Save the Earth - Reduce Fossil Fuel Usage

From the Saturday, November 24, 2007, Ideas section of the Toronto Star, here is an article about global warming, the warning the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued and thoughts about what that would mean and what we need to do:

Global Warming
If you really love the planet, hate the oil

Cameron Smith

The latest report of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is explicit: If temperatures rise to the range of 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius above what they were in 1999, up to nearly a third of all species on Earth will likely face in increased risk of extinction.

Think of it. One-third of all the different kinds of birds - likely gone. A third of all the various butterflies and wildflowers - gone. Red oak trees might survive, but maybe not the beach; birch trees but not ash; sugar maples but not the black spruce of the Boreal Forest - which would devastate the Boreal.

To prevent his happening, the IPCC says it will be necessary to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions witihin the next seven years, and then drive them down 59 to 85 per cent by 2050.

These are staggeringly ambitious targets, but as Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC says, "What we do in the next two or three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."

Despite setting its sight high, the report stresses repeatedly that the targets can be met. And they can be met at minuscule cost.

By 2050, global domestic product would be altered in the range of a 1 per cent gain to a 5.5 per cent decrease. "This corresponds to slowing average ... global GDP growth by less than 0.12 per cent (a year)," the report says.

It notes that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is "primarily due to fossil fuel use, with land-use changes providing another significant but smaller contribution."

And it highlights the scope of the problem the world faces. By 2030, it says, more than $20 trillion will be invested in energy plants that will have long lifetimes.

To ensure that these plants use low-carbon technologies - which means finding alternatives to coal and oil-fired stations - will require a large shift in investment patterns if energy-related CO2 emisisons are to return to 2005 levels by 2030.

However, on a calming note, the report adds, "The net additional investment required ranges from negligible to 5 to 10 per cent."

But it warns that part of the shift in investment will accompany "reduction of fossil fuel subsidies (and imposition of) taxes or carbon charges on fossil fuels." And "resistance by vested interests may make (this) difficult to implement."

The issue, then, is not whether global warming can be controlled. It is whether politicians will stand up to the oil and coal industries - the vested interests.

In the event politicians don't stand up to them, the report issues a stark warning:

If CO3 emissions are not cut back, it's unlikely that nature or civilization as we know it will have the ability to adapt. Against this background, there are a couple things I want to focus on in columns to come, because they bear on the IPCC report.

One is a new area of science that suggests plants have the ability to store knowledge and interpret information - and this is quite different from simply reacting in a blind, mechanistic way, according to what has been encoded in their DNA.

The concern is that global warming is adding to a number of other stresses, and together they may overwhelm this interpretative capacity, leading plants to act in ways injurious to themselves and to the insects that depend on them.

The second is a remarkable pilot project near Tillsonburg in south-western Ontario, where a farmer is being paid not to farm sections of his land that are key to improving local habitat.

It's an example of better land management, which the IPCC says will be invaluable in reducing global warming and it should be adopted by governments in Canada.

Cameron Smith can be reached at camsmith@kingston.net