Paving the Road

The beautiful object in the photo is a) Turkish tiled floor? b) a schematic model of a carbon molecule? No, it's c) a close-up photo of Scott and Julie Brusaw's driveway in northern Idaho. More specifically it's the solar-paneled driveway they installed through their company, Solar Roadways, to demonstrate the viability of the oversized (12'X12') panels. With help from a community grant, and another from the federal DOT, they have gone on to install solar roadway panels in a parking lot in Sandpoint, Idaho. Someday they would like to replace ALL our highways with solar roadway panels--a project they say would produce three times the US's current electrical needs.

Will that happen? Not soon. With the DOT grant, and more than $2 million raised online through Indiegogo with the help of this youtube video the Brusaws have planned larger prototypes and begun the expensive laboratory testing that will address doubts about strength, durability, and safety. While DOT spokesperson Eric Weaver has expressed skepticism whether Solar Roadways' plan for replacing highways is "realistic," he does believe it could work for "smaller scale purposes" such as "pedestrian roadways."

And indeed the town of Krommenie, a suburb of Amsterdam--bless the Dutch!--just last fall installed a 70-meter stretch of bikeway using solar panels developed by the Dutch research institute TNO--the first actively-used prototype for the technology. Does this matter? Not yet. But the determination of people like the Dutch researchers, the Brusaws, the 50,000 people world-wide who donated research funding, and the townspeople of Krommenie who took a chance with public funds to see if they could live a little greener--all this tells an important story about the ingenuity, optimism, and dedication that may rescue us yet.

Another Front in the Climate Wars

One of the subtle perversities of the climate problem is the potential effect of certain feedback loops--systems where warmer temperatures create conditions that produce still more warming. Such diabolical loops are not always counted in climate projections, and they produce a certain consternation when uncovered.

Nature magazine, in tomorrow's edition, will present a study of the Amazon rainforest, dating back to the 1980s, whose distressing conclusion is that a substantial decline in the health of the immense forest has seriously compromised its growth, reducing in turn its value as a carbon sink by as much as 50% over the past two decades. Causes for the decline are complex, but warmer temperatures and attendant reduction in rainfall are thought to be part of the problem. While protection of forests, especially tropical ones, not just in the Amazon region but in southern Asia and Equatorial Africa, has long been part of the climate change agenda, with today's report the profile of this problem in the discussions leading up to Paris may become more prominent.

Though the report is published behind a paywall, a summary can be found here, with fuller reports in The Guardian and Le Monde.

Small State Thinks Big

Activists in Rhode Island, led by a student and a professor from Brown University, have proposed a comprehensive carbon tax, which will be the first such state-wide measure in the United States if it passes. Other jurisdictions, such as Boulder, Colorado, Montgomery County, Maryland,  and certain counties in California have introduced such measures, as has British Columbia. Internationally, various European countries impose carbon taxes on particular energy sectors, and China has recently begun to tax some inefficient coal-fired plants, but none of these is as comprehensive as Rhode Island's would be. Australia had one of the broader-based carbon-tax programs, but its current right-wing government repealed it last year.

As drafted by student Solomon Goldstein-Rose and professor Timmons Roberts, the Rhode Island bill would tax every form of fossil fuel entering the state at a standard rate of $15/ton of CO2 emissions. Some of the money collected would be returned to state residents and businesses to compensate for elevated energy prices, with the remainder dedicated to Governor Raimondo's green infrastructure fund. She has not indicated her support for the bill, which will be reviewed in legislative hearings starting next month. Numerous climate change advocates including NASA scientist James Hanson have long advocated for carbon taxes, rather than cap-and-trade schemes, as the most direct way to capture externalized costs of carbon pollution and use market forces to promote carbon-free energy.

Briefing the Ambassador

As I suggested in my previous post, the United States, as the world's largest economy and largest per capita carbon polluter, holds many of the high cards in the global climate negotiations, and the man charged with playing those cards is our special envoy Todd Stern. Stern has laid out a detailed view of his approach in a speech delivered at Yale University last fall, a few weeks before President Obama's historic joint announcement with China's President Xi of their carbon reduction goals. Taken together, the speech and that announcement seem to give a clear picture of the negotiating stance the US will adopt in Paris.

Here are some questions I would like to put to Ambassador Stern:

• Do you feel the American record on climate change issues since 1992 is an impediment as you represent our nation at Durban or Lima or any of the other international venues? What credit can we claim, and how much apology do we owe the world community?
• Many have suggested that the US’s proposed reduction of 26-28% over 2005 levels is inadequate to meet the 2 degrees C temperature increase goal. Can you suggest how quickly you expect the US reduction goal to “ramp up” over several 5-year cycles? And shouldn’t we have a specific target in mind for 2040 or 2050 to put us on track for a 2C increase?
• You point to the “holy grail” of market advantage for non-fossil fuels, but—especially in a period of falling oil prices and increasing demand for coal—what steps will need to be taken, both nationally and internationally, to create that market advantage? Shouldn’t some form of international carbon taxation be on the agenda for Paris?
• Critics of the UN FCCC process have suggested that the only way to ensure that we don’t burn too much carbon to stay within the 2C goal is to budget it, or impose restrictions at the level of consumption. Scientists have given us fairly clear measures of how much carbon consumption will take us beyond the 2C limit: how can we justify exceeding those levels?
• You cite the interesting statistic that worldwide fossil fuel subsidies might amount to $500 billion annually—an outrageous fact in view of our global climate goals. Where should we start in the United States to begin phasing out those subsidies?

• What would you hope someone in, say, 2075, might say about your efforts, and what do you fear they might think, not just of you, but of all of us in our nation and generation?

Ciphers or Saviors?

Earlier this week Guardian columnist George Monbiot railed against the clan of UN climate negotiators, describing them as "hundreds of intelligent, educated, well-paid and elegantly-dressed people wasting their lives" in pursuit of "radical new deckchair design" for our global Titanic. I want to return to his argument, which merits attention. But first I want to introduce the US deckchair-arranger, arguably the most powerful of these global attendants, and a man of whom David Corn was asking, just 6 years ago in Mother Jones, "Can this man save our planet?"

His name is Todd Stern, and he certainly seems to be trying. Mr. Stern spent 5 years as a policy advisor in the Clinton administration, and was the US's chief negotiator in Kyoto in 1997. As a fellow at the Center for American Progress he continued to follow and write about the evolution of climate policy, and in 2009 he returned to Hillary Clinton's State Department as special envoy for climate change. He has gone on record to insist that fossil fuels will "obviously" have to be left in the ground and written off as assets, and more recently he warned that the whole UN process is at risk of breaking down without some perceived success at the Paris conference. This is a man who takes his job seriously and has engaged with the climate problem since before most of us knew there was one.

On the other hand, it is fair to ask whether Stern and the US position he has shaped and promoted is adequate to the dimensions of the problem. Monbiot is not alone in asking whether the gradualist approach of the UN process is too timid, too slow, and even dangerous in promoting false optimism. Activists including Bill McKibben of 350.org join Monbiot in pointing to "leave it in the ground" as a starting point, not a consequence. They would work backward from a "budget" of carbon emissions beyond which the goal of 2 degrees C is considered unreachable. 80% of that 'budget' of fossil fuels is already burned, so the rest would have to be carefully allocated, with some (unspecified) strict control on further exploitation or consumption. Such an approach would be aggressive, even coercive, but its proponents insist that any less stringent method inevitably takes us beyond the tolerable level of carbon, and puts the earth in almost certain peril of temperatures well above the 2C level. Indeed many climate researchers already believe 2C is a fanciful hope at this point, and reliable studies suggest that even with the eventual restraints of the UN process, we are headed for temperature increases of 4-6 C, or 11 degrees Fahrenheit--levels at which our species survival would be in serious doubt.

Like his boss, the President, Stern strongly advocates for a low-carbon, growth-based future--and yet Obama's "all of the above" energy policy is completely at odds with Stern's call to "leave it in the ground."  Stern has remarked that "the holy grail ... is for non-fossil energy to become a better business proposition, all-in, than fossil fuels," but that approach would seem to leave our fate in the hands of global businesses, whose indifference to and outright subversion of the climate debate is notorious.

So are we sailing toward Paris with Captain Stern and his UN crew, blithely enjoying the icebergs while they last? Or might we arrive at a scene of unprecedented international cooperation? Are dedicated public officials like Todd Stern offering false hope, as commentators like Monbiot would suggest? Or are they proceeding in the only feasible way to reach some achievable resolution? The question is hugely complex, and induces passionate and contradictory answers. It is a question I will be probing in future posts as if our lives depended on it.

A Different Road to Paris

These folks are also on the road to Paris--a real road. They are pilgrims, part of the World Council of Churches' "pilgrimage of justice and peace," and will end their journey at the Paris conference in December. Other groups of pilgrims are crossing Africa on foot and by bicycle in solidarity with victims of climate change present and future, with support from Archbishop Desmond Tutu and President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Under the banner of "climate justice" and in support of a legally binding and universal agreement, with the support of Pope Francis, Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew, and numerous Christian and ecumenical organizations, these pilgrims bring another dimension to the climate change movement.

But what exactly does the action of pilgrimage convey? Three thoughts come to my mind:

1) Through its traditional associations with penance, the pilgrimage acknowledges human responsibility and expresses remorse for the excesses that have brought us to this crisis. Americans, producing vastly more greenhouse emissions per capita than most of our fellow earth-dwellers, might particularly want to sign on to that aspect of the pilgrimage.

2) Continental in scope, these pilgrimages also suggest the vast climate migrations that will most likely become part of the tragedy of climate change, as densely populated regions become uninhabitable through inundation, drought, or other extremes of weather. As part of the growing discussion on adaptation and resilience, those of us in nations privileged by wealth or location might begin thinking how we can absorb millions of climate refugees in coming decades.

3) Finally, the act of pilgrimage--whether to Canterbury or Mecca, Jerusalem, Llasa or Santiago de Compostela--suggests a turning to some instance of a Higher Power or God. This thought becomes poignant for me when I read about the broad experience of grief felt by scientists who have researched and documented climate change for more than three decades, issued warnings and proposed interventions, only to see their work ignored and at times defamed. Knowing sooner and better than the rest of us what was and is at stake, their emotional response--depression, anger, futility--has in many cases been acute. Where else can they turn?

While the religious framework is often seen in opposition to the scientific, my own religious response to this potential for despair increasingly draws on the reality exposed by 20th century physics of an infinite and expanding universe. While our own future may seem dim, that reality offers the hope at least, even the probability, that somewhere in infinite space there are sentient creatures not so foolish as to destroy their only habitat. The encounter of modern physics with old-fashioned Anglican Christianity is captured in a wonderful hymn, written by Robert Bridges and set to music by Herbert Howells, whose final lines read
                                   
                             Evermore
                             From His store
                             Newborn worlds rise and adore.

Or as Kafka put it:  "There is plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope--but not for us."

Even the Bankers are Calling for Divestment

Last week the Bank of England expressed its concern to Britain's major insurance companies that their investment portfolios might be at risk from overvalued fossil-fuel stocks. Speaking to a conference of insurance executives, an official from the bank's prudential regulation authority suggested that large financial institutions could take a "huge hit" if major reserves of fossil fuel are left "stranded" by policies that reduce carbon emissions, whether by market regulation or legal injunction.

Last week's warning follows statements by BoE governor Mark Carney last fall, suggesting that "the vast majority" of fossil fuel assets "are unburnable" within sustainable climate policies. Former US Treasury secretary Henry Paulson made similar observations in a New York Times op-ed last summer, comparing the "carbon bubble" of overvalued energy stocks to the housing bubble of 2007, and the financial collapse it caused in 2008.

In short, financial leaders are coming to realize that "leave it in the ground" is not a wild-eyed slogan but the expression of a sane and inevitable truth. Not all: Shell oil executives are on record saying"We do not believe that any of our proven reserves will become stranded." That is, Shell intends to extract and burn regardless of the consequences. But Carney, Paulson, and other financial leaders are starting to assume that Shell, the Koch brothers, and other fossil fuel promoters can and will be restrained.

In effect, these leaders--as well as the conservative Financial Times--are making the case for fossil fuel divestment, though in different terms from movement activists. Unlike Naomi Klein, Paulson and the BoE believe the writing down of "stranded" fossil assets can happen in an orderly way within the capitalist model. Perhaps--though the resistance of Shell et al. suggests otherwise. It is nonetheless useful to know that the Davos crowd is no longer ignoring the fossil fuel dilemma but embracing it--for better or worse.