Climate Technology

Krupped up

I have been informed by people reliably more environmentalish than I that my qualified partial not-quite-endorsement of ED’s Fred Krupp makes me a corporatist dupe and a sell-out. I have turned in my environmentalist badge and look forward to reprogramming.

The greening of Chevron is not as impressive as they’d like you to think

Those greenwashing ads are really starting to bug me. "It took us 125 years to use the first trillion barrels of oil. We'll use the next trillion in 30." And you're proud of this fact -- proud of your role in bringing about the wholesale destruction of this planet's climate?

Will you join us? No, I won't. I'm trying to figure out a way to get people to use a lot less of your polluting product.

And now, "Chevron Announces New Global 'Human Energy' Advertising Campaign." I suppose it's better than the ad campaign for "inhuman energy" that they have been running for decades -- though it strikes me as a lame ripoff of Dow's "Human Element" campaign.

Chevron has taken the equivalent of three full-page ads in today's Washington Post. One of the ads says, "We've increased the energy efficiency of our own operations by 27% since 1992." To quote Clarence Thomas, "Whoop-Dee-Damn-Doo."

Clinton’s 21st century climate philanthropy

I heartily recommend this month’s Atlantic Monthly cover story, "It’s Not Charity" (via Yglesias). It’s mostly about Bill Clinton’s post-presidency adventures and the new model of philanthropy he’s trying to develop. Embedded within is a description of a fascinating climate program he’s been developing with Ira Magaziner. An excerpt: The climate initiative, in typical Magaziner […]

States adopt decoupling plans to encourage energy efficiency

It’s a scheme that turns the traditional business model on its head: power companies can make more money by selling less power. Under “decoupling” plans, state regulators give incentive payments to electric utilities that encourage energy efficiency by their customers. “Before there was almost a disincentive to go hard at efficiency because we weren’t recovering […]

Fair-trade market boosted by consumer demand

An ever-greener and ever-more-caffeinated world is boosting the fair-trade market — not just for coffee, but for products such as cocoa, cotton, tea, pineapples, and flowers. The certification, which holds growers to strict standards per child labor, pesticide use, recycling, and more, is not a phenomenon specific to hippie shops: all Dunkin’ Donuts in the […]

Is Environmental Defense leader Fred Krupp a savvy dealmaker or a stooge?

I keep meaning to link to The New Republic‘s thoughtful profile of Fred Krupp, head honcho at Environmental Defense: Krupp, of all environmentalists, has been the most successful in persuading the corporate world–and those who support its interests–to embrace the green cause. Among his accomplishments, Krupp has helped convince McDonald’s to abandon Styrofoam for paper, […]

A reply to Shellenberger & Nordhaus

It’s rare for any environmental book to receive the attention garnered by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger’s Break Through, particularly outside the usual green circles. Anything that prompts conversation on these issues is, in and of itself, a good thing. So one hesitates to point out that beneath all the hype — the "death" of […]

A utopian realist agenda

Recently Nordhaus and Shellenberger (N&S) posted on Gristmill, wrote in The New Republic, and published a book, all with the aim of offering a better alternative to the mainstream environmental agenda. In my estimation, they made three important points: Americans would respond to a positive vision of the future; global warming can only be solved if, in addition to regulatory policies, we embark on a program of public investment; and the public is quite open to the idea of public investment.

Unfortunately, they didn't do much with that great start. I think I know why: the central thrust of the conservative movement since Reagan has been to inculcate the idea of "government bad, market good," and the idea of making a virtue of public investment runs totally counter to a conservative world view. So in order to be politically relevant, N&S look to the two institutions that conservatives and moderates have been able to agree are legitimate sources of public investment: the Pentagon and government-supported R&D.

But that "won't work," as N&S declare about the possibility of mitigating global warming with a regulations-only policy framework. To be brief, the Pentagon is part of the problem, not part of the solution; and while R&D is always a good idea, the level of their combined program is only $30 billion per year, which would be great in this political climate but won't do much for the global climate.

These negatives shouldn't blind us to their advocacy of a positive vision and a public investment approach. One of the reasons public investment is not discussed more often in the environmental community, much less taken seriously as a policy approach, is that we have what I will call the problem of the political superego: before any such policy can even be considered by the conscious mind, the political superego dismisses it out of hand.

Which leads me to two of my favorite quotes: "The maximum that seems politically feasible still falls far short of the minimum that would be effective in solving the crisis," spoken by Al Gore at a policy address at NYU in 2006. The other, by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, the authors of Our Ecological Footprint: "In today's materialistic, growth-bound world, the politically acceptable is ecologically disastrous while the ecologically necessary is politically impossible."

I want to use the phrase "utopian realism" to express this dilemma, and to point to a possible way out of it. The word "realist" means that the policies advocated are a realistic way out of our global crises, from a technical point of view. "Utopian" has two meanings here -- first, that the political chances of these policies being implemented seem utopian; but second, that the implementation of these goals could inspire action. (The sociologist Anthony Giddens has also used the term "utopian realism", in a roughly similar way.)

So I ask you to try to keep your political superego at bay for a few paragraphs, as I lay out a possible positive vision of public investment.

Why $100-per-barrel oil would be no big deal

At current levels of around $80 per barrel, oil prices have leapt nearly eightfold since 1998. Many observers would have predicted economic disaster from such a leap, but the global economy just keeps chugging along. An interesting article in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal reports that many analysts figure that $100/barrel oil is on the way […]

A guest essay from Peter Montague analyzes the nuclear ‘renaissance’

The following is a guest essay from Peter Montague, executive director of the Environmental Research Foundation. —– The long-awaited and much-advertised "nuclear renaissance" actually got under way this week. NRG Energy, a New Jersey company recently emerged from bankruptcy, applied for a license to build two new nuclear power plants at an existing facility in […]