thinkingstring.com

If you want to understand whether COP15 us likely to make any meaningful difference look not to Copenhagen, nor to the twittering commentary of my fellow bloggers, journalists and assorted spinners. Look instead to England. The most important thing that has happened this week that frames the Western World’s proposed and possible actions on reducing GHG emissions took place this month in the UK High Court, where BA won an injunction declaring proposed strike action by BA cabinstaff as illegal.

Unite, the union representing some 12,000 BA employees had propose to cal a 12 day strike. Such action would, according to BA head honcho Willie Walsh “ruined Christmas for millions of people”. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown was reported as saying he was “very worried” by the prospect of a BA strike, and warned that BA and the unions must both consider the damage the airline would suffer if they cannot reach a resolution..

And there lies the key to understanding the degree to which Brown and other(se)elected national head honchoss of his ilk can lead us toward a safe level of greenhouse gases. They will pledge the world in Copenhagen. Just as anything they propose doesn’t interrupt the voting public’s plans to fly somewhere to see Granny or sit on a warm beach for Christmas.

How then are we meant t cost into airline tickets the environmental cost of flying, in a way that encourages the potential traveler to consider and choose alternate means of transport? Therein is the hypocrisy, moral weakness and failure to lead that speaks volumes, but leads is little.

It is reported that Willie Walsh will, on behalf of the IATA will promise to cut the airline industry’s emissions by 50% over 2005 levels, by 2050. It is further reported that the airline industry is taking such a pledge in order to sidestep what they expect to happen to them otherwise. Which is raucous protest by the rallied (and ever swelling masses) of concerned citizens, and censure from the soon-to-be-assembled set of speakers due in to Copenhagen in 76 days time. In effect, Willie has realised that the price the airlines must eventually pay to be allowed to continue trading is on the same sliding scale as that used to calculate passenger tickets. Leave it until later before you commit on the decision, and for the same outcome you just get charged more and with less choice.

Have the airlines finally got on board with the programme?

The choice of 2005 as the baseline year is the first red flag that all might not be “final and best effort” down at the IATA HQ. 2005 was one of the peak year for airline emissions this decade - prior to the recession-led slump in airline travel that has resulted in a fairly dramatic drop in emissions from the sector during the 2008-2009 period, and interestingly also before the run up to $147 p/bl oil prices. During the recession airlines have parked unneeded aircraft left and right, mothballing planes that nobody could afford to fly on any more. They have therefore chosen for themselves a baseline year that allows them plenty of scope for growth in airline movements and passenger numbers compared to now.

The airlines have also calculated that their efforts to cut emissions will result in higher costs being passed onto travellers. So it should - if the idea is to dissuade passengers from flying and encourage them to consider alternative means of transport, for example a national high speed rail system. However early reports indicate that the IATA estimates that the incremental cost will be around the £40 to £50 mark for a long haul trip. Interestingly this is the same price range for a charge applied to a would-be traveller by one of the flight-offset companies. I’ve written before here that offsetting doesn’t really make a lot of difference, and also that a £40-£50 charge on top of the cost of a long haul flight isn’t likely to make that much difference at all to a potential traveller’s decision as to whether to fly or not. For short-haul flights, the ones that are actually more likely to be unnecessary (you can catch a train from London to Paris but you can’t from London to Sydney) the incremental cost is likely to under £10, possibly under £5. Certainly not enough incremental cost to have anyone caring about whether they fly to Majorca on holiday or Paris for a meeting. After all, Ryan Air and the like charge that much just to allow you to breath inside the aircraft.

It will also be significant what percentage of the industry’s planned cuts come from carbon offsets, from reduced capacity, from fleet efficiencies, or from biofuels. The latter is particularly worrying - powering all the world’s aircraft with biofuels will use so much of the world’s arable land we won’t even have enough left spare to grow the peanuts to give to all the passengers (Oh…I forgot you don’t get free peanuts anymore anyway).

What would be nice is if the industry recognised that it is not just in the flight business, it is in the communications business. During the recession business travellers stayed out of the skies in sufficient numbers that the IATA Chairman stated recently that “teleconferencing has become a competitor to business travel via flying”. The airline industry needs to embrace this trend, not continue to fight against it. Having fronted Willie Walsh up to speak on their behalf, they perhaps now might consider the merits of joining forces with the growing teleconferencing industry to examine how communications hubs can best be developed to serve the business executive. Heathrow runway and passenger terminal expansion plans can be torn up now and they can start immediately on something like this instead.

Embracing “game changers” like teleconferencing might also help the airlines deal with the ever rising cost of petroleum based feedstocks for airline fuel. Willie Walsh himself is not stranger to the impact of high oil prices on airline viability and profitability, with BA shedding pounds and staff as oil climbed to $147 p/bl during 2008. Oil prices are not coming down to sub-$70 in the longer term. That too will represent a serious challenge to long term airline viability.

The IATA’s announcement is a welcome one. It ought not however to be seen as the airline industry rolling over sweetly and wagging its tail in a happy-go-lucky manner as climate campaigners coo and rub its stomach. The devil is in the detail regarding how the industry will achieve its promised cuts.

One last word on this by Dave Hampton, the The Carbon Coach.

What it boils down to, to me, is a belief system to live by. If you prefer to give your own magical personal power away, to others, don’t be surprised if that leaves you feeling powerless.

I chose to put the YES case - not because I believe it’s right, and the NO case is wrong - far from it! On another day in another place i might easily be found passionately arguing for more regulation!

Besides, as with all debates, they are win lose - hence artificial. Simon P and I probably agree much more than we disagree.

Not ‘both and’ but ‘either or’ and more!

(thanks to my friend Stephen Stretton for that one.)

Anyway, the state, the government, the law makers, the civil servants, the public, the campaigners, the police, the sun readers, …the tacos*… - are all one. We are all ONE. Everything is connected.

*See one minute wombat video if you haven’t:
http://www.global-mindshift.org/memes/wombat.swf
(From Pachamama and Change the Dream..)

And if we are all ‘one’ then it’s obvious we get a load more ‘bang to the buck’ - from our limited personal energy - from shifting ourselves, and our own (re)actions, and from the wider example we set, than from any amount of hectoring, lecturing, demanding, arguing, and thinking about what OTHERS need to do.

Job Vacancy
Save the World
Apply Within!

Instead of asking yourself which view your head agrees with - ask yourself which feels the more empowering belief. i.e. the no brainer.

A response to Dave Hampton’s excellent and thoughtful case for the “YES” argument.

Its important I think to not confuse the causal relationship that exists between the electorate and elected, and the very real need for the latter to use the power that they uniquely wield to make structural changes to the workings of the society in which we live.

We can debate the degree to which the elected are influenced by the actions of the constituency, both on polling day and on all the other days in between. Days the people may choose to spend not in comfortable pursuit of middle-class distractions but rather in a passionate expression of their belief for governmental or corporate action and change.

We can debate who wags whom and where the ultimate power to influence the view of reality that both the politicians and the people hold – I would argue that the media super-barons have at least one cheek ensconced on the throne of power with their proven ability to make or break a candidate’s aspirations, their demonstrated willingness to take sides on an issue, and their role as lenses of the world and its priorities for most citizens.

But what we ought not debate, and what we should accept as pragmatism is that as long as we accept that the sole answer to avoiding catastrophic levels of environmental degradation is for individuals to make personal and non binding pledges of action then the chances of our ultimate success are slim. That is not to say that we should just be sitting by, wondering why things aren’t the way we’d like to find them to be. It is important for us to take an active role in building the world we wish to live in. We get the world we make.

It is a simple recognition of reality that achieving the 80-90% emissions cuts that climate scientists advise are necessary requires changes to the system. Never mind dealing with the other pressing environmental issues we face such as water supply, land degradation, and the genocide of species.

To achieve emissions cuts of that magnitude then no less than transport choices, electricity generation and distribution methods, urban planning, construction methods and materials, and what food we eat must all be addressed. The reality is while a minority may care enough about an issue to make personal pledges, and to stick to them, the vast majority will go with the flow.

I may pledge to walk or cycle, but on a cold, wet and windy day most people just think I am an idiot. Or worse; someone with no money or no aspirations. I may elect to have a staycation, but in the time I have taken to type this much eight jumbo passenger planes have passed through my view on their descent to Heathrow.

As long as the default choice is the status quo with regards to housing, transport, energy supply and food supplies, locked in a behavioural framework where success is defined by a larger house, a larger car and ideally one that is endorsed by Top Gear, more overseas holidays and more consumption of throwaway stuff, then the reality is that the majority will blindly follow those choices. Meanwhile, developing nations and the next generation – those who will inhabit the world we deliver to them are being educated to aspire to repeat our mistakes, locking us into another thirty years heading in an unsustainable direction.

The premise of making personal pledges is to recognise that the status quo is broken and that the default sets of choices have something wrong with them. That is entirely a good thing – the more people who lift their eyes from the motoring or travel lift out of their paper and take a moment to think “Is it a good and worthwhile decision in the grander scheme of things that I fly the family to Florida so that the kids can eat popcorn and ride a roller coaster at Disney Land?” the better. However we do not have the timeframe available to us now to allow us to hold minority choices to be the strategic answer that will lead to ultimate success.

We need systemic changes that deliver default choices to the majority so that without pledges or other conscious action on their behalf their ecological footprint is sustainable. The power to deliver those changes lies not in the hands of a minority of average private citizens, no matter how vocal, passionate and committed they are. It lies in the hands of those making the macro financial and legislative structures that shape the world we live in.

Debate we can on how to best achieve the attention and action amongst our elected leaders. However it is to be pragmatic to recognise that success lies not in a minority swimming against the stream, it lies in changing the course of the river. Ten thousand people could sit in peaceful protest in Heathrow’s terminals tomorrow, but until the system stops classifying their actions as illegal, until the media brands them not as “Enemies of the economy” but rather “National heroes”, and until the majority of public opinion has some degree of empathy for their actions it will all be just a blip soon lost in time and significance as the status quo resumes.

We do not have time for the luxury of optimism. We have time only for bold thinking enabled through pragmatic execution. The time for despair may yet come, but it is not upon us yet as we are still “this side” of the historical record; a record that will document whether we lived through the age of stupidity or the age of grand deliverance.

YES there is time for individuals to fight climate change without government regulation by Dave Hampton

Before talking about individuals and governments, I’d like to separate out the: “Is there enough time?” part of the question.

Let me be clear. I think we have very little time. But is there enough time? I don’t know

The late great Dana Meadows had a famous stock answer. When asked if we have enough time to prevent catastrophe, she’d always say that we have exactly enough time, starting now. Ok, you could observe that it’s a while since she gave her answer now. But that would be missing the spirit of her answer. What is crystal clear, like the melting ice, is that we don’t have long.

We don’t have time for the luxury of pessimism any more. Neither despair, which, although sometimes tempting, is illogical, unhelpful, and, some might observe, part of the problem.

Dana treated the future as choice, not fate, and she defined with luminous clarity how to do (as one sometimes must) what is necessary.

I turn now to E.F. Schumacher, in Small is Beautiful: “Can we rely on it that a ‘turning around’ will be accomplished by enough people quickly enough to save the modern world? This question is often asked, but whatever answer is given to it will mislead. The answer “yes” would lead to complacency; the answer “no” to despair. It is desirable to leave these perplexities behind us and get down to work.”

“Down to work” I believe he meant, is taking every single action we can take, now (to fight climate change) within our direct sphere of influence. To act now, and now, as if we believe CO2 to be a toxin. To work to eliminate it from our lives, without delay, without excuses, and without exception. This ‘work’ prepares the foundation for the next stage. To BE the low carbon life.

There is a vital point here. How can we demand that others take action before we have. We can do so, but our words will fall flat. This is obvious, but oft overlooked.

Once we have trimmed our own lifestyle to the level where we are as much a part of the solution as we are the pollution, then we can turn our hand to other work. To being an advocate. To inspiring our peers. To persuading all the powers that be, whether bosses, captains of industry, MPs or PMs. Persuading them by whatever peaceful means are available to us, ethically.

Then, once everyone is awakened, and engaged in ‘the war effort’ – then the process turns to cultivation, reward, acknowledgement, and steady escalation of ambition, raising of game, until the job is done. Until the world can live happily ever after again, without fossil.

I see no point in my logic above where we the people – have to hand over power to them – the government – to make us do something that we have told them we want them to force us to do!

Governments don’t lead, they follow. People lead.

IF we lead well, they will follow well, and one day, when its popular and with the benefit of hindsight, they can legislate for all the things that we’ve done, and proved can be done.

Regulation is necessary, and will follow our collective individual actions, but these must precede it, and with urgency. Waiting for governments to regulate, hoping they will - is a mugs game – a game of mutually assured destruction. It’s the game we have been playing for the last 20 years.

The new game is one of simple example, responsibility and advocacy with high contagiousness.

After all, if all each of us manage to do, is just set our own back yard in order (simples) ..and we all just do that one thing… then the world will take care of itself!

NO there is not time for individuals to fight climate change without government regulation by Simon Perry

I’m all for the movie The Age of Stupid. I think it is a clever plot framework for presenting the multi generational challenge that is climate change. I am always mindful that my own children will be fifty-ish by 2055, the year in which the film is set. Note to Franny: can we please have a version that is specifically designed for the ten to sixteen year old audience and their teachers? My aspiring actress daughter volunteers herewith.

I also think that the associated 10:10 campaign has much going for it. Chipping away at the wall of popular ignorance and intransience that has prevented mass awareness of the risks associated with uncontrolled climate change is a task that will require constant and innovative ways of gaining attention and airtime. People love to rally around a cause; and making a pledge, wearing the rubber wristband and joining a Facebook group makes everyone feel involved and even helps encourage some people to take some real action.

The creation of popular rallying foci isn’t however the strategic answer to achieving the necessary changes required to avoid a level of global warming above two degrees Celsius. Like it or not, the pragmatic answer is that we require market intervention in order to deliver the financial incentives and regulatory control that will force individual and corporate change.

Businesses are answerable to their shareholders and private owners and the strictures of legislation, not to moviegoers and the minority of the population that will take a 10:10 pledge. I eat local, organically and avoid all animal products, but my supermarket still sells factory bred chicken swizzles from China, all in the name of “providing a choice to the consumer”. No business will make a strategic or structural change in the way that operate as a result of only popular pressure, where such a change runs the risk of reducing competiveness and material profitability, especially with regard to reducing emissions. Corporate history is awash with examples of profit over purity in areas such as ignoring human rights, general environmental degradation, overfishing, over-extraction of water and production of products that are unhealthy or dangerous.

Meanwhile the long term and multi generational nature of climate change effects, and the necessary duration and scope of our responses requires that the educational curriculum must be updated in order to develop a generation of “emission adepts”. The knowledge of economics, history we teach and the social values we attempt to instil in the citizens of tomorrow must recognise and call out the flaws of reasoning we have thus far applied in our economic systems and commercial approaches - thus bringing us to this brink of catastrophe from which we must retreat. We must teach to every child the skills and knowledge required for them to play an active role in transitioning to a low carbon way of life, starting now. “No child left behind…in a high carbon mindset” ought to be our mantra. School Governors, PTA members, and even the occasional brave teacher may organise a screening of The Age of Stupid, and the school may even pledge to reduce, recycle and reuse the kitchen scraps in the eco garden compost. However the teachers will also follow the set curriculum knowing that OFSTED scores standard tests and attendance records, not CO2 emissions and 10:10 pledges.

It is legislation and governmental leadership that will shape the reality of our future. Given the scope of the necessary changes – wide, systemic, and interwoven; the urgency of the required response; and the need to get this right first time it is almost inevitable that deep market intervention will be required. It is equally likely that the average citizen and business lead won’t like the changes much, given how far they will potentially push us from the status quo. This is of course Catch-22, governments won’t act if doing so has a short term negative electoral effect on popularity while we the governed won’t accept the changes (however grudgingly) unless we are forced to. In this context both the movie and the campaign are helpful – if only everyone who views and pledges remembers their priorities come election day.

Franny Armstrong has demonstrated exceptional vision, tenacity and commitment in making the film and the campaign a reality. How many of our elected leaders will demonstrate the same clarity and courage in order to now make the changes we need a reality? Voluntary and individual action around the edges won’t achieve the necessary emissions reductions – never mind address other pressing environmental issues – in a free choice open market.

Al Tepper of OOFFOO has organised a little online debate, inspired by the release of Franny Armstrong’s The Age of Stupid.

The question to hand is this: “Is there time to fight climate change without government regulation?”

Al says: We all encounter cynics when it comes to being green and with the global launch of the 10:10 campaign we thought it would be a great idea to debate whether or not individuals can make enough changes to tackle climate change or whether ultimately we need governments to regulate our way out of this mess. Is the carrot enough or do we need the stick?

Joining us to get the debate started are two great green voices: Simon Perry, Sustainalyst @ Thinking String & Dave Hampton aka The Carbon Coach (his latest newsletter is very relevant).

The original debate posting, together with reader comments can be found here.

Franny Armstrong and Team Stupid today launched the campaign 10:10 - on the back of the release of the film The Age of Stupid. The film (which this author has not yet seen) spices up a documentary on oil and climate change with a fictional, backward glance in time at the present day. It is designed to be no less than a catalyst for change in the attitude of viewers regarding the reality and urgency of climate change, and thus one that inspires meaningful action across a broad front. The film’s production, distribution and funding models are themselves innovative - and that too has helped form a buzz around the film. Meanwhile, the associated 10:10 campaign is an attempt to get individuals and corporations to sign-up to a pledge to reduce their GHG emissions by 10% (over 2009) levels by the end of calendar year 2010. So while the film is intended to galvanise action, the campaign is intended to provide the framework for execution. I sincerely wish both the film and the campaign the best of success.

However it pains me however honesty compels me to say that I also ultimately believe that neither effort will make a difference to the course we are on.

Here’s why…

We are well beyond the point where simple changes to everyday behaviours are going to make any meaningful difference to climate outcomes. That’s not to say that there aren’t a long list of good things that can’t be done at an individual level - from the choice of lighting and building environmental control methods to the selection of green energy producers. There are nearly as many lists of methods regarding “how to drop 10% of your emissions” as there are tonnes of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere every year. We have no shortage of knowledge with regards to what needs to be done. What we lack is any broad interest in actually making those changes and making them stick.

Of course, that lack of interest is what both the movie and the campaign are attempting to address. But it won’t work - there is too much momentum built into the system of doing things for the change to occur. Honestly - of all the people I know I can’t think of a single person who is today not already switched onto the idea of the need to reduce their own reduce emissions who is likely to change opinion now to meaningfully internalise the need to alter behaviour. Note the emphasis - I do know people who are doing their darnedest to make a difference, both in their own lives and in the broader community and business world. However of all the intelligent, successful and everyday people I know, living everyday lives I see no evidence whatsoever that the message on climate change is sinking in. Of course they are all aware of all the little things that I happen to do at a personal and professional level - however all that is relegated to either being something that is regarded as endearing and quirky personal characteristics (and thus forgiveable) or the “Well that’s just all about work…let’s talk about something meaningful like the great deal I can get on a new sports car since the recession.”

The all too obvious answer of course is to interject with the suggestion that if a sports car is needed then perhaps a Telsa Roadster might be a better environmental choice than an AMG modified Mercedes. However the real, strategic answer is “How about cycling, walking, or catching the train instead.” Its the difference between the tactical choice and the strategic direction and lets be honest, we’re not gearing up for it. After all, in order to make enough of a difference that we avert further climate change we don’t need 10% of film goers to elect to watch The Age of Stupid, and then have 10% of them not only to sign onto the 10:10 pledge but to also actually achieve the committed reductions. We need more like 50% of the developed world’s population to make and then deliver on that commitment, while supporting the developing nations in a wide variety of ways such that they do not fill the resulting emissions reductions with their own GHG fuelled economic growth.

The question is “What’s stopping us getting there? Surely a people-powered social change such as that of the 10:10 commitment will overcome the inertia?” Actually, its hard to believe that it will. Realistically speaking there is little to point to which would indicate that the carrot approach of market forces alone will set the appropriate path and pace for change. Cutting through to the “bottom line” we can actually say that market forces have proven to be utterly ineffective at delivering a low carbon economy. Only a bloody great big stick approach involving market intervention of a dramatic kind is likely to alter that outcome, and there is much to point to support the case that such market intervention is unlikely to occur.

Take the USA. Obama’s administration does I think get climate change, as well as understanding that a path toward a low carbon economy provides opportunities for a renewal of US economic fortunes. However one needs to look no further than the debate - if we can sensibly call it that - in the US concerning the health care system to find an example of the ability of the US population overall (stirred on by Republican Party agitators) to violently insist on retaining a status quo that is both already enormously damaging to human health and fiscal responsibility, as well being forecast to cause far greater economic exposure down the track. There are plenty of parallels between how the US health care debate is playing out and how events would unfold if the administration attempted the necessary market interventions required to reduce the USA’s by 10% next year, with further dramatic changes scheduled annually thereafter. Rest assured that bipartisanship will be sunk deeper than the Good Ship Titanic if the Democratic Party administration took that path. The chance to play politics on the issue of climate change and by doing so to place a Republican leader back in the White House in 2012 will override the longer returns to humanity that come from avoiding a greater than 2c degree rise in global temperatures by 2050.

Meanwhile in the UK there is consensus amongst all but the Brown family that the Tories will form the next UK government. Even the most ardent of Labour supporters can smell the paint fumes from the writing that is on the wall on this one. From the perspective of the government in waiting there are therefore no significant votes to be had in taking a more hardline approach to climate change than has already been mooted. Cameron has done green and almost certainly has recognised that he doesn’t need the incremental votes of the 10:10 pledged voting public to achieve power. Look no further than the very real absence of a detailed plan from Camp Cameron on how to achieve real structural change regarding climate change (hint to London’s Conservative Mayor, Boris Johnson - it makes no difference to climate outcomes if Heathrow expansion is cancelled in favour of a runway in the middle of the Thames).

Meanwhile down in Australia the debate between the incumbent Rudd government and the Liberal opposition over the details and implementation timetable of the proposed Climate Bill is raging. The Rudd administration, seeking to exploit the currently shambolic leadership of the opposition party has flirted with the idea of pushing the question of the adoption of the bill - which has thus far been blocked by Liberal Party opposition - through to a double dissolution election. Doing so would deliver both the opportunity to strike politically while the opposition is weak, outside of the standard election cycle (thus extending the overall potential duration of the Rudd government term of power), while giving all the appearance of taking action, while actually avoiding the pain of making real change. The latter is in fact the only guaranteed outcome of the whole process as there isn’t a climate scientist of any repute who has looked at the proposed Australian bill who feels it commits Australia to the necessary level of emissions cuts. Politics over real climate action again.

If all that sounds awfully cynical let me hold up some examples to ponder of where phenomenally important decisions and agendas have been pushed through by the government of the day. The following list is not, to be absolutely clear, meant to be representative of what have been good decisions. There are merely examples of the lengths that government will go to when they really want to achieve an end.

Exhibit one: The Iraq Invasion. When George W. Bush wanted to topple Saddam Hussein he co-opted no less than Tony Blair, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Colin Powell, and most of the USA/UK/Australian media in a campaign of popular and political persuasion both audacious in its scope as it was inevitable in its outcome. The general citizenry were lied to regarding the evidence for WMDs, and when none were found the raison d’être for the war was conveniently changed. When hundreds of thousands of protesters voiced their opposition to the invasion they were ignored (something to keep in mind if 10:10 does in fact succeed in drumming up widespread ground-up calls for action on climate change).

Exhibit Two: When in 1999 the question of whether Australia ought to become a republic could be ignored no longer as a question of federal political importance no less than a national referendum was held to put the issue to the public vote. Some would say that the outcome was manipulated by the structure of the actual referendum questions citizens could reply to - but like the Iraq War the point isn’t necessarily about the rights and wrongs of the process, its more to do with the fact that when an issue is deemed important enough to be brought to the voting public’s consideration a process and will exists to do so.

Exhibit Three: During 2008 and into this year as the economies of the world collapsed governments have not pulled back from a degree of market intervention that is without precedent. Money is being printed in the US and the UK. Banks have been nationalised, car companies and airlines bailed out. Indeed the outcome of the 2008 US election cycle ultimately hinged on the question of how the nascent government would address the failing economy and the rapidly growing ranks of the unemployed and homeless. You can bet too that as the dust clears from the market collapse that a whole slew of new regulations will be introduced designed to tighten up fiscal and corporate governance in the hope of avoiding a repeat. So we have widespread extraordinary intervention already, and we’ll get a whole lot more intervention in the form of ordinary legislation later.

The 10:10 campaign, for all the good it will do, and for all the good intentions of those behind it exists solely because there is a leadership vacuum on the issue of climate change from the only people who can truly make the strategic and structural changes required - the collective governments of the G8 nations and those of India, China and other major emerging large GHG emitters. People power alone is not enough to sway the outcome - those protests that have already taken place continue to be dismissed as the Greenie Fringe. Our elected leaders have the capacity and track record in manipulating widespread public opinion on the occasions that they wish to. When that fails they simply claim the mantle of electoral mandate in order to override a minority of public dissent in the secure knowledge that the majority are too distracted to really care anyway. Simply put - we won’t achieve the necessary GHG emissions cuts without structural changes to the global economy; to society; to transportation and housing; and to the balance of fairness of the world’s economic systems without deep market intervention. And we won’t achieve that without a degree of leadership so far utterly absent on this issue.

We can be honest. Or we can continue to be collectively stupid. The status quo may win votes and avoid an uncomfortable degree of change, but only history will honestly judge the degree of the stupidity of the age in which we live.

I recently was “followed” by Dennis McMahon of mygreenflight, a company that bills itself as offering carbon offsets for the air traveller. This author isn’t necessarily a fan of offsetting (see here) so being followed by an offset provider, especially one so bullishly named was an act just bound to make me poke around a little to see what was what. After some surfing around mygreenflight’s site for a while I emailed off some questions to the vendor, which Dennis subsequently and thoughtfully answered - more on that in a moment.

Before getting to that detail however it is worth spending a moment looking at why the entire concept of offsetting might be a little flawed. Offsetting is best described as a cousin of carbon cap and trade schemes (CCT), which themselves are the market led approach to managing and eventually reducing industry emissions. CCT schemes, like the UK’s Carbon Reduction Commitment, the European Emissions Trading Scheme, and the hotly debated nascent Australian scheme seek to create a finite market in emissions permissions. That subtlety is often ignored, such schemes do not actually trade emissions, they trade permission slips. Such permission slips are really no more than promissory notes that have a financial value intended to be significant enough that a nation or industry that needs to buy them will eventually be pushed into actually taking steps of their own to actually reduce the levels of GHG they emit. In theory, the costs associated with reducing actual emissions is less than the cost of continually buying the permission slips, therefore setting up an economic incentive to change. Meanwhile, a purchased permission is withdrawn from the market thus reducing the pool of permissions available, and the money garnered through the purchase of the permission slip might even be invested in some form or another of carbon sequestration equal to the task of absorbing the GHG emitted.

In reality however several major flaws are evident.

For a start, the cash value of the permission slips does not encourage investment in techniques, technology, or behaviour that actually reduces GHG emissions. The EU ETS is infamous for the wild fluctuation in the value of the permission slips. Such fluctuations will only be eliminated when the market is regulated and managed in a planned and interventionist manner (much to the angst of those who trust entirely in the free market approach - they see the open trade as being that akin to any other commodity while ignoring the fact that the price needs to be managed as the intention is actually to influence behaviour).

Secondly permission slips don’t reduce actual emissions. Meanwhile the GHG were almost certainly actually emitted by the individual/organisation that purchased the permission slip, and lets not forget that those emissions then stay in the atmosphere for a considerable period of time - think tens to hundreds of years. Offset schemes often claim that investment in them will result in creation of carbon sinks that will absorb a quantity of GHG equal to that emitted. Even if such action does occur (and there have been many cases where such claims are entirely fraudulent) it is highly unlikely that such schemes will effectively sequester GHGs for the entire duration that those GHGs that were actually emitted remain active in the atmosphere.

Some schemes claim that the money raised through permissions trading is spent encouraging the retention of the world’s existing carbon sinks, usually in the form of forest conservation. For example offsets can be purchased to buy a chunk of Amazon rainforest, thus protecting it from logging or clearing to enable urban expansion, the growing of monoculture crops such as corn for biofuels, or beef cattle grazing. Of course the only significant remaining stands of such forests are in developing (none G20) countries and such clearing is as often performed to enable the farming of produce (as well as the logged timber) for export to the G8 nations as it is for reasons of domestic poverty and lifestyle pressures. Putting aside for a moment all the not insignificant questions regarding unwanted foreign intervention and ownership of land in such countries it is worth remembering again that stewardship of such carbon sinks needs to be maintained for the duration that the actually emitted GHGs remain active. Most importantly, remember that such schemes do not incrementally add sequestration capacity, they simply attempt to retain the paucity of what natural sequestration capacity that remains. Meanwhile we already know that that remaining capacity is insufficient to actually absorb the levels of GHGs being emitted. Therefore such efforts might best be described as knocking around the edges of the question of ownership of natural carbon sinks, rather than incrementally adding capacity or actually reducing real emissions.

With all that in mind lets return to the specific example of mygreenflight. The first thing to know is the roots of the company are in a logistics business the mission of which is to enable the airline industry to further expand. Therefore you have the conundrum of this being an offset company with a tactical goal of reducing emissions through the trading of permission slips, which meanwhile has the strategic goal of expanding an industry which is arguably already unsustainable. GHG emissions aside it is worth also remembering that the entire airline industry’s future is tenuous at best in light of ever rising fuel prices. The answer by the way to rising fuel prices lies not in a move to biofuels. Despite early and highly publicized PR stunts dressed up as trials biofuels remain a potential solution that even the IATA regards as being at least 15 years away from reality and anyway the demand for biofuels from the global airline industry would require biofuel crop monoculture on almost all of the Earth’s available arable land, including all that currently used for food crops and all that currently “used” by all those virgin forest carbon sinks.

All that aside, to test mygreenflight’s scheme I used the company’s offset calculator to see what it would cost me financially to purchase offsets, and meanwhile to see what they think is required to “absorb” the GHGs actually emitted in my flight. To do so I added one long haul flight and one short haul flight (economy return, using bmi and Qantas as my chosen airlines).

My flight details as entered were:

Shorthaul: London Heathrow to Edinburgh (LHR-EDI) bmi, Economy Return. 0.17 t of CO2 emitted, requiring an offset costing £1.30
Longhaul: London Heathrow to Sydney, Australia (LHR-SYD) Qantas Airways, Economy Return. 5.31 t of CO2 emitted, requiring an offset costing £41.86

Total: 5.47 t of emissions for a cost of £43.16 in purchased offsets.

The first observation is that if the goal of offsetting is to allow me to trade in a CCT scheme, the goal of which is to provide an economic framework that ultimately changes behaviour through the internalisation into the balance sheet of the economic externality that is the emissions, through the mechanism of incremental cost then it has done little to actually deliver. £43 and change is unlikely to actually encourage me to seek alternatives to flying - though to be fair there really isn’t an alternative to flying in order to get to Sydney, however £1.30 (less than the cost of a coffee at Heathrow) isn’t going to encourage a potential traveller to catch the train to Edinburgh (an act that the train operator Stagecoach calculates would result in 86.4Kg of carbon emissions). Of course given that mygreenflight’s strategic mission is to enable expansion of the airline industry it stands to reason that the emissions calculated, and the offset costs assigned to them be finely balanced between providing a feeling that the passenger is making a difference without actually encouraging the passenger to take up an alternative mode of transport (or even consider not travelling at all).

But I also wanted to know more on what my £43.86 was going to buy, and this is where I emailed mygreenflight for more details. To ensure that I capture the full Q&A exchange copied here is the email I received in reply from mygreenflight’s Dennis McMahon (spelling and grammar errors, if any are “sic”).

-snip-
Hi Simon,

My apologies for the delay in responding to your questions.
Please find my responses to your questions below:

YOUR QUESTION: What audit trail is there of what this money is actually used for?

MY RESPONSE:

Our systems will see the funds being applied to Voluntary Carbon Standard Projects that generate Voluntary Carbon Units or VCU’s, which are a subset of Verified Emission Reduction Units (VERs).

All projects from which we purchase offset credits need to have the following criteria:

· Third party verified by accredited Verifiers in this field
· Credits must be issued
· Credits must be listed (or able to be listed) on the TZ1 VCS Registry
· Credits when allocated to offsets purchased by passengers will be formally “retired” on the TZ1 Registry

Re the audit trail – our processes and systems are being reviewed by Bureau Veritas (UK office) to ensure that we have the correct systems in place now. Bureau Veritas will also be conducting periodic audits of the funds trail, and providing reports for same, to ensure that we accurately retire the equivalent number of credit tonnes to match the offset credits purchased.

Initially, there will be a delay between offsets purchased from the site and the retirement, as there is a need to purchase a commercial qty of credit tonnes from project developers. As we gain purchase trend data (both quantities and preferred project types) from clients such as yourself, and expand our airline partnering program, this approach will be replaced by forward purchases, so that retirement can be made from a pool of credits we have forward purchased.

YOUR QUESTION:

a) Is it to purchase and maintain natural forests or other CO2 sinks, if so how much land equals how much CO2 and for what period do you guarantee to manage the purchased asset?
b) Is it to plant new trees and support reforestation?
c) Is it to support CC&S technology research?
d) Is it to trade in ETS permits and if so which markets do you use (EU, UK,,,?).

Basically I am looking for some info on what you actually do that practically makes a difference.

MY RESPONSE

We have decided that we will be guided by our clients as to the project types that we support – you will note that we offer a range of project types (but not specific projects) on the calculator page at the moment. This is to ensure that we get actual feedback from clients about the projects that are of interest to them. Based on that data, and the quantity of tonnes offset for each project type, we will purchase and offset credits from those projects that client shave told us they want to support. Naturally, our purchases will be partially dictated by availability of credits, but we are determined to match client preferences with project types as much as we can.

In specific response to your questions on this topic:

a) We are maintaining a watching brief on forestry projects and developments related to the REDD projects. We think there will be accredited projects in this category post-Copenhagen, but at the moment, there is too much uncertainty as to methodologies to give us the confidence to purchase forestry credits. I know that there are many forestry projects generating credits in North America and other parts of the world, but as far as I am aware, none of those projects have sufficient credibility to be verified and accredited under either VCS or Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) rules.

Simon, if you are aware of any projects that meet the VCS or CDM criteria, please let me know.

b) See a)
c) Funds are not to support CC&S technology. This technology is currently way too speculative for us to get involved in – we would prefer to utilise credits from projects that have a solid bases in accepted methodology, and that meet the “additionality” criteria required fro VCS and / or CDM project verification
d) We are not looking to trade in ETS permits as part of the MyGreenFlight Carbon Offset program. We may assist airline clients in this area if asked, but it would be as a separate consultancy service.

YOUR QUESTION

I have thoroughly read through what you say on your “About us” pages, and am looking for me insight than “..we will obtain all of the verification and accreditation documentation from the Projects to ensure that they are fully accreditied (sic) and verified”

MY RESPONSE

Simon, every CDM or VCS Project must have a number of documents to establish the Project, to define it’s scope and the number of credit tonnes projected to be generated.

These include:
· Project design document
· Validation Report
· Monitoring Report
· Verification Report

These are the documents we will be checking to ensure that projects meet our criteria. In addition, we (or agents employed by us) may visit certain projects to confirm “on the ground” additional social co-benefits that may be claimed by the Project Developers.

DENNIS MCMAHON

Sales Manager
Greenflight

-/snip-

It must be said that Dennis’s reply, on behalf of mygreenflight is entirely professional, thorough and reasonably precise. Specifically and impressively he also puts forward the view that current forestry projects are tenuously beneficial to say the least. It is also worthy of note that the company does not currently invest in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology development as such projects do not currently meet the criteria for additionality - meaning they don’t actually currently result in an additional carbon sequestration capacity. He is to be congratulated for taking on my questions and dealing with them in this manner.

Having said that, I’m still not sure what my £43.86 is buying - a strong sense remains that any offsets purchased from mygreenflight is simply being banked until such time as a suitable way for the company to invest the funds is found. A traveller may therefore assuage the guilt now of GHGs emitted into the atmosphere now, on the promise that sometime later something will be done that will somehow sequester an equivalent amount of emissions. While the emissions are guaranteed to be making a difference from the instant that they are released, what contractual guarantee does the purchaser have that later they will be neutralised through an investment that mygreenflight will make (not that I am in any way suggesting that the company will do less than make a best effort)?

So at this stage this exercise leaves me unchanged in my view that offsetting isn’t worth the effort. Travelling short haul distances by methods other than flying and in ways that reduce actual emissions (train etc) are not always possible, but they are also admittedly often less convenient and more expensive than the flying option. I remain of the opinion that when and if I have no alternative to fly I am making more of an actual difference by “copping” the expense and extra effort of not flying on a later occasion when the alternative does exist - in effect “banking” the money myself that I could have spent on offsetting into an account that I can later use to pay for a possibly more expensive train ticket, or even just treating myself to an extra coffee (with my £1.30) as a personal reward for making the effort.

The debate, if you can call it that, in the US over health care system reform is a truly bizarre spectacle, and one that is an abject lesson in how to distract an argument away from the core subject being discussed.

The indisputable fact is that approximately 40,000,000 people in the US cannot afford access to basic health care services. By “basic” I refer not to agonising decision over whether to have nipple enhancement or not while you’re in to get your breasts done. No…by ‘basic’ I mean services like non cosmetic dental care, A&E care, blood pressure and cholesterol diagnosis and treatment, diabetes diagnosis and treatment, natal care, and services to repair all the wear and tear experienced during the average first 18 years of life. The bottom line here is that the current system, the status quo, is structured such that 40 million mothers, fathers, grandparents, sons and daughters have zero ability to pay for services to fix health problems that are chronically painful and perhaps life threatening. With no “health care net” available either “no ability to pay” translates into “zero access”.

To reiterate what is an important and fundamental point. The current population of the UK is approximately 60 million people. If 40 million people in the UK were similarly effectively blocked from access to health care then two thirds of the population could not go to the dentist or doctor ever. The current population of Australia is 21 million - so if you deported all the doctors, nurses and dentists from Australia and closed all the hospitals and clinics you’d still only be halfway to denying 40 million people basic health care services.

Meanwhile, for the other 260 million or so Americans who do have access to health care, services and treatments are eye poppingly expensive. However, be careful your eye doesn’t pop too far out as it may not covered by the health insurance scheme provided by your employer - which is shelling out an estimated US$12,000 per employee per annum to pay for that insurance (providing insurance for the employee and up to 3 dependants). That’s US$12,000 more that could be paid directly to the employee as wages if the employer did not structurally have to cover the health insurance costs. If you think twelve thousand bucks is chicken feed, it is worth remembering that that figure is the about the US minimum wage - though it is also worth remembering that if you were an employee actually on minimum wages, it is unlikely that your employer would also be providing health insurance making you perhaps one of those 40 million people unfamiliar with the inside of a doctor’s waiting room.

This author speaks from experience with regards to the platinum coated pricing schemes of US health care as we had a son born in New York state during the family’s four year tenure in the USA. It is worth providing a short summary of those costs to provide perspective:
- total time mother/son spent in a hospital: 12 hours (the minimum time before you’re allowed to check out after giving birth)
- total time doctor spent in room: 60 seconds (to sign a form)
- nursing staff: 1 “in and out” with the majority of nursing provided by self funded midwife
- drugs and other interventions: zero (yes you read that right; no drugs, no interventions)
- use of “machines that bleep”: zero
- use of ambulance or similar: zero

In short - you would struggle to describe a birth experience that required less support from neo-natal services other than a home birth.

Total cost: just shy of US$8000; with the employer provided insurance paying for 90% and leaving us with a 10% or US$800 deductible. Just what was worth eight thousand dollars of medical treatment remains a mystery to this day.

Meanwhile the US is ranked by the WHO in almost all indicators, except for cancer survival rates, far below Oman, Morroco and Colombia, as well as the UK, France, Germany (just keep listing other major European and Scandinavian countries here), and Australia. The USA ranks 37th.

To summarise: the US has a health care system today that under-delivers against important key performance indicators (infant mortality, average life span etc), is eye wateringly expensive for those treatments it does provide, and leaves 40,000,000 people with zero health care. Oh, and by the way the status quo is projected to bankrupt the country entirely as it will fail to scale further as the populations increases and ages.

The debate therefore ought to be a simple one - does the US maintain this status quo, or does it seek to reform health care in such a way as to drastically improve the USA’s WHO rankings , provide basic services universally, and reduce the overall costs to prevent budgetary collapse.

However that isn’t the debate that is taking place. The debate that is taking place is over whether the provision of universal health care is “socialist” (translation: pinko subversise communist), and whether fantastical death panels will rule over the worth of Grandma’s life (Sarah Palin says she can see the Death Panels from her medicine cabinet). Take these two distracting and emotive topics, add a little dash of Glenn Beck to the aforementioned Salt of Palin and you’ve just hijacked what was a needed and sensible debate, and you’ve turned it instead into a roiling mess of argument that churns onward and achieves nothing. Or more accurately, it achieves the maintenance of the status quo.

Which brings us naturally to the topic of peak oil (this as my old friend George Watt would say, is a “neat little seque”). The connection here is twofold and less tenuous than you might think. Firstly, oil provides the energy that enables modern health care. Secondly, and more directly relevant to the main point here is that the debate over the timing of peak oil has been allowed to overshadow the necessary debate over the future of (petroleum based) energy prices.

The truth of the matter is that we will only definitively know when global oil supplies have peaked once we’re well down the slope of decline. Far enough down perhaps to have put behind us a few (more) instances of supply having insufficient scope of growth to meet real demand. There is much evidence to suggest that we’re already basically at the peak point, or just beyond. However arguing this point tends to just around in circles. It is very easy for peak-deniers to point to the status quo and argue that “Providers report significant reserves as they have in the past. They didn’t stop pumping last year. So they won’t stop pumping this year. And anyway, we can just drill a few more holes in the Alaskan tundra if we need more.” Such drill-baby-drill responses are the peak-oil equivalent of the pinko-communist-death-panel responses in the US healthcare debate. The main purpose, intentional or otherwise, is to maintain the direction and rate of the status quo and delay or prevent structural change and improvement.

The real discussion that needs to be taking place concerning oil is whether cheap oil will continue to be available. “Cheap” is of course a relative term. Ignoring for a moment that (not insignificant) fact of the infamous US$147 p/bl price peak, by “cheap” means “the median price of oil over the period during which it has fuelled the development and growth of the current economic model.” Furthermore, given that the maintenance of the social/economic/world-balance-of-power status quo relies on the oil price remaining somewhat near that median price, what are the implications for the economic decisions that are made countless times every day, that are based on the price of oil?

The outlook is such that it is almost certain, on balance, that anything but the status quo will result. For example, OPEC has for some time now called for a price range of between US$70 and US$80 p/bl as being the minimum that can support the necessary infrastructure and exploration investments required to maintain supply levels. Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer stated in June of this year that “(All this) points to new price spikes and volatility further down the road.” The same Kuala Lumpur hosted Asian Oil and Gas conference heard BP CEO Tony Hayward state that a target price of US$60 to $80 p/bl is also in BP’s sights in order to pay for required investments.

A per barrel target price of between US$70 and $80 p/bl is a very interesting one for a number of reasons.

For a start, it represents the upward slope of prices for petroleum and oil-derived products (fertilizer and plastics feed stocks) that are felt downstream by consumers and industry. The Wall Street Journal reports that petroleum prices as a percentage of disposable income more than doubled between 1981 and 2008. This is enough to change consumer behaviour, and certainly enough to alter the balance of cost calculations for heavily oil dependent industries.

Secondly, it is worth looking at the 2006 study performed by the US Department of Commerce titled “Macroeconomic and Industrial Effects Of Higher Oil and Natural Gas Prices”. The D.O.C. study was designed to predict the effects on the US economy (and by extrapolation all other developed economies) of an oil price that is maintained in the range of US$70.00 to $80 p/bl for two years or more. Not surprisingly, the study found depressive effects on GDP, industrial output, consumer disposable income levels and more. All other things being equal such a price would also result in an additional 500,000 people becoming unemployed due to cross sector job losses, compared to an oil price range in the US$50 to $60 p/bl range.

Those resulting changes occur for a very simple reason: as oil prices increase (and therefore the prices of products derived directly and indirectly from oil increase) the decisions made by individuals whether acting as individual consumers or in their capacity as business decision makers changes too. Spend less, invest elsewhere, carry less employees, locate and manufacture elsewhere. Scaling upwards to the strategic and structural as oil prices continue to go upward from US70+ we eventually reach a point where airlines downsize and go out of business en masse, and where commuters desert their SUVs and catch a train or a bus instead. Jeff Rubin, former Chief Economist of CIBC Worldmarkets is quoted as saying “I think we’ll see a return to triple digit prices (per barrel oil prices) very early into an economic recovery”. His book titled “Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: What the Price of Oil Means for the Way We Live” is worth a read as a basic outline of his thinking.

This therefore is the discussion we ought to be having - how do we achieve a soft landing for society as oil prices increase, and the associated economic decisions are reworked? Sure, there are clearly some, like Mr. Rubin who are sounding the drum. However the majority of individual and corporate decision makers continue with the assumption that energy prices will remain roughly in line with those enjoyed during the past 50 years, and that therefore the same structural economic system will continue. All the rest have either not noticed at all, or have been distracted by the circular debate regarding peak oil.

All of which is a segue if I ever seen one. And a sick one at that.