Andy Revkin has a Dot Earth post today that reflects on Jake Tapper's hackery and, in my humble opinion, lets Tapper off way too easily. Look at this:
For his part, Mr. Tapper posted a series of updates through Thursday clarifying his intent, saying he found Mr. Clinton's speech confusing and was posing questions more than offering criticisms. And his main point, he told me over the phone late last night, was to examine whether Mr. Clinton was portraying efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions as something that would blunt the economy. This is a point that other proponents of gas curbs have sometimes downplayed.
"I didn't think I was accusing him of anything other than candor," Mr. Tapper said.
That is rank bullshit, on its face. Tapper's updates did not "clarify" anything, they just replied to an entirely just accusation with catty snaring meant to make his Village buddies giggle. There was nothing confusing at all about Clinton's speech -- unless, like Tapper, you are so immersed in shallow Beltway conventional wisdom that someone saying something different is like a foreign language. And he wasn't "raising questions" -- he straightforwardly portrayed Clinton as saying the opposite of what he actually said. Tapper did not "accuse him of candor." Clinton was quite candidly saying that he thinks we can make money shifting to a green economy. Tapper is convinced that environmentalism means economic pain, because that's what his right-wing sources keep telling him, so he was convinced that that was what Clinton was secretly saying. But that just means that Tapper's a vapid dunce.
But anyway! Go check out the video in the post, of Revkin interviewing Clinton. There's some interesting stuff in there. One thing that particularly caught my ear: Revkin asked Clinton what he might have done differently as president to make more progress on this stuff.
Clinton speculates that his mistake was taking on transportation and electrical generation -- the two areas with the biggest, most powerful entrenched interests. He says maybe he should have started with energy efficiency and research into reducing solar and wind energy costs -- the low-hanging fruit -- and worked backwards to the harder stuff.
That strikes me as quite perspicacious.
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Comments
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Sean Casten Posted 6:25 am
01 Feb 2008
That said, I give Clinton more credit on GHG than most. Yes, he never brought Kyoto to the Senate for ratification, but that was because he knew it wouldn't pass, and rather than try to resubmit something that had previously been rejected, he was waiting for a time when he could bring it in. OK, he miscalculated on that, but I truly believe that it was a miscalculation made with the best of intents.
But the comment belies some of the worst elements of Clinton, in the sense that it belies a deep understanding of the issues but also willingness to compromise away the important stuff. Recall the Partnership for a New Generation Vehicle program, which was the Clintonian compromise over fuel economy standards, in which - in exchange for agreeing not to raise fuel economy stds - the auto companies agreed to cost share R&D in next generation cars. It was a huge boon for engineering research firms (me included, in my days as an engineering consultant), and a huge PR coup for the auto companies who got to trumpet all sorts of nifty new gadgets and gizmos. But after doling out hundreds of millions of R&D dollars, and backstopping lots of great media for the auto companies, Toyota (a non-US mfr, and therefore not a recipient of that largesse) actually started selling a hybrid. Then Honda. And yeah, finally Ford came around, but only after coming to an agreement to buy Toyota's technology, which was as bald an admission as you can get that the PNGV program was an utter waste.
So to hear him say that in retrospect, we should have spent more on R&D and end-use efficiency strikes me as a rather crummy answer.
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ce1907 Posted 7:38 am
01 Feb 2008
was a "slow blog" movement
right
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JMG Posted 10:38 am
01 Feb 2008
I read several comments and concluded the commenters don't get it any more than the dude in the picture any more than Bill Clinton. Like it or not, the fucking economy's gonna slow down and eventually tank as oil decline takes hold and starts solving our moral climate dilemma for us - except it's too damn late to avoid dangerous AGW anyway, even if we emitted not one more carbon dioxide molecule. The arctic ocean's gonna disappear in summer, leading to enough heatup to melt Greenland (and maybe part of the ice mass on the Antarctic peninsula as well) and lead to 20-40 foot sea level rise, at a rate which we don't know how to calculate and whose effect on global ocean currents we have no idea of. So call me a doomer, I really don't care any more, but them's the facts as I see 'em today. Which are different from the facts (as I saw 'em) 2 years ago, and extremely different from the facts (as I saw 'em) 10 years ago. So, clearly the facts as I see 'em are, in all probability, not facts at all but things I don't know that I don't know, to paraphrase the century's greatest obfuscator. If you wanna send that to our illiterate friend, BMG (deleting the expletives, natch).
All ranting aside, I finally saw my way to a clear climate/fossil fuel conclusion: The first half of fossil fuels (perhaps a little less than that now) led to about 1.5 C world average warming (0.8C so far, 0.6 still in the pipeline due to lag time), and in all likelihood we'll burn the second half for another 1.5 C, PLUS whatever a plethora of unknown/poorly-quantified positive feedbacks have in store for us. According to James Hansen, the threshhold for dangerous AGW (melting Greenland) is/was 0.5 C (relative to 1800). So I don't think we need any more model calculations by IPCC, just pure observational research on rates of ice loss, rates of warming, etc. So I've unplugged my mind from the IPCC reports but continue to follow field observations and data analysis with great interest. That's what I'm now telling my audiences. I'm also still telling them to learn to grow food sustainably - what other choice do we have (if we want to watch the great experiments {climate change and human population overshoot consequences}), even if there are some terrible climate surprises?
I do get your point, however, that the 'liberal' media, or MSM, is really just the DTM (daily trivia media).
tooj
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 9:36 pm
01 Feb 2008
Keep going.
Why does the straightforward presentation of ideas that have a "ring of truth" about them produce a firestorm?
Pehaps it has to do with too many people having idolized ideas borne NOT of what is somehow true, but instead ideas speciously emitted everywhere for the sake of political convenience and economy expediency.
Let's remember that Bill Clinton is a politician. He may still "say it ain't so"...but I am hopeful Bill will stand behind the words he has spoken and continue to bear witness to the truth as he sees it.
Right or wrong, Bill Clinton has done something wonderful and vital, I suppose. He has broken the pernicious silence surrounding a matter that could indeed have profound implications for our children, coming generations, global biodiversity, the environment and Earth's body.
Always, with thanks to you and the Gristian Community,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 10:47 pm
01 Feb 2008
Hmmm.... ok...... for just a moment let us consider that Bill Clinton is smart and is somehow on the "right" track; and that at least one way to realistically address the challenges posed by global warming could be by limiting the rate of increase in the unbridled growth of the global economy.
Perhaps we could follow what we already know from good science, sound reasoning and common sense. We can choose to respond ably and differently, in a more reality-oriented way, to the emergent global challenges looming before humanity, the ones that we can certainly manage because these challenges can be seen so clearly now to be spectacularly induced by the unrestrained global growth of human overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities now threatening to ravage the Earth.
Of course, it is fair to ask what the family of humanity could choose to do "ably and differently, in a more reality-oriented way." Here are several ideas that come to mind.
Implement a universal, voluntary, humane program of family planning and health education that teaches people the need for setting a limit on the number of offspring at one child per family.
Establish an upper limit on the growth of the individual human footprint.
Restrict the reckless dissipation of limited natural resources so that the Earth is given time to replenish them for human benefit.
Substitute clean, renewable sources of energy, through the use of substantial economic incentives, for the fossil fuels we rely upon now.
Recognize that everything human beings do on the surface of our planetary home utterly depends on the finite resources and frangible ecosystem services of Earth. Perhaps the time is nearly at hand when an endlessly expanding, gigantesque global economy on a relatively small planet of the size and make-up of Earth becomes patently unsustainable.
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 11:09 pm
02 Feb 2008
Even though Bill Clinton has "stepped it up" by talking about the need to slow the global economy -- given its leviathan scale and, perhaps, soon to become unsustainable growth rate -- there remains one problem, the proverbial "mother" of all global challenges, about which Republicans and Democrats, the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe and ordinary people, the corporatists and environmentalists, leaders and followers remain in virtually total denial.... trenchantly unwilling to discuss openly:
OVERPOPULATION ISSUE OVERLOOKED BY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES
http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/topstories/269259
THE CAPITAL TIMES, Madison, WI
Rob Zaleski -- 1/25/2008
Thanks for your attention. Comments are invited.
Steve
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