Drawing the line against the Keystone XL Pipeline - and David Roberts on hope

The Keystone XL Pipeline project would bring oil extracted from Canadian tar sands down south through the US.  

In the 20th century we had ever-expanding supplies of oil that was easy and inexpensive to extract.  With the easy oil already discovered and steadily being depleted, the new 
sources that remain are mostly unconventional oil and natural gas, which are very difficult, costly and polluting to extract.

That includes natural gas hydrofracked from tight shale deposits, deepwater and polar oil, or the Canadian tar sands.  The carbon emissions from especially dirty sources like the tar sands is expected to accelerate climate change. 

Funding and developing the project infrastructure makes it inevitable that the carbon from these deposits will find their way to the Earth's atmosphere.  NASA physicist James Hansen calls it a 'carbon bomb.'

Here's a two minute video from 350 describing the Keystone and their response.  

Then see this brilliant short video from 350 that puts the entire project in context. 

350.org declared Sat., Sept. 21 a national day of action. Hundreds gathered at NYC's Battery Park for a rally against the pipeline, emceed by the very capable Peter Rugh, previously the leader of the Occupy Wall Street Environmental Solidarity working group.  

Bill Hewitt, an environmental writer and activist, spoke of how clean energy sources have the capacity to supply our power needs.  

Cecil Corbin-Mark from WEACT urged the crowd to call Governor Cuomo and ask him to put a moratorium on fracking - and talked about the jobs that would be created from wind power. 

While this was going on, Clare Donahue from Sane Energy Project gave me a stack of flyers for Global Frackdown, a Sat. October 19 rally sponsored by many groups.  (It'll take place on Pier 62, the Chelsea Piers, on 23rd St. and the Hudson River, from 11 AM - 3 PM.) I made myself useful and passed them out.  Meanwhile Pete led the crowd in some chants, and revved them up for taking the pipeline to the South Street seaport.  

Are events like this enough? No, they're not enough but they're what we have today.  The few hundred people at this rally, and at rallies around the country, as small and hidden from mainstream media coverage as they are, still have an important role in keeping Obama from completely caving to fossil fuel interests.  

We need to get more New Yorkers involved in climate change response beyond this tiny choir.  But how? The film screenings/events I'm organizing are one small contribution toward that end.  Compare the extraordinary challenges we face and the limited resources we have to make them, and one cannot help but feel daunted.  

Yes, wind and solar could meet all of our electricity needs - potentially.  350 and other groups like them understand the positive messaging needed to convey a sense that a desirable energy future is viable and possible.  Going into detail about the less glamorous and indeed grimmer aspects of this discussion is off message, and best saved for private conversations among activists.  If you're reading this blog, congratulations! You've gone far off the beaten path.  For the general public it's best to focus on the positive possibilities, after briefly touring the dark scenarios.    

For a closer look, read "Searching for a Miracle: Net Energy Limits and the Fate of Industrial Society," a 2009 report from Richard Heinberg and Post Carbon Institute.  Yes, there's a lot of sun and wind to be turned into renewable power.  And installed solar and wind power capacity is increasing very rapidly...but...they still represent only a tiny fraction of the world's energy mix.  And virtually all our transportation infrastructure runs on liquid conventional fuels.  How much money, time and political will is there to convert all our cars, trucks and trains to renewable power sourcing?  And will that take place before production from conventional oil sources, now on a bumpy plateau because of the supplementation from unconventional sources, finally begins depleting substantially?  Our energy future is likely to be much more austere and volatile than the official messaging from either 350, Post Carbon Institute or myself would lead the new listener to expect - but that's not likely to help newcomers get their feet wet and get involved. 

But what about those who've looked deeper into the abyss?As David Roberts of Grist recently wrote, given what we know of upward trending carbon dioxide levels and the radical economic and social changes needed to put the brakes on climate change, the big question is - "is there any hope? Or are we just f*cked?"  He answers with the most helpful, and possibly the most realistic analysis I've come across lately.  Never mind just the link: here's the essay. Hope you find it helpful...

***

Hope and fellowship

By David Roberts

Over the last 10 years, I’ve been asked one question more than any other: Is there any hope? Or are we just f*cked?

Regular readers could be forgiven for concluding that we are, indeed, f*cked. On one side, we have the brutal logic of climate change, about which I wrote:

If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale.

On the other side, we have the many forces that retard or prevent change. Cognitively, we suffer from status quo bias and loss aversion. Psychologically and physiologically, we are designed to heed immediate threats with teeth and eyes, not long-term, incremental, invisible dangers. Socioeconomically, power is concentrated in the hands of wealthy incumbents who benefit from the carbon-intensive status quo: fossil fuel companies, the sprawl industry (roads, real estate), Big Ag, airlines, heavy manufacturers, and so on. Politically, we are gripped by polarization, dysfunction, and paralysis. Individually and collectively, we are extremely poor judges of risk, particularly the sort of risk posed by climate change. That makes social change, what Weber called the “slow boring of hard boards,” halting and painful at best.

And so we are stuck, as I said at the end of my TEDx talk, “between the impossible and the unthinkable.”

What does it mean, exactly, to have hope? It’s not a prediction. If we’re being coldly rational, we look to the climate and economic models that show current trends in fossil fuel use and carbon emissions extending out as far as the eye can see. A Vegas bookie making odds would probably say that the good money’s on us being f*cked.

And hope is surely not just about possibility. Sure, it’s possible we could stop rising temperatures at 2 degrees. There are scenarios floating around that demonstrate how it could happen, if we decided to make it happen. If all hope required was possibility, people wouldn’t be asking the question.

So, if not a prediction and not mere possibility, what are we asking about when we ask about hope?

I don’t think it’s about the future as much as it’s about the present. It’s about whether it’s worth it to learn about this stuff, carry the weight of it, talk about it with other people when they don’t want to hear it, fight against overwhelmingly steep odds, suffer daily disappointments and setbacks. If tomorrow we die, would it not be better just to eat, drink, and be merry? What good is all this anxiety, pain, and yearning?

We fear heartbreak. That’s why we reach out for hope.

The sad truth is that there’s no guarantee against heartbreak, in this or anything else. It looks like things are going to get bad, possibly really bad, even within my children’s lifetimes. The decisions we’re making today will reverberate for centuries, and so far we’re blowing it.

With no obvious path to victory (where victory = minimizing suffering and maximizing flourishing in the face of climate change), the question is how to proceed. How do we maintain our equilibrium, our happiness and fighting spirit, with disappointments so common, victories so rare, and unthinkable loss looming?

Though it may seem odd, I find comfort in chaos theory. For all our sophistication, we remain terribly inept at the simple task of predicting what will happen more than a few years out. All our models fail. That means those who predict a steady extension of the status quo will be wrong, too.

The outcome of the climate crisis depends not just on physical forces but on human beings, complex economic, social, and technological systems, and complex systems are nonlinear. We forget this; our instinct is to think the future will look like the recent past, only more so. We don’t anticipate the lateral moves, the lurches, the phase shifts. Because of this, the Very Serious thing to do is always to predict that things will not substantially change. If you say, “There will be a series of brilliant innovations that make clean energy cheap,” or, “There will be a sea change in public opinion on climate,” or, “Young people will take over and revive politics,” you sound like a hippie dreamer. Those aspirations are a matter of faith, a triumph of hope over experience.

And yet: things change! History unfolds along the lines of what Stephen Jay Gould called “punctuated equilibrium.” Things can appear stable for years and years while tensions gather beneath the surface, hairline fractures develop, and the whole system becomes highly sensitive to small perturbations. (The butterfly flaps its wings and causes a hurricane, etc.)

We do not know what those perturbations will be or when they will emerge, but we know from history that Don Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns” are inevitable. The North American natural gas boom, the precipitous decline in solar PV prices, the financial crisis — none were widely predicted. And there will be more like them.

Will unexpected, rapid changes in coming decades be good or bad, positive or negative? That depends on millions of individual choices made in the interim. Some of those choices, if they happen at just the right moment, could be just the perturbations that spark cascading changes in social, economic, or technological systems. Some of those choices, in other words, will be incredibly significant.

Which ones? That we cannot know. It could be any of them, any time. Precisely because we cannot know — because any one of our choices might be the proverbial butterfly’s wings — we must act. We must take advantage of every affordance, grasp every opportunity. We don’t know when history might unlock the door, so we have no choice but to keep pushing on it.

And really, what else are we going to do?

Remember, there is no “too late” here, no “game over” — it will be a tragedy to shoot past 2 degrees to 3, but 4 is worse than 3, and 5 is worse than 4. Being unprepared for any of those will be much worse than being prepared. The future always forks; there are always better and worse paths ahead. There’s always a difference to be made.

When we ask for hope, then, I think we’re just asking for fellowship. The weight of climate change, like any weight, is easier to bear with others. And if there’s anything I’ve learned in these last 10 years, it’s that there are many, many others. They are out there, men and women of extraordinary imagination, courage, and perseverance, pouring themselves into this fight for a better future.

You are not alone. And as long as you are not alone, there is always hope. 

http://grist.org/climate-energy/hope-and-fellowship/  

Screening of 350.org's "Do the Math" at Coffeed, Sept. 16

Len Maniace of Jackson Heights Beautification Group presents his group's report

The Neighborhood Resilience film screening series started on Monday, September 16, 2013 with "Do the Math."  The central figure in this 45 minute film is Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org.  In a widely circulated article, McKibben wrote about three numbers that are critical to understanding climate change. 

There's universal consensus that two degrees celsius of average global warming above pre-industrial levels is the safe upper limit for human civilization.  We've already up to nearly one degree of warming, which has produced the warmest years on record, and accelerating rates of extreme weather disasters.  More would be worse, right? 2012 reports from PriceWaterhouse Coopers and The World Bank, not exactly leftist sources, warn that we're headed for four to six degrees celsius by the end of the century if carbon emission trends persist, with cataclysmic consequences for the human race as well as the ecosystem.

Coffeed's Frank "Turtle" Raffaele and his team

Some physicists measured around how much carbon could be burned, and thus shoveled into the atmosphere, without exceeding the two degrees of warming figure.  They figured it to be 565 gigatons of carbon.  (A gigaton is a billion tons.)

The third number is how much carbon is present in the recoverable reserves of oil, coal and natural gas in the ground accessible to the major fossil fuel companies and and national producers.  It's 2,795 gigatons. 

What this means is that if the fossil fuel companies burn all the fuel they can extract, they will dump enough carbon in the Earth's atmosphere to put us five times over the safe upper limit.  The climate will no longer be suitable for human civilization.  Game over.

Another possibility: cultural, political and economic change that leaves the carbon in the ground. Very difficult but possible. In the film, McKibben points out how we have the tools and know-how to turn to renewable energy, and cut back our appetite for fossil fuel energy, but we don't have the political will, because the fossil fuel companies have bought out the politicians and the media.  

During WWII, the US turned within months from a consumer economy to a vast armaments factory.  We could make a similar rapid transformation today - if there was enough public awareness of the urgency of the situation, and the political establishment was able to act on it.  The climate change movement isn't yet capable of that feat.

Coming up with neighborhood greening ideas

350.org is building a student movement calling for divestment of colleges and cities from fossil fuel investments, much like the 1980s movement opposing apartheid in South Africa. 

This doc is a good introductory video for climate change.  Hurricane Sandy gave NYC a major wake-up call about more frequent weather disasters as an inevitable part of a climate changed future.  So it's become possible to talk about adapting to climate change, and becoming more resilient to its disruptions - at least a little bit.  

But the NYC discussion usually fixates on flooding scenarios which repeat Hurricane Sandy, rather than other likely consequences like heat waves or droughts.  And no one ever suggests using a lot less fossil fuel energy, which would be essential to put the brakes on accelerating climate change.  Like 80 - 90% less.  No no no.  And no one is talking about declining supplies of oil and natural gas making a transition away from fossil fuels not just desirable, but inevitable.  Heck, even Bill McKibben avoids that, to keep the climate change message relatively simple.  So how can we change that, and start bringing those topics into NYC conversations about sustainability?

There's a longer answer at www.beyondoilnyc.org and http://www.meetup.com/resiliencenyc/ - but here's the basic idea: organizing locally to raise awareness about big picture sustainability issues among New Yorkers, encouraging them to take action, and linking them to already existing sustainability projects.

Following screenings of films that raise awareness about climate change and limited fossil fuel resources with facilitated discussions among audience members is a starting point. 

Borrowing from the Transition movement and the group work of Joanna Macy, exercises lead audience members to make connections with each other, envision their community after green transformations, and hopefully encourage them to get involved with existing green initiatives.   

In the last exercise, I asked folks to get into groups of five or six, imagine time traveling into 2033, visualize NYC all green and sustainable, and come back with a list of ways that Queens in 2013 could make next steps in this direction. Technical accuracy and practical feasibility are not as important in this exercise as building community.  

There are hundreds of community Transition initiatives in England, Ireland, New England and the Pacific Northwest, and a number elsewhere in the US.  So far the organizing method does not seem to be present in NYC.

A number of the attendees were connected to green projects: two women from Community Environmental Center, an energy efficiency nonprofit, the leaders of a Jackson Heights green group and a LIC kayaking group, a tree planting activist, and of course the staff at Coffeed, all dedicated composting advocates. 

Coffeed, a sustainability-themed coffee house on the ground floor of Brooklyn Grange Farm in Long Island City, graciously donated its space, as well as free coffee, beer and pastries for the evening. 

The next two Mondays we'll screen "The Crash Course," a 45 minute version of Chris Martenson's full three hour video series on energy, environment and the economy, and "Crisis of Civilization," a virtually unknown 80 minute documentary that I think is the current version of "The End of Suburbia."  I'll come up with some new interactive questions too.  Come on out, it'll be fun!