The environment – Page 115 – a sibilant intake of breath

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.

Sea level rise and coastal property values

Anticipating a future featuring significant amounts of sea level rise, Joseph Romm has been pondering when this will affect the prices of coastal properties. The fact that the market probably hasn’t already taken into account the conservative sea level rise estimates of the IPCC is just one demonstration of how prices do not reflect ‘perfect information’ in the way often assumed by economists.

My guess is that higher insurance premiums will be the mechanism through which the threats to coasts in the developed world will be brought to light, for most people. Since insurance companies need to gauge risk adequately in order to stay in business, they have fewer conflicts of interest when it comes to evaluating climatic science and making projections about what the consequences of our greenhouse gas emissions will be.

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.

The magnitude of climate change energy flows

Some statistics from Oliver Morton’s book on photosynthesis illustrate just how massive the energy flows involved in climate change already are. Anthropogenic climate change has increased the amount of solar radiation being retained by every square metre of the planet’s surface by 1.66 watts. In total, that is equivalent to 850 trillion watts (terawatts, TW) of power.

By comparison, a large nuclear reactor produces about 1 gigawatt (GW) of output, 1/1000th of a TW. The total energy usage of humanity (power plants, vehicles, etc) is 13 TW. At any average moment, we are therefore experiencing about 65 times more climate change power than power intentionally employed by human beings. A comparison that may be even more startling is with the flow of heat from the Earth’s core outwards – the power that drives volcanism and continental drift. That energy flow is only 40 TW – one twentieth of the climate change we have already generated.

Of course, if we keep emitting at the present rate, we will increase the 1.66 watt per metre and 850 TW numbers considerably. It is vital to understand that these numbers arise from the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, not the amount we emit in any particular year. As such, all increases are effectively permanent, at least from the perspective of centuries. That is something to remember whenever somebody talks about ‘stabilizing emissions.’ Doing so only stabilizes the rate at which these energy statistics are increasing.

Threats from war and climate change

Some threats to society strike people as so severe they justify employing large numbers of people, at taxpayer expense, to mitigate them. Chief among these is probably the danger that foreigners will try to kill us. Largely to combat this, Canadians pay for 65,251 active military personnel and 24,300 reservists. We also contribute a bit more than 1% of our gross domestic product.

At best, the operation of these institutions will leave us as well off as we are now. The money spent on bombs and military vehicles is primarily expended so as to minimize the risks associated with being attacked (though domestic industry and humanitarian concern are also factors).

Now consider climate change: probably the greatest threat facing humanity in the foreseeable future. I can’t tell you exactly how many taxpayer-funded agents are working on the problem, but it is certainly a very small fraction of the armed forces total. Should that number not be increased, so as to bring the allocation of resources more closely in line with the suite of threats we face? The case becomes even stronger when you recognize that climate change workers (say, people performing free building retrofits) have all the advantages of soldiers, plus additional benefits. Climate change mitigation is a humanitarian activity – the faster we bring emissions down to a sustainable level, the less suffering will occur in future generations worldwide due to the effects of climate change. Climate change mitigation and adaptation can have domestic economic benefits: not only do efficient buildings have lower year-on-year costs for heating, cooling, and lighting but they may also make those who live and work in them happier and more productive.

The idea of employing, say, 10% as many people to fight climate change as to fight foreigners is not entirely unproblematic. Providing free retrofits might undercut the businesses that perform such operations for profit now. That being said, I am sure careful policy design could minimize such problems. The biggest hurdle to overcome is the psychological block between facing the threat of climate change and employing people to combat it. Actually, rather than a block it might be more accurately referred to as the absence of a connection, between where our likely societal problems lie and where our societal resources are being directed.

Admittedly, you could achieve many of the same outcomes through market liberal climate strategies, such as carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes. The potential advantage of doing it through government labour is that the market liberal policies are hard to implement: firms often oppose them tooth-and-nail and convince voters that they will cause economic harm to them personally. Given the strength of entrenched interests, it would take remarkable political will to deploy the kind of market mechanism that would produce the required change at an acceptable pace.

Some outstanding questions jump to mind. Would a public climate change service be sensible or useful? What would such a service do? How could unfair competition with the private sector be addressed? Is there a politically feasible way to achieve the same outcomes with fewer problems or lower costs? All of these seem worth debating.

Note also that if you extend the 10% logic to the United States and China, you are talking about huge numbers of mitigation workers. The American armed forces comprise about 1.5 million people, with that many again in reserves. The US spends more than 4% of GDP on them. China has 2.25 million active personnel and 800,000 reservists. They spend about 1.7% of their GDP on them.