ONE TOWN SQUARE: at the intersection of peak oil, climate change, and land use

This passage on the Peak Oil News site conveys the powerful message that the myth of growth has proven a failure:

Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth. For the last five decades the pursuit of growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world. The global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate the economy will be 80 times that size by the year 2100.

This extraordinary ramping up of global economic activity has no historical precedent. It’s totally at odds with our scientific knowledge of the finite resource base and the fragile ecology on which we depend for survival. And it has already been accompanied by the degradation of an estimated 60% of the world’s ecosystems.

For the most part, we avoid the stark reality of these numbers. The default assumption is that – financial crises aside – growth will continue indefinitely. Not just for the poorest countries, where a better quality of life is undeniably needed, but even for the richest nations where the cornucopia of material wealth adds little to happiness and is beginning to threaten the foundations of our well-being.

The reasons for this collective blindness are easy enough to find. The modern economy is structurally reliant on economic growth for its stability. When growth falters – as it has done recently – politicians panic. Businesses struggle to survive. People lose their jobs and sometimes their homes. A spiral of recession looms. Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries.

But question it we must. The myth of growth has failed us. It has failed the two billion people who still live on less than $2 a day. It has failed the fragile ecological systems on which we depend for survival. It has failed, spectacularly, in its own terms, to provide economic stability and secure people’s livelihoods.

This passage is attributed to the report Prosperity Without Growth, recently released by the U.K. Sustainable Development Commission – the government’s “independent watchdog on sustainable development.” The mystery is, I can’t find anything like it anywhere – in the report itself, in the summary, in any press releases, in any interviews with the report’s author. WTF?

Oops – there it is, right in the Forward.

In effect, underdeveloped countries such as Bolivia are paying dearly for the massive energy consumption of the United States and the industrialized world. The so-called “carbon footprint” of the average Bolivian peasant is negligible, yet Bolivia’s poor are not only among the first to feel the harsh effects of climate change, but also are sorely lacking the resources to adapt to it.

That’s the indictment Carolyn Kormann lays out in her article at Environment 360, Retreat of Andean Glaciers Foretells Global Water Woes.

The great Andean ice caps are swiftly vanishing. Global warming will cause many of the Andes’ tropical glaciers to disappear within 20 years, not only threatening the water supplies of 77 million people in the region, but also reducing hydropower production, which accounts for roughly half of the electricity generated in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador.

Agriculture in the region relies on irrigation during the annual five-month dry season. Water is stored in the Andean glaciers, which melt throughout the year and so provide water throughout the year. No glaciers, no storage, no water for farmers or city dwellers.

On the opposite side of the world, two billion people rely on meltwater from the Himalayas. Himalayan glaciers are the main source of water for five major river systems – the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, and the Yellow – whose flow irrigates and supplies drinking water to China, India, and Pakistan. Himalayan glaciers have lost 21% of their glacial mass since 1962. The Himalayas’ smaller glaciers will be gone by 2035 and many large ones will disappear by century’s end.

In an earlier post I observed that the G20 summit ended without tackling the world’s underlying problems. Others whom I respect greatly are now starting to weigh in with similar observations.

Kjell Aleklett writes, there’s Not enough oil for the G20 package. If the stimulus package that the G20 group decided on is to achieve its stated objective and return us to the growth path we’ve come to expect, then we will need an increase of 8 to 9 million barrels per day during the next 5 years. Such an increase is not possible. He says what the G20 group should be discussing is the investments required to transform the energy system to renewables.

George Monbiot writes the G20 forgot the environment. Climate breakdown, peak oil and resource depletion all dwarf the financial crisis in financial and humanitarian terms.

Monbiot sums up the G20 communiqué:

We, the Leaders of the Group of Twenty, will use every cent we don’t possess to rescue corporate capitalism from its contradictions and set the world economy back onto the path of unsustainable growth. We have already spent trillions of dollars of your money on bailing out the banks, so that they can be returned to their proper functions of fleecing the poor and wrecking the Earth’s living systems. Now we’re going to spend another $1.1 trillion. As an exemplary punishment for their long record of promoting crises, we will give the IMF and the World Bank even more of your money. These actions constitute the greatest mobilisation of resources to support global financial flows in modern times.

Oh – and we nearly forgot. We must do something about the environment. We don’t have any definite plans as yet, but we’ll think of something in due course.

Monbiot accuses the G20 of engaging in “magical thinking”, believing that getting the economy back to where it was – infinite growth on a finite planet – can somehow be reconciled with the pledge “to address the threat of irreversible climate change”.

Friends of the Earth’s executive director Andy Atkins laments:

“Once again world leaders have short-changed people and the planet. The economic system and the global environment are on a devastating collision course – but despite pledging to build an inclusive, green and sustainable recovery little has been done to change direction.

Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said:

Tacking climate change on to the end of the communiqué as an after thought does not demonstrate anything like the seriousness we needed to see. Hundreds of billions were found for the IMF and World Bank, but for making the transition to a green economy there is no money on the table, just vague aspirations, talks about talks and agreements to agree.”

And here’s David Norman, World Wildlife Fund campaigns director:

Any argument that climate change should be moved down the political agenda until the current economic crisis is addressed is incredibly shortsighted. Finance and the climate are inextricably linked, and if we don’t address climate change now, we will certainly pay later.

A U.S. Geological Survey ecologist says the park’s glaciers will be gone by 2020 – about ten years ahead of schedule.

A 2003 USGS study, using 1992 temperature predictions by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), had estimated that the park’s glaciers would disappear by 2030. But the temperature rise in the area has been twice as great as assumed in the 1992 model.

Nonpolar ice is disappearing all over the globe. Major glaciers have entirely disappeared from the Andes, and the Himalayas have lost a third of their snow.

The glaciers of Glacier National Park have shrunk by 67% in the past hundred years.

A lot of sensitive and rare plants are associated with the edges of glaciers. Reduced water is expected to cause drying and die-offs, especially for aquatic species.

A new study by scientists from the US Geological Survey and USDA finds that tree mortality in western U.S. forests has doubled since 1955 due to stresses induced by warming temperatures.

The team’s long-term monitoring shows that tree mortality has been climbing, while the establishment of replacement trees has not. In their surveys, the scientists found that a wide range of tree species were dying including pines, firs and hemlocks and at a variety of altitudes.

The article, “Widespread Increase of Tree Mortality Rates in the Western United States” is unfortunately behind a paywall. Here’s the abstract:

Persistent changes in tree mortality rates can alter forest structure, composition, and ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration. Our analyses of longitudinal data from unmanaged old forests in the western United States showed that background (noncatastrophic) mortality rates have increased rapidly in recent decades, with doubling periods ranging from 17 to 29 years among regions.  Increases were also pervasive across elevations, tree sizes, dominant genera, and past fire histories. Forest density and basal area declined slightly, which suggests that increasing mortality was not caused by endogenous increases in competition. Because mortality increased in small trees, the overall increase in mortality rates cannot be attributed solely to aging of large trees. Regional warming and consequent increases in water deficits are likely contributors to the increases in tree mortality rates.

Co-author Mark Harmon from Oregon State University told the BBC that he feared the die-back was the first sign of a “feedback loop” developing:

“We may only be talking about an annual tree mortality rate changing from 1% a year to 2%, but over time a lot of small numbers add up.

Increased mortality due to global warming sets off a positive feedback loop. As warming causes an increased number of trees to die, there would be fewer living trees to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. At the same time, the increased proportion of dead trees would be releasing carbon as the wood decays, inducing more warming.

Another member of the team, Dr. Nate Stephenson, said increasing tree deaths could indicate a forest that was vulnerable to sudden, widespread die-back:

That may be our biggest concern – is the trend we’re seeing a prelude to bigger, more abrupt changes to our forests?

Joseph Romm at Climate Progress warns this is just the beginning of the bad news:

the planet is on an emissions path to warm 10 times as much in the coming century as we warmed during the period examined in this study.

Barack Obama has only four years to save the world.

This stark warning from James Hansen leads off an article in Sunday’s The Observer (UK). The article contains this quote from Hansen:

“We cannot afford to put off change any longer. We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead.”

Hansen says current carbon levels in the atmosphere are already too high to prevent runaway greenhouse warming, yet the levels are still rising. Soaring carbon emissions are already causing ice-cap melting and rising sea levels and threatening further widespread species loss and major disruptions of weather patterns.

Cap-and-trade schemes – the best of the efforts so far seen from politicians and scientists – have so far proved feeble and futile. Too little, too late. What are needed are a stiff carbon tax and, most crucially, a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants, with a phase-out of existing plants to follow.

So how do the prospects look for action from the Obama administration? Not good, judging from these quotes compiled by Kate Shepard at Gristmill from testimony at the confirmation hearings of Obama’s nominees to head up crucial energy and environment agencies.

Steven Chu, nominee for secretary of energy:

I am optimistic we can figure out how to use those resources in a clean way. I’m very hopeful that this will occur and I think that we will be using that great natural resource.

Lisa Jackson, nominee for EPA administrator:

Coal is a vital resource in this country. It is right now the source of generation of about 50 percent of our power. And I think that it is also important for us to say in the same sentence that it is – the emissions from coal-fired power plants are – the largest contributor to global warming emissions. So we have to face square-shouldered the future and the issues of coal and then move American ingenuity towards addressing them.

Ken Salazar, nominee for secretary of the interior:

Coal is a controversial subject. The fact of the matter is it powers today much of America, and there are lots of jobs it creates . . .  The challenge is how we create clean coal . . .  I believe that we will move forward with the funding of some of those demonstration projects so we can find ways to burn coal that don’t contribute to climate change. I will certainly be an advocate of making that happen.

In Oregon, environmentalist were (embarrassingly) agog over Kulongoski’s “jobs and transportation” plan, which threw them a few crumbs while continuing our “war against space.” Now even those crumbs are being retracted. Concerned about economic damage, Kulongoski’s office is signaling the governor is ready to accept a less restrictive cap than the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goal would require. Brian Shipley – Kulongoski’s deputy chief of staff for energy, climate change and natural resources – is quoted in an article in the Saturday Oregonian as flatly stating that the economy comes first, the environment and climate be hanged:

The governor is not going to approve a proposal that’s going to damage the Oregon economy.

The myriad forces of the status quo are girding for battle under the Orwellian umbrella “Oregonians for Balanced Climate Policy.” Represented are realtors, paper mills, loggers, industry, cattlemen, dairy owners, farmers, metals industries, food processors and builders. Even labor, Kulongoski’s staunch ally, wants more protections for affected workers.

The Interior Department announced a controversial decision last Wednesday (December 31, 2008) to double the allowable rate of logging on 2.6 million acres of federally owned forests in southwestern Oregon.

While estimated annual timber harvest was reduced from 727 million board feet (mmbf) in the draft to 502 mmbf, this harvest level is an increase over the allowable cut of 268 mmbf under the NW Forest Plan and an actual harvest of 80 to 130 mmbf in recent years.

The Bush administration consistently ignored highly critical scientific reviews, including one by its own EPA, that found the WOPR was based on insufficient study, incomplete modeling, and would likely not comply with laws safeguarding fish and wildlife habitat. The EPA objected that the plan represents a significant reduction in the level of aquatic protection currently provided on BLM lands and reduced protection for riparian areas, landslide prone areas, and key watersheds with implications for water quality and sensitive beneficial uses including municipal water supplies and salmonid spawning and rearing.

Governor Kulongoski submitted a letter attacking the plan. Among other reasons, Kulongoski said the plan would interfere with any future wilderness designations in the areas around the Rogue River and had failed to consider the role of forest management in adapting to and mitigating global warming. Kulongoski also noted the new administration was unlikely to be committed to supporting or carrying out the plan.

Environmental groups condemned the decision and promised they would challenge the plan in federal court. Earthjustice described the decision a last minute Bush giveaway “to the timber industry at the expense of salmon spawning streams, healthy old-growth forests and habitat for rare birds such as the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet.”

The proposals for bailouts, regulations and government spending sprees – and, indeed, James Hansen’s recommendations for addressing climate change – all share one tragic flaw: they assume no physical or biological limits to human growth.

Rex Wyler at The Tyee writes that most of today’s economists cling to an 18th century mechanical universe governed by an “invisible hand” of God that magically converts private greed into public utopia. But look at the empirical results of this economic experiment:

Indeed, a few got rich, but the meek inherit an earth featuring child slavery, sweatshops, a billion starving people, toxic garbage heaps, dead rivers, exhausted aquifers, disappearing forests, depleted energy stores, lopped-off mountain tops, acid seas, melting glaciers and an atmosphere heating up like a flambé.

We need an economics that accepts the limits and laws of nature. Dr. Albert Bartlett reminds us that you can’t have exponential growth (at least not for long) within a finite, closed system:

“Growth in population or rates of consumption cannot be sustained. Smart growth is better than dumb growth – but both destroy the environment.”

Economist Herman Daly points out that the economy is but a subset of a larger system:

“The larger system is the biosphere, and the subsystem is the human economy. We can develop qualitatively, but we cannot grow beyond the biosphere’s limits.”

Tyler warns that technology will not save us. Every technical efficiency in history has resulted in more consumption of energy and resources, not less. Technology costs energy. Even advanced energy technology – such as the 4th generation nuclear and CCS that James Hansen thinks is necessary to bail us out of our predicament – requires huge investments capital and material to put in place.

The energy requirements to mine, process, and transport the raw materials that go into the plants; manufacture the components and build, maintain, and eventually decommission the plants; mine, process, transport, and store the fuel; and handle, transport, store, and dispose of the wastes;  make it questionable whether such energy sources will ever yield net energy.

It’s net energy that’s important – and the depletion of high-quality energy is what makes our situation intractable to business-as-usual type solutions. Oil in its early days had an EROEI of more than 100:1 but is now probably in the 18:1 range. Even so, that’s still enormously profitable (in energy terms) compared to other sources.

Before gambling our future on massive, speculative roles of the dice like CCS or nuclear, we need to do a rigorous and thorough life-cycle energy analysis. A life-cycle EROEI analysis is a necessary analytical tool before we jump onto any energy bandwagon. But I’m willing to bet: concentrated solar power (CSP) technology will prove to be far simpler, cheaper and more efficient than either CCS or nuclear, 4th generation or whatever. Not to mention safer and “cleaner” in more ways than just carbon emissions.

Bill Rees, who developed “ecological footprint” analysis at the University of British Columbia, set out the challenge for economists:

“We must account for the environment, reduce total consumption, and then address equitable distribution.”

The New York Times reports that the coal ash spill in eastern Tennessee – already the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States – is more than three times as large as initially estimated:

Officials at the authority initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond at the Kingston Fossil Plant, about 40 miles west of Knoxville, gave way on Monday. But on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep.

The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards.

clean coal

The ash contains potentially dangerous levels of heavy metals including arsenic, cadmium, mercury and lead, as well as radioactive elements such as uranium and thorium.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in its Regulatory Determination on Wastes from the Combustion of Fossil Fuels published in 2000 that federal standards for disposal of coal combustion waste were needed to protect public health and the environment. But the U.S. government has failed to take action.

The National Research Council calls for immediate government action to reduce urban and Midwest farmland runoff blamed for feeding an 8,000-square-mile oxygen-depleted “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. The report released Thursday says nitrogen and phosphorus loads must be reduced by at least 45% if the dead zone is to be reduced in size.

The report, requested by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency which sought the advice of the NRC in implementing the Clean Water Act, recommends that a load reduction allocation scheme be implemented. In exemplary bureaucratese, the report identifies five principles to be followed to allocate and achieve cap load reductions for the Mississippi River basin:

• Select an interim goal for nutrient load reductions as the first stage of an adaptive, incremental process toward subsequent reduction goals;
• Target watersheds to which load reductions are to be allocated;
• Adopt an allocation formula for distributing interim load reductions to targeted watersheds within the basin that balances equity and cost-effectiveness considerations;
• Allow credit for past progress; and
• Encourage the use of market-based approaches to allow jurisdictional flexibility in achieving allocated load reductions. It bears keeping in mind, however, that such markets do not automatically lead to satisfactory outcomes. Such markets require some regulatory caps on nutrient losses in order to operate.

The full report along with other material is available here.

A new study conducted in the Pacific Ocean at Tatoosh Island off the coast of Washington finds that ocean acidity has increased more than 10 times faster than had been predicted by climate change models and other studies. The new study is based on 24,519 measurements of ocean pH spanning eight years, which represents the first detailed dataset on variations of coastal pH at temperate latitudes where the world’s most productive fisheries are found.

This increase will have a severe impact on marine food webs and suggests that ocean acidification may be a more urgent issue than previously thought. Many sea creatures have shells or skeletons made of calcium carbonate, which is dissolved by acid. The increased acidity of the ocean could interfere with many critical ocean processes such as coral reef building or shellfish harvesting. The study documented that the number of mussels and stalked barnacles fell as acidity increased. At the same time, populations of smaller, shelled species and noncalcareous algae increased.

The ocean plays a significant role in global carbon cycles. When atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolves in water it forms carbonic acid, increasing the acidity of the ocean. During the day, carbon dioxide levels in the ocean fall because photosynthesis takes it out of the water, but at night, levels increase again. The study documented this daily pattern, as well as a steady increase in acidity over time.

The study, “Dynamical Patterns and Ecological Impacts of Declining Ocean pH in a High-Resolution Multi-Year Dataset,” will be published in the Dec. 2 issue of PNAS.

Herman Daly, one of the founders of the field of ecological economics, writes at NewScientist that traditional economists have a blind spot: they fail to recognize that our economy is part of a larger system – the ecosystem.

“[E]conomists have not grasped a simple fact that to scientists is obvious: the size of the Earth as a whole is fixed. Neither the surface nor the mass of the planet is growing or shrinking. The same is true for energy budgets: the amount absorbed by the Earth is equal to the amount it radiates. The overall size of the system – the amount of water, land, air, minerals and other resources present on the planet we live on – is fixed.

“The most important change on Earth in recent times has been the enormous growth of the economy, which has taken over an ever greater share of the planet’s resources. In my lifetime, world population has tripled, while the numbers of livestock, cars, houses and refrigerators have increased by vastly more. In fact, our economy is now reaching the point where it is outstripping Earth’s ability to sustain it. Resources are running out and waste sinks are becoming full. The remaining natural world can no longer support the existing economy, much less one that continues to expand.”

The sources of the resources consumed and the sinks into which wastes are deposited are ignored. Effectively, economists are assuming they are infinite. Consequently, economists recognize no limits on the capacity for economic growth.

Now we are seeing the warnings uttered in the 1972 book Limits to Growth come true: exponential growth is resulting in economic and environmental collapse.

Daly says to avoid environmental and economic disaster we must transition to a “steady-state” economy – one where the value of goods produced can still increase, but the physical scale of our economy is kept at a level the planet is able to sustain.

The idea of moving to a steady-state economy may at this moment appear radical and politically unimaginable. But the alternative – an economy that grows in scale beyond the biophysical limits of the Earth – is an absurdity impossible to sustain.

PacifiCorp has agreed to remove four dams on the Klamath River as part of a broader effort to restore the river and revive its ailing salmon and steelhead runs and aid fishing, tribal and farming communities. If the dams come down it would be the biggest dam removal and river restoration effort the world has ever seen.

The Agreement in Principle released today is intended to guide the development of a final settlement agreement in June 2009 and includes provisions to remove PacifiCorp’s four mainstem dams in 2020, a century after the construction of the first dam, Copco 1. Dam removal will re-open over 300 miles of habitat for the Klamath’s salmon and steelhead populations and eliminate water quality problems caused by the reservoirs.

But the deal came under immediate attack from tribes environmentalists who called it a scheme riddled with loopholes that favor farmers and other allies of the outgoing president. They say it makes no sense to strike a deal with just weeks left before Barack Obama becomes president.

Specific provisions of the agreement include:

• PacifiCorp agrees to contribute as much as $200 million to cover the cost of removing its four dams and restoring the river.  Dam removal funds would be obtained from ratepayers in Oregon and California before removal begins.
• If the costs of dam removal exceed PacifiCorp’s contribution, California and Oregon together would contribute up to $250 million.  Current estimates of dam removal costs range between $75 million and $200 million.
• In accordance with all applicable environmental laws, the Secretary of the Department of the Interior will assess the method and impacts of dam removal, and will make a final determination on the benefits and costs of dam removal by March 31st, 2012. California and Oregon will make similar determinations shortly after the federal government.
• Federal legislation will be required to implement provisions of the initial agreement. The legislation will establish the transfer of the dams to the federal government, although an independent third-party will be identified to actually remove the dams.

This LA Times article (cross-posted at Truthout) quotes Tom Schlosser, an attorney for the Hoopa tribe of Northern California:

“It’s just nutty to commit to this with Bush heading out the door.”

Environmentalists fear PacifiCorp will exploit the agreement as a delaying tactic, arguing that the deal has loopholes that allow the company to back out as late as 2012. The agreement will essentially shut down California’s water quality hearings on the Klamath dams.

PacifiCorp’s four dams produce a nominal amount of power which can be replaced using renewables and efficiency measures without contributing to global warming. A study by the California Energy Commission and the Department of the Interior found that removing the dams and replacing their power would save PacifiCorp customers up to $285 million over 30 years.

The dams, built between 1908 and 1962, cut off hundreds of miles of once-productive salmon spawning and rearing habitat in the Upper Klamath, which was once the third most productive salmon river on the west coast. The dams also create toxic conditions in the reservoirs that threaten the health of fish and people.

The $200 million from Pacificorps for dam removal and river restoration would come from boosted electricity rates for customers in the Pacific Northwest. PacifiCorp chairman Greg Abel said rates could rise as much as 2%. The agreement would give the company protection from liability and time to find replacement power.

Portland-based PacifiCorp is owned by billionaire Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.