The Next Hurrah

Ten Years and Counting

By Mimikatz

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released its fourth report (summary here), which synthesizes for policymakers attending the forthcoming UN conference in Bali  the three reports that it issued earlier this year as part of its Fourth Assessment Report.  Some of its conclusions are that

climate change is "unequivocal", that humankind's emissions of greenhouse gases are more than 90% likely to be the main cause, and that impacts can be reduced at reasonable cost.

But climate change may also bring about "abrupt and irreversible impacts" such as glacial melting and extinction of species.

"Approximately 20-30% of species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average temperature exceed 1.5-2.5C (relative to the 1980-1999 average)," the summary concludes.

Other potential impacts highlighted in the text include:

• between 75m and 250m people are projected to have scarcer fresh water supplies than at present
• yields from rain-fed agriculture could be halved
• food security is likely to be further compromised in Africa
• there will be widespread impacts on coral reefs

One problem with the IPPC consensus process is that it takes a great deal of time, and thus it is not clear whether the newest report takes into account the accelerated arctic melting seen this year.  But it is clear that things are happening faster than anticipated, the BBC reports:

"If you look at the overall picture of impacts, both those occurring now and those projected for the future, they appear to be both larger and appearing earlier than we thought [in our 2001 report]," Martin Parry, co-chair of the impacts working group, told BBC News.

"Some of the changes that we previously projected for around 2020 or 2030 are occurring now, such as the Arctic melt and shifts in the locations of various species."

There are indications that projected increases in droughts are also happening earlier than expected, he said, though that was less certain.

Interestingly, the IPPC finds that absent human factors, the climate would have cooled over the last 50 years (due to volcanoes and solar changes); only models that simulate human effects produce warming over this period.  Warming is greatest in the northern polar regions and then in the north temperate and tropical zones (with the exception of the ocean area influenced by the jet stream).  It is least in the southern temperate zone and southern seas.  Human influences are "very likely" to have led to sea level increases.

The IPPC consensus now exhibits greater confidence in projections about droughts, heatwaves and floods, and their adverse consequences, plus stronger evidence of adverse impacts now on vulnerable ecosystems, such as polar and high-mountain regions and coral reefs. 

In the ffuture, as temperatures rise, Africa and Asia will be particularly hard hit, in part because they already face shortages of good water and areas of extreme drought.  Overall dry areas will become drier, low-lying areas will be wetter, smaller islands will be imperiled.  Arctic areas will be transformed.  Climate and weather will become more extreme.  The widely-held impression that North America will suffer the least seems to be somewhat true, although serious effects are anticipated in cities that already experience heat waves, as are water shortages in the West, significant variability in agricultural impacts, increased intensity of Atlantic hurricanes and stress on coastal areas generally.    

Projected changes are accelerating, and will persist for a millenium even if changes are made, raising the specter of whether, and how soon, we are facing irreversible changes or a "tipping point."  Most serious seems to be accelerating Arctic ice melting, as this could cause meters of sea level increases, beyond what the models anticipate.  The Jet Stream looks safe to the end of the century, despite some slowing, which will help moderate rising temperatures in Europe.  (In case you were wondering, Dubai's spectacular islands have been designed to withstand at least a half meter rise in sea level, which was the high end anticipated by the end of this century.  Some projections are now for three times that.) 

Dealing with climate change has costs, but so does failing to deal with climate change, given the near certainty of the trajectory of change.  The report concludes that

There is high agreement and much evidence that all stabilisation levels can be achieved by deployment of a portfolio of technologies that are either currently available or expected to be commercialised in coming decades, assuming appropriate and effective incentives are in place for their development, acquisition, deployment and diffusion and addressing related barriers.

But we need "substantial investment flows" and "effective technology transfer," meaning lots of money and getting the solutions to where they are needed.  The longer we wait, the harder it is, because we need to begin to reverse that nasty increasing trendline, and the longer we wait, not only is it getting steeper, but because of the persistence of greenhouse gases, the stabilization level, and the attendant changes (such as temperature and sea level increases), will be higher.  It looks from the chart like we have about ten years if we want things to stabilize at or near 2005 levels of greenhouse gases.  If the CO2 peak comes after the 2010-2030 period, the resulting world will look very different from what we have now.

Update:

Surprise, surprise.  The US representative tried to water the report down.   More of the Bush/Cheney regime's attempts to make policy by denying reality.  By contrast, the UN chief Ban Ki-moon calls for action.

California Shows the Way

By Mimikatz

This morning's paper reveals that California has made real progress in both reducing energy consumption and reducing greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, while at the same time enjoying overall growth in per capita GDP.  The California Green Innovation Index, a report detailing the state's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, contains some stunning data:

-- The amount of greenhouse gases produced for every Californian has dropped since 1990. At the same time, California's per-capita gross domestic product - the value of the services and goods produced in the state - has risen. The state's economy, in other words, has been thriving despite the reduction in per-person emissions.

-- California emits less greenhouse gas per person than any other state except Rhode Island. California's economy produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions for every dollar of gross domestic product than Germany, Japan or the United Kingdom.

-- Californians pay less on their monthly electricity bills than do residents of many other states. In 2005, for example, California's average monthly electricity bill was $74, compared with $135 in Texas. Although mild weather plays a part, so do tough energy-efficiency standards adopted in the 1970s for buildings and appliances.

-- Those energy-efficiency standards saved California residents and businesses $56 billion between 1975 and 2003.

-- About 22,000 Californians were directly employed by green-tech companies in 2006. In the same year, California's green-tech businesses soaked up 36 percent of all the money venture capitalists spent on the industry within the United States.

My morning paper contains a stunning graph (not in the online version) showing that since 1990 per capita emissions have dropped almost 10 percent while per capita GDP growth has increased 20 percent, despite downturns in 1992-3 and 2001-2002.  Other surprises:  Californians drive less per person than the national average and miles driven per person has dropped since 2002. 

In other words, solid public programs and creative but stringent and science-based, innovative regulation can have a salutary effect.  It is not only possible to have solid economic growth and make progress on environmental issues, the two may just go hand in hand. 

While the report notes that much more needs to be done to make a real dent in global warming, it should help reinforce the idea that improvements in emissions and energy usage can be good economically as well as environmentally.

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, the natives are praying for rain.  For those not aware of it, the southeast, not the west, is the region hardest hit by drought in the US.

Getting it Wrong on the Central Issue of our Times

By Mimikatz

Fifty years ago I was about to turn 15, it was 1957, and the central issue of our times was clearly seen to be the Cold War, the struggle with the Communist Soviet Union and its allies such as China.  In retrospect, at least from the US perspective, that was probably accurate, although expanding civil rights and economic opportunity to those other than (straight) white men probably runs a close second.  Fifty years from now, in 2057, when today's 15-year-olds are my age, when people look back at the beginning of the 21st Century, what do you think they are going to see as the central issue of our times?  And how are they going to think we did?

I am willing to bet that it will not be the struggle with Islamic extremists, or even with terrorists generally, as the Bush/Cheney regime and its sycophants believe.  Rather, it is much more likely to be the intertwined problems of the end of fossil fuels and global climate collapse.  And depending on what we do in the next 5-10 years, they may be wondering why we didn't feel more of a sense of urgency, why we didn't do something while there was still time, why we threw so much money and effort at a crazy, endless war in the Middle East while the temperatures and sea levels rose around us. 

While both major parties saw the struggle against communism as the central issue in the 1950's, it has been devastating to the cause of mitigating climate change that the GOP and its patrons have not only denied the urgency, but fought the effort tooth and nail for the first six years of the Bush presidency.  But that began to change, as so much did, with Katrina, then with last summer's fires and heat waves, and now this summer's extreme weather events, all of which have cost many lives on all our coasts and the interior.

While Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" was seen as a political event, last night's Tom Brokaw special on the Discovery Channel was global warming 101 for the mainstream.  A poll taken a year ago reported 70% of the public convinced that global warming is happening, an equal amount having become more convinced over the previous two years, with severe weather being a major factor in that change.  This summer's severe rains and floods probably increased the number.

With a sufficient segment of the public now convinced theere is a problem, we sorely need real leadership on the issue.  Based on the 1970's gasoline shortages and our experience here in Califonria with periodic shortages of water and electricity, I firmly believe that the public will respond favorably to clear direction and mandates for change.  In parts of the country without such leadership many people do not do more because they believe that if the problem were real, the government would be doing something.  Thus, we need first and foremost a clear statement that the problem is real, serious and must be addressed. 

Second, people need to understand that while climate change cannot be arrested at this point, it can be mitigated, and that a little effort actually can go a long way.  One of the most informative graphics in the Discovery Channel show depicted the carbon dioxide output of various activities and machines of a typical family as blocks of soot above the house.  An amazing amount can be saved through conservation and efficiency around the home with negligible change in lifestyle.  The California Flex Your Power website claims that if every household replaced one incandescent bulb with an energy-saving CFL bulb it would be the equivalent of taking a million cars off the road.   (Flex Your Power is a model partnership of utilities, residents, businesses, institutions, government agencies and nonprofit organizations working to save energy formed during the 2001 energy crisis here.  Its website has a wealth of ideas for saving energy.)   In fact, addressing energy use in buildings and construction is at least as important as addressing conservation through better means of transportation, a point also made by the Discovery Channel special.  Municipal, residential and business lighting is another area ripe for conservation.  A fascinating article in theAugust 20, 2007 New Yorker discussed how improved outdoor lighting not only saves energy and allows more enjoyment of the night sky, but is actually safer as well.  Tucson has long set an example in this area.   

Finally, it is obvious that even as we conserve, we need to develop new technologies for building, transportation and power generation.  Rather than costing jobs, this could become the next entrepreneurial frontier, if there were more incentives (such as fuel efficiency mandates, seed money and regulatory changes that mroe fairly internalized, rather than externalized, the costs of existing fuel sources). 

Concern for the environment is one major area where young voters are disenchanted with the GOP.  Along with the traqgic blunder that is Iraq, I believe that GOP denial of global warming and refusal to confront it as a major problem may prove the undoing of conservatism as an appealing ideology even to an extent in the ultra- conservative parts of the country.  Certainly that would be the case if the Democratic Party leadership and candidates made addressing global warming and coping with declining supplies of fossil fuels through conservation and innovation a major part of their platform.   Not to do so is to be wrong, colossally wrong, about the central issue of our time.

Replacing the Imperial Presidency in the Age of Global Warming

by emptywheel

I'd like to use the occasion of Al Gore's op-ed in the NYT today to expand on something I said in my talk on Curbing the Imperial Presidency. In his book The Imperial Presidency, Arthur Schlesinger argued that the Imperial Presidency derived from foreign policy:

The Imperial Presidency was essentially the creation of foreign policy. A combination of doctrines and emotions--belief in permanent and universal crisis, fear of communism, faith in the duty and the right of the United States to intervene swiftly in every part of the world--had brought about the unprecedented centralization of decisions over war and peace in the Presidency. With this there came an unprecedented exclusion of the rest of the executive branch, of Congress, of the press and of public opinion in general from these decisions.

We would only need to replace the word terrorism for communism to apply this paragraph today--to describe how the rationale of crisis and fear justified the dangerous consolidation of power under the Executive. At the close of my talk on the Imperial Presidency, I said,

Finally, we have to use the Administration’s botched propaganda against it. It is clear to most, now, that the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with an attempt to prevent the proliferation of WMD, a desire to spread democracy, or a fight against terrorism. We need to keep refuting those who want to claim this war is part of the war on terror. But we need to take that a step further and talk about the real reason the Administration did invade Iraq: to prop up America’s threatened hegemonic position using a grand strategy that is not only outdated and immoral, but guaranteed to be ineffective in an era of global warming and peak oil.

Not Quite the Energy Task Force

by emptywheel

I get the feeling today's installment of Cheney started out as a story about the Energy Task Force. It also tells the story of the Klamath fish kill and snowmobiles in Yellowstone. The big news, though, is Christine Todd Whitman's side of several issues, where Cheney blindly put business issues ahead of environmental requirements. In some ways, last week's Rolling Stone article on Cheney's involvement in climate change--which relies heavily on FOIAed documents--provides a valuable complement to the WaPo story, so I'm going to read them in conjunction. Doing so, I believe, closes the circle, shows how Cheney's unwavering ties to the energy industry drive the rest of his actions.

The WaPo describes the Energy Task Force as an unquestioning affirmation of business assertions that environmental regulations hamper business and energy development.

Sitting through Cheney's task force meetings, Whitman had been stunned by what she viewed as an unquestioned belief that EPA's regulations were primarily to blame for keeping companies from building new power plants. "I was upset, mad, offended that there seemed to be so much head-nodding around the table," she said.

Whitman said she had to fight "tooth and nail" to prevent Cheney's task force from handing over the job of reforming the New Source Review to the Energy Department, a battle she said she won only after appealing to White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. This was an environmental issue with major implications for air quality and health, she believed, and it shouldn't be driven by a task force primarily concerned with increasing production.

Directly out of that effort, Rolling Stone suggests, arose the propaganda campaign that served to undercut EPA itself.

2007 Shaping Up To Be Another Hot One

By Mimikatz

Everyone is focused on the hot topics in DC, but look at this graphic from Climate Progress.  So far 2007 is shaping up to be as hot as 1998, so far the hottest on record.  The temperature in Siberia is 5 degrees C above normal, but I'm looking at some of the other big red dots on that map--the ones in California, Nevada and Arizona.  The article notes that

On May 29, 50% of the western U.S. was in moderate-to-exceptional drought, 83% in the Southeast, and 34% for the contiguous U.S. 

Perhaps this is related to the story in the morning paper about rapid declines in populations of 20 common birds, such as Meadowlarks and Evening grosbeaks, species whose numbers are now half what they were 40 years ago.

Even more ominously, the Climate Progress article notes that During the past century, global surface temperatures have increased at a rate near 0.11°F (0.06°C) per decade, but the rate of increase has been three times larger since 1976, or 0.32°F (0.18°C) per decade, with some of the largest temperature increases occurring in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

These figures are not from Al Gore or some enviro group, but the National Climatic Data Center.

Time truly is running out to mitigate the damage.  We have lost so much as a result of profit-based and faith-based politics from the Republican Party and its corporate masters and fundamentalist base.  Last year over 100 people died from heat-related causes in California in July.  Here it is already 83 degrees indoors in the shade at 10:30 am, in an area supposedly cooled by the winds off San Francisco Bay.

Those who will live to see even hotter temperatures in another 20-30 years, if not well before, will not look kindly on  the generation who fiddled while the world began to burn, enjoying the last of the good life.

Here's hoping the Dems can find the will to balance future health and well-being with the needs of energy-producing and auto-producing regions today.  This is the first big test of what looks like a very hot summer.

How High Will the Upcoming Oil Scandals Go?

by emptywheel

Back when I was reflecting on why Gayle Norton resigned her position as Interior Secretary, I thought she might be resigning just three steps ahead of the Abramoff investigations. She still might. But now I think it just as likely that she resigned just before the Inspector General started investigating how her Interior Department gave away our country's wealth to the oil companies.

The Justice Department is investigating whether  the director of a multibillion-dollar oil-trading program at the Interior Department has been paid as a consultant for oil companies hoping for contracts.

The director of the program and three subordinates, all based in Denver, have been transferred to different jobs and have been ordered to cease all contacts with the oil industry until the investigation is completed some time next spring, according to officials involved.

This appears to have been the scam: Some time ago, the Interior Department introduced a "royalties in kind" program, which allowed oil companies to pay for the privilege of drilling for oil on our land in kind--in oil and gas--rather than in cold hard cash. The gimmick is that it was supposed to facilitate accounting. Up until recently (don't worry--I'm going to figure out these dates), the oil went into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).* But the SPR apparently is all filled up now, so recently the US government started contracting with companies to sell the oil on the "open market." But, as these things are bound to happen in the BushCo world, we didn't take open bids for the contracts to sell the oil. We apparently just gave companies with ties to a bunch of Interior Department employees in Denver the contracts, which of course meant we got less money than we otherwise would have.

What Should Our Agenda Be? (Economics)

By Mimikatz

Nancy Pelosi has her 100 Days Agenda, but we need to be thinking in terms of shaping the longer term agenda for the next two to four years.  Other than Iraq, the area where we most need to roll back the damage of the Bush years is in the economic sphere.  Max Sawicky proposes five issues for a populist economics, including Trade (least important), Deficit dementia (moderate deficits are better than none), Social Security (there is no problem, let alone a crisis), Health Care (there is no crisis here either, just rising demand for ever-expanding treatments that must be managed fairly) and The Imperial Fed (which has elevcated slow growth and anit-inflationary policies at the expense of labor growth).

To me the biggest issues are global warming and how to turn the tide on increasing income inequality and declining mobility.  On the latter, certainly the minimum wage increase will help, as would repealing any Bush tax cuts that have not yet taken effect (there are several, and they benefit only the wealthy), including freezing the estate tax.  Single-payer or some similar way to provide at least basic health care for all and equalize risk better would also help greatly.  Rising inequality and its effects (along with Iraq), are, it seems to me, the area where the Dems are going to fulfill their mandate and get reelected to run the government for many years, or not and not.

What do you think are the big picture economic issues for the next 2-4 years?

California charts its own course

By Mimikatz

Yesterday California Democratic legislative leaders and Governor Schwarzenegger reached a deal on legislation to reduce greenhouse gases in an effort to halt the advance of global warming.  The legislation requires a 25% percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and requires the California Air Resources Board (CARB), as the lead agency, to adopt regulations to curb emissions and to set up a cap-and-trade system to allow less polluting companies to sell emission credits to more polluting companies.  As part of the deal the Governor would have the authority to delay the deadlines for up to a year in case of natural or economic disasters, a point Schwarzenegger insisted on. 

All businesses must reduce emissions, beginning in 2012, to meet the 2020 deadline.  CARB, which developed California's strict and groundbreaking low-emission vehicle/clean fuels regulations in the 1980s and early 1990s, enjoys strong support and has the staff expertise to develop a creative regulatory program to meet the law's goals.  It will develop targets for each industry, and may impose fees to fund aspects of the program.  Schwarzenegger also insisted on a cap-and-trade system.  The bill does not explicitly require such a system but authorizes CARB to set one up. 

The deal, which has been in the works for several months, marks the evolution of Schwarzenegger over the past several years from action-hero recall winner to cheerleader at the 2004 GOP convention to tough guy who called Democrats in the Legislature "girly men" and promised to kick the nurses' butt but got his own kicked in an ill-fated special election in 2005 to bipartisan dealmaker running for a second term.    As part of his retreat from the hard-right, divisive policies of last year, Schwarzenegger began early in the year to take a more conciliatory and a "greener" stance.

Global Warming Walk: Five Qs&As with Bill McKibben

By Meteor Blades

I sure wish I were in Vermont this week. I could join writer/environmentalist/deep thinker Bill McKibben and whoever else shows up for a four-day walk seeking to kindle federal action against global warming.

Billed as "The Road Less Traveled, Vermonters Walking Toward a Clean Energy Future," the march will begin Thursday noon at Robert Frost's old writing cabin near Ripton, stop in cities along the way for Conversations on the Green, and end 43 miles up the road in Burlington. Knowing McKibben's work and the kind of people he attracts, I imagine those are going to be eye-opening conversations for participants and bystanders alike, a traveling teach-in, if you will. You can get a taste of this in my five-question interview with McKibben below.

Many, I know, downplay the value of a public demonstration, even public action of any kind outside the realm of lawsuits and legislation. Sooooo '60s, they say. Doesn't work anymore. If it ever really did. I couldn't disagree more. Perhaps the reason people say this comes from their being so comprehensively saturated with a megamedia caricature of the era. They don't believe most or any of what the megamedia tells them about the times they themselves live in, but they accept as gospel what's been told them regarding one of the periods of greatest social change since the Civil War.

The public intellectuals and other activists who spurred that change worked inside and outside the governing system, using whatever megaphone seemed proper at the moment to capture public attention and increase the pressure on public policy. What you mostly hear about that era today is the media-mediated version, a distorted fraction of the story. That's not my way of trying to sanctify the "protest" movements or say that we made no mistakes, no strategic blunders, or engaged in no counterproductive activism. Surely, we did more than enough of that and were paid for it with half-victories and outright defeats, some of them long-lasting. But, please, most of the focus, even most of the public events, had nothing to do grubby street demonstrations.