Guterres on additional fossil fuel production and stranded assets

United Nations secretary general’s remarks on the ongoing release of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report are remarkable for their directness and candour:

“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres during the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) news conference on Monday. “But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.”

“Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said at the report’s release Monday. “Such investments will soon be stranded assets, a blot on the landscape, and a blight on investment portfolios.”

Canada’s government, despite taking more action on the issue than its predecessors, remains firmly on the side of the production-increasing radicals. In part that is from how emission statistics treat the GHGs from fuels we export as someone else’s responsibility, along with the GHGs embodied in what we import. Avoiding climatic catastrophe requires an end to such numerical evasions and a firm commitment to fossil fuel abolition, with production falling by a significant percentage every year until the world no longer runs on coal, oil, and gas.

You can blame the government for their inadequacy, but at some level that becomes like blaming corporations for emissions rather than the consumers of their products. By continuing to select governments that misrepresent what the consequences of their climate change plans will be while dodging the question of ending production, Canadians are ensuring that they will be lied to. When both the Liberals and Conservatives promise that climatic stability and a growing fossil fuel sector can be compatible, they perpetuate the cycle where we sacrifice the welfare of all future generations and non-human nature for the sake of our short-term comfort and the temporary perpetuation of unsustainable ways of life.

Related:

Dissertation extract: structural barriers to climate change action

Today I saw a Twitter post with some text that governments cut from the Summary for Policymakers from the 6th Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):

B6.4. Factors limiting ambitious transformation include structural barriers, an incremental rather than systemic approach, lack of coordination, inertia, lock-in to infrastructure and assets, and lock-in as a consequence of vested interests, regulatory inertia, and lack of technological capabilities and human resources. (high confidence) {1.5, 2.8, 5.5, 6.7, 13.8}

This accords with the section on structural barriers to climate action in my in-progress dissertation.

In response, I have released a draft section from my dissertation on the structural barriers that make controlling climate change so challenging. The barriers are essential for understanding why growing scientific alarm has not translated into adequate policy responses. It also raises questions for environmentalists working to control the problem, since part of the issue is their own opposition to fossil fuel alternatives.

Rand on climate capitalism

As a practical matter, the democratic uproar needed to build whatever alternative economy [Naomi] Klein and the Pope have in mind is far greater than the upswell of the Climate Capitalism I’m proposing, which harnesses financial markets in the climate fight. Reengaging our political system to reform financial institutions like the World Bank, motivate the quantitative analysts (quants) on Wall Street, and redirect trade agreements to accelerate climate solutions is faster and more effective than waiting for something akin to Che Guevara’s revolución. I will admit that I simply don’t know what that revolution looks like. Nor how we manage a complex modern economy without market forces. Those who’ve tried (today’s Venezuela comes to mind) failed miserably. And none of the far-left socialist experiments of the past gave up growth — the primary bugbear in Klein’s view.

The trillions of dollars that sit in money markets and pension funds is the most powerful tool in our climate arsenal — if it can be redirected. We need to co-opt capital markets, not slay them. That capital is conductor for the rest of the economic orchestra. With it, we unlock the financial, engineering, and entrepreneurial might that can rebuild global energy systems. To think overwise is naïve — the supply chains are too complex, the scale of manufacturing and project development too big, and the degree of entrepreneurial innovation required too deep. Like it or not, we must harness the very market forces that threaten our planet, to save the planet.

Rand, Tom. The Case for Climate Capitalism: Economic Solutions for a Planet in Crisis. ECW Press, 2020. p. xxviii-xxix

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CFFD campaign timelines and institutional memory in Canada

Amanda Harvey-Sánchez — who played a key role in the first Toronto350.org / UofT350.org divestment campaign — has written a detailed timeline of the campaign at the University of Toronto.

This kind of effort is especially valuable given the limits on institutional memory in the campus fossil fuel divestment (CFFD) movement. In part that’s because of how campaigns of student volunteers will experience constant turnover, though it is also the product of the informal style of organizing promoted by 350.org and implemented by most CFFD campaigns.

The closest document which I have a record of is from the SFU campaign, though it is much less detailed.

With student volunteers dispersing in all directions following graduation, and with few institutionalized structures to preserve knowledge between cohors of organizers, it has been especially useful to see some of the campaign debriefs which have followed divestment commitments. Climate Justice UBC (which I think is the new name / successor organization to UBCC350) released an especially good presentation about their campaign.

“2030 Emissions Reduction Plan: Canada’s Next Steps for Clean Air and a Strong Economy”

The Trudeau government’s latest climate change announcement is a plan to cut emissions by 40% by 2030.

The plan also aims to cut oil and gas sector emissions from 191 megatonnes to 110 megatonnes, though the government says it won’t reduce production “not driven by declines in global demand.”

Whether out of political calculation, the influence of the industry, or a simple lack of understanding, this announcement perpetuates the idea that “emissions” can be cut in a meaningful and sustainable way while continuing to expand fossil fuel production. This conforms with earlier analysis of how Trudeau promises action to the public while at the same time comforting business with promises that not much will change.

As long as Canadian politicians are too afraid to acknowledge that avoiding catastrophic climate change requires abolishing fossil fuels we will keep getting plans predicated on the nonsense that we can solve the problem without addressing its chemical causes. It’s fair enough at this point to attribute some of the blame to Canadian voters, who keep proving by their electoral choices that they want the government to express concern about climate change while not even meaningfully slowing down the pace at which we’re making it worse.

It also doesn’t help that the plan’s title sounds exactly like something the Harper government would have created. Climate change isn’t an issue of how “clean” the air is, and setting up clean air beside “strong economy” sticks to the narrative that good policy is about trading one against the other. That’s at best a distorted way of thinking about a fossil fuel dependency which threatens to undermine the very basis of human civilization. For people used to playing for only political stakes, gambling with the future of the whole species is outside of their training and conventional mindsets.

Canadian trains worse for the climate than flying?

I last flew in 2007, avoiding the practice since because of its unsustainability and the damage it does to the climate.

Nonetheless, my objection is to the unsustainable fossil fuel use and not to flying per se. I just think flying makes people travel more frequently and farther than they would otherwise be willing to go, and thus the damage from flying comes when people come to feel entitled to it and build lifestyles that depend on it.

Over the years I have seen a lot of inconsistent numbers on CO2 emissions from flying versus the train or other options. Today, the CBC posted some figures from Ryan Katz-Rosene, “a University of Ottawa professor who studies sustainable transportation”:

Taking VIA’s “Canadian” service from Toronto to Vancouver would generate 724 to 4,287 kilograms of CO2 per person. In comparison, an economy flight between those two cities would generate 464 to 767 kilograms of CO2 per person.

VIA’s “Ocean” service between Montreal and Halifax generates 218 to 1,292 kilograms of CO2 per person, compared to 152 to 482 kilograms of CO2 per person for an economy flight.

Katz-Rosene published the findings in the journal The Canadian Geographer and wrote about them on the University of Ottawa website in 2020. He tried to confirm the numbers with VIA, but they did not confirm or deny the figures, despite multiple conversations with him.

Katz-Rosene blames “diesel-guzzling locomotives hauling fairly empty trains” — including sleeping and dining cars — on those lines.

English’s study found that just adding a snack car can increase a train’s greenhouse gas emissions intensity by 19 per cent, and that increasing seating density was one of the easiest ways to cut emissions and energy use.

Back in 2009, my friend Matt did some calculations of his own to estimate Toronto to Vancouver flights as around 330 kg of CO2 each way in an 80% full 767 or A320.

I have known all through the PhD that I would need to do at least one last trip to Vancouver, to clear things out of storage at my parents’ house and ship everything I want to keep back to Toronto. With my brother getting married in August, the plan is now to combine those purposes into one trip, along with seeing the old sights and friends who are still in town. Enduring a four day train voyage each way was broadly unappealing even before COVID, but now I would expect it to be a vexing mixture between feeling constrained by public health protection rules and feeling frustrated and worried about other passengers not following them. Four days in a rolling box, sharing the air with people who I can’t control, is not my idea of a nice break from work or great scenic way to see the country. If the climate impact is worse than flying, there seems no reason to do it.

Open thread: 2022 Liberal-NDP consent and supply agreement

The Trudeau Liberals have made a supply and confidence agreement with Jagmeet Singh’s NDP.

According to the CBC, the climate-related elements are:

“A commitment to phasing out federal government support for the fossil fuel sector — including funding from Crown corporations — starting in 2022.

A commitment to finding new ‘ways to further accelerate the trajectory’ to a net zero economy by 2050.

A ‘Clean Jobs Training Centre’ to support retraining for energy workers as Canada moves away from fossil fuels.

Pretty weak sauce, I’d say, when we’re beginning to experience a potentially civilization-ending calamity, but that’s the state of Canadian politics today.

Russia’s threshold for nuclear weapon use

Christopher Chivvis has an article in The Guardian about the danger of escalation to the use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine crisis:

There are possible other paths toward further escalation, but they all eventually lead toward the nuclear threshold. Scores of war games carried out by the United States and its allies in the wake of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine make it clear that Putin would probably use a nuclear weapon if he concludes that his regime is threatened. It is hard to know exactly what turn of events would scare him enough to cross the nuclear threshold. Certainly a large Nato army entering Russian territory would be enough. But what if events in Ukraine loosened his grip on power at home? Indeed, achieving regime change in Russia indirectly by making Putin lose in Ukraine seems to be the logic behind some of those who are pushing for escalation today.

Moving across the nuclear threshold wouldn’t necessarily mean an immediate, full-force nuclear exchange – in other words, global thermonuclear war. But it would be an extremely dangerous, watershed event in world history.

The nuclear option that has been most frequently discussed in the past few days involves Russia using a small nuclear weapon (a “non-strategic nuclear weapon”) against a specific military target in Ukraine. Such a strike might have a military purpose, such as destroying an airfield or other military target, but it would mainly be aimed at demonstrating the will to use nuclear weapons, or “escalating to de-escalate”, and scaring the west into backing down.

Some analysts have questioned Russia’s ability to actually carry out such an operation, given its lack of practice. Unfortunately, this isn’t the only or even the most likely option available to the Kremlin. Based on war games I ran in the wake of Putin’s 2014 invasion, a more likely option would be a sudden nuclear test or a high-altitude nuclear detonation that damages the electrical grid over a major Ukrainian or even Nato city. Think of an explosion that makes the lights go out over Oslo.

Those war games indicated that the best US response to this kind of attack would be first to demonstrate US resolve with a response in kind, aimed at a target of similar value, followed by restraint and diplomatic efforts to de-escalate. In most games, Russia still responds with a second nuclear attack, but in the games that go “well”, the United States and Russia manage to de-escalate after that, although only in circumstances where both sides have clear political off-ramps and lines of communication between Moscow and Washington have remained open. In all the other games, the world is basically destroyed.

The more elevated the crisis, the greater the risks of misunderstandings and panicked decisions.