Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today, again, from Margaret Swedish:

We’ve had a bit of a discussion on this blog over the past few days on the issue of offsets — that’s where we allow ourselves to continue to emit carbon by contributing to projects aimed at capturing or reducing emissions. One way folks talk about this is that somehow these contributions can make us ‘carbon neutral’ — what we emit is balanced by what we contribute to conservation projects, projects to plant trees, investments in alternative energy, etc.

Maybe if we had all the time in the world…

But we don’t. We must reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs); we must reduce them drastically to keep the planet from catastrophic warming; and we must do this as quickly as possible. The slogan of the Step It Up 2007 Campaign says it succinctly — 80% reduction by 2050.

But we are headed in the wrong direction. Michael Klare, professor of peace and world security at Hampshire College, who has written a lot on energy and security issues, had this to say in a recent article for Foreign Policy in Focus:

Because Americans show no inclination to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels — but rather are using more and more of them all the time — one can foresee no future reduction in US emissions of GHGs. According to the[Department of Energy], the US is projected to consume 35% more oil, coal, and gas combined in 2030 than in 2004; not surprisingly, the nation’s emissions of carbon dioxide are expected to rise by approximately the same percentage over this period. If these projections prove accurate, total US carbon dioxide emissions in 2030 will reach a staggering 8.1 billion metric tons, of which 42% will be generated through the consumption of oil (most of it in automobiles, vans, trucks, and buses), 40% by the burning of coal (principally to produce electricity), and the remainder by the combustion of natural gas (mainly for home heating and electricity generation).

And then there’s China, India, and more. He goes on:

According to DoE, global emissions of carbon dioxide are projected to increase by a frightening 75% between 2003 and 2030, from 25.0 to 43.7 billion metric tons.

This is very depressing. As he says, we are headed to the very worst-case scenario of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

This is why Klare insists that global warming is not an environmental problem, it is an energy problem. And this is why we say that the only solutions lie in a radically new way of life — because the alternative technologies that now exist cannot replace all the energy provided, and to be provided over the next couple of decades, by fossil fuels to support economic expansion and vastly increased consumption from developing nations.

“Almost 90% of the world’s energy is supplied through the combustion of fossil fuels,” writes Klare. We can’t replace that with renewables, not for a long time, and probably never. Meanwhile, we must reduce our emissions A LOT so that the poor of our world can become not-poor. They have that right. Which means we must strive to be less rich. Oh, harsh words indeed.

Now unfortunately I have grave doubts that we will do that (though there are already many people changing their lives accordingly, but this needs to be done on a societal scale).

And that’s why I get nervous about personal, or individual, carbon offsets. I get nervous about any approach that lulls people into believing we can stop global warming without drastic reductions in our personal and society-wide greenhouse gas emissions — in other words, without changes in how we live.

Finally, I put this link to an article by Ken Caldeira, climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution’s department of global ecology. I fear that the NY Times may make you pay to view this article, so I am putting some excerpts below. It appeared on the op-ed page on Jan. 16. Hopefully you can read the entire thing. He notes that not only will planting trees not do it, but that we have to be careful about where we plant them. According to Caldeira, forests in the wrong places (the US, Canada, Europe and Russia, for example) could add to the warming, while planting them in the right places (the tropics) will help cool things. You see how complicated this can be. You see how there are no simple, burden-free solutions.

Excerpts from When being green raises the heat:

While preserving and restoring forests is unquestionably good for the natural environment, new scientific studies are concluding that preservation and restoration of forests outside the tropics will do little or nothing to help slow climate change. And some projects intended to slow the heating of the planet may be accelerating it instead.

Trees don’t just absorb carbon dioxide — they soak up the sun’s heating rays, too. Forests tend to be darker than farms and pastures and therefore tend to absorb more sunlight. This has a warming influence that appears to cancel, on average, the cooling influence of the forest’s carbon storage. This effect is most pronounced in snowy areas — snow on bare ground reflects far more sunlight back to space than does a snowed-in forest — so forests in areas with seasonal snow cover can be strongly warming.

In contrast, tropical forests appear to be doubly valuable to the earth’s climate system. Not only do they store copious amounts of carbon, the roots of tropical trees reach down deep, drawing up water that they evaporate through their leaves. In the atmosphere, this water may form clouds that reflect sunlight back to space, helping to cool the earth.

These findings have important policy implications. It has been suggested that agreements to limit climate change should consider carbon stored in forests. If so, they would need to consider the direct climate effects of forests so as to avoid perverse incentives to plant warming forests in places like the United States, Canada, Europe and the former Soviet Union. However, tropical forests, which are generally found in developing countries, may be due a double climate credit — one for their carbon storage and another for their cooling clouds…

Clear-cutting mountains to slow climate change is, of course, nuts. The broadest goal is neither to slow the growth of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere nor to slow climate change, but rather to preserve the irreplaceable natural balance that sustains life as we know it on this planet. We want to avoid climate change so that we might pass these diverse natural riches on to future generations. In this light, preserving and restoring forests is a valuable activity, regardless of its impact on climate — we need more trees, not fewer.

But the notion that we can save the planet just by planting trees is a dangerous illusion. To preserve our environment, we must drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and this will require a major transformation of our energy system. A primary goal for the next half-century should be to transform our energy system to one based on clean, safe and environmentally acceptable energy sources like wind, solar and perhaps nuclear. This means solving the real problems involved with storing and distributing power, providing energy for transportation, and using nuclear plants.

We cannot afford to indulge ourselves with well-intentioned activities that do little to solve the underlying problem. Instead, we must demand that our political leaders do more to revolutionize our energy system and preserve our environmental inheritance for future generations.

[tags] carbon offsets, carbon emissions, greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, carbon neutral, global warming[/tags]