Expanding access to lithium is crucial to meet demand for new green technologies to reduce carbon emissions
Electric car cables plugged into a charging point of the car sharing
company Zen Car are seen in Brussels, Belgium August 10, 2017.
REUTERS/Francois Lenoir
TORONTO - Scientists have found
an unexpected new source for lithium, a key component in battery-powered
electric cars and other renewable energy technologies: supervolcanoes.
Most of the world's lithium comes from Chile and Australia, and
expanding access to the mineral is crucial for meeting demand for new
green technologies to reduce carbon emissions, Stanford University
scientists said on Wednesday.
"The demand for lithium has outpaced the scientific understanding of
the resource, so it's essential for the fundamental science behind these
resources to catch up," Stanford University researcher Thomas Benson,
the study's lead author, said in a statement.
"Now we have a way to easily find more of these lithium deposits."
The discovery comes as more companies, including large carmakers
whose products cause significant carbon emissions, work to develop
climate-friendly technologies.
Electric cars, which use lithium ion batteries, are gaining traction as an emission-free alternative to conventional cars.
"We're going to have to use electric vehicles and large storage
batteries to decrease our carbon footprint," Gail Mahood, a professor of
geological sciences at Stanford University and the study's co-author,
said.
Supervolcanoes are much larger than ordinary volcanoes and erupt at least 1,000 cubic kilometres of material in one eruption.
Scientists studied the contents of craters left by supervolcanoes in
Oregon, Nevada and other parts of the United States, which erupted
millions of years ago.
They sliced through tiny bits of volcanic magma, which were trapped
in crystals in the craters, and analysed them to find the valuable
silvery-white metal.
Sweden-based Volvo pledged last month that all new cars it launches after 2019 will be electric vehicles or hybrids.
Other automobile firms are also planning to increase production of
electric vehicles, which will boost the demand for lithium, considered a
strategic resources by some governments.
The number of electric vehicles on roads worldwide rose to a record
high of 2 million last year, according to the International Energy
Agency (IEA), accounting for 0.2 percent of the global count. Links
The Solomon Islands are an archipelago filled with idyllic beaches and
perfect waves, but as temperatures and sea levels rise, much of their
pristine coast is disappearing FROM the window seat of our small aircraft, the
islands 13,000 feet beneath us looked like uncut emeralds poking out of a
vibrant azure pool. I pressed my nose up against the Plexiglas to study
the contours of each one. Dense forests blanketed the isles, bisected
by brown, winding rivers. On their perimeters sat palm-fringed,
white-sand beaches. The only signs of human development here in this
remote, northern region of the Solomon Islands — a 1,000-island
archipelago located just northeast of Australia, between Papua New
Guinea and Vanuatu — were small clusters of houses settled along the
coastlines, their corrugated tin roofs reflecting the sun back up at us.
Across
the aisle from me, surfers Torren Martyn and Leila Hurst and
photographer Ryan Craig had their eyes glued on trails of whitewater
below. They were pointing out the seemingly endless number of breaking
waves, feverishly tapping on the windows at the sight of any potential
setup.
"Mate, look at that one over there," yelled Martyn over the
roar of the engine, spotting an offshore reef pass that was reeling
amid the solid north swell. Whitewater spilled over a chunk of reef,
tracing what looked to be an empty A-frame.
Much of the Solomon
Islands are remote and hard to access, leaving large swaths of
coastlines — mainly along two of the biggest north-facing islands,
Choiseul and Santa Isabel — empty, unexplored and full of surf
potential.
From cruising altitude, the Solomon Islands looked like a Technicolor
slice of untouched paradise, a tropical playground for visiting
surfers. But as plentiful as the waves appeared to be, getting barreled
in empty lineups was only half the reason we were here. The other was to
visit these islands before any more of them disappeared into the ocean.
A
few months prior to our visit, I came in contact with Dr. Simon Albert,
a marine scientist at the University of Queensland. He and his
colleagues had recently discovered, using time series and satellite
imagery, that five Solomon Islands had been swallowed by the sea over
the last 70 years, and another six islands had severely eroded. The
cause was determined to be accelerated sea-level rise.
The landscape of the Solomon Islands is the stuff of travel brochures.
But as beautiful as the scenery may be, the country is steadily losing
land to rising sea levels. Not far from this island, five other islands
have been completely swallowed by the ocean.
"Over the last 20 years, the rates of sea-level rise in the Solomon
Islands have been three times higher than the global average," said
Albert. "That's about an 8 or 9 millimeter rise each year." Half of that
number, he explained, is the result of El Niño cycles, which naturally
siphon the world's water into the South Pacific. The other culprit is
climate change.
In some parts of the country, this rapid sea-level
rise, combined with high wave intensity, has eroded beaches and
destroyed people's properties. Even over the short span of five years,
many have watched the ocean come into their villages and carry homes
away.
"The changes have been really swift," said Albert. "People
living on those islands are feeling very physically and psychologically
insecure because they're feeling like their entire foundation of life is
washing away."
Albert sent me two photos to help illustrate the
problem. One was a snapshot of a thatched-roof house tipped over on its
side, collapsing into the ocean, the high tide rushing into where the
living-room windows used to be. The other was an aerial shot of
Beneamina, a small, circular island near Santa Isabel jam-packed with
about 30 houses, many of them sitting on the water's edge. This island,
Albert explained, is now only half the size it was 10 years ago. "When I
was there in December, an island nearby had one house on it," he said.
"By the time we returned in February, that house had been washed away."
The majority of seaside villages in the Solomon Islands, explained
Albert, are fairly young. Before the 20th century, most natives were
fierce headhunters and engaged in intense tribal warfare. They lived in
the hills for security, so they could easily spot invading tribes. But
when Christian missionaries arrived in the early 1900s, they encouraged
the Solomon Islanders to come down to the coast, build churches and live
their lives by the ocean. Now almost 85 percent of the population lives
along the coastline, and, ironically, many communities are now being
chased back up into the hills — not by spear-wielding warriors, but by
an intruding ocean.
Most people talk about sea-level rise and
other consequences of climate change using the future tense — as
something our coastal-dwelling grandchildren will have to deal with 100
years from now. But according to Albert, that dystopian future has
already arrived in parts of the Solomon Islands. "The rates we're seeing
there are the rates we're likely to see over the next 50 years around
the world as things get worse," says Albert. "In a way, the Solomon
Islands provide a window into the future."
Throughout the Solomon Islands, many homes skirt the shoreline and are vulnerable to impending sea level rise. During extreme high tides, this dock becomes level with the water line.
OVER the course of his life, the ocean will likely
chase Jeremy Baea farther and farther inland. But for now, the
25-year-old spends most of his days running toward it.
We first
met Baea inside the mobile phone store where he works, located along the
main road in Gizo, a bustling tourist and commercial center in the
southwestern region of the Solomon Islands. The chatter of vendors
selling fresh fish and vegetables nearby at the lively waterfront market
poured into the store, along with the whirrs of motorboats unmooring
from the wharf.
Behind the counter, two surfboards leaned against
the wall near the shop's computer. When Baea, who is half Solomon
Islander and half Australian, isn't busy at the shop, he serves as the
founding president of the nascent Western Solomon's Surfing Association,
which he established a few years ago with his younger brother Shemiah.
One
morning before work, Baea, along with Shemiah and their father, Patson,
took us surfing at Titiana, a hollow, freight-train left that breaks
over shallow reef. The sun had just peaked over the horizon and the
soft, pastel colors of dawn still
lingered in the sky. The waves were only about chest high — small by
Solomon standards — but the conditions were oil glass and the lefts
perfectly shaped.
This region of the South Pacific hosts a bevy of waves and many of them remain unsurfed.This particular left, commonly referred to as Titiana, is home turk for the Western Solomon Island’s Surfing Association and is one of the more populated breaks in the country. Martyn, sitting stylish on a low-tide runner.
Shemiah had broken his board a few months prior, and since surf gear
is nearly impossible to come by in this corner of the world, he and Baea
were taking turns on an old, rockered-out 6’2″. While Shemiah was in
the water schooling our crew with his local knowledge, I asked Baea and
his father about the effects of sea-level rise in the local area.
According
to Baea, although Gizo has suffered less-drastic coastal erosion than
islands in the northern region of the country that are exposed to larger
surf, this area has still seen its fair share of change. "I think in
the next 10 years things will look completely different," he explained.
Baea's
family owns a small bed-and-breakfast on a tiny island not too far from
Gizo. Back in the 1950s, Baea's grandfather purchased their island,
along with two others, for a mere 15 British pounds. All three of their
islands are now smaller than they were back then, and they're shrinking
more each year. "We're starting to look at other options, like building
seawalls or moving to the mainland," said Baea.
It wouldn't be the
first time Baea and his family were forced to flee their home. Back in
2007, a massive earthquake triggered a tsunami that struck the Solomon
Islands and wiped out more than 13 villages, killing 52 people. "It was
about seven in the morning," said Baea, remembering the day. "We had
just woken up and I was sitting outside by the water when everything
started shaking."
Located along the Pacific Ring of Fire, the
Solomon Islands are seismically active and they experience half a dozen
tremors each year. Baea initially thought it was just a small quake,
"but it wouldn't stop shaking," he said. "It just kept going
and going and going. When it stopped, that's then we noticed the water started sucking out."
Baea
and his family quickly piled into their boat. They picked up his
grandmother, who lives on a neighboring island, raced out to deep waters
and waited for the first surge to pass. "Riding out the tsunami was
very scary," said Baea. "The water out
there is usually very calm, but it was like a washing machine, with really strong currents, waves and whitewater everywhere."
“If we stop being friendly to the environment, the future is going to be really bleak,” said Patson Baea, a 58-year-old local who’s lived in the Solomon Islands his entire life. “But one island or country can’t really do anything about it. It has to be all of us.”
Once the first surge passed, they made a mad dash to Gizo, where they
could run for higher ground before the next surge. "The boat ride to
Gizo was surreal," said Baea. "We watched entire houses float by in the
water; rubbish was everywhere. The whole time, we knew that we had
probably lost our home too."
When Baea and his family finally
returned to their island, their beautiful wooden bungalows were
completely demolished. It took them three years to rebuild.
Patson
remembers the community's collective fear following the tsunami. "Even
three months after, people still weren't out fishing or doing things in
the ocean," he said. "We never thought about the sea that way before,
that it could come up and take all of your belongings. It was the first
time we looked at the ocean differently. We've always known that the sea
belongs out there; it doesn't belong up here on land."
Patson,
who's 58 and sporting a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, has also seen
the ocean engulf entire islands, one in particular where he would take
the kids when they were little.
After our session, Patson took us
to this vanishing island. As we neared it, Shemiah jumped off the boat
and paddled up to what was just a tiny sand bank. The island, Patson
told me, used to be the size of a football field and was filled with
large trees that were surrounded by a pristine ivory beach. They would
camp out, play soccer and picnic beneath the trees' shade. Now, less
than a decade later, the island was no bigger than an end zone, with
rotting tree trunks lying in the middle.
"If we don't behave in
the next 50 years, all these islands will be gone," Patson said,
motioning to the 10 or so small islands in our view. "I'm always trying
to picture what the scenario will be when the kids are older. But I
think it's very hard to imagine."
Just a couple decades ago, this tiny, barren sandbank was a tree-laden island the size of a football field.
BY Solomon standards, the people living in Gizo are
the lucky ones. The town and surrounding villages are built along the
coast of a mountainous island, so when oceans expand and storms become
more frequent as a result of climate change, people can move to higher
ground. But not everyone in the Solomon Islands has an easy escape
route. For the 600 residents that inhabit Taro Island, a low-lying,
kilometer-long atoll that sits no higher than 6 feet above sea level,
their only option is relocating their entire village, which is exactly
what they plan to do.
Despite its small footprint, Taro Island
serves as the capital of Choiseul province and contains a hospital,
grass airstrip, courthouse, schoolyard, police station, government
buildings and a few churches. The leaders of Taro have developed plans
to build a similar town from scratch on the nearby mainland — one that
will be better positioned to survive the future perils of sea-level rise
and climate change. But according to Taro's deputy provincial
secretary, Geoffrey Pakipota, relocating an entire town, even a modest
one like Taro, is easier said than done.
We met Pakipota in front
of the main government administration building, a raised, single-story
wooden structure encompassing a manicured courtyard. Across the dirt
road, a school bell rang and throngs of children poured out of their
classrooms into the large grass field that sits in the center of town.
The midday heat was sweltering, so he led us into an air-conditioned
conference room.
Pakipota, who is soft-spoken and has an affinity
for Hawaiian-print shirts, told me he's been working on the plans to
relocate the island since 1994, when the town decided to expand to
accommodate a growing population. But after the 2007 tsunami, the
leaders of Taro realized a more urgent reason to move: their
vulnerability to extreme weather events and rising sea levels.
From this perspective, Taro’s quickly changing coastlines can be difficult to detect. But in the next century, these homes could be entirely underwater. To prepare for that day, the local government is planning to relocate the island’s residents.
"There's nowhere to escape on this island," said Pakipota. During
tsunami events, like the one in 2007, it takes about two hours to
evacuate everyone and get them across the bay to the mainland, a process
that would leave them little chance of survival if the tsunami were
more intense or originated closer to their island.
In the time
that Pakipota has been in government, he's noticed huge changes to the
shape of Taro. He led us out of the conference room and toward the
shore, just a short distance from his office. We stood on the beach next
to a huge fallen tree with gnarled roots sticking up out of the ground,
the latest victim of saltwater intrusion. He pointed to a string of
buoys about 20 feet out to sea. "Fifteen years ago, that's where our
main market was," he said. It was completely submerged and a small dock
had been built in its place.
Pakipota then pointed across the bay,
toward the mainland. "That's where the new township will be," he said.
"It takes about three minutes by boat to get there." Taking into account
future sea-level predictions, the proposed settlement will sit about 1
or 2 miles inland. "It will be away from the sea," explained Pakipota.
"We're trying to build a modern, green, climate proof town. The whole
coastal strip will be preserved as a buffer."
The plans for the
proposed new settlement had recently been approved by the national
government, but securing the property was a huge hurdle. The majority of
the land in the Solomon Islands, Pakipota explained, is owned by
villages or families and is passed down only within communities. In
other villages that have been forced to hastily relocate because of
rising sea levels — like an island nearby that had been split into two
by water — arguments over rightful land ownership have caused internal
strife. For Taro, it took them almost 20 years of negotiations and
roughly $1.1 million to acquire the land they needed.
Even though
the plans have been rubber-stamped and the project is moving forward,
everything will likely come to a standstill if Taro can't procure enough
financial support (an estimated $50 million will be needed for the
construction of the new settlement and relocation of Taro's residents)
from the national government, which will be the biggest obstacle yet.
"We
love this place, but people are getting impatient and are pressing the
government to do something," said Pakipota. "Whatever the investment,
people need to be safe. If we spend billions of [Solomon] dollars on
taking care of this town where
it sits, if anything happens, it will all be gone. Instead, we need the government to invest money in a safer place."
The majority of Solomon Islanders depend on the sea for their food and their livelihood, which makes moving farther inland uphill or more difficult for residents.
THE global sea level is now 5 to 8 inches higher
than it was in 1900, primarily due to man-made climate change, and it's
rising at a faster rate than it has in the previous 6,000 years. In the
Solomon Islands, sea level is rising even quicker. Just in the past 25
years, the ocean surrounding the Solomon Islands has risen about 6
inches.
Those numbers might not seem significant at a glance, but
one vertical inch of sea-level rise equates to about 100 inches of land
loss on a flat beach. And according to scientists like David Boseto, who
does environmental consulting and auditing
throughout the Solomon Islands, every inch means destruction throughout his home country.
I
met Boseto in his small, halogen-lit office tucked away from the main
road in Gizo. Science textbooks, nature manuals, a Ben Carson
autobiography and the Bible were piled on his desk. Old and current maps
of the Solomon Islands hung on the walls. He invited me to sit down and
explained the details of his job, which includes surveying the impact
of climate change throughout his country and helping people adapt to the
threat of sea-level rise.
"There are a lot of cross-sectional
issues we are facing throughout the country related to climate change,"
said Boseto. He began listing them off like a narrator in a late-night
infomercial citing all the side effects of a new medication: In the
Solomon Islands, climate change has caused an increase in malaria,
earthquakes, tsunamis and cyclones; it's led to more irregular seasons,
leaving people confused as to when they should plant crops; the soil
isn't as fertile as it used to be and crops are now yielding fewer fruit
and vegetables; fish are moving farther and farther from shore and are
less abundant than they were 10 years ago; coral reefs are dying. But
the most visible symptom of climate change is the rising ocean and the
littoral erosion that accompanies it.
Leila Hurst, banking hard off the bottom on one of the country’s finest gems.
"Most of the communities near the ocean are having to move back 10,
15 meters because their beach is eroding," said Boseto. "Village
drinking wells along the coast are becoming too salty to consume. Now
when there is an extended dry season, people have to boil their salty
well water and drink that."
To combat sea-level rise, people are
planting mangroves, constructing seawalls and moving to higher ground.
But none of these methods, Boseto explained, are perfect solutions.
Mangroves can be planted only in areas with low wave intensity. Seawalls
are good short-term solutions, but when built haphazardly, they protect
one man's property while transferring that blocked wave energy to a
neighbor's. Plus, seawalls prevent the natural buildup of sand during
storm events, which normally helps rebuild lost beaches.
Moving
uphill and building on steep, rocky land has its challenges as well.
"Low-lying areas are more suitable for island living because you have
access to the sea for transportation — to travel to school and clinics
and to have access to food sources," said Boseto. "But when people move
uphill, they're far from those things, and they're subject to landslides
during earthquakes and heavy rains."
The Green Climate Fund, a
financial reservoir created by the United Nations, was designed to
mobilize $100 billion a year to help developing countries like the
Solomon Islands cut emissions and adapt to the risks of climate change.
But in order for people in smaller villages to benefit from this fund,
they need their central government in the capital of Honiara to apply
for this money on their behalf. According to some, there's a substantial
disconnect between villagers on smaller islands and those who decide
how to best disburse the money from the Green Climate Fund.
A disappearing landscape.
In the early 2000s, Honiara was embroiled in ethnic violence and
political upheaval, which left the capital in a state of chaos and
economic disarray. Many believe that in the years since, Honiara has
been so focused on reassembling itself that it's overlooked the needs of
people in more-remote villages who are dealing with acute sea-level
rise. For example, just a month ago the Solomon Islands acquired an $86
million subsidy from the Green Climate Fund for a hydro-development
project that will provide cheap electricity for the capital's denizens.
Meanwhile, people in places like Taro, who are watching their coastlines
vanish, are having a difficult time procuring the necessary capital to
relocate.
As good-natured as it may seem for developed nations to
donate money to smaller nations that feel strangled by the chokehold of
climate change, Boseto believes the Solomon Islands need more than guilt
money.
"This is just a Band-Aid solution," said Boseto. "Bigger
countries are saying, 'OK, we've emitted this much, so we will pay you
this much money to help you adapt to what we've done.' But that's not
what we are saying we need."
What they need, Boseto explained, is
for big, industrialized countries to address the root problem and reduce
their output of greenhouse gasses. They need the rest of the world to
collectively commit to turning down the global thermostat.
Eric Waiara’a, at home with his family.
LIKE most Solomon Islanders, almost everything
30-year-old Eric Waiara'a does revolves around the ocean. After working
as a science teacher near the capital for many years, he moved to the
small coastal village of Kolipakisa to be with his wife and two sons.
Now he spends most of his time fishing, diving for sea cucumbers and
chauffeuring visiting surfers around in search of waves.
We
conscripted Waiara'a to help us hunt down one of the best breaks in the
region, near the island of Santa Isabel, where Dr. Simon Albert had
found the five sunken islands. A midday thundershower had just cleared
and billowy, soft-hued storm clouds hung in its wake like unfurling
cotton candy. With Waiara'a at the helm of the boat, we zipped through
the warm, glassy waters while flying fish skipped along the ocean's
surface next to us. In the distance, we could see whitewater lining
up on the horizon.
We arrived at a shallow offshore reef where
double-overhead waves were marching in from deep water, hitting a shelf
and folding over themselves, forming shifty, powerful tubes. It looked
every bit as good as the most popular Indonesian breaks, but without
another boatload of surfers anywhere in sight.
Martyn began
frantically waxing his board and screwing in fins. It took only about 20
seconds before he was over the side of the boat and scratching into the
lineup.
He passed on the first wave of a thundering set, trying
to gauge its power. When the next one came through, he paddled deep and
swung underneath it. Sucking up off the reef, the wave seemed to drop
out beneath Martyn, but his fins gripped the face and he stood tall with
his trailing hand skimming the inside of the crystal-clear cylinder. As
he kicked out amid a cloud of spit, Waiara'a let out a bellowing laugh
from the boat, exposing his gap-toothed smile.
Martyn, below sea level. Although the waves in the Solomon Islands are often perfect, there’s a chance that the waves here could change shape under forecasted sea levels. “We could definitely hypothesize that as sea levels rise faster than coral are able to grow–which is the case in the Solomon Islands–breaks are going to become deeper and wave intensity might decrease,” says scientist Javier Leon.
Watching the scene in the lineup, and the distinct natural beauty
that surrounded us, it was hard to reconcile the area's idyllic
appearance with the increasingly challenging reality the environment and
local communities face. The International Panel for Climate Change
reports that sea-level rise is likely to increase by 3.22 feet by the
end of this century. Greenland and Antarctica are melting quicker than
ever before. Recent studies point to a segment in Antarctica called the
Amundsen Sea sector that has gone into "irreversible decline." The body
of ice there holds enough water to raise sea levels by another 4 feet,
and its eventual melting could destabilize other parts of the adjoining
ice sheets. The effects of this would spell disaster not only for the
oceanfront settlements in the Solomon Islands, but for coastal areas
worldwide.
Experts believe curbing climate change will require
unified action from the international community, which has proven
difficult due to the politicization of the issue. Back in 2015, 197
countries signed the Paris Climate Agreement, promising to limit
emissions in an effort to keep global warming at or below 2 degrees
Celsius. But many critics believe that the Paris Climate Agreement is
nothing but empty promises, and that governments aren't taking
aggressive enough measures to stop the burning of fossil fuels. The Drowning Isles
Waiara'a told me about how much his village has changed over the
years, and how he and his neighbors have to wade through thigh-high
water during extreme tidal floods in order to get to their homes. Some
people even paddle their dugout canoes straight to their front doors.
I
asked if there was any controversy within his village about whether or
not climate change was real, explaining that in other parts of the
world, people are still skeptical about its actuality. Waiara'a furrowed
his brow and shook his head.
"Of course we believe in climate
change. We see our beaches eroding, we see the saltwater ruining our
coconut trees and we see the small islands beside us disappearing," he
said. "We see it happening all around us."
March for Science, Washington, D.C., April 29, 2017.
Shutterstock.com
This summer I worked on the Greenland ice sheet, part of a scientific
experiment to study surface melting and its contribution to Greenland’s
accelerating ice losses. By virtue of its size, elevation and
currently frozen state, Greenland has the potential to cause large and
rapid increases to sea level as it melts.
When I returned, a nonscientist friend asked me what the research
showed about future sea level rise. He was disappointed that I couldn’t
say anything definite, since it will take several years to analyze the
data. This kind of time lag is common in science, but it can make
communicating the issues difficult. That’s especially true for climate
change, where decades of data collection may be required to see trends.
A recent draft report on climate change
by federal scientists exploits data captured over many decades to
assess recent changes, and warns of a dire future if we don’t change our
ways. Yet few countries are aggressively reducing their emissions in a
way scientists say are needed to avoid the dangers of climate change.
While this lack of progress dismays people, it’s actually
understandable. Human beings have evolved to focus on immediate threats.
We have a tough time dealing with risks that have time lags of decades
or even centuries. As a geoscientist, I’m used to thinking on much
longer time scales, but I recognize that most people are not. I see
several kinds of time lags associated with climate change debates. It’s
important to understand these time lags and how they interact if we hope
to make progress.
Agreeing on the goal
Changing the basic energy underpinnings of our industrial economy
will not be easy or cheap, and will require broad public support. Today
nearly half of Americans – presumably including President Trump, based
on his public comments – do not believe
that humans are the primary cause of modern rapid climate change.
Others admit that humans have contributed, but may not support strict
regulations or big investments in response.
In part, these views reflect the influence of special interest groups
who benefit from our high-carbon “business as usual” economic system.
But they also reflect the complexity of the problem, and the difficulty
scientists have in explaining it. As I point out in my recent book
on how we think about disasters, statements made by scientists in the
1980s, 1990s and early 2000s about global warming were often vague and
full of caveats, which made it easy for climate change skeptics to
forestall action by emphasizing how uncertain the picture was.
Fortunately, scientists are improving at communication. The increasing frequency of coastal flooding, summer heat waves and droughts
could also help to change minds, but it may take a few more decades
before a solid majority of Americans supports high-level action.
Earth’s average temperature has risen
over 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century. It is projected to rise an
additional 3°F to 10°F over the next 100 years. Designing cleaner technologies
It will also take time for technological developments to support our
transition to a low-carbon energy future. Here, at least, there is
reason for optimism. A few decades ago renewable energy sources such as
wind and solar seemed unlikely to replace a significant fraction of
carbon-based energy. Similarly, electric vehicles seemed unlikely to
meet a significant share of our transportation needs. Today both are
realistic alternatives.
This year wind and solar power hit 10 percent of U.S. electricity generation for the first time. Electric vehicles and hybrids are also becoming more common. The recent advent and rapid adoption of LED lighting could start to have an impact on our electrical consumption.
Thanks to these developments, humanity’s carbon footprint will look
quite different in a few decades. Whether that’s quick enough to avoid 2
degree Celsius of warming is not yet clear.
Funding the transition
Once we finally decide to make a low-carbon transition and figure out how to do it, it will cost trillions of dollars. Capital markets can’t provide that sort of funding instantaneously.
Consider the cost of upgrading just the U.S. housing market. The
United States has approximately 125 million households, of which about
60 percent (75 million) own their own homes. The majority of these are single-family residences.
If we assume that at least 60 million of these residences are
single-family homes, duplexes or townhomes where it is feasible for
residents to upgrade to solar photovoltaic power, then equipping just
half (30 million homes) with a standard solar energy package and battery
storage, at a cost of about US$25,000 per household, would cost nearly a
trillion dollars. Our economy can support this level of capital
investment over one or two decades, but for most of the world it’s going
to take longer.
Solar Charging Station for Electric
Vehicles at Phillips Chevrolet, Frankfort, Illinois. New energy
technologies require infrastructure to support them.Phillipschevy, CC BY-SA
The natural carbon cycle
Our ability to add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere greatly exceeds
nature’s ability to remove it. There is a time lag between carbon
emission and carbon removal. The process is complicated, with multiple
pathways, some of which operate over centuries.
For example, some atmospheric carbon dioxide at the ocean’s surface
dissolves into seawater, forming carbonate ions. Meanwhile, rainfall
weathers rocks on land, slowly breaking them apart and washing calcium
and magnesium ions into rivers and streams and on into the oceans. These
materials combine into minerals such as aragonite, calcite or dolomite,
which eventually sink and become entombed in sedimentary layers at the
bottom of the ocean.
But since this process plays out over many centuries, most of the
carbon dioxide that we put into the atmosphere today will continue to
heat the world for hundreds to thousands of years.
Earth’s carbon supply constantly
cycles between land, atmosphere and oceans. Yellow numbers are natural
fluxes, and red are human contributions in gigatons of carbon per year.
White numbers indicate stored carbon.NASA Earth Observatory
Today the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is just over 400 parts per million, rising by about 3 ppm yearly.
Given the political, technological and economic time lags that we face,
it’s likely that we will hit at least 450-500 ppm before we can
seriously curtail our carbon emissions. The last time Earth’s atmosphere
contained this much carbon dioxide was several million years ago,
during the Pliocene era. Global temperatures were much higher than 2°C above today’s average, and global sea level was at least 6 meters (nearly 20 feet) higher.
We haven’t seen comparable temperature or sea level increases so far because of time lags in Earth’s climate response.
It takes a while for our elevated carbon dioxide levels to trigger
impacts on this scale. Given the various time lags that are in play, it
is quite possible that we have already exceeded the 2°C rise over
preindustrial temperatures – a threshold most scientists say we should
avoid – but it hasn’t shown up on the thermometer yet.
We may not be able to predict exactly how much future temperatures or
sea levels will rise, but we do know that unless we curb our carbon
emissions, our planet will be a very uncomfortable place for our
grandchildren and their grandchildren. Large-scale social changes take
time: they are the sum of many individual changes, in both attitudes and
behaviors. To minimize that time lag, we need to start acting now.
