Time is running out (Ain't it always?)

While the U.S. Senate's sense of urgency on the climate change front wanes, a new campaign originating on the other side of rapidly warming pond is urging us all to get with the program by cutting our emissions sooner rather than later. This is obviously a good idea from a scientific point of view, but what are its chances of success?

The 10:10 campaign draws on the always-obvious-when-you-think-about-it, but until recently largely ignored, fact that it matters very much how quickly we reduce the carbon emissions that are trapping all the extra heat in the atmosphere and oceans. A pair of papers in Nature earlier this year made it clear that there is a finite amount of carbon that the ecosystem can absorb before global average temperatures exceed a critical threshold beyond which the chances of maintaining a comfortable living environment dwindle precipitously.

According to theses analyses, at current emissions rates, we have only a few decades left before we will have exhausted that carbon quota. So we can either continue with business as usual for another 30 or 40 years and then cease all emissions overnight, or we can start the process of bringing an end to the fossil-fuel era now and then gradually, but aggressively, bring down those emissions toward zero. The latter approach is the only rational one, of course. But that fact doesn't seem to have registered with those who are making policy decisions in most countries.

For example, the ACES (Waxman-Markey) bill, the one that the U.S. Senate may not even be able to pass before the December Copenhagen conference, delays real cuts in emissions for more than a decade, and has no significant targets until 2050. By that point, of course, it will be far too late. And yet, anything stronger will attract even few senators' support. And their heads are not the only inhabitants of the subterranean desert. To avoid charges of plagiarism, I'll lift George Monbiot's metaphor:

None of this is currently on the table. The targets and methodology being used by governments and the United Nations - which will form the basis for their negotiations at Copenhagen - are not even wrong; they are irrelevant. Unless there is a radical change of plan between now and December, world leaders will not only be discussing the alignment of deckchairs on the Titanic, but hotly disputing whose deckchairs they really are and who has the responsibility for moving them. Fascinating as this argument may be, it does nothing to alter the course of the liner.

Enter the 10:10 campaign, which calls for individuals, business, government -- everyone, really -- to put in place plans to cut emissions by 10 percent in 2010. If this can be accomplished, and if it can be repeated every year or two for the next couple of decades, then we might, just might, be able to forestall the worst of catastrophic climate change.

There are those who despair that we've already left things too late and that such efforts are doomed to failure because emissions are the wrong target. They're just a symptom of rapacious consumption and slavish devotion to the gods of economic growth. Maybe. But surely if cutting back by 10 percent on our fossil-fuel emissions is science fiction, then dumping capitalism in a decade or two is safely in the realm of fantasy.

Overwhelming odds are rarely a good excuse for not trying. I concede that it will be challenging in the extreme for my family to cut our emissions ANOTHER 10 percent. We've already spent considerable sums purchasing one of the most efficient heat pumps, clothes washers, and lightbulbs, I work from home, and so on. By some online calculations, our emissions are already less than half the national average -- a figure that says far more about wasteful habits elsewhere than frugality in our house and hints at massive potential reductions with little effort..

But those us who have been paying attention for the past few years aren't the main target of 10:10, and even the 10 percent cut isn't the ultimate goal, as Kevin Anderson, ddrector of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and the campaign's designated climatology expert, explains:

If the 10:10 campaign triggers a collective momentum towards long-lasting low carbon lifestyles, it will offer much more benefit than the direct emissions reductions it achieves - important though these are. A widespread acknowledgment of the scale of the challenge coupled with meaningful actions will provide a political mandate for effective low-carbon polices that it is difficult for decision-makers to ignore.

I'd like to see our overlords at SEED magazine commit to reducing it's carbon footprint by 10 percent next year, regardless of past efforts. Having seen its relatively spartan New York offices, I know that won't be easy, but it should be possible. As for me, I'll do what I can, and report back over the course of the year, which is still four months away, so there plenty of time to explore the options.

My only complaint about 10:10 is a curious lack of consistency on the part of one of its founders, Franny Armstrong, who is also the filmmaker behind the new climate change quasi-documentary The Age of Stupid. Despite having been released more than five months ago in the U.K, it won't be screen in the U.S. until Sept. 21. Where's the sense of urgency the underlies the 10:10 campaign? Months have been frittered away while one of the better efforts at pushing both emotional and logical buttons on the global warming issue has been denied to the most important audience on the planet. Armstrong's non-answer, delivered in a Skype call to a few members of The Climate Project back in May, merely begged the question and passed the buck to others involved in the distribution process.

Ironically, it may be too late for her excellent film to have any real impact. The 10:10 campaign needs better luck.