Bill McKibben — counder of 350.org, long-time guest blogger, and the author most recently of the must-read book Eaarth — has an op-ed in the LA Times on the spill-to-bill pivot:
Here’s the president on March 31, announcing his plan to lift a longstanding moratorium on offshore drilling: “Given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth and produce jobs and keep our businesses competitive, we are going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy.”
And here he is on May 26, as political pressure started to really build over BP’s hole in the bottom of the sea: “We’re not going to be able to sustain this kind of fossil fuel use. The planet can’t sustain it.” Still, he added quickly: “We’re not going to transition out of oil next year or 10 years from now.”
And here is the president Wednesday, after yet another gimcrack solution at 5,000 feet under the waters of the Gulf of Mexico had gone awry and real anger at the administration’s lackluster performance was cresting: “The time has come to aggressively accelerate [the transition from fossil fuels.] The time has come, once and for all, for this nation to fully embrace a clean-energy future.”
The question is: Which one is the real Obama? Has he really been transformed by the oil spill in the gulf, or is he merely trying to ride out the public reaction with stronger words? I think the answer is as murky as the water off Mobile. We don’t know because so far it’s all words; the closest he’s come to specifics is that pledge that we won’t be off oil in a decade.
Which, of course, is true. Ten years from now, we’ll still be using oil. Many of the people who bought new Fords this year will still be driving them in 2020. Exxon will still be in business. But this realism didn’t need to preclude him from saying so much more than he did. Had he chosen to, he could have pledged: “Ten years from now, America will be using half the oil we do today and producing 10 times as much solar power.” That would have been stirring. That would have put something on the line.
He could, in other words, have done what President Kennedy did when he committed us to an accelerated space program. In a special address to Congress in May 1961, JFK urged that America pledge itself to the goal, “before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” He demanded of Congress “a firm commitment to a new course of action, a course which will last for many years and carry very heavy costs.”
Now, let’s catalog the differences. Kennedy had the Cold War to help him, along with an accelerating economy and a strong congressional majority. Obama presides over a fragile economy and a fractious Congress. And he must deal with a lunatic right that, at the last Republican convention, came together around the slogan “drill, baby, drill.”
Not only that, but the challenge Obama faces is much tougher. The Apollo mission was technically complex but in a sense the very opposite of our energy challenge. A moon shot meant focusing all our energy on three guys and a rocket, while an energy revolution would mean, in essence, landing the whole nation on a different planet, one where we no longer need the fossil fuels that are currently the engine for our economy. So, advantage Kennedy.
Obama, however, has no choice. The planet’s future (and his legacy) will, in the long run, be defined by his response to global warming, the greatest problem humans have ever faced.
Forget the Cold War. Last week, new satellite data showed that this summer’s melt in the Arctic is already ahead of 2007′s record pace. Globally, we’ve just come through the warmest winter on record, and it seems all but certain that 2010 will set a record for the hottest calendar year. Every week we seem to see record deluges somewhere. May began with crazy flooding in Nashville and ended with inundation in Guatemala. Last week saw the warmest temperatures ever recorded in Asia and Southeast Asia.
So far, Obama’s barely broken a sweat on climate change “” a few paragraphs in a few speeches. Now, the catastrophic oil spill in the gulf offers him the best chance he’s ever going to get to go to work. The president could stand on the Louisiana shore and say: “Bad as this is, it’s only a small and visible symbol of the greater damage we do each day simply by burning coal and gas and oil. If that black gunk now washing up here had ended up safely in the gas tanks of our cars, it would nonetheless have done great damage. It’s all dirty, every last drop and lump.”
The president already has the podium he needs to start turning history, which means more than merely pushing for the climate and energy bill introduced last month by Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman “” a prime example of baby-step politics.
The bottom line from that bill: If you neglect all the offsets and loopholes, we’re aiming for a 4% reduction in carbon emissions from 1990 levels by 2020. Make your blood stir? Obama’s not proposing real solutions to real problems; he’s ticking off items on a list. He got a healthcare bill, and just maybe he’ll get an energy bill (though that’s an increasingly slim maybe). But we don’t need the bill. We need the thing.
I’m putting this all on Obama, even though it’s clear that he can’t do it by himself. He’d need a movement to make real progress. That’s the tragedy, though. He’s already got a movement. He was elected with millions of us sending him money, knocking on doors, standing in snow banks with signs. He commands a standing army (albeit one that’s growing rusty from disuse and a little demoralized).
And it’s not just here. Around the world, we at 350.org were able to organize giant demonstrations last year “” 5,200 of them in 181 countries. We did it by rallying people around a tough but understandable goal: reducing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, which, according to NASA scientists, is the most we can safely have in the atmosphere. Since we’re already past that point “” at 390 ppm “” we need to work harder than we could ever have imagined. We really do need to get off oil in the coming decade.
But to have a chance, we need a leader. We need someone to stand up and tell it the way it is, and in language so compelling and dramatic it sets us on a new path. On this planet of nearly 7 billion, at this moment in history, there’s exactly one person who could play that role. And so far he hasn’t.
You can also hear him discuss this on All Things Considered.
Related Posts:
- Obama begins spill-to-bill pivot: BP oil disaster means we must end our dependence on fossil fuels
- Write Obama’s ‘pivot’ speech to the climate and clean energy jobs bill
- Robert Redford tells President Obama it’s time to lead “America on a path to cleaner, safer energy
- In the aftermath of the oil spill disaster, voters overwhelmingly support a comprehensive clean energy bill”¦. Voters understand the dangers of our dependence on oil. Now, they’re ready to hold Congress accountable.”
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Besides Bill’s commitment and knowledge, he has a real gift for using clear language to distill what the people of this country need to do. As he points out, it starts with Obama, who appears to be on the edge, tugged from several sides.
I agree that it’s about time he stepped up and led on the most important issue of our time. I hope that the president and his key advisors read this piece, ponder it, and act accordingly. The specifics Bill laid out are an excellent way to start.
The challenge of landing a man on the moon spurred many technologies still paying dividends today, some obvious most less so. An underlying faith in the abilities of technologies to come to humanities rescue when times are tough fall into the latter category in my view.
While the abilities of technology are manifest and humanity will need every last drop of blood from this source we will not succeed without the efforts of a unified population working in tandem with Corporations and Capitalism. Just as a house divided cannot stand, a world divided will surely perish without all our efforts for a long time, perhaps for all time. This is a seriously heavy burden to put on the shoulders of one man.
Just as the challenge of space travel was the spark for advancements in computing, material science, miniaturization, and so much more, the challenge of sustainability will do the same in unimagined profusion should life survive.
Will “life” look the same? Not a chance.
Will the earth be better for the effort? Beyond a doubt.
Will there be winners and losers? Success, we will all be winners.
Failure, every last one of us will lose for all time!
We do not ask you to do it alone President Obama. We do ask for a standard bearer.
For the Nation.
For the world.
For your daughters.
For the future.
I started tracking worldwide flooding closer, around november 2009, with the saudi arabia flood. Since then there is almost daily somewhere on the planet a record breaking flood event.
Leaders and Movements
Great post, Bill! Thanks!!
I would only add, or emphasize, a few things …
I’d put it this way: We don’t just need a leader and a movement. We need leaders and movements. Although we do need President Obama to step up to the plate, with bat in hand, swinging hard, and pointing to the fence, we need many other leaders, and other sorts of leaders, doing the same. And we need the movements. We need one here, there, over there, around there, and everywhere.
I would say that your comment is “right on” but highly understated, i.e., that many people in the movement, or ready for it, are “growing rusty from disuse and a little demoralized”. I’m not only a little demoralized, I’m about to blow a gasket. And, to tell the truth, I’m not quite sure anymore what is causing me to feel that way more and more: Is it ExxonMobil and the petroleum pushers? Or instead, is it the hesitant and unclear administration that I voted for in the hope for effective action? (After all, hope requires effective action in order to be realized and to build upon itself: Otherwise it just remains hope, which can’t sustain itself for very long and dies a slow death.)
Or, is my gasket under pressure because of us — all the people who want change but feel that boycotts would be useless and so forth? All the people who didn’t show up at the White House on Earth Day? Many of the people in some of the various climate organizations who do their own things but who haven’t been able to cooperate quite enough with each other to amass an event of a million people or more, in one place?
We each have our own geographic areas in which we can walk, talk, and chew gum without having to travel too far. I’m here in the S.F. Bay Area, which is a place ripe for more action — much more action — much much more action! With a few others, I’d like to try to put something together out here that could, hopefully, help. But, that something would greatly benefit from a bit of participation from folks like you (Bill), Joe Romm, Jim Hansen, Stephen S at Stanford, and a few others, to speak. No money involved. Just a day or two of personal presence — and your normal passion and message. As you know, this is the land of U.C. Berkeley, of Stanford, of many clean energy startups, of deep concern for the future and the environment (although it seems to be getting a bit rusty from underuse), of movements, and of occasionally passionate and to-the-point free speech.
I think that movements need to achieve critical mass, and the present movement is at about 2 percent of critical mass. That’s not 20 percent. It’s 2 percent. Even as we (deeply) need President Obama to shift his paradigm and go into higher gear, we also need to shift ours, I think, and go into higher gear. It’s as simple as that — not simple to do, but simple to see and at least try very hard to do.
As a San Francisco singer of note used to sing, “Pick up the Cry!”
Thanks for the great post, Bill, and Be Well,
Jeff
Because the earth has warmed, science tells us there is ~ 4% more water vapor in the atmosphere. That 4% equates to ~1.5 times the volume of water in Lake Superior. (By 2050 that number will be about 3 times the volume of Lake Superior.) Record breaking floods, big surprise.
It is to be noted that heavy rain, or snow in the winter, does not remove that extra water for long as evaporation quickly saturates the atmosphere again. This is the NEW NORMAL!
“Nero Stayed in His Comfort Zone While Rome Burned”
TO BE CLEAR: I’m not suggesting a comparison between Nero and President Obama or Bill McKibben, of course. Not at all. I admire Obama and McKibben, and they don’t have easy jobs or roles. And besides, their hearts are in the right places, and I don’t think they play the fiddle?
But, there is some truth in the “comfort zone” problem as it relates to every discipline and, indeed, to all of us.
Each of our “comfort zones” is, in many ways, among the chief allies of the status quo and of enabling a continuance of our problematic GHG-emitting ways.
My favorite example involves the media: The media write, periodically anyhow, in editorials, that the oil and coal industries should change. The media write that the government should do a much better job. The media write that China and India should change. The media write that our public habits will need to change, substantially. The media periodically explain why everything under the sun will need to change if we are to address global warming — except of course themselves! If you suggest that the media are not covering the global warming problem well, they’ll provide a dozen (contrived) explanations of why that is simply not so, and why the problem is really with the public’s ability read, to understand, or to walk and talk.
The media insist on sticking to their pre-existing paradigms and insist on staying in their own limited and limiting comfort zone.
The same applies to most scientists. Theirs is a different comfort zone, but most of them stick strongly to it. Despite understanding the climate change problem, and understanding its immense importance, most scientists still seem to think that it is not their role or responsibility (are they not humans as well as scientists?) to speak out strongly on the matter. They want the oil industry to change, and the media, but they themselves insist, paradigmatically, on keeping within their own comfort zone, far too often.
Much of academia too. I find it quite interesting that some of the most admired universities (Harvard, Stanford, etc.), where the relevant scientists all understand the immense problem of climate change, also happily and humbly house professors who are Board members of ExxonMobil, for example. The second-longest-serving Board member of ExxonMobil is an economics professor at Stanford, and another Board member (who has been on the Board for quite some time) is a professor of leadership at Harvard Business School. Yet, do you think that the faculties of the scientific departments (and other departments that care about human well being) have knocked firmly and repeatedly on the doors of the ExxonMobil Board members that have offices only a short walk away from their own? If they have done so, then they haven’t done so sufficiently or effectively, that’s for sure. My impression (from talking to some) is that that sort of direct appeal, individually or en masse, is not within their paradigm or comfort zone. Again, they want the oil and coal industry to change, and the public to change, and China and India to change, and the media, but ask them why they don’t appeal strongly to their colleagues who are on the Boards of the culprit companies, and they say “that’s not the thing for an academic to have to do”.
I could go on and on. Every discipline has its own pre-existing, self-defined comfort zone, and most of those comfort zones fall far short of being applicable to the present mess and the problem of climate change. Indeed, the status quo is fueled and enabled and encouraged by the cumulative influence of these comfort zones, so to speak. As a general rule, that applies in most instances, if you aren’t willing to step beyond your own comfort zone, then don’t ask others to step beyond theirs. And, if you want us to face and address climate change, then we’ll need to step beyond our comfort zones.
(To be clear, again, when I say “you” here, I’m talking to all of us in the generic audience, in a positive sense. In other words, if we want to face and address climate change, we’ll all have to step beyond our comfort zones. That includes the media, the scientific community, academia, and me, and politicians — although don’t hold your breath for that, unless you prompt them to change. And, stepping beyond a comfort zone does not mean “just doing more of the same”. In some cases, it means doing some things that are precisely at odds with your present paradigm of what your discipline normally does.)
No more fiddling.
Be Well,
Jeff
Well said, Bill, per usual!The President’s support would do a great deal to move the movement forward; we need a strong leader at this point to have any hope of creating the political will to make the necessary changes.
Here’s a good petition on change.org asking Obamam to lead:
http://www.change.org/global_warming_education_network/petitions/view/obama_please_educate_and_lead_on_climate_change
Great article by Mr. McKibben, thanks for that.
I think Obama has already made the biggest step of his life: One term unknown African American senator, to President. A huge, unexpected step.
It doesn’t look like much more can be expected. Little steps only.
He is being begged by people who know what they are talking about, to do something significant.
yet he appears to be immobilized.
He doesn’t seem to even hear the voices of people like Bill McKibben. Or is unable to imagine, that he can do what they are saying must be done.
He does not appear to be up to dealing with this crisis.
President Obama does not see global warming as an emergency. Not like the Gulf calamity. If the American people, media pundits, and politicians on both sides assaulted him about global warming like they are about the Gulf WE WOULD SEE SOME ACTION.
I just got done reading the repies on the LA Times web site. What strikes me about most of the entries on the this piece is the pinheaded disrespect and namecalling people are engaging in. I would wager that most of those writing don’t have the guts or the initiative of a Bill McKibben or an Al Gore when it comes to following their conscience and trying to ensure a better world for future generations.
My response to them is stop namecalling and engage in finding out what’s really going on with the world’s environment. If you connect all of the dots in regard to our society’s impact upon the world, you may just discover that Bill McKibben is correct in a lot of what he is saying.
As for Obama, though he has his limitations (and nobody is more disappointed about his approach to claimte change than I am), he still has the power to inspire action. I am still somewhat hopeful the he will rise to the occasion and unleash the changes we need to get off fossil fuels as soon as possible. The lives of future generations depend upon our making the hard choices NOW.