On CO2 and the G8 “promise”

This week, the G8 promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (mostly CO2) by 80% by 2050.  Now they didn’t commit to what datum point in time is (1990? 2009?) and didn’t really sign anything that would penalize a nation for failing to do so.  Which makes it kind of meaningless.

Canada’s environment minister, Jim Prentice, has said that 80% isn’t realistic as a hard target and that it’s more of something to aspire to.  I think what he really means is that he will be dead by 2050 and isn’t going to do anything anyway.

And the truth is – making promises 40 years in the future by politicians in their 50s and older is great political theatre – and nothing more.  Predicting the future is a charlatan’s game, ever the moreso the further out you try to predict it.

Back to the subject of CO2 reduction – perhaps Mr. Harper and Mr. Prentice would like to explain how we are going to achieve this reduction in CO2 emissions.  80% is a big number.  My math tells me that we will need to:

• Convert most transportation vehicles (cars, trucks, trains) to electricity
• Convert the heating of many buildings to electricity from oil or natural gas
• Close power generation facilities that consume coal, oil or natural gas
• Build dozens of nuclear power generation facilities in every province.  Utilize breeder reactor technology, spent fuel reprocessing and plutonium cycle power generation to extend the life of our uranium reserves.  Or pray that the ITER project (which Canada pulled out of) actually makes nuclear fusion feasible.
• Build additional hydroelectric dams, flooding more valleys, especially in BC and Labrador.  Perhaps dam the Yukon and Mackenzie Rivers (although the latter might take too long to fill a reservoir the size of western Europe…)
• Build lots of wind turbines and power storage facilities (using some technology that probably hasn’t been invented yet).
• Place solar thermal and photovoltaic cells on homes and business.  Allow homeowners to sell power back to the grid for a fair price.
• Since it is unlikely we could replace fossil fuels for aircraft, air travel would either need to be curtailed or allowed to be a major part of CO2 emissions.
• Shutdown most of the oil, gas and coal production in Canada.   Power generation using fossil fuels will only be feasible with carbon capture and sequestration, which has yet to be proven on a large scale (particularly sequestration).

And all of this is going to be expensive and reduce the standard of living of people in all G8 countries.  And probably will have little impact on the atmosphere or climate, particularly if China, India, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa (and numerous other countries) continue with business and usual.

So again, I think the correct answer is adaptation to any change that might occur, rather than trying to engineer ourselves out of a problem we can’t be sure even exists or whether stopping it is even possible if it does.