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December 2007 Archives

December 10, 2007 - Bali

Bali discussions duly chuntering on. And my heart goes out to all those poor NGO stalwarts who have to sit there day after day listening to the mind-crushing mediocrity of most government delegations.

By way of inspiring contrast, I have just discovered WWF's excellent publication, 'Climate Solutions: a Vision for 2050'. It does a lot of the usual stuff, tracking out different scenarios in a very low-carbon future through to 2050, elaborating on the so-called 'Princeton wedges' (devised by Pacala and Sokolov) and highlighting in the process just how urgent it is to turn Bali-esque hot air into instant greenhouse gas abatement schemes.

Without a huge amount of enthusiasm, 'Climate Solutions' also emphasises just how crucial it is going to be to sort out two aspects of the journey to a low-carbon economy which environmentalists are understandably somewhat uncomfortable about: carbon capture and storage, and the extensive use of gas as a 'transition fuel'.

Oddly enough, both of these are really all about coal. How many times have you heard eminent energy experts pontificating about the 'inevitability' of massive increases in the use of coal over the next two or three decades? The International Energy Agency, for instance, estimates no less than a doubling of the use of coal by 2030, basing their predictions on the fact that coal use has gone up by 23% over the last five years! If that 'inevitability' happens for real, then we're all as good as stuffed.

So, according to WWF, two things have to happen. First, gas has to be substituted for coal wherever and whenever possible. A combined-cycle gas turbine plant emits no more than 40% of the emissions of a standard coal-fired station. With the biggest reserves of gas in just three countries (Russia, Iran, and Qatar) that inevitably means a massive increase in LNG (liquefied natural gas) facilities all around the world. And thatís quite challenging from an environmental point of view.

Secondly, we have to get stuck into capturing the CO2 which would otherwise be emitted from coal and gas-fired power stations, and sticking it back underground in old oil and gas reservoirs or saline aquifers. Substantial additional costs (at least $50 a tonne), huge logistical and legal issues all now loom - but as WWF uncomfortably reminds us, there's absolutely no way of getting through to a low-carbon world by 2050 without billions of tonnes of C02 being kept out of the atmosphere in that way.

And that's quite a challenge from an environmental point of view! But WWF never said it was going to be easy.

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Posted by JP on December 10, 2007 9:28 AM | | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

December 19, 2007 - Bali - the final analysis

So that’s Bali done: a binding timetable agreed – for more talks through to the end of 2009. And an agreement for something more substantial to slow deforestation - by 2013.

Against such meagre pickings, I wonder how Bali will be remembered in the annals of climate change diplomacy? A "good beginning" as Ban Ki-Moon put it, conveniently forgetting that this was exactly how the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was described, and exactly how the Kyoto Protocol was subsequently described as well.

A “tawdry, ineffective compromise”, as I heard one NGO representative describe it, bitterly aware of the fact that what was being compromised, yet again, was the integrity of the life support systems on which we all depend.

Or maybe as “a crazy game of global chicken”, with the EU and the US eye-balling each other through deadlocked negotiations, determined not to be the one to flinch first.

My favourite, at this stage, is “the final shaming of America”. Al Gore’s words, not mine, uttered in despair at the implacable intransigence of the Bush administration’s negotiators, offered with his right arm stretched over his chest as if he was standing in front of the American flag, as if seeking some inner strength in order to say such ‘unpatriotic’ things.

But the thank God a few Americans are actually saying them. I spent quite a bit of this year reading books about the role of America in a post-9/11 world – John Gray’s Black Mass:Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, and most recently, Naomi Kline’s astonishing Shock Doctrine. It numbs the mind to have to come to terms with the utterly hateful force and reach of today’s US imperium, a truly ‘evil empire’ if ever there was one.

To have so comprehensively lost America as an international ‘force for good’, at a time when the world needs more than ever that kind of energy and generosity of spirit that America brought to bear on post-war Europe in the 20th century, has to be just about the most depressing aspect of today’s disintegrating world.

Anyway, I have got cheerier books set aside for the holiday season, lots of novels (for which there is normally never enough time), lots of diversions and distractions – as well as a few upbeat eco-tracts as well!

All of which means that I am temporarily taking leave of absence from the Blog for the next three weeks, by which time I can only hope the debacle that was Bali will have already faded fittingly away.

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Posted on December 19, 2007 9:27 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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