Nest #9, Tackling Climate Change, is presented in three parts. Part 1, Climate Change Dynamics will be presented by developing a Causal Map. In Part 2, Climate Change Impact to Humans will be summarized. And in Part 3, we review what we all must do to counter Climate Change, by constructing a ValueMap. We use the ValueMap as a lens for viewing one of the most important problems facing the world today—the potential for a disaster to us humans that will come about from Climate Change unless we do something to prevent it. This lens will help us see what must be done, and who must do it.
Part 1 – Climate change dynamics
So let’s first look at the climate change dynamics. As I’m sure you have heard, the activities of us humans in the past century or more that involve burning fossil fuels like coal and oil have been sending so-called greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air, the major one, has been rising dramatically in recent years and is now more than it has been for hundreds of thousands of years.
And you can see how the CausalMap works—one activity causes another, as shown by the dashed green arrow. So the gases from human activities, as the increasing CO2 in the air absorbs more of the sun’s radiation, cause an increase in global temperatures.
The total amount of such greenhouse gases has recently been estimated at 51 billion metric tons, which is a lot, even when spread over the whole earth.
Here’s a pie chart that shows you where it’s all coming from. I’ll give you a moment to look at it. Among other things, you can see that more than half of it comes from manufacturing and the generation of electricity.
One of the effects of this rise in temperature is that large amounts of permafrost—which is essentially ground that normally stays frozen throughout the year—is gradually thawing. Such large amounts are in Alaska, Canada, Russia and other places.
When permafrost thaws, it releases CO2 and methane that has been trapped there for thousands of years. In addition, when it thaws various microbes cause the release of still more greenhouse gases.
And this additional release of gases in turn causes additional temperature rise.
Notice that we have a circular causal pattern. This is called a cycle by scientists, and more specifically, a positive feedback cycle or loop. Once it gets going, it is not easily stopped. This one is called the permafrost cycle.
Another effect of increasing air temperature is that it causes additional melting of snow and ice which reduces the area covered by it and exposes more ground. This newly exposed ground absorbs rather than reflects the sun’s rays back into space causing the ground to warm which then warms the air. The scientists call this the albedo effect, and, as you can see, this diminished reflection creates another positive feedback loop pattern called the albedo cycle.
Yet another such pattern occurs when the warmer air warms the ocean causing more evaporation of water vapor which causes more absorption of energy from the sun and so we have the ocean warming cycle.
And finally the higher temperature creates more droughts which, among other things, dries out forests which increases the severity of forest fires, like the ones we have recently been having in California, and this reduces the total amount of live forest covering the earth. This releases more greenhouse gases, and so we have a fourth cycle.
And there are some additional important effects from the warming atmosphere. The melting ice and snow disturbs the pattern of the jet stream which affects weather patterns, especially in the northern hemisphere. An example is last winter’s freeze that extended much farther south than normal in the US down to Texas and surrounding states, and it lasted much longer than normal. In other parts of the earth, the jet stream dislocation, combined with ocean warming, has increased the intensity of hurricanes and typhoons in the oceans. This combination can also create other forms of extreme weather like droughts and, at different times and places, major floods.
Yet another important effect is that the warming ocean combined with the melting of large amounts of ice, particularly in Greenland and Antarctica, is causing the ocean levels to rise.
A final effect to be seen is that the increased air temperature has caused a shift in the location of the temperate zones on the earth. In the northern hemisphere the zone has moved northward and in the southern hemisphere, it has moved southward. And the middle has gotten hotter.
So the causal map of climate dynamics has shown us the pattern of movement and change, including the existence of four positive feedback loops or cycles that intensify the pattern and will be slow to stop and difficult to reverse.
Part 2 – Climate Change Major Effects on Humans
So now in Part 2 of this Nest, we’re going to extend the CausalMap in a second dimension by looking at the major effects this climate change has on us humans.
First, it is easy to understand that extreme weather—the hurricanes, floods, droughts, and even unexpected extended freezes—creates major losses to the economies where and when they occur.
Then we have sea level rise, which will do major damage to coastline installations around the world such as harbors, airfields, roads and train tracks, and dwellings. All of these, of course, will be very costly to repair or move.
And third and perhaps less obvious is the effect of the temperate climate shifts towards the poles. For the farms and forests that are located in the zones nearer the equator, the increased temperatures and accompanying droughts will greatly reduce their productivity. But for countries presently in the far northern and southern limits of the temperate zones, their productivity will increase because their growing seasons will become longer and more land will be available for farming. Think of southern parts of Russia and Canada, for example. However, present estimates are that the losses will greatly exceed the gains. The net effect will still result in overall reduced productivity.
So overall, these three causes will hurt the global economy.
Another effect of significance to the peoples of world is that the temperate climate shifts both north and south will force migrations of people who are presently closer to the equator because the increased temperatures and droughts make their lands much less productive and they are threatened with starvations. We can see elements of this effect today. Think of the refugees leaving Syria and adjacent countries and trying to move to Europe. Or those in Central America trying to get into the US.
At a minimum, such movements cause political disruptions. And if they become sufficiently intense, can lead to wars.
A third kind of major impact of climate change is on the health of humans, both physical and mental.
To begin with, high temperatures in themselves and in their long durations can weaken people or even kill them.
So can extreme weather and droughts.
And the combination of various human activities and forest fires will generate fine particulates that affect our ability to breathe.
Dr. Barry Levy, who is one of my associates, recently co-authored a book on this subject. His summary of the potential ill effects of climate change on us is summarized on this slide.
So as you can see, by using a CausalMapl we have developed a perspective that on one page summarizes the dimensions of climate change and explains its major effects on humans.
Part 3 – What We Must Do
Now we come to the difficult part of this Nest. Given the nature and effects of climate change, what must we do to slow it down, stop it, and possibly reverse it.
As the CausalMap shows, the driver of climate change is the greenhouse gases that we are pumping into the atmosphere. So the key to tackling this problem is to greatly reduce the amount of such pumping and to find ways of absorbing the amount left. A target that was set by the many countries following the Paris Conference in 2015 is to stop it altogether by 2050—a so-called “net-zero”. They hoped this is achievable and not too late to avoid a major disaster.
But what has to be done to achieve this, and who will do it?
In order to get an answer to this tough question, we will develop a ValueMap that will help us see the major elements of the whole picture, and who has to do what.
We begin by drawing a very simple business model that shows that providers of all kinds of products, services, and energy create values that are delivered to all humans on earth. That’s the blue arrow.
The humans recognize these values and pay for them whether directly or indirectly with taxes.
But while creating those values, as we have shown in Part 1 of this video, the providers have also generated greenhouse gases in the global atmosphere, a negative value flow as shown by the red arrow. And as we showed in Part 2, the effect of these gases in the atmosphere have generated a negative value flow that affects all humans consisting of losses in economics, health, and political disruptions. This is shown by an additional red arrow. We must diminish this negative value flow by going to net zero or less in generating greenhouse gases.
How can we do this? By mitigating our gas generating processes in whatever ways we know how, thus creating a positive value flow to the atmosphere. For example, we can shift the generation of electricity from coal plants to gas plants, or going further, to more wind and solar generators. And we can practice so-called regenerative agriculture that creates less CO2 and stores more of it in the soil. And we can stop the destruction of forests and plant millions of trees. And we can recycle many plastic products and containers. And we can make and use more electric cars and trucks. There are lots of such ways to reduce the generation of carbon gases.
But most estimates of the magnitude of such mitigations are that even taken together and expanded, they are not enough. We need more.
We need to develop innovations–new methods and processes many of which will be enabled by technologies that have yet to be developed. And, once developed, these innovations must not only be tested to demonstrate that they are feasible and economic; they must also be sufficiently scaled if they are to have a significant impact on climate change. Scaling of innovations, as well as mitigations, will require additional steps to create the demand for them. For example, if we wish to increase the use of electric cars, large numbers of charging facilities will need to be built and operated. Or if new technologies enable atomic power plants to be built, tested, and demonstrated to be safe and make much less radioactive waste, a major campaign must be waged to overcome the deeply implanted fears most people have from the disasters at Chernobyl, Fukushima, and other atomic power plant accidents. Regardless of their splendid technologies, without such an effort these plants will not be built.
So we show the generation of innovations as a stage in our ValueMap, which delivers the results to all the providers of values to humans. These innovation generators may be separate units of large companies, or among startups, or universities, or government laboratories.
Here is a list of such potential innovations that, if successful in both technology and demand, could affect many different industries and make major contributions to meeting our CC goal.
In most cases, the spark plug for these innovations is new technologies, some of which, like fusion power, are far out in time and high risk. Where can such technologies originate? Often from new knowledge that comes from the fruits of basic research in academia. So we show this stage in our VM.
Of course, the development of innovations requires funding. Much of it, especially in democratic countries, comes from the growing segment of the private sector that is informed about the need to fight climate change and is committed to it. This segment includes companies, financial institutions, and even philanthropists. They fund both basic or early stage technologies as well as the development of innovations in their later stages. So we show those funding value flows in our VM.
But in addition to funding directly, this private sector segment also has another kind of strong influence on the providers. For example, in recent years, more investment funds, as major stockholders, are demanding not only profitable performance from their companies, but also so-called ESG performance (where ESG stand for Environment, Social, and Governance) with increasingly heavy emphasis on the “E-environment”. They also demand measurements of such performance where possible—to achieve so-called double bottom lines. We show this as an influential value flow.
Another very important, and often larger, source of funding for innovation development in both channels are governments. They are particularly large in countries like the US and the EU, and even larger in China.
But in addition to funding, governments also have a very strong influence encouraging innovation developments by forming laws and regulations, and by taxation of GHG generation or duties on imports that relate to GHG generating products. For example, the US has put limits on future auto gasoline consumption and California has even implemented a cap-and-trade program. Such policies have caused General Motors recently to declare that it will stop producing gas and diesel cars by 2035, and the entire global auto industry is now making heavy investments in the design and development of electric vehicles. So we show this influential value flow as well.
But it’s not only governments and the private sector that can have a strong influence on the value providers. We humans, as consumers, can in many cases have an even stronger influence by selectively buying more products that are known to be working against climate change and for sustainability. As we demonstrated in one of our prior nests, Unilever—a company that designates its sustainable living brands–reported two years ago that sales of those products grew 69 percent faster than their other ones.
And at least in democratic countries, we humans can have a strong influence on government funding and regulations by voting for candidates that strongly support CC innovations.
Lastly, it is clear that in order to meet our CC goal of net zero by 2050, all the countries of the world must work together towards it because we all live on one planet and share the same atmosphere. Following the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference, many issues among the countries remain, such as the nature and extent of enforcement, the equity between rich countries who generated most of the current atmospheric carbon and poor countries, and the respective degree of impact CC will have on different countries. But throughout the world there appears to be increasing awareness of the importance of CC and the needed cooperation and urgency in dealing with it.
I hope you have found the VM perspective on CC useful. You are welcome to offer commentary and suggestions.