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| Author | Thomas Homer-Dixon with Nick Garrison, eds. |
|---|---|
| Subject | Peak Oil and Climate Change |
| Genre | Non-fiction, Environmental Science, Energy Policy |
| Publisher | Vintage Canada, a division of Random House Canada |
Publication date | April 2010 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 240 pp. |
| ISBN | 978-0-307-35719-9 (0-307-35719-8) Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character |
| 333.8 | |
| LC Class | QC981.8.G56 C36 2009 |
Carbon Shift: How Peak Oil and the Climate Crisis Will Change Canada (and Our Lives),[1] edited by Thomas Homer-Dixon with Nick Garrison, explores where we currently stand on the issues of peak oil and climate change, and the possible outcomes if we do not swiftly and radically deal with the situation. The book was first published in hardcover by Random House of Canada in 2009 under the title Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future, and became a national bestseller. In 2010, the paperback was published by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House Canada, the sub-title then changing to How Peak Oil and the Climate Crisis Will Change Canada (and Our Lives).
The book is a collection of essays by six of Canada’s globally recognized experts in such fields as economics, geology, politics, and science, allowing for a thorough exploration of the issues from a variety of perspectives. Editor Thomas Homer-Dixon with Nick Garrison, provides the cohesion, pulling it all together in his introduction and conclusion.
Thomas Homer-Dixon (editor): CIGI Chair of Global Systems[2] at the Balsillie School of International AffairsinWaterloo, Ontario, professor in the Centre for Environment and Business[3] at the University of Waterloo, Director of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation.[4] Since starting his work on crucial global issues in the 1990’s,[5] [6] he has continued to share his research findings and opinions globally through his writing, personal appearances and media.[7] He is the author of such award winning books as The Ingenuity Gap[8] and The Upside of Down.[9]
Nick Garrison (associate editor): writer and editor, former communications director of a prominent environmental NGO.
Ronald Wright (Foreword): award winning novelist, historian and essayist, author of such notable books as A Short History of Progress.[10]
David Keith[11]: Canadian Research Chair in Energy and Environment at the University of Calgary, professor at the University of Calgary in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering and in the Department of Economics, adjunct professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, Canadian Geographic Magazine’s Environmental Scientist of the year, 2006.[12] His work has centered on the capture and storage of CO2, and the economics and climatic impacts of global climate engineering and alternate energy sources. He has served on panels and consulted for national governments, global industrial leaders and international environmental groups and has shared his expertise through various media world-wide.[13] [14]
David Hughes: A geoscientist, team leader for Unconventional Gas on the Canadian Gas Potential Committee, Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute,[15] on the Board of Directors of ASPO Canada.[16] He has spent the last 4 decades in the energy sector and 32 years with the Geological Survey of Canada. He developed the Canadian National Coal Inventory,[17] and has published and lectured internationally on global energy and sustainability issues. He has presented his analyses of global and North American energy issues to agencies of all levels of government, industry and professional organizations, as well as in trade journals and other media.[18]
Mark Jaccard: Professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management[19]atSimon Fraser University, former Chair and CEO of the British Columbia Utilities Commission, member of Canada’s National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy,[20] research fellow at the C. D. Howe Institute[21] and a lead author for policy of the Global Energy Assessment[22] published by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).[23] He has published many award winning books on the issues of climate change, sustainability and public policy, including The Cost of Climate Policy (2002),[24] Sustainable Fossil Fuels (2005),[25] and the co-authored Hot Air: Meeting Canada’s Climate Challenge (2007).[26]
Jeff Rubin: former Chief economist with CIBC World Markets, one of the top economists in Canadian financial markets over the past decade, author of best-seller Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization.[27] A frequent contributor to The Globe and Mail, his insights into global energy markets, the world economy and financial markets have also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Newsweek, and USA Today, among others.
William Marsden: Journalist, author, documentary-maker, award-winning senior investigative reporter for The Gazette in Montreal. He has won several awards for his investigative journalism, including two National Newspaper Awards and the U. S. Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for his report on the privatization of water, published by the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C. His recent book, Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (and doesn’t seem to care)[28] was a national best-seller and winner of the 2008 National Business Book Award.[29]
Jeffrey Simpson: Journalist, Officer of the Order of Canada, the Toronto Globe and Mail's national affairs columnist since 1984, senior fellow at the University of Ottawa's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.[30] He has won the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction (1980), the National Magazine Award for political writing, and the National Newspaper Award for column writing (twice).[31] He has shared his insights in such publications as Saturday Night magazine, the Report on Business Magazine,[32] The Journal of Canadian Studies,[33] and The Queen's Quarterly,[34] as well as in lectures at several universities in North America and the U. K. He has published many books, most recently Hot Air: Meeting Canada’s Climate Challenge (2007) co-authored with Mark Jaccard and Nic Rivers.[35]
In his Foreword to the book, Ronald Wright stresses that, in order to thrive, civilization must maintain a balance between the key components of knowledge, population and energy. He explains how human civilization managed to stay in relative balance until the breakthrough in energy, about 200 years ago. The tapping and innovative use of the earth’s fossil fuels allowed human population to quickly mushroom far beyond the earth’s handling capacity, leading humankind into a perilous “progress trap”.[36] The calamitous results of this situation, he maintains, can be avoided only by a swift and radical ‘carbon shift’ to a much cleaner energy.
The ‘Introduction’ by Thomas Homer-Dixon and Nick Garrison presents some of the facts and ideas necessary for readers to understand the main issues dealt with in the book: peak oil and climate change. They explain that almost everything in our lives is somehow connected to the earth's finite supply of fossil fuels which are becoming increasingly costly to access. However, they point out, the end of fossil fuels may not be the worst thing that could happen to us. The use of these fuels which allowed our rapid progress is now posing an enormous threat to life on this planet. What is needed is a better understanding of this carbon dilemma and a clarification of the real impacts on the economy and society. The introduction prepares the reader for the ensuing essays by cautioning that, due to the complexity of the carbon problem, the contributors will not be in agreement, do not claim to have the magic solution, and may pose more questions than they answer. They will, however, offer much needed insights into the issue and perhaps illuminate the way to some solutions.
The title of David Keith’s essay, “Dangerous Abundance”, alludes to his main argument. He puts forth that although we may run out of fossil fuels (though not for centuries, he says) we will always have some sort of energy. The ingenuity of a society hooked on energy will see to this. The oil problem is, therefore, a non-issue and should ‘self-correct’. In his view the real threat to life as we know it, and to future generations, is the fact that since we have been burning carbon fuels and emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at alarmingly increasing rates, we have been destroying our world. He points to the disturbing situation that, despite cold hard facts to prove that carbon emissions are indeed rapidly changing our planet’s climate, many factions of society remain in denial, preventing the urgent and drastic action needed to restrain, if not reverse, the emissions. Keith maintains that the world’s governments will have to take action and focus resources on world-wide reduction of carbon emissions if future generations are to enjoy a world like the one in which humans were fortunate to evolve.
In “The Energy Issue: a More Urgent Problem than Climate Change”, David Hughes argues that our modern, global world is quickly gobbling up our supply of non-renewable fuels, and we have not made much progress in our switch to renewable energy since the middle of the nineteenth century. Also, he shows that unconventional oil and oil substitutes are poor solutions as they produce large-scale exploitation of ecosystems and have huge ecological consequences. As the earth’s population skyrockets, we will be facing a real energy deficit. Disappearing fossil fuels will lead to increasing global tension as energy demands rise, and there will be a scurry to produce renewable energy sources, but these will never be able to replace the energy produced by carbon fuels. There is only one way out, Hughes maintains: we will have to reduce our consumption of energy. This will not be easy after two centuries of ‘the good life’, but it would have the beneficial side-effect of making climate change less of an issue.
Mark Jaccard explains in his essay “Peak Oil and Market Feedbacks: Chicken Little versus Dr. Pangloss” that the world is not in danger of running out of fossil fuels any time soon, even if we run out of conventional oil, which is unlikely as shown by his research and statistics. In his view, the crux of the issue is in the economics. After a rather involved discussion of the energy issues from an economics perspective, Jaccard finally gets to the bottom line: to address the problems we face surrounding fossil fuels and climate change, a global charge must be placed on the emission of carbon and other greenhouse gases. This would have the ultimate effect of slowing down the consumption of oil and high-cost oil substitutes. He states that there will be difficult and more costly times ahead in our relationship with energy, but the best option for the future of our children would be the move to renewable sources or conversion of fossil fuels into other forms of energy, as long as we could capture and safely store most of the carbon.
In “Demand Shift,” Jeff Rubin looks at the energy/climate issue form a ‘supply and demand’ angle. The demand for petroleum products has shifted from European, Japanese and North American markets to the rapidly expanding markets in Asia, Russia and Brazil. To keep us all ‘on the road’, he says, is not feasible given the current supply of oil, which is not showing growth. Changes in local production, consumption and export policies in OPEC countries mean that we can no longer depend on these once reliable sources of oil. He paints a bleak picture for oil consumers, unless you happen to live in Canada. Here, he explains, we still have the oil sands, then oil shale. Not cost effective right now to produce, this will change as world oil supplies dwindle, as they will, he states. The world will soon have to increasingly rely on these synthetic oil supplies, and Canada will become a main exporter. The down-side is that the process emits three times the carbon as conventional oil production, so Canada will also become an even greater part of the climate problem. Our challenge as Canadians will be how to handle this dilemma.
William Marsden takes his title “The Perfect Moment” from an ad for the Lexus, and uses the luxury vehicle analogy for the attitude we have about the quality of life we have been afforded by our close relationship with oil and its myriad of by-products. He cautions, however, that dazed by our addiction to this good life, we have failed to ‘do the math’. The supply of oil will dry up sooner rather than later, since in just two centuries we have almost depleted a billion years of energy. The life-supporting capacity of the earth and the supply of fossil fuels are finite, even here in Canada where we have been questionably blessed with the tar sands. To Marsden, this vast Canadian resource aptly illustrates the energy issue. The tar sands present Canada with a huge dilemma. They provide many benefits but also have drastic ecological impacts, especially in the area of climate change. To Marsden, it comes down to a question of taking the hard road and standing up for our basic values. Despite that our actions prove differently, he maintains, we know that the best path in this difficult situation is not the easiest or fiscally favorable one; it has to be the most environmentally responsible one if we and future generations are to have many more moments on this earth, ‘perfect’ or otherwise.
In “Broken Hearts, Broken Policies: the Politics of Climate Change,” Jeffrey Simpson shows how the decline in Canada’s real efforts to act positively and effectively on any environmental issue is the fault of the government: first the Liberals, ratifying the Kyoto Protocol and making lofty plans, but virtually doing nothing as emissions rose; then the Conservatives, based in oil-sand promoting Alberta, anti-Kyoto, and increasingly disdainful of any climate change policy. Both parties managed to get away with do-little and lip service policies for some time. Then, when Canadians started to pay attention to the realities around them, environmental issues became a focus of party platforms, and the Green Party gained momentum. Despite that a change in attitude and understanding of the climate change issue means that more Canadians truly want something to be done about it, there is still wariness about the economic and personal impacts of any change. Canadians want to remain a world leader on the environmental path, but that position is swiftly being usurped by other more progressive nations. To emerge from this mess somewhat intact, Simpson maintains, we must closely examine and learn from past mistakes, then make serious commitments and take real action.
In “Conclusion”, Homer-Dixon and Garrison stress the commonalities of the book’s six essays. Despite their diverse fields of study and approaches, the authors all share frustration over the poor efforts we have made so far to save our world from looming energy and climate crises, and agree that we have to change our attitudes and behavior drastically to protect the future for our children. The essays point to the logic of acting swiftly on the issues, but unfortunately, it usually takes a sudden crisis to jolt humanity into action. They maintain that there will certainly be an increasing number of such disasters as the negative effects of energy shortages and climate change escalate, but even once appropriate actions are decided upon, the undertakings will stagger us by their economic and social impacts. Our best course of action, they say, would be to voluntarily make the necessary changes in our lives to lessen these impacts. Homer-Dixon and Garrison conclude by stating that a ‘carbon shift’ is coming and we must act swiftly to avoid handing our children a much worse energy-climate problem.
Carbon Shift was well received by critics, especially those who understood the intent of the book. Alex Good of Quill and Quire states: “…the goal of the book is to view the issues through the eyes of those who think about them rigorously. The results are informative and the discussion stimulating,…”[37] Peter Robinson, head of the David Suzuki Foundation, says: “If the reader approaches this book in the spirit of exploring the issue as a complex problem for which there is no simple solution, however, then the essays reinforce the conclusion that it will take all of our ingenuity, will and perseverance to prevent catastrophe.”[38][39] Andrew Nikiforuk of The Globe and Mail sees that the strength of the book lies in the main message: “Homer-Dixon clearly sets the scene. He correctly argues that cheap oil has undermined our economic models, and business as usual is no longer an option…And that's why the brief collection of essays in Carbon Shift really matters.”[40]
Less than positive reviews of the book tend to come from those expecting and hoping for some solutions. Peter Robinson voices these concerns thus: “But does the book solve the challenge it poses? Not really… If anything, a reader looking for a solution will come away from the book thinking that humanity may not be able to reconcile the challenges of energy scarcity and climate change because we haven’t fully agreed that they are interdependent and, therefore, inseparable.”[41] Some reviewers commented on the fact that the book focused on Canada, preventing the message from reaching a desired global audience, and some felt that the material, much of it fact and statistic driven, would soon become dated.
Most critics did, however, feel that the book accomplished what it set out to do—provide a variety of expert insights into Canada’s energy-climate challenge, give some sense of the consequences of inaction, and outline the difficult but necessary attitude and behavior changes needed if our society is to survive.
Thomas Homer-Dixon's web site.
Random House page for Carbon Shift.
