hit pause

We all need a break now and again, and Carbon Copy has been on pause for a little while. I'll be back in the new year.

In the meantime, here's a novel source of recycled energy: captured waste heat from a crematorium in the Swedish town of Halmstad. Should reduce heating bills and pollutants.

a fighting chance

If the global financial meltdown has taught us nothing else, it has at least demonstrated that when action is seen to be vital, even the lethargic big-name brands like the USA and UK can make things happen quickly. 'Bushwhacked' George and 'Brownie Points' Gordon have shown it can be done when there's political will. So: while 2007 was the year many governments began to take seriously the notion that something needed to be done about climate change (and 2008 was the year of gathering momentum), the climate crisis clearly has not yet garnered the sense of urgency attributed to its financial cousin.

There are still people who believe that one year is not enough to get from this week's Poznan conference to next December's Copenhagen conference. The Climate Network wrote in Eco on Friday:

Delegates may have heard the recent speculation that getting a strong climate deal in Copenhagen is not possible. Excuses include: the US won’t be ready with cap and trade legislation before then, because the 2009 work program is too ambitious and because the horoscopes in this weekends paper are rumoured to say “Jupiter crossing Saturn makes preventing dangerous climate change a bit difficult in 2009”.

The pessimists may be right, but we can at least hope that Barack Obama really does see the benefit of a strategy that addresses the finance / environment / energy triumvirate in one fell swoop. He's at least in with a chance at getting his new New Deal in place quickly, but it's down to the political battles that need to be won.

I also find it interesting that while economists debate whether it makes 'financial sense' to fight climate change, the financial crisis has instantly wiped out far more equity than the cost attributed to climate change strategies. Sir Nicholas Stern pegged the cost of fighting climate change at 1% of global GDP, and Australian leader Kevin Rudd last month put the cost of the current financial crisis at 3% of global GDP. On top of that, the financial crisis has spurred governments to spend several trillions of dollars on panic bailouts, with zero preplanning and minimal consultation. So much for fiscal discipline.

But it's not just about headline financial indicators.

this little piggy went to market

It's not hard to make the business case for capturing methane from agricultural waste, which is why it's being done all over the place. Yet it's not being done on anything near the scale that is needed to counter the rapid growth in animals raised for meat. Agriculture is one area of human endeavour that is largely overlooked in efforts to curb carbon emissions, but it's under the microscope now at the UN negotiations in Poland.

The trillions of farm animals around the world generate 18 percent of the emissions that are raising global temperatures, according to United Nations estimates, more even than from cars, buses and airplanes.

But unlike other industries, like cement making and power, which are facing enormous political and regulatory pressure to get greener, large-scale farming is just beginning to come under scrutiny as policy makers, farmers and scientists cast about for solutions.

Get ready for a 'sin tax' on meat. Or maybe we could just plug those living smokestacks into regional gas pipelines to ship a new agricultural product to cities. Call it liquid pig.

the politics of climate science

The UN negotiations currently underway in Poland to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol serve as a reminder that by the end of next year South Africa and other developing countries are likely to be required to start reducing carbon emissions. Efforts will need to start in earnest to find ways to make it happen. We could have been using the local energy crisis as a launchpad for some serious efforts, but sadly that hasn't happened. Plans to reduce electricity consumption by 10% would never have amounted to much even if Eskom's halfhearted pleas had been backed up with some hard-hitting legislation, but even that has come to nought and we have frittered away another precious year.

Can South Africa become a climate change champion for the developing world? The current state of affairs is not promising, despite the potentially huge local impacts. What will it take to rouse the sleeping beast? Two things, at least.

One is a sense of urgency. The other is recognition that this is not just a case of leaving it to the scientists to agree on the science and sort things out. A debate now underway in California provides an illustration of how both these factors might come into play. While our situation in South Africa is vastly different in many ways, I think we could draw two lessons from California.

The first is that scientists need to recognise their role in creating a political climate that strengthens the forces for positive change - from above and below. One of the tragic aspects of the recent CSIR debacle is that researcher Anthony Turton was silenced for trying to do exactly that. From what has been published on the CSIR's treatment of Dr Turton, it seems that he was chastised for straying from what can be "scientifically substantiated" into emotionally charged territory. One letter to the Cape Times, defending the CSIR's position, made it clear that scientists should stick to science. But this position fails to recognise that science is rarely irrefutable and never neutral.

It's a sad day indeed if the CSIR's action will cause other researchers to hold back from speaking their minds.

If science is to be relevant (ironically, the CSIR conference from which Dr Turton was banned was titled "Science Real and Relevant") then it will often be politically charged. This is not to say that scientists can be careless; but if they do not explore beyond the known, they will not advance research; and if they are to bring politicians and other lay people along with them as quickly as possible, they will need to be somewhat provocative in order to dislodge us from the comfort of our existing worldview. Otherwise, there will be no sense of urgency.

The second lesson is that we need to fight the battle on many fronts. Long before climate change became a political issue, California - and the US in general - realised that emissions are already a health isssue, and that's why the US has had legislation in place for years (such as TEA-21) that ties federal funding of state infrastructure to air quality targets. The same could happen here. As national government sets emissions targets, they could require provinces to show that they are cleaning the air. National government would not necessarily have to specify how emissions are reduced, but funding could be channelled according to how successfully the skies are cleared. When we see that emissions are causing people to die and farmers to fail - these are the things that can spur change; but only if there is a sense of accountability.

Government - in theory, at least - should have an interest in making sure that its investments are broadly supportive of policy. In many spheres, South Africa already enjoys progressive policy, and the challenge lies in turning policy into implementable plans. And the "implementable" part of that challenge requires creating conditions that spur all stakeholders to play their part, from local government officials to property developers. But government is rarely as accountable as we would like, and lack of accountability limits the pressure that can be brought to bear in getting effective climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies in place. Which is why good governance is a key requirement in addressing climate change.

[Update on 4 Dec 2008: For some other interesting views on the issue of presenting climate change issues in a 'neutral' manner, have a look at this comment and the related post on Dot Earth, the NY Times blog.]