An Atmosphere of Concern: My Summer at the Climate Change Group

Ari Phillips: Atmosphere of Concern

During the course of my ten-week internship last year, Asia gained nearly one million new urban residents. Many of these urbanites moved into freshly constructed, high-energy consuming buildings that help make up a building sector accountable for one-third of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Over the next twenty years, China alone will add as many as 350 million urban residents to its population—more people than live in the United States—and will build the equivalent of ten New York Cities’ worth of skyscrapers. And GHGs, which are the main cause of climate change, will continue to gather with greater frequency up above the skyline.

This atmosphere of concern weighs heavily on the researchers in the Climate Change group at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), where I lived and worked in the summer of 2011. My colleagues—who included another American, a Filipino, an Indian, a Chinese ex-pat, and a dozen or so Japanese—and I spent our days in this glass-paned, spaceship-like building in the small town of Hamaya about an hour south of Tokyo, trying to reconcile the facts of rapid development in Asia with those of gradual climate change around the globe. We sat in our cubicles drinking milk tea and noshing on whatever treats had been most recently provided by a colleague returned from a business trip, and we pondered how the world can brave these twenty-first century challenges. We contemplated the more than 160 cities with one million-plus people in China, we considered the heated atmosphere these and other sources of GHGs will create, and then—once we’d settled down—we got to work, keeping in mind the last bus left at 10:48 p.m., lest we miss it have to take a taxi into town or spend the night at the institute.

IGES was founded in 1998 by the Japanese government with a mandate to conduct research toward realizing sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific region. It has determined that three issues are of critical importance at this stage: climate change, natural resource management, and sustainable production and consumption. The 100-odd researchers there are divided into groups and split into two large rooms splayed out in a semicircle of cubicles overlooking the Sagami Bay and beyond that Mount Fuji. On either side of the Climate Change group are the Market Mechanism and the Natural Resource Management groups. On the other end of the semicircle are the Sustainable Production and Consumption, Governance and Capacity, and Economy and Environment groups. Somewhere within the cubicle grid are other mini-groups dealing with adaptation, water, and forest conservation, and general project management. IGES also has satellite centers in southern Japan, Beijing, and Bangkok that conduct regional research.

I was given the opportunity to work for a summer at IGES because of an email that circulated through my graduate school program at the University of Texas notifying students of an internship position. (My supervisor at IGES, Dr. Zusman, or Eric san, also went to the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at UT Austin.) I first spoke with Eric about the internship two weeks before the earthquake on March 11. With the ensuing chaos and mass exodus of foreigners I doubted I would hear from him again. But three weeks later he called and said that I was still welcome at IGES. Aside from certain items missing from store shelves—eggs, milk, bread—and infrequent disruptions in public transportation, things were settling down. He anticipated that by June work would be back to business as usual.

ONE OF Dr. Zusman’s main projects at IGES involves working on the co-benefits of climate change mitigation. This more or less entails merging development goals with GHG emissions reductions. For instance, if you build a subway system in place of a highway you will not only reduce GHG emissions, but also limit local air pollution and reduce congestion. Co-benefits can entice governments in developing countries to pursue environmentally friendly policies they otherwise wouldn’t have. Telling developing countries they need to reduce their GHG emissions often leads to prolonged debate and scant progress, but making policymakers and other stakeholders feel they can benefit from such action can ideally lead to win-win outcomes. Development—economic or otherwise—is generally viewed as a positive indicator, and nary a local policymaker wants to indicate otherwise by slowing local growth for global health.

This may not sound groundbreaking, but it’s rare that policymakers pursue policies with more than one target or benefit. It’s politically easier to set a single goal to achieve: use this much energy; build this many train lines; reduce emissions by x percent. It’s also easier to analyze the impact of a single-target policy than one with multiple variables. Co-benefits themselves are often difficult to quantify, so generating measurable and verifiable data can be frustrating. And without reliable results demonstrating the effectiveness of a co-benefit policy, policymakers will be wary of taking it on. Given that they can also avoid tough-to-meet targets altogether and opt instead for easy actions with big payoffs—“low-hanging fruit”—or simply do little at all, getting co-benefits into the policy agenda and from there into government-backed measures is a formidable pursuit. And the policies still need to be implemented, enforced in the private sector, and explained to the public.

For some time the Climate Change group worked on transportation benefits, but by the time I arrived the focus shifted to the building sector in Asia. If you’re going to save the world from devastating climate change you’re going to need to do something about the building sector, especially in Asia, and especially in China. Buildings account for around 40 percent of global energy use and approximately one-third of GHG emissions. In China, buildings currently account for 25 percent of total energy use, but by 2020 this percent is expected to rise quickly to 35 percent. In 2008, China produced 1.4 billion tons of cement, about half the world’s total. By 2025, China will have 221 cities with more than a million inhabitants. Europe currently has just thirty-five. If current trends continue, by 2030 China will have 1 billion urban residents. China and the world’s other developing countries will contribute 97 percent of the growth in global GHG emissions from now until 2030.

(I could go on, but at this point I’d only be emitting unnecessary fumes.)

There is a silver lining to this ominous fact-cloud. Through increased efficiency alone, the building sector can achieve up to a 29 percent emissions cut below projected levels by 2020, at no extra cost. Studies have indicated that savings in energy use for new buildings could be up to 75 percent higher than in existing buildings through changes in design and operation, thus making new buildings the largest potential energy-saving industry.

The infrastructural decisions China makes over the next ten years—during which time it is projected to build the equivalent of America’s entire building stock—will determine the country’s GHG emissions, energy efficiency, and sustainable behavior in the decades ahead, and help determine the trajectory of one of the biggest global challenges of this century.

JUST BEFORE bed one night, as I was coaxing myself to sleep with the last few sips from a sake juice box, I felt a woozy rush, as if someone had drugged my drink. I came to attention and focused on the string for the window blinds, swaying slightly. Then I felt a wave pass underneath me. I stood up, put on a t-shirt, and prepared either to hide under the desk or run outside. No matter how many times I played through it in my head, I couldn’t decide whether I’d duck for cover or run for open air if a big earthquake struck. Luckily that decision could wait; this was just a 6.1.

Google “Japan earthquake tracker” and you get a real-time update of earthquakes in the country. The day after the 6.1 tremor there were around ten, same with the day before and the day before that. Most are small, one or two on the Richter scale, but I felt several above six. I can only imagine what going through a 9.1 must be like. A coworker who was in Japan at the time told me, “I thought I was going to die.” On March 11, ubiquitously referred to here as 3/11, the entire Market Mechanism group was at a meeting in a high-rise in Tokyo. When the earthquake hit, they hit the stairs running. A few minutes later it was over and they were outside, but the building was still swaying. That’s one thing that’s hard to imagine even after hearing a first-person account: a skyline swaying back and forth after being thundered to life by the earth below.

But earthquakes rumble through the blood of the Japanese, whose culture has been nurturing an internal disaster-response system for centuries. What they weren’t prepared for was the ensuing nuclear disaster and meltdown, which tested the resolve of this island nation like nothing since the Second World War.

Like other East Asian countries, Japan imports most of its energy resources. In a fast-growing world of limited fossil fuels, this implies a lack of energy security. Japan had a plan to address this that involved increasing nuclear power production from 30 percent of domestic electricity supply to 50 percent over the next thirty years. That plan has gone with the radioactive wind.

I didn’t fully realize the political and cultural impact of the nuclear disaster until I arrived in Japan and experienced firsthand the resounding public desire to shelf nuclear power. I thought maybe the radioactive scare could be isolated and overcome through increased safety measures and technological advances. But when the contamination is just a few hours away; when you vaguely consider it before eating fresh fish or going out in the rain; when you mull over all the other nuclear power plants nearby and all the other potential disasters waiting to happen at the will of God—or of a giant catfish, which many Japanese used to believe caused earthquakes—then you start to draw different conclusions.

Now that the recovery is underway and the disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Power Plant appears to have been contained, the debate in the Japanese Diet (parliament) is over the nation’s energy plan going forward. Japan is a leader in energy efficiency and climate change mitigation, with government-funded institutions such as IGES doing much of the legwork. The Kyoto Protocol came into being in Japan (and will die somewhere else). Japanese GHG emissions per capita are far below many other developed countries. There are something like twelve different recycling categories. Eco-cities are abundant. The train system is amazing. Litter is nonexistent. The country has a target of reducing GHG emissions by 25 percent by 2020.

At least for now. The recent devastation presents a significant setback to this goal. Many people want to scale back that commitment and focus instead on recovery, economic growth, and a reduced reliance on nuclear power. But other people see a unique opportunity to redefine energy policy in Japan, and perhaps even beyond its shores. To aid policymakers in their post-crisis decision-making, researchers at IGES are vigorously generating Japanese energy scenarios spanning the next forty years. Policymakers will have to navigate the consensus-based Japanese political system in search of an agreeable solution. Just as Chinese leaders try to balance rapid near-term growth and long-term sustainability, in Japan near-term development and recovery issues must be weighed against national and international longevity concerns. With climate change, the balancing act is between the local and the global.

During the summer I spent in Japan, the same dynamic was playing out in Texas, as officials attempted to deal with an unprecedented drought and the hottest summer on record: local effects from global causes. Who is responsible, and who should pay, for what? In Texas we chose to ignore the important questions and deal with the problem by praying for rain, at the governor’s sage suggestion.

There’s no easy route out of the energy fix in Japan, let alone the global crisis of climate change. A solution requires innovation and collaboration from all parties. At IGES researchers are working feverishly to address these challenges domestically, while onlookers await the course of action Japan will pursue as it emerges from this tumultuous period. The decisions made today will influence domestic energy and environmental policy for decades to come. This in turn will help steer the decisions of tomorrow made by developing countries such as China, where the stakes—just like the buildings—are ever higher and faster growing. If Japan puts renewable energy reform on the fast track and develops technological advances and pre-tested policies, then China might feel more inclined to emulate it and embrace more environmentally friendly policies.

JUST LIKE the rest of the Tokyo metropolitan area, IGES had to cut back on energy use last summer. This meant that once or twice a week my zone in the semicircle cubicle array went without air conditioning. On one of those days, it was stiflingly hot. It was windy outside though, and I could easily imagine the pleasant breeze cutting across my face and evaporating the slow-rolling beads of sweat just before they plunged onto my keyboard. But I couldn’t feel any breeze, because the windows in the workspace didn’t open.

Throughout the day my coworkers and I found places to gather and commiserate about the situation. Japanese, Indians, Chinese, Americans—all convening to vent about the unfortunate design of the building’s windows and the suffocating heat. Then we went back to our desks, lamenting the poor infrastructural decisions being made across China and the inevitability of rising temperatures across the globe.

And once again I was reminded that in the world we live in, the global is the local is the global. It’s all one big atmosphere of concern.

Ari Phillips is a dual-degree master’s student in global policy studies and journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written for the Austin-American Statesman, n+1, the Texas Observer, Willamette Week, and other publications. His focus is on energy and environmental reporting.

Photo: IGES building in Hayama, Japan (courtesy of the author)