You may have heard of the 10:10 Campaign, founded by “Age Of Stupid” director Franny Armstrong, and currently sweeping across the UK with its message of a 10% reduction in carbon emissions by the end of 2010. In essence, such an idea is a good thing: a 10% reduction in carbon dioxide every year will, if taken up by the world’s emitters, and continued until 2030 will lead to nearly a 90% cut overall. This is almost enough to stave off the threat of irreversible climate change.

There is one fundamental problem with this, and it isn’t that 10:10 is only in the UK (you can hardly blame the organisers for that); the problem is that 10:10 only runs until the end of 2010. To quote the web site:

What happens after 2010?
10:10 is a year-long campaign to get the ball rolling on the move away from fossil fuels. We hope that this will be the beginning of a journey that finishes in a world that is no longer threatened by runaway climate change. But for now the important thing is that we stop talking about what happens in the future, and start cutting the carbon.

The lack of a meaningful endgame and the inclusion of the weasel-word “hope” is a major sticking point, because the first 10% of any reduction is really easy. Just by changing the lightbulbs around your house from incandescant to energy saving, and turning your heating down 1 degree in the winter will achieve this. But isn’t easy good? Actually, no. Easy sends the message that we don’t have to really change the way we live, as reinforced by the point, again within 10:10’s FAQ:

Does signing up require a major change in your lifestyle?
No. 10:10 is about getting started on the transition to a low-carbon society, and unless you’ve already slashed your emissions, reaching 10% will be easy. It’s all about not wasting energy at home and cutting down on unnecessary journeys and it will save you money.

How does making a fairly trivial change set you on the path to a low-carbon society? What is missing is the process that takes people’s assumptions about the way they should live (i.e. as part of the globalised industrial consumer society) and moves them into a different state of mind (i.e. the globalised industrial consumer society is fundamentally unsustainable) with a different goal — local, non-industrial and self-reliant. 10:10 does none of this.

Oddly, they seem to recognise the potential for criticism, while simultaneously failing to address it:

Is this just another greenwash campaign?
To really make 10:10 happen we have to get everyone on board, from primary schools and residents’ associations to local authorities and big brands – perhaps even government departments, if they are brave enough to try. This is a project to start making genuine changes to British society, changes we need so that we can leave our children a future we can be proud of. That’s why 10:10 does not recognize any form of offsetting as counting towards the 10% target.

And with that announcement that sustainability is to be achieved while retaining the corporate and political status quo, a whole bag of nails is hammered into the coffin marked “10:10 RIP”.

To be fair, there are very few people anywhere in the mainstream environmental movement, of which Franny Armstrong is most definitely a part of, that see beyond the “one right way to live” delusion. It is all very well people like me harping on about the ills of Industrial Civilization, when the vast majority of people living in the civilised world are not aware that for most of human existance there was no such thing as civilization and that there are a multitude of different ways to live only limited by the imagination; but if people don’t accept this position there is little chance of genuine alternatives being sought. In short, I am probably on a hiding to nothing, should gather up all the like-minded people and go and live somewhere untainted by civilization.

On the other hand, at least I don’t accept the support of companies that make killing machines:

In a potentially controversial move, the campaign has accepted MBDA Missile Systems, a UK-based arms manufacturer, after it pledged to meet the campaign’s single aim – to cut its carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. But 10:10 has rejected Manchester Airport Group.

The campaign’s leaders said the decision to accept an arms manufacturer had caused considerable debate, but it could not exclude an organisation operating lawfully on the grounds of ethical objections to its product.

MBDA, which counts BAE Systems as a major shareholder, produces more than 3,000 missiles a year, including the Exocet. It has 10,000 workers employed across four European countries and sells to more than 90 armed forces worldwide.

Franny Armstrong, the campaign’s founder, said: “Of course arms manufacturers can reduce their emissions by 10%. What they do with the rest of their time is a different matter, on which we couldn’t possibly comment. 10:10 is about reducing emissions right across British society, and that means everyone. As long as arms manufacturers are a part of British society, it’s just as important for them to reduce their emissions as it is for the rest of us.”

[silence induced by disbelief]

Apparently it’s ok to clearfell forests providing they are certified as sustainable.

I suppose there’s a precedent for this: Dick Cheney, as we all know, said it was ok to torture prisoners of war enemy non-combatants so long as someone in the US government claimed it wasn’t really torture, or they were able to simple redesignate the people being tortured.

So when the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, a “non-profit” (oh, that phrase is so useful if you are a greenwasher) whose board is awash with timber industry cronies and various other representatives of the industrial machine, come along with the idea of their own certification scheme, who can blame them if it just happens to be of the utmost benefit to the industry. Actually, I really want you to stop reading this for a minute and go along to the SFI web site: read the biographies of the board members, and then come back here with perhaps a little anger in your veins…

Thanks to the people at ForestEthics, the greenwashing carried out by SFI is a little more in the public eye now. After their antics at the Greenbuild conference in Phoenix, Arizona a few days ago, the people at SFI seem to have become a little annoyed:

As sustainability practices continue to evolve, it is important that planners, designers, builders, customers and architects know the source of the wood used in their project, and increase the wood in their projects! Today in North America we are all fortunate to have a number of strong forest certification standards, which means the building community have a lot of options when it comes to responsibly sourced wood. But the fact remains that just 10% of the world’s forests are certified – collectively, we all need to promote credible forest certification to influence the other 90%.

As you may know, USGBC is currently reviewing and revising its wood certification benchmarks under LEED. I strongly urge them to recognize all credible forest certification programs, including SFI. This is really a huge opportunity for the USGBC to take a leadership role, end the certification debates and encourage more forest certification worldwide by focusing on sustainability. The certification debates, and subsequent PR stunts, take away from the real goal we should all be working towards – responsible forestry.

The “certification debates” that the SFI and other organisations decry so much, are looking into the failure of certification schemes worldwide to provide adequate protection for ecosystems — they are vital, as are the “PR stunts” such as the one below, that highlight the greenwashing to a wider audience.

I will leave it to ForestEthics to tell the story of their fun at Greenbuild…

Greenwashing by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) was an unexpected addition to the agenda at this year’s Greenbuild–the world’s largest green building conference–in Phoenix, Arizona. Today–the day after keynote speaker Al Gore exhorted Greenbuild to call out greenwashing–ForestEthics released a large floating banner exposing SFI as a greenwasher.

On the conference’s opening day, ForestEthics ran an ad in USA Today’s Phoenix edition spotlighting SFI’s “greenwashing practice” of certifying forest destruction as ‘sustainable’. Copies of this ad and a brochure detailing SFI’s shortcomings circulated throughout the massive conference–with an estimated attendance of 25,000 people.

The ad targeted three prominent window companies for their ties to SFI, as well as to “notorious” California clearcutter Sierra Pacific Industries.

These actions add powerful visual elements to a campaign that began in September when ForestEthics filed legal complaints with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that became the focus of an article in the New York Times on September 12.

In its FTC complaint, ForestEthics described how SFI, funded and managed primarily by large logging companies, gives its seal of approval to the logging practices of these same companies that harm people and wildlife, damage water resources and destroy forests.

In October, the Sierra Club also filed a complaint with SFI, presenting scientific evidence that SFI certified logging by Weyerhaeuser on extremely steep and unstable mountainsides in SW Washington despite publicly available evidence that these mountainsides were prone to landslides. In a major regional rainstorm in December 2007,massive landslides did occur on logging sites certified by SFI as sustainable, producing downstream logjams and record flooding. The report submitted to the IRS focused on SFI’s nonprofit status, as SFI’s funding and activities serve the private interests of wood and paper companies that want a ‘green’ image. This is not a proper purpose for an organization with the same nonprofit status that the IRS gives to public charities.

Edit: For the record, I have no faith in FSC or any other certification scheme, nor do I think ForestEthics are squeaky clean – certainly I do not endorse them, only the action they carried out.

A few days ago I was watching the TV trying to see which companies were plying their seasonal wares to small children. It was the usual plastic crap which I don’t need to explain in detail, but one thing caught my eye: the Playmobile Recycling Truck, with an awful voice over saying, “Do your bit for the environment” to which I mentally appended, “by purchasing this chunk of unrecycled plastic.” Browsing this morning for similar products — and to give Playmobile their due, they don’t actually say anything more on their web site except that its a Recycling Truck toy — and I inevitably came across the Fisher Price range of toys.

Fisher Price are big, and getting bigger. Part of the behemoth toy corporation, Mattel since 1993, they are now worth over $2 billion, over a third of Mattel’s earnings. Not surprisingly they have a huge range of products, but two of them struck me as being particularly interesting: the Rainforest Range and the Precious Planet range. In the UK, these are given top billing on the “Baby Gear” page, as you can see here.

It’s a bit difficult to get too stroppy about the Rainforest range, even though they say in their Infant section:

Bring the natural beauty of a rainforest to your baby’s nursery … with lush greenery, playful animal friends, serene backgrounds, even calming motion and sounds. The Fisher-Price Rainforest toys and accessories line: designed to soothe and entertain your very special baby in very special ways.

They don’t make any claims about preservation, and it’s not as though rainforest means anything special when it comes to toys except monkeys and trees.

On the other hand, Precious Planet is altogether more pointed: if you saw a range of toys called “Precious Planet”, what would you think? Three cute animals smiling at the shopper, with a bird appearing to walk across a blue and green globe, partially masked by the bubbly blue writing. You can’t honestly say that Fisher Price are not trying to make some Eco-point here, can you?

So I called the UK office up, ready to ask questions about the chemicals in the toys, where they are made and whether they contained any renewable or recycled materials. What I didn’t expect was what I was told at 4′ 44″…

Fisher Price UK Recording – Precious Planet

Sorry about the bad quality, but you can clearly hear the words: “but it’s not environmentally friendly”

So why the hell is it called Precious Planet?! As I said in the call, there is no information, just the heavily suggestive range name along with an equally suggestive graphic: people are going to believe the products are environmentally friendly, when they may just be the least environmentally and socially (Mattel have a terrible record on sweatshop labour) ethical products you can buy for your child.

Actually, there is a link, which has grabbed Fisher Price by the balls, and isn’t going to let go. At the bottom of the page is the logo of the Wildlife Conservation Society. It only appears at the bottom of the Precious Planet pages for both Baby and Infant, so they are clearly trying to greenwash the public about their environmental credentials, by virtue of presentation: just because it doesn’t explicitly claim to be ethical doesn’t mean it isn’t saying so.

Go to the WCS web site, and you find that Fisher Price are one of their key corporate sponsors, and have their logo all over the place should you happen to visit the Bronz Zoo Animal Prison. What is particularly interesting is the company that Fisher Price keep in this roll-call of elite greenwashers:

ConEdison — Energy supplier to New York City, using oil, coal and gas
Bank Of America — Financial giant who will invest in just about anything that makes money
Delta Airlines — Yes, an airline, how very sustainable
Hess — A major oil company working everywhere, including Borneo
PepsiCo — Junk food behemoth, getting their logo everywhere they can

Quite where that leaves the reputation of the Wildlife Conservation Society depends on whether you think wildlife conservation mixes happily with coal, oil, airlines, global finance and junk food. I would say it’s in tatters, which is pretty well the state of Fisher Price’s greenwashing reputation as well. They deserve each other.

I am under no allusions about the potential for “ethical” banking; unless you put your money into a bank that does not indulge in usary (such as banks that operate under Sharia Law) then someone, somewhere is being screwed, and most likely your bit of money is going to be having a negative impact on the natural environment. Non-Islamic banking is about making profit from someone else’s desire to keep their money safe, or make some interest themselves, but some banks are slightly less harmful than other banks.

Take the Co-operative Bank, based in Manchester, UK, which was founded on the principles of Cooperative Societies, and has maintained a set of evolving ethical standards since its inception in 1872. Lots of Environmental NGOs use the Co-op Bank for this reason, and up to very recently they seemed to put their money where their mouth was.

Here is their Ethical Policy, taken from www.goodwithmoney.co.uk, and broken down into the four core areas of Human Rights, International Development, Ecological Impact and Animal Welfare:

Human Rights

We will not finance:

* any government or business which fails to uphold basic human rights within its sphere of influence;
* any business whose links to an oppressive regime are a continuing cause for concern;
* any organisation that advocates discrimination and incitement to hatred;
* the manufacture or transfer of armaments to oppressive regimes;
* the manufacture or transfer of indiscriminate weapons, eg cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions;
* the manufacture or transfer of torture equipment or other equipment that is used in the violation of human rights.

International Development:

We will seek to support poverty reduction. In line with this, we will not finance organisations that:

* fail to implement basic labour rights as set out in the Fundamental ILO Convention eg avoidance of child labour, or that actively oppose the rights of workers to freedom of association, eg in a trade union;
* take an irresponsible approach to the payment of tax in the least developed countries;
* impede access to basic human necessities, eg safe drinking water or vital medicines;
* engage in irresponsible marketing practices in developing countries, eg with regard to tobacco products and manufacture.
* Furthermore, we will support fair trade and the provision of finance to the working poor in developing countries via micro-finance.

Ecological Impact:

We will not finance any business whose core activity contributes to:

* global climate change, via the extraction or production of fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas), with an extension to the distribution of those fuels that have a higher global warming impact (eg tar sands and certain biofuels);
* the manufacture of chemicals that are persistent in the environment, bioaccumulative in nature or linked to long term health concerns;
* the unsustainable harvest of natural resources, including timber and fish;
* the development of genetically modified organisms where there is evidence of uncontrolled release into the environment, negative impacts on developing countries, or patenting (eg of indigenous knowledge);
* the development of nanotechnology in circumstances that risk damaging the environment or compromising human health.

Furthermore, we will seek to support:

* businesses involved in recycling and sustainable waste management;
* renewable energy and energy efficiency;
* sustainable natural products and services (including timber and organic produce);
* the pursuit of ecological sustainability.

Animal Welfare

We will not finance any organisation involved in:

* animal testing of cosmetic or household products or their ingredients;
* the exploitation of great apes, eg in experimentation or general commercial use;
* intensive farming methods, eg caged egg production;
* blood sports, which involve the use of animals or birds to catch, fight or kill each other;
* the fur trade.

Furthermore, we will seek to support:

* businesses involved in the development of alternatives to animal experimentation;
* farming methods that promote animal welfare (eg free range farming).

So imagine my surprise to find that throughout 2009 and into 2010, every single customer of the Co-operative Bank who uses Internet Banking would be issued with a secure card reader. “What’s wrong with that?” you may ask; and from a security point of view it’s actually a fairly sensible thing, if you know what you are doing — I used RSA SecureID tokens for years in my previous work.

The first problem is merely practical: most people really don’t need another level of complexity in their life. Pay a bill online, and previously you would go through a two layer security model, complete with secure two-way authentication and encrypted communications. All of this was automatic apart from entering your account details and the answer to a personal question: now you have to carry out further two-way authentication, manually, and enter the pass code on screen. Guaranteed to ensure people start writing their account details and personal answers down above their computer so they have less scrabbling around to do.

But The Unsuitablog has another, far more sinister problem with the card readers.

Approximately two million of these pocket-sized devices are being given out by the Co-op, and many more will subsequently have to be replaced. The devices are known as Xi-Sign 4000, and are produced by a French company called Xiring. This company produce the vast majority of card readers issued to customers of UK banks; so you can be pretty sure there are tens of millions of these little electronic gadgets floating around in the UK alone. The mind boggles to think how many they might have produced globally!

From the Co-op Bank’s point of view, there are a couple of little problems:

“We will not finance any business whose core activity contributes to global climate change…”

Ok, there may be the proviso that they don’t invest in extractive industries alone, but to me that’s a complete cop-out. Each Xi-Sign 4000 is made from oil, and the production of it requires electricity which is generated predominantly through the burning of climate changing fossil fuels. Had the card readers not been issued, then an awful lot of climate changing gases would not have been released, or oil squandered.

Turn the card reader over and you will see “Made in PRC”. Yes, that’s two million devices made in China, which immediately wipes out another of the Co-op’s key policies:

“We will not finance any business whose links to an oppressive regime are a continuing cause for concern”

Quite cleverly worded, here, because they don’t explicitly say that just any link to an oppressive regime may be a cause for concern, but instead imply that only certain types of link may be a cause for concern. That’s just crappy semantics, as far as I’m concerned: if a regime is oppressive — and the government of China is one of the most oppressive regimes on Earth — then any link, including working within its political boundaries is a cause for concern. Simply by supplying products made in China, the Co-op have violated their own policy.

And there is more. China’s electricity is about 80% coal generated, therefore the first policy violation is even more blatant: the Co-op, by supplying Chinese card readers, are supporting the extraction and burning of climate changing coal. In addition, with the other 20% coming from a series of huge dams, that have been constructed with massive loss of human habitation and violation of the basic right of a place to live, the Co-op have violated yet another policy:

“We will not finance any government or business which fails to uphold basic human rights within its sphere of influence”

How would you feel if your money had been invested in a project that displaced millions of people from their homes?

As I said, there are many other banks who don’t have any ethical policies, and certainly don’t stick to those they have in any meaningful way; but if you are the Co-operative Bank, who for decades have traded on the mantle of “Ethical Banking” then you had damn well better stick to your principles, or be tarred with the brush of Ethical Hypocrites.

No surprises; no surprises at all. As the world’s “leaders” gear up to converge on the vapourware that is the COP-15 Copenhagen Climate Summit, their objectives seem to be diverging: different governments are being seen as wanting different things, with the less-industrialised nations pointing the finger at (giving the finger to?) the industrial world, essentially saying, “You made the mess, you clean it up!” Among the industrial nations, Canada has no intention of even pretending to do anything, Europe is wading around in a greenwashing miasma of its own making, and the USA doesn’t quite know what to do. The Independent, on Friday 6 November, put the situation like this:

British Government officials believe there is no hope of signing a legally binding climate change treaty in Copenhagen next month.

The positions of major world powers are so far apart that another year or even more may be needed to negotiate a world climate treaty, senior British sources said at talks in Barcelona, which end today.

Writing today for The Independent the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, also admits that a deal in Copenhagen is now unlikely. “The barriers to agreement on climate finance remain substantial,” he writes. “Even if countries agree the levels of finance, few will want to hand over money if they lack confidence in the means of delivering it.”

The development has disconcerted observers at Barcelona, where it has become clear over the course of this week’s talks that countries are still so far apart on how to act on climate change – with the American position the farthest from everyone else – that the most that Copenhagen can now produce is a “political” agreement on climate change, which would not be legally binding like the current climate treaty, the Kyoto protocol.

But yesterday’s frank admission, for the first time, that it might take another year or even longer to produce a proper treaty, after 10,000 officials from 192 countries have already spent two years working to a Copenhagen deadline, showed just how bogged down the negotiating process has become.

Although there are various stumbling blocks, there is no doubt that the continued lack of a serious American offer on cutting its greenhouse gas emissions and providing climate finance for the developing nations – the bill which might provide them is stuck in the US Senate – is the principle obstacle to progress. “Copenhagen is one of the most important meetings in human history. But the politicians seem determined to blow it,” said Joss Garman, climate campaigner for Greenpeace.

Leaving aside the Greenpeace comment for the moment, you would think that even the industrial nations are oceans apart; yet anyone who has an awareness of how Industrial Civilization operates will be looking at this and simply thinking, “Business as usual.” And so we should, because neither Copenhagen, nor its successor Mexico City are the slightest bit relevant in the real battle against climate change. This battle, when it is played out, will be a silent, local, underground battle against the forces that comprise every government engaged in the so-called “negotiation” process. What the governments of the world are negotiating is simply the continuation of the industrial machine in the face of global environmental change, but almost no public opposition.

We are so brainwashed into thinking that the system has it right, that it comes as no surprise to hear people like Joss Garman referring to Copenhagen as, “one of the most important meetings in human history”, as though anything that will have any impact on climate change was ever expected to come out of it. We pin our hopes on summits in this way because we have grown up to accept the false authority of “our leaders”, and to deny that we can do anything significant ourselves. As I wrote in “Time’s Up!“:

The system has legitimized all its efforts to prevent change and suppress opposition because the vast majority of people who are subjected to its activities are fully paid-up members of Industrial Civilization. It is ‘right’ that civilization maintains its stability because without stability, civilization collapses and can no longer impose its will upon the population. Does that sound like a coherent argument to you? In all truth, that really is the best argument civilization has for its continued existence: it has to be maintained because it has to be maintained. Even a heroin addict, shooting up to get the fix that he agonizingly craves, knows that his habit will eventually kill him. Even a lifelong nicotine addict will admit that smoking is bad for her and she should stop. Hands up if you think Industrial Civilization should be stopped.

Every environmental organisation, every lone campaigner, every ordinary member of the public that will be holding their breath as the laughably-titled “negotiations” wrap up, is in denial of the reality that we are doomed so long as Industrial Civilization continues to dominate the globe. Copenhagen is just one more pebble in that river of denial.

Crazy days as the unreal world approaches Copenhagen: corporations and a fair few governments are balking at the potential deals on the table — even though, if we’re being truthful here, they are hopelessly, awfully, ruthlessly inadequate. You will see a HUGE amount of greenwashing going on over the next few weeks, and the astroturfs are going to be piling on the pressure to ensure that everyone, not just politicians, sees a 2 degree temperature rise as something easily avoidable while industry keeps being industrial.

Basically, no one is going to be happy, and the planet will burn because no one in the civilized world will face reality…except one, maybe:

In a sign that some of the oil majors, which are preparing to announce 60pc-70pc drop in net profits this week, are becoming bolder in their opposition to international efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80pc over the next four decades, a senior executive who spoke to The Sunday Telegraph said there was currently a large degree of wishful political thinking about the changes targeted by the global summit.

“If you look at the Copenhagen targets they are basically completely illusory,” he said. “There’s no way to hit those targets and it would be very silly to think that we can.”

At first glance, I reacted with anger; and then realised that, maybe without realising it, he had hit on that very deep truth that needs saying out loud again and again: Industrial Civilization cannot co-exist with a healthy planet.

It doesn’t need an awful lot of analysis to see this; basically, if you are an oil company, the existence of which depends upon people using oil (or a coal company, agribusiness, clothing manufacturer and so on, the existence of which depends on people using whatever you produce) then supporting anything that may hit that business model will be economic suicide. Even if an aspirational 80% reduction in carbon emissions (60% globally) by 2050 has absolutely no chance of stopping runaway climate change, it’s still enough to make the profits crumble, which is one pillar of Industrial Civilization gone, there and then. Make changes that are actually sufficient to rein back climate change — and no one really knows what they are, but let’s say 90% reductions by 2020 — then not only will the entire global economy collapse, but the entire way of life that much of humanity has grown up thinking is its birthright will have to go.

Climate Change Stopped = Industrial Civilization Ended

So, well done, whoever that anonymous source was: you’ve really put the cat amongst the pigeons now.

It was with squeals of delight and amazement that I received this gem of a press release from David at TheGoodHuman.com. Southwest Airlines, a 500 plane, budget airline in the south western states of the USA, has managed to use the word “green” in a spectacularly inappropriate way. See what you think:

DALLAS, Oct. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) today announced at its annual Media Day a “green plane,” an innovative idea that marries efficiency, environmentally responsible products, Customer comfort, and reduced waste and weight. This plane, a Boeing 737-700, will serve as a test environment for new environmentally responsible materials and Customer comfort products.

It is a flying testament to the airline’s philosophy that environmental decisions make good business sense. All of the initiatives being tested on this Green Plane, when combined, will equate to a weight savings of almost five pounds per seat, thus saving fuel and reducing emissions, along with adding recyclable elements to the cabin interior and reducing waste.

“Southwest is committed to continuing to lead the industry in emissions reductions through fuel efficiency. Efficiency in fuel consumption benefits our Company as well as the environment, and this has been part of our business model since the beginning,” said Gary Kelly, Southwest’s Chairman, President, and CEO. “As we look to the future, we know climate change remains of vital importance to our industry, our Company, and our Customers, so Southwest works hard every day in every area to be a responsible steward of the environment.”

Southwest has designated one aircraft to serve as a test for eco-friendly products, which include:

— InterfaceFLOR Carpet – this carpet reduces labor and material costs
because it is installed in sections, thus eliminating the need for total
replacement of areas such as aisles, where Southwest currently uses one
single piece of carpet. The 100 percent recyclable carpet is returned to
the manufacturer at the end of its service life and completely
re-manufactured into new carpet; the process is completely carbon
neutral.

— Seat covers – two new products that will be tested on the aircraft
seats, offering more than twice the durability than the current leather
seats as well as a weight savings of almost two pounds per seat.

— On one side of the aisle, e-Leather is an eco-friendly, lightweight
and scuff resistant man-made alternative to traditional leather. It
is made from recycled materials that have been discarded by the
leather industry. It is then upgraded utilizing eco-friendly
technology, resulting in composition leather, a man-made material.

— On the other side of the aisle, IZIT Leather, a new breed of premium
leather alternative, is an evolutionary step beyond calf skin that
offers a lightweight product that is both economical and durable,
but with the genuine appearance and touch of luxurious leather.

— Life Vest Pouch – more environmentally friendly because it offers a
weight savings of one pound per passenger, replacing the current metal
container with lighter durable canvas. The smaller pouch also creates
more room under the seat for carryon items and offers productivity
improvements due to design change.

— Foam Fill – A lighter weight fill from Garnier PURtec in the back of the
seats that reduces weight while providing increased Customer comfort.

— Passenger Seat Rub Strips – switching from plastic to aluminum will help
with durability, which reduces waste, as well as being recyclable.

“Southwest is proud to lead the aviation industry in environmental stewardship and honored to be working with these eco-friendly vendors and our partners at Boeing,” Kelly says. “We are excited to test their forward-thinking products and expect these green products to not only help the environment, but also create a fuel and materials cost saving for Southwest.”

In addition to the green plane, Southwest also announced the Nov. 1 kickoff of its more robust onboard recycling program, which is a co-mingled system that will allow the airline to capture more recyclable material and divert it from the waste stream. This 18-month process involved team work from all areas of the Company to implement the program on the ground at its Provisioning Bases and re-working of waste collection procedures in the cabin.

“The initiative by the Southwest Airlines Green Team, Facilities Maintenance, Inflight Department, and Provisioning Department was a truly heroic effort; when you serve nearly 68 cities there are often 68 different ways to implement a program,” Kelly says. “We appreciate the hard work of our recycling vendor, Republic Services, and we are excited to take a very effective recycling program and make it even better.”

Environmental Stewardship is a responsibility Southwest takes seriously, and efficient operations are the hallmark of our Company and the foundation of our environmental commitment. Over the decades, Southwest has been at the forefront of such efficiencies as paperless tickets, quick turnarounds, installation of winglets, and, more recently; the installation of fleet-wide advanced avionics. This focus on efficiency not only makes good business sense, it is the right thing to do. For more information on how Southwest Airlines cares for the environment, visit www.southwest.com/cares.

I included the entire press release so that you have time to grasp the monumental gulf between the cool new materials they are using, and the sheer amount of energy required to transport hundreds of people in a large metal airframe with fuel-packed wings against the force of gravity and at high lateral speed. I am torn between whether Southwest actually believe their own press releases and their “cares” information (that’s where they got the hilarious phrase “Environmental Stewardship is a responsibility Southwest takes seriously, and efficient operations are the hallmark of our Company and the foundation of our environmental commitment”), and whether they are acutely aware of how crap airlines are in environmental terms and are just desperate to suck up a few gullible souls with their “green” message.

The thing that turned me from the former to the latter opinion (i.e. they are Greenwashing Hypocrites) was this:

Notice the inducement to take no less than sixteen flights (eight round trips) in a two year period; yes, it’s another flight. Which seems to slightly jar with the claim that they take their environmental responsibilities seriously. Let’s get this straight (and I am getting fed up saying this): there is nothing sustainable about burning fossil fuels to keep things in the air. Hence my attacks on organisations like Climate Counts, which promote themselves as being of benefit to the natural environment, but instead end up making people think — and they do, I’ve heard it from ordinary peoples’ mouths — that inherently destructive things can be green.

Seriously people, learn.

I sort of hated Stephen Harper before reading the new book by James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore, but after finishing Chapter Thirteen of “Climate Cover Up“, there’s no “sort of” about it. Whether you believe there is such a thing as Evil or not, by any discription of the term Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada has got to be partaking in Satan’s Brimstone Ball. From my point of view: he is a guy in pathological denial, so utterly inculcated in the industrial economy and all it stands for, that nothing good can exist that challenges this toxic orthodoxy.

So, because I’m feeling generous, I want to share the hate with all of you. Welcome to the world of Harper:

When Conservative leader Stephen Harper campaigned for the prime minister’s job in early 2006, he did so on an interesting two-track campaign. He promised first of all to be a law-and-order conservative who would crack down hard on people who broke the law. And he promised to abrogate Canada’s international legal commitment to the Kyoto Protocol. If any reporters noticed the contradiction, there is no record that they asked him about it. Once elected, the prime minister promptly handed the job of environment minister, which included defending the government’s climate change position, to the Alberta member of parliament Rona Ambrose. Ambrose came across as a Canadian version of the benighted Sarah Palin—attractive, initially popular, and totally out of her depth, which turned out to have been a policy decision. Government scientists in Environment Canada reported to their privatesector colleagues that Ambrose declined to be briefed on the science of climate change.

The Conservative hostility to Kyoto surprised no one. Prime Minister Harper was himself elected as a member of parliament from the oil capital, Calgary (his actual riding is Calgary Southwest), and his party’s base is preponderantly in resource-rich western Canada, and decidedly in oil-rich Alberta.

In 2006 Alberta was awash in cash. Between 1990 and 2006 fossil fuel industry revenues had climbed 61 percent. But that windfall had come with a complicating factor: industry-source greenhouse gas emissions had increased over the same period by 53 percent, accounting for almost half of the total increase in emissions recorded over the same period. Most of the rest came from transportation and from coal-fired electricity generation.

Harper’s position on climate change, that of a loyal Albertan, had been on the record—and perfectly unclear—for years. In a story published December 21, 2006 (“pm Denies Climate-Change Shift”), the Toronto Star’s Ottawa bureau chief, Susan Delacourt, chronicled the evolution of the prime minister’s thinking. In September 2002, for example, he passed off the issue as a controversy of little interest to Canadians: “It’s a scientific hypothesis, a controversial one and one that I think there is some preliminary evidence for . . . This may be a lot of fun for a few scientific and environmental elites in Ottawa, but ordinary Canadians from coast to coast will not put up with what this [the Kyoto accord] will do to their economy and lifestyle, when the benefits are negligible.” In 2004, Delacourt writes, the prime minister updated that position to say, “The science is still evolving.” And by 2006 he was still referring to “so-called greenhouse gases.” If you give him the benefit of the doubt, Prime Minister Harper seemed, even as he took over the reins of power, to be like those well-educated Republicans from Chapter 12, so steeped in uncertainty that he couldn’t bring himself even to believe in the existence of the greenhouse gases that Joseph Fourier had discovered in the early part of the 19th century.

In addition to announcing that he had no intention of trying to meet Canada’s Kyoto targets, the Canadian prime minister also set about dismantling all the climate change policies that the previous Liberal government had implemented to date. He shut down the government’s climate change Web site and removed all references to global warming, and especially to Kyoto, from federal communications, except to say that henceforth he would be resisting international pressure and pursuing a “made-in-Canada solution.”

Here Harper begins to use language that was actually made in America. The Republican spin doctor Frank Luntz was in Kingston, Ontario, in May 2006, speaking to the Conservative- linked Civitas Society and making time on the side for a personal meeting with Prime Minister Harper. (The prime minister confirmed in the House of Commons a couple of days later that he and Luntz had been acquainted “for some years.”)

In the weeks that followed, people started listening more closely to the Conservatives and looking for likely connections to the strategy document, as discussed in Chapter 6, that Luntz had written for the U.S. Republican Party (“The Environment: A Cleaner, Safer, Healthier America”). As Ross Gelbspan recorded on the DeSmogBlog on May 31, 2006, the Kitchener Waterloo Record reported the results in a story headlined “Tory Kyoto Strategy Mirrors U.S. Plan”:

In his 2003 memo, [Luntz] told Republicans not to use economic arguments against environmental regulations, because environmental arguments would always win out with average Americans concerned about their health. Luntz also told his U.S. clients to stress common sense and accountability. “First, assure your audience that you are committed to ‘preserving and protecting’ the environment but that ‘it can be done more wisely and effectively.’ Absolutely do not raise economic arguments first.”

Since the Conservatives took office, they have consistently stressed their commitment to clean air and water, and tried to avoid discussion of cutting back environmental programs— although many have been eliminated. “My mandate is to have accountability on the environment and show real results and action on the environment for Canadians,” [Environment Minister] Ambrose told the Commons last week.

Luntz advises that technology and innovation are the keys to curbing climate change, a theme the Conservatives have repeatedly echoed. “We will be investing in Canadian technology and in Canadians,” Ambrose told MPs.

Despite his general aversion to economic arguments, Luntz . . . advises putting the cost of regulation in human terms, emphasizing how specific activities will cost more, from “pumping gas to turning on the light.” Ambrose has claimed that “we would have to pull every truck and car off the street, shut down every train and ground every plane to reach the Kyoto target. Or we could shut off all the lights in Canada tomorrow.”

In this first year that the Harper Conservatives were in power, Canada was also the official chair of the un Framework Convention on Climate Change, which gave the country two special chances to drag down the process. First, Environment Minister Rona Ambrose was anything but a champion for action. She dismissed Canada’s own commitments, blew off Canada’s reporting deadlines, and on one occasion at least, declined even to attend a meeting, assuming her position as “chair” over the telephone.

Canada also increased international inertia on behalf of the Bush administration. Having refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, the United States was effectively sidelined from the process, forced to sit outside of the most critical meetings awaiting word of how the parties to the accord were planning to proceed. Given that the United States was the world’s number-one producer of greenhouse gases, there was only so much that could be decided by the remainder of the world’s powers, but the United States still feared that its interests could be marginalized by a concerted international effort to discourage emissions.

That was no threat with Canada in the room. Having backed away from its own Kyoto commitments, Canada also chose to join the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, a sort of anti-Kyoto coalition that included the world’s biggest polluters (China, India, Japan, Korea, and the United States) and the second-tier countries that sell them oil and coal (Australia and Canada). Even Republican Senator (and later presidential candidate) John McCain dismissed the partnership as “nothing more than a nice little public relations ploy.” McCain told Grist writer Amanda Griscom Little on August 4, 2005 (“New Asia-Pacific Climate Pact Is Long on PR, Short on Substance”), that the partnership had “almost no meaning. They aren’t even committing money to the effort, much less enacting rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” The group’s apparent determination to create an alternative organization that could be used to undermine the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, combined with the Canadian decision to join the Big Coal coalition during a year when Canada was nominal chair of the UN Framework process, dealt the UN body a telling blow.

At subsequent UN Framework conferences, especially in Bali in 2007, Canada’s obstructionist position became so obvious that people started to believe the Bush and Harper administrations were working together—that Canada was trying to prevent any progress that might demonstrate how badly the United States was out of step. But the theory broke down at the Kyoto Protocol update in Poznan, Poland, in December 2008. By then Barack Obama was already president-elect, though George Bush would retain the actual presidency until January 20, 2009. So the Bush negotiators were still in the room, but with no real mandate: everyone expected that the Obama administration would take a more aggressive tack in approaching climate change.

With the United States removed as a contrarian force, some people expected that Canada would shift to a more productive position as well. But if anything, Canada stepped up its obstructionism, urging other countries to back away from greenhouse gas reduction commitments they had made in Bali the year before. For its efforts Canada was granted the “Colossal Fossil” award. The environmental Climate Action Network chose a “Fossil of the Day” for each day of the two-week conference, and the country with the most nominations was judged to be the Colossal Fossil when the meeting wound down. Canada really earned that international embarrassment.

While dragging down efforts to build an effective greenhouse gas reduction policy on the world stage, the Harper Conservatives continued to emulate U.S. policy at home. Where in 2003 the Bush administration had proposed a Clear Skies Act that ignored greenhouse gases almost entirely, the Harper Tories followed with a Clean Air Act in 2006, which focused on smog and particulate pollutants and promised (still voluntary) emission targets by 2020.

With U.S. president George Bush advocating “energy intensity targets” as a way to address climate change, the same policy started appearing in Canadian climate documents only a short while later, such as in Environment Canada’s 2008 regulatory framework for industrial greenhouse gas emissions. An energy intensity target is something you might expect to get from Frank Luntz: it’s very specific. The definitions are clear and concise. But when you implement it succesfully, you get a public relations boost without any corresponding reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Consider, for illustration, the following definition from the World Resources Institute: “Greenhouse gas intensity targets are policies that specify emissions reductions relative to productivity or economic output, for instance, tons co2/million dollars gdp. By contrast, absolute emissions targets specify reductions measured in metric tons, relative only to a historical baseline.” That means that you can reduce energy intensity by a lot (the Canadian tar sands giant Suncor cut its energy intensity by 51 percent between 1990 and 2006) while at the same time continuing to make the problem worse (despite the “intensity” cut, Suncor increased its absolute emissions by 131 percent during the same period).

Thus, intensity targets are for people who don’t want to deal with the problem. Consider this May 7, 2001, statement from Bush White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer in response to a question about whether the president would urge Americans to change their world-leading energy-consumption habits: “That’s a big ‘no.’ The president believes that it’s an American way of life, that it should be the goal of policy-makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one . . . The president considers Americans’ heavy use of energy a reflection of the strength of our economy, of the way of life that the American people have come to enjoy.” True to his word, until oil prices spiked in the summer of 2008, the Bush administration held its position, touting energy intensity cuts while supporting the expansion of the coal-fired power industry and the aggressive extension of oil drilling into parks and oceans.

Here’s how things played out in Canada during the same period: the provincial administration in Alberta, home to the largest section of Canada’s huge tar sands deposit, announced a climate change strategy in 2008 that would call for no greenhouse gas emission reductions whatsoever before 2020. In a document titled Responsibility/Leadership/Action, Alberta also proposed to pursue energy intensity targets in the short term (2010), to “stabilize” emissions by 2020 and to “reduce” emissions by 2050 by 14 percent from 2005 levels. Put another way, Alberta was planning to give industry free rein until 2020, after which it would introduce regulations so gently that by 2050, the province still would not comply with the target that Canada promised in Kyoto to meet by 2012. Returning once again to the dark definition of Orwellian, it’s hard to imagine how that could seriously be described as responsibility, leadership, or even action.

Now, I get the feeling that you really want to do something about this imbicile; you’re not alone. Want to know the best way? So do I. But anything you can do to ruin his credibility and upset the system that he merrily wallows in has to be a good thing.

Thanks to Bindarri, an Australian creative arts hub, which has exposed the lies of Australian Pulp in promoting their ENVI “sustainable” paper which, unsurprisingly, still requires primary forest to be logged for its production…

Q – how do you sell woodchipped Australian native forest to an Australian market who is becoming more environmentally aware?

A – buy some offset credits and launch Australia’s first carbon neutral paper.

Go Greenwash with ENVI

Australian Paper (AP), the manufacturer of ENVI has had a long history of sourcing fibre from native forests and has been subject to consumer boycotts.

AP’s Maryvale Mill in Gippsland Victoria will consume 350,000m3 of native forest pulp in 2009 [pdf pg 29] as well as producing pollutant emissions. This mill produces its famous Reflex paper and some of the ENVI range.

“ENVI grades are exactly the same paper that AP already produces. The only difference is that they have had the associated greenouse gas emmissions calculated and offset with carbon credits” (quote from Dalton). Some of ENVI’s range includes part recycled content such as “ENVI Recycled 50/50” while some of their papers such as “ENVI DM MATT” and “REFLEX CARBON NEUTRAL” contain no recycled content.

Currently, AP is linked to logging in the Central Highland, Strzelecki Rainforest Reserve and the Baw Baw National Park, which has been recognised by several key scientific studies as one of Victoria’s most biologically significant sites and one of its most important water catchments.

The Central Highlands of Victoria are the world’s most carbon-dense forest according to researchers from the Australian National University. Professor Mackey said “It identifies a gap in climate change policy that Australia needs to address. There has been a lot of talk about the need to address tropical deforestation in developing countries, but these results show we must start by recognising the carbon benefits to be gained from protecting our native forests”.

Accrediting a paper which is sourcing part of their pulp from the worlds most carbon dense forests raises questions about the integrity of the “Greenhouse Friendly” program and what “Carbon Neutral” really means.

While Melbourne is facing strict water restrictions this summer, Melbourne’s main water catchment is losing 20,000 megalitres a year due to logging. Logging reduces waterflow in to our dams by 50% and causes erosion and pollution which impact on water quality.

You can read about the whole clearfelled mess at the Bindarri website, which also contains stacks more information about the corporate links of Australian Paper and other corporate greenwashing they are indulging themselves with.

This is a beautiful, sad advert produced by an agency of the British government. Very powerful, very moving.

It tells us that we are responsible for “over 40% of the CO2”, which is caused by ordinary, everyday things, like heating, powering appliances and driving.

The governments and their corporate masters, decided that they couldn’t afford to tell people that around 30% of all the CO2 was the result of the generation of electricity; electricity that ordinary people use directly, or indirectly in the things they buy, and the things that form the infrastructure that we all use. That might make people go to extra efforts, and stop them doing lots of things that keep civilisation moving.

And the same corporations told the governments most emphatically, that they couldn’t mention the other 30% that was the direct result of manufacturing and transporting all the things that the adverts made ordinary people want to buy, for that would mean the ordinary people might stop buying things and the economy would stop growing, and the corporations would hurt.

The outcome of this was that the British government produced a beautiful film that lots of people would be touched by, and decide that, “yes” they would do their bit, and try and cut carbon emissions by just 40%.

And the other 60%?

Don’t tell.