The Future (58 page)

Once the fracking fluid has been used, it must be disposed of as toxic wastewater. Often, it is reinjected deep underground in a manner that
has caused multiple small (usually harmless) earthquakes and, on some occasions, is
alleged to have infiltrated water aquifers. Indeed, the disposal of used fracking fluids is a
more common source of complaints than the initial injections that begin the fracking process. In other locations, this used fracking fluid has been stored in large open-air holding ponds that sometimes overflow following heavy rainfalls. It has also at times been
spread on roads, ostensibly for dust control.

Advocates of shale gas argue that there are safety measures that can mitigate many of these problems, although most claim disingenuously that the industry will adopt them voluntarily, in spite of the expense involved. By contrast, the oil and gas industry veteran who pioneered the fracking process, George P. Mitchell of Houston, Texas, has publicly called for more government regulation. “They should have very strict controls. The Department of Energy should do it,” Mitchell told
Forbes
magazine. “If they don’t do it right, there could be trouble.… It’s tough to control these independents. If they do
something wrong and dangerous, they should punish them,” he added.

But even if new safety regulations worked as planned and even if the leakage of methane is tightly controlled, the burning of natural gas still results in an enormous volume of CO
₂
emissions. The fact that these emissions can in theory be brought down to a level that represents only half of the emissions from coal has been used by some advocates of shale gas as a new twist on the old question: is the glass half full or is it half empty? They make the seductive case that switching to gas means we can bring emissions halfway down in the sectors that now rely on coal. But here is the rub: the atmosphere itself is already
full
. The concentrations of global warming pollution are already at dangerous levels.

As a result, solving the climate crisis requires reducing emissions not by a little, but by a lot. We have to begin reducing net additions of greenhouse gases by at least 80 to 90 percent—not 50 percent—in order to ensure that overall concentrations do not exceed
a potential tipping point before starting to decline. Continuing to add additional amounts of greenhouse gases at a rate that far exceeds the slow rate at which CO
₂
is drawn out of the atmosphere by the oceans and the biosphere would push far into the future any possibility of reducing the overall concentration levels. Reliance on gas to “bridge” the time needed to convert to renewables can help, but a longer commitment would, in fact, be tantamount to surrendering in the struggle to ensure that civilization survives.

In some ways, this challenge is similar to what is happening with the depletion of groundwater and topsoil. The natural replenishment of those resources takes place on a timescale far slower than the rate at which they are being depleted by human activities. The natural rate of CO
₂
removal from the atmosphere takes place far more slowly than the rate at which we are adding to the overall concentrations. In all three cases, human activities are causing changes far faster than nature can adjust to them.

The underlying problem is that the new power and momentum of Earth Inc. is colliding violently with and overwhelming the environmental balance of the Earth. The overconsumption of limited resources and the production of unlimited pollution are both inconsistent with the continued functioning of the Earth’s ecological system in a manner that supports the survival of human civilization. As noted earlier, the CO
₂
contained in the “proven reserves” of oil, coal, and gas already on the books of carbon fuel companies and sovereign states exceeds by many times the amount we could safely add to the atmosphere—and the unconventional reserves now starting to be drawn on are potentially even larger.

The shale gas boom in the United States has led to a
frenzy of exploration for shale gas in China, Europe,
Africa, and elsewhere, raising the specter of a long-term global commitment to gas at the longer-term expense of renewables. Nevertheless, production of this resource outside the U.S. has thus far been limited. In China, where geologists believe that the supply may be two and a half times the size of U.S. shale gas reserves, the underground geology requires technologies that are different
from those being used in the U.S., which complicates the option of simply transferring the
U.S. horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies to China. Also, as in the Western United States, the profligate use of water in fracking may impose a limitation on use of the process—
particularly in northern and northwestern China, where water shortages are endemic.

Even so, momentum is building in the global economy toward the full exploitation and production of shale gas. Some analysts make a persuasive case that if “fugitive emissions” are tightly controlled, the substitution of gas for coal might produce a temporary but still significant net reduction in the emissions of greenhouse gasses. In 2012, in what most analysts described as a surprising development, U.S. CO
₂
emissions dropped to their lowest level in twenty years—in part because of the economic slowdown, because of a mild fall and winter, because of more renewable energy use and increases in efficiency, but also because of
the switch from coal to natural gas by electric utilities.

Years ago I was among those who recommended the greater use of conventional natural gas as a bridge fuel to phase out coal use more quickly while solar and wind technologies were produced at sufficient scales to bring their price down even more. However, it is increasingly clear that the net effect of shale gas on the environment may ultimately be inconsistent with its use as a bridge fuel. Global society as a whole would find it difficult to make the enormous investments necessary to switch from coal to gas, and then turn right around and make equally significant investments to substitute renewable technologies for gas. It strains credulity. In other words, it may be a bridge to nowhere.

Not only have the new supplies of shale gas temporarily depressed energy prices to the point where renewable energy technologies have more trouble competing, if the studies showing that there is no net greenhouse gas benefit to switching to shale gas are correct, this might lead to the worst of all possible worlds: huge investments in shale gas diverting money from renewable energy, and a worsening of the climate crisis in the meantime. The only virtue of shale gas is that it is leading to a faster phase-out of coal, at least in the United States.

Coal has the highest carbon content of any fuel and emits the most CO
₂
for each unit of energy it produces. It causes local and regional air pollution, including emissions of nitrous oxide (the leading cause of smog), sulfur dioxide (the continuing cause of acid rain), and toxic pollutants
like arsenic and lead. The burning of coal also leaves huge quantities of toxic sludge—the second largest industrial waste stream in the United States—that is typically pumped to huge lagoons like the one that burst a holding wall and flooded portions of
Harriman, Tennessee, in my home state four years ago.

Of particular importance, coal burning is the
principal source of human-caused mercury in the environment, an extremely toxic pollutant that causes neurological damage, negatively impacting cognitive skills, the ability to focus, memory, and fine motor skills, among other effects. In the United States nearly all fish and shellfish
include at least some amount of methyl-mercury that originated in coal-burning power plants. It is primarily for this reason that many fish and shellfish are considered dangerous in the diets of pregnant women, women who may become pregnant, nursing mothers, and young children. (Since the eating of fish is beneficial for brain development, pregnant women are advised to seek out fish that are low in mercury content and not avoid fish altogether.)

But the worst harm from coal burning is its dominant role in causing global warming. Although public opposition in the U.S. has contributed to
cancellation of 166 new coal plants that had been planned, coal use is still growing rapidly in the world as a whole. An estimated
1,200 new coal plants are now planned in 59 countries. Under current plans, the global use of coal is expected to increase by another
65 percent in the next two decades, replacing oil as the single largest source of energy worldwide.

Coal is considered cheap, primarily because the absurdly distorted accounting system we use for measuring its cost arbitrarily excludes any consideration of all of the harm caused by burning it. Some engineers are working on improvements to a long-known process for converting underground coal reserves into gas that could be brought to the surface as fuel. But even if this technology were to be perfected,
the CO
₂
emissions would continue destroying the Earth’s ecosystem.

Oil, the second largest source of global warming pollution, contains
70 to 75 percent of the carbon in coal for each unit of energy produced. Moreover, most of the projected new supplies of oil—in the form of shale oil, deep ocean drilling, and tar sands (not only in Canada, but also in Venezuela, Russia, and elsewhere)—are considerably
more expensive to produce and carry even harsher impacts for the environment.

Conventional oil is burdened with other problems that coal does not have. Most of the easily recoverable oil in the world is found in regions
such as the Persian Gulf that are politically and socially unstable. Several wars have already been initiated in the Middle East for reasons that include competition for access to oil supplies. And with Iran’s determined effort to develop nuclear weapons, and ongoing political unrest in multiple countries in the region, the strategic threat of losing access to these oil supplies makes the price of oil highly volatile.

Although most of the discussions about reductions of CO
₂
emissions have focused on industrial, utility, and vehicle emissions, it is also important to reduce CO
₂
emissions and enhance CO
₂
sequestration in the agriculture and forestry sectors, which together make up the second largest source of emissions. As the Keeling Curve demonstrates, the amount of CO
₂
contained in vegetation, particularly trees, is enormous. It is roughly equal to
three quarters of the amount in the atmosphere.

The largest tropical forest, the Amazon, has been under assault from developers, loggers, cattle ranchers, and subsistence farmers for decades, and even though the government of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took effective measures to slow down the destruction of the Amazon,
his successor has made policy changes that are reversing some of the progress, though the rate of deforestation fell in 2012. In the last decade, the Amazon region was hit hard in 2005 and again in 2010 by “once-in-a-century” droughts (or rather, by what used to be once-in-a-century droughts before human modification of the climate). This led some forest researchers to renew their concern about a controversial computer model projection that has predicted the possibility of a
dramatic “dieback” of the Amazon by mid-century if temperatures continue rising.

An increasing amount of the world’s CO
₂
emissions are coming from the cutting, drying, and intentional burning of peat forests and peat lands—especially in
Indonesia and Malaysia—in order to establish palm oil plantations. According to the United Nations Environment Programme,
peatlands contain more than one third of all the global soil carbon. Although both governments have given lip service to efforts to rein in this destructive practice, endemic corruption has undermined their stated goals. Extremely poor governance practices are among the chief causes of deforestation almost everywhere it is occurring—partly because
80 percent of global forest cover is in publicly owned forests.

Tropical forests are also under assault in central and south-central Africa—particularly in Sudan and Zambia, and the Southeast Asian archipelago—including areas in
Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Borneo,
and the Philippines. In many tropical countries, the increased demand for meat in the world’s diet has contributed greatly to the clearing of forests for ranching—
especially cattle ranching. As noted in
Chapter 4
, the growing meat intensity of diets around the world has an especially large impact on land use because each pound of animal protein requires the consumption of more than seven pounds of plant protein.

The enormous northern boreal forests in Russia, Canada, Alaska, Norway, Sweden, and Finland (and parts of China, Korea, and Japan) are also at great risk. Recent reestimates of the amount of carbon stored in these forests—not only in the trees, but also in the deep soils, which include many carbon-rich peatlands—calculate that
as much as 22 percent of all carbon stored on and in the Earth’s surface is in these boreal forests.

In Russia’s boreal forest—by far the largest continuous expanse of trees on the planet—the larch trees that used to predominate are disappearing and are being replaced by spruce and fir. When the needles of the larch fall in the winter, unlike those of the spruce and fir, the sunlight passing through the barren limbs is reflected by the snow cover back into space, keeping the ground frozen. By contrast, when the conifer needles stay on the trees and absorb the heat energy from the sunlight, temperatures at ground level increase, thus accelerating the melting of the snow and the thawing of the tundra. The intricate
symbiosis between the larch and the tundra is thereby disrupted, causing both to disappear. Millions of similar symbiotic relationships in nature are also being disrupted.

Although some Canadian provinces have impressive policies requiring sustainable forestry and limiting the damage from logging operations, Russia does not. And in both Russia and North America, the forests are being ravaged by the impact of global warming on droughts, fires, and insects. Beetles have expanded their range as average temperatures have increased, and have multiplied quickly as the number of cold snaps that used to hold them back has diminished. In many areas they are now
reproducing three generations per summer rather than one. In the last decade, more than 27 million acres (110,000 square kilometers) of forests in the Western U.S. and Canada have been devastated by what the United Nations biodiversity experts described as “an
unprecedented outbreak of the mountain pine beetle.”