A review of recent climate science findings finds that Jim Hansen's bright-line standard and timeframe for global action [1.0ºC limit on further increase in global temperature / 475 ppm cap on atmospheric carbon with <10 years for global action] is, if anything, not conservative enough. A rash of recent reports identify major climate forcings wholly unaccounted for in IPCC models -- such as a five-fold increase in methane releases from Siberian peat bogs -- that support the view of rapid, discontinuous climate change predicted by Hansen.
Energy market projections show that current climate policies will barely dent the ramp-up of fossil fuel use and emissions. U.S. Energy Information Administration (DOE) International Energy Outlook 2006 projects energy-related carbon emissions to increase by 57%, from 25,028 million metric tons in 2003 to 43,676 million metric tons in 2030. Emissions reductions attributable to national environmental policies adopted in furtherance of the Kyoto agreement reduce the EIA reference case by just 58 million metric tons (<1%). Energy market sector leader emissions projections are in the same range; Exxon-Mobil projects an increase from 28 billion to 40 billion tons in the next 25 years (43%).
An increase in carbon emissions in the range 43-57% is more than sufficient to push global temperature above the bright line, roughly between 2020-2030. When the level of atmospheric carbon passes 475 ppm on an upward trajectory, we must assume that Hansen's simple and terrible story -- rapid collapse in Greenland and Antarctic ice shelves, resulting in sea level rise too high and too fast for either civilization or most species to adapt -- will be initiated within the lifetime of our children.
Every effort to envision a way out of this predicament -- the "first world leap-frog," private sector initiatives, and incremental tightening of international emissions limits, for example -- rests on flimsy logic unsupported by the evidence. In the most seductive story, China and India are expected to bypass the archaic, polluting technologies of the first world and achieve rapid, pollution free growth with renewable and efficiency technologies. The 2006 Worldwatch Report put the story front and center:
"... the choices these two countries make in the next few years will lead the world either toward growing ecological and political instability -- or down a development path based on efficiency and better stewardship of resources."
The core problems in making a leap from fossil fuel to renewable energy are not addressed. Unless it is assumed that emerging nations will impose (or re-impose) centralized planning to restrict fossil fuel use and establish economies of scale for renewables -- which seems improbable -- it is difficult to see why either nation would be in any better position than the U.S. or EU to make such a transition.
The spread of environmental values and commitment to forging an alternative energy future -- particularly in China, where U.S. environmental organizations and foundations have invested in a number of climate programs -- tends to be overstated, as U.S. EIA projections (2006 International Outlook, which projects renewable energy to make up < 1% of energy supply by 2025 in both India and China) make clear. It is very difficult to imagine any scenario where the emerging Chinese middle classes adopt an ethos of restraint, passing up the freedom and comfort of personal cars and detached single family homes and foregoing the enticements of a consumer culture, especially if U.S. entertainment exports continue to showcase these same luxuries. Nor does it seem likely that market solutions that have won little support in the U.S. private sector will be embraced in the rough and tumble capitalism of emerging nations.
No significant steps to taper off fossil fuel will be taken in the near term -- not because reasonable people do not want to avert cataclysm, but because our institutions and economic systems will not permit it. BP, for example, has endorsed the UK Stern Commission recommendation of 450-525 ppm cap on atmospheric carbon ["I believe that is the right target," Lord Browne, BP Group Chief Executive, remarks to Columbia Business School, New York, 17 Nov. 2006], yet the company is pursuing an aggressive oil and gas extraction plan indistinguishable from Exxon-Mobil, the bette nôire of environmentalists.
Advancing a solution to abrupt climate change at this late date is a Herculean task. It will require that the world's largest corporations be regulated or restructured, and that low-carbon emitting products, acceptable to first world consumers and appealing to the emerging middle classes of developing nations, be swiftly developed. Agreement must also be won from the world's most powerful nations that known reserves of oil, gas, and coal must remain in the ground.
These unlikely actions are only conceivable when things are thrown off kilter -- when climate change impacts have started to wreck, rather than merely damage, the structures of civilization. When the prospect that nation states can be shaken loose from their moorings becomes real, then the world will turn in earnest to a crash program of response. We cannot know whether there will be time to take effective action between the onset of climate change impacts of sufficient severity to rearrange global politics and the bright line. Aiming for this small chance, however, fits better with human experience and history than our present agenda.
In Collapse, Jared Diamond's exhaustive study of why societies faced with catastrophe often take no action, Diamond identifies four stages of inadequate response, which he terms failures to anticipate, perceive, act, or solve catastrophic risk. Climate change was detected early enough to take action, and its effects have been documented and so perceived. We are now poised between Diamond's third step, "refusal to try to solve a perceived problem," and onset of abrupt climate change, which cannot be solved once initiated. Refusing to take action in the face of cataclysm may be viewed as rational, where "maintenance of the problem is good for some people," or inaction, may be irrational, driven by a number of confused but very human reasons and reactions.
The present U.S. debate on climate change is best understood as a conflict between rational and irrational responses to cataclysm. Most nation states and the private sector have concluded that the certain benefits to be derived from a rapidly expanding, fossil fuel-driven global economy are worth the risk of abrupt climate change. Their decision not to advance a functional solution to climate change is, therefore, rational. Climate scientists operating from the precautionary principle, who are calling for vigorous global action, are also acting rationally. As Michael Oppenheimer put it, because ice shelf collapse and rapid sea level rise "are effectively irreversible, policy decisions need to be made based on the information in hand, which argues that deglaciation could be triggered by a modest warming."
By participating in what amounts to a consensual public policy hallucination that abrupt climate change can be addressed without great conflict, in measured steps, by reducing U.S. domestic emissions alone, however, U.S. environmentalists are acting irrationally. U.S. environmentalists are free to advance an inadequate solution because we focus on individual climate science findings and ignore climate science conclusions. Hansen's standard was proposed in 2004, but it has yet to be adopted by any U.S. environmental organization or foundation climate program. Our agenda is developed in the abstract, without reference to any objective standard. This is an extraordinary lacuna, difficult to reconcile with the policy orientation of the major U.S. climate programs and a flat contradiction of the precautionary principle. How do we explain it?
The deliberate decision a decade ago to downplay climate change risk in the interests of presenting a sober, optimistic image to potential donors, maintaining access to decision-makers, and operating within the constraints of private foundations has blown back on us. By emphasizing specific solutions and avoiding definitions that might appear alarmist, we inadvertently fed a dumbed-down, Readers Digest version of climate change to our staff and environmentalist core. Now, as we scramble to keep up with climate scientists, we discover that we have paid a hefty price. Humanity has <10 years to avert cataclysm and most U.S. environmentalists simply don't believe it.
If we did believe it, we would be acting very differently. Why do we continue, in our materials and on our web sites, to present climate as one of any number of apparently equally important issues? Why, if we really believe that the fate of the world will be decided within a few years, haven't our organizations liquidated assets, shut down non-essential program and invested everything in one final effort? Why, given the crushing circumstances, is there essentially no internal debate or challenge to our inadequate course of action? Why, for that matter, aren't environmentalists all working weekends?
These are not gratuitous questions. Environmentalists are not immune from the social and cognitive barriers that make it difficult for almost every individual, institution, society, and nation to come to terms with the threat of cataclysm. However, the whole point of environmentalism is to anticipate precisely the conditions in which we now find ourselves. The purpose of the precautionary principle is to encourage the long view, "out even to the 7th generation," and the ethos of environmentalism is a fundamental challenge to the dominant paradigm. Our values and principles are supposed to buck us up when, as individuals, we lose our way.
There are many reasons why our beliefs have become attenuated. Anyone who has worked as an environmental lobbyist or advocate is well aware of the fine line that must be walked between "political hack" and "eco-extremist." To participate in American civic life in the last decade required environmentalists to suppress the very instincts and emotions that brought us to the effort in the first place. Such necessary and largely unconscious accommodations, however, are now our greatest liability.
Fredrick Douglas, observed biographer David Reynolds, was "astonished by [John] Brown's empathy for blacks, unmatched by any other white person he knew" [John Brown Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights, D. Reynolds, 2005]. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, "solutions" to slavery including sending freed slaves back to Africa and establishing reservations where former slaves, believed unable to fend for themselves, could be cared for. So long as Americans of African descent were considered lesser or non-human by Abolitionists, ending slavery remained a greater good worth advancing, but without immediacy or urgency. John Brown was driven to take desperate measures by an acute awareness that millions of people were held in horrific servitude and that the nation carried an immense moral burden, shared by non-slave holders who acquiesced by their silence no less than slavers.
The desperate measures required to advance a functional climate change solution at this late date (pursued by principled, non-violent means) can only be conceived and advanced by individuals who accept climate change realities and take the <10 year timeframe seriously. If we do not believe it, then we will continue to present a demeanor that may inelegantly be described as "unterrified." We are not acting like people and organizations who genuinely believe that the world is at risk. Therefore, we cannot take the measures required, nor can we be effective leaders.
In passing over climate science, we have been forced to offer tortured justifications. The creeping irrationality of our approach is neatly illustrated by comparing Al Gore's two books. In Earth in the Balance (1982), Gore issued a ringing call to environmentalist climate action on barely any evidence, and outlined a practical solution -- a U.S.-led Global Marshall Plan -- around which political support might be rallied.
An Inconvenient Truth (2006), on the other hand, is devoted almost entirely to data sets from which no overall conclusion is drawn. No reference to Hansen's bright line or any other global standard of action is offered. In place of a global, U.S.-led, Marshall Plan, Gore offers a national agenda of domestic emissions reductions, relying on NRDC's U.S.-only revision of the global stabilization wedges concept developed by Socolow and Pacala, et. al. Gore does not call on Americans to build a movement around the "central organizing principle," he invites us to address cataclysm by emailing Congress, contributing to the environmental organization of our choice, and changing our light bulbs.
U.S. environmentalists must address the disconnect between climate science and our climate agenda, immediately endorse Hansen's standard of action (the only other option is to refute it), and launch an intensive review of our climate policy and approach. Our challenge is to reinvest climate action with the simplicity, rationality, pointed urgency, and principled call to action of Earth in the Balance.
‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science
Cast your vote for the best climate journalism
The science behind a climate headline
Comments
View as Flat
VTpowderhound Posted 6:13 am
18 Apr 2007
-other people don't even believe climate change is occurring, despite a mountain of evidence
-if they do believe it, they don't think it's a big problem at the moment.
-they think it (big time problems) won't happen until 50 - 100 years from now.
-they think those problems will affect the other guys (3rd world coutries in Asia & Africa, not us), not "us"
-they think technology will save us, somehow.
-they are not willing to give up their lifestyle to fix the problems.
While this list is incomplete, it's a reason that I personally have come to the conclusion that we're screwed. Our "leaders" (cough cough) won't do anything until a critical mass of people demand change, and most folks are just not ready for the massive paradigm shift and sacrifice this effort requires.
Jesus, I hate humans.
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ataremove Posted 6:17 am
18 Apr 2007
at a remove
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Earth Shaman Posted 7:51 am
18 Apr 2007
Earth Shaman
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Earth Shaman Posted 7:54 am
18 Apr 2007
Earth Shaman
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PBrazelton Posted 8:03 am
18 Apr 2007
I agree that most environmentalists (self proclaimed or otherwise) do not believe that action is truly necessary in ten years. Any action at all, let alone massive, desperate action. It's human nature that got us into this, and human nature will bring us right up to the brink and over.
Most days I can ignore the pronounced lack of interest in the topic even by the supposed guardians, but today isn't one of those days. Amen, VTpowderhound.
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Easterbunny Posted 8:25 am
18 Apr 2007
It's easy to knock Gore for not pushing a strong enough agenda, but consider how much he has changed the political landscape in the US since his movie came out. Would any of you have predicted a couple of years ago that that rather wooden-seeming presidential hopeful would walk away with an oscar for a popularist movie on climate change? Come on, he was a handful miscounted votes short of being president ffs. The environmental movement is now mainstream!
Of course, now we need another great leap forward - as big a step beyond "An inconvenient Truth" as the movie took in the first place. And then maybe another big step beyond that. I can't predict who the next leader will be that takes the next giant step forward...
...but surely we can take heart in the fact that there are still leaders left in the world.
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Billhook Posted 8:29 am
18 Apr 2007
While I entirely share your concern over the effective co-option of the Environmental NGOs, I have to say that you understate both their incompetence and the problems that causes.
Back in the mid '80s, when the E.NGO's were just starting to try to appease the Reagan-Thatcher axis,
I helped launch and operate a village-based campaign against the building of the largest coal-fired power station in Europe, at Fawley in Hampshire, UK.
While my interest was in blocking the carbon emissions, we saw from the outset the need for every ally we could get,
including aristos with fine woodlands, householders with property values,
retired admirals with spotless-decked yachts, ecologists with ultra-rare lichens, etc.
The major E.NGOs were simply not interested, as they felt such an effort might clash with their anti-nuclear campaigning.
Against all the odds we won, just, but entirely without the E.NGOs' help.
Since then I've found the very term "environmentalist" really suspect - are we supposed to view nature merely as being man's environment ?
Just how anthropocentric an outlook do we want to propagate ?
As a practicing ecologist I now recognize that humanity can only thrive when it is re-integrated within the natural ecology. Anthropocentricity is the core of the problem we face.
This is not the place to offer more than the briefest outline of the E.NGOs' incompetence re Climate Destabilization - (item, they allowed Thatcher's hacks to neatly mis-name the issue).
A major reason for that incompetence is that there has been 20 years of mal-recruitment and mal-promotion within the E.NGOs, not to mention the predictable infiltration and occasional outright corruption.
The chances of the E.NGOs now being of serious help thus look pretty slim - (item - Step It Up was launched when McKibben learned that the largest US demo to date was of a mere 1,000 people, and this with the E.NGOs taking hundreds of millions of dollars each year).
The degree of their "help" was demonstrated in the UK by a FOE-lead campaign titled (for no known reason) "I Count". Their goal was to get the thascist Blair to put his proposal of a 60% cut by 2050 into UK law, which may yet happen.
What was overlooked by FOE and the host of other NGOs participating was that IPCC pointed out in 1992 that we need to cut global GHG output by 60% to 80% just to stop adding to the problem of excess airborne GHGs.
So FOE and the rest of the E.NGOs have almost managed to get the UK legally committed to continuing adding to the problem for at least the next 43 years . . . . . .
The core of their incompetence is evidenced IMV in their refusal even to discuss the global climate policy framework of "Contraction & Convergence" [C&C]. This is the key requirement for the negotiation of a "Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons", without which the After-You-Claude-problem would be played by competitive nations till doomsday.
Furthermore, without formal agreement of the annually declining global cap on GHG outputs that C&C facilitates, improvements in energy efficiency will still be offset by rising sales (as usual) while ramping up [newspeak] "renewable" energies will (as usual) merely help to keep fossil fuel prices affordable for as many billions as possible.
The unmentionable difficulty for the E.NGOs is that C&C cuts clean through the core thascist agenda of "devil-take-the-hindermost." It is about equity for mutual survival.
This is not the place for a discussion of C&C (detail at http://www.gci.org.uk ) but it's worth noting that among its many endorsements are those of the chairman of the Kyoto Conference, of the Africa group of nations at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and of the formal majority vote of the members of the European Parliament.
And how many Americans have even heard of Contraction & Convergence ?
With warm regard,
Billhook
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Zarkov Posted 9:53 am
18 Apr 2007
>> will be initiated within the lifetime of our children. >>
yes, in YOUR lifetime, like in a few years you will be praying. This is not an exaggeration, and nor am I trying to be scarry.
>> Humanity has <10 years to avert cataclysm and most U.S. environmentalists simply don't believe it. >>
Humanity HAD 10 years 15 years ago.... now it has nothing
It does not even have the climate science correct.
Can you tell the World to just stop, and we may be able to save the people..... but who will stop?? Nobody listens. I hear the sounds of distant drums.......
read Book
The Death of Clouds
omegafour.com
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dobermanmacleod Posted 8:01 pm
18 Apr 2007
The first is the dilemma "The Tragedy of the Commons." Briefly and specifically, the atmosphere is a common dumping ground for emissions. It is in the best interests of each person to exploit that free resource, but ironically it is not in the best interests for everyone to exploit it. Because people have a hard time looking beyond their narrow self-interest, the common area is ruined for everyone.
The second is the delayed sudden consequence of abrupt climate change. People are not punished for dumping greenhouse gas into the air-that punishment will be delayed and escalate suddenly. Since people learn from stimulus/response, their behavior isn't modified by immediate negative feedback.
Mankind was a rare mammal on the plains of Africa 200,000 years ago. Our jungle genes simply haven't evolved beyond a tendency toward narrow self-interest or immediate consequences. Perhaps technology developed by the elite will save us, or perhaps a bottle-neck will occur.
One thing I am pretty sure of: the cultural and economic transformation necessary to avoid runaway global warming and abrupt climate change won't happen in the next couple of decade. We simply aren't going to become far-sighted and self-less overnight.
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Whiskerfish Posted 8:14 pm
18 Apr 2007
As the sector has become professionalised value-conflicts have arisen that have not been addressed.
We are now paying the price for this.
Whiskerfish
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caniscandida Posted 9:52 pm
18 Apr 2007
To Billhook: Thanks for your very interesting message. No, I never heard of Contraction & Convergence. Nor have I heard of "thascism." But I have indeed heard of anthropocentrism. I trust you are right on the former matters; I know you are right on the last.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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randino Posted 12:14 am
19 Apr 2007
What is Ken saying to the environmental movement afterall? Do we tell the people fighting moutain top removal in West Virginia, or environmental racism in New Orleans, to stop their projects and join a one issue movement?
A few years ago everyone was talking about the Death of Environmentalism. Now David Roberts and Bill McKibben are announcing the death of the Death of Environmentalism thesis. They are praising a movement that is diverse, active from the international to local level, and spread out over a zillion issues. This is the movement that made Step It Up a success. Now are we telling that movement to close up shop on any other issue than climate change?
Then the responses to Ken's posting read like a blog from the Hemlock Society. I am apocalyptic too, but I see little to minus utility in it. We have to learn to walk on both feet. We get into these death spirals of despair, and no one is asking what it means for our organizing? Answer that question and you will have my rapt attention.
It reminds me of a speaker at our recent Step It Up rally in Cleveland. He said that climate change could be solved if we quit driving our cars. Now there is a practical, easily achievable goal! He, by the way, drove to our post rally celebration.
Climate change is the big kahuna. I am just looking for ideas that can direct organizing. I sometimes think environmentalism shares some apocalyptic genes with the wilder environs of fundamentalis Protestantism, with talk of rapture, end times, getting right with god, and the sheep being separated from the goats. Makes me nuts. I am rambling. I am out of here.
Randy Cunningham
Randy Cunningham
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amazingdrx Posted 12:55 am
19 Apr 2007
And that will take mass production of the devices needed to convert to renewable energy. Mass conversion, mass installation.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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SMLowry Posted 2:15 am
19 Apr 2007
Time has come and gone and here we are, more aware but really not much better off with regard to dealing, realistically, with the issue. Yes, many times I, and others I worked with, were told to temper our language, to not sound so fatalistic, to not bring spirit into it, to distance ourselves from the "radicals" and "zealots" who demanded "unrealistic" things from people, and then of course there was the matter of funding. There has always been a divide between small-scale grassroots activist groups and the large NGOs. But today there seems to be a chasm.
Sometimes I don't have a clue what an environmentalist is or if I even want to be labeled as one, though I love this Earth with all that I am. And I am attached in particular to the life of Earth now, to the species alive now, outside my home, on the mountains I can see from the kitchen window, on the paths, in the rivers and streams and bogs I've explored from the time I was a young child growing up here.
Letting go of attachments . . . something I need to learn. But this way? By having to let go of what feels like the essense of home itself? It's hard and I'm not sure I can do it. So I hold on and I do feel terror and anguish and, often, despair. I have to remind myself that Earth will always be, that somehow life, of a sort, will continue, and consciousness will always Be.
That said:
The May/June issue of Orion arrived recently with part two of Curtis White's series "The Ecology of Work". Gristmill folks had lots to pick at in part one, so I'll be interested to see what folks have to say about this piece. But I felt like standing and cheering out loud when I read it yesterday. I've worked with people who rant against capitalism, and I've done the same myself over the years. I've worked with people like Richard Grossman, helped organize a couple of TOES meetings (The Other Economic Summit that took place at the same time as the G-8 Summit; I'm not sure TOES exists anymore), and worked for years to open people to the possibilities inherent in community-based economic solutions/models/enterprises.
As I saw it then, there were those working to create alternatives to the capitalist system. There were those who served as bridges between the new and the old, and there were those who, so they claimed, were working to change the old from within. The latter were always at risk of being co-opted and often were, at least as I saw it. Once someone gets access, gets "a seat at the table" they begin compromising themselves and their organization for the power, for the money potential, all in the guise of becoming more effective in winning over the mainstream - that vast, amorphous pool of potential volunteers and donors - that, once won over, will increase power, and on it goes.
So we have the greening of corporate America, we have socially responsible investing (which could have been a useful tool, but now exists to perpetuate itself - and make investors rich), and so on. Good ideas start and then get stuck and become a part of the problem.
Think about our society, about all the stuff that we use, buy, eat, dispose of, the work we do and why we do it. Reading White's article I thought, well my job isn't like this. I'm not a cog in the machine (I work part time at a natural foods store and I enjoy it and my co-workers; it's a good thing in my life). But I get the point. My job is made possible by selling stuff that other people who may be cogs in the machine make. The stuff in my store may be less toxic, more natural, even good in many ways and certainly people need to eat and eating organic is a good thing. But my store could still exist in a community/regionally based economy. Some of the companies whose products we sell, would not. Ideally they would be replaced by something local, or at least not imported from thousands of miles away. However, I assume stores like Wal-Mart, Gap, Nike, etc. would not exist. But, the thinking goes, without those jobs, those jobs mining resources, making stuff, and selling stuff, what would people do? How would they "Make a Living"? Those are the questions, aren't they? Those are the questions people asked of me years ago when I'd go around speaking about community-based models. And those are the questions people ask now when they're told our lifestyles must dramatically change if we are to survive.
And more to the point of the challenge White faces with regard to how environmentalists are just as caught up in the capitalist system as any cog in the machine, those are the questions we must find a way of answering. Hint: the answer will not be a vision of job for job replacement. The answer is a shift away from the current paradigm to different way of living. And we don't know exactly what it will be like.
I also love that White sees spirit as "the best chance of defeating the 'beast'. "Beast" refers to capitalism via a quote from Voltaire, you'll have to read the piece, too long for me to quote directly now. Here's the part I want to quote: "Environmentalists should stop depending solely on its alliance with science for its sense of itself. It should look to create a common language of care (a reverence for and a commitment to the astonishing fact of Being) through which it could begin to create alternative principles by which we might live. . . . The establishment of those principles . . . would begin with three questions. First, what does it mean to be a human being? Second, what is my relation to other human beings? And third, what is my relation to Being as such, the ongoing miracle that there is something rather than nothing?"
Answering the question, "What are we to do?" with three more questions may not satisfy those who want concrete answers, but the answers to those questions will determine the specifics of what we do next. Do we continue as we are because it's "easier" and "less risky" than total change or do we risk total change and perhaps (no guarantees) find (after a while) a new world, richer in feeling, spirit, opportunity, and even life than we have yet experienced? It's like you can take a known path that will bring you to "civilization" but it will be degraded, filthy, unpleasant and perhaps deadly - but it's known and familiar and maybe even feels safe - or you can walk into the unknown, which could be deadly - or not.
Certainly White's article isn't perfect. The large number of humans present on the Earth at this moment in time is problematic and could be used as an argument against White's ideas. After all, unless we have this huge, corporate, capitalist, global system set up how can we expect to feed, house, clothe, etc. all the billions of humans? Like I said, there are no easy answers. But I am convinced that the way out is not the way we got here, even if it appears to be the only game in town right now.
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Glenn Albrecht Posted 11:23 am
22 Apr 2007
With a new baby granddaughter in the family I have been thinking about buying her a present. I would like to buy her the equivalent of my past lifetime's worth of carbon dioxide pollution and lock it away so that it never enters the atmosphere. I have been eyeing off the proposed Anvil Hill mega coal mine in the Hunter Valley of NSW as a possible source of the coal that I would put into my carbon safe. I want to prevent Anvil Hill from ever becoming an active coal mine but I want to buy some of its coal, give it to Lilly, and leave it in the ground forever. I think millions of others worldwide would also like to `invest' in the idea of a carbon conservation park.
Lilly will be only 33 in 2040 when carbon dioxide levels, assuming they do not increase any faster than the current rate of 2% per annum, reach 450 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere. It is a gloomy thought, but we might already be dangerously close to that mark if the impact of all the greenhouse gases (e.g., methane and nitrous oxide) is taken into account. At this point, many of the world's top climate science experts agree that a dangerous `tipping point' could occur with the world's climate spiraling out of control into much higher temperatures, polar meltdown with massive sea level rise and totally unpredictable weather systems. I will have to tell Lilly that largely due to the lack of Australian and USA political leadership, the Kyoto Protocol failed to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and that in 2007, no major political party in Australia was prepared to immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, I have to tell her that both major parties, just before a national election, committed to major increases in our emissions for at least another two decades.
Coal miners and coal engineers love their children and grandchildren just as much as environmentalists do. We need to give to our children a sense of hope about the future and demonstrate that we are all prepared to make sacrifices right now in order to take excess greenhouse gases out of our economy and our atmosphere. Of course we must immediately cut our energy consumption and engage in massive energy conservation measures. It is equally obvious that a moratorium on all new coalmines and coal-fired power stations must be implemented while the energy conservation measures and the genuinely clean and safe renewable energy technologies of the post-combustion economy are put into place.
However, we still need to do more. A globally set cap on greenhouse gas emissions to bring the concentration down from its present 380 pmm to safer levels (less than 300 ppm) is urgently needed. From now to 2040 the Greenhouse Gas Index (GGI) will be far more important an indicator of our sustainability than the Dow Jones or the All Ordinaries. Right now, at a personal level, other than direct investment into clean, safe renewable energy technologies, the strongest ethical and practical statement we can make about our commitment to reducing the GGI is to buy pure carbon and permanently take it out of our economy. A clear demonstration that this mature, well-educated and affluent generation is prepared to pay for past greenhouse gas intensive lifestyles and forgo the immediate and future benefits of cheap carbon-based energy and leave it in the ground for the benefit of the common good is what the next generation needs to see right now.
We do not have the time (perhaps 20 years) to wait for speculative carbon capture and storage technologies that only partially reduce emissions even if they succeed. Conventional carbon offset businesses also offer only a limited solution to our current emissions. When we grow a new forest as a carbon offset we buy the equivalent of our carbon pollution as carbon dioxide sequestered in the living and dead matter in trees. However, the problems with forest carbon offset schemes are that the actual amount of carbon sequestered is not easy to calculate and that it can be converted into fugitive carbon dioxide by natural or human-made disaster. If a fire goes through our offset forest, and the forest is not regrown, most of our carbon goes up in smoke. Forests are also long term propositions and we cannot wait another 50 years before a significant amount of carbon is locked up in trees.
Other schemes for C02 offsets seem dodgy. Early dry season burning in Arnhem Land, burning methane from coal mines, non-audited alternative energy schemes in developing countries and low energy light bulbs that never get turned on give the whole idea a bad reputation. A radical new approach to carbon accounting is needed.
Let's examine the proposed Anvil Hill coal mine in the Hunter Valley as a case study in carbon accounting. Over its projected life of about 20 years it produces 10.5 million tonnes of coal per annum. If the coal is sold on the open market, at $50 (Aus) a tonne, the current historically high price, this coal is worth about $525 million per annum for the shareholders of Centennial Coal, minus about 7% for royalties paid to the government (calculated after costs such as washing and transport to port have been deducted). The final value would be less than $500 million per annum. If, theoretically, the carbon dioxide produced by Anvil Hill is captured and sequestered, at the current cost of about $100 per tonne of coal, it would deliver to Centennial a $500 million loss per annum. I can feel a huge public subsidy for carbon capture and storage coming on.
Moreover, if we convert 10.5 million tonnes of dirty coal via combustion to the 27 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (its 100 year global warming impact), then according to the Stern Report, it generates $109 per tonne in costs in damage to the earth and our economies or over $1.0 billion per annum. Again, Anvil Hill makes a $500 million loss per annum. The economics of business-as- usual and carbon capture and storage just do not add up. It is obvious that options other than burning coal are urgently needed.
With a shift in imagination we can think about Anvil Hill's annual 27 million tonnes of C02 equivalent as a guaranteed and instant pure carbon offset, one that can never be subject to accidental carbon dioxide release. With the current price for carbon offsets in NSW at $20 a tonne, then by selling the pure coal as a carbon offset, the value of the coal would be about $500 million per annum. To offset the 27 tonnes of C02 equivalent per annum generated on average by each person in Australia, it would cost me a mere $500.
After consulting with my carbon accountant, she recommends that via the Centennial Carbon Conservation Co. I give baby Lilly on her first birthday a certificate showing her that I have purchased the equivalent of my past 10 year's generation of greenhouse gas emissions. As my financial situation allows, I will be able to offset the total of my past 54 years of treating the earth as a `free' waste bin for my greenhouse gas emissions.
As others worldwide make similar bequests of pure carbon, never to be used in the future, for their children and grandchildren, we speed up the decarbonisation of our economy. However, I still have to pay more in the here and now for carbon-based fuels in the form of other carbon taxes that are designed bring the GGI down to below 300ppm. No purchase of `indulgences' here where I continue a carbon profligate lifestyle without taking carbon out of the economy. I pay twice for my carbon, once for my past consumption and again as I consume carbon in the last days of the combustion economy. Ultimately, as the economy becomes carbon neutral, my carbon tax noose is loosened. I have offset my lifetime's emissions and I pay no more carbon taxes in a post-carbon and post combustion world.
The Anvil Hill Carbon Conservation Park option looks like good value as it includes the complete preservation of landscape values, ecosystem services (water supply, arable soil, biodiversity) and no additional cumulative impacts on farmers and residents of the Upper Hunter. The shareholders of Centennial Carbon Conservation Co. have a return on their investment and the State of NSW gets offset royalties from permanently sequestered carbon. I see no reason why coal from any other working coal mine cannot be bought by those who wish never to mine or burn it; after all, it is a free market.
Moreover, it would be optimally ethical for the State government to invest all of its new carbon offset royalties into clean, renewable and safe energy technologies with all new employment to go to ex-coal industry workers. A final bonus is that we will not have to develop hugely expensive `cleaner' coal technology as we save a lot of money by leaving coal in the ground. All this money then goes into developing clean, safe renewable energy. This is a win, win, win situation and the Anvil Hill Carbon Conservation Park will become world famous as a turning point that helped prevent the tipping point into global climate chaos.
Glenn Albrecht PhD
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Zarkov Posted 6:37 pm
22 Apr 2007
>> (a reverence for and a commitment to the astonishing fact of Being)>>>
Funny, BAD science destroyed that link, now with greater understanding it could just be that we are one in LIFE, and have no other purpose than to fulfill LIFE's plan,.... and all that is happening should happen. The ignorant will go and if you are wise, you may stay.
G. Albrecht..
Coal (CO2) is not a problem, oil is the daemon, it is covering the sea stopping water evaporation---> Global Drought..... big oil is misinforming the world, and what a dangerous game that one is.
>> March 23rd 2011? >>
Yep, day after my birthday... a good time to say goodbye.
Book "The Death of Clouds"
omegafour.com
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