Each year our terrestrial biosphere absorbs about a quarter of all
the carbon dioxide emissions that humans produce. This a very good
thing; it helps to moderate the warming produced by human activities
such as burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests.
But in a paper published in Nature today,
we show that emissions from other human activities, particularly food
production, are overwhelming this cooling effect. This is a worrying
trend, at a time when CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels are slowing down,
and is clearly not consistent with efforts to stabilise global warming
well below 2℃ as agreed at the Paris climate conference.
To explain why, we need to look at two other greenhouse gases: methane and nitrous oxide.
The other greenhouse gases Each year, people produce about 40 billion tones of CO₂ emissions, largely from burning fossil fuels and deforestation. This has produced about 82% of the growth in warming due to greenhouses gases over the past decade.
The planet, through plant growth, removes about a quarter of this
each year (another quarter goes into the oceans and the rest stays in
the atmosphere and heats the planet). If it didn't, the world would warm
much faster. If we had to remove this CO₂ ourselves, it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars each year, so we should be very grateful that the Earth does it for free.
Apart from CO₂, there are two other main greenhouse gases that
contribute to global warming, methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O). In
fact, they are both more potent greenhouse gases than CO₂. The global
warming potential of methane and nitrous oxide is 28 and 265 times
greater than that of CO₂, respectively.
The human emissions of these gases are largely associated with food
production. Methane is produced by ruminants (livestock), rice
cultivation, landfills and manure, among others.
Other human-induced emissions of methane come from changes to land
use and the effects of climate change on wetlands, which are major
producers of global methane.
Nitrous oxide emissions are associated with excessive use of
fertilisers and burning plant and animal waste. To understand how much
excess nitrogen we are adding to our crops, consider that only 17 of 100 units of nitrogen applied to the crop system ends up in the food we eat.
Sinks and sources
Just as humans pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the land
also produces and absorbs them. If the land absorbs more of a gas than
it produces, we think of it as a "sink". If it produces more than it
absorbs, we call it a "source". The ability of the land to absorb and
produce greenhouse gases is affected by human activity.
We wanted to know how human activities on the land are affecting
these sinks and sources. Globally, the land currently absorbs more CO₂
than it produces (we don't include fossil fuels in this), so it is
considered a carbon sink. But we found that this is overwhelmed by
production of methane and nitrous oxide, so overall the land is a source
of greenhouse gases.
This study highlights the importance of including all three major
greenhouse gases in global and regional climate impact assessments,
mitigation options and climate policy development.
Another recent study calculated that the size of this combined greenhouse gas source is about equivalent to the total fossil fuel emissions of CO₂ in the 2000s.
Looking at the chart below, if you add up the carbon emissions from the
"LUC gross source" (emissions from deforestation) and the emissions
from methane and nitrous oxide (in blue and green), then you can see
they are roughly equivalent to those from the combustion of fossil
fuels.
So it's a huge part of our contribution to climate change.
Importantly, CO₂ emissions from deforestation together with methane
and nitrous oxide emissions are mainly associated with the process of
making land available for food production and the growing of food in
croplands and rangelands.
Unfortunately, there has been limited discussion about major
commitments to decarbonise the food production system, as there has been
about decarbonising the energy system.
Countries, particularly emerging and developing economies, have shown
little interest in placing the food system at the forefront of climate
negotiations. One reason is what's at stake: feeding their people.
A continuation of the current growth trends in methane and nitrous oxide emissions, at a time when growth of CO₂ fossil fuel emissions is slowing,
constitutes a worrying trend. The greenhouse gas footprint of food is
growing while the role of the food system in climate mitigation is not
receiving the attention that it urgently needs.
Opportunities for mitigation in this sector are plentiful, but they can only be realised with a concerted focus.
Australian researchers say a global tracker monitoring energy use per person points to 2C warming by 2030
Energy use per person was on track to rise sixfold by 2050 across the
world, according to researchers from Queensland and Griffith
universities
Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
The world is on track to reach dangerous levels of global warming
much sooner than expected, according to new Australian research that
highlights the alarming implications of rising energy demand.
University of Queensland and Griffith University researchers have
developed a "global energy tracker" which predicts average world
temperatures could climb 1.5C above pre-industrial levels by 2020.
That forecast, based on new modelling using long-term average
projections on economic growth, population growth and energy use per
person, points to a 2C rise by 2030.
The UN conference on climate change in Paris last year agreed to a 1.5C rise as the preferred limit to protect vulnerable island states, and a 2C rise as the absolute limit.
The new modelling is the brainchild of Ben Hankamer from UQ's
institute for molecular bioscience and Liam Wagner from Griffith
University's department of accounting, finance and economics, whose work
was published in the journal Plos One on Thursday.
It is the first model to include energy use per person –
which has more than doubled since 1950 – alongside economic and
population growth as a way of predicting carbon emissions and
corresponding temperature increases.
The researchers said the earlier than expected advance of global
warming revealed by their modelling added a newfound urgency to the
switch from fossil fuels to renewables.
Hankamer said: "The more the economy grows, the more energy you use
... the conclusion really is that economists and environmentalists are
on the same side and have both come to the same conclusion: we've got to
act now and we don't have much time."
Wagner said the model suggested the surge in energy consumption was not offset by improvements in energy efficiency.
He said energy use per person was on track to rise sixfold by 2050,
which had dire implications for temperatures when combined with economic
growth of 3.9% a year (the six-decade average) and a world population
of 9 billion.
"Massive increases in energy consumption would be necessary to
alleviate poverty for the nearly 50% of the world's population who live
on less than $2.50 a day," Wagner said.
"We have a choice: leave people in poverty and speed towards
dangerous global warming through the increased use of fossil fuels, or
transition rapidly to renewables."
Hankamer said: "When you think about statements like 'coal is good for humanity' because we're pulling people out of poverty, it's just not true".
"You would have to burn so much coal in order to get the energy to
provide people with a living to get them off $2.50 a day that
[temperature rises] would just go through the roof very quickly."
The researchers suggested switching $500bn in subsidies for fossil
fuels worldwide to renewables as a "cost neutral" way to fast-track the
energy transition.
Wagner said pulling the rug from out under the fossil fuels industry
was a move of "creative destruction" and "more a political issue rather
than an economic issue".
"If
we swapped those subsidies globally, of course we could have rapid
improvement and deployment of renewables to cover our shift from fossil
fuels," he said.
"You're pushing a huge amount of capital into a different sector
that requires an enormous amount of growth, so you would actually see a
great deal more growth from putting it into renewables than providing it
for fossil fuels."
Hankamer said the fact that about 80% of the world's energy was for
fuel, and only 20% for electricity, meant "we don't have any easy
solutions".
"If we want to do this, we need to do things like solar fuels, or
think about how we do battery technologies and fully transition to
electric," he said.
"The things that are going to be hard to replace are aviation fuels and things for heavy machinery and probably shipping.
"We can do electric cars for short runs but those things are going to be really hard to switch."
Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez, 15, is assembling a ‘teen army’. Picture: AAP/NEWZULU/PATRICE PIERROT
WHEN a group of teenagers first started taking governments to court over the lack of climate change action, people laughed at them. They are not laughing now.
This week a US court will consider whether 21 young people have a right to sue the US Government, President Barack Obama and other federal agencies, for their failure to tackle climate change.
The young people say they have a constitutional right to life, liberty and property, and this is being violated because of the Federal Government’s support of fossil fuels.
For those that think this is ridiculous, you may yet be proved right. But a similar groundbreaking action in the Netherlands last year was successful, with the government ordered to cut emissions more quickly.
In a separate lawsuit against the state of Washington, the government was ordered to look at its response in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, eventually resulting in Governor Jay Inslee directing regulators to cap emissions and curb them by 50 per cent by 2050.
“Congress and the President have not acted effectively to solve the climate crisis,” lawyer for the plaintiffs Philip Gregory told news.com.au. “As with civil rights cases, the courts must act.”
Companies lining up against teens
Some of the biggest polluters in the country are also taking the latest lawsuit seriously. Almost every fossil fuel-related company in America has asked to join the government as defendants in the case. They argue that the case was a “direct, substantial threat to [their] businesses”.
They include some of the most powerful companies in the country such as Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, Koch Industries as well as 625 oil and natural gas companies. They are putting their substantial resources into making sure the legal action fails.
“The fossil fuel industry would not want to be in court unless it understood the significance of our case,” Mr Gregory said. “This litigation is a momentous threat to fossil fuel companies.”
Renowned former NASA scientist Dr James Hansen has lodged the lawsuit along with the 21 young people, aged between 8 and 20, who are being supported financially by the not-for-profit organisation Our Children’s Trust.
Some of the young people who are suing the US government over climate change. Source: Our Children's Trust. Source: Supplied
The case is due to come before the US District Court in Oregon on Wednesday.
If successful the lawsuit would force the government to implement a national plan to decrease carbon dioxide in the air to 350 parts per million by the end of the century.
It would be a stunning acknowledgment of the rights of young people to a clean environment in the future.
One of the teens involved, 15-year-old Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, is also youth director of a group called Earth Guardians, which boasts of leading an “army of teens in over 50 countries to demand sustainable policy from our world leaders”.
Xiuhtezcatl Martinez. Picture: Michael Bezjian/WireImage Source:Getty Images
Martinez was raised in Colorado in the Aztec tradition and has
appeared before the United Nations General Assembly to speak about
climate change. He has been part of the environmental movement since he
was six.
In a YouTube video, Martinez said people had relied on governments and political leaders to make changes but “it hasn’t happened”.
“Our
generation is going to be the most impacted by climate change therefore
our generation has the most at stake and we have the most power in this
matter,” he said.
Tagging themselves #GenerationRYSE, which
stands for Rising Youth Sustainable Earth, the group aims to empower
thousands of young people to demand action on climate change.
More lawsuits likely
The Oregon case is part of a growing movement towards using litigation to force governments to act on climate change.
Professor Timothy Stephens of Sydney Law School, University of Sydney, said he believed the lawsuit was just the beginning.
“I think we will see lots of innovative legal actions right around the world to force governments to act,” Prof Stephens told news.com.au.
“We will see more litigation, especially because governments are not taking meaningful steps to cut emissions.”
A number of legal challenges have already been lodged in Australia over government decisions. While these have so far been unsuccessful, including a challenge to the Adani coal mine, Prof Stephens said people would always try to push legal boundaries.
The fact that Australia did not have a price on carbon also left it open to legal challenge, Prof Stephens said.
While Australia is different to the US and the Netherlands in that it does not have a constitution that enshrines people’s rights, Prof Stephens said legal action could still focus on other areas.
“They might point to the bills of humans rights in Victoria and the ACT — (those states) have a limited charter of human rights,” he said.
There was also the possibility of international action.
Prof Stephens said young people could potentially bring a complaint to the United Nations Human Rights Council about Australia’s failure to act.
While these actions may not be fully successful, over time they may establish certain rights and principles if people kept pushing the legal boundaries.
“If there are enough cases over time the law can change quite rapidly,” Prof Stephens said.
Harvard Professor Naomi Oreskes, who appeared at the Sydney Opera House for the panel discussion For Thought: Hope for the Planet last night, said that Our Children’s Trust had been successful in smaller court cases, arguing that state governments had a duty to protect air and water for future generations.
The lawsuits were a “very bold move” at the time, she said. “When they started this ... people laughed at them,” she said. But these cases have achieved some wins and many were still ongoing.
Environmental activist David Suzuki also spoke about his movement to amend Canada’s constitution to include people’s right to a healthy environment. This would see people’s rights to breath clean air, drink clean water and eat safe food legally recognised at all levels of government.
If the Blue Dot movement managed to change Canada’s constitution, this would put the onus on companies to prove they would not compromise the country’s healthy environment as part of any future development. “It reverses responsibility completely,” Dr Suzuki said.
While many young people may not be old enough to vote or even to bring legal action in Australia, Dr Suzuki said there was still one important thing they could do to address climate change.
“You’ve got to convince two people — that’s your mum and dad to become eco-warriors on your behalf,” he said.
“If you can't convince your father — who cares about you and thinks ahead — then how the hell are you going to convince the whole world?”
Three women, three stories.
In Papua New Guinea, the Carteret islands are drowning in the rising
sea. The people who live there traditionally have relied on taro for
food, but the plant has become increasingly difficult to grow as salt
water floods the fields. "Our shorelines are eroding so fast, and there
are frequent storm surges," says
Ursula Rakova via Global Greengrants Fund, an international environment
fund that supports grassroots environmental actions. "The rising sea
levels have gotten so bad that one of the islands is disappearing really
fast…We can't hold back the sea. It will do its part. It's already
doing its part. It's displacing us."
In response, Rakova initiated a process that relocated 86 people —
comprising seven families — to higher ground on the mainland, in
Bougainville, on four parcels of land donated by the Catholic Church.
But the elders don't want to leave the island. So Rakova and others from
the community are finding ways to grow crops in their new location and
bring it back to those still living on the atoll.
* * *
Her name is Aleta Baun,
but they call her "Mama" Aleta. She lives on Indonesia's Timor Island,
where the forests and the mountains are rich in natural resources,
including oil, gas, gold and marble. For years, mining companies had
taken the marble without consent, polluting rivers, destroying forests,
and eroding the very identity of the community.
Finally, when they tried to plunder Mutis Mountain, which lies at the
intersection of the island's major rivers, which supply water to the
indigenous Mollo people, Mama Aleta decided enough was enough.
With the tribal elders' approval, she organized more than 150 women
in the region to sit at the mine's entrance with their looms. They
stayed, peacefully weaving their traditional tapestries, blocking entry.
During the year-long protest, their men took on the domestic chores,
including cooking, cleaning and caring for the children. The youngsters
served as "runners" and brought the women food from home.
Ultimately, the miners gave up and left.
"The philosophy of our people is that we regard the Earth as our human body," she explains in a video
provided by Global Greengrants, which is supporting Mama Aleta's
campaign. "That stone is our bone. Water is our blood. Land is our flesh
and forest is our hair. If one of them is taken away, we are
paralyzed."
* * *
Sasolburg, in South Africa's Vaal Triangle, home to Caroline Npaotane,
is a city long dominated by the large petrochemical company Sasol. It
is an economic mainstay for the town, supporting many facets of its
infrastructure. Yet it also is polluter that emits carbon dioxide,
sulfur dioxide, and benzene, among others — a noxious stew that has
caused widespread health problems for residents who live nearby,
including Npaotane's daughter. When her child began suffering repeated
nosebleeds and breathing issues, Npaotane became an activist, with
Global Greengrants support, leading a successful campaign to enact new
air quality standards.
"You feel intimidated, because you're just a community member,'' she
told Parliament when testifying in favor of the new law. "You're not a
doctor or a scientist. But you don't need to be a doctor or scientist to
know when you know your kids are suffering."
* * *
Ursula Rakova, left. CREDIT: Global Greengrants Fund
Three women, three stories. But these three represent thousands of
other women globally who are engaged in local battles against climate
change and other environmental conflicts, often at significant personal
risk and with great courage. These women understand that the struggle
for environmental justice also is a fight for gender equality, land
rights, economic and cultural rights, and food security, among other
things, and that local activism can be a critical portal to the
political process and policy decision-making.
It seems fitting to recognize them on International Women's Day.
"Climate change is a women's issue largely because the current world
economic framework puts women at a disadvantage," says Osprey Orielle
Lake, co-founder and executive director of the Women's Earth and Climate
Action Network (WECAN), an
international climate justice-based organization that involves women in
sustainability issues, social and economic justice and policy advocacy.
"There is a clear link between poverty and who gets impacted by climate
change."
"Women make up the greatest percentage of the world's poor," she
adds. "Indigenous women and those in developing countries have a direct
reliance on nature, so when we have droughts, and heat waves and
flooding, this increases the stress on millions of women world-wide,
often due to gender roles — the responsibility to provide food, water
and firewood for their families."
Climate change is a women's issue largely because the current world economic framework puts women at a disadvantage.
These women don't necessarily self-identify as feminists or
activists; rather, they are fighting for the survival of their
communities and their people, and to preserve their heritage. They may
not be as high-profile as other women who speak out and work visibly in
the climate change policy movement, but they are no less important in
effecting change.
"When I hear about grass roots climate activism, it reminds me of the
Civil Rights movement," says Katharine Hayhoe, a Canadian climate
scientist who directs the Climate Science Center
at Texas Tech University. "We had Martin Luther King Jr. who gave
inspirational speeches — and we had Rosa Parks. We need both. We need
the Martin Luther Kings to give us the vision, the overall picture. And
we need the Rosa Parks of the world to refuse to give up their seat on
the bus."
Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian who often speaks about the realities
of climate change to Christian groups, stresses that climate change is
an issue that affects women disproportionately, particularly at the
local level, often in matters related to food, water and health. "How
climate change affects us depends on the ways we are vulnerable, which
are specific to the location where we live," she says. "We see a large
number of engaged women on the local scale, whether it's in Africa, the
Philippines — or Texas."
Mama Aleta's community, for example, had fought the miners for
decades, unsuccessfully. "The traditional ways of defending their land
were not working," says Ursula Miniszewski, Global Greengrants' gender
and environment officer. "They had marches. They tried negotiating with
the companies, but the companies weren't interested in engaging with the
communities at all."
As it always has been for those involved in controversial movements,
her activism put her in constant danger. "Mama Aleta was targeted — she
was attacked with a machete, but escaped," Miniszewski says. "None of
this deterred her. She is unrelenting."
Not everyone, however, has been so fortunate. Last week, Berta Cáceres,
a Honduran woman who organized the indigenous Lenca people in a
successful grassroots battle against construction of the Agua Zarca Dam —
and winner of last year's prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize — was
murdered by unknown assassins who snuck into her home after she had fallen asleep.
Berta Caceres at the banks of the Gualcarque River in the Rio Blanco region of western Honduras where she, COPINH (the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras) and the people of Rio Blanco have maintained a two year struggle to halt construction on the Agua Zarca Hydroelectric project, that poses grave threats to local environment, river and indigenous Lenca people from the region. CREDIT: Goldman Environmental Prize
The dam project she opposed would have cut off the water supply, as
well as access to food and medicine, to hundreds of Lenca people,
effectively ending their ability to sustainably manage and live off of
their land. In 2013, she initiated a road blockade to prevent access to
the dam site which lasted more than a year and ultimately ended the dam
company's construction efforts. One of her colleagues was killed during
the protest, and she had been the recipient of countless death threats.
"I have an advantage in regards to other women in the fight. I come
from women, my mother, my grandmother, very revolutionary, feisty," she
said in a Global Greengrants audio interview.
"My children were raised with that…. For them, it is very important,
the environmental cause…" She also spoke poignantly of the intimidation,
calling it an affront "to my physical integrity, emotional
integrity…and to the organization I work for."
Undaunted by her own narrow escape from death, Indonesia's Mama Aleta
fights on. She now is working with communities across West Timor to map
their traditional forests in order to protect their indigenous
territorial rights from future development, according to the Goldman
Environmental Foundation, which awarded her its prize in 2013. She also
is seeking economic opportunities for the villagers through sustainable
farming, and through initiatives that can produce income from weaving
and other activities.
It is not unusual for women in these communities to develop
approaches that are unique to the problems within their own communities.
"I visited a women's farming collective in Tanzania, and they talked
about how weather changes were messing with their crop rotation, and
their seasonal calendar," Miniszewski says. "They got together with
another women's collective nearby to exchange information, and decided
to try alternative ways of food storage."
Worried that their food sources would disappear, they learned to
preserve their food through drying. "This was something they hadn't had
to do before," says Miniszewski. "They didn't have access to information
about climate change, or even call it climate change. It was more 'OK,
we're going to adjust and adapt to this.' There are women all over the
world who are adjusting and adapting on a daily basis."
Caroline Npaotane. CREDIT: Global Greengrants Fund
Elsewhere in Africa, WoMin
(African Women United Against Destructive Resource Extraction), has
aligned itself with more than 60 organizations committed to bringing a
gender perspective to issues related to fossil fuel extraction and
climate change, and is working in nine countries to mobilize women to
challenge coal development and promote alternatives. This past week,
they have been holding a women's rights activist "building" school in
Johannesburg to teach women from seven African countries about women-led
campaigns against coal extraction, as well as issues related to energy
and climate justice.
"The climate justice question, linked to the fight against fossil
fuels and for energy justice, is a critical one for African women," says
Samantha Hargreaves, the director of WoMin. "This is because they bear
the immediate impacts of fossil fuels extraction and combustion on land
and water, the major communal resources from which women create
livelihoods for families and communities."
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, WECAN, in collaboration with SAFECO (Synergy of Association of Women in Congo), has been training Pygmy women of the Itombwe forest
(a rainforest in the Congo Basin) since 2014 to create conservation
projects and reforest land that has been damaged as a result of clear
cutting.
"In the last six months, they have planted over 7,000 trees," Lake
says. "The goal is to plant 20,000 trees." WECAN, which is providing
funding for the trees, nurseries and training, also has supplied small,
hand-held solar-powered light devices "to replace the need for cutting
trees for light," Lake says, adding:
These women are thrilled. The pygmy women have become
empowered. They're gone from seeing no way out of their poverty to
planting these trees, which, among other things, are providing fruit –
and it's been revitalizing and renewing for them.
Also, today in Puyo, Ecuador, women climate leaders organized by WECAN and Amazon Watch,
will stand with the Sápara and Kichwa indigenous peoples of the
Ecuadorian Amazon to protest the government's decision to sign a
contract with the Chinese oil corporation Andes Petroleum. The agreement
gives the company rights for oil exploration and extraction in two
areas that overlap the traditional lands of the Sápara and Kichwa. The
people there — led by local women — have been fighting for decades to
preserve their land.
"We thought it was perfect on International Women's Day to uplift
these brave women who literally put their bodies on the line to protect
these rainforests," Lake says.
The protestors have asked citizens around the world to support their efforts by signing a petition to the government of Ecuador.
On International Women's Day last year, Global Greengrants introduced a resource
for philanthropies and other organizations to understand the importance
of local environmental activism on the part of women which includes
case studies and practical tips.
Thus, despite disproportionate suffering from the impacts of climate
change, as well as life-threatening attacks for their environmental
activism, these women are at the forefront of global efforts to combat
the effects of global warming and environmental destruction. "They are
on the frontlines trying to heal our world," Lake says. "So many of the
women we work with will tell you: 'We are not the victims. We are the
solutions.'"
*Marlene Cimons is a freelance writer who specializes in science, health and the environment.
It's not enough to let the market handle it or depend on geo-engineering.
There is one convenient thing about climate change: The problem of
global warming poses so many threats, and emerges from so many causes,
that there's not one single solution for it.
This is convenient
because it means you can work on a lot of different angles and still
help the underlying problem. If every American stopped eating meat tomorrow,
the situation would immediately begin to improve but it wouldn't be
solved; ditto if every coal plant worldwide was shut down tomorrow. Even
in that crazy-go-nuts mitigation scenario, we'd immediately be a lot
better off, but there would still be work to do.
So thinking about
climate change requires a two-mindedness among those who want to pitch
in to work against it—or who just want to be educated voters on their
city, country, or planet. On the one hand, we have reached the point
where climate change will arrive regardless of what we do. Climate
change is vast, hopeless, horrifying, anxiety-inducing, and
imagination-staggering. On the other, it's a challenge without parallel
in human history: a vast, fascinating, thrilling, inspiring,
mind-bending opportunity. Many revere the Enlightenment
thinkers for turning the high ideals of equality and justice into
concrete political institutions (even as they and their contemporaries
invented race and justified chattel slavery). But if converting ideals
into institutions is an admirable challenge, don't worry: Now we have to
do it too. On a global scale. Inventing as we go. No biggie.
How
big is the problem? Here is the basic climate-change mechanism: Cars,
trucks, planes, power plants, factories, and farming techniques release
certain gases into the atmosphere; these gases build up over time and
trap more heat
than other kinds of gases would; this extra warmth
forces the climate—the sum of weather everywhere—to change, making it
more energetic (since heat is just energy) and wily and destructive.
Now, some scientists disagree over how bad climate change has already gotten, and some claim that pre-2100 global warming will be much worse than predicated,
but neither of those disagreements are about the general principle—and
the general principle is what matters when it comes to addressing
climate change with policy.
So that's the problem. How might we solve it?
ANSWER Climate change is finally getting solved. Last year, 189 nations adopted the Paris Agreement,
the first treaty to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions that includes not
only the rich West but the rapidly industrializing East (namely China
and India). It's not perfect, but it will send a "a critical message to
the global marketplace," to quote Secretary of State John Kerry, that it's time to pull out long-term investment in fossil fuel companies.
QUESTION That first part is unmistakably true: We are living the first hopeful years for climate change in memory. But maybe the Paris Agreement only
seems optimistic when it's compared to the recent past, when the
world—and especially the United States—did almost nothing to stop the
warming atmosphere. Examine the details of this recent progress and it
still looks pretty paltry.
The Paris Agreement talks an ambitious
game, but it has no mechanism to force anyone to do anything. And given
the fragility of the domestic politics here in America, where the EPA's signature climate-change regulation was just stopped, what's to keep the United States from reneging on its larger Paris promise? And if the United States backs out, won't China and India follow?
ANSWERBut it doesn't even matter if the United States fulfills its plan, though. The cost of clean power is plunging. Soon, solar could be as cheap or cheaper than natural gas—it already is in some places.
QUESTION Sure,
but there's no rule preventing clean power and dirty fossil fuels from
co-existing. Check the situation in Texas, where wind generated more
than 10 percent of the energy mix last year—but coal constituted 36 percent.
And even when the news on climate seems wholly good, it somewhat relies
on White House-supported policies. For instance, lots of Americans are
building rooftop solar panels on their houses with the help of the recently extended federal solar-tax credit. Yet Nevada once had a friendly solar policy too—until earlier this year, when it reversed them and literally made solar taxes retroactive.
Will
future administrations help bring clean energy into the world as much
as the current one has? Some of the cost reductions in solar and wind
power have come from government-research funding, after all. If the United States stops implementing its climate policies, will the cost of solar and wind creep up again?
ANSWER The
problem isn't just climate change—it's ceaseless growth. If people ever
want to live in symbiosis with the environment, they have to kick our
200-year addiction to growth and also probably capitalism. In the short
term, they'll also have to cut back steeply to keep places like
Bangladesh from drowning.
QUESTION Some (but not all)
environmentalists are beginning to argue a line like this. It's a line
with little partisan shading, at least here in the U.S.: Neither
Democrats nor Republicans support contracting the economy. It's also a
view with many advocates but without a consistent policy. You can find
de-growthism in many forms: Naomi Klein advocates for a kind of global
socialism, while others imply that drastic, short-term cuts are the only way will curtail carbon emissions fast enough.
In
today's populist political climate, are such cuts possible—even on the
multi-decade level? Will Americans be able to live with the consequences
of such cuts, much less accept or sustain them?
Even anti-growth
advocates are honest about their fall-out: "Not only will our standards
of living almost certainly drop, but it's likely that the very quality
of our society—equality, safety, and trust—will decline, too," writes Daniel Immerwahr,
in an article calling for the abandonment of growth. In a country with
both entrenched, institutional racism and a nuclear-armed military, who
will suffer most from that decline?
ANSWER The market will solve this problem, just like it solved expensive air travel, pre-Internet communication, and the sleeveless blanket.
QUESTION As
Republicans try to criticize climate regulation while accepting climate
science, they turn to some variant of this line. I think there are two
knocks against it—one more facile than the other. The first is that, you know, if private industry was going to step up and address the climate crisis, it maybe should have done it already.Greenland's ice sheet is sliding toward the sea, and Miami Beach is a lost cause: Where is the market?
But
worse, I think, is that this is more or less the tack that governments
have chosen to take. Governments have incentivized some pathways to
green energy more than others, but the world's approach is to move some
assets around—to send that "critical message to the global
marketplace"—and then tell business to figure the rest out. Is that
process working fast enough? Should the residents of small Pacific
islands, vulnerable to sea-level rise, be satisfied with the progress of
the markets?
Would the market move faster if it didn't get these
signals? The evidence so far, by the way, seems to prove the opposite.
When the Obama administration set new fuel-efficiency standards for cars
in 2012, manufacturers welcomed the move.
A single, shared standard let all companies compete on the same
framework and gave them investment targets to plan on. Would they have
made the same improvements—which have resulted in greenhouse-gas savings equal to the Clean Power Plan—if they weren't pressed?
ANSWER We
shouldn't even worry about these questions now. Geo-engineering will
fix this for us: Using negative emissions technologies, we'll suck
carbon out of the atmosphere; and until we perfect that technique, we'll
depress global temperatures by seeding the atmosphere with sulfate
aerosols.
QUESTION Let's look
at sulfates first: They're chemicals that would depress global
temperatures for about 10 years and, in the meantime, reflect enough
sunlight away to stave off some warming. Who should get to decide it's
time to release them? How should we geo-engineer the planet in ways that
are democratic? Which percentage of countries should get to decide how
weather in all countries works? What if some countries declare that they can never support such a technology? Oliver Morton, an Economist editor who wrote a book on geo-engineering, has told The Atlantic that he worries far more about politics than the techniques themselves:
What I really worry about with geoengineering is that conflict over
its use will lead to a greater conflict that leads to a nuclear war […]
because we don't even know if anyone's going to try geoengineering, but
we know the wherewithal to have a nuclear war is out there in the world
already.
And what about carbon-scrubbing the troposphere? In some
ways, it's easier than sulfate deployment, as more countries and
companies might get behind returning the atmosphere to pre-industrial
levels. But the most promising method—carbon capture and storage—isn't
ready for industrial deployment yet. How much should we risk the health
of the planet for an unproven commercial technique?
Indeed, an Oxford University study found that the most efficient way
to remove carbon from the atmosphere in the next 50 years isn't some
fancy technology. It's trees.
* * *
This
is only a tour of some of the solutions to climate change floating
around. None is both adequate and likely. So maybe it's better to think
in terms of management: How can the crisis be slowed, halted, and
reversed as soon as possible? And how can you use your time and
attention to help humanity along that path?
What's the role of
individuals in fighting climate change? Should they change their own
routines to reduce their emissions, cutting red meat and dairy—however small those consequent savings may be—or is that kind of activism meaningless compared to political involvement?
"Growth"
is now a mandate for American politicians, even as the country's
natural rate of growth seems to be slowing. But is the improvement of
quality-of-life for most people best measured through gross domestic
product? As the climate warms, should we find aims other than constant growth in order to sustain a healthy society and livable planet?
What
kind of society and democratic government will be best positioned to
handle resource scarcity and the sequential emergencies associated with
the now-inevitable consequences of climate change? How can we bring
about that society? What kind of global governance will be needed?
And
most important of all: Can the world both manage climate change and
avoid its worst cataclysms, like hideous famines, mass migrations,
surveillance-powered authoritarians, and World War III?
The last ichthyosaurs.
Andrey Atuchin, Author provided
Imagine dolphins disappearing from the world's oceans as a result of
prolonged climate change and slower evolution. As shocking and unlikely
as such an event might be, it happened in the past to a group of marine
animals: the ichthyosaurs.
These "fish-reptiles" were an iconic group of marine predators from
the dinosaur era – and the ichthyosaurs underwent the most profound
modifications to become fast, efficient swimmers. They evolved a
shark-like body shape, their limbs transformed into muscular paddles, and they had some of the largest eyes
in the entire animal kingdom, presumably to seek out and hunt prey in
deep or turbid marine settings. About a hundred ichthyosaur species are
currently known, covering a 157m-year reign in the ancient oceans that
ended around 90m years ago.
But ichthyosaurs mysteriously met their demise long before the mass
extinction of 66m years ago that claimed the lives of non-avian
dinosaurs, ammonites and a series of other ancient creatures.
Two theories have previously been put forward to explain the
out-of-the-blue extinction of the ichthyosaurs. First, increased
competition from other marine predators, especially new, fast-moving and
fast-reproducing fish. Second, that their food disappeared.
The last ichthyosaurs were thought to rely only on one type of food –
small belemnite cephalopods. And so when these underwent a partial
extinction about 94m years ago, ichthyosaurs soon followed.
Diversity question
These two theories have one point in common. They are based on the
idea that there wasn't enough diversity among ichthyosaurs for the group
to respond to minor changes in competition and food. More diverse
groups are more varied in their physical characteristics so can more
easily survive changing circumstances and environments.
But we now know that the fossil record indicates the last ichthyosaurs actually were very diverse.
To close this long-standing enigma, my colleagues and I at the
University of Oxford studied ichthyosaur diversity during the last
chapter of their history, which occurred during the Cretaceous period
(145m to 66m years ago). We reconstructed the fluctuation in the number
of ichthyosaur species and their feeding capabilities, as well as their
evolutionary and extinction rates.
We found
that ichthyosaurs were highly diversified in the Cretaceous, and that
several species with distinct physical structures and ecological niches
(ways of surviving in their environment) existed simultaneously. Some
evidence even suggests that they had never been more diverse in the
previous 120m years of their history.
But, at the same time, our analyses indicated that ichthyosaurs had
never evolved more slowly. In fact, only a few novel species and body
shapes evolved during this lenghty period. This possibly indicates that
ichthyosaurs simply were well adapted to their Cretaceous environments
and didn't need to evolve much further. The key point, however, is that
the previous theories about ichthyosaur extinction can't explain this
pattern of diversity.
We then looked at what we know was happening to the global environment by reviewing evidence of changes in things such as sea surface temperature and sea levels.
And we found that increased ichthyosaur extinction rates coincided with
higher sea level and sea temperature volatility (by how much they
changed). This gave us the first evidence of global environment change
driving ichthyosaur extinction. And this extinction happened in two
phases, separated by about 5m to 6m years.
Global climate change
These events didn't happen in a void. A vast series of extinctions
and accelerated evolutions in other marine groups took place precisely
during the extinction of ichthyosaurs. These changes affected almost all
of the marine ecosystems, from coral reefs to the homes of large predators.
On top of that, these events coincided with profound climatic changes:
fast-moving continents, intense volcanism, ice-free poles and episodes
of anoxia (absence of oxygen) on the sea floor. So the extinction of the
ichthyosaurs appears to be part of a much larger event that was
probably triggered by global environmental changes.
Our new work supports a growing body of evidence suggesting that a
major, global series of events profoundly reorganised marine ecosystems
at the beginning of the Late Cretaceous, about 94m to 100m years ago.
This gave rise to the highly peculiar and geologically brief Late
Cretaceous marine world. Not only did the ichthyosaurs disappear in the
course of this change, but numerous lineages of bony fishes and sharks
also evolved. We are currently expanding our research to many of these
other marine groups, in order quantify these changes and their links
with ancient global climate change.
The civil unrest behind the civil wars in Syria and Iraq, and the rise
of Islamic State, may be rooted in the region’s worst drought in 900
years.
THE incredibly complex chaos of
Islamic State and the upheavals of Syria and Iraq may have a very simple
cause: The region’s worst drought in 900 years.
A NASA study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres shows
the Middle East is in the grip of a mega-drought that began in 1998. It
has taken hold in Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey.
The
water shortage has been taking a steadily increasing toll on farmers
and the region’s ecology, with crop failures, dust storms and
record-breaking heat now an annual event.
But the true extent of the drought is only now becoming clear.
“The
range of how extreme wet or dry periods were is quite broad, but the
recent drought in the Levant region stands out as about 50 per cent
drier than the driest period in the past 500 years, and 10 to 20 per
cent drier than the worst drought of the past 900 years,” a NASA statement reads.
Syrian refugees carrying what they can in search of a better life — and rain? Source: AFP
Fingerprints in the rain
NASA
climate scientists have been mapping a database of the Mediterranean and
Middle East’s tree rings — the pattern in which a plant’s new growth is
laid upon itself each season — spanning several thousand years.
Tree rings are a kind of ecological fingerprint.
Each band reveals how much water the tree has been taking in, and how optimal conditions were for growth.
When a tree goes through a period of drought, the bands get thinner. The more thin bands, the longer the drought.
Mapping
when — and where — these trees were suffering water starvation offers
an opportunity to understand the natural variation in the areas weather.
“If
we look at recent events and we start to see anomalies that are outside
this range of natural variability, then we can say with some confidence
that it looks like this particular event or this series of events had
some kind of human caused climate change contribution,” says lead author
of the study Ben Cook.
In the case of the Middle East, a wide-reaching drought spanning more than 15 years has not been seen for more than 900 years.
Historical documents dating from 1100AD were used to corroborate the accuracy of the tree-ring map.
Abnormally persistent
drought, outlined by the dark brown and black spots in the top map, as
compared with the averages for similar periods dating back over the past
1000 years. Source: Geophysical Research — Atmospheres
No rain, no escape
The flood of refugees out of the Middle East and into Europe is a natural consequence of the conditions, the study infers.
Historically,
when there is drought in the Eastern Mediterranean, there is no escape
to the west. Both ends tend to suffer at the same time.
Which generates cause for conflict.
“It’s
not necessarily possible to rely on finding better climate conditions
in one region than another, so you have the potential for large-scale
disruption of food systems as well as potential conflict over water
resources,” says co-author Kevin Anchukaitis.
But the patterns established over thousands of years do suggest refuge: To the north.
When eastern North Africa is dry, Greece, Italy, France and Spain tend to be wet. And vice-versa.
A Turkish tank looks across the border to the north Syrian city of Kobane during its siege by ISIS early last year. Source: AFP
Devil in the detail
From these
patterns, the NASA scientists were able to identify the engines behind
the Middle East’s weather: The North Atlantic Oscillation and the East
Atlantic Pattern.
These regular wind patterns over the Atlantic are themselves driven by oceanic currents and temperatures.
Periodically they push rainstorms away from the Mediterranean, instead causing long dry winds to circulate in their place.
The NASA research shows that this time, however, the drought is different.
Its behaviour does not match the patterns clearly established over the past thousand of years.
“The
Mediterranean is one of the areas that is unanimously projected as
going to dry in the future [due to man-made climate change],” climate
scientist Yochanan Kushnir states in the NASA release.
