Thinking about the way we use energy are is one of those things which is not sexy or exciting, unlike breakthrough technology, but it is one of the things that we can all do. I recently saved a quarter of a tank of gas (value about £12) by taking longer over a long trip. The saving to me is small, but it was easy.

If you feel you can’t influence the White House, how about getting involved at the state level? Find out where the senators for your state and the House rep. for your district stand on support for wind and solar, ending subsidies to oil and coal, instituting cap-and-trade or a carbon tax. The last vote on the energy bill fell ONE VOTE short of ending a right-wing filibuster (59 senators for, but 60 needed to block the filibuster, or to override Bush’s threatened veto.)

So if you happen to live in a state that harbors one of these climate clowns like James Inhofe (R-OK), Larry Craig (R-ID), or Ted Stevens (R-AK) who still think CO2 doesn’t trap heat and that Jim Hansen, Andrew Dessler and Joe Romm are dangerous pinkos who want to destroy us all… then you’ve got your work cut out for you. Get the message out to everyone in your area that these dinosaurs are dragging us down and holding up the green revival that will save, not destroy, our economy, if we let it get started.

You can look up who is your senator at http://www.senate.gov and you can learn more about the voting records on these topics from groups such as the League of Conservation Voters http://www.lcv.org

If you are so fortunate as to live in a state with someone less regressive in Washington – great. You can influence how far they may be prepared to move in congress by phoning or emailing their office about specific issues. You can read about what issues are before both houses on political blogs or on the senate and house websites themselves. There is a search page on each one, so I’ve been able to find every pending bill or amendment that mentions a particular term like “carbon capture” or “photovoltaic”.

Another inspiring, if blood-pressure-raising, account is Robert Kennedy Jr.’s book _Crimes Against Nature_. RFKjr is an environmental lawyer who files class action lawsuits against foot-dragging government bureaus as his main occupation in life. His book points out that Bush has gone out of his way to ensure no corner of the federal government should ever lack a doctrinaire political appointee at the top, typically one untrained in the science needed to understand what the department actually does. Other books that bring out further aspects of this are Al Gore’s recent _Assault on Reason_, Chris Mooney’s _The Republican War on Science_ and anything by Sheldon and Rampton at the Center for Media and Democracy http://www.prwatch.org who work to expose the role of the P.R. industry in creating “spin” on every policy issue we face. My favorite title of theirs is _Toxic Sludge is Good for You_ (loved the title so much I had to read it – then I was drawn to all their other work.)

JMG has a point that big corporations really call the shots in Washington – it’s insane how much money corporations donate to almost every member of Congress. We need to do something about that too. Didn’t we do “campaign finance reform” in the 70’s – and again in the 80’s? Looks like another round is due.

Climate chaos is the ultimate example of how the takeover of government by fictitious people (corporations) has served to divest real person of essentially any rights. The utility with the grandfathered, inefficient coal plant spewing tons of CO2 into the air every day has a property right that the law will protect — if you take direct action against the coal plant, you will go to jail or be killed by a rent-a-cop protecting the corporation’s property and its property right to pollute and destabilize the climate.

You, on the other hand, have no property right to a livable world — sorry.

Our legal system is derived from a time when the world seemed “empty” (especially if you overlooked all the non-white people or considered them subhuman) and has advanced very little since then.

All you really need to know to understand the dire state of our legal system, vis a vis any attempt by actual persons to use it to the disadvantage of corporations is this: the same supreme court that has never found the death penalty unconstitutional, despite voluminous evidence of a system riddled with gross errors and intractable racism, has found a $4M punitive judgment against an automaker a violation of the company’s right to due process (where the company was selling cars that had been damaged and repainted as “brand new”).

All the discussion above about the three or four groups of people are totally irrelevant — the only group that really matters is the group of people who, regardless of their own views, direct the great, amoral corporate entities that do not care in the least whether we have a world to leave to the next generation — they only care about their stock price. That is the law–their sole mission is to produce the greatest possible return to shareholders, and that does not include anything for the planet.

http://www.iiasa.ac.at/ iiasa35/ docs/ speakers/ speech/ pdf/ Pacala_speech.pdf

http://www.iiasa.ac.at/ iiasa35/ docs/ speakers/ speech/ ppts/ pacala.pdf

Here’s a quote from his talk:

“The 3 billion poorest people…emit essentially nothing. The take-home message here is that you could increase the emissions of all of those people by putting diesel generators or anything you wanted into their lives and it would not materially affect anything I’m going to say for the rest of this talk. In other words, the development of the desperately poor is not in conflict with solving the climate problem, which is a problem of the very rich. This is very, very important to understand.

In contrast, the rich are really spectacular emitters….the top 500 million people emit half the greenhouse emissions. These people are really rich by global standards. Every single one of them earns more than the average American and they also occur in all the countries of the world. There are Chinese and Americans and Europeans and Japanese and Indians all in this group.”

I’d like to include my comment from the NYTimes piece in question. It discusses the latest research by Professor Stephen Pacala that i find very hopeful. His latest data says that less than 8% of humanity is responsible for 50% of ghg emissions. If so, it radically changes the perceived math of who needs do what to reign in emissions. The people who need to cut most are also the ones least seriously impinged on by cuts and the people most able to afford alternative technologies.

I notice you mention Rob Socolow in this post, Pacala’s partner in the “Stabilization Wedges” paper. And i see from searching your site that you’ve discussed Pacala and the “Wedges” a fair bit. So i’m interested in your take on Pacala’s latest research and some of the implications it brings up for how to proceed.

Glad to have found your site.

———-
MY COMMENT ON ANDY’S NYT POST:

Andy, you start your post with:

“A world with 6.7 billion people…needs far more energy options than it currently has, almost everyone agrees.”

We can easily allow 6 billion of these folks to continue using the energy they do now with little or no risk to the climate or peak oil. We could do all this while dramatically cutting ghg emissions. The reason is that 90% of humanity is responsible for less than half of global ghg emissions.

The entire energy and ghg emissions problem is caused by the remaining 10% of humanity trying to carry out unsustainable “big lives”.

As I’ve mentioned in other comments, the latest research by Professor Pacala (co-author of “Stabilization Wedges” paper) says less than 8% of humanity is responsible for 50% of ghg emissions.

My family used to be in that 8%. We’ve been working for years to reduce our emissions to get out. We’ve made huge percentage cuts in a few years and life is still very good. The refusal of other eight-percenters to take responsibility and make some luxury reductions is pathetic. We have the least to lose and the most money to make the changes with.

So, all this talk about Manhattan Projects, Marshall Energy Plans and nukes everywhere is only needed if the other 92% of humanity want to risk the climate and take lots of energy restrictions and financial pain to support the hyper-emissions of this tiny minority.

An alternative proposal: the world create a system where the highest-emitting 10% of humanity are temporarily required to cut their energy/emissions down to “luxury-lite” levels of the 90th percentile. According to Pacala’s research, that would give the world a 25-30% ghg cut right off.

The deal continues: once a robust low-ghg energy infrastructure is in place, this 10% can resume their “big lives”.

Instead of “flat taxing” carbon and causing real pain for everyone except the wealthy, we could avoid some of that widespread economic misery. I imagine a majority of humanity would be glad to sign up for such a plan.

The money freed up from heating their driveways and flying to watch glaciers melt in Greenland would quickly find it’s way into alternative energy installations and venture capital. Very quickly.

After a few decade the ghg emissions would be dramatically lower, the alternative energy infrastructure would be fully funded and online, and the wealthy would be raking in the big bucks from all those returns on “new energy” investments that are now powering the world.

The alternative we are pursuing of destroying the climate while trying to fix the problem by carbon-taxing the poor will never work socially, economically or politically.

What will it be? “Luxury-lite” for a few…or financial pain and climate chaos for everyone else?

Can we at least have the conversation, Andy, about exactly what chunk of humanity really needs to cut emissions to save the climate and avoid peak oil nightmare scenarios?

That really would be a new direction in the climate change debate.