Recession Planet
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ANALYSIS & FEATURE
FRIDAY OCTOBER 2, 2009
Could recession save the planet?
The more mess we make of the Earth, the more money can be made clearing it up
By Chris Williams
As Ban Ki-moon announced that the U.N. climate change summit “has given fresh impetus to efforts to tackle global warming,” there were seemingly miraculous reports about decline in carbon emissions. But these were not a response to global security problems. The cause is global recession. The annual report of the International Energy Agency, the “World Energy Outlook,” to be published in November, is likely to show that there has been the biggest annual reduction in carbon dioxide emissions in 40 years, 2 percent in 2009. This is probably bigger than the reduction during the recession at the start of the 1980s. The IEA estimates that only a quarter of this is due to new polices, such as improved car fuel use in the U.S. The rest is due to a slowdown in economic activities because of the recession, including reduced investment in new fossil fuel plants. China now creates the most carbon dioxide, 6,017.69 million tons in 2006, in comparison with America’s 5,902.75 million tons. But if that figure is presented per capita, the picture is different. China produces just 4.58 tons per person, compared with the United States at 19.78, and this figure excludes the U.S. Virgin Isles, at a staggering 118.35. Comparing national per capita emissions suggests that low GDP is related to low emissions. The obvious, if uncomfortable, example is that whilst South Korea produces 10.53 tons per capita, the figure for North Korea is 3.36. Elsewhere in Asia, Laos creates 0.09, Cambodia 0.05, and Afghanistan just 0.03. Like it or not, low GDP appears to be good for the planet, and economic slowdowns seem to help. But from a broader perspective of human wellbeing, the picture is not so simple. The countries with the lowest carbon dioxide emissions also include some with the most problematic political systems — DR Congo (0.04), Burma (0.27) and Sudan (0.32). It is also argued by writers such as Dalip Singh Wasan that “Poverty breeds pollution,” with the implication that wealth is needed to create the high-tech solutions for a less polluting world. But then how do we explain that the wealthiest countries in the world, those in the oil rich Gulf, are among the worst polluters — Bahrain (38.44), the UAE (35.05), Kuwait (30.92), and Qatar with a profligate figure of 61.19. The Gulf example also raises a question about why the ethic of saving humanity seems to be ignored by non-sec-
Chris Williams
● Chris
Williams is based at the Center for International Education and Research, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. can be reached at [email protected]
● He
ular governments. As a Buddhist would suggest, the “middle path” seems the most positive. The world average per capita emission is 4.48 tons. Countries reflecting this mean include Uzbekistan (4.43), Romania (4.42), Chile (4.01) and Croatia (4.77). Like others in this middle range, these countries are not bad places to live. In parallel with the climate change debate, other recent policy changes seem to contribute to a safer planet. The announcement that the U.S. missile defense system, based in Poland and the Czech Republic, would be scrapped challenges those who claim that we are returning to a new Cold War. Like carbon emissions, this is probably not unrelated to economic problems. The alternative to the Europe-based U.S. defense system was justified by U.S. President Obama as being a “proven, cost-effective” system. The proposal from Britain to reduce its Trident nuclear armed submarines from four to three seems similar. Britain has already cut the number of nuclear warheads from 200 to 160. Britain’s planned 20-year Trident program would cost at least $33 billion, and the country currently has the largest na-
tional debt since World War II. So it is perhaps not a coincidence that this cost-cutting in military spheres will help to make good the debits of the recession. But again, it is not so simple. The advocates of “military Keynesianism” argue that war can be good for the economy, at least in the short term. Proponents of this approach
ly in The Korea Herald, the restoration of rivers as part of Korea’s Green Growth initiative is predicted to have both economic and environmental benefits. Those who advocate the military interpretation of Keynesian economics also ignore the point that if they were correct, one of the nations with the best GDP, and most enviable lifestyles, would
instead about the U.K. exporting technology and creating a huge number of jobs, which makes us a force for good.” The bizarre nature of the argument seems likely to make investors in the arms trade run for cover in businesses with a more astute grasp of public perceptions. It is not hard to reformat the “military Keynesianism” as “environmental Keynesianism.” In
W hilst economic problems give gove rnments a political exc s fo ue r r educed carbon emissions and military expenditure,these two things need not be linke . R ecession might make t e p a e s fe d h l n t a r, but we don’ n e a recession to make t e p a e s fe ? t ed h lnt a r
show that the production of weapons creates jobs and generates other consumer spending on nonmilitary goods and services. A large military reduces unemployment, and provides useful training for low skilled workers. Military research creates innovations which are of benefit to all, for example the internet. Of course this conveniently overlooks the argument that much the same effect could be achieved with a large-scale hospital or school building program. As I explained previousbe North Korea. Perhaps the arms industry is aware that things are changing and many countries are taking a longer term view. During the Annual Defense Systems and Equipment International exhibition, held in Britain earlier this month, Alex Dorian, the CEO of one of the major defense traders, Thales UK, provided some astonishingly defensive rhetoric. Dorian argued that the arms trade “is in fact a really ethical business. We have to take away the arms trade image and think simplistic terms, the more mess we make of the planet, the more money can be made clearing it up. While we use a global accounting system, GDP/GNP, global economics will remain at the level of a delusion. In GDP terms, crashing your car “improves” the economy, because of the cash that resultantly moves around the system paying for repairs, legal fees, medical expenses and so on. A more honest alternative can be termed “loss costs,” for example the loss of a child’s memory
resulting from mercury or lead poisoning. German philosopher Kant provided the basis for this approach when he created the distinction between things that have “value,” which can be replaced simply by spending more money, and things that have “dignity” which cannot be replaced with dollar bills. If this ethic is not clear, think about whether it is O.K. for your child to be killed by a bullet or a tsunami, because the insurance will pay out. Or consider whether, in the guise of a modern King Canute, advancing sea level rises might be remedied by trying to buy-off the impending deluge with a file-full of carbon trading contracts. There is no such thing as a free trade-off. An underlying message in the IEA report is that the recession demonstrates that reducing emissions may be much easier in practice than governments and industrialists claim. We might apply the same principle to reducing weapons. Whilst economic problems give governments a political excuse for reduced carbon emissions and military expenditure, these two things need not be linked. Recession might make the planet safer, but we don’t need a recession to make the planet safer?
As delegates gather for the follow-up to the New York summit this week, the Bangkok climate change talks, a report from the Hadley Centre proposes that global warming has been underestimated. Temperatures may exceed four degrees by the end of the century, and many people alive now will suffer. Climate prediction is an imprecise science, but over the past five years one trend is indisputable. Most reports show that the speed and magnitude of the impact has been underestimated. The red dust storm in Australia this week shows that the impact will be complex. The storm is an indication of climate change. But the red dust might contain carcinogenic uranium particles from a mine in the South Australian desert, which has fueled a nuclear industry that many see as a way to address climate change. The soup of self-destruction that we are cooking is being served in a poisoned chalice. Before the decline of humanity becomes irreversible, let’s hope our politicians remember a Chinese saying — “You can always make fish soup from fish, but you can never make a fish from fish soup.”
Big quakes can trigger tremors miles away
PARIS (AFP) — Huge earthquakes can weaken seismic faults on the other side of the world, scientists in California said on Wednesday. Their study coincided with a major 8.0-magnitude quake in the Pacific, unleashing a tsunami that killed scores of people in the Samoan islands and Tonga. Seismologists led by Taka’aki Taira of the University of California at Berkeley found that the 9.1 monster that struck west of Sumatra in December 2004 weakened a closely-monitored segment on California’s San Andreas fault, 8,000 kilometers distant. Their investigation is based on a scan of 22 years of data from the Parkfield area, a district so studded with borehole seismometers and other gauges that it has been dubbed “the earthquake capital of the world.” The monitors found that areas of fluid-filled fractures lie within this section of the fault. Driven by seismic pressure, the fluid migrates along the fault like spidery veins in marble, acting as a lubricant that enables shocks to pry open the rock, they believe. Proof of this suspicion came with the finding that repetitive background quakes became smaller and smaller during periods of fluid shift — in other words, as the fault slowly weakened, less energy was needed to shake it. But the most remarkable finding was unexpected impacts from two big, distant quakes — a 7.3-magnitude shake near the Californian town of Landers in 1992 and the 2004 Sumatra behemoth that unleashed the Indian Ocean tsunami. Almost five days after Sumatra event — one of the biggest quakes in recorded history — sensors noted dynamic stress on the Parkfield fault at a depth of 5 kilometers. The study, published by the British weekly science journal Nature, provides compelling support for a novel theory that very big quakes can have a cascade effect elsewhere, sometimes months afterwards, say the researchers. “The long-range influence of the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake on this patch of the San Andreas fault suggests that many of the world’s active faults were affected in the same way, thus bringing a significant num-
Asia-Pacific disasters leave trail of death and destruction
HONG KONG (AFP) — Nature’s destructive power was bared to deadly effect this week with massive flooding in Southeast Asia, tsunamis that deluged the Samoan islands and a huge earthquake on Sumatra island. Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were the latest countries to be lashed by Typhoon Ketsana as it continued a rampage that began in the Philippines, killing over 330 people and forcing millions to flee their submerged homes. As outside powers geared up to help, disaster struck again further east when a powerful 8.0-magnitude undersea quake unleashed tsunamis on the vulnerable Pacific islands of Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga. At least 113 people were killed, including foreigners from Australia, Britain and South Korea, as waves 7.5 meters high wiped out villages, flattened tourist resorts and sent people scurrying for high ground. Samoa’s Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said he was “shocked beyond belief.” “So much has gone. So many people are gone,” he told the Australian news agency AAP. U.S. President Barack Obama called the incident in the outlying U.S. territory of American Samoa a “major disaster” and offered Samoans his “deepest sympathies.” He also dispatched troops for the aid effort in the Philippines, a former American colony. With the Philippines reeling from once-in-a-lifetime floods that have inundated Manila, officials in the mainly Catholic country urged people to pray for deliverance from a new menace lurking to the east, Typhoon Parma. Yet more disaster hit in Indonesia Wednesday, when a 7.6-magnitude quake rocked the island of Sumatra, killing at least 75 people and trapping thousands under rubble. Large buildings including hospitals and hotels caved in, while fires raged in the coastal city of Padang, home to nearly a million people, and outside rescuers struggled to reach the scene. The early death toll looked set to rise dramatically, said officials. “Maybe more than 1,000... because so many buildings and houses have been damaged,” said Health Ministry Crisis Centre head Rustam Pakaya. Rescue teams and doctors sent overland were expected in the city on Thursday morning, Pakaya said. Frightened office workers streamed out into the streets as tremors were felt in Jakarta, 940 kilometers away, and in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. As Washington grappled with a situation in American Samoa that evoked memories of Hurricane Katrina, the string of Asia-Pacific disasters highlighted pitiful defenses in some nations and underlying worries about global warming. In flood-hit Vietnam, the head of the Red Cross in the city of Danang, Phan Nhu Nghia, described aid efforts as “very, very difficult, even with a greater mobilization from the soldiers and the police, because the scale of the flooding is too vast and we lack equipment.” “We have not received any support from local authorities,” a 28-year-old mother of twin toddlers complained to AFP in Vietnam’s Quang Nam province.
Students run near a collapsed university building after an earthquake hit Padang on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, Thursday.
Reuters-Yonhap News
ber of them to failure,” the study says. “This hypothesis appears to be supported by the unusually high number of quakes of magnitude eight or above occurring in the three years” after the 2004 event, it said. “No other large earthquake, of magnitude eight or more, since 1900 was followed by as many for a comparable period,” it observed. The team hopes their work will yield a technique for assessing the strength of a seismic fault — testing whether it has the strength to resist a shock or rip apart and threaten human life.
Discreet changes in the seismic wave, corresponding to periods when the numbers of small earthquakes intensifies, can be quantified into a means of pinpointing faults that are likely to fail, Taira believes. Predicting when earthquakes will strike remains an over-the-horizon prospect, although strides have been made into assessing how stress builds up in a fault deep underground. “Earthquakes are caused when a fault fails, either because of the buildup of stress or because of a weakening of the fault,” said Taira in a press release.
ANALYSIS & FEATURE
FRIDAY OCTOBER 2, 2009
Could recession save the planet?
The more mess we make of the Earth, the more money can be made clearing it up
By Chris Williams
As Ban Ki-moon announced that the U.N. climate change summit “has given fresh impetus to efforts to tackle global warming,” there were seemingly miraculous reports about decline in carbon emissions. But these were not a response to global security problems. The cause is global recession. The annual report of the International Energy Agency, the “World Energy Outlook,” to be published in November, is likely to show that there has been the biggest annual reduction in carbon dioxide emissions in 40 years, 2 percent in 2009. This is probably bigger than the reduction during the recession at the start of the 1980s. The IEA estimates that only a quarter of this is due to new polices, such as improved car fuel use in the U.S. The rest is due to a slowdown in economic activities because of the recession, including reduced investment in new fossil fuel plants. China now creates the most carbon dioxide, 6,017.69 million tons in 2006, in comparison with America’s 5,902.75 million tons. But if that figure is presented per capita, the picture is different. China produces just 4.58 tons per person, compared with the United States at 19.78, and this figure excludes the U.S. Virgin Isles, at a staggering 118.35. Comparing national per capita emissions suggests that low GDP is related to low emissions. The obvious, if uncomfortable, example is that whilst South Korea produces 10.53 tons per capita, the figure for North Korea is 3.36. Elsewhere in Asia, Laos creates 0.09, Cambodia 0.05, and Afghanistan just 0.03. Like it or not, low GDP appears to be good for the planet, and economic slowdowns seem to help. But from a broader perspective of human wellbeing, the picture is not so simple. The countries with the lowest carbon dioxide emissions also include some with the most problematic political systems — DR Congo (0.04), Burma (0.27) and Sudan (0.32). It is also argued by writers such as Dalip Singh Wasan that “Poverty breeds pollution,” with the implication that wealth is needed to create the high-tech solutions for a less polluting world. But then how do we explain that the wealthiest countries in the world, those in the oil rich Gulf, are among the worst polluters — Bahrain (38.44), the UAE (35.05), Kuwait (30.92), and Qatar with a profligate figure of 61.19. The Gulf example also raises a question about why the ethic of saving humanity seems to be ignored by non-sec-
Chris Williams
● Chris
Williams is based at the Center for International Education and Research, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. can be reached at [email protected]
● He
ular governments. As a Buddhist would suggest, the “middle path” seems the most positive. The world average per capita emission is 4.48 tons. Countries reflecting this mean include Uzbekistan (4.43), Romania (4.42), Chile (4.01) and Croatia (4.77). Like others in this middle range, these countries are not bad places to live. In parallel with the climate change debate, other recent policy changes seem to contribute to a safer planet. The announcement that the U.S. missile defense system, based in Poland and the Czech Republic, would be scrapped challenges those who claim that we are returning to a new Cold War. Like carbon emissions, this is probably not unrelated to economic problems. The alternative to the Europe-based U.S. defense system was justified by U.S. President Obama as being a “proven, cost-effective” system. The proposal from Britain to reduce its Trident nuclear armed submarines from four to three seems similar. Britain has already cut the number of nuclear warheads from 200 to 160. Britain’s planned 20-year Trident program would cost at least $33 billion, and the country currently has the largest na-
tional debt since World War II. So it is perhaps not a coincidence that this cost-cutting in military spheres will help to make good the debits of the recession. But again, it is not so simple. The advocates of “military Keynesianism” argue that war can be good for the economy, at least in the short term. Proponents of this approach
ly in The Korea Herald, the restoration of rivers as part of Korea’s Green Growth initiative is predicted to have both economic and environmental benefits. Those who advocate the military interpretation of Keynesian economics also ignore the point that if they were correct, one of the nations with the best GDP, and most enviable lifestyles, would
instead about the U.K. exporting technology and creating a huge number of jobs, which makes us a force for good.” The bizarre nature of the argument seems likely to make investors in the arms trade run for cover in businesses with a more astute grasp of public perceptions. It is not hard to reformat the “military Keynesianism” as “environmental Keynesianism.” In
W hilst economic problems give gove rnments a political exc s fo ue r r educed carbon emissions and military expenditure,these two things need not be linke . R ecession might make t e p a e s fe d h l n t a r, but we don’ n e a recession to make t e p a e s fe ? t ed h lnt a r
show that the production of weapons creates jobs and generates other consumer spending on nonmilitary goods and services. A large military reduces unemployment, and provides useful training for low skilled workers. Military research creates innovations which are of benefit to all, for example the internet. Of course this conveniently overlooks the argument that much the same effect could be achieved with a large-scale hospital or school building program. As I explained previousbe North Korea. Perhaps the arms industry is aware that things are changing and many countries are taking a longer term view. During the Annual Defense Systems and Equipment International exhibition, held in Britain earlier this month, Alex Dorian, the CEO of one of the major defense traders, Thales UK, provided some astonishingly defensive rhetoric. Dorian argued that the arms trade “is in fact a really ethical business. We have to take away the arms trade image and think simplistic terms, the more mess we make of the planet, the more money can be made clearing it up. While we use a global accounting system, GDP/GNP, global economics will remain at the level of a delusion. In GDP terms, crashing your car “improves” the economy, because of the cash that resultantly moves around the system paying for repairs, legal fees, medical expenses and so on. A more honest alternative can be termed “loss costs,” for example the loss of a child’s memory
resulting from mercury or lead poisoning. German philosopher Kant provided the basis for this approach when he created the distinction between things that have “value,” which can be replaced simply by spending more money, and things that have “dignity” which cannot be replaced with dollar bills. If this ethic is not clear, think about whether it is O.K. for your child to be killed by a bullet or a tsunami, because the insurance will pay out. Or consider whether, in the guise of a modern King Canute, advancing sea level rises might be remedied by trying to buy-off the impending deluge with a file-full of carbon trading contracts. There is no such thing as a free trade-off. An underlying message in the IEA report is that the recession demonstrates that reducing emissions may be much easier in practice than governments and industrialists claim. We might apply the same principle to reducing weapons. Whilst economic problems give governments a political excuse for reduced carbon emissions and military expenditure, these two things need not be linked. Recession might make the planet safer, but we don’t need a recession to make the planet safer?
As delegates gather for the follow-up to the New York summit this week, the Bangkok climate change talks, a report from the Hadley Centre proposes that global warming has been underestimated. Temperatures may exceed four degrees by the end of the century, and many people alive now will suffer. Climate prediction is an imprecise science, but over the past five years one trend is indisputable. Most reports show that the speed and magnitude of the impact has been underestimated. The red dust storm in Australia this week shows that the impact will be complex. The storm is an indication of climate change. But the red dust might contain carcinogenic uranium particles from a mine in the South Australian desert, which has fueled a nuclear industry that many see as a way to address climate change. The soup of self-destruction that we are cooking is being served in a poisoned chalice. Before the decline of humanity becomes irreversible, let’s hope our politicians remember a Chinese saying — “You can always make fish soup from fish, but you can never make a fish from fish soup.”
Big quakes can trigger tremors miles away
PARIS (AFP) — Huge earthquakes can weaken seismic faults on the other side of the world, scientists in California said on Wednesday. Their study coincided with a major 8.0-magnitude quake in the Pacific, unleashing a tsunami that killed scores of people in the Samoan islands and Tonga. Seismologists led by Taka’aki Taira of the University of California at Berkeley found that the 9.1 monster that struck west of Sumatra in December 2004 weakened a closely-monitored segment on California’s San Andreas fault, 8,000 kilometers distant. Their investigation is based on a scan of 22 years of data from the Parkfield area, a district so studded with borehole seismometers and other gauges that it has been dubbed “the earthquake capital of the world.” The monitors found that areas of fluid-filled fractures lie within this section of the fault. Driven by seismic pressure, the fluid migrates along the fault like spidery veins in marble, acting as a lubricant that enables shocks to pry open the rock, they believe. Proof of this suspicion came with the finding that repetitive background quakes became smaller and smaller during periods of fluid shift — in other words, as the fault slowly weakened, less energy was needed to shake it. But the most remarkable finding was unexpected impacts from two big, distant quakes — a 7.3-magnitude shake near the Californian town of Landers in 1992 and the 2004 Sumatra behemoth that unleashed the Indian Ocean tsunami. Almost five days after Sumatra event — one of the biggest quakes in recorded history — sensors noted dynamic stress on the Parkfield fault at a depth of 5 kilometers. The study, published by the British weekly science journal Nature, provides compelling support for a novel theory that very big quakes can have a cascade effect elsewhere, sometimes months afterwards, say the researchers. “The long-range influence of the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake on this patch of the San Andreas fault suggests that many of the world’s active faults were affected in the same way, thus bringing a significant num-
Asia-Pacific disasters leave trail of death and destruction
HONG KONG (AFP) — Nature’s destructive power was bared to deadly effect this week with massive flooding in Southeast Asia, tsunamis that deluged the Samoan islands and a huge earthquake on Sumatra island. Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were the latest countries to be lashed by Typhoon Ketsana as it continued a rampage that began in the Philippines, killing over 330 people and forcing millions to flee their submerged homes. As outside powers geared up to help, disaster struck again further east when a powerful 8.0-magnitude undersea quake unleashed tsunamis on the vulnerable Pacific islands of Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga. At least 113 people were killed, including foreigners from Australia, Britain and South Korea, as waves 7.5 meters high wiped out villages, flattened tourist resorts and sent people scurrying for high ground. Samoa’s Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said he was “shocked beyond belief.” “So much has gone. So many people are gone,” he told the Australian news agency AAP. U.S. President Barack Obama called the incident in the outlying U.S. territory of American Samoa a “major disaster” and offered Samoans his “deepest sympathies.” He also dispatched troops for the aid effort in the Philippines, a former American colony. With the Philippines reeling from once-in-a-lifetime floods that have inundated Manila, officials in the mainly Catholic country urged people to pray for deliverance from a new menace lurking to the east, Typhoon Parma. Yet more disaster hit in Indonesia Wednesday, when a 7.6-magnitude quake rocked the island of Sumatra, killing at least 75 people and trapping thousands under rubble. Large buildings including hospitals and hotels caved in, while fires raged in the coastal city of Padang, home to nearly a million people, and outside rescuers struggled to reach the scene. The early death toll looked set to rise dramatically, said officials. “Maybe more than 1,000... because so many buildings and houses have been damaged,” said Health Ministry Crisis Centre head Rustam Pakaya. Rescue teams and doctors sent overland were expected in the city on Thursday morning, Pakaya said. Frightened office workers streamed out into the streets as tremors were felt in Jakarta, 940 kilometers away, and in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. As Washington grappled with a situation in American Samoa that evoked memories of Hurricane Katrina, the string of Asia-Pacific disasters highlighted pitiful defenses in some nations and underlying worries about global warming. In flood-hit Vietnam, the head of the Red Cross in the city of Danang, Phan Nhu Nghia, described aid efforts as “very, very difficult, even with a greater mobilization from the soldiers and the police, because the scale of the flooding is too vast and we lack equipment.” “We have not received any support from local authorities,” a 28-year-old mother of twin toddlers complained to AFP in Vietnam’s Quang Nam province.
Students run near a collapsed university building after an earthquake hit Padang on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, Thursday.
Reuters-Yonhap News
ber of them to failure,” the study says. “This hypothesis appears to be supported by the unusually high number of quakes of magnitude eight or above occurring in the three years” after the 2004 event, it said. “No other large earthquake, of magnitude eight or more, since 1900 was followed by as many for a comparable period,” it observed. The team hopes their work will yield a technique for assessing the strength of a seismic fault — testing whether it has the strength to resist a shock or rip apart and threaten human life.
Discreet changes in the seismic wave, corresponding to periods when the numbers of small earthquakes intensifies, can be quantified into a means of pinpointing faults that are likely to fail, Taira believes. Predicting when earthquakes will strike remains an over-the-horizon prospect, although strides have been made into assessing how stress builds up in a fault deep underground. “Earthquakes are caused when a fault fails, either because of the buildup of stress or because of a weakening of the fault,” said Taira in a press release.
