This is also a day when we must, more than ever, raise our voices and our concerns about the future of the planet.  Just weeks ago, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million.  This is the highest concentration of CO2 in approximately three million years.   At that time, the planet was at least 2-3 degrees warmer and sea levels were 25 metres higher.  For this reason, scientists have been defining 400 ppm as a frightening and dangerous turning point for the planet – and those living on it.  Therefore, although the Green Party is happy to mark UN World Environment Day, we think every day can and must be used to make our planet more sustainable.  The time is now.

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Over a period of the last million years, CO2 never exceeded 280 ppm (based on actual readings of atmospheric chemistry from Antarctic ice-core data.) The last time greenhouse gases reached 400 ppm was three million years ago. Put simply, humanity has now changed the chemistry of our atmosphere to replicate pre-historic levels—a time when no humans existed.

Related: Sign a petition for a National Cimate Strategy

Concentrations of GHG are a very different measurement than emission rates. Concentrations have a very long lag-time and will not be able to be decreased except over centuries, while emission rates can go down overnight. It is critical to start reducing emissions, because existing concentrations mean that we will see warming over the next 100 years from today’s emissions.

CO2 levels are monitored daily at Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii. When the monitoring station was set up in 1958, CO2 levels were at 317ppm. The rise to 400ppm was not expected so soon. Meanwhile, the Canadian government has joined in a global commitment to hold concentrations of greenhouse gases to levels that would avoid allowing global average temperatures to rise by 2ºC. Scientists have marked that wide red hazard line in a band between 425-450 ppm.

Avoiding 2ºC is critical because it represents a danger zone. Some refer to it as a point of no return—or a ‘tipping point to self-accelerating global warming, the so-called ‘runaway greenhouse effect.’ The actual tipping point might be 2.5º, or it could be 1.5º. Two degrees represents a consensus of scientists, but no scientist I know is sanguine about 2 degrees. It is certainly not a safe zone.

The most recent International Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Outlook includes some number crunching. If all the world’s known reserves of fossil fuels were to be used, the climate would move the world to a non-habitable state.

In fact, the IEA has said that to avoid an increase of 2ºC, at least two-thirds of known fossil-fuel reserves must stay in the ground until at least 2050.

The Over-rated Fossil Fuel Economy

This finding has led to a new and potentially powerful financial calculation. A major new report from the UK, Unburnable Carbon 2013: Wasted Capital And Stranded Assets, engaged the talents and expertise of Sir Nicholas Stern through a collaborative research project involving Carbon Tracker and the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and Environment.

The result is a new concept—the ‘carbon bubble.’ The essence of their work is this: a great deal of the stated value of stock exchanges around the world is in unburnable fossil fuels. The level of capital expenditure in developing those reserves over the next decade would amount to $6.74 trillion in wasted capital—developing reserves that simply cannot be burned.

The report calls for ratings agencies to update their approach to verifying the financial health of stock markets and individual companies. If assets being used to offset liabilities are assets that can never be used, then large parts of the economy—now seen as credit-worthy—are over-valued.

The consequence for financial markets is obvious. Meanwhile, the report notes that the carbon intensity of the New York and London stock markets is actually increasing; New York by 37% over 2 years and London by 7% over 2 years.

The creative notion that Moody’s and other credit raters might be able to do through financial valuations what governments have so far failed to do–bring Big Oil to its senses–is certainly tantalizing. What is encouraging is the extent to which the notion of a ‘carbon bubble’ as financial risk is catching on.

Perhaps that’s what we need—a clear financial consequence our brains can comprehend. Maybe we should keep the focus on the financial threat, while acknowleding the irony that it may be easier to provoke change through large multinationals and stock exchanges than through thoughts of our children’s dismal future.

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Source : 2012 Progress Report, p. 24

More information: Green Party of Canada’s backgrounder on climate change.

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But when those same attitudes and willful blindness form the basis of federal government policy as expressed by our federal Minister of Natural Resources, it is a sign of negligent disregard for the public interest. It is unacceptable.

This is what Oliver told the editorial board of La Presse: “I think that people aren’t as worried as they were before about global warming of two degrees…Scientists have recently told us that our fears (on climate change) are exaggerated.”

Thank goodness the editorial board at La Presse knows how to ask questions. They pressed him to name any scientist who thinks our fears are exaggerated. He couldn’t.

The extent to which the minister doesn’t know his brief was further exposed when the editorial board asked him about the International Energy Agency’s annual World Energy Outlook’s concern for limiting carbon. Oliver had actually quoted from the report to justify his claim that fossil fuel production must ramp up to meet demand. When asked if he had not seen that the same report had made it clear that avoiding a two degree global average temperature increase is essential, and that in order to do so, two-thirds of known fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground and not be accessed before 2050, Oliver drew a blank.

“I have no idea, I didn’t read that conclusion,” said Oliver.

Well, that’s like saying, “I opened Moby Dick and I never saw that line ‘Call me Ishmael.'”

Mr. Oliver must simply never have read the report at all. He must have had the selected quotes from briefing notes because to open the report at all is to see an executive summary in which climate concerns are front and centre.

“Successive editions of this report have shown that the climate goal of limiting warming to 2°C is becoming more difficult and more costly with each year that passes,” said the report. “If action to reduce CO2 emissions is not taken before 2017, all the allowable CO2 emissions would be locked-in by energy infrastructure existing at that time. Rapid deployment of energy-efficient technologies … would postpone this complete lock-in to 2022, buying time to secure a much-needed global agreement to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.”

I keep trying to determine if Stephen Harper has ever had a briefing on climate science. This revealing exchange with the editorial board of La Presse confirms that if Joe Oliver has ever had a science briefing, he wasn’t listening.

Originally in the Huffington Post.

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I think part of the problem is that even when experts understand the peril in which all human society is placed, those who are alarmed are afraid to sound “alarmist.” Translating the impact of two degrees, 3.5 degrees, and even higher levels of warming into language that is clear and unequivocal is not a project for the faint of heart. Let me try to explain two key factors in the IEA, World Bank, IPCC, and other projections.

The first is that these agencies do not yet say there is no chance of avoiding the two degree of warming threat which all countries, including Canada, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper personally in Copenhagen in 2009, have pledged to avoid. What is said is that if the collectivity of nations maintain current plans for climate action, the total impact is to allow greenhouse gases to continue to rise. On current policy trajectories, we fail miserably in our stated objectives. Only with the kind of urgent and comprehensive economic transitions undergone by nations at war can we avoid over-shooting two degrees. And even then, we are not guaranteed success.

Two degrees global average temperature warming is not a goal. It is to be avoided. It represents a level of human-caused climate impact which ensures dangerous levels of climatic destabilization. Many low-lying island states point out that at two degrees, they will be permanently inundated.

Yet, in a country like Canada that experiences minus 40 Celsius in winter and plus 40 Celsius in summer, it does not sound like a lot. Our failure to stress context allows the number to become meaningless. Only when it is explained that the difference between global average temperature today and in the last Ice Age was only five degrees Celsius does it become clear that two degrees global average temperature change is huge.

The second is to translate two degrees, three degrees and so on global average temperature into a language that actually says what it means. Given that two degrees is dangerous, what do words like “dire,” “devastating,” and “catastrophic” mean?

To understand a worst case-scenario for humanity due to the climate crisis, you need to understand the concept of positive feedback loops. Burning forests release carbon, warming the Earth faster to cause more forest fires. Melting Arctic ice reduces the albedo effect that bounced the sun’s heat back to the atmosphere. Without ice, the sun’s heat is absorbed in dark ocean water, warming the ocean faster, melting ice faster, further reducing the ice cover.

As the warming climate melts the permafrost, methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, is released from what was once locked away. The methane further warms the earth, melting more permafrost and releasing more methane. These are examples of positive feedback loops, of which there are many more.

At some point in the human-caused surge in atmospheric greenhouse gases, we could unleash an unstoppable release of warming forces. This is called “runaway global warming.” The worst case scenario is that the planet becomes more like Venus—uninhabitable for all, but some microbes or bacteria able to cope in high temperatures. I don’t think it will come to complete extinction of humankind and most of our fellow travellers on Planet Earth.

However, it is hard to imagine how human societies, civilization itself, could survive the loss of the Western Antarctic ice sheet, leading to the flooding of all coastal cities; or permanent states of drought in food producing regions; or tens of millions of refugees fleeing famine and floods. These are not far-fetched events. They could occur in the lifetimes of our own children.

In Ronald Wright’s best-seller, A Short History of Progress, he reviewed a litany of once magnificent civilizations that snuffed themselves out. One line, a piece of graffiti Wright repeated, sums it up: “every time history repeats itself, the price goes up.”

Wright was interviewed recently for a brilliant piece by Chris Hedges (“The Myth of Human Progress,” truthdig.com, Jan. 13, 2013). Wright pondered our inability to address an impending disaster that could eliminate us from the face of the Earth. “We’re Ice Age hunters with a shave and a suit,” said Wright. “We are not good long-term thinkers.”

So next time you read that the International Energy Agency thinks we could face “dire” consequences and the World Bank warns impacts could be “devastating,” don’t yawn and turn the page. Find a way to join the movement demanding a planned, aggressive transition away from our dependency on fossil fuels.

We have a profound moral obligation to protect our children and their children from what many increasingly see as unavoidable. Not unavoidable because we lack the ingenuity, technology and creativity to avoid two degrees; we could do so and experience an increasingly healthy economy. Those who believe it is unavoidable simply cannot believe we will bother to try. Let’s make 2013 the year when it all turns around, when the community of nations decides to give humankind a future as well as a short history of progress.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May represents Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.
Originally printed  in the Hill Times.

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