US Top Climate Scientist Arrested in Protest of the Keystone XL Pipeline

NASA's climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen
Photos: Josh Lopez via tarsandsaction on Flickr/CC BY

The arrest of US preeminent climate scientist James Hansen on August 29, 2011, for protesting outside the White House has brought more media focus to an issue that has been pretty much ignored by mainstream media. With arrests now climbing to nearly 600 in over a week, what exactly has caused famed NASA’s scientist to take to the street with faith leaders and commit a peaceful act of civil disobedience? The proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline by TransCanada that is now sitting on President Obama’s desk, waiting for a green light. 

Photo by Tar Sands Action

The Keystone XL is a 1700-mile pipeline that runs from Canada through the US, carrying tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, through the US to the Gulf Coast. According to Tar Sands Action, “If built, the pipeline could bring as much as 900,000 barrels per day through the U.S., and put fresh water, clean air and the climate at risk.” Back in June 2011, Dr. James Hansen explained in an essay, “Silence is Deadly,” why tar sands, and the proposed Keystone XL, is disastrous for our nation as well as the planet.

The U.S. Department of State seems likely to approve a huge pipeline to carry tar sands oil (about 830,000 barrels per day) to Texas refineries unless sufficient objections are raised.  

The scientific community needs to get involved in this fray now. If this project gains approval, it will become exceedingly difficult to control the tar sands monster. 

Although there are multiple objections to tar sands development and the pipeline, including destruction of the environment in Canada and the likelihood of spills along the pipeline's pathway, such objections, by themselves, are very unlikely to stop the project. 

An overwhelming objection is that exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts. The tar sands are estimated (e.g., see IPCC AR4 WG3 report) to contain at least 400 GtC (equivalent to about 200 ppm CO2). 

Easily available reserves of conventional oil and gas are enough to take atmospheric CO2 well above 400 ppm. However, if emissions from coal are phased out over the next few decades and if unconventional fossil fuels are left in the ground, it is conceivable to stabilize climate. 

Phase out of emissions from coal is itself an enormous challenge. However, if the tar sands are thrown into the mix it is essentially game over. There is no practical way to capturethe CO2 emitted while burning oil, which is used principally in vehicles. 

Governments are acting as if they are oblivious to the fact that there is a limit on how much fossil fuel carbon we can put into the air. Fossil fuel carbon injected into the atmosphere will stay in surface reservoirs for millennia. We can extract a fraction of the excess CO2 via improved agricultural and forestry practices, but we cannot get back to a safe CO2 level if all coal is used without carbon capture or if unconventional fossil fuels are exploited. 

I am submitting a comment that the analysis is flawed and insufficient, failing to account for important information regarding human-made climate change that is now available. I note that prior government targets for limiting human-made global warming are now known to be inadequate. Specifically, the target to limit global warming to 2°C, rather than being a safe "guardrail", is actually a recipe for global climate disasters. I will include drafts of the "Paleoclimate Information", "Earth's Energy Imbalance" and "The Case for Young People and Nature" papers, which are so far only published in arXiv; we will submit revised versions of all
of these papers for publication this summer. 

I also will comment that the pipeline project does not serve the national interest, because it will result in large adverse impacts, on the public and wildlife, by contributing substantially to climate change. These impacts must be evaluated before the project is considered further. 

It is my impression and understanding that a large number of objections could have an effect and help achieve a more careful evaluation, possibly averting a huge mistake. Brief pointed comments may be just as well as longer statements.

James Hansen

 As predicted, just last week the State Department has already approved of the pipeline.

To date leading environmentalist, author, and founder of the climate campaign 350.org Bill McKibben, former White House official and Yale dean Gus Speth, gay rights activist Lt. Dan Choi, Dr. James Hansen, an 84-year-old grandmother, and many others have been arrested. Supporters for the protest include dozens of religious leaders, Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT-I) and celebrities Mark Ruffalo, Thom Yorke, Danny Glover, Josh Fox, and 20 top US scientists.

Environmentalist, author & founder of 350.org Bill McKibben being arrested
Photo: Shadia Lopez

Renowned gay rights activist, Lt. Dan Choi, being arrested in front of the White House.
Photo: Josh Lopez

According to Bill McKibben, “This is the largest civil disobedience action in the environmental movement in a generation, and if they really aren’t even discussing it with the president, that signals a deep disrespect for their supporters, especially young people who have demonstrated that the environment is a top priority.”

Let’s hope President Obama is listening and paying attention, and shows that he cares about the environment and our nation by tossing the Keystone XL proposal right in the garbage bin. Do the right thing, Mr. President.

Note: For the full text of Dr. James Hansen's "Silence is Deadly," please visit http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110603_SilenceIsDeadly.pdf

The Garden Party

Photo by Everyman

Ever heard of the Garden Party? It does sound a little more productive than tea parties, doesn’t it? From its appellation, it appears that members of this party are growing something instead of sitting around drinking tea, shooting the breeze, and talking politics. A quick search on the Internet won’t come up with anything about this movement, which is surprising. The principles of the Garden Party are practical and very doable, especially for this period of time when it’s critical that individuals and families are encouraged to go local and organic. Let’s face it, climate change is a reality. There are plenty of scientific studies that point to the urgent state of our planet, as well as devastating physical manifestations of Mother Nature herself in the forms of earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, droughts, and for some countries, floods. Climate change is here to stay – be it global warming or global cooling – unless humankind does something about it, for example, curb manmade activities that are toxic to our air, our planet, and to the survival of all beings.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations released a report, “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” which implicates the livestock industry as the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions, 18 percent, more than all the transportation sectors combined. However, in 2009, researchers at the Worldwatch Institute estimated that that number is a bit higher, producing about 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. That’s about 51 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Imagine that. Just reducing our meat consumption – or even better, going vegetarian or vegan – we, as individuals, are already doing our part in the fight to stop or even reverse climate change.

Aside from cutting the meat out of our diet, we can contribute our efforts in another way – going organic. If the world’s agriculture switch to organic farming, not only will we eliminate chemical runoffs of fertilizers into the oceans, which harm marine life as well as create dead zones, but the sustainable methods of organic farming actually absorb 40 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That’s why a Garden Party is so important. A Garden Party in every neighborhood – what a wonderful way to have healthy and affordable vegetables, right in our backyard, or windowsill or rooftop.

Let us take a look at the Manifesto of the Garden Party (which can be found in its entirety at the Feral Scholar website):

1. The Garden Party is a collection of people who are committed to designing and implementing local, practical initiatives that:

a. increase food security through local sustainability

b. reduce our dependency on money, on-the-grid jobs, expensive and entropic technology, service agencies, and the government to feed ourselves.

2. The Garden Party is not seeking to acquire power for itself, but to deflate the structures of power by reducing people’s dependencies on those structures, in particular from the industrial food-grid, general-purpose money, and administration/management by employers, service agencies, and government.

The Garden Party is preparing for the ultimate General Strike, whereupon people can quit working for wages, quit requiring money to survive, quit paying taxes, quit obeying cruel, stupid, and unjust laws, and quit requiring resources that are not locally available for survival. This will not happen in one stroke, but little by little, spreading as both root and seed.

3. The Garden Party is peaceable. We do not accept the right of anyone to use physical force to bend the will of another; and we will not use any form of violence against persons as part of any campaign or initiative, no matter how much violence and force might increase our efficacy. The ends do not justify the means.

4. The Garden Party can “bind and loose.” If we voluntarily participate together in a boycott, or pickets against some entity, or any other trans-local initiative, then so be it. It requires no executive bodies, but can be suggested in the course of broad communication. Broad communication is encouraged to share helpful, practical tips, and to describe local activities. If the majority decides to participate in trans-local actions, then the majority will participate. No one will be coerced or expelled who doesn’t. If local groups want to initiate local projects, they need not request permission from anyone. Executive committees are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

5. There are no geographic boundaries for the Garden Party. Anyone anywhere can join.

6. The Garden Party is based on a concept of community that emphasizes the practical and personal, not the ideological. Local groups of the Garden Party should be friends. If you can’t be friends and treat each other with genuine goodwill and affection, then nothing you do will last anyway. A communication network is a good thing, but it is not a community. Communities can share food with each other, tend to each others’ children, nurture one another through times of personal trial, and celebrate together. If you’re too far apart to do these things, then there’s a better word than community.

The only requirement for membership into the Garden Party is to have a garden, be it pots that sit on windowsills or vegetables in plastic containers around the yard. What a wonderful way to empower ourselves, our family, as well as our neighborhoods and community. We are not helpless in the face of climate change. Together as a free-thinking collective, we can make a huge difference.

Kudos to Stan of the Feral Scholar website for the Garden Party concept. May there be members in every neighborhood throughout the world.

Eben's "How to Feed the World by Going Veggie"

I came across this blog post and I thought it was interesting. Rather than summarizing or paraphrasing it and losing all the good stuff in between, I'm re-posting it here:

How To Feed The World By Going Veggie
By Eben Harrel

I don't eat bacon cheeseburgers. About three years ago I gave up red meat and pork. I am American, and brother do I love bacon cheeseburgers. But I decided that as part of the imperfect project of trying to live a decent, moral life, I could no longer chow down on bacon cheeseburgers. I could not put my preference for the taste of a certain type of protein above the hunger of starving babies, or the imperative of tackling climate change.

It is one of the great failings of the environmental movement—and successes of the food lobby—that most people have no idea that bacon cheeseburgers have anything to do with starving babies, or climate change. Meat production is incredibly energy intensive. According to the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, meat production accounts for 18% of annual greenhouse-gas emissions — more than transportation, which accounts for roughly 14%. What's more, millions of acres of rain forest are cleared each year for cattle ranchers and suppliers of animal feed, wiping out one of the world's great "carbon sinks" and further accelerating climate change. A simultaneous problem is that meat production is also incredibly energy inefficient. We feed far more calories to cattle in the form of grain than we consume from their flesh. In a world where hundreds of millions of people go hungry, we snatch food from the mouths of starving babies and feed it to plump beasts.

Anyone doubting the severity of the issue would do well to spend a few hours browsing through the collection of 21 studies published today in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. The special issue, published by the Royal Society and overseen by the UK government chief scientist John Beggington, looks at the issue of food security in 2050—by then, the population of the earth is predicted to reach around 9 billion, meaning that global food supplies will need to increase by as much as 70% to meet increased demand. Clearly that's not possible if all 9 billion people want to eat bacon cheese burgers.

The special issue looks at various technological innovations that could help tackle food scarcity, including the possibility of growing meat in test tubes or using nanotechnology to deliver medication to livestock. It also talks about the importance of reducing food waste, particularly in developed countries (we end up throwing away a third of our food). Some of the scientists in the issue express optimism that global food security is achievable. And the issue points out that there will be some benefits from global warming when it comes to food production: extra carbon dioxide in the air could actually help increase yields and reduce water consumption, according to one study by a team of scientists at Rothamsted, a British agricultural research center. The Guardian offers a good summary of the entire special publication here.

There's no doubt that the task of feeding the world and tackling climate change would be helped if people fortunate enough to afford to eat meat decided to stop doing so. In 2008, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, suggested that the most useful step ordinary citizens could take to help combat climate change would be to embrace a vegetarian diet. Even meat reduction can be useful: in Belgium, the Flemish city of Ghent has designated every Thursday as "Veggiedag" — Veggie Day — calling for meat-free meals to be served in schools and public buildings, and encouraging vegetarianism among citizens by promoting vegetarian eateries and offering advice on how to follow a herbivorous diet.

Maybe it's time to follow the lead of the enlightened citizens of Ghent. In his great profile this week of the novelist Jonathan Franzen, TIME's Lev Grossman writes about how Franzen believes Americans would do well to adjust their conception of the concept of "freedom." To Franzen, constraints can actually be liberating. I know what he means. When I stopped eating meat, I felt free from the guilt of eating meat. By constraining my freedom of choice, I felt more free. So altruism, in a sense, can be self-serving and liberating. That's an alignment of incentives that even the most red-blooded, meat-loving American could appreciate. (Man do I miss bacon cheese burgers though).