Isramart : We need a new deal on carbon emissions

Isramart news:


According to Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, the meeting of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen this month is the most important international gathering since the Second World War.

I agree, but I worry that, as a Canadian, I may have to hang my head in shame at the lack of leadership from our country on this critical issue.

The Keeling curve, which shows rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the Earth’s atmosphere, illustrates the problem we face. These CO2 emissions are measured at a research station in Hawaii on top of Mauna Loa, a windswept and desolate place where scientists, including Dave Keeling (who passed away in 2005), gather data.

From ice cores, we know the CO2 level was stable at 278 parts per million (ppm) for 10,000 years. Then, as people turned to burning coal in the early 1700s, the level began to rise. Most of this rise has occurred in the past 50 years.

It took more than 200 years from the start of the industrial revolution to 1960 for CO2 to rise by 40 ppm but only another 35 years to add the next 40 ppm. The current level is now an ominous 385 ppm.

Imagine, for a moment, that we could roll the clock back to 1960 with only 318 ppm of CO2 instead of the current reality of our overheating world.

Since this problem has happened mostly on our watch, surely, we owe it to future generations to fix it. Scientists recommend a reduction of CO2 levels to 350 ppm to avoid dangerous impacts from global warming — i.e., droughts, flooding, land loss, food shortages and civil strife.

That’s going to be a formidable challenge.

Apart from showing the threatening rise of CO2, the Keeling curve also illustrates something quite beautiful — the annual rise and fall of CO2 due to its removal through photosynthesis in plants, algae and some bacteria. This has been described as the breathing of our living planet.

Because most forested areas are located in the northern hemisphere, the annual cycle of CO2 drops to its lowest point when northern forests are growing and utilizing CO2 during spring and summer. Given the power of forests to so effectively remove CO2 from the atmosphere, shouldn’t we be protecting all natural forests?

Instead, in Canada, we are destroying boreal forests and turning them into toilet paper and telephone books.

Natural ecosystems have an amazing ability to use CO2 and store carbon in vegetation (mainly trees), wetlands, soil and the oceans. Considerable carbon is taken up by the ocean but, when CO2 dissolves in water, carbonic acid is formed.

We are now pouring so much carbon dioxide into the air that oceanic uptake is acidifying the ocean to the extent that its ecological health may be impaired. It’s not as if we have a lot of effective options for removing CO2 from the air other than photosynthesis. Surely, a key strategy to minimize global warming should be to protect and enhance these natural systems of carbon uptake and storage.

Although some industrial techniques have been proposed to capture and store carbon, there are only a dozen projects worldwide attempting to sequester carbon. Most of these are still in the early developmental stages. In total, these projects, if successful, would sequester only 14 million tonnes of CO2 annually — a trifle compared to our annual emissions of seven billion tonnes. In contrast, the annual net uptake of the oceans is 1.7 billion tonnes of CO2 while that of forests is slightly less at 1.5 billion tonnes.

Protecting natural ecosystems and stopping deforestation appear to have far greater potential to provide effective mitigation for global warming than anything industry can offer. One of the more promising new approaches for sequestering carbon is to mimic nature by making bio-charcoal from agricultural waste and plowing it back into the soil, where the carbon would remain. This technique, if applied to 10% of the world’s cropland, is estimated to be able to sequester sufficient carbon to offset much of the emissions from fossil fuel combustion.

The Kyoto Protocol focused on achieving a first round of reductions in fossil fuel emissions but failed to require countries to consider emissions from deforestation or biomass burning. Burning biomass, such as wood, emits carbon dioxide. which also adds to global warming.

A new treaty is expected to deal with these issues and others. Hopefully, as world leaders inch their way towards a new agreement on climate, they will develop mechanisms to stop deforestation, require carbon recovery from biomass burning and better recognize the immense value of the natural ecosystems upon which we rely for a stable climate and prosperous future.

Elaine Golds is a Port Moody environmentalist who is vice-president of Burke Mountain Naturalists, chair of the Colony Farm Park Association and president of the PoMo Ecological Society.