Climate Progress/US Legislation

Long detailed post at Climate Progress on the Clean Energy and Climate Bill. It's a landmark shift from the Bush years. However in the light of recent scientific reports there are substantial doubts that the US getting back to its 1990 levels by 2020 are enough (vs EU is aiming for -20%). A very positive step, and a vital one in the build up to COP15 eg to engage the Chinese. But also representative of America's still not being willing to change its cherished "lifestyle", of the across the board conservatism of American politics - a free market consensus with slight variations in shade - & a testament to the ongoing lobbying power of big energy. The Cap&Trade element has been subject to an attempt to show it is a tax on the poor middle American coal states & hence working class democrat voters. vs actually via the cap&refund format most individual working americans would be better off financially. Details of what's in the bill from New York Times

Swapping, the new Shopping

Check out posh-swaps.com
Not an entirely new idea but a good one and well put together, could be the version that 'tips'? via Luke at MoreAssociates

HMS Paycheck

I'm in the late stages of drafting a book so obviously I need frittering diversions. Like tidying the desk, or getting to the post office. Or writing stuff just to get some words moving onto the screen. The other day I had the idea of writing a Gilbert & Sullivan parody opera about the UK MP's expenses scandals.

Here's a sample of what I mean (based on the "I am the captain of the pinafore" song from HMS Pinafore). Do feel free to chip in if you need to fritter while getting down to something. Today's episode is based on the resignation of the speaker of the house of commons. Also involved will be mySociety who brilliantly brought all of this about through a freedom of information act request for details of expenses, something the speaker tried to block and then a campaign.

Orchestra, house lights....

Speaker.
I am the Speaker of the House of Commons

Chorus.
And a right good speaker, too!

Speaker.
You're very, very good,
And be it understood,
I command a motley crew.

Chorus.
We're very, very good,
And be it understood,
He commands a motley crew.

Speaker.
Though soon to be a peer,
I can spin and block, and steer,
And hold inquiries at bay;
Your secrets are safe with me
No matter how dirty
They will never see the light of day

Chorus.
What, never?

Speaker.
No, never!

Chorus.
What, never?

Speaker.
Oh... bother
(holds up email)

Article for Mediacat (June)

TRUSTMARK™

As time goes on it becomes more and more apparent that the biggest trend in sustainable marketing is not brands going green, but brands getting other ‘brands’ (the Trustmarks™) to certify that they have really done so. The FairTrade mark grew 60% in 2007 according to the Co-op Bank survey of ethical consumerism. My guess is it will grow 200% in 2009 after its adoption by Cadbury, Starbucks, Tate&Lyle Sugar and others. Mars Confectionary (Masterfoods) have announced they will move to a completely sustainable certified range by 2020. Their first deal is with Rainforest Alliance, another big mover, also signing up brands from Nestle, Unilever, McDonalds, Kraft and others.

This isn’t an entirely new idea. 200 years ago you could buy sugar in the UK that was “guaranteed slave labour free”. That would still be a good label today, unfortunately, with some types of products like sugar and coffee. There are concerns for instance over children being sold to grow coffee as slaves in parts of Africa, something Nestle got accused over not policing. The labels are there as shields, to answer accusations such as these, to show you have a process in place to check that your goods are ethically untainted.

These Trustmarks are a sign of the times. We may like brands, identify with them, have what marketers call relationships with them. But we don’t trust them, or more accurately we don’t wholly trust the companies behind them. It is a collective failure of corporations who lost our trust over the last twenty years, through scandals and breaches of trust. In May Shell goes on trial in New York over its alleged role in the murder of an activist in Nigeria. Other ‘alien tort’ cases (where an American company is tried in America over breaches of human rights elsewhere in the world) are being brought against Coca-Cola, Exxon Mobil, Walmart.

We also don’t trust advertising claims. in the 1990s Faith Popcorn suggested that there should be a brand which certified advertising claims as 100% true and reliable. We have advertising authorities and we have regulation, but she meant something much more stringent, that would conform with what people would regard as truth. Like cereals which are 50% sugar not connecting themselves with health. Or cars which are lets face it not exactly Aston Martin being associated with sexual success and ‘cool’. Advertising is all exaggerated, everyone knows that and it can be part of the charm, but today people don’t trust it because it has become so devalued. A good way of doing this today might be to create a review system for viewers. They could judge (from 1 to 5 stars like on Amazon.com) how misleading or truthful an advert was. This could become a guide for other viewers. And also give advertisers feedback on their output, pointing out campaigns which as teachers put it when marking homework “could try harder”. If a TV company hosted this scheme, they could give cheaper rates for 5 Trustar (Trust Stars) commercials. In Belgium one TV company already gives a 30% discount to leading green (eco friendly) products.

Trustmark™ was a branding idea I had on a project for a new eco label (we aren’t using it, it was too broad and generic). Another idea I had on this project was to create a service called Brand Rehab. This would be used by a corporate as a crisis management tool for a brand had got found out on some issue. Like Nike in the 1990s when the picture appeared of a child stitching one of their footballs in Pakistan. Or Unilever last year when it was accused of buying palm oil in Indonesia grown on land where deforestation had been used. Brand rehab would act like the Betty Ford clinic is used by celebrity agents in Los Angeles. “Yes there clearly has been an issue. We are now in rehab, so you can be sure the issue is being dealt with.” This would damp the flames of further press investigation, you would just update them factually on progress and process, with nothing to hide the story would become a bore for them. It would also be an independent means for corporates to ensure that they actually were putting things right. Like the independent police complaint commissions that many have to investigate complaints over policing. Like all great brands, BrandRehab would have a human promise and also would create (or protect) brand and shareholder value.

You might want to have a meeting with someone like the WWF (who could provide the credible back end services) to explore all of this this. It’s a new market where people with skills in inventing brands can make value out of concepts. With the recession it’s nice to see a wide open new market, where ideas can so simply and effortlessly meet a need and create value, right?

Deindustrial Revolution?

Thought provoking post over at thearchdruidreport about the implications for declining fossil fuel energy reserves on the viability of today's IT infrastructure. Below are a few samples, but well worth reading the whole thing. See also the climate group report I covered last year, confirming the collossal growth in the energy footprint and emissions of this sector: "The ICT sector’s own emissions are expected to increase, in a business as usual (BAU) scenario, from 0.53 billion tonnes (Gt) carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in 2002 to 1.43 GtCO2e in 2020." Greer's book the long descent looks very well worth checking too. I've always found peak oil one of the most liberating of our looming problems (how 'looming' is a debate, but it's still an inbuilt mortality to our oil fuel technocratic society) because it forces you to think far beyond the status quo.

FROM ARCHDRUIDREPORT: END OF THE INFORMATION AGE
Very few people realize just how extravagant the intake of resources to maintain the information economy actually is. The energy cost to run a home computer is modest enough that it’s easy to forget, for example, that the two big server farms that keep Yahoo’s family of web services online use more electricity between them than all the televisions on Earth put together. Multiply that out by the tens of thousands of server farms that keep today’s online economy going, and the hundreds of other energy-intensive activities that go into the internet, and it may start to become clear how much energy goes into putting these words onto the screen where you’re reading them. It’s not an accident that the internet came into existence during the last hurrah of the age of cheap energy, the quarter century between 1980 and 2005 when the price of energy dropped to the lowest levels in human history. Only in a period where energy was quite literally too cheap to bother conserving could so energy-intensive an information network be constructed. The problem here, of course, is that the conditions that made the cheap abundant energy of that quarter century have already come to an end, and the economics of the internet take on a very different shape as energy becomes scarce and expensive again. Like the railroads of the future mentioned earlier in this post, the internet is subject to the laws of supply and demand. Once the cost of maintaining it in its current form outstrips the income that can be generated by it, it becomes a losing proposition, and cheaper modes of information storage and delivery will begin to replace it in its more marginal uses.

Governments will have very good reasons to maintain some form of internet as long as they can, even when it becomes an economic sink – it’s worth remembering that the internet we now have evolved out of a US government network meant to provide communication capacity in the event of nuclear war – but this does not mean that everyone in the industrial world will have the same access they do today. Instead, as energy costs move unsteadily upward and resource needs increasingly get met, or not, on the basis of urgency, expect access costs to rise, government regulation to increase, internet commerce to be subject to increasing taxation, and rural areas and poor neighborhoods to lose internet service altogether. There may well still be an internet a quarter century from now, but it will likely cost much more, reach far fewer people, and have only a limited resemblance to the free-for-all that exists today. Newspapers, radio, and television all moved from a growth phase of wild diversity and limited regulation to a mature phase of vast monopolies with tightly controlled content; even in the absence of energy limits, the internet would be likely to follow the same trajectory, and the rising costs imposed by the end of cheap energy bid fair to shift that process into overdrive.

Out Soon (29 May)

Sample chapters and a general feel for where Gil is coming from http://www.natlogic.com/truth

"For the last few years I've been imagining what the essential one-volume green business handbook would look like. Now I don't need to imagine it, because Gil Friend has written it. The Truth About Green Business is, simply, the best green business book on the market." Alex Steffen, WorldChanging

Kick the Habit

Free Unep eBook on personal carbon/change (NB big download 22MB) here












Now this is proper disclosure (info for the printed version):
"The production and transport of each copy of this book has released about 5 kilos of CO2 equivalent into the atmosphere. This value is comparable to the amount of CO2 generated when burning 2 litres of petrol. Factors that have been taken into consideration for this calculation are shipping (40 per cent), staff and editorial board travel (20 per cent), paper (20 per cent), printing (13 per cent) and energy consumption for office and computer use (7 per cent). The use of sustainably produced recycled paper and plant-based ink helped to lower the climate impact, whearas the transport of 500 copies to New Zealand for book launch is responsible for the biggest chunk of emissions."

One to Watch

It's still one of the more shocking facts that came up in research for the new book that the average American (woman, man and child) is eating 1.1kg of sugar per week. 1.1kg

Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change

(A statement as input to COP15 via ecobuddhism.org if you are a buddhist you can sign this declaration on that blog, the Dalai Lama was the first to do so. More on buddhism and deep ecology here)

The Time to Act is Now
A Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change

Today we live in a time of great crisis, confronted by the gravest challenge that humanity has ever faced: the ecological consequences of our own collective karma. The scientific consensus is overwhelming: human activity is triggering environmental breakdown on a planetary scale. Global warming, in particular, is happening much faster than previously predicted, most obviously at the North Pole. For hundreds of thousands of years, the Arctic Ocean has been covered by an area of sea-ice as large as Australia—but now this is melting rapidly. In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast that the Arctic might be free of summer sea ice by 2100. It is now apparent that this could occur within a decade or two. Greenland’s vast ice-sheet is also melting more quickly than expected. The rise in sea-level this century will be at least one meter—enough to flood many coastal cities and vital rice-growing areas such as the Mekong Delta in Vietnam.

Glaciers all over the world are receding quickly. If current economic policies continue, the glaciers of the Tibetan Plateau, source of the great rivers that provide water for billions of people in Asia, will disappear within 30 years. Severe drought and crop failures are already affecting Australia and Northern China. Major reports—from the IPCC, United Nations, European Union, and International Union for Conservation of Nature—agree that, without a collective change of direction, dwindling supplies of water, food and other resources could create famine conditions, resource battles, and mass migration by mid-century—perhaps by 2030, according to the U.K.’s chief scientific advisor.

Global warming plays a major role in other ecological crises, including the loss of many plant and animal species that share this Earth with us. Oceanographers report that half the carbon released by burning fossil fuels has been absorbed by the oceans, increasing their acidity by about 30%. Acidification is disrupting calcification of shells and coral reefs, as well as threatening plankton growth, the source of the food chain for most life in the sea.

Eminent biologists and U.N. reports concur that “business-as-usual” will drive half of all species on Earth to extinction within this century. Collectively, we are violating the first precept—“do not harm living beings”—on the largest possible scale. And we cannot foresee the biological consequences for human life when so many species that invisibly contribute to our own well-being vanish from the planet.

Many scientists have concluded that the survival of human civilization is at stake. We have reached a critical juncture in our biological and social evolution. There has never been a more important time in history to bring the resources of Buddhism to bear on behalf of all living beings. The four noble truths provide a framework for diagnosing our current situation and formulating appropriate guidelines—because the threats and disasters we face ultimately stem from the human mind, and therefore require profound changes within our minds. If personal suffering stems from craving and ignorance—from the three poisons of greed, ill will, and delusion—the same applies to the suffering that afflicts us on a collective scale. Our ecological emergency is a larger version of the perennial human predicament. Both as individuals and as a species, we suffer from a sense of self that feels disconnected not only from other people but from the Earth itself. As Thich Nhat Hanh has said, “We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.” We need to wake up and realize that the Earth is our mother as well as our home—and in this case the umbilical cord binding us to her cannot be severed. When the Earth becomes sick, we become sick, because we are part of her.

Our present economic and technological relationships with the rest of the biosphere are unsustainable. To survive the rough transitions ahead, our lifestyles and expectations must change. This involves new habits as well as new values. The Buddhist teaching that the overall health of the individual and society depends upon inner well-being, and not merely upon economic indicators, helps us determine the personal and social changes we must make.

Individually, we must adopt behaviors that increase everyday ecological awareness and reduce our “carbon footprint”. Those of us in the advanced economies need to retrofit and insulate our homes and workplaces for energy efficiency; lower thermostats in winter and raise them in summer; use high efficiency light bulbs and appliances; turn off unused electrical appliances; drive the most fuel-efficient cars possible, and reduce meat consumption in favor of a healthy, environmentally-friendly plant-based diet.

These personal activities will not by themselves be sufficient to avert future calamity. We must also make institutional changes, both technological and economic. We must “de-carbonize” our energy systems as quickly as feasible by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources that are limitless, benign and harmonious with nature. We especially need to halt the construction of new coal plants, since coal is by far the most polluting and most dangerous source of atmospheric carbon. Wisely utilized, wind power, solar power, tidal power, and geothermal power can provide all the electricity that we require without damaging the biosphere. Since up to a quarter of world carbon emissions result from deforestation, we must reverse the destruction of forests, especially the vital rainforest belt where most species of plants and animals live.

It has recently become quite obvious that significant changes are also needed in the way our economic system is structured. Global warming is intimately related to the gargantuan quantities of energy that our industries devour to provide the levels of consumption that many of us have learned to expect. From a Buddhist perspective, a sane and sustainable economy would be governed by the principle of sufficiency: the key to happiness is contentment rather than an ever-increasing abundance of goods. The compulsion to consume more and more is an expression of craving, the very thing the Buddha pinpointed as the root cause of suffering.

Instead of an economy that emphasizes profit and requires perpetual growth to avoid collapse, we need to move together towards an economy that provides a satisfactory standard of living for everyone while allowing us to develop our full (including spiritual) potential in harmony with the biosphere that sustains and nurtures all beings, including future generations. If political leaders are unable to recognize the urgency of our global crisis, or unwilling to put the long-term good of humankind above the short-term benefit of fossil-fuel corporations, we may need to challenge them with sustained campaigns of citizen action.

Dr James Hansen of NASA and other climatologists have recently defined the precise targets needed to prevent global warming from reaching catastrophic “tipping points.” For human civilization to be sustainable, the safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is no more than 350 parts per million (ppm). This target has been endorsed by the Dalai Lama, along with other Nobel laureates and distinguished scientists. Our current situation is particularly worrisome in that the present level is already 387 ppm, and has been rising at 2 ppm per year. We are challenged not only to reduce carbon emissions, but also to remove large quantities of carbon gas already present in the atmosphere.

As signatories to this statement of Buddhist principles, we acknowledge the urgent challenge of climate change. We join with the Dalai Lama in endorsing the 350 ppm target. In accordance with Buddhist teachings, we accept our individual and collective responsibility to do whatever we can to meet this target, including (but not limited to) the personal and social responses outlined above.

We have a brief window of opportunity to take action, to preserve humanity from imminent disaster and to assist the survival of the many diverse and beautiful forms of life on Earth. Future generations, and the other species that share the biosphere with us, have no voice to ask for our compassion, wisdom, and leadership. We must listen to their silence. We must be their voice, too, and act on their behalf.

Update on New Futurama

May 01, 2009, A new Futurama
(Referred to in post on Bill Becker TC talk, here's an update blogged by a participants at a meeting to discuss creating a 'new futurama')

In 1939, Robert Moses, Norman Bel Geddes and the General Motors Corporation put on an exhibit called Futurama, showcased at the World's Fair. Some 23,000 visitors a day settled into movable seats to be whisked through a dazzling vision of the future – of gleaming, tall towers set in open space, and serviced by multi-lane highways. Some of the same depiction of future conveniences appeared in the 1964 World's Fair, also directed by Moses, including General Electric's Tomorrowland.
Earlier this month, a group of engineers, architects, planners, museum directors, writers and others gathered at the Pocantico Conference Center at Tarrytown, N.Y. to consider the merits of putting on a new Futurama – a vision of what life might be like in 2050, when more sustainable arrangements are likely to be in place, including more transport options such as transit, energy-efficient buildings, and renewable power sources including solar and wind. A more positive portrayal of post-carbon life is needed to balance the apocoplyctic predictions of warming, says organizer Bill Becker, executive director of the Denver-based Presidents Climate Action Project Petra Todorovich from America 2050 demonstrated an interactive presentation on how people would make different journeys in the future, using intelligent transportation or high-speed rail. Gary Lawrence from Arup presented on the planned Chinese eco-city of Dongtan.
In a presentation based on research for the forthcoming book, Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City, I noted that Moses successfully used theatrical elements to capture public imagination and bolster support for his roadway-building agenda. A critical component was the theme of promise and possibility, rather than constraints or sacrifice.
The gathering was made possible by the Rockfeller Brothers Fund. Becker, who posted on the Climate Progress blog, said an initial exhbit on sustainability in the future might appear in museums such as the Chicago Field Museum and others around the country, with an accompanying interactive Web site feature.

Join Sustained Magazine's big carbon debate

click here

I actually really quite like this

...for its simplicity: Cisco's asking people just to register one green act they'll commit to. The REALLY impressive thing being that globally over a million acts have already been registered. And i like that it all feels quite humble and enabling. Much of its actually pointing on to stuff that others are doing like ecomaps in SFO. By humble I mean compared to some of the more show-offy (in my view, slightly put-offy) progenitors like Global Cool. I think the got the mood and tone about right for this year - ready to act, no longer stuck on the hype. Declaration of interest, I some work last year for Cisco on community & sustainability via Ogilvy. Nothing directly to do with this though.
One million acts of green

Al Gore at TED 2009 on Climate Change

Dark Mountain Project

An awesome new project, really struck a chord with me. Do check it out & if you feel inclined help them with the first milestone which is to raise a few more quid to enable them to fund their manifesto production by this friday.

- a brief excerpt below (the full story at dark-mountain.net)

The Dark Mountain project began with our feeling that, if you go deep enough, you’ll find the roots of this situation in the stories we have been telling ourselves: stories that go back beyond the latest episode of irrational exuberance, down through the history of industrial society and even further. Stories like the myth of human centrality, which tells of our destiny to separate ourselves from and subdue this thing called nature; which makes history a machine for the production of human progress, as measured in the production of ever more and better goods. What makes these stories more dangerous is that we have mistaken them for reality, insisting that we have put away such childish things as myth. As a society, we no longer acknowledge the role of stories in shaping what is real to us – and so our storytellers become entertainers, our poets harmless eccentrics, our artists cynical manipulators of the market, all taboos busted and everything for sale. This won’t do. The times we are living in demand something more.

You can contact them by emailing info@dark-mountain.net
* Paul is the author of 'One No, Many Yeses' and 'Real England: The Battle Against the Bland'. He was deputy editor of The Ecologist between 1999 and 2001. His first poetry collection, Kidland, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. His website is www.paulkingsnorth.net
* Dougald is co-founder of School of Everything (www.schoolofeverything.com) and writes the blog 'Changing the World (and other excuses for not getting a proper job)', at http://otherexcuses.blogspot.com. He is a former BBC journalist and has written for and edited various online and offline magazines.

Prince Charles Rainforest Appeal

http://www.rainforestsos.org/

Climate Crunch (Nature Magazine)

(To avoid 'interpreting' I am simply reposting the Potsdam Institute's own press release on the subject. In fact there is an excellent 16 page Q&A commentary on what the study says and what this means here. But in a nutshell it says we need to forget 2050 and focus on 2020).

Press Release from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact research

April 30, 2009 - Less than a quarter of the proven fossil fuel reserves can be burnt and emitted between now and 2050, if global warming is to be limited to two degrees Celsius (2°C), says a new study published in the journal Nature today (1).

The study has, for the first time, calculated how much greenhouse gas emissions we can pump into the atmosphere between now and 2050, to have a reasonable chance of keeping warming lower than 2°C (above pre-industrial levels) – a goal supported by more than 100 countries (2). We can only emit 1000 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) between the years 2000 and 2050. The world has already emitted one third of that in just nine years.

“If we continue burning fossil fuels as we do, we will have exhausted the carbon budget in merely 20 years, and global warming will go well beyond two degrees,” says Malte Meinshausen, lead author of the study and climate researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. The three-year research project involved scientists from Germany, the United Kingdom and Switzerland (3).

The study concluded that greenhouse gas emissions must be cut by more than 50 percent by 2050 relative to 1990 levels, if the risk of exceeding 2°C is to be limited to 25 percent.

“Only a fast switch away from fossil fuels will give us a reasonable chance to avoid considerable warming. We shouldn’t forget that a 2°C global mean warming would take us far beyond the natural temperature variations that life on Earth has experienced since we humans have been around,” says Malte Meinshausen.

The study also compared the volume of CO2 emissions that could result from the burning of known economically recoverable fossil fuel reserves—oil, gas and coal—and found that these reserves are four times larger than the emission budget between now and 2050 (4). “To keep warming below 2°C, we cannot burn and emit the CO2 from more than a quarter of the economically recoverable fossil fuels up to 2050, and in the end only a small fraction of all known fossil fuel reserves,” concludes Bill Hare, co-author of the study.

The study used a single, efficient computer model which incorporated the effects of all greenhouse gases, aerosols and air pollutants, and the range of possible responses of the carbon cycle and earth’s climate system. This was combined with about a thousand emission pathways.

The study explicitly takes into account the uncertainties related to modelling climate change. Throughout the study, probability statements were used to summarize the current level of knowledge based on observational data. It also used a huge number of different simulation results from the latest assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (5). In taking this comprehensive approach the researchers went a step further than previous work.

The new results have direct relevance to the international negotiations now underway.

“Our study draws on a huge body of research reported in the numerous assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It clearly shows that the 2°C target which many countries have adopted will require quick action in order to follow the blue route rather than the red one in the figure,” says Sarah Raper, co-author from Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.

“With every year of delay, we consume a larger part of our emissions budget, losing room to manoeuvre and increasing the probabilities of dangerous consequences, “ adds Reto Knutti, co-author from the ETH Zurich.

Companion study

A companion study (6), also published in Nature today by Myles Allen and colleagues, show the necessity to limit the total amount of carbon that humankind ever emits.

“In principle, it is the sum of all CO2 emissions that matters. In practice, substantial reductions in global emissions have to begin soon, before 2020. If we wait any longer, the required phase-out of carbon emissions will involve tremendous economic costs and technological challenges - miles beyond what can be considered politically feasible today. The longer we wait, the more likely our path will lead us into dangerous territory,” concludes Malte Meinshausen.

Policy implications

The authors of both papers have collaborated on a Commentary article (7) focussing on their long-term policy implications, published today in Nature Reports Climate Change. See as well the News & Views piece in Nature today (8).



Two possible futures: One in which no climate policies are implemented (red), and one with strong action to mitigate emissions (blue). Shown are fossil CO2 emissions (top panel) and corresponding global warming (bottom panel). The shown mitigation pathway limits fossil and land-use related CO2 emissions to 1000 billion tonnes CO2 over the first half of the 21st century with near-zero net emissions thereafter. Greenhouse gas emissions of this pathway in year 2050 are ~70% below 1990 levels. Without climate policies, global warming will cross 2°C by the middle of the century. Strong mitigation actions according to the blue route would limit the risk of exceeding 2°C to 25%. For more details, see Figure 2 in Meinshausen et al. (2009). Credit: M. Meinshausen et al. (2009)



Notes:
(1) Meinshausen, M., Meinshausen, N., Hare, W., Raper, S. C. B., Frieler, K., Knutti, R., Frame, D. J. & Allen, M. Greenhouse gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2°C. Nature, doi: 10.1038/nature08017 (2009).

(2) Note to Editors: For dangerous climate change to be avoided, 109 of the 192 signing countries of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are calling for warming to be limited to two degrees Celsius or lower relative to pre-industrial levels. Some of the most vulnerable countries as Small Island States and the least developed countries even consider 1.5 degrees Celsius as the maximally acceptable warming level.

(3) The study was led by the two brothers Malte and Nicolai Meinshausen from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Oxford University’s Statistics Department, respectively.

(4) More than 300 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide have been emitted since year 2000 due to burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. Thus, the emission budget of 1,000 billion tonnes (GtCO2) for the years 2000 up to 2050 is reduced to less than 700 billion tonnes for the remaining period since 2009. This remaining budget is hence less than a quarter of our estimate for known economically recoverable fossil fuel reserves (2800 GtCO2). See Meinshausen et al. (2009) for further details.

(5) IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/assessments-reports.htm

(6) Companion study: Allen, M. R., Frame, D. J., Huntingford, C., Jones, C. D., Lowe, J. A., Meinshausen, M. & Meinshausen, N. Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne. Nature, doi:10.1038/nature08019 (2009).

(7) Associated Commentary: Allen, M. R., Frame, D. J., Frieler, K., Hare, W., Huntingford, C., Jones, C., Knutti, R., Lowe, J., Meinshausen, M., Meinshausen, N. & Raper, S. The exit strategy: Emission targets must be placed in the context of a cumulative carbon budget if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. Nature Reports Climate Change, doi:10.1038/climate.2009.38 (2009).

(8) News & Views piece in Nature by Schmidt, G. & Archer, D. Too much of a bad thing. Nature (2009).

Yard Sharing

Rob and I were playing around with this idea as a potential part of our (in development) mobile phone based sharing platform. Anyway it's here now as hyperlocavore on ning and it looks really great. Even better for the 'yard sharing' tag (our British 'turn your garden into an allotment' doesnt really have the same ring?) Anyway I love this - do join if you are a stateside lovcavore in the making. Or start your own version if elsewhere. via @derekmarkham

UPDATE, yes sorry, ever on the ball I had forgotten our very own celebrity chef driven UK version, getting on for 30,000 members and pretty snappily titled too: landshare

Carbon Economics

Did you know that the industry most responsible for high levels of carbon emissions, and also with the biggest potential role in mitigation is… banking?

There is a direct relationship between economic (GDP) activity and carbon emissions. The UK had claimed that since 1990 we had succeeded in reducing carbon emissions by 15% while the economy had grown. But this turned out to be false accounting since (under UN carbon guidelines) we did not count those emissions we had outsourced to overseas manufacture and shipping. When the footprint of all the flat screen TVs, cars, clothes and out of season vegetables we import is included then rigorous recent studies show the UK has grown its carbon emissions by 19-20% since the early 1990s (Helm, 2007, Stockholm Environment Institute, 2008).

When you measure your carbon footprint, using online calculators, you find that consumer goods – fashion, electronics, food and so on don’t count. What they measure is your direct energy consumption. It’s a good basis for measuring the relative value of leaving things on standby (low), your flying (medium to high) and your car and space heating (high). But it leaves a lot out. That’s because indirect emissions are hard to calculate. But they are known to account for a large proportion of emissions. For instance, in the case of a house the embodied energy in construction is equivalent to 10-20 years worth of energy use by the home (Cole, 1993). It’s a lot not to count.

A better way to measure your overall carbon emissions would actually be to look at what you spend money on. Very broadly (according to the Office of National Statistics) for every £1 you spend, you emit 0.82kg of carbon. The figure varies for different goods (electronic gadgets are more like 2kg per £1). Energy efficiency is taken into account by looking at how much money you spend on energy. For petrol in the average car, you are emitting around 1.3kg per £1. If you buy a more efficient car then the lower kg/km are taken into account by the decreased money you spend on fuel.

This direct relationship between energy, money and carbon explains why banking is the biggest source of carbon emissions. That’s because banking today is mostly about credit. And credit is spending tomorrow’s earnings on today’s carbon. Charity Credit Action estimated that by late 2006 the average UK household debt was £26,747, rising to £50,918 when you take mortgages into account. Based on the carbon to money equivalence, £26,747 equates to 22 tonnes of carbon – more than two years’ worth of emissions.

If we want to tackle carbon emissions we need to tackle consumer spending. That’s why the new mood of caution and thrift is a positive development. I’ve been arguing for several years that a savings account is the only proven method of carbon sequestration. Because it has the opposite effect of credit – by delaying spending you are reducing carbon emissions. It’s the only way to ensure that the money we save from lagging our loft doesn’t get spent on other equally energy intensive goods; the so-called indirect rebound effect. But that means we need to find a completely new way of managing our economy, our companies and our lives. One based upon value, not debt. I’ll look at these macroeconomic implications next time.