Black Saturday to be repeated

I’m going to just ramble and ‘think out loud’ for this blog, for a bit of a change.

I read Living in the Hothouse by Ian Lowe a couple of years ago. It was a depressing forecast when I read it. I already knew I was living in a rain shadow, and that Victoria had been in drought for about 10 years, but after reading it, I considered moving to Tasmania.

Well, today, on the front page of the Melbourne Age, the headline was State faces ‘worst-ever’ fire season. The article by Peter Ker was about a leaked report from the Department of Sustainability and Environment about the coming fire season in Victoria, and its predicted intensity.

Victoria’ rainfall has been its lowest on record for the first six months of 2009. Even if we get above average rainfall (which we won’t) for the rest of winter and spring, we’re still looking at extremely dry conditions in the heavily populated areas in the regions with 250km from Melbourne. The report predicts drier conditions than last fire season, which produced Black Saturday, with the fire season starting as early as November.

Although Peter Ker’s article didn’t refer to climate change, I was instantly reminded of Living in the Hothouse when I read the predictions. Ian Lowe forecasted longer dry periods, more intense heat, and horrible fire seasons, for south eastern Australia. The book was only published in 2005, and we’re already seeing the results.

I am lucky the the wind on Black Saturday was blowing slightly from the west, otherwise the fire would have roared straight into the valley in which I live. As it was, it stayed on the other side of the Tallarook ranges, and burnt into Strath Creek. But this summer, the Tallarook ranges will have to burn. It’s tinder dry and full of undergrowth and fallen trees. If a fire started in there, there’s no stopping it, and all the homes nearby will fall victim to the embers.

Do things have to be personally brought home to people ... do we have to think of our own livelihoods before we realise how dire climate change really is? I was already an advocate for carbon trading, for sustainability, and for simple living. But, even if we all do the right thing, we have already raised the global temperature by about 1 degree. And it’s enough to produce Black Saturday.

What will the Black Saturdays of the future look like? Will insurance companies continue to insure people in the country? Will insurance companies survive? How high will our policies be? Do we leave or do we stay to fight, if we know the insurance companies will forsake us? How much hotter and drier will it get in a world where the temperature is another 2 degrees higher, as our Government suggests it will get?

I wish we had a leader that would take a stand. We have to take responsibility for our emissions and our wasteful actions now.

Carbon Trading

Global warming is the rapid and continued increase of the Earth's surface temperature. During the last century the earth warmed by 0.8°C. Now the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is projecting that global surface temperatures are likely to increase by 1.1 to 6.4 °C this century. Already nineteen of the hottest 20 years on record have occurred since 1980 with 2005 being the hottest year in recorded history while the east coast of Australia had its warmest May on record in 2007.

If the Earth’s surface temperature heats up by as much as 4˚C, the oceans could rise by 65 metres! Most of the world’s major cities are based on the coast, but what insurance company is going to be able to afford the submergence of entire cities? Relocating people will become too expensive for our current governments, who by then, will be competing for oil and water resources.

The current concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere are now substantially higher than any time in the last 650,000 years. The increase of GHGs in our atmosphere was kick-started with the industrial revolution, which since the 1850s has largely increased the output of the key GHGs, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. At present, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased by over 30% and methane by over 150% above pre-industrial levels and are projected to rise by over 10% every 20 years.

GHGs come from a variety of sources, the burning of fossil fuels from industry and transportation, methane from livestock and paddy rice farming, construction of buildings, the making of cement and deforestation. Three quarters of GHG emissions in the last 20 years have come from fossil fuel burning with the remainder coming largely from deforestation. Aviation is responsible for an estimated 3% of global GHG emissions but is expected to increase in the future.

In today's society, every item we consume is created by an industrial process, and hence has greenhouse gas emissions associated with it. The only way to avoid Greenhouse emissions would be to go live in a cave without power or heat (no little camp fires allowed!) and make everything (I mean everything!) by hand; You can't have any livestock either as one tonne of methane contributes to the greenhouse effect as much as 21 tonnes of carbon dioxide!

Living in a cave, while an adventure perhaps, is not exactly plausible. The alternative is to remove the greenhouse gases from the atmosphere in the short term while trusting that, globally, people are working to develop new, more Earth-friendly technologies in the mid to long term.

To avert the worst effects of global warming we must make changes to our habits and lifestyle. Little things when done by millions of people can make a big difference. While some carbon emissions are unavoidable many can be significantly reduced with a minimum of effort and cost. Then we can offset the rest of our emissions by purchasing and retiring carbon credits. Carbon credits empower anyone to take ownership of their personal greenhouse emissions.

Carbon offsetting means balancing or compensating for carbon emissions in one place with a reduction in emissions in another. Since it doesn’t matter where Green House Gases (GHGs) are emitted, as their effect on climate change is the same, reducing GHG emissions in Brazil or Italy is as effective as doing so locally. And while we need to reduce our personal carbon emissions, some emissions are currently unavoidable, so carbon offsetting is the way to compensate for those emissions we cannot stop.

Carbon reduction projects throughout the world create a tradable 'carbon credit' for every tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (C02-e) that is stopped from entering our atmosphere. This credit is bought on your behalf and then 'retired' so it can't be sold again, meaning that you have stopped one tonne of C02-e that otherwise would have entered the atmosphere.

This ability to generate and trade carbon credits was an implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. It enabled countries that weren't going to meet their reduction targets to buy credits from countries that had surpassed theirs. Meaning that overall Kyoto targets were met and there was an economic incentive built into the equation to encourage companies and countries to emit less and create a demand for clean energy technologies.

Offsetting means paying someone to reduce CO₂ in the atmosphere on your behalf. In that way we can pay for the damage we are causing and the money stimulates the technologies we desperately need to fund transition to a lower-carbon world.

Peak Oil: What The?

So, I’ve always been aware that oil is not a renewable fuel - the same with coal and natural gas. So, in the back of my mind, I always knew that something had to be found to replace the finite resources that we’re using. That’s where wind power, wave power and solar power come in, isn’t it?

Well, this week, I had a wake up call. I lady I work with brought in a book for me that she had just finished. It’s called ‘Choosing Eden’ and it’s by an Australian called Adrienne Langman. I’m halfway through, and I’m already looking at the world differently. I’m thankful that I’ve been trying to achieve sustainability, because of climate change - now I’ve got another reason. Peak oil.

Peak oil is apparently a concept that is as old as my parents - it was first coined by someone working for Shell in 1956. And like Choosing Eden says, as soon as you find out about it, you need to know more. I’m in the process of learning more.

Most of us are aware that petrol prices have doubled in the last 6 years or so (unless you have a company car and petrol card, and then why should you notice?). Well, guess what: they are going to double again, and again ... and again. So we’ll have $3 per litre for petrol in maybe 3 to 6 years. Then $6 per litre in another 3 to 6 years. It will keep going up as demand increases and supply decreases.

Guess what happens when fuel prices go up? Good and every other consumer item goes up, because it costs more to transport things from A to B.

There’s more. Apparently, there’s 300,000 products that are made from crude oil. Look at all the plastic items around you - your computer, for starters. When crude oil runs out, or becomes too expensive to purchase, most people won’t be able to afford computers and the cheap electronic gadgets that we all can’t live without at the moment. Then think about the food packaging, the cosmetics, the household cleaning products, the building materials ... just about everything!

So, everything becomes too expensive. We have a huge recession. Most of us can’t afford anything. Money is not worth what it used to be. Perhaps travelling becomes too expensive for most people. Air travel collapses, because no one can afford it. Airlines go out of business. It’s too expensive to fill the car, because it costs $50 to buy bread, and train tickets have quadrupled. Then truck companies go broke, and food has to be conveyed around the country on rail. There’s so many trains needed to move food, that there’s no more room for trains moving people.

In the recession, it’s conceivable that more than 25% of the country is unemployed, because so many of the former services that were performed are no longer needed. People are just concerned with feeding their families. Whole shelves in the supermarkets are empty, because processed foods can no longer be made. People who have survived on processed foods, and can’t cook from scratch, will starve.

When people are starving, and their families are starving, it creates anarchy. And looting. And murder. Who wants to live anywhere near a major city when the suburbs completely collapse?

So, this is what’s running through my head whilst I’m reading about peak oil for the first time. And I’m thankful that I’ve moved to the country and am growing my own fruit and veggies.

This is a fairly extreme picture that I’ve just pasted ... or is it?

Check out:

http://www.onthecommons.org/content.php?id=2471

http://www.oilvoice.com

http://peakoil.blogspot.com

http://www.peakoilblues.com

http://anz.theoildrum.com

Last Stand of the Polar Bear

I’m reading ‘Six Degrees’ at the moment, by Mark Lynas, and I agree with the Sunday Times who has described it as ‘terrifying’.

Clearly, I’m already a believer that our climate is changing, for the worse, because of the activities of humans. I’m also sure that it’s equally as clear that I think we should all take responsibility for our own lifestyles by reducing our footprints and buying carbon credits to offset our emissions. But occasionally I pick up a book on the subject, and am just terrified, for the lack of another word. ‘Six Degrees’ is one of those books.

Why am I terrified? Because there is so much t

o lose, and I just don’t see anyone really doing anything significant about it. Because people are waiting for the world’s governments to take responsibility for us, and the governments are all being paid off by oil and industrial companies. And because all it would take is a little bit of effort by everyone, but people think that it’s too big of an issue. Well, it will be a huge issue if we don’t do anything soon. Now is the time to act, and the questions it: Why aren’t we doing something now?!?

Here’s part of ‘Six Degrees’ that really got to me recently. It only starts on page 54 and talks about how our oceans are becoming more acidic, because a substantial amount of our carbon dioxide emissions are absorbed into the sea:

“The most important life-forms to be affected are those that form the bedrock of the oceanic food chain: plankton. Although individually tiny, photosynthesising plankton ... are perhaps the most important plant resource on Earth. They comprise at least half the biosphere’s entire primary production - that’s equivalent to all the land plants put together ... [A]ll higher species from mackerel to humpbacked whales ultimately depend on them.

“Phytoplankton are also crucial to the global carbon cycle. Collectively ... removing billions of tonnes of carbon from circulation ... But as the oceans turn more and more acidic, this crucial component of the planetary carbon cycle could slowly grind to a halt. With fewer plankton to fix and remove it, more carbon will remain in the oceans and atmosphere, worsening the problem still further.”

It’s another exponentially wo

rsening situation, exactly the same as the decreasing Arctic Ice - which leads me to the polar bears. Being white, ice is highly reflective; whilst the ocean absorbs the heat of the sun, the ice reflects it back into the atmosphere. However, as our oceans warm and the ice melts, there is therefore less ice to reflect the heat. More heat is absorbed, so the oceans warm quicker, and ice melts quicker. Like I said, an exponentially worsening situation.

What lives on the Arctic ice? Lots of species, in fact, including some humans. But our most iconic and lovable Arctic animal is t

he polar bear, who is becoming the face of climate change. There numbers are decreasing as the ice decreases. There are less baby polar bears, there are less yearling polar bears, and there are more starving polar bears who miss the retracting ice flows

.

Isn’t this enough to turn off your lights when you leave a room, taking up a more sustainable lifestyle, reduce your emissions, and even buy some carbon credits. Ca

rbon credits are produced when sustainable companies do things to help the environment. Pay someone else to plant trees to offset your lifestyle, but know that you are taking responsibility for your contribution to helping the environment. www.carbonneutralnow.com.au

Sustainability in economic difficulty

Climate change, carbon neutral and sustainability are all terms we hear a lot nowadays and the move to live and buy “green” has gained more awareness and interest from individuals and businesses over the last few years.

Most recently however the main topic on everyone’s mind seems to be the economy and an impending recession. This raises the question, “have these latest economic issues now caused climate change and sustainability to have a lower priority on our agenda?”

I really hope not, because by spending an initial investment on sustainability, operating costs will generally be less in the future.

Here are some tips on office sustainability:

- Dispense with disposable coffee cups. Over its life, a mug will be used about 3,000 times, resulting in 30 times less solid waste and 60 times less air pollution than using the equivalent number of cardboard cups.

- Cut down on paper use. The paperless office remains a futuristic fantasy, with about 10,000 sheets of A4 paper being used by every single Australian worker every year. Most of this paper comes from native eucalypt forests and is cholorine-bleached, a process that produces toxic dioxins. Minimise your paper wastage by setting your printer and photocopier to default to use both sides of the paper. Recycle your waste paper, and print only what’s necessary.

- Use recycled paper – a business is not truly recycling unless it buys recycled products. Recycled paper uses 90% less water and half the energy required to make new paper.

- Turn off lights; log off and shut down computers; and don’t leave chargers plugged in – they continue to draw energy even when the device isn’t plugged in.