The Greening of America - Big Apple Style

New York City is getting serious about slashing greenhouse gas emissions. Former mayor Michael Bloomberg set out to cut emissions 30 per cent by 2030. The current mayor, Bill de Blasio, has pledged cuts of 80 per cent by 2050.

New York City is targeting it's biggest emitter - buildings.

"As far as I know, this is the largest carbon reduction initiative for buildings anywhere in the world," said John Mandyck, chief executive of the Urban Green Council, a New York-based nonprofit that helped shape the legislation. He said that beyond the direct impact of the cuts in New York, the bill could help other cities design similar initiatives with flexibility. 

The package sets emissions caps for individual buildings and provides a number of ways to meet them. It also includes bills that will increase the number of green roofs, encourage renewable energy, and order a study to look at replacing the 24 large fossil fuel power plants within the city with renewable energy generation.

"A Big Step Backwards"

Global consumption of fossil fuels - oil and coal - rebounded last year. It's enough that fossil energy giant, BP, called it "a big step backwards" and warned that the world may be on course to miss the already paltry goals of the Paris Climate Summit.

The renewed upward march of global carbon emissions is worrying and a big step backwards in the fight against climate change, according to BP. 

Emissions rose 1.6% in 2017 after flatlining for the previous three years, which the British oil firm said was a reminder the world was not on track to hit the goals of the Paris climate deal. 

Renewable power generation grew by 17% last year, led by wind and followed by what BP called “stunning” growth in solar. 

But strong economic growth led to above-average energy demand, coal use bounced back in China and efficiency gains slowed down, causing emissions to jump, the company’s annual statistical review of world energy found.

That should be music to Justin Trudeau's bitumen-clogged ears. Misery loves company and he already has Canada on course to miss our emission cut targets. Besides, if China is going back to coal again, they're going to love our bitumen.

Well played, Justin.

Are We Just Going to Turn Our Backs on This?

It came out yesterday that reports submitted by the Harper government to the United Nations show that Canada won't be cutting our greenhouse gas emissions anytime soon.  Instead the government admits our emissions will soar by 38% by 2030 mainly due to tar sands exploitation.

Where's the outrage?  I have gone to the web sites of CBC, CTV, Torstar, G&M, NatPo, and four or five other papers coast to coast and not a word of this.  There is a CP story about Athabasca making the rounds to the effect of how the oilsands can help other provinces if only they'll help ramp up production, code for accommodating pipelines to get dilbit to "tidewater." 

There's plenty of reporting on Nordstrom's taking over Sears property in Eaton Centre, some Calgary guy killed fighting for al Qaeda, some Danish tourist gang-raped at knifepoint in New Delhi, all that sort of thing but nary a word on our federal government's dodgy emissions reports.

Did I say "dodgy"?  Why, yes, I did.  That's because, outrageous as they are, the U.N. is pretty sure that Harper has cooked the books.

In a new report to the United Nations, the Harper administration says it expects emissions of 815million tonnes of CO2 in 2030, up from 590Mt in 1990. Emissions from the fast-growing tar sands sector is projected to quadruple between 2005 and 2030, reaching 137Mt a year, more than Belgium and many other countries, the report shows.

Worse, Canada is likely under-reporting its emissions. An investigation in 2013 found that Canada's reported emissions from its natural gas sector, the world's third largest, could be missing as much as 212Mt in 2011 alone.

"Canada appears to have vastly underestimated fugitive emissions (leaks) from gas exploration," possibly because of "inadequate accounting methodology " according to the Climate Action Tracker analysis done by Germany's Climate Analytics, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Dutch-based energy institute Ecofys.

Bill McKibben, founder of the grassroots climate campaigning organisation 350.org, told the Guardian: "Who'd have imagined that digging up the tar sands would somehow add carbon to the atmosphere? That Canada watched the Arctic melt and then responded like this will be remembered by history."

But I guess we're okay with this.  It's not in the Canadian papers so Trudeau the Lesser's Liberals are okay with this.  Tommy Boy's NDP are okay with this.  Did we really throw in the towel that easily?

The Costs of Keeping Cool

North Americans had a tough and expensive time keeping cool over the summer.   A prolonged heat wave coupled with sustained drought (that continues in many places) drove demand for plenty of air conditioning.

Know how much electricity Americans, in a normal year, consume for cooling?   More than the entire electrical consumption of the billion plus population of Africa.   Vehicle air conditioners are said to account for 7 to 10-billion gallons of gasoline annually.

And now, with the planet warming and billions in some of the hottest regions coming into newfound prosperity, the demand for air-conditioning and the emissions nightmare associated with it is set to skyrocket.

The climate impact of air conditioning our buildings and vehicles is now that of almost half a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

Yet with other nations following our lead, America’s century-long reign as the world cooling champion is coming to an end. And if global consumption for cooling grows as projected to 10 trillion kilowatt-hours per year — equal to half of the world’s entire electricity supply today — the climate forecast will be grim indeed.

Because it is so deeply dependent on high-energy cooling, the United States is not very well positioned to call on other countries to exercise restraint for the sake of our common atmosphere. But we can warn the world of what it stands to lose if it follows our path, and that would mean making clear what we ourselves have lost during the age of air conditioning. For example, with less exposure to heat, our bodies can fail to acclimatize physiologically to summer conditions, while we develop a mental dependence on cooling. Community cohesion also has been ruptured, as neighborhoods that on warm summer evenings were once filled with people mingling are now silent — save for the whirring of air-conditioning units. A half-century of construction on the model of refrigerated cooling has left us with homes and offices in which natural ventilation often is either impossible or ineffective. The result is that the same cooling technology that can save lives during brief, intense heat waves is helping undermine our health at most other times.

...China is already sprinting forward and is expected to surpass the United States as the world’s biggest user of electricity for air conditioning by 2020. Consider this: The number of U.S. homes equipped with air conditioning rose from 64 to 100 million between 1993 and 2009, whereas 50 million air-conditioning units were sold in China in 2010 alone. And it is projected that the number of air-conditioned vehicles in China will reach 100 million in 2015, having more than doubled in just five years.

...The Middle East is already heavily climate-controlled, but growth is expected to continue there as well. Within 15 years, Saudi Arabia could actually be consuming more oil than it exports, due largely to air conditioning.

The report from Yale's 360 Environment is well worth a complete read.   A big factor in my own decision, 30-plus years ago, to relocate from Ontario to coastal B.C. was to escape central Canada's punishing summer weather.   It's a decision I have never regretted.

But our summers (when they actually arrive) can get uncomfortably warm for brief spells and I've noticed a few homeowners putting in central air.  I went another route.  In the course of ordinary renovations, I replaced all the low-flow, contractor-grade, aluminum-frame windows with high-efficiency, casement windows and equally effective blinds.  Every window in the house can open out like a door.   To fend off the summer heat, the windows are closed and the blinds drawn during the day.   As the sun goes down and the coastal breezes appear, the windows are opened wide and the blinds go up and all that fresh, cool, fragrant air literally flushes the residual heat out of the house.  It's very much like bringing the outdoors inside and it's very enjoyable.  And it's a low-carbon (or no-carbon) alternative to air conditioning.

About That Link Between CO2 and Warming

A team of Australian and Danish researchers has shown that CO2 was more instrumental in ending the last ice age than previously believed.   The scientists examined ancient air trapped in Antarctic ice.

''The results show that the temperature rise and the CO2 increase were much closer than what was believed before,'' said the study's lead author, Joel Pedro, a researcher at the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre in Hobart. ''It shows that the process of warming and CO2 rises in the past were actually very fast - though what's happening now is much faster.''

The study, published in the journal Climate of the Past, narrows the window of uncertainty around how long it took for slight natural changes in the Earth's temperature to be propelled by rising levels of greenhouse gases. Instead of an estimate of thousands of years, the results show a period of about 400 years in which the world switched from a frozen place to one which was decisively warming up.

 

It implies that the changes in the Earth's climate, now being driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases, could happen more suddenly.

A US ice core expert from the University of Washington, Eric Steig, said the paper represented a significant advance. ''I cannot emphasise enough how important this result is,'' Professor Steig said in a statement, after reviewing the findings.

Cooking the Carbon Books

Maybe it's time to put a cork in China's hydrocarbon pipelines.  A study published in Nature reveals that irregularities in China's energy consumption data suggest total carbon emissions from the People's Republic could be as much as 20% greater than stated.   That would be the equivalent of the CO2 emissions of Japan, itself one of the top five carbon emitters.


The team of scientists from China, Britain and the US, led by Dabo Guan of the University of Leeds, studied two sets of energy data from China's National Bureau of Statistics. One set presented energy use for the nation, the other for its provinces.

They compiled the carbon dioxide emission inventories for China and its 30 provinces for the period 1997-2010 and found a big difference between the two datasets.

"The paper identifies a 1.4-billion tonne emission gap (in 2010) between the two datasets. This implies greater uncertainties than ever in Chinese energy statistics," said Guan, a senior lecturer at the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds University.

That is slightly more than the annual emissions of Japan, one of the world's top-five greenhouse gas polluters.

Guan said China is not the only country with inconsistent energy data.

Scientists say the world is already racing towards a warming of 2 degrees Celsius or more in coming decades because of the rapid growth in emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation. Adding another billion tonnes into computer models would accelerate the pace of expected warming.

According to Chinese national statistics, on average, CO2 emissions have been growing 7.5% annually from 1997 to 7.69 billion tonnes in 2010, the authors say in the study.

In contrast, aggregated emissions of all Chinese provinces have increased 8.5% on average to 9.08 billion tonnes in 2010.

By comparison, US emissions were 6.87 billion tonnes in 2010, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

If China's true emissions numbers are blowing the planet straight through the 2C safety margin, why on Earth are we in such a damned rush to sell them massive stocks of the filthiest fossil fuel on the planet, Alberta bitumen?   Why are we so intent on degrading western Canada to help China degrade the world?

Taking Out the Trash, Bringing Home the Bacon

Mexico City has introduced a novel approach to dealing with its trash problem - food for trash.   Under the plan, Mexicans can take standard recyclables to a recycling centre where they're exchanged for "green points" that are redeemable for locally grown produce including fruits, vegetables, even flowers.  So far, no bacon - sorry.

And a h/t to Dan Moutal for pointing out that Mexico has done what the US and Canada can't - it has passed a powerful climate change law that mandates substantial reductions in carbon emissions and the introduction of large-scale renewable energy.   Working from 2000 levels the law calls for 30% emissions reductions by 2020 and 50% by 2050.

The bill made it through Mexico's lower house by a 128 to 10 vote and received unanimous approval in the Senate.

Emerging Economies Will Read the Riot Act to Developed West

When it comes to carbon emissions the emerging economic powers - Brazil, South Africa, India and China - have pretty bold expectations of the industrialized West.  They're not interested in major cuts in our carbon emissions.  They want us to become major carbon absorbers - negative emitters - in the first half of this century at least according to a position paper seen by BBC.

Working from the standpoint that western nations have a heavy responsibility for climate change because they industrialised first through fossil fuel burning, the experts reviewed various studies on what a fair and equitable allocation of future emissions might look like.

The analysis, seen by BBC News, is that industrialised countries should become net absorbers of CO2 rather than net emitters.

In the first half of this century, it concludes, the developed world should absorb 239-474 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide while developing countries continue to emit. That, the experts say, would be fair and equitable.

Analysts say it is not clear how far the BASIC bloc will push this line in negotiations.

Although the West's historical role is acknowledged in the UN climate convention, demands that Western countries become net carbon absorbers would not be countenanced.

Another Threat to Renewable Energy

The world is poised on the brink of  a "cheap gas" era that may undermine the viability of renewable energy options.   Not gas as in gasoline but as in natural gas, shale gas released by fracking.

"More gas [power plants] than wind and solar will be built [in the 10 to 20 years]," said Steve Bolze, chief executive of General Electric's  power and water division, which makes gas-fired turbines. "Gas is a good alternative to being 100% renewable."

...The International Energy Agency has predicted that if the anticipated   "dash for gas " goes ahead, the world will be far adrift of its greenhouse gas emissions targets. Laszlo Varro, head of gas, coal and power markets at the IEA, said:  "We have said repeatedly that on our current trajectory we will miss these targets ."

The gas industry is banking on a "cleaner than coal" argument to win over government resistance - if there is any.  This is another enormous hurdle in the path of alternative energy initiatives.  It reinforces the necessity of strict carbon taxes - the very idea embodied in Stephane Dion's "Green Shift" proposal - to curb fossil fuel consumption.  Of course our new leader of the official opposition was more than happy to trash Dion over carbon taxes and with Layton in the lap of a Petro-Pol prime minister, Canada's not going anywhere on carbon emissions.

Harper Cons Counting on Repugs to Dodge Carbon Emissions Initiatives

Canada's laughing stock environment minister, Jumpin Jim Prentice, figures a Republican victory in today's mid-term elections will put a North American cap-and-trade plan safely on the back burner.

"We've been very clear that we will not go it alone on cap-and-trade legislation," he said.

Danielle Droitsch, director of U.S. policy for the environmental group Pembina, says that if the Canadian government doesn't move ahead on climate change, she wants to know what the plan is.

"If the U.S. is on pause for federal climate legislation, does that mean Canada really is on pause for the next two years?" she asked. "I hope not."

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/11/02/canada-prentice-cap-trade-elections.html#ixzz148amblKB

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/11/02/canada-prentice-cap-trade-elections.html#ixzz148acPt5p

Whose Atmosphere Is It Anyway?

That's the question, the issue, the argument that's going to bedevil and quite likely scuttle any meaningful pact to fight global warming.

Whose atmosphere is it anyway? Well, if you look at those nations that have been dumping massive greenhouse gas emissions there for the past two centuries, you might think that the earth's atmosphere is the preserve of the industrialized and industrializing nations. First and foremost, think Europe and North America. Then add in countries like India, China, Russia and Brazil now vying for their dumping place at our atmospheric Love Canal.

Why is this question so important? Because the way it's answered will largely decide whether we have any hope of reaching the consensus without which we have no hope of preventing catastrophic climate change.

We used to talk about cutting greenhouse gas emissions by this percentage or that based on this year's or that year's threshold through emission reductions and carbon-trading. Nonsense, all of it utter nonsense. It's nonsense because it has endless wiggle room. The fine print alone renders it dysfunctional.

But there is another approach. Science has quantified both the amount of carbon dioxide emissions currently in the atmosphere and the amount of additional emissions the atmosphere can hold before we reach the 2 degree Celsius global heating point that's expected to trigger catastrophic climate change.

So, if we have an accurate idea of how many more billions of tonnes of CO2 emissions can be dumped into the atmosphere - for centuries, possibly millenia - the question becomes just who gets how much of that limited quota? This is where it gets tricky. You see there are some, an awful lot of "somes" in fact, who think that we in the West have already had our fair share of the atmosphere's carbon carrying capacity. It's hard to argue with that but their next argument is a real bitch.

What they're saying is that, "We'll spot you all the carbon emissions you've dumped into the atmosphere over the past two centuries in making yourself so fat and sassy but, from here on in, we should all share the remaining capacity equally." Gee, doesn't that sound fair and equitable? We treat the atmosphere as though it belongs to everyone and to no one so that we share it equally. Count the legs and divide by two sort of thing.

What's the alternative? Who has the right to say, "I claim that atmosphere as my own carbon emissions dumping ground because my economy relies on that so you can't have it"? Can you imagine? Going around to the people of sub-Saharan Africa or Central and South America and telling them we have priority rights to their atmosphere and we can use it to visit upon them the very worst scourges of global warming? Maybe we can torture logic enough to come up with a basis for atmospheric lebensraum.

To accept that the atmosphere belongs to everyone equally is to pass capital judgment on our carbon-based economy. It is to virtually outlaw fossil-fuels and commit us all to alternative-fuel rehab. There is no other way. If you can't understand that, read this.

But you say, won't that hurt the Canadian economy? Won't that affect our standard of living? Perhaps but even so the arguments are compelling. Do you think the climate change we've already triggered isn't already having a crushing impact on the economy and the standard of living of others, typically the least fortunate in the most vulnerable corners of the world? Isn't it grand that we can protest so vehemently about tweaks to our standard of living when others don't have the luxury of fretting about 'standards' because they're fully engaged with the struggle of merely living at all? It would be one thing if they caused their misfortune but they didn't, we did.

Your Call. Do You Want a Viable World for Your Grandkids? Yes or No?

Here's your personal quota for carbon emissions. 2.8 tons per year. That's five thousand, six hundred pounds of carbon dioxide you can emit from all sources of energy consumption. That includes the obvious - driving your car and heating your home, for example - and the less obvious including the production, processing, packaging and transportation of the food products you pluck from your grocer's shelves to the electricity that's powering the computer you're using to read this.

2.8 tons sounds like a lot. That's 15.3 pounds or roughly 7 kilograms per day. The problem is we North Americans exhaust that quota very quickly. In fact, we generate about 200-tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita annually. So we're producing about seven times more emissions than we ought to but what's the rush? I know, ask the Germans!

German climate scientists have been crunching the numbers just like you would expect from a bunch of Germans, very bluntly. None of that IPCC consensus fudging, just the plain, brutal truth. Their conclusion is that the carbon emission cuts recommended by the IPCC (which our politicians don't have the will to meet in any case) fall far short of what is needed, within the next ten years, to have a decent chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. Did you get that? Within the next ten years. You are living in the make it or break it moment that will decide the fate of your children and grandchildren.

The German Advisory Council on Global Warming has released their report available here in PDF format. Entitled Solving the Climate Dilemma: the Budget Approach, the council argues that budgeting (i.e. rationing) carbon emissions is our species' only hope. They've taken a global, per capita approach - count all the legs and divide by two. That means you're entitled to the same emissions quota as somebody from India or the Sahel of Africa.

The German government's top climate scientist, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, discussed his council's findings at a recent conference at New Mexico's Santa Fe Institute. AlterNet has an interesting report on the presentation by Mark Hertsgaard of The Nation:

Schellnhuber and his WBGU colleagues go a giant step beyond the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body whose scientific reports are constrained because the world's governments must approve their contents. The IPCC says that by 2020 rich industrial countries must cut emissions 25 to 40 percent (compared with 1990) if the world is to have a fair chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. By contrast, the WBGU study says the United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020 -- in other words, quit carbon entirely within ten years. Germany and other industrial nations must do the same by 2025 to 2030. China only has until 2035, and the world as a whole must be carbon free by 2050. The study adds that big polluters can delay their day of reckoning by "buying" emissions rights from developing countries, a step the study estimates would extend some countries' deadlines by a decade or so.

Say what? The United States must be at zero emissions by 2020? As the late Billy May would say, "But wait, there's more!":

Schellnhuber, addressing the Santa Fe conference, joked that the G-8 leaders agreed to the 2C limit "probably because they don't know what it means." In fact, even the "brutal" timeline of the WBGU study, Schellnhuber cautioned, would not guarantee staying within the 2 C target. It would merely give humanity a two out of three chance of doing so -- "worse odds than Russian roulette," he wryly noted. "But it is the best we can do." To have a three out of four chance, countries would have to quit carbon even sooner. Likewise, we could wait another decade or so to halt all greenhouse emissions, but this lowers the odds of hitting the 2 C target to fifty-fifty. "What kind of precautionary principle is that?" Schellnhuber asked.

"I myself was terrified when I saw these numbers," Schellnhuber told me. He urges governments to agree in Copenhagen to launch "a Green Apollo Project." Like John Kennedy's pledge to land a man on the moon in ten years, a global Green Apollo Project would aim to put leading economies on a trajectory of zero carbon emissions within ten years. Combined with carbon trading with low-emissions countries, Schellnhuber says, such a "wartime mobilization" might still save us from the worst impacts of climate change. The alternative is more and more "Oh, shit" moments for all of us.

What I find most troubling about Schellnhuber's report is the reality that this is a threat that isn't going to be met without political will. You and I can't do this on our own. The American people, even if they were so inclined, can't do this on their own either. Only our politicians can mobilize the resources needed for something of this magnitude. In Canada that means Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton - three total duds. If there are many more world leaders of the miserable calibre we've accepted in Canada, well we're all hooped.

Big Business (British) Goes Green

Some of Britain's biggest companies - car makers, airlines, banks and retailers - have joined together, pledging to offer greener products and pursue research into ways to reduce carbon emissions.

The group, which includes British Petroleum, Tesco and British Telephone, intend to set the standard for regular monitoring and reporting of carbon emissions, investing in technology and emission reducing products and promoting greener behaviour by their employees.

The 18-companies involved employ more than two million people worldwide and generate revenues of two trillion dollars annually. The group is to release a report on Monday setting out its plans. It notes that the real responsibility for cutting emissions lies with consumers who, through their purchases, directly influence some 60% of Britain's carbon emissions.