Climate Change

I’ve been looking at energy and environmental issues for nearly 40 years and I’ve never before seen the proliferation of big news stories that I’ve been seeing for the past year or so, particularly, of course, on climate change.  Maybe it was “An Inconvenient Truth,” released on May 24 last year; maybe it was the 72° temperature on January 6 in New York City this year (and no snow in the Alps); and maybe it was the sinking in of just how catastrophic Katrina was.  The war in Iraq is likely a factor.  It’s probably for these reasons and more that energy and environment have become such critical concerns.

We’ll look at some of the flak that Al Gore’s been taking recently in a post tomorrow or the next day.  This is a compelling story.  For your viewing pleasure, you might want to watch Al Gore and Bjorn Lomborg, one of the more prominent climate change skeptics, testifying on their “Perspectives on Climate Change” at a joint House hearing tomorrow.  Or see also Gore’s testimony before the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee:  “Vice President Al Gore’s Perspective on Global Warming.”

First, let’s look at New Hampshire.  Town meetings throughout the state this month have declared war on global warming.  The Carbon Coalition in New Hampshire sponsored a campaign for the annual town meetings.  This initiative received enormous support.  Presidential candidates better have their climate change ducks in a row when they come a calling for the next year.  See also this from the “New Hampshire Union Leader.”

Following on the heels last month of the enormous breakthrough involving the shelving of eight coal-fired power plants in Texas in a deal negotiated by Environmental Defense, a deal was announced today that will substantially reduce the carbon loading from Kansas City Power & Light. The Sierra Club was the driving force in bringing this agreement to conclusion.  Wind farms and energy efficiency will be a cornerstone of KCP&L’s ongoing operations.  Adding 400 megawatts of wind power and reducing load by 300 MW are big numbers. 

Here’s an eye-catching headline: “Funds with $4 trillion under management want Washington to put mandatory limits on carbon emissions.”  Not, as one might say in New York, chopped liver.  See also this from Ceres and the Investor Network on Climate Risk.

In Washington yesterday, Henry Waxman, held a second hearing on the subject of “Political Interference with Climate Science” in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he now chairs.  Waxman, from Los Angeles, is an old hero of mine from the Acid Rain Wars of the 1980’s when he was chairman of the House Health and Environment Subcommittee (of the Energy and Commerce Committee).  Waxman’s formal statement said this:  “It would be a serious abuse if senior White House officials deliberately tried to defuse calls for action by ensuring that the public heard a distorted message about the risks of climate change.”  James Hansen, one of the most respected climate scientists in the world and one of the first to indicate the sources and the dangers of global warming, testified as to the considerable pressure that has been brought on him under the Bush Administration.  One must understand Hansen’s position and stature.  He heads NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which “…emphasizes a broad study of global climate change.”  Bill McKibben characterized him, in a recent piece in the “NY Review of Books,” as the scientist whose testimony before Congress in 1988 really set off the global gold rush to sharpen and deepen scientific inquiry on the matter.   Hansen appeared with Philip A. Cooney, George C. Deutsch, III, and James Connaughton, all Bush administration appointees, all of whom said that undue pressure had not been focused on scientists and that editorial liberties had not been taken with scientific reports.  See this summary from the L.A. Times.

Finally, even for someone brought up in the age of color television and space flights to the moon, I have to marvel at technology sometimes.  Technology can be, certainly, the source of environmental ills, but it can also provide some wonderful flights of fancy that prove, often, to provide solutions for some of humankind’s enduring problems.  Here’s a new trip on gossamer wings:  “Flying electric generators (FEGs) are proposed to harness kinetic energy in the powerful, persistent high-altitude winds.”  See this from the special issue on wind power from the technical journal “IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion.”

As I said in my inaugural post on March 5, the good news on climate change is that “… the recognition of the terrible problem we’ve created is deepening and solutions are being actively sought.”  People everywhere are tuned in to the issue.  Recent polls indicate that this is very much the case.  “Poll Finds Worldwide Agreement That Climate Change is a Threat” reads the release from WorldPublicOpinion.org, an arm of the Program on International Policy Attitudes.  The survey, released on March 14, was done with the venerable Chicago Council on Global Affairs and looked at attitudes on climate change in 17 countries, representing 55% of the world’s population.  From Australia, where the support for the reality and the danger of global climate change was the strongest, to India, where it was the weakest, the heavy betting is that we have a “serious and pressing problem” on our hands.  I thought that one of the more compelling opinions expressed was on international trade:  a large preponderance of those polled said that environmental standards should be written into trade agreements. Some of those expressing this feeling were in countries where their governments have been resisting precisely this sort of approach.

A previous poll from these folks, from October 11, 2006, was headlined “World Publics Willing to Bear Costs of Combating Climate Change.”  One of the interesting subtexts here was that consciousness of global warming as a threat has risen dramatically among Americans in the past couple of years.  The pollsters speculate that this may be largely due to the impact of Katrina and the other catastrophic storms that devastated Florida and the Gulf Coast in 2004 and 2005.  Another salient finding:  “Seventy percent of Americans say that the U.S. government should take part in the Kyoto efforts, despite the Bush administration’s opposition to the treaty.”  The Chinese and the Indian publics are also noted to be at odds with their official government line.  They want to see the problem addressed.  (By the way, there are links here to other fascinating polls on the subject of climate change, energy, and the environment.)

One of these, done last summer for the BBC by WorldPublicOpinion.org, has the provocative title, “Current Energy Use Seen to Threaten Environment, Economy, Peace.”  The survey registers overwhelming support for renewable energy development and higher fuel efficiency for cars and trucks.  Another significant item:  “There is relatively lukewarm support for more nuclear energy with just one-half favoring nuclear energy to reduce reliance on oil and coal.” Disappointingly, only 37% strongly or somewhat favor increasing energy taxes.  Aussies, Brits, Kenyans and Indians show the strongest support for higher energy taxes and the Poles, Ukrainians, Russians and Brazilians show the least.

Another poll, by YouGov for the “Daily Telegraph” from last fall, found considerable awareness and concern among Britons regarding climate change.  Public opinion seems to be substantially driving the political debate there.  Climate change has become a hugely prominent issue among the U.K. parties.  They are fighting each other to be greener. This is fascinating and encouraging.  This article and this column from “The Economist” talk about it.  Would that our American political parties had a different dynamic.            

I’ve got bad news and I’ve got good news.  The bad news is that we have managed over the past 250 years or so to begin to dangerously overheat our planet, primarily by the burning of fossil fuels:  coal, oil, and natural gas. What’s worse is that we have accelerated this process as industrial civilization has grown exponentially and proliferated across the globe from Europe to North America to South America and to East Asia and India. There are other critical influences on climate change, such as forest loss and the production of methane and other gases from agriculture, that we will discuss over the course of the next year as this blog progresses through the many important subjects and themes that pertain.

In a report from the U.K.’s Hadley Centre for Climate Change, we are told that 2007 is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998.  The Fourth Assessment Report of the UN-mandated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says unequivocally, again, that what we are experiencing is real, it’s dangerous, and it’s manmade.  One particularly disturbing conclusion from the IPCC is that “Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized.”

But you probably already know all this.  You’ve probably seen “An Inconvenient Truth” aka the “Al Gore movie.”  If you haven’t seen it, you pretty certainly know that it just won the Oscar for best documentary.  You’ve also probably seen the now-ubiquitous media coverage of the subject of climate change.  You’ve perhaps read some of the excellent books that have come out in the past several years.

But then that’s the good news.  People, everywhere, in government, the environmental movement, in the media, in the science community, and in the general public now know what time it is.  The parlous state of our planet’s health is being addressed, albeit in fits and starts, but the recognition of the terrible problem we’ve created is deepening and solutions are being actively sought.

We will here look at an array of things, among them the politics of climate change.  In another excellent contribution from Bill McKibben in the “NY Review of Books,” he notes:  “After twenty years of inactivity— a remarkably successful bipartisan effort to accomplish nothing—the first few weeks of the new Congress have witnessed a flurry of activity.”  There is going to be a lot of news from Washington. 

There have been many important insights and developments from environmentalists and energy experts, business analysts, architects and engineers.  Hopefully, we are in what Thomas Kuhn would call a “paradigm shift” and there are going to be more and more positive developments in renewable energy and energy conservation, land use, and transportation.  We will be looking at high tech and low tech, lifestyle changes, and one important theme will be activism.  What can you learn?  What can you do?  Who can you reach out to influence?  “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living,” said Mother Jones.

Another theme will be that efforts to reverse the global warming trend will at the same time produce other felicitous effects.  Renewable energy, for instance, equals clean energy – for the most part.  (We’ll get into nuclear power, but not here and now.)

So, welcome to the Foreign Policy Association’s ongoing discussion of climate change.  Let’s roll up our sleeves and do some good work together.