The environment – Page 75 – a sibilant intake of breath

Farming, Brazil, and fossil fuels

The Economist recently decided to praise the high-output intensive agriculture of Brazil, claiming that it offers a sustainable model for global agriculture in the decades ahead:

So if you were asked to describe the sort of food producer that will matter most in the next 40 years, you would probably say something like this: one that has boosted output a lot and looks capable of continuing to do so; one with land and water in reserve; one able to sustain a large cattle herd (it does not necessarily have to be efficient, but capable of improvement); one that is productive without massive state subsidies; and maybe one with lots of savannah, since the biggest single agricultural failure in the world during past decades has been tropical Africa, and anything that might help Africans grow more food would be especially valuable. In other words, you would describe Brazil.

The briefing also derides “inefficient hobby farms” as a purported alternative to Brazil’s “productive giant operations.”

While there are definitely economies of scale in agriculture, this analysis leaves out the crucial issue of fossil fuels. Within the next few decades, it must be hoped that humanity begins a serious process of moving beyond fossil fuels, in order to reduce the harmfulness of climate change. Even if we are not so enlightened, it is possible that peak oil will massive increase prices and reduce supply.

When planning out how the world will feed itself during the decades ahead, a key consideration must be how we will do so without the cheap liquid fuels that power our industrialized global food system.

Climate change and nuclear war

In Gil Elliot’s Twentieth Century Book of the Dead, the Scottish writer seeks to estimate how many human beings died as the result of mass violence during the 20th century, concluding that the toll was about 110 million. Even without a nuclear winter, he also estimates that a thermonuclear war between the United States and Russia could have killed two billion, back in 1982.

His conclusions about the ethics of this have relevance to the question of climate change:

The moral significance is inescapable. If morality refers to relations between individuals, or between the individual and society, then there can be no more fundamental moral issue than the continuing survival of individuals and societies. The scale of man-made death is the central moral as well as material fact of our time.

With nuclear weapons and anthropogenic climate change, humanity has engineered two possible calamities, each of which could potentially eliminate the species. The moral obligation to curb both risks is immense, and ought to be a top political priority everywhere.

The melt rate in Greenland and Antarctica

The latest issue of Nature Geoscience features an article by David Bromwich and Julien Nicolas, in which they produce an estimate of the rate at which the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting in response to climate change. Their estimate is based on satellite gravimetry using the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission (mentioned before). They concluded that previous estimates hadn’t properly taken into account the phenomenon of isostatic rebound and that, as a consequence, the rate of ice loss is about half what was estimated before:

With glacial isostatic adjustment modelled in, the loss from Greenland is put at 104 gigatonnes, plus or minus 23 gigatonnes, and 64 gigatonnes from West Antarctica, plus or minus 32 gigatonnes.

On the basis of this, they concluded that icesheet loss accounts for about 30% of observed sea level rise, rather than the 50% estimated before. The remainder is the result of the oceans expanding as they warm up.

Inevitably, the reduced ice melt estimates will be jumped upon by climate change delayers and deniers. This once again re-enforces the asymmetry in the debate between scientists and those who argue for inaction on climate. The latter never admit their mistakes but jump on any correction, error, or update from scientists as proof that climate science is deeply uncertain, and that no action should be taken now.

Promoting energy efficiency

Recently, someone mentioned to me that they feel guilty about using twist-ties on plastic bags, because of the potential environmental consequences of doing so. To me, this seems like an extreme demonstration of how people can sometimes fail to grasp the relative scale of environmental impacts – they walk to work for a few days, rather than driving, and think that constitutes a substantial contribution to fighting climate change. At the same time, it is quite likely that they live in a home that is so poorly insulated that improvements would pay for themselves in a few years.

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides some quantitative data showing that people underestimate their own energy consumption and highlight relatively insignificant activities when asked how they can improve:

When asked to rank the single most effective way to save energy, participants typically endorsed activities with small savings, such as turning off lights, while ignoring what they could economise on larger devices. This suggests that people misallocate their efforts, fretting over an unattended lamp (at 100 watts) while neglecting the energy they could save by nudging their washer settings from “hot” to “warm” (4,000 watt-hours for each load of laundry).

While it can be argued that more education is the solution, I think it is probably more effective to use approaches that do not depend on voluntary change at the user level. One option is higher energy prices, to encourage conservation. That is especially justified at times of peak demand, when inefficient power plants get turned on.

Another option is to set higher standards for buildings and appliances. It may be best to simply ban especially inefficient options. Another tatic is to levy a fee on inefficient appliances – such as dishwashers, driers, and washing machines – and use the revenues to subsidize more efficient models. That would reduce the price differential between relatively good and relatively poor choices.

The future of India and China

This briefing on the relationship between India and China makes for interesting and important reading, given the strong possibility that both countries will have major global importance in this century. Already, China and India are the world’s largest and fourth-largest greenhouse gas emitters.

Some of the climate, energy, and security issues mentioned include their shared dependence on oil imports from Africa, competition over water and natural gas, and the “bitterly contested” status of the Indian-Chinese border.

Kessler Syndrome

When an atom of uranium undergoes fission in the right circumstances, it produces multiple neutrons which in turn induce fission in other uranium atoms, creating a chain reaction. Today, due to a lack of caution on the part of governments, there is a risk of something similar happening to satellites in orbit around the Earth. When they collide or get blown up, satellites produce large quantities of fast-moving debris. This can cause additional satellites to disintegrate, in turn.

The nightmare scenario is one resembling a nuclear chain reaction, in which a small number of initial collisions produce debris, additional collisions, and debris in an escalating cycle, until certain orbits are no longer safe and usable. This scenario is called Kessler Syndrome, a possibility first identified in 1978 by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler.

The risk of this outcome can be reduced by improving procedures in the future. For instance, satellites can be designed so that they fall out of orbit when they cease to be useful. There could also be financial incentives put in place to encourage the operators of satellites to behave responsibly at the end of their lives – for instance, a bond that is paid when the satellite is launched and which is refunded when it burns up in the atmosphere. If a satellite is simply left to die in orbit, the bond money can be put into an insurance fund, to compensate the owners of any satellite that it collides with.

It may also be possible to deal with some of the existing junk in space, using a variety of methods such as lasers, the after-the-fact attachment of small disposal rockets to existing satellites, or possibly the use of some kind of membrane to catch small pieces of debris.

California’s Proposition 23

In California, there is a risk of further rollback of climate change mitigation policies:

IN 2006, the California assembly passed AB32, known in the vernacular as the Global Warming Act of 2006. The measure requires that the state reduce its carbon emissions below 1990 levels by 2020. In this election cycle, that has proven too tempting a political target to ignore, and in November California will vote on Proposition 23, which would suspend AB32 until the state’s employment rate falls below 5.5% for four straight quarters (a condition which has been met just three times since 1976, and which seems rather distant with the state’s unemployment rate currently running at 12%). Proposition 23 has been largely funded by multi-million-dollar donations from two Texas oil companies, Valero Services and Tesoro Companies.

The campaign is largely being funded via multi-million dollar donations from two Texas oil companies: Valero Services and Tesoro Companies.

The situation reveals some of the special dangers associated with climate change policy: big polluters will do whatever they can to block and water down effective policies. Voters are always tempted to delay the necessary transition to carbon neutrality, due to concern about jobs or growth today. Finally, the structure of the political system often effectively prevents the consideration of the welfare of future generations.

Bedbugs proliferating

I have had one nasty personal experience with these fast-spreading bloodsuckers, and hope to never have another. Alas, that may be an unrealistic hope, given how they are spreading all over the world. According to the BBC, the last big outbreak happened before World War II: “[i]n the 1930s there were large swaths of London where every house was infested.” Eradication with DDT after 1946 pushed that outbreak back, but such pesticides are restricted now because of their health and environmental effects.

Apparently, bedbugs have also grown resistant to DDT, so bringing it back probably wouldn’t help address the current problem. The pesticides currently used for bedbugs may be losing effectiveness, as the creatures become resistant. Increased domestic and international travel may also contribute.

Personally, I have taken to adopting a few precautions:

When staying in hostels and hotels, I check for the fecal spots, moults, and blood smears they leave behind, especially when there is a severe infestation (as there is at the Sous Bois Hostel in Montreal).
Keeping luggage off the floor and away from upholstered furniture is also a good idea.
When I found that I had stayed somewhere with bedbugs, I put everything I had with me through either a high temperature wash or three weeks of sub-zero temperatures.
I will no longer purchase or accept used furniture.

Thankfully, these horrible creatures don’t seem to spread disease. They are revolting, however, and extremely expensive and difficult to eradicate. As such, it pays to be cautious.

Dangerous offshore drilling

One manifestation of how we are now chasing the dregs of the world’s oil is the increasingly dangerous and expensive places and ways we are going after the stuff. The latest explosion on a Gulf Coast oil rig is a demonstration of some of the dangers.

Meanwhile, we should be expecting more leaks and spills, including in places where help is a long way off. For improved understanding of part of what that involves, there is a series from Deep Sea News that may be worth a look:

Oil dependence is all about transportation – the fuels used for electricity and industry are largely oil and gas. As such, the medium- to long-term solution to all the problems associated with offshore drilling is to reduce the global demand for oil with some combination of investments in alternative forms of transport, pricing to reduce consumption, and complementary policies.

Bad times ahead

In the wake of the failure of the current U.S. administration to pass climate legislation, Grist’s David Roberts asks ‘How bad are the next few years going to suck?‘

He predicts that “Democrats are going to get shellacked in the midterms” but that they will probably retain control of the senate. The economy will quite probably remain weak, which significantly worsens Obama’s prospects for a second term. Finally, he says “[b]y 2016 my son will be a teenager and atmospheric CO2 will be flirting with 400 ppm” and calls for people to take local action, while central leadership is lacking.

That’s more useful than saying ‘throw up your hands in despair, we are dooming the world’ but it doesn’t strike me (or Roberts) as an adequate response to the problem. Humanity’s level of collective intelligence still looks pretty low.