The environment – Page 104 – a sibilant intake of breath

WTO rules allow carbon tariffs

Helpfully, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has made it clear that members can use border tax adjustments to deal with other jurisdictions that lack carbon pricing. For instance, steelmakers that are subject to a domestic carbon tax or cap-and-trade scheme could have their profitability protected from steelmakers in unregulated jurisdictions, through the use of an import tax.

The standard WTO position on environmental rules is that they are fine if applied equally to both domestic and international firms. For instance, you can require that both domestic fishers and those trying to sell imported fish use nets that are designed not to catch sea turtles. What you cannot do is impose the restriction on foreign firms in other WTO countries, but not impose it on domestic firms. Of course, as with all international legal issues, the practicalities of implementation and enforcement are complex.

More discussion of the statement is on the Free Exchange blog.

Getting serious about climate change

The key thing that is required for dealing with climate change, and which our society does not yet possess, is seriousness. Seriousness of the kind that accompanied winning the Second World War – far more seriousness than we are displaying now in Afghanistan. We can afford to effectively lose that war, watching control pass back to the Taliban, but we cannot afford the consequences that would arise from decades of additional unmitigated emissions.

The threat certainly justifies an effort on the scale of winning a world war. The business-as-usual outcome of more than 5°C of temperature increase would cause enormous disruption. It is quite probable that it would disrupt global agriculture to such an extent that the global population would drop significantly, amid a lot of bloodshed and suffering. Preventing that requires replacing the energy inputs that run everything with carbon neutral ones: a process that will cost trillions and probably require converting areas the size of states into renewable power facilities.

Where could the necessary seriousness come from? The scientists have already given us a vivid and well-justified picture of what continuing on our present course will do. Some political parties and entities have accepted the direction in which we need to travel, though they don’t really understand how far we need to go along that road, or how quickly we need to begin. In the worst case, seriousness will come with the first concrete demonstration that climate change is a major threat to civilization. By then, however, even action on the largest scale and with the utmost urgency would probably be more of a salvage effort than a save.

Something needs to prompt us, as a global society, to take action on an environmental issue at a scale and a cost never previously borne. Rational scientific and economic analyses are already urging that, but don’t seem to have the psychological motive power to make people stop dallying. Finding something to provide the needed push into serious thinking must be a major task for the environmental movement.

Hansen arrested, protesting coal

James Hansen, head of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was arrested while protesting mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia. Hansen has been one of the most prominent scientists giving warning about the seriousness of climate change.

The problem of climate change is certainly serious enough to warrant civil disobedience, as recommended by Al Gore. Hopefully, such actions can help to draw attention to the myriad harms associated with coal mining and use. Increasingly, it makes sense to see coal as a densely packed form of carbon dioxide, already helpfully located underground, rather than a fuel we should be using.

Vote nearing on Waxman-Markey

There seems to be a good chance of a vote on the Waxman-Markey climate change bill in the US House of Representatives in the coming week or so. Coverage on the bill has been very mixed, even among strong supporters of action on climate change. Partly, that reflects the sheer complexity of the thing, with all the special favours and unexpected consequences that represents. Partly, that is the product of obvious mistakes, such as giving away rather than selling the right to emit greenhouse gasses. Some have gone as far as to say that this bill is worse than useless. It certainly seems that the overblown cost estimates that some groups have produced are inaccurate. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget office estimates the cost at just $175 per household. Of course, there are legitimate questions about how many greenhouse gas emissions reductions can be secured when households are not presented with strong financial inventives.

The basic strategic questions are (a) is the bill so flawed that it should be rejected as a starting point and (b) what are the timing issues involved here? Timing is important both domestically and internationally. While climate change has had a relatively high profile within the Obama administration, it seems that they are refocusing their attentions towards health care reform – another issue rife with complexity and special interests. Missing this opportunity may mean a great deal of delay before another attempt can be made, as well as making it likely that the administration will have less overall energy and political capital to put forward. Internationally, the UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen this December certainly seem likely to go rather more smoothly if the United States has brought forward domestic legislation. If something can get through the Senate – even if it has some serious flaws – it might significantly improve the chances of an effective new global treaty.

How flawed is Waxman-Markey? This isn’t a question I feel that I can answer, given how sources I consider trustworthy have come down on opposite sides of the argument. Organizations like the Sierra Club have seen deep internal splits between those willing to accept the bill’s flaws and those who see it as beyond redemption. It is certainly a corrupt piece of legislation, in the sense that laws that do special favours to influential industries are corrupt, but that seems to be inevitable when advancing complex pieces of legislation in places like the US. In the end, I hope it passes, revealing that the US Congress is at least willing to take the first steps in dealing with climate change. The task then, as with many other environmental laws and regimes, will be to tighten the rules, eliminate the most egregious loopholes and handouts, and hopefully eventually produce an effective system for decarbonizing the American economy.

[Update: 26 June 2009] The bill passed in the House of Representatives, by 219 to 212, with 44 Democrats voting against it. While it is an imperfect piece of legislation, it is nonetheless exciting to see that it squeaked past this hurdle. The Senate will be tougher to convince.

Copenhagen climate science conference synthesis report

As mentioned previously, there was a major climate science conference in Copenhagen this past March. The conferences included 1,400 scientific presentations delivered to 2,500 participants from 80 countries. Now, a synthesis report (PDF) has been publicly released. Some of the key aspects have also been summarized on RealClimate.

The report reinforces the point that warming of more than 2ºC would be dangerous, arguing that such change “will be difficult for contemporary societies to cope with, and are likely to cause major societal and environmental disruptions through the rest of the century and beyond.” The report also concludes that strong and immediate action could still prevent the 2ºC threshold from being crossed. There is even scope for temporarily overshooting the target, then pulling back as the impact of greenhouse gas emissions works its way through the climatic system.

Influence and responding to the status quo

Influence is an unusual sort of property possessed by people and organizations. Partly, that is because it tends to flow through people as much as vest itself in them. In a world without superheroes, power comes from who stand behind you, rather than what you are personally. People with nobody else’s influence flowing through them are free to behave virtually any way they wish, but are largely unable to drive societal change. By contrast, those with a great deal of influence flowing through them have the appearance of being able to drive societal change, but have a real ability to do so that is constrained by their ability to shape the outcomes that arise from the influence behind and around them. Some of these people might be able to drive real change, by skilfully combining their talents with the influence they possess. Others are simply conduits for the preferences of others, lacking vision or effective agency of their own. Paradoxically, it can be easier to be influential and effectively powerless than to be both influential and a driver of change.

A key example is politicians of different stripes. Some have more influence than others (cabinet ministers, for instance, when compared to backbenchers). They are not, however, unconstrained in the exercise of that influence. If they don’t direct it in a way that its backers are amenable to, it will be lost to the politician doing the directing, as their support evaporates and they lose power (substantively, if not in nominal terms). Serving as the mouthpiece of some industry or constituency might be an effective mechanism for earning a comfortable life, but it isn’t the kind of role that helps to address the key problems facing humanity today.

Perhaps the key task involved in addressing climate change is altering the thinking of those who have the sheer motive power to change things: regulators that need not be toothless, firms that can either resist or help drive a low-carbon agenda, and states that can choose to make a genuine mitigation effort or not to. Entities that are too enduring to ever be complete backers of the status quo need to be made to realize that the shift to a low-carbon economy must happen in one way or another, and it would be a lot better for them (and all else concerned) if that happens in a relatively prompt, orderly, and coordinated manner. Individuals and particular firms can be so entrenched in the present arrangement that their best strategy is always to resist change, but societies and economies are broader things. As things continue to move faster and faster in the world, they need to be ever quicker at realizing what elements of the present order can and should be propagated, and which need to be eliminated or transformed.

Highest greenhouse gas concentrations for 2.1 million years

By analyzing shells buried under the Atlantic seabed, off the coast of Africa, researchers from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have determined that current atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses are significantly higher than they have been for more than 2.1 million years. Whereas current levels are at 385 parts per million (ppm), the average over the span was a mere 280ppm, the same approximate level as existed in Earth’s atmosphere before the Industrial Revolution. One thing this work helps to confirm is that the current level of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is not part of any natural cycle that has taken place during the span in which human beings have existed. Our emissions are projecting the climate in a direction that is unprecedented in the history of human life.

The technique employed was based on examining boron isotopes in foraminifer shells. The work was published in Science.

Lack of vision in the Australian senate

Australia may be the rich state with the most to lose from climate change, in the near- and medium-term. Almost all of the country is already either unsuitable or marginal for agriculture. They have major problems with erosion, invasive species, drought, and salinization. They are also one of the rich countries closest to low-lying poorer states, where climate change could induce a surge of migration.

Nonetheless, the Australian Senate seems likely to defeat the Rudd government’s attempt to introduce a carbon trading scheme. The principle grounds of opposition seems to be an unwillingness to act before others do. This is in spite of the fact that the plan calls for emissions-intensive and trade-exposed industries like steel and aluminum production to be given 95% of their permits for free. Barnaby Joyce, the leader of Australia’s National Party, has expressed his desire to delay climate change regulation for as long as possible, probably in ignorance of the fact that all states behaving likewise would threaten the long-term viability of Australia as a self-sustaining society.

This suicide pact mentality is especially inappropriate coming from a state as vulnerable as Australia, which could become almost entirely agriculturally non-viable with a multi-degree increase in mean temperatures. If anybody should be willing to step out a bit ahead of the pack, it should be a highly rich and highly vulnerable state, with excellent renewable energy opportunities. The fact that even politicians in this drought-stricken state don’t have the foresight to embrace carbon pricing speaks ill of the intelligence of politicians, as well as raises doubts about whether any society is going to be able to act effectively in time to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Societal values and sustainability

In Collapse, Jared Diamond argues that sometimes the only way for societies to survive, despite the environmental problems they create and experience, is for them to re-evaluate and reform their key values. Given the environmental problems we face today – climate change foremost among them – it seems worth asking whether our core values need such revision.

To begin with, it must be recognized that societies with widely differing values are nonetheless contributing to dangerous climate change. Anybody with net positive emissions is adding to the stock of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, though naturally those who are emitting tens of thousands of kilograms a year are causing more danger than those emitting mere hundreds or thousands. That being said, both due to the non-renewable nature of the resources and the climatic consequences of their utilization, it is fair to say that all societies that are dependent on fossil fuels are contributing to the problem: a set that includes everyone from Canada to India to Saudi Arabia to Indonesia.

Within such a diverse group, are there any common values at all? Perhaps the most important ‘value’ is more like the absence of a value – an unwillingness to take the welfare of distant future generations seriously. Most people work hard to improve the prospects for their offspring in the next generation or two, but engage in behaviours that are profoundly threatening to all members of generations beyond that, for a period extending into distant geological time.

One ‘value’ that might be both common and problematic is a continued determination to grow with respect to both activities with a high biophysical throughput and those with a low one. The latter isn’t really a problem. It is no more environmentally damaging to produce good paintings or music than bad ones. The former, however, is deeply problematic. There are inevitably physical limits to growth, as well as to the conditions under which people can live present lives. Most societies disregard those limits. As Diamond argues:

Even if the human population of the Third World did not exist, it would be impossible for the First World alone to maintain its present course, because it is not in a steady state but its depleting its own resources as well as those imported from the Third World. At present, it is untenable politically for First World leaders to propose to their own citizens that they lower their living standards, as measured by lowe resource consumption and waste production rates.

If we are to maintain a decent standard of living in developed states, while also alleviating the unjust suffering in the developing world, we need to develop a society that treats both resource demands and waste production as serious issues, to be kept within the bounds of what can be maintained forever.

Are there other deeply held values that conflict with the goal of producing a sustainable global society? Like the Greenland Norse described in Diamond’s book, placing a high status value on eating meat is one, and an especially concerning one when it comes to rapidly rising wealth in developing states. Indeed, the general problem of resource-intensive status symbols is one common to the Easter Islanders and both Chinese and North American people today.

Cheap water and salinization in Australia

Late in Collapse, Jared Diamond makes an interesting point about water in Australia. Apparently, many agricultural areas have salt deposits below the depth of soil reached by plant roots. As long as there is plant cover and irrigation is not excessive, the salt stays down there. When people employ ‘broadcast’ irrigation – which sprays large volumes of water everywhere – soil gets moistened down to the salt layer, causing productivity losses in that land and other land downhill.

As such, the problem is actually not water scarcity, but a level of water abundance that permits broadcast approaches in place of more efficient (and non-salinizing) drip irrigation methods.

This is a nice demonstration of a point also made by Michael Pollan and others: often, when a commodity is ‘cheap’ to a consumer, it is because the expensive externalities associated with it largely fall on other people. The Australian case also illustrates how natural abundances and scarcities are not necessarily what establish incentives and encourage or discourage different behaviours, but rather the whole collection of both natural and artificial incentives that exist at a particular time and place.