environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility Durban Conference economics
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 6: The Onward March Of Folly
The Zimbabwe Independent runs a story on the bad news:
THE World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) warned on Tuesday at the UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa that greenhouse gas levels were rapidly reaching critical levels that could trigger “far reaching and irreversible changes” to the planet, its oceans and its biosphere. In South Africa, meteorologists confirmed the country was witnessing an unprecedented increase in the frequency and intensity of weather “events”, and experiencing warming trends that were above the global average.
On Tuesday morning, the WMO released a provisional statement on the status of the global climate, showing that 2011 has been the 10th warmest year since 1850, when records began. This was despite the strong, cooling influence of the La Niña event that developed in the second half of last year.
The volume of Arctic sea ice in 2011 was also the lowest on record and the area covered by seasonal Arctic sea was the second lowest on record — 35% below the 1979 — 2000 average.The full report from the UN agency, which assesses global temperatures and provides a snapshot of weather and climate events in 2011, will be released early next year.
Finding a link for sending them a letter took longer than writing the damn letter. Sent December 1:
The temperature is rising everywhere on Earth; likewise, the scientific evidence confirming the reality and the danger of human-caused climate change. And yet, the world’s richest nations are seemingly paralyzed, unable to utilize their economic power to help avert catastrophe. Why? There are many answers, but many of them boil down to a fatal combination of two factors: short-sightedness and greed.
In most of the industrialized world, the profit cycle reigns supreme. Programs or projects that do not offer immediate returns on investment are automatically excluded from the policy-making process of nations whose economies are dominated by multinational corporations. The inability of the United States to address the disaster it has in large part created is a symptom of the control of government by these forces, and until their power and influence is checked, none of the world’s nations will be able to offer genuine solutions to the climate crisis.
Warren Senders
UPDATE: and the LTE bounced back; the Zimbabwe Independent does not appear to want to receive my emails. I searched on a text string from the original article and found another version of it in the Trinidad Guardian, so I’m resending it to them.
environment: Durban Conference energy policy Rajendra Pachauri sustainability
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 5: Variations On A Theme
The Albany Times-Union runs the same AP article on Pachauri’s remarks (see yesterday’s letter for a blockquote). So I took yesterday’s piece, filed off all the serial numbers, and passed it along.
Sent November 30 (now I’m five days ahead of the curve!):
Seeking to justify inaction on climate change, self-styled fiscal conservatives are fond of invoking the specter of expense. But as Rajendra Pachauri makes clear, the economic impacts of a runaway greenhouse effect will be far more exorbitant than any costs associated with shifting to an energy economy based on the principles of sustainability.
Genuine financial responsibility implies living within one’s means, and it’s time for the world’s biggest burners of fossil fuels to recognize the hidden costs of the energy they’ve long regarded as inexpensive. Climate chaos’ impacts on infrastructure, public health, and agriculture (to name just three vulnerable sectors of the economy) will be devastating in ways that neither business or government have anticipated — and once we include all these factors in our calculations, coal and oil stand revealed as exorbitantly costly.
Our species cannot afford any more “cheap energy” if we are to survive the coming centuries.
Warren Senders
Education environment music vocalists: genius Tuva
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The Musical Impact of Climate Change, pt. 2
“Throat Singing” from the Siberian nation of Tuva is one of the most remarkable phenomena in all world music; individual voices are trained to produce multi-note melody-and-drone combinations, creating an orchestral effect.
Kongar-ol Ondar visits David Letterman
Tuva has been inhabited since the 12th century, starting with the expansion of the Mongolian empire, but because of changes in weather and climate (increasing drought, growing and fire seasons), the severity of fires and areas burnt have increased since 1990. At the same time, protecting the area against future fires is becoming more difficult. This might be because large portions of the forest are being converted to a steppe-type ecosystem after fires have occurred, which further inhibits post-fire forest regeneration. Such a conversion is precisely what models predict will be an initial indicator of climate-induced ecosystem change. In addition, annual fire carbon emissions have been estimated for the Balgazyn forest of Tuva with regard to ground fuel loading and fire severity. This is important because the dryer the fuels, the more severe the fires and the greater the greenhouse-gas emissions. And, forests are not always able to regenerate on severely burnt or repeatedly burnt regions.
environment: corporate responsibility Durban Conference economics Rajendra Pachauri sustainability
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 4: Just Wait For The Balance-Transfer Offers!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution runs an AP article on Rajendra Pachauri’s words about how expensive climate change is certain to be:
DURBAN, South Africa — The U.N.’s top climate scientist cautioned climate negotiators Wednesday that global warming is leading to human dangers and soaring financial costs, but containing carbon emissions will have a host of benefits.
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, summarized a litany of potential disasters at a U.N. climate conference in the South African city of Durban. Although he gave no explicit deadlines, the implication was that time is running out for greenhouse gas emissions to level off and begin to decline.
If we won’t change our ways to save the planet’s biosphere, maybe we’ll do it to save money. Sent November 30:
Time is running out for the spurious fiscal arguments that have been deployed over and over again to justify inaction on climate change. As extreme weather becomes the norm, there will be huge impacts in every area of the economy. Public health, infrastructure, agriculture, transportation — all will be profoundly affected in ways neither public or private sectors have anticipated.
Such climate-related expenses are direct consequences of our century-long binge of fossil-fuel consumption. But now, the hidden costs of our energy economy are becoming obvious; oil and coal are suddenly very expensive once these factors have been included.
Financial responsibility now requires two things. First, paying off our debt to the environment; we’ve exceeded our credit limit and are now incurring significant penalties. And second, we must build an energy economy that ensures that all citizens of Earth live within their ecological means. Sustainability and fiscal responsibility must be synonymous.
Warren Senders
environment: corporate irresponsibility Durban Conference scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 3: You Kids Think Money Grows On Trees?
The Christian Science Monitor has done quite a bit of pretty solid analysis:
As this year’s round of global climate talks begin in Durban, South Africa, negotiators once again try to tackle an elusive goal: Trimming nations’ greenhouse gas emissions enough to meet the target of limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) before the end of the century.
This target is expected to reduce the potentially devastating effects of climate change, but, so far, it appears a long way off.
Last year, negotiators in Cancún, Mexico, agreed to the goal of limiting warming of the Earth’s average surface temperature to 3.6 degrees F above pre-Industrial Revolution levels. Their agreement notes, however, that a ceiling of 2.7 degrees F (1.5 degrees C) might be warranted.
A world 2 degrees warmer is not an ideal scenario. Even if nations are successful, the planet can still expect increasing heat spells, drought, flood damage and certain other severe weather events, along with elevated rates of extinctions and shifts in species’ ranges, including those of disease-spreading insects, and many other potentially problematic changes, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 Synthesis Report. Their severity grows along with increasing projected temperature rise, according to the report.
A scold. That’s me. Sent November 29:
With mountains of conclusive evidence attesting to both the reality and the danger of runaway climate change, the failure of the world’s industrialized nations to address the issue in any meaningful way cannot be ascribed to ignorance. Rather, the developed world’s unwillingness to take responsibility for the looming threat of catastrophe is essentially a failure of imagination — a failure to think beyond the shared assumptions of an energy economy based on fossil-fuels, a failure to evaluate human progress by measures other than quarterly profit reports, and a failure of empathy with the people whose lives will be devastated.
We’ve taken out an enormous advance on our Bank of Earth credit card. Like irresponsible youngsters on a spending spree, we conveniently forget that when the bill arrives, all humanity will have to pay it. Genuine fiscal responsibility requires aggressive and immediate action on climate change, rather than penny-wise, pound-foolish intransigence.
Warren Senders
Education environment music: cultural survival
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The Sonic Casualties of Climate Change, Pt. 1
Africa is an entire musical universe; I could (and no doubt will) show you stuff for hours. But some of the most beautiful and emotionally affecting singing I know of comes from the B’aka Pygmies of Cameroon, who yodel polyrhythmic songs of love and respect for the forest that gives them life:
DAKAR (AlertNet) – An increase in sea level and a drop in the quantity of rainfall linked to climate change could destroy Cameroon’s biodiversity, disrupt businesses and uproot hundreds of thousands of people in the west-central African nation, Cameroon Tribune newspaper reported on Thursday.
environment: corporate irresponsibility Durban Conference
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 2: He’s Dead, Jim.
Forbes Magazine runs an article called “Climate Treaty Would Actually Be Good For Business.” Yup. But business would be bad for a climate treaty, apparently.
Businesses pay an additional price for these disturbances. In June the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) found that even normal weather variation harms the U.S. economy, to the tune of $485 billion annually in 2008 dollars, or as much as 3.4 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. The study was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
Every so often, I feel compelled to send a missive off to the belly of the beast. The bloated corpse of global capitalism is still capable of doing damage as it runs amok in full headless-chicken mode. Sent November 28:
For decades, the “can-do” attitude of American entrepreneurship was an inspiration to the world. Combining polymathic creativity with a healthy disrespect for established modes of operation, the nation’s inventors transformed first this country, then the planet. It seemed our collective heritage was one that transformed every obstacle into an opportunity for greater achievement; the greater the difficulty, the more likely we were to respond with paradigm-shattering innovation.
Contemporary American business leaders, by contrast, often ignore the troublesome realities of global climate change and the difficult choices which face the world’s people, treating physical laws as subordinate to market forces, and ethics as irrelevant. Their lack of confidence in our country’s R&D and manufacturing is profoundly troubling; their protests that a transformed energy system might be bad for business show contempt for the scientific and moral facts confronting our species. And they forget: an “evolutionary bottleneck” is bad for business, too.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: analogies denialists Durban Conference scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 1: Maybe We Could Get A Carbon Patch?
This sounds depressingly familiar. NYT:
WASHINGTON — With intensifying climate disasters and global economic turmoil as the backdrop, delegates from 194 nations gather in Durban, South Africa, this week to try to advance, if only incrementally, the world’s response to dangerous climate change.
To those who have followed the negotiations of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change over their nearly 20-year history, the conflicts and controversies to be taken up in Durban are monotonously familiar — the differing obligations of industrialized and developing nations, the question of who will pay to help poor nations adapt, the urgency of protecting tropical forests, the need to develop and deploy clean energy technology rapidly.
I used the cancer analogy yesterday, and I’m using it again today. Sent November 27:
The United States, one of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, is acting like a five-pack-a-day man trying to wish away a negative biopsy. Scientists the world over, with increasing urgency, are saying that genuine action on climate change must be taken soon to avoid a metastasizing catastrophe — and America’s politicians are equivocating, because…well, because they’re scared.
Like someone who’s just come out of the oncologist’s office, they’re scared of change, scared of an uncertain and dangerous future, and scared of what it’s all likely to cost. And just as a heavy smoker unequivocally “needs” a cigarette to stay calm while he contemplates his diagnosis, the industrialized carbon-burning nations “need” another hit of carbon energy before they give it up.
We know it’s bad for us, that it’s very expensive, that it has drastic long-term health consequences. And we swear to quit, soon. Maybe next year. We promise!
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Andreas Schmittner denialists IPCC scientific methodology
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 30: I Feel A Tingle…
Look, everybody! Actual, unambiguous good news:
A new study in the journal Science suggests that the global climate may be less sensitive to carbon dioxide fluctuations than predicted by the most extreme projections, and maybe slightly less than the best estimates of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Andreas Schmittner, a climate scientist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore., and lead author on the new study, notes that, while man-made global warming is happening and tiny changes in global average temperatures can have huge and deleterious effects, the atmosphere may not be as sensitive to carbon dioxide change as has been reported.
“We used paleoclimate data to look at climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling in the atmosphere, and we are coming up with a somewhat lower value,” says Schmittner.
How long before James Inhofe suddenly discovers that science is cool and groovy? Sent November 26:
The authors of the newly released study on climate sensitivity very carefully note that while their conclusions suggest lower values than the IPCC’s more extreme projections, this does not diminish either the reality of global climate change or the importance of a robust policy on greenhouse emissions. But since the precise, reality-based language of scientists is incomprehensible to politicians desperately seeking excuses to avoid confronting inconvenient choices in an election season, we can anticipate a chorus of conservative legislators eagerly ignoring their cautionary words.
Andreas Schmittner’s historically grounded examination of paleoclimate data should not be used to bolster the usual denialist shibboleths. Employing these hopeful findings as an argument for inaction on the gravest existential threat our species has yet faced is the twisted logic of a cancer patient who, when told that the progress of the disease is slower than doctors’ worst-case projections, resumes smoking five packs a day.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Durban Conference scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 29: Puttin’ On The Hair-Shirt
The UK Guardian runs an optimistic take on Durban (NOT):
The will to act on climate change is out of political energy, running on empty. The problem is (relatively) distant, complex and intractable. The solution is costly, immediate, and the gains uncertain. It is the kind of slow-burn crisis that democratic politicians only tackle under sustained popular pressure and right now western voters have other things on their minds. Here, the government that promised to be the greenest ever is allowing emission-cutting policies to appear an indulgent hangover from a more prosperous age. Starting on Monday, when the 17th climate change conference opens in Durban, Africa has the opportunity to remind the rest of us why inaction is not an option.
Writing letters to the UK press always makes me want to use fancy words and allusions. To the best of my recollection, Saint Augustine has never before manifested in one of my climate letters. Sent November 25:
The yawning chasm between scientific reality and political exigency is swallowing up any hope for a meaningful agreement from the upcoming Durban climate conference.
Ultimately, the world’s nations are negotiating not with one another, but with a party whose inflexibility and intransigence would be the envy of any tinpot dictator. The laws of physics and chemistry are unmoved by arguments of economic survival, of market imperatives, of global justice — and their demands are simple: stop putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Immediately. And all of us (nearly seven billion humans along with the rest of Earthly life) are the hostages.
The industrialized world’s leaders aspire to climatic chastity and carbon continence, but (like Saint Augustine) not yet. Their hope is that at some unspecified future date, some unspecified future politicians will do the right thing, an outcome depressingly less likely than the ravages of a runaway greenhouse effect.
Warren Senders