Our stand on Kyoto in under one minute...
WHAT our Kyoto targets/commitments are:
Canada is legally bound under international law to a target of 6% below 1990 levels between 2008-2012 (with reductions achieved on average in each year)
WHY we should meet them (Other than being legally bound?): Because the necessary reductions in atmospheric carbon to avoid catastrophic local and global impacts will be at least 30% below 1990 by 2020, 50% by 2030, 80% by 2050. Missing our Kyoto targets places us in an even more difficult situation in the next phase. Further delay, denial, and procrastination is not an option.
HOW we will meet them; See the full list of actions within GP Squared. In short form : Get the prices right. Launch an energy productivity revolution. Eliminate subsidies to fossil fuels. Place a carbon tax on carbon emissions (upstream and downstream) Use the carbon tax revenue to reduce income and payroll taxes. Regulate for energy productivity improvements. Place a cap and trade system on large polluters. Develop a national transportation strategy to improve efficiency of the transport of goods and people. Modernize freight and passenger rail. Improve mass transit. regulate vehicle fuel consumption standards. Promote local food production and consumption. Promote decentralized local energy systems. District energy and co-gen. Geothermal and heat storage. Fuel switching, move to non-food crop ethanol (cellulosic). Accelerate uptake of renewables.
WHAT the effects on our economy will be. Depends on whether the approach is smart or stupid. Stupid is trying to pile "good" subsidies on top of "bad" subsidies to promote low carbon technologies...Smart is our plan. The four most productive economies in the EU all have carbon taxes. We are facing one of the largest business opportunities in the history of the world. developing renewables and energy miser systems. Ignoring the opportunity and clinging to the tar sands will hurt Canada's economy.
You did not ask "Can" we meet them? Due to years of inaction and action in the wrong direction (tar sands) we can no longer meet our targets entirely through domestic action. We can buy carbon credits through the Clean Development Mechanism (but only if the reductions are verifiable and reduce carbon emissions in developing countries.) Remember: the climate crisis is a global problem. A tonne of carbon reduced in Argentina or Vietnam has the same effect on the climate as a tonne of carbon reduced in Alberta or Nova Scotia. Verifiable CDM emissions reductions is sensible and economically rational (a tonne of carbon reduction being cheaper in developing countries than in Canada.) Helping developing countries avoid carbon emissions will pay dividends well into the future, while we catch up domestically.
Bottom line: Let's get started!! We have no idea how close to the target we can get until we start. If we cannot find adequate, defensible international credits, we can just take our lumps in the next commitment period, post-2012, where we will have a .3 tonne penalty added to each tonne in the next phase. We know the climate crisis is real and urgent. We know what causes it. We know we do not have much time. So let's get started! Elizabeth
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Emphasize non-food substrate for ethanol
Lambton Kent Middlesex EDA (SW Ontario)
Because of diversion of foodstock to ethanol production the USA and now Ontario is looking to get on the bandwagon producing corn for your car.
We will be seeing next year a major swing away from food production that will give us great opportunities for anyone who stays with food production.
We will have to become much more careful in how we use (waste) our forest products and waste if we are also to power our cars from this. But also we have to return to the forest soil the nutrients used to grow that material used to power our cars. The forest soils are far from inexhaustable.
Ethanol
Sure I love the idea of a cleaner more efficient fuel. Its certainly a big boost for my farming/rural riding. I just don't think our food source is the place to get it from. Frankly I have to shake my head at the concept of burning food while the world starves.
Matthew Smith
CEO - Green Party of Canada - Saskatchewan PD
msmith@greenparty.ca / soop@soop.ca
http://www.soop.ca
Even the straw/stover should be off limits?
Lambton Kent Middlesex EDA (SW Ontario)
Organic farmers, even those that use fertilizers, need to preserve most of the stover that food crops produce in the soil to maintain soil tilth, permeability, dark colour, and water retention.
Until we find an inorganic way to maintain those characteristics of soil we should not use stover, straw, manure, etc for energy.
There is a benefit of using those stovers and manure for energy, in that it replaces fossil fuel for the energy, and the rotting vegetation and manure now does not give off CO2 or methane from the ground. But at the same time the soils will lose most of their productive ability if those materials are not rotting away there.
Powering our transportation industry
There are still very large amounts of carbon lost to the atomosphere from agriculutre even when we don't remove waste products from the farm. In a zero till system large amounts of straw are either removed as bails or to the atmosphere as carbon from chaff that spread on the surface and not incorporated. In the case of manure when we stockpile it or hold it in a liquid form a large amount of methane is lost that can be recovered as energy. Nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon are still present to be applied to the back to the soil in from the digested material.
There is carbon fixed from the atmosphere by all plants and so as long as the amount fixed each year exceeds that lost (i.e more to the soil than leaving) then we can still reduce our emmissions. I realize that this is easier said than done.
I don't disagree that most grain or oilseed crops like corn or canola would be more efficiently used as food for humans or as feed for animals if the crop is of a lower quality. If we could reduce our inputs and the number of passes over the field then a crop like canola might be used to produce a carbon neutral fuel. One case where this has been accomplished is with winter canola in Denmark (fall seeded, high yield, low input). Another case where this likely would be possible were if a perennial grass could be used, since as much plant matter would remain in the field each year as root mass etc. as would be lost a biomass for fuel.
As for problems with reducing our food production I don't think that this should be so much of a worry. For one I don't think that it would make economic sense for most farmers to convert prime agricultural land to the production of biomass rather than food. Also, we already produce most grains and oilseeds far in excess of our country's needs. Rather than dumping our excess on countries as a band-aid fix for an uneven global distribution of wealth, I think that we would be better off to help developing countries to produce their own foods. I think that as Greens we tend to favour prevention rather than pure reaction and this is one case where this is applicable. It makes more economic and environmental sense to produce what we need as close to home as possible rather than to produce excessive amounts of a relatively few things to send abroad and then to import the rest. Socially I think that most of the "starving world" would rather be able to produce their own foods sustainably than to rely on our imports.
We can't forget that there are other oppertunities to provide power for transportation. If we improve our abilities to generate clean electricity then we still have the possibility of hydrogen power. As we improve our battery technology then even pure electrical power becomes a possibility.
Even just increasing the efficiency of our current fleet, but with conventinal fuels would go a long way. This however points us to the auto industry.
How much carbon food does the soil need?
Lambton Kent Middlesex EDA (SW Ontario)
Soil needs carbon food to provide for water retention, to prevent the collapse of clay crystals, and so improve ion-exchange capacity of the soils. But how much carbon food does the soil need, and will it be simply wasted as Co2 or methane if it is added to the soil?
Well, unless the soil is swamp soil, most of the emissions are CO2 rather than methane. The amount of Co2 emission is proportional to the amount of remaining carbon food in the soil, at a given temperature. Soils that are cooler can retain far more carbon food, ie they oxidize it much more slowly. Warm climates use it up much faster.
But how much do the soils nee to retain? Soils do not need to retain what they can not retain, of course, so that tropical and semi-tropical soils do not need to retain any... well, if they do, not much we can do about it. If we have a southern Ontario soil, it is likely a developed soil less than 15 cm deep, below that level it is inorganic. By contrast many soils on the praries are a metre deep... a goodly carbon content that far down allows even soils that are largely clay to take in water that would simply run off an inorganic clay soil.
On the Praries with clay soil we urgently need to keep the clay crystals open, not closed up as in brick. When we grow prarie grass and pasture it, all of the stover going into the soil either as grass or as manure, that deep topsoil is maintained. It would be most unfortunate to lose the ability of those clay soils to absorb water quickly, and to feed the crops via strong ion exchange support.
None of the crops grown on the prarie can maintain the level of carbon in the soils to the degree that original prairie grass did, even with all stover turned back into the soil.
Some farmers with no-till operations find it extremely difficult to return loose dry straw to the soil, because conventional practices are to till it into the surface to keep it from blowing away. What does one do with it? bale it, pile it up in a corner until it rots, or sell it to a farmer who raises livestock for bedding.
It seems that our culture of large-scale no-till with no livestock farming for many km gives a need to get rid of stover that we should have been using to maintain the soil, but what do we do with the scene, remove that stover for fuel.
Or are we prepared to accept continually degrading soils on the praries?
Auto vs. Power Generation
The oil industry only represents about 15% to 20% of total power used, and the auto industry only about 10%
http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/inter/pdf/outlook2006_e.pdf
Figure PR1
So it is not the biggest demand compared to coal, nuclear and hydro...
Indeed we need to focus on all of them simultaneously.
The car industry does need improving... and the fact that Japanese and non-western cars can last 10-17 years, while north american cars can last substantially less, and hybrid cars are only warranteed for 8 years is all very worrying....!!!!
Without constraints it is unlikely that anything of any value will ensue
Richard Belshaw
Wellington-Halton Hills EDA
Without constraints it is unlikely that anything of any value will ensue
Math is necessary to fully understand reality.... but it is not sufficient! pick up a 250000 word dictionary preferably oxford, and learn context and generatio
Building soil
One option, even for farmers without livestock is to incorporate a green manure, hay, or pasture into a rotation. If a nitrogen fixer (like alfalfa) is grown for a couple of years it adds nitrogen to the soil in addition to fixing carbon, expecially in its substantial root system. Plants that live with a large proportion of their biomass below ground, like many drought tollerant grassland species can help to replenish soils, even when above ground biomass is being removed. Alternatively plants can just be grown for a year and then incorporated through tillage (green manure). Even with these systems phosphorus limitation becomes and issue, except for pasture since most P is returned to the soil as manure). So without some form of phosphorus input or return we still run into an issue.
Not all farmers feel that green manure, hay, or pasture are suitable for them to work into a rotation and so we still run into the problem with degrading our soils. In most not till systems where stover is returned as chaff and spread in a fine layer on the soil surface to increase the efficiency of it being incorporated back into the soil. Obviously some carbon is still lost. In order for a soil building crop to be desirable in a cash crop rotation it would have to have some financial reward attached. The best possibility would likely be some kind of perennial that had a large root mass, but that had an above ground biomass that could be harvested for fuel. We haven't found that crop yet with our current technology, but switch grass is one crop that has recieved some research on this front.
In addition to the plants themselves there is a whole soil microfauna that we are overlooking too and on which I am not an expert. A lot of carbon is held in the soil as bacteria, fungi, and other decomposers so I would assume maintaining the biomass of this community would also keep nutrients in the soil.
For the most part we are still left with Donald's original question as to whether we are willing to accept soil degredation, but I do think that we have options in terms of diversifying what land uses make it into a typical roation. Organic farmers on the prairies make fairly extensive use of these techniques and in my experience it seems as though quite a few conventional farmers are too. I mean it can potentially reduce overall input costs. My experience might be a little skewed though as I am familiar with farming in Manitoba, where there seems to be a larger number of mixed farms as compared to some other parts of the Prairies.