(Today 9/29 at the State House 12pm-5pm is a big fat energy hearing, and clean energy advocates are trying to pack the house. Go if you can.)
I’ve always felt like another climate-voice-for-doom-and-gloom. And yet, look at what a whole lot of pressure, organizing and action have produced just this month:
- Pope. A papal visit is momentous in any event, but this one helped to make climate change an iconic cause of our time, much as John Paul II’s was for the Cold War. Francis put the issue in front of everyone’s face, and helps push denial to the margins. Practically no one else on Earth can put an issue on the table that everyone across the political spectrum has to confront. (The GOP is left with “The Pope is not a scientist”. Except that he’s got a Masters Degree in chemistry and is just, well, not a crank.)But more than vanquishing denial, it may well activate the soft supporters of climate action into more full-throated boosters. This is extremely welcome.
- China goes cap-and-trade. Amazingly, the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China has a more realistic view of climate science than a major party of the Land of the Free. The claim that America acting on its own can’t help the climate crisis is now officially, ridiculously moot. (“America is not a planet”? There’s a line for ya.)
- Alberta Doubles Carbon Tax. Easy for us to ignore, but Tar Sands Land just elected a progressive provincial government that is close to doubling its carbon tax. I mean, this is like Texas joining RGGI. Very unexpected, and also extremely welcome.
- Hillary vs. Keystone. You could argue that she was being too cute by not opposing it before, but no matter. Keystone went from being that issue that all the Very Serious People agreed was not all that Serious. Well, the case was made — forcefully, repeatedly, and by direct action and with great personal risk — that burning dirty tar sands oil is something to be avoided, and not something to be enabled or made anyhow easier. And that view is now prevailing. Keep that #$%% in the ground.
- and speaking of which … the Shell arctic pullout. Couldn’t find the goods, and not worth waiting around to find it at today’s low prices.
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We’ve bought ourselves more time. (ThinkProgress):
Virtually every major country has made pledges to limit or reduce carbon pollution in advance of the Paris climate talks this December. These pledges generally end in 2025 or 2030, and so they only matter if the world keeps ratcheting down its greenhouse gas emissions in future agreements until we get near zero by century’s end. Otherwise we will blow past the 2°C line of defense against very dangerous-to-catastrophic global warming, and hit 3.6°C warming by 2100.
That’s the key finding of a new analysis from Climate Interactive and the MIT Sloan School of Business, tallying up the global pledges to limit carbon pollution leading up to the big Paris climate talks later this year.Those pledges, called intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs), include the European Union cutting total emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, the U.S. cutting net greenhouse gas emissions emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 (including land use change and forestry), and China’s peaking in CO2 by 2030.
The good news, as you can see, is that the INDCs have bought us another five to 10 years of staying close to the 2°C path. I asked Andrew Jones, one of the systems-thinking savants behind Climate Interactive, if that was correct and he said, “Yep, about seven years.” By “staying close” I mean staying close enough to the 2°C path that it remains plausibly achievable — though (obviously) politically still very, very challenging.
Yeah, about those challenges
Hillary Clinton, still our most likely nominee, has made climate a central issue and has framed her arguments well and powerfully. She has endorsed Obama’s Clean Power Plan. She seems to get it.
She has suffered greatly from her email controversy. I worry less about bad faith from her, but the technical and political ineptitude rankles, because after all this is her second go-round as a Presidential candidate. If in 2007-08 Hillary had a.) acknowledged that her Iraq War vote was a terrible mistake, and b.) had employed advisors who actually knew the primary system math, she might well be President now. She didn’t, and didn’t, and isn’t. It was within reach, and she blew it.
She is vulnerable — not to Donald Trump — but rather to a smooth-talking Marco Rubio (“America is not a planet”). Although he famously choked away his first big moment alone in the spotlight, at least he has actually won elections. In any event, there will be a surprisingly-credible challenge from a party that ought to have no credibility whatsoever. It’s wildly dangerous.
All this good news is provisional. It hangs by a thread. The 2016 election is a massive gamble on whether human civilization has a future.
I like some things about Hillary, and others concern me. But when it comes to next November, I’ll take a bullet for her if I have to. This single-issue is all the issues. It’s all fine and well to get interested in the political narrative, but to my mind there’s only one bottom line. We win, global warming loses.