The unsustainable BBC - by Richard... Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The unsustainable BBC - by Richard... Wednesday, March 24, 2010

An excellent piece of work by The Register brings to light the unsavoury connection between Lord Oxburgh - the official chosen to chair the second Climategate inquiry at the University of East Anglia – and a shadowy environmental advocacy organisation called Globe International.

We have not given a great deal of time to tracking the Climategate inquiries, partly because it was a foregone conclusion that they would be stitched up, and partly because others are already doing the job better – and there are few enough of us "powerful vested interests" around. We do not have the resources to duplicate effort. 

Thus, the latest development can be picked up on the Register, while the ongoing saga can be followed on Bishop Hill, who ploughs his own high-quality furrow in splendid isolation.

Taking the issue further, though, we find from a speech given by Stephen Byers in June last, in his capacity as president, that Globe International is closely allied with another organisation calledComplus, which describes itself as "the sustainable development communications alliance".

That a shadowy political grouping, chaired by an ex-Labour minister (now under investigation for peddling influence) is allied to a shadow "communications" alliance is one thing – the sort of grouping one might expect. But what makes this especially significant and important is that one of the founding partners of Complus is the BBC World Service Trust.

The implications of the BBC's involvement come clear when you see Complus offering itself as "a diverse global alliance of organisations committed to scaling-up the impact of sustainable development communications through partnership and collaboration."

It then tells us that, "by offering a platform to share expertise, develop best practice and create synergies, COMplus actively supports creative and inspiring communications that advance a vision of sustainable development that builds on its social, environmental and economic foundations."

As a tax-funded organisation bound by its charter to political neutrality and impartiality, the BBC has no business allying itself to any organisation devoted to advancing "a vision" on anything, much less in concert with an overtly political organisation chaired by a Labour MP. But it gets worse.

Alongside the BBC as founding members of Complus are several other extremely partisan players. There is, for instance, Conservation International, another environmental advocacy group, this one which boasts as the chair of its executive committee, Rob Walton, chairman of the board of the supermarket giant Wal-Mart Stores.

Then there is the Global Environment Facility, one of the funding agencies which supported the WWF in its Amazon venture, alongside the World Bank, which was the main funder and a leading advocate of forest-based carbon credits. So, when the news broke last weekend of the scam, and the World Bank's involvement in it, the BBC was silent. What a coincidence.

Also silent was the news agency Reuters, but then the Reuters Foundation is also a founding member of Complus.

Yet another extremely partisan founding member is UNEP, the United Nations Environment Programme, which just happens to be the primary sponsoring organisation for the IPCC – prop. Dr Rajendra Pachauri. So there we have the BBC hand in glove in a formal alliance with the UN body which founded the IPCC. 

Others of the "usual suspects" include Globescan, the "global public opinion and stakeholder research" company, One Planet, the TV production company which is so often used by the BBC, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, of which Pachauri's TERI is a member.

The news agency IPS is also a founding member, as is the film maker TVE a ghastly green propaganda unit. That outfit was founded by Central Television, WWF-UK and the UNEP. It is funded by, amongst others, Al Jazeera International, the BBC and the WWF and has Winnie De'Ath, director of communications, WWF-UK, as one of its trustees. Thus we have the BBC formally allied with a film-maker founded with and sustained by WWF money, with formal links with the organisation.

Then add the International Federation of Environmental Journalists, a "network" of "around 7500 journalists associated with every type of medium, scientific authors, filmmakers, etc." Its president is Darryl D'Monte, former Resident Editor of The Times of India.

And just to round off this unholy partnership, an "associated partner" is the Green consultancy, an advertising agency which does work for the Green Party.

Taking money from the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian governments, it is also funded by DFID and the Netherlands government, plus – of course – the BBC, Complus tells us that "communications professionals and media outlets are key to advancing an enlightened global debate on sustainable development." 

They can, we are also told, "be a unique force in bringing environmental, social and economic issues closer to the public, raising both awareness and concern." The need, says Complus, "to communicate action at global, national and individual levels has never been greater." 

And, in that endeavour, there is no greater nor more enthusiastic member than the BBC, itsfunction being to generate "public support for reducing greenhouse gas emissions" and to promote "ecosystem management principles to adapt to climate change through multimedia channels, dialogues, and media training."

This is the BBC we know and love, already fingered by Biased BBC which has a collection of posts: - here, here, here, here, here and here - which attest to how far down the line our state broadcaster has gone. Sustainable this is not.

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It's the energy stoopid! - by Richard...

Aside from the peripheral and most decidedly ephemeral pre-occupations of today, an event is heralded in The Times which signals that the geo-political tectonic plates are moving – with profound repercussions in the short and medium-term.

That event is the imminent completion of a $40 billion deal between the Australian oil and gas producer, the BG Group, to supply natural gas to China. This amounts to 3.6 million tons of LNG a year for 20 years, shipped from BG's proposed export terminal in Queensland.

This is by no means the first of the giant Australian gas deals but what makes this very different and very special is that this is coal bed methane, providing further evidence that this hithertountapped resource is poised to make a significant contribution to the world's energy supply.

Alongside shale gas, it helps re-draw the global energy map, positioning huge reserves of cheap energy in easily accessible, democratic countries. By so doing, it marginalises some of the more inaccessible and unstable regimes, reducing their ability to disrupt the global economy and their political clout. 

In political terms, the significance of this cannot be over-estimated. Not least, the impact on Russia and the central Asian republics is likely to be profound. Their high-cost product is proving to be less attractive and necessary, to the extent that plans to exploit some of the Siberian gas fields are already on hold.

The news today of the TNK-BP conglomerate walking away from the vast Kovykta gas field development is not entirely unrelated. The Russian market has been severely dented by the increased availability of LNG and its failure to clinch an important supply deal with China.

As importantly, emerging economies such as China (and, to an extent India) are winning the race to secure supplies of cheap energy – thus underpinning their future prosperity and stability. By contrast, Western economies – and especially the UK together with other European nations – are saddling themselves with high-cost, unreliable cul-de-sac technologies such as wind power, creating a huge drag on their productive economies.

This is what our politicians do not seem to understand. While Clinton (or whoever) might have said, "it's the economy stoopid", underpinning every modern economy is cheap and reliable energy. Thus, it comes down to "It's the energy stoopid". It really is that important, that fundamental.

Yet, as we see today, we have serried ranks of politicians seemingly determined to undermine the very basis of our economy, our prosperity and stability, throwing away the advantages which made our nation great and which we need to exploit to ensure our continued prosperity.

Collectively, they conspire to engineer what amounts to economic suicide, while they prattle endlessly over their mindless trivia. There cannot be a more desperate, deadly betrayal than this, other than the wider failure of the political classes and the media to alert us to the importance of what is going on and to mobilise protest and dissent. We deserve better than this.

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The death of real politics - by Richard...

For a student of such matters, one of the fascinating aspects of contemporary politics is how narrow, party politics have overtaken the real thing, to the extent that the professional politicians and their respective claquesno longer have any understanding of what politics is about.

Immersed in Westminster bubble gum, they have come to believe that the tat and trivia of their daily fare ispolitics, rather than what it is, the froth and theatre attendant on the exercise of power. 

Then, suddenly, and probably unwittingly, we see on what is one of the most political of all days - budget day - The Times come up with the headline: "Nuclear and wind power will be at heart of Alistair Darling's Budget" 

At last, we see real politics. There is nothing so intensely political as money, and its expenditure, and energy – the very heart of civilisation as we know it. The two combined make for a heady mix, with decisions about to be taken which will have major repercussions for decades to come, in our pockets and, potentially, on our most basic lifestyles.

What gives these issues their edge is that politics, in its proper sense, is about policies – and in particular choices. The essence of the political process is the construction of different policies by different parties, and of choices made between them. In the normal course of events, voters gravitate towards their preferred policies which bring them into the ambit of the parties that offer them.

But, when there are no policies, or the policies held by different parties are the same, then real politics die. The substitute – a choice between parties – is a pale shadow of the real thing. It is not politics. It is a beauty contest – fun while it lasts but entirely lacking in substance.

And today, that is what we are going to see. When Darling stands up and puts "nuclear and wind power" at the heart of his budget, he will differ only in detail but not in substance from the Tories. There is argument at the margins, about how precisely this plan should be financed, but no disagreement that "nuclear and wind" should be at the very heart of energy policy.

That means that both parties subscribe to the fiction that, to renew Britain's electricity generation infrastructure will cost in the order of £200 billion – a figure so widely accepted and undisputed that we even see it trotted out by Rowena Mason, supposedly The Daily Telegraph "expert" on energy matters.

In fact, the figure is far higher than it should be. The cost of "conventional" capacity is about £1 billion per gigawatt, and we need about 100 GW installed capacity in about 20 years. We are looking at double what should be spent. And £100 billion is an awful lot of money to throw down the drain.

The reason for the waste is, of course, not difficult to work out. Both parties are committed to building about 30GW of offshore wind. At £3.1 million per MW installed capacity, that runs to about £90 billion. With the grid needed to serve the network, that makes, as near as damn it, £100 billion.

For the money, we will get about 30 percent load factor – if we are lucky. That, effectively is about ten percent of the capacity required. And all of this will have to be duplicated by conventional sets to provide power when there is no wind. Thus, we end up spending £100 billion on the "conventional" estate and another £100 billion on these useless ornaments.

Now, if we still had real politics, the governing party would be counterbalanced by an opposition. It would mock the insanity and offer what we needed for half the price. We would have real choice. Where to cast our vote would be an easy decision to make.

But we no longer have real politics. We have no real choice, only different parties with the same broad policies. There is no reality, no substance, just difference faces and the same outcome.

Thus, when Darling sits down after his speech, and the opposition starts to dissect his proposals, we will not be seeing politics – only theatre. Politics died a long time ago. To replace it, if the politicians have their way, we will have an array of useless windmills cluttering our seas, mute testimony to the death of something that was once precious but is no more.

And what will be remarkable, in all the torrent of "political" comment today, is how few will actually notice what is happening.

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