March 23, 2009

32 Comments

In the Fight Over Clean Energy, Will “Environmentalists” Stand With Science?

By Professor Andrew Weaver, Lead author for the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

There are many depressing things about being a climate scientist these days. The emerging data is going from bad to worse and the political leadership is still acting as if we have all the time in the world to deal with global warming. But what I find in some ways even more depressing is the fact even some environmental groups have chosen to abandon science and campaign against clean energy and climate policies.

The scientific community has a very solid understanding of what is causing global warming: it is overwhelmingly because of the combustion of fossil fuels. Thus, the primary solution to the problem is as simple as it is daunting:  the elimination of fossil fuel use in our economies.

Few people outside the scientific and engineering community have yet come to terms with the immensity of that task. In my home province of British Columbia, for example, we frequently hear about how “green” our energy system is – the rationale being that hydro dams make up the vast majority of electricity generation. Very rarely does anyone point out that electricity is a small part of our overall energy consumption which, even with the blessings of hydro, is more than two-thirds fossil fuel.

So, even in a province fortunate to have lots of hydro, we still need a massive transformation in energy. All those fossil fuel emissions need to be eliminated.  And we must do so quickly if we are to have any chance of stabilizing the climate and maintaining human civilization as we know it.

We need staggering amounts of energy conservation, emissions cuts and renewable energy. And all need to be deployed at an unprecedented rate.

Switching from fossil fuels to emissions-free energy sources is not going to happen without resistance. Each new hydro and wind project is being opposed by well-meaning citizens and environmental groups not familiar with the science. Each energy conservation policy is fought bitterly by “public interest groups” demagoguing to keep energy subsidized. Each attempt to tax carbon and each law to reduce emissions draws the fossil fuel lobby into action alongside these “public interest” groups.

The public debate has become a caricature. People complain about windmills blocking their view. Kayakers complain about seeing a transmission line on their weekend excursions. The public dialogue is riddled with outlandish and demonstrably false assertions such as windmills will devastate local bird populations or a hydro project will create more greenhouse emissions than it will displace by eliminating a coal-burning power plant. Some of the most insidious arguments attempt to slow things down: that we should do more planning, that we should do energy conservation first and build renewable energy later, that we shouldn’t do anything until China does.

These arguments are fundamentally not serious. They come from groups and spokespeople that have simply not grappled with the math — with the scale and speed at which we must eliminate fossil fuel emissions.

The policies and actions needed are very well understood. When my colleagues and I at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Prize, it was awarded for “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” We have been as clear as we know how about the science and the measures needed.

We need a global agreement and action. This means rich countries like Canada must take decisive action and demonstrate that we are willing to shoulder the responsibility for what our emissions have done to the rest of the world. To that end:

We need to build and transition to entirely emissions-free energy.

We need to tax carbon emissions and legislate their elimination.

We need aggressive efficiency policies.

These measures must happen extremely quickly and on an unprecedented scale. We desperately need all civil society organizations advocating as hard as possible for this effort and we cannot afford to have so-called environmentalists opposing what science shows to be necessary.

Environmental organizations and citizen groups will have to work constructively to support emissions-free energy options. Modern society has no choice but to move toward carbon neutrality if we hope to preserve our well-being. Emissions-free energy production is the only means of getting there.

Dr. Andrew Weaver is a lead author for the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. His most recent book is Keeping Our Cool: Canada in a Warming World. Dr. Weaver is a professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Victoria.

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32 Responses so far...

1. PatrickW says:

   July 19, 2009 at 8:17 am

   Next I must read Dr Wever’s book “Keeping Our Cool”. Some fellow on  radio a few days ago mentioned your book and other well qualified people in several fields and pointed out that even when we know and believe the facts and have determined what we should do about it and have even decided to do the right thing even then we don’t change until it is sufficiently easy and attractive. Fear if its immenent will get us moving. So we need a lot more carrot we can’t afford to wait for the fear that’s coming by then it will be too late for too many. 
2. Backlash against Green Economy - 47 « Lead the Way BC says:

   April 26, 2009 at 10:04 pm

   [...] a footnote, Dr. Andrew Weaver’s article, posted yesterday, can be found here, on Zero Carbon Canada. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Environmentalists are [...]
3. GreenHearted says:

   April 17, 2009 at 4:48 pm

   One of the earlier posts said, “To me, this says that we really do not fully understand what is happening with our climate and that much more investigation is needed before firm conclusions can be announced.”

   My response would be: That’s why we should be respecting the precautionary principle and acting as quickly as possible rather than waiting for scientific certainty. (Don’t forget, we have to factor in biological and ecological impacts, not just chemical and physical impacts.)

   Someone else asked: “What is the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere?  How has that changed over the past 10, 100 and 1000  and 10,000 years?  What contribution has the  combustion of fossil fuels made to the atmosphere?   Based on these short and long term trends in atmospheric CO2 content, what does the CO2 content over the next 10, 100 and 1000 years look like assuming one of the two possible approaches of mild and aggressive attacks on reducing fossil fuel consumption?”

   My response: The percentage of CO2 in the air isn’t the germane question (it’s a trace greenhouse gas). Its concentration in the atmosphere is what’s causing the globe to warm — up about 35% since human beings created the industrial age about 100 years ago (and still rising, at an accelerating pace). Here’s some scary science to consider: the warming (and devastation in Africa, the North and small island states, and increasing drought in North America) that we’re seeing today was caused by greenhouse gas (especially CO2) emissions decades ago. What we are emitting now will last hundreds and hundreds of years.

   So we are literally committing progenycide with the CO2 we continue to take out of the ground as fossil fuels and burn. Even if we aggressively cut back to zero carbon emissions on an emergency basis, we have warming in the pipe already, which could lead to feedbacks such as the methane timebomb, and we’ll have the latent heat of melting once the Arctic ice is gone.

   We SO have to get our butts in gear if we don’t want to make the future a thing of the past! We certainly won’t survive as a species if we only mount a “mild attack” on fossil fuel burning.
4. Barry Saxifrage says:

   April 4, 2009 at 10:54 pm

   Thank you Dr. Weaver for your great work on climate science and making the facts known to many of us.

   The most frustrating part for me in the BC green energy debate has been the calls to halt green energy projects until we can study the sitings more. Groups that claim to understand the climate urgency like the NDP and several environmental groups are calling for a moratorium on all new IPP green power until more studies and consultations can be done.

   My question is why haven’t any of these groups decided what projects should be built already? If climate change is the looming disaster they admit it is, where are their studies and list of “these are OK” green energy projects?

   Canadians pledged to the world to cut carbon emissions 17 years ago in Rio. But our emissions grew. Canadians pledged again 10 years ago in Kyoto to make big cuts in our emissions by 2012.  But our emissions grew. The scientists like Dr. Weaver have been collecting high quality from all over the globe showing climate changes becoming worse than expected. For years the headlines have been blaring that a crisis is upon us.

   In all these years, with all these pledges and warnings, how is it that these groups still don’t have a list of green energy projects they have researched and feel are safe and adequate to meet our needs?

   Now after 17 years when the situation is getting nasty and time is running out we finally start some government processes to develop alternatives to fossil fuels on a scale that might work and these groups say “stop we need more time”.

   Why will it be any different in the next 17 years?

   In my area people have spent a huge amount of energy in successfully protesting and stopping a big wind farm and two big tidal projects recently. They are now are trying to shut down hydro in the inlets. But in all this time I haven’t seen any such protests or actions directed at big fossil fuel use in our area. No protests at the gas stations or travel agencies or cruise ship docs or airports or heli-tours or marinas or car dealers or loading docks. Nobody even makes a peep about our local fossil fuel power plant that puts out half-a-million tonnes of CO2 and is right on the doorstep of a climate sustainable hydro project they are busy fighting.

   What I experience here is big repeated protests to shut down various climate sustainable power projects…no equivalent protests to shut down equal amounts of fossil fuels…and no plan after all these years showing how much climate sustainable power we need and where it should come from.

   And these folks are calling for moratoriums and further study.
5. Larry says:

   April 1, 2009 at 5:14 pm

   The root of the problem is that we have spent many decades building “wrong infrastructure” of all sorts.  Buildings, highways, the vehicles we use, the structure of communities and metropolis so that walking and biking doesn’t work well if at all for most, our means of heating, and our appliances and other wants and needs.

   In essence, it  seems to be expected that we need two infrastructures — the old inadequate one that was in reality a step backward instead of step ahead, and the new climate friendly one to replace it.   There have been real impacts from land and resource uses of our unwise old infrastructure use to biodiversity and other ecosystem elements (I’m not talking view here, or climate), and now it is expected that such impacts be repeated for the new infrastructure but without the environmental fights of the past.  

   The move is to end BAU emissions (business as usual), but to maintain LAU (lifestyle as usual).  As one commenter below put it, quoting the WaPo, “Never has so little been asked of so many at such a critical moment.”

   The environmental impacts of the 2nd infrastructure are as real as those of climate change.  They many not be as cataclysmic as those of climate change, but cataclysmic enough cumulatively on  both regional and global scales.

   Shall we make these broad environmental sacrifices to try to arrest climate change, or shall we sacrifice LAU instead.  That should be the question.  (Of course it isn’t as black and white as that — a real solution will be a mix of approaches — but is a question of what will be the dominant approach.)

   And thinking of going to Nepal, Australia, California, or Banff?  Think twice, please.   What are we as individuals truly entitled to, and how often, in terms both of treats and daily life?   It comes down to, in the accelerated retirement of old infrastructure, should we attempt to replace all of it?  What are our real needs, and what significant lifestyle sacrifices and adjustments  can we make as a society?  Answering this needs thought, leadership, consideration for those with low income, and no delay.  LAU is the heart of the problem Dr. Weaver has raised.
6. Professor Andrew Weaver: Will Environmentalists Stand With Science? | Global Climate Change Information says:

   March 27, 2009 at 4:39 pm

   [...] http://www.zerocarboncanada.ca/in-the-fight-over-clean-energy-will-environmentalists-stand-with-scie... [...]
7. Paul (UK) says:

   March 25, 2009 at 3:10 pm

   Jeff said

   “In fact they (environmentalists) promote status quo as it keeps them gainfully employed.”

   Amongst other crazy things!
   What can one say to that??
   It is such a big distortion of the truth, that one is left gob smacked!

   Environmentalists are interested in radical change throughout society as Andrew Weaver has stated and wants. Hydroelectric, solar, wind and even nuclear energy are all on the agenda. One obvious thing though is that we also need more trees, forests, woods.
   We need to draw down CO2 from the atmosphere as well as prevent new CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.

   New technology can help. But what’s the point in developing new cars that reduce emissions by 80% if car ownership increases by 80%?
   So the reality is that consumption also needs to be limited.

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