The environment – Page 97 – a sibilant intake of breath

Smart grid skepticism

The Economist argues that the popularity of so-called ‘smart’ electrical grids is cause for suspicion. The fact that builders of renewable energy plants and operators of dirty coal plants are both on side suggests that the grids will not, in and of themselves, produce a push towards reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, if they reduce the amount of extra capacity required and cut energy prices through greater efficiency they might encourage increased usage and thus increased emissions.

The point is well taken, as is the argument that legislation is required to ensure that new technologies actually lead to climate change mitigation. Without government-created incentives like carbon pricing, we cannot assume that technological advancement and voluntary action will lead to reduced emissions.

Fill the Hill – October 24th

Various environmental groups are supporting a major event on Parliament Hill next Saturday, October 24th. The event begins at noon, with a big photo stunt happening at 2:00pm. 3,559 such events are scheduled around the world, in 161 different countries. Groups involved in this non-partisan event include Oxfam Canada, the Canadian Federation of Students, 350.org, and KYOTOplus.

With the Copenhagen climate change negotiations less than 70 days away, this is a good opportunity to demonstrate that you are concerned about the issue, and hope that Canadian politicians will do more to address it. So far, Canada’s record is very poor. Our emissions are way above where we pledged to be through the Kyoto Protocol. Furthermore, while we do have climate targets for 2020 and 2050, we do not yet have a viable plan for meeting them. Changing that will require showing Canadian politicians that citizens aren’t satisfied with the meagre efforts put forward so far.

Beyond attending the event itself, if anyone wants to help with postering and general awareness raising, they can contact me and I will put them in touch with some of the organizers.

[Update: 18 October 2009] A postcard for the event is available.

[Update: 19 October 2009] Here are some posters in English and French.

[Update: 26 September 2009] I have put my photos and videos from the event online.

Supporters of 350, understand what you are proposing

The 350 movement is a group concerned about climate change that has adopted an upper limit of 350 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere as their target. The target is a good and extremely ambitious one, and the group is doing well in the media. That said, I worry that some of the 350 proponents don’t understand what they are arguing for.

The carbon cycle

To understand climate change, you need to understand the carbon cycle. In a normal situation, this refers to carbon in sugars being released as CO2 when animals, bacteria, and fungi metabolize them. This adds CO2 to the atmosphere. In turn, green plants use sunlight to make sugars out of CO2, releasing oxygen. These processes happen in a balanced way, with more CO2 emission in the winter (when plants are inactive) and more CO2 absorption in the summer.

Alongside the biological processes are geological ones. Two are key. Volcanoes emit greenhouse gases, and the erosion of certain kinds of rock locks up CO2 underground. The latter process happens very slowly. It is very important to understand that this is the only long-term phenomenon that keeps on drawing CO2 out of the atmosphere. The oceans will suck it up when CO2 accumulates in the air, but only until the seas become more acidic and come into balance. CO2 likewise accumulates in the biomass of living things, but there can only be so many forests and so much plankton on Earth.

When we burn fossil fuels, we add to the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Before the Industrial Revolution, it was around 280 ppm. Now, it is about 383 ppm and rising by 2 ppm per year.

What 350 means

It isn’t impossible to get back to 350 ppm. This is because the oceans haven’t caught up with the atmosphere yet. If we suddenly stopped burning coal, oil, and gas the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere would start to fall as more of it went into the sea. That being said, if we keep burning these fuels in the way we are now, getting back to 350 ppm will become impossible.

When you argue to cap the atmospheric concentration at 350, you are arguing to cut the net human emissions of the entire planet to zero – and to do so before we cross the point where the oceans can’t draw us back under the number. The same is true if you argue for stabilizing at a higher level, such as 450 ppm or 550 ppm; those scenarios just give us more time to keep emitting before we reach zero net emissions. When you support 350 ppm, you are committing to keeping the great majority of the carbon bound up in remaining fossil fuels underground and unused by human beings. ‘Net’ human emissions means everything that goes up into the air from burning fossil fuels, minus the trickle of CO2 into rocks (as described above) and possibly minus whatever CO2 we can suck out of the air and bury (a costly and energy-intensive procedure).

Cutting net human emissions to zero is a laudable aim. Indeed, it is the only way concentrations (and global temperatures) can ever be kept stable in perpetuity. I just hope that more 350 supporters will come to understand and accept that, and realize that achieving that ambition requires massive societal change, not just marches and savvy media campaigns.

P.S. If all that isn’t enough of a challenge, remember that there are also positive feedback effects within the climate system where, once we kick off a bit of warming, CO2 concentrations rise on their own in response. These feedbacks include melting permafrost and burning rainforests. Keeping below 350 ppm requires cutting net human emissions to zero before these positive feedbacks commit us to crossing the threshold.

Why Bury Coal? explains this in more detail.

Edgy campaign from the Young Greens

The Young Greens of Canada recently launched a new website emblazoned with the slogan “[Y]our parents f*cked up the planet – [I]t’s time to do something about it. [L]ive green, vote green.” Obviously, it is intended to provoke controversy, and it is arguably a tactical mistake. That being said, it is certainly factually true. The ancestors of those now alive helped to expand the fossil-fuel-driven society that is the fundamental cause of climate change. Most of them did so in ignorance of what the consequences would be, but that is no longer a legitimate possibility for those now alive. Faulty arguments from deniers aside, we all now know that climate change is real, dangerous, and caused by us. We have to stop. That being said, it would be more correct to say “our parents” or “all our parents” and to mention that, so far, we are all doing the same thing.

We certainly need a diversity in media campaigns to address climate change and, even if some people object to this one, I think there is some cause for raising the issue of responsibility. We need to move from a mindset where we pat ourselves on the back for walking to the grocery store or using a compact fluorescent light to one where we recognize the harm our emissions will cause to other people and take major steps to reduce them (while also demanding change in the economic and political structures within which we live).

Canada’s political system forces the Greens to engage from the outside. Whether you think this communication strategy will alienate more than it educates or not, that is clearly what the Young Greens are trying to accomplish here.

Promoting responsible mining

Previously, I described the phenomenon where mining companies leave behind messes that would eliminate their profits if they were obliged to clean them up. Often, however, these liabilities end up being borne by taxpayers in general, who either fund the cleanup or live with the consequences of the contamination.

Now, a private members bill proposes sanctions on Canadian mining companies that violate good governance and environmental standards abroad. Bill C-300 was proposed by Liberal MP John McKay, and has already passed through second reading in the House of Commons.

Extractive industries, including mining, certainly have a checkered history of international operations. While there are certainly examples of projects that take into account governance and environmental concerns, legal reforms that make these more typical are welcome.

Patio heaters

The photo above illustrates part of why Canada has greenhouse gas emissions of about 24 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per person per year (about three times as much as Sweden). It also shows the extent to which we take the easy energy embedded in fossil fuels for granted: gas powered heaters, running in Ottawa in October, to warm a patio with nobody on it.

I doubt renewable energy will ever become cheap enough for this kind of excess to make sense.

More misrepresentation of climate science

A YouTube user called greenman3610 sometimes puts up videos in a series called the ‘climate change crock of the week.’ One that he put up recently is illustrative of how scientific information about climate change is misrepresented in the media.

The initial remarks concerned how there is always random variation around the overall warming trend being caused by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The featured later media discussion suggests that the original speaker has now abandoned the view that greenhouse gasses cause warming – something that is blatantly contradicted by the original transcript.

The fact that such misrepresentation occurs is depressing for two reasons. First, it shows how low the ethical and journalistic of at least some media outlets have become. Second, it reveals the extent to which people in general are too ignorant of climatic science to identify which claims are credible and which are absurd.

Thankfully, sources like DeSmogBlog and RealClimate put a lot of effort into rebutting faulty arguments that find purchase in the media.

Electric cars in British Columbia

In 2011, Nissan is planning to launch their LEAF electric vehicle in B.C. The cars have a 160 kilometre range and can be charged to 80% of capacity in 1/2 hour. Unlike a plug-in hybrid, all-electric vehicles like the LEAF are powered entirely by electricity from the grid and cannot use gasoline to extend their range when their batteries give out. This limits their inter-city potential, but could be perfectly compatible with an urban lifestyle, especially as batteries improve and charging stations become more common.

The Nissan-Renault partnership behind the vehicles is the same one that is planning to roll out a fleet in Israel, complete with rapid battery switching stations. From what I have read, it isn’t clear whether the B.C. launch will involve a ‘subscription’ system in the same way as the Israeli one will.

My personal sense is that electric cars will play a major role in future urban transportation. Much as I would like to see private cars pushed out of city centres entirely, the prospects of that happening in most places are poor. Given that, the best we can hope for is making them into lower-carbon entities. Given the many problems associated with large-scale biofuel cultivation, my guess is that their use will be restricted to air travel and niche applications, leaving the bulk of ground transport powered by battery-driven electric motors. Of course, it is key to ensure that those batteries are being charged by low-carbon means like concentrating solar, wind, hydroelectric, and nuclear power.

Natural selection and species self-destruction

Late in The Greatest Show on Earth, Richard Dawkins reiterates a key point from his earlier book The Selfish Gene: namely, that there is nothing in natural selection to prevent a species from engaging in behaviour that is profoundly self-destructive in the long run. As he evocatively puts it:

“But, the planning enthusiast will protest, when all the lions are behaving selfishly and over-hunting the prey species to the point of extinction, everybody is worse off, even the individual lions that are the most successful hunters. Ultimately, if all the prey go extinct, the entire lion population will too. Surely, the planner insists, natural selection will step in and stop that happening? Once again alas, and once again no. The problem is that natural selection doesn’t ‘step in,’ natural selection doesn’t look into the future, and natural selection doesn’t choose between rival groups. If it did, there would be some chance that prudent predation could be favoured. Natural selection, as Darwin realized much more clearly than many of his successors, chooses between rival individuals within a population. Even if the entire population is diving to extinction, driven down by individual competition, natural selection will still favour the most competitive individuals, right up to the moment when the last one dies. Natural selection can drive a population to extinction, while constantly favouring, to the bitter end, the competitive genes that are destined to be the last to go extinct.” (p.389 hardcover)

The natural response to reading such a passage is to consider how it applies to human beings. A superficial reading is a dangerous one, as Dawkins describes at length in The Selfish Gene. It is possible for human beings to plan and to avoid the kind of deadly spiral he describes; it simply isn’t an inevitable product of evolution that we will do so. Probably without realizing it, Dawkins uses a terrible example to try to illustrate this human capability. He cites the “quotas and restrictions,” limitations on gear, and “gunboats patrol[ling] the seas” as reasons for which humans are “prudent predators” of fish. Of course, we are anything but and are presently engaged in a global industrialized effort to smash all marine ecosystems to dust. Nevertheless, the general capability he is alluding to could be said to exist.

In many key places, we need to accomplish what Dawkins wrongly implies we have achieved with fishing: create systems of self-restraint that constrain selfish behaviour on the basis of artificial, societal sanctions. Relying upon the probabilistic force of natural selection simply won’t help us, when it comes to problems like climate change. So far, our efforts to craft such sanctions (which would probably include ‘positive’ elements such as education) have been distinctly unsuccessful.

Perhaps if people could grasp the fact that there is nothing in nature – and certainly nothing supernatural – to protect humanity from self-destruction, they will finally take responsibility for the task themselves. The blithe assumption that a force beyond us will emerge to check the excesses of our behaviour is dangerously wrong. Now, if only people could show some vision and resolve and set about in rectifying the most self-destructive traits of our species, from indifference about the unsustainable use of resources to lack of concern about the destructive accumulation of wastes. In this task, we actually have an advantage in the existence of states that exist largely to constrain individual behaviour. The kind of behaviours that produce the self-destructive spiral in Dawkins’ lions can potentially averted by putting their human equivalents into the shackles of law.

US climate legislation and the Copenhagen talks

Some news sources are reporting that Obama’s top energy advisor is saying there will be no new climate legislation in the US this year. If true, that would mean that the US will be going to the UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen with disappointingly little to offer as evidence of progress, reducing the chances that the talk will succeed.

That being said, Joseph Romm is decrying such stories as misleading and old news. He claims that: “for many, many months now the only issue for those who follow DC climate politics has been whether the Senate would pass a climate bill before Copenhagen, not whether a final bill would get onto Obama’s desk before Copenhagen.”

Romm has been playing the role of arch-optimist when it comes to the Waxman-Markey bill and the upcoming Copenhagen talks. Hopefully, his perspective will prove justified in light of future events.