Climate Change

Over the past several days as we’ve seen the death and damage from the storm in Burma/Myanmar metastasize, there has been a greater-than-usual sense of impotency on the part of the international community in its inability to rise to the challenge. There is the extraordinary scale of the disaster, and the fact that so much of the impacted area is difficult to access. There is the immediate relief effort that seems to have been thwarted by the military government there. There is the realization that the hundreds of thousands who’ve been affected were terribly vulnerable in the first place, because of their poverty, the lack of adequate infrastructure, and their proximity to the Bay of Bengal and its often-dangerous weather.

There is a further realization, I think: that storms of this strength have been more frequent in recent years and will continue to grow in frequency and intensity. Certainly, Katrina’s impact on the consciousness of Americans, and others, has been a key factor in the further recognition and acceptance of the reality of the climate change crisis that is looming. The AFP reports here that “Some experts argue the evidence is already hard enough to identify a probable trend: storms are becoming more powerful as global warming heats up the oceans.” The article gives a good summary of the scientific thinking.

To go deeper, you can refer to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group II Report “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” (from last year’s critical Fourth Assessment Report), and specifically the chapter on Coastal Systems And Low-Lying Areas. (See also this from Reuters when the WG II report was issued, and my post at the time.) The IPCC Chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, said “It’s the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit.”

In this thoughtful piece, The Science Of Cyclones, from MSNBC’s Alan Boyle, we learn about the work of Chris Mooney, the author, and blogger for Intersection. (I’ve mentioned Chris here. He’s a formidable voice.) Among the things that Mooney says in his interview with Boyle, and this very much echoes the message from the IPCC, is “There’s a huge socioeconomic disparity, in terms of levels of preparedness, and in terms of levels of damage, and especially in terms of numbers killed by cyclones in the world. And that’s something we’ve got to address.” You can hear the interview here here and read Mooney’s essay for “Science Progress” here.

In the meantime, you should find out ways to help. My first stop when disaster strikes is Unicef. Not surprisingly, they are geared up to help. Look at their website’s Cyclone Nargis information for more.

Here’s an eye-catching quote:  “I believe the age of fossil fuels is coming to end - and that the age of clean energy will follow.”  That’s what Massachusetts Governor Deval L. Patrick told the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce last week.  See this from the AP.

Massachusetts is home, as you probably know, to the Cape Wind project, what NRDC has characterized as the largest single GHG reduction project in the U.S.  This is a project that Patrick has championed, in contrast to his predecessor, Mitt Romney.  At a conference I attended last year, I heard Cape Wind’s developer, Jim Gordon, say that on a good day his offshore wind farm could not only supply all the stationary power needs of Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard, but the surface transportation needs as well - if plug-in hybrids were being deployed.  (I recently wrote about a great Nova program on automotive advances starring those two quintessential Boston townies, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, better known as Click and Clack.)

For a comprehensive look at what’s being proposed, including advancing renewables and green jobs, go to the state’s website here for a transcript of the speech and video as well. 

Patrick’s speech coincided with an announcement by the state’s Department of Public Utilities that they’d given approval to a program that would allow a million Boston-area electricity customers the option of buying 100 percent of their power from wind.  See this from the venerable Boston-based Union of Concerned Scientists, one of the designers of this innovative program.

Deanne Upson, a consultant on climate change in Washington, posed a great question at my post below on soot and solar cookers. In a nutshell, she asked how would you design an energy-efficient home for low and middle-income people in the developing world or in economically distressed areas. I thought a reply rated a post of its own.

Off the top of my head I would say maximizing energy efficiency and deploying renewables are two great places for people in the developing world to start. The International Green Building Movement has been focused on urban housing design and commercial development. I wrote here about the “Masdar Initiative,” in Abu Dhabi, which will be a “… 6 million square meter sustainable development that uses the traditional planning principals of a walled city, together with existing technologies, to achieve a zero carbon and zero waste community.” Sweet. See the project plan and some graphics from the architects, Foster and Partners.

In Green Tech, Low Tech, Clean Tech, New Tech from a year ago, I noted a fascinating exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, on “Design for the Other 90%.” Here’s their section on innovative designs for shelter. Also, UNEP has a vigorous Sustainable Buildings And Construction Initiative. This particular section of their report on “Buildings and Climate Change” has excellent information on low-energy and zero-energy buildings and passive houses. The Rocky Mountain Institute, whose motto is “Abundance by Design,” has done a lot of consulting on buildings. See this section of their website. Of course, the U.S. Green Building Council and the American Institute of Architects’ Committee on the Environment (COTE) have been doing superb work for years. The USGBC has an extensive list of links. See also the work of their sister organization, the World Green Building Council.

There is truly extraordinary work being done in the area of green building. Human habitat is obviously a critical area in which we can achieve great things, sustainably.

In my post from March 29 on the “State of the Planet ‘08” conference, sponsored by The Earth Institute and “The Economist,” I talked about a close encounter I had with the gentle Chairlady of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority.  We talked about nuclear power and I said, among other things, that societies needed to choose and any emphasis on nuclear power would necessarily take a tremendous amount of wind out of the sails, or turbines, as ‘twere, of the renewables industry.

Here’s an excellent ten-minute video from Greenpeace UK that makes my point rather well.

The outspoken “NY Times” columnist, Tom Friedman, takes some serious shots here, Dumb as We Wanna Be, at two of the three Presidential candidates for their recommendation on suspending the 18.4¢ a gallon federal excise tax on gasoline during the heavy summer driving season coming up.  “The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: ‘Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.’” Ouch.   

Mr. Friedman has hit it fairly close to right on the button, but he also takes a shot at Congress for not renewing tax credits for renewable energy.  It should be noted that the question of the tax credits for renewables has, for all intents and purposes, been settled now by both houses of Congress  I wrote about this here on April 15 - a good day to be writing about these things.  

Also, to say, as Mr. Friedman does, “We have no energy strategy,” is incorrect. The present Congress has significantly altered course from the recent past by passing the somewhat extraordinary “Energy Security and Independence Act” in December of this past year. It’s not everything - a renewable portfolio standard is missing, for instance - but it’s a dang sight better than we’ve had.  See It’s A Wrap… from December. 

I believe that the next Congress, presumably more heavily loaded with Democrats than the present one, will continue moving on the track toward a low and zero-carbon energy policy.  (I am not being partisan in this, merely noting facts.  The present Congress has been fiercely divided by party on energy, particularly in the Senate.)

It is good, as far as I’m concerned, to note further that any of the three remaining Presidential candidates will, as President, be on board for much of this agenda of increasing efficiency, decreasing reliance on fossil fuels, increasing growth in renewables, and generally fostering progress toward a world vastly better suited to sustainable development and saving our climate system.

I touched on an important subject here earlier in the month when I mentioned a new study purporting that the spread of black carbon – or soot – from industrial and transportation sources, and from developing world cooking practices, is having a significantly more potent impact on climate change than previously thought. This release from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography discusses the work done by their highly regarded atmospheric scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan and University of Iowa chemical engineer Greg Carmichael. They report that black carbon “… has a warming effect in the atmosphere three to four times greater than prevailing estimates.” What is also evident is that “Between 25 and 35 percent of black carbon in the global atmosphere comes from China and India, emitted from the burning of wood and cow dung in household cooking and through the use of coal to heat homes. Countries in Europe and elsewhere that rely heavily on diesel fuel for transportation also contribute large amounts.” This article, Dust plays huge role in climate change, from the “Christian Science Monitor,” explains it well. There’s an accompanying podcast here from the reporter as well.

See also The even darker side of brown clouds from “Nature Reports Climate Change” and the scientists’ report itself, Global and regional climate changes due to black carbon, in “Nature Geoscience.” They say here that “The interception of solar radiation by atmospheric brown clouds leads to dimming at the Earth’s surface with important implications for the hydrological cycle, and the deposition of black carbon darkens snow and ice surfaces, which can contribute to melting, in particular of Arctic sea ice.” This is true for the Himalayan region as well.  Ramanathan and Carmichael further say that since “… BC has a significant contribution to global radiative forcing, and a much shorter lifetime compared with carbon dioxide (which has a lifetime of 100 years or more), a major focus on decreasing BC emissions offers an opportunity to mitigate the effects of global warming trends in the short term. Reductions in BC are also warranted from considerations of regional climate change and human health.”

We have known for some time about the health effects of soot in urban environments and in rural villages where cooking accounts for hundreds of thousands of deaths annually, mostly of women and young children, according to any number of studies. See this study from the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” (PNAS), and an accompanying group of studies, for instance, on the disastrous health effects of biomass burning for cooking in the developing world. According to the World Health Organization, “More than three billion people worldwide continue to depend on solid fuels, including biomass fuels (wood, dung, agricultural residues) and coal, for their energy needs.”

See this graphic from the Ramanathan and Carmichael report to illustrate the extent and the impact of the biomass burning.

[The polluting effects of cooking using biomass like wood or cow dung in South Asia are illustrated through a measurement of aerosol optical depth, a way of measuring the quantity of pollutants in the air by the relative ability of light to penetrate through them. The upper image is a representation showing reconstructed levels of pollution from 2004 and 2005. The bottom image is a representation with the effects of biofuel cooking removed.]

How do we address the soot from household use, thus radically reducing the human health impacts and the radiative forcing from the atmospheric brown clouds and the BC deposition? One way is to eliminate biomass from cooking. The use of solar cookers is one stunningly effective and, hopefully, burgeoning approach in the developing world. Solar Cookers International is the truly superb NGO that has been spreading the word and the technology both among international aid agencies and on the ground in the developing world for a number of years now. See this powerpoint show for an introduction and use their website to learn more. They are, as just one example of many, working with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to equip refugees from the fighting in Darfur with the equipment and the know-how to go nearly entirely solar for cooking. One of the strongest indications of the success of their approach is the near total acceptance of solar cookers by the women of these camps.

SCI is doing amazing, critically important work, and it is incumbent on those of us concerned about sustainable development to learn more and support exactly these sorts of efficient, cost-effective and easily deployable technologies. It’s not always all about the high tech, capital intensive projects.

KPMG is a global network of auditors and business consultants operating in 145 countries.  According to the new Climate Changes Your Business report from them, six industries in particular have to watch out because they are not sufficiently aware of and ready to manage the risks of global warming.  The winners (or potential losers) are:  aviation, healthcare, oil and gas, tourism, transport, and the financial services sectors.  See this article from “BusinessGreen.” 

Timothy Flynn, Chairman of KPMG International says that companies need to assess the direct implications of climate change to their businesses (extreme weather, etc.) and take corrective action, consider how indirect effects such as regulatory changes will effect them, and seek to benefit from opportunities such as the growing demand for energy-efficient technologies.  (I really do love that word:  opportunity.)  Their CSR chief, Lord Michael Hastings, says “I am convinced that companies that take the initiative to improve their carbon footprint will innovate for the better – for their own prosperity and the world as whole.”  Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, says “Smart companies take action.” 

On opportunity, I recently cited an “FT” article, Energy efficiency: Use less power to cut emissions, in which we learned the arresting news that “Dow Chemical claims to have reduced its energy intensity by 38 per cent between 1990 to 2005. The group invested $1bn to meet this target but says the initiatives have resulted in $5bn of savings.” Get it?!

I have also mentioned two reports from Lehman Brothers on the Business of Climate Change which prefigure much in the KPMG report, namely the risks and the opportunities. 

I just finished watching a truly terrific Nova special, Car of the Future, with the thoroughly irrepressible Tom and Ray Magliozzi, known to their adoring public as Click and Clack from Car Talk, the NPR supershow.   Along with the laughs, you get a look at lightweight materials to revolutionize car manufacturing – the same materials being used in the new Boeing Dreamliner, hybrids, plug-in electric cars, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles with the hydrogen produced by geothermal and hydropower, and discussion of the policies we need to get us to a post-gasoline society.  See a preview here.  The website for Car of the Future may be better than the show itself.  It’s got the footage, in-depth interviews, and open content so you can take clips for your own movie or other production. 

Then, run out and get ZOOM: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future, by two veteran writers for “The Economist,” Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran.  I heard Vaitheeswaran speak recently at the “State of the Planet ‘08” conference and he was quite enthusiastic about the possibilities for clean car technology for the future. 

Happy Earth Day!

We’ve seen a couple of great documentaries in my climate change class recently:  Fighting Goliath and Burning the Future: Coal in America.  I’m particularly excited that we’re having Burning the Future’s director in next week.  We’re also reading the outstanding Big Coal.  So, we’re into coal, in a big way.  More about the documentaries and the book before long here.

In the meantime, I just want to report that I’m a little depressed by this recent article on the Presidential contenders, Obama, Clinton woo coal vote in upcoming primaries, by the AP’s hard-working environmental reporter, H. Josef Hebert.  I know that these two, and the Republican nominee-in-waiting, John McCain, are heads and shoulders above what we’ve been experiencing in the White House on the subject of climate change.  (See Plus ça change, … from April 17 below.)  Still, I would love for the candidates to say, as John Edwards did, that we have to have a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants until there’s a real CCS technology available.

On mountaintop removal coal mining, a truly evil practice, both Clinton and Obama are trying to have it both ways.  I don’t bandy the word “evil” about too much, folks, but this is an environmentally destructive practice without peer in this country at this time, and it’s got devastating human health impacts.  See the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition website and get your hands on a DVD of Burning the Future if you don’t believe me.

The AP’s article says this about Obama’s and Clinton’s take on mountaintop removal mining:

“Clinton drew the ire of some environmentalists when in a public radio interview there she said she was ‘concerned’ about mountaintop mining but also viewed it as an ‘economic and environmental trade-off’ that must be ‘looked at … from a practical perspective.’

Facing a group of environmentalists opposed to mountaintop mining at a meeting in the coal town of Beckley, W.Va., Obama also talked about the balance between economics and environmental protection. ‘There are environmental consequences to coal extraction,’ said Obama, ‘just as there are with any energy source.’ That’s just what some of the mine workers in the audience wanted to hear.” 

Presumably, the next President’s Environmental Protection Agency will do its job.  If it does, mountaintop removal will be a thing of the past. 

MEM in Paris – The two-day Major Economies Meetings (MEM), talks among major carbon emitting nations, took place last week.  The economies of these 16 countries account for around four-fifths of global output of greenhouse gases.  The meetings aim to put these countries into some sort of unified trajectory as the world heads toward coming to an agreement, over the next year and a half, on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.  See this from the AFP (courtesy of Yahoo News).  One theme in this and other international meetings recently has been the need for assistance to the developing world on meeting the challenge of adaptation to climate change.  The article says “A South African assessment found that between 30 and 60 billion dollars was needed annually as of now to help poor countries cope with the impact of climate change.”

Governors on Climate Change – There was another meeting last week, of 20 US governors, Democratic and Republican, who met at Yale to advance the cause of meeting the climate change crisis.  See Governors Call for Federal-State Climate Change Partnership from the Environment News Service.  They signed a declaration that is founded on three principles:  (1) a federal-state partnership is critical, (2) state-based climate action plans and programs have worked and should continue, and (3) rewarding and encouraging meaningful and mandatory federal and state climate action is key.  Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell said “… today my fellow governors and I memorialized our commitment to stop global warming while calling on our federal partners to join us in establishing a national policy on climate change.”  The governors were joined at the conference by two Canadian provincial premiers and by IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri.  For more on the conference see this from the host, Yale University, and the declaration itself.

Stern Warning – The lead author of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change said in a speech in London last week “We badly underestimated the degree of damages and the risks of climate change.  All of the links in the chain are on average worse than we thought a couple of years ago.”  See this from “The Independent” and this from “The Guardian,” including this audio interview with the author of “The Guardian” article.

Vietnam – Finally, one of the burgeoning Asian economies, Vietnam, has announced its commitment to dealing with climate change.  In this story, we learn that Denmark and the UNDP are joining with Vietnam to create “pilot projects coping with climate change.”  UNDP has been doing a lot of work in the area of adaptation.

Have Some Fun – These five cartoons from NPR are informative and fun.  That’s a can’t miss combination where I come from.