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Remember This: 350 Parts Per Million
Bill McKibben, Washington Post
This month may have been the most important yet in the two-decade history of the fight against global warming. Al Gore got his Nobel in Stockholm; international negotiators made real progress on a treaty in Bali; and in Washington, Congress actually worked up the nerve to raise gas mileage standards for cars.
But what may turn out to be the most crucial development went largely unnoticed. It happened at an academic conclave in San Francisco. A NASA scientist named James Hansen offered a simple, straightforward and mind-blowing bottom line for the planet: 350, as in parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It’s a number that may make what happened in Washington and Bali seem quaint and nearly irrelevant. It’s the number that may define our future.
To understand what it means, you need a little background.
… Consider: We’re already at 383 parts per million, and it’s knocking the planet off kilter in substantial ways. So, what does that mean?
It means, Hansen says, that we’ve gone too far. “The evidence indicates we’ve aimed too high — that the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2is no more than 350 ppm,” he said after his presentation. Hansen has reams of paleo-climatic data to support his statements (as do other scientists who presented papers at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco this month). The last time the Earth warmed two or three degrees Celsius — which is what 450 parts per million implies — sea levels rose by tens of meters, something that would shake the foundations of the human enterprise should it happen again.
And we’re already past 350.
(28 December 2007)ss
Comments from:
Joseph Romm (Gristmill): Parting company with McKibben and, maybe, Hansen
Sharon Astyk: You Heard It Here First…Sadly
Cap and Trade: Why Grandfathering Sucks
Clark Williams-Derry, SightLine
Here’s why grandfathering is such a terrible idea:
The UK’s biggest polluters will reap a windfall of at least £6bn from rising power prices and the soaring value of carbon under the new European carbon trading scheme…
Critics argue…that the scheme, under which nearly all allowances are granted free of charge rather than having to be bought by big polluters, has created a distorted market in which the worst offenders will enjoy bumper profits while incurring no extra underlying cost for producing greenhouse gases.
That’s just about right: when we hand out pollution rights for free, as the European emissions trading system did, we’ll create the potential for massive, unearned windfall profits. Permits will have a market value — someone will want to buy them. So when we hand out emissions permits at no cost, we’re essentially handing out free money.
There may be a few exceptions to this rule — that is, a few economic sectors where free allocation won’t lead to windfall profits. But they’re the exceptions. The rule (as demonstrated in Europe) is that grandfathering is great for polluters, and bad for consumers.
So maybe that’s why lots of big oil & coal companies are so supportive of grandfathering…
(2 January 2008)
Why Geo-Engineering is a Debate Whose Time Has Gone
Alex Steffen, World Changing
With some regularity these days, I get calls from reporters wanting to know my thoughts about various schemes for attempting to use enormous technofixes — vast space mirrors, mountains of iron filings dumped into the oceans, newly planted forests of trees gene-hacked to suck in more carbon dioxide, intentionally filling the atmosphere with sulfate pollution (creating a sort of artificial volcano), etc. — to combat climate change. And, increasingly, my opinion has grown stronger: they’re all dumb, dangerous ideas.
I generally believe we ought to keep an open mind about matters scientific, and I’m prepared still to be convinced that one or more of these ideas can work and work well. That said, as the evidence currently stands, I think the intelligent stance regarding debate on these matters is one of extreme skepticism.
First of all, geo-engineering is a lousy term. It implies the certainties of engineering. It makes profound alteration of the Earth’s climate and biological systems sound as easy as building a bridge or tunnel or skyscraper, when the reality is that we don’t know anywhere near enough about the impacts on systems we’re talking about changing to be sure of the results of our meddling. The term “geo-experimentation” or “geo-gambling” might be more accurate.
What’s more, geo-experimentation efforts seem to me to be the epitome of carbon blindness. For instance, it’s been pointed out by many other, smarter people that sucking CO2 into the oceans will worsen ocean acidification, a potential catastrophic ecological problem.
(21 December 2007)
The Poverty Of The Rich
Mityanand Jayaraman, Tehelka (India)
India is arguing for differing responsibilities on climate change between rich and poor nations. It should apply the same principle at home
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… India’s average annual per capita emissions is lower than two tonnes, well below the sustainable global average target of 2.5 tonnes per capita needed to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius. But this semblance of India’s sustainable emissions hides a story of gross inequity. The four highest income classes, earning more than Rs 8,000 per month, account for about 150 million Indians. Their carbon footprint is above the global sustainable average, with the richest class – those earning over Rs 30,000 per month – emitting nearly twice the figure required to be reached to avert certain climate catastrophe.
The study spotlights lighting as one of the critical areas for intervention. With poorer classes ill-placed to afford the expensive, but more energy-efficient Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) or tubelights, and the low rate of penetration of CFLs even among those who can afford it, Greenpeace argues that a shift to CFLs will constitute the most logical and simple measure to drastically cut emissions. A total switch, the report stresses, will lop 95 million tonnes or five percent of India’s emissions.
This may seem commendable, but CFLs and fluorescents use mercury – a potent neurotoxin – that can be released into the home environment upon breakage. Research on mercury-free CFLs is under way. Till then, CFL promotion needs to go in hand with an aggressive effort to prevent the dumping of used CFLs.
Another no-brainer would be to overhaul our pathetically wasteful thermal power plants and inefficient transmission and distribution networks, a recommendation that has been doing the rounds at least since the anti-Enron struggle in the 1990s.
Greenpeace’s report also fails to address the planetary ills caused by conspicuous consumption. In a bid to reassure “the burgeoning middle-class” that it can retain its “new-found upward mobility” and that the wealthy need not stop consuming, Greenpeace delegitimises its own excellent diagnosis.Overconsumption of the planet’s resources – not just carbon – by the elites is what lies at the core of environmental malaise.
(29 December 2007)
UK Ministers ordered to assess climate cost of all decisions
Patrick Wintour, The Guardian
Government says new ‘carbon price’ will favour eco-friendly policy choices
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Coal-fired power stations, airport expansions and new road schemes could all be put on hold following a decision by Gordon Brown that ministers must in future take account of the true economic cost of climate change damage.
Ministers have been instructed to factor into their calculations a notional “carbon price” when making all policy and investment decisions covering transport, construction, housing, planning and energy.
That price – which will increase annually – is intended to frame all day-to-day policy and investment decisions for the next 30 years.
As a result carbon-free or clean technologies, including nuclear power, have been given a significant boost as they will now become relatively less expensive than polluting technologies.
(22 December 2007)
