Tag Archives: Big picture

Green has moved on – it’s no longer about the environment

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A flowerFed up and frustrated Green has ended her long-term relationship with environment  and moved on.

We have all seen how Green used to jump out of bed and dance along on the promise of great things. There was a spring in her step and a focus on what needed to be done to better her man.

Green could look at Environment with that sense of knowing born of a lover’s pride.

But for some time now it seems that the buzz had gone. The relationship had clearly lost its spark and begun to disintegrate. The rumour is that it is all because Environment has let himself go. He has been binging to excess, giving in to his mining and agricultural mates, and failing miserably to be romantic.

Insiders say the whole relationship has become quite spiteful.

No longer able to tolerate the angry arguments over resource use and pollution, beaten down by endless rhetoric and false promises, tired of the need to put everything on the line, it’s ended. Yesterday, Green walked out.

Not one to linger, Green hit the clubs and was seen with her Mercedes owning nemesis we know as Economics. That slick Rick famed for drive, determination and dirt. Whilst there are numerous paparazzi photos that suggests they were more than chummy in wee hours, it seems that Green’s new beau is actually the trend setting global bachelor Climate.

This reporter has tried to get an interview with the happy couple without success, but sources close to Climate claim that it was his new-found warmth that has made him more attractive. More likely it is his inevitable breakup with live-in partner Change that tipped things in his favour. Whatever the reason, Green is smiling again and we wish her well.

Environment did not take our calls.

Staggering numbers

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It is a tick over 1,900 km from Sydney to Melbourne and back again. Two full days of driving are needed to cover this distance if you keep to the speed limits.

Imagine each side of the road lined with oil tanker trucks parked end to end in one giant parking lot. Each of the 98,000 trucks is roughly 18m in length and is carrying 34,000 litres of crude oil.

This amount of oil, roughly 21 million barrels, is the amount of oil burnt in America in a single day.

Two-thirds of this vast amount goes into the engines of cars, trucks, planes buses and trains whilst the rest goes to heat buildings and manufacture chemicals and plastics.

OMG those Americans!

Well, hold on.

Australia uses around 950,000 barrels a day or a line of trucks 60 km long.

Hah, that’s nothing, won’t even get you across the Sydney basin.

Except that in less than a month there would be enough trucks to park along the road to Melbourne and back.  Just like the Americans.

 

Who’s behaviour are we trying to change?

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The Australian government has just released its clean energy future legislation, a long awaited climate change policy framework.

In line with other jurisdictions the focus is emission reduction by putting a price on carbon to change behaviours away from dirty, fossil fuel based energy and industry to a cleaner, more efficient economic system. Clean energy futures is an elaborate, and in many ways clever, market based system for the commercial exchange of what amount to licenses to pollute, is transitioned in through a tax on the 500 heaviest emitters.

Hit commercial entities with a cost and, on the assumption that the hit hurts, they will do their upmost to avoid it. They are expected to be rational after all. Some will cop the cost and simply pass it on to their customers. But this will benefit their competitors who choose to become more efficient and change to less carbon intensive activities. So the market will sift the options and favour the cleaner ones. Exactly what is wanted.

In this case $25 billion over 5 years is the hit – evened out it is $1 million a year per entity – and that sounds like it should hurt enough to prompt a change. Some entities will become more efficient, trade to get the best price for what they must pay for and, eventually, transition to clean practices.

So we have a system to change the behaviour of… the 500 heaviest emitters.

Only why do these companies emit? For the majority it is because they supply energy or goods to the market at a profit. In other words they have customers, ultimately us.

In the formulation of the clean energy future policy, the $25 billion raised from emitters will go back to consumers through raising the tax threshold at a cost $15 billion and another $10 billion to support exposed jobs. This is so that should the emitters pass the cost of their permits on to the consumer or cut costs in the form of jobs, it is not too painful for those on the receiving end. Us again.

No collective hurt there. And so no change in behaviour.

Propping up the consumer also eases the pain on the emitters and reduces the incentive to change.

At some point it will be necessary to try and change our behaviours too; or even the most intricate of policy formulations will be a waste of effort and opportunity.

Can we have sustainability?

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Sydney at four million inhabitants is a moderate sized city by modern standards. It is a similar size to Phoenix, half the size of Chennai, and a suburb compared to the 34 million inhabitants of Tokyo.

But Sydney is plenty big enough to have transport problems. The arterial roads that feed into the harborside CBD are mostly modern freeways, with tunnels and six lane bridges, but they just cannot handle peak flow. Smart commuters travel on the train.

One bonus of train travel is that on the days when you forget your ipod you get to hear people chat. A young couple sat ahead of me on one such day and discussed water.

“No we can’t.”

“Why not” said the husband.

“Those things just spray you with drips that don’t even get your hair wet. I need to get my hair wet.”

“What about the water crisis?”

“What about it?”

“Here, the dams at 39.2%”

It was true; there in the black and white of the morning paper ‘Dam levels at a record low’.

Sydney relies on water storage in a major dam, Warragamba, and the rain sometimes forgets to fall in its catchment in the Blue Mountains some 80km inland from the coast. The significant drought that began in 2006 and broke three years later forced water restrictions on all domestic use. To augment supply and reassure consumers there was drawdown of groundwater together with pumping from catchments further afield. And then, just to be absolutely sure, a desalination plant was commissioned and constructed.

The husband pressed his point.

“If only half the residents of Sydney took a shower this morning that’s two million showers,” he said.

“Ah, you want me to sit next to someone who hasn’t showered. Gross.”

“No, if they all showered for a minute less than usual they would save ten litres a minute, that’s 20 million litres saved.”

He said 20 million as though it was a large number and it certainly sounds impressive. The water from a minute of 2 million showers is 20 megalitres, enough to fill 30 Olympic sized swimming pools, provide 2 million toilet flushes or irrigate several hectares of winter wheat.

“I don’t care if it saves the planet I need a real shower.”

“It would help,” the young man said with hope in his voice.

It is easy to imagine a similar discussion over all sorts of conservation actions that can be done around the home. Recycling kitchen waste for example. All it requires is a sealable tub on the kitchen bench.

“But it smells and clutters up the place, get rid of it. And I hate those ants.”

Yet even in an average household it is easy to generate 10 litres of apple cores, vegetable peels and melon skins every week. Then if everyone in the street did it, say thirty homes, then we might see many tons of green stuff that the garbage men would not have to truck, saving fuel and space in the landfill for the garbage we cannot recycle.

There is a 60 litre black plastic bin in my garden that receives all the kitchen scraps. Every now and then there is a layer of brown leaves added and a bucket of water from the washing machine rinse cycle. All those apple cores and potato peelings decompose readily so that the bin is never full, even in winter. The magic of entropy facilitated by the military style operation conducted by decomposer organisms keeps the breakdown ahead of the household ability to generate waste. In spring the material under the bin is carbon rich compost ready to start off the vegetable patch.

If every second household in Sydney did this then, over a few years, millions of tons in greenhouse gas emissions would be avoided just by not having to shift the waste into landfill. There would be issues around nitrogen runoff into remnant vegetation patches from gardens now replete with green manure, but it is food for thought.

These sustainability actions are all good but surely we can do better. It would be great to do more than change the light bulbs, install a low-flow shower head, manage the compost to help build up the carbon in the stony garden soil, recycle the gray water, install solar panels, grow vegetables and any number of household behaviours for sustainability. Perhaps we could become self-sufficient.

The reality is that there is little prospect of genuine self-sufficiency for most of us. Even with half a hectare of yard and the compost going great guns, most of the vegetables I grow end up feeding the wildlife. There is greenery but not enough to provide for the family. The household members are also used to vigorous hot showers, power on demand, perfect fruit and veggies, the air conditioner in summer and the fireplace lit when it gets chilly.

No longer do we sit in front of smoky coal grates in high backed chairs with wings to keep the draft off our necks. We are acclimated to an even twenty something degrees wherever and whenever we happen to be. This level of comfort has sensitized us to the point where we really feel deviations from our comfort level, not that a few degrees colder or hotter would have any affect at all on our chance of survival.

We have climbed the hierarchy of needs yet, in our minds, we sit as though we are still at the basal level where deviations from what feels safe have the power to upset us.

Does this mean that westerners are desensitized to the problems we have in the environment? Not totally. The media runs stories of environmental challenges and energy saving bulbs are sold in supermarkets. There are energy use ratings on white goods and grants to install water saving devices or solar heating systems.

In Sydney, the Inconvenient Truth made it onto the most watched movie list for a few weeks despite being shown only in selected cinemas; school kids prepare assignments that help them learn about water, land and wildlife challenges; market surveys put the environment high on the list of issues that decide elections hot on the heels of taxes, education, health and the military. Yet whatever we say people still want their needs met. This is their priority.

What we must accept is that our living environment has changed. For better or worse we are sensitized human beings. Most of us really would struggle to survive in the wild and this puts very different parameters on sustainability. Now we must sustain conditions in narrow comfort bands, supply only certain food types and ensure a high level of creature comforts.

The exchange on the train said it all. Not in the words, but the incredulity in the woman’s voice and the despairing logic of her husband.

“Ah, you want me to sit next to someone who hasn’t showered. Gross.”

Journeys

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In 2009 2.5 billion journeys were taken in aircraft.

Evened out across the global population, every third person on earth took a flight. In reality it is the wealthiest proportion of the 1 billion people in western economies who took most of the journeys.

The projection is that by 2014 there will be 3.3 billion journeys taken.

This represents a 32% increase in 5 years.

Mobility is an inevitable consequence of affluence. As more and more people have disposable income, many will want to use some of those funds to travel. As economies grow, more business is done and so travel to buy, sell and negotiate also increases.

In the mid 1960’s the first Boeing 737s carried 100 passengers up to 2775 km. This was quite a revolution at the time.

The latest Boeing 737-800s carry twice the number of people over 5,500 km and use 23% less fuel.

Suppose it were possible to replace all the aircraft flying in 2009 with the latest fuel efficient models. It would be possible to absorb almost all of the 5 year increase in passenger volume to 2014 through fuel efficiencies that these more efficient vehicles bring.

Future aircraft construction materials that are lighter and still strong enough will see even greater fuel efficiencies. Aircraft built in the next decade or two might only use a third of the fuel guzzled by the earliest models.

Replace all the 737-800s with aircraft of composite material designs and 13 years of growth in passenger numbers could be accommodated without increasing fuel use above that used in 2009.

But even if all these replacements were possible by the mid-2020s, less than a generation from now, fuel use in air travel would begin to increase over 2009 levels.

In half the time since those first Boeing 737 aircraft began flying all the fuel efficiencies would have been used up by the increased volume of traffic.

Clearly instant replacement with the best technology is impossible.

Some of those fuel hungry early models are still in the air on the more remote routes operated by obscure airlines. And it is these cheaper fare options that will be responsible for much of the growth in passenger numbers. The fuel efficiencies will arrive incrementally.

In the absence of some remarkable technology that can replace jet engines running on aviation fuel, greenhouse gas emissions from or air travel will grow along with the airline industry.

PS

There is talk of a jet-rocket vehicle that would travel in the stratosphere, have no emissions because it flies above the atmosphere on hydrogen fuel and could reduce the travel time from Sydney to London to a few hours. Commercial flights might happen by 2040.

By then there will be close to 10 billion journeys per year.

Washing machines

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The number of people with the economic ability to purchase a dishwasher will double to more than 2 billion in the next 30-40 years.

Far more will rise above what Swedish statistician Professor Hans Rosling calls the ‘washing line’; an income of US$40 per day, the threshold necessary to own and run a washing machine.

On the one hand this is a worry.

Energy is needed to manufacture and power all these devices as is a water supply to allow them to function. Policy efforts on climate change notwithstanding, the cheapest power still comes from fossil fuels. It is why China is building coal-fired power stations even as they diversify into alternative fuels because they will need the energy to run all the new white goods.

On the other hand, sales of consumer goods will drive economic growth.

This is good news for those who require GDP growth, the enshrined dogma of political success. Nothing will prevent families from buying a washing machine they can afford it, nor indeed, airplane tickets, dishwashers and cars as their wealth allows.

Couple this inevitable growth in buying power with ever more people and the growth paradigm has never looked better.

Hans Rosling has a very clever way of explaining the population and economic growth combination  using Ikea boxes

 

 

What Rosling explains so simply is that it is the economic transition that is integral to the population one.

Without economic growth it is harder to see population growth slowing and eventually contracting.

Children must consistently outlive their parents for this to happen and that means needs must be met and standards of living must rise.

It seems that we have not fully embraced this reality.

No amount of environmental concern, moral imperative to preserve resources or even fear of environmental collapse is likely to trump the imperative to improve things for our families.

For this is an expression of self-preservation that is hard wired.

Rosling calls himself a ‘possibilist’ because even though the transition will happen, it can be done with a workable number at its conclusion and damage limitation along the way.

Street lights on a desert highway

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You would think that lights are unnecessary along remote desert highways. Vehicles have headlights after all, and in the desert there is not much wildlife on the road.

If being able to see the camel on the road at night prevents even one death, or even an accident, it might justify the expense. But there are surely higher priorities for spending that would save lives.

Not so for the company installing the lights. They say yes please.  And hey, we can even provide solar power systems to tackle the carbon issue. No problem Minister and think of the export earnings.

Unnecessary development is often a problem because it is hard to argue that there is such a thing as unnecessary commerce.

Economic activity must happen, deals struck, money exchanged, and made available through purchases, wages and profits to fuel more activity. It is a relentless system that works so long as we keep making and selling things.

The Australian government has just released new modeling on the impact of a $20 per tCO2e carbon price on economic growth to 2050. Minimal effect it says. This is good news for spruikers of action on climate change. But what about economic growth of around 3% per annum for the next 40 years.

If that growth is generated by building street lights where we don’t need them and selling vast volumes of white goods, cars and miscellaneous consumer items that we probably don’t need, any carbon price will have the effect of a drop in the proverbial ocean on protecting the environment.

Remember that action on climate change is on the agenda because we are concerned about how a warming world will support us all.

The real trick will be to find things that will fuel economic activity with development that we actually need.

The hip pocket

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A young colleague recently claimed that her generation has great concern about environmental ills. She thought that her y-generation all have deep feelings about the woes of our world. They want something done about it, especially climate change. She claimed that late alphabeters will be angry at any government that promised action on climate change but then reneged as the Australian government has just done.

“Are you sure,” I said, ‘won’t they vote with their hip pockets?”

“No they have all they need,” she said, “I mean we all have food and shelter and with those needs met we want to do the right thing.”

I believed her, at least the intent part. And I am sure it is how she feels herself having moved her own career path away from high finance into an environmental company. Unfortunately I don’t think that we have the freedom from basic needs that our apparent wealth implies.

It may be that most westerners are well fed, sleep in a bed, have a wardrobe, watch TV and take the occasional holiday. And it seems that all primary needs are covered (yes, it is true the TV is now a basic need according to the UK social services) and, therefore, higher values should mature. We should think about values beyond the basic, including care for the environment.

But this wealth, that supplies all the basics and more, has not given us emotional freedom. We are not free to think of higher things because we are still struggling to keep our wealth coming. We are locked into long hours of work to pay for large mortgages, excess food and more clothes than we could ever wear. And as we are at work we have to pay for someone else to look after the kids, and someone to do the washing, to mow the lawn and so it goes. In the end we have to keep the kids at home until they are middle aged to help us pay for it all.

And what if we just stopped? If we gave it all up in order to be enlightened, then the monetary flows so essential for our economies would stop as well. Our material world would collapse in a heap. And, well, it just can’t happen. Back to work we go, stressed to the max, a hand checking on the hip pocket.

Let us hope that I am just a cynic, a product of a different generation, and that the youngsters really do have a sense of higher value – although anyone who has seen a Lady Gaga music video may have to search hard for higher value.  Let us hope and believe that these youngsters will vote on their beliefs and give with their voice to help change the way we think.

Let us hope that they won’t vote with their hip pockets.