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Global warming - cool it

Nuclear Monitor Issue: 
#322
01/12/1989
Article

(December 1, 1989) (On 5 and 6 November representatives from more than 60 nations met in Noordwijk, The Netherlands to prepare a resolution on global warming. Simply put, the conference was a setback. Despite the fact that many industrialized countries agreed in principle on the need to stabilize emissions of CO2 by 2005, the conference failed to commit itself to any specific action by any specific date.)

(322.3231) WISE Amsterdam - (And not all the industrialized countries agreed on the necessity for cutting emissions even as late as 2005. Japan and the US announced before the statement was drafted that they would not endorse a commitment to stabilize emissions by that time. By the way, according to David Yarrow of SOLSTICE magazine, the Dutch Environment Ministry said that in 1988 the US accounted for nearly 24% of total world emissions of the gases perceived as contributors to the greenhouse effect.

At any rate, there doesn't seem much reason to waste any more space on the Noordwijk Conference. What is more interesting to us, and hopefully to you as well, is a conference organized for NGOs which took place in the nearby city of Rotterdam, prior to the Noordwijk fiasco. What follows is a report from Rob van Elsacker who attended the conference and on whom we at WISE Amsterdam greatly depend upon for information on climate change.)

On November 3 and 4, Stichting Natuur & Milieu (the Foundation for Nature and the Environment) from the Netherlands organized a congress for Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) on global warming. The aim of the congress was the preparation of a NGO-statement for the ministers conference on the same subject which took place on November 5 and 6 at Noordwijk in The Netherlands.

The morning and afternoon of the first day were also accessible to non-NGOs and consisted of lectures and a plenary discussion. Professor Lucas Reijnders addressed the problem of non-CO2 trace gases in the first lecture. Professor Reijnders also presented a list of reductions necessary to prevent a further ris.g in atmospheric concentrations of non-CO2 greenhouse gases. (See Table 1)

The problems of reforestation was the topic of a lecture by Herman Verhagen from Friends of the Earth Holland. One of the major difficulties of reforestation projects is that they are organized and financed by western organizations which have insufficient knowledge of the local uses and are making insufficient use local knowledge. According to Verhagen, reforestation is often planned at sites which are regarded as 'degraded lands' by the authorities or by the donor agencies. Unfortunately, in many situations these turn out to be 'common lands' and the people who rely on these lands are forced to start cutting down the surrounding rainforest.

 

Table 1. Requirements for prevention of a further rise in atmospheric concentrations of non—C02 greenhouse gases
gas requirement
fully halogenated chlorofluorocarbons approximately 90% cut in emissions
tropospheric ozone preventing a further rise of hydrocarbon, NO2 and CO—emissions; no further deterioration of the ozone layer
N2O approximately 85% cut in emissions
CH4 between 20% and 80% cut in emissions

This undesirable effect is also attained when the virgin rainforest is replaced by a commercial mono— culture. It may look like a joke but the sad truth is that this happens in no less than 15% of the cases. The wood is sold and the revenues are used to defray the costs of establishing the plantation. Verhagen says that we should look at other possibilities first before turning to reforestation. The best strategy is to improve energy efficiency and to start saying goodbye to fossil fuels, for both the developed and the developing world. The second best strategy is to stop deforestation. According to Verhagen, about 20% of the CO2 emissions is due to deforestation. Halving current deforestation rates would contribute more to reducing net carbon emissions than planting the equivalent of 130 million hectares.

Next on the list was Ian Tellam from WISE-Holland who gave a presentation of the study he made together with Herman Damveld on the fixed idea that nuclear energy could be an answer to global warming. The central point of his lecture was that the gaining of uranium and the enrichment of the ore costs energy, usually fossil energy. Because the reserves of uranium are finite, it will cost more and more energy to attain enough ore to keep the power plants running. It is not possible to stop global warming by increasing the use of nuclear power, but it is possible to reduce the speed of this process. However, to reach a significant reduction it will be necessary to build 110 large nuclear plants every year until 2005. This is three times as much as the nuclear industry is capable of building. (See WISE News Communique 314.2138 for more on this.)

Another point that Ian mentioned, which has been mentioned by professor Bach from West-Germany as well, is the fact that for every dollar spent on nuclear energy the amount of CO2 that is reduced is only one seventh of the amount that would be reduced if this dollar was spent on renewable energy.

The afternoon started with a split session, one about the North and one about the South. In the session on the North, Florentin Krause, from the University of Berkeley in California (USA), gave a short presentation of his long-expected report, "Energy Policy in the Greenhouse". (This report was part of a study by Krause sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Environment and the German Marshall Fund.) Krause argued that nature is capable of adapting to a temperature change of 0.1 C per decennium. From this starting-point he made some calculations on the amount of CO2 that could be emitted depending on the kind of measures taken.

As a result of the perestroika there was a speaker from the Soviet Union, Olevi Kull, who discussed the contributions to gasses responsible for global warming by his country and the Eastern Bloc. He used a cartoon to explain why a strong hierarchical, top—down governed country is forced to waste so much energy. That evening and the following day the representatives of the NGO's were finally able to begin work on the job that brought them to Rotterdam: the preparation of a statement. I can be short about this. After a strong NGO-statement, presented in Hamburg at the November 1988 World Congress on Climate and Development, and a strong statement presented at the May 1989 UNEP Governing Council Meeting in Nairobi, there had been no significant changes. Therefore there was no need for significant changes for the preparation of a new statement. There is one thing worth mentioning: an idea that came out of the working group on energy to tax waste energy. The idea to tax CO2 emissions has been mentioned several times before, but this idea has the advantage that it might prevent the search for pipe-dream solutions like catching CO2 from exhaust gases. Taxing waste energy would be a stimulus for the improvement of energy efficiency, and that is the final goal.

Besides this idea there was, unfortunately, not much that would be worth mentioning. The author agrees with the opinion put forward by Stewart Boyle from the Association for the Conservation of Energy who said, "Which of you has actually tried to put pressure on your government?"

Rob van Elsacker
Wageningen, The Netherlands

Contact: For a copy of the final statement of the Congress, as well as a copy of the report by Florentin Krause report ("Energy Policy in the Greenhouse"), write Stichting Natuur & Milieu, Donkerstraat 17, 3511 KB Utrecht, The Netherlands.
A copy of Ian Tellam's paper can be had from WISE-Amsterdam (Dutch f12; US $6).