The environment – Page 87 – a sibilant intake of breath

Haiti, crises, and the international community

Haiti’s terrible earthquake has given the international community an opportunity to demonstrate where it is capable of effective response. International organizations, national militaries, the media, and non-governmental organizations are all familiar with the business of short-term post-crisis response. The issues at stake are immediate, acute, and highly visible. The cost of making a commitment is fairly clear from the outset: whether you are evacuating people, digging through rubble, providing emergency shelter, or what have you. The response is also essentially apolitical: there is no blame to be assigned after such a natural disaster, and there are no clear partisan divisions in terms of what our response ought to be. Certainly, the international assistance is laudable and valuable. Predictions that a second wave of death would follow the Asian tsunami (on account of hunger, disease, etc) were partly defied as a consequence of energetic international aid efforts.

Of course, while a crisis illustrates what the international community is reasonably good at, it indirectly highlights areas in which responses are far more hesitant and ineffective. While the movement of tectonic plates is not a political phenomenon, the question of why Port-au-Prince was so vulnerable has political implications. The 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan was similarly powerful, but killed fewer people: about 6,500 compared with 40,000 plus in Haiti. Surely, construction standards and overall levels of societal wealth are part of the explanation for that. Comparisons can also be drawn to disasters that lack the features that make this one so politically simple: those that exist for an extended period, require uncertain and potentially large commitments of resources and political capital, and which lack the ability to create an immediate emotional response in the voting and tax-paying public.

While Haiti will provide incremental experience in acute crisis management, it is worth asking whether it can show the international community anything about longer-term risk management. In an increasingly interdependent world, the capabilities of the international community arguably need to expand beyond just sweeping up the broken glass, though doing so calls into question issues like sovereignty and the ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine that seems to have become an unexpected casualty of the second Iraq war. Certainly, the U.N. cannot create seismic standards and hope they will be enforced in poor countries; at best, the U.N. and other such international organizations might be able to get a better handle on transboundary issues, which can only become more acute as the world is ever more densely populated, and the total material withdrawals and waste deposits from humanity into the biosphere continue to grow.

If there were a climate change conspiracy…

A flawed but interesting blog post about climate change and conspiracy theories does a good job of summing up what climate change deniers are actually alleging:

They argue that the governments of Europe, of the US, of Canada, of China and India, and indeed of much of the rest of the world–governments that rarely agree on anything, I might point out–are acting in concert to promote a bogus claim that the earth is heating up because of man-made release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They claim that this conspiracy is being supported by the almost universal connivance of the world’s scientists, who are collectively falsifying data and hiding countervailing data. And all this is happening, they assert, despite the almost universal opposition of the world’s corporations, most of which, we know, are resisting having governments take any serious action to combat climate change, and in many cases (look at the US Chamber of Commerce), are actively challenging the whole notion of climate change.

When put that way, it really doesn’t sound terribly plausible. Of course, there will be new developments in science as we refine our models and collect more data about what is actually happening in the world. That is simply a consequence of the nature of the climate system and of scientific inquiry. To argue, however, that the world’s scientific and political community are cooperating to actively mislead people into thinking there is a problem where none actually exists is quite preposterous.

Note that I called the post ‘flawed but interesting’ because it contains a number of dubious claims not related to climate change – for instance, that only a fire hot enough to melt steel could explain the catastrophic failure of the World Trade Center towers on September 11th. As the BBC explains, the 800°C fires were hot enough to weaken the steel to the point where the weight of the towers could not be borne. While I wouldn’t endorse the entirety of the post, I do think the point about the alleged climate change conspiracy is well made.

Carbon taxes v. cap-and-trade

Among advocates of carbon pricing, there is a long-running disagreement about whether a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system is preferable. Among economists and environmentalists, there is generally a preference for a carbon tax. Politicians terrified of the electoral implications of creating a new ‘tax’ tend to favour cap-and-trade schemes (partly, because it is easy to give away permits to influential industries under such a scheme).

Economists frequently argue that the trade-off is between price and emissions certainty. With a tax, you know exactly how much more any particular carbon-intensive activity will cost, making planning easier. With a hard cap, you know exactly what your emissions will be. With a tax, you can try to tweak the level to get the emissions volume you want, but you can never be entirely sure. Conversely, a cap assures the emissions outcome selected, but does so at a cost that cannot be known in advance.

A recent letter to The Economist does a good job of laying out some of the advantages of a cap-and-trade approach, arguing that economists and environmentalists have been too eager in throwing their support behind a tax:

First, a “one size fits all” tax requires an impossible calculation of the average cost of reducing emissions over a given period of time. Compare this with an emissions-trading system that works on the free-floating marginal cost of abating emissions. Second, carbon taxes would be levied locally and so impossible to properly administer on a global scale. A global carbon-market price is perfectly pervasive. And third, taxation cannot guarantee a reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions; emitters could opt to pay the tax and continue emitting at will. Conversely, a cap-and-trade solution introduces a carbon ceiling and the price acts as no more than a useful barometer of how close we are to achieving that goal; prices will tend to zero as the requisite level of emission reductions is achieved.

Personally, I think the choice of instrument is less important than the level of genuine political will, reflected in the care taken in regulatory design. Either approach can be set up in a dodgy way, intended to produce the impression of action without actually constraining carbon emissions effectively. A well-designed tax is better than a cap-and-trade system full of giveaways and dodgy offsets. A well-designed cap-and-trade scheme is better than a tax that is too low to be effective, or one where exemptions and rebates undermine the incentive effect. Those concerned about climate change should be willing to support either policy approach, while being energetic in ensuring that the system that is ultimately designed is a fair and effective one where polluters pay for the cost of their damaging activities and the long path to carbon neutrality is started upon.

Open query: causes of denial and delay

I have my own theories about why people either:

Believe that climate change is not happening, or is not caused by human beings;
Or believe that, for one reason or another, we shouldn’t do anything about it.

Why do readers of this blog believe that both stances are so prevalent, at a time when the key science behind climate change is well understood?

Technology silver bullets for climate change

Talking about climate change mitigation, people often make reference to the Manhattan Project: arguing that we need a massive, technology-focused governmental effort to sort out the problem. This historical example can, however, be thought about in another way. During the final stages of WWII, the United States was preparing to invade Japan. Given the fierce resistance they encountered during the island hopping campaigns in the Pacific, they expected a very difficult battle to capture the Japanese home islands. Ultimately, those preparations were rendered unnecessary when the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped to produce a Japanese surrender.

In the climate context, the equivalent of the atomic bomb might be some miraculous new set of technologies that allows us to deal with climate change at a low cost and with few real sacrifices: algae-based biofuels, next generation fission or fusion nuclear reactors, carbon capture and storage, etc. Counting on the emergence of such technologies is akin to betting on the atomic bombs ending the war, long before it was certain that they would work or would be developed in a timely matter. While we may be lucky and see some breakthrough technologies emerge in the decades ahead, we need to do what the Americans did and plan to deal with the problem through the difficult practice of old-fashioned slogging. We need to have a plan to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a safe level, and do so with the technologies and technical resources that exist today, not those that may exist in the future.

The future of our planet and of all future generations of humans depends on avoiding catastrophic climate change. Presented with that burden, we cannot just invest in researching a few technological long shots and then rest easy. We need to get ready to address the problem, no matter how costly, painful, and difficult doing so may ultimately prove to be.

Socrates and modern America

In their always-worthwhile Christmas issue, The Economist has an article on what Socrates might think of the state of discourse in the United States, especially political discourse:

In 1968 Stringfellow Barr, an historian and president of St John’s College in Maryland, wrote a Socratic critique of American discourse: “There is a pathos in television dialogue: the rapid exchange of monologues that fail to find the issue, like ships passing in the night; the reiterated preface, ‘I think that…,’ as if it mattered who held which opinion rather than which opinion is worth holding; the impressive personal vanity that prevents each ‘discussant’ from really listening to another speaker”.

Socrates’s alternative was “good” conversation or dialectic. To converse originally meant to turn towards one another, in order to find a common humanity and to move closer to the truth of something. Dialectic, in other words, is decidedly not about winning or losing, because all the conversants are ennobled by it. It is a joint search. Unfortunately, as Mr Barr put it, it is also “the most difficult” kind of conversation “especially for Americans to achieve”.

Quite possibly, the worst discourse of all is that surrounding climate change, both in the United States and Canada. People deny that it is happening or suggest absurd causes, they interpret policies to reduce its severity in absurd and hyperbolic ways, and they singularly fail to either convey the most important aspects of the issue to the observing public or engage one another in meaningful discussion.

We have to hope that the climate isn’t as sensitive as the scientists endorsing a 350 part per million target believe; if so, we will probably toast the planet long before our discourse on climate change reaches a level of maturity sufficient to generate good policies.

Heathrow’s third runway and the carbon price

I have commented before on the incoherence of how the United Kingdom plans to both cut greenhouse gas emissions and increase airport capacity. The December 8th report from the Committee on Climate Change perpetuates this mis-match, saying that the third runway for Heathrow could be compatible with government emission reduction targets, provided the price of carbon reaches £200 per tonne by 2050.

To me, this view is rather perplexing. Why build a runway, then use taxes to choke off the demand for it? Either your taxes won’t prevent the flights, making it harder to reach your carbon targets, or they will and your investment in the runway and supporting facilities will be a waste. The committee also assumes that aircraft engine efficiency will improve by 0.8-1.5% per year, that biofuels that don’t compete with food crops will emerge, and that high speed rail will displace a lot of short-haul flights in Europe. To take advantage of assumptions about the future to defend a dubious current policy is a practice all too common. Rather than pretending they can have it both ways, the UK should acknowledge that achieving its climate change goals will require reducing incredibly emissions-intensive activities like air travel.

Thankfully, the British Conservative Party – which is likely to take power with the next election – continues to oppose construction of the runway, precisely because it clashes with climate change objectives.

Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places

Bill Streever’s book takes a meandering and often macabre journey through various facts and stories about the world’s chilled regions: discussing everything from ground squirrel hibernation to the fatalities that resulted from the Schoolchildren’s Blizzard of 1888. While it contains a lot of highly interesting information, the book’s non-linear structure is distracting and contributes to its repetitiveness. Had Streever stuck to a conventional structure with chapters focused on different topics, the result would probably have been better.

Streever is at his best when discussing the human suffering brought on by cold, and the ingenious ways by which animals have learned to survive in it. The story of the Arctic caterpillars that freeze solid every winter, and take ten years to eat enough to undergo metamorphosis, is a poignant one. So too are Streever’s excellent descriptions of snow and feathers as insulating materials, as well as frostbite and hypothermia as unwanted consequences of extreme cold. The book has an entertaining habit of pointing out odd coincidences. For instance, readers will discover what a certain volcanic eruption has to do with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Mormonism, and the invention of the bicycle.

Cold gives a fairly cursory treatment of climate change: mentioning it fairly often, but not getting into great detail. Streever takes it as a given that human greenhouse gas emissions will forever and substantially alter the world’s frozen places, and does not devote any time or attention to the kind of actions humanity could take if it wished to preserve the polar ice caps, glaciers, etc. The author acknowledges how his own jet-setting lifestyle is contributing to the destruction of the places that interest him so, but never takes time to really contemplate alternative behaviour for himself or humanity as a whole.

All told, Cold is well worth the couple of hours it takes to read. While some judicious editing would have been welcome, Streever’s book does manage to convey an appropriate sense of both curiosity and visceral dread about the importance that cold has played in our warming world.

The climate change denier at the helm of Whole Foods

Disappointingly, it seems that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey maintains the scientifically untenable position that we don’t know what is causing climate change. Furthermore, he thinks that those seeking to regulate the dumping of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere want to: “raise taxes and increase regulation, and in turn lower our standard of living and lead to an increase in poverty.” This seems in keeping with how people sometimes have absurdly overblown concerns about the degree to which certain things are dangerous (terrorists, kidnappers, genetically modified organisms), while not appreciating the overarching threat to humanity and the planet’s ecosystems that climate change represents.

People need to appreciate that our wastes, being released into the atmosphere, are threatening the future basis for all human welfare. We need to stop obsessing about plastic bags and GM soybeans and begin with the serious work of replacing our energy sources with zero-carbon, renewable options.

May you live in interesting times

In Vancouver, I had a conversation with Tristan about some of the major energy and environmental changes we are likely to witness in our lifetimes. These include:

Very significant amounts of climate change, very substantial climate change mitigation efforts, or both.
The probable collapse of most or all commercial fisheries globally.
The peak of global oil production, and progressive subsequent decline.

In some ways, the significance of all three is the same – humanity now has the capability to reshape the planet in very substantial ways and no political or economic arrangement to date has been sufficient to stave off some of our most dangerous and damaging behaviours.

Personally, I think this is a poor time to be bringing children into the world. While the loss of fisheries will be tragic, climate change threatens to undermine the ability of global civilization to feed and support itself, if it continues unchecked. Before I would feel confident that future generations will live reasonably good lives, I will need to see global emissions reach a plateau (very soon, if we are to avoid more than 2°C of warming) and begin the long and determined decline that is necessary to restabilize the climate on human timescales.

Within fifty years, we should have a pretty good idea of whether humanity will put in a solid effort in jumping over the various hurdles before us. Given the feedbacks in the climate system, there is no guarantee that even vigorous effort can prevent abrupt or runaway climate change. That being said, there is a big difference between devoting ourselves to making a real effort to overcome the obstacle and simply ploughing along blindly (accelerating all the while) until we hit it.