At Copenhagen, Canada cannot put the tar sands ahead of the environment

by Gwynne Dyer on December 16th, 2009 at 12:54 PM

The Copenhagen talks on climate change are going badly, which doubtless pleases the federal government. It thinks a weak agreement or none at all will serve Canada’s economic interests better. It is wrong.

There are only two likely scenarios, really. One is the “business as usual” scenario, in which the developed countries do not reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions fast enough and the developing countries just let it rip. In the other, the rich countries make big emissions cuts in the next 10 or 15 years, and the developing countries at least cap their emissions. That better future is still ugly in many places—but not in Canada.

Nobody gets away unscathed in the “business as usual” scenario. When British foreign secretary David Miliband revealed the latest numbers from the Met Office’s Hadley Centre (the U.K.’s national weather service) last October, predicting that a world in which emissions go unchecked may see a 4-degree-Celsius rise in average global temperature by 2060, he simply said: “We cannot cope with a 4-degree world.”

Actually, Britain probably could cope. As an island, cooled by the surrounding ocean, it would be only 3 degrees warmer, which means that it would probably still be able to grow enough food to feed itself. That is vital in a 4-degrees-warmer world, because almost nobody will be exporting food anymore.

Oceans cover two-thirds of the planet’s surface and are cooler than the land, so the average temperature over most land areas is higher than the “average global temperature”. The Hadley Centre predicts that a global average of plus-4 degrees means average temperatures 5 to 6 degrees higher in China, India, Southeast Asia, and most of Africa, and up to 8 degrees higher in the Amazon (which would burn, of course).

The result would be a 40-percent fall in world wheat and corn production and a 30-percent fall in rice by 2060—in a world that would, by then, have to feed 2 billion more people. So there would be mass starvation, and waves of desperate refugees trying to move to some country where they can still feed their kids.

Canada’s only land border, fortunately, is with the United States, and the Americans would certainly seal the Mexican border against refugees from further south. They would want Canadian water, though—and we would probably be short of water ourselves, because the further inland and the further north you go, the higher the temperature rise.

The Hadley Centre predicts that the thickly populated parts of Quebec, Ontario, and the eastern Prairies would be an average of 7 degrees hotter than they are today. Alberta, British Columbia, and New Brunswick would be 6 degrees hotter, while Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and P.E.I., surrounded by sea, might be down around plus 4 or 5.

Would Canada still be a grain exporter at those temperatures? Would it even be able to feed itself? It depends on what happens to the rainfall, not just the temperature, but the answer might be no. Not being self-sufficient in food in a starving world would be a very unpleasant experience.

On the other hand, suppose everybody signs a climate treaty so effective that world emissions of carbon dioxide peak and start to fall again by 2020. The latest study by the Met Office says that would give us a 50-percent chance of halting the warming, a couple of decades later, at plus-2 degrees Celsius. That is the better future, but it still isn’t pretty.

An average global temperature 2 degrees higher means that average temperatures over land would rise around 3 degrees—probably 3.5 degrees in the case of central Canada. If the rain still falls in the same places at the same times, that might leave Canadian food production at the same level or even higher, but closer to the equator it will be a different story.

In the tropics, the heat itself will be the main problem: rice yields collapse, for example, if the temperature is above 35 degrees Celsius during the critical fertilization period. In many places, even 3 degrees extra will push it into the red.

In the subtropics, drought will be the crop killer, as the rainfall shifts further away from the equator. Even the rain that does fall is likely to evaporate again from the hot, dry soil.

A few countries far from the equator, like Russia and Canada, may still be exporting grain at 2 degrees higher, but many of today’s major grain exporters will be out of the business. (Australia is already on the way out.)

Assume a 20-percent loss of global food production and a billion more people by 2030, and we can expect recurring famines in the tropics and the subtropics. Hungry people move, across borders if necessary, and people in less afflicted countries may use force to stop them.

Regimes that cannot feed their people tend to collapse. Failed states and civil wars multiply. There may even be regional wars between countries that share the same river system when the water gets scarce. The 2-degree scenario is ugly and almost inevitable, but Canada would still be safe.

You get big problems closer to the equator at plus-2 degrees. At plus-4, Canada faces catastrophe too. That is the difference, for Canadians, between an effective climate change treaty and a botched one or none at all.

Canadians, including the government, assume that we will be okay no matter what happens on the climate front, so we can afford to put our other interests (like protecting the income from the tar sands) first. It is not true.

Gwynne Dyer’s latest book is Climate Wars, published in Canada by Random House and Vintage.

Comments

19 Comments

gregron

Dec 16, 2009 at 3:05pm

Pure doomsday speculation without a shred of scientific proof..that`s the alarmist way. Sorry but your hysterical chicken little squackings might have worked 5 years ago..today`s public have caught on to your socialist plot to divert our wealth to third world thuggish dictatorships.

ec

Dec 16, 2009 at 7:00pm

It is business as usual and most people are too complacent about the real issue which is over-population. Climate change and peak oil are symptoms of over-population. TransLink annoys me more than Alberta and the tar sands, because we have all this clean hydro-electricity but TransLink keeps operating GHG emitting diesel buses on trolley bus routes powered by zero-emission hydro-electricity because we have a weak COV council and TransLink can do whatever it wants to save a few pennies in order to improve its bottom line since it so badly run that it can’t do it any other way.

Gwynne, I’d really like to see some people get fired and the damn diesel buses removed from trolley bus routes in Vancouver and maybe you can comment on TransLink instead of tar sands once in a while! Whoever is overseeing transport with the COV has the wrong attitude as far as I’m concerned!

Maplefudge

Dec 17, 2009 at 10:30am

Can anyone imagine us actually leaving trillions of dollars worth of oil or coal or gas IN THE GROUND? It's like we bought really expensive poison and have to be sure we take all of it.

walkingshadow

Dec 17, 2009 at 11:16am

Excuse my lack of civility but I've grown really tired of letting the braying of ignorant donkeys pass without comment.

gregron and other inhabitants of Dumbf*ckistan:

Who tf are you? Another jackass who gets his marching orders from F*ckwit In Chief Glenn Beck, I’ll wager. Right -- you know better than 95% of the climate scientists, and they're all in on a "socialist" plot. That makes a lot of sense. But, hey, you don’t have to be a climate scientist to understand he concept of positive feedback loops (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming#Feedback) and that the Arctic Sea ice is disappearing. Or that, even if it’s not the only driver of climate change, more C02 in the atmosphere unquestionably contributes something to warming, making things measurably worse, and that it's the only factor we can do anything about. Or that it’s ludicrous to attempt to use the possible malfeasance of a few academics (so-called "Climategate") to discredit the accumulated work of thousands of scientists. Or that if you’re looking for global conspiracies it might be a good idea to spend a few minutes considering which powerful interests have a stake in maintaining the status quo. But that would require a functioning brain.

The politicization of this issue is f*cking insane. What if you’re wrong, genius? Here are 4 simple scenarios, based on whether or not anthropocentric climate change is real and whether or not we take drastic action to mitigate it: 1) NOT REAL / NO ACTION = business as usual 2) NOT REAL / ACTION = some economic pain but we end up being better prepared for the inevitable decline in finite hydrocarbon resources 3) REAL / ACTION = we actually leave something worthwhile for future generations 4) REAL / NO ACTION = disaster, possibly on an unprecedented scale.

Bravo, Gwynne

Head Coach

Dec 17, 2009 at 11:30am

Its all about externalized costs. If they can harvest the tar sands/coal/oil and push all the environmental/social/economical costs of these efforts onto citizens then they win. They have been winning for over 200 years. But these deficit accounts for every man,woman and child on the planet have all reached tipping points. In the race to the bottom for lowest paid worker who wins? When the tar sands pollution makes Canada inordinately high on the CO2 lists in Copenhagen who wins? When both parents work and they still aren't breaking even and their childrend suffer the net-net..... who wins? They are called corporations and they are externalizing machines. We, the people of Canada and the planet need to start tracking, monitoring and addressing all these externalized costs by solving for pattern. Not one-off's in Copenhagen but right to the source and make the solutions systemic and transparent. The window to make this global change happen in time to reverse 200 years of externalized costs is getting very small. We need to act now. Petition your government and start tracking these costs where you live and work and send them to www.ex-cost.org . We can do this. Corporations do not have opposeable thumbs...

Strategis

Dec 17, 2009 at 12:41pm

Greed and ignorance are the real problems, and everyone is guilty, but the main responsibility lies with the leaders, and those who elect or tolerate them.The ultra rich capitalists and banksters who own the oil, coal, gas, etc built up the car and truck based society as well as the meat, dairy and processed food diets in order to create dependence on petrochemical fuels and chemicals derived from them. They deliberately suppressed all other technologies which would have diminished their wealth and power. These greedy capitalists also failed to invest in health, education, housing, human rights, justice, democracy and dignified lifestyles which, when confered on a population, reduce birth rates to a level where population declines moderately to eventually level off at a modest level of population density. By deliberately promoting a diet of meat, dairy, and processed, low nutrient density foods the food supply is effectively reduced by 90%, obesity spreads and the population is malnourished. The combination of a modern diet, population explosion and suppressed technologies created the greenhouse gases, climate change (maybe), habitat loss, species extinction, pollution and deteriorating quality of life that this entire debate is about. Windmills are not the answer. Real government composed of caring, competent leaders is.

gmulliga

Dec 17, 2009 at 1:09pm

thanks Head Coach! that link to www.ex-cost.org is great. i recommend everyone to go and have a look

Darwin O'Connor

Dec 17, 2009 at 1:17pm

"Climate change and peak oil are symptoms of over-population."

The places with the population growth aren't the places that are burning most of the oil. Increasing people standard of living, therefore resource consumption, ironically seem to be the best way to reduce population growth (most western counties would be in population decline, like Japan, without immigration.)

I'm not sure what the solution is, except to use technology to find a way to get a high standard of living with low resource consumption.

Steve Erickson

Dec 17, 2009 at 2:05pm

More relevant than if overpopulation is the driver for past and current anthropogenic (human caused) emissions of green house gases (GHG) is whether it will be in the future. And the answer is certainly yes.There are some studies indicating that taking measures to reduce future human population growth is perhaps the cheapest way constrain future increases in GHG. Condoms are cheap. Educating people about birth control is cheap. Empowering women so they can control their reproduction is cheap and everywhere this happens fertility drops significantly.

Now, significant population reduction to a level that is sustainable for other (than climate) earth bio-chemical-physical systems is certainly desirable, and will happen one way or the other, If past human history is any indication, it will be very unpleasant. But releasing the fossil carbon stored in coal and petroleum is still going to end up having negative climatic effects unless there are very few people. We simply must get off of our fossil fuel addiction.