Right up there with climate change, biodiversity conservation is one of the most challenging issues at the intersection of nature and culture.  Part of this challenge arises because of genuine differences in how people value other species.

In an interesting forthcoming article in Conservation Biology, Chris Sandbrook and colleagues at Cambridge University argue that these value differences not only show up in society at large, but among conservation professionals, who—like climate scientists—are drawn to the possibility of developing scientific consensuses to inform policy debates:

Conservation biology has been called a crisis science and a mission-driven discipline. Both the mission, and its urgency, seem clear, and there has been a substantial increase in activities intended to address the rapid decline in the variety of life on Earth at all levels of biological organization (structure, composition, and function). Nevertheless, there are tensions within the field about the values that underpin the conservation mission, particularly concerning the nature and singularity of these values and the role of values when conservation professionals try to inform or influence policy.

Recently, the values held by conservation professionals themselves have been debated. Conservation professionals often refer to both instrumental values (the usefulness of nature for humans) and noninstrumental or intrinsic values, and there may be an element of opportunism when they do so. Thus, although some may privately base the positions they hold on intrinsic values, they may espouse use-value arguments in public, adapting arguments to the interests of their audience. Some call for conservation scientists to return to a conservation ethic derived from intrinsic values

…[Others] propose a more pragmatic engagement with material values of nature in their focus on what they see as the “hard socioeconomic realities in real-world conservation problems.” The environmental philosophy of pragmatism, with its acceptance of both intrinsic and instrumental values of nature, is the hallmark of adaptive management

To study values held by conservationists, the research team posed a set of values to scientists and asked them to rank the degree to which they agreed or disagreed with the statements (Q methodology).  The responses were then run through a set of statistics (factor analysis) to distill the huge pile of value-by-person data into four overarching factors that summarized the main values held.

Their results suggest that consensus building may not only be difficult, it may be counterproductive…

Excerpts edited by me:

Factor 1…reflected the view that the value of biodiversity does not depend on its current usefulness to humans, potential future values to humans, or its importance to human survival.

• In terms of strategies and actions for conservation, the factor focused on global issues, such as changing human population growth rate and to a lesser extent changing the consumption levels of the wealthy.
• At the local level the factor did not express that conservation has a role in addressing poverty alleviation and considered it important to understand how people and nature interact in particular places, which suggests respondents considered that livelihoods of the poor as well as the rich are linked to biodiversity conservation.
• Because the focus of this factor was human population size and resource consumption, respondents appeared to be influenced by the concept of carrying capacity.

Factor 2…reflected a preservationist viewpoint, that conservation should prevent the human caused extinction of species.

• Nevertheless, the views in this factor emphasized social issues in the practice of conservation, particularly understanding how people and nature interact in places and to a lesser extent ensuring that conservation does no harm to human communities and does not displace long-term residents.
• This emphasis and the fact that science driven approaches to priority setting were rejected, suggests that this factor represents the viewpoint that conservation is mainly a political rather than a scientific endeavor.
• In terms of practical strategies, those that adhered to this factor do not believe conservation should focus on protected areas, involve strict law enforcement, or keep areas free from human influence.
• Rather, adherents to this factor strongly supported changes in consumption by the rich, which are actions far removed from the local level of protected areas. At the same time, the factor does not suggest the sole purpose of conservation is human survival.
• The factor also reflects a deep engagement in pragmatic and economic approaches to conservation action. Thus, the viewpoint expressed by this factor was that conservation planning must be local, can involve trade-based
  strategies, and can use incentives.
• This factor also showed there was an interest in holistic solutions, that conservation should not be confined to key priorities or areas and conservation actions should not be focused only where they are most cost-effective.

Factor 3…reflected a viewpoint that emphasized the diverse values of biodiversity, particularly the right of all species to exist and the role of species
in sustaining ecosystem functions

• The notions that trade in wild species can be a tool for conservation and that conservation action should prioritize cost-effectiveness were strongly rejected.
• Instead, priority was given to conservation of species and ecosystems, and the belief was that they should be conserved through implementation of protected areas. Little attention was given to the context and complexities of the practice of conservation, and there was a sense of disconnection between people and their environment at a variety of spatial scales, as evidenced by the focus on protected areas, little emphasis (relative to the other discourses) on understanding how people and nature interact, and rejection of any connection between conservation and consumption by the rich.
• Overall, this factor emphasized reasons biodiversity should be conserved, but gave little attention to mechanisms for achieving this goal.

Factor 4… reflected a view that biodiversity is useful to people, rejecting notions that biological diversity should be conserved for its beauty and that
all species have a right to exist.

• It emphasized the importance of connections between people and the environment, arguing that conservation success requires substantial changes in both human population growth and consumption by the rich.
• Conservation planning was seen to require detailed place-specific knowledge of human–environment interactions and not less-grounded patterns generated through tools such as GIS.
• The position expressed in this factor on economic tools was cautious: incentives are needed and cost-effectiveness is important, but trade in wild species and products was not considered a useful tool for biodiversity conservation.

There are several things I like about this article:

First is the notion that conservation is as political as it scientific— informed by the social sciences (policy, economics, sociology, psychology) and humanities (ethics, history) and ultimately debated by our local, national, and global societies.  It is not the role of science to drive contested, normative debates, although it’s great at providing information to inform these debates.

Second, now you see part of the reason why issues like conservation can be so contentious. There are myriad ways that people value biodiversity and it’s often difficult to reconcile these opposing philosophical positions.

Third, as I have written about previously on the blog, this is a good example of why nature needs to be situated in the context of culture and vice versa in order for challenging environmental problems to be studied effectively, as the authors allude to here (emphasis added):

[O]ur results provide an empirical challenge to the portrayal of conservation as a monolithic activity, driven by a convergent set of Western values, implicitly denying the possibility of differences in viewpoints about conservation at many spatial and temporal scales. The monolithic conception of conservation is based on an assumption that conservation professionals share a core set of values and goals, regardless of the social and economic contexts in which they are embedded and the experiences that have shaped their conservation interests. In reality, most conservation professionals draw on a range of values, from the intrinsic values of species to the use values of nature to humans. We consider it likely that such diverse views exist across a wide range of individuals and organizations involved in conservation.

…We believe conservation science and practice should not try to create a consensus under which conservation professionals can unite and instead acknowledge the diversity of opinions in the field. By acknowledging different
viewpoints, we believe conservation actors can build more honest and ultimately effective relationships with each other and the wider public.

SANDBROOK, C., SCALES, I., VIRA, B., & ADAMS, W. (2010). Value Plurality among Conservation Professionals Conservation Biology DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2010.01592.x

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When we think of human population change and resource use, it’s easy to assume that more people will consume more resources, such as water, energy, and food. An important corollary is that resource limitations will limit population growth.  Thomas Malthus was perhaps the most influential proponent of this idea.

However, several factors complicate this story:

(1) Affluence is a multiplier such that more people in a wealthy, high-consumption society lead to a disproportionate use of resources compared to people in poor countries. As my recent article on global change in Nature Knowledge shows,

the populations of China and India are roughly 1.32 and 1.14 billion people, respectively — about four times that of the US. However, the energy consumption per person in the US is six times larger than that of a person in China, and 15 times that of a person in India. Because the demand for resources like energy is often greater in wealthy, developed nations like the US, this means that countries with smaller populations can actually have a greater overall environmental impact. Over much of the past century, the US was the largest greenhouse gas emitter because of high levels of affluence and energy consumption. In 2007, China overtook the US in terms of overall CO₂ emissions as a result of economic development, increasing personal wealth, and the demand for consumer goods, including automobiles.

(2) Interestingly, resource limitations may actually inhibit our ability to slow population growth.  Yes, you read that right.  A new paper by John DeLong and colleagues in this week’s PLOS One (open access) argues exactly this.  Here’s why:

Influential demographic projections suggest that the global human population will stabilize at about 9–10 billion people by mid-century. These projections rest on two fundamental assumptions. The first is that the energy needed to fuel development and the associated decline in fertility will keep pace with energy demand far into the future. The second is that the demographic transition is irreversible such that once countries start down the path to lower fertility they cannot reverse to higher fertility. Both of these assumptions are problematic and may have an effect on population projections. Here we examine these assumptions explicitly. Specifically, given the theoretical and empirical relation between energy-use and population growth rates, we ask how the availability of energy is likely to affect population growth through 2050. Using a cross-country data set, we show that human population growth rates are negatively related to per-capita energy consumption, with zero growth occurring at ~13 kW, suggesting that the global human population will stop growing only if individuals have access to this amount of power. Further, we find that current projected future energy supply rates are far below the supply needed to fuel a global demographic transition to zero growth, suggesting that the predicted leveling-off of the global population by mid-century is unlikely to occur, in the absence of a transition to an alternative energy source. Direct consideration of the energetic constraints underlying the demographic transition results in a qualitatively different population projection than produced when the energetic constraints are ignored. We suggest that energetic constraints be incorporated into future population projections.

I love these kinds of unexpected outcomes that make us think more critically about simplified assumptions when it comes to the drivers and impacts of global change.

DeLong, J., Burger, O., & Hamilton, M. (2010). Current Demographics Suggest Future Energy Supplies Will Be Inadequate to Slow Human Population Growth PLoS ONE, 5 (10) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0013206

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Here’s an interesting thought question:  How much would global temperature warm if we used only the existing energy infrastructure (i.e., power plants, furnaces, motor vehicles) until these machines reached the end of their useful lives?  Once they died, they would be replaced by devices that did not emit CO₂.

Steven Davis and colleagues addressed this question in the current issue of Science:

We calculated cumulative future emissions of 496 (282 to 701 in lower- and upperbounding scenarios) gigatonnes of CO₂ from combustion of fossil fuels by existing infrastructure between 2010 and 2060, forcing mean warming of 1.3°C (1.1° to 1.4°C) above the pre-industrial era and atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ less than 430 parts per million. Because these conditions would likely avoid many key impacts of climate change, we conclude that sources of the most threatening emissions have yet to be built. However, CO₂-emitting infrastructure will expand unless extraordinary efforts are undertaken to develop alternatives.

Their analysis suggests that CO₂ emissions would decline linearly from 35 gigatons/year in 2010 to less than 5 gigatons/year in 2050, with the majority of the remainder being non-energy emissions from things like cement manufacture and land use changes.

On a personal level, this would mean replacing your current furnace, car, and electricity sources with ones that emitted no CO₂, so we’re talking upwards of 15-20 years for a personal vehicle, 20-30 years for a furnace, and 50+ years for power stations, depending on the age of these items.  The average power plant age in the U.S. is 32 years compared to 12 years in China and 21 and 27 years in Japan and Europe.

It’s encouraging to know that it may be possible to avert serious climate change without having to shut down existing infrastructure right away (especially long-lived fossil fuel power plants) but only if we plow significant funding into developing and implementing carbon-free technologies to replace them.  However, Davis et al. acknowledge that this is a tall order:

[T]here is little doubt that more CO₂-emitting devices will be built. Our analysis considers only devices that emit CO₂ directly. Substantial infrastructure also exists to produce and facilitate use of these devices. For example, factories that produce internal combustion engines, highway networks dotted with gasoline refueling stations, and oil refineries all promote the continuation of oil-based road transport emissions. Moreover, satisfying growing demand for energy without producing CO₂ emissions will require truly extraordinary development and deployment of carbon-free sources of energy, perhaps 30 TW by 2050. Yet avoiding key impacts of climate change depends on the success of efforts to overcome infrastructural inertia and commission a new generation of devices that can provide energy and transport services without releasing CO₂ to the atmosphere.

Davis, S., Caldeira, K., & Matthews, H. (2010). Future CO2 Emissions and Climate Change from Existing Energy Infrastructure Science, 329 (5997), 1330-1333 DOI: 10.1126/science.1188566
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Photo credit: Stuck in Customs

This week’s issue of Science includes a special section on biodiversity.  A review article by Michael Rands and colleagues, Biodiversity Conservation: Challenges Beyond 2010, summarizes the current approaches and challenges for conservation.

Here is an excerpt describing their outlook for the future:

The challenges of addressing the social and behavioral contexts for biodiversity conservation are daunting. We are far from including biodiversity in our conventional measures of well-being, which focus on wealth creation and internationally
recognized estimates of GDP. Although there have been attempts to redefine these (including, for instance, the Human Development Index and green national accounts), the mainstream view of well-being and of national development remains focused on narrowly defined economic growth. Furthermore, the current recession only strengthens the emphasis on growth. The transition to sustainability will not be easy, but it is central to securing a future for biodiversity. Conservation strategies, in concert with other environmental policies, must address seemingly intractable and politically unpalatable issues. In both developed and emerging economies, we need to reduce the carbon and material throughput demanded by current patterns of production and consumption if we are to create viable and democratically acceptable trajectories of contraction and convergence in resource use. In parallel, we must recognize that successful human development agendas are underpinned by functional ecosystems, and by biodiversity. This is the year in which governments, business, and civil society could decide to take seriously the central role of biodiversity in human well-being and quality of life and to invest in securing the sustainable flow of nature’s public goods for present and future generations.

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Happy New Year, everyone.  Sorry for the lag in posts, but there wasn’t a lot happening in the news or journals over the past week.

A few years ago, I saw a talk by Thomas Schelling (Nobel laureate in economics) who argued that we need to accelerate the economic development of poor countries so that they are able to cope with climate change.  This analysis is interesting, if not fraught with additional challenges, such as development in a carbon-based energy world hastening the very problem to which these nations are attempting to adapt.

In an article¹ in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (open access), Anthony Patt and colleagues argued that the need for assistance by Least Developed Countries (LDCs) is dependent on vulnerability, which, in turn, depends on both exposure to climate change and how socioeconomic factors affect the sensitivity of LDCs to climate change.

To assess this hypothesis, they first examined how deaths caused by disasters (floods, droughts, and storms) varied across the level of development in several LDCs.  They used the UN Human Development Index—HDI, a composite metric of income, education, and life expectancy—as a proxy for development.

Here’s what they found…

As you might expect, they found that deaths declined with increased HDI, but interestingly, the relationship had a peak in the middle, suggesting that as the least-developed countries become more developed, they may actually exacerbate vulnerability to climate change at mid levels of HDI before eventually reducing vulnerability at high levels of HDI.

Next, they focused on Mozambique as a case study.  Using the model of deaths vs. HDI they developed for other countries, they projected how Mozambique’s HDI might change over the next 50 years.  To do this, they linked the HDI to different development scenarios outlined by the IPCC’s Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES):

The A2 storyline describes high population and economic growth but low globalization, whereas the B1 storyline describes greater globalization
tied to improvements in environmental quality and sustainability, as well as lower population growth.

Under both scenarios, carbon increases in the atmosphere, but at different rates and to different degrees.  The authors assumed a linear increase in storms/disasters with rising temperatures, indicating that greater warming in the A2 scenario will lead to more disasters and more potential death than the B1 scenario where warming is not as great.

Following the B1 scenario caused the HDI to rise more quickly than the A1 scenario.  Simply put, society on a more-sustainable path (B1) leads to higher social welfare than under a more fossil-fuel intensive path with higher levels of human population (A2).

Similar to what they found by examining many countries, Mozambique will become more vulnerable to increased deaths as HDI rises over coming decades (by 2030-2040).  However, after 2050, vulnerability declined significantly in the B1 scenario, less so in the A2 scenario.

A few excerpts of their conclusions:

The results suggest that vulnerability may rise faster in the next two decades than in the three decades thereafter. Importantly, the overall need for adaptation measures will continue to rise… However,
assuming that their development paths fall somewhere close to the range bounded by the A2 and B1 scenarios, by the second quarter of the century LDCs will likely engage in a greater share of this adaptation autonomously, thereby reducing both their losses, and their need for financial assistance. This is especially the case if socio-economic conditions change in a manner close to that described in the B1 scenario.

….Looking beyond 2060 and the crossing of temperature thresholds such as 2 °C, it may well be that steadily rising climate impacts—such as sea level rise or the effects of cumulative changes on ecosystems—create problems that go well beyond the ability of any country, rich or poor, to adapt. Until that point, a primary argument for ramping up assistance slowly—namely, that adaptation needs can only increase as climate change continues—is incomplete, because it ignores the role that socio-economic development and the concurrent changes in adaptive capacity will have to play. Although there are important caveats to our results, they provide a first estimate of how vulnerability will unfold over the next 50 years, if one assumes, as do all of the SRES scenarios, that
incomes will continue to rise. They suggest that the urgency of efforts to reduce vulnerability, including the provision of international financial assistance, is high.

One thing the authors acknowledge is that nobody really has a good explanation for the humped relationship of HDI vs. deaths from disasters.  That’s an important part of their results, which suggests that the very poorest nations may experience more suffering in the initial steps of development.  Understanding this would make a great PhD in development economics.

¹Patt, A. et al. (in press) Estimating least-developed countries’ vulnerability to climate-related extreme events over the next 50 years. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Human actions are having large and accelerating effects on the climate, environment and ecosystems of the Earth, thereby degrading many ecosystem services. This unsustainable trajectory demands a dramatic change in human relationships with the environment and life-support system of the planet. Here, we address recent developments in thinking about the sustainable use of ecosystems and resources by society in the context of rapid and frequently abrupt change.

To deal with these challenges, they advocate “ecosystem stewardship,” which has three core principles.  Here are excerpts of these principles (slightly condensed/adapted by me); please check out the paper for details:

(Principle 1) Reduce vulnerability to known stresses

(A) Reduce exposure to hazards and stresses
• Minimize known stresses and avoid or minimize novel hazards and stresses
• Develop new institutions that minimize global-scale stresses
• Manage in the context of projected changes rather than in the historical range of variability

(B) Reduce social–ecological sensitivities and adapt to adverse impacts
• Sustain the capacity of ecosystems to provide multiple ecosystem services
• Sustain and enhance crucial components of well-being, particularly of vulnerable segments of society
• Plan sustainable development to address the tradeoffs among costs and benefits for ecosystems, multiple segments of today’s society and future generations

(Principle 2) Develop stewardship strategies to prepare for, and shape, uncertain change

(A) Maintain a diversity of options
• Subsidize innovations that foster socio-economic novelty and diversity
• Renew the functional diversity of degraded systems
• Prioritize conservation of biodiversity hotspots and pathways that enable species to adjust to rapid environmental change
• Sustain a diversity of cultures, languages and knowledge systems that provide multiple approaches to meeting societal goals.

(B) Enhance social learning to facilitate adaptation
• Broaden the problem definition and knowledge co-production by engaging multiple disciplinary perspectives and knowledge systems
• Use scenarios and simulations to explore consequences of alternative policy options
• Develop transparent information systems and mapping tools that contribute to developing trust among decision-makers and stakeholders, and build support for action
• Test understanding through comparative analysis, experimentation and adaptive management
• Exercise extreme caution in experiments that perturb a system larger than the jurisdiction of management

(C) Adapt governance to implement potential solutions
• Provide an environment for leadership and respect to develop
• Foster social networking that builds trust and bridges communication and accountability among existing organizations
• Enable sufficient overlap in responsibility among organizations to allow redundancy in policy implementation

(Principle 3) Transform from traps to potentially more favorable trajectories

(A) Preparing for transformation
• Engage stakeholders to identify dysfunctional states and raise awareness of problems
• Identify thresholds, plausible alternative states, pathways and triggers
• Identify the barriers to change, potential change agents and strategies to overcome barriers

(B) Navigating the transition
• Identify potential crises and use them as opportunities to initiate change
• Maintain flexible strategies and transparency
• Foster institutions that facilitate cross-scale and cross-organizational interactions and stakeholder participation

(C) Building resilience of the new regime
• Create incentives and foster values for stewardship in the new context
• Initiate and mobilize social networks of key individuals for problem solving
• Foster interactions and support of decision makers at other levels

Bottom line:  This paper provides a useful framework for the continuing conversation on sustainability.  Some of the ideas are not new, but it’s a good synthesis, and it makes progress towards the difficult task of integrating natural and social systems. I would like to see a comprehensive list of examples compiled for all of these strategies as a clearinghouse for ideas, including ideas that do (did) not work.

We are going to see a lot more on these ideas over the next decade:

• interdependence of natural and social systems
• reducing vulnerabilities (a key component of adaptation)
• fostering innovation in all sectors of society
• maintain diversity in ecological and social systems as a form of resilience (another key component of adaptation)
• being proactive to shape the trajectory of change

¹Chapin F.S. et al (in press) Ecosystem stewardship: sustainability strategies for a rapidly changing planet. Trends in Ecology and Evolution

²Bowdoin people can access the article here.

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We don’t ordinarily think about climate change and land use change as being a synergistic threat to society.  However, the combination of impervious surfaces that increase runoff, declining wetlands, levees, and more severe storms pack a quadruple whammy that could lead to some major flooding in the future.  From the cool adaptation work done in Keene, NH, we know that much of our infrastructure (roads, bridges, culverts) can’t handle the added stress of streams and rivers with higher discharge.  We’re looking at a potential nightmare of increased costs associated with infrastructure damage.

In this week’s issue of Science, Jeffrey Opperman and colleagues argue¹ that our historical paradigm of flood control with levees needs to fundamentally change to  achieve a more sustainable socioecological system.

Their solution?  Tear down some of the levees to allow some floodplains to flood.  This can accomplish several goals:

(1) Flood risk reduction

• Move to flood-tolerant activities in floodplains so that we don’t have to spend so much on disaster relief.
• Storing water in floodplains takes the strain off downstream regions because floodwaters can naturally spill to where they are supposed to rather than swelling channelized rivers.  Small amounts of land can accomplish this—they cite a study of the Illinois River showing that a floodplain of 8,000 hectares would drop the likelihood of flooding 26,000 hectares of cropland by 50%.

(2) Increased floodplain goods and services

• Several economic activities are conducive to periodic flooding:  pasture, timber, and flood-tolerant biofuel crops, such as willow.
• Periodically flooded soils can also assist with reducing erosion and storing nutrients that would otherwise reach and pollute coastal oceans.

(3) Building resiliency to climate change

• They argue that reconnecting rivers to floodplains can help us adapt to climate change in ways that are socioeconomically beneficial.  For instance, we presently have to keep some reservoirs partially empty to accommodate periodic flood waters.  But partially filled reservoirs can’t generate as much hydropower or provide as much drinking water.  If we used floodplains as a natural pressure relief valve, we can operate reservoirs closer to capacity and benefit economically.

Opperman and colleagues acknowledge that there are political hurdles, such as convincing some private landowners that flooding their land can be useful.

But there are creative solutions that have already been deployed.  They cite Sacramento as an example:  Some farmers allow their crops to flood, serving as a pressure-relief valve when rivers swell, thereby preventing more expensive damage.  In return, the farmers are compensated for their crop loss.  It’s a win-win situation that presumably costs less than dealing with infrastructure damage or having to build new infrastructure that handles greater flooding.

Another idea is to allow some of these areas to become wetlands and compensate people as part of a wetlands banking system to mitigate the loss of wetlands elsewhere.   This would most likely have several ecological benefits, including increasing habitat for wetland-dependent species such as waterfowl and other migrating birds.  It would also likely increase vegetation productivity and carbon storage.

It’s interesting to note that they don’t call for an end to economic activity or human use in floodplains.  Sure, we probably want to stop building McMansions in flood-prone regions.  However, there are several ways we can use floodplains for ecological and economic benefit.  These will likely require compensation, but in the long run, it’s cheaper than having to re-tool major infrastructure to handle greater discharge with climate warming.

¹Opperman, J.J. et al (2009) Sustainable floodplains through large-scale reconnections to rivers. Science 326:1487-1488.

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Most of the focus these days is on how we can mitigate climate warming by achieving specific reductions targets like 20% by 2020 and 80% by 2050.  Economists from McGill University, Isabel Galiana and Christopher Greene, are going to stir up debate in their latest paper¹ in Nature by arguing that the current way of thinking about mitigating warming needs to be turned on its head.

Focusing on rapid emissions reductions, they say, may not be the best way to rapidly stabilize climate as cheaply as possible.  They even go as far as to say that climate can be stabilized at a 2 degree C warming even if most of the carbon reductions don’t happen until after 2050.

What’s the basis for their argument?  Technology-led approaches.  Let’s see what this means…

In the recent 2009 Copenhagen Consensus on Climate (an annual meeting of economists to discuss ways to solve the world’s pressing problems), they were part of a panel of economists that ranked 15 proposals to mitigate warming.  Their key findings included

• For $US 100 billion per year invested in global energy R&D for the rest of the century, we can stabilize emissions and minimize warming.
• A technology focus should replace the current focus on emissions reductions.
• This can happen with a low “fee” (tax) of $5/ton carbon, which would raise $150 billion annually.
• The carbon fee would be allowed to double every decade, sending a price forward signal that carbon is getting increasingly expensive and that the benefit of developing and deploying low-C technologies as soon as possible is a good idea.  By 2050, carbon would cost $40/ton.
• Isolate this revenue as much as possible from politicians, by, say, putting it in a trust fund managed by public and private sectors much in the way the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation operates.
• Open competitions for these funds by companies, nations, and individuals to accelerate new technology development.  Others not in this competition can apply to use the funds to implement the successful technology developed from them.
• This approach facilitates development of breakthrough technology, allows technology to be scaled up, encourages demonstration projects, and helps diffuse technology spread.

Conventional emissions reduction approaches, they argue, have many pitfalls:

• They risk reducing emissions before the new technologies are fully developed and available, which could impact global GDP more than it should if we worried less about emissions reductions up front and did everything we could to push out new technology.
• They risk causing C prices to rise too rapidly, which could impact politically sensitive industries employing a lot of people, such as cement, steel, aluminum, and glass.
• Policies favoring high C prices (through cap and trade or high C taxes) don’t necessarily lead to new investment, especially if the revenue generated from these systems is used for anything other than energy R&D.

So back to the question in the title: What do radar, nuclear power, the Internet, and DNA have in common with technology to help us mitigate warming? Galiana, and Green argue

• they require(d) significant public investment to develop;
• the scientific knowledge needed to develop them is (was) not easy to patent, which challenged private investment;
• potential pay-offs are (were) decades away, which dissuades corporate boards focused mainly on short-term profit and stock prices.

¹Galiana, I. and C. Green (2009) Let the Technology Race Begin. Nature 462:570-571.

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There’s a new website/journal called Solutions, edited by Bob Costanza, David Orr, Paul Hawken, and John Todd that’s worth looking taking a look at.

Let’s take a look at five innovative and exciting ideas from Stanford University, City College of New York,  Western Michigan University, UC-Davis, and the University of Arizona…

(1) Stanford moves aggressively to cut energy use, reduce carbon impact

For those of us who have worked through campus climate action plans, one of the hardest things to deal with is emissions from steam plants.  Stanford is trying to tackle this by starting with energy recapture and conservation.  Their plan is significant because it’s potentially transferable to other schools, especially in warmer climates that use heating and cooling at the same time.  And it focuses on conservation first—usually a smart and cost-effective approach.

Excerpts:

• In an effort to tackle the threat of global climate change head on, Stanford University has developed an ambitious, long-range, $250 million initiative to sharply reduce the university’s energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
• Changes outlined in the Energy and Climate Plan could reduce the campus carbon impact by as much as 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, far exceeding the aggressive goals of California’s landmark AB 32 Global Warming Solutions Act.
• Unexpectedly, they discovered that over half the university’s heating demands could be met with heat that is already being removed from buildings by the campus cooling system. Such a reuse of energy would cut the amount of natural gas burned for heating purposes dramatically, reducing energy costs as well as emissions of greenhouse gases.
• Reconfiguring the university’s heating and cooling scheme, despite the $250 million price tag, would save money over the next four decades. Energy, water, and other operating cost savings are expected to be about $639 million from 2010 to 2050, after repayment of the initial capital investment.
• The energy-reduction plan revolves around this fact: Campus cooling systems do their job by using chilled water to remove unwanted heat from buildings. For years, that unwanted heat has been piped away from the buildings in the form of warm water, only to be discharged into the air through evaporative cooling towers at the central plant.
• That’s enough spare heat to take care of half of the campus heating needs. The result is that much less natural gas would be burned to warm offices, classrooms, dormitories and laboratories.

(2) City College of New York to offer master program in sustainability in the urban environment

Another example of an institution breaking down traditional divides—in this case architecture, engineering, and science—in the name of curricular initiatives that provide meaningful sustainability training.  Their goals are important, but if there’s anything missing, it’s contributions from sociology and psychology.  These other frames will be key for linking people and the built environment.  Otherwise, there’s a risk that these programs will deliver myopic, techno-driven conceptions of sustainability that are blind to cultural disparities and needs.

Excerpts:

• The program’s core curriculum lays a foundation in sustainability values, strategies and metrics through coursework in urban and natural systems, environmental economics and industrial ecology.  It draws upon approaches such as ‘whole systems thinking’ and life cycle analysis to understand and evaluate complex urban eco-systems.
• An interdisciplinary capstone project, which requires teamwork and interchange among groups of architects, engineers and scientists, will develop experience with the processes and dynamics of integrated design.  Additionally, students will take electives in relevant advanced courses within architecture, engineering and science.
• Graduates will ultimately develop leadership and teamwork skills that will give them an advantage in diverse professional settings where interaction and collaboration among teams of scientists, engineers, architects and others are commonplace.

(3) Western Michigan University getting $1 million for green manufacturing

University-business relationships like this are terrific for showing how university leverage and resources can help the broader economy transition to a more-sustainable world.

Excerpts:

• WMU’s Green Manufacturing project draws upon existing research and development centers at the University. Faculty researchers and students will collaborate with area manufacturers, especially smaller businesses, to help them build greater energy efficiency into manufacturing processes and promote recycling of materials to further reduce costs. About 25 companies in Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, Benton Harbor-St. Joseph, Grand Rapids and Muskegon have already expressed interest in participating, according to Patten.
• “I am especially proud with this project,” said Dunn, “because it highlights one of the longtime strengths of Western Michigan University, which is applying the latest knowledge and technology to create practical solutions of immediate and long-term benefit.”
• “Companies realize that being green is good for their bottom line to ensure their longevity,” said Patten, who added that project will help preserve existing jobs and foster creation of new ones.

(4/5) UC-Davis and U. Arizona have incentivized alternative transportation by using rewards to entice more walking and biking.

This is a great idea, and a no-brainer for schools with climates like Davis and Tucson.  Look at how Davis’ effort to attract people goes beyond traditional appeals for carpooling.  It’s a lesson to other schools:  If you really want people to change commuting behavior, sweeten the deal.

An excerpt from UC-Davis:

• Rewards for green commuting include complimentary parking permits, discounted bus and train passes, discounts on bicycle storage lockers, shower and locker facilities for walkers and bicyclists, and options to get you home in an emergency.
• On top of all that, goClub members are eligible for prize drawings every other month. A sampling of the prizes: bus and train passes, bicycles and assorted bicycle gear, a train-and-bus trip for two to Yosemite, a one-month membership to the Activities and Recreation Center, two tickets to an athletics event of your choice, lunch coupons and UC Davis apparel.
• The old alternative transportation program listed some 1,734 participants: carpoolers and vanpoolers, and bus riders and train riders. All of these people have been automatically enrolled in the goClub.
• With the addition of walkers and bicyclists, goClub membership could grow by thousands—especially considering that bicycling accounts for more than 40 percent of campus-related transportation.

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For more information:

• AASHE bulletin 11/9/09