Climate Change For Dummies. Elizabeth May

mining uses may one day seriously stress the water source of Fort McMurray residents.

      Heating up the bitumen and extracting it from the oil sands takes a lot of energy — energy that’s supplied by … burning fossil fuels. These operations use the equivalent of a third to a half a barrel of oil for every barrel of oil produced. (Anyone see a losing cycle here?)

      So, the mining industry consumes a huge amount of energy in order to produce oil, which primarily the United States buys for cars that don’t have proper energy efficiency standards (California excluded!).

      Canada’s decision to keep expanding and developing the oil sands is an example for other nations of what not to do — while making oil development a top priority, it’s impossible for Canada to decrease its GHG emissions. The report compared it to the American decision to encourage coal as a form of energy independence and to Brazil’s clearing of rainforests.

      Natural gas is almost pure methane by the time it reaches your doorstep. A quarter of the world’s energy comes from natural gas. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports show that the Earth contains more natural gas than regular oil, but that natural gas is patchy and spread out in comparison to oil, making it harder to tap into.

Because of how relatively clean it is when burned, some energy analysts have promoted natural gas as a clean-energy fuel to replace coal in power plants. But this solution may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Natural gas

       Increasingly comes from nonconventional sources requiring fracking: This involves fracturing of bedrock formations with water and chemicals under high pressure to release otherwise inaccessible sources of gas. It produces a huge volume of GHGs by releasing methane in the process.

       Is difficult to transport: Moving natural gas involves liquefying it first, which requires a lot of energy. This liquefying process also creates carbon dioxide emissions, depending on the source of energy. (For instance, coal-fueled energy would create more emissions than hydroelectric energy.)

       Is potentially dangerous: Concerns exist around possible pipeline explosions as well as the environmental damage created by gas exploration. Leaks and explosions do happen: On December 14, 2005, the community in Bergenfield, New Jersey, awoke to a tremendous explosion caused by a leaking natural gas pipeline that demolished an apartment building and claimed three lives.

       Has larger impacts: Including increasing the number of (generally small) earthquakes.

Fueling Civilization’s Growth: Adding to the Greenhouse Effect

      Fossil fuels have been powering human development for a long time. Prior to accessing fossil fuels, the energy driving North America’s economy was in the immoral form of human energy through slavery. This uncomfortable reality has never been fully acknowledged as a source of the initial wealth that led to the Industrial Revolution. Civilization has been steadily consuming more fossil fuels; consequently, more and more carbon dioxide has been pumped into the atmosphere. This section examines how an expanding world population along with growing economies had added to climate change.

      A growing world population’s impact

      The world’s growing population has been a key factor in the increasing levels of GHGs in the atmosphere. Earth’s population was 1.2 billion in 1850, when the Industrial Revolution was taking place in its infancy. In the past 50 years alone, the population has doubled from 3 billion to more than 6 billion; today the population is nearly 8 billion. Even if the per capita use of fossil fuels had remained relatively stable, the amount of GHGs would have increased. And, of course, use keeps on growing.

Population growth is slowing and should level off. (The bad news is that this isn’t expected to happen until around 2100 as the Earth’s population reaches 10.9 billion people, according to Pew Research.) Nevertheless, the estimate of population numbers leveling at 10.9 billion is a better outcome than some growth curves that put the Earth at exponential growth to more than 12 billion. It all depends on reducing fertility rates, which all depends on improving the economic, educational, and political status of women and girls.

      Growing economies also play a role

      Countries don’t produce carbon dioxide emissions equally. Unfortunately, North Americans are over-achievers when it comes to creating carbon dioxide emissions. One North American emits the same amount as two and a half Europeans, 20 Bangladeshis, or more than 40 sub-Saharan Africans!

      Population pressure is a factor, but a growing economy also plays a large role in boosting emissions of fossil fuels. The modern world economy has been hard-wired to use them. Businesses and governments used to think that economic growth depended on using more and more fossil fuels. But then, in the 1970s, when major members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) drastically reduced oil exports for political reasons, oil prices jumped. As a result, governments encouraged people to use less oil — so they drove less, bought fuel-efficient cars, and practiced energy conservation. Industrialized nations took the first, tentative steps in reducing the use of fossil fuels.

      But, after the mid-1980s (when oil prices dived), some old addictions took over. In the United States, for instance, the size of the average home (which needs fossil fuels to heat it) has increased by 50 percent since 1970 (though the size of the average family has decreased), and more drivers are using large, fuel-guzzling vehicles, such as SUVs. (You can read about improving home energy use and about more fuel-efficient vehicles in Chapter 18.) Countries such as Iceland and Sweden, however, switched to a renewable energy base and stayed that way.

      

Historically, the stronger a country’s economy, the more GHGs it produces. The general rule has been that a strengthening economy means a greater consumption of fossil fuels — just look at the rapid growth of the auto industry in China, which promises to surpass the United States in production and sales. Some countries have broken that link. Sweden was the first to prove that it was possible to grow GDP while reducing the reliance on fossil fuels, but others have followed suit.

But even as the economies of developing countries grow, they still emit only a small portion of what people in industrialized countries do, per capita. They have a lot of catching up to do. When we wrote the first draft of this chapter in 2007, the world’s biggest GHG polluter as a whole country was the United States. But, since then, China’s emissions of GHGs have already surpassed the United States’. The total pollution from developing countries is expected to exceed the pollution from the industrialized world by 2030. (We take a look at developing nations in Chapter 12.)

      A low-carbon future is essential. The IPCC says countries need to move quickly to clean energy or else the course of the climate emergency will become irreversible. It recommends that governments establish effective policies that support clean energies and wean the world off oil rapidly, cutting emissions by at least half by 2030. We talk more about government solutions in Chapter 10 and explore energy alternatives in Chapter 13.

      

Some countries show that economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions aren’t necessarily intertwined. By 2009, Sweden had seen 44-percent economic growth while reducing its GHG emissions to 8 percent below 1990 levels. Sweden is on track to be carbon-neutral by 2045.