Towards the tail end of Michael Specter's rambling feature on carbon footprint accounting in the latest issue of New Yorker, we are reminded that the single most effective and cheapest way to bring down atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels is preserving and restoring tropical rainforests. We're hearing that a lot these days, and with good reason.
Specter's article deals mostly with the challenges of assigning "carbon footprint" numbers to consumer goods, as the U.K's Tesco supermarkets are trying to do. The problem is, as usual, in the myriad details. But as becomes clear later in the article, it's beside the point. If all consumer goods and services were taxed according to their carbon emissions, then roses grown in the open fields of Kenya would be cheaper than those grown in heated Dutch greenhouses, the energy associated with flying them all the way to London markets notwithstanding.
Whether you want to levy that charge as a sales tax or indirectly through a cap and trade system in which producers have to pay for the right to emit carbon is for the politicians to sort out. That is going to take some time. In the meantime, goes the forestry argument, we could do far more to shrink humanity's emissions simply by paying developing countries not to cut down their tropic forests, and replanting those that have already been slash-and-burned.
"It's really very simple," John O. Niles told me. Niles, the chief science and policy officer for the environmental group Carbon Conservation, argues that spending five billion dollars a year to prevent deforestation in countries like Indonesia would be one of the best investments the world could ever make.
The typical numbers thrown about to describe how much deforestation, in the form of decaying carbon-based plant-life, contributes to our emissions budget is about 6 billion tonnes a year, which is about one fifth of the total of some 26-29 billion tonnes.
No other single policy measure ;;;;; not doubling automobile fuel efficiency, not a moratorium on new coal plants, not buying lots of compact fluorescents or insulating our homes better; would do more to cut our emissions. And it could be done almost overnight for a few billion dollars.
As Specter points out, there are some niggling political obstacles to this plan, such as the problem some advocates for developing countries have with the idea of not letting other people do what they want with the natural resources. But I don't think they are serious objections. At the end of the day, if you make it worth their while, even the most rapacious government will take the cash instead of the clearcut.
[Update: Specter talks today (Wednesday) with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air.]
Uber conservation biologist Stuart Pimm makes this argument on behalf of his new species conservation endeavor. In a clever approach, the Saving Species program makes carbon offsets an extra bonus of its attempts to preserve and maintain critical habitat for threatened species, a side-effect, as it were, of doing the right thing. You give money to a group to buy forests, primarily to save the golden lion tamarin among other species at risk, and by the way, you can also sleep well in the knowledge that you've done something to make up for that non-essential flight you took across the Pacific last month.
And as geneticist Spencer Wells points out in the latest SEED magazine salon, all you need to do save many species, such as mountain gorillas, is set a side a little bit of land. How hard should that really be?
It's kind of like sneaking a climate change program through the back door of wildlife conservation, and so far it's the only carbon offset program that I could endorse. (See here for some of my objections to the idea in general.) Pimm sings the praises of their plant, which sees your money to create protected national parks. It's not perfect, but definitely superior to most other competing programs, which really can't guarantee your money will actually bring down emissions.
Of course, just because it's easy and cheap to spend money on forests is no reason not to do all the other things we need to do to bring down greenhouse gas emissions. We should be using compact fluorescents. We should be driving more efficient cars (but only when we have to, the rest of the time we should be riding the train). We should be building lots of solar and wind power plants. We should be shuttering every coal plant over the next 10 or 20 years. And yes, we should be spending more billions on developing new clean alternative power-generating technologies.
But to get our emissions down to 10 or 20 percent of current values within two or three decades, which is what we have to do to keep global average temperatures from rising more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, we're going to need to take advantage of the cheapest tools already available. And that, it would seem, means paying Brazil and Indonesia to stop chopping down forests. Now.
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It would be great if we could stop the forests of the world being destroyed by simply paying Indonesia, Brazil, etc to protect them, but the sad fact is that in both these countries, and many others, the elite that run them are actively involved in the destruction themselves.
The annual burning of the forests in Indonesia, and the logging of Borneo, is done with the help of the authorities, with corrupt officals up the very highest levels receiving money to either turn a blind eye or actively handing out logging permits. Despite the claims from the Brazilian government that illegal logging had fallen this year, its clear that the government was lying, or at least in denial, with loggers and powerful ranchers still very much in charge. Of course it is not just corrupt governments which can be blamed. The EU basically paid the Congo to open its forest for logging, with multinational timber companies ripping off the locals, despite the fact that any negotiation was supposed to be illegal while the country was in a state of turmoil.
If we do pay them to protect the forests, then we also have to have ways of making sure they are telling the truth, and sanctions in case they fail. Personally, I think the only way to ensure that is that there will be no failure is to promise that anyone who does not live up to their side of the bargin should be dealt with under Rule 303....
Rule 303 huh. You climate loons have really turned the bend.
If it's easier to make money -not- doing something, than it is -doing- something, most people will take the first option. Logging and cattle ranching are frigging hard work, so I'd expect most loggers and cowboys would take a wad of cash so they can stay home and watch footie.
My question is - How do we make sure that if we pay a wad of money to the government of a country like Indonesia, known for not taking such good care of its populace, how would be ensure that the money is going to replace lost wages of those put out of the logging trade rather than line the pockets of the Ministers of the Interior?
Rule 303? More jackbooted ideas from MikeB. How about x-prizes for alternative energy? We'll have to wean ourselves from fossil fuels anyway, but there is no need to threaten people to force them to put hairshirts on.
Robert,
CO2 "mitigation" is all about forcing people to do things that they don't wish to do. MikeB. is just a little more up front and blunt about it than other climate doom purveyors.
I would dearly love the good people of Indonesia, Brazil and many other places busy turning their forests into chipboard to stop if we bung them some cash, but its unlikely to happen on trust alone.
Think just how many times the government's of both those countries have reported that their efforts to stop illegal logging have had some success, and how many times have they proven to be entirely wrong? In many cases, the governments themselves are complicite in illegal logging, such as Cambodia, or are totally ineffectual, with protection of the environment given few resources and no political support. And if ordinary people do try to stand up to loggers, ranchers, etc, then they may expect a bullet from the local police, rather than support (Brazil). Greenpeace estimated some years ago that 80% of Brazil's timber was illegal, with Bolivia's being about the same, as is Peru's. Indonesia's figure is probably as high as 88%.
For Africa the figure starts at around 50% for Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, higher in Gabon and 80% in Liberia. And the Congo is a disaster, without even the basics of government at all. But even in Europe and North America, there is massive logging of old-growth forests. The estimate for Latvia in terms of illegal logging is 1% by its government, whereas local NGO's report the true figure to be 25%, and Estonia the figure is 50%. These are part of Europe, not the Third World. As for Russia, it might be as high as 50%, with up to 80% in the far east (hence goodbye to the Siberian tiger).
The idea that any of these countries would comply with this sort of deal without careful oversight and draconian consequences for failure is simply naive. There's simply too much money to be made from the illegal trade, and too many people involved. Logging and ranching might be hard work, but its profitable, even for those at the bottom, and the higher you go, the bigger the rewards.
How are we to stop this without something fairly 'tough'? Speaking nicely doesn't work, neither does appealing to their better nature - so (and I'm asking Lance & Robert), what would you do? The irony is that we have used Rule 303 all too often in the past, to get what we want. We have used it over oil, over strategic mineral supplies, and to make sure that a country did not think it could be friendly to anyone we did not think they should be friendly with. We've used it in Iran, in Indonesia, in Guatermala, in Panama, and all over Africa - its just that we tended to use it against democracy, and against the better interests of humanity.
Al Capone said that you get more with a gun and a kind word, than a kind word alone - its something that the leaders of the countries mentioned and those who organise the illegal trade understand very well, so why not use the threat, since its language they understand?
Of course this timber has to go somewhere, and the most recent edition of Mother Jones http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/01/the-last-empire.html
there is a story about China's need for timber, much of which comes via Malaysia, and most of which is illegal. Yet some of that timber is used to make furniture for Ikea. So if you've ever bought cheap(ish) Ikea furniture, you've contributed to illegal logging. And of course it goes wider - if the stuff we buy isn't certified as substainable, then its probably illegal. As the Columbians like to point out, if you want to get rid of the coke trade, don't spray the fields, just stop using cocaine.
Lance, MikeB posts his jackbooted thug solutions all over scienceblogs, I've seen his posts before. He just keeps warmongering and threatening war with countries like Brazil and China.
Robert - I don't think I have ever suggested threatening war with anyone, and as a liberal Guardian reading type, warmongering just isn't my style. I don't even post all that often, although using the online tag of MikeB is hardly unique.
Lance, on the other hand, posts all the time, and is usually argumentative, dismissive of any fact that disagree's with his worldview, and still refuses to even take on board the possibility of man-made climate change; I suspect you have much in common. The use of the word 'jackboot' kind of gave you away...
I actually think that technology can help mitigate many of our environmental problems, but a quick look at the RMI, UCS, Apollo Alliance or a hundred other websites shows clearly that the solutions are already out there, but that innovation tends to be hamperd by special interests and distortions in the market. An X-prize is a fine idea, but many of the solutions already exist - we just have to use them!
As far as logging is concerned, the destruction of the world's forests will have truly catastrophic consequences for humanity, not only in terms of climate change, but will also trigger the extinction of flora and fauna on a massive scale. These are the worlds major bio-reserves. Preventing that should be a no-brainer. Yet unless the countries involved take it seriously, those forests will all go, possibly in as little as twenty years or less in some areas.
Being nice has failed. Trusting them has failed. Neither Lance or Robert ever answered the question - what would you do? The only solution is to threaten them - its not nice, but failure to protect the forests would be a disaster for the whole planet.
Of course it would be hypocritical for the West to leave it at that. The timber is bought by everyone, not just China. I note with sadness that the UK is number one in Europe for importing illegal timber - my government could police importation properly, but since it can't even police properly its own purchase of timber, I'm not holding my breath. Every industrial nation could make sure that only timber from truly substainable sources was used (as well as reducing the waste of timber, such as in the construction industry). Its not good enough pointing to China, if the stuff you buy is made from the illegal timber they imported. We all share the blame for this trade. And cutting down our own old-growth forests is the very height of folly - the Tongass is worth more to the US than cheap chipboard.
We can do this. We have the technology to see what is happening in the forest (in real time), we can track the shipments of timber from forest to port, to ship, to middleman. We can listen in to the organisation's phone calls and emails, and we can see what is in their bank accounts. We can trace who got the pay-offs, who benefits from the logging concessions, and where the timber ends up.
We can find out who bought it, and which multi-national turned it into something which will appear in our shops. We have the technology, we have the resources, we just lack the will. If a small charity like the Environmental Investigation Agency can be so effective, why can't the NSA lend a hand? Think of it as a clear and present danger for the planet - then act accordingly. The Pentagon think that climate change is a security issue, and so should everyone else.
And if you really want to stop this, arresting them will not be enough, because they are often the people in charge, in countries where the rule of law is a joke. Rule 303, on the other hand, might be the only way...
MikeB,
Brazil is a sovereign nation. How they choose to use their natural resources is entirely up to them. It is amusing that you rail against western imperialist nations using force to take what they want from less powerful nations and then advocate the use of force against these same nations to suit your radical environmentalist agenda.