State of the Union: pushing forward and backward on climate

February 13, 2013

“They deserve a vote.  They deserve a vote.”

President Obama repeated the phrase over and over, in a powerful appeal to Congress to curb gun violence at the end of last night’s State of the Union address.

His approach to climate and energy was different.  Senator McCain’s pained grin said it all, as the President gently chided Congress for its unwillingness to consider the kind of climate legislation that presidential candidate McCain had proposed – back before fossil-fueled denialism consumed his party.sotu 2 2013

The President went on to offer the rough outlines of an agenda for climate action through the use of existing executive authorities.   He slammed climate denialism and spoke frankly about the reality of climate impacts.  He spoke in broad terms of research and development investments and endorsed accelerated deployment of renewable energy.  He issued a “new goal for America” to cut energy wasted in our homes and businesses by half, and offered federal support for states that lead the way.  And he proposed to use oil and gas revenues to fund “an Energy Security Trust that will drive new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good.”  That’s good:  “for good.”

And yet even as he suggested some meaningful actions to advance climate solutions, he stepped all over the message – as he has for several years – by focusing heavily on increased oil and gas development.  And he certainly did not elevate the issue to the level where he was willing to challenge Congress to do its job and adopt a national climate policy.  The victims of Sandy Hook surely do “deserve a vote,” but apparently the victims of Sandy do not.

The President is on the right track in terms of using existing executive authority to reduce climate pollution and accelerate investment in energy efficiency and clean energy.  (And the Northwest is in an ideal position to lead that national effort by leveraging our existing federal power infrastructure to drive the next wave of clean energy development.)

But he’s also stuck on the wrong track at the same time – expanding domestic fossil fuel production, waffling on the Keystone pipeline permit, and essentially giving away billions of tons of coal on public lands to support development of fossil fuel infrastructure around the world.

Simultaneously moving in the wrong direction and the right direction won’t do the job.  Business-as-usual investments that “lock in” emissions growth – even if they are combined with near-term investments in efficiency and clean energy – will result in catastrophic climate disruption, with unthinkable consequences for humanity.

The President’s right – we do know how to respond to the climate challenge while sustaining prosperity.  We can look at the victims of Sandy – and our kids, the prospective victims of still-preventable disasters – and say “we know how to make this better, and we will.”  But they won’t believe us until we stop making it worse.

The President – and America – can no longer go backward AND forward on climate.  We don’t have enough time.  We don’t have enough money.  We have to choose.

That message will be delivered to the White House loud and clear, this week.   You can amplify it at Forward on Climate.

And today, some of our most courageous leaders will be risking arrest at the White House.  Hear them, support them here.

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Posted by kcgolden

Blazing a Path Ahead (BPA) for the next 75

November 17, 2012

.. originally published in Clearing Up

I drove through Eastern Washington last June, when the Columbia ran high.  I remember rounding a corner to a vista of Bonneville Dam, with water pouring over the spillways and mist rising on a bright windy day.  It took my breath away.  I remember how my 19-year-old son stood quiet and tall when he caught sight of Grand Coulee from the overlook.  “Damn!” I heard myself say, not intending the pun. “Look at that!”

Now, I’m a former river guide and an avid nature lover, so dams are a mixed bag for me.  But however you tally their costs and benefits, those bad boys are impressive.  I think what hit me was the sheer scale of ambition and collective human determination they represent.  They speak of a time and an ethos when we did big, great things together. 

That spirit seems sadly remote now.  We spend more time quibbling about how to divvy up the big juicy pie our grandparents baked than figuring out how to bake more, for our kids and grandkids.

You have to wonder, if we had to do something big and great together now, could we do it?  Turns out, it’s not a hypothetical question.

We actually do have a defining, existential challenge on our hands:  building a clean energy economy to stabilize the climate before we trigger catastrophic disruption.  These words sound edgy, “extreme” in relation to the political dialogue about these issues.  Yet they accurately represent our best scientific understanding of our actual circumstances…and the reality on the ground in New York and New Jersey in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, in the Farm Belt and Texas after this summer’s epic drought, in the dying forests of the Eastern Cascades.

Imagine that climate disruption presented itself not as a political football, but as the crisis that it is – the way Pearl Harbor turned a vague global threat into a national emergency overnight (or the way Sandy slammed into the East Coast).  Suppose we stop all the politicking and yapping and just deal with it.  Now what?

As we gather ourselves for the challenge, we’ll discover that one place has a uniquely powerful set of attributes that make it a natural proving ground for the transition to a clean energy era.  That place already has a vast, public infrastructure for producing and delivering carbon-free energy.   It is blessed with extraordinary natural and human resources and a culture of innovation, having played pioneering roles in the aviation, software, and internet revolutions.  It has a distant but still powerful memory of how ambitious collective investment in energy infrastructure cleared the path to broadly-shared prosperity.  That place is here.

Starting with these huge advantages, what could the Northwest do to lead the transition to a fossil fuel-free energy era, and how could BPA help us do it?  How can these assets be deployed to facilitate replacement of our aging coal plants with clean energy (and very little gas as a bridge) – effectively ending the use of fossil fuels to serve regional power needs in time for BPA’s 100th anniversary?  How can BPA help the region squeeze more work out of our low-cost power – meeting ALL foreseeable load growth by wasting less of the valuable resources we already have?  How could BPA accelerate deployment of new technologies that store energy, manage loads, and integrate more intermittent renewables? How could BPA help create a table where we end the perpetual cycle of litigation and hammer out a durable, comprehensive salmon recovery strategy?

I pose these as questions.   I’m not proposing a blueprint.  I’m suggesting we take this opportunity to step back and think hard about what’s right, what’s necessary, what’s possible.  What’s our job, in the big picture, and how can we use our assets and our history to help us step up and do it?

Think even bigger – as big as the climate challenge:  How could we leverage our low-cost, low-carbon electricity infrastructure to replace the high-cost, high-carbon petroleum that dominates our transportation system?  How could BPA anchor a regional strategy to capture the economic advantages of global leadership in clean energy technologies and systems?     How could BPA empower and assist local communities in implementing the clean energy and carbon reduction initiatives that work for them?

These questions may seem to stray outside BPA’s current scope – but not nearly as far as building tanks was outside the scope of the auto industry on December 6, 1941.  And if we are to have any hope of preventing catastrophic climate disruption, we’ll have to get into a December 7 state of mind.  It’s a state of mind and a spirit that’s radically out of step with the cynical, sniping, “can’t do” politics of the moment.  But it’s a spirit that represents the best of BPA’s legacy – the ambition, the collective will, the profound commitment to a better future – that built the nation’s best power system.

Let’s renew it.

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Posted by kcgolden

54.5!

August 28, 2012

I love the smell of solutions in the morning!

The Obama Administration finalized fuel economy standards today that raise average passenger vehicle efficiency to 54.5 mpg by 2025.  It’s a proud day – a huge achievement, grown from decades of relentless advocacy.  The White House release is here.

It’s been a long haul.  Campaigns were not enough.  Winning lawsuits wasn’t enough.  Ultimately, we had to buy the auto industry with a federal bailout before we were able to do the right, necessary, and obvious thing:  double fuel economy standards.  But hey, extreme measures  were warranted!

President Obama:   “These fuel standards represent the single most important step we’ve ever taken to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  This historic agreement builds on the progress we’ve already made to save families money at the pump and cut our oil consumption. By the middle of the next decade our cars will get nearly 55 miles per gallon, almost double what they get today. It’ll strengthen our nation’s energy security, it’s good for middle class families and it will help create an economy built to last.”

It’s all true.  And it’s all so good.

Want to just party?  Stop here.  Need to kvetch?  Read below.

__________________________________________________________

If I were a better person, I would leave it at that.  But the road to this point was long, winding, and full of potholes.  Some of us celebrate better when we can vent.  And since I have vented so comprehensively on this subject over the years, I’ll just recycle this column from October of 2009:

Clean Slate

What’s good for GM, revisited

OK, so maybe I got a little carried away.

Like when I called General Motors a “staggering Hummosaurus,” arguing that any federal bailout was both wrong and doomed unless it included a commitment to quickly double fuel economy.  Or when I accused the company of commercial suicide, because I couldn’t think of any other explanation for their aggressively inferior product quality.

I may have gotten a little too exercised, but GM asked for it.  They fought against stronger fuel economy and emissions standards tooth and nail.  They screwed their workers and the planet with a business strategy based on convincing us that real men drive tanks.  They dragged America into the economic and geopolitical quagmire of fossil fuel dependence.  They contributed lavishly to campaigns denying the science behind climate change, costing us twenty years worth of solutions and pushing us to the brink of crisis.  Then they crawled (in private jets!) to Congress for a public bailout, while continuing to prosecute lawsuits against state Clean Car standards.

So I come by my animosity to GM honestly.  I didn’t regret a word of what I said.  Until I heard this:

Chuck Todd, chief political analyst for MSNBC – an oracle for political junkies – was speaking to a ballroom full of them in Seattle earlier this month.  Todd talked about politics the way Bob Costas talks about sports – with lots of statistics and strategic insight and colorful metaphors.  He called the news like a game.  Engaging.  Fun. Clever.

…fun, that is, until he talked about the continuing crisis of confidence in government – the doubt so many of us share about whether government can deliver big solutions to big problems.  And then he dropped a bomb: He said the watershed for faith in government – the acid test of whether our public institutions deserve our trust or our scorn – is whether GM pulls out of bankruptcy and becomes profitable again after the bailout.

If I were Redd Foxx, I would have said “This is the big one!  I’m comin’ Elizabeth!”  Our confidence in public institutions – and any hope we might have of real solutions to the big problems that require collective action – depended on GM’s business acumen?  Our only prayer is to restore faith in democracy one crappy Aveo and bloated Escalade at a time?

For those of us who have spent much of our lives fighting this company’s ruthlessly ecocidal rampage, this was a cruel, sick joke.  Talk about your karma running over your dogma.

But even for those who don’t carry this chip on their shoulder, the prospect of the future of democracy riding on GM’s business savvy should be petrifying.  This is a company whose private management drove the stock price from nearly $100 to a buck and change.  While their Japanese competitors were innovating and inventing and engineering, they were litigating and stonewalling and marketing junk. It’s hard to imagine how the company could have done more to undermine its own competitiveness, or that it can overcome a culture of mediocrity that took decades to build.  And now Todd says the success of this basket case is our only hope.

But I get what Todd meant.  He figures that we figure it like this:   Bailing out GM was a pretty dubious deal.  The company reaped what it sowed, and we’re expected to throw our money down the rat hole they dug?  But there you have it, that’s exactly what we did, and now that there’s no turning back, it better damned well work.

Of all the bailouts, GM is the one we’re most likely to identify with.  Wall Street is more abstract and unsympathetic.  Who really knows what Morgan Stanley does or cares whether they go down?  But with GM, there’s a lot of people’s livelihoods on the line — real people who make stuff.  And despite all the garbage that has rolled off their lines, their brands are emblazoned on the national psyche.  Don’t you wonder what she does there in the back of her pink Cadillac, her paaank Cadillaaac?  How we gonna get to the levy without the Chevy?

Alright, alright, I can get with the program.  In fact, I’m way ahead of the curve.  Before I heard Todd’s speech – on the last day of the Cash for Clunkers program – I went out and bought me a 76 Chevy ¾ ton pickup.  Bicentennial vintage – the year I got my driver’s license.  Rescuing a clunker (even though it wasn’t eligible) seemed like a nice way to shake my fist at the insanity of it all – spending billions of tax dollars to get tiny improvements in fuel efficiency by scrapping cars that never should have been built and bribing people to buy new, barely more efficient ones. (This is like pumping Red Bull into the economy to promote recovery:  nice little jolt but not much nutrition there.)

Yes, I know, buying a 33 year old truck won’t keep jobs in Detroit.  But you should see this baby – gold and white, with those sweet iridescent gold Chevy insignias on the grill and hubcaps and steering wheel.  I won’t drive it much, but just owning it certifies my commitment to restoring faith in democracy and public institutions.  And, to certify my determination to leave a recognizable planet to my kids, I’ll leave it parked after I get the wood in.

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Posted by kcgolden

Going to town for climate solutions: Powering the new energy future from the ground up

July 18, 2012

“Global warming” is like a general anesthetic.  Yes, it accurately describes the trend in the global average temperature.  But nobody lives in the global average temperature.  Nobody works or plays in the global average temperature.  Nobody gets anything done in the global average temperature.

(Is “global warming” better than “climate change”[i]?  Enough already.  See footnote.)

The warming may be global, but the action is local.

The impacts – the flooding, the extreme weather, the fires – hit home, not the “globe.”  We cause the problem locally, primarily with our energy and transportation investments and choices.  And most importantly, when you roll up your sleeves and get real about solutions, many of the key decisions are local:  infrastructure investments, transportation options, energy choices.

I don’t mean to say for a minute that we don’t need state and national policy and international agreements; we desperately do.  But while we’re clearing the path to those policies – and after we succeed – we can and must put shoulder to wheel in our lives and communities.

We must be, you might say, Powering the New Energy Future from the Ground Up.

And in communities across America and the world, we are.    The successes and challenges of 22 of these communities are profiled in a terrific new report from the Henry M. Jackson Foundation and Climate Solutions’ New Energy Cities program, available here.

These stories aren’t from the big, well-known leadership cities like Portland, Seattle, and New York.  They’re from small and medium-sized communities.  Many of them emerged from individuals and grassroots collaborations among community organizations.  They employ local regulation and voluntary action.  They feature broad local partnerships with utilities, businesses, workforce organizations, schools, and non-profits.  They got a boost from federal recovery investments, and are developing their own funding models.  They started with low-hanging fruit, and are building toward long-term energy transformation strategies.

They are – geographically and substantively – all over the map.  That’s a good thing.  Not all of them are motivated by climate.   These cities, and thousands of others, are demonstrating that the clean energy transition is a solid foundation for building healthier communities and stronger local economies.   Living, breathing local examples of that proposition can take us a long way toward embracing the imperative for climate solutions.

Check ‘em out.

[i] In a “secret” 2003 polling memo, conservative pollster Frank Luntz advised Republicans to use “climate change” instead of “global warming.”  Clever (kinda) climate communicators, said “aha, then ‘global warming’ it is!”  Frank Luntz knows that nothing like that stays secret.  He’s had a decade of laughs watching us argue over which is better, knowing full well that they are both profoundly useless – abstract, disengaging, completely outside the psychological scope of human agency.  Both terms work splendidly, if your goal is to avert action.  I’m going with “climate disruption.”

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Posted by kcgolden

MORE sex is better with energy efficiency

July 9, 2012

My first foray into this topic, “Sex is better with energy efficiency,” was warmly – aye, steamingly – received.  (We are a simple people, no?)  So let’s dive deeper…

First, for the record:  Jimmy Carter is a great man, a courageous humanitarian, and a vastly underappreciated former President.  It’s not his fault.  But one of the founding myths of the modern energy efficiency “movement”, if we can call it that, is that his “moral equivalent of war” speech and his fireside chats on energy were a huge cultural setback for conservation.

By framing energy conservation as a moral proposition (goes the myth) he made it somehow trivial, sentimental, insubstantial.  In order to elevate energy efficiency to its proper place as a big manly energy alternative, we must think of it not as a lecture, not as a lifestyle admonition, but as an energy resource — just like a power plant.   We must never, ever call it “conservation,” because that smacks of moralism; we must call it “efficiency” in order to underscore its practical, effective, hard-nosed utility as an energy option.

I wish to explode this myth.

The problem wasn’t that Jimmy Carter framed conservation as a moral issue.  It IS a moral issue (AND our largest, cheapest, most important energy resource). The problem, in a nutshell, was The Sweater.

To observe that The Sweater was profoundly unattractive is to dwell on the obvious.  But the issue goes well beyond the butt-ugliness.  The problem was that The Sweater, and its wearer, came to symbolize national impotence, and the weakness rubbed off on energy conservation.  Look at that damned cardigan; a bald eagle wouldn’t be caught dead in that thing!  It’s fuzzy and pathetic and yella!

Once again, Jimmy Carter is a great man and it wasn’t his fault, but his Presidency occupies a place of doubt and deprecation in an American myth that celebrates exceptionalism and virility.  That he was followed by the strapping, ruddy, anti-ambivalent  Ronald Reagan was no accident.  “Morning in America” was the light at the end of the dark tunnel of national tentativeness for which the Carter era is (inaccurately) remembered.  The cardigan became a pathetic symbol of that, and the “malaise” oozed out all over energy conservation.

Which is why, inspired by a great upwelling of national pride, or something, I googled up these images.  I think you will agree that they illustrate a keen grasp of marketing on my part.

(Important preliminary research finding:  Penelope Cruz apparently does not wear sweaters.)

It may take another blog post to get to it, but there is actually a point to all this.  And it’s not just that we need to make energy efficiency sexier.

It’s that the clean energy transition must be enormous and robust.  And it must be accelerated in an era when large public institutions are increasingly prevented from doing much of anything, let alone enormous, robust things.

We can’t give up on large institutions – we must redemocratize them.  But we also need to drive the clean energy revolution up from the bottom.  Powered by distributed technology, connected by interactive media, and affirmed by new cultural norms and rewards (including but not limited to sex; but hey, might as well start with sex), the clean energy revolution is gaining inexorable momentum, even though it remains formally undeclared.  And we have to lean into that cultural transition, not run away from it.

Moral imperatives and psychosocial rewards CAN go together….just not in a yellow cardigan.

We’ll shoot to get more GRIP on that down the road.

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Posted by kcgolden

Clean energy efficacy: “Can’t” meets its match.

June 28, 2012

Climate solutions are not tweaks.  They’re a revolution.

Bob Doppelt at the Resource Innovation Group argues persuasively that big changes – fundamental shifts in beliefs, practices, goals, and results – require 1) dissonance (“this isn’t working”) 2) efficacy (“yes we can”), and 3) benefits (“hey, this is profitable/fun/sexy”).   These are necessary preconditions for the transition from an ecosystem of denial to a culture of responsibility.

There’s work to do on all three points.  But efficacy might be our biggest collective challenge.  Without it, we suppress dissonance and get mired in skepticism about benefits.

It’s hard to imagine how we tackle climate disruption without collective action on an unprecedented scale.  But the traditional vehicles of collective action at the national and international levels seem locked up, captured, kaput.  Congress’ epic failure to deliver a national climate policy was only partly about climate; the bigger factor was the wheels popping off the institution.  Cynicism is rampant (and justified, but useless).

Systemic collective dysfunction is a boon to defenders of fossil fuel dependence, since the clean energy revolution requires loads of collective efficacy.  They’ll never convince us that their way is better, so they have to demoralize us into believing that there is no other way.  That’s why they’re working overtime to undermine confidence in the clean energy revolution and the government’s ability to accelerate it.

Call in the efficacy brigade, intrepidly spearheaded by Climate Solutions co-founder Rhys Roth!  It’s no coincidence that he shares his initials with Rosie the Riveter.   Dude oozes efficacy.  And for the last few months, he’s been pummeling skepticism about the clean energy revolution.  Check out his review of the National Renewable Energy Lab’s Renewable Electricity Futures Study.

“You ever talk with someone who thinks you’re starry-eyed and gullible because you think a renewable energy future can work? I’ve got your answer….”  Read the rest at the Climate Solutions Journal.

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Posted by kcgolden

Sex is better with energy efficiency

June 14, 2012

Something  must be done about the abysmal marketing of energy efficiency.  Never has such a big energy story received so little love.

In the pie-throwing contest that passes for energy dialogue in our political culture, Solyndra gets the ink, while the biggest story by far goes unreported.   Keystone dominates the headlines, while new fuel economy standards languish in obscurity — even though they’ll save far more oil than Keystone will deliver and create more jobs, at a fraction of the cost.  Clean energy naysayers offer a rhetorical choice between a “Keystone economy vs. a Solyndra economy“, when the actual economy is running more and more on the energy we save through better codes, standards, and efficiency programs.

Here in the Northwest, for example, we have saved over 4600 average megawatts of electricity since 1980.  That’s more than enough to continuously power 4 cities the size of Seattle – and the Northwest only has one city the size of Seattle!  If we let the east side of the region have all the good stuff, these energy savings could power the entire states of Idaho and Montana.  But we would never do that, of course, because that would make Seattle and Portland dramatically poorer; that conserved energy, harvested from the whole region, is a gold mine, saving consumers about $2.5 billion-with-a-b annually on our power bills.

This is by far the biggest energy story in the Northwest over the last 30 years.  The saved energy has met more than half of the growth in demand, at a fraction of the cost of the power we would have otherwise bought.  It has extended the value of our regional hydropower system, squeezing more work – more cold beer, more hot showers, more data crunching – out of every drop of water in the system.

But there’s plenty more squeezing to do.  The Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Sixth Plan lays out a cost effective strategy for meeting the vast majority of new energy needs with efficiency over the next 20 years.  Oregon’s new draft 10 year energy strategy aims to go all the way – meeting all load growth by wasting less of the energy we’ve got.

And even that’s not the limit.  We’ve got coal plants to replace too, and huge power plants of wasted energy – squandered Grand Coulees, Dalles that dribble away – in our existing building stock.  Thousands of megawatts of available, cheap energy savings. Thousands of jobs for the people who harvest them…  A robust, irresistible, smoking hot energy future, powered by renewables and juiced by efficiency.

(Can’t get enough?  See “More sex is better with energy efficiency” here.)

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Posted by kcgolden

Yes and No for climate solutions: no ambivalence necessary

June 11, 2012

David Roberts at Grist and Stephen Lacey at Climate Progress kicked off a good discussion last week about the roles of “Yes” and “No” in climate work.  This would-be schism dominates Climate Solutions’ strategy sessions, so I must weigh in.

Climate Solutions is a Yes outfit.  Roberts nailed our MO:   We’re all about “forging of opportunistic coalitions.”  We accept “compromise, tedium, and endless setbacks.”  Roberts says “it’s just more fun to rage against The Man,” but we’re actually to the point where we revel in “the boring of hard boards.”  Our mission statement even makes it sound romantic, adventurous:  “….galvanizing leadership, growing investment, and bridging divides”!

Here’s the thing though:  With no meaningful climate policy commitment – no binding emission limits, no carbon pricing, not even a clean energy standard – the awesome work of building a clean energy economy is proceeding in parallel to the unfolding disaster of climate disruption, rather preventing it.  We can say “Yes” ‘til we’re blue in the face, but we can’t call it “climate solutions” unless we stop the beast.

A local example:  Here in Seattle, we made a commitment in 2000 to power our community with zero net carbon emissions.  We sold our share of a big coal plant (which is now on its way to retirement).  We let our gas combustion turbine contract expire.  We doubled down on efficiency.  We made the anchor investment in the region’s first big wind project.  For the little remnant of emissions we couldn’t eliminate (utility maintenance vehicles, spot market purchases, etc.), we bought high-quality offsets.  Saying “No” to carbon in our power supply was a launching pad for saying “Yes” to a clean energy economy.

By selling our share in that coal plant, we scrubbed about 400,000 tons of coal a year out of our energy footprint.  Sweet.  But if the current coal export proposals in the Northwest are fully developed, we would ship over 400,000 tons of coal A DAY through our communities to be burned in Asia (a third of it right through the middle of our iconic Olympic Sculpture Park on Seattle’s waterfront).  Our clean energy economy, as my colleague Ross Macfarlane colorfully says, would be but “a hood ornament on the Hummer of fossil fuel addiction.” Our brave local “Yes” would be a joke.

The point here is not just that the bad stuff will overwhelm us if we fail to stop it (though that point alone is plenty to justify No).  It’s that unchecked expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure undermines the credibility of solutions.  “Yes” to climate solutions without “No” to these “game-ending” investments comes off as silly, sentimental, tokenistic.

We work with a lot of state and local elected officials who take on climate commitments.  Almost invariably, skeptical reporters ask them something to the effect of, “C’mon, what difference will it make?  Our emissions are a miniscule fraction of the problem.  We could reduce our carbon footprint to zero and we’ll still have the same climate impacts.  Isn’t this local action just symbolic?”

A good answer goes something like, “We’re not fighting climate change alone.  Our city is joining with umpty-ump other communities, nations, and businesses around the world to deliver solutions.  We’re doing our part and pressing our national leaders for stronger action.  We’re proving up solutions that can work everywhere.   And we’re making this a better place to live and work by [fill in co-benefits here].”

This is a beautiful story and we’ve done much to make it true.  But nobody is going to hear it over the din of coal trains rumbling through town all day.  If we take all the coal we don’t burn, and a couple of orders magnitude more, and ship it through our communities to promote global fossil fuel dependence, how can we say with a straight face that we’re serious about solutions?  Yes is bunk without No.

Yes also feeds No.   It’s like an immune system booster - building resilience and increasing our capacity to resist fossil fuel development.  In Bellingham Washington, for example, the largest and most powerful business association is not the Chamber of Commerce but Sustainable Connections.  This community has such a strong investment in “Yes” that the idea of becoming a coal export hub seems like an alien invasion.  In a terrific NPR story, Julie Trimingham of Coal Train Facts says movingly:  “It’s almost inconceivable that there would be a plan afoot to change this part of the world to a coal export facility. It seems ironic or cruel, or misguided at best.”

Even in Longview, Washington, an industrial port community targeted for coal export, “Yes” holds a powerful allure.  The vision statement in “Turning Point,” their local Economic Development Strategic Plan, says the community “will transition from a natural resource dependent economy, embrace higher value projects, and raise its profile within a broader regional market.”  The coal export battle there will test the resolve and hope in that community for the Yes they’ve imagined.  If they believe in it, they’ll say No to coal export, which is roughly the exact opposite of their vision statement.

Yes and No are interdependent, but they are not symmetrical with respect to the pace and scale of the climate challenge.  The climate “game” must be won over the long haul.  The winning strategy is a zillion Yeses, driving an inherently slow transition.  But the game can be lost very quickly – Jim Hansen’s point in “Game Over for the Climate,” and the bright bottom line in the IEA’s World Energy Outlook.   Yes is a patient, incremental thing.  But the No we need to muster on tar sands and coal export is immediate and uncompromising.

Yet, while their roles and applications differ, Yes and No aren’t competing philosophies or alternative psychographics.   Our political culture drives us toward niches, pressuring us to identify as Yes or No types.  But if you want to be an effective climate advocate (or parent), you have to wield both.  Yes and No are the interdependent and mutually reinforcing faces of responsible action.

The more successfully we say No to fossil fuels, the more we open space for the growth of the clean energy economy we envision.   And as we open it, we need to fill it.  We have a better idea than Peabody and ExxonMobil about what a good future is, and we have to keep delivering on it.

When we affirm and invest in our vision, we fortify our defense against the fossil fuel onslaught.  The more “Yes” we say and do, the more credibly we can fight fossil fuel development with the claim:  “We can do better” - a core message in the coal export campaign.

Yes without No is lame.  No one will believe in the power of our clean energy vision if we let the fossil fuel juggernaut mow us down and wreck the climate.

And No without Yes is adolescence.  The only way to prove we can do better is to….do better.

3 Comments | Coal export, Ecosystem of denial to culture of responsibility, New energy economy, Solution scrum, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by kcgolden

With Ruckelshaus: Politics should stop at reality’s edge

June 7, 2012

Former EPA Administrator Bill Ruckelshaus has been one of reality’s wisest proponents for my whole lifetime.

I’m honored that he teamed up with me to write this piece welcoming Lisa Jackson to Seattle for the Climate Solutions breakfast tomorrow.

“Climate change should be the subject of a robust dialogue about the best strategies for solutions. But the existence and urgency of human-caused climate change is no longer a legitimate subject of disagreement. Politics should stop at reality’s edge.”

It’s in the Seattle Times at:

We must do more to accelerate solutions to climate change

Leave a Comment » | Ecosystem of denial to culture of responsibility, New energy economy, Solution scrum, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by kcgolden

Velkommen to solutions: Going all the way in Copenhagen

June 7, 2012

Was it the end of a world hopelessly tangled in geopolitical futility?  Or the beginning of a world that might heal as a distributed, connected organism?  The logo for the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit (enhanced here with bike love) was prophetic, because it evoked both.

COP-15 may well be remembered as humanity’s big missed chance.  But the Danes aren’t just hanging around crying in their Tuborgs.

They’re riding their bikes on “cycle superhighways.”  They’re retrofitting their buildings.   They’re building wind turbines and mounting solar panels.

Copenhagen has already reduced its carbon emissions 40% since 1990, on their way to zero net carbon by 2025.  Here’s the plan, and a good Climate Wire piece in Scientific American on how it’s being implemented.

Hopenhagen lives!

1 Comment | Ecosystem of denial to culture of responsibility, New energy economy, Solution scrum, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by kcgolden

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