Can't fix global warming

Global Warming's Real Inconvenient Truth
By Robert J. SamuelsonWednesday, July 5, 2006; A13
"Global warming may or may not be the great environmental crisis of the next century, but -- regardless of whether it is or isn't -- we won't do much about it. We will (I am sure) argue ferociously over it and may even, as a nation, make some fairly solemn-sounding commitments to avoid it. But the more dramatic and meaningful these commitments seem, the less likely they are to be observed. Little will be done. . . . Global warming promises to become a gushing source of national hypocrisy.''
-- This column, July 1997
Well, so it has. In three decades of columns, I've never quoted myself at length, but here it's necessary. Al Gore calls global warming an "inconvenient truth," as if merely recognizing it could put us on a path to a solution. That's an illusion. The real truth is that we don't know enough to relieve global warming, and -- barring major technological breakthroughs -- we can't do much about it. This was obvious nine years ago; it's still obvious. Let me explain.
From 2003 to 2050, the world's population is projected to grow from 6.4 billion people to 9.1 billion, a 42 percent increase. If energy use per person and technology remain the same, total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (mainly, carbon dioxide) will be 42 percent higher in 2050. But that's too low, because societies that grow richer use more energy. Unless we condemn the world's poor to their present poverty -- and freeze everyone else's living standards -- we need economic growth. With modest growth, energy use and greenhouse emissions more than double by 2050.
Just keeping annual greenhouse gas emissions constant means that the world must somehow offset these huge increases. There are two ways: Improve energy efficiency, or shift to energy sources with lower (or no) greenhouse emissions. Intuitively, you sense this is tough. China, for example, builds about one coal-fired power plant a week. Now a new report from the International Energy Agency in Paris shows all the difficulties (the population, economic growth and energy projections cited above come from the report).
The IEA report assumes that existing technologies are rapidly improved and deployed. Vehicle fuel efficiency increases by 40 percent. In electricity generation, the share for coal (the fuel with the most greenhouse gases) shrinks from about 40 percent to about 25 percent -- and much carbon dioxide is captured before going into the atmosphere. Little is captured today. Nuclear energy increases. So do "renewables" (wind, solar, biomass, geothermal); their share of global electricity output rises from 2 percent now to about 15 percent.
Some of these changes seem heroic. They would require tough government regulation, continued technological gains and public acceptance of higher fuel prices. Never mind. Having postulated a crash energy diet, the IEA simulates five scenarios with differing rates of technological change. In each, greenhouse emissions in 2050 are higher than today. The increases vary from 6 percent to 27 percent.
Since 1800 there's been modest global warming. I'm unqualified to judge between those scientists (the majority) who blame man-made greenhouse gases and those (a small minority) who finger natural variations in the global weather system. But if the majority are correct, the IEA report indicates we're now powerless. We can't end annual greenhouse emissions, and once in the atmosphere, the gases seem to linger for decades. So concentration levels rise. They're the villains; they presumably trap the world's heat. They're already about 36 percent higher than in 1800. Even with its program, the IEA says another 45 percent rise may be unavoidable. How much warming this might create is uncertain; so are the consequences.
I draw two conclusions -- one political, one practical.
No government will adopt the draconian restrictions on economic growth and personal freedom (limits on electricity usage, driving and travel) that might curb global warming. Still, politicians want to show they're "doing something." The result is grandstanding. Consider the Kyoto Protocol. It allowed countries that joined to castigate those that didn't. But it hasn't reduced carbon dioxide emissions (up about 25 percent since 1990), and many signatories didn't adopt tough enough policies to hit their 2008-2012 targets. By some estimates, Europe may overshoot by 15 percent and Japan by 25 percent.
Ambitious U.S. politicians also practice this self-serving hypocrisy. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a global warming program. Gore counts 221 cities that have "ratified" Kyoto. Some pledge to curb their greenhouse emissions. None of these programs will reduce global warming. They're public relations exercises and -- if they impose costs -- are undesirable. (Note: on national security grounds, I favor taxing oil, but the global warming effect would be trivial.) The practical conclusion is that if global warming is a potential calamity, the only salvation is new technology. I once received an e-mail from an engineer. Thorium, he said. I had never heard of thorium. It is, he argued, a nuclear fuel that is more plentiful and safer than uranium without waste disposal problems. It's an exit from the global warming trap. After reading many articles, I gave up trying to decide whether he is correct. But his larger point is correct: Only an aggressive research and development program might find ways of breaking our dependence on fossil fuels or dealing with it. Perhaps some system could purge the atmosphere of surplus greenhouse gases?
The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral crusade when it's really an engineering problem. The inconvenient truth is that if we don't solve the engineering problem, we're helpless.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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Readers turn green

Readers turn greenBy GREG WESTON
In an effort to stimulate debate on global warming, we recently asked readers to take the 200-megatonne challenge: How exactly should Canada reduce Canadian-made greenhouse gas emissions that are helping to heat up the planet, the recent sub-human winter deep freeze notwithstanding?
To help readers find 200 million tonnes a year in greenhouse gas reductions -- Canada's target under the Kyoto protocol -- we provided a list of some of the biggest Canadian emitters, from the belching smokestacks of the country's coal-fired electrical generating plants to the tailpipes of farting farm animals.
The point of the piece was ultimately to illustrate the hard choices confronting scientists and legislators in trying to clear the air on global warming.
As always, our readers came up with some illuminating ideas, from putting the screws to industry and consumers to keeping our heads in the clouds and ignoring the whole issue. Here are some of the responses we received.
First prize for the most elaborate submission came from Michael Ash of Grand Bend, Ont., who sent us a detailed spreadsheet of possible emission reductions in different sectors. His suggestions included a 30% cut in home heating through more efficient technologies; a 26% cut in emissions from the oil and gas sector, including the oil sands ("Let the energy sector bear its fair share of the burden; they can afford it"); and burning garbage to produce energy.
Anne Wilkings suggests a potential path to eco-salvation which, coincidentally, suddenly seems to be in big favour with the current Conservative government: Go nuke. As she notes, Canada could cut man-made greenhouse emissions by almost a third by building nuclear reactors to replace oil, gas and coal in electrical generation, and for heating and processing the Alberta oil sands.
Ray Temmerman of Winnipeg suggests replacing payroll taxes with increased government levies on non-renewable energy. "We might pay, say, $5 a litre for gasoline ... but we would exercise our choice as consumers, from driving our Humvee to work to walking. Depending on the choices we made, we might have more or less money overall in our pockets at the end of the year -- but the choice would have been ours."
Lane Myers of Kingston, N.S., says all those opinion polls showing public concern for the environment should instead be asking how much Canadians would be willing to sacrifice to help save Mother Earth. "I recently visited Toronto and was amazed to see how many four-wheel-drive SUVs people own in a city that hardly has any snow ... How many (people) would willingly move to car pools or public transit?"
Gary Cooper of Peterborough suggests cutting fuel consumption of garbage trucks by piling our household trash with a neighbour's for pick-up (reducing stops and starts by half), and by crushing cans and plastic bottles before pitching them in the recycling box.
Al Roffey recommends concentrating more on energy demand than supply, saying conservation would go a long way to reducing Canada's contribution to global warming -- specifically, throwing the switch on unnecessary lighting and other wasted electricity consumption; and obeying speed limits for all cars and trucks.
On the flip side of the global warming issue, we got plenty of missives from readers who think the controversy over greenhouse gasses is all a lot of Kyoto hokum.
Brian in Ottawa writes: "I think you could have added that even if Canada met its Kyoto targets (for reducing greenhouse gas emissions), the odds are significant that it would have no effect on global average temperatures ... I often wonder if 20 years from now, global warming will be seen in the same light as the 1970s belief in the coming ice age, and the Y2K scare."
Finally, Derek Holmedal, a western farmer, wants to set straight "another dumb easterner" (that would be me) on the science of farting cattle warming the Earth. Seems we may have been making a big stink about the wrong end of the right animal.
Forget farmyard flatulence, he says. The big gas bags are burping bovines, stupid. Phew.

Pay as you learn

Is it 'pay-as-you-learn'?By CHRISTINA BLIZZARD
I suspect if I added up all the cash I'd spent on tutors in the countless years I had youngsters in the public school system, I could probably have paid for one of them to go to some posh private school.
Tutors aren't cheap. But I quickly learned in navigating the public school system they are almost essential under certain circumstances, whether it's helping a good student get better marks to make it into the university of their choice, or whether it's a six year old struggling to learn to read.
That's why the issue of the York Region board of education charging for after-school tutoring touched a nerve with me. Make that several nerves. In fact, it makes me downright twitchy.
On the positive side, the school board's plan does make tutoring affordable. Extra help for students doesn't come cheap and the $190 for 16 hours of after-school tuition is a bargain basement rate.
It raises two issues, however. First, whatever happened to all those wonderful teachers who stayed behind for an extra hour to offer help for free? During the divisive battle under the Harris Tories over extra-curricular help, the teacher unions told us that a teacher's day doesn't end at 3.30. They often stay much later helping students and preparing for class. That seems to have changed. Now they're charging for the extra time.
There are some, I am sure, who will applaud this program. If it is run under the auspices of the school board, you can be sure it meets the curriculum and that the tutor is accredited by the College of Teachers.
I don't subscribe to that view. I often found the public school system captive of psycho-babble or hidebound by trendy educational ideologies. It didn't matter whether it was whole language or new math, the system was prone to the vagaries of every off-the-wall idea that whistled through. And it's a system that has left countless kids illiterate in its wake.
A tutor who is not captive to these whims is often able to use common sense and unconventional teaching skills to open up a child's mind. And if the students are struggling with these teachers from 9 a.m. to 3.30 p.m., why is an extra hour of help from the same people going to give them the push they need?
For sure, it may simply be that the student needs one-on-one help. It's tough to give attention to a struggling child when you have 25 other children demanding your attention. But this smacks of two-tier education. Not that we don't have that with private schools, of course. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Taxpayers in this province pay $13 billion for public education. For that kind of dough, parents should be able to demand that their kids learn to read and write without them having to pay a tutor.
In the York board, kids in grades 7 and 8 get help for free, while kids in the lower grades have to pay.
Education Minister Kathleen Wynne said the Liberal government has invested millions into additional help for schools to identify and help children who are struggling. The York program, she said, is simply a service that is available to parents if they want it.
"They are not paying for public education, they are paying for an additional service.
"The public education that is being provided is free -- it's supported by ministry dollars, by tax dollars," she said.
Children who are identified as in need of help will still get it without having to pay, she said.
"They are offering an additional service to parents who chose to put their children in that service. That is not a service that is identified as necessary by the teachers. That's the parents making a choice," Wynne said.
Fair enough. What I can't figure out is in a province that prides itself on its public education system, why it is that so many private tutors and private tutoring companies are flourishing? And fair enough, if you want a tutor to nudge your child's marks from the 80s to the 90s in order to get into the right university, it should be on your dime.
But the right of every child, regardless of their parents' financial resources, to a basic grasp of reading, writing and mathematics is surely fundamental in a civilized society. It shouldn't be pay-as-you-go.
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Problem with Kyoto

The problem with KyotoBy LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
Having had a chance to do some research into the Kyoto accord, I have a question for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Stephane Dion.
Why do you support a bizarre United Nations treaty that is mainly concerned with transferring billions of dollars from the First World (i.e. us) to the Third World over a period of decades, without any guarantees this will lower the man-made greenhouse gas emissions you say are the main cause of global warming?
Start delving into the Kyoto accord and you'll quickly discover it has very little to do with sensible things like practising meaningful energy conservation here in Canada, or reducing our heavy reliance on non-renewable fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal.
And plenty to do with having "Annex I" countries (like us) ship big bags full of our money to undeveloped and underdeveloped nations who may, or may not, use said funds to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions.
Whatever they do, Kyoto contains no provisions to compel those nations to live up to their word when Canadians and others, either as taxpayers or consumers, bankroll projects abroad to reduce greenhouse gases.
In terms of emission targets, Kyoto rewards notorious polluters like Russia and other former Eastern bloc nations (can you say "Chernobyl"?) for the fact their already inefficient economies collapsed in the early 1990s, after the Soviet Union fell apart.
And it punishes "Annex I" countries, like Canada, for having allegedly disproportionately contributed to the global warming crisis -- long before anyone knew it was a crisis.
While underdeveloped nations under Kyoto have room to emit more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than we do, the treaty's solution is to allow us and other "Annex I" countries to purchase and trade "emission credits" from them and each other.
This means, in effect, paying a surtax for generations to other countries for the right to continue emitting greenhouse gases in our own country, above what would otherwise be the acceptable levels set by Kyoto. That's what buying "hot air" from, say, Russia, actually means.
The theory is that since global warming is a global problem, it doesn't matter which countries emit greenhouse gases as long as total emissions go down, which is all well and good, except that Kyoto contains no provisions to ensure emissions go down.
And here's a question just for the Liberals and former PM Jean Chretien, who signed and ratified Kyoto.
How, exactly, did we end up in a big, cold northern country agreeing to the impossible task of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012 (under the Liberals they went up 30%) while Australia, another first-world nation, which doesn't have our cold weather extremes, is allowed to increase its emissions by 8%. That is, if it had ever signed Kyoto, which it didn't.
All this is not to mention the inconvenient truth that the last time the UN got involved in an international agreement involving billions of dollars for the alleged global good, it was the oil-for-food program in Iraq. And we all know what a corrupt mess that became.
Then there's the fact some of Kyoto's strongest supporters say its present greenhouse gas emission targets would have to be strengthened by a factor of 12 to do any good.
And that some of the most radical climate change scientists in the world say that in order to meet the threat posed by global warming, we need to invest massively in nuclear power (which doesn't produce greenhouse gases, but does produce nuclear waste).
As I recall, none of this was ever mentioned in those "take the one tonne challenge" ads the Liberals paid for with our money before they were tossed from power.
As for Harper, why do you now support a treaty which you surely must know is a mess and why are you ready to have (shudder) NDP leader Jack Layton make things even worse? Other than getting yourself re-elected, that is.
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Global Warming

Debunking hot hysteria
Political agendas, massive misinformation fuelling climate debateBy LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
Here are some things you probably haven't heard in all the recent hysteria being spouted about global warming by too many politicians, media and environmental activists. To keep this controversy in perspective:
1. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old and has experienced many protracted periods of global warming and cooling that had nothing to do with human beings because we weren't yet alive.
Glaciers melted and ice ages locked the Earth in their grip long before we existed.
Scientists say there have been near-extinctions of life on Earth five times because of climate change and other factors, the last one occurring about 65 million years ago.
FOREST FIRES
None of them had anything to do with post-industrial man putting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels like oil and coal. Erupting volcanoes unleash huge amounts of greenhouse gas. So do forest fires and decomposing plant life.
2. Claims by some environmental activists and media that this year's mild winter or hurricane Katrina were caused by man-made global warming are simply irresponsible.
Serious researchers stress that while climate change obviously affects weather, no single weather episode can be blamed solely or conclusively on global warming caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists know that if they start to make this claim, they'll be asked how, since they can't predict the weather two weeks from now, they can predict it decades or centuries into the future.
In fact, predicting climate change and forecasting weather are different issues. Unfortunately, too many politicians, environmental activists and media who often have a political agenda to ram through the Kyoto accord, are deliberately blurring this important distinction.
This is understandable because the UN treaty is highly controversial.
Many Kyoto critics charge it is more concerned with transferring wealth from the First World to the Third World than seriously reducing man-made greenhouse gases.
3. While there is widespread agreement the world is going through a sustained period of warming, from the 1940s to the 1970s we experienced a period of global cooling, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. Back then, Time, Newsweek and others ran stories predicting a possible new ice age. Oops.
Many scientists believe this cooling period was partially the result of post-industrial man injecting pollutants into the air. These pollutants reflect the sun's rays back into space, unlike greenhouse gases which trap heat.
Ironically, as we continue to clean up these pollutants, as we should, some think this will contribute to global warming.
4. The real debate on global warming is about whether man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing it to happen at an accelerated rate that risks, over time, cataclysmic climate change. Most climate change scientists believe this. A minority don't or argue the man-made effect is not significant. Serious researchers do not hysterically shout down as "global warming deniers" anyone who disagrees with them.
Rather, they argue, there is very strong evidence -- many say it's conclusive -- based on both scientific observation and computer modelling that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing a rapid increase in global warming that cannot be explained by any natural causes.
They say it is prudent to err on the side of caution and reduce these emissions now because of the possible catastrophic climate changes that may result over the coming decades and centuries.
5. One can be skeptical about all this, and Kyoto, and still agree with the argument it makes sense to conserve non-renewable fossil fuels like oil and coal and reduce our reliance on them. But the Cassandras, who claim that every time there's a hurricane, tsunami or heat wave, the direct and sole cause is man-made global warming, usually have a political agenda or don't know what they're talking about, or both.
By the way, without greenhouse gases like water vapour and carbon dioxide, we'd all freeze to death.
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Greenhouse gases

Cut the bull
Tough calls are ahead if Canada is to have any hope of reducing annual greenhouse gas emissions by 200 megatonnesBy GREG WESTON
Among the many reasons to cut the bull on global warming, it turns out a staggering 24 million tonnes of annual greenhouse gas emissions are coming from the exhaust pipes of Canadian cattle and other farting farm animals.
In the overall ecological scheme of things, that means farmyard flatulence is contributing as much to heating the planet as half of all the regular passenger cars on Canadian roads today.
Exactly how one coaxes Bessie into a raspberry reduction to help save the Earth is a problem we are happy to leave to Canada's enthusiastic new environment minister, John Baird (although we do hope there will be pictures).
Of course, so-called "enteric fermentation" in farm animals is only a small part of Canada's contribution to global warming -- less than 3%, to be exact -- and one of literally dozens of sources of homemade greenhouse gas emissions.
Unfortunately for Baird, the preponderance of polluters does not mean there are easy choices.
Shutting down the country's coal-fired electrical generating plants would solve a big part of the environmental problem. The trick is how to do it without leaving thousands of Canadians either shivering in the dark or with sky-high electrical bills.
Since cutting greenhouse gases is all about tough choices, how would you do it?
Following is a list of the biggest Canadian contributors to global warming, with the annual amount of greenhouse gas emissions from each in brackets, measured in millions of tonnes, compiled from Environment Canada and other sources.
WORST OFFENDERS
For the sake of a challenge, what would you do to cut 200 million tonnes a year, roughly the reduction that would be required to meet Canada's commitment under the Kyoto protocol by 2012?
- Power generation (130): The worst single offenders are the country's coal-fired electrical generating stations. More than half of the total greenhouse gas emissions of the power sector could be eliminated by shutting down the four largest Ontario coal generators (30), and the five worst belchers in Alberta (41).
- Oil and gas industry (133): Greenhouse emissions from the booming Alberta oil sands operations (34) alone are equal to those given off by the entire natural gas industry (34); more than half the pollution from crude oil production (50); and almost twice the emission levels of the entire petroleum refining industry (18).
- Oil and gas exports to the U.S (46): Over the past 15 years, most of the rapid growth in Canadian petroleum production -- and greenhouse gas emissions from it -- has gone south of the border.
- Ordinary passenger cars (50): For all the bad press the automobile industry gets in the greenhouse gas debate, total emissions from regular family clunkers have actually declined over time, primarily with improved fuel efficiency.
- SUVs and family vans (44): Since 1990, the North American addiction to four-wheel-drive gas guzzlers and mini-vans has accounted for 55% of the total increase in greenhouse emissions from the entire transportation sector.
- Transport trucks (45): Heavy-duty diesel trucks, buses and industrial vehicles have been responsible for most of the remaining 45% increase in transportation emissions over the past 15 years.
- Domestic aircraft (8). While jet fuel may be expensive and not at all good for the environment, grounding all the planes in the country would not reduce greenhouse emissions by even half the filth output of the Nanticoke coal generating station.
- Mining and manufacturing (139): Among Canada's great industrial earth-warmers, the biggest emitters are the chemical industries (22); mining (18); steel mills (15); aluminum and other smelting (13); cement (11); and pulp and paper (9).
- Home heating (43): The cost of a warm bed in our Canadian climate is about 5.5% of the country's annual greenhouse gas emissions, pumped into the air from our home heating systems.
- Office and institutional heating (38): Keeping office workers from freezing at their desks, and patients from dying of exposure in the hospital waiting rooms, produces greenhouse emissions that have increased 25% since 1990.
- Waste disposal (29): Emissions from rotting garbage and other landfill not only stinks, but is also helping to heat the planet.
- Agriculture (55): This brings us back to the substantial greenhouse gas production from farting cattle et al (24), something called "manure management" (8), and other barnyard stuff you really don't want to know.
Remember: Your challenge is to cut 200 megatonnes. No bull.

Kyoto Crimes

More Kyoto crimes
China, set to build 562 new coal plants, is exempt from the rulesBy LORRIE GOLDSTEIN, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Where is the political party in Canada that will take us out of the Kyoto accord, since the deal is an impending economic disaster for us?
When the Liberals under Jean Chretien signed the Kyoto accord in 1998 and, more important, ratified it in 2002, they committed Canadian taxpayers and consumers, without consultation, to one of the most radical programs for reducing greenhouse gases on Earth, with no idea of how to achieve it.
Canada, the world's ninth-largest emitter of man-made greenhouse gases (2.1% of all emissions in 2000), faces cuts no other major industrialized (and northern) country agreed to -- 6% below 1990 levels by 2012 -- which the Grits had already missed by 35% when they were tossed from power a year ago.
By contrast, the U.S., the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases (20.6%), refused to ratify Kyoto because of concerns about the harm it would do to its economy.
China, the second-largest emitter (14.8%) and India, fourth-largest (5.5%), don't have to cut emissions because Kyoto classifies them as "developing" countries.
Russia, the third-largest emitter. (5.7%) has lots of room to emit more greenhouse gases and sell carbon or "hot air" credits to other countries -- like us -- solely because its economy collapsed in the early 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Australia, the world's largest per capita producer of man-made carbon dioxide emissions because of its reliance on coal, would be able to increase emissions by 8% above its 1990 levels, if it ratified Kyoto, which it hasn't, fearing major job losses.
While the nations of the European Union (14% of all global emissions) accepted Kyoto reduction targets of 8%, they insisted on being treated as a collective in order to benefit from the collapse of the East German economy after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The news for Canadian taxpayers and consumers only gets worse. Even if we were to meet our Kyoto targets for 2012, which would have a huge negative impact on our economy because we're now 35% behind, it won't matter.
China, India and the U.S. -- none of them restricted by Kyoto -- are planning to build more than 850 new coal-fired energy plants over the next few years. China alone is planning 562. (Burning coal emits more greenhouse gas, linked to global warming, than oil or natural gas, the world's two other major fossil fuels.)
Two years ago, the respected Christian Science Monitor (CSM) did an in-depth analysis of the implications of this planned coal-fired plant construction in China, India and the U.S. It estimated these 850 plants will put five times more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than Kyoto is designed to remove, even if every other country, including Canada, miraculously hits its Kyoto target.
Even if new plant construction was limited to only those with a start date, it would still mean putting over twice as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as Kyoto, fully implemented, would remove.
Kyoto's defenders argue developing countries like China won't be exempt from emission targets forever, but first need to be shown that the developed world, which has put the lion's share of man-made greenhouse gases into the atmosphere up to the present (85%) are serious.
On that, China, has a point.
But the problem is it opposes any global say over its energy policy, which it considers purely a domestic issue. Plus, sometime after 2015, the developing world is expected to produce more than 50% of all global greenhouse gases.
MINIMIZE JOB LOSSES
Sorry, but I'm interested in Canada reducing its own greenhouse gas (and smog) emissions through technology paid for and developed by Canadians, to minimize job losses here as we do it.
I'm not interested in buying "hot air" from Russia, or convincing China to "go green" by throwing my money at it for various "carbon sink" projects.
I suspect most Canadians would feel that way, if any party -- including Stephen Harper's ruling Conservatives -- honestly told them what Kyoto really says.
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Climate Change

Cut the bull
Tough calls are ahead if Canada is to have any hope of reducing annual greenhouse gas emissions by 200 megatonnesBy GREG WESTON
Among the many reasons to cut the bull on global warming, it turns out a staggering 24 million tonnes of annual greenhouse gas emissions are coming from the exhaust pipes of Canadian cattle and other farting farm animals.
In the overall ecological scheme of things, that means farmyard flatulence is contributing as much to heating the planet as half of all the regular passenger cars on Canadian roads today.
Exactly how one coaxes Bessie into a raspberry reduction to help save the Earth is a problem we are happy to leave to Canada's enthusiastic new environment minister, John Baird (although we do hope there will be pictures).
Of course, so-called "enteric fermentation" in farm animals is only a small part of Canada's contribution to global warming -- less than 3%, to be exact -- and one of literally dozens of sources of homemade greenhouse gas emissions.
Unfortunately for Baird, the preponderance of polluters does not mean there are easy choices.
Shutting down the country's coal-fired electrical generating plants would solve a big part of the environmental problem. The trick is how to do it without leaving thousands of Canadians either shivering in the dark or with sky-high electrical bills.
Since cutting greenhouse gases is all about tough choices, how would you do it?
Following is a list of the biggest Canadian contributors to global warming, with the annual amount of greenhouse gas emissions from each in brackets, measured in millions of tonnes, compiled from Environment Canada and other sources.
WORST OFFENDERS
For the sake of a challenge, what would you do to cut 200 million tonnes a year, roughly the reduction that would be required to meet Canada's commitment under the Kyoto protocol by 2012?
- Power generation (130): The worst single offenders are the country's coal-fired electrical generating stations. More than half of the total greenhouse gas emissions of the power sector could be eliminated by shutting down the four largest Ontario coal generators (30), and the five worst belchers in Alberta (41).
- Oil and gas industry (133): Greenhouse emissions from the booming Alberta oil sands operations (34) alone are equal to those given off by the entire natural gas industry (34); more than half the pollution from crude oil production (50); and almost twice the emission levels of the entire petroleum refining industry (18).
- Oil and gas exports to the U.S (46): Over the past 15 years, most of the rapid growth in Canadian petroleum production -- and greenhouse gas emissions from it -- has gone south of the border.
- Ordinary passenger cars (50): For all the bad press the automobile industry gets in the greenhouse gas debate, total emissions from regular family clunkers have actually declined over time, primarily with improved fuel efficiency.
- SUVs and family vans (44): Since 1990, the North American addiction to four-wheel-drive gas guzzlers and mini-vans has accounted for 55% of the total increase in greenhouse emissions from the entire transportation sector.
- Transport trucks (45): Heavy-duty diesel trucks, buses and industrial vehicles have been responsible for most of the remaining 45% increase in transportation emissions over the past 15 years.
- Domestic aircraft (8). While jet fuel may be expensive and not at all good for the environment, grounding all the planes in the country would not reduce greenhouse emissions by even half the filth output of the Nanticoke coal generating station.
- Mining and manufacturing (139): Among Canada's great industrial earth-warmers, the biggest emitters are the chemical industries (22); mining (18); steel mills (15); aluminum and other smelting (13); cement (11); and pulp and paper (9).
- Home heating (43): The cost of a warm bed in our Canadian climate is about 5.5% of the country's annual greenhouse gas emissions, pumped into the air from our home heating systems.
- Office and institutional heating (38): Keeping office workers from freezing at their desks, and patients from dying of exposure in the hospital waiting rooms, produces greenhouse emissions that have increased 25% since 1990.
- Waste disposal (29): Emissions from rotting garbage and other landfill not only stinks, but is also helping to heat the planet.
- Agriculture (55): This brings us back to the substantial greenhouse gas production from farting cattle et al (24), something called "manure management" (8), and other barnyard stuff you really don't want to know.
Remember: Your challenge is to cut 200 megatonnes. No bull.