By PatrickBlennerhassett
Jul 13 2007
Dangerous Mind
Hypocrisy reared its ugly head this past Saturday as I sat there watching the Live Earth concerts that flooded my TV screen. Massive shows featuring nearly every imaginable act took place all over the world to support Al Gore’s campaign against global warming.
The whole time I kept thinking “How much gas and electricity are they burning to bring these concerts to the public?”
Back home an Idling Control Bylaw had just been passed by Victoria, and the Oak Bay Climate Change Task Force were being busybodies holding meetings on how to ban plastic bags. And once again, I couldn’t help but wonder “How many of the task force drive their cars to meetings, and how much paper are they using in all of these reports?”
We’re missing the point with all these half-baked ideas that will somehow lead us to some environmentally sound utopia of the future. Climate change isn’t being caused by too many plastic bags or ignorant car owners idling their cars for hours on end. No, global warming is caused by four things – fossil fuels, natural gas, coal and petroleum.
Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century, man has relied solely on these four non-renewable resources for power. Not only are greenhouse gases caused by them, they’re also fuelling wars on almost every continent. Dr. Andrew Weaver, a well known UVic climate scientist, said doing the little things like recycling, turning off unused lights and trying to conserve gas are still necessary, but really aren’t combatting either of the two elephants in the room.
“In the grand scheme of things they really don’t do a lot at all,” said Weaver, also a lead author of the international Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “But they are part of the bigger issue with solving climate change. And the two sides to that are technology and behaviour. Putting in better light bulbs isn’t going to have much of an effect. But it’s part of a process where down the road, people will be more open to the alternative measures we need to take when the technology is ready.”
Those alternative measures? Eradicating the internal combustion engine, permanently. The transportation sector needs to undergo a fundamental shift from automobiles that run on gasoline, said Weaver.
“We’ve got to go 90 per cent below the rate we’re at right now by 2050,” he added. “And as the technology allows us to do that we need to have the behavioural changes in place well before that.”
Dr. Lawrence Pitt, research co-ordinator with the UVic’s Integrated Energy Systems agrees with Weaver, but adds “getting rid of the internal combustion engine at this stage is premature in my opinion.”
The other elephant in the room might be easier to tame.
“The production of electricity and heat for our homes, businesses and factories still dominates the energy landscape world-wide,” he said.
Right now China is burning so much coal, powering its thriving economy, it truly does make an Idling Control Bylaw seem like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. Pitt said until developing nations, and first world countries replace traditional forms of energy, global warming isn’t going anywhere.
“I think it’s more likely that notable strides in emission reductions will come first in the area of electricity production,” said Pitt. “Generating low-emission electricity from hydrocarbons such as coal and natural gas by capturing and geologically sequestering the CO2 is becoming more credible. Significant investments in billion-dollar scale projects are on the drawing table in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. Over the next 25 years, this could be the way we build new generating plants, in addition to nuclear and some renewable energy plants such as wind and hydro which are also low-emission technologies.”
Pitt and Weaver point out an interesting fact. Non-renewable resources like hydroelectricity are much better, necessary alternatives, but have their drawbacks.
“Right now in Alberta they have numerous wind farms that are producing energy, but that’s only when it’s windy,” Weaver said. “You can’t just shut off a coal burning plant when it’s windy and switch to wind power, it doesn’t work like that.”
Pitt’s team at IESVic is at the forefront of getting society onto the sustainable energy path. Hydrogen technology, fuel cell science, ways to power our world with vastly renewable resources. And Pitt added we’re still decades from making those necessary leaps and bounds.
“Cost of hydrogen technologies are high and fuel cells are expensive and don’t last long – yet,” he said. “But this is true of any new energy technology. And the signs are good that there will be steady progress in improving on both fronts.”
He explained that carbon-capture technologies produce hydroden as a by-product, leaving hydrogen as a fuel for power generation.
“Maybe when this happens, some of the growing amount of hydrogen can be made available for transportation services just about the time, in say 15 years or so, when fuel cells may be come more wide spread for transportation.”
We should consider ourselves lucky in B.C. About 50 per cent of the province’s electricity is produced by major hydroelectric generating stations on the Columbia and Peace rivers. But we’re an anomaly, blessed with a rich environment. The rest of the world doesn’t have these benefits, and needs other alternatives.
Politicians are the people we’re looking to for leadership. Al Gore, the City of Victoria, Oak Bay’s Climate Change Task Force. It’s a great way to give peace of mind to the blissfully ignorant as they drive their SUVs to public meetings, sipping on Starbuck’s lattes, taking about banning the terribly villainous plastic bag.
But it’s all missing the point. Researches and scientists have the answers, and until we start listening to them, we’re going to be driving down this hypocritical highway for a very long time.
