Carbon Counter

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Tip: El Niño is the name given to a reversal of currents in the east Pacific Ocean, which brings warm water to the coast of Peru, sparking rainfall in areas that are normally desert. In contrast, the lush forests of Papua New Guinea, where the rain usually falls, bake in drought. El Niño, in fact, changes weather across the globe.

Southern Europe becomes like the Sahara, with deserts spreading in Spain and Portugal. People move north into temperate refuges in Scandinavia and the British Isles, which become increasingly overcrowded, resulting in further conflict.

All glaciers disappear from the Alps, further reducing water supplies in central Europe.

Permafrost melt in Siberia releases billions of tonnes of methane and carbon dioxide, meaning that global warming spirals upward.

Five degrees

Earth hotter than at any time for 55 million years.

Desert belts expand from the subtropics into temperate regions. Civilization collapses as humanity is unable to cope.

Methane hydrate is released from underneath the oceans, sparking tsunamis in coastal regions and pushing global warming into an unstoppable spiral.

Much of the world is uninhabitable.

Six degrees

Mass extinction scenario: the end-Permian mass extinction 251 million years ago was associated with six degrees of warming, and wiped out 90% of life on earth. No one is sure what happened, but a combination of volcanic CO2 releases and methane hydrates may have been the cause. (This was much worse than the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, 65 million years ago, which wiped out the dinosaurs.)

Huge firestorms sweep the planet as methane hydrate fireballs ignite.

Seas turn anoxic (without oxygen) and release poisonous hydrogen sulphide.

Humanity’s very survival as a species is in question.

(Note: this list is a very potted summary of a book called Six Degrees, also by Mark Lynas, published in March 2007 by Fourth Estate.)

If none of this sounds very appealing, then you’re reading the right book. This guide aims to show how you can help to avoid these disasters by reducing your personal contribution to global warming. The table on page 29 indicates the changes that are needed on a global scale to avoid each successive degree of global warming.

TWO DEGREES – THE TARGET

You might have noticed from the discussion above that there are certain ‘tipping points’, after which global warming could become unstoppable. Several of these could be reached if temperatures cross the two degrees threshold, because at this level of warming, greenhouse gas releases from the soils and forests could take on their own unstoppable momentum. That would leave humanity powerless to intervene as our planet began cooking. For this reason, many environmental groups and even governments (including the European Union) have begun to fix on the target of two degrees as a danger level that must not be crossed.

The graph on pages 20-1 shows how high temperatures might rise, in comparison to their levels over the last millennium. Note that the two degrees danger line is well below most of the scenarios for temperature change by 2100.

Staying below two degrees with any level of certainty would require global greenhouse gas emissions to peak by 2015 – quite a tall order, especially given the reluctance of many people and nations to face up to the scale and urgency of the problem. However, even if we overshoot this target, any cuts we do make will still help to slow the rate of change. At the very least, this gives human societies and natural species more time to adapt to rising sea levels, harsher weather and shifting climate zones. So it’s not too late to act, but time is rapidly running out, and the era of procrastination is definitely over.

WHAT IS A CARBON FOOTPRINT?

In short, a carbon footprint is a measure of an individual’s contribution to global warming. Almost every energy-consuming activity we engage in has a carbon cost. Sometimes this carbon expenditure is obvious, such as the exhaust belching out of the back of a ‘Chelsea tractor’ 4x4 on the morning school run. At other times it is less obvious, like the ‘food miles’ inherent in imported produce we might buy at a

supermarket. Your carbon footprint will be impossible to pin down exactly, but getting a general idea will help you to reduce your impact on the climate.

Many people (especially those who work in the fossil fuel industries) suggest that getting to grips with climate change will require terrible wartime-style sacrifices, where we all have to sit shivering around a single candle all winter while wearing five jumpers. But actually, reducing your carbon footprint is surprisingly easy, and not only does it not require hair-shirt sacrifices, it will probably increase your quality of life substantially. Cycling or walking rather than driving, eating local produce rather than supermarket junk and having some solar panels on your roof are hardly going to bring your world to an end. Sandals are, of course, optional.

Some comparisons between countries

We’ve all heard the cliché that Americans are greedy polluters, while Africans have a much lighter impact on the planet. But is it true? Different countries have radically different carbon impacts, depending on their pattern of development and the lifestyles of their citizens. America is in fact quite near the top of the global warming polluters’ league table, with almost 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted per person. But the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, with their oil-rich economies, have twice the per-person impact of the US.

European countries tend to have about half the per capita emissions of the United States: the UK, for example, has 9.4 tonnes to America’s 19.8. So our carbon footprints are only half as large as those of the average American. But they are still big on a global scale – each Brit produces ten times as much CO

as each Vietnamese. Global warming naysayers are fond of pointing the finger at China and India, as if they are to blame for the problem. But China’s emissions are only 3.2 tonnes per person while India’s are 1.2 tonnes per person.

Africa is often forgotten altogether, and African per capita emissions are indeed minuscule in comparison to ours. Tanzania’s people emit only 0.1 tonnes each – one hundredth of our per-person total – while Chad

Tip: At the moment it is not possible to say when each degree of temperature rise will be reached – because that depends on decisions we have all yet to make. If we continue to increase carbon emissions, we might reach two degrees as soon as 2030. But if we cut back our greenhouse gas emissions sharply, we may avoid two degrees altogether.

and Mali have emissions so low that they are not even measurable. It is interesting to note how African people are often blamed for environmental damage such as deforestation and the hunting of wildlife, but in global warming terms they are greener than green. The only exception is highly developed South Africa, which, with 7.8 tonnes per person, is nearly up to European standards. Anyone who has travelled around Johannesburg’s traffic-choked motorways will quickly understand why.

Of course, because developing countries have such huge populations, their global impact is considerable. China is the second-largest emitter in the world (after the United States, of course), with 14.5% of the world total. India is number four in the list, with 5.1% of the total, while the UK is seventh, with 2.3%. Because of their large total impact and the rapid scale of their economic development, it is clearly true that global

Tip: The UK often claims to be doing most towards bringing down greenhouse gas emissions, and the government projects that we are on target under the Kyoto Protocol to meet our reduction of 12.5% by 2012. However, a tougher government target of 20% reductions by that date has now been quietly dropped, and emissions are currently rising again – thanks mostly to the general public driving and consuming more.

warming cannot be solved without engaging developing nations in the effort. But while such dramatic per capita disparities remain, China and India have a fair point in refusing to take the first steps.

Contraction and convergence

Aubrey Meyer of the London-based Global Commons Institute has proposed an international solution – ‘Contraction and Convergence’ (C&C). This proposal recognizes that the only realistic way to avoid global political stalemate is to accept the need for equity – that each person has an equal right to the use of the atmosphere. At the moment, the wide divergence in carbon footprints means that each American is using nearly twenty times as much atmospheric space as each Indian. By demanding that India makes cuts at the same time as the US, the American government is in effect proposing to cement this inequity – something the Indian government is understandably unwilling to sign up to.

C&C gets around this problem by putting in place a framework for ‘convergence’ to equity where, by a negotiable date (say, 2030), each country in the world will have an equal emissions entitlement based on its population. While all of our carbon footprints might not be the same by that date, our rights would be.

So people in rich countries who want to use more than their fair share would have to pay for the right to do so by buying unused allocations from people in poorer countries. The result would likely be a net transfer of wealth from rich to poor, which would help tackle global poverty at the same time as global warming. This wouldn’t be charity, but trade – something world leaders are more likely to sign up to.

Of course, convergence is only one half of the equation. The other would be ‘contraction’, where global emissions contract downwards towards a sustainable level that would avoid serious climate change damages.

So far, C&C has gained substantial support from the African group of nations, while in the UK it has been recommended by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Aubrey Meyer suggests that C&C could provide a stronger framework for climate change action once the Kyoto Protocol lapses in 2012.

Kyoto and international negotiations

In theory, the international community is already committed to solving climate change, and has been for more than a decade. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit by leaders from 150 nations, including the first President George Bush on behalf of the United States. In its Article Two, it said the following:

‘The ultimate objective of this Convention…is to achieve stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.’

Trouble was, no one defined ‘dangerous’. Moreover, the Convention was only voluntary, without specific measures to actually enforce its stated objective. Nothing much happened as a result, and greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise after the UNFCCC was signed. In order to address this, the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in Japan in 1997 to try to give the Convention some teeth. Industrialized countries agreed that they should take the first steps towards cutting emissions, since they were the highest percapita polluters. Different nations took on different CO

reduction targets: the United States agreed to a cut of 7%, while the EU got a cut of 8%. Japan and Canada each took on 6%, while Australia negotiated itself an increase in emissions by claiming special status as a smaller country. In total, emissions from the industrialized world under Kyoto were supposed to fall by 5% by 2012.

Kyoto was finalized amid great celebrations in December 1997, and hailed as a triumph for global environmental protection. If it had worked, perhaps this book would not have needed to be written. Unfortunately things went somewhat downhill after all the delegates went home and the ink began to dry. First, no one did anything to cut emissions. Japanese, Canadian and US emissions continued to climb steeply, despite the countries’ Kyoto targets. European emissions were more stable, largely because of the happy accident of economic collapse in post-Communist Eastern Europe, which dramatically curtailed emissions from the old factories and power stations of the Soviet bloc.

Kyoto’s negotiating process continued at annual UN summits after 1997, but each successive meeting introduced new loopholes that served to weaken the treaty. Then in 2001, a further blow came when the second George Bush pulled the United States out of Kyoto, arguing that it would be too much of a strain on his country’s economy (though many pointed at his administration’s close links with the oil industry as a deeper reason for the hostility to Kyoto). The US played a further negative role by undermining the negotiations at the UN climate summits, and by trying to organize an alliance of other Kyoto-hostile powers.

It took seven long years before the Kyoto Protocol even came into force. It finally became legally binding in February 2005 when Russia belatedly ratified the treaty. Even so, the US and Australia remain on the outside, and Canada has said that it will not be able to meet its emissions target. Within the EU, Ireland and Spain are also grossly over-budget, and may have to buy ‘emissions credits’ from more thrifty countries.

CARBON RATIONING

Many people see rationing as the only verifiable long-term way to get people to change their lifestyles. It’s the ultimate in carbon footprinting: rather than each individual having to work out their footprint using calculations like the ones later in this book, it would all be done automatically, perhaps with an electronic card. Each time you fill up the car, you would have to

Tip: It’s not all bad news on the US front. Following the lead of Seattle’s Mayor Greg Nickels, by September 2006, 295 city mayors, representing fifty million Americans, had pledged to implement the Kyoto agreement in their localities.

swipe your carbon ration card and surrender some units. You would also need enough carbon ration to cover your heating and other domestic needs.

The beauty of carbon rationing, according to its proponents, is that it would be government-enforced – making it much more likely to work than voluntary approaches. Because each person starts off the year with an equal ration, it would also be fair, just as everyone during the Second World War had an equal allocation of food and other necessities in order to jointly share in the war effort. One difference from wartime rations, however, is that carbon rations would be tradeable. This would introduce some flexibility – if you really have to have that power-boat, then you can buy an unused ration from someone who is happy to forgo such luxuries. The financial incentives would therefore reward those who kept their carbon emissions low, because they could sell their unused ration on the open market.

At the moment, things work the other way round – it is often cheaper to be energy-profligate. Budget