One day, recently, I saw a fire-engine, crawling its way through a stop light, sirens blaring, hulking its way to provide the noble service of putting out someone’s fire or performing some other rescue operation. It was pouring a dark grey exhaust from one side, looking shiny new and well cared for, but obviously lacking advanced exhaust filtering or clean-energy drive technologies.
Police vehicles, government SUVs, public buses, fire engines and other public service vehicles, could be the great watershed moment required to effect a workable clean energy transition. Their ubiquity would mean that a fleet of high-powered electric vehicles, or alternative fuel or cutting-edge solar-supplemented hybrids, could help spur the development of a clean car infrastructure, with one or more stations in each town.
The US is in the midst of a complex array of government economic recovery outlays, designed to provide incremental support for a reformed energy economy and a more sustainable future, in which environmental degradation, technology breakdown, infrastructure erosion and public health ill-effects, are less of a drain on finances public and private.
The climate change conference currently underway in Poznan, Poland, seeks to build on the Bali agreement, adopted by 180 countries in 2007, in hopes of achieving a global emissions regime. A sweeping economic downturn overtaking North America and Europe, and now hitting China’s manufacturing and export base, it is feared, will hamper efforts to implement comprehensive green industrial and economic reforms.
Details of a new global climate protocol, to replace the troubled Kyoto protocol, which does not regulate China, India or the United States, are to be discussed at Poznan and established at the Copenhagen conference, in 2009. As reports from Poznan suggest progress is moving slowly, with some nations demanding the right to delay implementation of emissions caps, there is concern the Copenhagen protocol will be weaker than needed, or will fail to be adopted.
Steve Howard, chief executive of the Climate Group, says “Expectations from Poznan are not exceptionally high, but there are some clear signals from the major players that we are moving towards a robust global framework. Poznan needs to set the stage for Copenhagen to have a realistic chance of success.” The Climate Group works to bring governments and business leaders together to hash out a viable global framework for climate policy.
The UN’s top diplomat, however, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for a global “Green New Deal” and says that precisely because the global economic crisis threatens to distract policy-makers from much-needed action, now is the time “We must re-commit ourselves to the urgency of our cause”. One of Ban’s first trips after accepting the post of UN secretary general was to Antarctica, where scientists showed him the dire effects of global climate change and brought his attention to the threat of rising sea levels.
EU ministers are now studying the problem at Brussels, with policy-makers in the US watching closely. According to The Washington Post:
At the Brussels meeting, E.U. leaders must decide whether to finalize plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2020, while also reducing energy use by 20 percent and obtaining 20 percent of their energy supply from renewable sources. Coal-dependent nations such as Poland want to delay further lowering of emissions limits under the European Union’s nearly four-year old cap-and-trade system.
There is disagreement across the EU, however, on what the economic implications of speeding a shift to clean resources will be. The disparity in policy positions or confidence about the viability of green energy initiatives is tied in part to the degree to which various nations rely on emissions-intensive industries for their economic output. The AP is reporting:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the EU’s biggest economic power wanted an unequivocal commitment to the plan despite the economic downturn. But Italy’s premier threatened to veto the deal, and the 27 EU leaders will have a tough time finding a compromise that satisfies the often-conflicting demands from national industries.
With Poland, the nation hosting the Poznan conference, aiming to delay aggressive reductions, new global action on emissions reduction may be set back significantly, especially if the view takes root that emissions reduction is not economically viable. Green energy proponents, ecologists and some leading economists argue that such strategies are inseparable from achieving sustainable future prosperity, but skeptics and industry leaders continue to argue that such changes mean unnecessary economic strain.
The transition team for incoming US president Barack Obama has signalled that his policy on greening the economy will operate from the logic that an overhaul of the economic infrastructure will spur growth and build important resilience measures into the economy, over the long term. Ban Ki-moon’s call for a Green New Deal urges world leaders to include green economic inputs as a major segment of the massive economic stimulus plans currently being contemplated or implemented to spur economic recovery.
Climate scientists continue to sound the alarm, warning that failure to act on global climate change could lead to a severe worsening of chronic famine in poor parts of Africa. Climate-induced migration and the degradation of arable land could lead to a degeneration of food security, in Africa and across the world economy.
US president-elect Barack Obama has signalled his understanding of the intertwining of these issues. The Christian Science Monitor reports that, after meeting privately with his vice-president-elect Joe Biden and former VP and Al Gore —who won a Nobel Prize and Academy Award for his work to raise concern about the climate crisis—, Obama told reporters:
We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now, that this is a matter of urgency and national security, and it has to be dealt with in a serious way. That is what I intend my administration to do.
He also expressed his belief that “We have the opportunity now to create jobs all across this country, to re-power America, to redesign how we use energy, to think about how we are increasing efficiency, to make our economy stronger”. He has also linked the challenge of creating a clean-energy economy to national security, in part due to the need to extricate US economic prosperity from the availability of oil from authoritarian or hostile regimes.
The New Scientist magazine this week heralds a ‘plan B for biofuel’, making the case that starch-based ethanol fuels, like corn ethanol in the US, may drive up food prices, but a new generation of biofuels will sidestep the problem and help ethanol live up to its promise. “The corn required to fill an SUV tank with bioethanol just once could feed someone in Africa for a year” reports the UK-based magazine, but most biomass is not the starch currently being used to create bioethanol.
“Most biomass is a woody, indigestible mixture of lignin and cellulose, bound up in plan cell walls”, the report continues. The trick is distilling the cellulosic material in plant-waste to ethanol viable for fuel use, a process which costs a reported 50% more than making ethanol from corn starch, at least in the US. And the industry is paying attention to the problem, and working to create the solutions that will make ethanol a more environmentally friendly and economically sustainable fuel source:
In the US alone there are 30 projects in the pipeline to develop cellulosic ethanol “biorefineries”, with half a dozen of these dipping into a government development fund worth $385 million.
If vital advances are made in the refinery process, so that cellulosic biomass can be hydrolyzed into its basic sugars at a competitive cost, the result could be a genuine rebirth of the biofuels industry, with far more material available for fuel production, no need to cut into the food supply to derive ethanol from crops, and the possibility of using fallow ground for fuel-specific crop production.
This does not in itself solve all the problems, as biofuels, being organic in nature, actually emit carbon into the atmosphere. Some proponents hope that growing crops will offset carbon emissions from burning ethanol, but the fact remains combustible biofuels are not a zero-emissions energy resource. Many still believe ethanol is at best a complementary fuel source, best applied to assist hybrid vehicles during the transition from combustible to non-combustible locomotive energy, or an emissions reducer during that same phase of energy innovation.
But carbon-capture technologies could be applied to cellulosic-ethanol-burning motors to produce an emissions-free vehicle engine, in which case, bioethanol could turn out to be a better-than-carbon-neutral fuel that will replace fossil fuels in the interim between combustible fuels and zero-combustion non-nuclear standards of energy production.
The International Energy Agency has called for a major increase in the price at which carbon emissions are traded in carbon-offsetting schemes designed to reduce emissions. The IEA, as reported by the Financial Times, has called for carbon offsets to be priced closer to $200 per ton, in order to bring carbon-trading schemes in line with the costs of reducing emissions. EU carbon offsets are currently priced at roughly $43 per ton.
The call for a major energy-technology revolution is not the first, but it is one of the most urgent, top-level pleas by an agency government-linked international agency, for a major global initiative in this area. The problem of combustible fuels is not merely their adverse environmental impact, nor is it their massive significance for the economic vitality of the places they are found or refined in abundance: it is, at bottom, a problem of history, and scientific progress.
Burning carbon-based fuels is an ancient energy production technique, whose standardization and mechanization helped drive the industrial revolution in western Europe and North America, now more than two centuries ago. Allowing ourselves, as a species, to so intimately link the fate of our civilization —its economic performance, political liberty and the scope of its policy-making capabilities— to such an ancient method for something as basic as energy production —heat, light, electricity and locomotion—, is threatening the stability of what we have come to expect as the economic and political norm.
Achieving a zero-combustion standard for energy production —we should include in this new paradigm the need to surpass “collision energy”, i.e. nuclear—, means changing two things about our energy production model: 1. invest in new technologies that produce clean energy from renewable resources; 2. implement a standard operating procedure whereby energy production does not destroy the energy resource, but harnesses it.
The International Energy Agency now views achieving a post-carbon energy economy as fundamental to international peace and security and the stability of the global economy. Failure to innovate, at this point in history, will lead us more steadily toward the most serious potential effects of carbon-based global climate change. The UN has scheduled its next major climate conference for September, to plan for the Bali protocol negotiations in December.
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, also said on Friday that the UN would hold a major climate change planning session on 24 September, in anticipation of the next round of global negotiations on the issue climate change and greenhouse emissions, to be held in Bali, Indonesia, this December. As many as 100 heads of state are expected to attend the meeting, to be held the day before the annual General Assembly meeting opens at UN headquarters in New York City
The IEA on Friday called for a daunting increase in the cost of carbon offsets, part of the trading regimen that allows entities with high emissions to offset their activities by paying for the pollution. The recommendation was that offsets should be set at $200 per ton, while in the EU, they currently stand closer to $43 per ton. According to the Financial Times report:
Nobuo Tanaka, IEA executive director, said the world needed a “technology revolution” to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which would “completely transform the way we produce and use energy”.
The wave of headlines related to the climate crisis demonstrates the growing sense of urgency among leaders in politics and commerce, regarding the potential consequences of inaction. Ban, for his part, called for “concrete actions” from wealthy industrialized nations to cut emissions.
Senegal’s president, Abdoulaye Wade, said that “another round of G8 promises” [on climate change, but similar to those made on poverty and national debt of poor nations], must be followed with practical policies. He specified that “If our partners really want to fight, for instance, the rise of sea levels then they should fund practical projects, such as coastal protection”.
Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican party nominee for the US presidency, has said he views the issue of global climate change as an issue central to national security. This view echoes a strategic outlook report issued by top military officers in the US Dept. of Defense, last year. The US has previously resisted global protocols, demanding that booming developing economies, like China and India, also act to limit and scale back emissions.
Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic party nominee for the US presidency, has called for a new industrial-technological revolution that would blend the mass creation of new jobs and a major economic transition with the potential to implement policies that would “slow the rise of the oceans” and usher in a time when “the planet [begins] to heal”.
The Democrat favors what science says is necessary: an 80 percent cut in emissions by 2050. As President, Obama would achieve this through a “cap and trade” system that sells corporations permits to emit greenhouse gases and then invests the resulting revenue in green energy development and rebates to Americans hit by higher energy prices.
His policy proposals are bolder than McCain’s, but observers believe a major climate-change policy will be come law in the US in 2009, with a new president in office. And McCain is not shy about emissions reductions, calling for an overall 60% reduction by 2050, short of what the recently contested Liebermann-Warner Climate Security Act (CSA), which aimed for 71% reduction by 2050. (HotSpring’s Crisis Policy Forum published an rough-sketch action-plan last year suggesting 90% reduction by 2050.)
Also pushing US political debate on the subject is a report from NASA climate scientist, James Hansen, and colleagues, calling for an end to burning coal as fuel. CBS reports the study’s most significant data as follows:
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth’s [sic] atmosphere in 2007 was 385 parts per million and climbing 2 ppm a year. Alarmingly, Hansen’s study concluded that 350 ppm is the maximum level compatible with a livable planet. In other words, humanity is already in the danger zone and must reverse course rapidly.
If action were not taken to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, NASA’s scientists found, it would be impossible to stop the melting of polar ice, which would eventually drive a sea-level rise of up to 25 meters, inundating most of human civilization, over time.
As governments, businesses and scientists work toward creating cost-effective solutions for zero-emissions propulsion technologies, the possibility of a zero-combustion energy production and industrial fabrication model is emerging. Preservation of the natural environment and containment of emissions-induced global climate change both require new technologies that will allow full economic output, including industry and transport, that eliminate the need for combustible fuels.
Many renewable resource technologies currently being employed or explored require the burning of some form of fossil fuel at some stage of the production of the devices that allow for energy generation. Through a series of subtle changes to policy standards, extraction, production and transport of materials, and energy distribution networks, emissions tied to those elements of the production web.
But moving toward an entirely new standard in renewable energy extraction and implementation, we can begin to envision means by which automotive vehicles will actually be self-powering, requiring no fuel per se, and creating zero environmental disturbance aside from the space they occupy and the roads they use.
The zero-combustion standard is now within reach, as versatile revolutionary energy solutions first come online and then are expanded upon. The latest solutions will merge with emerging non-energy-related technologies and be transformed into consumer solutions for battery-like devices powerful enough to extract energy from their environment and power phones, computers, homes and even automobiles and aircraft.
Due to the science we already have, the laws we have to govern our own activity and to force government to act for the public health, we face the real possibility of being forced, in American courts, in the future, to pay for damage done to the most affected populations in other parts of the world, as a result of inaction by our government. And if not in court, then as a matter of the de facto urgencies of international political stability.
If we do not find a way to work to mitigate global climate change, future generations will look back and will see clearly that a zeitgeist of selfish convenience and primitive disregard for the wellbeing of our fellow human beings led to a reckless attitude with regard to this snowballing crisis. The public voice, and those campaigning for the level of public respect needed for election to office, should bring this issue to the fore, push for real initiatives to tackle the problem boldly, in a collaborative way, now.
In November, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon wrote a piece entitled “At the tipping point“, in which he explained some of the most dire aspects of the advancing effects of global climate change. Among the serious potential crises is the evidence that 20% of of Antarctica’s territory, in the form of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, may break up. “If it broke up, sea levels could rise by six meters”, he writes.
Added to that, such massive events may take some time to unfold, but once they reach their respective tipping point, the event itself could happen “quickly, almost overnight”. It’s worth considering what effect such a sudden sea-level rise would have on low-lying coastal cities, like New York, Mumbai or Shanghai, Dubai, Sydney or Hong Kong. The storm surge that breached New Orleans’ levees and plunged the city into chaos was roughly six meters.
The IPCC is one of the most comprehensive and prestigious bodies of scientists ever gathered from around the world, and it has been unequivocal in its reports this year. Every major player in world politics, including Pres. Bush, has acknowledged that global climate change is happening, and is the result of human activities. 2007 will be remembered as the year the climate crisis went public and stayed on the global public interest radar, for good. The United States cannot afford to be lagging behind, not now, and not in the eyes of history.
Senator Barack Obama’s campaign website explains the problem as follows: “Global warming is real, is happening now and is the result of human activities. The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years. Glaciers are melting faster; the polar ice caps are shrinking; trees are blooming earlier; oceans are becoming more acidic, threatening marine life; people are dying in heat waves; species are migrating, and eventually many will become extinct.” In fact, large-scale mass extinction already appears to be underway, with the IPCC predicting 15% to 37% of all species may be wiped out by climate change alone.
The campaign issue write-up continues: “Scientists predict that absent major emission reductions, climate change will worsen famine and drought in some of the poorest places in the world and wreak havoc across the globe. In the U.S., sea-level rise threatens to cause massive economic and ecological damage to our populated coastal areas.” Many may disagree, but the science supports every word of the problem as stated. US presidential candidates are, for the first time, seriously contending for the climate-responsibility prize.
So, for those candidates serious enough to work across ideological rifts, a proposal for responsible legislation to deal with this crisis (to be pushed for and initiated in advance of the November 2008 US elections):
1. Push a 90% emissions reduction goal for 2050, and make it global. (There’s no reason this cannot be done. Wind-energy resources in Texas, Kansas and North Dakota alone could power the entire US economy and more, if properly funded and developed. Most nations have a surplus of wind resources; the secret is local development and responsible construction and implementation. Other new technologies and a rebuilding of transport infrastructure can help reach this goal, without undermining economic stability.)
2. Work to punish all forms of corruption associated with energy production, and implement stiff sanctions against any nation that does not severely punish such corruption (whether it’s bribery is Appalachian coal mining schemes, Saudi authoritarianism and arms trafficking, Uzbekistan’s megalomaniac leader, or China’s support for the Bashir government in Khartoum).
3. Ensure that the US economy is incentivized, from top to bottom, to adopt renewable resources and that we can fund through innovation, entrepreneurship, research and development grants, the green technology boom, which if properly carried out, will far surpass the 1990s economic expansion related to the building and popularization of the world wide web.
4. Institute in US law a “limited use” doctrine for nuclear plants, which means they will be employed in a period of transition (with no new construction) as a means of softening the price pinch that could come to sectors that lag in the renewables transition. This is not meant to allow new growth or prolonged use of fossil fuels, but rather to avoid punishing the underprivileged for their lack of access to easy capital. Eventually, a plan will need to be implemented that will transition away from these extremely costly plants with unequaled capacity for contamination (in case of accident).
5. Greening the military: begin immediately the funding and incentivization for defense contractors of a comprehensive transition to a military made more efficient, flexible and green in its global reach by way of the ecological (which in the very near future means economic) sustainability of its technologies and deployment systems. This will soon be a measure of rapid-deployment capacity, i.e. the ability to project power without bankrupting the state, so there is a direct security motivation involved in this. (The US military is a massive source of research and development, and cutting-edge technologies could emerge for civilian use, if the fossil fuel addiction is broken.)
6. Plan for “jump” generation innovations: energy resourcing is still in its infancy, comparatively (fossil fuels are square one; nuclear a bold but ill-advised ‘spur’; renewables are the first step toward rational sustainable energy policy; after renewables, or within the context of, there will come a more advanced mode of powering the global economy). Geothermal still relies on risky construction methods, wind requires massive construction and solar occupies space (ever less, but still a constraint), whereas new capabilities may be lying in wait beyond the scope of current scientific methods.
Let’s think ahead and privilege the “zero emissions” criterion. The more we can do to implement large-scale energy solutions that are in themselves zero-emissions processes, the larger the percentage of current emissions we can do without. It’s that simple.
We are on the cusp of an energy revolution, which is synonymous with acting to save the relative homeostasis of the global environment, to which our civilization is accustomed and which it requires for long-term stability. We can phase out fossil fuels, then nuclear, while building a global renewables grid, and (parallel to that) jumping ahead to what’s next. Integrated thinking will help us to serve the needs of a global systems ecology imperiled by our current practices.
Lastly, I propose that it is of the utmost urgency to examine security risks involved with climate change. We already have water wars in Africa. There are potential hydrological conflicts brewing in South America and south Asia. Australia faces the possibility of the Sydney region becoming near uninhabitable in a century’s time. And Bangladesh, with more than 150 million inhabitants, is caught between India’s overpumping of vital rivers and the constant threat of mass death and chaos from monsoon flooding.
We need to look at the potential for crop failure on massive regional scales, resulting economic or political collapse, or the unplanned migration of tens of millions of refugees, and what happens when local militia start responding (reference: Darfur, or Afghanistan, on a much larger scale).
We need to find a collaborative framework wherein:
1. democracy is not in any way curtailed nor are totalitarian measures elevated by the global protocols;
2. global treaties are bold, viable, respected and implemented;
3. the median wealth of the human population globally is increased (to de-incentivize violations).
