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Archived material from historical editions of The Generator

  • The end of air travel as we know it

    Barbara Yaffe – Vancouver Sun

    In crafting policy around air travel, governments both here abroad are flying by the seat of their pants.

    The world is starting to be affected by the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil, but many involved in transportation planning are looking the other way.

    In fact, it’s easy to believe air travel will keep on expanding, given all the jam-packed airplanes, delayed flights and crowded airports. But cracks are appearing.

    In the first two weeks of April, the following airlines went belly up or sought bankruptcy protection: Aloha Airlines; Oasis Hong Kong Airlines, ATA, Skybus, Frontier Airlines and Champion Air.

    For now, it’s the budget and regional carriers that appear most vulnerable. But Italy’s national carrier Alitalia is in dire straits, and Delta, reacting to high fuel prices, this week announced a merger with Northwest Airlines.

    Air travel is facing static on two fronts. In terms of climate change, air travel — a relatively small industry worldwide — burns kerosene jet fuel that accounts for between four and nine per cent of all climate change on the planet, according to the David Suzuki Foundation.

    Britain’s Stockholm Institute at the University of York back in 2004 identified increased air travel as one of the most serious environmental threats facing the planet. It recommended travellers be required to use public transit to access airports and that they use rail for any journey under 400 miles.

    On the peak oil front, with a projected decline in global oil reserves, airlines are finding themselves unable to keep up with fuel costs.

    That has led to efforts to economize on other fronts such as maintenance, which explains American Airlines’ current dilemma.

    The New York Times reported last week that some big U.S. carriers plan to reduce domestic capacity in 2008 with the express goal of driving up airfares to offset rising fuel costs.

    Toronto urban planner Richard Gilbert cites a new forecast by the International Air Transport Association. It projects a $4.5 billion industry-wide net profit for 2008. But that’s predicated on oil priced at $86 per barrel.

    Oil was $105 per barrel last month. On that basis, IATA’s projected profit becomes a 2008 loss of nearly $30 billion — much higher than the last recorded loss, in 2002, of $11.3 billion.

    And consider, most observers believe oil will go beyond $105.

    "The place where airline use will actually decline is in North America where we have turned flying into ‘buses with wings’ mass transportation," says Anthony Perl, an Simon Fraser University urban studies professor who, along with Gilbert, authored the recently published Transport Revolutions.

    Their book explores the effect peak oil is likely to have on global transport.

    Perl believes air travel in the future will be reserved for the rich, many of whom will use "micro jets." Others will pay big bucks to be transported in larger, fuel efficient aircraft that ply high volume, long-range routes.

    He foresees a new type of passenger aircraft, designed for fuel efficiency — one that’s bat-shaped, resembling a B-52 bomber, with 20-seat rows.

    Perl considers developments like the Pacific Gateway Strategy to be folly. It’s counterproductive, he warns, to keep building infrastructure for traditional transit modes that are reliant on ever-more-costly oil resources.

    Governments and transit authorities need to recognize, given the energy crunch, they’re wasting tax dollars by plowing cash into airport and road expansion projects.

    Perl, appointed this week by the Harper government to Via Rail’s board of directors, foresees a future where vehicles will mainly be electrically powered and greater reliance will be placed on railways.

    Globally, no more than 25 airports will be functional by 2025, Perl predicts, only one of them in the Pacific Northwest.

    And that airport, Perl says, will be a "travelport," featuring high-speed electrical rail interconnections designed to carry passengers to and from all points around Cascadia.

    "If Portland or Seattle figure this out before YVR does, that will spell the end of non-stop flights to Asia from Vancouver." Sadly, he says, "there’s zero planning to bring inter-city rail into YVR."

    Perhaps the message in all this is, if you were planning to take that trip of a lifetime, you should have done it last year.

  • Stern underestimated global warming risks

    From Fiona Harvey and Jim Pickard of the Financial Times

    The Stern report on climate change underestimated the risks of global warming, its author said yesterday, and should have presented a gloomier view of the future. "We underestimated the risks . . . we underestimated the damage associated with temperature increases . . . and we underestimated the probabilities of temperature increases," Lord Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, told the Financial Times yesterday.

    In retrospect, he would have taken a much stronger view in the report on the drastic changes that would occur if greenhouse gas emissions were not abated.

    In the report, he put the costs of climate change at between 5 per cent and 20 per cent of global gross domestic product. But these would be far higher if the report had taken a more ag-gressive stance on probable consequences of warming.

    Lord Stern said data published since his report came out, in October 2006, had led him to change his mind.

    Last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of the world’s leading climate scientists convened by the United Nations, published the most comprehensive study of climate change science. It predicted a temperature rise of 3°C within the next 100 years with catastrophic consequences for the planet, unless greenhouse gas emissions were stabilised and then cut within the next decade.

    "The damage risks are bigger than I would have argued. Things like the damage associated with a 5° temperature increase are enormous. We can’t be precise about what it would be like but you can say it would be a transformation," he said.

    But he defended his estimate of the cost of taking action on emissions – about 1 per cent of global GDP.

    "Subsequent reports, [from] McKinsey, the International Energy Agency, the IPCC have pointed to the [Stern report’s] costs of action being roughly in the right ball park. Nothing [since] has led me to revise the cost of action.

    "I probably would have emphasised the importance of good policy [if writing the report today] and how bad policy puts up the costs [of cutting emissions]."

    Lord Stern has come under attack from economists and climate change sceptics since his report, which some sceptics regard as scaremongering. Some argued he underestimated the cost of taking action to cut emissions and overestimated the benefits to future generations.

     

  • Megacities may be sustainable

    by Stephen Lacey, Staff Writer – RenewableEnergyWorld.com

    Over the last 50 years urban populations have exploded, causing a slew of environmental and social problems. However, many community planners see the world’s urbanization not as a threat, but as a powerful force for addressing climate change and building a sustainable future.

    "Cities offer the most potential to face our environmental problems, and I believe that we can do it. We just have to do it now."

    — Herbert Girardet, Director of Programs, World Future Council

    The United Nations (UN) projects that sometime this year over 50% of the world’s population will be living in cities. That’s an increase of roughly 2.5 billion people since 1950. By 2020, the UN projects that 5 billion people will be living in cities. As this rapid urbanization continues, especially in developing countries such as China, India and Brazil, urban planners are trying to help cities become more environmentally and economically sustainable.

    "Certainly the city, if it is reconfigured in the right way, could become a very sustainable habitat for humanity," says Herbert Girardet, director of programs at the World Future Council and an expert on sustainable cities. "But we need radical new departures in urban planning and priorities for urban authorities for the city to ultimately become the solution."

    Girardet has written 9 books, produced 50 documentaries and advised cities such as London and Vienna on the value of sustainable urban development. Now China is his focus. With plans to build around 400 new cities over the next 20 years, the country desperately needs to think about environmentally-friendly ways to grow, he says.

    The eco-city of Dongtan may be the place where this change begins. Girardet is senior advisor to the project, which will be located on Congming Island in Shanghai Province. The city will integrate the most important aspects of sustainable design into its layout: small villages connected by bicycle paths, a robust public transportation system, a network of distributed renewable energy systems, local farming and a method to recycle all waste output. The idea, says Girardet, is to create a zero-waste city with a "circular metabolism."

    "When you look at natural systems, basically nature does not know waste. All wastes…end up as nutrients for future growth," he says. "We need to learn from nature for the way we organize ourselves in terms of human affairs."

    According to research by the USAID China Environmental Health Project, Chinese cities produce around 190 million tons of trash each year. That number could rise to around 480 million tons per year by 2030. Because of the environmental and health issues associated with poor waste management, the Chinese government has called for a 10% increase in the efficiency of resource use by 2020. Even with such measures, however, the problem will need to be tackled from the ground up. Designing cities like Dongtan may be a more effective solution, especially as China urbanizes so quickly.

    The plan is to move 25,000 residents onto the 86 square kilometer island by 2010 and steadily grow the population to 500,000 by 2030. If it proves successful, says Girardet, the eco-city will hopefully serve as a model for Chinese officials as they manage the country’s growth.

    While Dongtan will integrate an impressive list of renewable energy technologies and sustainable planning methods, changes to existing cities may be a bit more subtle in the short term. The goal now, says Michael Kinsley, a senior consultant at the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Sustainable Cities program, is to get community planners to change the way they think about the development process.

    The problem, he says, is that most cities working toward "smart growth" have a team of elected officials and consultants looking at environmental and social issues and another team looking at economic issues. Often, the two teams don’t talk to one another, which can start conflicts later in the planning process. Kinsley’s first order of business is to get all stakeholders collaborating to ensure that sustainability and economic progress go hand in hand.

    "That’s really what sustainability is about when you cut down through the rhetoric about it," he says. "What it’s ultimately about is the way in which you make decisions. It’s not a list of things you ought to do in a community, as much as it is a way of thinking about what the community ought to be."

    There are many agreed-upon components of a sustainable city: Better public transit, bicycle and walking routes, energy-efficient buildings, renewable energies and local agriculture. But not every city will integrate those components the same way. Instead of handing planners a standard list of action items, says Kinsley, the goal should be to "help community leaders think about what their principal values are," and then work from those values.

    "People will only be willing to go the extra mile if they feel they have a stake in the process," says Richard Levine, co-director of the Center for Sustainable Cities at the University of Kentucky. "This is an extension of the democratic idea."

    If cities are to take a systems-level approach to development, change needs to happen at the very beginning stages of planning. Levine sees some progress in this area, but he doesn’t see it happening fast enough. The technical details will never be fully worked out until the cultural, environmental and economic values of a community become consistent.

    "We have yet to build a truly sustainability city. Some cities are starting to think very hard about this, but we’ve got a long way to go," he says. "If this starts happening in a meaningful way, there’s probably no stopping it. Once cities see that it can be done in an economically-feasible manner, they’ll want to do it too. But we need to have one or two examples to start the momentum and get us off the treadmill we’re all bound to right now."

    Indeed, if all goes well, Dongtan could help build that momentum and speed up the process. But there is no time to wait around, say most experts. By many accounts the window for action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is about ten years; therefore, because of the large amount of time it takes to restructure cities, drastic changes to urban planning need to happen immediately, says Girardet.

    "There are some voices of doom out there who say it’s too late, but I cannot accept that notion," he says. "Cities offer the most potential to face our environmental problems, and I believe that we can do it. We just have to do it now."

  • Tasmanians disappointed about bags

    The Tasmanian town of Coles Bay was the first in Australia to ban plastic shopping bags. (ABC News: Giulio Saggin)

    The Tasmanian Government has ruled out unilateral action to reduce the use of plastic shopping bags.

    The Federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, met his state and territory counterparts in Melbourne yesterday, but they failed to reach agreement.

    The Greens have called for Tasmania to act anyway and introduce a bag levy or ban.

    Tasmania’s Minister, Michelle O’Byrne, says she argued for a national levy, but introducing it just locally would be unfair to Tasmanians.

    "We’re still working towards our target of phasing out from January, 2009," she said.

    "I would have like to have seen a national levy, I think that probably would have been the simplest mechanism.

    "It wasn’t going to happen, despite some really good support from other states, or other jurisdictions, so lets see what we can make out of the next stage."

    Ben Kearney led a campaign five years ago which saw all stores at Coles Bay, on Tasmania’s east coast, ban plastic shopping bags.

    It was a first for the nation.

    Mr Kearney says he had hoped for a better outcome from yesterday’s meeting.

    "I’m extremely disappointed that you know our own Tasmanian government couldn’t show more leadership on this at the same time very pleased to find out that the whole state of South Australia are going to do a Coles Bay and ban them anyway," he said.

    Greens Deputy leader, Nick McKim, says Tasmania should act anyway.

    "It’s well beyond time for Tasmania, the clean, green state to show some leadership," he said.

  • Red-hot coal deals add more fuel to the economic fire

    Tim Colebatch, The Age

     

     

    AUSTRALIA’S economic prospects have taken another unexpected turn.

    Economists estimate that last week’s deals with steel makers Posco and Nippon Steel to treble the price of coking coal will lift national income in the year ahead by at least $30 billion, or 3%.

    While each day brings more evidence that economic activity is slowing rapidly, the 210% rise in prices negotiated by the BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance in deals with the steel makers suggests a powerful force will be pushing it ahead.

    While senior Reserve Bank and Treasury officials forecast last month that Australia was heading for a boost of 10% to 15% in the terms of trade in 2008-09, the Posco deal suggests the rise could be more like 20% to 25%. Next year could see the terms of trade — the ratio of export prices to import prices — overtake the record levels of the Korean War boom in 1951.

    That boom and bust pitched Australia into recession. But the economy now has a much broader base.

    With the global financial crisis and higher interest rates pushing hard on the economic brakes, and soaring mineral prices pushing equally hard on the accelerator, the relative strength of the two forces will determine what happens to the economy over the coming year.

    ANZ senior economist Katie Dean said if the bullish assumptions behind the coking coal deals flowed into negotiations for steaming coal and iron ore contracts, Australia was set to experience another steep rise in its income in 2008-09.

    "It’s going to add about $30 billion to the size of the economy," she said. "It’s a huge development, and it shows what the Reserve Bank is up against in trying to slow the economy. They can’t control what is happening in these markets."

    ABN Amro chief economist Kieran Davies said the income boost could be more like 4% of gross domestic product — including a windfall of more than $10 billion in company tax revenue for the Federal Government.

    "This should provide an immense boost to the resource-rich states, but the broader boost should be less than usual if the Government saves the windfall," he said.

    "This suggests that the strengthening of the resources boom, while much greater than first thought, could have a less pronounced impact on the economy (outside the resource-rich states) than past commodity price rises."

  • Coal boss concedes clean coal unlikely

    Australian Greens climate change spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne, today called on the Rudd Government to focus its Budget priorities on existing climate solutions such as energy efficiency and renewable energy as the National Generators Forum joins those wavering on coal geosequestration.

    Senator Milne said "The window dressing for the coal industry is now in tatters. Comments from John Boshier on the 7.30 Report last night, that coal with geosequestration is failing to live up to the industry’s hype are yet another warning to Governments banking on "clean" coal and failing to prioritise the real, clean alternatives of energy efficiency and renewable energy.

    "Mr Boshier echoed concerns that cost and timeline blowouts are deeply troubling, with little progress in years. In recent years, renewable energy technologies have been moving in leaps and bounds, increasing their efficiency, reducing costs and developing better energy storage technologies, whereas "clean" coal has stagnated."

    "Mr Boshier also raised the fundamental problem that we would need to find enough ideal sites to store at least 200 million tonnes of CO2 every year in Australia alone. That is a mammoth engineering problem and could easily lead to the use of less-than-ideal storage sites, increasing the risk of leakage which would render the whole exercise pointless.

    "What Mr Boshier did not note is that, even if the technology did show promise, the polluter pays principle tells us that the companies that have profited from polluting for so long should be the ones to shoulder the burden of cleaning up their act, not the taxpayer.

    "The coal sector is old, polluting and well entrenched. Even if climate change were not an issue, it would be outrageous that our governments add billions every year to the coffers of the rich multinational corporations that run the sector. When you add climate change considerations to the mix, ongoing fossil fuel subsidies become one of the most perverse and destructive government decisions imaginable.

    "With the Rudd Government searching for budgetary savings, surely subsidies to rich and polluting corporations should be the very first place to start, rather than further undermining scientific research by cutting the CSIRO’s budget.

    "The Greens have proposed that a portion of the billions that would be saved by cutting fossil fuel subsidies should be channelled towards further research, development and commercialisation of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies through a Sun Fund, and to pay for the early stages of a systematic and systemic retrofit of Australia’s housing stock for energy efficiency set out in our EASI policy.

    "I will be watching the Government’s first Budget carefully to see if its priorities follow Martin Ferguson’s industry-fuelled hype, or a sensible, realistic path to clean energy."