What are the possibilities and prospects for action on climate change if Barack Obama is reelected?

Real talk: Obama will get very little done on climate or energy domestically, especially if Republicans keep the House, most especially if they win the Senate too. The reasons are drearily familiar: deep polarization, corporate influence, and the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Unless some large and unanticipated exogenous force knocks the system out of equilibrium, we can expect more of what the first term delivered, which is modest (read: woefully insufficient) progress on efficiency and clean energy.

But I’ve been thinking lately that Obama might still be able to make progress on climate through foreign policy.

It’s clear that Obama sees climate as a legacy issue, something that could improve the world in an enduring way. In a recent piece on Obama’s second-term prospects, Ezra Klein said: “Beyond the deficit, Obama’s advisers see two big unfinished pieces of business from the first term: climate change and immigration reform.” On the campaign trail, Obama has mentioned, in the context of a second-term agenda, “the long-term challenges that we’re facing in terms of energy independence and climate change.” In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Obama said: “I will be very clear in voicing my belief that we’re going to have to take further steps to deal with climate change in a serious way.”

But “legacy” and “long-term” are apparently not for the here and now, because as far as I know, he hasn’t mentioned climate change since, not even during the recent drought. He’s clearly not trying to make it part of his mandate in this election.

But! Presidents have a freer hand in foreign policy, and that’s where they often make their mark, particularly in a second term, as both Klein and Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker have pointed out. Both mention that Obama’s team anticipates a “pivot” or “rebalancing” away from the Middle East and toward the Asia-Pacific region. Climate could be part of that pivot.

Remember, in Copenhagen, Obama pledged that the U.S. would hit the near-term Waxman-Markey climate-change goal: 17 percent cuts in CO2 emissions below 2005 levels by 2020. The Waxman-Markey bill was never passed, but it turns out the U.S. is in fact reducing emissions — more than any other country in the world! Progress is being made. Admittedly, some of it, probably the bulk, has nothing to do with climate policy. Nonetheless, it gives Obama and the U.S. some rare credibility with which to try and reengage and reshape international climate work.

The situation internationally is similar to the situation domestically: For the time being, top-down Grand Solutions aren’t going to happen. The pathetic outcomes at Copenhagen and Cancun and Durban have made that clear. For all the exhortations from greens to lead, there’s only so much the U.S. president can do to generate consensus among the 192 nations of the UNFCCC.

What’s needed is for Obama to put bottom-up solutions at the center of his foreign policy. That means deals and treaties between states, regions, and other subnational entities. It means bilateral and multilateral deals among small groups of countries with common interests. It means, rather than one Climate Solution, a focus on the various bits and pieces of a solution: cities, sea-level rise, deforestation, solar manufacturing, carbon sequestration, and the like. Scholar David Victor has lots of ideas along these lines; check out my review of his book. His basic insight is that no international process or treaty can push nations beyond what they see as their own self-interest. So to at least get the climate ball rolling, we need to pay more attention to which aspects of mitigation and adaptation are in which countries’ interests.

There are plenty of measures that can take a bite out of climate while also creating near-term, local benefits. There’s a handy list of 14 of them in a recent paper in Science called “Simultaneously Mitigating Near-Term Climate Change and Improving Human Health and Food Security,” which focuses mainly on methane and soot. (David Biello has a nice write-up of the paper.) And of course growth in cleantech industries has both local and global benefits as well. There are plenty more places to look for win-win-opportunities.

This focus ought to fit neatly with the Asia-Pacific pivot. If the U.S. wants to build relationships in the region, we can do it by engaging on the knot of problems the region most desperately needs to solve: how to continue developing economically, bringing people out of poverty, without choking the air and water with poisons. How to grow local efficiency and clean energy industries that generate jobs and wealth. How to plan for unavoidable climate impacts. Focused on these challenges, America’s expertise and money can do good and create good will.

The current skirmish with China over solar subsidies and tariffs highlights the need for what Michael Liebreich referred to in our interview as a “global industrial policy.” The worst thing that could happen in clean energy is an escalating series of trade wars and protectionist barriers that play for short-term national advantage at the expense of global welfare. There is plenty of work to go around and dire need for low-cost low-carbon technologies. The U.S. should be working to find areas of economic cooperation, non-zero-sum games, that make the best use of each country’s unique strengths. Above all, the U.S. should be working with the region on innovation policy, coordinating and accelerating efforts to drive down the costs of cleantech.

International climate work badly needs a kick in the ass, a new sense of life and momentum. One more failed climate summit isn’t going to do it. If Obama wants to create a foreign policy legacy for his second term, he should focus on reorienting international climate policy toward mutually beneficial, bottom-up solutions. He should make America a catalyst, a constructive, creative force for practical progress on climate. It’s not the Kyoto-on-steroids global climate agreement greens want, but it could make a real difference, and I suspect historians — and future Earthlings — would look upon it kindly.

We have cut our carbon emissions more than any other country in the world in recent years — 7.7 percent since 2006. U.S. emissions fell 1.9 percent last year and are projected to fall 1.9 percent again this year, which will put us back at 1996 levels. It will not be easy to achieve the reductions Obama promised in Copenhagen — 17 percent (from 2005 levels) by 2020 — but that goal no longer looks out of reach, even in the absence of comprehensive legislation.

Why isn’t this extraordinary story a bigger deal in U.S. politics? You’d think Obama would be boasting about it! Turns out, though, it’s a little awkward for him, since several of the drivers responsible are things for which he can’t (or might not want to) take credit.

Awkward: that whole recession thing

First off there’s the Great Recession, which flattened electricity demand in 2008. It has never recovered — in fact, in part due to 2011′s mild winter, it has even declined slightly:

Click to embiggen.

For obvious reasons, boasting about the environmental benefits of the recession is not something Obama’s eager to do.

Awkward: frack-o-mania

The second big driver is the glut of cheap natural gas, which is currently trading at the 10-year low of about $3 per million British thermal units. This is absolutely crushing coal, the biggest source of CO2 in the electric sector:

The share of U.S. electricity that comes from coal is forecast to fall below 40% for the year, its lowest level since World War II. Four years ago, it was 50%. By the end of this decade, it is likely to be near 30%.

Here’s U.S. electricity generation from 2000-2012. Look how dramatic coal’s recent plunge is:

Click to embiggen.

In April, coal and natural gas both contributed 32 percent to the U.S. electricity mix — equal for the first time since EIA started collecting data in the ’70s. This is, as Alexis Madrigal emphasizes, an extraordinary shift, unprecedented in the history of the U.S. electrical system.

It’s helpful to Obama to be able to point to cheap natural gas when people accuse his EPA of killing coal. And it’s helpful in his effort to claim “all of the above.” But fracking’s potential environmental and health impacts has quickly made it a flash point with his environmental base (and his Hollywood base), so it’s at the very least a fraught subject.

Awkward: Kenyan socialist EPA sharia tyranny

A less significant driver of the switch from coal to natural gas is the EPA’s long overdue rollout of new or tightened clean-air rules on mercury, SO2 and NOx, and CO2. Those rules may do more work later on down the line when/if natural gas prices rise again, but for now the best analysis [PDF] shows that natural gas is doing most of the work killing coal. Nonetheless, EPA regs have proven a source of potent right-wing attacks on Obama and he’s probably not eager to call undue attention to them.

Thus: silence in the political world

So: given the fact that the decline in emissions is driven, at least in the conventional narrative, by an explosion in fossil fuel production, a recession, and a series of EPA regulations, it’s not hard to see why Obama isn’t eager to put it front and center. It’s got a little something for everyone to hate.

And of course the right isn’t eager to talk about it either, since conservative dogma tells us that there’s no way to grow the economy and shrink CO2 emissions at the same time … and yet, uh, that’s what’s happening. At the end of 2012, our economy will be much larger than it was in 1996, yet its carbon emissions will be the same. If conservatives acknowledge that it’s possible to loosen the link between climate pollution and economic growth, they’ll have to explain why we shouldn’t do a whole lot more of it.

Still, while the story has remained largely sub rosa in political media, there are several overlooked details that paint a happier picture than the conventional one above. There’s more to this story than natural gas and recession.

Happy: Coal’s getting its ass kicked by activists

First, it isn’t just natural gas and EPA taking coal out — it’s the kick-ass anti-coal movement! Fighting tooth-and-nail, plant-by-plant, it has blocked new construction and shut down over 100 existing plants.

The campaign has been so disciplined and successful that it’s drawn the support of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who does not typically invest his own money in feel-good symbolism. He expects accountability and he’s getting it. Like the man said, “Ending coal power production is the right thing to do.”

Happy: Clean energy is happening

Renewable energy still represents a small portion of U.S. electricity generation, but that fact obscures its outsized impact. The U.S. doesn’t need to add a ton of renewables for things to start shaking loose.

Here’s growth over the last decade:

Click to embiggen.

One thing that jumps out is that renewables are growing much faster in some places than others. South Dakota now gets 22 percent of its electricity from wind, Iowa 19 percent. The top two states in total installed wind are Kansas and Texas. The top two for wind jobs are Iowa and Texas. That’s three red states and a deeply purple one — a wedge separating clean energy from the climate culture wars. That portends accelerating changes in the political economy.

Also driving changes in political economy: 29 states and D.C. now have mandatory renewable energy standards.

Click to embiggen.

Installed wind and solar have doubled in the U.S. since Obama took office. Costs for solar are plunging like crazy and onshore wind power may be competitive with fossil fuels without subsidies by 2016. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory says the U.S. could get 80 percent of its power from renewables by 205o. Given that “official” projections of renewable energy growth have been consistently beneath the mark, it’s not unreasonable to think we may be underestimating future growth.

And renewables don’t have to get that big to start making waves. The sun shines most when the most electricity is being used — “peak demand” — so it serves to sharply reduce peak prices. Turns out that’s where utilities make a lot of their money. U.S. utilities are being forced to crank off coal plants when peak prices drop and then crank them back on afterwards.

It is no fun to turn coal plants on and off — it’s slow, laborious, and kills their economics. More and more, utility managers are turning toward upgraded, smarter grids and more flexible, responsive “mid-load” plants (i.e. natural gas). By hacking off peak prices, renewables will make the dynamics even worse for coal, well before they reach a large proportion of total electricity.

So renewables are a bigger part of this story than they appear, and getting bigger.

Happy: Demand is leveling off long-term

It’s not just the recession that’s bringing down U.S. energy demand — the leveling off of demand is a long-term trend. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects energy use will grow quite slowly through 2035:

Click to embiggen.

And this is almost certainly conservative: EIA doesn’t model policy changes, underestimates the role of technology, ignores rising fossil fuel prices, and is incapable of predicting cultural shifts.

For instance, few projections anticipated the sharp decline in driving in the U.S., which has been driven (ahem) as much by cultural and demographic factors as by economics.

Or consider the dramatic progress in energy use in buildings, which was also not anticipated by EIA. From Architecture 2030 comes this graph, which compares the EIA Annual Energy Outlook (AEO) projections on U.S. building stock from 2005 with the ones from 2012:

Click to embiggen.

The growth in U.S. building stock is slowing (in part — but only in part! — due to the recession), but growth in building energy consumption is dramatically slowing, thanks to advances in energy efficiency technology. EIA now expects CO2 emissions from the building sector to decline by 2035. That’s a pretty big change from going up by over 50 percent!

And that’s just with straight-line projections. If “best available demand technologies” are deployed, it looks like this:

Click to embiggen.

It’s within our reach to reduce the CO2 emissions of the building sector almost 22 percent! Given that building standards are one of the few areas of bipartisan agreement on energy these days, it’s not crazy to think that we’ll get closer to the latter projections than the former.

And the EIA projections for building energy consumption, Architecture 2030 notes, do not incorporate “sustainable planning applications or passive heating and cooling, natural ventilation, daylighting, or spatial configuration and site design strategies,” all of which are gaining in popularity and sophistication.

In short, there’s reason to think the demand-side story is similar to the supply-side story: official projections are dramatically underestimating potential.

Worry, but be happy

To sum up: yes, the explosive growth of natural gas and the Great Recession played a big part in U.S. climate emissions declining in recent years. And either of them could reverse in years to come. But they are not the whole story. There are real transitions underway — seedlings that can be watered and fertilized.

As Brad Plumer notes, America’s modest progress to date still leaves the world on a pathway to climate catastrophe. But it also shows that projections are not destiny. Things can change, and quickly.

A version of this article originally appeared on Real Climate Economics.

In 2009, I published a book with Graciela Chichilnisky, Saving Kyoto, that argued passionately for preserving the economic and political architecture of the only international treaty on climate change the world has known — the Kyoto Protocol. The book was timely: The countdown to compliance with Kyoto’s mandated emissions targets had begun; the international community was gathering that year in Copenhagen to negotiate the next round of climate commitments; and there was hope that the Obama administration could usher the U.S. back to the negotiating table in earnest.

More importantly from my perspective, however, was the growing realization that the window of opportunity for stabilizing the earth’s climate system was rapidly coming to a close. The urgency of the crisis demanded immediate, extensive emissions reductions. And I firmly believed that a coordinated international effort that mandated reductions from the world’s largest emitters was the fairest and most efficient way to stave off climate disaster.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the famous Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), the international governance framework that eventually gave rise to the Kyoto Protocol. As the global community convenes again this week in Rio to establish goals and strategies for sustainable development for the next 20 years, its failures to arrest climate change over the last 20 years will be hard to deny. But it will also be hard to ignore the real energy, innovation, and progress around climate change that is emerging from the ground up all over the world. The examples are many, including Germany’s aggressive use of feed-in tariffs that is helping to drive down the costs of solar technology worldwide; the commitments of cities across the globe to redesigning their infrastructure, planning, and policies to dramatically slash emissions; and the emergence of regional emissions reduction schemes, such as California’s AB32 and the Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Even private industry is taking positive leaps forward toward embracing energy savings and preparing for future uncertainties around climate change and global energy prices.

As someone who supports a global approach to climate change, I have had to reconcile the failures of the international framework with progress at regional and local scales. I am an economist by training, so my orientation to climate action is first and foremost as a global public good. Viewed through this lens, individual actions to mitigate climate change — whether at a national, regional, or local scale — are inefficient at best, ineffective at worst. If one country’s efforts can benefit all other countries without exclusion (the defining characteristic of a global public good), only credible, coordinated action between countries should incentivize an individual country to act. In the case of climate change, there is even more rationale for tackling the problem from the top down: No single country’s mitigation effort can be sufficient to slow global warming. Acting alone, each country is powerless to prevent climate disaster.

For these reasons and more, a binding international treaty on climate change seems to make sense. Acting as part of a coordinated global effort, each country can be sure that the costs it incurs to lower emissions will be justified by the reduction in global climate change risk. A global approach also facilitates a more just burden sharing between nations. Individual country commitments in the Kyoto Protocol, for example, institutionalized a notion of climate justice agreed to by the parties to the UNFCC. That equity commitment shifted the burden of emissions reduction onto those countries most responsible for global warming and best able to pay for mitigation, and excluded developing countries from mandatory reductions.

As the last two decades have demonstrated, however, a global approach to climate change may work better in theory than in practice. We may have been too optimistic reaching for a global solution in 1992, without having laid enough of the groundwork at home. There is no doubt that the picture of our climate future today would look very different had the U.S. remained a committed participant to the UNFCC process and taken the lead on reducing emissions and developing clean energy technologies. But the level of popular understanding and engagement with climate change and its impacts was not sufficient to sustain the necessary commitments.

To mobilize broad-based support for climate action, the moral and economic imperative of climate action needs to become more widely understood. A clearly articulated vision for an alternative energy economy has to be presented, alongside a feasible, delineated path that can lead us there. I interpret the groundswell of activity on the ground in the U.S. and elsewhere as progress along both of these fronts. The solution to climate change may ultimately be global, but national, regional, and local scale efforts will have to carry us part of the way there. Climate change is global; climate change impacts and adaptation are local. Why wouldn’t we look to locally appropriate technologies and solutions to inform a global response?

At the international scale, the benefits to emissions reduction have been described almost entirely in terms of reduced global warming potential. But there are non-climate related benefits from reduced dependence on fossil fuels that seem more tangible in the here and now. Though individual efforts at the local, regional, or national scale may not halt global warming, they can deliver real energy savings, improve health outcomes, increase efficiency and profitability, and reduce vulnerability to volatility in fossil fuel supplies. More localized campaigns to shutter coal plants, prevent hydraulic fracturing (fracking), create walkable communities, solarize public buildings, and retrofit homes and businesses for greater energy efficiency can create these ancillary benefits, while contributing to global emissions reduction.

Climate action from the ground up can also engender conversations within communities about the type of future that is desirable. A community that rallies to prevent fracking, for example, will have to grapple with creating alternative employment opportunities and securing community sovereignty, economic power, and political voice. These discussions can help forge bridges between climate action and other movements to eliminate gross inequalities, cultivate resilience, and create a more reliable prosperity. The connectivity of these movements may eventually secure a greater win for social justice than Kyoto’s complicated burden sharing scheme.

Supporting climate action from the bottom up does not mean abandoning all hope for a global solution. Successes at multiple scales increase the likelihood that a robust global solution will be forged. Every coal plant taken offline, every new pipeline halted, and every new regulation enacted reduces the power and influence of the fossil fuel industry over the electorate. Every new dollar saved through energy efficiency, every new kilowatt generated by wind power, and every new person employed installing solar panels demonstrates the real potential of a green energy future and closes the gap between aspiration and reality.

The Earth Summit in Rio begins today. What’s that? You thought it started weeks ago? Very understandable.

You can watch the plenary sessions here, or streaming below.

Later today, 17 year-old Brittany Trilford will speak to the assembly. (You can read Greg Hanscom’s interview with her here.) We’ll update this post after she does.

Non-governmental organizations continue to announce new initiatives related to the convening. Development banks yesterday committed $7.2 billion to help poor countries prepare for climate change. This morning, a group of banks made a $175 billion commitment to create sustainable transport systems.

You can follow commitments that have been made at the aptly named CloudOfCommitments.org.

Also worth checking out: The Guardian’s set of graphs detailing shifts in world demographics since 1992.

More updates to come.

Less important planets displayed at the summit. (Photo by Fora do Eixo.)

Update: Via TckTckTck, Brittany Trilford’s speech is now available. Inspiring.

You have 72 hours to decide the fate of your children. My children. My children’s children. I start the clock now. …

Are you here to save face? Or are you here to save us?

Update: The Atlantic has a great gallery of photos from the event.

Update: Venezuela has banned shark fishing in an 854 square mile area of the Caribbean.

“Venezuela’s decision to prohibit shark finning means that it now joins the rest of the countries of South America, North America and Central America in banning this wasteful practice,” said Jill Hepp, manager of global shark conservation at the Pew Environment Group. “Combined with the breeding ground safe haven in Los Roques and Las Aves, this is the latest step in the growing global movement to save these magnificent animals.”

New York state can continue to participate in a multistate effort to curb greenhouse gases, after a court dismissed a conservative legal challenge to the effort, known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

From a report by The New York Times:

Members of Americans for Prosperity, a group founded and largely financed by oil industry interests, filed the suit last year in state Supreme Court in Albany against Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and two state agencies, arguing that the program imposed what amounted to an illegal tax on electric ratepayers.

The group said that by making power companies pay for their carbon dioxide emissions, the program imposed costs that the companies then passed on to consumers. Such “coercive taxes” are illegally levied without approval from the state legislature, the group argued.

But in a decision signed on Tuesday, Thomas J. McNamara, an acting State Supreme Court justice, wrote that the plaintiffs lacked the standing to press their case because they had failed to establish that they had suffered a “distinct” injury from New York’s participation in RGGI (pronounced reggie).

Which is good news. RGGI has provided demonstrable benefits to participating states, including New York, as recognized earlier this year by the Citizen’s Budget Commission.

So Americans for Prosperity, humbled, will recede back into the shadows from whence it came, right? Well, that description of “a group founded and largely financed by oil industry interests” glosses over a key sponsor: the now-famous Koch brothers. If this profile of the group’s increasingly muscular political activity is any indicator, the New York Supreme Court basically just threw a two-inch speedbump in the path of a steamroller.

A steamroller that can also fly.

And that weighs 45 billion tons.

And runs on clean, wholesome, American crude oil.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead the U.S. delegation at the upcoming United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (dubbed Rio+20) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the State Department announced Tuesday.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson will act as alternate head of the delegation and Todd Stern, special envoy on climate change, will act as chief negotiator.

The press release from the State Department lists the following additional people as the American delegation:

• Ambassador Thomas A. Shannon, Jr., Ambassador of the United States to Brazil
• Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality
• Kerri-Ann Jones, Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs
• Ambassador Elizabeth Cousens, U.S. Representative to the UN Economic and Social Council
• Carlos Pascual, Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs, Department of State
• Reta Jo Lewis, Special Representative for Global Intergovernmental Affairs, Department of State
• Kris Balderston, Special Representative for Global Partnerships, Department of State
• Don Steinberg, Deputy Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development
• Elizabeth L. Littlefield, President and CEO, Overseas Private Investment Corporation

David Roberts here at Grist and Stephen Lacey at Climate Progress kicked off a good discussion last week about the roles of “yes” and “no” in climate work. This would-be schism dominates Climate Solutions’ strategy sessions, so I must weigh in.

Climate Solutions is a “yes” outfit. Roberts nailed our MO: We’re all about “forging of opportunistic coalitions.” We accept “compromise, tedium, and endless setbacks.” Roberts says “it’s just more fun to rage against The Man,” but we’re actually to the point where we revel in “the boring of hard boards.” Our mission statement even makes it sound romantic, adventurous: “ … galvanizing leadership, growing investment, and bridging divides”!

Here’s the thing, though: With no meaningful climate policy commitment — no binding emission limits, no carbon pricing, not even a clean energy standard — the awesome work of building a clean energy economy is proceeding in parallel to the unfolding disaster of climate disruption, rather preventing it. We can say “yes” ’til we’re blue in the face, but we can’t call it “climate solutions” unless we stop the beast.

A local example: Here in Seattle, we made a commitment in 2000 to power our community with zero net carbon emissions. We sold our share of a big coal plant (which is now on its way to retirement). We let our gas combustion turbine contract expire. We doubled down on efficiency. We made the anchor investment in the region’s first big wind project. For the little remnant of emissions we couldn’t eliminate (utility maintenance vehicles, spot market purchases, etc.), we bought high-quality offsets. Saying “no” to carbon in our power supply was a launching pad for saying “yes” to a clean energy economy.

By selling our share in that coal plant, we scrubbed about 400,000 tons of coal a year out of our energy footprint. Sweet. But if the current coal export proposals in the Northwest are fully developed, we would ship over 400,000 tons of coal a day through our communities to be burned in Asia (a third of it right through the middle of our iconic Olympic Sculpture Park on Seattle’s waterfront). Our clean energy economy, as my colleague Ross Macfarlane colorfully says, would be but “a hood ornament on the Hummer of fossil fuel addiction.” Our brave local “yes” would be a joke.

The point here is not just that the bad stuff will overwhelm us if we fail to stop it (though that point alone is plenty to justify “no”). It’s that unchecked expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure undermines the credibility of solutions. “Yes” to climate solutions without “no” to these “game-ending” investments comes off as silly, sentimental, tokenistic.

We work with a lot of state and local elected officials who take on climate commitments. Almost invariably, skeptical reporters ask them something to the effect of, “C’mon, what difference will it make? Our emissions are a miniscule fraction of the problem. We could reduce our carbon footprint to zero and we’ll still have the same climate impacts. Isn’t this local action just symbolic?”

A good answer goes something like, “We’re not fighting climate change alone. Our city is joining with umpty-ump other communities, nations, and businesses around the world to deliver solutions. We’re doing our part and pressing our national leaders for stronger action. We’re proving up solutions that can work everywhere. And we’re making this a better place to live and work by [fill in co-benefits here].”

This is a beautiful story, and we’ve done much to make it true. But nobody is going to hear it over the din of coal trains rumbling through town all day. If we take all the coal we don’t burn, and a couple of orders of magnitude more, and ship it through our communities to promote global fossil fuel dependence, how can we say with a straight face that we’re serious about solutions? Yes is bunk without no.

Yes also feeds no. It’s like an immune-system booster — building resilience and increasing our capacity to resist fossil fuel development. In Bellingham, Wash., for example, the largest and most powerful business association is not the chamber of commerce but Sustainable Connections. This community has such a strong investment in “yes” that the idea of becoming a coal export hub seems like an alien invasion. In a terrific NPR story, Julie Trimingham of Coal Train Facts says movingly: “It’s almost inconceivable that there would be a plan afoot to change this part of the world to a coal export facility. It seems ironic or cruel, or misguided at best.”

Even in Longview, Wash., an industrial port community targeted for coal export, “yes” holds a powerful allure. The vision statement in “Turning Point” [PDF], its local economic development strategic plan, says the community “will transition from a natural resource dependent economy, embrace higher value projects, and raise its profile within a broader regional market.” The coal export battle there will test the resolve and hope in that community for the “yes” they’ve imagined. If they believe in it, they’ll say no to coal export, which is roughly the exact opposite of their vision statement.

Yes and no are interdependent, but they are not symmetrical with respect to the pace and scale of the climate challenge. The climate “game” must be won over the long haul. The winning strategy is a zillion yeses, driving an inherently slow transition. But the game can be lost very quickly — Jim Hansen’s point in “Game Over for the Climate,” and the bright bottom line in the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook. Yes is a patient, incremental thing. But the no we need to muster on tar sands and coal export is immediate and uncompromising.

Yet, while their roles and applications differ, yes and no aren’t competing philosophies or alternative psychographics. Our political culture drives us toward niches, pressuring us to identify as yes or no types. But if you want to be an effective climate advocate (or parent), you have to wield both. Yes and no are the interdependent and mutually reinforcing faces of responsible action.

The more successfully we say no to fossil fuels, the more we open space for the growth of the clean energy economy we envision. And as we open it, we need to fill it. We have a better idea than Peabody and ExxonMobil about what a good future is, and we have to keep delivering on it.

When we affirm and invest in our vision, we fortify our defense against the fossil fuel onslaught. The more “yes” we say and do, the more credibly we can fight fossil fuel development with the claim: “We can do better” — a core message in the coal export campaign.

Yes without no is lame. No one will believe in the power of our clean energy vision if we let the fossil fuel juggernaut mow us down and wreck the climate.

And no without yes is adolescence. The only way to prove we can do better is to … do better.

First, the good news: The world has made some progress on its climate goals! Or, as the headline of the U.N.’s press release about the fifth edition of its Global Environmental Outlook puts it: World Remains on Unsustainable Track Despite Hundreds of Internationally Agreed Goals and Objectives.

Oh. The BBC summarizes a portion of the unhappy findings thusly:

• Air pollution indoors and outdoors is probably causing more than 6 million premature deaths each year.
• Greenhouse gas emissions are on track to warm the world by at least 3 degrees C on average by 2100.
• Most river basins contain places where drinking water standards are below World Health Organization standards.
• Only 1.6 percent of the world’s oceans are protected.

Six million premature deaths a year. Basically one of every 1,100 people will die prematurely this year from air pollution. And as the world is getting hotter, drinkable water often remains elusive. In summary:

“If current trends continue, if current patterns of production and consumption of natural resources prevail and cannot be reversed and ‘decoupled’, then governments will preside over unprecedented levels of damage and degradation,” said UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

That sounds bad.

The full report is available here, in all sorts of somber shades of tan and brown. It’s as though they went to a graphic designer and said, “Hey, give me the Mad Max” — which is, I suppose, apt.

This is a gorgeous infographic.

The presentation is by C40, a group of 58 cities that work together to share information and best practices about addressing climate change. (Here’s previous Grist coverage of the group.) Key points from the presentation, quoted directly:

• Almost 50 percent of cities are already dealing with the effects of climate change, and nearly all are at risk.
• Over 90 percent of all urban areas are coastal, putting most cities on Earth at risk of flooding from rising sea levels and powerful storms. [In fact, that process has already begun.]
• Larger cities have a ravenous appetite for energy, consuming 2/3 of the world’s energy and creating over 70 percent of global CO2 emissions.
• Today, over 4,700 climate change actions are in effect in the nearly 60 Cities of the C40, with almost 1,500 further actions under active consideration.

That’s a remarkable collection of data that reinforces a point that won’t surprise any regular Grist reader: Cities both bear the brunt of climate change and are best positioned to address it.

A footnote. There’s another point made in the presentation:

• Unexpected expenditures from storms, flooding, snow removal and drought can lead to major disruptions in business operations and city budgets.

That one hits very close to home for the group’s current chairperson, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Just after Christmas in 2010, a major blizzard hit the city, knocking the city that never sleeps into a coma. As recently as last September costs from the city’s response were still adding up — and Mayor Bloomberg was still regularly facing criticism for the slow response from the city’s inadequate fleet of snowplows.

Preparing for climate change is vital for a variety of reasons. But for politicians, being unprepared can also kill a career.

In case they needed any other motivation.

Via The Atlantic Cities.

I respond in accordance with internet tradition: a listicle!

5. Conservatives have a long history of advancing environmental progress. In a column directed to Mitt Romney, Thomas Friedman reels off (one suspects from memory) “the G.O.P.’s long tradition of environmental stewardship that some Republicans are still proud of: Teddy Roosevelt bequeathed us national parks, Richard Nixon the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency, Ronald Reagan the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer and George H. W. Bush cap-and-trade that reduced acid rain.” This familiar litany is slightly misleading, attributing to presidents what is mostly the work of Congresses, but the basic point is valid enough: In the 20th century, Republicans have frequently played a constructive role on the environment.

4. There is a conservative approach to addressing climate change. Law professor Jonathan Adler has laid it out in the past and does so again in a much-discussed post over at The Atlantic. He suggests prizes for innovation, reduced regulatory barriers to alternative energy, a revenue-neutral carbon tax, and some measure of adaptation.

It’ll be no surprise to Adler or anyone else that I believe the problem is more severe than he does; solving it — as opposed to just “doing something” — will involve a far more vigorous government role than he envisions. But he makes an eloquent, principled case for the simple notion that “embrace of limited government principles need not entail the denial of environmental claims.” Conservatives could, if they wanted, spend their time arguing for their preferred solutions rather than denying scientific results.

3. There are conservatives who believe in taking action on climate change. Even those dismal polls we’re always talking about find 30 or 40 percent of Republicans acknowledging the threat of climate change. And support for clean air and clean energy policies remains high across the board. Heck, some — OK, a tiny handful of — conservatives are even brave enough to say so in public! It’s really only the hard nut of the GOP, anywhere from 15 to 30 percent, depending on how you measure, that is intensely and ideologically opposed to climate science and solutions alike. Oh, and almost all Republicans in Congress.

2. Mitt Romney used to say and do moderate things on green issues when he was governor of Massachusetts. He spoke in favor of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade system for Northeastern states, and introduced the Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan. He wasn’t afraid to crack down on coal plants — I never get tired of this remarkable video:

Romney also directed considerable state funding to renewable energy companies and waged open war on sprawl. It’s almost like he was running a state where that kind of stuff was popular.

1. The Republican establishment has gone nuts on climate change and the environment.

This, more than anything, is what American voters need to know about the Republican Party — not what Republicans used to do, or what one or two outliers say, but what the party as an extant political force is devoted to today. The actually existing GOP wants to dismantle the EPA, open more public land to coal mining and oil drilling, remove what regulatory constraints remain on fossil-fuel companies, slash the budget for clean-energy research and deployment, scrap CAFE and efficiency standards, protect inefficient light bulbs, withdraw from all international negotiations or efforts on climate, and stop the military from using less oil.

Which brings me to the piece that drives me crazy, from National Journal‘s customarily excellent Amy Harder: “Campaign Energy Messages Differ; Policies Not So Much.”

Seriously?

No … seriously?

I know journalists don’t headline their own pieces. But the piece itself isn’t much better. Take this bit:

Whether the data is inflated or not, the message that may be coming across most to voters is that there really isn’t much difference between Obama’s policies and those likely to be pursued in a Romney administration.

Ah, so the problem is not that Obama and Romney would have similar energy policies. That’s just the message “coming across to most voters.”

Now, if you’re a journalist, and you determine that voters are receiving a wildly incorrect message, what do you do? Do you write a story about their receipt of the incorrect message? Or do you correct the message?

The fact is, Romney would not pursue the same energy policies that Obama is pursuing. At all. Not even a little bit. It’s interesting, I suppose, that Romney used to run a state (and a state party) where moderate energy policy was demanded by voters. But what matters now is that Mitt Romney serves the present-day Republican Party, which has gone crazy.

The notion that Mitt Romney will rediscover some hidden internal moderate and buck the party on this stuff is just a VSP fantasy. Ever since he started running for president (this time around, anyway), he’s been frantically trying to please the right-wing base. Friedman says Romney’s “biggest challenge in attracting independent swing voters will be overcoming a well-earned reputation for saying whatever the Republican base wants to hear.” But self-styled centrists like Friedman have been saying this kind of thing forever and there remains very little indication that any Republican politician faces a tangible cost for pandering to the right.

Romney will not be elected to follow his heart. He’ll be elected to ratify the GOP agenda. Grover Norquist, a man with as much claim to leadership of the GOP as anyone, made his feelings on the matter extremely clear at CPAC:

All we have to do is replace Obama. … We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. … We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don’t need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate.

…

Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared. [my emphasis]

Mitt Romney is well-aware — and if he wasn’t before, the primary taught him — that his job is to “sign the legislation that has already been prepared.” The leadership of the party is in Congress. It has declared skepticism of climate science the de facto party position. It has declared open war on clean energy, efficiency, and environmental protections. It has made clear that it will support fossil-fuel companies at every juncture.

That’s conservatives and climate for you. It’s interesting, intellectually, that there’s a history of green moderation in the party; that there’s a conceptual space where titular conservative principles overlap with climate protection; that many self-identified Republicans aren’t as crazy as their leaders; and that Romney used to pander in a different direction. But what’s relevant to voters who value climate and environmental protection is that they won’t get any under a GOP administration or a GOP Congress.