Category: The environment

Atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, etc – everything about life and the state of this planet

Climate change and wildfires

Through a variety of mechanisms, anthropogenic climate change is worsening wildfires. For instance, warm winter temperatures were a key factor in British Columbia’s apalling mountain pine beetle epidemic, and trees killed by the beetles may be more susceptible to fire. More directly, high temperatures dry out forests and raise fire risks.

Page 44 of the divestment brief summarizes some of the research on climate change and wildfires.

Fires also contribute to the worsening severity of climate change, both by releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide and by producing dark soot which absorbs energy from sunlight.

Activism and the limits of moral suasion

As radical an organization as SNCC had always been, its modus operandi had remained but an aggressive variation on the “petition the masters” strategy. Its approach depended upon the federal government’s willingness to respond to “moral suasion,” albeit of a forceful sort. Events in Mississippi had undermined SNCC’s confidence in such a strategy. But it was the convention challenge that foreclosed this strategic option once and for all. In the eyes of the SNCC leadership, the Northern liberal elite had finally shown its true colors; moral force had proven no match for raw political power.

It was one thing to come to this conclusion, quite another to know how to act on it. Having based their entire operation on a politics of personal witness, the SNCC leadership faced enormous obstacles in trying to devise a new tactical agenda. If moral suasion had not worked, what would? Stokely Carmichael’s call for “black power” some two years later was as much a rhetorical symbol of the organization’s failure to resolve this dilemma as it was a real solution to the problem. In the face of impotence, one boasts of potency.

Ironically, then, it was Freedom Summer and the MFDP challenge—the crowning glory of SNCC’s existential style—that exposed the limits of the approach and left the organization in a quandary as to how to proceed. Efforts to resolve the dilemma would embroil the organization in almost continuous controversy for the remainder of its short life.

McAdam, Doug. Freedom Summer. Oxford University Press; Oxford. 1988. p. 121–2

Obviously this has huge relevance to the contemporary climate change activist movement, which is similarly confronted with ineffectiveness and riven by disagreement on how to proceed in response.

Morally intolerable climate change impacts and risks

Sometimes convincing moral arguments take the form: outcome X is unacceptable, and since it arises from behaviour A then behaviour A can no longer be allowed to continue.

This is implicit in many of the hundreds of posts I have written about climate change, but I thought it would be good to have an open thread specifically listing credible impacts and risks associated with climate change which are so severe they compel us to discontinue behaviours that make the problem worse, such as fossil fuel production and development.

For example: Parts of South Asia could be too hot to live in by end of century

That’s a risk so morally intolerable that it torpedoes competing moral arguments, such as the claim that people can legitimately do anything to maintain their financial livelihood, or that political jurisdictions have an unrestricted right to exploit resources in their territories.

Keystone XL uncertainty and the environmental movement’s proficiency at saying no

It’s astonishing that the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline remains unresolved.

First, it shows how for activists determined to block a project it’s only necessary to make one jurisdiction say no. This is akin to the argument in computer security that the structure of vulnerabilities favours attackers over defenders; defenders need to protect every possible vector, while attackers just need one way in.

Second, this validates pipeline delay as a strategy. Using all available legal and political means to delay a project raises investor concern and probably the cost of financing. Since the point of blocking pipelines is blocking upstream bitumen sands development, creating uncertainty about any part of production, transport, and sales may help us avoid building inappropriate high carbon infrastructure.

Third, this supports George Hoberg’s concern (also raised by David Mackay) that the environmental movement has become highly capable at blocking projects but often lacks and skills and inclination to say yes to climate safe forms of energy.

Activism as being a catalyst

When we think about global trends, we tend to focus on their importance and how rapidly things are changing. China’s economic rise, along with massive economic development and urbanization around the world, all have unambiguous importance, though we will endlessly disagree about how they will interact and few of us will live long enough to feel confident we saw the final outcome (there are major limits to knowledge and prediction).

If one makes a sincere effort to understand what is happening in the world and feels compelled to try to encourage some of the best possible outcomes, given the state of the world right now, perhaps it makes sense to think in terms of which trends you hope to speed up and which you hope to inhibit.

The key question in effectiveness has to be: am I / are we making a difference in terms of an important objective.

So perhaps it makes sense to think about being a catalyst or accelerant (to choose a more obviously violent analogy) hoping to create as substantial a ∆ifference as possible in the final chemical equilibrium.

Trump the golfer

Golf.com has a surprisingly informative article about Donald Trump, with one tidbit about how his businesses have expressed concern about climate change risks:

The President has famously dismissed climate change as a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese while also calling it “pseudoscience” and “total bull—-.” But citing the rapid erosion of its dunes and ocean frontage, Trump International Golf Links & Hotel Ireland petitioned County Clare in May 2016 to build a two-mile, 200,000-ton seawall that would be as high as 15 feet on the picturesque, crescent-shaped Doughmore beach. The permit application stated, “Predicted sea level rise and more frequent storm events will increase the rate of erosion throughout the 21st century.” The application expired when the Trump Organization failed to complete the paperwork, but the company is putting together a new proposal with two smaller seawalls. (Meanwhile, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency has objected to the Trump Organization’s plans to build a second course in Aberdeen, named after Mary MacLeod, citing environmental concerns.) The threat to his seaside golf courses—including the two existing ones in Scotland—may yet influence Trump’s thinking about climate change.

Generally, the article makes clear that he’s a petty, litigious liar and swindler.

Is there an alternative to extracting the bitumen sands?

I only just came across it, but back in January CBC News asked a bold question: can the oil sands be phased out?

Related:

New jurisprudence on the duty to consult

From CBC News: Supreme Court quashes seismic testing in Nunavut, but gives green light to Enbridge pipeline

I think the Supreme Court is erring in maintaining the view that Canada’s Indigenous communities should not have the right to reject proposed resource development projects that affect their territories.

The land that supposedly belongs to the Crown and to private citizens was dubiously acquired by agreements concluded under duress, and never implemented in good faith by government or private industry. Denying Indigenous communities the ability to reject dangerous projects in the lands they retain control over is an unacceptable imposition by any other part of Canadian society. If resource extraction sites or export corridors are to be partly situated in Indigenous territory, it should only take place in the context of a voluntary partnership between those with an interest in the health and integrity of the land and those who are proposing dams, bitumen sands mines, wind farms, concentrating solar and solar photovoltaic sites, high-voltage power lines, nuclear power plants, etc. It’s to be expected that ownership and decision-making of such projects should be a shared undertaking between governments.

Canada’s history of bad faith and exploitation means they are the party to such agreements that ought to be viewed with suspicion and considered on parole. The heart of Canada’s grim legacy of settler-Indigenous relations lies in forcing people to accept the ways we want them to live. Any plausible pathway to reconciliation must be based on consent.

Climate change, Alberta politics, and hydrocarbon producers unwilling to act

The decision of Alberta’s Wildrose and Progressive Conservative parties to merge threatens the ability of Rachel Notley’s NDP government to stay in power. Almost certainly, the climate change policies the new party would implement are worse than those currently being implemented by the NDP, though it doesn’t necessarily follow from that that those concerned about climate change should support Notley, particularly in her plans to build new pipelines and keep expanding the bitumen sands.

The NDP government’s proposal to expand bitumen sands production from 70 megatonnes to 100 is simply unacceptable morally, politically, and economically. Given how rich it is and how disproportionately large our contribution to climate change has been, Canada should have started cutting fossil fuel production decades ago. To keep enlarging it now is to contribute to a global political climate where nobody is willing to take appropriate action, even as the impacts and injuries arising from climate change become more and more serious.

The problem of die-hard jurisdictions is going to be a difficult one in climate politics, both when it comes to sub-national jurisdictions in federalist states like Canada and in terms of hydrocarbon-dependent countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia.

It is hard to imagine a political change within these jurisdictions which will lead to them being willing to cut their fossil fuel production and use aggressively enough to contribute their fair share to a safe global pathway. Rather, it seems more likely that they will resist any plans to constrain climate change and demand compensation for any fossil fuels they are compelled to leave unburned.

Such intransigence could be overcome with sufficient concern and action by the world’s major economies. A handful of states collectively represent the majority of global fossil fuel consumption and thus a majority of demand for hydrocarbon producers. At the same time, domestic consumption is rising rapidly in many major fossil fuel producers, and there will probably be rogue states for a long time who are willing to buy and use cheap fossil fuels, regardless of the climatic consequences for others.

There seems little alternative but to try to constrain the fossil fuel output of recalcitrant jurisdictions externally, to the greatest extent possible. That’s part of why the fight against pipelines makes sense in North America, since both Alberta and jurisdictions active in hydraulic fracturing are unwilling to accept that they must leave most of their reserves underground. Unfortunately, such external resistance is virtually certain to breed resentment and feed the popularity of political parties who are determined to ignore the climate problem.