Counting Carbon: Reframing the Debate
May 3rd, 2009 by Richard
Humanity has burned half the fossil fuels required to force a 2°C rise in average global temperatures, and at the current rate, we’ll have 40 years to become a 100 percent renewable-energy society. That’s the message in a new study published in Nature last week which tries to simplify the climate debate by suggesting that developed and developing countries need to cap total emissions at one trillion tonnes, or it will lead to dramatic warming with severe consequences for the planet. The problem is that we’re already getting perilously close. Since the industrial revolution, we’ve burned 500 billion tons of carbon; now we’re emitting more than 10 billion tonnes — and rising — of carbon annually. So time is running short.
Professor Myles Allen, a physicist and climate expert at Oxford University who led the study on global carbon emissions, says that “Mother Nature doesn’t care about dates. To avoid dangerous climate change we will have to limit the total amount of carbon we inject into the atmosphere, not just the emission rate in any given year.”
This new research pushes the reset button so that stakeholders can think about carbon emissions in a streamlined and intriguing way. Allen and his colleagues are trying to encourage politicians and policy makers to consider the big picture, and understand how dawdling now with put an unfortunate burden on society in just a few years. In fact, the study would seem to indicate that that we need to start rationing fossil fuels sooner rather than later, with an eye towards turning the spigot off in less than two generations. And even if this reframing is successful, and we stop burning fossil fuels, we’ll still likely see warming of 2°.C,*which most scientists still believe will create serious problems for many countries, especially in the emerging world.
“If you use too much [carbon] this year, it doesn’t mean the planet will come to an end,” Allen says. “It means you have to work harder the next year.”
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By a renewable energy society, I mean one that burns no fossil fuels. And two degrees warming will undoubtably cause a great deal of sorrow and heartache, and that could lead to dangeous tipping points that bring an even greater rise in temperatures.
If we start urgently creating a renewble energy society now, we’re still on a trajectory that will leave more than a billion people in Asia with an inadequate water supply; the summer ice in the Arctic will still be gone; huge swathes of the Amazon rainforest will still die; the Colorado River will stop serving about 25 million people; and worldwide crop yields will fall significantly, to name just a few of the things to which we can look forward.
The study is fascinating in that it opens the debate on just who is entitled to how much of the remaining atmospheric carbon capacity. If we allocate it on a per-capita basis, in 6.7 billion equal shares, then we pretty much have to shut down North America. That would then force us to buy quotas from low-carbon emitting societies, i.e. poor African countries, but the market price would instantly become insane. Those poor African countries would become rich African countries overnight. We, of course, have all the guns so it’s not in our nature to voluntarily submit to such a massive transfer of wealth.
These studies, while invaluable, are ultimately profoundly discouraging if only because they expose the inevitability of what’s coming. They certainly reinforce the scenario depicted so well by Gwynne Dyer in his 3-part, CBC Radio “Ideas” documentary, “Climate Wars.” If you haven’t listened to it you should because it’s the most realistic and the most chilling outlook of what lies ahead in a matter of just two decades.
With our own NDP denouncing carbon taxes and the Libs bowing in awe of the Tar Sands, proclaiming bitumen the key to national unity and Athabasca Canada’s economic spine for the 21st century, there’s nobody in our True North Strong and Free offering any realistic hope of change.
It’s sad to talk to professionals in the climate change business who quietly confide that, while they’re still giving the cause their all, to themselves they’ve already given up all but the slightest hope we’ll sort this out in time.
Quite frankly, I’m with them. The irreversible changes you’ve already noted, such as the demise of the Himalayan glaciers transforming India’s and China’s key agricultural rivers into seasonal streams is enough. Dyer’s documentary (you really need to check it out) reveals that we’re concentrating on the wrong tipping points. Long before we get to an environmental, climate change tipping point, we arrive at a humankind tipping point - global war. The front lines are now emerging between India and Pakistan, China and Russia - all four of which share one thing in common - nuclear arsenals. Couple nukes with drought-fueled massive social upheaval and, well you can guess the point. The Pentagon gets it. So does Britain’s Ministry of Defence.
And on that cheerful, Monday morning note, I’ll bid adieu.
Mound of Sound…
This is a brilliant comment… Thanks! I soft-pedaled this study after recently feeling the wrath of a family member who doesn’t appreciate my candor. But I had thought of it in the same terms you mention… We’ve used up our quota.
Just like the professionals working this campaign, I’ve also been though a recent period of discouragement during which I could hardly write about climate change for the very reasons you’ve mentioned… It feels like the battle might already be lost. But I’ve regrouped, and decided to keep fighting as hard as I can because I want to be able to look my nieces and nephews — and any future children — in the eye.
The situation in Canada is so disappointing that I want to scream. The Conservatives are a killing us (and our economy while they’re at it), the NDP are too busy playing politics to see what’s really happening, and the Liberals under Michael Ignatieff are woefully misinformed. My only hope is that Iggy might be smart enough to change his mind, though it certainly doesn’t sound like it so far.
And alas, the Green Party still doesn’t stand a chance.
It’s funny… I downloaded the Gwynne Dyer podcasts through iTunes in January (readers: by subscribing to CBC’s Ideas, or by following the link), but haven’t yet listened to them… He’s long been one of my favorite journalists and commentators, but my partner thinks I’ve been far too immersed in climate change minutia over the winter, and needed to take a break. She’s right. But I think we’ll listen to them soon.
I’m not used to playing the optimist, and you probably don’t need reassurances from a part-time cynic… but I’ll throw it out there anyway. I wonder if there’s a lesson in US politics. In 2004 I was completely demoralized. Kerry couldn’t beat Bush despite an increasingly unpopular war, and Bush running a ridiculously conservative, destructive, cynical, and at times slanderous campaign. Democrats lost seats to Republicans in the US Congress and folks were talking about a permanent GOP majority. No one saw a way out.
Four years later we have a president talking seriously about environmental legislation (though he’s having a tough time with some of it). Progressives control both the legislative and executive branches of government and there’s talk of permanent progressive majorities (though it makes me cringe, given our recent past).
A cynic might point out it took a Katrina, a series of sex scandals, a perfect storm of economic struggles, and a president who criminally overstepped his authority.
I hope it won’t take that much your country, but I think it’s a sign that political fortunes can change in relatively short order. Four years may be a long time - especially when it may already be too late - but I didn’t think you all were tied to the same rigid election cycle we were. You know things can change. I know you’ll keep plugging away, as you say, and you’ll do a great job doing it.
You’ve already made a difference. I should know.
Hopefully, one day you’ll look back on all of this with some amount of satisfaction and pride - like some activists of the mid to late 1960s in the US fighting for civil rights. We probably won’t get it perfect, and we’ll suffer for it. But hopefully it will be better than it could have been, just like these last 40 years have been since the heroic words and deeds of MLK.
In the mean time we’ll keep plugging away, as I know you will… nudged, pushed, and cajoled by people like you: our social conscience.