As the world faces more and more extreme weather events, and New Zealand suffers from severe droughts, the links between these events and climate change and not being reported correctly by the media. Florence Issacs gives us the lowdown and joins the dots.

Climate change calls to mind a great deal of things –  authoritative figures yelling about carbon credits, graphs with red spikes, solemnly-nodding scientists and likely an association with extreme weather; or at least a barrage of Day-After-Tomorrow-esque images.

Perhaps your thoughts are currently with those in the regions of the North Island, facing very desperate times in what has come to be recognised as the worst drought in 70 years. Perhaps they are with those in Australia recently under siege by the fiery product of a “dome of heat”, which produced four out of ten of the hottest days on record, alongside a record average maximum temperature of 40.33C. Perhaps they stray to Northern India, to the friends and family of the 170 who died as a result of a recent cold snap that brought with it the coldest day Delhi has seen in 44 years. Your thoughts might linger with the deadly Hurricane Sandy in the US, or the devastating Hurricane Evan in the Pacific. Even closer to home, Aucklanders are still suffering the ramifications of some of the most severe tornadoes they have seen in decades.

What I can guarantee is that not one of these, nor any other significant extreme weather event appearing in the news in the past few years, has passed without any comment on its relationship to climate change. And as much as I, speaking from a scientific point of view (where I would want my own grandmother peer-reviewed if I could) kind of hate the way the media blindly decides that each and every unusual weather event is DEFINITELY ABSOLUTELY AND WITHOUT A DOUBT caused solely by climate change, they are sort of on the right track.

Everyone knows that global warming, well, warms the globe. More CO2 in the atmosphere acts as a barrier for outgoing radiation, resulting in more radiation trapped at the surface – etcetera. Thankfully this phenomenon is now so well-accepted that they teach it to schoolchildren. However, this basic explanation gives somewhat of an impression that the earth will warm at a even and steady pace. And this does nothing to account for the dual extremes of wildfire-inducing heatwaves with the hottest days on record and fatal cold snaps in countries that normally see average lows of around 12-13C.

The reason I prefer the term ‘climate change’ as opposed to ‘global warming’, is that the greenhouse gas effect will result not only in increased average global temperatures, but also in increased variability in global temperatures. If average temperatures are depicted in graph form, they take on the classic bell-curve distribution as shown below, with ‘extreme’ temperatures being represented in the tail-ends of the curve with a much lower probability of occurrence. Climate change causes this whole curve to shift to the right, redefining the boundaries of ‘extreme’ temperatures, and causing ‘record hot’ weather to fall closer to the centre point of the curve and thus have a greater probability of occurring. At the same time, if we look simply at the average temperature, ‘record cold’ weather disappears entirely. And as we know from India, and from cold snaps like Europe experienced early last year, this is not entirely the case.

(Source: IPCC Third Assessment Report – Climate Change 2001)

For the world is not a featureless and homogenous plane, and will not respond to warming all in the same way, convenient though that would be for pretty graphs and easily delivered blanket statements. Inland continental environments, already the sites of some of the most variable temperatures, could see the kind of heat domes Australia is experiencing as a common occurrence. In contrast, you also have the predicted temperature drop in Britain and Western Europe as a result of interruptions to the warm Gulf Stream current in the North Atlantic, that could occur if the freshwater : saltwater balance is altered enough by melting ice. Coastal regions will experience far less warming than inland areas, due to their proximity to the ocean and its ability to moderate temperatures and cause much more temperate climates. Furthermore, equatorial regions, having the highest receipt of solar radiation, are more likely to experience greater precipitation as a result of the updrafts caused by greater surface warming. Essentially, no two places on earth are the same, and thus cannot be expected to produce identical responses to climate change.

Therefore you get an increase in the variability of extreme weather events, i.e. a greater difference between the hottest and coldest temperatures, and an associated rise in phenomenon such as floods, droughts, fires and storms. See: climate change, not global warming.

So although the media needs to grasp a better understanding of the scientific method and stop making be-all end-all statements that aren’t supported by solid evidence, they are on the right track. And most of all, they are providing some of the most powerful material available to shift people into a mindset where they actually want to do something to stop climate change. Because storms such as Sandy, and Evan, and the images of a blackened Australian skyline, are solid visual evidence that climate change is here, now. And unless we want photos like the one below becoming one hell of a regular occurrence, we really need to start doing something about it.

(Photo by Getty)

Florence Isaacs is a third year geography and botany student at Otago University who hates odd socks but enjoys nerding out about science and picking a fight with climate deniers.

It is widely perceived that there is no solution to the bane of New Zealand’s emissions profile – agricultural emissions. However, this is not the case. Josh Pemberton, a summer intern at Motu Economic and Public Policy Research discusses the issues and facts surrounding emissions from the agricultural sector, and Motu’s solutions-focused initiative, the Agricultural Emissions dialogue.

It is an oft-quoted statistic that agriculture contributes to nearly half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions (1). Yet legislation passed earlier this year indefinitely deferred the substantive entry of the sector into our Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) (2). The Green Party’s Kennedy Graham responded by labeling the move “ecocide”, (3) whilst most of the agricultural industry – including Federated Farmers, who voiced strong opposition to bringing agriculture under the ETS in their submission to the 2011 ETS Review (4)– welcomed the news.

Agricultural emissions are seen as difficult to deal with because they are more scientifically complex than emission from other sectors. Non-carbon dioxide emissions from agriculture consist of methane emitted by livestock (approximately 2/3) and nitrous oxide from animal excrement, as well as the use of nitrogen fertiliser (approximately 1/3) (5). These different gases absorb different amounts of energy per unit time, and they also last for different lengths of time in the atmosphere once emitted.

Greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector account for 47.1% of New Zealand’s overall emissions.

The US Environmental Protection Agency has calculated Global Warming Potentials (GWPs) to compare the effect on warming of other greenhouse gases relative to carbon dioxide in a given period of time (6). Methane has a GWP of 21, meaning that over a 100 year period, 1 kg of methane contributes to warming as much as 21 kg of carbon dioxide. Even more drastically, nitrous oxide has a GWP of 300. This sounds ominous, but on the plus side, the different types of gases which make up an agricultural emissions profile means that there are different possible ways to tackle the problem. In addition, reducing nitrogen output and use has co-benefits, for instance in mitigating the harm to water quality caused by run-off.

It is easy for the issue of agricultural emissions to be framed as in terms of a tradeoff between the environment and the economy, pitting “naïve greenies” against “conservative farmers”. However, such an understanding is too simplistic. Given that it is not only emissions and the reputation of our agricultural sector at stake – there are also bottom lines, jobs and export dollars to consider –it is not surprising that there are differing and strongly held views on the issues surrounding agricultural emissions.

This all means that discussions of agricultural emissions can often be hamstrung by groups talking past each other. With this in mind, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research set up a dialogue group in 2011, aiming to improve the dialogue about how to efficiently control agricultural emissions in the short to medium term. The group – comprising of farmers, iwi, NGOs, government, representatives from farm industry groups, and guest experts – met ten times over an 18 month period. The group looked at how to make farming more greenhouse gas efficient, and what steps could be taken so that regulation, as it is increasingly imposed in the future, will be most effective.

In 2011, Motu set up the Agricultural Emissions dialogue to enable constructive discussions about the issue.

Although it did not aim to reach a consensus view, the dialogue process informed the thinking that led to a number of publications by Motu researchers in 2011-2012 (available here). Since the dialogue process has come to an end, Motu has sought to keep the issue in the public consciousness. Recently, an excellent short film about agricultural emissions in New Zealand, and an accompanying set of teaching materials were released. The intention is a wide range of people will be able to use the film and materials to continue to have fruitful discussions about agricultural emissions.

In addition, a blog has been set up to continue the conversation. You can visit the blog, or follow it via its Facebook page. The whole process is meant to be about input from a range of people. This means that contributions and comments, from anyone interested, are most welcome!

Sources:

(1) www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/climate/greenhouse-gas-inventory-2012-snapshot/index.html

(2) www.climatechange.govt.nz/emissions-trading-scheme/ets-amendments/

(3) www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10846094

(4) www.climatechange.govt.nz/emissions-trading-scheme/ets-review-2011/consultation/submission137.pdf

(5) www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/climate/emissions-factsheets/factsheet-21.html

(6) www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases.html

Lindsey Horne and ten others are cycling the length of New Zealand and putting their gluteus maximi to the test, all in the name of getting to Power Shift NZ-Pacific, New Zealand’s first ever youth climate summit. As the team nears their final destination, Lindsey updates us on their journey so far and the reasons behind their chosen mode of transport.

1. Peanut Butter

2. Vaseline

3. Sun screen

Not the ingredients for a weird face mask, rather the three top items to pack when you’re travelling 1700km up New Zealand from Dunedin to Auckland.

When I heard my friend Tod was keen to go for a hefty bike ride up the country, my initial thought was ‘just try getting out of the hills surrounding Dunedin!’. But I slowly started thinking about how this could be one of those things you tell your grandkids about.

So I tentatively signed up.

And now we find ourselves passing our 1000km mark. As I write this we’re all chilling at Awhi farm, a permaculture farm in Turangi, the wood fire pizza oven going, veges just being picked for the eating and laughing over some well deserved cider. We’ve been through rural Southland, across the Canterbury plains and along the Kaikoura coast. The original 5 of us gathered another 6 in Wellington (so we officially become a troupe) where we had an awesome send off by the Wellington Mayor and kindly received our valuable and tasty 8kg of Pic’s peanut butter. We then followed the Wanganui river up to the central plateau where we made friends with Mt Ngarahoe and Mt Ruapehu, watching over us as we cycle towards Lake Taupo and look forward to the hot pools of Rotorua. We’ve stayed with amazing people in amazing places – from camping on friends’ lawns to staying in a convent in the hills, Quaker communities and cheekily hidden camping grounds. We’ve become such a tight unit; friends for life.

A tight unit – the original Dunedin cycling team: Lindsey, Sophie, Tod, Leander and Letisha.

But, most importantly, we’re all doing this for a reason. While cycling up New Zealand is a fantastic way to see the country side, we 12 cyclists have a higher purpose than just sight-seeing. We see that the world, our world is feeling pressure and strain. We’ve already seen cracks forming in the ecosystems with sea level rise in the Pacific Islands, extreme weather becoming increasingly common and overall warming which is putting delicate systems out of kilter. We’ve seen our leaders make poor decisions with little acknowledgement as to how this will all affect us in the future and we’ve seen people carry on with business as usual, trying to hide these problems under the rug.

So we cycle up the country, not as an outrage to the past, but for our excitement about the future. We cycle knowing that when we reach Auckland, our final destination, 1000 young people will be there ready, waiting and armed to help save our wavering climate. 1000 young people alongside worthy mentors, inspiring speakers and experts willing to share the skills. 1000 young people attending Power Shift – New Zealand’s first youth climate summit.

You can follow the team’s journey on their facebook page at Cycling to Power Shift. For more information about Power Shift, check out www.powershift.org.nz.

Sam Lang from the New Zealand Youth Delegation gives his take on New Zealand’s position at the international climate negotiations in Doha, in light of New Zealand’s withdrawal from the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. He also offers some insight into youth’s role in the world of climate change negotiations.

Every now and again a debate arises in the media that polarises both the organisations involved as well as the New Zealand public. The most recent and dramatic of these debates has been the Government’s decision to withdraw from the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. This decision closely followed an ETS Amendment Bill which placed the ETS in a politically induced coma, sparking a deadlock between the Government on one side and Kyoto supporters on the other.

The public response consisted of a myriad of opinions, metaphorically resembling the crayon scribble your baby cousin might draw of the family dog ‘Spike’. Comments ranged from climate denialism, to harsh criticism of the Government decision, and filled most of the gaps in between. This is an attempt to present an objective take on recent events.

The response to New Zealand’s recent climate agreement announcements, aka ‘Spike’

Australia’s announcement to commit to the second commitment period a few weeks ago immediately turned the global spotlight on New Zealand. This provoked Minister Tim Groser to immediately announce that we would not commit to a second commitment period, a declaration I’m sure he’d have preferred to delay.

The Government’s justification for this decision can be summarised as follows: ‘Kyoto is toxic’, and it is in New Zealand’s best interests to join developing and emerging economies – including developed countries that have dishonourably withdrawn from Kyoto – under the voluntary ‘Convention’ track. Just how this decision was in New Zealand’s ‘best interests’ was never elaborated.

In response to the fiery protests from Kyoto supporters, Mr Groser replied “it won’t make a single cent of difference what New Zealand does with 0.2% of [global] emissions”. The Prime Minister also chipped in that “we never wanted to be a world leader in climate change”. Former Prime Minister Helen Clark may have a slightly different opinion.

The Sustainability Council recently released a report titled ‘The Carbon Budget Deficit’ which provides an enlightening insight into New Zealand’s carbon accounts and financial position. It affirms Minister Groser’s statement that New Zealand emissions will be below our target for the first commitment period. However, when you factor in the negative financial position of the Emissions Trading Scheme, the surplus Kyoto credits do not make up for the ETS losses and we find ourselves in a 51Mt deficit – almost equivalent to New Zealand’s total annual emissions. The graph below is an outdated Treasury graph which helps explain this concept.

If we look to between now and 2020 (the second commitment period) New Zealand has a projected Kyoto deficit of a further 43Mt. Tack CP1 and CP2 together and the New Zealand deficit rests at around 94Mt in deficit in 2020. The financial costs of this are highly uncertain. At today’s rock bottom carbon price of around NZ$6 this would cost New Zealand around $560 million. Using the Government’s $25 per tonne price it would be almost $2.4 billion. Ultimately the taxpayer will have to fork out for this (avoidable) liability.

Unfortunately beyond 2020 isn’t looking much better. To date, our extensive plantation forests have been offsetting our gross emissions, which continue to rise above 1990 levels. Claims that we’re doing our ‘fair share’ domestically are false claims and personally make me cringe; we have simply been free-riding on the back of our forestry sector.

The scheduled harvest of our plantation forests in the near future has large implications. While New Zealand – among other countries – managed to secure favourable rules for plantation harvesting and replanting, the amount of carbon sequestered by our forests each year will decline. Our forestry sector will become almost ‘carbon neutral’ while our gross emissions (eg. transport, energy, agriculture) remain high. The overall effect of this on New Zealand’s carbon accounts will be a large emissions increase, exposing our inability to mitigate greenhouse gases on the international stage.

So, that’s New Zealand’s domestic position. But more importantly, what are the implications of this and our Kyoto decision on the international stage?

Unhelpfully, the implications are broad and difficult to quantify. By not committing to Kyoto we may save ourselves the financial penalty from comprehensively exceeding our target. However, when you factor in the potential damage to our international reputation, inarguably a huge earner in both our tourism and primary export industries; or the potential to be barred from future carbon markets; or the impact that our withdrawal will have on global momentum to construct a comprehensive global agreement by 2015; the stakes seem fairly high to me.

If we narrow the scope to the international climate negotiations which have just kicked off in Doha, Qatar, we can only expect that our bargaining power will have been reduced. As a Kiwi, I feel that asking developing countries to commit to a new globally binding agreement while scaling back our own mitigation action, not only abdicates our responsibility as a developed nation but is downright embarrassing. Australia recognised the importance of renewing their Kyoto commitment and good on them – since when did Kiwis identify as less environmentally or socially responsible than Australia?

Fortunately hope remains nested in the New Zealand climate movement, powering towards its first major youth summit in under 2 weeks’ time, ready to launch into a whole new level of awesomeness. What I have come to understand more and more in the past few weeks leading up to the Doha negotiations, is that the voices of the New Zealand Youth Delegation are powerless without the foundations and support of those at home. Those tireless campaigners who work to educate, empower and shift public opinion, and constantly pressure our Government to do better. Ultimately our success abroad is dependent on winning the fight domestically.

It is with this knowledge and support that I have come to believe in the role of the New Zealand Youth Delegation. Our purpose is not only to lobby our decision makers and hold them to account, but to feed our knowledge and experience into our networks at home, strengthen our movement and ensure that we continue to be as effective and efficient as the urgency of our cause demands.

Our team heads into the negotiations confident in our role and ready to get stuck in. Do not expect a miracle outcome from the next two weeks, it’s not how these negotiations work. But rest assured we’ll be working our asses off to meet both your expectations and our own, and we remain ever optimistic that positive moves can be made.

The New Zealand Youth Delegation on the ground in Doha

NZYD will be feeding back regular updates via facebook, twitter and our newsletter. Follow our feeds and keep in touch if you are interested; any messages of support are more than welcome as Operation Desert Storm (Doha) commences.

Kia ora tatou

After a slight absence from the web, the ClimateTalk team is back! It is a very exciting time for all things climate-related. COP-18, the climate change negotiations in Doha are taking place right now, and in less than 2 weeks, hundreds of young people will gather in Auckland for New Zealand’s first youth climate summit, Power Shift NZ-Pacific.

ClimateTalk will be keeping you updated on the Doha negotiations through the lens of the New Zealand Youth Delegation. The New Zealand Youth Delegation are representing the voices of New Zealand, and global youth, at the negotiations and are keeping the New Zealand negotiators on their toes.

The global youth movement is growing, with an Arab Youth Climate Movement launching recently, and youth movements all over the world growing in numbers. Power Shift NZ-Pacific will be a key moment for the New Zealand youth climate movement. Generation Zero has been active for over a year, but the expected 700+ young people at Power Shift will increase our voice to decibel levels never experienced before! Keep an eye out on here for updates about Power Shift, and blogs from participants throughout the event.

If this is the first you’ve heard about Power Shift, check out the website at www.powershift.org.nz. The event runs from the 7th-9th December in Auckland.  What can you expect from the weekend? Power Shift is jam-packed with inspirational speakers including Lucy Lawless, Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben, over 50 workshops, panel sessions, regional breakout sessions to connect with your neighbours, and performances by skilled artists from around Aotearoa. Check out the amazing programme here.

This is the last week that tickets will be available at the regular price – so if you’re interested in attending, or know a young person who might be, visit the Power Shift website here.

Stay tuned for regular updates from the ClimateTalk team, NZYD and Power Shift crew!

– Sarah

Climate change is a problem that can only truly be solved once it is recognised that the environment and economy are, in fact, reliant on each other. Alec Dawson takes a look at how the debate is often framed in an “environment vs. the economy” way, and why this is not the right way to go about solving our most fundamental problems. 

One of the worst things about politics is watching people totally set in their ways argue with one another. They’re never going to agree, they’re never going to admit that they’re wrong, and to the regular person they’re both equally annoying. It can also be incredibly confusing. Often both sides will make factual claims that are polar opposites, leaving a mess of different possible realities.

This sort of debate becomes particularly bad when it comes to the environment. To make a couple of gross generalisations, you basically have a green camp decrying modern society’s obsession with economic growth at the cost of huge environmental destruction and calling for limits to be placed on business (a great example being the need for taxes on carbon emissions) while in the other camp you have a group saying that this will cause too much harm to the economy and that makes any action totally impossible.

The problem is that actually both groups are right in some ways: A lot of human action does serious damage to the environment, and if we do anything about that it is likely to cost us money and resources. Failing to acknowledge the other angle will mean neither side will get anywhere.

We need to think about the economy, not the environment!

Framing the debate in this way creates a myth that there are these two things, ‘the economy’ and ‘the environment,’ and that it’s up to you to decide which one is more important, in the same way you might prefer money over free time. This could be wrong on two grounds: firstly, what if it’s not an individual value judgement like where you buy your coffee, but that one of them can actually be proved to be more important? And secondly, what if they aren’t separate but are in fact totally interlocking concepts that necessarily affect one another? I think the second problem is the more important one.

It helps if we figure out what these two concepts are. The (natural) environment is pretty easy. It’s the trees, the rivers, the sea, wild animals, plants, all the nice stuff we see outside our flat windows. But for all that it gets dropped in discussion by the media, politicians and anyone who wants to talk smart, does anyone really know what the hell ‘the economy’ is?

The technical definition encompasses all the resources, production, trade, distribution and consumption of goods and services that occurs in a specified area. It’s big. Very big. In fact, it’s quite hard to separate anything from it, when we start to consider that “resources” includes the work people do and all the water and soil that we have, and that “goods and services” easily includes tracks through the wilderness, and by extension, the wilderness itself. The economy seems to be so big that the natural environment is included within it.

This contradicts both the political views on the economy. A standard environmentalist’s view of the economy would be that it is a small, human-focused thing that sits within the natural environment and depends on it. The current Government’s perspective is that the environment and the economy are separate, and that to help one means harming the other. But if the economy includes the environment, we come to a different conclusion: destroying the environment is destroying one section of the economy, and the question becomes how important a role the environment plays in the economy.

The economy is dependent on the environment – we all are!

This is where the green view starts to look very good. We obtain all of our natural resources – the water we drink, the soil we use to grow food, wood we build houses with – from the environment. If we’re damaging our capacity to use these resources, either by using them in an unsustainable way or by destroying them via pollution or urban development, the economy will cease to function.

The contrasting view has two main responses. The first is that in fact, as we become wealthier, we are able to care about the environment more and therefore we will protect it to a greater degree. The second is that human ingenuity is capable of making up for lost resources as long as we let it do so. Both of them fall down to the fundamental idea that if we increase human wealth in the immediate term, we will see greater prosperity in the future, despite the various warning signs such as smaller stocks of resources and climate change. There is some historical evidence to support this: The price of oil may have increased over the last 40 years, but so have standards of living.

That may be well and good when we are referring simply to the use of current stocks of resources. It doesn’t work so well when we are talking about the other end – the destruction of the environment so that we cannot use it in the future. As well as climate change (which will reduce usable land space, melt glaciers and reduce freshwater levels, and change weather patterns making growing crops more difficult and living more expensive) pollution of the ocean will hugely damage fish stocks, and the loss of forests leads to heavy soil erosion and lower storage of freshwater in the ground. It really is hard to ignore the scale of damage being done to the environment. It is also not something that will decline at a steady rate in the same way we use a resource. For example, fish populations are prone to collapse, as happened to Cod in the North Atlantic after they were overfished.

There are numerous reasons why we aren’t seeing a systemic change to stop this destruction. There is a delay between the damage done to one part of the economy and the consequences for the rest – we can’t be sure when the effects of pollution will actually kick in at the other end. It’s a hard thing to prioritise the economy of the future over the current one. That doesn’t make it impossible, or unimportant. There is also the problem that we tend to focus on national economies, while the effect of environmental destruction occurs internationally. Tuvalu, Niue and South Dunedin will disappear due to climate change; they are also some of the tiniest contributors to the problem.

What can we do? Stop pitting the environment and the economy against each other, and think about how they need to work together.

But one of the biggest problems is the fact that the debate can be framed in a way that sets the economy against the environment. This leads to prioritisation of figures (such as GDP or the goods and services we produce, usually over a year) that aren’t indicators of the economy as a whole, but only one section of it. If we consider the natural environment to properly be a part of the economy, different ways of measuring economic health have to be considered. What was previously “Economic Growth” might not be any more, if it comes at the expense of environmental destruction. That’s the shift that needs to occur, but it requires a simple change from both sides of the debate – both need to figure out what they actually mean when they talk about ‘the economy’ and ‘the environment’. If they don’t, everyone will continue to get pissed off and very little environmental progress will be made.

Alec Dawson is a fourth-year law and arts student at the University of Otago, and is involved co-ordinating Generation Zero’s Dunedin branch. He spends too much of the rest of his time debating, and not enough of it playing cricket, writing poetry and drinking craft beer.

While we still have time, it makes sense to focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible. But we also need to start thinking about what we might be able to do to reverse the effects of climate change as we quickly approach a dangerous concentration of CO2e in the atmosphere. Chris McIntyre takes a look at one such solution.

Somewhere near Seattle, a man is working in a lab, the sole purpose of which is to invent cool shit to make the world better. Take, for example, the laser which fights malaria through tracking and killing female mosquitoes—they’re identified through having a slower wing beat than males—from up to 30 meters away. This man and his lab are something special indeed; a fact which may not be surprising, considering he gained a bachelor’s, two masters’, and a Ph.D. all by age 23.

This man’s name is Nathan Myhrvold, reportedly the smartest man Bill Gates has ever met, and the lab in question is Intellectual Ventures, the base of a company specialising in patenting inventions.

Nathan Myhrvold – one very smart dude

Enter Budyko’s blanket theory. Essentially, this theory is based on the natural phenomenon of volcanic eruptions. In the years after large eruptions–say, Pinatubo 21 years ago or even Taupo nearly 2000 years ago–global temperatures fall measurably. This is due to volcanic excrement being exploded far into the atmosphere, where it binds to water vapour and forms an aerosol cloud, blocking the sun’s rays for about a year. Less sunlight reaches Earth, and we all chill out just a little bit. Now, hold that thought.

In the face of climate change, we have a number of options. We could do nothing, meekly cross our fingers and hope for favourable climate oscillations, a slight change in the Earth’s orbit, or regular volcanic eruptions of massive scale to offset the increasing temperature of our planet. We could take a proactive approach, where we get teary and silently promise action during the cinematic ice shelf collapses in Al Gore movies, live vicariously through Lucy Lawless as she battles those evil oil giants, and really become the change we want to see in the world, y’all.

Going vegan and composting your own waste products may be worthwhile endeavours, but the argument over their effectiveness is one which exists on a micro scale. To really save the planet, we need to worry about the macro scale. By macro, we are not even speaking about the actions of companies or states. Even if we somehow managed to completely stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow, the half-life of carbon dioxide means the cold turkey approach wouldn’t be effective for at least a century. We are talking about global systems. This brings us to the third option.

Our third option is to take a pragmatic approach which will actually work, and work right away–this is what Myhrvold and Intellectual Ventures have come up with. Remember Budyko’s blanket theory? Well, the IV lab has developed a plan to create it artificially.

Here’s the condensed version: chuck a relatively small amount of sulphur dioxide (just 0.05% of yearly sulphur emissions) 18km up, into the stratosphere. Let atmospheric winds distribute this around the globe creating a ‘blanket’ which reflects sunlight, lowering global temperatures as an eruption’s effluvia does. We do this using a long pipe, elevated by helium balloons, with pumps every 30 meters to maintain pressure. We test it out with small amounts of sulphur first–if it works we continue, if it doesn’t, we stop. We fiddle with the temperature as much or as little as we want, depending on the amount of sulphur we use. Simple, really.

Artificially manufacturing Budyko’s blanket is doable, and incredibly cheap in comparison to the expected cost of climate change—$1.2 trillion per year, according to economist Nicholas Stern’s 2006 findings on the economic impact of climate change—or even in comparison to the cost of Al Gore’s climate change money-go-round: a $300 million public awareness campaign which included the infamous film An Inconvenient Truth. Setting up a basic version of the Budyko’s blanket plan would take barely two years, cost a mere $20 million, and another $10 million a year to operate. That’s just 600 Priuses.

Budyko’s Blanket – cheaper than the “An Inconvenient Truth” campaign!

As tends to happen, we humans find ways to mess things up. Budyko’s blanket is unlikely to be an exception. If we can barely decide multilaterally on issues such as emission caps (see: the Copenhagen Climate Council held in 2009), is there any indication that we can successfully negotiate what we do with the entire stratosphere?  In reality, the likelihood of implementation is slim as the blanket plan has little support from governments. It’s not going to grow economies or provide tax revenue, and the amount of multilateral cooperation required to achieve a workable consensus is possibly insurmountable.

There is also bound to be opposition to this plan; worries have been raised about increased sulphur content leading to reduced rainfall, and increasing the phenomena of acid rain. An 18km stretch of glorified hosepipe is a relatively easy target and if Greenpeace can find a few Japanese whalers in 20 million km2 of southern ocean, I imagine there’d be many ways to halt the sulphur flow should such a measure be desired.

It is not the logistics of the process, but its implications which are the largest stumbling block. If we can emit greenhouse gases until our hearts are content and easily fix the temperature rises this will cause, do we then have a green light on pollution? Will climate change awareness without the threat of a huge negative externality like global temperature rise still have the same effect? Budyko’s blanket would undermine the need for awareness and action, eroding the gains environmentalists have made towards making our planet a nicer one to live in.

Should we even proceed with fiddling with the systems of an entire planet? Messing with the ozone content of the stratosphere is heady stuff. Environmentalists will argue that we are already fiddling with the planet, through wanton pollution from industrialising powers like China, the global carbon factory which is agriculture, and deforestation. Is the answer to meddling really to meddle more?

Ultimately though, it’s a good safety net. It lets us know that if push comes to shove, we can stop climate change if we have to. Budyko’s blanket is a solution which is simple, cheap, controllable, reversible and quick to implement, and one of few ideas that can make people genuinely optimistic about Earth’s future. That, and the possible return of Georgie Pie.

The author would like to acknowledge the works of Stephen D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner in writing this article.

First published in Salient on May 14th, 2012.

by Chris McIntyre.

The planned extraction of lignite, a very dirty and low-grade coal, is an issue which may have slipped under the radar of many New Zealanders. However, it is an incredibly serious and urgent issue. With billions of tonnes of the dirty fossil fuel deposited in Southland, the extraction and use of lignite could increase New Zealand’s carbon emissions by 20%. Tim Jones from Coal Action Network Aotearoa looks at lignite in detail and just how damaging its extraction will be (for New Zealand and the climate) and what we can do to stop the climate-bomb ticking.

There is a climate time bomb buried under prime farmland in the valley of the Mataura River in Southland. The time bomb is harmless as long as it stays where it is. The problem is that coal mining companies, with the enthusiastic support of the National Government, are doing their best to set that time bomb off. And if they succeed, that will put the climate, and therefore everyone reading this article, in further peril.

So what’s this time bomb made of? Well, it isn’t much to look at: buried under those thousands of hectares of farmland are billions of tonnes of lignite. Coal is formed from decayed plant matter that has been buried for millions of years and subjected to high temperatures and pressures deep underground. Lignite is what coal looks like before it is subjected to those high temperatures and pressures. It’s browner than ‘real’ coal, has a much higher moisture content than real coal, and if you look at a chunk of it you have a good chance of finding partly-fossilised plant matter.

And just like the black stuff, lignite or brown coal is also full of carbon: carbon that isn’t doing anyone any harm while it is buried underground, but which, when brought to the surface by coal mining companies and burned (or used in other ways), goes into our atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

Lignite is considered the lowest quality coal, and lies somewhere between peat and ‘real’ coal. The substance sometimes still contains visible plant remains.

Coal represents 79% of the climate change potential of the world’s remaining fossil fuels. If we don’t stop the coal miners’ expansion plans soon, and then reverse them, the Earth’s climate will be irretrievably cooked, and those of us who survive will be living on a very different planet.

In her report “Lignite and Climate Change: The High Cost of Low-Grade Coal”, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, says (based on Ministry of Economic Development figures) that there are over 6 billion tonnes of economically recoverable lignite in Southland. If all that lignite were to be mined and the resulting CO2 released into the atmosphere, that would amount to around 8 billion tonnes of CO2. That’s significant by world standards, and massive by New Zealand standards.

A number of mining companies have mining or prospecting licences in the areas where the lignite lies under Eastern Southland’s rich farmland. The most prominent of these is the currently state-owned coa lmining company Solid Energy, which has the right to dig up 1.5 billion tonnes of lignite. If all of Solid Energy’s planned lignite plants go ahead, this would result in an additional 20% per year on top of New Zealand’s current greenhouse gas emissions.

That’s just one company’s plans, but since companies like L&M Lignite aren’t as far advanced in their planning, let’s keep the focus on Solid Energy. Solid have bought up 4000ha of farmland along the Mataura Valley, and they are trying hard to buy off local opposition with a flood of sponsorship money. (Fortunately, they have underestimated Southlanders, who are well capable of seeing Solid Energy’s ‘support’ for the charade it is.) Solid Energy have almost completed the first of their planned lignite conversion plants, a small-scale plant to squeeze much of the water out of lignite and convert it into higher-value briquettes for use in thermal boilers. This plant will be supplied from their existing New Vale lignite mine.

Under prime Southland farmland lies the ticking carbon time-bomb

But that’s just the start. Next on Solid’s menu of climate disasters is a planned lignite-to-urea plant, which is designed to convert lignite into synthetic fertilizer. This has the potential to not only worsen climate change, but also worsen the damage to New Zealand’s rivers caused by excessive fertilizer runoff. Talk about synergy!

Last and worst comes Solid’s proposed plant to convert lignite into synthetic diesel. The lignite-to-diesel plant would be the biggest of the lot, resulting in the most emissions. What’s more, it would tie us into the current unsustainable transport model by locking us into using diesel-powered trucks, rather than rail or sea, for freight transport.

In the twisted logic of the Gerry Brownlees and Steven Joyces of this world, that dovetails perfectly with the National Government’s horrendously expensive motorway-building programme — the Roads of National Significance that Generation Zero is doing such a good job of campaigning against in its 50:50 campaign.

The planned lignite to diesel plant will lock us into fossil fuel dependency, not the smart transport future New Zealand needs to be moving towards

Although the climate consequences of lignite mining are the reason any sane person should oppose these plans, it’s important to remember that large-scale lignite mining in Southland will also cause serious environmental, social and health problems in the province. These include water pollution, noise and light pollution, the destruction of the social fabric of farming communities, and a wide range of adverse human health effects.

So, in late capitalism’s ceaseless quest for more raw materials to feed its sputtering growth engine, public and private companies are planning to despoil a productive environment, create products that will worsen existing environmental problems, and cause a sharp increase in New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions at the very time when a rapid and sustained decrease in emissions is needed. It’s a terrible idea. What are we going to do about it?

We’re going to stop them. “We” means you, and me, and everyone who understands the fundamental truth that we depend totally on a fragile biosphere which the prolonged use of fossil fuels will irretrievably wreck.

At the national level, Coal Action Network Aotearoa (CANA) has dedicated itself to preventing new and expanded coal mining. You can join us here , or by emailing coalactionnetwork@gmail.com. You can also find us on Facebook and on Twitter. As well as the national organisation, local and regional anti-coal groups are hard at work. Check out this page for details of the group nearest to you.

CANA is working with other national and local environmental organisations that recognise the folly and the danger of these proposals, and I’m pleased to say that Generation Zero is a valued ally.

If we don’t defuse the lignite time bomb locally and the coal time bomb globally, all our other efforts to save the climate will be in vain. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Let’s get on with it.

Tim Jones is the spokesperson for Coal Action Network Aotearoa.