Comments Ken Ward has made

Brad, This is a very useful post. Important to remember that the reason we (US environmentalists, that is) went with cap in trade is that it was supposed to gain us a powerful segment of private sector. Now that the chips are down, where are they? The real question here is not whether companies like Duke pull off spurious "clean coal" outfits like ACCE, it's why hasn't EDF and NRDC threatened to pull out of U.S. Climate Action Partnership, given the lackluster, at best, to duplicitous actions of corporate membership.

Thanks everyone for the comments and suggestions. As Andrée pointed out above, I'm not Kuba's father. His dad, Peter Zaleska, with whom Kuba and Simon live half time, has heartily endorsed Kuba's plan, in which the puppy/dog travels with the kids between households (both in Jamaica Plain).

The landslide of get-the-kid-a-puppy-already! (make sure it's from a shelter) comments and votes doesn't so much resolve the conundrum, as outline the problem. The JP Green House is 2 things: a model residence aiming to meet the rigorous passivhaus standard in an abandoned 100 year old former corner store on a low/moderate budget - which is primarily a matter of  design/build skill, with a few trade-offs discussed in my recent post; it is also a demonstration project, whereby the decisions our blended family takes in trying to mesh the imperatives of climate action and intentional living with parenting, love and holding down a job mirror similar tensions in other homes and households. As SMGrist points out, you all don't really get a vote, but we do assume there are others wrestling with the same problems with something to say on the questions before us.

That sort of a long-winded buffering of my point. Why so few comments and votes on the nix-the-puppy side of the argument? I found the back of envelope esitmate that US dogs & cats put out 3 1/2 times the carbon of the US cement industry to be astounding and worthy of consideration when it comes to our demonstration purposes. Isn't there an argument that pet ownership is a luxury that the world can no longer afford? Please do not interpret that as some call for puppy genocide. I don't know where I come down yet, but I do find the question worthy of consideration. Why should individual preference for pets be any different then say, owning a snowmobile or dirt bike?

Our demonstration/model intends to sketch a lifestyle that is both satisfying and full and more in line with that which is globally sustainable. Well, no way the rest of the world can have snowmobiles and dirt bikes like Americans do, and based on the numbers, neither does does it seem possible for the rest of the world to emulate our love for pets. Pet ownership in China increased 20% between 1999-2004, that's unsustainable. As the sponsors of one petition suggest, an expanding pet industry is, in effect, trading off wild species through habitat destruction for more domestic animals.That's the short term, of course.

In the mid-term, which I count as within Kuba's lifetime, we're looking at climate impacts fast and large enough to tear at the fabric of civilization. Isn't that worth more consideration here?

Fred Small's 350 ought to be on the list, a stunner which manages to be truthful, uplifting, singable and – most extraordinarily – fit "350" into a chorus.

I haven't the termerity to attempt such a feat, but do have a song about the 1938 hurricane which devasted New England and Long Island, hitting my own state of Rhode Island very hard. The Hurricane That Had No Name is based on eyewitness accounts.

Joe, I think you are misrepresenting the argument, at least your take doesn't quite gibe with my own view on the matter, and I don't know of any other ACES critics who are seriously arguing that the EPA implementation of the Clean Air can do the job of federal legislation – for several of the reasons you note. The point in referencing the Clean Air Act is to counter the position taken by Waxman-Markey advocates that failure to pass legislation now will mean that no action is taken. That's simply not true, because CAA regulation stands in the wings – insufficient to handle the problem and no road-map for global action, to be sure, but a very effective stop-gap that arguably would have more immediate impact on US emissions than ACES in its present form. You point out that regulating carbon emissions under current law entails a degree of uncertainty, encouraging coal sector interests to support (or acquiesce to) new law. That's a huge thing, not to be traded away lightly.

Robert Kennedy Jr. and then Michael Wara (after Senate refuses Kennedy).

First Ken (Ward) speaking here...

My point about Enron's role was more general than cap & trade, that is, regulation, enforcement and law are always subjected to constant pressure by those regulated looking for loopholes, laxity, or to reshape the playing field. In my view, to guarantee an outcome, and we have no choice with carbon, then we have to look at more draconian measures then cap & trade. If and when we do so, by mandating cap & phase-out on extractions or feedstock, then and only then is price parity for renewables achieved (and price stability for fossil fuels).

Sean, You've left out the key piece of the story, which is that it was Enron that mounted the national campaign to win state deregulation and it was Enron that spearheaded the idea of cap & trade as climate policy, having reaped immense profits in the sulfur market. Enron's utility deregulation drive included significant payouts to state environmentalists, which may or may not have been illegal, depends on the state law, but was certainly unethical (for all parties).

You know, I don't know, so I'm glad you asked before I post next piece. Perhaps you have a view on this, but I find the whole area of carbon uptake (at least bio-terrestial) to be a morass of conflicting views and insufficient data/analysis. I don't think there's a question that halting deofrestration is necessary, but I don't know whether failure to do so alone is enough to go over 2.0ºC, how it compares with biomass, where reforestation ranks viz biochar in pulling carbon, and so on. Something to study.

Ahhh, Randy. Say it isn't so! You can still call Kucinich and change your mind. As to who is speaking to what part of you, I'd argue you've got it mixed up. Opposition to Waxman-Markey is an act of reason, support is based on emotion. There is no way in hell that the bill I've heard called "Whacky Marksman" is going to come even faintly close to what Joe Romm, among others, has eloquently laid out is required. At the top list of the reasons for this is that US environmentalists chose not to tell the truth a long ways back. Now, on the brink, we have neither a solution nor the troops (for whom honesty is a requirement) to make a fuss. Since we've been playing the same game for decades, when exactly do we stop and try something else, liking telling the truth? Like I say, I think think this is an intellectual conclusion because I can sure say that I wish like hell I could be supporting the damned thing.

Bill, I suppose that makes sense, but only if you believe that cap & trade in some form is functional. I don't. I spent 13 years of my life on implementation of the Clean Water Act – which is scads easier to enforce than cap & trade at it's best could possibly be – in NJ where we had, pound per polluter, more citizen enforcement resources than anywhere in the nation, and we still lost. I'll probably write about this soon... but I don't understand how anyone at all cognizant of our own recent history can think that cap & trade, no matter how W-M is strengthened is anything other than a shuck.

Thanks Billy for the update. There's lots going on already that people can involved with. Here in Massachusetts, three teams of college students are volunteering their summer vacation to cycle to every city and town spreading word about 350 ppm. Follow their progress at Mass PowerShift's Mass Climate Summer blog and volunteer to host them when they get to your town. Next month, our 350.org state coalition is organizing "Christmas in July" house-parties around the state and on August 1st, there will be a rally and party at the Jamaica Plain Green House (you can follow or campaign work in the Grist Special series) to welcome all three teams of riders to Boston, the final leg of their journey.

The project is like the first episodes of This Old House, for those old enough to remember, which had a very scruffy Bob Vila and master carpenter Norm rehabbing an old Victorian in Dorchester. I like PBS producer Russell Morash's quote on the aims.... "House will be more than a working model of rehab hints for homeowners and do-it yourselfers," he explained back in 1982. "This Old House will expand viewers" perceptions of what a home can be." Nowadays, "This Old House" seems to be primarily about how to manage your contractor and what a house can be (with 5 or 6 hundred thou...). We are somewhere in the middle - expecting to do substantial work ourselves, but with experts doing essential pieces of the work.

Peter,

More on the important points you just raised soon, but a few quick responses. First, about all we've been doing for a decade and half has been policy, by any measure of US environmentalists' resources. We thought, and major foundations thought, that we could solve climate with good policy. Had a fraction of those resources gone more into....  well, you name it: field, campaigning, protest, media, coalition building, I suggest that we would not be in the spot we are in today. Second, the policy we are promoting is bad policy precisely because it came out of the mindset that we could win by skirting around the edges of the fundamental challenges. Third, the Obama administration has authority to regulate in the CAA, failure to pass W-M doesn't mean the US can't take aggressive action, it could be done now if there were sufficient political power.

This is as succint an analysis of why the bill I recently heard someone call "Whacky Marksman" is a sham that I've seen. Great job Gar, and I'm glad you pointed out the idiocy of trading away immediate power to regulate emissions for a dubious scheme down the line. By the way, my friend Bill  Wolfe, who heads up the NJ Chapter of Public Employees for Environmental Responsiblity, says that  Lisa Jackson played a simlar game before in NJ...

"I watched Jackson do the same thing in NJ. In 2004, NJ DEP (under Brad Campbell) adopted a regulatory finding - technically a definition - of GHG as "air contaminant" (the legal equivalent of "pollutant" under federal CAA) under state air law. This gave DEP a regulatory basis to control GHG emissions. Not only did the NJDEP subsequently do absolutely nothing with this authority for 4 years, but it actually was legally stripped - as the NJ enviro's applauded - by the NJ Global Warming Response Act. DEP's powers to regulate emissions were explicitly neutered and limited to monitoring and reporting."

A hugely important symbolic step. What a great way to start, Phil!

The ease with which President Obama is back-pedaling on permit auctions is a logical outcome of US environmentalist campaigning over the last decade. Convinced that to speak the truth would be too alienating, we sugar-coated the problem and cast climate cataclysm as an economic and employment opportunity. So long as nothing stood a chance of advancing, the pro-catastrophe forces had little incentive to invest in attacking our position. Now that there is some slight prospect of either EPA regulation or Congressional action, we're getting a taste of real push-back and, as Gomer Pyle would say (for those old enough to remember), "surprise! surprise!" our positions are blown away like chaff.

53 organizations issued the "National Call to Action on Global Warming" just one month ago, attempting to cut a political fire break that would stop the wet noodle agenda of the EDF/NRDC/GE/Dow Chemical cartel (USCAP), tossing out the precautionary principle and endorsing a ridiculous 450 ppm standard in a desperate move to appear moderate. Well that didn't work. The Markey/Waxman draft released last week explicitly credits the US Climate Action Partnership, but what did the 53 organizations do? They collapsed.  “An incredibly powerful and hopeful sign” (Sierra Club); “comprehensive” and “key first step” (1 Sky), "a historic opportunity to unleash clean energy" (State Environment). Why not just join USCAP?

The global energy infrastructure cannot be fundamentally and quickly overhauled without some measure of dislocation, disruption and pain. With "billions and billions" at stake (to misquote Carl Sagan), the largest treasure ever seen, this will be the penultimate struggle between the two natures of humankind. The only basis on which the forces of greed, sloth, pride and gluttony might be overcome is self-preservation. We must overturn the present order of things to save our asses and no other argument is worth a tinker's damn.

Peter Barnes' cap & dividend proposal is a hugely important contribution to strengthening our weak position, in my view, for two reasons. First, for considering the atmosphere as one aspect of the public commons, rather than a free resource for pollution, which is what the allocation/auction/dividend debate is about, and second, for proposing to cap carbon "where it enters the economy, not where it enters the atmosphere." If and when a serious drive is undertaken to avert cataclysm, you can bet that the action will be at the refineries and mine heads, not smokestacks.

sorry davedenali

You did respond on the point of coordination, but I respectfully disagree with your point. The reason we are split over how much we must accommodate pro-fossil fuel interests is that we did not, and have not cooperated to maximize our effectiveness. I do not think, EDF possibly being the exception, that our major organizations disagree on values or goals, just strategy. Had we focused our energy and resources we would have more power, in part because setting aside our small differences tends to emphasize how important we believe the goal to be, which in and of itself increases power.

Ken Ward kenward@brightlines.org jpgreenhouse.org

Kyoto redux

This has all the hallmarks, and with Gingrich, at least one of the major players of how Kyoto played out in the US. There too, we had an ineffectual  climate proposal only defensible on bureaucratic terms - i.e. putting systems in place which could then be ratcheted and have an actual impact. As Taz Cheplin showed, Obama's C&T costs will be inconsequential to business and invisible when passed on to consumers. So... we're left with a program that will do what? Transfer money...
What we need is a vigorous environmental opposition to C&T. Only then will be see missing words like "imminent collapse of ice shelves" and "innundation of all coastal lands" and "immediate shutdown of coal plants" and "limits on fossil fuel extraction."

Ken Ward kenward@brightlines.org jpgreenhouse.org www.brightlines.org

Thanks Chaz...

... for taking the time to do this, and I think you've put your finger on a tremendously important point here. I agree that these piddling amounts are inconsequential to business decision-makers and invisible after pass-on to consumers. You're probably right that this signals an expectation by Obama that the tanking economy will take care of short-term reductions, a la Russia, but it seems a cynical maneuver. Given how Obama has sold climate however (with our assistance), he mainly needs to deliver investments in alternatives, and now he can tick off climate. It's just more evidence that neither Obama nor cap & trade enthusiasts accept a timeline for action that's any shorter than 30 years or so.

Ken Ward kenward@brightlines.org jpgreenhouse.org www.brightlines.org

Christopher, Ted & Russ,

Christopher; cc: Ted & Russ,

I don't see it as an "either/or" question; more a "the chicken or the egg" problem. The fundamental challenge in seeking radical change is always the tension between engagement in the present, necessary to be relevant, and holding out on principle, necessary to avoid being captured by the politics of what is possible.

Couldn't quite tell, Ted, whether you were quoting my rewording of Mead in refuting the argument that only small groups drive change. I take the point (though my Mead-esque phrase was meant as parody and referred not to the "climate core," but to elite liberal, mass communication approaches). I do stand by the view that no significant change ever occurs without a hard-nosed, completely committed, radical core. I think a fair reading of American history shows that fundamental change has always been won by radicals driving the nation to a point of conflict, followed by moderates moving solutions acceptable to the majority and key interests. What examples can you point to otherwise?

The core does several things: small but fanatical groups force fundamental questions that are uncomfortable or awkward, and most people would rather not think about, to be deal with (anti-abortion movement), they cut through obfuscation , expert-dominated debate and dilatory political responses by defining simple, moral grounds for action (Civil Rights movement), they protest and disrupt, which is the basis of all outsider group power (Suffragettes), and they polarize the political question and galvanize a larger group of supporters who temporize if given any softer option (Prohibition, Vietnam). No one believes that the New Deal would have been possible without serious organizing by socialists, for example.

I do agree with Christopher's point that we need both. I'm arguing that we have ditched the radical over the last two, three decades in favor of the moderate, and therefore we have no power base.

I also agree, Bill, that climate has fallen on the Pew list because (a) even people worried about climate think the President should handle economics first and (b) given the way we and Obama have spun it, people think that economic recovery will address climate, and I hadn't thought about your important point that we've achieved much toward "ending the false choice between environment and economy."

But what you do not address, Bill, is the reality that some climate reform is not enough; we've completely run out of time to address this in steps. If we pass the "comprehensive climate bill" you mention, then we fail. Whether you agree, in your heart of hearts, with that, I don't know, but I am willing to bet you don't disagree that there are valid arguments being made - by Hansen, McKibben, and every environmentalist in Australia - that cap & trade plus even the most ambitious Democratic domestic measures are wholly insufficient to solve the problem. [The other thing you skip over is continuing weak response to open-ended polling questions.]

The fact that so many US environmentalists can support what most everyone agrees may be a package that is too little, too late and may be our last chance is, I think, pretty good grounds to support the position that we don't have a climate core. There ought to be a vigorous intramural debate going on with enough oomph behind it to force moderate environmentalists at least to negotiate, if not threaten to derail the whole Congressional debacle before it even launches, but we see nothing of the sort.

If these were ordinary times, then this would be merely the usual ebb and flow of American movement politics. At some point we would expect an influx of youth and frustrated radicals who would challenge and/or bypass the moderates, bringing a new verve, new waves of protest and disruption, and new idealism to US environmentalism - perhaps we are seeing the first stirrings of this now in West Virginia and the upcoming Capitol Coal action.

The problem is that there is no time to reinvent our institution nor take the long view - the one point where I diverge from Russ. I think there is more than enough evidence to support Hansen's statement that we're down to 4 years or less.

So... we need to simultaneously drop our moderate agenda, put forward a functional, global solution, engage and galvanize our core, hang on to as much broad public support as we can, and do all this without taking the time to fight for control of our institution, as, for example, the 10 year long effort by SEIU to remake labor.

We must, therefore, look for something very, very rare in society; perhaps even something wholly new. Our present leadership and moderate organizations must step back from the path they have followed for twenty years and blaze a new one, and that Herculean project, I would argue, requires that we shift our immediate attention from the majority to a minority.

I'm a Tom Rush fan (new album out! http://www.tomrush.com/nimbit.html#music/whatiknow) and in his update to fans this month, he included two quotes which seem very apropos...

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
Sir Winston Churchill

"Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is."
Erich Fromm

Ken Ward kenward@brightlines.org jpgreenhouse.org www.brightlines.org

Gramsci

I have that one on my wall; also, the motto of William the Silent, Dutch leader in the revolt against Hapsburg Spain, who knew a thing or two about desperate situations...

"It is not necessary to hope in order to persevere."

Ken Ward ken@brightlines.org www.brightlines.org jpgreenhouse.wetpaint.com

Actually, I think it's a larger point...

... of disagreement, Jon. I don't disagree that the world toward which we are working does not encompass large national armies, but looking to the near future, I think the U.S. military may be one of the institutions the world must rely upon to survive and make the leap to post-carbon.

The carbon savings from military renewables may be small (I'm taking our word on that), but then the list I proposed isn't based on that criteria, it's based on changing the climate story, and from that perspective, the military matters. It is a powerful example because if one can do away with fossil fuels in combat situations, there can be no question that we can to it elsewhere. It is a hugely efficient institution of mass education, particularly for those who don't go beyond high school.

In the end, it's where the power is and even if we don't reach the straits some folks predict, New Orleans showed us that the military will be more engaged in civil defense and martial law situations; don't we want to make sure that the officer corps is thinking in terms of preparing for climate crisis and views the world through a post-carbon, renewables paradigm?

Ken Ward ken@brightlines.org www.brightlines.org jpgreenhouse.wetpaint.com

But why was climate downplayed?

David,

Your position (which is widely shared enough, I think, to be considered majoritarian among environmentalists) mystifies me. If we are dependent upon the Obama administration to avert climate catastrophe and our role is to "help" then we might as well throw in the towel now, because the very clear message of the Inauguration was that President Obama meant what he said as candidate Obama: energy is about jobs, independence from oil imports and, oh yeah, climate too.

Nothing on display in the last few days would indicate that this President feels any strong responsibility to bring hard realities before the nation - certainly, not on a 4 year timeline. If he did, then climate would have had some central place in the Inauguration story.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the President would have had to announce new programs, shift gears or even ruffle any feathers. But we should certainly have seen more than a stray mention in the Inaugural speech and... well, that was it, wasn't it? Why didn't The President attend LCV's event installing solar panels at a DC school, instead of sending Sec. Chu? Why was there no sober aside in any public statement, or in the Proclamation about pulling the nation together, as a start on the long haul of refocusing the nation? Why has none of the language been changed since the campaign? The only new take on climate has been Secretary Chu's refreshingly straight talk, but one Secretary does not an Administration make.

The items people are enthusing about in posts and emails, like the White House web site and the fact that climate was mentioned at all in the Inauguration, are about the least that could have been done. Think about it. If the transition team had set out to downplay climate, what else could they have done?

Ken Ward ken[at]brightlines.org

comments

Couple things....

re: wiscidea. The continuum chart is offered as an example, not as comprehensive analysis. Sure, there are many groups/approaches missing on the "continuum," and I acknowledge that this approach, of the 3, is the most awkward, but the point of the exercise is not to figure out where any one approach or organization is located, it is to encourage an institutional view of US environmentalism. Your point, that local/state groups are underrepresented, and "shift" to incrementalism is not as strong as the chart suggests is true enough if one applies the approach to a state, but I think that the example, as drawn, is accurate enough for the nation. In the early 70s and early 80s, advocacy-based organizations set the agenda, as we do now, but there was considerably more room to maneuver because of the breadth of activism and the strength of protest and direct action.

re: Bart's comment. I don't agree that "in the U.S., the two axes are not separate." The cross-axis methodology deals with ideology, not organization. Sure, the US corporate/ideological right wing nexus is anti-environmental, but position is at odds with significant numbers of conservatives - which is why Republican candidates for President swing wildly between pro/anti positions (Bush on Kyoto, McCain on climate).

re: Grassroots. The view that "grassroots" is good and effective and "institutional" is clumsy and compromised is a leftist canard. We need both and both are strengthened when leadership thinks of environmentalism as an institution. Organizations are hugely important in assisting grassroots efforts to blossom, as RAN and SIerra Club are doing now, supporting coal swarms. Advocacy groups are vastly more powerful in direct proportion to levels of direct action and street protest. These are all institutional strategic questions of where organizing opportunities lie, what best ramps up spontaneous action, and so on...

We're spending billions now and have thousands of full time staff working on completely independent organization by organization projects. That won't work. Coordination may be stumbling, but we can't do without it.

re: Steven on Population."The rate of population growth declines in some countries and regions with growing wealth and not in other countries." Really? Where? And is wealth the important factor? What about standard of living, stability and happiness? Is it not the case that, generally speaking, nations that are secure, provide a comfortable - not necessarily rich - way of life, have personal and political freedom, and are dynamic (not necessarily in terms of economic growth), experience significant population decline?

Ken Ward ken[at]brightlines.org

The Bottom Line

onerudebuddha writes... "Ah, the familiar gnashing of teeth as the Most Aggressive Progressives prepare once again to devour their own entrails."

Wolverine writes... "This argument boils down to lesser of evils v. fighting for what you believe in.."

It is a tragic error to view this debate through the familiar lens of achievable, but limited-reform now versus purest, but pie-in-the-sky fundamental change.

The point of debate is not strategy, it is about how the problem is defined.

I read Jim Hansen's papers and a host of supporting original publications (not to mention the BBC and National Geographic) and am fully convinced that the world must bring the level of atmospheric carbon concentration (equivalent) at least below 350 ppm (I'm willing to bet that that number will go down again to 275 very shortly), and in the absence of any more precautionary proposal, I'm willing to accept Hansen's proposed timetable for global - not US, mind you - action.

EDF does not.

That is the debate.

If Hansen et. al.'s position is accepted, then Lieberman/Warner is unacceptable, because it precludes reaching the 350 ppm bright line within the timeframe for action; the world moves from breaching various tipping points to passing the point of no return, and I can expect that my 8 year old son Eli will live through a descent into chaos.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with pure very pragmatic approaches. It has to do with accepting a precautionary position or not.

I do; first because I am an environmentalist and should always err towards this view, and secondly, because i have read virtually all of the pertinent papers from climate scientists, biologists, geologists and meteorologists (though it is harder and harder to keep up with the volume), and I defy anyone to do so and still argue, as EDF maintains, that we have 40 years to put together an adequate US climate policy.

But EDF takes no position. Krupp's careful and vauge phrasing of goal - "to reduce those [CO2] concentrations to today's levels or below - sidesteps the fundamental question.

Ken Ward ken[at]brightlines.org

Conspiracy?

I understand your distinction. I meant "conspiracy" not in the legalistic or criminal meaning, but in the more general sense of a group of people acting in concert to advance a hidden agenda.

There are some who believe that this is a clear cut, corporate-run conspiracy, exerting direct control through foundations and I'm arguing that this is not the case.

To the extent that EDF advocates a corporate perspective and "free market" approach (I use quotes because I don't think that cap & trade is at all a free market climate policy) and accepts funding from the Pew Trusts and other similarly inclined foundations, this is icky, but it is not conspiratorial, because the players are all quite up-front about their reasoning and intentions.

I think your description of how Pew exerts power is dead on - though you left out the key Pew innovation, which is to form its own environmental groups, like National Environmental Trust and Oceana, and bypass environmentalists altogether (and fold them back in, as Pew did with NET recently, when their purpose is exhausted) - but I don't see Pew program officers calculated how much is necessary to keep our organizations flush enough to stay on the tether, but too poor to actually accomplish anything. If anything, I'd say the major organizations have had more than enough money  but squandered the opportunity.

Ken Ward ken[at]brightlines.org

Rising Tide

I goofed. I had listed Rising Tide with other organizations, based on a stray reference to Green Jobs, but neglected to read through the wealth of material on their site. Though I do not think there is time for any effort that aims to challenge capitalism, racism and patriarchy along with climate, Rising Tide is certainly no product of the Climate Policy Paradigm! My apologies. Ken

Ken Ward ken[at]brightlines.org

response to posts...

Great set of responses. Seems to me, all whining in my posts aside, that we (Grist posters) are making some strides towards carving out a conversation on the fundamental challenges.
In no particular order:

1. re: Bill MicKibben's post. Definitely didn't mean to imply that there has been no response to Hansen. Bill's eloquent and dogged effort to draw attention to the 350 benchmark is the most visible and effective. But I think that Bill's organizing in Step it Up and 350 prove the point. Climate activists groping for some point of certainty in the welter of partial goals and small-scale solutions (nicely described by kmp) must look to new efforts like 350, because there is no clarity in major environmental organizations' and foundations' program.

2. re: John Ryan #1. Cognitive dissonance, as I understand it in reference to climate, has several overlapping meanings: 1. The state of anxiety felt by an individual confronted by evidence which conflicts with belief; thus, the uncomfortable feelings of participants in low carbon footprint workshops who who believe that personal action is important and will rank household recycling and purchase of a Prius high on a list of climate action activities, but are also fully aware that carbon emissions reductions through their own, and like-minded peoples' efforts are essentially meaningless; 2. Sub-conscious processes the mind employs to resolve such conflict, particularly screening out or downplaying information which conflicts with belief. This, I think, describes the state of most professional staff working on climate, who are fully aware of the latest science, but unconsciously screen out, or do not access that information as they go about their day-to-day work), and; 3. Taking action that is contrary to belief and/or conforming one's beliefs to fit with actions one is unwilling or unable to change. This, it seems to me, describes the condition of many knowledgeable people working in the private sector, particularly oil, gas and coal companies.

That's the theory. What actually goes through an individual's mind is, of course, idiosyncratic, but I have listened to many people, from senior staff attorneys to my dentist, describe strikingly similar experiences of existential panic. These intense, mildly dissociative states seem to occur most frequently during commutes, on waking or attempting to fall asleep, and sometimes in breaks during the work day - lulls in the stream of orderly thought. The trigger may be a stray piece of information, an image, or (for a lot of people) a sudden burst of anxiety over the future of their kids or grandchildren. The feeling is difficult to describe - one friend said she felt as though her body was suddenly empty, an echoing hollow between her hips and shoulders. Most people also experience shortness of breath.
I think what's going on is that our fight-or-flight reflexes are kicking in at odd moments, and the problem with our climate agenda - at this very primal level - is that we neither address the feeling, nor offer an opportunity to fight or flee.

In the unfolding WWII analogy, our story speaks in the language of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, whose response to Hitler was...
... by all means in our power to avoid war, by analyzing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and goodwill,"

To break free of our own cognitive dissonance and energize our core, we must rally and fight (flight is not an option), as Winston Churchill did for Britain...
...we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

3. re: John Ryan #2. Neither Ross Gelbspan, nor Bill McKibben, nor any of several other outstanding efforts to draw a bright line and craft a functional solution - see, especially, David Merrill's work at StopGlobalWarming.org and Tom Athan ___ - should be compared to our major organizations and foundations. The difference in resources is gargantuan - a handful of hardworking people, with little or no funding, entirely reliant on volunteer action by individuals and coalitions versus $1 billion in assets dedicated to climate, memberships in the millions, and professional staff in the thousands. The fact that Ross's work is seen in the same terms as, say, the Pew Climate Center, demonstrates a huge disparity in cost-effectiveness, but the bottom line is that Ross and others similarly positioned have limited options if they want to advance a pragmatic solution. McKibben's campaigns aim to shift the balance of power, and in my opinion, the 350 effort will be more useful, because it advances Hansen's bright line, than Step it Up, which called for US domestic emissions reductions alone.

4. re: John Ryan #3. Gore's thinking remains an enigma. On the one hand, as John notes, he does speak in terms of a movement and has called for direction action, but when it comes to spending money, he invests in "We" commercials which are almost the antithesis. Movements and protest are launched by small groups of deeply committed people who crystallize a moral question and polarize options between black and white.
   

I keep turning to the example of slavery in the early half of the `19th century as the best example of how an issue that is accommodated within pluralistic politics can be pole-vaulted to the defining question before the nation. Northern abolitionist groups of the era, like environmentalists now, were large, well financed and able to move limited-aim bills in Congress. They were also committed to incremental change, split into many competing organizations, and spent a good deal of time and energy debating alternative policies - slaves should be returned o Africa, freed, but not made citizens, given their own territory/reservation, and so on. John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry failed raise a slave rebellion, but Brown's moral absolutism, brilliantly publicized by Emerson and Thoreau, put both Southern slavers and Northern abolitionists on the road to emancipation and rebellion.

5. re: John Ryan #4. Sure, I don't see how we avert catastrophe otherwise, and I have an optimistic view of America and Americans, that in clutch, we will do the right and pragmatic thing. The fact that we are not now willing to come to grips with the crisis is consistent with how Americans have always acted, but our nation as a unique ability to shift gears very quickly, and will do so again on climate. Don't get me wrong, this is not an argument to sit on our hands and wait for some future political crisis. But it does argue that our present focus on convincing the majority that we have a problem, while being careful not to scare them too much, is misguided. Rather, we should be focusing on building the base of flat-out committed climate activists, heightening conflict, and polarizing climate between two mutually exclusive visions.

6. re:kmp. I agree completely. I thought the most dispiriting aspect of the debate over Cape Wind was the fact that all arguments, pro and con, were in the abstract. The bottom line question - is Nantucket Sound so unique an environmental and aesthetic treasure that it trumps climate action? - can only be answered if we have some idea, even a guesstimate, of how much wind power we must generate and where, to meet this objective, Nantucket Sound falls on the list of sites.

7. re: lifestyle. I'm not convinced that Americans must make significant changes in lifestyle - at least to reduce fossil fuel use, we may well be forced to make major changes to deal with climate change impacts. It's all a matter of scale and power. If the US government, acting with the same alacrity and pragmatism of post-Pearl Harbor, simply mandated 60 mpg vehicles, phase-down of fossil fuel electricity generation, and required solar retrofits for building heating, we would be in striking distance of self-sufficiency, without any cultural change of significance.

Shellenberger and Nordhaus are half right in arguing that we must celebrate the vision of sustainability. After all, the rest of the world is fighting to become what we are. They are naive, I think, in arguing that emphasizing the positive alone is sufficient.

8. re: Tasermons Partner. I don't think we should discount the possibility of one galvanizing climate impact or a sequence. Part of our problem is that in describing climate change as a host of impacts without differentiation, we make is difficult to grasp the problem as something we can fix. But there is one big problem - the ice shelves and sea level rise - that will be "spectacular."

It already is, but we're not doing much to draw attention to it. The breakup of the Wilkins ice shelf in March of this year, 30 years earlier than the leading expert predicted, is very sobering and ought to have been banner line news in our communications.

9. re: Anna, Lorna,  hapa, Handley on what do we do? Good suggestions all. I feel that the key issue here, though, is how our organizations and the foundations which support us, define the agenda. I don't see that there is time to construct an alternative. This is nettlesome, in that there is little to offer frustrated activists, and at the same time relatively straightforward. It is our institution and if we cannot imagine reworking our own approach, why should we hold out any hope of changing America?

Ken Ward ken[at]brightlines.org

response to vernacularsnoop

Just 4 out of 52 most recent Green party press releases concern climate change, and 2 of those were international releases. http://www.gp.org/press.php

Global warming is ranked 8th on a list of 11 issues on the 2008 Green Party candidate questionnaire.

According to Brent McMilian, Green Party Political Director, "On energy policy, the connections between wars of imperialism, global warming and peak oil should be the number one focus of our federal level candidates."

This quote appeared in the Fall, 2007 issue of Green Pages http://www.gp.org/greenpages/, which contains no story about climate change, but does include articles entitled: "Anti-Racism: Green Party Has a Long Way To Go," "The Color of Green: Getting to Know People of Color Across the Country Active in the Green Party," "Greens Join Soldiers in Protest Against Iran War," "The Drug War is Meant to Be Waged, not Won," and so on.

What is this if not an orthodox leftist agenda? All three announced Presidential candidates - Jesse Johnson, Cynthia McKinney and Kent Mesplay - are vying for leadership of this agenda, none challenge it.

I stand by my assessment.

Ken Ward ken[at]brightlines.org

BP's Awards

Does this mean that CERES will take back their award, I wonder?

CERES was founded by environmental groups to advance the Valdez Principles in the investment world. In March, 2006 it announced...

"BP Receives Top Score in First-Ever Ranking of 100 Global Companies on Climate Change Strategies"

http://www.incr.com/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=543&sr ...

Ken Ward ken[at]brightlines.org

RFS

For one, I don't know much about RFS. Secondly, I see the most important conflict as renewables & efficiency vs. fossil fuels and as we aren't even able to fight that one, I don't see us capable of joining battle with agribusiness.

Ken Ward ken[at]brightlines.org

graph

Ron,

I had some trepidation posting the chart for that very reason - to the naked eye, the correspondence between protest and federal legislation looks general, but erratic. I decided to post the chart, in part, because it shows very clearly the decline in protest over time.

It is important to note that Agnone's statistical correletion between rates is significant no matter what the eye tells you. The same problem crops up in the Antarctica ice core data, which show a significant correlection between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and global temperature, but with significant - to the eye - lag time.

Ken Ward ken[at]brightlines.org

What drives change?

Colin, I think we're dealing here with a classic "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" conundrum. If we turn to human experience and American history as our guide, there is no question that significant socio-political change (the egg) is always driven by a small, committed contingent.

As organizers and leaders we skipped this step, believing that we could solve the problem by our own direct efforts, relying on the ultimate reasonableness of political and private sector leadership and majority public opinion. We have achieved these three things, have we won?

Flip the thing around. If we do not speak to "the converted" - the 3% who have only this year appeared in the polls - where do they go? Think about it in personal terms. If you are one of the "three-precenters" who has been paying attention to climate scientists and has come to accept that the world as we know it is on the line, are you going to be satisfied with the optomistic and unrealistic US environmentalist story?

Out situation is comparable to early 60's civil rights organizing. The civil rights establishment pursued a moderate, gradualist, and negotiated strategy. When high school and college students began spontaneous sit-ins, finding and expoliting cracks in the wall of Jim Crow, the established leadership tried to supress the effort, arguing that confrontation would polorize public attitudes and endanger majority support.

In that case - as in every other instance of significant social change,  including the American Revolution and Abolition - moderate positions were challenged by a radical minority, whose tone, tactics and urgency alienated weak supporters - but that is inescapable, where the goal is to polarize a tough proposition. Where this has been accomplished, and where social movements have rested their case on an expression of fundamental American values, a majority is returned and truth and justice have prevailed. Where social reformers have aimed for incremental solutions based on wide but thin public support, they are easily bollixed up by opponents - who, it should be remembered, succeed because they have disciplined, single-minded "true believers."

Ken Ward ken[at]brightlines.org

A True Fundamentalist Revival

Thanks, Cani (and i like VeJann's text as well). As you point out, literalists pick through to find passages that support positions and politlcal strategies already decided upon, and the biggest fraud, in so doing, is that the emphatic words of Christ are given short shrift. If God is in fact a nit-picking legalist, as literalists claim, then Fallwell and anyone foolish enough to follow him are surely consigned to a very warm place.

This fundamental skewing away from true "fundamentalist" Christian belief and practice is the Achilles heel of the religious right. It is important to emphasize - particularly for those outside communities of faith - that every wave of political progress and expansion of liberty and justice in US history won in the political sphere was accompanied by a fundamentalist Protestant revival.

It's tough to use such language without wincing because the terms are so indelibly stamped by mean spirited bigots, apologists of wealth and modern Pharisees.

As we focus on what conditions will permit rapid social-political change on the scale and speed necessary to put America at the head of a last ditch global drive to head off collapse, a resurgence of true Christian spirit (and willingness to toss money changers out of the temple) is going to be important.

An effective challenge to the power of legalist leaders who have hijacked American Christiantiy can only come up from the pews. Just as American democracy is refreshed by unearthing the founding Priciples of the Republic, so are revivals nourished when Protestants remember their doctrine and start reading their Bibles, open to what is written there. That Falwell apparently felt completely secure in premising a major sermon on the shoddiest of Biblical scholarship is convincing evidence that while there is a lot of page turning going on, there isn't much reading.

Ken Ward ken[at]brightlines.org

Use skeptics to tell our story.

David,

This is an excellent question that nicely illustrates why US environmentalists must discard the approach, tone and role we adopted over the last couple of decades if we are to have any hope of affecting the outcome on climate.

As I have noted in other posts, and you summed up nicely in a post on Huffington's site (link), the important question to ask in communications - and how we respond to skeptics is purely a problem of communications  - is to ask what response best tells our story?

For the two decades, our story was that climate change is real. We won the point, a decade too late, but the overwhelming majority of Americans now accept reality.

We ought now to be telling the story of abrupt climate change and mobilizing the relatively small numbers of existentialist-minded leaders (many of whom are not environmentalists) who are prepared to take forceful and single-minded action. From this perspective, any time spent in rebutting skeptics is utterly wasted. Our important audiences could care less.

However, by taking a few simple, cheap and determined actions we have an excellent opportunity to reinforce our story. We won't do so, however, until we rid ourselves of two persistent and pernicious beliefs: that environmentalists are responsible for solving climate change and that our principle audience is the general public. These two, deeply ingrained assumptions channel our work, our politics and our response to our adversaries and enemies in ways that reduce our political power (and inflate the influence of skeptics).

If we refocus on mobilizing a bloc of determined climate action political leaders, then we should take action toward skeptics that matches the anger of these folks and is invigorating. This can be done by stepping outside the box of civic niceties and "balanced" debate, which no longer apply (did anyone bother to respond to pacifists after Hilter invaded Poland?).

Here's three easy ways this could be done.

1. NRDC, ED, UCS and the Sierra Club refuse to appear in any media broadcast with skeptics.
   
2. Grist should institute a policy similar to Craig's List where posts from "skeptics" are flagged by readers and removed.
   
3. The Green Groups release a white paper that endorses the precautionary, climate-science-proposed standard of global action, or "bright line," defined by Jim Hansen and hammer away at the terrible story of ice sheet break-up and civilization-busting sea level rise.

Ken Ward ken[at]brightlines.org

The Numbers

Here's the methodology I followed. I made a completely personal list of what, in my experience, are the most activist-oriented foundations, plus a few that are just big (25 in total). I took whatever I could find on the web as total environmental grants made for the most recent year I could find. For most of the foundations it was 2003 or 2004, but for a few I had to go with 2001. For the largest funders, where I could find no breakdown by % of subject, I arbitrarily took 10% of total grants - which seemed a safe number.

A recent survey of climate change foundation grants made by just 15 foundations found $100 million in grants for 2004 - though this did include the UN Foundation with around $40 million, which I did not count.

I will be quite happy to be corrected on the numbers, but I think there remains no question that there are sufficient resources available to support the scale of coordinated climate change campaign we need to run.

As to whether there have been any significant shifts in grant-making, I will stick with my "laughably" quick check. Be happy to make a more in-depth analysis..... just as soon as my grant comes through.
On Response to "Death": Part IV posted 4 years, 8 months ago 3 Responses

Responding to Norris

Norris,

I'm not sure if you had a chance to read through the remaining sections or not. It's a bit awkward having an argument go out in installments. If you have, I'd be interested to know whether you have the same reaction.

The overarching point is that building sufficient power to put climate change on the national agenda, let alone have any hope of winning same, requires a mammoth effort with a level of coordinated funding and campaigning that the environmental movement and our funders are not, at present, contemplating. We've got maybe 20 years to accomplish this Herculean political task. Failure to approach this in a single-minded way will result in the largest human-induced tragedy in history. Catastrophic weather events, changing patterns in agriculture and sea level rise will have a disproportionate impact on those nations with the least capacity to take protective measures. America has the money to build hurricane barriers to protect Wall Street - the carnage in Bangladesh will be agonizing. Lousiana, we may assume, isn't going to be in much better shape.

We might disagree on the causes and effects of the Greenpeace decline, but that seems to me to be neither here nor there in the face of the immediate choices we face. I'm in favor of all environmental organizations immediately shifting a minimum of 50% of their resources to a joint climate change campaign. I agree with your estimate, and Michael & Ted's, that the current incremental, moderate approach to climate change is virtually meaningless - we will have to mount a very different, much more powerful, concerted and tougher effort.On Response to "Death": Part III posted 4 years, 8 months ago 3 Responses