The Earth Fights Back

Thomas Malthus (1798) asserted that once population reached its tipping point, such that it exceeded Earth's capacity, certain 'checks' would come into play. These 'checks' included 'positive checks'; natures way of returning to a point at which it can cope, through disasters such as war, disease and famine. Everyone has by now heard about climate change causing rising sea levels and increasing severity and frequency of floods. However, climate change is also thought to have led to an increase of magnitude and frequency of weather related disasters, as shown by The Economist (2012) graph below:

In 2011, Smith asserted that 2010 was the wettest and hottest year recorded since records began in 1880. In the US and Europe, seasonal records were broken by snowstorms. The following US summer of 2011 saw a hot and dry summer, leading to a record-breaking number of wildfires.

Figure 1

What does this mean for the economy? It means increased investment in adaptation to such weather events. In the wake of many weather related disasters, there is often damage to various buildings and infrastructure. To increase our capacity to cope with an increasing frequency and magnitude of natural disasters, governments need to invest in innovation into building robust and stable frameworks for infrastructures and buildings. If they don’t, they construction sector may transform into the re-construction sector. In Figure 1, Ward and Ranger (2010) show the trend in global economic losses for weather related losses between 1980 and 2009, peaking in 2005.

Figure 2

Ernst & Young (2015) state that in 2014, 980 natural catastrophes worldwide resulted in insurance claims of over US$31 billion. They also suggest hurricane winds have the potential to increase by 5% over the next 20 years, which could lead to an increase of up to 40% in property insurance losses. Furthermore, in Figure 2, Swiss Re (2015) show that globally, a significant proportion of countries have experienced growth in real premiums

It come as no surprise that extreme weather events compounded with exponential population growth, has put a real strain on both water and food security. This has led to food and water scarcity in some regions. For example, NASA shows that the Aral Sea has experienced a surface area decline of about 75% and a volume decline of about 90% since 1977:

Naturally, this puts stress on regions that use the Aral Sea. However, the UN distribution map (Figure 3) shows that globally, freshwater availability is unevenly distributed.

Figure 3

Therefore, countries can share water resources, but of course, for a price. The Global Water Intelligence’s 2010 report asserted that approximately US$571 billion dollars needs to be spent annually to meet rising demand (Jowit, 2010). This may lead to development and innovations in the water industry to distribute water more equally. Here, Dalin et al (2011) show that virtual water flows have continued to increase over the past 20 years:


Every aspect of climate change, combatting it and mitigation against its effects, seem to have various affects on different markets. So what next? I’ve spoken about economic markets emerging to accommodate our appetites sustainably, however, I’ve not spoken about changing our appetites to accommodate our surroundings. What about changing ourselves? That's not a question that crosses many of our minds, but if we did this to our Earth, surely we have some responsibility to correct ourselves. Perhaps the ultimate solution lies in stopping in our tracks and taking a good look in the mirror. As a species, we are so used to changing everything around us for our needs and our desires; what would happen to the economy if we completely transformed our materialistic and exploitative hunger? This is what next post will focus on. Stay tuned!

Biodiversity... Or Not?

Steffen et al. (2015) assert that biosphere integrity has exceeded its planetary boundary. Unfortunately, as per usual, humans are the most likely culprits here. We are involved in a number processes that lead to a reduction in biodiversity, to name a few:

Plastic dumping

• Ingestion of plastics has led to a decline in particular Mediterranean species:
  o   54 less Loggerhead Mediterranean turtles (Bugoni et al. 2001)
  o   171 less Mediterranean birds across 9 species (Codina-García et al. 2013)

• Entanglement
  o   Possible 10,000 Fur Seals on Bird Island, Georgia had suffered from entanglement, which would’ve caused restricted movement and thus possible death from starvation. (Croxall et al. 1990)
  o   62 Gannet Birds in Grassholm, Wales entangled each year (Votier et al 2011)

• Absorption of pollutants
  o   Plastics can also be carriers of pollutants such as Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs). Evidence of PCBs have been found in Great Shearwater birds and may have a damaging effect on them
  
  

Pollution from industrial chemical dumping

• Oil and Petroleum is very harmful to marine life and can greatly reduce biodiversity. The Gulf of Mexico British Petroleum oil spill had several impacts on various species (Biological diversity report, 2011):
  o   82,000 birds of 102 species injured or dead
  o   6,165 sea turtles injured or dead
  o   25,900 marine mammals injured or dead
• A rare species of Iguana on a Galapagos Island fell from 25,000 to 10,000 after a coastal oil spill (Revkin 2002)

What does this mean for us? Well, firstly it means less interesting wild marine life to see. It also means less marine animals available for us to consume and should we consume unhealthy marine animals, it may also have health impacts on us. As more marine species populations go into decline, there are less marine creature for other marine life to feed on, which may lead to starvation and trophic crash. As we can see from this Steffen et al. graph below, marine fish capture is already beginning to decline, which begs the question: have we already reached the peak?

The Living Planet Index shows a 39% decline in marine species between 1970 and 2010. Eutrophication, an increase in nutrients in an environment, can lead to the death of zooplankton, fish and shellfish due to their sensitivity to oxygen; this can then lead to trophic crash and a regime shift to an alternative stable state (WHO, 2002).

Due to these issues, there has been a rise in the demand for marine management and aquaculture (aquatic farming). Here, Schröder shows how the aquaculture market has grown over the past 30 years:

Steffen et al. also demonstrates how shrimp aquaculture along has seen a shocking level of growth over the same time period:

As more marine life becomes endangered, there has been increased investment in protecting marine habitats and species. An ever-increasing human population and an arguably declining marine population has led to a rise in demand and a fall in supply for aquatic organisms. This has led to exponential growth of the aquaculture market, as seen above, which is expected to reach over $195 billion by 2019 (Marine Water, Freshwater and Brackish Water, 2013). 

A Global Effort

From the previous posts, we can clearly see that we can harness the Earth’s natural resources and elements to produce energy sustainably. There are other forms of energy such as nuclear power, which can be just as efficient. Nuclear power in particular however, has death risks associated with it, which is why it a very controversial topic. Hydrogen can also be used to create energy, just as NASA uses it to launch space shuttles (NASA, 2010).

Perhaps as well as investment into renewable energies, we also need to look to nuclear power. Nuclear power plants obviously have a lot to offer in terms of energy production, however, the risk of radiation escape is potentially high and life threatening e.g. The Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Radiation is also extremely difficult to contain and dispose of. For this reason, I personally feel that renewable energies should be the most substantial energy source of the future. I do also believe that nuclear power does also have a part to play (however small it may be) in future energy sources.

There are many, many ways to harness energy. To really combat climate change, there needs to be a global effort to do so, and as of 2020, there will be! In the COP21 negotiations, 187 countries agreed to emission reduction commitments, including USA, Russia and China (Mabey, 2015). This undoubtedly means more investment into alternative energy sources and exponential growth for the renewable energy market. Feel free to have a look at the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions here.

What About the Earth?

Air, Fire, Water… What am I missing? Ah yes, Earth. Earth refers to the substances that create the environment around us. So how can we harness these substances to provide us with energy? Well, there are various different ways, but the main types are through:

• Bioenergy – burning decaying waste or organic material (biomass e.g. plants, wood) to produce energy such as heat and electricity. Only sustainable if organic material used is replanted and replaced.
• Geothermal Energy – This harnesses energy from earth’s natural heat through volcanoes. Water is fed underground in volcanic regions. Water is heated until it turns into steam, which then drives turbines.

Energy such as geothermal, is naturally renewable as it does not require depleting any of the earth’s resources. However, bioenergy does deplete biomass resources and thus to be sustainable and renewable, biomass needs continual replacement. For this reason, biomass may be more maintenance than other energy sources. However, this has not necessarily deterred nations from investing in bioenergy. In Kenya, there is a significant developing bioenergy market, particularly for SMEs (World Bank, 2014). The East African region in particular, is expected to receive an investment of $2.4 billion, $1.4 billion of which will be accessible to SMEs. The developing world however does face significant barriers to entry in the bioenergy market in terms of funding and skills. The following two World Bank graphs illustrate the investment into and the value of the clean tech market in East Africa.

Notice that the geothermal energy market is quite large in East Africa. This is largely due to the 18 active volcanoes in the region (US Geological Survey, 1999). The biofuel and bioenergy market however, is indeed existent, and receiving investment. Other energy sources such as geothermal are preferred to bioenergy in regions such as East Africa, as they can capitalise on their natural resources. Despite the fact that geothermal energy is the cheapest energy resource at 5 cents per kWh, and biomass is only 10 cents per kWh, in terms of efficiency, both biomass and geothermal energy are quite low down on the list...

Nonetheless, this IEA Pie Chart below shows that in 2012, biofuels actually accounted for 10% of the global energy market:

Furthermore, of the US renewable energy market in 2010, biomass energy accounts for more than half of energy consumption  (EIA, 2011). Despite these energy sources not being entirely efficient, they are receiving significant investment. In particular, these energy sources could be invaluable to capitalise on if the geographical region has an abundance of resources to use. These regions tend to be developing regions, which are still exploited for their natural resources through neo-colonial relations. Perhaps this is a market which developing nations can really capitalise on and gain a unique advantage which former colonial powers cannot exploit.