The upside of the downturn

While the recession is reportedly over, we can’t wax nostalgically about it yet because much of the suffering it caused continues.
Millions remain unemployed, many more are struggling, many who survived just fine have seen their 401ks, their home equity, their life savings, wiped out. But those ongoing costs of recession notwithstanding, we can begin to examine the downturn’s silver lining, particularly for a warming world.
The news out of Japan yesterday is typical of the effect the recession had on the atmosphere:
TOKYO (Reuters) – A slumping economy pushed down Japanese CO2 emissions from burning fuels by a record 6.7 percent in the year to March 2009, the trade ministry said on Friday, but the country is still far from meeting its Kyoto Protocol obligations.
Improvements in energy efficiency in Japan, the world’s fifth-biggest emitter, and a shift to non-fossil fuels contributed to less than 10 percent of the decline….
The preliminary data on Friday showed that CO2 emissions from fuel fell 6.7 percent to 1.14 billion tonnes in fiscal 2008/2009 from a year earlier when a record 1.22 billion tonnes were emitted.
“This is not an ideal way for the economy to join hands with the environment in a sustainable manner,” said Takashi Ishizaki, director of the ministry’s energy policy planning office.
via Japan CO2 emissions from fuel drop | Reuters .
A regular true/slanter, Bob Shanbrom, suggested in a comment yesterday this is exactly what should happen: “Even Obama fails to realize that America needs to go into a permanent recession, needs to reduce its economic activity (at least as we measure it now) by half. Half as many cars, hambugers, airconditioners, airplane trips. We simply need to cut our ecofootprint in half and our carbon foodprint by 80%.”
That’s a perilous plank for any politician’s platform because the developed world has been so dependent on development. Try running on a campaign of less business, reduced industry, greater austerity and sacrifice. The climate isn’t quite ferocious enough yet to make such ideas attractive.
And yet when recession comes, we see just how effective it can be at reducing pollution. No intentional effort by humankind has ever produced reductions like Japan’s 6.7 percent drop in greenhouse gas emissions from 2008-09, the expected 5.9 percent drop this year in the U.S., or these worldwide effects reported earlier this month:
Man-made greenhouse gas emissions will drop 3% in 2009 largely because of the worldwide financial crisis, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said today.
Three-quarters of the reduction has been the result of less industrial activity, with the rest coming from countries turning to renewable energy and nuclear power….
The emissions cuts, only the fourth in the last 50 years, provide countries with a unique chance to switch to less carbon-intensive energy sources, said the IEA’s chief economist, Fatih Birol.
“Average growth in emissions has been 3% a year but we estimate this year that emissions will fall 3%. Because of the financial crisis, many industries have the chance to move away from unsustainable power. If we get a good result at the Copenhagen climate talks, then they could be turned to sustainable energy,” he said.
via Carbon emissions will fall 3% due to recession, say world energy analysts | guardian.co.uk .
Industries do have a chance at Copenhagen: a chance to switch to clean, renewable energy, and a chance not to. If they choose not to, the most robust economy that emerges from this recession faces disruption as the predicted outcomes of global warming become realities. Imagine the economic effects of the collapse of California agriculture and cities from long-term drought in the Colorado River Basin, for example, or the effects of the loss of water supplies for 750 million people in Asia who depend on Himalayan glaciers.
This is why any commitment to economic growth, from even the most cynical capitalist, requires a commitment to clean energy. Dirty growth will destroy the markets.