Video: One degree war plan

Peter Willis, Director of CPSL South Africa, interviews Prof. Jorgen Randers and Paul Gilding, long-standing Core Faculty members of the Business & the Environment Programme and thought-leaders at this year’s BEP seminar in Cape Town.

Jorgen and Paul believe is it inevitable that society will at some point in the next decade demand a much more dramatic response to climate change than is currently on the cards, given the reality of the risk it poses. The interview outlines their radical “One Degree War Plan”, which is the type of response they believe will be demanded in due course. The Plan was “premiered” at our BEP seminar and has generated tremendous interest. This insert will be shown on SABC 2′ “50-50″ programme on Monday 1 June at ’09 19:30. (Full transcript below)

Produced by: Charles Moore

TRANSCRIPT
PETER:
I’m talking to Professor Jorgen Randers from the Norwegian School of Management, and Paul Gilding, climate activist and faculty member of the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership.

I believe you’ve been in some discussions to develop a global strategy in relation to climate change.

PAUL:
We notice this incredible disconnect between what the scientists are saying, which is that we clearly face a risk of catastrophic civilisation and economic collapse. Clearly that’s not the most likely outcome but it’s certainly a possibility. And the science is getting increasingly urgent on that issue, and yet you don’t see that kind of response from the public or from government at all, despite incredible change in the debate in recent years.

And so we thought, well logically there’s just a lag. Because logically will therefore come at some part where there’ll be a great awakening on the issue. And the public and the elites, we think will virtually, suddenly wake up and say, “Oh my God! There is actually a risk of complete economic collapse and very severe consequences for society. We have to fix the problem?”

And so we thought, let’s work out that plan. Then when it’s needed, and which we think, our best guesstimate is kinda 2018 or thereabouts, and we call it the “One Degree War” plan.

PETER:
And why a “One Degree War” plan? What’s the one degree about?

PAUL:
Because the general consensus in the scientific and policy community is that the target, the best we can hope for is a 450 part per million cap on CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, and that gives us a 50/50 chance of not passing two degrees… two degrees of warming, and two degrees of warming actually is the tipping point in most scientific studies that says beyond that point we get into very scary territory of runaway climate change or runaway greenhouse impacts, and catastrophic, cascading consequences down the line.

PETER:
That sounds like quite a steep challenge, given that most policy’s aiming, if we’re really lucky, at two degrees. So what’s the plan?

JORGEN:
Reduce by 50% during a strong effort, the climate war, from 2018 to 2023, and then a further 15 years where we cut dramatically, and then in a carbon negative territory for the rest of the century.

PETER:
Take me through each of those stages. What’s involved in the climate war? The first five years?

JORGEN:
Step number one is basically to reduce logging by 50%. A second step would be to ban half of the driving. So you basically say to people that you have a certain rationing. So you can drive your car a certain amount but not further. At the same time of course one starts the longer term task of shifting the car fleet from fossil cars, running on gasoline, to electric cars running on CO2-free electricity.

A third activity – you cut airplane flights by 50% again. So you basically strand half of the flights of the world. Much more powerful would be to take the world’s 6000 largest power stations and identify the ones that actually emit a lot of CO2, and close them down.

PETER:
Isn’t there going to be huge resistance? I mean, how could people possibly agree to do these things?

PAUL:
If people could imagine mass starvation because the climate changes so rapidly that food supplies collapse, then having to ration your petrol, suddenly becomes a lot more viable.

And so you’ve got to imagine a context, very clearly of a very scared public – of very scared political leaders who are saying, ‘hang on’. On my watch decisions are going to be made which could lead to the collapse of civilisation, and certainly are going to otherwise lead to some very severe economic collapse. With massive dislocation of people, loss of jobs, loss of value in society. And then suddenly a “planned” reduction of this type, even with that level of sacrifice – like a war – is going to be a price the public is going to support paying, relative to the alternative.

JORGEN:
And so the more you think about this, the more attractive the one degree war actually starts to become, and then you can start asking the question, why doesn’t this happen by itself quickly?

And of course that’s the real core problem. It’s a decision problem, very much more than it’s an execution problem. So, if one simply decided to start the war, implementing it would be fine. There would be little suffering, but there would be great excitement and this is highly do-able. And so it is just a question of getting going. But this, alas, will take some time because there is still not that type of fear in the population.

PETER:
But it seems to me one of the strengths of your proposal is that you’re not saying that this must happen now. You’re saying, we think this needs ten years of preparation, then it will be needed because then people will be ready.

And my… I find myself thinking as I’m sitting here that of course, once this plan gets out and people start debating it and thinking, well how feasible is it and so on, that I think, well why must we wait ten years? Why don’t we perhaps do it in three?

Masdar city – Paradise built

In 2006, Abu Dhabi’s rulers decided to plough some of their billions of petrodollars into an ambitious plan to build a $22bn carbon-neutral, waste-free green technology centre amid the scrub desert outside the city.

The futuristic Masdar city project is the cornerstone of the Masdar Initiative, which was set up to help diversify Abu Dhabi’s economy away from hydrocarbons and towards what it hopes will be a greener, more sustainable future. Masdar hopes that the car-free city – which is designed by British architects Foster & Partners – will generate 70,000 jobs, house 40,000 residents and add 2 per cent to Abu Dhabi’s gross domestic product, when it is completed in 2016.

In March 2009 Masdar city was awarded the FT ArcelorMittal Boldness in Business award in the Environment category.

All Masdar’s buildings will be elevated above the ground to allow the city’s pod-like automated vehicles to whiz residents around the 6.5sq km development. The elevation will also allow easier access to the various sanitary and technological piping, wires and infrastructure, making them easier to repair and replace.

More than two-thirds of the city’s energy will come from solar farms and photovoltaic panels that will cover the rooftops, and all water will be cleaned and recycled. Sensors will warn when pipes are leaky, and parks will be populated by hardier plants than the water-thirsty foliage that dots the rest of Abu Dhabi. Even the wind will be harnessed. The city will be surrounded by high walls to keep out the sand and grit that permeates the Middle East, but wind will be funnelled through the city’s main entrances, helping to keep the city cool and breezy.

A crucial part of the Initiative is the creation of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, in partnership with MIT, that will be the world’s first graduate level institution dedicated to the study and research of advanced energy and sustainable technologies. Instead of merely engaging in “greenwashing”, the objective is to become a global hub for world-class education and research in energy and sustainability.

Original article: Robin Wigglesworth. Financial Times. 20 March 2009. Read more…

George Monbiot – A self-fulfilling prophesy

Original article: George Monbiot. www.georgemonbiot.com. 17 March 2009. Read more…

Quietly in public, loudly in private, climate scientists everywhere are saying the same thing: it’s over. The years in which more than two degrees of global warming could have been prevented have passed, the opportunities squandered by denial and delay. On current trajectories we’ll be lucky to get away with four degrees. Mitigation (limiting greenhouse gas pollution) has failed; now we must adapt to what nature sends our way. If we can.
—

Faced with such figures, I can’t blame anyone for throwing up his hands. But before you succumb to this fatalism, let me talk you through the options.

Yes, it is true that mitigation has so far failed. Sabotaged by Clinton(5), abandoned by Bush, attended half-heartedly by the other rich nations, the global climate talks have so far been a total failure. The targets they have set bear no relationship to the science and are negated anyway by loopholes and false accounting. Nations like the UK which are meeting their obligations under the Kyoto protocol have succeeded only by outsourcing their pollution to other countries(6,7). Nations like Canada, which are flouting their obligations, face no meaningful sanctions.
—

The world won’t adapt and can’t adapt: the only adaptive response to a global shortage of food is starvation. Of the two strategies it is mitigation, not adaptation, which turns out to be the most feasible option, even if this stretches the concept of feasibility to the limits. As Dieter Helm points out, the action required today is unlikely but “not impossible. It is a matter ultimately of human well being and ethics.”(19)

Yes, it might already be too late – even if we reduced emissions to zero tomorrow – to prevent more than two degrees of warming, but we cannot behave as if it is, for in doing so we make the prediction come true. Tough as this fight may be, improbable as success might seem, we cannot afford to surrender.

Video: What causes climate change?

« Previous Page