CLIMATE CHANGE’S EVOLVING PLAN B

Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization; Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?
November 2009 (Earth Policy Institute)

SUMMARY
With the world community convening in Copenhagen on December 7, global climate change is finally taking its rightful place in the headlines.

Plan B 4.0; Mobilizing to Save Civilization, by veteran environmental champion Lester R. Brown, President and Founder of the Earth Policy Institute, is an excellent primer on the subject that vividly describes the situation as “a civilization in trouble” and unequivocally lays out the 4 crucial goals that must be achieved if climate change is to be turned back: (1) Stabilize population, (2) eradicate poverty, (3) restore the earth’s natural sustaining ecology and (4) stabilize the climate. The overall goal is a worldwide cut in greenhouse gas emissions of 80% by 2020.

Does Plan B sound too ambitious? Before answering, it is worth noting that Brown is on record as not caring how it sounds but only whether Plan B will impede the increase in the world average temperature and turn away the worst impacts of global climate change.

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It will take an all-hands-on-deck approach but, as Brown is well known for observing, “Saving civilization is not a spectator sport.”

Brown points out that wherever New Energy and Energy Efficiency have had subsidies and incentives to level the playing field against the Old Energies’ longstanding subsidies and the free ride they have gotten by not paying for the harms they do, the market has overwhelmingly chosen New Energy and Energy Efficiency.

The book concludes an all-out commitment to transition to a New Energy economy will cost $77 billion to achieve the basic social goals and $110 billion to restore the earth. That $187 billion is an eighth of the world’s military budget. It is less than a quarter of the U.S. stimulus package and less than a third of China’s stimulus budget.

In that context, it is also worth noting that conservative estimates put the cost of doing nothing and waiting to deal with the worst impacts of climate change at about 5% of the world’s GDP which, in 2009, would be over $2.5 trillion.

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COMMENTARY
The factors that cause Brown to describe civilization itself as being in trouble:
(1) Hunger is on the rise,
(2) World food prices are soaring,
(3) Food price spikes are not event driven anomalies but a long-term trend due to rising demand and compromised supply,
(4) Rising international food scarcity is leading to geopolitical turmoil,
(5) Energy shortages, water shortages and extreme climate factors could turn the turmoil into chaos,
(6) The chaos will make food and the resources necessary to produce it the center of states’ struggle to maintain stability and security,
(7) Some states will therefore fail and, as more fail, the chaos will worsen, and, finally,
(8) The tipping points that lead to this unfolding nightmare are making it impossible to continue doing business-as-usual but it is not clear the community of nations will turn to sustainable answers.

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The most worrisome trends:

(1) Due to increasing greenhouse gas emissions (GhGs) accumulations, the most recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) prediction is for an average global temperature increase of 1.1 degrees-to-6.4 degrees Celsius before the end of this century but changes and average temperature rise is exceeding the prediction. Every 1 degree Celsius increase decreases by 10% wheat, rice, and corn crops.

(2) The disappearance of the glaciers feeding the world’s great and vital rivers (like the Yellow, Yangtze, Ganges, and Indus) has progressed for 18 consecutive years and is accelerating. Without these rivers, much of the world’s population will lack water for crop irrigation. Wheat and rice in China and India, number 1 and 2 in world wheat and rice production, would be directly affected. World Bank numbers show that 175 million Indians and 130 million Chinese are already being fed on irrigation wells that will go dry. The situation is the same in Pakistan, Iran, Yemen and other places. The crisis in water will lead to the threat of the most massive food shortages the world has ever faced.

(3) Though the U.S. is increasing its program to grow corn for ethanol vehicle fuel, more than a billion people around the world suffer from hunger. The grain needed to fill an SUV’s 25-gallon tank once with ethanol will feed one person for a year. World food price increases are the unintended consequence of the U.S. ethanol subsidy. When world grain and soybean prices tripled from mid-2006 to mid-2008, there were riots and there was political unrest in dozens of countries.

(4) To increase food security, food importing countries such as Saudi Arabia, China, and South Korea are buying or leasing land abroad to grow food. The most popular places they are using are Ethiopia and Sudan, both only staving off famine through dependence on the World Food Programme. The inability to feed its population is the sign of a failing state and each year the list of failing states grows longer.

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Food shortages led to the collapse of several ancient civilizations, including the Sumerians and the Mayans. Brown asks a disturbing question: How many failing states before civilization begins to unravel?

The steps to accomplish Brown’s first 2 goals, stabilizing population and eradicating poverty: (1) Universal primary education; (2) Eradication of adult illiteracy; (3) School lunch programs for the 44 poorest countries; (4) Assistance to preschool children and pregnant women in the same 44 countries; (5) Reproductive health care and family planning services where they are needed.

The cost for these earth-changing steps, Paln B estimates, would be $77 billion per year.

To achieve goal number 3, restoring the earth’s natural support systems, it will be necessary to protect existing forests and restore those already lost. To do this, it will be necessary to: (1) Conserve and rebuild soils; (2) Protect the diminishing biodiversity needed to populate, sustain and balance the forests; (3) Restore natural ocean, lake and river fisheries; (4) Stabilize water tables; (5) Plant trees, plant trees, plant trees that will sequester carbon.

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The cost to rehabilitate this good earth from the harm humankind has done would be $110 billion per year.

To achieve Plan B's 4th and most crucial goal, stabilizing the climate, Brown calls for an 80% reduction in the world’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. THAT’S ambitious. Well, no, actually THAT’S BALLSY!

The EU is leading the way for the developed nations by aiming to cut its GhGs - but only 20% by 2020. The entire U.S. political system may go into gridlock to stop the Obama administration from putting a 15% cut through Congress by next Spring. China and India are willing to commit to nothing more through 2020 than reducing the amount their emissions grow.

Brown believes the world can make such drastic cuts by doing 3 things: (1) Raising Energy Efficiency (especially in transportation, by completely remaking the way transportation is done0; (2) Transitioning entirely to New Energy and eliminating all fossil fuels; and (3) Ending deforestation and planting GhG-sequestering trees.

He sees these actions bringing world GhG concentrations to 400 parts per million (ppm) by 2020 and minimizing any rise in the global average temperature.

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To raise Energy Efficiency:
(1) Retrofitting buildings with better insulation and more efficient appliances will cut energy use 20-50%;
(2) Switching to efficient (compact florescent and LED) lighting in offices, industry, and street lights worldwide will reduce electricity use 12%, eliminating the need for 705 of the world’s 2,670 coal-fired power plants;
(3) Japan’s Top Runner Program points the way to what is possible with efficient appliance standards that have improved computer efficiency by 99%;
(4) Making the chemicals, petrochemicals, steel, cement and a few other emissions-intensive industries more efficient will have a singular impact, especially through the institution of combined heat and power practices;
(5) Shifting to rail, light rail, and bus rapid transit will dramatically cut transportation energy consumption and make walking and cycling safer and more appealing;
(6) Personal vehicle transport must shift from fossil fuels to electricity. Even running on today’s coal-powered electricity, battery electric vehicles (BEVs) reduce GhGs and when the grid is powered by New Energy, personal transport will be essentially emissions-free. Using wind-generated electricity to charge a BEV provides the equivalent of $1 per gallon fuel.

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To transition to New Energy:
(1) Wind is the most immediately accessible and scalable New Energy and Brown calls for obtaining 40% of world power from it by 2020 through the installation of 3 million megawatts of capacity worldwide by building 1.5 million 2-megawatt turbines;
(2) With enough sunlight hitting the earth every hour to power the world for a year, Brown calls for the development of 1 million megawatts of capacity in all the solar energy technologies (photovoltaics (PV), solar power plants, solar hot water and space heaters);
(3) With the heat in the earth’s upper 6 miles of crust containing 50,000 times more energy than in all oil and gas reserves, Brown calls for developing 500,000 thermal megawatts of capacity and 200,000 megawatts of geothermal electricity by 2020.

Ending deforestation and planting GhG-sequestering trees will reduce GhGs dramatically and rehabilitate the soil’s capacity to harbor the earth’s natural respiratory processes.

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As Brown's Plan B points out, the transition to New Energy has already begun. Wind is being built faster than coal and solar soon will be. The U.S. is growing wind fast but China will soon be growing it faster. The EU is planning solar power plants in North Africa and transmission across the Mediterranean to meet half Europe’s power needs. This response is not, however, taking place fast enough. To speed it along, the world must:

(1) Put a price on emissions. At present, fossil fuels are cheap because they do not pay for the harms they do to the atmosphere and the climate. This is a market failure that is causing ecological and human devastation. The solution is a restructuring of costs through some form of taxation. Brown’s Plan B is a $20 per ton per year price on emissions, rising to $200 per ton of GhGs by 2020. He argues the costs to energy consumers can be offset with income tax reductions.

(2) Mobilize massively for a “war” on climate change. Brown’s Plan B sees a concerted, civilization-wide attack on climate change comparable to the World War II mobilization that mustered all resources and completely restructured all output toward the effort within months. Brown sees the situation as even more urgent. The tipping points into irreversible climate change are imminent but the capacity to take on the fight is at hand.

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There are solutions that have been demonstrated to be within reach:
(1) 36% of Copenhagen’s commuters bike to work;
(2) Iran’s national literacy health, and family planning programs cut the 1980s population growth of 4.2% to 1.3% in 2006;
(3) China’s 27 million rooftop solar hot water systems have prevented the need for 49 new coal plants;
(4) Japan has built an effective and heavily trafficked high-speed rail system;
(5) South Korea has reforested 65% of its once almost treeless land;
(6) The Phillipines is generating electricity for 19 million people with geothermal energy;
(7) The U.S. has cut soil erosion 40% and upped grain production 20% with conservation land management practices in the last 25 years;
(8) German subsidies for New Energy cut 20 million tons of emissions and created 250,000 new jobs from 1999-to-2003;
(9) Denmark gets 20% of its power from wind and intends to get 50%;
(10) A grassroots movement in the U.S. has blocked the building of 100+ new coal plants since 2001.

The only thing lacking, contends Brown, is the political will.

Brown: “Saving civilization is not a spectator sport…We can stay with business as usual and watch our economy decline and our civilization unravel, or…be the generation that mobilizes to save civilization. Our generation will make the decision, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come.”

Plan B is a demanding, over-the-top construct and absolutely audacious. (Who was that, just a little while ago, who was talking about the power of audacity?)

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QUOTES
From Plan B 4.0: “In early 2008, Saudi Arabia announced that, after being self-sufficient in wheat for over 20 years, the non-replenishable aquifer it had been pumping for irrigation was largely depleted…In response, officials said they would reduce their wheat harvest by one eighth each year until production would cease entirely in 2016. The Saudis then plan to use their oil wealth to import virtually all the grain consumed by their Canada-sized population of nearly 30 million people…”

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From Plan B 4.0: “The tripling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices between mid-2006 and mid-2008 signaled our growing vulnerability to food shortages…It took the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression to lower grain prices…Past decades have witnessed world grain price surges, but they were event-driven—a drought in the former Soviet Union, a monsoon failure in India, or a crop-withering heat wave in the U.S. Corn Belt. This most recent price surge was trend-driven, the result of our failure to reverse the environmental trends that are undermining world food production…”

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From Plan B 4.0: “We know from studying earlier civilizations such as the Sumerians, Mayans, and many others…that more often than not it was food shortages that led to their demise. It now appears that food may be the weak link in our early twenty-first century civilization as well…The world is entering a new food era, one marked by rising food prices, growing numbers of hungry people, and an emerging politics of food scarcity…Will we follow in the footsteps of the Sumerians and the Mayans or can we change course—and do it before time runs out? … Can we move onto an economic path that is environmentally sustainable? We think we can. That is what Plan B 4.0 is about.”