influence the decision-making process.The Angry Mermaid Award has been set up to recognise the perverse role of corporate lobbyists, and highlight those business groups and companies that have made the greatest effort to sabotage the climate talks, and other climate measures, while promoting, often profitable, false solutions.
Named after the iconic Copenhagen mermaid who is angry about the destruction being caused by climate change, the Angry Mermaid Award winner will be decided by a public web poll.
The winner of the Angry Mermaid Award will be announced in Copenhagen on Tuesday 15 December 2009. The Angry Mermaid Award is organised by Attac Denmark, Corporate Europe Observatory, Friends of the Earth International, Focus on the Global South and Spinwatch.
The eight nominees for the Angry Mermaid Award are:
*American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity*- for pushing “clean” coal and for employing a lobby firm which ran a fraudulent
letter writing campaign, sending fake letters to the US Congress on the US climate bill.
*American Petroleum Industry (API)*- for spending millions of dollars on lobbying against US climate legislation, including
setting up an “astroturf” campaign to create the illusion of strong grassroots opposition.
*European Chemical Lobby (Cefic) *- for lobbying for free permits under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, undermining the EU’s main measure to cut carbon emissions
*International Air Transport Association (IATA)* – for promoting weak voluntary efforts to cut emissions from aviation in an
attempt to pre-empt international legislation.
*International Emissions Trading Association (IETA)* – for promoting emissions trading and carbon offsetting as the solution
to climate change, despite the lack of evidence of real emissions cuts.
*Monsanto* – a biotech giant, for lobbying for carbon credits for genetically modified crops and promoting GM crops as a solution to climate change.
*Sasol* – for lobbying for carbon capture and storage as a way to clean up synfuel manufacture – where coal is converted to petrol using vast amounts of energy and generating huge levels of carbon emissions.
*Shell*- for lobbying for financial and political support for carbon capture and storage while investing massively in
environmentally destructive oil extraction from the Canadian tar sands.
It seems to me that the Nuclear Energy Institute and other nuclear power lobbyist should be on the list of nominees for the Angry Mermaid Award.
The nuclear power option has the potential to completely scuttle the overall effort to mitigate the climate crisis. It would divert capital from other projects and at the same time provide a false hope for solution. In other words it is a classical technical fix: it actually makes the problem worse.
Stewart Brand, James Lovelock, John Kerry and even James Hansen are absolutely wrong when it comes to the nuclear option. THEIR JUDGMENT HAS BEEN CLOUDED BY DESIRE. Their passionate desire for a solution to the climate crisis has allowed them to accept the false promise of the nuclear option without question. Amory Lovins’ recent response to Stewart Brand is a short concise analysis. Just look it up in Google.
In my opinion it is not hyperbole to say that this is the most important question of our lifetime: Should we embrace nuclear power as the primary solution to climate change? The answer is an emphatic no.