The environment – Page 98 – a sibilant intake of breath

Edgy campaign from the Young Greens

The Young Greens of Canada recently launched a new website emblazoned with the slogan “[Y]our parents f*cked up the planet – [I]t’s time to do something about it. [L]ive green, vote green.” Obviously, it is intended to provoke controversy, and it is arguably a tactical mistake. That being said, it is certainly factually true. The ancestors of those now alive helped to expand the fossil-fuel-driven society that is the fundamental cause of climate change. Most of them did so in ignorance of what the consequences would be, but that is no longer a legitimate possibility for those now alive. Faulty arguments from deniers aside, we all now know that climate change is real, dangerous, and caused by us. We have to stop. That being said, it would be more correct to say “our parents” or “all our parents” and to mention that, so far, we are all doing the same thing.

We certainly need a diversity in media campaigns to address climate change and, even if some people object to this one, I think there is some cause for raising the issue of responsibility. We need to move from a mindset where we pat ourselves on the back for walking to the grocery store or using a compact fluorescent light to one where we recognize the harm our emissions will cause to other people and take major steps to reduce them (while also demanding change in the economic and political structures within which we live).

Canada’s political system forces the Greens to engage from the outside. Whether you think this communication strategy will alienate more than it educates or not, that is clearly what the Young Greens are trying to accomplish here.

Promoting responsible mining

Previously, I described the phenomenon where mining companies leave behind messes that would eliminate their profits if they were obliged to clean them up. Often, however, these liabilities end up being borne by taxpayers in general, who either fund the cleanup or live with the consequences of the contamination.

Now, a private members bill proposes sanctions on Canadian mining companies that violate good governance and environmental standards abroad. Bill C-300 was proposed by Liberal MP John McKay, and has already passed through second reading in the House of Commons.

Extractive industries, including mining, certainly have a checkered history of international operations. While there are certainly examples of projects that take into account governance and environmental concerns, legal reforms that make these more typical are welcome.

Patio heaters

The photo above illustrates part of why Canada has greenhouse gas emissions of about 24 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per person per year (about three times as much as Sweden). It also shows the extent to which we take the easy energy embedded in fossil fuels for granted: gas powered heaters, running in Ottawa in October, to warm a patio with nobody on it.

I doubt renewable energy will ever become cheap enough for this kind of excess to make sense.

More misrepresentation of climate science

A YouTube user called greenman3610 sometimes puts up videos in a series called the ‘climate change crock of the week.’ One that he put up recently is illustrative of how scientific information about climate change is misrepresented in the media.

The initial remarks concerned how there is always random variation around the overall warming trend being caused by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The featured later media discussion suggests that the original speaker has now abandoned the view that greenhouse gasses cause warming – something that is blatantly contradicted by the original transcript.

The fact that such misrepresentation occurs is depressing for two reasons. First, it shows how low the ethical and journalistic of at least some media outlets have become. Second, it reveals the extent to which people in general are too ignorant of climatic science to identify which claims are credible and which are absurd.

Thankfully, sources like DeSmogBlog and RealClimate put a lot of effort into rebutting faulty arguments that find purchase in the media.

Electric cars in British Columbia

In 2011, Nissan is planning to launch their LEAF electric vehicle in B.C. The cars have a 160 kilometre range and can be charged to 80% of capacity in 1/2 hour. Unlike a plug-in hybrid, all-electric vehicles like the LEAF are powered entirely by electricity from the grid and cannot use gasoline to extend their range when their batteries give out. This limits their inter-city potential, but could be perfectly compatible with an urban lifestyle, especially as batteries improve and charging stations become more common.

The Nissan-Renault partnership behind the vehicles is the same one that is planning to roll out a fleet in Israel, complete with rapid battery switching stations. From what I have read, it isn’t clear whether the B.C. launch will involve a ‘subscription’ system in the same way as the Israeli one will.

My personal sense is that electric cars will play a major role in future urban transportation. Much as I would like to see private cars pushed out of city centres entirely, the prospects of that happening in most places are poor. Given that, the best we can hope for is making them into lower-carbon entities. Given the many problems associated with large-scale biofuel cultivation, my guess is that their use will be restricted to air travel and niche applications, leaving the bulk of ground transport powered by battery-driven electric motors. Of course, it is key to ensure that those batteries are being charged by low-carbon means like concentrating solar, wind, hydroelectric, and nuclear power.

Natural selection and species self-destruction

Late in The Greatest Show on Earth, Richard Dawkins reiterates a key point from his earlier book The Selfish Gene: namely, that there is nothing in natural selection to prevent a species from engaging in behaviour that is profoundly self-destructive in the long run. As he evocatively puts it:

“But, the planning enthusiast will protest, when all the lions are behaving selfishly and over-hunting the prey species to the point of extinction, everybody is worse off, even the individual lions that are the most successful hunters. Ultimately, if all the prey go extinct, the entire lion population will too. Surely, the planner insists, natural selection will step in and stop that happening? Once again alas, and once again no. The problem is that natural selection doesn’t ‘step in,’ natural selection doesn’t look into the future, and natural selection doesn’t choose between rival groups. If it did, there would be some chance that prudent predation could be favoured. Natural selection, as Darwin realized much more clearly than many of his successors, chooses between rival individuals within a population. Even if the entire population is diving to extinction, driven down by individual competition, natural selection will still favour the most competitive individuals, right up to the moment when the last one dies. Natural selection can drive a population to extinction, while constantly favouring, to the bitter end, the competitive genes that are destined to be the last to go extinct.” (p.389 hardcover)

The natural response to reading such a passage is to consider how it applies to human beings. A superficial reading is a dangerous one, as Dawkins describes at length in The Selfish Gene. It is possible for human beings to plan and to avoid the kind of deadly spiral he describes; it simply isn’t an inevitable product of evolution that we will do so. Probably without realizing it, Dawkins uses a terrible example to try to illustrate this human capability. He cites the “quotas and restrictions,” limitations on gear, and “gunboats patrol[ling] the seas” as reasons for which humans are “prudent predators” of fish. Of course, we are anything but and are presently engaged in a global industrialized effort to smash all marine ecosystems to dust. Nevertheless, the general capability he is alluding to could be said to exist.

In many key places, we need to accomplish what Dawkins wrongly implies we have achieved with fishing: create systems of self-restraint that constrain selfish behaviour on the basis of artificial, societal sanctions. Relying upon the probabilistic force of natural selection simply won’t help us, when it comes to problems like climate change. So far, our efforts to craft such sanctions (which would probably include ‘positive’ elements such as education) have been distinctly unsuccessful.

Perhaps if people could grasp the fact that there is nothing in nature – and certainly nothing supernatural – to protect humanity from self-destruction, they will finally take responsibility for the task themselves. The blithe assumption that a force beyond us will emerge to check the excesses of our behaviour is dangerously wrong. Now, if only people could show some vision and resolve and set about in rectifying the most self-destructive traits of our species, from indifference about the unsustainable use of resources to lack of concern about the destructive accumulation of wastes. In this task, we actually have an advantage in the existence of states that exist largely to constrain individual behaviour. The kind of behaviours that produce the self-destructive spiral in Dawkins’ lions can potentially averted by putting their human equivalents into the shackles of law.

US climate legislation and the Copenhagen talks

Some news sources are reporting that Obama’s top energy advisor is saying there will be no new climate legislation in the US this year. If true, that would mean that the US will be going to the UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen with disappointingly little to offer as evidence of progress, reducing the chances that the talk will succeed.

That being said, Joseph Romm is decrying such stories as misleading and old news. He claims that: “for many, many months now the only issue for those who follow DC climate politics has been whether the Senate would pass a climate bill before Copenhagen, not whether a final bill would get onto Obama’s desk before Copenhagen.”

Romm has been playing the role of arch-optimist when it comes to the Waxman-Markey bill and the upcoming Copenhagen talks. Hopefully, his perspective will prove justified in light of future events.

Today’s low-carbon cities

What does it take to produce a low-carbon city? First, it should be compact. The average resident of Barcelona emits about a tonne a year of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), while a New Yorker emits about one and a half and someone from Denver emits well over six. Torontonians emit about 4 tonnes of CO2e per year, from ground transport. This suggests that high-density urban planning might be a realistic component in climate change mitigation plans.

Secondly, it helps to be located in a temperate climate and to rely on low-carbon forms of electricity, such as hydro and nuclear. The worst thing to be is spread out, located in a very cold or very hot climate, and powered by coal. Phasing out coal globally should probably be our #1 climate priority.

Of course, tomorrow’s low-carbon cities will need to do dramatically better. Those annual ground transportation emissions are higher than the acceptable level for total emissions per capita by 2050.

CO2 and the formation of the Antarctic ice sheet

Research published in Nature explores the origins of the Antarctic ice sheet during the Oligocene transition, 33.5 to 34 million years ago. The formation of the sheet was apparently triggered by a drop in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) below a critical level. The researchers were able to estimate CO2 levels in this time period by examining boron isotope rations in fossils from Tanzania, an approach that was necessary since it is not possible to go so far back on the basis of data from ice core samples. The researchers estimate that the CO2 concentration during this transition period was about 760 parts per million (ppm). That is about twice the level of current atmospheric CO2 concentrations. If the world carries along on its current trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 will be above 1000ppm by 2100.

The operation of the global climate is highly complex, with many significant inputs and internal feedbacks. The researchers specify that the ice sheet displays “a nonlinear response to climate forcing during melting.” Nonetheless, it is worrisome to think that we are on track to exceed the atmospheric CO2 concentration at which the Antarctic ice sheet started to form, and do so well before the end of this century. That being said, even if we do push the climate into a state where the serious or total melting of Antarctica becomes an inevitability, the process may take hundreds or thousands of years to occur. Such long-term impacts seriously complicate economical and ethical analysis of climate change.

Peak fish

Daniel Pauly, of the UBC Fisheries Centre, has a sad but compelling article in The New Republic. The basic message is a familiar one: governments have allowed, and even encouraged, the wholesale destruction of marine fisheries by industrial fishing fleets. While they contribute less to GDP than hair salons, they have gained disproportionate power and given license to literally smash some of the world’s most productive and important ecosystems.

Pauly argues that we are reaching the end of the line:

The jig, however, is nearly up. In 1950, the newly constituted Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimated that, globally, we were catching about 20 million metric tons of fish (cod, mackerel, tuna, etc.) and invertebrates (lobster, squid, clams, etc.). That catch peaked at 90 million tons per year in the late 1980s, and it has been declining ever since. Much like Madoff’s infamous operation, which required a constant influx of new investments to generate “revenue” for past investors, the global fishing-industrial complex has required a constant influx of new stocks to continue operation. Instead of restricting its catches so that fish can reproduce and maintain their populations, the industry has simply fished until a stock is depleted and then moved on to new or deeper waters, and to smaller and stranger fish. And, just as a Ponzi scheme will collapse once the pool of potential investors has been drained, so too will the fishing industry collapse as the oceans are drained of life.

He cites a study published in Science which argued that by 2048, all the world’s commercial fisheries will have collapsed, and will be producing less than 10% of what they were at their peaks.

Sometimes, it is utterly disgusting to see how humans behave. The fishers who are destroying their own future and a resource that could serve human needs indefinitely; the governments that are so happy to be corrupted in exchange for jobs and political support; the general public that is indifferent to the origin of the seafood they eat.

It’s all quite enough to feed the lingering feeling that seems pervasive in the modern world: that the emergence of humanity as Earth’s dominant species has largely been for the worse, and that the world might be better off without us.