Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

80 Pitfalls and Pipelines: Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industries
The industry-financed lobbyists in the USA have had
considerable negative influence on United States government
policy, resulting in years of resistance to the development
of a truly international response to the threats from climate
change.
The coal, cement and steel industries lobbied directly to
weaken international efforts to impose strict limits on carbon
emissions at the Copenhagen Summit in 2009. They succeeded
in persuading governments to opt for actions aimed
at limiting average temperature rises to two degrees Celsius
by 2100. This target is viewed by some critics as inadequate
in scope or strictness of implementation to avoid some of the
worst impacts of climate change. 41
In attempting to present a clean image of coal, its proponents
in both industry and government have made strong
claims for an as yet unproven experimental technical fix to
be the main provider in reducing the mineral’s “carbon
footprint.” This fix is “Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS),”
which it is claimed will catch and safely store the carbon in
underground geologic formations to reduce carbon dioxide
emissions. 42
According to many scientists, CCS has not been once
proven to work on an industrial scale. According to some it
may never be able to do so. Michael Economides, Professor of
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of
Houston, Texas, states that “[G]eologic sequestration of CO2
[is] a profoundly non-feasible option for the management of
CO2 emissions.” He suggests that there are insufficient geological
formations suitable to store the enormous quantities
of carbon dioxide, which would be emitted under current
energy-use projections. 43 Storage formations may not be located
where most needed. Neither is there any guarantee that
formations would not rupture, causing stored carbon dioxide
to bubble back up to the surface and into the atmosphere. 44
Yet governments have paved the way for a whole new
round of coal-fired power stations based on the promise that,
someday, CCS will work. European Union member states will,
between now and 2015, allocate about one billion Euros to