Breakthrough: More Inconvenient Truths

Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection just launched the We Campaign. With the Obama-esque tagline, "We can solve it," and bright images of solar panels, wind turbines, and moon-walkers, the mood is hopeful and buoyant. With allusions to the invasion of Normandy and the Civil Rights Movement, Gore has finally figured out that the trope of American greatness is more powerful than the one of an empire in decline.

This is a big step in the right direction, but now Gore needs to come to terms with two more inconvenient truths about climate change:

we campaign.jpg First, that trying to make Americans care more about global warming is a losing battle -- with the ailing health care system, the slumping economy, and the Iraq war, there simply isn't room to prioritize everything, especially when ecologic issues are pitted against economic and social ones. Second, a price for carbon alone is ecologically irrelevant. We need a policy agenda that includes a government investment commensurate to the monumental size of the challenge.

While he knows how to bring his cause into the limelight, Gore keeps missing the mark when it comes to an effective policy agenda. This year's presidential campaign is focused on the concept of "empty" rhetoric, but it's a charge that Gore deserves more than Obama. While this latest effort may come in different packaging than the gloomy Inconvenient Truth, the policy agenda is none changed. Nowhere in the extensive website literature is there a call to invest in clean energy R&D. What we get instead is the soothing mantra that we already have all the technology we need:

The technological and policy solutions for the climate crisis already exist.

This is the clean energy economy we can adopt with today's technologies, resources, know-how...

We can...ensure that future energy projects take advantage of the clean renewable resources available.

The way he puts it, you almost believe we have a long row of clean energy darlings, politely waiting their turn out in the hallway. The strategy that goes along with this way of thinking focuses on garnering public support as a sign to leaders that we're over our carbon "addiction" -- we're ready for politicians to start calling in those patient clean energy technologies.

The problem with this approach is two-fold. First, it assumes that Americans are very concerned about global warming. But when asked about their top priorities, Americans consistently rank global warming near the bottom of the list; a recent Pew survey found that "dealing with global warming" ranked 20th out of 23 given policy priorities. When the question is open-ended, no one responds with global warming. Even during the increased media attention to global warming that accompanied the release of An Inconvenient Truth, the percentage of people who ranked global warming as an important issue fell. If the environmental movement had 15 minutes of fame, that was it -- what makes Gore think that this ad campaign is going to succeed where his feature film failed?

It is here that the We Campaign suffers a failure of imagination -- they insist upon framing the issue as an environmental one, rather than making it about something that Americans actually care about. The environment may not be high on Americans' policy priority list, but energy independence is. Studies show that voters strongly support large investments into clean energy sources to achieve energy independence and deal with global warming. Issues-based politics miss the opportunity to meet voters where they are -- always a more effective strategy than appealing to values that they don't share.

The second problem with the We Campaign is that in failing to advocate for substantial investment in technology innovation, it underestimates what it will take to counter global warming -- just as the IPCC did in assuming a trend of global decarbonization, as reported by Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke in Nature today. In both cases, the result was the same: policy recommendations far short of what's actually needed.

Everyone agrees that switching over to renewable energy is a good thing, but if it were easy, we would have done it already. Our current level of technology is not be capable of both reducing carbon emissions and supporting global standards of living, and it will not become capable of doing so spontaneously. From development to deployment, there are still many hurdles to implementing new clean energy systems, and it is going to take technological breakthroughs to clear those hurdles. Any serious attempt to address global warming must put an aggressive technology R&D agenda front and center, and despite its aspirational rhetoric, the We Campaign fails in this regard.

Lindsay, I'm afraid you folks are either not well informed or have a hidden agenda that escapes me. I've posted a list of 20 technologies on my blog and I'm going to add 4 more that will reduce GHG emissions by 90% or more if deployed en masse. We have the tools, just not the right policies. With the possible exceptions of Iceland, Germany and now Spain we have had no countries who have yet taken the task of transitioning to a sustainable energy system seriously. It's like you guys are saying, "We give up" before we in the US have even tried to meaningfully deploy what we either already have or will have very soon. You also are demonstrating a poor knowledge of emerging technologies in your assertions that we need to go on major research excursions. Yes, there are a few areas we need to work on, but we can wipe out 90% of our emissions at least with existing technologies. So research is good and needs to be stepped up but deployment of what we have is better. Michael Hoexter www.greenthoughts.us Posted by: Michael Hoexter at April 12, 2008 2:51 AM

Almost all wars and terrorism in the world can be stopped. Almost all dictators and tyrants can be rendered powerless. All we have to do is to stop paying them. An alarming amount of the money Western nations pay for oil is going into the coffers of people who are terrorists and dictators. All we have to do defund the world�s most violent criminals is to become energy independent. In the first phase of energy independence we get as much energy as possible from resources which we own or which are in the hands of friendly, stable nations. First we build new nuclear power plants in every state. If the French can make nuclear work what excuse do we have? If France�s success isn�t incentive enough, consider the success of Denmark, Brazil, and Australia in diversifying their energy supplies. In addition, we drill for oil off all our coastal waters and we build new refineries and pipelines in every state. We must burn more coal and use more natural Gas. Existing energy companies are making plenty of money in the current climate of false scarcity. We will have to find away around them. Usually the way around greedy energy companies would require political will. However, almost all existing politicians are in the pocket of the energy companies. This includes democrats and republicans. So every politician currently in office needs to be thrown out. Anyone who works for or who owns an existing conventional energy company is in my view disqualified for public office. We already know from the Bush/Cheney experience that such politicians will work in a way contrary to the national security of the United States and will start pointless wars for oil. Every time a new oil war start conservatives get paid. That is why no conservative supports plans to gain immediate energy independence. Merely having new politicians willing to clear the legal minefields laid down by oil bought senators and congressmen might not be enough. We might have to get a little bolder. Therefore I suggest that we build terawatts of new nuclear power plans and miles of new oil refineries in Mexico and that we send the power back to the states via pipelines, power lines, hydrogen, or whatever works. This will provide work for Mexicans and energy for us. The Mexican government will have a large incentive to make the plants secure and this increased security might even spill over to the borders and make our borders more secure. While phase one is going on we need to start on phase 2. In this phase we bring online as many green and renewable technologies as are currently viable and put as much money as is needed into producing more. I would suggest that the model cities be built in the west and south�anywhere that it does not get cold enough to snow. The idea is to build small towns or cities that will go cold turkey. There will be no fossil fuels of any kind allowed in these cities. All vehicles and houses will be powered by wind, solar and bio-mass. The best locations would be those that have year around wind, sun and enough farming in the area to produce the bio mass. These experimental towns would be off the power grid. The only way to get power to them would be to make the green and renewable technologies work. Volunteers who truly believe that the future is green would be invited to apply for residency. We would probably take engineers and farmers over other types because we would need people who were skilled in keeping the power conversion machinery going and others who don�t mind the get their hands dirty hard work of farming. Another part of the second phase will involve green government. In a free society you can not tell free citizens they must go green. But you can tell government at all levels that it is prohibited from using non domestic sources of energy and non domestic products. Posted by: poetryman69 at April 13, 2008 11:57 PM

Post a comment