Divestment movement, New York Times, Bill McKibben, Do the Math

It's time to post some of a more positive outlook. Ever heard of the Divestment movement?

Well, it just so happens that this interview with Bill McKibben (350.org; fathered projects like Connect the Dots, Do the Math) explains it well and cites some influential media in doing so:

"The New York Times, in what became the week's most e-mailed story in the paper of record, said the campaign could "force climate change back on to the nation's political agenda." A few days later, Time magazine ended its account of the mushrooming movement like this: "University presidents who don't fall in line should get used to hearing protests outside their offices. Just like their forerunners in the apartheid battles of the 1980s, these climate activists won't stop until they win.""

You might be interested to read more, here: Divest from Fossil Fuels. Now. (By Bill McKibben)

Externalities are not profitable in the long run, anyway. We are selling the future into the present, calling it GDP.

This is why I start to foam arround the mouth when discussing the concept of "Externalities":

'It refers to costs imposed by businesses that are not paid for by those businesses. For instance, industrial processes can put pollutants in the air that increase public health costs, but the public, not the polluting businesses, picks up the tab. In this way, businesses privatize profits and publicize costs.'

 

Something wrong with the picture?

 

From: None of the world's top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use by David Roberts.

"("Natural capital" refers to ecological materials and services like, say, clean water or a stable atmosphere; "unpriced" means that businesses don't pay to consume them.)"

 

Lets delve a bit further with another quote (and another one inside it):
"None of the world's top industrial sectors would be profitable if they were paying their full freight. None!

That amounts to an entire global industrial system built on sleight of hand. As legendary environmentalist Paul Hawken put it, "We are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it GDP.""

"To see what I mean, check out a recent report [PDF] done by environmental consultancy Trucost on behalf of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) program sponsored by United Nations Environmental Program"

 

Another nice post is the one that makes your bristles tingle: Stop trying to save the planet, says 'urban ranger' Jenny Price <link>.
I think this is the single most smart and realistic assertment I've read the whole week:

"Price, who calls herself a "lapsed wilderness-loving environmentalist," doesn't think we should stop caring about how sustainable our consumption is, but she does believe that we need to inhabit nature instead of trying to save it. We need to think a lot more about people, she says, and about creating communities and providing food and jobs both sustainably and equitably. In short, we need to deal with the real world."

It also says below:
This interview is part of the Generation Anthropocene project, in which Stanford students partake in an inter-generational dialogue with scholars about living in an age when humans have become a major force shaping our world.

Environmental heroes of Earth Day, secret road plans and stepping it up a notch + US Utilities and PV

This is from a post from Bill McKibben (350.org):

 

A tale of two Earth Day heroes: Tim DeChristopher and Sandra Steingraber

 

"It's no accident that the emerging fossil fuel resistance has sent so many people to jail in the last few years. That's because the overwhelming wealth of the fossil fuel industry means we can't outspend them; we need other currencies with which to work. Passion, spirit, creativity. And sometimes we have to spend our bodies."

 

About stepping it up a notch:

"Earth Day /.../ its remarkable debut in 1970, when one American in 10 went out in the streets to demand action on clean air and water. That unprecedented activism laid the groundwork for the swift passage of legislation, and the almost-as-swift rehabilitation of lakes and rivers. But in the years after, many Earth Day celebrations drifted in a slightly more corporate direction; there wasn't anything wrong with them, but they didn't seem to be helping arrest environmentalism's slide into relative impotence.

This year, however, the holiday really resonates, because there are two heroes reminding us of the sacrifices they've made to move the fight forward, and the way the rest of us need to step up our game."

 

Route 241 in Orange County to cover a State beach

"last week the TCA held a behind-closed-doors secret vote and, free from any public comments, approved construction of a 5-mile section of the controversial road. If built, the freeway would cover much of San Onofre State Beach in asphalt, and would choke off sand flow from nearby San Mateo creek that stabilizes the cobblestone reef at Lowers." 

 

It would appear that piecemeal intrusions into nature, thus flying under the radar of the often redundant or outdate environmental legislation has become somewhat of a hype in the Building world:

 

"Building the project in piecemeal may be TCA's attempt to side-step the environmental impact concerns voiced by, among other groups, the Surfrider Foundation and the National Resources Defense Council."

  "The National Resources Defense Council's Joel Reynolds points out that this "segmenting" approach is illegal according to state and federal precedent, because once the first section of road is built, later decisions by government officials about extending the toll road would invariably be influenced by the already-existing five-mile extension of the 241 toll road.
By voting in secrecy, the TCA has contradicted its earlier assertions that the group would always allow for public participation in any future decisions about the toll road project."

Source: http://www.surfermag.com/features/trestles-threatened-again/

 

 

Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities <link>

The gist:

  "Solar power and other distributed renewable energy technologies could lay waste to U.S. power utilities and burn the utility business model, which has remained virtually unchanged for a century, to the ground /.../: is the assessment of the utilities themselves."

 

"The report /.../ is one of the most prescient and brutally frank things I've ever read about the power sector. It is a rare thing to hear an industry tell the tale of its own incipient obsolescence."

 

The nice parts of the above post are the three quotes from the report of the US Utilities it referes to. I especially like the below one. And I ask myself:
since this is the prevailing logic in all businesses and <often old> investors <who might not live to see the environmental, social, economic, ... consequences of their investment choices in fossil fuel extraction/industry>, where are we going to? Will they give it some final pushes in the next few years, trying to ban private energy supply and independece, as the food industry has basically managed to do? (FDA ...)

"Increased uncertainty and risk will not be welcomed by investors, who will seek a higher return on investment and force defensive-minded investors to reduce exposure to the sector."
Source: http://grist.org/climate-energy/solar-panels-could-destroy-u-s-utilities-according-to-u-s-utilities/

 

"One implication of all this — a poorly understood implication — is that rooftop solar fucks up the utility model even at relatively low penetrations, because it goes straight at utilities' main profit centers. (It's already happening in Germany.)"

 

"Remember, too, that these utilities are not Google or Facebook. They are not accustomed to a state of constant market turmoil and reinvention. This is a venerable old boys network, working very comfortably within a business model that has been around, virtually unchanged, for a century. A friggin' century, more or less without innovation, and now they're supposed to scramble and be all hip and new-age? Unlikely.
So what's to be done? You won't be surprised to hear that EEI's prescription is mainly focused on preserving utilities and their familiar business model. But is that the best thing for electricity consumers? Is that the best thing for the climate?
We'll dig into those questions in my next post - How can we boost distributed solar and save utilities at the same time?"

"Socially efficient pollution emission level"

From lectures of an Environmental Economics for Environmental Sciences course at Wageningen University. The study is OK (MSc Environmental Sciences), heck, it's great. But you know, right... In every study you get these (parts of) courses, professors (or parts of them maybe), study matter, some slides that just stick into your nose and don't get out.

Economic agents (e.g. firms) may not consider all damages when maximizing private welfare (profits, utility).

Damages from pollution:

• to the firm: private damages PD(M) (=0?)
•  to the rest of society: external damages ED(M), also called external cost EC(M)

Damages and benefits at societal level :

• private + external damages (costs), SD(M)=PD(M)+ED(M)
• private + external benefits, SB(M)=PB(M)+(0?)

Check my other post about it: How can I "Understand why zero emission is not optimal"?.
Sigh.

Scary? Naah, "predictable". Food prices < climate damage.

Divestment in Canadian Universities
Campus campaign targets fossil fuel energy industry /Feb 2013
/.../ the year was rounded out by Hurricane Sandy, which wrecked the Atlantic Coast from the Caribbean to New York City, and Typhoon Bopha, which pummeled the Philippines.
These events destroyed land, forests and crops. They flattened homes and devastated people's livelihoods. Profiting from this kind of destruction is immoral.

This is the crux of an emerging movement that is calling on universities and colleges to sell off their shares in fossil fuel companies. Students in Canada are gearing up to join more than 200 schools in the United States in a campaign that the Nation magazine says is "engaging more students than any similar campaign in the past 20 years," and it couldn't be coming at a better time.

Universities across Canada are rightly celebrated for their campus sustainability work, but as they've gone green over the past decades, CO2 emissions have risen by 40 per cent, and continue to rise. Building a sustainable campus that is bankrolling and profiting from climate change is a Pyrrhic victory at best.
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2013/02/11/campus_campaign_targets_fossil_fuel_energy_industry.html

Fossil fuels are sub-prime assets, Bank of England governor warned (Jan 2012)
Concern over the long-term risk posed by high-carbon assets has also been raised in the US, where the Investor Network on Climate Risk, a group of 100 institutional investors with collective assets of $10 trillion/.../
 David Nussbaum, chief executive of WWF-UK, noted that other assets held by investors could be damaged by climate change: "It's clear that we cannot burn all the fossil fuels currently listed on the world's financial markets without seriously impacting the value of other listed assets /.../
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/19/fossil-fuels-sub-prime-mervyn-king



An unpublished U.S. government study indicates that the world needs to prepare /.../ as food prices spiral and long-standing agricultural practices are disrupted by climate change.
(http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/04/20/world/climate-change-feared-to-create-global-food-crisis/#.UXWA2WjnBte)
"We should expect much more political destabilization of countries as it bites," said Richard Choularton, a policy officer in the U.N. World Food Program's climate change office. "What is different now from 20 years ago is that far more people are living in places with a higher climatic risk: 650 million people now live in arid or semiarid areas where floods and droughts and price shocks are expected to have the most impact.
(Ibidem)
In the Middle East and North Africa, declining yields of up to 30 percent are expected for rice, about 47 percent for corn and 20 percent for wheat.
Egypt expects to lose 15 percent of its wheat crops if temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius, and 36 percent if the increase is 4 degrees.
(Ibid.)

For fun, compare this news article: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/04/20/world/climate-change-feared-to-create-global-food-crisis/#.UXWA2WjnBte
with the article from den Elzen, et al. (2013): http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513000426
Go on. Have fun with the implications. Buy popcorn and sit back. Or start doing stuff. Anything that will help.

The Carbon Bubble 2013, Monster Crisis and Stern Review

Bah! "For the industry sector, we find that the recent rapid growth in China limits the potential for emission reduction in the next decades, assuming that recently built coal-based industry facilities are in use for the next decades."
 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988312000576

So much for support from everyone. "Global stock markets are BETTING ON countries failing to adhere to legally binding carbon emission targets."
 Meh. I say this crisis was/is just a prelude to the monster yet coming. Happy huntin', folks.

The gist:
The so-called "carbon bubble" is the result of an over-valuation of oil, coal and gas reserves held by fossil fuel companies. According to a report published on Friday, at least two-thirds of these reserves will have to remain underground if the world is to meet existing internationally agreed targets to avoid the threshold for "dangerous" climate change. If the agreements hold, these reserves will be in effect unburnable and so worthless – leading to massive market losses. But the stock markets are betting on countries' inaction on climate change.
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/apr/19/carbon-bubble-financial-crash-crisis

To refresh and/or introduce:

Stern report (2006):
rn and his team set out to examine "the economic impacts of climate change itself" and "the economics of stabilising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere" – plus the policy challenges of creating a low-carbon economy and managing adaption to a changing climate.
/.../ "The evidence shows that ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth. /.../"
More specifically, the review warns that ignoring climate change could reduce global GDP by 20% by the end of the century, and that to avoid this risk the world should spend 1% of global GDP a year, starting immediately.
In 2008, however, Stern announced that his report had underestimated the speed and scale of some serious climate impacts and increased his recommendation for expenditure on emissions reductions to 2% of global GDP. Nonetheless, by Stern's analysis, ignoring climate change is still many times more expensive than fixing it.
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/15/stern-review

More from Summary of Conclusions (Stern Report, 2006):
This Review has assessed a wide range of evidence on the impacts of climate
change and on the economic costs, and has used a number of different techniques to
assess costs and risks. From all of these perspectives, the evidence gathered by the
Review leads to a simple conclusion: the benefits of strong and early action far
outweigh the economic costs of not acting.
Climate change will affect the basic elements of life for people around the world –
access to water, food production, health, and the environment. Hundreds of millions
of people could suffer hunger, water shortages and coastal flooding as the world
warms.
(http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/Summary_of_Conclusions.pdf)

I was talking with somebody about money being devaluated in the future, potentially, since the costs to EVERYBODY in the climate-freakin' world will be so high, that nobody will:
a) have the money
b) be able to pay for sanitation of the damages
c) get the money due to them

I find somewhat similar line of thought, rather more eloquently put, and drastically more substantiated (in economic analysis), in the Stern Report (yeah, that OLD thing) (2006):
"the Review estimates that if we don't act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever.
If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more."
View the full report, chapters, with Executive Summary (short and long), here:
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm

The Carbon Bubble:
Unburnable carbon 2013: Wasted capital and stranded assets

This new research from Carbon Tracker and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE calls for regulators, governments and investors to re-evaluate energy business models against carbon budgets, to prevent $6trillion carbon bubble in the next decade.
http://www.carbontracker.org/wastedcapital

Summer Ice Melt, EKC (Kuznets curve) and nuclear bombs

Summer Ice Melt On Antarctic Peninsula Is Now Nonlinear, Fastest In Over 1000 Years /Apr 15, 2013/
<lots of links to Nature, NASA and other reports. Worthwhile.>
A new study finds "a nearly tenfold increase in melt intensity" on the Antarctic Peninsula in the last few hundred years.

It was just 2006 when Penn State climatologist Richard Alley explained that observations had indicated the great ice sheets appear to be shrinking "100 years ahead of schedule."
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/15/1864401/summer-ice-melt-on-antarctic-peninsula-is-now-nonlinear-fastest-in-over-1000-years/?mobile=nc

In 2001, the IPCC "consensus" said neither Greenland nor Antarctica would lose significant mass by 2100. They both already have.  As Penn State climatologist Richard Alley said in March 2006, the ice sheets appear to be shrinking "100 years ahead of schedule." 
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/06/27/254996/melting-antarctic-ice/

Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlogNOAA report unable to pinpoint causes of the historic 2012 U.S. drought
The extreme 2012 drought in the Central Great Plains of the U.S. was more intense than any drought since record keeping began in 1895, says a new NOAA assessment of the historic drought, released Thursday. However, the study was unable to pinpoint the cause of the drought.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2384
  <see also the heading Criticism of the report> below the picture>

My thoughts are: when we've to deal with so much damages, the money won't matter anymore. Humanity, run for (y)our lives.
Yes, Climate Change Is Worsening U.S. Drought — NOAA Report Needlessly Confuses The Issue http://clmpr.gs/ZeyZsV via @thinkprogress.


"The EKC hypothesis derives from a model of the economy in which there is no feedback from the state of the environment to economic growth. Rising levels of deforestation and pollution are seen as having harmful effects on the quality of life but not on production possibilities.

From one of the classics: Stern, D. I., Common, M. S., & Barbier, E. B. (1996). Economic growth and environmental degradation: the environmental Kuznets curve and sustainable development. World development, 24(7), 1151-1160.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0305750X96000320

See also more recent studies:
Environmental Kuznets curve for CO2 in Canada (He, Richard, 2010) (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800909004790)
The relationship between income and environment in Turkey: Is there an environmental Kuznets curve? (2009): (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421508005624)
The Environmental Kuznets Curve: Seeking Empirical Regularity and Theoretical Structure (Carson et al., 2010) (http://reep.oxfordjournals.org/content/4/1/3.short)
  "Ultimately, the view that income growth by itself eventually will be good for the environment also appears to be wrong because a causal relationship between income and environmental quality cannot be demonstrated. The original empirical estimates appear fragile at best compared to estimates using more representative datasets, higher-quality data, and more appropriate econometric techniques. More plausible explanations for the observed data revolve around good government, effective regulation, and diffusion of technological change."

Munasinghe (1999): Is environmental degradation an inevitable consequence of economic growth: tunneling through the environmental Kuznets curve
Developing countries could learn from the experiences of industrialized nations, and restructure growth and development to `tunnel' through any potential EKC—thereby avoiding going through the same stages of growth that involve relatively high (and even irreversible) levels of environmental harm. An environmentally adjusted measure of national income could significantly change the shape of the development-environment relationship.
(http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0921-8009(98)00062-7)

Economic growth and pollutant emissions in Tunisia: An empirical analysis of the environmental Kuznets curve (Fodha, Zaghdoudb, 2010)
An inverted U relationship between SO2 emissions and GDP has been found/.../. However, a monotonically increasing relationship with GDP is found more appropriate for CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the causality results show that the relationship between income and pollution in Tunisia is one of unidirectional causality with income causing environmental changes and not vice versa, both in the short-run and long-run. This implies that an emission reduction policies and more investment in pollution abatement expense will not hurt economic growth. It could be a feasible policy tool for Tunisia to achieve its sustainable growth in the long-run.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421509008301)

The Rise and Fall of the Environmental Kuznets Curve. (Stern, 2004)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X04000798

 

I'll end with this, since I also read the Arrow et al., 1995 paper some time ago and found myself agreeing with much that was said:

"Arrow et al. (1995) note that "all economic activity ultimately depends" on the "environmental resource base," imprudent use of which "may irreversibly reduce the capacity for generating material production in the future."

The environmental resource base includes assimilative capacities for waste discharges.
Exceeding assimilative capacity gives rise to pollution, which in addition to being directly offensive and/or injurious to humans, can reduce the availability and productivity of renewable resources, and interfere with the operation of environmental life support services (Common, 1995)."
(From Stern et al, 1996: 1155)
 

"Countries, such as Japan for example, that import most of their raw materials may be exporting environmental impacts to the countries with which they trade (Herendeen, 1994)." (Ibidem)

 

To finish off, some ideas I've been struggling with during the day:
 

"Lately, North Korea has once again been using its nukes as a political tool. The public opinion in South Korea has now fully swung toward the belief that they too must acquire the big stick of nukes in order to counter their neighbor's threats."
Bracken: "

Nuclear weapons are used every single day to extort food and oil from the rest of the world to keep the regime going."

 

Disarmament, he would say, is a sweet fantasy. The best we can hope for is to "manage" the nuclear menagerie — and we cannot be confident of success…
From: The Threat of Nuclear War in an Age of Eco-Collapse and Peak Everything (20. mar 2013)
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/tag/hiroshima-and-nagasaki/

Rise of Climate Refugees: Nowhere to turn

From a blog, describing the life and situation of <climate> refugees in Nairobi/Kenya.

  Both Teddy and Admassu were born in Ethiopia and forced to flee their homes. Teddy left after he and his father were tortured by the current regime for handing out human rights leaflets. He fits the standard definition of refugee, having fled his country’s trenchant political persecution. But for Admassu, who left Ethiopia’s desiccating landscape, things are more complicated. If there were such a thing as an environmental refugee, Admassu, along with hundreds of thousands of others around the globe, would be one—but there is simply no such thing.

A refugee is a person who flees persecution based on his or her race, religion, political opinion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group. This is the definition the international community coined in “never again” spirit in the wake of the Holocaust. Currently, Kenya is home to over 600,000 refugees from dozens of neighboring countries: they flee political repression in Ethiopia, protracted conflict in eastern Congo, and, most infamously in recent years, a devastating state failure and wide-spread famine in Somalia. But Kenya is also home to thousands of migrants like Admassu who are not among these protected refugees—nor will they be unless current laws change.

Admassu left the Kambata region of Ethiopia in October of 2011, just two months prior to our meeting, because the changing weather rendered his life, in effect, unlivable. He comes from a long line of farmers in one of Ethiopia’s most fertile regions. But since 2005, Teddy translates, the weather has not been right. “Before five years ago, the weather is better for growing something. This time, it’s not good,” Teddy translates. All the weather patterns Admassu had come to rely on are now bunk. “Nothing grows. It’s very dry.”

From post named Nowhere to Turn, By Lauren Markham, on April 15, 2013.

What’s so radical about wanting to protect life-sustaining biosystems?

"/.../ what's so radical about wanting to protect life-sustaining biosystems? About wanting to only consume as much energy and resources as is sustainable? And about wanting to build an economic system that is equitable? And 'equitable' means equitable for all, including future generations."

From a great Blog post that is designed to 'lift your spirits':
Was Kurt Vonnegut right (and if so, Now What?), by Mike Targett. http://miketargett.com/blog/culture-technology-environment/

Tweet: I pray for the day when maximization of one's #utility will be viewed in terms of one's total contribution to the #planet's livability.

Solar Power Is Inevitable
Solar energy is distributed and essentially unlimited, and as it continues to become more cost-competitive, its use is inevitable.
http://ensia.com/voices/solar-power-is-inevitable/
"Solar consistently beats everyone's best estimates on price. The consensus of the experts is that each year calls for a new consensus."

'Environmental justice' award gives $150K to mom who closed power plants
A Chicago mother who spent 15 years shutting down two coal power plants is going to be awarded a $150,000 prize on Monday by an international body that recognizes environmental activists for their work.
More: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/15/environmental-justice-award-gives-150k-mom-who-clo/#ixzz2QjSDYymw

 

 

 

Drought in the Chinese Water Tower - Black Dragon Lake

Already, "when we look into the annual precipitation index we use, we can see that there has been no 'wet' month in Yunnan in the last four years," said Marco Gemmer, a senior adviser of the China Meteorological Administration in Beijing.

LIJIANG, China -- After photographing Black Dragon Lake here for eight years, He Jiaxin knows of more places where he can get the lake to mirror the majesty of its surrounding mountains than anyone else. But this year, he has a problem: The lake has disappeared.

http://www.eenews.net/public/climatewire/2013/04/16/1

Clean energy progress too slow to limit global warming: report

The IEA said that coal-fired generation grew by 45 percent between 2000 and 2010, far outpacing the 25 percent growth in non-fossil fuel generation over the same period. "Unless we get (carbon emissions) prices and policies right, a cost-effective clean-energy transition just will not happen," the report said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/17/us-carbon-energy-warming-idUSBRE93G05A20130417