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Leo's Dilemma - My take on Budget 2019 and the carbon tax debacle

10/11/2018

Once upon a time, two members of a gang were arrested and imprisoned for committing a crime. Interrogated in separate cells with no means of communicating with each other, the prosecutors offered them each a choice to betray each other by testifying that the other committed the crime or to remain silent.

These were the possible outcomes of their choice:

If both the prisoners betrayed each other, each of them would serve two years in prison.
If one remained silent but the other testified against them, the silent one would serve three years in prison and the betrayer would be set free.
If both remained silent, they would each serve one year in prison.

Testifying against their fellow gang member offered a prisoner the potential for a greater reward (freedom) than cooperating with the other prisoner (1 year in prison each). However, if both testified against each other, they would both serve the maximum 2-year sentence.

This is a game theory called the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” and it’s been used since the 1950s to show why two individuals might not cooperate even when it’s in their collective interest to do so. It also explains why countries like Ireland refuse to curtail their greenhouse gas emissions as long as they think countries like China, the USA, or Argentina may not reduce theirs. Countries act with “rationale self-interest”, even if the penalty from not acting collectively (climate chaos) is far worse than the cost of action.

This week, a similar dilemma dominated our politics. Bear with me and let’s call Prisoner 1 “Leo” and Prisoner 2 “The Early Birds”….

Leo is stuck in the Dail chamber, potentially facing life after the next election as a back-bencher (or worse) if he doesn’t do something amazing to combat the numerous political parties and independents encroaching on his space. The Early Birds are “people who get up early”, whom Leo claims to represent -aka employed tax payers and voters.

Meet Leo (and his fetching socks)

Leo just met with the Government’s esteemed Climate Change Advisory Council who told him one of the best things he could do to address Ireland’s climate commitments was to support a carbon tax. Leo’s also aware that Ireland’s Citizen’s Assembly (100 people representing all of Irish society) recommended that a carbon tax should be one of 13 measures implemented now to address climate change, and they said they were willing to pay more for fossil fuels to play their own role in addressing climate change.

Even a modest carbon tax scheduled to increase slowly over time would give businesses and consumers confidence that it makes economic sense to invest in low carbon technologies (like insulation and heat pumps) rather than continue to spend money on increasingly more expensive fossil fuels.

Such taxes can be designed so that a portion of revenue goes back to people to alleviate fuel poverty and invest in their household energy retrofit, along with investing the revenue in other emission reducing strategies. And there's nothing to stop Fine Gael from lowering USC while they implement a carbon tax, so people are taxed for consumption, rather than working.

The Climate Advisory Council explained to Leo how Fine Gael could even win votes by implementing a carbon tax that gave money back to tax payers and encouraged people to reduce their fossil fuel consumption. Leo was buzzing so much after his meeting with the Climate Change Advisory Council he even made a catchy little video afterwards, promising great things to come from Fine Gael with respect to climate action (though his comms team didn’t take too kindly to my efforts to debunk it).

Meet The Early Birds

The Early Birds have become surprisingly climate savvy lately. Now that the economy is up and running again, sustainability has become de rigueur and climate change is firmly back on the media agenda during their morning commutes. Traffic has gotten way worse too, so they’re in their cars even longer each day listening to news radio.

As a result, the Early Birds know Ireland is a self-confessed “laggard” in climate action and that the Government will continue to burn coal and extract peat until 2030. Despite Leo’s efforts to “keep the recovery going”, the Early Birds are still not flush with cash...

While they understand the need for climate action and accept the idea that polluters should pay, the Early Birds resent the idea of any more tax on anything in their lives and feel Leo would be a hypocrite to impose a carbon tax on them as long as Moneypoint and Bord Na Mona keep burning. Leo's neglected to tell them that they'll be paying even more for our EU carbon fines from 2020 onward if we keep heading down this carbon-emitting pathway.

Let’s Play “The Politician’s Dilemma”

This week, Budget 2019 was upon us. -Instead of the prisoner’s dilemma, it’s a game called the politician’s dilemma where Leo is Santa Claus and the Early Birds are the excited little boys and girls. Paschal is Leo’s friendly elf, here to announce whose naughty or nice, and the Early Birds wish each other “Happy Budget Day” as they head to their breakfast meetings….

A modest carbon tax (less than 3 cent a litre on petrol) is on the table -a lump of coal to many Early Birds who can’t get to work any other way than driving, but a treasure to those who felt would be a true test of Leo’s alleged commitment to addressing climate change.

Here’s how Leo’s Dilemma played out…

If Leo proposed a carbon tax in Budget 2019, Ireland would have moved one small step closer to addressing climate change and doffing the climate laggard hat (+1), but he risked alienating the Early Birds and finding himself on the back bench (or worse) after the next election (-1).

BUT, if Leo scraped the carbon tax (as he did), he’d only alienate a small percentage of environmentalists and economists, who already felt pretty alienated by Leo anyway (+/- 0). Sure, Ireland would maintain its reputation as a “climate laggard” (-1) and Leo would still look like hypocrite for his false bravado on climate leadership. However, scraping the carbon tax would be unlikely to impact how the Early Birds treat him at the next election (+1). Plus, if he throws the farmers a bone and gives them money to add some more beef cows to the herd (and more emissions to our atmosphere), he can recover any lost votes from potentially sore eco-warriors...

Leo's decision to scrap the carbon tax at the 11th hour (and add some additional greenhouse gas emissions via agricultural subsidies) was made purely in rationale self interest to survive another election, just like the Prisoner's Dilemma predicts.

Let’s call a spade a spade. -Politics is driven by the desire for power, and what happens to the climate or future generations is largely irrelevant unless it provides a political advantage to maintain that power.

Pardon me for my cynicism, but I’m writing this from a week working in Brussels where I’ve watched this week’s climate media frenzy in Ireland from a distance. Between the dramatic urgency of the IPCC’s Special Report trying to keep additional warming under 1.5C to Denis Naughten’s resignation as the country's first Minister for Climate Action, it’s been a weird time to be away, but perhaps the outside perspective gives me clarity about the real motivations for Leo’s behavior.

I choked up when I heard Prof. John Fitzgerald, ESRI economist and Chair of the Climate Advisory Council, on Newstalk Breakfast after the Budget was announced. Prof. Fitzgerald has argued for nearly 20 years that a carbon tax was a vital part of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

When asked on Newstalk if he would consider resigning his position since his advice had been ignored by the Government, Prof. Fitzgerald replied “I’ve been an economist with the ESRI for nearly two decades, so I’m used to being ignored”. Someone please explain to me why our Government ignores an esteemed economist they have paid for advice for nearly two decades…

I was equally upset when I saw Green Party TD Catherine Martin’s tweet in response to the budget. -The Green Party is the only political party who consistently defended the idea of a carbon tax at huge expense to their own “power”. They’ve heeded the advice of experts like Prof. Fitzgerald and Joe Curtain, putting long term societal benefit over short-term ambitions for power, but it hasn’t gotten them anywhere.

Santa and his elves have said they're waiting for the advice from the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action to make any changes to carbon tax and that some day far far away there will be an incremental carbon tax established until 2030...

It seems there’s always a reason to wait to address climate change, despite the fact that it’s is more urgent than ever and Leo’s got less than 12 months to prove his climate action ambitions before an election is probably called.

Climate Advisory Council member and economist, Joe Curtain, said it best in this must read twitter thread, summarizing his frustration:

Yesterday was a catastrophic failure of the Irish political and administrative system, and of us, the citizens. If a small wealthy booming country can't adopt the absolute minimum climate measures, even to pretend to care, if this is the world we live in....the world is doomed.

Photo credit: The Gloss Magazine, September 2018

Irish politics right now is driven purely by rationale self-interest, and we’re the prisoners caught playing that game with politicians in the lead up to the next election. The only way to change the game is to elect different people who prioritize societal benefits over their own personal ambition to stay in power. Let me know if you find any...

Keep fighting the good fight!
- Cara

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Good-Bye, Gasoline Blues

2/21/2018

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On February 8th, Ireland’s parliament voted 78 to 48 to end future off-shore oil and gas exploration in Irish waters. Their decision mirrors the governments of Costa Rica, Belize and France, who have all banned the exploration of fossil fuels in their waters.

Ireland’s Climate Emergency Measures Bill will provide for the amendment of the Petroleum and Other Minerals Development Act of 1960 to ensure national and global environmental considerations, (including the annual average global temperature and the monthly mean level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) are considered when issuing licences, undertakings, and leases under the Act.

In doing so, the Bill will prohibit further exploration and drilling for new fossil fuel resources anywhere in Irish territorial waters as an emergency measure to address the high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

For Valentine’s Day, I could think of no better topic to discuss with Newstalk’s Ivan Yates on our new “Down To Earth” radio slot than Ireland’s exciting systematic break up from fossil fuels!

Listen to our podcast or read the blog for more of my own opinions on saying good-bye to off-shore oil and gas exploration in Ireland.

The Beginning of The End

New Politics has stirred up some radical changes in Ireland’s Parliament since the 2016 General Election:

Last June, the Irish Government unanimously banned onshore hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, as the first private members’ bill to pass both Houses during the lifetime of this Government, joining France, Germany and Bulgaria in banning the practice on land. When the final stages of the bill to ban fracking were debated, amendments to extend the ban to offshore drilling were parked to achieve consensus.
In a 90 to 53 vote last February, the Dail approved legislation to drop coal, oil and gas investments from the €8 billion Irish Strategic Investment Fund through a Bill introduced by an Independent politician, Deputy Thomas Pringle, who credited new politics with advancing this historic legislation. If passed into law soon, Ireland will become the first country in the world to divest from fossil fuels.
And now, in a record breaking eight weeks, the Dail has agreed to send the Climate Emergency Measures Bill through Committee Stage scrutiny and potentially stop the government from issuing any new licenses for the exploration and extraction of fossil fuels in the State.

To put this in context, it took eight YEARS to secure Ireland’s climate legislation to require Government departments to simply report their activities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and eight months to get the fracking ban as far. Eight weeks is a miraculous achievement that puts Deputy Brid Smith of People Before Profit in this history books as the TD who led the Climate Emergency Bill through second stage post haste.

Leaders and Laggards

It’s not too surprising that People Before Profit, the Green Party, Labour, Sinn Fein, Social Democrats, and the Solidarity Alliance supported the Climate Emergency Measures Bill as it aligns generally with their ethe, but Fianna Fail’s 11th hour decision to support the Bill sends a significant message with respect to their new direction of travel.

Fianna Fail’s 2016 Election Manifesto was light on climate action and made no reference to oil and gas, but since then we’ve seen a “green lean” in their voting record and more engagement in environmental issues, including at their 2017 Ard Dheis where both myself and climate economist, Joseph Curtain, were invited to speak on climate issues. When I met Fianna Fail Leader Michael Martin at the Ard Dheis, he showed a lot of interest in air quality and told me climate change was a very popular issue among the younger Fianna Fail members in particular.

Fianna Fail Leader, Micheal Martin, and I pictured at 2017 Ard Dheis with staff from Trocaire.

In speaking in the Dail during the second stage hearing of the Climate Emergency Bill, Fianna Fail Environment Spokesperson TD Timmy Dooley leaned even further into the green by emphatically supporting the Bill, stating:

“To continue business as usual is one of the greatest acts of moral negligence that we could commit”.

It’s a good day for the planet when words that sound like they come from a Green Party manifesto start to make their way into traditional political parties!

The most surprising aspect of the Dail vote on the Climate Emergency Measures Bill was Fina Gael’s decision not to support the Bill even after Fianna Fail announced their own support. Even more surprising because Fina Gael’s decision came just weeks after Taoiseach Leo Varadkar admitted in European Parliament that his government’s response to climate change was inadequate, stating:

“As far as I am concerned, we are a laggard. I am not proud of Ireland’s performance on climate change ... There are lots of things that we intend to do so that we can meet those targets.

And it’s something that I am very committed to, and certainly, my generation of politicians is very committed to.”

Even our “Independent” Minister for Climate Action, Denis Naughten, voted against the Climate Emergency Bill rather than lose his lovely cabinet seat. I know I shouldn’t be surprised by this in the nasty game of politics, but I genuinely hoped the likes of Naughten and Varadkar (also “MY generation of politicians”) would be better men and leaders than they appear.

If you needed further evidence these guys are all talk and no real climate action, they’ve truly shown their cards on this one.

“Twill bring you gain, or perish on the seas”

To give them some credit, Fine Gael’s 2016 Manifesto clearly stated support for oil and gas exploration so they’re sticking to their word in that respect, even if they’re simultaneously contradicting their own National Policy Position to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least 80% (compared to 1990 levels) by 2050.

There's a small possibility Fine Gael’s unwavering support of oil and gas exploration is not driven by vested fossil fuel interests but rather a desire for energy sovereignty and some hope of economic benefit from potential new reserves, but every new extraction site threatens our U.N. Paris Agreement commitment to keep climate change under 2°C of warming. The climate science tells us to have a chance of staying under that 2°C limit, we must keep 80% of the world’s known fossil fuel reserves in the ground so there’s no point in looking for more oil and gas because we can’t burn it anyway. This conclusion by expert group Carbon Tracker has been endorsed by the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Research published by Oil Change International in 2016 also found that the oil and gas fields and coal mines that are already in production contain enough CO2 to carry us past the 2°C limit.

The Climate Emergency Measures Bill recognises and legislates for this scientific reality that we must stop looking for more fossil fuel-based energy and is in line with Ireland’s climate and energy obligations as part of the EU and UN. Ireland’s national and international climate commitments require almost complete decarbonisation of the energy, transport and home-heating sectors by 2050.

A vote to support continued exploration of oil and gas is a vote that rejects climate science and turns a blind eye to our international commitments.

Left in the dust

Even if we park the climate science and UN commitments for a moment and consider Fine Gael’s argument on the importance of oil and gas as an indigenous natural resource which enhances our national energy “security”, our paltry oil and gas reserves don’t contribute to any sense of national energy security. According to the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, 85 per cent of Irish energy is imported in 2016 at an annual cost of around €4.6 billion, with 91 per cent of this coming from fossil fuels so very little of our energy comes from Irish sources. We’re almost completely dependent on costly foreign imports. Furthermore, there are no indications that any future gas finds in Irish waters are likely or economically viable. Corrib gas field project incurred losses of €2bn and Shell exited the project in 2017, after losing $900m.

The Corrib gas field currently meets 40% of our demand and this will increase to over 60% until the mid-2020s, but it's important to note that revenue from these gas supplies does not go to the Irish state and we pay the same as any other country would to purchase this gas.

IrishTimes.com

Exploration and extraction are dominated by major fossil fuel companies who sell their supplies at the market price with no discount or royality to us here in Ireland thanks to a deal made by Charlie Flanagan's government in 1989 which gave all the rights to our own oil and gas away.

Despite this lack of benefits to the State, there are currently over 40 licenses granted for a range of fossil fuel, some of which have contracts up to the late 2020s. Any continued exploration and extraction of fossil fuels, if successful, locks Ireland into burning those fossil fuels when the State is already failing in its climate change commitments. The introduction of new gas sources would require the costly construction of new gas infrastructure which would remain in place for decades. New gas supplies also encourage increased gas usage by homes and businesses at a time when usage should be decreasing.

As part of its examination of the Onshore ‘Fracking Act’ in 2016, the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment produced a detailed report on fossil fuel supplies in Ireland, acknowledging that ‘further investment in exploitation of fossil fuels would in all likelihood reduce investment in sustainable sources of energy.’ It’s clear that a continued focus on oil and gas exploration, leaves us in the dust when it comes to the renewable energy transition we need to make.

The Future Is Electric

Research by the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition shows that Ireland would be far better off investing in local renewables and warmer homes that use less fuel than looking for more oil and gas. Ireland has one of the highest levels of fossil fuel use in electricity generation in comparison with other European countries and disproportionality high electricity bills as a result . Real savings and benefits to Irish citizens arise where those is no purchase of fossil fuels, be that imported or indigenous, not to mention all the co-benefits of a healthier environment without the risks of drilling.

In 2016, renewable energy in Ireland reduced our national energy import bill by €342 million. Moving to a fossil fuel free energy grid based on Renewable sources has the capacity to create 100,000 jobs in Ireland. Real energy security comes in the form of clean, zero carbon, indigenous renewable resources, not fossil fuel sources with dangerous extraction processes and grave climate implications.

Fossil fuel investment also now carries major financial risks. Financial analysts have highlighted the risks of fossil fuel assets becoming ‘stranded’ (worthless), a warning reiterated publicly by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney.

Enacting the Climate Emergency Measures Bill would create further impetus in Ireland to drive more Renewable Energy development and decarbonize transport and energy. This would be a positive step not only in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but also in attracting companies like the big data centres looking for fossil-fuel free locations to set up premisis. In addition, it will be one of only a handful of laws like it internationally and thus a rallying call to others to act.

Varadkar’s ambition to drop the “climate laggard” label could begin to be realized with no tangible cost to the Exchequer if only his party would agree to support the Climate Emergency Measures Bill.

But First...

Perhaps I celebrated a bit prematurely when I heard the news that the Climate Emergency Measures Bill had passed second stage, but we get so few opportunities to celebrate victories in the environmental arena.

Not Here Not Anywhere protests outside Leinster House to support the Climate Emergency Measures Bill

I was reminded by several colleagues after my happy dance that this was just one battle and the war is far from won. -The Bill could easily get stalled in Committee stage or watered down to a meaningless piece of paper. Climate Action and Environment Committee Chairperson, Fine Gael’s Hildegard Naughton, already hinted at this prospect during the Bill’s debate when she said pros and cons needed to be considered before legislation could be drawn up.

If opponents have their way, climate change will drop to bottom of considerations in the Bill to squeeze a bit more oil money into their campaign coffers while they still can.

It’s important to note that the Bill will not disrupt Ireland’s current gas supply or jeopardise the energy demands of citizens and businesses in Ireland. The policy change proposed in the Bill will not ‘switch off’ any existing supplies and does not affect current exploration licences. Gas Networks Ireland have emphasised no new gas sources are required for Ireland to maintain its gas supply in the short, medium or long-term because Ireland is connected to the UK gas system and not reliant on natural gas exports from the Russian Federation but instead via Scotland from the North Sea and from continental Europe via England. Furthermore, the UK’s decision to exit the EU does not jeopardise gas flows to Ireland or Northern Ireland.

While the Bill can now proceed to Committee Stage, there are concerns the government could block the Bill at a later stage or water it down when amendments can be made to the wording. It’s critical that voters force their representatives to stick to the science and back the Bill as it stands as soon as possible to ensure it becomes a law that aligns with climate science and a sustainable Ireland.

You can make your voice heard on this issue by joining the newsletter at www.foe.ie.

As always, keep fighting the good fight, and tune in to Newstalk FM on Wednesday's 6:45-7pm for more debate between Ivan Yates and I on the Down To Earth slot on the Hard Shoulder.

-Cara

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Fly Me To The Moon

2/14/2018

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Growing up with a father who was an Air Force pilot and a mother who needed regular trips from the USA to her family in Ireland, I spent a lot of my childhood in airplanes. Perhaps I chose the environmental profession to make up somewhat for those sins of my past, but I’m still having a hard time letting go entirely of flying even though I know I should.

I look at my European colleagues with envy as they can travel most places in the relative comfort of a train while I find it difficult, living in Ireland, to travel entirely by land and sea.

I found out recently that Newstalk Presenter, Ivan Yates, doesn’t fly himself. Exploring my own issues around aviation and environment seemed like an appropriate topic for our first chat as part of our exciting new weekly ‘Down To Earth’ slot on ‘The Hard Shoulder’.

Listen to our ten-minute chat here or read it about in much more detail in my Verdant Yank blog this week below.

Is flying really so bad?

Airplanes emit particulates and gases, including carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, black carbon, oxides of nitrogen and sulfur, lead and water vapor while in flight, and as the popularity of air travel has increased, so too has the pollution. Even though there have been significant improvements in aircraft fuel efficiency, these improvements are eclipsed by the increase in air traffic volume. Since 1999, the number of people who fly globally has doubled and there are now 8.3 million people in the sky every single day!

Back in 1999, the contribution of civil aircraft-in-flight to global CO2 emissions was estimated to be around 2%. Now it is closer to 3.5% and IPCC projections indicate aviation will contribute 5-15% of global human CO2 emissions by 2050 if action is not taken to reduce them. More than 82% of the world’s population has yet to ever set foot on an airplane and as the global middle class grows, the aviation sector is expected to grow in tandem with the number of commercial airplanes set to double in the next twenty years.

Those numbers may not sound alarming, but the impact of air travel on a personal carbon footprint can be. Per passenger, a typical economy-class Dublin to New York round trip flight produces over 1.5 tonnes of CO2, 15% of the average Irish person’s carbon footprint of 12.8 tonnes, for just one trip. Figures released by Aer Lingus last March showed that Irish people fly on average almost seven times a year, so those flights can add up to a large carbon footprint for some people! And if you fly premium class over economy your impact is even worse because of the extra space you take up, with the carbon footprints of business class and first class three-times and nine-times higher than economy class, respectively.

Not surprisingly, London is the most popular destination for flights leaving Ireland, costing us 0.15 tonnes of CO2 round trip. If we took the ferry and drove on our own instead, it we would emit double the CO2 because one person traveling in a 4-5 passenger car is really inefficient, but if we took the ferry and train to London, we’d expend 73% less CO2 than flying.

So what can we do about it?

Personally, I don’t believe technology is going to get us out of this mess we call climate change, but in an effort to be objective and recognize that technology has some positive role in reducing emissions, here’s where the technological advancements in aviation may help reduce emissions:

Tomorrow's Tech

Fly lower and choose smaller plans – At the high altitudes (8-13km) flown by large jet airliners, emissions of nitrogen oxides are particularly effective in forming ozone and these have a greater global warming effect. Emissions from jet flights are substantially higher than turboprop flights– probably in part because of their lower cruising speeds and altitudes compared to jet airliners
The Future is Electric - Adding an electric drive to the airplane's nose wheel may improve fuel efficiency during ground handling or integrating an Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) which would act as a catapult for take-off on the airstrips. Some companies such as Airbus are currently researching this possibility because as a lot of fuel is used during take-off in comparison to cruising.
Biofuels – Some companies are researching biofuel technology for use in jet aircraft and some aircraft engines can already run on vegetable oil or ethanol. since 2008, there have been a number of jet airline test flights conducted using biofuels but this has global environmental and social risks with respect to deforestation and converting farmland used for food production for production of biofuels for the aviation industry instead.

Hyperloop – My personal favourite tech option is to ditch the flying cattle cars altogether and save lots of travel stress stress via Elon Musk’s Hyperloop, which uses an electromagnetically levitated pod and electric motor to travel through a low-pressure tube underground tube at speeds of over 1000kph.

A Hyperloop could get from Dublin to London in 36 minutes or Dublin to Cork in 20 minutes. The Hyperloop wars have already begun and one company aims to deliver a fully operational Hyperloop system in the next three years.

Policy Drivers

Talking tech is fun, but climate change is such a wicked problem that it requires international and national policies to drive emissions down. The EU has had an Emissions Trading Scheme since 2012 which requires flights within the EEA to monitor, report and verify their emissions and trade carbon credits to allow a certain level of emissions from their flights annually. The system has contributed to reducing the carbon footprint of the aviation sector by more than 17 million tonnes per year to date (approximately 8% of EU aviation emissions), but some argue the price of carbon credits is still lower than it should be.

In 2016, the United Nations’ ratified an agreement to control global warming emissions from international airline flights and established airlines’ carbon emissions in the year 2020 as the upper limit of what carriers are allowed to discharge in the future. Airlines will be involved in an offsetting scheme whereby forest areas and carbon-reducing activities will be funded, costing about 2% of the industry’s annual revenues. The aim is to offset 80% of the emissions above 2020 levels through a voluntary system.

Personally, I wouldn’t hold your breath for a global aviation emissions trading and offsetting system. Trading emissions in aviation is complicated by its transient nature: If an airplane is made in country 1, owned by country 2, leased to country 3, takes off from country 4, flies over countries 5, 6, and 7, and lands in country 8, who is responsible for its emissions? Add a further complication of tree-planting to try and offset those emissions and the math gets even more complicated and far less likely to comply with the science to effectively reduce emissions.

There are other smaller policy decisions that could make a difference. The most novel of these is to end frequent flyer programmes. I you think about their very nature, frequent flyer programmes are designed to encourage more flying. Typically, employees get to use the miles they accumulate from business trips for personal use. This can amount to thousands of euros worth of free travel, encouraging families to fly more for personal holidays to avail of this benefit. Norway is one such country that has banned frequent flyer programmes due to competition laws, but large corporations who want to reduce their carbon footprints and be more sustainable could consider this as one of many ways to address the increasing impact of business flying.

Undoubtedly, the low cost of air travel is increasing its popularity and subsequent emissions. It’s only marginally more expensive to fly from Dublin to Cork than take the train, despite emission being 70% higher. We don’t incorporate the true environmental cost of flying into our ticket prices. In fact, aviation is highly subsidised so ticket prices can be kept artificially low out of the wallets of tax payers. There should be a tax or levy attached to ticket prices based on how much carbon is emitted from the flight. This would make rail travel more competitive, something we badly need as rail services like night trains struggle to survive in Europe.

I was surprised to discover there is already a levy attached to airline tickets in eight countries, including the United States, to fund health initiatives in the developing world, drugs for HIV, malaria and tuberculosis. The UNITAID solidarity levy is a supplementary charge ranges from US$1 for economy class to in excess of $30 for first class, depending on the price of the ticket. If eight countries have been able to attach that levy to tickets for the past 12 years and raise over EUR 2.5 billion without most of us ever knowing, it seems like it would be quite easy to do something similar to address their greenhouse gas emissions.

Ironically, Ireland could lead on solving the emissions problem from aviation. Over 40% of aircraft are now leased, not owned, by airlines and Ireland retains over 20% of global aircraft leasing operators, thanks to some vision from Tony Ryan of Ryan Air in the 1990s and some cushy tax breaks enacted by our Government to encourage this industry in Ireland. Fourteen of the top 15 global lessors have operations in Ireland, including the four big Chinese state-owned banks. If aviation wanted to get serious about emissions reductions, they could build it in to their leasing models and the Irish aviation leasing sector could drive this change.

Getting Personal

Unlike some of my colleagues, I try to steer away from conversations about “what we can do at home” to solve climate change. I know this is what the media love to talk about, but I find that topic a bit fluffy and inconsequential, putting the onus once again on the lowly citizen instead of the Government. Behavioral change is hard to enact and takes a long time to have any impact, and my analysis (to be posted in a subsequent blog) has shown me that even if I make radical changes in my personal life, I still don’t get my carbon footprint anywhere near what it should be until my Government decarbonizes our energy system. However, flying is one place where personal behavior can make a big dent. A round trip flight from Dublin to New York can easily consume as many emissions has heating an average European home for one whole year, so if you really want to know what you can do at home to stop climate change, cutting out the flights is definitely on the list.

And it’s going to get bumpier anyway! - A report published in the science journal Nature Climate Change forecasts that increasing CO2 levels will result in a significant increase in in-flight turbulence experienced by transatlantic airline flights by the middle of the 21st century. Even today, runways at places like Regan National Airport in Washington D.C. have occasionally been closed because they’ve gotten so hot they’ve actually melted a bit! With air travel getting more uncomfortable for a variety of reasons, land and sea-based travel is looking more appealing.

Several of my colleagues now refuse to fly and I am always fascinated by their stories of “slow travel”. Climate scientist, Keven Anderson, once told me how much great work he got done on a 3-week train journey from the UK to China and back and how so many Chinese people turned out to see this “strange English man who had travelled by land to their country”.

I still fly for work sometimes because I can’t justify the extra days away from my daughter to take the slow route, but increasingly, I’m avoiding flying for personal reasons – much preferring to holiday on my beloved Inishbofin island as much as possible than anywhere else in the world! It’s a life goal of mine to take a boat to the USA instead of fly there for family visits, but I’ll have to find an effective solution to my propensity for sea sickness first!

It’s hard for those of us in Ireland to avoid flying altogether, but there are creative ways to reduce how much flying we do or off-set the emissions from that flying through a charitable donation to an organization working on climate action. My favourite creative solution comes from my friend Eoin who wanted to go on a climate communication trip to Canada but felt guilty about the emissions, so he went vegan for 6 months beforehand to offset. That’s the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that makes personal change interesting.

To find out how much your flying impacts climate change and how it compares to other transport options visit www.carbonfootprint.com.

And as always, keep fighting the good fight!
-Cara

P.S. My new #DownToEarth slot with Ivan Yates on Newstalk FM airs Wednesday's approximately 18:40 GMT on 106-108fm in Ireland or online at newstalk.com. You can listen back on podcast and read complementary blogs on The Verdant Yank each week. Coming up... "Good-bye, Gasoline Blues". I'm celebrating our recently Dail victory to ban oil and gas exploration in Irish waters!

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Breaking up is hard to do

1/13/2018

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The demise of my relationship with the Internal Combustion Engine

One of my goals in recent years has been to end my over-dependency on fossil fuels before I turn 40. We’ve had a particularly toxic relationship since I got my first car over two decades ago…

I’ve known for a while that my relationship with the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) had run its course. After all, cars have changed a lot since I started driving, and so have I!

At age 16, my Ford Bronco was largely a source of entertainment that I took off-roading in the deserts of Eastern Washington with friends (much to my parents’ dismay). But now, cars just remind me of climate change, poor air quality, stress and obesity.

As I sit idling in M50 traffic, I can’t help but think about how much cars alter the planet and my daughter’s future, and I’m ashamed of the energy I wasted driving through deserts as a teenager.

The spark between ICE and I was most definitely gone, but I wasn’t quite ready to throw in the towel this year.

I know the future of transport lies primarily in public transport, walking and cycling but unfortunately my part of the country has patchy infrastructure and so while I don't need a car on a daily basis, I do still require one a few times a week for basic errands and childcare.

I had a little 2008 Nissan Micra that served those purposes as my faithful companion for a decade. At least she was low on emissions and I tried to use her as little as possible. My mechanic assured me she wouldn’t leave me anytime soon...

But something went gravely wrong last November on the M7 on a late-night trip back from Kerry– first a rattle, then a bang and smoke began pouring out of her bonnet as the whole car shook violently. It felt like her engine literally dropped out onto the motorway. My ICE was mostly dead.

Cue my knights in shining armour – My local mechanic, Darren Darker of A+ Service Centre had me in a loaner car the very next day while I awaited diagnosis.

When reports came back that my Micra was beyond repair, Renault’s Paddy Magee sent me a car to get me through Christmas while I decided what to do next. Chivalry is not yet dead, ladies!

I knew I couldn’t in good conscience fall into bed with another ICE, but I felt unprepared for the radical commitment of becoming an electric vehicle (EV) owner...

I test drove the usual suspects over the next few weeks. As the leading EV sold in Ireland for the past four years, the Nissan Leaf was my first port of call.

2018 Nissan Leaf

My dad was visiting from the USA at the time and disapproved of his daughter’s irrational desire for an EV. – “Too risky and unreliable!”, he exclaimed. After the test drive, with boyish wonderment, he said he’d “seen the future” and marveled at the superior technology of the EV. With far less moving parts and maintenance requirements than the ICE, the EV acquired the elusive parental seal of approval!

I test drove the Hyundai Ioniq too. With its autonomous driving features and sporty cockpit, it definitely had the wow factor. Driving an EV was the closest I’d come to driving a sports car, and it was exciting.

The guilty thoughts that once plagued me behind the wheel of my ICE began to melt away with the space age whiz of the electric motor. Driving felt fun again.

At the end of the day, however, what mattered most was size… I mean, range! 😉 I’d heard about the affliction of range anxiety that can affect EV owners, so I wanted the biggest range I could get.

2018 Hyundai Ioniq

Without the means to afford a Tesla (nor the patience for their waiting list), the Renault Zoe was the next best option with a theoretical 400km range (disclaimer: provided you drive like a granny on a windless, flat road in summer).

Renault’s Jeremy Warnock gave me the sage advice to borrow a Zoe for a few days to see how she could foster a term he coined, "range confidence" instead of anxiety.

I took Zoe for a spin around the block to learn about her features before we headed off on our own. It was an awkward first date as I struggled to get my head around her foreign personality – so silent I thought she was dead, yet so responsive I felt like a clumsy fool behind her wheel.

I drove Zoe from Bray into Dublin city centre the following morning to see how she managed a day in my life (though normally I would take the DART).

Once I got used to Zoe’s silence, it was bliss. In fact, I felt like we were floating rather than driving. Her touch screen dashboard, showing where energy was going through the car in real time, was also fascinating and made me drive far more efficiently than I ever did in my ICE.

If Zoe could make me a happier, better person while enduring Dublin traffic, I knew she was the car for me.

After a round trip commute from Bray to Dublin in peak traffic and cold weather, Zoe’s battery dropped from 70% to less than 40% charge.

Without a home charge point, I was dependent on ESB charge points to “refuel”. A friend suggested I join some of the EV owner Facebook groups for support, but I was surprised how much of the conversation was about poor and broken infrastructure. I’ve heard repeatedly that Ireland has some of the best EV infrastructure in Europe, but there does seem to be a problem in some areas with charge points breaking or being vandalized and not repaired.

Thank God for Sean Smith, who gave me a crash course in ecar infrastructure with this ESB map and the power of Facebook!

Zoe’s GPS told me there were four charge points within a kilometre of my house, but much to my dismay, the fast charger at Bray’s Tesco was listed as broken, leaving just the three slow charge points.

To make matters worse, it turns out there are at least three different types of chargers with different voltages and sockets in Ireland.

I found myself trying to recall high school physics to figure out which once I could go to and feeling a bit dumb and overwhelmed!

I can’t believe there isn’t a legal standard in place for charging sockets and plugs. Have we learned nothing from proprietary mobile phone chargers?!

I started to feel anxious... It wasn’t Zoe’s fault, she was great. Maybe I just wasn’t ready for such a dramatic change in my life. Maybe we needed to wait a few years until EVs and I were more mature. Maybe Zoe was too good for me and deserved someone smarter, who remembered more about currents, voltage and ohms…

Zoe’s GPS guided me to the nearest appropriate charge point on Bray sea front and I decided to use the time she was recharging to recharge myself with a run and a coffee.

I felt like a bit of a plonker pulling up to the charge point, getting my giant cable out of the boot, and trying to figure out how to plug it all in. I didn’t like the attention and feeling eyes on me as I struggled with my first charge.

Fortunately, it was all pretty idiot proof with the Ecar charger clearly telling me what to do at each stage. Zoe charged away and it didn’t cost me a single cent!

Fantasies of a life free of petrol costs filled my head while I ran... Maybe Zoe and I really could live happily ever after.

Luckily, Wicklow County Council (unlike Dublin City Council) gives EV owners up to three hours of free parking while on charge because it took that long to get Zoe back up to full strength.

I made a mental note that a home charge point would be essential if Zoe and I were to commit to a long-term relationship! SEAI currently refunds the cost of installation so this isn’t an obstacle for us.

The most surprising thing about being in Zoe’s company was the reaction from other people. The number of passers-by that gave me thumbs ups and nods of approval or stopped to ask questions about her was inspiring.

People were generally excited to see an EV and wanted to know more and that made me feel positive about the revolutionary low-carbon transition Ireland has to make.

I have a hunch the reason EV uptake isn’t higher is not due so much to limits in technology or lack of incentives, but rather because of limits in public awareness.

Car companies are focused on selling their particular EV to a niche group of techy or environmentally conscious consumers, but no one is selling EVs as a whole to the public though that is part of what it will take to decarbonise our transport system in the next three decades.

Maybe everyone needs a trial run like I had with Zoe to alleviate apprehension before they can fully commit. - Just like a long courtship before marriage, it makes sense to properly try before you buy!

I've just committed to a 2018 Black Renault Zoe EV!!!

I’ll be honest – while I’m excited, I’m also a little nervous about the prospect of a long-term future with something I know so little about.

Breaking up with fossil fuels is hard to do, particularly when everyone else around you are still wedded to them!

Going electric feels like a radical change for me and there's still the problem that our grid is fed largely by fossil fuels, but I’m passionate about climate action so it would be hypocritical to stay with ICE when I have the opportunity to leave.

I always find I learn the most and change for the best from the scariest things in my life. Becoming dependent on relatively new EV infrastructure to get around is definitely in the moderately scary category for me, so the learning curve should be interesting to say the least...

Stay tuned for my adventures with Zoe, which I’ll continue to chronicle on this blog, for better or for worse...

Keep fighting the good fight!
-Cara

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Globalization's Uncomfortable New Truth

9/17/2017

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On September 9th, I was invited to speak at Sinn Fein’s annual summer school alongside an esteemed group of politicians, including Icelandic Pirate Party MEP Birgitta Jonsdottir – self-proclaimed Anarchist and “Poetician”; Greek Secretary of the Central Council of the Youth of Synaspismos, Nasos Iliopolous; and Sinn Fein MEP, Matt Carthy, on the topic of globalization.

Cara Augustenborg speaking at Sinn Fein's Summer School, Sept. 2017

Only the night before the event did I realize this is a rather intimidating task for me –During the last General Election, I was critical of Sinn Fein's (lack of) climate policies in their manifesto, so I wasn’t expecting a warm welcome.

Even the topic they asked me to speak about brought me out of my comfort zone because right now, in this crazy world of geopolitics, I find myself conflicted about the role of globalization in climate action…

Globalization creates the perfect storm

If you’d asked me about the role of globalization on climate change before Donald Trump became president of the U.S.A, it would be easy to asses. We’ve known for a long time that globalization generally increases greenhouse gas emissions. In 2004, The OECD reported that for every 1% increase in international trade, a 0.58% increase in carbon emissions is observed (though hopefully that figure is at least slightly lower now that countries are beginning to de-carbonize their energy system and move toward renewables).

We also know that the transport related to global trade currently contributes to 14% of global emissions, with shipping and aviation emissions (now accounting for 6% of global emissions) expected to double or treble by 2050. More worryingly, because most of our aviation and shipping occur between countries, they’re not included in the Paris Agreement and are thus making slow progress in any kind of emission reduction planning.

Plus, these new super trade agreements like TTIP, TTP and CETA all point to further risks to climate and environment through global trade – primarily through their inclusion of an investor dispute system or investor court system, which allow private corporations to sue governments if the governments make decisions that might compromise a company’s profits.

We’ve already seen companies like US oil company Lone Pine using NAFTA’s court system to challenge Quebec’s moratorium on fracking in 2012. That’s one example, but Canada is facing legal challenges of over $2.6 billion from US companies over their environmental protection laws and this is a huge risk from global trade agreements that included these investor court systems.

We also know that almost everything we need to do to address climate change is contrary to the globalization model, namely doing things like encouraging more local and seasonal food purchases and more local energy distribution based on renewables. And we know that the impacts of climate change – in the form of the kind of extreme weather we’ve seen recently -are amplified due to globalization. In other words, extreme weather that happens on one side of the globe now has economic impacts all over the world. We witnessed this during the Russian fires and drought in 2010, which resulted in a ban on wheat export and a spike in global food prices that had a disproportionate effect on people in other developing countries who spend a large percentage of their income on food. We may experience something similar now as parts of Western USA are in a state of emergency due to droughts and fires, some of which they are saying won’t be extinguished until snow falls in October.

An Uncomfortable New Truth

Clearly, globalization has a negative impact on climate change. Yet, as a result of Trump announcing U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement last June, we now find ourselves in this uncomfortable situation of looking to both global corporations (and individual States) to fill the U.S. leadership vacuum on climate action. For someone like me who has a general distrust of global corporations, this is almost as uncomfortable as hoping the leader of North Korea is a more rational actor that the current president of the United States (also something I’ve bizarrely found myself praying for in recent weeks).

Everything about climate change has become uncomfortable since Donald Trump became president – Last week, he stood outside an oil refinery in North Dakota congratulating himself about reopening the Keystone and Dakota pipelines, saying how bad the Paris Agreement was, and that burning oil was more environmentally friendly.

This was the most tragic moment in the history of climate action to date in my opinion, made all the more tragic because so many people were suffering the impact of Hurricane Harvey and Irma at the same time.

We find ourselves in this sad situation of no longer being able to count on the USA to lead global climate action, and what’s left is the hope that corporations will join the 159 countries who have ratified the Paris agreement (along with the US Climate Alliance of states who plan to continue to uphold its aims) to lead a revolution on the scale of the Industrial Revolution.

Corporations are doing it for themselves

Corporations are unlikely to act on climate for selfless reasons, but fortunately they have plenty of selfish interest to do so now. -Europe’s largest insurer, Allianz, reports climate change stands to increase insured losses on an average of 37 percent per year over the next decade and single year losses could top US$1 trillion, and that was before Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim has stated: “Every company, investor and bank that screens new and existing investments for climate risk is simply being pragmatic”. Insurers now acknowledge climate change is the main threat to their industry and the economy.

This technological transition is not just limited to the insurance sector. The 2017 report “Power Forward 3.0: How the largest U.S. companies are capturing business value while addressing climate change” found 63% of Fortune 100 companies and nearly half of all Fortune 500s have set one or more clean energy targets, with significant numbers of companies setting 100 percent renewable energy goals and science-based greenhouse gas reduction targets to align with the Paris Climate Agreement.

Last May, 30 high-profile CEOs encouraged the US President to honor the U.S. commitment to the Paris Agreement, perhaps because they saw the trend that solar power is becoming cheap enough to push coal and natural-gas plants out of business faster than previously forecast. The current political landscape in Washington may slow this boom, but a great transition from the Industrial Revolution is already there for any corporations who choose to grab it.

In the coming year, global efforts toward the next Industrial Revolution will ramp up, aided by the U.N. Paris Agreement. To depend on US corporations to lead this transition instead of the USA itself is less than ideal.

It certainly indicates we need to be even more wary of these new global trade agreements, which pay no heed to climate impacts and give corporations way too much power to obstruct climate action. However, the alternative now being proposed – to weaken international climate efforts to encourage the U.S. to remain in the Paris Agreement – would spell disaster for the climate. So, ironically (and just for now), I find myself advocating for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to wash their hands of the Trump’s America and let States and corporations pave the way to a fossil free future instead.

What I learned at Sinn Fein Summer School

I was delighted Sinn Fein MEP Matt Carthy picked up on my concerns about trade agreements like TTIP and CETA in his own talk and was so well briefed on the issue of trade. It was a relief to see we have some representation in Europe who gets that these trade agreements would be a disaster for agricultural, health, labour and environmental interests in Europe and particularly in Ireland. However, I still didn’t see any sign of interest in the climate issue out of Sinn Fein leadership from my limited time at their summer school.

They hosted a fabulous debate between Sinn Fein TD Eoin O’Brion and the legendary Vincent Browne asking “Will Sinn Fein be the party to transform Ireland?” and while O’Brion proposed lots of plans to build social housing, not once did he mention the biggest transformation the world (and Ireland) will face in the next 30 years -to get off fossil fuels and adapt to a rapidly changing climate.

I can’t take any political party talking about “transformation” seriously if they don’t at least acknowledge the fossil free transition we’ve agreed to both in our own legislation and through our commitments under the U.N. Paris Agreement, so here’s hoping Sinn Fein (and all the other political parties in Ireland) have a few more “think ins” about real transformation before I read their next election manifestos.

Keep fighting the good fight!
-Cara

Special thanks to the organizers of Sinn Fein summer school for giving my daughter and I a warm West Cork welcome and to the Mills Inn for being so child-friendly! ;-)

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Plastic Paradise

5/21/2017

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This week, I was asked in to East Coast FM to have a chat with Declan Meehan about a report on the discovery of over 38 million piece of plastic on uninhabited Henderson Island located 5,000 km from the nearest population.

The plastic problem has received lots of media attention in the last few months, both internationally and in Ireland, so the latest report on Henderson Island doesn’t surprise me.

I’ve been following stories of the Great Pacific Garbage patch for years now (one of five marine garbage patches worldwide) and scheming ways to someday get out there to see it for myself. -If you ever wanted to witness the true scale of human impact on the planet, I can’t think of a bigger representation than an area of plastic “soup” that is alleged to be somewhere between the size of Texas to twice the size of the continental United States!

We’ve spread plastic globally, roughly doubling the amount of debris in the marine environment every decade. Plastic is being used more and more, not just in food packaging but also in clothing and items we think are paper-based like coffee cups. A report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in 2016 forecast there will be more plastic than fish in oceans by 2050! The Irish alone generate 35kg of plastic packaging waste each year, but worldwide only 10% of plastic waste is actually recycled.

Not only has our plastic waste migrated to uninhabited islands, but it’s also in the bellies of more than 200 marine species, including all sea birds. Plastic in the marine environment attracts algae growth and so it smells like krill to marine animals. They fill up on this plastic and then risk starvation due to a lack of calories and nutrition.

This plastic then goes back up the food chain when we consume seafood, including farm-raised species such as mussels, and water contaminated with micro-plastic which passes through filtration systems. Plastic acts as a hormone disruptor when it is injested, contributing to cancers and developmental disorders.

About 20% of marine trash comes from ships and offshore platforms while the rest comes from litter being blown into the sea, picked up by tides on the beach, or intentional garbage dumping. Ireland, as an island nation, is particularly susceptible to contributing and being impacted by this kind of pollution. However, as with most environmental problems in this country, we’re behind in how we’re dealing with it.

We’ve adapted to recycling very quickly in Ireland, but due to a lack of standardised practices, we don’t recycle well and our incinerator-focused waste system is more inclined to use plastic as a fossil fuel source to burn rather than to make new products.

Recycling is energy intensive and downright confusing, as I found out trying to manage the waste at Electric Picnic last summer. When it comes to saving our oceans and ourselves from plastic, we need to focus on reducing. You can start by buying reusable beverage containers made of things like silicon or stainless steel. Check out the Conscious Cup Campaign recently set up by an informal group of Irish citizens who are campaigning against single use disposable cups (of which we dispose of half a billion per year!), encouraging individuals to carry reusable cups and cafes to incentivise this by offering a discount and publicising it well. In Ireland, Starbucks already offers 35c off the cost of tea/coffee if you bring your own mug, which is equivalent to getting your 8th cup of coffee for free (better than your average loyalty card).

We need to urge retailers and wholesalers to use less packaging. In Germany, buyers remove all packaging at the shop and leave the retailer to dispose of it, which is a huge incentive to get retailers to reduce waste. In San Francisco, they’ve banned the sale of plastic bottles at public events to encourage people to bring their own containers. In France, they’ve banned the sale of all single use cutlery, plates and cups altogether.

Even here in Ireland, Friends of the Earth discovered huge success when we ran a deposit refund scheme on plastic cups and bottles, paying out 20 cents for every cup that was returned. In total, EUR 31,000 was given to those who returned cups. Over 150,000 cups stayed out of an incinerator and the arena grounds were practically devoid of plastic as a result.

One “eco-entrepreneur” earned over EUR 1,000 in refunds, covering the cost his festival ticket and leaving him with more than EUR 700 in spending money!

Last year, Cashel became the first town in Ireland to begin the journey to become a Zero Waste community to join over 200 cities and towns worldwide that aim to create little to no waste through waste prevention, reuse and repair, recycling and composting efforts. Expect to see lots of innovation coming out of Cashel in the next few years as they discover creative ways to convert waste into resources. Here’s hoping it becomes a model for the rest of Ireland to follow.

Zero Waste Cashel

Keep fighting the good fight!
-Cara

Coming Up: I'll be at Bloom in the Park June 1-5th showcasing Friends of the Earth's Postcard Nature garden at the main entrance. Find out what we're planning here and come say hi if you're visiting Bloom.

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Blog like nobody’s watching: The Verdant Yank’s One Year Anniversary

3/16/2017

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It’s hard to believe it’s already been one year since I launched The Verdant Yank blog on St. Patrick’s Day 2016. Honestly, the blog was born out of pure frustration. -There were stories that needed to be told but conventional media wasn’t giving me a platform to tell them, in part because conventional media is generally poor on environmental coverage but also because they had no interest in content from a “blow in” with a funny accent and even funnier last name. Hence, with some encouragement from friends, I decided to own the challenge and embark on my second blog ‘The Verdant Yank’ – Blogs on Ireland’s environment from my outlandish Irish-American perspective.

Those same friends thought I’d lost a few marbles when I accompanied my first blog on the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with an off-the-wall video that involved eating copious amounts of cream cake, but the blog was my laboratory and it was fun to see what kind of reaction letting out the cray-cray would get. If not on Paddy's Day, then when?!

Over the year, I’ve become more media savvy and found creative ways to get environmental stories into the mainstream Irish and international press. Thus, ‘The Verdant Yank’ has become a playground for a different type of writing – something more personal and cathartic. My musings in the mainstream press are things I think other people need to know, while what I write on the blog helps me work through my arguments and conflicting thoughts. The blog is my only platform to write about environmental problems in a deeply personal way, which seems to resonate with those looking for something different and authentic.

My motto for blogging is the same as my motto for dancing: Do it like nobody’s watching. -Drop the ego and insecurities and get funky!

Ironically, my blogs occasionally have more impact than mainstream content even though the latter reaches a wider readership. For example, during the Irish General Election of 2016, I wanted to analyze how Ireland’s political parties stacked up on climate policies in their manifestos, mainly to figure out who to vote for in my own constituency. Nonetheless, I decided to blog and vlog about it to save some other poor soul the trouble of reading nearly 700 pages of manifesto promises.

My effort featured on RTE News and the Irish Times with many people writing to thank me for doing the work so they didn’t have to. I made some enemies within a few political parties who weren’t too happy with my critical analysis, but I’m willing to bet they’ll dot their i’s and cross their t’s the next time they address climate change in their manifestos, and that’s the kind of impact I’d be really happy with.

Looking back on this year of blogging, I was curious to find out which blogs got the most attention. Overwhelmingly, it was a post I wrote after a train wreck of a TV appearance on TV3's 'Tonight with Vincent Browne' show last August. I’d been assured before I went on that the debate would be about Ireland’s response to climate change, not an archaic debate about the existence of climate change, but the minute we went live it was clear I’d been misled when the presenter started the show asking the audience “are you a believer?” as if the science of climate change was some kind of religious belief.

My colleagues and I valiantly argued against the token contrarian “communications consultant” but went away disappointed we didn’t get to tackle the real burning issue of the Irish government’s complacency on climate change.

In an effort to reclaim the debate, I took to the blog that night and vented my frustrations. The post, sarcastically titled "Long live the status quo!", went viral the next day though I suspected I’d never be invited back on Vincent Browne’s show again after expressing my opinion so publicly. Fair dues to the show’s producers, however. They invited me back on as a regular contributor to discuss the news headlines with Vincent Browne and I’m about to make my fourth appearance this coming Tuesday. It’s been an even better opportunity to bring environmental issues into everyday news and it’s a good learning experience to develop informed opinions beyond climate and environmental issues. A blog I expected to spell career suicide turned out to be an opportunity in disguise.

The biggest surprise of my year of blogging ‘The Verdant Yank’ was winning the Irish blog awards in the current affairs and politics category last year. I applied for that category along with the science category but had been disappointed when I didn’t make the short list for science, which seemed a more obvious fit, so I never expected to win an award in current affairs and politics. As it turned out, having an environmental blog nationally recognised as a current affairs issue was far more meaningful than having it recognised as an obvious science issue.

The award put my blog “on the map” and resulted in a lot of amazing opportunities, including getting recognized on the Irish Independent’s list of 20 "influencers" in Ireland’s response to climate change -a deeply satisfying moment of my career to date because it made all the trolling and frustration over the years worthwhile.

The Verdant Yank lives on (at least as long as I have a U.S. passport). I’m fuelled to keep writing by the wonderful comments I get from readers. Thanks to those of you who have reached out to let me know you’ve been inspired to ‘keep fighting the good fight’ through my work. Environmental advocacy can be a thankless vocation, so those comments mean more than you can imagine and keep me fighting the good fight too. In this world of dark skies, it’s nice that we have each other. :-)

Happy St. Patrick’s Day from The Verdant Yank and, as always, keep fighting the good fight!
-Cara

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What it means to miss New Orleans: An environmentalist’s view growing up below the sea

3/14/2017

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I spent ten of my formative years in The Big Easy -New Orleans, Louisiana or NOLA as we lovingly refer to it. My parents and I moved there on Mardi Gras day 1982, straight off the plane from two years in the Middle East.

We couldn’t have stepped into any more of a contrast from the burkas and mosques of Abu Dhabi to completely naked women walking down Bourbon Street. You can only imagine what I thought as the taxi forced its way through crowds of parade goers to our hotel -something close to “WTF kind of crazy place have my parents brought me to?!”

New Orleans is unique in every aspect, both culturally and geographically. For example, when you live in New Orleans, you get used to walking up, not down, to the water. New Orleans is a city that shouldn’t exist. The mighty Mississippi River winds its way above the land with earthen and concrete levees to protect us from drowning in it.

This feat of engineering sustained a city of up to 400,000 people for over 70 years, but they have to bury their dead in ornate sarcophagi because the ground is too spongy and flood prone to keep them below ground. Growing up below the sea gives one a unique perspective and is perhaps the reason why walking down to the sea from my home in Ireland still seems like a novelty for this Southern Belle.

In the decade my family and I lived in NOLA, we fell head over heels in love with the city. It was easy to see why many people from New Orleans never even cross the Mississippi River, let alone leave the state. Why would you go anywhere else when you live in what’s regarded as the “most unique” city in America? The food, the music, the history, traditions and people were out of this world in all respects, and I feel privileged to have been infused with their “laissez les bon temps rouler” spirit. However, the New Orleans of my youth wasn’t paradise. -It was gritty, poor, dangerous, unofficially segregated and downright racist in places. In 1992, my parents felt we needed to move west for a safer life that allowed teenage Cara a lot more freedom (and them a lot less worry).

Hurricane Katrina hit the city 13 years later in 2005. It is ranked as the third most intense tropical cyclone to make landfall in the USA and the deadliest since 1928, taking at least 1,465 lives. It flooded 80% of the city of New Orleans, mostly due to a storm surge and levee failures that could have been prevented through better engineering. Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster in the history of the United States and it’s considered the world’s worst engineering disaster since Chernobyl.

My parents and I watched on the television as our former city fell apart and was utterly ignored by the political elite in Washington D.C. Old friends drowned in their attics and our hearts were broken. In response, my father returned to New Orleans to help bring power back to the city, sleeping on a cruise ship docked along the Mississippi River for three months while working for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Climate change wasn’t high on my radar when Katrina hit New Orleans. I still naively thought dwindling freshwater resources would be the biggest environmental problem of my generation and that climate change was a longer-term challenge with less urgency. I can’t even say I made the connection between Katrina and climate change when it happened because hurricanes had always been a part of my life. My elementary school teachers in New Orleans recounted terrifying stories of Hurricanes Betsy, which killed 81 people in 1965, and we prepared to evacuate during hurricane season every year just in case another big one hit. Hurricanes, flooding, termites, fire ants, stinging caterpillars and humidity were the sacrifices we made for the privilege of living in New Orleans.

It wasn’t until 2007 that I started to connect the dots on how climate change might destroy everything I love, including the city that raised me. That’s when Al Gore eloquently explained the link between our warming ocean and more violent storms in his movie, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, and that’s when I realized the culture and history I grew up with might one day be lost beneath the sea forever.

Last week, I returned to the Crescent City for a family gathering. It was my first time back since Katrina. As I entered the USA via New Jersey, I was surprised how much had changed state-side since I left 14 years ago. Restaurant staff in Newark airport have been replaced with ipads so you scan your credit card and place your order via computer and only come into contact with a person when they silently place your meal in front of you. -Some how they still managed to lose my order... Everyone in the airport was on their phones and disconnected from what was going on around them. America seemed a lot more high-tech but less friendly than when I lived there.

I expected to see big changes in New Orleans too. I mean, the internet hadn’t even been invented when I grew up there so the city had plenty of scope for modernization since my day. Instead, I found a city that seemed to be stuck in a time warp. The poverty rate of 30% has remained the same as it was in 2000 and the murder rate remains the highest in the United States. Aside from the tourist spots, the parts of the city I visited looked poorer than ever.

The impacts of Katrina fell disproportionately on the black community, who now comprise a smaller percentage of the population and are less represented in government. Nearly 100,000 black people and 11,000 white people never returned to the city after Katrina. In the lower 9th ward, 40% of the mostly black population never returned, in most cases because they couldn’t afford to. Of those who did return to New Orleans, the median income of black households is a staggering 54% lower than of white households.

In spite of the inequality and poverty, New Orleans is still wonderful. I savoured as many of my favourite childhood foods as I could from beignets to crawfish and gumbo; I marvelled at the jazz musicians on street corners and clubs of Frenchman St., so talented I couldn’t comprehend why they weren’t playing in giant sold out concert halls; and I had fascinating conversations with taxi drivers and waiters about their lives. Even more than a decade later, everyone wanted to tell me where they were when Katrina hit and how they survived in the months afterwards under truly primitive conditions.

Tourism is nearly back to pre-Katrina levels and it’s easy to see why. -There is simply no place and no people in the world that can do it like they do it in New Orleans. However, as I flew out of New Orleans International Airport to return home, I could see just how close the sea was to consuming the city.

Here's my version of heaven. #NOLA #Brass #Jazz pic.twitter.com/93pvkSxFUZ
— DrCara Augustenborg (@CAugustenborg) March 11, 2017

Under “normal” conditions over its 300 year history, most of New Orleans is about half a meter to 2 meters below sea level but the Northwest Gulf of Mexico is now experiencing some of the largest rates of relative sea level rise in the USA and New Orleans is projected to have one of the highest increases in sea level among 138 coastal cities on the planet.

The existing levees rise 2m above sea level in the most populated parts of the city, but not all parts of the city are as protected and subsidence is causing those levees to sink by nearly half a meter per decade in some places. The land being swallowed by the Gulf waters also houses half of America’s oil refineries, along with pipelines that serve 90 percent of the nation’s offshore energy production and 30 percent of its oil and gas supply, giving us another good reason to divest from fossil fuels before they too are underwater. A 2015 study indicates New Orleans is locked in to drowning by the end of the century based on our actions to date. Already, a football field worth of land is being lost to the sea every hour in Louisiana.

All of us will lose things we love to climate change eventually but how surreal to live at a time when that includes losing the entire city you grew up in. New Orleans is a city which can both least afford to be further below the sea and least deserves any further tragedy, yet it will be most impacted by climate change and its resulting sea level rise. In Louis Armstrong’s famous words, I think I finally know what it means to miss New Orleans because now I understand that it won’t always be there to return to.

Thanks to the people of NOLA for being amazing, kind and resilient and making my trip “home” magical and memorable. Keep fighting the good fight.

-Cara

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Kurt Cobain’s 50th birthday shows how far we’ve strayed from nirvana

2/19/2017

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Me and my crew, high school days in Washington State circa 1993 when Nirvana was all the rage

Kurt Cobain would have turned fifty years old today had he not committed suicide on April 5th, 1994. At the height of Nirvana’s fame, I was in my early teens living in the heart of the USA grunge scene in Washington State. I loved the mosh pits, stage diving and the shock on my parents’ faces as I wore baggy pyjamas and old men’s flannel shirts to school. I reveled in the rebelliousness and anger of Kurt Cobain’s screaming vocals and the anti-establishment ethos Cobain reluctantly represented.

Two decades later, I can’t help but wonder what Kurt Cobain would have thought of the world now if he were still alive.

Musically-speaking, he’d be sickened by the boy bands and X-factor contestants conforming to corporations and market research when he felt “the duty of youth is to challenge corruption”. But beyond the bubble-gum pop and triteness of so much of today’s music, I wonder what Kurt Cobain would think of our society more generally.

Twenty-four years ago, I was brought to tears of joy as saxophone-playing Bill Clinton was inaugurated as the 42nd President of the United States, believing he represented the needs of my generation. Today, the neoliberal polices of lower regulation, more competition and free trade agreements promoted by every U.S. president in my lifetime have dismantled social institutions and democracy, making the 1% wealthier while the 99% are squeezed to the point of near-collapse.

Twenty years ago, the science of climate change was well-established, yet we’ve done little to address it and are still headed toward global warming that will make much of the Earth uninhabitable by the end of the century. Already, boats of migrants drown in the Mediterranean Sea fleeing hardship in their home countries exacerbated by extreme weather. More will come as the climate continues to destabilize.

Twenty years ago, I thought becoming an educated woman would allow me to “have it all” thanks to feminism. Now, I realize the opportunity women’s liberation gave me was to become a "double-shift employee", working by day to make countries and corporations rich and by night as a guilt-stricken caregiver trying to make up for lost time with her child. Where did those twelve years I spent in university get me? They’re becoming worthless fast as so many ivory towers join the market economy to become degree supermarkets for those who can afford to pay their premiums.

Twenty years ago, the U.S. was well into fighting its “war on drugs”, which it eventually lost in 2011 but not before it became the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world where approximately one in every 32 Americans are under criminal justice system control and one in five black Americans spend part of their lives behind bars. And while America was fighting that futile war on drugs, the U.S. obesity rate went from 11% in 1990 to 35% today and the number of homeless went from less than 300,000 to more than half a million (a quarter of which are now children).

“Birds scream at the top of their lungs in horrified hellish rage every morning at daybreak to warn us all of the truth, but sadly we don't speak bird.”

Cobain wrote those cryptic words in ‘The Journals’, the birds symbolizing “grumpy old men with turrets syndrome” and representing his passion for the writings of William S. Burroughs. Would 50 year old Cobain scream in hellish rage at the world today? In Cobain’s suicide note, he explained:

There's good in all of us and I think I simply love people too much, so much that it makes me feel too fucking sad.

Perhaps the broken systems we’re surrounded by today would be too much for his sensitive soul to bear. This is something I relate all too well with now as a mother –caring so much for the well-being of the next generation that it hurts.

So, what do you do when everything around you, all the systems you were taught to trust are broken and it hurts? You either give up and try to join the apocalypse party, or you try to fix one thing that has positive, knock-on effects to all the other broken systems.

To me, that one fix comes in the form of a low-carbon transition, transforming society away from the fossil fuel dominated energy production that powered our Industrial Revolution toward clean, renewable energy production as part of a Technological Revolution.

Ironically, William S. Burroughs had similarly strong opinions about the need to move on from the Industrial Revolution. In ‘The Place of the Dead Roads’, Burroughs explored more sustainable forms of human organisation, writing:

We will endeavor to halt the Industrial Revolution before it is too late, to regulate population at a reasonable point, to eventually replace quantitative money with qualitative money, to decentralize, to conserve resources. The Industrial Revolution is primarily a virus revolution, dedicated to controlled proliferation of identical objects and persons. You are making soap, you don't give a shit who buys your soap, the more the soapier. And you don't give a shit who makes it, who works in your factories. Just so they make soap.

Who would have ever imagined the invention of the combustion engine would be the cause of both so much human prosperity and yet so many global problems at the same time?

Clearly, a low-carbon transition would solve a lot of our climate and environmental problems, but it could also be the solution to so many of our other broken socio-economic systems too. Evidence shows moving to a clean-energy society:

Increases employment
Takes people out of extreme poverty
Improves heath, including decreasing obesity and incidence of respiratory disease
Revitalises towns and villages
Alleviates fuel poverty through energy efficiency
Reduces likelihood of migration of climate refugees
And is an essential part of feminism, as women are disproportionately victims of climate change and traditionally perform the “low carbon” duty of caregiving.

Lately, I’ve been approached by a lot of people in need of hope. The alarming rate of warming in the Arctic and current global politics are getting to everyone around me, particularly parents and millennials. I’m struggling too – questioning my decision to bring a child into this world; wondering if the country I grew up in will become too dirty to drink the water or breathe the air as the current regime dismantles environmental protection; and worrying that U.S. politics might halt urgently needed global progress on climate action.

For today, I’ll let Kurt Cobain influence me again. He once said:

There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life.

perhaps echoing the words of Burroughs who argued “there are no innocent bystanders – What are they doing there in the first place?”

So I’ll do something (anything) rather than remain a bystander because I can’t afford to spend twenty more years sitting around while our “leaders” take us further away from nirvana.

High school me complete with flannel and (yes) slippers in anti-establishment chic, 1993

Happy Birthday, Kurt Cobain -wherever you are- and thanks for two decades of inspiration. To my fellow generation X/Y-ers who where inspired by Cobain too, keep fighting the good fight! ;-)
-Cara

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On Trade and Environment, ‘Hunky Trudeau’ disappoints

2/14/2017

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When Canadian author Naomi Klein came to Dublin on a book tour in 2016, the audience giggled as she presented a photo of Justin Trudeau and referred to him as her “hunky new prime minister” or "ikemen shusho" as they refer to him in Japan. Like Barrack Obama, fresh-faced Trudeau campaigned on a platform of “change” and the world was smitten. He straddled a line between left and right politics and led the Liberal Party of Canada back into power in 2015 after their worst showing in history just four years earlier.

Even my own heart skipped a beat last April when Trudeau schooled a reporter on quantum computing, and I wished there were more politicians in the world like him.

Like most romance, fifteen months into Trudeau’s premiership, the glimmer is fading. His empathy for the disadvantaged and public support of climate action is darkened by his neo-liberal advocacy of global trade deals and oil pipelines.

At a town hall meeting in Alberta last January, Trudeau defended his pro-pipeline stance by saying:

The responsibility of any Canadian prime minister is to get our resources to market and yes, that includes our oil sands fossil fuels.

Compare this to Trudeau’s gutsy 2015 campaign commitment to “work in partnership with the United States and Mexico to develop an ambitious North American clean energy and environmental agreement” and your heart starts to break.

Trudeau’s nationalistic approach to fossil fuel infrastructure ignores Canada’s commitment to the United Nations’ climate agreement. Canadian tar sands contain approximately 240 gigatons of carbon or half of the world’s carbon we can burn to stay under the 2-degree Celsius limit considered “safe” for humanity. If we’re serious about addressing climate change, most of that tar sand oil needs to stay in the ground and building a pipeline to transport it is a regressive move.

Canadian tar sand extraction. Photo credit: greenpeace.org

Trudeau has already approved three pipelines in his short tenure as prime minister, most notably the Keystone XL pipeline between Canada and the U.S.A. which Barrack Obama vetoed following high-profile protests in the United States. SCROTUS Donald Trump recently reinstated plans for the Keystone XL pipeline, a move that was welcomed by Trudeau.

In a joint statement between Trudeau and Trump this week, they explained:

“As the process continues for the Keystone XL pipeline, we remain committed to moving forward on energy infrastructure projects that will create jobs while respecting the environment.”

Building an oil pipeline does anything but respect the environment or the ability of future generations to meet their needs in an uninhabitable climate, but such contradictory statements are becoming more frequent as Trudeau attempts to appeal to a diverse electorate who want to retain jobs in dirty tar sand fields while miraculously preserving the environment and leading on climate action.

On the other side of the pond, Trudeau’s behavior is equally troubling. He is championing the Canada-Europe trade deal, CETA, which will remove customs duties between Canada and the EU. Global trade deals are designed to improve efficiency for global companies, meaning job losses and lower wages. For Europe, CETA is likely to impact the agricultural sector worst of all as Canadian agriculture can out-compete due to lower regulatory standards and more intensive farming practices.

Modern trade agreements also create arbitration courts that let companies and investors file lawsuits against countries who pass regulations that damage their profits. This has grave implications for any public health and environmental regulations a country may want to pursue in the future, but Trudeau calls CETA "one of the most progressive trade deals ever proposed" and continues to ignore widespread public opposition to the agreement.

Trudeau has been described as the progressive counterweight to the likes of Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen. However, on climate and on trade, Trudeau has adopted a similarly nationalist agenda that pits Canadian self-interest against the environment and neighbouring economies. It would be nice if Trudeau represented a new generation of leaders with vision and joined up thinking, but the evidence suggests he is just another man who speaks out of both sides of his mouth to appeal to the widest voter base.

Perhaps actress Jane Fonda summed up Trudeau best last month when she said:

“I guess the lesson is we shouldn't be fooled by good-looking liberals no matter how well-spoken they are."

If we want an antidote to the extreme nationalism sweeping the globe, it appears “hunky Trudeau" is not our knight in shining armor.

All the more reason for the rest of us to "keep fighting the good fight" for ourselves rather than wait to be rescued!

Happy Valentine's Day! ;-)
-Cara

* CETA is scheduled to be voted on by EU Parliament tomorrow. Find out how your MEP plans to vote and contact them here!

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What it means to miss New Orleans: An environmentalist’s view growing up below the sea

Kurt Cobain’s 50th birthday shows how far we’ve strayed from nirvana

On Trade and Environment, ‘Hunky Trudeau’ disappoints

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Meet Leo (and his fetching socks)

Meet The Early Birds

Let’s Play “The Politician’s Dilemma”

​The Beginning of The End

​Leaders and Laggards

“Twill bring you gain, or perish on the seas”

Left in the dust

The Future Is Electric

But First...

Is flying really so bad?

So what can we do about it?

Tomorrow's Tech

Policy Drivers

Getting Personal

The demise of my relationship with the Internal Combustion Engine

I knew I couldn’t in good conscience fall into bed with another ICE, but I felt unprepared for the radical commitment of becoming an electric vehicle (EV) owner... ​

I've just committed to a 2018 Black Renault Zoe EV!!!

Breaking up with fossil fuels is hard to do, particularly when everyone else around you are still wedded to them!

Globalization creates the perfect storm

An Uncomfortable New Truth

Corporations are doing it for themselves

What I learned at Sinn Fein Summer School

For monthly blog notifications straight to your inbox:

Archives

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The Beginning of The End

Leaders and Laggards

I knew I couldn’t in good conscience fall into bed with another ICE, but I felt unprepared for the radical commitment of becoming an electric vehicle (EV) owner...