Political “realists” say Congress is incapable of passing a serious climate policy, period.  That assessment becomes more valid every time the “realists” echo it, so I’m not going there.  (I was expelled from their ranks long ago.) But a construction permit for a pipeline is nowhere near enough leverage to remove the obstacles to national climate policy.  As a political matter, the President’s opponents want to have the Keystone fight more than they want to win it.

And it hardly seems necessary or wise to “trade” Keystone XL for regulation of climate pollution from existing power plants under the Clean Air Act.  We already won the latter in the Supreme Court and the President as much as announced his intention to move forward in the State of the Union address.  Sure, there’s a range of ultimate outcomes on the CO2 rules; but by the time we know how hard the Administration will really push for strong CO2 regs, this year’s Keystone decision will be long gone.  If it’s supposed to strike some kind of political “balance,” it’s only on paper – the real political (economic) constituencies for the pipeline and power plant emissions are different.

Morover, there’s a principle at stake (the Keystone Principle).  It’s neither scientifically defensible nor morally acceptable to continue using scarce capital and time to invest in long-lived fossil fuel infrastructure.  Regulating climate pollution from power plants is a vital step forward, and potentially a very big one.  But in no world where we actually step up to the climate challenge does it justify a big, irreversible step in the wrong direction, like Keystone.  There’s no symmetry, no justice there – just political games, and losing ones at that.

I was proud to join a big group of Heinz and Goldman prize-winners – including a bunch of personal heroes – in making the case to Secretary of State Kerry this week. We wrote:

May 8, 2013

The Honorable John Kerry, Secretary of State  

Dear Mr. Secretary,

As recipients of Heinz Awards for our work in environment, energy, and public policy, and the Goldman Environmental Prize for grassroots environmental activism, we write to you with an urgent appeal to affirm America’s commitment to climate solutions by rejecting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.  

We are deeply honored and humbled to have been recognized for our achievements. But we are acutely aware that despite your best efforts and ours, the climate crisis is now upon us. After a year of unprecedented weather extremes and disruption, this is no longer only about impacts in the future. It’s about social, economic, environmental, and moral consequences, now.

We do not lack for viable solutions. Public and private leaders in America are demonstrating that energy efficiency, clean energy, transportation choices, and a range of other strategies are practical and economic. We are using them to build healthier communities and stronger local economies. We can say this with confidence: sustainable, broadly-shared economic opportunity is possible as we make the necessary transition from fossil fuels to clean energy and efficient energy systems.

But we cannot make the transition overnight. It will take many decades of patient commitment and investment to complete it. And while “winning” a safe climate future is a long game, we can lose it very quickly — within President Obama’s second term. Continued investment in capital-intensive, long-lived fossil fuel infrastructure like Keystone XL will “lock in” emission trajectories that make catastrophic climate disruption inevitable. This is the hard bottom line of the International Energy Agency’s 2012 World Energy Outlook, which starkly warned that without an immediate shift in energy infrastructure investment, humanity would “lose forever” the chance to avert climate catastrophe.

Wyoming Governor Matt Mead emerged as a stalwart defender of the eyes-closed rule last week, urging the White House Council on Environmental Quality to avoid any consideration of climate impacts in federal evaluation of coal exports.

He called assessing greenhouse gas impacts of coal export a “novel use of NEPA as a political opinion piece on global climate change.”

The National Environmental Policy Act is primarily a guide to procedure for environmental analysis, rather than a set of substantive requirements.  Its most basic function is to provide decision-makers with a thorough assessment of environmental impacts:  Whatever you’re going to do, says NEPA, do it in the daylight.

No, says Governor Mead.  Coal export requires darkness.  Open assessment of climate impacts would be “novel”, “political.”  Using the nation’s pre-eminent environmental disclosure law to analyze the effects of the nation’s biggest fossil fuel development proposal on the nation’s biggest environmental problem would “undermine the fundamental fairness of the process.”

It’s a stunning admission, when you think about it: Governor Mead is all but conceding that coal export cannot withstand an honest evaluation of its biggest impact. It puts the lie to the coal industry’s unsupportable claims that coal export will have no effect on the amount of coal burned in Asia (see distraction 2., in “King Coal’s tragic puppet show, part 4:  Field guide to distractions”.)

In a letter to CEQ, Governors Kitzhaber and Inslee called for full disclosure:   ”We believe the decisions to continue and expand coal leasing from federal lands and authorize the export of that coal are likely to lead to long-term investments in coal generation in Asia, with air quality and climate impacts in the United States that dwarf almost any other action the federal government could take in the foreseeable future,” they wrote.

And that’s exactly why Governor Mead won’t have any analysis of those impacts.  A full, thorough, honest review of the costs and benefits of coal export proposals will sink them.  So opponents fight on for light, while Governor Mead champions the only circumstance in which coal export has a chance:  utter climate darkness.

To deflect attention from these show-stoppers, coal export proponents change the subject.  They propagate arguments to have arguments – to pose, debate, rehash – so as to keep us distracted from forming clear-eyed ethical judgments about coal export.

So you shouldn’t read this post.  Really, don’t bother.

….But some of us aren’t disciplined enough to ignore these arguments.  We can’t help ourselves; we need to noodle through them.  You are one of us if you’ve read this far.  So, I offer this annotated, illustrated field guide to 6 of the most popular coal export rationalizations.  But remember: it doesn’t matter, because it’s wrong and it’s not us.

1. “If the Gateway Pacific Terminal at Cherry Point isn’t built, the trains would come anyway and offload in British Columbia.” 

This argument is brutal in its fatalism.  It basically boils down to:  “Well, yes, it sucks, but there’s nothing you can do about it. So, communities from Billings to Bellingham:  Lump it.”  The argument is, thankfully, wrong, but it’s remarkably persistent - almost as persistent as Eric de Place at Sightline, who just keeps slapping it down.  His posts are the go-to resource on the subject.  Bottom line:  No more terminal capacity, no more coal export.

2. “Coal export wouldn’t increase net emissions; if we don’t ship it, Asia will just use other coal.”  Vic Svec, VP of investor relations for Peabody Coal, went so far as to tell National Geographic:  “It’s safe to say that not one more pound of coal will be used in Asia because of this terminal.”  This argument defies the basic principles of economics.  Asia won’t buy the coal unless it’s cheaper than the alternatives, and if it’s cheaper, they’ll burn more.  There wouldn’t be compensating emission reductions in the U.S., because coal is already in steep decline here (mostly because it can’t meet clean air standards and gas is cheap).  That, in fact, is why the industry is so desperate to beat an export path through our front yard.  See and hear:

• Dr. Thomas Power:  The Greenhouse Gas Impact of Exporting Coal from the West Coast
• A Battle Over the Future of the Coal on To the Point
• The harder they come:  a rough guide to the climate impact of coal export.

3. “Powder River Basin coal is cleaner than the coal that China would otherwise use.” 

“Clean” and “coal” never belong in the same sentence.  Yes, PRB coal is lower in sulfur, but that’s another reason why they would use more of it.  We all deserve clean air, but no one deserves the catastrophic climate consequences of encouraging fast-growing economies to stake their energy future on coal.  (If you think carbon capture and sequestration is the answer, then you don’t want to export coal now because it will lock in more coal infrastructure that lacks CCS capability.) See:

• Purple Orca: Our coal is cleaner
• Sightline’s Coal Export FAQ
• Coal export violates Rule 1 for winning the climate game:   Don’t lose (see Note 2 on CCS)

4. “We need the jobs; in a weak economy, that takes precedence over environmental concerns.”

Coal export means a few jobs for some, but it’s a terrible jobs strategy for Washington.  If ships leaving America loaded with coal pass ships coming from Asia carrying solar panels and wind turbines and flat-screen TVs, who’s getting the jobs?  See:

• Dan Kammen: Coal’s no way to make the job market hop
• The Impact of the Development of the Gateway Pacific Terminal on the Whatcom County Economy
• By undermining our values and brand, coal export will cost more jobs than it creates.  See:  Parts 1 and 3.

5. “If we look at the climate impacts of coal export, what’s next?   Airplane manufacturing?  Wheat?” 

This is sort of a microcosm of the whole climate conundrum:  If everyone’s responsible, is anyone?  I haven’t seen much written on this yet.  OK, you talked me into it; I’ll post more on this later.  Initial thoughts:

- Before we get into the legal debate, let’s start with common sense.    In both sheer magnitude and direct causal relationship, coal export is, as Governor Inslee recently said, “the largest decision we will be making as a state from a carbon pollution standpoint, ….nothing comes even close to it.”  It’s one of the top threats globally among projects that would make catastrophic climate disruption inevitable. Are we really afraid that the slippery slope of analyzing climate impacts is more dangerous than the slippery slope of ignoring them, while aggressively exacerbating them, as the climate crisis deepens?

- The Keystone Principle is a useful screen here.  Shipping wheat may cause some emissions; but it does not materially increase long-term capital infrastructure decisions that lock in dangerous climate disruption.  Coal export does.

- The same people who insist that climate impacts must remain outside the scope of the environmental review also argue that there are no climate impacts (see 1. above).  Hmmm.

Where exactly do you draw the line?  The courts will sort out the legal answer.  But there’s a right answer:  “Here.  Now.  Before it’s too late.”

6. “Stopping coal export isn’t the right way to deal with climate change.  We need to reduce demand for fossil fuels, develop better alternatives, limit and price carbon pollution…” 

This is the saddest of the diversionary arguments, because it is so exasperatingly true.  Having devoted my professional life to those “right” ways of responding to the climate crisis, it’s a poignant reminder of how far we haven’t come yet.  And it’s a particularly bitter pill when administered by people who purchase political outcomes to prevent those solutions from happening.

But it’s still a distraction. This isn’t a hypothetical choice between rejecting coal export and adopting an effective global climate treaty. It’s a real, fateful choice between facilitating coal export and…not.  Stopping coal export certainly won’t deliver the climate solutions we need.  But if we don’t stop coal export (and other major new infrastructure investments that lock-in catastrophic emission levels), then all those solutions will be too little, too late.

I join those who wish we had made responsible policy choices that might have prevented this whole damned fight, and invite them to help us make those choices going forward.  But that’s not an answer to the coal export question.  We are where we are, and we’ve got an up or down decision to make.

We all need to be part of the climate solution, because we’re all part of the problem.  But condoning a massive expansion of global coal commerce – inviting it into our communities, spending public money to facilitate it, squandering our brand on it – would be more than playing a part.  It’d be auditioning to star in King Coal’s climate-destroying puppet show.

At the end of part 1 of this post, I proposed that at after part 4,  ”we’ll just rise up together, swat this insult to our shared values aside, and get on with our destiny as the region best qualified to show the world what sustainable prosperity looks like.“  Be it therefore resolved…

In Part 2 of this post, I argued that coal export is wrong, because it would materially contribute to fossil fuel infrastructure investments that make catastrophic climate disruption inevitable (the Keystone Principle).   But it’s not just generally wrong.  It’s wrong in specific ways that make it particularly objectionable to us, here, now.  Coal export would violate our identity, partly because it’s so (did I mention this?) wrong, but also because it’s so, so,….retrograde.

We’re working toward broadly-shared, sustainable prosperity; coal concentrates and removes wealth, leaving poverty and destruction in its wake.  We’re about a high quality of life;  coal systematically degrades quality of life.  The Northwest honors its past and looks forward to a brighter future.  The coal industry tears up the past and burns up the future.  We have staked our reputation and our economy on innovative technology, clean energy, healthy communities, and renewable natural resources.  Coal is the opposite of all that.

Thanks to our abundant renewable resources and sustained investment in energy efficiency, Washington is now in position to become the first coal-free state in the U.S..  Seattle City Light divested from coal in 2000 and completely zeroed out its carbon footprint in 2005.  Washington and Oregon achieved agreements last year to phase out our coal plants and we’re moving toward retiring the plants in the Mountain West that serve our energy demand.

So how ironic, how tragic would it be for the Northwest to pull a violent 180 and become North America’s biggest coal depot?  It doesn’t just negate our energy strategy.  It’s an affront to our vision, our values, our identity as people and communities.  Beyond the quantifiable impacts – climate disruption, ocean acidification, air pollution, noise, congestion, public safety, water contamination, etc. – there’s a deeper sense that coal export would be a turnabout, a one-way ticket away from our best future.

That sense comes into sharper and louder focus with each new voice rising in opposition from Northwest communities – and they are legion.  Hear them out:

Julie Trimingham of Communitywise Bellingham memorably said to NPR, “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.”

Edmonds City Council member Strom Peterson wrote,  “Our futures are brighter and our communities are stronger because we are building vibrant local economies – great places where people want to live, work, shop, and play.  Coal export is the direct opposite of that vision.”

Sustainability is a core value, an organizing principle, and a prosperity driver for communities like Bellingham.  But what about Longview, a hard-working community known for heavy industry, gritty port operations, and raw log exports?  You might think coal export would work for them.  But they’ve got something better in mind.  Here’s the vision statement from the Cowlitz County Economic Development Plan, “The Turning Point”:

“Cowlitz County will transition from a natural resource dependent economy, embrace higher value projects, and raise its profile within a broader regional market.”

Coal export would bury that vision.  Reverend Kathleen Patton, rector at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church worries, “If Longview winds up becoming a coal-export facility, I really do wonder if that’s the last 135 jobs this town will see.  Who else would be attracted to come here? I don’t see how we can justify saying a few jobs here makes it all worthwhile when we’re jeopardizing the health of not just the planet but even the people who are supposedly going to benefit from this export facility.”

Defending the region’s identity against the coal onslaught might seem like a luxury if you don’t have a job.  But the Northwest’s commitment to quality of life and sustainable prosperity isn’t just a cultural amenity.  It’s one of our most important economic assets, our competitive edge.  Our existing job base and our ability to sustain and attract good jobs going forward depend on it.

As Pete Knutson, owner of Loki Fish Company said in his testimony at the Seattle coal export hearing:

“Anyone who claims that this massive coal project is about jobs had better learn to subtract.  We’re weighing jobs based on the one-time exploitation of a fossil fuel versus livelihoods based on a sustainable resource.”  And it’s not just fisheries.  It’s all the jobs and benefits that flow from the fact that this is just one hell of a fine place to be in so many ways that coal export would defile.

The tribes get the last word; no one speaks with more authority to the power of our regional identity.  In a powerful, prophetic ceremony last fall, the Lummi Nation burned a blank check at Cherry Point, a proposed coal export site.  Even King Coal doesn’t have enough money to compensate them for losing their culture, their home.

“No deals, thank you,” said Fran James, 88, a revered tribal elder called as a witness to the ceremony. “All of our elders have always told us: ‘Take care of this place.’”

Seattle Times photo by Alan Berner.

The Northwest will be safe from coal export when we stand as firm and proud for our regional identity as Lummi Councilman Jay Julius:  “The Lummi Nation will not step out of the way.  We will protect with our every breath the ancient lifeway on these waters and honor our ancestors buried at Cherry Point.”

Click here for Part 1 of this series, “Live onstage in the great Northwest:  King Coal’s tragic puppet show”

Click here for Part 2, “King Coal’s tragic puppet show, Part 2 – Coal export is wrong” 

Coal export from the Northwest would increase coal consumption and carbon emissions, not just displace other coal. The coal trains won’t “come anyway” and continue on to terminals in B.C. if the Cherry Point project isn’t built.  Examining the climate impacts of coal export will not threaten airplane manufacturing or wheat exports, for Pete’s sake.  (In part 4 of this post, we’ll further deconstruct the most popular rationalizations for coal export.)

But as analytically weak as these arguments are, the coal industry wins just by having them. They serve the essential purpose of diverting our attention from the first, most fundamental reason why we should reject coal export:  It’s wrong.

Even if you could demonstrate that it would have zero effect on net coal consumption (and again, you can’t), coal export is materially participating in and profiting from an enterprise that sows death and destruction around the world. Many lives were lost, and millions disrupted, by Superstorm Sandy. Most of the counties in America were declared disaster areas last year due to drought. In January, parents in Australia sheltered their children from “tornadoes of fire” by putting them in the ocean. This is what climate disruption looks like. And coal causes it.

If we keep pouring capital investment into fossil fuel infrastructure for just a few more years, we will be locked into emission trajectories that make catastrophic disruption inevitable.  Arguments to the effect of “if we don’t do it, someone else will” just don’t hold moral water when “it” leads to unimaginably grave human consequences. It’s not right, no matter what anyone else does.

So far, the discussion of coal export has mostly occurred outside this moral context. But closing our eyes to the consequences doesn’t make them go away.  On the contrary, ethical evasion is the essential host condition in which injustices metastasize into historic moral crimes.

“We are not responsible.”

The whole edifice constructed for the express purpose of blocking climate action is built on this single, unconscionable stance. With each new definitive finding of culpability, fossil fuel interests devise a new dodge. The bottom line is always the same: It ain’t me, babe.

First, it wasn’t happening. Then it was happening but it wasn’t human-caused. (Damn those sun spots.) Then it was human-caused but there’s nothing we can do because China and India’s emissions will swamp us anyway. And now we might as well shovel their coal because otherwise they’ll just burn someone else’s. If we don’t ship it, the trains will just “pass us by” and offload elsewhere.  If we consider climate impacts now, where do we draw the line? Resistance is futile. Responsibility is no one’s.

So coal export proponents are part of a rich tradition of moral circumvention, offering a familiar litany of shirks and jives to deflect responsibility for climate consequences. Without relieving them of their accountability for this mess, you can understand how coal export enablers would default to a position of climate adolescence.  Their failure to accept responsibility for climate disruption is, after all, the prevailing condition of American society.  Denial is an ecosystem. When the President of the United States says in the same speech that we owe it to our kids to tackle climate disruption and we need an “all of the above” energy strategy, it’s hard to know which end is up.

But now, here, we have to deal with it.  Morally and mathematically, the gig is up.  If we aim to make it better, there’s just no more room for big capital investments that make it irretrievably worse.  Going forward with coal export amounts to looking our kids in the eye and saying “we are resigned to a future of unrelenting climate disasters for you, so it’s okay to make a few bucks now by facilitating that future.”  (Here is how they might respond.)  That may not be anyone’s intent.  But it would be the result.

How can we draw this moral line against coal export (or anywhere), when we exacerbate climate disruption every time we drive a car or eat an imported banana?  By invoking the Keystone Principle:  As we begin the long, slow journey to climate solutions, we must immediately cease making large, long-term capital investments in new fossil fuel infrastructure that “lock in” dangerous emission levels.

It will take decades to decarbonize our transportation and energy systems. We can do it over time, patiently and incrementally, building stronger economies and healthier communities as we go. But we cannot make big new capital investments now that irrevocably commit us to catastrophic climate failure. Driving to the store or eating a banana is not such an investment.  Coal export is.

King Coal rumbled into town with carloads of money, but they needed local cover.  Opportunistic PR and legal firms welcomed the business.  Sure, it carried some environmental freight, but it was okay because they appeared to be erring on the side of jobs – the only coin of the political realm at the time.

Then comes the reckoning:  Sightline Institute follows the money, exposing the hypocrisy of consultants using their green reputations to hawk Coal.  The Seattle Times does a big front page expose.  David Roberts at Grist takes the gloves all the way off.  The smackdown goes viral.  The consultants get their due.

Betrayal.  Greenwashing.  Jobs vs. the environment.  Battle lines are drawn, sides chosen.  An epic battle looms.  There is dramatic fulfillment in this, a sense that we’ve fallen into a familiar narrative structure.  That’s what we do to make sense of the world:  find an archetypal story, fit reality to it, and then play our roles.

But before we act out this whole long, sad, bloody spectacle, let me just say:  it doesn’t have to be this way.  We shouldn’t be having this fight in this community.  We’ve been hoodwinked into becoming characters in somebody else’s story.  The real villain here is the desperate and dangerous coal industry. 

We’re tackling the climate challenge and creating jobs by building our clean energy economy and reducing domestic coal consumption.  It’s great for us and the rest of the planet, but it’s an existential threat to the U.S. coal industry.  So King Coal is hell-bent on reaching new markets.  They’re willing to mow down anything in their way, including us – the folks who are on our way to building the nation’s first coal-free energy system.

For them, that irony is delicious.  For us, it’s beyond tragic.

Since the coal industry can’t publically represent themselves, they’ve built front groups, greased palms, and hired local talent so they don’t have to show their faces.  Not surprisingly, we coal export opponents connect the dots and call out the complicity.  The consultants got too close to the villain, and got the stink all over them.  I applaud Sightline for exposing this and demanding accountability.  But the whole damned coal-sponsored drama is toxic.  Dividing and devastating communities has always been the coal industry’s M.O..

We can’t let them do it here.  The great Pacific Northwest is not a global coal depot, a pusher for fossil fuel addiction, a logistics hub for climate devastation.  We’re the last place on Earth that should settle for a tired old retread of the false choice between jobs and the environment.  Coal export is fundamentally inconsistent with our vision and values.  It’s not just a slap in the face to “green” groups.  It’s a moral disaster and an affront to our identity as a community.

We have come too far together.  We’ve done too much to make our region a proving ground for a better way forward, a way that doesn’t end in catastrophic climate disruption.  We don’t have to play out this false and fruitless drama like puppets on a stage built by and for King Coal.

I know this appeal to our common identity may sound hollow if you don’t have a job and the coal industry has promised you one. But our identity isn’t just a green cultural amenity.  It’s the meaning of our past and the driver for our future.  It propels our economy.  It’s what makes this such a uniquely desirable and productive place.   If we squander our freight capacity, our waterways, our health, our quality of life, and our regional brand on coal export, the loss of jobs and opportunity will dwarf the blip of construction jobs building coal depots.  As Pete Knutson, owner of Loki Fish Company, said in his testimony at the Seattle coal export hearing:

 ”Anyone who claims that this massive coal project is about jobs had better learn to subtract.  We have 15,000 fishery jobs in Puget Sound; now our marine livelihoods are at stake. A job is not necessarily a livelihood. We’re weighing jobs based on the one-time exploitation of a fossil fuel versus livelihoods based on a sustainable resource. We have a moral obligation to reject this proposal.”

When this whole drama is over, I believe we will affirm our regional identity – our core, shared commitment to sustainable, broadly-shared health and prosperity – and conclude that coal trafficking is the opposite of that.   What’s so crazy and sad is that people who share those values are now commercially obligated to argue that a massive expansion of global coal commerce is the right thing for us, the right thing to do as the climate crisis deepens.  No matter how much money King Coal throws at them, they will fail.  But in the meantime, what a tragic, unnecessary setback for our community…what a godawful mess.

Yes, they got themselves into it.  And maybe the die is now cast.  But before we concede that – before anyone in our community further commits themselves to repeat the demonstrably false and irresponsible rationalizations for coal export – I’m hoping some of them might be willing to think this through again.  Because the longer we play out King Coal’s sad puppet show, the worse it gets for our community.

This will take a little doing, because the layers of rationalization around coal export are so thick.  And this post is already too long.

So in part 2 of this post, we look at the most compelling reason to reject coal export – the one that should make further discussion unnecessary:  Because it’s wrong.

In part 3, we further explore why coal export is an economically and culturally devastating affront to our identity as a region and a community.  It’s just not us.

In part 4, we: a) catalogue some of the ways in which coal export proponents try to evade responsibility for climate and other impacts; b) demonstrate that they are false, and then c) propose that we should stop having those arguments because they divert our attention from what’s really important: it’s wrong and it’s not us.

And then we’ll just rise up together, swat this insult to our shared values aside, and get on with our destiny as the region best qualified to show the world what sustainable prosperity looks like.  OK?

After a year of unprecedented destruction due to weather extremes, the climate fight is no longer just about impacts in the future.  It’s about physical and moral consequences, now.  And Keystone isn’t simply a pipeline in the sand for the swelling national climate movement.  It’s a moral referendum on our willingness to do the simplest thing we must do to avert catastrophic climate disruption:  Stop making it worse. 

Specifically and categorically, we must cease making large, long-term capital investments in new fossil fuel infrastructure that “locks in” dangerous emission levels for many decades.   Keystone is a both a conspicuous example of that kind of investment and a powerful symbol for the whole damned category.

It’s true that stopping a single pipeline – even one as huge and odious as Keystone – will not literally “solve” climate disruption.  No single action will do that, any more than refusing to sit on the back of a single bus literally ended segregation.  The question – for Keystone protestors as it was for Rosa Parks – is whether the action captures and communicates a principle powerful enough to inspire and sustain an irresistible movement for sweeping social change.

Stopping Keystone nails the core principle for climate responsibility, by preventing investments that make climate disruption irrevocably worse.  Again, it’s not just that burning tar sands oil produces a lot of emissions; it’s that long-term capital investments like Keystone (and coal plants, and coal export facilities) “lock in” those dangerous emissions for decades and make catastrophic climate disruption inevitable.

Now, if you are a fossil fuel company, “locking in dangerous emissions” means locking in profits.  It is your business strategy, precisely.  For the rest of us, it’s a one-way, non-refundable ticket to centuries of hell and high water.  We must not buy that ticket.

This is the Keystone Principle.  It emerges from multiple lines of scientific and economic research, most notably the International Energy Agency’s 2012 World Energy Outlook, which starkly warned that the chance to avert catastrophic climate disruption would be “lost forever” without an immediate shift away from fossil fuel infrastructure investment.

But it doesn’t take a supercomputer to confirm that the Keystone Principle is basic common sense.  It’s step one for getting out of a hole:  Stop digging.  A comprehensive strategy for global climate solutions called “Design to Win” put the point succinctly:  “First, don’t lose.”   The choice is clear and binary:  Do it and we’re toast.  So don’t.

In contrast, the many things we must do to advance positive climate solutions – clean energy, more efficient cars and buildings, better transportation choices – are full of grey areas.  Implementing them is inherently slow, incremental, and subject to tradeoffs based on economic and other factors.  Should new fuel economy standards make cars 80% more efficient or 90%?  Over what period of time?  The answers are judgment calls, not moral absolutes.  But when it comes to stopping Keystone and other fossil fuel infrastructure investments, the choice is stark, clear.

“Climate solutions” are millions of Yeses and many shades of green, over a long period of time.  But they also require a few bright red Nos, right now.  These Nos are, you might say, the “keystone” for responding to the climate crisis, as in “something on which associated things [like, say, all efforts to avert catastrophic climate disruption] depend.”  No amount of clean energy investment will stave off disaster unless we stop feeding the fossil fuel beast with capital now.

Most importantly, as we enter the era of climate consequences, the Keystone Principle has moral power.   Many lives were lost, and millions disrupted, by Superstorm Sandy.  Most of the counties in America were declared disaster areas last year due to drought.  Last month, parents in Australia sheltered their children from “tornadoes of fire” by putting them in the ocean.   This is what climate disruption looks like.

Now that the faces of the victims are regular features of the daily news, what will we say to them?  And what will we say to our children – the prospective victims of still-preventable disasters?  Defying the Keystone Principle is like saying “Sorry, you’re out of luck.  We will use our laws, our time, and our money to make it irretrievably worse.”

President Obama has begun to carefully edge away from the moral bankruptcy of this position.  As he said in his inaugural address:   “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”

But no one will believe him, or us, until we stop making it worse.  That’s what Keystone is about.  It’s not just a pipeline.   It’s a principle.

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.

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.

Of all the flaws in our democracy, the filibuster and its abuse in the U.S. Senate is among the most flagrant, and the silliest.  So the Senate’s recent failure to enact meaningful filibuster reform – despite the inspired leadership of Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley –  is a big disappointment.

I come to the filibuster reform campaign from the perspective of a climate policy advocate (inspired by Alan Durning at Sightline Institute).  Over the last couple of years, much has been written about the failure of the U.S. Senate to pass a national climate bill[i].   This growing literature of climate policy failure analysis has many important lessons to offer, particularly about building movements and political power.

But, without dismissing those lessons at all, there’s a case to be made that even a moderately functional United States Senate would have passed the climate bill under the prevailing political circumstances.  After health care, it seems exceedingly unlikely that anything very complicated or difficult or big could have been produced by the Senate in President Obama’s first term.  The institution was kaput, and it hasn’t recovered much since.

Fixing the filibuster would not cure all that ails Congress.  But it’s a great place to begin the process of restoring our democracy to some semblance of functionality and efficacy.   It’s almost a test of self-respect, of whether we care about the American creed and instruments of self-government enough to slap aside this ridiculous impediment.

But when Senator Merkley and other leaders stepped up with serious reform proposals (like the “talking filibuster”) in January, the Senate balked.   “It’s some change in a Senate committed to no change;” that was about as much enthusiasm as Senator Elizabeth Warren, a reform advocate, could muster for the tweaks agreed to by Senators Reid and McConnell, the majority and minority leaders of the Senate.

The reforms offer a few new procedural efficiencies that may reduce the opportunities for delaying consideration of a bill and speed up the confirmation process for nominees.  But the minority party will still have free reign to filibuster procedural motions and substantive bills.  As Ezra Klein put it in the Washington Post, “The filibuster is safe.  Even filibusters against the motion to proceed [without which bills can’t even be considered] are safe.  And filibuster reformers have lost once again.”

What ultimately hangs up filibuster reform is fear, and the willingness of the minority to obstruct government.  The majority party, which can use the “constitutional option” to amend Senate rules with 51 votes, knows that someday it won’t be the majority party.  And when that day comes, they’ll want to have that filibuster wrench to throw into the gears.

This is clearly destructive to the purposes of good legislative process.  And it’s so notoriously obstructionist that it erodes public trust and respect for government.  “But at least” – one might argue – “it’s symmetrical:  the destruction cuts both ways, and arguably constrains the abuse of majority power.”

I don’t buy it.  The damage associated with legislative obstructionism is not symmetrical.   If you believe that government actually has some big, important jobs to do – like, say, tackling climate disruption – then you need a functional, effective legislative process.  If you believe that “government is the problem” and you just want it to go away, then leaving it wrapped around the axle of its own procedural paralysis isn’t the worst outcome.   “Filibuster” is almost like the name of the proposition that “government is lame.”   That is hardly a neutral message.

Senator Merkley has vowed to keep fighting for a functional U.S. Senate.  His statement after the tepid reforms passed was measured and collegial – that’s how Senators do – but his passion for serious reform shines through:

“The Senate spoke clearly today: the paralysis of the Senate is unacceptable. Senators of both parties have recognized the need for change, and supported several steps to make the Senate more functional…

“I would like to have gone further. In particular, I believe that if 41 Senators vote for more debate, then Senators should have the courage of their convictions to stand on the floor and make their case in front of the American people. Then the American people could decide if obstructing Senators are heroes or bums.

“I’m disappointed that we didn’t take a bolder step to fix the Senate, but what is most important today is the deep determination of Senators to return the Senate to a more functional institution. If the modest steps taken today do not end the paralysis the Senate currently suffers, many Senators are determined to revisit this debate and explore stronger remedies.

“We have a responsibility to address the big issues facing our country. I’ll keep working with my colleagues to achieve that goal.”

Note to climate advocates (and advocates of all major public policy reforms for that matter):  Let’s learn our lessons and get stronger from the failure of the climate bill.  But let’s also focus on restoring some semblance of a functioning democracy.  It’s hard to imagine how we do climate policy, or much of anything, until we do that.

I bought the original stabilization wedge format for presenting climate solutions hook, line and sinker.  At the slightest provocation, I will administer a “wedgie” – or as my co-workers call it, a “napkin-point presentation” – using the famous wedge schematic to illustrate this or that point about emission trajectories or the effect of a particular energy policy on emissions over time.  A giant wedge banner hanging from a building on the central square in Copenhagen filled me with nerdy pride.

But something always bothered me about wedges, and now I know what it is.  While we were busy getting our wedges on – passing good policies and implementing solutions – we were also busy investing in new infrastructure that locked in emission increases.  We’ve been betting on solutions and the problem simultaneously.  The net result is somewhere short of treading water, which means getting further away from a safe stabilization path.  You can review the non-progress in “Rethinking Wedges,” published recently in Environmental Research Letters.

The problem is “Business As Usual” (BAU) — the upward-sloping emissions curve at the top of the wedges – and everything it represents about our climate denial.  Among its many objectionable qualities, it is imaginary, implausible, immoral, BS.  Yes, it’s what we’re doing.  But it’s delusional to project what we’re doing out for 50 years.  It’s kind of like the economist flying in a 4 engine plane that loses power in one engine, then another, then a third – each time cutting the plane’s speed in half – who said: “At this rate, we’ll be up here almost forever!”

“Business as usual” is not possible; global temperature increases that would result from sustained emission growth over 50 years would be “incompatible with organized global community,” without which we wouldn’t keep generating emissions at ever-increasing rates.  It is hard to imagine business as usual, say, amid the “tornadoes of fire” engulfing Australia right now.

Tom Friedman recently said we need to begin “tapping on the brakes” to avoid “the climate cliff” by passing a carbon tax.  But the brakes don’t work very well when we’ve got the other foot on the BAU accelerator.

Is it possible to conceive of some bizarre dystopia in which civilization falls apart but we nevertheless manage to keep increasing our emissions?  Oh, gosh, maybe, but do we have to?  It doesn’t seem very analytically sound to me.  And it’s certainly a moral disaster – to imagine that we just keep stoking the fire as it burns up everything dear.  Calling this “business as usual” is both intellectually weak and ethically numb.

We smacked our head into the folly of indefinitely increasing consumption curves in the Northwest, when we bought off on the ill-fated “WPPSS” nuclear power program – which touched off the largest municipal bond default in history at the time.  And of course we’ve learned more than we ever wanted to know about bubbles in recent years.

“Business as usual” is a lie.  It’s a form of climate denial.  So why do we use it as our baseline?  Sure, it’s “the path we’re on” so in some sense it’s what we have to divert from.  But it can’t go where it appears to be headed.  It leads inexorably to some kind of forced drop off.  We’ll never get anywhere good until we flatly reject it.

No, let me rephrase: We’ll never get anywhere good unless we reject it now, because after a few more years of BAU, stabilization at tolerable levels will be impossible.  This is the bottom line of the IEA World Energy Outlook.   We don’t have enough time (or money) to keep investing in the problem as we invest in solutions.

There are plenty of grey areas – questions about timing and economics and technology – in the climate solutions game.  But this one is black and white, the clear moral line in the shifting sands of climate politics:

We cannot in good conscience continue to make long-term investments that make it worse.

Or, if you will, we should make today’s emission levels the new BAU, smacking down anything that drives emissions higher.  And by “smacking down,” of course, we’re not primarily talking about a change in our analytic assumptions.  It’s a political change.  It’s a moral shift.  It’s taking a stance — a hopeful and unyielding one.  (But that doesn’t mean we can’t graph it!:)

THis is what Keystone’s about.  It’s what Power Past Coal is about.  It’s what Do the Math is about.  Climate solutions just isn’t a credible proposition until we swear off additional aggravation of the climate crisis – until we declare that the old business as usual is dead.

……

(One hates to introduce ambiguity when one is drawing lines in the sand, but it must be said that our standards for rejecting fossil fuel infrastructure investment should in fairness be different for rich and poor countries.  The Prime Minister of India once proposed that their emissions-per-capita should rise and ours should fall until they reach the same level; then we can all move toward stabilization together.  You can see the justice in this.   Thing is, then we’d all be toast.  [Just toast though - more equitably burnt.]  Whatever minimal fossil fuel investment is possible between now and blowing our global emissions budget – maybe four years’ worth at current rates, according to the IEA – surely “belongs” to the least developed countries.  But for us:  no more, period.  In fact, if we accept a flat global BAU as a baseline, rich country BAUs would have to be downward sloping.  And then of course, we need to set sail for the stabilization pathway immediately, abandoning the new BAU at the same moment that we re-imagined it.)