A World Mad for Coal

There's a big bright future ahead for coal and we'll pay dearly for it.

The International Energy Agency warns that, within five years, coal will rival oil as the fossil fuel energy source of choice.

Coal consumption is increasing all over the world – even in countries and regions with carbon-cutting targets – except the US, where shale gas has displaced coal, shows new research from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The decline of the fuel in the US has helped to cut prices for coal globally, which has made it more attractive, even in Europe where coal use was supposed to be discouraged by the emissions trading scheme.

Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the IEA, said: "Coal's share of the global energy mix continues to grow each year, and if no changes are made to current policies, coal will catch oil within a decade."

Coal is abundant and found in most regions of the world, unlike conventional oil and gas, and can be cheaply extracted. As a result, coal was used to meet nearly half of the rise in demand for energy globally in the past decade. According to the IEA, demand from China and India will drive world coal use in the coming five years, with India on course to overtake the US as the world's second biggest consumer. China is the biggest coal importer, and Indonesia the biggest exporter, having temporarily overtaken Australia.

The IEA report comes atop a study in Nature Climate Change that suggests we still have a chance of staying within the 2C target but that would require shutting down 65% of existing coal-fired power plants within the next 10 to 15 years.   In November the World Resources Institute reported that no fewer than 1,200 new coal-fired power plants are in planning or under development around the world, two thirds of them in India and China.

International Energy Agency Warns World Poised for Hefty Increase in Fossil Fuel Consumption for Next 25-Years

The International Energy Agency has released its latest World Energy Outlook and it paints a pretty grim picture of our future.

The agency sees global energy demand growing by 37 percent and carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels increasing by one-fifth between now and 2040 mostly because of crude oil and coal burning in Asian countries and Africa.

That increase in CO2 emissions will make it extraordinarily difficult to avoid the dangerous consequences from global warming outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its latest assessment, the IEA warns.

Here’s why: Capping a global average temperature increase at 2°C (3.6°F) over pre-industrial times — the internationally agreed-upon point beyond which the effects of climate change have been deemed to become dangerous — requires capping total future global CO2 emissions at 1,000 gigatonnes beginning this year. That’s called the carbon budget, and it’s likely to be used up by 2040, the IEA said.

The IEA says the world’s fossil fuel consumption in the coming decades is leading to an average global warming of 3.6°C, or 6.5°F, making catastrophic sea level rise, polar ice cap loss, water shortages and other severe effects nearly inevitable.

Unless it cuts back its use of fossil fuels right away, China is on track to become the world’s largest oil-consuming nation by the early 2030s, at the same time as U.S. oil consumption is likely to fall. China is also likely to consume half the world’s coal by the middle of the next decade as global coal demand grows 15 percent between today and 2040.

This is the future as Tony Abbott and Stephen Harper see it.  Unless China and the US make serious efforts to slash emissions very soon, and ride roughshod over countries like Canada and Australia to compel them to follow suit, everything else is merely good intentions and we know what paves the road to hell.

The IEA outlook is similar to the OPEC forecast released last week.

Lemmings, We're Really Just Lemmings

The Paris-based International Energy Agency predicts greenhouse gas emissions will increase from current levels a full 57% by 2030. Put simply, the IEA forecast suggests we don't have a remote hope of reaching the GHG emission cuts that even Stephen Harper pretends to want.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has set a target of limiting global warming to no more than 2.4 C. In its most optimistic scenario the IPCC sas COs emissions would have to peak by 2015 at the latest and then decline by somewhere between 50 and 85% by 2050.

The IEA forecast maintains there will be no peak until at least 2020 whereas to meet the IPCC's goal of 450 ppm of CO2 the peak would actually have to be 2012.

The Agency also predicts we won't make the IPCC's target of limiting warming to 2.4 C. The IEA believes we'll hit at least 3C at best. The IEA warns that temperatures could actually climb to 6C if China and India continue their coal-fueled industrial growth. I don't even want to go into what that would mean for most of the world.

And in other global warming news, humpbacks and fin whales are now joining grey whales in migrating in search of food far into the Beaufort Sea, several hundred miles past their normal feeding grounds of the Bering Sea. And Atlantic City's population of three-million is three months away from completely running out of water. Hey, anyone know how many shopping days left to Christmas?

The Only Question Now - Just How Bad Will It Get

The International Energy Agency warns we can kiss goodbye any hopes of limiting greenhouse gas-driven warming to under 2 degrees Celsius.   The energy arm of the OECD says oil demand will grow steadily over the next 25-years essentially dooming climate change goals.

Even under climate change pledges made under the Copenhagen Accord last year, fossil fuels will still account for more than half the increase in total energy demand, with oil to remain the dominant fuel, the IEA said in its World Energy Outlook report.

The broad failure of the Copenhagen summit on the climate would cost the world $1 trillion in extra investments needed by 2030 to avoid irreparable damage to the climate, raising the total investment needed to $11.6 trillion, the IEA estimated.

...The IEA, the energy monitoring and strategy arm of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, concluded that this " rising demand for fossil fuels would continue to drive up energy-related carbon dioxide emissions through the projection period.

"  Such a trend would make it all but impossible to achieve the two degree C goal..."

It's already becoming widely accepted that the November climate change summit in Cancun will be a failure marked by bickering between China and the U.S.   Meanwhile climate change denialists are leading the pack of Republicans that have captured the House of Representatives killing even the pathetically inadequate measures proposed before the elections.

Well, we're all Easter Islanders now.  It's too bad we won't figure out what that really means for our country and our people while we still have time to implement proper adaptation and remediation measures.   Those are steps you have to take before the problems land on your doorstep.

Six Months to Avert Climate Disaster

We've got six months to change course or lose the battle to curb climate catastrophe.

Now, consider the source of that dire warning. That would be the executive director of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Berol.

The world has only six months in which to change the course of the climate crisis and prevent a post-lockdown rebound in greenhouse gas emissions that would overwhelm efforts to stave off climate catastrophe, one of the world’s foremost energy experts has warned.

“The next three years will determine the course of the next 30 years and beyond,” Birol told the Guardian. “If we do not [take action] we will surely see a rebound in emissions. If emissions rebound, it is very difficult to see how they will be brought down in future. This is why we are urging governments to have sustainable recovery packages.”

In a report published on Thursday, the IEA – the world’s gold standard for energy analysis - set out the first global blueprint for a green recovery, focusing on reforms to energy generation and consumption. Wind and solar power should be a top focus, the report advised, alongside energy efficiency improvements to buildings and industries, and the modernisation of electricity grids. 

Creating jobs must be the priority for countries where millions have been thrown into unemployment by the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns. The IEA’s analysis shows that targeting green jobs – such as retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient, putting up solar panels and constructing wind farms – is more effective than pouring money into the high-carbon economy.

[Governments are] still targeting high-carbon investment, Birol warned. He pointed to IEA research showing that by the end of May the amount invested in coal-fired power plants in Asia had accelerated compared with last year. “There are already signs of a rebound [in emissions],” he said.

I know this is going to sting but why is Justin doing his part to help seal our fate? Why is Ottawa still pumping out subsidies to oil producers? Why is the Trudeau government still forging ahead, spending money we don't have, on a new and improved pipeline to carry high-carbon, low value bitumen to foreign markets?

Why the Obama-Xi Emissions Deal is Window Dressing.

The CO2 emissions deal reached this week by the presidents of the US and China is a positive step, no doubt about that.  It's also far too little, much too late, although it's reflective of how inflexible our global society has become even in matters of our very survival.

Even the numbers are squishy.  Obama has pledged that America will reduce CO2 emissions by 25 to 28% from 2005 levels by 2020.  The Chinese pledge is even more obscure.  It commits China to cap its emissions by 2030 and then begin reductions.

What's wrong with this?  Well, for starters, these are political numbers.  Neither commitment is demonstrably tied to a clear objective or purpose.  The numbers can't be shown as relevant in the context of avoiding climate "tipping points" that will trigger natural feedback mechanisms that lead to runaway global warming.

Taking a step toward the "exit" sign when the church hall is afire is a good thing but it'll take a lot more than a step if you're going to have any chance of escaping the flames.

Another troubling aspect of the Obama-Xi deal is the fudging of benchmark dates.  Look at what the Euros are doing.  The EU has pledged 40% reductions from 1990 levels.  1990, not 2005 - big difference.  1990, not 2030.

Slashing emissions is critical.  In its 2011 outlook, the International Energy Agency, warned we had five years to stop building fossil fuel energy plants and get into renewables or "the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be lost forever."  Fast forward three years to the IEA's 2014 outlook.  Echoing an OPEC forecast released last week, the IEA predicts CO2 emissions to increase another 20% between now and 2040.  And the IEA concludes our fossil fuel habit will lock in at least 3.6 degrees Celsius of warming, "making catastrophic sea level rise, polar ice cap loss, water shortages and other severe effects nearly inevitable."

A meaningful emissions reduction programme doesn't begin with a number pulled out of the air.  It begins by identifying the problem.  Then you have to calculate what's needed to solve it before moving on to the practical questions of how you can achieve that.  Tossing out percentages and dates that aren't coherently linked to the problem is simply disingenuous.  Yet perhaps we're really not capable of much more than that today.

We need to focus intently on tipping points.  At the end of the day there's nothing that matters more.  We need a clear idea of the point at which our man-made greenhouse gas emissions trigger natural feedback mechanisms that will drive uncontrollable global warming.  It's a bloody dangerous game, akin to holding a pistol to your head and trying to guess just how far you can squeeze the trigger before you release the firing pin to strike the round in the chamber.  That, however, is the game that we're in.

Why do we approach climate change as a stand-alone problem?  It's not.  In fact, you have to add climate change, in all its permutations, to overpopulation, in all its permutations, to over consumption, in all its permutations.  We need to see climate change, overpopulation and over consumption for what they are - symptoms of a larger, more intractable threat to our survival.

A few months ago I read a paper on food security written by three top Chinese experts.  What struck me was that these experts saw China, by 2030, growing by another 200-million people while per capita GDP soared from $7,000 today to $16,000.  That's an enormous increase in economic activity that will require commensurate increases in fossil fuel consumption, equally large increases in production and even greater increases in emissions, waste and pollution of all descriptions.  China is already the world's biggest single greenhouse gas emitter. Now imagine that more than doubling in under two decades.  Best not to dwell on what's in store for India, Brazil, etc.

Population.  Just a few years ago we projected our global population would peak around 9-billion.  Now we commonly hear 11-billion by 2100, perhaps more.  At the same time, we're growing a huge "consumer class" within that burgeoning population.  We're racing ahead on raw numbers and on per capita consumption. Can you see where this is heading?

Water.  In the minds of some rather bright people we're in a freshwater predicament potentially as perilous to our civilization as climate change.  The reason we were able to grow from under 3-billion at the end of WWII to 7+ billion today, heading for 9+ billion by 2050, has been our access to cheap fossil energy and abundant freshwater.  It took both.  That was the miracle.  Yet in our post-war growth spurt we came to view our water resources quite differently from the past.

In the post-war era we began to mine groundwater rapaciously.  We didn't give a second thought to just how much or how little water actually existed underground.  We just went at it and it produced some amazing results.  India, that had a history of periodic famine, achieved not only full food security but even ventured into the food export markets.  This same phenomenon allowed both India's and China's populations to treble in the post-war era.  Truly amazing.

Now we're in a real water jam.  NASA's Grace satellites have been mapping global surface subsidence which is used to measure the state of our aquifers.  As Maude Barlow has warned for many years, we're running on empty.

The groundwater at some of the world's largest aquifers - in the US High Plains [Ogallala], California's Central Valley, China, India, and elsewhere - is being pumped out "at far greater rates than it can be naturally replenished."

The most worrisome fact: "nearly all of these underlie the world's great agricultural regions and are primarily responsible for their high productivity."

So dependent are we on ever increasing access to a rapidly diminishing resource that a recent US intelligence estimate foresaw water wars looming within a decade: "As water shortages become more acute beyond the next 10 years, water in shared basins will increasingly be used as leverage; the use of water as a weapon or to further terrorist objectives will become more likely beyond 10 years." 

Where are these "water wars" hot spots?  They're all in areas that are already water stressed, that have critical groundwater issues and shared access to equally critical surface water.  Foremost is Asia where Pakistan, India and China have conflicting dependencies on the Himalayan headwaters.  As local groundwater resources falter, the dependency on this surface water worsens.  Did I mention that all three nations have nuclear arsenals?

Next up are the Tigris and Euphrates and the conflicting dependencies of Turkey, Syria and Iraq.  Of the three it's Iraq, as the downstream nation, that is most at risk from water diversion by the upstream neighbours.

Then there's the Nile where Egypt relies on an old colonial-era British pronouncement for its claim to 70% of the river flows.  Egypt's several upstream neighbours don't think much of the British ruling and seek to divert Nile waters for their own purposes.  Egypt responds by regularly threatening to bomb any installations these smaller countries might dare construct.  Yet as dependencies deepen and approach the threshold of survival itself, countries can become destabilized and threats escalate into armed conflict. 

Climate change compounds all this.  One aspect of our warming atmosphere that's most obvious is our broken, hydrological cycle.  Precipitation patterns are badly skewed.  Rather than receiving the relatively steady, moderate rainfalls that were so essential to the expansion of modern agriculture, we're now experiencing cycles of drought and flood that are also more severe, more sustained and more frequent.  That, in turn, increases the demands on the dwindling remnants of global groundwater reserves.

The global water crisis points to a major part of the solution to what truly ails mankind - fairness.  Only equitable approaches can possibly forestall conflict. Nations - all nations - have to share and that includes sacrifice.  When you have a pie cut into four pieces and you suddenly find it has to feed twelve people, you have to cut each of those pieces into three.  The problem is we're not conditioned to do that.  We want others to do the sharing and the sacrifice, just leave us out of it.  That's practically the mantra of the Tea Party.

Equity is deliberately omitted from the Obama-Xi emissions pact.  Nowhere is there any discussion of whether the relatively modest cuts envisioned are "fair" to the rest of the world, especially the poorest and most vulnerable nations of the Third World.

Emissions quotas are about more than cuts.  They're also a way of defining a claim to some share of the atmosphere's remaining greenhouse gas carrying capacity.  We know how much that is with some pretty specific numbers.  Yet just who 'owns' the atmosphere?  Who holds what right to pump what amount of emissions into it?

The issue is fraught with unwelcome implications.  If we explore the nature of the atmosphere it's clearly a "commons."  It belongs to nobody and, hence, to everybody.  That means a nomadic herder on the Sahel has as valid a claim to it as a bitumen worker in Athabasca.  But if we ever recognized that we'd be in a hell of a fix because our way of life is dependent on keeping the lion's share of the remaining emissions carrying capacity.  We need the atmosphere as our own and we need it free of charge.  That the people whose equitable entitlement to it we're rejecting are also those reeling from the worst impacts of our Industrial Revolution emissions and for whom catastrophic climate change is already a reality is merely the icing on the cake - our cake.  Ours first, ours alone.

During the 19th and 20th centuries the major powers wrestled and periodically fought each other over how to divide the world among them.  The French got this, the Germans that, the Spanish and Portuguese bits here and there, the Brits everything else.  It seems to be an approach we're going to stick with on the environment.

It could be argued that the Obama-Xi deal is an exercise along these same lines. Obama has essentially decreed how big will be America's excessive share of the atmospheric commons in the future.  China says it'll let us know what it's after by 2030.  Other countries, our own Canada for example, are playing coy, jockeying for an even larger share.  It's a ploy that will eventually lead to the failure of whatever efforts we take to deal with climate change.

If we can't find an equitable solution to the atmosphere our chances of finding acceptable solutions to global fisheries or water resources or any of the other threats and challenges now looming are significantly diminished.  You simply have almost no hope of solving these problems when you're constrained by the straight jacket of neoliberalism.

Some, such as renowned intellectual John Raulston Saul, see revolution in our future.

“The collapse started in 1973,” Saul continued. “There were a series of sequential collapses afterwards. The fascinating thing is that between 1850 and 1970 we put in place all sorts of mechanisms to stop collapses which we can call liberalism, social democracy orRed Toryism. It was an understanding that we can’t have boom-and-bust cycles. We can’t have poverty-stricken people. We can’t have starvation. The reason today’s collapses are not leading to what happened in the 18th century and the 19th century is because all these safety nets, although under attack, are still in place. But each time we have a collapse we come out of it stripping more of the protection away. At a certain point we will find ourselves back in the pre-protection period. At that point we will get a collapse that will be incredibly dramatic. I have no idea what it will look like. A revolution from the left? A revolution from the right? Is it violence followed by state violence? Is it the collapse of the last meaningful edges of democracy? Is it a sudden decision by a critical mass of people that they are not going to take it anymore?”

It's best not to get too gushy about the Obama-Xi deal for it speaks more to their limitations and shortcomings than it does of any genuine commitment to address our existential threats.

Steve, You've Got Mail. Stop Being Such a G__damned Socialist!

Dear Exalted Ruler, you have mail from the OECD and the IEA.   They want you and other world leaders to cut out the billions of dollars you waste each year on fossil fuel subsidies.  Yes, your Grace, that means the Tar Sands too.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Energy Agency Tuesday urged governments world-wide to cut billions of dollars in fossil-fuel subsidies, arguing the rollbacks would bolster sagging government budgets while cutting wasteful energy use and carbon emissions.
 
A group of 24 industrialized countries now spends $45 billion to $75 billion annually on more than 250 support measures to producers and consumers, according to a report released Tuesday by the OECD.The estimated price tag is even bigger for emerging countries: A group of 37 mostly developing countries studied by the IEA spent $409 billion in 2010 on fossil-fuel-consumption subsidies, according to IEA data.

And by subsidies, your Magesty, we must include all the free freshwater we let Big Oil take.   As you may know, Canada is one of the few places around the world that continues to treat this sort of water as free.   Put a realistic fair market value on that natural treasure and send Big Oil an invoice.

It's high time to stomp out this sort of socialist gladhanding, don't you think Steve?

Think We're Awash in Fossil Fuel Energy? Think Again. Crunch Time May Be Closer Than We Imagine.

The world could hit a global energy crisis possibly as early as 2015 and that's got the Pentagon deeply worried.  The shale oil and gas miracle that, especially in the US, heralded an era of abundant cheap fossil fuel could actually peak by 2018 and then begin a steady decline.

A conference sponsored by a US military official convened experts in Washington DC and London warning that continued dependence on fossil fuels puts the world at risk of an unprecedented energy crunch that could inflame financial crisis and exacerbate dangerous climate change.

The 'Transatlantic Energy Security Dialogue', which took place on 10th December last year, was co-organised by a US Army official, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis, operating in a private capacity, in association with former petroleum geologist Jeremy Leggett, chairman of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Gas.

According to US Army colonel Daniel Davis, a veteran of four tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, and regular contributor to the Armed Forces Journal:

"We put the event together because the prevailing idea that we have a bright future of increasing oil and gas production that can sustain our current way of life indefinitely is based on a selective appraisal of the data. We brought together experts from across the spectrum, and with a wide range of opinions, to have a comprehensive look at all the relevant data. When you only look at certain things, like the very real resurgence of US oil and gas production, the picture looks fine. But when you dig deeper into the data, it becomes clear that this is only part of the picture. And the big picture proves that our current course cannot continue without significant risks."

...Mark C. Lewis, former head of energy research at Deutsche Bank's commodities unit, ..highlighted three interlinked problems facing the global energy system: "very high decline rates" in global production; "soaring" investment requirements "to find new oil"; and since 2005, "falling exports of crude oil globally."

Lewis told participants that the International Energy Agency's (IEA) own "comprehensive" analysis in its World Energy Outlook of the 1,600 fields providing 70% of today's global oil supply, show "an observed decline rate of 6.2%" - double the IEA's stated estimate of future decline rate out to 2035 of about 3%.

The IEA report also shows that despite oil industry investment trebling in real terms since 2000 (an increase of around 200-300%), this has translated into an oil supply increase of just 12%.

...Lewis' presentation was complimented by geoscientist David Hughes, formerly of the Geological Survey of Canada, who cited a wealth of official data demonstrating that shale oil production is likely to peak around 2016-17. Similarly, US shale gas production has sustained a plateau for the last year that is unlikely to retain long-term sustainability due to spectacularly high decline rates, and because the vast majority of production comes from just two or three plays.

The upshot is that continued dependence on fossil fuels is becoming increasingly expensive, with oil prices continuing to rise for the foreseeable future, impinging evermore on global economic growth. At worst, declining global exports point to a risk of an oil crunch that could, in turn, trigger another financial crash.

One signature trait of the Harper government has been its ability to always be asleep at the wheel.  It failed to see the collapse of 2008 barreling down on Canada.  It has chosen to ignore the already serious impacts of climate change hitting our country.  Now we see that it has no national energy policy to insulate the country from a global energy crunch.  Harper doesn't govern, he administers.  He's really just another technocrat in a grey suit. 

The Only Hope Is to Depose the King

And the King is still coal.

The head of the International Energy Agency warns that the drive to renewables and alternative energy has stalled.

"The drive to clean up the world's energy system has stalled," said Maria van der Hoeven, the IEA's executive director, at the launch of the agency's report on clean energy progress.

"Despite much talk by world leaders, and a boom in renewable energy over the past decade, the average unit of energy produced today is basically as dirty as it was 20 years ago."

Global clean energy investment in the first quarter fell to its lowest level in four years, driven by cuts in tax incentives at a time of austerity, according to a separate report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance this week.

The IEA said that coal-fired generation grew by 45% between 2000 and 2010, far outpacing the 25% growth in non-fossil fuel generation over the same period.

Thanks, But I'll Pass

That seems to be the attitude of the world's political leaders today in the face of warnings that our civilization's last best opportunity to avert devastating climate change is slipping through their fingers.  "Thanks but I'll pass."

The dire and blunt warning yesterday from the International Energy Agency that we have until 2015 to reverse our rapacious consumption of fossil fuels or totally forfeit our last chance to keep global warming within the 2C safety zone seems to have fallen on deaf ears in capitals around the world, including Canada's.

Why less than five years?  Because there's a limit to the quantity of carbon dioxide our atmosphere can absorb before we blow straight through that 2C threshold.  By the most optimistic projections, that's 450 parts per million.  Many, like NOAA's James Hansen, contend the safe limit is actually far lower, 350 ppm.  We're already at 390 ppm.

Understand, this is the best-case scenario.  The others are far worse.  The IEA analysis concludes that, the way global fossil fuel consumption is trending and without drastic government action, we're on track for long term temperature increases between 3.5C and 6C.

Using the best-case scenario figures, IEA chief economist Fatih Birol says we've already used up 80% of the maximum carbon budget and we're heading toward 90% by 2015.  At that rate, by 2017 we'll have consumed our planet's safe carbon carrying capacity and mankind's exit door will be closed forever.  And that's the optimistic calculation.

So, what's with the "thanks but I'll pass" attitude of the NDP and LPC?   This is what may be the final warning of an imminent existential threat to the future of our country.  Isn't that serious enough to drive this issue straight to the top of the priority pile of the opposition parties?   Shouldn't this be their prime focus in Parliament?  If not, why not?  Do they have some right to transform future generations of Canadians into Easter Islanders?   This is the greatest challenge, the greatest threat and the greatest opportunity of our lifetime and it is up to the opposition to rise to it when the government will not.   If they don't, they're complicit in Harper's deadly neglect.

Burn Baby, Burn

If America has its way, your grandkids' chances of coping with climate change, already iffy, will be a lot worse. If anything the United States is poised to be the unchallenged bad boy of fossil fuels for the next several decades at least according to the International Energy Agency.

By 2025, the growth in American oil production will equal that achieved by Saudi Arabia at the height of its expansion, and increases in natural gas will surpass those of the former Soviet Union, the agency said in its annual World Energy Outlook. The boom will turn the U.S., still among the biggest oil importers, into a net exporter of fossil fuels.

“The United States will be the undisputed leader of global oil and gas markets for decades to come,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg television. “There’s big growth coming from shale oil, and as such there’ll be a big difference between the U.S. and other producers.”

The agency raised estimates for the amount of shale oil that can be technically recovered by about 30 per cent to 105 billion barrels. Forecasts for shale-oil output in 2025 were bolstered by 34 per cent to 9 million barrels a day.

The U.S. industry “has emerged from its trial-by-fire as a leaner and hungrier version of its former self, remarkably resilient and reacting to any sign of higher prices caused by OPEC’s return to active market management,” the IEA said.

Our High-Carbon Future

Many have imagined the Covid pandemic will usher in  a new era marked by fundamental change.  To some that means a low-carbon world just ticking along on alternative, green energy. The planet-destroying carbon-fuel era is over goes the refrain.

Don't bet on it.

Justin Trudeau, straining under the weight of his new $16-19 billion bitumen pipeline, has reaffirmed his fealty to a high-carbon economy for Canada. But who cares, the future is leaving the oil patch in the dust, right?

Don't bet on it.

The International Energy Agency predicts that the world is just waiting for the pandemic to pass and then we'll be devouring hydrocarbons as never before.

The IEA warns that that use of fossil fuels is likely to rebound when the crisis is over, leading to a spike in CO2. 

One reason is because China and other Asian nations are putting in orders now for a new generation of coal-fired power plants to supply energy in the future. 

“We see a historical decline in emissions, but unless we have the right economic recovery packages, we might see emissions again skyrocket and the decline of this year would be completely wasted," the IEA's executive director Fatih Birol told the BBC. 

“Remember the 2008-2009 crashes. We immediately saw a decline in emissions, but afterwards it rebounded. We must learn from history.”

The Case For Ditching Fossil Fuel Our Leaders Struggle to Ignore

What is most remarkable about Canada's mainstream political parties is their tireless ability to avoid doing anything meaningful about obvious threats to our country. Each does it in its own way. The Conservatives turn their heads. The Conservative-Lites act like a deer caught in the headlights. The Dippers simply whistle past the graveyard. At least that's how they react to the need to decarbonize the Canadian economy and Canadian society. The Conservatives and their political wannabees, the none-too oppositional Loyal Opposition, are in fact avowed Fossil Fuelers or, as TorStar columnist Walkom would politely put it, "on the same page" when it comes to the filthiest energy project on the planet, the Athabasca Tar Sands.

Rather than decoupling from oil, "The Twins" as I'll call them, actually want to lash our future to bitumen. Meanwhile Layton hunkers down in the corner, grinning sheepishly and munching on a stale crust while chanting "no carbon tax, no carbon tax, no carbon tax." This is what passes for leadership in our country and it's damned thin gruel to be sure.

In yesterday's Observer, the British government's chief science advisor (2000-2007), Sir David King, explains why our leaders, the lot of'em, are steering Canada down a dead end road:

Conventional oil production has a limited capacity. Most additional demand must be met by unconventional sources, which are abundant. But the capacity for production depends on the effective management of environmental, social and technical challenges that unconventional sources pose. The current disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is a clear indicator of how these boundaries are being pushed.

The most significant concern is transport; while there are many other ways to provide heat, light and electricity, liquid transportation fuels would be hard to come by if oil supply dried up.

The International Energy Authority (IEA) predicts that over the next 20 years there will be a steady increase in demand for liquid fuels, most of which will come from China and India. It also predicts that the supply of oil from fields that are currently in production will plummet over the same time frame.

There will be additional sources of oil to help fill this gap – from fields that have been found but not yet exploited, from those yet to be found, and from unconventional sources such as Canada's Tar Sands (though this is costly and particularly damaging from the point of view of climate). There is also the possibility of converting natural gas to liquid fuels. However, even adding all these into the mix, the IEA notes that there will still be a significant shortfall between demand and supply.

King warns of a looming, global oil shortage that will provide great wealth for oil producing nations but at the cost of destabilizing poorer states and damaging the economies of even larger, oil dependent countries. By the way, don't think for a minute that Canada's sitting pretty. Yes Athabasca generates wealth but ask yourself for whom? With Alberta's tragi-comedic royalty rates, that wealth doesn't stay in Canada. When oil hits $130 a barrel, you and I will be in the very same position as anyone from a non-producing country. Sir David says that our societies are going to change whether we like it or not:

To achieve this necessary change, we will need every weapon at our disposal. Improving the energy efficiency of our transportation will be crucial – by reducing air friction, improving engines and running smaller, lighter vehicles. Alternative fuels will also be important, moving from petrol to new generations of biofuels, hydrogen fuel cells and electric vehicles.
But we will also need to go beyond the designs of the vehicles and fuels themselves and look at changing urban design, building and improving mass transportation systems and changing the ways that people drive.

This, of course, is independent of the additional, but pressing imperative to reduce carbon emissions and prevent dangerous climate change. Put the two together and the case for change becomes overwhelming.

Something that King understandably doesn't mention but that I've begun to notice in international commentary lately is a not too subtle and growing hostility or resentment of the oil states. It's part envy for the windfall wealth they enjoy and part anger for the fallout that oil wealth spreads through the poorest parts of the world. The impacts of global warming are already setting in and they're bound to worsen significantly in the next two decades. In what light will that cast the petro-powers with their burgeoning wealth reaped from making the world sick? One thing George w. Bush was right about was that it's an addiction and the oil producers, us in particular, are the environmental meth lab that keeps that addiction fed.

"A Risk Any Sane Person Would Seek to Drastically Reduce"

That is the assessment of Lord Stern of the London School of Economics after reviewing the latest International Energy Agency figures on carbon emissions in 2010.  The report shows that the global recession had only a minimal effect on carbon emissions and that 2010 saw a record 30.6 gigatonnes of CO2 emissions, up a full 1.6 Gt over 2009.

The shock rise means the goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius – which scientists say is the threshold for potentially  "dangerous climate change  " – is likely to be just  "a nice Utopia  ", according to Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA.

Professor Lord Stern of the London School of Economics, the author of the influential Stern Report into the economics of climate change for the Treasury in 2006, warned that if the pattern continued, the results would be dire.   "These figures indicate that [emissions] are now close to being back on a 'business as usual' path. According to the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's] projections, such a path ... would mean around a 50% chance of a rise in global average temperature of more than 4C by 2100  ," he said.

"Such warming would disrupt the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people across the planet, leading to widespread mass migration and conflict. That is a risk any sane person would seek to drastically reduce ."

• About 80% of the power stations likely to be in use in 2020 are either already built or under construction, the IEA found. Most of these are fossil fuel power stations unlikely to be taken out of service early, so they will continue to pour out carbon – possibly into the mid-century. The emissions from these stations amount to about 11.2Gt, out of a total of 13.7Gt from the electricity sector. These "locked-in" emissions mean savings must be found elsewhere.

"It means the room for manoeuvre is shrinking," warned Birol.

• Another factor that suggests emissions will continue their climb is the crisis in the nuclear power industry. Following the tsunami damage at Fukushima, Japan and Germany have called a halt to their reactor programmes, and other countries are reconsidering nuclear power.

"People may not like nuclear, but it is one of the major technologies for generating electricity without carbon dioxide ," said Birol. The gap left by scaling back the world's nuclear ambitions is unlikely to be filled entirely by renewable energy, meaning an increased reliance on fossil fuels.

• Added to that, the United Nations-led negotiations on a new global treaty on climate change have stalled.  "The significance of climate change in international policy debates is much less pronounced than it was a few years ago ," said Birol.

The German government has announced it will abandon nuclear power generation completely by 2022.  It will be interesting to see just how Germany will make good the nuclear power deficiency.  If any country can muster the political will to launch a major renewables programme, it's probably Germany.  However Germany remains committed to coal power generation on the promise of carbon capture and sequestration technology as a solution to emissions problems.

How the Liberals and the Conservatives Jumped Into the Bag for the Fossil Energy Giants

They'll feed you no end of horseshit about how fossil fuels are critical to the Canadian economy. They don't want to tell you why they never have much, if anything, to show for it. They prefer not to dwell on why they collect minuscule royalties a fraction of what other nations demand. It's absolutely off-limits to delve into the hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities for cleaning up the West's Tar Sands, tailing ponds and orphan wells.

Leaving bitumen out of the equation entirely, Alberta has shipped more conventional oil than even Norway. Yet Norway has translated their oil bounty into the world's largest sovereign wealth fund. Alberta, by contrast, bounces like a pinball between prosperity and poverty. It doesn't make any difference how much they gross, they can't hold onto it. They simply can't handle money.

When Justin Trudeau talks oil, it's horseshit. When Andrew Scheer or Jason Kenney or Scott Moe talk oil, it's horseshit. All of them are in the bag for the fossil energy industry.

The Guardian's George Monbiot explores how the world's filthiest industries managed to corrupt politics.

The tragedy of our times is that the gathering collapse of our life support systems has coincided with the age of public disservice. Just as we need to rise above self-interest and short-termism, governments around the world now represent the meanest and dirtiest of special interests. In the United Kingdom, the US, Brazil, Australia and many other nations, pollutocrats rule. 

The Earth’s systems are breaking down at astonishing speed. Wildfires roar across Siberia and Alaska – biting, in many places, deep into peat soils, releasing plumes of carbon dioxide and methane that cause more global heating. In July alone, Arctic wildfires are reckoned to have released as much carbon into the atmosphere as Austria does in a year: already the vicious twister of climate feedbacks has begun to turn.
Torrents of meltwater pour from the Greenland ice cap, sweltering under a 15C temperature anomaly. Daily ice losses on this scale are 50 years ahead of schedule: they were forecast in the climate models for 2070. A paper in Geophysical Research Letters reveals that the thawing of permafrost in the Canadian High Arctic now exceeds the depths of melting projected by scientists for 2090.

...A recent paper in Nature shows that we have little hope of preventing more than 1.5C of global heating unless we retire existing fossil fuel infrastructure. Even if no new gas or coal power plants, roads and airports are built, the carbon emissions from current installations are likely to push us past this threshold. Only by retiring some of this infrastructure before the end of its natural life could we secure a 50% chance of remaining within the temperature limit agreed in Paris in 2015. Yet, far from decommissioning this Earth-killing machine, almost everywhere governments and industry stoke its fires. 

The oil and gas industry intends to spend $4.9tn over the next 10 years, exploring and developing new reserves, none of which we can afford to burn. According to the IMF, every year governments subsidise fossil fuels to the tune of $5tn – many times more than they spend on addressing our existential predicament. The US spends 10 times more on these mad subsidies than on its federal education budget. Last year, the world burned more fossil fuels than ever before.

The Trudeau government admits to subsidizing fossil energy producers to the tune of a couple of billion a year.  The International Monetary Fund pegs the real value of those subsidies at $46 billion every year.  The IMF is accurate and honest. The Trudeau government is peddling horseshit.

As for Monbiot's comments about retiring fossil fuel assets (beginning with the dirtiest of them all - thermal coal and bitumen), that's not happening.  Recent projections by the International Energy Agency, OPEC and academics at the University of Calgary all conclude that the fossil fuel industry is looking at a rosy future into 2040 and beyond.

In 2011, the IEA gave this grim warning.

The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure. 

Anything built from now on that produces carbon will do so for decades, and this "lock-in" effect will be the single factor most likely to produce irreversible climate change, the world's foremost authority on energy economics has found. If this is not rapidly changed within the next five years, the results are likely to be disastrous.

OPEC added this in 2018.

Opec expects global oil demand to reach nearly 112m barrels per day by 2040, driven by transportation and petrochemicals. That is up from almost 100m today and higher than last year’s projection.

Coal will continue to be be burned in record amounts, despite concerns about its impact on climate change. Opec estimates that coal usage in the OECD countries will plummet by a third by 2040, but it will increase by 20% in developing countries to reach five times the volumes burned in the west.

In its 2018 World Energy Outlook, the IEA added this.

In the New Policies Scenario, global energy needs rise more slowly than in the past but still expand by 30% between today and 2040, the equivalent of adding another China and India to today’s global demand. A global economy growing at an average rate of 3.4% per year, a population that expands from 7.4 billion today to more than 9 billion in 2040, and a process of urbanisation that adds a city the size of Shanghai to the world’s urban population every four months are key forces that underpin our projections.

George Monbiot continues:

An analysis by Barry Saxifrage in Canada’s National Observer shows that half the fossil fuels ever used by humans have been burned since 1990. While renewable and nuclear power supplies have also risen in this period, the gap between the production of fossil fuels and low-carbon energy has not been narrowing, but steadily widening. What counts, in seeking to prevent runaway global heating, is not the good things we start to do, but the bad things we cease to do. Shutting down fossil infrastructure requires government intervention.

But in many nations, governments intervene not to protect humanity from the existential threat of fossil fuels, but to protect the fossil fuel industry from the existential threat of public protest.

It was Trudeau's own minister, Carr, who suggested the Liberal government was ready to call out the army to deal with concerned British Columbians who might obstruct development of the Justin Trudeau Memorial Bitumen Pipeline.

Because the dirtiest industries attract the least public support, they have the greatest incentive to spend money on politics, to get the results they want and we don’t. They fund political parties, lobby groups and thinktanks, fake grassroots organisations and dark ads on social media. As a result, politics comes to be dominated by the dirtiest industries.

We are told to fear the “extremists” who protest against ecocide and challenge dirty industry and the dirty governments it buys. But the extremists we should fear are those who hold office.

It couldn't be more obvious. We're at a crossroads, perhaps our final crossing. We are supposed to be going left, slashing emissions, instituting the "induced implosion" of the fossil energy industry as Schellnhuber cautioned in Paris in 2015. Instead our leaders have chosen to turn right, ramping up production and distribution of ever more fossil energy, including the dirtiest varieties - coal and bitumen.

If they won't even shut down the worst fossil fuels, the highest carbon, lowest value, garbage stuff - by which I mean bitumen and thermal coal - then they're in the bag. And, yes, your government is in the bag. It isn't even thinking of intervening to stop this climate-wrecking madness. That pipeline isn't going to pay for itself. Their goal is to ramp up bitumen production and to flood world markets with this low-value, high-carbon garbage. What does that say except "let'er rip" and "burn baby, burn"?

They're at war with life on Earth. They're at war with humanity. Ultimately they're at war with us - you and me. And, right now, they're winning.

Gun, Check. Point at Head, Check. Squeeze the Trigger?

Think we're on the cusp of a "clean energy revolution" that will sweep the world and rescue our grandkids from environmental catastrophe?  Think again.

A report from the Our World 2.0 project of the United Nations University warns that coal, that accounts for almost half of energy-sector greenhouse gas emissions and was thought to be on the way out, is actually staging a comeback and faces a bright future.

the world is using coal for energy generation like never before, and projections are for consumption to grow by at least a third by 2040, possibly by a half if the worst case scenarios are fulfilled.

The US Federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) has just released its comprehensive International Energy Outlook 2013.
The EIA says world energy consumption is likely to grow by more than 50 percent over the period 2010 to 2040, with fossil fuels supplying 80 percent of the total, despite a growth in renewables and nuclear power.

It sees coal as remaining dominant in the electricity generation sector: global consumption will rise by 1.3 percent a year  — from 147 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) of energy in 2010 to 180 quadrillion Btu in 2020 to 220 quadrillion Btu in 2040.

While much of that growth will come from the rapidly growing economies of China and India, coal consumption is at present rising rapidly in other parts of the world.

The shale gas boom in the US means record amounts of relatively cheap US coal are now available for export. The EIA says US coal exports were more than 115 million tons in 2012, more than double the 2009 figure.

It all makes grim reading for those hoping to limit CO2 emissions and prevent runaway global warming. Even in the US — where much has been made of the switch away from coal to less carbon-intensive gas — coal is making a comeback.

With coal prices falling and natural gas prices rising, the EIA says coal’s share of US power generation in the first four months of 2013 averaged 39.5 percent, compared with 35.4 percent in the same period last year.

US greenhouse gas emissions have been falling over the past four years: watch out for a rise this year.

Over at TomDispatch, meanwhile, Michael Klare describes how we're giving renewable energy a pass and embarking on the Third Carbon Era, the era of unconventional fossil fuels. 

The energy industry is not investing in any significant way in renewables.  Instead, it is pouring its historic profits into new fossil-fuel projects, mainly involving the exploitation of what are called “unconventional” oil and gas reserves.

The result is indisputable: humanity is not entering a period that will be dominated by renewables.  Instead, it is pioneering the third great carbon era, the Age of Unconventional Oil and Gas.

That we are embarking on a new carbon era is increasingly evident and should unnerve us all. Hydro-fracking -- the use of high-pressure water columns to shatter underground shale formations and liberate the oil and natural gas supplies trapped within them -- is being undertaken in ever more regions of the United States and in a growing number of foreign countries.  In the meantime, the exploitation of carbon-dirty heavy oil and tar sands formations is accelerating in Canada, Venezuela, and elsewhere.

It’s true that ever more wind farms and solar arrays are being built, but here’s the kicker: investment in unconventional fossil-fuel extraction and distribution is now expected to outpace spending on renewables by a ratio of at least three-to-one in the decades ahead.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), an inter-governmental research organization based in Paris, cumulative worldwide investment in new fossil-fuel extraction and processing will total an estimated $22.87 trillion between 2012 and 2035, while investment in renewables, hydropower, and nuclear energy will amount to only $7.32 trillion. In these years, investment in oil alone, at an estimated $10.32 trillion, is expected to exceed spending on wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels, hydro, nuclear, and every other form of renewable energy combined.

As we continue the transition from conventional to unconventional fossil fuels, a few more home truths that we've been ignoring will become inescapable.

In certain ways, unconventional hydrocarbons are akin to conventional fuels.  Both are largely composed of hydrogen and carbon, and can be burned to produce heat and energy.  But in time the differences between them will make an ever-greater difference to us. Unconventional fuels -- especially heavy oils and tar sands -- tend to possess a higher proportion of carbon to hydrogen than conventional oil, and so release more carbon dioxide when burned.  Arctic and deep-offshore oil require more energy to extract, and so produce higher carbon emissions in their very production.

“Many new breeds of petroleum fuels are nothing like conventional oil,” Deborah Gordon, a specialist on the topic at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in 2012.  

“Unconventional oils tend to be heavy, complex, carbon laden, and locked up deep in the earth, tightly trapped between or bound to sand, tar, and rock.”

By far the most worrisome consequence of the distinctive nature of unconventional fuels is their extreme impact on the environment.  Because they are often characterized by higher ratios of carbon to hydrogen, and generally require more energy to extract and be converted into usable materials, they produce more carbon dioxide emissions per unit of energy released.  In addition, the process that produces shale gas, hailed as a “clean” fossil fuel, is believed by many scientists to cause widespread releases of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.

All of this means that, as the consumption of fossil fuels grows, increasing, not decreasing, amounts of CO2 and methane will be released into the atmosphere and, instead of slowing, global warming will speed up.

And here’s another problem associated with the third carbon age: the production of unconventional oil and gas turns out to require vast amounts of water -- for fracking operations, to extract tar sands and extra-heavy oil, and to facilitate the transport and refining of such fuels.  This is producing a growing threat of water contamination, especially in areas of intense fracking and tar sands production, along with competition over access to water supplies among drillers, farmers, municipal water authorities, and others.  As climate change intensifies, drought will become the norm in many areas and so this competition will only grow fiercer.

So, as always, money talks and in the case of high-carbon fossil fuels it's talking loud and clear to anyone who will listen.  It's a message of warning as much as anything if only we will heed it.    Left to their own devices, the energy industry and major markets will drag us through the comeback of coal and full scale exploitation of  unconventional oil and gas

Stopping this in time will be a challenge in a "top down" world in which political and economic power is becoming increasingly concentrated and fused, manifested in (among other things) the steadily widening gap between rich and poor.   In a top down world the welfare of those most vulnerable to the impacts that our Third Carbon Era will wreak is greatly discounted by the dominant class.

To many of us, Stephen Harper's obsession with maximizing production and export of Athabasca bitumen can seem like madness.  That's only because you're not seeing it from Steve's, top down perspective.  Steve is merely following his corporatist instincts which are, of necessity, narrow and short-term.  When you begin with a business outlook, maximum exploitation of the Tar Sands is nothing but rational.

It seems that the real battle we're facing isn't so much a war with the fossil fuel industry but a struggle to rehabilitate democracy, to restore a healthy and effective degree of progressivism - the very thing that's been steadily laundered out of our politics. 

Progressivism is the counterfoil to corporatism.  It is the key to restoring democracy as a bottom-up process that promotes the public interest instead of a top-down process that leads to the capture of political power and its merger with economic power, that is to say corporatism, the forerunner of fascism.

So far we haven't had a political leader prepared to promise to break the yoke of corporatism on Canada's politics.  Trudeau, Mulcair, makes no difference.  Neither of them has the courage to speak out against what ails our democracy and to speak for what we need to heal it - progressivism.  If you need proof of how far to the corporate right both of those characters really are, you need to recalibrate your political compass and the quickest way to do that is to read Theodore Roosevelt's "Square Deal" speech from 1910.

Icarus, Meet Boeing

The global aviation industry is now responsible for emitting more greenhouse gases than the total emissions of 135 nations combined.

The National Observer has an eye-opening report on the "spectacular expansion" of jet fuel consumption in our hyper-connected world.

The burning of jet fuel is increasing by an additional 44 million litres every day — an additional 16,000 million extra litres each year. That's like burning 1,000 tanker trucks more than the day before. And then 1,000 more than that the next day … ad nauseum. 

The International Energy Agency (IEA) credits the "spectacular expansion" of jet fuel burning, along with increasing plastic production, for fuelling the vigorous rise in global oil demand. 

At current rates, the aviation industry will soon be dumping a billion tonnes of CO2 per year into our atmosphere. That exceeds the combined emissions of 135 nations … for everything. 

...the industry isn't planning to stop at a billion tonnes. They are spending trillions of dollars to buy more jetliners, expand airports and build the fossil fuel infrastructure that will push their climate pollution to ever more dizzying heights.

...
On top of that, the best climate science indicates that burning jet fuel in the upper atmosphere creates additional warming from other greenhouse gases and contrail cloudiness. While less well quantified, the full climate impact is estimated to be between 1.5 times CO2 at the low end, and five times CO2 at the high end.

...
Aviation's soaring climate pollution carries another large, though little appreciated, climate risk: the industry produces very little value from each tonne of CO2 it emits. The economists' term is "high carbon intensity," while a more colloquial term is dirty dollars.

The industry's own GDP and CO2 numbers show they emit around 1,200 grams of CO2 per dollar of GDP they produce. For context, China's coal-choked economy emits only a third as much CO2 per dollar. 

The aviation industry says: "If aviation were a country, it would rank 20th in size by GDP (similar to Switzerland)." What they don't mention, but the chart shows clearly, is that the industry dumps 15 times more climate pollution than Switzerland to get there. 

However you slice it, there is growing risk — to industry, investors and humanity — from driving such a breakneck expansion of a "three-times-dirtier-than-China" industry into the teeth of the gathering climate storm.

The author contends the only viable solution is the "peak flight" option by which the number of flights/passenger miles would be frozen at today's levels. Then new technologies should be enough to gradually reduce overall GHG emissions. The downside is that we would land into an allocation quandry - rationing. Who gets to fly, who stays grounded? Do we all get one flight per year, two flights per year, perhaps one flight every two years? If we're to avert calamity the friendly skies may become somewhat less welcoming.

Don't worry, it'll never happen. Why not? Because it would be a forum for equitable allocation. Climate change and equitable considerations are not welcome at places like Davos or on Capitol Hill. That could open a hornet's nest of claims pertaining to carbon budgets, etc. The plebs might want their fair/fare share of the action and we cannot be having that, can we?

Is It Time to Nationalize Fossil Fuels?

There are times when governments must intercede to protect their citizens against significant threats and dangers.

Fossil fuels present a significant threat and danger to life of all forms around the world.

We know if we are to have any reasonable prospect of limiting global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, about 80 per cent,  perhaps even more, of known fossil fuel reserves must be left in the ground, untouched.  Forget about what might lie beneath the Arctic seabed or in other unexplored spots.

When known reserves exceed what we may safely burn on a 5:1 ratio, we're staring at a Carbon Bubble of truly giant proportions.  It's a "bubble" because those reserves are carried on fossil fuel company books at a notional market value that is heavily inflated.  The value of a coal seam that cannot be mined is about zero.  The value of a bitumen reserve that cannot be excavated is, likewise, zero.  Yet on stock markets around the world the Big Fossil companies that own these reserves are trading at share prices that bear no resemblance to their true "bubble" value.  There are trillions of dollars of fictitious wealth bouncing around our stock markets that are capable of inflicting massive economic disruption.

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, knows there's a dangerous Carbon Bubble loose on the markets.  He admits it.  He said it.   And his voice is just one of many sounding the alarum.

Big Fossil, however, will have none of it.  Big Fossil, and the governments that feed off them, are in for the long haul.  They dismiss the entire notion of a Carbon Bubble and assure their shareholders that people will be burning their products forever.  They're backed up by the latest assessment of the International Energy Agency.  The IEA warning is dire.

Curiously, Big Fossil never says that we can plunder their reserves and still live. No, they don't seriously dispute the idea that consuming their wares will pretty much doom most of mankind to extinction.

So, it's sort of like some outfit building a fireworks plant next door and hiring chronic smokers for their workforce.  You got a problem.  An urgent problem.

Now, if you're the government this puts you in a spot.  You have to pick a side. You can either side with Big Fossil and say that those scientists, the lot of them, don't know what they're talking about and it's "Drill Baby, Drill - Burn Baby, Burn" or those scientists do know what they're talking about and we have to intervene to do what no energy company board of directors could consider doing - leaving their reserves in the ground.

There are, I suppose, plenty of ways to skin this cat.  Governments could declare that a carbon bubble genuinely exists.  They could decree that no more than 20 per cent of existing, known reserves can be extracted and consumed.  They could fix a target date for decarbonizing our societies and economies.  They could rescind subsidies to fossil energy producers and, instead, use those billions to accelerate renewable energy development and production.  As a last resort, governments could nationalize Big Fossil and wind it down.

These options all sound radical and they are but only until you remember the alternative - the fireworks factory next door.  In that context they're not nearly as radical as they might have first appeared.

We have to put Big Fossil out of business.  They won't do it themselves, they can't.  The directors and executives of a company are duty bound to maximize shareholder value and return.  They are not permitted to take their foot off the gas and hit the brakes.  That's simply not their job and so we have to do it for them.

Yes, such a move will cause considerable market upheaval but that will be momentary and minuscule in comparison to what will befall civilization if we do not act.

This is a protection issue, the very future of civilization at stake.  That puts it right up there with threats such as total war and nuclear winter only, on this one, we haven't got another half century to work our way through the madness.

Update:

While you're pondering the scary notion of shutting down Big Fossil, consider this.  A new study finds that, in the US, renewable energy is now fully cost competitive with fossil fuels.  Eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and use those billions to stimulate demand for wind and solar and it should be quite feasible to make the transition.

It's a Tall Order

It's called 'living within your means.' What parent doesn't teach that lesson to his/her children. Part of giving kids an allowance is to help them learn how to control their money.

How did we, as a species, humankind, come to believe we didn't have to live within our means?

How did we figure we didn't have to live within the finite limits of our planet, our one and only biosphere, Spaceship Earth?

For that's what our planet is to our species and our global civilization, a spaceship hurtling through the cosmos at incomprehensible speed.  Beyond it there is no life for us, at least not yet. Unless and until we reach another inhabitable spaceship, we'll have to make do with the one we're in now, Earth.

How we have abused Spaceship Earth and we managed to do it in the span of just two centuries. The place has been around for billions of years but, since the Industrial Revolution, we've been at it like a massive horde of Vandals.


Over-Population

Before the Industrial Revolution humankind numbered in the low to mid-600 millions. Today we're past 7.6 billion (if you knock off 7 billion, we would be back where we were pre-Industrial Revolution). In 2030, the year by which we're supposed to have cut overall greenhouse gas emissions, we're expected to hit 8.2 to 8.3 billion. 2050, barring some enormously murderous event, look for upwards of 9.4 billion.

The Rosy Future of the Carbon Economy

While we're supposed to be putting out the global dumpster fire, a.k.a. the carbon-economy, those in the fossil fuel business such as OPEC and the IEA, see fossil fuels, including coal, burgeoning at least as far out as 2040. Their projected increase, about another 30%. They say it will be the equivalent of adding another China plus another India of fossil fuel consumption. Not sure how that's going to affect our ability to cut global GHG emissions 45% in a breathtakingly brief 12 years.


Carbon Taxes and Fossil Fuel Subsidies

We can stop this madness, say some, with carbon taxes. Hey, we've got a prime minister who wants to do that very same thing. There's a snag. There's always a snag. Given where we are today, not where we were in the 80s, those who know how to run the numbers on this have identified an effective carbon tax, one that might really make a difference. They have a range. It begins at a low of $200 per ton of CO2 all the way up to $600 a ton.

Our guy wants $20 per ton up to a max of $50. And, while that's going on he's still going to keep up those direct and indirect subsidies to Canada's oil and bitumen barons. The IMF has our generosity to  Big Carbon pegged at upwards of $34 billion each year "in direct support and uncollected tax on externalized costs."  (the latest IMF estimate is considerably higher but I chose to go with the lower number)

As far as carbon taxing being some one-size-fits-all solution, the Conference Board of Canada's 2017 report, The Cost of a Cleaner Future, poured a bucket of ice-cold water on the carbon tax solution.

The report, The Cost of a Cleaner Future, examines the impacts of carbon pricing and of the investments required to help Canada achieve significant emission reductions. It finds that even if carbon taxes were to reach $200 per tonne by 2025, this would only result in a 1.5 per cent reduction in GHG emissions outside of the power generation sector.

Then we reach the other conundrum. For a carbon tax to be relevant, it has to be global in application. Canadians are high-footprint GHG emitters but we're also just 36-million people out of 7.6 billion who share this Earth. How do you carbon tax the world when so many governments are hopelessly corrupt, so many nations failed states and so many fellow humans live in desperate poverty? Son of a bitch, I never thought of that until just now.


Petcoke-Laden Bitumen and Offshoring Emissions

Then we have another layer of hypocrisy. We focus on domestic emissions but, like Pilate, wash our hands of any responsibility for flooding world markets with toxic, filthy, high-carbon, petcoke laden bitumen. The carbon crimes that other nations may commit with that is no concern of ours. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has a 'hear no evil/see no evil/speak no evil' position on the petcoke they flog abroad. Deny everything. Hey, this is Canada, it works.

We could refine Athabasca's crud on site, in Alberta, and put that petcoke safely back in the ground where it can do no harm but, again, hey, this is Canada and we are a petro-state.


In Other News

We've taken a look at Spaceship Earth, the source of all life as we know it, in the context of over-population and our lethal carbon economy. There's one more major threat to consider, our rapacious over-consumption of Earth's resources.

We broke a major taboo around 1973 when, for the first time, mankind, then all 3 billion of us, consumed resources beyond Earth's ecological carrying capacity. We came to exceed the planet's ability to replenish these essential resources. We went after the Earth's reserves. We entered a state called 'overshoot.' The simple graph below illustrates how overshoot works. The red line represents our consumption. The dotted black line is Earth's ecological carrying capacity. The graph illustrates that, as overshoot worsens, the planet's carrying capacity degrades. Even as our demand goes up and up, the planet's ability to provide resources goes down and down and down. I won't go into detailed explanations of what occurs when the red consumption line passes its zenith except to point out how dramatically it plummets.

But how can this possibly be? Few of us have paid much attention to it but mankind has been going to town. It's called the 'Great Acceleration.' If you click on that link you will find no end of charts on where humanity has gone, especially since 1950, on everything from population to fertilizer consumption, GDP to energy use, CO2, methane emissions, and ocean acidification. The 1950 mark depicts how far mankind had come in 12,000 years of human civilization. The rest shows how much further we advanced in just the following 60 years. You'll see that the trend lines go sharply up until today they're almost vertical. We are reaching our zenith.

A recent study found that our planet's carrying capacity has already degraded to the point where it can support a maximum of two billion humans. And yet we think we're headed for nine billion.

We're now consuming the Earth's resources at more than 1.7 times the carrying capacity or replenishment rate. We've been raiding the reserves to pull this off. Those reserves are vanishing. The Earth is succumbing to exhaustion. It is visible to the naked eye from the International Space Station where astronauts can gaze down and see dried up lakes, rivers that no longer run to the sea, forests that have succumbed to logging or massive pest infestations, once fertile soil now reduced to sand that rises in great clouds over China and crosses the Pacific Ocean to reach North America, coastal dead zones and algae blooms that clog our rivers and lakes. And that's just some of the stuff you can see with the naked eye from space.


They're All Connected

We have to solve as best we can each of these threats if we're to have any prospect of solving any of them. Why must we deal with them all? The simple answer - chaos.

Focus on one - climate change is the flavour of the month - and the other two will defeat your best efforts. Even though different regions are impacted in ways and degrees not experienced in more fortunate countries and areas these are global threats that can only be addressed globally.

If Canada was to somehow decarbonize at the stroke of midnight tonight, what difference would it make in the global scheme of things. Not much, really. If the rest of the world or a significant fraction of it descends into chaos from famine, the collapse of freshwater resources, severe weather events of increasing frequency, intensity and duration, these nations and their peoples will not be able to contribute to the solutions. Those countries and regions will become destabilized and a threat to everyone else whether that takes the form of epidemics, war, terrorism even nuclear proliferation.

As Gwynne Dyer puts it, no tribe, no matter how peaceful, will allow its children to starve before it raids its neighbour.


The Tall Order

There are common threads that run through all these dilemmas and from those threads emerges the Tall Order.

The goal is to get back inside Spaceship Earth, the biosphere, the only place where life can be sustained. We're outside now. We're exposed and it's extremely precarious and worsening with each passing year.

The challenge is to find ways in which humanity can again live in harmony with Earth's environment, the biosphere. That is going to mean living within the planet's carrying capacity. We have far too many people. Our per capita carbon footprint is far too large. Our per capita consumption levels are massively beyond what the Earth can provide.

There are several ways these challenges can be met and a few by which they will be met in ways we'll deeply regret if we ignore the options that still remain open to us. Either we embrace the reality of our situation or it will extinguish us.

What'll it be? Your call.