Earth Hour - a powerful symbol, but the right one?

Shortly it will be Earth Hour again and around the world people concerned about global warming will turn off their lights in a powerful symbol of humanity's desire to tackle global warming.

At least that's the theory.

Earth Hour has undoubtedly been hugely successful as a symbol of the need to act on global warming. In only a few years it caught on globally; this year hundreds of millions, if not billions of people will take part. 

But is it a victim of its own success? Is it a powerful symbol of tacking the climate crisis; or is it an unwitting symbol of the exact opposite?

Are we just conning ourselves?

In 2007 George Marshall, in his article “Can this really save the planet?” (The Guardian) took a look at the usual sorts of demand reduction measures we are urged to do - like use less plastic bags -  and found them wanting:

The average Brit uses 134 plastic bags a year, resulting in just two kilos of the typical 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide he or she will emit in a year. That is one five thousandth of their overall climate impact ... The electricity to keep the average television on standby mode for a whole year leads to 25 kilograms of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. It's more than plastic bags, but still very marginal: 0.2 per cent of average per capita emissions in the UK.

... Imagine that someone came up with a brilliant new campaign against smoking. It would show graphic images of people dying of lung cancer followed by the punchline: "It's easy to be healthy - smoke one less cigarette a month."
We know without a moment's reflection that this campaign would fail.

So why do we persist with something that we know is failing?

Marshall explained:

Their logic is as follows. Simple actions capture people's attention and provide an entry-level activity. Present people with the daunting big-ticket solutions and they turn away. Give them something easy and you have them moving in the right direction and, in theory, ready to make the step up to the next level.

That is the theory, but, as plentiful social research confirms, it doesn't work. For one thing, making the solutions easy is no guarantee that anyone will carry them out ... And there is a greater danger that people might adopt the simple measures as a way to avoid making more challenging lifestyle changes ... In other words, people can adopt the simplest solutions as a part of a deliberate denial strategy that enables them to feel virtuous without changing their real behaviour... 

Judging by the latest Mori poll data, people have already acquired a severely distorted sense of priorities. Forty per cent of people now believe that recycling domestic waste, which is a relatively small contributor to emissions, is the most important thing they can do to prevent climate change. Only 10% mention the far more important goals of using public transport or reducing foreign holidays. (my emphasis)

Let me give you my own experience of Earth Hour: three years ago in the office tower I worked in, we were told that at Earth Hour, if we couldn't, or didn't want to turn the lights off, we should close the blinds to make it look as if we did. That way we'd be sending a powerful symbol of our desire to....

I think you know the rest. Pointless symbolism par excellence.

Earth Hour too successful for our own good?

My concern is that Earth Hour is now so successful, people are deluding themselves into thinking that turning their lights off for an hour is doing their bit to solve global warming. Like smoking one cigarette less a month, we're turning the lights off for one hour a year.

Of course, this is totally unfair on what Earth Hour is meant to represent, as it's founder Andy Ridley explains:

People are mistaken if they believe that Earth Hour is basically a lights-out campaign. In fact, 40 per cent of the countries that take part in Earth Hour have blackouts, so turning off the lights is meaningless to them.

Earth Hour has always been about a sense of unity and a sense of community, something that western society in particular has lost. So a child in Beijing can be doing Earth Hour, at the same time as a child in Rio and another in London. There is a sense of sharing this planet together.

Unfair my concern might be; but life certainly isn't fair.

Certainly the facts on CO2e emissions are telling a dismal story. Since the IPCC's latest report, which came six years ago, emissions of greenhouse gases continue to increase, except for a slight decrease during the financial crisis of 2008. Between 2000-2010 they grew faster than ever and correspond, according to recent media reports, to the worst scenarios in the IPCC's next report with projected temperature increases of four degrees by 2100.

None of this is Earth Hour's fault; it's ours. We are collectively to blame. It's no use blaming a remarkably successful advertising campaign for our own collective inability to act decisively. As Marshall summed up back in 2007:

Please don't misunderstand me. All of these actions are worth doing as part of a greener lifestyle. And I do all of them - I also turn off my tap when brushing my teeth, share my baths, and watch the telly in the dark - wearing three jumpers if need be. But it is a serious distortion to imply, as the top 10 lists of green living usually do, that there is any equivalence between these lifestyle preferences and the serious decisions that really reduce emissions - stopping flying, living close to work and living in a well-insulated house, for example.

Use Earth Hour to do more!

So come Earth Hour, by all means turn off those lights. Send a message of unity across the world that every politician will hear. But use that hour to make decisive changes about what else you're going to do to tackle global warming. If you've been thinking of getting solar power or hot water, make a decision to do it. Been thinking of cutting down on consumer goods? Stocktake what you actually already have and decide how to use it without buying more. Plan your next holiday - without flights or long drives. 

I'll even help you take the first steps: want to invest in commercial sized renewable energy? Bookmark this blog, or send Renewable Community Power an email at renewcommpower@gmail.com and we'll let you know when we have some renewable energy infrastructure ready to invest in. Breaking the back of coal in Queensland, and Australia, is something the world desperately needs.

And keep recycling :)

Germany's huge lessons about solar energy

Climate Denier Crock of the Week has done a brilliant analysis on how solar is working in Germany. In summary:

1. Feed in tariffs work
2. Prices will get lower. Much lower
3. More streamlined permitting works
4. Feed in tariffs democratise the grid
5. Democratising the grid gets more citizens involved
6. The grid will not fall apart with 5% solar penetration, or 10% or 20%...
7. Solar power brings down the price of wholesale electricity
8. Even when solar power capacity is equal to 50% of electricity demand, utility execs, fossil fuel execs, and their allies in government and the media won’t stop fighting tt

Some extracts:

Feed In Tariffs Work

Well, maybe there are other things that could drive even stronger growth, but nothing else has done so to date. Germany leads the world in solar in many respects. As of the end of 2011, it had more solar power per capita than any other country, it has more solar power relative to electricity production than any country other than Italy (which has also used FiTs), and it has more solar power per GDP than any country other than the Czech Republic (which also followed Germany’s lead and implemented FiTs).

Democratizing the Grid Gets More Citizens Involved

Guess what happens when you democratize the electric grid. People become more interested in energy, more informed, more motivated to save energy and get involved in the politics of energy. As someone once noted (sorry that I can’t recall the source), Germany may be the only country in the world where the taxi drivers can talk to you at length about energy policy. The same goes for energy use, the cost of energy, etc.

Solar Power Brings down the Price of Wholesale Electricity

Electricity suppliers get their electricity on the grid through a bidding process. The suppliers that can sell their electricity to the grid for cheapest win. Because the costs of solar and wind power plants are essentially just in the process of building them (the fuel costs are $0 and the maintenance costs are negligible), they can outbid pretty much every other source of power. As a result, 1) they win the bids when they produce electricity; 2) they drive down the price of wholesale electricity.

Because solar power is often produced when electricity demand is the greatest (and electricity is, thus, the least available and most expensive), it brings down the price of electricity even more than wind.

Lessons not learned and Depression could be in the offing: economist

TIM PALMER: A top economist is warning that the world has failed to learn the lessons of the global financial crisis and that the next downturn is likely to spark a Depression.

The global strategist at Morgan Stanley, Gerard Minack, says history is repeating itself as central banks keep interest rates close to zero and ramp up quantitative easing - effectively the printing of money.

But Mr Minack - who was one of the few economists to predict the last financial crisis - says the loose monetary policy is only increasing debt levels and the risks that investors are prepared to take.

Gerard Minack is speaking with our business editor Peter Ryan.

PETER RYAN: Gerard Minack, are we at the point in the economic recovery where there is a risk that history might be repeating itself?

GERARD MINACK: Yes, I think history is repeating itself in a funny way. We're doing it all again. But I think the next downturn, whenever it comes, and I'm not saying it's this year, it could be exceptionally difficult because central banks simply have less firepower to respond to a renewed crisis.

PETER RYAN: So if there is another serious downturn in the proportion of another Lehman Brothers collapse, central banks would be left with little ammunition?

GERARD MINACK: Yes, that's my view. The only thing I'd say is what history suggests is the cause of one crisis is rarely the cause of the following crisis so I'm not so sure it will be banks that pop the bubble. I'd look at other things - perhaps low-grade corporate lending or even some of the emerging market economies. They could be the catalyst for the next downturn but the underlying causes will be very similar.

PETER RYAN: So in terms of the massive or continual quantitative easing or money printing that we've been seeing over the last several years, that just would not be possible in a new type of crisis?

GERARD MINACK: They could try to do that and in fact they probably would. The problem is what they've been able to engineer over the last three or four years is interest rates going to rock bottom low levels and of course there is a limit to how low you can push rates and that's about zero.

So the forward looking problem is how do you engineer another reduction in borrowing costs if borrowers get into trouble? And that's the sting the in the tale of the success so to speak of what central bankers are now trying to achieve.

PETER RYAN: Is there a risk that when interest rates start moving higher in the United States for example that borrowers might find themselves under the pressure that they saw in the lead-up to the sub-prime crisis?

GERARD MINACK: I think that's a risk for sure but we've got a group of central bankers now who have told us they will "do what it takes," quote, unquote, to keep this expansion going.

So we're really looking at I think the end game here not being central banks tightening and killing the expansion but a bubble inflating in some risky assets and that bubble popping. Not this year as I said, perhaps a couple of years away.

PETER RYAN: So given that the world averted a full on meltdown after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, is there a point where the music would actually stop in the event of a different scale or a new crisis?

GERARD MINACK: Well that is the really big risk. We've really now seen 30 years where debt has ratcheted higher every cycle. As a result interest rates have ratcheted lower. We've never had the sort of cleansing, the outright debt reduction that you'd think you'd need to put expansion on a sustainable basis.

The scary point is those big debt reductions tend to go hand in hand not with vanilla recessions but with deep crises or depression. We saw that in the 1930s, we saw that in Asia in the crisis of 97/ 98.

Policy makers by having averted this time that big debt reduction may just be storing up even more problems down the track. We've really just kicked a massive can down the road.

Melting ice board game shows children effect of global warming

To demonstrate the consequences of global warming, this board game literally melts. ‘Meltdown‘ was created by GEOlino, a German science magazine for children, to show its young readers the effects in a playful way.

The aim of the game is to save a polar bear family by guiding them from melting ice to the safety of the mainland. The game teaches children about global warming in an engaging, easy-to-understand way.

The game board for Meltdown is made out of sponge and the game blocks are made of ice. Before playing, the accompanying mold needs to be filled with water and placed in the freezer.
When frozen, the blocks can be removed and arranged to form a small version of the Arctic. After the game begins, it is a race against time to guide the polar bears to safety across the slowly melting ice blocks.

Players also work together - rather than compete against each other - to save the bears. Now there's a thought...

New wind turbine blades from high-tech fabric

A little while back I watched a WWII documentary about the British Wellington bomber that was made from doped fabric literally sewn over a honeycomb frame. ('Doping' tightens the fabric and toughens it). Remember this thing had to be strong enough to carry a heavy payload into combat.

Now the same idea is being applied to....wind turbine blades ("War against global warming" anyone??)

The structure of the blade will remain pretty much the same except instead of fiberglass, a super-strong architectural fabric will be wrapped around the blade frame.

According to GE, this swap will allow for turbine blades that perform just as well, but can be made on site for a much lower cost — up to 40 percent less.

From an energy generation standpoint, the use of fabric, which is lighter than fiberglass, would allow for the production of much longer blades. Longer blades can capture even more of the wind’s energy.

I just love it!

Flashback: Scientists find US$1240 Trillion in climate impacts on current emissions path

Back in 2009 Thinkprogress wrote about a study that received too little attention at the time. Given the unrelenting lies about the science behind global warming and its impacts, it's timely to take another look at what it said:

Scientists led by a former co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [warn] that the UN negotiations aimed at tackling climate change are based on substantial underestimates of what it will cost to adapt to its impacts. 

The real costs of adaptation are likely to be 2-3 times greater than estimates made by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)...

The study finds that the mean “Net present value of climate change impacts” in the A2 scenario [850 ppm atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in 2100] $1240 TRILLION with no adaptation, but “only” $890 trillion with adaptation. 

The mean [annual] impacts in 2060 are about $1.5 trillion….with a small probability of impacts as large as $20 trillion.
But here’s the key point the media and the authors failed to convey.  In the “aggressive abatement” case (450 ppm), the mean “Net present value [NPV] of climate change impacts” is only $410 trillion — or $275 trillion with adaptation.  So stabilizing at 450 ppm reduces NPV impacts by $615 to $830 trillion.  But the abatement NPV cost is only $110 trillion — a 6-to-1 savings or better.

Permafrost: The Tipping Time Bomb