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Curing global crises: Let’s treat the disease not the symptoms - Page 4

Frequently asked questions

Q. An equal per capita allocation of emissions permits seems a bit rough and ready since some countries are a lot colder than others and therefore need more energy for space heating. Other countries have much better renewable energy potentials. Wouldn’t it be better to devise a more elaborate formula for distributing the permits that took these circumstances into account?

A. Any way of allocating emissions rights is going to be unfair to a greater or lesser degree. Every country in the world has special circumstances of some sort or other and a rough-and-ready climate agreement is infinitely better than no agreement at all. An international conference at which each country attempted to argue that it was a special case and its citizens should have an above-average allocation would quickly break down in acrimony. The Global Commons Institute has, in fact, that suggested that countries which trade a lot with each other or have other strong ties should group themselves in ‘bubbles’ in the way the fifteen member states of the EU have done under the Kyoto Protocol, and redistribute their equal-per-capita allocations amongst themselves to allow for special circumstances. More generally, if a distribution formula could be found that was universally accepted as being superior to equal per capita, there would be no problems with using it. The key factor is acceptability. We need to find a system that everyone can accept as reasonably fair.

Q. Some people are saying that it’s already too late to prevent a climate catastrophe.

A. They might be right. No-one knows. But fearing that we might have left corrective action too late doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take it. We are certainly in for a catastrophe if we don’t try to prevent it. And look at all the other benefits that would be brought by the package of proposals we’ve just discussed. Even if we were 100% sure that, say, a runaway warming was about to start, the actions suggested would still be worth taking because, amongst other things, they would help build the sort of low-energy, de-centralised local economies more likely to survive the crisis. In addition, the measures would mean that we installed money systems capable of continuing to function during the economic contraction a climate crisis would inevitably bring.


Q. Shouldn’t each country’s overall emissions entitlement be adjusted to take account of its historic responsibility for the climate crisis? In other words, instead of receiving grandfathered emissions rights under C&C by being granted a period of grace before the equal per capita allocation begins, the inhabitants of industrialised countries would have their allocations cut because of the environmental debt their fathers and grandfathers ran up when they released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the past.

A. We dislike this approach because it departs from the basic C&C principle that all men are created equal and are therefore entitled to equal emissions rights. Once you begin to demand exceptions to that principle it loses its moral force. True, the overconsuming countries might be given an extra emissions allowance for ten or twenty years under C&C to allow them to get their houses in order but this is a temporary concession generously granted them by the rest of the world rather than a departure from the equal per capita principle.

In fact, of course, the knowledge that the wealthy countries’ consumption patterns have caused the climate crisis will undoubtedly be at the back of everyone’s minds at any international conference to negotiate a C&C-based climate treaty. But that’s where the information should stay since, if the poorer nations try to drive too hard a bargain, the danger is that the richer ones will refuse to deal and walk away.

Poor country negotiators will have to remember two things if any sort of treaty is to be agreed. First, they need to get as many wealthy countries as possible to ratify the treaty if there is to be a good market for their countries’ emissions permits. Second, the rich countries are going to have to make far more drastic changes to their economic systems and ways of life than are the poorer countries. The rich have therefore to be allowed to retain enough resources to do so. It has to be remembered that, in addition to carrying out a massive replacement of their capital stock to allow them to survive using much less fossil energy, the overconsumers are going to need to export a lot more goods and services to underconsumers just to earn enough ebcus to buy emissions permits. They will therefore be stretched two ways.

Moreover, the ‘historic debt’ argument finds little sympathy amongst people living in wealthy countries as they feel no personal responsibility for creating the climate problem. This means that the over-consuming nations’ negotiators will not be able to pay the argument much attention if it is put forward in an attempt to work out better terms. The best the under-consuming nations can hope for is that, spoken or unspoken, the carbon debt idea will help them shorten the time the rich countries agree to take to adjust to getting the same number of SERs as the rest of the world.

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Panel 1

Why coal and nuclear energy can’t fill in for gas and oil

In an energy-scarce world, the financial cost of producing fuel will not matter as much as the energy cost. Indeed, the amount of energy one needs to spend to produce a unit of energy will be all-important. The chart below shows how much energy it takes to produce electricity in various ways. Coal-fired generation comes out of the comparison very badly, producing only around seven times as much energy as it took to produce it. This calculation takes into account the energy required to sink the mine, build a railway to take the coal to the powerstation, and then build the powerstation itself as well as the constant supply of energy is needed to operate the railway and the mine. If the coal has a high sulphur content and has to be scrubbed to prevent sulphur dioxide, the energy gain can fall to as little as 5 times the amount of power that went into producing it. Some authorities have put the figure as low as 2.5⁹ And if the CO2 produced by the burning of the coal was to be sequestrated – that is, pumped into a disused oil well or the cold depths of the sea, the energy gain would be very little at all. Compare this with the eighty-fold energy gain from building a windfarm and there can be no doubt which project would give the better return.

Energy Payback Ratio

That’s electricity. If coal was required to fill the other big use of oil – as a transportation fuel – it could be liquefied with the loss of at least 40% of the energy it contains. As more energy would be required to build the processing plant and to operate it, not more than half the energy in the coal would end up in the petrol substitute. A typical US coal mine produces between 15 and 30 times more energy than is needed to build and run it. As a result, the net energy gain from producing petrol from coal could be somewhere between 7 and 15 times. This is far worse than the return that could be had from producing hydrogen using wind-generated electricity and then burning the hydrogen in a fuel cell aboard the vehicle. In short, neither major possible use of coal makes good energy sense except in in parts of the world without a reasonable renewable energy alternative.

Nuclear energy is a more attractive competitor as its energy gain could be as high as from the wind but it has to be rejected on five grounds:

1. The risk factor. The nuclear industry is unable to get commercial insurance cover and governments have had to step in, taking on the burden instead. This is a massive subsidy.
2. The type of society that would be created. Nuclear reactors make wonderful targets for terrorists. Just having them could lead to a police state. There is also the problem of providing the materials for the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
3. The need for the long-term care of the waste. We don’t know that our descendants will have the capacity to provide it continuously for the next 10,000 years.
4. Uranium is in very limited supply and the use of fast breeder reactors does not get around the problem very convincingly. They entail considerably higher energy investments but could, theoretically increase the energy available by a factor of 60. But as the UK Atomic Energy Authority wrote in 1989, ‘In practice, it is now not clear how [the use of fast breeders] would be achieved on an expanded global scale without encountering basic plutonium shortages, not to mention serious problems with waste disposal, power plant decommissioning and nuclear weapons proliferation."
5. Even if there was the fuel, the number of nuclear stations required is too large to be feasible. 1,700 stations would be required just to make up the decline in oil and gas output between 2015 and 2040 and if we wished to provide the capacity for world economic growth to continue at 2% beyond 2015, that would take another 5,000 stations. So, over the 25 year period up to 2040, between 6,500 and 7,000 stations would have to come on stream – that’s five every week. There would be real problems in finding suitable sites outside earthquake zones where the cooling water would not harm the marine environment. And given that most stations take ten years to build, work would have to start almost immediately.

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Panel 2

The Effects of Allowing the World to Warm

The Climate Action Network believes¹⁰ that even if atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases were held at present day levels, a warming of at least 1^o C may not be avoidable. CAN writes: ”This committed warming is likely to cause irreversible damage to some unique ecosystems and the extinction of endemic species contained in them. Significant damages to agricultural production in some developing country regions, growing water shortages and increasing exposure to health risks will also occur. This is not ‘acceptable’ under any definition of the word.” The organisation then sets out the consequences of allowing warming to proceed beyond the 1 degree level:



1-2^o C global mean warming:

Developing Countries

• Many developing countries will suffer from net market losses in important sectors.
  
• Globally some regions may have net market benefits and others principally developing countries have net market losses.
  
• Majority of people adversely affected by climate change and livelihoods of the most vulnerable populations dependent on natural ecosystems increasingly adversely affected.
  

Food security

• There is the likelihood of significant damages to crop production in tropical and subtropical countries sufficient, among other things to reverse agricultural self- sufficiency progress in many developing nations.Heat waves will damage crops (rice unable to form grains, fruit unable to set) and livestock will suffer from heat stress (reductions of milk production and conception difficulties in dairy cows).
  

Water shortage

• Decreased water supply and quality will occur in regions already suffering from water scarcity and drought such as the Mediterranean, southern Africa, and arid parts of central and south Asia affecting half a billion people.
  

Floods

• More flood damage will result from intense storms, especially in areas affected by deforestation, wildfires, insect infestations, and ecosystem degradation.
  

Extreme events

• Increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events will result in increased insurance costs and decreased insurance availability (coastal areas, floodplains).
  

Health effects

• Direct - Increased heat related deaths and illness, affecting particularly the elderly, sick, and those without access to air conditioning;
  
• Indirect - more illness and death resulting from increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.
  
• o Increased risks to human life, risk of infectious disease epidemics, and many other health risks where floods, droughts or storms increase in frequency and/or intensity.
  

Ecosystems

• Wildfires and insect infestations will disrupt relationships in complex ecosystems already undergoing stress from direct effects of heat. Increased disturbances of ecosystems by fire and insect pests.
  
• Coral bleaching events will increase in frequency and duration, leading to destruction of brain corals and loss of related reef ecosystems.
  
• Loss of up to 10% of coastal wetlands globally from sea level rise will eliminate habitat of major migratory bird populations.
  
• 30-40% of nature reserves adversely affected
  

Ice Sheets and Sea Level Rise

• Meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet is likely with global mean warming above 1 - 3^o C, and would lead to several meters sea level rise over several centuries with disastrous consequences for millions.
  

Health effects

• It is likely that 300 million people would be at greater risk of malaria and much increased exposure to dengue fever.
  

• Rapid decay of the Greenland ice sheet for appears likely in this temperature range leading to 1-2 metres sea level rise by 2500 and 2.3-3.5 metres over the next thousand years depending on the extent of the heating.
  
• The model range for sea level rise induced by thermal expansion is 0.44-1.96 metres by 2500 and for greater than 1000 years 0.53m-1.96m (for doubling of CO2 ).
  
• Increasing risk of instability or decay of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet
  

10 “Preventing dangerous climate change”, CAN position paper released at COP-8, New Delhi, India. Available at http://www.climatenetwork.org/docs/CAN-DP_Framework.pdf

Related links in the Feasta website:

Climate and Currency: Proposals for Global Monetary Reform
Chapter Four of The Ecology of Money: One Country, Four Currencies