We need a system of cooperative public-private infrastructure financing, a national infrastructure bank. But we also need to use that fabric of cooperative investment and output to foster specific areas of major improvement to our national economy. The model could be replicated across the world, but the US is uniquely positioned to deploy this solution and to vastly improve its chances of restoring vibrancy to the wider middle class by doing so.

Two parallel projects are necessary to make the infrastructure redevelopment and economic recovery strategy a success:

• a renewable energy infrastructure bank – to help target some of the wider funding options to the project of building a sustainable, smart energy economy, free of the massive externalized costs of carbon-based fuels
• an economic opportunity bank – to aggressively, specifically and persistently direct funds to businesses that are hiring, building capacity at the community level, and restoring real wage gains to the middle class

The first is our topic here: a national renewable energy infrastructure bank. To build such a bank, we would need to first establish how a cooperative public-private infrastructure financing scheme would work. Ideally, it needs to work much like an investment bank, where individual investors see visible gains, but money is kept in the pot for a long enough period of time to produce gain across the full spectrum of investor contributions.

In other words, there has to be commitment to the project, and that shared commitment of resources will yield shared substantial gains to all parties. In the area of clean energy investment, this is possibly much easier than with other types of infrastructure investment, because the industry is entering into a period of massive, and necessary, prolonged expansion. Big investors understand that big investment will help to secure that prolonged expansion.

If Congress acts to incentivize this investment, massive amounts of private-sector capital will flow to clean energy resources. There are three reasons why this will happen:

1. Fossil fuels carry with them massive production costs that have long been externalized; the economy can no longer afford to continue such a strategy.
2. Clean energy technologies offer a major opportunity for prolonged expansion of business value, as information technologies have shown over the last 30 years.
3. There are literally hundreds of billions of dollars of private capital sitting on the sidelines, waiting for directional certainty that fossil fuels cannot provide.

So, how to structure such an operation? The renewable energy infrastructure bank would need the following to reach its full potential:

1. A national price signal or clear set of incentives to direct investment to clean energy
2. An investment strategy that looks at best practices, value to community, prospects for building aggregate demand, and structural resiliency
3. A focus on job-creation, skilled retraining, and positive value feedback loops that favor consumers
4. A legislative charter that sets forth priorities favorable to public-sector, private-sector and start-up investors alike
5. A model for redirecting funding when key elements of a project require support or restructuring
6. A focus on rewarding institutions, individuals and investors who do cutting-edge R&D that is practicable, 100% carbon-emissions-free and scalable
7. Short-, medium- and long-term investment strategies for building, optimizing and utilizing the smart grid

Suggestions for deployment:

1. Implement a national carbon fee and dividend policy, to correct market failures in the pricing of carbon, return control of the energy economy to households and incentivize major private capital investment in the rapidly expanding clean tech sector
2. Identify, build or support and expand, focus facilities in cities and regions across the country, to operate as cooperative laboratories of R&D, start-up incubators, and investment engines (examples might be Brooklyn Navy Yard or Philadelphia Navy Yard, or the Fab Labs project)
3. Motivate scalability planning for distributed clean energy production projects, to ensure sustained investment opportunities, and optimized overlap between community-building, job-creation and investment strategies, for higher overall cost efficiency
4. Ensure legal support for avoiding corrosive business models, favoring generative ones, to ensure Investment flows to the new technologies and collaborative strategies that build future prosperity, not to extraction-oriented investments
5. Reward rapid ramping up of high-efficiency clean energy tech, because this will build structural resiliency, favor the highest-value market-healing technologies, and help to revive the middle class

We can begin doing this nationally tomorrow, if:

• We focus first on wind and solar, due to their naturally occurring US domestic supply far outstripping total demand and all possible demand growth
• We commit to decentralizing innovation, influence and income-growth in the energy sector, so community and regional economies are empowered by the transition
• We recognize the need to fully develop leading-edge infrastructure at all levels
• We identify and elevate the pioneers who already know how to motivate and execute this transition
• We charter public-private partnerships to manage investment flows to stakeholder-defined initiatives

The clean energy economy is coming, and to fully enable its expansion, the US needs to flex the muscle necessry to turn the ship of state, to wrest from entrenched industries and financial investment patterns rooted more in extraction than in generative payoff the ability to decide what comes next. There is nothing beyond clean and renewable in terms of energy production and distribution, except the work of achieving the most advanced efficiency gains and making robust power generation an ever more ephemeral affair, at an ever faster rate.

To lead in that new economy, we need to be the first to build its value.

 - – -

Originally published October 12, 2011, at ProjectQuipu.net

El ser humano se ha vuelto tan influyente en los proceso naturales que los científicos ahora temen que la naturaleza ha perdido capacidades vitales de resistencia

Futurismo Verde :: En una reunión de científicos europeos, en Estocolmo, el hombre que inventó el término ‘antropoceno’ para describir una nueva época geológica—en la que la influencia humana domina los proceso naturales—ha anunciado que el término ahora se está aplicando desde múltiples campos de estudio. La importancia real del término es que la información ecológica es cada vez más imprescindible para poder llevar a cabo las ambiciones humanas de una forma responsable y sostenible.

The Financial Times, de Londres, ahora informa que “The EuroScience forum in Stockholm heard on Thursday that climate change was the most obvious of a complex range of man-made effects that is rapidly changing the physics, chemistry and biology of the planet.” [En el foro EuroScience, en Estocolmo, el jueves pasado, escucharon que el cambio climático era el más obvio de un complejo tejido de efectos de la actividad humana, que están cambiando rápidamente la física, la química y la biología del planeta."] Otros efectos tendrán que ver con la resistencia de la cosecha, fertilidad de la tierra, elasticidad de habitat vital para especies de sustento.

El alba de la época Antropocena, en la historia geológica, conlleva una cantidad importante de desafíos y oportunidades. En sentido de llevar a cabo una transición rápida de ubicuos modelos económicos a una metodología sostenible, hay una gran oportunidad de aumentar la producción económica potencial de la economía global. Hacerlo, sin embargo, exigirá cantidades masivas de inversión y de innovación acelerada.

Un grupo de 21 de los científicos e investigadores más respetados ha publicado su estudio de la cronología geológica en GSA Journal, y han confirmado que ocurrió un cambio fundamental a una época geológica definida por el efecto humano en el medio ambiente, a principios del siglo XIX. Lo que ocurre ahora, más allá de eso, es que se está desarrollando una conciencia del impacto severo de 200 años de expansión industrial agresiva, incluyendo explotación de recursos, construcción urbana y remodelación terrenal sin precedentes.

Estamos llegando a un punto de inflexión, después del que la ciencia no podrá evitar la necesidad de reconocer y manejar los impactos de la actividad humana en los sistemas naturales. Se ve ahora alteraciones fundamentales en la sedimentación, calidad de tierra, patrones geológicos y habitat biológico, hasta en la misma flora y fauna que habita los sistemas naturales afectados, y en la atmósfera respirable.

Específicamente:

From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the present day, global human population has climbed rapidly from under a billion to its current 6.5 billion (Fig. 1), and it continues to rise. The exploitation of coal, oil, and gas in particular has enabled planet-wide industrialization, construction, and mass transport, the ensuing changes encompassing a wide variety of phenomena, summarized as follows. [...]

Humans have caused a dramatic increase in erosion and the denudation of the continents, both directly, through agriculture and construction, and indirectly, by damming most major rivers, that now exceeds natural sediment production by an order of magnitude [...]

Carbon dioxide levels (379 ppm in 2005) are over a third higher than in pre-industrial times and at any time in the past 0.9 million years [...]

The projected temperature rise will certainly cause changes in habitat beyond environmental tolerance for many taxa (Thomas et al., 2004). The effects will be more severe than in past glacial-interglacial transitions because, with the anthropogenic fragmentation of natural ecosystems, ‘escape’ routes are fewer.

Los mecanismos principales de resistencia ecológica se ven erosionados, y el medio ambiente natural se encuentra menos capaz de adaptarse a los cambios en los sistemas naturales y su manera de competir dentro de y entre sí. El estudio también cita evidencia de un nivel acelerado de extinción de especies y de la creciente probabilidad de una ola masiva de extinciones, resultado directo de la actividad humana.

La comunidad científica ha comenzado a elaborar modelos informáticos del sistema natural integral, un complejo de ecosistemas e interacciones a nivel planetario. Esos modelos servirán para averiguar hasta qué punto la actividad humana influye en el medio ambiente y cómo se puede actuar para mitigar esos impactos y lograr un futuro más sostenible, y más capaz de seguir proporcionando los beneficios naturales necesarios como base de la civilización humana.

La idea del periodo Antropoceno es más que una clasificación cronológica del momento en el que nos encontramos. Se trata de una conciencia cada vez más desarrollada de la necesidad de modificar nuestras tendencias para colaborar con los sistemas naturales de los que dependemos tanto para la supervivencia. Es un despertar al efecto que tiene nuestro nivel de vida, nuestra producción y consumo industriales, y a lo que significa la integración de las sociedades alrededor del planeta, en una red global de comunicación y un mercado global de intercambio material y cultural.

Es posible ahora hablar de una creciente conciencia global de la necesidad de cambiar las motivaciones básicas de la política estatal, el negocio privado, el consumo y los mercados en general. Es posible ahora hablar de un momento en el que la evidencia existe para darnos cuenta del poder que tiene la industria de una civilización globalizada sobre el medio ambiente.

La época Antropocena existe porque el impacto medioambiental ya no se trata de un impacto local, en un ambiente limitado, sino de un impacto a nivel global, con secuelas en ecosistemas que no parecen tener contacto directo con la causa de su malestar. El cambio de pensamiento que ahora viene tiene que coincidir con una creciente capacidad de imaginación y colaboración, para dejar atrás la dependencia peligrosa que nos ata a los combustibles fósil.

• Geological Society of America: “Are we now living in the Anthropocene”
• Financial Times / MSNBC: “Scientists warn of a new Anthropocene age”
• About.com Geology: “Introducing the Anthropocene”
• Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie: “Anthropocene” [article that coined the term]
• Resilience 2008: “Resilience, Adaptation & Transformation in Turbulent Times” [Conf., Stockholm 14-17 April]
• Albaeco, Sustainability School: “Masking Environmental Feedbacks”

TheHotSpring.net :: The rupture of a pipeline in Montana has caused at least several tens of thousands of barrels of oil to spill into the pristine Yellowstone River, raising concerns about the tar sands pipeline planned to pass through the most important fossil aquifer in North America. The spill is precisely the kind of irreversible and unnecessary environmental disaster conservationists, farmers, energy reformers and local activists across the Great Plains seek to prevent.

The initial reports cited Exxon-Mobil spokespeople explaining that only a few hundred barrels of oil had been released into the river, and that the multinational was bringing in top cleanup experts from across the nation to do the most advanced cleanup work possible. But yesterday the news came that the spill had in fact released at least several tens of thousands of barrels of oil into the Yellowstone River, threatening pristine wilderness, delicate ecosystems, and human health, across several states.

Exxon-Mobil now says its expert cleanup effort is being hampered by Mother Nature. The takeaway seems to be that, more than twenty years after the catastrophic Exxon-Valdez spill, the oil giant has used its routine megaprofits to produce no viable cleanup strategy. It also appears there was insufficient maintenance to an insufficiently constructed pipeline, and a near total disregard for the potential impact on the natural and human environment.

The scale of the disaster was revealed when the multinational’s false reports were shown to be false by huge amounts of oil washing up on farmed land and spilling over the banks of the rising river. Critics say Exxon-Mobil’s complaints that rising waters are responsible for hampering the cleanup effort reflect the company’s frustration with how that same phenomenon revealed it had lied to the press and, presumably, to authorities, about the scale of the spill.

The material composition of the nation’s energy markets has a lot to do with this kind of crisis. Unreasoned overreliance on carbon-based combustible fuels continues even now, in the second decade of the 21st century, to incentivize irresponsible practices that threaten other natural resources, as well as animal life, arable land, aquifers and human health.

Hydrocarbon fuels currently comprise such a significant segment of the overall energy landscape, they are clearly built into our energy future, to some extent, but their current dominance does not reflect their viability as resources that produce optimum benefit to our society or our economy. The Yellowstone spill is just the latest in a seemingly unending chain of events that demonstrate the very serious dangers inherent in depending on fossil fuels as the baseload (or “go to”) energy resource.

The combustion-based energy extraction model goes back to the days when fire was first discovered and harnessed. It has served to help human civilization achieve great advances and humanize the planet, both in terms of resource-use and the expression of ideas. But that does not mean it does not bring with it the drawbacks of a primitive technological paradigm.

The amount of waste built into the combustible fuels model of energy extraction is startling. Only 2% of the energy from burning coal reaches the lightbulb in your home. The other 98% is lost, mostly in the form of uncontained heat. But the risk of uncontrolled spills, into pristine wilderness, delicate ecosystems, groundwater and the food production process, is worst with oil.

The BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, over several months in 2010, showed that across the entire oil industry, there is still a glaring lack of advanced strategy for doing immediate, effective and total cleanup. The Yellowstone spill appears to show that even on a much smaller scale, that lack of understanding and know-how plagues the industry and threatens the natural and human environment.

We don’t, in fact, have to rely on combustible fuels anymore, as the state of the art in clean renewable resources, like wind and solar, is now sufficient to extract enough energy to power the US economy. All that we are lacking is the state of the art energy infrastructure required to harness clean renewable energy on that scale.

That the nation is undergoing a prolonged job-creation slowdown is just one hint that the time is right for a major investment in new state of the art energy infrastructure. The emerging race with China for the global clean energy future (China is now investing an estimated $600 billion in developing, producing and acquiring advanced clean energy technology) is another.

But it is the massive externalized costs (costs passed on by industry to taxpayers and consumers) that pose an immediate and continuing threat to the economic wellbeing of the nation. The externalized costs of oil include not only the massive costs of even small spills, which are far more frequent and numerous than is widely reported, but also the impact of pollution on human health, the impact of heat-trapping emissions on the stability of climate bands on which all human civilization depends.

Wind and solar energy have no cleanup costs, no hidden human health costs, no climate-band dislocation costs, no long-term costs associated with burning and wasting the resource itself, no world-record military spending costs, and need pose no risk whatsoever to groundwater or the human food supply.

The Yellowstone spill has to be a signal to the American people, the United States Congress and to markets, that the time has come to phase out our reliance on fossil fuels. The way to phase out that reliance is to incentivize a shift to the construction of state of the art smart grid infrastructure and the proliferation of technologies to harness clean, renewable energy from the environment.

As of this writing, Exxon-Mobil now says the scale of the spill could be worse than has so far been reported, but has not yet released new numbers, beyond the latest estimate of 42,000. It appears the pattern of reporting is following the customary pattern for such spills, where the company involved starts with severe underreporting and little by little increases the estimates until an eventual admission of massive, catastrophic levels of contamination of the environment.

TheHotSpring.net :: Citizens Climate Lobby is an international non-partisan, non-profit volunteer organization, working to build political will for a livable world. To do that, they aim to find an ideologically neutral, democratically viable, market-focused way to reduce the amount of carbon trapped in Earth’s atmosphere and speed the transition to clean, renewable fuels. I am proud to be a member of the organization, and one who is inspired by the passion of its volunteers and fortunate to count so many good friends among its partners.

This past week, the organization took its campaign to Capitol Hill, bringing 85 volunteers to 140 office visits in the United States Congress —both houses, both parties— along with the State Department, the Department of Energy and the World Bank. The project is more than a response to fallout from excess atmospheric carbon dioxide; the CCL project involves connecting citizens with decision-makers on Capitol Hill, to take ideology out of the energy debate, and fashion policy more democratically.

CCL proposes addressing the carbon crisis in a new and different way, which in fact avoids the pitfalls of more complex and unwieldy past attempts at reducing overall emissions: the proposed Carbon Fee and Dividend Act of 2011 would put a fee on carbon-emitting fuels at the source, then deliver 100% of that money directly to American families and households.

The plan avoids the need to create burdensome new regulatory infrastructure, does not deliver any new revenue to the federal government, and turns the power to forge a brighter, more economically efficient energy future back over to the American people, the marketplace. By unmasking the massive externalized costs (not paid by industry) of fossil fuel dependency, but covering consumers so the transition is not traumatic, the fee and dividend proposal allows the virtues of a genuine market to operate.

The CCL mission is guided by the principle that when people remain open to one another, to differences of opinion and to opposing views, they can fashion a dialogue based on common vocabulary and put aside ideological biases. This, then, should allow for intelligent people, working to serve their nation in the most forthright and meaningful way possible, to work together to craft practical solutions to practical problems.

Climate destabilization has been turned into an intensely partisan issue, in which ideological assumptions and partisan strategy trump cooperative civics and negotiated problem solving. This is bad for democracy and bad for the human environment, in which impacts from inaction are mounting, and the economic fallout looks to be accelerating, certainly beyond the current window of opportunity to act.

The challenge of the political moment is to find a way around the intense partisan divide, and that is no small task.

On Capitol Hill, there is frustration on both sides of the aisle with the inability of Congress to work together in a responsible way on practical issues, and much of the gridlock is due to ideological bias interfering with sound policy judgment. But the United States now faces another moment of urgency regarding climate and energy: China is racing ahead with massive investment in clean energy resources, even as it expands at record pace its use of the dirtiest form of fuel, coal.

The Chinese agenda, to take control of the global marketplace for new technologies, not by manufacturing alone, but by developing the newest, most cutting-edge technologies that will build the future economy of the world, means the United States now sees its dominance in technological innovation and research and development threatened. If we, as a nation, do not succeed in building the foundations for the global clean energy economy of the 1st century, our ability to compete internationally, and to thrive domestically, will face constant pressure.

The most advanced intelligence work of Pentagon analysts has found that sustainability and security are now intertwined and cannot be disentangled: economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, the sustainability of alliances, of political borders, of nation states, of an economic model that allows us to thrive in relative peace and security, are all linked, and the emerging national strategic narrative [pdf], capable of addressing the complexity of the global environment, needs to rethink the paradigm of threat and risk, and view such challenges as opportunities to shape and influence the landscape of human civilization, for the better.

The great success of this week of CCL lobbying on Capitol Hill was that individual volunteers, the citizen-based movement as a whole, and some of those who sat in meetings with the organization, experienced breakthroughs in terms of openness and interest in dealing with this issue as one of practical problems demanding practical solutions.

It is CCL’s mission to work with members of Congress of all variety of ideological inclinations, many of whom have never been able to share a constructive conversation about climate or energy, with one another, to build a coalition based on citizen interest and a shared vocabulary for building a vibrant and resilient, cutting-edge clean energy economy, through which sustainable American prosperity and quality of life can be secured in this century.

It will be citizens who build, manifest and deliver the political will to achieve these vital goals, and success will mean the strengthening of our democracy and our economic future.

TheHotSpring.net :: Climate change means “global warming”, so how can severe winter storms and excessively cold breezes be evidence of a warming climate? The key is in the word “global”: the warming of the overall global average temperature need not manifest in all places at all times as warmer weather. Throughout the history of human civilization, the Earth’s climate has remained relatively stable, due to optimal global average temperatures; as global average temperatures slip outside that optimal range, the warmer air makes the interaction between climate systems more inconsistent and more severe.

So, while monsoons are failing across Africa and southern Asia, and major rivers are starting to run dry for part of the year, failing to reach the sea, in northern climate bands, storms are getting to be more severe and winter weather is hitting harder. This is because climate bands themselves are blurring, becoming less rigid, less reliable, and so in traditionally temperate climate zones, arctic and tropical air are coming together more often than before, both demonstrating and exacerbating the ongoing destabilization of major climate patterns.

On Sunday in New York City, freezing temperatures, dense snowfall and high winds all coincided with thunder, to the surprise of many, who had never observed this phenomenon before. As explained on the local news, such events can happen when the right combination of factors create a storm with some of the characteristics of summer storms. That means thunder can accompany snowfall if the cloud patterns are being fed by the right mix of freezing air and warmer southerly sea air.

The concern climate scientists have about global warming is not warm days as such, or mild winters, but rather the cumulative effect of warmer global average temperatures. That effect is widespread destabilization of vital climate patterns, and the resulting feedback loop, which would turn warmer high-altitude temperatures into melting glaciers, reduced precipitation and rising sea levels.

If the weather you’re seeing in your hometown is colder than usual, it is not evidence that the global average temperature is not warming. It is, however, consistent with a warming global climate to see weather that is more extreme in temperature or precipitation than has historically been the case in a given region.

One blizzard is not itself proof of global climate destabilization, but a mounting pattern over several years, where tornadoes converge on New York City (September 2010), more than 20% of Pakistan’s entire territory is inundated (summer 2010), hurricanes are more frequent, more numerous and more intense on average (2004-2010), and crops are under increased threat from frost in places like Brazil, Florida and India (1998-2010), are evidence of the destabilization of major climate patterns.

The persistent and mounting melt of Antarctic ice shelves, and their calving into the planet’s oceans, is further evidence of a persistent and mounting global increase in annual average temperatures. No system on Earth is entirely closed. Systems interact, which means chemical compositions of regional air and water flows, temperature adjustments, and frequency and precision of ecosystem services all interact and affect one another.

Such processes honor no political borders, recognize no economic zones and respect no observable boundaries. The warming of waters in the Gulf of Mexico means the Gulf Stream carries that warmer water to northwestern Europe, gradually warming the chill arctic waters, which then become less effective at rapidly cooling the Gulf Stream waters. This is important, because that rapid cooling generates the world’s most massive and powerful waterfall, as the cooled water plunges to the bottom, and flows around Europe and Africa into the Indian Ocean.

That Deep Ocean Current relies on the proper balance of warm and cool water at the precise point where falling water can push the right volume of water around the globe, at the right temperature to maintain key surface temperatures and major climate bands. To understand climate destabilization, it’s more instructive to think about the snowflake than the thermometer: cool temperatures don’t always bring snow, because weather is highly variable from moment to moment; but the fragile, tiny snowflake, of itself harmless, can become a paralyzing force across an entire region. Little incremental ticks of climate relevant data can mount to generate catastrophic change.

Today, we are digging out from under 25 inches of snow that fell in less than 24 hours. Digging out from under comprehensively destabilized global climate systems will not be so easy. The smart money tends to flow toward the more rational approach to problem solving. Having no plan but wait-and-see leads to transit collapse, states of emergency and regional collapse. The smart money for future investment wants to support more rational behavior, the kind that honors human need, human rights and the logic whereby democracy is highly capable of coordinated human brilliance.

Former Pres. Bill Clinton told CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, in an interview before a live audience this week at the Clinton Global Initiative, in New York City, that a commitment to clean energy is required to drive job growth, cut unemployment and boost the economy. He noted that the four countries who are projected to beat their clean energy targets under the Kyoto Protocol —Denmark, Germany, Sweden and the U.K.— all have lower unemployment, and less economic inequality than the U.S., due to the green tech boom.

The United States has committed more resources than ever before, under Pres. Obama, to promoting clean energy, but there is still significant pressure from powerful corporate interests tied to oil, coal and natural gas, to slow the transition to a clean-energy economy. Those interests might lose out, if subsidies are shifted from carbon-based fuels to clean energy, but only if they refuse to innovate along with the rest of the economy. The cost-effectiveness of subsidizing clean energy, however, far outstrips the cost-effectiveness of subsidizing the burning of carbon-based fuels.

The fact is: there is no single area of near-term economic development with as much potential to heal the economic wounds that afflict our nation or to create new jobs and make for vibrant thriving communities than clean energy innovation. In part, this is because the job is so big. In part, it is owing to the fact that energy is everywhere; there is no corner of the society that can ably do without it in at least some small dose for very long. The interconnectedness and fast pace of 21st century America requires a booming energy sector, and the energy sector has critical weaknesses.

Among these are: the finite nature of carbon-based fuels and the geologic time-scales required to create new reserves; the intense fallout to human and environmental health from pollution; the massive, ongoing and still growing contribution to destabilization of global climate patterns, from the burning of fossil fuels; negative externalities of even local impact: where coal-intensive communities suffer chronic endemic poverty and an over-dependence on one industry; the cost transport will impose on our economic activity if we don’t innovate away from combustible fuels.

Pres. Clinton’s announcement comes at a crucial time, as electoral battles over how to solve the jobs crisis raise not just ideological points of contention but serious confusion over what the cost implications would be for a transition to clean energy. The standard retort, for decades, has been that clean energy “is just too expensive”, that renewable resources like wind and solar energy are “intermittent” and so unreliable, that we cannot afford to stop using oil, despite our mounting dependence on nations whose interests may be in direct conflict with our own.

The fact is, rapid and widespread innovations in energy technology mean solar power is expanding its productive capacity more rapidly than any other resource. Wind is now capable, were the infrastructure already built, to supply more than 100% of the entire energy demand of the United States, and innovations in biofuel planning mean new strains of algae are now potentially 3x more efficient at turning light into energy.

Building the infrastructure for a truly efficient, clean and low-cost renewable energy economy will take time, and resources. The fossil fuel industry continually seeks to paint this fact as a sign that doing so would be prohibitively expensive, but precisely the contrary is true. In fact, not aggressively investing in this infrastructure overhaul, technological innovation and job-training, will render many of our basic economic underpinnings prohibitively expensive, within a generation. The fallout across our economy could be devastating.

Compare to that the effect of heavily investing in the clean energy transition: a relatively small but stable (year-after-year) commitment of resources from the federal government would spur over $100 billion in private-sector clean-energy investment, which would in turn create millions of new jobs, reforming local and regional economies, cleaning the air, stabilizing climate patterns around which our entire civilization is organized, and building resilience, knowledge, innovation and economic vibrancy into communities large and small.

Not only is it eminently affordable for the United States to make this transition now, in a committed and robust way, it is in fact an issue of far-reaching implications for national security. The Pentagon views the destabilization of global climate patterns and rival nations’ out-competing us on clean energy as potentially threatening our political and economic security in the coming decades, and so has embarked on a program to transform its use of energy; the nation would be wise to do the same, so we can get on the road to real, prolonged recovery, and build a stable, clean, sustainable energy future.

Sustainable security is a paradigm shift in foreign policy, economic and defense planning: it entails considering that not only diplomatic relations and military preparedness or alliances, but the full spectrum of connections between our society and the world abroad, determine the degree to which our future security and prosperity can be reasonably guaranteed.

Practices and relations that promote insecurity of the food supply in remote areas of foreign nations, or which drive unstable nations like Yemen toward total persistent clean water scarcity —the total collapse of the fresh water supply— pose a serious and measurable threat to both security and economic stability back home.

The US Department of Defense has recognized this, specifically calling for concerted national action to combat emissions-induced climate destabilization and to promote the protection of ecological systems across the world, as a matter of promoting stability and human prosperity, in order to prevent a domino effect of failing states from destabilizing the global political sphere.

Share ideas here for how to promote sustainable security, including cases where sustainability thinking is creating a framework for sustainable food, water, political and economic security…

• Join the discussion now on The Hot Spring Network

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) this week called for a move toward building consensus for a scaled back version of the climate legislation pending in the United States Senate. Two possible models, given the nature of the Kerry-Lieberman proposal, as written, would be to either establish at the federal level the kind of cooperative emissions reduction strategy already adopted by a coalition of states across the northeast or a limit on total carbon emissions from power plants only.

25 states, plus the District of Columbia, have renewable electricity standards, a requirement that a certain percentage of power generation come from clean renewable resources, by a certain year. 3 more states have voluntary RES goals, and there are incentives both at the state and federal level for power utilities to develop expanded renewable generating capacity. The state of New Jersey has quickly risen to 2nd nationwide in solar power generation, behind California, despite having no sun-scorched deserts and little eligible open space which is not protected.

New Jersey is also rapidly expanding its commitment to solar energy, incentivizing installations on private homes, factory and warehouse roof-space and corporate complexes, as with the new 4.1 MW solar power installation slated to go online early next year at Dow Jones’ South Brunswick site. Technology innovation —including R&D, manufacturing, energy efficiency improvements, and local renewable generation schemes— is driving New Jersey’s response to the carbon emissions question.

This model could be translated into something that allows for an array of public-private partnerships and aggressive incentives for enterprises, small and large, to commit to energy innovation and to clean renewables. If Sen. Snowe’s push for a utility-focused emissions protocol is built around the northeastern efficiency and renewables standards, a new round of Recovery Act funding for R&D could help speed the transition to clean energy.

Coal-heavy states consistently face the problem of how carbon-pricing (whether by tax or by cap and trade) will affect people reliant on the coal industry for their livelihoods and for affordable energy. Accelerating the pace of technological innovation for improved alternative energy performance is key to lessening the impact of a transition away from coal, but whatever emissions-reduction strategy becomes law, something will likely have to be done to insulate consumers and protect jobs in coal-dependent states.

The hope of those pushing for a tech-centered bill is that renewable electricity standards and incentives to assist in the transition from carbon-based to clean energy will allow coal-dependent communities to diversify their energy supply and their job markets in meaningful ways that make for a more vibrant local economy.

An alternative proposal is the fee/dividend model —proposed by Citizens Climate Lobby*, and with the support of leading scientists like NASA’s Dr. James Hansen—, which would place a fee on carbon dioxide at the point of entry into the US economy (well, mine or port) and return 100% of the revenues to every American household. This model puts the reins of the marketplace back in the hands of the consumer, by allowing families to cover any additional costs that filter through from the carbon fee.

Whether by technological innovation and direct incentives for investment and retooling or by contextual incentives like the fee/dividend proposal, one key focus for honest policymakers must be planning for the rapid diversification of energy supplies and labor markets in regions and communities that are currently reliant on coal or oil production for their economic sustenance.

The famously oil-driven state of Texas is another good example —like New Jersey, where oil importation and refinery have long been key players in the energy sector— where a transition to renewables has not only been recognized as necessary and potentially lucrative, but where the pace of the transition has been accelerating at a surprising rate. Texas is now the national leader in wind-based power generation, with 9,000 MW installed and plans to install another 40,000 MW.

With 49,000 MW of wind-based power generation, Texas would be producing enough power from wind to replace 41 coal-fired power plants. Oil money is now shifting into wind as oil becomes harder to find and harder to extract and investors recognize that yields from wind don’t decline over time, because the resource is renewable, or rather: constantly flowing.

Such energy innovations are helping to provide new sources of wealth to rural communities, as 1 acre of corn can yield roughly $800 at harvest, and 1 acre with 1 wind turbine installed can produce $300,000 worth of electricity. The efficiency in such a shift in power generation is enhanced by the new technologies’ ability to subsidize farming communities, potentially reducing the need for overall government spending relating to agriculture and energy as a combined total.

Sen. Snowe’s office has been keeping any definitive aim or strategy under wraps, while the senator seeks to rally wavering senators in both parties to the cause of emissions reduction, by one means or another. Her coalition building effort will win favor, many policy analysts and activists believe, as soon as it is clear that the technological transition will be rapid and effective and will allow carbon-reliant communities to prosper in ways they presently cannot.

* NOTE: This reporter is a group leader and citizen volunteer for Citizens Climate Lobby, a non-partisan, non-profit national organization working to build the political will for a sustainable climate. Read more about CCL’s efforts on Capitol Hill, on The Hot Spring Network

Sen. Olympia Snowe, Republican of Maine, is known for being a moderate, a pragmatist, and often the key to determining what gets done in a hotly divided partisan environment. She has consistently sought to take responsible positions on environmental policy, but has supported her party in many key votes. Now, she is pledging to push for a broader coalition of support for a scaled-back climate bill. Her approach is being called “utility-only”, focusing carbon emissions capping on power generation utilities, something supporters say will make the pending legislation more viable economically and administratively.

Her office released the following statement, on 29 June 2010, after a bipartisan Senate meeting with Pres. Obama to discuss pending climate legislation:

“As I have long advocated, working toward energy independence is an imperative for our economic and national security.  Which is why today I urged the President to seize control of our own energy destiny and, for the first time, establish clearly defined national timetables for clean energy production, benchmarks for oil consumption reduction, and goals for game-changing research – which no other president has ever done, to ensure we actually attain that independence.  Central to this is moving forward with an aggressive energy bill that reorients our nation toward renewable and energy efficiency. This cannot be underestimated in literally transforming our energy supply and yielding tremendous environmental and economic benefits.  Just last year, the U.S. was a global leader in wind with 10,000 Megawatts of facilities constructed at 39 percent growth – and yet, we are in danger of losing that competitive and technological edge to China which grew its wind capacity by 100 percent last year.

“And that is why I have co-authored legislation sponsored by Senator Klobuchar that would establish a strong Renewable Energy Standard of 25 percent by 2025 and worked on the Home Star proposal with Senators Bingaman and Warner, which would provide energy efficiency rebates and long-term tax credits to build an entirely new industry in performance-based efficiency.  While there is consensus among us on energy, on the complex and difficult question of curbing greenhouse gas emissions, there is no consensus at this time. From my perspective, I’ve long asserted that placing a price on carbon will send the appropriate signals to entrepreneurs that would unleash the innovation to position America as a global clean energy industry leader.  However, today we are in different and perilous economic times with last week’s new jobless claims actually increasing by 12,000, to a total of 472,000 Americans, and the full impact of the BP spill is yet unknown.  So it’s essential that we carefully weigh the costs of action versus inaction to avoid unintended consequences that cost us jobs, as well as the distributional effects of any policy we apply and how we mitigate and equalize those effects.”

“At the same time simply we cannot afford economy-wide approaches to carbon reduction that could cost consumers another 18 cents per gallon of gasoline in this struggling economy or subject our manufacturing sector to unnecessary regulations when they’ve already reduced their emissions by five percent below 1990 levels.  And yet, we also recognize the threat of blanket and ad hoc EPA regulations that would threaten at least 1,600 major employers should we fail to act. Which is why I believe that one possibility is to more narrowly target a carbon pricing program through a uniform nationwide system solely on the power sector which is the sector with the most to lose from the EPA regulations and it’s also the sector in which businesses actually make decisions today based on prices 20 to 30 years in the future.

“The bottom line is that this should be an era of practicality given our economic situation – and whatever Congress pursues should be viewed through that prism, to develop legislation that is pragmatic, reduces uncertainty, and creates business opportunities for a carbon-free economy of the future, without further harming our economy of today.”

Senator Snowe has been a longtime advocate for advancing policies to combat global warming, with her record beginning as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives when she cosponsored the Global Warming Prevention Act more than 20 years ago.  In 2007, Senators Snowe and Feinstein spearheaded the Ten-in-Ten fuel economy standards, landmark legislation to increase Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which is the single most effective US law that has addressed climate change.  The regulations based on Senator Snowe’s law were finalized this spring and will eliminate a metric Gigaton of CO2 emissions by saving 1.8 billion barrels of oil.  This Congress, Senator Snowe co-hosted the “U.S. Climate Action: A Global Economic Perspective” symposium on Capitol Hill with Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair, as well as the leaders in the business community to discuss the formulation of U.S. policy on climate change.

Snowe clearly seeks a pragmatic approach, and wants to rescue future generations from the potentially grave side-effects of political intransigence and the refusal to accept universally defined scientific findings on carbon-induced climate destabilization. Her task, of course, is complex, because many in her party are sensitive to the concerns of coal-heavy states, where fears about energy prices are closely linked to the sometimes narrow business plan of coal interests.

Technological innovation and efficiency standards could afford a way to persuade skeptics about the economic viability and civilizational imperatives of carbon emissions reduction. A coalition of northeastern states has already begun implementing emissions reduction schemes for power utilities, and this could serve as a model for national policy, without requiring a massive new bureaucracy or complex trading market.

Between June 21 and 25, Citizens Climate Lobby took its message to Capitol Hill, meeting with 52 different members of Congress, or their energy and climate staff, in both the House and the Senate. The first CCL national conference was fortuitously timed, as the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has brought into stark relief the nature of the carbon-fuel problem and the urgent need for action to achieve a civilization-wide overhaul of energy infrastructure, and the climate bill pending in the Senate may not have the votes to override a filibuster.

The “Lobby Day” experience was part of the first annual CCL National Conference, in the nation’s capital. The landmark event brought together climate scientists, oceanographers, environmental engineers, economists, activists, community leaders, small business owners and concerned citizens, to deliver the message to members of both parties that citizens from the community, their own constituents, will support them if they take meaningful, comprehensive action to combat climate destabilization.

Citizens Climate Lobby is a national non-partisan, non-profit organization, working to organize citizen volunteers, by state, county or Congressional district, to lobby elected officials for a strong emissions reduction plan that will prevent catastrophic climate change and speed the transition to clean energy. The group aims to motivate political support, across the political spectrum, for a pragmatic approach to emissions reduction and to speeding the transition to clean energy.

The CCL strategy entails reaching out to all members of Congress, in both parties, regardless of their specific views or past staunch opposition to carbon-reduction legislation. The aim is to listen, to understand what specific elected officials and their constituencies most value and how they prioritize issues of energy and climate, and to work with them to help them achieve their goals in a way that is consistent with establishing a sustainable, responsible climate policy.

As part of the Citizens Climate Lobby myself, I can say it is integral to the organization’s mission to work to transition the United States from a legislative climate of full-time professional lobbyists to a new paradigm wherein ordinary citizens speaking for their communities and for the well-being and rights of future generations, are the preferred interlocutors for shaping the nation’s laws.

The conference was a three-day event, in conjunction with the RESULTS National Conference, from June 20 through 22, where citizen volunteer lobbyists gather to push Congress to act to combat poverty at home and around the world. Sunday and Monday were training and informational days, in which the CCL volunteers heard directly from established scientists presenting the latest science regarding climate destabilization and carbon emissions, and participated in workshops designed to prepare the teams for meetings with members of Congress and their staff.

The specific focus of Citizens Climate Lobby’s efforts on Capitol Hill is to promote proposed language for a fee/dividend approach to limiting and reducing carbon emissions and promoting the transition to a world-leading clean energy economy. The proposed legislation would:

1. fee: place a direct and steadily increasing (year on year) cost on CO2 at the point of entry into the economy (well, mine or port);
2. dividend: return 100% of revenues collected to the American people directly, an equal amount per capita to every household;
3. clean energy: set a price that will make renewables cheaper than fossil fuels within 10 years;
4. level playing field: apply a border adjustment to balance carbon pricing for products from nations that do nothing to increase cost of carbon emissions;
5. pollution: stop construction of all new coal-fired power plants and phase out all existing plants, starting with the dirtiest…

The plan is supported by Dr. James Hansen (NASA’s leading climate scientist), by numerous retired military leaders and by leading members of the faith community. It is designed to relocate the hidden costs of carbon-based fuels (‘negative externalities’, in economics-speak) from the citizen, the community and the small business, back to the interests that seek to profit from the resources that generate those negative externalities for which the rest of us pay.

The CCL approach is intended not to be punitive, but to be clear and transparent. It does not discriminate, and it does not in any way limit the freedom of carbon-based enterprises to join the clean energy revolution. Over time, as the cost of producing energy from carbon-based fuels goes up, investment will move toward clean energy resources, technology and infrastructure, which will allow private enterprise to profit more readily and more consistently than the more costly carbon-based alternative, with its tendency to extreme volatility in pricing.

This method allows citizens, communities and small businesses to pay for any increase in costs that might come from utilities or other industrial enterprises passing along carbon fee costs to the consumer, and to drive demand for a clean energy alternative. The plan allows the American people to build the clean energy future they would prefer, and to drive a new wave of investment in innovation and ingenuity to secure the nation’s energy independence and protect the natural environment against progressive global climate destabilization.

Having met with and listened to so many members of Congress and/or their climate and energy policy advisers, CCL has begun the process of working to find areas of mutual interest and shared principle that can build a fabric of common understanding and common interest between rival political parties, rival community interests, rival ideological camps and even rival industries, to forge the political will to achieve the clean energy revolution this nation needs for its future economic, environmental and military security.

TheHotSpring.net :: There is nothing ideological about the issue of renewable energy resources. Proponents tend to care about the health of the natural environment, which motivates their wish to see renewables replace high-polluting resources like oil and coal, but the technologies, the fact of their economic viability and their usefulness for society at large, are not in any way a matter of ideology.

Neither is there anything ideological about the allegiance of some to carbon-based fuels. The considerations are entirely practical on all sides, and we need to remember this as we try to find consensus on how to move forward, responsibly, as a civilization, in terms of our relationship to energy.

For some people in the political arena, it would appear to make more sense to continue to support carbon-based fuels as the primary resource for energy production, for a number of practical reasons, each of which can be refuted on practical grounds: 1) because those entities that profit from carbon-based fuels donate to one’s campaign; 2) because those entities that profit from carbon-based fuels “create jobs”; 3) because burning things to release energy is easier to understand than more advanced technologies.

There are real ideologically-rooted reasons why the passions can run so deep on either side: for environmentalists, it is morally unconscionable that we continue burning dirty fuels and eroding the natural systems on which all life depends, no matter the reasons; for the pro-petroleum segment of the political spectrum, there are patriotic roots, hearkening back to two world wars and the Cold War, with oil seen as a guarantor of security.

Oil is no longer that, and passions aside, thinking people have to acknowledge that the root of those passions is really practical and not ideological anyway. It makes practical sense to be good stewards of the environment on which we depend for everything that we have, and it was a practical consideration that linked industrial production and national security to the availability of carbon-based fuels.

But now, national security has become so closely linked to energy supply issues that we can no longer rely —again, in strictly practical terms— on a commodity as volatile, finite and problematic as petroleum. The costs to society are too great, whether we are talking about war-fighting —and war-funding, for that matter—, the loss of freedom in terms of shaping our foreign policy, costs in terms of human health or the destabilization of major climate systems.

And coal, while abundant in North America, is so dirty a resource that the environmental fallout alone makes it less than reasonable as a foundational resource for long-term future planning. There may come a time when carbon itself is a resource, required for its chemical properties, but not necessarily as useful as we now pretend, as a combustible fuel. Places where the coal industry has its roots may have to change focus or find technologically cutting-edge ways to justify the exploration for coal.

The reasons for this are hard to understand, if one starts from the assumption that there is something traditional or sacredly local or productive about coal. But if we step back and consider the real adaptability of human populations, we find that no community really needs the coal industry, having no chance of survival or prosperity in absence, in the way the coal industry lobby pretends.

Communities are made up of human beings and are as adaptable as those human beings’ minds, hearts and relationships. The relationship to powerful coal interests is not always a happy one, and this alone can open doors for the development of resources that are more sustainable, more local-friendly, and respectful of future human need in ways that older technologies simply cannot be.

Even the coal industry itself could innovate, diversify, and find ways to turn its operations into major sources of clean renewable energy. At least three renewable resources come to mind: geothermal energy production, wind and solar. Mining companies in many cases own or lease land for which they have not yet devised a marketable use or long ago abandoned, and these can be converted to solar farms, wind farms or geothermal fields.

While international mining companies are outsourcing administrative jobs and moving to more “cost effective” mining sites overseas, some are beginning to use disused mining sites in the US to build part of the new clean-energy infrastructure. Across the southwest, such projects are already in development or being implemented. According to the Arizona Republic:

Both the Bureau of Land Management and Environmental Protection Agency are studying the potential to put renewable-energy projects on mines, landfills and other disturbed lands.

Mines can help avoid many of the expenses solar plants face on pristine desert, experts said, such as environmental rules that require relocating saguaros and other protected plants.

There is no reason why environmentalists seeking to promote clean energy and communities steeped in a long tradition of coal mining or oil drilling cannot come together, free of ideological constraints, to craft the solutions that will make the US a global leader in efficient, profitable, mass-produced clean energy. The ideology that claims this issue is one of ideology is simply a rhetorical framework that serves the interests of the most stagnant and unimaginative coal and oil interests.

Major oil producers could easily invest billions in renewable R&D and become global pioneers in the rush to achieve a fully self-sustaining clean-energy economy. Their resistance is perhaps more linked to a short-sighted ideological prejudice than to a lack of will to be part of the future, but they do not have any real ideological framework to back up their position, and the logic that favors a transition to renewables does not require one.

From a strictly economic standpoint, it does not make sense to continue being near totally reliant upon a way of doing business that carries the wildly exorbitant potential costs of an Ixtoc, an Exxon Valdez, Texaco in Ecuador, or a Deepwater Horizon disaster. If we want to be intelligent about how we achieve “energy independence”, we have to first assess and confront the real costs of doing business the way big oil does business.

It’s not a matter of “a tax on energy” or “a tax on carbon”, it’s a matter of making sure the responsible parties pay their share. Subsidies on an unprecedented scale, have made the oil business look and feel profitable in ways that it actually is not, when the health of the wider economy is considered. Were those wider costs built into the business itself, big oil would not be nearly as attractive an investment as it seemed to be until the Deepwater Horizon well blew out in April.

While an “ideology” that values the natural environment over the right of the oil industry to make profits may rejoice at the opportunity to use such a failure as BP has experienced in the Gulf of Mexico to make the case against oil, that does not make it any less true that BP had no responsible or credible action plan for dealing with an environmental catastrophe of this magnitude, despite deliberately doing everything necessary to bring about the catastrophe.

That such risks can be avoided with a transition to clean, renewable energy resources that do not require combustion and do not require oil or coal to achieve the efficiency gains they aim to achieve, is just as honestly not a matter of ideology. It’s the way it is. And science is now demonstrating that we can produce more than enough electricity, nationally, to power our entire domestic energy consumption through wind and solar alone, if we build the infrastructure.

At the point where the renewable energy infrastructure is pervasive and functional enough to outpace carbon-based fuels in total power generation capacity, there will be no question, practically speaking, whether or not renewables are a more effective method of promoting long-term economic health and prosperity. Where is the ideology inherent in planning for such a virtuous moment of future achievement?

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TheHotSpring.net :: Pres. Obama addressed the nation last night from the Oval Office, on the tragedy unfolding across the Gulf of Mexico, and issued an impassioned call for the entire nation to rally to the cause of breaking its “addiction to fossil fuels”. The president’s vision goes beyond the question of “energy independence”, which tends to favor expanded offshore drilling, to a push for a comprehensive transition to clean, renewable sources of energy and the phasing out of carbon-based fuels.

For more than a decade, ecological economists have been arguing that the United States needs to make a nationwide effort, “at wartime speed” to innovate and commit to clean, renewable power-generation methods. Last night, Pres. Obama became the first US president to echo this vision, reminding skeptics that no one believed the US could build its military capacity as rapidly or completely as it did to fight World War II on two opposite sides of the globe.

Obama said “The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most clean and painful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now”. He also noted that a nationwide transition to clean energy is an integral part of the nation’s long-term economic recovery, saying “The transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of new jobs, but only if we accelerate that transition.”

There are some in Congress who oppose this message, but this appears to be mostly from allegiance to the carbon fuels industry and the outdated view that clean energy solutions are not cost-effective. For many politicians from the Gulf coast region, the prospect of a comprehensive shift away from fossil fuels is not only terrifying, but taboo. There is such a deep fear that jobs tied to the oil industry cannot be replaced by any other means and that no other industry can be so effective at “creating wealth” that it is virtually forbidden for anyone in politics to speak of moving away from oil production.

The generating capacity, however, of wind, solar and wave power, has advanced to a level of efficiency where it is feasible to replace the energy production capacity of the Gulf of Mexico’s oil industry with renewables. What is needed is infrastructure, and building it will create jobs as soon as the first project is launched.

Obstruction from pro-petroleum politicians in Washington and across the Gulf region is linked to the 18th-19th century idea that burning carbon-based fuel is the most efficient way to produce energy. But refusal to pour major investment into the transition to clean, renewable resources and the infrastructure needed to make that system a reality is a direct impediment to immediate, widespread job growth in the very areas under siege from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The BP spill is in fact, no matter one’s perspective on clean energy, a watershed moment in thinking about energy and environmental policy: it is now clear the incalculable potential costs to every sector of society from the failed strategy of a devotion to carbon-based fuels far outstrip our ability to easily respond to a disaster of this kind, and the logic of using clean energy has suddenly come into stark relief as an obvious and necessary next step.

The call to arms, part of what the president called his “battle plan” for addressing the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, comes none too soon, as China and India have joined Europe in pushing the envelope of clean energy innovation. China has made the world’s largest investments in clean energy startup incentives and the EU has poured tens of billions of dollars in solar investment into projects in Africa and elsewhere.

But India has also joined the trend, as reported by Shravya Reddy, for the Natural Resources Defense Council:

On May 24, India unveiled the draft of its National Green Mission, one of the eight missions under its National Action Plan on Climate Change.   This is exciting news, especially for NRDC’s India team which is currently in New Delhi discussing climate change with Indian officials and civil society.   NRDC welcomes the draft and is encouraged to see India’s commitment to addressing the challenge of climate change and managing its greenhouse gas emissions.

India’s national green mission is just the latest major national policy proposal designed to not only build toward a new era of responsible environmental stewardship and reduced carbon emissions, but to transition a major national economy toward the use of clean, renewable resources for power-generation, industry and transport.

A dramatically expanded commitment to clean energy resources is no longer just a matter of environmental responsibility, it is now a very urgent matter of direct international economic competition. Denmark and Japan have become the world leaders in the production of advanced wind turbine technologies, while China is now pushing investment in both innovation and production of cutting edge solar and wind power technologies, for export.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is today trying to push through the United States Senate an amendment to proposed legislation which would limit the power of the EPA to regulate carbon emissions. Murkowski claims the constraint on EPA authority is necessary to protect future economic growth and job creation, though it is in fact an effort to deliver huge amounts of public funding to the oil industry and an attempt to establish federal government policy ignoring the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA has a legal obligation to regulate carbon emissions, under the authority granted to it by the Clean Air Act. This publication reported in April 2007 that:

In a lawsuit brought by 12 states, several cities and a dozen pro-environment organizations against the federal government, the US Supreme Court has handed down a narrow 5 to 4 ruling reversing Bush administration policy that avoids regulating carbon dioxide emissions. The Court says the Clean Air Act specifically authorizes the EPA to enforce such regulation in order to protect the public and effect clean air standards.

After two years of inaction by the Bush-era EPA, and a long period of study of the problem, the EPA officially ruled in December 2009 that carbon emissions pose a serious danger to public health and should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Murkowski’s amendment is designed to stop the EPA from instituting that program of regulation, as ordered by the US Supreme Court.

There is substantial debate about the political motivations for the senators who have signed on, including Arkansas Democrat Blanche Lincoln, who narrowly survived a two-round primary challenge in her state. It is an election year, and the Republican party decided when Pres. Obama was elected that at least for the first two years until the midterm elections of 2010, they would oppose every policy of his administration, except where he agreed with their policies on the Iraq or Afghanistan wars or counterterrorism.

It does seem clear, however, that climate-change skepticism is not a viable explanation for the momentum Murkowski has gathered. It is more apparent, however, that there is a direct connection between support for the Murkowski amendment and ties to the oil coal industries. Senators who have promoted oil interests, offshore drilling or the building of new coal-fired electric plants, seem to receive more money from oil interests and to be translating that relationship into support for the Murkowski amendment.

Clearly, there is a Republican party strategy involved in the energy behind the amendment, a deliberate attempt to sabotage the effectiveness of any new legislation on energy or climate policy, to dampen the impact of Pres. Obama’s reform agenda. But the same question comes to that point: why? Would it be in the electoral interests of Republican politicians to support legislation that would be harmful to the economic interests of the people of the United States over the long term? Clearly not.

And opposing immediate action to reduce carbon emissions will be damaging to the long-term economic interests of the United States, if only because it will make the country more dependent on foreign oil and susceptible to the easily manipulated and also highly volatile pricing of oil. We know that the costs of using oil and coal for fuel are far higher than what consumers pay, and businesses engaged in those practices are highly profitable. This means the government, ultimately, or the consumer through other expenditures, is picking up the tab.

To extend those economic inefficiencies and to deepen American dependence on foreign oil, in the midst of an economic crisis, when action is urgently needed to lessen the likelihood of catastrophic climate destabilization, is bad policy. It is thought to be good politics only because Republican party strategists and their friends in the oil and coal industries believe strongly that most people do not know enough to make an informed judgment on the issue.

Earth Day 2010 finds our world, in many ways, at a moment of crucial historical importance, on the issue of climate destabilization and environmental stewardship. The combined effects of major scientific advances, which have brought a wealth of hard evidence, the global campaign to raise awareness, and the deteriorating conditions of the carbon fuel sector’s relationship with consumers’ interest, now mean awareness of the urgent need to achieve a more sustainable global economic infrastructure has spread rapidly.

But consciousness is only part of the process: achieving meaningful action will likely be more arduous and more elusive an undertaking, and the entire environmental responsibility movement is now facing a multi-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollar campaign by interested parties aiming to smear the entire field of climate science, sow doubt and undermine progress.

But the early 21st century has given us the clearest signals we have seen, on a global scale, that stewardship of the natural environment is not just a human ethical imperative but that it requires our coming to understand and work together with natural systems, to protect the natural resources and services that provide us with a base of incalculable value for sustaining our civilization and our species. In 2010, climate policy is moving forward in historic ways, and the United States is now coming to grips with the opportunity/obligation to serve as a global leader in responsible energy, development, and climate policy.

2010 will also be remembered as the year when the first all-solar-powered plane took flight, and when the most advanced electric vehicles (EV) to date became available to the consumer market. The Solar Impulse prototype plane cannot carry a substantial passenger load just yet, but it is the major first step on the road to a carbon-free transport future. Tesla’s and Fisker’s stunning inaugural EV models remain too expensive for most consumers, but as the infrastructure, the battery technology and the energy efficiency rapidly advance, they will likely set the standard for 21st century automotive transport.

The Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf will also take the EV model to a new level, allowing a far wider range of consumers to really benefit from the option to move away from carbon-only transport fuel, and drive a paradigm shift in fuel-sourcing, clean energy and fuel-efficiency standards. Building the green economy has become an integral part of long-term economic policy in the US and the EU, but also across Asia, the Pacific and deep into Africa.

How effectively environmentally sustainable advances are put into practice, and across how wide a scope, will determine whether we are able to stave off some of the worst effects of comprehensive climate destabilization over the next 100 to 200 years. Even as major cities across the world seek to promote clean-fueled public transport and daily bicycle use, coal-fired power plants are expanding their number at an historic pace, in China and India, and governments are increasingly looking at nuclear energy (far from environmentally neutral or 100% “safe”) as the most powerful alternative to slow this process.

In the US, there is mounting grassroots pressure on the White House and Congress, both controlled by progressive, environmentally conscious Democrats, to make more committed, more aggressive plans for a comprehensive shift away from high-intensity carbon-polluting fuel sources, like coal and petroleum. But sustainability requires astute attention to detail on a range of issues far beyond energy and fuel use: sustainable agriculture, water use, even genetic science policy, all relate to the long-term sustainability quotient of any given nation’s overall policy framework.

In response to a recent article, explaining that record snowfall in certain places does not equate to a proof that global warming is not happening, but rather, that global warming is an apt explanation for why the record snowfalls would occur there, a number of climate skeptics chose to attack certain points in the piece, using what they take to be established science. In some cases, the evidence cited was simply misrepresented or misinterpreted, according to the wishes of the skeptics themselves.

For instance, one commenter wrote the following:

What does NASA satellite data tell us? “Unlike the surface-based temperatures, global temperature measurements of the Earth’s lower atmosphere obtained from satellites reveal no definitive warming trend over the past two decades. The slight trend that is in the data actually appears to be downward. The largest fluctuations in the satellite temperature data are not from any man-made activity, but from natural phenomena such as large volcanic eruptions from Mt. Pinatubo, and from El Niño. So the programs which model global warming in a computer say the temperature of the Earth’s lower atmosphere should be going up markedly, but actual measurements of the temperature of the lower atmosphere reveal no such pronounced activity. “

This report from October 1997 was cited in the same comment as proof that in fact global warming is a myth. The report does not say that. In fact, it specifically deals with questions about the accuracy of the very technology the commenter cites as proving the claim that a cooling trend exists while a warming trend does not. It’s important to remember that, first of all, the information is 13 years old, and the purpose of the linked report was to explore whether or not satellite data could be used to track atmospheric temperature fluctuations, at the time, not an entirely proven science.

There is also the problem of the comment’s premise: that lower atmospheric temperatures and surface temperatures cannot be different or that if lower atmospheric temperatures cool, surface temperatures could not warm or the warming would be cancelled out. The truth is that an increased difference between surface temperature (remember, we live at the surface; ocean temperature, glaciers and ice-melt are also at the surface) and temperatures in the lower atmosphere can lead to even more severe storms and climate-related environmental impact.

That temperature difference means stronger winds, and those winds cause climate phenomena to move, which is how we get weather. If surface temperatures are warming, the warming itself will also be more widespread due to increased wind activity. Winds are the engine of climate; they carry masses of low and high pressure, determine monsoon rain patterns and align weather systems over whole regions over extended periods of time.

The commenter fails to even consider this issue, because the intent of the comment was not to illustrate a matter of fact, but to use an apparently unrelated study —one exploring the criticism of the very point he is trying to make—, from 13 years ago, to discredit a vaguely defined “view” held today. In fact, that vaguely defined view is the consensus of the vast majority of scientists involved in climate research the world over, a consensus built on hard evidence and observable fact, and informed with the most advanced scientific peer-review process we have.

The skeptic commenter’s attack on the climate consensus conveniently ignores actual reporting on what is observed in terms of global average temperatures, the warming trend and the human role in driving that trend. It’s worth looking at what NASA’s climate scientists say about warming trends, 13 years after addressing the problem of whether satellite measurements were accurate enough to deliver reliable data.

On 21 January 2010, NASA released a report entitled “2009: Second Warmest Year on Record; End of Warmest Decade”. That warmest decade report shows a clear evidence of a sustained warming trend from the year 1880 through the present. The data come from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the most advanced climate measuring scientific institution in the world.

The climate-skeptic commenter alleges there is a proven cooling trend and that “The largest fluctuations in the satellite temperature data are not from any man-made activity, but from natural phenomena such as large volcanic eruptions from Mt. Pinatubo, and from El Niño.”

In fact, NASA’s GISS findings show a marked upward trend in global average temperature, increasing dramatically over the last half-century, with the last decade clearly the warmest ever recorded. Regarding El Niño, there is recognition that the “unusually high temperatures” for 1998 might be in part attributable to that phenomenon, but El Niño shifts weather patterns within a specific latitudinal range, and does not explain long-term global trends in average temperature.

NASA’s warmest-decade report reads:

A deep solar minimum has made sunspots a rarity in the last few years. Such lulls in solar activity, which can cause the total amount of energy given off by the Sun to decrease by about a tenth of a percent, typically spur surface temperature to dip slightly. Overall, solar minimums and maximums are thought to produce no more than 0.1°C (0.18°F) of cooling or warming.

“In 2009, it was clear that even the deepest solar minimum in the period of satellite data hasn’t stopped global warming from continuing,” said [GISS Director James] Hansen.

Small particles in the atmosphere called aerosols can also affect the climate. Volcanoes are powerful sources of sulfate aerosols that counteract global warming by reflecting incoming solar radiation back into space. In the past, large eruptions at Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines and El Chichón in Mexico have caused global dips in surface temperature of as much as 0.3°C (0.54°F). But volcanic eruptions in 2009 have not had a significant impact.”

So, while volcanic eruptions can cause temperature fluctuations, they cause cooling, not warming, and in the period from 1880 to the present, that effect has not overridden the significant warming trend. NASA specifies that in fact the period 2000 to 2009 (not part of the 1997 report) is clearly the warmest decade on record.

The second point raised by the commenter was that my claim that “even as the intensity of solar activity has dipped, the warming trend has continued” is “categorically untrue!” This attack is covered by NASA’s data, from the GISS report, already listed above. The truth is that the ONLY extant data on whether global average temperatures have changed during the recent solar cycle minimum show that in fact WARMING CONTINUED virtually unabated.

The third point of critique offered by this particular climate skeptic was a flawed attempt at rhetorical inversion. I had written “the evidence of newly sensitive solar activity assessment methods does not have a long enough history to accurately determine any long-term relationship to Earth climate”, to which the commenter retorted, “Let me re-phrase this… …the evidence of the newly proclaimed anthropomorphic global warming does not have a long enough history to accurately determine any long-term relationship to Earth climate.”

The rhetorical inversion falls flat, because solar activity assessment methods do not have a long-enough history is a factor, due to the fact that they attempt to measure the specific relationship of activity on a distant celestial body, with no hard surface where any recorded history can be explored or traced. We have no way of determining what the solar surface history was in relation to measurements of Earth climate pre-dating the advent of the solar-activity monitoring technology.

The attempted inversion does not work, because the Earth does have a hard surface, with hundreds of millions of years of climate information recorded in its geological record. Ice and sediment, organic matter and the fossil record, all show us information about the make-up of past climate patterns and even average temperature ranges for specific regions, based on things like the distribution of flora and fauna during a given period in the geological record.

It seems important to note, in a thorough and informed response to such a critique of climate science, that the climate-skeptic comment in question used the term “anthropomorphic global warming”. The term “anthropomorphic” means “in the form of human beings”. It refers to when we see an object as having human qualities, like assigning the value of “face” to a car because of the layout of its headlights and grill.

The term is used by some climate skeptics either out of ignorance or as a way of making the mainstream climate consensus sound foolish. The proper term is “anthropogenic”, meaning “caused by human beings”. Anthropogenic global warming describes the demonstrable connection between human industrial activity, namely the production of unnatural quantities of carbon-based gases, and the observable increase in global average temperature.

The fourth point raised amounts to another flawed rhetorical inversion. This one does not work, because it ignores the rhetorical premise of what it seeks to invert. The claim had been made that:

There is a logical leap involved in much of what is claimed about the link between solar activity and climate; until that logical leap is narrowed to evidentiary verifiability, the global scientific consensus will not treat the claims you cite as truly scientific…

Our climate skeptic —who had proposed that there was a definitive historical link between solar cycle minimums and global cooling, implying that the whole global consensus on climate destabilization is lying about warming— wrote the following in response:

May I re-phrase this… There is a logical leap involved in much of what is claimed about the link between anthropomorphic global warming (i.e. man-made increases in CO2 production) and climate; until that logical leap is narrowed to evidentiary verifiability, the global scientific consensus will not treat the claims you cite as truly scientific.

This rhetorical inversion does not work, because there is a fundamental difference between mainstream climate science and the logical leap involved in the solar-cycle theories cited. The difference is that mainstream climate science is based on the established evidentiary history of climate modeling, temperature study, physics, meteorology and geology. It is a vast, interdisciplinary terrain of fact and evidence, and leaves little room for interpretation or guesswork.

The solar cycle critique the commenter cited has already been shown to NOT illustrate what some scientists say it might illustrate —a comprehensive global cooling trend—; in fact, warming has continued, despite the dip in solar surface activity. And the critique is based wholly on the assumption, entirely in the realm of theory and untested, that reduced sunspot activity means cooler temperatures on the surface of the Earth. (It might mean a reduced warming influence related to sunspot activity, but not necessarily a wholesale cooling of Earth’s surface temperatures.)

The only reliable evidentiary measure of this claim is NASA’s modeling mostly over the last 10 years, after the 1997 report the commenter cited as having some bearing on satellite temperature measures, and what NASA ACTUALLY FOUND during the last ten years is that the solar cycle minimum might reduce global average temperatures by 0.1ºC (in a decade when global average temperatures have risen “to the highest levels ever recorded”, according to NASA’s research).

Climate-science skeptics have been gleeful in their assault on climate change theory, the hard research and tens of thousands of scientists behind it and the very concept of human responsibility to the environment, because there has been snowfall. In a stunning display of ignorance, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) openly claimed the record snows that hit Washington, DC, were evidence there was in fact no climate change, that the whole idea is just a myth.

His obvious ignorance about the definition of climate —it does not mean local weather— is one facet of his failure to reason. But the truly sinister feature of his non-evidentiary, ideologically driven, and well-funded (by corporate donors) attack on climate response policy is his unwillingess to see pattern of global climate destabilization. Record snowfalls across the nation, with snow falling in 49 of the 50 states (none in Hawaii, of course) are anecdotal proof of global climate destabilization.

But while Sen. Inhofe is using his family to build an igloo, alleging that snowfall makes global climate change an impossibility, the science is showing the destabilization of global climate patterns to be far more severe than any previous models had projected. It remains to be adequately studied whether eight years of flagrantly climate-skeptic industrial policy in the US may have contributed to a worldwide emissions binge, accelerating the process.

What the most unthoughtful, mean-spirited and self-interested climate skeptics, like Inhofe, fail to understand, or want the public and the government to fail to understand, is that a slight warming of the global average temperature alters weather patterns of all kinds. This leads to the destabilization of major climate patterns, and can mean the breakdown of deep ocean currents, the jet-stream —which keeps Europe warm despite its high latitude— and even the African and south Asian monsoons.

One of the most visible and immediate effects of destabilization is the more intense storms that come with warming of the global average temperature. With warmer seas and a slightly warmer atmosphere, storms that feed on sea-water evaporation —which is accelerated in a warmer climate— become more powerful, and have more precipitation to dump when they hit land. Intensifying hurricanes and the intensified snows of 2010 are equally indicative of that trend.

But the inconvenience, beauty and/or shock of incredible snows, is just one detail of how warming shifts climate bands and causes patterns of weather communication between regions to break down; the most dangerous scenarios relate to the oceans. The rapid and accelerating melting of polar ices shows not only the risk for rising sea levels, but also the risk of undersea climatological destabilization factors: the breakdown of sea methane hydrates along the sea bottom or the Deep Ocean Current could fundamentally alter climate patterns everywhere on Earth.

Methane clathrate hydrates —more commonly called methane hydrates— are deep ocean deposits of highly concentrated methane gas, trapped in the crystal structure of water ice. If these become vulnerable to melting, the release of methane could have a catastrophic effect on the relatively stable climate patterns that have existed throughout recorded human history.

Research in the permafrost region of Siberia in 2008 showed millions of tons of methane being released from melting clathrate hydrates, with the result being concentrations as high as 100 times normal in some areas. Methane is many times more greenhouse effective than carbon dioxide, and an atmosphere filled with massive concentrations of it would certainly produce significant destabilization in global climate patterns.

It is believed the rapid release of methane from methane hydrates may have been part of the feedback loop of catastrophic climate destabilization that led to major extinctions in the past. Major extinction events or global climate alterations may have been spurred by massive global methane release that resulted from melting of hydrates thawed by warming induced by either meteor strikes or volcanic eruptions of catastrophic magnitude.

The severe warming of the global average temperature over recent decades has no evident natural cause, though it is clearly explained by the massive increase, over the last several centuries, and most importantly over the last 100 years, of carbon-based gases that contribute to the “greenhouse effect”, keeping warm air closer to the surface of the planet, creating these dangerous climate destabilizing feedbacks.

The Deep Ocean Current has been described as a conveyor-belt of stable climate, required for civilization as we know it to function. It is, in fact, a global flow of water, the dynamics of which protect the climate distribution we view as “normal”. The most crucial engine of the Deep Ocean Current is where the warm Gulf Stream waters, having brought warmer temperatures to northern Europe —which is on the same latitude as Newfoundland—, reaches a literal tipping point in the North Sea, where the ambient temperature is so low the tropical waters rapidly cool and plunge to the bottom.

The effect is a powerful waterfall with more downward thrust than the driving current of any river system in the world. That thrust is crucial to keeping the global Deep Ocean Current moving, because it has enough force to push that same current down around Africa and into the Indian Ocean. Similar inducement zones occur across the globe, but the most crucial is the North Sea plunge. The breakdown of this “conveyor belt” could simply do away with warm European climates or the monsoon rains on which half the world’s population depends for food.

This is why “warming” is global and not local. The snows of Washington, DC, might appear to mean “cold” to the non-evidentiary observer, but in fact, they mean “warm”. Harsh mountain winters can just as easily be a sign of warming as snowless winters, because “global warming” is just a trigger for what is actually climate destabilization. It is foolish, if not brutish, to argue that somehow “cold” will make for climate stability in the same way water stands still when it freezes.

The climate does not work that way. It is a global contagion of temperature variations, humidity, atmospheric gases and feedbacks, which never stops or freezes. Winds are not mystical forces or the breath of gods, but rather the result of temperature fluctuations. Sen. Inhofe cannot explain away decades of climate science with record snowfalls, in part because the snows are a predicted proof of the warming and destabilization trend, and secondly, because he is talking about weather, not climate.

Despite the widespread debate in the US, China and other heavily coal-burning countries, about the degree to which “clean coal” can be a solution to the daunting challenge of how to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to global warming and climate destabilization, the technology does not yet exist. There are no clean coal plants in the US. And none of the immediate plans for new coal-fired plants would achieve anything close to the theoretical proposals loosely denominated “clean coal”.

There are a handful of projects planned to test technologies that would allow coal-fired plants to “capture” carbon emissions and other harmful pollutants, but there are numerous technical challenges to doing so, and so far, the existing technology has never been proven to be cost-effective for industrial-scale deployment.

The carbon-capture technology that is theorized to be able to “clean” the coal-burning process would actually only partly reduce the carbon pollution resulting from burning coal —which is essentially the burning of raw carbon— the dirtiest way known to produce electricity. In the meantime, the same coal industry that is advertising as yet untested and nonexistent “clean coal” technology is actively advocating for the construction of the dirty plants it already knows how to make.

Clean coal remains, at this moment in the evolution of energy technology, a hypothetical proposition used entirely as a front for an industry that fully intends to continue polluting in the most pervasive and irresponsible way. Clean coal is used as a palatable concept to help sell the coal industry’s argument that 1) renewable energy is not needed, and 2) burning coal is not a dangerous or destructive endeavor.

Coal has been shown to be of serious direct harm to human health. As reported by the Washington Post:

Many Americans think that coal went out with top hats and corsets. In fact, we burn more than a billion tons of coal each year in the United States — about 20 pounds a day for every man, woman and child. We don’t burn it in coal stoves, of course, but in big power plants that generate about half the electric power in the country.

Politically, the war in Iraq has been a boon for coal, allowing coal-friendly politicians to tout America’s 250-year supply as a substitute for our addiction to Middle Eastern oil — even though, in the real world, there is no overlap between coal (used to generate electricity) and oil (used for transportation fuels, among other things).

That “250-year supply” is misleading for a number of reasons. First, accessing the entire reserve could mean massive, widespread environmental destruction. “Mountaintop removal” mining is increasingly relied upon by coal companies to access hard-to-reach coal and is turning lush forested mountain country into toxic lunar wastelands with far too little money invested in long-term environmental clean-up and security.

It is also far too little reserve to really generate the energy demand over 250 years from now into the future. For one, energy demands are increasing, even as other energy-production methods are rapidly increasing their efficiency. Between the 1990s and the 2000s, solar-voltaic cells increased their energy production per volume of silicon by roughly 10-fold. Now, new glitter-sized solar-voltaic cells are more than 100 times as efficient in terms of energy generation per volume of silicon.

For all its convenience of use and centuries’ old well-worn technological specifics, coal has no such potential for increased efficiency. Continuing to invest heavily in coal-sourced electric energy could have an adverse effect on the technological innovations that are achieving such efficiency gains in other forms of energy production, thus leading to higher-cost energy, reduced capacity to ease out of carbon-based fuels, even as environmental impacts mount and costs become corrosive to economic growth.

Over time, the long-term costs of burning coal will continue to mount. Failure to prepare for a smooth transition away from carbon-based fuels to safer, more efficient clean energy sources, will result in degradation of the foundations of economic output, and an eventual decrease in quality of life. Health risks will also mount, as continued investment in coal means the further proliferation of the world’s dirtiest fuel across the developing world, intensifying China’s smog crisis and the risks posted to the western US from trans-Pacific contaminants.

Global climate patterns are already breaking down and at risk of sustained destabilization, due to the unnatural concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. CO2 levels already far exceed what the organic environment can absorb, and coal is already and will continue to be the single most prolific contributor to the acceleration of that process. The achievement of anything like the proposed “clean coal” technologies may be too expensive for the existing industry to finance without massive subsidies, making a transition to clean energy the more economical choice over time.

After decades of environmental scientists seeking to raise awareness about the detrimental impacts of burning ever more carbon-based fuels, the Copenhagen Accord shows a global willingness to recognize the gravity of the issue and to take concrete —if as yet unnamed— policy actions to address the challenges of coming decades.

Though the Accord uses language that is admittedly vague, it suggests the parties all agree science shows serious peril if no action is taken, and very explicitly specifies that science should guide the international response, and steep cuts should be achieved “as soon as possible”. This language might lay the groundwork for even more ambitious binding emissions targets for 2020, possibly even enabling the key goal of total emissions peaking before then.

The first move for American citizens interested in helping our nation achieve the cuts necessary should be to find creative ways to steer community-level investment in new energy technologies to places where job-creation and the greening of the energy and transport sectors can converge to generate a new economic dynamism. The Repower America Roadmap offers some insights into how this might best be achieved.

As momentum builds around the clean energy revolution, we can expect governments to be more ambitious about proposing and working to achieve the cuts needed in global greenhouse-gas emissions. An innovation and implementation-based approach may ultimately give local communities more of a say in how emissions policies affect them, and allow them to reap more of the rewards, as they build their own infrastructure.

• Follow or join the discussion now, at TheHotSpring.net

Because three issues alone will not adequately describe the breakthroughs we will experience in the coming decade, a second installment of the 2nd decade prognosis is necessary. While denuclearization pacts and a verification process for limiting the threat of nuclear weapons is likely to be key to international relations, and the green technology revolution will spur economic development around the world, international cooperation must also be directed toward issues relating to basic resources, like water and the food supply. Gender equality will be key to peacemaking efforts, and counter-extremism will be a leading aspect of collaborative development efforts.

Gender Equality

Why gender equality? Women constitute more than half the world’s population, but in nearly every country in the world, including the US and even the Scandinavian countries, they still experience a disadvantage in earning and advancement in the workplace. It is likely today’s generation of university students will see true equity in many advanced industrial countries, where women’s rights have a long history of progress. But across the developing world, discrimination against women has a very direct impact on quality of life, access to food and other basic resources, and on the ability of a political order to maintain peace.

Women have shown themselves to be integral in efforts to provide micro-lending opportunities to the poor. The Nobel Prize-winning Grameen Bank, in Bangladesh, discovered this early on: women are more reliable in repaying micro-loans and more disciplined in running the localized everyday businesses they are able to finance with such schemes. Closer bonds to children and family, as well as less tendency to expensive vices, are thought to explain this tendency. It is now widely known that women’s role in developing families and communities, as well as in raising children and providing food and shelter, is key to creating an atmosphere of political stability and peace.

The US Department of Defense has taken direct interest in the status of women’s rights around the world, especially in conflict zones, and is collaborating with the Obama administration’s initiative to promote the rights of women and girls. Pres. Obama has established a panel on which every Cabinet-level department head must report on the status of women and girls as relating to their purview. And women’s rights in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other key nations, is now a focus of Sec. of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s assertive “3D diplomacy”: diplomacy, development, defense.

Promoting the rights and the needs of women and girls will help to create a more educated, more civil and cooperative population, and should help to speed development to remote areas where improvements to basic infrastructure and economic cohesion cannot take root without active, sustained participation, and even leadership, on the part of women. More secure family environments and more advanced educational resources should also mean a reduced risk of armed conflict, factionalism and the collapse of basic services. The rights of women and girls are linked to all efforts to prevent or to combat the proliferation of failed states.

Food Security

There are growing risks of a partial or total collapse of the human food supply in corners of every continent. Arable land is being eroded, split up, sold off and industrialized. Desertification is taking increasing amounts of land south of the Sahara and across northwestern China. Glacial reserves of fresh water are being lost in the Himalayas and in the heart of Africa. At least 3 billion people live in regions where access to arable land is under severe threat, given demographic trends.

World grain harvests have failed to meet global demand for several consecutive years, meaning world grain stores are being depleted, prices are being pushed up, and the most fundamental element of economic stability —the availability of affordable nutrients— is under threat. With irrigation schemes expanding rapidly across much of the developing world, the Nile River, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, and other major rivers upon whose flow of fresh water billions of people depend for their sustenance, are becoming threatened rivers.

The extinction of fresh water systems is fast becoming the single most urgent international resource crisis. Negotiations related to resource scarcity, fresh water depletion and threats to the food supply, are now central to regional economic and military collaboration around the world. Democratic governments and authoritarian regimes alike face the possibility of rising extremism and instability due to the risk of long-term deprivation facing increasing numbers of people within and along their borders.

The politics and economics of the coming decade will be heavily and persistently affected by a wide array of issues relating to the security and stability of the human food supply. There will be increasing pressure to reach binding agreements related to cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as the effects of climate destabilization more severely impact the global food supply. Neighboring states, like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and China, or Chad and Sudan, or the US and Mexico, will be faced with opting between mounting hostility or committed collaboration, to secure needed resources.

A paradigm-shift favoring broader international cooperation to help secure and restore resource-generating ecosystems and slow the spread of climate-related environmental degradation should help to move most of these cross-border resource crises in the direction of committed collaboration. Efforts to prevent the collapse of troubled states and impede the spread of armed conflict will be vital to international peace and security and the resilience of increasingly interdependent economic relationships.

Counter-extremism

The 2000s has been a troubled decade, marked by rising economic inequality, expanding scarcity and an explosion of armed conflict around the world. Hate-speech has infiltrated the relationships between nations, with the presidents of Iran and Venezuela referring to the American president as “Satan” or “the Devil” and factionalism and racist violence spreading in tribal regions of many countries, including Sudan, Chad, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Militant Islamist factions, more closely linked to political violence than to any of the fundamental teachings of Islam, have sought to exploit widespread suffering and deprivation in many countries, in hopes of driving desperate young people to devote their lives to armed struggle. The killing of innocent people has proliferated across the world, and has been justified by one after another political movement or government, even as the international community seeks to prevent such killing of innocents.

In the United States, the political discourse is increasingly poisoned by radical hate-speech, either thinly veiled or overt, with radical ultra-conservatives calling for armed rebellion, bringing loaded weapons to political rallies and threatening the life of the president. Such extremism is a threat to the civic order and to the peaceful practice of democratic process and enlightened public policy. The security of political systems and of populations around the world depends on efforts to counter and to eradicate violent extremism.

Counter-terrorism is a key tactical tool in armed struggle against militants. But counter-extremism, the sincere effort to heal deep political wounds, eliminate hate and secure educated and open populations against the rise of radical militia, requires an intensely complex process of education, development, and collaborative diplomacy. The deployment of advanced diplomatic resources, including highly trained cultural liaisons and media technologies designed to open traditionally closed societies, will be integrated into standard global diplomatic efforts.

The UN system, including a vast reservoir of talent and informational resources linked to non-governmental organizations (NGO), will likely gain influence, as increasing democratization and the specific goal of countering hate-speech and violent extremism demand both the commitment of sustained human effort and highly informed charitable outreach infrastructure. Counter-extremism will be both a political ethic and a strategic necessity in both the wealthiest and the poorest of the world’s nations.

2nd Decade of the 21st Century: What’s in Store?

1. Denuclearization, Green Tech & Cooperation
2. Gender Equality, Food Security & Counter-extremism
3. Particle Physics, Media Freedom & Global Economics

China has outraged political and diplomatic leaders around the world by aggressively blocking agreement on hard targets for binding emissions cuts, refusing even to agree to any accord that would include mention of other nations’ specific cuts. One observer told the BBC that he observed China, India and Saudi Arabia as the key powers working to prevent binding targets from being adopted, but China was the most immovable opponent to a binding agreement.

The reasons are not hard to guess: China has invested unprecedented amounts of money (given the time-frame) in carbon-based fuels. Its efforts to expand the national capacity for coal-fired electric power plants and its holdings in oil-rich highly unstable African countries rivals Allied efforts to secure carbon-based fuel supplies during the two World Wars.

But carbon-intensive energy systems are not just harming the environment, they are degrading vital natural resources and generating massive additional economic costs, already being felt across whole economies, but projected to increase drastically as impacts from global climate destabilization worsen and mount.

The result is that China has signed over its potent economic growth to a kind of resource-relative Ponzi scheme. The numbers don’t add up, if China projects its behavior out over the long term. Extreme reliance on fossil fuels will eventually cripple its growth-driving sectors and limit its capacity to build future prosperity. Beijing’s current approach to the carbon-induced climate crisis appears to be rooted in a persistent unwillingness to face facts about the increasingly unsustainable nature of its carbon-fueled economy.

China can no more write off its historic investment in fossil fuels than Wall Street could just stop using unwieldy, unsustainable financial “exotics” and derivatives. The logic of a bubble economy, which buries its long-term costs under a glaze of rapid growth, easy profit and false abundance, is that the accounting method cannot become more honest, only less so. This is why China, despite devoting enormous amounts of productive capacity and new investment to developing the industrial infrastructure for supplying the green energy economy, will not tolerate a global agreement with binding targets for emissions cuts, and a transparent verification process.

That, and corruption. China’s banking system is notoriously opaque, firmly rooted in the hard ground of centralized power, and the spectacular expansion of private wealth through entrepreneurship has been closely intertwined with personal and family relationships linked to positions of high power in the Communist party. Corruption prosecutions are notoriously selective and often come only after significant signs of spreading public unrest.

But much more far-reaching than the question of China’s banking transparency or political corruption is the question of how China will provide resources for its booming economy and growing consumer class. Even as environmental degradation ravages the world’s most populous nation, with deserts rapidly expanding across the northwest and river systems under threat from contamination and other environmental factors, across the south and east, China has signed up for an 18th-century model of how to power economic growth, using unsustainable farming methods and privileging coal over most other fuel sources.

As the Copenhagen Accord is put into action, in the next round of international negotiations, in Mexico in 2010, attention needs to be focused on how to motivate both China and India to redirect behemoth industrial-scale funding for fossil fuels to a comprehensive, affordable approach to greening the entire infrastructure for energy production and distribution of industrial resources. Achieving that goal, whether through international funding incentives or a multilateral trade agreement, will help motivate the necessary awakening that will allow Beijing to admit to its fuel-economy catch-22 and make the hard choices needed to emerge from it.

As ongoing global climate destabilization builds momentum, and fundamental climate-linked environmental processes come apart, we are hearing time and again that melting ice, whether in glaciers or in the Arctic Ocean, is “the canary in the coal mine”. The metaphor is very tempting, indeed, as coal is the most carbon-intensive fuel in use and a major contributing factor to global warming and climate destabilization, but the problem with the metaphor lies in the meaning of the canary being nothing more than an alarm signal. Glaciers are very much more important to human civilization than that.

In fact, melting ice is not just a sign of the underlying problem, and something precious to life that can be corrupted and wiped out by ongoing climate change, it is also one of the fundamental engines of climate-linked disaster, as projected in most scientific models looking at the negative impact of warming. As glacial ice melts, it increases the flood-intensity of river systems downstream, during certain periods, but flooding pushes excess water through, leaving more arid conditions behind. Flooding also erodes riverbeds and surrounding terrain, reducing water absorption capacity.

As melt and erosion build into a cycle of degradation, the result is less fresh water available for farming, less stable riverside communities, and reduced protection against forest depletion. Each of these factors enhances the spiral of environmental degradation that depletes the resources which make vital ecosystem services possible. Without those ecosystem services, like forest-cover which absorbs carbon, stabilizes topsoil, takes up water and shifts precipitation patterns inland and upland, the fertility base and stable landscape civilization depends on are not sustainable.

But glacial melt is also part of the process that links rising temperatures to higher sea levels. When sea ice melts, it contributes to the warming process —as ice is more reflective and therefore less heat absorbing than deep-blue ocean water— but it does not contribute to the rise in sea levels, as the floating ice already displaces water to the same volume. But when glacial ice melts, it releases new water into the global ocean, adding volume and pushing sea levels higher.

Rising sea levels are one of the most severe environmental threats to result from global warming. The most obvious result is the erosion of coastal land. Some small island nations are threatened with total disappearance if global sea levels rise just a couple of meters. Whole populations will have to be relocated, raising serious questions of political sovereignty, democratic rights, and the nature of the link between citizenship and geography. Bilateral treaties are already being negotiated to prepare for such evacuations.

In the developed world, such cases seem rare, and highly exotic, and seaboard erosion tends to be equated with beachgoing and little more. But it is very much more serious than that. Nearly half the world’s population lives on land that is close enough to sea level to be under threat with just a couple of meters’ worth of sea-level rise. River systems and watersheds could see tidal flows interrupted and coastal cities could become uninhabitable, without unprecedented water-retention spending and technological development.

But more severe still is the effect such tidal shifts would have on low-lying nations like Bangladesh. With over 162,000,000 people, Bangladesh is the 7th most populous nation in the world, one of the most densely populated, and intensely poor. Enjoying some of the world’s most fertile land, a high percentage of Bangladesh’s arable land lies below sea level, meaning a sea-level rise of just two meters could erase more than 20% of the nation’s land area, most of its best cropland, and displace tens of millions of people.

Already, south Asian countries are dealing with the prospects of catastrophic and unprecedented mass migrations due to climate change. Serious erosion of Bangladesh’s arable land could cause migrations of up to 80 million people, destabilizing border regions and saturating neighboring countries with unmanageable new concentrations of people. Already, the entire Nile River basin is facing such severe chronic water scarcity that migration patterns, food aid requirements and political stability are linked to the water management policies of countries along the river’s length.

Glacial melt is not a canary in the coal mine; it is both a sign of and a driver of human habitat destruction. Without stable climate patterns and resilient ecosystem services, agriculture is not possible and human civilization as we know it cannot be sustained. Where we are seeing accelerated or even severe glacial melt, we are already facing the long-term fallout from climate destabilization linked to carbon emissions and the greenhouse effect. Concerted restorative action is needed to slow or reverse that melting.

Glacial melt is one of the key signs of global warming, but the disappearance of glacial ice is a worrying depletion of the basic life-sustaining resource of fresh water. Glacial ice provides the source water for many of the world’s major river systems, and thus affects the food supply and quality of life of billions of people. What’s more, as glaciers are eroded due to accelerated melting, downstream human populations face the twin problems of catastrophic flooding and more arid long-term conditions. Inland precipitation is reduced and sea levels rise, causing a very real threat to coastal communities of all sizes and levels of development.

With global temperatures warming steadily, and this decade the hottest ever recorded, ice stores are melting around the globe. From the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet to the Greenland Ice Sheet to the ancient glaciers of the Himalayas —which feed river systems that irrigate land that feeds 3 billion people—, we are losing unprecedented amounts of climate-regulating ice. And in 2007, the Arctic Ocean lost more sea ice than at any time on record.

It was projected that for the summer of 2008, the coveted Northwest Passage —from Europe to Asia— would finally be open, due to ongoing compounded melting of the polar ice cap. This video, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) clearly shows the extreme extent of Arctic Ocean ice melt, and the ongoing acceleration of the melting process. Each year, the ice cap is thinner, making it less resistant to warming summer temperatures.

• More documentation from the Copenhagen conference on climate change (UNFCCC)

After two weeks of intense and sometimes bitter negotiations, US president Barack Obama arrived in Copenhagen to marshal all his diplomatic skills in brokering the beginnings of a viable framework for global carbon emissions reductions. Late Friday, it was announced that five nations —the United States, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa— had carved out a deal that would, for the first time, bring all the world’s major economies into the same camp on efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The United Nations had failed to produce a climate pact that would establish binding international law on emissions reductions, so the five-nation deal can only be a beginning. Pres. Obama himself, addressing the press, said “This progress did not come easily and we know this progress alone is not enough”, but he also heralded the agreement as “meaningful”. While the agreement contains no legally binding measures, it sets the world on a course where the leading emitters of carbon dioxide —China and the United States— agree they must take steps to reduce emissions far enough that global average temperatures will not rise more than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels.

The rest of the world now needs to support the measure, and there has been stiff opposition. Sudan, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, nearly brought the talks to collapse, during a heated negotiating session overnight, as they denounced the accord as everything from a violation of the UN’s principle of unanimity to a neo-imperialist conspiracy. The government of the Maldives, however, a nation faced with extinction beneath rising seas, urged all nations to support the accord.

China’s Communist leadership and the United States’ Republican party should both be happy with the final language, which takes into account concerns about the possible erosion of national sovereignty under enforceable emissions reductions protocols. But there is clearly some outrage at the degree to which China’s refusal to allow for international transparency or legal enforceability undermined the potential for a binding Copenhagen protocol on steep emissions reductions.

The Copenhagen Accord will allow, in the short term, for individual nations to craft entirely unique strategies for meeting unspecified emissions reduction targets. The US plans to cut emissions by 20% by the year 2020 and by 83% by the year 2050, while Russia plans a 40% increase in its energy efficiency, an effort to modernize its infrastructure and also reduce overall carbon dioxide output. China has not specified an emissions-cutting target and it is feared the world’s leading emitter of CO2 will ramp up its emissions as new coal-fired plants come online, before enacting any tough emissions cutting measures.

The accord will also set a deadline for the end of January 2010 —just over a month from now— for nations to submit voluntary emissions cutting guidelines, while an alternate text also sets an end of December 2010 deadline for nations to report back on progress made in implementing specific emissions cutting strategies. EU nations expressed concern that the accord does not include language regarding a binding global target of 50% cuts in carbon emissions by the year 2050.

National Public Radio (NPR) is now reporting:

Following an all-night session, negotiators from 193 countries reached consensus on supporting a deal brokered yesterday by President Obama and leaders from China, India, South Africa and Brazil. The five-party agreement — three pages of broad brushstrokes — was criticized by the industrialized nations of Europe and bitterly denounced by some developing nations of Africa and Asia. Still, the gathered world leaders reluctantly agreed to continue the global effort to limit the effects of human-caused carbon emissions on the world’s climate.

Key components of the core five-nation deal call for keeping temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050; creating a $100 billion per year fund by 2020 to help poor nations deal with the effects of climate change; and establishing some means of verifying if nations are doing their part to hold down carbon emissions.

Despite pointed criticisms of the deal, French president Nicolas Sarkozy said all nations agreed to the non-binding accord. The government of the Philippines spoke out in support of the deal, though it noted criticism of the deal for being too weak on concrete steps to limit overall greenhouse gas emissions. The Philippines is among the island nations seeking a binding legal framework that will force the world’s leading polluters, China, the United States, and other industrialized nations, to sharply reduce overall emissions in the near term.

Pres. Macapagal Arroyo noted in her address that “The average world per capita CO2 equivalent emission is 6 tons and must be brought down to 3 tons to stabilize at 450 ppm in 2050. The Philippines is already doing better than that. Our emissions are only 1.6 tons per capita and we are committed to further deviate from our business-as-usual growth path.” She also noted that the Philippines is officially recognized as one of the 12 most vulnerable nations facing severe impact from climate destabilization.

The following is a transcript of Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s address to the Copenhagen climate conference…

The Philippines looks upon these negotiations in Copenhagen with a critical sense of urgency. The average world per capita CO2 equivalent emission is 6 tons and must be brought down to 3 tons to stabilize at 450 ppm in 2050. The Philippines is already doing better than that. Our emissions are only 1.6 tons per capita and we are committed to further deviate from our business-as-usual growth path.

Yet, though our country has a good carbon footprint, we are disproportionately vulnerable to the devastation of Mother Nature, accelerated by the mistreatment of the fragile environment by human beings all over the world. This is due in large part to the fact that we are an archipelago of over 7,000 islands with the majority of our people living in low-lying areas that are prone to climate hazards.

The UN reports that the Philippines is one of the top 12 countries at the greatest risk from climate change. We top the list of nations most in danger of facing more frequent and more intense storms as the impact of climate change intensifies.

Tropical storms of historic scale have inflicted devastation and a tragic loss of lives upon our country. Two recent typhoons cost our people $4 billion or 2.7% of our GDP. Our major food regions lost 8 to 10 percent of their GDP because over 600,000 hectares of farmlands were destroyed, while the industrial areas lost 6 to 8 percent.

These same typhoons affected more than 9 million people and killed more than 900. Over 200,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. Our nation was already struggling against the headwinds of global economic storm when we were forced to confront these natural disasters.

Thank God that we pulled together as a nation. We have begun to rebuild the affected areas of our country. We thank our international friends and development partners who assisted us in our moment of need over the past few months.

We come to Copenhagen in partnership with other nations to find a way to meet the harsh impacts of climate change and avert a global climate crisis. It is time to harmonize economic development with environmental protection in a new global order where they are not mutually exclusive, but synonymous. It is time all countries of the world owned up to our collective responsibilities. Solving this problem will certainly take years but we need to start the process now.

We cannot afford to leave Copenhagen without a deal, based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. For an equitable outcome, developed countries need to lead in reducing emissions.

A robust financial mechanism must also be established to meet the costs of adaptation for developing countries and for effective development and transfer of technologies. We applaud Secretary Clinton’s groundbreaking announcement that the United States is prepared to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries. It is essential that this augmentation of global funds should include the replenishment of existing global grant facilities.

Humans started the problem of climate change. Humans can certainly solve it. Thank you.

When US president Barack Obama arrived in Copenhagen, there was no global agreement on how to address climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, and talks were described as being “in a state of chaos”. His morning schedule of face to face meetings was reorganized so he could attend an emergency conference of key leaders. Talks were scheduled to continue through the weekend, and yet before midnight, agreement had been reached.

Key nations reached an agreement that Obama described as a “meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough” on a way forward in the effort to curb harmful carbon emissions and the environmental degradation associated with their effect on climate. A US spokesperson said the deal marked an “historic step forward” in shaping a global response to the climate crisis, and Pres. Obama himself said while the US, China, India, Brazil and South Africa, had “agreed to set a mitigation target to limit warming to no more than 2ºC and, importantly, to take action to meet this objective”, the deal was insufficient and there would still be “much further to go”.

The special agreement brings key states together, but a final draft has not been approved by the entire conference. It is unclear whether there will be further negotiations and/or any final vote on Saturday, but the “meaningful agreement” among key nations does need to be expanded and approved by the conference if Copenhagen is to be a success.

The UK executive director for Greenpeace, the environmental watchdog and campaign group said “It is now evident that beating global warming will require a radically different model of politics than the one on display here in Copenhagen.” While pressure groups had hoped for a binding protocol that sets specific targets and a global framework for reducing emissions year on year, the Copenhagen Accord that has reportedly been reached will commit the leading economic powers to establishing that very goal, for the first time in history.

The conference has also produced a UN plan for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), which will create a transparent network of funding schemes to help poor nations prevent deforestation and conserve the world’s great rainforests. The depletion of forest cover harms the environment in many ways, some obvious, some more complex and subtle, but it also contributes to climate destabilization in a number of ways, reducing the planet’s capacity to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide and contributing to desertification, runoff and the depletion of watersheds and green growth patterns.

As reported by Winnipeg-based CTV:

Earlier Friday, Obama arrived in Copenhagen, where he attended an emergency meeting with 19 other leaders. Obama arrived to drive a deal, which had eluded leaders throughout the week.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy were among the attendees. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao chose not to attend the high-level meeting, sending an envoy in his place.

There had been reports the Chinese delegation, including Premier Wen Jiabao, were offended by the language Obama used during his midday address, in which he noted the US was now the world’s “second” worst emitter of carbon dioxide. But Obama and Wen were to meet for an evening meeting, perhaps a private dinner, in which they would discuss the key sticking points that were keeping China from signing on to a comprehensive plan that would demand international supervision of their emissions reduction efforts.

It would seem that Pres. Obama’s presence in Copenhagen, from his tough language during the midday address, in which he warned that the delegates’ ability to find consensus and achieve a deal was in doubt, to his energetic non-stop schedule of meetings with world leaders, had the effect of helping to forge a hard-won consensus on how to proceed. This apparent display of global leadership could turn into not only a landmark on the road to major global climate action, but a significant political victory for Obama himself, who has been criticized for overextending himself on difficult issues.

The above video highlights the Danish city of Frederikshavn’s ongoing comprehensive plan to achieve 100% carbon neutral status by 2015, by focusing on wind and other renewable resources to produce its entire municipal energy supply. Mikael Kau, the director of the Frederikshavn energy project explains that other, larger cities in Denmark could adopt similar plans and from the local level help Denmark achieve 100% energy independence and carbon neutrality by 2015.

Gordon Brown plans “plan b” 2nd round of talks if Copenhagen conference fails to achieve global pact. The plan would call for a smaller number of nations to meet to agree to concrete steps to curb emissions and move their contribution to the world economy toward a green energy future.

A UK official has said of the stumbling blocks that China is the main hold-out and that “There are not thousands of variables in this, there are a handful. It is only the 2050 target and the issue of how to verify [emission cuts countries pledge].”

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With the US promising to commit $100 billion over ten years to help fund mitigation efforts against the impacts of climate destabilization and China all but refusing outright to agree to any pact that requires international verification of emissions reductions and/or how international funds are spent, the technological solution remains a key priority.

The United States should immediately begin redirecting fuel and energy-production subsidies to help produce not only state of the art, cutting edge clean energy technologies and zero-combustion transport vehicles, but also to aim for the next generation of zero-combustion energy production methods.

Taking the lead in building and deploying such technology will allow the United States to remain at the forefront of the global industrial and energy economy, and to deal with climate change and the rising everyday cost of greenhouse-gas emissions, in the most economic way possible. This sort of industrial technology transition can be achieved at unprecedented speeds, given today’s technology, and would create millions of new jobs across the US, helping to reduce global emissions and spur economic growth.

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