David Sassoon's Climate Chronicles

Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years. This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. It represents a challenge to all Americans – in every walk of life: to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen.

Al Gore, July 17, 2008

The whole speech is reprinted below. It's worth a read. It's a huge relief from the drill, drill, drill campaign that's been touted over the last month as the answer to America's energy problem. Repeat something often enough, and people start to believe it. Now we've got another campaign to contend with, courtesy of Al Gore: the Clean Tech Moonshot.

And it's based on convincing grand unified theory of what is ailing the nation and the globe:

....our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of .... the economic, environmental and national security crises. We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that's got to change.

And so Gore has issued a call, ending his speech by speaking of the moonshot:

On July 16, 1969, the United States of America was finally ready to meet President Kennedy's challenge of landing Americans on the moon....

We must now lift our nation to reach another goal that will change history. Our entire civilization depends upon us now embarking on a new journey of exploration and discovery. Our success depends on our willingness as a people to undertake this journey and to complete it within 10 years. Once again, we have an opportunity to take a giant leap for humankind.

The call for a Clean Tech Moonshot is nothing new. It has been an idea in the solutions space for a long time, echoed far and wide, in the clean energy section of this web site, too.

Once upon a time, the Soviet Union was threatening to be the first country to put a man on the moon. The president galvanized the nation to meet the challenge, and Americans got there first. The end.

The story of clean energy could follow a similar script. Global warming is a far larger and realer threat than a Soviet lunar landing ever was, but a similar sense of national mission is missing, even though developing reliable and abundant sources of clean energy is the next lunar landing, the next great leap for both America and humankind.

This and other echoes of the moonshot frame couldn't even get Congress to hand over a crumb off the federal table -- extension of the production tax credit for renewable energy. But Gore has attached an ambitious target and the full weight of his influence in order to make this moonshot suddenly real.

In his speech, he's got answers for "those who say 10 years is not enough time" and "for those who say the challenge is not politically viable." The nitpickers and the naysayers will have a field day no matter what.

So its probably worth it for every person who plans to form an opinion -- or mouth one -- to read Gore's words in the original in its entirety. If you want to watch it, head on over to youtube. But this speech is worth the active exercise of brain function and engagement of the individual human heart, and it takes 1/5th the time to read it than to watch it.

Here's the full, astonishing quote out of the mouth of Rick Wagoner, the chief of General Motors:

I’m determined and highly confident that G.M. will be a survivor.

That ought to send shivers up every stockholder's spine. A survivor, merely? My how the mighty are falling because of a short-sighted approach to energy and climate realities.

Exelon launched a public relations blitz today with a slick corporate report, a full page ad in the NY Times (and who knows where else), and an announcement carried far and wide by a largely credulous business press. The story?

Exelon to Slash Greenhouse Gases by 2020.

That was the way Forbes.com ran the story off the AP wire, and the 50 stories on Google news play the same refrain. You'd think Exelon had licked the climate crisis single-handedly.

In actual fact the company is making some modest emissions reductions far short of what science requires "in a bid to shape the debate on carbon dioxide rules and to get a jump on compliance," as Matthew Wald of the Times put it.

It's hard to criticize a utility whose CEO, John Rowe, comes out and says:

The science is overwhelming - climate change is happening now and human activity is the primary cause.

But someone's gotta do it, because from the standpoint of the global warming challenge, what's in the much-touted plan is bupkis.

One point is clear: the potential regulations of greenhouse gases under any portion of the Clean Air Act could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority that would have a profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy.

Stephen Johnson, EPA Adminstrator, July 11, 2008

That's what the man whose job it is to protect the environment said today when he released a 1000 page document on regulating global warming emissions. You'd think a man in his position would relish the thought of unprecedented expansion of EPA authority.

Not Bush's Johnson.

AFP has put this ironic headline out on its newswires: G8 Buries Climate Pledges - in Time Capsule. Turns out that the Windsor Hotel Toya where the G8 leaders just met is sinking $1.4 million in the greenwash gimmick to lure tourists to the remote northern resort.

They're building a park to house a monument of a melting chunk of ice and the time capsule, which is slated to be opened in 100 years.

It read like any business story in Monday's paper: Weather Channel Is Sold to NBC and Equity Firms.

An investor group led by NBC Universal and two private equity firms clinched a deal for the Weather Channel on Sunday after three weeks of negotiations.

Jeff Zucker, NBC Universal's CEO, thought the $3.5 billion price tag was a fair price. It bought him another #1 ranking.

“We’re No. 1 in business news, No. 1 in general broadcast news, and now we’re No. 1 in weather news too,” he said.

What a shrewd bet. NBC gets on the ground floor of broadcasting ever-more-frequent extreme weather events. Why right now, I just went to the Weather Channel and watched the latest reports about Hurricane Bertha, and a little news clip (preceded by an ad, of course) called "Lightning Strike Kills Jogger." A woman. At the beach. In Virginia. Sad.

Can't wait for the programming in 2020!

Keep in mind, NBC Universal is 80% owned by GE of Ecomagination fame. They know a lucrative climate-related business when they see one.

Just goes to show you.

Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about the climate.

The World's Biggest Appetite

The US is home to 4% of the world's population.

The US uses 1/4 of the world's oil.

The World's Thirstiest Cars

The average fuel economy of a car sold in the US in 1974 was 13.8 miles per gallon.

In 1989 it was 27.5 miles per gallon.

In 2008 it is 24.5 miles per gallon.

In 2020 it will be 35 miles per gallon.

In Europe today, it is 44 miles per gallon.

In 2012 it will be 48 miles per gallon.

There is a category of psychological illusion called "projection" which serves the purpose of reducing personal anxiety. It's a defense mechanism in which one attributes one’s own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts and emotions to others.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal provided a textbook case of the phenomenon in an editorial called Global Warming as Mass Neurosis. It is yet another installment of exemplary denialist rhetoric in need of some Freudian analysis.

The author, Bret Stephens, accuses those concerned about global warming of practicing a sick-souled theology. He doesn't realize he's blaming others for his own illness: his dogmatic embrace and belief in the perfect functioning of free markets.

The energy discussion took a great leap forward today with the release of a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Senator McCain and President Bush have recently called for oil drilling in offshore US waters as a solution to high gas prices. So the report examines whether drilling would make a difference at the pump and compares it to the impact of increasing the fuel economy of automobiles.

No surprise -- drilling for oil would have no effect on gas prices. That's according to the Energy Information Administration:

The Energy Information Agency (EIA) projects that Senator McCain's proposal would have no impact in the near-term since it will be close to a decade before the first oil can be extracted from the currently protected offshore areas.

The EIA projects that production will reach 200,000 barrels a day (0.2 percent of projected world production) at peak production in close to twenty years. It describes this amount as too small to have any significant effect on oil prices.

But what if US autos had become more fuel efficient over the last 20 years, slowly but steadily? A lot of savings at the pump and a whole lot of oil no longer needed -- about 3 million barrels a day less. The lost opportunity is astounding in magnitude, and points to a better way toward energy security.

The NY TImes story on this latest absurdity from the Department of Interior plays the headline pretty straight: Citing Need for Assessments, US Freezes Solar Energy Projects. And here are the lead paragraphs:

Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.

The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

A bit of editing at the copy desk might have yielded a more telling lede:

The federal government has placed a moratorium on solar energy projects on public land in order to study the environmental impact of collecting sunshine in the desert.

It's another spiteful move by the administration designed to slow down the development of alternative energy projects. Some of the best solar resources in the country fall on public land, and fledgling solar companies were left frustrated and angry.

Yet just last week, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne saw fit to stand next to President Bush in the Rose Garden when he called on Congress to allow development of oil shale on public lands in the Green River Basin which straddles Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The moment is commemorated on the Department of Interior web site in both a photo and a video.