We know that in the grand scheme of things, the actions of one single person don’t matter. But I wanted to check another premise: that there are easy and painless improvements, like thise you cited.

You are a technical person, presumably at ease with numbers. Could you please calculate by what percenrage did your “green policies” reduce your carbon footprint. It’s not personal, it’s speaking of “you” as a typical family.

The three main things are:
1. PV panels.
2. Insulating the attic.
3. Driving a prius.

Let’s forget for a moment of the price and economics.
Could you please calculate by what percenrage you’r (or a typical) carbon footprint is reduced by these three items ?

That was easy. They prohibitted any new oil refineries, power plants, or heavy industry in their beautiful state. Let other people in other states dirty their hands and backyards, to provide the fine people of California with abundant goods.
And a fine lot of good did it do to the global environment too…

Joe: “Sure it requires trillions over the next century. ”
But I thought the tipping point is near, max 10-15 years away. What do you mean: “the next century” ?

b) Peristent effort pays off: California has managed to stay flat on electricity/person for decades, without wrecking the economy:
http://www.data360.org/ dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=1499

c) Also, it is clear that the further we stretch oil, the further off we push unsequestered coal plants, and the faster we get to renewables, the less bad will be the economic effects from Peak Oil, due in 2015 +/- 5 (consensus predictions). I recommend David Strahan’s “The Last Oil Shock: A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man” (Amazon Canada or UK), or http://www.lastoilshock.com/.

As you say, even if everybody did the easy things you have done, it would help very little toward a “solution”. No sacrifice, but no solution either.

“We need collective action at a national level and then at a global level.”

What you mean is: since it’s gonna hurt like hell, we need “collective action” i.e. coercion. Without it it ain’t gonna happen.

“…just how much emissions can be reduced without a return to the stone age, which Denyers claim is what we (progressives) are demanding.”

I think John McCormick (in above comments) is nearer the truth – the problem is of gigantic dimensions: “the sooner will we and they begin to invest the trillions in realistic energy project …”

There are no realistic energy projects “out there” yet. There just aren’t. Maybe the investment of trillions will, after some time (god knows how much) create new, green energy solutions, and maybe, after spending all that money there will still be no solutions – money can’t change the laws of physics. Neither can government. After all coercion and spending is done, we might still be stranded with no workable “solution”.

There is no way we can “invest trillions” and it will not hurt like hell.

Your implication that the problem is solvable by “collective action at a national level and then at a global level”, and without much sacrifice is unrealistic. As a literate person, you should not underestimate the difficulties. There is no green energy readily available, we depend on solutions that are yet to be invented.

It not just a matter of clobbering the deniers (which are vicious grandchild murderers anyway), gaining political power, and then the planet is saved. It’s much, much, more complicated.

Your point about greenwashing and the like is very important.

Complacency is encouraged on purpose in many different ways. It is also, certainly, encouraged by mistake by well-meaning people who appear to offer a solution that in fact goes nowhere. They may be diverting activist energy from more productive paths, for instance. They may generate a sense that the problem is easy to solve; in fact, there is no real need for anyone to get worked up: it’s under control. Go about your business. Nothing to see here.

They unwittingly undermine the understanding of the need for large-scale solutions. The result is the same whether the complacency is encouraged on purpose or not: a delay on large-scale action (such as a moratorium on new coal-fired plants that do not in fact capture and store their CO2 emissions; a price on carbon, etc.).

*However*, I think the political will required for these large-scale actions (the implementations of the required policy instruments, for instance) hinges on climate change becoming a voting issue. And I think *that*, in turn, hinges on increased political activity among people in general. And, bear with me, *that* is where the personal action comes in, both the direct political action each individual can take but also the consumer choices. Because, and here’s the major claim, these consumer choices *contribute* to creating a movement, a culture, that encourages and demands the required political action (both the small-scale, which in turn affects the large-scale, and the large-scale political atmosphere directly).

In this sense, I think individual action is very important. And it is in part for this reason that I think it is more counter-productive to call individual action meaningless than it is to encourage it. But there are risks associated with both.

Thanks,
Paulina

Read the latest UNFCCC report “Analysis of existing and planned investment and financial flows relevant to the development of effective and appropriate international response to climate change” issued last week and available at:

http://unfccc.int/ files/ cooperation_and_support/ financial_mechanism/ application/ pdf/ background_paper.pdf

In particular, read Section 4 and either blow it off or accept it as the future.

The ‘we’ you refer to are more than 3 billion people soon to be six billion struggling to get a small portion of what we have. The sooner WE greedy and careless nations swallow that bitater truth, the sooner will we and they begin to invest the trillions in realistic energy project that are designed, in part, to capture the CO2 to be used as a resource, not as a reject.

Park the wishful thinking and see the world as it really is and not the one we wish for. The species of “rapid adaptors” can be a very constructive new role for the wealthy if we are brave enough to do the really heavy lifting to provide the next generation adequate energy supplies.

You and a few others, who represent the scientists doing the research, are telling us what needs to happen. What we need is guidance in the best ways to exert the political leverage to make the priority actions become realities. Our political system is chronically gridlocked. Even the most obvious priorities fall into neglect. Look at the sincere promises made after Katrina and where things stand there after 2 years. We can’t get ourselves out of the Iraq quagmire.

Top of the list – how do we stop the burning of coal? If that doesn’t happen, then we’ll need to learn quickly how to become a species of rapid adaptors.

The emotionally uplifting talk about personal actions being important is really only that; uplifting but not related to the massive challenge ahead for our children and grandchildren. Being a father of two children, I can admit they are clueless and appear personally unaffected by the news and views shared among AGW believers and analysts. If they realized the magnitude and timeline of the global mitigation investment needed to merely slow the growth of CO2 concentration, they would tell we grownups to shut up about the light bulbs, ethanol, low-flow shower heads and carbon (penance) credits. So, I will say it for them. Enough with the personal choice stuff.

US electric power sector (we customers) emitted 2.4 billion tons of CO2 in 2005 — that is 293 cubic miles of gas -EACH YEAR AND GROWING -destined for PERMANENT (one would presume) burial. China’s power sector might actually double US CO2 output and has limited geologic disposal sites and Japan has virtually no disposal sites since it is sitting atop the Pacific ring of fire.

To capture and pump the CO2 to its PERMANENT disposal site takes energy from the power plant — between 15 and 30 percent and that is in addition to the electric power needed to operate conventional pollution control equipment, run the plant’s pumps, etc. Cutting a plant’s electric output by a third or half and particularly in summer to capture and dispose the CO2 is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

A new plant will require building a 130 to 150 percent plant to assure the electric demand will be met by the new power station. Or, maybe our individual lifestyle changes will actually work and……….but that overlooks the basic fact that whatever size plant is built 30 to 50 percent more coal will be burned than needed if CO2 was not being captured. Is this beginning to make some sense or am I impinging on the comfort zone of the caring.

When we adults get real about what it is going to take to give our children a running start on damping the CO2 concentrations we will all then realize the cost will be enormous and it will not be spent on wind towers and bicycles. The world does not operate on casual power. It needs base load, 24-7 and very concentrated. Engineers make those decisions not us environmentalists.

AGW is not an environmental problem. The environment is the victim. It is engineering and economic challenge greater than human kind has ever had to take on and succeed. That will take bigger ideas than changing light bulbs and will include things we do not like to think about such as high temperature gas modular reactors.

Carbon dioxide can become a resource and converted through some complex, chemically accepted and commercially used processes into diesel and jet fuel and other petrochemical products. It will take trillions of dollars and about a decade to get things rolling. That might not sit well with the lifestyle change advocates but it can be real world and our children will have to live in the real world one day while we have fun in ours today.

Maybe everyone is eventually going to be a believer. Even then, no one will actually be in charge globally. My worst case scenario has capitalism crumbling and collapsing when Amazon drought becomes permanent, Arctic summer ice melt back near total and sea levels rise above the Battery Park subway entrance in NYC. I won’t be here then but that future bothers the heck out of me because caring people seem not to want to think about how to make that not happen while continuing to hold on to their vision of the world as they want it to be and refusing to accept the real world (industrial world) is operating on a here-and-now basis.