Category: The environment

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

The hypocrisy argument for pipelines

Some people who favour the construction of new bitumen sands pipelines have been deploying a particularly weak argument, which echoes a couple of the points that have long been made by people who don’t want to take adequate action to avoid catastrophic climate change. They point out that — in one way or another — any person calling for new pipeline projects to be stopped uses fossil fuels. At a recent Toronto climate change consultation, Adam Vaughan pointed out that a woman wearing plastic-framed glasses was therefore an oil user. In her recent segment on The Current and on Twitter, Martha Hall Findlay has made a similar ‘argument from hypocrisy’, implying that only people with a 100% post-fossil-fuel lifestyle can call for systemic change.

This argument is weak for a number of reasons, but most glaringly it’s because a post-fossil-fuel future isn’t something individuals can ever build through personal choice. The transportation, energy, and agricultural infrastructure around us isn’t something that can be changed without society-wide policy decisions including the use of market mechanisms like carbon pricing, regulations, and sheer governmental determination to leave enough fossil fuel in the ground to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

The fact that we’re presently dependent on fossil fuels is in fact a reason why we need to stop building new infrastructure that perpetuates that dependence. In a Canada where we’re seriously planning to be part of a fair and effective global transition away from fossil fuel use, we simply can’t build projects like pipelines which will lock in global fossil fuel dependence for decades to come.

The weak argument from hypocrisy is sometimes paired with a superficially more convincing but still deeply problematic argument about demand. People like Findlay assert that the real problem with fossil fuels is the enduring demand, and that we should therefore focus our policy efforts on reducing demand. This is questionable for several reasons. For one thing, if they are sincere about their desire to reduce demand sufficiently to avoid dangerous climate change, that would undermine any need for the pipelines they are promoting, which would be built to support expanded production from Canada’s bitumen sands. Furthermore, in the face of a climate crisis which requires incredibly aggressive action to reduce emissions, it makes no sense to only pursue demand-side policies. We certainly should use everything from carbon taxes to building and appliance standards to reduce demand, but we should simultaneously avoid investment in new extraction and transport infrastructure which perpetuates fossil fuel dependence.

The entitled argument that people who live on top of fossil fuel reserves have the right to dig them up and sell them regardless of the consequences for others (and that fossil fuel users are entitled to whatever demand-side activities they have become used to) is seriously faulty from an ethical perspective. We don’t have the right to impose suffering on others around the world, future generations, and nature. Now that science has made so clear that greenhouse gas pollution is terribly threatening and harmful, those whose economic systems depend on them have a strong and immediate obligation to move to other sources of energy. That moral obligation is fundamentally at odds with building new bitumen sands pipelines, and the ethical argument that supports this position is dramatically more credible than the flimsy assertion that anybody who uses fossil fuels should somehow support new infrastructure as a consequence.

Berman and Findlay on pipelines

CBC’s The Current recently ran a segment on whether Canada’s climate change goals can be reconciled with new pipeline construction. Tzeporah Berman effectively made the case that Energy East, Kinder Morgan, and the Northern Gateway would be means of increasing bitumen sands production, even beyond the unacceptably high cap chosen by the Alberta government, and argued that they are fundamentally incompatible with the climate action Canada committed to in Paris.

In the same segment, Canada West Foundation CEO Martha Hall Findlay seemed to do everything she could to evade the issue of climate change, arguing that Canada simply must enlarge its economy and its emissions and that anyone concerned about climate change should focus on reducing demand (which she expects will increase when pipelines increase Canadian wealth). Her argument boiled down to saying that Canada has an opportunity to profit now, and simply shouldn’t concern itself with what impact new oil infrastructure will have on the climate.

This argument from entitlement — sticking to the assumption that Alberta and anyone else that happens to have oil resources has the right to dig them up and burn them regardless of the impact on people around the world, future generations, and nature — needs to be challenged on ethical terms. Yes, we need to fight climate change by reducing oil demand. At the same time, building infrastructure to serve a world of higher demand is, at best, a wasted investment and, at worst, a choice to lock in pollution that will profoundly threaten the prosperity and security of people around the world.

Dakota Access Pipeline

One of North America’s most active pipeline resistance movements right now is opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline, which would run from North Dakota to Illinois through the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.

Some coverage:

The garbage can model – pertinent to activist organizations?

[James] March and his colleagues, Michael Cohen and Johan Olsen, developed an extremely important perspective on organizational behaviour, with the infelicitous title of the “garbage can model,” which seeks to explain how complex organizations make decisions under conditions that differ radically from those that reign under rational models. According to the model, such “organized anarchies” exhibit three general properties. First, instead of having clear and consistent objectives, “the organization operates on the basis of a variety of inconsistent and ill-defined preferences.” Different individuals at different levels of the organization may hold conflicting goals; the same individuals may hold different and incompatible goals at different times; organizations may not even know their preferences until after choices are made. Second, such organizations use extremely “unclear technology” in their operations: “Although the organization manages to survive and even product, its own processes are not understood by its members.” The organization’s left hand does not know what the right hand is doing; what happened in the past and why it happened is not clear; and the connections between the organization’s actions and the consequences of its actions are obscure. Third, there is extremely “fluid participation” in the organization’s decision-making process. Participants come and go; some pay attention, while others do not; key meetings may be dominated by biased, uninformed, or even uninterested personnel.

Sagan, Scott D. The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons. Princeton University Press. 1993. p. 29

Confronting ineffectiveness as an activist

Conversing with my friend Nada about in-group dynamics, the psychological property of agreeableness, and group cohesion, she raised the matter of the difficult psychological disjoint between the change which activists desperately desire in the world and the practical realization that they generally aren’t achieving it. There have been moments of triumph for some social justice campaigns (enfranchisement of women, gay marriage, banning leaded gasoline) but most activists at most times have not experienced major policy change of the sort they are seeking.

When confronted with this ineffectiveness, people are provoked to respond emotionally and also (somewhat separately) to consider their situation analytically. Emotionally, frustration, anger, and self-righteousness may be the inputs from which defence mechanisms emerge or are maintained. Analytically, an activist in an ineffective campaign may be driven to consider how their movement or situation differs from others that seem more capable of affecting policy outcomes. Activist organizations tend to be informal, volunteer driven, with high turnover in people involved, few accountability mechanisms, and with modes of democratic decision-making which may seem to both produce poor decisions and leave people feeling unhappy. They are often up against status quo opponents with paid professional staffs, more formal decision-making structures which are more often seen as legitimate by insiders, money, and privileged contact with policy makers. The contrast can leave activists both dispirited and despairing about their odds of success.

These unpleasant feelings arguably flow from a faulty assumption which is nonetheless tied to the very idea of being an activist: the belief, or at least the hope, that you can actually make a difference. For a problem as massive as climate change, there is no necessary reason to think that non-violent grassroots organizing can change enough behaviour globally to avoid the outcomes which we most fear. Similarly, there is no reason to think that a hierarchy-based or violent approach would necessarily be effective.

Psychologically, this also seems tied to cognitive dissonance, which I think is most meaningfully defined as a situation in which a person’s beliefs and behaviours are contradictory, and where the tendency is most often for them to adjust their beliefs to match their behaviours than to do the converse. If the behaviour is ‘doing activism’ and the belief is that this will change the world, at least a little bit, we can ponder the psychological response to being shown that your belief isn’t presently well supported. It may be rational to try something else (go and join the civil service, run for political office, try to influence people through your writing, become a charismatic leader in a new organization), and at least some of the time people do these things. More often, perhaps, the response is to find a way to believe that you are making a difference, perhaps by ‘raising awareness’ or something equally woolly and intractable. Another option is either a secular or theological faith that somehow in the long term the success you seek will be achieved (“the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”). It’s clear why this works as a psychological defence mechanism, since it mitigates the despair of seeing the threat that motivates you alongside little or even negative progress away from disaster. What’s less clear is whether such psychological defence mechanisms are effective in terms of maximizing the odds that your campaign actually succeeds by encouraging smart choices, effective teamwork, and other practical inputs to success.

I don’t think the question of how activists should confront ineffectiveness has a clear answer. Personally, I think ‘the power of positive thinking’ is dangerous nonsense that probably reduces most people’s odds of success in most situations (though it is likely better than utter despair, if that’s your only other option). Perhaps something like an emotionally-aware version of the rational ideal is possible: a hybrid mode of self-consideration in which you both recognize the psychological bases which are necessary to keep going as an activist, while also remaining capable of dispassionate consideration of which options for behaviour are actually open to you and whether any of them can advance your cause. As mentioned already, it’s totally logically possible that no political movement can prevent absolute climate change catastrophe at this point. Whether or not that’s true, however, for those who are determined to fight on, some sort of psychologically-aware strategic planning seems like a not-entirely-impossible objective.

A further challenge is applying any such model of personal reflection in the social context of an activist organization. For example, presenting totally valid and well-justified points made about strategy may undermine social cohesion to the extent that the group becomes ineffective or falls apart. At the root, activists collectively involved in a campaign are allies rather than friends and must somehow maintain healthy relations as a route to collective effectiveness. Pulling this off while everyone is erecting and reinforcing personal defence mechanisms, and while huge uncertainties about which courses of action offer the best chances of success, is a challenge of such a magnitude that it may itself contribute to how rarely activists achieve meaningful and durable progress.

Ethics and discount rates

The discount rate is a basic tool of accounting and economics: people and institutions often need to deal with costs and benefits which will arise in the future, and it doesn’t usually make sense to simply value them as if they were happening today. A person expecting pension payments of $1,000 per month in thirty years probably shouldn’t value them as though they had the money in hand today, and neither should the organization that will be making the payouts.

To adjust for the time difference, people doing accounting choose an annual discount rate by which to reduce the value of things expected in the future.

Problematically, however, the compounding effects of this across long periods of time can make the specific rate you choose into the most important feature of the calculation. This has an extreme effect in climate change economics.

In the context of pensions, a recent Economist article explained:

The higher the discount rate, the less money has to be put aside now; American public plans tend to use a discount rate of around 7.5%, based on the investment return they expect to achieve…

A promise to pay a stream of pension payments in the future resembles a commitment to make interest payments on a bond. A bond yield is thus the most appropriate discount rate. But given how low bond yields are, pension deficits would look larger (and required contributions would be much higher) if such a discount rate were used. A discount rate of 4%, for example, would mean the average public pension plan would have a funding ratio of only 45%, not 72%, according to the CRR.

That last bit means that American institutions which owe pensions to employees in the future may have only 45% of the money which is necessary for that purpose, rather than the 72% which they currently believe themselves to possess.

While there is an intellectual and even a moral case for discounting the future, it seems clear that it’s a practice with considerable moral risks associated. We are in a situation where simply by making optimistic assumptions we can reduce the burden which we owe to future generations. If we get things wrong, especially in the multi-century case of climate change, they will have no way to hold us to account.

Psychologically, this may also lead to us ‘discounting the future’ in other ways. If people expect corporate and government pension plans to be broke by the time they retire, it may inspire a super-cautious response of independent personal pension saving, or it may lead to people writing off any hope of financial stability in old age and simply ignoring the risk. Such temptations may be even greater for those who see the massively inadequate response the world is undertaking in relation to climate change and ask whether – even if governments, firms, and individuals did set aside adequate retirement savings in the near future – the world will still be intact enough in the second half of the 21st century for those funds to be meaningful.

Fix it with a fire tornado

Somehow, this article seems indicative of the low quality of a lot of our thinking about environmental issues: Mesmerizing ‘blue whirl’ from fire tornado could be cleaner solution for oil spills: Scientists discover clean-burning blue flame while simulating a fire tornado in the lab.

It seems a particularly questionable application of the idea that technology can correct environmental problems. Calling fire tornadoes used to burn up oil spills “remediation” stretches the bounds of both vocabulary and plausibility.

The AC dilemma

After many shorter spans which left us sweating in our third floor rooms, Toronto is now immersed in the longest and most intense heat wave of the summer so far.

This leaves me feeling awkward about actually owning an air conditioner, which I have never moved from its storage location in our living room. During my long search for accomodation, I saw many, many deeply unappealing, distant, and overly expensive rooms. When the chance to rent this one arose, I wanted to do everything possible to avoid somehow losing this one. So, when the previous inhabitant wanted to sell me his furniture (as well as most of the furniture in the common areas) I was willing to do so at the prices he initially suggested. That’s how I ended up with a $150 air conditioner which fits in my window but which I have never turned on.

My reluctance is entirely about the energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions. Remarkably, in a city that goes below -20 ˚C in winter, Toronto’s highest energy demand is during hot summer days when everyone turns their air conditioning on. This isn’t so remarkable really, in part because cooling is fundamentally less efficient than heating. Turning electricity into heat is essentially a 100% efficient process. By contrast, refrigeration requires the inefficient compression of a coolant (producing heat as an unwanted by-product) which is then expanded in the area to be cooled and circulated elsewhere to be re-compressed and release the heat it has absorbed into the outside environment.

Perhaps worst of all is that when energy demand peaks, Ontario cannot produce enough electricity from low-carbon sources including large-scale hydroelectric and nuclear — instead turning on natural gas ‘peaker’ plants that would not otherwise run, like the Portlands Energy Centre.

Another oddity is that, for renters like us, electricity bills are paid by the landlord. Cooling would thus have no associated financial cost for me.

There are arguments in favour of me using AC. At the best of times, summers carry a danger of being inefficient doldrums. Without the structure asociated with teaching tutorials, regular meals at Massey, regular contact and communication with colleagues, and all the other motivating accompaniments of the school year, it can be easy to become unproductive. This is even more true when it is too hot to sleep, or even to sit in my room reading or doing research in a productive way.

I do have fairly easy access to cooled work areas at Massey College and Robarts Library, and that has been my chief means of escaping the heat.

This particular wave is meant to break over the next few days. I am greatly looking forward to the fall, which I think may be my favourite season in this part of the world. As in Ottawa, it provides an enjoyably span of pleasantly cooler and cooler days. Even the depth of winter is far preferable to mid-summer, in my eyes. I can always break out the wool long underwear, and wearing coats is often convenient for carrying things. By contrast, summer often leaves us with worsening the climate change plight of everyone in the future as our only means of avoiding the discomfort of heat and humidity right now.

As for the air conditioner, I can’t sell it because that would certainly lead to it being frequently used. Perhaps the best option is to find somewhere that can remove the coolant, since they are powerful greenhouse gases when they leak, and recycle as much of the rest of the device as possible.

Urban growth

In an interesting recent article on urbanization, The Economist noted:

A huge and growing number of people live somewhere like Mikwambe [“on the edge of Dar es Salaam”]. Between 2005 and 2015 the world’s cities swelled by about 750m people, according to the UN. More than four-fifths of that growth was in Africa and Asia; specifically, on the fringes of African and Asian cities. With few exceptions, cities are growing faster in size than in population. Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, is typical: it doubled in population between 1990 and 2010 but tripled in area. In short, almost all urban growth is sprawl.

Among other things, this suggests environmental and climate change implications. Urban sprawl, whether of the kind experienced in America in the middle of the 20th century or the sort taking place in today’s newly emerging cities, essentially depends on cheap transportation. Furthermore, low urban density is a poor match with public transport.

Countries all over the world may be persisting with urban design choices which will make decarbonization more difficult. As a corollary, if we succeed in fighting climate change, it may make large parts of these sprawling cities economically unviable.