Re/Action on Climate Protection

US behavior at Montreal-More bad news

Despite the Bush administration's adamant resistance, nearly every industrialized nation agreed early Saturday to engage in talks aimed at producing a new set of binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions that would take effect beginning in 2012.

And so ends the Montreal talks. The officials of the American government have, once again, offered a gesture of arrogance and contempt to the rest of the world on the most significant environmental problem of our time.

And here we have Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, chairperson of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee,

"James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) was even more skeptical of Saturday's pact, saying it would lead only to "a dead end economically."

"Two weeks of costly deliberation only resulted in an agreement to deliberate some more, so Montreal was essentially a meeting about the next meeting," Inhofe said in a statement. "The Kyoto Protocol . . . is a complete failure."

(Remember, ol' Jim invited Michael Crichton, a writer of fiction, to testify as an expert, before Congress, on climate science.)

A complete failure also of American democracy to deal with the most pressing issue of our time.

Why Peak Oil does not address the real problem

The Peak Oil concern, from the ASPO website is,..."there will not be enough oil left in the ground to permit a continuing increase in oil production." This statement indicates the belief that the hydrocarbon economy will not be sustained by cheaply extracted and processed crude oil. The concern therefore is,"shortages of these two fuels (oil and natural gas) will likely cause severe economic hardship."

The point of this observation, evidently, is that societies (particularly oil-dependent societies like the US) will need to derive their energy needs from some other source. The other source is not specified, and indeed, appears to be irrelevant, as long as it satisfies society's thirst for cheap energy. In the Peak Oil literature, it appears that the environmental effects of harvesting the new energy source should be considered. On the website,

"Prudent energy resource management must include conservation and efficiency, ecologically responsible energy production and consumption, and the development of alternative energy resources.

It is not clear how the leap is made from "we are running out of cheap energy" to "our new energy source must be ecologically responsible, etc."

There is no reason why the "no more cheap oil' argument prevents anyone who is inclined to seek energy sources such as nuclear or "deriviative" hydrocarbons, such as coal gasification, from exploiting the "crisis of cheap energy". The real problem is that burning fossil fuels is destroying the atmosphere. So we need to stop using fossil fuels not because "there is not enough oil left in the ground...", but because if we don't, the surface of the planet will be become uninhabitable.

US behavior at Montreal

A personal note. I find the behavior of the American delegation to the Montreal climate talks, in particular, the walkout of Harlan Watson, disgusting and despicable. I am ashamed of the conduct of my government in this matter. The policies of the Bush Administration with regard to climate change do not reflect my views, or, I believe, the views of the majority of the American people. I am ashamed of those policies, and what they represent to the rest of the world. I apologize for the behavior of my government, and I am relatively confident that these policies will be repudiated over time.

In the meantime, I want to assure the rest of the world that at the local level, we are applying American ingenuity and work ethic to developing solutions to greenhouse gas pollution and fossil fuel dependency. We are working on solving this problem at a local level, and intend to share our solutions with the rest of the world.

We are particularly interested in extending a hand to developing nations, to help them reap the benefits of sufficient energy for all, without making the error of replicating the hydrocarbon economy.

Our GHG reduction strategy

Climate Protection Campaign is taking a "systems" approach to developing a strategy for a) stopping the growth of emissions and b) significantly lowering GHG emissions as close as possible to zero over the next 50 years.

First some background.

Growth in emissions in the transportation sector in the county between 1990 and 2000 was 43%. Growth in the residential sector (actually about 25% of overall emissions in 2000) of electricity and natural gas use was 18%. Population growth during this time was 18%. So you can see that per capita growth in residential electricity and natural gas use was approximately the same as population, while transportation was almost 2.5x the population growth. Emissions from commercial and industrial E & NG use grew 36%, double the growth rate of the population.

This guides our strategy as follows:

Frugality the basis for GHG reduction?

Zeno Swijtink recently commented,

"There is an earlier tradition of American frugality, of Benjamin Franklin and Henry David Thoreau, that is still alive in this country."

How can this be harnessed to bring about meaningful reductions in GHGs? Are Americans still capable of choosing to "use less" because it is "not right" to consume more than one really needs?

Using resources more efficiently implies that the same work is done with less energy. However, conservation goes to the root of what one thinks one needs or wants, and consciously "using less."

I was in a class one time where we had some Japanese guests from the energy industry. First time visitors to the United States, they were asked for their impressions. One of the responses was that they could not believe the size of the portions of food they were being served in restaurants. It appalled them that they could not finish it all, and it had to be thrown away. This is not to glorify Japanese society, however, it points to a fundamental difference in social constructs between societies.

Fossil Industry Has Its Way With Kyoto

There is an extremely disturbing article in the Week In Review section of the New York Times today, titled,"On Climate Change, a Change of Thinking", by Andrew C. Revkin. Revkin is a reporter for the Times, evidently specializing in climate change. There are many troubling apects of this article: It nearly exactly echoes the ExxonMobile/Bush Administration party line on the necessity for fossil fuel energy resources, the destructive economic effects of limiting emissions, and the far distant and still technologically problematic use of non-polluting energy sources.

However, the most troubling part of this article is potentially the most positive for efforts like Climate Protection Campaign.

Replace Natural Gas with Biogas

Natural gas use represents a little over 20% of the total GHG emissions in Sonoma County. (pgs 12 and 17 of inventory). Large GHG emissions reductions would result from displacing some of this natural gas with biogas generated from organic waste. Biogas could potentially compete with natural gas.

Reducing GHGs from the existing vehicle fleet

As Joel Woodhull described in our Transportation White Paper, the two root paths to remove carbon from the transportation system are

*Reduce the use of fossil carbon-based fuels (ultimately don't use them at all)
*Get more passenger miles per mile of motorized vehicle movement

In order to reduce the use of fossil carbon fuels, new cars can be built to more easily use biofuels, the so-called "flex fuel" cars. To the extent that diesel engines and particularly diesel hybrids become more common, biodiesel can be used. The remedy of increasing the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard to require auto makers to build more efficient cars is available, but is fraught with political difficulty. Raising the fuel price through a gasoline tax is another effective way to reduce fuel use, but also fraught with political difficulty.

There is still the problem of what to do with the existing fleet of cars and light trucks, which account about 85% of the GHG emissions from the transportation sector. An automotive efficiency specialist, Ernie Rogers has contributed a set of guaranteed, proven methods for improving the mileage of an existing, standard gasoline powered car or truck.