Climate Change Mobilization: From the Bottom or the Top? – Blog Post 14 - Oct 21

In this section of readings in The Global Warming Reader, there were two sections that came from Al Gore.  The first section came from his book Earth in the Balance, while the other came from a speech he gave during the formation of the Kyoto Protocol.  Both discussed climate change, but each of them gave different approaches towards attacking the problem.  In the excerpt from his book, Al Gore focuses more on people rising up and pushing companies and the government for action.  He discusses the successes of Pat Bryant in pushing for air quality laws in Louisiana and Lynda Draper for pushing General Electric to stop releasing CFCs into the atmosphere.  In this article, Gore also stated that a political movement will form if people begin to expand the definition of NIMBY from people’s own backyards to the commons, such as the atmosphere.  In this article, it really seems like he is pushing for people to take action in their own communities, which is more of a bottom-up approach for fixing climate change.  On the other hand, Gore pushed for emission limits in Kyoto, followed by the opening of new markets for technologies to replace fossil fuels.  This approach is more of a top-down approach because the Kyoto Protocol would influence governments to instill new rules on people below it. 

            So which method is better?  In other words, which methodology of attack would provide the most results?  The bottom-up approach may be easier to make some progress in, but would be harder to make a large scale impact in.  The top-down approach in America is very difficult to make any progress in, but if someone could implement changes in the government, it could be huge. 

            Although huge changes are needed in order to solve the climate crisis, I think that the problem should be solved with the bottom-up approach.  The top-down approach has not yielded many results in America.  Lobbyists from industry constantly push for fewer regulations, and even if a new regulation is made, lobbyists from industry will push for exemptions, loopholes, and the reversal of the new laws made.  The science is there in plain sight, and has been for a while, and the United States government still has not acted on it.  At this point, in order to avoid a climate crisis, I think that the bottom-up approach is really the only reasonable option.  This approach has been used by people for almost all social movements in America.  Putting pressure on the government by showing that people care about an issue seems to yield long-term results, although it is a lot more work.

            Reflecting back on my last blog post and the excerpt from Al Gore’s book, I think that the biggest thing that people need to learn in order for a movement to be successful is the interrelatedness of the world.  Learning about the interrelatedness of wind patterns, water patterns, and temperature could help people to understand climate change better.  It also will show people how everything is connected, which will force people to expand the NIMBY principle.  Right now, most people would be willing to fight a new chemical plant or garbage dump nearby their house, but would not be willing to fight if the plant or dump was located farther away.  If people could just realize how everything is interconnected and how everything affects them, they would expand their definition of their backyard and may begin to step up and be more environmentally friendly outside of their own neighborhoods.  When a chemical plant spills chemicals into a river, even if that river is not in that person’s backyard, it could flow downstream to that person’s backyard.  Or, that same water could be drunk by a cow downstream, which means that the chemicals could be incorporated in your meat.  Or maybe in your fruits and vegetables.  Everything is connected, and the interconnectedness of the environment may be the most important part of environmental science that people need to learn.  

A Need for a More Educated Public – Blog Post 13 - Oct 17

In my last blog post, I discussed why people may think that climate change is a hoax.  In addition to educating people that it is in fact not a hoax, American citizens also need to be educated about the science of climate change because it is clear that many people do not even know the basics.  I have heard people say before that they are wearing a sweatshirt or that it is cold outside, so global warming must not be true.  These people think that global warming is simply the warming of the planet a few degrees, which does not sound like a big deal.  In reality, the problem is climate change, or the changing of climate patterns that make life for humans more difficult to bear.  We, as a civilization, have already settled in the best places to support human life so if the climate changes, we will have to adapt to a place less suited for human life.  People do not realize that the change in climate patterns, from rainfall to temperature, will affect every area of life.  These changes will impact not only ecosystems, but agriculture, the economy, and the viability to live in certain areas.  People need to understand these connections to appreciate the severity of climate change.  As I read Dr. Jeff Master’s WonderBlog titled “Causes of the Russian Heat Wave and Pakistani Floods,” I realized how confused most people would be that events like floods are related to climate change.  Although almost everybody relates climate change to heat, it is very much related to water as well, since water and regional temperature are closely related. 

The article “Causes of the Russian Heat Wave and Pakistani Floods” discussed two of the most intense weather events that have occurred in the past century.  The Great Russian Heat Wave of 2010 was only comparable to the North American heat wave of July 1936 and the European heat wave of 2003, showing how significant it was.  The author discussed the research of Feudale and Shukla, which hypothesized that increased sea surface temperatures (SSTs) caused the polar jet stream to move in a certain way that caused a drought in Russia and massive flooding in Pakistan.  This polar jet stream brings “extratropical cyclones” to areas, which essentially bring precipitation and more moderate temperatures when it collides with the subtropical jetstream.  The higher SSTs may have caused the polar jetstream to move north over Russia and south into Pakistan, leaving Russia hot and dry and dumping the rain that usually falls over Russia into Pakistan.  Although no single event can be described as a result of climate change, climate change may have been the cause of the higher SSTs, which may have caused the heat wave and floods. 

            After reading this article, two things became apparent to me.  The first was reinforcement on my original idea that most people would not even think about a correlation between floods and climate change.  The other was that although I understand that floods are related to a rising global temperature by changing water patterns, I barely understand climatology either!  The discussion on jetstreams and how they create “lows” and bring “extratropical cyclones” to areas went right over my head.  I’ve taken some environmental science classes, and I have just realized that wind and water patterns really are not even discussed!

            In conclusion, this article did not only remind me that most people do not understand climate change, but it also showed me that I do not understand the environment as well as I would like to.  Even though I have shown the initiative to take environmental science classes, I have still not learned the basics of wind and water patterns.  Environmental education does not only need to reach more people.  It also needs to be improved as a whole.

Climate Change: Why It’s Not a Hoak – Blog Post 12 - October 10

            This week I read the first few sections in The Global Warming Reader, which discussed the science and history behind the realization that climate change was occurring as a result of human activity.  In earlier human history, people viewed the world as limitless.  They figured that the world, including the atmosphere, was so big that humans could not have any significant impact on them.  Yet, as the Industrial Revolution moved along, led by fossil fuels, this changed drastically.  As society unlocked the energy behind fossil fuels, their populations were able to grow as more food was able to be harvested.  Additionally, more resources per person began to be used as people’s standard of living increased. 

            In 1896, Svante Arrhenius was the first man to propose that fossil fuels could rise the world’s temperature, based on the fact that the carbon dioxide released with the burning of fossil fuels traps heat in the atmosphere.  About forty years later, G.S. Callendar started measuring carbon dioxide and temperature around the world and correlated the two, stating that an increase in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels may increase the temperature of the world globally.  Following this, Revelle and Suess concluded in their work that the ocean would not take up the excess carbon dioxide released from fossil fuels. 

            The real concern over climate change did not occur until Keeling began modifying infrared gas analyzers and began taking samples from Mauna Loa and other areas around the world.  He could see the seasonal variations in carbon dioxide across the globe, as well as a general rise in carbon dioxide and temperature over time.  James Hansen, the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA, brought this to the attention of the public and increased funding for the study of climate change.  Finally, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created by the United Nations in 1988, which was set up specifically to study the global climate and to determine if humans were generating any significant impacts on it.  The IPCC began to do attribution studies, trying to establish a cause and effect between human actions and the climate.  They analyzed the usual background noise of climate variability over time, which included fluctuations that were internal and external to the system, and then added the human-induced effect on top of them.  Inevitably, the IPCC found that humans were almost certainly causing a large effect on the climate, increasing the concentrations of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous dioxide, and other chemicals.  Finally, Naomi Oreskes conducted a study in 2004 of 928 scientific papers and found that essentially none of them denied that climate change was real.

            The reason that I bring all of this up is simple.  Climate change itself is generally accepted by the scientific community by countless research papers.  The climate is changing, whether it is natural or not, is the first point that needs to be made.  Second of all, the IPCC, along with the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meterological Society, and the American Geophysical Union all agree that it is human-induced.  So why is the topic of human-induced climate change still debated today?  Why do people not believe it?
            I think that there are two main reasons why people do not believe in human-induced climate change.  The first is the fact that on news coverage, journalists many times present both sides of the story, no matter how skewed the two sides are.  This can easily lead to confusion among people watching the news because they do not know what to believe.  Additionally, the big fossil fuel industry does not want people to believe in climate change because if they did, more regulations would be put on them and that would hurt business, so they lobby and push their agendas in certain ways to make the facts look unclear.  Human-induced climate change cannot be proven a fact, just like anything in science, but it is agreed upon by almost all scientists today.  People need to know this and understand the implications that human-induced climate change can cause.

            The other main reason that people do not believe is because of their own beliefs in science.  Many people say the world is too big for people to have that much of an impact on it.  Other people strongly claim that it is just a natural cycle that the Earth is going through.  When debated on sea level rise, some people state that the sea level can’t rise because ice melting in water doesn’t raise the sea level, not realizing that there is ice that can melt on land.  These people need to realize that they are not specialists in the field.  People do not debate other fields of scientific research nearly as much as they do climate change.  For some reason, maybe because of the fossil fuel industry and media, many people dismiss climate change because of their own belief on how the global climate works.  These people need to trust the science, and realize that the IPCC and other organizations take into account natural variations and other pieces of research while making multiple models, which many times are more conservative than what actually happens.  In conclusion, the thought that human-induced climate change is a hoax is essentially wrong.  People need to be educated on the science behind climate change, and the research methods that show that the research is sound and has already considered many of the variables that people use to dismiss it in the first place.  From here, people need to understand its implications and begin to fight against the change.  

Obama’s “Historic” Rule: Good or Bad for the Environment Overall? – Blog Post 11 - October 7

    In June of 2014, President Barack Obama used his executive power to pass a new rule with the Environmental Protection Agency to lower carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by thirty percent of its 2005 levels by 2030.  He could do this because he has the ability to make executive decisions and rules based on the Clean Air Act.  President Obama decided to act in this way because he thought that something needed to be done about climate change and knew that Congress would not allow anything to get passed.  Although coal lobbyists are screaming out energy crisis claims and a rising cost of electricity for the general American, Gina McCarthy, the EPA administrator, points out that this rule will lower medical costs, protect our jobs, and fight the environmental injustice that surrounds power plants (Obama Unveils). 

            This is a groundbreaking rule for many reasons.  First of all, this is the first time that any president has tried to limit the amount of carbon dioxide that power plants emit (Obama Unveils).  Second of all, it shows that environmental groups are finally having their voices be heard.  Finally, it shows that things can still be done in the government, even with lobbyists and a stalemated Congress.  This event is definitely a huge moral victory for the environmental movement as a whole.

            The question I pose is, will this rule necessarily help the environment overall?  Generally speaking, carbon emissions from coal power plants was decreasing overall because of the drop in the economy and because natural gas is on the rise in the United States (Obama Unveils).  Additionally, not all of the strategies to reduce carbon emissions from coal power plants are that environmentally friendly.  For example, natural gas could just take over for coal in energy generation.  Natural gas burns cleaner and releases less carbon into the atmosphere than coal.  But natural gas is still a fossil fuel that needs to be harvested, processed, and delivered, which creates many environmental problems of its own. 

            Another option may be to begin using carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) at coal power plants.  Canada recently started up their first carbon capture power plant, which is estimated to reduce carbon emissions from coal ninety percent.  That is equivalent to about one million tons a year, or about 250,000 cars.  This is a great technology because it enables society to keep using a similar infrastructure while reducing carbon emissions, until other alternative energies can be fully phased in.  The only problem is, the process is so expensive that it is argued that the only way that a carbon capture power plant can be economical is if the coal is nearby and if they sell the carbon dioxide to help in priming oil fields in the surrounding area (Canada Switches).  This limits how much the technology may be able to be used, and encourages the production of oil. 

            Other ways to lower coal power plant emissions would be to reduce energy usage overall or to begin phasing in alternative energy sources such as wind energy or solar photovoltaics.  Unfortunately, these alternative energy industries may not capitalize on the opportunity as well as the natural gas industry does because natural gas companies are already very powerful and can implement their technologies faster than most alternative energy companies can.

            Overall, I think that President Obama’s rule with the Environmental Protection Agency is a good thing, at least for the momentum for the environmental movement.  Environmental rules like this need to keep being associated with protecting jobs, public health, and increasing environmental justice to gain momentum, because the coal industry will lobby hard to say that it will lose jobs and cost the economy dearly.  People need to realize that acting in environmentally-friendly ways has many positive benefits to many other areas of life that may affect them more directly.  Unfortunately, I think that this rule may just increase the amount of natural gas that is used, which I do not like because I feel like their impacts on the environment are many times even greater than coal’s!  Hopefully, coal tries to clean up its practices to lower its environmental impact, and alternative energy companies take advantage of the more expensive energy prices to start implementing themselves further into society.  Different states have different rules that they need to comply with under this law, so alternative energy companies targeting states with higher amounts of regulation may make their products more competitive.  Carbon capture and sequestration seems too expensive to be practically implemented on a large scale at this time, so I doubt it will be. 

Works Cited

Goldenberg, Suzanne. "Obama Unveils Historic Rules to Reduce Coal Pollution by 30%." The Guadian. N.p., 2 June 2014. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/02/obama-rules-coal-climate-change>.

Goldenbern, Suzanne. "Canada Switches on World's First Carbon Capture Power Plant." The Guardian. N.p., 1 Oct. 2014. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/01/canada-switches-on-worlds-first-carbon-capture-power-plant>.

The Next Step Towards a More Sustainable Future – Blog Post 10 - September 30

            This week I read a variety of short essays in The Energy Reader about how humans can live more sustainably.  Each essay argued what the most important thing to do is in order to help make the world or the United States more sustainable.  With all of these options, which is the most important?  Where do we start?

Robert E. King essentially argued that capping the grid is the most important thing that can be done to help the energy crisis because it will stop the ever-growing American need for energy.  He points out that technology will not get us out of the energy crisis because of Jevon’s paradox.  This paradox basically states that as things become more energy efficient, they are cheaper to use and people will use them more.  As a result of this, people will continue to use the same amount of energy, or even more, because of the perceived or actual efficiency increases.  The laws of diminishing returns again applies here, where it becomes harder and harder to make technologies more efficient after the “low-hanging fruit” are picked.  Efficiency will eventually plateau as times go on.  The argument that conservation is the most important thing is strong, but his method of obtaining conservation is debatable.  King recommends a cap on energy, where the United States would stop growing its energy economy.  If new alternative energies were added, old power plants would be decommissioned.  This not only seems like a near-impossible goal to lobby for, but it also may not be considered fair by many Americans.  Americans today would have to be very very convinced of the negative effects of climate change before they would even consider limiting their energy usage in a mandatory fashion. 

Shiela Bowers and Bill Powers argue for more local energy generation as the centerpiece of America’s energy policy.  They argue that it increases property values, leads to less environmental impacts because there are less power lines, more secure energy system, and because it benefits local jobs.  Although alternative energy in general is good, Bowers and Powers argue that there are many negative impacts to centralized power in general and that localized is the best way for America to become more energy sustainable.

Other authors focused on lowering our energy economy through more indirect ways.  Harvey Locke made the argument that half of the land and water on Earth should be protected, which would not only be ecologically and aesthetically pleasing, but it would also limit how many resources our energy economy and regular economy could use.  Although the thought is great, this argument seems ideal at best.  First of all, it would take international efforts and regulation across the globe to get this done.  Second of all, it would probably lead to weaker, developing countries being exploited and the most civilized ones being saved.  Most of all, businesses would pick the most exploitable areas, and would push the government for new laws to allow them wherever they please if they run out, just as they do today.  Although Locke makes a good argument, I do not think fighting for conservation of land and water is the best solution to our problem. 

Bill McKibben wrote more of a step-by-step approach to ending global warming.  He argued that people need to spread the word about climate change, create strict goals on what the people want to change, and create a movement to fight for those goals and to show the government that changes need to be made.  It needs to show the spirit of the American people.  Of all of the arguments to help make the world a more sustainable place, McKibben’s basic argument has to be the strongest.  Business is probably not going to change on its own; it will continue to operate in the cheapest and easiest ways possible, by almost only using fossil fuels.  The American government will continue to support business over the environment as long as lobbyism from business remains the source of government official campaign funding.  Therefore, the force that needs to fight for the environment is the people.  For all of the other authors’ sustainability goals to happen, a movement from the masses must occur.  It must be from the masses because victories by minority environmentalist groups are usually overturned.  It must be a movement like the civil rights movement, where people show consistently that they want something and will be active enough to get it.  A movement, started by education, is the best way to lead to a more sustainable future.  There are many things that can be done for the sake of sustainability, but the change will only be drastic enough to matter if enough people are behind it.  The more people who know and care about today’s environmental problems, the more people will push for better laws and the more people who will attempt to incorporate sustainability into their jobs and everyday life. 

This movement will lead to people who care about the environment.  Conservation will be emphasized because people can easily control that in their daily lives.  Capping the grid then may seem like a more reasonable argument that may be supported.  Localized alternative energy will seem to make more sense.  Conserving more land and water will seem to make more sense.  With more people speaking up and acting, more will be able to get done and it will get done easier and more permanently.  The root of the problem is that American citizens do not care, or do not care enough to act.  The first step needs to be environmental education and the start of a movement.  American citizens must be the force of change, because no one else will be.  Then it may be possible to reverse many of the negative environmental effects we have been causing, before it is too late.  

A Cleaner Energy Future: Realism vs. Idealism – Blog Post 9 - September 26

            This week for Energy Politics I read two short essays, one by Richard Heinberg and another by Amory B. Lovins, on how the world should confront the energy crisis.  Both of these authors have a good vision for an ideal future, but do not recommend any steps to get there.  

Heinberg argues that people could either continue on the maximum carbon plan, burning all fossil fuels until it is not profitable to burn anymore, or the minimum carbon plan, where people use subsidies and incentives to increase the renewable energy sector, use biofuels instead of oil for transportation, and try to sequester carbon dioxide and store it out of the atmosphere.  Either way, Heinberg argues that people will need to decrease their energy consumption per capita in the future, so he recommends doing it now to make the transition easier.  Heinberg addresses most sectors, from agriculture to buildings.  He argues that with a shortage of fossil fuels, more people will have to be hired to maintain the fields in agriculture, and it will be less economical for farmers to use pesticides and herbicides.  Additionally, transportation will be more costly so communities should be reorganized so that public transportation can be utilized or so that walking or biking is more preferable.  A lot of these points are valid and are ideal in my opinion, but the question I ask is, how do we get there?  How do we get to this point and conserve more energy before we need to, as Heinberg suggests?

Amory B. Lovins has a similar piece.  He suggests that energy efficiency will lead to more profits for business and more economic growth.  Lovins makes many claims that technology is improving and that technology is here today that can help us live more efficiently.  He cites his own home as having countless improvements that make it very energy efficient.  On the other hand, many of his facts and statistics seem far too extrapolated to really make sense.  His technocratic belief that technology will save us seems far too strong to really trust a lot of what he says.  For example, Lovins argues that electric cars could have 125-250 miles per gallon by 2050.  He also talks about trucks and cars having “triple-efficiency trucks and planes” that require no oil because biofuels, hydrogen, and electricity will take over.  These kinds of assumptions on what technology will be able to do in the future are not well routed and seem too far extrapolated to really make much sense.  Increasing the miles per gallon of electric cars does not follow a linear path; additionally, efficiency generally decreases as more energy-efficient technologies are added due to the law of diminishing returns.  Furthermore, a hydrogen economy is very far away and would need a large policy, law, or subsidy to really get going and replace our current infrastructure.  Although Lovins brings up many economical ways to be more efficient, such as to integrative design in how we build and construct things, a lot of his claims seem too technocratic to believe the facts behind what he is saying.  
In conclusion, although it is great to have an ideal view of how society should function in the future, Heinberg and Lovins both do not put full plans together on how to get there.  One focuses on conservation of energy that is currently non-profitable in many ways; the other focuses on technological advancements that are unlikely to occur or function on their own. 
 

Gathering Support for an Environmental Movement – Blog Post 8 - September 23

            The world today is plagued with environment injustices, from the destruction of ecosystems across the globe to the poisoning of the very water and air we depend on for survival.  Yet, most Americans live their lives without ever doing anything to help the environment.  They move on and focus on their own lives in their own little bubbles, allowing environmental problems to worsen as the economy grows and businesses take advantage of the relaxed regulation that governs them.  Some people are unaware of the environmental problems.  Others do not care, do not have time to help, or do not know how to help.  The fact of the matter is, more people need to care and need to help if we are going to save the planet before it is radically destroyed, even more so than it is today.

            This week in class we watched the move Climate Change Disruption, which mainly focused on the events leading up to the People’s Climate March in New York City.  The march was meant to show support and show that climate change is an issue that needs to be addressed.  One of the strongest things that I took from the video is the need for emotional appeal to get people to become active.  The video explained that people have a rational, analytical side of the brain that helps to understand the problem, as well as an emotional, intuitive side that is very reactive.  In order to get people to become active, you must make them care and make them emotionally charged up. 

            Environmentalists have been using emotions in their campaigns for a while, but their scope is usually too thin.  Environmental activists usually focus on the environmental effects of climate change, which many times seem too gradual to really convince anyone to do anything.  As the movie Climate Change Disruption states, people have a finite pool of worry that usually prioritizes more immediate worries first.  People are so overwhelmed with their everyday struggles that they usually cannot be bothered by apocalyptic views of climate change twenty years down the road. 

            So how do you make people care?  You must explain how the environmental degradation impacts them directly.  You must make them care and make them see it on an everyday level.  You must make them feel like they are part of the environment and that it impacts them directly.  The organizers of the People’s Climate March did this well and really proved this point.  They discussed that the poor get hit first with environmental problems, and rallied them around this point.  The organizers talked about public health and protecting jobs.  These are things that directly affect people and that people worry about on a daily basis.  These are the things that will bring the average person to care about climate change.  The community of people fighting climate change needs to be expanded from solely environmentalists to all groups affected by climate change. 

            One of the most interesting groups I heard about in the video was called the Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS).  This is a group that wants to work with unions to fight climate change and lead to a more sustainable future.  They recognize that people are dependent on the environment and that if the climate worsens a lot, jobs will be lost.  Additionally, the LNS sees the green and sustainable jobs as a market that they would like to enter into.  Sustainability’s roots are in social and economic equities, so they have similarities to labor unions as well.  The LNS believes the best way to do this is to come up with a shared future plan with environmentalists and union workers so that both groups can fully work together towards a common goal (About 1-3).  The LNS is just one great example of the different groups that can be rallied behind an environmental issue.  Environmental issues impact most people in some way; it is up to the organizer to figure out which impacts will motivate people to take action the most.  People need to take action, in order to have a better future for all of humanity. 

Works Cited

"About." Labor Network for Sustainability. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Sept. 2014. <http://www.labor4sustainability.org/about/>.