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Only Dramatic Reductions in Energy Use Will Save The World From Climate Catastrophe: A Prophecy

2/27/2019

 
Prof. Andrew Watson, University of Saskatchewan.
This is the third post in a collaborative series titled “Environmental Historians Debate: Can Nuclear Power Solve Climate Change?” hosted by the Network in Canadian History & Environment, the Climate History Network, and ActiveHistory.ca.
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There is no longer any debate. Humanity sits at the precipice of catastrophic climate change caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)[1] and the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP)[2] provide clear assessments: to limit global warming to 1.5ºC above historic levels, thereby avoiding the most harmful consequences, governments, communities, and individuals around the world must take immediate steps to decarbonize their societies and economies.
 
Change is coming regardless of how we proceed. Doing nothing guarantees large-scale resource conflicts, climate refugee migrations from the global south to the global north, and mass starvation. Dealing with the problem in the future will be exceedingly more difficult, not to mention expensive, than making important changes immediately. The only question is what changes are necessary to address the scale of the problem facing humanity? Do we pursue strategies that allow us to maintain our current standard of living, consuming comparable amounts of (zero-carbon) energy? Or do we accept fundamental changes to humanity’s relationship to energy?
 
In his new book, The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Conflicting Visions of the Future of Our Planet, Charles C. Mann uses the life, work, and ideologies of Norman Borlaug (the Wizard) and William Vogt (the Prophet) to offer two typologies of twentieth century environmental science and thought. Borlaug represents the school of thought that believed technology could solve all of humanity’s environmental problems, which Mann refers to as “techno-optimism.” Vogt, by contrast, represents a fundamentally different attitude that saw only a drastic reduction in consumption as the key to solving environmental problems, which Mann (borrowing from demographer Betsy Hartmann) refers to as “apocalyptic environmentalism.”[3]
 
In the industrialized countries of the world, the techno-optimist approach enjoys the greatest support. Amongst those who think “technology will save us,” decarbonizing the economy means replacing fossil fuel energy with “clean” energy (i.e. energy that does not emit GHGs). Hydropower has nearly reached it global potential, and simply cannot replace fossil fuel energy. Solar, wind, and to some extent geothermal, are rapidly growing technological options for replacing fossil fuel energy. And as this series reveals, some debate exists over whether nuclear can ever play a meaningful role in a twenty-first century energy transition.
 
The quest for new clean energy pathways aims to rid the developed world of the blame for causing climate change without the need to fundamentally change the way of life responsible for climate change. In short, those advocating for clean energy hope to cleanse their moral culpability as much as the planet’s atmosphere. This is the crux of the climate change crisis and the challenge of how to respond to it. It is not a technical problem. It is a moral and ethical problem – the biggest the world has ever faced.
 
The USGCRP’s Fourth National Climate Assessment warns that the risks from climate change “are often highest for those that are already vulnerable, including low-income communities, some communities of color, children, and the elderly.”[4] Similarly, the IPCC’s Global Warming of 1.5ºC report insists that “the worst impacts tend to fall on those least responsible for the problem, within states, between states, and between generations.”[5] Furthermore, the USGCRP points out, “Marginalized populations may also be affected disproportionately by actions to address the underlying causes and impacts of climate change, if they are not implemented under policies that consider existing inequalities.” Indeed, the IPCC reports, “the worst-affected states, groups and individuals are not always well-represented” in the process of developing climate change strategies. The climate crisis has always been about the vulnerabilities created by energy inequalities. Decarbonizing the industrialized and industrializing parts of the world has the potential to avoid making things any worse for the most marginalized segments of the global population, but it wouldn’t necessarily make anything better for them either. At the same time, decarbonization strategies imagine an energy future in which people, communities, and countries with a high standard of living are under no obligation to make any significant sacrifices to their large energy footprints.
 
Over the last thirty years, industrialized countries, such as Germany, the United States, and Canada have consistently consumed considerably more energy per capita than non-industrialized or industrializing countries (Figure 1). In 2016, industrialized countries in North America and Western Europe consumed three to four times as much energy per capita as the global average, while non-industrialized countries consumed considerably less than the average.
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Figure 1: Per capita energy consumption (GJ/person) for select countries, 1990-2016 Source: International Energy Agency (https://www.iea.org/countries/).

Most of the research that has modelled 1.5ºC-consistent energy pathways for the twenty-first century assume that decarbonisation means continuing to use the same amount of, or only slightly less, energy (Figure 2).[6] Most of these models project that solar and wind energy will comprise a major share of the energy budget by 2050 (nuclear, it should be noted, will not). Curiously, the models also project a major role for biofuels as well. Most alarmingly, however, most models assume major use of carbon capture and storage technology, both to divert emissions from biofuels and to actively pull carbon out of the atmosphere (known as carbon dioxide reduction, or negative emissions). The important point here, however, is not the technological composition of these energy pathways, but the continuity of energy consumption over the course of the twenty-first century.
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Figure 2: Recent and projected primary global energy consumption, 1990-2050 Source: International Energy Agency (https://www.iea.org/countries/) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Global Warming of 1.5ºC, Chapter 2 (http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/).

In case it is not already clear, I do not think technology will save us. Solar and wind energy technology has the potential to provide an abundance of energy, but it won’t be enough to replace the amount of fossil fuel energy we currently consume, and it certainly won’t happen quickly enough to avoid warming greater than 1.5ºC. Biofuels entail a land cost that in many cases involves competition with agriculture and places potentially unbearable pressure on fresh water resources. Carbon capture and storage assumes that pumping enormous amounts of carbon underground won’t have unintended and unacceptable consequences. Nuclear energy might provide a share of the global energy budget, but according to many models, it will always be a relatively small share. Techno-optimism is a desperate hope that the problem can be solved without fundamental changes to high-energy standards of living.
 
The current 1.5ºC-consistent energy pathways include no meaningful changes in the amount of overall energy consumed in industrialized and industrializing countries. The studies that do incorporate “lifestyle changes” into their models feature efficiencies, such as taking shorter showers, adjusting indoor air temperature, or reducing usage of luxury appliances (e.g. clothes dryers); none of which present a fundamental challenge to a western standard of living.[7] Decarbonization models that replace fossil fuel energy with clean energy reflect a desire to avoid addressing the role of energy inequities in the climate change crisis.
 
 
Climate change is a problem of global inequality, not just carbon emissions. Those of us living in the developed and developing countries of the world would like to pretend that the problem can be solved with technology, and that we would not then need to change our lives all that much. In a decarbonized society, the wizards tell us, our economy could continue to operate with clean energy. But it can’t. Any ideas to the contrary are simply excuses for perpetuating a world of incredible energy inequality. We need to heed the prophets and use dramatically less energy. We need to accept extreme changes to our economy, our standard of living, and our culture.

​Andrew Watson is an assistant professor of environmental history at the University of Saskatchewan.

[1] IPCC, 2018: Global warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty [V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, H. O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J. B. R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M. I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor, T. Waterfield (eds.)]. In Press.

[2] USGCRP, 2018: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II[Reidmiller, D.R., C.W. Avery, D.R. Easterling, K.E. Kunkel, K.L.M. Lewis, T.K. Maycock, and B.C. Stewart (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA. doi: 10.7930/NCA4.2018.

[3] Charles C. Mann, The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Conflicting Visions of the Future of Our Planet (Picador, 2018), 5-6.

[4] USGCRP, Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II, Chapter 1: Overview.

[5] IPCC, Global warming of 1.5°C, Chapter 1.
​

[6] IPCC, Global warming of 1.5°C; Detlef P. van Vuuren, et al., “Alternative pathways to the 1..5°C target reduce the need for negative emission technologies,” Nature Climate Change, Vol.8 (May 2018): 391-397; Joeri Rogelj, et al., “Scenarios towards limiting global mean temperature increase below 1.5°C,” Nature Climate Change, Vol.8 (April 2018): 325-332.

​
[7] Mariësse A.E. van Sluisveld, et al., “Exploring the implications of lifestyle change in 2°C mitigation scenarios using the IMAGE integrated assessment model,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol.102 (2016): 309-319.
Bernie Kosicki
5/2/2019 03:49:08 pm

Comments on Only Dramatic Reductions in Energy Use Will Save The World From Climate Catastrophe: A Prophecy

Bern Kosicki May 2, 2019

How will a society make a decision to dramatically reduce its use in energy, knowing that this will lead to large scale inconveniences, disruptions, and if left unchecked, probably violent conflicts? It seems that for a democracy, which has traditionally had the freedom to create numerous “tragedy of the commons” situations, this idea is a non-starter. I can’t think of a single case is which it has worked- save for the resolution of a country to go to war. This seems to be a special case, where the perception that there is a “clear and present danger” to the existence of that country which is able to rally enough of the population to support what will prove disastrous to a significant percentage of that population.

However, non-democracies have been more successful. Consider the “one child” doctrine which has been in effect in China for almost 30 years (recently rescinded- but not due to citizen unrest- it just worked too well). When a few people can make a decision for many, it appears that the inability of most people to vote in favor of self-hardship is not an issue.

Does this mean that a precondition for making self-imposed dramatic reductions in energy consumption is that most countries need to first give up being democracies? Does it also mean that the authoritarian rulers set up in place of all these democracies also need to be uncommonly objective and single minded in their view to make the necessary reductions? Are these two preconditions before we can move forward with self-imposed energy restrictions? It doesn’t seem very likely we’ll get there following this path.

So, the other path is to follow is similar to that of a country’s deciding to go to war. Climate Change clearly is not now perceived as a “clear (it is now by many) and present (still regarded too far in the future) danger”. It seems that the problem is to change these perceptions before populations will vote for drastic and self-denying hardships.

The problem of course is that there isn’t a lot of time to change these attitudes before an advertised “tipping point” happens and the world is irrevocably set down the course of who knows what? My point is that Anti- Climate Change advocacy may have shot itself in the foot by advertising a hard deadline in hopes of getting a majority to take effective action soon. This hard deadline is coming back to bite those who have proposed it – some former foot-draggers/deniers are even now claiming “it’s too late” as a reason to not take effective action.

I believe that large majorities of people will have to start being negatively affected by Climate Change before any ground swell of opinion change will convince a democracy that it should undertake large scale self-denial to salvage itself. In order for that to happen and for the world to have any hope, advocates need to back off on the “tipping point- end of the world” message, and start to offer a regular stream of realistic and credible climate change occurrences in the daily news which will help people to understand and completely internalize that it is really happening.

But I don’t believe that real large-scale attitudinal change will happen until most people actually directly feel some pain of Climate Change. My hope is that new realistic predictions will lead us to believe that society can still continue to exist and function after the “tipping point”, since the “self-denial of energy” (and maybe no?) path will not be realistic until after this point.

Of course, we can also hope for a set of Technical Solutions to get us out of the problem. The big advantage with technical approaches is that they do not need to be fully understood and approved by the majority of the population- the majority only needs to be convinced to vote sufficient funding for technical solutions to begin to happen. But even this step of self-denial (increased taxes) may still need sufficient experience of general experiential suffering first.

It’s time for experts in large group psychology (are there any?) to be involved. How to convince people to take on personal hardship (denial of energy, payment of larger taxes) without first being subject to real experiential hardship (flooding, severe weather, new diseases, famine, drought, etc)? So far, according to a January 2019 poll, 71% of US population believes that climate change is real, but these same people are not willing to allocate even $10/month toward a solution. Climate Change is not yet even as important as Netflix.

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