Venezuela sabotaging UN climate treaty process, again

I went to the 1992 Earth Summit. I was there amidst a bunch of tents, wandering through a swarm of NGO brainiacs, walking my bicycle around, my purple dance tights making me an obvious outlier in the field of khaki pants. It was a depressing spectacle, an exercise designed to fail. Sure, there was hope for a treaty — the Montreal Protocol was entering full effect and the oil companies feared they would face the same fate as the makers of Freon. They needed someone, anyone, to stop any treaty that really reduced the consumption of fossil fuels. And it quickly became clear that there were plenty of volunteers for that dirty role.

The US, under George HW Bush, was the obvious saboteur. Bush said the US way of life was not up for negotiation. But when, for just a moment, it looked like the US would go along with the treaty, Japan popped up to say it would block the efforts. That put the US, and (briefly) Japan on the side of OPEC, that group of oil companies with UN seats. This is how things work: people think big oil has to try and pay people off to be heard. The fact is, there is a queue of leaders eager to do the bidding of big oil, just waiting for big-oil’s current favourite to screw up and do something environmental.

Now, the big oil companies and OPEC states have spent years slowing any progress on climate change. They have thrown smoke for literally a generation. But if you want creativity in the anti-climate-treaty game, you need to look to PDVSA and Venezuela.

In the climate change con, we are the victims

Here is a very nice wrap-up of the state of the debate over climate change in US Congress.

As this guy notes, the big climate marches Sunday were only needed because people are wilfully ignorant. I just went through my old papers and I turned up a copy of the newsletter No Sweat News from fall 1993. Here are pages 14-17, scanned for your pleasure.

No Sweat News Fall 1993 Yes, 1993. It is, here in the northern hemisphere, now fall 2014. This newsletter is now old enough to drink legally in the Puritan States of America. And it is still on point. The debate has barely moved.

That despite the cover article of the Summer 1995 issue, “Climate Change, Insects and Plague,” which explains why insects are among the quickest adaptors to climate change, happily moving upslope or up-latitude as conditions permit. Even 19 years ago, they were noting that malaria-bearing mosquitos had increased their range in response to climate change. And now here we are, in the middle of a host of outbreaks, from Ebola to Chikungunya to measles to mysterious weirdness, and people for the most part know not to mention climate change because it’s just going to break down into a stupid screamfest when we all need to just get together and fix these symptoms asap.

This blog is about scandals in the energy industry. The biggest scandal of all has nothing to do with Spanish con men or Nigerian governors or Venezuelan get-rich-quick schemes. The biggest and worst scam out there is that we continue to burn so many fossil fuels. We are all suckers in a huge con by the energy industry. Man-made climate change is now well underway, matching the form but exceeding the scale of predictions from 20 years ago, and we, like the victims of any con, continue to deny that we’ve been had, believing the con man’s promise that the payment will come next week, that it wasn’t his fault. Like the victims of any con, we blame ourselves. Like most victims, we refuse to react with righteous rage, instead slinking back home to have a drink and lament our fate. It’s a bad way to go.

Stupid vs smart solar panels

Not long ago there was a dumb idea going around: photovoltaic roadways. It was almost impossibly stupid, ignoring the fact that roads need to carry almost unlimited loads, need to be recycled every few years and are often shaded or covered with snow or dirt. Nevertheless, it got $2.2 million from probably well-meaning people on the crowdfunding website IndieGoGo.

There’s a new only slightly less dumb idea going around: photovoltaic building windows. It ignores that almost no windows face the sun directly, for good reason. Unless you are in a truly frigid climate, building windows that directly face the sun waste energy by overheating the space, requiring cooling or (often mechanical) ventilation. In the article at that link, the inventor fantasizes about using a PV film instead of current energy efficiency films on skyscrapers. Builders will have to justify any additional cost for the films and all the wiring through the building to collect all this energy. Adding to the cost is any reduction in operating efficiency of the building — if the PV film is any worse than the fancy efficiency films it displaces, you need to count in the increased energy consumption for the building and the need for bigger chillers, ducts and cool water piping. This starts to look like an awful expensive way to produce a tiny amount of electricity.

If you really want to reduce a building’s net energy consumption, one of the best things is to shade the windows so you get daylight without direct blast of solar gain, at least not in summer. PV windows won’t work if they are shaded.

Both of these clever PV ideas are based on a faulty premise: that the lack of solar power generation is for lack of places to put solar panels. There are plenty of places to put solar panels. If solar panels aren’t being installed in your town, it is probably because the level of insolation is too low to justify it, utility rate structures make it uneconomical, or other energy sources in your area are much cheaper. None of these are affected by clever inventions like solar roads or windows. You need to go back to boring old utility rate regulation, carbon taxes, and the weather.

These newfangled ideas obstinately forget all the lessons from decades past about negawatts. This is the idea that generation is no better, and often worse, than conservation. If you want to overall reduce the amount of fossil fuels being used for energy, you should probably drive less on any kind of road, with or without embedded PV cells. You should shade windows, especially in summer. And yes, you should build more PV installations — at the exact angles best suited to capturing peak solar radiation, in locations with minimal cloud and shade. In other words, make good use of roads and windows. Don’t try to cover over wasteful construction with a coat of PV film.

Aguirre, the Wrath of Petrobras

You can watch the film or you can read the legal brief, in which a modern-day Aguirre sues the king for sending him down a deathtrap Peruvian river. From US District Court for the Southern District of Texas comes the epic drama, “4:14-cv-02155,” starring one J Wilkerson and Petrobras America.

4.1 In February of 2013, Plaintiff was working as a mechanic at Defendant’s facility in Peru, where helicopters delivered supplies and materials in support of Defendant’s oil and gas exploration activities.

4.2 On or about February 13, 2013, when it came time for his work to end, and for Plaintiff to return to the United States, he was unable to depart via aircraft as planned, due to severe rainstorms. Consequently, Defendant provided a small aluminum boat and pilot to transport Plaintiff. The vessel was navigated through waters where there were visible trees rising out of the water, and presumably tree stumps hidden beneath the water. The vessel violently struck something in the water, which caused the vessel to flip, throwing Plaintiff into the water. Plaintiff lost consciousness, and sustained severe and disabling bodily injuries.

4.3 When he regained consciousness, Plaintiff was trapped in an air pocket under the boat. He swam out through a window, and up to the surface. He then began to float down the river. He spotted a small village and was able to make his way to the bank and up onto land. A small fishing boat, passing by, picked him up and took him to a village where he sat for hours, waiting for Defendant’s rescue boatto arrive. Defendant’s rescue boat transported Plaintiff back to Defendant’s work site from which he had departed in the aluminum boat. He was then transported by helicopter to Defendant’s main gas processing plant. From there, Plaintiff was transported by fixed wing aircraft to Lima, Peru, where he was taken by cab to a hotel. Plaintiff stayed at the hotel for roughly 6 hours, before flying by commercial airline back to the United States.

Petrobras America, the named defendant, simply says it’s never owned or operated anything in Peru, so quit bothering the poor saps. Sorry but this story doesn’t have much in the way of a cathartic conclusion. The case is ongoing in Houston.

Another few cents on Latin American memory museums

Lillie, Colin and Otto have commented about how the Econo missed on Latin American memory museums. A year ago, as I was putting together an article about the 40th anniversary of the coup d’état in Chile, I had the chance to interview Ricardo Brodsky, executive director of the Museo de la Memoria, Santiago de Chile’s spectacular museum that the Economist says presents a biased version of history.

I understand The Economist’s concern. I had it myself before I learned what the Museum of Memory was. Like the Economist, I thought it was supposed to be a history museum. But it makes no sense to study a coup that was supported by, at least, a sizable minority of the population while ignoring why so many people sided with such a thing. I thought it was bad history-telling.

But as Brodsky explains in this interview, the Museum of Memory isn’t a history museum. For the record, here is my interview with Brodsky, translated by me. Let me know if you want a copy of the tape.

How climate change will kill us: Two things you might not realize

Lives close to the edge. Dying.pte

Climate is changing. I think we all get that it’s bad, but a lot of people don’t understand the statistical mechanics of just how it’s going to do us in. Fear not! I explain things very simply.

Climate change shifts the margins. A hotter climate doesn’t affect everything or everyone equally. It hits things, species, and places that live close to the edge.

Species that live in little mountaintops will suffer as their favored temperatures move up to ever smaller zones at the summits and eventually disappear. Sea creatures with shells are already suffering, from ocean acidification. Turns out they had gotten a bit too comfy with the slow-changing acidity levels of the last 300 million years. Little did they know that things could change more quickly, outstripping their ability to adapt. (As they say in South America, chau pescau!)

The problem with collaborators (Galt’s Gulch Chile, Argentine dictators, and Derwick Associates, oh my)

Ken Johnson, head of Galt’s Gulch Chile, looks at proposed subdivision map at Curacaví city hall.

I’ve been thinking about collaborators: people who go along with situations where they aren’t comfortable. Resisting or opposing would be hard, or cause legal inconveniences, or burn bridges, or ruin the chance of making big bucks. Some are just afraid. Collaborating with misbehavior, from a petty lie up to a major human rights violation, is normal and human. I probably go along to get along 99% of the time. But anyone who counts on reluctant collaborators is taking chances.

One example is Galt’s Gulch Chile (GGC). This is a proposed real estate development in the suburbs of Santiago, Chile, marketed toward libertarians and others who think the US, Canada and Western Europe are likely to collapse. Among its problems are that its managing partner, Ken Johnson, alienated a lot of workers, investors and buyers. By last November, when I visited the place for a Spring Celebration, some of the big names that were promoting the project were already feuding with Johnson over money and employment conditions. I sensed there were some odd personal dynamics but I figured they were the usual things one would get between a bunch of lone wolves trying to work together. Turns out it was worse. A few people have privately complained about Johnson; then a couple weeks ago, an early buyer went public alleging financial malfeasance. That broke the dam.

Suddenly, the interpipes were flooded with people who had been suspicious, those who claim to have warned buyers against the project, and even promoter-in-chief Jeff Berwick, saying that he was hoodwinked. He now claims he was already disillusioned with the project last August but chose to keep going along to get along so as not to cause other people any problems. Lawyer Erin Gallagly (who has never returned my calls seeking comment), in a now-deleted comment on Facebook, said she “witnessed a plethora of horror” in three months at GGC: failure to pay vendors, withholding pay from employees, threatening employees, financial mismanagement, and demanding that salespeople not share information. 

Venezuela-China original documents hiding in plain sight

UPDATE: I learn that The Devil’s Excrement and Armas del Coronel blogs had these documents years ago. I missed them at the time. Credit where due!

 

Oil geeks and Venezuela-watchers might remember that in early 2010, a delegation of Venezuelans went to China to request a $40 billion loan and came back with a new $4 billion loan. This was the first part of the ongoing lending by China of money to Venezuela to be repaid in crude oil and fuel oil. That in turn led to new agreements in 2011. These deals have gotten a lot of attention, but much of what has been said has been poorly backed by information about the real content of the Venezuela-China deals.

Turns out, a collection of financial documents about these deals has been online since late 2011. Here you go, yours at no extra charge. Most of them appear to be late-phase drafts, rather than signed documents. But they are certainly close enough to final that they can give people discussing these deals a bit of grounding in reality, rather than the just making stuff up.

Included in this collection:

A trip report for President Chávez, describing exactly what happened in Beijing on the trip from February 2 to 4, 2010. 

Venezuela recastrates environment ministry

Some oil spill in Venezuela. Stolen without permission from El Universal.

Venezuela. One of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. A place with a nasty heavy-oil industry that produces tremendous quantities of water and spills oil into tropical rivers. And now, a place with no environment ministry.

It was bad enough when the ministry was stupid and weak. Now, it’s been “consolidated” with the housing ministry. In a country where nobody except the government builds homes, the housing ministry has its hands full. It won’t dedicate a whole lot of time or money to the environment.

Pond of produced water from oil well in Anzoátegui state, Venezuela, with scum of crude oil in foreground. Open to migrating birds, occasionally “cleaned” by burning off crude. My photo.

Meanwhile, in Colombia, the environment ministry has grown a spine and recently sanctioned Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp for improper water disposal in the llanos. (Funny how the Colombian press and the company have failed to report on that, eh? Thanks to Primera Página, the only real independent biz media in Colombia, for the heads-up on that news item.)

Sure, it’s probably about a decade late to the action, but it shows that a government can occasionally restrain the excesses of the oil industry if it wants to. In Venezuela, that won’t be happening.

Wet savannah near Campo Rubiales, Colombia. My photo.

I eagerly await the condemnation of Amazon Watch, the International Rivers Network, and other protectors of the environment.

Keeping up with the old stuff: Beracha case dismissed

Sorry I never posted this last week. I was one of the few outlets to write about Moris Beracha being sued for his alleged profits from Francisco Illarramendi’s hedge-fund-gone bad. So I should note that the US government dropped its case against Beracha last week. Thanks to Latin American Herald Tribune for staying on top of this. Beracha insists in their article that he has lost $100 million to the whole mess, and is a victim, not a perpetrator.

Given that the main Illarramendi case is now up to 891 filings and some related cases, like Beracha’s, extending well past 100 filings each, I have long since stopped paying for and reading these documents. I hope someone someday can be arsed to do so. Have fun.

(Oh look, Odo & Nancy Habeck’s case was dropped back in 2013. I should really keep more on top of these things.)