CLASS 5:DRIVERS AND CAUSES OF GCC

Capstone: Climate ChangeCofC Spring 2011P. Brian Fisher

Diamond, “The Last Americans”

Thesis: Civilizations prosper and ultimately decline because of environmental conditions

Population, wealth, resource consumption, and waste production reach limits that outstrip resources leading to societal decline

Diamond, Misconceptions about the Environment

1. Must balance the environment against human needs: actually the reverse—we depend on the environment!

2. Can Trust technology to solve problems (GMOs, hydrogen, biofuels, etc) ”all of our current enviro probs are unanticipated harmful consequences of existing technology”

3. Environmentalists are fear-mongering, overreacting extremists—the problems we face are compounded by ignorance and arrogance (lack of history)

Part II

History of Environmental Problems—Globally(McNeil, Something New Under the Sun)

McNeil, Epilogue

“human history since the dawn of agriculture is replete with unsustainable societies, some of which vanished but many of which changed their ways and survived. They changed not to sustainability but to some new and different kind of unsustainability. Perhaps, we can as it were, pile on unsustainable regime upon another indefinitely, making adjustments large and small but avoid collapse…most societies, and all the big ones, sought to maximize their current formidability and wealth at the risk of sacrificing ecological buffers and tomorrow’s resilience.”

McNeil

“with our new powers we banished some historical constraints on health and population, food production, energy use and consumption generally…but in banishing them we invited other constraints in the form of the planet’s capacity to absorb wastes, by-products, and impacts of our actions…Our negotiations with these constraints will shape the future as our struggles against them shaped our past.” (p 362).

Historical Continuum of Global Environmental Governance

1972, Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (differences b/w GS and GN)

1982, UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) (1994)—strongest environ agreement

1992, Earth Summit, UN Conference on Environment and Development World (based on Brundtland Commission or WCED, 1983), Rio Created sustainable development paradigm

2002, Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), Jo’burg Thrust was implementation of Rio

Clashing Backdrop to 1972 Stockholm Convention

Indira Gandhi at Stockholm: “Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters?...How can we speak to those who live in villages and slums about keeping oceans, rivers and air clean when their own lives are contaminated at the source? The environment cannot be improved in conditions of poverty.”

Developed: Surge of environmental concern, primarily within nation

Developing (G77): concern over preserving their sovereignty and control over their resources poverty, lower life expectancies, illiteracy, sanitation, etc

3 Massive Historical Changes

Social Triumph at a Price:

Economic Growth Population Growth Massive Increase in Energy Use (primarily driven by fossil fuels)

Economic Growth

YEAR GDP GDPPer cap

1500 $240b $595

1820 $695b $651

1900 $2t $1263

1950 $5.4t $2138

1992 $28t $5145

Today $69t $10400

Per capita, the world economy has grown 120 fold since 1500; yet, individual (avg) income has grown only 9 fold.

Population GrowthYear Population

1AD150017301820190019501990200020089-11-08Today

200-300m400-500m730m1.6b1b2.5b5.3b6.0b6.7b6.84b6.9b

Energy

2 Costs of Energy Intensification: 1. fossil fuel combustion generates pollution

and GHGs 2. fossil fuel use SHARPLY increased the

inequities in wealth and power globally (McNeil, 15-6)

Global Energy Use in 1800: 250m (metric tons of oil equivalent)

Global Energy Use in 1900: 800mGlobal Energy Use in 2000: 10,000m

3 Marked Results from 20th Century

1. Econ Growth: Exponential increased economic growth & living stnds (because of ↑ pop, ↑ tech)

2. Environmental Harm: Increases in widespread environmental degradation (from burning of fossil fuels for energy consumption & waste)

3. Inequality: Modern expansion, while liberating to many, brought severe inequality

Population & Environment Video

Population and Environment Video (5m)

Downsides to Economic Growth (Bill McKibben) (6+m)

Inequality

The assets of the 200 richest people in 1998 were more than the total annual income of 41% of the world’s people.

The richest one-fifth of the world:

• Consume 45% of all meat and fish, the poorest fifth 5%. • Consume 58% of total energy, the poorest fifth less 4%. • Have 74% of all telephone lines, the poorest fifth 1.5%. • Consume 84% of all paper, the poorest fifth 1.1%. • Own 87% of the world’s vehicles, the poorest fifth less than 1%.

Women work 2/ 3 of the world's working hours, produce 50% of the

world's food, and yet earn only 10% of the world's income and own less than 1% of the world's property.

Global Policy Solutions

Elite powerbrokers/nations erected new politics, ideologies, and institutions predicated on this principle.

Harnessing fossil fuels played a central role in widening gap wealth & power

RESULT: 1. More environmental degradation than any pt in history 2. More inequality between humans than any pt in history 3. More complexity to problems themselves 4. Ideology that technology is part of “progress” that will save day;

abstraction of nature

• Global Policy since 1950 (post WWII) has been an emphasis on:

1. faster economic growth (“rising tide raises all boats”)

2. raising standards of living

Part III

Greed to Green: Solving CC & Remaking the Economy(Charles Derber, 2010)

Chap 8: Econ Meltdown & Regime Change

Introduces new factors for contributing to climate change: Corporations & Capitalism

Corps bound in politics, and public perceptions of business and capitalism

Obama (new regime) focused early on using the financial crisis as a means of shifting to a “green agenda” and greening the economy through the stimulus package.

Consumerism is now the backbone of the US way of life. It seduces the public and generates massive corporate profits at the expense of the environment. It is unsustainable.

Chap 9: Blind Markets Climate change is (in part) generated from global structural capitalism (esp US model)

Derber says to address CC requires systemic change to capitalism and how it operates

Capitalism is blind. The “indivisible hand” is assumed to work for the betterment of society greed or self interest leads to competition, which leads to lower prices and profits for those producing goods. Although true, it has significant drawbacks, namely that it promotes profit over people and the environment

Relies on “externalities”: that is, corporations attempt to displace as much of the negative outputs to someone else—including the commons

Leads to “tragedy of the commons” (exploitation of environmental commons) AND exploitation of people powerless to stop (e.g. third world)

Goal of Capitalism: Monopoly. Leads to elite control, power in the hands of a few. Can undermine democracy.

Ideology: justifies and legitimizes blind consumerism

Fossil fuel intensive lifestyle based on cars, suburban life and hyper-individualistic lives

Accumulation Cycle: to maximize profits, creates a manic “work and spend” cycle that is unsustainable

Chap 9: Keys to Green Markets Shift from short-term profit max to long-term sustainability

Internalize costs (environmental & social)

Smaller and mid size corps (from monopolies)

Sustainable Main Street economy (from Wall Str)

Popular sovereignty (away from corp controlled government)

Preservation of commons (away from indivisible hand)

Living wages for all (to address poverty)

From consumerism to quality of life (emphasis)

From economic growth to sufficiency

Part IV

World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping North’s Future(Laurence Smith, 2010)

Smith, World in 2050

Core argument: “The northern quarter of our planet's latitudes will undergo tremendous transformation over the course of this century, making them a place of increased human activity, higher strategic value, and greater economic importance than today” (p6)

these first chapters identify some critical world pressures that are stimulating the New North into existence (p7)

4 Global Forces Shaping Future (World in 2050) 1. Demography: start with Pop Growth

2. Increase Demand/Pressure on Ecosystems: on natural resources, services and biodiversity

3. Globalization: increasing networking of connections and processes globally

4. Climate Change: human activity is changing the chemical composition of earth’s atmosphere

----------- 5. Technology: exacerbating factor in all four above

Force 1: Demography demography, which essentially means the ups, downs, and

movements of different population groups within the human race

II,80o years ... 130 years ... 30 years ... I5 years ... 12 years ....

Demographic Transition: modernization tends to reduce death and fertility rates, but not simultaneously. Because people tend to readily adopt technological advances in medicine and food production, death rates fall first and quickly. But fertility reductions-which tend to be driven by increased education and empowerment of women, an urban lifestyle, access to contraception, downsized family expectations, and other cultural changes-take more time.

Force 2: Demand on Ecosystems

“growing demand that human desires place upon the natural resources, services, and gene pool of our planet.”

Natural resources: means both finite assets like hydrocarbons, minerals, and fossil groundwater; and renewable assets like rivers, arable land, wildlife, and wood.

Natural services include life essentials like photosynthesis, absorption of carbon dioxide by oceans, and the labors of bees to pollinate our crops.

Gene pool (i.e. biodiversity) diversity of genes being carried around by all living organisms still existing on Earth.

20th C expansion in population, modernization, trade, and technology have escalated demand for all of these.

Fully Four-fifths of the world's land surface (excluding Antarctica) is now directly influenced by human activities

Force 3: Globalization set of economic, social, and technological processes

that are making the world more interconnected and interdependent

Accelerated post WWII (Bretton Woods) “this global force owes its existence to a long history of

entirely purposeful policy decisions, championed especially by the US and Britain, dating to the waning days of World War II”

Profound consequences: accelerated economic growth (based on neoliberal paradigm), environmental degradation, and exacerbated wealth inequality

Force 4: Climate Change

Humans unmistakably altering the atmosphere inducing warming which is affecting human populations

At the height of the last ice age, when Chicago was buried under a mile-deep sheet of ice, global temperatures averaged just 5°C 9°F) cooler than today. Projections suggest 3-7°C warming by 2100

Smith, World in 2050, Ch 2 Focus is on changing dynamics of cities

“For the first time ever, we have more people living in cities than out on the land. For the first time, most of us have no substantive ability to feed or water ourselves. We have become reliant upon technology, trade, and commerce to carry out these most primitive of functions. Sometime in 2008, the human species crossed the threshold toward becoming different animal: an urban creature, geographically divorced from the natural world that still continues to feed and fuel us.” (p30)

Urbanization: The New World The reason that the World's rural people are moving into cities is that they can make more money in town. This is partly because of the described growth of urban economies, and partly because demand for farm labor falls as agriculture commercializes, mechanizes, and becomes export-oriented

This urban shift is driving major demographic changes around the globe. City dwellers are projected to roughly double in number by 2050, rising from 3.3 billion in 2007 to 6-4 billion in 2050. Much will be from Asia/China/Africa

Century of Mega-Cities

Future of Cities

Some modern, clean, powerful, eco-friendly (e.g. Singapore), while others will be vast wastelands of slums (e.g. Lagos)

BRICs: Rise of next superpowers—Brazil, Russia, India and China

Higher median ages for OECD countries: more old people straining econ systems

World in 2050, Ch 3

Resources: Iron, Oil, and Wind

“The modern city survives upon constant resupply from the outer natural world, from faraway fields, forests, mines, streams, and wells. We scour the planet for hydrocarbons and deliver them to power plants to zap electricity over miles of metal wire. We take water from flowing rivers with distant headwaters of snow and ice. Plants and animals are grown someplace else, killed, and delivered for us to eat. Wind, rivers, and tides flush out our filth. Without this constant flow of nature pouring into our cities, we would all have to disperse, or die.” (p52)

Metals Model studies that add this extra step all indicate

serious depletion of in-ground reserves of certain key metals, notably silver, gold, indium, tin, lead, zinc, and possibly copper, by the year 2050

Pressure is also rising on some other exotic metals needed by the electronics and energy industries, notably gallium and germanium for electronics; tellurium for solar power; thorium for next-generation nuclear reactors

we are transitioning toward a world where some industrial metals will become either geologically rare and increasingly recycled, or abandoned altogether in favor of cheaper, man-made substitutes

Oil Even if total world oil production can be increased, if

production cannot keep up with demand, that is still a supply decline. Disturbing 21C scenarios of intense competition for oil

"Of all me resources discussed in this book," writes Klare in Resource wars, "none is more likely to provoke conflict between states in the twenty-first century than oil.”

Also more likely than a giant new find are supply problems with the reserves we have already. There are plenty of geopolitical problems with oil besides the nationalization trend described earlier

Move toward increasing electrification…based on renewables with hope of a next gen technology

Coal & Natural Gas ~ 40% of electricity comes from coal and 20% from natural gas (in contrast,

only 7% of all electricity is generated using oil). US only has 4% of world’s NG

By 2050, coal demand will nearly triple (for 52% of the electricity market). Natural gas demand will double (~ 21% of market)

Drawbacks to NG: Only in a handful of countries (subject to geopolitics) Hard to transport Can lead to contamination of sites and surrounding areas

Coal: plentiful, esp in the US. Over half our electricity comes from coal, and over 80% in China. Expected to grow demand at 3%/year for decades.

Drawbacks to Coal: Dirty—pollutant and GHGs (major environmental damage) China building one per week Clean Coal: is no such thing, although CCS (carbon capture and storage) offers

possibilities CCS: Use chemical scrubbers to capture carbon, compress it to a high-pressure liquid, then

pipe the liquid someplace else to pump deep underground

Biofuels Biggest advantage: a domestic or alternative liquid-fuel source

to oil, and potentially less GHG emissions, depending on how efficiently the biofuel can be produced.

Most common is ethanol made from corn (in the United States), sugarcane (Brazil), and sugar beets (European Union). Can be a supplement to gasoline (flex fuel)

Brazil and US are leaders in the field. Brazil for first time in 2008 bought more ethanol than oil

Drawbacks to biofuels Technology not quite there to make it efficient process Subject to politics as food is required. Corn in US is heavily subsidized Replaces food. May not be scaled up solution for the world Requires land. This displaces ecosystems and habitats

Renewables Wind, Hydro and Solar

Hydro is a mature technology that is at or near capacity

Wind and solar are fastest growing energy sector today

Wind: our global wind power capacity is expected to grow anywhere from tenfold to over fiftyfold by the year 2050, cornering 2%-17% of the world's electricity market.

Solar: tons of potential but cost and scaling up of techn are significant barriers. Also storing electricity is also a challenge growing 30%-40% annually, even faster than wind power.

Depending on the choices we make, world electricity production from solar sources is expected to grow anywhere from fiftyfold to nearly two thousand fold by 2050, cornering some 0%-13% of the world's electricity market

Nuclear Nuclear really isn’t renewable b/c uses uranium.

Currently, produces 15% of world’s electricity

Energy Wildcard: by 2050 8-35% of total energy will be nuclear.

Produces little GHGs (none directly)

US is increasing production of nuclear (building new plants)

Drawbacks to Nuclear Major waste issues (Yucca Mtn) Accidents (3mile Isl and Chernobyl) Uranium extraction (supply—as estimated 50-100yrs left) Politics: American public (and other countries) not sold on nuclear