by Shaun Chamberlin | Jul 27, 2008 | All Posts, Climate Change, Cultural stories, Favourite posts, Philosophy, Politics
Since my earlier review of Burn Up I have discovered a comment on the film posted yesterday by Jeremy Leggett, one of the few with any media profile to openly discuss the interplay of peak oil and climate change.
In his piece Leggett asks: "Why do the carbon-club lobbyists and contrarians do what they do? What is in their heads as they go about their work? Surely they must see the power of the emerging evidence that the threat is real, and massive? ... I don't have an explanation."
This is a question I have devoted a lot of thought to, and I will venture an answer.
Those who are benefiting most from the current 'business as usual' in the global economy are, by definition, extremely wealthy, and thus very influential. Yet it is these people for whom it may be hardest to acknowledge the reality of climate change and energy depletion.
The reason is that everything and everyone around them tells them that they have made an incredible success of their lives. Their ability to acquire whatever material possessions they desire, their exclusive social groups, their desirable romantic partners and respectful business colleagues - so much in their lives speaks to them of their triumphant prosperity.
Quite apart from the challenge of changing the habits of thought and reasoning that have appeared to serve them so well, what we are asking is that they shift the story they hold of their own life from one of heroic progress and success to one in which they are complicit in the end of civilisation and perhaps even higher life on Earth.
We should not underestimate the level of commitment and bravery such an internal transformation requires, especially when their peer groups provide them with all the encouragement in the world to resist it. And so we should not be surprised when many instead indulge in desperately contorted logic or straight-out denial (and bring their considerable resources to bear) in the attempt to resist losing the glorious tale of themselves they worked so hard to earn.
Yet despite all this, there are those who have braved the dark night of the soul. Ray Anderson, the founder and chairman of vast multinational corporation Interface Carpets has been telling his story to fellow industrialists:
"One day it dawned on me that the way I'd been running Interface Carpets is the way of the plunderer. Plundering something that is not mine, that belongs to every creature.
I stand convicted by me, myself alone, not by anyone else, as a plunderer of Earth, but not by our civilisation's definition. By our civilisation's definition I'm a captain of industry, in the eyes of many a kind of modern-day hero."
He deserves our respect for embracing this difficult epiphany (he has described the experience as "the point of a spear into my chest"), and if we can better understand the deeply personal challenges facing his fellow plunderers then perhaps we can help them in changing the story of their lives, so that they may come to measure their success very differently, but again become heroes.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jul 27, 2008 | All Posts, Climate Change, Cultural stories, Peak Oil, Politics, Reviews and recommendations
I have just watched the BBC's outstanding thriller Burn Up, starring Rupert Penry-Jones, Marc Warren, Bradley Whitford and Neve Campbell (trailer available here).
It is a dramatic account of the intrigue, betrayal, sex and violence surrounding characters in the oil industry, international diplomacy and the environmental movement in the build up to the international conference that will decide on the successor to the Kyoto Protocol. For those who haven't yet seen it, be aware that the discussion below the cut contains spoilers.
Right, so you've seen it now - what did you think? Personally, despite the supposedly 'stellar' cast I thought some of the acting was a bit below-par, but I was shocked in the best possible way by the direction the script took.
Against all my expectations of a prime-time major channel drama this was a fascinating attempt to engage with and dramatise the over-riding tension of our times, between the depletion of the fossil-fuel resources which fuel our globalised way of life, and the growing consequences of the emissions those fuels produce.
It was great to see the scientist in the film stating that we have only 5-10 years to avoid irreversible runaway climate change - to me that is the bottom line - but the section that particularly fascinated me was the ending.
One man alone ends up holding incontrovertible evidence that Saudi oil production is in decline, and so that Peak Oil truly is already in the past, and he faces a dilemma. Does he tell the world, so that we can start work in earnest on the transition to a low-carbon future, or does he keep it to himself, since he knows full well that this information would spread panic throughout the financial markets, plunging us into global economic depression, prompting energy wars and causing suffering throughout the world.
His dilemma represents the very real tension our world faces. Our global economies are dependent on both growing supplies of accessible fossil fuels and a stable climate, so we know that our carbon-intensive way of life will end, one way or another. Yet we have now left it too late for a gentle, gradual transition to a low-carbon economy, so we can see that the crash of our existing systems, when it comes, will be painful.
This creates an instinctive desire to put it off as long as possible, but the longer we persist in our current fuel-wasting, carbon-emitting ways the faster and more vicious the crash will be. We know we really ought to go to the dentist, but maybe we can put it off for just one more year...
The pace of Burn Up seemed to speed up dramatically towards the end, and some friends less immersed in this field told me they had trouble keeping up with it all, but in essence it ended with our hero deciding to leak the information, and the credits rolled to the sound of radio news broadcasts apparently indicating the global economy falling apart as the implications of the reality-check reverberated around the world.
I must confess that when I wrote last month about the thought that economic collapse might be the only remaining solution to global warming, the last thing I expected was to be encountering the idea on prime-time TV so soon.
"The world doesn't have to go to hell Mack, just the economy. You're right, this information will cause the biggest powerdown we've ever seen. But you cut world manufacturing in half you cut CO2 emissions in half. Look it may not be tomorrow, it may not be next week, next month, who knows when but the crash is coming."
The battle of cultural stories continues...
--
ps Since writing this post, I have been pointed at this fascinating interview with the writer of Burn Up.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jul 2, 2008 | All Posts, Climate Change, Politics, TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas)
My mother pointed out to me that on Saturday Colin Challen MP, Chair of the UK Government's All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group, had a letter published in the Guardian.
After numerous other eminently sensible suggestions about how the Government should be stepping up its response to climate change he concluded with the following:
"And most urgently we need to recognise that early carbon reductions are the most important step, and that will only happen with rapid behavioural change, which means some form of carbon rationing.
In this last respect, for any minister or potential minister to say the time for personal carbon allowances has not yet come illustrates either deep cynicism, defeatism or complacency, or perhaps a combination of all three."
Hear hear. His last remark is a clear reference to the comments of our Environment Minister, Hilary Benn, on the Today programme just over a month ago, when he described TEQs as "ahead of its time". This interview (also featuring George Monbiot) can be heard here.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jun 22, 2008 | All Posts, Favourite posts, Peak Oil, Politics
I find myself wondering if our current political system (like so much else in our modern culture) might be partially a product of the bonanza of abundant cheap energy we have been enjoying for the last century or two. Have we been so comfortable that the pressure has been off for our decision makers?
Now I am certainly no student of politics, and my musings should be taken with that proviso, but it has always seemed a little strange that there is such a widespread perception of our politicians as incompetent and immoral, and yet they continue to be entrusted with the ultimate decision-making role for our society. There is widespread disinterest among the young people I know, and perhaps part of the reason is that people have 'learnt' that it really doesn't matter how ineffective politicians may be - there still always seems to be water in the tap and food on the table, so surely they must be doing something right?
Equally it hasn't seemed to matter much to many people whether we had a Conservative or a Labour government - we just sort of swing back and forth based on something like national mood. According to political commentators, the reasons for these electoral shifts seem to be sentiments like "they've had long enough" or, more recently, "finances are a bit tight".
Yet it's an odd thing to swing to the current opposition because of our economic difficulties. If we really believed there was much of a difference between the two wouldn't we make a decision and stick with it? Does anyone truly believe that the UK budget would be vastly better off had the Conservatives been in power for the past few years?
The depletion of the North Sea (oil production there peaked at around 2.9m barrels/day in 1999 and is now at around half those levels) is marginally impacted by political decisions, but is essentially a geological fact, and importing just 0.2m barrels per day at the current price of around $135/barrel adds $10 billion a year to our trade deficit. Could the Conservatives have turned back time on depletion, resolved the global credit crunch, or prevented the upsurge in the globally traded price of food, or of oil for that matter?
I would venture that either party would have done just about as bad a job as the other. It's not about whether Gordon Brown or David Cameron is in the hotseat, there is something much more fundamental going on than that. As Voltaire said, "men argue, Nature acts".
Worryingly, there seem to be only two recognised political parties in the UK who understand the kind of future we are facing - the Green Party and the British National Party, both of whom show a firm awareness of the reality of energy resource depletion. Needless to say they advocate very different responses.
As Rob Hopkins pointed out some time ago, an interesting aspect of peak oil is that everyone seems to see its potential to usher in the kind of world they want to see. While the Greens see the potential to move to a more ecologically-friendly way of life in response to the need for lower energy consumption, the BNP recognise that in times of hardship extreme right wing groups have traditionally done very well.
The reality is that there are many possible futures, but we get to choose which of them come to pass. To put it another way, we will get the future we deserve.
This is why when I speak to my friends who refuse to vote on the basis of their disgust with the major parties I urge them to vote Green. There are alternatives, and it is hard to sustain the argument that a Green vote is a wasted vote when the alternative you are considering is not to vote at all.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jun 8, 2008 | All Posts, Climate Change, Cultural stories, Favourite posts, Peak Oil, Politics, TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas)
In the climate policy community there is a growing debate between advocates of 'upstream' and 'downstream' carbon caps (dams?). The terms draw an analogy between the flow of water in a stream and the flow of energy through an economy. 'Upstream' advocates want to regulate the few dozen fuel and energy companies that bring carbon into the economy, arguing that this is cheaper and simpler than addressing the behaviour of tens of millions of 'downstream' consumers.
At first glance this seems a convincing argument, but there is one important regard in which an upstream scheme fails - it does not engage the general populace in the changes required.
While this might seem a benefit in terms of simplicity it means that the fundamental changes required in society are simply not going to happen. Energy suppliers alone are not going to be able to resolve climate change. We need every citizen to see the need to change the way we live, work and play.
There are a great number of suggested schemes, but two are perhaps the best thought-through and can help us to explore this debate.
Representing the downstream camp is Tradable Energy Quotas - TEQs (AKA Domestic Tradable Quotas - DTQs). This is an energy rationing scheme designed to cover the whole economies of individual nations, requiring energy users to secure allowances in order to purchase fuels and electricity. These allowances are given free-of-charge to individuals but all other organisations in the economy have to buy them. The number of allowances issued is limited in line with the national carbon cap. It would operate underneath an international framework such as Contraction and Convergence which would set the various national caps, ensuring that global emissions fall.
In the upstream corner is Cap and Dividend (AKA Sky Trust). This is a system which sets a global cap on carbon emissions, and then auctions a number of allowances determined by the global cap to fossil fuel producers, who must have them in order to be allowed to extract fossil fuels. The revenue generated by the auction is then distributed to every person in the world on an equal basis - this is the 'dividend'.
Both schemes aim to provide a means to implement the global cap on emissions necessitated by the severity of our climate emergency, and both schemes allow for trading of allowances/permits once they have been issued.
Cap and Dividend would clearly be simpler and cheaper to introduce, however, as it only involves interactions with a small number of companies worldwide, followed by a relatively straightforward financial payment to the people of the world. On the other hand TEQs would provide greater public engagement and opportunities for behaviour change. This inverse relationship between financial savings and public engagement is as we might expect.
But clearly effectiveness in addressing the combined challenge of climate change and energy resource depletion is the most important criterion for evaluating such schemes. If we can achieve that more cheaply and easily then all well and good, but as Dr. Richard Gammon put it to Congress in 1999, “If you think mitigated climate change is expensive, try unmitigated climate change”.
Effectiveness is far and away the critical concern for many reasons, but ultimately an ineffective scheme will cost us a lot more than an effective one anyway.
Cap and Dividend advocates argue that implementing a cap guarantees effectiveness, thus leaving cost the defining factor in the decision. But this ignores the true nature of the problem we face, which is not just an abstract exercise in administering carbon caps. In reality the speed of energy descent required by our societies in order to avoid catastrophic climate change is extremely demanding, especially in the context of energy resource depletion. Achieving the necessary changes in our energy infrastructure and in our lifestyles in the timescale available presents possibly the greatest challenge humanity has yet faced.
This is why a number of Government and industry papers have suggested that there should be a 'soft cap', with a 'safety valve' in case living within the cap proves too challenging. However, undermining the cap in this way is clearly inappropriate to a situation where we are facing the possibility of permanently destabilising our atmosphere and life-support systems. We need a scheme that helps societies adapt to the constraints of the cap, without causing such strain that there are deafening cries for safety valves or softened caps.
We must engage the populace in the necessary transition at the local and individual level, as well as working with the big industrial emitters.
As last week’s Environmental Audit Committee report stated, upstream schemes,
“rely on price signals transmitted down through the economy to deter customers from buying carbon intensive goods or services—with the same downstream effect as a carbon tax. We remain to be convinced that price signals alone, especially when offset by the [additional income from the dividend], would encourage significant behavioural change comparable with that resulting from a carbon allowance.
Larry Lohmann, author of the outstanding Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power, which highlights many of the fundamental shortcomings of existing upstream trading schemes such as the EU ETS, recently commented that,
“The problem is that it’s not clear how price can incentivise structural change of the kind required for the climate problem. Historically, price has not been effective in stimulating the kinds of social transformation needed – although it has been effective in stimulating other kinds of change (usually far more marginal). Social and technological change of the kind at issue has come about in other ways.”
Now I should stress at this point that Larry Lohmann would not necessarily support TEQs either, and a thorough examination of how TEQs relates to the criticisms of carbon trading in his report is something I am currently engaged in, prior to discussing the matter with him directly.
But having outlined the shortcomings of Cap and Dividend in trying to address energy resource depletion and climate change purely via the price signal, I should outline how TEQs differs in this regard.
Energy, not money
The first key point is that TEQs is denominated in terms of energy, not money. This is because it was designed from the outset to address both energy depletion and climate change. It would guarantee an assured entitlement of fuel and energy to every individual in the country, in a way that C&D does not. Cap and Dividend is designed solely with regard to climate change, and so an additional energy rationing system – like TEQs – would be needed to deal with any oil or gas supply disruptions, which would rather negate the cost savings of such a scheme.
Yet even if we were to ignore the realities of energy resource depletion, the shrinking carbon cap is itself going to mean a shrinking supply of energy to the economy. So again we require some form of rationing system lest we are back to 'rationing by price', whereby the poor are simply expected to do without.
Small-scale solutions within a large-scale framework
The second point is that TEQs - devised by my colleague Dr. David Fleming - is explicitly a national scheme, not a global one. In my humble opinion, the most brilliant thing ever to pass David's lips is that,
“Large scale problems do not require large-scale solutions – they require small-scale solutions within a large-scale framework.”
I find this deeply inspiring, reminding us that schemes like Contraction and Convergence, Cap and Dividend and Tradable Energy Quotas exist only as frameworks to stimulate local action. We are tempted to think of them as solutions in themselves, but we must remember that it is at the local and individual levels where all the real changes take place – that is after all where everyone in the world lives. The correct role of these large-scale frameworks is to support and encourage local responsibility, while providing the assurance that enough action is taking place to address the scale of our global problems.
And this is why TEQs is defined strictly as a national scheme – because collective motivation is necessary on a scale in which individual effort is seen as being significant. It does not work on a scale so large that individuals lose the sense of belonging, or the belief that their individual contributions make a difference.
Common Purpose
The third key point is that ‘upstream’ regulation like Cap and Dividend only involves the fossil fuel companies. While this might seem a benefit in terms of simplicity it means that the fundamental changes required in society are not going to happen – while it is perhaps fashionable to hold them responsible for every aspect of our energy and climate problems, in reality our individual and community lifestyles need transformation too.
And perhaps even more crucially, to achieve the dramatic change in infrastructures necessitated by climate change we need cooperation between the different sectors of society, united in a single simple scheme. It is a critical feature of TEQs that it is designed to stimulate and enable constructive interaction both between households and between households and all other users – companies, local authorities, transport providers and national government. In short, the scheme is explicitly designed to stimulate common purpose in a nation.
The fixed quantity of energy available under TEQs makes it obvious that high consumption by one person leaves less for everyone else. Lower demand means lower prices, so it becomes in the collective interest that the price of TEQs allowances should be low. There is an incentive to collaborate to make it happen, and TEQs thus generates a social and economic culture that is intelligently, effectively and collectively working towards the shared goal of living happily within our energy and emissions constraints.
Cap and Dividend, unfortunately, might have the opposite effect. While it incentivises individuals to reduce their personal energy use, it also appears to incentivise them to encourage increased energy use in the world as a whole, as by doing so they push up the demand for emissions permits, and so increase the dividend they receive. Such a perverse incentive is entirely at odds with the required common purpose.
To sum up then, the key argument in favour of upstream schemes is that they would be cheaper and simpler than downstream alternatives (which they would be), but there are good reasons to suspect that they would represent a cheap and ineffective response to both climate change and energy depletion, which would be the greatest of all fool’s economies.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jun 7, 2008 | All Posts, Climate Change, Favourite posts, Politics, TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas)
Last week Mark Lynas wrote an article for the New Statesman in which he surprisingly argued against carbon rationing. As he acknowledges, this is a complete reversal from his earlier article in which he argued for it in the strongest of terms. Unfortunately, I believe his thinking on this is moving in the wrong direction.
His argument is essentially that we need the cheapest, simplest way of implementing a firm global carbon cap. I absolutely agree that such a cap is crucial and necessary, but it is a mistake to imagine that this alone is sufficient to realistically address climate change. The setting of a cap is a fairly abstract process - the real challenge is to develop a society that can exist within that cap.
If we simply set an upstream cap and trust to the markets to change our energy infrastructure and individual lifestyles we will simply suffer more and more as the cap tightens over time and energy prices rise higher and higher. If that process continued, eventually the pressure to loosen or abandon the cap would become irresistible - "sod your future generations, my children are hungry today".
So the important goal is not to find the cheapest policy for setting the cap, but to find the policy most likely to engage the whole culture in the transition to a low-carbon, lower-energy society that can thrive within the cap. I will address the finer details of why I believe this leads us to TEQs and not an upstream policy in my next post, but what surprised me most about Mark's piece is that I thought he understood all this, and that I was sure he had encountered all of these arguments before. So what changed his mind?
On Wednesday I met Mark and put this question to him. His answer was that he feels that public engagement with climate change has gone backwards over the past couple of years, and that he now considers it unrealistic to hope for public mobilisation on the issue within the 7 years or so we have left to avoid sealing our fate. For this reason he believes TEQs will not soon enough be politically acceptable, and so that we need to focus on upstream measures.
I, on the other hand, consider it unrealistic to imagine that we can address such a collective problem without engaging the majority of the population - let's hope Mark and I are not both right!
Unfortunately, while I have a deep respect for Mark's work in publicising climate change, his article contains a number of misunderstandings when it comes to climate policy.
He makes the common mistake of describing carbon rations as a "second currency". In truth, however, in contrast to a currency (with which one can purchase many different things) a ration on its own can only be exchanged for money, in the same way that any goods (boots, apples...) can only be exchanged for money. Tradable rations are thus just one more commodity that can be bought with money, rather than a parallel currency, in much the same way that European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) permits are a commodity, rather than a parallel currency threatening the Euro.
He also writes of "the oldest rationing system in the book: the price mechanism", but 'rationing by price' (i.e. the richest get whatever's in short supply) has never been a pretty process. We need guaranteed entitlements to energy for all, not simply ever-increasing prices.
Finally, Mark also has faith in the EU ETS itself, which Larry Lohmann has convincingly argued is fundamentally flawed and unable to control the emissions of Europe's industry. Yet even if it were satisfactory, the current piecemeal approach to addressing climate change is being widely condemned. For example, the Environmental Audit Committee have stated that,
"It is clear that the Government has responded institutionally to the challenge of climate change through the creation of new bodies to tackle specific climate issues. Although this process signifies the Government's willingness to tackle the issue, the organic process by which leadership and responsibility have evolved appears to have created a confusing framework that cannot be said to promote effective action on climate change…"
There are currently 94 present or planned policies that impact on the level of personal carbon emissions in the UK, before even considering other emissions. An overarching framework like TEQs which covered the whole economy would make many of these redundant, producing substantial financial savings while bringing a clarity and focus to our national carbon reduction strategy.
Recent Comments