World Bank
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With food riots raging, let’s open the books on the finances of Big Ag
When we talk about the crisis in food prices, we should scrape below the surface to explore who's actually benefiting from the crisis.
Unless you've had your head stuck in the freezer at Dean & Deluca, you've heard about the food crisis across the planet.
A recent Financial Times displayed this staggering map of the globe: Black dots marked each of the countries were food riots have been sparked in outrage against the rising prices of food. Thirty dots in all. A recent CNN report noted that "Riots, instability spread as food prices skyrocket." These surging costs, warns World Bank President Robert Zoellick, "could mean 'seven lost years' in the fight against worldwide poverty."
With the food crisis as front page news, I couldn't help but notice which agribusiness company has just reported an 86 percent jump in its quarterly earnings.
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Coal still has no place in clean development
You knew it had to happen: the World Bank now has the same climate sensibility as ... the Kansas House.
Scientist Jim Hansen, on the other hand, has requested a meeting with Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, arguing for a moratorium on coal plants until carbon capture and storage technology is available. Even Wall Street looks on coal skeptically. Last Friday, the Kansas House failed to override Sebelius' veto of two new plants by only one vote. And the World Bank is considering funding a massive coal plant in India in compliance with the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism.
Yes, you read that correctly: a larger-than-ever coal plant in a developing giant is considered a mechanism for clean development. Why? Because it will burn more efficiently than other coal plants in India. In fact, it boasts 'supercritical' technology.
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Question
What does it say about humanity if, knowing what we know, we stand by and allow a 4,000 MW dirty coal plant get built?
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How a twisted definition is setting up a monumental folly in India
Here is how the World Bank proposes to solve climate change: lend money to build a 4,000-megawatt coal plant in India that will emit 25.7 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. By way of comparison, that's half a million tons more than the worst carbon emitter in North America, the Scherer plant near Macon, Georgia.
In a weird distortion of logic, Tata Ultra Mega is considered a Clean Development Mechanism by the organization that administers the Kyoto Protocol. This allows industrialized nations to invest in the plant as an alternative to domestic emissions reductions.
The thinking is that since Tata Ultra Mega uses supercritical coal technology, it will increase the average efficiency of coal use in India. Turns out World Bank policy is to invest in "abatement of climate change impacts" through "investment focus on ... supercritical coal technology, ultra supercritical or subcritical coal technology with energy efficiency higher than [the] existing national average of the sector."
Do not be deceived by fancy-sounding terms like "supercritical." We're still talking about burning coal, just at higher temperatures and pressures that notch the efficiency of the process upward from about 36 percent to maybe 43 percent.
The idea that building more coal plants is a step toward "abatement of climate change impacts" could not be sillier, especially since there are baseload technologies available now for solar-rich locations that create zero emissions. In an informative critique of Tata Ultra Mega, Dr. David Wheeler, Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, points out that Gujarat, the location of Tata Ultra Mega, is ideal for concentrated solar power (CSP): "India does have a scalable, economically feasible alternative to coal ... [because] the region near Mundra has a huge solar potential and is one of the most sparsely-settled areas in India. Baseload solar power with thermal storage for 24-hour operation is now technically feasible ... "
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The economic heresy of Herman Daly
If economics is a religion, the World Bank is perhaps its grandest church. For the last half century, the venerable institution at 1818 H Street in Washington, D.C., has been dispatching its missionaries around the globe, spreading the theology of the free market to the heathens. And if economics is a religion, Herman Daly is […]
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Fire on the Mountain
Enviros in Washington are apoplectic over what they fear will be a pre-Earth Day cave-in by the Clinton administration over mountaintop-removal mining in West Virginia. This used to be a mountain. Photo: David Miller, www.mountaintopmining.org. Readers may recall this battle from last year’s appropriations season, when powerful Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) introduced a rider that […]