Captain Compassion
2007-11-09 15:25:28 UTC
How to stop climate change: the easy way
Mark Lynas
Published 08 November 2007
http://www.newstatesman.com/200711080026
We have about 100 months left. If global greenhouse gas emissions have
not begun to decline by the end of 2015, then our chances of
restraining climate change to within the two degrees "safety line" -
the level of warming below which the impacts are severe but tolerable
- diminish day by day thereafter. This is what the latest science now
demands: the peaking of emissions within eight years, worldwide cuts
of 60 per cent by 2030, and 80 per cent or more by 2050. Above two
degrees, our chances of crossing "tipping points" in the earth's
system - such as the collapse of the Amazon rainforest, or the release
of methane from thawing Siberian permafrost - is much higher.
Despite this urgent timetable, our roads continue to heave with
traffic. Power companies draft blueprints for new coal-fired plants.
The skies over England are criss-crossed with vapour trails from
aircraft travelling some of the busiest routes in the world. Global
emissions, far from decreasing, remain on a steep upward curve of
almost exponential growth.
Sure, there are some encouraging signs. Media coverage of climate
change remains high, and a worldwide popular movement - now perhaps
upwards of a million people - is mobilising. But with so little time
left, we must recognise that most people won't do anything to save the
planet unless we make it much, much easier for them. This essay
outlines my three-part strategy for stopping climate change - the easy
way.
STEP ONE: Stop debating, start doing
Although there is now a very broad consensus on climate in the media
and politics, opinion polls show that many people still harbour doubts
about climate change. One of the peculiarities of the climate debate
is that although more than 99 per cent of international climate change
scientists agree on the causes of global warming, the denial lobby
still only has to produce one contrarian to undermine the consensus in
the public mind. Similarly, changes in our understanding can be
magnified and distorted to suggest that, because we don't know
everything, therefore we must know nothing. Thus, data from one
glacier that apparently bucks the global trend can be wielded as a
trump card against all the accumulated knowledge of climate science.
This partly reflects a perhaps healthy scepticism in the public mind
about believing "experts". But there is also a darker force at work:
doubt undermines responsibility for action. If you don't know for sure
that global warming isn't caused by sunspots or cosmic rays, then it's
OK to go on driving and flying without feeling as if you're doing
something bad. When it comes to global warming, many people -
subconsciously at least - actually want to be lied to.
This is where the psychology gets interesting. Most green campaigners
assume that information leads to action, and that deeper knowledge
will undermine denial. Actually, the reverse may well be true: the
more disempowered that people feel about a huge, scary issue like
climate change, the more unwilling they may be to believe it is a
problem. This sounds illogical, but it makes sense. If people don't
feel they can do very much about climate change, they will prefer to
cling to any tempting doubts that are dangled their way. Presenting
people with more gloom-and-doom scenarios, however true they might be,
may thus serve to reinforce denial.
Most campaigners try to mitigate this by also offering people easy
things they can do: the "just change your light bulbs" approach.
However, most people intuitively understand that an enormous problem
cannot be solved by a tiny solution; that changing your light bulbs
will not save a single polar bear. They are right, of course. So how
can we mobilise collective action on a sufficiently grand scale to
make a measurable contribution to solving the problem?
The American political strategists Ted Nordhaus and Michael
Shellenberger make a specific proposal in a recent paper, and this
forms the first plank of my three-part strategy to tackle global
warming. Stop debating, they say, and start doing. Instead of
confronting deeply established patterns of behaviour head on, let's
start focusing on preparing for the impacts of global warming that are
already inevitable. That means working on flood defences for
vulnerable towns, helping to drought-proof agriculture and population
centres, and adapting to sea-level rise in low-lying areas.
By sidestepping the tedious causality argument (is it us or natural
cycles?), focusing on global warming preparedness can also help reopen
the mitigation agenda. Shifting sandbags is empowering because you
feel as if you're doing something tangible and useful. But accepting
the need for adaptation and preparation implicitly involves accepting
the reality of global warming, and therefore the eventual need to cut
emissions. Many more people may be prepared to accept the change - the
introduction of personal carbon allowances, for example - that this
will inevitably mean.
In any case, adaptation is now essential because of the one degree or
so of additional global warming that is already locked into the system
thanks to past emissions. With proper planning, we can not only save
thousands of human lives, but also try to protect natural ecosystems
by establishing new "refuge" coral reefs in cooler waters or helping
species to migrate as temperature zones shift.
STEP TWO: Focus on the big wins
But this is a long-term agenda, and we don't have much time. Hence my
second proposal, which is for a much clearer focus on win-win
strategies for immediate emissions reductions. These are things we
would want to be doing anyway, even if global warming had never been
thought of. Reducing deforestation in the tropics is a big win-win.
Inherently desirable, this by itself would reduce global carbon
emissions by 10 per cent or more. All it takes is money: we have to
pay countries such as Brazil and Indonesia to leave their forests
alone rather than chop them down to sell to us as plywood and
furniture.
There are obvious win-win strategies in the domestic sector. Better
insulation makes living conditions more comfortable and reduces fuel
bills. Even without climate change we'd still want to be getting cars
out of town centres to reduce air pollution and improve the urban
experience. Getting more children to walk and cycle to school improves
their physical health and helps to tackle obesity. Enforcing speed
limits (and reducing them further) would save hundreds of lives a
year, and give some respite from the incessant noise pollution of
speeding traffic.
Quality-of-life issues are by their nature subjective, so we need to
focus on things that most people will agree on. Partly, this depends
on how an issue is framed: most people don't want motorists to be
unjustifiably hounded, but nor are they likely to oppose a measure
that is about saving children's lives. The ban on smoking in public,
for instance, was accepted precisely because the issue was correctly
framed, and quickly became imbued with a sense of inevitability.
There is also a high degree of consensus about the desirability of
localisation: protecting and encouraging small shops and local
businesses, privileging farmers' markets over supermarkets, helping
build stronger and more cohesive communities by reducing the need for
travel, and so on. The fact that all of these measures will also
reduce carbon emissions simply underlines the need for a more
determined approach to their implementation. A much longer-term agenda
here might be the reconnecting of people with their place and
surroundings, helping them feel more rooted in their communities and
proud of what is distinctive about their own areas. We are bringing up
children who often have no direct experience of nature any more. Tree
houses are replaced with Nintendos, the unsupervised exercise of
playing outdoors replaced with structured exercise of sporting events.
The author Richard Louv terms this "nature deficit disorder" and asks
whether this disconnection might have something to do with the
alienation and boredom that many youngsters feel today.
STEP THREE: Use technology
But there are some areas of high-carbon behaviour that people will
always be reluctant to give up, and this brings me to the third and
final part of my strategy to deal with global warming - technology.
Today we face a situation where a global population of potentially
nine billion or so by 2050 continues to demand a steadily increasing
consumer lifestyle. There is nothing we can do to stop this, and nor
should we try. But it does put humanity on a very real collision
course with the planet, so we are going to have to throw every
technological tool we have at the problem to try to meet people's
aspirations without worsening our climatic predicament. Some of this
will involve technology leapfrogging: helping developing countries
skip over our dirty phase of industrialisation, by installing solar
power in remote, off-grid areas of Africa and Asia, for example. We
also need to help developing countries make choices that put fossil
fuels at the bottom of the energy shopping list, by helping them use
carbon capture and storage technology as well as nuclear power. Both
have obvious drawbacks, but I would rather see China building two
nuclear reactors a week than two coal-fired plants.
The localisation agenda can only go so far: in an age of
carbon-fuelled globalisation, we need to figure out ways to transport
people and goods long distances without increasing emissions. Aviation
in particular is crying out for a techno-fix. Humanity went from the
first manned flight in 1903 to putting a man on the moon in 1969. I
think we should give the aviation industry 15 years to find a low-
carbon way to shuttle people between continents - or get taxed out of
existence. I believe with this kind of incentive, designers would come
up with ideas none of us today could even conceive of.
The technological challenge is not just to come up with new
inventions, but - in the words of Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala
from Princeton University - "to scale up what we already know how to
do". In their concept of "stabilisation wedges", each wedge represents
a billion tonnes of carbon shaved off the upward trend of emissions
over the next 50 years. Building two million one-megawatt wind
turbines, for example, is a wedge, as are two million hectares of
solar panels, a 700-fold increase from today's deployment. There are
many more wedges in the fields of transport, power generation and
energy efficiency. As the two researchers say, this reduces a "heroic
challenge" merely to a set of "monumental tasks". No one said it would
be easy.
Perhaps the most controversial technological option of all is one that
we need to keep strictly in reserve for real emergencies -
geo-engineering. Here, some proposals have more merit than others,
whether they be seeding the oceans with iron filings or putting up
solar mirrors in space. None of them is an alternative to reducing
emissions, but one just might be a valuable piece of insurance against
the worst-case climate change scenarios. Believe me, pretty much
anything is better than five or six degrees of global warming.
This may seem like a depressing conclusion, but it's really an
optimistic one. If we fail to reduce emissions quickly enough and find
ourselves frying, we must throw everything we possibly can at the
problem to counteract the warming process, however temporarily. At no
point - I repeat, at no point - do we give up and admit that all is
lost. If we go over two degrees, then we have to try and stop
ourselves going over three. If we fail to stabilise emissions by 2015,
then we have to try and stabilise them by 2016 or 2020. If people
continue to demand economic growth, then we have to try to deliver
than growth in a low-carbon way. It will never be too late. As long as
people and nature remain alive on this planet, we will still have
everything to fight for.
--
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to
escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. -- Marcus Aurelius
Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS
Joseph R. Darancette
***@NOSPAMcharter.net
Mark Lynas
Published 08 November 2007
http://www.newstatesman.com/200711080026
We have about 100 months left. If global greenhouse gas emissions have
not begun to decline by the end of 2015, then our chances of
restraining climate change to within the two degrees "safety line" -
the level of warming below which the impacts are severe but tolerable
- diminish day by day thereafter. This is what the latest science now
demands: the peaking of emissions within eight years, worldwide cuts
of 60 per cent by 2030, and 80 per cent or more by 2050. Above two
degrees, our chances of crossing "tipping points" in the earth's
system - such as the collapse of the Amazon rainforest, or the release
of methane from thawing Siberian permafrost - is much higher.
Despite this urgent timetable, our roads continue to heave with
traffic. Power companies draft blueprints for new coal-fired plants.
The skies over England are criss-crossed with vapour trails from
aircraft travelling some of the busiest routes in the world. Global
emissions, far from decreasing, remain on a steep upward curve of
almost exponential growth.
Sure, there are some encouraging signs. Media coverage of climate
change remains high, and a worldwide popular movement - now perhaps
upwards of a million people - is mobilising. But with so little time
left, we must recognise that most people won't do anything to save the
planet unless we make it much, much easier for them. This essay
outlines my three-part strategy for stopping climate change - the easy
way.
STEP ONE: Stop debating, start doing
Although there is now a very broad consensus on climate in the media
and politics, opinion polls show that many people still harbour doubts
about climate change. One of the peculiarities of the climate debate
is that although more than 99 per cent of international climate change
scientists agree on the causes of global warming, the denial lobby
still only has to produce one contrarian to undermine the consensus in
the public mind. Similarly, changes in our understanding can be
magnified and distorted to suggest that, because we don't know
everything, therefore we must know nothing. Thus, data from one
glacier that apparently bucks the global trend can be wielded as a
trump card against all the accumulated knowledge of climate science.
This partly reflects a perhaps healthy scepticism in the public mind
about believing "experts". But there is also a darker force at work:
doubt undermines responsibility for action. If you don't know for sure
that global warming isn't caused by sunspots or cosmic rays, then it's
OK to go on driving and flying without feeling as if you're doing
something bad. When it comes to global warming, many people -
subconsciously at least - actually want to be lied to.
This is where the psychology gets interesting. Most green campaigners
assume that information leads to action, and that deeper knowledge
will undermine denial. Actually, the reverse may well be true: the
more disempowered that people feel about a huge, scary issue like
climate change, the more unwilling they may be to believe it is a
problem. This sounds illogical, but it makes sense. If people don't
feel they can do very much about climate change, they will prefer to
cling to any tempting doubts that are dangled their way. Presenting
people with more gloom-and-doom scenarios, however true they might be,
may thus serve to reinforce denial.
Most campaigners try to mitigate this by also offering people easy
things they can do: the "just change your light bulbs" approach.
However, most people intuitively understand that an enormous problem
cannot be solved by a tiny solution; that changing your light bulbs
will not save a single polar bear. They are right, of course. So how
can we mobilise collective action on a sufficiently grand scale to
make a measurable contribution to solving the problem?
The American political strategists Ted Nordhaus and Michael
Shellenberger make a specific proposal in a recent paper, and this
forms the first plank of my three-part strategy to tackle global
warming. Stop debating, they say, and start doing. Instead of
confronting deeply established patterns of behaviour head on, let's
start focusing on preparing for the impacts of global warming that are
already inevitable. That means working on flood defences for
vulnerable towns, helping to drought-proof agriculture and population
centres, and adapting to sea-level rise in low-lying areas.
By sidestepping the tedious causality argument (is it us or natural
cycles?), focusing on global warming preparedness can also help reopen
the mitigation agenda. Shifting sandbags is empowering because you
feel as if you're doing something tangible and useful. But accepting
the need for adaptation and preparation implicitly involves accepting
the reality of global warming, and therefore the eventual need to cut
emissions. Many more people may be prepared to accept the change - the
introduction of personal carbon allowances, for example - that this
will inevitably mean.
In any case, adaptation is now essential because of the one degree or
so of additional global warming that is already locked into the system
thanks to past emissions. With proper planning, we can not only save
thousands of human lives, but also try to protect natural ecosystems
by establishing new "refuge" coral reefs in cooler waters or helping
species to migrate as temperature zones shift.
STEP TWO: Focus on the big wins
But this is a long-term agenda, and we don't have much time. Hence my
second proposal, which is for a much clearer focus on win-win
strategies for immediate emissions reductions. These are things we
would want to be doing anyway, even if global warming had never been
thought of. Reducing deforestation in the tropics is a big win-win.
Inherently desirable, this by itself would reduce global carbon
emissions by 10 per cent or more. All it takes is money: we have to
pay countries such as Brazil and Indonesia to leave their forests
alone rather than chop them down to sell to us as plywood and
furniture.
There are obvious win-win strategies in the domestic sector. Better
insulation makes living conditions more comfortable and reduces fuel
bills. Even without climate change we'd still want to be getting cars
out of town centres to reduce air pollution and improve the urban
experience. Getting more children to walk and cycle to school improves
their physical health and helps to tackle obesity. Enforcing speed
limits (and reducing them further) would save hundreds of lives a
year, and give some respite from the incessant noise pollution of
speeding traffic.
Quality-of-life issues are by their nature subjective, so we need to
focus on things that most people will agree on. Partly, this depends
on how an issue is framed: most people don't want motorists to be
unjustifiably hounded, but nor are they likely to oppose a measure
that is about saving children's lives. The ban on smoking in public,
for instance, was accepted precisely because the issue was correctly
framed, and quickly became imbued with a sense of inevitability.
There is also a high degree of consensus about the desirability of
localisation: protecting and encouraging small shops and local
businesses, privileging farmers' markets over supermarkets, helping
build stronger and more cohesive communities by reducing the need for
travel, and so on. The fact that all of these measures will also
reduce carbon emissions simply underlines the need for a more
determined approach to their implementation. A much longer-term agenda
here might be the reconnecting of people with their place and
surroundings, helping them feel more rooted in their communities and
proud of what is distinctive about their own areas. We are bringing up
children who often have no direct experience of nature any more. Tree
houses are replaced with Nintendos, the unsupervised exercise of
playing outdoors replaced with structured exercise of sporting events.
The author Richard Louv terms this "nature deficit disorder" and asks
whether this disconnection might have something to do with the
alienation and boredom that many youngsters feel today.
STEP THREE: Use technology
But there are some areas of high-carbon behaviour that people will
always be reluctant to give up, and this brings me to the third and
final part of my strategy to deal with global warming - technology.
Today we face a situation where a global population of potentially
nine billion or so by 2050 continues to demand a steadily increasing
consumer lifestyle. There is nothing we can do to stop this, and nor
should we try. But it does put humanity on a very real collision
course with the planet, so we are going to have to throw every
technological tool we have at the problem to try to meet people's
aspirations without worsening our climatic predicament. Some of this
will involve technology leapfrogging: helping developing countries
skip over our dirty phase of industrialisation, by installing solar
power in remote, off-grid areas of Africa and Asia, for example. We
also need to help developing countries make choices that put fossil
fuels at the bottom of the energy shopping list, by helping them use
carbon capture and storage technology as well as nuclear power. Both
have obvious drawbacks, but I would rather see China building two
nuclear reactors a week than two coal-fired plants.
The localisation agenda can only go so far: in an age of
carbon-fuelled globalisation, we need to figure out ways to transport
people and goods long distances without increasing emissions. Aviation
in particular is crying out for a techno-fix. Humanity went from the
first manned flight in 1903 to putting a man on the moon in 1969. I
think we should give the aviation industry 15 years to find a low-
carbon way to shuttle people between continents - or get taxed out of
existence. I believe with this kind of incentive, designers would come
up with ideas none of us today could even conceive of.
The technological challenge is not just to come up with new
inventions, but - in the words of Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala
from Princeton University - "to scale up what we already know how to
do". In their concept of "stabilisation wedges", each wedge represents
a billion tonnes of carbon shaved off the upward trend of emissions
over the next 50 years. Building two million one-megawatt wind
turbines, for example, is a wedge, as are two million hectares of
solar panels, a 700-fold increase from today's deployment. There are
many more wedges in the fields of transport, power generation and
energy efficiency. As the two researchers say, this reduces a "heroic
challenge" merely to a set of "monumental tasks". No one said it would
be easy.
Perhaps the most controversial technological option of all is one that
we need to keep strictly in reserve for real emergencies -
geo-engineering. Here, some proposals have more merit than others,
whether they be seeding the oceans with iron filings or putting up
solar mirrors in space. None of them is an alternative to reducing
emissions, but one just might be a valuable piece of insurance against
the worst-case climate change scenarios. Believe me, pretty much
anything is better than five or six degrees of global warming.
This may seem like a depressing conclusion, but it's really an
optimistic one. If we fail to reduce emissions quickly enough and find
ourselves frying, we must throw everything we possibly can at the
problem to counteract the warming process, however temporarily. At no
point - I repeat, at no point - do we give up and admit that all is
lost. If we go over two degrees, then we have to try and stop
ourselves going over three. If we fail to stabilise emissions by 2015,
then we have to try and stabilise them by 2016 or 2020. If people
continue to demand economic growth, then we have to try to deliver
than growth in a low-carbon way. It will never be too late. As long as
people and nature remain alive on this planet, we will still have
everything to fight for.
--
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to
escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. -- Marcus Aurelius
Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS
Joseph R. Darancette
***@NOSPAMcharter.net