The environment – Page 32 – a sibilant intake of breath

Keystone XL uncertainty and the environmental movement’s proficiency at saying no

It’s astonishing that the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline remains unresolved.

First, it shows how for activists determined to block a project it’s only necessary to make one jurisdiction say no. This is akin to the argument in computer security that the structure of vulnerabilities favours attackers over defenders; defenders need to protect every possible vector, while attackers just need one way in.

Second, this validates pipeline delay as a strategy. Using all available legal and political means to delay a project raises investor concern and probably the cost of financing. Since the point of blocking pipelines is blocking upstream bitumen sands development, creating uncertainty about any part of production, transport, and sales may help us avoid building inappropriate high carbon infrastructure.

Third, this supports George Hoberg’s concern (also raised by David Mackay) that the environmental movement has become highly capable at blocking projects but often lacks and skills and inclination to say yes to climate safe forms of energy.

Activism as being a catalyst

When we think about global trends, we tend to focus on their importance and how rapidly things are changing. China’s economic rise, along with massive economic development and urbanization around the world, all have unambiguous importance, though we will endlessly disagree about how they will interact and few of us will live long enough to feel confident we saw the final outcome (there are major limits to knowledge and prediction).

If one makes a sincere effort to understand what is happening in the world and feels compelled to try to encourage some of the best possible outcomes, given the state of the world right now, perhaps it makes sense to think in terms of which trends you hope to speed up and which you hope to inhibit.

The key question in effectiveness has to be: am I / are we making a difference in terms of an important objective.

So perhaps it makes sense to think about being a catalyst or accelerant (to choose a more obviously violent analogy) hoping to create as substantial a ∆ifference as possible in the final chemical equilibrium.

Trump the golfer

Golf.com has a surprisingly informative article about Donald Trump, with one tidbit about how his businesses have expressed concern about climate change risks:

The President has famously dismissed climate change as a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese while also calling it “pseudoscience” and “total bull—-.” But citing the rapid erosion of its dunes and ocean frontage, Trump International Golf Links & Hotel Ireland petitioned County Clare in May 2016 to build a two-mile, 200,000-ton seawall that would be as high as 15 feet on the picturesque, crescent-shaped Doughmore beach. The permit application stated, “Predicted sea level rise and more frequent storm events will increase the rate of erosion throughout the 21st century.” The application expired when the Trump Organization failed to complete the paperwork, but the company is putting together a new proposal with two smaller seawalls. (Meanwhile, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency has objected to the Trump Organization’s plans to build a second course in Aberdeen, named after Mary MacLeod, citing environmental concerns.) The threat to his seaside golf courses—including the two existing ones in Scotland—may yet influence Trump’s thinking about climate change.

Generally, the article makes clear that he’s a petty, litigious liar and swindler.

Is there an alternative to extracting the bitumen sands?

I only just came across it, but back in January CBC News asked a bold question: can the oil sands be phased out?

New jurisprudence on the duty to consult

From CBC News: Supreme Court quashes seismic testing in Nunavut, but gives green light to Enbridge pipeline

I think the Supreme Court is erring in maintaining the view that Canada’s Indigenous communities should not have the right to reject proposed resource development projects that affect their territories.

The land that supposedly belongs to the Crown and to private citizens was dubiously acquired by agreements concluded under duress, and never implemented in good faith by government or private industry. Denying Indigenous communities the ability to reject dangerous projects in the lands they retain control over is an unacceptable imposition by any other part of Canadian society. If resource extraction sites or export corridors are to be partly situated in Indigenous territory, it should only take place in the context of a voluntary partnership between those with an interest in the health and integrity of the land and those who are proposing dams, bitumen sands mines, wind farms, concentrating solar and solar photovoltaic sites, high-voltage power lines, nuclear power plants, etc. It’s to be expected that ownership and decision-making of such projects should be a shared undertaking between governments.

Canada’s history of bad faith and exploitation means they are the party to such agreements that ought to be viewed with suspicion and considered on parole. The heart of Canada’s grim legacy of settler-Indigenous relations lies in forcing people to accept the ways we want them to live. Any plausible pathway to reconciliation must be based on consent.

Climate change, Alberta politics, and hydrocarbon producers unwilling to act

The decision of Alberta’s Wildrose and Progressive Conservative parties to merge threatens the ability of Rachel Notley’s NDP government to stay in power. Almost certainly, the climate change policies the new party would implement are worse than those currently being implemented by the NDP, though it doesn’t necessarily follow from that that those concerned about climate change should support Notley, particularly in her plans to build new pipelines and keep expanding the bitumen sands.

The NDP government’s proposal to expand bitumen sands production from 70 megatonnes to 100 is simply unacceptable morally, politically, and economically. Given how rich it is and how disproportionately large our contribution to climate change has been, Canada should have started cutting fossil fuel production decades ago. To keep enlarging it now is to contribute to a global political climate where nobody is willing to take appropriate action, even as the impacts and injuries arising from climate change become more and more serious.

The problem of die-hard jurisdictions is going to be a difficult one in climate politics, both when it comes to sub-national jurisdictions in federalist states like Canada and in terms of hydrocarbon-dependent countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia.

It is hard to imagine a political change within these jurisdictions which will lead to them being willing to cut their fossil fuel production and use aggressively enough to contribute their fair share to a safe global pathway. Rather, it seems more likely that they will resist any plans to constrain climate change and demand compensation for any fossil fuels they are compelled to leave unburned.

Such intransigence could be overcome with sufficient concern and action by the world’s major economies. A handful of states collectively represent the majority of global fossil fuel consumption and thus a majority of demand for hydrocarbon producers. At the same time, domestic consumption is rising rapidly in many major fossil fuel producers, and there will probably be rogue states for a long time who are willing to buy and use cheap fossil fuels, regardless of the climatic consequences for others.

There seems little alternative but to try to constrain the fossil fuel output of recalcitrant jurisdictions externally, to the greatest extent possible. That’s part of why the fight against pipelines makes sense in North America, since both Alberta and jurisdictions active in hydraulic fracturing are unwilling to accept that they must leave most of their reserves underground. Unfortunately, such external resistance is virtually certain to breed resentment and feed the popularity of political parties who are determined to ignore the climate problem.

The climate movement and “100% renewables”

350.org recently sent around a strategic planning survey to people on their email lists. It sought to inform their planning on which campaigns to prioritize. The questions, however, took for granted that the only plausible or desirable way to prevent catastrophic climate change is to commit to an immediate transition from our mass dependence on fossil fuels to a global economy 100% based on renewables like hydro, wind, and solar.

I’ve written before about how climate change policy planning requires the consideration of multiple dimensions of uncertainty simultaneously. We shouldn’t choose strategies where we only succeed if other unknowns work out favourably for us (reducing the cost of renewables, dealing with the intermittancy problem, rebuilding energy grids). Even in terms of researching geoengineering, I can see the sense of evaluating whether it could be a backup plan if mitigation proves too hard, or if powerful positive feedbacks kick in. (That said, Gwynne Dyer paints a frightening picture where disputes over how quickly and energetically to begin geoengineering could be the spark for global conflict.)

I can see why pledging 100% renewables makes life politically simple for environmental non-governmental organizations (eNGOs) and activist groups. Most of their supporters and allied organizations are deeply opposed to nuclear energy, though the threat of climate change has brought some around. Likewise, they tend to oppose big dams and (arguably) most large industrial projects. Too often, they assume that massive reductions in energy demand will be achieved through improved efficiency, though considerable evidence suggests that as people around the world get richer, their demand for energy rises substantially as they choose air conditioning, high-energy forms of transport, and other lifestyle benefits long taken for granted in rich socities. (Though activists sometimes do support large solar farms, wind farms, run-of-river hydro projects, electrified transport, and other large-scale climate-friendly infrastructure.)

Rejecting low-carbon energy options like nuclear power stations and large dams (both of which are very expensive and carry with them a variety of forms of damage and risk, from methane release from hydroelectric reservoirs to the risk of nuclear weapon proliferation) makes for a more harmonious coalition among groups demanding aggressive action on climate change, but it introduces new risks into our long-term planning. In his excellent Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air, David MacKay convincingly argues that a future where energy use levels are adequate and more equitably shared around the world requires us to “say yes” to big electricity sources that do little or no damage to the climate:

Because Britain currently gets 90% of its energy from fossil fuels, it’s no
surprise that getting off fossil fuels requires big, big changes… Given the general tendency of the public to say “no” to wind farms, “no” to nuclear power, “no” to tidal barrages – “no” to anything other than fossil fuel power systems – I am worried that we won’t actually get off fossil fuels when we need to. Instead, we’ll settle for half-measures: slightly-more-efficient fossil-fuel power stations, cars, and home heating systems; a fig-leaf of a carbon trading system; a sprinkling of wind turbines; an inadequate number of nuclear power stations.

Solving climate change quickly enough to avoid intolerable damage requires the rapid deployment of all low-carbon energy generation options. It’s better to spend the money and accept the other costs and impacts of multiple pathways to a sustainable future than it is to bet everything on one possibility and hope to our good luck.

Open thread: pipelines under B.C.’s NDP-Green government

Pipeline politics remain exceptionally contentious in Canada, with one faction seeing them as a path to future prosperity through further bitumen sands development and another seeing them as part of a global suicide pact to permanently wreck the climate and the prospects of all humans for thousands of years.

The replacement of British Columbia’s pro-fossil-fuel Liberal government with an NDP-Green coalition promises to re-open the question of the Kinder Morgan TransMountain pipeline, among other projects.

It also sets up conflict between B.C. and Alberta, and between B.C. and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has so far been pretending quite implausibly that Canada can meet its climate commitments while continuing to allow growth in the fossil fuel sector.

Financing oil production

There is, however, a considerable campaign to be undertaken before we reach a post-carbon world, especially in the United States. A larger lesson from Carbon Democracy is that such democratic struggles depend not on future designs but upon identifying in current socio-technical systems their points of vulnerability. This postscript has traced the peculiar vulnerability of oil companies dependent on flows of equity investment that must increase as rapidly as the costs of producing oil are rising. Yet those rising costs reflect a world in which cheap, conventional oil is more and more scarce and the technical expense and environmental costs of producing unconventional oil are escalating. These risks and costs reveal a world at odds with the optimistic scenarios on which accelerating flows of equity depend. Meanwhile, capital that long ago began losing interest in organising — and thus becoming vulnerable to — large-scale productive labour, tried the easier route of organising lives around the making and servicing of debt. The problems of peak oil hastened the collapse of the debt machine. The recent US energy boom offers only a temporary and equally vulnerable diversion.

Mitchell, Timothy. Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. Verso; London. 2013. p. 267

Domestic consumption and oil exports

Saudi Arabia currently uses as much as one-fifth of its daily oil production to power the twenty-seven desalination plants it needs to produce domestic water, and almost as much again on other domestic consumption. Unless the government finds a way to slow the growth in this use of oil, which reduces the proportion available for export, Saudi Arabia’s exports are set for rapid decline. (Brazil discovered the largest new oil field found in the Western hemisphere in more than thirty years in 2007, any may prove to have the world’s seventh largest reserves; but due to rising domestic consumption, the country will never become an exporter.) Iran faces similar problems and more: with decline rates of 13 per cent in the six supergiant fields that hold most of its reserves, rising domestic consumption, and sanctions imposed by the US and European Union that prevent the use of enhanced extraction technologies, the country’s oil production now faces long term decline.

Mitchell, Timothy. Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. Verso; London. 2013. p. 262