Were destroying wetlands and their methane is killing us. Big Oil cant be trusted but nor can the EUs climate commitments. Boomers leave their great grandkids a tenth of what they enjoyed.

Wetlands and methane

Is this

the source of this?

CO2 is the major cause of global warming but there is increasing concern (except among members of the Australian government) about methane for two reasons: 1) its concentration in the atmosphere has been rising rapidly for the last fifteen years, and 2) in the short term, which is what matters at the moment, its a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. The reasons for the increase arent fully understood but there are various likely contributors including increasing fugitive emissions from the regrettably increasing production of fossil fuels, and more emissions from landfill sites, growing livestock herds, and drying of wetlands such as the Pantanal in Brazil (pictured above) as climate change increases. Although fossil fuels account for just over a fifth of the methane released into the atmosphere, the biological processes mentioned above account for about two-thirds. A warming Earth that dries wetlands and stimulates more release of methane is possibly establishing a difficult to break vicious circle. And while (good news) research is ongoing into identifying and measuring the precise causes of the increasing methane emissions, the (bad news) emissions arent waiting, they keep increasing.

Inadequate reporting by countries of their annual methane emissions certainly doesnt help us to understand whats going on. A new report from the International Energy Agency indicates major discrepancies between the emissions reported to the UNFCCC and independent estimates based on new technologies including satellite and drone monitoring. As the figure below demonstrates, countries own reports need to be increased significantly to accurately reflect their true emissions from agriculture (+11 per cent), waste (+33 per cent) and, the daddy of them all, energy (+71 per cent).

People may think of peat bogs as bug-infested wastelands good only for digging up and burning, draining and turning into farmland, or damming and flooding to create hydroelectric schemes. Not so, says the New York Times which has put together an easy-to-read, online information page. Peatlands make up 3 per cent of Earths land but store twice as much carbon as all the worlds forests. This is because peatlands are so soggy that organic materials cant fully decompose and the carbon in them is locked underground. That also explains the interesting archaeological and natural remains we hear have been discovered in bogs from time to time. Humans have already drained about 15 per cent of the worlds peat bogs which now release two billion tons of carbon every year. Again, this causes more global warming and more drying of the remaining peatlands, which of course releases more carbon, etc. etc. The best things humans can do is stop draining the bogs, halt global warming and re-wet drained peatlands. The Timess information page is illustrated and written in the style of a toddlers picture book but the text is probably beyond most 3 year olds.

The NYT has a much longer article about a relatively intact peatland, larger than two Tasmanias, and the communities who live in it in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Confession: I havent read it all but, like a good 3 year old, I did look at the pictures!

Whos building the most renewable energy?

Which state in the USA led the field with the construction of renewable energy projects in 2021? The fruits and nuts of California? New Yorks go-getters? Green Vermont? Thoroughly-woke Massachusetts? No, none of those.

Whos burning the most wood for energy?

A little while ago I discussed the problem of trees in the southern states of the USA being chopped down, turned into pellets, shipped to Europe and burnt to generate electricity; a situation that arises because the European Union regards biomass as a renewable fuel and even pays companies to burn it. This 4-minute video highlights the same process of turning forests into fuel occurring within Europe, not only in the rapidly industrialising nations of the old Soviet bloc but also in Germany, France, Finland and Sweden. A staggering third of the EUs renewable energy comes from burning wood. As well as undermining policies to tackle climate change and loss of biodiversity, burning wood on an industrial scale generates an immense amount of air pollution. We can plant trees but not forests, says Professor Cramer, and they certainly dont grow and absorb CO2 in the few years weve got left to prevent a disaster.

Big Oil simply cant be trusted

Big Oil has made consuming its products seem like a human necessity. It has confused the public about climate science, bought the eternal gratitude of one of Americas two main political parties, and repeatedly out-maneuvered regulatory efforts. And it has done all this in part by thinking ahead and then acting ruthlessly. While the rest of us were playing checkers, its executives were playing three-dimensional chess.

So begins Naomi Oreskes who has great form as an exposer of the lies, obfuscation and political shenanigans used by corporations (particularly Big Tobacco) to ensure that their harmful products continue to be consumed by the unsuspecting public, all to maintain their massive profits. In How Big Oil works the system and keeps winning Ms Oreskes has teamed up with Jeff Nesbitt to illustrate how the US oil and gas industry has maintained its influence and profits ever since the break-up of Standard Oil in 1911, a move that tripled John D Rockefellers wealth. Through undermining Rachel Carsons exposure of the harms of DDT in Silent Spring (Dr Seuss makes a cameo appearance here), to the promotion of healthy-sounding natural gas rather than the nasty implications of methane, and, when the public mood changed, abandoning blatant climate denial for the equally obstructive yes, but not yet climate delaying tactics. Now that were in a race to a clean energy future, its time to recognize that they simply cant be trusted as partners in that race. Weve been fooled too many times conclude Oreskes and Nesbitt. (In my naivety, Id never realised that Esso represents S-O, Standard Oil.)

If you are interested in hearing more about Ms Oreskess work, directly from her, shell be speaking on Who pays for science? Does it matter? in a UNSW Centre for Ideas webinar on March 29th.

Hey Boomers, stop whingeing

For the world to hit net zero emissions by 2050 and keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Centigrade, children born today will need to have average lifetime emissions of CO2 that are a tenth of, not to be precious, people like me. The average lifetime emissions of each person born in the 1950s is about 350 tonnes of CO2. The figure for babies born in the 2020s is about 34 tonnes. Are you listening, Boomers?

Thats quite some intergenerational inequity no wonder the young people are in the streets and in the courts making their feelings clear. But it looks even worse when you look specifically at the average lifetime emissions of each person in high-emitting countries. The baby boomers average lifetime emissions (almost 700 tonnes) will be 14 times greater than and todays babies (just over 50 tonnes). The intergenerational difference for developing countries is less because their lifetime emissions per person are lower 155 tonnes for 1950s babies and 33 tonnes for todays, a five-fold difference. Equity demands that wherever a baby is born by the middle of the century their average lifetime emissions will be the same across the world.

The study is not based on a 2050 world of pre-industrial technology and personal austerity, by the way. Rather, it assumes that the global economy will double between 2020 and 2050 but that this will (must!) be accompanied by changes in technologies and lifestyles that deliver justice, environmental sustainability and comfort.

Note to young and old, rich and poor, developed and developing: Power must be taken, it is never given.

Causes, victims and solutions

not always easy to tell them apart.