Gwynne Dyer's talk "Climate Wars" at the University of Guelph

Today Gwynne Dyer, one of Canada’s most respected and prolific freelance journalists, broadcasters and lecturers, gave a free public lecture entitled "Climate Wars" at the University of Guelph. I agreed with much of what Mr. Dyer had to say about the geopolitics of climate change, but like most good thinkers and writers of today who suddenly turn their attention toward the topic of "climate change" and the "environment," Mr. Dyer put a great deal of thought and research into the complexity and diversity of the problem and did not nearly as much as he should have into the solutions (plural). In fact, Mr. Dyer spent his entire discussion on one solution to the climate change crisis: the replacement of fossil fuel energy production (with passing remarks given to energy conservation).

The one point of Mr. Dyer's with which I most strongly objected was his insistance that nuclear power is the best "short term solution" we have to a sustainable power supply. Mr. Dyer made comment that nuclear is "safer than we thought," and that Chernobyl killed no one "only firemen." First of all, I think that the very best institution we should listen to in order to assess the safety (or lack thereof) of nuclear power is the insurance industry. Canada's Nuclear Liability Act allows a nuclear power plant to purchase a scant $75 million dollars worth of insurance to mitigate the costs of the worst potential nuclear accident. The actual cost of the worst potential nuclear accident when one takes into account deaths, environmental destruction, clean-up, loss of useable land, the hindering of life for dozens of generations to come (not to mention, all things considered, potential lost profits), is immesurable. But for the sake of argument, let's up the figure at $100 billion dollars. $75 million is taken care of by the insurance company, but the mess is still there, it has to be dealt with, so guess who would be on the hook for the remaining $100,025,000,000. That's right, we would.

Second, Mr. Dyer's comment that Cernobyl killed "only firemen" is, I'm sorry, laughably uninformed. Chernobyl killed an entire ecosystem: humans, animals, plants, and most everything else even lower on the food chain for hundreds if not thousands of years. And if he hasn't read the stories of those who were not killed but survive on the outskirts of Chernobyl with hideous deformities or life-long ailments, he simply hasn't done his homework.
Nuclear fission must seem like a very efficient and clean source of electricity to someone who has done only a surface reading of the science behind it. Nuclear fission is not, in fact, a direct sourse of electrcity. The uranium is enriched which then creates a great deal of heat. The heat is then captured and used to boil water which then turns into steam which then turns turbines which then generates electricity. Other than the fuel which is burned, a nuclear power plant actually operates quite similarly to a plant which burns fossil fuels (coal, oil, or natural gas). But it is this difference in fuel which makes all the difference.

First of all, uranium does not fall from the sky; it has to be mined and it is not concentrated evenly around the world, not even around the developed world. So, any attempt to shift our power generation capacity to nuclear, even for the short term, would run into the very same geopolitical issues which now surround the extraction of fossil fuels. Secondly, when uranium comes out of the ground, it is useless in terms of power generation. It must first be enriched, a process which itself requires a not insignificant amount of energy, and the poorer the quality of uranium, the more energy is required to enrich it. Thirdly, when it is no longer useful it must be removed from the reactor and stored deep underground because the waste remains dangerous for a very long time. Fossil fuels are actually advantageous over nuclear in this regard; carbon dioxide will, given enough time, be naturally reabsorbed by the planet. Depleated uranium will not. Mr. Dyer's response to this criticism went something along the lines of "the energy that we get will far outweigh the cost of storing it." This is true, but only if one is working within an artificial three-dimensional economy of space. In reality, our economies have a forth dimension: time. It takes a quarter of a million years for depleated uranium to lose its radioactivity and become inert again --theoretically. We have not, of course, had someone watch the stuff for a quarter of a million years to find out if it will be safe even then. A quarter of a million years is four times longer that our civilization has been in existence. How much would it cost to store and monitor anything, let alone an incredibly dangerous substance, for a quarter of a million years? Nuclear power has all these costs associated with it and Mr. Dyer would have us believe that they are not to be considered because they will be safely absorbed by future generations for the sake of a "short term solution." I, for one, am not willing to hand down those costs. We already have long-term solutions and we need to start implimenting them now.

Mr. Dyer's address, although eloquent and entertaining --and rightly quite correct, I believe, on the vast majority of his points-- also demonstrated a number of ideological blindspots. First is his assumption that whatever energy solution we create, it will have to be created around the classical "grid" architecture that has characterized our large-scale electrical supply systems ever since they were first built. This is the very kind of thinking that we need to be getting away from, not building solutions around. When you can take one building entirely off the grid throught he use of solar panels, local wind power, small-scale hydro, etc. and suppliment this with small-scale storage methods such as hydrogen storage cells and other advanced batteries to keep the building in operation through periods when power generation is low, you've solved the climate change crisis for that building. When you can do the same for that building's entire neighbourhood, you've solved it for that neighbourhood. When you can do the same for every neighbourhood in the country, you've solved it for your nation. At this point, you also save a considerable amount of electricity from "line loss" --that is electricity that is wasted as heat due to being transported over long distances; with local power generation, power is used where it is generated. And, finally, if every nation did the same, you've solved the climate change crisis full stop. And we don't even need to go that far; we can still maintain the grid that we have and still use fossil fuel power plants to load it with electricity (so long as we sequester the CO2), but we won't be reliant on centralized energy production from fossil fuel sources (let alone nuclear) to get us through day and night --spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

But before all that, we need to thoroughly address conservation. Mr. Dyer concluded that a enforcing a 30% or greater reduction in power demand would result in "unsellable" lifestyle changes and would therefore not be worth trying to pursue. But Mr. Dyer went about this the wrong way. If you first support policies which encourage changes in individual lifestyles and collective market behaviour, the power conservation takes care of itself --quite likely to a degree much greater than 30%. And we are not talking about entirely unsavoury lifestyle changes here. Working and shopping closer to where you live. Taking affordable, clean, and reliable public transit (i.e. not having to drive). Eating locally-grown produce. None of these lifestyle changes seem unreasonably arduous to me. Granted there will be others. Not being able to jump on a plane to paradise once a year. Not being able to go for that drive in the country whenever it tickled your fancy. Not being able to take that once a year "roadtrip" with friends. But the reality is that the majority of people in the developed world don't have those luxuries now --I know I don't.

Furthermore, although not much of what he said spoke directly to this, Mr. Dyer would appear to assume that we will also be forever locked within our current economic models which gauge "success" by measuring "growth" and volumes of production and consumption. Indeed Mr. Dyer used these gauges himself to measure the economic success of China and other nations. And, consequently, that any attempts to mitigate the climate change crisis, although necessary, would be forever at odds with our economies. This does not have to be true, and it may in fact be the easiest change to make of all. If we have the political will, we can change our gauge of economic success and base it upon, not volumes of production and consumption, but the intensity and efficiency of service and flow, where environmental waste is an economic liability and conservation is encouraged.

In a global economy it would be, of course, very difficult for one country to make this change alone, but this leads to another of Mr. Dyer's points with which I must disagree. He stated that it would be a necessary first step for us, the "developed" nations, to not only export sustainable energy technology to the "developing" nations, but to subsidize their use of it as well. I do not argue with the merits of this in itself, but I disagree that it should be the first step. The only reason that the developing nations are on the old industrial path that they are is because they see it as their best possible future. If we in the developed world take it upon ourselves to show them a better future, one which is entirely sustainable and also generates a great deal of wealth, we will not have to export, subsidize, or interfere in the affairs of the developing world at all --they will be asking us for the technology and making the changes on their own.

I enjoyed Mr. Dyer's talk very much and I really believe that 90% of what he shared was very valuable indeed, however I must admit that it has been my experience that the solutions to the climate change crisis, and the complicated nexus of issues surrounding it, are not to be found among Mr. Dyer and his ilk. They are to be found among the communities, and within the individuals, that are making sustainability work already --the "tree huggers" of the world. I have met people who --right now-- are not only living quite well enitrely off of our electrical grid but also off of any municipal water or septic system! We have all the ideas, technology, and people which we need to make the transition to a sustainable future --not in 40 or 50 years, but in 15 or 20. All that is missing is the political will and it is that political will which I hope and pray that our democracies find before it is too late.