A Place to Stand

From the Telegraph but not the BBC comes news of the financial link between the Teeside steelworks closure & the chair of the IPCC.

One of Corus's prizes was the Redcar steel works, once Europe's largest blast furnace. It is this which is now to be mothballed, according to Corus because of worldwide "over-production". But this is transparently not the case, since its new owner, Tata, is planning to more than double its steel production in India over the next three years. Furthermore, only last month Corus announced plans to build a 20 million euro plant in the Netherlands, with the help of 15 million euros from the EU and 5 million euros from the Dutch government. Our Government says it is unable to help over the closure of Redcar because this would not be allowed under EU state-aid rules, although Gordon Brown says he may be able to offer a little "re-training".

The real gain to Corus from stopping production at Redcar, however, is the saving it will make on its carbon allowances, allocated by the EU under its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). By ceasing to emit a potential six million tonnes of CO2 a year, Corus will benefit from carbon allowances which could soon, according to European Commission projections, be worth up to £600 million over the three years before current allocations expire.

But this is only half the story. In India, Corus's owner, Tata, plans to increase steel production from 53 million tonnes to 124 million over the same period. By replacing inefficient old plants with new ones which emit only "European levels" of CO2, Tata could claim a further £600 million under the UN's Clean Development Mechanism, which is operated by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – the organisers of the Copenhagen conference. Under this scheme, organisations in developed countries such as Britain – ranging from electricity supply companies to the NHS – can buy the right to exceed their CO2 allocations from those in developing countries, such as India. The huge but hidden cost of these "carbon permits" will be passed on to all of us, notably through our electricity bills.

Thus, at the end of the day, Redcar will lose its biggest employer and one of the largest manufacturing plants left in Britain. Tata, having gained up to £1.2 billion from "carbon credits", will get its new steel plants – while the net amount of CO2 emitted worldwide will not have been reduced a jot.

And the connection with Dr Pachauri? Directly there is no connection at all. But it just happens that Dr Pachauri's other main job, apart from being chairman of the IPCC, is as director-general of the Tata Energy Research Institute, funded by Tata, which he has run since 1981.

Incidentally next time somebody points out that all those sceptical scientists don't count because they aren't "climate scientists" (by which they mean computer modellers who, according to the Wegman report don't understand the statistics they work with) point out to them that Dr Pachauri isn't a scientist at all but an engineer (albeit a high powered one).

The closure of the LLanwern steel plant earlier this year was also linked to the closure of a nearby nuclear plant & thus it not getting reliable inexpensive nuclear electricity.

The failure of one of the few remaining parts of our productive industry owes nothing whatsoever to any inherent inability to compete with orientals & everything to decisions by our political leaders to prevent them having power to compete with & stacking the deck against our own workers.

Expect every single prospective MP from the Labour, LibDem & Conservative & indeed SNP & Green parties who are not wholly & completely corrupt to get up at the election & take responsibility for this. Expect every one of them, who is a lying, thieving, fascist parasite with total contempt for the electors & who can never be trusted to tell the truth on anything to say how much they share the ex-worker's pain & intend to do their best to "create" new jobs. Expect virtually the entirety of these parties' candidates to prove wholly corrupt fascists. UKIP & the BNP obviously are not tarred with that brush.

Labels: British politics, eco-fascism