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Updated: 2 hours 43 min ago Can We Manipulate the Weather?
Chinese scientists claim to be able to control the weather. But is so-called geoengineering more than wishful thinking? And, if so, should we be worried? Image: Unseasonal snowfall in Beijing, which scientists claim is the result of their geoengineering, November 2009. Photograph: ADRIAN BRADSHAW/EPA The unseasonal snow that fell on Beijing for 11 hours on Sunday was the earliest and heaviest there has been for years. It was also, China claims, man-made. By the end of last month, farmland in the already dry north of China was suffering badly due to drought. So on Saturday night China's meteorologists fired 186 explosive rockets loaded with chemicals to "seed" clouds and encourage snow to fall. "We won't miss any opportunity of artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering from a lingering drought," Zhang Qiang, head of the Beijing Weather Modification Office, told state media. The US has tinkered with such cloud seeding to increase water flow from the Sierra Nevada mountains in California since the 1950s, but there remains widespread scientific sniffiness in the west at such attempts at weather control. The chemicals fired into the sky, usually dry ice or silver iodide, are supposed to provide a surface for water vapour to form liquid rain. But there is little evidence that it works – after all, how do investigating scientists know it would not have rained anyway? Such doubts have not stopped China claiming mastery over the clouds. Officials said the blue skies that brightened Beijing's parade to celebrate 60 years of communism last month were a result of the 18 cloud-seeding jets and 432 explosive rockets scrambled to empty the sky of rain beforehand. Last year, more than 1,000 rockets were fired to ensure a dry night for last year's Olympic opening ceremony. "Only a handful of countries in the world could organise such large-scale, magic-like weather modification," Cui Lianqing, a senior meteorologist with the Chinese air force, told the Xinhua news agency after last month's parade. Magic or not, there is growing interest in such attempts to deliberately steer the weather, and on a much larger scale. Next spring, a group of the world's leading experts on climate change will gather in California to plan how it could be done as a way to tackle global warming, and by whom. The ideas, some of which, similar to cloud-seeding, involve firing massive amounts of chemicals into the atmosphere, can sound far-fetched, but they are racing up the agenda as pessimism grows about the likely course of global warming. As interest grows, so does concern about whether such techniques, known as geoengineering, could be developed and unleashed by a single nation, or even a wealthy individual, without wide international approval. "What will happen when Richard Branson decides he really does want to save the planet?" asks one climate expert. If China thinks it can make cloud seeding work, then what about geoengineering? "If climate change turns ugly, then many countries will start looking at desperate measures," says David Victor, an energy policy expert at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Logic points to a big risk of unilateral geoengineering. Unlike controlling emissions, which requires collective action, most highly capable nations could deploy geoengineering systems on their own." Victor is a heavyweight policy analyst, but one of his most impressive academic feats could have been to smuggle the name of the world's favourite secret agent into the sober pages of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy. "Geoengineering may not require any collective international effort to have an impact on climate," he wrote in an article published last year. "A lone Greenfinger, self-appointed protector of the planet and working with a small fraction of the [Bill] Gates bank account, could force a lot of geoengineering on his own. Bond films of the future might [enjoy incorporating] the dilemma of unilateral planetary engineering." Move over, Goldfinger. Unilateral geoengineering worries experts for two reasons. First, the massive side effects; what it could do to the world's rainfall, for example. Second, once started, geoengineering would probably have to be continued, as stopping could bring an abrupt change in climate. "One of the many dangers with unilateral geoengineering is that once a country starts, it becomes very hard to stop," Victor says. "Removing a warming mask, even if it is a flawed mask, would expose the planet to even more rapid and probably dangerous warming." In a world where action on global warming has created new markets in carbon worth billions of pounds, countries are not the only players. Geoengineering would require investment and the private sector is already eyeing up opportunities. Two companies have emerged with a business plan based on dumping iron in the sea and then selling carbon offsets based on the extra pollution supposedly soaked up by the resulting algal bloom. And in their new book, Superfreakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner talk approvingly of Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer of Microsoft, whose company, Intellectual Ventures, is exploring the possibility of pumping large quantities of reflective sulphur dust into the Earth's stratosphere through a patented 18-mile-long hose held up by helium balloons. This is the point where most people will shake their heads, say the whole silly idea will never happen, and skip to the crossword. They could be right, but the global warming story has a tendency to outpace most attempts to predict its path. Just a few years ago, scientists and politicians talked of the need to avoid a 2C rise in global temperature, yet experts recently gathered at an Oxford University conference openly talked of a likely 4C rise, which, without urgent and unlikely action, a new report from the Met Office says could come within many of our lifetimes. A decade ago, an unproven idea called carbon sequestration, that would see carbon emissions from power stations trapped under the ground, was talked up by a small group of advocates, but was dismissed by most people as too expensive and unworkable on a large scale. Renamed carbon capture and storage, the idea is now mainstream energy policy in countries including Britain, despite still being unproven and dismissed by many as too expensive and unworkable on a large scale. Last month, the International Energy Agency said the world should build 100 full-scale carbon-capture power stations by 2020, and 850 by 2030. If the geoengineering narrative follows a similar arc, then how long until nations or individuals that have the most to lose, or are the first to accept that the required massive emission cuts are impossible, turn to the presently unthinkable option? The US government, under President Bush, has already lobbied the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to promote geoengineering research as "insurance". When the Royal Society recently carried out an investigation of the options, senior figures privately expected it to dismiss the whole concept as nonsense. Instead the society, Britain's premier scientific academy, concluded in September that methods to block out the sun "may provide a potentially useful short-term backup to mitigation in case rapid reductions in global temperature are needed". The society stressed that emissions reductions were the way to go, but recommended international research and development of the "more promising" geoengineering techniques. "My guess is that we will be taking geoengineering a lot more seriously in the next decade," says Victor, "but we won't be in a position to deploy systems for some time. Most nations will decide it is needed only if we have really bad luck as warming unfolds and if we fail miserably in controlling emissions. I put the odds of using such systems in the next 40 years at perhaps one in five." Of all the apparent obstacles to geoengineering, cost is not likely to be among them. Compared with the expense of investing in renewable energy and phasing out fossil fuels, the cheapest geoengineering options come with a price tag of just a few billion pounds, perhaps 1% of what it could cost to tackle global warming through emissions cuts. Alan Robock, an expert on volcanos and climate at Rutgers University in New Jersey, has looked at how much it might cost to carry out one of the most commonly discussed geoengineering options, to mimic the cooling effect of a volcanic eruption by filling the high atmosphere with sulphur compounds, which reflect sunlight. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 threw so much shiny sulphurous dust into the atmosphere that temperatures across a shaded Earth dropped a year later by about 0.5C. The 1815 explosion of Mount Tambora in Indonesia triggered the notorious "year without a summer" and widespread failure of harvests across northern regions including Europe, the north-east US and Canada. Robock has worked out the likely cost of technology needed to deposit a million tonnes of sulphur in the stratosphere each year, an amount equivalent to a Mount Pinatubo eruption every four to eight years, and which scientists think could be enough to cancel out the global warming caused by a continued rise in carbon emissions. The cheapest option could be to use giant mid-air refuelling aircraft, such as the US air force's KC-10 Extender, filled with sulphur dioxide or hydrogen sulphide gas. It would be a round-the-clock operation, with nine aircraft each required to fly three sorties a day. In a new paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Robock and his colleagues say it could be done for "several billion" dollars a year. The results have forced Robock to revise a high-profile list of 20 objections to geoengineering he published last year. "It turns out that being way too expensive is not the case." Robock's new analysis still includes 17 reasons why geoengineering is a bad idea. Throwing sulphur into the atmosphere could slow down the world's water cycle and do more damage to rainfall patterns than the global warming it aims to prevent. And because techniques that focus on stopping sunlight do nothing to stop carbon dioxide pollution from cars, factories and power stations, they cannot address the looming disaster of ocean acidification. The surface of the world's ocean is slowly turning to acid as our extra carbon pollution dissolves in seawater. Coral reefs already appear doomed and many shellfish could follow. Altering the atmosphere could also weaken solar power and reverse years of work to close the hole in the ozone layer. With such a catalogue of potential disasters waiting to unfold, there must be a law against geoengineering? The international rulebook is fuzzy on this issue. The only international framework that directly covers many geoengineering techniques, the 1976 Environmental Modification Convention, designed to stop nations at war from meddling with each other's weather, has never been tested. The 1982 UN Law of the Sea Convention and the 1967 Outer Space Treaty could be used to regulate activities and experiments in those shared spaces, but releases to the atmosphere are legally more problematic because nations have sovereignty over their own airspace. Rather than laws and treaties, many experts argue that the best way to prevent countries or companies from going it alone is to plunge in and start serious research. "The way to tame the worst forms of unilateral geoengineering is to promote a lot more research, especially [into] the side effects," Victor says. "One of the biggest dangers is that some governments will try to create a taboo against geoengineering. A taboo would stop a lot of research but it wouldn't stop determined rogues. That scenario would probably be the worst, because rogues would not abandon their efforts and the rest of us would not have done enough research to know what to expect." Mike MacCracken, chief scientist at the Climate Institute in Washington, is organising the California meeting next spring, which aims to figure out some guidelines. He says large-scale unilateral geoengineering is "not very plausible" and his main concern is fairness to future generations. Once started by anybody, a geoengineering attempt would probably need to be continued by everybody else because it would offer a mask on global warming that could be dangerous to remove. "It might be that this is how unilateral concerns should be reframed; this generation more or less deciding it will take only slow action on any type of emissions, essentially forcing the next generation to be more likely to have to invoke geoengineering to save much that anyone considers beneficial and unique about the Earth." Read between the lines of most scientific reports on geoengineering and there is a tacit assumption that the idea sounds so extreme that merely discussing it will refocus efforts on emission cuts. But what if the reverse is true? What if a heavily funded research programme, and articles such as this, promote the idea to people who have little interest in moving to a low-carbon world? "Knowledge is hard to hide," says Robock. "It would be great if people didn't know how to build nuclear bombs, but they do. We need to research and debate the consequences and then use politics and influence to let people know what would happen." This piece originally appeared in The Guardian For more on geoengineering, see the Worldchanging archives: Geoengineering the Planet: The Possibilities and the Pitfalls Influential U.K. Panel Outlines Possible Geo-engineering Ideas Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 12:21 PM) Walk Score Adds Transit
Popular walkability ranking now includes bus stops and rail stations. Walk Score, which has become the most widely-used measure of pedestrian friendly neighborhoods in North America, has added a new trick: they're now incorporating transit data into their walkability ratings. So in addition to stores, restaurants, parks, and the like, Walk Score now treats nearby bus stops and rail stations as key ingredients of a walkable neighborhood. What makes this extra nifty is that Walk Score has already partnered with a bunch of national real estate websites to incorporate walkability rankings into real estate listings. So now, all those real estate sites will have data on transit access, too. Sadly, Walk Score's new transit ranking only works in places where transit agencies have made their "transit feeds" -- the data on transit locations and schedules -- freely available to the public. So if you live and walk in Portland, OR, you're in luck. Same goes for a handful of smaller transit agencies around the Northwest -- Island and Jefferson counties in Washington, Tillamook County in OR, and Humboldt County California. But even though King County Metro and Vancouver, BC's Translink publish their transit data for Google's use, their transit feeds are kept private--so third parties like Walk Score can't get access to them. So the good folks behind Walk Score have set up an online petition to ask local transit agencies to release their transit service data to the public. (I've signed the petition -- and if you care about walkability and transit, you should too!) This piece originally appeared on Sightline Daily. Image Credit: kworth30 via Flickr, Creative Commons License. Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Clark Williams-Derry in Transportation at 12:20 PM) Interview with Rajendra Pachauri: Amid Mounting Pessimism A Voice of Hope for Copenhagen
Few people have as much stake in the outcome of the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen as Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Yet despite growing pessimism that a substantive treaty can be forged in Copenhagen, Pachauri believes a flurry of eleventh-hour negotiations may lead to an agreement, although the United States may not initially be a part of it. or get the Flash Player. var so = new SWFObject('http://e360.yale.edu/common/mediaplayer.swf','mpl','200','20','8'); so.addParam('allowscriptaccess','always'); so.addParam('allowfullscreen','true'); so.addVariable('height','20'); so.addVariable('width','200'); so.addVariable('file','http://e360.yale.edu/audio/pachauri-2.mp3'); so.addVariable('backcolor','0x112200'); so.addVariable('frontcolor','0xffffff'); so.addVariable('lightcolor','0x88BB00'); so.addVariable('searchbar','false'); so.write('player'); Yale Environment 360: I wanted to start by asking you about the obvious thing that’s on everybody’s mind, the upcoming conference in Copenhagen in December. It’s obviously a key conference and there’s been a great deal of pessimism in recent weeks about the chance for really substantive action in Copenhagen on climate change. What do you see as the picture for heading into Copenhagen at this point, and what do you think can realistically be accomplished there? Pachauri: I think there are three things that’ll have to be part of an agreement. Firstly, commitment to reduce emissions by the developed countries, through 2020. I think that’s essential. And that also accords with what the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] has brought out in the Fourth Assessment Report, where we clearly said that if you want to limit temperature increase to 2 to 2.4 degrees Celsius, then 2015 is the year when global emissions will have to peak, and then decline thereafter. Now that clearly implies that you ought to have very clear targets for 2020 at the latest. So I think that’s one important element of an agreement. The second would be some commitment to provide money on the table to help the developing countries, both in adaptation as well as mitigation actions. And the third would be to provide some facilitation for access to technologies that are required in the rest of the world. So I think if these three things are there, then perhaps the majority of the countries that are part of COP will agree to a deal. e360: You attracted widespread attention some months ago when you said, as an individual, not as chairman of the IPCC, you supported calls to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations at a level of below 350 parts per million. What led you to take that position, and knowing that it would be controversial, why did you choose to go public with that? This piece originally appeared in Yale e360 Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Yale Environment 360 in Politics at 11:44 AM) New Study: Changes to Economic Policy Necessary for Switch to Low-Carbon Economy
by Bill Becker Conducted by Climate Risk Pty. Ltd. of Great Britain and Australia, the study concludes: Runaway climate change is almost inevitable without specific action to implement low-carbon re-industrialization over the next five years [emphasis added]… World governments have a window that will close between now and 2014. In that time they must establish fully operational, low-carbon industrial architecture. This must drive a low-carbon re-industrialization that will be faster than any previous economic and industry transformation…Today, only three out of 20 industries are moving sufficiently fast enough.By “low carbon re-industrialization”, the authors mean energy efficiency and clean generation technologies, low-carbon agriculture, and sustainable forestry. They have identified 24 critical resources and industries the world will need to develop quickly to avoid climate catastrophe. Among their conclusions:
“Starting with the least-cost mitigation solutions and working our way forward to higher-cost solutions as carbon prices rise – that approach will take too long,” says Sean Kidney, Climate Risk’s manager in Europe. “We need to tackle all solutions at the same time.”
“We can harvest these enormous future savings now to create an income stream that funds the capital expenditures we need,” Kidney says. How? Kidney and his colleagues are working on a number of ideas for new bonding mechanisms designed specifically to finance low-carbon investments. What is government’s role? The Presidential Climate Action Project has submitted several re-industrialization proposals to the Obama Administration and Congress. Among them:
We will not avoid climate catastrophe merely by tinkering around the edges of industrial society or by counting on a slow evolution of technologies and markets. As businessman and environmentalist Paul Hawken puts it, “There isn’t one single thing that we make that doesn’t require a complete remake.” Alex Steffen, the executive editor of worldchanging.com, says: “The magnitude of the crises we face, the speed with which they are unfolding…mean that the solutions we need to embrace are not going to be the same sort of solutions we’re used to thinking of now…Faced with the need to reinvent the material basis of our civilization, we argue paper or plastic." Can we reinvent world industry in only five years? The rapid redirection of U.S. industry during World War II suggests that it may be possible – but not without intense collaboration between governments and industries. There must be a third party in the deal, too: the citizen-consumer. In my next post, I’ll suggest how government, industry and consumers can collaborate in a new social contract for economic transformation. [JR: I would note that if this statement is true -- "To achieve an 80 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, the world will have to invest $400 billion annually in green industries by 2025" -- the U.S. share is about $100 billion a year, which is just about what the climate and clean energy bill would result in (see "The only way to win the clean energy race is to pass the clean energy bill"). I actually think we'll need a bigger investment, maybe twice as big by 2025.] This piece originally appeared on Climate Progress. Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! The Future of Environmental Law Mapping
By Laurent Granier Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and mapping offer great opportunities for the transfer of legal data from books to maps. GIS applications have been evolving in many directions, well beyond geography. Many fields such as environmental economics, social science, health science and administration are now aggregated with scientific representations. The methods for environmental and social mapping are now participatory too. Together, these tools offer new, integrated visions of our territories (or anthromes) and could greatly assist environmental lawyers and policy makers. Maps and plans have been considered legal tools in urban and planning law for a long time here in France. The "Plan Local d'Urbanismes" (formerly "POS" ) with its "graphical documents" are both legally binding. Sectoral environmental legislation also offers legally binding spatial representations, such as boundaries in protected areas, water catchments or industrial zones. In international law, the Counsil of Europe developed guidelines on coastal management that include "legal mapping" as a relevant tool (art. 26). Part of our environmental legislation is made of data, standards and zones that make sense horizontally. Another strong tendency that should lead us to more legal mapping is the need to aggregate more and more rules and multiple statuses (of land). This applies both in developing and rich countries. There is, for example, no real understanding of the future of a protected area (PA) without looking to the diverse rules applying to its surrounding lands, forests, concessions, villages, etc. In the case of participatory PAs mapping (in the Gabonese legislation for example), legal data in mapping can include: - Representations of general laws and regulations, for example health rules on malaria applying to the entire country, the ban on fishing after 3 miles, general building rule, roads, etc. - Specific laws and regulations. In the case of protected areas, rules are plenty. They include boundaries (usually through a law or decree creating limits, rules), the internal zoning with different affectations, the buffer zone, the zoning of local communities activities, the customary zones, corridors, etc. More interesting is the zoning of what surrounds PAs, such as clear identification of forest concessions, mining, industries, cities, private land, etc. - Contractual rules can be represented too, such as local participation tools (local conventions, charters, bylaws) and international transboundary agreements.
A great French online public tool allows users combine personalized maps with protected area status information (including biosphere reserves, bird nesting zones, EU birds and special conservation zones, and of course all the "classical" protected areas). Addwijzer is another innovative program. It is an EU eContent project that succeeded in demonstrating how planning laws could be integrated into maps in the Netherlands. According to Dr. David R. Newman, Queen's University Belfast, a Member of the PGIS network, Framfab used the IMRO codes that a Dutch project had created to add laws to maps of the district plans, and added rules that you could use to quickly find areas where a particular kind of development is legal. The tool is still under development. For more examples with lots of potential for environmental education, see this compilation of online mapping data about protected areas in Southeast Asia, or the Google Earth apps on marine protected areas. Law and policy makers may promote these legal mapping tools to a greater extent in the future. They give a big, clear picture of the numerous rules now applying to any zone, they can be made democratically, by involving stakeholders (from international to local - participatory mapping), they help administrators taking more sound land management decisions and also allow us to better plan for the future (particularly in adaptation to climate change perspectives). Hopefully environmental maps and plans will become more and more legally binding. Laurent Granier is the director of ecocy, an environmental law and policy consultancy assisting leading organizations and companies who want to develop integrated and dynamic solutions. His work includes breakthrough protected areas legislations in Africa where he worked 6 year with UNEP and IUCN before founding ecocy in 2008. This piece originally appeared on Ecocy. Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Emerging Technologies at 11:17 AM) Smart, Cheap Stormwater Fixes
Stormwater -- the rainwater that streams off roofs, parking lots, roads, and yards, carrying with it toxic pollutants -- poses a costly, intractable problem for governments and businesses. In Washington, efforts to control stormwater have cost its cities hundreds of millions of dollars. The problem with stormwater comes from its massive volume, which floods homes and blasts through streams, flushing salmon eggs, gravel, and everything else out to sea. And it comes from the pollutants that are picked up by the torrents of rain along the way, including copper, oil and grease, and pesticides. Stormwater presents a daunting challenge considering the Northwest's rapid pace of development, and the fact that residential areas have three-times the rate of runoff compared to forests and fields (see page 12). Polluted stormwater kills salmon returning to urban streams to spawn before they can lay their eggs. It forces the closure of acres of shellfish beds made unsafe for human consumption. The rush of water causes erosion and fills basements with muddy water. The good news is we already know some of the best, cheapest solutions for controlling runoff. The bad news is the solutions aren't being widely used. A few governments are wisely putting a value on trees in the name of stormwater controls to encourage developers to protect them. Portland offers tree credits as a way for landowners to meet part of their stormwater mitigation obligation. Seattle is for the first time including credits for trees in its stormwater manual update (see section 4.4.6), which is expected to be approved by the end of the month. But clearly even with incentives to keep trees, stormwater will be created in the Northwest by the barrel-full. So the next best strategy is to keep pollutants out of the runoff. Otherwise the stormwater has to be captured and treated, and many of the pollutants are difficult and costly to remove. One of the bad actors that's been getting a lot of attention in recent years is seemingly innocuous copper. You can hold a penny in your hand with no harm done, but when the dissolved metal gets into streams it can wreak havoc on a salmon's sense of smell -- and they use their noses to find food, mates, their spawning streams, and to avoid predators. Scientists at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle find that super low levels of copper -- levels that match what is found in nature -- deadens coho's response to an alarm pheromone that warns schoolmates that a predator is near. So where does the copper come from? Research in the San Francisco Bay area found that the top two sources of human-caused copper pollution come from pesticides (42 percent) and brake pads on cars and trucks (36 percent). Some of the pesticides' copper gets trapped in the soil and plants, putting more of a focus on the brake pads copper that travels from roadways and the air to waterways. Now California's Brake Pad Partnership, a nonprofit coalition of environmentalists, engineers, and auto reps, is working to get legislation passed that will get copper-containing brake pads off their roads. Their Q & A sheet gives a great explanation of how the copper is scraped off the pads when a car brakes, why it's used, and what the substitutes are (they include steel and iron). Here's the most important piece: Stormwater flooding photo courtesy of Flickr user technokitten under the Creative Commons license. This piece originally appeared in Sightline.org Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 11:16 AM) CFCM Show and Tell: Making Change
Ryan Toole is designing a platform called Red Ink, a tool designed to enable secure, collective financial action. He points out that there are existing tools – wesabe, mint.com, yodlee – which unify your online financial information. The bleeding edge in this field is financial tools for collective action – carrotmob, groupon, merry miser, buy it like you mean it. Red Ink fits into this latter category. It’s a “social financial platform” designed to let you visualize spending at regional levels, in different industries. This is useful information for organizing a boycott – you can show the effectiveness of a collective action by asking everyone to report their purchasing behavior. Similarly, you could get a constituency of people to report on local spending, or just try to negotiate a discount on your local beer spending. The goal for the platform is to be highly private and anonymous, maximizing communications and minimizing private data leakage. This vision could be very important for activists, allowing them to spread information person to person. It might also matter to people off the grid, allowing communication in an otherwise unwired village. And for general users, there could be services allowing communication and discovery. Some of the projects that have emerged from this work are: With this information, we can consider the carbon impacts and social impacts of our products through supply chain transparency. A demonstration shows the inputs into an Ikea Alsarp bed, including the origins of the wood and steel – this report is published and becomes a resource for anyone looking at purchasing the bed in the future. Hockenberry’s strongest example is a map of breweries in Scotland, all of which are currently bottled in northern England. By mapping their supply chains, he was able to make an argument for a transition to a central Scottish bottling plant, which might transform the local brewing industry. ExtrAct focuses on energy extraction and its impact on communities in North Texas and Colorado, specifically the impacts of hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas. This process is very chemically intensive and is unregulated by federal law. Chris tells us that it’s causing such severe health and environmental damage that we’re seeing communities organize to fight fracturing. The ExtrAct project started with extensive ethnographic studies in these communities. That study pointed to the landman – a representative of the energy companies sent to purchase mineral rights from homeowners – as a pivotal piece of the extraction system. ExtrAct functions as a “Landman review site, like Rotten Tomatoes or Yelp.com”, trying to address the problems of accountability in the process of acquiring land for mineral extraction. This post covers presentations at MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media at MIT’s communications forum. The piece originally appeared on My heart's in Accra. Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Ethan Zuckerman in Communications and Networking at 10:58 AM) Buffett's Bet on Rail: What Does It Mean for Transport and Energy?
by Elana Schor The financial world was riveted this morning by billionaire investor Warren Buffett's move to take full ownership of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad, a $34 billion deal that ranks as the largest ever executed by Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway. But what does Buffett's purchase mean for the nation's energy future? The so-called "Oracle of Omaha" told CNBC today that his decision was "a bet on the country" as well as a bet on the viability of cleaner transportation: BNSF last year... moved a ton of goods 470 miles on one gallon of diesel. It releases far fewer pollutants into the atmosphere. It saves enormously on energy consumption and...it diminishes highway congestion. Rails last year moved 40 percent, more than 40 percent, over the country. They moved more than all those trucks, just the four big railroads. It's a very effective way of moving goods. I basically believe this country will prosper and you'll have more people moving more goods 10 and 20 and 30 years from now, and the rails should benefit. As coal-hauling railroads go, however, BNSF has made an attempt to distinguish itself on the energy efficiency end. The railroad is developing an emissions-free hydrogen-powered locomotive, and in May started to test-run a group of GE locomotives that cuts emissions by 40 percent over previous, dirtier models. BNSF also has gotten on board the California High Speed Rail Authority's plans for an initial route connecting Merced to Fresno, and its CEO has advocated for a national focus on one initial high-speed project, rather than spreading around the Obama administration's $8 billion investment "like peanut butter." When putting Buffett's bet into context, however, the corporate identity of BNSF may matter less than the impact of one powerful investor's foray into transportation. At a time when the job-creation potential of infrastructure spending is increasingly propelling the political debate, Buffett's interest in the transport sector could be a harbinger of greater private-sector involvement to come -- thus bolstering Democratic lawmakers as they make the case for more transit, bridge, and road repair money to hasten the nation's economic recovery. This piece originally appeared in streetblog.org Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Business at 11:00 AM) Gaming Cap and Trade: Should We Worry?
A look at the evidence - and a path forward. Worries about “gaming” or market manipulation sometimes crop up as an objection to cap and trade, often with reference to recent shenanigans in the financial markets. Some fear that a cap-and-trade system could be manipulated to artificially raise—or lower—permit prices to generate profits for a few at the expense of consumers. While distrust and concerns about scamming a carbon market are understandable, they’re not warranted. To put some of these fears to rest, it’s informative to look at existing cap-and-trade programs. Neither of the two programs regulating greenhouse gases nor a third controlling acid rain pollutants has been corrupted by gaming or market manipulation. The European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) was the world’s first cap-and-trade program restricting carbon dioxide releases when it started in 2005. The system has succeeded in creating a Europe-wide carbon market and trading program. There have been hiccups in the ETS, including an initial overallocation of allowances to polluters and some price volatility. Yet the problems are fixable and are already being addressed as the program evolves. The challenges are not attributable to a fundamental flaw in the policy or to lack of regulatory oversight. And the market has grown more robust as the number of traders has increased, making price manipulation difficult. Partly thanks to the ETS, the EU is on track to meet its emissions reduction obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), with a membership of 10 Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states, held its first auctions in September 2008. Additional auctions are scheduled. While still in its early days, RGGI appears to be off to a good start, with low permit prices and no evidence of gaming. The US Acid Rain Program has a track record dating to 1995. The program regulating power plants has exceeded expectations, beating the SO2 emissions cap years ahead of schedule and costing only one-fourth of what was expected. After more than a decade, analysts have concluded that the SO2 cap-and-trade program has also been free of gaming. In short, cap-and-trade programs are already up and running with no evidence of sinister manipulation. That’s no surprise to specialists who study markets. The very nature of carbon permit markets makes them hard to game, unlike California’s “spot” electricity market, and not terribly prone to speculative bubbles, unlike real estate and subprime mortgages. Mortgages and pollution permits are very different commodities; a mortgage is a promise to pay a debt—a promise that a mortgage holder may not be able to keep—while a carbon permit is an allowance to emit fixed quantities of pollution. Carbon markets are not like “spot” power markets either, in part because electricity must be supplied immediately to consumers, while firms need permits to cover their emissions at most only once a year, eliminating the urgency to acquire them at any particular time. In a poorly designed cap-and-trade program, traders might try to hoard permits and manipulate prices to harm consumers. Yet commonsense rules of the road can address the gravest concerns. To minimize price volatility, authorities can ensure transparency about prices and the number of permits available, both at auction and on secondary markets where permits are traded. Authorities can also restrict the share of permits that any single entity can hold, to perhaps a few percent of the total permits in circulation for any year. Other particulars of market design also help. The larger the permit-trading market and the more linked it is with other cap-and-trade systems, the more stable prices will be. Making permits perpetually bankable also stabilizes prices. For example, a hydro-dependent utility can use banking to accumulate a cushion of permits for use in an unexpected December cold snap during a “low-water” year, when the utility must generate (or import) more coal-fired power. Opening auctions to all bidders with adequate financial reserves, conducting auctions frequently and early, and limiting the number of permits any one actor may hold—all these things will keep prices stable and prevent market manipulation. There are also built-in disincentives for manipulation. The public doesn’t want it because it could raise power bills, and the market participants themselves, the polluting firms, don’t want to pay more to pollute. Both provide strong motivations for keeping the system honest. As with any policy, a cap-and-trade system’s success will ultimately depend on oversight and vigorous public institutions. But there is every reason to believe that a well-crafted and -regulated system for auctioning and trading carbon permits can function smoothly and cost-effectively. This piece originally appeared on Sightline Daily. Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Eric De Place in Transforming Business at 10:40 AM) Population control is not what makes climate change a feminist issue
Women contribute less to global warming yet will be hit harder by its effects. Reproductive justice is a separate issue Last week Mary Fitzgerald argued that climate change is a feminist issue on the basis that population control is a way to prevent the situation spiralling out of control. And, she posited, this could be achieved by giving more women more autonomy over their own bodies, through improved access to contraception and abortion. I'm not going to get into the arguments around whether population control is a good solution to climate change. Others have already done so; George Monbiot's piece barely more than a month ago, for this newspaper, is a great place to start. Ensuring all women have full reproductive freedom and reproductive justice is a necessary goal in its own right moving towards a more equal and just world. I get that it might be tempting to hitch this issue to climate change, which has so much political capital. But, as Betsy Hartmann said recently in On the Issues magazine, "A world of difference exists between services that treat women as population targets and those based on a feminist model of respectful, holistic, high-quality care." Although Fitzgerald does say that rich countries as well as poor countries need to look at population control, in reality this is not on the political agenda, as countries such as Germany are already incentivising women to have more children. The resource consumption of a German resident is considerably higher than the resource consumption of a child born in countries likely to be targeted – any population control efforts are realistically likely to target mostly poor women and mostly women of colour. But Fitzgerald is completely right that climate change is a feminist issue. Everyone stands to suffer if climate change is allowed to spiral out of control, of course, but a gender analysis of both the impacts and causes of climate change shows that globally women contribute less to the problem and yet are likely to be hit especially hard. Poor people are likely to bear the brunt as the climate changes and 70% of the world's poor are women. According to one estimate, 85% of the victims of climate disasters are women. Another study found 75% of environmental refugees are women. (Statistics from the Women's Manifesto on Climate Change). Last month, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, recognised this with a message to a women's leadership conference, in which he acknowledged that women are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change – and called for women to be given a greater say in tackling the problem. Of course, as this demonstrates, men are capable of recognising and acting on the gendered impacts of climate change, but the fact that out of 146 delegates at recent climate talks, only seven were women nevertheless speaks to a significant shortfall in political representation of women in this process. Gender CC, a network of activists and academics working on this issue has a compendium of research on this area, with case studies and materials, all of which paint a clear picture that ignoring gender in tackling climate change risks both failing to get the job done and perpetuating – or even worsening – gender inequality. And this is not just relevant in the developing world either; a study by the Swedish government found "significant differences" in women's and men's energy consumption in four European countries, both in terms of total energy consumed and what that energy is spent on. The picture varied by country, however – for example carbon dioxide emissions from Swedish single households were 10,700 kg/year for men and 8,500 kg/year for women. So, yes, climate change is a feminist issue; women are on the front lines of climate change impact and need to be part of creating solutions. And women all over the world are in dire need of access to full and real reproductive justice. But linking the two by advocating population control as a solution to climate change isn't the way to achieve either of these aims. This piece originally appeared in The Guardian Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Empowering Women at 10:26 AM) Straight Talk for the Planetary Era: A Trio of Book Reviewsby Edward Wolf
Three recent books say that it’s all about thinking. In The End of the Long Summer, Dianne Dumanoski tells how our thinking got us in planet-scale hot water; in Whole Earth Discipline, Stewart Brand advocates heresy to get us out; in Thinking in Systems, the late Donella Meadows teaches a different way of thinking altogether. While the subject matter of this trio of titles may sound familiar to Worldchanging readers, all three books deserve a careful read. Each of these authors is an elder with wisdom to impart. It’s up to the generation building a bright green future to match that wisdom to new challenges.
Award-winning science journalist Dianne Dumanoski considered her 1985 story on the science of the Antarctic ozone hole, published on the front page of the Boston Globe, “the most important story I had ever written.” Humanity had narrowly escaped full-scale disruption of a stratospheric chemical shield essential to our survival. Faulty assumptions and outright mistakes brought us – and all higher life – to the brink of calamity. How, Dumanoski wondered, could a banal, supposedly inert synthetic compound have triggered global jeopardy? How could its chemistry have been so thoroughly misunderstood, mis-measured, and misjudged? Later, puzzling over the story’s meaning, she came to see it signaling “a new and ominous epoch when human activity began to disrupt the essential but invisible planetary systems that sustain a dynamic, living Earth.” Dumanoski was among the first journalists to break the news to general readers: Disrupting the planet’s metabolism was no longer a theoretical possibility. It was a fact. The ozone story called for new institutions, new economic arrangements, and a new understanding of the Earth. In The End of the Long Summer, Dumanoski applies the lessons of the ozone story to the challenge she calls “a planetary emergency . . . that involves far more than the pressing problem of climate change.” She examines evolutionary and modern history for clues about our capacity – as a species and as a civilization – to act. Dumanoski’s criterion for success in the coming century is not prosperity, but survival. If she is right, success will boil down to our ability to “shockproof” societies to withstand changes unlike any confronted during the 10,000-year run of the civilization project. Her storyline is not for the faint of heart. Human activities have destabilized several fundamental flows of the Earth system. The comparative climate stability experienced during the “long summer” of the last 10,700 years is the exception in Earth’s history. Big changes in climate are underway, no matter what actions societies take to control emissions. Abrupt climate changes are possible and growing more likely as carbon emissions rise. The thinking that built a globalized civilization capable of disrupting planetary systems also makes that civilization more vulnerable to the consequences of instability. Against this sobering backdrop, Dumanoski embarks on a “search for honest hope.” She finds grounds for hope in three places: the fruits of science, the legacy of our species’ evolutionary past, and the creative gift of culture. Dumanoski is well versed in the Earth system sciences. Reporting the ozone hole and other big picture stories, she’s acquainted with many prominent chemists, biologists, and climate scientists responsible for the emerging understanding of the Earth. She is especially sympathetic to the views of James Lovelock, originator of the theory that life in the aggregate is a creative partner in the planetary cycles that maintain conditions conducive to life. She reminds us that Lovelock invented the electron capture device first used to detect trace quantities of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere, a discovery that helped solve the mystery of the ozone hole. In Lovelock’s Gaia theory, Dumanoski sees contours on a new conceptual map for the planetary era. She examines the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens during the chaotic Pleistocene climate swings that preceded recent millennia of stability. She notes three distinctive adaptations – large brains, skillful environmental manipulation, and cooking – that helped the species survive turbulent times. In the shifting climates and habitats of the Pleistocene, humankind became a “stormworthy species” with a smart generalist’s flexibility rather than the fine-tuned fitness of a specialist. Finally, she considers the creative gift of culture, the means humankind forged to escape the constraints of purely biological evolution and to accelerate adjustment to changing circumstances. Brains and cultures evolved in tandem, bootstrapping change and setting the stage for civilization. But culture is a paradox, both adaptive and maladaptive. Cultures have inertial tendencies that create dangerous inflexibility. Certain of those tendencies, designed to protect the integrity of distinct groups but exaggerated in the arrangements of a globalized economy, lock humanity into conflict with the planet. It’s a battle humanity cannot win. “Through most of our history, the human species has sailed into the storm in many boats,” Dumanoski writes. “Today, through globalization, we are all becoming passengers on one Titanic.” Against this backdrop, Dumanoski surveys our options. A lengthy chapter devoted to geoengineering finds little merit in leading proposals to shade the Earth, boost biological absorption of carbon dioxide, or capture and sequester carbon where fuel is burned. She finds such proposals dangerous but alluring distractions from the work that must be done, products of the linear logic that put humankind afoul of nonlinear systems. Instead, Dumanoski urges a strategy of survivability: deliberate steps to reduce our disruption of planetary systems coupled with efforts to reconfigure patterns in human systems that make our civilization dangerously vulnerable to shocks. In a nutshell, she counsels steps to reverse the “hypercoherence” of globalization, to pursue resilience, and to apply design features from natural systems to human arrangements. Through such adjustments she sees the best chance for shepherding the achievements of civilization through a disruptive century she expects to shake human arrangements to their foundations. In the end, Dumanoski’s “honest hope” feels anemic. She doesn’t tell readers how to draw on the adaptive capacity she considers our species’ birthright, the hard-wired abilities that once made us “stormworthy.” Perhaps no one can tell us that. But the challenges of guiding a globalized civilization of 7 billion souls through global climate disruption are in any case hardly comparable to the challenges that faced migratory hominin bands enduring the whip-saw climates of the Pleistocene. Yet like Rachel Carson before her, Dumanoski presents a compelling case. Her honesty is stark: “Bitter truths serve better than sweet lies.” As for hope, she quotes systems scientist C.S. “Buzz” Holling, who urges readers “to experiment and act inventively and exuberantly via diverse adventures in living.”
Cue Stewart Brand, self-described “ecologist by training, futurist by profession, and hacker (lazy engineer) at heart.” Brand founded and published The Whole Earth Catalog, edited CoEvolution Quarterly (later Whole Earth Review), and has founded organizations including The Long Now Foundation and the Global Business Network, where he works part-time. Brand is a playful, inquisitive gadfly who wears a heretic’s robes with relish, challenging readers to reexamine assumptions and to change their minds. Framed as a challenge to environmentalists, his new book Whole Earth Discipline presents four heresies: Cities are Green! Nukes are Green! Gene modification is Green! Geoengineering is Probably Necessary! At first glance, Brand would seem to personify Dumanoski’s nightmare. His motto, “We are as gods, and HAVE to get good at it!” positively drips with the hubris that Dumanoski detects at the heart of the planet’s emergency. But there is much the two authors agree on, beginning with their assessment of the climate crisis; in a TED Talk outlining the four heresies, Brand calls climate change “worse than we think, and coming faster than we think.” The two share heroes. Brand, like Dumanoski, is close to Gaia originator James Lovelock, and he is on friendly terms with prominent scientists including climatologist Paul Crutzen, biologists E.O. Wilson and Peter Raven, restoration ecologist Dan Janzen, genome decoder Craig Venter. When it comes to assessment of the planetary challenge and the people who understand it best, Dumanoski and Brand are on the same page. Where Brand differs, and what makes Whole Earth Discipline a provocative companion to The End of the Long Summer, is his orientation. Brand admits to the “engineer’s bias”: the world is a set of design problems. Framed this way, the world’s problems a priori have solutions; the solutions must simply be found and applied. If his tone seems unusually chipper given the weight of those problems, it’s because Brand is at heart a gadget guy, eager to choose the right tool and get on with the job. Brand claims that he is not out to convince anyone. He states flatly: “My opinion is not important, it’s just a tool.” He is out to force readers to examine their assumptions, a desirable talent in a world shifting at its foundations. Thus in his chapter titled “New Nukes,” Brand spars cheerfully with his friend Amory Lovins over the economic viability of nuclear power. Brand is unlikely to win this particular debate with Lovins, who has been engaged with nuclear issues about as long as the country’s oldest nuclear reactor (Oyster Creek in New Jersey) has been generating power, but if he has even dented the armor of reflexive opponents of nuclear expansion, then he has achieved his purpose. Solar and renewable power appeal to Brand, and he contends “energy efficiency and conservation come first, last, and always.” He just doesn’t believe that clean, non-nuclear power sources can scale fast enough to meet the baseload demand of growing megacities or shut down coal fast enough to avoid climate disaster. He bases his views in part on the work of Saul Griffith, who has calculated the physical scale of renewable and nuclear power expansion needed to supply 17.5 terawatts of global power demand within 25 years. It’s an area the size of the United States – “Call it Renewistan,” Griffith says – and Brand thinks we’re unlikely to do that, but might go nuclear if we consider it Green. “Science is the only news,” Brand proclaims with relish, brandishing headlines from Nature, Science, and specialized journals. His footnotes and annotations (available here online) are a treasure trove, and most readers will discover “hidden in plain sight” surprises from new research in his chapters on cities, genetic science, and the large-scale ecosystem restoration strategies he likes the term “megagardening” to describe. Sometimes, however, Brand’s enthusiasm for data blinds him to context. Brand sees “a ray of hope” in news that the abundant phytoplankton Emiliana huxleyi increases its rate of calcification at higher carbon dioxide concentrations – a finding that would portend increasing carbon capture by the oceans as climate change advanced. But he fails to mention reasons this laboratory result may not pertain under natural conditions in the ocean (where acidification puts other, larger shellfish at risk). His wish for an elegant negative feedback mechanism reaches farther than available data can support. Brand attempts to push “ecopragmatism” on a green movement he considers overly prone to sentiment and ideology. The critique rings true to me, and there is much to learn from Brand’s eclectic appetite for solutions. Doom fills the book, but not gloom; his favorite adjective is “thrilling.” Seeing vitality where others see only chaos and decay, Brand is a sort of countercultural Tom Friedman. One senses that his first response to disastrous news like a “methane burp” from the melting permafrost of Siberia would be “Wow! Cool! What are we gonna do now?” Echoing Pogo’s famous line, Brand points out that “the key positive feedback in the current earth system is us.” To understand feedbacks and their influence on the structures, stocks, and flows of systems of all kinds is a central aim of Donella Meadows’s posthumous Thinking in Systems. Trained as a biophysicist, Meadows was lead author of The Limits to Growth (1973) and achieved distinction as a professor, author, syndicated columnist, and organic farmer. Though she died unexpectedly after a short illness in 2001, her work remains timely and exceptionally relevant to challenges of the scale and urgency laid out by Dumanoski and Brand.
Meadows’s long-time associate Diana Wright has edited an unfinished 1993 manuscript into humane, pertinent, and delightful book. Thinking in Systems reflects Meadows’s lifelong effort to understand systems at all scales – their resilience, their pathologies, their response to perturbations, their capacity to defy prediction. A reader seeking to understand the anomalies of our time and to prepare mentally for the likelihood of disruptive change needs this book. “A system,” Meadows writes, “is a set of things – people, cells, molecules, or whatever – interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time.” Systems thinking can reveal interconnections, explain behavior, and anticipate outcomes. Changing outcomes – slowing climate disruption, spreading new crop varieties, containing an epidemic – requires action to change a system’s elements, the interconnections among them, or (more likely) both. Much of the book is devoted to introducing and illustrating systems concepts. Early chapters combine taut explanation with well-chosen examples to make a palatable primer. The book’s final section, “Creating Change – in Systems and in our Philosophy,” sheds welcome light on topics covered in The End of the Long Summer and Whole Earth Discipline. Chapter 6, “Leverage Points – Places to Intervene in a System” (first published in essay form in Brand’s Whole Earth Review) outlines twelve points of influence over the behavior of complex systems. Chapter 7, “Living in a World of Systems,” takes a step toward an ethics for a new human story, offering a humble acknowledgment that the systems view entails new responsibilities exercised in unfamiliar ways. Dianne Dumanoski is afraid a stable earth can’t live with us; Stewart Brand is pretty sure it can’t live without us. Do systems thinkers have the chops to guide us through the treacherous straits that separate those views? Can a systems-savvy ecopragmatism yield honest hope? Dana Meadows counsels that “systems thinking by itself cannot bridge that gap (between understanding and action), but it can lead us to the edge of what analysis can do and then point beyond – to what can and must be done by the human spirit.” Just past that edge is where the activism, politics, diplomacy – and innovation – of this century really begins. Edward Wolf was a contributing author of Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the Twenty-First Century. A board member of Focus the Nation, he lives in Portland, Oregon. Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Features at 10:23 AM) U.S. Comes Under Pressure in Final Session Before Copenhagen Summit
by Keith Schneider This piece originally appeared in Yale e360 Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Yale Environment 360 in Politics at 10:14 AM) Threatened Voices: An Interactive Map
My friend and colleage Sami Ben Gharbia just launched a fascinating and useful new site: Threatened Voices. It’s an interactive map of bloggers under arrest and under threat around the world, with an accompanying timeline that makes it possible to track the phenomenon of arresting bloggers over the past several years. It’s an uncomfortable fact that, as blogs become a more influential public space, the technique of arresting bloggers to silence online speech becomes increasingly common. The Threatened Voices map complements another map that Sami maintains on Global Voices Advocacy, the Access Denied Map. That map is an overview of government efforts to block online publishing platforms, like Blogger or YouTube. I continue to believe that censorship of these types of sites is one of the most serious problems the web faces today. When a government blocks a website, it blocks the voice of one person or one group – when they block a tool like Wordpress or Twitter, they block all the voices that wanted to use that tool, which might represent hundreds or thousands of alternative perspectives. While I believe we should combat all online censorship (or, more to the point, I believe that any filtering should be done at the edge of the network, by parents, schools or businesses that pay for internet access, not by governments or ISPs), I think there’s a special importance in calling attention to these blocked platforms. But the blocking of a platform for speech is an abstract idea. Threatened Voices helps personalize the idea of internet censorship, making it clear that it’s a technique that doesn’t just involve blocking packets – it can involve harrassing and arresting individuals, sometimes detaining them for months or years. The goal was to provide a complement to organizations like Committee to Protect Bloggers and Reporters without Borders, who do a great job of leading campaigns to call attention to the imprisonment of individual bloggers. Threatened Voices isn’t campaigning for any of these individual bloggers – it’s trying to present a picture of how vast the phenomenon of imprisoning and threatening bloggers has become. There’s no way a map like the one Sami is building will ever be complete. We don’t know about every blogger who’s been arrested. And it’s a difficult question whether someone has been arrested for their blogging or for other alleged offenses – is Hossein Derakhshan still in prison because he’s alleged to be an Israeli spy (an absurd accusation) or because he’s an influential blogger? Sami’s trying to broaden the information available, asking people to contribute reports of bloggers under threat to the map. Knowing what countries are harrassing and arresting bloggers is a first step. What’s the most useful next step is an extremely difficult question. Not all countries respond well to external pressure, or to direct lobbying. It’s possible to harness a great deal of energy around the cause of releasing an individual blogger, but it’s not as clear how that energy should be productively channelled. My hope is that efforts to map this problem will help build solidarity between organizations that have a long track record of protecting journalists, or protecting human rights more generally, and the emerging movements to protect bloggers and the tools of online speech. This piece originally appeared on My heart's in Accra. Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Ethan Zuckerman in Transparency and Human Rights at 9:25 AM) Climate Prosperity: Building a Worldwide Clean EconomyAs world leaders begin to pack their bags for the Climate Summit in Copenhagen next month, feelings of anxiety may accompany the pressure to hammer out an international agreement to cap carbon emissions to keep our planet from entering a period of climate crisis. A group of people involved in the Climate Prosperity Alliance are working to shift the debate to a more positive and productive goal. Instead of focusing on carbon-reduction strategies and schemes like cap and trade, “clean coal”, or carbon sequestration, the Climate Prosperity Alliance believes the Copenhagen Summit should be the entryway that leads the world into a global green economy. While some analysts are already predicting a dismal outcome for the conference, citing the inability of major players such as the United States, India, and China to come to agreements on limiting the amount of greenhouse gas emissions they produce, Hazel Henderson of the Climate Prosperity Alliance sees another opportunity for victory. “The real win”, says Henderson, “would be to get all the countries in the North and South to agree that the best thing to do is invest in the developing world, building the infrastructure that would allow it to leapfrog the fossil fuel economy. Everyone is in favor of investing in low-emissions energy”. The Climate Prosperity Alliance proposes that investing in a global infrastructure of renewable energy sources such as solar, geothermal, wind, and biofuel from algae, can not only prevent the creation of more greenhouse gases, but can foster a clean economy capable of competing with, and eventually overtaking traditional oil-dependent industrial practices. Though the money necessary to fund this “re-industrialization” is considerable, investors are already showing interest in the project. In fact, the Climate Prosperity Alliance will arrive in Copenhagen with very good news – the announcement of the first $1 trillion in investments raised to build the global green economy. Henderson and the Climate Prosperity Alliance suggest that if the world focuses on investing $1 trillion per year from 2010 to 2020 in renewable projects in the developing world, the foundation will be laid for a clean energy economy capable of competing with, and eventually overpowering power sources dependent on oil. This statement is supported by a report made by Climate Risk to the World Wildlife Fund using a computer model called CRISTAL (Climate Risk Industry Sector Technology Allocation) to calculate the speed required to re-industrialize the energy sectors to create a low-carbon economy and avoid catastrophic climate tipping points. “Government, industry and institutional investors can expect to see the benefits of their investment in transforming the energy sector from 2013. This is the point when the first of the renewable energy technologies starts to outperform the current fossil fuel, business-as-usual model.” Climate Risk also indicates that a secure, long-term investment environment will be necessary to fund the global green economy. An innovative solution proposed by the Climate Prosperity Alliance is the issue of Climate Bonds whose proceeds go towards re-industrialization projects in the developing world. Buyers of these bonds are literally investing in the future, promoting clean energy and feeling secure about a positive return in more ways than just financial. The Alliance is also speaking to managers of pension funds, whose investments are generally stable and long-term, to divert their investments from hedge funds and oil-dependent companies into Climate Prosperity funds for the future. Henderson added that in the fight against climate change, the obstacle is not a lack of money, but a lack of time. Every year of delay will increase the level of growth required and increase costs. If the Alliance’s advice is taken to heart by world leaders in Copenhagen, we may yet succeed in moving the global economy by 2020 from its current system of resource-wasting industrialism to a new economically and environmentally sustainable resource-saving industrialism. “By itself,” states the Climate Risk report, “an emissions trading scheme will not promote the growth of important but initially higher-cost technologies. A comprehensive plan for low-carbon industrial development is an integral part of the solution. “
Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Agnes Mazur in Features at 9:00 AM) When Green Isn't Green Enough: UC Observer Interviews Alex on the State of the Movement
In their most recent issue, The UC Observer put Lisa Van de Ven's article exploring the state of the environmental movement on the cover. Her piece When Green Isn't Green Enough poses this question to readers: 'Think you’re doing your bit for the environment? Here’s the deal: you’re just getting started.' Van de Ven interviewed our own Alex Steffen for the article. Although the entire thing is worth a read, here is some of what Alex had to say: By making small changes like buying better light bulbs or low-flow showerheads, individuals are reducing their impact by maybe three to five percent, Steffen says. Armed with the illusion that we’re doing our part, we stop there. In fact, many of us are fooling ourselves into thinking we’re doing more than we actually are; a July study by Quebec-based research and communications firm Cossette and Summerhill showed that gaps of up to 40 percent exist between what Canadians think they’re doing for the environment and what they actually do. ... “You see Al Gore’s movie [An Inconvenient Truth], with a giant civilization-ending problem, and the solutions at the very end are little things you can do at home,” Steffen says. “I think that is problematic because it ignores the whole idea that democracy is based on, which is that regular people can understand complex problems and come to a decision together to meet those challenges. And certainly we’ve seen situations in the past where people have done those things — whether it’s about individual liberties or group rights or suffrage for women.”... It’s not that the tips aren’t a step in the right direction, Steffen adds; if millions of people change all of their light bulbs or refuse plastic water bottles, there will be an effect. It’s just that, given the urgency of the situation, change might not be happening quickly enough, he says.... It’s going to take individual action, too, but not the kind that comes in a shopping cart. What Steffen advocates is good old-fashioned activism. “The problem is not that we are not each doing enough in our lives, but that we’re not doing the right things,” he says. “The more people who can move up that ladder of engagement, the better our odds get.” It might be as easy as starting a green committee at church or at work.
Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in About Worldchanging at 2:42 PM) Nearly 200 Organizations and Companies Urge Senate to Adopt Key Energy-Efficiency Provision in Climate Bill
A diverse coalition of nearly 200 business, labor, civil rights, and environmental groups have sent a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) urging her to support an important energy-efficiency provision that would:
What is this magical provision? As the letter explains: We are writing to request that the climate bill require an investment in energy efficiency equivalent to at least 1/3 of the value of the total allowance allocation given to electric utilities. Such an efficiency investment will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs retrofitting millions of buildings nationwide, and benefit consumers by lowering electricity costs by billions of dollars, as residential, commercial, and industrial consumers typically save in the range of $2 to $4 for every $1 invested in energy efficiency. It would also help decrease greenhouse gas emissions and thus reduce the market clearing price of carbon.Following is a joint statement from the broad-based coalition: “We believe that the adoption of an additional electric utility, energy-efficiency measure in the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act will reap tremendous benefits for our economy and consumers.Energy efficiency is the fastest, cheapest and cleanest way to reduce our carbon pollution. We urge the Environment and Public Works Committee to act now by adopting this provision to create jobs, reduce pollution, and save consumers and businesses money.” For more on benefits of efficiency in the climate bill, see:
This piece originally appeared on Climate Progress. Image Credit: Campus Progress via Flickr, Creative Commons License Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Joe Romm in Politics at 12:52 PM) Hossein Derakhshan, Now Detained for Over a Year
Hossein Derakhshan (”Hoder”) has now been in prison in Iran for more than a year. My friend Cyrus Farivar has followed his case closely, and has been in touch with Hoder’s family, who confirm that he’s beeing held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. Reports from the activist group Human Rights in Iran suggest that Hoder has been held in solitary confinement for long periods of time, beaten and otherwise mistreated, and that Hoder was considering a hunger strike to protest his extended detention. I’ve written about Hossein’s detention previously – it’s a complicated topic, as Hoder’s a complicated guy, and understanding his wishes is a difficult matter. Hoder held Iranian and Canadian passports, and according to a CBC article on his detention, may have believed that the Canadian passport would have made it more difficult for Iranian authorities to detain him when he came home. More to the point, I think, Hoder had a political change of heart and became an outspoken supporter of Ahmedinejad – angering and alienating most of his reformist colleagues inside and outside Iran – and believed that the Iranian system would handle his “transgressions” – trips to Israel, critical articles on his blog – in a just fashion. As such, he told his friends that he didn’t want a campaign for his release if arrested, especially not a campaign led by the US human rights community. I’ve thought a great deal about my conversations with Hossein before his return to Iran. In retrospect, it seems clear that he expected to be arrested and questioned and perhaps detained for some weeks while the government punished him for his transgressions and assessed his political change of heart. At the same time, I don’t believe that Hossein believed that he’d be held for so long, treated so badly and cut off from contact with his family. The few clues we’ve gotten about his state of mind from contact with his family suggests that he regrets asking friends not to agitate for his release, and is now deeply worried (understandably so) that no one is working to secure his freedom. Hossein’s family has come around as well – Cyrus published a translation of a letter from Hossein’s father, Hassan Derakhshan to the head of the Iranian judiciary, explaining that he and his family had patiently refused requests from western media to comment on Hossein’s arrest, expecting that he would receive fair treatment from the courts system: In all these months, days, and hours, my family, my wife and I were hoping that in the arms of Islamic law and the mercy of the Islamic judiciary, Hossein’s case will be dealt with in the way it deservesThere is no need to mention the numerous times that we refused the requests of foreign media to explain Hossein’s situation… Our complaint is not because you are exercising the law, but to the contrary, because of its suspension, lack of information and disrespecting of the law. The accused have rights, the family of the accused has some rights… If the question had been whether the international community should become involved with advocating for Hossein’s release, the question is now what that community could effectively do. Circumstances have changed dramatically in Iran since Hoder went into prison. The protests after the July elections helped cement the view of Iranian authorities that online spaces were dangerous ones when used by activists, an interpretation that may explain Hossein’s extended detention, as he’s widely acknowledged as one of the first Iranian bloggers and a major promoter of blogging tools in Iran. As such, an online campaign for his release, supported by the blogging community, is unlikely to lead directly to his release. And, as Cyrus points out in a story for PRI’s The World, it’s unclear how many of his old friends are still willing to support him, given his change in views. The reason to write about Hoder and support campaigns like the Free Hoder blog is not to influence the Iranian government, but to urge the Canadian government to do whatever they can. Hoder holds a Canadian, as well as an Iranian passport, and while Iran doesn’t respect dual nationality, Canada does, and has an obligation to push for Hossein’s release. Cyrus has been regularly calling Canadian authorities to seek updates, but has received little information from those inquiries. My hope is that by continuing to discuss Hossein’s detention, we can call attention to the ongoing situation and urge Canadian authorities to push for his release. But even knowing that Hossein is now looking for the world’s help in pushing for his release, it’s very hard to know what to do. This piece originally appeared on My heart's in Accra. Image Credit: Free Hoder Campaign Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Ethan Zuckerman in Transparency and Human Rights at 12:44 PM) Changing a City: Inside Portland's 80 Percent by 2050 Target
An Interview with Deputy Director of Portland's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability Micheal Armstrong by Alex Aylett Last week the City of Portland and Multnomah County jointly passed one of North America's most ambitious Climate Change Action Plan (CAP), which commits the city and county to reducing their overall emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Portland has been a leading city on climate change policy since 1993, when it became the first city adopt a strategy to reduce carbon emissions. It is also the only North American city that has managed to reduce its emissions below 1990 levels (despite an 18 percent growth in population). Nonetheless, the plan opens with the sobering point that “perhaps the most important lesson learned from local climate protection work to date is the frank recognition that our good work...is not What follows in the rest of the 70 page plan (pdf) is an example of what it might look like if cities truly take sustainability seriously. The plan is packed with useful information and strategy. You can find more complete review here. The standout element is the way the city has positioned itself to facilitate a broad shift that extends well past what it controls directly. This is much more than leading by example. Through a combination of educational programs, public consultations, economic development planning and the coordination of financial incentives, the municipality is leading change across the city as a whole. To find out more, I caught up with Deputy Director of Portland's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability Micheal Armstrong via e-mail. Micheal Armstrong: Since 1993 Portland’s climate-protection work has consistently included both its own operations and community-wide emissions. Our operations represent about one percent of total local emissions, so there’s a modest but real opportunity to achieve meaningful reductions. We clearly need to be making the same prudent investments in efficiency and renewables that others are making. But our ability to set policy and to invest in infrastructure is a much more powerful lever in influencing local carbon emissions. We have an important role in shaping the overall form of the community -- which is perhaps the single most significant factor in emissions, as well as in integrating transportation systems, enforcing the building code, and regulating garbage and recycling collection, among many other thing. AA: All true. But this goes beyond good land-use planning. Renewable energy and efficiency gains in private homes and commercial buildings, for example, make up 29 percent of the city's planned GHG reductions. "Food choice" (something significant that never makes it into municipal policy) accounts for another 10 percent. Often cities avoid things that they can't directly regulate. You've gone a very different route. How has the city approached targets that can't be met solely through regulation? MA: In the Climate Action Plan we prioritized actions the City of Portland or Multnomah County could either take ourselves or strongly influence, while at the same time trying to identify the full range of potential options for reducing emissions. If we do not put issues like food choice or how much stuff we consume on the list, it makes it that much more difficult — and expensive — to reduce emissions, since we’re limiting our options for where we can make reductions. Food is a good example, too, where historically local governments have not had much of a direct role. We see that changing. Last year, for example, we provided gardening and food-related classes to more than 700 local residents, and we expect even more participants this year. We’re also actively reviewing our code to address ways in which it makes it more difficult to grow, sell, or distribute locally produced foods. And we continue to identify parcels of land owned by the city that may be suited to urban gardening. We’re looking at options for expanding the number of community garden plots, and we now have several larger parcels of land that are being gardened by residents. We need to enable a much more active urban agriculture. AA: Funding is also a big issue here. High up front costs are often cited by homeowners and property managers as a barrier for efficiency retrofits. What's Portland's approach to that part of the puzzle? MA: With the help of federal stimulus funding, Portland has put together a program, “Clean Energy Works Portland,” that deals with this issue head on. The program pays for the cost of installing efficiency improvements, and the homeowner then repays the cost on his or her utility bill over time. The program puts contractors to work today, provides homeowners a more comfortable, more valuable home, and delivers energy savings and carbon reduction for decades to come. We’ve also worked hard to ensure that the program provides quality jobs. We developed a “community workforce benefits agreement” that brought together contractors, unions, social equity organizations, and environmentalists to ensure that the jobs created through the program reach historically disadvantaged parts of the community. This program is still in a pilot phase that will retrofit 500 homes by June 2010, but we’re optimistic that we’ll be able to scale it up from there. AA: How important are the links between these projects and other local benefits like creating jobs or improving health? Connections to other benefits are essential. But we view it more as choosing carbon-reduction actions that help create a future community that people want to live in. In the Climate Action Plan we describe a “vision for 2050” that we hope is appealing, attractive, and desirable – not so much because it doesn’t depend on carbon emissions to succeed – but because it’s simply a place people want to be. One of the things that gives me hope that we can achieve very large carbon reductions is that many people enjoy the exact things that make a low-carbon community possible: walking to the neighborhood business district; eating fresh, seasonal food; enjoying a cozy, well insulated home; and having affordable, convenient choices about how to get around town. Alex Aylett is a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia studying the politics behind municipal climate change policy. He is currently a Trudeau Scholar and has worked as a consultant and researcher for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the International Centre for Sustainable Cities. His articles have appeared in The Tyee, THIS magazine, the Montreal Gazette and ReNew Canada magazine. He splits his time between Durban (South Africa), Portland (Oregon) and Vancouver (BC). You can read his blog here. Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 11:40 AM) "Reverse Trick-or-Treaters" Deliver Fair Trade Chocolate
Dressed in masks and outfits reminiscent of the film The Matrix, a group of foreign exchange students celebrated their first Halloween in proper fashion on Saturday in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. But the classmates turned the U.S. tradition on its head. In addition to accepting candy, the students handed back their own Fair Trade-certified, organic dark chocolate. "Farmers are paid more with Fair Trade, so they don't have to live in poverty and their children can get an education," explained Gaurav Noronha, a 15-year-old student from Mumbai, India, to a perplexed neighbor. "The farmers from whom this company gets the cocoa, they are paid fairly. Usually farmers are not paid well enough." Noronha and his classmates were participating in "reverse The San Francisco-based human rights group Global Exchange began the campaign two years ago to put increased grassroots pressure on international companies that purchase cocoa. The non-profit delivered about 260,000 information packets this year, each containing a sample of Fair Trade-certified chocolate, to "We're hoping this will create a landslide of interest among chocolate companies," said Adrienne Fitch-Frankel, coordinator of the reverse trick-or-treating campaign. "There is an outrageous number of children who are The reverse trick-or-treating campaign also generates free In the United States, Fair Trade chocolate has grown in popularity but the market is relatively small compared to that in Europe. About 1,745 tons of the chocolate was imported into the country last year, nearly double the total from 2007. Worldwide, 10,299 tons of Fair Trade-certified cocoa was sold in 2008, according to Fairtrade Labelling "We're just trying to make people aware that there are other options out there, and important issues need to be considered," said Michael Zelmer, communications director for TransFair Canada, a Fair Trade certification body that promotes the reverse trick-or-treating campaign in Canada. The world's largest chocolate manufacturers agreed in 2001 to ensure that their products are not grown and processed on farms where the "worst forms of child labor," such as trafficking children and compulsory labor, persist. Such incidents are on the decline, yet nearly 2 million children still work on cocoa farms in Côte The governments of the two West African countries, where about 75 percent of the world's cocoa is grown, have since established child-labor monitoring systems. The governments are also partnering with the international law enforcement body INTERPOL to arrest farmers who are known to use child labor. A June sting operation freed 54 children who were trafficked to southeast Côte d'Ivoire from seven different African nations. In addition, the chocolate industry is participating in various certification schemes that strive to reduce child labor. Companies such as Mars, Nestlé, and Cargill are cooperating with UTZ CERTIFIED, a program that sets Rather than provide farmers with a premium, many companies that have partnered with UTZ support separate programs that train cocoa farmers on advanced production methods and proper labor conditions. "One of the concerns we've seen is that some of the activities children are involved in are inappropriate to their age: carrying heavy loads, using machetes on farms," said Bill Guyton, president of the World Cocoa Foundation, a developer of several industry-supported training sessions in cocoa-growing regions of Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Americas. "Through farmer field schools, we Cadbury's aligned this year with Fair Trade for its chocolate products in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. "These certifications are a major step forward because finally most of these companies recognize the need to take responsibility for labor standards in the cocoa supply chain. It itself is a victory," said Tim Newman, campaign director at the International Labor Rights Forum. "The next step is to provide consumers with information about what these programs actually mean.... Some standards are stronger than others in enforcing worker rights." Despite the progress of these programs, Tulane University's Payson Center said in a 2009 report that any certification system is unlikely to eliminate child labor completely. "The ability to verify a 100-percent free [worst-forms of child labor] environment is doubtful," the report said. "More realistic objectives should be established by the countries." For the foreign exchange students, who are participanting in a U.S. State Department youth leadership program, the campaign was an introduction to Fair Trade. Most of them visited neighbors who were unfamiliar with the program as well. "Many were not aware what Fair Trade is, but many are eager to find out," said Fabian Bollinger, a student from Schaffausen, Switzerland. Jody Axinn, a liaison for the American Field Service/Youth Exchange and Study Program (AFS/YES), chose to engage the students in the reverse trick-or-treating campaign in hopes that the students would raise awareness of Fair Trade in their home countries of India, Indonesia, Mozambique, and Switzerland. "They come from countries that would benefit if Fair Trade was more widely spread," Axinn said. "If they bring the idea back to their country, and it's more widely spread on the producer side, it'd help." This piece originally appeared on Worldwatch Institute. Photo Credit: Ben Block, CC Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Ben Block in Community at 11:30 AM) Small Deposits Add Up: Savings, not just loans, factor into microfinance formulaYak herders in Mongolia may seem like the most unlikely of bank customers. There’s little infrastructure in their largely rural country, making it tough to find a local branch office. But in these sparsely populated steppes, opening a personal savings account is increasingly seen as a first step out of extreme poverty, according to international microfinance leaders.
Until relatively recently, Mongolia’s poor were among the world’s “unbanked,” overlooked and underserved by formal financial institutions. Without access to credit, those on the margins of the economy struggle to stay a step ahead of the loan sharks and moneylenders. Financial illiteracy often persists for generations. Microfinance is slowly changing this picture. By offering small, no-collateral loans to rural villagers and the urban poor, microfinance institutions (MFI) enable borrowers with scant resources but smart business ideas to improve their lot in life. When a dozen microfinance leaders gathered in Portland, Ore., recently, at a global forum sponsored by Mercy Corps, I expected the conversation to focus on loans. So I was surprised to hear the emphasis on savings. “Can poor people save their way out of poverty? It’s a fundamental question in development,” acknowledges Steve Mitchell, vice president of financial services for Mercy Corps. The global aid organization considers microfinance a key strategy to combat poverty and has spent a decade building its network of MFI partners around the world. Increasingly, these institutions are expanding their offerings to include savings products. Many cite the example of Grameen Bank, the microlending pioneer, which has seen its customers in Bangladesh emerge from extreme poverty through a combination of savings and loans. Mongolia is one place determined to demonstrate the power of small savings, as well as small loans, to improve its standard of living. XacBank, based in Ulaanbaatar, has $220 million in assets after nearly a decade of operations. “We loan to yak herders, embroidery women, shoe shiners—people who get a spark of courage to start a small business,” explains CEO Bold Magvan. Over the past decade, XacBank has extended its reach by opening rural branches and developing mobile banking services. Virtually everyone in the country, Magvan says, “now has a bank account.” XacBank is offering new incentives to promote savings among these first-generation bank customers. Their small savings accounts have big potential: Not only do they offer a means of improving family finances, but they may also help reduce the bank’s reliance on external funding. “Too much outside help can be harmful in the long term, especially if there are downturns," Magvan says. “Mobilizing local investments makes us less dependent.” How does one of the most rural places on earth, where a third of the population lives in extreme poverty, encourage the savings habit? One strategy is to start early. A XacBank program called “Future Millionaires,” for instance, encourages families to open children’s savings accounts at birth. These accounts pay a high interest rate but do not permit withdrawals until a child reaches age 18. Another savings product caters specifically to teen girls. An initiative of Women’s World Banking with funding from the Nike Foundation, this year-old effort aims to improve economic opportunities for girls and young women who have been “the forgotten population in microfinance,” according to Mary Ellen Iskenderian, president and CEO of Women’s World Banking. After school, Mongolian girls meet with XacBank staffers for lessons on “how to save and spend wisely,” Magvan explains. “Then, they can open their savings book,” which is colorfully branded for teen appeal. Bottom line, he adds: “They love having their own accounts.” These youth-oriented programs are attracting new customers—who will be more likely to use formal financial services as adults. Globally, child savings accounts have the potential “to spur the social and/or economic development of children,” according to recent analysis by the Global Assets Project. Starting adulthood with a nest egg offers a cushion against economic shocks and creates another benefit that’s hard to quantify: hope. Encouraging savings, while also building financial literacy, is a strategy for serving the underbanked in more developed parts of the world, as well. In the U.S., an estimated 40 million households are currently unbanked. Mercy Corps NW, the U.S.-based arm of the global nonprofit, offers a matched-savings program to low-income clients in Oregon and Washington. While clients are accumulating savings with monthly deposits, they study financial education and put together a business plan for a microenterprise. “If they can save $1,000 over three years, we’ll match it three to one,” explains John Haines, executive director of Mercy Corps NW. A variety of small businesses have emerged from this incubator program, including home-based daycares, masseuse services, and artisan-run shops. It’s no accident that the majority are women-owned. All over the world, says Mitchell of Mercy Corps, “women make better borrowers and better savers.” Image credit: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
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This site © 2005-7 Buckminster Fuller Institute | Built and designed by Quilted | Powered by drupal.