Category: The environment

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

Climate Change Accountability Act vote

This Wednesday, Bill C-311 (Climate Change Accountability Act) will be debated at Report Stage. This NDP-sponsored bill includes targets of a 25% reduction in emissions below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80% below by 2050. It also obliges the government to produce an emissions target plan for 2015, 2020, 2025, 2030, 2035, 2040 and 2045.

I don’t know that the bill’s prospects for passing are, but it seems likely to have little effect in any case. Parliament previously passed the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, in the face of government opposition. The government refused to alter its climate change mitigation plans in response, and the Supreme Court Federal Court of Appeal ruled that the law was ‘not justiciable’ and therefore not for the courts to enforce.

The only importance this bill seems likely to have is a mild and symbolic one. If it passes, it will show continued dissatisfaction on the part of opposition parties about the government’s climate plan. If it fails, it risks showing the opposition parties divided on the issue, or unwilling to make it a priority.

[Update: 13 April 2010] This post originally made reference to the Supreme Court of Canada, whereas it should have made reference to the Federal Court.

[Update: 15 April 2010] The bill passed the Report Stage and will go to Third Reading, probably via committee. The motion to send it to Third Reading passed by 155 to 137.

Some good climate news from Ontario

The Ontario government has just announced $8-billion in renewable energy projects, to be undertaken by dozens of companies with the aim of increasing renewable capacity by 2,500 megawatts.

Investing in the energy systems of the future just makes sense. Ontario could improve on this further by accelerating their planned coal phase-out from 2014 to this year.

The British House of Commons on the East Anglia climate emails

Following up on claims of scientific impropriety at the University of East Anglia, the Science and Technology Committee of Britain’s House of Commons produced a report on the leaked emails. The report includes consideration of datasets, freedom of information issues, and independent inquiries. The report’s three conclusions clearly express how the content of these emails does not undermine climate science, or does it suggest that action should not be taken on climate change. I will quote them verbatim and in full, to avoid any appearance of selective editing:

  1. “The focus on Professor Jones and [Climate Research Unit] CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, we consider that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community. We have suggested that the community consider becoming more transparent by publishing raw data and detailed methodologies. On accusations relating to Freedom of Information, we consider that much of the responsibility should lie with UEA, not CRU.
  2. In addition, insofar as we have been able to consider accusations of dishonesty—for example, Professor Jones’s alleged attempt to “hide the decline”—we consider that there is no case to answer. Within our limited inquiry and the evidence we took, the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact. We have found no reason in this unfortunate episode to challenge the scientific consensus as expressed by Professor Beddington, that “global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity”. It was not our purpose to examine, nor did we seek evidence on, the science produced by CRU. It will be for the Scientific Appraisal Panel to look in detail into all the evidence to determine whether or not the consensus view remains valid.
  3. A great responsibility rests on the shoulders of climate science: to provide the planet’s decision makers with the knowledge they need to secure our future. The challenge that this poses is extensive and some of these decisions risk our standard of living. When the prices to pay are so large, the knowledge on which these kinds of decisions are taken had better be right. The science must be irreproachable.”

As they say, their purpose was not primarily to study the science produced by the CRU. Other examinations of that are ongoing. Still, it seems clear from this that claims made by climate change delayers that these emails revealed a massive conspiracy seem to be clearly contradicted by these findings.

Evan Harris, one member of the committee, successfully moved an amendment to the report expressing that: “the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact.”

There are many uncertainties that remain about the nature and future of the climate system, and it is essential to both scientific and political processes that the scientific investigation of those things continue to take place in a rigorous, robust, and transparent way. At the same time, we mustn’t allow climate deniers to use any little ambiguity or issue that arises to suggest that the whole edifice of climate science has been undermined. We are rather too far along in the research now for such claims to be credible.

Can democracies solve climate change?

James Lovelock, of Gaia Hypothesis fame, thinks we are too stupid to deal with climate change. He has also argued that democratic systems of government may be at fault:

But it can’t happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What’s the alternative to democracy? There isn’t one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.

This touches on issues that have been discussed here frequently before, like just how radical a change we need in our political and economic systems. Still, it seems worth discussing.

Is there any chance whatsoever that the suspension of democracy could help deal with climate change? Or would such suspension simply perpetuate inaction, or make things even worse? Certainly, the more concerned any government is about remaining in power, the less seriously they generally take issues of long-term importance.

People are also discussing this on MetaFilter.

Food, energy, and fossil fuels

Yesterday night, I had an interesting conversation about energy, fossil fuels, agriculture, and human population. The key fact is that global agriculture is now deeply dependent on fossil fuels. They are needed for everything from running industrial farming equipment to producing fertilizer to operating the vast logistical networks through which food is processed and distributed. The key question is, what will the ramifications be when we inevitably transition from a global energy system based on fossil fuels to one based on renewable sources?

The transition is indeed inevitable, though it could happen in either of two ways. Either we can voluntarily cut back on using fossil fuels due to well-founded concerns about climate change – and awareness of the opportunities that exist in renewable energy – or we will draw down reserves to the point where it takes more energy to extract one calorie worth of fossil fuel than the fuel contains.

So, what might the post-fossil-fuel world look like? To get one idea, we can consider the world as it existed before the Industrial Revolution brought about large-scale fossil fuel use. Back in 1500, there were about half a billion people alive on Earth. The energy they relied upon was overwhelmingly from renewable sources, such as the embedded solar energy in plants. It seems plausible that returning to that kind of an energy system would return the planet’s capability of sustaining human beings to about the level that existed then: a bit higher, perhaps, because people now live in more places, and a bit lower, perhaps, because of the damage we have caused to the planet in various ways.

For an alternative, we need to consider an enhanced renewable-backed future that includes clever approaches to harnessing renewable sources of energy: solar, wind, wave, geothermal, etc. It seems to me that if we are going to have a world that does not use fossil fuels and which sustains something like as many billions as are alive now (to say nothing of in 2050 or later), such technologies are going to need to be deployed on massive scale and the world’s agricultural systems will need to be adapted to rely on them.

Fossil fuels have been an enormous energy boon for humanity. Quite possibly, they have allowed us to far overshoot where we would otherwise have been, in terms of energy use and population. Quite possibly, both of those will need to fall substantially in a post-fossil-fuel world. If there is any chance of that not taking place, it will depend on the massive deployment of the kind of advanced renewables that are already technologically feasible. That deployment will take dedication, foresight, financing, and energy. Indeed, there is surely no better use for whatever proportion of the world’s remaining fossil fuels we choose to burn than in making the solar and wind farms that will need to form most of the future energy basis for all human civilization.

Lifetime cost labels

To me, it seems problematic that people are excessively moved by the initial purchase price of various goods, giving much less consideration to total cost of ownership. For instance, when I used to sell printers at Staples, I observed that a $10 difference in price would often be enough to make a person choose one machine over another. My sense was that this encouraged printer manufacturers to make ever-shoddier products, hoping to capture the business of those who apparently care a lot more about the initial impact on their chequing account than on how long and well the product will serve them.

The same phenomenon is observable everywhere – in everything from clothes and shoes that fall apart in a few months to houses where corners have been cut in construction, at the expense of their efficiency, lifetime, and other factors.

I wonder if there is any way a labeling system could be devised to better express the real cost of products. For goods that have been available for many years, it seems like it should be possible to calculate the average length for which they remain in good working order, as well as tally up maintenance costs. Alongside the price, a label could display both the average number of years for which a product is likely to be useful, and the total cost of ownership divided across those years. The labels would have to be developed by some outside independent rating agency, somewhat akin to the analyses that are performed on automobiles.

Some will surely object that such ratings would be some kind of restriction on the free market. I argue that they are just the opposite. Rational choice models of economics hold that consumers have effectively perfect knowledge about what they buy, including factors like probable lifetime and upkeep costs. Actually providing this information in an effective and accessible way would help people to make rational economic choices. In so doing, it would mean that more people found themselves using more durable goods of higher quality. That, in turn, would cut down on total resource use and waste accumulation.

Such a system could be implemented in a number of different ways. Most ambitiously, it could be a national requirement, with a public agency producing the figures. A less elaborate option would be a voluntary rating system run by a non-profit entity which manufacturers could submit their goods to for evaluation. That would at least offer manufacturers of quality products a way to demonstrate their value through an independent estimate. Another approach would be for a quality-conscious retailer to implement such a system themselves. One example that comes to mind is Canada’s Mountain Equipment Co-Op. They could collect data from their members and produce estimates for durable products like tents, sleeping bags, stoves, climbing gear, etc.

Climate change severity levels

In the interests of using language clearly and consistently, when talking about climate change, I have written up some personal definitions over at BuryCoal.com. Specifically, I have defined what I mean when I talk about ‘dangerous,’ ‘catastrophic,’ and ‘runaway’ climate change.

I hope the post will serve the dual purpose of helping to encourage effective conversation – in which all participants understand one another clearly – and of reminding people just what a serious problem we are dealing with, when it is necessary to define such terms and consider the implications of such phenomena.

Tracking what is in the atmosphere

The Economist recently published an article lamenting how little funding is devoted to tracking the quantity of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. States do produce bottom-up records of emissions, based on what various facilities and vehicles emit. But it is also possible to track the accumulation of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere directly, and to infer things about emissions from regional variations in concentrations and from isotopic ratios which can help to identify the sources of gases like CO2 and methane. As explained in the article, little of this is being done, largely because of a lack of funding. The unfortunate destruction of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory is also a contributing factor.

It is both saddening and surprising that so little funding is devoted to collecting this basic information, especially given that it could provide the earliest signs of significant changes in the functioning of the carbon cycle. For instance, it could identify things like the rate of methane release in the Arctic, or changes in the world’s carbon sinks. Greenhouse gases affect the climate system, regardless of whether they are released directly by human beings or whether humans merely induce their release indirectly. As such, top-down tracking is vital for developing and maintaining a comprehensive sense of what is going on.

In Canada, at least, the state of climate science funding seems to be worsening. While promises of a ‘High Arctic Research Station’ continue to be made periodically, the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) is being shut down for lack of funding, and Canada’s climate scientists remain muzzled.

Obamacare and climate change

Now that the Democrats have had a success on health care reform, my thinking turns naturally to what this means for climate change legislation. In one sense, it looks as though an obstacle has been removed. Important as it was to reform health care (and imperfect as the solution that has emerged is), it had clearly become the top priority of the administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress. That inevitably meant less attention for an issue that will ultimately be much more important, given that it may substantially affect the habitability of the whole planet.

While Democrats in Congress may now have a bit of confidence, born from success, and a bit more openness in their schedules, there does seem to be reason to think that climate change legislation will be a very tough sell. Health care only seems to have passed because Senate agreement was secured while the Democrats still had their slim super-majority. Furthermore, while Congresspeople may thunder on about how health care reform will prove the death of liberty, that remarkably science-averse institution will find far more reason to complain about anything that restricts the emission of greenhouse gases. Regional interests are certainly a lot stronger on this matter, though it is ironic that the regions that suffer most from the environmental effects of things like coal mining nonetheless have representatives who will fight tooth and claw to protect that filthy industry.

What do readers think? Will success on health care embolden Democrats, or make them even more timid on account of upcoming mid-term elections? Is there any change of Waxman-Markey or some similar cap-and-trade bill succeeding in Obama’s first term? What about a more novel carbon pricing scheme, such as one based on tax-and-dividend? What about regulation of greenhouse gas emissions by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)? Will that provide an alternative to Congressional action, or will it not prove a potent enough tool to make a difference? Also, might Congress close off that option as well?

Earth Hour 2010

Earth Hour is happening again on March 27th. I have argued before that it is a bad idea, and I stand behind that assessment. I think it propagates faulty beliefs over what needs to be done, and what sort of tactics can succeed.

One more reason why Earth Hour is counterproductive is that it feeds naturally into one of the most common arguments against action on environmental issues: namely, that environmentalists just want to shut down everything people rely upon and enjoy. Turn the lights out, ban travel, etc. They may ask you to do it voluntarily for an hour, but they really want to force it on you forever. That’s how the Conservative Party portrayed the Kyoto Protocol – as though meeting it would mean shutting down a third of all of Canada’s energy use overnight.

Dealing with climate change does require us to change behaviour, and the ethics considerations everyone needs to make now must take climate change into account. That being said, the solution doesn’t lie with shutting everything down, but rather with replacing the energy basis of our society with one that is clean and renewable, leaving most remaining fossil fuels unburned. I don’t see how Earth Hour helps us move in that direction.