Eco Chamber # 7: The Question of Energy

It is my birthday this week. As I turn 25, there is one question I face: do I have a future? My life from here on out, and the lives of my generation, will be shaped by the choices we make now. The choices we make depend on one word: energy.

We are at a precipice. We either make a paradigm shift in the 21st century with our energy consumption. Or we stand to repeat the 20th century with “fossil fool” reliance and be doomed. Essentially, I either have a future or I don’t.

Energy sourcing will be the most important issue in the next 10 to 20 years and will shape the remainder of this century, as well as beyond. Presently, 86 percent of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels — oil, coal and gas. These energy sources ave shaped our way of life in the 20th century, providing us with our technological advances and many creature comforts along the way. But running cars, heating up our bathtubs and blaring TV sets come with a price tag of more than just money.

The price could be the my generation’s future. Fossil fuels are destroying landscapes with strip mining (such as what’s happening in the Appalachian Mountains for coal), polluting air and water, and is the number one contributor to anthropogenic climate change.

Yet there are reasons for hope as U.S. President Barack Obama has shown great strides in changing energy practices. The president plans to make sustainability “the centerpiece of a new American economy.” He aims to implement a “Green New Deal” that would double solar, wind and biomass energy sources and cut U.S. dependency on oil with fuel-efficient auto standards. These transformations can create jobs and make for a more energy-secure superpower.

However, developing countries like China, India, and parts of the Middle East will still account for 80 percent of future oil demands. Therefore, “fossil fuels will continue to meet 80 per cent of global energy needs for the foreseeable future,” Thomas Axworthy recently wrote in the Toronto Star.

And if there is no global plan to reduce emissions, scientists are now stating there is a 90 percent probability that temperatures will rise between 3.5° to 7.4°C on the earth’s surface. This will have a horrendous impact on all life on the planet.

Hence, there needs to be a global energy shift. Some argue that this shift comes in the form of nuclear. Jeremy Nelson makes this argument in the current cover story of This: that to battle climate change, he says, it’s not renewables we need to turn to, but an older generation of power, nuclear. He argues that solar and wind energy is unreliable because they fluctuate, and still lag in development, while nuclear energy is zero-emissions now.

Despite grudgingly agreeing with Nelson that to be a pro-environmentalist today might mean being pro-nuclear, there is still a mighty can of worms being opened with nuclear power generation.

Nuclear might in fact be used to accelerate Canada’s desire to become the next fossil-fuel superpower: It will be used for the energy needs of the Alberta tar sands, says Andrew Nikiforuk in his book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent. Nuclear would assist in the production of the unconventional oil that already emits three times

more greenhouse gases than a conventional barrel of oil does.

So ironically, increasing nuclear power in Canada may actually increase fossil fuel emissions, rather than lowering them. There are some benefits to shifting now to a low-emission nuclear — but nuclear is not the be-all-and-end-all for energy. At best, it might be a temporary solution for action today, this year, even perhaps for the next 10-20 years on climate change. But for the remainder of the century, other means of energy need to be considered.

We, as humans, think we know it all. But perhaps we don’t know what the energy of the 21st century will be yet. Perhaps it is in research and development that we could find it. The Obama administration has recently given stimulus to R&D with 3 percent of the nation’s GDP — that is US$46 billion annually — put into prospects for the future.

Is my sense of urgency premature? I am, after all, only 25. But this is the year, a make-it or break-it year, with the Copenhagen Climate Conference. A year that is our next, and probably final, chance for a climate agreement to make fossil fuels history. We either have a future or we don’t: the answer depends on shifting energy — and shifting now.

Eco Chamber #2: Countdown to Copenhagen

April 17th, 2009

The countdown to Copenhagen is 233 today. That is the number of days left until the Obama administration must sway its own domestic politics by getting Congress on side of climate action, and prove real leadership in global emission reductions. It's a very short timeframe, especially when, in a state of economic turmoil, one big "E" seems to take precedent over another, economics over ecology.

Come December, 170 countries will come together at the Copenhagen Climate Convention in Denmark to attempt at an agreement on reducing greenhouse gases. The Copenhagen agreement will replace the Kyoto Protocol. But like Kyoto, if there is not real leadership from the U.S., the Copenhagen agreement will fail too.

More than leadership, Copenhagen comes down to American politics. Republican and Democratic senators alike are more interested in economics than ecology today, and that attitude will further stall any significant action on climate change. Many scientists say we no longer have any time to wait.

"I frankly think that this Copenhagen is the last chance for us to deal with this problem," Andrew Weaver told the Montreal Gazette recently. Weaver is an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contributor and author of Keeping Our Cool: Canada in a Warming World.

With the Arctic now melting faster than scientists had previously believed — possibly reaching 100 percent summer melting as early as 2013 — global climate change is pushing us toward a precipice. International consensus says that by 2050 it is "virtually certain" that temperatures will rise to 1.5° to 2°C, unless there are sharp carbon reductions. Every decade there is delay, experts say, temperatures will continue to rise by half a degree.

On the earth's surface, this temperature rise means that young people today will be living in a vastly re-shaped world when they are older. Thirty percent of species will be at risk of extinction; there will be widespread aridity and crop failure in the global south, where most of the Earth's population lives; and we will see up to 12 meters of sea level rise. That doesn't even get into the new geopolitical world we will be living in, with mass human migrations and conflict.

As we come to a close of the first decade of the 21st century, with emissions only rising, now, more than ever, is the time for action. People around the world en masse are calling for it. This year's Earth Hour had over eighty countries and one billion individuals participating, according to WWF Canada's Communications Director, Josh Laughren, who spoke about the Earth Hour event on the Green Majority radio show on April 10th. That's a huge leap forward from last year's Earth Hour, with 35 countries and between 50 and 100 million participants.

WWF is calling this year's Earth Hour a "global phenomenon." Earth Hour is meant as a symbolic action on the fight against global climate change. By dimming lights, people are voting for the earth and creating a mass demand for action.

However, US deputy special envoy for climate change, Jonathan Pershing, told the Reuters news agency that global climate agreements are complicated. "Finding common ground will take some time."

In domestic American politics, the situation is further complicated. With a recent Congress bill passed that now requires any cap-and-trade climate plan needing sixty votes to see the light of day. And with the two U.S. parties preoccupied with the economy, the prospects for a cap-and-trade bill looks dismal.

President Obama's election promise was to have swift action to combat climate change. the promises included cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 14 percent by 2020 and a cap-and-trade emissions plan. However, on the recent climate talk in Bonn, Germany, as part of a series of talks leading up to Copenhagen, delegates were disappointed with the U.S.'s vague and far-reaching plan to cap emissions. Obama's rapid action on climate now appears cautious and slow.

But slow and steady is a luxury we can no longer indulge in. And people around the world are making a stand for climate action now. At the recent G20 Summit in London, UK, 4,000 protesters were part of a "Climate Camp" protesting against the proposed cap-and-trade systems with slogans including "Nature Doesn't Do Bail-Outs." The activists argued that cap-and-trade is just another system for emitters to hide behind, while true emissions reduction remains on the back burner.

At the same G20 conference, over 20,000 protestors took over the streets of the central banking district, rioting about the economy. For many in Washington, this "separate" issue of the economy is often a fig leaf to hide more inaction on the climate. But economics and ecology are not two mutually exclusive entities. Rather, with a failing economy comes opportunity: opportunity for sustainability, with green industries and jobs, less dependency on oil, and more renewable energy.

Our world is out of check, but we have an opportunity for a sustainable one. Copenhagen is the first and last opportunity for Obama to make it so. But a slack pace will not get us there. Instead, we have 233 days — and the world is counting.