The God Species_ How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans - Mark Lynas [105]
Some caveats are again in order. I have no way of knowing how influential Green critics actually were in holding back the rise of the voluntary carbon market, or how many millions of stoves offsetting companies—like JP Morgan ClimateCare, which runs a successful stoves project in Uganda—would have been able to install if the environmental movement had been supportive from the beginning. My impressions are anecdotal not empirical. Globally, the voluntary carbon market’s overall value actually fell between 2008 and 2009, from $419 million to $338 million,37 but this drop was probably mainly due to the economic recession. Also, some of the early criticisms were correct in that not all carbon offsets sold—particularly those based on questionable tree-planting schemes—were likely to mop up all the carbon emitted elsewhere.
Some environmental groups also deserve praise for playing a constructive role in helping the new industry meet the highest standards: WWF, for example, was involved in designing an industry “gold standard” for carbon offsets. But I still often receive emails from people who are worried that they might be ripped off and want to ask whether offsetting is worthwhile. My answer is an unhesitating “Yes”: Anyone—everyone—who cares about the climate should offset the entirety of their emissions each year (not just those from flying) and ensure wherever possible that their money goes toward projects that benefit both the climate and the world’s poor.
SULFUROUS SUNSHADE
Taking aerosols as a whole, the world was at its dirtiest from the 1950s to the 1970s. By reducing incoming sunshine, sulfur, carbon, and other particles in the atmosphere caused “global dimming,” which significantly cooled the Earth’s climate. Some cold winters during these decades were even frigid enough to convince early climatologists that a new ice age might be on its way.38 But as the West became wealthier, its inhabitants—forming the nascent environmental movement in the early 1970s—began to demand that acid rain, smog, and other forms of air pollution be controlled. In the U.S., regulation culminated in the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, which set up a successful “cap and trade” program to reduce sulfur emissions from American power stations. In Europe, progressively tighter regulation in the 1980s and 1990s has now reduced sulfur emissions by two-thirds, and in some advanced countries by more than 80 percent since 1990.39 Humanity’s progress in reducing these aerosols can even be tracked by looking at the moon, where “earthshine” shows up more brightly when our atmosphere is more polluted and therefore more reflective.40
Aerosol pollution, like many environmental problems, is being solved not by reductions in consumption but by technology. In common with water pollution, air pollution tends to reduce as economies grow and people get more prosperous. There is no doubt that the benefits of cleaner air are many, including the reduction in acid rain, improvements in human health, and the reduction also in the negative climatic effects of aerosol pollution like the extended droughts suffered by North Africa in the last century. But one effect of aerosol pollution was undoubtedly positive, in that it held off global warming for several decades after the Second World War. Once pollution controls began to bite, however, temperatures began inexorably to rise in response: Between 1985 and 2002 temperatures over land rose ten times as fast as during the previous two decades.41
All of this is evidence of climatic management by humanity, but to date this intervention has been conducted unawares as a consequence of other activities. The central argument of this book, however, is that humanity is today powerful enough, and increasingly knowledgeable enough, to begin to take a more intelligent