An internal bank manual for the Carbon Pricing Club

An internal bank manual for the Carbon Pricing Club (Whitehorse Star Comment March 30, 2016)

The club image as a signal for special finance interests looks cynical, but the honesty of it is a refreshing contrast to the World Bank’s generally false advertising of fighting poverty with free trade and the climate crisis with carbon pricing.

The Institute For Climate Economics, I4CE, in Paris, posted an unusual and very tight 10-page set of sales instructions and recruiting strategies that comes in big fat letters.

It is authored by Dr. Venkata Putti, the program manager of the World Bank’s Carbon Finance Unit, http://goo.gl/6b8LvA .

The front page poses the question and thread: Towards a Carbon Pricing Club on the Road to and through COP21? 

The document headline reads: WBG Carbon Pricing Initiatives: Building and Linking the Next Generation of Carbon Markets.

Graphically, a winding labyrinth is laid out for processing financial derivative, carbon tax leveraged products and related expansion of sales and PR networks (renewable energy is unmentioned). Here is the abbreviated list of seven main stations:

1. CPLC, Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition;

2. PMR, Partnership for Market Readiness;

3. CADF, Carbon Asset Development Fund;

4. PAF, Pilot Auction Facility;

5. NCM, Networked Carbon Markets;

6. CPF, Carbon Partnership Facility;

7. T-CAF, Transformative Carbon Asset Fund

“Carbon markets in the Paris agreement – an early holiday gift” says a Dec. 17, 2015 blog posting by Vikram Widge, head of Climate and Carbon Finance at the World Bank Group.

As somebody who remembers the 2008/09 financial heist, I cannot help to notice the sinister flavour of this obfuscation gobbledigook has investor fraud written all over it.

The concern is legitimate that the lack of transparency in financial product design is helping those who would embezzle people out of their retirement savings and seek a carbon money laundry for criminal gains.

What is in a name or in a name change?

The World Bank still exists, but a lot of its business is carried out as WBG, World Bank Group, which is the World Bank plus three add-ons, including the anti-democratic free trade enforcer ICISD. 

The International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes participates in overruling parliaments in Quebec and Ontario against environmental and renewable energy legislations, under NAFTA Chapter 11 Investment. 

WBG’s ICISD is engaging in direct intervention to increase greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.

Elsewhere, the World Bank’s trail of action since the days of the Marshall Plan has become a questionable one as well.

Following the post-Second World War era, the World Bank has changed its economics focus to a political one.

So-called structural adjustment programs, SAPs, play a role as tools of World Bank and IMF that throughout the Global South are understood to be neo-colonial and anti-development in their orientation.

Around 50 of the poorest countries spend more than their entire foreign reserves on oil imports alone.

The World Bank co-ordinates carbon pricing mechanisms with SAPs towards restricting renewable development to cosmetic insignificance. 

The results are devastating for environment, energy/food security and economy.

Generally, SAP enforcement by World Bank and IMF, aligned with free trade deals, oppose democratic institutions such as parliaments, medicare, education and unions.

Economically, the WBG restricts value adding, wealth building, exporting industries in favour of poverty, debt and pushing raw resource exploitation. 

Looking at the hypocrisy of internal and public World Bank communication, one particular aspect of false language contaminates or suppresses discourse these days.

It is the idea, sometimes explicit, sometimes subliminal, that CO2 is the only problem of burning fossil resources as energy source. 

This is comforting to super-polluters in carbon and uranium extraction that carbon price language hides seven-fold prohibitive impacts (and disproportionally blames little guys who make no infrastructure decisions).

Fossil/nuclear cartels generate harm against climate, clean water/air/land, democracy, peace, industrial resource preservation, energy/food security, market economy and energy affordability.

Dimming down awareness is one more carbon pricing strategy that favours deceptive climate solutions like gas fracking in B.C. and Yukon or subsidizing Royal Dutch Shell’s failed leaky carbon sequestration tinkering in Alberta and Saskatchewan. 

What jumps out from the Carbon Pricing Club document is a cancerous ambition to fill all policy and manoeuvring space with inflated circular thinking. It is to get everybody to chase their carbon price tails, to suck the oxygen right out of even seeing anything that can make sense. 

As in the broader and substantial World Bank PR on carbon pricing, the club is about ignoring clean energy source legislation, sustainable economies or allocating fuel/alcohol taxes towards renewable infrastructure initiative.

High-profile environmentalists David Suzuki, Bill McKibben or, locally, John Streicker and the Yukon Conservation Society, invoke the impression that carbon pricing is science-based or even recommended by the IPCC. Distortions are reminiscent of World Bank language.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expressed no such thing. From the beginning in 1988, it had set down evidence-based principles which continue in the up-to-date 2013/14 Fifth Assessment Report, AR5. 

The IPCC assessment reports on the climate crisis come out of three working groups:

• Working Group I reviewed climate science; 

• Working Group II reviewed climate adaptation; and

• Working Group III reviewed climate mitigation.

The adaptation and mitigation working groups refer to carbon pricing and its hypothetical input assumptions critically and separate to climate science.

It is discussed as theory that has no evidence nor shred of empirical proof to support what never worked. 

Proven climate solutions, of renewable legislative frameworks and of cutting fossil subsidies, to fight greenhouse gas emissions are substantively recognized and ranked highly by the IPCC. 

Given the academic light weight of the carbon price which to date has not survived a single examination by economists that I am aware of, the amount of PR traction involved is nothing short of astonishing.

We need to remember the carbon price title was not randomly chosen by marketing brains 30 some years ago.

The hollow abstraction of it that matches nothing and everything is what oil and finance profiteers require to design their needs into it. 

On March 11, 2016, Keith Halliday, the Yukon News columnist, prolific carbon price and frack proponent, flip-flopped on carbon tax and trade.

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, Yukon Premier Darrell Pasloski and Takhini-Kopper King MLA Kate White, on behalf of the Yukon NDP caucus, have made similar public statements.

While in the new consensus a carbon tax is supposedly a more or less positive instrument, it is currently not affordable nor needed. On that basis, everybody can get (back) into it tomorrow morning if they feel nobody is watching. 

The NDP further has the carbon trading agenda of the club on its books and has not let go of it. In no way is that coming clean on the stuff that is unethical and deceptive all around.

Does that make Halliday, Wall, Pasloski and White fence-sitting politicians, fifth column or sleeper cell for the Carbon Price Country Club (CPCC)?

Editorial exposes déjà-vu of Kaska deal (16 Feb. 2016 Whse Star)

The strength of the Star editorial from Feb. 10 was in holding to account the current deal signed by the Yukon government and Kaska chief against the failed aspirations of the somewhat identically presented 2003 deal.

And in pointing out that a legitimate process would have needed to be transparent on how it is interwoven to the preceding deal, and that it would have needed the support of the Kaska citizenry, who apparently do not consent.

I might add even more context by pointing out these are Kaska citizens who have not swallowed the Dec. 13, 2012 annulling of their veto right to oil and gas development, a removal of rights which continues in the 2015 amended Oil and Gas Act.

And unfortunately they face a much bigger problem, made bigger by the opposition NDP and Liberal party as well as the Yukon Conservation Society.

All could have said no, but chose to become part of the problem and support the act to come online.

Alberta carbon price plan ambushes clean energy (4 Mar. 2016 Whse Star coloumn)

Blacked out is renewable energy source legislation from Denmark to Texas to China that have become legend for reducing emissions and leveraging employment. 

Adopted is the oil industry’s and Wall Street’s carbon tax agenda, which shifts blame to people and subsidizes carbon increases.

Gordon Laxer, a veteran energy analyst from the University of Alberta’s Parkland Institute, finished his Dec. 3, 2015 piece in the Edmonton Journal, “Opinion: Alberta’s climate plan stands in the way of Canada’s”, with the observation:

“Getting the NDP’s backing on expanding the oil sands lends more credibility than Big Oil could have got from a Conservative Alberta government. No wonder Big Oil is smiling. It’s time to reboot Layton’s dream” (of actually cutting emissions).

The carbon price-centred Alberta process lacks balance in single-mindedly adopting the recommendations of those close to corporatism, exemplified by its chair, Andrew Leach, from the Alberta School of Business.

Ignored are all investigations into these mechanisms.

Those include investigations by the Guardian, Harper’s Magazine and the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, which exclusively found corrupt carbon price designs that incentivize greenhouse gas emission increases.

Mitch Jones reported for foodandwaterwatch.org on Sept. 9, 2014, “Why a Carbon Tax Won’t Save the Climate”. Jones agrees with the financial services industry on an important point. Carbon taxes and carbon derivative trade are one beast.

B.C. Auditor General Doyle observed in 2013 that carbon taxes are not revenue-neutral, as falsely claimed by the B.C. government, typical for carbon pricers. 

Jones: “Wall Street hopes to build new financial markets and speculative financial instruments like those that brought down the global economy in 2007.”

Alberta’s carbon tax strategy as a launch tool for carbon derivative markets, separate to the real economy but siphoning investment from it, uses the playbook from B.C., the U.K. and Australia.

Economists Dr. Lynne Chester and Stuart Rosewarne, University of Sidney, lived through the carbon tax episode in Australia and were baffled by surprises.

In the very week the Gillard government enacted the carbon tax, it rolled back the renewable energy framework.

In 2011, Chester and Rosewarne published an interesting paper examining financial markets that generate subsidy structures towards fossil resource cartel interests, funded by the taxpayer, under the title: “What is the relationship between derivative markets and carbon prices?”

“More recently, Prime Minister Gillard announced an intention to introduce a carbon tax from mid 2012 to apply for three to five years until the implementation of a carbon trading scheme.”

Following the Gillard logic, the Alberta plan calls for tar sands emissions to expand from currently around 70 million tons of emissions a year to 100 million tons, and describes it as cap, which it is not.

There is a commitment to phase out coal by 2030, significant for Alberta electrical generation.

It is to be replaced with over its life cycle with even dirtier fracked gas, which is deceptively lumped in with renewables as “cleaner electrical supply.”

This reorientation from coal to fracking flavours the entire corrupt process. 

The plan for more, not less fracking appears recklessly based on oil cartel interests, bound to deepen economic disaster and unemployment.

China, ahead of Germany, shows how it’s done. Wind power grew over 100-fold since the 2008 financial heist.

Economics, energy security and affordability are the main drivers in the transition, even ahead of emissions concerns, recently phasing out brand new coal plants.

Economic decline in Alberta became visible with a lowering crude price during the second half of 2014.

However, already in 2013, problems accelerated when the price for one barrel hovered firmly above $100.

Because of growing unconventional reserve replacement, namely shale fracking and tar steam extraction that have no net returns, 2013 profits of the five Big Oil players had remarkably contracted by more than 25 per cent.

Not just in the Star and other independents but in the corporate mainstream media, the facts were widely reported. They are facts that cannot be repaired with returning higher prices, but can only deepen in their impact.

This happened after over a decade of continuous profit increases that had dipped only once during the financial heist of 2008/09.

Yet there is no awareness nor mention of such relevant facts in a document that needlessly incurs future debt by throwing more good money after bad.

The purpose of the carbon pricing terminology is to activate a well-grooved mechanism that is a trigger signalling to elite climate undertakers the feeding trough of carbon tax revenue.

By its nature, a carbon tax, similar to a sales tax, is always a regressive tax, a flat tax and never progressive nor socially fair.

In contrast, a fuel or alcohol tax can be transparently allocated by government toward clean energy infrastructure investments.

The unified carbon tax, for in reality widely differing products, has a vacuous abstract title for a reason. It is to fill in harm and prevent benefits for people and environment.

Tucked away within endless arrays of bureaucratic platitudes, a language of increased emitter privileges, permits and rights in the Alberta climate strategy further underpins multinational corporations’ powers to legislate under free trade agreements.

Unconstitutional powers of NAFTA chapter 11 Investment have already been exercised against environmental protections and renewable energy development in Quebec and Ontario. More undemocratic hostilities can be expected from CETA and TPP (former PM John Turner: real trade items are updated in GATT).

The plan falsely assigns the role of climate solution provider to the oil and gas industry with hard targets to accelerate emission increases for decades to come. Renewables are given meaningless, anecdotal mention, when, cost competitively, they are in a position to replace coal and more.

The plan is so badly one-sided, it was impossible to anticipate before reading it. Renewables can replace obsolete coal-fired electrical generation without stepping on the toes of a single existing oil and gas operation, but are shut out.

Unfortunately, the unscientific and dishonest Alberta process is now invited as a model for climate consultations in Yukon by Stuart Clark, John Maissan and Richard Price (a University of Alberta professor).

They take carbon price encouragement from Keith Halliday and John Streicker.

Electric cars and trucks are about 10 times cheaper to fuel up and service than equivalent combustion-powered ones. 

Obviously, there is an infrastructure flaw of lacking fast charge points and initial EV purchase rebates, not a retail market problem.

Ten-fold, that is how far out of touch the carbon tax proposal is with its five- or 15-percent price signal at the pump to supposedly nudge people’s behaviour.

General Motors Corp. has done its homework. The brainchild of CEO Mary T. Barra, the 2016/17 Chevy Bolt (not Volt) is essentially a half-price Tesla car with its 200-mile driving range.

With one 20-minute or so charge top-up, it can go from Whitehorse to Watson Lake, and likewise anywhere crosscountry without range anxiety.

The proposed carbon flat tax may take the economic freedom and dignity of lower-income people to buy an electric car, a bus pass, or force them to take their kids out of hockey practice and music lessons.

Made poorer by carbon pricing, the carbon tax won’t stop them driving to shop for groceries even more often than before to stay on top of deals, food bank hampers, etc. Underlying cynicism and vanity of the carbon price ideology are disturbing.

Homeless people with minimal or close to zero carbon footprints receive zero carbon credit benefits in the Alberta green washer process that directly rewards emission increases of big polluters.

Political fault lines of carbon pricing are not exactly what some think they are. The previous Conservative government already implemented part of Alberta Premier Rachel Notley’s plan. And the most right-wing government in Canada then as now, B.C., has the most aggressive oil and gas subsidy regime.

Carbon flat tax dividends and carbon offset rewards are paid directly to gas frack operator Encana, whose emissions are to a significant degree excluded from carbon accounting.

Underneath false populist double talk, then-prime minister Stephen Harper had given full blessing to these mechanisms enacted by two carbon pricing governments.

The ethics code for professional engineers restrains statements made as an engineer to the scope of one’s trade competence.

And yet engineers Stuart Clark and John Maissan underwrote, with professional credentials in bold letters, what I believe are unsubstantiated political leanings in their Yukon News commentary on Feb. 17.

NDP brings in Bill McKibben and bad climate advice (Whse Star column 8 Mar. 2016)

It seems out of touch with the still carbon price confused energy and climate conversation in Yukon where, e.g. an S. David Freeman, who has headed and converted power utilities towards renewables and wrote All Electric America, could have inspired solutions.

At this critical point where Prof. Mark Jaccard, a climate modeller and former figure head of carbon pricing, Simon Fraser University, is backing out, the NDP invites Bill McKibben.

His climate crisis awareness we already have, and his increasingly muddleheaded digging deeper of the carbon price hole, we don’t need.

The choice of speaker for the Change 2016 event is equally out of touch with the climate and energy conversation in Canada, where the rats are beginning to leave the sinking carbon price ship. And not just in the Vancouver Declaration of the recent first ministers’ conference.

The event organizers could have done one better and combine McKibben’s carbon tax emphasis with David Suzuki, who is one more excellent academic and speaker who got himself lost in the policy mine field.

It would have covered the scope of Big Oil and Wall Street climate strategy.

Quite possibly, the Yukon Conservation Society, which, like Suzuki, proudly recruits for carbon derivative trading, would have pitched in.

But three decades of carbon price ideology in instrument and propaganda have incentivized and accelerated emission increases consistently and done enough harm deepening the climate crisis (the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation provided one of many studies).

McKibben brings even more baggage to burden Yukon, where oil and gas resources are only accessible by fracking.

Bill McKibben continues to tickle investors and governments with supposedly $20 trillion of value in the ground they should not touch.

Whereas oil and gas industry data show reserves that are largely unconventional and actually are a financial liability in geological characteristic, which is covered up by more layers of fraud against taxpayers and investors through inflated volume numbers (Deborah Rogers, David Hughes, Art Berman).