Monthly Archives: November 2010

Has Garrett Brown sold his soul?

Walking around the streets of Ottawa, I am often confronted by Garrett Brown crouching and looking serious on life-sized billboards. The ads – funded by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) – proclaim that they have discovered ways to restore land used for oil sands extraction in years, now decades. Mr. Brown has put his name, face, and signature on these ads. He must think he is doing good. And yet, inescapably, I think he is aiding one of the most dangerous and immoral things happening in the world right now, namely the exploitation of the oil sands.

Restoration

Garrett, I have some questions for you. How much land actually gets restored, and how much gets left as toxic wasteland? In the period before it gets restored, how many toxins and carcinogens leak into the Athabasca River? In the event that the government of Canada or Alberta tried to obligate oil sands producers to actually restore most or all of the land getting ravaged by oil sands extraction, don’t you think the CAPP would fight tooth and nail against that obligation? After all, it would reduce the profitability of the oil firms that fund the organization.

Climate change

More importantly, do you really think land reclamation is the most important issue here? The CAPP advertising campaign is designed to make policy-makers and the general public think that industry is already on top of all the problems with oil sands extraction, and that improved technology and techniques will make turning bitumen-laden sand into usable fuels into a benign activity.

What about climate change? What do you think about the effect of the rising concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Do you accept the basic physics and chemistry of the situation, which have been well understood for decades? Do you recognize how the oil sands are a gigantic store of carbon, and how your employers would be happy to add all of it to the atmosphere. What consequences would that have for future generations of people?

How can we impose that suffering on them, just so we can extend for a while the length of time during which our civilization is dependent on fossil fuels? How do you think your great grandchildren will feel when they see these ads?

Obviously, Mr. Brown feels strongly that oil sands extraction is an activity that deserves a public relations facelift. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have consented to have his name, face, and signature splayed across these ads. I wonder what evidence and logic supports his views. Perhaps he expects carbon capture and storage to make oil sands extraction compatible with climate stability. If so, he isn’t paying enough attention to how the emissions from the oil sands are ultimately dispersed among all the disparate vehicles that use the fuels. Perhaps he cares a lot more about short-term energy availability and economic robustness than about the long-term factors affecting human welfare. If so, perhaps he should reconsider his priorities.

Right now, it is clear that the forces of inaction are winning. Climate change policy is going nowhere in Canada, and internationally. To a large extent, that reflects how effective opposition from industry has been: sowing phony doubts about the science of climate change, while arguing that climate change action is sure to cause economic ruin (while climate change itself will not.) With these ads, Mr. Brown is helping CAPP perpetuate a dangerous status quo, in which the atmosphere continues to get more and more full of greenhouse gas pollution.

I would definitely like to have a conversation with Mr. Brown, asking about the motivation for his endorsement. In the absence of that, I can only conclude that he hasn’t been paying enough attention to the science, politics, and ethics of climate change. He has lent his name and reputation to the people undertaking one of the most dangerous and unethical things happening on Earth right now.

Protecting the oil sands

According to an article in today’s Globe and Mail, Canadian bureaucrats are actively lobbying against laws overseas that would restrict the use of carbon-intensive fuels from sources like the oil sands:

In one series of e-mails dated December, 2008, Paul Khanna, a senior official at Natural Resources Canada, convened a meeting of colleagues, noting that the oil sands sector “has emerged as one of the high priority files” for the government, and sent around briefing notes from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the industry lobbying arm.

The documents, which groups obtained under Access to Information, note that the Department of Foreign Affairs has launched an “oil sands advocacy” effort in the United States to counter what one official refers to as “political lobbying” against the oil sands – including California’s low-carbon fuel regulations and a U.S. law that would prevent government departments from using fuels that result in high levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmentalist Graham Saul said the campaign to defend the oil sands is consistent with the government’s approach of doing nothing at home and obstructing progress on climate regulations internationally.

The documents reveal “a concerted effort to weaken climate policies outside our borders, with the aim of ensuring that no doors are closed to Canada’s highly polluting tar sands,” said Mr. Saul, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada.

“In other words, Canada is not just exporting dirty oil any more; we’re also exporting dirty policies.”

As explained previously, the biggest problem with the oil sands from a climatic perspective isn’t really the greenhouse gas emissions per litre of fuel produced. Rather, it is the sheer size of the fossil fuel reserve. Putting all that carbon up in the air would have a big effect on the climate.

Was Bill C-311 just posturing?

The blogosphere is alive with outrage about Conservative senators killing the latest opposition climate bill.

This strategy has been tried before, with the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act. It tried to force the government to abide by its legal obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, and the courts ruled that it could do no such thing. As such, repeating the strategy is just political posturing, designed to make opposition parties look better relative to the government (more opposition as theatre).

If we want to achieve different outcomes, we need different strategies.

Coal and China

Cutting global coal use is the single most important thing to do, if we want to prevent the effects of climate change from becoming catastrophic. As such, the use of coal in China is a critical issue for the entire world. In 2009, China consumed 49% of the world’s coal, much of that to produce exports that went to other countries, from steel girders to iPods.

Much of the coal China uses is produced and shipped domestically (sometimes causing carbon tariffs). The fact that China’s leadership is less clueless about science than those in Canada and the U.S. may help. That said, it will take an enormous effort to decarbonize the global economy before catastrophic climate change has been locked in. Curbing coal burning in China will be one of the key battles in that overall effort.

Beyond climate change, air pollution from coal also causes enormous death and suffering in China – further reason to push aggressively toward better energy options.

The Ultimate Roller Coaster Ride: An Abbreviated History of Fossil Fuels

This video is rather quick, and might be overwhelming to those not already somewhat familiar with the history being described. Still, it does a remarkable job of relating the history of fossil fuels in five minutes:

Readers may not agree with all of the arguments – some are certainly debatable – but it seems like a good way of pressing people to think about some of the ways fossil fuels have influenced history, and about some of the interconnected issues of today.

The video was produced by the post carbon institute. The organization has written material that expands on the video: The Post Carbon Reader – Managing the 21st Century’s Sustainability Crises. They have some pretty high-profile fellows: Bill McKibben and William Rees among them.

Open letter to ING Direct and PC Financial

To: Jan Hommen (CEO, ING Group) and
W. Galen Weston (Owner, Loblaw Companies) and
Gerald T. McCaughey, (CEO Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce)

Gentlemen,

I am a customer of your banks and I think they provide the best options for Canadians right now, in the areas of saving and chequing respectively. At the same time, I don’t think you have given sufficient consideration to the importance of climate change – both as an ethical and a business phenomenon.

Banks play a vital role in Canadian and global society: helping to match up those who have excess funds at any particular time with those who have productive investment opportunities. That allows the first group to accumulate wealth for future purposes, while allowing the latter group to undertake projects that increase human welfare.

Not all projects achieve that end, however, and there are cases where it is not immediately obvious that a project being undertaken is unethical or a bad investment. Right now, investments made in the production and use of coal and unconventional oil and gas are both unethical and bad investments. I encourage your financial institution to wind down any investments it maintains in these areas, as well as develop and implement a policy against making such investments in the future.

The threat from climate change

We now know to an extremely high degree of certainty that burning coal, oil, and gas causes greenhouse gases to accumulate in the Earth’s atmosphere. This accumulation is dangerous for humanity, since our global society depends upon a stable climate for continued prosperity and even survival. The Holocene period in which human civilization emerged consisted of 10,000 years of unusual climate stability. During that time, we built all the infrastructure that is now relied upon by humanity. At the same time, humanity expanded in numbers and biophysical impact to the point where humans have become the dominant force on Earth. Indeed, there are those who argue that the Holocene has now been replaced by an ‘Anthropocene’ period, in which human choices will do more than anything else to determine what conditions are experienced by all the living things on Earth.

Right now, humanity continues to burn fossil fuels with abandon, disrupting the climate in ways that will ultimately be profoundly threatening. In order to produce climatic stability, humans need to abandon fossil fuels as sources of energy and replace them with zero-carbon, sustainable energy options like solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, and hydroelectric energy.

If we continue on our present course of emissions, it is estimated that global temperatures will increase by over 5°C by 2100 – far above the 2°C threshold that has been generally accepted as ‘dangerous’. With such temperature increase, it is likely that major sea level rise would be accompanied by large-scale changes in precipitation and other major climatic shifts. There is even a danger that warming could kick off a self-amplifying cycle: ‘runaway’ climate change that could leave the planet profoundly transformed.

The larger the proportion of fossil fuels burned, the more warming will take place and the greater the risk of a catastrophic or runaway outcome. As such, most of the world’s remaining coal, oil, and gas should be left unburned and underground. The global economy must be reformed so its energy needs are supplied in other ways.

Unethical behaviour

The choices we make today as a global society will affect the lives of thousands of future generations of humans. If they could speak to us, it is reasonable to conclude that they would be shouting for us to move quickly away from fossil fuels – not to condemn them to climatic instability and infrastructure that is increasingly poorly matched to the world they inhabit.

But they cannot speak to us, or indeed affect us in any way. In relation to them, we are entirely invulnerable. At the same time, they are completely defenceless when it comes to the circumstances we can impose on them through the reckless burning of fossil fuels. As philosopher and ethicist Henry Shue argues, the moral question of climate change mitigation falls into the special moral category of intentional harm imposed upon the defenceless.

It is unethical for us to deprive all those generations of the opportunities our generation inherited, in the form of a stable climate. We cannot impose the risk of catastrophic or runaway climate change upon them, despite how convenient fossil fuels are for us, and how challenging it may be to move to renewable options. When your banks invest in the production and use of fossil fuels, you participate in the unethical imposition of that harm. For the sake of doing what is right, you should stop and refocus your efforts on funding renewable and zero-carbon forms of energy that can serve human needs forever.

A bad investment

Even if we ignore the ethics of the situation, a strong case can be made that investing in coal and unconventional oil and gas (like the oil sands) is bad business. As humanity continues to pump out greenhouse gases, the effect on the climate is going to become more and more unambiguous. Scientists have understood for decades how threatening climate change could be, but those with an interest in the status quo have been highly effective at confusing the public and political debates on the issue. Eventually, however, the threat posed by climate change will be clear and governments will take action.

When that happens, investments in things like coal-fired power plants, oil sands extraction and processing facilities, and shale gas pipelines will suddenly look like poor choices. If governments act soon, they can put a price on carbon that will encourage more rational long-term decision making. If they delay action (as seems likely), investments will be made in facilities that will need to be shut down long before the end of their natural lives. The people who made those investments will suffer financially as a result.

It is far more economically responsible to invest in technologies that can serve humanity forever than it is to invest in the fossil fuel industry: an industry that ultimately has no future, both due to climate change and the fundamentally finite nature of the resources being exploited.

Conclusions

Right now, many Canadians see investments in things like the oil sands as a path to prosperity. That perspective only seems valid when you ignore the long-term consequences of the unrestricted emission of greenhouse gases. If all the future generations that will be impacted by climate change could vote on our current policies, I think it is nearly certain that a moratorium on new investments would be immediately agreed and existing operations would be wound down. From the perspective of humanity in general, the oil sands are best left underground. The same is true for the lion’s share of the Earth’s remaining coal, oil, and gas.

As businesses, you are most concerned about the responsibility you bear to your customers and shareholders. When you invest in projects that don’t make sense in the long-term, you expose those people to risk. Governments will eventually wake up to the danger of climate change and, when they do, they will reform policies in ways that make these investments unprofitable. It is better from a business perspective – as well as an ethical one – to simply not get involved in the first place.

Thank you for your attention,

Milan Ilnyckyj

Keepin’ Carbon Underground

For the last 10,000 years during which human civilization has emerged, the planet has had a relatively stable climate. Carbon embedded in coal, oil and gas has been a major establishing feature of the climate around the world.

Since the Industrial Revolution, humanity has been burning those fuels at ever-increasing rates – rapidly returning that carbon to the atmosphere. As a result, we’re on track to heat up the planet by more than 5°C by 2100. That is far beyond the 2°C threshold of warming that scientists and policy-makers have widely accepted as ‘dangerous‘.

The solution to human-induced climate change is to leave most of the world’s remaining fossil fuels underground. That way, the carbon they contain will be kept in a place where it doesn’t affect the climate. To accomplish that, we are going to need to find alternative sources of energy. Nuclear fission is one of the temporary bridging options. However it has its own issues: it has non-renewable fuel and waste and proliferation problems. Ultimately, though, if humanity wants to power itself in a way that can be perpetuated forever and which does not threaten the climate, we’re going to need to draw the energy we need from renewable sources: hydroelectricity, solar power, wind, tidal, geothermal, and so on.

Given how much it would transform our world – and how many human lives that would harm – we need to keep most of the carbon still locked in fossil fuels underground.

Using violence to stop climate change

I remember the Oxford philosopher and ethicist Henry Shue once suggesting in passing that the level of risk associated with allowing climate change to proceed unchecked could potentially justify the use of force against those who refuse to curb their emissions.

Of course, there is a massive gulf between something being potentially justified and it being a good idea. In particular, I think it is absolutely foolish for people to consider using violence to try and encourage climate change mitigation or political change. Doing so would further brand the environmental movement as a bunch of dangerous radicals – rather than the only group within society that is taking the right of future generations to live in a stable and hospitable climate seriously.

For those without power, non-violence resistance seems enormously more likely to succeed. By all means, consider chaining yourself to the railroad tracks that run to a coal-fired power plant, painting slogans on smoke stacks, or engaging in other acts of civil disobedience. Just don’t delude yourself into thinking that things like kidnapping or arson can possibly help the cause. Don’t develop a ‘Che Guevara complex‘.

Eventually, I do think the threat or use of violence will be involved in climate change mitigation, but it will not be a case of the weak pressing the strong to change their behaviour. At some point, things will get bad enough that climate change denial will be obviously incorrect from the perspective of almost everyone. There will also be some point at which the world’s most powerful states recognize that their own prosperity – indeed their own survival – requires stopping catastrophic or runaway climate change. At that point, states like the United States and China will be saying: “Climate change is terrifying, so we have decarbonized our economies. Get on board, Qatar and Alberta, or we will bomb you to hell.”

Fossil fuel subsidies in Canada

Because the emission of greenhouse gases hurts people around the world and in future generations, many people argue that anyone who emits them should be made to pay a fee for doing so. One way to do this is with a carbon tax, which is a specific example of a Pigovian tax applied when someone undertakes an activity that causes harm to others.

Rather than imposing such a fee on users of fossil fuels, Canada actually provides them with large subsidies. An assessment by the Climate Action Network found that oil and gas companies are receiving billions of dollars a year in subsidies, from various levels of government. This view conforms with that of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), which found that the Canadian oil and gas industry “received $2.84 billion in tax incentives from the different levels of government across Canada in 2008 through 63 different subsidy programs”. They estimate that $1.38 billion of this comes from the federal government. Alberta is the province that provides the most subsidy: $1.05 billion, followed by Saskatchewan at $327 million and Newfoundland and Labrador at $83 million.

The IISD estimates that emissions from the oil sands would be 12% lower without these subsidies. These subsidies continue despite a pledge made to the G20 that they be eliminated.

Another way governments subsidize oil and gas producers is by protecting them from legal liability in the event of accidents. This is what the Government of Alberta is planning to do, in relation to carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects. Such liability limits would be similar to those in the nuclear industry, where operators of nuclear power plants cannot be held financially responsible for the full cost of accidents they cause. Rather, taxpayers will be on the hook to pay for many of the cleanup costs.

What I believe and why

Tristan and I have been discussing the importance of what people believe to the general issue of climate action. As such, it seems worth answering the key question behind this site: Why do I believe that we can move to a global economy based on renewable, zero-carbon sources of energy?

Why climate change is scary

Partly, my belief is rooted in the belief that doing so is necessary. That belief arises from two major sources. There is the degree to which I can evaluate the empirical evidence and related theories myself, and then there is the degree to which I think bodies like the IPCC and National Academy of Sciences are credible. To me, there seems to be many lines of evidence that reinforce one another. We have all kinds of observations – from temperature records to species migration patterns to ice core samples – that seem to demonstrate that greenhouse gas concentrations affect the climate, and that the climate can change in ways that would be very dangerous for humanity.

The fact that I find James Hansen credible enough to take seriously contributes to a significant extent to my concern about the possibility of runaway climate change. So does the fact that I haven’t seen any forceful rebuttal of his argument from credible scientists or organizations (though many object to his overt political advocacy).

Even if runaway climate change will not happen, it seems like there is strong evidence that warming of more than 5°C would have devastating consequences for humanity. Furthermore, it seems like that is the amount of warming we are likely to produce by the end of the 21st century, unless we change the development path the world is following.

Why renewables can do the job

All that makes me think the transition is necessary. I think it is possible because of the same combination of factors. I know enough to be able to see that the total incoming energy from sunlight far exceeds the current energy use of humanity. Furthermore, I know that we can convert that energy into forms that are useful for us. This belief is reinforced by calculations like those in David MacKay’s book. You can take the average amount of sunlight falling on a square metre of the ground in a day and combine that with the current efficiency of different means of converting that energy into a useful form and arrive at a sense of how many metres we need per person, to give people an amount of energy comparable to what they are using today.

On that basis, the transition to renewables looks feasible, though the scale of the thing is clearly massive. Producing a comparable amount of energy per person using renewables will probably require using a significant portion of the world’s total land area. That said, it is quite possible that the land can be used in multiple ways. We can farm between wind turbines, after all.

Why we can (hopefully) afford it

Finally, I believe that the transition is affordable almost completely on the basis of the testimony from others. I don’t know enough – and haven’t put in enough time – to produce an assessment comparable to that of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.

This last section is admittedly the weakest. I cannot say for sure that the transition will be affordable – only that the best available evidence suggests that it is. Given that the transition is both necessary and possible, I think we should do it even in the less likely case that it is very expensive.

After all, climate change threatens to devastate human civilization, by undermining the stable climate upon which it depends. Even if making the transition to zero-carbon forms of energy was massively expensive – so much so that it was just about the only thing we could do aside from grow enough food to survive – the choice to make that investment would still be the best option open to us.