climate change adaptation

Talking Points

Climate and energy have entered mainstream dialog. They're being discussed on op-ed pages and cable news, by ordinary people around the water cooler (do they still have those?), outside of environmental and policy-wonk circles. Hell, Rory's grandparents bought her a Prius on Gilmore Girls. Or so I hear.

This is all to the good: these are extraordinarily important issues, and every concerned citizen should be at least minimally educated about them.

Problem is, there are lots of folks out there with a vested interest in confusing people and derailing these discussions. They are armed with misleading factoids and bogus rhetorical tricks, and seek to kick up enough dust to convince the public that it's all just too complex and they should leave it up to politicians -- politicians bought by the very vested interests in question. There are massive misinformation campaigns afoot, and your average Joe or Jane is outgunned.

So, I'm starting a series of posts called Talking Points. The idea is to provide short bits of ammunition for y'all to take out into the public square. I want to collect arguments or ideas or notions or turns of phrase that might be useful when talking to people about climate- and energy-related matters. I'll try to avoid wonkiness and scientific jargon.

And of course I'd love it if you left your own talking points in comments, or emailed them to me.

Stay tuned.

Adaptation redux

Roger Pielke Jr. has an overheated post up today wondering why I don't care about the suffering of "millions, perhaps billions" of people around the world adversely affected by climate. Oy. I hesitate to reply, but here goes.

Adaptation and political context

The U.S. should be doing more to prepare for changes in the climate that are already inevitable. As many folks have pointed out, even if we completely stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow, the gases already in the atmosphere will yield climate weirdness 30 to 40 years from now.

Adaptation -- the term of art for these sorts of adjustments -- is necessary. And it probably doesn't get the attention it should in policy discussions.

Nevertheless, I'm leery about discussing it too much. Why? Because there's more to policy discussions than policy discussions. There's also the political and cultural context in which such discussions take place. Focusing purely on policy details without taking the larger context into account is not a virtue, as some would have it. It's irresponsible.

Kevin Drum recently made this argument with regard to another subject, namely Iran. Should progressives spend more time criticizing Iran's repressive, authoritarian regime? Well ...

Adaptation

The other issue that's come up in Pielke-Roberts Mild Disagreement '06 is the relative importance of mitigation vs. adaptation, climate-change wise. A couple of issues need to be distinguished here.

First, the substance: According to Roger, the "Kyoto Protocol, as is the FCCC under which it was negotiated, is in fact strongly biased against adaptation." It frames money spent on adaptation as money directly drained from mitigation (which it says would make adaptation unnecessary). I'm no expert on the FCCC, but this jibes with what I've read, and I agree with Roger that it's not a smart way of framing things.

Over 150 activists send letter asking Kennedy to reconsider position

Cape Wind Associates' plan to build a big wind-power farm off the coast of Cape Cod has been dividing enviros for years, but the disagreement got a lot more heated last month when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ran a high-profile op-ed railing against the project in The New York Times.

An excerpt:

These turbines are less than six miles from shore and would be seen from Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Hundreds of flashing lights to warn airplanes away from the turbines will steal the stars and nighttime views. The noise of the turbines will be audible onshore. A transformer substation rising 100 feet above the sound would house giant helicopter pads and 40,000 gallons of potentially hazardous oil. According to the Massachusetts Historical Commission, the project will damage the views from 16 historic sites and lighthouses on the cape and nearby islands. The Humane Society estimates the whirling turbines could every year kill thousands of migrating songbirds and sea ducks.

That didn't sit so well with many enviros who see climate change as the big environmental issue and therefore think renewable-energy projects should be welcomed in all our backyards. More than 150 green leaders and activists this week sent a letter to Kennedy asking him to reconsider. Word is Kennedy said he'll meet with them to discuss. We'll keep you posted.

Meantime, here's the letter:

Highs and lows of sweet, sweet wonkitude

Enough about The Reapers. How's the rest of the American Prospect environment package?

Much of it, sadly, is deathly, wonkily boring. In particular, Carl Pope ... dude. What is this pap? It's so bland, so politician-y, it takes genuine concentration even to get through it. You've written better stuff on your blog, for chrissake. This from Ross Gelbspan and this from John M. Meyer are similarly forgettable.

But there are many bright moments. Bill McKibben could write about what he ate for dinner and make it engaging, but I found the conclusion of this piece on global warming particularly on-point:

Where the environmental movement can and should go from here

Adam Werbach presented this speech at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco on Dec. 8, 2004. Further discussion of the issues he raises can be found on 3Nov.com. And read more on the debate over environmentalism’s prospects here. Adam Werbach. I am here to perform an autopsy. Autopsies begin with these words. Hic locus est […]

Greenpeace student activists stir things up at The Hague

THE HAGUE, Netherlands Bill McKibben reports from The Hague: Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five The Hague, with its constant drizzle, qualifies as one of the gloomiest cities I’ve ever visited, and the tense, uncertain busyness of the convention center doesn’t add much to the atmosphere. But a 20-minute train ride […]

Will the rest of the world bend to U.S. pressure to weaken Kyoto?

THE HAGUE, Netherlands Bill McKibben reports from The Hague: Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five An hour’s drive from the crowded convention hall where international negotiators are toiling to reach some agreement on fighting climate change, you can visit one of the enormous storm surge barriers the Dutch have built to […]