Climate Change
Will we leave a habitable planet for our children?
(Versión en ESPAÑOL : Barcelona Indymedia, Pub.Oberta, 14/06/07)


This text gives you an explanation of Climate Change and the idea of the personal Carbon Footprint we leave on the planet. It goes on to give ideas on how we might cut our CO2 emissions, using Can Pascual, a big squatted social centre in the Catalan countryside, as an example.
The habitable part of the Earth is only a very thin layer, not much thicker relatively than the skin of an apple, and its existence depends on a series of rather fragile balances. Recently a series of prestigious scientific reports have forced a section of western public opinion and even many politicians to accept at last that human activities are destroying this layer of life. Now the argument is more between those who claim it’s enough to regulate CO2 emissions and even make money in the process, and those who demand immediate emergency action as we may already be arriving at a point of no return, with unstoppable chain reactions.
The scientific reports are worrying, but the reality is much worse. Due to a campaign of suppressing reports and media misinformation by the American right the experts have had to prove the obvious ten times over.
For example the authoritative IPCC report (March 2007) was censored by ‘government agencies‘ before publication. The final version omits many references to runaway effects, like the melting of the Greenland ice cap, which would raise the sea level 7 metres. Reference 1.
Now that climate change is undeniable many politicians even George Bush, are having to put on a green image, but none of them is promoting the necessary negative growth. At present many independent scientists and more and more governments accept an increase of 2 degrees of world temperature as a limit to give us a reasonable chance of preventing unstoppable climate change. But none of them accept the implications, that is would mean the industrialised states cutting by 80% to 90% their emissions of CO2 (plus equivalent). Reference 2.
No country will accept such cuts, even as a goal, so there is a lot of media spin and manipulation of numbers. In Spain for example there was media jubilation when levels dropped 4 points to ONLY 48% above 1990 levels. Cutting total emissions by 80% is not on the agenda.
Limiting average temperature increases to 2 degrees seems impossible. For example in China and India hundreds of millions of families are saving up to buy their first car. In Europe the UE has agreed ambitious reforms, to reduce CO2 emissions by 25% in new cars. But, with the steep rise in car numbers and usage, emissions will keep rising. Air travel is similar, the planes are more efficient but there are many more flights. (Aviation of course is illogically excluded by all governments from their climate change calculations.)
Unstoppable Chain Reactions


Two degrees seems very little, how could it be the limit for not having runaway overheating? The great danger is in the vicious circle, the runaway feedback effects which are not yet clearly understood. Some examples:
A. A third of all the heat which reaches the earth is reflected back into space by light coloured surfaces. As the permanent ice and snow melts, especially in the Arctic Ocean, more heat stays in the air, which melts more ice and snow, so more heat stays in the air, so more ice melts even faster, so….
B. A less well known effect is caused by the melting permafrost. The permanently frozen but once boggy earth of the Siberian and Canadian tundra contains a lot of methane, which heats the atmosphere 24 times as fast as CO2. If liberated by melting it would equal 70 years of world CO2 emissions at present levels, and due to effect A above it’s melting faster every year. What does this mean? Urgent studies are needed but clearly such a great release of methane could trigger runaway climate change.
C. We can find another feedback effect in the tropical forest, a great climate regulator in absorbing and recycling CO2. In Amazonia a large part of the rain is caused by the forest itself. The humidity rises and falls. As the forest is burned and destroyed it rains less, it lets out less humidity, it rains less, it…The lungs of the world could face devastating droughts and turn into another Sahara.
D. The irreversible and unpredictable collapse of ecosystems, caused partly by destructive human expansion, but more and more by climate change. All living organisms are interdependent, but we are still very ignorant of exactly how. Although scientists register 40 new species every day it will still take centuries to describe all the species that exist, never mind understand how they interact. We know we have entered a period of catastrophic extinctions, and suspect the worst. One obvious danger for us would be the disappearance of pollinating insects. Another may be the disappearance of plankton and tiny crustaceans that are fundamental in the ability of the oceans, the greatest carbon sink, to absorb CO2. The oceans are being decimated by uncontrolled industrial fishing, dumping and pollution, increasing Dead Zones, agricultural runoffs, and of course by climate change.

CO2 is only 0.0003% of the atmosphere, but we can only control its level by changing the whole basis of modern society. Now there is no doubt about how dangerous it is, it has been calculated that if CO2 rose to just 1% of the air the oceans would begin to boil.
But if the atmosphere is so fragile how is it that it has never overheated before? The answer is that it has indeed. The tendency is the opposite, towards long and frequent Ice Ages, and according to the ‘recent´ cycle we should be entering right now into a new Ice Age and not a possible inferno. Some scientists are investigating the theory that the cultivation of rice for some millennia in Asia may have produced enough CO2 and methane to halt the Ice Age cycle. The last great overheating took place 55 million years ago, rather difficult to study. Recent research into cores extracted from the sea bed show that the temperature rose by 5 to 10 degrees, the oceans became very acid (something happening now as well) and there were mass extinctions in the sea. The climate took 20,000 years to stabilise itself and it took millions of years to regenerate the biodiversity. Reference 4.
Your Carbon Footprint

Your carbon footprint is the quantity of CO2 and equivalent that you personally cause to be emitted, your mark on the planet. In the USA the average person emits nearly 20 tons of CO2 a year, that is enough to fill about 470 million party balloons with CO2 each, in European countries and Japan and Israel the amount is about 10 tons each, and the rest of the world much much less…..China 3.2, Cuba 2.3, Indonesia 1.4, Nigeria 0.43, Chad 0.01,….etc. Ref 5.
Nearly all the extra CO2 in the air has been emitted cumulatively by a few rich countries, over the last century, but it’s the poor who will suffer first and worst. For example Bangladesh, which emits only 0.25 tons per person will be devastated, with an estimated 17 million people displaced by a sea rise of just 1.5 metres.
Now it’s easy to calculate your personal carbon footprint, there are simple guides on the internet which calculate it for you, usually a percentage is added to account for other greenhouse gases, about half your emissions are direct and the rest caused by the CO2 generated in things you buy. Ref.6.
Using a litre of petrol emits about 2.4 kg of CO2, enough to fill 3696 balloons, according to my calculations. Diesel emits 2.7 kg a litre, or 13.6 kg a gallon. In the USA the average car emits 7 tons of CO2 a year, as much as 700 people in Chad use for all their needs. A few examples…5 plastic bags, or 2 plastic bottles produce a kg. of CO2, or using a computer for 32 hours (at 60 watts). Producing an American cheeseburger emits an amazing 3.1 kg of CO2. Flying by plane you get only 2.2 kilometres per kg of CO2 produced…. Ref 7.
Recently the idea of carbon offsetting has taken off, on a personal level, (it’s not the same as the discredited Kyoto carbon trading system). These organisations invite you to compensate for the CO2 you cannot cut down on by paying them to set up schemes which cut world CO2 emissions by the same amount. (See Ref 6). You pay only 10 or 20 euros a ton. Most of these companies are genuine, but the science is still uncertain, for example only now it’s been discovered that planting trees only really works in the tropics, when many projects are underway in temperate zones. For many the whole idea is just a moral excuse so that the rich and powerful can continue happily with their ecological vandalism and massive waste, paying someone else to do something dubious, often in the third world. For others it’s better than nothing. A fine idea would be to calculate the carbon footprints of the rich and famous and accuse them publicly of their scandalous crimes against the Earth.
As Climate Change gets worse, as it will do even if we stop emitting CO2 tomorrow, people who personally produce hundreds of tons of CO2 could be viewed, at least in the West, as Eco Criminals, while people practicing alternative ideas, now scorned and ignored, could be hailed as carbon neutral survival models. When people realise that we have to stop producing CO2 we may question the model of consumerism and even capitalism itself, or more likely we will be taken in by people who see world destruction as one more money making opportunity.

Rumours, panic…..Emergency

Now it becomes clearer every day that we are facing a planetary emergency, every day there are new scientific reports, political reactions and public campaigns. There is a 20 year time lag in feeling the effects of CO2, because the oceans warm (and cool) very slowly. Now we are feeling the effects generated in the 1980´s, before the present world boom. It may be too late already to stop at the limit of plus 2 degrees. There are too many unknowns and variables, for example the aerosols, which means the dust in the air which slows down or masks the overheating. We don’t know by how much, but the geo-climatic evidence suggests that at the end of the last glaciations the temperature increased 5 degrees (with a 100ppm CO2 increase), now it has increased only 0.8 degrees with the same CO2 increase. The dust in the air, which lasts just a few days, masks the effect of the CO2, which lasts centuries, so any catastrophe which stops world industry for a short time could cause a huge heat wave. Many independent experts set a 5 degree rise as a limit for the end of present human civilisation. The Climate Change Wars are already beginning; recent studies cite the Darfur War as being caused mainly by the 3 decade long drought caused by the heating up of the Indian Ocean, peoples natural resources have disappeared. Climate Change will cause much more suffering, for example when the Himalayan glaciers finish melting an estimated 1300 million people in China and India would lose their water supply. A note of panic creeps into public announcements. Far from being controlled the latest United Nations report says that CO2 emissions have doubled just since the year 2000 and sea level rising rates have tripled... Ref 9.

Low Carbon Squatters
Can Pascual


All over the world people are beginning to wake up to the emergency of climate change. Hopefully in a few years there will be action and pressure groups in every city and neighbourhood on the planet. If we cannot stop the production of CO2 we will enter a cycle of unstoppable chaos, of fires, floods, hunger, droughts, extinctions, wars and generalised collapse.

I live in a squatted country house with 15 others, 3 of us children. We have a relatively low carbon footprint, about 2 tons each a year, compared with the Spanish level of 9.5 tons a year.
Two tons is the level of a poor third world country, but we are not at all poor. In fact we lead a rich and varied life, every week is a busy cycle of visitors, parties, assemblies, working the land and the kitchen, workshops of many types, making counter-information, dinner parties ,concerts, demonstrations, alternative education, children’s games, and more parties.
We are part of a storm of creative energy created by a small movement which occupies abandoned properties and sets up many types of social centres, making decisions by popular assemblies, without state control. Ref 10.
Some things we do that cut our CO2 level are not easily applicable in general. For example if you are living as a couple with children in a flat, with both adults working to pay the rent or mortgage, there aren’t enough hours in the day to cook with firewood or go out recycling food. But other things could be adopted, and the reality is that if we don’t radically change our lifestyles climate change will do away with us or our children.
We do a lot of recycling, which costs nothing extra in CO2 or in money, and lengthens the life of things. Rubbish containers are full of surprises, in the waste recycling centres you can pick up all sort of things for free. Lots of broken goods are easily repaired. Friends pass us on things that won’t fit in their flats. There is no need to buy clothes, not even for the children. Market workers happily give us boxes of good food at closing time.
Of course you need space to recycle things, but a group of neighbours might arrange something. For us even the house is recycled, if not for us it would be ruined already, and to construct living space for 15 people would produce hundreds of tons of CO2, it’s always better to renovate an old house.
We are not connected to the electricity grid. After a time using candles we got some solar panels and now we have constructed a super wind generator, which often gives us too much power. Solar panels still cost too much in money and CO2 generated in producing them, but the water heating solar panels give us a great solar shower. The water stays hot for a few cloudy days in an insulated tank. Our electricity system isn’t enough yet for a washing machine, and you have to recharge the laptop while the sun is shining.
We use the car and van as little as possible, the bicycle is faster in town and here they let you bring it on the train. It’s cheaper in CO2 and in money to keep an old car going, as making a new one is very energy intensive. Now all the economists are worrying about climate change while at the same time measuring the health of the economy in production and sales of new cars. If you use 20 litres of petrol a week you produce more than 2 tons of CO2 a year.
We heat the house with wood stoves, and partly cook with wood. We only collect from trees already fallen, leaving some to regenerate the forest floor. Of course everybody couldn’t use firewood, but where we live there is a huge amount not collected, and it makes the forest much more combustible in summer.
One day a week we make bread in an old wood oven, and another day some neighbours from the area do the same, distributing it among friends and cooperatives. We use ecological flour, without chemical fertilizer which produces Nitrous Oxide, NO2, (another dangerous greenhouse gas which is destroying waterways and the oceans), and without pesticides or herbicides.
The vegetable gardens are also organic; we take care of 2 retired horses that provide all the manure... We try to practice permaculture, using mulch to conserve moisture, doing two or three jobs in one, encouraging biodiversity, with mini habitats, ponds, etc. As such we are a little part of the worldwide struggle between high CO2 agri-business and the organic movement.
We are not connected to the water mains. We collect water from the roofs in big tanks and from the road and paths in little dams and ponds. One tank is also our swimming pool. We use small solar pumps, but also a diesel pump to bring water from a limited far-off well. If you have space for a tank it’s cheap and easy to collect water from roofs, and so start to take part in the worldwide fight for control and use of very limited fresh water.
There is a chicken run, also ducks and turkeys, which eat grass and weeds, recycled dry bread and a little grain. Years ago the cities here were full of gardens and chicken runs, and maybe if people really start to fight climate change they will be again.
We are not connected to the sewers or drainage systems. We have a beautiful compost toilet, built by some German carpenters, which after a year provides black earth that we put round the fruit trees. The waste water from the shower goes through some baths filled with reeds and comes out clean in a pond. If you have space it’s not necessary to throw your waste in the ocean.
I should mention that though we work little in regular jobs we do produce our own conserved food and jams, craftwork, medicinal creams, beer, wine and ratafia (a Catalan liquor). Also we have developed carpentry, mechanics and bicycle workshops, a huge library and hold workshops on everything from mycology or astronomy to natural healing. And I forgot to talk about the beehives……
Here where we are the local authorities regard us as criminals, yet they needlessly produce gigantic quantities of CO2 which may soon destroy their city and our world. We hope that what we try to do in Can Pascual will continue to inspire people to make practical changes, whether it is a mini balcony garden or instigating the Social Revolution. Why not come and visit and participate.


Contacts
Can Pascual, Camí de Can Balasch, Collserola, Barcelona, Spain. Tel 0034 934069888.
Web page being renovated. Emails  agustillu@hotmail.com,  mikegilli@hotmail.com,
References
I, www.meridian.org.uk/whats.htm,
2. www.monbiot.com (Giving up on 2 degrees). Stern Report 2006. Maite Meinshausen 2006.
3, www.turnuptheheat.com, George Monbiot 2007.
4. La Amenaza del Cambio Climático (Flannery 2006), Zachos2003. Malthe-Sorrenson, 2004. Science 302 (1551-1554).
5. Ecologistas en Acción. United Nations Report, June 2007.
6. Readily available on Internet,
7. All figures for 2003.
8. The Discovery of Global warming. (Weart 2003), Flannery 2006 P.190), Meadows 2006.
9. National Academy of Science (June2007), Coalition against Climate Change bulletin 06/06/07.
10.  http://www.indymedia.org/or/2007/05/886474.shtml, ContraInfos.