The short answer is, “Not today — not even close.”

The long answer is the subject of this post (and my book and this entire blog).

Certainly regular readers know that the nation and the world currently lack the political will to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at 450 ppm or even 550 ppm.

The political impossibility is also obvious from anyone familiar with Princeton’s “stabilization wedges” — and if you aren’t, you should be (technical paper here, less technical one here). The wedges are a valuable conceptual tool for showing the immense scale needed for the solution (although they have analytical flaws).

Of course, if solving the climate problem were politically possible today, I would have found something more useful to do with my time (as, I expect, would you). But 450 ppm or lower is certainly achievable from an economic and technological perspective. Indeed, that is the point of the wedges discussion (since they rely on existing technology) and the Conclusion to Hell and High Water.

The purpose of my last post on the adaptation trap was to make clear that 800 to 1000 ppm, which is where we are headed, is a catastrophe that is far beyond human imagining, that makes a mockery of the word “adaptation,” that has a “cost” far beyond that considered by any traditional economic cost-benefit analysis. It is both a rationally impossible and morally impossible choice. So, I think is 550 ppm, assuming we could stop there, which as I argued, we probably can’t thanks to the carbon cycle feedbacks like the melting tundra.

What needs to be done?

STABILIZING BELOW 450 PPM

[Note: I am going to do this entire post in billions of tons of carbon (GtC) even though I just wrote a long post explaining why carbon dioxide is better. That's because the wedges were formulated in GtC and are much more intuitive that way.]

As Princeton’s Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala (S&P) explain:

A wedge represents an activity that reduces emissions to the atmosphere that starts at zero today and increases linearly until it accounts for 1 GtC/year of reduced carbon emissions in 50 years. It thus represents a cumulative total of 25 GtC of reduced emissions over 50 years.

They wrote their Science paper when we were at 7 GtC and rising slowly — an ancient time you may remember as 2003, before Bush was reelected, before anybody ever heard of Reverend Wright or Paris Hilton or the need to stabilize below 450 ppm. An innocent time, really, but I digress.

So they said that 7 wedges would keep emissions flat for 50 years and then, assuming we invested in a lot of R&D, we could start cutting global emissions rapidly after 2050, and stabilize at 500 ppm. And everybody would live happily ever after driving fuel cell cars, watching YouTube, and popping the occasional Xanax.

Problem 1: The world is at 8 GtC annual emissions.

Just to stabilize emissions at current levels thus requires adopting at least 8 wedges.

Problem 2: S&P assume “Our BAU [business as usual] simply continues the 1.5% annual carbon emissions growth of the past 30 years.” Oops! Since 2000, we’ve been rising at 3% per year (thank you, China). That means instead of BAU doubling to 16 GtC in 50 years, we would, absent the wedges, double in 25 years. That would mean each wedge needs to occur in half the time, assuming our current China-driven pace is the new norm (which is impossible to know, but I personally doubt it is).

Problem 3: A wedge is a mind-bogglingly large amount of “activity.” For instance, a post last year on the Keystone report explained that one nuclear wedge would require adding globally:

• an average of 14 plants each year for the next 50 years, while building an average of 7.4 plants a year to replace those that will be retired;
• Plus 10 Yucca Mountains to store the waste.

If you believe 3% growth is the new norm, then double that — 43 nukes a year for 25 years — for one wedge.

One wedge of coal with carbon capture and storage means storing the emissions from 800 large coal plants (4/5ths of all coal plants in 2000) — a flow of CO2 into the ground equal to the current flow of oil out of the ground. That’s right — you have to re-create the equivalent of the planet’s entire oil delivery infrastructure.

So one wedge from nuclear and one from CCS would be a stunning global achievement. Those who want to rule them out need 2 more wedges.

Here are other typical wedges (these are examples, not endorsements):

• If we built two million large (one megawatt) wind turbines, or 2000 GW. “Last year’s global wind power installations reached a record 20,000 MW, equivalent to 20 large-size 1 GW conventional power plants.” So we’re at half the rate needed for 1 wedge of wind (or mayber a quarter).
• If the fuel economy of the 2 billion or so cars in the world in 2050 got 60 mpg, that would be one wedge.
• For the conservation/peak oil folks, if the 2 billion cars in 2050 travel 5000 miles a year, rather than 10,000.
• If we grew biofuels requiring one-sixth of the world cropland.
• For S&P, ending all deforestation and doubling the current rate of tree planting is one wedge. In fact, if we don’t sharply reduce deforestation, we probably need to add another two wegdes (S&P used optimistic numbers for deforestation).

Problem 4: Stabiling emissions at current levels for 50 years and then declining sharply would probably not stabilize us below 600 ppm (even assuming that 1.5% annual growth was BAU, and not 3%).

For 450 ppm, we need to average 5 GtC this century. So we must be back down below 4 GtC globally by mid-century (and then head to zero by century’s end). Thus we need a minimum of 12 wedges if we started last year, which we didn’t. We probably won’t start putting serious measures into place before 2010 at the earliest, when we’ll be at 9 GtC. So that is 2 more wedges.

[Yes, I know, know, why in God's name did we elect and reelect two oil men who would spend their entire time in office not merely blocking all domestic action, but all international action, too. That is one for the history books, I'm afraid. What is especially depressing is that China's torrid love affair with coal plants only began after 2000, after it was clear the U.S. wouldn't take any action.... As Richard the III might have put it, a time machine, a time machine, my Kingdom for a time machine....]

Problem 5: The baseline of the wedges is unknown even to the the original authors, S&P. This is related to Problem 2.

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Despite a Court-issued directive to develop a plan for regulating greenhouse gas emissions, Johnson goes back to square one, writes Robert Sussman. Read more from the Center for American Progress here.

Even for a do-nothing Administration, Johnson is a standout!

Earlier this week Alexandra Kougentakis, Fellows Assistant at the Center for American Progress, attended one of the American Meteorological Society‘s seminars discussing the latest in climate science (which are great resources for policymakers, as they tend to take place on Capitol Hill). She has kindly reported on the event below:

One of the favorite, though well-debunked, claims of the global warming skeptics is that the recent warming is due to the recent up tick in solar activity. The current solar cycle has indeed seen higher-than-average sunspots, but what most strengthens skeptics’ argument is the lack of knowledge about what this means. In that light, the American Meteorological Society’s recent seminar, “Solar Radiation, Cosmic Rays and Greenhouse Gases: What’s Driving Global Warming?” was especially illuminating

The core of the skeptics’ argument is to take legitimate scientific fact and distort it to serve a false premise. Solar activity is among the external factors listed by the IPCC whose variation could be a source of radiative forcing, which is the net change in solar ray penetration between the two atmospheric layers closest to the earth. In other words, solar activity is potentially a cause of climate change. The historic correlation between solar activity and climatic shifts seen in the paleoclimate record provides evidence to this effect. Since the 17th century, the record of 11-year cycles of solar irradiance, or brightness, charted through the analysis of tree rings and ice cores makes clear that solar irradiance has increased. A correlation has been observed between solar activity and climate shifts, at least up until the mid-20th century, when the connection became sharply weaker.

One of the strongest arguments against attempts to link solar activity to current warming has to do with inconsistencies in the solar signal.

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Lofty Pledge to Cut Emissions Comes With Caveat in Norway – New York Times. Norway has been stunning speculators with its pledges to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, and then by 2030. This article reports on the disappointment that much of Norway’s promise relies more on offsets than policies that make actual reductions. Similar realities and hurdles are likely to proliferate as we get more serious about global warming policy, and this is a challenge policy-makers must overcome.

New Limits to Growth Revive Malthusian Fears – Wall Street Journal. This article is sort of Jared Diamond’s book Collapse in brief in that it’s an exploration of how modern societies are handling economic, industrial and population growth as it merges with dwindling natural resources. Two questions emerge – Can we handle the management challenge, and can the earth handle us?

Even with stricter CAFE standards than our own, China Facing Renewed Fuel Shortages – AP. “China’s leaders are facing renewed pressure over shortfalls in diesel and gasoline, with lines growing at filling stations in major cities Monday as the gap widens between international crude oil values and centrally controlled fuel prices.”

Sharp to invest $729 million in new solar cell plant – Reuters. A Japanese company has recently announced how much capital funds it will be putting into its upcoming solar cell manufacturing plant. I think the real story is simply that this is another example of how international businesses are committing to building a green energy base, while American companies are not. Sharp intends to compete with a large German solar cell production company, both to act as exporters of the solar cell technology. We need to pay more attention to this market before we lose the potential to have an edge in it.

– Kari M.

Today, former Vice President Al Gore and his organization, the Alliance for Climate Protection, launched a $300 million, three-year campaign with the goal of “educating people in the US and around the world that the climate crisis is both urgent and solvable.” The Washington Post reports that the “We” campaign “aims to enlist 10 million volunteers through a combination of network and cable commercials, display ads…and online social networks.” Gore told 60 Minutes he and his wife Tipper had donated the Nobel Peace Prize money and all the profits from his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” to this new campaign.

The campaign’s website, wecansolveit.org, includes action alerts, blogger outreach, and the message of a “clean energy economy” fueled by energy efficiency and renewable energy.

The campaign will launch TV advertisements later this week that “will team up offbeat celebrity couples who may not have much in common but share a belief that it is important to address climate change,” including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and former Speaker Newt Gingrich, Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson, and the Dixie Chicks and Toby Keith. Sign up for the campaign, and watch its debut ad:

The Alliance’s spending of $100 million per year on a public advocacy campaign may be without precedent. However, the public is being bombarded with propaganda from the industries whose emissions are causing global warming and thus have the most to lose — or gain — from how the United States regulates greenhouse gas pollution. Here’s a look at what Gore’s campaign is up against:

• The energy, transportation, agribusiness, chemical, and energy-intensive manufacturing sectors have spent a combined $80 million in donations to Congress and presidential candidates since 2007;
• The coal industry is sponsoring a $20 million lobbying campaign by the National Mining Association and a $40 million campaign by its front group Americans for Balanced Energy Choices;
• The American Clean Skies Foundation, a natural gas industry front group, is launching a “multi-million dollar media advocacy campaign” with a 24-7 online TV channel on Earth Day;
• The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Council for Capital Formation, and the energy industry front group Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth have launched a 17-state tour painting a doom-and-gloom scenario for the economics of climate change action;
• Chevron, a major exploiter of the Alberta tar sands, is running the “Power of Human Energy” campaign;
• General Motors, whose chairman recently called global warming “a total crock of shit,” is running “GMNext,” Gas-Friendly to Gas Free” and “Live Green Go Yellow” campaigns;
• ConocoPhillips, who spent $506 million to purchase oil and gas leases in polar bear habitat in February, is running ads with the tagline “So we can pass on what matters … to the ones who matter most.”

In Part 1, we saw that

1. Adaptation as primary strategy for dealing with climate change is widely oversold.
2. This is especially true as atmospheric Co2 concentrations approach 800 to 1000 ppm, a likely outcome if we listen to either the delayers or deniers.
3. And a leader adaptation advocate and apparent delayer-1000, Roger Pielke, Jr., “labels adaptation what is in fact mitigation, and his idea of mitigation is apparently research into adaptation.”

Let me elaborate on these points. The day before the dubious pro-adaptation L.A. Times piece, one of Pielke’s fellow Prometheus bloggers, Jonathan Gilligan, pointed out

… if our political system stinks at managing floods, coastal storm risks, and fresh-water resources in the absence of anthropogenic climate change, why would it manage better if climate change does turn out to significantly increase the mean severity and/or variance of the distribution?

I made a similar point last year on the second anniversary of hurricane Katrina, a catastrophe that “showed the limitations of adaptation as a response to climate change“:

… a classic adaptation strategy to deal with rising sea levels is levees. Yet even though we knew that New Orleans would be flooded if the levees were overtopped and breached, even though New Orleans has been sinking for decades, we refused to spend the money to “adapt” New Orleans to the threat. We didn’t make the levees able to withstand a category 4 or 5 hurricane (Katrina was weaker at landfall than that, but the storm surge was that of a category 4).

… even now, after witnessing the devastation of the city, we still refuse to spend the money needed to strengthen the levees to withstand a category 5 hurricane. We refuse to spend money on adaptation to preserve one of our greatest cities, ensuring its destruction, probably sometime this century.

If we won’t adapt to the realities of having one city below sea level in hurricane alley, what are the chances we are going to adapt to the realities of having all our great Gulf and Atlantic Coast cities at risk for the same fate as New Orleans — since on our current path, climate change will ultimately put many cities, like Miami, below sea level?

For some, of course, adaptation is a complete ruse:

The fact is, the Denyers don’t believe climate change is happening, so they don’t believe in spending money on adaptation. The Center for American Progress has written an important paper on hurricane preparedness, which is a good starting point for those who are serious about adaptation.

But don’t be taken in by heartfelt expressions of faith in human adaptability. If Katrina shows us anything, it is that preventing disaster would be considerably less expensive — and more humane — than forcing future generations to adapt to an unending stream of disasters [which is to say a permanently altered climate].

The nation and the world will obviously have to spend serious money adapting to global warming for two reasons. First, we’ve delayed action to reduce emissions for so long. Second, delayers like Pielke (and President Bush, Bj¸rn Lomborg, and Newt Gingrich) still have the upper hand in the debate (as the L.A.T article and this Revkin NYT piece make clear), because the 1) technology trap is so appealing, 2) action requires a lot of effort, and 3) procrastination is always attractive option when someone is whispering in your ear that it is actually the best option.

Note: The cleverest delayers, like Pielke, never oppose action completely, they just never tell you specifically what their targets and actions would be. So they get to take the high road and argue out of both sides of their mouths, effectively arguing — “We need both mitigation and adaptation, but even though I don’t think the problem requires urgent action like the advocates, take my word that I support just enough mitigation to avoid the part of climate change that can’t be adapted to.”

Unfortunately, the part of climate change that can’t be adapted to is coming much faster than we feared. If we can keep total warming from preindustrial levels to 2°C or lower, than genuine adaptation is possible. The more we go above 2°C, the more adaptation will be replaced by suffering.

LIVING/SUFFERING IN A 1000 PPM WORLD

I listed only three catastrophes that would probably occur at 800 to 1000 ppm because I think those are the most serious and most inevitable. But they are hardly the only ones. A major 2005 study of the impacts of about 800 ppm on the United States found in the second half of this century (from 2071 to 2095) a vast swath of the country would see average summer temperature rise by a blistering 9°F.

Houston and Washington, DC would experience temperatures exceeding 98°F for some 60 days a year. Oklahoma would see temperatures above 110°F some 60 to 80 days a year. Much of Arizona would be subjected to temperatures of 105°F or more for 98 days out of the year–14 full weeks. We won’t call these heat waves anymore. As the lead author, Noah Diffenbaugh, of Purdue University said to me, “We will call them normal summers.”

Climate scientists don’t spend a lot of time studying 800 to 1000 ppm, in part because they can’t believe humanity would be so self-destructive as to ignore their increasingly dire warnings and fail to stabilize at well below 550 ppm. The IPCC notes that if equilibrium CO2-equivalent concentrations hit 1000 ppm, the “best estimate” for temperature increase is 5.5°C (10°F), which means that over much of the inland United States, temperatures would be about 15°F higher.

This increase would be the end of life as we know it on this planet. Interestingly, 5.5°C is just about the temperature difference between now and the end of the last ice age, the difference between a livable climate for human civilization that is well suited to agriculture and massive glaciers from the North Pole down to Indiana.

Is it 100% certain that 1000 ppm would result in

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RealClimate has a good introductory post on air capture, which they explain as:

The idea would be to let people emit the carbon dioxide at the source but then capture it directly from the atmosphere at a separate facility.

This is going to be a relatively expensive and complicated strategy for decades — and, of course, you need a place to put the carbon dioxide. That said, a lot of work is going on to see if one can do air capture driven by heat.

Why does that matter? The world has a LOT of zero carbon waste heat not currently being used for anything. Indeed, U.S. thermal power plants alone throw away in waste heat as much energy as Japan uses for every purpose! That’s more than 20 quads. And that doesn’t even count the heat thrown away in industrial processes. Now the smartest thing to do with that heat for the next few decades is obviously either generate electricity with it or use it for heating buildings or industrial processes.

But we should surely do a fair amount of research on air capture, since, by not later than the 2020s, we’re going to get desperate for emissions reductions, and by the 2030s, we’re going to be very desperate and willing to pursue expensive options we that aren’t yet politically realistic.

Indeed, it seems rather likely to me that something like air capture will be needed by the second half of this century. Assuming we actually seriously try to keep emissions below 450 ppm (currently, a doubtful proposition), we’ll probably need to go back to below 400 by 2100 and 350 by 2150, in my optimistic spin on Hansen’s latest paper.

In summary, air capture is not a near-term or medium-term solution, but possibly a long-term strategy.

Late last week, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) held the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) board meeting previewed in Killing the Electric Car Again Part 1 and Part 2. CARB appears to have put on a partially choreographed show.

Agency staff played the role of “bad cop.” Before the meeting they proposed cutting ZEVs by 90%, setting the scene for the Board appointees to play “good cop” and change the cuts to 70%. This allowed CARB to spin it as a tripling in the numbers in their press release:

The Air Resources Board today voted to triple the amount of zero emissions vehicles that staff had proposed for automakers to produce from 2012 through 2014, while directing staff to look at overhauling the program to account for climate
change benefits.

If FCVs with 300-mile range are used, then the cut is actually 79%; only 0.08% of new vehicles would have to be ZEVs.

Some of the board members insisted on playing the role of “bumble cop”, as they seemed to have little understanding of exactly what they were voting on. Even board members who had initially stated they thought the numbers should be increased, not decreased, seemed suddenly to forget those remarks and docilely follow the lead of board member Dr. Daniel Sperling, who near the end flashed up a slide filled with a table of numbers (presumably prepared in advance), and suggested that the board go with only 2,500 (1,785 if 300-mile range) FCVs a year. The board followed 7-0.

During the meeting, over fifty speakers took 3-minute slots explaining to the board why CARB should not retreat on its 8,333 per year mandate for 2012-14 (approximately 0.4% of California vehicle sales). The other dozen or so speakers primarily represented automakers and other interests requesting changes peculiar to their particular situations (issues such as the transition from intermediate to high volume manufacturer status, hydrogen internal combustion engines, and so on).

Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey testified at the CARB meeting on the wastefulness of diverting resources to hydrogen fuel-cell programs and the need to get plug-in cars on the road soon in order to reduce U.S. dependence on oil and to increase national security. Former Secretary of State George Shultz and former Deputy Under Secretary of Education Peter R. Greer, both of whom served under President Ronald Reagan, wrote to Gov. Schwarzenegger imploring him to help get more electric vehicles on the market.

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I was recently forwarded a link to a photographer’s work online, titled Industrial Scars. Intrigued by its name, I was expecting images of the Industrial Revolution or old building structures. To my surprise, the artist, Henry Fair, has a small collection that beautifully portrays the damage our petroleum and coal consumption is doing to the environment.

And yes, I meant ‘beautifully portrays the damage.’ At first, I felt guilty and torn for being drawn to the images. I didn’t know what message Fair means to send and couldn’t tell if he is concerned or ignorant of the damage. Until I read his statement, which I’ve excerpted from the webpage below:

I see our culture as being addicted to petroleum and the unsustainable consumption of other natural resources, which seems to portend a future of scarcity. My vision is of a different possibility, arrived at through careful husbandry of resources and adjustment of our desires and consumption patterns toward a future of health and plenty.

…At first, I photographed “ugly” things; which is, in essence, throwing the issue in people’s faces. Over time, I began to photograph all these things with an eye to making them both beautiful and frightening simultaneously, a seemingly irreconcilable mission, but actually quite achievable given the subject matter.

I’d like to be able to post a photograph here, but I’m certain there would be legal issues with that. So, I’ll simply encourage you to take a look at the photos at the site (and once in the portfolio, chose to read the captions – one of the choices on the bottom toolbar) and to reflect on them.

– Kari Manlove

The wheels may be falling off the media’s climate discussion, if a new L.A.Times piece is any evidence. The piece, “Global warming: Just deal with it, some scientists say,” which is really an article about not dealing with it.

The L.A. Times, with the help of the delayer-1000 du jour, Roger Pielke, Jr., has brought to prominence (and fallen for) what I call the “adaptation trap”:

The adaptation trap is the belief that 1) “it would be easier and cheaper to adapt than fight climate change” [as the Times puts it in the sub-head] and/or 2) “adaptation” to climate change is possible in any meaningful sense of the word absent an intense mitigation effort starting now to keep carbon dioxide concentrations below 450 ppm.

Sorry for the long definition, but as we’ll see, the second part is especially critical in what has now becaome an important emerging policy debate, which is cleverly devoid of specifics. (Indeed, on his blog, Pielke says he was misquoted and denies he believes the first part, which actually makes the L.A.T. piece even lamer, as Grist’s Dave Roberts shows). And being misquoted doesn’t mean Pielke isn’t very wrong anyway — as we’ll see at the end, Pielke is so confused about adaptation and mitigation that he takes the prize for the most backward analogy in the history of the climate debate and unintentionally proves just how wrong he is.

You see, as I’ve been arguing, the real question for the world is not whether we can stabilize below 450 ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide if we try hard enough and fast enough — of course we can, and at a very low cost according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which self-described “nonskeptical heretics” like Pielke claim to believe in.

The real question for humanity is whether we can avoid 800 to 1000 ppm or more. That is what the delayers and nonskeptical heretics simply don’t understand. At 800 to 1000 ppm, the world faces faces multiple catastrophes, including:

1. Sea level rise of 80 feet to 250 feet at a rate of 6 inches a decade (or more).
2. Desertification of one third the planet and drought over half the planet, plus the loss of all inland glaciers.
3. More than 70% of all species going extinct, plus extreme ocean acidification.

[I will explore these and other impacts in more detail in Part 2.]

This Hell and High Water could be “adapted” to by billions and billions of people only in the sense that the citizens of New Orleans “adapted” to Hurricane Katrina or that people in Darfur have “adapted” to their military conflict. Such “adaptation” is better called “suffering” as former AAAS President John Holdren describes it in talks.

What will it take to avoid 800 to 1000 ppm? Remember the IPCC bombshell from last year:

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Tomorrow, a handful of cities across the country will be participating in Earth Hour – a campaign to turn out the lights for an hour.

The event is to take place March 29th at 8 pm (your time). The objective is to raise awareness, use a bit less energy, and show the difference that could be made by simply turning out the lights. (And if you’re not sure what to do with the lights out, they’ve got ideas on their website.)

Like other critical mass events, if enough people particicpate, their statement could be huge. Worldwide, it probably will be – the event started in Sydney and spread to an internatinoal scale in one year. City-specific, it will be interesting to see how dramatic the difference is.

Loads of energy will be saved, even in just that hour. To sign up to participate, and make the change that much bigger, head over to their webpage. Over 245,000 have agreed to turn their lights out, and counting.

Next year, they should do this on March 21 — then it would be 3-2-1-Lights Out.

– Kari Manlove

I have a new article in Salon on perhaps the most misunderstood subject in energy — peak oil.

Here is the short version:

1. We are at or near the peak of cheap conventional oil production.
2. There is no realistic prospect that the conventional oil supply can keep up with current projected demand for much longer — if the industrialized countries don’t take strong action to sharply reduce consumption, and if China and India don’t take strong action to sharply reduce consumption growth.
3. Many people are expecting unconventional oil — such as the tar sands and liquid coal — to make up the supply shortage. That would be a climate catastrophe, and I (optimistically) believe humanity is wise enough not to let that happen. More supply is not the answer to either our oil or climate problem.
4. Nonetheless, contrary to popular belief, the peak oil problem will not “destroy suburbia” or the American way of life. Only unrestrained emissions of greenhouse gases can do that.
5. We have the two primary solutions to peak oil at hand: fuel efficiency and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles run on zero-carbon electricity. The only question is whether conservatives will let progressives accelerate those solutions into the marketplace before it is too late to prevent a devastating oil shock or, for that matter, devastating climate change.
   

That last sentence has been a major focus of this blog. I discuss it briefly in the article, but let me elaborate on it here. For more than two decades, conservatives have put up almost every conceivable roadblock to a sane energy policy. They have essentially said to peak oil — and catastrophic global warming, for that matter — “Bring it on!”

No one should be surprised we are now mired in a tar pit of growing dependence on oil imported from unstable or undemocratic regions, oil prices over $100 a barrel, a trade deficit in oil alone approaching $500 billion a year, and, of course, the very serious threat of catastrophic climate change from burning an ever-increasing amount of fossil fuels.

Many of us have predicted for a very long time that a quarter century of ignoring or underfunding the key solutions to our addiction to oil would have consequences. For instance, an April 1996 article I coauthored warned about what the Gingrich Congress was trying to do:

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Tonight Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is flying into Denver to scrounge up cash at a $25,000 apiece “roundtable” followed by a $1000-a-head ($2300 with a “Photo Opportunity”) fundraiser at the Denver Petroleum Club. McCain’s choice of venue is singularly appropriate, as his campaign is being funded and run by Big Oil lobbyists. As global warming, skyrocketing oil prices, and a failing economy create an interlinked energy crisis, McCain has repeatedly failed to put the people’s interests before those of the fossil-energy industry.

Since launching his campaign for president, Sen. McCain has talked tough about Big Oil but has been funded by their petro-dollars. In a 2007 Iowa speech, McCain described his “energy strategy” for America, with “straight talk” about “petro-dictators,” big oil subsidies, and energy lobbyists:

As President, I’ll propose a national energy strategy that will amount to a declaration of independence from the risk bred by our reliance on petro-dictators and our vulnerability to the troubled politics of the lands they rule. That strategy won’t be another grab bag of handouts to this or that industry and a full employment act for lobbyists. Yes, that means no ethanol subsidies. But it also means no rifle-shot tax breaks for big oil.

But is candidate McCain himself reliant on Big Oil? Since first running for the Senate in 1986, John McCain has received at least $549,712 from the oil and gas industry. More than half — $291,685 — has come in the last two years. Moreover, John McCain’s own campaign is a “full employment act for lobbyists” who rely on “petro-dictators.”

– McCain’s Senior Adviser Lobbies For Foreign Oil Interests. Charlie Black (lobbying firm: BKSH), McCain’s senior campaign adviser, is a registered lobbyist for two Russian oil companies — Yukos Oil and Occidental International Corporation — and his lobbying firm was hired in 2005 by the China National Off-Shore Oil Corporation. [Roll Call 7/18/05, Senate Lobbying Disclosure Records]

– McCain’s “Consigliere” a Top Lobbyist for Saudi Arabia. Former Texas representative Tom Loeffler (The Loeffler Group), a top Bush fundraiser now in charge of McCain’s fundraising efforts, received approximately $900,000 a year from the Saudis to lobby Congress and “arrange meetings between Saudi officials and such senior Bush administration officials as Karl Rove.” [DNC 4/23/07]

– McCain’s Campaign Liaison to Congress a Million-Dollar Big-Oil Lobbyist. John Green (Ogilvy Government Relations) — the “full-time liaison between McCain’s presidential campaign and Republicans in the House and the Senate” — has made over $7.6 million dollars since 1999 lobbying for petro-industry giants such as Amerada-Hess, Chevron Texaco, the American Petroleum Institute, Reliant Energy, PJM Interconnection and First Energy. [Politico 3/4/08, Senate Lobbying Disclosure Records]

– Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Everywhere in the McCain Campaign. Susan Nelson, McCain’s National Finance Chair worked at the Loeffler Group for Saudi Arabia. Frank Donatelli, McCain’s RNC liaison to the Republican Party, has lobbied for ExxonMobil, Dominion, and Eastman Chemical. Jerry Kilgore, co-chairman of McCain’s Virginia campaign, has lobbied for Shell Oil and coal company Alpha Natural Resources. [Washington Post 3/12/08, O'Dwyer's 8/9/06, Media Matters 2/26/08, Senate Lobbying Disclosure Records]

Although Candidate McCain may have made a “declaration of independence” on the campaign trail, Senator McCain’s own actions have kept “rifle-shot tax breaks for big oil” and “reliance on petro-dictators” as the law of the land.

– McCain Voted Against Reducing Dependence on Foreign Oil. In 2005, McCain voted against legislation calling on the President to submit a plan to reduce foreign petroleum imports by 40 percent. [Senate Roll Call Vote #140, 6/16/05; DNC 6/22/07]

– Candidate McCain’s “Zero” For Energy Future, Billions For Big Oil. Since launching his campaign for president in 2007, Sen. McCain has skipped out on every key environmental vote the Senate has considered, earning him a zero on the League of Conservation Voters scorecard this session. In one such instance, his absence killed the rollback of billions of dollars in oil subsidies for renewable energy investment. [LCV 2008]

– McCain’s Absence Allows GOP to Filibuster Oil-For-Renewables. By a roll call vote of 59-40 on December 13, 2007, Senate Democrats failed to muster the 60 votes needed to prevent a filibuster threatened by Republicans of compromise energy legislation with an oil-for-renewable tax package. The tax package rolled back $12.7 billion in tax breaks on the oil and gas industry to invest in renewable energy tax credits. Sen. John McCain, on the campaign trail, was the one senator not voting. [CQ 12/12/07] [Vote #425 12/13/07]

Having failed to act to roll back subsidies for Big Oil as a senator, McCain now has unveiled a tax plan which would provide an even greater “grab bag of handouts” to industry. As Wendy Norris at Colorado Confidential asks, “[W]ould a McCain presidency simply reprise the oil-and-gas-friendly Bush Administration for another four years?”

If you’re interested in a Green Jobs 101 (from the media, anyway), a good place to start is Wednesday’s New York Times article, “Millions of Jobs of a Different Collar.” But it’s not a perfect start, because the article fails to demonstrate an understanding of the scale of this movement, and the author could have taken heed to one of his co-worker’s pieces on green education and job-training.

Here’s how the article describes green jobs (emphasis added):

Presidential candidates talk about the promise of “green collar” jobs — an economy with millions of workers installing solar panels, weatherizing homes, brewing biofuels, building hybrid cars and erecting giant wind turbines. Labor unions view these new jobs as replacements for positions lost to overseas manufacturing and outsourcing. Urban groups view training in green jobs as a route out of poverty. And environmentalists say they are crucial to combating climate change.

For those reasons, the issue of green jobs is something the Center for American Progress has given a lot of attention. This is the creation of a workforce to power a low-carbon economy.

However, in the same places the article shows skepticism of green jobs, the article reveals that it does not entirely understand or convey the concept of a green workforce for a green economy.

Two cases in point. The article writes, “Welders at a wind-turbine factory are viewed as having green jobs, but what about the factory’s accountant or its janitors?” And later it quotes Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute: “There will undoubtedly be a lot of jobs created in industries that are considered green or fashionable. Some will last a long time, and some will go like the dot-coms.”

What you have to understand about green jobs is that they’re part of something much, much larger, and that’s the transition to the low-carbon economy. Another person quoted in the piece is Lois Quam, who commented, “When I first started looking at this area, many people commented on how this will be as big as the Internet. But this is so much bigger than the Internet. The only comparable example we can find is the Industrial Revolution. It will affect every business and every industry.”

She has a much better grasp of the notion. The earlier two are so focused in details that they’re missing the larger picture. Mr. Ebell is right, dot-com jobs disappeared, but the Internet (the essence) revolutionized. The same is true here, some green jobs may fall as fads, but so many of our fundamentals about the economy will have to change that the argument holds its own. (The same applies to the relevance of the janitor at the turbine factory.)

A perfect example of how such a dramatic, yet subtle shift occurs also ran in today’s New York Times, “Majoring in Renewable Energy“:

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William Chandler, director of the Carnegie Energy and Climate Program, has borrowed my phrase for the title of his new study– “Breaking the Suicide Pact: U.S.-China Cooperation on Climate Change.” It begins:

Together, China and the United States produce 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Their actions to curb or expand energy consumption will determine whether efforts to stop global climate change succeed or fail. If these two nations act to curb emissions, the rest of the world can more easily coalesce on a global plan. If either fails to act, the mitigation strategies adopted by the rest of the world will fall far short of averting disaster for large parts of the earth.

These two nations are now joined in what energy analyst Joe Romm has aptly called “a mutual suicide pact.” American leaders point to emissions growth in China and demand that Chinese leaders take responsibility for climate change. Chinese leaders counter that American per capita greenhouse gas emissions are five times theirs and say, “You created this problem, you do something about it.”

Great factoid from the report:

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the United States has produced 1,150 billion tons of carbon from fossil fuels, compared to China’s 310 billion tons.

Key Recommendations for U.S.-China Cooperation:

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At the Swampland blog, Joe Klein praised Sen. McCain’s foreign policy speech today as “a quantum leap toward sanity and away from the prevailing idiocy of the Bush Administration,” singling out the passage below:

There is such a thing as international good citizenship. We need to be good stewards of our planet and join with other nations to help preserve our common home. The risks of global warming have no borders. We and the other nations of the world must get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand off a much-diminished world to our grandchildren. We need a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner. We Americans must lead by example and encourage the participation of the rest of the world, including most importantly, the developing economic powerhouses of China and India.

Klein evidently did not hear Bush when he addressed the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference three weeks ago:

[L]isten, let me start first by telling you that America has got to change its habits. . . But we’re dependent upon oil, and so as our economy grows, it’s going to create more demand for oil — same with China, same with India, same with other growing countries. . . I’ve come today to tell you that America is the kind of country that when they see a problem, we address it head-on. I’ve set a great goal for our country, and that is to reduce our dependence on oil by investing in technologies that will produce abundant supplies of clean and renewable energy, and at the same time show the world that we’re good stewards of the environment. . . . The United States is serious about confronting climate change, and the strategies I just laid out for you are an integral part of dealing with climate change. Should there be an international agreement? Yes, there should be, and we support it.

In the strict physical sense of a “quantum leap,” Joe Klein is quite accurate. McCain’s words represent a shift of infinitesimal scale from Bush’s own.

Sundance Channel today announced that programs from THE GREEN, the Tuesday night destination devoted entirely to the environment, are now available for download on the iTunes Store (www.itunes.com). Programming from THE GREEN includes the award-winning documentary series “Big Ideas for a Small Planet” and the first episode from season two is available as a free download, beginning March 26 through April 1. Each additional episode will be available for purchase and download from the iTunes Store for $1.99 the day after it airs on Sundance Channel.

Additionally, THE GREEN interstitial series, “EcoBiz,”„¢ exploring financial aspects of environmental innovation, and “The Ecoists,”„¢ featuring active and recognizable environmental activists sharing ideas and information, will be available for free from iTunes Podcast on the Wednesday following its premiere on Sundance Channel.

THE GREEN, Sundance Channel’s programming destination devoted entirely to the environment, offers entertaining sources of information and inspiration about the planet we call home. THE GREEN original programs and interstitial segments provide viewers with ideas and tangible opportunities for all facets of their lives, demonstrating how to work green, play green, eat green, dress green and live green.

“Big Ideas for a Small Planet”

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I know it seems hard to believe sometimes, but this blog is actually titled Climate Progress. I only see two major, quantitative areas of sustained progress — clean energy deployment (especially in Europe) and private sector clean-tech funding.

Those folk at Clean Edge, who wrote the best 2007 book on clean tech, The Clean Tech Revolution, have quantified these gains — and made predictions about the future — in a new report you can read here. Some interesting factoids:

• Clean-energy markets — revenue for solar photovoltaics (PV), wind, biofuels, and fuel cells — grew by 40 percent from $55 billion in 2006 to $77.3 billion in 2007. They project revenues will reach $254.5 billion by 2017. [Yes, lame (if not counterproductive) biofuels are about a third of those numbers, and I personally wouldn't count them as "clean tech." Then again Clean Edge isn't counting energy efficiency.]
• New Energy Finance does a slightly different calculation, showing “New global investments in energy technologies — including venture capital, project finance, public markets, and research and development — have expanded by 60 percent from $92.6 billion in 2006 to $148.4 billion in 2007.”
• “U.S.-based venture capital investments in energy technologies more than quadrupled from $599 million in 2000 to $2.7 billion in 2007…. As a percent of total VC investments, energy tech increased from .6 percent in 2000 to 9.1 percent in 2007. Between 2006 and 2007, venture investments in the U.S. clean-energy sector increased by more than 70 percent.”
• “Last year’s global wind power installations reached a record 20,000 MW, equivalent to 20 large-size 1 GW conventional power plants.”
• “Annual installations [of PV] were just shy of 3 GW worldwide, up nearly 500 percent from just four years earlier

In Europe, renewables have become the dominant form of new power generation — which just shows you what happens when governments become (relatively) serious about global warming:

Europe provides a great example of this transition. Since the beginning of the decade the EU has added 47,000 MW of new wind energy compared to just 9,600 MW of coal and only 1,200 MW of nuclear, according to Platts Power Vision and the European Wind Energy Association. Perhaps even more telling, 2007 saw net capacity additions of 8,505 megawatts of wind, whereas both coal and nuclear saw net capacity reductions of 750 megawatts and 1,023 megawatts, respectively.

Climate Progress, albeit in fits and starts, can be found if you look hard enough.

In October of last year, the administration of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) denied permits for two new coal-fired plants in her state because the greenhouse gases such coal plants would emit constitute a threat to the environment and public health. Last Friday, she also vetoed a legislative attempt to reverse the decision. Opponents of the veto claimed “the decision is costing the state jobs and economic investment” and warned of “higher electric bills for Western Kansas,” where the plants were proposed.

But a landmark report released yesterday by an esteemed financial research firm finds that, in fact, Sebelius has been acting in her state’s best economic interests.

Innovest Strategic Value Advisors finds that Sunflower Electric Power Corporation, the company whose proposal was denied, failed to account for the effects of the likely regulation of carbon dioxide on the cost of coal-fired electricity when it sought to build two 700 MW coal plants in Holcomb, Kansas:

Innovest examined the economics of the transaction and determined that under the most plausible regulatory scenarios the decision to build new coal generating capacity will put Sunflower Electric’s ratepayers – who in this particular case are the actual owners – at significant risk. The report concludes that Sunflower’s management has not adequately addressed the competitive and financial risks associated with climate change in deciding to pursue the expansion of its Holcomb Station power plant.

Sunflower was remiss in not considering that federal legislation that places a price on carbon emissions is extremely likely, considering the bipartisan support and strong international pressure for such action.

The report compares the economics of coal plants versus natural gas plants, which have a considerably smaller carbon footprint, and concludes:

In general, this analysis demonstrate that gas is the more financially sound choice for the construction of baseload generating capacity in all scenarios except 100% free allocation [to power companies] of carbon allowances.

The report also notes that western Kansas has “among the nation’s most abundant wind resources” and that the cost of wind power has plummeted 80% in the last 20 years.

The Center for American Progress plan for a low-carbon economy explains how a carbon-cap system with full auctioning of permits and broad investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency is the right choice.

(HT: David Sassoon at SolveClimate)

Please.

So as Andrew Leonard writes in his “How the World Works” blog, this all began with a column by

Toronto Star energy reporter Tyler Hamilton that itself had summarized the conclusions of a study raising questions about whether it always makes sense to replace incandescent light bulbs with CFLs. The nub of the argument was that in some cases the heat generated by the incandescent light bulbs could be useful.

Tyler is a friend of mine and a great reporter, so I sent him an email explaining why this is not true, which was not written for publication. Then Leonard himself summarized the column on his blog. So, as Leonard explains:

This excited a storm of comment, and even inspired Joseph Romm, author of “Hell and High Water: Global Warming — The Solution and the Politics,” energy expert, blogger extraordinaire, and regular Salon contributor, to pass on a copy of an e-mail he sent directly to Hamilton.

[That Leonard comment is, I believe, the blogging equivalent of make-up sex -- note to parents, that link is PG-13 -- but I digress.]

Anyway, here is my email:

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