for the future

ecology, economy, energy, environment

The economic & ecological illiteracy of Tony Abbott

 

 

James Hansen: Cassandra or climate science hero?

James Hansen is one of the world's most eminent climate scientists. His TED Talk mentions how the US Government tried to silence him from speaking publicly about the seriousness of climate change. (This is detailed in the book Censoring Science by Mark Bowen.) When Hansen pointed out that NASA's mission was "to protect the home planet" the words were deleted from the mission statement.

For over three decades now Hansen's message has been clear and consistent: human emissions of greenhouse gases are warming the Earth's atmosphere and pose a serious threat to humanity. I don't think there is anything new in this recent talk, but it highlights how Hansen has evolved from a scientist studying the climate to an activist moved to acts of civil disobedience. History may well recognise Hansen as a Cassandra of our times, but I hope that he is recognised for providing the scientific basis for global action to stabilise the Earth's climate.

Low-lying Pacific Island nations need to make critical decisions about their future

Fearing climate change could wipe out their entire Pacific archipelago, the leaders of Kiribati are considering an unusual backup plan: moving the populace to Fiji.
via theage.com.au

This article, featured on the various Fairfax Media websites today, highlights the critical decisions low-lying Pacific Island nations need to make about their future. It reminds me of a similar suggestion I wrote on one of my blogs a few years ago. Back then I suggested that the people of Kiribati could establish new communities in Australia. The relevant text of that blog post is pasted below.

 

Australia has the capacity to host the refugees from Pacific Island nations. I would like to suggest an innovative way it could do this.

The people of Kiribati (or Tuvalu or other island nations) could be offered a piece of land on which to resettle. Not all of them would necessarily move at the same time. Initially at least a few thousand would need to move to establish a working community.

The land would need to be along the coast as fishing and living by the ocean is an important part of their culture. People would come under state and federal laws of Australia but form their own local government. As Kiribati is a former British colony there should be no major problems with this. People would be free to use their own native language and the school curriculum would be bilingual.

Development of the land would be a model of ecological sustainability. The community would aim to develop in a way that is carbon neutral (although some carbon emissions may be necessary in the early stages of development). They would seek to develop a local economy that provided for as many needs as possible as well as some industries producing surpluses for sale to outside.

As the community developed its economy and infrastructure more people could relocate from the islands to the new community. If the space or resources were limited a second community could be established based on the lessons learnt from the first.

Of course detailed plans and financial support would be required to realise this idea. However, to not attempt to solve the problem is to condemn an entire nation to extinction.

 

Paul Gilding: techno-optimism is a form of denial

Paul Gilding, author of The Great Disruption, gave a TED Talk on how the economy has exceeded Earth's carrying capacity. Following his talk Gilding noted how the discussion involved a tension between the techno-optimists and those with a more negative view of the future. He explained this in more detail in a post on his blog. Humans have a tendency to optimism, but Gilding argues this optimism is dangerous because it creates complacency—techno-optimism becomes a form of denial.

I believe that it's very important to cultivate a more critical attitude towards technology. Some technologies are important and will play vital roles in the future. However, much of the technology that people marvel over today is simply toy-like. It may make things work faster or make them fun, but it doesn't bring substantial benefits while still having an environmental cost.

 

BoM statement on record breaking rainfalls in southeast Australia in Feb/March 2012

Click here to download:
climate statement - bom.pdf (3.55 MB)
(download)

The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) have released a statement on the record rainfalls that have affected the southeast of Australia in the period from 27 February to 5 March 2012. According to the Bureau the significant feature of the event was the persistence of heavy rainfall over the course of a week. They described the rainfall event as "one of the most extreme multi-day rainfall events in southeast Australia’s history."

There is no mention in the statement of how the rainfall event could be linked to climate change. It does note however that similar events in the past were linked to La Niña.

*The pdf file of the Bureau of Meteorology's statement is embedded in this post.

Sustainable House Tour in Castlemaine

20120225-img_2385
I joined the Sustainable House Tour organised by the Mt Alexander Sustainability Group (MASG) on 25 February 2012. The tour visited four homes in the Castlemaine area. 

I don't really like the word sustainable for a number of reasons (although these are not related to the house tour or MASG). I think it would have been better to call it the energy efficient house tour. Basically the four houses were all built and designed by people who cared about the energy efficiency, embedded energy and overall livability of their homes. During the presentation at the end of the tour the architect used the abbreviation ESD meaning "environmentally sensitive design" which I liked.

The common connection between all the homes was use of passive solar design. The key features common to all four houses were large windows to take advantage of solar gain on the northerly aspect and use of insulation. Thermal mass is another common component of passive solar design but it wasn't used in all the houses.

There was a contrast in approaches to building the houses as well. One house was owner-built and used mud bricks, a natural and low embedded energy material. Another house was a pre-fabricated and transported to the site. The two other houses were built using a range of more manufactured materials. 

At the end of the tour I spoke to Peter Cowman, an architect who lives in the Castlemaine area. He had a lot of interesting ideas about "sheltermaking" and eco-building. He runs workshops including one on how to build a low-cost eco-building for $5,000 which I would like to join. More information is available at his website: http://www.livingarchitecture.com. 

I got a lot of ideas from the tour. I am particularly interested in the idea of designing and building small houses and two of the houses fitted into that category. The tour also highlighted the basic common sense of passive solar design. I think it can be considered as a key part of an evolving vernacular architecture in Southern Australia.

I have embedded some photos of the houses in this post.

(download)

Sustainable Living Festival, 11-26 February 2012

Sustainable-living-festival-20

 

The Sustainable Living Festival includes a wide range of events in Melbourne and elsewhere in Victoria between 11 and 26 February 2012. I have selected a few interesting events and listed the details below. A full program of events is available at http://festival.slf.org.au/

Macedon Ranges Sustainability Festival
10am-4pm, Sat. 11 Feb.
Rear of Woodend Neighbourhood House, 47 Forest St, Woodend
$5/adult, Under 18 free, V/Line day ticket holders free

Hepburn Wind Open Day
10am-12pm, Sun. 12 Feb.
Leonards Hill Wind Farm, Ballan-Daylesford Road, Daylesford
Cost $5

Nicole Foss - Public Lecture
7pm, Thu. 16 Feb.
Daylesford Town Hall
Cost $15/$10

Retrofitting the Suburbs for Sustainability
David Holmgren (co-founder of Permaculture)
12:45pm, Thu. 16 Feb.
The Wheeler Centre, 176 Little Lonsdale Street (www.wheelercentre.com)
Free, but bookings necessary

Fast Track Transport for Sustainable Cities
Swanston Room, Melbourne Town Hall

Australia, Fully Renewable In Ten Years
presented by Dr Karl Kruszelnicki
1-2pm, Sat. 18 Feb.
The Greenhouse, Birrarung Marr
Free!

Better By Bike Awards
Announcing the winners of a national design competition for innovations and improvements in bike, infrastructure and accessory design
1:30-2:30pm, Sun. 19 Feb.
The Greenhouse, Birrarung Marr
Free!

Speed Date a Sustainable Designer
Presented by the Alternative Technology Association
1-3pm, Sun. 19 Feb.
The Atrium, Federation Square
Register online at sdsd.ata.org.au

Ecocide: Crimes Against the Planet
Presented by the Environment Defenders Office
11am-12:30pm, Sat. 18 Feb.
BMW Edge, Federation Square
Free!

Transitions Film Program
Sat. 11 - Sun. 19 Feb.
Village Roadshow Theatre and State Library

The peak oil report that the Australian government doesn't want you to read

Click here to download:
Australian_Govt_Oil_supply_trends.pdf (4.76 MB)
(download)

In 2007 the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE) prepared a report for the Minister for Infrastructure Anthony Albanese on the impact of peak oil on transport in Australia. The report titled "Report 117: Transport Energy Futures -- Long Term Oil Supply Trends and Projections" was published in March 2009. However, the findings were never made available to the public and only came to light following a recent media report. 

The report will probably contain nothing that is of surprise to people who are well informed about peak oil and energy issues. It predicts peak oil in 2017, which on current evidence seems a little optimistic. The obvious question is that considering the report's findings have serious implications for Australia's economy why did the government try to bury it rather than act on it.

The report is embedded in this blog post. In addition there are links to some related articles below. 

All evidence of this treachery went down the memory hole -- Daily Telegraph, 20 Jan. 2012 (Note: Piers Akerman, the author of this article, is known for his extreme right-wing conservative views. He uses the article to promote coal-to-gas plants and to express his opposition to the carbon tax.)
Australian Peaky Leaks goes mainstream -- Crude Oil Peak, 20 Jan. 2012
Transport energy futures: long-term oil supply trends and projections -- Energy Bulletin, 20 Jan. 2012 (contains some extracts from the report)

Defining Political Ecology

As a community of practice, political ecology has formed a general constituency: a global conversation revolving around a set of themes, which adopts a specific sort of critical attitude. It is drawn from a large group of people who write professionally (like university academics) as well as those in international agencies (e.g. FAO), NGOs (e.g. WWF), state bureaucracies (e.g. USEPA), and local organizations. Typically, its constituency operates in the borderlands between analysis and action and between social practice and environmental change. It is, however, a community that holds a deep skepticism precisely of the institutions within which it operates. Its members, prodded by a sense that something has gone profoundly wrong...
via ethnografix.blogspot.com

The definition of political ecology is from the blog ethnografix. The blog also has another post Political Ecology: Where is the politics? which discusses political ecology of golf course development.

More definitions of political ecology can be found on the University of Kentucky Political Ecology Working Group blog.

Some important editorials about climate change in Grist

Grist recently carried two editorials by David Roberts which spell out in no uncertain terms the harsh realities of climate change. The first editorial "The brutal logic of climate change" details the impacts of a 2°C and 4°C rise in temperature and what measures would be necessary to avoid these rises. It also notes that according to a recent paper by Anderson and Bows even the impacts of a 2°C temperature increase would be extremely dangerous. The message is sobering:

If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale.

After outlining what type of action would be necessary to avoid "civilization-threatening climate change" it comes to the conclusion:

So this is where we’re at: stuck between temperatures we can’t possibly accommodate and carbon reduction pathways we can’t possibly achieve. A rock and a hard place.

The second editorial is titled "The brutal logic of climate change mitigation." The reason analysts set out plans for targets lower than required to avoid catastrophic climate impacts is that:

...climate analysts construct their scenarios not to avoid dangerous climate change but to avoid threatening economic growth.

Anderson and Bows draw the conclusion that:

The logic of such studies suggests (extremely) dangerous climate change can only be avoided if economic growth is exchanged, at least temporarily, for a period of planned austerity within Annex 1 nations and a rapid transition away from fossil-fuelled development within non-Annex 1 nations.

In a follow up post Roberts discusses how to communicate messages about climate change when they cause such despair that most people just prefer to tune out. The first point is that rather than targetting messages at the middle ground they need to be targetted at the 10% or so of people who understand the seriousness of climate change and the need for action. The next point is that the message should not just be negative, but need to include an element of hope. This doesn't mean ignoring the negatives, just including some positive vision within otherwise gloomy messages. 

Roberts finishes by saying that everyone "could stand to push the edge a little bit occasionally, reminding their audience, whatever audience, that climate change is some genuinely dire sh*t and that now is the time for ambition and courage."