(A Siemens factory in Berlin for manufacturing turbines. Gordon Welters for The New York Times.)

In a story yesterday in the “NY Times” about the Europeans upgrading their factories - and saving jobs while doing it - a Siemens operation in Berlin was highlighted.  Because of the commitment by this 163-year-old company to sustainability, they have spent $700 million to develop new, low carbon turbines.  The kicker for me comes in the penultimate paragraph:  “Siemens managed to save its customers an estimated 210 million tons in carbon dioxide emissions last year, the equivalent of the amount generated annually by New York, Tokyo, London and Berlin combined.”

I wrote recently about Hermann Scheer, the father of the German renewable energy industry.  He says that we are in a transition from a fuels-based economy to a technology-based economy.  Oil, coal, gas and uranium are often called “extractive” industries.  We go into the earth and rip these fuels out - at great cost of pollution, as I’ve noted here often.  Well, the technology-based energy economy means we access the abundant energy all around us by simply harnessing it.

And we use it much more efficiently.  That’s the path that Siemens and many other big industrial concerns are taking.  The policymakers in Europe get it too.  Europe’s green energy ’supergrid’ is the story from CNN.  “Plans for a massive electricity grid dedicated to uniting the varied sources of renewable energy available in northern Europe have taken a step forward in January as nine countries formally agreed to work together on the project.”  This is energy independence, folks, live and in color.

Along these same lines, I noted here a smashing op-ed at the FT last spring that tells the story, among others, of a successful test of a decentralized renewable energy network that blows the myth of intermittency out of the water.  We can have all renewable, hugely efficient energy all the time.

For your further delectation, here’s a video, courtesy of the indispensable RenewableEnergyWorld.com, of Christian Kjaer, CEO of the European Wind Energy Association.  Wake up and smell the fair trade coffee.  It’s a beautiful morning.

I had a good time the other night talking about climate change policy and politics with Amanda Little on The Hyperbole Hour. We’re on the same wavelength.  (You can download the show as an mp3 file and listen in from around 29 minutes.)

One of the points we made was that we really need to sell the case in the US for why cap-and-trade and clean tech are the only way to fly.  In response to an FT analysis on Copenhagen I noted the other day, there was a good letter that reinforces this point from two worthies at the UK’s Institute for Public Policy Research.  They say “…the politics of climate change are tough.”  (That’s an understatement.)  They go on to note “This calls for an urgent reframing of the issue in terms that matter to people now: less dependence on oil, investment in renewable energy, renewed economic growth as a result of innovation, jobs, and security.”  That’s all true.

Beyond that, there are the costs involved in ignoring the issue.  How is it possible for the elected representatives of people in the Gulf Coast and Texas, in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, or for that matter, representatives from farm states, who are going to be crushed by warming, to vote against Waxman-Markey?  It’s possible because we’re not yet making the case convincing enough, particularly in the face of dogmatic opposition by some as well as subterfuge from special interests.

Andrew Leonard notes one lonely Republican voice in the Senate, Lindsey Graham.  Graham is even pushing back on President Obama’s recent display of reticence on bringing cap-and-trade forward this year.  Graham’s remarks, courtesy of Grist, indicate some fight that may be lacking among the Democratic caucus in the Senate and at the White House. “You don’t have to believe that Iowa is going to become beachfront property to want to clean up carbon,” says Graham. “It is not about polar bears to me, it’s about jobs. I like the polar bears as much as anyone else but I want to create jobs.”

Why aren’t Barack Obama, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, and the truly sterling Obama cabinet appointees blistering the airwaves and the hustings with this message?

You can’t beat that.  Catching up on my reading, I came across this terrific article, Construction plant, from the FT from a couple of weeks ago.  Hemp is the building material that can work wonders.  (This reminds me of biochar, one of the most exciting developments in agriculture and horticulture to come along in a while.)  The largest hemp building in the world, a 4,400 square meter warehouse - with a living roof - holds “…the equivalent of 100-150 tonnes of carbon dioxide locked up within its walls while a conventional brick building of the same size would have been responsible for about 300 to 600 tonnes of CO2 emissions.”

Hemp is strong, really easy to grow - with minimal chemical inputs, grows quickly and doesn’t use much space in its cultivation.  Pete Walker, head of the BRE Centre for Innovative Construction Materials says “All the 180,000 new-build homes the UK government ambitiously estimates are needed each year could be built with hemp grown on just 1 per cent of Britain’s agricultural land.”

One more example of innovative - and simple.  Hemp, as the British are developing it, is another resounding vote for KISS.

I wrote in September about what I identified as Tom Friedman’s Strange Call on China.  I was reporting that the “NY Times” hadn’t printed a letter I’d written in response to one of Friedman’s columns - Our One-Party Democracy - and so wanted to share the column and response.   Funny thing:  They did print my letter.  It’s been my experience in the past on several occasions that they’ll contact you, but they didn’t on this one, so I missed it.  To make a long story short, here is the letter as printed by the Gray Lady.  To save you a couple of keystrokes, this is what I said:

One party of autocrats

Thomas Friedman (One-party democracy,” Views, Sept.10) writes ”One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.” This statement is, to be kind, scandalous. China is a police state. China’s leaders have brutally repressed the populations of Tibet and East Turkestan for many decades. The Chinese leadership strongly supports regimes in Zimbabwe, Sudan, Myanmar and North Korea that have consistently ravaged their own people. China is itself corrupt. Nearly unabated air and water pollution devastates the health of the Chinese people.

Mr. Friedman’s argument for the ”enlightened” nature of the Chinese leadership hinges on its embrace of renewable energy technology. It should be noted, however, that China continues to build scores of new coal-fired power plants annually, while the nation is in a headlong rush to put hundreds of thousands of new cars on its new roads. And, for my money, its rush to nuclear power does not in the least indicate the requisite thoughtfulness and attention to environmental protection that would allow its leadership to be called enlightened.

I’ll be in august company tonight, discussing climate change on The Hyperbole Hour.  Gavin Schmidt will be talking about climate science, and Amanda Little and I will be kicking around some policy and politics.  I had the opportunity to review Gavin’s book, Climate Change: Picturing the Science, for “Nature Reports Climate Change” and I had an article on biochar at “Grist” where Amanda has been a columnist.

I’ll be on during the second half, from around 9:00 PM, but be sure to listen to Gavin starting at 8:30.  He’s a truly important voice on climate science.

We’re up in Cambridge, Mass., and were over at the MIT Museum yesterday.  One exhibit looked at the work of Daniel Nocera and his colleagues on developing a new catalytic process to convert water to oxygen and hydrogen.  There is wonderful potential in this to create a zero carbon, closed loop distributed energy system.

The MIT Climate Collaboratorium is another project that has great reference material.  Check it out.  More importantly, this world-class engineering school is engaged in critical policy work:  MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

I had a very busy end of the week and now I’m out of town, so I haven’t been reporting.  Here, however, are two pretty interesting reads for you, from two of my favorite writers.

The first is from Fiona Harvey, indefatigable environmental correspondent for the FT.   She has some unkind words for some of the more visible environmental organizations whose performance in Copenhagen she found, let’s say “wanting.”  Green is the colour of climate discord is the title of her analysis on the op-ed page yesterday.  While she notes that there was a lot more substance than many credited coming out of Copenhagen - as I also noted here in December - she also excoriates Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Oxfam for playing “…an exceptionally destructive role in the two weeks of the Copenhagen summit.  They fomented discord among developing nations and their rejection of all compromises provided a cover for those governments with a vested interest in the talks’ failure.  Climate sceptics rejoiced - the greens were doing a far better job of wrecking Copenhagen than they ever could.”  Ouch!  I think, however, that she should be a little more circumspect in this, simply in not tarring all the environmental groups with the same brush.  Important groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Fund, among others, were constructive before, during and after.  Nevertheless, she’s right about some of the more visible groups being unrealistic in their expectations and unhelpful in their rhetoric.

The other piece I would commend to you is from Andrew Leonard at Salon.com.  He writes “How The World Works” which is a terrific column.  You may have heard about Al Qaeda’s leader - if he’s still alive and in the driver’s seat - calling out the US for causing the climate crisis.   Osama bin Laden: Eco-terrorist is the title.  The insight here is he equates the sincerity of the efforts of this particular mass murderer to that of several Republicans in the Senate who have just offered a “No Cost Stimulus” proposal that “…aims to boost the economy by weakening the environmental impact review process, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and forbidding the Environmental Protection Agency from classifying greenhouse gases as air pollution.”  (See The Reaction from me recently on one particularly dark aspect of all this:  the attempt to subvert the EPA’s responsibility to protect the public from harm.)

Leonard says, eloquently:  “The only thing more ridiculous than the GOP’s No Cost Stimulus Act is a mass murderer parading his passion for Gaia. The two sides are made for each other, and their unholy matrimony will help assure that nothing worthwhile gets done.”

I wrote, in the wake of the shameful Chinese performance in Copenhagen, about China, Climate and Trade.  A couple of days after that post, there was an excellent analysis in the “FT” and I wrote a letter to the editor, alas unpublished.  Here’s the letter now:

Geoff Dyer rightly wonders “…whether China’s political system is compatible with the international respect it craves.”  (”Beijing’s push for soft power runs up against hard absolutes” - Jan. 4.)  The High Panjandrums of the CCP may think so, but it’s past time for the liberal democracies to spell it out:  Closed political systems, aka police states, should not be given full access to the hard-won benefits of the international system until they are willing to play by the rules.  The Chinese broke nearly all the rules in Copenhagen, and they have been brazen in their own defense when called on it by Gordon Brown and others.  One of the reasons they get away with murder in China - literally and figuratively - when it comes to environmental protection and public health is because civil society is non-existent or neutered.  I quoted John Ikenberry recently in this regard: China “… faces a Western-centered system that is open, integrated, and rule-based, with wide and deep political foundations.”  We simply have to remember, don’t we, that there are rules and China does not get a free pass.  I also quoted Christopher Patten to the effect that when we do give them a free pass “…it encourages China to think that it can become part of the modern world entirely on its own terms.”  Thus, this can well “…make the world a more dangerous and less prosperous place.”

Here is another excellent recent analysis about China from the “FT” - Full circle by James Kynge.  He asks some pretty probing and important questions, among them “…how can an international system created under Pax Americana to serve the interests of the west accommodate a rising giant that is set to remain different in almost every aspect - politics, values, history, natural endowments and per capita wealth - from the incumbent ruling order?”

Kynge quotes James Mann, a former Beijing bureau chief for the “LA Times” from his 2007 book, The China Fantasy: “America hasn’t thought much about what it might mean for the United States and the rest of the world to have a repressive, one-party state in China three decades from now because it is widely assumed that China is destined for a political liberalisation, leading eventually to democracy.”  (This is an assumption that I used to share, but now, for the most part, disavow.)

John Ikenberry, in this brilliant essay at “Foreign Affairs” two years ago, says, however, that “The rise of China does not have to trigger a wrenching hegemonic transition.”  It is in China’s best interests, he asserts, for them to play by the rules.

Whatever the future holds for China, the shape of its internal politics, and its relationship to the rest of the world, it’s incumbent on us now to take some blinders off.  Kynge notes “During the Copenhagen negotiations, China allied itself with some 77 developing countries to resist a legally binding treaty on climate change and opposed a mechanism of independent inspections that was intended to confirm emission control targets were being met. Frustration with China’s role was clear both during the summit and in comments by western participants afterwards. As a senior official from one developed country put it: ‘China cannot be allowed to appropriate the developing world like this again.’”  They’ve been doing that for many years on human rights, in case you hadn’t noticed.

To add insult to injury, China’s most senior negotiator on climate change now says that we should keep “…an open mind on whether global warming was man-made or the result of natural cycles.”  Damn the avalanche of science which, not incidentally, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has fully endorsed, along with the Academies of 12 other G-20 nations.  From the joint statement of the Academies:  “…large reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases, principally CO₂, are needed soon to slow the increase of atmospheric concentrations, and avoid reaching unacceptable levels.”  Xie Zhenhua was speaking after meeting with his counterparts from India, Brazil and South Africa.  All of the national science academies of these three countries, by the way, also signed the joint statement.  To his credit, the host of the four-nation meeting on climate change, the Indian environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, tried to play down any suggestions of dissent over the science of climate change.

I’ve wondered out loud here several times about convergence - getting our galloping consumption down in the developed world while simultaneously raising the standard of living for the citizens of developing nations.  You can do this a thousand different ways, most of which can “cool” the planet.  One critical approach is for developing economies to “leapfrog” their way to clean energy and low-GHG industrial and agricultural production.  One other vital thing to do is to reduce the reliance of the OECD nations on high-GHG output in emerging economies.  See Northern Consumption Reaches Deep into Other Countries’ Ecologies, for instance, from “SolveClimate.”

So what’s one good thing to do to alter the trajectory of our “high living” Western lifestyle?  (”High living” can mean obesity and heart disease, massive pollution, traffic jams, a shocking apathy about nature, among other ills.  It doesn’t have to mean these things, but, well …)  Lawns may contribute to global warming is the headline from the “Bright Green” blog of the “Christian Science Monitor.”  Referring to a study from the University of California, Irvine, we are alerted to some interesting findings.  First, over 1.9% of land in the continental US is covered in “turfgrass.”  (That’s a term used to describe residential lawn grasses as well as varieties used in sports venues.)  But it’s not the lawns themselves that are the problem - it’s the amount of energy, chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides that are brought to bear to cultivate these sylvan greenswards.  Massive GHG impact?  You better believe it.

My favorite environmental writer, Betsy Kolbert, had a blockbuster on this at “The New Yorker” a year and a half ago:  Turf War.  Here’s another perspective on scale, as Kolbert reports:  “Recently, a NASA-funded study, which used satellite data collected by the Department of Defense, determined that, including golf courses, lawns in the United States cover nearly fifty thousand square miles-an area roughly the size of New York State.”  (Kolbert also wrote about convergence here.)

How to address this?  For one thing, freedom lawns.  Even nicer are wildflower meadows.  I also reported on sun-reflecting plants here.  I love green roofs too.

As I said, there are thousands of ways to get our GHGs down.  “‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.“

I wrote here a while ago about food miles - see under Transportation of Food.  I looked at two arguments:  that the long distances we transport food has a discernible impact on the production of greenhouse gases - and that it doesn’t.  From what I’ve been reading over the past couple of years, the weight of evidence seems to be tipping in favor of the latter argument.

Airbus, the airplane manufacturing giant, in partnership with National Geographic Magazine, has published an interesting supplement:  Lift.  This details the many important contributions that the airline industry is making.  (I also wrote a story on Sustainability at the Airports for the American Planning Association a couple of years ago.  It turns out there’s quite a lot going on.)

In Lift, there is a compelling article about how air freight is significantly enabling developing world farmers to get their products to market, improve their livelihoods, and at a minimal cost to the environment - perhaps even at a net gain.  From Field to Fork: Reassessing the Value of Food Miles talks about how developing economies are taking full advantage of developed economy consumers’ appetite for fresh, largely organic food and flowers.  One NGO executive notes:  “People in Kenya have made an investment, and the consumer is now getting healthier, better grown and ecologically sound produce, with hardly any chemicals used on it.”  This is now Kenya’s fastest growing economic sector.  The article also notes that “…the majority of energy use in the food supply chain in developed countries is in distribution and consumption, not in transport from the place of origin.”  The argument here is that the Kenyan farmers and others are generating even fewer GHGs in their production.

Here’s a graphic the “NY Times” did on the environmental footprint of orange juice.  It indicates that the carbon dioxide emissions generated by transportation are a small fraction of the total generated throughout the entire life cycle of the product.

There’s a new book out from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) called Fair Miles: Recharting the food miles map that underscores this message.  “…while food miles loom large in our carbon-aware times, transporting it counts for less than you might think.”

It’s always important to consider environmental impacts, something that in the United States we established in law on January 1, 1970.  The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires public agencies to look at this in all things.  But it’s also important to look at the net benefits of any activity throughout its life cycle.  That’s what these thoughtful re-examinations of the impact of food miles are doing.