Laureates call on Harper to halt tar sands expansion
Eight Nobel peace laureates on Wednesday urged Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in an open letter to halt the expansion of the Alberta oil sands.
“Further exploitation of the tar sands will dramatically increase the amount of greenhouse gas emissions being produced in North America,” said the letter, signed by South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Iran’s Shirin Ebadi, Jodi Williams of the United States, and others.
“It will also ultimately make turning the clock back on climate change impossible.”
And so, “we are calling on you to use your power to halt the expansion of the tar sands, and ensure that Canada moves towards a clean energy future,” they said to Harper.
Acting to curb greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change, they added, is a “profoundly moral decision, one that deserves to be placed alongside any other major struggle in human history.”
The letter comes two days after federal police arrested 117 protestors for storming Canada’s parliament to protest Ottawa’s support for a $7 billion pipeline to bring oil from Canada’s tar sands to the US Gulf Coast.
Climate Change to Cost Canada Billions
Climate change will cause damage in Canada equivalent to around 1 percent of GDP in 2050 as rising temperatures kill off forests, flood low-lying areas and cause more illnesses, an official panel said on Thursday.
The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy said Canada’s Conservative government – strongly criticized by green activists for not doing enough to fight global warming – should take measures to mitigate the effects of climate change, blamed on greenhouse gas emissions.
The northern regions of Canada, the world’s second largest country, are warming up at a much faster pace than the rest of the Earth.
“Climate change presents a growing, long-term economic burden for Canada,” said the NRTEE, which the government set up in 1988 to provide advice on environmental issues.
According to the most likely scenario outlined by the panel, the damage done by global warming would be between 0.8 percent and 1 percent of GDP by 2050 and could hit almost 2.5 percent by 2075.
You can find the NTREE study here. The key figure is on page 41 — but that isn’t the plausible worst-case for Canada. Note that the study finds, “A small but not impossible chance of costs reaching over $150 billion per year in 2050 exists.“ In 2075, “there would be a 5% chance of costs exceeding $546 billion and a 1% chance of costs exceeding $820 billion.”
What NTREE considers a 5% case, many might consider a much more likely case — see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces.”
Top Ten Reasons Why Renewable Energy Wins
By now the financial, political, and emotional fallout from the recent Solyndra bankruptcy filing is running at full tilt. Print, online, and social media channels are filled with the appropriate questions about what happened — who’s responsible, who’s accountable, and who’s going to pay for it? Incumbent energy providers, including coal and oil, along with many politicians are cynically rushing to tout this event as the beginning of the end for renewable energy, while others see Solyndra’s collapse as merely a singular event that is part of an inevitable macro-trend toward a 21st century clean economy.
However, in reality, Solyndra was not the entire solar industry. It was just a manufacturer and supplier to the industry. Citing Solyndra as a grave indicator of the end of the solar industry is like noting that the demise of Goodyear would end the auto industry. As long as solar makes economic sense; systems will continue to be deployed.
So how about we all take a breath, step back, and look at what’s happening in the bigger picture that is the global energy business.
There are no silver solar bullets to America’s energy needs — but there is solar buckshot.
Solar Buckshot, aka Top 10 Reasons Why Solar Energy Will Win
Global Warming Could Cause Animals to Shrink
A new study by researchers from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences has explored the possibility that many of the world’s organisms may shrink in size as a result of continued global warming.
This study relates to the ‘temperature-size rule’ which describes how individuals of cold-blooded organisms reach a smaller adult size when they are born and raised in a warmer climate.
The study was published in the journal The American Naturalist and authored by Dr. Andrew Hirst and colleagues from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, thanks to funding provided by the Natural Environment Research Council.
The study was carried out using data collected over 40 years on marine planktonic copepods, tiny crustaceans that are the main animal plankton in our planet’s oceans. These little animals themselves graze on smaller plankton and are a food source for larger fish, birds and marine mammals.
The results showed that the rate at which these crustaceans grew – how fast they acquired mass – and the rate at which they developed – how fast an individual animal passes through the various stages of life – are consistently decoupled across a whole range of species, “with development being more sensitive to temperature than growth.”
Greens will surround White House – NRDC
If President Obama looks out at demonstrators circling the White House on Nov. 6, he’ll be receiving a message: The nation’s Greens are seeing red.
“It’s symbolic that this will be one year before the 2012 election,” Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an interview during a Seattle visit.
The peaceful circle-the-White House protest will be in opposition to the Keystone Pipeline, a 1,711-mile pipeline designed to carry carbon-laden oil from the oil sands of northern Alberta to refineries in Texas and the U.S. Gulf Coast.
The U.S. State Department has ruled that the project will have no significant environmental impact: Its conclusion is being furiously debated at hearings now underway along the planned pipeline route in Montana and Nebraska.
Approval or rejection of the pipeline “is President Obama’s decision — it is his and his alone to make,” said Beinecke, who served on the National Commission to Investigate the Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Labor unions are for the pipeline, echoing builders’ claims that it will create 20,000 jobs. Montana’s Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer supports the project. Leading Nebraska politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, fear for their aquifer and oppose it.
Energy Department approves $1 billion in solar energy loan guarantees
The Energy Department announced Wednesday that is has finalized more than $1 billion in loan guarantees for two separate solar energy projects.
The decision comes several weeks after Solyndra, a California-based solar manufacturer that received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration in 2009, filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers, setting off a firestorm in Washington.
DOE announced a $737 million loan guarantee to help finance construction of the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a 110-megawatt solar-power-generating facility in Nye County, Nev. The project is sponsored by Tonopah Solar, a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve.
The Energy Department said the project will result in 600 construction jobs and 45 permanent jobs.
White House, Energy Department seek green tech momentum
The White House is looking to recapture political momentum on green energy that’s been blunted by the collapse of the stimulus-backed California solar energy company Solyndra.
The Energy Department on Thursday will announce the next round of projects to be funded through its Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.
“This fourth round of ARPA-E project selections focuses on transformational, breakthrough technologies in rare earth alternatives, biofuels, thermal storage, electronic grid controls, and solar power electronics,” DOE stated in an advisory.
Separately, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and officials from the departments of Commerce and Energy, along with other agencies, will announce funding winners under the i6 Green Challenge.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
It’s nice to see the protests being so consistent for the XL extension of the Keystone pipeline (if only we had done this for Keystone 1 to the midwest back in 2009, we might not be in this situation now since it could have been stopped before there was serious money flowing to Alberta).
Unfortunately I’m guessing this will just play into the administration’s hands to show how the President can stand up to people in his own party as he courts those middle of the road voters (most of whom would probably choose oil from Canada over no oil from Canada since they don’t understand the dire climate implications of the extraction).
One other detail not often appreciated with regards to the XL extension of the pipeline. The Keystone 1 pipeline sells crude to midwest refiners at West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil prices (currently around $80 a barrel), but the XL extension will allow the oil companies to sell the oil at Brent Crude prices (about $25 more a barrel, i.e. 30% margin increase) which is what the world goes by and most of the US as well – so there is big money trying to make the XL extension happen.
To elaborate on your post Saspailla, there is less than 50 gallons of oil in a barred so that $25 dollars premium would add $0.50 / gallon of crud, even less refined gas. A give away to the already RICH. Yet society cannot get even 15 cents a gallon added to fuel price that would help humanity! Very Strange
However it is easy to see why Corporate America is in favor. Are you paying attention Tea Party Folks!
In Good Company
So, eight Nobel Peace Prize winners write to Canadian PM Harper about the tar sands, using phrases and comments such as “profoundly moral decision” and “ultimately make turning the clock back on climate change impossible”. As we know, the Nobel Peace Prize winners have also written to President Obama to say ‘no’ to the Keystone XL pipeline with the same degree of urgency.
Meanwhile, the NRDC (and others) plan a November 6 circling of the White House, pointing out the relevance of the fact that it’s one year before the election. Yet for all that, it seems to me that the message will be rather vague, lacking the verve and leverage it could otherwise have, if it implies (or even allows the politicians to assume) that most of the folks will vote for President Obama no matter what he chooses to do regarding Keystone XL.
I find it interesting that Nobel Peace Prize winners — eight of them, no less — write about these decisions as profound moral choices (they are) and yet (as it seems) the most activist of the activists here are mostly unwilling to put their feet down and actually tell Obama clearly that he’d better make the right choice, literally, or else they won’t vote for him. And here on CP there seems to be a deep reluctance to even air the issue — to even entertain the question — straightforwardly? (Sorry for the repetition: Think of it as “tough love”.)
So let’s consider: Our leaders face a “profound moral choice” with respect to Keystone XL and continuing development of the tar sands. It is a choice that is President Obama’s (Keystone XL, anyhow). The pipeline and ongoing usage of tar sands oil would mean “game over” for efforts to stabilize the climate, according to Jim Hansen and others. Yet who will actually state clearly that his/her vote is on the line — that President Obama had better say ‘no’ to the pipeline if he wants their vote, and that he won’t get their vote if he approves it? And who will even air the question and allow the arguments to be heard, pro and con?
It seems to me that people are dancing around the issue, preferring to be vague in terms of messaging: “President Obama, it’s crucial that you say ‘no’ to Keystone XL (but we’ll allow you to assume that we’ll vote for you either way, and we’ll even say so).” And yet elsewhere we talk about the importance of messaging. And also we can probably not even comprehend the immense mixed message that will result if President Obama approves of Keystone XL and yet continues to say he cares about climate change. Again, sorry for the harping; again, it’s tough love.
I applaud the Nobel Peace Prize winners. If only we could somehow realize that it would help to actually use the leverage that comes with our votes.
Jeff
You have it right, Jeff. I won’t vote for BO in any case because there are other policies of his that I don’t agree with (Occupy Wall Street is one result). But this should surely make almost everyone on this list stop and think.
I take Solyndra in the larger context of the energy wars that are cropping up as alternatives become ever more viable. The oil industry and the political mercenaries they back are currently fighting to maintain dominance. The vitriol of their attacks and the desperation of their action is just a sign of how powerful and viable alternative energy has become. Not to say that they won’t succeed, or that we don’t need to keep fighting. But, on this front at least, there is reason for hope.
Climate Change to Cost Canada Billions
It is in fact costing a lot of money now….
I wonder what it is, but over the last few years it must already be a multibillion figure.
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Here is before 2000… just for flood
http://ec.gc.ca/eau-water/default.asp?lang=En&n=02A71110-1
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Manitoba floods cost province $750M
canoe july 2011.
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more than $400 millions is spent on fighting wildfires each year (1990–2001). In 1998, fire management costs were more than $800 million, and costs in 2003 were near $1 billion.
http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/auth/english/maps/environment/naturalhazards/forest_fires/1
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2011
Insurable damage caused by the fire was estimated at over C$700 million, $1.8 billion in total. It was the second costliest disaster in Canadian history, topped only by the North American ice storm of 1998 which caused $1.8 billion in damages, adjusted for inflation to 2011 dollars.[22]
Canadian ice shelves halve in six years
theconversation.edu.au
Half of Canada’s ancient ice shelves have disappeared in the last six years, researchers have said, with new data showing significant portions melted in the last year alone.The rate at which ice melts…
The link in:
“see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces.””
Simply re-opens this page. I would love to see the contents of the proper link.