An additional challenge for clean energy development is to avoid reinforcing the new wave of xenophobic tendencies.
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In a previous post, Michael examines how appealing to xenophobic tendencies has become a fundamental strategy for attacking any issues intended to address the health and welfare needs of the poor. By extension, this piece suggests how xenophobic appeal could extend to attacks on environmental efforts on the diplomatic front. Michael's connection is an important one because we know from history environmental concerns, particularly during times of economic hardship, are easily overwhelmed by the politics of insecurity.
Continue reading "Xenophobia Goes Global" »
There is a strong correlation between rising economic insecurity and xenophobia.
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by Michael Shellenberger
Immigration reform advocates were surprised last year by the grassroots, populist backlash against "amnesty" for illegal immigrants. Now, a xenophobic populist backlash threatens national health care reform. What can be done about it?
Continue reading "Xenophobia Destroyed Immigration Reform - Is Health Care Next?" »
Iraq, Iran, and Al Qaeda -- the world is a genuinely scary place. How can we overcome our fears to make the world a safer place?
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by Michael Shellenberger
On September 24, the New York Daily News starkly announced: "Evil has landed." The occasion? The arrival of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Manhattan. Three weeks later, President Bush declared in a news conference that a nuclear Iran could lead to "World War III." Four days later, Vice President Cheney reiterated the threat in a major speech. And New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh reported that the White House was serious about taking military action against Iran, which almost everyone believed was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon.
Continue reading "Overcoming Fear in Foreign Policy" »
After scaring himself senseless, Diamond embraces maintaining inequality and poverty in countries like China and India.
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By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger
Jared Diamond wrote his 2005 bestseller "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," intending to motivate political action to forestall ecological crises. In this excerpt from Chapter Six, "The Death of Environmentalism," in Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility," Breakthrough Institute co-founders argue that political appeals to fear risk backfiring.
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Continue reading "Against Fall Narratives" »
"When men are made to feel insecure about their masculinity, they buy more SUVs."
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Robb Willer received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Cornell University in 2006. He is the director of the UC Berkeley Sociology department's new Laboratory for Social Research and is a Senior Consultant for the Breakthrough Institute. His research focuses on the social psychology of political attitudes, and what leads individuals to adopt liberal or conservative political views. Much of his work examines the potential for fear to impact political affiliation.
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Continue reading "Fear, Insecurity, & Conservativism: an Interview with Sociologist Robb Willer" »
How do we turn fear into intelligence, courage, and empowerment rather than stupidity, paranoia, and cowardice?
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by Michael Shellenberger
In most of the talks we give about global warming, we lay out the social science research about the connection between fear and conservatism. We describe why fear-based appeals on global warming (read: "An Inconvenient Truth") often backfire. And we argue that progressives must find a way to build a bridge for the public from fear to hope.
Continue reading "Against a Fear-Based Politics" »
Support for clean energy is still pathetically small
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by Frank N. Laird
Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Crawford...
While we've been talking about the scale of innovation that a clean energy economy needs, the Bush administration has long since submitted its proposed budget for fiscal year 2009, which starts on October 1, 2008. It's sobering to realize how far from a serious R&D policy for clean energy it is. Whatever President Bush is trying to secure for his legacy, it certainly won't be innovation in clean energy.
Continue reading "Bush's Empty Legacy" »
Can you ask a nation whose people are starving to lower its emissions?
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What to do about China? It's a fraught question for anyone who cares about the environment. On the one hand, China may have already surpassed the U.S. in terms of greenhouse gas emissions; on the other, China is using all that energy to improve the lives of its people.
Continue reading "China's Plea for Clean Energy" »
Should we have to choose between reducing emissions and eradicating malaria?
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by Roger Pielke, Jr.
Did you know that today is "World Malaria Day"? I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't; a search of Google News shows 233 stories on "world malaria day" published in the past 24 hours. A search of "climate change" over the past 24 hours shows 45,819 stories. This post is about the inevitable conflict in objectives that results when we frame the challenge of global warming in terms of "reducing emissions" rather than "energy modernization." The result is inevitably a battle between mitigation and adaptation, when in reality they should be complementary.
Continue reading "Malaria & Greenhouse Gases" »
Remember the first word in "carbon" is "car" lets hope the better-buy will be the clean-buy.
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Based on a reading of this blog and the comments from readers, it seems reasonable to assume that this conversation is dominated by a modern cosmopolitan culture. It is a culture of self-identified progressives living a post-material existence; in fact the closer one approaches zero-impact-person the better. More specifically the merit of a particular technology or policy is often evaluated on a per-unit-of-carbon basis. Yes, there are divergent and impassioned views over any specific technology, policy or definition of "the problem," but the discursive space and basic units of evaluation (carbon, dollars, votes) are quite consistent; this is Culture.
Continue reading "Car Culture" »
We are making a pretty risky bet if we are counting on current technology and currently proposed policies.
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Let's assume that, as Joe Romm recently argued, all of the additional growth in annual emissions above S/P's 1.5% projection is due to inefficient coal fired power generation. This is probably not wise. Much of the rise in emissions will likely be driven by efficient coal generation -- the world will just build a lot more of it than S/P assumed both because the global economy will grow faster and because much of that growth will be in very energy intensive sectors of the economy as developing nations build modern economic infrastructure. But we'll put those factors aside for the moment and assume that the growth of emissions above the S/P projection is all due to very inefficient coal powered generation.
Continue reading "The Wisdom of Investment in a World of Mounting Wedges" »
Ah, the politics of the sixties. Openness to other cultures. Harmony with nature and -- hysterical overpopulation screeds?...
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Ah, the politics of the sixties. Openness to other cultures. Harmony with nature and -- hysterical overpopulation screeds?
Continue reading "The Sixties Were the (Population) Bomb" »
Even the remarkably ambitious range of implementation activities that he proposes cannot meet his own stated goals for success.
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by Roger Pielke, Jr.
[UPDATE: Joe Romm replies in the comments: "Roger -- Thanks for catching my C vs CO2 error.those are very hard to avoid. And thank you for this post. I probably should have elaborated on this issue already -- so I'll just do it in a new post, which will take me a few hours to put together. As you'll see, there actually isn't a gap in my math -- there is a gap in Socolow's and Pacala's math that most people (you included) miss. I'll leave it at that, for now, and Post the link when I am finished."]
Continue reading "Joe Romm's Fuzzy Math" »
The New York Times today reports that Europe, which will meet its Kyoto obligations by purchasing pollution credits from other countries, is turning back to coal. Europe will construct 50 new coal plants over the next few years (that's about...
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The New York Times today reports that Europe, which will meet its Kyoto obligations by purchasing pollution credits from other countries, is turning back to coal. Europe will construct 50 new coal plants over the next few years (that's about what China constructs in six months). This is more evidence that global warming's Gordian Knot, and the technology gap, exert a powerful influence even on the wealthiest countries in the world.
Continue reading "Apres Earth Day, Le Coal" »
We've fallen from the Ideal World. We've fallen from Eden. We've fallen from Nature. And music is lacking because there is no single defining band. Bullshit, says the blogger Arduous, a young woman named Ruchi, who describes herself only as...
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We've fallen from the Ideal World. We've fallen from Eden. We've fallen from Nature. And music is lacking because there is no single defining band.
Bullshit, says the blogger Arduous, a young woman named Ruchi, who describes herself only as "difficult." Ruchi wrote about the ambiguous state of popular music, fall narratives, and Break Through, and her prose and argument caught my eye.
Here's the opening of Arduous' "Why I have Hope."
Continue reading "Against Narratives of the (Musical) Fall" »
Two recent articles create an interesting juxtaposition and raise the ironic question, "will genetically modified crops save the organic food industry?"
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Yesterdays New York Times ran a piece describing renewed interest in genetically modified crops (GMOs) even in countries that had "longstanding resistance" to their use. The piece is interesting because is ran shortly after "Sticker Shock in the Organic Isle" which describes how the rise in the cost of organic foods may begin to price people out of the market.
Continue reading "GMOs: Organics Best Friend?" »
What technologies will provide the world's future power needs, and do so in a carbon-free manner?
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by Roger Pielke, Jr.
The central question can be found at the bottom of this long, technical post. In 1998 Hoffert et al. published a seminal paper in Nature which argued that:
Continue reading "The Central Question of Mitigation" »
Insofar as a coal-fired power plant replaces forms of power generation that are far dirtier, like diesel generators, and make electricity available to people without electricity, a relatively efficient coal-fired power plant should be seen as a good thing
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Recently, plans for a new "Ultra Mega" 4,000MW coal fired power plant in India has come in for much criticism from environmentalists. Writing on Grist.org, environmentalist Nathan Wyeth has called this a "monument to a failed approach". According to him,
Investing in coal generation and plugging it into an unreliable grid (rather than building renewables close to consumers or fixing the grid) has the effect of - get ready for this - spurring the construction of small-scale fossil fuel generation on the other end, which is ... incredibly dirty.
Continue reading "Can a Coal Power Plant Ever be Good?" »
If engaging in ecologically-aware micro-practices reinforces the widespread view that the Chinese can't have what we have, then they are the dark side of the Green Bubble that can't burst fast enough.
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In 2018 we will almost certainly look back on Earth Day 2008 as the high point of the Green Bubble. We will cast our eyes over our abandoned backyard gardens and chuckle softly to ourselves about how we once thought they were the solution to skyrocketing emissions in China. We will wonder why we were more worried about future droughts caused by climate change than we were by the worst global food shortages in 30 years, which were triggering food riots at the same time that we were flipping through our special Earth Day issue of the New York Times Magazine. And we will remember how, just months later, the Green Bubble burst and images of food riots abroad and economic hardship at home finally replaced images of melting glaciers, stranded polar bears, and the lists of the 1,001 Things You Can Do to Prevent Eco-Apocalypse.
Continue reading "The Coming Bursting of the Green Bubble" »
In their Earth Day issue, Vice Magazine profiles Breakthrough Institute. At long last, Breakthrough finds a magazine interviewer who uses more profanity than its two co-founders. Little wonder it's the best Break Through book interview yet.
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In their Earth Day issue, Vice Magazine profiles Breakthrough Institute. At long last, Breakthrough finds a magazine interviewer who uses more profanity than its two co-founders. Little wonder it's the best Break Through book interview yet.
Continue reading "Tuesday Interview: Vice Magazine: "Breakthrough Institute Wrests Environmentalism Away From the Dumbs"" »
At 70, Charles Jones is still fighting the good fight!
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This guest post was sent to us by our good friend, Peter Teague, of the Nathan Cummings Foundation.
I met Charles Jones on a Memphis streetcar. We were headed downtown, in the direction of the Lorraine Motel, 40 years and a day after Martin Luther King's assassination. I fell into conversation with this charming, white-haired southern gentleman, and quickly learned that, as a 23-year old, he'd helped form the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee with Ella Baker and Diane Nash. This was exciting. I'd read about these heroes of the Civil Rights Movement, and here I was talking to one of them!
Continue reading "Memphis, 40 Years After" »
It is an article of faith among most journalists reporting on the environment that public attitudes changed dramatically over the last two years. A new poll by Gallup shows they haven't....
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It is an article of faith among most journalists reporting on the environment that public attitudes changed dramatically over the last two years. A new poll by Gallup shows they haven't.
Continue reading "Is global warming a higher priority today than it was 20 years ago?" »
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Is there an expert consensus behind major public investments in global warming adaptation and government investment in clean energy? Breakthrough says there is. What does the Center for American Progress' Joe Romm say?
Continue reading "Adaptation and Public Investment: The Expert View" »
Joe seems to agree with just about everything I've written on energy policy.
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By Roger Pielke, Jr.
Joe Romm has continued his hysterical, content-free attacks on me and my colleagues for suggesting a view not 100% the same as his own. How dare we. After taking a close look at some of Joe's writing, it turns out that he seems to agree with just about everything I've written on energy policy, and his continued (mis)characterizations of my views simply don't square with what I've actually written.
Continue reading "What is Joe Romm Complaining About?" »
A chapter from Controversies in Science and Technology Volume 2: From Climate to Chromosomes by Roger Pielke and Dan Sarewitz ( PDF)
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The climate system of the planet earth, and the energy system built by those who inhabit the earth, are today seen as the integrated elements of a single problem: global warming. In turn, scientific inquiry, public concern, and policy prescription have given rise to an international regime for controlling the behavior of the climate through management of the global energy system. In this chapter we explain why this regime, and in particular its codification through the Kyoto Protocol, is a failure. Our central point is simple: protecting people and the environment from the impacts of climate is a different problem from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat global warming. The policies that have resulted from combining these two problems are, as a consequence, failing to meaningfully address either problem. Policies to reduce global warming must be pursued independently of policies to reduce climate impacts.
Download the PDF chapter.
Alternately, you can buy the full book here.
Social Values, Nano-Practices, and the Education of Adam Werbach
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Last Thursday, I headed over to the Commonwealth Club to hear Adam Werbach talk about "The Birth of Blue." The speech marked a return of sorts for Adam and for me. Back in 2004, on the heels of "The Death of Environmentalism," I sat in the very same room and listened to Adam give a speech titled, "Is Environmentalism Dead?" that embraced the Death of Environmentalism thesis and promised to return to offer a way forward for those who were committed to building a sustainable world but were frustrated at the lack of progress environmentalists had made in actually doing so.
Continue reading "Return of the Prodigal Son" »
"We can't just depend on the marketplace and regulatory influence."
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Ken Zweibel co-authored the recent attention-grabbing Scientific American piece on solar power, "A Grand Solar Plan." He is an international authority on thin film solar, is widely published (including two books), and is a popular speaker on solar policy issues.
Continue reading "An Interview with Solar Power Expert Ken Zweibel" »
The satisfaction of the material needs of food and water and shelter is not an obstacle to but rather the precondition for the modern appreciation of the nonhuman world
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Last week, the New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin blogged about the World Bank's decision to finance a major new coal fired power plant in India. Revkin ended his blog with a question: "Is all of this bad? If you're one of many climate scientists foreseeing calamity, yes. If you're a village kid in rural India looking for a light to read by, no."
Continue reading "Maybe Horses Will Fly - Developing Countries and Global Warming " »
50 cheering steelworkers in Maryland foreshadow a struggle at the national level.
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For a preview of what may happen when it comes time to pass federal cap and trade legislation, look to Maryland. A state bill calling for dramatic reductions in carbon emissions failed there last week because of worries it would cost jobs and hurt the economy:
Continue reading "Maryland's Failed Global Warming Bill" »
It's a great time to expand R&D, not contract it.
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Last week, Joe Romm on his Climate Progress blog challenged Michael's assertion that solar energy technologies will need to make very significant improvements in cost and performance before they can reasonably be expected to displace large amounts of fossil fuel based energy. Michael concluded:
Continue reading "Solar Energy Not Quite Ready For Prime Time" »
Why can't they support adaptation and clean energy at the same time?
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By Roger Pielke, Jr.
Anyone who wants to see how the misplaced opposition to adaptation actually hurts poor people need look no further than the report out today from ClimateWire:
Continue reading "Holding the Poor Hostage" »
Rather than "debunk" this effort, we need to start dealing with the hard questions.
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A controversial commentary in last week's Nature -- arguing that the
IPCC greatly underestimated the emissions reductions challenge -- immediately launched a heated debate among environmentalists. We had hoped for an open and productive exchange of ideas, but after the rude welcome the Nature piece got from Joe Romm, we braced ourselves for another round of low blow mud-slinging and ad hominem attack. The ugly battle wore on for a week before things took a turn for the better.
Continue reading "The Debate Gets Civil: Romm Apologizes For Unfair Attacks" »
For solar PV to be cost-competitive, the price per ton of CO2 would have to be $220.
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The Center for American Progress's Joe Rom, like much of the environmental establishment, believes that a price on carbon dioxide can do much of the heavy lifting for deploying clean energy technologies. But the price carbon dioxide would have to reach for technologies like solar to be cost competitive is far higher than voters, far more concerned about higher energy prices than global warming, will allow.
Continue reading "No Clean Tech Breakthroughs Needed? Think Again" »
Unfortunately for Romm, energy experts do not share his view.
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The Center for American Progress's Joe Romm claims we don't need technology breakthroughs -- defined as disruptive or non-incremental improvements in technology performance and price -- to stabilize emissions. Unfortunately for Romm, energy experts do not share his view.
Continue reading "Romm vs. Expert Consensus on Energy Technology" »
"All the dramatic technological changes of the last 70 or so years have involved massive federal R&D investments."
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The following is an interview with Breakthrough Senior Fellow Frank Laird, an expert in energy policy, particularly the way that renewable energy policies can affect environmental policy. He is an authority on the history of renewable technology development in the U.S., and a contributor to the Breakthrough blog.
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Continue reading "An Interview with Energy Expert Frank Laird" »
Unable to respond with a well-reasoned defense of their policy agenda, a few angry environmentalists are leading a misinformation campaign.
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It's an exciting time for anyone who cares about climate change. For years, the threat of "deniers" loomed so large that we didn't have the luxury of mulling over the intricacies of policy -- if we let our guard down, they might have erased climate change from the national consciousness. But as a consensus emerges about the existence of climate change, the conversation about what to do about it is just beginning.
Continue reading "Misinformation Campaign" »
The climate cold war is finally thawing.
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For two decades, the big challenge of global warming was getting people to realize that it existed. "Deniers" were once a force to be reckoned with, but through the hard work of the environmental movement, they've now been relegated to the ideological fringe. Even conservatives talk about investing in clean energy and the need to reduce our carbon emissions, with Republican presidential candidate John McCain saying global warming would be one of three key issues of his presidency. We've crossed item #1 off the to-do list, and now a new task looms large on the horizon, no less challenging than the first: everyone knows that global warming is real, so what do we do about it?
Continue reading "The Global Warming Debate Grows Up" »
Roger Pielke, Jr. fillets Joe Romm's red herring.
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By Roger Pielke, Jr.
It is always good when debates can be resolved by appeals to data, because it helps to eliminate ambiguity.
Continue reading "Case Closed" »
Why is Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress attacking Nature for publishing new analysis of emissions projections -- and trying to squash debate over solutions?
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Last week, Roger Pielke Jr. and two co-authors published a landmark commentary in the science journal Nature suggesting that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had probably dramatically underestimated the likely growth of carbon emissions over the next century. Many environmentalists did not take the news well, attacking Pielke, his co-authors, and the Breakthrough Institute, where Pielke is a Senior Fellow, for conspiring to undermine efforts to address climate change.
Continue reading "The Green Politics of Personal Destruction: Deconstructing Joe Romm " »
Joe Romm's focus on semantics and definitions is the classic approach of someone who feels that they can't win a debate on substance, and must resort to dissembling and misdirection.
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by Roger Pielke, Jr.
Joe Romm is someone who I've never met, but he has taken on a somewhat odd obsession with attacking me over the past few weeks, and I have come to the conclusion that he is dishonest and uninterested in constructive discussion.
Continue reading "Joe Romm's Dissembling" »
To suggest that decarbonization of the economy has gone on for "centuries" is just plain wrong.
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The bloggers at Grist have taken strong issue with the Commentary in Nature that I co-authored with Tom Wigley and Chris Green. They have even gone so far as to make up "facts" to support their critiques. Consider this howler from David Roberts:
Continue reading "Misinformation from Grist" »
Mr. Romm is an unfortunate exception displaying the worst face of intolerance among an increasingly isolated, detached few.
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Joe Romm, a former political appointee [Update: Mr. Romm, has asked that a fuller description of him be provided here, so here is a link], has engaged in an increasingly hysterical set of attacks on the Breakthrough Institute and people associated with it. His most recent attacks focus on my paper out this week with Tom Wigley and Chris Green. Despite writing close to 10,000 words in reply to the paper, it does not appear that he has actually read it.
Continue reading "Joe Romm's Challenge" »
The Significance of the Nature Piece
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The Significance of the Nature Piece
What is the significance of "Dangerous Assumptions"?
"Dangerous Assumptions" argues that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has significantly underestimated the amount of emissions reductions required to stabilize carbon emissions at levels currently deemed acceptable in the policy debate. The technological challenge is at least twice as large as the world has come to believe. Policy makers would be wise, including those advancing climate policy proposals in Congress to carefully examine the scenarios that they use to see if in fact they also significantly underestimate the technology challenge.
Continue reading ""Dangerous Assumptions" FAQ" »
"Dangerous Assumptions" shattered the notion that we already have all the technology we need to deal with climate change
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A new piece in Nature today shatters the notion that we already have all the technology we need to deal with climate change. "Dangerous Assumptions" reveals that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change underestimated the size of the technology challenge; it's at least twice as large as the world has come to believe.
Continue reading "Expanding Wedges: a News Roundup" »
You'd almost believe we have a long row of clean energy darlings, politely waiting their turn out in the hallway.
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Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection just launched the We Campaign. With the Obama-esque tagline, "We can solve it," and bright images of solar panels, wind turbines, and moon-walkers, the mood is hopeful and buoyant. With allusions to the invasion of Normandy and the Civil Rights Movement, Gore has finally figured out that the trope of American greatness is more powerful than the one of an empire in decline.
This is a big step in the right direction, but now Gore needs to come to terms with two more inconvenient truths about climate change:
Continue reading "More Inconvenient Truths" »
"Policy makers are lulled into a false sense of security by those seven wedges."
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Marty Hoffert is Professor Emeritus of Physics and former Chair of the Department of Applied Science at New York University. He wrote the landmark 2002 article in the journal Science that concluded global warming was a energy technology problem, not a regulation problem, which inspired Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus to start working on a new Apollo project. In this interview, he makes the case for why the six-wedge scenario to climate stabilization is wrong -- we actually need 18 wedges.
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Continue reading "The Technology Challenge: An Interview with Physicist Marty Hoffert" »
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