Humanity's crisis: An island's opportunity
IT has been a heady week in the politics of global warming and sustainable development. Most important has been the publication of the report by Sir Nicholas Stern (pictured)<$><\p>on the economics of climate change. Stern is no environmental activist, but a former World Bank economist, commissioned by Gordon Brown, the UK Chancellor to report back on the economic consequences of climate change.
If we continue as is, the planet will warm between 3-5 degrees Celsius by 2050, and we will face a global economic turndown that will make the economic depression of the 1930s and the Second World War look like a tea party.
His review argues that if we continue with our present energy systems and usage, the resultant rise in temperature, will lead to an economic downturn of between 5 and 20 per cent.
He argues that if we start immediately to address the problem, global warming will cost one per cent of global GDP to stabilise emissions and temperature rises, but the longer we leave it, the more it will cost.
The report puts a figure — $85 — on the cost of the damage that every ton of CO2 causes to the environment. His report finally nails the two biggest claims of climate change deniers — that we don’t know enough about it yet, and that if we wait, new technologies will sort out any problems that occur.
The issue of climate change is now aggressively mainstream. Gordon Brown will make it the central thrust of his administration, and has appointed Al Gore as his adviser.
Richard Branson, the Virgin Airways boss, has created a $3 billion fund to develop greener transport systems, Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking California green, Gore’s Inconvenient Truth is a major box office success and there a even strong rumour that President Bush will use his next State of the Union address to call for major reductions in carbon emissions in the US.
There’s a major UN Climate Change conference this month to start the process of replacing the Kyoto Agreement, this time bringing our three biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions — India, China and the US — into the fold.
The UK government is calling for a major deal on global warming by 2008, asking for a 60 per cent reduction on carbon emissions by 2050. Things are surely on the move, with the UK at the forefront of leading the fight to finally take action. It looks like humanity is getting its act together at last.
Even consumer capitalism in the raw is getting in on the act. A local DIY store in London now sells domestic solar panels and wind turbines ($2,500 for a three-panel solar unit and a wind turbine system for $1,500).
However, all of this is merely a beginning, and we’re a long way from taking the steps necessary to really tackle climate change. It’s not all about economics either.
We face a mass die-out of humanity if we don’t move fast. And it will be the poor, the disenfranchised, and the marginal and exploited communities of our species that will bear the brunt of the impact of global heating. At least at first.
The big problem for humanity is that we’ve never dealt with problems like this before, either in terms of its complexity, its likely impact or the timescales involved.
Our institutions are not geared up to deal with them. Our politics finds it difficult to think a year ahead, never mind the 40-50 years that provide the timeframe for dealing with climate change.
This crisis asks a lot of us — personally, nationally and internationally. This is a multi-headed Hydra — with moral, social, political and even religious/spiritual questions for us all.
Even as we come to accept the reality of global heating and its effects, we continue to deploy the very technologies which cause the problem. We continue to live our lives as though it was happening to another species, on another planet.
We continue to wait for someone else to deal with the problem. And we in the developed world continue with our energy profligate lifestyles in full face of the knowledge that we are destroying the planet, playing havoc with its ecologies, decimating its species of plants and animals, and denying the right of a dignified life, or even any life, to millions.
It’s easy to be in Bermuda and feel both very far away from all of this, and at the same time, uniquely vulnerable to the consequences of global heating.
And as with everything else on the island, uniquely vulnerable. Imagine the effect of a tornado running through Pembroke . . . No infrastructural project on the island should be allowed to go ahead without putting zero/low carbon technologies at the heart of the system, and they should all be decentralised, distributed systems.
The new hospital is a perfect example of the kind of project which should have zero-carbon energy systems at the heart of its design and deployment.
A number of the world’s smaller economies have policies in place for developing carbon-neutral energy systems. They’re working because they are cohesive societies, and because they are using their natural resources in win-win ways for their energy needs and ecological sustainability.
It’s not just a question of moving to new forms of energy production, distribution and usage, but of deploying these technologies in such a way that the island is both resilient in the face of global climate change, and autonomous to the likely global chaos and dislocation it will bring to the world economic systems.
There’s no one system that will work for any one household, and in fact it’s the appropriate linking together of these technologies to suit both individuals and wider society which will create real dividends for the whole island.
Bermuda should be a completely carbon neutral society within ten years. It is merely a matter of political will. Sustainable development is not a political afterthought or add-on, but the starting point for everything on the island.
It’s not just a matter of buying a windmill, or putting in solar water heating, but moving to a whole new energy production infrastructure on the island. If you think about it, it would be crazy for Bermuda to import all its water, when by and large it is reasonably self-sufficient here.
Yet this is precisely what is happening with energy. Surrounded by the abundant resources of the sea, wind and sun, Bermuda is locked into a system whereby vast amounts of increasingly expensive oil are imported to drive the island’s infrastructure, with all the attendant effects upon its balance of payments, and, your pocket.
Bermuda is throwing money away, year after year, when these same resources could be being used to create a completely indigenous energy system for the betterment of the whole community.
Now these new technologies may be capital intensive, and therefore easy to dismiss, but it is not difficult to think of financial mechanisms which would allow all Bermudians to spend their hard earned cash on energy infrastructure, rather than on burning ‘black gold’.
Then, instead of paying the power companies for your energy, the money goes to clear the loan for that initial capital investment — at some point power bills will virtually drop to zero, much like your water does now.
This level of autonomy and independence should appeal to your average Bermudian (if there’s such a thing). Your banks, business, Government and energy companies should be actively exploring and developing this opportunity now.
The effect upon Bermuda’s economy would be profound, and would do much to move it to the ‘next level’ that Premier Ewart Brown signposted recently.
Bermuda should be doing this even if global warming wasn’t happening, simply for the economic advantages that it would bring, both individually and to the whole community.
They should also be taking advantage of Bermuda’s unique location and advantages of sun, wind and sea to develop small and large scale sustainable energy production systems, particularly for the Caribbean and the whole tropical belt.
Just one type of system that’s nearing fruition is a kind of deep ocean heat transfer tech which not only produces clean, continuous electricity, but, as a by-product, fresh desalinated water. Belco is working in partnership to explore deep-water turbine electricity production of a similar kind. This is a step in the right direction. Belco itself needs to move from being an energy production utility to an energy systems company.
Bermuda’s society, Government and business sector have a real opportunity here to do something important and powerful, not just for themselves, but the whole world, IF they could see the economic, social and ecological potential here.
IF Bermudians want to keep the island’s development on track, this has to happen. In a real sense, the climate change angle doesn’t even need to come into it.
Autonomous sustainable energy production is critical to Bermuda’s future, and the bedrock of the island’s survival. The political will and policy initiatives across the board should be in place now to achieve that within the next ten years. In the bigger picture, unless the whole of your policy is bedded within a clear framework of ecological and economic realities in the face of mounting climate change, none of them will mean anything.
While our responses to global warming are to some extent always political, this is a much bigger problem than politics. This challenge is about how we all understand the connectedness of everything to everything else, and our responsibility for and to each other, and the planet as a whole.
Small, isolated island communities are uniquely susceptible to the economic and ecological effects of global warming and environmental degradation. The lessons are there from the past.
The Easter Islanders turned their island into a lovely lawn with big statues and then wondered why there was nothing to eat but each other. The Vikings in mediaeval Greenland died out in the midst of plenty because they lacked the cultural tools and nous to use their local environment as the Inuit did. The Tuvaluans are being washed out of their homes through our collective greed and wilful stupidity.
To do nothing in today’s world means that we all face rapidly rising costs, and ever more precarious energy supplies, which would have serious economic impacts upon the local and global economy.
To use Bermuda’s famous cohesion to create a sustainable, affordable and robust energy system for all directly faces that coming challenge.
More importantly, to involve the whole community in a project of this scale helps foster a Bermuda that is strong enough to face whatever challenges global warming may bring, gives it a leading place in the world in the use of those technologies, and in so doing, creates the basis for Bermuda’s sustainable future. And handled cleverly, that’s only the start . . .
Next week: I’ll look in more detail as to how the island can move to this new energy infrastructure, and how this creates the bedrock for a truly independent society.
