we\'re fucked

Kent Cancels Kyoto!

In doom on January 5, 2012 at 4:36 pm

Tells Tuvalu: ‘Boo-Hoo’, Dances Electric Boogaloo

Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent, glowering menacingly. Photo credit: Rajesh Jantilal, AFP, Getty Images, File, Edmonton Journal

Alex Perala
The Reckoner

Here at the Reckoner, we like silly headlines. And we hate pollution! Which is why we can’t let the old news of Canada’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol pass us by without at least some comment. So here it is.

To many environmentalists, the news came as a huge disappointment. The Kyoto Protocol is the world’s only legally binding carbon emissions treaty; at the moment, there is no alternative, beyond the empty rhetoric of politicians trying to fool young people into thinking they have a future. So it’s a step back.

Of course, there are many who believe that Kyoto wouldn’t solve any problems anyway, that its targets are far too low to make success meaningful, and that debate over it is therefore moot. China’s commitments to Kyoto’s targets were strictly voluntary, and the U.S. was not bound by the treaty either – and these are two of the biggest polluters in the world.

But there is a symbolic significance to the Kyoto Protocol – and Canada’s withdrawal from it – that shouldn’t be ignored. Kyoto represented an ideal, a shared commitment among various factions of humanity to ensuring a sustainable future. It was an acknowledgment of the suffering that many countries of the Global South would experience as a consequence of the environmental rapaciousness of the prosperous North. It represented compassion, hope. It wasn’t perfect, but it was something.

And what does withdrawal from the treaty signify?

For withdrawal apologists, it’s simply realism. Adherence to the treaty would have been difficult and costly. Impractical. Peter Kent, Canada’s environmental minister, said that the cost of meeting Kyoto’s targets would be $13.6 billion. “We believe that a new agreement that will allow us to generate jobs and economic growth represents the way forward,” he said. It’s a variation of the American pioneering spirit – the idea that this is a problem we can tackle with ingenuity and aplomb, and if we play things right, not only will it not cost us anything, but we will actually create jobs and make money in the process.

But what if a new agreement can’t promote economic growth? What if we can’t mitigate climate change without making economic sacrifices? Should we then just not bother with it? Is it not worth it?

Nobody is going to admit it, but I think that for some political leaders and business elites, this actually is the underlying logic – That it isn’t worth it. We know that there are things we can do to mitigate climate change, and we know that if we don’t do them the consequences will be catastrophic – but they won’t be catastrophic for everyone, everywhere. At least, not for a very long time. Certainly, those who are old enough to currently be in positions of power will not see the worst effects of climate change, and they are the ones with the most wealth to lose under any kind of onerous emissions-reduction regime. Many such people believe, perhaps correctly, that they will barely feel the effects of climate change, if it all; if anyone is going to suffer in the near future, it will be someone else, far away.

At the end of the Durban conference, the negotiator for Tuvalu – a low-lying island that is certain to flood in the near future due to the effects of climate change – asserted that for “a vulnerable country” like his, Canada’s withdrawal from Kyoto was “an act of sabotage on our future.”

But they’re down in the Pacific, south of the Equator, and we’re up here. Kyoto “is in the past”, and different countries will have to deal with climate change in different ways. It will be hard on some, sure. But it won’t be bad for everyone.

The permafrost in northern Canada is melting. We can build cottages there.

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Windmills and You

In green energy on December 1, 2011 at 10:23 am

Toronto wind turbine in Exhibition Place - Stuart Murray

James Byrne

The Reckoner

Wind powered generation has become a hot topic of public discussion in Ontario for the past half decade. The province of Ontario has adopted a strategy for climate change mitigation that includes the development of wind power as a main component of its energy policy. As a way to circumvent the use of coal generated electricity, which produces greenhouse gases and contributes to the effects of climate change, the provincial government has deemed that renewable energy will become the main energy producers to the electrical grid in the decades to come. This decree has spurred the proliferation of wind farms throughout the southern portion of the province. The rapid construction of wind turbines in various places has initiated a strong anti-wind mill response with many different issues of contention for their removal. The strongest outcry by the anti-wind mill faction has been over concerns of serious and adverse health effects reported by some people whose properties back onto wind turbine lots. This has become the main rallying cry of the anti-wind mill movement. I want to defuse this issue that wind power is a deadly pariah of energy production but a great tool to combat global warming. I believe that the strong opposition to wind generated electricity is a simple case of NIMBYism manifesting itself in mostly rural districts unaccustomed to rapid development or tall things (turbines can be 10 storeys high!).

To be succinct, as of 2011 there has been no direct connection between health related illnesses due to turbines. The chief medical officer of Ontario Dr. Arlene King tabled a report, The Potential Health Impact of Wind Turbines  in 2010, and found that there was not a direct causal link between turbine noise and health effects. The report cited peer-reviewed literature as a determining factor in Dr. King’s conclusion. The anti-windmill naysayers have claimed that people living in close approximation are suffering from a wide variety of symptoms such as: severe headaches, tinnitus, heart palpitations, anxiety, depression, and sleep deprivation to name just a few. How can these people be ill when people living in other regions or countries have not cited the same claims.? It would be logical to find a huge backlash in Europe where 14 500~ wind mills have been built compared to Ontario’s 700. I have not found any such health reports submitted to the EU as of yet. That is why I believe that many of the adverse health effects are due to biological changes in the body and that have happened at the same time as construction or maybe people are projecting their fears and making themselves sick in the process.

This is what I have found thus far.

All turbines in Ontario follow the World Health Organization 2009 edict that residential sound limits should be no greater than 40dB (a decibel being the measurement for loudness). At the 550m turbine setback boundary from any surrounding residential household, the sound generated can be no louder than the prescribed 40dB. That noise is typical of the sound in a library or office chatter. The same noise restriction of 40dB has been the standard placed upon all industrial operations in the province since the 1970′s. Also, the 550m setback limit is noted as being the most stringent in all of North America which again calls into question why people are describing adverse health claims while others in different parts of world are apparently not. Infrasound, sound below the human hearing range of 20Hz, has been credited by some members of the anti-wind turbine movement as to be an unheralded culprit for the described illnesses. The government in its review of the literature had not come across any evidence that supported the claim of infrasound. Infrasound can be emitted by all types of sources found within the environment like fast-moving rivers or the blowing of the wind. Since the wind blows many Ontarians around, and since rivers are found everywhere, this line of argument was deemed contradictory.

The only true danger from turbines is the potential for ice accumulating on the blades which can then be thrown a great distance. Being crushed or impaled by a piece of ice is a frightening thought but yet again the operators can turn the turbine off and de-ice it if necessary. Lastly, people suffering from epilepsy have a greater risk than anybody else in the surrounding community due to the threat of an epileptic episode caused by the flicker of the blades. The report does blatantly state that even at a limit of 40dB the sound emitted can be deemed “annoying“ to some but not enough to cause physical symptoms as some people claim. Ironically, the authour of the study found levels of reported adverse health claims decreased when direct economic benefits occurred to the community with a wind farm than ones that did not. This placebo effect can be attributed to either a turbine manufacturing plant, a college program teaching installation, or some other factor. It seems that having direct contact with windmills has a soothing effect on the body, kind of like the effects dolphins have with people who have debilitating diseases (but not as frisky as dolphins).

When compared to other types of power generation like coal, gas, or nuclear, wind power has a much greater appeal to me to have in your backyard skyline then any of the aforementioned. They can directly stop the increase of CO2 emissions and thus aid in slowing down climate change by having them as a primary energy source. It is smart policy to institute turbines into an electrical grid. The detractors will say otherwise. There is nothing inherently evil about them. They are just misunderstood creatures of power production. With the sheen of nuclear battered after Three Mile Island and then destroyed in the wake of Chernobyl and again in Fukushima, the world is rightfully justified in taking precaution in any new forms of energy production. Wind power is not a disaster waiting to happen: it’s safe, climate friendly (a little to friendly), reliable, and cheap. How can we go wrong with this? There should be an IMBY movement to want to have wind power in everybody’s backyard. Hell, I’ll start it myself. I’ll take two windmills, a roof of solar panels, and a mini-nuclear reactor. Take that, neighbours!

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Peanut Production Pummeled!

In civil unrest, doom, food security on November 21, 2011 at 5:22 pm

Peanut Butter Pinched in Heat-and-Drought Sandwich; Jam ‘Still Tastes Great On Its Own’: Jam Producers 

Alex Perala
The Reckoner

The dismal tide of runaway climate change has washed yet another harbinger of doom upon humanity’s shores: The price of peanut butter is set to increase dramatically, spurring tough-talking journalists to ask a panicked public, ‘How would you deal with a peanut butter price jump?’

How could this happen?

For starters, there has been a horrible drought in Texas – maybe you’ve heard? Well Texas produces a lot of peanuts. And Georgia produces even more, and it was affected by the drought as well. It’s the largest peanut producer in America, and this past summer it, too, endured record-breaking heat and a terrible dearth of rain.

One Georgian farmer, a three-decade veteran of the field, commented on the particular severity of the drought: “It was so dry you didn’t have any moisture in the soil to make the seed even rot. It just laid there in the soil. I’ve never seen that before.”

So farmers are suffering due to the catastrophic effects of a warming climate – we’ve heard all about that kind of thing before. But this is also going to affect consumers in a significant way: Americans will already have to face devastating peanut butter price hikes this year, and Kraft Canada plans a price increase of 35% on its peanut butter at the beginning of 2012.

“We’re committed to continuing to offer consumers the great taste and high quality Kraft peanut butter they enjoy and thus the increase,” one Kraft employee said through gritted teeth and with a forced smile, beads of flop-sweat forming on her twitching brow.*

Of course, this offers little consolation for the hard-working parents who are toiling away to provide their children with the lives they deserve. What about them? What about their children? Won’t someone please think of the children? The impact of this price increase on families could be devastating.

“We probably won’t be happy about it but we will still buy it,” one mother told a reporter in a discussion about the crisis. “As picky as children are with food, you will buy what they eat.”

Indeed. But how long can such a situation be tolerated? And how do you measure the true cost of such a disaster – how do you measure the sorrow, the pain? It adds up, and it isn’t peanuts.

Oh, btw, there’s going to be mass extinction in the oceans “within a single generation” – you can learn more about that here.

*The visage of Ms Stephanie Minna Cass is entirely the product of speculation on the part of the author.

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