We as a group are idealistic, and sometimes this gets in the way of action. While there is something positive to be said for people who are completely committed to a cause, having an ideologically pure movement is no replacement for effective action. The right-wing spin machine portrays enviros as holier-than-thou to an extent that is out of touch with reality, but there is a grain of truth to this spin. Lets not fall into our opponents trap.  

In the US the environmentalist community has had stunning success. In the span of 25 years we went from having virtually no environmental protection to the most extensive and effective environmental regulations in the world. Our success has made us spoiled and complacent. These victories were hard won and at the time our opponents were not really fighting back. Now they are, and this means it will be harder to get legislation passed and there will be no perfect bills.

We often forget that not everyone is an environmentalist. Just because all the enviros want to do something does not mean everyone else wants to do it too. Getting climate change bills passed will require broad based coalitions with people who are outside the environmentalist community. They might not want everything the enviros want, so sometimes compromises must be made for the sake of progress.

On a minor note, I thought the subsidies for clean energy (solar and wind) had been cut (I hope not, but that's what I thought I heard)?

Oh well, even if they were, the 15% standard should ensure enough investment so that the industry continues to grow at a fairly rapid pace.

I say that because, as you will have heard climate scientists mention from time to time, the "unknowns" in the science are distinctly tilted toward the bad news.  Today we have a prime example of that:

"Widening of the tropical belt in a changing climate"

Abstract: "Some of the earliest unequivocal signs of climate change have been the warming of the air and ocean, thawing of land and melting of ice in the Arctic. But recent studies are showing that the tropics are also changing. Several lines of evidence show that over the past few decades the tropical belt has expanded. This expansion has potentially important implications for subtropical societies and may lead to profound changes in the global climate system. Most importantly, poleward movement of large-scale atmospheric circulation systems, such as jet streams and storm tracks, could result in shifts in precipitation patterns affecting natural ecosystems, agriculture, and water resources. The implications of the expansion for stratospheric circulation and the distribution of ozone in the atmosphere are as yet poorly understood. The observed recent rate of expansion is greater than climate model projections of expansion over the twenty-first century, which suggests that there is still much to be learned about this aspect of global climate change."

Recall that it has taken very little in the way of accumulated anthropogenic forcing to have this result.  If we double pre-industrial CO2 levels by 2050, as seems likely, or even if we manage to stick to Jim Hansen's new limit of 450 ppm, that's a much larger extra push to the system.  Look for larger and nastier surprises.

The Australians at least seem to have figured out what this latest change means.  OTOH I don't see them proposing sharp cutbacks in coal production.

not everyone agrees

now what?

Also, do not be too sure about furure supermajorities.  more rare and fleeting than you might think

Suppose Al Gore had simply faded away instead of causing all his hullabaloo.   The results would still be the same: technology working to decrease Co2, increase efficiency and get us to next generation transportation and fuels.   But that has been in the works for decades, and is coming, barely, to fruition right now.

The "Green Revolution" is being made by businessmen and engineers, not by bloggers and diatribes.

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

It's just a tick better than doing nothing at all.

The science, the observable data and consistent hypothesis and theories, says the atmosphere is heating at an accelerating rate. A rate so fast right now that the current "worst case scenario" models are understating the effects of global warming as shown by last summers unprecedented retreat of arctic sea ice by 40 years.

More ominously the permafrost of the Siberian and Canadian arctic is melting releasing methane that has been trapped in ice for a very, very, long time. This will undoubtedly accelerate the rate of change still more as there is more biologically available carbon in the permafrost than all the coal and oil burned to date.

So the proposed laws aren't even going to slow the growth in the rate of climate change.

Any pretense that these bills are anything but a political stopgap until tougher, more extensive measures can be enacted should be abandoned. Really we should be on a worldwide crash course to completely halt the release of fossil fuel carbon as well as another crash program to secure the excess carbon already in the atmosphere.

Because this is no cause for celebration. It's a farce. A powder puff artillery. A duct tape brigade on the Titanic. A water pistol in San Diego. A colander in New Orleans. A crushed glass kindergarten.

Just a little reminder. Look at the Arctic Ice anomaly graph here.  Notice all the way to the right how radically different the current graph is even compared to 2000.

Another reminder. Meltwater "ponds" on the surface of Greenlands glaciers. This was unthinkable 50 years ago.

Put the Carbon Back

I did write a letter to my senators yesterday requesting that they remove the loopholes in CAFE, especially the egregious Flex Fuel Vehicle loophole.  Not likely that Durbin and Obama, both big corn ethanol proponents, will pay any heed. When you have to cheat to promote your fuel ... you are doing it the Washington way.

Yellow streams in celebration,
Lou

While harumping away on Grist, I been out there humping for precisely what I am denouncing. Functional schizophrenia.

Its a beautiful thing.

Randy Cunningham.

Randy Cunningham

But it must be done by increments.  Otherwise, it will not happen.

Be careful of angry or pretentious rhetoric because it gets in the way -- even when you are right.  If the public gets the idea that you scorn them, then they will label you and scorn you.

A year ago, few believed political action was necessary or likely.  Now, a consensus is being built that something must be done.

The science news will be relentlessly bad.  The consensus can be built upon for more action.

But watch out for the economic counter-arguments.  Especially if a recession hits.  People who feel at economic risk get humiliated and angry, and susceptible to demogoguery.  Don't let them blame the Greens.

It will be a political tightrope to build toward effective action for years to come.

Keep pushing hard, but be nice.

http://www.blueplanetsociety.org

any legislation pending?

But wasn't Dingell proposing carbon taxes (on fuel) in order to kill the environmental movement a while back?  The green side wants to raise your taxes (no new taxes ever!) so unelect every green candidate.  I think that was his strategery.

So now he pretends to be dragged kicking and screaming into higher CAFE standards?  I can hear the propaganda already, greens are killing our auto industry.

We could celebrate, but it better be a celebration of the trend rather than the actual acomplishments.  

The worst president in history, he started a war he can't finish so intends to pass it on to the next president.  Democrats take over congress because of this, and we get an energy policy loaded with subsidies for agribizz, clean coal, oil and gas, and even nukes.  With a few bones thrown to renewables and conservation.

Still the trend away from the status quo is a reason to be hopefull.  We can celebrate because subsidies for renewables were not eliminated completely.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/11/30/12449/665/#co ...

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/11/19/02938/435/#6

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Much of what needs to be done is to convince more people to drive the more fuel efficient vehicles.  

The next levels of transportation efficiency needs to be pursued, plug-ins with electricity from non-carbon sources.

Is there a trade off in what type of vehicle car companies should be trying to make?  Should car companies entire research and development money go to making new gasoline standards or for more research into plug-ins?

It might make more sense go directly to plug-ins than working on some intermediate fuel milages.

Lorna Salzman

But I do not disagree with your goals.  

It will take many election cycles to build a sufficient progam -- if we can do it then.

You are talking about changing a way of life.  And with that, a culture.  No easy path.

It is a very good sign of things to come. It looks like the upcoming elections will put more pro-environmental candidates in office (i.e. Democrats), and no matter who is elected president they won't be as anti-environmental as Bush. In the next round the bill will be improved, but the environmentalist community will have to be involved. Sitting on the side lines and complaining that other people aren't dirty hippies is self destructive.

If they take out the RES...well, then the bill is pretty much worthless, whether he passes it or not.

In fact, the actual performance falls short of the current standard by about 20 percent, as would be true as well of the higher standard if the proposal becomes law.

Manufacturers will be encouraged to keep selling cars that can burn rich mixtures of ethanol with gasoline, even where there is no place to buy it. The compromise phases out the credit for building "flex fuel" cars more slowly than current law does."

 'Calculating Energy Bill's Real Figures'
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/washington/04fuel.html

Not bad for a harumper, eh?

Now let me say I hope we can do much, much better in the future and I sure hope this bill does not make people complacent, nor get in our way in the future.

Harump!

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

so empty victories are not a basis for celebration...they're wasting time and manufacturing illusions that we're solving the challenge.

like another poster above said, if our solutions are not tied to scientific standards....well, we'll go the way of the other 99% of species to walk, crawl, swim, flagellate the earth.  

our only difference...we'll probably be the first species in the earth's history to document our extinction (or stupendous ignorance of it!).

:)

but no one is saying that.  to the contrary, most are saying it is a huge problem and will need attention for years

the choice now is half a loaf, or nothing

half a loaf builds some momentum (but leaves much to do)

nothing builds cynicism and avoidance

this incremental action is borne of human inertia and efficiency.  

should we accept a 20% loss of biodiversity by 2100, 30%, or 50%.

should we trade a few hundred or thousand cases of childhood cancer for a few years of incremental momentum, or should we draw a line based in science and strongly advocate for that position?

look at bush & cheney's actions regarding torture...how half-step did they go in renditions, torture and denying habeas corpus?

i won't jump on any soap box about how it's going to take one to five million years for the Earth to replace the biodiversity we're now destroying, or how how 5,000 children a day die due to lack of or dirty water (think one full 747 jetliner crash every hour).  :)  Soooooooo, anyway....it is in concessions and agreeing to process that we will lose, if only because there is a temporal dimension to all of this.

if only we had a hundred years to build that momentum...but hansen et. al have demonstrated otherwise.

it's no different than when the environmental community buys into the argument that solar power "costs" more than conventional power.  in agreeing with that statement (instead of quantifying the costs of lives cut short by air pollution, acid rain over the Adirondacks, mountains lost and communities destroyed in Appalachia, etc..., CO2 emitted), we enable the coal industry to keep extracting and burning, while it is starting to buy more time marketing itself as America's resource, and clean.  check out the recent ads on CNN...

until we decipher and define the honest terms of the debate (e.g., how paul hawken did in "ecology of commerce"...as one example), we will be stuck with these incremental, feel-good momentum building moments, not tied to scientific, quantifiable and verifiable restorative policy and action.