One Blue Marble Blog

On the latest G8 Climate Scorecard (PDF) released in advance of the L’Aquila, Italy G8 Summit, Canada has fallen into last place now that the Obama administration is reversing the global warming policies of his predecessor. The report chastises Canada as one of the few developed countries in the world with dramatically rising greenhouse gas emissions, and no real plan to control them. The scorecard also notes that Germany is the acknowledged G8 leader when it comes to climate change, and that UK, Germany and France have all been enacting successful policies to cut emissions, with all three nations expected to exceed their Kyoto obligations.

But the report argues that this still isn’t good enough. By a long shot.

The scorecard was released by the WWF and financial services giant Allianz SE. It noted that Canada’s emissions have risen by 26% over 1990 levels, and that telling statistic means that Canada’s per capita emissions will soon surpass the US. And the sad truth is that per capita emissions in Canada and the US are double those in Europe.

“We emit more greenhouse gases than half the countries in the world put together,” said Keith Stewart, WWF-Canada’s climate change campaign manager. “We have the resources — financially, intellectually, ecologically — to be leaders, and we’ve simply chosen not to… Canada is becoming increasingly isolated in clinging to the fossil economy while the rest of the world is moving on to green economy.”

Stewart argues that Canada’s poor showing is especially irksome given country’s inherent natural wealth. “Nowhere else on Earth do fewer people steward more resources, yet Canada now stands dead last amongst the G8 Nations in protecting our shared home from the threat of dangerous climate change.Canada’s future lies in creating green jobs on a living planet, not in becoming the energy sweatshop for the world.”

The report suggests that while some countries are pulling their weight, much remains to be done, and the lack of leadership among G8 nations is discouraging. Even the top countries are not committing to medium-term emission reductions by recent scientific studies. In the report’s foreword , James Leape, Director General of WWF International and Allianz board member Joachim Faber, urged the nations to take dramatic action now to seal the deal in Copenhagen.

“While there might be a bailout possibility for the financial system, no amounts of money will save the planet once climate change crosses the danger threshold. It is therefore crucial to limit the rise of global temperature to below two degrees compared to pre-industrial levels.”

A vast swath of the coastal lands around New Orleans will be underwater in 90 years because of rising sea levels due to climate change, according to a study published this week in Nature Geoscience. The new report suggests that up to 13,500 square kilometers — an area the size of Connecticut — could be lost to the sea, which is much greater than earlier estimates. The findings suggest that some hard decisions will have to be made about how best to protect coastal areas under threat from melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and an expected increase in hurricane intensity.

Hurricane Katrina started the ball rolling in 2005 by seriously reducing the land mass of the barrier island chain sheltering New Orleans, and that loss of protection is much greater than expected. Rising waters and thousands of dams are also affecting the Mississippi’s ability to bear sediment downstream, and that too is weakening the region’s natural defenses. Up to 24 billion tons of sediment would be required to shore up the coastline, and that’s just outside the realm of possibility.

“I think every geologist that has worked on this problem realises the future does not look very bright unless we can come up with some innovative ways to get that sediment in the right spot,” said Professor Harry Roberts, one of the study’s co-authors. “For managers and people who are squarely in the restoration business, this is going to force them to make some very hard decisions about which areas to save and which areas you can’t save.”

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* Le Grand Dérangement of 1755 sent many of my Acadian forebears to Louisiana.

Scottish lawmakers have signed into law the world’s toughest climate regulations. The landmark legislation includes binding goals to cut greenhouse gases by 42 percent* by 2020 from 1990 levels, which knocks Germany into second place in the race to set the most ambitious GHG reduction targets. Scotland’s bill does hold an option to delay meeting these ambitious targets if the road to Copenhagen turns into a dead end. The Scottish bill is comprehensive, and even includes steps to curb shipping and aviation emissions.

Environmental campaigners are thrilled by Scotland’s initiative which comes just days after they denounced targets set by Russia and Japan. “At least one nation is prepared to aim for climate legislation that follows the science,” said Kim Carstensen, head of the Global Climate Initiative of the WWF International environmental group.

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* By comparison, Canada is promising to cut GHG emissions by 2 percent by 2020, using 1990 as a baseline.

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman, in fine form.

In May, after Canada yet again failed to meet its international obligations on climate change, I sent this letter to the Honourable Jim Prentice, Minister for Industry the Environment asking him to convene a press conference to better inform Canadians on the dangers of climate change. At the very least, I want our Environment Minister to take the muzzle off Environment Canada scientists who are no longer allowed to speak to the media without approval from the minister. In effect, that gag orders means that EC scientists aren’t allowed to speak to the media, period.

I received the following reply from David McGovern, Deputy Minister at Environment Canada. Perhaps he’s hoping that I won’t notice as as he dipsy-doodles his way around the truth.

I’ve parsed his comments below. It’s good to have a blog at times like this.

Letter from David McGovern, Deputy Minister, Environment Canada

On behalf of the Honourable Jim Prentice, Minister of the Environment, I am pleased to respond to your email regarding the matter of Dr. Don MacIver not having attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland, as well as your concerns on Canada’s GHG emissions.

I appreciate your interest in ensuring that Canada supports its scientific and technical experts when they have a significant role to play in the international community. (1)

Dr. MacIver was not a member of the official delegation to the conference in Poznan. (2) He was scheduled to make a brief presentation at a three-hour side meeting (3) aimed at providing the delegates in Poznan on an upcoming World Climate Conference. After reviewing the purpose of the meeting and Dr. MacIver’s proposed role, as well as considering that this matter was not related to the climate change negotiations, it was decided that we could not responsibly justify the expense to the public at a time when many Canadians are experiencing serious economic hardship. (4)

I would also like to point out that this decision was not a special case involving only Dr. MacIver. Before the conference, the proposed role of each member of the Canadian delegation (2) was carefully reviewed, and only the essential members of the negotiating team were approved for travel to Poznan at public expense. (5)

In 2009, as Canada continues its efforts to work actively and constructively (6) through the United Nations Climate Change Convention to help develop an effective international agreement to address climate change, we will continue to carefully review all the proposed international travel by federal officials and to make decisions in the spirit of financial restraint during these difficult economic times. (7)

However, this will not diminish the Government’s commitment to reducing Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent from 2006 (8) levels on the way to a 60-70 percent reduction from 2006 levels by 2050 (9). The Government will accomplish this through concrete actions to reduce emissions from the industrial, transportation, and commercial and residential sectors. (10) We will work with provincial governments and with our partners to develop and implement a North America-wide cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases. In addition, the government has set an objective that 90 percent of Canada’s electricity needs should be provided by non-emitting sources, such as hydro, nuclear, clean coal or wind power, by 2020. (11)

For more information on federal actions to address climate change and the clean air we breathe, please visit www.ecoaction.gc.ca.

Sincerely,
David McGovern,
Assistant Deputy Minister
International Affairs Branch
Environment Canada

1) McGovern says that the government will support its scientific and technical experts when they have a significant role to play in the international community. That’s just one facet of the letter I sent. My primary concern is that Environment Canada scientists have a major role to play in every community in Canada. If Canadians had a clearer idea of what’s coming down the pike, the pressure on this government to enact meaningful climate legislation would increase exponentially.

I can see where the current government wouldn’t want that.

2) Was Dr. MacIver on the team, or wasn’t he? In the third paragraph, McGovern suggests that he wasn’t. But if that is so, why does he state in the fourth paragraph that all members of the negotiating team ― including Dr. MacIver ― needed to have a solid reason for being in Poland?

It sounds like MacIver was a member of the negotiating team, at least until he wasn’t.

3) McGovern belittles the role that MacIver was to play, describing it as a “brief presentation” in a “side meeting” at the climate talks. He neglects to mention that MacIver was acting as chair of the World Meteorological Organization, and that he was forced to resign his position after the government’s refusal to let him speak.

4) McGovern suggests that the reason that MacIver was dropped from the Poznan team ― while on his way to the airport, I might add ― because “we could not responsibly justify the expense to the public at a time when many Canadians are experiencing serious economic hardship.”

Now that’s straight bullshit. First of all, MacIver’s traveling expenses were actually covered by the WMO. When this came to light, government PR flacks suggested that it wasn’t his plane fare that was at issue, it was his salary, and the vital work he was leaving behind to attend Poznan.

Do bureaucrats think that climate scientists go to climate conferences hoist a few mugs of mead while casting the 20-sided die in Dungeons and Dragons?

Stephen Harper Thinks Kyoto is a Socialist Scheme

5) Some recent history would not go amiss. Canada suffered through a federal election in October, and Jim Prentice was appointed to his new post as environment minister on October 30, 2008, five weeks before the conference. So you’d expect that he might want to have a few experts on his team at Poznan ― that is, unless the government had no intention of listening to the experts.

When it comes to climate change, Harper hasn’t listened to any experts since he became Prime Minister. In 2004, he described climate change as junk science, and the Kyoto Accord as a socialist plot.

6) McGovern suggests that Canada will “continue to work actively and constructively” at climate talks.

That would be a huge step forward! Perhaps he doesn’t know what others have been saying about our recent role in climate talks. To wit:

Embassy Magazine

At the most recent round of international climate change negotiations, Canada once again emerged as a leading “spoiler,” attracting scorn and condemnation from both environmentalists and foreign delegations alike.

Graham Saul, Climate Action Network

“I think Canada is seen as a spoiler role in the negotiations,” said Graham Saul. “They’ve been blocking progress in a number key areas and have been called out for it.”

Mr. Saul said Canadians would be appalled to know what their government was doing.

“In our opinion there is a real disconnect between where Canadians are at on these issues and what the government is doing at this conference,” he said. “I think a lot of Canadians would be would be deeply ashamed to learn about the role Canada is playing.”

Sierra Club

Well it’s over. I began COP 14 with high hopes for progress towards Copenhagen and a post-Kyoto climate plan, but this did not happen. COP 14 failed to produce any significant progress. There were a few outcomes (an Adaptation Fund Board was created) but hardly the kind and number we had hoped for. It was not only Canadian NGOs and youth who left disappointed, but international delegates and NGOs as well. The world really was watching Canada actions at the negotiations to see if they would finally take meaningful action to fight climate change. But sadly for Canadians— and tragically for those whose nations will be underwater as a result of sea level rise― Canada did nothing.

Canada named Colossal Fossil

As it has at past international climate change negotiations, Canada collected a number of “awards” drawing attention to its climate change delinquency.

The “Fossil Awards” are given out by the Climate Action Network, a global network of more than 400 environmental organizations. Each day, representatives from these organizations voted on which country they think most blocked progress at the talks.

At the 2008 summit, Canada received 17 fossil awards, often more than one per day, for a variety of reasons. As a result, Canada was named the world’s Colossal Fossil as the worst climate bandit on the planet.

7) Was MacIver’s trip cancelled because money was so tight? Well, perhaps, but it’s worth noting that this example of fiscal prudence was made while Stephen Harper was telling Canadians that our economy was in good shape, that job losses would be minimal, that our budget was balanced.

8. Canada is promising to cut its GHG emissions by 20 percent by 2020, McGovern says. But he’s using 2006 as a baseline even though the most developed countries world have agreed to use 1990 as the baseline. Viewed through that prism, Canada is promising to cut emissions by 2 percent over 1990 levels. That’s pitiful; virtually every other developed nation has pledged to do better.

9) As point 8 suggests, our promise to cut emissions by 60 percent by 2050 is also fudged because we’re still trying to use 2006 as the baseline. In fact, we’re pledging to cut emissions by about 40 percent. We’re promising to do even less than many of the world’s poorest countries.

Just as a comparison, Scotland is pledging to cut its emissions by 42% by 2020! Germany will cut emissions by 40 percent, and the UK by 34 percent.

10) McGovern says that Canada is taking concrete steps to cut emissions, but he’s talking through his hat. In 2007, for example, Canada’s emissions rose dramatically. Most analysts, including the government’s own watchdog, say we have almost no hope in hell in meeting those targets given the inaction by the Harper government (and, to be fair, the Chretien and Martin governments, too).

The difference is that the science now is frightening.

11) Canada is promising to use renewables for 90 percent of our electricity by 2020. That’s good, but it might hide the fact that fully 60 percent of our power is already generated by hydro, and another 12 percent by nuclear. Similarly, the provincial governments of both Ontario and BC are currently enacting environmental policies that will dramatically increase the percentage of renewable energy that powers Canada. (Ontario, for example, is phasing out coal).

The federal government has nothing to do with it.

In fact, Prentice and McGovern seem to be making all the wrong decisions, in my opinion. In the last two budgets, the government has invested heavily in carbon capture and biofuels, and ignored more promising technologies like wind power and energy efficiency. Carbon capture, for example, is at least 15 years away from implementation, and it won’t work on the fastest growing source of Canada’s GHG emissions: the Alberta Tar Sands.

McGovern’s letter makes one thing clear: Prentice is trying to lock us into a fossil fuel economy to protect Alberta jobs, and his party’s power base.

With men like Jim Prentice and Stephen Harper in power, Canada will diminish.

Leading experts have made good on a promise to update the climate change science in advance of Copenhagen, and they’re telling politicians that humanity is risking “abrupt and irreversible climatic shifts” from the accelerating pace of global warming. Rising global surface and ocean temperatures, surging sea levels, extreme weather events, and the retreat of Arctic sea ice* are all coming harder and faster than research suggested five or 10 years ago. The takeaway message is that politicians had better find a way to work together at the next international climate summit in December, or the results will be devastating.

The 36-page document summarizes more than 1,400 studies presented at an emergency climate conference held last in March in Copenhagen. The report said that greenhouse gas emissions are growing faster than expected, and evidence accumulates that the planet itself is becoming a factor. Some carbon sinks like the oceans and Canadian boreal forests are diminishing, and many places in the far north show signs of liberating methane into the atmosphere.

“Rapid, sustained, and effective mitigation … is required to avoid ‘dangerous climate change’ regardless of how it is defined,” according to the report. “Temperature rises above 2°C will be difficult for contemporary societies to cope with, and are likely to cause major societal and environmental disruptions through the rest of the century and beyond.” And a business-as-usual approach will take us well beyond the 2°C threshold in less than 50 years.

The report suggests that deep emission cuts are essential, and the sooner the better. “Weaker targets for 2020 increase the risk of serious impacts, including the crossing of tipping points” beyond which irreversible natural forces could push temperatures to unthinkable levels.

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* Among the predictions made, and summarized in this 36-page document: The coming decade will be the warmest ever, and summer arctic ice will largely melt by 2020. Droughts will intensify, and hurricanes will become ever more potent. By 2100, we should expect sea levels to rise by between 5 and 7 feet; that 85 percent of the Amazon rainforest will die (if it isn’t already cut down); that 50 to 70 percent of species will go extinct; that agriculture will fail in California; that the American Southwest will be turned into a permanent dust bowl; and that a few billion people in Asia to have no water for life. And that’s but a sampling of dozens of apocalyptic predictions.

In a wide-ranging and candid interview with The Globe & Mail’s Editorial Board, Canada’s Environment Minister has admitted what environmental activists have been saying for years — that carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology probably won’t work at the Alberta Tar Sands. Nevertheless, over the last 18 months, the provincial and federal governments have offered the Alberta oil industry and power utilities almost $3 billion in funding to establish CCS demonstrations in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Most oil producers have shown little interest, but a few coal-fired power demonstration pilots will likely be approved.

“CCS is not the silver bullet in the oil sands,” said Prentice. “It’s important, but it is really in the upgrading of bitumen that CCS has more promise, rather than in the mining or in situ production.”

Minister Jim Prentice said that he is watching several projects closely that are testing solvents — instead of natural gas — in the extraction process to see if they cut GHG emissions. The Alberta oil sands are the fastest growing source of carbon pollution in Canada, and a big reason why the government is only promising to cut CO2 emissions by 2% by 2020 over 1990 levels.

Prentice does believe that CCS holds promise for capturing emissions that are produced by upgrading bitumen to a usable product. The problem with this acknowledgment is that most tar sands oil is sent to the US for refining.

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I have to say that this is the very first time that our Environment Minister has actually sounded like an Environment Minister. I’m still trying to figure out if he went off-script.

For more current news on the Alberta Tar Sands, have a look at Clearing the Air of Oil Sands Myths at the Pembina Institute.

President Obama’s top science advisors have created a comprehensive climate change report which details the expected impact of global warming on the US, and urgently recommends decisive action. The report, by the Global Climate Research Program, is being unveiled by Dr. John Holdren, who heads the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and NOAA’s Dr. Jane Lubchenco. It is expected to provide the scientific support for the administration’s cap-and-trade policies, and the need to transition as quickly as possible to a low-carbon economy. By acting soon, and boldly, the report suggests that humanity has a chance to avoid the worst effects of climate change. By failing to act, society will place an overwhelming — and perhaps insurmountable — burden on future generations.

The report will suggest that under a business-as-usual scenario, temperatures across the US will rise by between 9 and 11°F over the next 90 years. By any measure, that would be devastating. For example, the report predicts that temperatures in Kansas City will be above 90°F for more than 120 days per year by 2090. Houston and Washington will both suffer through temperatures greater than 98° for more than two months each year.

Among the report’s key findings:

We’re in the middle of a large move from Lunenburg to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

I’ll start posting on One Blue Marble again next week. Salut!

A new report from a dozen retired US military leaders warns that climate change poses significant risks to its national security. Dependence on fossil fuels and the vulnerable energy grid threaten the country, according to Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Securityfrom the Military Advisory Board (MAB) of the Center for Naval Intelligence. The report argues that climate change concerns are intersecting with issues of national security, calling the country’s reliance on fossil fuels “perilous.”

Among the study’s recommendations:

1. The US uses about 25% of the world’s oil but only controls 3%, leading to a fossil-fuel dependence that undermines its foreign policy objectives and economic stability.

2. Climate change will create further instability in politically unstable regions, and dwindling fossil fuel reserves will create an upward pressure on fuel prices, and that could disable the American economy
3. The military relies on on fossil fuels, but it uses them inefficiently, and that inefficiency wastes money and often places soldiers in harm’s way. The Department of Defense should better understand its own carbon footprint, correct inefficiencies, and move to renewable energy where possible
4. The antiquated US electricity grid represents a national security “weak link.” The US and DOD should enable smart grid technologies.
5. The DOD should integrate energy security and climate change targets into national security and military planning processes.

“We have less than ten years to change our fossil fuel dependency course in significant ways,” concludes Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, the former Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfare Requirements and Programs. “Our nation’s security depends on the swift, serious and thoughtful response to the inter-linked challenges of energy security and climate change. Our elected leaders and, most importantly, the American people should realize this set of challenges isn’t going way. We cannot continue business as usual.”

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The MAB includes:

General Gordon R. Sullivan, USA (Ret.)
Admiral Frank “Skip” Bowman, USN (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Lawrence P. Farrell Jr., USAF (Ret.)
Vice Admiral Paul G. Gaffney II, USN (Ret.)
General Paul J. Kern, USA (Ret.)
Admiral T. Joseph Lopez, USN (Ret.)
Admiral Donald L. “Don” Pilling, USN (Ret.)
Admiral Joseph W. Prueher, USN (Ret.)
Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.)
General Charles F. “Chuck” Wald, USAF (Ret.)
General Anthony C. “Tony” Zinni, USMC (Ret.)