Engineers declare climate responsibility

Engineering is centre stage in the transformation of our energy and transportation infrastructure to respond to the climate crisis.

Engineer climate action

"Plan A" remains tackling the problem at its source. A major UN climate science report released in South Korea makes it clear that slashing carbon pollution—even drastically—won't be enough to keep Earth from seriously overheating. Crisis management and seven ways to engineer climate are outlined with drawbacks in this article from Phys.org as a menu of "Plan B" geo-engineering solutions.

Direct CO2 capture… and prohibitively expensive and cannot operate at scale. Massive afforestation… and clash with food and biofuel crops. Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage… and scheme in conflict with food crops. Ocean fertilisation… and enhanced weathering.. and expensive to mine and mill. Biochar...and the stability of biochar used as a fertiliser. Solar radiation management … and what scientists call "termination shock"—a sudden warming if the system were to fail.1 

The resolution of tension between options and outcomes is practiced daily by engineering professionals. The CBC reports that as climate change protests ramp up, Australian engineers are pushing for a zero-carbon future. More than 1,000 engineers have joined Engineers Declare, a movement that calls on its members to prioritize sustainability and push their industry toward a low-carbon future.

Jane Hadjion is one of the movement's coordinators and says her peers have a unique responsibility to address climate change.
"We're asking engineers to reassess what they do," she told Day 6 host Brent Bambury.
We're driving an inclusive movement, and we've been using [the] words "just and equitable transition."
So we don't want people to lose their jobs, and if they do lose their jobs, we would like the industry to collectively put its creativity hat on and plan a future where everybody is brought along.2 

Engineers Declare supports that engineering teams have a responsibility to actively support the transition of our economy towards a low carbon future. This begins with honestly and loudly declaring a climate and biodiversity emergency.

Meeting the needs of our society without breaching the earth’s ecological boundaries demands a paradigm shift in our activities and our behaviours. Together with our clients, we will need to design and implement systems, infrastructure and technologies that can contribute to constantly regenerating and self-sustaining economic and ecological systems.
The research and technology exist for us to begin that transformation now, but we need to work together.3 

Engineering teams, in the next decade, are the best equipped professionals in society to assess project merits “by the numbers”. Careers will be created for hundreds of thousands in support of this massive engineering undertaking.

References

1	(2018, October 8). Crisis management: Seven ways to engineer climate - Phys.org. Retrieved November 30, 2019, from https://phys.org/news/2018-10-crisis-ways-climate.html
2	(2019, October 25). As climate change protests ramp up, Australian engineers are .... Retrieved November 30, 2019, from https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/engineers-take-on-climate-change-u-s-nukes-in-turkey-raptors-uprising-spider-web-art-irl-witches-and-more-1.5333393/as-climate-change-protests-ramp-up-australian-engineers-are-pushing-for-a-zero-carbon-future-1.5333408
3	(n.d.). Australian Engineers Declare Climate and Biodiversity .... Retrieved November 30, 2019, from https://engineersdeclare.org.au/

Populism Rainforest and Immaturity

The burning of the forests of the Amazon rainforest is properly raising concerns by governments and people around the world.

'Our lungs are on fire' is the headline from BBC Newsnight. The populist president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, protests the involvement of outsiders in what he believes is Brazil’s domain. Frank Graves offers a reminder why Canadians need to wake up about populism that typically doesn’t solve the problems that it’s supposed to solve. It’s mainly bombast and rhetoric (“For the People”) but little of positive substance although from the past there have been horrifying historical conclusions. It tends to be xenophobic, nativist, and mistrustful.

At the same time, ignoring the problem or sneering at it as deplorable and wrong-headed is ineffectual. That merely strengthens the emotional engagement of those drawn to this force, and denies the empirical reality that most of those drawn to populism’s outlook are the losers in the new economic machinations of hyper-globalization, automation, and lingering neo-liberalism and the withering of the middle-class dream of shared prosperity.1

Eliane Brum, writing in the Guardian, comments that in Bolsonaro’s burning Brazilian Amazon, all our futures are being consumed. In 2019, we are witnessing the beginning of a new, disastrous chapter. The area of trees being cleared has surged this year. In July, the deforestation rate was an area the size of Manhattan every day, a Greater London every three weeks. This month, fires are incinerating the Amazon at a record rate, almost certainly part of a scorched-earth strategy to clear territory. Why is this happening now? Because of a change in power.

A predatory form of politics called Bolsonarism has assumed nearly total, and totalitarian, power in Brazil. President Jair Bolsonaro’s chief project is to create more ruins in the Amazon forest, methodically and swiftly. This is why, for the first time since Brazil became a democracy again, it effectively has a minister against the environment. For more than 30 years no environment minister has enjoyed the same autonomy as Ricardo Salles. He is a gofer for agribusiness, which is responsible for the majority of the deaths in the fields and forests, and Brazil’s greatest destructive force. The landowners lobby has always been part of Brazil’s government, formally or not. But today, this has reached a new level. They are not just in the government, they are the government.2 

Manuela Andreoni, Letícia Casado and Ernesto Londoño, writing in the NY Times, report that the Brazilian government is struggling to contain growing global outrage over its environmental policies, which have paved the way for runaway deforestation of the world’s largest rainforest.

The fires, many intentionally set, are spreading as Germany and Norway appear to be on the brink of shutting down a $1.2 billion conservation initiative for the Amazon.
Concern over the environmental policies of President Jair Bolsonaro, which have prioritized the interests of industries that want greater access to protected lands, has also put in jeopardy a trade agreement the European Union and a handful of South American nations struck in June, following decades of negotiations.
“The ongoing forest fires in Brazil are deeply worrying,” the European Commission said in a statement on Thursday. “Forests are our lungs and life support systems.”3 

Aristos Georgiou, in a Newsweek article, notes that experts are warning the recent spike in wildfires is likely the result of human activities.

"This is without any question one of only two times that there have been fires like this [in the Amazon,]" ecologist Thomas Lovejoy told National Geographic. "There's no question that it's a consequence of the recent uptick in deforestation."
Recently released INPE data has shown that Amazon deforestation rates have risen to the point where around three soccer fields of tree cover are being lost every minute, The Guardian reported. In fact, the figures show that in July this year, deforestation had increased by nearly 300 percent in comparison to the same month in 2018.4 

Aylin Woodward writes for Business Insider that blazes in the Amazon are so big they can be seen from space. One map shows the alarming scale of the fires.

Source: https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5d5ef0e39563f4384f698e2a-750-549.jpg

The "lungs of the planet" are burning at a record rate: The Brazilian Amazon has experienced more than 74,000 fires this year, whereas last year's total was about 40,000.About 10,000 of the 2019 fires have started in the past couple of weeks.Some of these fires were started by farmers and loggers seeking to use Amazon land for industrial or agricultural purposes.But once blazes start, hot temperatures and dry conditions because of climate change enable the flames to spread farther and faster.These satellite images, along with a map of the fires, show the scale of the burning.5

Returning to the warning about populist government, the article in the Guardian about the state of the Italian democracy quotes citizens who describe populist politicians as vulgar, irresponsible, opportunistic, and immature.

Vulgar, irresponsible, opportunistic, immature. These are just some of the adjectives beachgoers in Santa Severa, a town near Rome, used to describe the motley crew of politicians at the centre of Italy’s latest political drama.
“I’m bewildered,” said Mirella Castracane-Mombelli as she read a newspaper at a beach bar on Friday morning.
“This situation shows that our political institutions are inadequate and do not represent us. They are all just opportunistic. Sergio Mattarella is the only one with a sense of duty and correctness, the only one.”
President Mattarella’s speech to the nation on Thursday night was brief but clear: either Italy’s main political parties come up with a strong new government by Tuesday, or he will call fresh elections.6 

Canadian and American voters need to use their critical thinking skills to avoid giving political support to the self serving populists in our democracies.

References

1	(2017, March 13). Populist anger is real, and Canada had better wake up - The Globe .... Retrieved July 15, 2019, from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/populist-anger-is-real-and-canada-had-better-wake-up/article34268031/
2	(2019, August 23). In Bolsonaro's burning Brazilian Amazon, all our futures are being .... Retrieved August 23, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/23/amazon-rainforest-fires-deforestation-jair-bolsonaro
3	(2019, August 22). Amazon Rain Forests Are on Fire, and Brazil Faces a Global Backlash .... Retrieved August 23, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/world/americas/brazil-amazon-fires-bolsonaro.html
4	(2019, August 22). How Did the Amazon Rainforest Fires Start? - Newsweek. Retrieved August 23, 2019, from https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-rainforest-fires-start-1455685
5	(2019, August 21). The blazes in the Amazon are so big they can be seen from space .... Retrieved August 23, 2019, from https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-fires-satellite-images-map-of-rainforest-blazes-2019-8
6	(2019, August 23). 'They do not represent us': Italians despair over state of politics | World .... Retrieved August 23, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/23/they-do-not-represent-us-italians-despair-politics

We have disrupted a cycle essential to all life.

Humans have disrupted a cycle essential to all life. Doctors and economists may seem like strange partners.

Christopher Ragan, Director, Max Bell School of Public Policy, McGill University and Courtney Howard, Clinical associate professor, Department of Family Medicine, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary spend their days working on very different problems in very different settings. But climate change has injected a common and urgent vocabulary into our work. We find ourselves agreeing both about the nature of the problem and the best solution. It’s essential that we put a price on carbon pollution.

Emergency physician Edward Xie has worked in Toronto for over 10 years. Lately, he’s seen more patients anxious about tick bites. It’s no wonder. A recent medical study shows a fivefold increase in Lyme disease cases in Ontario between 2012 and 2017 as ticks expand their habitat northward.
Dr. Xie also notices more cases of heat exhaustion and dehydration in summer months — particularly among elderly and low-income individuals who lack adequate housing. In Toronto alone, heat already contributes to an estimated 120 deaths each year. The city expects that number to grow.1

Doctors and economists agree. Climate change is here, it’s getting worse, and the best time to do something about it is right now. One way or another, we are paying the costs of climate change — in sick days and lost wages, rising health care costs and home insurance rates, and a less stable climate for the next generation. And we’re still adding new charges to our bill. Both professions agree: we must act.

In a new open letter, more than 3,500 economists state that climate change is “a serious problem” calling for immediate action. The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change research collaborative, which includes doctors and economists, agrees that adequately pricing carbon could be the single most important treatment for climate change.
Economics has a very clear prescription for these challenges: carbon pricing. In the same way that penicillin treats an infection, carbon pricing can help fight climate change. It effectively targets the root of the problem and there’s a mountain of evidence that it works.2 

Several Canadian medical organizations issued a call to all federal political parties to act on climate change, urging serious treatment for what the World Health Organization calls “greatest health threat in the 21st century.”

References

1	(2019, June 30). COMMENTARY: Why doctors argue 'carbon pricing' can 'cure' climate .... Retrieved June 30, 2019, from https://globalnews.ca/news/5428375/climate-change-carbon-tax/
2	(2019, June 24). Climate change puts health at risk and economists have the right .... Retrieved June 30, 2019, from http://theconversation.com/climate-change-puts-health-at-risk-and-economists-have-the-right-prescription-118797

Political platforms missing push for carbon price by oil industry

As 2019 begins, some political storms appear to be developing over carbon pricing. These articles indicate that the political fight is out of step with oil industry direction and long standing scientific and ethical concerns.

Price on Carbon

Deborah Gyapong reports that the political battle in Canada over a price on carbon threatens to disrupt the continuity that Pope Francis declares in Laudato Si is essential because policies related to climate change and environmental protection cannot be altered with every change of government.

 In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis said regardless of which policies governments adopt, “continuity is essential, because policies related to climate change and environmental protection cannot be altered with every change of government. Results take time and demand immediate outlays which may not produce tangible effects within any one government’s term.”
Gunn says the Liberals have adopted the same greenhouse gas emissions target of the previous Conservative government.
“There’s no indication we’ve reduced our emissions yet, and I don’t see them as having a plan that’s going to work,” he said. “Frankly none of the recent governments have brought us close to achieving the promised goals.”
That is unlikely to improve, said Philip Cross, former chief economic analyst with Statistics Canada and a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an Ottawa-based think tank.
“If it becomes an election issue, it will be entirely because of symbolism,” he said. “The Liberals are saying, ‘See, we’re taking some action however small and unimportant. It’s hard for the Liberals to pretend they’re being virtuous” when all serious economists say you need a tax of $100 “before you get dramatic meaningful change in people’s behaviour.”
Last July, the CCCB released a joint document with the United Church on climate change. Shaped “profoundly” by Laudato Si’, it affirmed the need to actively promote “a greater reverence for creation and to teach that Earth itself is holy.”1

Monica Ell-Kanayuk connects the work of Inuit for decades on the effects of climate change to the proposals that emerged from Katowice. She notes that ideology is a serious obstacle in making progress.

 Inuit have been bringing this message to the world for decades. This is partly why my reaction to the “emergency debate” in the House of Commons in the fall in reaction to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s “Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5 degrees C” was to say, “the debate was 30 years too late.”
If you took note of the news that emerged from Katowice, 11 is the number of years this planet has to avert catastrophic climate change. But tell that to the people who have recently lost their homes to “fires, floods, or hurricanes of the century.” These extreme weather events will become more common as the planet warms. Without radical change in the way we generate and use energy in efforts to reduce the output of carbon dioxide, extreme weather will only get worse.
Radical action means transformational change over the next decade, in an urgent way. To me the use of the word “emergency” by the House of Commons means we are all in an emergency. It’s an emergency that should transcend party lines, and especially ideology. From an Inuit perspective, the ideologies linked to partisan politics is foreign to us in our traditional knowledge, and in modern times we don’t have political parties in our legislatures in Nunavut, Nunatsiavut, and the Northwest Territories.2

Tyler Dawson from the National Post looks at the legal battle for authority over carbon tax in Canada set to start in 2019.

 “There is no free standing federal jurisdiction over the environment or pollution,” says Saskatchewan’s factum.
But the federal government says Saskatchewan, by being intransigent on carbon pricing, risks affecting British Columbia because climate change has global effects.
Lawyers for the Liberal government, a tad opaquely, draw a line between Saskatchewan’s refusal to implement a carbon tax and the fact that, annually, large swaths of British Columbia catch on fire and burn down.
The Saskatchewan government rejects this: “The greenhouse effect of a megaton of emissions from Saskatchewan upon British Columbia, for example, is no different than it is upon Timbuktu.”3

Charles Lane considers California wildfires, intense tropical storms,and increased carbon dioxide emissions as he offers the opinion that the political science of climate change is where the trouble resides.

 This year, California recorded its deadliest wildfire in state history. The combined intensity and duration of the Atlantic and eastern Pacific oceans’ tropical storms and hurricanes reached a new recorded high. A group of researchers reported that worldwide fossil-fuel-related carbon dioxide emissions are projected to hit 37.1 billion tons in 2018, yet another annual record.
It’s time to take a clear-eyed look at the science behind these developments — the political science.
The data show that, for all the evidence that climate change is real, manmade and dangerous, and despite wide public acceptance of those propositions, people in the United States do not necessarily want to stop climate change, in the sense of being willing to pay the cost — which is the only sense that really matters.4

Umair Irfan clarifies the mystery of the support by Exxon for efforts to put a price on carbon.

 But it’s a significant move from a company with a decades-long history of studying climate change, misleading the public about it, and funding organizations that deny climate change even exists.
Exxon has actually endorsed a carbon tax before, but now the company is putting some money behind the policy: a $1 million donation to Americans for Carbon Dividends, a Republican-led lobbying effort for a carbon tax. (Exxon did not respond to a request for comment.)
There’s some debate about whether this is a cynical delay tactic, a show of genuine concern for the environment, or an act of rational self-interest in a changing energy landscape. (Or as the Onion put it, “ExxonMobil CEO Depressed After Realizing Earth Could End Before They Finish Extracting All The Oil.”)
But what’s gone largely unnoticed is that Exxon’s proposal comes with a massive catch: In exchange for a tax, the company wants immunity from all climate lawsuits in the future.
Cities across the United States are currently suing oil companies to make them pay for damages wrought by climate change, which could put companies like Exxon on the hook for billions of dollars in payouts.5

Amy Harder reports after a whirlwind week in Katowice, Poland, where Conoco announced it is also funding a political push for a carbon tax. Conoco is also joining a connected initiative, called the Climate Leadership Council, whose corporate members include Exxon, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Total.

 The U.S. policy that Conoco, Exxon and several other energy companies back also sends money back to consumers. Supporters say that’s an important distinction. In a Washington state carbon pricing initiative that voters just rejected, the money would have been mostly used to fund clean energy.
With its funding of the tax push, Conoco is also joining a connected initiative, called the Climate Leadership Council, whose corporate members include Exxon, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Total.6

The political battles that might try to make climate change policy a ballot box issue seem to be out of step with the decisions being taken by the oil industry giants and the ethical guidance from Pope Francis and Inuit leaders.

References

1	(2019, January 9). Climate change caught in political battle over carbon tax. Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://www.catholicregister.org/item/28738-climate-change-caught-in-political-battle-over-carbon-tax
2	(2019, January 8). Let's remember: climate change is not ideological, it's fact - The Hill .... Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://www.hilltimes.com/2019/01/07/lets-remember-climate-change-not-ideological-fact/182353
3	(2019, January 2). With legal battle over carbon tax set to start in 2019, here are the major .... Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/with-legal-battle-over-carbon-tax-set-to-start-in-2019-here-are-the-major-players-arguments
4	(2018, December 10). Opinion | It's time to look at the (political) science behind climate change. Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-time-to-look-at-the-political-science-behind-climate-change/2018/12/10/f1787070-fc96-11e8-862a-b6a6f3ce8199_story.html
5	(2018, October 18). Exxon is lobbying for a carbon tax. There is, obviously, a catch. - Vox. Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://www.vox.com/2018/10/18/17983866/climate-change-exxon-carbon-tax-lawsuit
6	(2018, December 17). Axios Generate: ConocoPhillips joins carbon tax push. Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-generate-bcae2461-6151-4e1c-97bb-29807aac5d68.html