Bill Becker's Climate Chronicles

An old friend of mine used to say that at a certain stage in political campaigns, dead cats start flying through the air.  I’ve never understood what he meant by that, but I think the cat-flinging has begun.

Both candidates are doing their share, but one exchange deserves special analysis: John McCain’s attack against Barack Obama’s comment about tire gauges. In one of his recent energy speeches, Obama made the point that acts of conservation by individual Americans can have an impact on rising oil prices. He used tire pressure maintenance as an example.

Hunter Lovins is one of the country’s premier prophets of the post-carbon economy and the vast new markets and investment opportunities that are opening worldwide for clean technologies. “Those who recognize this opportunity will be the first to the future and the billionaires of tomorrow,” Hunter says.

The good news: The race already has begun. It’s producing some new billionaires and attracting some old ones.

The first recorded solar billionaire was identified by the Wall Street Journal in October 2006. He is Shi Zhengrong, founder of Suntech Power Holdings Company in China. Since then, at least two other solar entrepreneurs have joined the club: Frank Asbeck, who founded Germany’s Solar World, and Xiao Peng, head of LDK Solar in China.

Joining them are two American tycoons who have decided that while their past was in oil, their future – and America’s – will be found in renewable energy. Everyone now knows about T. Boone Pickens’ commitment to build the world’s largest wind farm in Texas, and his commitment to spend $58 million of his own money on television commercials to persuade Americans that we can’t drill out way out of the energy crisis.

Pickens has been traveling around the Great Plains states lately to make the case for wind power and, judging by the photo, he’s committing so much of his disposable fortune to renewable energy that he can’t afford Powerpoint.

Do the 535 elected leaders in the United States Congress have what it takes to help America solve its energy and climate crises?

Apparently not. Congress flunked a crucial test on climate change earlier this year when the Senate failed to bring a cap-and-trade bill to a vote. The House hasn’t even brought a bill to the floor.

Another crucial test took place this week on a proposal to extend tax incentives for renewable energy industries. The incentives are critical to the rapid development of wind and solar systems in the United States, technologies that are essential to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. But the US Senate failed to pass a key procedural vote on the incentives for the fourth time this summer, shelving the bill again. Unless Congress votes to extend them, the incentives will expire at the end of the year.

How much science does it take; how many droughts, wildfires and natural disasters; how many energy crises; how many entreaties from world leaders before Congress does the right thing?

It does our heart good to see an oil tycoon spend his money to tell the truth. There’s too little of that today. But T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oil billionaire, is investing $58 million on a television ad campaign (Youtube) to explain that we can’t drill our way out of the current energy crisis.

Instead, he says, we should build wind farms from Texas to North Dakota, and install the transmission lines necessary to move the power to where we need it. That will liberate natural gas from its most common current use – generating electricity – and allow us to use it to power our vehicles, Pickens says.

He’s right about the wind part and wrong about the best use of natural gas.

You've thrown the worst fear... that can ever be hurled... afraid to bring children... into the world... and for threatening my baby... unborn and unnamed... you ain't worth the blood that runs in your veins... Let me ask you one question... is your money that good... will it buy you forgiveness... do you think that it could?... I think you will find... when your death takes its toll... all the money you made will never buy back your soul...

Bob Dylan, "Masters of War"

In May 2007, the White House published a photograph of Lynne and Dick Cheney proudly introducing their sixth grandchild to the world. The question is: When Samuel David Cheney grows up, how proud will he be of his grandfather?

A year later, the White House published photos of President George W. Bush with his daughter, Jenna, at her wedding - the first of the Bush twins to take a husband. The question is: When they come of age, what will Jenna’s yet-unborn children think of their grandfather?

Let’s face it: The Bush Administration has made a mess of things. It is now clear, if it hasn’t been all along, that by the time George Bush leaves office, the White House will have wasted eight years of leadership on the Mother of All Issues.

If those eight years are a profound disappointment looking backward, then they are a profound tragedy looking forward. The head of the IPCC is spreading the message that the world community has seven short years to act decisively to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Dr. John Holdren is among the prestigious U.S. scientists who now say more openly that the affects of climate change already are upon us. Dr. Jim Hansen now estimates that atmospheric concentrations of carbon must level off at 350 ppm, nearly 30 percent lower than everyone thought was needed to keep climate change at "safe" levels. Anyone who’s paying attention sees that the impacts of global warming are occurring much faster than predicted.

If this year’s weather extremes are a sample of climate change, how much worse will they be 10 years, 20 years or 30 years from now, as today’s rising and accumulating emissions take their toll?

When it comes to energy policy, Amory Lovins has proven again and again that he's a pretty smart guy. At the moment, nothing seems more insightful than one of Amory’s comments in the May/June issue of Mother Jones.

Asked what energy policies the next president should champion, Lovins was skeptical. He believes energy policy will continue to be made not at the national level, but by communities and states. "With modest exceptions," Lovins said, "our federal energy policy is really a large trough arranged by the hogs for their convenience."

Right now, the hogs are eating very, very well. With voters struggling from record prices for gasoline and all of the products made from petroleum and with no end in sight, the oil companies are pushing for more leases to drill for more oil on more public lands. President Bush, Big Oil’s special friend in the White House, is pushing for more drilling, too, as are a number of people in Congress. At the moment, most Democrats on the Hill seem to be holding fast against this strategy – but there’s an election coming up.

The fallacious idea is that we can drill our way out of the petroleum problem if only the tree-huggers get out of the way. That argument already has been debunked in several places.

Even T. Boone Pickens, who has decided he’s made enough money in oil, is purchasing television air time to say that drilling isn’t the answer (Youtube).

But two points are worth repeating.

America is a land of opportunity. But when it comes to climate change and national security, it has been a land of lost chances.

The nation’s top scientists have warned presidents at least as far back as Lyndon Johnson that climate change is an issue that should not be ignored. We have known at least since the 1970s that we lack energy security and, by extension, economic security.

Past presidents have spoken eloquently on the need for energy independence and climate action. They apparently were “firing for affect” because we remain more insecure than ever. In fact, we live in a fundamentally indefensible society, deep in denial with little control over our own vital energy supplies, laced with fragile energy supply and communications lines and living in a “target rich” environment for terrorists.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the Commander-in-Chief and the leaders of the world’s most powerful military force began to think of climate change as an issue vital to national security?

Ponder the implications: Investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency, distributed generation and zero-carbon buildings might become a critical part of our national defense budgets. Solar collectors would become as important as M-16 rifles; plug-in hybrids as vital as M-1 tanks. Our arsenal would include weapons of mass mitigation.

If that seems far-fetched, consider what’s just happened in the defense and intelligence communities. Over the last two weeks, climate change has graduated officially from an environmental to a full-fledged national security issue. Now, any candidate who isn’t gung-ho about reversing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions should be considered soft on national defense.

In case you missed them, here is a recap of the latest developments.

We are standing at the threshold of a revolution in the world energy economy. Or, so we might hope after reading this week’s Economist.

The tell-tale signs of that revolution are documented in a 14-page special section on “The Future of Energy.”