I’ve mentioned quite a few times the spurious calculations offered by Ted Trainer of the Simplicity Institute, purporting to prove that renewable energy can’t sustain a modern lifestyle. But I haven’t looked hard at the other side of the coin; the idea that ‘degrowth’ could provide us with a sustainable, low-tech but still comfortable way of living, based on local self-sufficiency.
Samuel Alexander, also of the Simplicity Institute, has a piece in the Conversation, making this claim. Presumably, unlike energy technology, this is an area where the Institute ought to have some special expertise. Sadly, this does not appear to be the case.
Alexander makes two points of particular interest.
First, he suggests that we (that is, urban dwellers) could meet our food needs through a combination of suburban gardening and trade with nearby farmers. This is illustrated by a picture of a community garden in San Francisco.
Second, he observes that this is not a process that should be sought through top-down measures from government, but rather through ‘bottom-up’ initiatives from individuals and groups.
I’ll deal with the second point first. Rather than putting this discussion in the future tense, why not look at attempts to move in this direction, which have been going on for at least forty years (there was a big movement to Nimbin on the NSW North Coast in the early 1970s, for example). As far as I know, none of these have got anywhere near achieving self-sufficiency in food, let alone fibre for clothing, timber for building and so on. And, as far as I can see, there is less going on in this direction now than there was 40 years ago.
That’s not to say of course, that self-sufficiency is impossible. For thousands of years, the majority of the world’s population lived by subsistence agriculture, and a billion or more still do. The only problems were
(i) It’s a life of miserable, back-breaking work from which people have always fled at the earliest opportunity, even when the alternative was near-starvation in a disease-ridden urban slum or shantytown
(ii) The current world population could not possibly be fed (even on a meat-free diet) with the yields typical of traditional subsistence agriculture
Perhaps the Simplicity Institute is counting on using more modern (but sustainable) technology to achieve high food yields. At one level, this might just be feasible. ‘Organic’ farmers have shown that it’s possible to achieve commercial yields without using pesticides or manufactured fertilisers, though other costs are higher, so that it is necessary to charge a premium price. But this only works on a significant scale if, in other respects, standard energy-intenisve industrial technologies (farm machinery, food processing and so on) are used.
Alexander makes it pretty clear that (as with the Institute’s attacks on renewable energy) this kind of modest tinkering is not what he has in mind. So, let’s take a look at the community garden he uses to illustrate the simpler approach. The photo shows about 20 people and a dozen or so garden beds, each about 1-2 sq m in area.
I’m not much of a gardener, but the total area looks pretty comparable to the backyard patch we had when I was a kid, which certainly didn’t feed our family. Rather than rely on such impressionistic stuff, though, it seems better to look at some proper data. Alexander doesn’t offer any and neither does the Simplicity Institute website, but the Internet has plenty of information.
Typical estimates seem to be that you need somewhere from 100-400 sq m to supply enough vegetables for a single person.
That includes a carbohydrate source such as potatoes, and perhaps fruit, but no meat, eggs, milk, grain or plant protein sources like soybeans.
Taking the most optimistic numbers possible, the garden plots illustrated by Alexander would meet less than half the vegetable needs of one person. This isn’t a remotely serious analysis: it’s more like claiming that a household could supply its own electricity by pedalling a stationary bike.
A more immediate objection relates to the transition path. Suppose that the Simplicity Institute managed to convince everyone that it is necessary to adopt the ‘degrowth’ approach they advocate. This would require a comprehensive restructuring of the entire economy: food production and distribution systems are just one example.
How rapidly could such a transformation be achieved? An obvious answer is to run the tape in reverse. The shift from a largely agricultural economy to our current post-industrial economy took about 200 years in the leading economies, and has nowhere been achieved in less than two generations (say 60 years). It seems reasonably to assume that reversing the process would take just as long, even granting the improbable premise that we started tomorrow[^1]
We don’t have 60 years to spare. If the world economy isn’t thoroughly decarbonized by 2050 (a little over 30 years away), the chance of holding global warming to 2 degrees C will have been lost.
The only chance of decarbonization is an approach that is focused much more narrowly on reducing CO2 emissions, through energy efficiency, renewable energy and a shift away from the most energy-intensive forms of consumption. As has been repeatedly demonstrated, this can be done at very low cost, but we need to move much faster than we are doing.
Those, like Trainer and Alexander, who oppose any effective action to reduce CO2 emissions, while demanding a massively larger agenda reflecting their social and ideological preferences, are effective (and sometimes actual [^2]) allies of the rightwing denialists.
fn1. The UN Climate Change Framework Convention process started more than 20 years ago, and is only now producing any significant (though still inadequate) action. ‘Degrowth’ isn’t a process or even the basis of a movement, it’s just an idea.
fn2. One notable meeting place was Barry Brooks’ Brave New Climate site, where denunciations of renewable energy from Trainer and Peter Lang, a denialist who used to comment here, sit side by side
John Quiggin 
@Ikonoclast
Mate, I’m your age. Strewth, the spirit is still strong and the back is willing … but … various other components are less willing. I’m very pleased to read that you live with your whole, grown family. Do you realise how such a living arrangement is so much of the past and the future? The time of the nuclear family, of family fracture and loss, is passing.
My own two dear kids are in Sydney. I’ll take the time here to personalise JQ’s blog and talk about my kids. One has a good honours degree in history and is about to get into psychology as a profession which only requires another three years of study. The male younger is undergrad doing an arts/science major with an emphasis on plant biology in the sciences. I can,t even imagine where the interest in plants comes from, not my background at all, but I’ve encouraged it because, in my reckoning, in the future, people who know how to grow plants will be wel placed.
My big issue is compost.
I’m aware of your deep Marxist roots. Have you had a look at John Bellamy Foster’s stuff? He is a revisionist who claims to have found evidence, within Marx’s text, of a well informed ecology. I think he is right in so far as Marx was, at various points, clever enough to disern that modernity bring into focus the technology of how humans are compelled to metabolise nature in order to live.
I’m fascinated by the way in which the sciences are engaging with political economy again. There’s nothing like rationally tarined people. I haven’t had so much intellectual fun since I watched S Jay Gould and Richard Lewontyne destroy the neoliberal account of Darwin. Well, almost. I can’t neglect Mary Midgley who destroyed Dawkins’ theory of “the selfish gene” as “biological Thatcherism”.
I love the way that the moral straighteners of the neolibs, is there any other type (?), oppose drogs because drogs are bad in objectively insane world.
It’s a da da epoch.
@Ronald Brak
I have been totally unable to find any roof-top system that powers the energy needs of the people under the roof.
So I am not sure how all this relates to my original point 2).
The alternative to fossil fuel is not roof-top solar. Why are you running this interference?
Why have you not explained your figures?
Small scale subsistence does not constrain people to be vegetarian. Households with extended families can get enough milk and occasional meat from goats, or even from cows of miniature breeds like the Dexter that was developed for precisely that by the Irish (only one adult female is needed, as stud services can be farmed out, so to speak). Nuclear families or even individuals can get by raising guinea pigs indoors for meat, just as those were used in South America; they do not need additional fodder, as they can eat the parts of food plants like carrots grown for humans that humans don’t use (but not the greenery from potatoes – the green parts of those are somewhat poisonous, as indeed is potato peel, though not as much).
@Ivor
It might be more productive to go a sophisticated analysis.
Say Jacobson MZ, Delucchi MA. 2011 Providing all global energy needs with wind, water, and
solar power, Part I: technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and
materials. Energy Policy 39, 1154–1169. (doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2010.11.040)
and Mark Diesendorf’s recent book.
There are still questions to be asked but these do show change is conceptually practical already.
No need then to reinvent a potentially creaky wheel.
@Newtownian
Yes, that is precisely what needs to occur (I will seek the Jacobson, Delucchi article).
However, as renewable wind looks like producing power at less than US 2c per kilowatt
see: http://sheerwind.com/
and other developments will increase other renewables, the real problem is how can this give all the worlds people a common decent standard of living, and how does this play out when the population doubles.
Much current growth is caused by or invoked by population increase. To have meaningful degrowth, you must have a controlled population, or even a stagnant population.
If population increases – and renewable energy is free – CO2 emissions will not necessarily fall to the required level – particularly if all the worlds population has equal right to a certain standard of living.
People are slow to understand the ramifications of doubling (of any quantity).
Some time ago I did a back of the envelope calculation as to the amount of land area available per person on the planet: it was around 8 hectares, which includes mountains, deserts, and everything in between. The calculation is simple enough: compute the total surface area of Earth, when considered as an oblate spheroid (i.e. avoid complications of fractal landscapes, etc), and divvy it up among the current human population. For a sphere, we have surface area S = 4 x PI x r^2, where r = radius of Earth: r = 63750km, approx, say r = 6400km, and PI = 3 approx, so S = 12 x 6400^2, i.e. S = 12 x 64 x 64 x 10^4 km^2, or S = 3 x 2^14 x 10^4 = 48 x 10^7 = 4.8 x 10^8 km^2. In units of metre squared, S = 4.8 x 10^14 m^2.
Current human population P = 7.25 x 10^9, i.e. 7.25 billion people on this ball, give or take.
Surface Area per person A = (4.8 / 7.25) x 10^5 m^2, i.e. approx (48/30) x 4 x 10^4 m^2, which gives A = 6.4 x 10^4 m^2, or 6.4 hectares per person, a single hectare = 10^4 metres squared, i.e. 100 metres by 100 metres.
Given that our figure includes the water part of the surface of the Earth as well as the land part, and assuming we only care about the land, our land per person is 29% of A, and reducing fast (as sea level rise removes land area, thanks to our foe of AGW). At an approximation of 25% being land, we finally come up with L = 1.6 Ha, that’s right, only 1.6 hectares of land per person!
Now, the smarties will say let’s just jam everyone into city livin’, but no matter where we put people, we only have 1.6 Ha of desert, cliff, mountain, glacier, island, and so on as our land for farming, and for stashing all those wild animals and flora. According to DAFF’s Outlook 2014 presentation, we could expect there to be less than 0.5Ha of arable land per person by 2050.
As far as I can see, this means that if we don’t do more to steer population into net decline (peacefully and cooperatively), as the same time as coming up with better ways of producing food, e.g. agriculture in three dimensions instead of just two, we are running towards a very nasty surprise. Factor in when AGW is expected to really be felt (i.e. 2050 and on), and we are in for a constellation of hurt.
Humans are incredibly innovative when they finally appreciate an issue and get it; who knows what wonderful ways we come up with for producing more food? However, there are some hard limits which we cannot so easily innovate out of, and one of them is the loss of biodiversity per annum. At some point we are going to notice the lack of wildlife, the reduced ecological landscape, but at what point is something I’ll leave to expert prediction.
Finally, fishing is an industry in turmoil, and it could be in for even worse trouble, thanks once again to AGW. It has recently been discovered that the southern oceans are absorbing one heck of a lot more heat than previously thought, meaning that if this research is fully verified and stacks up, then we have been underestimating the total effect of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and the warming as a result of it. I doubt that is a good thing for cold-dwelling fish species.
There is hopefully a window of time during which we can use renewables effectively, but given the three basic parameters above (i.e. available land, population size, AGW), our modern lifestyles are looking way too expensive to expect to continue for much longer. Either we’ll adapt to something less extravagant by peaceful and cooperative means, or we’ll hit a wall of hurt and forcibly adjust to a different kind of living. Heck knows what happens when we consider other parameters like potable water, etc.
Sorry for the lengthy post.
@Ivor
Ivor, rather than give you figures, I invited you to go and look at a rooftop solar system so you could through observation see one, and only one so far, of the points I made to help ease your mind about your concern that, “(2) if efficient renewables need dams, acres for wind farms and for solar, all of which are finite, how can renewables give the entire world’s population the same standard of living?” So did you take a look at a rooftop solar system and see that it does not remove land from its original use?
@Collin Street
You seem to have this backwards. 3rd world countries have fewer issues with reliability because they don’t use electricity for much (because it’s unreliable). It’s more of an issue if, like me, you need always-on electricity for heating and cooking.
It’s interesting reading comments from Australians on this – by world standards, Australia has huge amounts of space for things like solar, as well as plenty of sun. Whereas those of us in the UK.. my panels generate only 20% of their summer output in winter, which does indeed imply the need for seasonal-level storage if they are required as a main energy source. For a country like the UK, this means that a full wind+solar+storage ‘solution’ mandates something like a TWh of storage.
As far as food self-sufficiency goes.. as has been said, one bad summer – like 2012 – and that’s destitution for a subsistence farmer. And it’s not enough just to be self-sufficient – there still has to be a government with all it’s functions, so you’ll have to have surpluses.
Indeed, this is one of the bigger arguments against this kind of de-industrialisation. Imagine that we manage to implement it, worldwide, solving all the problems along the way. Then, after a decade or two, a country decides to re-industrialise. Pretty much be definition, this country will suddenly become the most powerful militarily on the planet.
Explain to me the necessity.
@Collin Street
I have an electric oven. Dosen’t work very well when the electric is off. Works even worse when the electric goes off half way through.
I also have a combi natural gas boiler, which is an electrical appliance. No electricity, no hot water or heating.
This is pretty standard for the UK.
@Ivor
“I have been totally unable to find any roof-top system that powers the energy needs of the people under the roof.” – Ivor.
I hope I am not misreading you because on the face of it this is totally wrong. I have a 5.5 kW nominal capacity system of solar panels plus inverter. The panels occupy maybe half of my north facing roof. On the other half of north facing roof I have an evacuated tube solar hotwater system which occupies barely a 1/4 of this half. Over about 3 years this system has trouble-free produced more than enough power to run my household of four adults with all mod cons, all electric no gas. The only things we are frugal about are air-conditioning and heating. (Don’t need heating in Qld. and our house has good passive design so only 1 room is air-conned and that only gets used about 12 hours a day for about 2 months.
In fact, my solar pV system produces enough power to run 1.75 households like mine. I sell power to the grid. We also get all the hot water we need from our solar hot water heater.
For sure, I benefit by being connected to the grid and treating it as my great big (almost free) battery. But if I had to get a battery back-up system this might cost me $7,500 in upfront capital every 8 years or thereabouts. No more money than people waste on car depcreciation in a like time span by buying a new car rather than a used car. I buy used cars, always have all my life. Never owned a new car, never owned a lemon. Did own a new blowtermike (motor bike) once.
For the record, my 5.5 kW nominal system can produce over 5.0 kW peaks on a good day and is very often producing 3.5 to 4.5 kW for many hours on most days summer and winter (except for really cloudy or rainy days. On a drizzly day with light grey total cloud cover (not dark grey) it can easily still be producing 1.5 kW to 2.0 kW.
This system really opened my eyes to how good solar power can be.
95% electricity reliability is, what… a dinner ruined every three weeks?
With regard to the discussion on how many square meters are needed to grow food for a person – the Australian tradition of the 1/4 acre block was for this very reason. It was thought 1/4 acre (less the area occupied by what used to be small cottages) would be about the right size for growing food for the household – I think probably fruit and vegetables and maybe a small hen house. Grains would have come from farms outside the city, and dairy from dairies etc.
my grandfather always had a vegetable patch and fruit trees in his backyard – and the family had chooks when my mum was young, which my grandmother would breed from for additional income for a while. There also used to be a market garden just up the road that a family ran until finally selling it for residential subdivision. After my grandfather passed away the new owners demolished what was a perfectly fine mid century house to build an enormous house covering just about all of the garden (according to my cousin – I don’t want to visit to have it in my memory).
A recent refugee from Africa was settled in public housing in the suburb and she has started a community garden in her yard to reach out to the community, because she was quite lonely at first being settled in a middle class Australian suburb. She spoke at uni about her work , and she said she finds some people in the suburb are very lonely also, and she has had older people come in to the garden and cry because of all the plants and people – it reminds them of the suburb having a stronger community and more gardens in the past.
@Andrew Dodds
I haven’t done a full data collection and calculations but a quick estimate is that my solar panels in winter generate about 80% of summer power generation. This is in Brisbane, Australia – latitude 27.4679° S.
Indeed, our summers are so hot that the solar panels start to get hot, lose electrical efficiency and make less power than they could otheerwise . Our bright winter days with really clear skies generate power just as well because the panels are much cooler via air cooling from the winter air (though it’s not what a Brit would call winter air). The main thing that pulls down winter power generation a bit in Brisbane is the shorter day and sun’s lower angle.
These factors make Brisbane (and indeed all of Qld) brilliant for solar power at residential scale and utility scale though we have little of the latter. It is a total climate crime that we still run thermal coal power stations on a large scale. Solar pV, solar heat concentrating, solar mirrors and solar updraft towers(which run 24/7 on temperature differential) plus wind turbines in places plus certain forms of energy storage (hot salt tank storage) would make cheap, 24/7 sationary electrical power a cake-walk in Qld. And the engineering challenges are probably about a magnitude easier than the challenges of nuclear power.
The only things that keep coal going are the huge subsidies they get (like the diesel fuel rebate for miners which costs the Federal budget $6 billion per annum) and the fact that they don’t pay for the huge negative externality damage they are causing which if again costed properly would see them paying many billions in carbon taxes or emissions permits. The whole fossil fuel industry is now a giant morally criminal enterprise holding the lives and safety of 7 billion people to ransom.
Ok so here’s an anti-growth economist -Warwick Smith in the Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/13/do-we-dare-to-question-economic-growth
Wonder what Prof Q (and everyone) thinks of him?
@Newtownian
The Jacobson MZ, Delucchi MA. 2011 paper is interesting and the presentation is covered in Scientific American November 2009.
My quick read makes me feel they are being a bit loose with calculating footprint, particularly expecting that areas between land-based wind turbines will be used as productive agriculture and excluding access roads.
I cannot see how they have modeled the 8 billion 2030 world population obtaining the same living standard, so how is 17TW in 2030 a relevant benchmark (or even lower).
If all the worlds population have the right to 10,000 kwhr pa, then this is around 80 TWhr/yr.
However Jacobson and Delucchi’s papers are good starting points.
@Ikonoclast
This is not my point. I have seen plenty of current affairs programs where individual Westerners have produced habitable houses with zero emissions, and off grid.
That is not the issue flagged at point 2) initially at top of this thread.
There’s your problem.
Gazing at roofs is not relevant.
@Ivor
Okay.
@Ikonoclast
I’m at 51 degrees North, which probably explains the difference.
I suspect that there is a band around the Earth, perhaps +-30 degrees from the equator, where solar power can work pretty effectively as the main power source, because storage and demand shifting only have to work on a 24-hour basis. Unfortunately that excludes Europe (and most of the USA).
The interesting thing about nuclear is that somehow we managed to solve the problems decades ago – how many reactors have actually had disasters without stupidity of extreme natural disaster taking a part? – but we can’t solve them now.
It’s a management/culture problem and our current solutions scale badly.
Mark Diesendorf
I reject this reasoning. One can’t know for certain how intelligent these folk are, though there’s no basis at all for thinking them ‘competent’ in any but trivial senses. My best guess is that they are at best of mediocre cognitive accomplishment. This mediocrity is an absolute boon for someone selected by well-resourced folk wanting sock-puppets to do their bidding. Intellectual mediocrity, an ability to follow instructions, a lack of scruple, some scandals in their background for when the moment to replace the sock puppet with less soiled socks beckons — these are attributes that are ideal from the point of view of the privileged.
Our system for party selection of candidates for the ruling parties, unsurprisingly, is comparatively efficient at filtering for these attributes and promoting them to the boss class shortlist. Nobody looking at or listening to Shorten could imagine that such a fellow ought to rise beyond the status of secretary of the local football club, and yet there he is, uttering banal phrases he can barely intone with the insight and proficiency of your average 12-year-old who has memorised Shakespeare. Abbott is even less convincing, and today’s efforts at Moranbah and the G20 underline that.
And on the substantive matter, the numbers for land, water and energy to meet the bottom tiers on Maslow’s hierarchy are pretty ugly for anyone thinking a return to self-sufficiency could transform the world while it is occupied by 7 billion people. 1 billion? Probably. 3 billion? Probably not.
I’m also not seeing how, even if you persuaded half the populace or more of every country to give it a go, how that manifests.
That’s not to say that all of our current demands for consumer goods are essential of course. Much of what we produce is stuff we’d never miss if it was gone, and if it were gone, the largely petroleum-based polymer packaging could go to. We don’t really need tea or coffee or alcohol or tobacco or meat or eggs or even dairy products. Most of us don’t need cars or televisions or bumpf shoved into our litter boxes (oops letter boxes). Few people need more that one or two pairs of sensible shoes/boots, or whole wardrobes full of outfits. We don’t really need to be travelling the world so we can ski in the Andes and be waited on by people in Acapulco or Biarritz. We don’t need to pay out trillions each year in defence spending so every jurisdiction can threaten its neighbours (or in the case of the US, everyone). The misdirection of human labour power is one of the most serious failings of the capitalist system. If we stopped misdirecting it, we could do a lot of good, and all live better lives.
Most people like these things, but they are purely discretionary. If we couldn’t afford these things, we’d get by well enough.
@Fran Barlow
Agree with your last 2 posts. Your sketch of Shorten had me laughing aloud. And Abbott is such an embarrassment. Shirt-front Putin? Even metaphorically? Puh-lease!
And we could indeed live with a lot less. Over-production and over-consumption is now quite extreme in the West.
@Val
I take pretty much the same line here, with a bit more explicit reasoning
http://aeon.co/magazine/society/john-quiggin-keynesian-utopiav1/
and argue for feasibility here
http://aeon.co/magazine/society/john-quiggin-climate-change/
You might think tropical regions would do well from solar but that’s not particularly the case e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Hawaii
at Lat 19 N. Frequent cloud cover and high prices for oil fired electricity have led to interest in onsite batteries and disconnection from the grid. It could be a test case for the rest of the world if it succeeds or fails. Germany is largely above Lat 47 N yet at one stage it had half the world’s installed PV. Their emissions have risen for several years (notwithstanding the dip after 1990s reunification) and now their economy is near recession. Way to go.
@Hermit
Well, it is particularly the case that Sth East Qld (and pretty much the rest of Australia too) does particularly well from rooftop solar pV. I can run 1.75 households of my size (4 adults) with a 5.5 kW nameplate system. It’s pretty silly if you are going to cherrypick the wettest or cloudiest places on earth and then say solar pV won’t work there. Perhaps you will be surprised to know that wet places are often windy (think wind power) and they are often mountainous with rapid, voluminous streams and rivers. Think hydro power at micro and macro levels.
As a mature industry, nuclear power, if it was going to be the answer, would have been the answer by now. Clearly nuke power has a lot of problems. After about 50 years, with massive accumulated subsidies that make renewable subsidies to date look like a pittance, nuclear power only supplies 6% of world primary energy. Renewables, late starters except for hydro, already supply 10% of world primary energy.
@Hermit
Hermit that’s all taken out of context and exaggerated. Germany’s self imposed target for ghg emissions reductions by 2020 is 40% less than 1990 levels (compared with Australia’s target of 108% over 1990 levels!). Since the decision to switch from nuclear, they have started using more coal, which does seem to have caused a slight increase in emissions in 2013. However their renewables are also growing very fast. It is possible they will miss the 40% target but they are already almost 30% down on 1990 levels and if they continue to invest in renewables they hope to get back on track shortly. The Greens are dissatisfied because they feel the Merkel government should be doing more, but they are still way ahead of us. Living in a German city, as I did this year for two months, is very different than living in an Australian city, in terms of the quality and insulation of buildings, and the amount of walking, cycling and public transport.
The German economy has grown more than expected in recent years. The concern about recessionary trends now is, again, because the government is being too tight with the purse strings.
I don’t know why you do this gloom and doom stuff. You are apparently doing all you can to reduce reductions in your own life, but you seem to take delight in saying that no-one else is doing anything. I wonder why?
@Hermit
I suppose Ikon has nailed it. It is your old obsession with nuclear isn’t it? I wish you’d give up beating that old drum.
Btw I think Germany – even though so far ahead of us – could be doing more. Most of us could probably be doing more. Including me, even with my simple life – I could be doing more. But we will achieve more if we focus on a mix of real alternatives, rather than dreaming of magic bullets. I’m not getting into the argument over nuclear, we’ve done it to death here, but it’s not the answer.
@John Quiggin
“Of the resource constraints we face, energy is the most critical. Our current reliance on carbon-based fuels is clearly unsustainable. For a decent chance of keeping global warming below two degrees C, America’s carbon dioxide emissions will have to fall to around 10 per cent of their current average by 2050, while other developed countries will have to cut emissions per head of the population to about 20 per cent. If climate change is not controlled, the effects on water supplies and food production could be catastrophic.” – J.Q.
I seem to recall an old blog debate where I said energy was the “master resource – the one we need to utilise all other resources.” I focused on finite stocks of non-renewables. However, it is fully supportable now that the waste sink limit (atmospheric CO2) is the actual limit in this case not the fossil fuel stocks themselves.
J.Q., you did long ago nominate waste sink limits as likely to be more critical than resource stock and flow limits. (Long before I thought of this issue for example.) This is starting to look more and more to be the case. So it is starting to look like bioservices provided by the environment are our most precious resource. Damage to bioservices ripples through the whole system. Direct destruction, like deforrestation and over-fishing, also plays a major deleterious role of course.
Bioservices are very difficult to identify and value in many cases. It is easy to see that a forest has been clear-felled and to value the loss of regrowth timber and CO2 scrubbing. It is harder to predict and value changes in rainfall and runoff. It is impossible to put a value on unknown lost species. What value might they have been to us directly (new medicines from plants say) and what unkown broad bioservices did they provide to other species and or to humans?
A relatively benign, stable climate (for humans) is a bioservice or a biospheric service. How do we value that? Stable ocean currents are another one. If existing reasonably reliable and stable currents go through a phase shift or direction shift the changes to regional and world climate are probably incalculable.
The precautionary principle would suggest that we stabilise the world’s population very soon and that we stop quantitative growth (not qualitative growth) until we can much better evaluate what is going on in the arena of bioservices and biospheric services. It is clear that a lot of such services are in deep trouble. The various serious perturbations indicate a great concern that we are near dangerous tipping points and phase shifts.
According to the ABC, Australia already has a solar farm.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-03/royalla-solar-farm-opens-south-of-canberra/5716500
It seems to be 20MW capacity – producing 37,000 MWhr per year – for 4,500 homes, using 50 hectares.
@Ivor
So what is your objection to solar power exactly? I am still trying to understand.
@Fran Barlow
Wot, no coffee?? Waaaaaaa!
@Donald Oats
Wattle seed has a really nice flavour. I’m hoping that when we have to stop importing coffee (or I voluntarily give it up – ha ha as if) I can go on to some kind of wattle seed drink. But I agree with you, waaaa
On the debate by Ikonoclast (#9 in 2), Mark Diesendorf (#19 in 2), Fran Barlow (#27 in 3) as to whether the right wing climate deniers are stupid or not, I now have the view that the smart right wingers representing fossil fuel interests have come to the view that King Coal is indeed dying and that renewables will take over. Their strategy now therefore is to dig as much coal out of the ground as quickly as possible so as to maximise their profits, because they know a lot of the coal will be left in the ground. Therefore they are trying to delay the surge of the renewables by whatever means they can.
The fact that they are reverting more and more to blatant falsehoods and threats to bolster their cause is actually a good sign, as it shows even half-truths aren’t working well as a weapon any more.
While the right wing fossil fuel interests push their line, the rest of the industrial capitalist world is rapidly moving towards support of renewables. The International Energy Agency (IEA) illustrates the shift very well. Their projections for 2050 are now indicating a minimal role for coal in energy production, whereas only a few years ago they were projecting a major role for coal in 2050. I will be fascinated to read their November Energy Outlook report to see if they have shifted further.
JQ at the end of your post you say:
Which sounds a bit like guilt by association, but leaving that to one side, this is what Trainer has to say:
“It must be stressed that the argument in this paper does not question the analyses the discussions of climate science in either source. Nor does it argue against renewable energy sources; we must move to full dependence on them as soon as possible… but we cannot run an consumer-capitalist society on them”
(Ted Trainer ‘Renewable energy cannot sustain an energy intensive society’ – note this a short version and he is here not just talking about a “consumer” society, but an “energy intensive” society, at
http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/trainer_renewable_sustainable_society.pdf)
I’m not arguing whether Turner is right or wrong in his analysis of the capacity of renewables – quite likely he is underestimating them – but he is clearly not a climate change denier, and he is not arguing against renewables. He seems to be saying that we cannot, globally, run high consuming capitalist societies like Australia on renewables realistically in the time frame we’ve got to prevent catastrophic climate change.
I don’t put an argument on that because I don’t have enough knowledge, but I argue that there are very good health and equity reasons for moving away from an energy intensive consumer capitalist society. However, I would like to know: are you arguing that we can – or should – aim to run high energy intensive societies like Australia globally on renewables alone, and that we can do that in sufficient time to prevent catastrophic climate change?
Having said that,I haven’t read your articles you linked to before, so I will now also do that.
Sorry Trainer not Turner.
@John Goss
I’ve heard this argued before and it seems plausible to me. As far as I can tell, those opposing decarbonisation are trying to protect the asset values they have currently in the ground (and recover the sunk costs in the mining processes). Further down the value chain, every technology configured soecifically for FHC has stakeholders opposed to rapid decarbonisation.
All of them have an interest in presenting FHC as in infinite supply, and relatively innocuous in relation to the benefits of use.
This is one reason why OPEC for example, rather than insistently trying to push up the cost of oil, tends to prefer price stability at a point where growth is maximised.
@Debbieanne
“Like”
@Ikonoclast
I don’t know about Abbott and Putin. Personally, I’d kick in $20 for the two of them to get in the ring for 3 rounds. And while I’d have to barrack for Abbott, its one of those lucky situations where either result would be quite pleasing.
@John Brookes
I’ve already got $20 on Putin. Unlike Abbott, he’s the real deal.
Val,
Roasted dandelion roots make a nice coffees substitute already offered by some cafes as a latte with soy and honey. I only ever so far manage to give up coffee for a couple of weeks then go back to it.
In terms of how to run a high consumption society like Australia on renewables – one thing is to remember we do very little manufacturing of our consumption products – they mostly are imported. So unless we re-industrialise rapidly as well as transitioning to RET – the question really is can China and similar countries get enough energy from renewable energy technology?
I am not sure – students say China is better placed because it can manufacture itself a lot of RET since it has all the factories and we have hardly any so chinese students who study RET engineering here like to go back to China where the factories are. The main focus in China at the moment is air pollution. I wonder if there are Chinese books/reports on 100% RET for China?
The CEO of the Climate Change Authority said some countries would have nuclear to supplement RET. And someone has told me RET looks difficult in Vietnam. But at this stage I don’t know if enough technical work has been done for each country to know what sort of use and amount of production would be possible with 100% RET globally.
@Helen
🙂 thank you
Ikonoclast,
“”For a decent chance of keeping global warming below two degrees C, America’s carbon dioxide emissions will have to fall to around 10 per cent of their current average by 2050, while other developed countries will have to cut emissions per head of the population to about 20 per cent.””
I just looked into a similar statement on the train home last night – so I have the figures at hand to look at this.
1. What is the remaining carbon budget to have a good chance of staying within 2 degrees?
Malte Meinhausen et al : The article says for only a 20% chance of exceeding 2 degrees there is a 890Gt or lower carbon budget from 2000-2050. The article does not give zero% chance of exceeding 2 degrees , so this is the best offered.
Now, we are not in the year 2000 so we need to subtract the carbon emissions from 2000-2014 from this total which leaves 398GtC of carbon emissions from 2015 onwards to stay within 2 degrees.
IPCC : Scenario RCP2.6 is the mitigation scenario with a median confidence unlikelihood of going over 2 degrees. This is the safest offered, so we just have to use it even though medium confidence is not very comforting.
In this scenario the fossil fuel carbon emissions for RCP2.6 between 2012 and 2100 is 270GtC We will deduct carbon emissions in 2013 and 2014 so from 2015 onwards a total of 198GtC remains to stay with a medium confidence chance of staying within 2 degrees.
So our figures for the remaining carbon budget are 198GtC or 398GtC.
I am not sure why there is such a discrepancy – but it might be that the IPCC only looks at fossil fuel carbon emissions — whereas Malte Meinshausen et all look at carbon emissions from all sources including land use.
2. What amount of carbon emissions are emitted in the above suggested emissions reduction scenario by 2050.
Our scenario above is “America’s carbon dioxide emissions will have to fall to around 10 per cent of their current average by 2050, while other developed countries will have to cut emissions per head of the population to about 20 per cent”
This is too difficult for a comment because I am not going to work out the correct amounts for each individual country.
I have already worked out the maths for everyone in the world going to per capita emissions of an 80% reduction from UK 1990 levels. So this is 20% which is 2 tonnes per capita carbon emissions in 2050 – which for ~9 billion people is around about ~18GtC.
For convenience I will stick with this figure of the scenario getting global carbon emissions down from a current ~36GtC to ~18GtC in 2050.
Anyone can work out the exact figure for developed countries in the above JQ scenario if they have the time. But you have to add developing countries emissions in too.
3. What is the cumulative emissions of the goal to go from ~36GtC in 2015 to ~18GtC in 2050?
I have made up this easy staged pathway as an example to get a figure:
2015-2016 = 36GtC p.a. = 36GtC over the period
2016-2020 = 30GtC p.a. = 120GtC over the period
2020-2030 = 25GtC p.a. = 250GtC over the period
2030-2040 = 22GtC p.a. = 220GtC over the period
2040-2045 = 20GtC p.a. = 100GtC over the period
2045-2049 = 19GtC p.a. = 76GtC over the period
2049-2050 = 18GtC p.a. = 18GtC over the period
This emissions reduction pathway to 20% of 1990 UK per capita emissions by 2050 would add up to 820GtC over the period 2015-2050.
4. Would we keep within our 2 degrees target by following this emissions reduction target scenario?
No – our carbon emissions budget is either 198GtC or 398GtC – so 820GtC goes well over
5. Conclusion
We need much stronger emissions reductions targets to stay within the international agreed upon limit of 2 degrees
@John Brookes
I cannot begin to imagine why. Abbott is a far greater threat to the interests of this country than Putin is ever likely to be. Watching ‘our’ strutting bovver boy put on his bottom and told to mind his mouth would be worth paying good money to see.
@Val
Orwell would have felt vindicated to hear this…Australia is reducing emissions (in some sectors) and we’re the bad guys while Germany is increasing emissions and they’re the good guys. As they say perception is everything.
The fact that I rely on or am involved in several forms of renewable energy but conclude they will never be enough to replace fossil fuels should be food for thought. As a backup to empirical observation is the old standby of simple arithmetic. When Australia has 1.5% solar electricity then some insist it will solve everything I worry whether we’ll even survive.
@ZM
Yes, the climate advisors from IPCC, NASA etc. should be talking about the remaining CO2 emissions budget left to avoid 2 degrees C warming or more with a high confidence, say 90% confidence. I agree that this would probably yield something like having the economy at zero net CO2 emissions from all human sources by 2035 or even earlier, maybe 2030.
@Ivor
Agreed equity and population are part of the mix. I always refer back to I=PAT. This is good at highlighting how the west’s smaller population has a disproportionate impact.
@Donald Oats
Can I suggest you dont try and reinvent the wheel but look into the concept of ecological footprint which is where you are going.
Also have a look at this oldie but goodie VITOUSEK, P. M., EHRLICH, P. R., EHRLICH, A. H. & MATSON, P. A. 1986. Human appropriation of the products of photosynthesis. BioScience, 368-373.
@Ikonoclast
I think Ivor’s point about solar being sufficient relates to PV not being sufficient for current primary energy – globally its about 52 kWh per person per day (16 TW for 7.2 billion) on average. Oz uses a lot more – about 200 kWh per person per day on average. By comparison a 2 kW PV system in Sydney summer gives about 10-12 kWh which is very useful but still illustrates a gap which needs addressing one way or another.
Ignoring the total primary energy needs is a bit like saying sustainability is only about backyard farming. You have to get the total picture.
@Ikonoclast
Regarding Mark’s comment about the coalition being rat cunning rather than stupid, Richard Denniss went into a more detailed explanation on this matter that should be considered.
There was no disagreement about the coalition and Abbott being philosophically short sighted but the point was that you dont get to positions of power like their’s AND stay there for 30 years by being dumb.
Pauline Hanson’s rise and fall illustrates what genuinely dumb means.
Beyond that Denniss’s other themes included that more reliable principle for analysis – follow the money. Its not like the truth not reflecting the public spin being new. Think of Richard Nixon.
@John Brookes
Abbott v Putin reminds me of a story about Kerry Packer.
Allegedly, he was in a casino in the US and there was a loud, annoying, boastful Texan showing off and generally being a nuisance.
Packer asked him “How much are you worth?” and the Texan replied swaggeringly “$250million dollars.”
Packer pulled out a coin and said: “I’ll toss you for it.”
Apparently that shut up the Texan pretty quickly.