Our low-carbon future – think opportunities, not costs
If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.
Herbert Stein (1916 – 1999)
The quote above, often referred to as Stein’s Law, is in my view especially appropriate in describing the situation we now face with climate change. The scientific community tells us that climate change, left unchecked, could potentially result in catastrophic consequences for the world. Our future will have to be low-carbon, if only because the alternative may not even exist.
In this post I will outline the reasons why our collective future will indeed be low-carbon. The public debate should shift from emphasizing the costs and sacrifices that have to be made in the decarbonisation process to focusing on the tremendous economic and environmental opportunities this transition entails. Calling on people to capitalize on existing opportunities is, in my view, much more motivating and effective than pleading with them to show restraint. Young people will also have to step up to the plate – the time has come to do more than just pointing the accusing finger at previous generations for messing up the climate system.
1. Why we are moving towards a low-carbon world
Up to now, we have been slow in taking strong climate action. There has indeed been a failure in political leadership around the world to heed the science and implement sensible solutions. But make no mistake here – governments are not completely at fault.
At the end of the day, civil society has a tremendous role to play in communicating to our political representatives what kind of future we want. Too many years have passed in which climate change deniers and special interest groups have consistently managed to spread their irresponsible and often counterfactual messages that the scientific basis behind climate change is still shaky. Too many of us have failed in our responsibility as an informed citizenry when we chose to be sloppy about educating ourselves properly about the science and economic implications of climate change.
The time for such ignorance and irresponsibility is over.
As I write this in November’09, just two weeks before the landmark climate change conference in Copenhagen, the public debate has fortunately shifted in favour of strong climate action. Even if the world fails to agree on the objectives set out in Bali two years ago in establishing a comprehensive global deal during the conference itself, the signs are optimistic that robust agreements will be reached in the negotiations following it in 2010. It seems clear to me that, in principle, advocates for strong climate action have won the day.
Let me be clear: I am by no means implying that the road ahead to a low-carbon future will be easy. It will not. It is however absolutely necessary for the public to be optimistic about it, because optimism itself increases the odds of the realization of a cleaner, safer future. I can put it no better than Lord Stern, who, in his book A Blueprint for a Safer Planet, said (emphasis mine):
‘… I can see the likely consequences of pessimism and of optimism. First, if we assume people and politicians will be irretrievably short-sighted, quarrelsome and narrow in their judgement of their interests and act accordingly, then our pessimism will be self-fulfilling. Second, over the last two years or so there have been increasing grounds for optimism in the growing understanding and commitments of countries around the world; if we recognize the progress that others are making and act in mutual support, we have a good chance of responding on the scale the planet requires.’
As recent phenomenally successful climate change movements such as 350.org’s October 24th International Day of Climate Action illustrate, there is a global mobilisation of people at the grassroots level. Electorates now fundamentally understand that our current mode of development is unsustainable and are demanding that political leaders do something to change it.
Happily, governments around the world have paid attention. The global economic crisis has elicited governments around the world, in ramping up public expenditures, to bring national economies out of the throes of recession; according to the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) in September’09, 15% of an estimated world total of US$3.1trn in stimulus funds is ‘green’ in nature. Most laudably, South Korea leads the world by a wide margin, with 79% of its fiscal stimulus program dedicated to environmental projects. China has pledged to cut its emissions per unit of output by a ‘notable margin’. In Brazil, where deforestation accounts for more than half of national emissions, the government has managed to reduce deforestation rates by 45% in the year to July 2009. The list goes on.
2. The opportunities of the low-carbon transition
Given the global scale of the climate change problem, it is easy to be pessimistic about the likelihood of securing an efficient, effective and equitable global deal to reduce emissions. The differences among the multitude of countries gathering in Copenhagen will be difficult to reconcile. Too many sacrifices will have to be made, and too many inequities will remain unresolved.
While arguably realistic, this view of the situation seems to leave out an important element: taking strong climate action is by no means just about countries and people making sacrifices. It is fundamentally also about opportunities. Plenty of them, and for the most part untapped.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t know of a single episode in history where countries and people around the world had come together to resolve serious global issues by agreeing to make collective voluntary sacrifices. In my mind, that simply goes against the grain of the primary mode of civilization’s advancements through the ages – we’ve come this far not by showing restraint, but by repeatedly utilizing human ingenuity in coming up with new solutions. In modern economies, market forces provide the incentives that tease out these entrepreneurial energies and ideas, most often for the benefit of society at large.
It certainly seems to me that advocates for strong climate action could use a radical shift in their PR strategy. Some ‘nudging’ is probably required: emphasize the opportunities, not the sacrifices. It’s fundamentally the same message, but packaged differently. The responses could be vastly different, especially when the public is likely suffering from a bout of apocalypse fatigue.
Unconvinced? Google ‘clean tech’ – there’s an army of immensely energetic and creative entrepreneurs out there. The tipping point seems close.
It’s a virtuous cycle…
The monumental task of building low-carbon economies will be self-reinforcing. As former U.S. vice president Al Gore explains in his book Our Choice (emphasis mine):
“… the explosion in demand for innovative new approaches to the production of energy from renewable sources is fueling ever larger research and development budgets to find innovative new approaches at lower costs… And as the cost comes down, the demand goes up, reinforcing the pattern of constant improvement, just as in the computer industry. A global commitment toward renewable energy will greatly accelerate this trend.”
Take, for instance, renewable energy and the smart grid. As this article in China’s Caijing illustrates, wind power installations are typically situated in remote locations that have limited connectivity to the existing transmission grids, and the intermittency of wind power places a burden on the country’s inadequate distribution system that is prone to congestion due to multiple bottlenecks in the network. An investment in building a smart grid, especially with energy storage features, will therefore significantly lower the costs of transmission for various renewable energy installations.
… and it’s huge
Take a moment and think about what it would take for an advanced economy like the United States to reduce its total annual emissions by 80% by 2050. Factoring in population growth, the measures that need to be taken are not qualitatively different from an attempt to completely de-carbonize the modern economy as we know it. It’s hard arithmetic fact.
Practically all our sources of energy will have to be renewable. If we choose to continue using coal, then we’ll need to find a way to safely store carbon underground using technology that remains in demonstration stages. We’ll need to harness the winds and the sun vastly more than we do now. We’ll need to commercialize and scale up geothermal energy quickly. We’ll need to grow fuel in our crops with minimal impacts on food supplies. We’ll need to find a way to standardize the production of parts and components for nuclear generation plants to help bring down the prohibitively high fixed costs of nuclear power.
We’ll need to drive energy efficiency way up, and that takes modern turbine designs, such as combined heat and power (CHP) systems that recycle energy in the generation process. Unless we can stop people from driving altogether, we’ll need to convert our existing fleet of internal combustion vehicles into electric vehicles powered by rechargeable batteries – perhaps lithium ion, or maybe even hydrogen. We’ll need to upgrade our existing electricity distribution network into a modern, ‘smart’ grid with storage capabilities to help deal with problems of intermittency and increasingly variable demands for power.
Beyond technology, there will also be plenty of opportunities in policymaking and professional services. We’ll need a lot more environmental lawyers to help draft and enforce the new legal frameworks a global deal will bring about. We’ll need management consultants to help companies make the transition towards low-carbon. We’ll need professional investors to allocate funds to firms and countries that need to make capital expenditures in low-carbon technologies. We’ll need securities firms to provide liquidity in the emissions and forestry credits markets under cap-and-trade frameworks. We’ll also need green-savvy civil servants to help ensure the policy actions taken are consistent with the objectives of emissions reductions.
The immense scale and self-reinforcing nature of the low-carbon transition tell us one thing: the elements of a global clean revolution are in place. Civil society climate change movements and governments around the world are increasingly helping to catalyze the fundamental restructuring of our economic lives to a paradigm that is greener and safer for everyone. The technological inputs we need to capitalize on these opportunities are there – what we need now is human capital.
3. The role of young people – a cleaner future is ours to lose
Prudent decision-making under uncertainty means that a low-carbon future is the only viable option we have. Time lags inherent in the climate change process mean that most of the adverse consequences will be borne by people alive decades and centuries down the road – in other words, young people now and generations of people yet to be born. This generation of young people thus have a crucial role to play in stepping up to the challenges and opportunities that the low-carbon transition will bring.
For one thing, we need to galvanize current decision makers that they have to take the lead in starting to fix the mess they’ve created, and lay the groundwork on which we can continue to create a cleaner, safer planet. In his November 2009 lecture at the London School of Economics, Ed Miliband, the UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, very appropriately pointed out that “… it is for good reason that some young people in the climate change movement wear t-shirts saying ‘how old will you be in 2050?’”. He was referring to the ‘Think 2050’ movement, which is “in the business of future-proofing the quality of life for people in the years to come”.
It is also critical to realize that young people can’t just talk and do nothing – after all, we’re inheriting the stewardship of the planet. Pointing the accusing finger at previous generations won’t get us far. This generation of young people needs to learn the requisite new skills in the new low-carbon economy. These opportunities could be everywhere: in science, technology, engineering, design, architecture, policymaking and advocacy… If current decision-makers do indeed lay the groundwork, a low-carbon future will then be ours to lose.
The time for this generation of young people to take responsibility for our collective future is at hand. Let’s be prepared for it.
