Category: Politics

All posts on what Bismarck called “the art of the possible”

Aidid on fossil fuel divestment at Canadian universities

Shadiya A. Aidid’s Master of Health Sciences thesis from Lakehead University is the latest major scholarly publication on the campus fossil fuel divestment movement: From divestment to climate justice: perspectives from university fossil fuel divestment campaigns

The thesis examines case studies of “Divest Concordia based at Concordia University, Climate Justice UBC based at the University of British Columbia, and Fossil Free UW based at the University of Waterloo.”

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20 million saved by COVID vaccines

It is being reported today that a study at Imperial College London “modelled the spread of the disease in 185 countries and territories between December 2020 and December 2021, [and] found that without Covid vaccines 31.4 million people would have died, and that 19.8 million of these deaths were avoided.”

That is a staggering, historical achievement. At the same time, it reminds me of how bad people are at basing their beliefs on evidence. If we could effectively update our beliefs based on empirical information, people around the world would be celebrating this achievement and hosting parades for vaccine scientists. As things are, I have to wonder if with the political lessons taken from this pandemic we would even make such an effort in the future. Quite possibly through political polarization and the linkage of beliefs about medical facts with personal identity and ideology the world at large has become more fragile rather than more resilient through this experience.

Reversion to fossil fuel dependence

With economic instability, the Ukraine war, and increased fossil fuel prices there is a disturbing trend toward nations deepening their fossil fuel dependence. For instance:

This all brings up a familiar fear: at a time when humanity can only avoid disaster through cooperation, there is a serious risk that increasingly strained circumstances will instead drive a selfish and ultimately hopeless logic of individual self-protection among states. Thus, the hope that a more acute experience of the impacts of climate change will drive a rejection of climate denial and public demand for strong mitigation policy may not be well justified. With all the structural barriers to climate action, our worsening global situation could become inescapably self-reinforcing.

Trans Mountain would not be profitable

One of the most bizarre things the Trudeau government has ever said about energy and climate change is that building the Trans Mountain pipeline is necessary for the transition away from fossil fuels because it will raise the money needed to carry it out.

This has always been an absurd proposition. It’s ridiculous on its face that investing billions of tens of billions in fossil fuel export infrastructure which will operate for decades will help Canada do its share to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Now even the financial argument has come under serious criticism. Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux recently estimated that the cost of the project has grown from $12.6 billion in 2020 to $21.4 billion now and concluded that “Trans Mountain no longer continues to be a profitable undertaking.” At the same time, cancelling the project would yield a $14 billion loss.

Neither the federal nor Alberta government is changing course because of this analysis. Chrystia Freeland’s press secretary has said: “The Trans Mountain Expansion Project is in the national interest and will make Canada and the Canadian economy more sovereign and more resilient.” Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage said: “This project is necessary for Alberta and Canada’s energy sectors.”

All this is a reminder of how the behaviour a government needs to follow to stay in power does not consist of serving the public interest or putting forward a coherent policy agenda, but rather maintaining the support of the key societal actors that the government needs to keep in power.

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Exposure of individuals’ investments to the carbon bubble

Further substantiation of the carbon bubble / stranded assets argument that if governments act seriously on their climate goals then a huge amount of fossil fuel investment will become worthless:

Nature Climate Change study: Stranded fossil-fuel assets translate to major losses for investors in advanced economies

Guardian reporting: People in US and UK face huge financial hit if fossil fuels lose value, study shows

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Wray on the suitability of emotions in response to climate change

Pain is a natural outcome of being told—and experiencing—that wildfires, hurricanes, and floods are becoming more ferocious due to the climate crisis, and that droughts are getting more serious and lasting longer. It is reasonable to get worried when the World Bank foresees that 140 million climate migrants will be fleeing ecological catastrophes and the knock-on effects of social strife within Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and south Asia by 2050, while other estimates put the number at over one billion. It is normal to get anxious about mass migrations and resource scarcity increasing the risk of violence and war. It is appropriate to grieve when the UN reports that humans are driving up to one million species to extinction, many within mere decades. It is logical to be horrified when a study shows that most trees alive today will be killed in massive die-offs within forty years if we don’t dramatically change course. It is understandable to be scared when a different study finds that Arctic permafrost is thawing at a rate that was predicted to happen seventy years from now, that the Greenlandic ice sheet has already melted beyond a point of no return, and that unchecked climate change could collapse entire ecosystems as soon as 2030. Stress is a suitable reaction when scientists say that by 2070, one to three billion people will be living in hot zones outside the temperature niche that has allowed human civilization to thrive over the last six thousand years. It is humane to be gutted when you learn that air pollution caused the premature deaths of nearly half a million babies in their first month of life over a twelve-month period. It is fitting to freak out when the World Meteorological Organization issues a report on the global climate that states “time is fast running out for us to avert the worst impacts of climate disruption and protect our societies from the inevitable impacts to come.” It is sensible to get spooked when a group of leading environmental researchers publish a paper that opens with the words, “The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms—including humanity—is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts.” It is right to be pissed off when you learn that we’ve emitted more carbon dioxide since the UN established its framework convention on climate change in 1992—that is, since we have been making an intergovernmental effort to reduce our emissions—than in all the millennia before then. And it is decent to rage once you understand how deeply the fossil fuel industry has manipulated the political system and misinformed the public, valuing money over our survival. There is nothing pathological about this pain. It is an unavoidable symptom of a very sick society.

…

At this late stage in the climate crisis—a scientifically proven anthropogenic phenomenon that’s been debated on baseless claims for decades—I would suggest eco-anxiety is merely a sign of attachment to the world.

Wray, Britt. Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis. Knopff, 2022. p. 19-21

Wray on climate distress

Our study also showed that the psychological distress young people experience over the climate crisis isn’t just about the degrading state of the environment. Rather, it is linked to perceptions of government betrayal and being lied to by leaders who are taking inadequate climate change action while pretending otherwise.

Wray, Britt. Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis. Knopff, 2022. p. 21

We are losing the global fight against fossil fuels

Three examples from today:

1) Coal shortage and heatwave spark India’s power woes:

The government says it is doing all it can do to ensure supplies. Coal India, the world’s largest coal miner, has increased production by 12%, “strengthening India’s energy security”, according to the federal coal ministry. It also despatched 49.7 million metric tonnes of coal to the power generating companies in April, a 15% rise over the same month last year. The railways have cancelled more than a thousand passenger trains to transport more coal to fuel-starved plants.

2) Hydro-Québec mounts last-ditch effort to revive stalled power line project through Maine:

The planned project would carry 1,200 megawatts of electricity over a 336-kilometre high-voltage transmission line between Thetford Mines, Que., and Lewiston, Maine. Of the 233 kilometres planned on the U.S. side, 85 kilometres would cut through a forested area. Clearing work was already well underway at the time of the referendum.

According to Maine Public Utilities Commission, the project would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 3.6 million metric tons per year — the equivalent of taking 700,000 cars off the road.

However, the state’s largest environmental advocacy group, the Natural Resources Council of Maine, has expressed a great deal of skepticism about the real environmental benefits of Hydro-Québec energy, questioning whether the project would actually reduce GHG emissions.

3) Ontario energy grid emissions set to skyrocket 400% as Ford government cranks up the gas:

Since all renewable energy projects were cancelled when Premier Doug Ford was elected, the province currently has no other way to compensate for the looming shutdown of a major nuclear reactor in Pickering, responsible for roughly 16 per cent of province-wide power. Only natural gas is available to meet rapidly growing demand for electricity, according to the IESO projections.

The projections show that the province’s natural gas plants — which only operate about 60 per cent of the time now — will run non-stop by 2033. The additional annual emissions this will produce over the next 20 years are equivalent to a large Alberta oilsands project.

Meltdown

I watched the four-part Netflix series on the Three Mile Island disaster and found it to be well crafted and emotionally poignant, though only OK as an educational resource on the partial meltdown.

My technical complaint is that they explain almost nothing about why the accident happened and exactly what took place while it was going on. There is a lot of interesting material on how complex systems have interactions which cannot be foreseen, as well as user interface issues in the control room, which would have helped viewers better understand.

In terms of storytelling, my objection is with how the filmmakers basically set up two kinds of interview subjects: forthright and emotional local residents who suffered, and a few wicked representatives of the industry. They quote dismissive claims about culpability and the accident’s severity from the insiders, while uncritically quoting residents on how an unchecked disaster would have destroyed Pensyllvania or the East Coast. To me this all felt like too much handholding about who to believe, coupled with insufficient reference to credible outside accounts.

I wouldn’t especially recommend the series to either people who know a lot about nuclear energy or those who know fairly little. The former are likely to be annoyed at how anecdote-driven the whole thing is, while the latter may be given a false sense of confidence about the correctness of the view expressed. Unlike the remarkable 2019 series on the Chernobyl accident, this is one that can be safely missed.

For better explanations on TMI, I would suggest Nickolas Means’s talk (which also contains some fascinating discussion about what human error means in the context of major industrial accidents and how to investigate them after the fact) or this Inviting Disaster episode from The History Channel.

De Mesquita and Smith on is/ought

But remember, what constitutes doing the right thing must be understood from the perspective of a potential supporter: it may have nothing to do with what is best for a community or nation. Anyone who thinks leaders do what they ought to do—that is, do what is best for their nation or subjects—ought to become an academic rather than enter political life. In politics, coming to power is never about doing the right thing. It is always about doing what is expedient.

De Mesquita, Bruce Bueno and Alastair Smith. The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics. PublicAffairs, 2012. p. 37 (italics in original)

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