Politics – Page 191 – a sibilant intake of breath

Cycle friendly London

Once again, London is demonstrating leadership in making progressive urban choices in response to climate change. The city is going to spend £500m on making London more cycle friendly: an initiative that will include 6,000 rental bikes, 12 car-free cycle corridors through the city, and an increased number of pedestrian only streets.

The bike rental scheme is modelled after a successful Parisian initiative, which was in turn inspired by successful community bicycle programs in the Netherlands. The bikes can be collected and deposited from special stalls that will be set up every 300m. The rates to be charged in London don’t seem to be available yet, but those in Paris are very reasonable: free for under 30 minutes, one Euro for an hour, and increasing progressively beyond that. The idea is to stimulate their use in making human-powered trips easier, not letting people use a bike for half a day. The Dutch seem to be the world leaders when it comes to public support for cycling, with 40% of Amsterdam traffic consisting of bikes and a 10,000 bike parking garage under construction at the main train station. Copenhagen, Tel Aviv, Barcelona, Brussels, Stockholm, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Helsinki, and Vienna all have community cycling schemes of some sort.

Cities that are blessed with snow and ice-free roads year round (*cough* Vancouver *cough*) might want to think about something similar. You can’t built many kilometres of highway or subway line for £500m, but you can probably do quite a lot to promote a health-positive, community-centric, and virtually emissions-free transportation option.

Hydroelectricity and bare winter mountaintops

Hydroelectricity is a crucial energy source for Canada: providing 59% of the national electricity supply (and 97% in Quebec), as well as energy for things like the Kitimat Aluminium Smelter. As such, there is good reason to be concerned about changes in mountain glaciers and snowpack arising from climate change. Ideally, you want snow and ice to accumulate in the mountains during the winter. That somewhat reduces the flow of water into reservoirs, which helps prevent the need to release large quantities because the dam is at capacity. Then, during the spring and summer, you want the ice to melt, helping to keep the water level in the reservoir relatively steady and allowing the continuous production of energy without threatening riverflow-dependent wildlife or downstream water usage.

Climate change is upsetting this dynamic in several ways. Warmer winters involve less snowfall, overwhelming dams during the wet season and failing to build up frozen reserves. Hot summers increase evaporation from reservoirs and water usage by industry and individuals. Some scientific evidence also suggests that climate change is exacerbating both the intensity of rainy and dry periods: further worsening the stability of water levels and the ability of dams to produce baseload energy reliably.

Mike Demuth, a glaciologist working for Natural Resources Canada, predicts the disappearance of all small to mid-sized glaciers in the Rockies within the next 50 to 100 years. The Athabasca and 29 other glaciers feed the Columbia River, which in turn provides 60% of the electricity used in the western United States (generated by the Grand Coulee Dam, Chief Joseph Dam, and others). The low cost of energy in the area has even led companies like Google to locate their server farms in the region. Not only is the loss of our mountain cryosphere likely to cause domestic problems, it is highly likely to eventually provoke a pretty serious international conflict.

Ethanol politics

This Robert Rapier article on the politics of biofuels makes some well-worn points (about how ethanol probably takes more energy to produce than it contains, how it drives harmful land use changes, etc), it also contains some interesting new arguments. The best bit might be the politically motivated change of heart ‘straight talking’ US presidential candidate John McCain has experienced:

2003:

“Ethanol is a product that would not exist if Congress didn’t create an artificial market for it. No one would be willing to buy it. Yet thanks to agricultural subsidies and ethanol producer subsidies, it is now a very big business – tens of billions of dollars that have enriched a handful of corporate interests – primarily one big corporation, ADM. Ethanol does nothing to reduce fuel consumption, nothing to increase our energy independence, nothing to improve air quality.”

2006

“I support ethanol and I think it is a vital, a vital alternative energy source not only because of our dependency on foreign oil but its greenhouse gas reduction effects.”

The article also makes some good points about the different political situations in the various states considering ethanol as an option. China is increasingly wary on the basis of concerns about land and food. It has now put a halt to new corn ethanol projects. The EU is also concerned about the unintended consequences of ethanol. The fact that they mostly import it, rather than growing it domestically, arguably gives them greater political freedom to investigate claims about ethanol and make decisions about how good an option it really is. Political leaders in the United States and Canada may face too many entrenched farm interests to make a similarly objective judgment.

Will technology save us?

All sensible commentators acknowledge that asking people to make big voluntary sacrifices to fight climate change is a strategy unlikely to succeed. People will fight to keep the benefits they have acquired, as well as their capacity to acquire yet more in the future. They will turf out or overthrow leaders who demand heavy sacrifices from them – especially if people in other places are not making the same ones.

If we accept that contention, we are left with a number of possible outcomes:

Painless technological triumph: technological advances allow us to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations without big sacrifices in current or future standard of living.
Disaster provoked changed priorities: a big and undeniably climate related cataclysm convinces people to buckle down for the sake of their own safety.
Inaction with fairly benign climate change: people do little or nothing, and it turns out that climate change is not as harmful as predicted.
Unmitigated disaster: people do nothing or act too late and slowly, causing global disaster.

Intermediate outcomes are clearly also possible. The differences between several of these have to do with unknown facts about the climate system. Will it throw up a few big and undeniable disasters before a slippery slope is reached? What is the actual sensitivity of the climate to greenhouse gas concentration increases, once feedback and adaptive effects are included?

The first option is certainly the one most popular among politicians. Virtually everyone likes technology and progress: it creates jobs and economic growth while increasing the welfare of those already alive. What big technologies are people hoping might make the difference?

Renewables: sound in theory and partially demonstrated in practice. New transmission capacity and incremental improvements in efficiency required. Potentially high land use.
Biofuels: politically popular but increasingly scientifically discredited. There may be hope for cellulosic fuels.
Nuclear fission: works in practice, with big non-climatic risks.
Nuclear fusion: promising in theory, but nobody has made it work.
More efficient machines: highly likely to occur, unlikely to be sufficient, may not cut total energy use.
Carbon capture and storage: theoretically viable, undemonstrated in practice. May divert attention from technologies with longer-term potential.
Geoengineering: desperate last ditch option, unlikely to work as predicted.

The question of whether climate change can be tackled without a substantial reduction in standard of living remains open. So does the question of whether climate change mitigation can be compatible with the elevation of billions in the developing world to a higher level of affluence. Given the above-stated unwillingness of anyone to undergo avoidable sacrifice, we should be hoping that technology does a lot better than expected, or some potent force changes the balance of risks and opportunities in the perception of most people.

Cut cables in the Middle East

Something strange is happening to undersea fiber optic cables in the Middle East: they are being cut. At least four, and possibly five, of the communications links have failed in the last twelve days. The first two were allegedly damaged by a ship’s anchor; subsequent failures are more mysterious. Serious disruptions are being experienced in Egypt and India, along with lesser problems in Bahrain, Bangladesh, Kuwait, the Maldives, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The fifth cable cut seems to have disabled internet access in Iran.

It’s tempting to ascribe some nefarious motive to all of this. That said, it is sensible to recall how past hysterias proved unjustified. After much hoopla in the media, it turned out that the ‘cyberwar’ against Estonia was the work of a twenty year old subsequently fined $1,620 for his misdeeds.

The cable problems are being widely discussed:

[Update: 16 February 2008] According to The Economist, all this was just hysteria.

The failure of liberal dreams for Afghanistan

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh’s death sentence is a compelling demonstration of how thoroughly the west has failed in Afghanistan. The death sentence was issued by an Afghan court in response to the allegation that Kambaksh had downloaded and distributed a report about the oppression of women. This is not the first time a death sentence has been issued for blasphemy in Afghanistan since the imposition of the Karzai government, but it is a pretty egregious case. Yesterday, the sentence was confirmed by the Afghan Senate.

Is the whole point of the war in Afghanistan the replacement of one brutal band of thuggish warlords with another? Admittedly, the present government is better than the Taliban was, but that is hardly a ringing endorsement. Canada is considering an ever-more long term commitment to the protection of this government while, at the same time, we cannot trust them not to torture detainees that are transferred to them.

What is to be done in response? Do we become hard-headed realists, asserting that aiming to empower women or promote human rights was never a realistic or appropriate aim of the war in Afghanistan? Supporting a government just because they seem relatively pliable and seem to say the right things about cracking down on groups that worry us is certainly a practice with a long history. That said, it isn’t a very successful one. After all, it is why the west armed the Mujahideen in the first place (not to mention the Pinochets and Musharrafs of the world). Do we become isolationists, then, despairing of our ability to effect any progressive or worthwhile change in the world? That doesn’t seem practically or morally tenable in a world as interconnected as ours has become.

Perhaps all we can do is become a bit more cynical and a lot more critical about the supposed justifications for interventions. Rather than aspiring to replace oppressive societies with somewhat better ones, perhaps we should admit that overthrowing governments – however awful – will normally lead to horribly broken societies. That is not to say that it is always the worst option available. A horribly broken society is better than one in which an active genocide is occurring. With such exceptions admitted, it does seem as though the dream of a transition to liberal democracy through military intervention has been essentially invalidated by the experience of western states in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001.

Bans, taxes, or nothing

A former chairman of Shell has argued that the European Union should ban cars that get fewer than 35 miles per gallon. The basic idea is that there is no reason for cars to be less efficient than that and the new ones that do more poorly are intolerable luxury items. Forcing all cars to meet the standard is presented as a way of making the rich “do their share” when it comes to climate change.

Similar arguments exist about lightbulbs. Should governments ban incandescent bulbs, impose extra taxes on them, or do nothing? The last option won’t help with climate change mitigation. The middle option risks dividing the world between an upper class nicely lit in flattering yellow hues and an underclass rendered corpselike by flickering green compact fluorescent bulbs. Banning the bulbs outright could prevent their use in the few situations in which they are genuinely highly valuable, as evidenced by the willingness of their owners to cut emissions in other areas in order to not have to give them up.

The ideal solution is sustainable, tradeable carbon allowances. Everyone on earth gets about 750kg a year, and are free to trade it between them. Yes, the poor will sell to the rich, but they will do so voluntarily because the money is worth more to them than their emissions are. This certainly isn’t perfect (people may sell under duress or still lack sufficient means for a decent life), but it’s better than the ‘grab what you can’ approach that dominates presently. Of course, this allowance approach is hopelessly unrealistic. The emissions of people in the rich world are so far above what’s sustainable, they would never sign on to a system that required them to cut back as far as is appropriate.

Another big question has to do with induced technological change. Automakers will howl to the moon if you demand that they make 35mpg cars across the board. Sputtering, they will swear that it is impossible and even trying will bankrupt them. Actually forced to do so, however, it is probable they would squeak over the line. The question is whether such a policy would have benefits that outweigh the associated costs – including the perceived loss of liberty on the part of car makers and car owners.

How then do policymakers reconcile the possible with the fair, the risks associated with climate change and the reality of other social and equitable issues? The idea of forcing manufacturers of luxury cars to turn out models that get 50mpg does have appeal, but it is probably a mistake to conflate the fighting of climate change with the desire to reduce the profligacy of the wealthy. Excessive emissions are the behaviour properly targeted by climate policies: not pompous displays of extravagance. Mandated standards do have a role to play in situations where elasticity of demand is weak and there are possibilities for structural change. Those, in combination with carbon pricing, do have the capacity to help us move to a low-carbon economy. The devil of that transition, as ever, is in the details.

Taskforce calls for $2 billion for CCS

In March 2007, the Canadian federal government and the Government of Alberta formed a task force to investigate carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a climate mitigation technology. Now, the report of that task force has been released: Canada’s Fossil Energy Future: The Way Forward on Carbon Capture and Storage. The report for $2 billion to be spent by federal and provincial governments in order to get five CCS facilities online by 2015. These five facilities would collectively sequester 5 Mt of CO2 per year. This is equivalent to about 0.6% of Canadian emissions.

Supporters of the plan argue that initial governmental support is essential for learning how to scale up the technology, making much larger (and presumably unsubsidized) reductions possible in the future. The report projects that as many as 600 megatonnes (Mt) of CO2 could be sequestered by 2050: a figure equivalent to about 85% of current Canadian emissions. Sequestration at this kind of scale is a key element of the climate plan recently announced by the Government of Alberta.

The announcement raises both practical and ethical questions. The first centre around the overall expense of the plan, the second around who is paying it. The report acknowledges that building CCS into facilities increases the cost substantially:

The financial gap associated with most commercial-scale CCS projects (ones with one megatonne or more of CO2 emission reductions per year) is on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Businesses will only do this when either (a) the cost of emitting carbon justifies mitigation efforts of this expense or (b) they can convince someone else to foot the bill. The idea that federal and provincial governments should spend $2 billion to help the oil sector continue behaving as usual can be seen as objectionable. It certainly contradicts the Polluter Pays Principle. If carbon capture and storage is to rescue certain industries from the climate change externalities they are creating, it will have to be possible for them to pay for it themselves and remain profitable; otherwise, either public finances or the global environment will need to suffer to sustain their profits.

The fight for the nominations

The utter implosion of Rudy Guliani is probably the biggest surprise so far in the American presidential race. WIth ‘Super Tuesday‘ five days away, a person has to wonder whether clear winners will emerge on the Democratic side, Republican side, or both. If not, the fights in the last few states might get rather ugly.

A Romney-Obama fight would obviously be rather different from a McCain-Clinton fight. It is way too soon to project who would win either. This election certainly continues to be most interesting.

People hoping for a good climate plan from the next administration are especially torn. Both Clinton and Obama have fairly credible plans. McCain is a lot better than Romney, but worse than either Democrat. As such, there is a tension between damage limitation (hoping the Republican with the best climate plan is nominated) and a competing hope that the least electable Republican is nominated, increasing the probability of a Democratic victory.

FutureGen and the cost of CCS

The American Department of Energy (DOE) has announced that it is cancelling funding for the $1.8 billion FutureGen project: a demonstration ‘clean coal‘ power plant to be built in Illinois. The reason cited for the change of position is “ballooning costs.” This makes it pretty unlikely the 275 megawatt plant will be built. Previously, the utilities involved would have been paying less than the cost of an ordinary coal plant, with the DOE paying the rest. Now, they would be paying more than three times as much for a carbon capture ready plant that would not, from the outset, actually capture any carbon.

This raises some serious questions about carbon capture and storage (CCS). A lot of climate plans depend on it, including those as diverse as George Monbiot’s and that of the Government of Alberta. The big question is whether this is evidence that all CCS is ruinously expensive, or simply evidence that this particular project was badly planned.

Some environmentalists are cheering this development, which might make sense if it’s just an example of a big taxpayer handout to industry being averted. Others, however, seem keen to see CCS undermined completely. It is true that it is an untested technology; only four installations in the world use anything like it. It is also true that it could perpetuate fossil fuel usage and slow the development of renewables. At the same time, it must be recognized that building renewables isn’t a purpose in its own right. It is a means to low-carbon and reliable energy. If that can be achieved through a combination of coal and CCS, we should probably be happy – especially given the strong likelihood that many coal rich countries (the United States, China, etc) are likely to burn as much of the stuff as they can get out of the ground for the foreseable future, with potentially ruinous climatic effects.

[Update: 12 June 2009] It seems that the Obama administration has decided to revive the project.