Courtesy Climate SOSGlobal warming activists endorsed by the preeminent climatologist James Hansen are working to defeat the climate and energy bill in Congress, and they’re using some provocative stunts to spread their message.
Briefly:
- Activists handed out fake $2 trillion bills at a rally for climate legislation in New York last week, criticizing the size of the global-warming emissions market they oppose. ($2 trillion is their estimate for the size of the emissions market they oppose.) The bills depict Al Gore holding a wrench and a compact-fluorescent light bulb and the words “Corporate Giveaways! Carbon Ponzi Schemes! FALSE SOLUTIONS!”
- Others hung a 14-foot banner of the same bill from the Manhattan headquarters of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
- “Cap’n Trade,” an actor in a pirate costume, unfurled a similar banner at a presentation by Connie Hedegaard, chairperson of the Dec. 2009 UN Climate Summit and Denmark’s minister for climate and energy.
- Still others blocked a motorcade of UN delegates to drop a banner with the message “Cap + Trade is a Dead End.”
At least three groups worked together on last week’s events—Climate SOS, Rising Tide North America, and “Greenwash Guerrillas,” which pied Thomas Friedman last year. They all hold a “no compromise” philosophy on climate-change action, opposing carbon markets that allow polluters to buy and sell pollution credits and arguing that larger environmental groups such as NRDC have compromised too much in working with businesses and Democratic lawmakers.
“It’s an awkward position to be environmentalists working on climate change but opposing a climate bill,” said Climate SOS organizer Rachel Smolker, a Vermont ecologist and author. “Especially with a new administration that we want to support. But we felt we need to take a really strong position because this [bill] is so inadequate.”
The campaign is awkward for “establishment” green groups too. They’ve been preparing to battle fossil-fuel interests over the energy bill introduced in the Senate this week. Now they must figure out if and how to respond to this attack from the far left.
“It’s troubling,” said Daniel J. Weiss, director for climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank with close ties to the Obama administration. “No one believes that the clean energy bill that will come out of Congress will address the threat of global warming in a single step. But we have to start.”
“The real enemies are Big Oil and Big Coal and the right wing attack machine,” he said. “For them to mock [Gore] in the way they did shows that they don’t understand you need to attack your enemies and not your allies.”
Hansen’s involvement is especially troublesome. The director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies wasn’t involved in the New York stunts, but he endorsed Climate SOS’s recent tour against a climate bill. The $2 trillion bill includes his statement that a cap-and-trade program “would be worse for the environment than doing nothing.”
The opposition by Hansen and Climate SOS is unlikely to influence Washington policymakers, in Weiss’s opinion, but it’s got the potential to make everyday Americans think the situation is hopeless.
“If they hear from such a respected scientist as James Hansen that what Congress is doing won’t matter, then why would they bother to call their senators to say ‘Act on this’?” he said.
What does that even mean?
Climate SOS activists at NRDC’s headquartersCourtesy tanukiAside from the stunts last week, other moves by the “no-compromise” camp are downright perplexing. Last week Greenwash Guerrillas launched a website in response to Cleanenergyworks.us, a three-month-old diverse coalition supporting a comprehensive energy bill. The similar-sounding Cleanenergyworks.biz was a replica of the real Clean Energy Works site, with two notable changes: The phone number and email address for spokesperson Josh Dorner had been changed. His name was left the same. The site changed to a more innocuous version over the weekend and is currently down. (Have a screen grab? Send it in and we’ll post.)
Dorner had no interest in speaking about the site that took his name. “I don’t send too much of my day worrying about a website,” he said Thursday. “There are considerably more important tasks before us to get this bill across the Senate floor.”
NRDC spokesperson Michael Oko shared Dorner’s reluctance to give attention to the stunts. “There are a lot of different groups out there,” he said in regard to the banner hung at NRDC’s office. “Everybody has the right to express themselves.”
About the replica website Oko said, “Frankly, I was a little confused about what their intention was.”
Smolker of Climate SOS said the idea was “to provide a spoof, to reveal the emptiness of the claims Clean Energy Works provides. For them, it’s green jobs and clean energy and everything’s a smiley-face, you know? Our goal is to tell people to look deeper and take the smiley faces off.”
At Environmental Defense Fund.Courtesy tanukiShe said she contributed ideas for the mock site, but individuals from Greenwash Guerrillas, who did not want to be identified, created the idea.
The 51-year-old Smolker has seen firsthand how environmental groups can evolve, professionalize, and grow in wealth and influence. Her father was one of the founders of Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), another group targeted by Climate SOS last week. EDF met in her childhood home when it was still a “ragtag group,” as Climate SOS is now, she said. (Smolker, who works for Biofuel Watch, declined to give funding information for Climate SOS but said all members were volunteers.)
“We’ve played that compromise game for a long time,” she said. “There’s too much at stake right now.”
The old saw
The compromise question—whether to sacrifice what is ecologically necessary for what seems politically possible—has been around as long as the green movement itself. The naturalist-and-mystic John Muir and the politician-and-forester Gifford Pinchot clashed over the same tensions in the early 20th century.
As for Hansen’s “worse than nothing” remark, there has been plenty written about the failings of the House climate and energy bill—it gives away too much to dirty-energy backers, it even protects coal-plant pollution from further regulation. But there is historical precedent of legislation that is deeply flawed at first evolving into something effective and durable. The original Clean Air Act did not address the acid rain crisis, an omission not corrected until 1990. The original Social Security Act did not include domestic or agricultural workers, effectively excluding many Hispanic, black, and immigrant workers, as Democratic strategist Paul Begala notes.
“If that version of Social Security were introduced today, progressives like me would call it cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist,” writes Begala. “Perhaps it was all those things. But it was also a start. And for 74 years we have built on that start.”
Most progressives, including many major green groups, would gladly embrace an imperfect climate bill as a start.
“Those who see the House clean energy bill as somehow tainted by deals, and therefore want a carbon tax, have to understand that no tax proposal would ever emerge from Congress as we know it without similar or worse deals being made,” said Weiss. “Unfortunately the moral high ground of ‘we must act for our children’ is necessary but not sufficient for our political process.”
Smolker said Climate SOS would continue on a different tack, insisting on an acceptable bill from the get-go. She expected the group would pause to take stock of the bill released in the Senate this week, then regroup.
Here’s Cap’n Trade delivering his message to Danish climate and energy minister Connie Hedegaard:
U.S. warns China against ‘stillborn’ climate deal
What are the chances of a cap-and-trade system being established in the U.S. this year?
Comments
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gaiapunk Posted 8:21 pm
01 Oct 2009
Check out my article on
"Why COP15 is NOT the most important meeting in human history!" http://bit.ly/Qb1bD
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vbstenswick Posted 8:43 pm
01 Oct 2009
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sparki Posted 9:40 pm
01 Oct 2009
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ed abbey Posted 10:22 pm
01 Oct 2009
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mahonia Posted 11:21 pm
01 Oct 2009
From the top: "Acolytes of James Hansen?" As if people haven't been opposing the corporate written climate policy (house reps OPENLY admit US-CAP's plan was the basis of the bills in congress) for 12+ years?
It's absurd to marginalize the opposition in this way or to simply attribute it to Hansen when movements a large and diverse as Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth, and the Climate Camps have roundly rejected the approach for years. [Geez, even Obama said "If you're giving away carbon permits for free, then basically you're not really pricing the thing and it doesn't work -- or people can game the system in so many ways that it's not creating the incentive structures that we're looking for."]
As for Al Gore, while has done well to bring tons of attention to climate as an issue, has been no environmental angel (http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20000522&s=silverstein).
Moreover, he is eminently responsible for the international framework we are mired in today. He led the team that WROTE THE TEXT that became the Kyoto Protocol (despite not signing on, the US led the negotiations on it's framework). When has he ever said "I regret we made Kyoto so weak, and gave away all those permits for free to big polluters"?
He has done nothing to back off of this. He's given every indication he's proud of it.
So, if he is a central founder of this regime, why should he not be recognized as such: is it not like George Washington on the dollar?
But aside from that, at the very least it'd be great if this article could have focused on the debate, rather than "the controversy" over these issues.
It's really unfortunate to read this "coverage" of the issues, which gives us no depth at all.
Great reports that raise serious questions about the legitimacy - not to mention the human rights and environmental impacts - of Carbon Trading come out practically weekly (The indigenous environmental network released one on REDD this week) but that doesn't get covered and gets nothing but lip service from the big green organizations.
It takes action.
Weiss: "“If they hear from such a respected scientist as James Hansen that what Congress is doing won’t matter, then why would they bother to call their senators to say ‘Act on this’?”
The idea here is that intelligent people who have looked closely at this bill and concluded that is has an utterly wrong-headed approach to the climate crisis should just shut up. Just hush it: if you have anything negative to say, just keep it to yourself.
It's outrageous. An explicit request of activists to maintain ignorance and climate politics illiteracy. It's depressing that people like this have a central role in the "left" political establishment.
By comparison: how about the democrats in the house that say they won't support a health bill without a "public option." Should I suppose they traitors to the uninsured? (The public option is becoming the "cap and auction" of health care: it's not a single-payer system that actually values health more than the welfare of health insurance companies, but it'd at least be a small poke in the eye of the dirty energy industry).
If the large environmental groups took a stand, the climate movement would be 100 times more vocal on this bill.
It is in no small way BECAUSE that they haven't done so, and have essentially given their blessing to the shit pile US-CAP wrote for us, that the bill is such a mess.
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Charles Komanoff Posted 7:03 am
02 Oct 2009
Mahonia's comment pretty much says it all. I'll just add that it's not really a question of "compromise" vs. "no compromise." Waxman-Markey deserves to go down, not because it's imperfect but because it will accomplish little in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions while using up precious time and political mindshare that could still go into more effective and equitable approaches such as a revenue-neutral carbon tax.
I also agree that the article was shallow, yet I appreciate it and Grist for giving visibility to the actions.
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wearewhatweeat Posted 7:25 am
02 Oct 2009
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wearewhatweeat Posted 7:26 am
02 Oct 2009
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SusanKraemer Posted 8:37 am
02 Oct 2009
Greenpeace needs to get a clue about just how precarious our political strength is.
Senators who represent a state with just 1,000 people have the same strength in the Senate as a state with 40 million people, we are endangered. A few entrenched Knuckledraggers have way more power than the educated who understand science. But our entire civilization will suffer for this accident of one nation's political system set up before anything this awful could even be understood.
We are just going to go over the tipping points because they can pick off enough of the sane side to add up to the 30% knuckledraggers to get things stalled in the Senate.
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wearewhatweeat Posted 8:50 am
02 Oct 2009
A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power
by Larry Lohmann (editor)
published by Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, Durban Group for Climate Justice and The Corner House"
then comment
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kenshin Posted 8:54 am
02 Oct 2009
i don't know if it is helpful in anyway to anybody to be split up like this, even if it's just a handful of us. i mean, the prez has also said no to carbon tax, so what is the goal? i think Weiss has it exactly right--polluters re-assesed their positions and decided to eat away at whatever bill had the momentum. we'd have the same problem with a carbon tax bill.
the thing that concerns me most about carbon tax that no one has really answered is why EXXON supports it. EXXON is advocating for a carbon tax in Australia right now. their lobbyists sound just like any ultra-left progressive on the idea. what loopholes have they found? i don't think it's just about splitting up support on a bill there, i think it's a strategy of getting around any real responsibilities for their pollution--so what is it about carbon tax that would give them a loophole?
anyways, all the protests still shows our decision-makers that we mean business on climate change, so it is helpful to a certain degree, but i'm getting concerned that we are playing into the hands of the far-right who would love more examples of our "extremism" so they can relate it to terrorism or communism or whatever name-calling they do.
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rsmolker Posted 9:03 am
02 Oct 2009
New Analysis Brings Dire Forecast Of 6.3-Degree Temperature
Increase: Washington Post, by Juliet Eilperin, September 25, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/24/AR2009092402602.html?wprss=rss_nation. Climate researchers now predict the planet will warm by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century even if the world's leaders fulfill their most ambitious climate pledgesThe increase is nearly double what scientists and world policymakers have identified as the upper limit of warming the world can afford in order to avert catastrophic climate change.
This is pretty much a death sentence for the planet.
Can anyone out there really believe we should model our response to such prediction after the Social Security Act, pass a half-***ed climate bill and hope that 75 years later it will be improved upon!
Climate SOS is not a fringe element working in isolation. During the week of activities in NYC, there were actions associated with the Mobilization for Climate Justice http://www.actforclimatejustice.org/
in Pittsburgh around the G20, and in California, all opposing the disaster capitalism approach to climate change, demanding Corporations out of Copenhagen, stating Our Climate is Not Your Business, and denouncing the inadequate US climate bill.
All are critical of the US bill for its insistent reliance on carbon marketing, and corporate giveaways (Obama had earlier stated he would insist on the auctioning of permits in a cap and trade system, but now in office he remains eerily silent on the issue). The corporate players poised to profit from the carbon markets and permit giveaways are holding the US and to large extent the rest of the world, by the neck.
As Mahonia points out in his/her comment above: the international community is very well aware of the US role in obstructing progress, and (with major help from Al Gore), insisting that the only acceptable approaches to addressing climate change involve carbon marketing. The report launched by IEN a day or so on indigenous peoples opposition to marketing of forest carbon (REDD) is a recent example of how people who are not big players in the market economy (but are big players in holding many keys to real solutions) experience these approaches: land grabs, rights abuses, and in many cases more, rather than less, pollution and ecosystem destruction.
A somewhat surprising recent post in Climate Action Networks Eco points out the international dynamic over carbon market approaches: Industrialised countries talk about carbon markets and offset mechanisms in particular as if they are doing developing countries a favour, by providing financial flows from north to south. In fact, at least under present mechanisms it is more accurate to say that developing countries are the ones doing the favour by giving Annex 1 countries a way of meeting their targets on the cheap. And understandably, developing countries fear that the rich world is picking all of their low hanging fruit.
Mr Dorner should take a break from his busy schedule and sit down and contemplate deeply what it is he is working so hard to pass through the Senate. Having listened to the original public briefing for CEW, I was amazed when someone asked: do you think the US climate bill be well received in Copenhagen. The response from Paul Tewes: Our role is not to analyze the content of the bill, our job is to get it passed. Marching Orders.
And Mr Weiss: if you are truly content to sacrifice your childrens future, abandon the moral highground as necessary but not sufficient? I strongly advise a month or so vacation in the deep woods, alone.
Our tactics may strike some as odd, but time for polite asks and compromising and settling for baby steps is long past overdue. There is just way too much at stake and really, outside of the offices of major polluter corporate headquarter and their corporate environmental group allies, much of the world is not fooled.
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sunflower Posted 9:44 am
02 Oct 2009
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ohiopapa Posted 10:03 am
02 Oct 2009
If their arguments are taken seriously, as they should be, perhaps that will give the Democrats the backbones necessary to say NO to Big Oil, Dirty Coal and the traders slavering for a piece of the carbon trading pie, as well as the giveaways to coal cos through unproven sequestration technology.
I'll take a slightly less efficient Carbon Tax over a Rube Goldbergian scheme to trade carbon and buy offsets. There are too many loopholes, too many ways the trading system could be gamed to make it work right, and companies need the stability of a carbon tax to plan for future activities.
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ramsdelisa Posted 10:32 am
02 Oct 2009
I absolutely support Climate SOS and Rising Tide North America and think we would be better off if more people aligned with their views.
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David Roberts Posted 10:37 am
02 Oct 2009
Go ahead. Don't tell me about what we "need" and what you plan to "demand" and what's "enough." Walk me through the scenario whereby it happens in the real world.
Waiting.
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Tim DeChristopher Posted 12:39 pm
02 Oct 2009
First, here's how things might go down if the bill passes: Since most folks don't really understand the economics of cap and trade or why this bill is too weak, any efforts to strengthen it will be impossible until the reality of its failure sinks in around 2020, which will of course be too late.
Now to your challenge, here is one scenario. Think of all the young people who worked for the Obama campaign, showed up for Powershift, and put so much hope into the belief that the system might work for us this time. If we get a half-assed climate bill, many will continue to hold onto the delusion that the corporate controlled Congress will take care of things. But if the bill goes down, it will be absolutely clear that Congress has failed to defend our future. All those young people will be pissed and will wake up to the reality that real fundamental change is necessary. Their investment of time and energy into the political process creates a strong sense of salience when that process sells them out. They will go well beyond phone calls and photo petitions and turn to direct action to demonstrate that if Congress won't reign in the fossil fuel industry, they will shut it down. Their actions will create the tension and social crisis which Martin Luther King taught us was necessary for change. Their outrage may combine with all the health care activists whose hopes for real reform were dashed by the interests of the insurance industry. They may come together to create fundamental changes like ending corporate personhood and getting corporate money out of politics, which opens up a clear road to an adequate climate bill.
Is this a really long shot? Absolutely, but it's 2009 and we're trying to stop climate change. All we've got left are longshots, but that's a whole lot better than aiming low, which we know will fail. Does this scenario require a far more awakened and active citizenry than we've seen in recent memory? Yes, but if we're honest about the requirements of a livable future, that awakening has to happen. Would this require real sacrifices from a soft and lazy population? Certainly, but the first step of sacrifice shows us how empty the easy and comfortable life we are sold really is, and how fulfilling it is to find our potential for greatness in rising up to a great challenge.
Anyone still working on climate issues in 2009 is holding on to an unlikely faith. Those supporting ACES are holding on to the faith that most of our scientists are wrong in the seriousness of their warnings. Those rejecting ACES for something stronger are holding on to the faith that the American people have an incredible potential for greatness. As "morally narcissistic" as it may be, I choose the latter.
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Peter Wood Posted 10:05 pm
07 Oct 2009
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mahonia Posted 1:28 pm
02 Oct 2009
But don't be mistaken: these conversations ARE happening on email lists, phone conferences, and in-person daily amongst the climate justice community.
Also, I would posit that an equally valid of questions (ie, what is your plan?) are:
1) if this bill DOES pass, how do we topple the highly developed and entrenched systems that would be set up by it that will not even get us to 450, let alone 350?
2) how will we overcome the skepticism of the public who will see almost no direct benefits from this bill to their lives, while the energy and financial service sectors gets everything they want?
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sparki Posted 5:19 pm
02 Oct 2009
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Ken Johnson Posted 2:50 pm
03 Oct 2009
Case in point: The California Air Resources Board estimates the net economic benefits of vehicle emission standards exceeding current CA standards at $262 per ton-CO2, more than ten times the projected carbon trading price under cap-and-trade. That implies that clean-car financing incentives could be vastly more effective than carbon pricing at motivating vehicle efficiency improvements.
Another case in point: If carbon fees in the electricity sector are applied to subsidize new, renewable energy sources, they could create an immediate economic incentive for renewables equivalent to a $100/ton carbon price or higher, even though the fees would initially be substantially zero (because there would initially be no "new sources".)
The important question is why the prospect of "something better" should require defeat of the climate bill. As long as the bill does not impede implementation of more effective complementary measures (such as states' climate initiatives), what harm is there in establishing federal regulations that will at least set minimal targets?
The answer to that question -- which I think David clearly understands -- is that the bill, as currently drafted, will subvert any attempt to reduce emissions beyond the cap limit because it will allow any such reductions to be nullified by increased emissions elsewhere. This deficiency could be remedied, e.g. by giving EPA authority to establish allowance set-asides for states' complementary climate policies. But I don't see any support for such a remedy coming from either cap-and-trade apologists like David Roberts, who may be inclined to just sweep the problem under the rug, or from "moral narcissists," who seem to be more focused on promoting a liberal economic agenda than pursuing realistic political options.
Unless the climate bill is amended to encourage and support complementary greenhouse gas reduction efforts, I think it should be defeated, but it will nevertheless have created a huge groundswell of political momentum for more effective policy measures.
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prohb Posted 10:53 am
02 Oct 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 11:01 am
02 Oct 2009
I'm sick of the amoral narcissists always ready to sell out for promises of bright and shiny things.
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Royal Enfield Posted 11:18 am
02 Oct 2009
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roncastle Posted 11:20 am
02 Oct 2009
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Jonathan Hiskes Posted 1:38 pm
02 Oct 2009
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Tim DeChristopher Posted 2:10 pm
02 Oct 2009
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greengenie4 Posted 11:20 am
02 Oct 2009
True, the bill is largely inadequate and has a lot of holes, but it is stronger than the ACES bill in many respects, and that shows hope on the bi-partisan front. Have people forgotten about that other political party in America? The party that will never vote for a bill with squeaky-clean environmental provisions, will never vote for the bill that radicals like Climate SOS envision being passed, or even drafted for that matter? Some allowances will have to be made, but the power of grassroots activism to keep it as strong as possible cannot be ignored, and that's why we need America to care. Caring requires at least a little bit of hope -- something currently not being supplied by the radical-left. We have a loooooong way to go on climate legislation, but let's not stop while we're at least heading in the right direction.
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amazingdrx Posted 11:21 am
02 Oct 2009
Taxpayers and consumers will pay corporate criminal conspiracies even more money than they are now to go on looting the treasury and the economy and the environment.
The price for carbon and other pollutants belched into the atmosphere and mountaintop removal and aquifer destruction is clear. Why not make corporatistas pay for that?
Then take the considerable subsidies and tax breaks for fossil fuels, nuclear power, and chemical agriculture away. And divert some of those savings into a national high voltage power grid and renewable energy and organic ag subsidies.
Then the clear solution would be non-polluting renewable energy. The bottomline next quarterly earnings focus of corpoRATS would dictate a switch to renewable energy.
An EU style pollution permit giveaway cap n' trade scam will do what it has done in europe, allow market manipulators to bubble trade pollution permits while discouraging investment in renewable energy, electric transportation, ground source heating/cooling, and organic ag.
The president sees the world ruled by corporate power and asks what we can do to get some kind of wedge into the corruption to begin to split it up. Progressives ask how can we end corporate corruption yesterday. It's our role on the left to push the administration to pursue reform, and in the process make the president seem moderate.
We are the bad cops, he is the good cop. Our problem is that we just don't have the numbers and media profile to credibly claim that status as the force behind the throne.
On the other hand teabaggers driven by corporate lobbyists get a spotlight many times their actual strength. It's a problem, how do we get noticed without the kind of massive demonstrations common in France (for instance). Whenever french students, farmers, or workers need something they take it to the streets and take over the media.
We evidently do not have that kind of commitment on the part of our progressive forces. If we did, Obama as the good cop could get us a pretty good compromise with corporate power. We can't even get enough people to organize and oppose teabaggers taking over townhall meetings.
Is it wimpy leadership or ambivalent troops or both? How do we fix it and man up like the french people do? Maybe we need to ask them. "Freedom fries" indeed! It turns out french patriots beat american patriots at every turn.
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greengenie4 Posted 11:21 am
02 Oct 2009
True, the bill is largely inadequate and has a lot of holes, but it is stronger than the ACES bill in many respects, and that shows hope on the bi-partisan front. Have people forgotten about that other political party in America? The party that will never vote for a bill with squeaky-clean environmental provisions, will never vote for the bill that radicals like Climate SOS envision being passed, or even drafted for that matter? Some allowances will have to be made, but the power of grassroots activism to keep it as strong as possible cannot be ignored, and that's why we need America to care. Caring requires at least a little bit of hope -- something currently not being supplied by the radical-left. We have a loooooong way to go on climate legislation, but let's not stop while we're at least heading in the right direction.
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kkloor Posted 11:58 am
02 Oct 2009
And as I muse here( http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2009/10/02/the-agony-of-half-a-loaf/), where does that leave him on Grist's "radical green" spectrum?
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oceanminded0808 Posted 12:17 pm
02 Oct 2009
Meanwhile, I do think the editors of Grist could take a lesson from these articles in that the benefits and theory behind a cap-and-trade carbon market have not been fully understood by a lot of environmentalists. The point is that you cap emissions at a certain level and people can trade the rights to emit UP TO THAT LEVEL. So, even if you give away permits in the beginning (admittedly, shirking the polluter pays principle here), there is still a LIMITED AMOUNT of greenhouse gasses that industry can legally emit, and any given company that continues to emit at high levels is losing an opportunity to profit by selling its permits. Even the House version of the climate bill would be a crucial first step, and it is only by showing a willingness to implement a market like this that China will consider getting totally on board with cutting emissions at Copenhagen.
Although many of us might think we prefer to impose debilitating fines on anyone who even thinks about continuing to run a carbon-positive operation, we CAN make markets work for us by setting them up to value the things that we care about in the first place. And it will be a more efficient way of getting from point A to B than command and control.
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ids Posted 12:44 pm
02 Oct 2009
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megaloptera Posted 2:26 pm
02 Oct 2009
A climate change bill that locks in harmful programs like cap and trade and a renewable electricity standard that subsidizes incineration as a way to create green energy is nothing but a scam. Enough with compromises and give aways to Wall Street and the incinerator industry.
When the Boxer Kerry bill finally dies, there will be space for the American people to do the right thing and institute conservation and efficiency and clean renewables to address the climate crisis.
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raphsperry Posted 2:29 pm
02 Oct 2009
I wonder if targeting other environmentalists is just a way to deal with someone who will actually listen. I'm as tired as anyone of having genuine left-wing voices shut out of the mainstream media and what passes for the "national debate," but taking that frustration out on would-be allies seems counterproductive. Is this the best way for that position to be heard, and which audience is really the target?
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Tanuki Posted 3:36 pm
02 Oct 2009
Wolves in sheep's clothing can be the most dangerous of all. Organizations like NRDC and EDF are responsible for some of the most pronounced compromises of enviro-policy. As one example: groups of this ilk were part of sabotaging the strip-mining abolition movement in the 1970's. Now we can be thankful for mountaintop removal mire, thanks in part to them.
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mtvyfan Posted 2:35 pm
02 Oct 2009
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SusanKraemer Posted 2:49 pm
02 Oct 2009
Unfortunately, it is not understood by these people.
That is why the fossil fools are now so easily able to get our side to agree to just a carbon tax instead. But a tax doesn't put any limit on emissions. That's why fossil cos have made an about turn on that. In 1993 when Gore suggested it, they demonised him - have ever since. At least we've backed them into a corner...
Under a carbon tax it would be easily possible for a few trillionaires to live like a twenty-planet emperors in a destroyed world where the remaining thousand humans left after climate destruction would live as scavengers using a horse and cart.
Because a carbon tax does not put a Cap on co2. It just gets more expensive. It doesn't generate the funds to make the switch as trading pollution permits does.
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ed abbey Posted 8:10 am
03 Oct 2009
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Peter Wood Posted 10:29 pm
07 Oct 2009
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LaurieWilliams Posted 3:13 pm
02 Oct 2009
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Gary Houser Posted 4:50 pm
02 Oct 2009
But there comes a time when a strategic error must be admitted. The results are in. The "politically expedient" strategy of cap and trade has resulted in climate legislation that has crashed on the shoals of power politics and insider horse-trading. The allowances that were supposed to auctioned in order to exact a price for carbon pollution and push industry to de-carbonize are instead being given away for nothing. The only fallback we have - the very ability of EPA to regulate carbon - has been stripped. The Senate bill says it is back in, but then Kerry announces the very next day that this restoration is available as a bargaining chip.
Full utilization of "offsets" means no actual emission reductions until the year 2029. At least half of the offsets granted under Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, which ACESA is modeled on, were found not to meet the criteria of “verifiable, permanent and additional”. Please see the two page fact sheet on this produced by Friends of the Earth, International Rivers, and Friends Committee on National Legislation: http://www.fcnl.org/energy/pdfs/OffsetFlyer.pdf To see the unbelievable lack of logic involved in offsets, see the brief video produced by Greenpeace: http://thecroc.org/
I am saddened by the polarized condition of the climate movement. It would help a lot if the concerns of those who are indeed willing to "stand in front of the bulldozers" as Gore has requested were not simply sneered at and ignored by the mainstream enviros. We are in fact the heart and soul of this movement. Instead of ignoring us, why not have the integrity to tell us where our facts are in error. Where exactly is Dr. Hansen wrong on the science and his assertion that the reduction goals of the proposed legislation fall abysmally short? Tell us how you will postpone the laws of physics that now inexorably drive our planet toward tipping points while we waste precious years learning that we made a terrible strategic error? Please point out where we are wrong in our statement that the rush to murky and un-verifiable offsets will completely negate any true progress in actual emission reductions? And tell us why we should not object to our only fallback of EPA regulation also being placed on the chopping block? Point out to us how the process has NOT been hijacked by the powerful vested interests that were supposed to be reined in? WILL YOU ENGAGE US RATHER THAN DISMISS US ??
And please explain why carbon fee and dividend - an approach championed by Gore himself for 16 long years - is not even being allowed on the table for discussion? See the video being offered by Laurie Williams in her note above. Why are our choices so limited when Sen. Cantwell is preparing an alternative bill based on this principle that would halt not only the false solution of offsets but also block any market manipulation by Wall St.?
Should the future of the planet be trusted to the same speculators that just crashed the economy with their profiteering manipulations?
Gary Houser
Founder, Ohio Climate Action Network
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Billhook Posted 4:53 pm
02 Oct 2009
This is not an idle question - a key part of the reason that Canada will have Neocons as its 'delegation' to Copenhagen, is that the oposition was fool enough to adopt a Carbon Tax as official policy for the last election, for which it got roundly trounced.
The sheer juvenility of these protests' basis seems to me astonishing - for instance the assumption that because Hansen has unique scientific credibility, that this somehow endows him with expertize in international diplomacy ? In reality, he is on record as urging that the US should write the global action plan, get a few tame allies to endorse it, and then coerce all other nations into compliance by threat of trade sanctions.
As if.
As if that coercion would not only work today, but would continue doing so reliably for generations hence ?
As if there was the wisdom in the US body politic to begin to scribe such a global plan without other nations' insights and experience ?
As if the long global effort to develop a Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons was somehow an "un-american" endeavour ?
The assumption written in a comment above that Cap & Trade is a "damaging" policy when, in reality, like everything from a chainsaw to gaffatape to a carrot, it depends on how you apply it ?
The assumption written above that what we need is more energy efficiency, when Jeavons Paradox has been recognised as a fundamental driver of fossil fuelled growth for more than two centuries ?
The assumption written above that we need more 'renewable' energy - when the UK govt. recently claimed world leadership in the 'renewable' known as "Battery Chicken Dung Power" (good export potential to Asia !), and while it is very plain that, without an agreed global cap on GHG output, using 'renewables' to leave fossil fuels on the market will do nothing overall to diminish their usage. Nothing at all.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect is that all these posts and the protests they support have nothing constructive to say about the US role in the UNFCCC.
Not a whisper of a suggestion as to how this century's remaining global carbon budget should be allocated among the nations.
No, focussing on parochial US affairs is apparently sufficient to be part of the radical US left it seems - Surely, in a country where even leftists can ignore the rights & interests & needs of other nations it is plain that American Supremacism is so pervasive that it is unseen ?
So isn't it time that people asked whether the goals for the Senate bill should be drawn from what is learned at Copenhagen ? Or does Obama really want the rest of the world to match the 5% cut on 1990 output that the Senate bill proposes ?
I just wish that people would start taking the issue as seriously as it deserves -
juvenile posturing, when your nation is the lead developer of the greatest genocide-by-famine the world has ever seen, is just innappropriate.
And by the way, I mean no offence by the above comments - I'm trying to help people see how America looks to other countries.
Regards,
Billhook
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RussellLowes Posted 4:57 pm
02 Oct 2009
The scandal of the future will be cap & trade tax, if these bills pass. Many enviros who are supporting it now will be shocked at what doesn't happen if these pass.
That some people are saying, "At least it's a start," I will agree to, that is, a start in the wrong direction!
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Billhook Posted 5:00 pm
02 Oct 2009
This is not an idle question - a key part of the reason that Canada will have Neocons as its 'delegation' to Copenhagen, is that the opposition was fool enough to adopt a Carbon Tax as official policy for the last election, for which it got roundly trounced.
The sheer juvenility of these protests' basis seems to me astonishing - for instance the assumption that because Hansen has unique scientific credibility, that this somehow endows him with expertise in international diplomacy ? In reality, he is on record as urging that the US should write the global action plan, get a few tame allies to endorse it, and then coerce all other nations to compliance by threat of trade sanctions.
As if.
As if that coercion would not only work today, but would continue doing so reliably for generations hence ?
As if there was the wisdom in the US body politic to begin to scribe such a global plan without other nations insights and experience ?
As if the global effort to develop a Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons was somehow an "un-american" endeavour ?
The assumption written in a comment above that Cap & Trade is a "damaging" policy when, in reality, like everything from a chainsaw to gaffatape to a carrot, it depends how you apply it ?
The assumption written above that what we need is more energy efficiency, when Jeavons Paradox has been recognised as a fundamental driver of fossil fuelled growth for more than two centuries ?
The assumption written above that we need more 'renewable' energy - when the UK govt. recently claimed world leadership in the 'renewable' known as "Battery Chicken Dung Power" (good export potential to Asia !), and while it is very plain that, without an agreed global cap on GHG output, using 'renewables' to leave fossil fuels on the market will do nothing overall to diminish their usage. Nothing at all.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect is that all these posts and the protests they support have nothing constructive to say about the US role in the UNFCCC.
Not a whisper of a suggestion as to how this century's remaining global carbon budget should be allocated among the nations.
No, focussing on parochial US affairs is apparently sufficient to be part of the radical US left it seems - Surely, in a country where even leftists can ignore the rights & interests & needs of other nations it is plain that American Supremacism is so pervasive that it is unseen ?
So isn't it time that people asked whether the goals for the Senate bill should be drawn from what is learned at Copenhagen ? Or does Obama really want the rest of the world to match the 5% cut on 1990 output that the Senate bill proposes ?
I just wish that people would start taking the issue as seriously as it deserves -
juvenile posturing, when your nation is the lead developer of the greatest genocide-by-famine the world has ever seen, is just inappropriate.
And by the way, I mean no offence by the above comments - I'm only trying to help people see how America appears to other countries.
Regards,
Billhook
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ShellyT Posted 5:42 pm
02 Oct 2009
People who are telling this bill will get us nowhere are doing the deniers and the Republican skeptics jobs for them. They don't mean to, but that is what they are doing. I was very uncomfortably on their side up until the Senate bill and the impassioned speech Boxer and Kerry gave when they introduced the bill. These two people aren't stupid. They know what's at stake and they are not run of the mill politicians. In every way I can think of, to work against them and this bill seems completely counterintuitive.
The other option is to do what eventually will need to be done without having this legislative groundwork laid: citizen again, civil disobedience, riots, chaos, and eventually, violence. That might be what it takes, but why do that without any sort of Congressional basis to add to when that eventually makes an impact? We are not going to get a new, improved country with new ways of living overnight. It just ain't gonna happen.
Meanwhile, I want to see all these people complaining about how this isn't enough to stop flying and driving their cars. Otherwise, they're just common hypocrites.
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Tim DeChristopher Posted 8:34 pm
02 Oct 2009
In fact, many of those holding out for a stronger bill are those like Rising Tide and Greenpeace who are out there shutting down coal plants and taking direct action. And I don't think that's a coincidence. Most of those who believe a better bill is possible are those who are willing to go to great lengths to fight for it. None of us think it will be easy to get an adequate climate bill, we just think it's worth it.
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megaloptera Posted 6:22 pm
02 Oct 2009
“While the Senate bill recognizes the absolute necessity of
stronger emissions reduction targets, the targets in the Senate
bill – like those in the House bill – are woefully inadequate. This
legislation would not save the polar bear and numerous other
species and ecosystems because it simply does not go far enough
quickly enough.
“The scientific consensus is clear: We must reduce atmospheric
carbon dioxide to no more than 350 parts per million. Leading
climate scientists have called for reductions of approximately 40
percent below 1990 levels to avoid climate catastrophe, and yet
this bill aims to deliver only a 20-percent reduction from 2005
levels.”
"Passionate speeches" aside, the planet demands a real solution, one that will save the polar bears and other species from extinction. That's what citizens, not USCAP, are demanding and Climate SOS is speaking for the planet not Wall Street.
Maybe Boxer and Kerry could start with eliminating offsets and subsidies for such environmentally destructive practices as biomass burning.
This bill is so bad that citizens in Massachusetts have launched a ballot initiative to stop the CO2 emissions from biomass burning that would be promoted by the bill. http://www.stopspewingcarbon.com, 1-800-729-1363 When Kerry and Boxer wake up to the folly of false solutions, maybe the plant will have a chance.
Margaret Sheehan, Founder, EcoLaw/Massachusetts
http://www.nobiomassburing.org
http://www.stopspewingcarbon.com
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RussellLowes Posted 7:20 pm
02 Oct 2009
-- The House Bill strips the EPA of its Clean Act Authority over coal CO2 emissions.
-- The H.B. also specifically exempts a few dozen coal plants, so our air will get dirtier in the near term with more CO2 than if the bill didn't pass.
-- Both bills have cap & trade and annual renewals by, of all people, Congress! This can get put off annually into oblivion, depending on their re-election outlooks.
-- Both bills promote clean energy without adequately defining what clean energy is.
-- Both bills will promote nuclear energy as a clean energy source. This is a bad joke. The EPA did an assessment on the H.B. right before it passed and estimates that nukes will increase by 150% over the 104 nukes we currently have operating. See: http://epa.gov/climatechange/economics/pdfs/HR2454_Analysis.pdf page 11.
It should be noted that the quality of uranium ore has dropped from 3000 parts per million, or .3% in 1980, to 1500 ppm, or 0.15% today. It is expected to go down to about 400 ppm by 2040, with no increase in nuclear capacity. With this exponential mining increase, there will be a huge increase in CO2 emissions. Nuclear is about to get a lot dirtier.
I want a bill that successfully reverses global warming, not a bunch of red tape that embroils us in figuring out to get out of the mess we have legislatively gotten ourselves into.
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ShellyT Posted 7:34 pm
02 Oct 2009
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Tanuki Posted 11:46 am
03 Oct 2009
"People have an irrational fear of nuclear power."
?!?!!! - What's up with these lesser-of-two-evil factions? How about we turn around from corporate-consolidated, ultra-dangerous/toxic/destructive foundations immediately and begin pretending that we can move towards something better, sustainable, and dare I say equitable? Because, uhm, we could, yanno!
I'm still blown away by how many folks are on board with the old 'label it progress' trick. Erosion and compromise are the name of Congress's "green" game. Let's NOT get excited about hopping onto the bandwagon of energy status-quo slapped with a "clean energy" sticker, it is net loss.
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ShellyT Posted 7:25 pm
02 Oct 2009
Sure, the bill is woefully inadequate. Nothing Congress passes will be anything but inadequate. That's our political system. It's a mess. Can we change that overnight by being expecting miracles? No. Can we influence them to make it a little better? Maybe. Do the odds on these chances and pick the one that might save the most lives. This is a fight for survival.
Here's the bottom line, if you want the truth: Feedback loops have already started. Climate change is inevitable. 4-6 degrees is inevitable. It's already in the atmosphere. I have been reading the latest climate science, like I do every day and we are screwed. Nothing the Congress does, not even a perfect bill, will make enough of a difference, unless they can pass a bill that grounds all airplanes and makes all use of all fossil fuels illegal immediately and if someone invents a way to capture all the methane and CO2 coming out of the oceans and the permafrost starting next week. THAT would make a difference. Will the no-compromisers compromise on what needs to be done? What needs to be done is to completely change our society from the bottom up. It's not going to happen.
Instead of working against the K-B bill, it's probably a better use of your time to get a book on how to survive devastating climate change and make appropriate plans.
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RussellLowes Posted 7:58 pm
02 Oct 2009
It would be nice to think that the bill could be a foundation. It is so riddled with problems, though, and so promotes short-term conventional coal plant construction, and long term nuclear plant construction, that it is a foundation for a return to outdated 20th Century fossil and nuclear energy. With high CO2 emission from the 20 steps of the fuel cycle, combined with uranium depletion, nuclear is really not an option.
If nuclear is good for one thing is is that it sucks money so well that it dominates the energy scene -- to the exclusion of real alternatives like energy efficiency, solar and wind energy.
The House Bill also heavily promotes coal carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to the tune of over $60 billion. This is a money grab for a technology that will probably never be economically viable, just like the nuclear option. No nukes have ever been financed without massive government support, and the same will probably be true for CCS. We already have viable environment and economy-supporting solutions.
http://www.Architecture2030.org is a good place to see the horizon. These technologies are already here, but need to be the emphasis -- not coal and fossil fuels.
This bill-writing process should go back several steps to correct the course in order for it to be a successful step in the right direction or, as you put it, a good foundation. To support this bill is not a compromise. It is a giveaway to slightly new versions of old outdated technologies that helped get us in this mess to begin with.
To a better bill,
Russell Lowes
Research Director
http://www.SafeEnergyAnalyst.org
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Gary Houser Posted 8:02 pm
02 Oct 2009
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpt from "EPA pre-emption could offer political mileage for Kerry-Boxer"
E & E Reporter, Oct.1
The bill from Kerry and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) heeds
environmentalists' requests by removing a section of the House-passed
climate bill that would have restricted EPA's ability to enact climate
change regulations.
But asked yesterday why the Senate version left out such a provision,
Kerry replied, "Because I think that we need to have some negotiating
room as we proceed forward here. We'll see where we get as we come to
the table."
Kerry signaled that he may be willing to include such a measure in
future drafts.
"If there's a significant bona fide effort, where people are really
coming and saying, 'Yes, if you do this, I'll vote for it,' I'll
consider anything that's reasonable that gets us the votes we need,"
he said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
If this was a sincere move by Kerry-Boxer, why is it being offered as a bargaining chip "to gather more votes" the very next day ??? This EPA authority would be our only fallback if cap and trade were to be implemented but fail miserably. How is this not a warning that the Senate bill is heading down the same path of fatal compromise that we have already seen in the House ???
Gary Houser
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ShellyT Posted 4:24 am
03 Oct 2009
So if the 'purists' want this bill defeated because it's not the bill they envisioned, please tell us what the U.S. should have in hand when we arrive in Copenhagen in December. Some angry proclamations that this bill just wasn't good enough won't be enough. I am curious what is being discussed as a replacement. I want a carbon tax too, and always have. I also know that the odds are against it.
So what's the plan B? Maybe we can all get onboard with it. If only we knew what it was.
As for the "radicals" at Powershift09, as I remember, they were demanding natural gas replace coal, so they didn't really get that fossil fuel thing all that much.
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Tim DeChristopher Posted 9:56 am
03 Oct 2009
No offense, Shelly, but what are you talking about? First, no one on here has referred to Powershifters as radicals. Energy Action Coalition supports the bill. I think my comment was the only one that referenced Powershift, and I said that those folks are trying very hard to play by the rules but have the potential to become more radical if they get a clear message that Congress isn't protecting them.
I think you're also confusing Powershift with the Capitol Climate Action. Congress tried to preempt that event by switching from coal to natural gas, but the activists held the protest anyway to proclaim that such a small step is not really a solution.
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wearewhatweeat Posted 9:35 pm
02 Oct 2009
Carbon Trading
A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power
by Larry Lohmann (editor)
published by Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, Durban Group for Climate Justice and The Corner House
FIRST PUBLISHED OCTOBER 2006 |if not at the libraby closed, see:
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/summary.shtml?x=544225 order it, be real
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snedunuri Posted 1:29 am
03 Oct 2009
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ed abbey Posted 8:31 am
03 Oct 2009
There's nothing more in the way of "self-interest" than the f'ing climate crisis! Watch what happens with 350.org.
Further: "a far sighted entity can take action - this is usually a government"??? far-sighted government? Ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha.......
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snedunuri Posted 12:10 pm
03 Oct 2009
Yes, I agree that gummnts are not usually very far sighted - that's the problem. However, what I am saying is that this situation calls for a far sighted entity, such as a government to be able to move a step at a time over the next 10 or so years. Realize we're dealing with a bunch of folks (I won't use the R********n word here) who're barely this side of the stone age, so getting them on board is going to take patience. We need to start from somewhere and the current W-M bill is as good as we'll get in the current climate
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ShellyT Posted 2:06 pm
03 Oct 2009
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ed abbey Posted 6:10 am
04 Oct 2009
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snedunuri Posted 10:38 am
05 Oct 2009
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rsmolker Posted 7:51 am
03 Oct 2009
I think that our alternative really ought to be more bold than the typical "carbon tax is better" frame. I suggest that we ask for better than a carbon tax, since a carbon tax is fraught with many of its own problems, such as:
* not guaranteeing any specific reductions in a relevant time frame; there is no guarantee that making fossil fuels more expensive will bring their use to an end soon enough -- or replace them with clean solutions
* by opposing just PART of what falls on the dirty energy side of the energy spectrum, a carbon tax puts nuclear power, biomass/incineration, biofuels and other false solutions at a competitive advantage, which is very dangerous; there's no guarantee that a carbon tax will move us to clean solutions rather than differently dirty false solutions
A real solution for climate should look more like this:
1) An Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard that reduces energy demand by 50% in 20-30 years, across all three energy sectors: transportation, heating and electricity
2) A Clean Energy Portfolio Standard that meets the demands of the other 50% with wind, solar and ocean power (and perhaps some small-scale micro hydro or closed-loop geothermal) within the same time frame. The industrial heating sector and the planes/boats transportation sector will be harder to get off of burnable technologies, but there is evidence that energy intensive industrial heating needs like cement kilns can have their needs met by concentrated solar. For planes and boats, perhaps some algae-based biofuels would make sense, but NOT running off of fossil fuel power plant exhaust because we won't have any more combustion-based power plants!
3) Remove all subsidies from fossil fuels, nuclear power,
biomass/incineration, biofuels, corn and at least half of the military budget (a major oil and gas subsidy) and shift that to energy demand reduction and clean energy development.
4) Set a national zero waste policy, starting with the 75% national recycling/composting goal as pushed by GAIA and the Teamsters. (I could write a lot more on what this would entail, but I'll save that for another time, when needed).
5) Have a climate-friendly sustainable agriculture program, focusing on making all food organic, localizing food production systems and getting people to eat lower on the food chain.
6) Creating a "Superfund for Workers" job retraining program to make this transition possible, targeting the urban and rural communities who are most in need.
And, finally:
0) Pushing public campaign financing, like the Fair Elections Now Act(http://www.publicampaign.org/federalaction) because we'll never get ANY decent legislation at the federal level (ditto for the states) without cleaning up our election processes. Clean energy requires clean elections!
Some of the solutions above, with a slight bit of additional detail, can be found/inferred from our hierarchies chart here:
http://www.energyjustice.net/technologies.pdf and from elsewhere on our Energy Justice website. More links to election reform tactics can be found on our election reform page here:
http://www.corporations.org/solutions/electoralreform.html
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RussellLowes Posted 8:56 am
03 Oct 2009
-- Replace cap & trade tax/financial derivative with carbon tax.
-- Establish a meaningful renewable energy portfolio goal, with intermittent goals, like 20% by 2016, 30% by 2022, 40% by 2030, etc.
-- Establish a meaningful energy efficiency portfolio, with the eventual goal being 20 quads/quadrillion btus in energy production(compared to our current 100 quads of energy production). This should also have intermittent goals like 80 by 2016, 65 by 2022, 50 by 2030, etc.
-- Eliminate fossil fuel and nuclear subsidies.
However, if we perform the last step and also implement the first step, you will see that nobody will build coal CCS or nukes, because these are two technologies that are not viable. Coal CCS would require a massive increase in coal mining to power the CCS process, and nukes, well let's say to quote an old friend, is like cutting butter with a chain saw. Both are much to expensive.
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David Roberts Posted 3:35 pm
04 Oct 2009
The question is about your *political* alternative. The Kerry bill everyone is crapping on is widely considered *far too ambitious to pass the Senate*. The Climate SOS response is to kill the bill and then "demand" something far, far stronger (like your list). Why on earth are we supposed to think the "demands" of a tiny, tiny group that's considered far-left and radical going to change the behavior of the US Senate?
Ignoring political realities, pretending they can be banished by stomping one's feet and demanding louder, is not a virtue. It doesn't make the SOS crown moral or brave. It just makes them irrelevant, except insofar as they incrementally damage the possibility of passing an actual bill.
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Tim DeChristopher Posted 4:39 pm
04 Oct 2009
Do you really believe that political realities are unchangeable? You think there is no level of popular uprising which will impact the Senate? If this were true, it wouldn't matter where grassroots groups stood on ACES, because they couldn't possibly affect the result anyway!
We could argue over what it might take to sufficiently change the political realities(marches vs. national strike), but to say that it is not possible is a hopeless and defeatist attitude. If the political realities don't allow for climate policy that will protect our survival, the only reasonable option is to change the political realities.
Whether we want to pass Aces and strengthen it down the road or scrap it and start over, either way we will need a powerful social movement to overcome corporate interests. If that's not possible, learn to can and buy guns. If it is, why would we possibly want to wait?
I know a little something about ignoring the political reality and believing that I could affect change. I'm glad I never listened to your condescending advice.
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randino Posted 1:00 pm
03 Oct 2009
First, regarding the people who are backing the current raft of climate bills - namely Waxman Markey and now Kerry Boxer. Appeals to realism are fine, but tricky. You can use realism to change and transform reality. Or you can use it to surrender to reality. I think a lot of the defenders of policy "realism" have spent so much time in the beltway that they have gone native. I also find that their child like faith in the market to be charming, but frankly baseless in history. I suggest as an antidote to this market idolatry, John Maynard Keynes's definition of capitalism, as "the remarkable belief that the the nastiest of men, with the nasties of motives will somehow work for the common good."
Now to turn the artilery in the direction of the radicals. To work to scuttle the current climate legislation, and to make no proposals on what would come next is to committ political malpractice. If any of you worked for me in a union or community organization, I would fire you in an instant. It is malpractice to have no idea of what you would do on the morrow of the defeat of what is currently before Congress. Organizing is not a primal screem therapy session for your anger at the venality of Congress, or the tendency of your more conservative colleagues to roll over and compromise more than they need to. Decide on whether you are interested in therapy or in changing the world, and then act accordingly. Finally, many of you loathe to cut any deal with the corporate a-holes who have put us in this horrible situation. I sympathize. I have been a socialist all my adult life, but unless you know a way to overthrow capitalism in the next 12 months, I suggest you admit that you are going to have to dance with the devil because after all, we are in hell not heaven.
The progressive movement and broadly defined left in this country talk incessantly about change, but don't have the foggiest damn idea of how it happens in this country. Which is the key question, if we are to keep from going over the falls. When I say this, I am pointing both at the beltway crowd and the enrages giving them hell. Neither side in the above debate show any sense of sophistication or nuance in a strategy that will use both the suites and the streets to get us out a jam that I fear we may not be able to get out of.
I give Ds to both sides.
Randy Cunningham
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sunflower Posted 5:28 pm
03 Oct 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 5:33 pm
03 Oct 2009
The IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) says that to prevent the average mean temperature of the planet from increasing beyond the two degrees Celsius threshold, emissions must be cut 80-90 per cent by 2050.
Based on that, the federal government should enact a law to cut emissions by 90 per cent by mid-century without exception -- and free up the financial resources that would otherwise be expended on bureaucracies and the enforcement of carbon taxes and/or cap and trade systems as well as dollars currently used to subsidize fossil fuels of all sort, roads, private transportation, and agriculture. Then leave it to the ingenuity of individuals and the market place to figure out how it can be done. We would have, if we started now, four decades to innovate, create, and build a nation free of carbon emissions.
The process of research and development for new and cleaner energy systems and fuels, the replacement and retrofitting of infrastructure, buildings, homes, and transportation models, along with finding alternatives to all the uses for which we currently consume fossil fuels, could, with the right government involvement, put people to work in a way and with a mission not seen since the second world war.
We would have the opportunity to build a new economy that is sustainable and a model for other nations to follow. We can slay the two-headed dragon of energy scarcity and climate uncertainty and still live lives of prosperity in a vibrant and viable economy. We need only confront the problem and recognize that the rewards of action will far outweigh the costs of doing nothing.
I wrote the above a year ago.
Carbon taxes and trade schemes are mechanisms of the status quo. Real change requires a demand for real action. And for the record, carbon taxes and cap'n'trade are all about doing nothing but disguising it with a flurry of activity.
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RussellLowes Posted 8:30 pm
03 Oct 2009
Try looking at the simple carbon tax & dividend, at carbontax.org. James Hansen is also promoting a simple carbon tax that is similar to a sales tax, but different in that all the money raised goes back to the public. This way, if you save energy via energy efficiency, conservation or through buying solar for example, then you not only reduce your energy costs up front, but you also get a dividend check from the government. Those who save get a positive double-hit. Those who consume more still get a dividend, but do not get the up-front savings.
There are a few variations on this idea, where say 50 or 75% would go back as a dividend and then the remainder would go into renewable energies and energy efficiencies.
I highly recommend looking into carbontax.org
Russell Lowes
Research Director
http://www.SafeEnergyAnalyst.org
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mwildfire Posted 7:55 am
04 Oct 2009
To whoever said the people at the front lines don't appreciate actions like those of SOS and would rather have these people fighting at the gates of the coal mines: as one who was arrested at the gates of the coal mines in Februrary, I applaud Hansen for getting arrested there more recently and I applaud SOS and the Yes Men for pointing out that what is being brought forth by the US Congress is completely inadequate. Some assume that shooting down Waxman/Markey and Boxer Kerry will cause all the activists to go home in defeat, while others assume that it would give us a better bill. I tend to think it would give us at least a tiny chance at an adequate bill, whereas passing a bill so heavily compromised that it would make certain derivatives traders rich and up coal profits without reducing GHG probably at all, while still pretending to be a climate bill, will delay actual legislation by years we can't afford. It's hard to say how the rest of the world, specifically the Copenhagen delegates, will view either the passage or failure of what they surely recognise as a completely inadequate bill.
I am disappointed in Randy Cunningham, who has posted good things in the past, for here wailing that the progressives have no alternatives suggested, while ignoring all the alternatives posted above his comment--and I note he himself has no solutions to suggest, yet arrogantly "assigns both sides a D"!
The reality that has not been adequately faced by either side is that 1--we can't really get where we need to merely by individual virtue ("stop flying and driving") as important as it is for each of us to assume such virtue; and 2--we therefore must have legislation coming first from DC and then from Copenhagen to allow our economies to make the kind of radical changes we need, fast enough. But the US Congress is essentially a large whorehouse--they pass whatever legislation their largest campaign contributors request. Yes, some corporations have issued statements claiming to have concern about climate change, but most will continue lobbying for whatever enhances next quarter's bottom line until the waters close over their offices. So it's pretty hard to imagine any scenario in which Congress passes a remotely adequate bill.
I heard recently that Stephen Hawking said runaway climate change could leave us with a planet like Venus where water boils on the surface. No doubt a worst-case scenario, and Hawking isn't a climate scientist, but he's hardly uninformed nor an idiot. It looks like life on Earth may be at stake here, and we're running out of time. Will massive protests help? I think they're likely to be more effective than "calling your (sic) Senators" but of course the mass media covers what it chooses, and it's hard to influence with protests if the mass media doesn't put them on TV. The mass media is owned by the ruling class, which is happy to cover tea party "protests" whose participants are their dupes.
So what MIGHT work, in time? I'm sure there are those, like Derrick Jensen, thinking about direct action to bring down civilization before it destroys our planet. Don't expect them to post such suggestions here. I myself am led logically to conclude such people are right--yet can't face the moral horror of actions likely to kill millions or billions of humans; although climate change, together with other crises facing us, is likely to do the same thing and take most other species with us.
The sad part is, I believe that while it would be a major undertaking for humanity to solve this problem, it's well within the realm of what's possible technically; and furthermore we could make the transition and find ourselves healthier and happier than before, with no premature human deaths. Unfortunately humanity's fatal flaws in collective decsion-making are such that there is realistically no chance of this happening. It would require, for example, that we stop diverting the biggest part of our collective surplus to finding ways to arrange the premature deaths of those humans currently labelled by our "leaders" as "our enemy." Crazed radicals like me don't view this as a sacrifice, would even embrace the change--but to normal people it would of course be unthinkable. Likewise, only the extremists think it would be a good idea to restrict the rich--but sufficient change might require that we stop diverting such a hefty perecentage of our surplus to ensuring that a tiny fraction of the population, and all their offspring forever, live like emperors without making any contribution. Obviously these two changes are so extreme that we should not contemplate them even if they should turn out to be necessary for the survival of the human race. But we're not discussing such extreme measures here--only whether a bill that's, um, "not perfect" ha ha ha!--should be stopped. Sigh.
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RussellLowes Posted 8:44 am
04 Oct 2009
While it is bad news that we won't have any bill passed by then, it is good news that Waxman-Markey's senate version will not be the bill that was passed. This bill would have shown the world that Congress is willing to pass bogus legislation in an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the general U.S. public and the world.
To those that say we won't have anything to show the world, that's not quite right. Here are some of the items to report.
-- California has improved its jobs numbers through increasing energy efficiency;
-- Vermont and other local jurisdictions just passed a feed-in tariff that promotes rapid solar deployment;
-- Our energy consumption went down last year. True, this was partly in response to the global economic downturn, but it was also due to our people have changed the way they are using energy, in a more efficient way. Top EIA officials do not expect the next several years to be at the energy consumption level of 2007.
-- The U.S. passed Germany and is now the leader in wind energy.
There are things happening in the U.S., although not nearly at the speed needed. Same for the rest of the world. Hopefully we can take some of the ideas included in this thread, as well as presented in many other places, and create a bill that actually accomplishes what we need to accomplish. Hopefully W-M will become known as a failed attempt of 20th Century energy industry to salvage itself. Hopefully this failure will free us to create truly positive and forward thinking and then much better legislation.
Hopefully, a major segment of the environmental movement will not get duped into such a scam again.
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Dave McArthur Posted 1:30 pm
04 Oct 2009
Long before I ever knew Jim Hansen opposed Carbon Trading I had established its psychology is fatally flawed. People like the Buddha warned us of its folly over 2500 years ago. Jim is correct that doing nothing is the better option. The reason is Carbon Trading is designed to actively destroy community and individual stewardship. Its architects designed it with the sole objective of gaining control of and transferring massive amounts of community wealth into the accounts of a few extremely wealthy, psychopathic bankers the same folk who just benefited by some trillions of dollars from President Obamas rescue packages.
My decade of research suggests that Al Gore and much of the Green Movement pose a far greater threat to humanity than George Bush, Enron, Goldman Sachs et al do for they enable the activities of the latter folk. Example: An Inconvenient Truth is the perfect advertisement for the activities of the fossil fuel sector. Before its release in New Zealand I predicted it would result in increased car sales, air travel and the rejection of carbon stewardship legislation in favour of a Carbon Trading regime. All this occurred as predicted.
Grist can publish but should dissociate itself from the ignorant abuse of us such as occurred in the introductory sentence.
P.S. If you want a glimpse of the heart of corporate America as seen through a nation remade in its Enronian essence then check out what happened to the precious energy symbol here in this prototype video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66sbyWmdQig
I will do one on the abuse of the carbon symbol by the Carbon Traders.
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ShellyT Posted 2:02 pm
04 Oct 2009
Cantwell's bill is much better anyway. It's called the Carbon Limits and
5 Energy for America’s Renewal (CLEAR) Act of 2009. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't, but what is the POINT of working against something before we even know if it will work, at all, even a little bit, and isn't that better than nothing?
Al Gore's movie did not make people in New Zealand buy more cars. That's the most ridiculous thing I've read in this entire comment section. I'm starting to think the oil industry has people commenting everywhere.
That brings up another point. We know Exxon et al., spend millions on disinformation campaign: How do we know people working actively against this bill aren't from the oil and coal industries?
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Dave McArthur Posted 4:36 pm
04 Oct 2009
Previous to the movie NZ Government had actually been working towards a carbon tax regime as the sane option. This was subsequently rejected and instead the Carbon Trading ethos was almost universally endorsed by our Parliament and imbedded in our national legislation in 2008. In the period after the NZ movie release air travel by New Zealanders rose 14% and new car imports rocketed to record levels. What is extraordinary about the prediction is that I was also on record since 2004 as predicting mineral oil prices would reach $US80 a barrel in 2008, generating an economic implosion. So my prediction of rising mineral oil prices worked directly against increased car sales.
Understand NZ invests heavily in its 100% Pure Clean Green image and Al provided our policy makers with the rational for maintaining the polluting status quo by making notions of carbon trading/offsetting/neutrality acceptable. Our Prime Minister even declared in 2008 we would be the first carbon neutral nation this in a country that destroys 38 barrels of mineral oil a day per 1000 people! Humans can live in harmony with the planetary carbon flows but our actions are never neutral.
Al wonders in the movie why he seems unable to communicate his message calling for change. The truth is he communicates his message perfectly and it includes his dissonant lifestyle. More of this psychology at http://www.bonusjoules.co.nz
Note: I work as a school janitor nights to finance the thousands of hours I devote to exposing the great dangers of the Carbon Trading ethos and revealing the joy of being a steward of carbon. I walk to work. I no longer fly or own a car. This century I have reduced my mineral oil destruction and carbon pollution from transport by 90% as a matter of principle and despite great inconvenience at times.
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mahonia Posted 8:01 pm
04 Oct 2009
Indeed, many of us have been working on climate issues for 10-20 years. And yes, many of us HAVE spent many dozens, or more accurately hundreds, of hours studying the issue - I give presentations on the problems of carbon trading and have published short papers on the topic, have read 5-6 books on the topic, and dozens more reports.
Perhaps you could do some reading yourself on the topic?
Check out (in loose historical order):
http://www.indiaresource.org/issues/energycc/2003/baliprinciples.html
http://www.carbontradewatch.org/durban/whoarewe.html
http://risingtide.org.uk/about/political
http://www.sinkswatch.org/
http://www.carbontradewatch.org/
http://focusweb.org/climate-change/21.html?Itemid=169
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/summary.shtml?x=544225
http://www.seen.org/
http://www.ienearth.org/carbontrading.html
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climate/
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Agent Simple Green Posted 2:58 pm
04 Oct 2009
The market, by which I mean the mass hallucination that has taught us first-worlders in varying degrees to value things like forests as ass-paper, keeps up its smokescreen in the atmo-sphere around ACESA. It enjoys the time-tested assurance that the largest sector of the population (relative to the wealthiest) becomes (unknowingly?) wedded to the act of passing their own shared wealth and commons onto industry and bankers, courtesy the conduit of politicians. Of course, with the added descriptor of climate and the example of carbon trading, the potential to turn back and reverse this "run on nature" decreases exponentially the longer it happens. I would argue there is no turning back, but you have to throw a bone to those mean-wells that still think the phrase "stop climate change" is sensible.
I can hardly wait for the hour when the urgency of tackling root causes of environmental destruction and climate change is ridded of the hindrance of parleying with apologists. When the carbon finally clears it seems unlikely that generations of the future, their incalculable inheritance of loss already secured, will look at the 'green' idlers of our day with anything but scorn. As ETC Group would say, "Stop the Stockholm Syndrome" already!
And in response to ShellyT below: are you pretending not to notice the typical composition of US Federal policy? Do you really think corporate America is limited to standing outside of Congress offering suggestions scrawled on napkins? And yes, resource-intensive hybrid cars and mercury bulb sales did rise thanks to Gore's sales pitch- each with their own requisite enviro. tolls while the guilt pressure-release valve on the Global North's consumers was triggered.
May I offer the metaphor of jumping into a chasm to describe why there is grassroots and scientific opposition to ACESA?- There is no trial period for chasm-jumping: you can't undo it after two years of testing, by then you've long since been pudding on a rock. Do you think a bureaucracy of carbon trading bankers will relinquish the entire superstructure of their enterprise once it's obvious (even to folks like you) that it is a failed, fraudulent distraction?
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ShellyT Posted 4:27 pm
04 Oct 2009
I don't think that cap and trade will work, not fast enough and not enough, and I'm not defending it, but I also realize I'm no expert on it at all. No one I've read here is. Hardly anyone anywhere is. Have you spent hours and days studying it? I'm saying there is no reason to work to defeat it that makes sense. The people who are coming out loudly against it sound like operatives for Exxon. No one here can predict the future, so proclamations of doom and saying Earth might end up like Venus - that sounds crazy.
States, cities, towns, and companies are doing things on their own to mitigate climate change. Cities and transportation are changing in the U.S., right now. People all over the country are doing things. Federal legislation is not the end-all and be-all final word on anything. It never is. These discussions need less end of the world predictions and more hard thinking. Thanks to the people here who have offered solutions we can think about instead of doom and gloom.
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b e r n a r d o Posted 7:40 pm
04 Oct 2009
I'm cynical enough to ponder whether Exxon might be adopting the stance to feign some concern and as empty gesture to take some heat off of itself, or perhaps with the explicit purpose of undermining the critics of cap n trade.
And by the the way, Exxon is not that distant from some of the leading proponents of WaxmanMarkey/KerryBoxer.
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mahonia Posted 8:06 pm
04 Oct 2009
So, tell me again, who is backed by industry on this?
* AES
* Alcoa
* Alstom
* Boston Scientific Corporation
* BP America
* Caterpillar
* Chrysler
* ConocoPhillips
* Deere & Company
* The Dow Chemical Company
* Duke Energy
* DuPont
* Exelon Corporation
* Ford Motor Company
* FPL Group
* General Electric
* General Motors Corporation
* Johnson & Johnson
* NRG Energy
* PepsiCo
* PG&E Corporation
* PNM Resources
* Rio Tinto
* Shell
* Siemens Corporation
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megaloptera Posted 8:05 pm
04 Oct 2009
Here's someone who spent days and hours analyzing and reading the Waxman Markey bill, the so called Bingaman bill and a little time working on the Kerry Boxer bill! (still plowing through the 851 pages).
Here's one key fact that shows how the proposed bills do more harm than good: they call burning trash, forests, landfill gas, and construction and demolition debris "clean and green" renewable energy! And, the bills make us rate payers and taxpayers foot the bill for the incinerator companies like Covanta to poison us with arsenic, mercury, dioxin, lead and all sorts of other goodies!
Check it out: it's true, a hard core fact: these incinerators poison our air and water AND get to emit all the CO2 they want! It's not regulated by EPA and isn't covered by the cap! DOE estimates that by 2020 all this biomass burning will emit 700,000,000 tons of CO2 per year: that's about 10% of total U.S. emissions. AND we are supposed to think Kerry and Boxer giving us a bill that reduces emissions by 20% over 2005 levels via cap and trade is a good thing?
10% of the cap will be wiped out by the 700 million tons of CO2 emissions! Yeah, a great deal!
The devil is in the details, Shelly, check it out!
http://www.nobiomassburning.org
http://www.springfieldbiomass.info
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ShellyT Posted 12:08 am
05 Oct 2009
http://static.newrules.org/pdf/climate-bill-cantwell.pdf
Surely there must be something acceptable as a starting point. Or check out the governor's sub-national climate summit that just ended. The governors don't care all that much what the feds do, maybe we shouldn't either. They are going to do their own thing, like CA.
It's true that much of Congress is as corrupt as it gets, but they aren't all like that. I don't know about Kerry, but Boxer isn't a lost cause. Their draft bill isn't even finished yet. Keep in mind it's hardly done being written. That means we have time to pressure people... try Sen. Bernie Sanders, he's reasonable. I have heard he doesn't like cap and trade. Neither does Sen. Byron Dorgan.
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Ken Johnson Posted 12:07 am
05 Oct 2009
Re "these incinerators poison our air and water AND get to emit all the CO2 they want! It's not regulated by EPA and isn't covered by the cap!":
So what? Is there anything in W-M/K-B that prevents you from introducing legislation to regulate those incinerators? It's a good thing they're not under the cap; otherwise anything you do to reduce incinerator CO2 would just allow more emissions elsewhere.
Shelly,
Re "States, cities, towns, and companies are doing things on their own to mitigate climate change. ... Federal legislation is not the end-all and be-all final word on anything."
Actually, in the context of capped sectors, it is. Anything those states, cities, towns, and companies do to reduce emissions in capped sectors will just allow more emissions to be generated elsewhere. The cap is what it is whatever they do, so their noble efforts will merely be subsidizing fossil fuel combustion. No compromise.
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ShellyT Posted 12:15 am
05 Oct 2009
With Obama and a Democratic congress, this is the only crack at this we might have. Yeah the bill sucks, I think I've said that about 4 times now, but it makes sense to give it a chance to work or at least wait until it's written to start bashing it to pieces. BTW, I've been reading and writing about this for years too, so don't try to pull rank on anyone just because you disagree with them. I suspect anyone who is commenting here knows far more about this topic than the average person or they wouldn't even be bothering. Don't throw your reading list at me and I'll spare you mine.
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mahonia Posted 9:32 am
05 Oct 2009
"I also realize I'm no expert on [cap and trade] at all. No one I've read here is. Hardly anyone anywhere is. Have you spent hours and days studying it?" I assumed you would want to know if that was an inaccurate statement, and also assumed that you were suggesting that neither you or anyone else here had studied the problems of carbon trading (and that therefore, some background reading was merited). I guess I misunderstood?
Anyhow, I, like you say above about yourself "don't think that cap and trade will work".
I'm not sure why I should support a bill that implements something that isn't going to work...but, if you think it is logical to support something that you don't think will work, well, by all means go ahead.
But I hope you can understand why others would not find it logical to support something they don't think will work.
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ShellyT Posted 1:00 pm
05 Oct 2009
This is Congress's first try at some type of climate bill, they have 1,000 considerations to include, and obviously it's not perfect but it's a starting point. People who are going to actively work against it, like Climate SOS for example, are doing the entire world a disservice. I get angry, self-righteous emails from some of these groups who are bending over backwards to destroy the only shot at climate legislation we have, and if they have their way, we end up with nothing. Is that what they want? This is why action to defeat this makes me very suspicious.
Climate change isn't even on most people's radar. The public knows about it only in a vague way. If we had a bill at least the public would know it's important and they'd be forced to learn about it.
So fine, don't support it, but don't work AGAINST it. Work to strengthen it or work locally and on a state level to do things within your state. This idea that we should expend our valuable energy and time actively opposing a climate bill that we don't like is exactly what the deniers and Big Oil and Big Coal want you to do.
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mwildfire Posted 3:50 pm
05 Oct 2009
I guess in your view there are two binary possibilities here. Either the bill is perfect and should be supported, or it is not-quite-perfect and should be supported anyway because it's the best we can expect. No such thing as a bill that's utterly and laughably inadequate? I myself see quite a distinction between that and a bill that's "not perfect," and I'm getting irritated with the constant repeating of that phrase whenever people explain why Waxman Markey is so without merit that it is not worth supporting--at least, not by environmentalists. Is it our only shot, the best we will ever get? Quite possibly, but there ARE other bills being proposed, including some with a much simpler and cleaner and likely more effective carbon tax. Apparently it's good enough for you as long as it is called a climate bill, and you don't care what's in it. A key difference between the two sides in this debate lies in whether one believes--as you clearly do--that inadequate legislation is likely to be improved upon later, or as many of us do, that inadequate legislation is likely to be the excuse to do nothing more about this issue for years, until the failures of the bill are glaringly apparent. At that point it will be way too late--we will have catastrophic climate change no matter what we do. That the public doesn't fully understand climate change and that--in the US anyway--the deniers have made good progress of late in influencing public opinion is entirely true, and rectifying this situation probably has more likelihood of leading to a solution in time than any amount of lobbying in DC--unless you have given the campaigns of your targets tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, in which case lobbying might well be fruitful. Unfortunately, influencing public opinion is much easier for the denialists--they have the built-in advantage that most people want to believe them. They have inertia and laziness and selfishness as allies, while we are asking people to make changes--I would argue that they aren't really sacrifices, but most people see them that way--primarly to benefit people who haven't been born yet, on the basis of what scientists claim about a problem that's barely visible as yet. Most people are happy to believe in even less visible Gods, but that's different--they get a payoff in avoiding awareness of death and evading adult responsibility (God is in charge and will take care of it all, and everything will be fine as long as I'm a good boy or girl).
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ShellyT Posted 4:58 pm
05 Oct 2009
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megaloptera Posted 5:18 pm
05 Oct 2009
And those environmental groups lined up with Dow Chemical promoting the bill? Something's wrong with this picture.
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ShellyT Posted 9:54 pm
07 Oct 2009
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prohb Posted 6:16 am
06 Oct 2009
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latecommer Posted 11:35 am
07 Oct 2009
Where has the idea risen that we now live in the best possible climate and any change is bad? Have activists forgotten that human beings evolved and prospered during a period of time about 3 degrees C higher than today?
And now with the Sun in a marked decline in it's energy output, cooling is what is most likely to happen for the next two solar cylces. This isn't guess work, it is the continuation of cycles that have driven our climate for billions of years.
Adaptation to a cooler Earth should be the focus, because history has been very clear in the lessons that cold kills many more than heat. If one looks at the the world wide epidemics, famines, and disasterous weather events of the past....these have occured in primarily colder times than today. That is the enemy worth mobilizing for.
I for one welcome this all or nothing apporach by the extreme envioronmnetal movement.(where I include James Hansen) It guarantees a failure of the cap and trade system. One that I agree will not work, but only re-distibute wealth. From those opposed to it to those pushing it with all their might.
We need to do what is best for man, and that is to adapt to changes as all other animals have in the past...as our ancestors did through ice ages, and climate optimums.
I am all for stopping polution, even if as a scientist I understand that CO2 is not one of those products. Particulates, arosols, and carbon monoxide are also products of energy generation and the actually do cause harm.
It is always interesting to me that those who are the most alarmist about what technology has done to our planet, are the biggest believers in future technology that will bring us all back to the "good old days".
Cap and Trade has already failed where ever it has been attempted.
It will be impossible to stop the train of development of the third world. They will not, and should not, stop their own internal development towards the goals of having what we in the developed world enjoy today... energy for refrigeration, medical purposes, and for pumping clean water from the Earth... in short what makes up our modern life.
It borders on racism to demand that African and Asian countries wait for technology which, honestly, is still at least a decade away.
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vbstenswick Posted 6:20 pm
07 Oct 2009
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latecommer Posted 9:25 pm
07 Oct 2009
I have spent the last 5 years in an intense study of the climate issue. I have read a score of books, over 350 scientific papers...am a member at both Real Climate, and Climate Audit. I have learned from very good scientists on both sides of the issue.
The scientific truth as I see it is that there is nothing unprecidented about the .6 C degree heating we have had in the last century or the identical trend since the beginning of this, except perhaps a slight negative bend in the last few years.
But this is no place to argue the entirity of climate science...I would like to, I hope, allay your fears about the rising of the sea level.
All scientific sources show the rate of the rise in water levels have remained unchanged for decades. NOAA has recently reported that the rise has actually apears to have slowed.
Water levels can only rise when continental sheet ice melts. Sea ice has no effect on water levels just as a piece of ice when it melts does not change the level in a glass. A good place to start would be the point that glaciers do not melt due to atmospheric temperatures. A glacier melts from the bottom and ablates from the top. As you might no ablation is the chage from ice to vapor without passing through the water stage. While it takes a measured amount of energy to bring ice to a melting point it takes 80 times that much energy to melt it.
I suggest that to educate yourself on the climate if you are not a scientist but are concered you should buy the book "The Resilient Earth".
The authors (Hoffman and Simmons are two compputer scientists who have worked on GCM simulators and weather satallites. They very clearly lay out what the models can predict and what they can not. They have a section on glacial ice that clearly explains that if we were to have the maximum projected temperatures of the most extreme General Circulation Models (8.6C per century) it would take Greenland about 2500 years to melt., and cause a rise of about 4 ft in ocean levels.
The Antarctic Continental Ice is actually growing and in 2007 reached its highest ever measured extent. it is protected by the circum Antarctic current and warming of the rest of the globe is very much diminished.
The thing to keep in mind here is that the idea of human created CO2 causing warming, is a theory that was proposed as a change to the standard system, and as such bears the burden of proof that it can be tested and found valid. To do this in climate, the theory has to predict effects and have them happen as predicted. That has not happened as of yet. That is not a matter of which side you are on, it is just science.
The models predicted that temperature would rise as CO2 rose. I knew from chemistry that this was untrue. Warming atmosphere and warming oceans produce CO2 and at all times in history co2 levels have laged behind temperature by about 800 years. The natural part of the rise we see in CO2 levels today are a result of the Medievial Warm Period about 800 years ago.
Don't let politicians, activists and journalists do your thinking for you.
Read , study the views of both sides without bias, and I am convinced that if you stick with the science and not the politics you will understand that there is nothing unprecidented or unreparable happening...absolutly nothing that didn't happen in the past without the aid of human beings.
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ShellyT Posted 9:59 pm
07 Oct 2009
And keep in mind, anyone can come on any website online and say they are a science teacher or a Nobel Prize winner in physics but that wouldn't make it so. Since you are so off base with widely accepted science, you could improve your credibility by telling us the school you work for and show us your online bio. You can't even spell, so it's hard to believe you are a teacher.
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vbstenswick Posted 10:42 pm
07 Oct 2009
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Zixingche Posted 10:05 am
08 Oct 2009
Right now we have a Liberal Democratic President
60 Democrats in the Senate
Strong Majority of Democrats in the House
Even with that level of support, if Waxman-Markey/Boxer-Kerry is signed into law, it will barely do so.
Also look to history as a guide: Nixon proposed universal health care when he was President OVER 30 YEARS AGO. Why did it fail? The Democratic Unions killed it because they wanted something better.
So what is the Lesson? Keep fighting but take all the small victories you can get. After the 2010 midterms Dems will likely lose a lot of seats in Congress. Who knows what will happen in 2012/2016. Do you really want the Republicans handling this issue?
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Zixingche Posted 10:05 am
08 Oct 2009
Right now we have a Liberal Democratic President
60 Democrats in the Senate
Strong Majority of Democrats in the House
Even with that level of support, if Waxman-Markey/Boxer-Kerry is signed into law, it will barely do so.
Also look to history as a guide: Nixon proposed universal health care when he was President OVER 30 YEARS AGO. Why did it fail? The Democratic Unions killed it because they wanted something better.
So what is the Lesson? Keep fighting but take all the small victories you can get. After the 2010 midterms Dems will likely lose a lot of seats in Congress. Who knows what will happen in 2012/2016. Do you really want the Republicans handling this issue?
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latecommer Posted 10:22 am
08 Oct 2009
Obviously you are political...who else goes to hear a politician?
Do you actually believe that Greenland is melting in an unusual way? Well it most certainly is not. It does this every time we recover from a cold cycle (yes Milankovitch cycles..VB) We are now recoving from the Little Ice Age which ran from about 1300 to 1850, and are in the what is called the Modern Warming (for lack of a future better name). Going back from there we had the Medieval Warm Period (900 -1300 when Greenland lost about 20% of its ice and allowed the Vikings to habitate there, and world temperatures were about 2 degreeC warmer) the Dark Ages Cold Period (~500 to 900 AD that followed the Roman Warming period (250 BC to 450 AD) and so forth. Each of these warm periods were warmer, so far, than what we see now.
This is the patterns of interglacial periods...and remember we are still involved in an Ice Age. It isn't a matter of if but when the next major glacial advance will occure.
At some point the ice caps at both poles will melt and then we will be out of this current ice age. If the past holds the key we are still at least 300,000 years from a total ice free Earth. (A condition more common to Earth in the majority of its history)
These are knowns concerning climate and Earths history:
- Earth's climate is constantly changing. There is no one "normal" climate pattern.
-More often than not, there have been no polar icecaps on Earth
-The temperature on Earth has bee much hotter than it is now and has been for long streaches of time (more than 100 million years in the Mesozoic).
-Co2 levels in Earth's atmosphere have been much higher than they are now and were higher for most of the history of life.
-There have been a number of times when Earth has been very much colder than know. There have been 7 to 12 major Ice Ages (difficult to be exact since each Ice age tends to obscure the ones before it.)
- After each ice age, Earth's climate has warmed back up to modern temperature levels or higher.
Generally all scientists agree to these points. It seems evident that nothing unusual is happening today. There has been no surge in temperature, we remain at historically low levels of CO2, unless we are myopic and can see back only a couple of hundred years. Co2 makes up .035% by volume of the atmosphere, or 35 of every 10,000 moleules. In past periods of time it has been as high as 10% (a level definately dangerous to man).
There have been recent times however when CO2 levels were higher than today. We have a 180 year record of CO2 measurements using the Pettenkofer method with an accuracy of 1-3%. This method was used from 1812 until 1961. It has shown that for much of the 19th century and from 1935 to 1950 parts per million were higher than today.(400 ppm 1940 average) It is not a complicated study. As temperatures warm co2 levels rise (with a lag in timing)
The problems arise when scientists try to factor into the computer models the forcing effects of clouds, the more powerful greenhouse gas water vapor (90+percent), and how it interacts with CO2. Climate models assume an unproven variable contending that water vapor creates a positive feedback to CO2. Many other scientists point out that there is a blance of positive and negative feedbacks ie. more heat causes more water vapor which cools the atmoshpere as it rises, and as it condences. a further cooling happens with precipitation. Add in the facto that more water vapor causes more low cloud cover, reducing the Earth albido which causes a negative feedback.
If any of you have studied engineering models (the forerunners of today's climate models) you will know that a system that has a balance of positive feedbacks will go into a run away mode. Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, has shown that when heat goes up in the tropics thunder stormes vent excess atmopheric heat in the the upper stratosphere above the influence of greenhouse gases where it escapes into space. The climate models don't deal with clouds. (and the modelers are quick to admit this). It is probable that we will never have a validated climate model since models can only project accurately in a linear system, and our climate is a chaotic system.
So I personally do not put credit in an unvalidated process. I prefer to look at observational data for today, and bring in the template of prehistorical climate patterns well established by science.
As hard as it is for some of you activist motivated people to believe, science shows nothing unusual happening in todays climate.
In the next article you read, I would challenge you count the "might", "could", "possiblely", terms used by the author. Scientists are careful in their language and do not like to state absolutes...journalists do not have that mindset. Their MO is to grab you and shake you with the headline and opening paragraph, and then put the "coulds and mights" later in the piece.
I put zero credence in any newspaper, or popular science site, or article until I read the paper, if any behind it. I advise you as a thinking person to do the same.
You will never get a true "scientific" view of nature from the above. There are political motives that drive this whole controversy (on both sides) I dealt far to long with politicians to have any respect for what they say. Their very existance depends on lying...and the effectivness of such envioronmental orginizations such as WWF, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, depends on the same tactics. (As of course do the organizations on the opposite side) The only reason I hold the latter in higher esteme than the former is that politicians lie for their own benifit, activist sites lie as a means to an end. They don't mind scaring you with half truths or less if they can get you aboard for their projects of what they consider critical actions.
Just don't forget that they are not scientific sources, but people using science to acheive their agendas. If you take that approach, it doesn't take long to figure out the real science behind global warming is very scarce, and uncertain, but being sold as the probable outcome. Politics have swayed the masses not the science. I don't hate politics, I just object when it pretends to be science.
Shelly T, I have no problem giving you that information. I teach at Escalon High School in Escalon California. I have been teaching here for 16 years...before that I briefly taught at Tacoma Community College until we moved. My education was at Calvin College in Grand Rapids Michingan, University of Michigan, Modesto Junior College, and Stanislaus State University in Turlock California. I have as well about 100 credits from a dozen other Universities in the United States and in Europe. I am 62 yeas old and was an intelligence officer in Viet Nam and for a number of years after I seperated from the military.
I apologize for my spelling...I recently learned that I am considered a sever dyslexic (no wonder spelling was such a mountain to climb in school) and I suppose I must say I sometime am to lazy to get out the dictionary and proof read sites that don't have spell checkers.
I fall back on a quote by Mark Twain
"I don't give a damn for a man who can only spell a word one way"
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snedunuri Posted 11:26 am
11 Oct 2009
Finally, its popular among dissenters to claim they are being muzzled but far greater and revolutionary ideas in science have found takers in the form of some respected scientific journal. It makes you wonder why these dissenters can't get their theories published anywhere and instead have to resort to yelling at passers-by from their web sites.
cheers
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latecommer Posted 11:12 am
08 Oct 2009
Other papers use the data from 10,000 years ago, adn their is a very good reason to not go back 3,000 years further. That was the period of the "Younger Dryas" in which, for geological reasons, we had extreme cold and then subsequent warming. This occured because of the breakup of ice dams holding back hugh fresh water lakes (Lake Agassiz and others)and a hugh inflow of fresh water into the oceans, temporarily changing ocean currents. The needs of the writer did not include this natural non-human induced climate change. A background in Paleo-geology and paleo-climatology gives one a better "long look" than you can get from studying the science page of News Week.
Just another thing to keep in mind when reading about science today.
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latecommer Posted 9:45 am
13 Oct 2009
I also find it interesting that after the Prime attacks that all alarmists use... "You work for big OIL", and "the vast majority of scientists disagree with you" (both charges patently false....Big OIL is one of the largest investors in green tech, and 32,000 American scientists have signed the Oregon Petition inluding 8,000 PHD's which refutes CO2 warming) they then fail to produce even one piece of observable human caused impact on the climate. No one disputes that climate changes, and alarmists have tried to point to every natural change as human caused, and have yet to even give a good explaination of how that is caused.
On the other hand, those with a knowledge of past events can list many times in the geological past when these same cycles have occured without the help of man, and with virtually no change from the values of today's changes.
So I am saying give me observational proof tha man has changed global climate. Good luck because even your top scientists can't give us that. The best they can do is show correlation, but causation is still best fitted to the natural cycles that have ALWAYS run the climate.
Correlation is not proof!!
Until then realize that your AGW is the "new kid on the block" and YOU are challenging the established climate model of natural cycles. Until you show proof don't expect to be tyreated wiht respect inso far as you science is concerned
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cyberfarer Posted 10:06 am
13 Oct 2009
For those concerned about real problems, the die has been cast and people had better start developing their own mitigation plans. Forget the Bill. It doesn't really matter. If you follow the news coming out of the US, the IEA, Britain, the UN, etc ..., the fate of the world has been determined by financial interests. The lion's share of dollars available for mitigation and clean energy is being siphoned off to carbon capture--an unproven, and costly technology that will cost all of us valuable years and scarce resources for what must really be done.
The politicians, local, national, and international, including many environmentalists, are taking the path of least resistance and that is giving in to big coal and Canada's tar sands. Simply put, we have made our choice.
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