Resilience

Pathways to Resilient Communities

Engaging communities to plan for future shocks.
Te Papa, Telstra-Clear Suite, 7th and 8th March 2009

Our World... and Wellington are facing a broad range of serious and growing threats: increasing oil prices and peak oil, climate change and erratic weather patterns, rising food prices, energy shortages, transportation strikes and economic downfalls.

Representatives from Wellington organisations with a strong interest in supporting the development of sustainability are holding a “conversation event” to explore issues related to the development of a Resilient Community Plan for the Wellington Region. The symposium offers councillors and council offices the opportunity to enter into a conversation with a range of active community groups and NGOs including the growing "transition town" movement, and business owners and commentators,
Once we have identified our community’s most important vulnerabilities, then we can move onto possible responses. This may include developing mechanisms to ensure that building community resilience is built into strategic planning processes, including reviewing community outcomes and Long Term Community Plans (LTCPs).

Resilience is the ability of a system, from communities to whole economies, to hold together and maintain their ability to function in the face of forced change and shocks from outside. The symposium will look at the importance of both planning for outside shocks; and building, or rebuilding, resilience communities to withstand those shocks, alongside current efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate climate change. The event will include a limited amount of visionary resilient communities concept information including international examples. The event will be held in the Te Papa, Telstra-Clear Suite, 7th and 8th March 2009.

A dialogue for Action

Earth has entered a new era, one in which humans are the dominant force. The uncertainty, magnitude and speed of change in the Earth’s systems is without precedent since the retreat of the last ice age -
11,000 years ago - or possibly since the last permian period 250 million years ago......

the ticking time bomb of climate change, droughts, fires and torrential downpours... shrinking fisheries and rising oil prices, water tables drawn down to their limits.

Today it is all coming to head, just as predicted in the Limits to Growth and the Club of Rome Reports in the 1970s. Costs are spiralling as fuel now directly competes with food production.

We are facing a planetary emergency, and the development of Resilient Communities is the only effective survival strategy.

A link to a proposal to help make your community better able to respond to the coming economic shocks from resource depletion, beginning with Peak Oil, can be found below.

Community forums are being organised in many places. A clear statement from your Council in support of developing Community Resilience Plan at the Regional and local Level would help us move more more quickly along this track.

Many aspects of society - transport, agriculture, trade, tourism, and manufacturing, to name just a few - are heavily dependent on oil, and continuing oil price rises, and possible supply shortages may lead to severe impacts on the your region's economy, and widen the gap between rich and poor. Appropriate use and management of such resources will be critical in meeting our lifestyle needs in the future.

Therefore, it is important that each region or district set up a Community Resilience Plan, involving all sectors including community groups, to investigate the effects of oil depletion and oil price rises, and recommend steps that they should take to prepare for and mitigate these impacts.

See Richard Heinberg: *Resilient Communities: A Guide to Disaster Management*

http://www.richardheinberg.com/museletter/192

also

Transition Towns http://www.transitiontowns.org.nz/

Do we look for short term technological fixes, that might allow further growth in the wealth of some nations, including our own? Or do we reduce our ecological footprint to a per capita basis acceptable globally on the long term?

Lets transform our cities into urban islands centred around transport hubs and permaculture gardens, linked with modern communications systems that continue to allow sharing of information.

A decision to follow this course, offers not only great challenges, but great opportunities to forge appropriate technologies and research on how best to live within natural systems, and how to fully engage out communities.

Nelson Mandela said
"People living in poverty have the least access to power to shape policies - to shape their future. But they have the right to a voice. They must not be made to sit in silence as "development" happens around them, at their expense. True development is impossible without the participation of those concerned".

We cannot ensure stable outcomes if other countries continue to consume and expand without regard to natural limits.

".... The rate at which we in rich countries are using up resources is grossly unsustainable. It’s far beyond levels that can be kept up for long or that could be spread to all people. What is not clearly understood is the magnitude of the over-shoot. The reductions required are so big that they cannot be achieved within a consumer-capitalist society. Huge and extremely radical change in systems and culture are necessary" Ted Trainer.

".... if all the world’s people today were to consume resources at the per capita rate we in rich countries do, annual supply would have to be more than six times as great as at present, and if our population were able to increase to billion, it would have to be about ten times as great...

"...the per capita area of productive land needed to supply one (New Zealander) with food, water, settlements and energy is about seven to eight hectares. The US figure is close to 12 hectares. But the average per capita area of productive land available on the planet is only about 1.3 hectares. When the world’s population reaches 9 billion the per capita area of productive land available will be only .9 hectares. In other words, in a world where resources were shared equally we would have to get by on about 13% of the average New Zealand footprint.

"....the greenhouse problem is the most powerful and alarming illustration of the overshoot. The atmospheric scientists are telling us that if we are to stop the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere from reaching twice the pre-industrial level, we have to cut global carbon emissions and thus fossil fuel use by 60% in the short term, and more later. If we did that and shared the remaining energy among 9 billion people, each (New Zealander) would have to get by on about 5% of the fossil fuel now used. And that target, a doubling of atmospheric CO2, is much too high. We’re now 30% above pre-industrial levels and already seeing disturbing climatic effects".

These lines of argument show we must face up to enormous reductions in rich world resource use if we’re to solve the big global problems. This is not possible in a society that’s committed to the affluent lifestyles that require high energy and resource use. We in countries like New Zealand should reduce per capita resource use and environmental impact, to something like one-tenth of their present levels."

Walden Bello also questions whether Capitalism will survive these
challenges.....

WILL CAPITALISM SURVIVE CLIMATE CHANGE? - By Walden Bello

".....In contrast to the Northern elites’ strategy of trying to decouple growth from energy use, a progressive comprehensive climate strategy in both the North and the South must be to reduce growth and energy use while raising the quality of life of the broad masses of people. Among other things, this will mean placing economic justice and equality at the center of the new paradigm.

The transition must be one not only from a fossil-fuel based economy but also from an overconsumption-driven economy. The end-goal must be adoption of a low-consumption, low-growth, high-equity development model that results in an improvement in people’s welfare, a better quality of life for all, and greater democratic control of production.

It is unlikely that the elites of the North and the South will agree to such a comprehensive response. The farthest they are likely to go is for techno-fixes and a market-based cap-and-trade system. Growth will be sacrosanct, as will the system of global capitalism.

Yet, confronted with the Apocalypse, humanity cannot self-destruct. It may be a difficult road, but we can be sure that the vast majority will not commit social and ecological suicide to enable the minority to preserve their privileges. However it is achieved, a thorough reorganization of production, consumption, and distribution will be the end result of humanity’s response to the climate emergency and the broader environmental crisis.

THREAT AND OPPORTUNITY
In this regard, climate change is both a threat and an opportunity to bring about the long postponed social and economic reforms that had been derailed or sabotaged in previous eras by elites seeking to preserve or increase their privileges. The difference is that today the very existence of humanity and the planet depend on the institutionalization of economic systems based not on feudal rent extraction or capital accumulation or class exploitation but on justice and equality.

The question is often asked these days if humanity will be able to get its act together to formulate an effective response to climate change. Though there is no certainty in a world filled with contingency, I am hopeful that it will. In the social and economic system that will be collectively crafted, I anticipate that there will be room for the market. However, the more interesting question is: will it have room for capitalism? Will capitalism as a system of production, consumption, and distribution survive the challenge of coming up with an effective solution to the climate crisis?

(Walden Bello is Senior Analyst with Focus in the Global South)

You, the New Actor

Contraction and convergence and personal carbon allowances
In the past few years, the scientific community has achieved a near-consensus that our energy profligate lifestyles are contributing to a process that threatens future life on earth. The Global Commons Institute has put forward a realistic framework to address this. Based on principles of precaution and equity, the policy of contraction and convergence is already commanding impressive support from the UK Government and in international circles.

When it is calculated that the capacity of the planet to absorb greenhouse gases without serious destabilisation of the climate is finite, any reasonable plan must also support the proposition that the contraction should converge towards an equal distribution. If that capacity is therefore divided by the world's population, each person's fair annual allocation of carbon dioxide emissions cannot be greater than about 1 tonne.

Jeanette Fitzsimon's Green Plan released in April this year, would make major polluters meet the cost of their emissions by forcing them to buy carbon credits on the international market and give them to the Government generating a "kitty" of surplus credits worth about $2.1 billion. This can then be invested in public transport, energy efficiency and tree planting. However, the plan doesn't spell out a route for individuals to take greater responsibility for their emissions.

The Green Party has supported the concept of Contraction and Convergence in the past Now that both National and Labour have moved towards stronger positions on climate concern and appear to be giving qualified support to the Green Plan, it is urgent that we move the debate on one more step.

Clearly, it would be wholly impractical for us as individuals or for the economy to cope with an immediate reduction to the 1 tonne allowance, although it must be achieved as soon as possible. A year-on-year reduction will be needed. With due warning of each future annual allowance, people can make changes to their home, transport arrangements, and general lifestyle at the least cost and in the way that suits them best. By including all personal transport and household energy use in the allowance, a large proportion of total emissions will be covered. Units of the allowance will be surrendered when gas and electricity bills are paid, petrol is purchased, and air tickets bought. The contribution made by the business, industry, commerce, and public sectors which produce our goods and services can be included at a later date within a wider allowance system.

A key feature of the proposal is buying and selling. Those who lead less energy intensive lives and who invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy are unlikely to use all their allowance. They will then not only be spending less on fuel but will also add to their income by selling their surplus units. The process will be a far more effective driver towards minimising the impact of climate change than attempting to encourage individuals to adopt green practices.

Carbon allowances will act as a parallel currency to real money as well as creating an ecologically virtuous circle. Individuals with low energy use-and therefore low emissions-will have a surplus to sell, while those maintaining high energy use will have to buy this surplus. But the cost of doing so will rise steadily in line with the reduction of the allowance because price will be determined by the availability of the surplus set against the demand for it. In effect, a conserver gains principle will complement the conventional polluter pays principle.

Where does the prime responsibility for the adoption of such a radical but essential transformation of society lie? Of course, only government can ensure that individuals are obliged to exercise their responsibilities in this way. Without action, we will be knowingly handing over a dying planet to the next generation.

It would work like this: The government would allocate to each adult an equal per capita share of the country's emissions that are attributable directly to individuals. The remaining carbon emissions would be auctioned or purchased by government and business in a similar manner to the Green Plan. The UK Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs has written a comprehensive report analysing a variety of different ways of implementing such a plan. The points of contention centre around how comprehensive the emission accounting is, and what level of quotas would be allocated to children, if any. The cost of administration could be similar to that of schemes such as our Flybuys point card, and the net value of the individual emission quotas allocated would be initially only a few hundred dollars. However, carbon prices will rise as the annual allocations diminishes.

So what would happen if each person was financially responsible for his or her own emissions?
Firstly we would find out where our allowance was going: do we drive a big car? do we leave the lights on? If there was strong financial incentive and individual access to the market,
one would see a rapid move away from wasteful to low-carbon lifestyles. People would look for low-carbon products and services to save on their emissions allocations. If there was demand for low-carbon products, entrepreneurs, in turn, would develop and produce them for the market.

Targets

The target of one tonne is already a very challenging one.

The website; HYPERLINK "http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/env_co2_emi_percap-environment-co2-emissions-per-capita"http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/env_co2_emi_percap-environment-co2-emissions-per-capita gives the weighted global average carbon dioxide emissions per capita as 4.2 tonnes per capita (total 24 billion tonnes)... which would imply a global 80% reduction per capita (adopted by institutes such as the Tyndale Foundation) for NZ to reach one tonne emission.

If we are talking about carbon equivalent, which includes the other greenhouse emissions such as Methane, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Nov06) gives CO2 equivalent emissions for NZ of 75.1 million or 18 tonnes per person per year in 2004 (1990 figure: 61.9 million tonnes). To reach one tonne equivalent here in New Zealand, we would need a reduction of 95%, a very challenging figure indeed without worrying about future population growth.

It is worth bearing in mind that the carbon footprint of countries who still have growing populations, is already around under one tonne per capita. If we can tackle the inequalities, then we probably can also tackle the population growth and our emissions.

The aim of caring people, should be to work together as a community to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels in a humane manner...by relearning to live in harmony with nature, increasing our efficiency in energy use, and transferring appropriate technology to low income countries to assist them improve their standard of living, while not increasing their emissions significantly.

The Earth holds (held!) up to 3 trillion barrels of accessible crude oil, the sum of which probably took the last 200 million years to form.
That equates to an average of 15, 000 barrels a year worldwide.
During a 75-year period (i.e. average lifespan of a person) 1, 125, 000 barrels would be available at this rate. With a population of 6.5 billion people, 0.000173077 barrels would be available per person per lifetime.

There are 158.984 litres in a barrel; thus each person would be entitled to burn the grand total of 27.5mL of crude oil during their lifetime – a single bus ride.

A decision to address Limits to growth
Draw out a stepped timetable to reduce emissions in New Zealand
by 95%, approx 1 tonne equivalent GHE per capita

Intelligent management of economic contraction

A foolish management of economic contraction would entail burning the biosphere for alternative fuels; propping up the banks and other financial institutions that created the mortgage mess, without ever re-examining the wisdom of growth-based economics; and responding to human privation and misery with repression and war.
Intelligent management would start with an explicit commitment to redesign the global economy to run with less. We would assess ecosphere resources and identify a humane, equitable path toward gradual reduction in population and total consumption levels. We would focus on those aspects of life that bring us increasing satisfaction without requiring more inputs of energy and materials. We would reacquaint ourselves with the values and virtues of community, self-sufficiency, and modesty. We would redesign our cities to eliminate cars, while developing renewable energy sources and educating a new generation of ecological farmers.
If we handle this well, the medicine of contraction will leave Nature intact and humanity in a state of greater happiness, equity, and peace.
We don't have much choice regarding whether a Depression will ensue. But a great deal depends on how we respond. It's not too soon to start that discussion.
MuseLetter 191 / March 2008 by Richard Heinberg

Background Papers

There are four initial papers/documents that should be regarded as a starting point for any debate on moving towards sustainability.

1: Climate change and trace gases by James Hansen et al 18 May 2007.
also Scientific reticence and sea level rise J E Hansen
(NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies May 2007)

IPCC seriously underestimated the impact of climate change on rising sea levels. The IPCC fourth assessment report had a very conservative figure of maximum 59cm sea level rise by 2100 due to climate change. But they reached this figure after excluding the impacts of ice dynamics in Greenland and West Antarctica because they couldn’t agree on how to model them.

Hanson et al suggest that there is a very serious risk of major ice break up by the end of the century with up to 5 metres of sea level rise. They look at past climate change to argue that the positive feedback loops are overwhelmingly on the side of warming (especially albedo, that is warming melts ice, which exposes water and land, water and land absorb more heat, so get more warming etc). So the warming and cooling are asymmetric - the planet tends to warm faster than it cools.

"Iceberg discharge from Greenland increased markedly over the past 15 years. Mass loss increased from 4–50 cubic km per yr in 1993–1998 to 57–105 cubic km per yr in 1999–2004, based on radar altimeters, with probable losses at the higher ends of those ranges (Thomas et al. 2006). Recent analyses of satellite gravity field data yield a net annual loss of 101 +-16 cubic km per yr during 2003–2005 (Luthcke et al. 2006)…West Antarctica seems to be moving into a mode of significant mass loss (Thomas et al. 2004). Gravity data yielded mass loss of approximately 150 cubic km per yr in 2002–2005 (Velicogna & Wahr 2006). A warming ocean has eroded ice shelves by more than 5 m per yr.

We find it implausible that BAU [business as usual greenhouse emission] scenarios, with climate forcing and global warming exceeding those of the Pliocene, would permit a West Antarctic ice sheet of present size to survive even for a century.

2: Southern Ocean already losing ability to absorb CO2

One of the world's largest carbon sinks has stopped soaking up the carbon
dioxide that humans are pumping into the atmosphere, according to a new
study.

Global warming has caused the Southern Ocean to become windier, churning
up the waters so that they are unable to absorb CO2 at the rate we produce it, the researchers say.

The implications are far-reaching, and once more imply that the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's projections are conservative: temperatures are likely to rise higher than IPCC predicted.

Corinne Le Quéré at the University of East Anglia in the UK, and
colleagues say their study suggests that climate feedback loops – whereby more CO2 in the atmosphere causes warming which in turn releases even more CO2 from the oceans – are happening between 20 and 40 years before they were expected.

"This is serious," says Le Quéré. "All climate models predict that this
kind of feedback will continue and intensify during this century."
The Earth’s carbon sinks absorb about half of all human-produced carbon
emissions. The Southern Ocean is one of the biggest sinks, absorbing 15%
of CO2 emissions. The gas dissolves into the ocean's surface waters and is
stored at cool depths where it is retained far longer than it would be at
the warmer surface. But since 1958, the Southern Ocean has become windier, mixing up the ocean waters and bringing the cool, carbon-laden waters up to the surface, where they release their gas into the atmosphere.

Le Quéré's team found that this is effectively saturating the Southern
Ocean reservoir, so that it is unable to absorb CO2 as quickly as it is being emitted by human activities.

3: Oil experts see supply crisis within five years

The International Energy Agency has predicted a supply crunch in the world's oil markets that could send prices soaring and place a severe dent in global growth.

This report paints a bleak outlook for the global economy with the IEA saying spare capacity in oil production would dry up over the next five years, even as demand continues to jump significantly.

However, world total liquids supply production has already been on a peak plateau since 2006 and is forecast by others to fall off this peak plateau in 2009. As long as demand continues increasing then prices will also continue increasing.

Check out links to Richard Heinberg's NZ tour

RNZ interviews
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/ngts/peak_oil_educator
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/ntn/richard_heinberg

Powerpoint presentation to MP's in the Beehive http://www.greens.org.nz/campaigns/peakoil/HeinbergMPsBriefing.ppt

Video of Auckland lecture
http://www.infonews.co.nz/news.cfm?l=1&t=0&id=7617 52minutes

Wellington talk (audio file first 30 minutes)
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=25134

Other links
www.oildepletionprotocol.org
www.postcarbon.org
www.richardheinberg.com
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2716

4: Peak Coal http://www.odac-info.org/
Currently there is a vigorous debate about fossil-fuel production, and whether it will be sufficient in the future. At the same time, there is an intense effort to predict the contribution to future climate change that will result from consuming this fuel. There has been surprisingly little effort to connect these two. Do we have a fossil-fuel supply problem? Do we have a climate-change problem? Do we have both? Which comes first? We will see that trends for future fossil-fuel production are less than any of the 40 UN scenarios considered in climate-change assessments. The implication is that producer limitations could provide useful constraints in climate modeling. We will also see that the time constants for fossil-fuel exhaustion are about an order of magnitude smaller than the time constants for sea level and sea-level change. This means that to lessen the effects of climate change associated with future fossil-fuel use, reducing ultimate production is more important than slowing it down.

A report just released by the Energy Watch Group concludes that global coal production will peak about 2025.
From the report's Executive Summary, Conclusion and recommendation:
• Global coal reserve data are of poor quality, but seem to be biased towards the high side.
• Production profile projections suggest the global peak of coal production to occur around 2025 at 30 percent above current production in the best case.

There should be a wide discussion on this subject leading to better data in order to provide a reliable and transparent basis for long term decisions regarding the future structure of our energy system.
Also the repercussions for the climate models on global warming are an important issue.
Some of the report's conclusions:
• Data are of poor quality;
• Six countries dominate coal globally (USA, Russia, India, China, Australia, South Africa);
• Fastest reserve depletion in China, USA beyond peak production.

If the report conclusions are correct, this is good news for climate change and bad news for the global economy. The implication is that as natural gas supplies get tight over the next two decades, coal will be unable to replace gas for producing electricty. It also implies that there is no long-term future for producing liquid fuel from coal (see Fischer-Tropsch process, better known as coal-to-liquids).

The three primary take-away conclusions from the newer study are as follows:
• “world proven reserves (i.e. the reserves that are economically recoverable at current economic and operating conditions) of coal are decreasing fast”;
• “the bulk of coal production and exports is getting concentrated within a few countries and market players, which creates the risk of market imperfections”; and
• “coal production costs are steadily rising all over the world, due to the need to develop new fields, increasingly difficult geological conditions and additional infrastructure costs associated with the exploitation of new fields”.

Even if society finds steep voluntary cuts in the use of coal to be economically onerous, there is really no alternative: declines in production will happen anyway, so it is better to cut consumption proactively than wait and be faced with shortages and price volatility later.

The findings of the 2005 USDoE-funded Hirsch report (PDF 1.17MB) (Peak of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management) regarding society’s vulnerability to peak oil apply also to peak coal: time will be needed in order for society to adapt proactively to a resource-constrained environment. A failure to begin now to reduce reliance on coal will mean much greater economic hardship when the peak arrives.

The new information about coal tells us that even if the economic price for carbon reduction is high, we have no choice but to proceed. There is no “business-as-usual” option, even ignoring environmental impacts, given the resource constraints. Nations that are currently dependent on coal - China and the US especially - would be wise to begin reducing consumption now, not only in the interests of climate protection, but also to reduce societal vulnerability arising from dependence on a resource that will soon become more scarce and expensive.

..........Climate Sensitivity

Recall that climate models depend not only on future carbon emissions (which are contingent, as we have just seen, on fossil fuel supplies as well as on energy policy) but also on climate sensitivity. How will the global climate respond to a given additional increment of carbon dioxide? In general, as observations of impacts from Climate Change are being logged, they are tending to show that past assumptions about climate sensitivity have, if anything, been too timid and conservative.

Most climate sensitivity models are now being seen as subject to three problems. First, they tend to assume a linear relationship between atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and global temperature increase, whereas there is mounting evidence that the relationship is actually non-linear. Second, they tend to assume a linear relationship between global temperature increase and actual impacts to ecosystems and human society, whereas there is mounting evidence that this relationship is also non-linear. Third, such models have created a questionable basis for policy: it has been widely accepted that a future temperature increase of two degrees C (which is assumed to be tied to a greenhouse gas concentration of 450 ppm) must be our target limit, above which changes to the climate will be catastrophic, irreversible, and unacceptable—whereas, in fact, we may already be seeing degrees of change that are catastrophic, effectively irreversible, and unacceptable.

Non-linearity in the relationship between greenhouse gases and temperature increase was demonstrated by a 2005 study by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact in Germany, which concluded that—to keep the temperature from increasing more than two degrees C—the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would need to be stabilized at then-current levels (i.e., 380 ppm). Among other things, the study pointed out that the biosphere's ability to absorb carbon is being reduced by human activity, and this must be factored into the equations; by 2030, this carbon-absorbing ability will have been reduced from the current four billion tons per year to 2.7 billion tons.

Non-linearity of the consequences of global warming is illustrated by several self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms that, if triggered, could result in effects spiraling far out of human control. Perhaps the scariest of these has to do with the vast amounts of methane (a greenhouse gas over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide) locked in the ocean floor and in the frozen soils of Siberia, Northern Europe, and North America. Climate warming could trigger a rapid thawing that would release billions of tons of this stored methane into the atmosphere. More methane in the atmosphere would create more warming, which would release still more methane. The ultimate consequence might be the tipping of the planet into a new climate regime so different from the current one that many higher life forms (including humans) might find survival difficult or impossible.

The inadequacy of policies that use 450 ppm and a two degree average global temperature increase as targets or limits is illustrated by evidence that catastrophic Climate Change has already been set in motion on the basis of a mere one degree C global temperature rise. For example: Recent observations have established that oceans are absorbing increasing amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, resulting in their gradual acidification. In the last two centuries, the oceans have absorbed roughly half of the amount of CO2 emitted by fossil fuel use and cement production. This has caused ocean pH to fall. Ocean acidity will be devastating to the marine environment within a short period of time—tens of years instead of hundreds of years. Seawater undersaturated in calcium carbonate will make it difficult for shelled organisms to create skeletons and shells. These organisms form an essential link in the aquatic food chain; thus all life in the seas will be impacted. Given that the oceans have already absorbed a substantial amount of carbon dioxide, we are already committed to an irreversible amount of ocean acidification. It is likely that rebalancing the ocean pH will take thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of years.

Ocean acidification again illustrates the disturbing fact that very little about "global warming" is simple or linear. Instead, the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions are complex, mutually interacting, and far-reaching. Rather than merely having to accustom ourselves to winters and summers a degree or two hotter, we will see far more severe storms of all kinds, as well as rising sea levels, collapsing ecosystems, disease outbreaks, species extinctions, profound challenges to agricultural production, and more. We may already have committed ourselves to centuries of overwhelming environmental damage.

If we are already seeing fundamental changes to the world's oceanic food chain, to the Arctic sea ice, and to glaciers that feed some of the world's most important river systems, can we afford to commit ourselves to still higher atmospheric greenhouse concentrations (450 ppm instead of the current 390), and to a two degree temperature increase above pre-industrial levels instead of the single degree that has already produced these impacts?

In a recent paper, "Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?", James Hansen, along with eight co-authors, questioned the 450 ppm target and suggested a new one:

Our current analysis suggests that humanity must aim for an even lower level of GHGs. Paleoclimate data and ongoing global changes indicate that 'slow' climate feedback processes not included in most climate models, such as ice sheet disintegration, vegetation migration, and GHG release from soils, tundra or ocean sediments, may begin to come into play on time scales as short as centuries or less. Rapid on-going climate changes and realization that Earth is out of energy balance, implying that more warming is 'in the pipeline,' add urgency to investigation of the dangerous level of GHGs. . . . We use paleoclimate data to show that long-term climate has high sensitivity to climate forcings and that the present global mean CO2, 385 ppm, is already in the dangerous zone. . . . Ongoing Arctic and ice sheet changes, examples of rapid paleoclimate change, and other criteria cited above all drive us to consider scenarios that bring CO2 more rapidly back to 350 ppm or less.

On the basis of this article and the recent findings that prompted it, climate activists such as Bill McKibben and George Monbiot have also begun to call for more stringent targets—350 ppm target for atmospheric CO2 concentrations and a 100 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050.

This is a far more rapid and drastic reduction in carbon emissions than can be achieved by fossil fuel resource depletion alone.

Further, relying on fossil fuel depletion to safeguard the world's climate would entail a serious risk: What if the new lower estimates of coal reserves turn out to be wrong? Clearly, the world's oil and coal reserves are a mere fraction of total resources. If somehow a way were found to transform a significant portion of remaining resources into reserves, this could entail a significant increase in atmospheric carbon emissions.

This risk also extends to unconventional fossil fuels such as tar sands, shale oil, and methane hydrates. While the potential for the development of these resources is often overstated, since current technology will permit only a very slow extraction rate for tar sands and perhaps no commercial extraction at all of oil shale and methane hydrates, nevertheless there is always the possibility that new technologies will enable their exploitation on a wide scale. Without a stringent emissions policy in place, the consequences for the global climate would be profound.

In general, human society faces a conundrum: unless non-fossil sources of energy are developed quickly, or unless society finds a way to operate with much less energy, and preferably both, the depletion of higher-quality fuels (natural gas and oil) will mean that efforts to obtain more energy will entail burning ever dirtier fuels, and doing so in proportionally larger quantities in order to derive equivalent amounts of energy.

Therefore, to the question, "Will coal, oil, and gas depletion solve Climate Change?", the answer is an unequivocal no...........
complete article at Richard Heinberg's MuseLetter: Coal and Climate
http://globalpublicmedia.com/Museletter_196_Coal_and_Climate

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*Resilient Communities: A Guide to Disaster Management*
By Richard Heinberg

/Resilience: The ability to recover quickly from illness, change, or misfortune; buoyancy; the ability to absorb shocks/

The following is a proposal to help make communities better able to respond to the coming economic shocks from resource depletion, beginning with Peak Oil, and perhaps also to shocks from other causes (such as the ongoing subprime mortgage and credit collapse). In searching for a name for the strategy, I have settled on the phrase "Resilient Communities," which comes with considerable baggage---useful baggage in this instance.

Once I have described and discussed the proposal, I will offer some background materials regarding the terms resilience and resilient communities, mentioning some other projects that have used the same title or that pursue similar goals.

Making existing petroleum-reliant communities truly sustainable is a huge task. Virtually every system must be redesigned---from transport to food, sanitation, health care, and manufacturing. Some fine efforts are under way in towns such as Kinsale, Ireland; Totnes, England; Portland, Oregon; and several cities in northern California to catalogue the needed changes and initiate the transformative process. The Powerdown Project, Energy Descent Action Plans, and local Climate Protection initiatives are all important efforts in this direction. However, even in places that began such work two or three years ago, actual oil dependence remains largely unaffected. The transition that is required will take many years, huge shifts in both private and public investment, and fundamental changes in public policy at higher levels of government in order to succeed. Do we have enough time? Will the investment capital be available?

Meanwhile, global oil production appears already to have entered its plateau phase, with a gradually steepening decline in total production---and a much more rapid drop in export capacity among nations with any oil to spare---likely to commence within the next two or three years. It appears that the time available for adaptation is probably far too short to enable needed work to be accomplished. Meanwhile, the financial solvency crisis initiated by the US subprime mortgage fiasco threatens to obliterate trillions of dollars of investment capital, impeding whatever efforts might be undertaken toward energy conversion. Thus few if any communities---including those that have initiated worthwhile projects---will be prepared for the shocks of high fuel prices and fuel shortages that will inevitably follow in the coming years. What to do?

A few months ago, on the day following the most recent "Peak Oil and Community Solutions" conference in Yellow Springs, Ohio, some of the speakers and organizers gathered to compare notes and strategize. At some point during the lively conversation, Faith Morgan, the Director of the film /The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil/, reminded us how, early in Cuba's crisis period, organic farming advocates had provided crucial advice that helped quickly transform the nation's food system; without the input of these previously marginalized alternatives advocates, the nation probably would not have survived. I was certainly familiar with the story: I have recounted it in print and in lectures on many occasions. Nevertheless, as Faith spoke, a (compact-fluorescent) light bulb flickered somewhere in my murky skull. Perhaps something similar could happen in other nations or communities---and not just with regard to food, but all the other aspects of modern existence. There are plenty of marginalized "alternatives" advocates who for decades have been researching and promoting low-energy ways of doing things that will make perfect sense in a post-petroleum environment. What if these folks could be mobilized and coordinated, their knowledge made readily available to local officials and the public at large, in preparation for the imminent period when existing systems start to fail in ever more obvious ways?

The notion solidified as I read Naomi Klein's recent book, /The Shock Doctrine/, which details how savvy politicians and business leaders have used natural disasters, wars, and economic upheavals as propitious moments for the introduction of neo-liberal economic policies---privatization, free trade, slashed social spending---that are themselves disastrous (though immensely profitable for the few), and that would normally be rejected. In the current instance, as we contemplate a global mega-disaster-in-the-making, it is not difficult to envision neo-liberal or neo-conservative power-holders licking their collective chops over the prospect of doing away with all labor and environmental regulations as citizens everywhere clamor for strong leaders who can implement bold policies to restore relative normalcy.

In other words, crisis equals opportunity---for those who are prepared to seize the day. Unless sensible plans to manage disaster are formulated and put forward now, the opportunity afforded by crisis will be hijacked by a familiar cast of characters.

What follows, then, is a strategy to take advantage of the gathering storm to steer communities in a direction that will make them more sustainable over the long run. I must emphasize at the outset that, while I am making the case for this new strategy as strongly as I can (that's a writer's job), I do not wish people already hard at work on proactive energy transition strategies through Relocalization and Transition projects to get the impression that I am saying, "Stop everything you're doing now, rush to the other side of the boat, and start doing this other thing." In fact, all I hope to accomplish with this essay is to introduce a new strategic perspective that can be useful to activists as they continue and expand the work in which they are currently engaged.

Anyone can adopt this strategy; however, existing Peak Oil response groups and networks are probably in the best position to do so. Groups wanting to explore this strategy can join the Relocalization Network, if they are not already affiliated, and use that network for sharing information and other resources. Groups could also link Resilient Communities work with the Transition Network , Step It Up, Mayors for Climate Protection Campaign, Climate Action Network, and Sierra Club's Cool Cities program.

What is needed is not just another trademark for yet another activist campaign, but an additional strategy that can be used by any existing organization.

*Try This*

The strategy I am envisioning might be composed of the following series of steps:

1. Establish a working group for the purpose of formulating a Community Resilience Plan. The size of the group will depend on who is available and motivated, and on the size of the community. It will be helpful if the individuals involved have experience with organizing efforts and are already trusted, active members of the community. If there is a sufficiently large pool of potential members, group membership could rotate. This could be an entirely new group, or it could be a new project for an existing group. At the very earliest stage, establish a connection with the Relocalization Network.

2. Identify organizations, businesses, and individuals in your community that have some skill or capacity that will be needed in the post-Peak Oil environment. Look for people who are already working in food production and distribution, health, transport, water delivery, waste disposal, home heating, communication, and crisis management who are able to supply goods or services in their respective field using less energy and fewer imported materials, or who have concrete proposals in this regard. Examples include organic farming and Permaculture groups; herbalists and others able to provide health care in the absence of high-tech equipment; car-share organizations; and bicycle advocacy groups.

3. Approach these people, inform them that you are formulating a Community Resilience Plan, and ask for their help and participation. Tell them about Peak Oil---if they don't already know---and help them understand the implications. Point out that their "alternative" skills and knowledge, which they may have grown weary of promoting in the face of general systemic preference for "mainstream" approaches, will soon be crucial to community survival and well-being. In effect, you must appeal to their self-interest as a way to motivate them to expend some extra effort on behalf of a Community Resilience Plan.

4. Work with these groups and individuals to develop a contingency plan in their respective areas of action and expertise. The plan should answer the question: If your community were suffering from a crisis (unaffordable energy prices, fuel shortages, and knock-on effects such as empty store shelves and rampant unemployment), how could your expertise be rapidly deployed on a large scale to help reduce the impact? What assistance and resources would you need? What steps would have to be taken, and in what order? For example, Permaculturists might have a fine way of producing food locally, but in order to expand their efforts significantly they might need to train teams of gardeners to roam the city planting garden beds on vacant lots or in the front and back yards of willing homeowners. How would these teams be financed and coordinated? How might a surge in demand for garden tools and seeds be satisfied? In each essential field, look for ways to build redundancy with regard to provision of goods and services.

5. As you are doing all of these things, also contact city disaster management officials, letting them know what you are doing and why. Ask for their input and inquire how what you are doing can be most useful to the community at large. Make sure they have copies of /Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty by Daniel Lerch.

6. It might also be useful to contact leaders in some of the mainstream organizations (government agencies as well as private companies) currently responsible for food, water, transport, and energy provisioning and inquire if they have any plans for the time when fuel becomes scarce. If they perceive your project as a threat, they are likely to try to block or undermine it in various ways. However, if they see the project for what it is---an effort to enable the survival of the community in circumstances where current support systems cease functioning---they may be moved to contribute. If they simply deny that any problems are on the horizon, you may have no choice but to continue what you are doing without their input. Again, make sure these leaders have copies of ‘Post Carbon Cities’.

7. Assemble the various suggestions into a coherent Community Resilience Plan. Some sort of document is always useful as a touchstone for collective action. The plan should be comprehensive, modular, and staged. It should offer suggestions for slow-onset as well as rapid-onset disasters. It should also be consistent with proactive plans for the long-term post-carbon transition of society (such as the report of the Portland Peak Oil task force). It should be in a form that can be upgraded and revised continually. And it should be widely available to the public (i.e., published on an easily accessible web site).

8. Once a document has been formulated, go back to civic leaders and disaster management officials and present the document. At the same time, stage a public roll-out of the plan, arranging newspaper articles and radio interviews as well as a public event at which all of the contributors, and local officials, can offer brief presentations.

9. When shortages develop and the economy comes unhinged, work with contributing groups and local officials to implement the plan. Without implementation, the effort will have been wasted. This stage will no doubt entail the hardest and most demanding work. It is difficult to foresee the exact circumstances in which that work will be taking place; nevertheless, the more thorough the preparatory efforts, the more successful the implementation is likely to be.

10. Work with groups in other communities to coordinate programs across regions and nations. Again, the organizations most likely to be helpful in this are the Relocalization Network and the Post Carbon Cities program of Post Carbon Institute, and the Transition Network. Communities should be encouraged to share their experiences, and to share other resources wherever possible. At the earliest opportunity, meta-plans for resilience should be initiated at the state, national, and international levels.

Granted, formulating a plan along the lines I have suggested is a huge task, and the process I have described may not be robust enough and sufficiently engaged with all facets of the community in order to succeed. I welcome input on how to deal with these shortcomings. However, the general thrust of the strategy is logical and strategically sound. Obtaining local government support and public or private funding will be extremely advantageous, as attempting such a task on a purely volunteer basis will create obvious pitfalls of overwork and underperformance.

*Why?-and Other Questions*

/Why do we need another strategy?/

I have been directly or peripherally involved in many Peak Oil response efforts over the past five years. Some I would characterize as top-down (starting by trying to convince and enroll policy makers such as city officials), some bottom-up (starting from a grass-roots base of concerned citizens and activists). All begin or end with a long-range plan for reducing the community's reliance on oil and other fossil fuels---a plan that entails a redirection in investment of public funds, the shifting of priorities, changes to zoning regulations, and so on.

The Resilient Communities strategy is based on observations of what worked in those previous efforts and what didn't. It is also based on the fact that, even in situations of apparent success (where much publicity was garnered and city councils adopted Peak Oil action plans), nagging doubts remain. What if these efforts are too little, too late? What if society is broadsided by an economic collapse from other sources before the effects of Peak Oil become obvious, undermining proactive plans? When I think of my own community, I wince: despite some good activist efforts over the past couple of years, Sonoma County is really not much better prepared than it was before we started.

During these past few years, I have had opportunity to observe a few policy makers at fairly close quarters and to observe how they think, what they say, and what they do. I've concluded that (with a very few notable exceptions), regardless of lip service to sustainability, Peak Oil preparedness, or climate protection, these people's first priority is economic growth. If their attention to this overarching priority wavers, they soon find themselves out of a job. Thus as long as business-as-usual (or at least business-as-usual lite) is an option, it will be favored. However, looming environmental limits require economic contraction. Peak Oil preparedness is, in essence, the effort to controllably scale back the pace and scope of society's consumption of energy and natural resources so as to reduce the impact when inevitable shortages arise---and also, ultimately, so as to reduce society's material throughput to a level that is actually sustainable over the long haul.

Policy makers demand growth, while prudent policy (in light of resource depletion) requires voluntary contraction. This basic contradiction suggests that real change won't come about until hardship is upon us. And that judgment is in turn confirmed by the one example we have of successful adaptation to energy famine---Cuba's Special Period---which was not a proactive effort, but primarily a reactive one.

Thus as compared to other plans and strategies, Resilient Communities strategy has a more explicit focus on disaster management.

At the point when maintaining business as usual is no longer an option, there may be a chance for new strategies to be considered. Officials must face crises (whether effectively or ineptly); they cannot simply ignore obvious breakdowns in the societal support system. If a plan can be put forward that helps officials solve pressing, undeniable problems, that plan has at least a chance of being considered.

Granted, the strategies most likely to gain favor in the early stages of crisis are those that promise a return to business-as-usual (even if that promise is hollow). But as those strategies fail and crisis deepens, nets will be cast wider. At some point the Resilience Plan will become the strategy of last resort.

A useful historical example: as the Great Depression gathered gloom, the New Deal was not the US government's first response (Herbert Hoover dithered for two years); it wasn't even Franklin Roosevelt's initial strategy: only after everything else had failed during three to four long years of economic crisis and misery were more radical ideas tried.

/How, exactly, is a Resilient Community different from a Transition Town or the Powerdown Project?/

There certainly are similarities. Transition Towns do tend to bring alternatives movements together to design solutions, and Chapter 3 of Rob Hopkins's /Transition Handbook/ offers an excellent discussion of "why rebuilding resilience is as important as cutting carbon emissions." The Powerdown Project did focus at least partly on disaster management. Indeed, nearly all of the individual elements of the ten-step program laid out above exist in these and other plans. The virtue of the Resilient Communities strategy as outlined here is that it puts those elements together in a new framework that explicitly takes account of the opportunities that crisis affords.

Transition and Relocalization projects tend to have a hopeful, upbeat, attractive tone, and that is one of their virtues. By contrast, disaster management is a sobering subject. Yet while hopeful visions are good and necessary for motivating communities, the real future that is now unfolding is one of crisis heaped upon crisis. Effective response strategies must respond to the facts, however unattractive they may be from a marketing standpoint. The Resilient Communities strategy faces harsh reality and makes the best of it by using it strategically.

The point must be stressed: I don't mean to suggest that proactive plans to alter energy consumption absent a crisis are a waste of effort, even if they are unlikely to be fully implemented by "business-as-usual" policy makers. The efforts of cities like Portland, Oakland, Willits, Totnes, and others deserve to be celebrated and supported.

Moreover, while a Community Resilience Plan would seek to maximize the opportunity that crisis affords, crisis management can only get us so far toward our goal of reducing and redesigning the human economy so that it does not degrade nature's carrying capacity. Broad-scale, proactive plans are still essential. Once the crisis has hit, once other remedies have been tried, once the Resilient Communities programs have been adopted, and once "alternatives" begin to become mainstream, then the long-range plans for redirecting economies toward true sustainability will become actionable. Indeed, at every stage along the way we will need some sense of what a sustainable society would actually look like and how we might bridge the chasm between the present and that distant goal.

/What's in it for people in the alternatives movements?/ Why should they go to the extra trouble? They are already engaged in important efforts, and are probably overworked.

Folks in the alternatives movements have in many cases been toiling for decades to research and promote sustainable practices. Where they have tried to shape public policy, they may have found themselves ignored or marginalized. The Resilient Communities strategy offers them more than a soap box: it is a chance to use their knowledge and skills in service to community during an imminent time of crisis. While previously they may have found themselves adopting an oppositional or even confrontational stance in relation to industry leaders and policy makers, this is a chance to assume the role of representatives and protectors of the community. If the strategy works, they will cease to be "alternative" and become the "new normal."

/What's in it for the officials?/ Won't they just ignore or undermine the effort?

Most public officials will gladly sacrifice interests of the alternatives crowd that conflict dramatically with those of the business community. But absent a direct conflict, it is in the nature of politicians to try to keep everyone happy. Resilient Community planning does not focus on conflicts between diverging interests within the community; indeed, its main goal is to improve survival prospects for everyone. If the effort is framed properly, officials should view it as a gift---an aid in solving potential problems that may actually be looming much closer than many politicians and business leaders currently realize is the case.

*Resilience in Ecosystems and Economies*

For those wishing to adopt the strategy outlined above, the use of the phrase resilient community is not mandatory. Nevertheless, resilience has so many useful implications that it may be useful to spend the remainder of this essay unpacking and exploring a few.

There is a sizeable and edifying literature on the subject of resilience in ecosystems; C. S. "Buzz" Holling is responsible for much of the pioneering work in this regard. An introductory summary of some core ideas related to ecological and economic resilience is contained in the entertaining essay, "Diesel-Driven Bee Slums and Impotent Turkeys: The Case for Resilience," by Chip Ward.

Briefly, resilient systems are able to withstand higher magnitudes of disturbance before undergoing a dramatic shift to a new condition in which they are controlled by a different set of processes. Reducing resilience increases vulnerability to smaller disturbances.

From the website of the Resilience Alliance:
Even in the absence of disturbance, gradually changing conditions, e.g., nutrient loading, climate, habitat fragmentation, etc., can surpass threshold levels, triggering an abrupt system response. When resilience is lost or significantly decreased, a system is at high risk of shifting into a qualitatively different state. The new state of the system may be undesirable, as in the case of productive freshwater lakes that become eutrophic, turbid, and depleted of their biodiversity. Restoring a system to its previous state can be complex, expensive, and sometimes even impossible. Research suggests that to restore some systems to their previous state requires a return to environmental conditions well before the point of collapse.

The notion that human communities can benefit from fostering resilience is far from new; when I did a Google search for "resilient communities" in preparation for writing this article, over 80,000 hits came up, including HYPERLINK "http://www.resilientcommunities.org" www.resilientcommunities.org ---an inactive website related to an initiative in the late 1990s by Northwest Regional Facilitators and the late economist Robert Theobald). One other example worth noting: the UN has a "Resilient Communities & Cities partnership" program, which aims to "increase the resilience of a city or community to a range of shocks, crises, and disasters including environmental emergencies, industrial accidents, outbreaks of epidemics, economic shocks, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and social conflict.". I'll mention a few more examples at the end of this essay.

In their 1982 book /Brittle Power/, Amory and Hunter Lovins argued for the decentralization of energy production in order to foster resilience.

More recently, David Fleming---the originator of Tradeable Energy Quotas ---has written and spoken at some length about resilience in the context of preparations for Peak Oil and Climate Change. With Lawrence Woodward, Fleming has authored, "Transition, Resilience and Tradeable Energy Quotas", in which he notes that a resilient community will need to be "relatively small-scale" and "localized" so that:
If one part is destroyed, the shock will not ripple through the whole system.
There is wide diversity of character and solutions developed creatively in response to local circumstances.
It can meet its needs despite the substantial absence of travel and transport.
The other big infrastructures and bureaucracies of the intermediate economy are replaced by fit-for-purpose local alternatives at drastically reduced cost.

Once these conditions are satisfied, new possibilities open up:
Local closed systems conserving fertility and materials will become feasible.
Local energy production, distribution and storage can be established, linked by local grids.
Local social capital and culture can be rebuilt as a necessary condition for the cooperation and reciprocities needed to achieve the transition.

One quality of resilience is redundancy---which is often at odds with economic efficiency. Standard economic theory tells us that if it is cheaper to manufacture a particular widget in Malaysia than to do so locally, then all such widgets should come from a factory in Kuala Lumpur. Efficiency implies both long supply chains and the reduction of inventories to a minimum. The "just-in-time" delivery of raw materials and parts for manufacturing reduces costs---but it increases the vulnerability of systems to fuel shortages.

As we pay more attention to resilience and less to economic efficiency, we begin to see redundancy and larger inventories as benefits rather than liabilities. Other resilience values include diversity (as opposed to uniformity), dispersion (rather than centralization) of control over systems, and, as already noted, the localization (versus globalization) of economies.

More notable "resilient communities" resources include:
The organization RESET (Renewable Energy/ Shelter/ Environment Training) in the UK was recently established to increase knowledge about climate change and Peak Oil outside the OECD countries, and to provide training in practical measures to foster resilience in the face of coming transitions to soaring energy prices and rising temperatures.
The University of British Columbia's Resilient Communities Project, a collaboration of academics, First Nations peoples, and government
The University of Minnesota project on Resilient Communities
Ontario Healthy Communities Project's publication on Resilient Communities
Resilient Communities and Cities Coalition
British Columbia's Disaster Resilient Communities Program
ICLEI's Climate Resilient Communities Program
The J. W. McConnell Family Foundation's program on Creating Resilient Communities

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Moving Beyond Kyoto
Al Gore 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/opinion/01gore.html

WE — the human species — have arrived at a moment of decision. It is unprecedented and even laughable for us to imagine that we could actually make a conscious choice as a specie
The concentrations of CO2 — having never risen above 300 parts per million for at least a million years — have been driven from 280 parts per million at the beginning of the coal boom to 383 parts per million this year.
As a direct result, many scientists are now warning that we are moving closer to several “tipping points” that could — within 10 years — make it impossible for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet’s habitability for human civilization.
Just in the last few months, new studies have shown that the north polar ice cap — which helps the planet cool itself — is melting nearly three times faster than the most pessimistic computer models predicted. Unless we take action, summer ice could be completely gone in as little as 35 years. Similarly, at the other end of the planet, near the South Pole, scientists have found new evidence of snow melting in West Antarctica across an area as large as California.
This is not a political issue. This is a moral issue, one that affects the survival of human civilization. It is not a question of left versus right; it is a question of right versus wrong. Put simply, it is wrong to destroy the habitability of our planet and ruin the prospects of every generation that follows ours.
On Sept. 21, 1987, President Ronald Reagan said, “In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”
We — all of us — now face a universal threat. Though it is not from outside this world, it is nevertheless cosmic in scale.
Consider this tale of two planets. Earth and Venus are almost exactly the same size, and have almost exactly the same amount of carbon. The difference is that most of the carbon on Earth is in the ground — having been deposited there by various forms of life over the last 600 million years — and most of the carbon on Venus is in the atmosphere.
As a result, while the average temperature on Earth is a pleasant 59 degrees, the average temperature on Venus is 867 degrees. True, Venus is closer to the Sun than we are, but the fault is not in our star; Venus is three times hotter on average than Mercury, which is right next to the Sun. It’s the carbon dioxide.
This threat also requires us, in Reagan’s phrase, to unite in recognition of our common bond......

We must focus on the opportunities that are part of this challenge. Certainly, there will be new jobs and new profits as corporations move aggressively to capture the enormous economic opportunities offered by a clean energy future.

But there’s something even more precious to be gained if we do the right thing. The climate crisis offers us the chance to experience what few generations in history have had the privilege of experiencing: a generational mission; a compelling moral purpose; a shared cause; and the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside the pettiness and conflict of politics and to embrace a genuine moral and spiritual challenge.