Waiting for a techno miracle: not the fastest way to cut emissions

Government-financed construction plus carbon pricing is the key

Posted by Jon Rynn (Guest Contributor) at 2:33 PM on 21 Apr 2008

With NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof's seeming endorsement of Roger Pielke Jr.'s ideas about mitigating global warming, it seems that we have two main arguments developing: the "breakthrough" argument, which says we must have technology breakthroughs in order to solve the problem, and, as articulated (for instance) by Joseph Romm, the "just do it" argument that we have the technologies now to minimize global warming. Most of my posts have been an attempt to show how current technologies can move us toward a "zero emissions" society.

The "breakthrough" people do raise an interesting question, but then they veer off into the wrong answer. They ask, effectively, Is there something the government can do to solve global warming, besides carbon pricing? Their answer: Spend $30 billion a year on energy R&D, hoping for a breakthrough.

I will argue in this post that the answer to their question is, Yes, the government can do something beyond carbon pricing -- governments at all levels can, first, provide some of the finance capital to the private sector to build renewable energy systems, and second, governments can build the necessary transportation systems and in some cases the energy systems. And by doing so, support for and the effectiveness of carbon pricing policies will be improved.

In order to make this argument, let's back up a little and ask, "What kind of society are the authors of the various plans for global warming mitigation envisioning?" I think that, at their core, most global warming initiatives embed a conception of what is practical, considering both political and cultural constraints.

For the "breakthrough" authors, it seems that the ideal would be a society that looked identical to today's, except that if you looked "under the hood" -- either of the cars or the electricity-generating plants -- there would be all kinds of nifty renewable energy technologies pumping out carbon-free energy. However, even for Joseph Romm and most of the "just do it" authors (including Al Gore, I think), there is a concern to conserve the reigning culture as well. For instance, Romm, even though he is pro-public transit, devotes his entire proposal for transportation to plug-in or electric car technology. For "just do it" proposals, the changes might be more noticeable -- PV on roofs, a general awareness of efficiency of appliances and buildings -- but it still would not require a great change in lifestyle.

The desire to conserve the culture is perfectly understandable. Thus, as Ryan Avent has written, public transit is a forgotten solution, even among environmentalists, probably (in my estimation) because it would mean, for the vast majority of Americans, a culture change from a car- and suburbia-oriented lifestyle.

This is where the problem with carbon pricing comes in: If having a big house and a big car becomes prohibitively expensive, people will have to change their lifestyles, and so their attitude toward carbon pricing will be negative. Therefore, government-directed financing and construction may be an essential selling point: If we build the transit and transit-oriented communities that would be preferred in a carbon-constrained world, people will be much more willing to accept carbon pricing. They'll have alternatives.

For instance, it can be very difficult to provide the upfront money to add the solar energy or geothermal systems to a building that would drastically decrease the use of fossil fuels -- but the city of Berkeley is providing that upfront money, to be paid back from the savings gained.

As electricity provided from utilities becomes more expensive, there will be greater and greater demand to cut energy requirements for buildings. If programs like those of Berkeley are available, more expensive electricity will not lead to an outcry to scale back or dump carbon pricing altogether. Instead, people will be relatively cheery about putting up those photovoltaics or retrofitting their buildings.

Governmental loans have the added advantage that they will cost the taxpayer very little, over the long run, because most of the loans will be paid back. If governments at all levels were to provide the finance capital to developers to build dense housing and retail in town and city centers, those loans would also be repaid eventually.

Governments could directly provide several parts of a green energy and transportation infrastructure: the construction of high-speed rail, light rail, commuter rail, and bus rapid transit (plus improvements to make bicycle riding safe), making all government buildings zero-emission buildings, the construction of a national high-voltage direct current energy grid, and perhaps even TVA-like national wind and solar farms in appropriate parts of the country.

In turn, depending on how it's set up, carbon pricing could provide most of the funds for the upfront capital and the infrastructure construction.

There is one more argument to be made for combining carbon pricing and government-directed financing and construction: if all the products bought as a result of government-provided finance capital or bought in the course of construction were required to be American-made, building a carbon-free economy would lead to an explosion of good manufacturing jobs. If all or most of the machinery used in the manufacturing process were also American-made, the restoration of American manufacturing as well as much of the prosperity of the middle class would be assured.

The pitch could be the following: "Everything that uses fossil fuels will become more and more expensive. But while that is happening, we'll be building high-speed rail, urban and suburban transit, dense housing and retail in cities and town centers, and providing loans to everybody to make all buildings emission-free. In order to build all of this fossil fuel-free stuff, we will need to revive our manufacturing sector and the supporting services, and this will create millions of good middle-class and green-collar jobs."

That sounds more appealing than "we're sunk unless a technological miracle happens," doesn't it?

For story: Waiting for a techno miracle: not the fastest way to cut emissions
23 Comments | Post a Comment

The Third Way

The typical two social models that Grist likes to contrast are:

Exurbian: Large home, multipoint transit via personal vehicle.
Urban: Hub and spoke rail system. High density dwellings.

Both these models assume one thing: A lot of people working for other people in businesess or organizations.

Although I have brought it up many times, you never consider the idea of:

3) Reallocating capital to foster more self-employment, stay at home parents, wealth acquisition allowing people to break free of the command and control structure.

Not that I've run the numbers, but I would think option 3 would require neither cars NOR trains because people wouldn't have to "go to work" -- they would simply stumble to their PC or lathe or oven and start producing.

Instead of workers going to the means of production, the means of production would come to the workers. Thus, hydrogen and battery vehicles would be employed to drop off goods (groceries) and take away products from these independent businesses.

Do I make sense?

J. Bailo Participant Texeme.Construct()

by jabailo at 2:56 PM on 21 Apr 2008

Bailo --

You raise some good points -- parents (or a parent) should be able to stay home with their kids, people shouldn't have to be worker-drones, the best transportation is no transportation -- but I think that much of that is made possible by a denser situation. Density does not have to mean the disappearance of the single family home, by the way -- in the Chicago area for instance, there are lots of single family homes, that with a little effort could be made very accessable to good public transit and definitely bikes and human-powered vehicles.

Certainly the office is a bizarre institution in a number of ways. Employee-owned and operated firms are more efficient and nicer to work for than hierarchical firms. If the economy was set up in a more rational way (say, with more manufacturing), we could probably have many more families with one wage-earner.

But, for better or worse, the reason cities grew up in the first place (besides security considerations) was because the short distances between the different parts of the system of production made possible by the city is such a powerful economic engine. However, we now have high-speed internet access, so it may be possible to decentralize some of the work -- but people will still need to come together at intervals to exchange information and materials face-to-face. So I guess I'm trying to say that, for an efficient/resilient society to prosper, at the very least, there will have to be a fairly large proportion of the population that is living and working in a dense environment.

by Jon Rynn at 3:09 PM on 21 Apr 2008

Sadly,

Looks like Desmogblog was somewhat suckered in by the Pielke paper.
http://www.desmogblog.com/nature-delivers-one-two-punch-a ...

by GreyFlcn at 5:03 PM on 21 Apr 2008

Just a comment on the ad

Interesting that the Pacific Research Institute's "Are we making progress? Get the real story on the environment" ad appears beside this post.
(Scaife Fndn, Exxon being among its donors)

I haven't read the PDF report they're making available; perhaps someone can do so and summarize it in a comment?

by Anna Haynes at 7:00 PM on 21 Apr 2008

Not an either or proposition.

Current technology is not sufficiently advanced to solve the climate issue (350 or even 450ppm peak). At least it isn't if we consider the fact that we must politically sell the needed lifestyle/economic sacrifices to major populations who are in denial about either the existence -or severity of the problem. Current technology should be sufficient to begin reducing emissions.

So we do need the significant advances, but barring cheap and scalable free air CO2 capture and storage, we can't afford to wait for them. So we have to commit to an aggressive emissions reduction program soon, even though it is clear that such a program with current technologies will not be up to the full solution. The near term emissions reductions buy time to develop the needed breakthroughs, and/or to create the political climate which would allow the needed sacrifices to be made.

Regardless of whether the end solution is obtained primarily via sacrifices or breakthroughs the near term strategy can be the same: Begin short term emissions reductions, and aggressively pursue the hoped for breakthroughs.

by bigTom at 9:25 PM on 21 Apr 2008

The premise is faulty

Calling for more R&D does not mean we are betting our future on an improbable breakthrough like cold fusion. The vast majority of the money would be spent on evolving existing technologies. Better batteries, fuel cells, reactors, solar cells etc.

We should spend $90 billion on R&D to push every technology as hard as possible and build demo plants of everything.

Adding 2.25 cents per kWh would pay for it.

Denmark and Germany are paying 20 to 30 cents per kWh by forcing the implementation of expensive impractical technology, without solving the world's emission problem.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/elecprih.html

Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

by BILL HANNAHAN at 10:11 PM on 21 Apr 2008

Downplaying existing and emerging technologies

The problem with Pielke et al.'s argument is that it minimizes the potential role of existing and emerging technologies in mitigating carbon emissions. I've put together a list of about 24 existing and emerging technologies (www.greenthoughts.us) that will get us most of the way there.

Government R&D spending is not the highest probability strategy in getting these technologies into the ground nor to create the economies of scale required to bring down their cost. A combination of government involvement and smart market design through incentives is key, with the carbon price playing a part but with much more specific incentives to build what I believe to be the most probable energy solution, an electricity-based energy system powered by renewables.

Bill Hannahan's comment above belies biases against existing and emerging technologies that are typical of Pielke et al. He calls them "expensive and impractical". Because of the Dane's and Europeans willingness to start working with what we have, we now have wind turbines that are highly efficient though unfortunately because of the nature of their resource (wind) they cannot substitute for coal.

We on the other hand in the US have the natural resources (solar and some geothermal) that can substitute for coal but because of our unwillingness to start with what we have (looking for the technological silver bullet) we are not pushing down the price of these technologies fast enough by deploying them en masse. I am for well-designed feed-in tariffs that get people to put their money where their ideals are.

Talk is cheap, clean energy and the infrastructure it requires is not(yet).

by Michael Hoexter at 11:43 PM on 21 Apr 2008

Naked child needs what?

Take a naked child, what does that child need?

It needs it's parents to care for it.
Therefore we must support the parents (community services)
It needs clean air
It needs clean water
It needs to be kept in a thermally stable environment 65 to 85 degrees F or so. (clothing and also housing)
It's family needs food and food security
a small fuel or power source to cook food
It needs a mentally stimulating environment (a large garden is ideal)
It will need some medicines at some point. (provided by the garden and community but also trade)
Access to accurate information

That's it. Is there anything else all of us naked children really need? Most of our culture focuses on luxuries.

The cheapest available solutions to the above problems are:

One worker families or no more than 60 hours total for two workers.
social safety nets (cheaper than prisons)
restricted burning of fuels (no coal, oil, biofuel or gas burning without community restrictions)
No net discharge of wastes to water systems. Because dumping fertilizer in drinking water is insane that's why.
A cob or straw bale house (mud and straw; what could be cheaper?) works everywhere but the arctic where logs and mud work just fine. Geo-exchange is just another way of accessing thermal mass. Fabrics can be made from a very wide variety of materials from wool to musk ox to hemp to nettles.
Food security depends upon a biodiversity of food sources. Multiple sources ensure that no failure of a single source results in disaster. Permaculture agriculture promotes this concept. By contrast our current food stream is almost entirely corn, soy, rice, wheat, potatoes, barley and cane sugar.
Solar ovens backed up by wood-gas stoves could provide most of the cooking heat at fraction of current fuel use of even the poorest families.
The cost benefit analysis of gardens effects on health suggest that for that reason alone people should spend time gardening.
A community based upon healthy diet and exercise can more easily afford to care for the remaining sick.
Durable, cheap laptop computers have been designed that could be available to everybody on the planet. Information is the best birth control.
bicycles, barges, heavy rail and sail-powered shipping can move the worlds goods. Airships don't require roads so could possibly be cheaper than rail on many routes. Solar power and solar-generated liquid fuels would be sufficient to provide this transportation structure.

Carbon Capture can be handled by

Biochar agriculture (requires a hoe and machete)
Rangeland management prioritizing soil optimization (requires a boy with a long stick to prod cattle)
Forest reserves, orchard crops and coppicing. (requires a billhook and pruning knife)
As a last recourse seeding oceans with powdered minerals that fix carbon dioxide. (requires massive industrial machinery and large shipping capacity)

Now I don't see malls, jet aircraft, Prius or ecotourism on the lists above but the list is survivable and even an improvement on much of the worlds standard of living. What are those breakthroughs we need again?

Put the Carbon Back

by Pangolin at 1:10 AM on 22 Apr 2008

Kristof and Pielke

Thank you, Jon, for explaining your reservations about Kristof's column, which you mentioned less fully in an earlier thread.

Another distinction, which pops up in Kristof's article, turns on how quickly in any conversation about energy reform "China and India" gets spoken. Republicans tend to do that much more quickly than Democrats: which makes the Republicans look like jingoistic xenophobes, and the Democrats look unrealistic and wimpy.

Your third paragraph from the end, beginning "There is one more argument to be made," sort of touches on those global issues. But possibly you would like to say more on the subject.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 3:53 AM on 22 Apr 2008

the naked child

No human life, well-lived and flourishing, is complete without Art, Religion, Philosophy and Science.

Whether those things require tools, or props, or gadgets, or trappings, depends on the culture on the floor of which the naked child, exvulvated, lands.

As an aficionado of monasticism, I love the principle of simplicity. But I hate the inhumane crystallization of certain Jewish and Christian pious disciplines that one sees imposed on everyone in classic Islam.

We need to make some decision on the line separating "luxuries" from material objects that are reasonably good to have.

It is wonderful that durable laptop computers are now being made which are inexpensive and easy to power up. Why are they not "luxuries," though? Once we say that they are a characteristic part of a good life for human beings, we may have to start adding a bunch of other goo-gaws too.

What about Game Boy, and other video games, which apparently are the birthright of Americans born after 1980? Much of the education and cultural identity of young Americans are based on them. And yet, they are quite unknown to many of us dinosaurs. So, are they "luxuries"?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 4:13 AM on 22 Apr 2008

Pangolin the ultimate demogropher

Hi Pangolin,

I'm impressed by your wisdom above!

Could you please describe the materials by which your home is constructed, and which upon, your recommendations are based?

Do you (and/or your partner) enjoy cooking your meals by the methods you advocate?

Oh, Truly, I don't know where to stop in comprehending your infinitely revealing guidence on the true meaning of our human existense!

Do you burn animal dung in-house when cooking, and do you feel that wearing a face mask is beneficial or not?

by Black Wallaby at 4:27 AM on 22 Apr 2008

Beware carbon pricing

Remember the Enron energy crisis in California? Energy "traders" shut down power plants to boost prices, consumers paid for the whole mess.

Now imagine carbon emission permits sold by the government. Who would aquire those permits? Who would trade those permits? Would electricity prices double or triple suddenly, soaring as gas prices have soared? Pushed by speculators manipulating markets with insider information?

No recovery of the funds stolen in the mortgage/credit crisis will ever happen. That money is safely stashed in Switzerland or Dubai. Investment "banks" go under, are bought out, or are bailed out with public funds.

The hedge fund operators who stole the cash will never be punsihed. In fact Bernanke (Bushs' financial advisor, great choice for fed chatrman, the one who advised the worst president in history. Who got US into this financial disaster) turned to these very hedge fund managers, who created the crisis, to explain it to him.

A hedge fund bubble in corn and corn farm land is building right now. Chemical fertilizer is following along in the bubble mode.

Is it wise to turn over GHG climate disaster cure to these "free" market operators? When they sell carbon emission permits back to your local utility at 500% profit, and your electric bill suddenly triples. Will it still seem like a good idea then?

Please realize exactly why many corporate CEOs support cap and trade. They can raise caps with lobbying pressure. And they think that trading carbon permits can actually add to their bottomline profits. they know that cap and trade will effectively stop any additional environmental legislation.

Politicians can point to it as their green responsibility fullfilled. And say, "Let market forces provide the cure". While they take the lobbyist "contributions", bundled to get around campaign finance laws.

Industry will keep it's 100 billion per year in subsidies. The agribizz corn subsidy amounts to over 30 dollars per acre. For instance.

In an illuminating film, "King Corn", two city dwellers moved back to Iowa and grew an acre of corn. They lost 9 bucks on their acre. But the subsidies gave them a 20 dollar profit. Farmers in the area told them that no one makes money growing corn, the money is made from the subsidies.

If all those subsidies from business as usual were diverted to subsidize GHG free energy and ag, then industry would provide the devices for consumers to invest in. Consumers would use subsidies to pay for the devices.

No new taxes. Just a leveled market deciding which GHG-free technologies to invest in.

This adds cost to GHG intensive energy and ag by withdrawing subsidies. And lowers cost for GHG free energy and ag. Simple. Not easily scammed by traders. They will be left with trading the booming renewable energy and conservation manufacturing stocks. And shorting GHG intensive energy and ag company stocks, and commodities like coal.

As far as government intervention in suburban and urban planning, well that's a whole other area of speculation. It has huge local, state, and national political resistance. It might be overcome here and there, with bike lanes, mass transit, and more centralized living.

But it's tough. Urban landscapes are dangerous and getting worse as economic disaster hits the poorest people the hardest. The drug war "justice" system has created a revolving door for violent crime. No room left to protect the public with all the drug "criminals" incarcerted.

It's "Clockwork Orange" for real out there in most urban areas and it's spreading to suburbs. The cops have portable taser torture devices along with their clubs and guns. The US already has the largest percentage of its population in jail of any other nation on earth.

And you are asking us to crowd into high crime areas and take our chances? Not likely. In fact anyone who fights back against crime is more likely to be a victim of police corruption.

This climate crisis demands action now, no time to reform our whole culture. Direct subsidies diverted to cure the GHG crisis is the only solution that will work, barely in time. Many believe the tipping point already happend in '06.

Methane from melting tundra and methane hydrate sea floor ice and fertilzer and manure run off in an exponential feedback loop has done it.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

by amazingdrx at 4:36 AM on 22 Apr 2008

Couldn't have said it better

Nice post, Jon.

by Ryan Avent at 5:49 AM on 22 Apr 2008

On breakthroughs

In all the discussion about breakthroughs, I don't know that anyone has actually talked about how breakthroughs happen. My father spent most of his professional life researching fusion, starting in the early 1960s. If there is a "silver bullet", fusion (hot) would be it.

The important lesson of the history of fusion is that we can't predict the speed of progress. There are some things that you can fairly safely predict, and the technologies that Bill Hanahan mentioned seem amenable to slow and steady progress, definitely, R&D could be very profitably directed in those areas. R&D money should also be spent on 'breakthrough' technologies, like fusion, and it's a disgrace that the history of fusion funding is so stop-and-start-and-stop.

But that doesn't avoid the fact that we have no idea when fusion would be practical -- indeed, the dirtier, more expensive kind of fusion, based on tritium, might be developed before a deuterium-based fusion, which would be very clean and cheap. But the ITER facility in southern France, being built at the cost of at least $30 billion, I believe, is based on the tritium process.

Which leads to another point, "breakthroughs" don't just come jumping out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus's skull. They involve plenty of choices, like tritium vs. deuterium, and most critically, even when a "breakthrough" is developed, it can take decades to make it usable on a large scale -- which is what happened in the initial roll-out of electricity.

It's not the idea of funding "breakthrough" R&D that's the problem; it's deciding to wait on it, and not deploying our less-than-perfect technologies now that's the problem. I don't think we can afford to play dice with global warming.

by Jon Rynn at 6:39 AM on 22 Apr 2008

CC, on China and India (and Pangolin)

I thought the post was too long already, but China/India seem to be the basis of Pielke's argument. And I think the main point is that what applies to the US applies to China and India. They are perfectly capable of rolling out concentrated solar power, wind farms, retrofitting, geothermal, trains -- did you know that India has the largest train system in the world?

Again, the question becomes ohe of capital -- although even here, the Chinese have built up about a trillion dollars in dollar reserves. But certainly, the various ecoequity proposals envision some sort of help from the developed countries to the developing. And again, they could be very low-interest loans, or better yet, provided as help in building these facilities in India and China, which would also give a boost to the manufacturing sectors of the developed world (and the US in particular).

In fact, by building renewable systems in the developing world, the developed world could create a boom in their own countries. But such systems would not be just prebuilt ones shipped and maintained by rich countries -- they would be built with the help of rich countries, but built mostly by Indian and Chinese (and let's not forget the rest of the world), so that those countries could fairly easily move to create their own renewable systems. That's the history of development.

Which brings me to Pangolin's comment -- and Pangolin, could you please put that one on your web site too, it's much easier than bookmarking them and trying to find them later -- you bring up things like solar heaters, which Lester R. Brown thinks could be a critical technology in order to improve the living standards of the world's poor and reduce deforestation (see his "Plan B" book). You're talking about what used to be called "appropriate technology". These are fairly cheap ways to cover the developing world in renewable technologies, while increasing their standard of living, while providing an export market for the rich countries. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

by Jon Rynn at 6:51 AM on 22 Apr 2008

amazin' (and thanks, Ryan)

I used the term "carbon pricing" because I'm not sure how this will work out. Al Gore, in his latest "TED" lecture, used the term as "the" solution. My understanding of cap-and-auction is that trading is not part of the program, or not a big part, and of course carbon taxes wouldn't be either -- and actually, I think you brought up the idea of using cap-and-auction monies for renewable technologies, didn't you?

You also bring up a good point about the whole justice system, with a prison-industrial complex and a huge fraction of the prison population there for drug infractions, it's another huge "efficiency" loss for the society as a whole.

But as far as urban areas being inherently crime-ridden, crime thrives either where political authority has broken down, or more important in the US, where there is poverty.

If cities were part of a renewable technology boom, and their infrastructure was rebuilt, and everybody had jobs, and the education system was attractive -- OK, now you'll say I'm utopian -- the point is, cities can be made very comfortable and safe.

In fact, the suburbs are going to be crime-ridden if half the houses are abandoned because gas prices make it impractical to live there -- either through carbon pricing, or, frankly more likely, peak oil leads to outrageous prices. As an added note, government-financed construction is a good idea for peak oil and peak coal, which could lead to a greater call for biofuels, tar sands, etc.

As for trying to change the culture, that was to some extent the point of the post. If some kind of large cultural change is needed, it's much more difficult than just changing the motor or generating plant. And by building attractive cities and rail-based transportation systems, you make it much easier to make those cultural changes. After all, governments at all levels made the current car-and-surburbia system possible, they can make a train-and-city system possible too.

by Jon Rynn at 7:05 AM on 22 Apr 2008

Withdraw subsidies first

I think that's the first step Jon. Green legislators are trying. They got within a vote or two in the senate. Lieberman no doubt sided with the GOP. To make the difference.

That would provide the 50 billion or so needed without raising taxes.

I agree that carbon permit sales could work. If trading was eliminated. If an industry had a extra permit, no scalping. Sell it back to regulators.

That's a good analogy. When you buy a ticket from ticketmaster, the hedge fund traders of live entertainment, you pay a hefty premium. Hedge funds are like ticketmaster for carbon permits and everything else they can get their greedy fingers on.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

by amazingdrx at 7:28 AM on 22 Apr 2008

Yes, amazin',

and I've been very wait-and-see, personally, in my opinion about any form of carbon pricing, but I've been unnerved to see the debate focus on carbon pricing vs. breakthrough R&D, with maybe car efficiency standards or general efficiency standards thrown into the carbon pricing mix, with no role for government-directed financing of construction. But certainly, ending subsidies would be a good source -- does anyone have a good compilation of all the subsidies, annually? I've generally looked at the military, higher taxes for the superrich and higher taxes for corporations as the big three of revenue generation, but diverting subsidies could be the big number four!

by Jon Rynn at 7:47 AM on 22 Apr 2008

30 bucks per acre for corn!

There's a big one Jon. I wonder what these agrichem bizz subsidies amount to, total? Aimee Whitman probably knows.

Wouldn't it be great to see this cash going to wind farms on the farm and farm biogas electric power/organic farming? With 10 cents per GHG free kwh in subsidy direct to farmers.

And maybe it's equivalent paid for switching to organic fertilizer. For each kwh's worth of GHG (use coal as a benchmark?) saved by using organic fertilizer, give the farmer 10 cents.

It's a huge savings over ammonia and mined fertilizer, with their huge multi-path sources of GHG. And recycling farm waste and manure prevents another huge amount of GHG.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

by amazingdrx at 8:01 AM on 22 Apr 2008

Agricultural policy is another huge one...

...that needs to be addressed, along with carbon pricing. Again, using government-provided finance to convert farms to organic, setting up municipal permaculture farms, would be attractive, on the one hand, because it would lead to cheaper and better tasting food, and on the other hand, it would rid us of so much of the GHGs that our agricultural system currently produces.

by Jon Rynn at 8:09 AM on 22 Apr 2008

Yep Jon!

Energy policy needs to be farm, home, and small business based.

With subsidies direct to get the change done.

I keep sending Grist discussions to my legislators, links and excerpts.

How about a resolution? All Grist readers, send something you find here to a legislator in an email, once a week.

We might beat out the lobbyists if they start reading this stuff.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

by amazingdrx at 8:24 AM on 22 Apr 2008

Here's a thought.

A one click default email opener, addresser for your (very own, depending on locale in your web packet info) legislators. Just click, copy and paste some links and excerpts. Add a few of your own words. Zzzappp!

Can this be added to Grist? Or any website?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

by amazingdrx at 8:37 AM on 22 Apr 2008

Get the necessities....

.... taken care of and the luxuries take care of themselves.

Once everybody is fed and there is some assurance of safety and food tomorrow art and culture will spring forth from humans. The aborigines of Australia and the San of Southern Africa have rich cultural lives even when they have nothing else by western standards.

Art (as creators), music and happiness are or should be part of the genetic heritage of the human race. The fact that they are absent in many lives should suggest that something is wrong.

Put the Carbon Back

by Pangolin at 11:24 AM on 22 Apr 2008

ADVERTISING POLICY

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.