Sprawl is a particular form of outward development that began in the 20th Century and was designed to accommodate automobiles to the exclusion of other transportation modes. It is characterized by separated uses, disconnected street patterns, plenty of surface parking, and arterial roads with high design speeds. It also tends to be extremely low in density. The suburbs of Phoenix and Atlanta have 1,600 to 1,700 people per square mile, according to the book Boomburbs by Robert Lang and Jennifer LeFurgy. They are wastefully spread out in comparison to traditional cities like Boston (11,543 square mile), San Francisco (15,834 per square mile), Paris (24,783 per square mile), and Manhattan (66,940 per square mile).

US urbanized areas now consist overwhelmingly of sprawl, which contributes to a low average density of 2,670 per square mile — less than two units per acre. This US suburban development pattern is the main reason why we use twice as much energy per capita as European countries that enjoy the same standard of living as ours. Energy use is the driver of greenhouse gases, which is why the US is the cause of a disproportionate share of global warming.

… When people live in sprawl, they lose the choice of other modes of transportation. Walking is out — and for the most part, so is public transportation. So if there is a crisis with regard to energy or the environment, people cannot easily reduce their automobile use. Those living in urban places — either new or old — can more easily make that switch on a temporary or permanent basis.

Climate Change and Water Resource Management in the Okanagan Region

The impacts of climate change on the water resources of south-central British Columbia, and possible adaptation strategies, were identified using a dialogue approach that actively engaged resource managers and regional stakeholders as collaborators in the research project.

Project Status: Complete

Full Report Location: Link available

The objective of this study is to develop an integrated decision-support system that involves an integrated optimization-simulation framework for assessing vulnerabilities of water resource management system to changing climate in the Georgia Basin.

Project Status: In Progress

Using crop water demand models and Geographical Information Systems (GIS), researchers investigating the impact of climate change on crop water requirements and crop suitability in the southern Okanagan Valley, found that crop water demand could potentially increase by more than 35% between the present and 2070-2099 (using scenarios derived from climate model output). As a result, some agricultural operations could experience water shortages. Water conservation measures, both traditional methods and new approaches, were suggested as potential adaptation options.

Project Status: Complete

Full Report Location: Link available

Coastal vulnerability to climate change and sea-level rise, Graham Island and Queen Charlotte Islands, BC

This study will examine the potential physical, socio-economic, and cultural impacts of climate change on one of Canada’s most sensitive coasts – northeastern Graham Island, Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands), B.C. This region is subject to high tides and frequent extreme storm events, which produce ongoing erosion of 1-3 metres per year. Projected sea level rise of 0.15 metres per century could increase the vulnerability of sensitive ecological reserves, cultural sites and activities, parks and tourism, natural resources, livelihoods, and infrastructure. The project proposes an integration of scientific research with traditional community knowledge to assess past, as well as future changes, in order to determine what these changes may mean for the biophysical and socio-cultural integrity of this region. Projected physical impacts will be mapped to identify regions at risk to enhanced erosion, flood inundation, tidal encroachment, and ecosystem change, and sensitive areas and activities of socio-economic and cultural significance will be evaluated in consultation with local stakeholders in an attempt to develop appropriate adaptation strategies.

Project Status: In Progress

Further Research Information: Link available

In this project, researchers used paleoenvironmental records (e.g., lake sediments, pollen, tree rings, glaciers) to examine past climate changes in southern British Columbia. Rapid climatic changes have occurred in this region in the past, and are especially well documented in conjunction with the deglaciation of the region that occurred 10, 000 to 13, 000 years ago. Palaeoenvironmental studies reveal how natural systems have responded to past climatic changes, and provide a unique perspective on how these systems are likely to respond to future changes in the climate system.

Project Status: Complete

Further Research Information: Link available

Full Report Location: Link available

Climate Change and Groundwater: A Modelling Approach for
Identifying Impacts and Resource Sustainability in the Central Interior
of British Columbia

This project will create a numerical model of an aquifer system using data on groundwater, surface water and water use. It will also measure climate change impacts on seasonal groundwater levels, water budgets and flow direction within the Grand Forks aquifer, and eventually other regions in British Columbia.

Project Status: In Progress

Further Research Information: Link available

Full Report Location: Link available

This study will provide scenarios of the impacts of climate change on water supply and demand in the Okanagan Basin of British Columbia. Results of this work will be used to build on previous adaptation research and to expand the dialogue on adaptation with resource managers and stakeholders in this region.

Project Status: Complete

Full Report Location: Link available

The amount and type of food consumed by young fish are known to be particularly important factors that affect their growth rates. Similarly, through its effect on metabolic rates, temperature also plays a key role. This project tested the hypothesis that recent changes in plankton dynamics, coupled with recent increases in water temperature have reduced the growth rates of juvenile salmon in the months following their entry into the Strait of Georgia in British Columbia.

Project Status: Complete

A multi-century perspective on forest disturbance dynamics in south central British Columbia

The principal goal of this research is to describe the interrelationships between forest structure, climatic variability and disturbance dynamics along ecological gradients in the “dry-belt region” of south central British Columbia. These relationships will be assessed through retrospective analyses of annual radial incremental growth, forest insect and disease surveys (FIDS), and stand histories. By evaluating the geographic and climatic context of the observed relationships, this project will assess the potential impacts of projected climate change on disturbance processes and species distributions.

Project Status: In Progress

Changes in the duration, amount and intensity of precipitation have the potential to increase ground movement and slope instability. This soil movement could, in turn, threaten the structural integrity of linear infrastructure, including pipelines, roads and railroads, by placing additional strain on these structures. In this study, researchers examined the integrity of pipelines in western Canada by using a modelling approach to predict the effect of changes in precipitation on slope movement rates. Results allowed the identification of critical thresholds that will help industry and government regulators plan for potential impacts of climate change.

Project Status: Complete

Further Research Information: Link available

Full Report Location: Link available

Evaluation of Risk of Erosion and Flooding in British Columbia

Researchers studied the role of winds, storms and tide levels to analyse the risks of coastal flooding in British Columbia and identified steps that could be taken to improve warnings of extreme sea levels.

Project Status: Complete

Further Research Information: Link available

This project examined the relationship between fire activity and climate in Canada over the past 50 years, and evaluated how an increase in the number and severity of fires would affect forest communities, timber supply, and carbon budgets. Researchers used high-resolution regional climate models to generate scenarios of future forest fire danger. They found that the seasonal fire severity rating would increase in much of Canada under the projected impacts of climate changes.

Project Status: Complete

Further Research Information: Link available

In this project, researchers examined how slope instability (e.g., landslides and debris flows) in the Georgia Basin would be affected by shifts in precipitation patterns due to climate change. This involved first determining how changes in annual precipitation would affect rainfall intensity, then assessing how these changes in rainfall intensity would impact the frequency of slope instability. Researchers concluded that there would be an increase in rainfall intensities with durations of 24 hours, and this would increase the frequency of slope failures.

Project Status: Complete

Full Report Location: Link available

An Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Recreational Fisheries: British Columbia´s Southern Interior Rainbow Trout Fisheries

The southern interior rainbow trout fishery in British Columbia is one of the most economically valuable fisheries in Canada. The goal of this research is to assess climate change impacts on this recreational fishery and related tourism. The main objectives are: 1) to integrate physical, biological, and human response dynamics within a simulation model that can be used to assess climate change impacts on recreation and tourism in BC’s southern interior, and; 2) to assess adaptive management strategies for responding to climate change impacts on the recreation and tourism sectors.

Project Status: In Progress

Further Research Information: Link available

Researchers conducted interviews in six municipalities across the country to better understand the barriers to climate change adaptation at the municipal level. These interviews revealed that financial constraints, attitudes of the public and council members, and the nature of municipal politics were key factors limiting the consideration of climate change in infrastructure decisions. For example, municipalities were not comfortable undertaking long-term financial and infrastructure planning without guarantees of funds from provincial government. In addition, priorities are set, and final decisions are made by council members, many of whom may not consider climate change to be a priority issue within their three-year term of office. Indeed, lack of awareness of the importance of climate change issues among both the public and councillors, was an often-cited barrier to adaptation. Another significant constraint was insufficient municipal staff time and resources to plan for future climate change impacts. To begin to overcome these barriers, researchers recommend increasing awareness and understanding of climate change, and providing municipal staff with detailed information on potential climate change impacts on infrastructure. Improving relationships and communication between scientific researchers and municipal staff was also suggested, as were various ideas for dealing with financial barriers (e.g., funding opportunities).

Project Status: Complete

Further Research Information: Link available

Full Report Location: Link available

Regional workshops were used to identify broad scale vulnerabilities in the water resources sector across Canada. The resulting report addresses the nature and reliability of the new generation climate models; regional vulnerabilities for the major regions of Canada; and outlines an adaptation strategy for water management.

Project Status: Complete

Full Report Location: Link available

The Fraser Delta has been identified as being highly sensitive to sea level rise. The purpose of this research is to examine the potential impact of climate change on the Fraser River tidal flats and to identify adaptation strategies. Addressing these impacts would affect a broad range of evolving community, commercial, and conservation interests, several of which are already in conflict with each other. Furthermore, eventual resolution of the issues and development of a common adaptation strategy would involve four levels of government: federal, provincial, municipal and First Nations. The research is intended to provide sound technical background for decision-making, to raise the level of awareness of the climate change impacts, and to develop integrated biophysical and socio-economic scenarios upon which realistic, implementable adaptation strategies might be based. For the purpose of this research, the impacts of climate change on Roberts Bank are considered to be physical, biological and socio-economic, for which specific objectives of these study components have been developed.

Project Status: In Progress

Mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreaks can produce significant economic and ecological impacts of extensive areas. The Canadian Forest Service has found that areas of favourable climatic conditions have expanded within western Canada since 1970, accompanied by increasing numbers of outbreaks within areas that had previously been climatically unfavourable. This project aims to build on existing knowledge by examining climate- and stand-related factors in more detail, and has three main objectives: (1) to develop and test a model of interannual variations in climatically favourable regions for MPB activity; (2) to relate recent changes in climatically favourable regions and MPB outbreaks to synoptic- and larger-scale phenomena; and (3) to adapt and calibrate an existing stand-level forest ecosystem model (FORECAST) to simulate the effects of projected future climate change on stand development and MPB habitat supply within individual forest stands.

Project Status: Complete

Full Report Location: Link available

The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether climate change needs to be included as a factor in producing landslide hazard assessment maps for one of British Columbia’s most vulnerable transportation and energy lifelines, the Vancouver-Whistler corridor. This project will provide geoscientific / geospatial information for land-use management and planning against the threat of landslides and will help decision-makers take into account the effects of climate change.

Project Status: In Progress

Further Research Information: Link available

This project will examine climate change impacts and adaptation by communities located in the central and north coast regions of British Columbia. It will study how key communities are responding to current and potential climate change threats; what social, institutional and governance opportunities exist to enhance successful adaptation, and; which of the above might be introduced or modified to locally specific needs so as to optimize resilience in the face of climate change. In this context, the proposed research will focus on 3 key areas of research concern related to the climate impacts and adaptation in the coastal communities identified, including Management processes, climate change knowledge and perspectives, and social capital relations.

Project Status: In Progress

The aim of this project is to identify aspects of indigenous and local non-aboriginal ecological knowledge that records evidence of past climate change and associated human adaptation, and to suggest ways in which this knowledge might provide insight for human adaptation in the face of contemporary climate change. This project draws upon the detailed knowledge of resource harvesters (indigenous and non-aboriginal alike hunters, fishers, and harvesters). Ethnographic research will be complemented by sediment core samples and scenarios derived from a range of climate change models, and will be used to generate future scenarios against which past human adaptation to climate change might be extrapolated and evaluated. The results of this project may lead to strategies for making adjustments in socio-economic activities, and it is anticipated that these will be in the form of short and long-term adaptation strategies. Short-term adaptation is likely to involve immediate tactical changes, while long-term strategies could inform changes in activities on land and of locations of activities that may contribute to decreasing the risk of loss due to climate change.

Project Status: In Progress

Changes in ecosystems supporting communities in coastal Newfoundland and British Columbia, central Canada and northern Saskatchewan have already occurred and climate change in conjunction with other socio-economic and political factors will continue to effect livelihoods in these rural communities. This comparative assessment will employ a human vulnerability-security research framework to assess each community’s capacity to cope with and, if necessary, adapt to uncertain futures including climatic change.

Project Status: In Progress

Further Research Information: Link available

The project will combine biological modeling and socioeconomic analysis to develop an integrated assessment approach for assessment of factors contributing to the vulnerability of renewable resource based communities in Canada. The assessment methodology will be tested on two Canadian communities. An important and relatively unique dimension of this project is that the analysis of impacts and community capacities will be undertaken at scales relevant to community decision makers (i.e. relatively high spatial resolution compared to most vulnerability assessments). Through partnership with the Model Forest program communities will be engaged in the project and examination of the results.

Project Status: In Progress

Canada’s forests are of critical importance to our national heritage as well as to our economy. Globally our forests contribute to climatic stability, the water cycle and the sequestration of carbon. Climate change threatens these ecosystem services. In this study researchers will assess (1) the impacts of a range of plausible climate change scenarios on the distribution and composition of Canada’s forests, and (2) the implications for forestry and conservation interests.

Project Status: Complete

Full Report Location: Link available

This study’s purpose is to assess the prospects for farm-level adaptation to climate change and other risks in Canadian agriculture. Focusing on the lower Fraser Valley, BC, Manitoba, and southwestern Ontario, the main objectives are: 1) conceptualize and empirically assess the place and the interaction of climate related risks relative to other risks of production, marketing, and finance in Canadian agriculture; 2) assess the suitability of conventional farm-level climate change adaptation options in Canadian agriculture given other sources of risk, and; 3) develop a revised inventory of farm-level options for adapting to climate and other risks in Canadian agriculture.

Project Status: Complete

Further Research Information: Link available

Full Report Location: Link available

This project is focused on the Thompson-Nicola-Shuswap region of the interior of British Columbia. The aim of the project is to identify and develop community planning and management tools to help adapt to the impacts of climate change upon freshwater shorelines. This project will use a consultative process, including use of community focus groups and there are plans to have a forum to engage the public

Project Status: In Progress

Further Research Information: Link available

More simulations on carbon tax, GHGs and economic impacts

In my post yesterday, I lamented the fact that the Jaccard modeling of carbon tax impacts for the federal government assumed uniform carbon tax rates applied immediately and held constant over time. But in the real world, some phase in period is going to be necessary.
Enter the Interim Report of the National Round Table on […]

Posted by Marc Lee under taxation, climate change.
June 28th, 2007

Deconstructing Jaccard and the Green Party

Last week, the Green Party issued a press release claiming that a “secret government study backs $50 carbon tax”, which is convenient since the Green Party recently endorsed a $50 carbon tax. My initial response to the Green’s carbon tax was one of skepticism, mostly in regards to the likely non-impact on driving, and the […]

Posted by Marc Lee under taxation, climate change.
June 27th, 2007

Carbon taxes, trading and auctions

This oped by Daniel Sperling in the LA Times appears to bridge, via California, my and Andrew’s positions on the impact of the Green’s proposed carbon tax:
The one sector where carbon taxes will work well is electricity generation, which accounts for 20% of California emissions (and 40% of U.S. emissions). The carbon tax works because […]

Posted by Marc Lee under taxation, climate change.
June 21st, 2007

The Green Party Climate Plan

Elizabeth May and the Green Party can take credit for putting forward a serious climate change plan, based on a $50 per tonne carbon tax, with some revenues from this directed to a reduction of other taxes. http://www.greenparty.ca/en/releases/06.06.2007?origin=redirect
Today, they placed in the public realm a study by Marc Jaccard suggesting minimal economic disruption from […]

Posted by Andrew Jackson under green party, climate change, Uncategorized.
June 21st, 2007

Monbiot, Stern and climate change strategies

In New Left Review, Clive Hamilton writes a review and critique of George Monbiot’s Heat. There are a number of interesting passages. First, he gives this doozy as an indicator of how grave the issue is in the USA:
In recent years wealthy Texans have discovered the joys of sitting in front of a log fire. […]

Posted by Marc Lee under progressive economic strategies, climate change.
June 18th, 2007

Electric cars: why aren’t we talking about them?

The Economist (Charging around the city: How green and safe are they?) asks about the safety of electric cars on the streets of London. But to me, the big news is that there are electric cars on the streets of London! I mean, how cool is that? I saw a documentary last year called, Who […]

Posted by Marc Lee under climate change, transportation.
June 6th, 2007

A shrug of the shoulders at the G8

Limiting global temperature increase to 2 degrees is a good objective because above that amount the likelihood of runaway climate change (melting of Greenland and the Arctic; release of methane from permafrost in the North) is really serious. So this news that the US is not interested in this issue is depressing. Not that communiques […]

Posted by Marc Lee under climate change, US.
June 6th, 2007

The Green’s carbon tax plan: another gimmick

Chalk up another gimmick for Elizabeth May, with the Green’s carbon tax plan that promises, literally, the world, but falls apart upon examination.
Don’t get me wrong: carbon tax may well be the way to go, because of its ease of administration compared to other schemes. But a major issue is that we have little idea […]

Posted by Marc Lee under climate change, transportation.
June 6th, 2007

Saving the environment through gas price gouging

Hugh Mackenzie’s piece on gas price gouging set off a chain reaction in the mass media. The oil execs were scrambling to come up with any and all excuses to justify their outrageous abuse of market power, and their even more outrageous profits. The lame response essentially boils down to this: it’s just market forces.
Indeed, […]

Posted by Marc Lee under big business, climate change, transportation.
May 23rd, 2007

Two loopholes in Kyoto

Two articles below look at two major items exempted from the Kyoto Protocol: air travel and deforestation. First, the Independent looks at the emission impacts of deforestation in poor countries (though emphasizing that air travel accounts for only a very small percentage of global emissions). Second, the Globe comments that despite its small share of […]

Posted by Marc Lee under climate change.
May 15th, 2007

Time to tax carbon

A carbon tax is the best, cheapest and most efficient way to combat cataclysmic climate change.

May 28, 2007

IF YOU HAVE KIDS, take them to the beach. They should enjoy it while it lasts, because there’s a chance that within their lifetimes California’s beaches will vanish under the waves.

Global warming will redraw the maps of the world. The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that sea levels will rise 7 to 23 inches by the end of the century; as the water gets higher, the sandy beaches that make California a tourist magnet will be washed away. Beachfront real estate will end up underwater, cliffs will erode faster, sea walls will buckle and inlets will become bays. The water supply will be threatened as mountain snowfall turns to rain and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta faces contamination with saltwater. Droughts will likely become more common, as will the wildfires they breed.

Global warming is happening and will accelerate regardless of what we do today, but the scenarios of climatologists’ nightmares can still be avoided. Though the cost will be high, it pales in comparison to the cost of doing nothing.

The proposed fixes for climate change are as numerous as its causes. Most only tinker at the edges of the problem, such as a California bill to phase out energy-inefficient lightbulbs. To produce the cuts in greenhouse gases needed to slow or stop global warming, the world will have to phase out the fossil fuels on which it relies for most of its power supply and transportation — especially the coal-burning power plants that account for about 32% of the annual emissions of carbon dioxide in the U.S. and that generate about half of our electricity. There are three basic methods of doing that, which are the subject of debate and legislation at every level of government.

Tax or trade?

The first is the simplest, and the least efficient: Just order the polluters to clean up. Unfortunately, that’s the strategy favored by the Legislature, which last year ordered that greenhousegas emissions in California be cut by 25% by 2020 and is now coming up with ways to meet the goal through conservation and regulation.

The law isn’t specific about how to achieve the reduction, opening the door for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to pursue Method No. 2: a cap-and-trade system. Under this system, the government decides how many tons of a given greenhouse gas can be emitted statewide and passes out credits to the emitters. Polluters trade credits among themselves; those for whom it’s relatively cheap to cut emissions sell credits to those for whom it’s expensive. In the last year, Schwarzenegger has been traveling around the country and the world signing cap-and-trade deals.

The difference between these methods is that the Legislature wants to impose a cap without any trade. This “command and control” strategy is extremely punitive to some polluters, such as utilities that rely heavily on dirty, old coal plants. Many will find it impossible to meet the state goal, exposing them to harsh fines — the costs of which they’ll pass on to their customers. Of all possible approaches, it would have the worst effect on the state economy.

Cap-and-trade isn’t just less expensive, it has proved to be workable. In 1995, the federal government launched a cap-and-trade program for sulfur dioxide, the main ingredient in acid rain. The goal was to reduce emissions to half their 1980 levels by 2010, and the program is expected to reach it or fall just short. It has become a model worldwide, leading signatories to the Kyoto Protocol to pursue an international cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases. Moreover, the carbon-trading concept has widespread political and business support — even such gargantuan polluters as Duke Energy, BP America and General Motors have joined a corporate coalition calling for a federal cap-and-trade program.

And yet for all its benefits, cap-and-trade still isn’t the most effective or efficient approach. That distinction goes to Method No. 3: a carbon tax. While cap-and-trade creates opportunities for cheating, leads to unpredictable fluctuations in energy prices and does nothing to offset high power costs for consumers, carbon taxes can be structured to sidestep all those problems while providing a more reliable market incentive to produce clean-energy technology.

Europeans strike out

To understand the drawbacks of cap-and-trade, one has to look not only at the successful U.S. acid rain program but the failed European Emissions Trading Scheme, the first phase of which started in January 2005. European Union members each developed emissions goals, then passed out credits to polluters. Yet for a variety of reasons, the initial cap was set so high that the polluters fell under it without making any reductions at all. The Europeans are working to improve the scheme in the next phase, but their chances of success aren’t good.

One reason is the power of lobbyists. In Europe, as in the U.S., special interests have a way of warping the political process so that, for example, a corporation generous with its campaign contributions might win an excessive number of credits. It’s also very easy in many European countries to cheat; because there aren’t strong agencies to monitor and verify emissions, companies or utilities can pretend they’re cleaner than they are.

The latter problem might be avoided in the U.S. by beefing up the Environmental Protection Agency. But there’s reason to suspect that many of the corporate interests pushing for a federal cap-and-trade program are hoping for a seat at the table when credits are passed out, and they will doubtless fudge numbers to maximize their credits; some companies stand to make a great deal of money under a trading system. Also hoping to profit, honestly or not, would be carbon traders. Large financial institutions would jump into the exchange to collect commissions on carbon trades, just as they do with crude oil and wheat. This presents opportunities for Enron-style market manipulation.

Cap-and-trade would also have a nasty effect on consumers’ power bills. Say there’s a very hot summer week in California. Utilities would have to shovel more coal to produce more juice, causing their emissions to rise sharply. To offset the carbon, they would have to buy more credits, and the heavy demand would cause credit prices to skyrocket. The utilities would then pass those costs on to their customers, meaning that power bills might vary sharply from one month to the next.

That kind of price volatility, which has been endemic to both the American and European cap-and-trade systems, doesn’t just hurt consumers. It actually discourages innovation, because in times when power demand is low, power costs are low, and there is little incentive to come up with cleaner technologies. Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists prefer stable prices so they can calculate whether they can make enough money by building a solar-powered mousetrap to make up for the cost of producing it.

Carbon taxes avoid all that. A carbon tax simply imposes a tax for polluting based on the amount emitted, thus encouraging polluters to clean up and entrepreneurs to come up with alternatives. The tax is constant and predictable. It doesn’t require the creation of a new energy trading market, and it can be collected by existing state and federal agencies. It’s straightforward and much harder to manipulate by special interests than the politicized process of allocating carbon credits.

And it could be structured to be far less harmful to power consumers. While all the added costs under cap-and-trade go to companies, utilities and traders, the added costs under a carbon tax would go to the government — which could use the revenues to offset other taxes. So while consumers would pay more for energy, they might pay less income tax, or some other tax. That could greatly cushion the overall economic effect.

Taxes a tough sell

There is a growing consensus among economists around the world that a carbon tax is the best way to combat global warming, and there are prominent backers across the political spectrum, from N. Gregory Mankiw, former chairman of the Bush administration’s Council on Economic Advisors, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to former Vice President Al Gore and Sierra Club head Carl Pope. Yet the political consensus is going in a very different direction. European leaders are pushing hard for the United States and other countries to join their failed carbon-trading scheme, and there are no fewer than five bills before Congress that would impose a federal cap-and-trade system. On the other side, there is just one lonely bill in the House, from Rep. Pete Stark (D-Fremont), to impose a carbon tax, and it’s not expected to go far.

The obvious reason is that, for voters, taxes are radioactive, while carbon trading sounds like something that just affects utilities and big corporations. The many green politicians stumping for cap-and-trade seldom point out that such a system would result in higher and less predictable power bills. Ironically, even though a carbon tax could cost voters less, cap-and-trade is being sold as the more consumer-friendly approach.

A well-designed, well-monitored carbon-trading scheme could deeply reduce greenhouse gases with less economic damage than pure regulation. But it’s not the best way, and it is so complex that it would probably take many years to iron out all the wrinkles. Voters might well embrace carbon taxes if political leaders were more honest about the comparative costs.

The world is under a deadline. Some scientists believe that once atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have doubled from the pre-industrial level, which may happen by mid-century if no action is taken, the damage may be irreversible.

Fri 20 Apr 2007

Another Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore has famously and correctly characterized the scientific consensus about global warming as “An Inconvenient Truth”. In today’s Financial Post, Buzz Hargrove identifies another “inconvenient truth” for Canadian progressives: “it is impossible to achieve Kyoto targets in the time frames spelled out in Kyoto.”

Canada’s Kyoto commitment was relatively modest and achievable. However, after signing it, the Liberal government spent years increasing Canadian emissions faster than George Bush II increased American emissions. Now, our emissions are way above target levels and the target period (2008-2012) is only eight months away.

To the extent that Canada is allowed to meet its commitment through the Clean Development Mechanism, we should do so. We should also make a serious effort to reduce our own emissions. However, as I think most environmentalists have quietly concluded, Canada will inevitably blow our first-round Kyoto target. Since the consequence will be a more stringent second-round target, we should start taking serious action now.

The opposition Liberals have taken the hypocritical, unrealistic position that Canada must now meet its first-round Kyoto targets. Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez introduced a bill to that effect. The other opposition parties understandably felt that they had to support this bill to keep their green credentials intact.

Theoretically, there may be nothing wrong with adopting an unachievable goal in order to prompt action in the direction of achieving it. As Robert Browning wrote, “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

Practically, the problem with this approach is that it leaves the door wide open for the Conservatives to point out, as they did this week, that severely reducing emissions in an extremely short period of time would entail significant economic dislocation. The hypothesized $195-per-ton carbon tax is far higher than needed to meet Kyoto targets in the medium term, but might be needed to get there immediately.

As long as the debate is framed in terms of meeting Canada’s first-round Kyoto targets, the Conservatives will win the argument. The debate is likely to remain framed in this manner as long as the Liberals succeed in pinning the other opposition parties to the Rodriguez position.

Progressives must reframe the debate as being about the costs of action versus those of inaction in the medium term, which is the more serious argument and one that the Conservatives cannot win. The only way to reframe the debate this way is for progressives to start publicly acknowledging what everyone already knows: that, as a result of Liberal inaction, Canada will inevitably blow its first-round Kyoto targets. We can then move forward with the reasonable, affordable measures needed to meet our second-round targets, such as a carbon tax closer to $25 per ton.

Fri 20 Apr 2007

Buzz on Kyoto

From today’s FP – I’ve dropped the misleading headline – this is a much more reasoned piece than some recently and widely circulated short quotes from Buzz on the implications of Kyoto for workers.

Friday, April 20, 2007

As the president of the Canadian Auto Workers Union, I often find myself taking controversial positions, usually with a strong opinion on one side of the debate. But on the issue of the environment I find myself actually taking a position in the middle. I’m not used to that.

On the one hand, I have no time for those who deny the science of climate change and who steadfastly resist reductions in greenhouse gases or try to hide them with intensity targets. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that Stephen Harper and his Tory colleagues were climate-change deniers.

But I also oppose those who insist that a full-steam-ahead, immediate, damn-the-consequences approach is the only answer. Instead I find myself in agreement with those environmentalists who propose the twin goals of improving the environment as well as strengthening our economy.

The CAW continues to support the objectives of the Kyoto protocol and the principle of international obligations. While it is impossible to achieve Kyoto targets in the time frames spelled out in Kyoto, Canada needs to work vigorously towards them and be part of a broader community of nations in our efforts to halt and reverse the degradation of our environment. All of which means we need clear targets, achievable timelines, the commitment and the resources to turn these goals into a workable plan.

I’m in a similar position when it comes to cars and the environment. I reject the proposition that reducing our environmental footprint means we must drive small vehicles or get rid of cars altogether. I think that Canadians are eminently practical – the top three selling vehicles in the country are a subcompact, a minivan and a pickup truck. These vehicles speak to the demands of life in Canada. Whether driving a pickup truck or a subcompact, consumers need to know that their choice of vehicles is meeting targets for fuel efficiency improvements.

It doesn’t make any sense that the federal government, in its recent budget, would announce higher incentives for imported 4-cylinder vehicles than for leading-edge, Canadian built products. For the Conservative government to introduce an incentive program that rewards imports while punishing Canadian producers with higher taxes on Canadians products is unconscionable. The government’s incentive program will encourage consumers to buy imports from Asia at the expense of our manufacturers and Canadian jobs.

I am overwhelmingly concerned about the manufacturing job crisis in Canada. This country has lost more than 250,000 manufacturing jobs in less than five years. It is a huge mistake to accelerate the problem through government policies.

The CAW understands the necessity of maintaining a clean environment as one of the most important legacies we can leave future generations. Since the formation of our union in 1985, our constitution has mandated all CAW local unions to have active environment committees.

Over the last few years the CAW has taken an active role in schools and communities throughout Canada, spending over $3-million educating students on the importance of a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Centered around Earth Day, each year CAW volunteers reach out to Canadian schools to educate youth on environmental

issues. In 2006 alone, the CAW brought this message to over 82,000 students.

Our union has already adopted a green car strategy and later adopted an Extended Producer Responsibility policy that would ensure all manufacturers must dismantle older vehicles and recycle the materials.

Our union recognizes that any solution will lead to some of our members losing their jobs. What Canada needs is a just transition period that recognizes this. We need government programs to support workers who lose their jobs and a serious retraining commitment that will allow industry to make responsible adjustments to ensure workers and their families don’t pay the price of cleaning up the environment.

Clearly, reducing greenhouse gases means reducing the amount of fossil fuel we consume. In addition to greater fuel efficiency and new technologies, we need a transportation strategy that will increase the use of renewable fuels and reduce the use of vehicles overall. This requires investments in clean and alternative fuels, mass transit, rail, as well as efforts to reduce gridlock.

The CAW supports mandatory fuel efficiency standards in the vehicle industry and believes that setting a clear target across all classes of vehicles, phased in by 2014, is achievable. These targets need to be constructed in a manner that drives improvements while at the same time strengthening, rather than undermining, Canada’s auto industry. There are real challenges to meeting those twin goals, but we can achieve both.

In addition, we need programs that support innovations in developing lighter materials, alternative fuels, green engine technologies, and fuel-efficient components. The federal government should introduce a Green Vehicle Transition (GVT) fee on each manufacturer that sells into our market, based on each company’s total Canadian sales. Companies would earn back the fees through Canadian investments in ‘green’ technologies and green production.

We need to look for opportunities to boost our economy and at the same time protect the environment.

A Ford engine plant in Windsor is closing– why wouldn’t government and industry join together to develop a new facility that produces a ‘green engine’ to replace those jobs? Through projects like these we can make our nation a leader in automotive and other green technologies. We need to find ways to protect the environment through ecologically-sound technology that create jobs.

The federal government has already recognized that incentives are needed to encourage homeowners to retrofit their homes. Similarly, we need real incentives to get older vehicles off the road. There are over 1? million vehicles that are over 20 years old on Canada’s streets and highways. Getting them off our roads will do more to solve GHG problems than any other proposal.

If the political parties are genuinely concerned with climate change, they should quit playing politics and work together to ensure that proper strategies and incentives are in place that will boost our economy and at the same time protect our manufacturing jobs. The future for young Canadians could flourish with a sustainable environment, a robust economy and a thriving manufacturing sector. A balanced approach is needed. – Buzz Hargrove is president of the Canadian Auto Workers.

Thu 19 Apr 2007

The Great Kyoto Job Scare

Some good points in this piece. I just love Baird’s argument that “275,000 Canadians would lose their jobs, gasoline prices would jump 60 per cent and natural gas prices would double.” Sounds like just what has happened over the past couple of years as the result of the oil boom. Did 250,000 manufacturing workers lose their jobs because of Kyoto -or because of a surge in the dollar caused by an environmentally unsustainable resource boom? (No prizes for the correct answer.)

For me the key Conservative deception here is that there is only one way to meet our Kyoto obligations. In fact, we have the Clean Development Mechanism, and the option to take on greater carbon reduction obligations in the next phase. If we get started, and get serious, – which is absolutely the key reason to keep our feet to the fire -there’s no reason to believe that other countries won’t cut us a bit of slack, especially if we are prepared to finance cheap, legitimate carbon reduction efforts in developing countries.

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=2dbd587d-e88b-447e-8f2f-936d6a1623dc&k=12457

Critics mock Ottawa’s apocalyptic scenario of Kyoto compliance

Environment Minister John Baird presented an apocalyptic scenario of what it would take to comply with the Kyoto Protocol. (CP PHOTO/Fred Chartrand)

Dennis Bueckert, Canadian Press

Published: Thursday, April 19, 2007

OTTAWA (CP) – Environment Minister John Baird has gone on the offensive against advocates of the Kyoto Protocol, presenting a federal study which suggests the treaty’s emissions-cutting targets could be met only at a massive economic cost.

But opposition critics and environmentalists say the study is flawed because it excludes the benefits of cutting emissions, such as avoiding dangerous climate change and creating new jobs in green technology.

The confrontation comes as a Senate committee ponders a Liberal bill which would require the government to meet its commitment under the Kyoto treaty – a six per cent emissions cut from 1990 levels by 2012. All three opposition parties united to pass the bill in the Commons and it if passes the Senate, the government will have a law on the books that contradicts its policy.

“There is only one way to make it happen, to manufacture a recession,” Baird told the Senate environment committee Thursday.

He said 275,000 Canadians would lose their jobs, gasoline prices would jump 60 per cent and natural gas prices would double. The study says meeting the Kyoto targets would require a carbon tax of $195 per tonne.

Baird said the study has been reviewed and approved by a number of leading economists including Don Drummond, chief economist of Toronto Dominion Bank Financial Group and Carl Sonnen, president of Informetrica.

“The cost to maintain a home or business would skyrocket,” Baird told the committee.

Liberal environment critic David McGuinty said the study is skewed because it artificially restricts the use of international emissions trading and ignores the job creation that would come with a new focus on green technologies.

“Of course it’s hard to get the job done without tools. That’s like saying it would take years to build a subway line with teaspoons.”

New Democrat Paul Dewar said the study amounts to “deception” intended to back the government’s inaction. “Putting scare and fear into the hearts of Canadians doesn’t work. People know there will be costs but what the hell is the government doing now?”

Dewar quoted Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, whose study in October estimated it would take two per cent of gross domestic product in advanced countries to reduce emissions to an acceptable level. Dewar said he believes Canadians would accept such a cost.

The government analysis itself admits that the costs would be much lower with different assumptions. A section titled “alternate scenarios” says unrestricted access to international emissions credits would cut the cost to about $25 a tonne, rather than $195 a tonne.

The study assumes that Canada can get only 25 per cent of its reductions through international credits, even though the Kyoto treaty imposes no such restriction.

Stewart Elgie, a professor at the University of Ottawa who focuses on carbon markets, says that single assumption inflates the cost of compliance by 700 per cent. He also criticized the study for ignoring the benefits of curbing emissions.

“It only looks at the cost of meeting Kyoto and ignores the benefits of avoiding dangerous climate change, and it will have huge benefits in Canada.”

Baird denied that the government is scare-mongering: “I’m just giving the information.” He said the benefits of cutting emissions were not included because they would develop only in the longer term.

Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez says the study is intended to scare Canadians and called its conclusions ridiculous. Similar scare campaigns crop up whenever environmental reforms are proposed, he said, citing past efforts to curb acid rain or phase out chemicals that attack the ozone layer.

© The Canadian Press 2007

Thu 19 Apr 2007

From socialist conspiracy to economic apocalypse

The framing of the Kyoto Accord by the Harper government, that is. I suppose this is progress for Harper, who had essentially dismissed climate change a year ago, but as the polls moved he has had to follow.

I’m not as pessimistic about the economic fall-out if we are creative in developing just transition strategies for affected workers and are aggressive in using public policy to shift behaviour. We do need a transition period, and Kyoto’s 2012 target is a mere five years away. But we can do a lot in five years, and we should press to meet the target – even if we miss by a bit we will be on the right track. We should think of this as a war we need to win, and that means some shared sacrifices, lots of creative solutions, and government-led direction through fiscal measures and regulatory approaches that lead us forward – that type of effort would be good for the economy.

This latest salvo from the Canada’s New Harperment seems like pure electioneering: the Tories framing themselves as a sensible and responsible alternative who will save the planet without destroying the economy. Probably smart politics, too, if they can convince voters that they are sincere about climate change and that the plan being worked up by other parties is going to be the Big Hurt. It reminds me of another big debate we had back in in the late 1980s, but back then it was the Tories and big business who were pushing for a major structural change to the Canadian economy, and the Liberals and the NDP who were pressing the doom-and-gloom button. The issue: Canada-US free trade.

Kyoto would ‘manufacture a recession’: Baird

TENILLE BONOGUORE

Globe and Mail Update and Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Environment Minister John Baird has delivered a drastic vision of economic breakdown if Canada were forced to comply with the Kyoto Protocol.

Speaking after appearing before the Senate environment committee – where he said the only way to meet Kyoto’s carbon limits was to “manufacture a recession” – he said the government would soon bring forward a plan that can be accomplished. (more…)

Tue 17 Apr 2007

Government Plans on Kyoto – Response from Climate Action Network

OTTAWA — Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution will continue rising for several more years and remain well above Kyoto targets beyond 2020 if government plans leaked to Canadian Press and reviewed by the Climate Action Network Canada/Réseau action climat Canada (CAN-RAC) are implemented.

The organization expects the federal government’s proposal for a new national GHG target to be defended based on dire cost predictions for meeting Canada’s Kyoto obligations. Not only is the Government not listening to Canadians, these projections are not based on real world experience or an accurate method of predicting costs. Investment needed to meet the Kyoto target is relatively small in the context of the Canadian economy.

“Canadians want Canada to meet our legal obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. This latest document is just complicated double speak designed to hide the fact that the government is turning its back on the environment. We demand a Kyoto Plan, nothing else will do,” said John Bennett, spokesperson for ClimateForChange.

The leaked plan would allow Canada’s GHG pollution to continue rising until 2012 and then fall by 2020 to 20% below the current (2006) level – but this is still more than 10% above Canada’s Kyoto target, supposed to be met during 2008-12. The plan also fails to provide a convincing explanation of why the measures it contains would actually ensure that these extremely weak objectives are met. The government still intends to set “intensity” targets for industrial emissions – despite the fact that intensity targets allow actual emissions to continue increasing. In addition, the draft outlines large loopholes that would allow industry to claim targets were being met without actually reducing emissions in the target period.

There are well-documented examples of industry and government cost projections being hugely over-estimated when compared to real world experiences. These include:

• Reducing acid rain causing emissions proved to be a profitable investment for companies like INCO.

• The Montreal Protocol to eliminate chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the international treaty that is the model for Kyoto Protocol, was greeted with predictions of economic catastrophe in 1987. Dupont eliminated the production of CFCs, found profitable alternatives and is now one of the companies leading the way in greenhouse gas reductions.

• The National Resources Defense Council did a comparison of industry-estimated costs of reducing car emissions over the past forty years and the actual costs and found that:

“Industry estimate were 2 to 10 times higher then actual costs,” said Emilie Moorhouse of the Sierra Club of Canada.

The Canadian economy is expected to grow at 2.4% a year to 2020. Extending that to 2030 implies an economy about 40% larger today’s $1.4 trillion economy, (almost $2 trillion). Projected GDP losses from these models based on overestimated costs and underestimating technological potential are less than 0.05% of GDP.

“The Government wants Canadians to believe only its approach is affordable. But that is not true. If we can afford to forego between $40 to 80 billion (i.e. one percent GST cut over six years is $39.6B) then they can afford to deal with climate change,” said Dale Marshall, Climate Change Policy Analyst, David Suzuki Foundation.

Backgrounder follows (more…)

Tue 17 Apr 2007

Stern, Sachs, and Stiglitz on the Economics of Climate Change

A report by Felix Salmon from the front lines of Columbia University on some issues arising out of the Stern review. I’d love to see a transcript of this session.

Stern, Sachs, and Stiglitz on the Economics of Climate Change

… I managed to ask Stern the question I’ve been wanting to ask him for a couple months now … If you look at Stern’s worst-case scenarios, most of them put the population of the future on a much higher standard of living than the population of the present. So the $400 billion we’re (hypothetically) spending today on reducing carbon emissions is being spent so that future generations can be even richer still – the whole thing feels a bit like taking from the poor (us, now) and giving to the rich (our great-grandchildren).Stern replied first by noting that the $400 billion / 1% of GDP cost is only an estimate. It’s entirely possible that the cost could actually be negative, he said: “a Schumpeterian tech-driven burst of growth is possible and even likely from zero-carbon sources of electricity”. On the other hand, Sachs noted that the 1% of GDP cost is predicated on our developing a workable and scalable method of capturing and sequestering the carbon output from the coal-fired power stations which are certainly going to be built in huge numbers in India and China. If we don’t get the CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) right, then the cost of reducing carbon emissions could easily double, or more. So let’s split the difference and say that the 1% of GDP cost is realistic, to be borne mainly but not entirely in the form of higher energy prices.

Stern then said that it’s also entirely possible that if we do nothing at all, and carbon emissions continue to rise, then in the next century “we could end up a lot poorer than we are now”. His models show a 50% chance of global temperatures rising by more than 5 degrees Celsius in the business-as-usual case; when global temperatures were 5 degrees lower than they are now, we were in the last Ice Age and most of Europe was under a mile of ice. That sort of temperature change would be catastrophic on many levels and would transform the planet in very, very negative ways. But Stern did agree that under his models, “most of the time we’re better off”. So, he says, “you discount for that”. An expenditure today is only worthwhile, under his model, if it causes a disproportionate increase in future wealth.

And then came the barrage of very good reasons why it makes sense to spend money today for the benefit of future generations. (more…)

Thu 12 Apr 2007

Bill C-30 – Climate Change Policy and Impacts on Workers

Bill C-30 – the Clean Air Act – is a strange beast – a government bill which was fundamentally re-written by the three opposition parties to finally move Canada towards a real national action plan to prevent catastrophic climate change.The media are so focused on the politics of climate change that little attention seems to have been paid to the content of Bill C-30 itself .

Most environmental organizations have responded very positively to the key elements – clear targets for greenhouse gas reduction to meet and move beyond the Kyoto commitment; hard caps on large industrial emitters set at Kyoto consistent levels; and a greenhouse gas emissions trading system.

While supporting these key elements, the CLC said that we need to deal with climate change while also protecting workers. Accordingly, we said that the plan had to include support for green job creation, Just Transition for affected workers, and room for labour input.Thanks in large measure to the efforts of NDP MP Nathan Cullen, Bill C-30 does just this.

The Bill calls for a Green Investment Bank. The Bank would collect fines from large industrial polluters who exceed emissions limits, but use all of the funds to finance job-creating investments in new green technologies and processes, and in funds to retrofit buildings for greater energy efficiency. We have here a potential key building block for a green industrial strategy.

The Bill mandates the government to develop a Just Transition plan for workers affected by greenhouse gas emission reductions. Just Transition means that affected workers and communities should be compensated for any losses.

Last, but not least, the Bill provides for the involvement of labour in turning the plan into regulations. For example, unions must be involved in the setting of new vehicle fuel efficiency standards.

We can expect the Conservatives and industry to mount a fierce campaign in favour of their cosmetic “intensity reduction” targets over the next little while, and to argue that sticking to the Kyoto targets will cost jobs.

These arguments were addressed in the CLC brief to the Committee, and responded to by the opposition parties.

http://www.canadianlabour.ca/index.php/Briefs_to_Parliament/1096

Labour’s concerns were taken into account, and Bill C-30 deserves our support.

The re-printed version of the Bill is now available on the Parliamentary website:
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=2826031&Language=e&Mode=1

Thanks to NDP staff economist Matt de Vlieger for the following notes and extracts from the Bill.

(more…)

Wed 11 Apr 2007

Behind the scenes at IPCC: science, skeptics and politics

George Monbiot takes us behind the curtain of the IPCC report-making process, and who is really pressuring whom to censor what:

The Real Climate Censorship

Posted April 10, 2007

It’s happening, it’s systematic, and it is precisely the opposite story to the one the papers are telling.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian, 10^th April 2007.

The drafting of reports by the world’s pre-eminent group of climate scientists is an odd process. For many months scientists contributing to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tussle over the evidence. Nothing gets published unless it achieves consensus. This means that the panel’s reports are extremely conservative – even timid. It also means that they are as trustworthy as a scientific document can be.

Then, when all is settled among the scientists, the politicians sweep in and seek to excise from the summaries anything which threatens their interests. While the US government has traditionally been the scientists’ chief opponent, this time the assault was led by Saudi Arabia, supported by China and Russia(1,2).

The scientists fight back, but they always have to make some concessions. The report released on Friday, for example, was shorn of the warning that “North America is expected to experience locally severe economic damage, plus substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption from climate change related events”(3). David Wasdell, an accredited reviewer for the panel, claims that the summary of the science the IPCC published in February was purged of most of its references to “positive feedbacks”: climate change accelerating itself(4). (more…)

Tue 10 Apr 2007

Climate change and the poor

More on the unequal burden of costs posed by climate change:

How the worst effects of climate change will be felt by the poorest

By Michael McCarthy and Stephen Castle

 

Humanity will be divided as never before by climate change, with the world’s poor its disproportionate victims, the latest United Nations report on the coming effects of global warming made clear yesterday.

Existing divisions between rich and poor countries will be sharply exacerbated by the pattern of climate-change impacts in the coming years, predicted in the study from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Increased drought, crop failure, disease, extreme weather events and sea level rise are all likely to fall much more heavily on struggling populations in Africa, Asia and South America than on the rich industrial societies of Europe, North America and Australia – who have done most to cause global warming through greenhouse gas emissions in the past, and who are best able to afford counter-measures to limit its consequences.

This picture of great inequity and a great climate divide was seized on by aid agencies and environmental pressure groups. “Governments must act now to stop a catastrophe for the world’s poor,” said Benedict Southworth, director of the anti-poverty charity the World Development Movement. “Climate change is no longer just an environmental issue, it is a looming humanitarian catastrophe,” said Friends of the Earth International’s climate campaigner, Catherine Pearce. (more…)

Thu 5 Apr 2007

Climate change winners and losers

The New York Times reports on the inequities generated by global warming below. The April edition of The Atlantic also featured a story on the same theme, but it was really poorly done. While the article makes a few interesting observations of what might happen in different parts of the world, Gregg Easterbrook, from Brookings, was more inclined to treat global warming as an investment prospectus (where to buy and sell land to take advantage of global warming). His tone reaks of a skeptic grudgingly convinced by the overwhelming evidence on climate change (he repeatedly used the term “artificial climate change” insinuating that much of what is happening is actually just the Earth doing her thing). He closes with a rallying cry for capitalism to save our collective bacon. And he made some plain old factual errors, including most of his commentary on Canada, that a decent fact-checker should have caught. All in all, a disappointing read, though I did find the cover picture quite humorous.

Here’s the Times’ contribution:

The Climate Divide: Reports From Four Fronts in the War on Warming

 

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Over the last few decades, as scientists have intensified their study of the human effects on climate and of the effects of climate change on humans, a common theme has emerged: in both respects, the world is a very unequal place.

In almost every instance, the people most at risk from climate change live in countries that have contributed the least to the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases linked to the recent warming of the planet.

Those most vulnerable countries also tend to be the poorest. And the countries that face the least harm — and that are best equipped to deal with the harm they do face — tend to be the richest. (more…)

Wed 4 Apr 2007

Another IPCC preview

The Economist previews Friday’s release of the next IPCC report. A short article but one that is quite good for a publication that is often wagging its ideological finger about abstractions like free trade. It will be interesting to see in years to come whether The Economist can reconcile its free market fetish with what the Stern Review has called “the greatest market failure the world has ever seen.”

All washed up: As the evidence of global warming proliferates, so do the nasty consequences

WE WERE right, all along. That is the likely thrust of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body set up to pronounce authoritatively on the science of global warming. In 2001 it predicted that global warming would lead to many ills, including greater numbers of extinctions, growing shortages of water, higher incidence of tropical diseases, and lower yields from agriculture, fishing and forestry in some places. Now the scientists who write the reports say they have much stronger evidence that such calamities are indeed occurring—faster, in many cases, than they originally thought.

The previous IPCC report, in February, examined the evidence that the globe was actually warming. It called the trend “unequivocal”, and expressed “very high confidence” that it was largely man-made. The new report assesses the likely impact of global warming. It is due to be released on April 6th, after scientists and governments have finished haggling over the wording.

But the underlying research will not change, says Camille Parmesan, a professor at the University of Texas who has vetted part of the report. The findings of the chapter on current impacts alone rests on a review of over 1,000 academic studies, most of them already published—compared with about 100 last time around. (more…)

Mon 2 Apr 2007

Air travel and climate change

Air travel is a beast for the climate change file, one that is going to be difficult to tackle as we move ahead. For consumers, it is  deeply entrenched as a means of getting around the globe, and may be particularly hard to reduce because it would require strong international collaboration. In Monbiot’s book Heat, he argues we need to reduce air travel by 90%, soon, in order for us to have a fighting chance. But governments looking at the problem tend to focus on domestic emissions and leave international flights off the table (even though they have to land somewhere).

I’m somewhat of a hypocrite on this, having just spent my recent tax cuts in Mexico. But I look at it this way: either we all pull together or we are doomed. It’s a classic prisoner’s dilemma. You are going to have a tough time convincing some people to make sacrifices if others merrily go along as usual. The problem is that there is some lumpiness to air travel: even if I skip a flight and the plane goes one seat empty, not an ounce of carbon has been saved; alternatively, my “sacrifice” just opens up a spot for someone else. This is about shared sacrifice, not individual choices on the margin, and it is going to be a tough sell to get Western consumers to stop.

From The Independent, we learn why we may be doomed:

Open skies pact ‘will worsen climate change’

Plans to open up transatlantic aviation and generate an extra 26 million air passengers over five years will undermine Europe’s push to combat climate change, campaigners warned yesterday.

 

An “open skies” agreement, due to be agreed by EU transport ministers today, is being hailed as a revolution by officials who say it will deliver more competition and lower fares.

But environmental groups say the increased air traffic generated by the measure will write off all the benefits expected from separate plans to “green” aviation by bringing airlines into the EU’s carbon emissions trading scheme.

Coming just days after EU leaders announced ambitious plans to combat global warming, the row over “open skies” has prompted questions about the EU’s commitment to the environment. Under the deal, any EU airline will be able to fly to the US from any part of Europe ushering in a dramatic change in the structure of transatlantic aviation. (more…)

Mon 2 Apr 2007

Canada’s Climate Forecast

The “uh oh” file is growing, as the next IPCC report comes out this Friday. In it are more graphic descriptions about what warming could mean for the planet and by region. Scary stuff that will hopefully take our governments to the next level beyond recognition and half-measures to something more meaningful. Below are some previews from the Toronto Star and the Vancouver Sun.

In an otherwise decent article, the lead-in from the Vancouver Sun, known for its anti-tax stance, is rather humorous for its relative ordering of impacts: “The looming “destabilization” of Earth’s atmosphere means British Columbia faces higher municipal taxes and a reordering of basic government priorities to cope with an accelerating regime of droughts, floods and other weather-related civil emergencies.” Somehow I doubt the actual IPCC report comments on municipal taxation.

First the Star:

Climate forecast grim for Canada: heStar.com – News – Climate forecast grim for CanadaReport from world scientific body says country is ill-prepared to handle impacts of change, leaving citizens vulnerable

By the end of this century, fires will consume twice as much forest annually in Canada, a fifth of the currently snowy Arctic will be greened by tundra and Great Lakes water levels will have plunged still lower, international scientists are going to warn this week in an authoritative climate change report.

Economic damage from severe weather, such as hurricanes, is almost certain to continue rising in North America and city-dwellers face heightened health risks, the scientists conclude. Yet Canada and the U.S. are ill-prepared to adapt to such almost-certain impacts from climate change, leaving their citizens vulnerable. This grim regional picture is contained in the second report this year from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to be published Friday. (more…)

Tue 27 Mar 2007

George Monbiot on Bio Fuels

Of more than passing interest given Harper’s ramped up subsidies to ethanol – more of a farm support program than a genuine climate change solution it would seem (though perhaps we should be more supportive of the newer biotechnologies which can convert wood and agricultural wastes to ethanol.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2043724,00.html

If we want to save the planet, we need a five-year freeze on biofuels

Oil produced from plants sets up competition for food between cars and people. People – and the environment – will lose

George Monbiot
Tuesday March 27, 2007
The Guardian

It used to be a matter of good intentions gone awry. Now it is plain fraud. The governments using biofuel to tackle global warming know that it causes more harm than good. But they plough on regardless. In theory, fuels made from plants can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by cars and trucks. Plants absorb carbon as they grow – it is released again when the fuel is burned. By encouraging oil companies to switch from fossil plants to living ones, governments on both sides of the Atlantic claim to be “decarbonising” our transport networks.

(more…)

Wed 21 Mar 2007

The Vehicle Efficiency Incentive

I’ve posted below an interesting commentary from Dennis DesRosier in favour of gas tax increases as an alternative to the proposed incentive increases. His chart shows a near perfect correlation between monthly gas prices and % monthly auto sales going to entry level ( fuel efficient) vehicles. It strikes me that – to reduce the emissions intensity of motor vehicles – the way to go is to raise gas prices and then use the proceeds to subsidise the most efficient vehicle choices and development of new technologies, bio fuels etc. Our domestic auto industry will be hit by an incentive to purchase overwhelmingly non Big 3 vehicles, and could and should have been cushioned through support for the development of new greener vehicles. I note that the incentives are not to fuel efficiency per se, but to relative fuel efficiency within vehicle classes.

The entire premise of the Vehicle Efficiency Incentive (VEI) is wrong. VEI’s cannot take Canada to the next level of fuel efficiency because it pushes OEMs to build vehicles that many Canadians do not want. The only approach is a gas tax like the one that has been so successful in Europe and other overseas markets. These same domestic OEMs that everyone blasts for gas guzzlers sell high mileage fleets in Europe because CUSTOMERS want to buy efficient vehicles because they pay high gas taxes that pushes gas over $1.50/litre. (more…)

Sun 11 Mar 2007

How much do we care about our distant descendants?

Mathematically, we are all related through our common ancestors. This is because of the power of 2 – that we each have two parents, four grandparents, and so forth back as far as you can go. Assuming no in-breeding, and an average of 20 years per generation, this works out like this: by 20 generations past (approx. 400 years ago), we each have over one million great-great-…-great-grandparents, and by 30 generations (600 years ago) over one billion, a number that is certainly greater than the human population at the time.

If we go back 100 generations (about 2000 years ago), we each have 1,267,650,600,228,230,000,000,000,000,000 unique ancestors. This would clearly imply some in-breeding. It is possible to tweak the math, but the point is that since the time of Jesus (or the Roman empire) we are all the common descendants of people of those times.

Looking forward, then, we are all the common ancestors of future generations. We obviously care about our children, and grandchildren, even great-grandchildren (if we are so lucky). But 200 years from now, within the ream of projections being made for global climate change, every child would have 1,024 of us today as its great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents. But by 33 generations from now, or around 660 years (stardate 2667), every child could claim the entire population of the world today as a great-…-great-grandparent, at least in some statistical sense. (This analysis is not my own, but is based on some long-ago thing I read.)

So the question, when it comes to long-run decisions around global warming action, is: how much do we care about our common, distant descendants (and all the other living stuff)? With that in mind, here is some of what is to be expected, based on draft versions of the next major IPCC report:

Climate Report Warns of Drought, Disease

By SETH BORENSTEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won’t have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium.

At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press. (more…)

Sat 3 Mar 2007

Red Ken’s Green Plan

The Guardian on Livingstone’s latest for the city of London:

Cleaning up the Big Smoke: Livingstone plans to cut carbon emissions by 60%

· Londoners given 20-year target to go green
· Flights could drastically affect success of campaign

David Adam and Hugh Muir
Tuesday February 27, 2007
The Guardian

A detailed plan to slash London’s carbon emissions by 60% within 20 years and place the city at the forefront of the battle against climate change will be announced today by Ken Livingstone.The mayor will appeal to Londoners to stop using energy wastefully and will urge businesses to embrace green technology to heat and light offices and workplaces.

Mr Livingstone wants a quarter of London’s electricity supply to be shifted from the national grid to local combined heat-and-power systems by 2025. The city will offer “green gurus” to help families make their lifestyles more environmentally friendly, and will subsidise supplies of cavity wall and loft insulation. (more…)

Thu 1 Mar 2007

Labour and Climate Change

http://www.canadianlabour.ca/index.php/briefs_to_parliament/1096

The Canadian Labour Congress today submitted to the Parliamentary Committee looking at Bill C-30, the Clean Air Act which deals with greenhouse gas emissions. Our brief sets out a broad labour perspective on climate change issues – focusing on the need for a planned transition to a more environmentally sustainable economy. Labour supports sticking with Kyoto, deeper emissions reduction targets moving forward, a cap and trade system for large industrial emitters, investment in green industrial strategies, and Just Transition for affected workers.

By Mitchell Anderson

Publish Date: November 23, 2006

Richmond need to start paying attention to rising sea levels

Feeling wet? Get used to it.

The storms battering the B.C. coast this fall are a small taste of what our climate-altered future has in store for us. And although scientists have been steadily churning out increasingly troubling predictions about our changing climate, it seems that our development-minded politicians have had little time to read them.

This is leaving parts of the Lower Mainland woefully unprepared for the one-two punch of increasingly violent storms and rising sea levels.

A case in point: the city of Richmond and the tiny South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu both have an average elevation of only one perilous metre above sea level. Scientists are predicting eventual worldwide sea-level increases of more than seven metres. The government of Tuvalu is so alarmed by this that they have negotiated an arrangement with New Zealand to evacuate some of their population as their country disappears under the waves.

You certainly don’t hear about any plans to evacuate Richmond. In fact, nowhere in Richmond’s official community plan does the phrase sea level make an appearance.

The only reference to climate change is a commitment to “continue to monitor environmental trends and adjust city policies and programs as required”. This document was last amended in 1999.

However, there are signs that this elephant in the room is attracting some notice. A recent city-staff report to Richmond city council cited the need to amend Richmond’s flood-protection management strategy, which dates back to 1989.

The report appears to be the first effort to include climate change in city planning and assumes that sea levels will rise 35 centimetres by the next century. However, the authors also note that Canadian government researchers estimate that there is now a “high confidence” that the world’s oceans will rise by almost double that amount by 2100.

The challenge facing low-lying municipalities such as Richmond illustrates the implications of our changing climate and how many impacts will be felt very close to home.

In the past few years, climate scientists have drastically increased the predicted sea-level rises caused by climate change. Rising waters are due to both the thermal expansion of the world’s oceans as they warm and the release of massive amounts of water from melting ice sheets.

A recent NASA analysis of data from its GRACE satellite shows that Greenland’s ancient and massive frozen storehouse of water is pouring into the ocean faster than anyone anticipated, leading to predictions of an eventual long-term sea-level rise of almost seven metres from melting Greenland ice alone. Although it is highly unlikely that sea levels would rise that much in the near future, the long-term trend is very bad news for low-lying areas throughout the world, including Richmond.

So why haven’t these startling findings found their way into Richmond’s urban planning? One possible explanation is the blistering pace of growth in the city. Housing starts in the city increased by a record 40 percent between 2004 and 2005. The total value of building construction for permits issued in 2005 hit an unprecedented $499 million.

Richmond now has a population of more than 180,000, with a growth rate of four percent over the past two years. With that kind of increase, who wants to hear about a coming deluge?

If anyone is wondering, climate experts are clear on the local implications of rising sea levels. In a phone interview from Ottawa, James Bruce, a former Environment Canada scientist and expert on climate change, described Richmond as “a disaster waiting to happen…within 50 years, [rising sea levels in Richmond are] going to be a very significant problem.

“Our best estimates are that sea levels have been rising by about three centimetres in the last decade, and it seems to have accelerated in the last decade. That suggests that sea level might go up by somewhere between 20 and 40 centimetres by 2050.”

According to Bruce, even that projection may be overly optimistic. “Some people think that is a very conservative estimate and that the recent evidence of more rapid melting of the ice in Greenland, for example, suggests that we might well exceed those figures…”

It is important to remember that Richmond is not in the open ocean like Tuvalu and is not currently threatened by tropical cyclones. Low-lying areas such as Richmond are not one day simply under water due to rising oceans—the ?initial threat comes first from storm surges like the one that overtopped levees in New Orleans with tragic results. That makes increased storm activity and rising sea levels a deadly pairing, and something we should be keenly aware of here in B.C.

Last fall, about 200 waterfront homes in South Delta were damaged when a vicious storm breached the berm in front of the structures, causing more than $2 million in damage. The recent storms drenching the coast and flooding the Fraser Valley are a further sign of things to come.

A recent study out of the University of Washington shows that winter storms in the Pacific Northwest are predicted to dump 15 percent more precipitation on the B.C. coast by the end of the century.

“The atmosphere becomes more energetic because of climate change. It’s not just the temperature increase, but the increased temperature drives a more vigorous circulation,” Eric Salathé, a scientist with the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Oceans (which published the study last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters), stated in a release.

That is bad news for B.C., Salathé noted ominously: “Alaska will really get it—Alaska and the British Columbia coast.”

Bruce agreed. “Winter storm activity has been increasing in the northern hemisphere for the last 30 to 40 years. That means that you could get quite significant storm surges on top of that rising sea. The evidence is very strong that wave heights have risen significantly in the Pacific and the Atlantic as the climate was warmed in the last 40 years.”

Given all that, Bruce feels, “You have a scenario that could easily give you problems in Richmond fairly frequently by 2050.”

Is there anything from an engineering point of view that will solve this problem in the long term? “No,” said Hadi Dowlatabadi, a Vancouver-based Canada Research Chair in global change at UBC and an expert on the impacts of climate change. “Not really. Not forever—unless we stop climate change in its tracks.” He believes that in the long term, overreliance on engineering solutions such as sea walls can make the daunting situation like the one facing Richmond even worse.

“The problem is that the more we rely on sea walls, the more we will be under the illusion that we are safe. The safer we feel, the more we will invest in capital behind a wall that eventually will collapse just like in New Orleans…The [U.S.] Army Corps of Engineers, by building the levees, set New Orleans up for exactly the disaster that happened. It’s sad, but it’s predictable.”

Dowlatabadi said that the most effective strategy in the short term is to ensure protection from big storms, something that is already partly there in the form of Vancouver Island. “I can imagine highly valued areas and highly influential property owners requesting construction of ever more prominent sea walls…But these will get overwhelmed by sea-level rise and storms eventually.”

The Dutch are world experts at reclaiming land from the sea by building dikes and then farming below sea level. But in recent years, they are rethinking this expensive practice. “The Netherlands is actually allowing many of their sea walls to collapse because they are finding their continued maintenance costing too much compared to the income these generate,” Dowlatabadi said. “Even though Amsterdam [Schiphol] Airport is six metres below sea level, the Dutch are careful not to develop towns in areas of high risk.”

He also pointed out that we currently lack insurance mechanisms that reflect the true costs of increasing flood and storm damage due to climate change. Earlier this year, this led a number of insurance companies in the U.S. to cease offering insurance in areas that are prone to such risks because of large storms and hurricanes, from the Florida Keys to New York state’s Long Island.

“Our research shows that development strategy on the coast has a huge effect on the eventual cost of sea-level rise to the community. If you have a community that allows repeated repair of shoreline properties after each damaging event, the total repairs will grow to be much larger in value than the cost of abandoning the land earlier on,” Dowlatabadi said. “It is like having a clunker that you keep repairing instead of buying a newer, more reliable car.”

He noted that rising sea levels also raise an important issue related to social justice. “The poor are in the same pool of risk as the rich who are living on the waterfront, and the premiums the poorer households pay reflect repairs to the damages of the rich…It’s ridiculous. We need bands of insurance risk that are much more specific than the [projected] 50-year and 100-year floodplains. In Florida, super-expensive shorefront homes are no longer included in the insurance pool underwritten by private companies. We need to signal the magnitude of risk to residents of each area through higher insurance premiums and perhaps higher taxes where the city has undertaken risk-reduction measures such as sea walls. However, this is where reliance on simple market forces may not be enough, and urban planners should step in—and with growth plans that reflect long-term risks of earthquakes and floods.”

This point is particularly poignant in Richmond, where homeowners are not even able to buy flood insurance. The recent report to Richmond city council calls for flood covenants and indemnity clauses for all discretionary development. This indicates that although development is not yet being discouraged, the city—like insurance companies—does not want to be held responsible if things get wet.

According to the staff report, Richmond currently has a perimeter dike system “designed to withstand a 1-in-200-year flood event [that] has been constructed around Lulu Island, protecting most of Richmond from all but extraordinary flooding”. This dike system is designed to be two feet higher than the highest water level ever recorded—in 1894.

The problem is that sea levels have already risen by 20 centimetres since then. Making matters worse, the entire Fraser River delta is sinking at a rate of one millimetre per year due to the accumulated weight of fresh sediments being dropped by the river. Given the situation facing areas such as Richmond, one would think it would be wise to direct population growth to areas less at risk from rising oceans. Is this happening?

“No, the opposite is happening,” said Tom Lancaster, Vancouver manager of advisory services for Smart Growth B.C. “We are seeing Richmond emerge as one of the new regional growth centres, which it wasn’t designated as in the [GVRD’s] Livable Region Strategic Plan [LRSP].”

The LRSP is supposed to direct where population growth takes place in the Lower Mainland, but proposed revisions have proven so contentious it hasn’t been updated since being written in 1996. One of the things the plan has not done is stop the expansion of Richmond as a growth centre.

According to Lancaster, “From the regional-planning perspective, the tail seems to be wagging the dog. The growth taking place in Richmond will probably force the GVRD to write Richmond into the next iteration of the LRSP as a regional growth centre.”

Richmond was never supposed to be a growth centre because of the enormous risk posed by areas with soils that will liquefy in the inevitable event of a large earthquake. Rising sea levels are just the latest reason to avoid densification there.

Lancaster also added that the $2-billion Canada line will not help. “A lot of that growth is being facilitated by the emergence of a new rapid-transit line connecting Vancouver with Richmond. In the context of risk-mitigation from rising sea levels, it’s one of the silliest things we could do.”

Why is regional planning not taking into account such an important issue? Lancaster offered these thoughts: “Planning in B.C. is limited by politics. Politicians don’t tend to want to work together for long-term goals. If they can be seen to be bringing in money to their municipality by doing development in places where development hasn’t happened before, they are dumping money into the coffers of their municipalities. Property developers don’t tend to look at long-term risks because once you develop a property and sell it, typically you walk away…From the paradigm of the development industry, there’s absolutely no point in looking at rising sea levels and the effect on properties that are being developed right now.”

Politicians have so far had the luxury of treating the enormous implications of climate change as mere hypotheticals that some future government would have to deal with. Much precious time has been wasted. Our changing climate is coming home to roost—whether we are ready or not. This will require fundamental changes in how we live and how we plan communities, not just in places like Tuvalu and Bangladesh but here in B.C.

The sooner we get on with that important work, the better.

Because it is going to get wet.

Tue 13 Feb 2007

As mayor of one of Canada’s biggest cities, Vancouver, I am frustrated with the nature of the debate on global climate change in this country.

Over the past several months, I have watched as environmental organizations, government agencies and the media provide advice on how Canadians can make small changes to our lifestyles, yet continue living in a fundamentally unsustainable fashion.

Instead of telling Canadians to simply check the air pressure in their tires to ensure better mileage, or put energy efficient light bulbs in their suburban homes, we should be talking about how better urban planning and densification of our cities can significantly reduce our impact on the environment.

Not once have I seen any prominent national news coverage on the link between increased urban density and the impact on our global ecology. It is time that we have this debate.

My concern for the environment was the primary reason I introduced the concept of Eco Density to the citizens of Vancouver in June, 2006. After several months of planning, this innovative program will be launched this month with multiple events and workshops aimed at engaging our citizens in developing new plans for future residential development, through an environmental lens.

As noted by Professor Patrick Condon, who holds the James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Liveable Environments at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver has become the first city in North America to formally establish an official policy of well-planned high quality densification.

Prior to becoming mayor, in my 13 years as a Vancouver city councillor, the “D” word was not popular. In fact, the mere mention of increased density often meant the kiss of death for a civic politician’s career. But, with an ageing population, rising home prices and an increased public interest in protecting our local and global environment, the time has come for us to embrace density as a tool to make cities more sustainable and livable.

Why do we need to embrace density? The science is very clear on the link between density and the environment. Densification reduces urban sprawl. When people live closer to where they work, they travel less often in carbon-emitting vehicles and they produce fewer carbon emissions. Increased density also leads to neighbourhood town centres becoming economically viable with an increased selection of local shops and services.

Although many Canadians are accustomed to the traditional suburban form — detached homes with garages and expansive lawns — it is not sustainable to continue stripping our agricultural land and forests to develop vast tracts of single family neighbourhoods. By continuing this pattern of development, we are hard-wiring our dependency on fossil fuels well into the next century.

Increased suburban development also places significant demands on limited infrastructure funding for critical public amenities such as transit, community centres, libraries and parks. In sprawling communities, infrastructure is instead allocated to bridges, roads and sewers, which do little to improve our quality of life.

Recently, I made a presentation to my fellow Canadian mayors at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Big City Mayors Caucus, urging them to adopt Eco Density or similar policies of high quality densification in their communities.

Clearly, all levels of government, the business community and individuals need to take immediate action if we are going to address climate change. But we need to do more than simply tinker around the edges.

At a local level, cities should be seeking every opportunity to immediately use density as a tool to ensure we provide new and innovative forms of housing so that people can live closer to where they work. Through the creative use of our zoning powers, cities have a responsibility to become a major partner in the battle against climate change. But that will mean showing leadership beyond our three-year mandates and making the tough but necessary choices which may not always prove popular.

I also believe that provincial and federal governments should be demanding that cities commit to carbon-reducing strategies such as Eco Density before they provide infrastructure funding.

For too long, cities have built out to the far edges of our downtown cores, and then run cap in hand to senior levels of government demanding billions of new infrastructure dollars to fund these unsustainable planning and zoning decisions. Although it would be a departure from the status quo, future investments in infrastructure should be directly linked to the environment.

Cities need to be part of the solution and the time for action is now. It is my hope that through the Eco Density initiative, Vancouver will not only continue to be one of the most livable cities; we can become a world leader in battling climate change.

Blaming ‘humanity’ for climate change permits the real culprits to escape the consequences of their actions.

Jeremy Seabrook

The almost universal recognition of the potential disaster of climate change (that more benign-sounding euphemism for global warming) ascribes the causes to “humanity”. Human activity, mankind, man – these generalised entities have been the great reshapers of the planet and its fragile atmosphere. This dispersal of blame diffuses responsibility, and permits the culprits to embed themselves in the global population to escape the consequences of their actions.

It is not “humanity” which threatens to wreck the planet, but that section of it which has been so conspicuously advantaged by its depredations. This not a new thing, Thomas Carlyle, as early as 1829, in Signs of the Times, wrote “We war with rude nature; and by our resistless engines, always come off victorious and loaded with spoils.”

The use of nebulous terms which implicate all the peoples on earth, including those whose millennial modest cultures are a reproach to the rage of industrialism, also permits an easy passage into the question of what “we” are to do about it. An inclusive first person plural is always invoked when the world faces catastrophe. It is rarely in evidence when the “fruits” of wealth-creation are being distributed. We are all in this together. Both rich and poor are threatened. There is nowhere to hide from global warming. Every country must be “on board”, on the far from agreeable voyage to a future land of sustainable harmony.

The “we” – the bogus unity invoked by privilege – masks the reality, namely, that the poor are going to pay disproportionately to put right wrongs of which they have never been beneficiaries. Throughout the industrial era, the poor – known earlier under more pejorative aliases as natives, locals and subjects – have never been part of the generous all-embracing “we”, who are now called upon to face the effects of runaway greed, euphemistically described as “wealth-creation”. It is not as though the effects of exuberant industrialism were unknown: Wordsworth spoke of “such outrage done to nature as compels the indignant power to avenge her violated rights”. If poets had really been the unacknowledged legislators of the world that scientists have now become, much present-day anguish and hand wringing might have been avoided.

The fictitious unity of a whole world in a common endeavour to heal the abuse of the planet not only elides historic and contemporary injustices, but also prepares the ground for future ones.

There was never the slightest concern for the poor (the elided “them” in the appeal to universal humanity) when resources were seized and transferred from Africa, India, central and South America to feed an insatiable industrial system. China and India will be reluctant to enter into any agreement which makes them equal partners in addressing climate change: for it burdens them with shared responsibility, as though they had invented the industrial paradigm, and were the originators of a destructive globalism. That they have embraced it with such fervour is, of course another question, as indeed are the coercive pressures which compelled them to do so.

If the implications have been resisted by climate change deniers, this is because they understand the enormous significance this has for the maintenance of economic growth and the accelerating inequalities which come with it. The US FreedomWorks group states: “Global warming is not about sound science or saving the planet so much as it seeks more to cool economic activity … [It] obstructs the spread of entrepreneurial capitalism and will radically stunt economic growth”. It threatens the holy of holies – limitless economic expansion, that ideology born of the early industrial era, and assimilated uncritically by the heresy of a now vanquished communism. No longer constrained by the “internal” contradictions of capitalism, the proponents of business as usual see their cherished belief in the mystical capacity of wealth to cure all the ills it has caused now menaced by another bunch of subversives.

The tenderness of the rich countries for humanity is a substitute for acknowledging that they are the authors of the present global predicament, and that it behoves them to show the rest of the world how they propose to undo what they have wrought. Of late, there has been a great fondness for waging war against abstractions – on terror, on poverty, wars against “criminality” or “bullying” or “anti-social behaviour.” The new crusade against climate change, and its ghost-army of “humanity”, is cast in similar rhetoric; the surest guarantor that it will prove ineffective.

Rich and poor alike are caught up in the epic penitence of the planet in peril. Bangladesh will be drowned. Africa will be desiccated. Southern Europe will become uninhabitable. Hurricane Katrina will have been merely a prelude to the drowning of cities. It is one thing to invoke collective action, the common destiny of mankind, but quite another to ensure that the unequal do not bear an excessive share of the asperities required to confront the enormity facing the world. To impose sacrifice and renunciation on those who have nothing is consistent with the division of the spoils of the two centuries-long smash and grab raid on nature.

To efface the “footprint” of “mankind” upon the earth would require a contraction, or at least a different kind of economic activity, one which ensures a more modest use of, and more equitable distribution of, resources. This is the most frightening prospect the leaders of the rich world can imagine; even though it might guarantee a secure sufficiency to the hungry and wanting of earth and serve as cure for the excesses, addictions and violence of those who have more than enough.

This is indeed a pivotal moment. Decisions made now may well determine the fate of the earth and all its peoples. But to provide for the sustenance of the poor remains the most urgent priority. It is disingenuous to give way to lachrymose exaltations about the fate of humankind and our menaced habitat, while not addressing the cruelty of a world economy worth $60 trillion annually, which leaves hundreds of millions to expire in sight of global plenty, even while the rich look in vain for ever more expensive and marginal pleasures to augment their value-added discontents.

Britain’s First Carbon-Neutral Village

31 January 2007 – 12:00pm

The English village of Ashton Hayes is looking to become the country’s first carbon-neutral community. Cooperation village-wide has enabled the installation of solar panels and used recycled building materials in new structures.

“The village school in Ashton Hayes, near Chester, already has a solar panel which provides enough energy to heat the water the caretaker uses to wash classroom floors, and soon a wind turbine will be installed on the school roof. The parish council chairman, Hugo Deynem, will be able to see its blades turn as he works on the eco-friendly extension he is building to his cottage in the centre of the village (pop: 1,000).”

“The project, which sets out to show how small efforts can combine into significant collective action, celebrates its first anniversary tonight with the premiere of a film charting a year in which villagers’ conversations have been dominated by talk and action on solar power, wind turbines, recycling and carbon footprints.”

“Enthusiasm has blossomed as locals have come to realise that they can make a difference.”

Mark

Saw your “five myths” post. The thing is that the big issue isn’t how much you drive, but mileage. And there’s a strong effect of prices on consumption, mainly through that channel.

Oh, you do have to be careful, though: Europe uses a lot more diesel, so you don’t want to just look at gasoline.

Here’s the figure for use in the 2nd edition of the Krugman/Wells text showing that higher fuel prices are associated with lower fuel consumption:

Some caution is advised here. Prices are higher in Europe, but gas consumption may reflect other things, like the installed base of mass transit, previous urban design decisions, and country size. Still, an interesting comparison. Here is the original post that got the ball rolling:

Five Myths?

The authors say these are myths:

5 Myths About Suburbia and Our Car-Happy Culture, by Ted Balaker and Sam Staley, Commentary, Washington Post: They don’t rate up there with cancer and al-Qaeda … but suburban sprawl and automobiles are rapidly acquiring a reputation as scourges of modern American society. Sprawl, goes the typical indictment, devours open space, exacerbates global warming and causes pollution, social alienation and even obesity. And cars are the evil co-conspirator — the driving force, so to speak, behind sprawl. Yet the anti-suburbs culture has also fostered many myths about sprawl and driving…:

1. Americans are addicted to driving.

…Some claim that Europeans have developed an enlightened alternative. … Europeans may enjoy top-notch transit and endure gasoline that costs $5 per gallon, but in fact they don’t drive much less than we do. In the United States, automobiles account for about 88 percent of travel. In Europe, the figure is about 78 percent. And Europeans are gaining on us.

The key factor that affects driving habits isn’t population density, public transit availability, gasoline taxes or even different attitudes. It’s wealth. Europe and the United States are relatively wealthy, but American incomes are 15 to 40 percent higher than those in Western Europe. And as nations such as China and India become wealthier, the portion of their populations that drive cars will grow.

2. Public transit can reduce traffic congestion.

…Even though spending on public transportation has ballooned to more than seven times its 1960s levels, the percentage of people who use it to get to work fell 63 percent from 1960 to 2000 and now stands at just under 5 percent nationwide. Transit is also decreasing in Europe, down to 16 percent in 2000. …

We have to be realistic about what transit can accomplish. Suppose we could not only reverse transit’s long slide but also triple the size of the nation’s transit system and fill it with riders. Transportation guru Anthony Downs of the Brookings Institution notes that this enormous feat would be “extremely costly” and, even if it could be done, would not “notably reduce” rush-hour congestion, primarily because transit would continue to account for only a small percentage of commuting trips.

But public transit still has an important role. Millions of Americans rely on it as a primary means of transportation. Transit agencies should focus on serving those who need transit the most: the poor and the handicapped…

3. We can cut air pollution only if we stop driving.

Polls often show that Americans think that air quality is deteriorating. Yet air is getting much cleaner. … Air quality has been improving for a long time. More stringent regulations and better technology have allowed us to achieve what was previously unthinkable: driving more and getting cleaner. Since 1970, driving — total vehicle miles traveled — has increased 155 percent, and yet the EPA reports a dramatic decrease in every major pollutant it measures. Although driving is increasing by 1 to 3 percent each year, average vehicle emissions are dropping about 10 percent annually. Pollution will wane even more as motorists continue to replace older, dirtier cars with newer, cleaner models.

4. We’re paving over America.

How much of the United States is developed? Twenty-five percent? Fifty? Seventy-five? How about 5.4 percent? That’s the Census Bureau’s figure. And even much of that is not exactly crowded: The bureau says that an area is “developed” when it has 30 or more people per square mile. … One need only take a cross-country flight and look down, however, to realize that our nation is mostly open space. … The United States is not coming anywhere close to becoming an “Asphalt Nation,” to use the title of a book by Jane Holtz Kay.

5. We can’t deal with global warming unless we stop driving.

What should be done about global warming? The Kyoto Protocol seeks to get the world to agree to burn less fossil fuel and emit less carbon dioxide, and much of that involves driving less. But even disregarding the treaty’s economic costs, Kyoto’s environmental impact would be slight. … Nations such as China and India were excluded from the Kyoto Protocol; yet if we’re serious about reversing global warming by driving less, the developing world will have to be included.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change … expects the temperature to rise 1.4 to 5.8 degrees by 2100. What does the IPCC think the effects of global warming may be? Flooding may increase. Infectious diseases may spread. Heat-related illness and death may increase. Yet as the IPCC notes repeatedly, the severity of such outcomes is enormously uncertain.

On the other hand, there’s great certainty regarding who would be hurt the most: poor people in developing nations, especially those who lack clean, piped water and are thus vulnerable to waterborne disease. The IPCC points out that … simple measures such as adding screens to windows can help prevent diseases (including malaria, dengue and yellow fever) from entering homes. …

Two ways of dealing with global warming emerge. A more stringent version of Kyoto could be crafted to chase the unprecedented goal of trying to cool the atmosphere of the entire planet. Yet if such efforts resulted in lower economic growth, low-income populations in the United States and developing countries would be less able to protect themselves from the ill effects of extreme heat or other kinds of severe weather.

Alternatively, the focus could be on preventing the negative effects — the disease and death — that global warming might bring. Each year malaria kills 1 million to 3 million people, and one-third of the world’s population is infected with water- or soil-borne parasitic diseases. It may well be that dealing with global warming by building resilience against its possible effects is more productive — and more realistic — than trying to solve the problem by driving our automobiles less.

On (1), how does saying that Europe will soon drive as much as we do, that public transportation doesn’t change driving habits much, and that if we get wealthier we’ll drive more show that “Americans are addicted to driving” is a myth? Arguing that everyone in the world is addicted to driving doesn’t prove Americans are not.

Point (3) seems hard to swallow too. The argument is that pollution levels have been declining even as the number of cars have increased, therefore there’s no need to do anything to reduce driving. But that doesn’t mean that cutting the number of cars wouldn’t cut pollution even more. It’s also notable that all the arguments are about particulate levels at the ground level, not about about green house gases.

All in all, a pretty lame defense of doing nothing to try and prevent global warming. Basically the proposal in the last paragraph is to forget about driving less to try and combat global warming. Instead, we should fight malaria and other diseases as a means of “building resilience against its possible effects.” Let’s fight those diseases with all our might anyway, but really, what a dumb idea for fighting global warming.

If you care about global warming, you’ve got to care about coal.  Unlike oil and gas — for which North America production is in decline — there’s plenty of coal left on American soil.  And while some energy companies and promoters of “energy independence” see this as an unqualified good, those of us who see most issues through the lens of climate change see the “wall of coal” as one of the scariest things out there.

And that’s why California’s latest foray into climate policy is so heartening.  Go California!

On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission is expected to approve rules that would… effectively ban Southern California Edison Co. and other non-municipal utilities in California from signing long-term contracts to import electricity from existing plants that burn coal in the intermountain West.

Now on the one hand, this is a huge deal. California isn’t just acting to curb coal consumption within its own boundaries; it’s putting limits on electricity purchases from other states.  And as a result, it’s influencing infrastructure decisions all across the intermountain West, where heaps of new coal-fired power plants have been proposed.

But on the other hand, unless other states adopt similar policies, California’s action will only go so far.  The danger is that power suppliers can just game the system; the Northwest states, for example, could start exporting more hydropower and wind power to California, and then turn around and import more coal-fired power from, say, Wyoming or Nevada.  As far as I can tell, there’s nothing in California’s plan that would prevent these sorts of shenanigans.

That’s not a critique of what California’s doing, obviously.  It’s a critique of what the Northwest states are doing.  What’s it going to take for our states to start playing follow the leader?

How richest fuel global warming – but poorest suffer most from it

By Philip Thornton, Economics Correspondent

Published: 09 January 2007

 

By the end of tomorrow the average Briton will have caused as much global warning as the typical Kenyan will over the whole of this year, according to a report.

The findings highlight the glaring imbalance between the rich countries that produce most of the pollution and the poor countries that suffer the consequences in the forms of drought, floods, starvation and disease.

The World Development Movement (WDM), a poverty campaign group, has drawn up a “climate calendar” showing the dates when the UK will have emitted as much CO2 gas as other countries will in a year.

Unsurprisingly, the poorest counties such as Chad, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo produce virtually no carbon emissions. Even populous countries such as India will be overtaken in its emissions by the UK in a month’s time. In fact, 164 countries in the world have a smaller carbon footprint than the UK, while just 20, mainly including the major oil producers as well as the US, have a larger one.

By the end of tomorrow the average Briton will have produced 0.26 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

“The poorest countries in the world, with 738 million people, make no contribution to climate change, but it is those same people who face the worst consequences,” Benedict Southworth, WDM’s director, said. ” One hundred and sixty thousand people are already dying every year due to climate change- related diseases and billions will face drought, floods, starvation and disease.”

WDM has calculated the figures by taking the annual CO2 emission for each country, dividing by the number of people and then working out a daily contribution.

Thus while an Afghan on average will produce an annual equivalent of 0.02 tonnes of CO2, a Briton will produce 9.62 tonnes and the most prolific polluter – someone from the United Arab Emirates – will emit about 56 tonnes.

WDM acknowledged that its figures were based on averages that masked differences between life in rural and urban areas, but said that the figures still exposed the “injustice” of global warming.

“It is the richest people in the world who have produced and who are still producing most of the greenhouse gases causing climate change,” Mr Southworth said.

The report said 7,800 Kenyans, Tanzanians and Rwandans died every year from diseases that were related to climate change. It warned that a 2C rise in temperature could lead to as many as 60 million more people being exposed to malaria in Africa.

The potential for massive ecological and human suffering as a result of climate change was a key finding in the report by Sir Nicholas Stern, although it was overshadowed by the political debate over the need for higher taxes or the imposition of rationing.

The Stern report found that many “vulnerable” regions embracing millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa were at risk from harvest failures, droughts and malaria.

It warned that these phenomena would affect the poorest people most of all and fuel conflicts and raise the number of child deaths as populations moved to avoid the worst-hit areas.

WDM said that although the Government had used the Stern report to show Britain’s commitment to fighting climate change, emissions had risen 5 per cent under Labour.

It called on the Government to include legally binding annual targets to cut emissions in its Climate Change Bill.

Carbon comparison

The average British citizen produces 26kg of CO2 in a day. This breaks down as follows:

* 7.4 electricity
* 1.6 fuel production
* 3.8 manufacturing and construction
* 7.4 transport, of which: (5.2 road transport, 1.7 air travel, 0.1 railways and 0.4 shipping)
* 1.0 office buildings
* 3.8 residential heating
* 1.0 Other industrial processes, agriculture, military travel, other

The average Kenyan citizen produces 0.7kg of CO2 in a day. This breaks down as follows:

* 0.08 electricity
* 0.08 fuel production
* 0.16 manufacturing and construction
* 0.31 transport
* 0.07 other

From the Independent:

EU: Climate change will transform the face of the continent

By Michael McCarthy and Stephen Castle

Published: 10 January 2007

 

 

 

Europe, the richest and most fertile continent and the model for the modern world, will be devastated by climate change, the European Union predicts today.

The ecosystems that have underpinned all European societies from Ancient Greece and Rome to present-day Britain and France, and which helped European civilisation gain global pre-eminence, will be disabled by remorselessly rising temperatures, EU scientists forecast in a remarkable report which is as ominous as it is detailed.

Much of the continent’s age-old fertility, which gave the world the vine and the olive and now produces mountains of grain and dairy products, will not survive the climate change forecast for the coming century, the scientists say, and its wildlife will be devastated.

Europe’s modern lifestyles, from summer package tours to winter skiing trips, will go the same way, they say, as the Mediterranean becomes too hot for holidays and snow and ice disappear from mountain ranges such as the Alps – with enormous economic consequences. The social consequences will also be felt as heat-related deaths rise and extreme weather events, such as storms and floods, become more violent.

The report, stark and uncompromising, marks a step change in Europe’s own role in pushing for international action to combat climate change, as it will be used in a bid to commit the EU to ambitious new targets for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.

The European Commission wants to hold back the rise in global temperatures to 2C above the pre-industrial level (at present, the level is 0.6C). To do that, it wants member states to commit to cutting back emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, to 30 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, as long as other developed countries agree to do the same.

Failing that, the EU would observe a unilateral target of a 20 per cent cut.

The Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, gave US President George Bush a preview of the new policy during a visit to the White House this week.

The force of today’s report lies in its setting out of the scale of the continent-wide threat to Europe’s “ecosystem services”.

That is a relatively new but powerful concept, which recognises essential elements of civilised life – such as food, water, wood and fuel – which may generally be taken for granted, are all ultimately dependent on the proper functioning of ecosystems in the natural world. Historians have recognised that Europe was particularly lucky in this respect from the start, compared to Africa or pre-Columbian America – and this was a major reason for Europe’s rise to global pre-eminence.

“Climate change will alter the supply of European ecosystem services over the next century,” the report says. “While it will result in enhancement of some ecosystem services, a large portion will be adversely impacted because of drought, reduced soil fertility, fire, and other climate change-driven factors.

“Europe can expect a decline in arable land, a decline in Mediterranean forest areas, a decline in the terrestrial carbon sink and soil fertility, and an increase in the number of basins with water scarcity. It will increase the loss of biodiversity.”

The report predicts there will be some European “winners” from climate change, at least initially. In the north of the continent, agricultural yields will increase with a lengthened growing season and a longer frost-free period. Tourism may become more popular on the beaches of the North Sea and the Baltic as the Mediterranean becomes too hot, and deaths and diseases related to winter cold will fall.

But the negative effects will far outweigh the advantages. Take tourism. The report says “the zone with excellent weather conditions, currently located around the Mediterranean (in particular for beach tourism) will shift towards the north”. And it spells out the consequences.

“The annual migration of northern Europeans to the countries of the Mediterranean in search of the traditional summer ’sun, sand and sea’ holiday is the single largest flow of tourists across the globe, accounting for one-sixth of all tourist trips in 2000. This large group of tourists, totalling about 100 million per annum, spends an estimated €100bn (£67bn) per year. Any climate-induced change in these flows of tourists and money would have very large implications for the destinations involved.”

While they are losing their tourists, the countries of the Med may also be losing their agriculture. Crop yields may drop sharply as drought conditions, exacerbated by more frequent forest fires, make farming ever more difficult. And that is not the only threat to Europe’s food supplies. Some stocks of coldwater fish in areas such as the North Sea will move northwards as the water warms.

There are many more direct threats, the report says. The cost of taking action to cope with sea-level rise will run into billions of euros. Furthermore, “for the coming decades, it is predicted the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events will increase, and floods will likely be more frequent and severe in many areas across Europe.”

The number of people affected by severe flooding in the Upper Danube area is projected to increase by 242,000 in a more extreme 3C temperature rise scenario, and by 135,000 in the case of a 2.2C rise. The total cost of damage would rise from €47.5bn to €66bn in the event of a 3C increase.

Although fewer people would die of cold in the north, that would be more than offset by increased mortality in the south. Under the more extreme scenario of a 3C increase in 2071-2100 relative to 1961-1990, there would be 86,000 additional deaths.

It’s the 21st century: A country’s economic prosperity is directly tied to its environmental sustainability

David Boyd

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Prime Minister Harper recently recognized that Canada lags behind other industrialized nations in protecting the environment.

Most Canadians have already figured this out, as reflected by opinion polls putting the environment at the top of public concerns.

In a column published Monday on this page, Terence Corcoran blamed reports published by so-called “activist academics” at the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University for misleading the prime minister about Canada’s environmental record.

Corcoran described these reports as “a catalogue of misleading indicators, warped assumptions and outrageous conclusions.” His vitriolic attack demonstrates archaic ideas about the relationship between the economy and the environment.

The impugned reports were based entirely on environmental statistics collected, standardized and published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The 2001 report, called Canada vs. The OECD, looked at 25 environmental indicators and evaluated the performance of the 29 nations in the OECD. Overall, Canada ranked 28th out of 29 nations, reflecting our large ecological footprint.

A team of researchers from SFU produced an updated report, published by the David Suzuki Foundation in 2005, called The Maple Leaf in the OECD. Canada ranked 28th out of 30 nations.

In both reports, Canada ranked among the three worst OECD nations in terms of energy consumption, energy intensity (the amount of energy used per unit of GDP), greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, nuclear waste and emissions of air pollutants including sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds.

Assessments of Canada’s environmental record by other institutions including the commissioner for environment and sustainable development, the auditor-general, and the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation also conclude that Canada is a laggard.

The OECD itself is highly critical of Canada’s environmental record. OECD reports decry Canada’s subsidies to polluters, inefficient use of energy, lack of action to address climate change, unsustainable use of natural resources and unwarranted reliance on voluntary agreements instead of strict environmental laws.

The OECD says that on environmental issues Canada has “a tendency to talk rather than act.”

In addition to disputing Canada’s dismal record, Corcoran claims that environmental degradation is an inevitable byproduct of economic activity. To reduce our environmental impact, Corcoran suggests, requires going back to the “impoverished world of centuries past.”

The myth that nations must choose between economic prosperity and a healthy environment has been conclusively debunked.

Countries including Sweden, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands are similar to Canada with respect to per capita incomes, manufacturing intensity (industrial production as per cent of GDP), and road travel rates (kilometres per capita.) Yet these nations have far better environmental records, while maintaining a high standard of living.

The main difference is that these European nations recognize that one of the free market’s greatest flaws is the failure to put a price on pollution.

In response, they have implemented strong and effective environmental policies.

Europeans generate less air pollution in part because of more compact cities and superior public transit systems, but also because high fuel taxes and congestion charges compel them to drive more efficient cars and find alternatives to single passenger vehicles.

Innovative European laws require manufacturers of products ranging from computers to vehicles to eliminate the use of toxic substances and ensure their products can be recycled or remanufactured.

In contrast, Canada has been reluctant to use strong regulations or economic disincentives to protect the environment.

Instead of imposing a carbon tax on the oil and gas industry as Norway did, our governments provide billions of dollars in subsidies. Instead of imposing special charges on pesticides as European nations do, Canada exempts pesticides from the GST.

Overall, the level of environmental taxes in Canada is less than half that of EU nations with superior environmental records.

If strong environmental policies were a recipe for economic disaster, one would expect to find Northern European economies in disarray. Instead, the Scandinavian nations that are far ahead of Canada in environmental protection are also outperforming Canada economically.

In the World Economic Forum’s latest ranking of economic competitiveness, Canada fell to 16th place, while countries like Finland, Sweden, and Denmark placed in the top four.

It’s the 21st century economy, stupid. The nations that are outperforming Canada both economically and environmentally are strategically using public policies to spur innovation, investment, technological progress and behavioural change.

Corcoran’s opinions are outdated, like conventional incandescent light bulbs, which waste more than 90 per cent of the energy they consume to generate heat rather than light.

Canadians can only hope that Prime Minister Harper and his new environment minister, John Baird, genuinely understand that in the 21st century economic prosperity and environmental sustainability must go hand in hand.

Then Canada’s future — lit by LEDs and compact fluorescents — will be bright, clean, green, and energy efficient.

David R. Boyd is a Trudeau Scholar at the University of British Columbia.

The Cost of Climate Change

 

Reducing our contribution to global warming may be expensive. The actual global warming, however, is likely to be much more expensive.

In support of that last claim is a new report that is the most definitive look to date at the economic impacts of climate change on Washington. (There’s a shorter one for Oregon (pdf), published in 2005.)

I thought this lede from the Seattle Times was a great summary:

A warming climate could cost Washington governments and businesses tens of millions of dollars every year in drought-stricken crops, forest fires and tightened water supplies, according to a new state study.

It is the first such analysis illuminating how rising temperatures and shifting snow patterns could ripple through the economy.

Yakima Valley farmers could experience more crop losses as snowpack declines. Forest fires could double in size, driving up the costs of fighting them and hurting tourism. Dairies in Whatcom County might produce less milk. Cities, including Seattle, could spend millions more on water conservation or expand their water-storage dams. More than 50 square miles of Washington land could wind up underwater if sea levels rise two feet.

More media coverage here and here.

One of the report’s primary authors is Yoram Bauman, a PhD economist and longtime Sightline associate. I contributed to the report in a small advisory capacity.

On a swift boat to a warmer world

By Daniel P. Schrag  |  December 17, 2006

I AM A climate scientist and an optimist. This may seem like a contradiction, with all the talk of scorching heat waves and bigger, deadlier hurricanes. But it’s not.

Let’s be clear: I am not a skeptic on climate change. In my earth science courses, I teach that burning fossil fuel is raising atmospheric carbon dioxide to levels not seen on Earth for more than 30 million years. In public lectures, I show pictures of what would happen to Florida and the Gulf Coast if half the Greenland Ice Sheet melted, asking people to imagine abandoning New Orleans and Miami. I tell people that, unless we take action to reduce emissions, the question is not whether this is going to occur, but when.

Yet I am an optimist because I believe we can fix the climate change problem. We can deploy the technologies to meet our energy needs while slashing carbon emissions: plug-in hybrids, windmills, carbon sequestration for coal plants, and even nuclear power. We have responded to larger challenges in the past, such as when FDR appropriated most of the nation’s industrial capacity to build ships, tanks, and airplanes for World War II.

Unfortunately, I am a little less optimistic today than I was a couple of weeks ago, before testifying at the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. It was Senator James Inhofe’s last hearing as chair of the committee, and the focus was on media coverage of global warming. I was invited by the Democratic staff to counter arguments that global warming is a hoax perpetrated on the American people by scientists like me.

Inhofe is a climate skeptic. But I still hoped I could help educate our lawmakers — maybe not Inhofe, but perhaps some of the others. In my opening statement, I explained that global warming is not a partisan issue. America should lead the world and capitalize on an extraordinary business opportunity as we invest in new energy technologies, I said.

Then I watched in horror as Inhofe’s witnesses spouted outrageous claims intended to deceive and distort. Two were scientists associated with industry-funded think tanks. They described global warming as a “mass delusion” among the scientific community, sowing confusion by misrepresenting the ice core data that connects carbon dioxide and temperature over glacial cycles, and claiming that “global warming stopped in 1998″ — an anomalously warm year. They even recommended burning as much fossil fuel as possible to prevent another ice age.

Unfortunately, the format does not allow for direct debate. Some senators defended the integrity of the scientific community, including Barbara Boxer, who will become chair of the committee in January. But amid the collegiality and decorum that is the tradition in the Senate, no one stood up and called this hearing what it was: a gathering of liars and charlatans, sponsored by those industries who want to protect their profits.

Later that day, Inhofe issued a press release that specifically highlighted my testimony, claiming that I “agreed” with him that the Kyoto Protocol “would have almost no impact on the climate even if all the nations fully complied.” In fact, I had interrupted him during the hearing to object to this claim, reminding him that Kyoto was only conceived as a first step, and never as a long-term solution.

I later learned that Inhofe’s communications director, Marc Morano, was a key figure in publicizing the swift boat veterans’ attack on John Kerry in 2004. Morano, it seems, is still up to his old tricks, twisting the facts to support his boss’s outrageous claims. This made my visit complete: a glimpse at our government that sees the world only through glasses tinted by special interests, which treats science as a political football, no matter what is at stake.

I am still an optimist. We still have time to avert a climate catastrophe. But I am not counting on government, or at least this government, to lead us toward a solution. As our leaders accept the outrageous spectacle I saw the other day as just a normal day in Congress, we will have to take the first step without them.

Daniel P. Schrag is professor of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard and director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment

Shots across the Stern

Dec 13th 2006
From The Economist print edition

Was Sir Nicholas’s big report on climate change egalitarian, inegalitarian—or both?

TO SHOW that you are up to speed on global warming, you need to know your Rio summit from your Kyoto protocol; your Greenland pump from your carbon sink; and your Harald Sverdrup (a Norwegian oceanographer, who measured sea currents) from your Bjorn Lomborg (a Danish controversialist, who annoys greens). And as if all that were not enough, Sir Nicholas Stern’s big report on climate change, published by the British government in October, has forced greenhouse gasbags to master another bit of esoterica: the Greek alphabet.Actually, just two letters will do: delta and eta. The characters are Sir Nicholas’s shorthand for two concepts. Delta determines the weight he places on the welfare of future generations that are not yet here to stick up for their own interests. Eta governs his answer to a different question: how much weight should be given to the consumption of the rich relative to that of the poor?

 

One of the main reasons most of us don’t go around thinking about global cooking every day is that it is, by definition, so staggeringly huge and abstract that our already overtaxed brains can easily shuffle it down the mental priority list—right down there with “strip and paint the siding” and “sign up for Italian classes.” One way to make the issue more tangible: Bring it on home. Vanity Fair recently ran some really cool digital photo projections showing Eastern Seaboard cities—the heart of the mag’s circ base—under several feet of seawater.

I longed for such knockout images as I plowed through a new provincial government report that outlines in part the impacts that global warming has had—and will have—on my own backyard, coastal British Columbia. All we get is a few charts.

Here’s a bit of a summary: Though we’ll enjoy a longer growing season (maybe I should plant a peach tree…), most of the news is of course, not good, including predictions for:

• shortage of fresh water and hydroelectricity for communities, agriculture, and industries that rely on snow pack and glaciers as a water supply;
• the retreat and disappearance of glaciers in southern B.C. (This of course would include the glaciers on Blackcomb and Garibaldi mountains.)
• increased frequency and severity of natural disturbances, such as fire, and pest outbreaks, such as mountain pine beetle.

The report also mentions the possibility of malaria, losses of whole ecosystems, and increased risk of damage to people and buildings from extreme weather .

For all this, we can all thank our beloved SUVs. Road transportation, the report notes,

is responsible for almost a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions, amounting to 15.6 million tonnes in 2003 for British Columbia. Personal transport, made up of cars and light trucks together, accounts for about two-thirds of this figure and is the largest single emissions category in the province and across the country.

]]> http://justtransition.wordpress.com/2006/11/24/bc-impacts-i/feed/ 0 badeconomist sealevel.gif