Corporations To Lead Charge Into Wind, Solar And Storage

RenewEconomy - Giles Parkinson


Renewable energy production from Australian businesses has more than doubled over the last two years, and nearly half are making the switch to wind and/or solar to take control over their electricity bills and to help reduce emissions.
A new survey from the Climate Council says the massive shift to wind and solar is happening because electricity bills are soaring and wind and solar and storage offer an affordable and reliable solution.
In Australia, 46 per cent of businesses are looking to turn to wind and solar, many are looking for those technologies to provide the bulk of their power needs, and they are also looking at storage and electric vehicles.
“This report shows that the rising cost of energy is the number one concern for Australian businesses over the next decade,” says the Climate Council’s Greg Bourne, a former chair of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
“So it’s no surprise that a variety of businesses from bakeries to breweries, and tech agencies to chilli and chicken farms, are all turning to affordable renewable energy and storage solutions.
“These businesses are actively investing in renewable energy in a bid to cut costs and take control of their power bills, while also playing a crucial role in transitioning the nation away from ageing, polluting and unreliable fossil fuels.”
The role of corporations is expected to be one of the key factors in the future of large-scale and distributed renewable energy projects over the coming decade, particularly if the federal government fails to lift its emissions reduction targets for 2030.
Right now, the government is seeking to lock in a 26 per cent cut in electricity emissions from 2005 levels by 2030, through its National Energy Guarantee.
But most independent analysis say this target will be largely met by the renewable energy target by 2020 – meaning little incentive for further construction in the following 10 years.
That leaves only state-based targets such as Victoria, Queensland, and the Northern Territory, and the underlying push from households and businesses turning to renewables and storage to address their electricity bills.
A total of 46,000 Australian businesses have already installed solar energy, and this has mostly been in relatively small-scale rooftop arrays, although the pace of this uptake has accelerated dramatically in the last 12-18 months, as this graph below illustrates.

According to the Clean Energy Regulator, the amount of rooftop solar installed by businesses (arrays of up to 1MW) will increase five fold in 2018 to around 100MW.
The other more recent phenomenon is the decision by very large businesses and energy users to turn to large-scale wind and solar project to lower their bills in response to the doubling of electricity prices and soaring gas bills.
Some companies, such as Nectar  Farms, have chosen to electrify their businesses so they can use cheaper wind energy and battery storage, rather than expensive gas.
Nectar Farms will build the country’s largest vegetable greenhouse, powered by wind and solar, on an old gold mine in Stawell in Victoria, as part of a $550 million project with Neoen and Tesla.
In South Australia, Sundrop Farms turned to solar towers and solar thermal to provide power, heat and desalinated water for their tomato growing operations (pictured top).
In Queensland, Sun Metals will soon become Australia’s first major refiner to go solar with the imminent opening of its 124MW solar farm, which will help underpin a $300 million expansion of the refinery by locking in low electricity costs.
Other major corporations that have signed contracts for large-scale solar or wind farms include Telstra, CUB, Westpac, Foster’s, ANZ, and CC Amatil. There are many others in the pipeline.
The Climate Council quoted a recent Baker and McKenzie survey of business intentions which shows that 40 per cent of its respondents are looking at renewables, and 40 per cent are also considering some form of storage.
Other key factors include changing business models to align with renewables and storage, and also preparing for the widely anticipated uptake of electric vehicles, and infrastructure such as charging networks.
One-third of businesses said they were considering using renewables as their main source of energy in the next 18 months – that’s a big development from businesses putting on small amounts of rooftop solar to support their “green messaging”.
A total of 138 global corporations have made a commitment to go ‘100% renewable’, including food producers, car manufacturers, data centre operators, breweries, real estate companies, banks and fashion brands .
These 100 per cent renewable companies include Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Wells Fargo, Johnson and Johnson and Amazon. They also include Anheuser-Busch, the owner of Australia’s Carlton and United Breweries, which is also going 100 per cent renewable.
In the US, nearly two-thirds of Fortune 100 and nearly half of Fortune 500 companies have set ambitious renewable or sustainability targets.
“This is a world-wide transition, with businesses around the globe taking advantage of the investment opportunities associated with renewable energy,” Bourne says.
Climate Council Energy and Climate Solutions Analyst Petra Stock said businesses were naturally transitioning to renewable energy and battery storage, with wind and solar now the cheapest forms of new-build energy generation, far cheaper than a new coal power station.
“This transition is good for the pockets of business owners and good for our climate, it really is a win-win.”
“This report showcases a range of Aussie businesses who are benefiting from making the switch to solar and wind, including eight New South Wales chicken farms that are saving an astonishing $2,000 a day,” said Stock.
“It simply makes good economic sense for businesses to make the switch to clean, affordable and reliable renewable energy and battery storage. Renewables are taking care of Aussie businesses facing high electricity prices.”

Links

• Renewables and Business: Cutting Prices and Pollution
• Design of national energy guarantee revealed, but key details omitted
• Clean Energy Regulator
• Turnbull's national energy guarantee could have 'no meaningful emission reduction'
• Frydenberg to warn Abbott allies against 'extreme ideologies' on energy
• Turnbull's national energy guarantee a step closer after Jay Weatherill's exit
• Turnbull predicts states will sign up to national energy guarantee
• Labor says it will reach 50% renewable energy regardless of PM's guarantee
• What is the national energy guarantee and is it really a game changer?
• Malcolm Turnbull convinces party to unite on energy policy
• Coalition balks on Finkel target but will unveil energy and emissions policy

Urgent Climate Action Required To Protect Tens Of Thousands Of Species Worldwide, New Research Shows

InsideClimate News - John H. Cushman Jr. | Neela Banerjee

Limiting global warming to 2 degrees and not the more ambitious 1.5 degrees would put far more species at risk of extinction. Insects are especially vulnerable.

A mere half degree of extra global warming could mean profound risks for tens of thousands of the planet's species, scientists have found. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Humanity can powerfully improve the survival odds of tens of thousands of species, but only if nations dramatically raise their ambitions in the fight against climate change, according to new research published on Thursday in the journal Science.
One key to salvaging plant and vertebrate habitat and protecting the world's biodiversity is to limit warming to the most challenging benchmark established under the 2015 Paris treaty—1.5 degrees Celsius of warming—not to the treaty's less stringent 2 degree guardrail, the study found.
The study assessed, in more detail than ever before, a key measure of extinction risk: the shrinking size of each species' current geographical range, or natural habitat. It projected that for an alarming number of species, their range size would shrink by at least half as temperatures rise past the Paris goals.
If nations do no more than they have pledged so far to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions—and warming consequently shoots past 3 degrees by the end of this century—6 percent of all vertebrates would be at risk. So would 44 percent of plants and a whopping 49 percent of insects.
But the dangers would be greatly reduced if warming can be limited to 1.5 degrees. That might protect the overwhelming majority of the 115,000 species assessed by the researchers. Just 4 percent of vertebrates would lose more than half of their current range. Only 8 percent of plants and 6 percent of insects would face that risk.
Keeping warming to 2 degrees is not nearly as effective, they found. The additional half degree of warming would double the impact on plants and vertebrate species, and triple the impact on insects.

First-of-Its-Kind Biodiversity Study
Conducted by researchers from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom and James Cook University in Australia, the study builds on their earlier work. For the first time, it examines insects and explores how effectively the extinction risks can be addressed by increasing ambition.
"If warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100, then more species can keep up or even gain in range," said Rachel Warren, the study's lead researcher, "whereas if warming reached 2 degrees Celsius by 2100, many species cannot keep up and far more species lose large parts of their range."
The new research adds a compelling layer of evidence to the mounting risks of rising temperatures. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is currently revising a comprehensive draft report on the science behind the 1.5 degree target. This new report on endangered species was written in time to be reflected in the IPCC review, to be published in the fall.
A leaked copy of the latest IPCC draft, circulated for expert comment in the winter, noted in its summary that "local extinction (extirpation) risks are higher in a 2 degrees Celsius warmer world, compared to  1.5 degrees Celsius."

Race to Bolster Paris Treaty's Call for Action
At Paris, everyone recognized that the pledges to cut emissions would fall short of meeting the 2 degree target. Even so, the world's nations decided to shoot for 1.5 degrees, where the dangers become pronounced for small island states and other highly vulnerable people. Since then, talks about increasing ambition have made relatively little headway, and President Donald Trump has renounced the pledges of the Obama administration.
Whether the goal is 2 degrees or 1.5 degrees, scientists say it can only be met by bringing net emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels to zero later in this century. The main difference is that with the more ambitious goal, emissions must be reduced much faster; some say it's already too late.
This urgency has been highlighted by one peer-reviewed study after another, as scientists explore the consequences of falling short. Hundreds of scientists have filed thousands of comments to the IPCC as it races to bolster the treaty's call for rapid action.

115,000 Species Studied; Insects Particularly Vulnerable
Since lost species never come back, and since many species perform vital ecosystem services, the growing risks of extinction are an especially profound aspect of climate change.
Until now, these problems have been studied in relatively few species, notably tropical coral reefs, which are already dying off under the approximately 1 degree of warming that's been observed so far. They may be partly saved if emissions are reduced aggressively enough to stay below 1.5 degrees.
This time, the researchers examined 115,000 species, including 34,000 insects and other invertebrates that previously have not been included in global studies of climate and biodiversity. (Roughly a million species of insects have been named, and there may be many more.)
Insects, it turned out, are particularly sensitive to temperature increases, and these findings are particularly alarming.
They focus attention on pollinators essential to agriculture and insects that serve as food for birds and animals. The researchers found that three groups of pollinators are especially vulnerable to climate risks—true flies, beetles, and moths and butterflies.
The study's authors concluded that meeting the most aggressive temperature target would most benefit species in Europe, Australia, the Amazon and southern Africa.
The study also looked at the ability of different species to migrate outside their normal ranges.
Birds, mammals and butterflies have better chances of relocating than other species as temperatures rise, the researchers found.

Links

• The projected effect on insects, vertebrates, and plants of limiting global warming to 1.5°C rather than 2°C
• Keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees C helps most species hold their ground
• Limiting warming to 1.5 degree C would save majority of global species from climate change
• Restricting global warming to 1.5C could ‘halve’ risk of biodiversity loss
• Climate Change Threatens Thousands of Species in Our Lifetime
• Media reports on the draft IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C

Climate Change On Track To Cause Major Insect Wipeout, Scientists Warn

The Guardian - Damian Carrington

Insects are vital to ecosystems but will lose almost half their habitat under current climate projections

The famous migration of the North American monarch butterfly is one of the most well-documented examples of an insect species affected by climate change. Photograph: Joel Sartore/NG/Getty Images

Global warming is on track to cause a major wipeout of insects, compounding already severe losses, according to a new analysis.
Insects are vital to most ecosystems and a widespread collapse would cause extremely far-reaching disruption to life on Earth, the scientists warn. Their research shows that, even with all the carbon cuts already pledged by nations so far, climate change would make almost half of insect habitat unsuitable by the end of the century, with pollinators like bees particularly affected.
However, if climate change could be limited to a temperature rise of 1.5C - the very ambitious goal included in the global Paris agreement - the losses of insects are far lower.
The new research is the most comprehensive to date, analysing the impact of different levels of climate change on the ranges of 115,000 species. It found plants are also heavily affected but that mammals and birds, which can more easily migrate as climate changes, suffered less.
“We showed insects are the most sensitive group,” said Prof Rachel Warren, at the University of East Anglia, who led the new work. “They are important because ecosystems cannot function without insects. They play an absolutely critical role in the food chain.”

“The disruption to our ecosystems if we were to lose that high proportion of our insects would be extremely far-reaching and widespread,” she said. “People should be concerned - humans depend on ecosystems functioning.” Pollination, fertile soils, clean water and more all depend on healthy ecosystems, Warren said.
In October, scientists warned of “ecological Armageddon” after discovering that the number of flying insects had plunged by three-quarters in the past 25 years in Germany and very likely elsewhere.
“We know that many insects are in rapid decline due to factors such as habitat loss and intensive farming methods,” said Prof Dave Goulson, at the University of Sussex, UK, and not part of the new analysis. “This new study shows that, in the future, these declines would be hugely accelerated by the impacts of climate change, under realistic climate projections. When we add in all the other adverse factors affecting wildlife, all likely to increase as the human population grows, the future for biodiversity on planet Earth looks bleak.”

A dragonfly lands on a stalk of wheat. Many insects are in rapid decline due to factors such as habitat loss and intensive farming methods. Photograph: Todd Korol/Reuters

In the new analysis, published in the journal Science, the researchers gathered data on the geographic ranges and current climate conditions of 31,000 insect species, 8,000 birds, 1,700 mammals, 1,800 reptiles, 1,000 amphibians and 71,000 plants.
They then calculated how the ranges change when global warming means some regions can no longer support particular species. For the first time in this type of study, they included the 1.5C Paris target, as well as 2C, the longstanding international target, and 3.2C, which is the rise the world will experience by 2100 unless action is taken beyond that already pledged.

Insect ranges could be seriously cut by climate change
Percentage of species losing more than half their range by 2100

Guardian Graphic | Source: Warren et al, Science

The researchers measured the results in two ways. First, they counted the number of species that lose more than half their range and this was 49% of insect species at 3.2C, falling to 18% at 2C and 6% at 1.5C. Second, they combined the losses for each species group into a type of average measure.
“If you are a typical insect, you would be likely to lose 43% of your range at 3.2C,” Warren said. “We also found that the three major groups of insects responsible for pollination are particularly sensitive to warming.”
Guy Midgley, at University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and not part of the research team, said the new work built on previous studies but is far more comprehensive. He said major impacts on wildlife would be expected given the potential scale of climate change: “Global average surface temperatures in the past two million years have rarely approached the levels projected over the next few decades.”

A bee forages in a garden. The UK bee population has seen a severe decline over the past 20 years. Photograph: Ian Jacobs/Alamy

Warren said the new work had taken account of the ability of species to migrate, but had not been able to include the impact of lost interactions between species as ranges contract, or of the impacts of more extreme weather events on wildlife. As both of those would increase the losses of range, Warren said the estimates of losses made were likely to be underestimates.
Warren said that the world’s nations were aware that more action on climate change is needed: “The question is to what extent greater reductions can be made and on what timescale. That is a decision society has to make.”
Another study published in Science on Thursday found that one third of the world’s protected areas, which cover 15% of all land, are now highly degraded by intense human pressure including road building, grazing, and urbanisation.
Kendall Jones, at the University of Queensland, Australia, who led the work, said: “A well-run protected area network is essential in saving species. If we allow our protected area network to be degraded there is a no doubt biodiversity losses will be exacerbated.”

Links

• Warning of 'ecological Armageddon' after dramatic plunge in insect numbers
• Insect declines: new alarm over mayfly is ‘tip of iceberg’, warn experts
• Climate change threatens rare British orchid that tricks bees into mating
• Destruction of nature as dangerous as climate change, scientists warn
• A giant insect ecosystem is collapsing due to humans. It's a catastrophe
• Warning of 'ecological Armageddon' after dramatic plunge in insect numbers
• Climate change could wipe out a third of parasite species, study finds
• Bird species vanish from UK due to climate change and habitat loss
• Climate change is disrupting seasonal behaviour of Britain's wildlife

Climate Change An 'Existential Security Risk' To Australia, Senate Inquiry Says

The Guardian - Ben Doherty

Threat is not a possible future one but one endangering Australia now, parliament told

The Senate report says climate change threatens Australians’ health, businesses and the economy. Photograph: The Washington Post/Washington Post/Getty Images

Climate change is a “current and existential national security risk” to Australia, a Senate inquiry has told parliament, one that could inflame regional conflicts over food, water and land, and even imperil life on Earth.
The Senate committee inquiry into the implications of climate change for Australia’s national security recommended an increase in foreign aid to be dedicated to climate change mitigation and adaptation in the region, as well as a government white paper on climate security, Department of Defence emissions targets and a dedicated climate security post within the Department of Home Affairs.
The inquiry, which released its report on Thursday afternoon, heard that the security risk of climate change was not a possible future threat but one that endangers Australia and its region now. The Asia-Pacific was the region “most vulnerable” to the security and humanitarian impacts of climate change, the committee heard, and faced an “existential threat”.
An existential threat was defined as “one that threatens the premature extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life or the permanent and drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development”.
The committee report said climate change threatened Australians’ health, and the viability of communities, businesses and the economy. Climate change was heightening the severity of natural hazards, increasing the spread of infectious diseases and increasing water insecurity, and threatening agriculture.
Sherri Goodman, a former US deputy undersecretary of defence in the Clinton administration and founder of the CNA Military Advisory Board, told the committee climate change was a “threat multiplier”, exacerbating existing conflicts over water and other resources, and that it posed “a direct threat to the national security of Australia”.
“The problem also is not a distant one in the future but it’s now. We are experiencing this in regular sunny-day flooding at military bases in the United States and in changes in the Arctic, forcing the first wave of displaced persons from villages in the Arctic.”
The Climate Council told the committee climate change was “already contributing to increases in the forced migration of people within and between nations, as well as playing a role in heightening social and political tensions, flowing onto conflict and violence”.
The Australian government has recognised the security implications posed by climate change. Its seventh national communication on climate change to the United Nations in December highlighted that Australia was “already experiencing the impacts of a changing climate, particularly changes associated with increases in temperature, the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events, extreme fire weather and drought”.
It noted “communities in the Torres Strait are already being impacted by rising sea levels and many of the region’s coral reefs have been severely impacted by increased sea surface temperatures”.
And the Department of Defence agreed climate change had the potential to worsen existing conflicts.
“When climate impacts are combined with ethnic or other social grievances, they can contribute to increased migration, internal instability or intrastate insurgencies, often over greater competition for natural resources. These developments may foster terrorism or cross-border conflict.”
The Senate committee heard that acute climate disruption – in particular long-running and severe droughts – exacerbated conflicts in Mali and Syria, contributing to the destabilisation of fragile states.
In Australia’s region, the Australian Council for International Development said: “For Pacific nations such as Tuvalu, Kiribati and Micronesia, climate change is already a genuine existential threat with the capacity to diminish their livelihoods and even erase their states’ territorial footprints.”
The Senate committee noted Australia does not have an overarching climate security strategy.
Research Director for Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration David Spratt said there was a disconnect between the evidence presented to the inquiry and the recommendations that emerged from it.
“Existential risk management requires brutally honest articulation of the risks, opportunities and the response time frame. At the moment we are knowingly locking in an existential disaster without being prepared to articulate that fact … at least this Senate inquiry report is significant for having broken the ice, but it should be so much more.”
Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson said the defence personnel who appeared before the committee “engaged deeply with climate change science and were in no doubt that a warming world is a more dangerous world”.
“What this inquiry has brought home to me is that when people choose to engage with the climate science, without any partisan or ideological blinkers, they quickly understand the seriousness of the challenge and decide to act. We have seen that the Australian Defence Force is changing how it does things because it is taking climate change seriously, but we have a government that is doing nothing to reduce emissions to actually reduce the threat of climate change itself.”

Links

• It's no surprise emissions keep going up. There's no price on carbon
• 'It's all about vested interests': untangling conspiracy, conservatism and climate scepticism
• Australia faces potentially disastrous consequences of climate change, inquiry told
• Australia warned it has radically underestimated climate change security threat
• Finance sector could face climate-risk testing, says Australian watchdog
• Climate change impact on Australia may be irreversible, five-yearly report says
• Climate change: Australia falling behind rest of world on emissions cuts, says report
• Australia needs two emissions trading schemes, Climate Change Authority says

'This Is An Eye-Opener’: Changes In Global Water Supply Hint At Future Conflicts And Crises

Globe and Mail - Ivan Semeniuk

Dry, cracked Earth that used to be under Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, illustrates how water resources are shifting due to climate change and human activity. A new analysis using satellite data has identified more than 30 regions on Earth where the amount of stored water on the landscape has increased or decreased by an amount greater than the 32 billion ton storage capacity of Lake Mead. Justin Sullivan/GETTY IMAGES

By combining 14 years’ worth of satellite data, scientists have captured a startling portrait of the world’s water supply undergoing rapid transformation. The new analysis points to areas where there is increasing potential for conflict as a growing demand for water collides with the impacts of climate change. In Canada, the maps shows shifting water supplies that include wetter, more flood-prone regions in many areas of the country but a general drying out in the western sub-Arctic.

“This is an eye-opener,” said Roy Brouwer, an economist and executive director of the University of Waterloo’s Water Institute who was not involved in the analysis. “It raises awareness that things are changing and that in some areas something has to happen to counter and anticipate some of the catastrophes that may be waiting for us in the not-so-far future.”

The analysis is based on data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, a NASA-led mission launched in 2002 that involved two satellites circling the globe in tandem about 220 kilometres apart. A microwave link between the two satellites allowed scientists to precisely monitor minuscule changes in their separation down to a distance of 10 microns, or about one-tenth the width of a human hair.

The setup created a sort of flying weight scale that mean the satellites could be used to measure slight regional variations in Earth’s gravitational pull. Many of those variations are due to geological features, such as mountain ranges, that do not vary over time. But by taking measurements over many years, the satellite also picked up changes that are largely due to the movement of massive amounts of water at or near Earth’s surface.

Researchers have published many results based on GRACE data but the new analysis, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, marks the first time all available observations from the mission, from April, 2002, to March, 2016, have been analyzed and assembled to provide a comprehensive map of water trends around the world. Those trends encompass changes in where water is stored across Earth’s surface, including groundwater, soil moisture, glaciers, snow cover and surface water. The result suggests a water landscape that is changing fast on a global scale, in large part due to human activity and climate change.

“The human fingerprint is all over what we see in the map,” said Jay Famiglietti, a water-resource expert affiliated with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the incoming director of the University of Saskatchewan’s Global Institute for Water Security.

Dr. Famiglietti, a co-author on the Nature study, has played a central role in interpreting data from the GRACE mission over its lifetime. He added that the new analysis pointed to profound changes in the Earth’s water resources that should serve as a wake-up call for policy makers.

“There are implications in that map for food security, for water security and for human security in terms of things like conflict and climate refugees,” he said.

In total, Dr. Famiglietti and his colleagues identified 34 regional trends in water storage observed by GRACE. Some are likely due to natural variations over the time that the observations were taken. For example, the Amazon basin looks like it’s getting wetter because the area has been recovering from a drought. The same is likely the case for a region centred on the Canadian Prairies and parts of the United States. Over the long term, those trends may fade away.

The most obvious changes are clearly due to climate change and relate to ice loss in the polar regions and in some mountainous areas such as Alaska and the southern portions of the Andes in South America. Others show places where humans have directly affected water storage.

One example is a large swatch of diminishing water supply across parts of the Middle East, including Syria and Iraq. The shortage is related to dam building in Turkey and overuse of groundwater, both of which have exacerbated an already complex and volatile political situation in the region.

Similar shortfalls in India reflect the impact of subsidized electricity, which has created a “perverse incentive” that makes it inexpensive to pump out more groundwater than can be replenished, said Dr. Brouwer.

Overall, the map shows how the world’s water is increasingly moving from natural storehouses such as glaciers to human-built reservoirs, a change that comes with plenty of political fallout when that water crosses international boundaries, said Aaron Wolf, an expert in water-related conflict at Oregon State University.

“This kind of data really helps us identify hot spots in advance of real crises,” he said.

Support for the GRACE mission officially ended last fall and the last of the satellites burned up as its orbit decayed in mid-March. A follow-up mission with two new satellites that will continue the gravity measurements is currently set for launch this Tuesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Watching The Water Flow

Satellite data accumulated over a 14-year period reveals dramatic changes in the world’s water supply, partly due to natural variation but also because of human activity and climate change

Global Water Storage Trends

Ivan Semeniuk, John Sopinski And Murat Yükselir/The Globe And Mail

Source: Emerging Trends In Global Freshwater Availability, doi.org

Links

• ‘We have to go to carbon-free electricity’: James Hansen on how world leaders can effectively take on climate change
• Unique salt lakes discovered under Nunavut glacier a ‘jewel’ for researchers
• Studies show Paris targets crucial to maintaining Arctic ice

Extinction vs. Collapse: Does It Matter?

Millennium Alliance for Humanity and Biosphere - Samuel Miller McDonald*

Venus - May 18 2016  Kevin Gill | Flickr | CC BY 2.0

Climate twitter – the most fun twitter – has recently been relitigating the debate between human extinction and mere civilizational collapse, between doom and gloom, despair and (kind of) hope.
It was sparked by an interview in The Guardian with acclaimed scientist Mayer Hillman. He argues that we’re probably doomed, and confronting the likelihood that we’re rushing toward collective death may be necessary to save us.
The headline alone provoked a lot of reactions, many angered by the ostensible defeatism embedded in Hillman’s comments. His stated view represents one defined camp that is mostly convinced of looming human extinction.
It stands in contrast to another group that believes human extinction is highly unlikely, maybe impossible, and certainly will not occur due to climate change in our lifetimes. Collapse maybe, but not extinction.
Who’s more right? Let’s take a closer look.
First, the question of human extinction is totally bounded by uncertainty. There’s uncertainty in climate data, uncertainty in models and projections, and even more uncertainty in the behavior of human systems. We don’t know how we’ll respond to the myriad impacts climate change is beginning to spark, and we don’t know how sensitive industrial civilization will be to those impacts.
We don’t really know if humans are like other apex predators highly sensitive to ecological collapse, or are among the most adaptable mammals to ever walk the earth.
One may be inclined to lean toward the latter given that humans have colonized every ecological niche on the planet except Antarctica. That bands of people can survive in and around deserts as well as the Arctic as well as equatorial rainforests speaks to the resilience of small social groups. It’s why The Road is so disturbingly plausible; there could be a scenario in which basically everything is dead but people, lingering in the last grey waste of the world. On the other hand, we’ve never lived outside of the very favorable conditions of the Holocene, and past civilizational and population collapses suggest humans are in fact quite sensitive to climatic shifts.
Famed climate scientist James Hansen has discussed the possibility of “Venus syndrome,” for instance, which sits at the far end of worst case scenarios. While a frightening thought experiment, it is easily dismissed as it’s based on so many uncertainties and doesn’t carry the weight of anything near consensus.
What’s more frightening than potentially implausible uncertainties are the currently existing certainties.
For example:

Ecology

• The atmosphere has proven more sensitive to GHG emissions than predicted by mainstream science, and we have a high chance of hitting 2°C of warming this century. Could hit 1.5°C in the 2020s. Worst-case warming scenarios are probably the most likely.
• Massive marine death is happening far faster than anyone predicted and we could be on the edge of an anoxic event.
• Ice melt is happening far faster than mainstream predictions. Greenland’s ice sheet is threatening to collapse and already slowing ocean currents, which too could collapse.
• Which also means predictions of sea level rise have doubled for this century.
• Industrial agriculture is driving massive habitat loss and extinction. The insect collapse – population declines of 75% to 80% have been seen in some areas – is something no one predicted would happen so fast, and portends an ecological sensitivity beyond our fears. This is causing an unexpected and unprecedented bird collapse (1/8 of bird species are threatened) in Europe.
•  Forests, vital carbon sinks, are proving sensitive to climate impacts.
• We’re living in the 6th mass extinction event, losing potentially dozens of species per day. We don’t know how this will impact us and our ability to feed ourselves.

Energy

• Energy transition is essential to mitigating 1.5+°C warming. Energy is the single greatest contributor to anthro-GHG. And, by some estimates, transition is happening 400 years too slowly to avoid catastrophic warming.
• Incumbent energy industries (that is, oil & gas) dominate governments all over the world. We live in an oil oligarchy – a petrostate, but for the globe. Every facet of the global economy is dependent on fossil fuels, and every sector – from construction to supply chains to transport to electricity to extraction to agriculture and on and on – is built around FF consumption. There’s good reason to believe FF will remain subsidized by governments beholden to their interests even if they become less economically viable than renewables, and so will maintain their dominance.
• We are living in history’s largest oil and gas boom.
• Kilocalorie to kilocalorie, FF is extremely dense and extremely cheap. Despite reports about solar getting cheaper than FF in some places, non-hydro/-carbon renewables are still a tiny minority (~2%) of global energy consumption and will simply always, by their nature, be less dense kcal to kcal than FF, and so will always be calorically more expensive.
• Energy demand probably has to decrease globally to avoid 1.5°C, and it’s projected to dramatically increase. Getting people to consume less is practically impossible, and efficiency measures have almost always resulted in increased consumption.
• We’re still setting FF emissions records.

Politics

• Conditions today resemble those prior to the 20th century’s world wars: extreme wealth inequality, rampant economic insecurity, growing fascist parties/sentiment, and precarious geopolitical relations, and the Thucydides trap suggests war between Western hegemons and a rising China could be likely. These two factors could disrupt any kind of global cooperation on decarbonization and, to the contrary, will probably mean increased emissions (the US military is one of the world’s single largest consumers/emitters of FF).
• Neoliberal ideology is so thoroughly embedded in our academic, political, and cultural institutions, and so endemic to discourse today, that the idea of degrowth – probably necessary to avoid collapse – and solidarity economics isn’t even close to discussion, much less realization, and, for self-evident reasons, probably never will be.
• Living in a neoliberal culture also means we’ve all been trained not to sacrifice for the common good. But solving climate change, like paying more to achieve energy transition or voluntarily consuming less, will all entail sacrificing for the greater good. Humans sometimes are great at that; but the market fundamentalist ideology that pervades all social, commercial, and even self relations today stands against acting for the common good or in collective action.
• There’s basically no government in the world today taking climate change seriously. There are many governments posturing and pretending to take it seriously, but none have substantially committed to a full decarbonization of their economies. (Iceland may be an exception, but Iceland is about 24 times smaller than NYC, so…)
• Twenty-five years of governments knowing about climate change has resulted in essentially nothing being done about it, no emissions reductions, no substantive moves to decarbonize the economy. Politics have proven too strong for common sense, and there’s no good reason to suspect this will change anytime soon.
• Wealth inequality is embedded in our economy so thoroughly – and so indigenously to FF economies – that it will probably continue either causing perpetual strife, as it has so far, or eventually cement a permanent underclass ruled by a small elite, similar to agrarian serfdom. There is a prominent view in left politics that greater wealth equality, some kind of ecosocialism, is a necessary ingredient in averting the kind of ecological collapse the economy is currently driving, given that global FF capitalism by its nature consumes beyond carrying capacities. At least according to one study [1], the combination of inequality and ecological collapse is a likely cause for civilizational collapse.

Even with this perfect storm of issues, it’s impossible to know how likely extinction is, and it’s impossible to judge how likely or extensive civilizational collapse may be. We just can’t predict how human beings and human systems will respond to the shocks that are already underway.
We can make some good guesses based on history, but they’re no more than guesses. Maybe there’s a miracle energy source lurking in a hangar somewhere waiting to accelerate non-carbon transition. Maybe there’s a swelling political movement brewing under the surface that will soon build a more just, ecologically sane order into the world.
Community energy programs are one reason to retain a shred of optimism; but also they’re still a tiny fraction of energy production and they are not growing fast, but they could accelerate any moment. We just don’t know how fast energy transition can happen, and we just don’t know how fast the world could descend into climate-driven chaos – either by human strife or physical storms.
What we do know is that, given everything above, we are living through a confluence of events that will shake the foundations of civilization, and jeopardize our capacity to sustain large populations of humans. There is enough certainty around these issues to justify being existentially alarmed.
At this point, whether we go extinct or all but a thousand of us go extinct (again), maybe that shouldn’t make much difference. Maybe the destruction of a few billion or 5 billion people is morally equivalent to the destruction of all 7 billion of us, and so should provoke equal degrees of urgency. Maybe this debate about whether we’ll go completely extinct rather than just mostly extinct is absurd. Or maybe not. I don’t know. What I do know is that, regardless of the answer, there’s no excuse to stop fighting for a world that sustains life.

*Samuel Miller McDonald: Born and raised in Northern Michigan, Sam is currently pursuing a PhD at University of Oxford in political geography and energy.

Links

• Economic Growth is not Compatible With Environmental Sustainability
• The Connection Between Environment, Conflict and Security
• Interview with Paul Ehrlich: “Collapse of civilisation is a near certainty within decades”
• Believing in climate change, but not behaving sustainably: Evidence from a one-year longitudinal study
• ‘We’re doomed’: Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention

More Than 100 Organizations Call On Oil And Gas Industries, Banks To Opt Out Of Arctic Drilling

ThinkProgress -  E.A. Crunden

Indigenous groups and institutional investors representing more than $2 trillion call for industries to keep the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a "natural wonder."

A young polar bear stands on its hind legs on the barrier island of Bernard Spit, along the eastern arctic coast of Alaska. CREDIT: Steven Kazlowski / Barcroft Medi via Getty Images

Environmental advocates and organizations are calling on major industries to move against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
The groups behind the push to keep oil and gas extraction out of the wildlife refuge include indigenous representatives, national environmental activists, and institutional investors representing more than $2.5 trillion.
In a sweeping effort unveiled Monday, representatives from the Gwich’in Nation joined nearly 120 signatories opposing oil and gas drilling in the nation’s largest national wildlife refuge. Through two separate letters, advocates lobbied oil and gas companies along with major banks with potential interest in ANWR drilling.
Writing from its headquarters in Fairbanks, Alaska, the Gwich’in Steering Committee emphasized that the community opposes “any efforts to develop oil and gas” in the area.
The Gwich’in Nation considers ANWR’s coastal plain sacred and has fought against efforts to open the area up for drilling.
“As the world rapidly shifts towards clean energy sources, we are also gravely concerned about the climate, financial and reputational risks associated with pursuing a speculative fossil fuel source that will likely become uneconomical,” the steering committee wrote.
“It is both deeply unethical and unwise to permanently destroy lands vital to the culture and existence of the Gwich’in to pursue this high-risk gamble.”
In a separate letter, investors representing some $2.52 trillion similarly asserted opposition to any ANWR oil and gas development.
Citing “financial” and “reputational” risks along with “ecological” and “human rights” impacts, the signatories urged banks and industries to “honor their fiduciary duty to investors” and pledge to opt out of drilling.
“We, as investors, encourage expanding support for the wide range of clean energy solutions and sustainable industries in Alaska, instead of helping to destroy this natural wonder,” the letter concludes.
Signatories include BNP Paribas Asset Management and the David Rockefeller Fund.
Drilling in the Arctic has been a source of controversy for years.
Advocates for oil and gas drilling have pushed to allow industries to drill in the area, often referred to as “the last great wilderness” in the United States.
ANWR spans nearly 20 million acres and the refuge is home to many threatened and endangered species, including migratory birds, polar bears, and Porcupine caribou.
As head of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) has increasingly fought to allow drilling in ANWR’s coastal plain, known as the “1002 area”, which encompasses some 1.5 million acres of land.
That site is home to a caribou calving area with deep cultural significance for the Gwich’in people, who also rely on the region for nutritional purposes and food access.
Lawmakers like Murkowski, who has received significant contributions from the oil and gas industry, have used instructions from the Republican-led Senate to the Energy Committee to find $1 billion in order to reconcile the 2018 budget as an excuse to move forward with drilling.
Their efforts have found an ally in the White House: President Trump took an aggressive first step towards opening ANWR up for drilling in April when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued a notice of intent exploring the potential environmental impact of oil exploration in the area.
That announcement sparked a 60-day comment period, set to end mid-June, during which the public can weigh in on the decision.
At the time, Bernadette Dementieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, slammed the move and said the Trump administration’s efforts came “at the expense of human rights”.
Studies have found that pregnant and nursing members of the caribou herds on which the Gwich’in rely for food are prone to avoiding infrastructure like the kind drilling would introduce.
That will mean fewer caribou for the community to hunt, forcing them to look elsewhere for sustenance in a break with cultural norms.
“The administration has made my people a target,” said Dementieff in a statement. “We will not stand down. We will fight to protect the porcupine caribou herd … every step of the way.”
Trump’s support seems to have been motivated more by industry ties than anything else.
In February, the president said that he “didn’t really care” about drilling in ANWR until a friend “who’s in that world and in that [oil and gas] business” asked him to ensure a provision in the upcoming tax bill touched on the issue.
But drilling in the area has been met with some surprising opposition.
In December, a dozen House Republicans penned a letter to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) arguing against opening ANWR up to drilling and calling the area “a symbol of our nation’s strong and enduring national legacy.” The representatives said such efforts would endanger multiple species and were not necessary to national interests.
“The fate of the Arctic Refuge and its sensitive Coastal Plain lies in the hands of Congress and we must ensure robust debate on this highly-controversial issue,” read the letter.
The separate letters sent Monday indicate the issue is likely to remain heated, with repercussions for industries and funders eyeing drilling.
“Any oil company or bank that supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge faces enormous reputational risk and public backlash,” wrote the Gwich’in Steering Committee.
“Their brands would be associated with trampling on human rights, destroying one of the world’s last remaining intact wild places, and contributing to the climate crisis.”

Links

• Trump’s industry friend ‘had a very big impact’ on his decision to open Arctic refuge to drilling
• Melting Arctic sends a message: Climate change is here in a big way
• Arctic warming: scientists alarmed by 'crazy' temperature rises
• Climate change in the Arctic - Wikipedia
• Climate change played a major role in extreme 2016 Arctic heat wave