If you thoughty you understood climate change

guess again.  I take that back, don't guess.  Read the most recent post by David Roberts at Grist.  If there is one piece of writing that will change how you think about the climate... or even about politics... this just may be it. 

Roberts clearly lays out the two notions of dealing with the climate changes coming, one from the climate scientists who are panicked about our continued under estimation of the rate of change and the economists who so believe in the power of the market to solve all problems that keep telling us not to worry. 

Humanity has never had to grapple with a problem that measures itself in centuries, threatens our very existence, and requires global cooperation to overcome. We are fairly beset by gaping uncertainties. We know it could get really bad, but we don't know exactly how bad it will get, or how fast, or where. We don't know how much it will cost to re-engineer the world along sustainable lines, or how quickly we can do it, or even whether we can do it at all.

That last phrase is what scares me "whether we can do it at all." Where does the will to act come from?  It surely will not come from those who do not take seriously the lessons of ecology.  I follow Matthew I Kahn's Environmental and Urban Economics blog, He frequently hypes his own view expressed in his book Climatopolis.  I have also mentioned it in my own posts because I don't understand where we find the revenue required by the massive infrastructure re-invention that his Climatopolis would require.  It seems the work of a free market economist who does not understand governmental fiscal policy at any level.

What's growth got to do with it?

I had an interesting exchange with Grist's David Roberts on twitter tonight.   It began when @drgrist came through with this tweet.

Dear Beltway journalists: economic slowdown, not increased spending, causing current deficit. Solution not less spending, but more growth.

I could not pass up the opportunity to question this chase after growth, and so I responded using the Green Party CA id, GPCA.…

@drgrist Isnt' the need for growth at all costs part of the problem? Energy? Population? Water? Food?

Roberts was attentive enough to reply.

@GPCA We need to decouple growth from resource consumption in long-term. Short-term, we need to save O's political bacon...or Pres Palin.

And there you have the Democratic Party platform if the race were being run now… and in many ways it is. Anybody but Palin.

This still sidesteps the basic question of when, if ever, will it be proper to talk about this decoupling of growth from resouce consumption. I listened to a piece on NPR about climate change and the tragedy of the commons this AM. That is what seems to be playing out here. We all know what is good for everyone. But our fears keep us from doing it, whether it is Roberts's fear of a President Palin, the Obama - Summers - Geitner group fear of an economy without growth to pay off our debts, or the Republican's fear that someone else will have the economic magic for the 21st Century.

So we muddle along. Politicians preen in public but compromise, shave the results, are satisfied with mincing little steps in the right direction because "that is what we can do this term."

Well, I am not satisfied and neither should you be. If politicians are not going to deliver a sustainable future, if they are only using that word "sustainable" to make us believe, then maybe we need to go watch The Road to get a reminder what what can happen. I have not seen that movie. I did read the book. The review in the Washington Post seems to remind us of just why Washington seems not to understand.

If leaders will not lead, then we need to elect new leaders. If some corporation would sell us the koolaid, then it is time to just stop buying. If growth would bring the end, then start planning for a steady state economy. It is no longer up to them. It is up to us.

Grist Presidential Forum

I think that I learned more from the reactions to the forum than I learned from the candidate's actual comments. It is interesting compare Dave Robert's comments about the three candidates (Kucinich, Clinton, Edwards) to Cathleen Decker's reporting in the LA Times. I will add my own commentary.

To begin with, most media have not yet learned how to discuss Global Warming in terms of the pre-defined narrative of the election campaign. It does not fit neatly into any of the predefined narratives of the campaign, where the general tendency is to treat it like a sporting event with your play by play announcer telling you who is ahead and describing every detail while the color commentator tries to explain what it all means about who will in a couple of months. Treating global warming in that context has not worked to raise public attention, or even candidate attention, as an election issue. CNN's coverage of this event focuses on the issue of why this issue appears to have little traction with the public and quotes Roberts to good effect.

We can easily understand the narrative used by both Roberts and Decker just by looking at their headlines. Roberts is writing for Grist readers, an audience that already believes in the seriousness of Global Warming. He was part of the panel that asked questions and hardly unbiased about the results. His blog entry today was headed "More light, less heat". He is going to explain the candidates and evaluate their answers. Decker is going to follow the campaign narrative. "Democratic candidates buff green credentials" and all it becomes is a tactic to win the vote of a particular interest group.

The Candidates:
Regarding Dennis Kucinich, Roberts finds him to be "relatively light on specifics." In fact, most of Roberts's comments seem to belittle Kucinich as not really understanding what it takes to make all of this work.

The big question about all this, of course, is how a President Kucinich could get such a radical agenda past Congress. His only answer was that he would talk over their heads, directly to the people, and get them so riled that they would, I guess, drag Congress along. I'm not sure where he sees the evidence for this enormous untapped vein of radical progressivism among the American populace, but he seems convinced.

This is rather an important point for Greens to consider. There are many Green Party members who would love for Kucinich to change parties and for all the very reason that Roberts disparages him: the Kucinich appeals to the populist idea that you can make a difference from the bottom up. That does not sit well with power players, especially those who reside on "K" Street.

The LA Times story summarized Kucinich without the overriding commentary.

First came Kucinich, the Ohio congressman and presidential longshot, who touted his modest-size house, efficient car and vegan diet as indicators of his personal parsimoniousness and vowed to guarantee an annual income to untold numbers of Americans.

Both sets of comments made more of Kucinich proposing a "guaranteed annual income" than anything else. Decker seems to like the word play also and "personal parsimoniousness" while accurate turns this into an elitist position, subtly undercutting his point.


Roberts makes two points about Clinton. First, that she has "gravitas" and "is always the most prepared," especially on policy issues. The second is that that sh was waring people that they don't have the broad public support they need.

One of the sobering messages she delivered is that when she mentions energy independence, crowds go nuts. When she mentions global warming, there's silence. "The public isn't there yet." This means, for one thing, that greens need to do a lot more to carry the message out.

Decker repeats the story of Clinton evasiveness and triangulation, easily understood because the media has repeated every mention of this from Obama and Edwards.

Next came Clinton, the New York senator, who offered a stern argument for pragmatism, barked down a heckler and warned the audience that global warming legislation pending in the Senate would be too incremental for their taste -- even as she refused to say whether she would back it.

It tells us little about what Clinton was really trying to do and a lot about how the public perception of this issue really in influenced by the media. I think that the public deserves better from the LA Times.

In discussing Edwards, both Decker and Roberts have the same focus, but continue their different narratives. According to Decker, it was about hammering Hillary.

Last came Edwards, the former senator and former vice presidential nominee, who railed against corruption in government and challenged candidates to "put political calculation aside and actually stand up with a little backbone for what's right." He didn't mention Clinton by name, nor did he need to.

As with all three, Roberts measures a candidate by how easily they moved to becoming specific on given policy points. This was his overall summary of Edwards.

My sense during the Q&A is that while Edwards' top-line proposals are immensely appealing -- efficiency, green jobs, fighting poverty, etc. -- he's either unwilling or unable to go much deeper. In response to specific questions, he would always go lateral, covering broad swathes of ground while staying light on specifics.

Green Party Action:
The Green Party needs to find an effective way to deal with Global Warming as a local issue. We say that we believe in grassroots organizing. If we were really effective at harnessing the grassroots energy that may be there, we could have a major influence. Roberts and all of the other Global Warming pundits are going to focus on the inside the beltway, presidential election, federal governmental policy implications because those are the buttons you are supposed to push to have the largest effect.

The Green Party needs to start pushing local buttons, getting people involved in making those fundamental changes right now in their own communities. Were we to do so, those who have decided to act now would surely make this function in their personal political calculus.

Beyond Protest: when distraction hurts.

The Grist / LCV Presidential Forum on Energy and Climate Change is being touted as a triumph. In some respects, it was. After all, it was the first time that such a forum was held on this particular topic.

It was also an embarrassment. The fact that only three of the Democrats showed up and none of the Republicans bothered, shows that these issues do not figure into the political calculus being calculated by the pundits and consultants that swarm around candidates like yellow jackets on a soda can. You can add the fact that they description of this forum keeps using the word "green" and they never bothered to ask about the Green Party.

But more specific to my Title is the way that this particular presentation was disturbed by a protest. According to Grist's Dave Roberts...

When Clinton came on stage, there was persistent, boorish booing from one part of the crowd. Said boo-er, in the middle of Clinton's remarks, stood up and started shouting about something or other. He was quickly dragged out by the police. Turns out he was a member of the activist group Code Pink, which is trying to end the Iraq war by showing up at events, yelling and screaming and annoying the bejesus out of everyone, discrediting the anti-war movement and progressive activism, and generally engaging in futile acts of moral onanism.

I had to look up "onanism" as I am more accustomed to using Woody Allen words to describe this mode of giving yourself pleasure. But then, I did catch the evening news and there was a recognizable Medea Benjamin handing out literature as Hillary walked in to a San Francisco fund raiser last night. It is obvious that Code Pink has made a decision to hound Hillary for the rest of the campaign. I wonder who they do support, and whether they are walking precincts to convince people to elect that candidate, or if they are only interested in bring Clinton down.

In the case of the Forum in LA, the protest grabbed media attention and the ideas did not. That tells me that Code Pink does not care about whether people can make an informed decision about Global Warming. They have a single issue focus and the future of this planet is not on the list.

Green Reactions to the IPCC report

If we turned on the TV news this weekend, we surely heard about the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Chang. Meeting in Valencia, Spain this weekend, they have once again warned the world of the dire consequences of business as usual. Even their Summary for Policy Makers runs 23 pages and none of it is uplifting.

The type of events that they warn against are being played out in Bangladesh at the same time. That is all over television also, finally. I want readers to take a look at the charts posted by Chris Mooney at intersection. They give graphic evidence of the effects of the warming of the ocean on the intensity of such storms. As Mooney writes:

The before-and-after difference, to my untrained eye, appears to be an average cooling of something like 1 degree Celsius for almost the entire Bay of Bengal.
And where did this incredible amount of energy removed from the ocean go?

Unfortunately, much of it it got unleashed upon Bangladesh in the form of wind and waves.

Unfortunately, what are getting out of policy makers, and even the most ardently vocal Democratic Presidential Candidates (Clinton, Edwards, Kucinich) is business as usual. It is all geared to inside the beltway policy wonk decisions and it will favor, once again, big business.

Grist has posted the pertinent Global Warming positions from all of the candidates, Democratic and Republican, on their site. It is all currently linked from this page. For some reason, they forgot to ask a Green. Maybe it is time that Kent Mesplay (Air Quality Control expert) or Cynthia McKinney provided an answer to them. The both know how.