Category Archives: Climate change

Stabilizing emissions doesn’t solve the problem

This article demonstrates a common mistake in thinking about climate change: Recession rebound didnâ€™t hurt environment – Report shows greenhouse gases stable in 2010.

Keeping emissions stable harms the environment very badly. The climate change problem is the accumulation of greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere. Humanity continues to add tens of billions of tonnes of that pollution to the air annually.

Our climate problems will be solved when that pollution is nearly cut to zero – just levelling off the amount of pollution per year is just the start of a very difficult journey.

EPA power plant CO2 standards

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Potentially big news: “Proposed new [EPA] emissions standards would limit carbon dioxide produced by new power plants, which would probably prohibit construction of any coal-fired facilities“

James Hansen’s climate change TED talk

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NASA scientist James Hansen has a TED talk in which he addresses climate change:

He talks about his motivation for speaking out, as well as for engaging in civil disobedience to try to encourage the emergence of stronger climate policies.

Growing pollution from the oil sands

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Clare Demerse of the Pembina Institute does a good job of explaining one major reason why the oil sands are of special concern, when it comes to the various sources of greenhouse gas pollution in Canada:

No one could make the case about why the oilsands matter better than Environment Canada just did. In late July, the department published a document called Canada’s Emissions Trends, which provides an up-to-date projection of greenhouse gas pollution under a “business as usual” scenario â€” in other words, our emissions future unless governments take stronger actions than they have to date.

This document provides really important data, so we were very glad to see it made public. But the picture it paints of where oilsands emissions are heading is â€” to put it mildly â€” not pretty.

Over the last two decades, greenhouse gas emissions from the oilsands have grown by over 150 per cent. From 2005 to 2020, Environment Canada’s number show, they’re going to keep right on growing, tripling from 30 million tonnes in 2005 to 92 million tonnes in 2020. That represents 12 per cent of Canada’s projected national emissions in 2020, more than the total for any province except Alberta and Ontario.

That makes the oilsands sector very unique. In other parts of Canada’s economy, emissions are expected to grow much more slowly, or even to drop as technologies improve or federal or provincial emission reduction policies take effect. Most notably, electricity emissions are expected to fall by 31 million tonnes in Canada by 2020 in the absence of new government policies â€” while oilsands expansion is forecast to increase emissions by twice that much over the same period. (It’s worth noting that the federal government has already outlined a regulatory approach to coal-fired electricity detailed enough that it’s been included in Environment Canada’s “business as usual” projections, while the projections don’t include an equivalent federal policy approach for the oilsands.)

While other sectors of the Canadian economy can learn how to operate in ways that damage the climate much less, output from the oil sands will always significantly raise global pollution levels.

The world as a whole needs to go on a carbon diet, and Canada along with it. Plans to have output from the oil sands keep growing without end are at odds with that necessary aim.

Warnings ignored

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I wonder if one day words like these will be written about climate change:

In his preface to the 1921 edition of The War in the Air, [H.G.] Wells wrote of World War I (still able to call it, then, the Great War): “The great catastrophe marched upon us in daylight. But everybody thought that somebody else would stop it before it really arrived. Behind that great catastrophe march others today.” In the preface to the 1941 edition, he could only add: “Again I ask the reader to note the warnings I gave in that year, twenty years ago. Is there anything to add to the preface now? Nothing except my epitaph. That, when the time comes, will manifestly have to be: ‘I told you so. You damned fools.’ (The italics are mine.)”

Gibson, William. Distrust that Particular Flavor. p.207 (harcover)

Canada does not have the right to develop the oil sands

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The entire debate about oil sands development in Canada seems to centre around the question: “Is this good for us?” It includes aspects like the water and air pollution produced by the oil sands, the economic impact of oil sands development, the significance of the oil sands to federal-provincial relations, and similar such matters.

While that question is obviously a valid one worth discussing, it is also important to realize that it isn’t the end of the debate. Two more important questions are: “Are the oil sands good for the world as a whole?” and: “Does Canada have the right to keep developing the oil sands?”

I think the answer to both of these questions is clearly ‘no’. There is every indication that climate change is extremely dangerous. There is also every indication that once an industry develops in Canada, politicians will never have the guts to shut it down, no matter how obviously harmful it has become. Finally, there is the enormous size of the carbon reserve in the oil sands.

Canada is now deciding whether to spend additional billions developing the capability to add an enormous amount of extra carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. This is at a time when the atmosphere already contains a dangerous amount of the gas – so much so that entire low-lying nations are being threatened with destruction because of sea level rise. Canada does not have the right to force climate change on the rest of the world; by extension, Canada does not have the right to develop the oil sands, and must work to substantially diminish the quantity of greenhouse gas pollution it generates.