I went to two very interesting lectures recently. The first was by Professor Mike Hulme from the University of East Anglia (home of the Climategate email ‘scandal’) talking about Climate Pragmatism.[1] It was quite a compelling lecture in which Dr Hulme suggested that since we can’t agree on the implications of the science of climate change, we should look at different cultural frames for discussions, and cherry pick the issues we can agree on to try and get past the stalemate that has been created by the stonewalling of vested interests.

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This sounded great to me – we don’t need to worry! Climate change will sort itself out because the technophiles will look at clean tech, the free marketers will gear up their carbon markets, we won’t have to keep having the ‘is climate change real or a giant conspiracy’ circular debate with the radical right, and by our powers combined, we’ll fix it.

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We don’t need scientists in the debate any longer; we just need a more pluralist debate. I was almost rethinking my career choice – the problem was already in hand.

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The second lecture was by Professor Michael Mann from Penn State, who is famous for his ‘hockey stick’ temperature graph which led to him being subpoenaed in 2005 by Republican Senators to answer criticisms of his data that were made in the Wall Street Journal.[2]

The now infamous graph from Chapter 2 of the 3^rd IPCC report[3]

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I asked Professor Mann what he thought about Professor Hulme’s idea, given the amount of vitriol and hate mail he receives because of his work, and his response really made me think. He pointed out that we can’t have a half-way point between climate change being real and climate change being a hoax, because there’s no half-way point between the truth and a lie; you can’t have your own different set of facts. It’s like arguing with someone who claims the earth is flat, and coming to the compromise that it’s something in between. It cannot be both; it’s either flat or round.

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Climate change is either being accelerated by the burning of fossil fuels and the release of large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere or it isn’t. We can’t be so afraid of the politicisation of climate science and the weight of all the lobby groups that we don’t speak up and challenge people when they’re wrong.

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The facts are pretty straight forward. The concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere has been growing rapidly, and has increased from less than 320ppm (parts per million) in 1960 to close to 400ppm recently.[4] Isotopic modelling (where different types of carbon have different weights) has been able to show where the carbon is originating from, and that the increase is from burning fossil fuels.[5] Levels of atmospheric CO₂ above an average of 350ppm will start to significantly change our planet’s systems over the coming decades.[6]

Source: US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration[7]

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The globe is warming. There is a solid body of scientific research that shows how the globe is warming, why the globe is warming and the changes we may expect from that warming in the future. There are many sensible and practical ideas for furthering debate and solving smaller disputes in Professor Hulme’s idea. However, Professor Mann is also right about how we cannot shy away from the larger (now mostly ideological) debate. We cannot cherry pick our own ‘facts’ from the data and ignore the inconvenient bits. You may disagree with me, but you can’t have your own facts.

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Further watching:
Michael Mann’s TEDx Talk: http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxPSU-Michael-Mann-A-Look-Int
NASA animation of global surface temperatures from 1937 to 2011:  http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20120119/

I like to think of myself as a conservationist. I don’t drive a car, I eat mostly organic, local food, I try to be cognizant of the “things” I buy and, like many others, I question the rapid development of the oil sands and its impact on climate change, water, nature and First Nations. The perspective of seeing pipelines going through the Great Bear Rainforest, or super tankers plowing through the pristine waters of the Inside Passage makes me shudder. I sympathize with those who think we should stop the development of such a carbon-intensive commodity but last night I got a reality check, a harsh, but much-needed one. I sat for an hour and a half at UBC’s Institute for Asian Research to listen to a presentation by renowned professor Jiang Wenran on the energy relationships between Canada and China.

Edward Burtynsky, "Alberta Oil Sands #6, Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, 2007." Chromogenic color print.

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To say that China and Canada have had a rocky relationship for the past few years is an understatement. Prime Minister Harper failed to appear at the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games and raised questions of human rights abuses in China on more than one occasion. During the last Durban COP summit on climate change, Canada notoriously backed away from the Kyoto protocol, citing the growing emissions of China and India and their lack of binding targets as a reason not to engage in the second phase of the protocol. China was prompt to criticize Canada for disengaging. As Wenran commented (the pun intended): “how did Prime Minister Harper turn from a China passer to a panda hugger”? More interesting (but not as cute I’ll concede) were the questions Wenran posed about Canada-China relations:  Where is the environmental file in the conversations between Canada and China? Do we have an informed national discourse on these issues? How does China’s environmental challenges affect Canada?

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Wenran provided a sobering account of the realities facing China as it struggles to meet its resource needs. China’s exponential development requires more resources than ever as the Chinese middle-class grows (they now account for 1/3 of the emerging global middle-class) and strives for access to all the modern comforts we take for granted in our resource-rich countries: safe housing, cars, electrical appliances and more. China is currently experiencing the largest rural to urban migration in the history of humanity. In consequence, they are facing high energy consumption, high levels of pollution (70% of Chinese waters are polluted and only 1% of the country’s 560 million city-dwellers breathe an air considered safe by our health standards) and increased resource depletion.

Pollution over Tiananmen Square in Beijing —Photograph by Oded Balilty/AP Photo

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The Chinese are acutely aware that they are on an unsustainable path. Their next 5-year plan stresses the need for more investment in energy efficiency. But, although China is massively investing in solar and other renewable energies, these energies still account for a very small portion of their total energy mix, most of which is provided by coal. The Chinese have already improved energy efficiency tremendously but coal consumption is still climbing.

Projected Energy Growth in China by Energy Source *Projections based on the IEA's Reference Scenario, which estimates future trends based on existing government policies. Source: Earth Trends

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Highly dependent on foreign oil (China now accounts for 40% of new demand for oil worldwide), energy security is also a major concern for the Chinese. When 80% of their current imports come from the Middle-East and Africa, it is no wonder they are seeking reliable and safe sources of oil, even if it’s as carbon-intensive as bitumen from the oil sands. And as Andrew Weaver recently wrote in a commentary in Nature, dirty coal is a much bigger contributor to GHG emissions than oil sands. So is there an argument for those who say “the oil sands are better than more of their dirty coal”? Wenran argues that anything we can do to lower China’s dirty coal consumption will contribute to a decrease in global carbon emissions.

China's crude oil imports by source, 2009 - Source: FACTS Global Energy

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We have to remind ourselves that if China is such a big emitter of carbon, it is also because they are focused on heavy manufacturing of products, destined to be consumed by Western industrial countries including Canada. Their growing urbanization feeds the factories that provide us with the Ipads, the toys and the appliances upon which we depend. As such, we share some of the responsibility in their growing carbon emissions and we share in the responsibility to find solutions to mitigate the growing global problems they create. Does this mean finding new pathways for global governance or investing in more comprehensive collaboration on clean-energy technologies between our countries? China has vast reserves of funds available for trade investments that could enable some of this much-needed collaboration to emerge. Wenran was quick to point out that the Chinese government has been more than willing to invest in Canadian companies such as Westport, who are on the leading edge of clean technologies.

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For now, the harsh reality is that China does not have an option for de-growth, neither have any of our resource-rich countries. If we look objectively at carbon emissions, our modern life-style is very much to blame and we cannot ask emerging economies to forgo their chances at a better life when we’ve enjoyed it for so long. So where do we go from here? I think it is time we stop pointing fingers at each other and work collaboratively to find global solutions for what is a global issue. The people of China want clean air and clean water, and they want a chance for a better future just as much as we do. The perceptions we have of China are deceiving at best. We have to engage in more dialogue with China and together we have to focus on developing solutions that reduce GHG emissions across borders. As a conservationist, I recognize that time is running out.  Thanks to Wenran, I recognize that I need to move beyond my ideological positioning and promote solutions with China that will deliver results – not just to improve my life in Canada, but the lives of Chinese, the global community….and the cute pandas.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper pets a baby panda with his wife Laureen at a zoo in Chongqing during his last visit to China. Photograph by: Chris Wattie, Reuters , Postmedia News

2011 annual rainfall compared against historical rainfall records. Australian Bureau of Meteorology

For those baking in the 38°c heat at the Australian Open tennis grand slam that year, this would probably seem curious. And for all those people who watched their lawns die with water restrictions, surprising too. The downside was that a lot of the rain came at once, resulting in emergency situations like this:

Floods in Brisbane, January 17. Photo from the Brisbane Times

Sadly, it’s looking like Australia is going to have another summer like the last one with more record-breaking floods. South-West Queensland is flooding again,  as are parts of New South Wales where about 9,000 people have been isolated by floodwaters.

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One of the consequences of climate change is a more frequent occurrence of extreme weather events, which in Australia is being seen through devastating droughts and bushfires as well as floods and tropical cyclones.   While my brother, a PhD student in Meteorology is always the first to tell me that many factors influence weather patterns, there are some patterns emerging with greater frequency that cannot be ignored.

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It is economically unviable to continue to pump emergency funds into different parts of Australia for each separate event year. Last year’s floods in Queensland necessitated a national flood levy to raise the $5.6billion required to rebuild and support the communities who were devastated.  Additionally, the Prime Minister recently announced ‘clean up and recovery grants’ of up to $25,000  for those affected by the 2012 floods.

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Whilst people like to argue that the cost of changing our current energy systems to renewable ones is unfeasible, there also needs to be a factoring in of the costs of the increased frequency of natural disasters. For those that don’t wish to dig through the IPCC 4th Report on Climate Change,  the US EPA website has a great table of the kinds of weather events that can be expected to occur with ongoing climate change and the negative impacts this will have on a range of different sectors.

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This is one of the key things about climate change – it affects everyone and all sectors of the economy. While no one extreme weather event can be ‘caused’ by climate change, overall increases in the average temperature – which increases the amount of water vapour that can be stored in the air – affects the balance of all our systems, environmental and economic.

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In Australia, this is manifesting as droughts, floods, bushfires and tropical cyclones, which are sometimes even happening at the same time in different parts of the country. In Canada, it’s pine beetles, snowstorms, and floods.  Currently in Europe, it’s freezing temperatures.

Bikes snowed in during London's unusual snowstorm. Photograph by Malika Benatti for The Guardian.

Even if you’re an arch-conservative who has chosen not to ‘believe’ in climate change, you’re still going to be affected by the increase in extreme weather events. When new fossil fuel projects are being proposed, we need to be questioning their contribution to extreme weather events becoming normal. We cannot just think of the short term profits, without also accounting for the long term consequences. The changes we make now to reduce our carbon emissions will determine how much we are going to have to adapt to each ‘new normal’ with each degree of average warming. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to keep the extreme disasters to a minimum.

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May retraced the history of international climate change negotiations dating back to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the development of the Framework Convention on Climate Change which commits all countries to stop green house gas (GHG) emissions from rising to dangerous levels.  Later in 1997, when countries wanted a protocol with targets and timelines, they modeled their process on the Montreal Protocol.

Rio Summit, 1992

May reminded audience members of the important role Canada had played in international climate change negotiations as the host of both the 1987 Montreal Protocol and COP11 – the Eleventh Session of the Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention – which was also held in Montreal in December 2005.

COP11, Montreal 2005

In those years, Canada was well regarded for our ability to convene and facilitate international negotiations that were successful.  Ozone depletion – once believed to be irreversible,  is now no  longer a threat – largely due to Canadian leadership in negotiating a global protocol.  Although we face a much tougher challenge with climate change, according to May, Canadians are no longer  trusted or capable negotiators.  We have squandered our good will globally by undermining global climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Cancun and Durban.

May illustrated her point by outlining Canadian actions at COP 17 in Durban.  Although a story was leaked to the Canadian press prior to the Durban Conference that Canada would officially withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, Minister Peter Kent attended the meetings and assured Christine Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, that Canada had no intentions of withdrawing.  During the negotiations, Canada consistently tried to derail negotiations by waiting until the final hours to dispute texts that had been agreed upon [in UN terms, waiting until the last minute to place brackets around agreed text is seen as negotiating in bad faith].   Within a week of returning from Durban, Minister Kent, publicly acknowledged what the Canadian press had been reporting for weeks, that Canada was in fact, going to legally withdraw from Kyoto.  This announcement was met with international scorn and disgust.  As Globe and Mail reporter Doug Saunders tweeted on the day of the announcement

You can just watch Canada’s international reputation collapse in the international press this morning.”

Although May believes that the Canadian government’s actions were embarrassing and undermined our long-term global interests, she did note that the Conservative government has not yet officially withdrawn from Kyoto.  The government has indicated its interest in withdrawing but the official letter of withdrawal won’t be sent until December 2012.   “So there is still time” , May argued, “to turn this decision around”.  She urged Canadians who are concerned by the impending effects of climate change to ask the government to reverse its decision to withdraw from Kyoto. May noted there are many conservative MPs who have serious concerns about climate change even if Prime Minister Harper has never felt compelled to receive a scientific briefing on the question. She also pointed out the recent popular movement against further development of the oil sands and the subsequent pipeline projects as examples of the profound divide between Canadians and policy-makers.

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The Kyoto Protocol, May argued, is not dead.  It is still very much alive and with a second period of agreement, countries like China, India and Brazil will be signing on to reduce their GHG emissions.  Africa and the Island States who are among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, have joined with the European Union to push forward on targets and timelines.  May believes that it is possible to reverse Canada’s position.

Stranger things have happened. Stephen Harper could change his mind and withdraw the letter this year”.

And Elizabeth May would know.  She has over 30 years of experience in environmental negotiations.  She has seen the highs and lows of international climate change diplomacy and true to her nature, she hasn’t given up hope that Canada can find a better way forward.

NYC from the top of the Rockefeller Centre. Photo: Amy Huva 2008

When I lived in Canberra (pop. 350,000) , one of my favourite things to do when visiting ‘big city’ Melbourne (pop. 4million) was to go down Centre Lane on a busy lunchtime weekday to get a latte and focaccia, and just be surrounded by all the hustle and the bustle and the noise. I found it so relaxing being in the middle of everything again.

Centre Lane in Melbourne near one of Amy’s favourite cafes. Photo: Amy Huva 2010

More than 70% of the world’s population will be living in cities by 2050 according to the UN.  So when urban planners and sustainability planners say that the future of sustainable living is going to be in cities,  I say everyone get on board! While obviously not everyone is going to have the same level of love for cities as I do (or the horrified aversion to suburbia and commuting), in our transition to a low carbon economy, people are going to have to start being more realistic about how much space they actually need.  Not everyone gets their own bathroom, there may not be a whole lot of storage space, you may have to get used to living with less stuff accumulating, and possibly lose the object d’art in the grand entranceway (and maybe the entranceway itself).

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Inspiration Courtesy of Ikea

However, on the upside – in smaller spaces you save on heating large rooms, cleaning all those additional bathrooms, and gas for the commute.
The point is, environmentally we can’t keep expanding to new greenbelts to build McMansions  and with the rising price of gas, soon it won’t be economical to drive in from beyond Maple Ridge to downtown Vancouver where most jobs and amenities are still located.

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The cultural change is going to be two-fold: increasingly densified business and economic centres will create their own regional hubs, removing the need for those who like their wide open spaces to have to go downtown  ; and previously low-rise inner-suburban areas (especially those along transit corridors) will become more densified.

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Suburbs will change; more people will move in, there will be more things to do in your area, and despite what some residents may think- being near the skytrain actually makes your property more desirable (and makes it less of a pain for your non-car friends to visit you!). I always think of the boulevards of Paris (another place I’d live in a heartbeat if only I spoke French) as a beautiful example of densification; eight stories high on either side, yet eminently liveable.

Rue Caulaincourt, 18e arrondissement, Paris. Photo: Amy Huva 2008

Cities will change in the next decade; density will increase and people will have to get used to suburbs no longer being as it was forever ago (I’m looking at you Baby Boomers!). But it’s not a bad thing. I think that the future of sustainable cities is one of collaboration with communities and increased urban density. And that can be a great thing.

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Further reading :
Richard Florida, Who’s your City? http://www.creativeclass.com/_v3/whos_your_city/
Edward Glaeser, Triumph of the City http://www.triumphofthecity.com/
David Owen, Green Metropolis http://davidowen.typepad.com/david_owen/news.html

Home on Canadian soil for the last few weeks, I have been happy to enjoy Christmas in Sidney, but having trouble shaking the residual depression from Prime Minister Harper’s decision to legally withdraw from Kyoto. Naturally, most Canadian media coverage focussed on Canada’s role in Durban, not on the results.  To give you a sense of the nail-biting finish, look at this photo, taken (not by me) in the wee hours of Sunday, December 11 as two weeks of negotiations, and three days of round the clock talks, hung by a thread.

Since 2005, climate talks have been moving along two tracks—decisions under the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (described as the Long-term Cooperative Action, or LCA, track) and under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The key difference between the two tracks is that the US is part of the 1992 FCCC, but not Kyoto. All other countries are within Kyoto, but the support for a second commitment period has been waning. Sub-issues abound, from funding adaptation, to monitoring, to how to account for changes to forest cover. It is ultimately enormously complicated. But it would be a mistake to think it is challenging primarily due to its complexity. It is challenging because the weight of some of the biggest corporations in the world, Big Oil and Big Coal, have been blocking progress.

People talk about ‘the UN’ as though it were a building, or a bureaucracy. It is both, but it is in its workings, and failings, a collection of nations, and they are a collection of people. This photo illustrates what the UN looks like. It is not institutional. It is excruciatingly human. Here you see the faces of the key movers of progress (or blockers of progress depending on where you sit) after many sleep-deprived hours. Standing is the President of COP17, the woman who chaired all proceedings, formal and informal, South African Minister of International Relations, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane. To her left sits India’s Minister of Environment and chief climate negotiator, Jayanthi Natarajan. Across from her, the blond woman in profile is Denmark’s former environment minister, the woman who unsuccessfully battled her own prime minister to try to avoid disaster in Copenhagen at COP15. (William Marsden’s new book, FoolsRule: Inside the Failed Politics of Climate Change, Knopf Canada, has nailed down critical details of how and why COP15 went so very badly). Connie Hedegaard left Danish politics soon after the Copenhagen train-wreck to take up the challenge of negotiating climate on behalf of the EU.

There in that snapshot is the drama of our future in negotiation. Three women working in English, not the first language of any of them, translation headsets abandoned on the table. In the end, it was the Brazilian minister who found the language that allowed the whole package of agreements to be approved (dubbed ‘weasel words’ by The Economist, and not unjustly). Instead of ‘legally binding’ agreements under the LCA track, the Durban agreement sets out that the LCA commitments will be in the form of a ‘protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force.’ Some have denounced Durban as a complete failure; others claim it was an historic breakthrough. In truth, it was a bit of both. If this set of agreements were all we ever achieved to reduce emissions, human civilization would not have much hope of survival. But if the negotiations had made no progress at all, our hope of future progress would be dashed. As Gwynne Dyer commented in his analysis, Suicide Pact in Durban (gwynnedyer.com),

The outcome at Durban could have been even worse—a complete abandonment of the concept of legal obligations to restrict emissions —but it was very, very bad.’

What the EU, low-lying island states, Africa and environmental groups all wanted was a legally binding second commitment period under Kyoto. A second commitment period under Kyoto was also the sine qua non for China, Brazil and other growing economies to take on new commitments under the LCA track. EU leadership gained the lifeline to Kyoto with a second commitment period, to begin January 1, 2013, avoiding any gap in legally mandated reductions. The weakness is obvious. The targets for reductions, on the order of 20-30% below 1990 levels by 2020, only apply to the European Union and a handful of other countries — Norway, New Zealand and Australia. But what did the EU gain to win that second commitment period? An LCA track decision for an all inclusive set of reductions (having ‘legal force’) negotiated by 2015, to take effect by 2020. And here is where it is clear the negotiations failed. 2015 is too late to act and 2020 is certainly too late to avoid shooting way past those tipping points in the atmosphere that preclude civilization from having a chance. As one scientist put it to the BBC:

The agreement here has not in itself taken us off the four-degree Celsius path we are on, but by forcing countries for the first time to admit that their current policies are inadequate and must be strengthened by 2015, it has snatched two-degrees Celsius from the jaws of impossibility. ‘At the same time it has re-established the principle that climate change should be tackled through international law, not national voluntarism.’ (Michael Jacobs, visiting professor at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment in London, UK).

Lessons from Durban? Kyoto still matters. For Canadians to help the global process, we need to reverse the letter of intent to withdraw from Kyoto, which will not take effect until December 31, 2012. Somehow, we need to mobilize a global public to take on the fossil fuel industry. There is still hope, but with each year’s delay, we have less time. The atmosphere is not negotiating with humanity. And time is not our friend.

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I think this is why in all the media explosion around the hearings for the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline that started last week (1,240 articles at last Google count) no-one seems to be asking about the long-term plans for the pipeline. Yes, there are billions of dollars  to be made right now according to Enbridge’s PR website that shows lots of happy and smiling pipeline employees, but what happens after that?

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We have 20 years, at best estimate to redirect our world’s economy to sustainable business practices and position ourselves to successfully mitigate the effects of climate change.  Which means linear projections for projects like oil pipelines will not necessarily be accurate. Obviously, the world’s need for oil is not going to disappear in the next 20 years, but hopefully by then markets and demand will have shifted and we’ll be well on our way to seriously reducing our oil needs. Shipping tar sands bitumen as fast as possible out to Asia to make the quickest buck may not be the best way to benefit industries or Canada.

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To me, it looks similar to the war in the woods that happened over Clayoquot Sound in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. Forestry companies came in, and offered remote communities lots of high paying jobs; fast money in boom and bust industry. Then, once all the local forests were clear-cut and there was nothing left, the companies bailed just as quickly, taking all their money with them and leaving nothing behind except a lack of infrastructure and investment in the communities, a whole heap of newly unemployed people and gaping holes in the landscape where they’d logged. Their business models at the time were not economically or environmentally sustainable, and not in the long term interests of the communities they were sold to.

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The Enbridge deal looks pretty similar. They’re going to come in, put a great stonking pipeline through the middle of the Great Bear Rainforest,  provide a whole heap of new jobs with fast money to communities, and when they’re done with it, or a diminished market for unrefined tar sands bitumen means the pipeline is no longer profitable, what then?

The remnants of an abandonned oil field on the Yamal Peninsula in Russia

At a time when the world is looking to be more sustainable, and we are all aware of the finite nature of our natural resources, is it advisable to put a pipeline through the largest coastal temperate rainforest in the world (yes, world),  and then send fully loaded oil tankers out through the 4th most dangerous stretch of ocean in the world – the Hecate Strait?

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Is a pipeline built in a mad rush to export tar sands bitumen as fast as possible to gain the biggest short-term profits really the best idea? It will be at the long term expense of not only the environment, but the communities the pipeline goes through, not to mention the loss of Canadian jobs that could be created if we refined the oil ourselves. And why should we allow ourselves to be bullied by a Federal Government who has decided it wants this project ‘now!’ regardless of costs so they can curry favour with international business and trading partners while mortgaging our future? (For a detailed economic breakdown, this report from the Pembina Institute is excellent )

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Governments and businesses think short term, because they know they’ll only be around (and therefore responsible for their actions) for the next 5- 10 years. However, short term-ism will not succeed in the new low carbon economy, and the long term costs of rashly developing this pipeline may outweigh whatever short term billions can be made. We have to start thinking long term again. The environment and the economy depend on it.

Oil fields in Baku, Azerbaijan - Photos by Edward Burtynsky "The End of Oil"

Using wood for heat is rare these days, but it wasn’t long ago that trees were the main source of energy for civilizations around the world. The advent of the steam pump, and with it, new ways of extracting and using coal for energy, led us away from wood and towards more energy intense fossil fuels. It was out with the old and in with the new.

Even though it was part of my upbringing, I always felt that wood was, well, a ‘dirty’ way to heat a home. It’s a little surprising then that wood based fuel is experiencing a surge in popularity. In the quest to move away from non-renewable resources and reduce carbon emissions, the efficient use of biomass is actually being embraced as being good for the environment.

Granted, the technology has improved. Gone are the inefficient stoves and furnaces of yesteryear.  Biomass today is more likely to take the form of compact wood pellets, and ideally, the biomass is salvaged from waste rather than harvested from pristine forests. Also, wood can be used not only to heat homes, but also to power them.  Renewable energy with lower carbon emissions than coal? Sounds great! Does this mean we could be entering the biomass age?

Wood pellets

If you ask those in the business of biomass, they’ll paint a pretty optimistic picture.  For example, if you consult ‘An Information Guide on Pursuing Biomass Energy Opportunities and Technologies in British Columbia” a report commissioned by the BC Bioenergy Network and the Province, encouraging the biomass industry is a no-brainer. For one thing, it’s claimed that because the harvested trees are replanted, biomass is carbon neutral. Biomass also often utilizes wood waste, which, if let to rot, would otherwise produce harmful methane.  And of course, let’s not forget the employment opportunities biomass exports could provide to the oft-struggling forestry industry.

Biomass sources

But are there any holes in these arguments? Greenpeace certainly thinks so. In a recent report, Greenpeace puts forth some pretty compelling arguments to counter those of the biomass industry. While they’re quick to highlight that they don’t support ongoing dependence on fossil fuels, the key message is simple – biomass isn’t the panacea it’s made out to be.  For one, they argue, it takes decades, if not centuries for harvested forests to regain their carbon sinking potential – far from carbon neutral. For another, they point out that biomass comes increasingly from new harvest rather than from the ‘leftovers’, as is often assumed. Building an export-led biomass industry also has its problems. In harvesting, processing, and shipping chips to Europe, a key market, the energy used for transportation chips away at the carbon emission benefits.

In the end, as with most matters to do with sustainability, there is no perfect solution. Is using biomass for energy the best solution for the world’s shift to renewable forms of energy? Probably not. That said, it’s better than the status quo, and as far as renewable energy is concerned, it’s garnering a lot of support – even from non-environmentalists.  In today’s world of polarized views regarding the environment, that’s worth quite a lot.

Kitzbuhel

Kitzbuhel is by no means alone. The global tourism industry is arguably one of the most vulnerable sectors to the impacts of climate change. In the Alps, for instance, ski resorts below 1,050 metres – such as the famous Kitzbuhel – will no longer be viable within 20 years (OECD). Glaciers will all but disappear within 45 years and all but the highest ski resorts will close. The economic implications alone will be severe. The annual cost to Switzerland’s winter tourism industry, for instance, is projected to be USD $1.4-1.9 billion by the year 2050. Other countries are expected to fare worse.
Ironically, tourism is not just a victim of climate change but a sizable culprit of the problem. In terms of CO2 emissions, tourism’s contribution to global climate change is approximately 5% (UNWTO). If tourism were a country, it would be the 5th largest emitter worldwide, ahead of Germany (6th) and Canada (7th).

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By far, the biggest portion of tourism’s CO2 emissions is associated with travel. Approximately three-quarters of the industry’s emissions are generated from visitor travel to and from the destination (UNWTO). Air travel in particular accounts for 40% of tourism’s contribution of CO2 and is the dominant source of emissions for medium- and long-haul travel.

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Here lies the rub. Travel is a fundamental prerequisite of tourism – you can’t bring the beach to you after all. Yet it is this journey that contributes to climate change the most. Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, has gone so far to suggest that “making selfish choices such as flying on holiday… are a symptom of sin.” Ouch! So much for that dream vacation to Thailand…

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While some destinations have begun to take ambitious steps to reduce greenhouse gases, the scale of these reductions is often dwarfed by travel-related emissions. In Whistler, where sustainability is practically ingrained in the DNA, visitor travel accounts for roughly 86% of the resort’s carbon footprint (approx. 78% is from aviation). What this means is any local strategy to reduce emissions will only be a drop in the bucket in terms of minimizing the destination’s actual carbon impact.

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For the most part, reducing the emissions from travel is beyond the influence of the destination. It is also improbable that destination marketing organizations will shift their marketing focus from “higher spending” distant markets to “lower yielding” regional markets because of potential opportunities to reduce emissions from air travel.

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There is hope that the “sin” of air travel could be saved by technology. Looking into the future, a blended wing body aircraft design could be at least 30% more efficient than conventional airplanes. And fuel substitutes, such as blending algae fuels with existing jet fuel, could reduce flight emissions by 60 to 80%. Eventually, liquid hydrogen produced from renewable sources could provide a near zero-emission solution for air travel.
However, the technological improvements needed to curb air travel impacts are decades away from happening. Large commercial hydrogen aircraft, for instance, could be built by 2020 but will probably not enter service until closer to 2040.

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In the meantime, rapid growth in air travel continues. The number of air travelers is projected to double from 2007 to 2025 to more than 9 billion travellers per year. The industry would need to cut its carbon intensity in half by 2025 just to keep total emissions at 2007 levels. This is an improvement of 4% per year for an industry that historically achieves 2%. Not impossible, but very optimistic. For the foreseeable future, technology won’t likely provide a “silver bullet” – not in aviation anyway.

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So what can an environmentally-conscious travel bug do, short of re-routing that dream vacation to Thailand to a local camping trip in the Interior?
One option for climate-friendly travel is to offset the greenhouse gases generated from your flight. So-called “carbon offsetting” involves trading off carbon dioxide emissions for financial contributions to environmentally-friendly projects, such as planting trees that take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or investing in the use of alternative energy sources that do not create carbon dioxide emissions in the first place.
While carbon offsetting is a useful option for lessening the carbon impacts of tourist travel, it should not be viewed as a permanent solution for stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere over a long time period. What is more, the entire concept of carbon offsetting may be sending out the wrong message to tourists. Although these strategies may alleviate some impacts of tourist travel, they fail to tackle emissions at source by reducing the use of fossil fuels.

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Ultimately, meeting the climate change challenge will depend on developing new technologies and fuel substitutes that drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes. Responding to this challenge will be one of the major issues facing the tourism and travel industries over the next several decades.

Amy in Switzerland

It was normal (and affordable) when I was living in Canberra to fly home to Melbourne for a weekend. And since I graduated high school, I’ve been averaging at least one stamp in my passport every year. It may only be a two week trip to South East Asia, or it could be a two month trip to Europe, but I’m always either travelling, or wanting to travel somewhere.
A reduction in air traffic, (if we assume a low carbon economy will result in a reduction in air traffic) will have all kinds of consequences that I wouldn’t immediately think of. That book from Amazon will take a few extra days on a train. Those shoes from Hong Kong will take even longer on a boat. And if my new favourite band is from Europe, or South America, I may never see them tour to Vancouver. Also, will the whole concept of the NHL season have to be re-worked so that they can account for team buses instead of planes? The hyper-mobility that we currently are able to have through air travel could change significantly; it could force everyone to have to re-localise their habits, or it could make many more things virtual, as the cost of travelling the distance rises.
Thankfully for my itchy traveller’s feet, there’s a lot going on in the biofuel sector right now that could allow for the transition of commercial aircraft from traditional jet fuel to biofuels. There’s some really innovative ideas like growing algae in seawater and turning that into fuel, or using plants like Camelina which is a naturally oily plant that can not only be turned into fuel, but is also good for rotating with wheat crops to replace nutrients in the soil.

Camelina crop

The idea of rotating bio fuel crops with commercial food crops is one I really like. One of the major concerns I’ve always had about bio fuels is that the bio fuel crop could be taking farming space from food crops and creating another shortage in the race to grow as much biofuel as possible to meet demand. And the trade off between growing crops for jet fuel or people fuel is not a good one to have to be making. So cyclical cropping is a great idea.
As with all alternatives to oil based products, it’s going to be a combination of different sources that will fill the gap. There is not going to be a ‘silver bullet’ to replace all of the things we use oil for. But if we can get some combinations of algae fuels, biofuels and gas-to-liquid fuels , hopefully I won’t have to pick a continent to stay put on!

Algae biofuel

Which for me, is a great thing. Because after Canada, I still want to live in New York City… and Germany… and maybe London… and Vienna… and….