Climate Climate & Energy

E.O. Wilson, John Updike, and others on climate change

So we've seen much of the so-called intelligentsia ignore the global warming issue when asked by the Atlantic Monthly to consider the greatest challenges to the American idea. But not all of those asked were so short-sighted.

You would expect the one environmentalist they asked, Edward O. Wilson (essay below) to get it right. But what about a Harvard constitutional law professor and his policy analyst/linguist wife?

Lawrence H. Tribe and Carolyn K. Tribe: "Our greatest national challenge is to reverse the profoundly misguided course the last two presidential elections have set, while doing three things ... Third, cooperating with the international community before it is too late to restore the degraded health of our fragile planet and to protect the well-being of all its inhabitants."

Who else got it right, or partially right? John Updike, Anna Deavere Smith, and even Stephen Breyer:

John Updike: "The American idea, as I understand it, is to trust people to know their own minds and to act in their own enlightened self-interest, with a necessary respect for others ... The challenges ahead? A fury against liberal civilization by the world's poor, who have nothing to lose; a ruinous further depletion of the world's natural assets; a global warming that will change world climate and with it world geopolitics. The American idea, promulgated in a land of plenty, must prepare to sustain itself in a world of scarcity."

My point exactly!

Free e-book on biofuels and water

I know -- let's use all our food and drinking water to make SUV fuel!

A foundation officer on the need for coordination and funding for equity efforts

This is a guest essay by Danielle Deane. Deane is a Program Officer at the Hewlett Foundation, where she runs the New Constituencies for the Environment initiative. She is also a 2007-2008 Association of Black Foundation Executives (ABFE) Connecting Leaders Fellow. The essay is part of a series on climate equity. —– 1. What would […]

Introducing an ongoing series on the most undercovered aspect of climate change

((equity_include)) One aspect of climate change is overlooked by politicians, commentators, and big NGOs alike: equity. The suffering that climate change will bring is going to be visited primarily on the globe’s most vulnerable populations — the very people who have done the least to cause the problem. Any response to climate change that hopes […]

Umbra on carbon offsets

Dear Umbra, I’ve been reading the whole back-and-forth about carbon offsets, and it seems strange to me that most (all?) of the ones I’ve seen fund projects that, while worthwhile, may or may not result in the promised emissions reduction. It seems that a simple way around this problem would be to buy actual emissions […]

Quote of the day

Why do I keep harping on coal? Here’s why: “It’s becoming impossible to build coal stations,” Michael Liebreich, founder and CEO of New Energy Finance, a London-based research company, said during a visit to Paris on Friday. The backlash against coal “is one of the driving forces for the clean energy industry.”

Widening roads does not, in fact, reduce emissions

Why is it that stupid ideas get all the air time?

For months, fellow climate geeks have been telling me that road-builders -- and the politicians who love them -- have started to make a startling claim: namely, that widening a congested highway will help curb global warming. By reducing stop-and-go traffic, the argument goes, cars will operate more efficiently and waste less fuel. So if you want to save the climate, you'd better widen that road!

To me, this sounded too dopey to be worth refuting. I mean, sure, over the short term, congestion relief might help a bit. But what about all of the emissions from road building itself -- and, more importantly, from the extra traffic that will inevitably fill those new lanes?

But despite its obvious absurdity (or perhaps because of it) this particular suburban legend seems to be getting a life of its own. Just take a look at what British Columbia's Premier had to say recently about a proposed highway widening project in greater Vancouver, BC:

Campbell ... continued to defend the [highway] project ... saying that it will reduce emissions and make room for rapid-bus services along the highway.

Because I couldn't find anything addressing this issue online (academics have better things to do with their time, apparently), I spent a bit of time running some numbers. You can read the full report here (PDF) if you're a real geek. But in a nutshell: congestion relief may offer some slim GHG benefits over the short term; but these benefits are absolutely dwarfed by the emissions from road construction and, more importantly, by all the extra traffic that fills the expanded roadway.

In fact, it looks to me as if adding a single lane-mile to a congested urban highway will boost CO2 emissions by at least 100,000 tons over 50 years. And that's making some pretty optimistic assumptions about fuel economy improvements.

So now, if anyone out there in Grist-world hears this particular suburban legend, you'll have some numbers you can use to smack it down.

A review of a new doomer cult classic

Some years ago I was alerted to the problem of peak oil by a friend from Bellingham, Wash., way up in the upper left corner of the continental U.S. A nuclear physicist and astronomer, the smartest guy I know, and no doubt someone who uses the serial comma, he had this to say about a new movie called What a Way to Go: Life at the end of empire:

Time to end the phony and historically inaccurate debate

This will, hopefully, be the last post devoted to debunking Shellenberger & Nordhaus.

As noted, S&N spend far more time attacking the environmental community and Al Gore (and even Rachel Carson!) than they do proposing a viable solution. Worse, they don't even attack the real environmental community -- they create a strawman that is mostly a right-wing stereotype of environmentalists.

Now it turns out they support the exact same thing the environmental community -- and energy technologists like me -- have been pushing for many years: an aggressive and intelligent regulatory strategy coupled with a significant increase in the energy R&D budget.

To my great surprise, they have taken up my challenge and endorsed Barack Obama's terrific climate plan. So why are we fighting? Only because S&N keep attacking, keep trying to rewrite history.

S&N claim over and over again that environmentalists don't support increases in clean energy budgets. They even claim I don't support an increase in the budget of the very office I ran at the Energy Department -- and that "'experts' like Romm" shift our analysis "after the political winds changed direction." Silly (and petty).

In this post, I will set the record straight.

Right-wingers will do whatever Gore says not to

I bet it would work:

Better yet, maybe Gore will make a major speech telling people to not stick their tongues in wall sockets in an effort to save electricity. Afterward, expect lots of flickering lights in your neighborhood and fewer right-wing bloggers on the internets.