a candle in the winds of change

After a week and a half of reading about climate negotiations, I'm experiencing Bali burnout. I can't imagine what it must be like for the poor sods who are actually there in the ring. But if I feel like switching off, it's not so much because it feels like a ten-day carbon binge, but rather because I find the politics disheartening. Week one was easy, no commitment required. Soften everyone up, issue encouraging statements, feel the lay of the land before delivering a left hook in week two.

In all likelihood, the real punchline on the final day will be that there is no knockout blow to global warming. No magic strategy to solve global ills. No elegant solution, just a messy tangle of promises to reach agreement sometime in the next two years. Indeed, that's all some people are hoping for as an outcome of these two weeks: a commitment to negotiate a global deal under the UNFCCC. Not the deal itself.

The trouble with negotiated settlements is that they tend to find the lowest common denominator as the only acceptable solution, and that's not what we're looking for here. We're looking for inspiration, innovation and integrity. Not just minor tweaking, but a dramatic mindshift in how we think about the way things work. One of the subtexts of this conference, ECO notes, is that "given the gravity of climate change, climate stabilisation must become a new lens through which the rules of trade and finance are viewed. Re-prioritised values must guide global governance to recognise ecological limits and to agree on equitable ways to live within them. Proper alignment of trade policy and climate response is an important task that should not to be taken lightly or quickly."

With 2007 feeling like a turning point as more politicians recognised the need to address climate change, I had subconsciously assumed that this would bring negotiators together with a sense of common purpose. Silly me. Politicians haven't changed, they've just been shoved into a dark room and the only thing they are sure of is that they have to find a way out. We need some enlightened leaders. (See Cutting through the Bali knot.)

Oz answer to global warming: baby carbon tax

File this under "I can't believe they'd really consider this."

Australian obstetrician professor Barry Walters proposes that because all humans are responsible for carbon emissions - just by the act of living - any couple producing more than two babies should be levied a carbon tax for every additional baby.

Hell, why stop there? Just stick a methane collector on the rear end, send a gas truck around once a week to every house with a registered baby, take the gas to a municipal depot, and sell it as a new fuel source. And in the spirit of the carbon trading negotiations, shouldn't couples with no babies be allowed to sell their carbon credits to those with three? A whole new market in baby offsets could give new meaning to the term "baby boom".

And what about farmers with all their methane-belching cows? Give every Australian citizen a milk quota, and anyone who drinks more than three litres a week should pay a carbon tax as a way to limit the size of the national dairy herd. The possibilities are endless.

designing for sustainability

California architect Sym van der Ryn calls the environmental crisis a design crisis:

"It is a consequence of how things are made, buildings are constructed and landscapes are used." Sustainable Design finds new ways to design our built environment so that the earth can be restored and healed and the human spirit strengthened. If poor design is a major part of the problem, good design is certainly a key part of the solution.

Which is not to say that I, as a consumer, am absolved of responsibility for the choices I make. I can choose good design or bad design. There are more efficient lightbulbs, fridges, cars and a whole range of products that have reduced impact on the environment than the standard fare. If we all made better choices, if we insisted on buying products that were low-impact, and if we altogether reduced consumption of products that use energy and water in their manufacture and operation, the environment would thank us.

Some choices have obvious impacts. A 4x4 uses more fuel and contributes more to greenhouse gases than a Toyota Prius. But to expect consumers to understand the implications of all their choices is asking a bit much. Improved labeling of products will raise awareness, but in many cases the manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers themselves don't understand enough to adequately guide consumer decisions.

It's partly because of the complexity of the issues that it's not enough to rely on market forces to get us out of the environmental crisis. Intervention is needed on a number of levels to ensure that design decisions are carbonsmart. At its most basic level, this is the purpose of the gathering of scientists right now in Bali. The politicians and their negotiators are there to make sure that geopolitical interests are taken into account, but the process would otherwise be a reasonably technical debate about how to guide design decisions so that they consider the impacts of carbon on the environment.

If Bali COP 13 and the next two years of negotiations manage to produce a workable solution, then it will be down to individual countries to meet agreed climate change targets. Countries will establish incentives and other mechanisms to guide consumers and businesses and designers, who - the theory goes - will make low-carbon choices or pay more dearly for choices that exact a heavy ecological cost.

South Africa has established a very positive national policy framework for moving towards more sustainable design practice with regard to urban planning. What is missing, aside from specific emissions targets, is education of local government authorities who are responsible for approving planning applications. Design professionals, after educating themselves through efforts like those of Dendrite Studios, need to motivate sustainable designs to government authorities. Although national policy supports sustainable design, local guidelines and standards often contradict this, and need to be amended. This can be a challenge, but is an important step in reordering urban life to be environmentally sustainable.

slow train coming

There is nothing yet to force Cape Town developers to incorporate sustainable features in their buildings. At least, no regulations; but there's a quiet revolution gaining momentum that will soon change the building industry.

The first office building to be built in Cape Town with anything resembling green credentials was the BP head office, completed around 2003 in the V&A Waterfront. With solar panels, rainwater collection and a few energy-saving design features, the building remains the city's most well-known green building. It would not achieve a very good rating under formal green accreditation schemes such as LEED, BREEAM or Green Star, but it was a trail blazer.

This BP building helped raise awareness of green building design among Cape Town's architects and engineers, but it only happened because of the global transformation of BP's image 'Beyond Petroleum'. In fact, the absence of a strong local driver for the development of green buildings in Cape Town may be one reason why some of the BP building's green systems aren't working as intended.

Sustainable processes and technologies are pointless if there is no commitment to keep them going. If you want waste to be reduced, sorted and recycled, you need people who occupy the building and manage its operations to believe in waste management as part of a broader sustainability strategy.

Today, the context is different. While there is still no legislative imperative to get sustainable systems installed and operating in South Africa's buildings, there is another force at work. Just as the groundswell of public opinion has forced more politicians to consider environmental issues and brought them, however reluctantly, to the Bali negotiating table, public opinion is also shaping the markets that guide developers.

If it achieved nothing else, the BP building did play a role in evolving public awareness that is now encouraging Aquacor to plan the Red Brick Building in Cape Town's inner city. The property developer is placing strong marketing emphasis on the incorporation of solar water heating, grey water recycling, energy-efficient lighting and on-site electricity generation in the block of flats. With construction only scheduled to begin in March 2008, recent advertisements claim that 70% of the units are already sold.

Probably the first building in Cape Town that will take green building to the next level will be the planned extension of the Cape Town International Convention Centre. (Rendering of the extension is in the foreground of the picture, taken from Skyscraper City.) Competing in a global market, the CTICC has no choice but to ensure that it achieves some level of environmental accreditation under an internationally recognised scheme. Increasingly, convention organisers are including green credentials in their venue selection criteria. For the first time in Cape Town, this will subject a developer to a formal commitment and an auditing process that guarantees the inclusion of more than token green technologies in building designs.

The public is becoming more discerning, and the days of 'greenwashing' will soon be over. The green building revolution will be supported by the Green Building Council of South Africa, which is developing a South African accreditation system, but in the absence of a legal framework the real force for change is the investing public.

development equity is key to climate negotiations

One of the sticking points in the Bali COP 13 climate talks is the impact of agreements on trade, and how climate mitigation strategies affect economic and social challenges particularly in developing countries.

A press release was issued on Thursday last week about the Nairobi Agreement, which is an attempt to spread the benefits of CDM across Africa, where only 2.6% of all CDM projects are located. (CDM is the carbon trade mechanism by which heavy emitters in developed countries can offset their emissions by investing in clean projects in the developing world.) The press release points out that much still needs to be done to spread benefits around. It's going to be tough getting political agreement on a workable solution at the global scale. The issues are complex, and the definition of fair and equitable depends on your political perspective.

A draft proposal tabled on Saturday at the Bali talks asks for deeper cuts in emissions by developed nations, but addresses other countries too:

The four-page draft, written by delegates from Indonesia, Australia and South Africa as an unofficial guide for delegates, said developing nations should at least brake rising emissions as part of a new pact.

But developed countries are living off the accumulated benefits of past carbon-intensive industrial activity, and with the extent of socio-economic catching up required by developing countries, any deal that is limited to current emission levels is not going to cut it. So far, there is no sign of changes that will address the exploitative aspects of global trade. The outsourcing of carbon-intensive industries to China and India is just another form of imperialism. The US, Canada and others are changing their economies to be less energy-intensive, but somebody has to make the products that the developed world buys. And now they turn around and tell China and India to clean up: Washington is presently considering legislation that will bar carbon-intensive imports.

Even South Africa, which is a relatively heavy emitter, is unlikely to agree to binding emissions targets in the short term - as suggested by countries like Canada, Australia and Japan - unless there is a clear path to addressing poverty and social development issues.

The Climate Change Performance Index ranks the 56 worst greenhouse gas emitters (where position 1 is the best). In the just-released 2008 index, South Africa is at position 33. Canada, Australia and the US are at the bottom of the heap, at positions 53, 54 and 55 respectively.

Reuters reports:

"Canada and Japan are saying nothing about legally binding emission reductions for themselves after 2012," said Steven Guilbeault of environmental group Equiterre. "They are trying to shift the burden to China and India."

This is a bit rich, considering Canada's poor carbon record and the fact that their commitment to the Kyoto Protocol has steadily disintegrated. The country started the Protocol period with good intentions, but Ottawa's strategies to reach emissions targets were all voluntary and achieved little. Now Ottawa simply doesn't have a meaningful plan, and puts the climate change blame elsewhere.

Political solutions tend to be based on simplified versions of reality. One of the realities that needs to be addressed with a post-2012 successor to the Kyoto Protocol is that carbon emissions are not the only issue. There are alternative ways to set targets, and these need to address developmental concerns.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Yvo de Boer, has acknowledged:

...the two-week conference needs to deliver on ongoing issues of particular importance to developing countries. This means moving forward on adapation, transfer of technology and deforestation, as well as strengthening capacity-building.

Let's see if Bali produces the goods. But don't hold your breath - this is just the opening play in what will be a drawn-out series of negotiations.

going slower on biofuels

Good news in South Africa this week is that national cabinet on Wednesday decided to prohibit maize from being used as a feedstock for biofuels. The country will focus on soya beans, sunflower seeds, canola and sugarcane. The hope is that this will help reduce inflationary pressures on the country's staple food source. Cabinet also downgraded the production target for biofuel to make up 2% of liquid fuels by 2013. The draft biofuels strategy had proposed 4.5%.

We need to address the liquid fuels issue, but there are too many risks related to biofuels to rush it as a strategy. If there was a clear and enforceable exit strategy, then biofuels might be a reasonable short-term strategy while we reduce demand for liquid fuels over a longer period, but I would think if we did manage to make biofuels a successful alternative to fossil fuels, we would just hang on to are car-centred way of life even longer, with continually growing carbon emissions and other impacts.

I don't have the inside track on how this cabinet decision was made, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a fairly arbitrary outcome of behind-the-scenes political negotiations, and we are just lucky that the decision-makers took heed of the plea to consider food security. So many studies are prepared as motivation for well-considered decisions, only to have recommendations altered and decisions made without any reference to sound planning. It's scary.

Even scarier is that the Bali negotiations are just as political. I know several people from Cape Town who are there, providing the technical backup, but I wonder how much influence they have on the final outcome. Considering the stakes, I can't believe we're leaving it to the politicians.

***

Update on 8 December 2007:

One of the growing challenges for biofuels (and for many sustainability issues, for that matter) is how to regulate, monitor and authenticate claims. Not all biofuels are created equal. Primafuel is one company that has come up with a way to assess which biofuels are genuinely beneficial, and which are not. How the feedstock is grown, what energy sources are used to process it, and other questions need to be answered so that producers can be held accountable.

boldly go... again

If tropical rainforests are the world's green lung, then coal deposits power its artificial heart.

In South Africa the forestry issue is a minor one in global terms, but the country's huge coal resource should generate a debate similar to the one now raging in Bali over the prevention of deforestation as a strategy to help mitigate climate change. One of the key issues in that debate is meeting local needs while contributing to the global good: establishing a politically acceptable mechanism that will improve sustainability in terms of social, economic and environmental objectives.

Forests and coal deposits are both carbon stores that should be left alone, but the temptation to use them can be irresistable.

The main driving force behind South Africa's exploitation of coal is, for now, the need for electricity to feed economic growth. I say "for now" for two reasons. Firstly because South Africa's national electricity utility, Eskom, intends to expand its nuclear power generation capacity, which will ease pressure on coal somewhat; and secondly because rising oil prices will inevitably increase the economic viability of producing oil from coal (a technology which South Africa's SASOL has developed and is exporting to other coal-rich nations).

South Africa's energy strategy seems to be focused on providing conditions suitable for other industries to grow - and produce jobs - while not seriously considering employment potential in the energy sector itself. (The new biofuels strategy is an exception, but that raises a raft of other issues that I won't explore now.) But Eskom has been caught with its pants down. While government at all levels has been pushing economic growth, and succeeded quite admirably by traditional measures, Eskom hasn't got up off the toilet seat. Result: not enough capacity region-wide, and electricity shortages expected for years to come. Eskom has no viable short-term game plan, and we're sitting in the shit hole. The only way to make up the deficit in the short term is to try something new.

Perhaps more than anywhere else, developing countries need to foster growth that is developmentally advantageous, not just a boost to traditional statistics like GDP, or even the Gini coefficient (which gives an indication of the wealth inequality between rich and poor).

The need to fight climate change provides an opportunity to do just that, but success needs leaders who are willing to step outside the box. Just as the turnaround of Curitiba's public transport system required a city mayor who was somewhat brash in his transformation agenda, other types of public infrastructure investment need someone to boldly go and take a few risks.

(Just where to find such a person is a question for which I have no answer. Ideas, anyone?)

In the area of electricity supply and demand lies an opportunity to reduce reliance on coal and forestall the expansion of South Africa's nuclear industry, while empowering communities by creating local jobs and giving them greater control over energy. I mentioned on Tuesday that the country should be doing all it can to encourage research and development and manufacture of technologies for renewable energy, and this could go hand-in-hand with a new model for electricity provision based on distributed supply.

A variety of small-scale or microgeneration technologies mixed with medium and large-scale facilities would increase the system's flexibility and adaptability, much as biodiversity increases ecological resilience. There are dozens of available technologies that can be installed immediately, unlike any large-scale power plant. And dozens of reasons why and how they can work. From a sustainable development perspective, a diversified system can meet a range of policy objectives. People could be trained to install and maintain power systems, supported by innovative financing; but jobs are only one part of the equation.

The good news for South Africa is that the legal framework is already in place for anyone to feed electricity into the national grid - we just need Eskom to stand aside and let us in.

Oh yes, and Captain Kirk.

we'll pay a high price for the world's cheapest car

If I was in the market for new wheels, I suppose I'd be pleased that Indian car manufacturer TATA (which includes South Africa as one of its markets) is planning to release the world's cheapest car. Just as the original Volkswagen Beetle was developed to provide transportation for the masses, the new 'People's Car' is expected to be cheap enough to achieve the same objective in India. It's expected to sell for £1,200.

This is bad news: not good for the energy crunch, or carbon emissions, or urban life in general. We don't need more cars on the roads, we need fewer. And those that are on the roads must be more efficient. One of the biggest problems with vehicle emissions is that cars are so darn heavy. Most of the energy they use is to propel the car, not the people inside. I haven't seen the numbers, but at a guess I would say that if you could reduce car weight by 50%, you would probably use less fuel than the current generation of hybrids.

Enter Hyundai, whose QuarmaQ concept car uses new materials and manufacturing methods to reduce weight. If you read the details, though, you'll see that the weight reduction is a measly 60kg - the equivalent of one passenger. Hardly a big deal, but credit for trying. They have also replaced some toxic materials with more benign ones, and one QarmaQ re-uses approximately 900 PET bottles that would otherwise become landfill.

The next stage would be to replace the plastic panels with biodegradable panels: now that would be environmentally responsible. It probably wouldn't be any lighter, but it could still be greener. After all, a big part of the environmental impact of a car is not its emissions from driving, but the emissions generated in its manufacture, the space it takes up in landfill sites, and the toxic chemicals left behind. Imagine a car made from modified corn starch - if you damage a panel in a collision, just unbolt it, stick on a new one, and throw the damaged one onto the compost pile.

I am not making this up - the Mini-Bimoke uses biodegradable panels impregnated with palm tree seeds. And there's a new tyre manufacturing technology from Yokohama that enables them to make tyres from orange rinds.

boldly go where no public utility has gone before

This week's Bali COP debate around protection of rainforests is vital to a comprehensive climate change strategy, but as the Climate Action Network points out, there is far too little discussion of how to address the needs of people who depend on forests for their livelihoods - many of whom are from poor communities.

It's all very well to suggest that the rest of the world should pay Brazil not to chop down the rainforest, but that's a fraught strategy that can lead not only to disempowerment of local people, but also to struggles over national sovereignty. A large proportion of deforestation activity is illegal anyway, and beyond the ability of national governments to control.

Just who owns the rights to these oxygen factories? They are geographically-bound public utilities of global significance. We might just as well say that the world population should pay Brazil a monthly fee for the air we breathe. It's an invisible, global commodity trade that currently has no monetary value, so let's monetize it and see if that stops deforestation.

The UN could set up a financial system for micropayments from individuals, using an equivalent of the Internet's Paypal, and using mobile phones to transfer funds - who doesn't have a mobile phone? - and provide discounts to people who pay annually in advance. Just for good measure, developing countries could provide their citizens with a Basic Income Grant so that nobody need go without oxygen for want of money.

Imagine the illegal activities that would spring up, like trading oxygen credits on the black market. Enterprising individuals would set up hermetically sealed rooms, or entire buildings, and produce their own oxygen from the most efficient plants they could find. They would build up a supply, stop payments to the UN, and sell bottled oxygen cheaper than the UN rate.

Dedicated agencies (in South Africa, a special branch of the Green Scorpions) would be set up to enforce oxygen regulations and bust the grow houses. Some derelict city districts would become unenforceable no-go zones, guarded by gangsters sniffing pure oxygen.

Even residents of respectable suburban neighbourhoods would watch suspicious activity at rental houses on their streets, fearing an invasion of undesirable characters coming and going under the protection of the night. There would be accusations and denials in the press. Occasionally, a house would be sold, and the buyer would find evidence of an oxygen operation (known colloquially as an O2): unusual plumbing and electrical fittings; dampness and mould on the walls and ceilings; traces of liquid fertilizer.

A public outcry would follow. The local Councillor would assure residents that everything possible would be done to rid the city of this scourge of the carbon age, and eventually an official inquiry would find that the Councillor had been on the take.

"Politicians," we'd say. "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em." And we'd think back to Bali 2007 and curse the crackpot who came up with the Oxygen Protocol, and the politicians who endorsed it.

two degrees of freedom

Two degrees don't make a whole lot of difference to a sunbather on the beach, but they make one helluva difference to plant and animal life. We can debate the nuances of climate change science all we want, but the fact is that farmers in many regions of the globe are already feeling the pinch - from French vintners finding that their Bordeaux wines are migrating to cooler slopes, to South African farmers experiencing shifts in microclimates affecting their rooibos tea crops and Kenyans chasing their coffee up the mountains.

The Climate Action Network is demanding that the Bali conference discuss emission reductions by Annex 1 countries at a level sufficient to keep global warming to below 2 degrees. Why 2 degrees? It's a number that's stuck in the public consciousness since some of the earlier climate models were published, and the latest IPCC AR4 report, released last month, says:

There is medium confidence that approximately 20-30% of species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average warming exceed 1.5-2.5oC (relative to 1980-1999). As global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5oC, model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe.

It is sobering to note that 2 degrees of warming is a conservative estimate based on the IPCC's presentation of modelled climate change. Of six different scenarios presented in the latest report, all but one predict more than 2 degrees of warming by the end of this century. Along with the warming comes drought, flooding, pestilence and plague. In short: unpredictability.

Plant species also face extinction, and plant and animal life are obviously intertwined. The full implications of this scenario are impossible to predict, but this description of resilience from biodiversity by Thomas Linders hints at the problem:

Diversity (the number of species within a habitat, such as a wetland) is often considered a measure of ecosystem resilience (the ability of the system to accept disturbances): as the number of species increases, so does the complexity of the interactions of the different species with each other and with their environment; the greater the number of interactions, the more resilient the system is as a whole and the broader its capacity to adapt to change.

Humans are just one species among many, and are just as dependent on life support systems as any other. We need uncontaminated air, water and food; a healthy habitat with room to grow, and manageable levels of stress. And we are rapidly depleting all of these resources, not only through climate change, but also through many other processes that support modern life.

Much of what we do deliberately reduces diversity: tending weed-free suburban lawns and single-crop farms; clearing natural forests for cash crops; spraying pesticides that destroy organisms in the soil; breeding animals for specialisms like more milk or better meat; keeping birds and bugs away from fruit crops. We want uniformity, efficiency, productivity. Homogenised life.

Like rabbits in a cage, we are running out of options. Human resourcefulness might extend our ability to live in suboptimal conditions. Or not. A mathematician friend of mine recently pointed out that models of population growth and decline often show catastrophic decline in the face of resource stresses. Are we any different?

Enjoy your last two degrees. The ride might get a little rough from here.