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Road to Copenhagen, Part 6: Tragedy of the commons vs. action by the uncommon

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Members of Congress are the custodians of a sacred trust: to protect the vitality and integrity of the extraordinary experiment the Founders began. For example, the debate about climate change isn’t just about polar bears and energy prices. It’s about whether a free people will be a responsible people, a capitalist economy will be a caring economy and a democracy will protect the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for everyone, even those not yet born.

Some of this sacred trust is codified in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Some is unwritten and implied. And although the Constitution dictates that we keep government and religion separate, there are places in public policy where secular values and moral values overlap. Stewardship of nature and its resources – called “creation care” in religious circles – is one of those places.

Government’s stewardship responsibility is recognized in the body of laws past congresses developed once we realized that burning rivers, poisoned water, dangerous air, carcinogenic fish and toxic wastes were not in the national interest. In the landmark National Environmental Policy Act, for example, Congress declared:

Post by Bill Becker in Politics | 5 Responses

Road to Copenhagenm, Part 5: Awesomely audacious leadership vs. nattering nabobs of negativism*

Monday, November 9th, 2009

We are only just beginning to scratch the surface of the power of a positive vision of an abundant future…

Rob Hopkins, “The Transition Handbook”

During his 10 months in office, President Barack Obama and his team have assembled an impressive list of accomplishments on energy and climate policy. Some might conclude the President has done about all he can do with the powers of his office.

One would be wrong. What energy and climate security require — what the future of the American Dream demands — is audacious big-picture ideas that capture the imagination, stir the emotions, speak to the souls, rally the support and win the involvement of the American people. That’s been lacking so far in the President’s climate leadership.

I suspect there is a sizeable segment of the American people waiting to be engaged, waiting to have their imaginations triggered, waiting to understand what a new energy economy looks like and what they can do to build it. I’m not saying that citizens can’t act without top-down leadership. Indeed, as President Obama hinted recently in his “Grab a Mop” speech, there’s fundamental unfairness, guaranteed stasis and more than a little buck-passing when we citizens stand on the sidelines, some expecting the White House to do everything, others protesting it is doing far too much.

Post by Bill Becker in Solutions | 5 Responses

Road to Copenhagen, Part 4: A New Social Contract

Friday, November 6th, 2009

As we approach the climate conference in Copenhagen, politicians are balking and diplomats are burning the midnight oil, deprived of sleep. But we can take heart. Some unlikely new heroes may come to the rescue.

One prospective hero is The Citizen-Consumer. Consumers are not the first group that pops to my mind when I think about environmental leadership. Unbridled consumption without regard for consequences has much to do with the mess we’re in.

Then came a poll by Time magazine over the summer. It found that nearly four of every 10 American consumers over age 18 regularly and deliberately choose products made by “socially responsible” companies. If conspicuous consumption got us into this mess, can it be that conscionable consumption will get us out? Maybe. Based on its poll and several other factors, TIME concludes:

Post by Bill Becker in Climate Progress | 14 Responses

Road to Copenhagen, Part 3: Re-Tooling Industry

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

In case we need more evidence that an urgent economic transformation is required to avoid catastrophic climate change, it can be found in a new study commissioned by World Wildlife Fund International.

Conducted by Climate Risk Pty. Ltd. of Great Britain and Australia, the study concludes:

Runaway climate change is almost inevitable without specific action to implement low-carbon re-industrialization over the next five years [emphasis added]… World governments have a window that will close between now and 2014. In that time they must establish fully operational, low-carbon industrial architecture. This must drive a low-carbon re-industrialization that will be faster than any previous economic and industry transformation…Today, only three out of 20 industries are moving sufficiently fast enough.

By “low carbon re-industrialization”, the authors mean energy efficiency and clean generation technologies, low-carbon agriculture, and sustainable forestry. They have identified 24 critical resources and industries the world will need to develop quickly to avoid climate catastrophe. Among their conclusions:

Post by Bill Becker in International, Solutions | 10 Responses

Road to Copenhagen, Part 2: Risky Business

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

The evidence is irrefutable: Climate change poses enormous risks to economic stability, public health, ecosystem services, and national security, as well as to the environment.

How should we manage those risks? The first step is to acknowledge them. The second is to start listening to the experts who manage risks for a living.

Over the past two months, I’ve attended several meetings of military and civilian experts in security, intelligence and risk assessment. They were unanimous in concluding that

The risks of climate change are growing rapidly;
Those risks are routinely underestimated by policy makers; and
Little is being done to plan for contingencies, even in those regions of the world likely to suffer the most and even though the suffering already has begun.

One meeting of security and risk experts was organized by Nick Mabey, a former advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair and now the leader of E3G, a nonprofit organization based in Europe to promote sustainable development. Our mission was to explore how the science of risk assessment and management should be applied to climate change. In a Whitehall Paper written last year, Mabey explained:

Post by Bill Becker in International | 14 Responses

Dressing for Copenhagen

Monday, October 19th, 2009

In the Danish fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, an Emperor goes out among his subjects in his underwear. Two swindlers posing as tailors have convinced him he’s wearing a suit made from cloth that’s invisible to anyone who is stupid. Not wanting to accept that he’s stupid, the Emperor parades through his empire believing he’s fully dressed.

It now is up to the U.S. Senate to make sure Uncle Sam is not only fully dressed, but dressed for success when he shows up in Copenhagen Dec. 7 to work on a global climate deal.

As far as wardrobes go, President Barack Obama and his team have done a pretty good job packing their suitcases with climate initiatives they’ve launched under their own authority this year. As The Economist puts it, “America will now not have to go naked into the conference chamber” at Copenhagen.

Even so, without an affirmative vote by the Senate on a respectable climate bill, Uncle Sam will be only half-dressed in the eyes of the global community. That’s my reading after a three-country tour of Europe where I spent nine days in meetings with people from 19 nations ranging from Bangladesh to Belgium and Russia to Rwanda. They included a former head of state, former top military leaders, current government officials, scientists, entrepreneurs, academics and other thought leaders in their respective countries.

In my informal sampling of their opinions, I found that a) U.S. leadership remains the linchpin of a global climate deal, and b) the world needs to know that Congress, as well as President Obama, is serious about capping America’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Before speculating about why this is the case, let’s review the accomplishments the Administration already can take to Copenhagen:

Post by Bill Becker in International | 5 Responses

Senate Climate Debate: Calling All Green Dog Dems

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Now that John Kerry and Barbara Boxer have introduced their climate bill in the U.S. Senate, this fall will be all about changing canine colors. To get the 60 votes they need to pass a bill, progressive Democrats will be trying to turn Blue Dog Democrats into Green Dog Democrats.

Welcome to the dog days of autumn. Watch for progressives to offer milk bones, kibbles and bits to coax their more conservative colleagues into commitments that conscience alone should be sufficient to dictate.

The challenge for leaders in the Senate, as it was in the House, will be to prevent the climate bill from being negotiated into something far less than required to reinvent the American economy and reverse our greenhouse gas emissions, and to do both quickly.

Whether Senate leaders succeed in producing public policy that averts climate disaster will depend in large part on how they frame the debate. Here are three suggestions:

Post by Bill Becker in Clean energy jobs bill | 15 Responses

From Cope to Hope: Twitter to the rescue?

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Can Twitter save civilization? We’re about to find out.

As the clock winds down on the big climate negotiation in Copenhagen this December (formally known as the 15th Conference of the Parties, or COP-15), the future of the planet and its inhabitants may be in the hands of tweeters, especially tots, teens and twenty-somethings.

Several groups are attempting to mobilize a worldwide mandate for action in Copenhagen, calling for boots to hit streets and thumbs to hit keyboards, to harness the power of Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, You Tube, FlickR, text messaging and the potential power of the PDA Nation.

One of my favorites (in part because I’ve been a sometime advisor on it) is a campaign called Hopenhagen, launched last week during “climate week” in New York City. At the request of the United Nations, the International Advertising Association is applying its creative powers to a viral effort in which young people will petition for a “definitive, equitable and effective” climate agreement at COP-15.

Led by the global communications powerhouse Ogilvy & Mather, the campaign urges young people to become citizens of a Hopenhagen community, complete with a virtual passport. With help from corporate giants Coca Cola, Siemens and SAP, and with support from a growing list of “Friends of Hopenhagen” who range from Reader’s Digest and the Wall Street Journal to Mother Jones magazine, Ogilvy will deploy media and billboards in major cities to promote the power of the grassroots.

Rather than complaining about an infringement on its name, the City of Copenhagen has agreed enthusiastically to rename itself “Hopenhagen” in December, replacing Cs with Hs where the city’s name appears at the airport and on highway signs leading to COP-15.

Hopenhagen is one of several current opportunities for youth to help shape the future they will inherit, and for old-timers like me to improve the future we will pass along. Here are some of the others:

Post by Bill Becker in International | 11 Responses

The top 10 bogus statements (BS) in the climate debate

Friday, July 24th, 2009

[This is Bill Becker's BS list. Feel free to add your own suggestions.]

If there is any doubt that Washington D.C. is where hyperbole, distortions and silly arguments come home to roost, that doubt disappears as we listen to congressional debate on climate and energy policy. Even some of the statements coming from the Obama team lately inspire a loud “Huh?”

Jon Stewart would win a Nobel Prize for Truth, if one were awarded for diligence in revealing how some members of Congress, not to mention the conservative chattering classes, regularly insult the American people’s intelligence. Unfortunately, he’s only on the air 30 minutes each day.

Also unfortunately – and here’s an inconvenient truth — not all of the American people are informed enough about climate change to know their intelligence has been insulted. It’s a complicated topic made even more complicated by bogus arguments [and by a status quo media more focused on celebrity funerals and celebrity comments (e.g. Sarah Palin) -- JR].

So, in the spirit of improving the quality of the debate and with unapologetic imitation of another political satirist on night-time TV, here are today’s Top 10 Bogus Statements (B.S.) in the climate debate, each followed by a reality check.

No. 10 BS: The United States can’t make a firm commitment to reduce greenhouse gases until China and India do.

Post by Bill Becker in Advocacy Content, Politics | 30 Responses

Coal mining costs Appalachians five times more in early deaths than it provides in economic benefits

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Bill Becker discusses a recent study that provides one more example of the Ponzi scheme our U.S. economy is built on. See also “The day ‘clean coal’ died” and “Second TVA coal ash pond ruptures — at Widows Creek coal plant.”

The Appalachian region has been supplying American with cheap energy for generations, a duty it has performed with a sense of pride and patriotism. But while electricity from the region’s coal has been cheap for the rest of us, the price has been extraordinarily high for the people of the mountains.

That price took on a new dimension this week in a peer-reviewed study (subs. req’d) from the Health Policy Institute at West Virginia University. Researcher Michael Hendryx reports that coal mining costs the region five times more in early deaths than it provides in economic benefits.

Hendryx’s sobering calculation is that the coal industry provides about $8 billion annually in jobs, taxes and other economic benefits — but premature deaths attributed to coal mining and its impacts, including local air and water pollution, cost the region $42 billion.

Post by Bill Becker in Ponzi Scheme | 6 Responses

Why Cities and CEOs Can’t Relax

Monday, June 1st, 2009

America’s mayors, governors and CEOs may be feeling a sense of relief now that Congress shows signs of movement on a climate bill. Over the past decade, some of them have stuck their necks and spent their political capital on climate policy. Now, Congress is taking the heat.

But unfortunately, there is no rest ahead for anyone, not if we’re going to cut our greenhouse gas emissions back to levels we haven’t seen in a generation or more. Whatever agreements emerge from Congress this summer and from Copenhagen next December, the fate of the planet will remain largely in the hands of our corporations and cities.

That’s a message I will deliver June 3 to corporate and local leaders from Europe and the United States at the World Investment Conference in La Baule, France, where the topic will be trans-Atlantic cooperation on building sustainable cities. We can’t count on Washington or Copenhagen to solve the climate and energy problems. The most important leadership ahead still will come from cities and CEOs.

Post by Bill Becker in Climate Progress, Politics | 6 Responses

Gore mobilizes his “army” to fight for climate action and take on gravest U.S. security threat

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

As the House Energy and Commerce Committee completes its work on the Waxman-Markey climate bill, Al Gore’s army is mobilizing to support it.

Gore hosted a North American Summit late last week in Nashville, convening 500 of the 2,600 volunteers he’s trained to deliver his “Inconvenient Truth” presentation. Five hundred was the maximum number that could crowd into the ballroom of the Hudson Hotel for what amounted to a pep rally for long-overdue climate action in Congress.

The purpose of the summit was twofold. Gore and his roster of speakers gave his volunteers fresh ammunition for their public education efforts, including information on the public health implications of global warming and a review of current science by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and co-winner of the Nobel Prize awarded to Gore and the IPCC.

The summit’s second mission was to encourage the thousands of volunteers Gore has trained to join his “Repowering America” campaign, launched some months ago after he proposed that America receive 100 percent of its power from renewable energy within 10 years.

Repowering America is being administered by another Gore organization -– the Alliance for Climate Protection -– best known for the series of television spots it has aired on climate action. Now, the Alliance is organizing volunteers to hold town hall meetings, write letters to the editor, contact members of Congress and recruit more people in support of bold action on energy and climate policy. As one Alliance speaker told the Summit, “TV ads show you have money. A grassroots movement shows you have passion.”

Post by Bill Becker in Politics | 2 Responses

The real Patriot Act, Part 1

Monday, May 18th, 2009

MONDAY, MAY 18, 2009 — If members of the U.S. Congress listen closely today, they will hear this sound.

That’s the cavalry (and the Navy, Air Force and Marines) coming to the aid of the green army that is so vastly outnumbered and out-funded by the oil and coal lobbyists on Capitol Hill.

A panel of 12 distinguished retired generals and admirals has just released the latest in a series of reports over the past two years warning that global climate change is not just an environmental issue, or an economic issue, or a public health and welfare issue. It’s an urgent matter of national security.

Put another way, any effort to further delay the world’s transition to a sustainable energy economy or to launch an aggressive response to global climate change is a national security threat.

The new report — “Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security” – is the work of the Military Advisory Board of the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA), a federally funded research and development center serving U.S. defense agencies. The Board consists of former admirals and generals who have served at the very top of America’s military structure and who know a security threat when they see one. (See their names and titles at the end of this post).

Among their conclusions:

Post by Bill Becker in Politics | 7 Responses

The Next 100 Days, Part 2: Bring on the Sizzle

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

It is time for President Obama to mobilize us all to help build the new energy economy. The “clean energy FDR” has begun shaping the public policies we need with a history-making first 100 days. Now he needs to launch an interstate highway project, Marshall Plan, and war effort all rolled into one.

For starters, he should call on us all to pick up our caulking guns and enlist in the war against energy waste – a national clean energy surge.

Efficiency improvements and conservation have been America’s main source of energy since 1973, according to the Alliance to Save Energy. Yet, the potential for more savings is enormous. As Obama noted during the campaign, the United States is only the 22nd most energy-efficiency major economy in the world. With very few exceptions, every vehicle, home, power plant, factory, community and state is hemorrhaging energy, energy dollars and greenhouse gas emissions. Consider just a few examples:

Post by Bill Becker in Climate Progress, Politics | 17 Responses

The Next 100 Days, Part 1: A second serving of beef, please

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Bill Becker has some meaty suggestions for what “The Green FDR” should do next.

During the last presidential race, Republicans issued a bumper sticker that read “All Sizzle, No Steak” next to a picture of Barack Obama. It was the bumper sticker that didn’t stick and today, Republicans are eating those words. During his first 100 days in office, Obama has served up far more steak than Republicans are willing to digest.

A check of the Obama-Biden campaign platform shows the President has made progress on an impressive number of his pre-election promises on energy and climate, not the least of them an economic stimulus bill that provides the biggest green energy investment in the U.S. history.

Given the Bush Administration’s eight-year climate fast, we’ll need even more meat in the second 100 days and in many 100 days to come. In fact, stabilizing the climate and maintaining that stability is a standing commitment that every future president must make.

So, what’s on the president’s menu for the next 100 days? Here’s hoping he uses the next three months as impressively as the last, serving up lots more steak -– and some sizzle, too. I’ll propose some steak here and some sizzle in Part 2.

Here are some recommendations drawn mainly from the Presidential Climate Action Plan (PCAP):

Post by Bill Becker in Solutions | 6 Responses

The Age of (small) Tradeoffs

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

[JR: I have added the "(small)" here, since it will become increasingly clear that the impacts of global warming on our current emissions path are so catastrophic that they trump all other concerns and we must pay any price, bear any burden to stop them.]

Are green energy industries about to ruin the environment and undermine national security? Are they engaged in the ecological equivalent of mountaintop removal? Are they the new Big Oil, making us dangerously dependent on imported strategic resources?

Those questions are implied in “Clean Energy’s Dirty Little Secret”, a provocative article in the current issue of The Atlantic. Author Lisa Margonelli points out that wind turbines, hybrid cars and some other green technologies carry “their own hefty environmental price tag”, including the use of rare-earth minerals extracted from open-pit mines or imported from places like China.

I’ve encountered similar concerns among members of the U.S. intelligence community: In the pursuit of green energy, will we trade our dependence on one imported strategic resource – oil – for dependence on other imported strategic resources?

Post by Bill Becker in Climate Progress, Science, Solutions | 13 Responses

The Earth Day stories you wish they wrote

Monday, April 27th, 2009

Bill Becker offers “some news stories I wish I had seen on Earth Day.” Feel free to add you own!

NEW YORK – The United Nations announced today that the international climate negotiation originally scheduled for December in Copenhagen now will be held by conference call.

“Every part per million counts,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in the announcement. “If tens of thousands of negotiators fly to Copenhagen…. Well, you do the math.”

Post by Bill Becker in Humor | 8 Responses

Where there is no vision, the people perish — Part 1

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

The only thing as important as explaining to the public, media, and policymakers what will happen on our current emissions path is laying out a positive vision of a sustainable future.

Humanity has only two paths forward at this point: We voluntarily switch to a low-carbon, low-oil, low-net-water use, low-net-material use economy over the next two decades or the post-Ponzi-scheme-collapse forces us to do so circa 2030. The only difference between the two paths is that the the first one spares our children and grandchildren and the next 50 generations untold misery aka Hell and High Water. A key element of jump-starting the first path is developing and communicating a clear positive vision for the future, as Bill Becker has begun doing. Bill is uniquely qualified here since he helped launch one of the first green communities (see “High and Dry: The Soldiers Grove Story“).

Note: Buried in Becker’s post is a request: “If you are aware of other projects to envision a post-carbon future, please let me know by commenting on this post.”

The best way to predict the future is to design it.
- Buckminster Fuller

For some time now I have been proposing a national vision project – a conversation among the American people about the positive future we can create if we put our minds to it. That idea may have gained some momentum last week in a converted barn on the Rockefeller estate outside New York City.

Post by Bill Becker in Solutions | 38 Responses

The Really Cool Awards

Friday, April 10th, 2009

[Guest blogger Bill Becker proposes a new award for unsung heroes of sustainability, those fighting to preserve natural capital and stop catastrophic global warming. Your nominations are welcome.]

What would happen if the same six people won the Oscars every year? Three things: 1) The Oscars would get so boring that no one would pay attention; 2) the awards would lose credibility; and 3) a lot of very talented people would go unrecognized.

That what’s happening in regard to our national and international heroes of sustainability – the many people who day in and day out demonstrate uncommon persistence in the face of virtual anonymity.

I received a call the other day from someone who wanted me to attend a conference. Her selling point was that her organization was giving an award to one of sustainability’s superstars –- someone who already has received considerable honors and attention for his good work.

Post by Bill Becker in Climate Progress | 9 Responses

Best of Times, Worst of Times: The Presidential Climate Action Project

Monday, April 6th, 2009

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way…

After two-and-a-half years of work and $2.5 million of investment in research and writing, the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP) will shut down on April 30. We will end the project in a political and social climate much like that described by Charles Dickens.

Post by Bill Becker in Climate Progress | 8 Responses