I'm still working on the next long post, about the carbon cost of eating meat (I work pretty slowly during the school year, I'm afraid)… in the meantime, I recently heard an interview on Democracy Now with Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows-Larkin of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the COP 19 climate conference. They had a lot of things to say about many aspects of the climate crisis, and you can read (or watch) the whole interview here; but in light of my last post, I was especially interested in the part about why they took a 23-hour train ride to the conference instead of flying. His basic point is about hyper-mobility — here's a bit of an excerpt, in response to a question about using a train and using a plane, in terms of energy consumption:
"Well, a lot of people just ask me that question: Is the train that much better than the plane? Actually, it doesn’t really matter, in terms of the journey, whether it’s better or not, because what happens if you go by train is you don’t go very often. So you immediately curtail about how much you travel. And also, you plan when you get there to spend longer there. So I went to China, and I spent two weeks doing a lecture tour in China, as many of my colleagues flew there to give 20-minute talks and then flew back the following day, and then probably the following week were flying to another venue. So, it’s not the actual emissions from the journey that matter; it’s how it makes you change your life.
"Virtually everyone that I’ve spoken to who’s flown here say, "Oh, I flew here and then got a taxi into Warsaw." So people who fly already do not then use public transport to, say, travel back into the town. It normalizes a whole load of high-carbon activities, that we then—that then become what we do every single day…
"You know, we manage to engage with scientists around the world using all of the forms of communication that we’re all using here... We do not have to keep flying around the world in a sort of old-fashioned, colonial style. You know, here’s the great white hope, the great white males from the rich parts of the world, flying around to the poor parts of the world, telling them how they should be living their lives. So I think that we really need to be stepping away from thinking about the world like that."
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Monday, August 5, 2013
the climate cost of flying
Okay, it's far past time to get into some more detail about those three main precepts I set for myself and specified in my opening missive — those were, of course: 1. don't fly on airplanes; 2. don't eat meat (or even better, go vegan); and 3. don't buy new stuff you don't absolutely need.
Before I start on details, though, I should add a little disclaimer: of course, I know and believe that individual actions are not enough to solve this dire crisis we have brought on (not even close) — but I also believe that our so-called political leaders are not going to do anything at all to solve it, given that they are nearly all concerned with supporting the corporate empire. So for the time being I am focusing on what we can do as individuals to get the world off of fossil fuels — that is, coming at the problem from the demand side… inspired from a reply to my first post: "I also believe that any radical change worth making has to start with one person which leads to another person which leads to another person…"
So, as to the issue of air travel — I guess we need to start with some numbers. Unfortunately, accurate numbers are a little hard to chase down, but I've seen figures showing the per-passenger cost of air travel in CO2 equivalents as anywhere from 0.4 to 0.64 lbs/mile, where passenger cars are figured at about one lb/mile. However, the real carbon cost for flying is actually much higher, because of the high-altitude climatic forcing effect — the IPCC's commonly cited estimate is 2.7x — so the cost does come out to be greater than for travel by car.
Still doesn't really sound so bad though, does it? Only a little more carbon than driving… But of course, the per-passenger cost is not anywhere near the whole story. To get at the destructive nature of air travel, we need to consider a couple of aspects to this. First, think about how many times you would pack up and travel from (for instance) Los Angeles to New York if you had to get in your car and take a few days to drive there. Maybe once, it could make an interesting family vacation, with stops along the way… but you'd hardly go cross-country for a quick weekend getaway — and those frequent-flyers who work three days on one coast and two days on the other just couldn't do it at all. And there are undoubtedly relatively few people who would choose to vacation overseas if they had to sail those seas on a ship.
The concept at work here is hypermobility — people just move around, at incredibly long distances, a lot more than they used to before air travel was ubiquitous (and cheap). It's nearly impossible to find total miles traveled using various forms of transportation throughout history (believe me, I tried); I doubt they kept statistics on that sort of thing back in the horse-and-buggy days. But the difference must be astronomical (no pun intended, I think) from the days when traveling across the country meant an arduous journey on horseback and covered wagon; or even the middle of the last century, when traveling by air was a rare luxury. Now there are hundreds of international airports in the world (three of what the FAA calls "large primary hubs" in the SF bay area alone); and each one of them has hundreds of airplanes flying in and out every day — even thousands at the busiest. Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of miles per flight, and by dozens of passengers on each plane, and the numbers begin to get truly dizzying.
We've become so accustomed to air travel that most of us don't even think twice about flying across the country for a conference, or hopping over to Europe or Asia for vacation, or even just flying a few hundred miles to visit family… while if we had to travel by older, slower methods (cars, trains, or ships) we might think about whether we really needed to take that trip.
Another aspect of this is our global carbon budget — how much carbon we, collectively in the world, can burn up and still have a hope of averting total climate disaster. According to the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), in order to stay under the commonly-cited 2°C of warming we'd need to decrease global emissions to 2 metric tons of carbon per capita annually, right now; and even further, to 0.45 tons, in the near future — all from the current global average of 4 tons.
To do that fairly* means that those of us in the industrial west must cut our own emissions down to two tons per year now, and to less than a half-ton per year very soon. So here's the problem — one roundtrip flight between LA and New York creates nearly two tons of emissions per passenger (715 kilos of CO2, multiplied by 2.7 for the high altitude forcing, equals 1,930 kilos or almost two metric tons). In any sane, fair, and just world, in which we all burn no more carbon than is sustainable, in just one plane trip across the country you would blow through your entire year's allotment in one shot — or exceed it many times over.
*(Of course, our current global average is not distributed at all fairly — we citizens of the US on average spew about 17 tons per year —Australians even more, with a few tiny countries like Kuwait, the Netherlands, and Qatar emitting up into the 30s and 40s of tons — while citizens of Mozambique, Nepal, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Chad, Mali, and Afghanistan (among others) each emit a tenth of a ton or less. And naturally, there's a wide range within those nations as well — the famous 1%, with their 5,000-square-foot McMansions, conspicuous consumption, and frequent flyer miles, obviously contribute a lot more to the problem than my students in East Oakland who live in apartments or little old bungalows, never travel, and have no money to buy much more than what they need to get by. In order to get down to a (relatively) sustainable level of emissions per capita, we can't very well ask those who already get by without using much to cut back as much as those who already use much more than their share… Well, actually we could, and given the appalling political situation here and around the world, I fully expect it — but I'd rather pretend for the moment that we would at least make some attempt to be fair.)
I have heard back from some correspondents that massive changes in the way we live (including giving up flying) would risk making our present lives intolerable for the slender chance of preserving our future. But I see it differently: to quote Yotam Marom, "Climate Armageddon isn’t a Will Smith movie about what happens in 10 years when all hell breaks loose. Climate change is already here." There are people losing their livelihoods, homes, and very lives to droughts, fires, floods, hurricanes… If we widen the circle of concern (which we must — this is not just about humans), plant and animal species are already going extinct at an alarming rate (no, not all because of climate change, but it is exacerbating the situation). So, yes, the chances of preserving a livable future are vanishingly slim — but plants, animals, and humans are being hurt, and are dying, right now; and every gram of carbon we add to the atmosphere, for the sake of the convenience of being able to travel around the world whenever and wherever we want, makes it even worse.
The situation the world is in gives true meaning to the term "existential crisis." In this emergency, we can't afford to wait for governments. Many activists talk about fighting the power of the fossil fuel companies, but relatively few mention the time-honored tactic of the boycott. Granted, it is difficult to completely boycott fossil fuels while living in our fossil fuel-dependent society, but we can radically decrease the amounts we use — and one of the two or three most effective ways for an individual to do that is to stop flying.
Before I start on details, though, I should add a little disclaimer: of course, I know and believe that individual actions are not enough to solve this dire crisis we have brought on (not even close) — but I also believe that our so-called political leaders are not going to do anything at all to solve it, given that they are nearly all concerned with supporting the corporate empire. So for the time being I am focusing on what we can do as individuals to get the world off of fossil fuels — that is, coming at the problem from the demand side… inspired from a reply to my first post: "I also believe that any radical change worth making has to start with one person which leads to another person which leads to another person…"
So, as to the issue of air travel — I guess we need to start with some numbers. Unfortunately, accurate numbers are a little hard to chase down, but I've seen figures showing the per-passenger cost of air travel in CO2 equivalents as anywhere from 0.4 to 0.64 lbs/mile, where passenger cars are figured at about one lb/mile. However, the real carbon cost for flying is actually much higher, because of the high-altitude climatic forcing effect — the IPCC's commonly cited estimate is 2.7x — so the cost does come out to be greater than for travel by car.
Still doesn't really sound so bad though, does it? Only a little more carbon than driving… But of course, the per-passenger cost is not anywhere near the whole story. To get at the destructive nature of air travel, we need to consider a couple of aspects to this. First, think about how many times you would pack up and travel from (for instance) Los Angeles to New York if you had to get in your car and take a few days to drive there. Maybe once, it could make an interesting family vacation, with stops along the way… but you'd hardly go cross-country for a quick weekend getaway — and those frequent-flyers who work three days on one coast and two days on the other just couldn't do it at all. And there are undoubtedly relatively few people who would choose to vacation overseas if they had to sail those seas on a ship.
The concept at work here is hypermobility — people just move around, at incredibly long distances, a lot more than they used to before air travel was ubiquitous (and cheap). It's nearly impossible to find total miles traveled using various forms of transportation throughout history (believe me, I tried); I doubt they kept statistics on that sort of thing back in the horse-and-buggy days. But the difference must be astronomical (no pun intended, I think) from the days when traveling across the country meant an arduous journey on horseback and covered wagon; or even the middle of the last century, when traveling by air was a rare luxury. Now there are hundreds of international airports in the world (three of what the FAA calls "large primary hubs" in the SF bay area alone); and each one of them has hundreds of airplanes flying in and out every day — even thousands at the busiest. Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of miles per flight, and by dozens of passengers on each plane, and the numbers begin to get truly dizzying.
We've become so accustomed to air travel that most of us don't even think twice about flying across the country for a conference, or hopping over to Europe or Asia for vacation, or even just flying a few hundred miles to visit family… while if we had to travel by older, slower methods (cars, trains, or ships) we might think about whether we really needed to take that trip.
Another aspect of this is our global carbon budget — how much carbon we, collectively in the world, can burn up and still have a hope of averting total climate disaster. According to the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), in order to stay under the commonly-cited 2°C of warming we'd need to decrease global emissions to 2 metric tons of carbon per capita annually, right now; and even further, to 0.45 tons, in the near future — all from the current global average of 4 tons.
To do that fairly* means that those of us in the industrial west must cut our own emissions down to two tons per year now, and to less than a half-ton per year very soon. So here's the problem — one roundtrip flight between LA and New York creates nearly two tons of emissions per passenger (715 kilos of CO2, multiplied by 2.7 for the high altitude forcing, equals 1,930 kilos or almost two metric tons). In any sane, fair, and just world, in which we all burn no more carbon than is sustainable, in just one plane trip across the country you would blow through your entire year's allotment in one shot — or exceed it many times over.
*(Of course, our current global average is not distributed at all fairly — we citizens of the US on average spew about 17 tons per year —Australians even more, with a few tiny countries like Kuwait, the Netherlands, and Qatar emitting up into the 30s and 40s of tons — while citizens of Mozambique, Nepal, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Chad, Mali, and Afghanistan (among others) each emit a tenth of a ton or less. And naturally, there's a wide range within those nations as well — the famous 1%, with their 5,000-square-foot McMansions, conspicuous consumption, and frequent flyer miles, obviously contribute a lot more to the problem than my students in East Oakland who live in apartments or little old bungalows, never travel, and have no money to buy much more than what they need to get by. In order to get down to a (relatively) sustainable level of emissions per capita, we can't very well ask those who already get by without using much to cut back as much as those who already use much more than their share… Well, actually we could, and given the appalling political situation here and around the world, I fully expect it — but I'd rather pretend for the moment that we would at least make some attempt to be fair.)
I have heard back from some correspondents that massive changes in the way we live (including giving up flying) would risk making our present lives intolerable for the slender chance of preserving our future. But I see it differently: to quote Yotam Marom, "Climate Armageddon isn’t a Will Smith movie about what happens in 10 years when all hell breaks loose. Climate change is already here." There are people losing their livelihoods, homes, and very lives to droughts, fires, floods, hurricanes… If we widen the circle of concern (which we must — this is not just about humans), plant and animal species are already going extinct at an alarming rate (no, not all because of climate change, but it is exacerbating the situation). So, yes, the chances of preserving a livable future are vanishingly slim — but plants, animals, and humans are being hurt, and are dying, right now; and every gram of carbon we add to the atmosphere, for the sake of the convenience of being able to travel around the world whenever and wherever we want, makes it even worse.
The situation the world is in gives true meaning to the term "existential crisis." In this emergency, we can't afford to wait for governments. Many activists talk about fighting the power of the fossil fuel companies, but relatively few mention the time-honored tactic of the boycott. Granted, it is difficult to completely boycott fossil fuels while living in our fossil fuel-dependent society, but we can radically decrease the amounts we use — and one of the two or three most effective ways for an individual to do that is to stop flying.
Thursday, July 18, 2013
ignoring the truth
I recently heard an interview with Clive Hamilton, one of whose books is subtitled "Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change" — and it occurred to me that I disagree with that on only one word: for most of the people I know, folks do not so much resist the truth about climate change as ignore it. Frustratingly, this applies to people who profess to be very concerned about global warming… but when it comes to deciding whether to get on an airplane for a weekend trip, it simply doesn't even enter their thinking.
After I sent my original missive out to friends and family, I got back a few beautiful and encouraging responses — "I, too, have nightmares about this"… "I will do all I can to support your ideas"… But then life goes on, including those flights around the world. My husband and I are literally (and yes, I do mean literally — the rampant misuse of that word is one of my pet peeves) the only people I know personally who will not set foot on an airplane because of the huge climate implications... I hardly even know anyone else who hangs clothes on a clothesline instead of throwing them into an electric dryer. Perhaps I'm expecting too much, but it seems as if even among those who profess to be concerned about global warming, so few are ready to make any serious changes in their own lives, much less take on any advocacy. It's as if everyone is waiting for our elected "leaders" to do something to fix the situation — once again, not realizing (or perhaps ignoring) the monumental scale of the emergency. As always, I feel we have to keep trying — we can't prevent catastrophe whatever we do, but maybe we can prevent catastrophe from being even worse… But it is hard not to give in to despair.
On another note — it's about time for me to start adding some detail to my original "big three" precepts (the three biggest things an individual can do)… so I will try to get to some specifics regarding air travel next week. Coming soon!
After I sent my original missive out to friends and family, I got back a few beautiful and encouraging responses — "I, too, have nightmares about this"… "I will do all I can to support your ideas"… But then life goes on, including those flights around the world. My husband and I are literally (and yes, I do mean literally — the rampant misuse of that word is one of my pet peeves) the only people I know personally who will not set foot on an airplane because of the huge climate implications... I hardly even know anyone else who hangs clothes on a clothesline instead of throwing them into an electric dryer. Perhaps I'm expecting too much, but it seems as if even among those who profess to be concerned about global warming, so few are ready to make any serious changes in their own lives, much less take on any advocacy. It's as if everyone is waiting for our elected "leaders" to do something to fix the situation — once again, not realizing (or perhaps ignoring) the monumental scale of the emergency. As always, I feel we have to keep trying — we can't prevent catastrophe whatever we do, but maybe we can prevent catastrophe from being even worse… But it is hard not to give in to despair.
On another note — it's about time for me to start adding some detail to my original "big three" precepts (the three biggest things an individual can do)… so I will try to get to some specifics regarding air travel next week. Coming soon!
Friday, July 12, 2013
two brief tidbits — on how far we have to go...
The other day, after I filled up my bottle with bulk olive oil at my local natural foods store and brought it up to the checkout, I got into a bit of conversation with the checker/buyer — when I sighed that I wished I could get the California olive oil in bulk, he asked "Oh — do you like the taste better?" I said no, I prefer not to get my food shipped from halfway across the planet. His reply was "Oh, that carbon footprint thing… I guess it's a matter of your priorities — for me it's all about the taste... I guess I'm part of the problem, huh?" I really couldn't think of a way to answer without being incredibly rude, but of course what I was thinking was "I have a hard time prioritizing slightly better-tasting olive oil over a habitable planet…"
Then two days ago, in an SF Chronicle article about siting huge wind and solar energy plants in pristine southern California deserts, a spokesman for the developer of one of the projects was quoted saying "Those who sincerely care about the birds and the wildlife know that climate change is their greatest threat… and if you want to mitigate climate change while keeping the lights on [my emphasis], responsibly sited wind and solar power is your best answer." Of course, we could never consider just turning off some of those lights! This attitude is so pervasive — we can't even think of changing the way we live, so we must pave over pristine deserts to build more "energy capacity" (however "renewable" it may be). If we were seriously sacrificing and paring down to just what is absolutely necessary to survive, then it might — just barely might — be defensible to think about building energy plants in the desert… But as long as we are using energy to power Las Vegas and pro sports night games (among many other quintessentially nonessential pursuits), even considering this should be beyond the pale. Unfortunately, in our society, this thinking is the norm — there is no greater good than keeping those lights on, keeping up our lifestyles... and preserving life on the planet just has to take a backseat.
Then two days ago, in an SF Chronicle article about siting huge wind and solar energy plants in pristine southern California deserts, a spokesman for the developer of one of the projects was quoted saying "Those who sincerely care about the birds and the wildlife know that climate change is their greatest threat… and if you want to mitigate climate change while keeping the lights on [my emphasis], responsibly sited wind and solar power is your best answer." Of course, we could never consider just turning off some of those lights! This attitude is so pervasive — we can't even think of changing the way we live, so we must pave over pristine deserts to build more "energy capacity" (however "renewable" it may be). If we were seriously sacrificing and paring down to just what is absolutely necessary to survive, then it might — just barely might — be defensible to think about building energy plants in the desert… But as long as we are using energy to power Las Vegas and pro sports night games (among many other quintessentially nonessential pursuits), even considering this should be beyond the pale. Unfortunately, in our society, this thinking is the norm — there is no greater good than keeping those lights on, keeping up our lifestyles... and preserving life on the planet just has to take a backseat.
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Obama's climate speech
Well, I seem to have been pretty well MIA from this blog for the last couple of months — that's what comes of teaching (and dashing between) two schools while trying to look for a new position, I guess… Oh well, now that it's summer break, I should be able to catch up a bit — perhaps even throw some more details onto my big three issues (eating meat, flying, buying stuff)… And I figure that when the so-called leader of the free world finally gets around to recognizing the global warming emergency with more than just a couple of sentences in a state of the union speech, it's as good a time as any for me to jump back in (even if I'm already about a week late — I'm afraid I'm a pretty slow and painstaking writer).
By now I've read plenty of mainstream environmental organizations praising the speech for actually describing the problem in fairly accurate scientific terms, for dissing the deniers ("the Flat Earth Society") for shouting out the divestment movement (just by speaking the word "divest" exactly once)… And it's true that the opening and closing included some beautiful language about the crisis we face.
BUT… the President also boasted — three times (!) — about how we are producing more oil than ever ("produced more oil than we have in 15 years"… "even as we're producing more domestic oil"…), and more natural gas "than anybody else." I guess he at least knew better than to brag about producing coal… but in a speech ostensibly about the climate emergency, this is unconscionable.
He twice referenced that China has passed the US as the world's largest emitter, and made congratulatory mentions of how much the US has "reduced" emissions. Of course, saying that China is the world's largest emitter works only if you start with three givens: 1. you are counting total emissions, not emissions per capita; 2. you are counting the carbon being emitted right now, not cumulatively — even though it is cumulative emissions that matter to the climate (and by that standard, it will take China or anyone else a very long time to catch up); and (and this is the big one) 3. you are counting emissions from the production end, not the consumption end. A big proportion of China's emissions comes from manufacturing for the American market — they are burning all that coal just to make all the stuff that we incessantly shop for...in other words, a huge part of the reason we can boast that "no country on earth has reduced its total carbon pollution by as much as the United States of America" is that we have off-shored our emissions, right along with all those manufacturing jobs going to low-wage countries! Not exactly something to be proud of.
Another theme, revisited four times, was economic growth — "there's no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth." The growth economy is a huge topic that I will take up in another post, but this focus on growth, at the very least, betrays complete ignorance of the extent and scope of the problem. At worst, it betrays something more like indifference — a mindset that nothing (not even a habitable planet) is more important than a growth economy, keeping Wall Street happy while the common people (not to mention the natural world) are left to deal with the crisis the best we can…
As to the Climate Action Plan itself, it could be called a decent start (and could have actually been a decent start, 40 years ago) — but again, the tiny baby steps approach betrays either ignorance of or indifference to the urgency of the situation. The plan prominently recommits to cutting US emissions 17% from 2005 levels by 2020 (which is only a 4% cut from 1990 levels). As a local columnist said, "Here's the bigger issue: Emitting less carbon dioxide isn't a solution to climate change. It beats increases, but by using fossil fuels at all, we're adding to rather than subtracting from the problem. It takes hundreds of years for CO2 to fully leave the atmosphere, and we're already at dangerously high levels." I can't say it better, but maybe a little shorter: the climate doesn't care how fast we put that carbon up in the atmosphere, it only cares about the total amount — so slowing down the rate at which we spew it out does nothing!
But the fatal flaw in the plan — the one which makes it not just too little too late, but actually worse than doing nothing — is its enthusiastic promotion of natural gas (especially fracked natural gas) as a "cleaner-burning" "transition" fuel. Even at best, natural gas is only marginally better than other fossil fuels, only serves to somewhat reduce emissions, when what's needed is to come as close as possible to getting off all fossil fuels, cold turkey, tomorrow… But because of methane leakage at the well, fracked natural gas is actually — please pardon me, but I do feel the need to shout here — WORSE THAN COAL! Methane doesn't hang around in the atmosphere as long as CO2, but over the first 20 years methane is 80 - 105 times more potent as a greenhouse gas (Obama's climate plan calls it 20 times more powerful, but that assumes a 100-year timeframe — and remember, we don't have 100 years!) This means that fracked natural gas is worse for the atmosphere than coal if those "fugitive emissions" are as low as 2%; and the most extensive and credible studies have found up to nearly 8% leakage (other studies have found as much as 17%). Yet this is what Obama is pushing as a way to "reduce our carbon emissions."
And even worse, the plan rests not only upon increasing natural gas production in the US (and exporting that oh-so-dirty fracked gas, which adds even more emissions for transport), but also pushing fracking technology on the rest of the world (through applying "private sector knowhow in countries that transition to natural gas"). This is truly a recipe for disaster… and yes, I am using "pushing" intentionally, because this is also a recipe for keeping the world addicted to fossil fuels — by avoiding any thought of more effective strategies like conservation, or even (perish the thought!) truly changing the way we live our lives...
The plan is at best mistaken — and at worst outright mendacious — on two fronts: first, that natural gas will reduce emissions; and second, that simply reducing emissions is in any way a solution to the emergency we face. I cannot imagine that the President's energy and environment advisors have not informed him about the climate impacts of fracked natural gas — so I'm afraid the only conclusion I can draw is that keeping our economy humming and our energy sector profitable is a higher priority to our leadership than preserving a habitable planet.
I cannot say that this speech was a disappointment, as I did not expect much to begin with; but did I find it to be amazingly frustrating, as the first part really was an eloquent statement of the effects of climate change — and then the rest proceeded to propose policies that will only serve to worsen those effects.
By now I've read plenty of mainstream environmental organizations praising the speech for actually describing the problem in fairly accurate scientific terms, for dissing the deniers ("the Flat Earth Society") for shouting out the divestment movement (just by speaking the word "divest" exactly once)… And it's true that the opening and closing included some beautiful language about the crisis we face.
BUT… the President also boasted — three times (!) — about how we are producing more oil than ever ("produced more oil than we have in 15 years"… "even as we're producing more domestic oil"…), and more natural gas "than anybody else." I guess he at least knew better than to brag about producing coal… but in a speech ostensibly about the climate emergency, this is unconscionable.
He twice referenced that China has passed the US as the world's largest emitter, and made congratulatory mentions of how much the US has "reduced" emissions. Of course, saying that China is the world's largest emitter works only if you start with three givens: 1. you are counting total emissions, not emissions per capita; 2. you are counting the carbon being emitted right now, not cumulatively — even though it is cumulative emissions that matter to the climate (and by that standard, it will take China or anyone else a very long time to catch up); and (and this is the big one) 3. you are counting emissions from the production end, not the consumption end. A big proportion of China's emissions comes from manufacturing for the American market — they are burning all that coal just to make all the stuff that we incessantly shop for...in other words, a huge part of the reason we can boast that "no country on earth has reduced its total carbon pollution by as much as the United States of America" is that we have off-shored our emissions, right along with all those manufacturing jobs going to low-wage countries! Not exactly something to be proud of.
Another theme, revisited four times, was economic growth — "there's no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth." The growth economy is a huge topic that I will take up in another post, but this focus on growth, at the very least, betrays complete ignorance of the extent and scope of the problem. At worst, it betrays something more like indifference — a mindset that nothing (not even a habitable planet) is more important than a growth economy, keeping Wall Street happy while the common people (not to mention the natural world) are left to deal with the crisis the best we can…
As to the Climate Action Plan itself, it could be called a decent start (and could have actually been a decent start, 40 years ago) — but again, the tiny baby steps approach betrays either ignorance of or indifference to the urgency of the situation. The plan prominently recommits to cutting US emissions 17% from 2005 levels by 2020 (which is only a 4% cut from 1990 levels). As a local columnist said, "Here's the bigger issue: Emitting less carbon dioxide isn't a solution to climate change. It beats increases, but by using fossil fuels at all, we're adding to rather than subtracting from the problem. It takes hundreds of years for CO2 to fully leave the atmosphere, and we're already at dangerously high levels." I can't say it better, but maybe a little shorter: the climate doesn't care how fast we put that carbon up in the atmosphere, it only cares about the total amount — so slowing down the rate at which we spew it out does nothing!
But the fatal flaw in the plan — the one which makes it not just too little too late, but actually worse than doing nothing — is its enthusiastic promotion of natural gas (especially fracked natural gas) as a "cleaner-burning" "transition" fuel. Even at best, natural gas is only marginally better than other fossil fuels, only serves to somewhat reduce emissions, when what's needed is to come as close as possible to getting off all fossil fuels, cold turkey, tomorrow… But because of methane leakage at the well, fracked natural gas is actually — please pardon me, but I do feel the need to shout here — WORSE THAN COAL! Methane doesn't hang around in the atmosphere as long as CO2, but over the first 20 years methane is 80 - 105 times more potent as a greenhouse gas (Obama's climate plan calls it 20 times more powerful, but that assumes a 100-year timeframe — and remember, we don't have 100 years!) This means that fracked natural gas is worse for the atmosphere than coal if those "fugitive emissions" are as low as 2%; and the most extensive and credible studies have found up to nearly 8% leakage (other studies have found as much as 17%). Yet this is what Obama is pushing as a way to "reduce our carbon emissions."
And even worse, the plan rests not only upon increasing natural gas production in the US (and exporting that oh-so-dirty fracked gas, which adds even more emissions for transport), but also pushing fracking technology on the rest of the world (through applying "private sector knowhow in countries that transition to natural gas"). This is truly a recipe for disaster… and yes, I am using "pushing" intentionally, because this is also a recipe for keeping the world addicted to fossil fuels — by avoiding any thought of more effective strategies like conservation, or even (perish the thought!) truly changing the way we live our lives...
The plan is at best mistaken — and at worst outright mendacious — on two fronts: first, that natural gas will reduce emissions; and second, that simply reducing emissions is in any way a solution to the emergency we face. I cannot imagine that the President's energy and environment advisors have not informed him about the climate impacts of fracked natural gas — so I'm afraid the only conclusion I can draw is that keeping our economy humming and our energy sector profitable is a higher priority to our leadership than preserving a habitable planet.
I cannot say that this speech was a disappointment, as I did not expect much to begin with; but did I find it to be amazingly frustrating, as the first part really was an eloquent statement of the effects of climate change — and then the rest proceeded to propose policies that will only serve to worsen those effects.
Friday, May 10, 2013
"moral authority" and personal choices
I've been thinking more about one of those dichotomies I wrote about a little while back (aaargh! Has it really been over a month since the last time I wrote here?? There's so much I want to write about, and so little time… sigh… a lot, I'm afraid, will wait until summer break) — personal consumption vs. systemic change. Of course, as far as I'm concerned there is no real dichotomy, we absolutely need both — the climate emergency is so urgent we need everything we can do, as fast as we can do it — but there is another aspect to this one, and that is carrying the moral authority to even advocate for changing the systems we live under… or, in other words, simply not opening oneself up to being seen as a hypocrite.
It occurred to me that this is something those in the animal rights community take for granted. Imagine the sneers if animal activists showed up at demonstrations wearing leather shoes and munching cheeseburgers — but it doesn't happen because I have never met any animal rights folks who were not committed ethical vegans (and yes, that does mean eschewing all animal products, including leather and wool). Of course animal activists' main concern is that they do not themselves cause any unnecessary suffering if they can possibly help it (even though individual actions are trivial in the face of the massive suffering of billions of animals); but avoiding hypocrisy is also important to any political movement.
On a similar note, after a recent anti-Keystone XL protest in San Francisco, someone wrote a letter to the Chronicle decrying the protesters for hypocrisy, as (he said) he watched them get into their gasoline-powered cars and drive away… Now this is pretty hard to believe in any case — if you know anything about the parking situation around SF's civic center, you know it would be well-nigh impossible to follow more than one or two people back to a parking spaces (which would be blocks away in various directions), and anyone coming to protest would have been crazy not to simply hop on BART (so much easier for getting to that part of town, even if principles were not an issue). But still these stories crop up, because the opposition is so intent on finding hypocrisy…
… So why let them? Granted, one person's consumption choices are not going to by themselves save the planet; and granted, no one is perfect (certainly not me)… But while we advocate for the end of industrial capitalism, or whatever systemic change might actually have a chance of making a difference, we need to do the absolute best we can to carry that moral authority in ourselves, to walk our talk. Of course, this is nuanced — while it is possible (though difficult) to completely avoid animal products, it is nearly impossible to live in today's society without burning some fossil fuels. But we can certainly try to at least stop doing the big things: eating meat, flying on airplanes, just being part of the consumer culture. Take a hint from the animal rights folks — you can't effectively protest at the slaughterhouse wearing leather shoes and munching cheeseburgers, and you can't effectively protest the fossil fuel industry by using their products (and that does mean flying cross-country to the protest — and munching cheeseburgers, even artisan, grass-fed ones). And it is incumbent on all of us to do as much as we can to avoid causing suffering by our actions, whether that means being an ethical vegan to avoid causing animal cruelty, or not buying any new stuff because it might, just might, help avoid the extinction of one little species somewhere down the line...
It occurred to me that this is something those in the animal rights community take for granted. Imagine the sneers if animal activists showed up at demonstrations wearing leather shoes and munching cheeseburgers — but it doesn't happen because I have never met any animal rights folks who were not committed ethical vegans (and yes, that does mean eschewing all animal products, including leather and wool). Of course animal activists' main concern is that they do not themselves cause any unnecessary suffering if they can possibly help it (even though individual actions are trivial in the face of the massive suffering of billions of animals); but avoiding hypocrisy is also important to any political movement.
On a similar note, after a recent anti-Keystone XL protest in San Francisco, someone wrote a letter to the Chronicle decrying the protesters for hypocrisy, as (he said) he watched them get into their gasoline-powered cars and drive away… Now this is pretty hard to believe in any case — if you know anything about the parking situation around SF's civic center, you know it would be well-nigh impossible to follow more than one or two people back to a parking spaces (which would be blocks away in various directions), and anyone coming to protest would have been crazy not to simply hop on BART (so much easier for getting to that part of town, even if principles were not an issue). But still these stories crop up, because the opposition is so intent on finding hypocrisy…
… So why let them? Granted, one person's consumption choices are not going to by themselves save the planet; and granted, no one is perfect (certainly not me)… But while we advocate for the end of industrial capitalism, or whatever systemic change might actually have a chance of making a difference, we need to do the absolute best we can to carry that moral authority in ourselves, to walk our talk. Of course, this is nuanced — while it is possible (though difficult) to completely avoid animal products, it is nearly impossible to live in today's society without burning some fossil fuels. But we can certainly try to at least stop doing the big things: eating meat, flying on airplanes, just being part of the consumer culture. Take a hint from the animal rights folks — you can't effectively protest at the slaughterhouse wearing leather shoes and munching cheeseburgers, and you can't effectively protest the fossil fuel industry by using their products (and that does mean flying cross-country to the protest — and munching cheeseburgers, even artisan, grass-fed ones). And it is incumbent on all of us to do as much as we can to avoid causing suffering by our actions, whether that means being an ethical vegan to avoid causing animal cruelty, or not buying any new stuff because it might, just might, help avoid the extinction of one little species somewhere down the line...
Sunday, April 7, 2013
"de-extinction"
Yesterday there was a story in the San Francisco Chronicle about researchers involved in some gee-whiz "de-extinction" experiments to clone long- (or not-so-long)-lost species. It mentioned, in breathless terms, that "the possibility of billions of passenger pigeons once again clouding city skies or the sound of thunder from the hooves of woolly mammoths trampling the Arctic's tundra may be speculation no more."
Gosh — I can hardly wait for the spectacle of "woolly mammoths trampling the Arctic tundra" — only to see it melt away beneath their feet! Or perhaps they might share the fate of the gray wolf and other recently "de-listed" species, shot at will as soon as their numbers barely rise above the threshold for endangered status.
Stewart Brand (referred to as "'environmental visionary' Stewart Brand") appears to be pushing this idea through his Long Now Foundation. In the article, he is quoted crowing that "re-wilding is storming ahead everywhere." This idea is not "re-wilding" — according to The Rewilding Institute, rewilding involves "restoring big wilderness based on the regulatory roles of large predators.” The features needed for true rewilding are large, strictly protected core reserves; connections between reserves so that animals are able to travel; and, most importantly, the reintroduction and recovery of keystone carnivorous species. None of this is fulfilled in any way by cloning a few extinct animals — to quote cinematographer Lois Crisler, who spent years filming wolves in the Arctic, "animals without wilderness are a closed book.”
This is rather the ultimate vanity project, designed to assuage our consciences for wiping so many species from the face of the earth (It's okay! Look — we can bring them back!) It is the same sort of thinking that justifies keeping endangered species captive in zoos, to "preserve" the species as their habitats disappear — it certainly does those individual animals no good to be held behind bars, but we don't like to think we've destroyed another species so we keep the last few "specimens" breeding in cages for eternity. The article mentioned one recently extinct species, the bucardo or Pyrenian ibex, as being "very close to 'de-extinction' even now" as "many implantations" resulted in the birth of a "living bucardo clone" — which died ten minutes after birth! Again, cloning animals so feeble as to survive just for a short time does no good for those individual animals, and serves only to make us feel a little less monstrous.
Meanwhile, we are busily driving more species into extinction at the rate of one every five minutes, as we slaughter them for bling, exterminate them to keep them away from our endless herds of livestock, or pave over their habitats in our insatiable need for more space for our ever-increasing billions. Before we in our arrogance start to clone sickly versions of species we have exterminated, I think we would do better to figure out how to stop annihilating those that still manage to survive.
Gosh — I can hardly wait for the spectacle of "woolly mammoths trampling the Arctic tundra" — only to see it melt away beneath their feet! Or perhaps they might share the fate of the gray wolf and other recently "de-listed" species, shot at will as soon as their numbers barely rise above the threshold for endangered status.
Stewart Brand (referred to as "'environmental visionary' Stewart Brand") appears to be pushing this idea through his Long Now Foundation. In the article, he is quoted crowing that "re-wilding is storming ahead everywhere." This idea is not "re-wilding" — according to The Rewilding Institute, rewilding involves "restoring big wilderness based on the regulatory roles of large predators.” The features needed for true rewilding are large, strictly protected core reserves; connections between reserves so that animals are able to travel; and, most importantly, the reintroduction and recovery of keystone carnivorous species. None of this is fulfilled in any way by cloning a few extinct animals — to quote cinematographer Lois Crisler, who spent years filming wolves in the Arctic, "animals without wilderness are a closed book.”
This is rather the ultimate vanity project, designed to assuage our consciences for wiping so many species from the face of the earth (It's okay! Look — we can bring them back!) It is the same sort of thinking that justifies keeping endangered species captive in zoos, to "preserve" the species as their habitats disappear — it certainly does those individual animals no good to be held behind bars, but we don't like to think we've destroyed another species so we keep the last few "specimens" breeding in cages for eternity. The article mentioned one recently extinct species, the bucardo or Pyrenian ibex, as being "very close to 'de-extinction' even now" as "many implantations" resulted in the birth of a "living bucardo clone" — which died ten minutes after birth! Again, cloning animals so feeble as to survive just for a short time does no good for those individual animals, and serves only to make us feel a little less monstrous.
Meanwhile, we are busily driving more species into extinction at the rate of one every five minutes, as we slaughter them for bling, exterminate them to keep them away from our endless herds of livestock, or pave over their habitats in our insatiable need for more space for our ever-increasing billions. Before we in our arrogance start to clone sickly versions of species we have exterminated, I think we would do better to figure out how to stop annihilating those that still manage to survive.
Monday, April 1, 2013
the urgency of the problem — either / or vs. both / and
In some of the online forums I peruse from time to time, there is often a lot of "either/or" talk — endless arguments about which of two problems (or solutions) is most pressing, important, necessary, possible…
Population versus consumption is a frequent theme; also renewables versus consumption — that is, whether renewables can supply all of our energy "needs" or whether we need to reduce consumption; a third common dichotomy is systemic change versus personal consumption — "the problem is capitalism… industrial civilization… big oil… big coal… the corporations… the military-industrial complex…"
What all of these "either/or" arguments miss, of course, is that this is a multiplication problem — debating whether population or consumption is more destructive, or whether developing renewables or reducing consumption is more effective, really makes just as much sense as debating whether height or width is more important in finding the area of a rectangle!
But beyond that, these dualities betray a misunderstanding of the scale and urgency of the problem. Climate scientist Kevin Anderson has determined that we need to cut our emissions 10% per year — and drop emissions to ZERO within ten years — just to have an outside chance of holding warming to the longstanding target of 2°C (and we know what effects we are already seeing from just 0.8°C, with more in the pipeline from what we've already emitted — the 4-6° we are heading for is nearly unimaginable). So our emissions have to essentially drop off the proverbial cliff — and that is not going to happen by reducing either consumption or population, or by either effecting systemic change or changing our own lifestyles (as if one could happen without the other); and certainly not by developing renewables without radically reducing consumption as well. This is an all-hands-on-deck, do everything we possibly can as fast as we can situation, and it feels as if very few people I run into really, truly get that.
There seems to be an idea out there that if we begin to reduce our emissions somewhat, then things will start to get better... and little awareness of the cumulative nature of the problem — that what matters to the climate system is the total amount of carbon we add to the atmosphere, not how fast we put it up there. David Roberts, writing in Grist, attributes this in part to thinking about global warming the same way we think of other environmental problems like air or water pollution: if we quit putting particulates into the air, the smog dissipates within a few days (witness the dramatic improvement in air quality in LA when city officials instituted traffic controls during the 1984 Olympics); and if a factory stops dumping its wastes into a river, the water will run cleaner pretty quickly as well. But the CO2 we emit stays up there in the atmosphere for up to a century, and carbon emissions accumulate (sort of like lead posioning in your body) — and that is the piece of this that people seem to have trouble getting their heads around. Our habits of thinking are too ingrained, ironically from past successes.
So a lot of concerned, well-meaning folks (including many of my friends and relations) don't really feel the urgency, and continue to go about their lives thinking that something will come along to fix this — after all, we sent a man to the moon, didn't we?...Or debate which of various dual options is the most realistic, with little recognition that the only way to do what really needs to be done — that is, bring emissions down to ZERO, as soon as possible — is to radically reduce both population and consumption, to both develop renewables and reduce consumption; and to (yes) change our capitalist-industrial-corporate system and look to our own wasteful lifestyles that support that system.
More about all three of these in future posts, soon I hope (sorry I am not as prolific as I would like to be, I'm a bit painstaking in my writing)…
Population versus consumption is a frequent theme; also renewables versus consumption — that is, whether renewables can supply all of our energy "needs" or whether we need to reduce consumption; a third common dichotomy is systemic change versus personal consumption — "the problem is capitalism… industrial civilization… big oil… big coal… the corporations… the military-industrial complex…"
What all of these "either/or" arguments miss, of course, is that this is a multiplication problem — debating whether population or consumption is more destructive, or whether developing renewables or reducing consumption is more effective, really makes just as much sense as debating whether height or width is more important in finding the area of a rectangle!
But beyond that, these dualities betray a misunderstanding of the scale and urgency of the problem. Climate scientist Kevin Anderson has determined that we need to cut our emissions 10% per year — and drop emissions to ZERO within ten years — just to have an outside chance of holding warming to the longstanding target of 2°C (and we know what effects we are already seeing from just 0.8°C, with more in the pipeline from what we've already emitted — the 4-6° we are heading for is nearly unimaginable). So our emissions have to essentially drop off the proverbial cliff — and that is not going to happen by reducing either consumption or population, or by either effecting systemic change or changing our own lifestyles (as if one could happen without the other); and certainly not by developing renewables without radically reducing consumption as well. This is an all-hands-on-deck, do everything we possibly can as fast as we can situation, and it feels as if very few people I run into really, truly get that.
There seems to be an idea out there that if we begin to reduce our emissions somewhat, then things will start to get better... and little awareness of the cumulative nature of the problem — that what matters to the climate system is the total amount of carbon we add to the atmosphere, not how fast we put it up there. David Roberts, writing in Grist, attributes this in part to thinking about global warming the same way we think of other environmental problems like air or water pollution: if we quit putting particulates into the air, the smog dissipates within a few days (witness the dramatic improvement in air quality in LA when city officials instituted traffic controls during the 1984 Olympics); and if a factory stops dumping its wastes into a river, the water will run cleaner pretty quickly as well. But the CO2 we emit stays up there in the atmosphere for up to a century, and carbon emissions accumulate (sort of like lead posioning in your body) — and that is the piece of this that people seem to have trouble getting their heads around. Our habits of thinking are too ingrained, ironically from past successes.
So a lot of concerned, well-meaning folks (including many of my friends and relations) don't really feel the urgency, and continue to go about their lives thinking that something will come along to fix this — after all, we sent a man to the moon, didn't we?...Or debate which of various dual options is the most realistic, with little recognition that the only way to do what really needs to be done — that is, bring emissions down to ZERO, as soon as possible — is to radically reduce both population and consumption, to both develop renewables and reduce consumption; and to (yes) change our capitalist-industrial-corporate system and look to our own wasteful lifestyles that support that system.
More about all three of these in future posts, soon I hope (sorry I am not as prolific as I would like to be, I'm a bit painstaking in my writing)…
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
the dilemma
Last week, we (my husband and I) ran into a couple of friends/acquaintances/colleagues we hadn't seen in a while; and in the course of the usual "so, what have you been up to lately" talk, they told us all about their recent travels to Asia and Europe… And I found myself confronting my usual dilemma in these situations: do I bite my tongue, nod and listen politely (thus implying that I think flying around the world is not incredibly destructive), or do I let myself blurt out something like "do you know how much a flight to Europe actually costs in terms of atmospheric carbon?"
After all, one reason I wrote that long letter (and then started this blog) in the first place was to explain to my friends why I can't share their joy in flying off to distant lands, but tend to sit in uncomfortable silence when talk turns to foreign travel… And another (probably the main) reason was that I do feel the political situation is hopeless, and the only way to turn this thing around is to change people's behavior, persuade others to live as low-carbon as possible, one friend at a time if need be…
But when it comes right down to it, it's very hard to go beyond that uncomfortable silence stage and actually evangelize for a livable planet — not without alienating all of my friends and colleagues, which is not a good way to change anyone's behavior in any case. So when I wrote my letter, I carefully worded it to avoid insulting and driving away those that I sent it to, hoping against hope that it might give someone enough food for thought to begin to change some habits...
I desperately wish for a sane world, a world where travel mavens like Rick Steves (not to mention feedlot operators) were looked on as the social parasites they are, and where hopping on a plane for vacation and all forms of conspicuous consumption were as socially unacceptable as smoking in a roomful of children… But we need a huge shift in perceptions to get there, and in the meantime I guess I'm not a very good evangelist. I wish I knew how to do this better…
After all, one reason I wrote that long letter (and then started this blog) in the first place was to explain to my friends why I can't share their joy in flying off to distant lands, but tend to sit in uncomfortable silence when talk turns to foreign travel… And another (probably the main) reason was that I do feel the political situation is hopeless, and the only way to turn this thing around is to change people's behavior, persuade others to live as low-carbon as possible, one friend at a time if need be…
But when it comes right down to it, it's very hard to go beyond that uncomfortable silence stage and actually evangelize for a livable planet — not without alienating all of my friends and colleagues, which is not a good way to change anyone's behavior in any case. So when I wrote my letter, I carefully worded it to avoid insulting and driving away those that I sent it to, hoping against hope that it might give someone enough food for thought to begin to change some habits...
I desperately wish for a sane world, a world where travel mavens like Rick Steves (not to mention feedlot operators) were looked on as the social parasites they are, and where hopping on a plane for vacation and all forms of conspicuous consumption were as socially unacceptable as smoking in a roomful of children… But we need a huge shift in perceptions to get there, and in the meantime I guess I'm not a very good evangelist. I wish I knew how to do this better…
Sunday, March 10, 2013
another example of the sickness of our society...
This may not be immediately obvious as global warming-related quote, but... In an article after Hugo Chavez' passing, entitled "Little Reaction In Oil Market To Chavez Death," an AP reporter wrote:
"Chavez invested Venezuela's oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world's tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi."
Of course, one can argue how huge a problem it is that Venezuela gets the majority of its wealth from oil in the first place... but when I heard this quote it jumped right out at me as another measure of the sickness of our society — that the Chavez government could be criticized, not for pulling all that oil out of the ground, but for not using the proceeds to build glittering construction projects and tall buildings! This one shocked even me — as Lily Tomlin said, no matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up...
"Chavez invested Venezuela's oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world's tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi."
Of course, one can argue how huge a problem it is that Venezuela gets the majority of its wealth from oil in the first place... but when I heard this quote it jumped right out at me as another measure of the sickness of our society — that the Chavez government could be criticized, not for pulling all that oil out of the ground, but for not using the proceeds to build glittering construction projects and tall buildings! This one shocked even me — as Lily Tomlin said, no matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up...
Friday, March 8, 2013
worthwhile conversation...
... I just recently read an conversation between Leanne Simpson, a Canadian First Nations author, poet, and Idle No More activist, and Naomi Klein. Very well worth reading... I especially appreciated the concept of (and coining of the term) "extractivism" — so descriptive of our (western, capitalist) culture. The complete interview is available at Yes! magazine — in the meantime, a few vital passages:
(Leanne) "We’re running out of time. We’re losing the opportunity to turn this thing around. We don’t have time for this massive slow transformation into something that’s sustainable and alternative. I do feel like I’m getting pushed up against the wall... I think that the impetus to act and to change and to transform, for me, exists whether or not this is the end of the world. If a river is threatened, it’s the end of the world for those fish. It’s been the end of the world for somebody all along."
(Leanne) "One of the stories I tell in my book is of working with an elder who’s passed on now, Robin Greene from Shoal Lake in Winnipeg, in an environmental education program with First Nations youth. And we were talking about sustainable development, and I was explaining that term from the Western perspective to the students. And I asked him if there was a similar concept in Anishinaabeg philosophy that would be the same as sustainable development. And he thought for a very long time. And he said no. And I was sort of shocked at the “no” because I was expecting there to be something similar. And he said the concept is backwards. You don’t develop as much as Mother Earth can handle. For us it’s the opposite. You think about how much you can give up to promote more life. Every decision that you make is based on: Do you really need to be doing that?" (my emphasis)
(Leanne) "If I look at my ancestors even 200 years ago... they didn’t rely on material wealth for their well-being and economic stability. They put energy into meaningful and authentic relationships... I think that extended to how they found meaning in life. It was the quality of those relationships—not how much they had, not how much they consumed—that was the basis of their happiness."
(Leanne) "In order to make these changes, in order to make this punctuated transformation, it means lower standards of living, for that 1 percent and for the middle class... And I think in the absence of having a meaningful life outside of capital and outside of material wealth, that’s really scary."
(Naomi) "If you have a rich community life, if your relationships feed you, if you have a meaningful relationship with the natural world, then I think contraction isn’t as terrifying. But if your life is almost exclusively consumption, which I think is what it is for a great many people in this culture, then we need to understand the depth of the threat this crisis represents. That’s why the transformation that we have to make is so profound—we have to relearn how to derive happiness and satisfaction from other things than shopping, or we’re all screwed."
(Leanne) "We’re running out of time. We’re losing the opportunity to turn this thing around. We don’t have time for this massive slow transformation into something that’s sustainable and alternative. I do feel like I’m getting pushed up against the wall... I think that the impetus to act and to change and to transform, for me, exists whether or not this is the end of the world. If a river is threatened, it’s the end of the world for those fish. It’s been the end of the world for somebody all along."
(Leanne) "One of the stories I tell in my book is of working with an elder who’s passed on now, Robin Greene from Shoal Lake in Winnipeg, in an environmental education program with First Nations youth. And we were talking about sustainable development, and I was explaining that term from the Western perspective to the students. And I asked him if there was a similar concept in Anishinaabeg philosophy that would be the same as sustainable development. And he thought for a very long time. And he said no. And I was sort of shocked at the “no” because I was expecting there to be something similar. And he said the concept is backwards. You don’t develop as much as Mother Earth can handle. For us it’s the opposite. You think about how much you can give up to promote more life. Every decision that you make is based on: Do you really need to be doing that?" (my emphasis)
(Leanne) "If I look at my ancestors even 200 years ago... they didn’t rely on material wealth for their well-being and economic stability. They put energy into meaningful and authentic relationships... I think that extended to how they found meaning in life. It was the quality of those relationships—not how much they had, not how much they consumed—that was the basis of their happiness."
(Leanne) "In order to make these changes, in order to make this punctuated transformation, it means lower standards of living, for that 1 percent and for the middle class... And I think in the absence of having a meaningful life outside of capital and outside of material wealth, that’s really scary."
(Naomi) "If you have a rich community life, if your relationships feed you, if you have a meaningful relationship with the natural world, then I think contraction isn’t as terrifying. But if your life is almost exclusively consumption, which I think is what it is for a great many people in this culture, then we need to understand the depth of the threat this crisis represents. That’s why the transformation that we have to make is so profound—we have to relearn how to derive happiness and satisfaction from other things than shopping, or we’re all screwed."
Monday, February 18, 2013
Senator Sanders' carbon tax proposal
Sigh… So Senators Sanders and Boxer have come out with proposed legislation for a carbon tax — which sounds like great progress, but turns out to be just another measure of how far we have to go to face reality. To begin with, the ostensible goal of the proposal is to decrease carbon emissions 80% by 2050. This might have been a worthwhile goal a few years (or decades) ago, but the effects of warming are so fast outpacing the projections it is now clear that 80% by 2050 is not even close to what is truly necessary (more on that in a later post).
But even if the goal were enough, there are two huge problems with this proposal. First, the price for carbon is set at $20/ton initially, rising to $35/ton over 10 years. This is practically guaranteed to have virtually no effect. Just think about it — we know that a cross-country roundtrip flight spews the equivalent of 2 tons of carbon per passenger, so this would add a big $40.00 to the price of that roundtrip ticket! (even if all of those emissions were fairly counted, which they usually are not). Is that really going to keep anyone from flying? I understand the airlines have been tacking on that much just in luggage fees and whatnot lately — I haven't read of a huge drop in air travel because of it. There is also a really easy conversion factor for car travel: dollars/ton of carbon approximately equals cents/gallon of gas — so that $20/ton will add about 20 cents per gallon. Excuse me, but — big deal! The price of gas fluctuates more than that, all the time, with little effect on driving (how many folks do you think would stop driving to work if gas went up a measly 20 cents?). Getting an 80% cutback is going to take pricing carbon orders of magnitude higher than that.
The second big problem, of course, is that this is not a real carbon fee-and-dividend proposal, it is a carbon tax proposal — and that makes all the difference. The beauty of true fee-and-dividend is that all of the proceeds go to reimbursing the people, so that it's not just another regressive tax: the proceeds are collected according to consumption, but distributed per-capita, so that those who consume a lot (frequent flyers, living in and heating giant houses, etc.) pay a lot, and people who consume little end up getting back more than they put in. This proposal, on the other hand, returns only 60% to the people; the other 40% would be used for various purposes, including "energy efficiency" and (naturally) paying down the debt (!). This is, of course, only the starting place — this is the part that is ripe for loading up with lots of pork for lots of political contributors. And all for naught, as only a few senators will end up voting for even this. So far we have to go, to face reality...
But even if the goal were enough, there are two huge problems with this proposal. First, the price for carbon is set at $20/ton initially, rising to $35/ton over 10 years. This is practically guaranteed to have virtually no effect. Just think about it — we know that a cross-country roundtrip flight spews the equivalent of 2 tons of carbon per passenger, so this would add a big $40.00 to the price of that roundtrip ticket! (even if all of those emissions were fairly counted, which they usually are not). Is that really going to keep anyone from flying? I understand the airlines have been tacking on that much just in luggage fees and whatnot lately — I haven't read of a huge drop in air travel because of it. There is also a really easy conversion factor for car travel: dollars/ton of carbon approximately equals cents/gallon of gas — so that $20/ton will add about 20 cents per gallon. Excuse me, but — big deal! The price of gas fluctuates more than that, all the time, with little effect on driving (how many folks do you think would stop driving to work if gas went up a measly 20 cents?). Getting an 80% cutback is going to take pricing carbon orders of magnitude higher than that.
The second big problem, of course, is that this is not a real carbon fee-and-dividend proposal, it is a carbon tax proposal — and that makes all the difference. The beauty of true fee-and-dividend is that all of the proceeds go to reimbursing the people, so that it's not just another regressive tax: the proceeds are collected according to consumption, but distributed per-capita, so that those who consume a lot (frequent flyers, living in and heating giant houses, etc.) pay a lot, and people who consume little end up getting back more than they put in. This proposal, on the other hand, returns only 60% to the people; the other 40% would be used for various purposes, including "energy efficiency" and (naturally) paying down the debt (!). This is, of course, only the starting place — this is the part that is ripe for loading up with lots of pork for lots of political contributors. And all for naught, as only a few senators will end up voting for even this. So far we have to go, to face reality...
Monday, February 11, 2013
China and India — and "common and differentiated responsibilities"
I have so far received a few responses to my original email, and a few issues have come up… so that will be a good jumping-off point for me to further explore some of the issues I have been reading about…
One of the things I read a lot these day in the press, or in comments in online forums, or wherever, is that even if the US gets its emissions under control (a pretty unlikely scenario), we are at the mercy of developing nations like China and India. China, of course, famously passed the US in total emissions not long ago, and that seems to give many people an incentive to worry about developing nations rather than our own profligate consumption.
I am extremely wary of this urge to make China and India the bugaboos in this (led by our climate negotiators, who would like nothing better than a chance to deflect blame from ourselves). The principal of "common and differentiated responsibilities" in the Kyoto Protocol was devised for a reason -- if you think of the total amount of carbon we as a global species can release "safely" as our carbon budget, then we in the West, and especially we in the US, have already used far more than our share. So now we are trying to tell the rest of the world "we got ours, we got fat and comfortable off the stores of ancient sunlight, now it's time for ALL of us to cut back, too bad for you." I compare that to the "water rationing" our water company imposes in drought years, when all of us are required to cut back by 15% — whether we are only using what we need to survive, or are wasting water by watering huge lawns on sprawling estates every day… The latest figures show the US using 17.2 tons of CO2 per capita (slightly down from the 19 - 20 tons we used for the last few decades, but only because we are offshoring our emissions as companies move operations to low-wage countries). China is now up to 5.3 tons per capita, less than a third of our rate; and India's emissions are 1/12th of ours, at 1.4. So it's a little hard for us to point fingers across the globe… Yes, it is frightening to think of how emissions are growing in the East, but so much of that is driven by our own consumption — in a sane world, emissions would be counted at the consumption end, not the production end, and it would be entirely clear who is driving this destruction.
I'll end this one as well with a quote, this one from British climate scientist Kevin Anderson (quoted on Environmental Research), who figures that about 40-60% of the world's emissions come from 1-5% of the world's population, including "climate scientists, every journalist, pontificator and sceptic… [and] everyone who gets on a plane once a year… So we're the major emitters – we know who they are. Are we prepared to make changes to our lives now or have them forced upon us?"
One of the things I read a lot these day in the press, or in comments in online forums, or wherever, is that even if the US gets its emissions under control (a pretty unlikely scenario), we are at the mercy of developing nations like China and India. China, of course, famously passed the US in total emissions not long ago, and that seems to give many people an incentive to worry about developing nations rather than our own profligate consumption.
I am extremely wary of this urge to make China and India the bugaboos in this (led by our climate negotiators, who would like nothing better than a chance to deflect blame from ourselves). The principal of "common and differentiated responsibilities" in the Kyoto Protocol was devised for a reason -- if you think of the total amount of carbon we as a global species can release "safely" as our carbon budget, then we in the West, and especially we in the US, have already used far more than our share. So now we are trying to tell the rest of the world "we got ours, we got fat and comfortable off the stores of ancient sunlight, now it's time for ALL of us to cut back, too bad for you." I compare that to the "water rationing" our water company imposes in drought years, when all of us are required to cut back by 15% — whether we are only using what we need to survive, or are wasting water by watering huge lawns on sprawling estates every day… The latest figures show the US using 17.2 tons of CO2 per capita (slightly down from the 19 - 20 tons we used for the last few decades, but only because we are offshoring our emissions as companies move operations to low-wage countries). China is now up to 5.3 tons per capita, less than a third of our rate; and India's emissions are 1/12th of ours, at 1.4. So it's a little hard for us to point fingers across the globe… Yes, it is frightening to think of how emissions are growing in the East, but so much of that is driven by our own consumption — in a sane world, emissions would be counted at the consumption end, not the production end, and it would be entirely clear who is driving this destruction.
I'll end this one as well with a quote, this one from British climate scientist Kevin Anderson (quoted on Environmental Research), who figures that about 40-60% of the world's emissions come from 1-5% of the world's population, including "climate scientists, every journalist, pontificator and sceptic… [and] everyone who gets on a plane once a year… So we're the major emitters – we know who they are. Are we prepared to make changes to our lives now or have them forced upon us?"
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
my opening missive
Last week I sent a very long email to a few dozen of my friends, hoping to start some conversations and perhaps somehow make a difference. This is what I wrote:
Dear friends,
I would like to beg your indulgence as I begin the year with a long missive on a subject which has troubled my mind and occupied my thoughts for some time now. I have debated with myself over how to word this, and then whether to even send it out — knowing that this will pretty much brand me as a crazy obsessed environmentalist — but I so felt the need to do something that I have finally decided to send a cry from the heart and see what comes. I apologize for the length — it proved difficult to say what I feel without including the background information — my intention is not to pretend to know everything (I certainly don't), but to share some of what I've read about and perhaps to give some food for contemplation and start some conversations. So I would greatly appreciate your reading this, if you might have the time, and letting me know what you think about it...
I have read enough about global warming to understand the desperate situation we are in — the human-created calamity already set in motion, and the near-impossible measures needed, almost immediately, to avert an even worse crisis and somehow preserve a habitable planet. "Business as usual" puts the world on course for a rise of 6°C (11°F) this century. Researchers and activists have used 2°C (3.6°F) as the upper limit of minimal "safety" before positive feedbacks send warming spiraling completely out of control. Yet even now, at 0.8°C of warming, the Arctic sea ice is melting away alarmingly faster than anyone ever predicted; and the greenhouse gasses we have already emitted are enough to bring us to nearly 2°C of warming, even if we stopped using fossil fuels, cold turkey, tomorrow. We are well on the way toward a climate that is simply incompatible with life as we know it. Meanwhile, right now, the oceans are dying before our eyes (with dead zones expanding and 90% of large fish already gone), trees are dying across the planet, and species are being driven to extinction at the rate of one every seven minutes.
I also understand the extreme improbability of anything meaningful being done. Most solutions put forth in general discourse are on a scale so insignificant as to make almost no difference at all. There are solutions that could make a difference — emissions reductions of 10% a year, coupled with massive reforestation, would be a step; and a large carbon fee (with the dividends returned to the people, per capita) is one proposal for a way to get there. The problem is that we live on a finite planet, and reducing emissions enough to avert climate catastrophe is simply not compatible with endless growth — but endless growth is what all our economic and political systems depend on. So we talk about "sustainable growth" (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) and keep chasing the chimera of a technological fix that could allow us to grow indefinitely — a fix which is as mythical as a perpetual motion machine. Because of the rebound effect, producing more energy (of whatever kind, including "renewables") simply lowers cost and leads to more consumption — much in the same way that widening freeways simply encourages more driving and never actually solves the traffic problem. "Clean energy" really only helps keep us on the path of thinking we can keep using all the energy we need to fuel our unsustainable "lifestyles"… and allow us to put off facing the fact that what is needed is to simply STOP what we are doing, change the way we are living -- and radically, and now. In this situation, there truly is no free lunch.
The crisis we face goes so far beyond fluorescent lightbulbs, hybrid cars, and "green consumerism" (another oxymoron). Research has determined that we cannot pour more than about 500 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere and still have any hope of averting total disaster —and that 500 gigatons is about one-fifth of the carbon in proven fossil fuel reserves (forget about "peak oil" — our problem is that we still have way too much of the stuff). Only governments, working together, could possibly be powerful enough to keep all that carbon in the ground and rein in the fossil fuel companies that profit by using our atmosphere as a waste dump; only true systemic change will get us where we need to go — and systemic change, as Derrick Jensen warns, will not be brought about by personal choices. And I do know that my own attempts to live within a carbon budget, such as they are, really make no discernible difference (especially given that rebound effect, by which my conservation just makes consumption cheaper and easier for others…)
And yet, and yet... While it is absolutely true that global warming cannot be fought through consumer choices alone — we must battle the powerful economic interests who profit from our emissions and the government entities who serve them — it is equally true that we cannot hope to battle those interests while continuing to buy whatever they are selling. I do feel the need to make the best choices I can, to "walk my talk"… And, despairing of any hope for systems to change or for the powerful to do the right thing, I am beginning to agree with the sentiment expressed by a commenter on a UK Guardian thread, who said that "it is much harder to change the political system than to change your own behavior and the behavior of people you know," that the only way to make headway is to live as low-carbon as possible, and persuade others to do the same, one by one if need be. If enough of us do that, recursively multiplying our numbers, eventually the systems that support our unsustainable consumption may begin to crumble… (it's not much hope, but it's all I've got).
And here's the problem — I know very well that telling anyone that "this is what you should and shouldn't be doing" is a really quick and easy way to lose friends… So let me say right off that I certainly don't consider myself any kind of exemplar —I still drive a car to work every day (sigh… to two different schools, on opposite ends of town), I generally use far too much carbon just living in our rich industrialized culture (the best estimates of allowable limits for the kind of reductions we need are anywhere from ½ ton to 2 tons of carbon per person, per year — the average American uses twenty). But there are a few things I've looked into and found out a little about — so if you'll indulge me (if you're still reading, this far), I'll share a little, and you can take it as you may — and if enough folks start the conversation, maybe our governments might get around to doing what's necessary to allow us to live sustainably… My big three precepts for myself, as the three biggest things an individual can do, are: 1. Don't eat meat; 2. Don't fly on airplanes; and 3. Don't buy any new stuff you don't absolutely need.
Eating meat — When I stopped eating meat long ago it was for completely different reasons; but as it happens, meat production is incredibly carbon-intensive. The way it is produced these days, meat is simply grain, concentrated: each pound of meat contains many times that amount of grain (the vast majority of grain we grow goes to feed livestock) — along with all of the petroleum fertilizers, the rainforests cut down to run cattle, etc. etc… The UN FAO estimated that meat is responsible for 17% of all carbon emissions worldwide; Worldwatch added up the things the FAO left out and came up with the incredible figure of 51%. Either way, it's huge.
Flying — Air travel is also incredibly, if not unconscionably, carbon-intensive. One roundtrip LA-to-NY flight uses the equivalent of about 2 tons of CO2 emissions per (economy class) passenger — about the same amount the average resident of Brazil uses in a year, and either equivalent to or many times more than the per-person allowable annual limit for the necessary reductions… When my parents were young, flying was a huge big deal, but now it has become so commonplace that we think nothing of jetting across the country or the world for work or vacation. If carbon were priced at anything like a rate commensurate with its damage, none of us (at least in my circles) could afford to fly — it would again be a rare luxury rather than something we regularly use for transportation.
Buying stuff — This is sort of a no-brainer. A huge part of our emissions comes from manufacturing, buying, using, and then throwing away our stuff — It is a measure of the sickness of our society that we are defined as consumers instead of as citizens. China recently (and famously) passed up the US in total GHG emissions — but what's not usually mentioned is the reason for that is all of the stuff we buy from them! A Chronicle story before the holidays said that 75% of all new toys in the US are manufactured offshore (and the majority of those in China). So if you hear that US emissions have dropped slightly, that is why — we are simply offshoring our carbon emissions along with our jobs.
Of course, I know that common wisdom will say that if we all did this, our economy would take the proverbial nosedive. There's the rub: our economy, dependent on endless growth, just cannot be sustained over the long run — and the long run is getting very short these days. I know there are models of steady-state economies out there, which I have yet to investigate fully… but the important thing is that the collapse of a habitable planet, and the chaos that goes with it, will be orders of magnitude worse than the collapse of an economy. David Roberts, in "The Brutal Logic of Climate Change," talks about planned austerity, shared sacrifice… an "all-hands-on-deck mobilization" that is the moral equivalent of war. Life as we know it will have to change, for life as we know it not to be lost entirely.
It is already too late to avert disastrous effects — right now the Arctic icecap is melting away, with all of the feedbacks that entails — and it is easy to lose hope completely, to say there's no use trying, we can't prevent catastrophe whatever we do… But what we can do is to prevent catastrophe from being even worse, and in so doing we can make a difference.
The story I keep telling myself is the one about a father and child walking on a beach covered as far as the eye can see with starfish washed ashore, dead and dying. When the child picks up a starfish to toss it back in the ocean, the father asks "Why? What difference can you possibly make, just you, with all these thousands and thousands of starfish dying?" And the child picks up another one, tosses it in the ocean, and says "It makes a difference to that one."
Dear friends, if you are still reading, I truly appreciate the time you have taken with this… I have been sick at heart, knowing what we are doing to the world and the innocent life around us, watching as we hurtle toward a mass extinction, not knowing what to do that might be of any use. David Roberts said that "building a core cadre of intense, motivated citizens who feel the climate threat in their bones is an indispensable part of the puzzle" — maybe that's part of the reason I wrote this. Getting the conversation going is perhaps a start, and I would love to hear your thoughts… Thank you for listening.
peace and good wishes,
Avilee
(and just a few of my favorite, pertinent, quotes)…
"Do we want a living real world, or do we want a social structure that is killing the real world? Do we want a living real world, or do we want a dead real world, with a former social structure forgotten by everyone because there is no one left alive to remember? You choose." - Derrick Jensen
"I believe we are musicians in a human orchestra. It is time now to play the Save the World Symphony. It is a vast orchestral piece, and you are but one musician. You are not required to play a solo. But you are required to figure out what instrument you hold and play it as well as you can." - Sandra Steingraber
We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time… Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late."
- Martin Luther King Jr. — "Beyond Vietnam" speech, April 4, 1967
"If we appear to seek the unattainable, it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable."
- Port Huron Statement of the SDS
“It makes a crucial difference whether humankind thinks of the natural world as consisting of resources or relatives.” - Oren Lyons, quoted by Daniel Wildcat in Red Alert
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