Carbon Culture Change

“Carbon Culture” and Climate Change – A Personal View

So what’s the fuss … surely there been “climate change” before?

It’s not difficult to see that our planet has undergone serious and significant climate change many times in its 4.5 billion year existence.

Consider the fossil and geological records, showing warm-climate animals roamed over Britain in the past, evidence of tropical vegetation at the poles, deserts where there are now forests, forests where there are now deserts, and evidence of glaciers scouring landscapes, such as the ones which created the Royal Mile in my own Edinburgh – and, to illustrate how things have changed, that glacier was moving round a volcano!

Geological time is hard to comprehend

We humans have only been here for a relative blink of an eye. There have been vast swings of atmospheric content, temperature, sea levels, over this timescale, even the distribution of the continents, over the millennia!

Think about the movement of tectonic plates, and how all the land we know was once joined together as Pangaea, the super-continent that existed 250 million years ago, according to continental drift science.

Where do we think this “carbon” came from?

Consider the black liquid that we go to great lengths to remove from under the land and sea – oil – and the black soft rock-like substance that we mine and cut from the land – coal.

How did coal and oil come about? These fabulous natural substances were not placed there intentionally by some higher being, for us to find – sorry – they are there because of climate change conditions over many millions, in fact, billions of years.

So, there has been climate change before, oh yes, big time

The difference with today’s conditions is that there is now a massive “biomass” of one particular species on this planet – approaching 7 billion Homo Sapiens – with the intelligence and ability to make massive, at times unintended, changes on a global scale. 

 Is the science right – are we to blame?

The “greenhouse effect” theory was first put forward over a hundred years ago, but it was not until the 1970s that clear evidence started to emerge. Now there is overwhelming scientific evidence that it is happening and that human activity is to blame.

 “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (>90%) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations”

IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), 2007.

In other words, it’s the human race’s increasing and persistent output of greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) which is causing the planet to heat up.

For those people who either don’t believe in or deny climate change, I would say, even if the human race isn’t to blame, we still have a problem.

What will climate change mean?

Current scientific thinking (mainstream, across the board, around the world thinking, including intergovernmental panels, formerly cautious and reticent to come down on one side of the fence) says that we, globally, must stabilise our greenhouse gas emissions by 2015, and reduce those emissions by 80% by 2050, to avoid the catastrophic climate change that would result from a global average temperature rise of more than 2ºC.

The science also says that if we do nothing, then we are certain to be on the path to runaway climate change.

Greenhouse gases – the main culprits

Carbon dioxide is responsible for 63% of global warming, and stays in the atmosphere for up to 200 years, so CO2 released today will affect the climate for a very long time to come – in fact, even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emission now, there will still be climate change effects.

Methane (CH4) is responsible for 24% of global warming, and its levels have more than doubled since before the Industrial Revolution. A huge amount of methane comes from farming – in particular, the burping and farting of cattle, to be frank, but also from landfill sites, burning fossil fuels, wetlands and swamps. Although it is present in much smaller amounts than CO2, it is 20-25 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Fortunately it only hangs around for 11-12 years, compared to CO2. 

How will our climate change?

Broadly, climate change will affect land, air and ocean temperatures, causing great changes to typical weather patterns (extreme storms, hurricanes, rain, and drought), increases in sea levels through ice melt in the Arctic ice sheets and Antarctic ice shelves, the destruction of forests and arable land and the desertification of huge areas of land where people live.

The people who will be badly affected first will be the world’s poor … again.

“It’s the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit and who are the most vulnerable as far as the impacts of climate change are concerned”

Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the IPCC

98% of people seriously affected by climate change will be in developing countries ... 99% of all deaths from weather-related disasters, and 90% of total economic losses, likewise …

What about in the UK – what will our climate be like?

We, in the UK, are relatively fortunate in that the large islands (UK, New Zealand, Tasmania, Japan) will be last to be affected very seriously (father of Gaia theory, James Lovelock, calls them “lifeboat islands”), due to the starting point of having a temperate climate.

Rising sea levels will affect London, the capital and the second largest centre of global finance, as well as many other coastal areas.

We will initially have warmer summers and milder, wetter winters, with more frequent extreme weather events such as storms, plus a coastal loss issue caused by rising sea levels, but … is all that really so bad?

It is, of course, for a number of reasons.

One is that the UK is 8th in the list of countries by total CO2 emissions, yet we have only 60m out of the world’s 6.8Bn people. We are contributing more than our share to the global crisis of climate change.

The UK will be a “lifeboat island”

If the UK becomes a “lifeboat island”, where will we grow our food?

“The fact is that the UK population relies on food imports and has done for centuries. Today 91 percent of the fruit and 38 percent of the vegetables that we buy are imported”

Department for International Development Jan 2009

How will we grow food, and house 100 million (estimate of UK population by end of 21st century – and that’s not counting climate refugees)?  

Where do we expect the billions, yes, billions of people who will be displaced by climate change to wish to be, when they can no longer stay where they live?

The consequences of runaway climate change are unimaginable

If global action is not taken firstly to stabilise greenhouse gas levels by 2015, then reduce emissions by 80% by 2050, and the consequence is runaway climate change (currently rated as 50:50 anyway), then the resultant chaos on Earth really can’t be imagined.

This is not on the scale of what was done to the American Indians, the Aborigines, the indigenous populations in South America and Africa, the Highland clearances.

This is not a global fight between good and evil, such as the two World Wars of the last century.

This is not just a more sustained version of the natural disasters of Bangladesh in the late 60s, the droughts in Ethiopia, Sudan, the tsunami of 2004, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the recent wildfires in California and Australia.

One of the main drivers of human conflict in decades ahead

Through rising sea levels, floods, droughts, heat and famine, large parts of the world will be uninhabitable. We will be faced with climate wars - wars for food, wars for water, and wars for habitable land.

“One of the reasons why Al Gore and the IPCC were awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was in acknowledgement of the fact that if efforts to reduce climate-changing emissions fail, global warming will be one of the main drivers of human conflict in decades ahead as resources dwindle and competition increases”

Mark Lynas

If the Earth’s climate flips to a “hot” state, it won’t be temporary … what if it lasted for 250,000 years?

Why is it so important ?

I am involved in this, not for my sake … I may stumble over the finishing line before things get too intolerable for me in my nice house, around 75m above sea level, in my prosperous, middle class European city, in a currently temperate climate  … but for my children’s sake, and for their children’s sake.

I can’t let this happen without saying “I tried my hardest”.

Richard Brown

Director Carbon Culture Change

Richard Brown has a lifelong interest in the environment. A graduate of Edinburgh University in Ecological Science.  His working career has however mainly been in IT and HR, and in recent years he has been making use of facilitation skills to help companies with organisational and culture change.

He believes that globally we have to take massive action to head off a crisis of a gargantuan scale. The time is now to start working with companies to create a new culture change – away from one dedicated to carbon – to enable us to meet the targets required in time.

Further Information from richard@carbonculturechange.co.uk 

You can contact Philip, Richards' business partner through his website at philip@philipatkinson.com or at philip@carbonculturechange.co.uk