best earth

7/21/14

I have one big question about the climate conference scheduled for Paris at the end of next year: What plans are afoot to prevent it from turning out like the 2009 fiasco in Copenhagen? Seriously, they must be doing some advance planning to try to prevent that outcome, but what? I was even surprised they were having another major conference like this, after that last one.

6/25/14

be rude

The idea is that planetarians should always posit the best interests of the planet in various venues. This may often be unwelcome. Such venues might include:

.political meetings and races
.legislative hearings
.treaty negotiations
.shareholder meetings

Your contributions at these get-togethers may not be appreciated, but somebody's got to do it. You've been nominated.

6/19/14

planetarians

What we need is a political force that explicitly puts the interests of the planet above everything else. Environmental groups do this implicitly, but their actions are usually focused on narrower areas of concern. Planetarians, on the other hand, always keep the big picture in view. We’re saying it right upfront: We put the interests of planet Earth above the interests of any one nation, and certainly above the interests of corporations. The obvious area in which this is relevant is climate change. This is a global problem that requires a global solution.

6/13/14

deep decarbonization

These are the eight goals of the 'Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project' (DDPP), a consortium of universities and think tanks in 13 major countries that is coming up with specific proposals for deep cuts in carbon emissions in preparation for the Paris climate conference next year:

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Fossil fuels:
•Moratorium on development of new coal deposits and non-conventional fossil fuel reserves (e.g. oil sands, Arctic oil, deep-ocean oil, or methane hydrates) after 2015.
•Moratoriums to be lifted only in the event of possible large scale diffusion of point source CCS (for coal) or air CCS (for oil)

Power:

•No new coal-fired power plants licensed for construction after 2018 except with CCS (2025 for LICs)
•All existing coal-fired power plants retrofitted with CCS, or closed, by 2030 (2040 in LICs)
•Carbon intensity of power generation <100 g/kWh by 2050

Transport:
•All new personal vehicles sold after 2030 with zero tailpipe emissions, e.g. electric or fuel-cell power (2035 for LICs), and all commercial vehicles with electric, natural-gas power, or sustainable, low-CO2 biofuels

Housing:
•All new residential and commercial buildings heated by electricity or co-generation after 2025 (2035 for LICs)

Energy efficiency:
•Global standards on CO2 intensities for appliances and industrial processes by 2025 (2035 in LICs)

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My initial feeling about this, which lasted for several days, was that this was all basically impossible. It has occurred to me now, though, that what I meant was that this was POLITICALLY impossible, particularly in this country at this time. Just to take the first point: Put a moratorium on all new coal mining and 'non-conventional' (including fracking) fossil-fuel extraction BY THE END OF NEXT YEAR??!?! Im-bleeping-possible.

It's occurring to me now, though, that there's an interplay here between what's politically possible and what's technologically feasible. On the last point, for example, engergy efficiency, Jeffrey Sachs insists elsewhere that the technology is there to increase energy efficiency by a factor of five right now.

I won't attempt to break these claims down here, but just to say that what's politically possible will have a lot to do with what's technologically and economically feasible.

6/5/14

global carbon budget

This is from last fall, but it makes the central point about the importance of a 'global carbon budget.' The thing to keep in mind is that (for all practical purposes) the total amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is cumulative. It is this total amount, not the rate of emission, that determines the effect on the climate. If we want to keep the global temperature increase below 2 degrees C, the total amount of gases cannot exceed a certain limit. This is the basis for the IPCC saying that 75-80% of fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground, forever.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/ipcc-climate-change-report-contains-grave-carbon-budget-message-16569

5/19/14

king canute and the republicans

The message comes rolling down the centuries, from this medieval English king right up to the pedicured footsies of today's Republicans.

'Canute set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the incoming tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes. Yet "continuing to rise as usual [the tide] dashed over his feet and legs without respect to his royal person. Then the king leapt backwards, saying: 'Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.''

Like, for example, the laws of physics? Could Canute have been talking to the Republicans about climate change?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute_and_the_waves

5/15/14

two big fat unsexy nouns

Latinate polysyllables don't have a lot of political 'oomph,' I suppose. But these two words, it seems to me are the crux of the enviornmental conundrum: Decarbonization and Overpopulation. Decarbonization is the only immediate rational way to mitigate global warming:

http://unsdsn.org/what-we-do/deep-decarbonization-pathways/

The IPCC says we have a 15-year window to decarbonize our energy regime.

Accepting the reality of overpopulation is the longer-term solution, both to warming and to unsustainability in general:

http://www.overpopulation.org/

On these two words, as we used to say in church, hang all the Law and the Prophets.

5/7/14

national climate assessment

Well, the White House has just released the third iteration of the ‘National Climate Assessment.’ One wonders at what point a political critical mass will arrive actually so that we actually do something about climate change. The IPCC report released last month indicated we need to ‘decarbonize’ our energy regime, and we have until about 2030 to do so if we’re to avoid the worst scenarios of climate change. I like that word ‘decarbonize,’ though. It makes it very specific what we need to do, and I find that very helpful. What do you actually have to do to our energy system in order to start throwing a LOT less carbon into the atmosphere? Energy efficiency is one thing—accomplishing the same task with less energy. Switching to nonpolluting renewable energy is another—wind, solar, geothermal, possibly even nuclear. But the big thing, politically, is that we’ve got to start making the fossil fuel companies PAY for the carbon their products are putting into the atmosphere; that’s right, we’re going to have to have a carbon tax.

There’s one other aspect of this situation that nobody wants to talk about: overpopulation. If you really want everybody to have a Western-style middle-class standard of living, you can’t do it with seven billion human beings on this planet—let alone the 10 billion or so that are estimated by 2050. I think this needs to become part of the political discourse. I would start at the local level, at the level of municipality, county, maybe state or small country. The question is, are there too many people here? How do we decide that? If we decide there are too many people, what do we do about it? Close down immigration? Restrict childbearing?