look like the
negotiations will over-run. Laurent Fabius wanted to finish today. He fell more
than 200 brackets short of that. John Kerry targets tomorrow. Many experienced
players are now betting on Saturday.
Christiana Figueres answers an obvious question from the media. “Of
course I get tense. My daughters keep me fed, and they make sure that I’m
sleeping. I wouldn’t say it’s the most restful sleep, but that’s not what we are
here for. We are here to get a task done.”
Day Eleven, Thursday 10 th December: My day begins with a panel on fossil-fuel
subsidies in the EU Pavilion. The experts assembled on the stage tell a grim
story. The OECD counts almost 800 ways that governments subsidise fossil fuels,
a representative says. Pre-tax subsidies for fossil fuels add up to between 600
billion and a trillion dollars. Consumer subsidies such as subsidized fuels and
company cars add up to $548 billion annually, four times the subsidies going
to renewables globally. Producer subsidies that support companies to develop