The environment – Page 162 – a sibilant intake of breath

Quebec rejects corn ethanol

Having decided in 2005 to authorize a corn-fed ethanol plant in Varennes, the government of Quebec has now officially said that corn ethanol has no future in the province. While the future use of alternative feedstocks is not ruled out, the Quebec Minister for Natural Resources have said that this pilot plant will be the last of its kind. An article in the Montreal Gazette supports the idea that “[b]acking away from ethanol makes sense.”

This is a good thing for a number of reasons. To begin with, ethanol made from corn probably doesn’t have any positive environmental effects. It takes as much oil to grow the corn, make the ethanol, and distribute it as it would have taken to power the ethanol cars in the first place. As such, the effect of using corn ethanol on greenhouse gas emissions is negligible. Furthermore, intensive corn agriculture has problems of its own. Pesticide use peppers the environment with toxins – including persistent organic pollutants. Fertilizer runoff causes the eutrophication of rivers and algae blooms in the sea.

Wherever a sustainable future for transportation energy lies, it is not with ethanol made from corn.

Farewell to horns

This blog has previously mentioned the process of ‘fishing down’ marine food webs: you start with big delicious predator species (tuna, salmon, etc) and fish them to local extinction. Then, you catch smaller and less tasty things until the area of sea contains only plankton and jellyfish. This is a rational thing to do in the right circumstances: where access to a certain area of sea is free and unrestricted, and where everyone else is driving the resource towards destruction anyway. The best you can do individually is cash in while you can, since the resource is getting destroyed anyhow.

It seems that something similar is happening in relation to horns used for traditional Chinese medicine. Back in 1991, conservationists concerned about the decimation of rhino populations for medicinal purposes tried to encourage the use of Saiga Antelope (Saiga tatarica) horn instead. The World Wildlife Fund tried to encourage pharmacists to substitute the horns of the less endangered antelopes for those of the more endangered rhinos. Now, antelope populations in Russia and Kazakhstan have fallen from over 1,000,000 to just 30,000 (a 97% decline).

Switching from the unrestrained usage of one resource to the unrestrained usage of another just shifts the focus of the damage being caused. In order to create sustainable outcomes, restraint must be enforced either through economic means or regulation.

As an aside, there does seem to be some scope for reducing the horn trade by reducing demand through education. While horn is apparently an effective remedy for fever (though less good than available drugs not made from endangered species), the idea that it is an effective aphrodisiac can be countered. The rigid appearance of horn hardly makes it likely that it actually has chemical aphrodisiac properties, though it may strengthen the placebo effect already bolstered by general reverence for tradition. Apparently, the advent of Viagra has reduced prices and demand for rhino horn as well as seal and tiger penises that have traditionally been employed (though less effectively) to the same end.

Some nuclear facts and figures

The first nuclear reactor to generate electricity was the EBR-1 experimental reactor in Arco, Idaho. Previously, reactors had only been used to produce materials for the military: especially plutonium for bombs of the kind dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. Four years after the EBR-1 reactor became operational (producing a paltry 100 kilowatts of power), it became the first nuclear reactor to suffer a partial meltdown.

The contemporary nuclear industry includes 439 nuclear reactors worldwide, producing 6.5% of the world’s energy and 15.7% of the world’s electricity. According to the International Atomic Energy Organization, 31 different countries operate reactors. Two countries – France and Japan – produce 57% of the world’s nuclear power, with nuclear producing 80% of all French usage. In terms of sheer output, the United States produces more nuclear power than anyone else in the world. US nuclear output in 2005 was about 406 terawatt-hours. They also have the largest and safest nuclear navy (Russia has had 18 serious nuclear accidents on subs, producing seven sinkings and 241 deaths).

As far back as 1952, a Presidential commission (The President’s Materials Policy Commission) produced a pessimistic report on the prospects of nuclear power for electrical generation, suggesting that money be devoted to solar power research instead. Now, the combination of concerns about energy security and concerns about climate change is prompting a possible re-birth within the industry. Here is a map showing who is considering new nuclear facilities.

It would certainly be useful to know the true price of nuclear power, as well as whether anyone will actually open a geological storage depot for spent fuel in coming years.

The biofuels controversy

Ricardo Hausmann, over at the Financial Times, has written an article on why biofuels are wonderful, not to mention the wave of the future. He says that current oil prices guarantee the long-term viability of biofuels, that there is lots of under-utilized land to grow them on, that the market can sort out the fuel/food issue, that higher profits for farmers from biofuel production will reduce government subsidies, and that developing countries will benefit because they have the most under-utilized land. Hausmann concludes that:

Standards will have to be developed to allow the energy and automotive industries to co-ordinate technologies. To make this scenario appealing, the impact of the expansion of the agricultural frontier on the environment and biodiversity, and the distributive effects of the rise in food prices will have to be addressed.

But these problems seem solvable given the expected political benefits in terms of lower net carbon emissions, more energy security, more efficient agricultural policies and greater opportunities for sustainable development.

While there is some reason to share his enthusiasm for biofuels, it is becoming increasingly clear that they have very serious (perhaps fatal) technical and ethical problems. The idea that biofuel profits will reduce government support for agriculture is also laughably naive.

Perhaps the most outspoken critic of biofuels is George Monbiot – British journalist and author of Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning. In his most recent article on the subject, Monbiot pans biofuels as both ecologically ineffective and ethically unsound. He argues that their purported climate change benefits are over-stated:

[Nitrous oxide emissions] alone ensure that ethanol from maize causes between 0.9 and 1.5 times as much warming as petrol, while rapeseed oil (the source of more than 80% of the world’s biodiesel) generates 1-1.7 times the impact of diesel. This is before you account for the changes in land use.

A paper published in the journal Science three months ago suggests that protecting uncultivated land saves, over 30 years, between two and nine times the carbon emissions you might avoid by ploughing it and planting biofuels.

He also argues that the drive towards biofuels will literally starve the poor, as farmers start using their land, water, and labour to fuel SUVs rather than feed people. He cites how Swaziland, in the grip of famine and receiving food aid, is nonetheless pushing to expand biofuel production from their main crop: cassava. His concerns do not seem unfounded, given how the amount of corn it takes to fill the tank of an SUV could feed a hungry person for a year.

Jean Ziegler, the United Nations’ independent expert on the right to food, has called biofuels “a catastrophe for the poor” and a “crime against humanity.” Such concerns deserve to be taken seriously. While it may ultimately be both possible and necessary to use biofuels for air travel (given the absence of any alternatives to liquid-fuelled engines for planes), it seems entirely possible that the drive towards biofuels for ground transport will further increase the harm being caused to the developed world and the biosphere by the unsustainable behaviours of the rich.

Climate and the rainforest

Picture a square of tropical rainforest 100m to a side. According to a study from 2000, it is heavily laden with carbon: between 155 and 187 tonnes for wet forest and between 27 and 63 tonnes for dry. That means that each square kilometre of rainforest is holding between 2,700 and 18,700 tonnes of carbon: with about 70% of that in trees, 20% in the soil, and the rest in roots, understory, and litter.

Cutting down the trees for timber and to open farmland releases some portion of that stock into the atmosphere: with the amount dependent on how the soil’s carbon absorption changes and what is done with the wood and wood waste. When the forest is burned, either intentionally to clear land or unintentionally, the bulk of that carbon gets released into the atmosphere more of less immediately. As a result of both land use change and forest burning, the World Resource Institute estimates that deforestation represents about 18.3% of all human greenhouse gas emissions. As such, tackling it is a priority.

Arguably, the best thing individuals can do is refuse to eat meat or use first-generation biofuels. A considerable amount of cattle production takes placed in cleared areas of rainforest, with additional land cleared to grow soya to feed to cattle. On the biofuels front, there are both situations where rainforest is cleared directly for biofuel plantations (palm oil) and situations where the use of agricultural land to grow biofuel crops (corn) increases the overall need for agricultural land, pushing things like soy production into previously forested areas.

One other element to be aware of is the connection between population growth, urbanization, and deforestation. Several states actively encourage people to relocate from crowded areas to more sparsely populated zones bordering forested areas. Indonesia has sought to shift people away from Java in the same way Brazil has encouraged development in the Amazon to try to reduce crowding in the south.

Addressing deforestation is thus a two-fold proposition. In the first instance, the developed world needs to be aware of how commercial activities directly encourage deforestation. Restricting the use of tropical hardwoods, encouraging vegetarianism and veganism, and improving public transit would all help. Secondly, developing states must be encouraged to value their forests at a level high enough to prevent their destruction. That will probably require some kind of international financial instrument whereby the states actually protecting forests receive payments from all the states that benefit from ecological services those forests provide. The latter is a more wide-ranging solution, but the former can be more immediately implemented. If we are to keep that carbon in rich tropical soil and majestic tree trunks, action on both fronts needs to be undertaken.

Sources:

Papdopol, C.S. “Impacts of climate warming on forests in Ontario: options for adaptation and mitigation.” Forestry Chronicle. 76(1): 139-149 (2000).
Livingston, Nigel and G. Cornelis van Kooten. “Terrestrial Carbon Sinks and Climate Change Mitigation.” in Coward, Harold and Andrew Weaver eds. Hard Choices: Climate Change in Canada.

Climate ethics principles

Last November, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change convened a meeting in Nairobi. One document that resulted from that meeting was the White Paper on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change (PDF). On the basis of arguments similar to those I have heard from Henry Shue and Stephen Gardiner, the document lists seven things that states intending to behave ethically on the climate change problem should do:

Immediately acknowledge that they have a duty to reduce their emissions as quickly as possible to their fair share of safe global emissions;
Immediately agree that an international greenhouse gas atmospheric stabilization target should be set as low as possible unless those who are most vulnerable to climate change impacts have consented to be put at risk from higher levels;
No longer use scientific uncertainty or cost to their economies alone as justification for refusing to reduce GHG emissions;
No longer refuse to reduce GHG emissions now on the basis that new less-costly technologies will be available in the future or that not all other nations have agreed to reduce their GHG emissions;
Accept national targets for assuring that atmospheric concentrations of GHG are protective of human health and the environment that are based upon ethically supportable allocation criteria;
Acknowledge that nations commit human rights violations that refuse to reduce their GHG emissions to their fair share of global emissions needed to protect those most vulnerable from climate change to loss of life, health, and well-being;
Accept that those who are responsible for climate change have a duty to pay for costs of adaptation to and unavoidable damages from climate change.

Generally speaking, these are fine principles. If every major emitting state adopted them, it is entirely plausible that emissions could be brought down to sustainable levels within the next couple of decades and that the inevitable consequences of climate change from past emission could be equitably addressed. What the list fails to consider is the inherent Nash Equilibrium problem. States do not act as all states would act in an ideal world; rather, they generally act in a way that is rational given their inability to control the actions of other states. Given the Stern conclusion that mitigation is far less expensive than inducing and enduring climate change, it would be in the interest of all states to mitigate. Given how many states are proving reluctant to take that seriously, states that are serious about tackling the problem find themselves pushed towards a rationality of building up adaptive capacity instead of reducing emissions.

All that said, ethicists are not meant to be pragmatists. Having a well-argued idea of what ethical behaviour in the face of climate change would be provides a cognitive platform from which to evaluate current actions. It may also help to raise the overall profile of the issue in democratic states where moral and ethical argumentation can be an important element of the political process.

Pakistan’s state of emergency

While I cannot speak on them with any particular knowledge or authority, it does seem that the unfolding events in Pakistan generate some ominous possibilities within the region. A recent Stratfor briefing argues that:

Whether Musharraf himself survives is not a historically significant issue. What is significant is whether Pakistan will fall into internal chaos or civil war, or fragment into smaller states. We must consider what that would mean.

One can only begin to imagine how the Middle East would change if Pakistan disintegrated. It’s a nuclear power bordering a huge but relatively fragile democracy, as well as Iran and Afghanistan. Furthermore, that exists in the context of the Iranian drive for nuclear weapons, the weakness of the Afghan federal government, and. the possibility of the breakup of Iraq (as well as a Turkish attack against the northern Kurdish region). Even for a region that has frequently been in turmoil, this is quite a confluence of events.

Given the context, it is unsurprising that climate change is not the top priority in Pakistan, though the inevitable disruption a changing climate will bring in future decades does seem likely to exacerbate tensions in this part of the world.

Brief post on the Alberta oil sands

“If anything characterizes the 21st century, it’s our inability to restrain ourselves for the benefit of other people.”

This quotation from James Katz comes from an article on the annoying use of cellular phones in public or at inappropriate times. It applies just as well to an issue currently being protested in Alberta as a new legislative session begins: the oil sands.

If oil companies had to bear all the direct and indirect costs associated with production in the oil sands, it seems doubtful that the industry would exist. Those costs include air and water pollution, the large-scale use of fresh water supplies, deforestation, soil contamination, the wholesale destruction and of large tracts of land, and heavy greenhouse gas emissions.. The Pembina Institute – probably Canada’s best environmental NGO – has a website devoted to oil sands issues.

With oil likely to hit $100 a barrel this week, it seems probable that ever more of Alberta’s northern boreal forest will be carved up for petroleum.

Small island states under threat

What can really be said about climate change and small island states? Working Group I of the IPCC projects that global sea levels will rise by 0.12 – 0.22m by 2100 not taking into account the melting of Greenland and Antarctica. With those elements factored in, a sea level rise of 1m certainly seems possible and it becomes conceivable that rises of several metres will occur if either of those icesheets goes the way of the polar icecap.

So what happens to the really low-lying states like the Maldives? The combination of coastal erosion, sea level rise, increased vulnerability to storm surges, and contamination of freshwater aquifers may well make them simply non-viable as places that can support a population. Nauru, Vanuatu, and Tuvalu face the same vulnerabilities – just to choose a few from among many examples.

A number of more substantial islands could be seriously threatened by the aquifer issue. Malta is suffering a double effect: rising sea levels threatening freshwater aquifers and decreased rainfall further increasing their salinity. In 2007, it doubled from 2000 to 4000 microsiemens and it is now too salty to water trees with. Fossil fuel based desalinators are being installed to help address water shortages: though they will increase Maltese GHG emissions.

All told, there isn’t much that can be hopefully said about low lying areas. Like the Arctic, these areas will certainly experience significant effects from climate change. The questions that remain are how serious and sudden it will be.

Some carbon capture and storage numbers

For the period between now and 2030, the International Energy Agency predicts that energy demand will grow 1.7% annually. The also predict that 85% of the new demand will be met using fossil fuel generation: including a doubling of coal power output from 1,000 gigawatts to 2,200 gigawatts. Given the retirement of old plants, this is a net growth of 1,400 gigawatts of coal capacity. 1,200 of those gigawatts are likely to be conventional coal technologies, while the remaining 200 are expected to be Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plants.

Since the Industrial Revolution got started in 1750, humanity has released about 150 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This has increased the carbon dioxide concentration of the atmosphere from 280 parts per million to 380. Most scientists and economists agree that avoiding really dangerous climatic effects requires that emissions be stabilized between 450 and 550ppm. Last year, emissions were about 27.2 gigatonnes.

From the period when they are built until the time when they are slated for retirement, these new coal plants will emit 140 gigatonnes of carbon. One mechanism that has been emphasized for dealing with this is carbon capture and storage (CCS): whereby the carbon dioxide contained in the fossil fuels is re-buried once the energy in the fuels has been used.

According to Lynn Orr, director of the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford, using a quantity of infrastructure equal to that presently used to extract oil, we could sequester about 14% of humanity’s fossil fuel related emissions. That is about half the combined output from large factories and power stations – the kind of facilities where CCS is most likely to be used. According to an article in Nature, $80 billion dollars of investment per year would be sufficient to capture “several million tonnes of carbon per year.” Burying gigatonnes will presumably cost several orders of magnitude more.

If any meaningful CCS is to occur, those 1,400 gigawatts of new power stations must be built with at least the capability to be easily upgraded to use the technology. This is easier to do with IGCC plants than with conventional coal, though only four plants of the former sort have ever been built. Once power plants have the capability to employ CCS, it will be a matter of internalizing the social costs of carbon to the extent that it becomes more commercially appealing to sequester that to emit.