Starting back in mid December I was bummed to discover that I am in a tribe with college educated and relatively competent folk for whom their consumption is more compelling than their compassion. I am referring to Laura Ingraham’s elaboration on a comment by former Governor George Allen that the entire climate change conversation is a global conspiracy to lower the living standard, or ‘lifestyle’ of the United States. Beyond the stunningly false dichotomy that underlies her statement, is the ignorance. While there are plenty of good arguments about what to do about climate, none of them actually demand that the United States lower its standard of living. Thanks to initiatives taken in some jurisdictions 35 years ago, we have multiple examples that show how to have a modern western excessive lifestyle without increasing energy use per capita. In fact in California, where the per capita energy use hasn’t gone up in 30 years, the economy was grown faster than in the rest of the United States, where per capita usage went up 50%. In Sweden, hardly a third world standard of living, energy usage has been lowered over that same period. Forty percent of the carbon emission reduction can be achieved, according to a McKinsey study published in 2007, would be net positive to the economy. The resistance is more than just Ms. Ingraham or the rest of us being attached to long showers and thick steaks. As for the concern that energy will be more expensive, nothing except an extended global recession will keep energy prices down.
The notion of changing our behaviors to use less, or live and drive more efficiently creates new challenges to living with one another. As reported in the NY Times today, therapists report that conflicts about differing priorities and responses among couples and families. Gender distinctions exist as well, as in women are more oriented to the home and personal behaviors, with men more focused on larger policy impacts. A Santa Barbara based family and marriage therapist said “Food is such an emotional issue,”
Today’s holiday is celebration of the person who most embodied social change in the last century. For all those who wish to see our society different than it is today, the principal lesson to be taken from Martin Luther King is to have a dream- especially a dream that resonates across human ideals for a better life for individuals as well as collectively. Certainly the dream that our skin color would be no more important than our eye color was not original or unique to King, but his personal journey of leadership was.
The dream not being articulated today within the issue of climate is that through living well we can enable millions of others to live better too. While there is a threat that catastrophic suffering may result if the harsher possibilities of climate change take place, the opportunity to transform our society from alienating consumption to conscious commerce.
If we can figure out how to support the millions in the Southwestern US desert with the limited supply there, we can probably deliver water to the billion who currently do not have access to clean water. We have been capable of feeding all of the humans on earth since the late middle 20th century, although we have lacked the will to do it. Not only are these admirable goals for moralizing environmentalists, it promises increased national security, as well as opportunities for prosperity. None of which has been articulated for the likes of George Allen or Laura Ingraham, much less the millions of American voters who profess the environment as a priority but are clearly more concerned with their personal circumstances.
So good night friends. Dream tonight of living well, and having it mean others- millions of others- will live better thanks to your conscious intelligent and self serving consumption.
Holiday Dreaming
January 18th, 2010Copenhagen Crib Sheet
December 14th, 2009This week there are going to be lots of headlines, inches and screen time about the Climate Conference in Copenhagen. Rather than have you be overwhelmed, or just bored and annoyed, let Saturday’s LA Times article by Jim Tankersley reduces it pretty nicely -
1- They’re one big optical illusion- it’s a circus on the outside with a few key players wrestling with breaking down the barriers to an agreement. Even today’s headlines about developing nations boycotting are theater.
2- Many activists are going to leave disappointed.- No matter what agreements emerge, they won’t be anywhere near the estimates of scientists say will be necessary to avoid the upper range of climate change possibilities predicted by existing models.
3- Scientists are striking back. In their own way, scientists are responding to the attack upon climate consensus led by the release of hacked emails. In addition to numerous interpretations of the three main emails actually used in the attack campaign, scientists are releasing data, and making presentations reaffirming this as the warmest decade on record, among other things. BTW- the cooling over the last few years fits with the solar cycle as we are in the low years of the 11 year variation of the sun’s radiance.
4- Language matters- The details of whatever announcement/agreement emerges will evidence a mastery of linguistic diplomacy as the need for both emerging and existing industrial nations to appear to be committed to both reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving or keeping their standards of living are great.
5- The circus is coming.-Last week was nothing. This week the world’s leaders show up- including Obama. The theater in the street will explode as the tens of thousands of environmentalists with no real access to the inside track at the talks strive to make their case, and those on the inside track elbow each other in ways that make the speed skating competition at February’s Winter Olympics look like kids going for cookies.
Here at home, while we won’t be hearing about it until next year, Cap and Trade is the big subject. From Anne Leonard, whose “Story of Stuff” explains our economic system’s accounting problems with the environment, comes “The Story of Cap and Trade”. Leonard’s short online presentations are simple yet sophisticated explanations of complex and very significant subjects. Her position is clear, but doesn’t obscure or ignore the full picture. While she uses the shorthand of ‘saving the planet” she doesn’t pretend that the economy doesn’t matter. Her annotated footnotes- appearing beneath the movie window as it plays &documenting the facts stated- are a model for media that makes me jealous for her staffing support.
Meanwhile, winter is at hand. You can probably feel the places in your house where the heat isn’t, or is leaking. However you may feel about climate- the science or the politics- your best course of action is to keep that heat in. It will keep you warm, make the most of your energy dollars, make our nation more secure (especially if your heat comes from imported oil) and, if you hire local and buy domestic, help generate prosperity here at home.
Happy Holidays!
Climate facts and email hacks
December 4th, 2009Just wanted to post a short review of the basics here, before opinionating on the East Anglia CRU email hacks. I mean everybody else has so why not?
First the facts-
The world is a closed system, and humans wouldn’t be here without the greenhouse effect. Does anyone not accept those facts?
CO2 retains heat disproportionate to its volume. ( Tyndal 1859)
According to economists, civilization has burned fossil fuels to increase C02 by 35%.
Anybody dispute these facts?
By everything we know about chemistry and physics, such a change in the atmospheric gases should produce a warming, which was predicted, along with melting of glaciers, the artic, increased flooding and droughts etc. in the 70′s.
When something is predicted, and then happens, we accept that as good science.
Ok, now on with the opinionating-
One of four ground temp data efforts has been brought into question (through illegal means and questionable provenance). By careful reduction and extraction, a case has been made that this science group has falsified their data, and the head of the group has been suspended from his daily activities there while the academic investigation progresses.
Skeptics, particularly the kind unique to the climate issue, who for the most part ( almost exclusively) take issue with the policies promoted to address climate change ( the carbon tax market in particular) have attempted to make this a ‘shot in the heart’ of not just AGW, but Copenhagen and global action to address the one part of the climate system that we humans have some decision about.
And well they should. They haven’t got much else. Observable data confirms AGW predictions almost daily, even during the current cooling stats. The number of climate refugees grows, and the trend to sustainable practices threatens those who hate any kind of change, but especially those that demand they learn new ways to make money.
More disturbing, is the emotional ranting. People who profess to be champions of capitalism decry Al Gore for profiting by his advocacy. Apparently he’s a sanctimonious hypocrite, whose movie is the prime force behind moving governments world wide. He’ll be a billionaire as a result of the outcome of Copenhagen, which will also undermine, if not end, US sovereignty. Damn.
In my opinion that just makes him a more successful hypocrite than the rest of us.
Having been privileged to meet and get to know some of the leading climate scientists, I feel awful that some of their fellows have been accused of fraud and power grabbing, and that by being in the field, they are painted with the same brush. I am saddened by the lack of thought demonstrated by some very intelligent people, although not surprised by the political opportunism of others.
Unfortunately this is the tribe we are in. Some of them (7% of the US are estimated to be dismissive of AGW) sure are vocal and engaged. And this I respect. I am far more concerned about the 75% of our population that don’t seem engaged, at least to a level past ‘buying green’.
There seems to be very little attention paid to what we all actually agree upon, and how we might act from that commonality. And there is a lot. One of the interesting things about the dismissive 7% is that they are just as likely to engage in conservation behaviors as the alarmed 17%, more so than the 33% that are ‘concerned’.
So when ever you are wondering about the hoopla, just review those facts at the top of this page. Examine the hacks and hollering for anything of substance addressing those facts. Draw your own conclusions.
Smart bricks in the stupid age- a modern wonderment
September 23rd, 2009
You may not have noticed, but every year the world’s leaders show up in New York the last week of September. Each time the president of Iran has been to the US for instance, it has been for this week, which this year is all about negotiating whatever agreements will be signed next December in Copenhagen at the world’s next climate summit.
While this year’s fresh face is Mohamar Khadafee, pitching his tent in this country for the first time.it is Ahmadinejad’s return that is generating the most headlines.
But the work being done is about how civilisation can manage continued increases in the standard of living for its many developing nations, without limitless supplies of fossil fuels. While there are plenty of those who will examine this on the basis of the traditional dialectic of economy vs. environment, I won’t waste your time with more- just this:
Here is one example of why that is a false dialectic. This brick uses a pollutant- fly ash- and requires a fraction – one tenth- of the energy to produce than required to make the traditional brick. Its just a brick, but its smart, because of how its made. Lower energy use equals lower cost, plus it makes a toxic into a resource. Naturally the traditional brick industry has already started arguing that we can’t say how long it will last, even though the product has been put through the stress tests required of all bricks.
Full disclosure- CalStar Founder and Chairman Marc Porat is a source in “Proof or Propaganda”
The Age of Stupid- opening soon
September 17th, 2009
“The Age of Stupid” is a fictional film starring Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055 looking back on life in our times, contemplating why we didn’t save ourselves. Described by The Guardian as “The first successful dramatization of climate change to hit the big screen”, the film opens globally, as befits a climate themed film, next Monday night, with a simultaneous opening in over 50 countries (440 cities) and a simulcast of the New York premier.
In spite of winning several festival awards, the film didn’t capture broad distribution interest from a conventional distributor, and is being opened in an innovative independently organized global day and date strategy complete with a ‘green carpet’ premier that will feature Kofi Annan, and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke playing live.
Have a look at the trailer and judge for yourself. The play here is clearly to frighten you, and yet give you a sense that you can make a difference in preventing the suffering so vividly portrayed.
Congratulations to the production company for mounting this broad release and achieving the breakthroughs in distribution this type of release requires.
At the same time, it begs the question- do you need more scare tactics or would some straight talk be more useful to you? If it is the latter, let me know how I can put “Proof or Propaganda” in your hands as a tool to inspire dialogue in your community about climate change.
Are we ashamed yet?
August 14th, 2009As pointed ut by Mona Gable on Huffingtion Post, white people are going to meetings and behaving badly. From comparing our elected representative with Nazis for things they haven’t even suggested, much less done, to having the lack of self awareness to not realize the irony of showing up to scream down a health care discussion while obese, a certain set of people are showing us just how to stop things from happening. Things like an earnest and honest discussion, or a full exploration of alternatives.
Fortunately I am so conditioned by advertising and my time in the last century to know that those are ‘my people’ even though I can certainly see white in my hair. I know that I’m not like them because I haven’t tried to shout down anyone since my kids got out of preschool and I gave up being a referee for AYSO.
The whole health care ‘debate’ is a sorry excuse for public discourse much less democracy. What’s happening in Iraq looks more honest and authentic Where are all those smart young ground troops that helped elect Obama now? It looks like the party in power put the freshman team on the field and they’re getting their butts kicked by the other sides sympathy alumni (didn’t even attend or graduate) pickup squad.
And Mona’s absolutely right. Their behavior isn’t called for. A single person whispering into the microphone “We don’t trust you” would be more compelling, especially if it was somebody’s grandma. At the heart of the resistance to much of what is being proposed right now is our lack of confidence in any government to do a decent competent job. Any and every person that gets an income from a government should be looking in the mirror right now and asking “am I part of why they don’t trust government?”
Between six hundred dollar toilet seats, $150 hammers and weapons systems for threats that don’t exist, and education systems that can’t produce mediocre results much less world beaters while spending more than half a state’s budget (California educators this means you), the people of this country have reason to doubt that a government role in health care is a good thing.
Now lest you think I’m ranting, or am still riding Reagan’s “government is the problem” bandwagon, I never thought it was “morning in America”. I am a former board member of my labor union, and I still support the right to collectively bargain as being equal to, and part of, the individuals right of self definition. I recently completed a government contract with a program at NOAA , and found the competence and quality of everyone I dealt with to be great. In fact I tell people that if only all of us taxpayers could meet and work with the members of the US Global Climate Research program, we would be of the opinion that our taxes are producing great results.
But that billion dollar annual success gets wiped out by one pallet of cash that disappears in Iraq, or any of a dozen or so no bid defense deals. It certainly doesn’t make up for the fact that Swedish and Korean kids get more time on math and science instruction. And it clearly hasn’t made me forget about the fact that a few manipulative interests can twist even a really good idea like paying someone to counsel you once in a while on your rights when you are a patient in the health care system into ‘death panels.’
Why these old fat white guys ( they aren’t all fat or white by the way) would rather have a private sector profit participant decide they should have their plug pulled than a government bureaucrat beats me. I haven’t seen anybody yet who can convince me that we don’t have rationed health care already. It’s who’s doing the rationing that we ought to be concerned about.
Do we really like horror movies and monsters all that much? Why do we keep inviting them to our discussions about important topics? Whether the topic is health care, product safety or the climate, the people who are trying to scare you aren’t interested in your best interest., much less society’s. Their looking out for their own skin, and more than likely pockets. I’d like to see the Vegas line on whether a competent journalist can draw a line from those screaming faces at the town meetings to insurance company lobbyists. Then at least we could blame the media for illuminating something besides a lack of civility.
Climate, Coal, Corn and Culligan- power and policy collide in Congress
June 29th, 2009The passage by the house of what is widely called the climate bill illustrates a number of the challenges faced by American society in addressing any of its problems.
The bill, historic (“revolutionary” was Massachusetts’s Democratic Congressman Ed Markey’s assessment) in its creation of the first carbon regulations in the country, was a far cry from what many had called for as necessary to address the need to reduce greenhouse gas generation over the next few decades. So much so that some Democrats opposed it as not tough enough.
At the same time there are voices decrying it as a radical job killer, a shift of wealth to foreign nations or just too much government. West Virginia Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito criticisms covered a wide range of her own constituents concerns, “”It is a national energy tax that will burden consumers, burden businesses, and particularly burden the lower-income families in this country — particularly the lower income. It picks regional winners and losers, with coal-dependent states like mine, West Virginia, bearing the brunt of this bill,”
So what do you make of this? Well let me suggest that what we have here is the result of democracy, as currently constituted and practiced in the United States. Those with power and influence, which is mostly derived from how things have been done, are doing their best to maintain that income producing advantage by shaping and eroding the aspects of the bill while those who see their interests served best by “a fundamental change” in our energy generation and use fight to change them.
Examine for instance the coal state concerns. If your livelihood has always been based in taking something out of the ground and selling it around the nation, hearing about how its base costs are going to be assessed and the price raised in a manner that will cost your customers more, your business will be dealing with such impacts. If you are a coal miner, you are among the lower income families and the idea that you will pay more for heating your house while the value of the element you extract will be made less is threatening.
At the same time, coal states have enjoyed a century of tax revenues and stability thanks to geographical accident. Nobody in West Virginia worked to make it the Saudi Arabia of coal, and while one can say it hasn’t’ made the state rich, it has made some people very wealthy, and no doubt that wealth has helped elect Capito.
Another big influence in this bill’s evolution was big agriculture, namely corn producers. Corn, which has gone from being a key product in our diets to being a major component of a number of industry sectors including energy, generates sufficient profit that it was able to get the administration of carbon dioxide emissions in the bill shifted from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Department of Agriculture. The EPA, which even under the Bush administration was perceived to be less business friendly than the DOA, at least has experience monitoring atmospheric gases. The DOA has experience generating them.
Other changes to the bill included dropping the goal from a 20% reduction over the next decade to 17% in the same time frame. And there is plenty of debate among those who are fully committed to control of CO2 as a means to defer or mitigate a crisis whether or not even the upper number is sufficient to do so. What comes through any such process today is, as one elected representative labeled it, ‘a product’. Indeed a product of compromise, which is one definition of politics- “the art of compromise”. And compromise has produced most of the results we like to think of as the best nation on earth.
The bigger picture is actually illustrated by the case of water softeners in California, and personified in the Culligan International, best known for the “hey Culligan man” ad campaigns from the last century. Water softening uses salt to change the characteristics of the water people get from the taps in their homes. That salt ends up in municipal sewer lines, making the waster water more difficult to reuse, eroding the infrastructure as well as eventually raising the salt level in the aquifer. Regulations in number of California communities are impacting the water softening business. Controlling the output of the devices, or shifting to other technologies or services to eliminate the downstream costs all threaten the existing businesses.
It is a classic case of externalities not being accounted for in our society, either in legal or economic systems. The same is at issue for the coal and corn related segments of our society. Successful capitalism has expanded itself right up to the boundaries of the closed system that is water, air and climate. Whether it is mothers wanting milder acidity in the water they wash their families clothes and faces in, or the price of keeping our homes comfortable, the larger systems and patterns of cause and effect have taken a back seat to the immediate and personal ones.
So whether or not the bill becomes law, is mutated further by whatever the Senate passes, and then is ‘reconciled’ by joint committee, is not as significant as the fact that in spite of overwhelming public opinion, national security and prosperity issues related to our current way of generating and using energy calling for change, existing cash flows are being directed to influence Congress to sustain those cash flows.
Should a climate bill be passed, its impacts upon the price of energy may be secondary to the number of jobs it will facilitate in alternative research and implementation. Those jobs may or may not be in West Virginia, and therefore Congressperson Capito will need to adapt as much as the current participants in coal mining. Coal won’t go out of business in even the most radical climate legislation discussed. Neither will oil or gas. But the statements of their lobbyists and elected spokespeople will make it seem that the price of energy was just fine until this law was proposed.
We all know that isn’t true. We know that we need to address our security in sending billions to the middle east for oil. We know that we need to support our long term future prosperity by ending our dependence on finite energy sources. And doing both of those will also address what is within our control in the area of climate.
The advantages that coal, corn and Culligan have had in establishing their places in the economy were the results of what was known then. What we know now is that all of those activities take place at a scale and scope that is difficult for those of us living today to grasp, much less those who made the choices and decisions about accounting for and assigning responsibility for ‘externalities’ in centuries past. We can’t know all the results of any course of action we take in a large complicated system, be it the economy or the climate. But that is no reason to not take any action.
I recommend- Paul Krugman in the NYTimes
Josef Hebert with AP
and for those with a big appetite- all the analysis in detail you can possibly absorb from The Breakthrough Institute.
Lies, Damn Lies and Lies the speaker believes
June 15th, 2009Somewhere it has been said that the way you can tell a politician is lying is to watch and see if their lips are moving.
That’s one of those generalizations that go too far, but still don’t hurt you. Why not be cynical and then get pleasantly surprised from time to time?
As the Cap and Trade debate starts to unfold, it is important to realize just how much of what is said will not be true or false, but could be. For instance, already we have heard that the Cap and Trade legislation will make energy more costly for all Americans. Well that is probably true. Adding a new cost to the system to say nothing of another layer of stuff to measure and then the oversight required to allocate ‘credits’ and the resulting markets will undoubtedly be passed on to the public both in purchase costs and administration.
But the fact that is unsaid, the context that makes the call for Cap and Trade compelling is that energy will cost more no matter what is done or not done to address the full costs of burning fossil fuels.
Another statement that can’t be either true or false is that such a system won’t work. Defining the end goals of Cap and Trade of carbon isn’t going to bring out honesty statements from either side of the debate. Cap and Trade isn’t another attempt to destroy Capitalism any more than it is a solution to Global Warming. Neither statement is honest or true, but yet these are the best statements the partisans have to bring to the fight.
FYI- Cap and Trade is at best a begining in the process of addressing the common values of commonly held assets being affected by privately held activity. It won’t stop climate change, and it can’t be said. even decades from now, just how much difference it will or has then made in the matter. What it does do is implement the beginning of a system to assign market costs to the burning of fossil fuels. Based upon the scheme which solved the problem of acid rain, Cap and Trade can be seen as a first attempt to bring market ideas to the issue of CO2 proportion in the atmosphere.
Looking from the middle of the bell curve, we need to appreciate what a long journey resolving the failings of Adam Smith to address the difficult question of common assets. Because it was, and remains, a very difficult challenge. What is the value of a mountain top? Of maintaining the natural balance of atmospheric gases( what ever ‘natural’ is defined as)? Of keeping edible fish in useful populations in the oceans?
For once we have arrived at a global economy, clearly we have to address the fact, as Bill McDonough points out, that there is no ‘away’ to throw to. We’re there, for quite awhile now actually. And if you want to be informed as well as involved, you have to accept that the public debate on many issues, as well as the promotion of ‘green’ products and ‘green’ companies, is for quite some time going to appear much like the over generalization stated earlier. If their lips are moving, they are probably lying.
News From the Middle of the Bell Curve
May 1st, 2009In the days, weeks and months ahead, this page will regularly discuss the climate change issue and related topics from a little recognized position- the middle.
The public discourse on climate is dominated by two voices- the one being that you and society must radically reduce your lifestyle or your planet and species will be irrevocably damaged, and the other being those, US Senators among them, who that listening to those people will destroy your prosperity and undermine your security. These two voices occuppy opposite ends of a line that could be called the base of a bell curve which comprises the possibile climate change outcomes horizontally, and the probabilities of those outcomes vertically. These voices are at the ends of the line because they represent the LEAST likely outcomes.
“Proof or Propaganda” was produced to give voice to those who are most intimate with the realities of climate, and those who having investigated climate have found constructive profitable responses. While they are not in total agreement about the issue, none of them can be said to fall at the ends of the aforementioned bell curve. In fact, when one maps their voices, they all tend toward the middle. Thus the title.
Now the middle is not a very sexy place. We don’t get passionate about the middle usually, and that is why you won’t likely see “Proof or Propaganda” on the marquee in your neighborhood, or even down the cable channel menu. The middle is where common sense seems to show up, and where most of us make our choices. Applying the wisdom available in this territory is what we hope to do here, and be a resource for those of you who want to understand the complex and never ending aspects of climate, policy and the important societal changes that are being discussed.
In terms of one person’s life, climate is vast, beyond the horizon, and our lifetimes. In terns of our society, the issue of climate, and the actions we individually and collectively are embarking on are just now getting started. Expect this to be a theme for decades to come.
Hello world!
February 10th, 2009Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!