Recent Work
Commentary
World Bank Climate Profiteering
March 31 - The IFC, the World Bank’s private sector lending arm, plans to back a massive coal-fired power plant in Mundra, a town in the Indian state of Gujarat. The complex of five 800 megawatt plants will cost $4.14 billion to build and be owned and operated by Tata Power Company Limited, a scion of India’s largest multinational corporation, the Tata Group. To put this in perspective, Tata Motors, a division of the same conglomerate, recently announced plans to buy the luxury car companies, Jaguar and Range Rover from U.S. automaker Ford for $2.3 billion. And Tata Power’s 2007 revenues totaled $1.6 billion. So, it’s hard not to ask how much help Tata needs from the World Bank, which has as its motto: “our dream is a world free of poverty.” Several other corporations are involved. Toshiba, for example, will supply the steam turbine generators. By Shakuntala Makhijani and Daphne Wysham, published in AlterNet, Common Dreams, Foreign Policy In Focus, Green Left Weekly, The New York Times Dot Earth Blog.
Op-Ed
Hoodwinked in Bali on Carbon Credits
December 12 - It's the second week of the UN Climate Change Conference and the air is heavy with humidity, but despite being the rainy season, it hasn't rained heavily in weeks. The rooms in the conference facilities where people are clustered around computers feel like saunas, an appropriate thing, I suppose--reminding us not only of where we are, in tropical Bali, but also of why we're here. The world has a fever, and we're here to begin to bring the temperature down before it's too late. The question is, will the 15,000 or so government and nongovernment actors here deliver the goods, or have events been set in motion to make such a breakthrough impossible? By Daphne Wysham, published in The Nation.



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