List of References and Excerpts to Accompany Briefing Paper on Global Warming

Editor’s note: Immediately preceding this post is the one for our Briefing Paper for the Canadian Government on Ecological and Economic Urgencies of Global Warming, by Michelle Mech of West Coast Climate Equity. This post was updated on 18 January 2009.

Our briefing paper was written in an attempt to convey to officials of the Canadian government the dire environmental emergency we are facing and how solutions to this situation can be linked to successful economic stimulation.  However, we believe this brief will also be a valuable resource for anyone.

References and Excerpts – The Ecological Urgency of Global Warming

1.  Rather than trying to define what constitutes dangerous anthropogenic influence, a general consensus appears to be emerging that global warming should be limited to less than 2ºC relative to pre-industrial times (about 1.3ºC from today).  This is close to the lower bound of warming estimates beyond which the Greenland and perhaps the West Antarctic ice sheet pass the point of no return.
Andrew Weaver, Keeping Our Cool, Penguin Group, 2008, p. 230 

James Hansen et al. [5] argued for a limit of 1°C global warming (relative to 2000, 1.7°C relative to preindustrial time), aiming to avoid practically irreversible ice sheet and species loss. 
[5] Hansen J, Sato M, Ruedy, et al. Dangerous human-made interference with climate: a GISS modelE study. Atmos Chem Phys 2007; 7: 2287-312: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2007/Hansen_etal_1.html

James Hansen*,1,2, Makiko Sato1,2, Pushker Kharecha1,2, David Beerling3, Robert Berner4, Valerie Masson-Delmotte5, Mark Pagani4, Maureen Raymo6, Dana L. Royer7 and James C. Zachos,
Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?, Published in the Open Access Journal 23 September 2008,  http://www.bentham.org/open/toascj/openaccess2.htm  

An international team of climate experts, whose comprehensive study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and represents some of the world’s most prestigious organizations, identify the nine areas that are in gravest danger of passing critical thresholds or “tipping points”, beyond which they will not recover.
They calculate Arctic sea ice will go into irreversible decline once temperatures rise between 0.5C to 2C above those at the beginning of the century, a threshold that may already have been crossed.  There is already a 50% chance that the Greenland ice sheet will soon begin melting unstoppably. . . A temperature rise of 3C could see more intense El Niños, with profound effects on the weather from Africa to North America.
Warming of 3C to 5C could reduce rainfall in the Amazon by 30%, lengthening the dry season. The Boreal forests could also pass their tipping point, with large swaths dying off over the next 50 years. In Africa, more rainfall may regreen the Sahel region, but the West African monsoon could collapse, leading to twice as many unusually dry years by the end of the century. The Indian summer monsoon is predicted to become erratic and in the worst case scenario, begin to flip chaotically, unleashing flash floods one year and droughts the next.
Measurements of the western Antarctic ice sheet show the balance of snowfall and melting has shifted and it is now shrinking. According to the study, a local warming of more than 5C could trigger uncontrollable melting. . . Under the same warming, Atlantic currents that power the Gulf Stream could be severely disrupted.
Ian Sample, science correspondent, The Guardian, Global meltdown: scientists isolate areas most at risk of climate change, 5 February 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/05/climatechange

Responding to findings by the Global Carbon Project, published in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” this week, that atmospheric CO2 levels have risen 35% faster than expected since 2000, Gavin Edwards, Head of Climate at Greenpeace International said: “It is imperative that real action is taken to reduce emissions and global mean temperature rise well below 2ºC as soon as possible. Without this climate change will spiral out of control; the world will suffer even more extreme weather, water crises, and increased hunger. Millions of people will become climate refugees. Governments must take a leadership role and make strong commitments to tackle climate change, including a revolution in the way the world produces and uses energy, and strong action to end deforestation” continued Edwards.
Greenpeace Press Release, CO2 levels rising faster than predicted, 23 October 2007, http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/co2-levels-rising-faster-than  

 Scientists at the UN climate conference in Poznan, Poland complained that politicians still don’t get the enormity of the problem. Minister after minister claimed at Poznan that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said we can avoid dangerous climate change if we stop average global temperatures from rising by 2°C, and that this can be done by halving CO2 emissions by 2050. Neither claim is true, said Philippe Ciais, the incoming chairmain of the Global Carbon Project, a network of scientists that monitors how humans are influencing the natural carbon cycle.  “We need an 80% cut by 2050, and that would only give a 70% chance of avoiding [a rise of] 2°C,” said Martin Parry, co-chair of the latest IPCC report on climate change. Another scientist put it: “Most of the politicians just don’t get it. We have to emit less carbon dioxide than the planet can absorb. The planet does not do political compromises.”
Fred Pearce, NewScientist, World leaders “failing to get” climate message, 17 December 2008,
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026875.300-world-leaders-failing-to-get-climate-message.html?page=1
      
2.  “The global-average surface temperature has already risen about 0.8ºC above pre-industrial levels and is projected to rise another 2-4ºC by 2100 if CO2 emissions and concentrations grow according to mid-range projections”, said John P. Holdren, chairman of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Confronting Climate Change: Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable, the final report of the Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change and Sustainable Development, released by The United Nations Foundation and Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, 27 February 2007, http://www.sigmaxi.org/about/news/UNSEGReport.shtml

Global warming is now 0.6°C in the past three decades and 0.8°C in the past century. It is no longer correct to say that “most global warming occurred before 1940″. More specifically, there was slow global warming, with large fluctuations, over the century up to 1975 and subsequent rapid warming of almost 0.2°C per decade.
GISS Surface Temperature Analysis, http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005 

A warming trend of 0.68ºC over the last hundred years has occurred.  However, the rate of warming has increased dramatically since the 1970s. Over the last thirty years, the globe has warmed by about 0.53ºC 
Weaver, Keeping Our Cool, Penguin Group, 2008, p. 163  

3.  The expanded time scale for the industrial era reveals a growing gap between actual global temperature and equilibrium (long-term) temperature response based on the net estimated climate forcing. Ocean and ice sheet response times together account for this gap, which is now 2.0°C.
That climate model [Global temperature and GHG forcing due to CO2, CH4 and N2O from the Vostok ice core], which includes only fast feedbacks, has additional warming of ~0.6°C in the pipeline today because of ocean thermal inertia.
The remaining gap between equilibrium temperature for current atmospheric composition and actual global temperature is ~1.4°C. This further 1.4°C warming still to come is due to the slow surface albedo feedback, specifically ice sheet disintegration and vegetation change
. . . Earth’s history suggests that positive feedbacks, especially surface albedo changes, can spur rapid global warmings, including sea level rise as fast as several meters per century [7]. Thus if humans push the climate system sufficiently far into disequilibrium, positive climate feedbacks may set in motion dramatic climate change and climate impacts that cannot be controlled.
. . . Human-made climate change is delayed by ocean and ice sheet response times. Warming ‘in the pipeline’, mostly attributable to slow feedbacks, is now about 2°C. No additional forcing is required to raise global temperature to at least the level of the Pliocene, 2-3 million years ago, a degree of warming that would surely yield ‘dangerous’ climate impacts [5].
[5] Hansen J, Sato M, Ruedy, et al. Dangerous human-made interference with climate: a GISS model  E study. Atmos Chem Phys 2007;
7: 2287-312.
[7] Hansen J, Sato M, Kharecha P, Russell G, Lea DW, Siddall M. Climate change and trace gases. Phil Trans R Soc A 2007; 365: 1925-54.
James Hansen, Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?, Section 2.4, 23 September 2008,  http://www.bentham.org/open/toascj/openaccess2.htm 

Even if we stabilized greenhouse gas concentrations today, the rate of warming would slow, but not stop for another 30 years. This delayed warming, caused by (among other factors) how long it takes for the ocean to heat and cool, is called “warming in the pipeline”. The IPCC estimates that warming in the pipeline will increase global temperatures by an additional 1.0oF [0.6oC], no matter what action we take. But we can – and better – stop it there.
Environmental Defense Fund, Climate 411, How Warm is Too Warm? Part 1, 7 March 2007 http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/2007/03/07/tipping_point/

Our results suggest that if a 2.0 degree C warming is to be avoided, direct CO2 capture from the air, together with subsequent sequestration, would eventually have to be introduced in addition to sustained 90% [relative to 1990] global carbon emissions reductions by 2050.
Andrew J. Weaver, Kirsten Zickfeld, Alvaro Montenegro, Michael Eby, Long term climate implications of 2050 emission reduction targets, 6 October 2007

4.  In a world where no action is taken to curb global warming, temperatures are likely to rise by 5.5 °C and could rise as high as 7 °C above pre-industrial values by the end of the century. This would lead to significant risks of severe and irreversible impacts.
Dr. Vicky Pope, Met Office Hadley Centre, Climate Change Models: A Shocking Graphic from the UK Met Hadley Centre, 13 October 2008, http://westcoastclimateequity.org/?p=1521#more-1521

To which extent side-effects [such as melting permafrost] amplify ongoing global warming is not yet properly understood. The IPCC’s scenarios, therefore, do not account for eventual runaway effects that would speed up global warming.
Allianze, The UN Global Warming Report Facts and Predictions, 6 February 2007 , http://knowledge.allianz.com/en/globalissues/climate_change/global_warming_basics/ipcc_
report_facts.html

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists in early 2007, the full range of projected temperature increase is 2 to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius) by the end of the century. Note that the upper end of the range is higher than the prior IPCC assessment, mainly because of increased understanding that “warming tends to reduce land and ocean uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide, increasing the fraction of [carbon dioxide] emissions that remains in the atmosphere.”
“Warming is expected to be greatest over land and at most high northern latitudes, and least over the Southern [formerly Antarctic] Ocean and parts of the North Atlantic Ocean.”
Union of Concerned Scientists, Global warming, Findings of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change Science, 16 February 2007, http://knowledge.allianz.com/en/globalissues/climate_change/global_warming_basics/ipcc_
report_facts.html

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists in early 2007, the full range of projected temperature increase is 2 to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius) by the end of the century. Note that the upper end of the range is higher than the prior IPCC assessment, mainly because of increased understanding that “warming tends to reduce land and ocean uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide, increasing the fraction of [carbon dioxide] emissions that remains in the atmosphere.”
“Warming is expected to be greatest over land and at most high northern latitudes, and least over the Southern [formerly Antarctic] Ocean and parts of the North Atlantic Ocean.”
Union of Concerned Scientists, Global warming, Findings of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change Science, 16 February 2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/12/climatechange.carbonemissions 

Today, CO2e (equivalent carbon dioxide) is about 440 ppm (455 ppm, if you count greenhouse gases such as CGCs and ozone not included in the Kyoto Protocol).  The positive radiative forcing of all greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide is almost exactly cancelled out by the negative radiative forcing associated with human-caused aerosols.  That is, the current net human-caused radiative forcing is about 385 ppm CO2e, which is the present-day carbon dioxide concentration. . . we’re increasing at 2 ppm per year.  
Andrew Weaver, Keeping Our Cool, Penguin Group, 2008, p. 231 & 232 

Carbon dioxide emissions were 35% higher in 2006 than in 1990, a much faster growth rate than anticipated, researchers led by Josep G. Canadell, of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. . . “In addition to the growth of global population and wealth, we now know that significant contributions to the growth of atmospheric CO2 arise from the slowdown of nature’s ability to take the gas out of the air,” said Canadell, director of the Global Carbon Project at the research organization. . . Alan Robock, associate director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers University, added: “What is really shocking is the reduction of the oceanic CO2 sink,” meaning the ability of the ocean to absorb carbon dioxide, removing it from the atmosphere. . . According to the new study, carbon released from burning fossil fuel and making cement rose from 7.0 billion metric tonnes per year in 2000 to 8.4 billion metric tonnes in 2006.
The Associated Press, CBCnews.ca, CO2 levels rising faster as oceans trap less of greenhouse gas, 23 October 2007, http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/10/23/science-carbon-sink.html

6.  We’re already at 385 parts per million, and it’s knocking the planet off kilter in substantial ways. So, what does that mean?  It means, Hansen says, that we’ve gone too far. “The evidence indicates we’ve aimed too high — that the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2 is no more than 350 ppm.”  The last time the Earth warmed two or three degrees Celsius — which is what 450 parts per million implies — sea levels rose by tens of meters, something that would shake the foundations of the human enterprise should it happen again. And we’re already past 350.  We just need to stop putting more in and, over time, the number will fall, perhaps fast enough to avert the worst damage.
Bill McKibben, Remember This: 350 Parts Per Million, 28 December 2007, page A21  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/27/AR2007122701942.html

If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm. The largest uncertainty in the target arises from possible changes of non-CO2 forcings. An initial 350 ppm CO2 target may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO2 is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.
A probabilistic analysis [9] concluded that the long-term CO2 limit is in the range 300-500 ppm for 25 percent risk tolerance, depending on climate sensitivity and non-CO2 forcings. Stabilizing atmospheric CO2 and climate requires that net CO2 emissions approach zero, because of the long lifetime of CO2 [10, 11].
We use paleoclimate data to show that long-term climate has high sensitivity to climate forcings and that the present global mean CO2, 385 ppm, is already in the dangerous zone. Despite rapid current CO2 growth, ~2 ppm/year, we show that it is conceivable to reduce CO2 this century to less than the current amount, but only via prompt policy changes.
[9] Harvey LDD. Dangerous anthropogenic interference, dangerous climatic change, and harmful climatic change: non-trivial distinctions with significant policy implications. Climate Change 2007; 82: 1-25.
[10] Matthews HD, Caldeira K. Stabilizing climate requires near-zero emissions. Geophys Res Lett 2008; 35: L04705.
[11] Archer D. Fate of fossil fuel CO2 in geologic time. J Geophys Res 2005; 110: C09S05.
James Hansen, Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?, 23 September 2008, Introduction, http://www.bentham.org/open/toascj/openaccess2.htm

Speaking at the UN climate conference in Poznan, Poland, Philippe Ciais, the incoming chairmain of the Global Carbon Project, warned of a growing gap between political rhetoric and scientific reality on climate change: while politicians boast of slashing CO2 emissions and promise further cuts, in the real world things are deteriorating fast. Global emissions have risen 28% already this decade, compared with 9% for the whole of the 1990s, said Ciais. . . Nature’s ability to absorb CO2 is declining – it is down from 60% of all man-made emissions in 1960 to 55 per cent today. As the world talks about stabilising CO2 levels, it is actually accumulating ever faster.
Fred Pearce, NewScientist, World leaders “failing to get” climate message, 17 December 2008,
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026875.300-world-leaders-failing-to-get-climate-message.html?page=1

7.  To avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change, world carbon emissions will have to drop to near zero by 2050 and “go negative” after that, the Worldwatch Institute reported on Tuesday.
Limiting carbon emissions aims to keep global mean temperature from rising more than 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) over what it was before the Industrial Revolution — but one Worldwatch author said even this is too dangerous.
“Global warming needs to be reduced from peak levels to 1 degree (Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) as fast as possible,” co-author William Hare said at a briefing on the “State of the World 2009″ report. “At this level you can see some of the risks fade into the background.”  Hare said that global greenhouse gas emissions would need to hit their peak by 2020 and drop 85 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and keep dropping after that. He said carbon dioxide emissions would have to “go negative,” with more being absorbed than emitted, in the second half of this century. 
Hare said that industrialized nations should reduce emissions by 90 percent by 2050, allowing developing nations to let their economies grow and develop new technologies that will ultimately reduce climate-warming gases.
. . . Co-author Robert Engelman, said, “We still have some precious time and a clear shot at safely managing human-induced climate change,” Engelman said. “What’s at stake is not just nature as we’ve always known it, but quite possibly the survival of our civilization.”
Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent, Reuters, Halt all carbon emissions by 2050, says Worldwatch, 13 January 2009, http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE50C7LS20090113?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

To cool the earth fast enough to get the Arctic sea-ice back quickly, we need to move to zero greenhouse gas emissions as fast as the economy can be restructured, and is environmentally safe to do so, and take about 200 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the air. We also need to find environmentally-safe mechanisms to actively cool the earth while navigating this transition.
David Spratt, Global warming – No more business as usual: This is an emergency, 30 October 2008, http://links.org.au/node/683 

Arctic Sea Ice Criterion (assuming near-balance among non_CO2 forcings):  1. Restore Planetary Energy Balance: 325-355 ppm; 2. Restore Sea Ice: 300-325 ppm (-0.5 W.m2); ranges based on uncertainty in present planetary energy imbalance (between 0.5 and 1 W/m2).
James Hansen, Bjerknes Lecture, American Geophysical Union, San Francisco, 17 December 2008, p. 27
AGU2008.Bjerknes_Lecture[1].pdf (2456KB)

Carbon dioxide emissions and their associated warming could linger for millennia, according to some climate scientists. . . Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California and a few other climate scientists are saying that human-generated CO2, and the warming it brings, will linger far into the future – unless we take heroic measures to pull the gas out of the air.
University of Chicago oceanographer David Archer, writes in his new book, The Long Thaw, “The lifetime of fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is a few centuries, plus 25 percent that lasts essentially forever. “The next time you fill your tank, reflect upon this.” [3]  “The climatic impacts of releasing fossil fuel CO2 to the atmosphere will last longer than Stonehege, longer than time capsules, longer than nuclear waste, far longer than the age of human civilization so far.”
 “The longevity of CO2 in the atmosphere is probably the least well understood part of the global warming issue,” says paleoclimatologist Peter Fawcett of the University of New Mexico. “And it’s not because it isn’t well documented in the IPCC report.  It is, but it is buried under a lot of other material.”

The lasting effects of CO2 also have big implications for energy policies, argues James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies. “Because of this long CO2 lifetime . . . we must identify a portion of the fossil fuels that will be left in the ground, or captured upon emission and put back into the ground.”  If all recoverable fossil fuels were burnt up using today’s technologies, after 1,000 years the air would still hold around a third to a half of the CO2 emissions.
[3] Archer, D. The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate (Princeton Univ. Press, 2008).
Nature Reports – Climate Change, Carbon is Forever, 30 November 2008, http://westcoastclimateequity.org/?p=1373#more-1373 

A recent paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society agrees that to deliver a reasonable chance of preventing more than two degrees of warming, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere need to stabilize at a maximum of 450 parts per million, carbon dioxide equivalent (ppmCO2e). But it shows that to achieve this, global emissions of greenhouse gases from the parts of the system we can control need to peak by 2015, then fall by 6-8% a year between 2020 and 2040, leading to “full decarbonization sometime soon after 2050.” Even this, it shows, relies on an optimistic reading of the current data.

The paper shows that allowing greenhouse gases to rise to 500 ppm CO2e before falling back to 450 is a dangerous assumption. Not only does this mean that the cut comes too late, but as the biosphere starts producing more greenhouse gases than it absorbs, instead of falling back the enhanced levels in the atmosphere are likely to trigger more emissions. We cannot afford to overshoot.

A forthcoming paper in Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Sciences also suggests that, above a certain level in the atmosphere, CO2 could take much longer to be absorbed than most studies assume, as the global sinks become saturated. See: Geoffrey Lean, 30th November 2008. Greenhouse gases will heat up planet ‘for ever’. The Independent.
George Monbiot, published in the Guardian, Whistling in the Wind, 2 December 2008,
http://westcoastclimateequity.org/?p=1415#more-1415 

The Earth has fallen off the wagon several times in the cold direction, ice and snow reaching all the way to the equator. Earth can escape from snowball conditions because weathering slows down, and CO2 accumulates in the air until there is enough to melt the ice and snow rapidly, as the feedbacks work in the opposite direction. The last snowball Earth occurred about 640 million years ago.  Now the danger that we face is the Venus syndrome. There is no escape from the Venus Syndrome. Venus will never have oceans again.
Given the solar constant that we have today, how large a forcing must be maintained to cause runaway global warming? Our model blows up before the oceans boil, but it suggests that perhaps runaway conditions could occur with added forcing as small as 10-20 W/m2.  ((IPCC 2007)  The greenhouse gas forcing is a sharp function, well-known at about +3 W/m2. But the aerosol forcing might be anywhere between zero and -3 W/m2. So the net forcing, is anywhere between zero and +3 W/m2, probably between about +1 and +2 Watts.)
…What is different about the human-made forcing is the rapidity at which we are increasing it, on the time scale of a century or a few centuries. It does not provide enough time for negative feedbacks, such as changes in the weathering rate, to be a major factor.
Jim Hansen, Climate Threat to the Planet: Implications for Energy Policy and Intergenerational Justice, 17 December 2008, http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/AGUBjerknes_20081217.pdf

8.  Experts from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado will further reveal that temperatures this fall in some Arctic areas north of Alaska were 9 or 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5 or 5.5 degrees C) above average. The long-predicted phenomenon is known as “Arctic amplification.” As global air temperatures increase, the Arctic tends to show greater changes because the ice pack that once reflected solar heat is reduced in scope. More heat is therefore absorbed. The study is being discussed at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
Says NASA climate scientist H. Jay Zwally, “We may be going through a tipping point [in climate change] right now.” He adds, “Once the ice goes away, you’re absorbing much more heat.” The Arctic, he says, is showing two to three times the overall global rate of temperature increase.
Thomas Omestad, U.S. News, Arctic Ice Melting at Alarming Pace as Temperatures Rise – New studies show that the region is warming even faster than many scientists had feared, 16 December 2008
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/world/2008/12/16/arctic-ice-melting-at-alarming-pace-as-temperatures-rise.html

Scientists have found the first unequivocal evidence that the Arctic region is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world at least a decade before it was predicted to happen. . . Julienne Stroeve, of the NSIDC, who led the study with her colleague Mark Serreze, said that autumn air temperatures this year and in recent years have been anomalously high. The Arctic Ocean warmed more than usual because heat from the sun was absorbed more easily by the dark areas of open water compared to the highly reflective surface of a frozen sea. “Autumn 2008 saw very strong surface temperature anomalies over the areas where the sea ice was lost.” 
“The observed autumn warming that we’ve seen over the Arctic Ocean, not just this year but over the past five years or so, represents Arctic amplification, the notion that rises in surface air temperatures in response to increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations will be larger in the Arctic than elsewhere over the globe,” Dr. Stroeve said. “The warming climate is leading to more open water in the Arctic Ocean. As these open water areas develop through spring and summer, they absorb most of the sun’s energy, leading to ocean warming.
In autumn, as the sun sets in the Arctic, most of the heat that was gained in the ocean during summer is released back to the atmosphere, acting to warm the atmosphere. It is this heat-release back to the atmosphere that gives us Arctic amplification.”
Temperature readings for this October were significantly higher than normal across the entire Arctic region¬ between 3C and 5C above average ¬ but some areas were dramatically higher. In the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska, for instance, near-surface air temperatures were more than 7C higher than normal for this time of year.
By Steve Connor, Science Editor, The Independent, Has the Arctic melt passed the point of no return?, 16 December 2008, http://westcoastclimateequity.org/?p=1678#more-1678

9.  Some scientists say that by 2013, there will be no sea ice left in the Arctic, causing a tipping point for climate change throughout the world.

One of America’s leading sea ice researchers, Dr Don Perovich, US Army Cold Regions Research and his colleagues believe a “feedback” mechanism is at work that is accelerating the melt as the ice retreats. . . “The sea ice reflects around 85% of the light, but as that ice melts back it exposes the open ocean and the open ocean only reflects 7% of the light. It absorbs 93%.”

Dr. Ted Scambos of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre USA explained, “What we’re seeing right now in the last few years is that the Arctic loses so much of its ice every summer that, again, solar energy heats the water underneath it; the older ice is pushed out of the Arctic ocean so there’s a very thin cover of ice; and without any further input, it doesn’t have to get any warmer; it seems as though the Arctic simply can’t recover.”

Dr. Mark Serreze also from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre stated “what happens up there in the Arctic, this seemingly far away place, eventually influences what happens in other parts of the globe. . . There are concerns that the Greenland ice sheet may be close to a tipping point – a point of instability, that if we warm it up just a little bit more we could greatly accelerate the loss of ice from Greenland that contributes to sea level.”

Marian Wilkinson, reporter, CBC Newsworld, Tipping Point, 1 December 2008, http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/passionateeyemonday/2008/tippingpoint/

Program Transcript at http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2008/s2323805.htm
See also Australian website at http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2008/s2321264.htm

Sea ice in the Arctic shrank to its smallest area on record in September 2007, when it extended across an area of just 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles), beating the previous record low of 5.32 million sq km, measured in 2005. “I think this is the first time that we can definitively say that the bulk overall volume of ice has decreased,” observed co-author Dr Seymour Laxon. “So this means melting; it doesn’t mean that the ice has just been pushed up against the coastline.” . . . “About five years ago, the average projection for the sea ice disappearing was about 2080 . . models [now] suggest the sea ice will disappear by 2030-2040, but there is still a lot of uncertainty.”
The findings have been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Mark Kinver, Science and environment reporter, Arctic ice thickness ‘plummets’, BBC News, 28 October 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7692963.stm

The Arctic icecap is now shrinking at record rates in the winter as well as summer, adding to evidence of disastrous melting near the North Pole, according to research by British scientists. They have found that the widely reported summer shrinkage, which this year resulted in the opening of the Northwest Passage, is continuing in the winter months with the thickness of sea ice decreasing by a record 19% last winter.
The Sunday Times, Arctic is melting even in winter - The polar icecap is retreating and thinning at a record rate, 26 October 2008, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5014744.ece

Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado and colleagues say the overall ice volume in the Arctic Ocean is at least as low as 2007, and may even have dwindled by as much as 10% more. Although more widespread than last year, the ice is significantly thinner, Meier said, making it more prone to melting than ever before.
Michael Reilly, Discovery News, 8 October 2008, Arctic Sea Ice Mimics Stock Market, http://westcoastclimateequity.org/?p=569#more-569

10.  The danger is that an ice-free state in the Arctic summer will kick the climate system into run-on warming and create an aberrant new climate state many, many degrees hotter. The Arctic sea-ice is the first domino and it is falling fast. Other dominos will inevitably fall unless we stop emitting greenhouse gases and cool the planet to get the Arctic sea-ice back.

Those dominoes include the Greenland ice sheet. . . If Greenland totally melts, global sea levels will rise by 7 metres. . . To not forcefully consider the Arctic is to ignore the biggest issue today in global warming.

. . . Recently, 49 Australian grassroots climate action and environment advocacy groups stated in an open letter that “the tipping points for large ice sheet and species loss have already been crossed, as we are witnessing in the Arctic. It is no longer a case of how much more we can safely emit, but whether we can quickly stop emissions and produce a cooling before we hit tipping points and amplifying feedbacks — such as large-scale release of greenhouse gases from melting permafrost — that will take the trajectory of the earth’s climate system beyond any hope of human restoration.”
David Spratt, Global Warming – No More Business As Usual, This is an Emergency!, 30 October 2008, http://westcoastclimateequity.org/?p=865

The world’s seas could rise far faster than the UN is predicting, according to research presented to this week’s European Geosciences Union meeting. If this work is right, millions of people are living on what will soon be sea floor.
The Great Beyond, nature.com, Sea level rise ‘threatens millions’, 16 April 2008,
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2008/04/sea_level_rise_threatens_milli.html

The models used by the IPCC project that by the end of this century, the global average sea-level will rise between 7 and 23 inches (0.18 and 0.59 meters) above the 1980–1999 average. . . If the observed contributions from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets between 1992 and 2003, the IPCC states, “were to grow linearly with global average temperature change,” the upper ranges of sea-level rise would increase by 3.9 to 7.9 inches (0.1 to 0.2 meters). In other words, in this example, the upper range for sea-level rise would be 31 inches (0.79 meters).
Union of Concerned Scientists, Global warming, Findings of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change Science, 16 February 2007,
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/findings-of-the-ipcc-fourth-2.html

There is already a 50% chance that the Greenland ice sheet will soon begin melting unstoppably.
Ian Sample, science correspondent, The Guardian, Global meltdown: scientists isolate areas most at risk of climate change, 5 February 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/05/climatechange

If we fail to act in time to avert the climate catastrophe . . . We should expect 0.8 to 2.0 meters of sea level rise this century, inundating the homes of 100 million people. 
ClimateProgress.org, Is the Financial Crisis More Dire Than The Climate Crisis?, 21 September 2008,  http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/21/is-the-financial-crisis-more-dire-than-the-climate-crisis/

The Polar Ice Cap is crucial for the preservation of Greenland’s glaciers. Its dissolution will speed the melting of these glaciers to such a degree that we will see in this century millions of people displaced by sea level rise. According to climateologist James Hansen, if we allow the Earth’s land-based glaciers and ice sheets to melt, it will take many thousands of years for them to refreeze. However, to refreeze the floating polar ice would take only a fraction of that time. Whereas we have seen the stability of the polar ice decay in less than 60 years, it could refreeze again in less than a century or two, but only if we cause the CO2 level in our atmosphere to return to a level where this could take place. This level should be at 350 ppm or lower, preferable below 325 ppm.  This would not only stabilize our climate, which has been remarkably benign for the last 10,000 years, it would also protect the vast ice sheets and glaciers on our planet and prevent the huge sea level rise that will occur if they melt.
Dorothy Cutting, West Coast Climate Equity, Arctic Ice Crisis: Why We Must Lower Atmospheric CO2, 11 September 2008, http://westcoastclimateequity.org/?p=3

Deterministic global temperature change depends mainly upon three things: (1) the equilibrium climate sensitivity, (2) the forcings that are applied to the system, and (3) the response time, which is primarily dependent on the ocean.
. . . The fast feedback climate sensitivity is 3 C for doubled CO2, plus or minus half a degree. . . This includes all fast feedback processes: water vapor, clouds, sea ice, snow, and aerosols. The physics is exact, it is not modeled. It is important to realize that aerosols should be included as a fast feedback. As the planet becomes warmer, the atmosphere is moister, and the aerosol load is reduced.
. . . Greenhouse gas forcing is accurately known (approx. 3W/m2), but aerosol forcing is very uncertain. (IPCC 2007).  The greenhouse gas forcing is a sharp function, well-known at about +3 W/m2. But the aerosol forcing might be anywhere between zero and -3 W/m2. So the net forcing, is anywhere between zero and +3 W/m2, probably between about +1 and +2 Watts. . . If the net forcing is closer to 1 Watt, then the portion of the forcing that the planet has not yet responded to is much smaller than in the case of net 2 W/m2 forcing, i.e., the planet is closer to energy balance.  That means that global temperature will be more responsive to ongoing changes of global climate forcing, even moderate changes such as solar irradiance changes of 0.2 W/m2.
. . . Twenty years ago, when I was asked ‘what is the most important measurement for global climate change’, I said ‘ocean heat storage, because that defines the planet’s energy imbalance.
. . . Two conclusions should be emphasized. First the natural imbalance between geologic sources and sinks of CO2 is of the order of one ten-thousands of a ppm per year. In a million years that can cause a change of 100 ppm.  But the human-made rate of change is today about 2 ppm per year, about ten thousand times greater than the natural rate.  There have been larger changes, but on very long time scales. On any time scale of interest to humanity, humans will be in charge of the climate change.
The second conclusion is that we cannot burn all the fossil fuels, which would double or triple the amount of CO2 in the air, without setting the planet on a course to the ice free state. It would be a rocky trip, and it would take some time, as the ice sheets collapsed and sea level rose 250 feet. But it should not be doubted – feedbacks work in both directions – ice sheet formation is reversible
Jim Hansen, Climate Threat to the Planet: Implications for Energy Policy and Intergenerational Justice, 17 December 2008, http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/AGUBjerknes_20081217.pdf

11.  The world’s glaciers are continuing to melt away with the latest official figures showing record losses, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) announced today.
Data from close to 30 reference glaciers in nine mountain ranges indicate that between the years 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 the average rate of melting and thinning more than doubled.  The findings come from the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS), a center based at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.
North America: “Heavily-utilized water systems of the western US and Canada, such as the Columbia River, that rely on capturing snowmelt runoff will be especially vulnerable,” says the Fourth report of IPCC Working Group II.
In Latin America, the IPCC warns of a melting of most tropical glaciers in the near future (2020-2030).  The glacier retreat trend reported in the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC is continuing and reaching critical conditions in Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador.
Recent studies indicate that most of the South American glaciers from Colombia to Chile and Argentina (up to 25ºS) are drastically reducing their volume at an accelerated rate. Changes in temperature and humidity are the primary cause for the observed glacier retreat during the 2nd half of the 20th century in the tropical Andes. In the next 15 years inter-tropical glaciers are very likely to disappear, affecting water availability and hydropower generation.
ScienceDaily, Glaciers Are Melting Faster Than Expected, 18 March 2008, UN Reports, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080317154235.htm

The world is now facing a climate-driven shrinkage of river-based irrigation water supplies. Mountain glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau are melting and could soon deprive the major rivers of India and China of the ice melt needed to sustain them during the dry season. In the Ganges, the Yellow, and the Yangtze river basins, where irrigated agriculture depends heavily on rivers, this loss of dry-season flow will shrink harvests.
The world has never faced such a predictably massive threat to food production as that posed by the melting mountain glaciers of Asia. China and India are the world’s leading producers of both wheat and rice—humanity’s food staples. China’s wheat harvest is nearly double that of the United States, which ranks third after India. With rice, these two countries are far and away the leading producers, together accounting for over half of the world harvest.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that Himalayan glaciers are receding rapidly and that many could melt entirely by 2035.
Lester R. Brown, Melting Mountain Glaciers Will Shrink Grain Harvests in China and India, 20 March 2008, http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update71.htm

In virtually all of the mountain ranges of this planet, the glaciers are now melting rapidly in the Alps, in the Andes, in the Rockies and most ominously in the Himalayas which contain 100 times as much ice and snow of all of the mountains in Europe.
The leading Chinese scientist who studies ice, professor Yao Tandong calls the Tibetan plateau the water tower of Asia. It feeds the great rivers of Asia, the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Salween and the Irawati, the Mekong, the Yangtze and the Yellow. 1.4 billion people depend for more than half of their drinking water on the rivers and spring systems that flow from the ice of the Tibetan plateau, which is now melting at an alarming rate.
Al Gore, We cannot negotiate with the facts, the truth and the consequences, Speech in Poznan, 18 December 2008,
http://www.green-blog.org/2009/01/07/gore-we-cannot-negotiate-with-the-facts-the-truth-and-the-consequences/

12.  The Arctic represents approximately 13% of the total land area of the Earth, and arctic tundra occupies roughly 5 million square kilometers.  Arctic tundra soils represent a major storage pool for dead organic carbon, largely due to cold temperatures and saturated soils.  A total of 98.2 gigatonnes of carbon is estimated to be stored in the soils of the North American Arctic tundra.  An area-based estimate for the entire Arctic suggests the presence of approximately 160 gigatonnes of carbon. The annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is roughly 2% of this amount, so small changes in Arctic carbon storage could have substantive impacts on atmospheric CO2.

Vladimir Romanovsky, Professor in Geophysics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and head of the Geophysical Institute Permafrost Laboratory University of Alaska, USA, stated, “the amount of carbon which is sequestered in permafrost is at least the same as the amount of carbon in the atmosphere . . . in this area, it’s within about minus one degrees Celsius so it’s within one degree of thawing. . . Crossing this threshold of thawing permafrost will release this methane and this bomb will explode.”

Melting permafrost could soon be a worldwide disaster . . . “The Arctic will export change to the rest of the world”, warned Robie MacDonald, one of Canada’s top ocean chemists and an Arctic specialist who has worked for the IPCC. “Melting sea ice will intensify the extreme weather caused by climate change, bringing violent storms and cyclones.  Very quickly the world’s food and water supplies will begin to run short. . . What happens here is coming to us.”

Dr Scambos concluded, “What will happen I think is that we’ll get this whole new source of CO2 and methane from the thawing permafrost that we won’t easily be able to shut off, even if we get our act together. . . that sets us down the road of a much warmer planet where all of the game has changed in terms of how you live, where you live. . . Eventually we have to quit producing these greenhouse gases and putting them in the atmosphere or we will see warming continue until levels are much more dire. We’ll see increasing difficulty in making enough food, having enough water to keep six, seven, eight-billion people on earth alive and happy. . . Eventually these things will become critical, will become things that people are willing to go to war over. And that’s I think the ultimate threat, that it will destabilize the world because we’ll be in such a fight for our very lives, our existence, based on the changes, based on the re-partitioning of all the resources that we thought we had, due to climate change.

Marian Wilkinson, reporter, CBC Newsworld, The Tipping Point, 1 December 2008, http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/passionateeyemonday/2008/tippingpoint/

Program Transcript at http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2008/s2323805.htm
See also Australian website at http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2008/s2321264.htm

Ping et all (2008) estimate 98.2 GtC in North America tundra, extrapolates to roughly 160 GtC for entire arctic tundra, 2.5% of this pool is equivalent to the annual increase in atmospheric carbon.  But the northern permafrost region extends well beyond the area of arctic tundra, approximately 3-4 times the size of the tundra blome.  Schuur et al. (2008) estimate that organic carbon content in all permafrost soils to 3m depth is 1024 GtC, 30-35% more carbon than is presently in our atmosphere.  0.4% of this pool is equivalent to the annual increase in atmospheric carbon.
Carbon dioxide emitted from soils increases exponentially with soil temperatures.  Approximately 4% of soil organic carbon globally is decomposed each year.  Permafrost melting would expose previously frozen dead organic matter to microbial decomposers.  6.7% of the tundra permafrost carbon pool is equivalent to the annual increase in atmospheric CO2.
. . . Schuur et al. (2008) suggest that other “processes do not appear to be able to compensate for C release from thawing permafrost, making it likely that the net effect of widespread permafrost thawing will be a positive feedback to a warming climate,”   Estimates of C release from melting permafrost range from 0.5 – 1.0 GtC per year over the next century (approx 25-50 ppm).
Howard E. Epstein, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, New Estimates of Carbon Stores in Arctic Tundra and Permafrost Soils, 26 September 2008, www.ametsoc.org/atmospolicy/documents/2008ESSS/ESSS92608/Epstein-AMS-Carbon.pdf -

13.  In recent years, climate scientists have been concerned about a so-called “methane time bomb” on land, which would be detonated when warming Arctic temperatures melt permafrost and cause frozen vegetation in peat bogs and other areas to decay, releasing methane and carbon dioxide.
This summer, scientists taking part in the six-week International Siberian Shelf Study discovered numerous areas, spread over thousands of square miles, where large quantities of methane rose from the once-frozen seabed floor.These “methane chimneys” sometimes contained concentrations of the gas 100 times higher than background levels and were so large that they created “whole clouds of bubbles on the surface of the water,” Orjan Gustafsson of the Department of Applied Environmental Science at Stockholm University and the co-leader of the expedition, said in an interview. There was no doubt, he said, that the methane was coming from sub-sea permafrost, indicating that the sea bottom might be melting and freeing up this potent greenhouse gas.  One thing is certain: the shallow Siberian Shelf alone covers more than 1.5 million square kilometers (580,000 square miles), an area larger than France, Germany, and Spain combined. Should its permafrost layer thaw, an amount of methane equal to 12 times the current level in the atmosphere could be released, according to researcher Natalia Shakhova. Such a release would cause “catastrophic global warming.”
Temperature increases in the Arctic of a just few degrees could unleash the huge storehouse of methane, which some have estimated would be comparable to burning all recoverable stocks of coal, oil, and natural gas.
Susan Q. Stranahan, Enviroment360, Melting Arctic Ocean Raises Threat of ‘Methane Time Bomb,’ 30 October 2008,  http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2081

Methane is about 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many scientists fear that its release could accelerate global warming in a giant positive feedback where more atmospheric methane causes higher temperatures, leading to further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane.

The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is calculated to be greater than the total amount of carbon locked up in global coal reserves so there is intense interest in the stability of these deposits as the region warms at a faster rate than other places on earth.

Orjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University in Sweden, one of the leaders of the expedition, described the scale of the methane emissions in an email exchange sent from the Russian research ship Jacob Smirnitskyi.

“We had a hectic finishing of the sampling programme yesterday and this past night,” said Dr Gustafsson. “An extensive area of intense methane release was found. At earlier sites we had found elevated levels of dissolved methane. Yesterday, for the first time, we documented a field where the release was so intense that the methane did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as methane bubbles to the sea surface. These ‘methane chimneys’ were documented on echo sounder and with seismic [instruments].”

At some locations, methane concentrations reached 100 times background levels. These anomalies have been seen in the East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea, covering several tens of thousands of square kilometres, amounting to millions of tons of methane, said Dr Gustafsson. “This may be of the same magnitude as presently estimated from the global ocean,” he said. “Nobody knows how many more such areas exist on the extensive East Siberian continental shelves.
Steve Connor, Science Editor, The Methane Time Bomb, 23 September 2008,
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-the-methane-time-bomb-938932.html 

Last week a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters produced what could be the first hard evidence that runaway global feedback has begun [7]. In 2007, methane levels in the atmosphere, which had previously leveled off, began rising again. The most likely reason is that the Siberian permafrost is melting, as a result of the runaway warming of the Arctic. This wasn’t supposed to happen for another 80 years. The great global meltdown appears to have started . . . We’re still digging trenches, even as the sky fills with bomber planes.
[7] M. Rigby et al, 2008. Renewed growth of atmospheric methane. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 35, L22805, doi:10.1029/2008GL036037.
George Monbiot, published in the Guardian, Whistling in the Wind, 2 December 2008,
http://westcoastclimateequity.org/?p=1415#more-1415 

Researchers who have recently returned from western Siberia found that an area of permafrost, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia and spans a million square kilometres has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.  It is the world’s largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane into the atmosphere. . . as it thaws, it reveals bare ground which warms up more quickly than ice and snow, and so accelerates the rate at which the permafrost thaws. . . . Western Siberia is heating up faster than anywhere else in the world, having experienced a rise of some 3C in the past 40 years.
Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said the finding was a stark message to politicians to take concerted action on climate change. “We knew at some point we’d get these feedbacks happening that exacerbate global warming, but this could lead to a massive injection of greenhouse gases.  If we don’t take action very soon, we could unleash runaway global warming that will be beyond our control and it will lead to social, economic and environmental devastation worldwide.  There’s still time to take action, but not much.”
Ian Sample, Climate Correspondent, guardian.co.uk, Warming hits “tipping point”, 11 August 2005,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/aug/11/science.climatechange1

Siberia and Alaska have already warmed 2–3 degrees Celsius since the 1950’s.
Lila Buckley, Global Temperature Rise Accelerating, 2008, http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Temp/2004.htm

The amount of methane in Earth’s atmosphere shot up in 2007, bringing to an end a period of about a decade in which atmospheric levels of the potent greenhouse gas were essentially stable.  The new study is based on data from a worldwide NASA-funded measurement network. . . Methane levels in the atmosphere have more than tripled since pre-industrial times, accounting for around one-fifth of the human contribution to greenhouse gas-driven global warming.
Stephen Cole, Jen Hirsch, NASA Measurements Show Greenhouse Gas Methane on the Rise Again, 20 October 2008, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/oct/HQ_08-276_Methane_levels.html

Methane is a relatively potent greenhouse gas with a high global warming potential of 72 (averaged over 20 years) or 25 (averaged over 100 years).[1] . . . The Earth’s methane concentration has increased by about 150% since 1750, and it accounts for 20% of the total radiative forcing from all of the long-lived and globally mixed greenhouse gases.[13]
[1] IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
[13] “Technical summary”. Climate Change 2001. United Nations Environment Programme
Wikepedia, Methane, 11 December 2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane

14.  More than 80% of the mass of sea-ice in the Arctic Ocean in summer has already been lost. An area of summer sea-ice once as large as Australia is rapidly disintegrating, with consequences that will reverberate around the globe.  Scientists with expertise on the Arctic environment are predicting that the Arctic Ocean will be ice free in summer between 2010 and 2013, and that once lost, the Arctic summer sea-ice will not return.
The loss of the Arctic summer sea-ice will cause a large local warming in the Arctic region of around 5ºC and a smaller but very significant global warming of around 0.3ºC.
This further warming of the Arctic will significantly add to the speed of disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet (sea-level rise of 7 metres if fully lost, possibly five metres this century according to NASA climate chief Dr James Hansen) and to the rate of permafrost melting, which will release much more carbon dioxide and methane and further drive up global warming…I am not aware of any well-informed climate scientist who thinks that it is possible to have a safe climate or avoid dangerous climate change with the permanent loss of the Arctic summer sea-ice.  Because of the dangerous knock-on effects caused by its loss, the Arctic sea ice must be restored to its normal extent as fast as possible.
To get the Arctic sea ice back we need to cool the earth by about 0.3ºC. If we don’t, we cannot avoid very dangerous climate impacts.  There is no third way.  This is the new very inconvenient truth politicians seek to avoid.
David Spratt, What Politicians won’t talk about: the fate of the Arctic, 8 June 2008, http://climatecodered.blogspot.com/2008/06/what-politicians-wont-talk-about-fate.html 

15.  On the one hand, the United Nations’ top climate official, Yvo de Boer, announced at a U.N. desertification conference: “Climate change has become the prime cause of an accelerating spread of deserts which threatens the world’s drylands.”  On the other hand, he pointed out that desertification would, in turn, accelerate climate change: “You’ll see a sort of feedback mechanism … quite a lot of carbon is captured in soil, so with more desertification (exposing the soil), you also get more CO2 emissions. They are two halves of the same coin.”
What’s coming?  Major deserts like the Sahara, Gobi and Kalahari are all expanding and desertification has begun to threaten countries like Spain and Kazakhstan, where swathes of cropland have had to be abandoned in the last three decades.  The U.N. estimates that more than 250 million people are directly affected by desertification and approximately one billion in over 100 countries are at risk.
Posted by Joseph Romm, Gristmill, The desertification-global warming feedback loop, 13 September 2007l
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/9/12/152749/121

Because the climate crisis has also increased the rate of soil moisture evaporation around the world and concentrated rainfall in shorter periods of time, shifting the seasons during which it falls, there is increased desertification and longer droughts, increasing stress on all of the people who live in the dry land regions of our world. Many shallow lakes, including prominently lake Chad, have disappeared. The Great Lakes of Africa are undergoing dramatic change, the Great Lakes of North America are losing their ice cover, and the water level is dropping dramatically.
Al Gore, We cannot negotiate with the facts, the truth and the consequences, Speech in Poznan, 18 December 2008,
http://www.green-blog.org/2009/01/07/gore-we-cannot-negotiate-with-the-facts-the-truth-and-the-consequences/

If we fail to act in time to avert the climate catastrophe . . . We face desertification of one third of the planet and loss of the glaciers that provide water to a billion people. 
ClimateProgress.org, Is the Financial Crisis More Dire Than The Climate Crisis, 21 September 2008,  http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/21/is-the-financial-crisis-more-dire-than-the-climate-crisis/

16.  The oceans are currently absorbing about one metric ton of human-generated carbon dioxide per year for each person on the planet.  We’re putting about a million tons of carbon dioxide into the air every hour. . . The most important implication is for the many animals, and even some algae, who make shells or support structures out of calcium carbonate.  These include numerous photosynthesizing organisms at the food chain’s base, as well as animals like sea stars and urchins, mollusks like clams and oysters, and reef-building corals.  Crabs and lobsters make shells mainly of chitin (the same material as your fingernails), but reinforced with calcium carbonate.  What keeps all these important calcium carbonate shells from dissolving is that, naturally, they live surrounded in seawater saturated with carbonate ions.  But the cascade of changes caused by our mushrooming cloud of carbon dioxide causes progressive carbonate scarcity.  Thus making shells will get much more difficult and energy consuming.  And once formed, the shells will begin to slowly dissolve.
. . . The higher carbon dioxide levels go, the thinner the shells.  The result will be reduced ocean productivity and widespread food scarcity for sea life because the base of the whole food chain will be affected; plus, weaker coral reefs will be more vulnerable to storms – which are intensifying because of global warming.  The Royal Society concluded in 2005 that without significant action to reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, there will be no place in the future oceans for many of the species and ecosystems that we know today.
Carl Safina, Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth’s Last Dinosaur, Owl, 29 May 2007, pps. 298-299

Increasing pressures from climate change will reach a tipping point in less than a decade triggering a significant decline in the health of the planet’s coral reef ecosystems according to the findings in an international report, put together from 370 contributors in 96 countries and states and the most authoritative report on the world’s coral reefs.
 . . . “Unless the world gets serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the next few years, it is likely there will be massive bleaching and deaths of corals around the world,” notes the report’s lead editor and global coral authority Clive Wilkinson who coordinates the Global Coral Monitoring Network in Australia. “This will have significant impacts on the lives of the people in developing countries who are dependent on reefs for food, for tourism, and for protecting the land they live on.” . . . Frequent or long-term bleaching kills or severely weakens corals, leaving them more vulnerable to disease, and resulting in a sea bottom covered with algae and sponges that may eventually smother remaining coral.
ScienceDaily, Time Running Out On Coral Reefs As Climate Change Becomes Increasing Threat, 15 December 2008, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081210112808.htm

Rising levels of carbon dioxide will have wide-ranging impacts on the world’s oceans regardless of climate change, reports a study published in the March 9, 2007, issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “Whether you believe in global warming or not, CO2 is going to run havoc in the oceans if unabated, ” warned co-author Dr. Caldeira. “Temperature increases from climate change affect salinity, circulation, and marine biology. When carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean, some of it becomes carbonic acid—a corrosive agent, which can eat away shells of important species in the global food chain.”
Oceans worldwide absorbed approximately 118 billion metric tons of carbon between 1800 and 1994 according to a report published last year by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and NOAA, resulting in increased ocean acidity. . . . Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of fossil fuels combustion. Scientists estimate that the oceans have soaked up about half of all carbon dioxide produced from fossil fuel emissions over the past 200 years. Had oceans not absorbed this carbon, current atmospheric carbon dioxide would be much higher than the current 381 parts-per-million (ppm)–probably closer to 500-600 ppm say climatologists.

“Ocean acidification threatens all marine organisms that use calcium carbonate to make their shells,” Caldeira added. “However even as the planet warms, our study shows that we can help the ecological balance in the oceans by curbing CO2 emissions now. . .”
Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com, Carbon dioxide levels threaten oceans regardless of global warming, 8 March 2007,
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0308-oceans.html

Entire ecosystems threaten to literally crumble away as critters relying on calcium carbonate for a home – from corals to mollusks to the sea snail — have a harder time manufacturing their shells. Corals shelter millions of species worldwide, while sea snails account for upwards of 45 percent of the diet of pink salmon.
The oceans so far have absorbed some 30 percent of the carbon dioxide that humans have added to the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and nearly 80 percent of the heat generated by those gases, according to Oceana.  Today the world’s oceans absorb some 30 million metric tons of extra carbon dioxide every day, according to scientists — roughly twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted each day by the United States. Scientists are already seeing harm as the oceans acidify. Reefs are struggling in many parts of the world, shell growth rates are slowing, life phases — particularly reproductive maturity — are being thrown out of whack.  Even the healthiest reefs in the most optimum conditions today face a daily struggle to grow faster than reef dwellers and the ocean can erode them, and the effects grow more dire as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise.To avoid the most serious problems associated with acidification, Oceana and other scientists warn, society must hold atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at 350 parts-per-million. By Douglas Fischer, Daily Climate editor, November 2008
http://www.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/acid-test/the-oceans-acid-test 

There is no doubt that we have entered a world of rapidly changing climate as a result of human activities and tropical coral reefs are already being affected. Corals live only 1-2°C below their thermal threshold; above which the relationship with the algae breaks down and corals ‘bleach’. 
Chemical Science, Instant insight: A changing climate for coral reefs, 12 December 2007,
http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/ChemScience/Volume/2008/01/changing_climate_coral_reefs.asp

The world’s oceans are becoming acidic more quickly than climate change models predict, according to scientists who claim it will have a dramatic impact on marine ecosystems.  Water samples collected around an island in the eastern Pacific over the past eight years showed seawater had acidified more than 20 times faster than scientists expected. The effect could be devastating for shellfish and other crustaceans, because acidic waters dissolve calcium carbonate used by the organisms to make their protective shells.
. . . The increasing acidification of the oceans is likely to have impacts that run throughout the marine ecosystem, because the organisms most affected are at the bottom of the food chain.
Ian Sample, Science correspondent, The Guardian, Unexpected rise in carbon-fuelled ocean acidity threatens shellfish, say scientists, 25 November 2008,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/25/water-ocean-acidity-shellfish

Ecologists refer to corals, trees, and other organisms (e.g., kelp, oysters, etc.) that literally create habitats as “foundation species” and recognize that their loss can be catastrophic for the community and ecosystem that is built around them.. . . Climate change is having negative effects on coral populations via at least three mechanisms.  First, ocean warming is directly reducing coral cover through coral bleaching. . . Second, ocean warming can also indirectly kill corals by magnifying the effects of infectious diseases, which are one of the primary causes of coral loss, particularly in the Caribbean. . . The third and in many respects the greatest concern in the longer term, is that global change is causing the world’s oceans to become more acidic. . . We have already lowered the pH of the ocean by about 0.1 unit which makes it more difficult and energetically costly for corals to secrete their calcium carbonate skeleton.
. . . Even conservative forecasts suggest that we could loose coral reef ecosystems by the end of the 21st century. Corals are thought to require an aragonite saturation of greater than 3.25 to successfully calcify and grow. Even under the most conservative IPCC climate change scenarios, ocean pH will decrease by 0.1 to 0.3 units and the aragonite saturation in most of the world’s tropical oceans will drop well below the 3.25 threshold. Field and laboratory experiments and climate models indicate that even more modest acidification will slow coral calcification and growth by nearly 50% by 2050. Under more extreme scenarios coral skeletons will literally dissolve. . . Forecast models of increasing ocean temperature and coral bleaching indicate that under most ocean warming scenarios, mass bleaching will happen nearly every summer by 2030.
John Bruno, Coral Reefs and Climate Change, 26 August 2008, http://www.eoearth.org/article/Coral_reefs_and_climate_change

Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Professor of marine biology, Oregon State University, selected by Barack Obama to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, on acidification and perturbation of coastal upwelling ecosystems.
The acidification of oceans may well be the most insidious and pervasive threat to life in the oceans everywhere, simply because so many different plants and animals that play key roles in ecosystems will likely be affected – coccolithophores, pteropods, corals, mollusks (clams, mussels, oysters, snails), echinoderms (urchins, seastars), arthropods (lobsters, crabs, shrimp), etc., etc. Recent studies suggest that some organisms probably can’t cope with the expected increases in acidity; others suggest they might be able to handle the increasing acidity, but not also deal with rising temperatures.
The appearance of large zones of low-oxygen or no-oxygen (‘dead zones’) along exposed outer coasts like Oregon and Washington came as a complete surprise.  We’ve seen the seasonal appearance of hypoxia in 6 of the last 6 years. . . Data show that the normal situation off our coasts is well oxygenated waters. The recent transformation of this ecosystem from one dominated by a diverse assemblage of rockfish, crabs, sea stars, anemones, sea cucumbers, flatfish, lingcod and more to one devoid of life except microbes has been stunning, wholly unexpected and downright scary. . . Events such as this confirm how little we know about the full impacts of the major perturbation of the climate system we’ve unwittingly set in motion.
Andrew Revkin, Sea Champion Picked for Ocean, Air Agency, 18 December 2008,
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/sea-champion-picked-for-ocean-air-agency/

17.  By 2050, rising temperatures exacerbated by human-induced belches of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could send more than a million of Earth’s land-dwelling plants and animals down the road to extinction, according to a recent study. “Climate change now represents at least as great a threat to the number of species surviving on Earth as habitat-destruction and modification,” said Chris Thomas, a conservation biologist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom.
According to the researchers’ collective results, the predicted range of climate change by 2050 will place 15 to 35 percent of the 1,103 species studied at risk of extinction. The numbers are expected to hold up when extrapolated globally, potentially dooming more than a million species.
John Roach, National Geographic News, By 2050 Warming to Doom Million Species, Study Says, 12 July 2005,
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/01/0107_040107_extinction.html

Climate change may drive a quarter of land animals and plants extinct, according to a major new study published in the journal Nature – unless greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced. . . Three different climate change scenarios were considered – minimum, mid-range and maximum expected climate change using data supplied by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The ability of animals and plants to move to new areas was also considered, using two alternatives; one where species could not spread at all, the other assuming “unlimited” or successful movement.
The study found that 15 to 37% of all species in the regions considered could be driven extinct from the climate change that is likely to occur between now and 2050 (i.e., for mid-range climate warming scenarios). “ . . .our analyses suggest that well over a million species could be threatened with extinction as a result of climate change,” said lead author Chris Thomas of the University of Leeds, England.
. . . The Nature paper concluded that “Minimum expected (i.e., inevitable) climate change scenarios for 2050 produce fewer projected extinctions (18% averaging across the different methods) than mid-range projections (24%), and about half those predicted under maximum expected climate change (35%).” Thus, 15-20% of all land species could potentially be saved from extinction if minimum, rather than maximum, climate warming is achieved.
University of Leeds Press Release, Climate change threatens a million species with extinction, 7 January 2004,
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/media/current/extinction.htm

The Earth could see massive waves of species extinctions around the world if global warming continues unabated, according to a new study published in the scientific journal Conservation Biology.  Given its potential to damage areas far away from human habitation, the study finds that global warming represents one of the most pervasive threats to our planet’s biodiversity – in some areas rivaling and even surpassing deforestation as the main threat to biodiversity.
This latest study picks up where the Nature paper left off, incorporating critiques and suggestions from other scientists while increasing the global scope of the research to include diverse hotspots around the world. The results reinforce the massive species extinction risks identified in the 2004 study. . . “Climate change is rapidly becoming the most serious threats to the planet’s biodiversity,” said lead author Dr. Jay Malcolm, an assistant forestry professor at the University of Toronto. “This study provides even stronger scientific evidence that global warming will result in catastrophic species loss across the planet.”
ScienceDaily, Global Warming Capable Of Sparking Mass Species Extinctions, 12 April 2006, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060411230548.htm

Earth’s ecosystems and biodiversity are sending multiple signals that essentially confirm 350 ppm as the limit. Unquestionably we are beyond where we should be.  Nature is on the move all over the planet, with species changing their natural history (e.g. earlier blooming) and their geographical location (e.g. often moving northward and up in altitude).
We have also begun to see abrupt threshold change in ecosystems. Coral reefs are being bleached all over the globe as the fundamental coral animal-alga partnership of reef systems breaks down at warmer temperatures. Evergreen forests in western North America and in Europe are experiencing major tree mortality as a longer summer tilts the balance against the trees in favor of bark beetles.
Thomas E. Lovejoy, Tim Flannery, Achim Steiner, International Herald Tribune, We did it, we can undo it, 27 October 2008, http://westcoastclimateequity.org/?p=869

Animal and plant species are already stressed by climate change. Polar and alpine species will be pushed off the planet, if warming continues. Other species attempt to migrate, but as some are extinguished their interdependencies can cause ecosystem collapse. Mass extinctions, of more than half the species on the planet, have occurred several times when the
Earth warmed as much as expected if greenhouse gases continue to increase. Biodiversity recovered, but it required hundreds of thousands of years.
James Hansen, Global Warming Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near, 23 June 2008, www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TwentyYearsLater_20080623.pdf

The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report assessed the vulnerability of natural ecosystems to future warming:

• for a further 0.9ºC warming from today’s temperatures, between 9% and 31% of the world’s species become committed to extinction, 
• for 1.5ºC warming, this number rises to between 15% and 37%,
• for 2.2ºC warming, it rises to between 21% and 52%, and
• if global temperatures exceed about 3.3ºC warming beyond today’s temperatures (about 4.0ºC above pre-industrial values), the best estimate is that between 40% and 70% of the world’s species become extinct. 
  Andrew Weaver, Keeping Our Cool, Penguin Group, 2008, p.218 

18.  Higher growing season temperatures can have dramatic impacts on agricultural productivity, farm incomes, and food security. . . In temperate regions, the hottest seasons on record will represent the future norm in many locations.
. . . Presently there are more than 3 billion people living in the tropics and subtropics, many of whom live on under $2 per day and depend primarily on agriculture for their livelihoods (4). . . Experimental and crop-based models for major grains in these regions show direct yield losses in the range of 2.5 to 16% for every 1°C increase in seasonal temperature (7, 8). . .Global climate change thus presents widespread risks of food insecurity.
. . . Regional disruptions can easily become global in character. Countries often respond to production and price volatility by restricting trade or pursuing large grain purchases in international markets—both of which can have destabilizing effects on world prices and global food security. In the future, heat stress on crops and livestock will occur in an environment of steadily rising demand for food and animal feed worldwide, making markets more vulnerable to sharp price swings.
. . . Climate model projections from the IPCC 2007 assessment suggest. . . as early as 2050, the median projected summer temperature is expected to be higher than any year on record in most tropical areas. By the end of the century, it is very likely (greater than 90% chance) that a large proportion of tropical and subtropical Asia and Africa will experience unprecedented seasonal average temperature, as will parts of South, Central, and North America and the Middle East
. . . Three important conclusions can be drawn from these projections. First, tropical countries experience less year-to-year temperature extremes than do temperate countries and therefore will be the first to experience unprecedented heat stress because of global climate change. By the end of the century, however, the seasonal growing temperature is likely to exceed the hottest season on record in temperate countries, and the future for agriculture in these regions will become equally daunting.

Second, the projected seasonal average temperature represents the median, not the tail, of the climate distribution and should therefore be considered the norm for the future. Indeed, the probability exceeds 90% that by the end of the century, the summer average temperature will exceed the hottest summer on record throughout the tropics and subtropics. Because these regions are home to about half the world’s population, the human consequences of global climate change could be enormous. 
Lastly, with growing season temperatures in excess of the hottest years on record for many countries, the stress on crops and livestock will become global in character. It will be extremely difficult to balance food deficits in one part of the world with food surpluses in another, unless major adaptation investments are made soon to develop crop varieties that are tolerant to heat and heat-induced water stress and irrigation systems suitable for diverse agroecosystems. . . National and international agricultural investments have been waning in recent decades and remain insufficient to meet near-term food needs in the world’s poorest countries, to say nothing of longer-term needs in the face of climate change (1).
1. R. Naylor, W. Falcon, Boston Rev. 33, 13 (2008).
4. World Bank, World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007).
7. S. Peng et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.101, 9971 (2004).
8. D. B. Lobell et al., Science 319, 607 (2008).
David. S. Battisti, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, and Rosamond L. Naylor, Program on Food Security and the Environment, Stanford University, Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat, 2 December 2008, Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity.pdf (602KB)

Rising food prices could spark worldwide unrest and threaten political stability. . . Sir John Holmes, undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, told a conference in Dubai that escalating prices would trigger protests and riots in vulnerable nations. He said food scarcity and soaring fuel prices would compound the damaging effects of global warming. Prices have risen 40% on average globally since last summer.
“The security implications [of the food crisis] should also not be underestimated as food riots are already being reported across the globe,” Holmes said. “Current food price trends are likely to increase sharply both the incidence and depth of food insecurity.”
He added that the biggest challenge to humanitarian work is climate change, which has doubled the number of disasters from an average of 200 a year to 400 a year in the past two decades.
. . . As well as this week’s violence in Egypt, the rising cost and scarcity of food has been blamed for: riots in Haiti in April that killed four people, violent protests in Ivory Coast, price riots in Cameroon in February that left 40 people dead, heated demonstrations in Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal, and protests in Uzbekistan, Yemen, Bolivia and Indonesia.  As well, UN staff in Jordan went on strike to demand a pay rise in the face of a 50% hike in prices, while Asian countries such as Cambodia, China, Vietnam, India and Pakistan have curbed rice exports to ensure supplies for their own residents.
David Adam, environment correspondent, The Guardian, Food price rises threaten global security – UN, Hunger riots will destabilise weak governments, says senior official, 9 April 2008,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/09/food.unitednations

According to Dr. William Dar, director general of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat) and the chairman of the Committee on Science and Technology of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the business-as-usual cannot continue when it comes to dealing with land degradation. . . “If we fail to combat land degradation and desertification, the consequences can be disastrous. We must use science to become better stewards of our precious inheritance.”
. . . According to the 2008 Global Hunger Index, 33 countries are showing alarming levels of hunger. Though the right to food is a basic human right, there are close to a billion people who suffer from chronic hunger. The Food and Agriculture Organization’s 2006 State of Food Insecurity Report cites agricultural growth as being critical for reducing hunger.
Failing to take measures to address desertification, land degradation and drought threats to sustainable land management will have a severe impact on food and water security, Dr Dar said. The UNCCD mechanism provides the platform for bringing together policy- makers and global scientific institutions to combat land degradation and desertification.
Science, Combating desertification is key to tackling global food crisis, 09 November 2008, 
http://desertification.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/combating-desertification-is-key-to-tackling-global-food-crisis-businessmirror/

19.  The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. 
Livestock’s contribution to environmental problems is on a massive scale and its potential contribution to their solution is equally large.  The impact is so significant that it needs to be addressed with urgency.  Major reduction in impact could be achieved at a reasonable cost.. . .The livestock sector is a major player [in climate change], responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent.  This is a higher share than transport.
The livestock sector accounts for 9% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, primarily from land-use changes.  The livestock sector emits 37% of anthropogenic methane (with 23 times the global warming potential [GWP] of CO2) most of that from enteric fermentation by ruminants.  It emits 65% of anthropogenic nitrous oxide (with 296 times the GP of CO2), the great majority from manure.  Livestock are also responsible for 64% of anthropogenic ammonia emissions, which contribute significantly to acid rain and acidification of ecosystems.
This high level of emissions opens up large opportunities for climate change mitigation through livestock actions.

• The livestock sector is by far the single largest anthropogenic user of land.  The total area occupied by grazing is equivalent to 26% of the ice-free terrestrial surface of the planet.  In addition, the total area dedicated to feedcrop production amounts to 33% of total arable land.  In all, livestock production accounts for 70% of all agricultural land and 30% of the land surface of the planet.
• The livestock sector is a key player in increasing water use, accounting for over 8% of global human water use and the largest sectoral source of water pollution.
• Livestock now account for about 20% of the total terrestrial animal biomass, and the 30% of the earth’s land surface that they now pre-empt was once habitat for wildlife.

Livestock’s Long Shadow, Environmental Issues and Options, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 2006,
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a0701e/a0701e00.pdf

Agriculture contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Agricultural soil and livestock directly emit large amounts of potent greenhouse gases. Agriculture’s indirect emissions include fossil fuel use in farm operations, the production of agrochemicals and the conversion of land to agriculture. The total global contribution of agriculture, considering all direct and indirect emissions, is between 8.5 – 16.5 Pg CO2-eq1,2, which represents between 17 and 32% of all global human-induced GHG emissions, including land use changes.

Jessica Bellarby, Bente Foereid, Astley Hastings and Peter Smith from the University of Aberdeen and a lead author on the latest International Panel on Climate Change report, Cool Farming: Climate impacts of agriculture and mitigation potential, January 2008, http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/cool-farming-full-report 

20.  In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. Stopping the loggers is the fastest and cheapest solution to climate change.
The accelerating destruction of the rainforests that form a precious cooling band around the Earth’s equator, is now being recognized as one of the main causes of climate change. Carbon emissions from deforestation far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories. . . Figures from the Oxford-based Global Canopy Programme (GCP), an alliance of leading rainforest scientists, summarising the latest findings from the United Nations, and building on estimates contained in the Stern Report, show deforestation accounts for up to 25% of global emissions of heat-trapping gases, while transport and industry account for 14% each; and aviation makes up only 3% of the total.

“Tropical forests are the elephant in the living room of climate change,” said Andrew Mitchell, the head of the GCP. . . As the GCP’s report concludes: “If we lose forests, we lose the fight against climate change.”
Daniel Howden, Deforestation: The hidden cause of global warming, 14 May 2007, http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/deforestation-the-hidden-cause-of-global-warming-448734.html

National and international plans to combat climate change must address the root causes of deforestation, which is responsible for nearly 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) official said in testimony before the U.S. Senate today. 
“Simply put, we cannot make progress in battling climate change unless we reduce the alarming rate of deforestation that is occurring on an on-going basis in a number of developing nations.”
Joe Pouliot, 22 April 2008, WWF, Reducing Deforestation is Key to Addressing Climate Change, WWF Official Tells Congress, http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/media/press/2008/WWFPresitem8733.html 

In most tropical countries, the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions is deforestation.
The Anthropologist: Steve Schwartzman, Fighting Global Warming by Slowing Tropical Deforestation, 20 February 2008, http://www.edf.org/article.cfm?contentID=7652

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References and Excerpts – The Economic Urgency of Global Warming

A:  Why the World should aggressively and expeditiously act now on climate change
 
1.  The bold steps that are needed to solve the climate crisis are exactly the same steps that ought to be taken in order to solve the economic crisis and the energy security crisis.
Economists across the spectrum — including Martin Feldstein and Lawrence Summers — agree that large and rapid investments in a jobs-intensive infrastructure initiative is the best way to revive our economy in a quick and sustainable way.  Op-Ed contributor, The Climate for Change, Al Gore, 9 November 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/opinion/09gore.html 

Development and climate change are the two big issues of the 21st Century. And unless we tackle them together we will fail on both of them. Climate change, if it goes on unmanaged will undermine development.
…Lord Stern explained that continued high levels of emissions reflect a ‘business-as-usual’ mindset, a failure to accurately reflect the global social cost of carbon emissions in our economy and in our daily life. Business-as-usual, he said, “is the biggest market failure the world has ever seen.”
http://blogs.cgdev.org/globaldevelopment/2008/06/lord_nicholas_stern_calls_for.php  June 2008

The collision of these two crunches could be a boon. Just as the banking system imploded when it was left unregulated, the current carbon-spewing economy is on course to ecologically implode. The path out of both crunches is the same: concerted state action and re-regulation. To get out of the credit crunch, we need a big package of job creation and economic stimulus. To get out of the climate crunch, we need an army of millions of new workers – and billions in public spending – to insulate every home, construct millions of new renewable energy sources, and work on endless innovations that help us to decarbonise.
. . . People who won’t stop warming for the sake of growth are like a man who won’t stop his house burning down because he makes a living toasting marshmallows on the flames. . . This is, perversely, a dazzling time to be alive: every human being who ever lives will deal with the decisions we make here. . . We could be the people who saw this threat to our species coming and remade our societies to stop it.
Johann Hari, Don’t kill the planet in the name of saving the economy, 20 October 2008,
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-dont-kill-the-planet-in-the-name-of-saving-the-economy-966936.html
 
2.  Xie Zhenhua, vice director of China’s National Development and Reform Commission and the man responsible for steering the government’s climate change policy recently said that the financial crisis has given China and the world a great opportunity to transform economic development, consumer behaviour, people’s lifestyles, and the structure of the economy and industry.
New economic opportunities will be created by reforming our energy industry and dealing with climate change.  Conversely, if we do not take this opportunity to tackle the climate crisis we not only miss a great chance to solve the financial crisis we will also have to suffer the disastrous effects of global warming which will further bruise the world economy.
Supporting energy conservation and the development of low-carbon industries will not only help us to overcome the present economic crisis but will also help with long-term sustainable development.
…Becoming more energy efficient and focusing on developing renewable sources of energy, can heal the economy, boost industry and improve livelihoods. And if these measures are supported by strong and vigorous government policies then they can be a new driving force for economic development.
Barack Obama – can he fix the economy by fixing the environment?, 19 November 2008,
http://www.greenpeace.org/china/en/news/ailun-obama

We have to completely overhaul not just the economy, but the way we think about the economy.  The foundations for most of our economic models, accounting tools, and business practices have their root in the eighteenth and nineteenth centures.  At that time there was an awful lot of nature – and relatively few people.  Today there are an awful lot of people, but schockingly little nature left.  Most Western economic models assume cheap and abundant energy forever.  They assume cheap and abundant everything forever – such that we can throw millions of tons materials into landfills and incinerators every, year, year after year, and never run out of anything important.
There are appeciable and obvious limits to resources that the textbooks once described as inexhaustible.   
Van Jones, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, HarperCollins Publishers, 2008, p. 11

If the federal government shifts its policy to fully back the green economy, the private sector can create millions more jobs in new clean and green industries.
Van Jones, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution an Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, HarperCollins Publishers, 2008, p. 15

“There is a lot of talk among politicians that we need a massive jobs program to pull the economy out of the current recession,” Jacobson, author of a new study at Stanford University, said. “Putting people to work building wind turbines, solar plants, geothermal plants, electric vehicles and transmission lines would not only create jobs but would also reduce costs due to health care, crop damage and climate damage from current vehicle and electric power pollution, as well as provide the world with a truly unlimited supply of clean power.”
A battery-powered U.S. vehicle fleet could be charged by 73,000 to 144,000 5-megawatt wind turbines, fewer than the 300,000 airplanes the U.S. produced during World War II and far easier to build. Additional turbines could provide electricity for other energy needs.
Louis Bergeron, Stanford Report, Wind, water and sun beat other energy alternatives, study finds, 10 December 2008, http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2009/january7/power-010709.html

3.  Sir Nicholas Stern, the former chief economist of the World Bank who analyzed the costs of climate change in 2006, predicted that left unaddressed, the immense impacts of global warming could cost between 5% and 20% of global GDP. Preventing that substantial economic hit would cost about 1% of world GDP, Stern said. In other words, the costs of acting are much less than the costs of doing nothing.

That was then. Now, Stern estimates that the costs of mitigation have doubled, to 2% of global GDP. For one thing, the world hasn’t acted yet to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Each year we fail to act, mitigation gets harder and more costly. For another, climate change is happening faster than expected.
Climate Action Brief – Other Economic Tsunamis on the Horizon, September 24, 2008
http://www.climateactionproject.com/climate_briefs.php

4.  Economic arguments that suggest it’s too expensive to act now . . . fall apart when it comes to sustained, irreversible changes to our planet.  Or frankly, the destruction of civilization as we know it.  How do you cost the commitment to extinction of 40% to 70% of all species?  [The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report suggests this will occur at global temperatures exceeding 3.3ºC warming beyond today’s temperatures] How do you value the cost of a life? 
Andrew Weaver, Keeping Our Cool, Penguin Group, 2008, pps. 255-256

“A key aspect of this work is that it shows that even species existing in protected areas can be under imminent threat from climate change. Maintaining natural habitats is essential, but not always sufficient, to permit species to survive. The problem of climate related extinction is only realistically tackled through governmental and international energy and emissions policies,” said co-author of a major Nature paper, Alison Cameron, from the University of Leeds.  “An immediate and progressive switch to technologies that produce little or no new greenhouse gases, combined with active removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, could save a million or more species from extinction,” said Thomas.
University of Leeds Press Release, Climate change threatens a million species with extinction, 7 January 2004,
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/media/current/extinction.htm

If we fail to act in time to avert the climate catastrophe . . . We face loss of more than two thirds of the species on the planet, and a hot, acidic, and largely lifeless ocean.
ClimateProgress.org, Is the Financial Crisis More Dire Than The Climate Crisis, 21 September 2008,  http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/21/is-the-financial-crisis-more-dire-than-the-climate-crisis/

5.  Both the [Canadian] public and business leaders are ready for a change.  On October 1, 2007, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) issued a statement calling for “aggressive action to tackle climate change, drive energy innovation and strengthen economic performance”.  The CCCE called for a national plan to deal with global warming, noting that everyone would have to accept their “share of the responsibility”.  They viewed curbing global warming as an economic opportunity.  The CCCE called for “price signals”, which translate into assigning a future cost to the price of greenhouse gas emissions.  And this cost, they argued, could be applied through either an environmental tax (carbon tax) or a cap-and-trade system.
Andrew Weaver, Keeping Our Cool, Penguin Group, 2008, pps. 280-281

358 U.S. mayors (representing 55 million Americans) have signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement pledging to meet or beat Kyoto goals in their communities.
Environmental Defense Fund website, Global Warming by the Numbers, 16 January 2007
http://www.edf.org/article.cfm?contentID=5816

On November 30, 2007, leaders from one hundred and fifty of the world’s largest companies issued The Bali Communique, which called for:

• a comprehensive, legally binding United Nations framework to tackle climate change;
• emission reduction targets to be guided primarily by science;
• those countries that have already industrialised to make the greatest effort;
• world leaders to seize the window of opportunity and agree on a working plan of negotiations to ensure an agreement can come into force post 2010 (when the existing Kyotot Protocol expires).  

Andrew Weaver, Keeping Our Cool, Penguin Group, 2008, p. 281

6.  The Presidential Climate Action Project, a $2 million initiative that was finalized 13 November 2008, is a comprehensive set of action options for President Obama to take decisive action on global climate change.  It contains a broad menu of policy and program recommendations for the President, including:

• reduce America’s greenhouse gas emission 25 to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020
• cut America’s petroleum consumption in half by 2020
• generate 30 percent of America’s electricity from renewable technologies by 2020
• improve economy-wide energy efficiency 50 percent by 2030
• develop standards and plans for a “smart grid” transmission system
• commit to join other nations in holding the increase in the Earth’ temperature to no more than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels
• collaborate with China on reducing both nations’ greenhouse gas emissions and demonstrate cooperation between the developed and developing world
• create 5 million new green jobs now
• take the lead in renewables
• redirect federal subsidies for fossil and nuclear energy to emerging renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies

The United Nations reports renewable energy investments are expected to reach $450 billion annually between now and 2012, and more than $600 billion annually from 2020 to 2030. The global market for environmental products and services is expected to double to $2.74 trillion by the end of the next decade.
The Department of Energy reports that project investments in renewable energy technologies reached more than $13 billion in 2007.

A recent study by Navigant Consulting estimates that the eight-year extension of the federal solar tax credit (approved 3 October 2008) will result in $232 billion in new investment in the solar industry by 2016.

Carbon pricing is expected to produce $100 billion to $200 billion in federal revenues in the first year it is fully implemented.  Under the Lieberman-Warner bill that reached the Senate in 2008, revenues would reach an estimated $6.1 trillion in current dollars by 2050.
Presidential Climate Action Plan, http://www.climateactionproject.com/plan.php 

NOTE:  A two page PCAP extract follows this reference section.

Barack Obama plans $150 billion in investment over 10 years to create 5 million jobs in the auto and clean-energy industries.
Daniel Whitten, Obama May Put Renewable-Energy Plan Ahead of Climate Package, 5 November 2008, 
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a.YTOC9grPB8&refer=home
 
7.  What follows is a five-part plan by Al Gore to repower America with a commitment to producing 100 percent of our electricity from carbon-free sources within 10 years, by 2018.  It is a plan that would simultaneously move us toward solutions to the climate crisis and the economic crisis — and create millions of new jobs that cannot be outsourced.

• First, offer large-scale investment in incentives for the construction of concentrated solar thermal plants, wind farms, advanced plants in geothermal hot spots that could produce large amounts of electricity.
• Second, begin the planning and construction of a unified national smart grid for the transport of renewable electricity from the rural places where it is mostly generated to the cities where it is mostly used. New high-voltage, low-loss underground lines can be designed with “smart” features that provide consumers with sophisticated information and easy-to-use tools for conserving electricity, eliminating inefficiency and reducing their energy bills.
• Third, we should help the automobile industry (not only the Big Three but the innovative new startup companies as well) to convert quickly to plug-in hybrids that can run on the renewable electricity that will be available as the rest of this plan matures.
• Fourth, embark on a nationwide effort to retrofit buildings with better insulation and energy-efficient windows and lighting.
• Fifth, we should put a price on carbon, and lead the world’s efforts to replace the Kyoto treaty next year in Copenhagen with a more effective treaty that caps global carbon dioxide emissions and encourages nations to invest together in efficient ways to reduce global warming pollution quickly, including by sharply reducing deforestation.

Al Gore, Op-Ed contributor, The Climate for Change, 9 November 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/opinion/09gore.html

At a speech at George Mason University on Thursday, Obama repeated his intention to promote the development of clean-technologies such as solar and wind energy, and to upgrade the electricity distribution system to enable smart-grid technologies. Obama said, “To finally spark the creation of a clean-energy economy, we will double the production of alternative energy in the next three years. We will modernize more than 75% of federal buildings and improve the energy efficiency of 2 million American homes, saving consumers and taxpayers billions (of dollars) on our energy bills. In the process, we will put Americans to work in new jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced–jobs building solar panels and wind turbines; constructing fuel-efficient cars and buildings; and developing the new energy technologies that will lead to even more jobs, more savings, and a cleaner, safer planet in the bargain.”
Posted by Martin LaMonic, cnet news, Obama’s stimuation plan: The energy debate, 9 January 2009,
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10138356-54.html

An Obama aide on Friday said the administration would seek to add 20 gigawatts (GW) or more of wind power and 4 GW of geothermal and solar power in the next three years, doubling the nation’s current renewable power base of 24 GW through loan guarantees and, eventually, national renewable energy requirements.
Nichola Groom, Rueters, Obama renewables plan more ambitious than appears, 9 January 2009, http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE5086Y220090109

8.  A new report from the nonprofit American Solar Energy Society shows that as many as 1 out of 4 workers in the U.S. will be working in the renewable energy or energy efficiency industries by 2030.  This is the nation’s first comprehensive report on the size and growth of the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries – and the numbers are great news for American workers. This green collar job report shows that these industries already generate 8.5 million jobs in the U.S., and with appropriate public policy, could grow to as many as 40 million jobs by 2030.
By the year 2030, the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries could generate up to $4.5 trillion in revenue in the U.S., but only with the appropriate public policy, including a renewable portfolio standard, renewable energy incentives, public education, and R&D.  Renewable energy and energy efficiency industries today generate nearly $1 trillion in revenue in the U.S. contributing more than $150 billion in tax revenue at the federal, state, and local levels.
Report officially released on 8 November 2007 in Washington D.C., Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency: Economic Drivers for the 21st Century, www.ases.org, American Solar Energy Society, Green-Collar Jobs: The New Cash Crop, 6 November 2007, http://www.ases.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=29&Itemid=16

9.  Kevin McCarty, Managing Director of the Mayors Climate Protection Center of the U.S Conference of Mayors, said there could be a fivefold increase in green jobs within the next two decades by investing in renewable energy sources, alternative fuels for the transportation sector, and improvements in energy efficiency in homes and commercial buildings.
Green Jobs would stimulate the American Economy, 10 November 2008, http://earthdaynetwork.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!FE94E768F855775C!1748.entry

10.  The old U.S. energy economy, fueled by oil, coal, and natural gas, is being replaced by one powered by wind, solar, and geothermal energy. 

Having overtaken California two years ago, Texas, long the leading oil-producing state, is now also the leading generator of electricity from wind and has nearly 6,000 megawatts of wind-generating capacity online and a staggering 39,000 megawatts in the construction and planning stages. When all this is completed, Texas will have 45,000 megawatts of wind-generating capacity (think 45 coal-fired power plants), which will more than satisfy the residential needs of the state’s 24 million people and enable Texas to feed electricity to nearby states.  And other states such as Iowa, Minnesota, Washington, and Colorado are emerging as wind superpowers.  In South Dakota, a 5,050-megawatt wind farm is under construction and will generate five times as much electricity as the state’s 780,000 residents currently use.  This project includes building a transmission line along an abandoned rail line across Iowa, feeding electricity into Illinois and the country’s industrial heartland.

Solar power is also expanding at a breakneck pace. The nation’s wealth of solar energy is being harnessed by using both photovoltaic cells and solar thermal power plants to convert sunlight into electricity. For solar cell installations, California, with its Million Solar Roofs plan, is far and away the leader followed by New Jersey and Nevada.  The largest U.S. solar cell installation today is a 14-megawatt array at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, but PG&E has entered into two solar cell power contracts with a combined capacity of 800 megawatts. Together, these plants will cover 12 square miles of desert with solar cells and will have a peak output comparable to that of a large coal-fired power plant.

Solar thermal plants that use mirrors to concentrate sunlight on a vessel containing a fluid—heating it to 750 degrees Fahrenheit to generate steam and produce power—have suddenly become an enormously attractive technology. The United States has the world’s only large solar thermal complex, a 350-megawatt project completed in 1991. But as of September 2008 there are 10 large solar thermal power plants under construction or in development in the United States, ranging in size from 180 megawatts to 550 megawatts.  Within the next three years, the United States will likely go from 420 megawatts of solar thermal generating capacity to close to 3,500 megawatts—an eightfold jump.

Geothermal energy is also developing at an explosive rate. As of 2008 the United States has nearly 3,000 megawatts of geothermal generating capacity, 2,500 of which are in California. Some 96 geothermal power plants now under development in twelve western states are expected to double U.S. geothermal generating capacity.

At a time of economic turmoil and rising joblessness, these new industries can generate thousands of new jobs each week. To ensure that this shift to renewables continues at a rapid rate, national leadership is needed in one key area—building a strong national grid in order to unleash the full potential of renewable energy wealth.

Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute, New Energy Economy Emerging in the United States, 15 October 2008,
http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update77.htm

B:  Why it makes sense economically
 
11.  The country that becomes the leader in new energy technology (ET) will have the most stable economy and garner the most respect on the international stage, said [author Thomas] Friedman.  The country that leads that industry is going to have the most national security, economic security, innovative companies, and I think global respect.

If the United States does not take the lead in the ET revolution, others—China, India, Europe—will, but they won’t do it as fast or as well as the United States, he says. . . “This country has never been more alive in terms of innovation,” he says, but our leaders have not capitalized on it. He thinks the government must play an important role—“for markets to produce innovation, they need to be shaped. . . Friedman criticized the pop culture environmentalism that claims people can save the Earth by changing their daily lives in small, painless ways.
Thomas Friedman: U.S. Can Lead the Green Revolution and Renew Itself, October 21, 2008
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1413&fuseaction=topics.item&news_id=484309

12.  Confronting the mounting energy and global warming crises represents an extraordinary opportunity to reinvigorate the economy . . . Dollars directed toward renewable energy and energy efficiency would result in more jobs than spending in most all other areas. . . “Green” investments, on average, create more than twice as many jobs per dollar invested than traditional fossil fuel-based generating technologies . . . Near-term green investments can immediately stimulate the economy, move the country along the road toward economic recovery, create millions of good jobs, and put a solid down payment on the low-carbon future vital for our long-term economic growth.
Bracken Hendricks, Benjamin Goldstein, A Strategy for Green Recovery, Stimulating the Economy Today by Rebuilding for Future Prosperity, 10 November 2008,
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2008/green_recovery_memo.html
 
13.  In a detailed new study from Stanford University, Mark Z. Jacobson makes one key point that deserves repeating over and over again: the renewable resources available to power the planet are staggering . . . Sufficient clean natural resources (e.g., wind, sunlight, hot water, ocean energy, gravitational energy) exists to power all energy for the world.
Wind was by far the most promising [energy alternative], Jacobson said, owing to a better-than 99 percent reduction in carbon and air pollution emissions; the consumption of less than 3 square kilometers of land for the turbine footprints to run the entire U.S. vehicle fleet (given the fleet is composed of battery-electric vehicles); the saving of about 15,000 lives per year from premature air-pollution-related deaths from vehicle exhaust in the United States; and virtually no water consumption. . . Because the wind turbines would require a modest amount of spacing between them to allow room for the blades to spin, wind farms would occupy about 0.5 percent of all U.S. land.  Land between turbines on wind farms would be simultaneously available as farmland or pasture or could be left as open space.
Jacobson said that while some people are under the impression that wind and wave power are too variable to provide steady amounts of electricity, his research group has already shown in previous research that by properly coordinating the energy output from wind farms in different locations, the potential problem with variability can be overcome and a steady supply of baseline power delivered to users.
. . . Going even further, the report points out that worldwide emissions of fossil- fuel carbon could be eliminated entirely by powering the world economy with 2.2 to 3.6 million 5-megawatt wind turbines. No one expects the world to rely exclusively on wind-power, but the calculation reveals just how large and clean the wind resource really is.
The globally-available wind power over land in locations worldwide with mean wind speeds exceeding 6.9 m s−1 at 80 m is about 72 trillion watts (630–700 PWh yr−1), as determined from data analysis.23 This resource is five times the world’s total power production and 20 times the world’s electric power production.

Global Renewable Energy Resources        Max           Potential     Current   [1TW = 1 trillion watts]
Wind over land > 6.9 m/s (TW)                72             47               0.02
Solar over land (TW)                                 1700         340             0.001
Geothermal (TW)                                      160           0.15            0.007
Hydroelectric (TW)                                   1.9           <1.9             0.32
Wave+Tidal (TW)                                      3.5            0.5              0.00006
Global electric power demand (TW)          1.6- 1.8
Global overall power demand (TW)           9.4-13.6

[23]  C. L. Archer and M. Z. Jacobson, Evaluation of global wind power, J. Geophys. Res., 2005, 110, D12110 [Links].
Joseph Romm, Guest contributor, Gristmill, Study: Wind, solar baseload easily beat nuclear, 15 December 2008, http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/12/15/113343/78
Louis Bergeron, Stanford Report, Wind, water and sun beat other energy alternatives, study finds, 10 December 2008, http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2009/january7/power-010709.html
Mark Z. Jacobson, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security, 1 December 2008
http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArticleforfree.cfm?JournalCode=EE&Year=2009&ManuscriptID=b809990c&Iss=Advance_Article
Enough solar energy falls on the Earth’s surface in one hour to power all of human civilization for a year. [8]  The warmth from that same sun creates the weather patterns that also drive the winds; modern wind turbines can turn a gentle breeze into raw power.  The interaction between the Earth and the moon creates the tides of the ocean, which turbines in the sea can convert to usable energy. 
[8]  Speech by Susan Hockfield, Pesident of MIT, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual conference,
http://web.mit.edu/hockfield/speeches/2008-aaas.html
Van Jones: The Green Collar Economy, HarperCollins Publishers, 2008, p. 5
 
The sun’s rays deliver to our globe daily 15,000 times more energy than the daily consumption of nuclear and fossil energy.
Mariah Blake, Correspondent CS Monitor, Interview: Hermann Scheer, German pioneer in renewable energies, 20 August 2008,
http://web.mit.edu/hockfield/speeches/2008-aaas.html
Van Jones: The Green Collar Economy, HarperCollins Publishers, 2008, p. 5
 
The sun’s rays deliver to our globe daily 15,000 times more energy than the daily consumption of nuclear and fossil energy.
Mariah Blake, Correspondent CS Monitor, Interview: Hermann Scheer, German pioneer in renewable energies, 20 August 2008,
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/06/26/f-qanda-mcbean.html#letter

15.  “There are too many links between [energy companies] and the government, and this is a barrier for adequate renewable energy legislation,” Mr. Scheer said. “And the only [ones] who can overcome this are the legislation chambers themselves. This is a question of political will and political strategy – only that.”
Byline: Chris Turner – Source: cturner@globeandmail.com, The wind at his back, The Globe And Mail, 2 August 2008 -Page: F7 -Section: Science,
http://www.cleanairalliance.org/node/580

The main problem [to switching to renewables] was the barriers of the conventional power structures – the monopolization of the energy supply by large power companies and the legal framework, which was designed to their interests.
The big energy companies have too many vested interests in sticking with conventional energy sources.
Mariah Blake, Correspondent CS Monitor, Interview: Hermann Scheer, German pioneer in renewable energies, 20 August 2008,
http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/08/20/interview-hermann-scheer-german-pioneer-in-renewable-energies/

Van Jones is critical of “multinational corporations (who) benefit from lopsided trade deals that protect capital and copyrights, but fail to protect workers and the environment. Sadly, most of the economic power we need to green the Earth is still in the hands of people with a ‘pillage and pave’ mentality.” (p. 62)
Ted Glick, Making a Green Revolution, Future Hope Column, 19 October 2008, http://westcoastclimateequity.org/?p=748#more-748

16.  The present political approach is to set carbon emission reduction goals for 2025 or 2050.  The politicians do not expect the goals to be reached, and they define escape hatches that guarantee they will not.  They expect to be retired or become lobbyists before the day of reckoning.  The goals are mainly for bragging rights: “Mine is bigger than yours!”
Andrew Revkin, James Hansen, Hansen on Next Climate Steps, June 2008,
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/james-hansen-tax-c02-emitters-pay-citizens/

What is required, first and foremost, are market-based incentives to induce Americans to use less energy and to produce more energy in ways that emit less carbon.
The Changing Climate On Climate Change, Joseph Stiglitz, 2007,
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz80

17.  One big problem is simply that green employers can’t find enough trained, green-collar workers to do all the jobs.
R. Margolis, J. Zuboy, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Nontechnical Barriers to Solar Energy Use: Review of Recent Literature, September 2006, http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/40116.pdf.

18.  An overstressed and inefficient national electrical grid can’t accommodate new kinds of power and a byzantine array of local rules impedes access by innovators to national markets.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Foreword, The Green Collar Economy, HarperCollins Publishers, 2008, p. ix

19.  In 2002 people around the world produced 11.7 million tons of shellfish, representing a value of 10.5 billion dollars. Almost 15 % of this concerned Pacific oyster or mussel. Because of this major economic importance a diminished yield of these species will have a large financial impact. Besides that, these species are invaluable for the biodiversity and nature in general along our shorelines. The so-called “ecosystem engineers” create the right underwater climate for other life at the spot. Also, shellfish are an important food source for birds.
Science Daily, Science News, Ocean Acidification Predicted To Harm Shellfish, Aquaculture, 19 March 2007
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070318133722.htm

Timothy Wootton, a biologist at the University of Chicago, led a team of researchers who analysed the acidity, salinity and temperature of water around Tatoosh Island off the northwestern coast of Washington state. 
Over eight years, the pH level of the water fell by 0.36 to about 8.1, more than 23 times more than the predicted fall of just 0.015 points. . . According to computer models of the local marine life, the rise in acidity is likely to cause substantial falls in the numbers of mussels and large goose barnacles, while algae and populations of smaller barnacles may increase. In turn, the changing distribution of these organisms will have effects on marine life that feed on them.
Ian Sample, Science correspondent, The Guardian, Unexpected rise in carbon-fuelled ocean acidity threatens shellfish, say scientists, 25 November 2008,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/25/water-ocean-acidity-shellfish

The acidic seawater is moving closer to shallow waters containing the bulk of marine life, according to an article this month in the journal Science. The increasingly corrosive water threatens the survival of many organisms, from microscopic plants and animals at the base of the food chain to shellfish, corals and the young of some marine species.  The latest research indicates acidic water is appearing along the Pacific Coast decades earlier than expected.  The research involved experts from Oregon, California and Canada.  The acidified water does not pose a threat to humans, but it could dissolve the shells of clams, oysters and other shellfish.
One of the article’s authors, Christopher Sabine, told about watching small marine snails placed in water of similar acidity to that recorded last summer off the northern California coast.  “We actually saw the shells dissolving off these living organisms. They were dissolving off the terapods as they were swimming around,” Sabine said. Such creatures comprise as much as 40 percent of the Pacific king salmon’s diet.
Global ocean currents make the Pacific Northwest’s coastal ecosystems particularly vulnerable to acidification’s effects, Sabine said. A worldwide “conveyor belt” very slowly carries colder water from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific. Along the way, the water accumulates carbon dioxide from dead organisms, so it naturally has a higher carbon dioxide concentration before man-made carbon dioxide is added. A process known as ‘up-welling’ drags this water into shallower, coastal areas.  “As long as CO2 continues to increase in the atmosphere, the oceans will continue to absorb that,” Sabine said. “What we’re seeing is only going to get worse.”
. . . If diatoms, corals, clams and oysters succumb to this it not only wipes out the shellfish industry but potentially the entire marine food chain,” said Bishop, a fifth-generation shellfish harvester.
Dan Catchpole, Associated Press, Washington: Seattle hearing on rising acidity in Pacific Ocean, 27 May 2008,
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=100611&keybold=ocean%20AND%20%20acidified

20. Government-mandated and -subsidized ethanol from corn will go down in history as the “iraq war” of environmental solutions: ill-considered, costly, and distastrous.  In a world full of hungry people, burning food should be ciminally punished – not financially subsidized.
Van Jones, The Green Collar Economy, HarperCollins Publishers, 2008, p. 6

It is a great mistake to think about growing biofuels only from the few plants that provide food.  The first step should be to make use of residues from food production.  Ninety per cent of the biomass, like straw, is not used for food.  Refining it to make biofuels would provide a second income for farmers, and the waste from biorefineries, like ash, could be used to replace chemical fertilisers.  In this integrated system, biofuels would be the basis for organic agriculture and there would be no competition for land between food and fuel.
Fred Pearce, Inverview: Bring on the solar revolution, NewScientist.com, 21 May 2008,
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826572.000-interview-bring-on-the-solar-revolution.html?page=2
 
Concerns about global warming . . . will have significant effects on a range of commodity and asset prices. One of the more dramatic set of effects relates to biofuels; the increasing importance of this is likely to have (and in some places already has had) large impacts on land and food prices.
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel-winning economost, looks at climate change, by Daniel Altman, 25 September
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/25/business/glob26.php

[Biofuels] may have an important role to play in replacing some oil use—provided that at least five conditions are met. They must reduce greenhouse gas emissions substantially; not displace food crops and threaten food security for the world’s poor; uphold the integrity of critical ecosystems, particularly in tropical forests; and strengthen the human rights of community farmers and Indigenous people. Most importantly, biofuels should be developed only as part of a broader strategy to reduce fuel consumption and redesign mobility.
Michael Brune, Coming Clean, Sierra Club/Counterpoint, 2008, p. 140  

21.  OTTAWA – The Canadian Renewable Fuels Association (CRFA) today welcomed Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s announcement of $2 billion in new incentives for renewable fuels.  The renewable fuels producer payment will provide $1.5 billion over 7 years to domestic ethanol and biodiesel producers, and create a $500 million fund for the commercialization of next generation renewable fuels technologies such as cellulose ethanol. 19 March 2007, Biofuels Get Big Boost in 2007 Budget
http://www.bioxcorp.com/web_resource/news/2007-03-19.pdf

Ottawa, ON: In a milestone decision today, the House of Commons overwhelmingly passed a bill that will implement a national Renewable Fuel Standard, requiring ethanol and biodiesel blended transportation fuels in Canada. It is the first legislation of its kind in Canada.

“Today, the House of Commons voted to grow beyond oil. Thanks to this vote, we will lower greenhouse gas emissions, provide new opportunities for Canadian farmers, and bring about competition at the pump.” – Gordon Quaiattini, President, Canadian Renewable Fuels Association. . . . “GM Canada welcomes the new Canadian legislative support for renewable biofuels that provide significant GHG reduction benefits. GM offers consumers flexible fuel vehicles that can operate seamlessly on 85% ethanol blends (E85) or regular gasoline.” – David Paterson, Vice President Corporate and Environmental Affairs, General Motors of Canada Ltd 28 May 2008, House Of Commons Passes Milestone Biofuels Bill,
http://www.bioxcorp.com/web_resource/news/20080610075133_ReleaseC33_052808_1.pdf 

In 2007, the Federal government of Canada passed a federal mandate for a 5 percent ethanol blend in automobile gas by 2010 and a 2 percent renewable content in diesel fuel and heating oil by 2012.
According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) “corn used for ethanol production is forecasted to increase by 34% while feed use should increase only slightly” and “Canada’s ethanol production is expected to triple, to over 650 million litres per year by 2010.”
The demand for corn for ethanol production in the USA and Canada has increased the price of this commodity, in turn increasing the price for food products related to corn. Products such as tortillas and cornflakes to cattle and chickens that eat corn have increased dramatically in price.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008, Economic downturn offers an opportunity to end some bad ideas,
http://naturecanadablog.blogspot.com/2008/11/economic-downturn-offers-opportunity-to.html and
From article by Eric Reguly, Globe and Mail 3 November 2008, Ethanol producers’ unworthy heyday finally over,
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/v5/content/subscribe?user_URL=http://www.theglobeandmail.com%2Fservlet%2Fstory%2FGAM.20081103.IBREGULY03%2FTPStory%2FTPComment&ord=24713404&brand=theglobeandmail&force_login=true

Examples of current ethanol plant development:

• 3 September 2008 – Northern Ethanol was approved for 9,000 kilowatts of low-cost hydro-electric power from the New York Power Authority’s Niagara Power Project. The cost of the ethanol plant is pegged at $245 million. Production would  include 108 million gallons of ethanol per year, from 37 million bushels of corn. 
  http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2008/09/01/daily16.html
• 9 May 2008 – In Canada, Farm Tech has proposed a $185 million co-op corn ethanol plant in Ontario; GreenField Ethanol is constructing a $185 million plant near Johnstown that will be operational by year end.
  http://biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2008/05/09/farm-tech-proposes-185-million-corn-ethanol-plant-in-canada-financing-tough/
• 17 October 2008 – Northern Ethanol stated that local opposition in Ontario to its plans for two 108 Mgy ethanol plants in Sarnia and Barrie have resulted in shelving of the Barrie project.  But the company confirmed that groundbreaking in spring for the Sarnia plant will go forward as previously scheduled. The original project cost for Sarnia was estimated at $210 million before high-end pollution control equipment was added. 
  http://biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2008/10/17/canadas-northern-ethanol-cancels-barrie-project-proceeding-with-108-mgy-sarnia-plant/
• 12 March 2008 – Ontario has been best known in biofuels for the 15.8 Mgy Biox biodiesel plant in Hamilton, Ontario. Biox Corp. recently announced plans for an IPO to raise $150 million in new capital. 
  http://biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2008/05/05/northern-ethanol-secures-9mw-of-niagara-power-for-proposed-ethanol-plant/
• 12 March 2008 – Methes Energies announced the completion of its 1.3 Mgy biodiesel plant in Mississauga, Ontario.  The demonstration plant is intended to showcase the company’s Denami 600 biodiesel processor. 
  http://biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2008/03/12/methes-energies-completes-13-mgy-biodiesel-demonstration-plant-in-ontario/
• 20 November 2008 – GreenField Ethanol, Canada’s largest ethanol producer, will hold a media event at its newest plant in Johnstown, Ontario, on November 21, 2008 when the first shipment of corn will be delivered. 
  http://finance.alphatrade.com/story/2008-11-20/
  CNW/200811201330CANADANWCANADAPR_C2710.html                                                             

Western Canadian wheat growers anticipate ethanol will energize the wheat market there in the same way it has the U.S. corn market by creating a new use for the dominant grain crop.  For more than 25 years, ethanol has been produced in a small way on the Canadian prairies. This year, two new plants coming on line will boost total ethanol capacity. Ethanol capacity will more than double this year with Husky’s second 130 MMly plant commissioned in December at Minnedosa, Manitoba, and Terra Grain Fuels Inc.’s 150 MMly plant at Belle Plaine, Saskatchewan, scheduled to start up this spring.  While eastern Canada relies on corn for ethanol, western Canada’s growing industry is turning to wheat as the primary feedstock.
Suzanne Retka Schill, Move Over Corn, Wheat’s King in Western Canada,
http://www.biofuelsmagazine.ca/article.jsp?article_id=84&article_title=Move+Over+Corn%2C+Wheat%3Fs+Kingin+Western+Canada&q=&page=all

22.  One of the impacts of growing more corn in Canada and particularly the USA is that farmers are switching to corn from soy and wheat because it is more profitable. . .One of the consequences of this is a stimulation of the soy production elsewhere, particularly in Amazonia and other parts of South America. In Brazil, an increase in burning of rain forest in the Amazon basin for conversion to soy production has been directly related to the decline in US soy production because of corn production for ethanol.
A study produced by Tim Searchinger, a research scholar at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, found that when “taking into account expected worldwide land-use changes, corn-based ethanol, instead of reducing greenhouse gases by 20 per cent, will increase it by 93 per cent compared to using gasoline over a 30-year period.” This is due to both the growing of the corn crop – the fertilizers and pesticides used – and the processing that is associated with creating ethanol as the final product.
Our experiment to produce ethanol from corn makes no economic sense and no environmental sense. . . We should not be subsidizing the production of ethanol from corn in Canada.  One can only hope that this economic crisis will cause policy makers to rethink this misadventure with corn-based ethanol.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008, Economic downturn offers an opportunity to end some bad ideas,
http://naturecanadablog.blogspot.com/2008/11/economic-downturn-offers-opportunity-to.html
From article by Eric Reguly, Globe and Mail 3 November 2008, Ethanol producers’ unworthy heyday finally over,
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/v5/content/subscribe?user_URL=http://www.theglobeandmail.com%2Fservlet%2Fstory%2FGAM.20081103.IBREGULY03%2FTPStory%2FTPComment&ord=24713404&brand=theglobeandmail&force_login=true

A detailed new report from Stanford University examines 10 electric power sources and two liquid fuel options, comparing them by 11 different criteria and applying a weighting factor based on importance of criteria. The study concludes that ethanol, nuclear, and coal-with- carbon-storage (CCS) are dirty, inefficient, and wasteful compared to wind, direct sunlight, geothermal and ocean energy. . . The author is Mark Z. Jacobson, director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif.
. . . This is an exceedingly important study that breaks new analytic ground and provides clear guidance for policy makers.
Wind-powered battery-electric vehicles are ranked #1, best by far; Second is wind-powered hydrogen- storage vehicles . . . 11th place goes to vehicles powered by corn-based E-85 fuels; 12th place goes to vehicles burning cellulose-derived E85 fuel.  According to the report, both methods of producing ethanol make the global warming problem worse, not better.
Jacobson said. “Ethanol-based biofuels will actually cause more harm to human health, wildlife, water supply and land use than current fossil fuels.” He added that ethanol may also emit more global-warming pollutants than fossil fuels, according to the latest scientific studies.
. . . He found cellulosic ethanol was worse than corn ethanol because it results in more air pollution, requires more land to produce and causes more damage to wildlife. . . Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality among all technologies, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-estimate risk of mortality due to the risk of nuclear attacks resulting from the spread of nuclear energy facilities that allows for the production of nuclear weapons. The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. 
. . . Because sufficient clean natural resources (e.g., wind, sunlight, hot water, ocean energy, etc.) exist to power the world for the foreseeable future, the results suggest that the diversion to less-efficient (nuclear, coal with carbon capture) or non-efficient (corn- and cellulosic E85) options represents an opportunity cost that will delay solutions to global warming and air pollution mortality. . . [Corn ethanol and cellulosic ethanol] should not be included in policy options to address climate or air pollution.
In summary, the use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, solar, wave, and hydroelectric to provide electricity for battery electric cars and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles result in the most benefit and least impact . . . The biofuel options provide no certain benefit and result in significant negative impacts.
Jacobson’s research is particularly timely in light of the growing push to develop biofuels, which he calculated to be the worst of the available alternatives. . . “That is exactly the wrong place to be spending our money. Biofuels are the most damaging choice we could make in our efforts to move away from using fossil fuels,” Jacobson said.
Stanford Report, Wind, water and sun beat other energy alternatives, study finds, 10 December 2008, http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2009/january7/power-010709.html
http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Most prior studies have found that substituting biofuels for gasoline will reduce greenhouse gases because biofuels sequester carbon through the growth of the feedstock. These analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels. Using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years. Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%. This result raises concerns about large biofuel mandates and highlights the value of using waste products.
Timothy Searchinger [1], Ralph Heimlich [2], R. A. Houghton [3], Fengxia Dong [4], Amani Elobeid [4], Jacinto Fabiosa [4], Simla Tokgoz [4], Dermot Hayes [4], Tun-Hsiang Yu [4]*

*[1] Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA. German Marshall Fund of the U.S., Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute, [2] Agricultural Conservation Economics, Laurel, MD, USA, [3] Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, MA, USA, [4] Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA., Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change, 28 January 2008, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1151861v1?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Searchinger&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

The amount of corn it takes to produce 75 litres of ethanol– roughly a tank of fuel– is enough corn to feed one person on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet for a year. . . And as corn prices rise, farmers plant more corn and fewer fields of wheat, barley, soybean, canola and anything else that sprouts from the ground.  Soy and canola prices have doubled in the past year-and-a-half while the price of wheat is up 80%.  Since corn is the main ingredient in animal feed, the cost of meat and milk is also climbing and consumers are footing the bill.
Carrie Tait, Financial Post, How corn is quickly becoming the new crude, 16 February 2008
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/politics/story.html?id=2bbf9091-bfe2-4098-b0e3-65ce3927be23

23.  “Clean coal” is an oxymoron at this point; the technology for it does not even exist.  It is just a great slogan that conceals the awful fact that the mining and burning of coal are two of the dirties activities– few places on Earth have the right geological features underground.
[15] David Adam, Plan to Bury CO2, Guardian, 5 September 2003, http://www.guardian,co.ud/science/2003/sep/05/sciencenews.science.
Van Jones, The Green Collar Economy, HarperCollins Publishers, 2008, p. 7 

Out of the Earth we suck the liquefied remains of dead organisms. We burn our ancestors’ remains in our engines, without ceremony. Then we go back to the Earth, like vampires, to suck out even more oil.   Our coal-fired power plants munch daily on the black bones of the ancients – and belch out death. Today, the climate itself threatens to bring everything full circle: if we keep pulling death from the ground, we will reap death from the skies. 
Van Jones, The Green Collar Economy, HarperCollins Publishers, 2008, p. 4 

The Union of Concerned Scientists has released a report outlining the considerable risks associated with so-called “clean coal” and carbon capture and storage technology (pdf.)  The report found that carbon-capture-and-storage technology, while promising, is saddled with many unanswered questions about scale, safety and cost:

• SCALE: For the technology to make a meaningful contribution to reducing global warming pollution, it would require an enormous processing and transportation infrastructure that could handle a volume of liquefied carbon dioxide rivaling that of the oil consumed in the United States today.  The Department of Energy estimates that the annual storage space needed for a typical 600-megawatt plant’s emissions would be approximately four times the volume of the Empire State Building.
• SAFETY: Demonstration projects will have to determine if carbon dioxide can be stored indefinitely and in what type of underground geologic formations. Slow carbon leaks could undermine the technology’s effectiveness as a global warming solution and contaminate groundwater. Fast leaks from a storage site or a pipeline could threaten local residents.
• COST: Current coal plant designs cannot cost-effectively capture carbon dioxide. Studies estimate that adding the technology to a conventional coal plant would dramatically increase cost and reduce energy output. Although there are advanced coal plant designs that are better suited for carbon capture, it still would be extremely expensive to add the technology, particularly as a retrofit.

Report Outlines Risk of Clean Coal by Kevin Grandia from “DeSmogBlog – Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science,” 16 October 2008, 
http://www.desmogblog.com/report-outlines-major-risks-of-clean-coal

Carbon capture is technologically but not economically feasible. And at the end, you still have the problem of making sure the carbon stays safely in storage for thousands of years.  In any case, carbon capture would cost much more than renewables.
Fred Pearce, Inverview: Bring on the solar revolution, NewScientist.com, 21 May 2008,
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826572.000-interview-bring-on-the-solar-revolution.html?page=2

Nuclear power and coal with carbon capture and sequestration were Mark Z. Jacobson’s lowest-ranked choices after biofuels, in a new report from Stanford University. “Coal with carbon sequestration emits 60- to 110-times more carbon and air pollution than wind energy, and nuclear emits about 25-times more carbon and air pollution than wind energy,” Jacobson said. Although carbon-capture equipment reduces 85-90 percent of the carbon exhaust from a coal-fired power plant, it has no impact on the carbon resulting from the mining or transport of the coal or on the exhaust of other air pollutants. In fact, because carbon capture requires a roughly 25-percent increase in energy from the coal plant, about 25 percent more coal is needed, increasing mountaintop removal and increasing non-carbon air pollution from power plants, he said.
Louis Bergeron, Stanford Report, Wind, water and sun beat other energy alternatives, study finds, 10 December 2008, http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2009/january7/power-010709.html

24.  Church and environmental groups today called on the federal government to justify giving billions of dollars in tax breaks to Canada’s oil and gas corporations.  In formal petitions filed with Canada’s Auditor General the groups demanded that the government publicly respond to the obvious contradiction between subsidies that encourage fossil fuel production and spending on measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).  Between 1996 and 2002 the federal government spent approximately $8 billion on tax subsidies for Canada’s oil and gas industries. The groups want the government to provide current figures, given the huge increase in tar sands developments.
Media release, Groups challenge billions in subsidies for Canada’s oil and gas companies, 14 November 2007,
http://www.ecojustice.ca/media-centre/press-releases/groups-challenge-billions-in-subsidies-for-canadas-oil-and-gas-companies

For sustainable growth to happen, there will have to be major changes in economic policies and lifestyles.  We have to eliminate the large numbers of market distortions, which in effect contribute to global warming, such as America’s subsidies to the oil industry.  We have to make individuals face the true costs of the environmental impact of their actions, through the imposition of environmental charges (carbon taxes). This will provide incentives for innovation.
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel-winning economist, looks at climate change, by Daniel Altman, 25 September 2007,
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/25/business/glob26.php

25.  The Tar Sands are the largest fossil fuel project on the planet, lying beneath 141,000 sq. km. of northern Alberta forest, making Alberta Canada’s largest greenhouse gas emitting Province at 31.4% and the Tar Sands Canada’s single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions growth in Canada.
Weaver A., Keeping Our Cool, Canada: Penguin Group, 2008 and Greenpeace, Shells’s Dirty Business – Tar Sands,
http://members.greenpeace.org/blog/greenwash?blog=26468&cat=34333&page=1&disp=posts&paged=2

Producing a barrel of oil from the Tar Sands emits three times more greenhouse gas emissions than producing a barrel of conventional oil, making Alberta’s Tar Sands oil some of the dirtiest oil produced on the planet.
TarSandsWatch.org, Section: Global Warming, Oil sands: Canada’s dirty secret, 11 July 2008,
http://www.tarsandswatch.org/oil-sands-canadas-dirty-secret

Canada is among the worse offenders. Primarily because of the oil sands, Canada’s emissions have increased since 1990 by 33 per cent. When deforestation is entered into the equation, the figure is 54 per cent.
The Gazette, The Sustainable Economy, 15 December 2007
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/story.html?id=6096fcb2-9de2-4158-a1bf-dc8976ca93a1&k=72439&p=1

Strip-mining in the Tar Sands is destroying the complex ecosystems of the Boreal Forest, the world’s single-largest terrestrial storehouse of carbon that helps regulate the climate. 
mongabay.com, Canada’s boreal forest must be saved – Ecosystem stores 27 years of CO2 emissions, 14 May 2007,  http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0514-canada.html

Processing the Tar Sands uses 2 tons of oil sands to produce one barrel of oil, enough natural gas in a day to heat over 3 million homes in Canada, and 2 to 4.5 barrels of water for each barrel of oil.
TarSandsWatch.org, Expedition to raise awareness about threats to Athabasca River, 12 July 2007,
http://www.tarsandswatch.org/expedition-raise-awareness-about-threats-athabasca-river and

Andrew Nikiforuk , CTV.ca News Staff, Declaration of a Political Emergency, 21
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20081021/tar_sands_081021/20081021?hub=CanadaAM
 
Most waste water used to process Tar Sands oil ends up in acutely toxic tailing ponds, ponds so toxic that propane cannons are used to keep ducks from landing on them and which cover more than 50 sq km and can be seen from space. Tar Sands: The Most Destructive Project on Earth
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/tar-sands-most-destructive-project.php

Downstream aboriginal populations are experiencing rare cancers suspected to be caused by toxic substances that have leached downstream from Tar Sands production, deformed fish have been found in nearby Lake Athabasca, and game animals are being found with tumours and mutations.
http://www.forestethics.org/section.php?id=44 and http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080215/tarsands_enviroreport_080215/20080215?hub=SciTechThe main development incentive [for the Tar Sands] is the Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance (ACCA) which, since 1996, has applied to both surface and underground mining in the oil sands. It allows the individual oil sands projects, though not the parent company itself, to write off all of their capital costs before they start to pay income tax. Conventional oil and gas projects qualify for a 25-per-cent ACCA. . . The Pembina Institute estimates the industry reaps $1.4-billion or more in federal tax goodies every year. 

Eric Reguly on the Accelerated Capital cost Allowance and Big Oil, Subsidies in the Oil Patch, posted by Marc Lee, December 12, 2006  http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2006/12/12/subsidies-in-the-oil-patch/

26.  FAO says the world’s forests store 283 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon in their biomass alone, while the total carbon stored in forest biomass, deadwood, litter and soil together is about one trillion tonnes — 50 percent more than the amount of carbon found in the atmosphere.  [Yet] one and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic consequences for both developing and industrial countries.  Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth’s land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
Rhett A. Buttler, mongabay.com, 9 December 9 2005,
http://news.mongabay.com/2005/1210-fao.html and
The Disappearing Rainforests, 2004,
http://www.rain-tree.com/facts.htm

Developing countries’ tropical forests are an important source of carbon sequestration (carbon storage), yet they are not provided with any compensation for these environmental services.  Providing them with compensation for maintaining their forests will help them to grow and provide an incentive to maintain their forests.
Daniel Altman, Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel-winning economost, looks at climate change, 25 September 2007,
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/25/business/glob26.php 

According to David Hayes, a senior fellow at WWF (World Wildlife Fund), in testimony before the U.S. Senate, “This [reducing deforestation] will require the cooperation of the governments who are losing their forestry resources; the cooperation of the U.S. and other developed nations whose trade practices are influencing how forestry resources are being used (and/or abused); and, importantly, the active participation of indigenous people and others who are most impacted by land use choices in their home lands.”
Joe Pouliot, 22 April 2008, WWF, Reducing Deforestation is Key to Addressing Climate Change, WWF Official Tells Congress,
http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/media/press/2008/WWFPresitem8733.html 

27.  “If our demands on the planet continue to increase at the same rate, by the mid-2030s we would need the equivalent of two planets to maintain our lifestyles.”   WWF International Director-General James Leape, 29 October 2008, http://westcoastclimateequity.org/?p=802#more-802 
 
We have to completely overhaul not just the economy, but the way we think about the economy.  The foundations for most of our economic models, accounting tools, and business practices have their root in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  At that time there was an awful lot of nature – and relatively few people.  Today there are an awful lot of people, but shockingly little nature left. 

Most Western economic models assume cheap and abundant energy forever.  They assume cheap and abundant everything forever – such that we can throw millions of tons of materials into landfills and incinerators every year, year after year, and never run out of anything important.
Van Jones, The Green Collar Economy, HarperCollins Publishers, 2008, p. 11 

“Many ideas have struggled over the centuries to dominate the planet. Fascism. Communism. Democracy. Religion. But only one has achieved total supremacy. Its compulsive attractions rob its followers of reason and good sense. It has created unsustainable inequalities and threatened to tear apart the very fabric of society. More powerful than any religion, it has reached into every corner of the globe. It is consumerism.” Jonathon Porritt, chairman of UK’s Sustainable Development Commission..
David Smith, The Observer, guardian.co.uk, , Stop shopping … or the planet will go pop, 8 April 2007,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2007/apr/08/greenpolitics.observerpolitics

D:  Countries that are in the lead on renewable energies, sustainability and greenhouse gas emission reductions 

28.  Sweden – Swedish emissions fell by 1.7% between 2005 and 2006. The emissions have decreased by nearly 9% from 1990 levels. This means that Sweden has reduced its emissions by 12.7% more than agreed under the Kyoto Protocol. . . The economy, in fixed prices, has grown by 44 per cent between 1990 and 2006.
“Developments in Sweden give us a chance to show other countries that are doubtful that it is possible to reconcile economic growth with emissions reductions,” says Andreas Carlgren, the Swedish Environmental Minister.  “The Swedish example shows how important it is to let carbon dioxide emissions cost and for the polluter to pay. These trends show that it was right to raise the tax on carbon dioxide.”
Permanent Mission of Sweden to the United Nations, Swedish greenhouse gas emissions are declining, 21 January 2008, http://www.swedenabroad.com/News____11143.aspx?slaveid=70694

In 2007 Sweden topped the list of countries that did the most to save the planet – for the second year running – according to German environmental group, Germanwatch. Between 1990 and 2006 Sweden cut its carbon emissions by 9%. . . Under Kyoto, Sweden was even told it could increase its emissions by 4% given the progress it had already made. But “this was not considered ambitious enough,” explains Emma Lindberg, a climate change expert at the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation.  “So parliament decided to cut emissions by another 4% [below 1990 levels]. The mindset was ‘we need to do what’s good for the environment because it’s good for Sweden and its economy’.” . . . The main reason for this success, say experts, is the introduction of a carbon tax in 1991.
. . . Today, environmental measures are common throughout the country. Take Linköping, Sweden’s fifth biggest city, which is running its fleet of buses and rubbish lorries, a train line and some private taxis on biogas, from methane produced from the entrails of slaughtered cows. Similarly, Stockholm’s central station is planning to harness the body warmth of 250,000 daily commuters to produce heating for a nearby office block. The body heat would warm up water that would in turn be pumped through pipes over to a new office block. . . “A carbon tax is the most cost-effective way to make carbon cuts and it does not prevent strong economic growth,” adds Carlgren.
Gwladys Fouche, Guardian.co.uk, Sweden’s carbon-tax solution to climate change puts it top of the green list, 29 April 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/29/climatechange.carbonemissions

Swedish greenhouse gas emissions are expected to have fallen by 4% in 2010 in comparison with the base year of 1990. . . The Swedish EPA and the Swedish Energy Agency propose a future climate strategy consisting of three elements, which together signify that by 2020 emissions can decrease by 25-30% in comparison with 1990. This means that emissions must decrease annually by around 17-20 million tonnes of greenhouse gases (calculated as CO2 equivalents).
Swedish Energy Agency, Checkpoint 2008: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Can Be Sharply Reduced, 29 November 2207,
http://www.swedishenergyagency.se/WEB/STEMEx01Eng.nsf/F_PreGen01?ReadForm&MenuSelect=68C791734D7868C9C125730800420752

Sweden enacted a tax on carbon emissions in 1991. Currently, the tax is $150 per tonne of carbon, but no tax is applied to fuels used for electricity generation, and industries are required to pay only 50% of the tax (Johansson 2000). However, non-industrial consumers pay a separate tax on electricity. Fuels from renewable are exempted (Osborn).
Carbon Tax Centre, Where Carbon is Taxed, 23 July 2008, http://www.carbontax.org/progress/where-carbon-is-taxed/

Sweden implemented such tax in 1991 that is currently $150 per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions, though industries pay half of this and there are other exemptions. . . Swedes also pay almost 40 cents extra per litre in carbon taxes at the pumps.
CBCNews.ca, Environment, Carbon Taxes: Cash Grab or Climate Saviour, 19 June 2008,
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/06/18/f-carbon-tax.html

The heavily taxed Swedish economy is now the world’s eighth richest by GDP. 
Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Foreword, The Green Collar Economy, HarperCollins Publishers, 2008, p. viii

Wikipedia, List of Countries by GDP (nominal) per capita, 5 December 2008,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita

Denmark – One country in which carbon taxes have led to a large decrease in emissions is Denmark, whose per capita carbon dioxide emissions were nearly 15% lower in 2005 than in 1990. And Denmark accomplished this while posting a remarkably strong economic record and without relying on nuclear power.
. . . . If we want lower emissions, the goal of a carbon tax is to prompt producers to change their behavior, not to allow them to continue polluting while handing over cash to the government. . . Denmark avoids the temptation to maximize the tax revenue by giving the proceeds back to industry, earmarking much of it to subsidize environmental innovation. Danish firms are pushed away from carbon and pulled into environmental innovation, and the country’s economy isn’t put at a competitive disadvantage.  The carbon tax worked in Denmark because it was easy for Danish firms to switch to cleaner fuels. Danish policy makers made huge investments in renewable energy and subsidized environmental innovation. . . . When the tax gave companies a reason to leave coal and the investments in renewable energy gave them an easy way to do so, they switched.
Monica Prasad, Op-Ed Contributor, The New York Times, On Carbon, Tax and Don’t Spend, 25 March 2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/opinion/25prasad.html

Denmark, recorded a significant drop in emissions after a adopting a carbon tax. Emissions fell by nearly 15% after the 1992 adoption of a tax, going from 56.59 million tones in 1990 to 50.96 tonnes in 2005. Monica Prasad, an associate professor at Northwestern University in Chicago who studies economic sociology, credited the decline in emissions in Denmark to Danish manufacturers reducing their use of coal and coal products. “When the carbon tax came in at the same time, the government also invested heavily in wind power. So all those things, the carbon tax coming in, this easily available alternative, all of that worked to make the carbon tax work,” she said.  Prasad stressed that Denmark had terrific economic growth as well, but was still able to curb its carbon output. . .  “It is possible I think to do a carbon tax right but it is not automatic. It does not just follow from implementing a carbon tax it will work.”  The reality is, according to Prasad, the key to a successful carbon tax is if the revenue is invested in alternative technologies.
Mark Gollom, Posted in Reality Check, The Scandinavian carbon tax experience, 18 Septmember 2008,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/realitycheck/2008/09/the_scandinavian_carbon_tax_ex.html

29.  Germany is in the throes of a green revolution that has made it the global leader in solar- and wind-power generation. . . Anyone with a rooftop solar generator or a small water turbine can sell the energy they produce at a healthy profit. . . Following Germany’s lead, more than three dozen nations, from Spain to Indonesia, have adopted some variation of the policy, known as a feed-in tariff.  In the US, six states and Congress are weighing similar bills. . .

In Germany, at least a dozen communities now produce much or all of their own energy, using everything from ultrathin photovoltaic panels to cow manure. A few have gone even further. Residents of Dardesheim, a hamlet in the hardscrabble east, now own enough windmills to power 10,000-plus homes.
Germany’s Key to Green Energy, by Mariah Blake, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor/ 20 August 2008 edition,
http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/08/20/germany%E2%80%99s-key-to-green-energy/ 

The architect of Europe’s most ambitious renewable energy policy, a “feed- in tariff” that has vaulted Germany into the global lead in wind- and solar- power production. . . Germany’s Renewable Energy Sources Act – sometimes referred to as “Scheer’s law” – obliges electricity distributors to buy power from renewable sources at up to seven times market rates, with the scale of the subsidy varying according to power source and declining gradually over the 20-year life of the tariff.

In addition to adding more than 20,000 megawatts of emissions-free energy (about one-fifth of Canada’s entire installed power-generating capacity) to the nation’s grid, the feed-in tariff has transformed Germany’s renewable-power business into an industrial behemoth. It now generates about $240-billion in annual revenues and employs a quarter-million Germans. Germany’s wind industry created 8,000 jobs in 2007 alone, and one recent study suggested that the renewable sector could provide more work than the auto industry (currently the nation’s biggest employer) by 2020. . . Conventional energy costs have only gone up while the cost of renewables has decreased dramatically.  The surcharge on the average German consumer’s power bill, Mr. Scheer asserted, has been 24 euros (about $38) a year.
Byline: Chris Turner – Source: cturner@globeandmail.com, The wind at his back, The Globe And Mail, 2 August 2008 -Page: F7 – Section: Science, http://www.cleanairalliance.org/node/580 

To date, 15% of Germany’s energy comes from renewable sources.  Scheer predicts that, if his country continues on its current course, that number could be 100 per cent by 2030.
CBC-TV, The Gospel of Green, 12 November 2008,
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2008-2009/the_gospel_of_green/
 
30.  New Zealand, Singapore, The Netherlands, and European Union have run and updated green plans since the late 1980s or early 1990s. The Netherlands plan, created in 1989, has the overall goal of restoring the country’s environment to “quality” within 25 years. The structure lets industries work with government and decide their own methods and strategies to meet the country’s goals. 

Report by GreenBiz Staff, California Needs a Comprehensive Green Plan, 16 October 2008,
http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2008/10/16/california-green-plan

New Zealand – In 1991, New Zealand enacted a model of environmental policy, a Green Plan, called the Resource Management Act (RMA), based on the desire to maintain a high level of quality of life for the residents of New Zealand.  It made major, almost revolutionary, changes in government,  The RMA entirely restructured New Zealand’s resource agencies and laws around the premise of what they term “sustainable management” [1].  The RMA, introduced to the public through a broad program of public education, raised the level of public awareness and involvement in the process of reform, and also included the indigenous Maoris. (p. 129 & 137)  It was forwarded by broad public support created in constant discussions regarding what the legislation should contain.  (p. 131)  NGOs also participated in negotiations throughout the years it took to develop the RMA, and remain participating as watchdogs.  (p. 140-141)  Business groups also played an important role in enacting the RMA and are playing an even larger role in its implementation.  (p. 138) 

At its core is the move from a narrow, piecemeal approach to a more comprehensive and integrated view of resource management, as well as the concept of sustainable management as the structuring principle behind the country’s environmental laws and policies.

In 1994, the “New Zealand 2010” program was instigated, setting the goal toward sustainability by the year 2010.  (p. 152) 

[1] Management is a key word here.  In the debate over the legislative bill, one senator said the only thing that would get his vote was a bill that would manage New Zealand resources for a better future, and the act passed with his vote.  An example of this result is that resource management in New Zealand is now based on districts defined by watersheds, rather than arbritrary political boundaries.
Linsay Gow, New Zealand’s Minister of Environment says, “The Environment is the top line and the bottom line.”
Huey D. Johnson, Green Plans: Blueprint for a Sustainable Earth, University of Nebraska Press, 2008 (& pps. 20-21) 

In May 2008 the New Zealand government launched the Carbon Neutral Public Service Program, which aims to make six lead agencies carbon neutral by 2012, with an additional 28 on the path to carbon neu­trality by 2012. (NZ government, April 12, 2008)
Whole Earth Review,  Fall, 1995  by Alex Steffen,  Alan AtKisson
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1510/is_/ai_17462059 

Singapore – First adopted in 1992, the Singapore Green Plan, a ‘roadmap’ to lead the country to environmental sustainability by 2010, is reviewed and updated every 3 years.  It outlined strategies to make Singapore a ‘model green city’ by the year 2000.  There are currently 155 action programs with six funtional areas: climate change, clean water, waste management, conserving nature, public health, international environmental relations.

Six action program committees (APCs) have government, industry and public sector represen­tatives overseeing a functional area.  The Singapore Green Plan aims to create an en­vironmentally conscious and healthy city through strategies of investment, conservation, efficiency, public education and promotion of clean tech­nologies.
Huey D. Johnson, Green Plans: Blueprint for a Sustainable Earth, University of Nebraska Press, 2008, pps. 156,157,159 

The Netherlands – In 1972 an “Urgency Policy Document” was published, identifying environmental issues (and causing others, such as soil contamination, to be identified). In a famous Christmas speech to the nation in 1988, Queen Beatrix warned that “the Earth is slowly dying;” and the nation turned to planning for sustain­ability in earnest and the first Netherlands Envi­ronmental Policy Plan (NEPP) was introduced in 1989. It has been revised and reissued every four years since then. The plan took the attitude of modeling, i.e., cleaning “our” house first. The NEPP goal is to return the environment to “qual­ity” in 25 years by ethical management of their eco footprint (e.g., shipping waste offshore is not ethical).
Whole Earth Review,  Fall, 1995  by Alex Steffen,  Alan AtKisson
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1510/is_/ai_17462059 

The whole spectrum of environmental issues is managed together to avoid partial solutions and to foster synergy. The problem is made operational and manageable by defining quantitative medium- and short-term emission targets and specifying the contribution of each sector of the economy. (p.81)  The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, an independent group of scientists, ‘audits’ the country’s green plan results, making their assessment of progress, or the lack thereof , clear to everyone. The environmental movement’s groups serve as watchdogs, monitoring and feeding information to the media (p. 88 & 89)
Huey D. Johnson, Green Plans: Blueprint for a Sustainable Earth, University of Nebraska Press, 2008 

The Netherlands is probably the first country in the world to have not only agencies dedicated to enforcing environmental laws, but an environmental police force, with special courts and prosecutors.

But targets were hardly crammed down industry’s throat. Many of Holland’s leading industrialists say they like the idea. First, they gain a large degree of certainty about long-term environmental policy — a certainty that allows them to make investments in pollution prevention technologies with more confidence. Second, they gained the freedom to tackle the problems in the ways that made the most sense for their businesses. This “customized implementation” approach has allowed the Dutch to avoid the excesses of inappropriate regulations that plague industries in the US, while preserving the core of important environmental law unchallenged.  Industry is learning that more efficient, environmentally sound products and processes make companies more competitive than their rivals.
Whole Earth Review,  Fall, 1995  by Alex Steffen,  Alan AtKisson
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1510/is_/ai_17462059 

The European Union has been diligent in formu­lating policies and issuing directives on all aspects of environmental regulation, from packaging to vehicles to electronic waste. Most of the directives are only now coming into force; while indus­try protested vigorously about costs and loss of competitiveness, so far there are few statistics to support a negative view of the regulations.

The 6th Environmental Action Plan, entitled “En­vironment 2010: Our future, Our choice” directs policy in four critical areas (Europa website): 

• Climate change: goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8% of 1990 levels by 2008-2012.  It was announced in April 2008 that the 27 members of the EU have reduced their emissions to 7.4% of 1990 levels. (European Environmental Agency  website)
• Biodiversity: objective to protect and restore the structure and functioning of natural sys­tems and halt the loss of biodiversity both in the European Union and on a global scale.
• Environment and health: achieve a quality of the environment which does not give rise to significant impacts on, or risks to, human health, noise pollution reduction, air and water quality management, and regulation of pesti­cide use.
• Sustainable management of resources and wastes: to ensure that the consumption of renewable and non-renewable resources does not exceed the carrying capacity of the environment. 

Whole Earth Review, Fall, 1995, by Alex Steffen, Alan AtKisson
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1510/is_/ai_17462059

31.  Norway, the first country to pledge money to the [Amazon] fund, will donate as much as US$130 million next year, the Norwegian Embassy in Brasilia said.  But the money will only be handed over if Brazil shows deforestation was reduced in the previous year, Stoltenberg told reporters during a visit to Brazil.  “The Norwegian government has decided to contribute one billion US dollars to the Amazon Fund,” he said.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched the international fund in August. It aims to raise US$21 billion over 13 years to finance conservation and sustainable development in the Amazon.  “We support Brazil’s government and its efforts to preserve the forest and stop deforestation,” Stoltenberg said.  “The precondition is that we can look at all of the documentation showing that deforestation is being reduced.”

Deforestation has been accelerating steadily in the world’s largest rainforest.  The Amazon Fund will support forest conservation through scientific research and sustainable development projects such as rubber tapping, forestry management and the creation of drugs from plants.
Fernando Exman, Ana Nicolaci da Costa, Mohammad Zargham, Norway Pledges US$1 Billion to Brazil Amazon Fund, 18 September 2008, http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/50272/story.htm 

E:  Recommendations, potential initiatives, opportunities 

32.  Hermann Scheer, probably the most influential renewable-energy lawmaker on the planet, whose most famous piece of legislation catapulted Germany to the front ranks of the green-power business in less than a decade, has called on Canada to make a wholesale switch to 100-per-cent renewables.  The German parliamentarian proposed that Canada adopt a radically decentralized electricity system, powered primarily by wind turbines and hydroelectric plants. The effect, he said, could be the elimination of fossil fuels from electricity generation inside a decade.
His policy initiatives have become models for legislators worldwide.
Byline: Chris Turner – Source: cturner@globeandmail.com, The wind at his back, The Globe And Mail, 2 August 2008 – Page: F7 – Section: Science, http://www.cleanairalliance.org/node/580 

33.  Our results suggest that if a 2.0 degree C warming is to be avoided, direct CO2 capture from the air, together with subsequent sequestration, would eventually have to be introduced in addition to sustained 90% [relative to 1990] global carbon emissions reductions by 2050.
Andrew J. Weaver, Kirsten Zickfeld, Alvaro Montenegro, Michael Eby, Long term climate implications of 2050 emission reduction targets, 6 October 2007
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL.34, L19703, doi:10.1029/2007GL031018, 2007 

34.  The landmark Stern Report last year, and the influential McKinsey Report in January agreed that forests offer the “single largest opportunity for cost-effective and immediate reductions of carbon emissions”. . . Putting a price on the carbon these vital forests contain is the only way to slow their destruction.
Daniel Howden, Deforestation: The hidden cause of global warming, 14 May 2007, http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/deforestation-the-hidden-cause-of-global-warming-448734.html

35.  A carbon trading scheme could help in slowing tropical deforestation. Carbon dioxide credits could be used as a mechanism for valuing forest lands and protecting them from destruction.  A proposal currently under consideration calls for the use of carbon credits as a means for industrialized countries to compensate forested countries for the services their forests provide.
Rhett A. Buttler, mongabay.com, 9 December 2005,
http://news.mongabay.com/2005/1210-fao.html 

Wealthy nations could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally by paying landowners in developing nations not to clear forested land for agriculture, finds a new study by a research team from Austria, Brazil and the United States.
Environment News Service (ENS), Avoiding Deforestation to Limit Climate Change ‘Cheap and Practical’, 23 July 2008,
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2008/2008-07-23-01.asp

At the UN climate change conference in Poznań, Poland, European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas endorsed a joint ministerial declaration launched today by like-minded countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation. The statement commits a number of developed and key tropical developing countries to take early action to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation – a process known as REDD – in the developing world.  Dimas said, “The Poznań Statement on REDD will strengthen and accelerate this process. The European Commission has proposed the creation of an international financial mechanism to reward developing countries for their efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation.”
 . . . The developing countries involved show their willingness to develop national REDD strategies in cooperation with relevant stakeholders, including indigenous peoples, other civil society groups and the private sector. Establishing national systems for monitoring, reporting and verifying emissions and emission cuts will be vital in order to produce credible results.
Developed countries agreeing to the statement affirm that they stand ready to help developing countries build up their capacity to develop national strategies, and to reward those which move quickly to show measurable and verified emission cuts.
. . . Forests are disappearing at a rate of around 13 million hectares per year. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has indicated that land-use change and forestry, including deforestation, is responsible for some 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions.  The Commission’s REDD strategy proposes that the future global climate agreement should aim to reduce the total forested area lost in the tropics by at least half of current levels by 2020, and then to halt global forest cover loss completely by 2030 at the latest.
To reward developing countries REDD efforts, the Commission has suggested the creation of an international financing mechanism, the Global Forest Carbon Mechanism.  The Poznań Statement on REDD was endorsed at a ceremony in the sidelines of the Poznań conference. The rainforest countries involved are Brazil, Cameroon, Congo, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Indonesia, Madagascar, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Surinam, Singapore, Thailand and Uganda.
Among developed countries the statement was endorsed by Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, the European Commission, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK.
UN Climate Change Conference: EU Commission endorses Poznań declaration on reducing emissions from deforestation, 12 December 2008, http://www.europa-eu-un.org/articles/es/article_8367_es.htm

In addition to reducing domestic emissions, Annex-I countries have a responsibility to provide finance and support for developing countries’ efforts to avoid deforestation, permanently protect, and sustainably manage native forests. Priority must be given to protect intact, biodiverse, and carbon-rich forests. REDD accounting must be verifiable and accurately reflect the actual carbon carrying capacity of these forests. Accountability, transparency, and good governance must be required of all participating parties.
. . . Critically, REDD must be a mechanism for forest protection for the sake of climate stabilization, not a mechanism for profit. There are serious risks associated with REDD being used as an offset mechanism for Annex-I countries. We reject any proposal that functions as a means by which Annex-I countries avoid domestic mitigation action (i.e. fossil fuel emissions reductions).
International Youth Delegation, Guiding Principles & Policy Recommendations for REDD negotiations at COP 14, 10 December 2008, http://www.redd-monitor.org/2008/12/10/forests-are-more-than-just-trees-and-carbon/#more-1065 
 
36.  The livestock sector has such deep and wide-ranging environmental impacts that it should rank as one of the leading focuses for environmental policy: efforts here can produce large and multiple payoffs. 
Livestock’s Long Shadow, Environmental Issues and Options, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 2006, http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM 

The solution to the environmental problems caused by today’s agricultural methods lies in a shift to farming practices which could provide large-scale carbon sinks, and offer options for mitigation of climate change: improved cropland management (such as avoiding bare fallow, and appropriate fertilizer use), grazing-land management, and restoration of organic soils as carbon sinks. Since meat production is inefficient in its delivery of products to the human food chain, and also produces large emissions of GHG, a reduction of meat consumption could greatly reduce agricultural GHG emissions. Taken together, these could change the position of agriculture from one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters to a much smaller GHG source or even a net carbon sink.
Jessica Bellarby, Bente Foereid, Astley Hastings and Peter Smith from the University of Aberdeen and a lead author on the latest International Panel on Climate Change report, Cool Farming: Climate impacts of agriculture and mitigation potential, January 2008, http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/cool-farming-full-report
 
37.  If the prospective changes to our economic system are to make human commerce more stable and reliable, then the changes must also end our habit of living in “ecological overdraft”. Any economic system that fails to recognize environmental limits will ultimately fail – catastrophically.
The Global Crisis: Financial and Ecological by Ray Grigg  10 November 2008, http://westcoastclimateequity.org/?p=1082#more-1082 

Our desire to survive as a species dictates that we become much better stewards—and partners with—the billions of nonhuman species with which we share this planet. . . We cannot continue indefinitely abusing those relationships. We cannot continue to tug at the web of life without tearing a hole in the very fabric of our earthly existence—and eventually falling through that hole ourselves.
Van Jones, The Green Collar Economy, HarperCollins Publishers, 2008, pps. 74-75 

38.  Herman Daly, an economist at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy in College Park, says that humanity is already at or beyond the point where economic growth is counterproductive, where the environmental and social costs more than cancel the gains. . . Daly and others have called for a rethinking and restructuring of our economy before nature restructures it for us. The notion of perpetual economic growth warrants scrutiny before it drives us over a cliff, they argue. The science of economics must be overhauled to better account for earth’s physical realities. Civilization won’t have to stop in its tracks, just shift emphasis, says Daly.
. . . John McNeill, professor of environmental history at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., tells how unprecedented the past two centuries of human history have been.  “Most economists are under the impression that 2 to 6 percent annual growth is a normal condition for human society,” says Professor McNeill. “A longer historical view would tell you such growth is a peculiar period in human society.”
. . . Peter Victor, an economist at York University in Toronto and author of the forthcoming book “Managing Without Growth,” says “The pace at which we’ve become more efficient hasn’t kept pace with the rate of growth.” For example, prices for raw materials have gone down even as the environment has become increasingly degraded. . .“We would have thought that the price system would have given us a signal that we were doing this,” Victor says. “And it’s not giving us that signal.”  This is a recurring complaint among environmental economists: The science of economics often treats economies as if they exist in a vacuum. Environmental costs – greenhouse gases, waste, overfishing – are rarely reflected in market prices.
That was fine in times past, when a large margin separated the edges of the human sphere from the limits of earth’s biosphere, says Robert Costanza, director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont, Burlington. But now the margin is much slimmer – perhaps totally gone – and omitting the true cost has become a liability.
. . . Ecological economists say we can start by examining economic yardsticks like Gross Domestic Product, which counts oil spills and other calamities that cost money to fix as additions, or positives.
. . .“You get what you measure,” says Jim Barrett, executive director of the nonprofit Redefining Progress in Washington, D.C., which has developed an alternate Genuine Progress Indicator. “And we don’t measure things that matter.”
Moises Velasquez-Manoff, Toward a greener economy – Scientists seek a more sustainable model for growth, 15 October 2008, http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/10/15/toward-a-greener-economy/

“What we should start with is the economics of planet Earth and the biosphere of planet Earth and then try to size economic activity to the bio-system on which it depends. So I think global warming is just a tip of an iceberg of a system that fundamentally doesn’t work. . . I would say the purpose of the economy is not growth … it is the stewardship of the Earth’s natural systems for the purpose of the prosperity of human beings and all the other species that live here. . . GDP is a measure of income but it’s not a measure of wealth. So Canada, for instance, can have rising income, but declining wealth at the same time because of our exports of our natural resources,” says Peter Brown, author and professor at the school of environment, departments of geography and natural resource sciences at McGill University.
. . . “It really wasn’t until the end of the Second World War that government adopted full employment as a policy objective and shortly thereafter economic growth as a policy objective to promote full employment. . . I have looked into this specifically with respect to Canada. . . I think you have to make a transition to a system where growth is not a paramount object. I think you can have full employment and you can reduce the impact on the environment and the government can maintain a fiscal balance.
. . . There are a lot of studies showing that all this increased growth over the last century in the rich countries did not make people happier. . . I think we ought to try to know more than we do about what does contribute to quality of life, how to measure it, and then try to design our economy and government policies towards those goals,” says Peter Victor, economist and professor in environmental studies at York University in Toronto.
. . . We [also] need to evolve some institutions that are capable of looking beyond the interests of the nation state to the interests of the whole world, to the interests of the whole planet and all things on Earth,” says Brown . . . [However] They will give up sovereignty when it comes to trade. But they don’t seem to be willing to give it up for the environment.” Says Victor.
The Gazette, The sustainable economy, 15 December 2007, http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/story.html?id=6096fcb2-9de2-4158-a1bf-dc8976ca93a1&k=72439&p=1

Gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.  It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. – Senator Robert Kennedy (1968)

“It’s in our culture to spend a lot, and it has been for a long time. It would be a significant change to decide all that spending was bad.” said Meghan O’Brien, an economist at Iowa State University who focuses on consumer behaviour. . . A more likely scenario, she said, is a gradual shift of values, putting greater emphasis on “green” products and businesses, and on no longer spending what we don’t have. This transition would favor companies that make things people genuinely need as opposed to what people want. It would entail a newfound emphasis on long-term satisfaction rather than instant gratification. . . . “The potential is there, but it requires a complete change in how we look at money.” . . . “We need to get the percentage lower,” said Colander of Middlebury College. “Consumer spending shouldn’t be this much of the economy. But it won’t be easy. It will be like an addict going through withdrawal.”
David Lazarus, L.A. Times, Crisis may cure our materialism, shift priorities, 26 October 2008,
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/26/business/fi-lazarus26

39.  Currently, the German government – in collaboration with Spain and Denmark and with the support of more than 50 other nations – has initiated a process to implement an International Renewable Energy Agency which will supply practical advice and support to both industrialized and developing countries, support them in improving regulatory frameworks and building capacity. IRENA will facilitate access to information, including reliable data on renewable potential, best practices, effective financial mechanisms and state-of-the-art technological expertise. As the global voice for renewables, it will foster collaboration, lobby worldwide for renewable energy solutions, and enhance the work of complementary agencies.
Jose Etcheverry & Lily Riahi, RenewableEnergyWorld.com, IRENA – Joining Forces, 18 December 2008, http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/magazine/story?id=54347

IRENA will act as a driver for renewable energy on an international level.  Its role will be to promote political processes that give due consideration to renewable energy. IRENA, as an independent international institution, will ensure that the activities of other bodies do not form a barrier to action in the area of renewable energy. Its aim will be to create momentum for renewable energy on an international level.
IRENA will constitute an independent driving force in the political process with the goal of creating a level playing field for the development of renewable energy. 
The Case for an International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), Berlin, April 10-11, 2008,
www.irena.org/downloads/Prep-Con/Case_for_IRENA_EN.pdf 

170 delegates from 60 countries attended the Preparatory Conference.  On the 26th and 27th of January 2009, the German government is planning to invite all interested countries to Bonn for the IRENA Founding Conference.
Background information on the Initiative for the Establishment of an International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), http://www.den-haag.diplo.de/Vertretung/denhaag/nl/IRENA__Seite2.html 

Excerpts from The Presidential Climate Action Plan – PCAP – 13 November 2008 

On Thursday, Nov. 13, in a news conference at the National Press Building in Washington, D.C. Bill Becker, Ray Anderson and Sen. Gary Hart announced the finalized Presidental Climate Action Plan. That afternoon, the team also held a briefing on Capitol Hill. 

The Presidential Climate Action Project is a two-year, $2 million initiative administered by the Wirth Chair, School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver. The project is guided by a prestigious National Advisory Committee chaired by Ray Anderson, former co-chair of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development and founder and chairman of the board of Interface Inc. in Atlanta, Ga.   (PCAP Advisory Committee – http://www.climateactionproject.com/advisory.php) 

The Presidential Action Plan contains a broad menu of policy and program recommendations for the President, rather than advocating a particular policy.  It consists of four parts: 1) goals and milestones for reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions; 2) actions the President can take under his executive authority during the first 100 days in office; 3) actions for the Administration’s first 1,000 days in office; and 4) initiatives the President can include in his first budget and legislative package to Congress. 

Excerpts: 

“We have used up all the slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb,” Hansen told the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. “The next president and Congress must define a course next year in which the United States exerts leadership commensurate with our responsibility for the present dangerous situation.” 

McKinsey & Company, the global consulting firm, estimates global carbon productivity (economic output per unit of greenhouse gas emissions) must be increased more than 10-fold over the next four decades. “This is comparable in magnitude to the labor productivity increases of the Industrial Revolution,” the company says. “However, the carbon revolution must be achieved in one-third of the time.”
 
The emerging international consensus is that industrialized countries must collectively cut their greenhouse gas emissions 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Today, U.S. emissions are 40 percent above 1990 levels.

If global climate change is the greatest challenge of our time, it is also the greatest opportunity. As former President Bill Clinton put it, “Creating the low-carbon economy will lead to the greatest economic boom in the United States since we mobilized for World War II.” And that might be understating the potential.
 
The first green shoots of economic transformation already are appearing at home and abroad. The United Nations reports that 2.3 million people have found jobs in renewable energy industries in recent years. Global employment in wind and solar energy alone is expected to reach more than 8 million by 2030. We are experiencing a “gold rush of new investment into renewable power,” the United Nations says, with capital investments increasing 60 percent from 2006 to 2007. 

Renewable energy investments are expected to reach $450 billion annually between now and 2012, and more than $600 billion annually from 2020 to 2030. The global market for environmental products and services is expected to double to $2.74 trillion by the end of the next decade. In short, the global demand for clean energy is creating an enormous global market opportunity that can mean new industries and jobs if the United States chooses to compete. 

The DOE reports that renewable energy technologies are booming in the United States as well, with project investments reaching more than $13 billion in 2007. The Center for American Progress estimates that a $100 billion investment over two years – about one year’s worth of revenue under the carbon trading proposals being considered by Congress – would create 2 million high-quality green jobs. The Apollo Alliance – a coalition of business, labor, environmental and local leaders – estimates that a $500 billion investment over 10 years will create 5 million new green jobs.
 
Government investments in the new energy economy promise substantial economic return as we improve national energy efficiency, reduce the transfer of American wealth to oil-producing nations and end our dependence on finite resources destined to increase in price and decline in supply.  The investment must be made not just by taxpayers, but by the private sector as well. Federal policy should leverage much larger investments by state and local governments, the business and capital communities and individual consumers. 

When we calculate the public-private cost-benefit ratio of climate action, we must count the high cost of doing nothing.

Climate change will place immense strains on public sector budgets. Various estimates project the maintenance of Alaska’s infrastructure will cost $10 billion; property damage from rising sea levels will cost as much as $170 billion by 2100; and upgrading water treatment facilities will cost up to $2 billion over the next 20 years. . . .Climate stabilization requires sustained action over several decades to achieve deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions throughout the economy. With its frequent changes of leadership and priorities, however, the American political system does not lend itself to long-term commitments. Leaders in both government and civil society must shape policies and institutions that ensure sustained climate protection. 

Measures that signal investors, corporate decision makers and consumers of the certainty of future reductions are essential to change the economy. . . Measures to stabilize the climate must change the behaviors of business, industry, agriculture, government, workers and consumers. All sectors and the public must be engaged in changing both infrastructure and social norms. . . Actions to stabilize, mitigate or adapt to global warming should be considered alongside other environmental, economic and social imperatives that can act synergistically to produce multiple benefits.
The true and full societal costs of greenhouse gas emissions, now often externalized, should be reflected in the price of goods and services to help consumers make more informed choices and to drive business innovation. Policymakers should eliminate perverse incentives that distort market signals and exacerbate global warming. 

U.S. government and civil society must act now to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of the actions of other nations. Because greenhouse gas emissions and the effects of climate change are global, however, the ultimate solutions also must be global. The U.S. must re-engage constructively in the international process.

We must strive for solutions that are fair among people, nations and generations. 

Extracts from the 78 recommendations to the President:

• Establish the goal of reducing America’s greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
• Restore integrity to federal climate science by directing agencies to prohibit political interference in the work of government scientists and by appointing America’s best experts to climate-critical federal positions.
• Set the goal to cut America’s petroleum consumption in half by 2020.
• Establish a CAFE standard of 50 miles per gallon by 2025.
• Increase by a factor of 10 the government’s investment in energy research, including better vehicle efficiency, battery technology and cellulosic (non-food) ethanol.
• Propose to increase the national energy research budget to $30 billion annually for 10 years and to focus research and development on renewable energy technologies, including methods to store solar and wind power.
• Set a national goal to generate 30 percent of American’s electricity from renewable technologies by 2020.
• Challenge state regulators to meet the nation’s need for electric power without building any new conventional coal-fired power plants.
• Direct the DOE to work with state regulators, national laboratories, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and others to develop standards and plans for a “smart grid” transmission system.
• Urge Congress to support the Global Warming Wildlife Survival Act to mitigate the harmful impacts of climate change on animal habitats and species.
• Propose that the United Nations create an Intergovernmental Panel on Ocean Ecology, similar in scope to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to focus the attention of the world’s leading scientists on the challenges facing the world’s oceans.
• Commit during his inaugural address to join other nations in holding the increase in the Earth’s temperature to no more than 2oC above pre-industrial levels.
• Early in 2009, meet with key congressional leaders to agree on the actions the U.S. government will take before Copenhagen to show concrete progress on domestic climate action.
• Negotiate a bilateral agreement with China in 2009 to collaborate on reducing both nations’ greenhouse gas emissions and to demonstrate cooperation between the developed and developing world.
• Use the bully pulpit to call for public and private investments in energy efficiency, renewable energy, climate adaptation and the modernization of infrastructure to stimulate the economy with new businesses and jobs.
• Work with Congress to phase out taxpayer subsidies of the coal, oil and gas industries and redirect the funds to develop and commercialize emerging energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies.
• Strengthen the U.S. Small Business Administration’s assistance to small companies that manufacture, install and service carbon-free energy technologies.
• Offer $1 billion over five years in “platinum carrot” awards for breakthrough technologies that enhance America’s energy and climate security.
• Use federal aid strategically to leverage private investment. A recent study by Navigant Consulting estimates that the eight-year extension of the federal solar tax credit approved by Congress on October 3, 2008, will result in $232 billion in new investment in the solar industry by 2016.
• Redirect federal subsidies for fossil and nuclear energy to emerging renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies.
• Invest revenues from carbon pricing. Carbon pricing is expected to produce $100 billion to $200 billion in federal revenues in the first year it is fully implemented. Under the Lieberman-Warner bill that reached the Senate in 2008, revenues would reach an estimated $6.1 trillion in current dollars by 2050.
• Launch a national conversation, using state-of-the-art web-based citizen involvement tools, to develop a common vision of post-carbon America.
• Set priorities that achieve early success and celebrate those successes to restore the confidence of the American people and make clear the fact that today’s challenges are indeed great opportunities and that Washington is capable of principled, bipartisan, effective leadership in the national interest. 

The Presidential Climate Action Project, 13 November 2008, http://www.climateactionproject.com/plan/