Environmental successes, challenges and opportunities
As a newspaper reporter, I wrote about our biggest environmental crises and how we fixed some of them. Later I worked with governments, businesses, universities and non-governmental organizations as they tried to figure out how to make development more sustainable. I’ve seen that we can fix difficult environmental problems. But the job is not over.
We are in a titanic struggle with ourselves over how much to consume and how much to pollute. By over polluting and overusing natural resources we are creating a poorer and more difficult future for ourselves and our children. We know that climate change caused by air pollution, especially from burning coal, oil and natural gas, results in worse droughts, wildfires, storms and floods. There are constant stories about the tiny microplastics and dangerous chemicals in our food, water and bodies. These are just pieces of the story. We have altered about half the Earth’s surface. The destruction of soils and forests is causing desertification of more land and this is reducing the amount of farmland to feed a growing population. Overuse of water to irrigate crops is causing an increasing number of local and regional water crises. Deforestation, along with overhunting, overfishing and pollution is causing the greatest extinction of life in millions of years. For the first time in human history, young people face the prospect of a planet made less hospitable by their parents. Is there any good news?
Over the past six decades I saw widespread public anger and disgust at raw pollution flowing into our air and water and ending up in us. Parts of the Great Lakes were so polluted they killed fish and birds. Many surviving fish were listed as unsafe for eating because they contained too many toxic chemicals. Acid rain was killing life in many northern lakes. The hole in the ozone layer brought the threat of widespread cancers and crop failures. Garbage was overwhelming landfills. The clearcutting of ancient forests led to violent confrontations between loggers and people who wanted to save trees that were older than our country.
It was public pressure that forced governments and big corporations to react. During the 1970s and 1980s, governments began to control or ban an increasing number of hazardous chemicals, such as DDT and PCBs, and started a historic Great Lakes cleanup. After years of delay, politicians put tough limits on the pollution causing acid rain, thus saving tens of thousands of lakes from being killed. The whole world agreed to phase out the chemicals that were destroying the ozone layer. Recycling became common and diverted waste from overflowing dumps. People are buying electric cars and heat pumps thus reducing air pollution. Clean solar and wind power is being added in record amounts. Some irreplaceable ancient forests were saved from logging, and many more parks were created on land and at sea. Nowdays big chemical spills and oil tanker wrecks are rare. In most industrialized countries black smoke no longer billows from smokestacks and we breathe cleaner air. It’s safer to eat lots of fish. Birds like eagles that were being poisoned off are flying in our skies again.
Is it enough? No. But we have lessons from our success stories that we can use to build a more sustainable future. I’ll look at five important success stories to find lessons that may guide us.
The problems
The Great Lakes of North America are so big that astronauts could see them from the moon. They contain one-fifth of the fresh, surface water on Earth. But by the middle of the 20th century uncontrolled pollution was turning parts of those lakes into aquatic wastelands where fish and waterbirds could no longer survive. There were international stories about the “dying” of Lake Erie. People were horrified that a huge lake could be so polluted. It was a wakeup call to governments at all levels.
In the late 1960s I lived in Windsor, a city that gets very hot in summer. One day I waded into Lake Erie to cool off. I came out covered with green slime. I didn’t go back. During the 1960s, phosphorus from human sewage and high-phosphate laundry detergents, along with phosphorus and nitrogen fertilizers washed off farm fields and lawns, was causing massive growth of algae and weeds in parts of the lakes, particularly in the shallow waters of western Lake Erie. Green slime choked harbours and rotted on beaches. When these aquatic plants died their decay sucked oxygen out of the water, creating “dead zones” where fish could not survive.
It wasn’t just algae. In some places there was so much oil dumped by industry into the water that fires broke out on the surfaces of rivers. When ducks landed in oil slicks they died. Raw sewage poured into the lakes. As scientists looked deeper, they found a host of toxic chemicals in the lakes. In 1970, scientists found mercury, a heavy metal that can cause nerve damage, in fish in parts of the Great Lakes. This was the first time there was widespread fear of toxic pollution in a highly populated part of the country. I remember watching federal and provincial politicians scrambling to come up with reassuring answers for a nervous population. Polluted waters were closed to commercial fishing, and sports fishing was limited. There were no environment ministries in Canada at the time and this crisis helped spur their creation.
Along with pollution we either deliberately put or allowed more than 180 foreign species into the lakes. The first really bad actor was the sea lamprey, an eel-like creature that sucks the life out of big fish such as lake trout and whitefish. Lampreys started moving through the lakes when shipping canals allowed them to bypass natural barriers like Niagara Falls. They decimated big fisheries within a few decades. More recently zebra and quagga mussels have radically changed the lakes, by sucking up nutrients in the water and starving out native species. Many of these invasive species hitch-hiked their way into the lakes in the ballast water of ocean-going ships sailing to Great Lakes ports from overseas.
The fix
In 1965, the Canada-United States International Joint Commission on boundary waters told the two countries they needed to reduce phosphorus discharges to the Great Lakes. This, combined with public outrage at the gross pollution pushed governments in both countries to control phosphorus, and they spent billions on sewage treatment. The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, first signed in 1972 and periodically updated, commits the two nations to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the Great Lakes ecosystem. In simple terms the goal is to make the lakes swimmable, fishable and drinkable.
The water got cleaner for years but more recently phosphorus runoff from intensive agriculture has led to a resurgence of algae particularly in western Lake Erie. At one point more than half a million Toledo residents were ordered not to drink or even touch their water because of toxins in algae. It is an important story because it shows how we can bring an environmental problem under control, but see it boil up again because we have failed to deal with all causes and to put a permanent cap on pollution.
Governments also put controls on industrial pollution and banned a number of toxic chemicals, such as the insecticide DDT and the industrial chemicals, PCBs. As a result many more fish are now safe to eat and wildlife such as eagles and cormorants, which had been poisoned off, are making a comeback. The lakes and wildlife are not completely clean but they are much better.
There is an ongoing long-term battle against invasive species. Since the 1960s Canada and the United States have been using a chemical poison that kills young lamprey. Both countries have regulations requiring overseas vessels to discharge their ballast water at sea or into treatment centres and not into the Great Lakes. This appears to have virtually stopped the introduction of more species through ballast water but the lakes are still threatened by invasive species that could migrate into the lakes through tributary rivers.
The two countries issue periodic State of the Great Lakes reports. The latest describes the state of the lakes as fair and unchanging. High levels of phosphorus in parts of Lake Erie and some bays in other parts of the Great Lakes are contributing to blooms of algae and toxic cyanobacteria. Levels of a number of toxic chemicals in fish have been declining for years but new types of dangerous chemicals are turning up in the lakes. Water from the lakes is safe to drink when treated. Beaches are generally open for swimming but there are some closures due to bacteria.
The problem
In the early 1980s a federal environment minister called acid rain “the most serious and pressing environmental problem Canada has ever faced.” No other environmental issue had created such a wide groundswell of public concern. The slogan Stop Acid Rain was soon on buttons, posters, t-shirts and all over the news.
Acid rain begins as colourless sulphur and nitrogen gases, spewing from millions of chimneys, smokestacks and exhaust pipes. These gases, and the acids they form in the rain and snow, can travel thousands of kilometres. When they fall to the ground, they acidify water killing fish or leaving them deformed. Acidic air pollution causes building materials to corrode and crumble, and tiny acid particles get into our lungs. It has been called a rain of death.
Acid rain leapt from being a scientific issue to a cause célèbre once Canadians felt it was touching them. When I told a lawyer friend about acidic fallout damaging lakes in cottage country his visceral reaction was that had to be stopped because it would destroy a region he loved and where he had a cottage. The idea that industrial pollution was destroying life in pristine lakes horrified people and led to a groundswell of public opinion calling for controls. It became the intersection of environmentalism, politics and business.
To get a better sense of what acid rain was doing to the environment I visited Peter Peloquin, owner of what had been a successful fishing lodge on the shore of Chiniguchi Lake in northern Ontario. Peloquin, who had lived there 50 years, talked of how rich wildlife had been in this small, remote lake. Then, life in the lake began to vanish. He was too close to the huge Sudbury metal smelters that spewed tonnes of acidic gases into the sky. The lake became so acidic that it could no longer support wildlife. He looked at me sadly saying: “The fish are gone; the otter are gone; the ducks are gone. There’s no frogs anymore.” The lake shimmered blue in the summer sun but it was dead. At 160 times more acidic than pure water almost nothing could survive.
Acid rain was mainly a problem in eastern Canada and northeastern United States where the hard rock environment was less able to neutralize the acids. The major sources of pollution were metal smelters and coal-burning power plants in both countries. At first companies built towering smokestacks to disperse the pollution so it would not choke nearby residents. The Inco superstack in Sudbury was once the second tallest chimney in the world. But the tall stacks shot acid gases high into the atmosphere where they could mix with moisture to form acid rain that spread over hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. It was a spectacular failure of the idea that the solution to pollution was dilution.
The fix
As one Ontario government official told me in 1981, the provincial officials knew acid rain was destroying fish in the lakes but “…it was considered a tradeoff to industry.” But this tradeoff was no longer acceptable. Public and scientific pressure was pushing for real controls. By the early 1980s, public opinion, pushed by strong campaigns by non-governmental organizations, forced governments to act. It was a clear case of anger over the pollution triggering support for change.
About half of the acid rain falling on Canada was blowing north, mainly from coal-burning power plants in the northern United States. In 1980, the two countries signed a memorandum of intent to control acid rain and international air pollution. Within months there was a new U.S. government headed by President Ronald Reagan, who showed little concern for the issue. Canadians became increasingly angry about the unchecked pollution blowing north and acid rain became the greatest irritant in Canada-U.S. relations for much of the 1980s.
After years of failure to get an agreement with the United States, Canadian federal and provincial governments decided in 1984 they had to go it alone and agreed to cut our acidic air pollution by half. The provinces had most of the control over the polluting smelters and power plants, but the federal government played a key role in providing scientific information and funding, and brought provinces together to get agreement.
Smelters brought in technologies to greatly reduce their pollution. After the cleanup Inco Ltd., the biggest single source of acidic air pollution in Canada, bought full-age newspaper ads to boast about clearing the skies. Coal-burning power plants added “scrubbers” to remove pollution, and later most plants were closed. It was expensive but a major environmental success story.
Near the end of his second term, President Reagan said he would consider a clean air accord, but it was his successor, George H. W. Bush, who, in 1990, got new air pollution legislation in the United States, and in 1991 signed Canada-United States Air Quality Accord. Now, the rain is much less acidic thanks to major cleanups in both Canada and the United States.
The problem
The discovery of a hole in the ozone layer triggered the first global environmental crisis. Scientists had known since the 1970s that commonly used chemicals could migrate to the stratosphere high overhead and damage the ozone layer. This is a naturally occurring layer of ozone gas that protects life on Earth by filtering out dangerous levels of ultraviolet radiation from the sun before it can reach the ground. Higher levels of ultraviolet light will increase the amount of skin cancer, eye cataracts and other illnesses. It also attacks such major food crops wheat, rice, corn and soybeans, as well as phytoplankton, the base of the food chain in the ocean.
The main ozone destroyers were chlorine-based chemicals, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), substances used to keep refrigerators and air conditioners cold, make some types of foam plastics and to power some spray cans. In 1985 scientists discovered the ozone over the Antarctic was reduced by half for part of the year. This became known as the hole in ozone layer.
The fix
In 1987, the world met in Montreal to hammer out an agreement to phase out CFCs and other ozone-destroying substances. It was impressive to see Cold War adversaries like the United States and the then Soviet Union agreeing on something. The Montreal Protocol on the ozone layer was signed by every country on Earth and is widely considered a triumph of international environmental cooperation. It is estimated to have helped prevent millions of cases of skin cancer and cataracts.
Reaching agreement was easier because there were replacement chemicals available. They were a bit more expensive but far less damaging to the ozone layer. The first replacement chemicals still did some damage to the ozone layer and are also powerful greenhouse gases, so they are being phased out and replaced by less damaging compounds.
Susan Solomon, one of the atmospheric chemists who determined the cause of the Antarctic ozone hole, and whose work helped push through the Montreal Protocol credits three factors for the swift action on the problem: the clear and present danger the ozone hole posed to human health made it personal to people, satellite imagery made it visible and there were practical solutions.
Today, the ozone hole still forms over Antarctica every year, but it is shrinking. Based on scientific assessments, the ozone layer is expected to return to pre-1980 levels around the middle of the century. Healing is slow because of the long lifespan of ozone-depleting molecules. Some persist in the atmosphere for 50 to 150 years before decaying. Some ozone-eating chemicals are still in use and leaking into the atmosphere.
The problem
Every year, tens of millions of tonnes of chemicals and fine metal particles are spewed into the air around the world, and many are carried hundreds, even thousands of kilometres on air and water currents. Some chemicals, such as pesticides, are deliberately sprayed onto crops to kill bugs that eat food plants. Other chemicals are either intentionally or accidentally released by industries. Toxic substances can cause a wide range of health effects, including neurological damage, cancer, genetic mutations and birth defects. They are often in such low concentrations as to be tasteless, colorless and odorless, but still harmful.
It has long been the cardinal rule of waste-disposal: the solution to pollution is dilution. The air, waters and land were long regarded as giant sewers into which unlimited wastes could be dumped with impunity, even anonymity. From the beginning of the industrial revolution in the 1700s until the latter 1900s pollution was easy to see, smell and taste. You could watch black smoke pouring from smokestacks, smell fumes, feel an acrid taste in your mouth and see oil or discoloured water in lakes and rivers. Such gross pollution has largely disappeared, especially in the industrial world, but millions of tonnes of invisible, tasteless and odorless chemicals flow into our air and water every year.
Early forms of pollution generally broke down into less harmful substances but during the 20th century scientists created chemicals that resisted decay in nature. They are persistent in the environment and sometimes called “forever” chemicals. Some accumulate in the food chain, poisoning wildlife and causing harm to humans. DDT, the first widely used insecticide and PCBs, an industrial chemical, are two examples of chemicals that were useful but turned out to be dangerous to nature and humans. Industrial metals, such as mercury, which causes nerve damage, were dumped as waste in large quantities and ended up in fish that people ate.
The biological effects on wildlife of widespread use of pesticides in the environment had become severe enough that birds were sterilized and even fell dead from the skies as recorded by Rachel Carson in the famous 1962 book Silent Spring. The knowledge of toxic chemicals grew quickly in the 1970s as more were found in fish and wildlife. By the 1980s there was enough concern that governments told people to stop eating many fish in polluted regions, such as parts of the Great Lakes.
The fix
By the 1970s, Canada and the United States started to ban or strictly control hazardous chemicals, such as DDT and PCBs. As a result, pollution levels in Great Lakes fish have been dropping for 30 years and now more fish are safe to eat. However, the levels of some chemicals are high enough in large, predatory fish that governments around the lower Great Lakes are warning people to eat only occasional meals of these fish and telling children and women of child-bearing age to avoid them entirely. Another sign of improvement is the return of species such as bald eagles, peregrine falcons and double-crested cormorants to regions where they were being poisoned off by high levels of pollution years ago.
Scientific research is crucial in identifying environmental threats, but it was often pressure from non-governmental organizations and ordinary citizens that pushed politicians to control pollution. Getting the lead out of gasoline is a good example. Since the 1920s, tetraethyl lead was added to gasoline to boost its performance. But some of that lead comes out of tailpipes, and this heavy metal can cause nerve damage and irreversible brain damage to infants and young children. The Canadian Association for Children and Adults with Learning Disabilities was a powerful force pushing Canadian environment ministers to get the lead out of gasoline. In 1983, the federal government announced a major reduction in how much lead could be put in gasoline and it was prohibited by 1990.
At first polluting companies were defiant about their right to discharge wastes into the environment. “That’s the smell of money,” is what some businesspeople apparently said to neighbours complaining about the smell from their operations. As public anger about pollution increased companies went quiet. They lobbied governments against pollution controls but said little if anything to the public.
So, it was a huge surprise when I got a call in 1986 from the president of the Canadian Chemical Producers’ Association [now the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada]. He wanted to meet me to talk about the chemical industry taking responsibility for its pollution. Over dreadful cups of coffee from a machine in the newspaper’s cafeteria the president, Jean Bélanger, and Chuck Hantho, chairman of the chemical association representing most of Canada’s chemical industry, said they were committing to tell the public what pollution they were releasing and what they were doing to reduce it. This was the start of a program called Responsible Care under which signatory industries would undertake to reduce pollution and would report publicly every year on their emissions. Responsible Care started in Canada but has become international, including most of the world’s largest chemical producers.
It was a wise move. As the president of a major Canadian chemical company later told me, the industry was getting hammered by one story after another about their pollution and companies feared losing their “social license” to operate. [Social license has been called an informal agreement based on trust, legitimacy and the perception that the organization’s operations are acceptable within the community.]
The problem
During the 1980s there was a huge change in the public attitude towards logging. People were starting to see clearcuts scarring the landscape close to home. Ancient trees were being turned into toilet paper. There was an upwelling of anger and suddenly the forest industry was on the front lines of environmental conflict, along with the chemical industry and companies whose pollution caused acid rain.
The forest industry was cutting down more trees than it replanted or that grew back naturally. The number of commercially valuable trees was shrinking. Some companies ran out of timber and had to shut their mills. At the same time there was rising public support for protection of wild areas. Hikers, canoeists, birdwatchers and ordinary citizens saw the devastation left by massive clearcuts either directly or in photos and started calling on governments to protect more wilderness. It became crunch time. Should remaining old forests be liquidated or preserved? The reality of old growth forests is that once they’re gone, they’re effectively gone forever. The biggest and oldest trees take centuries to reach maturity.
The desire to save old forests sparked strong emotions in many people. Law-abiding citizens, including politicians and public figures blocked logging roads and got arrested because they felt a primal need to save ancient trees. Loggers were fearful of losing their jobs. Sometimes there were violent clashes, and many protesters were arrested by police. It was called “the war in the woods.”
Canada’s Pacific coast is home to one of the world’s great temperate rainforests, with Sitka spruce and western red cedar as high as 20-story buildings and 1,000 years old. Some of the most impressive old trees are in Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off British Columbia’s northwest coast. It is home to the Haida people, whose rich and complex culture has existed for thousands of years. When I visited the islands, I found a primaeval forest beautiful beyond description. Overhead the trunks and branches of spruce, cedar and hemlock stretched upward and outward like the pillars and arches of a great, green cathedral. The forest was also coveted by forestry companies. In 1985, many Haida were arrested for trying to stop loggers from cutting in one of the most beautiful sections of the region. The conflict was finally resolved when the federal government reached an agreement with British Columbia to create Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve to protect the region. It is jointly managed by the Council of Haida Nation and the federal government.
The fix
It took many confrontations, many arrests and many years of negotiations but the forest industry and forest protectors came to terms in a series of historic agreements that restricted logging and preserved some forests. The most important was the 2010 Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, described as the largest conservation pact ever signed. It is an agreement about logging and preservation of forests across much of the country. It was a sort of peace treaty between six leading Canadian environmental organizations and the Forestry Products Association of Canada. The negotiations involved a wide range stakeholders, including Indigenous peoples, communities, and municipal, provincial and federal governments. The agreement covers more than 730,000 square kilometres of public forests across Canada, an area larger than Alberta. In return for forestry companies suspending logging on nearly 290,000 square kilometres of land, environmental groups agreed to stop boycotting the forest companies involved.
It was part of a major change in Canada’s forest industry with a commitment to move to sustainable forest management. At the same time the industry was reducing pollution from pulp and paper mills, diversifying into new products, increasing efficiency and increasing reforestation. In other words, they were moving away from the classic technique of cutting and moving over the next hill. They become tree farmers, raising a crop. It is important progress but there are still conflicts and some companies are accused of unsustainable forest operations.
Lessons from the success stories
We still have lots of serious environmental problems, but we need to celebrate success in dealing with some in the past. We made the Great Lakes much cleaner, reduced acid rain, stopped the destruction of the ozone layer, banned or controlled a number of hazardous chemicals and preserved some irreplaceable ancient forests. There is less smog in the air we breathe and much less raw sewage being dumped into lakes and rivers. We have recycling programs and gains in energy efficiency. We are building alternative energy systems and moving to electric cars and heat pumps. Many species of wildlife are able to survive because of toxic chemical bans and protection of their habitats.
How did we get these wins? Three emotions drove people to put such pressure on governments that they forced industries to clean up. These emotions were fear, anger and disgust. People were afraid of toxic chemicals in their drinking water and food, and they feared cancer from a disintegrating ozone layer. They were angry that acid rain was killing wilderness lakes and that beautiful forests were being destroyed. They were disgusted by slimy, stinking algae and dead fish rotting on shorelines.
What is the back story? Researchers and scientists discovered the problems and proposed solutions. Non-government organizations played a key role in mobilizing public concern and support for action by governments, business and individuals. There were often campaigns waged though the news media to inform people and stimulate public action. Thousands of citizens joined environmental organizations and took to the streets to protest against environmental damage. People were willing to defy authorities and get arrested to save ancient forests. Mothers afraid of the effects of pollution on their children pushed governments to control toxic chemicals.
It was the voices of enough voters that moved politicians to take action to control environmental abuses. Two lessons stand out. People must be informed and motivated to protest and push for change. And it’s much easier to get change if there are relatively few companies causing the environmental problems, and there are feasible and affordable alternatives.
Despite our successes there are serious environmental problems preventing us from reaching a sustainable lifestyle. In many parts of the world, and in most big cities, poor air quality harms people’s health and shortens lives. A growing number of regions face water shortages as they take more water to irrigate food than nature replenishes. Soil fertility is being reduced by heavy equipment and agricultural chemicals. Many species are being reduced in numbers, and some face extinction, especially from habitat loss overhunting, overfishing and poisoning by pesticides. There are tens of thousands of chemicals in widespread use, and we know little about the wide range of possible health effects. In recent years we have discovered that plastics break down in the environment into ever smaller particles and some of these end up in our bodies. The U.S. National Institutes of Health said that plastics in the human body can potentially lead to a range of health issues, including respiratory disorders like lung cancer, asthma and hypersensitivity pneumonitis, neurological problems and cell death.
Let’s look at the biggest issue facing our world and the one that seems most difficult to deal with: climate change.
The problem
The basics of climate change are not complicated. As far back as the 1800s scientists were writing that putting carbon dioxide [CO2] into the air by burning fossil fuels would raise the Earth’s temperature by trapping more heat in the atmosphere. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the 1700s our burning of these fuels – coal, oil and natural gas – has poured billions of tonnes of CO2 into the sky causing the global temperature to rise. This in turn is destabilizing the climate in which our civilization has evolved.
The summer of 1988 was extremely hot and dry in eastern North America. The Mississippi River fell so low that boats were stranded and there were calls to divert water from the Great Lakes. By chance Canada was holding the World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere, the first major global meeting on climate change. Hundreds of scientists and policymakers from around the planet gathered at the Toronto Convention Centre with the goal of kickstarting international action on cutting climate warming gas emissions. The conference final statement said: “Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war.”
Even as scientists at the Toronto atmosphere conference were saying that we needed to reduce the use of fossil fuels, countries around the world were increasing production. New technologies, such as fracking, were about the tap vast amounts of oil and gas long trapped in the ground. Canada was heading into a major expansion of the oil sands, one of the world’s largest oil deposits. It would take decades for a large number of politicians and other leaders to accept that we have to reduce and finally stop the burning of fossil fuels if we are to avoid a climate disaster. The increase in renewable energy has helped but it has only slowed not stopped the increase in greenhouse gas emissions because our demand for energy keeps growing.
The Earth’s climate is changing rapidly and dramatically. The global temperature is up. Sea levels are rising as glaciers melt and inhabitants of some low-lying islands will have to abandon their homelands in the future. Weather is becoming more erratic and violent; we have more extreme droughts, wildfires, floods and storms. The cost and the disruption even loss of life is mounting steadily. As the planet heats up the problems will worsen. Large areas will produce far less food, and some will become virtually uninhabitable because of extreme heat or rising sea levels. We are heading toward tipping points such as the irreversible melting and collapse of ice in Greenland and Antarctica that will cause sea level rise that will flood coastal cities and low-lying islands. All these changes will lead to mass migrations such as the world has never seen before. It is the greatest threat modern humans have faced.
The fix
Victories on acid rain and the ozone layer were a dress rehearsal for the giant problem of climate change. The big difference is that for acid rain there were technologies to remove the acid pollutants before they went up the smokestacks. To stop destroying the ozone layer chemical companies had alternatives products available and though they cost a bit more this was not a barrier.
We know how to first slow and finally stop further climate change, but we haven’t figured out how to do enough in time to prevent disaster. Climate change is not like acid rain or the ozone layer where you could retool a relatively small number of industries to get a fix. It’s not just industries that release greenhouse gases but billions of people who run their vehicles and heat their homes and businesses with fossil fuels like gasoline, diesel and natural gas. We need to change an energy system that is now about 80 per cent based on fossil fuels to one that is almost entirely based on renewable energy. It’s like trying to replace the engine on a huge ship moving at full speed.
Governments have been grappling with this really difficult issue since the 1988 Toronto conference on climate change called for big cuts in CO2 emissions. The conference triggered a surprising amount of political support for action in Canada with the prime minister calling for a “law of the air.” Following the Toronto conference, the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, [IPCC] a group of international scientific experts whose advice provides the basis for climate change decisions around the planet. The IPCC says to limit the damage of climate change we need to virtually eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Since the Toronto conference there have been dozens of meetings and many agreements starting with the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which aimed to stabilize greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at levels that will not dangerously upset the global climate system. The most ambitious goal was set at the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, a treaty with the goal of limiting the global temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. Virtually every nation has agreed that we need to reverse climate change. Easier said than done. As the global population continues to grow so does the demand for energy. Fossil fuel production, greenhouse gas emissions and the global temperature have all continued to rise despite the Paris Agreement.
We need a second great wave of electrification even bigger than the first one that connected people to power lines more than a century ago. We have started the process. In recent years, there has been a surge in renewable energy especially wind and solar power, which is becoming cheaper than fossil fuel power. Electric cars and heat pumps are becoming more common but mostly in countries that give subsidies and other supports. Some governments have phased out coal-fired power plants, the most polluting form of energy generation. All this is good but not sufficient. Although the world has started to build new power systems based on clean electricity it will take years to replace fossil fuels.
While new technologies will eventually give us cleaner energy the greatest short-term opportunity to reduce pollution is to lower consumption. Energy conservation combined with renewable energy could get us cleaner faster. The problem is that most people don’t want to reduce their energy consumption. More people in wealthy countries means more consumption, and the introduction of new technologies such as smartphones and artificial intelligence continues to increase demand for electricity. Governments that tried to push people to reduce consumption by putting surcharges on fossil fuels got such strong pushback they had to reduce or abandon the fees. The question is will humans voluntarily cut back their energy demands or wait for an ecological collapse to force change?
The World Commission on Environment and Development’s 1987 report, Our Common Future, said to stop environmental destruction we have to change how we do business and how we consume. This group of experts called for a shift to development that satisfies our basic needs and reasonable wants, and fits within nature’s limits. Their report caused a shift in thinking about the environmental impacts of development and the around the world and led to a series of global meetings and pledges to do better. Many governments created sustainability policies and many businesses changed their practices to become more sustainable. We are still running down the environment but more slowly than we would have without the guiding idea of sustainability.
We are in the early days of what needs to be a new industrial revolution. We need to measure development proposals in terms of what they will do for or against such basic needs as a stable atmosphere, clean air, drinkable water, wholesome food, shelter and good health. It will mean changing many of our ideas about what we need for a good life. If we are to start living within rather than using up the biosphere we must move to sustainable forms of energy, transportation, farming, forestry, fisheries, mining, smelting, petroleum and chemical manufacture. On both a business and a personal level this implies lower consumption of most if not all raw materials and energy per person and per unit of production. This means different forms of consumption including a move away from machines that demand huge amounts of energy and a reduction in throwaway products.
[For a more detailed description see the Understanding sustainability page.]
Major development patterns are stuck in a rut. Fossil fuel projects are still being launched even though we should be reducing and eventually stop burning these fuels. It is a sad reality that too many people see dirty development as the best option for economic growth even though the long-term costs are high.
We look for government leadership, but politicians struggle to find acceptable ways to help us live more sustainably. People are happy to have subsidies for electric vehicles and energy efficiency upgrades to their houses. But when governments put fees on gasoline to discourage consumption people rebel. Governments find it difficult to impose change until there is broad change in society’s values. Only when enough people choose to reduce their environmental footprint and signal they are ready make the necessary sacrifices for a transition to a sustainable economy and lifestyle can governments bring in laws and regulations to codify the changes. An environment minister told me many years ago that cabinet ministers pretend to lead but are waiting for the public to move. Then the politicians run to the front of the crowd and say they are leading.
Can business help? We will only have sustainable development if business gets on board. Although many industries contribute to our environmental problems, an increasing number are also finding ways to fix those problems or come up with alternatives. Corporations gave us dirty cars and now they are making cleaner electric vehicles. Companies created power plants that polluted the air, but other companies are making solar panels and wind turbines that give us clean energy. There is a limit to how far businesses can move on their own. They are in competition and if some make higher profits from polluting the environment then other companies will be reluctant to move. As business leaders told me, they need governments to set environmental regulations that control all the companies in a field. They need a level playing field.
But we have great opportunities
We have to learn to use nature without using it up. This means inventing ways of getting the benefits of modern life without destroying our environment. In case of fossil fuels and plastics we have to reinvent or replace complex technologies. This will require great ingenuity, but it will bring great rewards to those who succeed. Many of the technologies we need are already available and others are being developed. We also need to limit some of our consumption. This will take a major shift in values. Billions of individuals need decide to voluntarily reduce their consumption and pollution. It’s a tough choice for a consumer society in which many jobs depend on people buying more than they need and throwing a lot of things away. This will require a form of self-discipline that goes against the high consuming lifestyle promoted by advertising and by internet influencers. We are going to have to change some long-held beliefs about the right to consume without limit and focus on satisfying our real needs and reasonable wants. Perhaps we can turn to what the Greek philosopher Socrates said more than 2000 years ago: “The secret of happiness is not in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”
As a reporter, I asked Brundtland commission member Maurice Strong, a world-famous Canadian business leader and environmentalist, if we could make that shift. “It is going to be a race between our sense of survival and our more indulgent drives,” he replied.