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The Broader Picture

When it comes to taking environmental actions, it is imperative to look at a broader picture of the environmental situation at hand. For the past decade or so politicians have been under pressure to deal with all kinds of environmental issues “because something needs to be done” as they say. Politician often act under this pressure and make decisions that have dramatic effects on the environment, and not necessarily as planned. The following cases offers the lesson of that what politician’s rule on environmental issues should be; don’t just do something.

Cars will continue to be part of our lives – deal with it

Along with housing the household car is probably one of the biggest investments of the modern-day family. Cars offer the freedom most people appreciate and are often fundamental in improving the quality of one’s life. Cars rate high on the priority list of almost everyone at some point in their life, despite of being relatively expensive. Still, many politicians go out of their way to hinder car ownership by heavy taxes. In the name of the environment.

True, cars do have impact on the environment. There is the carbon dioxide (CO2) emission, soot and noise. The CO2 debate that started two decades ago has led to extremely high taxes on petrol in Europe. But trying to tax away the negative side of the private car is not likely to reduce cars on the street (for the reasons already mentioned) but has led to different kind of environmental problems and more threatening to the human health. Taxing CO2 emission favours diesel fuel over petrol. In Iceland excise duties on vehicles are also linked to CO2 emission, making diesel cars more economic than petrol car. The downside to that is that diesel car’s emission, relatively low as it is in CO2 is high in NOX which is said to be the cause of premature deaths in densely populated areas. Now politicians are reflecting on the option to take another “something must be done” approach and start taxing diesel fuel and diesel cars heavily. After having diverted consumer to diesel cars and lured manufactures into investing more in the development of the diesel engine, the regulator now threatens to punish all association with the diesel. If only the regulator had just let the consumers be in the first place. Who knows what kind of development the petrol car would have undergone by now giving the fact that it in spite of hostile regulatory environment the average petrol car is improving dramatically each year and becoming less and less polluting. The reason for that is not taxation but the general consumer’s demand for more efficiency.

Before solving a problem, define the problem

Everyone is eager to support the Paris Climate Change commitment by reducing CO2 emissions. But how? Each country is now in the progress of putting together its agenda and surely there will be different approaches in different countries. But it is fair to state that the general political debate in Europe has had transport heavily under fire. That is a bit odd considering that transport from passenger cars only contributes roughly 12% of all EU greenhouse gas emission. Some politicians are even eager to make a rapid shift to electric transportation in spite of electricity production being one of the contributor of the remaining 78% of the greenhouse gas emission (though not in Iceland or Norway). Here, a politician needs to look at the bigger picture. In Iceland, the broad picture might be different from those of other countries. Still it serves as an example. 

In Iceland wetlands are the biggest store of carbon on land. As a result of government subsidies in the last century a vast amount of the wetlands was drained in order to make cropland. Only 15% of the drained wetlands has however be turned into useful cropland.

By draining the wet soils containing high organic carbon content, access is given to atmospheric oxygen. The carbons accumulated in the soil for centuries are therefore oxidized. The oxidation leads to formation of vast amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Draining and degradation of wetlands turns them into a net source of greenhouse gas emissions. And this goes on for decades and centuries.

In the case of Iceland, the annual emissions from the wetlands alone are 72% of the of the annual anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, leaving the country’s automobiles with less than 4% and the big fishing fleet with only 3%. At the same time politicians in Iceland are fixated on reducing CO2 emissions from cars. In addition to heavy taxation mentioned earlier the EU now mandates a minimum level of renewable energy at every sales point of fuel. In Iceland, this has led to a subsidized imports and blending of ethanol and other biofuels to gasoline and diesel fuel with dubious environmental results. Even if we believed the 5% blending of expensive biofuels reduced CO2 emissions by 5%, the overall reductions for Iceland would only be 0,2%. At the same time 85% of the drained wetlands is just waiting there to be restored, which is estimated to cut the total annual CO2 emissions by more than half.

The Kyoto protocol has up until 2013 been somewhat indifferent on the emission figures for drained wetlands. According to the protocol, emissions from wetlands drained before 1990 are not included in national emission figures. This flaw in the protocol became apparent after the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) agreed in 2013, upon Iceland’s initiative, to take into account restoration of wetlands when estimating reduction in submission of greenhouse gases. Restoring wetlands can now rightly be counted as an offset to meet national targets even if emissions from drained wetlands are still not included in emission numbers.

The lesson to learn from this is that when deciding on a policy, especially when it entails relocation of resources by taxation, it is imperative to take into account all the relevant facts and not let the end justify the means. Those who are really serious about reducing greenhouse gas emission should be looking into the predominant causes of emission and tackle the problem at its roots. War on car owners and the free market in general has highly distorted the task at hand.