This site has been inspired by the work of Dr David Korten who argues that capitalism is at a critical juncture due to environmental, economic and social breakdown. This site argues for alternatives to capitalism in order to create a better world.
The World Heritage Convention and the ‘in danger’ list
The World Heritage Convention is an international convention adopted by UNESCO aimed at conserving the world’s most outstanding heritage sites. The convention covers 190 countries that voluntarily participate in it. Identifying potential world heritage places is the responsibility of each participating country.
The World Heritage Committee - a 21-member body established by the convention but with membership elected by the member states - decides which sites make the list (there are currently 1,007). Countries have to protect, conserve, communicate the value of, rehabilitate and transmit the sites to future generations.
The government of Honduras requested the World Heritage Committee place its Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve on the List in Danger because of its reduced capacity to manage the site. Lawlessness in the area led to illegal logging, fishing and land occupation, poaching and the presence of drug traffickers.Hjvannes/Wikimedia Commons
The World Heritage Committee also publishes a second list: the “List of World Heritage in Danger”.
Normally, for a site to enter this list, its country asks for help to address serious threats. But in cases of urgent need, the committee can inscribe a site immediately and without the agreement of its country. Currently, 46 World Heritage Sites, 20 of which are natural, are on the List in Danger.
The 46 sites currently on the List of World Heritage in Danger.UNESCO/Google MapsHow are sites added to the list?The World Heritage Committee gets information about the state of conservation of sites from countries and from advisory bodies such as the IUCN (natural heritage) and ICOMOS (cultural heritage). Where threats have been identified or changes proposed that may adversely effect a World Heritage property, the committee may seek a detailed site examination. This happened on the Great Barrier Reef in 2012.
The Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System, the largest barrier reef in the Northern Hemisphere, was put on the World Heritage in Danger List for excessive development. The Great Barrier Reef is under scrutiny for similar concerns.Asteiner/Wikimedia Commons
Two of the criteria used for placing a property on the list are ascertained and potential danger. Ascertained danger measures imminent threats, such as industrial development, to the site. Potential danger applies to development proposals that could undermine the essential character of the site.
Why list a site as ‘in danger’?
There are some advantages to a country of having a site listed as “in danger”. The World Heritage Committee can allocate funds to respond to the threats, typically under a plan drawn up with the country concerned. And it highlights to the world the threats that exist and encourages donor agencies to help.
For example, all five World Heritage Sites in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been on the endangered list since 1994, which has generated a large amount of international aid to support their rehabilitation. More than US$50 million has flowed not just from UNESCO but also from non-government organisations and from Belgium and Japan. This is an excellent example of the convention at work.
Garamba National Park, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is home to the last known wild population of Northern White Rhinoceros. Continual poaching of the rhinos has caused the park to be added to the list on two separate occasions.Nuria Ortega/African Parks Network
Countries may seek to avoid listing (and any perceived shame attached to this) and address the concerns internally. This occurred when Ecuador’s Galapagos World Heritage Area was inscribed.
Ecuador initially opposed the listing and asked for time to resolve the concerns internally. This required a constitutional change to empower the federal government to take appropriate action. Much to Ecuador’s credit, this was accomplished.
Few other countries have taken such dramatic action to protect World Heritage. On two occasions when countries have failed to respond appropriately, the committee has taken the radical step to remove sites from both Heritage lists altogether. The first to be removed was Oman’s Arabian Oryx Sanctuary - a victim of the nation’s lust for oil.
Every such removal would be seen as a failure of the convention. The presumption is that a site is rehabilitated and then upgraded to its original standing on the World Heritage list.
While there has been some debate about its efficacy and there are different interpretations about the significance and meaning of listing a site as “in danger”, the process is a very clear first step in the potential removal of a site from the World Heritage List.
In a new initiative to ‘encourage people to
be mindful of the animals they share the road with when walking or
biking’, Duck Lanes have been put in place along pathways in London,
Birmingham and Manchester.
These pathways are alongside the city waterways and the Canal & River Trust have even stenciled silhouettes of ducks along the paths so people know exactly who can use them.
‘We’ve painted in duck lanes on the tow path, just to
highlight … [that] there’s only so much space you can share ... [a]nd
actually probably ducks need the priority’, Dick Vincent, a London
Towpath Ranger tells ruptly.tv.
You can even follow the happenings of the ducks and the new pathways with the hashtag #sharethespace.
Via Bored Panda
About the Author
Rachel Oakley is an Aussie writer based in
NYC with an obsession for the creepy, cool and quirky side of life. Some
of her main passions include philosophy, art, travel, and sarcasm.
In July 1995, Chicago experienced the deadliest weather event in the
city’s history: a sustained heat wave that included a heat index - a
measure of the heat experienced by a typical individual - of 120 degrees
Fahrenheit.
The extreme weather of that summer 20 years ago led to at
least 465 heat-related deaths over a roughly two-week period. While all
Chicagoans felt the heat, they did not suffer equally.
The parts of the
Windy City with higher concentrations of low-income people, elderly
people, and African Americans experienced some of the highest
heat-related death rates. Pinpointing the locations of these deaths
revealed a map of climate vulnerability that spoke to stark racial
divisions and inequality within Chicago.
Weather is often referred to as “the great equalizer,” but as
Chicago’s experience shows, extreme weather such as flooding, storms,
unusually cold spells, and heat waves disproportionately affect
low-income communities. There are several explanations for this
disparity.
Low-income housing - which is typically older and of poor
quality - tends to provide less protection from extreme weather. After
destructive weather events, people in low-income communities are not
able to recover as quickly or completely as individuals who live in more
financially secure communities.
Moreover, people who choose to leave or
are forced to move from a climate-affected area become “climate
displaced,” which results in disruptions to their lives and a potential
burden to host communities.
Since the Chicago heat wave of 1995, the world’s changing climate has
contributed to an increase in the strength and frequency of extreme
weather events, with the resulting fallout more likely to be acutely
felt by low-income households.
In order to curb climate change, a number
of cities are testing strategies to cut carbon pollution, such as
expanding public transportation, improving energy efficiency, and
increasing access to renewable energy. These strategies also have the
added benefit of improving public health, particularly in low-income
areas where rates of asthma and other environment-related illness are
high.
Climate change adaptation efforts that are currently underway to
fight coastal flooding, reduce excessive heat in urban areas, and limit
drought effects - such as planting trees, restoring natural areas, and
improving water-use efficiency - can help residents of all income levels.
In addition to these measures, promoting social cohesion - in which a
society’s members cooperate to achieve shared well-being - in communities
is an additional and overlooked tool for strengthening climate
resilience, with particularly good outcomes in low-income communities.
Just as the Chicago heat wave displayed the vulnerability of low-income
communities during extreme heat events, it also spotlighted the
resilience of socially cohesive communities in the face of extreme
weather.
Researchers found that 3 of the 10 Chicago neighborhoods with
the lowest rates of heat-related deaths were low-income, African
American communities. The reason that communities with similar
demographics fared so differently was high levels of community
interaction and organization that decreased isolation among residents.
Put differently, socially cohesive communities in which people are
engaged in social or civic events enjoyed increased resilience against
extreme weather events.
While there is no singularly accepted definition of social cohesion,
the concept has been used by social scientists and international
government organizations. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development uses this definition:
A cohesive society works towards the well-being of all
its members, fights exclusion and marginalisation, creates a sense of
belonging, promotes trust, and offers its members the opportunity of
upward social mobility.
Sociologist Dick Stanley, who directed research and analysis at the
Department of Canadian Heritage for the Canadian government, elaborates
that social cohesion includes society’s willingness and capacity to
cooperate.
He also noted, “Social cohesion should not be confused with
social order [or] common values.” Social cohesion is not meant to
stratify communities but to increase cooperation. Additionally,
societies may lack social cohesion because they do not have the
communication, funding, or organizational tools needed to foster
cooperative networks in a community.
These definitions can provide important policy context for efforts to
develop community resilience against the extreme weather effects of
climate change. Social cohesion can help serve as a resilience tool
before, during, and after an extreme weather event:
Before an extreme weather event: Mapping
low-income, climate-vulnerable communities can target weatherization,
energy-efficiency measures, and other resources to prevent the worst
impacts of extreme weather. Identifying these communities can also
assist government efforts to foster social cohesiveness within those
areas in order to improve climate resilience during and after extreme
weather.
During an extreme weather event: Residents and
organizations in more connected communities can assist with supplies and
help prevent displacement while identifying local needs for government
officials.
After an extreme weather event: Cohesive
communities may have a shorter duration of climate displacement.
Cohesive communities participating in voluntary coastal buyback programs
may receive greater compensation than individual residents.
For these benefits to be realized, however, government policies must
foster community cohesion and incorporate community input in climate
resilience and mitigation plans. Of course, social cohesion and other
resilience strategies benefit all communities, not just low-income
areas.
However, since low-income neighborhoods are the most vulnerable
to climate change effects, these strategies are particularly beneficial
in those communities. Moreover, social cohesion is a vital tool for
low-income communities because they typically experience unique housing,
economic, and health disadvantages even before extreme weather strikes.
Incorporating social cohesion into climate resilience planning is a
difficult task that requires improving the level of interaction and
trust between low-income communities and climate resilience planners. It
is crucial that resilience plans not only focus on physical
infrastructure, but also consider the human element and the long-term
health of vulnerable communities. Despite the complexity of the task,
building social cohesion is a worthy goal.
Danielle Baussan is the Managing Director of Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress.
Taylor Hill is TakePart's associate environment and wildlife editor, full bio
For
Santa Barbara residents, the recurring scene involving blackened
beaches, slick-sheened waters, and muck-covered wildlife isn’t a case of
déjà vu - it just feels like it.
On Tuesday, a report indicated that anywhere from 21,000 gallons to 105,000 gallons
of crude oil had gushed onto the beaches just northwest of the famously
scenic seaside town - made infamous by a 1969 offshore oil blowout that
saw around 3 million gallons of oil blanket its pristine coast - the
third-largest oil spill in U.S. history.
This time, the rupture wasn’t offshore. It came from a burst 24-inch
pipeline about a quarter mile inland from the coast. Crude oil trickled
down a storm drain and spread along Refugio State Beach and into the
ocean.
The report came in Tuesday around noon, when a beach-going citizen
noticed a stench in the air. By 3pm, the Coast Guard had found and
neutralized the source - an underground pipeline owned by Plains All
American, an oil infrastructure giant with more than 17,000 miles of crude and natural gas lines streaming across the country.
The burst line has resulted in at least a quarter mile of
oil-splattered coastline, where the high tide from Tuesday night carried
globs of crude into the rocky intertidal zone of Refugio State Beach south toward El Capitan Creek.
Zack Warburg, a local photographer, got to the site around 9am on Wednesday morning. “You can see what it looks like in the photos, but what was really
upsetting was the smell,” Warburg said. “It was unbearable. After an
hour at the scene I left because I was getting such a bad headache.”
By mid-morning Wednesday, the wind had carried two slicks - one a
four-mile-long ribbon 50 to 75 feet wide and one a triangular
slick - about five miles offshore, both heading south toward Santa
Barbara’s coast. "This is more than an inconvenience, this is a disaster,” Santa Barbara County Supervisor Doreen Farr told the Los Angeles Times.
A boat with the nonprofit collective Clean Seas deploys a
boom, with an oil platform seen in the distance, to try to contain an
oil spill on May 19, north of Goleta, California. (Photo: David McNew)
Clean Seas, the group contracted to clean up the oil spill, has three
vessels on the scene skimming oil from the surface, with five other
boats towing booms to trap and corral the oil from spreading further.
Coast Guard vessels are assisting in the cleanup as well.
Kyle Hanson, operations manager at Clean Seas, said the offshore
cleanup should take around three days but didn’t give a timeline on how
long the beach cleanup would take.
“Right now, there are around seven or eight cleanup crews working on
the sandy sections of the beach, and once they clean those up, they’ll
focus on the high-tide portion where the cobble and boulders were left
with a splattering of oil,” Hanson said.
According to state and U.S. Coast Guard officials, no wildlife
impacts have been reported yet, but the California Department of Fish
and Wildlife issued a fisheries closure effective one mile east and west
of the site.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Plains All American district
manager Darren Palmer said the ruptured line had undergone an integrity
check two weeks ago but the results hadn’t come back before the breach.
Oil surrounds the feet of a local resident on the beach north of Goleta, California. (Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)
“Plains deeply regrets this release has occurred and is making every
effort to limit its environmental impact," the company said in a
statement. This line was part of a larger oil transport network centered in Kern
County, where oil is carried from Exxon Mobil’s Las Flores Canyon
facility toward Gaviota. The 11-mile pipeline was built in 1991 and can
carry 150,000 gallons of crude through the line daily.
For environmental groups, the spill is an opportunity to skewer the
“technological advancements” in use that oil companies claim make oil
extraction and transportation techniques safe.
“We continue to be vulnerable to big risks from big oil,” said Joel
Reynolds, western director and senior attorney for the National
Resources Defense Council. “If we are going to allow this kind of
extraction activity in sensitive areas like Santa Barbara, we can expect
to see spills.”
Consumer rights group Food & Water Watch used the spill as a chance to remind everyone of the dangers of fracking.
Local residents patrol the oil-covered beach for distressed
wildlife on May 19 north of Goleta, California. (Photo: David
McNew/Getty Images)
“This incident is all the more reason to ban fracking both offshore
and onshore to help prevent future spills and protect Santa Barbara’s
beautiful beaches and coastal environment," the group said in a
statement.
The modern environmental movement was born in part from the reaction
to the devastating oil spill of 1969 that battered this same coastline
and killed more than 3,600 seabirds along with unknown numbers of
dolphins, sea lions, elephant seals, and other marine animals.
The spill was also the catalyst for a freeze on any additional
offshore oil drilling in California waters - —a moratorium that’s been in
place for more than 40 years.
Officials stand on the oil-covered beach north of Goleta, California, on May 19. (Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)
“When you look back, the entire structure of many of today’s
environmental laws came in part because of the devastation of the Santa
Barbara oil spill and Cuyahoga River fire of 1969,” Reynolds said.
The movement galvanized the creation of the Environmental Protection
Agency in 1970, the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, and the
establishment of the California Coastal Commission, considered one of
the strongest coastal protection bodies in the country, in the same
year.
Clean Seas, the nonprofit group in charge of this new cleanup, was created in reaction to
the 1969 spill - oil companies operating in the Santa Barbara Channel
formed the group to function as a first responder for oil spills. Its
vessels docked in Ventura Harbor can be at any oil spill in the channel
within 20 minutes.
An unidentified, oil-covered surfer walks along
Hobson Beach, Santa Barbara, California, in February
1969. (Photo: Vernon Merritt III/Life Picture Collection/
Getty Images)
It’s a sea change from the old days, when Union Oil’s Platform A erupted offshore and the early cleanup crew response was to throw straw and kitty litter on it,
but it doesn’t keep the environment safe from oil’s potential impacts
as long as crude continues to be pumped across the ocean and the
country.
“They had a safety shutoff valve on the pipe, but it didn’t work,”
Reynolds said. “And now we’re seeing oil spread across the ecologically
sensitive and unique Southern California coast. Not that we haven’t seen
it before, but it’s tragic every time.”
The Western States Petroleum Association said in a statement: “Once
the incident is contained and thoroughly cleaned up, they will review
the facts surrounding this incident and apply what they learn to prevent
future accidents.”
“Safe and responsible oil and gas drilling are myths,” said Friends
of the Earth campaign director Marissa Knodel. “Like the 1969 oil spill,
let today’s oil disaster be the catalyst for a new movement to keep
fossil fuels in the ground.”
Higher temperatures will either create a range of illnesses, disease or
injuries or exacerbate them, at a time when ageing populations and
lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and heart disease will place
increasing strain on health systems around the world.
Heat waves are likely to have health impacts for significant numbers
of people around the world, as evidenced by events in Western Europe in
2003 and Russia in 2009 when 80,000 and 50,000 premature deaths
respectively were reported. Vulnerable poor and elderly people made up
the majority of these counts.
Vector-borne diseases normally contained within temperature
thresholds that contain their habitats are also likely to spread with
higher temperatures. There is now evidence that malaria which is spread
by the Anopheles mosquito is now present in regions that were previously
regarded as too cool for the mosquito’s survival, such as the Ethiopian
highlands.
Cases of the West Nile virus, a potentially fatal mosquito-borne
disease are likely to spread to the United States as a result of climate
change. Lyme disease which is transmitted by ticks is also expected to
spread with increasing temperatures, and the USEPA added it to its list
of climate change indicators last year.
Water supplies and sewage
systems are also vulnerable to climate change due to more destructive
and frequent floods and hurricanes, and damage to either or both could
increase the likelihood of water and food borne diseases, particularly
in poorer communities that have lower resilience and adaptive capacity.
Water supplies in Bangladesh are already being impacted due to rising
sea levels as a result of climate change. Professor Paolo Venesis from
Imperial College in London has noted that the intrusion of salty water
into the drinking water supply can lead to increases in the number of
hypertension cases and other associated negative health impacts. In
Bangladesh, hundreds of thousands of people are exposed to this risk.
It is important at this point to recognise that the climate is
already interacting with a range of pollutants with dramatic results. In
northern China, a joint United States-Chinese study found that air
pollution from coal burning has reduced the average life expectancy by
5.5 years.
Anyone would say that this is clearly unacceptable, however
we need to realise that rich and poor countries are still struggling to
manage nitrous oxides (from a range of sources), ozone (formed in a
reaction under specific circumstances) and particles from coal burning.
The US Clean Air Act has reduced air pollution significantly, however a
Harvard Study estimated that the annual cost of coal use in the US was
$345-$500 billion in negative health effects. This range was far beyond
the economic cost of coal as an energy source.
In a number of poorer countries, the use of inefficient poorly
ventilated kerosene and biomass stoves for cooking is a significant
contributor to the 7 million deaths worldwide that is attributed to air
pollution by the World Health Organisation, with heart and lung disease
being the most significant killers.
The evidence of the major health and environmental benefits of
tackling climate change continues to mount, and as it does, this very
clearly shows that both Governments and the private sector can achieve
significant wins from the perspectives of their financial bottom lines
and of the health of their employees and constituents.
In many previous
blogs I have discussed some of these aspects and the results are really
speaking for themselves in terms of growing market share and exploiting
opportunities in new markets.
If you are at all concerned about climate change I would urge you to
start a conversation (or maintain one) with your State and Federal
Members of Parliament, as they are a vital piece of the climate change
mitigation puzzle. They need to be aware of and appreciate that each one
of us is aware of and appreciates the win-wins of climate change, and
that we must act now.
Emily J. Gertz is TakePart's associate editor for environment and wildlife. full bio.
Sea-level rise has sped up over the past decade and continues to accelerate at a rate of about 12% a year.
For the first time, scientists have been able to show that the
reality of sea-level rise aligns closely with projections made by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Christopher S. Watson, a climate scientist at the University of Tasmania in Australia and coauthor of the new research, published Monday in the journal Nature.
The IPCC is the United Nations’ scientific group for assessing the advance and impacts of climate change.
For coastal nations,
accelerating sea-level rise could mean more deaths and injuries - as well
as greater damages - from storm surges and flooding in the next several
decades.
“In Australia, there’s about $226 billion worth of infrastructure in
the way of that sea-level rise, and that’s before you take into account
the ecosystems,” Watson said. Looking to the northern hemisphere, “Hurricane Sandy is a good example [that] the previously once-in-a-lifetime floods are going to become a lot more frequent.”
Two hundred thirty-three people died in the U.S., Canada, and
Caribbean nations during 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, which caused almost $1
trillion in direct damages - including more than $68 billion in the New
York metropolitan area alone.
With the New York area’s sea level already a foot higher than it was a
century ago, experts have estimated that powerfully destructive storms
on the order of Sandy will occur up to four times more often by the time
a baby born today is 85.
Last year, the think tank Global Climate Forum estimated that globally the dollar costs of sea-level-related disasters
could rise from $25 billion per year (on average) to upwards of $100
trillion per year by 2100. Countries must increase their spending on
flood and storm protections by tens of billions of dollars, the group
recommended, to cut the deaths, injuries, and economic costs of such
climate change-driven disasters.
But barring a major reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the next
few decades, Watson said, the world is on track to hit the IPCC’s
“worst-case scenario” of a three-foot global sea-level rise by 2100.
The earlier projections, which suggested that sea-level rise was
slowing down, did not factor in that larger geological forces cause land
in many places to sink or rise, Watson said. “To achieve the accuracy
that we want for sea-level studies, you have to take into account those
very small motions,” he said, even if it's only a few tenths of an inch
per year.
To get an accurate picture of sea-level rise, Watson and his
colleagues combined measurements from tide gauges around the world - the
traditional method for tracking sea levels - with global positioning
system measurements of land height since 1993.
The combined data reduced
the figures for mean sea-level rise by 15%, from 0.13 inches a
year to between 0.09 and 0.11 inches. But by taking into account land
motion, the scientists demonstrated that total sea-level rise is
accelerating by 0.002 inches a year.
International negotiations are already under way to reach a binding
global treaty on controlling greenhouse gas emissions. They will come to
a head late in 2015 at a Paris conference. Observers already fear that
whatever comes out of these talks will be too weak to hold off the worst
impacts of climate change.
Rising temperatures, caused by burning fossil fuels, are raising sea
levels in two primary ways. Oceans, which cover 70% of the
Earth’s surface, are absorbing about 90% of the increased heat,
causing seawater to expand and take up more room in the ocean basins.
The next step in the research is to look more closely at regional
rates of sea-level rise, which can vary considerably owing to local
geology, ocean currents, and other factors, he said, so that nations and
cities can plan effectively for an even hotter, wetter future.
“I think that our agencies, regionally, need to consider the impact
of rising sea level and plan accordingly,” Watson said. “The community
has the right to consistent info on these things. I think there are
parts of the world where that information has been inconsistent.”
“Adaption is going to happen,” he added. “Sea level is rising, full
stop. We need to be able to adapt, and the community needs better
information to be able to do so.”
The problem is that the central methodology of Lomborg and the CCC is at best blind to inequality and, in its application, could actually increase it. Moreover, there are good arguments to suggest that if we take a broader view of inequality to include intergenerational equality, the CCC methodology is not even equality-blind; it is equality-averse.
Simple analysis, simplistic outcomes
The basic idea, that of cost-benefit analysis (CBA), is straightforward and, indeed, literally high school-level economics. You work out the economic cost of a particular investment (or policy) and estimate its economic benefits (including estimates of indirect costs and benefits such as health).
The idea of the CCC is that, with expert advice, policy interventions in climate change, international development, or other global challenges can be prioritised in terms of their benefit-cost ratio.
The methodology is, in itself, blind to inequality. This is because it is based on a Benthamite assumption that the objective is utility maximization irrespective of the distribution of that utility.
Put simply, an investment of $100 that returns $1,000 accruing to an already rich person is, in these terms, better than an investment with the same cost that generates $800 return that accrues to a poor person.
As Duke University’s Matthew Adler has consistently argued, the CBA methodology can be adjusted relatively easily to incorporate “aversion” to inequality by simply weighting the calculation according to who pays, and whom it benefits.
In a simplistic scenario in which the world is divided into “poor” and “rich”, we might for instance weight benefits accruing to “poor” people twice as highly as benefits accruing to “rich” people. Applying this weighting to our previous example would reverse the ranking of the investments.
I should stress that this is technically easy in the sense that it is quite a simple calculation, even in more realistic situations where you have gradations of wealth and poverty. But it is ethically more difficult. How much inequality aversion should we build in? This will necessarily be a somewhat arbitrary decision and subject to contested views, and indeed societies will expect to be free to make different value judgements about tolerable levels of inequality for different issues.
Cost-benefit and international development
Lomborg might assert that this doesn’t really matter because his centre is set up to look primarily at problems affecting the poor, so policies that benefit the rich are automatically ruled out. But this is insufficient defence because the world is not just divided into “rich” and “poor”.
There are gradations of poverty, and while many individuals and families move in and out of poverty throughout their lives (in a process termed churning), there are many others who live in situations of “chronic poverty”, and it is these who are often missed or under-serviced by international development assistance.
It is my contention that a CBA approach to international development would simply exacerbate this problem, contributing to a widening divide between middle- and low-income countries and groups on the one hand, and those countries and groups trapped in chronic poverty on the other hand.
Let’s take the example of immunization against infectious diseases. CCC analyses of public health often return very sizeable benefit-cost ratios for such policies, and not surprisingly so: few international development experts would dispute that immunization is, in principle, a very cheap and effective way of improving livelihoods.
Such analyses, including the CCC papers on infectious diseases, are based on an estimated economic benefit expressed in terms of “disability-adjusted life years” (DALYs) - basically the monetary value on one year of healthy living for one individual. The CCC papers typically take a value of between US$1,000 and US$5,000 for a DALY.
Now suppose we agree with the 2012 CCC outcome that of a hypothetical budget of US$75 billion over four years, we would invest US$1 billion per year in child immunization. Where, geographically, would we invest it? Inevitably cost-benefit analysis would lead us to invest in relatively wealthy countries, because DALYs are necessarily worth more money in a place with higher economic standing.
Likewise, the costs for administering immunizations would probably be higher in poor countries, which typically have worse infrastructure, a comparative lack of trained health professionals, and are often bedeviled by insecurity and conflict.
A hard-headed cost-benefit analysis can overlook the fact that it’s usually more expensive to help those who really need it most.EPA/Thomas Schulze/AAP
Lomborg and his advocates might argue that their approach was never intended to be applied at this level of implementation (and, indeed, the CCC paper on infectious diseases argues for a single DALY for precisely this reason).
But my example nevertheless shows how a cost-benefit approach without inequality aversion will almost inevitably prioritise marginal poverty rather than entrenched disadvantage. The consequences are clear: the poorest of the poor would still be left out and we would end up exacerbating inequality in the developing world.
Intergenerational inequality?
The picture is complicated even more when considering issues where the benefits are deferred - such as taking action on climate change.
Cost-benefit calculations typically deal with this by using “discount rates”. Typically, humans are not good at deferred gratification; we would much rather have $100 today than next year, so discount rates place a lower value on returns the further they are in the future.
This approach is contentious, particularly in environmental economics, where the benefits of our investments accrue to future generations rather than ourselves. Do we have the ethical right to discount the value of the lives and livelihoods of future generations against our own shorter-term financial benefit?
In climate economics, the time horizons are so long that even a relatively low discount rate can generate apparently absurd conclusions. More generally, any discount rate can be interpreted as a preference for intergenerational inequality: it systematically values the welfare of future generations at a lower level than our own.
Cost-benefit analysis on the world stage
As we have seen, where cost-benefit analysis is applied to decisions that affect a diverse, disparate population (such as the global population), it is liable to entrench inequality unless we ask who benefits, rather than just how much.
Remember that cost-benefit analysis was originally developed to evaluate decisions that affect the same group that makes the decision. This might be a firm deciding how much to invest in R&D; a government choosing what infrastructure to build on behalf of the society it represents; or, at the extreme end, a person’s individual financial decisions that affect only themself.
But now imagine deciding on a major infrastructure investment in a developing country, and having to choose between road or rail. In this situation it would seem remiss not consider who benefits. Roads might generate a better overall economic return, but might also disadvantage those who are too poor to have a car.
The larger the scale of the decision-making, the more important these distributional considerations become. It is therefore crucial that the people affected by the decisions are represented in the decision-making process. But at the CCC, where the evaluation and ranking of priorities is made by an “expert panel” (however undoubtedly eminent in their fields), this is demonstrably not the case.
Thus the global aspirations of the CCC project are its Achilles’ heel. By calculating benefit-cost ratios at the global level, without the participation of those affected by the proposals, it risks favouring policies that will exacerbate, rather than overcome, global inequality.
This is an edited version of a blog post that originally appeared here.
On April 30, 2015, South Australian Family First Senator Bob Day published an opinion piece on his website titled Wind turbines’ inconvenient truth.
In gotcha-style exuberation, Senator Day noted that wind turbine motors incorporate rare earths, which are often sourced from heavily polluting mining in inner Mongolia.
Highlighting in bold an excerpt from a 2011 Daily Mail report, Day emphasised:
Whenever we purchase products that contain rare earth metals, we are unknowingly taking part in massive environmental degradation and the destruction of communities.
The subtext was plain: green wind energy supporters are indifferent to the environment and suffering and so are massive hypocrites.
A small problem with this accusation is that by far the main use of rare earths are not in wind turbine motors, but in a wide range of electronics that include billions of mobile phones, computers, DVDs and fluorescent lights, all of which Senator Day uses himself.
Senator Day, who has no training or experience in assessing medical evidence, also wrote to The Australian recently that he had heard “compelling” evidence about the adverse effects of wind turbines on humans and animals.
Day is one of six senators currently conducting what is the third Senate enquiry into wind farms in four years. The committee is chaired by the ex-Demcratic Labour Party (DLP) Senator John Madigan, a man who makes no secret of his loathing for wind farms and the industries which manufacturer and operate them:
I remain one of the wind industry’s most stubborn and outspoken critics (at 8m 27sec here).
Madigan is viewed as a hero by the anonymous authors of the virulently anti-wind farm website Stop These Things, a site which has over 15,000 Twitter followers, nearly all which have been generated from “follow-back” bots.
Against this background, here are some recommendations I’d like to make which are guaranteed to advance our knowledge about wind farms and health complainants, but which are highly unlikely to appear in the committee’s report.
Sitting astride them all, is a proposal that a judicial investigator such as a retired judge should be appointed to investigate the evidence for the following claims by those strenuously insisting that their health is being affected by exposure to wind turbines. Specifically, such a judge should investigate the following:
1. ‘Abandoned homes’
How many Australian families have really “abandoned” their homes near wind farms, as opposed to simply selling and moving, as many tens of thousands of Australian families do every year regardless of location?
I investigated claims about “more than forty” such families and concluded that the calm was a factoid. But Senator Madigan claims he has confidential knowledge of many families who have abandoned their homes but that these people do not wish to go public. His claim is thus not open to any scrutiny. He could provide this information in confidence to the appointed judge who could then investigate the veracity of these anonymous claims.
Questions to be asked would include whether those who had moved had any other reasons for moving such as seeking work, eviction from rented property or need to be near medical facilities.
The judge could also investigate whether any complainants where property owners whose applications to host lucrative turbines were declined because of unsuitable topography, and who then began resenting neighbours whose land was suitable.
Those claiming to have to regularly leave their house for respite from the turbines would be asked to make their home telephone records available to corroborate that no calls were made or taken in the many times they claimed to have been away.
They should also be willing to provide receipts for hotel accommodation or statutory declarations from family and friends who might have put them up on all these alleged many occasions.
2. Medical records
The judge should request the medical records of complainants from periods both before and after the operation of wind farms, to settle the matter of whether the complaints were sufficiently serious to have been given medical attention, and that they did not have these problems before the wind farm commenced operation.
Problems such as insomnia, headache and anxiety are very prevalent in all communities with and without wind farms.
In Canada in 2012, the Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal called for such records from some “wind action” plaintiffs. Tellingly, they declined to produce them and their case fell over. They then complained that these medical records would have been to onerous to obtain. This is an odd claim, because my GP can produce my records instantly on screen, going back nearly 20 years.
3. Has there ever been a wind disease diagnosis?
Next, public notices should be placed in the press and publicised in the attempt to find any medical practitioner who has ever diagnosed even a single case of “wind turbine syndrome” in Australia. If any such cases emerge, all relevant case notes should be made available to a panel of doctors appointed by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.
Consent would of course be needed from the patients concerned, but as they would be entirely confident that their diagnosis was real, they would surely leap at the opportunity to have this corroborated by an independent assessment process.
4. Experimental tests
Claims made by prominent opponents of wind farms that wind turbines can rock a stationary car at 1 km, cause lips to vibrate 10km away, “bring some men to their knees when out working in their paddock" near wind farms and be heard 100km away could be easily subjected to tests under blinded experimental conditions.
Wind farm operators would willingly cooperate in the experiment by powering turbines on and off unbeknown to the experimental subjects, and their lip trembling, standing ability in paddocks and claims about hearing the turbines at massive distances all tested.
5. Magical mystery tour
Similarly, Senator Madigan may like to cooperate in organising a fully supervised experiment where those claiming to be adversely affected by wind turbines at distances up to 10km could have this claim experimentally tested.
A bus could have its windows blackened and views out the front obstructed by a partition. Those alleging wind turbine impacts could then be driven through wind farm zones not knowing if the turbines were operating or not and their ability to discern operation tested. All mobile phones would be barred on the bus to prevent “phone a friend” assistance.
However, at least one Victorian couple who frequently complain about wind farms may have an objection to this. Ann and Andrew Gardner have stated publicly that:
Around the Macarthur wind farm, residents suffer from infrasound emitted by the turbines, even when they’re not operating.
They believe that the stationary blades catch passing wind, vibrate and generate debilitating infrasound. They have not made similar claims about the impact of tall trees, buildings, mountains or any other tall objects.
While this inquisition rolls on in Australia, the rest of the world is powering away with growing wind energy. Leading nations are Denmark (34% of all electricity generated), Spain (21%), Portugal (more than 20%), Ireland (more than 16%) and Germany (9%).
Environmental and energy issues did not feature heavily in the Budget, although there was a A$400 million total package of assistance for drought-stricken farmers (particularly relevant in the week that the Bureau of Meteorology called an El Niño), as well as an extra A$100 million in funding for the Reef Trust, aimed at safeguarding the Great Barrier Reef.
Below, our experts react to the budget’s environmental and energy measures.
Ian Lowe, Emeritus Professor, School of Science at Griffith University
The 2015-16 Budget is very disappointing in the broad area of environmental protection. Last year’s cuts to important bodies like Environmental Defenders Offices have not been reversed. Even the funding of a core Coalition initiative, the “Green Army”, has been cut by A$73 million over four years.
While there is an extra A$100 million over four years for measures to protect the Great Barrier Reef, the cuts to Landcare and the continued promotion of the export coal industry put the reef under increased pressure. There is no new money for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which has been making a real difference.
Critically, the Budget shows no sign of the government taking seriously our responsibility to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The allocation for the Emissions Reduction Fund will not meet even the present inadequate target, let alone the sort of goal Australia will be expected to take to the Paris talks later this year. There is no funding for urban public transport, but they will spend billions on roads; the Budget even retains A$3 billion for the cancelled East-West Link road project.
It is the Budget of a government that still thinks that the integrity of our environment is an optional extra. Have they perhaps been advised by Maurice Newman?
Tony Wood, Energy Program Director, Grattan Institute
There were few, if any, expectations of initiatives for the energy sector in the Budget - and those expectations were met. Energy policy levers, where they have been pulled, are covered in the recent Energy White Paper even as that document failed to provide a long-term vision for energy policy in Australia.
There were also no new initiatives regarding climate change. Environment minister Greg Hunt has previously made it clear there would be no increase in the budget allocation to the Emissions Reduction Fund and it remains to be seen whether his optimism regarding achieving our current 2020 target is justified.
Finally, the prospects for future negative impacts on export revenue that could arise if the world turns against fossil fuels remain ignored, but anyway are beyond the time horizon of federal budget considerations.
Frank Jotzo, Director, Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, Australian National University
The government is planning to spend around A$400 million per year paying some businesses for projects that are presumed to reduce emissions. If we had emissions trading, it would bring money into the budget, in the order of A$2 billion per year.
That is twice the most recent aid cut. And it would provide an economy-wide incentive to cut emissions, not piecemeal subsidies.
The Climate Change Authority gets funding until the end of 2016. It has an important role to fulfil in advising on policy settings. To what extent government listens to its advice on a post-2020 emissions target will be revealed by July. Greg Hunt has stated that “the speed limit has been lifted” on Australia’s climate action. But it is not clear how greater ambition could be delivered. The government is not likely to heed the advice on an emissions trading scheme that the Climate Change Authority will deliver next year.
David Pannell, Director, Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy, University of Western Australia
After many cuts and a number of questionable changes to environmental programs in 2014, the 2015 environment budget includes few initiatives or significant cuts. One substantial new cut is a 10% reduction in funding for the Green Army - an initiative that many in the environment sector have reservations about in any case. And it still has funding of A$700 million over the next four years.
On the other hand, there is an additional A$100 million over four years for the Reef Trust, on top of the A$40 million that had already been committed. While the increase is welcome, this level of funding is still leaves overall budget for the Great Barrier Reef well short of the level that would be needed to achieve the sorts of improvements in water quality that the community expects.
There is a reduction of A$22.7 million over two years for water buybacks, although this is a modest cut in the context of this large program. Other cuts for environment in this budget are small.
In an interview with the ABC, The National Irrigators’ Council chief executive Tom Chesson was critical of the government’s failure to commit to funding for the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder (CEWH) beyond 2016-17.
The CEWH is actually Australia’s largest owner of water rights, so there needs to be significant ongoing investment in an organisation that is responsible for allocating and managing the environmental water that the government owns on behalf of all Australians. There is time to fill the current funding gap before the existing funding commitment runs out.
In the agriculture portfolio, there is about A$330 million of new funding for drought assistance to farmers and drought-affected communities. An interesting question is whether this could be considered to be a response to climate change. Perhaps, although it is not explicitly flagged as such in the budget papers.
Below is a four-part video series exploring some of the critical
questions we face as society embarks on the transition to life beyond
fossil fuels. The themes covered in these videos are much more
thoroughly explored in Richard Heinberg’s latest book, Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels.
The Law of Diminishing Returns
Is modern society hitting our defining moment, the point of
diminishing returns? We may well be. When previous societies have hit
similar limits, they often doubled-down by attempting ever more complex
interventions to keep things going, before finally collapsing. Will this
be our fate too? And is there an alternative?
The Great Burning
The Great Burning - the combustion of oil, coal, and natural gas -
must come to an end during the next few decades. But what will we do then?
If the twentieth century was all about increasing our burn rate year
after blazing year, the dominant trend of twenty-first century will be a
gradual flame-out.
Our Renewable Future
Can we keep growing the economy and avoid diminishing returns by
switching energy sources? The transition to renewable solar and wind
technology is both necessary and inevitable. But can it solve all our
problems?
A Resilient Society
Resilience is a word that’s gaining a lot of currency in recent
years, as more and more people realize there are some shocks headed our
way. But what would a more resilient society look like?
Special thanks to New Society Publishers for partnering with us on
this fantastic series and to Shutterstock.com for granting image rights.
A few years ago, it was rooftop solar. Now battery storage is the new silver bullet to solve our energy problems.
Storage is a great step forward, and it will play an important role in our sustainable energy future. But it is just one piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is our energy future.
That’s worth keeping in mind, given the recent hype over Tesla’s new storage appliances, including its 10 kilowatt hour Powerwall for energy storage in the home.
Storage frees us from the need to match electricity generation and supply to demand on a “real-time” basis. This is a game-changer. But it still costs money, incurs energy losses and has environmental impacts. So practical and economic strategies will involve several elements, which complement each other.
It’s all about efficiency
First, energy-efficient appliances, equipment and buildings are fundamental. With them, we need much less energy to deliver a given service. The best LED 100 cm television now uses 30 watts, compared with an old plasma TV that uses up to 400 watts.
The best reverse-cycle air conditioner provides heating at a sixth of the cost of an electric fan heater. LED lighting is delivering up to 80% energy savings. And so it goes on. With lower daily energy consumption, the size of battery needed is reduced.
Combining an energy-efficient building with efficient appliances makes an even bigger difference.
My 7-star reverse cycle air conditioner cools and heats my 35 square metre insulated and shaded living room on a 38C or 10C day using less than 250 watts - equivalent to just four halogen downlights, a reduction of over 90%. No hair shirts here as I bank the savings!
Energy efficiency cuts energy use but also cuts peak energy demand, avoiding costly energy infrastructure investment.
Other pieces of the puzzle
Second, smart appliances and energy management systems allow us to manage appliance operation to reduce peak demand, maximise utilisation of on-site solar generation and maximise the benefits of storage.
New air conditioners can be remotely controlled to limit peak demand. Motorised shading can be managed automatically or remotely. Appliances can include their own forms of storage. For example, some refrigerators now have “cold packs” built into their walls, so they can avoid damage to food during power blackouts and can be switched off during peak energy demand periods. They also have variable speed compressor motors, which improve efficiency and flexibility.
Third, distributed energy-generation technologies such as rooftop solar allow us to generate electricity on the consumer side of the meter.
Fourth, for many households and businesses, it increasingly makes sense to shift from gas appliances to high-efficiency electric technologies. This can cut energy use, cost and greenhouse gas emissions (even when using grid electricity), while also avoiding fixed gas supply charges.
It makes battery storage and energy efficiency more important, as shifting from traditional gas-using activities such as cooking and heating potentially adds to peak electricity demand.
From consumers to partners
Combining all of these pieces of the jigsaw means many households and businesses can consider radical options such as going “off-grid”. If they stay on-grid, the nature of their relationship with the electricity supply industry is fundamentally changed from “consumer” to “partner”.
This means the electricity industry will need to make it worthwhile to stay “on-grid”. In the new world, a household or business could agree never to call for power when the network was under stress, to limit maximum rate of draw-off to a few hundred watts, and even offer to export power to “help out” at critical times. Exports in sunny times could be sold to others and all could share the profits.
There are other options. A group of off-grid homes could share a single back-up generator (running on renewable fuel), and share electricity to help each other.
A shared grid connection could also work, as the group’s peak demand on the grid could be kept within the capacity of a single household connection cable. Storage would cope with usage peaks. These options illustrate the “microgrid” approach.
An electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid adds an extra dimension to the possibilities. It could top up and export power and be charged from on-site generation.
There may be scope for new businesses that monitor how much stored power a home has, and then travel around (in an electric vehicle, of course) to top up those who need more electricity, as liquefied petroleum gas suppliers now do. They could also buy up excess stored electricity to sell to others.
The technology packages, relative costs, financing packages, reliability and convenience offered to households and businesses will drive choice. Laws limiting transfer of electricity across property boundaries (to protect the “right to profit” of electricity networks) may also influence outcomes, although it seems fairly easy to creatively circumvent such anti-competitive laws.
Also, as storage and renewable energy prices fall, there is less and less scope for electricity network operators to charge much for a connection. They simply can’t expect us to keep subsidising them when we have other options. That’s the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle. Alan will be on hand for an author Q&A between 12:30 and 1:30pm AEST on Wednesday May 6. Post your questions in the comments section below.
While wind and solar power have made great strides in recent years, with renewables now accounting for 22% of electric energy generated, the issue that has held them back has been their transience.
The sun doesn’t shine at night and the wind doesn’t blow year-round - these are the mantras of all those opposed to the progress of renewables.
Now the renewable power billionaire Elon Musk has just blown away that final defence. Last Thursday in California he introduced to the world his sleek new Powerwall - a wall-mounted energy storage unit that can hold 10 kilowatt hours of electric energy, and deliver it at an average of 2 kilowatts, all for US$3,500.
That translates into an electricity price (taking into account installation costs and inverters) of around US$500 per kWh - less than half current costs, as estimated by Deutsche Bank.
That translates into delivered energy at around 6 cents per kWh for the householder, meaning that a domestic system plus storage would still come out ahead of coal-fired power delivered through the conventional grid.
What’s more, Musk is going to manufacture the batteries in the United States, at the “gigafactory” he is building just over the border from California in Nevada. He is not waiting for some totally new technology, but is scaling up the tried and tested lithium-ion battery that he is already using for his electric vehicles.
Not just for homes
Now the fossil fuel companies - from fuel suppliers such as coal miners to coal-burning electric power utilities - will be on the defensive, fighting the new normal of cheaper renewable supplies and storage. Instead of asking “can we have our own energy system?” communities will be asking “why can’t we have it?”
The Tesla Energy system launched last week is comprehensive, with global ramifications. The Powerwall system offering 10 kWh is targeted at domestic users. It is complemented by a commercial system termed the Powerpack offering 100 kWh storage, and a stack of 100 such units to form a 10 megawatt hour storage unit that can be used at the scale of small electricity grids.
Whole communities could build micro-grid power supply systems around such a 10 MWh energy storage system, fed by renewable energy generation (wind power or rooftop solar power), at costs that just became super-competitive.
At his launch last week, Musk maintained that the entire electric power grid of the US could be replicated with just 160 million of these utility-scale energy storage units. And two billion of the utility-scale units could provide storage of 20 trillion kWh - electric power for the world.
The revolution begins
It is instructive to put these numbers in context. There are already around 2 billion cars and commercial vehicles on the world’s roads, and nearly 100 million new vehicles are being added every year.
If it’s feasible to build these exhaust-pumping complex machines, it’s certainly feasible to build the storage units that will help to make them unnecessary. What’s more, Elon Musk has just announced that he intends to do so.
Musk is a Henry Ford-style figure who takes others’ innovations and scales them up, taking the breathtaking entrepreneurial leaps that others can only dream about. Suddenly the world of renewable energy just moved to become the new normal - because when combined with cost-effective storage it becomes unbeatable.
There are already Chinese companies such as BYD producing their own energy storage units based on lithium ion technology for both domestic and commercial usage - although not as sleek nor as cheap as the new Tesla offering.
But give them time and they will be producing at comparable scale and cost, or bettering it. This is capitalist competition - and its propagation is what makes Tesla’s announcement the start of the real renewables revolution.
No going back
What about Australia and the sorry state of affairs in which the Abbott government can see nothing beyond coal exports and does everything it can to halt the transition to renewables? Tesla’s announcement has just shifted the ground beneath their feet.
No longer can anyone in Australia claim that renewables would be “nice” if only they came with storage. Now they do.
A smart government in Australia would be looking to ride this wave and promote Australian renewable technology as a source of wealth for the country in a post-fossil fuel era.
Finally we would be able to move beyond the fruitless debates in Australia over whether to have a carbon tax or not, and move to the more immediate and practical issue of promoting renewable industry and technology.
China has given the world a huge lesson in the business-like way it has gone about building and promoting its renewable energy industries, importing technology from around the world and now improving on it as well, and scaling up production so as to drive down costs.
Now Musk and his Tesla Energy have just taken that process one decisive further step, to encompass storage as well as renewable power generation. From here there is no going back.
