Canada – Page 69 – a sibilant intake of breath

G8 insufficiently wary of climate change

Writing in The Toronto Star Christopher Hume has produced a short but trenchant criticism of this government’s position on climate change: Political expediency trumps fate of planet.

As Hume explains:

In the face of overwhelming evidence that global warming is happening, and faster than the most pessimistic climatologists had expected, how can such extraordinary stupidity be justified?

Inaction of this sort goes well beyond ordinary human idiocy; it represents a collective rush to self-destruction on an unprecedented scale. And through it all, our leaders smile and assure us they won’t let our standard of living be threatened.

The G8 leaders would do well to read Jared Diamond’s work on civilizational collapse, so as to better understand the extent to which civilizational success depends absolutely on maintaining agricultural productivity, which in turn depends on avoiding massive environmental degradation and responding intelligently to the problems that arise.

As I have pointed out before, it is a false to suggest that we can continue to enjoy economic and social prosperity without dealing with the problem of climate change. Runaway climate change could literally kill everyone, and even increases of as little as 2°C “stands a strong chance of provoking drought and storm responses that could challenge civilized society” according to the scientists at RealClimate.

This government needs to realize that climate change isn’t some minor political issue to be managed, but rather a major civilizational challenge for humanity. So far, Canada has influenced this process primarily be serving as an anchor, holding back those with greater vision and determination.

Who is vulnerable to climate change?

Yesterday, I attended a meeting on climate change, security, and human rights (mentioned before). One thing about it disturbed me: namely, that the entire perspective offered was a north-south narrative of industrialized states causing harm to vulnerable populations around the world. The discussion was largely about how that harm could be reduced, and whether any legal mechanism exist through which states could be called to account, for the damage they do to the prospects of vulnerable groups.

Sadly, this perspective is over-optimistic, given the world’s track record so far. While highly vulnerable groups and poor states may be hit first and hardest by climate change, the idea that they will be the only people profoundly affected is misleading and potentially dangerous. It feeds into the flawed notion that rich states can basically keep behaving as they have in the past, with the worst possible outcome being a lot of suffering for poor people elsewhere.

The reality is that business-as-usual emissions would probably produce a mean global temperature increase of 5.5°C to 7.1°C by 2100. That is a massive enough change to raise doubts about the future of even some rich societies. Could Australian agriculture cope with that much of an increase? Could cities in the southern United States continue to provide the minimum level of water required to sustain their populations? (US Energy Secretary Stephen Chu suggested perhaps not.)

My fear is that people who expect that only the poor and vulnerable will suffer from climate change will not be sufficiently motivated to deal with the problem. Such a belief strikes me as a serious misunderstanding of both the best scientific and political assessments. It would be hard to read the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC and not conclude that people in rich countries face acute vulnerability to unchecked climate change. Similarly, the basic message of economic analyses like those performed by Nicholas Stern is that the costs of inaction are very high, especially when compared with the real but comparatively modest price of dealing with the problem.

The credit crunch and Canada’s national debt

Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Office recently projected that Canada will remain in deficit until 2014, with a total deficit of $156 billion to be accumulated. Those are figures that should be worrisome to everyone, even if you accept the argument that the consequences of being more fiscally prudent would have been even worse, because they would have caused a deep recession and exploding unemployment.

What seems most regrettable to me about this is that we have basically failed to use the opportunity to make necessary investments in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In exchange for the support given to carmakers, for instance, we could have demanded a lot more movement on efficiency and the deployment of hybrid and electric vehicles. More of our infrastructure spending could have been directed at the energy sources of the future (renewables) and less at perpetuating activities that climate change and dwindling fossil fuels have rendered unsustainable. We need to realize that many aspects of how we now live simply need to change – particularly dependence on fossil fuels for both wealth and our energy needs.

Canada has too many future liabilities to be unconcerned about our degraded financial position. Inevitably, the money we are borrowing is going to need to be paid back with interest and, when we are not using it to invest in productive future assets and capabilities, the cost of that will inevitably be borne in future service cuts and tax rises. As a general pattern, it is awfully frustrating how Conservatives everywhere like to cut taxes without decreasing spending, wreck the financial balance of countries, lose power, and then leave it to the next government to repair. They can then win power again and restart the cycle.

The Globe and Mail has more on the announcement.

Grouse Mountain’s 1.5MW wind turbine

According to the Megawatt blog and The Vancouver Sun, the Grouse Mountain ski resort is going to put a highly visible 1.5MW wind turbine near the mountain’s highest point.

While the move is more symbolic than substantive, the turbine is expected to provide about 20% of the power requirements of the resort. It will also be a tourist attraction in and of itself, with a viewing platform 58m up. The turbine is meant to go up in August or September, and produce power in early 2010, in time for the Vancouver Olympics.

The most important impact may be making people gradually more tolerant of visible renewable energy facilities. If we are going to escape our harmful dependence on fossil fuels, we are going to need a lot of them.

Ontario rethinking new nukes

Apparently, the government of Ontario is reconsidering its decision to build more nuclear power plants, due to concerns about cost overruns and the status of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL). The province was previously planning to spend $26 billion over the next few decades, expanding and refurbishing nuclear reactors.

Apparently, the Ontario government has rejected foreign bids from France’s AREVA and the American Westinghouse corporation, but doesn’t have sufficient confidence in AECL to commit for sure at this stage. They want guarantees from the federal government, in order to proceed.

I am torn on the question of whether to support nuclear power. It is certainly more appealing than additional coal power, when all the risks of each are taken into account. That being said, nuclear has always benefitted from large direct and indirect subsidies. It isn’t clear whether that public money would be better spent on alternatives, such as renewable generation, an improved electrical grid, energy storage, or demand management. I also have serious doubts about the competence of AECL, as well as our government’s effectiveness in regulating and managing it. It would have been nice for a foreign corporation with domestic support from its own government and taxpayers had taken on some of the risk associated with the new projects, rather than leaving it all in Canadian hands.

As an aside, Canadian nuclear regulators have discovered that Canada’s existing CANDU reactors are more dangerous than previously appreciated. In the event of a coolant leak, the chain reaction inside them actually speeds up, instead of slowing down. This could lead to dangerous overheating if a serious leak isn’t followed by a rapid shutdown.

Looser collusion laws for oil sands producers

Apparently, Canada’s Competition Bureau is considering loosening rules on collusion to benefit oil sands producers. Specifically, the proposed rule would permit firms to coordinate on megaprojects, without risking criminal charges for anti-competitive behaviour. Firms could do things like plan staggered construction schedules, to try to avoid the large increases in costs that accompanied the run up to $150 a barrel oil last year.

While the chaotic booms and busts of Alberta’s oil patch probably aren’t economically efficient or environmentally benign, it’s not clear that giving firms more scope to coordinate their behaviour is a good solution. Already, the government of Alberta is far too lax in the regulation of oil sands projects. Given how the interests of oil sands producers can conflict fundamentally with those of the population as a whole (especially when long-term environmental damage and cleanup costs are considered) it seems a lot more sensible to improve coordination through government policies intended to enforce the public interests, rather than giving oil giants more leverage through which to seek their own.

Getting serious about climate change

The key thing that is required for dealing with climate change, and which our society does not yet possess, is seriousness. Seriousness of the kind that accompanied winning the Second World War – far more seriousness than we are displaying now in Afghanistan. We can afford to effectively lose that war, watching control pass back to the Taliban, but we cannot afford the consequences that would arise from decades of additional unmitigated emissions.

The threat certainly justifies an effort on the scale of winning a world war. The business-as-usual outcome of more than 5°C of temperature increase would cause enormous disruption. It is quite probable that it would disrupt global agriculture to such an extent that the global population would drop significantly, amid a lot of bloodshed and suffering. Preventing that requires replacing the energy inputs that run everything with carbon neutral ones: a process that will cost trillions and probably require converting areas the size of states into renewable power facilities.

Where could the necessary seriousness come from? The scientists have already given us a vivid and well-justified picture of what continuing on our present course will do. Some political parties and entities have accepted the direction in which we need to travel, though they don’t really understand how far we need to go along that road, or how quickly we need to begin. In the worst case, seriousness will come with the first concrete demonstration that climate change is a major threat to civilization. By then, however, even action on the largest scale and with the utmost urgency would probably be more of a salvage effort than a save.

Something needs to prompt us, as a global society, to take action on an environmental issue at a scale and a cost never previously borne. Rational scientific and economic analyses are already urging that, but don’t seem to have the psychological motive power to make people stop dallying. Finding something to provide the needed push into serious thinking must be a major task for the environmental movement.

Pondering smartphones

Soon, I will probably be switching cell phone plans, and possibly phones and providers as well. I am considering getting an internet-enabled phone, and pondering the various associated options. The most appealing phones are the iPhone and the HTC Android phone, followed by the Nokia smartphones. Using the first two would mean switching to Rogers.

In terms of the phone itself, I definitely prefer a physical keyboard to Apple’s error-prone on-screen version. That said, it would be nice to have a phone that was also an iTunes compatible iPod replacement… Does anybody have an HTC Dream or direct experience with a working one? I am curious how they compare with the iPhone for web browsing, email, and instant messaging.

I definitely don’t want to get locked into a three-year contract, so I am considering buying an unlocked phone as inexpensively as possible, then getting a one-year smartphone contract from Rogers. That way, if I move outside Canada, or get into a financial circumstance incompatible with expensive data plans, I won’t have to pay a massive fee to get out of the contract.

Bixi bikes in Ottawa

The Ottawa area now has four bicycle rental kiosks – two in Gatineau, and two on the Ottawa side. The company that provides them is called Bixi and they are priced to encourage brief usage: free for 30 minutes, $1.50 for the next thirty, $3.00 for the next thirty, and then $6.00 for each half hour after that. To take one out, you swipe your credit card. It charges the appropriate amount when returned to another station. Montreal has a system with the same bikes: 3,000 of them at 300 locations. The Montreal system apparently cost $15 million, and is expected to pay itself off with user fees.

The stations are outside the Portage Complex and near the Civilization Museum in Gatineau, as well as beside the ByWard Market on Sussex near York and on the other side of the Canal at Elgin and Queen.

I want to try doing a rally between all four, making each trip in less than half an hour, so as to make it all free. Going from Portage to the Civilization Museum would be a breeze. From there to the ByWard stop would also be pretty easy, across the Alexandra Bridge. The trip between the Ottawa stations would be short, but going from the Elgin station back to Portage would be the trickiest part to achieve in half an hour, though still very possible.

The system should be very useful for both visitors and residents. I hope people treat it with respect.

$3,500 for old cars

Automobile makers and dealers apparently want the federal government to pay people $3,500 if they give up an old car and get a new one. What industry wouldn’t want that? I am sure Sony would like the government to give $1,000 grants to anyone buying a new laptop, just like Apple would appreciate $200 grants for those replacing music players. The only justification for such a public subsidy is that the environmental damage done by the new cars will be lessened to an extent worth more than $3,500 to society at large.

Here are two ideas I think would be better:

Offer anybody $500 in exchange for recycling any car, regardless of whether they get a new one or not. This would both lead to a reduction in the total number of vehicles out there (especially those in a very poor state of repair) and set a floor price on used-car sales. After all, nobody would sell a car for less than $500 if the government would give them that much to scrap it.
Offer grants if people recycle and old car and buy a zero-emission vehicle, with the amount increasing along with the efficiency of the vehicle per passenger-kilometre. For instance, trading in a car might get you a $500 credit towards a bicycle, a smaller credit towards an electric scooter, and an even smaller credit towards an electric car.

Of course, the supporters of either of these approaches are a lot less politically influential than car companies and car dealers, making it unlikely that any government would embrace these approaches. Still, I hope this doesn’t emerge as yet another policy designed to extend the lifespan of yesterday’s carbon-intensive transport, production, and consumption. What we need are policies to help drive the economy towards modes of energy production and use that are sustainable and compatible with a stable climate.