Politics – Page 18 – a sibilant intake of breath

The biodiversity crisis

The concept of the Anthropocene holds that human beings have made changes of such enormity to the planet that they will be chemically identifiable into the distant future. That includes our changes to the atmosphere and disruption to the climate, as well as the radionuclides generated from nuclear tests, accidents, and power stations.

The human impact will also be identifiable through the vast and uncountable number of species we have driven to extinction, probably chiefly through habitat destruction but also from causes as diverse as industrial fishing and the introduction of endocrine disruptors as pollutants.

How exactly this relates to the crisis of climate change is complex and disputed. Certainly, the impact of our GHG pollution on the climate is one of the drivers of extinction, for instance for species which have shifted northward or uphill in response to rising temperatures and which eventually run out of space, or species that have had their life cycles disrupted away from those they have symbiotic relationships with, like when insects act as pollinators for plants.

Some scholars are highlighting how some climate change solutions could exacerbate the biodiversity crisis. For instance, the pursuit of biofuels as alternatives to fossil fuels may drive further habitat loss as land is converted to energy crops. Others have emphasized simultaneous opportunities to both protect biodiversity and climate stability, notably by setting aside territory for nature that will also continue to retain or draw down potential atmospheric carbon.

Jenica Atwin leaves the Greens for the Liberals

As every first year Canadian politics class covers ad nauseam , the first past the post electoral system is great for large parties and terrible for small ones. Since you only win MPs by winning a plurality in each electoral district, parties that have a small but significant amount of support spread between many ridings may end up electing almost nobody while the parties that win the largest share of the vote end up with an even larger proportion of the seats and usually all the influence.

The sheer difficulty of electing someone from the Green Party as an MP makes running a bit of a quixotic gesture, with most candidates, staffers, and volunteers aware that their chances of winning are negligible and so the value of participating in the election may be about contributing to the discourse rather than a hope of victory.

With each Green MP so precious and unlikely, it must be especially galling to see Fredericton MP Jenica Atwin cross the floor from the Greens to the Liberals. At least according to the CBC, one reason she chose to make the change is Green Party infighting about the Israel-Palestine dispute. To me, this is suggestive of two things. First, how the agreed portions of a ‘green’ agenda don’t really add up to a complete set of policies, and so green supporters may have to deal with an unusual amount of in-party disagreement about non-environmental matters (and perhaps also on how to solve environmental problems). To me it’s also suggestive of the emphasis on symbolism and moral righteousness or superiority within the progressive left. It’s questionable whether Canada as a whole has any meaningful influence over the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and it’s basically certain that a fringe party with just a few MPs doesn’t. That makes the dispute seem a bit like a high school student council voting on whether to praise or condemn a foreign government; it has considerable scope for generating conflict among those involved in the vote, but no real prospect of making a difference in the world at large.

Bitumen producers’ distant, unlikely, and disingenuous promises

In perhaps the ultimate demonstration that ‘net zero’ promises are a delaying tactic meant to preserve the status quo which favours fossil fuel producers, Canadian bitumen sands giants Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Imperial Oil, MEG Energy, and Suncor Energy have formed “an alliance to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from their operations by 2050.”

When firms that see their futures as continuing to dig up the world’s dirtiest hydrocarbons en masse it becomes clear how ‘ambitious’ promises set in the far future are a tactic to avoid meaningful regulation and lobby for additional subsidies right now. In a world genuinely heading for net zero, there will be no reason to exploit the world’s dirtiest fossil fuels, including coal and the bitumen sands. Furthermore, the idea that ‘net zero’ can apply in this context is fanciful. Using a technology like direct air capture to collect all the emissions associated with extracting, upgrading, and burning oil from the bitumen sands would cost so much that it would undermine any economic rationale for extracting the oil in the first place. Furthermore, the idea that the pollution can just be buried fails to fairly consider the scale at which CO₂ would need to be buried. There is simply no comparison between the total amount of carbon pollution we emit and the amount we might plausibly bury given the need for a vast new infrastructure to sequester carbon by the gigatonne, and the fact that this infrastructure would only consume money and energy without producing anything of value except reduced pollution. Rather than keep pounding back whisky in the hope that we can build a machine to clean our blood before we die, we really just need to abolish the practice which is creating these dire risks, namely continued fossil fuel exploitation.

Health and climate change

I was surprised just now to see that I don’t think I have a general thread on climate change and human health.

I’d say there are at least two big relevant dimensions to it.

First, because fossil fuel use causes so many bad health impacts, phasing out fossil fuels brings major co-benefits in terms of avoiding disease.

Second — whereas people seem to find environmental problems generally abstract and of low salience — people seem to have a much more consistent willingness to prioritize health related items. Thus, emphasizing the health impacts of climate change may help to motivate those presently unmoved or hostile to climate action.

There are certainly other important links, including how climate change will alter the distribution of mosquito-borne and other diseases and of course the intersectional ways in which health connects with public policy, economic justice, race, and global equity.

I did for a while host a Canadian government report on human health and climate change, which the Harper government decided to make available to the public only through the mail on a CD.

Health was also an important part of the case we made for divestment at U of T (PDF page 50 / printed page 44-7).

Waterloo commits to divestment

The University of Waterloo has joined the set of Canadian schools committing to fossil fuel divestment, specifically with pledges for a “50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030” and “no material positions in fossil fuel exploration and extraction companies by 2025.”

Cindy Forbes, chair of Waterloo’s Board of Governors, specifically cited the financial case for divestment and argued that it is compatible with fiduciary duty:

To protect our investments, we’re making the decision that we will reduce our exposure to carbon. In doing so we are protecting our primary fiduciary duty to maximise pension fund and endowment returns using measurable science-based targets.

While it contradicts the justice-based framing preferred by most climate activists, purely bottom-line driven divestment arguably has greater potential to spread through the financial system, since the system’s norms heavily emphasize an obligation to reduce risk and maintain profits, whereas commitments to justice and equity are at best controversial.

Dutch court rules that Shell must deeply cut total emissions

In a promising new development in the field of climate change litigation, a Dutch court has ruled that Shell’s climate change mitigation plan was insufficient:

The company must slash its CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 from 2019 levels, according to a judgment from a district court in The Hague on Wednesday. That includes emissions from its own operations and from the energy products it sells.

…

The Anglo-Dutch company announced plans in September to become a net zero emissions company by 2050, a target that includes emissions from its products. It is currently targeting a 20% reduction in carbon intensity by 2030, and 45% by 2035.

The last part is hugely important and impressive, given how governments usually treat emissions from exported fuel as someone else’s problem. This is a legal recognition that controlling climate change requires limiting the production of fossil fuels.

CBC on the war against the fossil fuel industry

The CBC has two new podcast episodes related to my research. Front Burner has an episode on the movement to divest from the bitumen sands, which tracks the movement’s progression from church groups to universities to major banks and insurers. It notes that only half as many insurers are willing to cover the industry as before the divestment movement began in 2011/12. The second describes Supran and Oreskes’ new analysis of how ExxonMobil has worked to delay climate action and mislead the public, notably by emphasizing consumer responsibility (like the idea of carbon footprints) to try to avoid regulation.

Climate change and human migration

One of the certain consequences of climate change is that it will change the relative prospects and appeal of living in different areas, both in the short-term as acute incidents like wildfires and floods occur and long-term as agricultural productivity, water availability, and sea level shift.

This is a reason why climate justice activists see migrant rights as fundamentally linked to the fight against climate change. Theoretically, it could also be a motivation for conservatives who are skeptical about large-scale and uncontrolled migration to do more about limiting how badly we damage the climate.

The scale of movement driven by climate disasters is already substantial, exceeding the level of internal displacement caused by war according to the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

Even in rich countries, a large scale managed retreat from coastal areas may be forced by storms and rising seas — a development that hasn’t yet percolated into the thinking of citizens and politicians.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) on the carbon bubble

The International Energy Agency has released a report on what would be necessary to achieve a ‘net zero‘ global economy by 2050: Net Zero by 2050 A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector.

Unsurprisingly, it replicates the carbon bubble / stranded assets argument: “The global pathway to net‐zero emissions by 2050 detailed in this report requires all governments to significantly strengthen and then successfully implement their energy and climate policies. Commitments made to date fall far short of what is required by that pathway.”

It also asserts the basic concept of a contraction and convergence framework for global equity in emission reductions: “advanced economies have to reach net zero before emerging markets and developing economies, and assist others in getting there.”

Most encouragingly, it avoids the assumption that massive carbon removal technologies will be deployed, meaning a net zero pledge based around effective fossil fuel abolition:

Net zero means a huge decline in the use of fossil fuels. They fall from almost four‐fifths of total energy supply today to slightly over one‐fifth by 2050. Fossil fuels that remain in 2050 are used in goods where the carbon is embodied in the product such as plastics, in facilities fitted with CCUS, and in sectors where low‐emissions technology options are scarce.

This is naturally an enormous challenge to the companies and governments choosing to pretend that there will be an easy technological fix which reconciles controlling climate change with continued fossil fuel use.

Unsurprisingly, the CBC describes Canadian reactions to the report as “mixed”.

Polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)

One of the case studies in my M.Phil thesis was persistent organic pollutants (POPs) — a class of mostly pesticides which have been restricted under international law because they harm humans and other species, persist in the environment for long periods, and bioaccumulate in food chains, rising to higher concentrations in each level of predators.

One of the reasons states were motivated to act was because of the strong moral case made by arctic Indigenous peoples, especially the Inuit. Data on the accumulation of POPs in breast milk was especially salient, as discussed in the excellent book edited by David Downie and Terry Fenge: Northern Lights against POPs: Combatting Toxic Threats in the Arctic.

Similar attention is now being directed toward polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are also persistent or “forever chemicals” and which have also now been found accumulating in human breast milk.