Politics – Page 160 – a sibilant intake of breath

Climate science conference in Copenhagen

The recently concluded International Scientific Congress on Climate Change has released the ‘key messages’ from the conference. Somewhat truncated, they are:

“Recent observations confirm that, given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised… There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts. “
“The research community is providing much more information to support discussions on “dangerous climate change”. Recent observations show that societies are highly vulnerable to even modest levels of climate change, with poor nations and communities particularly at risk.”
“Rapid, sustained, and effective mitigation based on coordinated global and regional action is required to avoid ‘dangerous climate change’ regardless of how it is defined.”
“Climate change is having, and will have, strongly differential effects on people within and between countries and regions, on this generation and future generations, and on human societies and the natural world.”
“There is no excuse for inaction. We already have many tools and approaches… to deal effectively with the climate change challenge.”
“To achieve the societal transformation required to meet the climate change challenge, we must overcome a number of significant constraints and seize critical opportunities.”

The conference involved 2,500 delegates from nearly 80 countries, and was intended to consider scientific issues prior to the UNFCCC negotiating meeting in December. A synthesis report on the conference will be released in June.

There is still an enormous gap between what climate scientists say must be done in the near-term and what most governments have pledged to do. Hopefully, the two will converge sharply during the next year, and the UNFCCC meeting will produce a viable successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

Environmental assessments in Canada

Reading about the plans of Canada’s federal government to limit environmental assessments, I was left wondering whether the term ‘environment’ is itself somewhat marginalizing. These days, people seem to generally accept the idea that ‘environment’ and ‘economy’ are competing interests and, by extension, that the former should sometimes be sacrificed for the latter. I wonder, then, what would change if part of the environmental assessment was split off and called a ‘human health assessment.’ People seem much less willing to accept a trade-off between money and health.

If there was a separate study on things like lung diseases, cancers, and human toxic exposure likely to arise from a project, it might get a lot more attention. That being said, there does seem to be a risk that once you isolate human health from the rest of the environmental assessment, nobody will care about the nature portion. I mean, who really cares about birds, fish, or polar bears anyhow?

Legalizing drugs

In a recent leader and briefing, The Economist has reiterated its support for worldwide drug legalization. They argue that, while legalization will certainly bring problems of its own, it is better than another century of failed attempts at prohibition. All told, the case is a very strong one. Legalization could bring with it government control: tax revenues, funds to treat addicts, quality control of products, and public information. Legalization would bring the problem into the open, as well as allow the billions of dollars spent on anti-drug policing and prisons to be put to better uses. In their leader, the magazine makes the surprising suggestion that the participation of legitimate drug companies in the development and improvement of recreational drugs could make them safer.

Legalization could also undercut organized crime, the body that probably benefits most from the current arrangement. That, in turn, would cut down on the crime associated with an illegal trade. Legalization would also suspend the situation in which governments criminalize large segments of their own population. The point is made that Barack Obama could easily have ended up in prison for his youthful experiments with cocaine. Certainly, prison sentences for drug use have the capacity to ruin what would otherwise be excellent lives by stigmatizing those who receive them and exposing them to one of the most intolerable social environments that exist within secure states.

An interesting rebuttal is offered to the idea that looser drug laws turn more people into drug users and addicts. Comparisons of otherwise similar states (harsh Sweden and laxer Norway, for instance) suggest that laws have little impact on the level of drug-taking in society. Under a legal regime, there would also be an opportunity to dispel misinformation about drugs. Certainly, the arguments that politicians have sometimes made about the ‘extreme’ danger of marijuana undermine their credibility when talking about substances that are genuinely far more dangerous.

In short, drug legalization does seem to offer the prospect of weakening the connections between many different harmful phenomenon: from the way in which poppy eradication is undermining peacemaking efforts in Afghanistan to the way in which the poor are more likely to go to jail for drug offences than their richer fellow citizens. While it would be asking too much for governments to take the plunge and legalize everything instantly, it may not be too much to hope for gradual progress in that direction, with a growing emphasis on harm prevention and a more evidence-based approach to policing, lawmaking, and judicial decisions.

Call for papers on climate change

The St. Antony’s International Review has issued a call for papers (PDF) for their upcoming issue: “Climate Change: Preparations for a Low-Carbon Future.” Normally, it is something I would definitely make a submission to. As it stands, their last issue included a paper of mine on nuclear power, so I will probably sit this one out.

That being said, readers of this blog who have something interesting and scholarly to say about climate change should consider sending something. In particular, they are looking for work that addresses one or more of these topics:

Framing the Issue
Rethinking Existing Policy
Actors and Sites of Governance
Societal Attitudes towards Consumption

They also want reviews of books consistent with the theme. Abstracts are due by April 30th. Final papers are due August 31st.

Overcoming the status quo, and building a sustainable society

One of the biggest difficulties in dealing with climate change is the challenge of making people give up things they have been benefiting from inappropriately for a long time. For instance, if a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system raises the price of fuels or energy, people will rebel because these things were cheaper before. It isn’t very psychologically potent to say that the lower previous prices were the result of ignoring the consequences of one’s actions. While a theoretical concern for future generations and people living in other countries is easy to maintain, a concern than manifests itself in changed behaviour is quite different.

In the end, our whole society is unsustainable. It is based on an energy model that cannot be perpetuated, and it is doing terrifying damage to the physical and biological systems of the Earth. Between the advent of industrialization and the present day, we have been living a kind of Ponzi scheme. Hopefully, people will grow to understand the enormous opportunity that exists now to initiate the transition to a sustainable human society: one that can sustain itself for millions of years.

Doing that requires foresight, an understanding of science, and a willingness to reject things that have existing for a long time, on the basis of rational objections. Ultimately, I am not entirely confident that humanity can manage that transition. Even so, now is undeniably the moment to try.

Fuel efficiency, climate change, and 2050

Recently, the United Nations Environment Program and others called for fuel efficiency in automobiles to be doubled by 2050. While more efficient transport is a necessary element in dealing with climate change, this target strikes me as profoundly lacking in vision or ambition. There are two major reasons for which I think we must do a lot better.

The first is that, by 2050, we will probably be seeing serious consequences from climate change globally. It is entirely possible that there will be no more Arctic summer sea ice, and far fewer glaciers. Droughts, fires, and heat waves are likely to have increased in frequency and severity. These kinds of changes are likely, to some extent, regardless of what sort of emissions trajectory we follow. The major differences in outcome between a scenario where we cut emissions and save ourselves and one where we doom huge numbers of future generations to enormous climatic harm will largely be felt after 2050. In spite of that, it seems probable that changes which will occur by 2050 will render the strategy of denying and ignoring climate change non-viable. As such, it is doubtful that governments would ask so little of automakers.

The second concerns peak oil. There are a lot of uncertainties involved about timing, technological development, and about how the global economy will respond to falling output. That being said, there will come a day when the global production of petroleum peaks and begins an unstoppable decline. To me, at least, it seems likely that the decline will be well underway by 2050 – making a petroleum-fuelled automobile an expensive proposition for anyone, and quite possibly unavailable to most. In an optimistic scenario, where standards of living keep rising in spite of reduced hydrocarbon output, that will mean that the reduced quantity of fuel available will have a price inflated even beyond what scarcity would dictate. It is, of course, terribly hazardous to make guesses about technology and economic developments so far off, but my gut impression is that a vehicle engineer from 2050 would be aghast to see a vehicle anywhere near as inefficient as those we are using now.

If we do take climate change seriously, and we begin to capture the opportunities for economic transition the crisis offers, by 2050 we should find ourselves moving sharply towards a far more sustainable world. To take one set of examples, it might be a world where ground transportation is overwhelmingly electric, fuelled by renewables and probably some nuclear fission. Liquid fuels produced from biomass might be employed only by aircraft and for specialty applications like vehicles in very remote areas. While that scenario is speculative, to me it seems more likely than one where we are driving around in the same old internal combustion engine, gasoline cars but burning 3.5 litres per 100km rather than 7.0.

The Hill Times on the oil sands

In one of the more absurd headlines I have seen printed recently, Ottawa’s Hill Times reported that: “Canada will fail if there’s no tar sands plan, say experts.” This is both false and an insult to Canadians. It implies that the only economic value that can arise from Canada is embodied in natural resources. It ignores the fact that any kind of long-term prosperity for Canadians needs to be based on sustainable activities, and must ultimately be compatible with a stable climate. Because the oil sands are about chasing down the last few drops of yesterday’s energy source, rather than looking to the future, economic activity based upon them is necessarily ephemeral, as well as hugely environmentally destructive.

The article itself is more reasonable than the headline, but still fails to consider the possibility that the ‘boon’ to Canadians from the oil sands is illusory. When the externalities are taken into account, it is likely that the harm being done to future generations outweighs the value that frantic extraction may have for this one.

Cap-and-trade schemes and price increases

An exciting element of the new American administration’s climate change agenda is the promised cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gas emissions. During the campaign, Obama pledged that the system would auction 100% of the permits. The government would issue a set number of permits each year, which firms would need to bid for competitively. That way, the price of permits would be established through a market mechanism and whatever opportunities existed to mitigate emissions for a lesser cost would be captured. The revenues from the auctions could be used in various ways.

One big rhetorical counter-argument, employed largely by those seeking to stall the regulation of greenhouse gasses, is that this will increase consumer prices. At least when it comes to greenhouse gas intensive products, this is necessarily true in the short to medium term. The whole idea behind carbon pricing is to alter the relative cost of high-carbon and low-carbon goods: encouraging people to switch from the former to the latter, and generally minimize the consumption of high-carbon goods altogether. Prices are an important mechanism through which this information is conveyed. Also, the existence of a significant and rising cost of carbon is necessary to drive the kind of investments required to produce a low-carbon society.

There are a number of important responses to the point about raising prices. Firstly, it is important to highlight how the transition to a low-carbon economy is necessary and one-off. Putting society on a sustainable footing is a huge task, but also one of humanity’s biggest opportunities. Managed properly, our response to climate change can establish key parts of the foundation for a sustainable society. Secondly, it is key to realize that energy companies will pass along the cost of permits, even if they receive them for free (this previous post explains why). This leads to the third point, about the importance of where the funds go. In a system where permits are ‘grandfathered’ and given to power plants and industrial facilities for free, the price increases will translate into profits for those polluting firms. Cap-and-trade revenues, however, go into the public coffers. They can then be used to help individuals deal with the difficulties of economic transition, reduce taxation elsewhere, and help fund green infrastructure projects.

The 100% auction plan is certain to face stiff opposition in Congress. In spite of that, it is very much worth putting through. It is far better to get a weak but decently-designed system in place, ready to be tightened up later, than introduce something that is compromised from the start. Putting a small but real price on every tonne of emissions is thus better than entrenching a system of free emissions for favoured firms, even if non-favoured firms face higher initial carbon prices. Here’s hoping the Obama administration has the resolve and skill required to really kick off America’s urgent transition towards carbon neutrality.

Regulating dirty coal in the US

The New York Times is reporting on how the Obama administration in the US is going to propose new regulations on the wastes from coal combustion, including coal ash of the kind that spilled so dramatically in Tennessee, causing $100 million in damage. The wastes contain toxins like arsenic, mercury, and lead at higher concentrations than in previous decades, partly because the scrubbers used to keep these toxins out of the plant’s air emissions lead to them ending up in the ash instead. In 2006, the National Research Council of the National Academies researched the mean concentrations of toxins in the ash: arsenic (43.4 ppm); barium (806 ppm); beryllium (5 ppm); boron (311 ppm); cadmium (3.4 ppm); chromium (136 ppm); chromium VI (90 ppm); cobalt (35.9 ppm); copper (112 ppm); fluorine (29 ppm); lead (56 ppm); manganese (250 ppm); nickel (77.6 ppm); selenium (7.7 ppm); strontium (775 ppm); thallium (9 ppm); vanadium (252 ppm); and zinc (178 ppm). In 2007, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that: “The presence of high contaminant levels in many CCR (coal combustion residue) leachates may create human health and ecological concerns.”

At present, coal ash facilities are regulated far less stringently than landfills for municipal waste, despite how they are fundamentally more hazardous. The new regulations will aim at preventing spills, as well as the leaching of toxins into the water supply.

It just goes to show that, even with effective carbon capture and storage technology, coal will probably never be a clean source of energy. By the time coal-fired power stations are required to mine, burn, and dispose of coal in a more environmentally benign manner, the cost advantages associated with coal are likely to vanish as well.

Alberta’s economic slowdown

According to The Globe and Mail, the economic situation in Alberta has recently worsened considerably. Major causes include the drop in oil prices and reduced access to credit.

While the slowdown will almost certainly reduce the pace of development in the oil sands, it may also deepen the political resolve to pursue growth at any cost. Whatever the economic future holds, a deep conflict will remain between Canada’s stated greenhouse gas mitigation goals and ambitions for Alberta to be an even larger fossil fuel producer.