If a recent article from the BBC is anything to go by, countries that think they are reducing their carbon emissions may in fact be increasing them. It seems that under UN rules no-one owns emissions from aviation and shipping.
Furthermore, no-one counts the increase that comes from imported goods. So moving manufacturing offshore is one way of reducing your GHG emissions score. And any increase in the consumption of material goods doesn’t count when they are imported.
This article indicates that the UK reduced its GHG emissions from 775.2 million tonnes in 1990 to 658.1 million tonnes in 2006. That’s a healthy reduction of 15%. But two new reports spoil the party somewhat. It seems that in 2004 when the emissions were 657 million tonnes the real score was 979 if aviation, shipping and imported goods are taken into account.
On one count with all emissions included that’s an increase of 18% from 1992 to 2004.
Walden Bello, who along with the rest of what they call civil society thinks the Doha trade negotiations should be junked, says that derailing Doha is essential to saving the climate:
A derailment of Doha will not be a sufficient condition to formulate a strategy to contain climate change, but given the likely negative ecological consequences of a successful deal, it is a necessary condition.
The increase in shipping is bad enough, but he quotes the IPCC as saying that fuel consumption by civil aviation “could rise by nearly 350 per cent from 1992 levels by 2050.” He quotes Mander and Retallack as saying:
“Each ton of freight moved by plane uses forty nine times as much energy per kilometer as when it’s moved by ship….A two minute takeoff by a 747 is equal to 2.4 million lawn mowers running for twenty minutes.”
Many goods and even food are being transported by air.
George Monbiot in his book Heat (2006) calculates that in order to achieve a 90% reduction in emissions the British will have to reduce the number of flights they make by 87%. That is after allowing for a 20% increase in fuel efficiency. He compares the carbon efficiency of various modes of transport from London to Manchester (298km):
Plane (70% full) 63.9kg CO2 per passenger
Car (1.56 passengers) 36.9kg
Train (70 % full) 5.2kg
Coach (40 passengers) 4.3kg
Monbiot believed the UK Government was not serious about limiting air travel. He quotes the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee as calculating that the extra capacity the government was proposing meant “the equivalent of another Heathrow every 5 years”.
What the higher price of fuel will do to demand remains to be seen. Monbiot was questioning whether carbon pricing alone would be enough to achieve the deep cuts necessary. There may be some areas where demand would have to be limited by regulation or rationing rather than price. We might have to distinguish between necessary vs discretionary travel.
A 90 per cent cut in carbon emissions means the end of distant foreign holidays, unless you are prepared to take a long time getting there. It means that business meetings must take place over the internet or by means of video conferences. It means that trans-continental journeys must be made by train – or coach. It means that journeys around the world must be reserved for visiting the people you love, and they will require both slow travel and saving of carbon rations. It means the end of shopping trips in New York, parties in Ibeza, second homes in Tuscany and, most painfully to me, political meetings in Porto Alegre – unless you believe that these activities are worth the sacrifice of the biosphere and lives of the poor. (p187)
He says that the people affected most are a small but powerful group. But I think our cultural expectations in the last 40 years have gone way beyond that. People move around the world for all sorts of reasons, and many of those reasons add up to personal growth. Also can you imagine a world where cultural groups and sporting teams travel only by boat if at all?
There is a further issue that needs to be rounded up before we can have satisfactory carbon accounting – the role of soils. I recall a news item saying that a study had found that all the gains made in Britain since Kyoto in reducing emissions had been nixed by increased carbon loss from soils. The implication seemed to be that climate warming caused a net loss of carbon stored in soils to the extent of 13% from memory.
When I googled I found this 2005 study behind the pay wall so I can’t read it. Nevertheless it’s clear that there is a problem and the authors suggested a link with climate change. In 2006 they were still fingering climate change but in 2008 they seemed to think the main driver was land use change.
Obviously this factor needs to be nailed and included in the accounts along with the other three. And we are going to have to decide whether we count carbon emissions at the point of production or consumption. The latter seems logical to me if we are going to go for equity across national boundaries.
A broader question is how are we going to live on the planet? Certainly we could get by with less stuff. But are we going to forgo new fashions every year while last year’s are still perfectly serviceable?
Are we going to take the planetary carbon implications into account when we negotiate on trade matters? Should industries be located where they can be most carbon efficient? Should minerals be processed in Australia where we potentially have abundant renewable energy? Should we host a renaissance of manufacturing for the same reason?
And the consumption of services, as illustrated by the issue of air travel, is not carbon-free. Sure we can buy offsets for air travel, but should offsets be used for such ‘trivial’ purposes?
In general terms the problem is this. In the long run the whole biosphere would be best served if we returned the atmosphere roughly to its preindustrial state. I think that’s the way to go on ethical grounds as well as in terms of rational self-interest.
At present according to the Blair report (pdf) we are emitting globally about 55gt of CO2e each year. In 1990 it was 40gt and in 2050 if we take no action it will be 85gt (probably more if truth be known). 55gt of CO2e is about 15gt of carbon. By sector we do it this way, according to IPPC AR4:
If you want to decrease that by even 90% it’s pretty obvious that you have to turn the forestry number into a zero, probably a negative, and get the whole remaining diagram back to close to zero apart from agriculture, which is going to be difficult to reduce at all.
This is roughly how the carbon sits in the various parts of the planetary system (image from here):
This is how we found it (image from here):
I suspect some of the figures are a bit out of date. I think the atmospheric carbon is presently about 810gt and the pre-industrial figure 590. The super-informed amongst you will correct me. In any case we’d need to remove about 200gt of carbon from the atmosphere. But it exists as gas, mostly CO2, so you should multiply by 3.667 to get the true mass. You’d need an almighty great hole to bury 733 billion tonnes of the stuff.
The problem doesn’t finish there. As I understand it if we removed all that carbon the ocean would give up some of it’s carbon (quite a lot) as the PH returns to what it was pre-industrially. That would be would terrific for the coral reefs and the sea life.
So where will we put it? The best bet seems to me the trees and the soil, mostly the soil.
Will our life-style survive? We might get somewhere near it if we indulge in the odd bit of nuclear power and perhaps a bit of odd geoengineering.
We do have to choose, because if we do nothing that is also a choice. We can leave all the existing carbon in the atmosphere, but if we do in the long run we risk 25 meters or more of sea level rise, 3C or more temperature increase and the possibility of triggering the release of methane deposits and other nasty tipping points.
If we translate the air travel issue into the Australian situation, Ben Rose calculated that when international travel is included the sector comprises 5.2% (and no doubt increasing) of our emissions, compared with the 0.8% domestic travel reported in the national accounts. This is how our national accounts looked in 2005:
If we need to reduce that lot by 90% we will have to stay at home more, short of a miracle, unless we do a bit of geo-engineering. The choice is ours.
Furthermore, jet fuel is completely untaxed for international routes, and in Australia, the jet fuel excise is just 2.8c/L for domestic routes. Compare that with 38c/L for petrol and diesel — that’s more than 13x the excise rate on jet fuel! (no I didn’t miss a decimal point).
One may ask why the most damaging of all forms of transportation is so favoured by the tax system, both in Australia and around the world. The best answer I have is:
No-one, and I mean no-one, wants to give up flying. I include myself in this.
Try suggesting to your greenie, lefty, latte-sipping friends that they give up flying for the sake of the environment. I doubt you’ll get many volunteers.
carbonsink, there were three main points to this somewhat rambling post. The first is that we are going to have to lift our game in counting carbon if we are going to be able to be fair dinkum in mitigating global warming.
The second is that there is an argument for attributing emissions to the point of consumption rather than where the emissions are actually produced.
Third, the task of reducing atmospheric carbon is truly vast, but is something that should surely be tackled. Growing more trees than we cut down will be necessary for that alone, and hence may become less available to you and I to buy offsets for what Monbiot calls love miles. Air travel and air transport for trade seem to be on a dynamic growth path. Given the depth of cuts to be made, will price signals alone keep emissions in that category down sufficiently or will our activities in that regard need to be limited by regulation?
The other more general point is that if we want to preserve our ability to act with freedom according to our desires, we will only be able to do so if we bring into play nuclear power (not in Australia, but elsewhere) and geoengineering of some kind. We’ll have to get over any squeamishness that may possess us. Or so it seems to me.
As you all know, I think geoengineering is just about inevitable.
However, I think it’s an erroneous assumption that long-distance travel is doomed.
For one thing, jet engines run on hydrogen just fine. It’s bulky and inconvenient to carry – and flights will have to travel at a lower altitude to reduce the warming effects of contrails – but the demand for high-speed travel is so immense that we’ll find a way to deliver.
For another, given the enormous incentive that restrictions on aircraft would present, really high-speed trains running in evacuated tunnels might well become viable.
Start crazy speculation
Ultimately, you could have a Northern Hemisphere backbone running from New York, through Quebec, Greenland, Iceland, and possibly the Faroe Islands, to London. From there, perhaps Paris-Berlin-Moscow-…(a long, long distance), all the way to the Bering Sea, through Alaska, and from there south-east to Vancouver or Seattle, with a link across the northern United States to complete the loop.
Obvious branch lines would be down the US coasts, a link to Beijing, a link from Japan, though that might be a bit difficult. Geography would suggest through Korea. The alternative route is through Hokkaido and Sakhalin Island, but that has political issues of its own.
You’d also want a link to India, which presumably would go through China and bypass the Middle East.
Australia’s chances of joining such a network are low in anything other than the very long term. The only plausible route is through Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, which might prove viable if Indonesia continues to develop.
End crazy speculation.
Oh I don’t know Brian. Just ask Rob Merkel or John Quiggin, the problem is not “truly vast” but actually relatively small. To quote Rob from a few days ago:
One could also argue that the capturing and distribution of water is also a “very small fraction of the world economy” but just because water is cheap now, doesn’t make it any less essential, or make the task of producing water through alternative means (e.g. desalination) any cheaper or easier.
I simply ask the question: If its so cheap and easy to replace our existing energy infrastructure, why have we made so little progress over the past decade?
I see a world where developing nations are building coal-fired power at a furious rate, where crucial carbon sinks (such as tropical forests) are still being destroyed, and where developed nations continue to rapidly expand airport capacity, while conveniently forgetting to count the carbon emissions from air travel. I don’t see a world in the process of making a “comparitively small” economic transformation.
Carbonsink: because there hasn’t been the political will to do so.
Re:
Here’s a quote from an article by Paul Kelly in The Australian today: Rudd’s carbon scheme chokes
Far more likely IMO is we’ll be flying lower and (slightly) slower in bio-fuelled propeller planes.
We can build propeller airliners tomorrow. We can grow bio jetfuel tomorrow (albeit in very small quantities). By comparison, the technical challenges with hydrogen fuelled aviation immense:
- Energy density of hydrogen by volume is crap
- Energy is required to produce hydrogen
- Energy is required to compress hydrogen
- Much larger fuselage to accommodate hydrogen tank, flying at lower altitude, means much more drag and a shorter range.
- The “flying bomb” factor.
From memory Monbiot demolished the idea in “Heat” (I’ll find a page ref later)
As for your “crazy speculation” Rob, how are the fairies at the bottom of your garden? Frankly, I’d be happy if we get through the next 20 years with civilization more or less intact. I won’t hold my breath waiting for high-speed trains running in evacuated tunnels. Tra la la…
Two questions:
1. Where will this political will come from in energy-intensive economies such as Australia, Canada, and the U.S, and developing economies such as China, India and Russia?
2. They seem to have a fair amount of political will in Europe, the home of Ryan Air, easyJet and dozens of other budget airlines.
Monbiot on hydrogen planes:
More Monbiot on hydrogen planes:
Rob, if you’ve seen any compelling evidence that hydrogen aviation has a future, I’d love to see it.
I love the idea of high-speed trains linking the world, but is there any reason we couldn’t have them linking, say, Melbourne – Adelaide – Perth? Or Melbourne – Sydney – Brisbane – Cairns? It wouldn’t solve international travel emissions, but wouldn’t it help with a lot of the love-miles that we create nationally? It seems so obvious that I can’t help but feel there’s a good reason it hasn’t happened already, though.
Julie, leaving out demand which will solve itself if airline flight is priced a great deal higher than now, there remain two problems with high-speed trains in Australia. The first is the hilliness between Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, the three most obvious points to start with. To go through the Victorian Alps and Great Dividing Range means either tunnels or slow, winding curves—ask the ghost of John Whitton.
The other problem is compulsory acquisition of the land for the wide, wide corridor where the line would have to go. High-speed trains require many dozens of metres of room on either side to allow for safety, and that land right now is owned.
I reckon a high speed train is great idea, though, and would be best created with a bit of judicious asset-seizures and massive deficit-funded spending.
/democraticsocialism
Putting one’s realist hat on again, the most likely prospect for high-speed rail is Melbourne-Canberra-Sydney, and then perhaps Brisbane.
Brisbane-Cairns, Melbourne-Adelaide, and Adelaide-Perth are unlikely to stack up for a while; they’re too far to be competitive with planes for current-technology high-speed rail, and the populations are too small to drive demand enough.
Wasn’t Federalism the other reason – because every State and territory wanted a different gauge?
(/
TrainThread derailment)Helen: yes, but that’s not an insurmountable problem in these days of COAG and dual gauge track.
/oh my God what have I started
Aha, yeah I can see how hilly regions would be difficult to work with. And people actually wanting to live on the land they own, instead of donating it to the nation for the greater good.
So: apart from the land we’d need to
Pesky logistics, getting in the way of a perfectly good pipe-dream.
seizeacquire, the tunneling, the huge cost and the time/labour to build it, it’s a great ideaAnyone for zeppelins?
Ah, well, the question is who isn’t?
Actually, Julie, zeppelins will probably turn out to be the only use we have for hydrogen in aviation.
Isn’t it wonderful, when two interwoven threads collide.
As usual with threads on this topic no-one wants to confront the ugly truth that we might have to give up flying. We might just have to settle for travelling shorter distances, more slowly, and less frequently, in a carbon-constrained and oil-depleted world.
Instead people offer up a myriad of techofixes — hydrogen planes, fast trains, biofuels — all of which fail to replace the fossil-fuelled miracle that is modern aviation in one way or another.
In any sane carbon pricing system aviation really should be the most heavily taxed of all modes of transportation, but in fact, aviation escapes with the lightest taxes. The reasons are obvious. Who here wants to see the end of the $50 flight anywhere between Sydney-Melbourne-Brisbane, or a doubling of airfares to Europe, Asia or America? No-one.
We are all in complete denial about aviation.
Not all of us, carbonsink. I had planned to go to Japan for a holiday with my youngest son in a couple of years time, but I’m starting to rethink it.
Why? No-one else is making the sacrifice, why should you? (Yes, I know this is the same point denialists use to argue that Australia shouldn’t reduce its carbon emissions).
I’m doing some “love miles” myself next month — flying my family of four to see relatives in Scotland. Sure, I’ll buy offsets, but I’m not kidding myself that will undo the damage I’m doing to the planet. By far the best thing I could do by the environment is not emit the carbon in the first place. Its the main reason why I haven’t done a long haul flight in five years.
Ok you may say this sounds like a hairshirt answer to the problem, but unfortunately its the Goddamn truth. Just don’t fly.
The guy over at Coyote Blog reckons that air transportation actually gets a pretty bum rap and isn’t much less efficient than many other modes of transport. He has the figures and is always a good read.
Ummmm … yeah, what was that I was saying about denial?
Here’s another gem from Monbiot, just telling it how it is…
It seems that the practical difficulties of reducing emissions are starting to dawn. Exactly HOW does the average person go about reducing emissions by even 10% let alone 60%.A Carbon tax will have zero effect when there are no alternatives. How does a farmer,or tradesman or truck driver reduce emissions? Even the humble bike rider will have to reduce emissions because after all it is all about per capita emissions.
Time for a rethink.
Annual per capita carbon emissions for selected countries (2004):
USA 20.4 tonnes, Canada 20.0, Australia 16.3, Japan 9.84, Germany 9.79, UK 9.79, New Zealand 7.8, France 6.2 … Bangladesh 0.25.
CO2e emitted from a round-trip economy class flight from Sydney to London: 10.8 tonnes.
If you want to reduce your personal carbon emissions: DON’T FLY.
This is the reason I support tax over cap-and-trade approaches. The latter are too fiddily and you can squirm out of them by claiming for instance that the CO2 you’re spewing isn’t being spewed by you cause you’ve done it over Vanuatu or some place.
.
Just make it more expensive to spew any CO2 anywhere and the incentive will be to reduce emissions not fiddle the regs.
t make it more expensive to spew any CO2 anywhere and the incentive will be to reduce emissions not fiddle the regs.
Adrien. Is there any evidence that the increase in price of petrol has reduced cosumption at all? Petrol could go to $3.00 per litre and people would still use it because there is no alternative.
Cost of coal(tax) would have to double to make wind viable, but we would still need the coal burning 24/7 for baseload. i.e increase in tax but no reductions in emissions.
Carbonsink:If you want to reduce your personal carbon emissions: DON’T FLY.
As most people don’t in fact,fly, any more bright ideas.
We have to get to 60% reduction, but 10% will do for now.
Baseload, schmaseload. I wish we could stop talking about this mythical beast, which spawns ridiculous offspring like unwieldy coal-fired power stations, and off-peak electricity (Mummy, does that mean there’s no carbon-dioxide with that?).
We just need to make our demand curve fit our supply curve as well as we can, and there are a myriad ways we can do that with current (ie. non-imaginary) technology. Our energy demand peaks, from memory, in the morning before work, and in the evenings, so one fairly simple example is to make all those appliances that aren’t really time sensitive part of a smartgrid, so they do not draw power when it is peaking.
I’m just off to buy a smartfridge (TM) right now…
We just need to make our demand curve fit our supply curve as well as we can
You mean sit in the dark and cold when the wind isn’t blowing?
chrisl, in Australia it should be entirely possible to decarbonise grid electricity through wind, concentrated solar and geothermal, not to mention tides and waves, with geothermal providing base load for when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.
Once you’ve done that you can substantially decarbonise land transport through electricity or fuel cells primed from the grid. Air travel is harder, clearly, and the information provided by carbonsink from Monbiot was what I was getting at.
But it is air transport as well, and I can’t see us being able to justify flying cut flowers and specialised fruit and other food around the world no matter how much the rich are prepared to pay.
Ships are another thing I don’t know how to deal with, but I suspect that globalised trade and globalised manufacturing will have to be rethought and rationalised. For example, perhaps Australian iron ore should be made into steel here, rather than lug the ore around the world.
Can I remind people that agriculture currently accounts for 16% of our emissions. I tried vegetarianism and my gut is just not adapted to it! And honestly should we be held responsible for the emissions in producing food that we export? Clearly not. Let them starve!
Philip Sutton gave a talk on Perspective the other night. He reckons we’ve got to get 200 billion tonnes of carbon out of the air, so he agrees with me! You could do it by increasing vegetation on the planet by a third, but that’s a lot of trees to plant, which will reduce runoff and limit fresh water available to us and to agriculture as well as compete with agriculture for land.
The real shocker though is that if we want to have a good life going forward, as they say, we have to reduce net emissions to zero. I think that’s what Kenneth Caldeira has been telling us. (I think I should do a post on that.) So we are going to have to offset things like growing food, unless the new factor I’ve been hearing about and have read nothing as yet, about plant growth including certain grasses fixing carbon in soil in the process of growing comes to our rescue.
So we seem to be a long way from sorting out our carbon accounting. When we do and find our way back to the Eden of the Holocene I think discretionary air travel is going to be hard to justify unless there is in fact a technofix.
in Australia it should be entirely possible to decarbonise grid electricity through wind, concentrated solar and geothermal, not to mention tides and waves, with geothermal providing base load for when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.
Wow that sounds easy Brian.Any idea on cost or timeframe? Can geothermal be cranked up or down in reaction to windspeed?
Actually, if developing nations continue to grow emissions, developed nations have to get to a 80-90% reduction, but anyway…
So … you haven’t flown anywhere in the past 12 months? I doubt this would be true of most middle-class Australians these days. If so, could any of those flights been avoided? Did you really need to go on that holiday, attend that conference, or meet those customers face-to-face? In all cases the answer was probably no. The fact is, the most easily avoided emissions are from flying. The problem is: WE DON’T WANT TO.
I will be jumping on a plane to Europe next month. Rob Merkel recently flew to San Francisco. Assuming we make no more long haul flights this year, these flights will represent more than half our carbon emissions for 2008.
As for personally reducing your emissions from other sources getting 10% from other sources, there are plenty of low-hanging fruit around.
1. Switch to 100% GreenPower
2. If you have electric storage hot water, switch to gas or solar
3. If you use electric resistance heating, switch to gas or heat pump.
4. Use public transport more often.
5. Change your light bulbs to CFLs
I reckon there’s an easy 10% there … but none of the above will have the same impact has not taking one long haul flight.
chrisl, I’m not an engineer. Geodynamics, which is the first mover in Australian geothermal, should be in a position to declare “proof of concept” at the end of this month. The trials are looking good. It’s a much better bet than ‘clean coal’, for instance.
The process involves pumping water down a 4km hole where it is forced through fractures in the hot rocks and extracted through a hole about 500m away. The heat is then turned into power through a common steam turbine. The water is filtered and returns down the hole in a continuous process.
I imagine it can be cranked up or down as easily as a coal-fired power station, possibly more so.
In terms of output Geodynamics are planning a Snowy Mts sized output by 2015 which they reckon will be commercially competitive. After that it would depend on how fast they can dig holes. They might have to upgrade the distribution infrastucture, which is a long way from markets, but I’m confident they are planning whatever is necessary, without government handouts, as I understand it.
Robert is better on the practical stuff, so he might be able to correct me.
Chrisl, you seem deeply cynical about renewables. That’s fair enough – I am deeply cynical about coal power. But I’d prefer you respond to the actual realities of the situation. I would have no problem (apart from it’s deep aesthetic ugliness) with coal power, if AGW was not an issue. Hey, there’s a lot of coal, so why not? Why do you object to renewables? There is some great technology there, but no-one has been serious about it because of the cost. Soon, it will be a choice between cost and starvation/global collapse/anarchy, whether we get an ETS or whatever. I am not wanting to sit in the dark either, but if I have to read by a 10W lightglobe rather than six 50W halogens, I think I can do that!
Chrisl, a 10% reduction personally is piss easy. I’ve not thoroughly accounted for my family’s emissions, but we’re far more than 10% under the average Australian family. It’s really simple stuff, the first bit. CF lights, turning stuff off rather than stand-by, take advantage of solar rebates, insulate your house, try to walk or ride some places, buy four and five star appliances and you’ve already done more than most people.
For flights, yeah it is hard to kick the habit, but we’ve managed to take a few less, consciously holidaying closer to home ratehr than abroad or interstate. And when we do go to Europe next year, we’ll save up our leave and $$ and go for 8 – 10 weeks rather than three.
I think the time has jsut about come for Australia to take another clsoe look at the VFT. There are no insurmountable problems with it, the inland route from Melb to Sydney could be up and running in ten years. Three and a half hours from Spencer St to Central Station is better than flying anyway. I can’t believe anyone would raise compulsory acquisition as an issue – it happens all the time, for far worse projects than this. And there would be winners as well, such as people at Badgery’s Creek, or near current airports.
On public transport,it’s been said here that they’re not as green as claimed. Well, the Victorian Commissioner for Environmental sustainability has just put out a position paper on the role of Public Transport. Interesting reading. Here’s the PDF: http://www.ces.vic.gov.au/CA256F310024B628/0/3C375AF544CFB3D4CA25748D0022100E/$File/public+transpor+-+role+in+reducing+greenhouse+emissions.pdf
Brian, some of my meagre shareholdings are with Geodynamics, and I read their pressers regularly. They calculate a 9% transmission loss due to distance from the grid, but are very confident of the economics of the proposal. It’s basically all baseload, they would be generating 24/7, 365 days a year.
So now we have Rob Merkel, myself and wilful, three individuals acutely aware of the damage flying does to the environment, all doing long haul flights, or planning to soon. The emissions from these flights will completely overwhelm any emissions reductions we’ve made in other areas of our lives.
If we can’t kick the habit, who can?
Honestly, our only hope is that the oil markets take away our “right” to fart out 10 tonnes of CO2 into the stratosphere.
carbonsink, add me to that list. In about 6 weeks time our family is meeting in Basel and then doing a trip down the Rhine to Amsterdam. After a spell in Germany we meet again for a week at my sister’s place in Toronto. Then back home via Vancouver.
Reasons? My sister turned 70 this year.
My younger brother turned 60.
As it happens our dear old Mum would have been 100 if she was still alive.
Most of the families we grew up with are no longer intact. Happens we still are. We’ve only met once as a family since 1965 and will probably never do it again.
I’ve never been over there, and my sister would never forgive me if she (or I) died before I came to see where she has spent most of her life.
After that last sin, I’ll be good.
carbonsink, I acknowledge the hypocrisy, but I’m finding it harder to give up dairy products! My wife agrees that we wont be flying much in the future, in fact she’s increasing her support for my crazy idea to build a 40′ catamaran to get to europe next time.
Videoconferencing is an interesting thing. Still not really culturally acceptable or technically feasible except within a large organisation. I think this will break down quickly and it will be OK, and easy to do, to have a small business person deal with you through videoconference.
“in fact she’s increasing her support for my crazy idea to build a 40? catamaran to get to europe next time”
I am very impressed by your achievement and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I should have added … because government certainly isn’t willing to!
Nowhere in all the greenpapers, whitepapers, committees and discussion groups revolving around Penny Wong’s “Carbon Emissions Reduction Scheme” is there any mention of raising the price of air travel, which, as I have pointed out several times, is very heavily favoured by the tax system at the moment.
Brian, I’ve noticed amongst people of retirement age (and I’m guessing you’re close judging by the age of your siblings) an urgency to travel while they still can, and while its still affordable. This is certainly true of my parents and my wife’s parents, who have done at least one long haul flight a year for the past five years. As the price of oil rises, and threat of carbon-pricing becomes more real, their urgency to travel has increased.
This is classic accelerating-towards-the-cliff behaviour.
Seems to me the baby-boomers are determined to wind down their assets, spend their retirement in debt, and fart out as much GHGs as possible before they die.
Excuse my cynicism Yaz but this post sums it up in a nutshell. Robert(when will it snow again) Merkel, Carbon(low hanging fruit) sink and Brian(crank coal stations up and down) all really really believe in climate change but off they go overseas.By plane! And here is me who has some serious doubts about the whole theory not flying and driving a four cylinder converted to gas!
I’ll believe it’s a crisis when those who say it’s a crisis ,act like it’s a crisis.
P.S Brian: You cant crank coal fired power stations up or down, they go flat out 24/7. That is why wind is largely useless(except as garden ornaments)
chrisl, I said I wasn’t an engineer. But what you say leaves geothermal quite suitable for baseload power, does it not?
If you think I’m being a hypocrite then good luck to you, but you’re a fool if you think my attending a family reunion has anything to do with whether there is a critical situation WRT to global warming.
I didn’t say whether or not we were purchasing offsets.
I’ve just found the answer and its here
My sister-in-law lives in Scotland (married a Scottish bloke, now has two kids). She has flown out to Oz five or six times since 2003, which was the last time we visited Scotland. We can afford the flights much more easily than she can. She knows this.
You can only hold out against the pressure for “love miles” for so long. While flying is still affordable, people will fly.
All the other lifestyle changes I’ve already made, from not eating red meat to changing lightbulbs — installing solar hot water, signing up for GreenPower, driving an ultra fuel efficient car — I’ve done them all, and like I said, I haven’t done a long haul flight for five years, and not for economic reasons.
Right thats it…. I’m off overseas… I’m sure i’ve got some family in Upper Bavaria or somewhere.
By the way Carbonsink you have done the “easy” 10% how are you going to manage the other 50%?
If you exclude the long haul flight (which I’m unlikely to repeat for many years) I reckon my emissions are down by at least 50% from my pre “greenhouse aware” days.
My house uses less than 10kWh/day and its 100% GreenPower, so in theory that’s zero emissions. My car emits less than 150g/km, and I drive less than 10,000km a year. I don’t eat red meat. I try to buy locally-produced food. I ride my bike around town whenever possible. Oh, and I’ve planted around 500 trees in the backyard and neighbouring bush (doing some bush regen).
What exactly are you doing?
I decided not to get into show and tell mode. It would take at least 300 words to explain myself and that’s about 200 too many.
I copped a huge serve recently when I suggested that I might think twice about going to Adelaide for a visit now that my daughter has produced my first grandchild.
I don’t need a serve from any of you folks if I do decide to go!
Hey all,
The Cwth Green Paper indicates that “The Government would work with the fuel supply industry to develop administrative arrangements to enable fuel that is exported, used for international transport, sequestered in plastics and supplied to visiting defence forces and consular vehicles to be excluded from obligations under the scheme.”
Currently domestic airlines pay the excise (about 3c/L) on fuel, so airlines would simply be liable to pay for permits at the same point.
International aviation won’t be included to start, but domestic will. This will essentially just flow through to another price increase, and will perhaps impact on demand but not overally.
The EU is also considering including all domestic flights and possibly any flights landing in EU airports.
It’s not all that strong, but its a start:
“All flights starting and/or landing in Europe (including intercontinental flights) to be included in the ETS from 1 January 2012;
The EU to have an obligation to seek an agreement on global measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from aviation. Bilateral agreements, for example with the US, could be a first step;
85 percent of the emissions certificates to be allocated for free according to a common European benchmark. 15 percent to be auctioned;
The reduction target to be calculated on the basis of airlines’ average annual emissions between 2004-2006: in the first period (2012), airline emissions to be cut by 3 percent; in the second, from 2013 onwards, by 5 percent. The percentage to be further modified as part of the general review of the ETS.”
Although, in both these cases, once airlines are included in an ETS, the difficulty in reducing airline emissions will drive the costs onto other parts of the economy.
Of course, if oil prices continue to more or less rise, more efficient jumbos will be developed. Efficiency gains in airlines have been massive compared to other forms of transport, because the costs in terms of actual fuel, but also ability to fly non-stop between longer destinations is significant.
You’ll also see airlines try and just cram more people on and it will get more expensive to have extra weight due to the efficiency gains.
In the meantime, offset your travel, and if you’re still guilty do it twice. =)
Carbonsink – 100% green power, less than 8,000km a year drive, cycle/PT, little to no red met, and offset airline travel. 500 trees though – that is impressive.
Brian You don’t need a note for the teacher to defend your travel plans. Go where you want. It is a case of rhetoric meeting reality. Perhaps the rhetoric needs to be toned down.
I regularly get ear-bashed about global warming by my brother-in-law, who drives a land Rover discovery, has 3 air-conditioners and a patio heater.And is flying to Scotland for his fathers birthday.
Perhaps he could meet Carbonsink while he is there and talk about the perils of Global Warming.
Brian, re your comment:
To borrow a comment from Peterc:
It’s tricky isn’t it…?
By the way, if we contributed towards saving the forests this could go some way to offset our horrid emissions…
On the topic of emissions, we’re forever being told that historical emissions are the fault of the developed countries.
Apparently this belief emanated from “The Brazilian Proposal”. This UNFCCC link provides some background and notes that: http://unfccc.int/methods_and_science/other_methodological_issues/items/1038.php
(It should also be noted that the developed countries also created most of the world’s technological advances, so many that have been beneficial, but ironically many that are also contributing to our current predicament…)
While I have some reservations about the glib attribution of historical emissions, I accept the developed world must address its over-consumption. However, the developing world should also consider the environmental impact of its over-population.
The UN http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43156 suggests the global population could grow to 12 billion by 2050, of which 10.6 billion would be in developing countries. (p. viii) http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2006/WPP2006_Highlights_rev.pdf
The topic of population growth is a political correctness minefield (Note: I’m not so sure about the concept of “contraction and convergence” mentioned in this linked article) but I’ll throw myself on the altar of political incorrectness by suggesting that developing countries have also significantly contributed to our current environmental problems because of their enormous population growth in recent years (and potential growth in future years), influenced by a number of complex factors including culture and religion (not to mention US (and Australian) reluctance to fund family planning.
Perhaps it’s time we broke down the “developed country” / “developing country” dichotomy and tried to solve our environmental problems together. Because there’s only one world.
We could start by including the impact of population growth on the climate change agenda.
I don’t ear-bash anyone about global warming or peak oil in “real life”, only on blogs, and the very occasional email.
FWIW, I have one five-star air-conditioner that is used almost exclusively for heating (no gas available here) which runs on 100% GreenPower, a turbo-diesel VW Golf that does 5.7L/100km, and no patio heater.
Again, chrisl, I’d love to hear what lifestyle changes you have made, if any.
Brian, I imagine the “Love Miles” chapter in Heat must have hit you hard
Well, yes, it was a wake up call, carbonsink, but Monbiot was working on the notion that we can safely absorb 2.7gt of carbon (about 10gt CO2e) even with failing carbon sinks and safely leave in the air what we’ve already put there. Both those assumptions appear to be wrong.
The news on GW and CC just seems to keep getting worse. Merely repeating what scientists at the leading edge are saying gets one into trouble about alarmism, and the need to “tone down the rhetoric”.
Excellent post Brian, and some excellent comments too. I think emissions trading (the CPRS) is heading towards being yet another SNAFU, as many commentators are now pointing out [link]
As per David Spratt today, we are in the middle of the road, heading towards a cliff with a climate emergency now upon us. For exampble, Melbourne’s water supply is lower than it was at this time last year (around 30%).
Personal actions to reduce emissions are commendable, but our governments are still rushing headlong into more high carbon emission projects such as brown coal power stations, desalintation plants and building more freeways. Some suggestions I put into the Victorian Climate Change summit are (based on EVs submission) are [here}
Nationally, it seems like Rudd, Wong, Garret et al still believe that their 60% by 2050 target is just fine (which it clearly now is not) and that the CPRS (already bastardised in the Greenpaper) will reduce emissions – though it now appears highly likely it won’t.
I think we really need to get water, climate change and energy policy out of the political arena and in the hands of a taskforce who can really do something – before our politicians preside over the total collapse of our ecosystems, our climate and our economy.
carbonsink:Again, chrisl, I’d love to hear what lifestyle changes you have made, if any.
I happen to think that the changes you have made, while commendable, are futile. Firstly the expense, which most people could not afford.
Secondly, what difference has it made? Australia has 1.4% of the worlds emissions so divide that by the number of households (say 5 or 6 million). Then halve it again because you have “only” reduced your emissions by 50%.Thirdly you have wrecked it all by going overseas!
I would support adaption over mitigation
I would support a carbon dioxide tax that went into a fund that allowed for future scenarios. Lets make up an acronym with precautionary in it.If the gloom and doom merchants are right then we have money to do something about it, if not, well we could think of something else, like an education revolution.
Brian:Adele Horin has a piece in the SMH that could be written just for you. “Globetrotting boomers fly in the face of carbon reality”
I’m always interested in what Adele Horin has to say, but I’m nowhere near being a boomer. I predate them by a clear margin. My younger brother on the other hand is, and boy do they get around!
She says “Wearing a hair shirt, turning the thermostat down and eschewing the car are easy sacrifices compared with abandoning the dream of international travel”
Then she justifies it by saying”putting the passport in the bottom drawer would really hurt the people who probably care most about global warming. Those who have seen the world are likely to have not only a pile of frequent-flyer points but an affinity with the inhabitants of countries most imperilled by global warming.”
She is saving the world, one frequent flyer point at a time.
I followed the Hansen 2007 hearing in Iowa from a recent link, (here: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/IowaCoal_071105.pdf ) and he outlines his views on how we can make it, very very simply. No new (unsequestered) coalfired power stations immediately, no new ones in the developing world from 2020, and phase out all emitting power generation between 2025 and 2050. He reckons peak oil will fix transport and if we manage transport and stationary energy we’re pretty much sorted. This is from the lead ‘tipping points’ person.
That’s all pretty doable.
Yes, and shifting to electric drive trains for vehicles (such as plug in hybrids) provides a realistic alternative for the majority of vehicle use, and can transition to use electricity from renewable sources as it comes on line. Truck freight can shift to trains for the long haul routes – trailer and all if loading costs are a barrier.
I wonder what the cost of electric freight would be for Australia?
Certainly it would be a massive air quality improvement in Footscray.
Truly foul what happens when a long train with three engines chugs slowly through the middle of an inner suburb.
Chrisl, Adele Horin says she was as addicted to air travel as the next person, but now she’s thinking about it.
What made her think was Richard Begbie talk on Ockham’s Razor. What made Begbie think about it was a question of Jeremy Leggett by John Rogers of the ANU at a Science Week session a year earlier. Begbie says we are going to have to lose the habit and revert to the practice of the 1950s when people went overseas once in a lifetime if at all. I like his last para:
wilful, when Hansen gave the Iowa testament he was still saying that we should limit CO2 to 450ppm (see note to Fig 30 on slide p49). Soon after that he revised the goal downwards to 350ppm. If you look at this piece (pdf) he talks about better forestry practice to use forestry as a sink rather than a source, biochar etc. He reckons drawing down 50ppm at $100/tC would only cost $10 trillion. At that price it’s still doable, given the will.
Here’s another item to depress yourself with from the Tehran Times, would you believe!
Energy is used in our personal lives largely for reasons of convenience and comfort. The way I see it, if it’s still convenient and still comfortable, then there’s still room to improve and reduce energy use and its subsequent GHG emissions. Say what you like about the things you deem to be necessary (eg. love miles), but at the end of the day, with 6 billion of us and rising, there’s someone out there who does not agree with your version of necessity, and acts accordingly. When this is the case, the “well if they can do it so can you” argument becomes difficult to combat.
BenW, that’s fair comment. I think Hansen’s adoption of 350ppm is strategic in that it is less than what we have now and gets us going in the right direction. That’s what he said. His own consideration of paleoclimate history indicates that CO2 has not been above 300ppm in the last million years. Yet in the Eemian interglacial 125k years ago we had temperatures 1-2C above 2000 levels and a sea level 4-6m higher. He stresses this repeatedly.
If we ultimately need to get CO2 concentrations down to 280ppm and keep them there we’ll need to organise offsets so that we can produce essentials like food, shelter and necessary infrastructure. In that context we would need to collectively take a very different view of love miles.
. When this is the case, the “well if they can do it so can you” argument becomes difficult to combat.
IOW If you can’t walk the walk, don’t talk the talk.
I think this covers love miles (and most of the rest of our lifestyles)
chrisl, in my experience it is actually rare for people who have theoretical and principled understandings to carry the implications of same through into every aspect of their personal lives, which are lived in a reality that is subject to all sorts of pressures and normative constraints over which they have no control.
This, which you may or may not know about, does not detract from the wisdom/rightness or otherwise of what they say, which in it’s own way is does work in the world.
Not as much work perhaps as it does if they can demonstrate it in their praxis, but work nevertheless. But lecturers at university in the social sciences area don’t spend the last 15 minutes explaining how what they say has led them to change their life habits. Nor should they feel they have to.
In my case, to put it bluntly, I could make a statement by withdrawing from the family reunion thing in Europe and Canada. If I did it would be tantamount to resigning from the family. They roughly know what I do here on the blog, but we don’t discuss it unless they want to, and I know their reactions would vary from sympathy to a belief that I’d finally lost it and gone nuts.
You have to keep the lines open if you want to change people’s views. And respect their position.
So Brian, What is the point of the whole post? Are you trying to convince yourself? Or show your superior googling skills? Or just alarm the ship out of everyone. The least you could do is add a disclaimer at the end of it.
The reality is that a call for a reduction in emissions by 90% or 60% or even 10% is preposterous. People won’t do it in a voluntary or compulsory manner.The only regions that do it either cook the books or receive their baseload power from elsewhere(a la California, Denmark or The Netherlands – and most of it nuclear)
I say go to your reunion with a clear conscience but remember every farmer, truckdriver, tradesmean etc faces the same dilemma that you do.
I am interested in this take on things. It’s the “unless they want to” part that I find difficult. I mean, do you think that there is really the possibility of practical progression in terms of peoples opinions on the issue? It’s like climate change denial – you either deny, don’t deny, or haven’t made up your mind. I don’t see that there is a point where you can be half denying and half not. For the issue of love miles etc, you either consider them alright or you don’t (and it’s no good saying “but I haven’t done it in X years”, because doing it means that you’re not not doing it).
So I guess I am wondering if it is the case that we, at a certain time, will have to discuss the things that people don’t want to hear and do (or don’t do, as the case may be) what is frowned upon even if people haven’t come around, simply because there is no gradual progression to acceptance on issues like this, and it must be forced suddenly.
And if that is indeed the case, then why aren’t we choosing to be the forcers, and why aren’t we choosing now to be the time to make the stand?
chrisl, I have already summarised the main points of the post back at 2. I’m honestly a bit sorry that I mentioned the trip, because it’s a distraction. What I do in my own circumstances doesn’t really matter in the context of the future of the planet. Nor does it have any bearing on whether I’m right or wrong about anything I write on climate change.
BenW, there is no half way. I agree with Kenneth Caldeira
He then went on to use an analogy I wouldn’t use, because it’s potential to distract. He said that if mugging little old ladies is wrong you don’t have a target for the rate of mugging little old ladies.
In spite of that I’ll bet any money you like that Kenneth Caldeira has been unable to arrange his life to avoid emissions. Most likely he hasn’t even done all he could do. But does that make him wrong and let you off taking any notice of him?
BenW again, all my rellies know my position in general terms on climate change. Some of them agree, some of them don’t. But I don’t harangue them about it. I tend to make comments from time to time that create little openings for people to follow up if they want to, rellies included. But there is no point in forcing the issue.
On this blog I can explore issues and share, but no-one is obliged to read it.
Can I remind anyone who is still here that the post was about more than air travel?
Chrisl, I wanted to go back to your preference for adaptation over mitigation. IMO it’s got to be both, but you need to come to terms with the notion that the last time we had GHG concentrations as high as they are now, about 3 million years ago, the temperature was 2-3C hotter and the sea level was 25 meters higher (plus or minus 10). OK, it won’t happen near term but we will be held responsible for our legacy.
Actually GHGs as such are higher now at about 455ppm CO2e. The cooling effect of some aerosols brings the net effect back to about 375, whereas 3mya they were thought to be 360-400.
Having said that what I do doesn’t really matter, of course in the aggregate it does. Brisbane’s water saving record is an excellent example of that. With mostly just general urging but the threat of a stick if we’re really bad we’ve had a year of the limit of 140 litres per person per day. I believe the year long average was 129.
So on CO2 there can be no clear conscience for me, but I’m not going to beat myself up over it. In a real but imperfect world we make compromises.
Of course, I have not done all I could do to curtail my CO2 emissions. I do not hold myself up as a paragon of virtue. However, and not to excuse my behavior, we are embedded in a carbon-emitting system — my primary effort has been on effecting systemic changes.
If all we are offered is fossil-fueled electricity, cars, etc, good behavior can do only so much. We need to change the system in which we are embedded so that when we plug something in the wall socket or try to get to work, the easiest course of action does not lead to carbon emission.
Life is full of surprises! Thanks, Ken.
I wasn’t meaning you specifically, Brian. My question was more general – when is society going to stop “humouring the Joneses” and not tolerate flying etc for things that are not essential to society as a whole?
Should we just say “there’s no time to dally any longer, so dammit, I’m forcing the issue!”, and should it be us, in the current temporal location who do it?
BenW, sorry, I was probably a bit tired.
I think with air travel, as carbonsink was saying further up the thread, people just don’t want to know about it as a problem, and I guess the more aware salve their consciences by buying offsets which are probably inadequate even as offsets.
In the long run we are probably going to have to regulate and perhaps have lotteries for use of a limited resource. But we are a long way from that at the official level. First we’ll have to start counting the emissions and find a way of allocating them. I guess it’s likely to start with the EU.
Hansen’s view, and I think you would agree with it, is that we are going to have to live without fossil fuel emissions, so why not start now? I’d have to go along with that.