Humanity faces a momentous period of transition. Modern civilization is not only in crisis. It confronts a multiplicity of overlapping global crises that are potentially terminal.

We're all aware of the devastating findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose worst case scenario, is that on a business-as-usual trajectory, global average temperatures will rise by 6 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, creating an uninhabitable planet. We now know that this was far too conservative.

The IPCC didn't sufficiently account for the interconnected complexity of different ecosystems.

Arctic sea ice coverage is now at the lowest level it's been for a million years. It will likely disappear in the summer by 2015. The loss of summer sea ice is linked to the accelerating melt of permafrost, releasing the vast underground stores of methane – about 30 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon. The process is happening much faster than anticipated. Methane concentrations in the Arctic now average about 1.85 parts per million, the highest in 400,000 years.

If this reaches a tipping point, we could trigger a process of unstoppable runaway warming, and we could see a rise of 8-10 degrees Celsius, by the end of this century.

Scientists also link the Arctic melt to our increasingly extreme weather. It will mean more colder, stormier winters in the UK and northern Europe. This, in turn, will damage British and European agriculture. With four-fifths of the United States in drought, prolonged droughts in Russia and Africa, and a lighter monsoon in India - all due to climate change - we're already seeing a global food supply crash that will precipitate dramatic food price spikes. This alone will lead to unprecedented food riots in poor countries around the world.

By mid-century, if we fail to act, world crop yields could fall as much as 20-40 per cent due to global warming. Imagine what this would look like when we factor in the role of energy depletion. In 2010 the International Energy Agency acknowledged that world conventional oil production had most likely peaked in 2006. Future production, relying increasingly on unconventional sources like tar sands, oil shale and shale gas, will be increasingly expensive. But industry hype has promised to reduce these costs dramatically with new drilling technologies, namely fracking. But this just isn't true. Despite the US having increased its total oil supply by up to 2.1 million barrels per day since 2005 – world crude oil production overall has remained largely flat since that very year.

Writing in the journal Science, Sir David King, the former UK government chief scientist, confirms that unconventional oil and gas won't be able to produce sufficiently cheap liquid fuels at the same rate as that of conventional oil. Production rates at shale wells drop off by 60 to 90 per cent within their first year of operation. Sir King also argues that oil companies have overestimated the size of world oil reserves by about a third. To make matters worse, a typical frack job uses about 4.5 million gallons of water - what New York City consumes in seven minutes. As climate change intensifies drought, it will make fracking more costly and unsustainable.

The problem is that every major point in industrial food production is heavily dependent on fossil fuels – on-site machinery; production of artificial fertilisers; processing, packaging, transport and storage. Ten per cent of energy consumed yearly in the United States is used by the food industry. So as oil becomes more expensive, this will place massive strain on industrial food production.

And it won't just be food. By 2030, on our current course, climate change alone will lead to deaths worldwide of over 100 million people, and a 3.2 per cent reduction in global GDP. What happens when we factor in the impact of peak oil? A study this year in the leading journal, Energy, concluded that “world oil supply has not increased” since 2005, that this was “a primary cause of the recession”, and that the “expected impact of reduced oil supply” will mean the “financial crisis may eventually worsen.” What happens when we factor in the interconnected feedback effects of water scarcity, food riots, civil breakdown, state failure, mass migrations? The costs will be amplified tremendously.

This is because the growth that we've pursued over the last decades has been tied, inextricably, to the systematic expansion of debt. Although total world GDP is around $70 trillion, global external debt is at $69 trillion, and global public debt is at 64 per cent of global GDP. Meanwhile, the total size of global derivatives trading - the debt-based speculation which got us into this mess - has risen from $1,000 trillion in 2008, to now $1,200 trillion; a number with no relation to the real-economy. It's no coincidence that debt and derivatives have both intensified, because the speculative investments designed to benefit the 1 per cent are being bailed out by the 99. So it's only a matter of time before accelerating costs catch up with unsustainable debt.

It's time to wake up to the fact that the conventional economic model has run out of steam. Having outlasted its welcome, it's now leading us along a path to self-destruction. The heart of the problem is the skewered structure of our current form of capitalism, which makes endless material growth at any cost a seemingly rational imperative.

What is this structure? It comes down to who owns the Earth. Today’s capitalism is based on a completely unnatural condition where approximately 1-5 per cent of the world’s population, owns the entirety of the planet’s productive resources, as well as the technologies of production and distribution. This is the outcome of centuries of colonisation, imperialism and globalisation, which has centralised control of the earth’s resources and raw materials into the hands of a few.

With the entire planet subjected to the unrestrained logic of endless growth, we're witnessing the accelerated degradation of our natural environment, our resource base, our economic and financial system, as well as our material and psychological well-being. These are not separate crises. They are interconnected symptoms of a global Crisis of Civilization.

So how can we respond? We must first awaken to the reality that this is not the end, but the beginning. We are witnessing the collapse of the old paradigm, which hell-bent on planetary suicide, isn't working. By the end of this century, whatever happens, civilization in its current form will not exist. The question we must therefore ask ourselves is this. What will we choose to take its place?

As a species, we are on the cusp of an evolutionary choice. Standing at the dawn of this perfect storm, we find ourselves at the beginning of a process of civilizational transition. As the old paradigm dies, a new paradigm is born. And many people around the world are already making the evolutionary choice to step away from the old, and embrace the new.

Already, local communities and grassroots activists are co-creating this new paradigm as I speak, from the ground up. In Greece, locals in Athens gave up their salaries to form an eco-village, producing their own food, building sustainable houses, and decreasing reliance on money. As austerity wipes out jobs and businesses, the eco-village has become a citizen's hub, giving advice and running workshops on independent living. In the UK, there are 43 communities producing renewable energy through co-operative ownership structures. These projects are established and run by local residents, who collectively invest their own time and money to install local wind turbines, solar panels, and hydro-electric power. The Borough of Woking in Surrey, for instance, produces 135 per cent of its electricity from renewable energy sources, selling energy to the national grid, and earning revenue that feeds back into the local economy. In 2008, 200,000 US households were living off grid - sourcing their own water, generating their own electricity, and managing their own waste disposal. By 2010, this had jumped to 750,000, and is now rising by about 10 per cent a year. Across the Western world, there are now 380 Transition Towns, whose citizens are actively collaborating to make urban life resilient to fossil fuel depletion and climate change.

The new paradigm is premised on a fundamentally different ethos, in which we see ourselves not as disconnected, competing units fixated on maximising consumerist conquest over one another; but as interdependent members of a single human family. Our economies, rather than being assumed to exist in a vacuum of unlimited material expansion, are seen as embedded in wider society, such that economic activity for its own sake is recognised as the pathology that it is. Instead, economic enterprise becomes aligned with the deeper values that make us human - values like meeting our basic needs, education and discovery, arts and culture, sharing and giving: the values which psychologists say contribute to well-being and happiness, far more than mere money and things. And in turn, our societies are seen not as autonomous entities to which the whole of the planet must be ruthlessly subjugated, but rather as inherently embedded in the natural environment.

These grassroots endeavours are pointing us toward a vision in which people reverse their irrational investments in counterproductive conflict. Over the last decade, under the old paradigm, we've steadily increased world military spending by about 4.5 per cent annually. In 2011, world military spending totalled $1.74 trillion – rising 0.3 per cent from the preceding year – flattening only due to the financial crisis. Imagine what we could achieve if we transferred such absurdly huge expenditures on war-preparations for the nation, into development concerns for the species. Study after study proves that we could successfully transition to a 100% global renewable energy infrastructure, within the next 30 years. The costs of this transition would be no more than 1 per cent of the annual national budgets of all world governments.

This implies not just sending home armed forces, reducing unnecessary weapons production, and curtailing the influence of the military-industrial complex. We must convert that very industrial capacity by re-training our workers in the defence industries, and re-employing them in the new industries of sustainable peace that can underpin post-carbon civilization.

This will generate a new sustainable form of prosperity. Even by today's completely inadequate levels of investment, by 2020, some 2.8 million people in Europe will be employed in the renewable energy sector, boosting Europe’s GDP by some 0.24 per cent. Imagine what we could achieve if hundreds of millions of households across Europe came together in their communities to invest their collective resources into each becoming owners and producers of energy? The new energy paradigm is not about corporate-dominated mega-projects, but about empowering small businesses and communities. Up to 70 per cent of energy is lost in transmission over large distances. So there's potential for huge efficiency gains when power is produced and consumed closer to the source. This model, where households, communities and towns become producers and consumers of clean energy, is being successfully scaled-up in Germany, where 20 per cent of the country's electricity comes from renewables, and 51 per cent of distributed energy generation is owned by individuals, not utility companies.

This new paradigm also applies to food. On the one hand, we need to put an end to the wasteful practices of the industrial food system, by which one third of global food production is lost or wasted every year. On the other, we must shift away from resource-intensive forms of traditional corporate-dominated agriculture. In many cases, we will find that smaller-scale forms of organic farming which are more labour intensive, though less energy and water intensive, can be more sustainable than current industrial practices. Communal organic farming offers immense potential not only for employment, but also for households to become local owners and producers in the existing food supply chain. In poorer countries, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food finds that small-scale organic methods could double food production. And a recent University of Michigan study concludes that no-pesticide, local forms of organic agriculture without artificial fertilisers, could theoretically be scaled up to sustain high nutritional requirements for the entire global population.

This new paradigm of distributed clean energy production, decentralised farming, and participatory economic cooperation, offers a model of development free from the imperative of endless growth for its own sake; and it leads us directly to a new model of democracy, based not on large-scale, hierarchical-control, but on the wholesale decentralisation of power, towards smaller, local ownership and decision-making.

In the new paradigm, households and communities become owners of capital, in their increasing appropriation of the means to produce energy, food and water at a local level. Economic democratisation drives political empowerment, by ensuring that critical decisions about production and distribution of wealth take place in communities, by communities. But participatory enterprise requires commensurate mechanisms of monetary exchange which are equitable and transparent, free from the fantasies and injustices of the conventional model. In the new paradigm, neither money nor credit will be tied to the generation of debt. Banks will be community-owned institutions fully accountable to their depositors; and whirlwind speculation on financial fictions will be replaced by equitable investment schemes in which banks share risks with their customers, and divide returns fairly. The new currency will not be a form of debt-money, but, if anything, will be linked more closely to real-world assets.

But equally, the very notions of growth, progress, and happiness will be redefined. We now know, thanks to research by the likes of psychologist Oliver James and epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson, that material prosperity in the West has not only failed to make us happy, it has proliferated mental illnesses, and widened social inequalities, which are scientifically linked to a prevalence of crime, violence, drug abuse, teenage births, obesity, and other symptoms of social malaise. This doesn't mean that material progress is irrelevant - but that when it becomes the overriding force of society, it is dysfunctional. So we must accept that the old paradigm of unlimited material acquisition is in its death throes – and that the new paradigm of community cooperation is far more in tune with both human nature, and the natural order. This new paradigm may well still be nascent, like small seeds, planted in disparate places. But as the Crisis of Civilization accelerates over the next decades, communities everywhere will become increasingly angry and disillusioned with what went before. And in that disillusionment with the old paradigm, the seeds we're planting today will blossom and offer a vision of hope that will be irresistible tomorrow.

There's only one question that remains. Are you going to hold fast with the grip of death to the old paradigm, or will you embrace life to become an agent of the new paradigm of community cooperation?

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is a bestselling author, international security analyst and consultant. He is Chief Research Officer at Unitas Communications and founder and president of the Institute for Policy Research & Development (IPRD). He also wrote and produced the documentary feature film The Crisis of Civilization

It was around the same time last year that I wrote about the fact that the world is locking itself into an unsustainable energy future from a paper written by the International Energy Association (IEA). A whole year later, a new study by UNEP says that keeping average global temperature rise to below 2°C still possible, with cut backs from buildings, transportation and avoiding deforestation. So obviously we can still find hope, if we have not taken the warnings seriously last year at all.

The UNEP paper says action on climate change needs to be scaled-up and accelerated without delay if the world is going to hold a global average temperature rise below 2 degrees celsius this century. The Emissions Gap Report, was prepared by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the European Climate Foundation, for the convening of the Climate Change Conference of the parties in Doha. The important point being made was that the greenhouse gas emissions levels are now around 14 per cent above where they need to be in 2020. So, instead of declining, the concentration of warming gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) are actually increasing in the atmosphere,up around 20 per cent since 2000. If no swift action is taken by nations, emissions are likely to be at 58 gigatonnes (Gt) in eight years’ time, reveals the report which has inputs by a mind boggling 55 scientists from more than 20 countries.

The Emissions Gap Report of 2012 points out that even if the most ambitious level of pledges and commitments are implemented by all countries and conforming to rules,there will now be a gap of 8 Gt of CO2 equivalent by 2020. This is 2 Gt higher than last year’s assessment with yet another year passing by.

Preliminary economic assessments, highlighted in the new report, estimate that inaction will trigger costs likely to be at least 10 to 15 per cent higher after 2020 if the needed emission reductions are delayed into the following decades. Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: “There are two realities encapsulated in this report,that bridging the gap remains do-able with existing technologies and policies; that there are many inspiring actions taking place at the national level on energy efficiency in buildings, investing in forests to avoid emissions linked with deforestation and new vehicle emissions standards alongside a remarkable growth in investment in new renewable energies worldwide, which in 2011 totaled close to US$260 billion”.

“Yet the sobering fact remains that a transition to a low carbon, inclusive Green Economy is happening far too slowly and the opportunity for meeting the 44 Gt target is narrowing annually,” he added. “While governments work to negotiate a new international climate agreement to come into effect in 2020, they urgently need to put their foot firmly on the action pedal by fulfilling financial, technology transfer and other commitments under the UN climate convention treaties. There are also a wide range of complementary voluntary measures that can that can bridge the gap between ambition and reality now rather than later,” said Mr. Steiner.

The report estimates that there are potentially large emissions reductions possible,in a mid-range of 17 Gt of CO2 equivalents,from sectors such as buildings, power generation and transport that can more than bridge the gap by 2020. Meanwhile, there are abundant examples of actions at the national level in areas ranging from improved building codes to fuel standards for vehicles which, if scaled up and replicated, can also assist.

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said, "This report is a reminder that time is running out, but that the technical means and the policy tools to allow the world to stay below a maximum 2 degrees Celsius are still available to governments and societies”.

The most important segment of the report was looking at sectors where the necessary emissions reductions may be possible by 2020. The areas that were zeroed in on were - Improved energy efficiency in industry could deliver cuts of between 1.5 to 4.6 Gt of CO2 equivalent; followed by agriculture, 1.1 to 4.3 Gt; forestry 1.3 to 4.2 Gt; the power sector, 2.2 to 3.9 Gt; buildings 1.4 to 2.9 Gt; transportation including shipping and aviation 1.7 to 2.5 Gt and the waste sector around 0.8 Gt.

Certain sectors have an even bigger potential over the long term. By boosting the energy efficiency of buildings, for example, could deliver average reductions of around 2.1 Gt by 2020 but cuts of over 9Gt CO₂ equivalent by 2050.

“This implies that by 2050 the building sector could consume 30 per cent less electricity compared to 2005 despite a close to 130 per cent projected increase in built floor area over the same period,” it says.

The report concludes that if this is to happen, “state of the art building codes may need to become mandatory in the next 10 years in all of the major economies such as the United States, India, China and the European Union”. Further emission reductions are possible with the use of more energy efficient appliances and lighting systems.

Potential emissions reductions from the transportation sector are assessed at 2 Gt of CO₂ equivalent by 2020. The report notes that there is already a shift with the eight biggest multilateral development banks at the recent Rio+20 Summit pledging US$175 billion over the next decade for measures such as bus rapid transport systems. The report recommends the “Avoid, Shift and Improve’ polices and measures that encourage improved land planning and alternative mobility options such as buses, cycling and walking above the private car, alongside better use of rail freight and inland waterways.
Combinations of improved vehicle standards and scrappage schemes for old vehicles can also assist. The report says approved and proposed new standards in seven countries ranging from Australia and China to the European Union, the Republic of Korea and the United States are expected to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of new light-duty vehicles by over 50 per cent by 2025 from 2000 levels.

“Although it remained under-utilized, “avoided deforestation” is considered a low cost greenhouse gas emissions reductions option,” says the report. Policies to assist in reducing deforestation and, thus, greenhouse gas emissions, include establishing protected areas such as national parks to economic instruments such as taxes, subsidies and payments for ecosystem services.

The report cites Brazil where a combination of conservation policies allied to falls in agricultural commodity prices has led to a decrease in deforestation by three quarters since 2004 avoiding 2.8 Gt of CO₂ equivalent between 2006 and 2011. Protected areas in Costa Rica now represent over as fifth of its territory, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and triggering a rise in tourists from just under 390,000 in 1988 to 2.5 million in 2008: tourism now accounts for around 15 per cent of GDP.

Marianne de Nazareth is Independent media professional and adjunct faculty, St. Joseph’s PG College Bangalore)

Rarely does the release of a data-driven report on energy trends trigger front-page headlines around the world. That, however, is exactly what happened on November 12th when the prestigious Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) released this year’s edition of its World Energy Outlook. In the process, just about everyone missed its real news, which should have set off alarm bells across the planet.

Claiming that advances in drilling technology were producing an upsurge in North American energy output, World Energy Outlook predicted that the United States would overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the planet’s leading oil producer by 2020. “North America is at the forefront of a sweeping transformation in oil and gas production that will affect all regions of the world,” declared IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven in a widely quoted statement.

In the U.S., the prediction of imminent supremacy in the oil-output sweepstakes was generally greeted with unabashed jubilation. “This is a remarkable change,” said John Larson of IHS, a corporate research firm. “It’s truly transformative. It’s fundamentally changing the energy outlook for this country.” Not only will this result in a diminished reliance on imported oil, he indicated, but also generate vast numbers of new jobs. “This is about jobs. You know, it's about blue-collar jobs. These are good jobs.”

The editors of the Wall Street Journal were no less ecstatic. In an editorial with the eye-catching headline “Saudi America,” they lauded U.S. energy companies for bringing about a technological revolution, largely based on the utilization of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) to extract oil and gas from shale rock. That, they claimed, was what made a new mega-energy boom possible. “This is a real energy revolution,” the Journal noted, “even if it's far from the renewable energy dreamland of so many government subsidies and mandates.”

Other commentaries were similarly focused on the U.S. outpacing Saudi Arabia and Russia, even if some questioned whether the benefits would be as great as advertised or obtainable at an acceptable cost to the environment.

While agreeing that the expected spurt in U.S. production is mostly “good news,” Michael A. Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations warned that gas prices will not drop significantly because oil is a global commodity and those prices are largely set by international market forces. “[T]he U.S. may be slightly more protected, but it doesn’t give you the energy independence some people claim,” he told the New York Times.

Some observers focused on whether increased output and job creation could possibly outweigh the harm that the exploitation of extreme energy resources like fracked oil or Canadian tar sands was sure to do to the environment. Daniel J. Weiss of the Center for American Progress, for example, warned of a growing threat to America’s water supply from poorly regulated fracking operations. “In addition, oil companies want to open up areas off the northern coast of Alaska in the Arctic Ocean, where they are not prepared to address a major oil blowout or spill like we had in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Such a focus certainly offered a timely reminder of how important oil remains to the American economy (and political culture), but it stole attention away from other aspects of the World Energy Report that were, in some cases, downright scary. Its portrait of our global energy future should have dampened enthusiasm everywhere, focusing as it did on an uncertain future energy supply, excessive reliance on fossil fuels, inadequate investment in renewables, and an increasingly hot, erratic, and dangerous climate. Here are some of the most worrisome takeaways from the report.

Shrinking World Oil Supply

Given the hullabaloo about rising energy production in the U.S., you would think that the IEA report was loaded with good news about the world’s future oil supply. No such luck. In fact, on a close reading anyone who has the slightest familiarity with world oil dynamics should shudder, as its overall emphasis is on decline and uncertainty.

Take U.S. oil production surpassing Saudi Arabia’s and Russia’s. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Here’s the catch: previous editions of the IEA report and the International Energy Outlook, its equivalent from the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), rested their claims about a growing future global oil supply on the assumption that those two countries would far surpass U.S. output. Yet the U.S. will pull ahead of them in the 2020s only because, the IEA now asserts, their output is going to fall, not rise as previously assumed.

This is one hidden surprise in the report that’s gone unnoticed. According to the DoE’s 2011 projections, Saudi production was expected to rise to 13.9 million barrels per day in 2025, and Russian output to 12.2 million barrels, jointly providing much of the world’s added petroleum supply; the United States, in this calculation, would reach the 11.7 million barrel mark.

The IEA’s latest revision of those figures suggests that U.S. production will indeed rise, as expected, to about 11 million barrels per day in 2025, but that Saudi output will unexpectedly fall to about 10.6 million barrels and Russian to 9.7 million barrels. The U.S., that is, will essentially become number one by default. At best, then, the global oil supply is not going to grow appreciably -- despite the IEA’s projection of a significant upswing in international demand.

But wait, suggests the IEA, there’s still one wild card hope out there: Iraq. Yes, Iraq. In the belief that the Iraqis will somehow overcome their sectarian differences, attain a high level of internal stability, establish a legal framework for oil production, and secure the necessary investment and technical support, the IEA predicts that its output will jump from 3.4 million barrels per day this year to 8 million barrels in 2035, adding an extra 4.6 million barrels to the global supply. In fact, claims the IEA, this gain would represent half the total increase in world oil production over the next 25 years. Certainly, stranger things have happened, but for the obvious reasons, it remains an implausible scenario.

Add all this together -- declining output from Russia and Saudi Arabia, continuing strife in Iraq, uncertain results elsewhere -- and you get insufficient oil in the 2020s and 2030s to meet anticipated world demand. From a global warming perspective that may be good news, but economically, without a massive increase in investment in alternate energy sources, the outlook is grim. You don’t know what bad times are until you don’t have enough energy to run the machinery of civilization. As suggested by the IEA, “Much is riding on Iraq’s success... Without this supply growth from Iraq, oil markets would be set for difficult times.”

Continuing Reliance on Fossil Fuels

For all the talk of the need to increase reliance on renewable sources of energy, fossil fuels -- coal, oil, and natural gas -- will continue to provide most of the additional energy supplies needed to satisfy soaring world demand. “Taking all new developments and policies into account,” the IEA reported, “the world is still failing to put the global energy system onto a more sustainable path.” In fact, recent developments seem to favor greater fossil-fuel reliance.

In the United States, for instance, the increased extraction of oil and gas from shale formations has largely silenced calls for government investment in renewable technology. In its editorial on the IEA report, for example, the Wall Street Journal ridiculed such investment. It had, the Journal’s writers suggested, now become unnecessary due to the Saudi Arabian-style oil and gas boom to come. “Historians will one day marvel that so much political and financial capital was invested in a [failed] green-energy revolution at the very moment a fossil fuel revolution was aborning,” they declared.

One aspect of this energy “revolution” deserves special attention. The growing availability of cheap natural gas, thanks to hydro-fracking, has already reduced the use of coal as a fuel for electrical power plants in the United States. This would seem to be an obvious environmental plus, since gas produces less climate-altering carbon dioxide than does coal. Unfortunately, coal output and its use haven’t diminished: American producers have simply increased their coal exports to Asia and Europe. In fact, U.S. coal exports are expected to reach as high as 133 million tons in 2012, overtaking an export record set in 1981.

Despite its deleterious effects on the environment, coal remains popular in countries seeking to increase their electricity output and promote economic development. Shockingly, according to the IEA, it supplied nearly half of the increase in global energy consumption over the last decade, growing faster than renewables. And the agency predicts that coal will continue its rise in the decades ahead. The world’s top coal consumer, China, will burn ever more of it until 2020, when demand is finally expected to level off. India’s usage will rise without cessation, with that country overtaking the U.S. as the number two consumer around 2025.

In many regions, notes the IEA report, the continued dominance of fossil fuels is sustained by government policies. In the developing world, countries commonly subsidize energy consumption, selling transportation, cooking, and heating fuels at below-market rates. In this way, they hope to buffer their populations from rising commodity costs, and so protect their regimes from popular unrest. Cutting back on such subsidies can prove dangerous, as in Jordan where a recent government decision to raise fuel prices led to widespread riots and calls for the monarchy’s abolition. In 2011, such subsidies amounted to $523 billion globally, says the IEA, up almost 30% from 2010 and six times greater than subsidies for renewable energy.

No Hope for Averting Catastrophic Climate Change

Of all the findings in the 2012 edition of the World Energy Outlook, the one that merits the greatest international attention is the one that received the least. Even if governments take vigorous steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the report concluded, the continuing increase in fossil fuel consumption will result in “a long-term average global temperature increase of 3.6 degrees C.”

This should stop everyone in their tracks. Most scientists believe that an increase of 2 degrees Celsius is about all the planet can accommodate without unimaginably catastrophic consequences: sea-level increases that will wipe out many coastal cities, persistent droughts that will destroy farmland on which hundreds of millions of people depend for their survival, the collapse of vital ecosystems, and far more. An increase of 3.6 degrees C essentially suggests the end of human civilization as we know it.

To put this in context, human activity has already warmed the planet by about 0.8 degrees C -- enough to produce severe droughts around the world, trigger or intensify intense storms like Hurricane Sandy, and drastically reduce the Arctic ice cap. “Given those impacts,” writes noted environmental author and activist Bill McKibben, “many scientists have come to think that two degrees is far too lenient a target.” Among those cited by McKibben is Kerry Emanuel of MIT, a leading authority on hurricanes. “Any number much above one degree involves a gamble,” Emanuel writes, “and the odds become less and less favorable as the temperature goes up.” Thomas Lovejoy, once the World Bank's chief biodiversity adviser, puts it this way: “If we’re seeing what we're seeing today at 0.8 degrees Celsius, two degrees is simply too much.”

At this point, it’s hard even to imagine what a planet that's 3.6 degrees C hotter would be like, though some climate-change scholars and prophets -- like former Vice President Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth -- have tried. In all likelihood, the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets would melt entirely, raising sea levels by several dozen feet and completely inundating coastal cities like New York and Shanghai. Large parts of Africa, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the American Southwest would be rendered uninhabitable thanks to lack of water and desertification, while wildfires of a sort that we can’t imagine today would consume the parched forests of the temperate latitudes.

In a report that leads with the “good news” of impending U.S. oil supremacy, to calmly suggest that the world is headed for that 3.6 degree C mark is like placing a thermonuclear bomb in a gaudily-wrapped Christmas present. In fact, the “good news” is really the bad news: the energy industry’s ability to boost production of oil, coal, and natural gas in North America is feeding a global surge in demand for these commodities, ensuring ever higher levels of carbon emissions. As long as these trends persist -- and the IEA report provides no evidence that they will be reversed in the coming years -- we are all in a race to see who gets to the Apocalypse first.

Michael Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, a TomDispatch regular, and the author, most recently, of The Race for What’s Left (Metropolitan Books). A documentary movie based on his book Blood and Oil can be previewed and ordered at www.bloodandoilmovie.com. You can follow Klare on Facebook by clicking here.

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Copyright 2012 Michael T. Klare

Today there is a ‘Silent Crisis’ in our midst. The crisis, still largely unrecognised, is potentially greater than all the other problems that transfix our policy makers.

For many decades now there has been a wilful blindness in recognising that relentless human population growth is one of the pre-eminent problems we face. A problem that is driving the astonishing growth of fossil fuel use and its depletion, climate warming, bio-diversity loss, the growing shortage of fresh water to meet human needs - and as a consequence of these changes - the prospect that agriculture will be unable to produce enough food to feed us.

In 1950 world population was barely over two billion. In October 2011 we passed seven billion. It is nothing to celebrate.

In most countries today existing populations are not living environmentally sustainably, yet even if the UN’s assumption of birth-rate decline in developing countries happens, global population will rise to 9.3 billion by 2050. Less reported is that if current birth rates persist, the United Nations Population Division warned in March 2009 that our population will exceed 11 billion by then. A report in October 2011, The State of World Population 2011 says the world's population could more than double to 15 billion by the end of this century.

More and more developed countries offering new ‘baby bonuses’ make it even less likely that we will achieve the lower figures being quoted in the media. We have to start thinking about a ‘genuinely sustainable’ rather than ‘endless growth’ economy – an economy that is already faltering around us, with commodity prices soaring and living standards falling. Politicians focus on reviving economic growth and stimulating spending, but in an era of rapidly depleting resources, the ‘business as usual’ mindset will need to be radically rethought to keep our complex society functioning, with a transition to a qualitative, dynamic, self-supporting economy that satisfies our needs.

The growth lobby is pushing two great myths: That our ageing population will be a disaster unless we have higher birth rates and, despite rising unemployment, there is a terrible shortage of labour that only high immigration can supply. Both claims have been repeatedly shown to be either false or grossly exaggerated. They have huge long-term costs on our infrastructure and environment. Young people get old too and have higher dependency costs. Politicians don’t emphasise this.

In Africa, the UN now admits that it won’t meet its Millennium Development Goals but fails to explain the underlying causes for pessimism. Many countries in Africa already have massive unemployment and not enough food. How will they provide all the schools, jobs, hospitals and food to sustain populations that are set to more than double and in some cases triple in size in less than 40 years?

Governments will be struggling with millions of unemployed and hungry people attracted to violence and extremism. Look at the problems already in our news in countries like Haiti, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan – all countries on constant food aid, with exploding populations and increasingly scarce resources – yet population growth is never mentioned!

In Australia, the population is now set to double every 33 years, fuelled mainly by immigration - this in an arid continent with only six per cent of the country suitable as arable land. America, Canada and the UK’s already high environmental impact are also increasing due to demographic pressures.

Saving the planet and greenwash

Most environmental organisations tell us that ‘if only we each reduced our environmental demand, population growth would not be a problem’. But our economic system based on growth is driving us in the opposite direction. Even if all the efficiency and renewable alternatives could be implemented the savings would be quickly wasted if populations continue to grow.

You can try reducing consumption all you want, but when you keep adding 100 million and another 100 million, you simply drive every human to a lower and lower standard of living. You cannot escape that reality.

Professor John Beddington, former UK Chief Scientist, warned in March 2009 that: "Our food reserves are at a 50-year low, but by 2030 we need to be producing 50% more food, we will need 50% more energy, and 30% more fresh water. They are dramatic problems, and they are all intimately connected." We are producing ever more pollutants and greenhouse gasses. No reasonable amount of "Green" behaviour changes could possibly compensate for this tsunami of demand generated by population growth.
Most experts now agree we will pass ‘peak oil’ production in 2012 and production of all liquid fossil fuels will drop within 20 years to half what it is today. Yet, forecasts project energy demand will grow by 60 per cent between 2002 and 2030. (Sources: (US) Energy Information Administration 2009 report and chief executive, BP oil).

A huge problem is most alternative energy sources are poor energy performers because they need a high-energy input to provide a given energy return. Wind and solar power are intermittent, while Hydrogen is only as clean as the fuel source used to produce it and provides only a quarter the energy as the same volume of gasoline. Ethanol, from corn or sugarcane, contains 33 per cent less energy than the same amount of oil and competes with food production. Already, 18 per cent of U.S. corn now goes to producing ethanol, but provides only one per cent of the liquid fuel used in the U.S.

Charles Hall, professor of Environmental Science at the State University of New York, warns that apart from bicycles, there are virtually no forms of transportation that are not powered by oil and most goods are made with oil. Most jobs would cease to exist without it. Renewables (other than hydropower or wood) provide around one per cent of the energy used in the world, but the annual increase in the use of most fossil fuels is far greater than the total electricity production from wind turbines and photovoltaics.
Governments now plan to spend billions by substantially increasing nuclear generation. Apart from potentially critical contamination risks, even doubling the number of reactors across the world could see commercially extractable uranium ore run out in just 20 years.

According to some energy analysts, the energy commitment required in mining, waste storage and disposal will shortly make the nuclear industry a net user of energy, just when the energy famine begins to hit hard. Unless there is an unlikely breakthrough with fusion power and we drastically cut demand, we are on course to exhaust the energy we need in the lifetime of many people alive today.

Water

The Stockholm International Water Institute calculated in 2008 that 1.4 billion people live in regions where existing water cannot meet the agricultural, industrial and environmental needs of all and only 2.5 per cent of the world’s water is fresh. Today, one person in five has no access to safe drinking water, and one in three lacks safe sanitation.

Around 19% of US energy demand goes into food production. Fossil fuels to meet this demand are declining and many regions are already reaching the limits of their water resources, according to the UN’s World Water Development Report in 2009.

And then there is the impact of climate change. The accelerating icecap melt will make at least a metre rise in sea level probable by 2100, according to the International Panel on Climate Change, threatening the world's major cities and fertile crop-growing deltas. Freshwater glaciers that feed major rivers are shrinking.

If governments won’t talk population, then they are not serious about cutting emissions, managing the water supply, managing food supplies, and a secure quality of life for our people. Look at the facts. Look at the numbers. The problems are here, they're real.

Those who say there is no problem about future resources and energy supplies need to do so on the basis of what is probable, not gamble on what just might be, because the quality of life and the lives of billions of people will depend on having sufficient energy, food and resources once fossil fuels become scarce.

It is not a question of ‘either or’ and who needs to act. We are in this together. Rich nations are consuming too much and populations continue to rise. Legitimate aspirations to raise living standards in high population countries like China and India are consuming ever-more resources. In many developing countries with acute water and food shortages, populations are projected to double or triple in size within 40 years – driving social unrest and migration on a massive scale.

There are several key challenges we have to talk about and face. In particular, ensuring development aid from donor countries delivers fully accessible and properly funded reproductive health care for all, along with equal access to education for girls and women. In many countries there are still barriers to this. We also have to start incentivising welfare systems to encourage fewer births rather than more.

Moral values?

Some people believe they have a right to have as many children as they want, whether they can look after them or not and fail to understand or just ignore the consequences of growing populations. Many commentators wilfully promote an ever-larger population in the name of freedom of choice and growth. There will be precious little choice left if we go on multiplying with no thought for the future.Others claim their religion as an excuse for actions that impact on others: Have large families "in the name of God"; Over-consuming resources? "God will provide" - so we don't need to think about the ecological consequences; and when the day of reckoning and collapse arrives - "It is God's will" - a religious opt-out from moral responsibility.

We have superior intellect to understand the consequences of our actions and the ecological and social devastation that will run like a scourge of misery for billions if population keeps increasing. Do we plan for a secure and better life or do we carry on blindly toward a minefield of lethal limits?

Rights come with responsibilities. Society has a right to expect its citizens to act in ways that do not endanger others. Governments ‘incentivise’ many aspects of our lives for a common good, but the more crowded we become the more governments will police our behaviour and restrict our activities. We still have a choice. The world badly needs a grown-up, rational discussion of the population issue - without blame, abuse and hysteria.

It would be a tragedy if population growth became a catastrophe - a catastrophe we were too polite to talk about. Our children will not thank us for being driven to an abyss.

Brian McGavin is a UK-based writer, analysist and environmental campaigner

Veterans For Peace urgently calls on the United States and NATO to cease all military activity in Syria, halt all US and NATO shipments of weapons, and abandon all threats to further escalate the violence under which the people of Syria are suffering.

NATO troops and missiles should be withdrawn from Turkey and other surrounding nations. US ships should exit the Mediterranean.

Veterans For Peace is an organization of veterans who draw upon their military experiences in working for the abolition of war. We have not entered into this work without consideration of many situations similar to the current one in Syria.

Peace negotiations, while very difficult, will be easier now, and will do more good now, than after greater violence. Those negotiations must come, and delaying them will cost many men, women, and children their lives.

No good can come from US military intervention in Syria. The people of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Vietnam, and dozens of other nations in Latin America and around the world have not been made better off by US military intervention.

While experts have great doubt that the Syrian government will use chemical weapons, while accounts of past use are dishonest, and while claims that such use is imminent are unsubstantiated and highly suspicious, the most likely way to provoke such use is the threat of an escalated foreign intervention. Required now by practicality, morality, and the law is de-escalation.

The possession or use of one kind of weapon cannot justify the use of another. Were the Syrian government to use chemical weapons against Syrians, the United States would not be justified in using other kinds of weapons against Syrians. The United States possesses chemical and biological weapons, as well as nuclear weapons, and possesses and uses cluster bombs, white phosphorus, depleted uranium weapons, mines, and weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles -- none of which justifies military attacks on the US government.

The United States' own military actions kill far more civilians than combatants. The United States facilitates and tolerates governments' abuses of their own people in nations around the world and around Western Asia, notably in Bahrain -- not to mention in Syria, to which the United States has in recent years sent victims to have them tortured. The world does not believe US motivations for intervention in Syria are humanitarian. The motivation has been too openly advertised as the overthrow of a government too friendly with the government of Iran and insufficiently subservient to NATO. Syria has been on a Pentagon list for regime change since at least 2001.

The threat of war, like the use of war, is a violation of the UN Charter, to which both the United States and Syria are parties. War without Congressional declaration is a violation of the US Constitution.

Another US war will not only breed hostility. It will directly arm and supply those already hostile to the US government.

How many times must we watch the same mistakes repeated?

The options are not limited to doing nothing or escalating warfare. Nonviolent resistance to tyranny has proven far more likely to succeed, and the successes far longer lasting. Nations and individuals outside of Syria should do what they can to facilitate the nonviolent pursuit of justice.
But Syria's struggles should be controlled by the Syrian people without military intervention. The first step is a cease-fire and de-escalation. The US military and NATO can assist only by departing.

Veterans For Peace is a national organization, founded in 1985 with approximately 5,000 members in 150 chapters located in every US state and several countries. It is a 501(c)3 non-profit educational organization recognized as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) by the United Nations, and is the only national veterans' organization
calling for the abolishment of war. Contact:
Leah Bolger leah@veteransforpeace.org 541-207-7761
Mike Reid mikereid@veteransforpeace.org 314-766-4657
David Swanson david@davidswanson.com 202-329-7847

Much has been written about the need to adapt to climate change, to help the poor and the vulnerable. Much more has been written about how to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions to encourage capitalists to invest in renewable energy (1) rather than in fossil fuels and nuclear energy, in order to maintain living standards for the middle class without harming the environment. But these are partial responses to a problem which is actually systemic in nature and thus needs a system-wide solution.

The Earth used to have grasslands, forests, agricultural lands and soils which acted as giant carbon sinks and prevented a build-up of concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But the gases from anthropogenic sources in the last 300 years began to outgrow the sinks. The sources of greenhouse gas emissions are carbon dioxide from extracting and burning fossil fuels, other man-made gases, and other gases like methane released from positive feed-back due to temperature rise. The sinks are the ecosystems consisting of living organisms and plants which absorb carbon dioxide as they grow and sequester the carbon in their living tissue, until it decays and returns to the soil, releasing some methane.

Oceans are another sink, which are also compromised by shipping and pollution. Mining, urbanisation, logging, agriculture, and deforestation appropriate 80 per cent of the Earth's net primary biomass production. Thus the reason for climate change is that the sources of greenhouse gases have increased, and the sinks have been more or less completely destroyed. Today a world population of 7 billion people is appropriating nearly all the net primary biomass production of the Earth. Plants, trees and animals are being used without being replaced. Only human beings are being replaced, but the majority are being born into conditions of suffering and destitution, whilst the rich minority are making use of the technologies produced under capitalism to insulate themselves from the environmental calamities that their world system causes. Their comforts are achieved using fossil fuels and nuclear energy, which further exacerbates runaway climate change.

Technically it is not necessary to use biomass and the land in a way which causes climate change. Biomass use does not have to be a net source of carbon dioxide emissions. If a tree adds 12 kg of wood to its mass every year, then provided that you only take 12 kg of wood from that tree every year you are not destroying its sequestration capacity, especially if you do not burn the wood but use it to build a house and later let it decompose and turn back into soil carbon over time. If you burn the wood it is also not a problem provided that you plant another tree that will sequester the 22 kg of carbon dioxide that you emit when you burn the wood. Similar numbers and figures have been calculated for grasslands and agricultural production systems. (2) (3) ,

These basic facts point to the global solution to anthropogenic climate change. In order to halt and reverse anthropogenic climate change, human beings must first change their social systems and remove the division between capital and labour. The system must be replaced with a rational and scientific communitarian society based on the social and ecological implications of anthropogenic climate change outlined above. Secondly, capitalists and the middle class must stop using fossil fuels and nuclear energy, thus eliminating the sources of carbon dioxide emissions.

Once these two changes are achieved, a global humanity which is neither middle class nor working class but simply a humanity living and working in associations of free producers, can do the hard manual work of restoring biotic sinks.

In the early days of the climate change debate many governments had looked forward to international cooperation to mitigate climate change through forestry restoration. Sadly the insistence on ?least-cost' solutions meant that forestry for carbon sequestration never took off in the international arena. Twenty years on, and after another failed UNFCCC meeting, it is necessary to remind ourselves again of the role that human forestry and agricultural labour can and must play in reversing climate change. Working on the land, with scientific management systems that advise workers in villages and town municipalities how to conserve carbon whilst producing food and building materials, must become the free and voluntary mode of human production and reproduction.

Because there are so many more people than there were in pre-capitalist days, the agricultural and forestry systems will be different from what was done earlier. In order that decisions can be taken on the basis of the scientific understanding of the Earth's needs, all men and women and children will have to be retrained in soil, plant, animal, forest and human conservation. The emphasis on voluntary work and community control will have to unleash the interest of the scientific community in advising their kith and kin how to go about planting trees, producing food, and conserving soils and water.

Capitalism and the middle class have thus given humanity a formidable challenge. Not only must we overthrow capitalism, we must introduce in its place scientific social and ecological systems to address the problems the previous world system created.

The target is to return to pre-capitalist concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which were around 250 ppm. This is a reduction of 150 ppm from the current 400 ppm. Thus, in addition to eliminating all sources of greenhouse gases by totally abandoning capitalism and the middle class standard of living and thus eliminating the use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy, the human species must devote the rest of its species' existence to sequestering 1,166 Gigatonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This figure is derived from the fact that 1 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 7.773 Gigatonnes of carbon dioxide. Assuming that an average tree adds 12 kg of wood and roots ? sequesters 22 kg of carbon dioxide - per year, we must plant 97 trillion trees. That is, each person on the planet must plant and maintain 13,881 trees.

Seen in the light of these facts and figures, the problem is not insurmountable. There is land, and we can do work. What is needed is the reorganisation of the world system so that associations of free producers can do this labour voluntarily for the sake of humanity and in order to feed themselves and lead a life in dignity and in harmony with the Earth. The associations must also remember not to emit any greenhouse gases whilst doing this work, or if they do, they must plant additional trees in proportion to the quantity of wood they have burnt.

1.some environmentalists even advocate nuclear energy

2.Douglas B. Kell, Breeding crop plants with deep roots: their role in sustainable carbon, nutrient and water sequestration. Annals of Botany (2011)

3.Lal, R. Sequestering carbon in soils of agro-ecosystems. Food Policy (2011)

Anandi Sharan is a Bangalore based writer. https://www.facebook.com/anandisharan

UXBRIDGE, Canada - The most important number in history is now the annual measure of carbon emissions. That number reveals humanity’s steady billion-tonne by billion-tonne march to the edge of the carbon cliff, beyond which scientists warn lies a fateful fall to catastrophic climate change.

With the global total of climate-disrupting emissions likely to come in at around 52 gigatons (billion metric tonnes) this year, we’re already at the edge, according to new research.

To have a good chance of staying below two degrees C of warming, global emissions should be between 41 and 47 gigatons (Gt) by 2020, said Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Switzerland’s Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich.

“Only when we see the annual global emissions total decline will we know we’re making the shift to climate protection,” Rogelj told IPS.

Making the shift to a future climate with less than two degrees C of warming is doable and not that expensive if total emissions peak in the next few years and fall into the 41-47 Gt “sweet spot” by 2020, Rogelj and colleagues show in their detailed analysis published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The study is the first to comprehensively quantify the costs and risks of emissions surpassing critical thresholds by 2020.

This shift means 65 percent of existing coal power plants will have to be shut down in the next decade or two.

“There are enormous benefits if global emissions decline before 2020. Failure to do so will mean we will need to use more nuclear, massive amounts of bioenergy, large-scale carbon capture and storage,” he said.

The costs and social implications from deploying all this will be “huge”, he said.

“Delay is by far the riskier option,” Rogelj said, noting that failure to act now means those additional risks, costs and social disruption will land on the heads of the next generation.

“We’re deciding that the next generation will have to pay significantly higher costs because we’re not doing anything now.”

These climate-disrupting emissions are primarily carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning fossil fuels and deforestation. The global total also includes other greenhouse gases that are warming the planet such as methane, nitrous oxide, and a few other chemicals.

In 1990, global emissions were 38.2 Gt, and in recent years, they have been growing at a rate of three percent per year. This growth is despite commitments by industrialized countries to reduce their emissions.

In 2009, all industrialized countries, including the United States, made emission reduction pledges under the Copenhagen Accord. However, even if countries reach their Copenhagen targets, global emissions will be about 55 Gt in 2020, the study estimates.

Staying below two degrees C is still feasible, but it will be far more expensive and difficult, imposing an additional cost burden amounting to trillions of dollars over 2020 to 2050.

Earlier this month, during the annual U.N. climate conference in Doha, governments declined to increase their emission cut targets. Citing economic difficulties, countries like the U.S. and those in the European Union looked to a new global climate treaty that would not make additional emission reductions until 2020.

Despite the urgent need to reduce emissions, the fossil fuel industry received a record 523 billion dollars in public subsidies in 2011, 30 percent more than the previous year, according to the International Energy Agency.

“Lots of actions at the local and national level are needed to bring emissions down over the next few years,” said energy researcher David McCollum of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), in Laxenburg, Austria.

Waiting until 2020 before emissions decline means millions of hectares of land will be needed to produce biofuel, billions of dollars invested in new nuclear power plants, and new technologies like carbon capture and storage must not only work but be effective on a large scale, McCollum told IPS.

“At 44Gt (in 2020) we can choose the most cost-effective reduction options. Above 55Gt, we need everything and they’d all better work,” he said.

The authors of the study acknowledge these numbers might be too optimistic because current climate models cannot incorporate emissions from melting permafrost and other natural sources of greenhouse gases that might result from increasing temperatures.

Staying below two degrees is not a matter of science or technology. It will be determined by political and social decisions to take the necessary steps to shift to low-carbon living, said McCollum.

And, in that regard, the choices made before 2020 are critical, both he and Rogelj conclude.

Stephen Leahy is the international science and environment correspondent for the Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS).

© 2012 IPS North America

New study documenting climate change shows sweeping changes happening faster than previously recorded and bringing 'cascading effects'

A new report documents how climate change is already causing rapid, massive changes with "cascading effects" on ecosystems and biodiversity.

The report (pdf), led by the US Geological Survey, the National Wildlife Federation and Arizona State University, foresees a global loss of biodiversity and major shifts in ecosystems.

"These geographic range and timing changes are causing cascading effects that extend through ecosystems, bringing together species that haven't previously interacted and creating mismatches between animals and their food sources," states Nancy Grimm, a scientist at ASU and a lead author of the report.

And these changes will have direct consequences on humans, Amanda Staudt, a NWF climate scientist and a lead author on the report adds, as many ecosystems serve as a backbone in the defense of storm damage.

"Shifting climate conditions are affecting valuable ecosystem services, such as the role that coastal habitats play in dampening storm surge or the ability of our forests to provide timber and help filter our drinking water."

Among the animals in the US affected by climate change already underway, the report states, are climate-induced changes in pests and pathogens that have been deadly to some conifer forests, small mammals which are seeking higher elevations or having their already high elevation habitats shrunk and a fragmentation in habitat for wolverines.

The USGS offers some of the key findings of the report:

>> Changes in precipitation and extreme weather events can overwhelm the ability of natural systems to reduce or prevent harm to people from these events. For example, more frequent heavy rainfall events increase the movement of nutrients and pollutants to downstream ecosystems, likely resulting not only in ecosystem change, but also in adverse changes in the quality of drinking water and a greater risk of waterborne-disease outbreaks.

>> Changes in winter have big and surprising effects on ecosystems and their services. Changes in soil freezing, snow cover and air temperature affect the ability of ecosystems to store carbon, which, in turn, influences agricultural and forest production. Seasonally snow-covered regions are especially susceptible to climate change because small precipitation or temperature shifts can cause large ecosystem changes. Longer growing seasons and warmer winters are already increasing the likelihood of pest outbreaks, leading to tree mortality and more intense, extensive fires. Decreased or unreliable snowfall for winter sports and recreation will likely cause high future economic losses.

>> The ecosystem services provided by coastal habitats are especially vulnerable to sea-level rise and more severe storms. The Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts are most vulnerable to the loss of coastal protection services provided by wetlands and coral reefs. Along the Pacific coast, long-term dune erosion caused by increasing wave heights is projected to cause problems for communities and for recreational beach activities. However, other kinds of recreation will probably improve due to better weather, with the net effect being that visitors and tourism dollars will shift away from some communities in favor of others.

>> Climate change adaptation strategies are vital for the conservation of diverse species and effective natural resource policy and management. As more adaptive management approaches are developed, resource managers can enhance the country’s ability to respond to the impacts of climate change through forward-looking and climate science-informed goals and actions.

>> Ecological monitoring needs to be improved and better coordinated among federal and state agencies to ensure the impacts of climate change are adequately monitored and to support ecological research, management, assessment and policy. Existing tracking networks in the United States will need to improve coverage through time and in geographic area to detect and track climate-induced shifts in ecosystems and species.

In the shadows of what was for many another disappointing international climate negotiation at COP 18 in Doha, the German energy transformation or “Energiewende” has all the signs of a modern miracle: A complete shift of the world’s fourth largest economy to 80% renewable energy and complete buy-in from all political parties—from the most conservative to most liberal.  So, where is the sustainability energy Kool-Aid and how can we get some for the U.S. Congress? 

The Perfect Energy Plan?

No matter who one seems to talk to in Germany, whether it’s the conservative member of parliament or the kid of the street, they all seem to agree on one thing: climate change needs to be addressed and they’re going to do it.  Conflict arises, however, when asked HOW to do this and the Energiewende plan of Germany is touted as an inspirational and socially-responsible movement by one of the worlds’ leading economies, while others see it as a plan doomed to failure.  According to a2012 Economist critical analysis of the plan, “To many theEnergiewende is a lunatic gamble with the country’s manufacturing prowess. But if it pays off Germany will have created yet another world-beating industry, say the gamblers.”

So, what is this transition plan and is it an energy and climate innovator or, as skeptics claim, a plan made to fail? The targets are impressive. TheEnergiewende includes phasing out all nuclear power by 2022 and cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from 1990 levels and shifting the nation’s energy sources to 80% renewables by 2050. Additionally, theRenewable Energy Act gives priority to renewable energy in the energy grid before dirty forms of energy, securing a place for renewables in the energy marketplace.  The plan also includes major expansions of the energy grid, consumer-based incentives, market-based emissions reductions and, all in all, reads as a gigantic climate and renewable energy high five.  

In stark contrast, the world is watching closely as the U.S. undergoes a climate-unfortunate “re-industrialization”.  Our own domestic energy transformation includes the “shale gas miracle”—or curse—of untapped natural shale gas reserves and the increased call for hydraulic fracking—a method of natural gas extraction that has lead to dramatic health and environmental concerns by many communities and aburgeoning anti-fracking movement. Many speak of the “shale gas miracle” as the key to U.S.energy independence. The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts a 44% increase in U.S. natural gas production from 2011 to 2040. Additionally, according to aNovember, 2012,L.A. Timesarticle, “The U.S. will become the world’s top producer of oil by 2020, a net exporter of oil around 2030 and nearly self-sufficient in energy by 2035, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency.”  The popular rhetoric of U.S. energy independence seems to be the only climate or energy discussion to have successfully infiltrated U.S. media and crossed party lines—with “energy security” as a close runner-up. However, as we learned as teenagers, all this “independence” comes with a price (think: global climate change) and increased responsibility (is it time to become a global climate player?).  Germany, on the other hand, has historically been anenergy dependent nation (currently importing 70% of its energy) with longtime dependency of natural gas from Russia and coal and oil imports from a diversity of countries.  As the U.S. leads the way in per capita greenhouse gas emissions, our “energy independence” being centered on an INCREASE in fossil fuel extraction is problematic.  No matter how you look at it, Germany is phasing out fossil fuels and the U.S. is phasing up fossil fuels. 

Buying Public Buy-In

Another component of the Energiewende is an incentive-based system that’s referred to as a “feed-in tariff”.  Germans who install renewable energy systems (envision solar panels on your house) can sell surplus power back into the power grid at a rate guaranteed for 20 years.  The feed-in tariff rate has dropped significantly over the past few years as more and more individuals, small businesses, and pop-up entrepreneurs take advantage of the financial incentives, costing the German government increasing sums.  According to a 2012Economist article, “The number of ‘energy co-operatives’ has risen six fold since 2007, to 586 last year. Solar parks have migrated from farms and family houses to apartment blocks. ‘Roof exchanges’ match owners with investors.” 

This tariff both engages the German public in the great “transition”, while creating a more decentralized system of energy production and increasing the independence of Germany on foreign energy sources. Importantly, Germans are making this transition through clean, renewable energy, as opposed to the U.S. energy independence scheme currently centered around dirty fossil fuels.

In the U.S., we have incentivized small-scale renewables and energy efficiency withfederal tax credits for energy efficiency since 2006, which include tax credits for up to 30% of the cost of renewable energy and other energy efficiency measures for individuals.  What we’ve seen in the U.S. over the past 12 years is less of an emphasis on climate or energy regulation at the federal level, with concerned states and municipalities picking up the slack. According to theData of State Incentives for Renewable and Efficiency (DSIRE), there are only a small handful of federal rules, regulations, or policies for renewable energy in the U.S., compared to over 380 of them at the state and local level.  So, what’s preventing our national government from joining the renewable revolution?

Energy History

In Germany, no one is arguing one thing: energy prices are going to go up, before they go down.  In the U.S., where “tax” is a four-letter word and prices at the gas pump influence elections, rising energy bills are a politician’s nightmare.  In Germany, however, it is expected that Chancellor Angela Merkel, who spearheaded the dramatic pace of the Energiewende, is projected to easily win re-election.  Why then, despite the grumbling of many from the consumer and business side on price escalations, are Germans taking the renewable energy lead?

Part of the story has to do with German history and the domestic relationship with energy.  For many in Berlin, the radioactive fallout of the1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in what is now the Ukraine, still stings.  Many remember it as a time where German children weren’t allowed to play in the streets for fear of contamination and water supplies were suspect by a majority in the region.  The 2011Fukishima nuclear disaster of Japan was a sudden tipping point for Chancellor Merkel and many Germans. Although Germany was already planning a national energy overhaul, the rapidity of the national nuclear phase-out was drastically increased following Fukishima. The images and tremendous impacts of this disaster nailed the lid on the coffin of German nuclear power. 

Often slated for its “clean” energy in terms of greenhouse gas emissions,nuclear is hotly contested throughout the world due to the danger of necessary radioactive material and the lack of safe disposal methods for toxic waste. However, some questions also arise with the sudden phase-out of nuclear energy in Germany, including: What will Germany do with the waste from its current nuclear facilities? Can Germany really claim nuclear safety on a domestic level when its neighbor,France, is dependent on over 75% of its domestic energy by nuclear power?  And what about the increased domestic emissions fromnew coal power plants being built to counter the energy production lost by the phase-out of nuclear?

If one is to believe the market-based rhetoric on climate change and international development, then climate change presents an opportunity for new and innovative business models for nations that are fossil fuel dependent. Faced with a rapidly changing climate, the German approach has been to get in early, and stay in it for the long haul. Diametrically opposed to the long-term German approach, the U.S. is the global “risk taker”, where community-based thinking and long-term planning necessary to address climate change are nearly foreign concepts. 

In terms of international cooperation, Germany has experience in collaborative sandbox play.  The formation of the E.U. has forced member states to work together and confront some of Europe’s long-standing domestic patterns.  The strategic patience learned from negotiating economics, environment and countless complex issues amongst 27 different governments (E.U.) has matured European countries beyond the American collaborative experience.  As the global teenage superpower, the U.S. is a country that still works as a political island—where cooperation is far from synonymous with compromise.  From the German political perspective, the U.S. is “missing opportunities” in regards to international climate negotiations. 

When it comes to their renewable revolution, Germany is convinced that being the renewable “technological front runner” is an advantage as it’s rapidly growing market.  When looking to German business, climate change and increases in energy efficiency and emissions standards in the U.S. and E.U. are shifting how they do business.  Auto manufacturers, such as BMW, are now looking for suppliers domestically and abroad who can guarantee green energy for their new fleets of electric vehicles and they need to produce electric and hybrid fleets to comply with newU.S. fuel efficiency standards.  For many of these companies, it’s not the “environment” or “good will” or even the market that’s driving them to green: it’s policy.  According to a November 2012 commentary of the Energiewende by the Center for Eastern Studies, “The energy transformation in Germany is not perceived as an element of protection of the natural environment but primarily as part of the state’s economic and social policy.”  So, is this a next step in bringing environment into the heart of social and economic systems or tossing them out of the running? And how does this discourse potentially impact the larger climate discourse?

Public Perception: It’s Not “If,” It’s How

As U.S. media outlets continue to ignore the clear, international climate science consensus and debate the existence of manmade climate change, the German media—and public—is on the road to energy independence AND cutting their climate impacts drastically.  Even when talking with a former parliament member of one of Germany’s more conservative parties, he simultaneously touted the need for expansion of the fossil fuel industry, while saying, “of course climate change is real and we need to take action”.  To many U.S. conservatives, climate change has somehow become a part of the “liberal agenda” of big government, tree hugging and a communist plot to destroy the nation’s economy.  Regardless of party lines, there’s an obvious breach of communication between climate scientists, policy makers, the media, and the American public. 

The success of the Energiewende would prove, globally, that addressing climate change builds your economy, not breaks it.  Additionally, the trends in energy consumption per capita in Germany shows that less can indeed be more.  As the German GDP rises, energy consumption is actually dropping per capita.  According to thePost Carbon Institute, “Between 1980 and 2005, energy use was close to flat, while GDP rose by an average of 1.7% per year.” This means that Germans are becoming more energy efficient, and less energy intensive, as they earn more money. One key goal of the Energiewende is to show the world that jobs, growth, and sustainability are not exclusive.  All eyes are on Germany and it is up to them to demonstrate that their energy transition is going to support their economy, not ruin it, through a rapid transformation to renewables.

On the other side of the ocean, as was reported in a 2012 Guardian article, the world continues to be amazed by the climate misinformation campaigns and partisan reporting on climate and energy in the United States.  However, according to a 2012 report from the Yale Project on Climate Communication on U.S. perception of energy and climate policy, “A large majority of Americans (77%) say global warming should be a priority for the president and Congress,” and, “Nearly all Americans (92%) say the president and the Congress should make developing sources of clean energy a priority.”  So, perhaps Americans are waking up to the inconvenient truths of climate change when faced with increased droughts, wildfires, and strengthened storms, or are they?   

Regardless of international public perception, the U.S. is not without “climate wins” and international NGOs, academic bodies, and government agencies consistently refer to learning from regional, state, and citywide case studies.  Many of the more progressive climate states includeCalifornia with their recently-launched cap-and-trade system, and the first U.S. based cap-and-trade system,Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) , which brings together nine Northeast states to reduce CO2 emissions from the energy sector by 10% by 2018. 

Another sign of potential consumer-level buy-in to climate action is that both Germany and the U.S. are seeing the phenomenon of “social cocooning” grow, resulting in a rapidly expanding movement of people reverting to self-sufficiency and personal sustainability. The result? More urban gardens, the local food movement, small-scale energy production and increases in human-powered mobility, which some attribute to social awareness of climate change and others to economic troubles on both sides of the Atlantic.  A not-so-climate-positive shared phenomenon is what’s referred to as “NIMBY” or Not In My Back Yard, where even those who support renewable energy or shifting economies towards sustainability don’t necessarily want to feel or see that shift in their daily lives.  For example, you might love wind energy, but not really want one on the horizon while you’re on a beach vacation with the family.

No Country Is an Energy Island…

As far as climate change is concerned, no country is an island. We’re all in this together.  So, what does it mean that a country like Germany is slashing emissions, pushing for binding emissions targets internationally, and leading the renewable revolution?  Some would argue that they are setting a great example, but unless the other large global economies (and polluters) follow suit, their positive climate impact will be negligible.  Whether we like it or not, energy is the backbone of our global economies, and currently that energy is based on fossil fuels. 

The international impacts of the Energiewende might hit home for the American public sooner than we think.  Currently, the E.U. and U.S. are reinvigorating talks on developing a Transatlantic Free Trade Area, to increase economic ties between the two regions.  As was reported in a 2012Washington Post article, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “We are discussing possible negotiations with the European Union for a comprehensive agreement that would increase trade and spur growth on both sides of the Atlantic.” Included in her speech were direct calls for an end to certain standards in the E.U., including agricultural rules, that she referred to as “long-standing barriers to trade and market access”.  Putting this into layman terms: the E.U. has stricter labeling and environmental rules for consumer products and bans genetically modified foods.  So, will the E.U. succumb to U.S. demands and lower their standards to increase inter-continental trade?  Will these demands creep into energy policy and cater to the lowest common climate denominator—the U.S.?  Or will the opposite come true: Germany and the E.U. will counter that if the U.S. wants to open economic ties, then we have to start coming together on the ethical ones, whether it’s energy efficiency, reducing carbon emissions, or having honest labels on our goods?  

In a world powered by dirty energy, what will it take to make a global shift to renewables?  Looking at the “bigger picture” of climate change and energy links, many see Germany’s country-by-country approach as a small, perhaps insignificant piece, in the global climate puzzle. This concern echoes the critiques by many of Germany’s neighbors—if just one country transforms their climate impacts, does it really matter?  And the answer: Germany can’t do it without buy-in from other countries in the E.U. and, perhaps, even us in the United States. And they just might have the long-term planning, innovation, and determination to make it work. 

“One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, So fast they follow”(1). That radical green pressure group PriceWaterhouseCoopers warns that even if the current rate of global decarbonisation were to double, we would still be on course for six degrees of warming by the end of the century(2). Confining the rise to two degrees requires a sixfold reduction in carbon intensity: far beyond the scope of current policies.

A new report shows that the UK has lost 20% of its breeding birds since 1966: once-common species such as willow tits, lesser spotted woodpeckers and turtle doves have all but collapsed; even house sparrows have fallen by two-thirds(3). Ash dieback is just one of many terrifying plant diseases, mostly spread by trade. They now threaten our oaks, pines and chestnuts(4,5).

So where are the marches, the occupations, the urgent demands for change? While the surveys show that the great majority would like to see the living planet protected(6,7), few are prepared to take action. This, I think, reflects a second environmental crisis: the removal of children from the natural world. The young people we might have expected to lead the defence of nature have less and less to do with it.

We don’t have to disparage the indoor world, which has its own rich ecosystem, to lament children’s disconnection from the outdoor world. But the experiences the two spheres offer are entirely different. There is no substitute for what takes place outdoors; not least because the greatest joys of nature are unscripted. The thought that most of our children will never swim among phosphorescent plankton at night, will never be startled by a salmon leaping, a dolphin breaching, the stoop of a peregrine, the rustle of a grass snake is almost as sad as the thought that their children might not have the opportunity.

The remarkable collapse of children’s engagement with nature – which is even faster than the collapse of the natural world – is recorded in Richard Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods, and in a report published recently by the National Trust. Since the 1970s the area in which children may roam without supervision has decreased by almost 90%(8). In one generation the proportion of children regularly playing in wild places in the UK has fallen from over half to fewer than one in ten(9). In the US, in just six years (1997-2003) children with particular outdoor hobbies fell by half(10). Eleven to 15 year-olds in Britain now spend, on average, half their waking day in front of a screen(11).

There are several reasons for this collapse: parents’ irrational fear of strangers and rational fear of traffic, the destruction of the fortifying commons where previous generations played, the quality of indoor entertainment, the structuring of children’s time, the criminalisation of natural play. The great indoors, as a result, has become a far more dangerous place than the diminished world beyond.

The rise of obesity, rickets and asthma and the decline in cardio-respiratory fitness are well-documented. Louv also links the indoor life to an increase in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other mental ill-health. Research conducted at the University of Illinois suggests that playing among trees and grass is associated with a marked reduction in indications of ADHD, while playing indoors or on tarmac appears to increase them(12). The disorder, Louv suggests, “may be a set of symptoms aggravated by lack of exposure to nature”(13). Perhaps it’s the environment, not the child, that has gone wrong.

In her famous essay The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood, Edith Cobb proposed that contact with nature stimulates creativity(14). Reviewing the biographies of 300 “geniuses”, she exposed a common theme: intense experiences of the natural world in the middle age of childhood (between 5 and 12). Animals and plants, she contended, are among “the figures of speech in the rhetoric of play … which the genius in particular of later life seems to recall.”

Studies in several nations show that children’s games are more creative in green places than in concrete playgrounds(15). Natural spaces encourage fantasy and roleplay, reasoning and observation(16). The social standing of children there depends less on physical dominance, more on inventiveness and language skills. Perhaps forcing children to study so much, rather than running wild in the woods and fields, is counter-productive.

And here we meet the other great loss. Most of those I know who fight for nature are people who spent their childhoods immersed in it. Without a feel for the texture and function of the natural world, without an intensity of engagement almost impossible in the absence of early experience, people will not devote their lives to its protection. The fact that at least half the articles on ash dieback disease in the newspapers have been illustrated with photos of beeches, sycamores or oaks seems to me to be highly suggestive.

Forest schools, Outward Bound, Woodcraft Folk, the John Muir Award, the Campaign for Adventure, Natural Connections, family nature clubs and many others are trying to bring children and the natural world back together again. But all of them are fighting forces which, if they cannot be turned, will strip the living planet of the wonder and delight, of the ecstacy – in the true sense of that word – that for millennia have drawn children into the wilds.

This article was published in partnership with  GlobalPossibilities.org.

This just in: The planet is screwed. Well, if you ask Bill McKibben (and you should) we still have a fighting chance. But that’s only if we actually start fighting. This week proved a holiday downer with multiple reports coming in about how quickly we're losing the battle to stave off the effects of catastrophic climate change. Here’s a quick recap:

1. UN Report: We’re Really Bad at Cutting Global Warming Emissions

It would be one things to say that we are working hard, but not quite hard enough to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But the sad fact is, we’re not really working on it at all in any meaningful way. Fiona Harvey reports at the Guardian: 

The world is straying further away from commitments to combat climate change, bringing the prospect of catastrophic global warming a step closer, a UN report said on Wednesday. ...

The gap between what world governments have committed to by way of cuts in greenhouse gases and the cuts that scientists say are necessary has widened, but in order to stave off dangerous levels of global warming, it should have narrowed. There is now one-fifth more carbon in the atmosphere than there was in 2000, and there are few signs of global emissions falling, according to the new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

This is incredibly troubling news and means our hope of staying near or below a global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius — which scientists have deemed the upper level of preserving life as we know it on this planet — is quickly slipping out of reach.

2. World Meteorological Organization: Here’s How Bad We Are at Cutting Emissions

Just a day before the UN report, the World Meteorological Organization calculated just how much greenhouse gases are actually in the atmosphere right now. Here’s what they found: 

The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a new record high in 2011, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Between 1990 and 2011 there was a 30% increase in radiative forcing – the warming effect on our climate – because of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping long-lived gases.

This doesn’t measure greenhouse gas emissions — like how much CO2 is released from things like burning fossil fuels -- but indicates how much is left in the atmosphere after greenhouse gases are absorbed by sinks such as oceans and trees. Going forward, this is even more troubling as WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud explains: 

Until now, carbon sinks have absorbed nearly half of the carbon dioxide humans emitted in the atmosphere, but this will not necessarily continue in the future. We have already seen that the oceans are becoming more acidic as a result of the carbon dioxide uptake, with potential repercussions for the underwater food chain and coral reefs. 

3. World Bank: We’re Headed to a Really Bad Place

The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics did a report on behalf of the World Bank and it concluded that if we hit 4 degree Celsius warming things are going to get really bad: “extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise.” They also found that we are headed there if we don’t drastically change course. 

According to the World Bank, “The report says today’s climate could warm from the current global mean temperature of 0.8°C above pre-industrial levels, to as high as 4°C by 2100, even if countries fulfill current emissions-reduction pledges.”

A new study, “Comparing climate projections to observations up to 2011,” confirms that climate change is happening as fast — and in some cases faster — than climate models had projected. The news release explains:

The rate of sea-level rise in the past decades is greater than projected by the latest assessments of the IPCC, while global temperature increases in good agreement with its best estimates. This is shown by a study now published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and his colleagues compare climate projections to actual observations from 1990 up to 2011. That sea level is rising faster than expected could mean that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) sea-level rise projections for the future may be biased low as well, their results suggest.

As Dr. Rahmstorf notes, “the new findings highlight that the IPCC is far from being alarmist and in fact in some cases rather underestimates possible risks.”

The oceans are rising 60 per cent faster than the IPCC’s latest best estimates, according to the new research. The researchers compared those estimates to satellite data of observed sea-level rise. ” Satellites have a much better coverage of the globe than tide gauges and are able to measure much more accurately by using radar waves and their reflection from the sea surface,” explains Anny Cazenave from LEGOS. While the IPCC projected sea-level rise to be at a rate of 2 mm per year, satellite data recorded a rate of 3.2 mm per year.

Figure: Sea level measured by satellite altimeter (red with linear trend line) … and reconstructed from tide gauges (orange, monthly data from Church and White (2011))…. The scenarios of the IPCC are shown in blue (third assessment) and green (fourth assessment); the former have been published starting in the year 1990 and the latter from 2000.

The release notes, “The increased rate of sea-level rise is unlikely to be caused by a temporary episode of ice discharge from the ice sheets in Greenland or Antarctica or other internal variabilities in the climate system, according to the study, because it correlates very well with the increase in global temperature.”

As sea level rises, storm surges worsen, coastal populations are put at risk, and salt water infiltrates rich deltas. For more on likely future sea level rise, see “New Studies on Sea Level Rise Make Clear We Must Act Now” and “JPL bombshell: Polar ice sheet mass loss is speeding up, on pace for 1 foot sea level rise by 2050.”

On the subject of global warming, the release explains:

“Global temperature continues to rise at the rate that was projected in the last two IPCC Reports. This shows again that global warming has not slowed down or is lagging behind the projections,” Rahmstorf says. Five global land and ocean temperature series were averaged and compared to IPCC projections by the scientists from Potsdam, the Laboratoire d’Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales (LEGOS) in France and the US based Tempo Analytics. To allow for a more accurate comparison with projections, the scientists accounted for short-term temperature variations due to El Niño events, solar variability and volcanic eruptions. The results confirm that global warming, which was predicted by scientists in the 1960s and 1970s as a consequence of increasing greenhouse concentrations, continues unabated at a rate of 0.16 °C per decade and follows IPCC projections closely.

Figure. Observed annual global temperature, unadjusted (pink) and adjusted for short-term variations due to solar variability, volcanoes and ENSO (red) as in Foster and Rahmstorf (2011). 12-months running averages are shown as well as linear trend lines, and compared to the scenarios of the IPCC (blue range and lines from the third assessment, green from the fourth assessment report). Projections are aligned in the graph so that they start (in 1990 and 2000, respectively) on the linear trend line of the (adjusted) observational data.

Rarely does the release of a data-driven report on energy trends trigger front-page headlines around the world.  That, however, is exactly what happened on November 12th when the prestigious Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) released this year’s edition of its World Energy Outlook.  In the process, just about everyone missed its real news, which should have set off alarm bells across the planet.

Claiming that advances in drilling technology were producing an upsurge in North American energy output, World Energy Outlook predicted that the United States would overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the planet’s leading oil producer by 2020.  “North America is at the forefront of a sweeping transformation in oil and gas production that will affect all regions of the world,” declared IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven in a widely quoted statement.

In the U.S., the prediction of imminent supremacy in the oil-output sweepstakes was generally greeted with unabashed jubilation.  “This is a remarkable change,” said John Larson of IHS, a corporate research firm.  “It’s truly transformative.  It’s fundamentally changing the energy outlook for this country.”  Not only will this result in a diminished reliance on imported oil, he indicated, but also generate vast numbers of new jobs.  “This is about jobs.  You know, it's about blue-collar jobs.  These are good jobs.”

The editors of the Wall Street Journal were no less ecstatic.  In an editorial with the eye-catching headline “Saudi America,” they lauded U.S. energy companies for bringing about a technological revolution, largely based on the utilization of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) to extract oil and gas from shale rock.  That, they claimed, was what made a new mega-energy boom possible.  “This is a real energy revolution,” the Journal noted, “even if it's far from the renewable energy dreamland of so many government subsidies and mandates.”

Other commentaries were similarly focused on the U.S. outpacing Saudi Arabia and Russia, even if some questioned whether the benefits would be as great as advertised or obtainable at an acceptable cost to the environment. 

While agreeing that the expected spurt in U.S. production is mostly “good news,” Michael A. Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations warned that gas prices will not drop significantly because oil is a global commodity and those prices are largely set by international market forces.  “[T]he U.S. may be slightly more protected, but it doesn’t give you the energy independence some people claim,” he told the New York Times.

Some observers focused on whether increased output and job creation could possibly outweigh the harm that the exploitation of extreme energy resources like fracked oil or Canadian tar sands was sure to do to the environment. Daniel J. Weiss of the Center for American Progress, for example, warned of a growing threat to America’s water supply from poorly regulated fracking operations.  “In addition, oil companies want to open up areas off the northern coast of Alaska in the Arctic Ocean, where they are not prepared to address a major oil blowout or spill like we had in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Such a focus certainly offered a timely reminder of how important oil remains to the American economy (and political culture), but it stole attention away from other aspects of the World Energy Report that were, in some cases, downright scary.  Its portrait of our global energy future should have dampened enthusiasm everywhere, focusing as it did on an uncertain future energy supply, excessive reliance on fossil fuels, inadequate investment in renewables, and an increasingly hot, erratic, and dangerous climate.  Here are some of the most worrisome takeaways from the report.

1. Shrinking World Oil Supply

Given the hullabaloo about rising energy production in the U.S., you would think that the IEA report was loaded with good news about the world’s future oil supply.  No such luck.  In fact, on a close reading anyone who has the slightest familiarity with world oil dynamics should shudder, as its overall emphasis is on decline and uncertainty.

Take U.S. oil production surpassing Saudi Arabia’s and Russia’s.  Sounds great, doesn’t it?  Here’s the catch: previous editions of the IEA report and the International Energy Outlook, its equivalent from the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), rested their claims about a growing future global oil supply on the assumption that those two countries would far surpass U.S. output.  Yet the U.S. will pull ahead of them in the 2020s only because, the IEA now asserts, their output is going to fall, not rise as previously assumed. 

This is one hidden surprise in the report that’s gone unnoticed.  According to the DoE’s 2011 projections, Saudi production was expected to rise to 13.9 million barrels per day in 2025, and Russian output to 12.2 million barrels, jointly providing much of the world’s added petroleum supply; the United States, in this calculation, would reach the 11.7 million barrel mark. 

The IEA’s latest revision of those figures suggests that U.S. production will indeed rise, as expected, to about 11 million barrels per day in 2025, but that Saudi output will unexpectedly fall to about 10.6 million barrels and Russian to 9.7 million barrels.  The U.S., that is, will essentially become number one by default.  At best, then, the global oil supply is not going to grow appreciably -- despite the IEA’s projection of a significant upswing in international demand.

But wait, suggests the IEA, there’s still one wild card hope out there: Iraq.  Yes, Iraq.  In the belief that the Iraqis will somehow overcome their sectarian differences, attain a high level of internal stability, establish a legal framework for oil production, and secure the necessary investment and technical support, the IEA predicts that its output will jump from 3.4 million barrels per day this year to 8 million barrels in 2035, adding an extra 4.6 million barrels to the global supply.  In fact, claims the IEA, this gain would represent half the total increase in world oil production over the next 25 years.  Certainly, stranger things have happened, but for the obvious reasons, it remains an implausible scenario. 

Add all this together -- declining output from Russia and Saudi Arabia, continuing strife in Iraq, uncertain results elsewhere -- and you get insufficient oil in the 2020s and 2030s to meet anticipated world demand.  From a global warming perspective that may be good news, but economically, without a massive increase in investment in alternate energy sources, the outlook is grim.  You don’t know what bad times are until you don’t have enough energy to run the machinery of civilization.  Assuggested by the IEA, “Much is riding on Iraq’s success... Without this supply growth from Iraq, oil markets would be set for difficult times.”

2. Continuing Reliance on Fossil Fuels

For all the talk of the need to increase reliance on renewable sources of energy, fossil fuels -- coal, oil, and natural gas -- will continue to provide most of the additional energy supplies needed to satisfy soaring world demand.  “Taking all new developments and policies into account,” the IEA reported, “the world is still failing to put the global energy system onto a more sustainable path.”  In fact, recent developments seem to favor greater fossil-fuel reliance. 

In the United States, for instance, the increased extraction of oil and gas from shale formations has largely silenced calls for government investment in renewable technology.  In its editorial on the IEA report, for example, theWall Street Journal ridiculed such investment.  It had, the Journal’s writerssuggested, now become unnecessary due to the Saudi Arabian-style oil and gas boom to come.  “Historians will one day marvel that so much political and financial capital was invested in a [failed] green-energy revolution at the very moment a fossil fuel revolution was aborning,” they declared.

One aspect of this energy “revolution” deserves special attention. The growing availability of cheap natural gas, thanks to hydro-fracking, has already reduced the use of coal as a fuel for electrical power plants in the United States.  This would seem to be an obvious environmental plus, since gas produces less climate-altering carbon dioxide than does coal.  Unfortunately, coal output and its use haven’t diminished: American producers have simply increased their coal exports to Asia and Europe.  In fact, U.S. coal exports are expected to reach as high as 133 million tons in 2012, overtaking an export record set in 1981.

Despite its deleterious effects on the environment, coal remains popular in countries seeking to increase their electricity output and promote economic development.  Shockingly, according to the IEA, it supplied nearly half of the increase in global energy consumption over the last decade, growing faster than renewables.  And the agency predicts that coal will continue its rise in the decades ahead.  The world’s top coal consumer, China, will burn ever more of it until 2020, when demand is finally expected to level off.  India’s usage will rise without cessation, with that country overtaking the U.S. as the number two consumer around 2025.

In many regions, notes the IEA report, the continued dominance of fossil fuels is sustained by government policies.  In the developing world, countries commonly subsidize energy consumption, selling transportation, cooking, and heating fuels at below-market rates.  In this way, they hope tobuffer their populations from rising commodity costs, and so protect their regimes from popular unrest.  Cutting back on such subsidies can prove dangerous, as in Jordan where a recent government decision to raise fuel prices led to widespread riots and calls for the monarchy’s abolition.  In 2011, such subsidies amounted to $523 billion globally, says the IEA, up almost 30% from 2010 and six times greater than subsidies for renewable energy.

3. No Hope for Averting Catastrophic Climate Change

Of all the findings in the 2012 edition of the World Energy Outlook, the one that merits the greatest international attention is the one that received the least.  Even if governments take vigorous steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the report concluded, the continuing increase in fossil fuel consumption will result in “a long-term average global temperature increase of 3.6 degrees C.”

This should stop everyone in their tracks.  Most scientists believe that an increase of 2 degrees Celsius is about all the planet can accommodate without unimaginably catastrophic consequences: sea-level increases that will wipe out many coastal cities, persistent droughts that will destroy farmland on which hundreds of millions of people depend for their survival, the collapse of vital ecosystems, and far more.  An increase of 3.6 degrees C essentially suggests the end of human civilization as we know it.

To put this in context, human activity has already warmed the planet by about 0.8 degrees C -- enough to produce severe droughts around the world, trigger or intensify intense storms like Hurricane Sandy, and drastically reduce the Arctic ice cap.  “Given those impacts,” writes noted environmental author and activist Bill McKibben, “many scientists have come to think that two degrees is far too lenient a target.”  Among those cited by McKibben is Kerry Emanuel of MIT, a leading authority on hurricanes. “Any number much above one degree involves a gamble,” Emanuel writes, “and the odds become less and less favorable as the temperature goes up.” Thomas Lovejoy, once the World Bank's chief biodiversity adviser, puts it this way: “If we’re seeing what we're seeing today at 0.8 degrees Celsius, two degrees is simply too much.” 

At this point, it’s hard even to imagine what a planet that's 3.6 degrees C hotter would be like, though some climate-change scholars and prophets -- like former Vice President Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth -- have tried.  In all likelihood, the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets would melt entirely, raising sea levels by several dozen feet and completely inundating coastal cities like New York and Shanghai.  Large parts of Africa, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the American Southwest would be rendered uninhabitable thanks to lack of water and desertification, while wildfires of a sort that we can’t imagine today would consume the parched forests of the temperate latitudes.

In a report that leads with the “good news” of impending U.S. oil supremacy, to calmly suggest that the world is headed for that 3.6 degree C mark is like placing a thermonuclear bomb in a gaudily-wrapped Christmas present.  In fact, the “good news” is really the bad news: the energy industry’s ability to boost production of oil, coal, and natural gas in North America is feeding a global surge in demand for these commodities, ensuring ever higher levels of carbon emissions.  As long as these trends persist -- and the IEA report provides no evidence that they will be reversed in the coming years -- we are all in a race to see who gets to the Apocalypse first.