Kuuvik River Expedition, the Arctic and You

“Climate change is enormous in scope, verifiable, and requires unprecedented international intervention and collaboration.  Inuit have long known that the Arctic climate has been changing and that the rate of change is accelerating.  The Arctic is a barometer of worldwide climate change.”
                                                           - Ms. Mary Simon, President, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2007

Given that climate change now affects all people in some way, it is only a matter of time before everyone will be influenced by the international “low carbon” economy.  The emerging global low carbon economy incorporates three broad realms that are elemental to human life on Earth – supply, demand, and finance.  There is now a multi-billion dollar world marketplace for reducing carbon emissions, or their equivalent in the form of other greenhouse gases.  The sum total of carbon traded globally increased 44-fold between 2004 and 2005; the carbon market is well on its way to becoming the world’s largest commodity market.  Carbon is already a global currency.  There is now a serious possibility that carbon currency, pegged to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, will become the dominant international currency within a decade.

Thoughtful world leaders are moving fast to create the low carbon economy.  The United Kingdom, which has positioned London as the hub of international carbon trading, is a leading developer of the low carbon economy.  The high-tech nation of Japan is working hard to realize a low carbon society, while the awakening Chinese giant is obviously keen on a low carbon future too.  Brazil has been trying to retail an inexpensive alternative to gasoline to consumers in North America.  Yet the import of low carbon ethanol from Brazil is now being hampered by a foolhardy tariff of 54 cents per gallon – to protect the fragile logic for a needless war, only begun to buoy undeclared fascist regional interests.
 
Climate change, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute, is not an inevitable price that humans must pay for progress -- it is simply an unnecessary artifact of the uneconomically wasteful use of resources. This impractical state of affairs has the potential to be transformed by a low carbon economy.  The North American “popular” media often misrepresents reality by casting the Kyoto Protocol, which the Canadian and American federal governments are attempting to undermine, as an unviable treaty of mutual inconvenience.  Kyoto, an initial go at ushering in a low carbon world, is in reality designed to be easily achieved and it frames global climate change as an opportunity to invigorate the world economy while enhancing global living standards.
 
Yes, there are still those who dare to keep characterizing a global solution to climate change as idealistic.  Yet in the midst of such pleas for inertia there are ongoing, coordinated campaigns by intelligent business leaders to facilitate, and capitalize on, the inevitable emergence of the international low carbon economy.  In the United States the transition to a low-carbon economy has already begun.  Following the precedent of Brazil’s ethanol program, founded by Brazilian governmental decree on 14 November 1975, the State of California recently ordered-up a crucial new “Low Carbon Standard for Transportation Fuels”.  Moreover, California is currently the world’s most advanced jurisdiction in terms of its carbon dioxide emissions reduction objective -- 80% by 2050.
 
Pursuant to the fact that carbon is already being rationed on an industrial scale worldwide, the emerging low carbon economy will inevitably enable you to help fight climate change via personal carbon rationing.  Personal carbon rations will be your future basis for, amongst other things, trying to stop Arctic meltdown.  You will be able to earn profits from personal carbon rations merely by practicing a carbon conscious lifestyle.  Personal carbon rationing policies are now being designed in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Japan, among other places.  Personal carbon rations will be regularly allocated in economy-wide quota systems, wherein a set amount of rations is equally distributed among a populace.  Within such systems, those who want to depend more on fossil fuels to power their homes and mobility, and thus pollute more, can do so -- yet they must pay for this option by purchasing extra rations on the market from CO2 conscious individuals who pollute less than their quota.  Over the course of time, the emission quotas allocated within personal carbon rationing systems can be ratcheted down, and international carbon emissions can thus be guaranteed to drop.

Personal carbon rations transfer some of the accountability for emissions reductions from governments to citizens.  Such an accountability migration is crucial because it is at the level of the individual that the decisions are being taken on a daily basis that most affect the trajectory of global climate change.  Sure, energy efficiency and clean energy programs implemented by governments and industry are important, yet globally we now realize that we must enlighten patterns of behaviour at the level of the individual, via pro-market initiatives like personal carbon rations, if there is to be any hope of countering climate change.  Personal carbon rations are an attractive policy option, fated to spread worldwide, since they can ably tap the age-old power of financial self-interest, amid a framework of shared responsibility and collective action, to spur the global diffusion of carbon consciousness, lower emission lifestyles and climate change literacy.  Specific to North America, improved climate change literacy may help us reduce our energy consumption, and our CO2 pollution, per unit of economic output.  We have great potential to be more efficient in our use of energy; reduction of spend can boost profits, lowering emissions can boost profits, eco-efficiency is gold.

This map, courtesy of the NASA Scientific Visualization Studio, is a composite image of our Earth at night that was made in the year 2001 – importantly, it depicts the useless diffusion of light photons into space, and thus highlights regions that are mis-utilizing their energy supply and causing global climate change.  The “lit-up” regions are, for the most part, wastefully scattering artificial illumination into space due to mediocre quality outdoor lighting.  Poor quality outdoor lighting unnecessarily casts part of its light skyward in the form of light pollution.  This waste of electricity, due to flawed fixture design and ignorant purchasing policies, needlessly instigates mammoth amounts of carbon dioxide emissions, and squanders financial resources too.  Thankfully, when we humans start to realize that we are the cause of harmful eco-inefficiency on a massive scale, we can become more inclined to help actualize global eco-efficiency.  At the community level, we can choose to make use of quality lighting fixtures instead of visibly mediocre alternatives.  That simple idea, if it were to be systematically implemented worldwide, could on a yearly basis achieve for our world: (a) energy cost savings of $143 billion; (b) carbon dioxide emission reductions of 592 million tons; and (c) a reduction in oil dependence of 1560 million barrels of oil -- according to the CEO of Philips Lighting.

Indeed, images of our Earth at night depict the scale at which humans pointlessly send light photons into outer space, and thus transmit a sense of how much energy we humans continuously waste unnecessarily.  Amid such flagrant signs of eco-inefficiency, institutions like the International Energy Agency now incessantly bang the drum for outlandish near-term increases to the worldwide energy generating capacity -- egregious fossil fuel pollution or not.  Yes, energy is essential to sustainable development and, yes, more people must be hooked-up in the years ahead.  However, “supply-side” energy extremism cannot deliver an enhanced quality of life if we roast our home planet.  Now that we humans are starting to comprehend the significance of global climate change, there is reason to seek out organizations like the Sydney Outdoor Lighting Improvement Society.  They know that “the global warming is with us” and they inspire one to think that “building more coal-fired power stations… while we continue to install wasteful outdoor lighting fixtures… is like filling a leaky bucket with water, surely the priority is to first plug the hole.”  So interpreted, IEA energy supply scenarios are leaky buckets.
 
Beyond leaky buckets, what our global society could really use is an “International Negawatt Agency”.  The term negawatt, a neologism coined in the 1980s, is a play on the word ‘megawatt’ and refers to
a unit of energy that is saved, rather than supplied, and is thus available via arbitrage for use in an energy system.  The modern-day world market for negawatts, otherwise known as electric-efficiency, was conceptualized in good part by Mr. Amory Lovins and colleagues.  Working from their eco-efficient research laboratory in the Colorado Rockies, they drafted technical standards that now help to frame a multi-billion-dollar world market for negawatts.  According to Mr. Lovins there is there is no cheaper or cleaner power than the power that is not produced, and he is, like usual, correct.  An essential priority for the future of human life on Earth is, indeed, to create ways to systematically and comprehensively facilitate “negawatt-mining” within our industrial societies, and thus tap into the tangible prospect of creating more profits while simultaneously reducing pollution emissions.
 
The message here is real world.  Even Norway, the world's third largest oil exporter, knows that fossil fuel is destined to be old-school.  The Norwegian Government recently financed a national task force entitled the “Commission on Low Greenhouse Gas Emissions” to best determine how Norway can reduce its emission of greenhouse gases 50-80% by 2050.  Norway now has an elaborate plan to reduce its climate gas emissions 67% by 2050.  Their “Low Emissions Path” to achieve a climate-safe society involves greater national attention to clean energy production, negawatt mining, and the promotion of vehicle fuels that cause less CO2 pollution.  Although specific to the country of Norway, the initiative is an inspiring leadership example for the rest of the world.

Norway is playing a prominent role in global efforts to realize a low carbon future.  Many Norwegians know that the future commercial success of their nation depends on their figuring out new ways to do old things, and new ways to do new things.  There is no sense in wasting oil, especially if doing so can be problematic and there are smarter ways to live.  Yet, to be sure, the transition to a low CO2 future will not be effortless, and there will be casualties.  Back in March 2000, for instance, a Norwegian government that had been in place for three years was forced to resign because it was committed to blocking the construction of two fossil-fuel power plants, until new eco-friendly technologies were ready to sequester their carbon dioxide emissions.  Since then governments in Norway have fortified their prerogative to make responsible choices, like other intelligent jurisdictions, by ensuring that the Norwegian populace is highly-educated about climate change, and not deceived.

The matter of determining whether or not fossil-fuel power stations should be allowed to operate at all is of vital consequence to worldwide climate change mitigation efforts.  Many of North America’s most offensive air polluters are now running fossil-fuel power plants, which emit negligent amounts of climate harming carbon.  Showing signs of mindfulness, on 27 March 2007 the Government of British Columbia pledged that the license to operate for all new coal fired electricity generation facilities in the Province will be firmly conditioned on their capacity to guarantee zero greenhouse gas emissions.  Moreover, thermal generation power stations already operating in British Columbia will be obliged to lower their climate pollution emissions to zero by the year 2016.  These moves, in combination with the pledge of the BC government to introduce hard caps on greenhouse emissions, will help to transform the BC business landscape for negawatt miners and energy companies. Climate-friendly industries require such intelligent market-framework conditions to accelerate low-carbon innovation, tap venture capital funds, and win enlightened institutional investors for market-ready technologies.

Climate change is compelling reason to suggest that we should scale-back the global deployment of coal-fired power stations -- at least until we re-structure global markets to universally put a cost on greenhouse gas emissions, like Norway has done with its carbon tax, and thus alter the economics of greenhouse gas emissions so that, if a coal plant needs to be built, sharp industrialists will opt for a climate neutral design.  Unfortunately, at the global level, the market basis for deploying coal plants that pollute is still bullet-proof.  This is due to the fact that given contemporary world market framework conditions, our market-system tends to reward actors that choose not to integrate “external” costs, like carbon dioxide pollution impacts, into their business-as-usual energy planning formula.  This “tragedy of the commons” dynamic is an absurd artifact of how we now structure global governance. 

China is now our world’s epicentre for non-climate-neutral coal plant construction.  China is building energy infrastructure, and spending capital on energy projects, at a faster rate than anywhere else on the planet.  Already the world's second-biggest energy consumer overall, China now derives nearly 80% of its electricity from coal -- that is twice the global average.  At present, China is building about two large coal-fired power stations every week.  Accordingly, China’s yearly greenhouse gas emission inflation rate is growing faster than that of any other nation, and the trend seems set to continue.  China knows very well that greenhouse gas emissions are a grave concern, and suffers terribly from industrial factory derived air pollution, however China’s foremost priority these days is to massively expand its socio-economic base by means of further export-oriented industrialization, and thus increase its capacity to improve the general quality of life for people in China over the long-term.

The West cannot justly fault China for failing to manage its greenhouse gas emission signature -- because much of China’s existing emission profile is a derivative of other nations outsourcing their manufacturing to China; which means that a significant percentage of “Chinese” emissions now correlate with factory goods made for other nations, not China.  This phenomenon is illustrated by the fact that in “developed” countries total energy consumption tends to split into thirds, amongst industry, construction and transport, while in China it is industry -- iron, steel, cement, aluminum etc. -- that eats up about 70% of the energy that is consumed.  To its credit, China is trying to move away as quick as possible from using non-CO2-neutral coal plants to power its industry.  China already leads all other world nations in renewable energy spend -- an honor.  Yet it is not realistic for the West to hope that China, a developing nation, will unilaterally invest in the technological-capacity that is necessary for it to systematically phase-out coal station emissions.  China is going to continue making goods for the West using energy from non-CO2-neutral coal plants, with all the loaded implications that has for our climate system, until Western nations intervene with socio-economic incentives for China that can further shift China’s market framework conditions in favour of climate-neutral industrial development.  

To officially bring China and other big developing nations into the fight against climate change will require major league financing.  Well-informed estimates calculate that about $80-$100 billion a year is the price the West will have to pay to get China and the G-77 on side and in the ring.  That amount of coin has the potential to catalyze an abrupt surge in clean-tech deployment, and buy lunch for a lot of negawatt miners.  This seems achievable given that the groundwork for an international clean energy investment framework is already now  in place, and a $20 billion fund to spur low-carbon innovation in developing nations is en route.  Yet, of course, seed financing and policy frameworks are not enough on their own.  What is also essential is a clear, long-term vision for our world’s future energy mix that accounts for ecological requirements –- that kind of vision, or in other words a realistic scenario for worldwide energy production, is needed to help inspire institutional investor confidence in emerging clean energy technologies, and further advance the international cause of sustainable development.

The Germans are thinking about environmentally correct energy production scenarios in part because they would like to establish a long-term answer to the question “ Woher kommt der Wasserstoff ? ”  A climate-friendly bulk supply of wasserstoff, derived from climate-neutral energy, could stem climate change.  There is exceptional potential, too, for wasserstoff to fuel a climate-neutral worldwide mobility transition.  Yet the Germans are also developing environmentally correct energy production scenarios because they, like all bright folk, want to help guarantee that we do not barbeque our planet and make it markedly less habitable.  This inclination has a strong foundation in Germany.  For example, in 1991 Munich targeted a 50% reduction in its carbon dioxide emissions by year 2010, relative to a 1987 baseline emission level.  At the national level the Germans have already reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by 18% relative to their 1990 baseline emission level, and thus they are now close to achieving their Kyoto commitment of a 21% reduction by year 2012.  The phenomenal efforts of the German people have led to their attaining 3/4 of Europe’s CO2 emission cuts over the last decade.  This type of forward thinking is emblematic of a Germany that has freshly bested the USA to become the world’s #1 exporter of goods, motivated by the knowledge that the way to lead the international economy in the decades ahead is through truthfully promoting sustainable development.
 
Germany, and other climate-friendly countries, will be able to do even more to promote clean-tech and negawatt mining once global market framework conditions are set to sanction the carbon careless.  International “border tax adjustments” currently need to be introduced and applied to the trade in goods between climate-friendly nations and pollution-haven nations that do not yet limit their pollution to the atmosphere.  At present, the climate-friendly nations -- those that limit greenhouse gas pollution and utilize emissions trading schemes in their jurisdictions -- are being put at a market disadvantage by pollution-haven nations -- such as Australia, Canada and the USA -- since the climate-friendly nations account for the cost of protecting the atmosphere in the price calculus of their traded goods, unlike the pollution haven nations.  Thus the rogue pollution-haven nations are leveraging climate negligence as a worldwide market advantage.  This is totally unacceptable.  Pollution-haven free-riders must be exposed to extra costs on par with the costs that their pollution forces on other people -- this can be arranged via border tax adjustments.
 
Border tax adjustments can appropriately ‘level the playing field’ between the climate compliant zones and the rogue pollution-havens through, firstly, imposing a tax on carbon-intensive products imported into the climate compliant zones from a pollution-haven and, secondly, providing exporters from the climate compliant zones a tax rebate when they sell carbon-intensive goods into a pollution-haven.  The amount of the importation tax, and the tax rebates respectively, can be correlated with the additional costs that responsible market participants’ shoulder by obtaining emission offset permits from official sources.  That is the plan, and until a universal GHG emission trading system is put in place, that is the best plan there is to address non-participation in emissions trading by free-riders.  Surely, climate-friendly border tax adjustments can help to create global market reflexes that will be vital to ensuring the smooth, timely launch of a worldwide per-capita emissions entitlements regime.

Hopefully the necessity of border tax adjustments will be pre-empted by the rogue pollution haven nations transforming themselves into climate compliant zones.  Yet, if not, the environmentally correct countries of the world must be ready to institute border tax adjustments to help the carbon ignorant nations to “see the light”.  Just like the European supermarket shoppers that will soon start to see airplane icons on the packaging of some supermarket items, to help them make shopping decisions that can account for products’ climate impacts, perhaps there may eventually have to be an icon that indicates point-of-origin from a rogue pollution haven -- if so, a miniature silhouette of the “Statue of Taking Liberties” could be an evocative pollution haven icon.  Even with border tax adjustments, if necessary, humanity will not be able to stave off an increase in global warming and extreme weather events.  Damaging change has already been programmed into the climate system by our greenhouse gas emissions -- certain types of which can be aloft for centuries once they are airborne.  The global warming is with us.  Our maximum efforts can now only serve to lower the degree of damage to come.

The European Union is devoted to trying to limit planetary warming to a global average temperature increase of less than 2° Celsius, relative to the global average temperature just prior to when fossil fuels began to be systematically and ritually burnt by humans worldwide.  Their contemporary climate change mitigation efforts are informed by an awareness of the striking implications of exceeding that Earth system threshold.  However, despite the ongoing efforts of the EU and other responsible institutions to limit climate change, the trends are still not good, and the EU now believes that there is a more than 50% chance that the world average temperature will increase by more than 5° Celsius over the course of the current century.  That said, it will not only be changes to average temperatures and meteorological mean values that will impact humanity this century.  The paramount danger manifested by climate change is the escalating incidence of climate extremes that it spawns; like more intense hurricanes, heat-waves, droughts, floods, et cetera.  According to catastrophe research by re-insurance firms, and recorded in the open literature by the German Institute for Economic Research, worldwide extreme weather events have already increased by a factor of 3.1 since 1960.

Encouragingly, the general public is starting to become more aware of the significance of climate change. For those who rely on the “popular” news media to structure their weltanschauung, climate change is now becoming a reality.  In the global print media, for instance, news reports on the subject of climate change have increased dramatically, from 200 reports in 1997 to more than 35,000 in 2007.  Exemplifying the emerging media relevance of climate change, a decade ago Vanity Fair killed a draft-story about Kyoto in lieu of Oscar awards coverage -- and nowadays VF adeptly advances societal climate change awareness.  Furthermore, climate change is now being reported on more responsibly by the media, at least in the United States of America.  To quote from the 9 October 2005 edition of the Seattle Times newspaper:  “We have to figure out how to make ourselves more resilient (to climate change), rather than using the argument about global warming to do nothing.”

Independence from oil is a reality that we humans can achieve via simple planning and decision making.   A low carbon future is not something that we humans can afford to miss out on.  Our current “addiction to oil” is threatening the precious global atmosphere upon which we all depend for our very existence.  Global warming will overwhelm us if we do not act boldly, decisively, comprehensively, and quickly to lower our greenhouse gas emissions.  There is a reason why “Carbon Neutral” was chosen to be the New Oxford American English Dictionary’s 2006 word of the year.  And now in 2007, the discovery that Arctic sea ice is disappearing faster than anticipated will likely be the most prophetic global happening of the year.  Dr. John Holdren, a leading American scientist and the Director of the Woods Hole Research Center in New England, describes the situation in the following way: “we got a problem here that requires that we change things in quite fundamental ways... change the way we are supplying energy to the whole world's economy... and it requires that we start doing it soon... before we have irreversibly committed ourselves to a trajectory that completely wrecks the world's climate…”

Global climate change is already spoiling the conditions for life on planet Earth, and things will get worse before we humans can, if possible, stop the warming.  The amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is higher now than at any time in the past 800,000 years, and is set to keep escalating at an unprecedented rate.  What we are dealing with here is certain climate change.  What we are striving to avoid at all costs is a runaway greenhouse effect.  We know that elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere have the potential to cause the demise of life on Earth, and boil the ocean so that it becomes warmer than a hot-tub.  Further to such knowledge, we urgently require an international treaty within the next two years to diminish global warming pollution in developed nations by 90 percent.  If we cannot achieve a consensus of this scope then we humans will naively stoke the climate crisis, and thus ultimately make Earth’s climate more like that of Venus.

A runaway greenhouse effect happens when a given planet absorbs more energy from the sun than it can re-radiate back into space.  By filling our atmosphere with ghastly volumes of greenhouse gases we humans are inhibiting the ability of the Earth system to rid itself of excessive heat.  Due in part to human greenhouse gas pollution, our home planet has warmed by 0.74 °Celsius in the past century, with more than half of this increase having occurred since the 1970s.  At some point, if we humans do not take preventive action, the rising temperature could instigate a critical increase in worldwide water evaporation to our atmosphere.  High in the atmosphere water vapor acts to block solar energy from re-radiating into space, just like human-derived greenhouse gases.  Thus a critical increase in worldwide water evaporation could theoretically cause a further rise in temperature, more planetary water evaporation, again more temperature warming, and so on.  It is speculated that our neighboring planet Venus once had a lot of water on its surface, similar to Earth, until a runaway greenhouse effect caused the planet to become extraordinarily dry, with an average surface temperature of 464 °Celsius.

Global warming is happening now, here on Earth.  Nowhere is this more obvious than in our world’s Arctic region.  The dramatic changes already underway in our world’s Arctic region signal the future fate of our planet.  What this all means for you, the reader, is simple -- lower your greenhouse gas emission impact, fast.  For many people this will involve ensuring that household energy consumption is sourced from a climate-neutral supply, and it could also mean taking up the opportunity to utilize low-to-no greenhouse gas emission personal mobility options.  Moreover, be climate smart, keep abreast of the latest updates about global warming.  The International Polar Year website is one place to get such information, at least until the International Polar Year worldwide cooperative effort ceases.

For those of us that live in North America, the ongoing climate crisis should be a reminder that “freedom” in use of a global common resource, like the greenhouse gas absorptive capacity of our atmosphere, can bring ruin to all.  Both Canada and the United States of America are supposedly pledged to be responsible and work to the best of their ability with the world community to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that prevents dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.  Fifteen years ago, in 1992, President Bush, in the name of the USA, and Prime Minister Mulroney, in the name of Canada, both signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.  Yet, despite the purportedly solemn oaths, both Canada and the United States of America are now refusing to cap their harmful greenhouse gas emissions, breaking their word, and behaving like traitors to the community of life on Earth.  This is a crisis of democracy.  This is a crisis of some people believing that they are more equal than others.  We cannot insulate ourselves from the peril of global warming by naïvely believing in false notions of reality.