Climate Capitalism

The White House released a key report on climate change this week. The report Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, (Thomas R. Karl, Jerry M. Melillo, and Thomas C. Peterson, (eds.). Cambridge University Press, 2009.) was the work of multiple U.S. agencies including NOAA and the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

What a difference a new administration makes.  Rather than the Bush administration’s technique of downplaying hard science in lieu of industry interest this report was accompanied by a full White House press release by Obama advisor John Holdren.  The report itself paints a bleak, but honest picture of the challenges climate change poses for the 21 Century world.  It is written in fairly plain language complete with plenty of graphs, diagrams, and examples to make the results of the science that went into the report, accessible to the average reader.

You can view the official press release YouTube clip below.  If you are in a hurry, you can skip the first 5-10 minutes which is largely introductions.  It gets a little more interesting when the authors present some of the key findings of the report.  One comment I found very apt to “Climate Capitalism” was by lead author, Tom Karl,

“… we designed and built our infrastructure for the climate we’ve had, not the climate we will have.”

This statement is exactly the kind of pragmatic thinking this country needs if we are going to lead the world out of the climate crisis.  The status quo of industry and infrastructure will not hold up to the rate of change we are now experiencing.

I was lead the this report and the video clip by Lisa Moore’s post on the Environmental Defense Fund’s blog. Drawing from the report,  Moore’s post includes some nicely summarized highlights of what a warmer world might look like.

If you’re reading this, you probably have some interest in the intersection of business and sustainable energy.  If so, then be sure to check out Fortune magazine’s The Business of Green section.  It has a variety of 3-4 minute videos about news and trends in the business of sustainable energy and technology. 

There are several interesting recent episodes on the controversy over clean coal technology, including an interview with George Soros.  Among the other intriguing content was a story about a manufacturer that uses methane gas from a nearby landfill to power a Wisconsin plant.

You can subscribe to the Business of Green podcast on iTunes or Zune Marketplace.

NPR’s Planet Money discusses Russia’s state-run oil giant Gazprom on their January 7th podcast.  The show gives some perspective on the current natural gas crisis in Europe which has been in the headlines recently, but they also talk about Gazprom’s recent purchase of mineral rights in Algeria.  

Guest reporter, Geoff Porter, reports on a possible larger strategy at work, where Russia is interested in using Algeria as a transit country for the bountiful supply of natrual gas in Nigeria.

There is one particularly frightening statistic that Porter mentions in his report: Nigeria, which does not have the infrastructure to export their natural gas is currently flaring about 20 billion cubic meters of gas a year.  This is equal to about 1/3 of Algeria’s annual exports.  I did a quick calculation on this assuming: 

1.0 cubic meter natural gas (methane) = 0.49 kg carbon (http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html)

This comes out to 10.8 million tons of CO2 that is emitted and completely wasted.  Most estimates I’ve seen for a sustainable level of carbon emissions for an individual range from 2-2.3 tons per person per year.  With this in mind Nigeria is flaring the equivalent carbon allowance of about 4.7-5.4 million people or which is roughly 0.08-0.09% of the world’s population.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/01/hear_russia_russia_everywhere_1.html

KUOW’s Steve Scher discusses the Western Climate Initiative, an effort between seven Western states and four Canadian provinces to set targets for greenhouse gas limits with organization co-chair Janice Adair.

Scher also talks with author and environmental activist, Bill McKibben, about a new effort to reduce the carbon dioxode levels in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million called 350.org.

You can listen to the hour-long program at: http://www.kuow.org/program.php?id=16553

It wasn’t so much of a debate since the story ran as two separate interviews, but NPR’s Robert Siegel interviewed both former Vice President Al Gore and Joe Lucas, vice president for communications for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

Robert Siegel gave Al Gore a series of softball questions, but I thought Gore did an excellent job delivering a clear message that subtly derided the green washing of the coal industry without shutting the door on any future possible uses for coal in a carbon-neutral economy.

During Joe Lucas’s segment, however, Siegel seemed to transform into more of a journalistic pit-bull (albeit in a very NPR sort of way.)  Siegel asked Lucas a very pointed question: Does a “clean coal” plant exist today where 90% of CO2 emissions are sequestered? Lucas response was to re-define “clean coal”. He continued with a very thin argument about how the evolution of clean coal was similar to the development of medical technology. “30 years ago when didn’t have MRI machines we didn’t argue we didn’t have medical technology,” Lucas reasoning went. As the interview progressed, (or regressed) Lucas started to sound Palin-esque, making a series folksy appeals to support his cause.  Lucas compare the “difference of opinion” about how clean, “clean coal” should be to his mother’s opinion about the cleanliness of his room.  Siegel did a very solid job of taking him to task and brought him back to hard number definitions.

You can hear both interviews on NPR at this link.

While I was happy to hear Robert Siegel earning his public radio salary today it was sobering to hear Gore’s claim industry has spent a quarter of a billion dollars promoting the idea of “Clean Coal” this year alone. This is not investment into the technology to help figure out how to make coal into a “clean” fuel source, but as Lucas explained to support the evolving feeling or perception about coal in the minds of the American public.

As if solving the climate crisis wasn’t hard enough already… it should be a good time to be a PR firm.

The November 21 broadcast of NPR Science Friday included a panel discussion of the future of electric cars and whether government bailout could be used to encourage automakers to focus efforts on improving electric car technology.  Here’s a link to a synopsis and audio.  You can also subscribe to Science Friday on iTunes, Zune, or other aggregators.

It’s been over 6 years since I read my first article from the independent research organization, Worldwatch Institute.  If you remember, 2002 was all about fighting terrorists and very little about fighting global warming.   Katrina was still a name for a woman, likely from Sweden.  Al Gore was the guy that “invented the Internet” and “lost” an election.  It was not at all sexy to “be green” in popular culture in 2002.

The article I read was about the state of food production, mainly in the United States.   The content of the article now seems almost common place: local organic produce, food miles, the economic benefits of a local food system… how the mood has shifted in 6 years.  At the time however, most people still thought organic food was something you ate with a wheat grass shake on a hippie commune, if they’d even heard of it.

Since that article, I’ve read their flagship publication, “The State of the World” every year since.  This annual book is an excellent collection of well researched articles written in layman’s terms.   Each edition follows a central theme (e.g. Urbanization, Economic Sustainability)…. a really big idea.  Each article is written by a different author or team of authors which results in a diversity of ideas and perspectives that starts to untangle the ball of global problems we are all facing.  Most satisfying for me is that I find it possible to discuss the ideas in these articles with my most liberal and conservative friends with out immediate dismissal.  These are not political papers designed to support someones agenda.  These are well-balanced, hard-hitting papers that will make you rethink your position on global policies, problems and opportunities.

The newest edition comes out in January, but the 2008 edition is still very timely… I’ll be sure to post some updates as I work through State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World.