Michael Levitin is a freelance writer based in Germany. Last week, he attended KyotoPlus: Escaping the Climate Trap, an international conference held in Berlin.

Monday, 2 Oct 2006

Berlin, Germany

Imagine a trans-European "super grid" of renewable energy connecting solar parks in northern Africa to wind farms in Scandinavia. Consider the millions in savings -- in miles, in dollars, in tons of CO2 injected into the atmosphere -- if once a week, one out of every 10 Americans telecommuted to work using state-of-the-art conference screens at home.

Or how about picturing the alternative: a world in which our continued burning of fossil fuels forces global temperatures over the 2 degree Celsius threshold (we're currently 0.7 degrees C above pre-Industrial levels) believed to be the tipping point that will lead to long-term, devastating atmospheric changes.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the G8 summit in July.

Photo: www.g8russia.ru

These were a few of the starkly opposing scenarios laid out by scientists, politicians, activists, and businesspeople at last week's international conference held in Berlin, called "KyotoPlus: Escaping the Climate Trap." With the original Kyoto Protocol and its modest rules on carbon cuts set to expire in 2012, energy and policy experts across the developed world are hustling to lay out conditions for a new, comprehensive climate-protection policy. It's fitting that the gathering took place in Germany, the country scheduled to take over the rotating seats of both the European Union and the G8 nations in 2007 -- and where Chancellor Angela Merkel last Thursday vowed to make tackling climate change a top priority of her European chairmanship.

"[The future] is about making sharp cuts. It's about restructuring our lives, re-steering investment, shifting our modes of transportation and production," Renate Künast, a Green Party politician and former agriculture minister, told the 600-strong crowd packed into the glass, solar-powered Energy Forum building located on the Spree River, just yards from the longest standing stretch of the Berlin Wall. Young, charismatic, and a shrewd politician, Künast is the kind of firebrand leader the environmental movement needs, here and elsewhere. Damning the EU's failed cap-and-trade system within the Kyoto Protocol, whose loopholes allowed industrial carbon emissions to keep soaring, she called on her country to much more aggressively lead the way in Europe. "Germany must be a pioneer. We need a green market economy where only sustainable use is an acceptable use. Count on technological change," Künast warned, "because by the middle of the century, we'll need an economy that runs carbon-free."

How we reach that carbon-zero goal, though, is where the Germans and other Europeans differ decidedly from the Americans in their approach to climate change. It's as though, at a conference like this one, two opposing strategies are simultaneously at play: there's the European camp, attempting to centralize a common energy policy (such as a follow-up treaty to Kyoto) based on universally agreed-upon emission cuts and a continent-wide plan for renewable fuel distribution, versus the American one, where energy policy is driven by a fragmented, state-by-state patchwork of strategies and no unifying law.

"At the end of the day, climate is about energy technology, and in the U.S. it's the states who are taking the lead on energy policies," Lewis Milford, president of the Vermont-based Clean Energy Group, said at a panel he chaired with California Energy Commissioner John Geesman, Massachusetts Rep. Jim Marzilli (D), and other clean-fuel advocates from the U.S., who shared some surprising results of their regional energy plans. In Connecticut, for example, an NGO called SmartPower is marketing clean energy through competitive community programs; in Oregon, energy efficiency saves the state 1 million megawatt hours per year; in the Northeast, nine states have signed on to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, agreeing to cut CO2 emissions by 10 percent. And in California, according to Geesman, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's aim to increase renewable-electricity generation to 20 percent of the state's total by 2010 -- and, even more ambitious, to possibly 33 percent by 2020 -- backs up a recent poll that found 85 percent of Californians want the state to double its reliance on clean energy over the next decade.

"Germany has become complacent as a leader in climate change," said Marc Berthold of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, one of a handful of NGOs that helped organize KyotoPlus. It was Germany, after all, that in 2001 established the Renewable Energy Sources Act, whose successful feed-in tariff model has been adopted by countries from China to Spain. Germany is still the world's largest wind power producer, the second largest solar producer, and it is planning to subsidize its renewables industry to the tune of $60 billion to $70 billion over the next decade -- a figure that dwarfs U.S. renewable energy subsidy plans per capita by comparison. Nevertheless, "Germany needs to learn from and be encouraged by policies elsewhere," Berthold added. "If the U.S. said, 'We want to be better than Germany by reducing emissions, say, 30 percent by 2030,' that would be great. The competition would help us."

One thing people in Europe seem to agree on is that the growth and trade of renewable forms of energy, including their spread to the developing world, must not be seen as a national resource with national boundaries but as a continental -- even a transcontinental -- resource whose widest expansion benefits us all. In Germany alone, the signs of ecological decline are all too obvious: rainfall deficits, soils suffocating in nitrogen, swaths of forest killed off by the bark beetle, vast tracts of fruit trees withering from disease. So, as the world receives the fourth report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change early next year, Germany will take charge of the European Union and the Group of Eight with the chance to lead the effort to make the most binding commitments to cutting carbon emissions ever, speculated to be as high as 40 percent by 2020.

Then, of course, comes the other big question: will America and the industrialized nations -- not to mention China, India, Brazil, and others -- follow? According to Jerome Ringo, president of the 22 million-member Apollo Alliance, who spoke with a resounding, preacher-like intensity at the conference, the answer is a simple "yes."

"The people of America want to see an answer to climate change. The people of America want to see a reduction in CO2," he said, his voice bellowing through the bright, sunlit conference hall. "I challenge you: help us save the planet. It is not a question of should we. We must."

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Who's afraid of the big, bad future? Al Gore, clearly -- and pretty much anyone who has seen An Inconvenient Truth. While Gore's dissenters may argue that he cries wolf too often, no one who knows and understands the statistics used in the film can doubt that the Big Bad Wolf of climate change is at the door. The question is whether our economies are best built of straw, sticks, or bricks.

He's getting closer ...

Photo: iStockphoto

These days there can be few Grist-folk who haven't seen -- or at least heard of -- the YouTube short Al Gore's Penguin Army, in which he is depicted lecturing an army of slumbering birds. Those stoking the engines of climate change clearly have a vested interest in crying penguin and pouring ridicule on inconvenient assertions about their roles and responsibilities. And then there was the South Park episode this spring in which Gore cried "ManBearPig" as a ploy to attract attention and overcome the real problem -- that he didn't have any friends. South Park may be a national treasure, but bear in mind how the Nazis and their favorite cartoonists portrayed the Jews and others during the 1930s. Lampoons can mask darker intent.

Meanwhile, for most people, most of the time, the climate wolf is still a long way from the door. But it's coming. When SustainAbility polled our network of some 10,000 people working or interested in the field of sustainable development a few weeks back, asking about the prospects for globalization over the next decade, we received more than 1,000 responses from 75-plus countries. Climate change came in fourth in the ranking of big issues that will impact globalization and the corporate responsibility agenda. The top slot went to conflict (42 percent), the second to energy availability (39 percent), and the third to terrorism (26 percent). Climate came in at 22 percent -- although it could be argued that it will have a fair old impact on the availability, or acceptability, of certain types of energy. Poverty got 18 percent.

Perhaps respondents were calculating that the major shocks from climate change would impact our economies beyond the time frame we presented. With no one wanting to cry frog, maybe there was a sense that the water around us will come to a boil at a slightly more relaxed, comfortable pace. The Jacuzzi theory of climate change?

Still, there were some respondents with frogs on the brain -- or in their Jacuzzis. One of the most thoughtful early commentaries on Gore's presentation came from Kevin Sweeney, who argued that, while his message was outstanding and important, Gore didn't leave enough space for hope. This theme was picked up in different ways by two Pauls in our survey, Paul Hawken and Paul Ray.

"My sense is that there has been a reversal of the crying-wolf syndrome in the environmental sector," Hawken warned. "Instead of overstating problems, there is tendency to understate. The IPCC process is necessarily slow and deliberate, a pace of understanding and buy-in that may be overtaken by [damage to] oceans, forests, and Arctic permafrost."

So are there any grounds for hope in all of this? Hawken thinks so. "Hope is not extracted from demonization of business or a recitation of past errors," he noted. "Hope is humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider." And there was more. He noted that there is a huge amount of positive activity designed to address climate and other environmental issues, "but it flies under the radar. For several years now, our Natural Capital Institute has been researching the extent of NGOs, village-based organizations, foundations, institutes, citizen-based organizations, etc., that directly address the issue of social justice and the environment. Our estimate is that it comprises over 1 million organizations populated by over 100 million people, and that collectively it constitutes the single biggest movement on earth."

A cheering factoid, but clearly more needs to be done to give this movement of movements a clear, collective identity. Someone else who has been picking up on elements of this is Paul Ray, probably best known for his book The Cultural Creatives. He kicked off with some fairly gloomy projections, though. "The planet is lurching toward integration," he told us, using the term planetization. Once we factor in the gathering tempo of natural and other disasters, he said, and "our much more uniform and newly collective planetary reactions to them, the paradoxical-seeming effect is that it will take some falling apart of many vulnerable institutions for us to go farther with planetary integration, with the result being a new system."

While Ray believes civil society may well become more informed and more virtuous, even here there was bad news for some. "International NGOs as we have known them will look primitive, because the next generation will be quasi-corporate and make their own money, rather than being in poverty and in perpetual 'begging for money' mode," he said. "Some of them may fuse with newly designed for-profit corporations. I expect the line between for-profit and not-for-profit to be blurred and eventually erased."

We agree, to a degree. Indeed, that's why we're working increasingly with social entrepreneurs and exploring the extent to which for-profit business models can scale faster than their nonprofit counterparts. It's clear, however, that the spread of these new hybrids won't be easy or comfortable. As Ray continued, they "will not only violate our conceptual categories, but will take the lead in redefining what we mean by 'corporate responsibility.'"

And so what should business be doing? Helping us wake up to the wolves at our doors? Replacing straw with sticks and sticks with bricks? "Business can make more and better money in redesigning and in financing planetary integration than it can in trying to hang on to the old inherited neo-imperial exploitation model," Ray concluded. "It is utter folly to be either pessimistic or optimistic, because both are immature emotional responses that fall well short of useful creative action."

Drawing together the epistles from our two Pauls, it's clear that we shouldn't deny ourselves the pleasure of crying wolf when the wolf is out there. But there are at least some grounds for hope -- and, to a degree, clues to how we might achieve something like global salvation. A huge social movement is building worldwide that's likely to spin out novel business mind-sets and models that can tackle vulpine challenges. But this will only happen if CEOs and other business leaders take up Ray's parting advice: "Pull up yer socks an git on wiv it!"

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Drop that apocalyptic vision and start imagining a positive future

The Freak-Out Before the Storm

Back at the turn of the millennium, the local government I was working for asked community members to contribute their vision of the municipality in the year 2025. As an environmental planner, I attended the community's presentations with some interest.

It doesn't have to be like this.

Photo: iStockphoto.

One group that responded was a gifted-students' club from an elementary school. In their envisioned future, they imagined a community with only indoor parks. Beyond these parks, there would be no trees, no plants, no birds, and no animals. Freshwater would be gone, because lakes and streams would either be dried up or too polluted to support life; drinking water would have to be created from desalinization plants on the coast. In the future these children predicted, universities and colleges would be closed because everyone would learn -- alone -- through their personal computers.

As the children spoke, I sat with tears rolling down my cheeks. Had I really just heard what they'd said? Had the appreciative and encouraging municipal council heard the same thing? Why would children who lived in an idyllic natural environment -- surrounded by trees, a rich diversity of plants and lush gardens, abundant wildlife including deer and cougars, large forested parks, and fish-bearing streams -- imagine a future that was ecologically dead?

The answer may be because this is the future collectively envisioned by most everyone, including scientists, technology pundits, fiction and documentary filmmakers, writers, advertisers, video-game producers, and those of us whose careers are devoted to trying to protect the planet. Perhaps these children envisioned a future in which their community was dead because that's the future they're taught is inevitable.

I fully understand this despair. I hit a wall of it straight-on during my tenure as an environmental planner. In fact, I remember saying things like, "Yes, we will hit total ecological collapse, but our job is to ensure that as many species as possible live beyond it." Now I see how harmful such words are.

Somehow, we need to begin to envision ecologically sound and socially just futures that reflect the great diversity of all beings, including humans. We must insist on having a say in what our futures look like. We do not have to accept the singular vision being created by those in power. This singular vision of the future is hyper-urban, with decaying cities, polluted air, and corporate and technological dominance. There is not a speck of nature. White men are still in charge. And then there are those damn flying cars.

On a swing and a prayer.

Photo: iStockphoto.

This isn't the future I want, nor is it one I am working hard to create in my community. My vision of the future includes birds, trees, and clean flowing streams; organic, small-scale farms and lots of bicycles; conversations with neighbors at local stores and engaging educational institutions; clean air, strong women, diverse communities, truly democratic decision making, and happy children. No flying cars.

Some people will dismiss my vision as idealistic or unrealistic. But as scholar Ivana Milojevic of Metafuture reminds us, the dominant, dystopic vision of the future is seen as more "realistic" simply because it is talked about more, visualized more, and analyzed more. It is given infinite time and space in the media. It serves those in control; it is a continuation of their world. It's endorsed by our corporate culture, because people who have been made to feel powerless to contribute to a better world simply give up, becoming self-absorbed in golf games, video games, war games. Becoming relentless consumers to fill the void -- without challenging a thing.

Some people will say that my image of the future is counterproductive; that the doom and gloom is necessary to keep us all on our toes, to get us to respond to the warnings. I understand this. I have witnessed how politicians are unwilling or unable to take action until there is a crisis in front of them. But it doesn't have to be an either/or. Yes, a good cautionary tale is a powerful thing. What makes me crazy is that a cautionary tale is all we get. We also need the alternative. We need hopeful visions to give us something to work for, as opposed to always working against something. We need a diverse crop of sustainable ways forward.

Back to the children who imagined their future as dead: I went to visit them a few months later, and told them about the work I was doing at the local level, some of the amazing work being done by teams of people at the regional and federal levels, by volunteers, and by nonprofit groups. And they completely shifted. They reworked their vision to include flowing streams, trees, birds, animals, and happy people. They just needed to know that there were adults making positive change toward a flourishing earth. And then they asked me how they could help. So we set to work on a plan to create a native garden in their schoolyard.

As peace activist Elise Boulding puts it, "The sheer difficulty of imagining a future sustainability different from the present is one of our greatest problems as a society." Let's create, in the space that Grist provides, a dialogue about our worries and our hopes. Let's share stories about what is important for us to put in place for the future, and what's happening in our communities now that provides hopeful ways forward. It will be hard work to imagine sustainable and just futures, but it is time to begin.

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The Freak-Out Before the Storm

Officials try to scare Americans into preparing for hurricane season

As hurricane season approaches, officials in storm-prone states are determined to scare residents into being ready to take care of themselves -- because as we all saw last year, government sure ain't up to the job. Florida officials are broadcasting public service announcements with recordings of terrified 911 calls made during 2004's Hurricane Ivan. Mississippi's "Stay Alert. Stay Alive" campaign urges people to pack an evacuation kit and, like many states, orders residents to stockpile at least three days' worth of food and water. Recent polls show that a majority of residents remain stubbornly unprepared. Maybe they will be jolted into action by two new studies supporting the theory that global warming is linked to more intense, destructive storms. Now that's scary.

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Group aims to create wildlife corridor from Yellowstone to Yukon

Recognizing that halting development is just not feasible (these are humans we're talking about), a group called Y2Y wants to create a wildlife corridor stretching from Yellowstone National Park to the Yukon in northwest Canada that would allow animals and people to coexist peaceably. A collaboration of conservationists, scientists, and government officials, Y2Y has worked on overpasses and underpasses that let wildlife safely cross highways, and negotiated to curb some use of golf courses and ski slopes to clear the way for animals to traverse them. The goal is to link numerous shrinking wildlife habitats into one long contiguous corridor, hopefully effecting an increase in population -- what zoologist Michael Proctor calls "sex across the highway." Saucy! Researchers have their work cut out for them, trying to determine what structures will be acceptable to a great diversity of megafauna; meanwhile, many existing structures meant for wildlife are being used by eager hikers and bikers. Damn humans.

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NOAA predicts active hurricane season this year

This year's hurricane season, which starts June 1, will produce up to 10 hurricanes in the North Atlantic, up to six of which will be Category 3 (winds over 111 miles per hour) or above, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted yesterday. NOAA thinks it will be an above-average season, but less active than 2005, when there were 15 hurricanes. U.S. government agencies are stressing individual preparedness; acting Federal Emergency Management Agency Director David Paulison said the agency is better prepared this year (a low bar to clear), but noted that New Orleans evacuees currently living in government trailers on the coast would have to evacuate if winds reached even tropical-storm levels of 39 mph. Many scientists believe global warming is increasing hurricane intensity, and some are pondering whether to add a Category 6 (winds greater than 175 mph) to the current hurricane scale. Shiver our timbers.

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A look at green job prospects for 2006

Can't face another year chained to the same old desk or stuck in the same old cube? Itching to start a new career in an environmental field? Fortunately for you, Kevin Doyle of the Environmental Careers Organization knows a thing or two about job searching. He assesses the upcoming year's eco-jobs market and dispenses advice on how to remake your living.

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Schools curbing energy costs by building green

School officials in Oregon are learning a thing or two from a prototype uber-green classroom near Salem, which uses a large skylight and other technologies to enhance and regulate the natural light coming into the space. With energy bills eating up millions of dollars from school budgets, the project demonstrates that classrooms can be built or retrofitted at competitive cost with no need for artificial lighting during the day, even in the rainy Northwest. Officials touring the space say they're impressed. "Even on an overcast day, when I visited, the classroom was very, very bright," said Catherine Diviney, energy specialist for the Portland public school district, which spent more than $6 million for lighting and heating in the last school year. Oregon school districts are reporting significant energy savings thanks to adopting green-building techniques, from using groundwater for heating and cooling to installing natural ventilation systems.

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Kathleen McGinty, head of Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection, approaches the state's environmental challenges with an optimistic "let's-get-it-done" attitude.

Early in her career, she made waves as chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and deputy assistant to then-President Bill Clinton. After creating and heading up the first-ever White House Office on Environmental Policy, McGinty left national politics for a yearlong fellowship at the Tata Energy Research Institute in India, returning in 2000 to act as a counselor to Al Gore during his presidential campaign.

Now, with much of the nation's environmental progress happening at the state level, McGinty is well-positioned to pioneer and push through innovative solutions to environmental problems. In 2004, she helped rally support for Pennsylvania's Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard -- a bill requiring 18 percent of the state's energy to come from clean sources by 2020. And she played a supporting role this year as Pennsylvania became the first coal-producing state to reject the EPA's mercury rule and move forward with its own tougher mercury-reduction requirements for coal-fired power plants.

McGinty maintains -- to the point of evangelizing -- her conviction that protecting the environment and creating a new, clean energy future can lead to dynamic growth in the economy. She explained her reasoning in a recent chat with Grist from her 16th-floor office in the (aptly named) Rachel Carson State Office Building in Harrisburg, Pa.

Let's talk first about the work you're doing in Pennsylvania. What projects have you been working on lately?

Energy is our top priority. I think it's a way to better secure our future and also vastly clean up our environment. If there ever was a win-win, I think it is turning very deliberately to the energy challenges we have and beginning to grow our own energy, right here at home, where we're not dependent on crazy dictators on the other side of the planet.

Pennsylvania has rejected the EPA's mercury rule and moved forward with its own. How much can be accomplished on the state level without the aid of the federal government?

The absence of federal leadership is a real detriment both to public health and the environment, but also, I would argue strongly, to our economy as well. The mercury issue represents that quite dramatically. The sportfishing community is a major revenue-raiser in Pennsylvania. The fact that we now have to strongly advise people against eating the fish that they are catching [because of mercury contamination] ... let's just say it's not a big boost to tourism and recreation dollars in Pennsylvania.

What's your overall opinion about the Bush administration's environmental record?

At best, it represents a huge opportunity lost, and at worst, a real injury to the health and the vitality of our country. The opportunity is ours to capture energy, transportation, advanced-technology markets, and we are ceding those markets and the billions of dollars of export they represent to other countries. Having said that, our failure to show any leadership or vision as it relates to our environmental security very definitely is an injury to the health and well-being of our young people especially.

What role did you play in shepherding through the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard, and what do you think it can do for your state?

This legislation was a top priority for the governor. We rallied around to build the coalitions and the partnerships to support and ensure its passage. I'm really happy to report that the dialogue was completely nonpartisan -- that unlike the deadlock and the polarization at the federal level, here at the state level, people were convinced that diversifying our energy resources, growing and using much more of our energy right here at home, was a winning recipe not only for our environment but also for our economic revitalization and for our security as a state.

Have you seen any job creation as a result yet?

We certainly have. To give you just one example, we won a race to have the most profitable renewable-energy company in the world, the Spanish [wind-energy] company Gamesa, select Pennsylvania as their U.S. home. That company now is building not just one but three manufacturing facilities in Pennsylvania, and they've also opened their U.S. corporate headquarters here. When you add up all of their investments in our state, it's on the order of a thousand new jobs, most of them manufacturing jobs -- one of the largest new investments in manufacturing in our state in a very long time. We are just thrilled to see the positive economic spin-off of our commitment to clean energy.

You recently announced a grant financing an operation at a Pennsylvania landfill turning waste gas from the rotting garbage into fuel.

This is one of my all-time favorite projects. Here we have something that everyone loves to hate: a landfill. It's generating methane, a pollutant that is one of the worst problems as it relates to climate change. But instead of just throwing the book at the landfill, we decided to roll up our sleeves and partner with them, and now that landfill is producing a gas product that is being delivered to four manufacturers in Pennsylvania. It is enabling us to save hundreds of good family-wage jobs at those four manufacturing facilities. It is enabling us to avoid polluting the atmosphere with a strong greenhouse gas. And overall, it's generating enough energy to heat 34,000 homes. That last point is really important to me because as we face what could be a very cold winter -- as we see energy prices going through the roof -- the idea that we can both reduce pollution and hopefully ensure that some 34,000 families will not be shivering in the cold this winter is just a wonderful accomplishment and a terrific partnership.

Any predictions about the future of alternative energy?

I think it is our future. Period. I think that every generation is called upon to achieve some greatness for their country and for the world, and I think that the calling for this generation is to invent a new energy reality -- one that is healthy for our people [and] stabilizing for the world.

After working with President Clinton and later on Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000, you stepped away from politics and started a clean-energy investment fund. What prompted your shift out of the political arena?

My approach to environmental challenges, from my first days in working in the environmental area, has been to see in them economic opportunities in disguise -- to see that an environmental problem is really some business's invitation to invent a new technology, to enhance productivity, to improve efficiency, and to grow their bottom line. So when I had the opportunity to leave government and do something different, I was very drawn to the notion of helping to channel investment dollars in the direction of new, clean, sustainable technology.

Now that you're back in politics at the state level, do you see yourself continuing in politics, perhaps moving back up to the national level in the future?

Honestly, I have never enjoyed politics. I have been in and around the political world my whole career, and I guess I would say I tolerate politics in the interest of getting good things done, but it's not at all what inspires me. I know that seems odd, given my résumé and where I've been. But I love public policy. I'm mostly just passionate about this country and what we can achieve. I realize that the rules of the road are that you have to bear and survive politics along the way in order to be able to do the things that I've had the privilege of doing.

Do you see yourself running for office in the future?

You know, I honestly don't.

As a native of Pennsylvania, what do you see as the most critical environmental issues for your state?

My smart-aleck answer to that is: air, land, and water.

On a more serious note: in terms of air, energy certainly connects centrally to our need to clean up the air pollution that comes from our old, dirty power plants.

In terms of land, we have made a great push to revitalize brownfield properties as a way of cleaning up the pollution that is on those properties but also as a critical part of our strategy to encourage smart growth and to hold on to the rural character of Pennsylvania. I am pleased to say that we now have one of the most expansive brownfield programs in the country as well as the largest farmland-preservation program in the country.

As it relates to water, we're aggressively taking on the legacy of 300 years of unregulated mining in Pennsylvania, trying to clean up the thousands of miles of streams that have been polluted or destroyed by abandoned mine drainage. And now, with the strongest regulations in the country, [we're] requiring farming operations to ensure that manure does not run off those farms and get into streams.

What are your hopes for your home state?

I hope that we will be seen as a state that is inventing and building a clean, sustainable, promising, and exciting future.

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Resourceful environmental leaders have unearthed opportunity amidst the wreckage left behind by this year's record hurricane season and the battering of the Gulf Coast. They've crafted plans for everything from the building of new, green, affordable housing to the tightening of auto fuel-economy standards.

Of course, powerful people with less eco-friendly agendas have seen opportunity too. In their eyes, the devastating storms were not-so-green lights to fast-track brown legislation.

Such efforts to exploit the hurricanes for different political ends will no doubt continue as the process of rebuilding New Orleans and other devastated communities stretches over years or decades.

Here we examine 17 proposals -- both pro- and anti-environment -- that flooded in soon after Katrina and Rita, and offer predictions for their success.

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Radical design might help curb greenhouse-gas emissions from aircraft

Under pressure to reduce fuel use and greenhouse-gas emissions, the airline industry may turn to a futuristic airplane design sketched by Sir Frederick Handley Page in the 1960s. The delightfully dubbed "batwing" would be built of plastic rather than today's heavy aluminum, and would be covered in tiny, laser-drilled holes to reduce fuel-consuming drag. Industry group Greener by Design is using the batwing design in its plans for jets that would consume two-thirds less fuel than current aircraft, which combined with other changes in flying practices could bring total aircraft emissions below current levels by 2025, says industry, even if the number of flights keeps growing. Airlines are hoping that the unveiling of their plans will convince the U.K. government there's no need for taxes on aviation fuel. But some eco-advocates are skeptical. "They are trying to imagine their way out of the problem with artists' impressions that are worthy of Walt Disney," says Jeff Gazzard of the Greenskies Alliance. "The only realistic solution is to fly less."

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Wal-Mart unveils specific, ambitious environmental goals

After weeks of scattered signs and announcements, today Wal-Mart issued a far-reaching set of concrete environmental goals. CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. announced that the company would invest $500 million in technologies to reduce its stores' greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent in seven years, increase its truck fleet's fuel efficiency by 25 percent in three years and double it in 10 years, design a 25 percent more energy-efficient store within four years, work to reduce packaging, and pressure its worldwide network of suppliers to follow its lead. Scott even called on Congress to raise the minimum wage. Activists across the U.S. struggled to maintain their cynicism. Said Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, "The reason Wal-Mart's leadership in this area is so important is that they have the scale and market power to change what is offered, and to change it rapidly." Alyson Slater of the Global Reporting Initiative was more succinct: "I thought GE was big. But Wal-Mart? Whoa. That's big."

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Schwarzenegger signs many green bills into law, vetoes a few

California reaped a green bonanza last week, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) signed more than 30 wide-ranging environmental bills into law. One with potential for nationwide impact will mandate that all new cars for sale in California be stickered with information on how many tons of greenhouse gases they emit, starting in 2009. Others will prohibit sewage dumping from commercial ships within three miles of the shore, ban use of experimental pesticides around schools, phase out mercury in industrial switches, and require cosmetics companies to tell state officials if potentially toxic chemicals are used in their products. However, the Governator vetoed four of the 10 bills the state Sierra Club deemed top priorities, including one that would establish a program to track toxic chemical levels in the bodily fluids of state residents. "This continues his mixed record on environment," said Sierra Club's Bill Magavern. "Not terrible, not great. He could have done better."

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Obama going to Copenhagen

Dear Umbra,

There seem to be plenty of good organizations accepting dollars to help the people of the Gulf Coast. But as The Nature Conservancy has said, "While current attention is rightfully focused on the immediate human toll and suffering of this tragedy, the ecological damage has yet to be assessed."

The rebuilding effort, it seems, ought to occur in an environmentally sustainable way. Where can we direct our dollars to best advantage when the focus shifts?

M.Z.
Cleveland, Ohio

Dearest M.,

Katrina and the toxic soup left in her wake is yet more unneeded confirmation that what we do to our planet, we do to ourselves. It is likely that as the focus shifts to restoration and remediation, we will also receive unneeded confirmation of our obliviousness to the delicacy of ecosystems. Your question of how to help make a good future out of a bad past is an excellent one, and one that a lot of people are struggling with at the moment.

If I had a hammer ...

While I've heard of admirable eco-efforts that are forming, there's no single magical place to send money right now. But here are a few options to check out: Green Relief, Rebuild Green, Habitat for Humanity, the Sierra Club's Gulf Coast Environmental Restoration Project, and the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.

We wish there were a magical place to send money -- a collaborative entity making plans to counteract the shortsighted, business-as-usual rebuilding that has already begun. (Hello, Halliburton.) Because as Grist's own David Roberts put it when I bumped into him in the stacks last week, "There's every reason to believe that the rebuilding effort on the Gulf Coast is going to become what Iraq has: a massive, wasteful boondoggle." (David, as ye Gristmillers know, has quite a bit to say on this whole topic.)

So writing checks, while laudable, may not be enough in this instance. We need to speak up. We need to work with our political-action groups to agitate for consideration of ecosystems, full buy-in from residents, and a transparent process on the ground. We need to encourage the many environmental groups that are weighing in on this issue to collaborate. When I asked David what his call to action might look like, he had this couriered down to the basement:

"Each of these groups has their own ideas and initiatives around reconstruction, but such diffuse and stovepiped efforts will be small levees indeed against the tidal force of corruption and cronyism that already surges toward the Gulf Coast. A coalition along the lines of the Apollo Alliance should come together quickly and start flooding newspapers with editorials, TV stations with ads, members of Congress with letters, petitions, and calls. A bright spotlight needs to be thrown on the reconstruction effort, to drive out the kinds of greedy roaches that thrive in the shadows. If the American people are shown what's being put together, and the alternatives, they'll make the right choice."

You heard him: roaches. Grist will continue to keep tabs on the Gulf Coast and how to influence recovery there, so keep an eye on us. And in the meantime, you know your action group of choice, so get on the phone, get your fingers tappin', and get to work.

Spiritedly,
Umbra

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Obama going to Copenhagen

I heard that George Bush told New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin the city could be remade into "a shining example for the whole world." If Bush did say that, it surely wasn't an environmentally sound renaissance he had in mind. But that is precisely what is needed.

Call it Eco New Orleans. It should encompass not just the city, but the other places blasted by Katrina and by FEMA's impressively incompetent response. The Eco New Orleans I'm talking about should extend scores of miles in every direction. It should be a place attuned to the definition of sustainable development put forth by the U.N.'s Brundtland Commission: "Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Which way to go?

Some estimates put the cost of rebuilding the city and its neighbors at $150 billion -- seven times more than the total amount the feds spent on the nation's 10 most expensive previous natural disasters. Eco New Orleans would cost even more, take longer, and require forming a plethora of public-private enterprises and overcoming immense ideological obstacles. But if we as Americans are unwilling to spend the time and money to rebuild New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast with environmental concerns taking a front seat, then we're as self-interestedly myopic as the administration that couldn't pry itself out of vacation mode to save people's lives.

I'm not saying we can, or should, start tomorrow -- the ongoing human disaster caused by Katrina must be taken care of first. Nor do I seek imposition of a utopian ideal that ignores the region's unique culture, history, and atmosphere. Building Eco New Orleans would demand an innovative politics not only to educate communities about the benefits of an environmentally sound approach, but also to spur them to provide input into how exactly to implement it. It would call for, to use a phrase from my youth, "participatory democracy."

Much can be done to shape the damaged Gulf Coast into a model for others to emulate, modifying it for their own circumstances. I have no blueprint, just an outline of ideas that other people have been thinking about far longer than I. Here are a few places to start:

Fully fund "Coast 2050." This wish list of restoration projects, first put together in the late 1990s, carries an estimated price tag of $14 billion over 30 years. The Bush administration has reliably opposed funding for it.

Because wetlands act as a storm buffer, those already lost to erosion and subsidence probably worsened Hurricane Katrina's destruction. About 90 percent of America's coastal wetlands loss each year occurs in Louisiana: 1,900 square miles since 1932, an additional 700 square miles by 2050, scientists say. If these resources disappear at even a fraction of this pace, immense harm will be caused to human populations, infrastructure, the seafood industry, fisheries, and wildlife.

Coast 2050 is no radical proposal, even though the motivation behind it is grim. Like any plan assembled by diverse stakeholders, it's a compromise. As its creators say: "Because natural processes created the highly productive wetlands in coastal Louisiana, reestablishment of these processes is essential to achieve sustainability. Reestablishment does not imply controlling nature ... [or] a return of the coastal system to a pristine condition, because too much has changed for that to occur. The intent is to design restoration strategies based on ecological principles so the future coast will have the productivity and other desirable features of a highly valued natural system."

Upgrade oil refineries. Several refineries have been temporarily shut down by Katrina, but they'll be back. When operational, these facilities are environmental disasters, founded on outdated technology and producing a heavy output of pollution.

No hydrocarbon refining process can ever be truly green. But greener refineries would install shielded pipes and conduits; isolated and double-barrier-protected towers, tanks, and reservoirs; and multiple pressure-relief and blowout prevention devices. Greener refineries would initiate more efficient processing and capture effluents and reaction products better. Greener would require better scrubbing and filtering. Greener would involve better oversight, maintenance, training, and siting.

Never keen on enhancing environmental controls of any sort, President Bush has proposed that new refineries be constructed on closed military bases with no such modifications. Getting the administration to press even minor upgrades for existing refineries would be no easy matter.

Curtail oil and gas drilling in the Delta. Since Katrina struck, many people have taken note of last year's almost supernaturally prescient piece "Gone With the Water" in National Geographic. Joel K. Bourne Jr. described a New Orleans-area catastrophe that could have been yanked from the recent headlines.

He also outlined the conclusions of Bob Morton, a former petroleum geologist now with the U.S. Geological Survey. Morton noticed Louisiana's wetland losses reached a peak during or just after the period of intensive oil and gas production in the 1970s and early 1980s. He believes that removing millions of barrels of oil, trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, and the huge amounts of saline water found within petroleum deposits caused subsurface pressure to drop, which in turn caused nearby faults to slip and the land above them to subside.

"When you stick a straw in a soda and suck on it, everything goes down," Morton told Bourne. "That's very simplified, but you get the idea." The oil industry argues against Morton's theory, but neither it nor its consultants have been able to disprove it.

Support renewable energy. Louisiana (and Alabama and Mississippi) could all benefit from retooling their practically invisible state energy departments. Although each gives lip service to conservation, few moves have been made toward developing a renewable-energy, conservation-oriented mind-set among citizens, or assisting those citizens who already "get it."

A fountain of ideas.

Using the experiences of other states and going a few steps farther, Eco New Orleans should be outfitted with solar-power systems, gas microturbines, combustion turbines, wind turbines, fuel cells, and cogeneration systems, so the region can begin the march toward independence from fossil fuels that is essential for the planet's long-term health. Much of this could be accomplished with tax breaks to consumers, manufacturers, and developers. Eco New Orleans should also put considerable effort into community outreach to teach people to become energy smart. Less affluent consumers should have access to subsidies so they can make the change along with everyone else.

Adopt "smart growth" concepts as regional policy. The smart-growth movement focuses on environment in the broadest possible way: quality of life, design, economics, health, housing, and transportation. Principles guiding smart growth include developing a range of housing types; creating walkable, architecturally distinctive neighborhoods; encouraging community participation in decision making; opting for mixed land uses; making development decisions "predictable, fair, and cost-effective"; preserving farmland and open space; providing for a variety of transportation modes; adopting compact building styles; and directing development toward existing communities.

The key to making smart growth work in Eco New Orleans would be making sure it doesn't merely mean gentrification, a greened-up version of urban renewal that forces out the poor.

Rebuild with Green Communities in mind. Green Communities, a partnership between the Enterprise Foundation and the Natural Resources Defense Council, is a five-year, $555 million program dedicated to building more than 8,500 environmentally healthy dwellings for low-income residents nationwide. Rehabilitation of rental and owner-occupied dwellings is also part of the agenda. Support for the projects -- like Seattle's new 50-unit Denny Park Apartments -- comes from housing authorities, corporations, and private foundations, as well as the Enterprise Social Investment Corporation.

Before Katrina, New Orleans was the fifth most densely populated city in America, filled with impoverished neighborhoods that would benefit from an expansion of the Green Communities program, or at least an imitation of it. In addition to those 8,500 green units nationwide, why not 85,000 units for Eco New Orleans?

Establish green building standards. More affluent dwellings in Eco New Orleans should also be built or rehabilitated with more than a modest concern for environmental effects. Regulations based on a system similar to LEED that assigns "points" for, among other things, energy efficiency, use of green materials, siting angles, landscaping, window glazing, and the like could make a big difference region-wide. New housing and rehabs that reach a minimum-point threshold would be the only ones approved, but nobody would be required to follow a strict architectural formula.

None of this is simple. For one thing, I've left out a lot of issues, both big and small: Cancer Alley, mass transit, park development, sewage treatment, and zoning issues, to name a few. And Eco New Orleans cannot, obviously, spring up full-grown. No great changes are ever accomplished overnight. But someday all cities must be "eco," or they will be dead. New Orleans and its battered neighbors have a chance to be pioneers.

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Obama going to Copenhagen

Say anything.

Uncle Sam wants you ... to cooperate on conservation. Not only that, he's willing to listen. At least that's what he says.

Earlier this week, St. Louis hosted the White House Conference on Cooperative Conservation. The invitation-only event was modeled after Teddy Roosevelt's 1908 Governors' Conference, which brought all the country's governors, Supreme Court justices, cabinet members, and other national leaders to the White House to make conservation a national priority.

The purpose this time around was to celebrate what Interior Secretary Gale Norton called a new chapter, built on the four C's: "communication, consultation, and cooperation, in the name of conservation."

In a videotaped message, President Bush reminded the assembled "conservationalists" that Roosevelt -- who established, among other things, the first national wildlife refuge, the U.S. Forest Service, and 23 national parks and monuments -- "called conservation a patriotic duty." Although he didn't show up at his own White House conference on conservation, this president eagerly took credit for improving the environment too. "Our air is cleaner, water purer, and land better protected than four years ago," he told the crowd. But then he turned modest. "Not all wisdom is found in the nation's capital," he said with that sly grin of his. "Local communities have the best ideas about how to use air, land, and water. All we have to do is listen."

Ah.

The three-day conference brought together around one thousand attendees who were ready to talk. They were more or less evenly divided between federal officials working for environmental, land-management, and wildlife agencies; state and local officials; representatives of nonprofit conservation organizations; and private landowners and businesspeople. "Business attire," it had said on the invitation, and it was mostly a pretty tightly wound, buttoned-down, suit-and-tie crowd, with a few rowdy cowboy boots and 10-gallon hats thrown in. They gathered at the America's Center, a typical convention hall that could be anywhere, but is, in fact, in the center of America, just blocks from the Gateway Arch on the muddy Mississippi.

Federal officials announced precious little in the way of new initiatives over the course of the event. Norton said they would be developing cooperative conservation legislation to submit to Congress, but couldn't say much about what it would be, because, well, it too would be the result of collaboration. And let's not forget consultation and communication. And what was that fourth C? Oh yeah, conservation. Or was it cooperation?

But at a plenary session on the last day of the conference -- after Norton and other cabinet members had been called back to Washington, D.C., to coordinate the emergency response to Hurricane Katrina -- federal officials issued an intriguing invitation. They asked for input on the proposed legislation (or, rather, the non-proposal for legislation), and anything else that could help the federal government better cooperate with citizens on conservation.

Now, I know some of you are rolling your eyes and saying, "Yeah, right." More than a few folks at the conference did the same thing -- though surreptitiously, not wanting to attract undue attention from the young staffers monitoring the scene, BlackBerries in hand and earbuds in place. (It was hard to tell the aides-de-camp from the service secret at this shindig.)

But suspend your cynicism for a moment -- in the name of cooperation, for goodness' sake! -- and presume that they meant it. Then presume that suggestions should come not just from the select few who were invited to participate in the White House's version of cooperative conservation, but from all the citizens of this great democracy of ours. Here's what the federales said they want to hear. If you can interpret it, you'll find ways to reach them at the end.

Flowers, power.

Lynn Scarlett, the assistant secretary for policy, management, and budget in the Interior Department and Norton's guru of cooperative conservation, invoked Mao Zedong's dictum to "let a thousand flowers bloom." She said she wants to hear what works best at the grassroots. "I think the greatest gift you can give is something you're already giving," she told the gathering. "My greatest concern is that we will get so entranced, we will muck it up in Washington by trying to shoehorn it into a one-size-fits-all."

In his own poetic plea, Marcus Peacock, the deputy administrator for the U.S. EPA, combined Mao and The Carpenters. "It's a fertile field," he said. "We've only just begun. I go with the thousand flowers. I'd like specific ideas of where that could be pursued, right now." Well, that leaves things pretty wide open. What could the EPA be doing better to cooperate in protecting and cleaning up the environment in your community? How about "white lace and promises"?

No frilly talk from Conrad Lautenbacher Jr., a retired vice admiral in the U.S. Navy and administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The military-minded "Connie," as his colleagues called him, didn't seem too pleased with the idea of letting a thousand flowers bloom. "This has started a stampede of messages to come to government," he said. "I sit back and hear a cacophony. If we can have a coherent national voice, we can do better." The vice admiral thinks "we have a good setup" already for cooperative conservation. He wants suggestions for a unifying national voice and vision. Any ideas?

Speaking of military minds, Alex Beehler, an assistant deputy undersecretary at the Department of Defense, said he wants to hear "specific ideas and opportunities" for expanding conservation buffer zones around military bases. The military is flush these days, unlike most other agencies, and eager to work with conservation organizations, communities, and landowners to expand no-growth zones around its installations and training grounds using conservation easements, acquisitions, and other tools. Is there a base in your area? Would you like to cooperate with the military to defend nature? They're looking for a few good ideas.

The references to thousands of blossoms proved all too much for Mark Rey, the Agriculture Department's undersecretary for natural resources and the environment, and the man in charge of the Forest Service. "I'm a little alarmed at the number of people in a Republican administration quoting Mao," he said. While the audience laughed, Jim Connaughton -- panel moderator, conference host, and chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality -- reminded him: "It is a red book."

Rey said he wanted some good news. "I'd like to hear when an employee is doing a good job," he said. "Lord knows I hear the opposite." The current generation of federal land managers "is being asked to do something different than they were trained to do," he added. In a joke that left itself open to multiple interpretations, he said, "It's like replacing the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall with elephants from Safari Land three days before Christmas."

OK, then, that really opens the door. Are there federal employees you know who are doing a good job for conservation? How about it? Can we get a positive feedback loop going? And anybody know any terpsichorean techniques for repurposing pachyderms?

It seems at least some in the Grand Old Party have realized they need to learn how to dance with conservationists. So have at it. I know there are plenty of people out there doing a lot of fancy footwork to improve our environment.

Just a word of caution: Don't be surprised if your toes get a little tender.

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