Climate ‘tipping points’, carbon offsets and emergency shelter

I’m relieved that climate change seems to be moving higher up the agenda, although bearing in mind the magnitude of the risks we’ve hardly started tackling the problem.  Last Thursday, 14^th September 2006, I attended an evening organised by COIN (Climate Outreach Information Network) at Ruskin College, Oxford.  The subject of the evening was ‘Carbon offsets – salvation or distraction?’  Mike Mason, the founder and managing director of Climate Care, one of the fastest growing offset companies, gave an excellent talk on the theory of offsets and the problems of selecting projects which reduce emission of greenhouse gases (primarily carbon dioxide and methane) which would not otherwise have taken place.  I intend to give a flavour of the meeting in another posting, but I want to mention a few of the statistics which emerged from the evening.  In 2005, according to their annual report, Climate Care sold of 99 000 tonnes of carbon offsets and Mike claimed that their offsets achieved were running ahead of the offsets sold.  On the other hand the UK’s emissions have increased in the last two years and are now more than in 1995.  The government has the rhetoric but has not achieved reductions and certainly nothing like those needed to achieve climate stability, given IPCC forecasting consensus figures.

Whatever reductions the UK might expect be planning (20% by 2020) this is swamped by increasing emissions from a power hungry China, which is apparently opening new coal-fired power stations at the rate of one every five days, and putting 22 000 thousand new cars on the road every day (I must check that – it seems so incredible).  Incidentally, a programme on BBC Radio 4, ‘Driven by Oil’ considered the effect of China’s aggressive search to secure sources of oil on political stability and on attempts by countries of the West to aim for an ‘ethical foreign policy’ – a phrase marketed by the late Robin Cook as UK Foreign Secretary but long since dropped.

 Last Friday’s Financial Times (15^th September 2006) demonstrated how the urgency of tackling potentially disastrous climate is becoming better known.  An article by Fiona Harvey “The heat is on: how global warming could suddenly tip over and ignite calamity” reviewed some of the arguments and areas where feedback effects can reinforce the impact of a rise in greenhouse gases, namely melting of artic ice, melting of the Greenland ice sheet and  accelerating glacier movement towards the sea, melting of glaciers elsewhere as likely to lead to floods followed by water shortages, melting of the permafrost leading to methane emissions, faster decomposition of organic matter in the soil, Amazon rain forest die-back and acidification of the oceans and lowered agricultural productivity.

This reminded me of an editorial in New Scientist (24 December 2005) Review 2005: Climate going crazy “The ominous phrase “tipping point” entered the vocabulary of climate science – a stark warning that global warming may soon spiral out of control”.  The article reviewed the worrying events, and research published, during 2005 suggesting climate change acceleration.

Meanwhile, I’ve been browsing through Architecture for Humanity’s 2006 book “Design Like you Give a Damn”, some of which deals with ideas for emergency housing, shelter and water supply.  Some of the demand for these arises out of climate change related events such as drought, flood and storms including Hurricane Katrina, the one which hit New Orleans in 2005; even now some of those displaced are living in emergency accommodation.  Let’s hope that we manage to contain our impact on climate change and that we won’t have enormously increased crisis needs to respond to – we’ve got quite enough unmet need as it is.