Top Aussie: "Carbon-free economy" by 2050

From the ABC:

The Australian of the Year [Professor Tim Flannery] has told an energy conference in Sydney that climate change is occurring more quickly than at first thought and time is running out to make substantial emission reductions... "what that really means is that four decades from now we have to be living in a carbon-free economy."

Wake up, Australia, before the Great Barrier Reef and Bondi Beach become nothing more than stories we tell our grandkids. That is if society survives long enough for us to have grandkids.

Whatever you think about the economy or health or education, the most important issues this election are climate change and sustainability. Please vote for the long term, not just the next term.

Fear, and its banishment

It's quiet here tonight. Hot. The air is heavy, humid and still. Michelle has suffered in the heat today and, having had little rest for the past day or two due to an unsettled infant, she took the opportunity to retreat to our air-conditioned bedroom around 6:30 when Asha finally went off to sleep herself.

I helped the other two kids peacefully through dinner, teeth brushing, stories and bed time. Now it's just me in a house so quiet I can distinctly hear the clock ticking in the dining room a dozen or more meters away. So you'd think I'd be feeling reasonably relaxed. A quiet summer-ish evening, alone with nothing much required of me. Perhaps time to read a book, listen to some music, surf the net. But inside I'm pretty tightly wound.

With my family all sleeping there's nothing much to distract me, and the knot of fear that's gradually developed over the past couple of years is combining with general weariness and the oppressive heat to produce a kind of heavy feeling in my stomach and a tension through my whole being.

It may be that I'm particularly vulnerable to fear, having lived for my first 30 years with a deep conviction in the absolute power and infinite love of an almighty God and then suddenly, this year, having to learn to cope without that psychological refuge after my faith simply shattered. But in a curious kind of way, my unanticipated unbelief highlighted and reinforced many of the values and principles which I'd previously justified on the basis of a moral God. In the end it sort of came down to a conscious choice to live and to devote my own life to the benefit of all life, though first and foremost to my children.

So it is that I find the state of the world today deeply terrifying. My own perspective on the size of the inhabitable universe has been dramatically reduced: I used to believe in an immortal soul and a boundless existence in a spiritual plane, but now there is simply Earth and everything that lives upon it.

For all practical purposes, the entire living universe is here, now, in an incredibly thin shell wrapped around an otherwise unremarkable 4 billion year old rocky planet. Humanity's influence within that tiny universe has grown to become powerful, pervasive and almost completely unchecked. We literally have the ability to destroy the world, to cause a mass extinction such as has required the force of an asteroid or an epic ice age in aeons past. The trouble is we are at serious risk of actually doing this as a result of too much power and too little intelligence.

When I type "power" there I mean that in the literal, physical sense. Homo Sapiens dominates this planet because we discovered how to harness sources of energy and apply them for our own immediate, personal benefit. Ironically it's our relative intelligence compared to other species which gave us this competitive edge. Unfortunately we have been insufficiently smart when it comes to understanding the long term and widespread consequences of our actions. Our perspective is too limited in both time and space. And so we have come through countless multiplying generations, burning wood, burning coal, burning oil, burning gas, as disruptive to the millions-years-old patterns of energy flow from Sun to storage as a sharp pin is to the steady state of a blown-up balloon. With this explosion of unexpected energy input, humanity has devastated the finely balanced, self-sustaining systems of life on the planet that gave it birth.

It's so hard to find any good news, any hope in all of this. If we continue down this path unchecked then (whether you believe that human activity is causing climate change or not) disaster is unavoidable. It's small comfort that one particular "check" is just starting to make itself felt - Peak Oil might put a stop to humanity's expansion in time to save the biosphere from total destruction, but so dependent have we become on energy derived from burning things that it might just about put a stop to humanity as well.

So here I am, keenly aware of the loss of a deity, the fragility of life, the distress of the planet, the stupidity and the power of my own species, and the three precious children sleeping peacefully in my care. How could I not be afraid?

---

I almost left it at that, but I think a short post-script is in order.

Fear should probably be considered a friend rather than a foe. What happens to the fearless? They do unwise things. They get hurt. They die when they could otherwise have lived. When it's both timely and appropriate, fear is an emotional signal that can help you to minimise or avoid a bad outcome.

Fear isn't always good though. Too much fear is crippling. Misplaced fear is usually counter-productive. And fear that hits you too late to allow you to escape trouble is just bad news.

I'm pretty much convinced that my own fear for the future is appropriate, but there's a lot of uncertainty about whether it's too late. But for now we're all alive and I can't see what else to do but to try and apply what energy and intelligence we do have towards avoiding catastrophe.

And in typing that I have had a sudden flash of inspiration for the world of 2050. It is my desire to build a world where children and parents can both sleep peacefully in the knowledge that the world is well and life will indeed go on. I had that once. If I'm lucky I may experience it again one day, but regardless it sounds like a bloody good thing to word towards.

Goodnight for now.

Sunday Sermon

It's a weekend of bad news on a global scale, I'm afraid.

I linked just now to Greenpa's discussion of the fatal flaws in the idea of replacing oil with crop-derived ethanol. From a broader perspective there's also this report at New Scientist about the UN's official conclusion that we really are facing the end of the world as we know it due to human-caused environmental destruction and unsustainable development. The point is made there that energy consumption is the number one concern. Dramatic action is needed, now.

The ABC has a story about another new report which makes the startling conclusion that if we keep digging minerals out of the ground on an industrial scale then before too long there won't be any left. Well, duh, but for some reason humanity still seems to act as if the world's resources are limitless. Maybe seven billion is too large a number to really comprehend. But that's roughly how many people are now aspiring to live something like "the American dream".

I guess if there's anything positive it's that the broader message about sustainability is starting to get mainstream exposure. The shift in society and in politics is in the right direction. And speaking of politics, I'm delighted to see the ALP, Democrats and Greens joining forces to try and break the Liberal/National stranglehold in the Senate. If you're an Australian voter who cares at all about the future of humanity, please don't let the industrial-era coalition continue in power.

Fuelish Fantasies

One of my favourite bloggers, Greenpa, is a professional scientist who has lived a low-impact lifestyle for 30-odd years. His latest post is a stunner, making a convincing argument about why the dreams of the biofuels industry are more like naive fantasies. Please take a few minutes and have a read.

Then get back to reducing your energy dependence while you still have a chance.

Down days

I had been wondering what would happen when my initial burst of enthusiasm for sustainability inevitably lost a little of the excitement that comes from starting a new project. Well now I know.

Have had a couple of down days. Haven't read my meters (though I'm still watching the Centameter and aggressively turning things off), have slacked off with the composting, have been using the car a little more than is really necessary, have been indulging in slightly longer showers... and haven't posted anything here.

There are a few things which I can think of which might have contributed to the slump. The biggest one is probably just the feeling of being overwhelmed: the challenges are so huge and I feel so impotent when literally everywhere I turn and in just about everything I do I see our utter dependence on crude oil.

I also come across analysis and predictions from various sources which make it sound like another dark age for humanity is all but inevitable. It's hard to maintain focus and discipline when somebody's telling you it's probably all for nothing.

What I want to hear from people - backed up by reasonable logic and solid data - is that there is a chance to maintain some of what I consider the best and most noble parts of our modern world. Coal and oil have provided the fuel for advances in so many areas: obvious ones like science and technology as well as indirect ones like allowing more time in billions of lives for education, art and social development.

As I look towards 2050 I want to be assured that the vast wealth of knowledge that is a defining characteristic of the current era will be available to all the way it is today - through the continued evolution of the Internet. I want to believe that we can apply our knowledge of natural sciences (with a healthy dose of wisdom from our forebears) to turn our backyards into thriving food gardens without sacrificing the opportunity for education, art and social development of each person. I want to know that my children will have access to at least the same level of health care that has literally saved my life several times over in the past 30 years.

So, after a couple of days of doing nothing terribly worthwhile, I'm going to try and pull myself together tomorrow. Meter readings, composting, disciplined consumption and working for the future... with a good bit of time set aside for fun with the kids, talking with Michelle, reading a book, listening to some music or chatting with the neighbours.

After all, there's not much point worrying about 2050 if I can't enjoy any of the days between now and then.

Global warming myth busting

Wanted to point out a great article at the New Scientist website which addresses 26 of the most popular myths and misconceptions about global warming.

Bottom line: climate behaviour is bewilderingly complex and it's great that global warming research is being subjected to intense scrutiny, but it really does seem likely that humans are having a major influence on the climate and this could have disastrous consequences unless we sort it out in a big hurry.

You can read the article here.

Can despair be helpful?

Remember that I started this blog as part of my own fight to avoid falling into depression over the constant barrage of bad news and terrifying predictions regarding humanity's impact on the Earth and our chance of surviving the first half of this century.

Well here's an interesting perspective on that same topic, "The point of despair", where it's suggested that despair can be the springboard for positive action.

Water

Australia is suffering a devastating drought. We have no idea whether it's a temporary abnormality or a new weather pattern caused by global warming which is going to stick with us for the long term.

Brisbane's water storages have dropped to under 20% capacity. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on water infrastructure in this region alone, including new dams, pipelines, desalination and reclamation (recycling). It's appalling that our response to a drought which may be caused by global warming is a massive project which first burns oil to power the construction machinery and then coal to power the desal plant and all the pumps. It may in fact be our only option to survive the present conditions but still...

The nation's major food producing region (the Murray-Darling basin) has just been informed that in the absence of significant rain in the next couple of months there will be no water available for irrigation later in the year. If this eventuates, future recovery would take years as long-established trees and vines are likely to die.

All these water woes aren't restricted to humans though. Environmentalists have been telling us for years that our abuse of water destroys ecosystems upon which we all depend. Now the pressure on the environment is coming from both sides: what little rain there is is being consumed by us, with basically nothing left.

No Silver Bullets (re Peak Oil)

My previous post was about the tension between the growing demand for oil and predictions of declining availability, and the relationship of oil consumption to global warming.

I expect that many people reading that post would quickly reassure themselves by thinking about one or more of the following:
- biofuels (especially ethanol for use in existing cars)
- electric, hybrid or hydrogen-powered vehicles
- coal liquefaction (literally converting coal into a fluid form similar to oil)

Here's why none of those make me worry much less, if at all.

1. Biofuels

The basic idea is neat: instead of giving carbon a one-way trip from oil to the atmosphere, lets grow plants to take CO2 out of the air then convert it to fuel which when burned puts the carbon back where it came from. The overall amount of CO2 in the air stays constant and we don't need oil.

But already we've hit a fatal flaw with biofuels: in fact the production of ethanol from, say, corn requires massive inputs of oil in the form of fertilisers, pesticides and fuel for agricultural machinery and transport. It also requires significant electrical input which - especially in Australia - basically means burning coal. So we're still consuming oil and adding CO2 to the atmosphere even before the ethanol gets into our petrol tanks.

Fatal flaw #2 is so obvious I'm stunned we are even bothering to attempt growing fuel. Our cars and trucks and planes and ships consume enormous amounts of fuel. Even if we dedicated all the productive land on the planet to growing fuel crops we would only manage to produce a fraction of the fuel we need to keep everything running at the current pace - let alone meet the exponential demand predicted for the future.

There is some research being done into growing algae in tanks or ponds as an alternative to land-based fuel crops. This may lead to a significant, sustainable biofuel industry and I'd be encouraged by that. But from what I've read it's still not likely to ever be enough to match our current appetite for oil.

2. High tech cars

It's true. We can make cars which don't need to burn oil.

Some people are keen on cars similar to the ones we have today but which burn hydrogen gas (H2) instead. There's no "C" in hydrogen, so when you burn it you just get H2O. Water vapour. But hydrogen gas is highly explosive (can you say "Hindenburg"?) and it's very difficult to handle. Oh yeah, and water vapour is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide.

So there's a lot of attention on using hydrogen in fuel cells - basically little modules of hardware that generate electricity through chemical reactions and which you'd either swap in and out of your car like rechargable batteries in a camcorder, or top up with additional hydrogen. Fuel cells are real enough (they're used in the Space Shuttle, for example) but the technology needs a fair bit of development before it's suitable for use in everyday transportation.

Sounds good, huh? Uh-oh, here it comes.

Hydrogen's fatal flaw when it comes to the global warming / peak oil dilemma is that it generally isn't a source of energy but a carrier of energy. Hydrogen can't be mined*, it has to be produced. The simplest way to produce it is to push an electric current into water so that you give the hydrogen atoms the energy they need to escape their bonds to the oxygen atoms. That's how it acquires the energy which we want to use later on when we burn it in an engine.

Fuel cells and electric vehicles get lassoed with the same rope now. All these vehicles depend on large inputs of electrical energy. Hopefully you recall that our electrical consumption is already a major concern because of the CO2 we emit when we generate it. Unless we come up with a revolutionary large-scale way to produce electricity, these cars would simply drive us from the peak oil frying pan into the global warming fire.

3. Coal liquefaction

I only learned about this one recently, but it's old technology. During one of the Great Wars the British were astonished that their attacks on the German sources of oil didn't bring the Nazi machine to a halt. The Germans had prepared by switching to production of liquid hydrocarbons from coal.

The world does have heaps of coal (though calculations for "Peak Coal" are already being debated) and I get the impression that it's relatively simple and efficient to convert it to a liquid. On the positive side, this may help alleviate the shortage of raw material for plastics and fertilizers etc. But of course burning the stuff in cars is just as bad as burning it in power stations. As a greenhouse-friendly replacement for oil, coal is also fatally flawed.

Three bullets: shiny-looking, but definitely not silver.



* I am simplying things a fair bit with regards to hydrogen as an energy carrier but it's generally true that getting usable H2 on a very large scale would require massive energy input and that would predominantly come from coal at this point in time.

Peak Oil

The global warming prophets like to make graphs showing the world's predicted consumption of oil growing at an exponential rate through 2050. Their point is that we shouldn't be doing that because it will add so much more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and accelerate the warming.

However...

Another group of scientists and researchers reckon those graphs are plain silly because according to them there isn't enough oil left in the ground for us to consume at anywhere near that rate. Instead they predict that within a decade or two we're going to reach a point where oil extraction starts to steadily decrease as the wells dry up. They call that point "Peak Oil".

Some think we've already reached it.

So on the one hand there are predictions of skyrocketing demand and on the other they're talking about falling production. Those of you who owned a car in the 1970's might feel a sense of deja vu reading this. As I understand it at that time the constraint on supply was more political than practical but the effect is predictable: fuel prices went through the roof.

But the potential problem is much worse than high prices. Having a gap between demand and supply literally means there isn't enough oil to go around.

Transport would be the first thing to be affected. I was struck some years ago by a very simple phrase stuck to the back of a semi-trailer: "Without trucks, Australia stops." Think about it for a second or two. Then consider which is more important to you: the tractors and trucks which grow food and transport it to the shops, or the car which you drive to work to earn the money so you can drive to the shops and buy the food. In a world of diminishing oil, which one could you give up first? And what happens when the other one runs out of fuel too?

Oil is also a critical feedstock for industry. According to Wikipedia, it is "the raw material for many chemical products, including solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, and plastics; the 16% not used for energy production is converted into these other materials." The cost and availability of all these things and anything which depends on them would also be badly impacted.

It's kind of ironic that the worst predictions of CO2 emissions growth might never come to pass, due to us simply running out of hydrocarbons to burn. Lucky us.

Global yawning

OK, let's get this one out of the way.

I'm mentioning global warming as the first of my Big Worries because it's so obvious. You're probably well and truly sick of hearing about it. Just so there's no uncertainty I need to let you know I'm currently in the "this could be really really bad and it looks like it's our own fault" camp.

There are plenty of other places where the causes and impacts of the ever-rising thermometer are being debated and I'm not intending to enter into that here. But I will keep an open mind about it all and let you know if my position changes in any signficant way.

Now there are plenty of unpleasant predictions but for me the scariest thing about the world getting hotter is the thought of what would happen if the unbelievably large masses of ice currently sitting above sea level on solid ground in Antarctica and Greenland were to melt or slide off into the ocean. I've heard estimates of global sea level rises of as much as 60 metres as a consequence of that happening. No idea how reliable those estimates are, but even as I type this my stomach is clenching just a bit at the thought.

According to Google Earth my home is about 8m above sea level. Frankly I don't think I could possibly survive this if it did happen, even if I sold up today and moved to higher ground and joined a commune. For starters, both Michelle and I are pretty much dependent on modern medicines to keep us alive and functional (my heart and her thyroid gland) and I reckon things like drugs would be pretty hard to come by with most of Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne etc permanently under the waves.

Of course I have no real idea how likely that is. The vast majority of us can only see a tiny glimpse of the overall picture through our personal experience - like I can tell you that winters just don't feel as cold as they did when I was a kid. But when the people with full-time jobs analysing this stuff tell me there's a chance it'll happen, who am I to tell them they can't possibly be right?

It'd take a lot more than six billion people crossing their fingers to hold back the tide. For the sake of my kids, as well as my own chances of seeing 2050, "a lot more" is what I'm willing to give to try and prevent the ice from melting.