Centerblue.org

I decided to evaluate Obama’s and McCain’s proposals for confronting the twin crises of energy scarcity/dependence and climate change. I developed the following grid, based on information provided by the two candidates on their respective web pages devoted to these issues (you can see Obama’s page here, and McCain’s pages here and here.)

(The government report referenced above regarding offshore resources can be found here.)

Bottom line: overall, Obama’s plan beats McCain’s hands down when it comes to aggressiveness and vision. These crises require a national resolve and commitment akin to the Manhattan Project or the Apollo program in order to relieve our oil dependence and prevent a climate catastrophe. We should be throwing everything and the kitchen sink at these problems–government funding, tax incentives, education, efficiency improvements, and every other tool in the book. Both candidates kind of pick and choose, but at the end of the day Obama’s plan shows more of a commitment to resolving these problems than McCain’s.

McCain’s emphasis on developing “clean coal” technology is particularly disappointing. Coal can never truly be clean from an emissions perspective until we develop sound ways to sequester the carbon dioxide emitting from these plants, and we are a long ways off from doing that in a cost-effective and reliable manner.

However, McCain’s plan fills some notable gaps in Obama’s–most notably in pushing for the large-scale development of nuclear power as a cleaner alternative to coal. Nuclear has its problems too, but at least it doesn’t worsen the carbon emissions problem as we ramp up production of renewable energy.

I also oppose continuing subsidies for corn-based ethanol, which Obama favors but McCain does not. We have to stop putting food into our gas tanks as quickly as possible or we will continue to exacerbate food shortages around the world. Cellulosic ethanol is just around the corner, but we need to push very hard right now to make that a viable alternative to corn.

Overall, Obama has it right on these crises–but he would do well to pick up a few elements of McCain’s plan so as to truly commit America to literally saving the world from these pernicious problems that are wrecking our planet, economy, and national security.

Seven years. That’s as long as we have left to prevent a climate calamity by stopping the growth in carbon emissions entirely, according to the conclusions derived from thousands of studies by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Doing that, along with cutting emissions 50-85% by 2050, will stabilize the climate at a 3.5 degree Fahrenheit increase, which will “merely” cause seas to swell, a reduction in water supplies from glaciers and icecaps with millions of people going thirsty, acidification of the oceans, the dying out of most coral reefs, and increases in flood and storms. Again, ladies and gentlemen, this is what we get if we meet the impossible goal of stopping emissions growth in 7 years.

What if we do not? Well then things go downhill from there, don’t they. If instead we fail to stop emissions growth until 2030, the planet’s temperature will increase by 6.3 degrees F. That would result in the widespread extinction of species, slowing global currents that would wreak havoc on climates all over the developed world, decreases in food production, 30% global loss of wetlands, flooding of millions of people, and many more deaths from heat waves.

To say that these are “extremely serious findings,” as the chairperson of the IPCC said, is an understatement. They are stunning and depressing in their immediacy, inevitability, and seeming impossibility of doing anything in our political world in time to prevent catastrophe.

Seven years is also, by the way, the amount of time the US has wasted in doing absolutely NOTHING about climate change under our current Chimp-in-Chief, who refused to join most of the rest of the world in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Even now, when confronted with these dire warnings and mindful that they can no longer play the part of ostriches with their heads stuck in the ground, US climate delegate Sharon Hays had the gall to defend our non-action, saying that “what’s changed since 2001 is the scientific certainty that this is happening”–with no promises that Washington would change its reliance on “voluntary” (aka non-existent) reductions given the “new evidence.”

No Sharon, we knew fully well in 2001 what was happening, which is why Kyoto came about. What hadn’t happened then was Katrina, and Atlanta going dry of water, and Al Gore, and other evidence so clear that even a monkey could understand it. In insisting on evidence as certain as cogito ergo sum, all we have done is waste seven valuable years while allowing the oil industry and other polluting interests increasingly free reign to pollute with impunity. We now have the result–our backs are against the wall with only 7 years left to avoid a worse calamity.

I’m not sure anything CAN be done in 7 more years, despite the good intentions of a few. Our world is just too fragmented politically, with too many competing interests. I also wonder whether the exponential nature of technological advancement is being accounted for in these findings–futurist Ray Kurzweil is severely critical of Al Gore for supposedly failing to account for technological advancements in areas like nanotechnology that could prevent carbon emissions or even suck already-emitted carbon out of the air.

I sure as hell hope Kurzweil is right, because that may be our last best hope. In case he is not, however, we still have a moral obligation to do everything possible to lessen the damage and destruction as much as we can. If we can’t or won’t, then I question whether we even deserve to be on this third rock from the Sun, given our disgraceful stewardship of the planet.

In an era of $100/barrel oil with no end in sight to our energy problems, and with climate change growing increasingly alarming, the League of Conservation Voters has put out a chart that shows the energy policy positions of each of the 2008 presidential candidates. I’d love to reproduce it here, but it doesn’t fit the blog’s margins–so you can see the whole chart here.

Here’s a sample from the top candidates.

Dems

Clinton: wants 80% carbon reduction by 2050, 55 miles per gallon standards by 2030, 25% energy from renewables by 2025, reduce energy consumption (increased efficiency) 20% by 2020.

Obama: wants 80% carbon reduction by 2050, 50 MPG standards by 2025, 25% energy from renewables by 2025, reduce energy consumption 50% by 2030.

Edwards: wants 80% carbon reduction by 2050, 40 MPG standards by 2016, 25% energy from renewables by 2025, reduce electricity consumption 15% by 2018.

GOP

Giuliani: no articulated position on anything except supporting liquefied coal.

Romney: cap carbon emissions only if the entire world does so, opposes fuel economy/MPG increases, generally supports efficiency but has no stated goals, has no renewable energy goal, supports liquefied coal.

McCain: lead author of bill to reduce carbon emissions 65% by 2050, wants fuel efficiency increase but no goal specified, wants 25% of energy from renewables by 2025, 50% reduction in energy use via efficiency by 2030.

What strikes me is how pathetically small-minded the GOP candidates are on this issue (with the exception of McCain, who at least “gets” it about global warming and somewhat “gets” it about the energy crisis). It’s as if the rest of the GOP candidates forgot that a lot of middle class people are stretching to the breaking point in the wake of $3.00+ gas and multi-hundred dollar winter heating bills–or maybe they just never bothered thinking about it in the first place. It’s also as if they have no idea about the freight train of fossil fuel scarcity headed our way that even our own Bush-led government has warned us about, preferring instead to continue blithely on in ignorance.

Well, the rest of us “get” the energy problem every time we go to the gas pump, and a majority of us now see the light on global warming. Whether the GOP candidates like it or not these issues will be front and center in this campaign–and they will be bludgeoned to a bloody pulp by their Democratic opponents if they don’t get their heads out of their asses and address the obvious.

Thing is, we can meet the energy goals outlined by the Democratic candidates–but we need someone at the helm willing to provide the leadership necessary to make them happen. The process will be painful, and will require an adjustment to the thinking of many Americans with feelings of entitlement to cheap energy, but it CAN be done and it MUST be done if we are to keep our nation (and indeed our civilization) moving forward.

On Monday evening I was sitting at a sidewalk cafe with a friend, enjoying the spring weather after having taken in the sights of DC’s beautiful cherry blossoms. As I sipped on a martini the conversation turned to global warming, and in particular to the use of compact fluorescent light bulbs instead of incandescent ones.

My friend bought these light bulbs and installed them. After trying them a few days he removed them and replaced them with the original bulbs. Why? Because he felt their light was simply too unnatural and ugly to bear. He felt terrible about it, but he simply had to get rid of them.

That got my mind to thinking about how much easier it is to care abstractly about global warming than it is to do something about it. And this is true for all of us, not just my friend. In my case, I know that eating meat is very destructive to the environment because of the huge amounts of carbon dioxide and methane spewed by the meat industry, but hell will freeze over before I become a vegetarian.

Why is it so difficult for us to actually DO something about global warming? Maybe because it’s just hard for human nature to accept the reality of an emergency and the need to take proactive action when it happens in slow motion. It’s like the proverbial frog in a pot, which sits there while the water is slowly heating on the stove and doesn’t try to leap until it’s entirely too late.

The evidence of the impacts of global warming are out there already, but most of us are not in a position to see them either individually or in their aggregate. We don’t see the ice melting every day. We don’t see the hungry polar bears. We don’t see the mountain frogs going extinct right now. We hardly notice that the DC cherry blossoms bloom almost a month earlier than they used to, a change so drastic that the accompanying festival had to actually be moved back earlier on the calendar a few years ago because the blossoms were already gone by the time the festival happened. But whether we see these things happening or not, they ARE happening, and the emergency is real.

Or maybe the reason we are slow to act is because we feel impotent, powerless to stop something ourselves that encompasses all of humanity…and if we can’t stop it then why should we change our behavior? Does it really matter much if *I* recycle or not, when most people don’t? Does it really hurt much if *I* use plastic bags because they are convenient, because so many other people do? It seems that if we did away with using plastic bags and installed the CFL light bulbs and did all the rest that we are inconveniencing ourselves while not seeing any measurable result from our personal sacrifices.

That’s a tough argument to counter, but we must. Inventor/architect/poet Buckminster Fuller said,

“Never forget no matter how overwhelming life’s challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person.”

It doesn’t matter if the person next door recycles or not–we must (and maybe we can convince them to do it too!) It doesn’t matter that the effects of our own personal contributions and sacrifices are tiny, because when it comes to this kind of thing the AGGREGATE effect of lots of people making tiny contributions is absolutely huge.

I intend to begin a series of postings over the next several weeks that will focus exclusively on what *we* as individuals can do to make a difference in this emergency. I’m basing the list loosely off Time Magazine’s recent article on 51 things we can do about global warming, though their list also discusses things that are not in the power of individuals and I will ignore those (such as building environmentally friendly buildings, irrelevant to most of us unless you’re an architect).

Let’s face it–none of us is going to be the planet’s environmental Jesus Christ, and nobody can possibly be expected to do everything on this list. Each of us has different things we can and cannot tolerate, allowing us to pick and choose among the various things we can do. I personally don’t mind certain compact fluorescent light bulbs and I have replaced most of my incandescents, but I will not give up meat. Perhaps my friend can’t tolerate fluorescents, but may be able to recycle his clothes or do something else on the list. Same goes for anyone else reading this.

As we go through this list we’ll have a better idea of the things we can do and how those things can add up to huge benefits. The only thing that remains is for you to care enough to actually do something about global warming. Are you up to the challenge?

Today the Supreme Court handed down an extremely important case on the environment, Massachusetts v. EPA. In it the Court ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide/auto emissions as a pollutant. It is forcing the EPA to reconsider its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide and to base its decisions on regulation/non-regulation on applicable law rather than arbitrarily declining to do so. The lawsuit arose as several states sued the EPA to get the federal government to do something about global warming.

The case is a stinging rebuke of Bush’s approach of doing absolutely nothing about climate change. Said Justice Stevens in writing for the majority:

“A well-documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere… EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change.”

For the first time the Court has weighed in on global warming and broadly reviewed national policy on the issue in favorable terms. That’s fantastic, although the 5-4 nature of the decision reminds one of the razor-thin balance of power on the Court; the decision could have easily gone the other way. Nevertheless, the precedent set by the decision is great news as individual states continue their battles against global warming.

Here’s a very interesting video on where technology is progressively taking us by 2100. (Turn the volume down, the music is rather annoying).

What’s contained in this video isn’t the dream of some sci-fi junkie. The possibilities depicted are the work of some of the planet’s most respected scientists and thinkers who understand the accelerating trends in artificial intelligence and nanotechnology. Work is already underway to make some of the earlier predictions shown in the video a reality.

One notable omission from the video is how our emerging technology will handle global warming–because if we don’t deal with that problem then all bets are off. But I do believe that we will eventually possess ways of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere so that we can return our planet to its normal pre-industrial state (and there’s a prize out there waiting to be claimed right now by whoever comes up with an initial answer).

A monthly roundup of technological breakthroughs in energy, computing, nanotechnology, and biotechnology–and how these converging technologies are transforming our society, solving problems, and creating new ones.

Let’s round up evil-doers before they commit crimes: (computing, ethics) I’m sure my friend Boztopia will “love” this one. A team of neuroscientists has come up with a powerful technique that can scan deep inside a person’s mind and read his intentions before he acts, “Minority Report” style. It raises some serious ethical questions about how and whether this device should be used in interrogations and police work. That tearing sound you hear is that of the Bill of Rights enduring further shredding.

If you live 20 more years, you may get to live forever: (biotechnology) Research into senescence continues to gather speed, as more scientists come to view old age as a curable disease rather than as an inevitability. Researchers like Dr. John Langmore are looking at telomeres in the DNA code, which become damaged as cells keep replicating over time and cause eventual degeneration–in the same way that making copies of copies of copies of a piece of paper eventually results in a mess. Understanding how this works could lead the way to stopping and reversing the aging process.

World’s first “bionic woman:” (robotics) US Marine Claudia Mitchell is the world’s first person to have a prosthetic arm she can control through thought alone. It can do things like cutting up food, and she can feel touch when something touches her artificial hand.

Let’s suck carbon dioxide out of the air: (environment) Bowing to the inevitable fact that we are not likely to reduce carbon emissions enough in time to prevent a climate disaster, Al Gore and Virgin Group boss Sir Richard Branson have announced a $25 million “Earth Challenge” Prize to be awarded to whoever comes up with a workable method of permanently removing at least one billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per year. There are already ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, such as this contraption that looks like a goal post devised by a Columbia U. researcher, but such devices still lack a way of cheaply and permanently sequestering the carbon they capture.

Robots (may) have feelings too: (robotics) Astonishingly, researchers are working on giving robots emotions and feelings that may be seen in mainstream robots within ten years. They are getting their robots to react to stimuli with emotions like happiness and fear, or to spontaneously feel “hunger” as a way of telling them they need to recharge their batteries. If they can be taught feelings, can ethics follow? Let’s hope so.

Creating the Jordi LaForge visor: (computing) Jordi was the blind Chief Engineer on the Enterprise-D who wore a visor to help him see. A new implant puts receptors in some blind patients’ eyes that is interpreted by a computer and then sent to the user’s brain as signals he can understand. The device won’t equate to full sight, but would allow totally blind patients to see imagery and navigate about. However future versions should allow more sight, including recognizing someone’s face.

The computer that won’t work if you look at it:(computing) Well that’s a bit of an overstatement, but a start-up called D-Wave claims it has demo-ed the world’s first quantum computer. The computer relies on the state of quantum qubits rather than on binary 0’s and 1’s, and could be used to solve certain thorny problems in just a few seconds that would take regular computers eons. Hype or real? Who knows, but we’ll find out soon enough as the company makes its increasingly powerful computer available to corporations for research.

A 2012 laptop’s speed = 1997’s world’s fastest supercomputer: (computing) Intel recently demonstrated a new 80-core teraflop chip that will be widely available on computers within 5 years, and whose power is greater than the most powerful supercomputer on Earth just ten years ago. It will also only consume 62 watts of power, less than what a single processor consumes today.

Bush, apparently not wanting to be seen as the last and stupidest person on Earth to be convinced that global warming is real in the face of overwhelming evidence, is mounting a PR offensive. He is sending his lackeys out, claiming the administration has spent over $29 billion to fight climate change.

How cheeky, especially in light of evidence that the Bush administration has tried to suppress hundreds of scientists’ findings in support of global warming, which has done serious damage to American efforts to curb greenhouse gases. But then again, this administration has amply demonstrated its ability to live in Fantasyland.

What are YOU doing about global warming?

“You did it! You finally did it! Damn you all to hell!” –Charlton Heston, “Planet of the Apes”

The first major global warming report for this year has come out of Paris, and it’s not pretty. Pretty damn depressing is more like it.

The report, put together by hundreds of scientists, bureaucrats, and skeptics worldwide based on thousands of studies, contains these gems:

• Using the strongest language ever, the report stated that it is “very likely” (that is, a 90%+ likelihood of certainty), that the warming effects we are seeing world-wide (including droughts, heat waves, and mega-strong tropical storms) are directly attributable to man-made causes rather than natural variations in climate.
• Global warming has in fact become unstoppable. We’ve really done it with the planet’s climate. Our only choices now are among mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. The more carbon we mitigate going forward, the less we’ll suffer down the road. But regardless of what we do and barring some blockbuster technology that can suck the carbon out of the air quickly we will be stuck with some measure of rising sea levels, melting ice caps, and desertification for the next thousand years–and we will have no choice but to adapt.

It is unfathomable to me that a single generation of humans has essentially wrecked the planet for our descendants for thousands of years to come–if they manage to survive the changes at all. It is more obvious than ever that we have a moral duty to ourselves and our children to do everything possible RIGHT NOW to minimize the damage we’ve done–and hope for a cure in the next couple of decades from advances in nanotechnology and the like.

Over the course of the next few weeks I’ll be posting some articles on what we as individuals can do right now to help stop global warming. It’s a global problem, but each of us can do things to help deal with it if we have the will to do so.