Glen Beck doesn’t know jack about science

September 10th, 2009

The resignation of Van Jones from his post as green job advisor to the White House this past weekend was both cheered and lamented this week by various champions of reinvention of the building, energy and transportation sector. Arianna Huffington thanked Beck for freeing Jones to, like Sarah Palin aspires, do better more important work outside of government.

In attacking Jones on his past, Beck reveals his preference for ideology and history over economics and the future. The question I would ask Beck is whether or not he thinks the laws of economics trump those of physics and chemistry. Economists tell us that since the industrial revolution humans have burnt coal and oil in amounts that have changed the proportion of carbon dioxide in the oceans and atmosphere. The increase is calculated to be about 35% more. Physics tells us that CO2 retains heat disproportionate to its volume and chemistry that CO2 proportions impact the PH of a fluid. These repeatable testable laws are what informs the basis of climate change science. Well before most of us had any idea about global cooling or warming, scientists predicted numerous changes in our world based upon these laws. Today observation confirms those predictions.

The future of the economy – something Beck does seem to care about- derives from those changes. Beck, and others who have focused upon ideology and referencing the laws of economics while ignoring those of physics and chemistry, are missing the emerging theme of the 21st Century – clean technology leadership in energy, transportation and building is going to translate to leadership in banking, employment, foreign exchange, and probably military might as well.

So it isn’t just science Beck doesn’t know about, but economics as well. In going after a leading author and hands on leader in putting people to work in green building, Beck and others have done damage to investors in the US economy. As pointed out by Thomas Freidman this week, China, by virtue of a mono party government, has been able to make the longterm policy choices to invest in the markets that are clearly driving this century’s development. Those busy distracting this administration instead of engaging in the discourse to find the best practices to answer the challenges that will not only secure our energy independence, reverse our balance of trade, and most immediately important, put our population to work, are betraying their claim to capitalism.

At it’s simplest level, capitalism values self interest. On a societal level, that self interest is served in serving the needs as defined by others. And the global need, where willing buyers are standing by right now, is for clean sustainable energy at or near the coal price of a kilowatt. Again chemistry and physics point to plentiful ubiquitous sources that are free, above ground, and need technology developed to be converted cost effectively. Silicon Valley, with a rich deep vein of talent, experience and cash, is eager to dive in.

But even the most liberal of investors wants to know that the rules are going to be before getting in the game. Until the energy and climate legislation gets done, they won’t. And getting Van Jones out of the jobs position means that one component of the recovery stimulus will be further delayed. Until building and home owners get the word on federal tax credits for upgrading energy efficiency, those installation jobs won’t be posted in the want ads.

Conservatives of the country are getting shortchanged. Instead of having a place at the table, making sure that the regulations are the best least practice, yet also stable and securing the place of capital in the societal investment, they are left out of the discussion. Those representing conservative thought who are engaged are being vilified by those crowing about socialism and job killing.

Meanwhile the self proclaimed communists of China have positioned themselves to out invest the US in critical growth areas. They have an even bigger number of people to put to work. There are populations in China greater than the US just striving to achieve running water and electrification. Yet they have the political will to invest in the future and the US doesn’t. Makes one wonder what was so bad about Jones having identified with communism.

The fact is that Beck doesn’t know jack about any of this, and doesn’t care either. His self interest is in that extremely short term commodity known as ratings. Serving up Van Jones as communist boogie man to his audience seems to have been the racist play that has made his calling the President a racist old news. He can be ‘hot’ again, and we can count on him to be even more hyperbolic in finding his next mark.

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Viewing the fire this time

September 2nd, 2009

My friend and not too distant neighbor Doc Searls posted a geological outlook on the ecosystem here in fire plagued California. And he looks both past and present in doing so. Doc is always a good read.
And inspired my comment, which I re-post here.

People come to California to reinvent themselves, free from the constraints of ‘home’. Yet they don’t adapt to the physical reality of where their psychic freedom is achieved. Only since jurisdictions started enforcing building codes have we seen the end of shake roofing in southern California. Our past is pretty clear- when there is death and suffering, we’ll respond.
As my very smart sources in “Proof or Propaganda” told me- we are a very clever species. How much suffering will occur before we adapt the laws of humans to the facts of chemistry and physics is yet to be seen. Nearly 80 years since Fuller pointed out we could feed everyone, we still haven’t. Global television makes that suffering very available and yet not compelling.
Short of the most extreme asteroid hitting the planet or nuclear holocaust scenarios, humans are likely to persist and prosper.
While millions of Mayans may have starved over a decade or so of that society’s demise, there wasn’t global telecom to show those who were sharing the planet at the time. We really don’t know what will happen on so many levels. We seem to be able to watch Darfur and keep our selves under control.
Geologic perspective can be misleading too. Humans have succeeded to this level because we have had geologic and climate stability for 10- 15,000 years. Will the lessons learned from those successes be available in the future? While we have built seed repositories, will those who find them be able to make use of them?
“The little ice age” was a challenge to emerging agriculture, but previous ones only prove that we can survive as hunter/gatherers.
We started burning wood, and went to coal and oil because they were easily available and convertible. Governments subsidized that transition heavily. Given what we know about the risks of continued burning, to say nothing of the increasing costs-security as well as monetary- and lack of availability to bring another billion people into even third world middle class standards of living, borrowing against the future to own the clean coal price generation of kilowatts is a good bet.
Betting on human nature to change without widespread pain and suffering is probably not as good a bet. We may be decades away from those painful possibilities. That gives those who benefit from those coal trains crossing the continent plenty of time and money to make sure that things change over as long a time frame as there is still coal easily and cheaply available.
The very successful memes of the individual are currently much more effective than those of the collective. Unless the balance shifts toward collective benefit,only the efforts of enlightened capitalists offer promise.
That said, it was a beautiful humid day in Santa Barbara. I’m looking forward to more.

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The Green in Green won’t be Green

July 30th, 2009

Yesterday McKinsey & Company released a 165 page report titled “Unlocking Energy Efficiency in the US Economy”.

Summarized here in the NY Times, it shows that an investment of $520 billion in “sealing leaky building ducts and replacing inefficient household appliances with new energy saving models” could yield a 23% savings in the nation’s energy bill, more than the projected increase in demand, or “greater than the total of energy consumptions of Canada”. The paper only looked at buildings, commercial and private. It did not include the anticipated carbon cost, which would add another 8%.

Count this as another supporting document reinforcing the opportunity available in reinventing everything in society, as suggested by Mark Porat in “Proof or Propaganda”.

While the report looks at a ten year reward, the immediate impacts of such an investment is the massive domestic employment of such a broad and essentially low tech effort. The vast majority of those jobs would be urban because that is where our buildings are, especially our most easily improved buildings. And the jobs would employ those without high tech skills- people who are disproportionately unemployed at the moment and the ones most likely to not have bought all those consumer products languishing on store shelves at the moment. So there are big immediate payoffs available as well as a significant long-term benefit.

Many of the programs required have already be running in California for decades- incentives to utilities to give rebates for efficient appliance upgrades, and insulation installation in homes for instance, so while there is a lot to be done to execute such an investment, the models exist and have been tested.

But while there are short and long-term economic results available, to say nothing of decreasing if not eliminating our need to build more power plants, there are some facts about efficiency that mean that the result won’t be less pressure upon the environment, and certainly won’t result in the lowering of consumption hoped for by environmentalists. Historically, efficiencies result in resources that we use in some other way. We might put away more savings, but human nature says we’ll spend most of it, and even if it is on much more sustainable goods and services, it won’t be about reducing our individual consumption.

One good example is the automobile over the last thirty years. Without increasing CAFÉ standards, automotive engineers have made huge advances in engine efficiency. But almost all of that has resulted in increases in horsepower, making it possible for even relatively small cars like the Mini to weigh a lot, and still get away from a stoplight faster than a 70’s Porsche or Corvette. A Toyota minivan today can reach freeway speed faster than the most performance cars from the 80s.

Another issue is the fact that a 2 for 1 payback over a decade won’t inspire many individuals, much less landlords that don’t pay the electric bills. Without significant public policy incentives, whether in tax breaks or extraordinarily low cost financing, the average homeowner won’t be making major renovations solely to achieve energy efficiency. While we should count on energy costs continuing to rise, unless we see the kind of spikes that occurred last summer, most people won’t be either investing in efficiency or changing their use. And until utility costs of a house or building are reflected in resale pricing, a population that moves as often as we do won’t be looking at a ten year return.

I recommend you look at the comments section of the article as well. There are lots of insightful references. One points out that a similar study reached the same result in 2002, but only projected a fraction of the savings. The difference? Well oil was $22 a barrel in 2002, and reached $145 last summer. Plenty of other great pointers as well.

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Reinventing Capitalism for a sustainable world

July 19th, 2009

If you are like most people, according to every single published social science, public opinion poll or market research survey, you care about the environment- just not very much, at least compared to other concerns and issues. Depending on which study you select, around 85% of us will state that the environment is an important issue.Yet very few of us say we are “environmentalists” with single digit percentages selecting the term when are offered that option.

In virtually every survey where people are asked to rank their concerns, the environment falls to near the bottom of how ever many issues are offered.    Two areas are consistently at the top of nearly everyone’s list- security and prosperity. FDR made these the two ‘from’ of the “four freedoms” – freedom from fear and want (the other two being the “of “ freedoms – speech and religion).

Thanks to the bifurcated and stilted state of public discourse today, the relationship between a healthy, sustainable environment and our security and prosperity have been typically placed at odds, if not outright opposite ends of a scale. Yet as is clearly visible in any place where air and water are significantly degraded, there can be no prosperity and security is threatened in an entirely different way. So it is no surprise that today’s business leaders are embracing ‘green’ ways of doing business. As one of the sources in “Proof or Propaganda”, Andrew Winston points out that this isn’t just altruistic or even enlightened capitalism. Because as much as we may rate the ‘environment’ near the bottom in a survey, in our shopping carts we rank it pretty highly, purchasing the product in any segment that creates a credible value of sustainable or ‘green’ – even though these terms are not clearly defined – and manages to be priced within 6-8% of the leading brand for that segment.

So in that very personal alchemy calculation where we may or may not actually use a calculator, pencil, make a list or just as Stephen Schneider says “in our gut” decision making, we are very much environmentalists. Nobody wants to have their daily existence be part of poisoning the water, making the ground or air toxic, much less contribute to child labor, slavery or suffering. And if we can do it without having to go to a different store or pay higher prices so much the better. We, as a group, voting with our money, want to be responsible, and will take up any and all retail opportunities to do so.

You would think that conservatives – social and fiscal- would be touting this victory of personally responsible behavior and capitalism. But they aren’t at least not from the usual known voices. And you would think that classic environmentalists would be cheering from the treetops too. But they aren’t. In fact those traditionally environmental leaders that have ‘crossed over’ to aid companies like Walmart are in most cases vilified and lose credibility.

Just look at this past week’s announcement by Walmart,  launching a new initiative to label all their products. Just like their other green efforts over the last four years, cynics and critics were quick to point out all sorts of flaws and contradictions inherit in a major agent of consumption and globalization advocating sustainability and conservation.

Well,”yea!” for Walmart. Four years in, and the company is continuing to take more significant steps toward sustainable operations, and is bringing its vendors along too. By all measures, this hasn’t cost them market share, gross revenue or their status as world’s largest retailer.

And while we’re at it, let’s say greenwashing and totally hypocritical marketing is appreciated too. In the big scheme of things, that is at least an acknowledgement that the need to appear ‘green’ has weight even among the least sincere  enterprises. If the goal is truly reinventing our society so that our footprint is actually an enhancement to the environment, as William McDonough says, then every step toward that is good. It’s very early in this evolution of society. Tom Friedman of the New York Times likes to say that we aren’t having a ‘green’ revolution. “It’s a green party. It’s not a revolution until someone gets a bloody nose.” And the party needs everybody as soon as possible.

As evidenced by our buying patterns, we all want to be part of a cleaner, more sustainable society, although as evidenced by social science, we need to feel safe and prosperous to do so. From what I learned from making “Proof or Propaganda” the path to integrating those values is not only possible, it’s the reason that the 21st century is the most exciting time to be alive.

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21st century capitalists rejoice

July 12th, 2009

News from the G8 talks this last week was dominated by the lack of consensus action.

With the main three developing nations balking at restricting their own burning of fossil fuels, supposed champions of capitalism were heard carping at China, India and Brazil’s leaders failing to commit to standing side by side with the far richer more established nations in addressing our collective atmospheric imbalance.

Among my favorite examples was Bill O’Reilly, who claimed to have spent his most recent vacation in Switzerland so he could learn how the Swiss do sustainable. But he also used the developing three’s reticence as his reason for the US to not attenuate our own burning ways. This is so 20th century thinking, conservative, capitalist or otherwise.

Let me point out that none of those three developing economies has sufficient coal or oil reserves to make it out of the 21st century burning fossil fuels, given their current rates of economic growth, even assuming population stasis mid century. All of them have significant toxic air pollution and related health issues to address, to say nothing of smog in the air right now. These three countries have as much at stake in arriving at the solution to the world’s sustainable clean coal priced energy generation problem as any of the G8, plus they have to raise the standard of living for the majority of their populations.

Thus all three are, like all the G8 nations, future customers of whoever does solve that problem. I say, thanks guys, for not being more focused on the key economic opportunity of our times- that being the leader in developing the solution. The country that is home to the inventor/company/coalition that brings forth that solution instantly wins the 21st century leadership economically. Probably the 22nd century too.

If you are under the age of 30, that means that in your lifetime the country that has this solution will see all the dollars China currently holds, shift there. That country will have the leverage for good or evil that OPEC has had over the last 50 years.

So rejoice 21st Century capitalists. Three emerging powers won’t be in the race, because they have decided to focus their resources on feeding and housing more and more of their people. That leaves the game more open to those countries that do pursue this.

Remember, when you hear someone complaining about what China or India aren’t doing you are listening to someone who: 1) is not a 21st Century capitalist 2) is not aware of what leadership in this issue or time is and 3) hasn’t watched “Proof or Propaganda” where why we want to lead the world in reinventing energy among other things, is explained in clear terms.

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