Carbon Copy

global warming - why even doubters should pay attention

Whether or not you believe that humans are the cause of climate change, it's hard to deny the accumulated studies suggesting that the earth's atmosphere is warming. Many will still argue that it doesn't matter: the climate goes through cycles, so what's a few degrees up or down?

An article published online yesterday in Nature provides a statistical analysis of literally thousands of observations of natural systems from around the world, taken between 1970 and 2004.

Among the warming-linked changes seen in the study are the timing of plant flowering, bird nesting, ice melting, salmon migration and pollen release; declines in populations of polar bears, krill and penguins; and increased growth of Siberian pines and cool-water ocean plankton.

There seems to be a clear picture forming of significant change in biological systems. Again, does it really matter if a few species go extinct or fruit ripens earlier or later? In some respects, we don't know how much it matters, but that in itself is reason to be cautious. Business as usual is to deplete the earth's resources - both the living and the stored - so arguments that "there is no proof of anthropogenic climate change, so we should just do nothing" are fallacious. We aren't doing nothing now; we are actively changing the environment in which we live. If we clear the oceans of fish, what does that do to the rest of the food chain? Biodiversity is important for a number of reasons, and one is to provide ecological resilience. It's easy to forget that we are part of the chain, and while we may be able to overcome some obstacles, we are not immune to the laws of nature. Some species have gone extinct in dramatic fashion, not gradually. You have been warned.

So here's my short list of why a few degrees matters, and why we need to do something about it.

migration through climate change

Here's a fascinating look at how human population growth and migration has been affected by warming and cooling periods on Earth from 160,000 years ago up to recent times. [via rebecca's pocket]

how is your inner primate?

Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson started writing about climate change in his Mars books, and takes the topic further in his latest trilogy. In an interview with BLDGBLOG, he talks of how we - modern society - pursue activities that are intended to make our lives easier, or more interesting, or somehow better, and many of these things are harming us directly as individuals and also indirectly by altering our earthly habitat.

And there’s an addictive side to this. People try to do stupid technological replacements for natural primate actions, but it doesn’t quite give them the buzz that they hoped it would. Even though it looks quite magical, the sense of accomplishment is not there. So they do it again, hoping that the activity, like a drug, will somehow satisfy the urge that it’s supposedly meant to satisfy. But it doesn’t. So they do it more and more – and they fall down a rabbit hole, pursuing a destructive and high carbon-burn activity, when they could just go out for a walk, or plant a garden, or sit down at a table with a friend and drink some coffee and talk for an hour. All of these unboosted, straight-forward primate activities are actually intensely satisfying to the totality of the mind-body that we are.

So a little bit of analysis of what we are as primates – how we got here evolutionarily, and what can satisfy us in this world – would help us to imagine activities that are much lower impact on the planet and much more satisfying to the individual at the same time. In general, I’ve been thinking: let’s rate our technologies for how much they help us as primates, rather than how they can put us further into this dream of being powerful gods who stalk around on a planet that doesn’t really matter to us.

[...]

Sustainable development, as well: that’s a term that’s been contaminated. It doesn’t even mean sustainable anymore. It means: let us continue to do what we’re doing, but somehow get away with it. By some magic waving of the hands, or some techno silver bullet, suddenly we can make it all right to continue in all our current habits. And yet it’s not just that our habits are destructive, they’re not even satisfying to the people who get to play in them. So there’s a stupidity involved, at the cultural level.

why the US did what it did at Bali

In a guest column on Grist, Professor Andrew Light provides the best analysis I have seen of why representatives of the Bush admimistration behaved the way they did at the Bali conference. We'll probably never really know for sure, but Professor Light provides several possible explanations. Considering it was all about setting the scene for the negotiations to come, rather than actually producing a binding protocol for post-2012 Kyoto, it seems bizarre that Washington should be so obstructionist.

What is heartening, though, is that despite the petty behaviour of US negotiators, the rest of the delegate countries were willing to leave a seat for the US at the negotiating table. Let's hope the next US president is as magnanimous.

South Africa helps save Bali declaration

It's over, and Bali negotiators are limping home after a gruelling two weeks. But they nearly didn't reach closure. In the early hours of Saturday, US representative Paula Dobriansky again blamed developing countries for not showing commitment to targets for themselves. This has been an issue for the US since the original Kyoto Protocol was agreed, and was the reason Washington refused to sign on in 2001; and it has been a sticking point throughout the Bali conference.

The EU was pushing hard to have developed countries adopt emissions targets in line with the IPCC summary report issued earlier this year, but eventually backed down in the face of objections from the US, Canada and Japan, who insisted that developing countries needed to show stronger commitment. In the final hours of the conference, India had requested a change in the wording of the final declaration that would place greater emphasis on the need for sustainable development in developing countries, and for technology transfer to assist developing countries to migrate towards lower emissions. The US rejected India's change.

Global Deal reports that the eleventh-hour obstruction by the US was met by strong opposition:

Japan speaks next, giving the United States some kind of fuzzy support. But South Africa issues a ferocious and articulate denunciation of the American position. Developing countries have gone much further than they needed to. It's the United States that has failed to take on strong commitments.

According to Wired, South Africa was followed by the Papua New Guinea delegate:

"We seek your leadership," Kevin Conrad told the Americans. "But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way."

After a bleak few moments, the US backed down and expressed a desire for a shared vision and a Bali roadmap. According to Global Deal, Dobriansky says "In a spirit of co-operation and responding directly to the words of South Africa, she is prepared to withdraw her objections and go with the consensus position." South Africa welcomed this new US position, and "the delegate 'interprets' the text that applies to developing countries and shows that it can be interpreted as meeting the needs of the poorest people."

A few minutes later, agreement was reached on a Bali declaration, but it was clear that many issues have been left for the negotiations that will continue from here. Bangladesh expressed a view that seems to be felt by a number of the poorest developing countries: that treating the G77 countries (the negotiating block of 155 developing countries) as equals unfairly discriminates against the poorer ones.

If this emerges as a significant split, it may make things tougher for South Africa, as one of the stronger G77 countries with high levels of carbon emissions. I suggested on Friday that targets should recognise historic advantage gained through carbon-intensive industrialisation. This approach benefits South Africa in relation to the developed world, but places a greater burden on South Africa in comparison to poorer countries.

The hard work is only just beginning.

[Update on 19 December: Here is the text of the Bali Declaration signed by 200 scientists on 6 December. Try as I might, I can't find the text of the final agreement reached on 15 December. Here is the unedited Bali Action Plan (the five-page document that all the fuss was about). Here is the Conference President's closing statement.]

Bali-hoo on day 12

It had to happen. The left hook I mentioned yesterday. We just didn't know where it would come from, although many would have guessed it would be the US. And they'd be right. Global Deal reports:

But the Americans have just dropped something of a bombshell. An hour or so ago, they read out new text to a meeting of ministers that are looking to push through a new agreement. A copy has just reached me here in the lobby outside.

The core of the US proposal is that developed and developing countries should be treated in the same way, with countries taking on targets according to "their level of economic development and significance" or some similar formulation.

Blogger David Steven suggests this is not just an amendment to text that negotiators had been working on in the early hours of Friday morning, but a completely new proposal, designed to provoke. The question is, why? Bali COP 13 is now in its final hours, and the answer may only become clear once everyone's gone home and the dust has settled.

What I'm wondering is whether it will really make much difference to the Americans, if they do pass the Climate Security Act. The Act is a protectionist measure that essentially hedges Washington's bets. If developing countries don't adopt carbon emissions targets, the Act will give America the means to block trade from those countries.

There's more than one way to slice the carbon cake, and more than one way to set targets. New Zealand is sensibly approaching their goal of becoming a carbon neutral country by slicing the cake into economic sectors. Bite-sized chunks, as it were, to make it easier to monitor progress and make adjustments along the way. There is no reason to be concerned about countries adopting such a practical approach, but what of the bumbling countries like Canada, or the fast-developing ones like China?

If internationally agreed targets for both developed and developing countries are going to be based on levels of economic development, as the US is suggesting, one way to be truly equitable would be to consider not only current emission levels but also the historic emissions from past economic activity. Just as an assessment of the sustainability of a new building considers the embodied energy in the materials used to construct it, or product labelling might include the carbon emissions from its manufacture (as the US Climate Security Act is proposing), so too entire economies have a level of "embodied carbon" that needs to be considered.

All the steel, concrete and other materials used to build the American Dream represent vast amounts of carbon emissions over centuries. To ignore that historic impact in setting emissions targets would be to severely disadvantage developing countries. This is not to say that they should be allowed to develop as irresponsibly as the more developed countries did; they can grow using leapfrog technologies that have lower ecological impacts. I am just suggesting that it would be grossly unjust to consider only current emissions in the targets.

Of course the US would not like this approach, because it would place a greater responsibility for climate change mitigation on their shoulders, but I think it's time the developing world stood up to Washington's bullying tactics.

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.)

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.