Thad Miller is studying for an MPA in environmental science and policy at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.
Monday, 29 Sep 2003
NEW YORK, N.Y.
Greetings to anyone who may be reading this. Since you'll be getting to know me over the next week, for better or worse, I'll start off by setting the scene. Who is this person and why is he writing a diary for Grist? Well, I contacted Grist over the summer while I was hard at work at Columbia University, where I'm studying for my Master's of Public Administration in environmental science and policy at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). I have always enjoyed "Dear Me" as it lets you take a look at the perspectives of policy makers, biologists, environmental activists, etc. So I thought that it might be interesting to give a glimpse into the mind of someone who is just starting out on the path to becoming an environmental professional -- interesting for me and hopefully for those who read my entries. This is why I'm sitting here typing away.
Lately, I've been thinking about how I got here and where I am going. This, I would think, is a pretty typical situation for someone who will be looking to start a job next summer. How did I come to be at Columbia studying environmental science and policy? For that matter, why do some of us develop a strong environmental ethic while for others it's not a priority, and in some cases it's a nuisance? Why, for every Jeff Sachs or Herman Daly, is there a George Bush or Dick Cheney? All right, perhaps that's a philosophical/political question for another time. Nonetheless, how do those of us who consider ourselves environmentalists arrive at that point? This was a question that was posed to us in our politics and management class last week. This "re-self-examination" of my stated goals really struck a chord.
Reality is the truth and the truth is as intimidating as it is empowering. Most people attribute their views to their family or community experience. Others point to their education. Still others (myself included) attribute them to a combination of both. Occasionally, there will be the person who has had an epiphany leading to a drastic change in their viewpoint. Maybe someone took John Muir's advice on a whim and climbed up to the top of a tree in hurricane-force wind and rain so that they might experience the raw force of nature. (If there are any such stories from Hurricane Isabel, please email me!) As for me, it was family vacations to Maine, an interest in marine biology, and education -- particularly the reading of The Final Forest by William Dietrich in my first year of college at Bucknell University. I was struck by the serenity of nature and how that serenity masks a complexity of interdependent actions and reactions. As I explored this curiosity and awe, while interested in the science of it, I became enthralled with the notion of finding ways to allow it to run its course and to bring our actions into accordance with nature's functioning.
Ask yourself how you came to be an environmentalist. (And if you like, email me with your answers.) It may not be some fantastic story, but it should be interesting nonetheless.
Consider one more question (the last one, I promise): How can we foster the development of an environmental ethic? For instance, inner-city children may not have the benefit of seeing Mount Katahdin or the forests of the Adirondacks. How do we give them an appreciation for the need to preserve the environment? I wonder about these things as I walk to my apartment right next to Harlem. Those who may not come to an appreciation of nature through experience can be taught not only about the pertinent environmental issues of the day but also why they should care about such things that seemingly have no impact on their lives. Indeed, while they may not have visited a forest, there may be examples of poor environmental practices that affect their everyday lives. For example, does their neighborhood have high asthma rates due to local industry air emissions? Such issues involve environmental justice, which is of great interest to me -- but a topic for another day.
Tuesday, 30 Sep 2003
NEW YORK, N.Y.
The work plan for the fall semester is done! Okay, let me back up. I'm the project manager for the Climate Stewardship Act of 2003 project group in the Workshop in Applied Earth Systems Management II (that's a mouthful). There are 12 members in the group and we work through this legislation for two semesters in workshop. During the summer semester, we defined the scientific problem -- greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions leading to global warming -- and then proposed a solution -- the Climate Stewardship Act. (It's a real piece of legislation, introduced in Congress by Sens. Joseph Lieberman [D-Conn.] and John McCain [R-Ariz.] on Jan. 9, 2003.) This semester we must act as if the legislation were going to be implemented on Jan. 1, 2004. Therefore, we must go through some very practical management steps -- produce a staffing plan, a budget, program design options, a master calendar, etc. I'll give you a peek at what we've accomplished so far, and give some background about the bill.
The Climate Stewardship Act will be coming up for a vote this fall. Originally, it was destined to be a rider on the energy bill. However, as time ran out on Congress' last session, the sponsors of the bill were promised a vote and at least six hours of debate in the fall.
Surprisingly, for a bill of this nature, it seems to me that it has received fairly meager press coverage. It's an ambitious, bipartisan environmental bill that amounts to a response to the Kyoto Protocol. As the text of the bill reads, "[t]he Climate Stewardship Act of 2003 (S.139) proposes to provide for a program of scientific research of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by establishing a market-driven system of greenhouse gas tradable allowances."
The legislation includes three titles. Title I establishes the need for further research into climate change. Title II creates a National Greenhouse Gas Database that provides the base for Title III, which establishes a market for GHG emissions. I'm concerned mainly with Titles II and III. The database would enable the creation of sector emissions baselines, which would inform the establishment and distribution of GHG emissions caps. The sectors included under the act are: energy, commercial, industrial, and transportation. (Note the omission of agriculture, which is a large source of methane. A question we'll be exploring this semester is the reason for this omission. However, we all suspect that the basic reason is that the bill would have no chance to even hit the floor in Congress if agriculture were included due to the power of our nation's agricultural lobby.) Entities in each covered sector must submit annual reports of their emissions to the U.S. EPA to create the database. The emissions covered under the bill amount to 70 to 85 percent of the annual GHG emissions in the United States.
The cornerstone of the act is the creation of a market-driven system to reduce GHGs. Similar to Kyoto, this would establish an upper limit of emissions and then give tradable allowances to the entities covered. The cap has two phases. Phase I would begin in 2010 and establish a cap at 2000 levels. Phase II would begin in 2016 and bring emissions down to 1990 levels. These caps are in accordance with the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, though they are less aggressive than the Kyoto caps, which call for the U.S. to bring emissions to 8 percent below 1990 levels.
Under the act, a nonprofit corporation would be set up through which entities would buy, sell, borrow, and bank allowances -- the Climate Change Credit Corporation. An analysis by the Department of Energy projects that under the act U.S.-produced GHG emissions would be reduced by 20 percent in 2016 and by 39 percent in 2025, relative what the U.S. would produce in those years based upon the current emissions trajectory. While the emissions levels projected to result from this act are far from achieving stabilization of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, they are clearly a meaningful step toward reduction.
It seems that a major deterrent to the U.S. ratifying the Kyoto Protocol was the apparent substantial effect it would have on the nation's economy. Will the Climate Stewardship Act suffer the same fate? While I must admit it is highly unlikely that the bill will pass given the political environment in Washington, its economic impact should not be the reason for its failure. For instance, MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change predicts household energy expenditures under the bill would increase by a modest $89. Since the EPA refused to do an analysis of the act, we'll use the DOE's analysis again, which concludes that the act would result in a 0.02 percent drop in GDP. This hardly amounts to a large sacrifice for the U.S. economy. In addition, this is saying nothing of the potential substantial savings that could be reached with the development of less CO2-intensive technologies.
In the end, this bill will probably not get passed. However, it will get a substantial amount of debate and bring attention to a matter which since 9/11 has almost fallen off the radar. The Climate Stewardship Act can serve as a framework that future policies can build on. As an optimist, one can only hope that as it goes up for a vote this fall, the debate will turn from whether or not global warming even exists, and from calls for more and more research (which just means delayed action), to what the best policy option is to deal with this global problem.
P.S.: This entry is dedicated to the Climate Stewardship Project group. Thanks!
Wednesday, 1 Oct 2003
NEW YORK, N.Y.
Happy October! Just a quick follow-up to yesterday's entry to start things off: This morning at 9:30 a.m. (EST), the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will debate the science behind and possible solutions to global warming, according to Environmental Defense. I'll have to check that out and mention it in my presentation this morning!
I've been thinking a lot lately about how we define "progress." This was brought on by reading Valuing the Earth, edited by Herman Daly and Kenneth Townsend, and Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. [Editor's note: Read a review of Cradle to Cradle.] For a society, "progress" means getting more and more (and more...). As my classmates and I have been learning in microeconomics this semester, a consumer will always want more. It seems that even when we get what we want, it makes us happy for a short time and then we want more yet again.
Now, I must admit, I am certainly not immune to this culture, as I have been told I have a small obsession with my CD collection. However, now I am thinking of one good in particular that seems to be turning up around every corner -- the Hummer. Why? I am totally baffled at the thought that anyone would want to purchase such a thing. I even saw one with an American flag across the back windshield -- consuming more means you're a better American these days, right? Even if you're guzzling more gas and increasing our dependence on foreign oil, I suppose.
Besides bashing an individual's choice to purchase a Hummer, what about the bigger picture? Take GNP. This is supposed to indicate how well we are doing. My main gripe here (and one expressed in Valuing the Earth) is that under the current system, pollution adds to GNP and therefore supposedly increases our well-being. For example, say a coal-burning power plant is spewing various gases and particulates into the air as it produces electricity. This adds to GNP -- we are better off. Then the citizens living near the plant develop asthma or some other ailments and need to go to the hospital or visit the doctor or purchase asthma inhalers. Again, all this adds to GNP -- the more inhalers we buy, the better off society is, right? Am I the only one to whom this makes no sense? These things should subtract from GNP, not add. Either that or we need a new indicator for our well-being.
That being said, I am not calling for an end to economic activity or growth. Why must our activity pollute the air and water and poison living things? There must be a better way we can make things, as Cradle to Cradle argues. I refuse to believe that such an innovative society does not have the know-how to produce goods that don't harm the environment. I think it's just a matter to trying -- and caring.
"The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation." -- Albert Einstein (as quoted in Cradle to Cradle)
Thursday, 2 Oct 2003
NEW YORK, N.Y.
Last night I attended a lecture by Jeffrey Sachs at Columbia's Low Library. Professor Sachs is the director of the Earth Institute here at Columbia, and among his other duties he is a special advisor to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. His talk focused on the eradication of extreme poverty in our world -- a goal that he views as achievable and managed to convince the audience of as well.
Right now readers probably have the following reaction: ending poverty, that's great, but there's no way we can. That's exactly what I thought, too. So I'll go through some of the main points of Sachs's argument.
First, why have we all of a sudden decided to spend $87 billion on Iraq? Well, I guess we know why. However, why our sudden change of heart regarding foreign aid? In the past, we have thrown some money to Africa and then told them not to come back but to go talk to the International Monetary Fund. Sachs argues that we would need much less then $87 billion to help eradicate poverty in areas such as sub-Saharan Africa, where much of the world's population is living in abject poverty. Millions of people are on the edge of a cliff about to fall off, as he puts it. This is occurring while in the rich part of the world there are 400 people (400 individuals!) who together have more than $60 billion. Think about those numbers for a second.
How did the world's poor get into this situation? If we can understand this, then maybe we can come up with a solution. Well, it's not because they're being exploited by multinational corporations and globalization (I know some of my friends will be happy to hear that). Instead, the main reasons are very systematic and amount to a "downward spiral." Let me explain.
Most of these people rely on subsistence farming for their food. So, they farm and cut down trees for firewood. Then they farm on some other lot of land and cut down more trees. There's also some slash-and-burn agriculture in there too. Eventually, they run out of firewood. (In Ethiopia, 97 percent of the forests are gone and desertification has set in.) Now they need something to cook their food with. Without wood, they have to burn the dung of animals (which, as it turns out, produces harmful smoke). Now the soil is degraded and they have nothing to fertilize the fields with. All the while, population is rising. And as it becomes harder to farm and scratch out an existence, they have even more children. Here children are economic assets -- parents need their help to farm, etc.
These poor parts of the world are desperate for economic development. However, Sachs argues, certain basic conditions need to be addressed first: AIDS, malaria, TB, disease in drinking water, respiratory infection, measles, micronutrient deficiencies, and death during childbirth. But in many parts of the world, there are as few as three doctors for every 100,000 people.
These are very concrete, identifiable problems, and Sachs says we could address them and save 8 million people per year if we spend $25 billion per year. That's 1/1000 of the income of the rich world. That's 20,000 lives a day that could be saved by "weapons of mass salvation." Sachs estimates that this would require $8 billion per year from the U.S. -- and these numbers are backed up by analysis. That's two months of Iraq.
At first, the eradication of poverty may seem like a great but wholly unachievable goal. However, I am starting to believe that this may not be the case. This entry is by no means the whole story. I think the important thing to realize is that while we are living in a time of unbounded wealth and prosperity, there are other parts of the world where thousands of people die each day from things that never even enter our minds. These are basic problems with identifiable solutions, and these solutions can put people on a path to sustainable development. Our task is to deliver these solutions.
Friday, 3 Oct 2003
NEW YORK, N.Y.
It's Friday and this is my last entry. I must say that I have really enjoyed this experience. It's been amazing to see the reactions -- even if people don't agree with my perspectives, at least the issues are being thought and talked about, and I've been surprised by what I've heard from some people who I never thought would agree with me. I want to thank Grist and Sherry Bosse for giving me the chance to take the mike and sound off about things. I also want to thank the editors for taking rushed sentences I threw down before class and turning them into coherent paragraphs.
I hope my entries have shown that there are a plethora of issues out there. These issues are what weigh on the minds of every environmental science and policy student in this program (and on any environmentalist, for that matter). On Monday, I was thinking about ethics and environmental justice. Tuesday, policy and global warming were on my mind. As the week progressed, I was thinking about "progress" and consumption. Yesterday, I went on a little rant about poverty.
With so many different and often complex issues out there, it's very easy to feel overwhelmed. I've learned by talking with my classmates in college and graduate school that this is often a shared sentiment. It can be very tempting to throw up your hands and say to yourself, "What's the use?" Friends of mine who are working in environmental consulting, etc., have already become bitter and jaded. This feeling ends up paralyzing anyone trying to act. I believe it's this same sentiment that has also led to the "gloom and doom" outlook of many environmentalists, turning many people away from environmental issues (however, "gloom and doom with a sense of humor" is another matter). When adopting a pessimistic attitude in tackling environmental issues, progress is made almost impossible.
In order to move forward, one must shrug off that sense of being overwhelmed. If I can bite off one piece at a time and tackle a certain issue or project, then hopefully success will be within sight. However, one must be conscious of the bigger picture, which I will not attempt to paint right now because it's too early in the morning (and I'd need another week).
I am driven by these issues and I'm optimistic that things can be changed , that people can make a difference (despite how corny that sounds). As I sit in class (shhh!) and look at the faces around me, I see very bright and motivated people who care deeply about environmental issues and the general well-being of society. People from India, Kazakhstan, Taiwan, Des Moines, Los Angeles, and New York. This is what makes me feel like things are looking up. This makes me feel that things are going to change and drives my classmates and I even further.
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