Jim Brumm: Long-Term Thinking for a Short-Sighted World

An extract from The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming by Guy Dauncey

New Society Publishers, November 2009 www.theclimatechallenge.ca

If we succeed in this great undertaking, the next generation will thank us not only for preventing a disaster but also for the many benefits that will flow from our success.

The ecological benefits are clear, but no one has calculated the full economic benefits. These are the climate solutions dividends, the enticing rewards for success.

1. We get to avoid the desperate scenarios laid out in Mark Lynas’ book Six Degrees, and keep human civilization intact, including many species that would otherwise face extinction. What price should we put on the ability of our children to continue the journey of evolution? The avoided costs are known: 5-20% of the US’s GDP of $14 trillion is $700 billion to $2.8 trillion a year. In Canada, it is $63 to $254 billion a year. The gains are priceless.

2. We enjoy a managed transition through what would otherwise be the economic trauma of peak oil, avoiding the relentless waves of bankruptcies, evictions, unemployment, poverty and hunger that will be caused by peak oil’s sudden arrival, for which – at present - our societies are completely unprepared.

3. We enjoy permanent energy security and the end of dependence on oil from the Middle East and other countries. This means we can bring the troops home, stop irritating the Islamic terrorists, stop being obsessed with security and stop exporting $300 million a day to the oil-rich states of the Middle East. These gains have been costed out by a team led by Milton Copulos, president of the National Defense Council Foundation, which spent 18 months undertaking the most comprehensive analysis of the subject ever conducted, which was “rigorously peer-reviewed”.[i] For the US, the gains come to $825 billion a year, which will be available every year as a free economic stimulus package.

4. We protect the world’s forests, which would otherwise face being logged or burned. Under the business-as-usual scenario, the Amazon rainforest starts dying by 2050 and turns into savannah by 2100, because of a combination of drought and fire. Because tackling climate change requires that we preserve the forests’ carbon, our children will continue to be enchanted by their magnificence. We will also benefit from the forests’ ecosystem services, as a continued contribution to our economy. Globally, their 1200 Gt of stored carbon, priced at $13.60 a tonne, has a $16 trillion value. If we assume a 200 year forest carbon lifecycle, that’s $80 billion a year. For the US, with 5% of the world’s forest, that’s a $4 billion a year contribution. For Canada (10% of the world’s forests) it’s $8 billion.

5. We enjoy a more secure global food supply by embracing organic farming, which stores more carbon in the soil, reduces farming emissions by up to 30% and increases yields in developing countries – where the food is needed - by up to fourfold. We also remove the threat to crops from smog, air-pollution and the increasing heatwaves, which reduce the yields.

6. We eliminate smog and pollution, which cause asthma, lung disease, cancer, disability and premature death. For Los Angeles alone, this has been assessed at a $10 billion annual cost. Air pollution and smog also cause crop losses and damage buildings and forests. For Ontario, Canada, the full economic costs have been estimated at $8 billion a year, rising to $250 billion by 2030 as rising temperatures cause more smog.[ii] For the US, the full economic savings are up to $690 billion a year.[iii] In California, smog and air pollution cause 9,300 deaths, 16,000 hospital visits, 600,000 asthma attacks and five million lost work days every year.

7. We enjoy cheaper driving, more cycling routes, more public transport, more high-speed rail and more friendly walkable communities, which build neighborhood strength. These benefits have not been costed out.

8. Thanks to our investments in efficiency, we enjoy lower heating and power bills. The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy has calculated that a 15% increase in efficiency will produce annual savings worth $169 billion a year. By increasing efficiency by 30%, this could rise to $338 billion.

9. We get to end most warfare. This may sound unbelievable, but most modern conflicts are fought over scarce energy supplies. When nations become self-sufficient in renewable energy, we can eliminate 80% of our military expenditures. The US military budget is around $1 trillion a year,[iv] of which $138 billion has been included in #3 above. This leaves $850 billion a year, which, trimmed by 80%, produces a peace dividend of $680 billion a year. When all these numbers are totaled, they come to a “free” annual climate solutions dividend of $1.5 to $2 trillion a year, which never has to be approved by the Senate or Congress.

10. Finally, we enjoy our first proper experience of working together as a world, and we restore hope to our children. What more can we ask?

The Yearly

Climate Solutions Dividend

Low range

($ billion)

High range

($ billion)

End of Persian Gulf oil dependence

$825

$825

End smog and air pollution

$59

$690

Peace dividend

$680

$680

Improved efficiency

$338

$338

Total

$1,900

$2,500

[i] The Hidden Cost of Oil, 2003, updated January 8, 2007. National Defense Council Foundation. Peer review comment from The Hidden Cost of Our Oil Dependence. Milton Copulos interview with Bill Moore, EV World, April 23, 2006.

[ii] The Illness Costs of Air Pollution in Ontario. Ontario Medical Association, 2005.

[iii] See Lives per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction, by Terry Taminen (Island Press, 2006). Chapter 3 summarizes the various studies and references their sources.

[iv] The Trillion-Dollar Defense Budget Is Already Here. Robert Higgs, The Independent Institute, March 15, 2007.

Over millions of years of evolution, every kind of insect and bacterium has evolved, seeking its niche in the world. There are over a million insect species - and sometimes a gardener may think that they’re all eating the roses at once.

No problem, however - we are clever. We can reach for the pesticides!

Spray, spray, spray away, gently with the breeze,

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, spray away disease.

At first blush, the magic works. The bugs disappear. Your lawn is so immaculate you could invite the Queen to dine on it. Isn’t it amazing what modern science can achieve?

But then the dogs start dying. They don’t know you’ve sprayed the lawn, and they romp and roll, finishing with a good licking to clean their paws.

Between 1975 and 1995 the incidence of bladder cancer in dogs examined at veterinary teaching schools in North America increased six-fold, with Scottish terriers, Shetland sheepdogs, wirehaired fox terriers and West Highland white terriers having a higher risk than mixed breeds.

When researchers interviewed the owners of Scottish terriers with bladder cancer, they found that dogs whose owners had used phenoxy acid herbicides on their lawns were four to seven times more likely to have cancer than dogs whose owners had not.

And then the children start getting cancer. A 1995 study by Jack Leiss and David Savitz published in the American Journal of Public Health found that children whose yards were treated with pesticides were four times more likely to have soft-tissue sarcomas.

Another study, by R. Lowengart, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 1987, found that the parents’ use of pesticides during pregnancy was linked to a 3 to 9-fold increase in childhood leukemia.

And then there are the golf courses. When the 10-year-old Jean-Dominique Levesque-Reneé of Montreal was in hospital with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1994, with only a 50% chance of surviving, he did some homework.

First he discovered that half the area where he had grown up on L'Île-Bizard had golf courses that were routinely sprayed with pesticides. Then he learned that the herbicide 2,4-D, linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, had been sprayed on their lawn every summer since he was a toddler.

While in hospital, he met other children with childhood cancer, and built up a map of Quebec showing where they lived. 22 came from L'Île-Bizard, where the golf courses were, and their rate of childhood cancer was 37 times higher than normal. When he left hospital, he became a persistent activist for by-laws to ban the cosmetic use of pesticides.

And this is where we come in. Quebec, Newfoundland, PEI, New Brunswick and Ontario all have legislation that bans the cosmetic use of pesticides and herbicides, and right now - but only until February 15th - British Columbia is gathering public feedback on its own proposed legislation.

The proposed legislation as it stands is not strong enough, however. The Canadian Cancer Society has joined with a number of health and environmental organizations to call for legislation that will prohibit the use, sale, and retail display of chemical pesticides for lawns, gardens, and non-agricultural landscaping. Their ideal legislation would allow exemptions only to protect public health; provide public education about the ban and alternatives to chemical pesticides; include effective mechanisms for enforcement; exclude the use of Integrated Pest Management (IPM), which allows the use of pesticides as a last resort to deal with weeds and insects; and be passed in 2010 and fully implemented by 2012.

Barbara Kaminsky, CEO of the Canadian Cancer Society, writes: “A full 76% of British Columbians support the Canadian Cancer Society’s position that there should be provincial legislation to restrict cosmetic pesticide use. And so does the Union of British Columbia Municipalities. Over 25 municipalities have adopted cosmetic pesticide bylaws, and while this is good, it isn’t enough. The BC government must act so that these products aren’t for sale in retail stores, and so that all British Columbians are protected from exposure to cosmetic chemical pesticides.”

This is politics, however, and you can be sure that the companies that sell the pesticides are lobbying for legislation that is weak and woolly.

Please, for the sake of our children, our pets, and ourselves, go to www.advocate.ccsbcy.ca and send an email to reinforce the Canadian Cancer Society’s push. Five minutes, that’s all it needs.

Guy Dauncey

Guy Dauncey is co-author of the book Cancer: 101 Solutions to a Preventable Epidemic, from which some of this text has been taken.