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

Spiegel Online International reports A confidential German army study, warning of a looming oil crisis which could have dramatic political and economic consequences, has been leaked. The study – a product of the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Center, a think tank tasked with fixing a direction for the German military – depicts the consequences of an irreversible depletion of raw materials.

According to Spiegel Online, the report concludes there is “some probability that peak oil will occur around the year 2010 and that the impact on security is expected to be felt 15 to 30 years later”. The study warns of:

[S]hifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the “total collapse of the markets” and of serious political and economic crises.

The article provides the following summary of the report’s main points:

• Oil will determine power: The Bundeswehr Transformation Center writes that oil will become one decisive factor in determining the new landscape of international relations: “The relative importance of the oil producing nations in the international system is growing. These nations are using the advantages resulting from this to expand the scope of their domestic and foreign policies and establish themselves as a new or resurgent regional, or in some cases even global leading power.”
• Increasing importance of oil exporters: For importers of oil more competition for resources will mean an increase in the number of nations competing for favor with oil producing nations. For the latter this opens up a window of opportunity which can be used to implement political, economic or ideological aims. As this window of time will only be open for a limited period, “this could result in a more aggressive assertion of national interests on the part of the oil producing nations.”
• Politics in place of the market: The Bundeswehr Transformation Center expects that a supply crisis would roll back the liberalization of the energy market. “The proportion of oil traded on the global, freely accessible oil market will diminish as more oil is traded through bi-national contracts,” the study states. In the long run, the study goes on, the global oil market will only be able to follow the laws of the free market in a restricted way. “Bilateral, conditioned supply agreements and privileged partnerships, such as those seen prior to the oil crises of the seventies, will once again come to the fore.”
• Market failures: The authors paint a bleak picture of the consequences resulting from a shortage of petroleum. As the transportation of goods depends on crude oil, international trade could be subject to colossal tax hikes. “Shortages in the supply of vital goods could arise” as a result, for example in food supplies. Oil is used directly or indirectly in the production of 95% of all industrial goods. Price shocks could therefore be seen in almost any industry and throughout all stages of the industrial supply chain. “In the medium term the global economic system and every market-oriented national economy would collapse.”
• Relapse into planned economy: Since virtually all economic sectors rely heavily on oil, peak oil could lead to a “partial or complete failure of markets,” says the study. “A conceivable alternative would be government rationing and the allocation of important goods or the setting of production schedules and other short-term coercive measures to replace market-based mechanisms in times of crisis.”
• Global chain reaction: “A restructuring of oil supplies will not be equally possible in all regions before the onset of peak oil,” says the study. “It is likely that a large number of states will not be in a position to make the necessary investments in time,” or with “sufficient magnitude.” If there were economic crashes in some regions of the world, Germany could be affected. Germany would not escape the crises of other countries, because it’s so tightly integrated into the global economy.
• Crisis of political legitimacy: The Bundeswehr study also raises fears for the survival of democracy itself. Parts of the population could comprehend the upheaval triggered by peak oil “as a general systemic crisis.” This would create “room for ideological and extremist alternatives to existing forms of government.” Fragmentation of the affected population is likely and could “in extreme cases lead to open conflict.”

The study, Peak Oil: Sicherheitspolitische Implikationen knapper Ressourcen, is available here (unfortunately in German). Robert Rapier has posted a translation of the major points in the report at his R Squared Energy Blog.

China has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest consumer of energy, according to data from Paris-based International Energy Agency. The IEA said China consumed the equivalent of 2.25 billion tons of oil last year, slightly above U.S. consumption of 2.17 billion tons. The measure includes all types of energy: oil, nuclear, coal, natural gas and renewable energy sources.

This chart is posted at The Daily Reckoning:

As this chart posted at The Daily Reckoning shows, China has a long way to go to catch up with U.S. per capita energy consumption:

40% of the world’s population – China and India – uses two barrels of oil per person per day. In the US, we use 25.

China dismissed the IEA’s analysis, saying the IEA data on China’s energy use is unreliable. China’s National Bureau of Statistics said in a report in February that China’s energy consumption last year stood at 3.1 billion tons of standard coal equivalent, or 2.132 billion tons of oil equivalent. Even by China’s reckoning, China is fast approaching U.S. energy consumption levels.

In June, China consumed approximately 9.4 million barrels each and every day. Of this total, they imported 5.44 million barrels. Between them, China and India together now consume about 28 million barrels-per-day, nearly 33% of the world total.

But while China’s oil consumption is rising and China is busy locking up future oil supplies around the world, U.S. oil consumption is declining – and improved efficiency has nothing to do with it. Oil consumption has likely peaked in the United States because our economy is trashed and likely to remain so. In 2007, the last year before the crash, American oil consumption often exceeded 21 million barrels per day. Those days are over. U.S. consumption is now bouncing around 19 mbd, a decline of ~10%.

A recent post pointed out our actions belied any intention to actually do anything about global warming – we’re not really serious. Here’s another example.

First, Bloomberg reports Chinese president’s special envoy Xie Zhenhua vowing to “vigorously” fight “world scale climate destruction”:

The scale of economic destruction would be equivalent to that of the two world wars and the Great Depression combined” if global temperatures rise by 3 degrees (5.4 Fahrenheit) to 4 degrees Celsius, Xie said. “Human beings and the Earth cannot afford such disasters.

On the very same day, China Daily reports a huge jump in Chinese coal production:

China’s coal output grew 28.1 percent year-on-year to well over 751 million tons in the first quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics said Thursday. . . .

The report estimates China’s total coal production capacity has exceeded 3.6 billion tons.

Channeling Groucho Marx:  who are you to going to believe, Xie or your lying eyes?

Developed countries are “outsourcing” more than a third of their carbon emissions associated with products and services to other countries, according to a new study by scientists at the Carnegie Institution for Science. To be meaningful, regional climate policy thus needs to take into account emissions embodied in trade, not just domestic emissions.

This map shows the flow of carbon emissions embodied in trade among the major exporting and importing countries. Net exporting countries are in blue and net importers in red. China is by far the largest exporter of carbon dioxide emissions. Arrows indicate direction and magnitude of flow; numbers are megatonnes. (Steven Davis/Carnegie Institution for Science)

The study finds that, per person, about 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide are consumed in the U.S. but produced somewhere else. The United States is both a major importer and a major exporter of emissions embodied in trade. The net result is that the U.S. outsources about 11% of total consumption-based emissions, primarily to the developing world.

Says co-author Ken Caldeira, a researcher in the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology:

Instead of looking at carbon dioxide emissions only in terms of what is released inside our borders, we also looked at the amount of carbon dioxide released during the production of the things that we consume.

Caldeira and lead author Steven Davis, also at Carnegie, used published trade data from 2004 to create a global model of the flow of products across 57 industry sectors and 113 countries or regions. By allocating carbon emissions to particular products and sources, the researchers were able to calculate the net emissions “imported” or “exported” by specific countries.

For Europeans, the figure can exceed four tons per person. In Switzerland and several other small countries, outsourced emissions exceeded the amount of carbon dioxide emitted within national borders. Most of these emissions are outsourced to developing countries, especially China.

Davis explains:

Just like the electricity that you use in your home probably causes CO2 emissions at a coal-burning power plant somewhere else, we found that the products imported by the developed countries of western Europe, Japan, and the United States cause substantial emissions in other countries, especially China. On the flip side, nearly a quarter of the emissions produced in China are ultimately exported.

Where CO2 emissions occur doesn’t matter to the climate system. Effective policy must have global scope. To the extent that constraints on developing countries’ emissions are the major impediment to effective international climate policy, allocating responsibility for some portion of these emissions to final consumers elsewhere may represent an opportunity for compromise.

The report is published online in the March 8, 2010 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Stuart Staniford at Early Warning has posted some revealing graphs showing past carbon emissions – and projected future carbon emissions from China.

First, a history of carbon emissions. Notice emissions didn’t really start to take off until the 1950s.

Next, a closer look at emissions since 1965, broken out by major contributors.

Future Chinese emissions make doubtful any prospect of avoiding dangerous or even catastrophic global warming, whether or not the Chinese economy continues along its current growth path.

Exactly how is the world going to achieve 20% cuts (from 1990 levels) by 2020, much less 80% by 2050? Copenhagen sure doesn’t leave much room for optimism.

Amanda Gelder has a great interview with Jeremy Rifkin at Culturelab. What I find most intriguing are the connections Rifken draws among psychology, politics, and economics. We find ourselves in a pickle of historic proportions at the moment at least in part because of errors in thinking about these things.

I’ll try to pull together a couple of threads to focus on economic thinking and its relationship to the global crisis we face:

The Enlightenment view is that human beings are rational, detached agents that pursue our own self-interests and our nation states reflect that view. . .

A lot of interesting new discoveries in evolutionary biology, neuroscience, child development, anthropology and more suggest that human nature might not be what Enlightenment philosophers suggested. For instance, the discovery of mirror neurons suggests that we are not wired for autonomy or utility but for empathic distress; we are a social species.

* * *

Geopolitics is an extension of the Enlightenment view of human nature, the idea that we pursue our utilitarian pleasures and individual self-interests. In geopolitics, the nation-state becomes a macro view of that. Nations deal with nations by being rational, detached and calculating, pursuing self-interests, excercising power and acquiring more capital and wealth. That’s why Copenhagen failed. The world leaders weren’t thinking biosphere, they were thinking geopolitics. Everyone was looking out for their nation’s self-interest.

* * *

A lot of business people would say that you can’t be empathic in the market. But the market is a secondary institution–it’s an extension of culture. The real invisible hand of the market is trust, which is the result of empathic engagement. The only way you can have a market is if you have a shared narrative. The market is not a utilitarian frame of reference, it only exists by the social trust that allows people to engage in anonymous settings and believe that their engagements will be honored. When that trust fails, markets collapse and that’s what is happening now.

Rifken thinks the new world of distributed knowledge and distributed energy means we’ve moving from Homo sapien to Homo empathicus. His vision is attractive. I wish I could share his optimism. Still, we too often forget that philosophy does not live just in acedemia – it has real world implications. The “market” we have come to deify today is really nothing more than a myth, a powerful one that has turned destructive and threatens to consume civilization itself.

Rifkin has just published a new 600-page book, The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis, in which he expands on the ideas explored in the interview. I recall in my college days (note we were flower children of the 60s) reading books about evolving human consciousness.  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s  The Phenomenon of Man. Lancelot Law Whyte’s The Next Development in Man. Remember Charles Reich’s The Greening of America? Answer: not without some embarrassment.

So count me skeptical. My remaining aspirations are much less ambitious than forging a new human consciousness, rather just to eat well and live warmly in an increasingly uncertain world.

Osama bin Laden in a new tape blames the industrialized states and the U.S. in particular for causing climate change:

This is a message to the whole world about those responsible for climate change and its repercussions – whether intentionally or unintentionally - and about the action we must take.  Speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury - the phenomenon is an actual fact.

Bin Laden gives European nations a bit of credit for signing the Kyoto Protocol and agreeing “to curb the emission of harmful gases” but puts the finger on Bush and global corporations:

George Bush junior, preceded by [the US] congress, dismissed the agreement to placate giant corporations. And they are themselves standing behind speculation, monopoly and soaring living costs. They are also behind ‘globalisation and its tragic implications’. And whenever the perpetrators are found guilty, the heads of state rush to rescue them using public money.

Bin Laden calls for targeting the U.S. economy in retribution by boycotting American products and ending dollar hegemony:

They are the true terrorists and therefore we should refrain from dealing in the US dollar and should try to get rid of this currency as early as possible. I am certain that such actions will have grave repercussions and huge impact.

It’s hard to argue with the facts. Here’s a chart of cumulative emissions from 1900 through 2002.

The fact that Chinese emissions are growing fast and have now overtaken U.S. emissions on an annual basis doesn’t do much to relieve the U.S. of its overall responsibility.

Micronesia is forging new precedent in global environmental law by claiming it is adversely affected by a Czech coal-fired power plant and thus entitled to relief under Czech law.

Micronesia filed a plea with the Czech environment ministry using a measure designed originally to settle disputes between near neighbors, arguing:

The Federated States of Micronesia is seriously endangered by the impacts of climate change, including the flooding of its entire territory and the eventual disappearance of a portion of its state. . . . The commissioning or retrofit of any large coal power plant could play a relevant role in the destruction of the entire environment of our state.

It may be too late for Micronesia. A new study suggests that Antarctica’s Pine Island glacier has passed its tipping point and is poised to collapse in a catastrophe that could raise global sea levels by 24 centimeters.

Pine Island glacier is but one of many at the fringes of the West Antarctic ice sheet. Climate change is warming the Amundsen Sea, which is at the southern margin of the Pacific Ocean. As rising sea levels push the warm water beneath the ice shelves, it melts them from below, pushing the grounding line higher up the continental shelf.

By raising sea levels, and therefore the grounding line, in their model, the scientists identified a point of no return beyond which the glacier would be unable to recover.

The Antarctic sea bed has a small lip in it: it rises slowly up the continental shelf, then makes a slight dip before rising again to the shoreline. The researchers found that as long as the grounding line is on the outer rise of the sea bed, before the lip, small changes in climate lead to correspondingly small changes in the glacier’s ice volume. But as soon as the grounding line moves over the lip and starts to move down into the dip in the sea bed, the situation changes critically. Once the grounding line passes the crest, a small change in the climate causes a rapid and irreversible loss of ice.

News isn’t good from the other pole, either. Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley,  predict that replacing tundra with trees will melt sea ice and greatly enhance warming over the entire Arctic region.

Because trees are darker than the bare tundra, scientists previously have thought that the northward expansion of trees would result in more absorption of sunlight and a consequent local warming.

During past episodes of warming, broad-leaved deciduous trees expanded their range north even more quickly than needle-leaved trees. While not not as dark as evergreen trees, broad-leaved trees transpire a lot more water. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas that becomes well-mixed throughout the Arctic.

Taking account of this in a standard model of global warming, the researchers discovered that, while broad-leaved trees do absorb some additional sunlight, the water vapor they pump into the atmosphere causes a more widespread warming.

The increased water vapor would melt more sea ice, resulting in more absorption of sunlight by the open ocean and dumping more water vapor into the atmosphere. This positive feedback will warm the land even more and encourage faster, more efficient tree growth and perhaps an even faster expansion of trees into the Arctic.

For anyone concerned about the impact of emissions from the transportation sector on global warming (or complacent about peak oil), this chart posted by Stuart Staniford at his blog Early Warning should be sobering:

Heading Out at The Oil Drum reports the Chinese purchased 13.6 million cars and light trucks last year, compared to 10.4 million sold in the USA. China is now the world’s #1 auto market. Not surprisingly, Chinese oil imports are also up. In December, Chinese imports of crude oil rose to 20 million tonnes, or the equivalent of 4.7 million barrels a day. Chinese demand is helping keep oil prices firm despite the continuing global economic disruption.

Then again, this chart from another Staniford post looking at urbanization trends shows that urbanization and vehicle use are in lockstep, growing exponentially :

Of course, correlation does not establish causation. But Staniford shows that as the percentage of the population engaged in agriculture declines and as countries “develop” and become urbanized, per capita energy use tends to increase.

The global climate and energy outlook is grim as China begins to look more and more like us. And notice India, looming there on the horizon.

A deal was reached at the last minute in “Nopenhagen” among the U.S. China, India, Brazil and South Africa. About 25 other nations signed on, but other countries instead agreed only to “take note” of the document – that is, to simply recognize that it exists.

Obama called “Copenhagen Accord” a “meaningful and unprecedented” step to slow global warming. Bill McKibben described it as “non-binding, unfair, and breathtakingly unambitious.”

Lars-Erik Liljelund, the director general of Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s office, had a different take:

The meeting was a disaster. The process needs to be changed because if we continue like this, we won’t be any further a year from now.

The deal reached calls for voluntary steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Obama admitted the agreement is just empty talk:

It will not be legally binding, but what it will do is allow for each country to show to the world what they are doing.

The Copenhagen accord “recognizes” the scientific case for keeping temperature rises to no more than 2° C above pre-industrial levels. But the accord calls for only a 50% reduction in global emissions by 2050 (80% in developed countries), and does not contain any actual commitments to emissions reductions to achieve that goal. As a U.N. secretariat memo that was leaked at conference shows, the “voluntary” cuts on offer would produce a rise of at least three degrees and a CO2 concentration of at least 550 ppm, not the 450 ppm that supposedly is necessary to hit the 2° C target. The best guess from the modelers at Climate Interactive was that the proposals various countries were making might yield a world about 3.52° C warmer, with a carbon concentration of 770 ppm. That’s far from the 350 ppm scientists now believe is necessary to avoid climate catastrophe.

A decision on targets for reducing carbon emissions by 2020 was put off until next month.

The accord also establishes a goal of developed countries “mobilizing jointly 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries,” predicated on developed countries judging the mitigation actions to be “meaningful” and “transparent.” Trillions shoveled to the bankers, no questions asked. A pittance to save the planet, someday – and that “goal” hedged to the hilt.

The developing countries also pledged $30 billion for the period 2010 – 2012, with priority to be given to the most vulnerable developing countries. The money would be split between adaptation and mitigation, including forestry. Ian Fry of the drowning island-nation Tuvalu compared it to “being offered 30 pieces of silver to betray our people and our future”.

The accord ends with a promise to take another look in 2016 – and perhaps to consider a 1.5° C target at that time.

In what is becoming a familiar refrain, Obama told delegates to quit bitching – an “imperfect framework” is better than nothing.

Obama should take lessons on negotiating from the Chinese. China won, in the sense they achieved their objective of stonewalling any meaningful agreement.

The Chinese should take note, as should we all: sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Even as the climate change talks begin today in Copenhagen and as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announces the U.S. will begin regulating greenhouses gases regardless of what the House and Senate do, some are warning: what we are considering doing, won’t be enough.

Consider that economic infrastructure now being installed around the globe is locking in future increases in fossil fuel consumption. Take China, for example.

In 2008, less than nine million cars were sold in China. In 2009, car sales will rise to between 12 and 13 million. By 2015, car sales are expected to reach 16 million – an increase of 44% over 2008 levels. The cumulative increase in cars on the road in China cannot do other than increase future demand for oil, as gasoline and diesel.

At the beginning of 2006, China had an estimated 350 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity in operation. An additional 600 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity (net of retirements) is projected to be brought on line in China by 2030 – an increase of 42% over 2006 levels.

Not to pick on China. The U.S. is responsible for 29% of carbon dioxide emissions over past 150 years, triple China’s share. But assigning blame for greenhouse gas emissions is irrelevant to crafting a solution to the climate change crisis.

Even while a new study published in Nature Geoscience (abstract here) reports that over the long term Earth’s temperature may be 30-50% more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than has previously been estimated, the decade of the 2000s will go down as the warmest on record – and climatologists warn warmer weather is on the way.

In a speech to delegates at Copenhagen, IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri went down the list of impacts from global warming, some of which we are already beginning to see:

• More heat waves and heavy rainfall events
• Increase in tropical cyclone intensity
• Disappearance of Arctic sea ice
• Decrease in water resources in semi-arid areas, such as the Mediterranean Basin, western United States, southern Africa and north-eastern Brazil
• Elimination of the Greenland ice sheet and a resulting contribution to sea level rise of about 7 meters
• Species threatened with extinction
• Greater stress on water resources from population growth and economic and land use change, including urbanization
• Significant future increase in heavy rainfall in many regions, with greater flood risk, while other regions dry up
• More than two billion people will live in areas threatened by flood
• Increasing threat to low-lying island nations and coastal cities and deltas from rising seas Seas are already rising because of melting glaciers and icesheets as well as expansion of the oceans as they warm

The good news may be that the scenarios spun out by the IPCC are fantasies when it comes to potential future fossil fuel consumption. The fossil fuels – oil, gas, and coal – simply will not be physically available to generate the greenhouse gas emissions projected in the several IPCC scenarios. Even the IEA, in its recently released World Energy Outlook 2009, is admitting its projections of future energy availability are nothing more than “faith based”, conceding the majority of oil production in 2030 will be coming from “fields yet to be developed or found” and that “output at existing fields . . . will drop by almost two-thirds by 2030.”

The bad news is, the science keeps getting increasingly gloomy. Every new study seems to report that Earth’s climate is more sensitive than previously believed and that “tipping points” are fast approaching, if not already exceeded.

And the good news is pretty dismal, for business-as-usual. If peak production of fossil fuels is near enough to ensure that climate catastrophe will not occur no matter what emissions policies we adopt, that in turn means that our energy policies are hopeless when it comes to transitioning to a social and economic system based on renewable energy resources that in any way resembles the industrial society we have come to think of as normal and desirable.

We cannot avoid the reality that any possible solution to our energy and climate predicament requires that we invent an entirely new economic model, one that doesn’t strive for or depend on economic growth but instead is based on the ecological principle that we must learn to find happiness within limits imposed by the natural systems within which we all live.

Unfortunately, economic growth remains the official ideology at Copenhagen. How to continue on that path is the agenda.

According to James Hansen, the track being followed by international climate negotiators is the disaster track.  He says it will be better for the planet and for future generations if next week’s Copenhagen climate change summit ends in collapse.

As he writes in an article in Newsweek:

I am sorry to say that most of what politicians are doing on the climate front is greenwashing—their proposals sound good, but they are deceiving you and themselves at the same time. Politicians think that if matters look difficult, compromise is a good approach. Unfortunately, nature and the laws of physics cannot compromise—they are what they are.

Here’s the remedy to the climate crisis that is being rolled out at Copenhagen:

Hansen thinks the whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to start over from scratch. The climate problem is solvable, if we phase out global coal emissions within 20 years and prohibit emissions from unconventional fossil fuels such as tar sands and oil shale.

But not if we just keep blowing smoke.

“The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Climate Science Report” has been released as a lead-up to the global climate talks to be held in Copenhagen next month.

The intent of the 26 scientists who participated in drafting the report was to bring the IPCC 2007 Working Group 1 report up to date with the latest science. The report and a summary are available for download here.

The report warns that global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly if catastrophic climate change is to be avoided.

Here are some of the points made in the report:

• Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were nearly 40% higher than those in 1990.
• Over the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.190C per decade, in very good agreement with predictions based on greenhouse gas increases.
• Both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate. Melting of glaciers and ice-caps in other parts of the world has also accelerated since 1990.
• Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models.
• Sea-level rise (3.4 mm/yr over the past 15 years) is 80% above past IPCC predictions, consistent with a doubling in contribution from melting of glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland and West-Antarctic ice-sheets.
• By 2100, global sea-level is likely to rise at least twice as much as projected. Sea-level will continue to rise for centuries even if global temperatures are stabilized. Sea levels will inevitably rise by several meters over the next few centuries.
• Vulnerable elements in Earth’s climate system could be pushed past irreversible “tipping points” if warming continues unabated.