While teaching environmental law for 27 years, I read a lot about environmental damage and climate change. Over that time, I became increasingly concerned about the public’s, and hence government’s, indifference to some extremely ominous trends.
I have come to agree with Lester Brown, who says that, the “threats to our future now are not armed aggression but rather climate change, population growth, water shortages, poverty, rising food prices, and failing states.” Add to this one of the biggest extinctions which has ever happened, this time largely due to human activity. (A U. N. study concluded that loss of biodiversity presents a greater risk of financial loss than terrorism.)
No wonder I lose sleep over our collective failure to respond.
It would be easy to give up in dismay, but if we look more carefully, we can see signs of hope. Perhaps a phoenix is about to arise from the ashes of the status quo.
Researchers’ warnings (e.g., Herman Daly’s Beyond Growth, Andrew Nikiforuk’s The Energy of Slaves, Lester Brown’s World on the Edge) have spurred some mainstream institutions to respond with ingenuity and urgency. Various research institutes are on the job – for example, Brown’s Earth Policy Institute and UBC’s Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability.
The U.S. government has prepared risk assessments of environmental degradations and climate change. Many municipalities, cooperatives and entrepreneurs have taken various grassroots initiatives, while waiting for oblivious senior governments to wake up and smell the coffee.
Some of the world’s most famous corporations (for example, IKEA, Starbucks, Nike, Intel, eBay, Nestle), through the Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP) coalition, have called for action to address climate change by promoting clean energy, boosting efficiency and limiting carbon emissions.
Europe’s on the bandwagon. Portugal’s renewable energy facilities supplied 70 per cent of total electricity consumption in the first quarter of this year. Denmark presently produces about 17 per cent of its electricity through wind power and has a target of 30 per cent renewable energy in 2020. It intends to be fully free of fossil fuels by 2050.
Germany and Spain also have ambitious renewable targets and have nurtured major manufacturing of renewable energy equipment.
Some nations which are not generally considered progressive have also signed on. Saudi Arabia intends to install 41 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2032. China intends to have 100 GW capacity of wind power and over 23 GW of solar power by 2020. It also generates 200 GW through hydro power (Canada’s total generating capacity is about 131 GW).
Compared with these countries, Canada is lagging converting from fossil fuels. Non-hydro renewables contribute only three per cent of the country’s electricity supply.
What still needs to be done, both nationally and on a world scale?
Consider Lester Brown’s comment:
“What will it take to reverse the many environmental trends that are undermining the world economy? Restructuring the economy in time to avoid decline will take a massive mobilization at wartime speed.”
Take a deep breath, for some possible policy ideas are not yet in the mainstream.
First, governments desperately need aggressive disaster avoidance and response plans for a variety of natural systems crises.
Second, significantly reducing consumption of both energy and resources is crucial. Canada could start by acknowledging that, according to the International Energy Agency, two-thirds of our fossil fuel reserves will have to stay in the ground if we are to prevent climate catastrophe (other countries should follow suit). Then we might budget the other third’s development over the next 50 years.
This would also radically reduce the rancour over, and environmental risks of, increased pipeline construction, for if we produce oil at lower rates, our present transportation network should suffice. (I admit the need for some market diversification.)
The short-sighted among us say that “we’re going to need every drop” the oilsands can produce, ignoring the fact that many of the world’s great coastal cities, as well as various rice-growing river deltas in Asia, would be at least partially inundated by a one-metre rise of the sea level. The U. S. National Research Council suggests a possible sea level rise this century of between 56 and 200 cm.
Transforming our energy systems, of course, will need a massive shift in investment. Remember, though, we already have most of the necessary knowledge and technology. What’s lacking are public awareness and the necessary management and cooperation to implement the shift. Leadership by governments, NGOs and international organizations is desperately needed here. We must eventually learn to live within the current energy budget produced by the sun (which is the ultimate source of virtually all forms of energy), so let’s get there before the crunch comes.
Some of us can recall stringent rationing, during and after World War II, of foodstuffs, rubber and oil products (water should now be included). Down the road, that could be another step. Short of rationing, however, price increases to reflect resources’ true costs would help reduce consumption.
Redistribution of world income might be next, so that a privileged class could not save itself at the expense of the rest of us. Why should the best-paid among us make more than four times the average wage? (The present ratio is in the hundreds.) And, paradoxically, taking from richer people to give to the poor would probably slash the environmental damage and climate change caused by both classes, although for different reasons.
Reducing world population is essential, including in countries whose high per capita consumption hugely multiplies their impact. Presently, with Earth’s natural bounty unable to sustain its present population without our one-time-only fossil fuels subsidy, some nations are crazily trying to encourage more births. In order to prevent ecological collapse, let’s plan to reduce world population in an orderly way (give the world’s women reproductive health care and access to family planning) instead of by mass die-offs from famine, war and pestilence.
“Monetary, financial and social systems built upon the expectation of growth will simply fail in growth’s absence.” (Richard Heinberg, The End of Growth) Perhaps we’re getting a hint about this today. So implementing “small is beautiful” ideas must also be on the menu. The world needs to convert to a steady-state economy, following ideas like those of economists like Daly, Georgescu-Roegen, the New Economics Institute and Canadian Peter Victor. Hopefully we’ll have the wit to swallow the necessary medicine.
Should we not also divert most military spending to developing clean water, regenerated soil, reforestation, fishery restoration, universal primary school education and crop diversity? How about de-industrializing agriculture, which cannot continue in its present form without a huge fossil fuel subsidy?
Lastly, governments could organize a national conversation about our situation, for without democratic debate nothing will happen except for the present re-arranging of the Titanic’s deck chairs.
Without sustained and courageous political leadership, which is largely absent today, our inertia will lead to great hardship. If so, our grandchildren will curse us for doing nothing serious to solve the terrible problems which we helped to create.
According to Heinberg, “If civilization fails, it will not be for lack of good ideas.”
Phil Elder is Emeritus Professor of Environmental and Planning Law with the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary.
