Responding to Global Warming
Michael Robertson. Urban Ecology Australia. 2007.3
Rapid global warming is disrupting human settlements and natural ecosystems. By slowing global warming, and other measures, we can help humans and nature adapt.
For this we need capacity. The political capacity to, as a community, face the challenge of global warming, negotiate solutions, and reassign shared resources. And the creative capacity to develop and apply technology.
Slowing Global Warming
Over the last 30 years, the world has warmed at an average of 0.18 degrees C. This is too rapid.
- We should slow global warming to below 0.1 degrees C per decade, in order to allow humans and nature more time to adapt.
Slowing global warming requires reducing greenhouse gas emissions. For example, to a point where atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are no longer increasing. Currently world greenhouse emissions are over 40 Gt CO2e per year. Reducing this to around 20 Gt per year may be enough to stabilise atmospheric greenhouse gases.
- Bring world greenhouse emissions down from 40 Gt CO2e per year to 20 Gt CO2e per year between 2010 and 2050. A simple schedule would be:
| Gt CO2e | |
| 2010 | 40 |
| 2020 | 35 |
| 2030 | 30 |
| 2040 | 25 |
| 2050 | 20 |
But such a reduction schedule, while significant, may not slow global warming very much in the short term. If so, we may need to make deeper cuts in world greenhouse emissions, at least for the first decade or two. Thus we should:
- Develop the capacity to make deeper cuts in world greenhouse emissions over the next two decades, eg to reduce annual emissions to 30 Gt CO2e or less by 2020.
Reducing Greenhouse Emissions
We can reduce greenhouse emissions by:
- Reducing consumption of fossil fuels.
- Reforming agricultural practices so that agriculture acts as a (net) carbon sink rather than source.
- Capturing or reducing methane produced from organic waste.
- Reducing the conversion of forest land to grassland and crop land, while increasing the conversion of grassland and cropland to forest land.
Reducing Fossil Fuel Consumption
We can reduce fossil fuel consumption by:
- Reducing demand for energy. Hence: developing and using low-energy buildings, appliances, industrial processes, vehicles and transport systems.
- Developing alternative energy resources such as wind and solar power.
Developing the Capacity to Reduce Greenhouse Emissions
We can increase our capacity to reduce greenhouse emissions by:
- Enhancing our capacity for technological innovation.
Hence:
- Employing more people to develop and apply new (and existing) technologies. For example, more scientists, technicians and industrial designers.
- Ensuring supply of people able to develop and apply technology by enhancing and extending education facilities and networks. For example, through universal primary and high school education.
- Fostering an innovative culture that encourages people to seek out new ideas and engage in transformative activities, not just in science and technology, but also art, popular culture, and life in general.
And by:
- Enhancing the ability of the general public to understand global warming and related issues; see the need for change; engage in the process of developing options and negotiating solutions.
Adapting to Global Warming
Global warming and consequent rapid climate change is causing disruption to human settlements and natural eco-systems. We need to shift resources into adaption measures such as:
- Giving poorer human communities greater capacity to resettle and rebuild their economy and lifestyles.
- Setting aside more land for nature conservation in order to offset damage that will be caused by climate change.
Developing the Capacity to Adapt to Global Warming
Developing the capacity of humans and nature to adapt to global warming will require:
- Increasing the capacity of human communities to adjust to climate change without needing to resettle. Hence the capacity to develop and apply solutions to problems such as drought, flooding, salination, etc.
- Enabling human communities to resettle when necessary (away from areas irrecoverably disrupted by climate change). Hence: enabling people to reestablish their culture and livelihoods in the new settlements. And for existing settlements to take on extra population with minimual disruption.
- Creating alternative habitats for species disrupted by climate change. For example, to provide food supplies for polar bears who cannot swim the extra distance to and from shrinking ice packs.
- Protecting and creating habitats for species disrupted by agriculture and other causes, to compensate for disruption due to global warming. For example, creating wildlife corridors in agricultural regions to connect remant habitat fragments.
Shifting Creative Resources
The current economic system has been quite successful in devoting creative resources - the ability of people to develop innovative solutions - twoward activities that are causing global warming, for example, advertising that promotes unnecessary material consumption by the wealthy. At the expense of activities that would help us slow global warming and adapt to climate change - technology development, cultural revitalisation, and educational investment.
Investment in education and technology development delivers us the capacity to discover and apply specific solutions for greenhouse emission reduction and adaptation to climate change.
Cultural vitality encourages people to engage in creative pursuits and with new ideas, and thus enhances the capacity for technological development, and to shift from material and energy intensive lifestyles, to less intensive ones. It also gives communities greater resilience when needing to resettle, or to accomodate new people resettling from elsewhere.
Using a Carbon Tax to Shift Creative Resources
One way of shifting resources from material and energy intensive activities, and hence from activities promoting such activities, and toward attempts to transform our economy into a much less material and energy intensive one, would be a carbon tax - a tax on greenhouse emissions.
Such a tax would make material and energy intensive goods and services more expensive relative to less intensive goods and services, and so encourage businesses to shift toward producing, and customers towards purchasing the latter.
The question then is how to spend the proceeds from the tax to further our response to global warming.
Proposal:
- We should spend much of the proceeds of a greenhouse emissions tax on technology development, cultural revitalisation, and investment in education, both in Australia and across the world.
Because such spending will foster greater capacity to respond to global warming both in the near and distant future, by redirecting creative resources into activities that are more productive of the kind of change we need, and away from pursuit that are productive of outcome we don't, or that are simply not very productive.
No Regrets
Shifting resources into technology development, cultural revitalisation, and education investment will not merely allow us to better respond to global warming, it will empower people, and inspire tham to transform their situation, and their relationships with the people around them, in creative and beneficial ways.
So even if global warming turns out to be less of a problem than it seems now - because easy to slow down, or because the climatic system causes it to slow down regardless of our intervention - we will still be glad that it acted as a catalyst to harness human resources more productively towards the general human good.
Just as we will be glad that it prompted us to harness natural resources towards better protection and enhancement of natural ecosystems.
2007.3.5