The Climate Solutions Dividend

An extract from The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming by Guy Dauncey

New Society Publishers, November 2009 www.theclimatechallenge.ca

If we succeed in this great undertaking, the next generation will thank us not only for preventing a disaster but also for the many benefits that will flow from our success.

The ecological benefits are clear, but no one has calculated the full economic benefits. These are the climate solutions dividends, the enticing rewards for success.

1. We get to avoid the desperate scenarios laid out in Mark Lynas’ book Six Degrees, and keep human civilization intact, including many species that would otherwise face extinction. What price should we put on the ability of our children to continue the journey of evolution? The avoided costs are known: 5-20% of the US’s GDP of $14 trillion is $700 billion to $2.8 trillion a year. In Canada, it is $63 to $254 billion a year. The gains are priceless.

2. We enjoy a managed transition through what would otherwise be the economic trauma of peak oil, avoiding the relentless waves of bankruptcies, evictions, unemployment, poverty and hunger that will be caused by peak oil’s sudden arrival, for which – at present - our societies are completely unprepared.

3. We enjoy permanent energy security and the end of dependence on oil from the Middle East and other countries. This means we can bring the troops home, stop irritating the Islamic terrorists, stop being obsessed with security and stop exporting $300 million a day to the oil-rich states of the Middle East. These gains have been costed out by a team led by Milton Copulos, president of the National Defense Council Foundation, which spent 18 months undertaking the most comprehensive analysis of the subject ever conducted, which was “rigorously peer-reviewed”.[i] For the US, the gains come to $825 billion a year, which will be available every year as a free economic stimulus package.

4. We protect the world’s forests, which would otherwise face being logged or burned. Under the business-as-usual scenario, the Amazon rainforest starts dying by 2050 and turns into savannah by 2100, because of a combination of drought and fire. Because tackling climate change requires that we preserve the forests’ carbon, our children will continue to be enchanted by their magnificence. We will also benefit from the forests’ ecosystem services, as a continued contribution to our economy. Globally, their 1200 Gt of stored carbon, priced at $13.60 a tonne, has a $16 trillion value. If we assume a 200 year forest carbon lifecycle, that’s $80 billion a year. For the US, with 5% of the world’s forest, that’s a $4 billion a year contribution. For Canada (10% of the world’s forests) it’s $8 billion.

5. We enjoy a more secure global food supply by embracing organic farming, which stores more carbon in the soil, reduces farming emissions by up to 30% and increases yields in developing countries – where the food is needed - by up to fourfold. We also remove the threat to crops from smog, air-pollution and the increasing heatwaves, which reduce the yields.

6. We eliminate smog and pollution, which cause asthma, lung disease, cancer, disability and premature death. For Los Angeles alone, this has been assessed at a $10 billion annual cost. Air pollution and smog also cause crop losses and damage buildings and forests. For Ontario, Canada, the full economic costs have been estimated at $8 billion a year, rising to $250 billion by 2030 as rising temperatures cause more smog.[ii] For the US, the full economic savings are up to $690 billion a year.[iii] In California, smog and air pollution cause 9,300 deaths, 16,000 hospital visits, 600,000 asthma attacks and five million lost work days every year.

7. We enjoy cheaper driving, more cycling routes, more public transport, more high-speed rail and more friendly walkable communities, which build neighborhood strength. These benefits have not been costed out.

8. Thanks to our investments in efficiency, we enjoy lower heating and power bills. The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy has calculated that a 15% increase in efficiency will produce annual savings worth $169 billion a year. By increasing efficiency by 30%, this could rise to $338 billion.

9. We get to end most warfare. This may sound unbelievable, but most modern conflicts are fought over scarce energy supplies. When nations become self-sufficient in renewable energy, we can eliminate 80% of our military expenditures. The US military budget is around $1 trillion a year,[iv] of which $138 billion has been included in #3 above. This leaves $850 billion a year, which, trimmed by 80%, produces a peace dividend of $680 billion a year. When all these numbers are totaled, they come to a “free” annual climate solutions dividend of $1.5 to $2 trillion a year, which never has to be approved by the Senate or Congress.

10. Finally, we enjoy our first proper experience of working together as a world, and we restore hope to our children. What more can we ask?

The Yearly Climate Solutions Dividend	Low range ($ billion)	High range ($ billion)
End of Persian Gulf oil dependence	$825	$825
End smog and air pollution	$59	$690
Peace dividend	$680	$680
Improved efficiency	$338	$338
Total	$1,900	$2,500

---

[i] The Hidden Cost of Oil, 2003, updated January 8, 2007. National Defense Council Foundation. Peer review comment from The Hidden Cost of Our Oil Dependence. Milton Copulos interview with Bill Moore, EV World, April 23, 2006.

[ii] The Illness Costs of Air Pollution in Ontario. Ontario Medical Association, 2005.

[iii] See Lives per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction, by Terry Taminen (Island Press, 2006). Chapter 3 summarizes the various studies and references their sources.

[iv] The Trillion-Dollar Defense Budget Is Already Here. Robert Higgs, The Independent Institute, March 15, 2007.

Read more...

It's Time to Stop the Pesticides

Over millions of years of evolution, every kind of insect and bacterium has evolved, seeking its niche in the world. There are over a million insect species - and sometimes a gardener may think that they’re all eating the roses at once.

No problem, however - we are clever. We can reach for the pesticides!

Spray, spray, spray away, gently with the breeze,

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, spray away disease.

At first blush, the magic works. The bugs disappear. Your lawn is so immaculate you could invite the Queen to dine on it. Isn’t it amazing what modern science can achieve?

But then the dogs start dying. They don’t know you’ve sprayed the lawn, and they romp and roll, finishing with a good licking to clean their paws.

Between 1975 and 1995 the incidence of bladder cancer in dogs examined at veterinary teaching schools in North America increased six-fold, with Scottish terriers, Shetland sheepdogs, wirehaired fox terriers and West Highland white terriers having a higher risk than mixed breeds.

When researchers interviewed the owners of Scottish terriers with bladder cancer, they found that dogs whose owners had used phenoxy acid herbicides on their lawns were four to seven times more likely to have cancer than dogs whose owners had not.

And then the children start getting cancer. A 1995 study by Jack Leiss and David Savitz published in the American Journal of Public Health found that children whose yards were treated with pesticides were four times more likely to have soft-tissue sarcomas.

Another study, by R. Lowengart, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 1987, found that the parents’ use of pesticides during pregnancy was linked to a 3 to 9-fold increase in childhood leukemia.

And then there are the golf courses. When the 10-year-old Jean-Dominique Levesque-Reneé of Montreal was in hospital with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1994, with only a 50% chance of surviving, he did some homework.

First he discovered that half the area where he had grown up on L'Île-Bizard had golf courses that were routinely sprayed with pesticides. Then he learned that the herbicide 2,4-D, linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, had been sprayed on their lawn every summer since he was a toddler.

While in hospital, he met other children with childhood cancer, and built up a map of Quebec showing where they lived. 22 came from L'Île-Bizard, where the golf courses were, and their rate of childhood cancer was 37 times higher than normal. When he left hospital, he became a persistent activist for by-laws to ban the cosmetic use of pesticides.

And this is where we come in. Quebec, Newfoundland, PEI, New Brunswick and Ontario all have legislation that bans the cosmetic use of pesticides and herbicides, and right now - but only until February 15^th - British Columbia is gathering public feedback on its own proposed legislation.

The proposed legislation as it stands is not strong enough, however. The Canadian Cancer Society has joined with a number of health and environmental organizations to call for legislation that will prohibit the use, sale, and retail display of chemical pesticides for lawns, gardens, and non-agricultural landscaping. Their ideal legislation would allow exemptions only to protect public health; provide public education about the ban and alternatives to chemical pesticides; include effective mechanisms for enforcement; exclude the use of Integrated Pest Management (IPM), which allows the use of pesticides as a last resort to deal with weeds and insects; and be passed in 2010 and fully implemented by 2012.

Barbara Kaminsky, CEO of the Canadian Cancer Society, writes: “A full 76% of British Columbians support the Canadian Cancer Society’s position that there should be provincial legislation to restrict cosmetic pesticide use. And so does the Union of British Columbia Municipalities. Over 25 municipalities have adopted cosmetic pesticide bylaws, and while this is good, it isn’t enough. The BC government must act so that these products aren’t for sale in retail stores, and so that all British Columbians are protected from exposure to cosmetic chemical pesticides.”

This is politics, however, and you can be sure that the companies that sell the pesticides are lobbying for legislation that is weak and woolly.

Please, for the sake of our children, our pets, and ourselves, go to www.advocate.ccsbcy.ca and send an email to reinforce the Canadian Cancer Society’s push. Five minutes, that’s all it needs.

Guy Dauncey

Guy Dauncey is co-author of the book Cancer: 101 Solutions to a Preventable Epidemic, from which some of this text has been taken.

Read more...

Climate Action - Best Practices course

Climate Action:

Best Practices

What are the best ways that governments can tackle climate change?

with Guy Dauncey

Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC.

Thursday February 4th, 1-4:30pm. $55 +GST

This course will offer a guided tour of best practices in the areas of transport, buildings, energy, farming, food, wastes, carbon pricing, and community engagement, and provide an opportunity for participants to find solutions to the challenges they face.

AND .... What will it take for BC to achieve a 100% reduction in our GHGs by 2030?

This course should be of interest to everyone who is concerned about the growing climate emergency.

Guy Dauncey is author of the newly published book The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming, and President of the BC Sustainable Energy Association His personal website is www.earthfuture.com

To register, click here: http://bit.ly/4YZYzn

or call 250-391-2600 Ext 4801 Toll-free 1-866-890-0220

Feedback about Guy Dauncey's new book:

What an amazingly (insanely!) comprehensive and useful book. This is a joyous, hope-filled manual for facing the greatest crisis humanity has ever encountered. - Bill McKibben, 350.org

Guy Dauncey has created something unique in the current literature - if you wish to grasp the mind-boggling complexity of the climate challenge, read this book. -- John Shellnhuber, Chief Sustainability Scientist for the German Government

If you are wondering what to do about climate change, here is the answer. The Climate Challenge is not only interesting and informative, it is also exciting. –Lester R. Brown, author of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

Feedback from people who have attended this course:

“Fantastic, world-changing course. Must be turned into a 2-3 part documentary.”

"Guy is a tremendous speaker, teacher, and stimulator. More people need to hear him."

“Excellent presentation – should be made into a movie.”

Read more...

Brokenhagen - So Let’s Try Something New

In the wake of Copenhagen, what are we to make of all the confusion and mutual blaming?

Der Spiegel’s editorial said “What a disaster. The climate summit in Copenhagen has failed because of the hardball politicking of the United States, China and several other countries - and because people just can't seem to fathom how catastrophic climate change will be.”

But let’s step back a minute, and consider the difficulty of obtaining a binding consensus from the leaders of 193 fractious nations, each of whom has to answer to his or her own voters, on a change so enormous that it calls for nothing less than retrofitting the entire planet for zero carbon operations within 40 years. There’s not a nation on Earth that manages to govern itself by consensus.

Can you imagine any kind of consensus agreement coming out of the USA, where very few Democrats deny the science of climate change, and very Republicans accept it?

Even if they had agreed, UN data published during the conference shows that the commitments on offer would have caused global temperatures to rise by 3°C, not the 2°C limit everyone agrees is needed, or the 1.5°C demanded by the Maldives and other vulnerable nations. And that’s bad news. The last time the world was 3°C warmer, the sea level was 25 metres higher.

So maybe it’s good news that the US, China, India, Brazil and other large nations that are responsible for 85% of the world’s carbon emissions got together and thrashed out their own agreement, without waiting for Saudi Arabia and a host of small nations to sign on. As Michael Levi points out in Slate, the 100 smallest emitters are producing less than 3% of the problem.

Ever since I started writing my new book on climate solutions I’ve also been thinking that the whole Kyoto process is steeped in the negative. It is framed in the mindset of limiting a problem, not winning a victory. If the 193 Kyoto nations were a football team, they’d all be playing defence, and losing 96-3 at half-time, with only the tiny Maldive Islands scoring 3 points for its commitment to build a 100% carbon neutral society by 2020.

If something’s broke, you’ve either have to fix it, or find a better way to design it. We’ve got to reframe the climate problem not only as reducing our emissions, complaining every tonne of the way, but also as building a zero carbon world that is so attractive and sustainable that why would we want to do otherwise? The oil’s about to hit its global production peak anyway, so the sooner we make the transition, the better.

Getting back to the football metaphor, no coach would last long who took such a negative approach. You’ve got to play offense as well as defense, and that means being able to visualize victory so clearly that it becomes a determined and resolute result long before it has been achieved - and that means visualizing a world powered and transported by 100% renewable energy, with green cities, zero waste, carbon-storing forestry, farming and ranching, and then going flat-out to score some goals.

So let’s have solar treaties, in which nations agree to aggressively ramp up the amount of solar PV that’s installed every year, driving down the price. Let’s have electric vehicle, wind energy, and bus rapid transit treaties, signaling to investors that they should press ahead and build new factories. Let’s have bicycling treaties, biochar treaties, and zero-net energy building treaties. If we depended on market forces to bring victory, Winston Churchill would have had to announce in World War II that “I’m afraid we can’t fight Hitler and his Nazis, because we’ve go to wait for the price of warships to fall.”

And while playing defense, where we’re doing such a lousy job, let’s try breaking out the various greenhouse gases instead of bundling them together, and find ways to tackle them separately. There are some aggressive players there who keep scoring touchdowns against us, and they’ve got to be targetted individually if we’re going to take them out.

This would allow us to create a specific plan to tackle black carbon, or soot, which comes from dirty diesel vehicles, traditional biofuel cooking stoves, residential coal fires, and open forest and savanna fires. It’s not a gas, so it’s not even on the Kyoto/Copenhagen table, but it’s scoring 21% of the global warming goals, and we urgently need to eliminate it. Since it only stays in the atmosphere for a few days or weeks, the response to our success would be immediate, which is precisely what we need.

We’ve also got to tackle methane, which is scoring 13% of the goals against us. Methane traps far more heat than CO2, but its life in the atmosphere is only 8.4 years, after which it breaks down into CO2 and other gases. Its official global warming potential (GWP) over 100 years is 25, but over its short life it traps 100 times more heat - and it’s the short term that’s so critical now. A deal to tackle methane would apply an urgent focus to fugitive emissions from fossil fuel extraction, livestock digestion, rice paddies, landfills, animal feedlot slurry, and open biomass burning.

And then there are the F gases, which are scoring goals against us while no-one’s even watching. The worst, HFC-134a, used in air conditioning, traps 5,000 times more heat than CO2 does over its short 14 years’ life in the atmosphere. Perfectly good CO2-based alternatives exist, so a side-deal to push it out of the game is urgently needed.

Before Copenhagen, bringing up new ideas like this would have been a troublesome distraction. But now that Copenhagen’s out of the way, and seen to have failed, we need to put everything on the table, and try to find a better approach.

There’s another new idea that concerns how we’re going to pay for the $100-$300 billion a year needed to help the world’s poorer nations deal with the impacts of climate change, and make their own journey to a zero-carbon future. Voluntary commitments won’t cut it, and a global carbon tax is unlikely to win support.

During Copenhagen, Ethiopia’s leader, Meles Zenawi, suggested raising the money by imposing new taxes on aviation and shipping, and on financial transactions (known as a "Tobin Tax"), which alone could raise up to $100bn a year. The idea has already won support from Britain, France, Brazil, and to some extent the whole European Union. The double merit of the proposal is that it can be targetted to foreign exchange and derivatives, where speculation has harmed the world’s economy so much over the past 30 years.

Copenhagen’s broken, and even if it had succeeded, with a temperature rise of 3°C it would still have guaranteed disaster, so let’s try something new.

Guy Dauncey is author of the newly released book The Climate Challenge - 101 Solutions to Global Warming (New Society Publishers, 2009). He is President of the BC Sustainable Energy Association.

Read more...

For singers everywhere!

The Twelve Days of Copenhagen

On the first day of Copenhagen, leaders gave to me, a really solid climate treaty.

On the second day of Copenhagen, leaders gave to me two turbines turning, and a really solid climate treaty.

Three transit choices

Four firm targets

No more dirty oil! (All sing)

Six solars sunning

Seven southern subsidies

Eight electric engines

Nine nations capping

Ten tides a-harnessed

Eleven leaders leading

Twelve coal-mines closing

With acknowledgements to the Canadian Youth Climate delegation.

Alternative words:

Six solar panels

Seven southern climate funds

Eight electric vehicles

Ten trains a-travelling

Read more...

You are invited to the North American Launch of

The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions

to Global Warming

by Guy Dauncey

www.theclimatechallenge.ca

Tuesday November 3rd, 7:30pm

Vancouver Public Library, Alice McKay Room,

350 West Georgia St.

With an Introduction by Dr Mark Jaccard, Professor of Environmental Economics at Simon Fraser University; Presentation by Guy Dauncey; and a Special Honouring of 10 of Vancouver’s climate action heroes.

What an amazingly, insanely, comprehensive

and useful book.

This is a joyous, hope-filled manual for facing the greatest crisis humanity has ever encountered.

- Bill McKibben, 350.org

In his new book The Climate Challenge, Guy Dauncey shows how it is possible to reduce our global carbon footprint to almost zero by 2040, ushering in a new civilization that will be happier, healthier and more sustainable. Taken together, the Solutions represent an amazing blossoming of innovation that will change the world and create a host of new green collar jobs.

Guy Dauncey is an author, organizer and futurist who works to develop a positive vision of a sustainable future, and to translate that vision into action. He is President of the BC Sustainable Energy Association.

Signed copies of The Climate Challenge will be for sale at the event.

www.theclimatechallenge.ca

Organized by the Vancouver Chapter of the BC Sustainable Energy Association

and hosted by the Vancouver Public Library, with many thanks.

What people are saying about the book:

This is a terrific labor. Nowhere will readers find a more exhaustive, yet accessible, treatment of the climate challenge.

- Gary Gardner, Senior Researcher, Worldwatch Institute

Guy Dauncey has created something unique in the current literature - if you wish to grasp the mind-boggling complexity of the climate challenge, read this book.

- John Shellnhuber, Chief Sustainability Scientist for the German Government

A real cracker. Hugely informative, hard-hitting and very upbeat about the solutions.

- Sir Jonathon Porritt, past Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission

If you are wondering what to do about climate change, here is the answer. The Climate Challenge is not only interesting and informative, it is also exciting.

– Lester R. Brown, author of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

Very timely and persuasive - an essential owner’s manual for our planet.

- Terry Tamminen, former Secretary of California EPA

This book is marvelous! The Climate Challenge is an elegant, insightful and comprehensive examination of the dominant global challenge we face. This attractive work belongs on the desk of every investor, entrepreneur, citizen and policy maker.

- Paul R. Epstein, M.D., M.P.H., Associate Director, Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School

It's as if Whole Earth Catalog had been reborn 40 years later. Guy Dauncey is deeply, urgently persuasive.

- Felix Kramer, founder of CalCars.org

www.theclimatechallenge.ca

Read more...

This is our call to action

The message, so firmly, is – don’t give up. Don’t hang with the cynics, the angry-hearted, the whiners, the blamers, the negative minded. Hang with those who believe in love, hope, and beauty – and then work with them to make this a reality. This is our planet. This is our time. This is our call to action.

- Guy Dauncey

Read more...