It’s not just time that’s running out

Climate change is a major problem. It’s huge. It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever faced as a species and is going to cause unimaginable damage to far too many other species apart from us. It’s something that we have a chance to fight back again though, which I really think you should do immediately. You can see my post from Monday here and act on climate change by getting in touch with key government officials.

But.

There is another problem. One that tends to be somewhat overlooked, but also feeds into and from climate change.

Peak Oil.

Is this a bigger problem then climate change? For me, I suppose it’s a matter of perspective. On the one hand, climate change virtually every species on earth.  Peak oil, on the other hand, has a direct effect only on humans.

I’ll ignore that for the moment.

As I mentioned in my post on Monday, there was a speaker from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas Ireland (ASPO), Richard O’Rourke at the Union of Students of Ireland’s green training day last Saturday. He was talking to us about peak oil and had some very interesting points.

Oil is running out. Of the 70 oil-producing nations in the world, 60 are producing as much oil as they are ever likely to produce. They are at the plateau of their production levels. The International Energy Agency is predicting that oil production will have peaked by 2020. The world consumes 30 billion barrels of oil a year. Ireland imports 66 millions barrels of oil a year. Ireland’s biggest use of oil is on transport.

Now, not to state the obvious but once oil is gone, it’s totally gone. The worst part of all this is that oil has a very high energy density. It is incredibly difficult to replace, because it is so high-energy.

Photo owned by therichbrooks (cc)

Richard said that it is predicted that two things will happen in or around 2011/2012. The first is that Ireland’s economy will properly begin to grow again. In line with this and the recovering economies of the rest of the world, the second thing to happen will be a rapid spike in the price of oil. This, he said, is forecast to plunge Ireland into a second recession. He called this a ‘double dip’.

Oh dear. Well, once again there are plenty of things we can (and have to) do. We need massive investment in the electricity infrastructure in the West of Ireland, as this is where we’re going to be conducting most of our wind and wave electricity. We need to immediately, as a country, stop being so dependent on oil and change what we’re using oil on. Use up all the oil now and there’ll be none left to use in emergency generators when blackouts leave hospitals in darkness and when we really need it.

Again, this is only going to work if passionate people get involved. Tell your friends about peak oil. People don’t like discussing this ’cause they deem it ‘negative’ and ‘depressing’. To them, I say “Tough shit”. This is not the time for people to moan about something being unpleasant, or difficult to handle.

If this does not happen now then by the time we start to make the necessary changes it will be far too expensive. Think about it this way:

In order to harness wind energy, we need to build a wind turbine. In order to build a wind turbine, we need oil for the construction and transportation process (among many other things, but we’ll keep things simple). Today, oil is at a relatively low price. In 10 years, with minimal investment in alternative technologies and no reductions in consumption, oil will be extortionately expensive. The result is, then, that building a wind turbine now will be significantly cheaper in 10 months than in 10 years

Act now:

• E-mail your local TD, as well as John Gormley (Minister for the Environment and Local Government), Eamon Ryan (Minister for Energy, Communications and Natural Resources) Brian Cowen (An Taoiseach) and Brian Lenihan (Minister for Finance) to express your concern over the potential economic and social effects of peak oil
• Plan to cut down your oil usage
• Start cutting down your oil usage!

Richard pointed us to a number of resources throughout his talk. Here are the ones I noted:

• worldvaluesurvey.org (for the graph showing no correlation between reported happiness and being in a highly material society)
• David McWilliams’ book Peak Everything
• Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
• theoildrum.com
• The Party’s Over

 

Why This is More Important than Anything Else

I’ve been out of the environmental loop for a while. It’s probably been a little over a year. It was a poor choice to forget about this part of my life.

Yesterday I was at the Union of Students of Ireland’s (USI)  ‘green training’.  We had John Gormley, TD, Green Party leader and Minister for the Environment and Local Government in to talk to us, among other speakers. It was interesting listening to him, specifically about the meeting in Copenhagen next month. This world summit of the UN will be discussing climate change and will aim to agree legally-binding carbon emission reduction targets. I say aim, because on of the major problems it will face will be an unwillingness of countries (specificly what are known as World North countries, ie: more developed nations) to agree to definitive targets.

Due to the length of this process (it takes months to get agreements), the fact that there is a time-lag in the effects of increased carbon levels on our climate (approximately 20 years, if I remember correctly) and the ‘feedback systems’ that our climate has (essentially, once we increase our global average temperature by a certain amount, then no matter how much we reduce our emissions, the temperature will continue to rise)  this meeting in Copenhagen is seen as the world’s last chance to avoid the most serious effects of climate change.

Next year 500,000 will die in the world as a direct result of climate change. Conservative predictions based on a best-case scenario estimate a loss of 20% of the species in Ireland. By 2011, the number of environmental refugees worldwide is estimated to rise to 50 million and up to 1 billion by 2050.

While being slightly over-the-top, this video explain all this quite well (I can’t seem to embed Vimeo videos): Wake Up, Freak Out.

Give it a watch, then come back (the video will open in a new window).

Now, welcome back.

First of all:

Don’t Panic.

We still have time.  What we need is for our voices to be heard. We need action to be taken immediately.

You’ll find below an e-mail I sent to Brian Lenihan (TD, Minister for Finance) and Brian Cowen (TD, An Taoiseach). I also sent it to the Irish Times and the Irish Independent. I urge you to do something similar. John Gormley, as Minister for the Environment, can do very little if he does not have the support from the cabinet. The most effective way to influence politicians is to remind them how they got their job (we voted them in) and I’m pretty sure it’s about time for climate change to be top of their agenda. I hate to say this, but climate change is more important than any other issue in Ireland.

So, here’s the letter. Paraphrase if you wish, then e-mail it to brian.lenihan@oireachtas.ie, brian.cowen@oireachtas.ie and john.gormley@oireachtas.ie

A brief letter about Copenhagen

Dear an Taoiseach, Minister Lenihan and Minister Gormley

I write to you today to on the issue of climate change, probably the most important issue the world has ever faced.

As a young Irish person, a European and a citizen of this world I’m clearly very much in favour of getting as strong a deal in Copenhagen as possible. This e-mail, then, is a note of support for getting Ireland, the EU and the world to agree to the necessary changes. By necessary changes, I primarily mean the reduction in carbon emissions that will keep us within the “safe” change in global average temperature. This should not be limited by a economical circumstance; there’s no point preserving the economy if we don’t preserve the environment first.

Not acting now means environmental, social, political and economical devastation with 40 years (at most). I hope to still be around at this point in time and certainly don’t want it to be my legacy. I’d rather not have to explain to my children and grandchildren why we live in a world that, instead of facing up to its responsibilities, made the foolish and selfish decision to close our eyes and minds to the problem.

Every developed nation in the world needs a massive reduction in carbon emissions. Ireland needs to start reducing its emissions immediately. We need to drop to 5% of our current emissions. This is not going to be an easy task, but the consequences of not taking such an action are devastating, from both an economical and environmental point of view. Acting now means we still have the potential to take advantage of the massive opportunities in the green economy. Not acting means not being able to afford such luxuries in the future.

Climate change is more important than NAMA, Lisbon, the pothole down the road, my education, public health services, low tax rates, or any other issue I care about or can think of.

This process is too important to wait for a direct mandate. This needs to be acted on immediately, with foresight, strength and determination. When negotiations are underway in Copenhagen, we need to be sure that our future interests are being served, not those of short-term governments, corporations and individuals.

Yours, in hope,

Conor Pendergrast

All this, of course, ignores the looming elephant in the room of peak oil. There was also a speaker from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas Ireland (ASPO), Richard O’Rourke. That was a terrifying talk (to be honest), but did end on a word of hope. It’s going to take me a day or two to come to grips with that topic and articulate it in to a post, so bear with me on that and come back tomorrow and Wednesday or Thursday.