Controlling carbon emissions: the price of failure, implications for land use
July 31st, 2008 by Jim JustLast week saw the public unveiling of the draft design of the Western Climate Initiative (WCI). Our take is that the target for reductions isn’t nearly ambitious enough, it leaves too many sources outside the program, and it’s too generous with offsets. But it’s a start.
It’s important to remember what’s at stake, should we fail to bring atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations under control.
Joseph Romm at Climate Progress relays that in a new report, researchers looked at the case of a (mere) 700 ppm atmospheric concentrations of CO2, the A1b scenario, with total warming of about 3.5°C by century’s end. The key scientific point is that “the extremes rise faster than the means in a warming climate.” And the way things are going, these record temperatures could be seen closer to 2060 than 2100.
Business as usual will result in life-threatening and ecologically devastating temperature increases across the U.S. and around the world.
What are the implications for land use?
We’d better, right now, start adapting to a future characterized by climate change – and depleting oil. First, stop digging. No more big parking lots. No more big highway or bridge projects. No further airport expansions. No more fossil-fuel fired power plants. Then start investing in infrastructure that will make sense in an energy- and climate-constrained future. More villages, both inside and outside of cities. More local production, reducing transportation needs. More and electrified rail, for both freight and passengers. More renewable energy sources to power electrified transportation, such as wind and solar.
We cannot, as our planning program does, continue basing our civic infrastructure on past trends – including continuation of population and economic growth. An assumption of continued population growth underlies our planning program, and continued economic growth is an overriding goal.
As John Michael Greer points out, economic growth is not the same as prosperity, and in fact has little to do with quality of life. A large part of economic growth has consisted of moving activity out of the unmeasured “household” economy into the official and measured market sphere. But just because economic activity is measured doesn’t make it more, or better. We’ve conflated economic growth with prosperity, with devastating consequences as Earth’s limits to growth are approached and exceeded.
We have to purge our thinking – and our planning program – of the false idol of economic growth and replace it with the more sustainable goal of prosperity. We cannot afford to continue business as usual.