The environment – Page 141 – a sibilant intake of breath

American climate change impacts report

Because of a 2006 lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, a judge in Oakland California ordered the release of the Climate Change Science Programs (CCSP) assessment of climate change impacts in the United States. In total, the public release of the report was delayed for three years. The report – Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Climate Change on the United States – is now available online. It is not unlike the impacts report previously released by Natural Resources Canada.

None of the contents of the CCSP report will be surprising to those who have been paying attention to what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been releasing. Indeed, that is not surprising. The IPCC is looking at the same scientific evidence when they reach their judgments. One thing that would have been helpful would have been a more comprehensive effort to estimate the total economic damages associated with different plausible levels of climate change. It is information of that kind that seems most salient to those making hard choices about what actions to take.

Nitrogen trouble

Carbon dioxide isn’t the only human-generated gas about which we ought to be concerned. As this article highlights, the environmental consequences of nitrogen are also significant:

The release of reactive nitrogen into the environment has a “cascade” effect, according to two papers published in the latest issue of Science. James Galloway of the University of Virginia, the lead author of one of the papers, says that every single atom of reactive nitrogen can cause a cascading sequence of events which can harm human health and ecosystems.

In the lower atmosphere the oxides of nitrogen add to an increase in ozone and small particles, which can cause respiratory ailments. The reactive nitrogen in acid rain kills insects and fish in rivers and lakes. And when it is carried to the coast it contributes to the formation of dead zones and in the creation of red tides (a kind of toxic, algal bloom that can form in the sea). It is then converted to nitrous oxide which adds to global warming.

Marine dead zones and air pollution are threats at a lesser scale than those posed by climate change, but this is nonetheless further evidence of humanity’s ability to alter chemistry on a global scale.

Monbiot to King Abdaullah

British journalist and climate change agitator George Monbiot has written an interesting open letter to King Abdaullah of Saudi Arabia. He comments on the degree to which remaining oil supplies in Saudi Arabia are one of the biggest geopolitical mysteries out there, and how Saudi Arabia retains a unique influence to manage oil prices. He also comments on the contradictory policies of western leaders who both assert that they want to solve climate change and continue to envision a world in which oil is cheap and plentiful:

In other words, your restrictions on supply – voluntary or otherwise – are helping the government to meet its carbon targets. So how does it respond? By angrily demanding that you remove them so that we can keep driving and flying as much as we did before. Last week, Gordon Brown averred that it’s “a scandal that 40% of the oil is controlled by Opec, that their decisions can restrict the supply of oil to the rest of the world, and that at a time when oil is desperately needed, and supply needs to expand, that Opec can withhold supply from the market”. In the United States, legislators have gone further: the House of Representatives has voted to bring a lawsuit against Opec’s member states, and Democratic senators are trying to block arms sales to your kingdom unless you raise production.

This illustrates one of our leaders’ delusions. They claim to wish to restrict the demand for fossil fuels, in order to address both climate change and energy security. At the same time, to quote Britain’s Department for Business, they seek to “maximise economic recovery” from their remaining oil, gas and coal reserves. They persist in believing that both policies can be pursued at once, apparently unaware that if fossil fuels are extracted they will be burnt, however much they claim to wish to reduce consumption. The only states that appear to be imposing restrictions on the supply of fuel are the members of Opec, about which Brown so bitterly complains. Your Majesty, we have gone mad, and you alone can cure our affliction, by keeping your taps shut.

The letter is a somewhat cheeky way for Monbiot to make his points – appealing to the autocratic ruler of a foreign state to help temper the bad policies of his own government – but it does share the intriguing quality of most of his writing.

More and more, people need to gain an appreciation that concerns about climate change and energy security do not always push us in the same policy direction. Concern about climate change tells us to change our infrastructure, cut back on energy use, and use the energy we have more intelligently. Energy security often presses us towards a desperate search for alternative fuels, regardless of what environmental consequences their production may have.

Climate ethics and uncertainty

Climate Ethics has a thoughtful post up about climate change, scientific uncertainty, and ethics. While not particularly novel, the arguments are well and concisely expressed. Key among them is the basic ethical point Henry Shue has made about revolvers and the heads of others: even if you only have one bullet chambered, pulling the trigger is still an immoral act. It is the possibility of severe harm, rather than the probability of the harmful outcome, that is most ethically relevant.

The uncertainties of climate change are primarily about how bad it will get how quickly, as well as how quickly we need to act to stop it. There is also very strong consensus that the climate can change in ways that would be disastrous for humanity and that present activities materially contribute to the risk of that taking place.

On ethical grounds, it does not seem as though there are any remaining arguments for total inaction in the face of climate change. The question now is the degree to which our moral obligations to future generations compel us to make massive and rapid changes in our lives.

Tundra dangers

One of the biggest climatic dangers out there is that warming in the Arctic will melt the permafrost. The tundra is heavily laden with methane – a potent greenhouse gas. In total, the ten million square kilometres contain about 1,000 gigatonnes of carbon (3,670 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide). The permafrost contains more carbon dioxide equivalent than the entire atmosphere at present.

If even a fraction of a percent of that gets released every year, it would blow our carbon budget. Even with enormous cuts in human emissions, the planet would keep on warming. Right now, humanity is emitting about 8 gigatonnes of carbon a year, on track to hit 11 gigatonnes by 2020. If we were to stabilize at that level, emitting 11 gigatonnes a year until 2100, the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere will surpass 1,000 parts per million, creating the certainty of a vastly transformed world and a very strong possibility of the end of human civilization.

As such, it is vital to stop climate change before the planet warms sufficiently to start melting permafrost. This is especially challenging given that warming in the Arctic is more pronounced than warming elsewhere. There is also the additional challenge of the sea-ice feedback loop, wherein the replacement of reflective ice with absorptive water increases warming.

The actions necessary to prevent that are eminently possible. Unfortunately, people have not yet developed the will to implement them to anything like the degree necessary. Hopefully, the ongoing UNFCCC process for producing a Kyoto successor will help set us along that path before it becomes fantastically more difficult and expensive to act.

[Update: 4 February 2009] Here is a post on the danger of self-amplifying, runaway climate change: Is runaway climate change possible? Hansen’s take.

[Update: 19 February 2010] See also: The threat from methane in the North.

Growth in Vancouver

Sightline Daily has an interesting post about urban development in Vancouver. The interactive map is also worth a peek.

Historical emissions and adaptation costs

It is widely acknowledged that developing countries will suffer a great deal from climate change. They are vulnerable to effects like rising sea levels and increased frequency and severity of extreme weather. They also have more limited means available to respond, as well as other serious problems to deal with. Providing adaptation funding is therefore seen as an important means of getting them on-side for climate change mitigation. It could be offered as an incentive to cut emissions.

That being said, there is a strong case to be made that developing countries should not need to do anything in exchange for adaptation funding. Making them do so is essentially akin to injuring someone, then demanding something in return for the damages they win against you in court. The historical emissions of developed states have primarily induced the climate change problem; as such, developing states suffering from its effects have a right to demand compensation.

Very roughly, the developed world as a whole is responsible for about 70% of emissions to date. The United States has produced about 22% of the anthropogenic greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere; Western Europe is responsible for about 17%; Canada represents something like 2% of the total. It can be argued that – by rights – states like Bangladesh and Ghana should be dividing their total costs for adaptation and sending the bill to other states, on the basis of historical emissions.

That being said, it is only fair to say that developed states are only culpable for a portion of their total emissions, on account of how the science of climate change was not well understood until fairly recently. Exactly where to draw the line is unclear, but that doesn’t especially matter since developing states simply don’t have the power to demand adaptation transfers on the basis of past harms. States that developed through the extensive use of fossil fuels will continue to use the influence they acquired through that course of military and economic strengthening to make others bear most of the costs for their pollution.

New Canadian emission data

The Canadian government has published the official National Inventory Report: Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada for 1990 to 2006. Emissions in 1990 were 592 megatonnes (Mt). By 2000, they were 718 Mt. Here are the most recent figures:

2003: 741 Mt
2004: 743 Mt
2005: 734 Mt
2006: 721 Mt

Maintain and deepen that downward trend and we might just do our part in sorting out this unprecedented problem. Moving to a low-carbon global society would be quite a human achievement – even more so if we can also transition from fuels that are running out to those that never will.

Delicious pike

The Smoky Lake canoe trip provided a delicious opportunity to deviate from my ordinary shunning of meat-eating. There are three major reasons for which I do not normally eat animal flesh: it is generally produced in a way that is not environmentally sustainable, the animals generally live in very poor conditions, and a number of unhygienic practices are endemic in factory farms. I maintain that when most people choose to eat meat, they do so in either honest or wilful ignorance about the consequences of that choice.

Happily, the trip provided an exception to all those objections in the form of lake-caught pike. I saw the lake they came from, the way they were caught and cleaned, and the way they were cooked. Two fish among eleven people probably isn’t causing damage to the ecosystem, particularly since it is a once a year trip. Furthermore, it is fair to say that a pike living in an attractive lake in Ontario is living an existence true to its nature: a statement that surely cannot be made truthfully about most animals people eat.

In any case, our pan fried pike was exceedingly delicious: as the result of its character, freshness, and the fundamentally food-improving qualities of camping. The experience of seeing it delivered from lake to plate has also made me somewhat rethink my view of sports hunters and fishers. While it is certainly true that ecosystems can be damaged by such activities, it is also fair to say that those who especially enjoy such activities might be passionate, knowledgeable, long-term advocates of conservation. It should be further asserted that – environmental considerations aside – those with such skills can make a most satisfying contribution to an expedition outdoors.

Harper on gas prices and carbon taxes

One thing for which you need to give Stephen Harper some credit: unlike the American presidential candidates, he is willing to admit that the government cannot do much to reduce gasoline prices. Unfortunately, he is also using those high prices to oppose carbon taxes, probably the most economically efficient economy-wide mechanism for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.