GMOs, Ebola, ISIS... and climate change

"...one of a few million favoured human beings who live ultimately on the degradation of the rest."  

  - George Orwell's definition of the middle class, 1941

If site traffic is an effective judge of the power of a post, then my write-up on planetary changing changing climate change was 25% as effective as my write-up on the process and history of corn hybridization. I understood the difficulties inherent in the subject before going at it, and yet I failed completely to accomplish my writing goals. Since it affects every aspect of our lives it's hard to boil down into a digestible and readable form. It's even harder to explain why we should all care and harder again to explain why we need to overturn our current economic structures in order to fight climate change.  Yet...

What if I had uncovered a secret Monsanto plot to raise the temperature of the planet by six degrees through genetically modifying the respiratory process (to release more Co2) of soy bean so that their patented heat resistant corn would take over the market?

Or, what if ISIS was developing a weapon that they planted deep in the Syrian desert that converts sunshine to carbon dioxide in order to turn the entire planet into a barren waste land?

Or, what if Ebola mutated to cause hemorrhaging of ocean algae, therefore eliminating one of the largest biological carbon sinks on the planet and causing rapid temperature increases and climactic instability?  

Everyone would go batshit. We'd instantly mobilize and defeat climate change. When someone else is causing the problem, that's what we do.  But, since our relative wealth is a direct result of our carbon intensive economy, what do we do with the realization that we are the problem?

Current inaction on climate change benefits the status-quo. Right wing politicians understand this, which is why they fight so hard to continue with a steady course of denial and inaction (only 3% of Republican elected officials at the federal level have gone on record accepting the reality of climate change). And, to a certain extent, we all understand that the status-quo will have to be upended in order to fight climate change. So, we compartmentalize climate change in an area of the brain reserved for future thought. We justify our inability to do anything about it with the fact that there are more pressing issues on our plate: we spend $10 million per day to fight ISIS; we fear the almost nonexistent chance that EBOLA will cause a US Pandemic; and, we maintain that genetic modification is a tipping point in the human evolution of food. A popular political candidate in Hawai'i (who I will not name) has used Facebook to combine all of the above threats to insinuate that Monsanto worked with the Department of Defense to create Ebola and that they are using Kaua'i to experiment with it. That candidate's innate ability to draw on our collective societal fears is a main driver of his popularity. 

Yet, I understand our communal unwillingness to engage in the complex topic of climate change. Because there is no tangible enemy to fight, we can't fix climate change through war or merely by throwing more money at it. Effective action on climate change is not just research and development of renewable energy and it's not capitalistic deployment of carbon capture technology. The fact that our planet is warming from unfettered economic growth fueled by stored carbon necessitates a complete societal and economic restructuring. 

The one billion starving people in the world need adequate food before they can think about smaller families and preserving rainforest.  And, in turn, we need to eliminate poverty to end starvation. The only hope for developing countries to reject oil and coal (the cheap energy sources that brought unprecedented wealth to developed nations) is to use our wealth to advance their economic security. 

As a quick aside, let me clarify when I say "our wealth."  I mean the relative wealth of the US. Not the $842 that I currently have in my savings account. The top 10% of Americans own 75% of the wealth, yet pay 68% of the income taxes. And, while our economy has exploded since 1979, look at the graph below to see where all that wealth has gone.  

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

On a local level, when the average Kauaian is struggling to pay their mortgage and afford groceries, who can blame us for not caring about climate change? Which is partly why (there are many other reasons, including basic morality) reducing inequality has to be the social priority of anyone who cares about preserving biodiversity and maintaining a planet conducive to human civilization.

As voting middle-class members of the wealthiest democracy on Earth, it's up to us to take stock of our privilege and step out of our comfort zone to start combating the forces of climate change: consumerism fueled by laissez faire capitalism and social darwinism. To be a modern environmentalist means incorporating socialist ideology;* as they go hand in hand.  And any modern environmental movement that ignores the human aspect of our economic system is doomed to fail.  

Check out the following graphs from the Institute of Policy Studies and Peace for a snapshot on the undervaluation of climate change investment (including energy R&D, science funding, and climate change related foreign aid) when compared with military investment.  

As defined by Wikipedia: 

"Social democrats have advocated for a peaceful and evolutionary transition of the economy to socialism through progressive social reform of capitalism.^[4][5] Social democracy asserts that the only acceptable constitutional form of government is representative democracy under the rule of law.^[6] It promotes extending democratic decision-making beyond political democracy to include economic democracy to guarantee employees and other economic stakeholders sufficient rights of co-determination.^[6] It supports a mixed economy that opposes the excesses of capitalism such as inequality, poverty, and oppression of various groups, while rejecting both a totally free market or a fully planned economy.^[7] Common social democratic policies include advocacy of universal social rights to attain universally accessible public services such as education, health care, workers' compensation, and other services, including child care and care for the elderly.^[8] Social democracy is connected with the trade union labour movement and supports collective bargaining rights for workers."

Government is not, and should never be, like business

"We need to run government more like a business."
      -Said by nearly every political candidate at nearly every political debate since the beginning of time, especially on Kaua'i.

I'm able to swallow most of the rhetoric at political forums on Kaua'i.  But that statement above always makes me cringe. Government should not be run like a business. The entire function of government is to fill in the gaps that business can not. As a small business owner of seven years (ugh, I'm getting old) I will proudly admit that running a business has nothing to do with running a government. And, if anything, being a successful businessman makes a candidate particularly unsuited for running a government.*

When my business partner and I are making a decision at Kamanu Composites, our financial bottom line should be our first priority. And the nature of the beast forces us to toe that line. If we stray too far from a profit motive, then our insolvency will make room for the next guy that stays on track. Our own moral inability to follow that capitalist ideal to its natural conclusion (for us, that conclusion would be outsourcing production to China) is part of the reason that we are not successful businessmen.

Successful businesses exist for one reason: to make a profit. Even Patagonia, the model of a conservation minded business, makes no qualms about the fact that backing environmental causes helps them increase their sales. Businesses exist on a psychopathic sphere where the bottom line is accumulating more cash. And, government is the opposite. Government's bottom line is to balance the field (i.e. public education and business regulation), to protect the unprofitable (i.e. human health and the homeless), and to maintain the commons (i.e. natural resources and our climate). To quote myself (yeah, I know it's egocentric) from a post I wrote in May:

...capitalism can not adequately value the environment.  There is an intrinsic worth to nature which can not be quantified. Even if we try (as people are doing) to calculate the market value of a tree (such as calculating air/water purification, carbon sequestration, etc), it's not enough.  It's like trying to quantify the value of your child's life or your family pet. You can't, and shouldn't do it.  Putting a monetary value on a forest (or our climate, or a human life) only lends legitimacy towards cutting it down when the price of wood goes high enough or when oil is found under it. We desperately need to acknowledge that the open market of capitalism can only take us so far. 

Because business can not adequately account for the non-monetary value of human health, environmental protection, or reductions in inequality, we need government to fill in the gaps. Yet, somehow we've made government a dirty word and business a political buzzword. Just once, before I go to the polls in November, I want to hear a candidate tell me how they will use government to reverse inequality and protect our environment and not how they will run the county like a business.

*Before an angry conservative commentator calls me out on that statement, I'm not saying that fiscal responsibility isn't vital for elected officials. What I mean is that the basic pursuit of accumulating more profit that lies at the heart of successful businesses is the anti-thesis of good governance.

Climate Change: why I write

"We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented society' to a 'person-oriented society.' When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
        -Martin Luther King Jr, 1967

 "Today's climate movement does not have the luxury of simply saying no without simultaneously fighting for a series of transformative yeses- the building blocks of our next economy that can provide good clean jobs, as well as a social safety net that cushions the hardships for those inevitably suffering losses"
        -Naomi Klein, 2014

I was recently scrolling through my blog and I realized, to my dismay, that I've created a glaring and grievous error.  While I spend an inordinate amount of time writing about biotech, industrial agriculture, smart meters, capitalism, consumerism, inequality, Kaua'i politics, and my own off-grid experiences-- I've never attempted to unify those issues or explain why I care. Maybe because of its complexity, or because of my own glaring complicity, or because it makes me anxious beyond words, but I've avoided explaining the motivation behind my blog; the one thing that unifies every post on here; the reason that I ride the bus and live off-grid: climate change.

Every aspect of climate change is complex: from the science, to the politics, to the solutions. It's impossible to just jump in in the middle (as I've done with every other post) and try to engage in a solutions oriented dialogue. So, I have to start at the beginning. I know you're busy, I know you've seen climate change headlines before, I know that this subject is politically polarizing, I know that this post is excruciatingly long, and I know that there is plenty of engaging online faire competing for your attention, but, before you close this browser window, please hear me out. 

The Science
The basic concept of the greenhouse effect has been around since 1824.  Rather than re-hash high school biology for you, I'll skip an explanation of what exactly is happening. If you want to learn more, check out Bill Nye the Science Guy's Explanation, or the EPA's, or Wikipedia's, or NASA's. The important take aways are:

• Greenhouse gasses (Methane, Co2, etc) trap heat in the atmosphere and create the foundation for all life on earth.  
• However, higher concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gasses cause higher temperatures.  
• Industrial activities (anything that relies on combustion-- i.e. driving, electrical generation through coal, oil, and natural gas, etc) have caused atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane to be higher than they have been in 650,000 years.  
• Because of that, global temperatures are rising faster than they have in human history.  
• Rising temperatures lead to atmospheric instability, sea level rise, lower crop yields, and increased likelihood of severe storms and draught. 
• These basic tenets are endorsed by the 192 member countries of the UN, the Scientific agencies of every industrialized country on earth, 97% of climate scientists, The World Bank, the IMF, major insurance companies, the Pentagon and even the fossil fuel companies. 
• The only people that continue to deny the science behind climate change are members of the US House of Representatives Committee on Science Space and Technology. (I'm only half-joking). 

The Politics

Since there is widespread agreement in the scientific, business, and financial community, it only makes sense that politicians adopt binding international emissions agreements in order to stay on the safe side of the warming curve. In 1992 the United Nations Conference on Energy and Development resulted in a non-binding treaty to "stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." Over the past 22 years basically every country on the planet has signed that treaty. And, over the same time period annual global emissions have risen 61%. In 2010, the same annual global conference agreed that to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, global temperature change needs to stay below 2 degrees celsius from pre-industrial levels (temps. have already risen .8 degrees).  

While the regional effects of climate change are notoriously hard to predict, scientific models can predict long term trends based on the Co2 concentration of the atmosphere. And, the Co2 concentration of the atmosphere can be accurately predicted based on the amount of Co2 that we emit. So, using the best science available, in order to keep warming below 2 degrees celsius we have a carbon budget of 565 gigatons of Co2.

The Business
Here is where we encounter a problem. It's a little complicated, but it's the most important part of this entire piece, so bear with me.

Fossil fuel companies (Shell, Chevron, etc) are publicly owned. In order to keep the value of the company from dropping (to keep share prices high) they need to have at least a 100% reserve ratio. Meaning that whatever volume of oil and gas they are currently sucking from the ocean floor, dissolving from shale, or fracking to get, must be matched by an equal or greater amount in reserve. If the reserve ratio falls (less in reserve than in current production) then share value falls.

Why is this important? Because if the companies were to extract all of their reserves, they would emit 2,795 gigatons of Co2. Remember our carbon budget of 565 gigatons? The 2,795 gigatons that the fossil fuel companies have in reserves is nearly five times more than can be burned while staying below the 2 degree limit agreed upon by every nation on earth. As Bill Mckibben elaborates on in this must-read article, without government intervention or divestment, the fossil fuel companies are going to drive us to 6 degrees of temperature change.

The science of climate change necessitates a restructuring of our energy economy, the way we do business, and the role of government in our lives. Which is why the fossil fuel companies spend more than $400,000 per day lobbying congress and untold amounts funding climate change deniers. They are literally fighting for their right to continue on as the most profitable companies in the history of the world.

And, they're winning the fight. The number of Americans that believe that climate change is not occurring is increasing and the Republican Party is firmly entrenched in an anti-science stance. Instead of balking at the threat of regulations governing carbon emissions, Exxon recently spelled out in a report that restrictive climate policies are highly unlikely and "based on this analysis, we are confident that none of our hydrocarbon reserves are now or will become stranded." Meaning that the fossil fuel companies plan on burning every ounce of the 2,795 gigatons of stored Co2 that they have sitting in the ground.

The Economics
So, with a carbon budget in mind, how do we keep temperatures below 2 degrees? As climate journalist David Roberts spells out:

Right now, global emissions are rising, faster and faster.  Between 2000 and 2007, they rose at around 3.5 percent a year; by 2009 it was up to 5.6 percent.  In 2010, we hit 5.9 percent growth, a record.  We aren't just going in the wrong direction-- we're accelerating in the wrong direction.  If emissions peak in 2020, then, in order to stay under 2 degrees, they need to drop by 10% every year until we reach a zero carbon economy by 2045.

As you can see in the graph below, the longer we wait, the steeper the necessary emissions drop.

And, in the words of David Roberts again: 

Just to give you a sense of scale: The only thing that’s ever pushed emissions reductions above 1 percent a year is.. “recession or upheaval.” The total collapse of the USSR knocked 5 percent off its emissions. So 10 percent a year is like … well, it’s not like anything in the history of human civilization. This, then, is the brutal logic of climate change: With immediate, concerted action at global scale, we have a slim chance to halt climate change at the extremely dangerous level of 2 degrees C. If we delay even a decade — waiting for better technology or a more amenable political situation or whatever — we will have no chance.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development projects that:

By 2050, the Earth's population is expected to increase from 7 billion to over 9 billion and the world economy is projected to nearly quadruple... A world economy four times larger than today is projected to use 80% more energy in 2050.  Without more effective policies, the share of fossil fuel based energy in the global energy mix will still remain at about 85%.

Pushing us far, far beyond the 2 degree target adopted by every nation on earth.

The Alternatives

So, what happens if we don't make the 2 degrees target? James Hansen, the most prominent climate scientist on the planet (head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies for over 20 years) says that 3 degrees could mean: "no return within the lifetime of any generation that can be imagined, and the trip will exterminate a large fraction of species on the planet." How about 4 degrees (which would mean 3.5% reductions from 2020 forward)? According to Kevin Anderson (Great Britian's most prominent climate scientist): 

For humanity it's a matter of life or death... We will not make all human beings extinct as a few people with the right sort of resources may put themselves in the right parts of the world and survive. But I think it's extremely unlikely that we wouldn't have mass death at 4C. If you have got a population of nine billion by 2050 and you hit 4C, 5C or 6C, you might have half a billion people surviving.

Yet, as the International Energy Agency predicts, we're currently on track for 6 degrees of temperature change.

The Implications for Kaua'i
At last night's election forum in Kapa'a, not a single one of the eighteen candidates (mayor, state legislature, county council) mentioned climate change (every question was a variation of GMOs, marijuana, traffic, homelessness, and property taxes). Our General Plan makes no mention of climate change. The Garden Island Newspaper repeatedly publishes editorials denying the science of climate change from a known fossil fuel lobbyist.

Yet, on the other hand, our news is full of the current affects of climate change.  From the most active hurricane season in history (including the one barreling down on us right now), to the record breaking water temperatures and coral bleaching, to declining trade winds, to this summer breaking all global historic temperature records.

Significantly (and very under-reported by the media), UH Seagrant, at the request of the Kaua'i County Planning Department, just did the first comprehensive report on the affects of climate change on Kaua'i and recommended specific adaptation strategies.

It addressed increasing ocean acidity (caused from absorbing Co2), increasing prevalence of major storms and hurricanes, increasing levels of erosion on already stressed beaches (71% of Kaua'i beaches are currently eroding), increasing levels of drought (main Hawaiian islands have all seen more severe drought since 1950s), negative impacts on tourism (related to loss of beaches), threats to our water table from sea level rise, threats to agriculture in low-lying areas, and, most importantly, sea level rise.

The report made it clear that climate change exacerbates our current problems. For example, while pesticide run-off and cesspools are a current concern, climate change magnifies them:

Because the Pacific Islands are almost entirely dependent on imported food, fuel, and material, the vulnerability of ports and airports to extreme events, especially typhoons, is of high concern... Increased coastal inundation could bring toxic soils from agricultural or industrial practices into the marine environment. Flooded wastewater systems, including treatment plants, cesspools, and septic tanks, could bring untreated sewage into waterways. In addition, saltwater intrusion into valuable water supplies affects household and agricultural water quality and supply...

While the report gave a range of possible sea level rise scenarios, it landed with this: "based on the best available science, a range of sea-level rise of 1 foot by 2050 and 3 feet by 2100 is a reasonable, and possibly even conservative planning target for Kaua'i and other Hawaiian islands." What does that optimistic 3' feet look like?

Much of Kapa'a town will be under water; our prime agricultural lands in Mana, the Hanalei river valley, and in the Kealia river valley will be threatened; and all low-lying residential areas in Anahola, Hanapepe and Ha'ena will likely have to be abandoned. And this optimistic sea-level rise scenario will occur by the time my child (if I were to have one in the next year) is 85 years old.

The map of Kapa'a below accounts only for high tide levels at 3' and not for increased erosion (100' of erosion for every 1' of sea level rise) or storm surges (check out NOAA's database for a look at the effects of sea level rise for all of Hawai'i).

 

The Seagrant report recommends numerous adaptation measures, such as updating the General Plan to include the effects of sea level rise, taking steps towards community resilience, and using climate change and coastal hazards as a "major driver for land use decisions." They also recommend that the Public Access, Open Space, and Natural Resources Preservation Fund Commission utilize the fund to finance "the acquisition of vulnerable shoreline lands that can protect natural resource areas for public use, including areas that could serve as refugia for species impacted by SLR, or areas that could be appropriate sites for coastal habitat creation or restoration."  

While the report focused heavily on the effects of sea level rise and adaptation to those effects, there was also a very short piece on mitigation (written by Ben Sullivan of the County of Kaua'i). The mitigation section reiterates the importance of moving to renewable energy, highlighted KIUC's success in doing so, and mentions the importance of mode shifting (getting people out of cars) and alternative fuels. Yet, it admits defeat when it comes to tourism and air travel: "The local economy is dependent primarily on tourism, which is in turn wholly dependent on air transportation. Very few solutions to this challenge have surfaced to date."

While Hawai'i ranks relatively high among the US on per capita energy consumption (32nd in the US), when we account for the fact that 20 cents of every dollar spent in Hawai'i comes from the tourist industry (which, in turn, is wholly reliant on air travel) and that 90% of our goods come from overseas we skyrocket to having the largest carbon footprint in the nation.

The Point
As I mentioned in my opening, the issues that I have been writing about for the past year are important to me because of climate change. We need to reduce inequality, strive for community resilience, reduce our usage of fossil fuels, and increase local agriculture and manufacturing because of the imminent threat of climate change. As Naomi Klein writes in her latest book,

if these sorts of demand-side emission reductions are to take place on anything like the scale required, they cannot be left to the lifestyle decisions of earnest urbanites who like going to farmers' markets on Saturday afternoons and wearing up-cycled clothing. We will need comprehensive policies and programs that make low-carbon choices easy and convenient for everyone. Most of all, these policies need to be fair, so that the people already struggling to cover the basics are not being asked to make additional sacrifice to offset the excess consumption of the rich. That means cheap public transit and clean light rail accessible to all; affordable, energy efficient housing along those transit lines; cities planned for high-density living; bike lanes in which riders aren't asked to risk their lives to get to work; land management that discourages sprawl and encourages local, low-energy forms of agriculture; urban design that clusters essential services like schools and health care along transit routes and in pedestrian-friendly areas; programs that require manufacturers to be responsible for the electronic waste they produce, and to radically reduce built-in redundancies and obsolescences.

Most importantly, we need to figure out how to do all of this while we contract the economy. Some drivers of growth can be positive (for example the growth of renewable energy). Tourism, in limited form, can help provide financial incentive to preserve resources that may otherwise be exploited. And biotech can drive our local food industry, by adapting locally developed seed to a rapidly changing climate and by financially supporting mutually beneficial local initiatives towards self-sufficiency (such as a food science department at KCC).

But, how do we take the difficult steps that will become increasingly necessary? How can we wean ourselves off of tourism? How can we achieve 100% clean, renewable energy for Kaua'i? How can we produce all of our own food? How can we manufacture our own goods? How can we ensure that those who can afford it least (our low income families) aren't hardest hit by the effects of climate change? And how do we do all of this before crop failures in the mid west cause food prices to spike, before the waves lap over Kuhio Hwy, and before the complete collapse of our coral reefs?

Complex questions require complex answers; they require visionary leaders who can make hard decisions; they require active engagement in the democratic process; and they require consumer support. There is no environmental bill of rights or one step solution that will get us there. For Kaua'i, the answers lie in billions of decisions from our mayor, to our state representatives, to our county council members to our own personal consumer habits.

And, because Naomi Klein says it best, I'll close with her words:

...the measures we must take to secure a just, equitable, and inspiring transition away from fossil fuels clash directly with our reigning economic orthodoxy at every level. As we will see, such a shift breaks all the ideological rules-- it requires visionary long-term planning, tough regulation of business, higher levels of taxation for the affluent, big public sector expenditure, and in many cases reversals of core privatizations in order to give communities the power to make the changes they desire. In short, it means changing everything about how we think about the economy so that our pollution doesn't change everything about our physical world.