Four conclusions of a warming world.

The room is alive with conversation, cervezas, and Mexican folk music. At Frida restaurant, a small Mexican eatery in Toronto, a group of environmental, political, and social actors have gathered for an informal discussion over tortillas and guacamole.  The evening’s guest of honour is Gwynne Dyer - journalist, military historian, and soothsayer - and his topic of discussion is the end of the world as we know it.

Gwynne Dyer’s Climate Wars presents vivid hypothetical descriptions of the geopolitical aftermath of a warming globe, sits on stage with a glass of red wine, joking that the alcohol is all that keeps him afloat in the midst of so much doom and gloom. But the laughs following Dyer’s playful quips are soon quieted by the seriousness of his message.

“This started for me a couple of years ago, when I realised that the American military was getting very interested in climate change,” he begins. “They were doing it presumably because their job is to find out what threats there are to the United States- and they were beginning to see some.” This realization inevitably led Dyer to extensively interview the world’s leading scientists, policy makers, and military Generals about the practical implications of a warming planet. After a few years,

Dyer came to four conclusions about climate change. The look on his face tells us they are not happy ones.

His first conclusion –the numbers are wrong.

The figures presented to global senior policy makers concerning carbon emissions and climate change are vast underestimations, giving us an over-confident sense of timing, he says. “Every single scientist I have talked to in any country thinks the numbers are wrong. They think they are far too conservative, and that things are moving much faster.”

According to Dyer, this means that current goals set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of 80 per cent cuts in emissions by 2050 will be insufficient. Instead, he says we need to be seeing 100 per cent cuts by 2035 to avoid entering into what Dyer refers to as “the point of no return”.

The second conclusion – the Generals are right.

“When the warming becomes greater, we will see huge disruptions to the normal course of political and geopolitical business,” he insists. “There will be a global shortage of food, which will probably lead to failed states, climate refugees, and in some cases to wars.”

The waiters clear away our plates. It is hard to overlook the irony of dining on Mexican food in the context of an uncertain future that, according to Dyer, could see Mexico and other equatorial countries in the throes of ecological devastation. The lingering aromas of Poblano peppers and barbacoa are soft reminders of our privileged position. After a short pause, Dyer continues with his third conclusion.

“There is a point of no return, and we’re probably going to blow right through it.”

Dyer believes this is the point where global temperatures reach two degrees Celsius warmer than levels recorded at the beginning of the industrial revolution. “It is the point at which we lose control of the process,” he says.

The loss of control, according to Dyer, comes with what he calls “feedbacks”, where the warming temperatures trigger natural systems to release additional amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.  To avoid these feedbacks, he insists, it will be necessary to switch from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources in a very short period of time.  Globally speaking, Dyer warns that there will be major political obstacles in achieving this.

“It is unlikely that the necessary deals will happen in time,” he concedes. “The politics are still ferociously difficult, mainly because a small group of rich countries are responsible for almost all of the carbon dioxide that’s in the atmosphere.”

“You can’t go to [the developing world] and say, ‘we are all going to take equal cuts’,” he maintains. “They know that it was us who did this, and we got rich as a result of doing it. Now they want to get rich, but we’ve left them no room in terms of emissions to do so.”

Dyer offers what he calls a fair but “lopsided deal”, where the rich countries take very deep cuts up front – up to 100 per cent cuts in thirty-five to forty years – and the developing countries cap their current emissions. In addition, to allow for further economic growth, Dyer suggests that the developed world should provide financial aid for the installation of clean power technologies in these regions. Responding cynically to his own suggestion, he muses that for a politician, such a platform would be “political suicide”.

Dyer leaves us with some semblance of hope in his fourth and final conclusion.

“There is a way of cheating, and that is geo-engineering.”

For Dyer, cheating our way through climate change is a feasible method of winning valuable time. Geo-engineering involves developing technologies to rapidly lower global temperatures and delay moving through the critical point.

According to Dyer, some ideas in the works include infusing aviation fuel with sulphur dioxide to mimic the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions, or thickening low-lying clouds of the ocean by spraying a fine mist of sea water into the air to reflect more sunlight. 
Such tactics are met with considerable scrutiny, as they are currently untested and unpredictable, a fact that Dyer acknowledges. At Frida, the scrutiny is apparent as some take issue with the fourth conclusion.

“I don’t like to talk about geo-engineering, and I don’t like to talk about adaptation,” José Etcheverry, a professor of Environmental Studies at York University responds. “These stories of climate change tend to leave us with a sense of despair, but I think there are reasons for pragmatic optimism.”

For Etcheverry, this optimism lies in policy solutions at the local, regional, and international levels. He brings to light a recent agreement between 79 countries at a 2009 meeting of the International Renewable Energy Agency as a significant step in the move away from fossil fuels. For him, the answer is in implementing effective “policies that matter”, not technological quick-fixes. Dyer believes we may not have the time to wait for such policy agreements to develop, let alone be implemented.

The discussion period following Dyer’s lecture provides further insight into the issue. There is little dispute in the room about the numbers that Dyer has presented, but opinions with regards to how we should approach them are varied. Someone questions Dyer on his predominantly ‘Western’ approach to development, offering that there may be entirely different frameworks for developing countries to grow within. Another wonders if more responsibility should be placed on corporations, challenging that Dyer focuses too heavily on politics, and has overlooked a key player in his analysis. In the discussion, a specific word continues to come up with regards to Dyer’s conclusions: cynical.

As a response, Dyer reveals that he is far more optimistic than when he started this climate change investigation a few years ago. “Now I can see ways through; not just one, but several ways through,” he assures. “There are parachutes, there are lifelines. We’re not doomed, we’re just in trouble. With a little bit of stick-handling we can make our way through this.”

In a room full of individuals working diligently to solve these problems, Dyer is speaking to the stick-handlers themselves.

As the evening comes to a close, Corporate Knights Editor in Chief Toby Heaps is saying goodbye to Dyer at the door. Heaps playfully questions Dyer about his tentative plans to buy property in Canada’s northeast to avoid the ensuing climate conflicts.

“If all else fails, maybe I’ll see you in Newfoundland,” says Heaps.

“If I see you on my property, I’ll shoot you,” Dyer jokes back.

The nervous laughter of Heaps says it all.