Climate Progress: An insider's view of climate science, politics, and solutions

A few weeks ago, one of the presidential candidates’ advisors challenged a group of climate leaders to describe America’s future. His challenge triggered a flurry of e-mails as we attempted to articulate a vision.

We talked about carbon caps and price signals and new investments in R&D. That’s fine, the advisor responded, but what it the vision? What is America’s perfect future?

I’m not sure we ever satisfactorily answered this very good question, but I found myself trying to describe what America might look like 10, 20 and 40 years from now.

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In true journalistic fashion, Andy Revkin of the New York Times dug deeper into the controversial coal campaign run in Kansas after the state rejected a new coal-plant. Curiously, he surfaced with some interesting investment numbers with regards to Venezuelan coal.

For background, see Grist and Climate Progress’s discussion. In short, after the state refused to allow the construction of a new coal-fired plant, a local utility conspired with a larger energy firm to run a smear campaign against the decision, accusing it of supporting foreign energy enemies like Hugo Chavez.

In more recent news, Revkin has posted his correspondence with Peabody Energy, the world’s biggest private coal company. Ends up, they’ve a 25.5 stake in a Venezuelan coal mine.

Revkin pried, and this is what he was told: (more…)

We are the nation we are because giants have walked among us.

America was founded by giants. Others have appeared since to guide us through crises or to great things: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King. We have had leaders whose oratory has, sometimes in a single sentence, rallied the American people around their obligations of citizenship, the morality of equal rights, the spirit of exploration, and the compassion our blessed nation should show to those who have never known security or abundance.

Are giants walking among us today? Are any of them in the present field of presidential candidates?

Polls indicate that most Americans agree the current President has demonstrated some qualities we do not want in the White House. I’d like to offer an unabashedly old-fashioned and idealistic answer about the qualities we DO want, drawn from the Presidential Climate Action Plan.

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The Detroit Free Press reports:

Congressional negotiators are close to agreement on an increase in fuel economy standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, with some caveats to satisfy U.S. automakers.

What caveats?

The compromise would preserve the distinction between cars and trucks, something Detroit automakers have fought for, while giving federal regulators strict limits on how to put the increases into place. It also would include a provision backed by the UAW aimed at keeping small-car production in the United States.

Still, much better than no deal at all.

In his final testimony submitted to the Iowa Utilities Board on the proposed coal-fired power plant in Iowa, NASA’s James Hansen used a very provocative metaphor about the trains that deliver coal:

If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains — no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.

The President and CEO of the National Mining Association wrote Hansen a letter (posted here by Hansen with his response) complaining:

The suggestion that coal utilization for electricity generation can be equated with the systematic extermination of European Jewry is both repellent and preposterous…. I believe you owe the hard-working men and women of the coal mining and railroad industries an apology and respectfully request that you refrain from making such comments in the future.

Hansen’s reply was:

There is nothing scientifically invalid about the above paragraph. If this paragraph makes you uncomfortable, well, perhaps it should.

I have a slightly different view of the metaphor.

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As I mentioned in a previous post, many of my colleagues in climate-action circles are delighted at the detailed commitments the presidential candidates in the Democrat field are making about what they’ll do to fight global warming. It seems ungrateful to ask them for more. But ask we must.

We need to know what they’ll do to act quickly. And we need to hear their unifying vision for the post-carbon world.

On speed: We’ve all read Jim Hansen’s warning that the international community must take significant action within a decade if we wish to avoid the most dangerous consequences of global warming.

Now the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has moved up the deadline. In announcing the IPCC’s final report on Nov. 16, Rajendra Pachuari warned, “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”

So, the question we must ask the candidates is not only what they’ll do, but when they’ll do it. What, for example, is each candidate’s plan for the first 180 days of the presidency — the six-month honeymoon period between inauguration and the middle of August, when Congress traditionally takes its summer recess?

What will the next President do about our constipated Congress?

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